SOUTH AFRICA: Privatisers gets `Seattled'

JOHANNESBURG -- Holding up an unexploded orange water balloon like a trophy, South Africa's water and forestry department director-general Mike Muller beamed with relief.

He and a gathering of water privatisation advocates had survived a vigorous toyi-toyi by a few dozen workers, students and residents, which shut down the Urban Futures conference in Johannesburg for half an hour on July 11.

The purposefully rude protesters had lobbed balloons at the suits, but missed. Muller, Johannesburg municipal bureaucrats Roland Hunter and Antony Stills, and Archer Davis of Water and Sanitation South Africa, could get on with the workshop's business. Annoyed conference-goers sighed, “We respect their right to protest”.

But, as Gil Scott-Heron said of “free speech” in the United States, you get that right “only so long as you don't say too much”. The balance of power in the workshop was evident: the suits winked and nodded at the interruption, but went on developing plans to trump workers facing retrenchments and pay cuts; township communities suffering unprecedented levels of water cut-offs; and University of Witswatersrand students under threat of exclusion when fees bills they couldn't afford reach their mailbox.

The Urban Futures conference was, in a very minor way, “Seattled”. The water balloon that no doubt takes pride of place as shrapnel on Muller's fireplace mantle still could one day detonate.

BY PATRICK BOND

[Patrick Bond is a co-director of the Municipal Services Project. For further info contact <pbond@wn.apc.org>.]

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