African Activist Archive

This funding appeal begins with an anecdote of a remarkable act of protest by seventy black patients who walked into the emergency room of the white Johannesburg General Hospital to register for treatment. Director Gay McDougall describes how the Southern Africa Project "has put apartheid on trial in its own courts of law" - by defending the rights of protesters, challenging repressive laws, and lending moral support to an embattled people. The South African government is inflicting new barbarisms and illegalities on members of the Defiance campaign, which is being organized through the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM). Thousands of activists in the Defiance campaign - and journalists who attempted to cover it -- have been arrested; many under age 18. Drawing upon a network of over 100 dedicated attorneys in South Africa, the Lawyers' Committee has forced government prosecutors to dismiss trumped-up charges and release detainees being held without charges, and has brought lawsuits to challenge apartheid laws, illegal police practices, torture and imprisonment. Contributions to this work are a powerful statement of international solidarity with the anti-apartheid protesters. The mailing mentions Yasmin Moolla of the South Africa Health Workers' Congress, Faghied Johnson of the Manenberg Advice Office, and the Rev. Jan de Waal.

African Activist Archive

[At the Baragwanath Hospital in South Africa's black township of Soweto, the sick, injured and dying wait in long lines to use the toilets and showers.]

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