Advocacy Activity

Land! Food! Jobs! - WSSD 2002

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1. INTRODUCTION

The above statement talks to the general mood and attitude which epitomized the National Land Committee's response to the opportunities presented by the World Summmit on Sustainable Development which was held in Johannesburg in 2002. As many progressive organs of civil society the world over prepared to engage with the WSSD the NLC responded with a clear programme and equally clear objectives.

The NLC's overall response was captured in the campaign named "Land! Food! Jobs!". This was to be the rallying point for the main social movements and civil society organisations during the WSSD. The march on the 31 August 2002 from the impoverished township of Alexander to the wealthy suburb of Sandton where governments and business held the official WSSD meeting bears testimony to this assertion. The march was organized under the banner of "Social Movements United: Land! Food! Jobs!". The symbolism of what Alexander and Sandton represented could not have been more apt, as generalized representation of the state of the world. Thirty thousand marchers walked for about twelve kilometers in a colour-full mosaic representing all the peoples of the world and their desire for social justice and sustainable development. Needless to say the NLC's campaign provided both space and functioned as cementing factor for all these to happen.

The main objectives of the campaign were defined as follows:

To create a platform for South African and international solidarity,

• To get commitment/acknowledgement from the South African government of the gaps within current land reform framework
• To highlight link between land, livelihoods and sustainable development
• To contribute towards the building of a strong and independent landless people's movement

These objectives rested on sub objectives, which were inter alia: the promotion of women's land rights, the building of conscious link between the rural and urban land issues and to raise the general public's awareness around landlessness. It was on the basis of the above objectives and sub themes that the Land! Food! Jobs! campaign was constructed and implemented.

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2. CAMPAIGN COMPONENTS

The campaign had three main phases, preparations, the Week of the landless and the March to Sandton. The three main actors of the campaign where identified as: the South African landless people, the international landless/peasant organisations and progressive civil society in South Africa and internationally. The process of getting all these players together and creating the possibility for the articulation of a shared analysis and programme was a challenging and very dynamic process punctuated with difficulties, successes and lessons. The benefits derived from the engagement would be felt within the broader civil society for a long time.

2.1 The Preparatory Phase

Engaging the Landless!

Once the general principles of the intervention were established and agreed upon by the NLC network, other players were engaged starting with the Landless People's Movement (LPM), which agreed to adopt the campaign and to work closely with the NLC to make it a success. To prepare the landless and related civil society organisation a process of awareness raising was embarked upon. This took the form of provincial workshops. In these workshops detailed discussions on the history and achievements of the WSSD process were discussed (appendix provincial process agenda).

These workshops were held in all the provinces and were facilitated by the NLC network, with the assistance by teams from the National Office. Where the NLC network did not work with the organised landless other organs of civil society such as the The Land Service Organisation (Tralso) were engaged. This ensured that workshops were held in all the provinces.

The main objectives of these workshops were to discuss what WSSD meant for the landless and to collate ideas, demands and strategies for intervention from the landless. The workshops also discussed the logistics of the whole process and the responsibilities of participants during the WSSD. The programme for the week of the landless was discussed in each provincial meeting (appendix). Cooking and marshalling teams were also established during this process for each province. The provincial process revealed different levels of understanding within civil society and the landless around the United Nations process and the history of the WSSD. The process did help in building common position for future actions. In these provincial workshops. Each step of the campaign was full of tensions, life and excitement (see meeting Neruda .)

Since the WSSD itself was going to be held in Johannesburg, the bulk of the activities were undertaken by the Gauteng LPM and the NLC National Office played a central coordination role. To this end mobilisation teams were set up to carry out dialogue and awareness raising activities at community level in Gauteng . The following communities were intensively engaged: Thembelihle, Protea South, Slovo Park, Lawley one and two, Freedom Park . S'naoane, Central Johannesburg, Mandela Park (Durban Deep), Thembisa (Rabie Ridge), Eikenhoff (both farms and settlements) Thulamtwana, and in Pretoria North and the Bulfour farms. The common basic characteristic of all these areas was that they suffer the most acute poverty (informal settlements), environmental degradation and all have tenure insecurity- most of the informal settlements engaged are facing forced removals. But also farm community around Gauteng where drawn into the process they also suffer poverty and threats of evictions on farms. The common suffering created a good basis to confront the hugely exaggerated urban/rural divides. At least three workshops were held in Gauteng including a meeting of the landless Youth (see appendix). In these meetings understanding of the WSSD process was deepened and responses further developed. The Mobilisation Teams met at least once a week. These teams were comprised of at least two representatives per community and in turn were responsible for coordinating community level teams. The responsibilities of the Teams included pamphleteering, holding of community meetings and workshops, and generally raising awareness around Gauteng on the WSSD. Their area of mobilisation was not restricted to the active communities along, pamphleteering extended to other areas including the city.

To be able to carry out these tasks the Teams underwent basic training on what is the WSSD, community mobilisation, crowd control, first aid, negotiation with the authorities including marshalling activities. The Gauteng team also undertook to cook for all provinces for the first day of the Week of the Landless.

National Strategy Meetings

Four national strategy meetings were held during this phase to collate the views and issues cultivated from the provincial process and to consolidate plans and review the progress. Also during the preparatory phase were public actions aimed at highlighting the issues affecting both rural and urban landless. These actions were met with overreaction and down right repression from the government. As a result many arrests were made of leaders and symphathisers of the LPM in particular. Some of these arrests continued up to the days before the official start of the WSSD. The state intelligent agents were very active in a manner which clearly threatened democratic rights and over-stepped reasonable security concerns. The state seem to have responded to the mobilisation with an iron first. This repressive situation is well captured in a publication, THE RIGHT TO DISSENT (attach the cover page and the table of contents of just Ann's paper).

South African Civil Society

The was also a process of engaging civil society in South Africa . The engagement initially occurred through the Civil Society Indaba, and later through the WSSD sectariate. Planning was very difficult as the NGO process was at times bedeviled by crisis when the NLC endeavoured to share its plans with all civil society organisation. Particular attention was given to discussions with land organisations outside of the NLC network. Some of the organisations engaged included Tralso, TCOE, Plaas, SACC, Cals and the LRC. These organisations also shared their plans and all worked towards harmonizing of activities. One of the results of this engagement was that both Tralso and the TCOE participated actively in the activities of the NLC including during the Week of the Landless and march to Sandton (appendix from their annual reports). The process no doubt strengthened the land civil society, and created possibilities of future cooperation.

International Civil Society

The main players engaged around the land issue were the La Via Campesina, Fian, Food First and several Africa based organisations such as the Ugandan and Kenyan Land Alliances, and Pelum. Also several organisations in the region were informed and invited. As a result the La Via Campensina representing more than 100 countries send a 30 persons delegation to South Africa . The presence of the La Via groups assisted with the planning and coordination between movements and NGOs across the continents. The impact of the intervention had gone a long way towards strengthening international solidarity. The French based and active member of the La Via Campesina Confederation Paysanne dedicated its September 2002 publication to the Week of the Landless (see Attachment).

2.2 Other components of the Campaign

Before we discuss the Week of the Landless, let us report on other important aspects of the campaign. These were the media interventions, publicity and supporting the rural women.

Media

To facilitate media interest and understanding a media pack was prepared which carried the basic positions of the NLC and the LPM around the WSSD (see appendix). Other media engagement such as the launch of the campaign, ongoing conferences and media statements, radio interviews and talk shows were undertaken prior to the WSSD itself. By the official WSSD meeting the positions of the NLC and those of the LPM were more or less well known in South Africa, and its activities widely reported on. The 31 August march was covered by all major news papers mostly taking the front page. The coverage extended to both national and international TV. Some documentaries both in South Africa and by BBC were made on the Land! Food! Jobs! Campaign and highlighting the land questions, also an independent media centre did a short production ( video included VHS version).

Publicity

A massive publicity campaign was undertaken at all phases of the campaign. 10 000 T-shirts (End Poverty: Land! Food! Jobs!) were produced, 10 000 bumper stickers (same message, appendix), 10 000 badges (appendix), 10 000 posters (appendix) and 15 000 pamphlets were printed. Also a very innovative and collective publicity process was under taken through the utilization of the Star Graffiti Wall. This wall is about 20m long and 5m tall located in the main streets Jan Smuts and Empire. Messages of the campaign were painted on the wall and generated a lot of interest. The wall was painted 8 weeks before the WOL and about four times with different messages (see appendix). Towards the WOL many spaces around Johannesburg were donned with the colours of the campaign sustaining a high visibility and awareness. The result of all this was that by the day of the march the biggest organized contingency was from the landless!

Women's participation

The land questions and sustainable development affect the poor in general but women are the most negatively affected. As a result during the whole process of the Land! Food! Jobs! emphasis was placed on women participation and representation. Spaces were deliberately created where women qua women could discuss their issues. A women's caucus was also discussed during the preparatory stage and during the Week of the Landless itself. The delegations were clearly advised to have an equal number of women and men representation.

The Camp of 5000!

The Landless People's camp was variously described by both sympathetic and not so sympathetic scribes, one Rian Malan writing in the editorial of the September issue of Focus journal put forward this description:

". a Landless People's Camp sprang up in Shareworld, a bizarre, faux-Moorish village near Soweto, built as an entrainment centre in the eighties but now falling into ruin. From the distance the camp looked almost medieval - red flags and banners flying, smoke rising from open fires, armies of red-shirted women toiling over cauldrons of pap and vleis for thousands of peasants bussed from all corners of the country".

What Malan is not telling us is that very presence of about 5000 delegates of the landless people actually pumped life into the building. Neither does he talk to the shared cooking responsibilities between men and women. The life imbued into the old building reverberated into the whole Johannesburg city. The camp can also be described as a week of singing, talking, planning, working, meeting, connecting, cooking and making life in general. The break-away spaces in this big building were named after the sages of the peoples struggles the world over, names such as Che Guevara, Tsietsi Mashinini, Govan Mbeki, Steven Biko, Robert Sobukwe and in solidarity with international struggle some rooms were named after the Movemento Sem Terra (MST) of Brazil also there was a room named after the Zapatistas of Chiapas Mexico. A Map for easy direction was also constructed and placed in a prominent places (Appendix)

The Landless Camp provided a third focal point for the world people and media during the WSSD. The camp was situated only a ten minutes walk from Nasrec where the NGOs were meeting. It became standard that when media reported on the WSSD, it focused on Sandotn, Nasrec and on the Camp. The proximity of the Camp to the NGO meeting venue facilitated interaction with progressive elements in civil society. The success of the Week of the Landless was perhaps captured by the words of Canadian based world renown activist, Maude Barlow when she addressed the day of solidarity, she said "I have been to Sundton, and to the Ngos in Nasrec, there is no life there. Life is here with the people!".

The Week of the Landless (WoL)

The Week of the Landless started on the 27 August and ended on the 1st September 2002 . The 27th was the energetic arrival of the 5000 delegates, they arrived from all the provinces up to the morning of the 28th . A flurry of activities were on going and the briefings and orientation were continues. The 28th was the official day of the LPM business. Progress reports delivered and attempt to hold elections undertaken. A detailed analysis of the state of the movement and the land reform programme were also presented.

The 29th was the "International Landless People's Assembly". Delegates from well over 20 countries delivered their message of solidarity. These messages came from as far as Honduras, Bolivia, Brazil, France, Canada, Italy, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Mozambique, Lesotho and others. The messages were moving. At this day the delegates to the WOL did not want to even go to lunch as a result of the centrality and inspiration derived from the messages. The delegates from Lesotho told their painful story of displacement by the World Bank funded Katse Dam. They spoke about lost livelihoods and destruction of the environment. At the end they asked for the LPM to visit Lesotho and organize there as well. The meaning of this call was displayed clearly during the March, a huge banner created by the LPM youth carried a message of support and solidarity for the Lesotho Dam survivors, thereby the landless of Lesotho found common course with the landless of South Africa .

On the 30th the Camp adjourned for a "Day of Solidarity". This entailed visiting communities around Gauteng who are faced with security of tenure issues such as forced removals and environmental degradation. These areas are informal settlements were the poor and vulnerable live. Amongst the areas visited where the following: Ruth First, Durban Deep, Orange Farm, Dieplsloot, Thembelihle, Protea South, Lawley 1 and 2, Eikenhof both Farms and Settlements. These visits where planned to give the delegates both national and those from other countries a sense of conditions of people living in informal settlements and to hear the story of their brutalisation by poverty and the indifference of power, which includes illegal forced removals.

The March!

The march of the landless happened on the 31 August. This morning the camp was abuzz with song, red T-Shirt, banners, flags, posters and other assortment of cultural artifacts associated with a day of celebration. A truck with a public address system lead the procession from Shareworld to Alexander where the march started. In Alexander, many movements colours and song meshed into a unitary force of protest and hope. The issues which affect the people were all well represented, Water, Housing, Environment, Fishing rights, Land, Women's rights, livelihoods, anti- GMOs etc. at the peak of the march there walked between 25 000 people to 30 000! The sun smiled at the marchers and they seem to have waved back in a warm appreciation.

This was a historic first, where movements of the people independent of political parties and governments managed to stage such a huge march of the poor since 1994 in South Africa . Despite the scare that anarchist and other elements were planning violence the whole march was incident free. The view from the back of the truck brought to focus the multitudes of people snaking in a long disciplined line. A leader of the LPM in tears was heard saying: "We have made it! The poor shall never be ignored again!". At the end of the march were the 30 000 gathered for the ceremony in Sundton, Francois Dufour the General Secretary of the French Farmers Confederation was seen holding his phone to the air for the voices of the multitudes to travel through. On the other side of the phone was Jose Bove the leader of the same organisation who shot to fame for the "reconstruction" of a McDonald outlet in France and who was on of the key organizers of the Seattle uprising against corporate globalization. Bove was preparing for his court case hence his inability to come to the Week of the Landless, but like many other justice loving people the world over, there was a spiritual association. So was the significance of the event!

The Week of the Landless and the March sparked a sustained debate in the media and in the South African population at large. Many journals, news paper columns, radio talk shows followed, and the land question was again on the leaps of everyone. The "Landless" stopped being an unknown abstract phenomena, these were now people who asked in a dignified defiance, "for how long shall we wait?". The rhetorical question where are the landless? was now emphatically answered.

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3. ACHIEVEMENTS

If we are to try an assessment of the achievements against objectives then it will become clear to by and large the objectives have been achieved. Amongst the key achievements we can identify the following: land issues featured prominently in the public debates and was the first thematic issue in the report of the Global Forum Programme of Action. This was a huge improvement from where land was located in the Rio report. This achievement was obtained without having participated directly in the official process. Certainly the outside process had strengthened the hands of the negotiators. So the objective around highlighting the link between land, livelihoods and sustainable development was achieved, and governments have a responsibility to carry out land reform.

What is perhaps more important is that the South African government was forced to admit to the gabs in its land policy. For the first time the Director General made it public that expropriation of land by government was an important instrument to speed up the land reform process. This has been a call of the land NGOs for many years now. This shift in policy pronouncement was supported by even the main stream media, such as the Business Day. This policy shift now finds concrete expression in the proposed amendments of the Restitution Act, which are currently before parliament. Whilst the provisions are limited to the restitution process, they represent some progress to right direction. The Land! Food! Jobs! Campaign played a significant role towards this achievement.

International solidarity was no doubt also achieved given the central role played by peasants and small scale farmers in the Week of the landless, and the coordination of the international contingency around the march. Also the many messages of solidarity received attest to the connection established with international progressive organisations. Since the WSSD, many invitations have been received including attending the World Social Forum in Brazil by two LPM members. The relations with such regional organisations as Unac of Mozambique has been strengthened and clearly the fraternal relations with the Movemento Sem Terra (MST) is also at an all time high. So we can say with confidence that a platform for international solidarity was in deed created.

Another key objective was to contribute towards building a strong landless people's movement, whilst this contribution is difficult to measure immediately, signs abounds that the movements of the people emerged with a new sense of purpose and confidence from the WoL. Many independent self organisation of the landless has since happened inspired by the WoL. Many stories have been told of how the landless confronted their situation with more courage after the week. One example would be the landless women in Mpumalanga at the Alzoe Farm. These women confronted the farmer who has been encroaching on their land and refusing to back off. After the WoL, much more stronger intervention occurred and the process lead to dialogue with the Department of Land Affairs to purchase the land for the community. Other organisation of the landless has been reported in North West province both in Rustenburg and Vryhberg areas These are just a few examples which indicate the strengthening of the landless peoples movement.

There is little doubt that the profile of the land question has been significantly raised by the Land! Food! Jobs! Campaign. Land is now seen as one of the central questions which needs attention if national development is to be achieved as well as long term political and economic stability in South Africa . The issue can no longer be postponed indefinitely or ignored.

Whilst it is possible to report on some tangible result and those of immediate nature the long term impact can not naturally be observed yet. However, when the history of land struggle and initiatives for change are reflected upon with the benefit of time, it is very possible that the WoL would be seen as a turning point in the politics of land reform in South Africa . The impact of this development has also lead to many tensions within the Land Civil Society, these tension should not be looked at only in terms of the negative impact they are likely to produce in the short term, in these tensions also lies the gems of a new direction which is necessitated by the changed condition of the landless as far as they are now more or less an organised force and not just a helpless recipients of "aid" from the benevolence of those who have been their spokespersons for many decades.

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4. CONCLUSION

Land, sustainable developments and national reconstruction remain unfinished business for the world but in South Africa in particular. The Land! Food! Jobs! Campaign has contributed significantly in raising awareness around these issues. In the short term national dialogue has been sparked around the land and landless. Also the need for change has been highlighted. We have seen some positive moves on the side of the government on the one hand but also a sense of panic on the other, which has lead to the continued low intensity attack on the movements of the poor. The Land! Food! Jobs! Campaign has in many ways returned hope to the many minds and hearts of the poor landless, hungry and jobless of South Africa . The many stories of how life was created and enjoyed during the campaign continues in the villages and township of South Africa where the poor continued to eke out life under difficult conditions. Many a documentary, news paper column, journal pieces have been written, and analysis continues also we have seen an up serge of research, and international students requests to do their internships with the NLC and the LPM. Needless to say without the generous support of the Ford Foundation, International Land Coalition and Christian Aid all these achievements would not have been possible. Now, we can say with a little more confidence, "Another World is Possible!".

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