A row over the opening concert for the World Summit on Sustainable Development underscores tensions between the ”greens” and President Thabo Mbeki’s pro-Nepad (New Partnership for Africa’s Development) team organising the mega-event in Johannesburg later this month.
The Netherlands branch of the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) is paying about R3-million for the concert on August 23. It insists the theme for the concert should be ”SOS Planet” — highlighting alarm among greens that the global environment is under serious threat from development.
Local environmentalists and sustainable development activists are objecting to the ”SOS Planet” theme, saying it is out of tune with the agenda of developing nations in the South. They argue in favour of a people-centred theme, with a focus on opposition to global apartheid.
”Because WWF-Netherlands is footing the bill, their attitude is they can do what they like. They have been acting like a bull in a china shop,” says one local activist involved in the concert, who asked not to be named. WWF’s concert organisers did not return calls from the Mail & Guardian this week.
The local activists were equally dismayed when organisers at the World Summit secretariat — responsible for the civil society section of the summit — recently stepped in to rearrange the event.
Nelson Mandela — darling of the greens, who had been invited as a high-profile guest with Desmond Tutu and Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King — was taken off the bill. He has since been reinstated.
It now appears that Mbeki will be the kingpin of the concert and the focus of speeches will be on Nepad. The activists say this is yet another coup for ”Mbeki’s team” at the World Summit secretariat, which earlier this year ousted environmentalists and replaced them with trade unionists and civics’ affiliates.
”This concert was supposed to be totally independent,” says the activist. ”But it is turning into yet another political platform with government influence.”
The concert, featuring at least eight bands, will be staged at the Johannesburg Stadium. The official opening ceremony of the World Summit will be held on August 25 in Sandton, home to the United Nations segment of the summit. Latest figures show that about 40 000 delegates and media have signed up to attend the summit.
The concert row comes at a time when local and international greens are attacking Nepad as an inappropriate vehicle for sustainable development in Africa. Both the draft political declaration and plan of implementation — the principal documents that heads of state will eventually be asked to sign at the summit — pledge support for Nepad.
”Nepad has been formulated by a number of African leaders with very little public debate and consultation. African civil society has not played any part in the conception, design and formulation of Nepad,” says the Eco-Equity Coalition, a powerful international alliance of consumer and green groups.
The Wildlife and Environment Society (Wessa), one of South Africa’s oldest green NGOs, and the Environmental Justice Networking Forum hosted a workshop on Nepad and biological diversity last week.
”While recognising the value of Africa’s resources, Nepad fails to identify biodiversity conservation, or the environment, as a central condition for sustainable development,” says Wessa’s Anton Boonzaier.
”While Africa needs to develop, the type of development should be environmentally sustainable to avoid Africa falling into the same trap that developed countries are now in. Nepad fails to fully comprehend that the wealth of so-called developed nations was gained at huge environmental cost.”