Emma Bryce delves into a new kind of environmentalism: one which cuts its hair, keeps office hours, and might have a shot at saving the world.

From the archives: This article originally appeared in the October 08 edition of the Jerusalem Globalist

Just before Town, in the heart of Salt River, there is a large, square building flanked by palm trees. In the street of derelict flats and graffiti-ed sidewalks, number 41 Community House feels like a tiny island of order and industry. But inside, Sibusiso Mimi – supporting co-ordinator of the anti-nuclear group Earthlife Africa Cape Town – works between coffee cups and biscuit tins, stray sugar bowls and teaspoons. “Sorry about the mess,” he says, grinning from behind a computer screen. Sibusiso, like many others in Cape Town who work in similarly small rooms in similar chaos, has a job too broadly called ‘activism’.

It’s a term frowned upon by many; it’s the kind of word that prompts a verbal lashing: “Go get a real job,” others might sneer. What too many South Africans don’t realise is that activism is giving people jobs, because it’s not just about the physical environment anymore; it’s about people and their socio-economic place in it. Activism is no longer an indulgence of barefoot hippies, or the by-product of virulent youth. Activism is on the rise, and it wears a suit and tie. But in a South African context, it still holds elements of a cruder, and more turbulent, history.

Back in the 1960s, South Africa’s Green Revolution marched hand-in-hand with its much larger sibling in struggle: the anti-apartheid faction. Unsurprisingly, it was a movement catalysed by anti-apartheid sentiment, and it became the past time of banner-wielding Wits students, and radicals at the ‘Moscow on the Hill’ of days gone by – the anti-communist pet name for UCT. The Green Movement was small, and went largely unnoticed, overshadowed by historical political events like the Cradock Four and the Soweto Uprisings of ’76. But in the 1980s, in the climate of the new nuclear energy debate in South Africa, the advent of organisations like Koeberg Alert – bombed by the apartheid government in ’82 - gave force to the movement.

Alongside pioneer groups like the Dolphin Action and Awareness Group and the Cape Town Ecology Group (CTEC), the lobby started gaining recognition. In other countries like the U.S., being ‘green’ still meant building tree houses in threatened forests, and heading out in ships to rescue whales. But South Africa had reached an interface between the environment and social issues. Here a natural fusion took place, giving rise to organisations like the Environmental Justice Network (EJNF), still an active forum today. Steeped in the traditions of social struggle in South Africa, this union was neither unexpected nor revolutionary, and environmental-social activism has become the legacy of the first green roots in South Africa.

Today, environmental groups range from NGOs to watchdogs, with titles like the Environmental Monitoring Group (EMG) who primarily target dam construction; BioWatch SA, who keep tabs on GM foods; and WESSA, which advocates public participation in environmental management. But this organisational structure doesn’t mean that ‘take-it-to-the-streets’ activism has faded with the hippies. In the Northern Cape, lobbyists are threatening tourism boycotts and court action against the decision to cull elephants. In a memorable event in November 2007, a group of protestors in Maandagshoek, Limpopo marched to the offices of the Department of Minerals and Energy to deliver a petition. According to Groundwork Online, residents have endured beatings, shooting, and imprisonment at the hands of the police, who are protecting the rights of mining company Genorah, to mine the land. Spokesman for the protestors, Emmanuel Makgoga explained, “We are organising and resisting against the aggression and violence of mining companies and the state.” These sentiments ring the bells of a turbulent past. Up the East Coast, civilians and action groups have lobbied the proposed construction of an aluminium smelter at the renowned Koega industrial park – feared to be toxic to both the environment and people. And in Cape Town, the nuclear debate rages, what with the potential contract between Eskom and French nuclear giants, Areva, for new nuclear power stations; and questions of the notorious pebble bed reactor lurking in the wings. With this rise of public dissent - triggered by everything from increasing bread prices to surging electricity tariffs, activism is spread country wide, and very much on the loose.

Back at number 41 Community House, Sibusiso sits in a big black shirt, slowly sipping a Stony. He is struggling to pinpoint the exact definition of eco-justice movement: “Environmental Justice was coined to accommodate the kinds of people you view as, you know, your bunny-huggers, and then your social activists, who are about access to services, better living conditions – environmental justice issues.” By way of illustration, he speaks of the communities in South Durban who continue to campaign against the environmental and health effects of a large petrochemical company situated in the city’s industrial basin. In this light, ‘environment’ becomes not only the physical fauna and flora, air and water of an area, but the socio-economic and aesthetic situation in which people find themselves.

This essential social-environmental union has become the currency with which the environmental activist movement trades its importance. In a country like South Africa, green issues come second best to social ones likes Aids and poverty. But framing a lack of access to natural resources (land, clean water, and food) as a causal link to poverty, disease, and inequity has become a hot ticket to recognition and funding for many activist groupings. And so, we are witnesses to an age of popular environmentalism, and the discarding of the more traditional kind. For some time, Earthlife Africa, founded in 1988 as a left wing activist group, was criticised for its conventional environmental approach, which some say lacked a social dimension. But their focus has increasingly turned to the environmental effects of nuclear energy, with a central Health Campaign established to investigate individual cases of cancer in nuclear workers, and the possibility of class-action litigation against Eskom. Sibusiso shakes his head, “Eskom are not very open about anything.”

This is an opinion which Mike Kantey - veteran anti-nuclear activist and current spokesperson for both Koeberg Alert and the Campaign Against Nuclear Energy (CANE) – has blown wide open and capitalised upon since his student days. He speaks of the days of student marches, and the times when Koeberg Alert was accused of bombing, and was bombed in turn for its anti-nuclear sentiments. An advocate of the social-environmental link, Mike is a target for the nuclear energy sector because of his dedication to documenting the evidence of threatened Eskom officials who are too scared to tell anyone else. On one occasion, Mike returned home after speaking at a nuclear technology conference about workers, to find his flat standing open. “All my nuclear papers are whirled around, and I have an AIDS ribbon on my pillow.” At times, activism comes with a price.

But nevertheless, Mike keeps radically punting the notion of social-environmentalism, dedicated to the idea that the people and the environment are linked in many ways. “Networking is the key. Because it means that you’re really good at fynbos, you’re good at penguins, you’re good at nuclear power, you know about industrial pollution. That process of networking is the new politics. It’s replaced parliamentary democracy entirely, because the networks extend deep into Parliament, they extend into Cabinet, they extend into Eskom.” Mike’s current project-focus on the profit-environment interface has flung him full-force into the world of nuclear energy and one of Southern Africa’s biggest corporates, Eskom. “I realise that [we need to change] economic behaviour – not doing away with it, like some nutcases want – but just transforming it fundamentally to be more environmentally-conscious, more people-friendly…we’re not saying away with profit, we’re saying ja you can make your profit, but these are the constraints. There are human justice constraints, there are environmental constraints.” Here, Mike broadcasts the message of new environmentalism: a movement no longer tagged by tree-huggers and people who knit their own clothes. Environmentalism today is progressive, it’s business, and above all, it’s about compromise. Though in fairness to history, elements of street activism still remain. Hailing from an era of student uprising in the 70s and 80s, Mike Kantey proclaims, “If you were to say to me come let’s take to the streets, I’m with you. Because I’m also – well, you know the gatvol factor?”

Indeed, testimony to the era of idealist activism, an activist of a different sort shares his views in an organic coffee shop in the backstreets of Muizenberg. His name is Mark Wells, and with a history of collaboration with environmental and social NGOs, and ownership of an organic farm on the East Coast, at first glance, he seems like a definite throwback to the 1960s. He even wears a t-shirt that says “Earth, Wind, Water and Fire.” Over coffee, Mark takes the time to describe his home: “We’re working on running zero-waste agriculture, and all the money that comes into the community gets divided amongst the members and the land.” These are the ideals of an era long past, but which a scattering of so-called South African ‘new-agers’ have adopted. However, Mark also reveals a sound technical knowledge of economics and politics, put into practise by his involvement with an NGO appropriately named “Twig” - an organisation advocating the full-cost accounting of businesses, with a focus on the environmental costs of the economy at its core. For Mark – by profession an industrial engineer - the ‘environmental turning point’ came one day when an incident at work changed his perceptions: “I realised that the industry I was working for was having a profound impact on the environment around me.” So he handed in his resignation, and decided to become an organic farmer.

But parallel to this revolutionary decision-making, there is a practicality and cynicism about Mark’s character. He is sceptical about the future of street-activism in the face of state crackdowns on gatherings of more than six people, and the rise of “internet activism.” He argues that lobbying is powerless against the power of big business, and the advance of corporate sponsors on academic and environmental institutions. “Let me tell you a really interesting story,” he says, “I visited a particular university recently to meet with lecturers in the agricultural department. It turns out that departmental graduates are offered jobs by a certain company specialising in pesticides. It’s unbelievable.” Surprisingly, this organic farmer from Forest Vale places faith in the policy-making trend that is so popular in the new environmentalism. It’s an approach often slated as slow-moving and ineffectual by the more radical environmentalists, but for many activists, it is the only perceivable way forward; the only suitable option among the host of others.

While some activists argue that ‘action’ is the essence of their function – indeed, a word embedded in the title they hold – others find a place for policy-making and papers. And this faction has a point: desk-job activism is still activism after all. Certainly, it is making waves. In January 2005, Earthlife Africa won a court case against defendants, Eskom, which saw the initial go-ahead for the pebble bed nuclear plant overturned, based upon a long, legal battle of documents and reports. But the list goes on: street battles like the South Durban anti-pollution campaign, or the fight against harmful waste incineration would have less force without legal representation, and the busy hands that sift through policy papers and white papers, corporate reports and the Constitution. Perhaps the environmental justice of the future will be testimony to this evolution, this increasing interdependence between policy and activism.

But, caught in the conflict between the physical environment and socio-economics, between policy and anarchic rallies to “take it to the streets”, environmental and social activism is still a chameleon of the twenty-first century. One thing is for sure: as long as the emotional, social, and economic link between people and the environment in South Africa remains, there will be space for activism, and scope for its establishment in the economic and corporate machine. Whether this is a good or a bad thing remains to be seen.

Emma Bryce is a third-year print production student.