WSSD: IT'S BETTER TO BREAK THE LAW THAN BREAK THE POOR

WSSD: IT'S BETTER TO BREAK THE LAW THAN BREAK THE POOR

Patrick Burnett
Fahamu

JOHANNESBURG – Africa faced enormous electricity supply problems in both urban and rural areas, with a large portion of the population relying on paraffin as the principle source of fuel in rural areas, and the lack of electricity exacerbating conditions of poverty.
Following the economic progress in Africa in the post-independence years of the 1960s and 1970s, most African states suffered economic decline in the 1980s. This trend led to a privatisation of public sectors under pressure from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
These new privatisation polices gave priority to cost recovery and mass production for the industry. They also gave priority to increasing profits for multi-national corporations against the benefit of the poor, leading to massive frustration from civil society organisations and populations who resisted the impact of these policies.
This was the argument of Dieudonne Thang from Cameroon and representing the organisation Global Village. Thang was speaking at an event entitled ‘Sustainable Energy for All?: Resistance and Alternatives to the Global Commodification, Deregulation and Privatisation of Energy’ at Wits University. The event was hosted by the Transnational Institute and the Municipal Services Project, and co-sponsored by Friends of the Earth Latin America and the Caribbean and Oilwatch.
After looking at the general electrification trend in Africa, Thang outlined the impact of privatisation on Cameroon.
He said many communities in Cameroon still had no access to electricity. In 2001, the government had published a report saying that only 2 000 villages out of 30 000 had electricity services. This meant that 28 000 villages were in the dark – translating into 70 percent of the entire population.
In 1998 the president had signed an agreement to implement the privatisation of the energy sector in Cameroon, but it was only in 2001 that this was implemented.
Under the law there were two agencies, the first to regulate the sector and the second to promote rural usage. The problem, Thang said, was that the second agency was relying on funding from multi-lateral agencies in order to begin their work. This was funding which had yet to arrive.
Thang said: “We can be sure that rural populations will not benefit from electrification in the future.”
The solution, he said, was to create a participative approach where the population could be included in projects.
“The electrification of rural areas should be based on sustainable energy and decentralised production and this should come with efforts for good governance from African states. The funding conditions of financing institutions should be transformed urgently.”
What emerged from the conference was the global linkages between organisations struggling against the adverse effects of the privatisation of energy supplies. Speakers from Africa, North America, South America and Asia related their experiences of how privatisation had negatively impacted on their communities.
Speaking about the problem of privatisation in South Africa, Trevor Ngwane, from the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, outlined how local communities had risen up to resist privatisation.
Ngwane explained that electricity in South Africa was provided by the public company Eskom, which under the apartheid government had a mandate to supply electricity to the white community and big business.
Hopes by black people that they would benefit from greater electricity supply in the post-1994 era had been dashed by the emerging privatisation trends in the industry.
Although Eskom had not yet been privatised, global trends placed pressure on the ANC government and business principles had begun to take over - with the principle of cost recovery moving to the fore.
As a result there had been widespread electricity cut-offs in areas where people could not afford to pay, leading to the formation of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC) in the Johannesburg township of Soweto.
Ngwane said: “Remember that we have a 40 percent rate of unemployment therefore people just could not keep up with the electricity payments.”
At one point, Eskom had been cutting off electricity at a rate of 20 000 households a month. “This means that if we had not fought back Soweto would be a dark city by now.”
The cut-off crisis had led to the formation of the SECC in mid-2000 and a committee had coordinated what was happening in townships around Johannesburg. Public meetings had been held to inform people about what was happening and the reasons behind the disconnections.
Operation Khanyisa – Zulu for lights out – had been launched and when electricity was cut, teams of activists had been organised to reconnect the electricity supply.
Ngwane said people had already been doing reconnections illegally but had felt like they were stealing it. “We made it an act of defiance because it is a right to have electricity.”
Ngwane stressed the value of a research base to back up their actions. Research by The Municipal Services Project had shown that a government claim that people did not want to pay had been untrue.
Research showed that many people had been paying each month but could not afford the full amount.
People in Soweto had also been paying astronomical rates compared to their rich counterparts in Sandton. “At one stage we were paying 29c per kilowatt hour, Sandton was paying 16c and business was paying 7c. The biggest users – steel and aluminium corporations - were paying 3c.”
A further lesson had been boldness. “Instead of negotiations and discussions, we simply grabbed the bull by the horns and reconnected. The slogan was it is better to break the law than to break the poor.” - ENDS