Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Anti-nuclear activists awarded ‘Green Nobel’
ON THE eve of Freedom Day last year, Liziwe McDaid and Makoma Lekalakala stood on the steps of the Western Cape High Court, victorious.
Inside a packed courtroom, Judge Lee Bozalek had just ruled that South Africa’s secret R1 trillion nuclear procurement process with Russia was unlawful and unconstitutional.
For McDaid, 55, and Lekalakala, 52, who persisted with their court case for almost two years despite frequent delays and dirty tricks, the verdict was a “victory for justice and the rule of law and the people of South Africa”.
On Monday, fittingly marking the one-year anniversary of their landmark nuclear case, the two environmental activists were honoured with the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in the US, for leading the campaign that halted the deal in its tracks.
“The nuclear deal was never about energy. It was about the greed of a few individuals,” McDaid said.
The prize ( the world’s largest award for grassroots environmental activists, dubbed the Green Nobel) is awarded annually to “environmental heroes” from each of the six inhabited continental regions – McDaid and Lekalakala are the Africa winners.
The Goldman Environmental Foundation saluted the pair from small environmental organisations for “waging a grassroots campaign to expose the government’s unconstitutional deal – mobilising strong public opposition, even challenging the president himself and ultimately winning the court case to successfully prevent the production of toxic nuclear waste”.
“Last year, the ruling in court was on the eve of Free- dom Day and the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster,” said Lekalakala, director of Earthlife Africa Johannesburg, from the US this week. “The linkage was a vindication that what we had committed ourselves to when we attained freedom in 1994 was not reversed.”
For McDaid, the ethical governance leader at the SA Faith Communities’ Environment Institute, clinching the prize of $175 000 (R2.1 million) per recipient, still seemed unbelievable.
“It’s a bit surreal, but what it shows is that we can have an opportunity to be inspirational to a new generation of activists who can see that ordinary people can stand up and take action that ensures the protection of our environment.”
Lekalakala agreed. “It’s an honour for both of us that our names are going to be mentioned alongside the names of people who have inspired millions to protect the environment, like Wangari Mathaai, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Bobby Peek and Jonathan Deal… But the work we were doing in this case is what we do every day as environmental activists.”
In 2014 Lekalakala obtained a copy of the secret agreement between South Africa and Russia – which would have had “devastating economic and environmental implications” for South Africa.
They developed a strategy to challenge the nuclear deal on the grounds that it had been kept secret and bypassed legal process without public consultation or parliamentary debate, which was unconstitutional,” said McDaid.
“People have a democratic right to participate in decisions that affect them. What we did was stop this nuclear decision from going ahead without people’s input,” McDaid said.