South Africa: Durban's perfume rods, plastic covers and sweet-smelling toxic dump

Durban's perfume rods, plastic covers and sweet-smelling toxic dump

Trusha Reddy

Sajida Khan is a soft-spoken, dignified but intense Durban resident who
opposes the World Bank's methane-to-electricity project at the Bisasar Road
Landfill. Her passion is fighting - and almost palpably winning, now -
against awesome forces, including environmental racism, global warming and
international economic power.

It is a story that needs telling. But not before another - more personal -
story, one which merges seamlessly with the history of the municipal dump
whose closure Khan has been fighting for years.

In 1980, Bisasar Road Landfill in the Indian suburb of Clare Estate
officially opened its gates to rubbish-dumping trucks. I was just three
years old at the time and living in the suburb next door. During the course
of my entire childhood, the Bisasar Road landfill was a regular topic of
discussion, as my mother and I made trips to visit my grandmother nearby.

Clare Estate was the bridge between our familial residences. I vividly
remember the preparations, as we hit that short stretch. Car windows had to
be rolled up. Nostrils had to be squeezed tight with tiny, pincer-gripped
fingers. Breaths needed to be held. The stench was reminiscent of my public
school toilet on a really hot Durban day.

I would also marvel at the big houses on the hill lining the road on the
opposite side of the dump (we lived in a block of flats). They stood
majestically like something out of Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, in sharp
contrast to the huge stinking dump right in from of them. A few houses were
owned by one of the wealthiest Indians in Durban, my mother used to boast,
as if they were members of our own family.

I could never quite work out why rich people would live right across from a
refuse dump. Little did my premature mind comprehend that everyone,
including the rich Indian, could only live in an area designated under
apartheid's Group Areas Act. Since Clare Estate had a large quarry, it was
deemed unsuitable for white people. Indians were allocated that area.

A few years after the opening of the dump at the site of that quarry, I
remember my mother excitedly telling me that the Bisaser Road facility would
be shut and transformed into a park for the community. As a child whose life
was spent riding a bike around our tar-covered parking lot the idea of a
park in our vicinity was just too thrilling.

Perfume and toxics

It's now 2005 and I'm 27 years old. We live in a non-racial democratic South
Africa today. But Clare Estate's notorious dump is still there, although
approaching it, I notice something very different.

The stench has changed markedly, into a kind of 'mutant funk', as comedian
Jerry Seinfeld describes the combination of body odour and perfume
deodorant. Bisaser Road landfill now exudes the stink of dump rot mixed with
an artificial sickly-sweet smell, emanating from long 'perfume rods' lining
the road on the outer rim of the landfill. These rods were installed to
merely mask the fumes arising from the dump; but the effect is quite nasty.
Again I pinch my nose.

This time, instead of driving past, I enter one of the Gatsbyesque houses on
the hill, Khan's residence. The city councilor in the area had just
announced to the media that the landfill was, finally, to be closed. So
again, as in my youth, I felt almost ecstatic at the thought of this old
dream now coming true.

But there is more to the story than met the nose.

Khan welcomes me warmly into her home. Her lounge is framed by glass doors
overlooking the entire landfill below, and beyond to the informal shacks and
formal homes directly adjacent to the landfill, and a technikon campus at
the bottom end of the dump. Just out of eyesight are two primary schools, a
secondary school and a home for the safety of abandoned children, all in
close proximity to the Bisaser Road dump.

Apartheid's racist rationale for the location of the dump in an Indian
residential area, even one with nice homes like Khan's, was obvious enough.
But the location of dumps is a class issue as well: low-income, powerless
people ultimately bear the consequences of over-consumption by higher-income
groups.

'You should have come earlier', Khan tells me. 'They were dumping sewage.
Humph, the smell!' According to its original permit, Bisasar Road Landfill
was a domestic waste site. Yet Khan reports that the dumping of sewage
sludge is a daily occurrence, and is apparently included in Durban Solid
Waste's contract. This is a violation of water law, which requires sewage
sludge to be transported and disposed off in such a way as not to cause any
odour or health hazard.

It is not only sewage sludge that contravened the law and caused offence,
Khan argues. Medical supplies and industrial waste from Mondi (the paper
mill), Huletts (sugar factory) and other industries in the nearby industrial
area of Springfield are also regularly dumped there. In February 2001 a
large shipment of rotten eggs exceeding 22 000 tons was also dumped, Khan
recalls. 'When combined with the stink of the sewage sludge, this made life
extremely uncomfortable for the residents.'

To exacerbate the situation, according to Bryan Ashe of the NGO
EarthlifeAfrica, South Africa's dumps only became landfills in the 1990's
when new laws were being introduced. This meant, in effect, that rubbish was
never recycled, treated and extracted, because dumping was the cheapest
option for industries. That, in turn, has given rise to the challenge of
extracting the methane that is formed by the rot of decades' worth of
garbage.

Closure - or a new threat?

Most importantly from the perspective of Khan and her neighbours, I ask,
might Bisaser finally be closed? Khan ridicules the newspaper article I had
read. According to her, the source cited for the announcement, one Councilor
Bechoo, is the source of community outrage, because he refuses to support
efforts to win full closure of the dump. In fact, Bechoo was asked by the
community to retract his statement and they were expecting to see it in the
next edition of the newspaper.

Khan explains that the closure was officially declared a 'pro-forma closure'
or 'partial closure'. Raymond Rampersad, Head of eThekwini Cleansing and
Solid Waste, was quoted by the Daily News as saying the landfill was going
through 'various stages of closure. That means it will only be shut down in
about seven years, with a limited area remaining open for the recycling of
specific non-smelly wastes such as builder's rubble and garden refuse.' Khan
sees the council's move as 'playing for time', part of a deliberate attempt
to mislead the public.

A new dumpsite for the catchment area's waste is proposed in Buffels Draai,
but it will only be ready to accept Bisasar's volume in 2012. Buffels Draai
is also located much further away from the city centre and thus Bisasar
would remain a 'transfer site'. According to Khan, the rubbish that cannot
be compacted will be left there to rot.

Khan's own research revealed that neither the local nor national branch of
the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry had received a permit
application from Durban Solid Waste (DSW) to close the dump, even though the
local water system is affected by such a decision.

Khan recalls the council's long history of false promises to the community
that it would close the dump. After reneging on a promise to close the dump
in 1987, the council announced, 'The remaining life expectancy of the dump
tip site is nine years.' The town clerk then led the community to believe
that the dump would indeed be turned into a recreational and sporting site.
However, in 1996, the city again broke its promise, and another operator's
permit was granted, without community consultation.

Public reaction was swift, as people blocked the site entrance of the dump,
held demonstrations and marches, and circulated a petition to council that
gained 6000 signatures. But nothing worked, so Khan decided to take legal
action on behalf of the residents and schools.

As the battle raged, a wealthy white-dominated suburb to the north of Durban
was quickly closing its landfill. Umhlanga, situated at the shore's edge and
expanding into rolling sugarcane-covered hills, was 'earmarked for up-market
property development,' according to Bryan Ashe. The rubbish tip, along with
waste from other closed landfill sites elsewhere in Durban, was rerouted to
Bisasar Road. Attempts to increase dumping in the African township of Inanda
were met by community protests, including the stoning of Durban municipal
trucks. Bisaser again received an added inflow.

Khan shows me the area the council said it would return to the community
after the partial closure: two small strips of land on the Bisasar Road dump's
outer edge. I ask about plastic covering that was lining some of the
terrain. She urges me to inspect it carefully. Indeed, nursery plants are
still intact in plastic pots, lying on plastic sheets rolled out several
weeks earlier.

According to Khan, these are meant to create the public impression, however
tenuous, that the soil is rehabilitated and that plants are indeed growing
there. They stand in stark contrast to other, wilting plants in the same
area but that are submerged in Bisaser Road soil. Khan explains that the
proposed plan to turn the area into a recreational zone is also ridiculous,
because after a dumpsite is closed, it cannot be used for another 30-50
years due to decommissioning requirements.

The city also tries to divide the African and Indian people in the area, she
says. African people moved into the area when the Apartheid laws relaxed.
They live in informal shack housing, some surviving by scavenging off the
dump because of the high unemployment rate. The city's main concession to
them was to build a few pitlatrines and chemical toilets on the edge of the
settlement, abutting the road. These don't appear hygienic or, for women,
particularly safe.

The immediate short-term interests of very desperate poor people are thus
being posed against those of the other neighbours, although it is the
lowest-income people who will no doubt suffer the most severe health and
safety problems in the medium-term if the dump remains open.

As she stands up, Khan bats away a nagging fly. 'If you cook you have to
close everything,' she points out. At the beginning of 2003, DSW management
gave residents insecticides 'Baythroid' and 'Bayt' to combat the
debilitating fly problem. Complains Khan, 'This will cause even more harm to
the environment.'

Khan's sister emerges from the kitchen to interrupt our conversation,
warning that she is going to be late for her appointment with the doctor.
Clutching a bag of medication and her car keys, Khan apologises and ushers
me to the front door. Khan was diagnosed with cancer in 1996. Her nephew
died of leukemia.

In fact, seven out of ten households in this downwind area of Clare Estate
have reported tumour cases, and it is entirely probable that dump emissions
are the culprit. According to studies, the limits of waste emissions
considered potentially hazardous were exceeded at Bisasar Road many times
over: hydrogen chloride by 50%, cadmium by 200%, and lead by more than
1000%. Limits for suspended particulate matter were also exceeded.

As the waste decomposes, there are additional concentrations of methane,
benzene, toluene, trichloroethylene and formaldehyde. Further cause for
worry comes from a New York State Health Department Study, which shows that
women living near landfills have a four-fold increased susceptibility to
cancer.

Having hoped so deeply for a new beginning and the end of the toxic dump, I
leave feeling more than a little deflated. Beyond the fakery of perfume rods
and plastic covers, I want to find out why Bisaser Road has suddenly become
what the World Bank actually terms an 'environmentally friendly' pilot
project, for the creation of a global greenhouse gas market.

Climate crisis

My next port of call is municipal waste official Lindsay Strachan, whose
title is Manager of Engineering and Projects. Strachan has been intimately
involved in the methane-to-electricity project, and is based on site at the
Bisasar Road Landfill. 'It's where the action is', he insists.

Strachan enthusiastically launches into the mantra of climate change doom
that we are all getting accustomed to hearing in the media. There is every
reason to be alarmed, he convinces me:

· 'Continental shelves are breaking off the size of
Manhattan.'
· 'The president of the Maldives is worrying about his
island going under.'
· 'Rising sea levels means the waves are a meter higher.'
· 'The increase in temperature gives rise to hundreds of
types of diseases.'

So what can be done? The global establishment is divided:

· the US, Australia and a few other retrograde countries
simply refuse to address global warming;
· the manic-growth industrial zones of China and India -
as well as slow-growing South Africa - are not prepared to adopt more
energy-efficient economic development strategies; and
· most of the global elites endorsed a deal hammered out
in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997, that had taken ten long years of
deliberation, like an elephant birthing a mouse.

The Kyoto Protocol, which formally came into effect on February 16, is
indeed a mere mouse in the evolution that our global society must urgently
make, merely to survive. China, India and South Africa are not even pushed
to change anything, as Kyoto now stands.

According to Heidi Bachram of the Oxford-based NGO network Carbon Trade
Network, the Kyoto Protocol contains 'inadequate targets to reduce
(greenhouse gas) emissions'. A key UN scientific advisory board, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms that Kyoto's targets for
reducing emissions (5.2% by 2012) are miniscule compared to the 50 -70%
reduction required to merely stabilise the existing concentrations of gas in
the atmosphere.

Nevertheless, the signing of Kyoto and its even slower ratification by 156
countries are hailed as successes. Many environmentalists endorse it,
because it is considered at least a first step towards more substantive
change.

Even though South Africa ranks amongst the top twenty greenhouse gas
polluters in the world, it was considered a 'developing' country, and hence
was not listed by Kyoto as a target country for emissions reduction.
Strachan explains, 'Our dustbins need to be filled before they can be
emptied.'

Needless to say, Strachan avoids extending the metaphor: South Africa's
wealthy communities have already overflowing dustbins, and low-income black
people are left to rummage through these, in desperate search of thrown-away
items of even minimal value. This is a particularly poignant issue in
Bisasar Road, given how many people nearby survive by scavenging at the
dump.

Still, Kyoto worries Strachan: 'What are we going to do about carbon
trading, emissions reductions. Do we do something like Kyoto advises? Our
president is saying, "Where is this project? Where is any project? Where's
anything? Where can you show that X tons are being reduced by SA?"'

But Kyoto has a catch that concerns more probing ecologists. The emissions
'reductions' may actually occur in a form that leaves the world without any
substantive reduction. To attract US support, which then never materialised,
Kyoto negotiators agreed to the idea of market-based emissions trading.

The compromise is the Protocol's Achilles Heel, for it allows a major
polluter to continue emitting carbon dioxide, but with an offset in the form
of a carbon 'sink', or some other contribution to lowered emissions
elsewhere. This strategy, says Bachram, 'is likely to undermine these
already weak targets and exacerbate global injustice in the process'.

Strachan sees carbon trading through more optimistic eyes: 'Let's have a
flexible mechanism. Make it such that if profit makes you thrive, let's make
it profitable to reduce emissions.'

This flexible, profitable mechanism allots carbon credits to projects like
Clare Estate's Bisasar Road methane-to-electricity conversion. The credits
can be purchased by industrialised countries and corporations, as a way of
avoiding the reduction of their own emissions. Hence if a polluter
over-pollutes it can buy credits from a polluter who had under-polluted.

But likewise, if a polluter (like Russia) under-pollutes (because of
post-Soviet deindustrialisation), it has an incentive to sell credits -
which are called 'hot air' - to an over-polluter. This means that there will
be a tendency to pollute up to the maximum Kyoto allows, rather than achieve
declines in leaps and bounds, which we all must do if we are to avoid
heating up the atmosphere. In other words, the permissible ceiling for
carbon emissions will, with this mechanism, become a floor.

In late 2004, when I began looking more deeply at this complicated world of
economics and nature, the Mail & Guardian newspaper (10-16 December 2004)
declared the merits of emissions trading: 'Carbon credits are a triumph of
capitalism, creating a commodity from nothing - clean pockets of air that
gain value through being certified. They have created a market that will be
worth between $10- and $30 billion by 2008.'

The UK was the first country to establish a national market in greenhouse
gases. Though the British Treasury provided more than R2 billion worth of
incentives for emissions trading, the New Labour government shirked its
commitment to increase energy supplied by renewables by 20%.

With this sort of official support, the carbon trade lobby has succeeded in
getting the market off the ground. According to Strachan, 'In the last two
years there was suddenly this birth of carbon traders. They never existed
before, something like 400 000 carbon trading companies in the world. It's
unbelievable.'

One such firm is even run with the support of the former South African
tourism and environment minister, Valli Moosa, who in November was elected
the president of one of the world's most important ecological agencies, the
IUCN. The carbon trading lobby certainly appears formidable, especially with
the World Bank playing a central role.

Banking on the carbon market

The Bank introduced its Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) in 1999 in order to
provide investment outlets for industrial country governments and
corporations, ostensibly on behalf of 'Clean Development Mechanisms' (CDMs)
in the Third World. A quick $180 million (more than R1 billion) was injected
to finance projects such as the methane emissions extraction next to Khan's
house. Her catastrophic fate, and those of others in similar projects, was
to be used as the clincher in thousands of business deals being brokered
around the world.

Strachan is excited. Ahead of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in
2002, he says, there was already 'a big rush to get South Africa on the map'.
Durban, in particular, decided 'to take the lead', with Mayor Obed Mdlaba
and City Manager Mike Sutcliffe at the helm. City officials soon realised
that their own goldmine could be unearthed from landfills like Bisaser Road.

And so it was that a $15 million deal to launch a CDM project was signed
with the PCF and given the 'thumbs up', says Strachan, in October 2003. If
it becomes operational, landfill gas will be collected from three sites in
Durban, and methane (a harmful greenhouse gas) will be converted to
electricity, and then supplied to the grid.

No one is against extracting the methane from the rotting garbage. But
Durban officials say they won't go to the trouble of doing so without the
$15 million subsidy, because the electricity generated in the process costs
so much more per kilowatt hour than Eskom charges for its coal-fired power.

There are a host of technical and environmental objections raised by Khan in
her 90-page critique of the World Bank's project, as well as the need to
reverse the history of racist dumping which implicate so many wealthy Durban
residents in Khan's cancer. But morality aside, the extraction of dangerous
methane should be happening anyway, Khan agrees, so long as no further
rubbish is brought to Bisasar Road.

And hence what bothers Khan is that the Bank's interests are now in keeping
the dump open as long as possible, so they can make more money off rotting
and often toxic trash that turns into methane and produces electricity. More
cancer in Clare Estate is good for the World Bank's budding business, Khan
concludes.

The documents appear to back her up. According to the Bank's baseline study,
'The production of methane can theoretically continue in excess of 30 years.
Bisasar is sized and operated to be used for up to 15 more years.' Bisasar
Road Landfill averages 4000 tons of waste dumped each day, an amount that
'will continue to increase in the near-term'.

So, if the Bank business plan is followed, not only will the dump not close,
but the flowthrough of waste and the emission of toxins will actually
increase.

Khan's suspicions about the Council's inclination to break promises were
confirmed when she looked into the PCF's 'crediting period'. The project
opted for a seven-year crediting period, with the expectation of renewing it
twice. So, in this scenario the project's lifetime rose to 21 years.

The final nail in the community's coffin came from the World Bank's baseline
scenario which indicated that, 'because of the growing waste generation per
capita in the municipality.there is no plan to close. the Bisasar Road
site.during the PCF project life.' If the World Bank has its way, Khan may
be fighting this dump for the rest of her life.

Community costs and benefits

In response, Strachan is adamant that the community will benefit from the
project. Landfill gas comprises 50% methane and the gas wells (some of which
were already installed because the gas was currently being flared) will suck
out all that gas and convert it to electricity thus making the air safer to
breathe.

Khan is not convinced, because the World Bank's own Monitoring Process
document for the project reveals that whilst most of the gas emissions will
be combusted in the engines for generation of electricity, some of the gas
will still be released into the atmosphere and burned in flares.

Furthermore, the Bank concedes that the tools for measuring how much gas can
actually be converted to electricity are highly uncertain. Engines and
flares combust the landfill's gas with different efficiencies. A Bank
document even admitted, 'It is unclear with which portion the gas from
project wells is either flared or utilised.'

Although the World Bank says it will monitor this process at monthly
intervals, a footnote (the small print) gives away the game: 'Not all
methane collected will thus be converted into CO2 but a small portion will
be emitted as methane into the atmosphere.' The community's already damaged
lungs will be further clogged with landfill pollution, not merely the scent
of perfumed rot.

Strachan also tries to convince me that the electricity generators will be
placed on the site where the dispersion model shows it will cause the least
harm. But the community is located all around the dump, I point out. His
rebuttal is that the combustion process will spew out an equivalent amount
of emissions to a rush-hour's worth of traffic on busy Umgeni Road (the
major throughway at the bottom of the dump).

Khan disagrees, and pulls out a huge stack of reports for reference. She
calculates that each year, the generators will pump out 95 tons of nitrogen
oxides, 319 tons of carbon monoxide, 323 tons of hydro-carbons and 43 256
tons of carbon dioxide. Carbon monoxide reduces the oxygen-carrying capacity
of the blood; nitrogen oxides are a respiratory irritant and exacerbated
asthma; and carcinogens such as benzene and butadiene could be found in
hydrocarbons.

Other dangers abound. Improvement of ground water and air quality are listed
as World Bank priorities, yet one report confessed, 'It is difficult to
provide the environmental safeguards that assure safety of the local
population.' The Bank also concedes that the project might 'adversely effect
the value of the land holdings surrounding the landfill site'.

Strachan's assurance that CDM projects have very stringent ecological
controls is contradicted by PCF projects which are receiving a response
similar to Khan's, in Brazil, Argentina and Thailand. In the Brazilian case,
for example, a tree plantation that was not indigenous to the area is being
grown to help finance a corporation, Plantar, which in turn will burn the
trees into charcoal which will be used in an iron smelter to produce more
cars. Not only was community consultation deeply flawed, the whole logic
simply falls apart under scrutiny.

Job creation was another pro-community rationale for the Bisasar Road
experiment. However, there are plans for only 70 new positions (50
unskilled) over the 15-year lifetime of the project, hardly impressive for
what may be a R100 million investment.

Part of the community distrust can be traced to DSW's history. For example,
Khan points out that DSW is already flaring dangerous gases in Bisasar,
instead of redirecting them into nearby gas piping. The city, which prides
itself on its advanced attitudes, simply does not require gas capture and
flaring from permit holders.

It is just one of the ways that Durban officials show an acute awareness
about the costs that landfill operators would incur, and disdain for the
health risks to the public.

Consultation turns into intimidation

But the power of the people has yet to be tested, and here a surprise
appears to be in the offing.

Strachan assures me that consultation is central to Bisaser Road's
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA). Indeed, in all documentation, the
World Bank emphasises the merits of consultation with affected communities.

Khan prepared thoroughly for this particular battle. As she wrote in a
letter of complaint to the World Bank, neither the Clare Road City Councilor
nor DSW management ever discussed the project's implications. But nor did
the Bank take consultation seriously, for the time allocated for objections
in late 2004 was a mere 10 days. More disturbing, consultation was to be
conducted through the Bank's PCF website. According to Bachram, 'This shows
that the PCF is woefully out of touch with the reality of a community living
around a waste dump.'

But in jujitsu activist mode, Khan suddenly turned the flawed consultation
process to her advantage. She filed a vast formal complaint, filled with
technical environmental, health and social analysis. In November, Bank staff
came to visit Durban to check on the project. Suddenly the fruits of Khan's
labours became visible, as three newspaper articles described her problems,
and as she and her supporters - local and even international - began
flooding the Bank with complaints which were sufficiently substantive to
cause widespread concern in the PCF crowd.

After sensing the rising grassroots anger, Bank officials and their
financial backers began to seriously consider withdrawing from the project,
Strachen admits. 'Now the World Bank has given us a quick visit last year.
We're talking about businessmen as well, we're talking about people who need
to assign their money to projects,' he says. 'They were probably thinking,
"Consult all you want but hell can't you hurry it up a bit. We only have 60
years on this earth!"'

Perhaps Khan's rebuttal, had she overheard, would be similar in frustration:
'Hell, can't you hurry closing the dump? At least your children have 60
years to live. My cancer-ridden body only gives me just a couple more years.'

Stachan later informed me that the World Bank's 'quick visit' resulted in a
deadline imposed on the government to sort out the situation: December 2005.
The city may fail to meet the challenge. In a follow-up interview by phone,
Strachan confesses to me that the appeals process is 'rotten. We're being
held hostage by a single person.'

Does Khan have any alternatives to suggest? One is to use the money going to
the cost of the project to close the dump and create a buffer zone. 'The
city can afford to pay us replacement value for our homes and for damages,
since the estimated costs of the project are greater than R120 million,'
insists Khan.

Another idea is to pump the gas to the Petronet gas pipeline running past
the site, instead of converting the landfill methane directly to
electricity. 'This would cost very little compared to the project cost,'
says Khan.

Strachan's rebuttal sounds politically correct, yet doesn't quite make
sense: '[What] if something goes wrong with this pipeline? If the land
subsides or they do something funny with their pipeline, what happens to our
gas? We rather opted for something whereby we sort it out on site, in our
own home. That's an onsite solution. Don't send the problem to someone else's
backyard and tell them to sort out our methane. We think it's very
irresponsible. The world thinks it's very irresponsible.'

But to act as a front for investors who want to avoid their
emissions-reduction obligations is far less responsible, I'm thinking.
Instead of World Bank carbon trading, the more genuine solutions would be to
impose strict government regulations against excessive greenhouse gas
emissions, and introduce community-based power generation systems that use
renewable, environmentally-friendly technologies.

Maybe what's obvious simply cannot be put on the agenda, because of these
vested interests. I'm learning just how political this process has become.
For example, research by Heidi Bachram shows that these sort of projects
regularly ignore the problem of over-consumption by 'voracious rich
minorities', the people and industries who caused the environmental mess-up
that we were in today.

And that leads logically to a manipulated process of blame-shifting to the
Third World, as the preferred international elite strategy. As Khan puts it,
'The poor countries are so poor they will accept crumbs. The World Bank know
this and they are taking advantage of it.'

Bachram also argues that industries involved in buying credits to offset
their emissions will simply continue to pollute, to the detriment of the
communities in which their factories are based.

Engen, for instance, is a notoriously bad neighbour nearby in South Durban,
and on the night of January 18 the entire residential community of at least
50 000 people was stunned by an enormous explosion at the local refinery.
These sorts of companies will continue to emit carbon and encourage
unsustainable petrol consumption as long as it is profitable.

Bachram concludes, 'Communities like Clare Estate and South Durban will see
no real benefits from emissions trading and in fact will be the victims of
even more pollution.' In short, emissions trading represents 'carbon
colonialism', she contends. The introduction of property rights to pollute
the air means that whoever controls carbon credits effectively controls the
atmosphere.

But where there is colonialism, there is also resistance. Khan's detailed
rebuttal to the carbon trading project has slowed the process of approval.
There are so many flaws in Durban's PCF proposal that she thinks she may
win. She has certainly intimidated her opponents, and - like Julia Roberts
of Erin Brokovich movie fame - is becoming a quiet kind of role-model
heroine for me.

Strachan, meanwhile, is at first philosophical about what appears to be an
impending defeat. 'The first project in Africa is literally slipping through
our fingers,' he says. 'Stopped in its tracks. Completely.'

So instead of investing in Durban, the Bank PCF team appears to be forging
ahead in Latin America, the Middle East and even Uganda, with Strachan
helping as a consultant. In Kampala, the municipality will 'rake in R300
million on their project,' he tells me. 'South Africa probably won't be able
to say that we spearheaded the CDM market or better still we spearheaded the
emissions reductions market. There is disappointment, but such projects will
go on elsewhere.'

Because of Khan's appeal, the city is losing R20 000 each day, says
Strachan, and he is obviously very frustrated: 'Her objection is 90 pages
thick. She was invited by the World Bank to Milan to learn about clean
development mechanisms.' In fact, Khan tells me later, two environmental
groups - Carbon Trade Watch and the TransNational Institute - funded her
2004 trip so that more people around the world might understand the dangers
of carbon trading. It was her teaching the World Bank, not the other way
around.

Strachan continues, 'When an objection goes through the minister we have to
spend money, time and effort. People are looking at the past. Not the new.'

But what is really new? It's a new project, with new money, and it also may
be new feeling for white South Africans to be 'patted on the back' - as
Strachan himself put it - by the big financial agencies and corporate
players, for being first in Africa to implement a multimillion dollar carbon
trading deal.

Perhaps realising that the potential glory is slipping from his grasp,
Strachan becomes visibly angry. As for Khan and her colleagues, 'We'd like
to put the whingers on one boat and send them off!'

Indeed. Though it is certainly not the last word, perhaps that attitude says
it all. For this slur is particularly poignant, as it was used during
apartheid to exclude and degrade people who had been shipped from India to
work on white-owned land in the mid-19th century, in order to magnify their
utter vulnerability. The insult smacks of that earlier generation of white
colonial men who came to South Africa, encountering resistance to their
easiest path to profit, prestige and power.

Even if at great cost, the resistance offered by communities - especially
courageous grassroots women like Sajida Khan - was finally successful
against colonialism and apartheid. We may be watching something quite
formidable again.

* Trusha Reddy served as an intern at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre
for Civil Society in early 2005. This article was first published on the website of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and reproduced here with kind permission of the author. Pictures are available at http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs

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