Right to Say No: Rally and festival in Sigidi village, ‘Xolobeni’, Human Rights Day 21 March

Amadiba Crisis Committee | 13 March, 2019

A community meeting organised by the Amadiba Crisis Committee in Xolobeni, Easter Cape, South Africa, 8 August 2018.

It is with great pride and excitement that the Amadiba Crisis Committee announces, and at the same time invites all those resisting dispossession to join our RIGHT TO SAY NO rally and festival.

The rally will be on Human Rights Day 21 March in Sigidi village, in ‘Xolobeni’ area (Umgungundlovu) on the Wild Coast, Mbizana.

This rally will celebrate our victory in the Pretoria High Court when our right to say no to mining was finally recognised. Our rally will commemorate the killing of ACC’s beloved Chair, Sikhosiphi ‘Bazooka’ Radebe, who was brutally gunned down by the traitors of the AmaMpondo and Amadiba people, and it will celebrate all other heroes who were killed when defending our land. The rally will be an opportunity for all freedom loving people to register our disgust with the Minister of mining and the Department of Mineral Resources that are desperately trying to break our resistance to transnational corporations wanting to grab our land and natural resources.

The rally will be a festival celebrating the resistances and alternatives of many different communities involved in the same fight as the Amadiba people: The fishers resisting corporations taking over the sea, communities resisting mining corporations that are hungry for land and who destroy Mother Earth on which we all depend, rural communities fighting for the return of their land expropriated from us over many decades.

Our rally will honour mineworkers and farmworkers whose labour is exploited by the bosses, so hungry for profits that they ignore basic health, safety and environmental regulations. The rally will celebrate our children who will be the victims of climate change and who are starting to mobilise to defend their future.

Please come and join us on Human Rights Day 21 March. Let us come together to forge new bonds of solidarity everywhere where affected communities say No to mining and extractivism and say Yes to the true development they want, which doesn’t take their land and destroys it.

Welcome!

Once you accept our invitation we will share our ideas for the programme that starts 9.00AM on 21 March. Please, mail to amadibacrisiscommittee@gmail.com for more information. This is a people’s festival. We cannot cover your transport, we cannot pay for your accommodation, but we can give you food and shelter over the night in Sigidi village. Closest town is Port Edward.

Amadiba Crisis Committee

Spokesperson: Nonhle Mbuthuma, 076 3592982

Chair: Sibusiso Mqadi, 063 496 4074