Uniting against coastal seismic testing

The Green Net recently embarked on a protest against seismic testing and TotalEnergies gas drilling on the South African coast.

The protest held at Southport beach last Sunday was in solidarity with the nationwide protest organised by the Climate Justice Charter Movement (CJCM).
The movement had called on the public to come out in numbers to support coastal communities against oil and gas extraction.

CJCM said as a movement, they firmly reject the capture of oceans by multi-national corporations that want to loot the ocean commons for oil and gas.

“In our campaigning with South African Food Sovereignty Campaign since 2014, we have continually argued that there can be no food sovereignty and no climate justice if the oceans are captured by corporations. Our food sovereignty tool elaborates on this. We also made this clear in 2020 when we called on parliament to adopt the charter as per section 234 of the constitution. The call was endorsed by 74 organisations which include fisherfolk and coastal community organisations. The struggles of coastal communities have been ignored by the mainstream media. In 2019, we called on the South African National Editors Forum, the Press Council and the Media Ombudsman to stop ignoring community struggles and document the neo-colonial carbon capture of our ocean. We need to amplify this call again and ensure that communities are not silenced,” said the movement.

It added that in their submission to parliament on the Gas Amendment (2021) and the Upstream Petroleum Development bill, they also rejected this capture of ocean commons.

CJCM said denying communities access to the sea is denying their rights, their heritage, and their culture and basically, it is a form of carbon apartheid.

“Our human chain around SASOL and climate justice march to its AGM in 2019 was a symbol of our collective mass resistance against oil and gas. We stood with #OceansNotOil against Shell. Along with other progressive forces, we appealed Total Energies exploration of South Africa Block 567 (offshore exploration well drilling in block 5/6/7, South-West Coast, South Africa). On September 13, we marched to the Southern Africa Oil And Gas Conference in Cape Town and demanded a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels and no new investments in oil, gas, coal and nuclear, see our press release. All these actions are not enough, we must all unite,” said the movement.

Meanwhile, for the activation in Southport, The Green Net asked members of the public to bring at least 20 best friends with posters to peacefully protest for their beloved ‘lwandlekazi (ocean) and her children’.

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