Hundreds of anti-debt campaigners were expected to take to the streets of Pretoria on Thursday in protest against the World Bank’s privatisation policy.
Sonto Mthimkhulu, chairperson of the Gauteng branch of the International Jubilee Debt Campaign (JDC), said they would march from the International Monetary Fund offices in Park Street to the World Bank building in Pretorius Street to hand over a memorandum.
”Privatisation leads to job losses and prevents access to many of life’s basic needs for the thousands of poor South Africans,” Mthimkhulu said.
She said the aim of the protest was to try and convince the IMF and the World Bank to change their policies.
JDC said it hoped for a world ”in which the people of the poorest countries were liberated from the crushing burden of debt, and in which the future financial arrangements between rich and poor nations were founded on fairness accountability and transparency”.
Joining the protest, Johannes Mokonyane of the Tembisa Concerned Residents Association, said it was the World Bank’s encouragement of privatisation which was leaving people without the basic requirements of water and electricity.
”It is because of them that there is now pre-paid water and electricity,” he said.
Mokonyane also complained against imports such as textiles from countries like China which were cheaper than local textiles.
”These clothes are imported from ‘fong kong’,” he said explaining the phrase meant to describe clothes that were worn today and were rags tomorrow.
”Privatisation causes starvation in our country,” he said. – Sapa