PRESS RELEASE - SADC People's Summit
Lindile Ndlovu
SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY
"PEOPLES SUMMIT"
Hundreds of activists from mass-based social organisations, trade
unions, faith-based and health networks, human rights, developmental
and environmental NGOs, and many others, are departing by bus and taxi
from Johannesburg to attend a "Peoples Summit" in Lusaka 15-16 August,
parallel to the annual SADC Heads of State Summit taking place there.
Every year, an official 'Civil Society Forum' takes place at the same
time. But over the years more and more mass-based organisations and
networks, and activist NGOs have also been converging on the SADC
summits to hold their own parallel "Peoples Summits", organised by the
Southern African Peoples Solidarity Network (SAPSN) in cooperation with
local organisations.
This year, hundreds of representatives of local, national and regional
organisations will be traveling for days to Lusaka by train, bus and
mini-taxi from all the countries of the region. At the Peoples Summit
in Maseru, in 2006, more than four hundred activists traveled to meet
and discuss common burning issues. In that year the discussions,
singing, chanting and popular theatre presentations, centered around
the impacts of trade liberalisation on employment rights and
conditions, and the effects of services privatisation on health and
other basic peoples rights.
At the Peoples Summit of 2007 these activist organisations will gather
to share their experiences and draw together the alternative policies
and programs that they have been developing in their respective
organisations and sectors, their communities and countries. This year
the prime focus will be on two further sets of issues.
The sessions on Governance Democracy and Human Rights will receive
reports and testimonies from the participants from each country in the
Southern African region on the situations in their respective
countries. There are various problems in this regard in most of the
countries of the region, but the major emphasis will undoubtedly be on
the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe, and the deepening of peoples
solidarity and national and regional actions in this regard.
Economic and Socio-Economic Challenges will receive reports on many
issues, including the continuing
external debt burdens of their countries. But the major focus will be
on the so-called "Economic Partnership Agreements" (EPAs) that all the
SADC governments are currently negotiating with the EU. The EPA terms
will impose 'reciprocal' trade liberalisation on all SADC countries,
large and small. The other 'reciprocity' that they are being required
to give to the EU, in return for continued 'development aid', will be
to open up their investment fields and services sectors to EU
companies.
The effects of such liberalisation have already become clear over
decades of IMF/World Bank Structural Adjustment Programs, like GEAR -
which is why these issues have been firmly rejected by these and other
countries in the WTO. The EU is now seeking to outflank the combined
resistance amongst developing countries in the WTO, and the UN, by
promoting their demands through bilateral and 'regional ' agreements.
In the process, SADC has been split in half. The demand from the
Peoples Summit will be for the SADC governments to (re)unite and resist
the EU's latest offensive and "STOP EPAs!"
These and other demands will be transmitted through a Peoples
Declaration to the Heads of State and carried through Lusaka by an
organised procession to present to the SADC Executive Secretary or
local host Foreign Minister, as was done in Maseru last year.
For further information please contact - Alternative Information and
Development Centre (AIDC), Tel: 021-447-5770 email: zur...@aidc.org.za
Lindile Ndlovu
Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC)
129 Rochester Road
Observatory
7925
Tel: 021 447 5770
Fax 021 447 5884
Cell: 073 074 0110
www.aidc.org.za