Ghana/South Africa: Amandla! Awethu! Africans Fight Corporate Greed

With fist in the air, Virginia Setshedi shouts “Amandla!” The crowd gathered in a University of Alberta classroom raises fists in the air and responds “Awethu!” – “Power to the People,” the cry of South Africa’s liberation movement. But this cry is in opposition to a new form of oppression – privatization. Virginia Setshedi, a founding member of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee in South Africa, and Rudolf Amenga-Etego, the national campaign coordinator of the Coalition Against the Privatization of Water in Ghana, visited Edmonton as part of a cross-Canada speaking tour organized by the Halifax Initiative. Setshedi and Amenga-Etego spoke of the detrimental effects of the privatization of electricity and water services and other neoliberal policies foisted on poor countries by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).