hawarameen
16th April 2003, 23:53
New Power Generation
Paul Kingsnorth.
The Big Issue April 14 - 20 2003 NO.352
A young man in a red T-shirt bearing the legend 'Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee' is hauling himself up a telegraph pole in a Soweto suburb. When he gets to the top, he reaches into a leather bag slung around his shoulders and pulls out a pair of pliers and a knife. He spends a couple of minutes doing something technical with the wires, then lowers himself down.
He makes his way over to an electricity meter mounted on the side of a nearby house, and swings a pickaxe at it. It splinters ant tears away from the wall. He makes some adjustments to a jumble of wires sticking out of the wall with a knife, using a bin bag for insulation. Then he stands up, dusts himself down and approaches the house owner, an old woman who has been anxiously watching from her doorway.
"You now have electricity," he says. He flicks the woman's light switch, and her tiny front room floods with light for the first time in weeks. She begins to sniff, gratefully.
"Now I'll be able to drink tea in the morning, instead of water," she says. "Oh, thank you!"
the man is one of dozens of illegal 'reconnectors' who roam Soweto reconnecting the electricity of people who have been cut off for non-payment. He is part of Operation Khanyisa operation light-up - a campaign of resistence to the steadily rising costs of basic utilities that has hit the poor in this, and other, townships. Collectively, Soweto owes the state electricity company, Escom, almost one billion Rand - about £57 million - in unpaid bills. But Soweto has 70 per cent unemployment, and most people simply cannot afford to pay. Eskom's response is to cut them off by the thousands. Their response is to reconnect themselves.
The man in the red T-shirt says the government promised free electricity to the poor before the election, and hasn’t delivered. He is not alone in feeling angry; across Soweto, people say that their bills are rising and rising, and that their government is to blame. Reconnection is dangerous, difficult and illegal, but the people say they have no choice; they say they are desperate.
The Sowetans are absolutely right: their electricity bills are rising. Eskom is being prepared for privatisation, and the South African government, on the advise of the world bank, will not subsidise prices for the poor blacks here. The poor blacks whom the ANC was supposed to liberate; the poor blacks who thought that, in 1994, when Nelson Mandela came to power and apartheid dissolved, their country wsa finally in their hands.
Something is happening in the new South Africa; something that was never supposed to be part of the landscape in this liberated, post-apartheid nation. Electricity cut offs, evictions, rent hikes - all are increasing. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing, and the poor are getting poorer. And in South Africa 95 per cent of the poor, unsurprisingly, are black.
The reason for all this is simple, and chilling; globalisation has come to South Africa, and it has pulled the rug out from under the feet of the ANC government more effectively than Apartheid ever did. The South African government, like every other government, has to play by the inhumane rules of the global market; rules that squeeze the poor and enrich the wealthy. But in South Africa, as in so many other places, the poor are not prepared to be squeezed any more.
This is just one scene from what could turn out to be the biggest political movement in the 21st century - perhaps the biggest ever. Those South Africans who are beginning to resist what corporate globalisation is doing to their country are not alone; their actions are being replicated in almost every continent, every day, in ever-growing numbers.
In Southern Mexico, a quarter of a million indigenous people rise up against their government, claiming that unresponsive politicians, uncaring markets and self-interested corporations are destroying their livelihoods and killing their people. In New Guinea, tribal guerrillas swear to drive out the oil, gas, timber and mining corporations that are plundering their land into the sea. In a city in the Bolivian Andes, the population rises up and chases away the private water company that has doubled their bills. In rural Brazil, millions of landless people invade unused farms and claim them for their own, in defiance of the country's giant agri-business corporations. In California, local people use the law to rein in the power of corporations in their towns.
This growing global movement is only noticed when it takes to the streets of Genoa, Seattle or Prague to hijack an economic summit in a cloud of tear gas and baton rounds. But those scenes are just the tip of the radical iceberg. In fact, this is a force that was born in the poor world, and which has now come to the west. And it is a force that, despite its global nature, shares common values. What these people stand for, together, is stronger than anything that kept them apart.
This gathering force of dissidents stands for democracy - real choice, at local level - and real people - over the dictatorship of the market. It stands for diversity - cultural, ecological, political and economic - over consumer monoculture. For decentralisation of power rather than its concentration in boardrooms summit venues. For access to resources for people and communities rather than their enclosure by those who would sell them back to us and pocket the profits. Above all, it stands for sovereignty rather than dependence; for the reclaiming of our power to live our own lives, unmediated by the demands of the consumer monoculture.
Paul Kingsnorth.
The Big Issue April 14 - 20 2003 NO.352
A young man in a red T-shirt bearing the legend 'Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee' is hauling himself up a telegraph pole in a Soweto suburb. When he gets to the top, he reaches into a leather bag slung around his shoulders and pulls out a pair of pliers and a knife. He spends a couple of minutes doing something technical with the wires, then lowers himself down.
He makes his way over to an electricity meter mounted on the side of a nearby house, and swings a pickaxe at it. It splinters ant tears away from the wall. He makes some adjustments to a jumble of wires sticking out of the wall with a knife, using a bin bag for insulation. Then he stands up, dusts himself down and approaches the house owner, an old woman who has been anxiously watching from her doorway.
"You now have electricity," he says. He flicks the woman's light switch, and her tiny front room floods with light for the first time in weeks. She begins to sniff, gratefully.
"Now I'll be able to drink tea in the morning, instead of water," she says. "Oh, thank you!"
the man is one of dozens of illegal 'reconnectors' who roam Soweto reconnecting the electricity of people who have been cut off for non-payment. He is part of Operation Khanyisa operation light-up - a campaign of resistence to the steadily rising costs of basic utilities that has hit the poor in this, and other, townships. Collectively, Soweto owes the state electricity company, Escom, almost one billion Rand - about £57 million - in unpaid bills. But Soweto has 70 per cent unemployment, and most people simply cannot afford to pay. Eskom's response is to cut them off by the thousands. Their response is to reconnect themselves.
The man in the red T-shirt says the government promised free electricity to the poor before the election, and hasn’t delivered. He is not alone in feeling angry; across Soweto, people say that their bills are rising and rising, and that their government is to blame. Reconnection is dangerous, difficult and illegal, but the people say they have no choice; they say they are desperate.
The Sowetans are absolutely right: their electricity bills are rising. Eskom is being prepared for privatisation, and the South African government, on the advise of the world bank, will not subsidise prices for the poor blacks here. The poor blacks whom the ANC was supposed to liberate; the poor blacks who thought that, in 1994, when Nelson Mandela came to power and apartheid dissolved, their country wsa finally in their hands.
Something is happening in the new South Africa; something that was never supposed to be part of the landscape in this liberated, post-apartheid nation. Electricity cut offs, evictions, rent hikes - all are increasing. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing, and the poor are getting poorer. And in South Africa 95 per cent of the poor, unsurprisingly, are black.
The reason for all this is simple, and chilling; globalisation has come to South Africa, and it has pulled the rug out from under the feet of the ANC government more effectively than Apartheid ever did. The South African government, like every other government, has to play by the inhumane rules of the global market; rules that squeeze the poor and enrich the wealthy. But in South Africa, as in so many other places, the poor are not prepared to be squeezed any more.
This is just one scene from what could turn out to be the biggest political movement in the 21st century - perhaps the biggest ever. Those South Africans who are beginning to resist what corporate globalisation is doing to their country are not alone; their actions are being replicated in almost every continent, every day, in ever-growing numbers.
In Southern Mexico, a quarter of a million indigenous people rise up against their government, claiming that unresponsive politicians, uncaring markets and self-interested corporations are destroying their livelihoods and killing their people. In New Guinea, tribal guerrillas swear to drive out the oil, gas, timber and mining corporations that are plundering their land into the sea. In a city in the Bolivian Andes, the population rises up and chases away the private water company that has doubled their bills. In rural Brazil, millions of landless people invade unused farms and claim them for their own, in defiance of the country's giant agri-business corporations. In California, local people use the law to rein in the power of corporations in their towns.
This growing global movement is only noticed when it takes to the streets of Genoa, Seattle or Prague to hijack an economic summit in a cloud of tear gas and baton rounds. But those scenes are just the tip of the radical iceberg. In fact, this is a force that was born in the poor world, and which has now come to the west. And it is a force that, despite its global nature, shares common values. What these people stand for, together, is stronger than anything that kept them apart.
This gathering force of dissidents stands for democracy - real choice, at local level - and real people - over the dictatorship of the market. It stands for diversity - cultural, ecological, political and economic - over consumer monoculture. For decentralisation of power rather than its concentration in boardrooms summit venues. For access to resources for people and communities rather than their enclosure by those who would sell them back to us and pocket the profits. Above all, it stands for sovereignty rather than dependence; for the reclaiming of our power to live our own lives, unmediated by the demands of the consumer monoculture.