Africa Follow

The US is eyeing up Africa's oil.

RICHARD SYKES is the chairman of the giant pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline. The firm makes £10,000 every minute - the same time it takes 21 people in the Third World to die of preventable diseases. It was also one of the firms which tried to prevent South Africa from developing its own cheaper drugs for AIDS and HIV.

HUNDREDS OF thousands of workers went on strike across South Africa against the policies of the ANC government last week. Bosses and the government claimed the strike was a flop but the Cosatu union federation, which called the action, disputed their figures. Cosatu leaders said that up to 60 percent of their members had taken part in the strike.

"IT IS extremely important that we prevent more aggression against a country that has already been bombed back to the Stone Age. Around 60 percent of our workforce are African or Middle Eastern in origin, so they tend to be more sympathetic to the anti-war argument. We have to keep on making our efforts to stop the war." Arif Shaikh, TGWU, First Central Buses

FIFTEEN million people are starving in southern Africa. More than 30,000 children die every day around the world from preventable diseases. Five times as many people die from AIDS every day as died in the World Trade Centre. So world leaders are getting ready to spend hundreds of billions of pounds on a war to crush Iraq. These are the two faces of imperialism - war and hunger.

A UN World Food Programme report said this week that 14.5 million people across southern Africa face starvation and famine. The famine doesn't just affect Zimbabwe, which the British media concentrated on as part of its support for rich white farmers against Mugabe's government. It also hits Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique.

Radio Bemba Sound System, the new live album by the anti-capitalist musician Manu Chao, captures the exuberant energy of his live shows. It makes it clear why he and his sound system have become a flagship for the movement. His music fuses influences from Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and the US in a manic aural assault.

Tuesday 22 October will be a global day of solidarity with the Kensington 87, the protesters who were arrested in Johannesburg, South Africa, for demonstrating against water and electricity cutoffs. The defendants include Trevor Ngwane. They will go before a court on 23 October to face serious charges. Globalise Resistance has called a demonstration outside the South African embassy in London at 5pm on 22 October.

TONY BLAIR claimed to be leading the world on tackling poverty and environmental destruction at the Earth Summit this week. The truth is that the summit's outcome represents no progress at all. On key areas it will guarantee things get worse, not better. That is why 25,000 protesters, mainly the poor of South Africa, defied the police and government and staged an angry march on the summit last Saturday (see report below).

"WE ARE inspired by Seattle and Genoa, and we hope our protest turns into something like Seattle." That's how South Africa's Anti-Privatisation Forum summed up its aim and hope for the mass protest it planned at the Earth Summit on Saturday. The forum is an umbrella group uniting a wide range of people campaigning for social justice.

WOMEN IN one of South Africa's poorest townships, Wentworth on the edge of Durban, issued a statement about why they are protesting at the Earth Summit. They have called their grassroots organisation the Wentworth Summit on Sickness and Death (WSSD), mirroring the official title of the world leaders' gathering, the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

THE PROTESTS against the rich and powerful at the Earth Summit in South Africa have been inspiring. Following on from the protests in Barcelona and Seville earlier this year, they are a powerful rebuttal to all those who claimed the anti-capitalist movement was dead after 11 September.