One of the early challenges for TransAfrica was how best to support the people of South Africa to end the inhumane system of apartheid. TransAfrica exposed secret strategy meetings between the apartheid South Africa regime and the United States’ Reagan administrations, was a founding member of The Free South Africa Movement (FSAM), and conducted daily demonstrations and civil disobedience outside the Embassy of South Africa.Friday
Aug242012
African American and Anti-Apartheid Leaders Call for an End to Violence in South Africa
Friday, August 24, 2012 at 11:36AM
August 20, 2012
His Excellency Jacob Zuma
President
The Republic of South Africa
Pretoria, South Africa
Dear President Zuma,
We, along with most in the world, woke up Friday morning to be shocked by the photographs we saw on the front pages of major newspapers. The pictures of South African police firing on miners were shocking and deeply disturbing. The toll of death and injuries, and the overall context of the incident, has generated in us a crisis of conscience. We feel compelled to speak up and to seek an understanding of how the long road away from apartheid could have taken this turn.
At the core of the fight against apartheid, a battle that the signatories of this letter were proud to join, was the fundamental belief in the equality and dignity of all persons; the right to work for a living wage without exploitation; freedom of speech and peaceful protest; freedom of association and the right to organize. While the press coverage so far indicates that violence, fear and loose discipline marred the actions of both the miners and police, the South African Police must be held to the higher standard because of their superior fire-power, training and the obligations that come from acting under the mantle of the state and color of law.
Mr. President, we welcome your announcement that there will be a commission of inquiry. We look forward to it being both independent and transparent in its deliberations.
South Africa has many success stories; South Africans have much of which to be proud. Among them are one of the world’s most progressive constitutions, an independent and activist judiciary and millions of hard-working, resilient people.
But, if nothing else, the story behind this strike and the horrendous violent events on Friday reveals the structural inequalities in South African society that persist years after the end of apartheid. Even today, South Africa is among the most unequal countries in the world, in terms of disparities in income and individual wealth. The extreme poverty of the townships festers.
We urge an immediate end to the violence. We call upon all sides of this tragedy to cease and desist from provocative actions that may result in violence at this especially tense and sensitive time.
At the same time, we support unequivocally the right to organize and to petition the government peacefully, through the exercise of free speech, for the resolution of legitimate grievances. Such principles are the hallmark of a democratic society. Anything less would be a betrayal of the South African ideal for which so many have fought and died.
We speak as friends, as former anti-apartheid activists and in solidarity.
Nicole Lee, President, TransAfrica Forum
Danny Glover, Chairman, TransAfrica Forum
Randall Robinson, Founding President of TransAfrica, Anti-Apartheid Leader, Authors Law Professor
Wade Henderson, President, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Richard Trumka, President, AFL-CIO
Arlene Holt –Baker, Executive Vice President, AFL-CIO
Gay McDougall, International Human Rights Lawyer
Mark Morial, President, National Urban League
Barbara Arnwine, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Debo Adegbile, Acting President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP LDF and Educational Fund
Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of
History at the University of Pennsylvania
Fred Redmond, Executive Vice President, United Steelworkers
William Lucy, Founding Past President, Coalition of Trade Unionists
Harold Rogers, Chairman, International Affairs Committee, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists
Gary Flowers, Executive Director, Black Leadership Forum
Angela Glover Blackwell, President, PolicyLink
David Saperstein, Religious Action Center
Ronald Dellums, Vice Chairman, JC Watts Companies
Reverend Jesse Jackson, President, Rainbow Push Coalition
Sylvia Hill, Board Member of TransAfrica
Cecelie Counts, Anti-Apartheid Leader
Adwoa Dunn-Mouton, Board Member of TransAfrica
Joseph Jordan, Associate Professor, African and Afro-American Studies; Director, Sonja Haynes
Stone Center
Judith Lichtman, Chair, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
Donna Katzin, Executive Director of Shared Interest
Rabbi Israel S. Dresner, Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Anshe Amunim
Al Vorspan, Senior Vice-President Emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President Emeritus, Union for Reform Judaism
James Early, Institute for Policy Studies Board of Advisors
Maurice Jackson, Associate Professor of History and African-American Studies
** Signatories of this letter are individuals signers. Titles and organizations are for informational purposes only.
