Dennis Brutus, veteran anti-apartheid campaigner, describes how US, British and other major multinational corporations colluded with the racist regime of apartheid South Africa. Brutus is attempting to win reparations for superprofits made through the exploitation and repression of black South African workers. For further background to this, go to ``Can reparations for apartheid profits be won in US courts?''.
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Friday, July 11th, 2008
SOUTH AFRICAN POET DENNIS BRUTUS ON STEAL THIS RADIO!
By Thandokuhle Manzi and Patrick Bond
May 26, 2008 -- The low-income black township here in Durban which suffered more than any other during apartheid, Cato Manor, was the scene of a test performed on a Mozambican last Wednesday morning (May 21). At 6:45am, in the warmth of a rising subtropical winter sun, two unemployed men strolling on Belair Road approached the middle-aged immigrant. They accosted him and demanded, in the local indigenous language isiZulu, that he say the word meaning ``elbow'' (this they referred to with their hand). The man answered ``idolo'', which unfortunately means ``knee''. The correct answer is ``indololwane''. His punishment: being beaten up severely, and then told to ``go home''.
March against xenophobia, Johannesburg, May 24, 2008.
See also ``Xenophobia tears apart South Africa's working class'' by Thandokuhle Manzi and Patrick Bond.
Watch South Africa: The New Apartheid, on the South African government's treatment of migrant workers and refugees and the involvement of racist white farmers.
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May 21, 2008 -- According to the UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, as of May 19, 2008, the death toll in a wave of attacks targeting foreigners around South Africa's main city of Johannesburg has risen to at least 32, with an estimated 6000 people seeking shelter in police stations, churches and community halls. The violence has spread to Zandspruit, northwest of Johannesburg, and Tembisa, Primrose, Reiger Park and Thokoza, on the eastern perimeter of the city, as well as other working-class communities.
On April 4, 1967, African-American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King addressed a gathering of religious antiwar activists at Riverside Church in New York City. On April 4, 1968, he was assassinated.
Norm Dixon is a member of the National Committee of the Australian Democratic Socialist Party and a journalist for Green Left W