The programme is expanding to address issues of climate change and mobilize for environmental justice which will protect the natural resources and foster equity.
Climate change is increasingly impacting on the poor and working class with extended droughts and floods crippling agriculture and food production, jeopardizing homes and livelihoods and forcing people to buy potable water. Youth are beginning to join the resistance against rampant development and extractive industries which impact on their future and natural resources, most particularly water. The promises of job creation and economic development and lack of meaningful public participation divide and undermine community resistance. SCLC will use all engagements across all programmes to disseminate latest information around developments and raise critical awareness.
South Africa faces interconnected social, economic, climate and ecological crises, which require urgent and immediate action to transform our archaic and harmful energy and mining sector.
Yet, Minister Mantashe and the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) repeatedly block, delay and inhibit Eskom's just transition to renewable energy, approve polluting projects, ignore and exclude communities most affected by energy planning decisions and leave many people without access to basic electricity. Mantashe and the DMRE therefore stand in the way of a rapid, broad, inclusive and transformative socio-economically and environmentally just energy and mining future.
The Support Centre for Land Change (SCLC) with its community advice offices in rural parts of the Eastern and Western Cape, focuses on informal settlement dwellers facing socio-economic rights violations. The SCLC further focuses on tenure and human rights of farm- and forestry workers and dwellers, access to land and resources for small-scale/subsistence farmers and producers, and support and solidarity for communities resisting land development which threatens their homes, livelihoods, health and heritage (https://www.landportal.org).
The SCLC specifically call on the DMRE to #BanFracking in the Karoo Basin. They plan to outline their concerns relating to the current research that is being conducted in the Beaufort West area and the relentless push for gas exploration and extraction in the Karoo and the adverse impact that fracking will have on the lives and livelihoods of Karoo communities who are already bearing the brunt of the climate and ecological crisis.
Here follows our summarised demands in bullet points. These and our fuller list of demands, which CJC members of the undersigned partner organisations and groups in labour, mining affected communities, youth, energy and environmental justice have co-developed, will be delivered to the national offices of the DMRE in Tshwane and sent per email to Ms Thandiwe Biyela (Eastern Cape Regional Manager of the DMRE) as part of the Climate Justice Coalition's #UprootTheDMRE mobilisations happening across the country.
1. The DMRE leadership and structures must be transformed to fulfil a mandate for an inclusive socially, economically, and ecologically just energy and mining future. Mantashe must step aside to allow for new progressive leadership.
2. A rapid and just transition to a more socially owned, renewable energy powered economy, providing clean, safe, and affordable energy for all, with no worker and community left behind in the transition
3. No to new polluting, corrupt and expensive coal, oil, and gas projects. DMRE Officials must be investigated around irregular deals and reject the corrupt, costly and unnecessary Powership program, for example, at the Port of Ngqura 20 km northeast of Gqeberha. We demand One Million Climate Jobs instead.
4. Communities must have the right to say no to mining projects, that right includes free, prior informed consent, the upholding of social labour plans, and the right to sustainable alternative modes of development.
5. Minister Mantashe and the DMRE must stop blocking and inhibiting Eskom's transition to renewables. We demand a Green New Eskom driving a just transition to a more socially owned, renewable energy future.
Here follows some protest action of #UprootTheDMRE
Mobilising for a just energy and mining future! #Banfracking
The #UprootTheDMRE mobilisation occurred across all 9 provinces to protest the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE). SCLC and XR NMB are staged a protest action at the DMRE offices in Gqeberha on 22 September.
As part of the ongoing #UprootTheDMRE mobilisation movement, and the #Banfracking campaign, SCLC & The Green Connection, together with activists from the Central Karoo and the Eastern Cape, gathered at the drilling site in Beaufort West on Monday, 27 September, to protest the relentless push for gas exploration and extraction in the Karoo. We believe that fracking will have an adverse impact on the lives and livelihoods of Karoo communities who are already bearing the brunt of the climate and ecological crisis.
After the protest action, the comrades met with the Mayor and Municipal Manager of the Central Karoo District Municipality to hand over a Memorandum of Demands. The Mayor and MM undertook to discuss the demands of the memorandum with their counterparts from the Beaufort West Municipality and will respond to the comrades soon. They promised to be transparent and keep the people informed.
World Hunger Day
World Food Day: 16 October 2020 Highlighting the devastating impact of climate change on the ability of small-scale farmers to produce food and the availability of food in resource-scarce communities.
