In the last 3 years, social movements
have emerged in the big cities,
Jonannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, which have become the focus of the struggle against the neo-liberal policies of the ANC government. Such organisations are the AntiPrivatisation Forum (APF), the AntiEviction Campaign (AEC) and the Concerned Citizens Forum (CCF). In the countryside, a Landless Peoples Movement (LPM) has sprung up, which is challenging the policies of a government wedded to the interests of commercial farmers and not those
Under fire: Thabo Mbeki of the landless peasants.
The pivot of support politically for the government is the Tripartite Alliance, which is constituted by the ANC, the _Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP). lation and flexible labour pursued by the ANC government since 1994 have led to a million job losses. Ten million people have reportedly had their water cut off, and another ten million were victims of electricity disconnections, mainly due to affordability. The incidence of cholera, a disease associated with polluted water, has increased in recent years, with many deaths. Two million people have been evicted from their homes or land. HIV/Aids is killing millions siowly in South Africa. Only the opposition internally as well as international pressure have forced a reluctant government to provide antiretroviral drugs for pregnant mothers who are HIV positive. The policies of privatisation, dereguharsh. number wounded.
The reaction of the ANC government to the resistance it has encountered from the social movements has been
defence.
There have been forced evictions. Protests against cut-offs have been broken up by the police with arrests and imprisonment of protesters.
This was the case in Johannesburg last year when activists demonstrating outside the home of the mayor of Johannesburg against electricity and water cut-offs in Soweto were shot at by a security guard, and two of their
87 protesters (later known as the Kensington 87) were arrested and tried for public violence, a charge which was dismissed by the court earlier this year. A solidarity movement nationally as well as internationally played an important part in their
The fight against neo-liberal policies pursued by governments and their failure to protect the environment from pollution, was boosted at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held last August in Johannesburg.
A protest march of over 20,000 peo ple was organised by an alliance of diverse social movements and civil society organisations which constituted themselves into the Social Movements Indaba (SMI).
The organisations in the SMI ranged from the APF, AEC, Jubilee 2000 and
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ce Summer 2003 21 International resistance