Defend Liv Shange!

On 27 July, Liv Shange was forced out of the country by the Department of Home Affairs on the pretext that she applied for the wrong visa. She was denied permanent residency on the basis of new regulations implemented last year, with the ludicrous justification given by Home Affairs that because Shange’s South African relative—her child!—is unable to support her financially, she does not meet the qualifications. Shange, a member of the Executive Committee of the Workers and Socialist Party, had been in the cross hairs of the ANC-led Tripartite Alliance tops for some time. In June 2013, ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe implied that she was behind the labour unrest in the platinum belt during the spate of wild cat strikes following the Marikana massacre. The following year, during the protracted five-month-long platinum strike led by the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, Shange was again scapegoated by Mantashe, who absurdly accused her of trying to “destabilise” South Africa’s economy (Mail & Guardian, 13 June 2014).

Spartacist/South Africa opposes the persecution of Liv Shange, and urges others in the labour movement and left to take up her defence as well. This is a blatant attempt to silence and repress a leftist activist who has supported the mineworkers and is seen as a thorn in the side of the ANC-led capitalist government. As we pointed out when she was first targeted, in 2013, “Defending Shange is in the interest of the left and workers movement as whole, which is facing increased repression from the bourgeois Tripartite Alliance government” (see SSA No. 9, Winter 2013). We demand that she be allowed to return to South Africa unconditionally and given full citizenship rights.