Africa Oil Week: Mantashe slams “foreign-funded” activists

Protester Thami Khumalo does not want new oil and gas exploration. Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee

Hundreds of environmental activists from various organisations took to the streets of Sandton calling for a boycott of the upcoming Africa Energy Week. In Cape Town, Extinction Rebellion and The Green Connection protested outside the Africa Oil Week conference.

Africa Energy Week (AEW) will be hosted in Cape Town from the 4 to 8 November, and boasts that it is “Africa’s biggest gathering of energy policymakers, companies and investors. Serving as a meeting place for Africa’s energy elite.”

Africa Oil Week is a four-day conference at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, and started on Monday.

Joburg protest

Protesters accused AEW of perpetuating a fossil fuel agenda and for placing the interests of multinational corporations above the interests of communities affected by the extraction of fossil fuels.

“The fossil fuel industry enriches a tiny proportion of Africans and does not serve the poor. They devastate the ecosystems and leave destruction in their wake,” said Extinction Rebellion’s Malik Dasoo.

According to protesters, AEW will include discussions about the 1,400km East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which will take Uganda’s crude oil to the Chongoleani Peninsula near Tanga port in Tanzania for export. The project is driven by French oil company TotalEnergies.

Among those attending the protest was Ugandan activist Samuel Okulony from the Environmental Governance Institute, and a member of the StopEACOP coalition. He said local communities are resisting the pipeline because of its potential impact on their land and livelihoods.

“Communities are not being compensated for their land, a key resource and their only economic asset. They are now not able to support their families,” said Okulony.

He said the government was using the police and army to suppress community opposition to the pipeline and the justice system was failing to protect citizens.

“I can call this a new form of colonialism, it’s the same exploitation that this continent endured for so many years,” said Okulony.

Protesters marched through Sandton accompanied by a large police presence as they stopped at the African Energy Chamber, the American Consulate, and at the Sasol head office, where they read out some of their demands.

“We demand the cancellation of AEW and the establishment of an energy system that serves African people, not corporations, not imperial powers and not profit hungry elites. Let’s build a future where energy is a public good, democratically controlled and used to power development that is socially just, environmentally sustainable and economically empowering for all our people,” read a statement issued by the demonstrators.

A protester calls for a boycott of the upcoming African Energy Week conference.

Cape Town protest

Meanwhile, Extinction Rebellion Cape Town and The Green Connection protested outside Africa Oil Week on Tuesday morning at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. The conference had started with a closed session with ministers from across the continent on Monday.

A small but vocal group of protesters came dressed as vampires “to show how the oil industry tends to suck Africa dry”. They chanted: “Fossil fuel sucks, fossil fuel kills” and “Africa needs renewables”. Placards also read “Gwede Mantashe sucks”.

The activists say African leaders should shift away from the fossil fuel industry and focus on a just energy transition.

Jacqui Tooke, spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, said the fossil fuel industry had come “to make promises to our leaders that we need oil and gas to power our economies; we want to challenge that narrative”.

She said humanity is facing an existential risk because of global warming and climate instability caused by fossil fuels.

Liziwe McDaid, from Green Connection, said the group worked with coastal communities.

“Thousands of people’s livelihoods depend on a healthy ocean. The oil barons want to drill the ocean for oil and gas, and that will threaten (people’s) livelihoods.”

Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources Gwede Mantashe delivered the keynote address at the conference. He appealed to delegates to “continue investing in the development of oil and gas”.

He said, “The main hindrance or risk to these projects being realised in South Africa remains the unabated and frivolous litigation against the exploration and production of oil and gas by foreign-funded lobby groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).”

Responding to GroundUp, at a media briefing on Tuesday he said, “They [NGOs] block development and hide behind protecting the environment.”

“Our view is that what is required is responsible development, not stopping development,” he said.

Africa Oil Week is set to conclude on Thursday.

Protestors from Extinction Rebellion Cape Town and The Green Connection came to Africa Oil Week conference dressed as Zombies and vampires on Tuesday morning. They said the vampire theme captured the essence of what oil companies are doing. They called on African leaders to shift away from the fossil fuel industry. Photo: Matthew Hirsch

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