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Cape Town, South Africa

Misria

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.

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maryclare.crochiere

"Two FDNY EMTs who had to intervene to stop four police officers beating a handcuffed patient on a stretcher have turned the cops in to authorities"

""Three cops began to punch the patient in the face, EMS (had) to get in the middle of it to intervene. Pt's. wounds and injuries cleaned in the (ambulance)," the report said."

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maryclare.crochiere

The article shows the fact that EMTs had to step in to prevent police officers from further abusing an inmate/patient. The purpose of EMS is to take care of people that are hurt accidentally or in crimes, not to pull police officers off of patients. This article is purely factual, but shows a very poor example of police "helping" EMTs.

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maryclare.crochiere

This article is all about emergency response. Could you imagine being called to a scene where the patient is sustaining injuries from a police officer? As EMTs, we are trained to help police for help if the patient is combative or a minor, and all they should do is restrain the patient or act as their parent for custody purposes. The police officer should not be the reason we have to provide care, unless someone's safety was at risk - which it does not seem was the case. This situation shows increased risk for EMTs in the field and more challenges we are facing each day with the politics and violence around police departments these days.

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wolmad

"The violence broke out when the patient spit at the Emergency Service Unit officers and swore at them. The officers responded by hitting him in the face, hauling him off the stretcher to the ground and then tossing him back on the stretcher, "

"After the first round of punches, the patient was "taken off the stretcher to the ground and restrained again, pt. was thrown by ESU again on to my stretcher," the EMT wrote. "Pt. sustained injuries to face and head," the report said."