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Tail-end trophy for Greenpeace
29/08/2002 11:47 - (SA)
Lizel Steenkamp, Beeld
Johannesburg - African and Asian farmers, and hawkers from across South Africa handed over a "Bullshit Trophy" (yes, that is the trophy's real name) to Greenpeace, the Third World Network and BioWatch for their contribution to the "preservation of poverty" in developing countries.
The trophy comprises of a piece of wood on which two heaps of dried cow-dung - "unfortunately not elephant dung" - are mounted.
Barun Mitra of the Sustainable Development Network (SDN), a coalition of non-governmental organisations which believes, among other things, that sustainable development is attainable only through free trade, officiated at the symbolic handing-over in Johannesburg on Wednesday.
Mitra denounced the three NGOs as parasites which "prey on the blood of the poor" and did not help to improve agricultural productivity in the Third World.
"They are not interested in famine or poverty. This lot is concerned only about their own interests.
"They sit here at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in their rich man's hotels and romanticise everything," he said.
Hawkers furious at banning
Seven hawkers' organisations, including the Gauteng Hawkers' Association, and seven farmers' associations from South Africa, Kenya, the Philippines and India, protested under the banner of the SDN outside the Sandton conference centre on Wednesday morning.
The demands of the farmers' associations relate to, among other things, access to the best technology, to enter into trade inside and outside their borders and to sell their products at a price that has not been determined through agricultural subsidies, tariffs or quotas.
The hawkers demanded the right to enter into trade where and with whom they wanted, without the government's interference, and the right of self-regulation.
Both memorandums were handed to Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota.
Leon Louw, secretary of the Informal Business Forum to which most of the hawkers' organisations belong, said on Wednesday that it was a disgrace that hawkers were prohibited from sitting along the roads in Johannesburg and Soweto selling their products during the Earth Summit.
About 20 000 hawkers in Johannesburg were losing "millions of rands" as a result of this ban, said Louw.
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