Manifesto
The Green Party of South Africa – Also known as – The Government by the People Green Party
The Green Party of South Africa ultimately believes in replacing representative government by a system of universal participation in decision-making on an ongoing basis.
Practically, however, we need to get a green voice in parliament to put law and government spending into:
- Stopping the practices that are destroying the ecosystems that give us life
- Changing the emphasis from trying to create jobs no matter how they damage the environment, to assisting people to have a good life and have what they need – even if they cannot have employment
- Ensuring that food is safe to eat, water safe to drink, air safe to breathe
- Restoring damaged soils, aquifers, seas, ozone layer
- Detoxifying rivers and lakes, soils and aquifers
- Reforesting, restoring fish numbers in the seas and rivers
- Rehabilitating wildlife, giving all animals rights
- Creating a world for our children to inherit
The first truly democratic governmental system in the world:
- Effective education for all in the art and science of living sustainably on the planet and with each other
- Environmental decisions that offer a sustainable future for all
- A radical new approach to joblessness, crime and social problems
Background
The environmental situation on planet Earth requires much more immediate attention than most people now realise. Conventional politics fiddles while Rome burns. Parties make promises based on an old, colonial view of the world which saw a finite human population surrounded by infinite resources. Today the reality is reversed.
The end purpose of setting up a Government by the People Green Party is to institute radical changes county-wide in time to redress the destructive course we are at present bent on. It is a green party that, in the election, will provide a powerful platform to bring the urgency of our situation to the attention of the whole of South Africa – and the world – and the steps required to address this.
This country has already demonstrated a remarkable ability to break from entrenched patterns: maybe we can again lead the world in introducing a sane approach to government which actually takes account of what is happening to the planet.
We make no bones about the fact that the changes we propose are radical and will disrupt ordinary life for everyone. But this is wake-up time. If we don’t do it to ourselves, now, whilst we still have alternatives, the awakening when climate and other global changes hit us we be far more disastrous.
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