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JOHANNESBURG--Homebuyers
are always exhorted to remember the
three factors that create property
value: "location, location and
location." But the location
of the World Summit on Sustainable
Development, in a luxurious, post-colonialist
enclave tucked into the suburbs of
South Africa's largest city, surrounded
by black townships that are home
to masses of people living in third-world
squalor, added little value to the
proceedings.
The
city of Sandton, where the government delegates
met (along with many delegates of the "major
groups" of activists), was certainly comfortable
enough-perhaps even a bit too comfortable,
if one is not put off by razor wire and electric
security gates on private residences. But nobody
was proposing that it serve as a model of development
that other poor countries might emulate. Indeed,
if Sandton represents anything, it is a monument
to white flight, to the kind of socio-economic
apartheid that has largely replaced the former
rigid separation of the races by government
order-but which has spawned its own uncomfortable
(to say the least) feelings of resentment and
unease.
The
summit, with its relentless and invidious
comparisons
between rich and
poor, could not help but exacerbate those
feelings. To many of the people of South
Africa, it was clear, the summit's big
news was that the resentments in their
hearts were being given voice (or their
innermost fears were being reawakened)
by participants such as Robert Mugabe
and Sam Nujoma, presidents respectively
of neighboring Zimbabwe and Namibia.
Mugabe defended his "land reform" program
of ousting white farmers from their land
(and distributing it to his political
cronies). Nujoma lashed out at the European
Union for the sanctions it has imposed
against his country and at the British,
who he said still own 78 percent of his
country's land. Each was greeted with
tumultuous applause.
The very next day, as it happens, the
value of the South African rand took
a beating on international currency markets.
To the people who control the global
flow of investment capital, apparently,
this part of the world suddenly seemed
more risky and less inviting-which can
hardly be a good thing for the sustainability
of its development prospects. Unfortunately,
however, this was not considered a suitable
subject for discussion at the summit.
To the big-country delegates and other
VIPs staying at Sandton's more luxurious
hotels, the experience of attending this
summit was not very different from attending
any other international meeting. Perhaps
the most remarkable thing about it was
that the food and wine were so inexpensive,
even in upscale eateries. Some might
have observed that at this conference
there was no queue of taxicabs lined
up just outside the security perimeter,
as there usually is at such meetings.
Instead, many of the people attending
the summit-not just the VIPs-relied on
limousines and vans hired for the duration
of their stay, each one driven by a man
with a sidearm on his hip. For some journalists
and other participants who were staying
in private homes in Sandton, this summit
stood out as a very different experience
from other conferences. We were, in effect,
prisoners in those homes, unable even
to go out for a stroll without getting
somebody to open the electric security
gate for us-once to let us out and again
to let us back in.
As
Noel J. Brown, a former head of the
UN Environment
Programme's North America
Office and a long-time participant in
and observer of international meetings,
told me on the final day of the Johannesburg
summit, it may in the future, with the
benefit of hindsight, come to be seen
as the "beginning of a world of
gated communities."
One can only hope that this is one prophecy
that won't come true.
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