Download PDFAmadiba Crisis Committee invites the public and the media to participate in the Human Rights celebration of 2024. It will be in Sigidi village on the Amadiba coast in Mbizana on 21 March, the Human Rights Day. It will start at 10:00 AM.
We will commemorate all the heroes and heroines who have fallen in the struggle for human rights, in Amadiba, in South Africa, in Africa and in the world.
Pondoland has a history of resisting imposed ‘development’ that destroys ancestral and agricultural land, threatens livelihoods of communities and harm the environment. Corporations and the rich also invade and attack the culture and communal ownership of land. Customary law and collective ownership of land don’t suit the capitalist system. The land grab never seems to stop.
Corporations are coming like flies to make profits without caring about human rights and land rights. When they start and drive their projects, they violate the rights of workers. This happens right now, in South Africa and all over the world.
The climate crisis doesn’t exist to them or to the governments. We suffer badly from the effects of climate change. We have both droughts and extreme rain falls in the wrong seasons. Floods like never seen before are killing and displacing people, in South Africa and all over the world.
The lives of people everywhere are threatened. But the plans of the government don’t change. Everything continues like before.
But if we don’t act now to stop the warming of the planet, it will threaten food security even where people have land and use it for agriculture.
The rally on 21 March will celebrate the resistances and alternatives of communities involved in the same fights as we are in Amadiba:
For the land. For enough water that is not polluted by garbage and sewage. For local roads that people can use. For schools that are not overcrowded. For clinics with enough staff and medicines.
We will celebrate the fishers resisting corporations taking over the sea. We will celebrate communities resisting corporations hungry for the land on which we all depend. We will rage against the violence against women and children.
We as communities are fighting for survival and a decent livelihood, but a minority are fighting to make themselves rich, no matter what will be destroyed and whose lives will be lost. We have to organise and come together against the violence gripping our country!
Please come and join us on Human Rights Day 21 March. Let us forge new bonds of solidarity, everywhere where communities say Yes to the development we want. Yes, to the people’s development from below that gives meaningful lives to all. Where our food security is guaranteed and our local communities are protected, as well as our land and our ocean.
- Yes, to sustainable development! Defend future generations!
- No short-term ‘development’ that will make us suffer for the rest of our lives!
- Knowledge is Power!
“Uninformed people are in prison. Informed people are liberated.”
Please, mail to amadibacrisiscommittee@gmail.com for more information.
This is a people’s solidarity festival. We cannot cover your transport or your accommodation. Closest town to this event is Port Edward.
Nonhle Mbuthuma 0734262955; Cromwell Sonjica 0630523090. (WApp and phone calls).
This invitation was sent by Amadiba Crisis Committee on 18 March 2024.
