African Activist Archive

A funding appeal for the South African Exchange Program on Environmental Justice (SAEPEJ), a two-year-old organization founded by South African Heeten Kalan. SAEPEJ focuses on the effects of toxics and the deteriorating environment on the health and daily lives of communities in South Africa, which is a heinous legacy of apartheid. SAEPEJ provides resources to South African community, developmental, and environmental groups to address their neglected environments and assists in building an effective environmental justice movement that will network closely with the U.S. environmental justice community. The mailing sites the link between damaging accidents involving toxic chemicals at Rhode-Poulenc plants in Institute, West Virginia in August 1992 and in a community in the Mid-rand, South Africa in September 1992. Borden Chemicals in Louisiana and American Cyanamid in New Jersey stockpile thousands of mercury waste barrels at the Thor Chemical plant in Cato Ridge, South Africa. Two workers at Thor have already died from mercury poisoning, and the community downstream has access to mercury-contaminated water from the Mngweni River. SAEPEJ proposes to organize exchange of environmental justice leaders from the U.S. to South Africa. It already organized a trip to the U.S. by Maria Mbengashe, founder and director of the Community Environment Network in Port Elizabeth, reported on in the enclosed article, "U.S., African activists meet on environment" by Yawu Miller. The mailing quotes Albie Sachs and mentions environmental racism, incinerators, toxic dumps, hazardous substances, lead, PCBs, the Principles of Environmental Justice, Trish Settles of the Dudley Square Neighborhood Initiative in Roxbury, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, South Bronx Clean Air Coalition, the Tides Foundation, South African Environmental Justice Network, the African National Congress (ANC) Environmental Desk in the Eastern Cape, and Nelson Mandela's book No Easy Walk to Freedom.

African Activist Archive

[On April 27, 1994 a new South African nation was born but the old regime did not die. Ticking quietly behind those bells of freedom lies an environmental time-bomb.]

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