On the 16-17 November the Support Centre for Land Change hosted various community based organisations, NGO’s  and local leaders to the launch of their National Anti Fracking campaign in George, Western Cape.

The Support Centre for Land Change(SCLC) have been working on the Anti Fracking Campaign for over 6 years with local community organisations and local leaders around the eastern and western cape of South Africa. We heard from the community based organisations about the different activities taking place in their communities by some of the world’s largest oil companies like  Sasol, ENi, Exxon Mobil or ShelI as part of the government’s Operation Phakisa(Hurry Up).

This is the reason the SCLC decided on the National campaign which would see them running it and all the local organisations and communities they have been working with taking up a fair share of the work with the NGO partners also putting in their strategic views to create a strategy that would see this campaign get enough amplification regionally and globally.

We (NGOs) were also asked to facilitate workshops for community members on how our organisations could support this campaign and as 350AFrica we would get the SCLC onto our redesigned platform which would help in amplifying the campaign and get some much needed support from our regional partners.

In the end the launch was a success and the take away would be the development of a strategy by the SCLC with input from strategic partners. There is still a lot to be done for this campaign however it was a good start.

Congratulations to SCLC and all the community partners for a great launch.

 

Tshepo Peele