Development Alternatives

From 28-30 April, the Delta Built Environment Consultants (Delta) will host public hearings on the Musina Makhado Special Economic Zone (MMSEZ) – a mega-industrial development proposed to be built in the Vhembe region of Limpopo.

The climate crisis is the result of relations of power and exploitation, between the Global North and the Global South as well as between people and nature. A decolonial approach in climate activism stands for a radical break with colonial principles of economic, political and social systems – including industrial agriculture and landgrabbing. A conversation with Ruth Nyambura, climate activist from Kenya. 

For centuries, resources have been extracted from the African continent without adequate payment or compensation. With colonialism, Khoikhoi and San, the first inhabitants of Southern Africa, lost their land and many lost their lives. During decades of Apartheid they were racially discriminated and still have to fight for political and economic inclusion in the post-Apartheid era. We spoke to the Khoikhoi lawyer Lesle Jansen about her fight for the community and for the legal acknowledgement of the cultural heritage of Indigenous people.

What began as a hyperlocal movement to protect the interests of emerging and commercial farmers, farmworkers and informal settlement residents in Cape Town’s Philippi Horticultural Area has become a much bigger campaign.

The struggle to preserve this resource for residents of the Cape Flats to farm and feed themselves is about protecting it from development and nurturing the richness it offers.

The South African government still needs to drawing up a just transition plan that will support workers who are likely to lose their jobs as the country moves its economy away from dependence on carbon-emitting production, such as mining and downstream industries.

With findings that neither the City of Cape Town nor the provincial government considered the full impact of development on the Cape Flats Aquifer in the Philippi Horticultural Area, the Cape High Court has sent two crucial decisions back for a second look.