Five hundred activists from the Southern African People’s Solidarity Network from Tuesday, August 15, 2017 move into Stay City and will, from Thursday, August 17 to Friday, August 18, hold a Permanent Peoples Tribunal to Dismantle Corporate Power with a focus on land and environment.
This is a counter-summit to the 37th Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Pretoria, where South Africa is expected to assume the role of Chair of the sub-regional organisation. The summit takes place under the theme: “Partnering with the private sector in developing industry and regional value-chains”.
The 2nd Session of the Southern Africa Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Transnational Corporations is being organised by the Southern Africa Campaign to Dismantle Corporate Power. The Tribunal takes place at the Old Women’s Jail at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, South Africa. It is a follow-up to the 1st Session of hearings which were held in Manzini, Swaziland, in 2016.
During the Tribunal, seven communities and movements from the Southern African region will give testimony to the violations of their human rights, environmental rights and the “Right to Say No!”
They will present their cases to a distinguished panel of jurors including:
- Mireille Fanon-Mendes: President of the Frantz Fanon Foundation,
- Nnimmo Bassey: Director, Health of Mother Earth Foundation,
- Stefano Liberti: award-winning journalist and filmmaker,
- Donna Andrews: South African ecofeminist intellectual activist,
- Lucy Edwards: Political and gender activism, and lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Namibia, and
- Paolo Ramazzotti: Professor of Public Policy at the University of Macerata, Italy.
The cases that will be presented cover how transnational corporations destroy food and seed sovereignty, steal from Southern African peoples through illicit financial flows and tax havens, demolish forests which have been the life source for indigenous communities and worked with states to oppress dissenters through imprisonment without charge.
