The Jo'burg Junket (Contd.)
With kickoff looming tomorrow, the Sunday papers are predictably full of news and comment about the big event. Jo'burg's own Sunday Times headlines that "delegations are locked in make-or-break negotiations this weekend to prevent the meeting ending in dismal failure". The Sunday Telegraph has a similar report, and the BBC says "Pessimism hangs over world summit". John Battersby in the Sunday Independent worries that Robert Mugabe and his war veterans are preparing to hijack the event, while Alex Kirby of the BBC reports that the logistics are not quite there yet.
Meanwhile, out on the streets, police are firing stun grenades at an eclectic mixture of local and foreign protestors, while Greenpeace activists have invaded the Koeberg nuclear power station outside Cape Town. Almost like old times! Sadly, though, probably just a warm-up for the real action to come, with local groups lining up with Zimbabwe war veterans, Israeli and Palestinian activists and hardened veterans of Seattle, Genoa and Gothenberg to cause trouble and get attention for their diverse causes.
Editorial scepticism abounds. The Sunday Telegraph's editorial today is headed "Futile Summit". The BBC's awesomely authoritative pundit, John Simpson (who knows Jo'burg very well, having been their resident correspondent at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle in the late 80's) comments, also in the Sunday Telegraph:
I have never wanted to be proven wrong so badly in my entire life; but if the Johannesburg World Summit amounts to anything whatsoever I'll be amazed.
(Simpson's previous column, from last Sunday, is also worth reading).
From the left (not that Simpson isn't there also), Jonathon Porritt in The Observer, has very similar words:
'I went to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro with low expectations, and all of them were met.' Regretfully, those were the rather glib words with which I tried to summarise my feelings about the Earth Summit a decade ago. Ten years on, it appears that you'd have to be an insane optimist to have any expectations at all of the World Summit on Sustainable Development which opens in Johannesburg tomorrow.
The Economist, in a typically even-handed and graceful summary, points to some of the obvious contrasts such an event throws up in Southern Africa:
Some national delegations have publicly pledged themselves to restrict the normally lavish hospitality which accompanies such international gatherings. But even with caviar and champagne off the menu, the contrast between the well-fed delegates and the millions of people in southern Africa now starving, as their region is caught once more in the grip of a famine, will be striking.
Along the same theme, The Sunday Telegraph has a report called Delegates head for a world apart, in which we read the following:
At the Michelangelo Hotel, where the British delegation will be staying, nothing has been left to chance. Cases of Champagne have been flown in from France and no expense has been spared to meet delegates' gastronomic needs.
"Whether it is caviar, foie gras or cut sandwiches, we can deliver," said Desmond Morgan, the head chef. One of the hotel's £525-a-night presidential suites has been reserved for Tony Blair for a week tomorrow - complete with private dining room and butler - but it will see little active service.
The Prime Minister will spend less than 12 hours in Johannesburg and address the summit for only a few minutes.
Let's hope that the ineffable Tony delivers sufficient value in that brief period to justify such expense, which could house, clothe and feed a number of families in neighbouring Alexandra township. Basildon Peta on IOL and Chris McGreal of the Guardian explore the same theme.
Why, oh why, do our leaders insist on hosting these huge, useless affairs, instead of getting their heads down and responsibly solving the very real problems of our own people? The anti-racism conference in Durban this time last year was widely considered to be a total fiasco (Salon called it The Durban Debacle). Perhaps fortunately for Durban, it was pushed out of the world headlines by the events of September 11, and now almost no-one remembers it happened. But it is instructive to review this anaysis of the conference, from Linda Grant in the Guardian:
A very simple truth has emerged out of the debacle of the Durban conference: that you don't fight racism with more racism, and, unfortunately, as the conference revealed, the "Zionism is racism" doctrine is fostering a climate of increased racial prejudice....
If, as a result of the conference, attacks increase on Jews in the Diaspora and Israelis refuse to examine their own actions, the conference will have spectacularly failed to achieve its most basic function. It will have increased racism and not reduced it.
Let's hope that Johannesburg is not similarly remembered.
7:07:25 PM 
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