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dam-l LS: Invitation to send Solidarity Messages



Dear All

On 11 and 12 November, we are holding the Southern African Hearings for
Communities Affected by Large Dams in Cape Town, South Africa. This is the
first event of its kind, and many of the small rural communities who have
been displaced or otherwise affected by these large dam developments, are
unaware of the global nature of their dilemma.

To this end we would like to invite messages of solidarity from civil
society organisations and NGOs from throughout the world to give support to
Communities who coming from neighbouring countries, including Zambia,
Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Namibia, as well as from many communities from within
South Africa.

We believe that there are two good reasons for doing this:

1. It is a useful strategic technique used by a number of civil society
organisations when "lobbying" forums such as the UN, the OAU, SADC etc is to
show that one has the support of organisations/people across the globe;

2. It is also useful to show "affected communities" that their struggle is
shared by similar communities very far away, many of whom they would never
have heard of - "our struggle is your struggle"; "our struggle is one
struggle" etc.

In any event, to counter (or counter-balance) globalisation of politics and
capital civil society needs to engage at a "cross-border" or transnational
level; civil society needs to globalise.

The message can be simply a "best wishes" for the hearings; we are thinking
of you as we have faced the same problems etc. The messages of solidarity we
will refer to during the opening section of the Hearings.


We thank you for your support.

Regards

Liane
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Liane Greeff
Environmental Monitoring Group,
PO Box 18977  Wynberg, South Africa, 7824
E: liane@kingsley.co.za Tel: +27 +21 7610549/788 2473 Fax: 762 2238
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