African Activist Archive

Leaflet issued as part of a campaign against importing South African coal into the U.S. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference demands that the Southern Company stop doing business with racist South Africa. Each year, the Southern Company (and its subsidiaries Georgia Power, Gulf Power, Mississippi Power, Alabama Power, and Southern Electric International) buys 800,000 tons of low-sulfur coal from South Africa. The leaflet says black South African miners earn one-tenth the wages of white miners. They must live in hostels near their place of work, rather than with their families in their homelands, and they are permitted to visit their families for only one month each year, without pay. South African mines have one of the worst accident records in the world. When 50,000 miners went on strike recently to protest safety conditions, 14.000 of them were fired; one miner was killed by police deployed to stifle protest. In the past four months, between 1,000 and 1,500 South African apartheid opponents have been detained without being charged; some may remain in jail as long as two years before being charged. Detainees are victims of widespread torture and ill treatment; recently, a trade union leader and a student leader died from brain injuries immediately after their release from detention. Since January 1984, at least 400 South Africans have been killed as a result of military and police action. [Note on date: the firing of mineworkers in South Africa mentioned in this leaflet was likely in late April 1985. See ACAS NEWSLETTER, Summer 1985, Association of Concerned Africa Scholars; and i.d.a.f. news notes, June 1985; both are available on this website.]

African Activist Archive

The Cold Blood of South Africa Heats Our Homes

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