Our readers speak out

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N.R.A.?

In two letters below, we continue last month's exchange of opinions by our readers on the topic of "gun control."-The editors Dear editor, While I agree the anti-gun people are pathetic, the two pro-gunners [see "Our readers speak out" in the April 1989 Socialist Action] sound like supporters of the right-wing NRA. I see no reason to have semiautomatic rifles in the United States. (Send them to the FMLN. They really need them.)

The only people who benefit from these are the rich arms merchants, while poor Blacks and Hispanics (95 percent of whom are innocent) die. As for hunters, too bad! Stop murdering animals and do something constructive.

Disarmament Dear editor, Since the end of World War I, there have been innumerable disarmament conferences in the world, all without any result. On March 7, however, the U.S. government began implementing a unilateral disarmament program—the disL.A.M., Hawthorne, Calif. arming of the American people. Using drug-related crime as an excuse, Secretary of the Treasury William Bennett banned the import of semi-automatic weapons into the United States. All existing stocks were bought up within a few days. Along with Colt's closing of its AR-15 production, semi-automatic weapons are effectively unavailable through legal channels in the United States today.

Liberals are pressing for a ban on semi-automatic weapons. (Automatic weapons and "machine guns" are already illegal.) At the same time, there are plans to send U.S. troops into the Black community of Washington, D.C. These troops will be armed with automatic weapons.

One thing should be clear. Banning guns will not deprive criminals of weapons. The sawedoff shotgun has been illegal since 1938, but criminals continue to use them. The Thompson sub-machine gun used by the gangsters of the '20s and '30s were illegal as well. The actual effect of a gun ban is to disarm honest working people. The leaders of the American Revolution and the founders of the United States wanted to codify the right of the people to rebel against tyranny. The Second Amendment is a statement of that.

The right of the people to bear. arms is the right to defend itself against its own government. If the Chilean workers had been armed, the army coup of 1973 may well have turned out much differentiy.

Some people will argue that there are other firearms that can be legally owned if semi-automatic weapons are banned. These are boltaction rifles. These have not been mass-produced for armies for 40 years. Permitting the ownership of bolt-action rifles today is not much different than permitting pikes; it is not a right to bear arms but a right to collect antiques.

The most heavily armed organization on earth is intent on disarming working people in the United States. Only the future can answer whether this move will save it and its predatory economic system from their well-deserved replacement.

Vinnie Longo, Chicago, III.

Thanks.

Dear editor, Thanks for the informative reading provided by Socialist Action during the past year. It is certainly refreshing to read alternative, insightful perspectives on pressing contemporary issues.

While there is room for

Scan page 19

trade union leader Moses Mayekiso Moses Mayekiso and his wife, Khola, leave the Johannesburg Supreme Court after being granted bail in December 1988.

After an 18-month trial, South African union leader Moses Mayekiso and four other activists from the Black township of Alexandra were acquitted of charges of treason, sedition, and subversion. On April 24, a packed gallery in a central Johannesburg courtroom erupted in cheers of "Viva!" as the judge found the Alexandra Five not guilty.

Mayekiso is general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA). The defendants also included Mayekiso's brother Mzwanele, Paul Tshabala, Richard Mdakane, and Obed Bapela.

The judge rejected the state's contention that the Alexandra Action Committee, of which Mayekiso was chairman, had attempted to turn the township into an ungovernable "liberated zone." Instead, he affirmed, a rent boycott promoted by the Action Committee in early 1986 was intended to protest township conditions and corrupt town councilors.

Mayekiso described the verdict as a victory for the "struggle for a better society." He promised to pick up where he had left off before his arrest in June 1986. He will work to rebuild the Action Committee, Mayekiso vowed.

In a remarkable admission, on April 3, the prosecution acknowledged that it had failed to prove the treason charges. According to Mayekiso's wife, Khola Mayekiso, the government was forced to drop the treason charge as a direct result of an international campaign on the defendants' behalf.

International pressure also played an important role in the court's decision last December to release the defendants on bail— after they had spent over two years in jail.

Street committees

Last month, Khola Mayekiso toured three U.S. cities, telling trade-union members about her husband's case and calling for continued solidarity with all South African political prisoners.

The Alexandra Action Committee was formed, Khola Mayekiso explained, because of intolerable living conditions. From 200,000 to 300,000 people live in Alexandra, only blocks away from some of Johannesburg's wealthiest whites-only districts. Although the township lies within JohanBy ADAM WOOD SAN FRANCISCO-Nomonde Ngubo, a representative of the United Mine Workers of America's Shell Boycott Committee and a founder of the National Union of Mineworkers in South Africa, toured the San Francisco Bay Area late last March.

Ngubo spoke to several meetings about the international boycott of Royal Dutch Shell, which provides oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa. She also spoke at the April 2 rally for "Women's Equality/Women's Lives" in San Francisco.

On March 31, Ngubo spoke at a Socialist Action forum titled, " An Update on the Black Workers' Movement in South Africa." She SOCiALiST Action nesburg, Black residents must obtain a permit to get a job in the city.

Up to 20 families, each in one-room houses, must share a single water tap. There is no electricity and no sewage system.

The Alexandra Action Committee organized street committees, electing block representatives. In a country where Black people are allowed no vote, everyone in the community participated, including the youth. The committees organized many tasks, from digging latrines (previously done only with official authorization) to establishing day-care centers, soup kitchens-and people's courts.

They organized along the lines of tradeunion structures-with accountability of all officials and with elections every year. They planned to form committees throughout the entire township. This posed a serious challenge to the authorities.

Ngubo Kohla Mayekiso said that in February 1986, after a youth was killed by the police, Alexandra residents organized a night vigil. The police fired on the vigil, resulting in many deaths. In what they called the "Six Day War," the people defended themselves by hurling stones and gasoline-filled bottles.

The official government town council resigned. Right-wing vigilante attacks, in which out-of-uniform police took part, were stepped up. A state of emergency was extended.

While Moses Mayekiso was in Sweden, police detained the organizers of the committee organization. Soon after Mayekiso returned to South Africa, in April 1986, he was thrown into jail and refused bail. The trial began in October 1987.

From the beginning, the prosecution tried to deflect much of the testimony away from 31 Socialist Actlon forum in San Francisco. what really happened in Alexandra. Instead, in true witch-trial fashion, a focus was placed on quotations from certain political pamphlets— most of which had been seized from Mayekiso when he returned from abroad.

International labor defense Many people and organizations around the world contributed to the defense effort. Amnesty International declared Mayekiso a "prisoner of conscience." Several international labor organizations paid for the five-person legal team that represented the Alexandra Five in court.

The United Auto Workers union (UAW) spearheaded fund-raising activities in the United States and formed a committee of American lawyers to monitor the case.

Khola Mayekiso's meetings during her U.S. tour reflected the significant union backing the case received. In New York, 175 people attended a meeting at the AFSCME District 37 hall.

In Detroit, UAW President Owen Bieber joined Mayekiso in addressing the 200 unionists representing 50 union locals who gathered there. Local unions gave $1000 and pledged another $8000 to support the campaign.

In Chicago, Mayekiso spoke to 250 people at two meetings along with UAW District Director Bill Stewart, United Steelworkers of America District 31 Director Jack Parton, and Chicago Coalition of Labor Union Women President Johnnie Jackson.

The speakers pointed out that the attack on Mayekiso was part of a more extensive attack by the South African government on the militant trade-union movement. Mayekiso was the highest ranking trade unionist to be tried for political subversion and sedition in many years. The apartheid regime hoped that a guilty verdict would intimidate other union leaders and activists. ti "The international labor movement will not be silenced," said Bill Stewart. The government has tried to silence the people of South Africa. It has tried to shut down the international news media. But there are other voices that cannot be silenced."

Because the labor movement and numerous friends of civil liberties raised their voices in protest, Moses Mayekiso and the Alexandra Five are free.

Joseph Ryan/Socialist Action to deliberate on the recommendations that

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