Mute witnesses: a dispatch from Johannesburg. (Gazette).(World Summit on Sustainable Development)

THE MORNING SUN GLINTS against corrugated iron roofs scattered with car engines, beer crates and wire shopping carts. We are in Alexandra, one of the oldest shantytowns in Johannesburg, South Africa. Nelson Mandela rented a one-room shack here in the early 1940s. Today, dozens of yelling protesters push toward the backseat of a Toyota, where only a few red T-shirts bearing antiglobalization slogans remain to be had.

Nearby, some 10,000 people wearing red headbands wait in the heat. There's a mother with a baby strapped to her back, and an old man with no teeth carrying a bag of ...

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