---
title: Superheroes in South Africa
date: 2009-09-08T16:00:26Z
modified: 2009-09-08T18:29:59Z
permalink: "https://350.org/superheroes-south-africa/"
type: post
status: publish
excerpt: Superheroes indeed!
wpid: 7120
author: Bill McKibben
---

![](/wp-content/uploads/SA_Joburg_action_card.jpg)

Superheroes indeed! I found them all over South Africa, from Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg to the botanical gardens of Cape Town. This is a country, obviously, that knows a little bit about political movements, so it’s not entirely surprising that people are coming up with dramatic and creative actions: [a mass climb of the iconic Table Mountain](https://www.350.org/o24/action/4328) that juts out above the confluence of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans in Capetown, or simultaneous bike rides in the three main cities, or — the list is long.

I ate breakfast with bishops and other clerics; lunch with biologists; dinner with journalists. South Africa is incredibly diverse and beautiful, which means it will suffer from all the various forms of trouble that climate change brings — drought on the desert edges that now support agriculture, for instance. And because it’s a developing country with an enormous first-world population, it has a real mix of causes and consequences. But more to the point, there seems to be a surplus of people ready to go to work, on Oct. 24 and in the months thereafter. This place has worked miracles before — and everyone we talked to pointed out that it the international movement against apartheid helped pressure the country to change. That’s the kind of pressure we need now!