4 October 2024
Protest Against the African Energy Chamber and African Energy Week
Date: Tuesday, 8 October 2024
Time: 09:00 AM SAST
Location: Sandton Central Park, Corner Grayston and Sandton Drive, to the African Energy Chamber, Corner Katherine and West Streets, Johannesburg.
Johannesburg – On Tuesday, 8 October 2024, over 1,000 people, from a broad coalition of community based organisations, civil society organisations, activists, and community members impacted by extractive projects, will gather in Sandton, Johannesburg to protest against the African Energy Chamber (AEC) and its fossil-addicted African Energy Week (AEW) conference. The protest will take the form of a march from Sandton Central Park to the AEC Offices via the representatives of fossil fuel imperialism, war and environmental destruction; including the ultra-Zionist Ichikowitz Family Foundation which is tied to Ivor Ichikowitz’ Paramount Group, the U.S. Consulate and the headquarters of Sasol.
This protest aims to denounce the AEC’s promotion of fossil fuel exploitation across Africa, which has devastating social, environmental, and economic impacts on African communities and societies, while benefiting multinational corporations and global imperial powers. In their rejection of AEW, the demonstrators will make the point that AEW and its host, the AEC, play a role in perpetuating fossil fuel-driven neo-colonialism. By creating a space for the representatives of global finance capital and international fossil fuel corporations to exercise their influence on African governments and decision makers, AEW serves the interests of multinational corporations and imperial nations abroad. AEW seeks to legitimise conditions which exploit Africa’s energy resources to line the pockets of an international elite, fuel the war machine of Western imperialism and drive the economies of the Global North, while leaving African communities impoverished. The policies pushed by AEW—free-market economics, deregulation, and privatisation—are designed to entrench debt, underdevelopment, and exploitation, while accelerating climate collapse and environmental degradation across the continent.
Specifically, demonstrators will call for an end to the AEC’s role in promoting fossil fuel projects like the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), which displaces communities and devastates ecosystems in Uganda and Tanzania while providing no real socio-economic benefit for ordinary people and will also highlight the AEC’s complicity in sustaining the exploitation of critical minerals and huge oil reserves in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Participants in the AEW enable global imperialism, including Israel’s genocidal onslaught against the Palestinian people, given that coal exports from South Africa – especially from Glencore and African Rainbow Minerals – have long fuelled that apartheid regime’s power grid.
At the African Energy Chamber, which is headed by the serial-fraudster NJ Ayuk, the demonstrators will read out and deliver an open letter which has been endorsed by roughly 200 African civil society organisations, community based organisations, social and environmental justice groups, faith based organisations and trade unions. The letter, to be published ahead of the protest, outlines the following critical demands:
- The immediate cancellation of African Energy Week
- African governments must Boycott African Energy Week and cut ties with its host, 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
- Reparations for the environmental destruction caused by fossil fuel extraction
On route to the African Energy Chamber, demonstrators will stop at the ultra-Zionist Ichikowitz Family Foundation, denouncing Ivor Ichikowitz’s Paramount Group for supplying military hardware that protects Big Oil’s interests in Africa, particularly fueling war and climate devastation in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado region. Demonstrators will also pass the U.S. Consulate, where protesters intend to condemn U.S. imperialism and its destruction as the world’s second largest CO2 emitter, driving climate collapse and uncertainty across Africa, while also backing Israel’s genocidal actions and the expansion, violence and exploitation of U.S. oil firms. Lastly, at the headquarters of Sasol, activists will spotlight Sasol’s deadly pollution and devastation of communities in South Africa and Mozambique, emphasising the reparations owed by Sasol to those communities as well as the urgent need to transition away from coal.
Resources:
https://groundwork.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Whose-Energy-Future.pdf
For media inquiries, interviews, or additional information, please contact:
Tumi Masipa:
Phumla Duma:
Abiud Onyach:
Tsepang Molefe
Please note that a detailed Press Release and photos will be available immediately after the protest.
