Cleveland meeting backs Shell boycott

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CLEVELAND-On Oct. 10-11, approx -imately 250 people attended a conference Anti-Apartheid Committee (NOAC).

Registration forms indicated that participants came from 34 different local unions and from local campus and high-school anti-apartheid groups.

The conference program on Oct. 11 opened with welcoming remarks by Rufus Sims, a representative of the Cleveland State University Black Law Students Association, which hosted the conference; and Richard Acton, acting president of the Cleveland AFL-CIO Federation of Labor.

Acton explained that Shell Oil has been selected as a boycott target for two reasons: its role in propping up the apartheid system through its sales to the South African government, and its viciously anti-labor record. He pointed out that Black workers, in South Africa are fighting for the same thing as workers in the United States—the right for free, democratic trade unions.

The conference featured three panels:

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The first panel was made up of David Lewis, the general secretary of the General Workers Union (affiliated with the Congress of South African Trade Unions) from 1976-1985; and Dee Zondo, a local South African exile who fled to avoid imprisonment for her activities in the high-school student movement.

Lewis defined apartheid as a "legalized system of racial oppression and economic exploitation" and emphasized that none of the South African government's so-called reforms end any restrictions on the labor Zondo described the complete lack of human rights in South Africa, adding that "apartheid exists by violence, by the blood of Black children, women, and men." Participants in the second panel were James L. Hardiman, first vice president of the Cleveland branch of the NAACP; Ken Zinn, an international representative of the United Mine Workers of America; and Rev. Donald G. Jacobs, general minister of the Interchurch Council of Greater Cleveland. Zinn pointed out that apartheid's survival is dependent upon foreign multinational magazine published under the auspices of the Fourth 1l. We offer a special introductory offer of three issues ‹-month subscription is $22, and one year of 1 Viewpoint is available for $42. 3435 Army St., Rm. 308, S.F. CA 94110 corporations. "We cannot allow corporate giants to pit workers in one country against those in another," he said. "We must raise the wages of the lowest."

The final panel consisted of Grace Jones, adult adviser to Youth United to Oppose Apartheid; Jerry Gordon, an international representative of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and coordinator of NOAC; and Elizabeth Franklin, a former South African who had been active in prisoner-defense there.

The conference concluded by unan -imously endorsing a resolution submitted by the United Mine Workers of America in memory of the 172 Black mineworkers and five white mineworkers killed Sept. 16 at the Kinross gold mine in South Africa.

This resolution supported "the call by the National Union of Mine Workers of South Africa for an independent, comprehensive inquiry into this disaster and the working conditions of South Africa's mines in general."

It further demanded "comprehensive, mandatory sanctions against the South African government, whose apartheid system allows such corporate disregard for the health and safety of working people." •

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