The South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA), groundWork and the many community people reliant on the sea for their livelhoods, were excluded during the negotiations over Ocean Phakisa, but senior Exxon leadership flew to Durban to meet with government. Ironically, at the same time we had met with Exxon leadership in good faith but in hindsight this was probably only for show as they knew that they could ignore us as after our meeting they were meeting with a government prepared to bend over backwards to accommodate the greed for oil, gas and elite profits.
Operation Phakisa claims big benefits for the economy - a whopping extra R177 billion to the GDP by 2033 and between 800 000 and 1 million direct jobs. We have heard all these promises before and watched as the mirage dissappeared before us in the heat of Durban.
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