MEDIA STATEMENT
Anti-nuclear activist evicted from Energy Minister’s nuclear stakeholder fiasco
Government turns its back on thousands of jobs and SME opportunities giving dictatorial support for “arms deal style” nuclear power acquisitions that will impose nuclear risks to South Africans for thousands of years. Billions of rand destined to alleviate poverty will once again be commandeered by the ruling party without allowing any public debate to derail this irrational & unsustainable policy.
“Is this the Government we fought to bring to power?” asked anti-nuclear stalwart Mike Kantey who was evicted from a nuclear stakeholder meeting on Tuesday in Cape Town called by Energy Minister Dipuo Peters.
Meant to be an open and constructive get together of “nuclear stakeholders”- including those against nuclear power – it turned into a fiasco. In just over an hour, Kantey the lone anti-nuclear activist in a predominantly pro-nuclear government and industry gathering, was summarily ejected for daring to challenge Kelvin Kemm’s claim that nuclear power is a form of “clean energy”. Discussion of the ruling party’s nuclear policy was also ruled “out of order”.
A former member of Armscor from 1981-1986, Kemm stands to benefit from the PBMR boondoggle as a director of BEE company Silver Protea. Kantey is the self-funded Chairperson of the national Coalition Against Nuclear Energy (CANE) and was one of only four civil society invitees to the meeting.
At the same meeting, Deputy General-Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers Oupa Komane introduced himself as a “representative of the working class” and confirmed that the biggest trade union in COSATU and an active member of the Tripartite Alliance is “opposed to the PBMR but in favour of nuclear power.”
All those affiliated to CANE — as well as those sister organisations opposed only to the siting of a nuclear power station in their region — will be having their own consultation to determine what response will be appropriate in the forthcoming months leading up to the 2010 World Cup.
Given the credence given to climate change denialist Kelvin Kemm in the meeting, and the Minister’s own attempts to convince civil society that “nuclear power is a clean energy option”, we will continue to broaden and strengthen the Coalition across all sectors of society — including our own trusted allies within the Tripartite Alliance.
The new-look Government should understand once and for all that the anti nuclear lobby cannot be co-opted, isolated or marginalised, since it remains united in opposition to nuclear energy, whether at the local level, or as a “one-size-fits-all” national energy policy. The blatant attempt to over-represent nuclear lobbyists with minimal civil society representation as ‘stakeholders”, must be addressed and rectified.
The anti nuclear lobby believes that the R1.3-trillion nuclear policy will hold back scarce public funds from solving the real issues of grinding poverty and economic injustice and will also substantially delay delivery of reliable energy to the economy due to massive delays in bringing nuclear power plants on line.
If China can build a massive two gigawatt solar plant, enough to power about 3 million Chinese households for less than $6 billion resulting in a tariff of 15 to 25 cents per kilowatt hour, why does South Africa with the best solar potential in the world want to go nuclear? *
Nuclear stakeholder groups from Namaqualand, Bantamsklip, Thyspunt, Koeberg and Pelindaba expressed solidarity with Kantey and questioned why their representatives had not been invited to the meeting which was billed as all-inclusive, as announced by the Minister.
ISSUED BY:
National Executive Committee
Coalition Against Nuclear Energy
Email: caneoffice@cane.org.za
Website: www.cane.org.za
