Standard Bank’s head office in Rosebank, Johannesburg, was the scene of a protest by climate activists this week. [Picture: RVI]
On Monday, a group of climate activists protesting against Standard Bank’s involvement in the East African Crude Oil Pipeline project were physically booted out of the institution’s Johannesburg headquarters. This prompted many to question whether the current approach to activism is effective.
Speaking in an interview on Salaamedia, social justice activist and researcher Malik Dasoo said he and his peers have known for a while that the old method was not yielding the results needed. The time for a different approach has come, he suggested.
“The passive approach to activism – the organising of large marches, pickets, memorandum handovers or petitions – just doesn’t work because you’re dealing with deeply-vested interests and deep power structures.”
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Activism, change and vested interests
As a researcher, Dasoo has studied at least three movements to find out what spurs regime change. These were the civil rights movement in the US, the anti–apartheid movement in South Africa and the liberation movement in Serbia.
Ultimately, he said, civil disobedience was what created change. “That’s what changes the needle and there’s very clear reasons why that happens,” he said, adding, “There’s a clear formula for how to make this work and that’s what we’re trying to do in South Africa”.
One of the reasons why the current approach was largely failing, he explained, was because the system was inherently opposed to heeding the climate emergency.
“These corporations that are involved in it, they don’t try to hide that fact. This is something that they have acknowledged but they craft creative stories around it to try and distract from the issues.”
Referring to Standard Bank, Dasoo said their involvement in the East African Crude Oil Pipeline project was an example of how corporations would repackage exploitation under the guise of development.
“They’ll say it bolsters economic growth. But economic growth is just how you define it. It bolsters economic growth for the wealthy elite, for their rich clients. It bolsters growth for governments who are often corrupt and hungry for this money. Those benefits don’t translate to the ground – to communities where it’s actually needed.”
The West and its corporations were all centrally involved in sustaining this economic system of extracting value from Africa, leaving us with very little benefit to show for it and just lining their pockets even more, he said.
