Mailing asking people to protest the Reagan administration policy of constructive engagement. The mailing says: Five years have passed since the historic Soweto uprising of June 1976. Little has changed for South Africa's black majority in those years. Blacks are still denied the rights of citizenship in the country of their birth and live tightly controlled lives of abject poverty created by the apartheid system. Apartheid not only continues, but is becoming more repressive. The white minority regime is presently cracking down on student, community, and labor leaders in an effort to stem the strikes and protests which are once again sweeping the country. In particular, the regime has focused...
Mailing asking people to protest the Reagan administration policy of constructive engagement. The mailing says: Five years have passed since the historic Soweto uprising of June 1976. Little has changed for South Africa's black majority in those years. Blacks are still denied the rights of citizenship in the country of their birth and live tightly controlled lives of abject poverty created by the apartheid system. Apartheid not only continues, but is becoming more repressive. The white minority regime is presently cracking down on student, community, and labor leaders in an effort to stem the strikes and protests which are once again sweeping the country. In particular, the regime has focused on mass-arrests. In all, some 200 people have been detained so far in what some observers are describing as the largest government campaign against opponents since October 1977. Liberation movement activity such as a week long series of sabotage attacks by the African National Congress (ANC) , added to the protests and sent thousands of soldiers from the Defence Force into the streets of Durban, Johannesburg, and other major cities. Also in late May a significant new development emerged in the labor movement when black workers at Ford, General Motors, and Firestone plants in Port Elizabeth staged a militant two week strike in solidarity with workers at the Firestone plant who had been dismissed in an earlier dispute. The largely successful action was led by Motor Assembly and Components Workers Union of South Africa (MACWUSA) - the union which was formed after the two month strike led by Thozamile Botha in late 1979 at the Ford Cortina plant in Port Elizabeth - and served once again to underscore the role of U.S. corporations in the oppression of black South African workers. The mailing mentions the South African Allied Workers Union (SAAWU) and SAAWU president Thozamile Gqweta, Wantu Zentile of the Committee of South African Students (COSAS), Khotso Seatloho of the South African Youth Revolutionary Council, the Black Student Society of the University of Witwatersrand (Wits), Andrew Boraine of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), and Sammy Adelman of the Wits Students Representative Council.
