Partisan Defense Committee Letter

12 June 2007

Partisan Defense Committee P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013

email: partisandefense@earthlink.net   www.partisandefense.org

Contact: Kevin Gilroy (212) 406-4252

PDC Protests Repression of Striking South African Workers

12 June 2007

President Thabo Mbeki
Office of the President
Private Bag X1000
Pretoria, South Africa 0001

Dear Sir:

The Partisan Defense Committee joins workers around the world in protest against the brutal repression being meted out by your ANC government against the approximately 700,000 public service unionists on strike since June 1. As this massive strike led by COSATU and other unions to defend workers’ livelihoods began, thousands of armed soldiers and cops launched a furious campaign against strikers at schools and hospitals around the country. Among many reported instances, police in Cape Town fired stun grenades at strikers picketing Tygerberg Hospital injuring workers including one who was hospitalized in intensive care. In Durban, police fired rubber bullets at striking nurses, arresting 20, and carried out another grenade attack at Addington Hospital. Now your government threatens mass firings of striking health workers for defying a government ultimatum that they return to work.

This is an outrage. We demand an immediate end to this campaign of terror against striking workers. Workers all over the globe have followed and will continue to follow the struggles of the South African working class against neo-apartheid capitalism over which you preside: a system in which the white capitalist class, its senior partners in the City of London and Wall Street and a thin layer of black businessmen and politicians reap rewards, while the conditions of the working class, rural toilers and township masses continues to be miserable.

The PDC demands an immediate halt to all police attacks and freedom for all arrested strikers. We demand all charges be dropped with no reprisals against striking workers. We also demand the rescinding of all firings and the immediate reinstatement of any dismissed worker.

Very truly yours

Kevin Gilroy
for the Partisan Defense Committee

cc: COSATU

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The PDC is a class-struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which champions cases and causes in the interest of the whole of the working people.  This purpose is in accordance with the political views of the Spartacist League.