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As of 13 February 2023, South Africa declared a national state of electricity disaster. In this paper we consider the impacts of global tech giants on the land, environment, people, heritage, and the technological landscape in Cape Town, South Africa. Our methods consist in long-term ethnographic fieldwork (Waltorp 2010, 2019, Waltorp et al 2022) and decolonial design anthropological approaches (Kambunga 2023) as we work with a group of local assistants and critical friends (www.digisatproject.com). We start from the controversy surrounding Amazon Web Services Headquarters: In 2021, the Observatory Civic Association and the Goringhaicona Khoi Khoi Indigenous Traditional Council filed an urgent notice with the High Court of South Africa to interject the construction of the Amazon River Park development on sacred land, where confrontations between the Peninsula Khoekhoe and the first Dutch settlers took place (genesis of colonialism in South Africa), and one of the only natural floodplains in Cape Town. Respondents argued that the site has no visible heritage significance, and the interjection will hinder economic development and job creation, an urgent concern, with Cape Town home to the most data centres on the continent. Data centres provide the computing and storage power that is essential to realising the smart digital futures furthered by corporate strategists and government policymakers. Yet, the data centres that underpin these futures are themselves energy-intensive enterprises (Howe et al. 2015) placing burdens on national energy supplier Eskom and energy shortages for the neighbouring communities (Pollio and Cirolia 2022). Data are entangled with water, wind, oil and other elements. Resource prospecting and extraction of energy were driving forces of colonial expansions. The material effects this has had on contemporary human and more-than-human life as well as geopolitical formations continue: How might we think together beyond techno-solutionism and -determinism to imagine technological futures otherwise.

Waltorp, Karen and Asnath Paula Kambunga. 2023. "Land, Legacies and Energy Futures in Cape Town, South Africa." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

Astrophysics is a discipline that has a lot to do with environmental justice, even if it doesn’t look like so. Astrophysics research nowadays involves both large cutting-edge infrastructures and a great number of people and institutions, usually at international level. Most of these projects require to be placed in very specific environments, which are not very common on our planet, to function in the best conditions. The territories chosen to host large facilities for astrophysics, as remote as they can be, are not empty. In most cases, they are inhabited (or regularly frequented) by people who are not always involved in the decision process and may see the construction as an invasion of lands they have owned or occupied for centuries. In this context, we believe that what pulls people away from environmental justice advocacy, especially those who do not live in or near these territories, is the lack of information and awareness about this topic, which may cause strongly polarized opinions and harshful discussions on the topic. To try to fill this gap, as science communicators we decided to develop a game-based activity which fosters the debate about this connection. Among our inspirations is the struggle of the protectors of Mauna a Wākea, on the Big Island of Hawai‘i. The mountaintop is a sacred place for Native Hawaiians, who have been fighting to protect their ancestral land from the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). There are many other examples of large astronomical infrastructures and their impact on territories, including in our own country (Italy), some more virtuous than others, that show how the Astrophysics research world is strongly connected to environmental justice. For this activity, we chose the Creative Commons PlayDecide format, which aims to facilitate simple, respectful and fact-based group discussions. The game consists of a different set of cards containing facts about the topic, issues for different interest groups and personal stories of fictional individuals who are involved or affected by the topic. By telling the stories of different characters involved in this kind of situation, we aim to enlarge the debate, fostering the change of perspective of players. We wish that many people around the world download and use the game, either during public outreach activities with schools and the general public or as a self-awareness exercise within the astronomical community. The game does not refer to a specific facility, but we researched study cases related to astronomical observatories in sites such as Mauna a Wākea (Hawaiʻi), Kitt Peak and Mount Graham (Arizona), the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy as well as ongoing projects such as the SKA Observatory in South Africa and Australia. In particular, for the story cards, we strived to provide a balance in terms of gender and affected communities, trying as much as we could to avoid stereotypes, in the awareness that we, as the authors of the activity, are a group of white, female astronomers from a G7 country.

Toniolo, Rachele and Claudia Mignone. 2023. "Some students play the PlayDecide activity at a Science Festival in Italy." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

Nanjala Nyabola, a Kenyan journalist and author tweeted: 'There were two anti-police brutality protests in Nairobi today. The one featuring white people made it's way to the US embassy undisturbed. The one led by working class and poor folks ended in teargas and arbitrary arrests.'

On March 25, 2020 the Kenyan government imposed a curfew to limit movement in Nairobi to prevent the spreading of COVID-19. In the ensuing months, the police 'enforced' the curfew by killing as many people as COVID-19 in Nairobi. The police have had a long and bloody history in Nairobi. Missing Voices Kenya have documented the shocking number of people who have lots their lives to police brutality over the years. Although groups in poor neighbourhoods such as Mathare have long held protests against police violence, the recent murder of George Floyd in the US has lent momentum to this movement. Thus, these groups took to the street to walk to the apartment where Yasin Moyo, a 13 year old playing on his balcony was killed by police, to demand that Black lives mattered- everywhere. The protests ended in the police tear gassing protestors.

A separate group comprising of many white protestors marched to the US Embassy to protest extrajudicial killings in the US and Kenya. From reports I have been reading about the protests on Twitter, these groups were left unharmed by the police. It is thus important that we recognize the the situatedness of protests agains police violence in different parts of the world, and the specific histories and contexts that shape each one of them, while recognizing their common themes.