Why we want to shut down the W$$D
JOHANNESBURG - 25 august

Come to Alexandra to hear the voice of the people and to see the realities of unsustainable development
Press Conference and Press walk about tomorrow in Alexandra (Monday 26th August)

Tomorrow (Monday 26th August) at 1:30pm, the Social Movements Indaba will hold a Press Conference at the Alexsan Kopano Community Centre in Alexandra.

Various representatives of grassroots organisations that are part of the Social Movements Indaba will address the press on why they oppose the W$$D and want to shut it down. Afterwards, members of the press will have the opportunity to accompany residents and activists of Alexandra in a community walk about to see, and hear, about the realities of the unsustainable development that the W$$D both ignores and sustains. They will also be able to see firsthand, the mobilising that is taking place under the umbrella of the Social Movements Indaba in preparation for the mass actions against the W$$D later in the week.

Alexandra represents a microcosm of everything that is wrong with the W$$D. The massive unemployment, lack of essential services, housing evictions, water and electricity cut-offs, environmental degradation, and generalised poverty that is present-day Alexandra sits cheek-by-jowl with the hideous wealth and extravagance of Sandton where the W$$D is taking place. While the fat cat bureaucrats and politicians will be hiding themselves away in luxurious Sandton and spewing out meaningless rhetoric and resolutions about the poor and sustainable development, the people of nearby Alexandra continue to live in dire poverty and to wage a daily struggle for survival. The tragic irony could not be more apparent.

Here is an opportunity for local and international press to break out of the hypocritical shell that is the W$$D and to see, hear and report on the realities, not the myths, of development in South Africa. The power and prestige might seem to be with those in Sandton, but it is amongst ordinary people such as those in Alexandra that real power and prestige lies.

The Social Movements Indaba is struggling alongside such people to tear the veil from the fraudulent face of the W$$D. The future will not be shaped by what goes on inside the sanitised halls and rooms of the Sandton Conference Centre. It will be shaped by the struggles of those communities, such as Alexandra, to give concrete meaning and content to a genuine development that is not held hostage to the dictates of the self-important and rich. Come witness the shaping of that future.

For further information contact: Dale McKinley on 072 429-4086