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SOUTH AFRICA SAYS NO TO WTO

Gauteng Department of Economic Affairs
Gauteng Anti-WTO protest
November 9, 2001

Around 500 people marched through central Johannesburg today to protest the Doha, Qatar, meeting of the WTO, the South African government's participation in it, and the effect of WTO-enforced neoliberalism on South Africa.

The march was coordinated by the Johannesburg branch of the Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC), which campaigns against the South African government's neoliberal economic policies, and the involvement of the World Bank, IMF and TNCs in South African affairs.

Activists from several grassroots organisations took part, along with hundreds of individuals. They included the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, formed to prevent the state electricity company, ESKOM, from cutting off the electricity of the poor in Soweto. ESKOM is preparing for privatisation by raising its prices beyond the reach of many people, whose living standards have not improved since the end of apartheid. Also marching were representatives of the Johannesburg Anti Privatisation Forum, which is made of up grassroots groups opposing the ANC government's neoliberal economic plan, GEAR (Growth Employment and Redistribution), which focuses on privatisation, attracting foreign investment and the usual array of neoliberal inducements to rich corporations. Since GEAR was introduced in 1996, unemployment rates have rocketed, as have electricity and water prices and inequality.

Other grassroots groups, including Kathorus Concerned Residents, Lekoa Vaal Community Forum, Inner City Community Forum, Kwa Thema Unemployed Association, Thembisa Concerned residents and the Democratic Socialist Movement were also involved, and marched with many other campaigners and individuals to protest at the WTO's proposals to promote privatisation of basic services, under the GATS treaty, and prevent the sale and distribution of cheap medicines, under the TRIPS agreements - a genocidal measure in a country with a disastrous AIDS epidemic.

South Africa president Thabo Mbeki is a keen supporter of the new world neoliberal order, and SA trade minister Alec Erwin is attending the WTO meeting in Doha to urge a new trade round and the speeding up of neoliberalism not just for South Africa but for w\the whole of the continent. Protesters here say the ANC government is betraying its people, and that further neoliberal policies will increase the misery, poverty and inequality of the mass of people here, for the benefit of foreign corporations.

To make their point they carried a huge cutout Alec Erwin through the Johannesburg streets, with a 'WTO hammer, falling heavily onto another cutout of Africa, stamped with the words 'for sale'. Placards condemned water privatisation, TRIPs, GEAR, the commodifying of public services and the selling-out of the people in the name of trade. Despite heavy police harrassment, the protesters managed to sing and dance their way to the regional trade and industry office, where they delivered the attached petition to Alec Erwin to enjoy when he returns from Qatar.

In a separate protest, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) held a rally in the city, attended by upwards of 600 people, in which they voiced their opposition to the WTO and privatisation.

STATEMENT OF JOHANNESBURG PROTESTERS AGAINST THE WTO

To Alec Erwin,
Minister of Trade and Industry

c/o Dept of Economic Affairs
Gauteng Province

On this day of the start of the WTO Ministerial in Doha Qatar, we of anti-WTO community organisations, NGOs and other like-minded organisations in Gauteng are marching to call for the shutting down of the WTO.

We say:

No to the WTO!

No to Trips and higher medicine prices!
Not to GATS, No to Privatisation!
No to the WTO tariff regimen, No to retrenchments and unemployment!

And we say:

NO TO A NEW ROUND OF NEGOTIATIONS!

We are very much aware of and appalled by the positions you have taken with regard to the WTO, looking to expand and strengthen an organisation with a track record of causing untold misery to workers and the poor across the world. We are also appalled at your tactics of attempting to coerce other African and less developed countries to your position and simultaneously portraying South Africa as a leader of Africa in this regard.

We are watching you, we are watching the undemocratic processes that are unfolding in Geneva in the run up to the meeting, and we will be watching the coercion in Doha, Qatar.

Today we are in the streets protesting the unsavoury things we have seen.

Alec Erwin, as Minister of Trade and Industry in South Africa, we have certainly expected a very different form of leadership.

We say to you, reconsider your position. Get in step with the needs of people in South Africa, the continent of Africa and the world.

STOP THE WTO!

Handed over on 9 November 2001

Signed: Gauteng Department of Economic Affairs

Signed: Gauteng Anti-WTO protest