BY T.J. FIGUEROA
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - On January 8 police opened fire
with rubber bullets on demonstrators gathered here to protest
the visit of British prime minister Anthony Blair and the
December bombing of Iraq by U.S. and British forces.
Four days later Yusuf Jacobs, 22, died of injuries sustained from the police bullet that slammed into his temple. Four other protesters were wounded by police bullets. Two thousand people attended Jacobs's funeral January 12. Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi asked President Nelson Mandela to appoint a judicial inquest into Jacobs's death.
The Blair protest was organized People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD), Muslims Against Illegitimate Leaders, and Muslims Against Global Oppression.
Between 50 and 100 people attended the picket outside the Castle of Good Hope, where Blair was pinning medals on British army officers stationed here. Police claim the action was "illegal," since no permit had been issued, and that they opened fire after the protesters refused to obey orders to disperse.
Apartheid-era police
The shootings generated a lot of anger among working people
in Cape Town, but took no one by surprise since police racism
and brutality are entrenched. The cops' actions highlight the
fact that the police force is one of the arms of the state
least disturbed since the 1994 nonracial, democratic elections
that ended apartheid rule.
Deaths in police custody in the first three months of 1998 alone totaled 203. Figures for the entire year are not yet available.
An article in the Nov. 27, 1998, Mail and Guardian reported that the South African Police Service as a whole had 1,500 officers on its staff who were convicted of criminal offenses in the prior 17 months. Complaints laid against the cops from January 1997 to May 1998 included 7,263 charges of assault, 797 of attempted murder, 332 of murder, 61 of attempted rape, 149 of rape, 1,550 of theft, and many others.
The African National Congress (ANC) says the problems are worse in this province - the Western Cape - because the National Party, which ran the white regime for 46 years, controls the provincial government.
In the past three years there have been 420 pipe-bomb attacks in the Cape Town area. These have usually been presented as part of a war between drug-dealing gangs and vigilantes, but the involvement of police and other agents provocateurs anxious to destabilize the democratic government cannot be ruled out.
The ANC pointed out in early January that not one conviction had been made in any of these 420 attacks.
The ANC said all the leading investigators in the pipe-bomb cases were Afrikaner males, top positions were dominated by relics of the old order, and police found it difficult to stamp out gangs they had used in the past to fight anti-apartheid organizations. Eighty-three percent of senior police managers, 90 percent of middle managers, and 78 percent of junior managers in the province are white.
The police, along with the press, have launched a hue and cry over "urban terrorism" in the city, which in many cases has assumed a distinctly anti-Islamic odor.
Last August a bomb exploded in the Planet Hollywood restaurant in the Waterfront mall, a popular tourist spot. It made international headlines in the wake of U.S. missile strikes in Sudan and Afghanistan. The Waterfront bomb, police speculated, was in "retaliation" for the air raids, but no evidence of this has been produced.
Addressing a crowd of 15,000 at the ANC's 87th anniversary rally here in Athlone Stadium on January 9, ANC president Thabo Mbeki singled out the actions of PAGAD without naming it directly. He denounced self-appointed vigilantes, and further said that no one had the right to tell leaders of the ANC where they can and cannot speak. At the end of December PAGAD and others threatened to disrupt a speech at a mosque by provincial ANC chairperson Ebrahim Rasool. The talk was subsequently called off.
PAGAD's vigilante character
PAGAD and Muslims Against Illegitimate Leaders have
harassed Rasool and his family, and denounced Justice Minister
Dullah Omar and Water Affairs Minister Kader Asmal - both ANC
leaders who are Muslim - as being "illegitimate." They say they
will prevent such "illegitimate" leaders from public speaking.
They present the ANC government as a toady of imperialism, and
denounce it for actions such as making abortion legal.
PAGAD is the vigilante outfit that drew international attention in August 1996 when its members shot and burned Rashaad Staggie, who the group said was a drug dealer. It draws support from middle- and working-class Muslim residents of the Cape Flats. It says its mission is to clean up crime, and projects a radical, street character that has included armed demonstrations. Much of this stems from a section of its middle- class leadership, who were trained in the tradition of the Pan Africanist Congress, a split-off from the ANC.
A couple of years ago, it was common for PAGAD marches to draw up to 5,000 people. Recently, those numbers have dwindled as the group has upped its rhetoric and thuggery against the government and those Muslims who do not share its views.