A letter from Kate Kaku
1990 1990-07Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 3 →
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Below we reprint major portions of a letter sent to Socialist Action on June 4, 1990, by Kate Kaku, wife of convicted SWP member Mark Curtis and a leader of the Curtis Defense Committee.
Dear Supporters, Thank you very much for your recent letter renewing Socialist Action's support for the fight to win freedom and justice for Mark Curtis.
The defense campaign is at an important turning point. We face a trial now set for July 9 on a civil case filed by the Morris parents seeking general and punitive damages from Curtis for pain and suffering allegedly inflicted on their daughter.
This lawsuit seeks to demoralize Curtis and aid efforts of prison authorities to break him by threatening damages that will follow him after he gets out of prison. It is a move to prevent me from travelling around the world and speaking out in defense of my husband and political collaborator.
If successful, it can be a deadly threat aimed at the entire defense campaign.
Your letter summed this up well, calling this operation "a serious attempt to bankrupt the committee, to smear its leadership and to paralyze its ability to publicize the injustice done to Mark."
economic and social needs of the Black majority while safeguarding an economic system predicated upon exploitation and inequality.
These and other questions concerning the future of post-apartheid South Africa can only be decided by the South African people themselves. Nelson Mandela is totally right when he says that only the sovereign will of the people-expressed through a constituent Kate Kaku at Mark Curtis rally We are launching a special fundraising campaign to meet the expenses entailed in defending Mark, myself and the Committee from this attack. Far from being derailed by the lawsuit, we are going to redouble our efforts to reach out and win new political and financial support for Curtis. The funds will aid in this effort as well. .. New literature from the defense committee explaining the dangers of this attack are being printed, and, as they are available, we will send copies to you.
In solidarity, assembly based on one person, one vote can determine the fate of South Africa.
Anything else would be to allow negotiations between self-appointed (or selected) leaders of the liberation struggle and the white minority regime behind the backs of the Black majority.
The U.S. government and the corporate rich have no right to dictate any negotiating terms to the South African freedom fighters. that the Socialist Workers Party is run by government agents and serves the government and the corporate bosses as an instrument of spying and political provocation. The Mark Curtis defense campaign is part of a wider pattern of state operations which make use of the SWP to gather information on the workers' movement both within the United States and internationally."
The Workers League's scurrilous attack on the SWP as a police operation is the basis of their alliance with the cops in attacking the Curtis Defense Committee. They are attacking Curtis to get at his party.
Using the courts to disrupt the SWP is the same method employed several years ago when Workers League member Alan Gelfand filed a suit asking that SWP membership lists be made available so that he could "prove" that the bulk of the party's members were police agents. After 10 years of burdening the SWP with substantial legal expenses and diverting it from other political tasks, this case was finally thrown out of court.
On Aug. 15, 1989, a federal judge ruled that the Gelfand suit was designed "to disrupt the SWP." The judge also said that the suit was "abusive, harassing" and that "one of its main purposes was to generate material for political attacks on the SWP by the Workers League."
"What the judge said about the Gelfand case applies as well to their 'facts' about the Curtis case, " Studer observed. Nonetheless, he emphasized, the case should be taken very seriously. It is an attempt to bankrupt Curtis and Kate Kaku and to strike a blow against the right of frameup victins to defend themselves.
They have no right to have any say in the future of South Africa. That right belongs to the South African people-and to them only. That is the meaning of self-determination.
The task of all supporters of the South African freedom struggle in this country is, following Mandela, to insist that sanctions be maintained until apartheid is fully dismantled and the Black majority rules!