On Tuesday, October 8, 2024, activists from a broad coalition of community-based organisations, civil society organisations, trade unions, and environmental and social justice groups gathered in Sandton, Johannesburg, to protest against the African Energy Chamber (AEC) and its African Energy Week (AEW) conference.
The demonstrators marched from Sandton Central Park to the AEC offices, expressing their concerns about fossil fuel exploitation across Africa that leaves frontline communities with polluted environment and much poorer while the transnational corporations laugh to the bank.
Protesters highlighted the AEC’s role in promoting fossil fuel projects like EACOP, which they argue displaces communities and devastates ecosystems in Uganda and Tanzania while providing limited socio-economic benefits for ordinary people. The demonstrators emphasised the need for a just transition to renewable energy that prioritises the interests of African communities and ecosystems.
At the African Energy Chamber office, the protestors presented an open letter endorsed by over 250 African civil society organisations, community-based organisations, social and environmental justice groups, faith-based organisations, and trade unions.
The letter outlined the following key demands:
- The immediate cancellation of African Energy Week.
- African governments must boycott African Energy Week and cut ties with the African Energy Chamber.
- African leaders must reject fossil fuel expansion on the continent and aggressively pursue a just, people-centred transition to renewable energy.
- Multinational corporations must pay reparations for environmental and social destruction caused by fossil fuel extraction across the continent.
The protest aimed to draw attention to the long-term environmental and economic consequences of continued fossil fuel investment in Africa, emphasising the potential for renewable energy to drive sustainable development across the continent.
Mametlwe Sebei, President of the General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA), said: “Africa Energy Week represents the united power of big corporate fossil fuel monopolies, to which we must counterpose working class unity, and power. Ultimately only a revolutionary transition would be a just transition which, through working class power will ensure and guarantee a transition to clean renewable energy to meet all our energy needs and on the basis of decent paying jobs.”
Zaki Mamdoo, StopEACOP Campaign Coordinator, said: “We have marched through Africa’s richest square mile, in defiance of the many corporate criminals who call it home, to reject the unholy alliance between finance capital, African governments and the fossil fuel industry. We see the pro-war, pro-fossil fuels and pro-exploitation operations of Ivor Itchikowitz’s Paramount Group; we see the unapologetic violence, destruction and war mongering of American imperialism; the suffocating pollution and devastation caused by Sasol; and the corrupt bolstering of it all by the sinister African Energy Chamber fossil fuel lobby group and its fraudster chairman, NJ Auyk.
“We reject them all and demand that our leaders cut ties with the African Energy Chamber and boycott events where elites plot our demise for their enrichment. African leaders must engage in a process of deep and meaningful consultation with communities, civil society and ordinary people to pursue a developmental path that serves our collective interests for jobs, housing, education, healthcare, adequate nutrition and climate stability.”
