Cape Town - “We want climate justice and we want it now!” That was the message of the youth and civil society in Cape Town who took to the streets on Tuesday to “March for System Change” to mark Human Rights Day and to stand in solidarity with the global climate strike.
The march from Hanover Street to Parliament was organised by the African Climate Alliance, a youth-led climate justice group, and took place under the theme “Don’t Gas Africa” to highlight the Don’t Gas Africa campaign by African civil society to ensure Africa was not locked into fossil gas production.
This year, the March for System Change also reiterated the demands made at its very first march in 2021 to call for urgent action over the need for energy, water, housing and food access for all, and to address the interlinking crises of income inequality, climate crisis, water and food insecurity.
Mitchelle Mhaka, programmes co-ordinator of African Climate Alliance, said: “Today we are here to call for the system change we need to address the climate and ecological crisis, and all the other social struggles that are deeply interlinked with it.
“Without social justice, there can be no environmental justice. Without environmental justice, we will never achieve social justice.”
Some of their demands were for the exploration of fossil fuels to be abandoned; for all new fossil fuel-related projects to be stopped in favour of investment in renewable energy; to transform the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy which “currently acts as the biggest stumbling block to a just transition in the country”; and for the Department of Basic Education to improve national literacy in Climate Change and adequately prepare youth for the realities of the climate crisis.
Project 90 by 2030, Extinction Rebellion (XR) Cape Town, Greenpeace volunteers Cape Town, Feed the Future, 350Africa, Environmental Monitoring Group and The Green Connection were some of the participating environmental and civic groups.
Also joining the march were pupils from Mfuleni Tech School, the Centre of Science And Technology, Fairdale High School and Bardale Secondary School, who shared the educational and socio-economic difficulties they faced as a result of energy poverty – this ranged from being unable to finish their curriculum and homework, to climate anxiety over the country they were inheriting.
They sang: “We are young but the burden is a lot.”
With a largely youthful crowd at the march, Extinction Rebellion Cape Town spokesperson Judy Scott-Goldman said it was unsurprising as the youth had the most to lose with warnings that if sufficient action was not taken within this decade, irreversible climate harm would occur.
Scott-Goldman said: “The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report reiterates what we already know – if we go on pursuing fossil fuels and emitting more greenhouse gases, we are just going to intensify droughts, hurricanes, floods and further destabilise the climate.”
Scientists in the latest IPCC report said that in 2018 they highlighted the unprecedented scale of the challenge required to keep warming to 1.5°C, but five years later, that challenge has become even greater due to a continued increase in greenhouse gas emissions. They said only urgent climate action could secure a liveable future for all.
Addressing the crowd, Dean Bhebhe from the Don’t Gas Africa campaign, said that if they allowed energy infrastructure to be grounded on “dirty energy”, they would be causing irreversible impacts on future emissions and living standards.
“African land is not a gas station. The growing threat to use Africa as a gas station has made it clear for the need to raise Africa’s climate ambitions on the international agenda and Africa’s ability to be a key stakeholder of a green clean global economy – not just a victim of the climate crisis,” Bhebhe said.
Bhebhe said millions were losing their homes, had no access to food, had their health threatened and were slipping into higher levels of extreme poverty because of the fossil fuel industry.
