Capitalism or population (Re: Political Ecology)

[Patrick Bond]

> From:          Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com>
> ...When you build houses in the desert, you have to drain water from
> surrounding states hence causing desrtification in places that are
> naturally fertile while diverting water to swimming pools, lawn sprinkler,
> air conditioners, etc. What we are headed toward is cities that will
> eventually strangulate themselves.
>
This is indeed the problem my town, Johannesburg, represents. Our 
democratic government's solution is to continue to deny low-income 
black people even a minimal 25 litres per capita per day of water; to 
allow roughly 7 times more water to be used for white folks' swimming 
pools and gardens than black households consume; and so as to 
supply the thirsty petty bourgeoisie, to drain Lesotho of its 
water through a couple of megadams and huge tunnels (partly 
funded by US taxpayers through the World Bank). Attempts to find 
reformist folk in the Bank's Inspection Panel to raise a stink came 
to naught, predictably, a few months ago. Just heard on tonight's 
news that a smaller city a couple of hours from here has a township 
of 30,000 black residents that has had its water cut off for three 
months. An intensification of municipal water privatisation lies on 
the immediate horizon. The rural water projects of our famous 
water minister Kader Asmal are now around 90% broken down, according 
to sources inside his ministry, and the reason is that there are no 
subsidies available for operating and maintenance work. To top it 
all off, some great comrades in Tembisa township slightly 
to the northeast of Jo'burg are being denied the right to protest 
water and electricity cuts at their local municipal office, because a 
local magistrate judges their march to be a distraction to local 
businesses operating on Saturday (they'll go ahead tomorrow morning 
anyhow, with an expected 5,000 of their fellow residents).

The Washington Consensus applied to water is evidently exhausted in 
South Africa.

***************************************************
Patrick Bond
51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094
Johannesburg, South Africa
phone:  (2711) 614-8088
email:  pbond at wn.apc.org
office:  University of the Witwatersrand
Graduate School of Public and Development Management
PO Box 601, Wits 2050
phone (o):  (2711)488-5917; fax:  (2711) 484-2729
email (o):  bondp at zeus.mgmt.wits.ac.za