Blacks Call for Environmental Reparations at World Summit

August 27, 2002, Johannesburg, South Africa - More than three hundred environmental justice leaders from around the world gathered at the Shaft 17 Education Center in Johannesburg to participate in the Environmental Justice Forum. The four-day forum, sponsored by the South African-based Environmental Justice Networking Forum (EJNF), served as a pre-summit kick-off to the opening of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and the Global People's Forum-a meeting of nongovernmental organizations that run parallel to the official government meeting. The meetings run through September 4th in Johannesburg.

The EJNF forum examined the costs and consequences of environmental racism and nonsustainable development practices and their contribution to poverty, pollution, and ill health. Many of the South Africans blacks are the "poorest of the poor," that one-fifth of the world's population living on less than $1 a day and unable to secure adequate food, water, clothing, shelter, and health care. "We are engaged in an everyday struggle to recover from the legacy of apartheid and environmental racism," said Thabo Madihlaba, national coordinator of the EJNF.

Lack of affordable energy, sanitation, and access to clean water pose severe health threats to millions of South Africans who remain crowded in substandard housing. Longtime South African human rights activist Dennis Brutus criticized the slow pace of the government getting basic services to its people. "The legacy of apartheid is still with us and accounts for poor health delivery, inadequate water and sanitation infrastructure, poor housing, and lack of basic services such as electricity," said Brutus speaking at the EJNF forum. Almost 15 million Black South Africans out of a total population of 43.5 million are without electricity and live on less than $2 per day.

Inadequate sanitation accounts for over 43,000 South African children deaths each year. Getting clean and affordable water delivered to the people is a major challenge. Over 10 million South Africans had their water cut-off. These problems are not limited to South Africa. More than 1.4 billion people around the world lack access to safe water. Dirty water is one of the world's "deadliest" pollutant.

Speaker after speaker challenged government and transnational corporations to halt their destructive and nonsustainable practices that harm the poor, people of color, and indigenous. "We came to Johannesburg and the WSSD to share our experiences and work with our colleagues in South Africa and with other groups around the world to craft common strategies to build a movement for achieving safe, healthy, just, and sustainable communities" said Bullard. Bullard, author of Confronting Environmental Racism, directs the Environmental Justice Resource at Clark Atlanta University. He and three-dozen of his colleagues from the U.S. are part of the National Black Environmental Justice Network (NBEJN) attending the WSSD. This past July, NBEJN launched its healthy and safe communities campaign that tackles childhood lead poisoning, asthma, and cancer in the African American community.

Several bus loads of forum participants were taken on a "toxic tour" of North West, Mpumalanga, and Gauteng provinces to witness firsthand some of the mining, waste, water, housing, land use, and economic development problems facing rural and urban black South Africans.

"The damage done to these and other communities by polluting industry must be repaired. Reparations for environmental racism should be put on the table at this world summit," said Henry Clark, a grassroots activist with the California-based West County Toxics Coalition, after touring the Impala Platinum Mine, the Rostenburg Quarries, and several villages in the North West Province. Clark and his group were successful in negotiating a "good neighbor" agreement with the Chevron refinery, located in Richmond, California.

The tour of Soweto provided a glimpse of the massive housing, waste management, and infrastructure challenges facing urban South Africans. Years of poor and irregular removal of rubbish and garbage pickup from townships have resulted in the proliferation of illegal dumps on open grounds. Over 550 illegal rubbish dumps dot the surrounding Soweto landscape.

Amidst all of the problems in the township, the Soweto Mountain of Hope or SOMOHO, towers over the community and offers a glimmer of light. The Chiawelo Mountain, once a "no-go" area is being transformed into a focal area around art, dance and drama, sports, catering, music, and entertainment. "This is a bright spot. The people are making beauty out of pain, taking nothing and making something out of it," stated Emelda West, a 77-year old great grandmother from Louisiana. West knows something about beating the odds. She led a two-year campaign that blocked the Japanese owned Shintech company from building a polyvinyl chloride plant in her small, rural, black and mostly poor community.

The massive garbage dump at the Orange Farm settlement typifies the illegal dumping and poor sanitation . The burning dump covers several football fields. "I was devastated by what I saw on the tour of the squatter settlements and illegal dumps. The double burden of poverty and pollution translates into poor health," stated Elodia Blanco of New Orleans, Louisiana. "My neighborhood is built on a dump and we want out now." Blanco is waging a campaign to get her neighbors and an elementary school relocated from the Agriculture Street Landfill Superfund site-a site that was declared an imminent health threat by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

"Things have to change in South Africa. Sustainable development will be difficult if not impossible to achieve as long as the 'haves' continue to own 80 of the land and the 'haves not' continue to eat out of and live in garbage dumps, in communities where health services, access to water, sanitation, education and a toxic free environment is not even an afterthought," said Maryam Mair, a grassroots activist from the Arbor Hills Environmental Justice group based in Albany, New York.

The NBEJN and EJNF summit participants identified several common themes they want presented and adopted at the WSSD. "We want to see the work we did at the World Conference on Racism in Durban last year integrated into the WSSD. We want to see our government step up to the plate and enforce the laws that protect all communities and provide opportunities for partnerships that promote healthy and safe communities," said Beverly Wright who directs the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Xavier University in Louisiana. Wright states, "It is unlikely that we can have sustainable development in the U.S. and South Africa without addressing environmental and economic justice, and environmental racism."

South Africa is grappling with the legacy of apartheid that herded approximately 87 percent of the black population into 13 percent of the country land. Land redistribution is a core environmental, economic, and political issue. Just days before the official opening of the WSSD meetings, the South African government arrested 72 members of the Landless Peoples Movement (LPM) for staging a protest in protest at the John Vorster Square. LPM was protesting the eviction of people who were living on government land due to apartheid settlement policies.

EJNF and NBEJN joined with the LPM in calling upon the South African government to complete the land redistribution scheme in an appropriate and timely process. Thabo Madihlaba says, "landlessness is tantamount to structural apartheid and a manifestation of environmental racism, which is reprehensible in a free and democratic society. The present government has been commended by the world community as a model for emerging democracies and we don't think it should engage in the abhorrent tactics of the old apartheid regime."

"The land redistribution movement in South Africa is analogous to the reparations movement in the U.S.A. Both movements have recognized that the path to sustainable development can be achieved by ensuring that the most marginalized have access to the primary tools of economic development-land," maintains Dr. Mildred McClain of Citizens for Environmental Justice based in Savannah, Georgia. The World Summit on Sustainable Development could be a showcase for real sustainable development rather than being hijacked by the transnational corporations.

Written by:
Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D.
Environmental Justice Resource Center
Clark Atlanta University
404-880-6911
www.ejrc.cau.edu
rbullard@cau.edu