1
TROUBLES AT THE TOP: SOUTH AFRICAN PROTESTS AND THE 2002 JOHANNESBURG SUMMIT
CARL DEATH
ABERYSTWYTHUNIVERSITY
Political protests have visibly increased in frequency and intensity in South Africa in recent years, and they seem to indicate a more adversarial relationship between the post-apartheid state and civil society. This article uses the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, and the protests which accompanied it, to illuminate these broader trends. It analyses the legacy of the Summit as a mega-event, and highlights the importance of the mega-protestsin 2002. The most important effects are shown to be the disruption of South African extraversion; the marginalization and repression of particular social movements; and the exacerbation of broader trends toward a more polarized political landscape in South Africa. Importantly, however, the article concludes that such developments are not evidence of growing distance between the state and civil society, but rather between those considered legitimate and responsible partners, and those who are excluded from ‘normal’ politics. As such the Johannesburg Summit illuminates broader trends toward the governmentalization and transnationalization of politics in South Africa, and destabilizes conventional understandings of what and where ‘South African politics’ actually is, as well as raising important questions regarding the impacts of such mega-events in the future.
The tumultuous street protests outside the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), held in Johannesburg between 26 August and 4 September 2002, were the largest since the end of apartheid and were met with arrests, tear-gassings, rubber-bullets and government condemnation. In their aftermath the South African Freedom of Expression Institute held a workshop on the right to dissent in which African National Congress (ANC) spokesman Michael Sachs conceded that ‘there were certainly serious problems and violations that took place from the side of the police’.[1]Yet, in response to his suggestion that the clashes at the Johannesburg Summit were merely flashes in the pan resulting from the unique context of an international summit, Jane Duncan, Director of the Freedom of Expression Institute, argued rather that they ‘were symptoms of a far more systematic crisis that is not only national, but international, in nature’.[2] Moreover, ‘the theory and practice of repression and dissent in recent years in South Africa and beyond should tell us that the WSSD was a taste of things to come’.[3]Duncan’s predictions appear to have been borne out, as since 2002 South Africa has experienced waves of so-called ‘service delivery protests’, often violent and sometimes xenophobic, peaking at almost 30 per day in 2006.[4]By late August 2009 more violent protests had taken place across the country than in any previous year since 2004, primarily in informal settlements or townships such as Khayelitsha, Thembisa, Diepsloot, and Sakhile, as well asprotesting soldiers at the doors of the Union Buildings inPretoria.Some have suggested that one could be forgiven for imagining that the days of the ‘rolling mass action’ of the 1980s had returned.[5] With reports of protests in the first third of 2010 reaching rising above 100 per month far earlier than in preceding years, commentatorshave raised concerns about a ‘winter of discontent’ prior to and in the aftermath of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.[6]
The exchange between Sachs and Duncan raises a number of important questions: what effects did the Johannesburg Summit have on South African politics? What can mega-events like the Summit tell us about the relationship between national and international politics? And how do the Summit mega-protests connect to more recent cycles of contention? In this article I examine the effects of these ‘troubles at the top’ of South African politics, and argue that they were significant in illuminating broader trends,as well as exacerbating existing tensions within the national polity. By drawing on the literature on mega-events,the Johannesburg Summit can be regarded as a technique of extraversion, although with attendant mega-protests which disrupted dominant discourses of South African national branding,stimulatedthe repression of particular movements, and polarized thepolitical landscape. The paradoxical relationship between the extraversion of the mega-event and the polarization of the mega-protest is brought together through the broader context of the changing character of the South African state, and the state-civil society relationship. I argue that the South African state is increasingly governmentalized, in whichthe smooth space of the modern state is replaced by fractured and overlapping spaces of highly governed localities and international institutions, and increasingly ungovernable hinterlands, and that the Johannesburg Summit protestors were inserted within these complex and heterogeneous networks and spaces of rule. Such an analysis is primarily focussed on South Africa; however the trends observed are not unique. Many are more general characteristics of globalized states, and African states in particular. Indeed, the blurring and interpenetration of urban, provincial, national, regional, continental and global politics is one of the broader transformations illuminated by the Summit protests.
The next section briefly introduces the concept of the mega-event, and highlights how such events produce their own mega-protests. This is followed by an account of the Summit and its protests. The effects on South African politics are then discussed in three parts: 1) frustrated nation-branding; 2) the repression of particular movements; and 3) the polarization of South African politics. The analysis draws on the extensive documentary archive produced by the Summit, as well as semi-structured interviews with key individualsconducted in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and New York between 2006 and 2008. The final section situates these effects within the broader context of the governmentalization of the state in a globalized era.
Summits: mega-events and mega-protests
Summits are complex and theatrical political moments,and the 2002 Johannesburg Summit, coming ten years after the Rio Earth Summit, was regarded by many as one of the largest political meetings in human history.[7] Representatives of over 190 countries, 100 world leaders and about 22,000 other participants attended the main conference in the Sandton Convention Centre, while a further 15,000 attended one or more of the many side-events, such as the parallel Global People’s Forum.[8]One way to conceptualize the effects of a major summit is through the literature onmega-events. Mega-events refer to short term, high-profile events associated with high levels of participation and international media attention, most notably world fairs (expos), the Olympics, and other major sporting and cultural occasions.[9]Although not often used in reference to UN conferences, the concept captures the scale of participation in the Summit, its festival atmosphere, and the scope of activities going beyond the official negotiations. For ten days in Johannesburg it felt as though the global community was assembled in miniature, and that ‘the world had come to one country’ in order to put aside their differences and cooperate in striving for a new political order.[10]
The mega-event literature focuses upon effectssuch as‘increases in tourism, urban infrastructural improvements, or the more intangible benefits of civic pride, boosterism, and international image building’.[11]In this way such events can be regarded as examples of what Jean-François Bayart refers to as the politics of extraversion: the mobilization of resources by African elites ‘derived from their (possibly unequal) relationship with the external environment’.[12]The special issue of Third World Quarterly in 2004 highlighted the importance of mega-events in developmental or nation-building strategies, and South Africa is an oft-cited example given its enthusiasm for hosting major sporting, cultural and political events.[13]South African economists calculated ‘that for each Rand of expenditure in hosting the Summit, R3.17 [was] generated throughout the South African economy’.[14] Despite the Summit’s budget overspend organizers reported that ‘the benefits of the WSSD to the country’s image were much better than could have been achieved by spending the same money on marketing’.[15]The Summit also gave the South African hosts the opportunity to cement South Africa’s growing reputation for successful international diplomacy. Brigalia Bam, chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission, declared that ‘South Africa has become a major destination for international dialogue. It has simply become the “Negotiating capital of the world”’.[16] As such the Johannesburg Summit was an important way of reinforcing the ‘branding’of South Africa as a transformed and reconciled ‘Rainbow Nation’, playing a leading international role at the helm of the African Renaissance.[17]
Yet analysis of the effects of such events cannot remain limited to their commercial, diplomatic or nation-branding dimensions. Mega-events produce specific power relations and forms of resistance, which a critical research agenda must unpick.[18]Many such events produce conflicts with local residents, or are utilized by either protest movements to communicate their grievances, or by state authorities to clamp-down on troublemakers in the name of national security. Kris Olds’ pioneering work, for example, showed how Canadian Expos in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto led to forced evictions and in some cases stimulated local residents’ organizations to campaign against the event itself.[19]The literature on mega-events can therefore be usefully supplemented by considering the mega-protests that increasingly accompany major global conferences, and which themselves ‘exploit the window of visibility offered by summits’.[20]These mega-events often work, by virtue of their very visibility and prominence, as polarizing or catalyzing moments for broader social tensions. As Della Porta et al observe,
the fortification of the summit sites produces effects that tend to be dangerous; concentrating police efforts of defending it greatly restricts the kinds of protest that can be peaceful but visible and increases the distance between the rulers and the population. The perceived risks of invasion reduce the room for dialogue and encounter between demonstrators and the institutions, as well as between demonstrators and the police.[21]
At the Johannesburg Summit, this was most evident during the social movements’proteston 31 August, when between 20,000 and 25,000 people marched from the township of Alexandra to the Summit convention centre in Sandton. In such cases the concepts of mega-events and mega-protests usefully capture the ways in which the inherent theatricality, prominence and visibility of the occasion functions bothas a technique of extraversion, and as a moment of polarization. The following section discusses these protests in more depth, before considering their effects.
The JohannesburgSummitand its protests
As in any international conference the Summit negotiations were protracted and often tense. However, aided by considerable South African diplomatic effort,delegates finally reached an official agreement and the Political Declaration asserted grandly that ‘significant progress has been made towards achieving a global consensus and partnership among all the people of our planet’.[22] Outside, however, in stark contrast to the largely self-congratulatory atmosphere withinthe Sandton Convention Centre, vociferous and angry protestorswere demonstrating against the government, the UN, and the vision of sustainable development under negotiation. The most prominent manifestationsof dissent were the marches from Alexandra on 31 August. The march organizers pointed out that
the massive unemployment, lack of essential services, housing evictions, water and electricity cut-offs, environmental degradation, and generalized poverty that is present-day Alexandra sits cheek-by-jowl with the hideous wealth and extravagance of Sandton where the W$$D is taking place.[23]
The march route was chosen to make visible to a global audience the differences between Alexandra, where people live, and Sandton where Summit delegates spent most of their time.[24]
Yet there were actually two rival marches,highlightingthe contested politics of South African civil society. The ‘official’ march was led by the ANC and their Alliance partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and numbered less than 5,000, whilst the more confrontational social movements mobilized at least four times as many, drawn from a wide range of groups including the Landless People’s Movement and the Anti-Privatisation Forum, under the banner of the Social Movements United (SMU). The latter constituted the largest and ‘most militantly anti-government march since 1994’.[25] Commentators interpreted the marches as ‘a battle for control of South Africa’s revolutionary tradition’, the unexpected outcome of which suggested a ‘new era’ in South African politics.[26]In the immediate aftermath it was claimed that ‘the map of the South African political landscape was fundamentally transformed’.[27]
These marches were only the most visible and high-profile protests amidst a number of other flashpoints during the Summit, which occurred during a period of broader tension that led commentators to proclaim ‘an undeclared state of emergency’.[28] The clashes intersected with tensions over the economic policies of the ANC government, which had been rising since the shift from the Reconstruction and Development Plan (RDP) to the more overtly neo-liberal Growth, Employment and Re-distribution(GEAR) programme in 1996. Exacerbated by the transition in the Presidency from Nelson Mandela to Thabo Mbeki and the apparent end of the ANC’s political honeymoon, GEAR’s policies of cost-recovery and the privatization of basic services have led to increased frictions within the ruling Alliance as well as among local communities and social movements.
The Johannesburg Summit took place after a turbulent and fractious preparatory process,during which meetings of the South African Civil Society Secretariat were characterized by disagreements over structure, financial irregularities and clashing personalities.[29] Tensions between radical social movements, NGOs, and more established mass organizations such as COSATU resulted in a number of social movements leaving the formal preparatory process and forming the Social Movements Indaba (SMI), which declared itself ‘opposed to the hoax of the W$$D’.[30] The official Civil Society Secretariat, chaired by COSATU’s Bheki Ntshalintshali, proceeded to organize the Global People’s Forum and eventually marched with the ANC on 31 August, whilst the SMI concentrated instead on a series of events at the fringes of the official Summit.[31]
Media reports fuelled the confrontational atmosphere. Headlines were militaristic and alarmist: ‘Battle Lines Drawn at Jo’burg Summit’; ‘A new war for the allegiance of the poor’; ‘Summit marchers attack government’; ‘Invasion of the would-be wealth-snatchers’; and ‘Militant siege of summit feared’.[32] In this atmosphere security concerns were heightened, and the Johannesburg authorities adopted a ‘zero tolerance’ policing strategy, meaning that street vendors, hawkers and the homeless were swept out of the city.[33] Social movement activists alleged that squatters were being dumped ‘miles from Johannesburg to hide poverty from summit delegates’.[34] According to Naomi Klein, ‘vendors and beggars have been swept from the streets, residents of squatter camps have been evicted’, and the Sandton precinct was transformed into a ‘military complex’ with remote spy planes and a 1.8 kilometre ‘struggle pen’ for authorized protests.[35]
Protesting in Johannesburg was fraught and dangerous. When activists and academics from the International Forum on Globalization (a North-South educational and research group in town for the Summit) joined a candlelit march from the University of the Witwatersrand on 24 August in support of freedom of expression, they were blocked by riot police who fired stun grenades into the march, injuring several protestors. On 2 September police and security guards clashed with pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the Wits Education Campus over a scheduled speech by Shimon Peres, resulting in injuries caused by rubber bullets to a number of activists. There were also protests in Sandton against pollution from steel works in the Vaal Triangle, and in Durban against pollution from oil refineries. Greenpeace International hung a banner from one of the cooling towers at the Koeburg nuclear power station near Cape Town, to the intense irritation of the ANC. Countless other smaller demonstrations occurred during the Summit, including the noisy disruption of Colin Powell’s speech in the Sandton Convention Centre, angry speeches in the Global People’s Forum, and innumerable placards and banners.GroundWork organized a satirical ‘Greenwash Academy Awards’ceremony on 23 August 2002 as part of their campaign forcorporate social accountability, presenting first prize to BP for their ‘Beyond Petroleum’ adverts. As a result, ‘many of the potentially controversial partnerships, particularly those involving corporations, held their meetings on the outskirts of the Summit, fearing bad publicity’.[36]
The effects of the Summit protests