[Debate] CCS seminars next week: Trevor Ngwane on protest (Wed), Baruti Amisi on the world's biggest dam (Fri)

[Patrick Bond]

*Univ of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society seminars, 18 and 20 
April - all welcome

CCS Seminar: Ideology, agency and protest politics
Date: Wednesday 18 April 2012
Venue: CCS Seminar Room 602, Memorial Tower Building, Howard College
Time: 12:30-14:00

Topic: *Trevor Ngwane's Centre for Civil Society MA dissertation is 
entitled "Ideology and agency in protest politics: Service delivery 
struggles in post-apartheid South Africa". The seminar addresses this 
thesis and additional pre-doctoral research now underway with Professor 
Peter Alexander and colleagues at the University of Johannesburg. There, 
a reliable database of protest events in South Africa is being 
constructed because there is presently no authoritative factual basis 
upon which commentators can generate coherent explanations of South 
African protests. Most researchers rely on police records and on the 
Municipal IQ, SA Local Government Association and SA Broadcasting 
Corporation databases, but these have been questioned for accuracy, 
comprehensiveness and reliability. A related problem is that present 
estimates of the number of protests suffer from the use of different 
definitions and methodological approaches that are found in the field. A 
reliable, verifiable database that covers the past decade or so of 
protest activity and that is updated regularly will contribute immensely 
to protest scholarship.

*Speaker: *Ngwane is a community organiser and, since the early 2000s, a 
leading South African representative of global justice activism (e.g. 
http://www.newleftreview.org/A2459). He was previously an African 
National Congress regional leader in Soweto and Johannesburg city 
councilor (until being fired in 1999 for questioning water 
privatisation), a trade union educator, a Wits University sociology 
lecturer, a co-founder of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, 
general secretary of the Anti-Privatisation Forum, and recently a 
national organiser of the Million Climate Jobs campaign.

***

*CCS Seminar: Will the Inga Hydropower Project meet Africa's electricity 
needs?
Speaker: Baruti Amisi
Date: Friday 20 April 2012
Venue: CCS Seminar Room 602, 6th Floor, Memorial Tower Building, Howard 
College *

*Topic: *The world's single-largest energy investment - the Inga 
Hydropower Project (IHP) on the Congo River in the Democratic Republic 
of the Congo - will remain a high-profile megaproject for decades to 
come. In fact, the increasing electricity needs from power hungry 
countries and the need to preserve the environment in European countries 
and thus to destroy natural ecosystems in the poor countries, and the 
DRC in particular, have intensified the pressure on this unique 
geological and hydrological site to produce the cheapest hydropower in 
the world, notwithstanding a construction price tag in the range of $80 
billion. In terms of output, the dam will be three times larger than 
even China's Three Gorges. But civil society locally and globally is 
asking difficult questions:  (1) Is not further development of IHP 
premature or too ambitious?, (2) Who are the winners and losers in the 
IHP?, and (3) Is there a net benefit for the those on the ground and 
throughout the host county? Electricity is desperately needed, because 
only 6 percent of the DRC population have access. But the financial 
performance, net recognised income, the subsequent proceeds from it , 
and socio-economic and environmental legacy of Inga 1 and 2 together 
suggest that the DRC is not prepared for a project of such a magnitude. 
Current capacity - political, institutional, organisational, managerial, 
financial and technical - and socio-economic instability represent 
significant risk for investors. Prejudiced agreements insisted upon by 
investors will undermine benefits to the country. Secondly, IHP 
electricity could undermine the African poor, given the price and 
unaffordability. The main material beneficiaries will be multinational 
corporations and wealthy individuals who already received the returns of 
the investment and rewards in Inga 1 and 2. Hence a better approach 
would be to refocus the project's efforts to cover rehabilitation, 
transparent financial management, and improvement of the internal 
controls that were seen to be failures in Inga 1 and 2. Otherwise, 
instead of supplying electricity to the people of Africa, the IHP will 
be remembered as Africa's largest white elephant.

*Speaker:* Baruti Amisi is a doctoral candidate at the UKZN Centre for 
Civil Society and Development Studies discipline, and a leader of the 
KZN Refugees Forum. He has recently returned from two months of field 
research in the DRC.

<http://www.rhizomia.net/>
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