Johannesburg — The South African authorities, hosting the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), feared the worst and deployed massive police reinforcements just in case. But a day of mass marches and rallies passed off peacefully in Johannesburg on Saturday.
Thousands of protestors from within and outside South Africa took to the streets, marching from the poor residential area known as Alexandra to the official WSSD venue, just a few miles up the hill in swanky Sandton.
The demonstrators' message to world leaders and delegates meeting at the Sandton Convention Centre was, as host President Thabo Mbeki put it earlier, that 'global apartheid' must end. That message was potent on the wrong side of the tracks in Alexandra, one of South Africa's best-known black townships, across the highway to Sandton, home to wealthy whites.
Alexandra slum dwellers may be worlds apart from Sandton residents, but they certainly know all about poverty - and prosperity and what a difference this could make to their tough lives. Every day as they head to work, or as likely despair about finding a job -- one in every two adults is unemployed, the people of Alexandra can see the impressive high rise skyline of sophisticated shopping malls from their shacks and shantytowns.
Ministers and senior government and UN officials are laboriously negotiating an agreement at the WSSD and racing against the clock as world leaders start to arrive in Johannesburg to sign it. They will have to answer to those living in Alexandra, and other poor parts of the world, for whom the summit, and Sandton, may as well be in Seattle or Genoa.
However, the violence and bedlam that characterised earlier global summits in American and Italian cities were absent in Johannesburg, despite dire predictions in local newspapers, to the relief of the South African hosts. "People are quite happy and they want to articulate their views. It's a good thing if people express their views peacefully," said the country's police commissioner, Jackie Selebi.
Up to a ten thousand marchers negotiated the crowded and bustling streets of Alexandra, on a busy Saturday, making up a coalition of South African and foreign NGOs, civil society lobbyists, activists and campaigners. They were kept in line under the watchful eye of a heavy deployment of armed, but generally affable, riot police, backed up by armoured vehicles and helicopters. Vigilance was the order of the day and the march passed without incident.
The multinational demonstrators sang, danced and ululated, carrying placards with messages ranging from "End Poverty: Land, Food, Jobs," to "Water: a Human Right", and "Africa is not for $ale, Our World is not for $ale" to, simply, "Liberate Palestine," and "Globalise the Intifada".
Most of the vitriol was directed at President George W Bush, whose is not coming to Johannesburg. The American leader, who has become something of a bogeyman at the WSSD, was again roundly denounced, with anti- Bush banners in abundance at Saturday's march.
"Shame on Bush! The US government does not speak for me" read one placard. Another said "Blair, don't beat about the Bush". "President Bush, Stand up for Sustainability" and "Bush Protect People not Polluters," were some of the others.
Still more read "USA -- United States of Aggression" (in bold red letters) and United States of Arrogance" (also in red) as well as "Hands off Iraq". A few marchers wore grotesque George Bush masks and hats made of angrily-worded anti-Bush posters.
But the ferocity of some of the wording on the placards did not match the good-tempered mood of the demonstration. Once the marchers reached the environs of the WSSD, one of the rally organisers, Virginia Setsedi, shouted: "Hello Sandton! It's a pity you're barricaded, preventing us from coming in and showing you the real world".
Setsedi was referring to the barricades and razor wire which surrounded the conference centre and what some are calling the 'fortress' mentality of those within, as well as the daunting police presence.
The marchers heckled Mbeki's senior advisor, Essop Pahad, who was on hand to receive their petition, protected by bodyguards and a police escort.
Critics of the summit, including renowned Indian environmental campaigner, Vandana Shiva, say globalisation has smothered the vital issues that need to be addressed in Johannesburg. "This was meant to be an earth summit," Shiva told a special BBC discussion, "but the earth has virtually disappeared".
Shiva said that World Summit had become "a trade valley," adding that Johannesburg should have been talking about "survival issues, but this summit has been hijacked by people who think the summit is a commodity and a marketplace".
Speaking outside the Sandton summit location, another organiser of Saturday's mass march, Eddie Cottle, said: "The people of South Africa, together with national movements have gathered to say 'no' to the world summit and 'no' to the anarchy of capitalism".
Pro-summiteers reject the claim by their outspoken critics that corporations are the 'villains' versus the 'victims'. They also disagree that the gathering of representatives from more than 200 countries will be just another 'talk shop jamboree,' dominated by corporate and business interests and agendas.
Another bitter argument at the WSSD, pitting the developing world against the wealthy industrialised world -- especially the United States and the European Union -- is the vexed issue of subsidies. Poorer countries, and notably many in Africa, complain that government subsidies to farmers in America and Europe simply cannot be reconciled with the Western mantra that the South must open wide its markets. The developing countries protest that, because of handouts to farmers from Washington and Brussels, their imports have seriously restricted entrée into the significant U.S. and European markets.
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The West is also demanding more accountable government and democracy, as well as a reduction in corruption, while poorer nations are requesting assistance and tangible targets in whatever is agreed in Johannesburg.
The challenge and debate on how to lift the world out of poverty, while protecting natural resources and the global environment, are set to continue for the remaining four days of the World Summit and way beyond.
But in a separate rally on Saturday, led by President Mbeki's governing African National Congress, the South African leader repeated an earlier message. In his speech, Mbeki said the short walk to Sandton symbolised the "global apartheid" that ensured the continuing divisions between the minority rich and the majority of the world's poor people. This must end, said Mbeki, because "there is no reason that the poor of the world should be poor forever. The time has come for action".
Mbeki came close to mirroring the demands of the demonstrators when he said: "The means are there, the technologies are there in order to wipe out poverty and underdevelopment across the globe. What is missing is the will to do it".
