jamanthis at mailbox.co.uk 10/17/02 11:16PM
SUPPORT ANTI-PRIVATISATION ACTIVISTS IN SOUTH AFRICA
Tuesday 22 October, 5pm, South Africa House, Trafalgar Square, London SW1
**87 people from Soweto, including pensioners and children, were arrested on charges of public violence, malicious damage and assault in April 2002. They were at the ANC Mayor of Johannesburg's house protesting against electricity cuts offs, water price-rocketing and evictions. All these have resulted from the ANC government doing what western banks, governments and multi-nationals want: privatising state-owned utilities, helping multi-nationals lay off thousands of workers, breaking promises to provide free electricity and water to poor people, and to provide them with housing, health care and education. The activists wanted to cut off the Mayor's water and electricity to give him a taste of his own medecine. His bodyguard shot them with live bullets and they fought back.
**The trial of the 'Kensington 87', postponed three times, was set for 15 August, and then postponed again until 23 October, partly because international protests took place on that day, including at South Africa House in London.
**The Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, part of the Anti-Privatisation Forum, along with the Landless People's Movement and ex-combatants from Umkhonto We Sizwe and other armed liberation forces, continued to be the targets of police harassment, arrest, detention, and bullets up to and after the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg at the beginning of September.
**They came together as the Social Movement Indaba and humilitated Thabo Mbeki by organising a march of 30,000 people in Johannesburg on 31 September at the height of WSSD, while Mbeki, posing as the spokesperson for poor people throughout Africa, could only get 5000.
Demonstrate your support for anti-privatisation activists in Africa and your opposition to neo-colonial collaborators
020 8223 4559, 7771 9565, 07890 738997, 020 8968 0113