Defend the Kliptown Five!

We print below a protest letter sent on March 23 to the High Court, Witwatersrand Local Division, South Africa, by the Partisan Defense Committee, a class-struggle, non-sectarian, legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League.

We vehemently protest the 13 March sentencing of Thabo Modisane, Charlie Nyatumba, Sibongile Maphalele, Ricardo and Oscar in the Protea Magistrate’s Court on bogus charges of “public violence.” The five activists were victimized for their participation in a 3 September 2007 housing protest in Kliptown, Soweto, organized by the Anti-Privatisation Forum. Thabo Modisane, national organizer of the Workers International Vanguard League, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment or a R3,000 fine while the other four received five-year suspended sentences, which Modisane also received.

The Kliptown protesters were arrested for the “crime” of demanding houses that had been promised by the government. The routine cop violence meted out against township protests and workers’ strikes shows that the “justice” system in the “new,” “democratic” South Africa, as under the racist apartheid police state, exists to uphold a brutally oppressive capitalist order. Modisane was singled out by the court for harsher sentencing specifically because he had suffered court repression previously for his involvement in social struggles for the poor, including during apartheid. We join with others in the working-class movement in demanding that the convictions of the Kliptown Five be overturned immediately. We further call for charges to be dropped against the many others who have been victimized for engaging in social protests demanding the most basic necessities of life.