The Peoples Dialogue is a network that brings southern Africa and South American rural and popular activists and social movements together to share experiences and strengthen linkages in challenging injustice and building alternatives. The Peoples Dialogue held a meeting in Durban from 21-23 September 2011 to engage with the issue of climate change and the challenges it poses for rural movements, moving towards COP17 and Rio+20.

The present crisis of climate change facing the planet and humanity is a part of a broader crisis of capitalism, an economic system that is reaching its ecological limits. The planet and its resources are more than capable of providing for the needs of all its people. However, we live under a system of production and consumption that undermines the natural basis of life through a need for constant growth, while only a small minority of the world’s population, historically in the North and a growing elite in the South, benefits from the results of such growth. Meanwhile, many of the effects of overproduction and consumption and climate change are felt by the world’s small scale and peasant farmers, the poor and the working class.

Thursday 2 June 2011.

Advocate Thuli Madonsela, South Africa’s Public Protector has received a complaint from the Amadiba Crisis Committee (ACC) representing residents from the Eastern Cape’s Wild Coast, because of the failure of the Director General of Mineral Resources, Sandile Nogcina to honour commitments made to bring closure on the Xolobeni Mining Rights controversy.

“Nearly three years have elapsed since we learned from an announcement on the Australian Stock Exchange web site, that the South African government had awarded mining rights to Perth based venture capital mining exploration company MRC Ltd over our ancestral lands” Mzamo Dlamini, spokesman for the ACC said.

Impacts of the Massive Food Production Programme (MFPP), GMOs and cash crops in the Amathole District Municipality

Masifunde and Zingisa have completed a report based on field research carried out between February and June 2010 in four villages in the communal areas of the Eastern Cape (EC): Mgababa and Prudhoe (Ngqushwa Municipality) and Peelton and Nxarhuni (Buffalo City Municipality). These villages were chosen because they had been involved in MFPP and/or cash crop projects, and the people in the area have a history of involvement in agriculture. Here we present only a summary of the main findings of the research. For details one must read the full report.

Towards the end of 2010, a workshop took place in Langa (Cape Town) that brought together progressive social movements (SM) and NGOs. This workshop was attended by representatives from the donor community . The purpose of the workshop was to provide a space to advance an ongoing dialogue between these two different players in ‘civil society’, viz. the NGO sector and the movements.

There are many tensions, contradictions and challenges in this dialogue: sometimes it is a dialogue between ‘equals’ and sometimes it is one between ‘unequals’ - those with unequal power and resource bases. Thus it is important to define the roles of the different players and what kind of partnerships can be formed. One has to bear in mind that both NGOs and social movements are very diverse, not homogeneous and they have different agendas, which may or may not be transformative. Below is a summary of the main issues that emerged from the discussions: