This article was published in the issue of November 2017 of the newsletter DAWN Informs.  

The Second Southern Africa Peoples Summit, a gathering of about 500 delegates from civil society across the sub-region, was held in South Africa on 17-18 August. The day before the summit, a convoy of delegates went to Rustenburg to mark the fifth anniversary of the Marikana massacre on August 16[1]. The massacre occurred during one of the most remarkable chapters in global labour history. After killing 34 mineworkers and seriously injuring 78, the women in Marikana informal settlement and the miners decided to continue to strike for a living wage. It is in this spirit that the Peoples Summit was held.

There was consensus at the Summit that Southern African Development Community (SADC) governments no longer provide meaningful concessions. Securitisation of social problems in liberal democracies and hardening of authoritarianism in the face of popular protests has rendered irrelevant attempts to engage with intergovernmental processes.

This is reflected in the rise of the youth movement against inequality and authoritarianism in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the most resource rich countries in the world.
Now is a time of resilience and reflection, experimentation and renewal of hope for potentialities that exist. In this moment, the importance of going beyond critique and thinking through alternatives cannot be overemphasised.

The Peoples Summit heard that in a step forward, Zimbabwe Diamond Workers Union has gone beyond traditional trade union concerns. It also explicitly addresses unequal employment for women, environmental violations and supports artisanal miners and mining affected communities.

The Rural Women’s Assembly[2] (RWA) took a clear stance to reject corporate takeover of seeds which has led to the destruction of seed variety. A common thread was critique of the farmer input subsidy program.[3] Activists, who are also smallholder women farmers, cited how farmer input subsidy programs have facilitated the entry of agribusinesses further down the value chain. They also called for locally owned seed banks and support for smallholder farmer controlled markets to keep multinational corporations out.

One of the most striking deliberations at the Summit was a session held by RWA on violence against all women, including queer bodies. The analysis gave insight into the great strides being made on confronting violence against women in the sub-region. Dispossession was understood as violence to a person’s being and identity. There was a clear position on making linkages between violence on an interpersonal, epistemic, structural and system wide level. These processes were linked to the extractive nature of the economy and complicity of the state in this process. This is becoming entrenched and threatening livelihoods and food sovereignty, and is escalating in the face of climate change.

At the Permanent Peoples Tribunal, charges were laid against transnational corporations. One case was brought by Amadiba Crisis Committee (ACC), which was formed in 2007 by the Xolobeni community in South Africa to resist a titanium mine, Minerals Commodity, a subsidiary of an Australian corporation. It is expected a mineral separation plant and smelter could provide about 300 permanent jobs. However ACC views the environmental damage and dispossession as part of a global existential crisis. In September 2016, the Minister of the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) took a unilateral decision to cancel the license of the Australian listed mine for 18 months. In some quarters, this was understood as a victory. ACC rejected this and continues to call for a permanent cancelation of the mining license, even though their then chairperson, Sikhossiphi Rhadebe, has been assassinated.

Justica Ambiental presented on the case against Pro-Savana[4], a public private partnership in the Nacala Development Corridor (NDC) of Mozambique. NDC covers an area of 14 million hectares with a population of about 10 million. Pro-Savana seeks to transform NDC from being dominated by smallholder production to plantation farms. Brazil provides technical expertise from the Brazilian Agriculture Research Corporation (Embrapa) and Japan provides finance, while the government of Mozambique secures access to land. The project is export oriented for countries such as Japan and China. This project has led to land grabbing, a pattern that intensified after the 2008 food crisis[5] and has raised serious alarm.[6]

The Peoples Summit provided a space for convergence and debate between diverse movements and struggles in Southern Africa and beyond in the spirit of internationalism. The articulation of interlinkages between structural, epistemic and systemic factors was also very clear. It opened the space for accountability of states captured by corporate interests. The Peoples Permanent Tribunal offered an example of an important mechanism which can be replicated elsewhere. Nonetheless, the scale of the unevenness between corporations on one hand, and communities and activists on the other, appears to be overwhelming.

Yet the recent collapse of one of the biggest land grab deals in the world in the Horn of Africa has raised hope. After a decade long struggle in Gambela region of Ethiopia over a deal covering an area of 300 000 hectares, Karuturi, a flower grower based in India has had its trade and investment license revoked. Land is to be returned to smallholder farmers. This is a victory indeed.[7]

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[1] Platinum mine workers led by rock drill operators were on an unprotected strike for a week for a living wage. The strike before and after the massacre was sustained by women in the Marikana mine community who also were part of decision making, even on the day of the massacre. Just before the massacre, Joseph Mutunjwa, President of the Allied Mining Construction Union (AMCU) famously went on his knees and begged the men and women to end the strike. The mineworkers were shot in the head and the back as they attempted to flee.  See more information on women of Marikana from the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at https://www.wits.ac.za/media/wits-university/faculties-and-schools/comme…

[2] RWA was launched in 2003 and is a self-organised network or alliance of national rural women’s movements, assemblies, grassroots organisations and chapters of mixed peasant unions, federations and movements across nine countries in the SADC region. RWA focus is to reclaim indigenous seeds and eject agribusinesses like Monsanto.

[3] In the 2003 Maputo Declaration, African governments agreed to allocate 10% of the national budget to agriculture. Not only has this not been achieved, but allocation of resources has tended to benefit big farmers and agribusinesses instead of smallholder farmers, especially women.

[4] Programme of Triangular Co-operation for Agricultural Development of the Tropical Savannahs of Mozambique.

[5] The Land Grabbers of the Nacala Corridor: A New Era of Struggle Against Colonial Plantations in Northern Mozambique, National Farmers Union and Grain, February, 19, 2015, https://www.grain.org/article/entries/5137-the-land-grabbers-of-the-naca…

[6] Land Grabbing for Agribusiness in Mozambique: UNAC statement on Pro-Savana Programme, October 11, 2012, http://www.unac.org.mz/english/index.php/our-position-documents/8-unac-s…

[7] Anywaa Survival Organisation and GRAIN, Turono Karuturi (“Bye-bye Karuturi” in Anuak), 22 September 2017, https://www.grain.org/article/entries/5803-turono-karuturi-bye-bye-karut