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In Alexandra township A recent visitor to South Africa went to Alexandra, where the township community organised their own defence against Inkatha thugs. THE TOWNSHIP OF Alexandra, to the north of Johannesburg, provides a graphic illustration of the social crisis confronting the black South African working class, and of the massive struggle it is mounting to liberate itself. A quarter of a million people live in an area five kilometres square; 40% of them live in shacks; there is 43% unemployment. Before l visited South Africa, I was fully aware of these and many more statistics which illustrated the poverty confronting workers in Alexandra. But statistics do not prepare you for the shock of meeting families who have to live their whole lives in wooden boxes the size of a couple of double beds. The whole township smells as a result of tens of thousands of people living without rubbish collections and with vastly inadequate water and sanitation. One comrade who I met could only find space to build his home in a spot which becomes flooded every time it rains. Wet weather means bailing a foot of water from the floor of the shack. Small wonder. then, that he suffers from rheumatism and his baby has continual chest infections. In response to these conditions. and the attacks of the state, the people of Alex have organised big struggles. At the height of the 1981-86 uprising. the Alexandra Action Committee (AAC) was built on the basis of committees in almost every vard. AAC organised rent boycotts and self-defence, digging traps across the roads to prevent armoured vehicles from penetrating the township. AAC leaders. including metal workers leader Moses Mayekiso, stood trial for treason and were acquitted after an international campaign Alex activist. Philemon Today: another Mauku. the vice-chair of the hostels committee of the Alexandra Civic Organisation (AAC's successor), faces serious charges. Philemon was arrested for possession of firearms. and faces a ten-year sentence. He does not deny possession of the guns. but insists that he held them on behalf of the community: who had obtained them to defend their homes and organisations against the violence of Inkatha.
ALEX BRACE FORWARD TO PEOPLES SADIO EDUCATION FOR PEOPLE'S Teachers from This makes his trial an important opportunity for the AliC to expose the complicity of De Alex demonstrate.
Klerk and the state in arming these counter-rerolutionary thugs and to test in public the real meaning of the 'peace accord which De Klerk signed with the AVC and Inkatha, and which is supposed to guarantee communities the right to self-defence.
As part of his legal defence Philemon intends to call representatives of the Alexandra clinic to give expert evidence on the effect of violence in the community. On 10 December. with Philemon and other representatives of the Philemon Mauku Defence Campaign (PMDC). I met David Robb. the clinic's administrator, and Pascal Ngakane. the clinical manager. They agreed Philemon has been denied legal aid so he has to raise money for his defence. Send donations to CSSA, PO Box 77, London, E8 4TB. Make cheques payable to Campaign for a Socialist South Africa. Send letters of support to The PMDC, PO Box 53514, Troyeville 2139, Johannesburg, South Africa, with copies to the CSSA.
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to present evidence in court and outlined to us of washing before getting to work); a small 320 MIR Spring 1992 the impact of political violence on the clinic's South Africa "ork and the life of the community. David Robb explained that violence was now the number one cause of death and hospitalisation amongst all groups 'from babies upwards'. They had treated 22 political injuries in the previous 60 hours. The clinic itself has been the urget of political violence. It has been firehombed six or eight times by white right-wingers opposed to its support of decent health care and the struggles of the community in Alex. David Robb told us that since the rise of Inkatha violence the clinic is 'spending a fortune on rapid response and security.
The PMDC has also been told that on the night of Saturday ? December Inkatha impis, who had attacked shack dwellers. killing one worker and raping a 68-year old woman, assembled outside the clinic threatening to force their way in and kidnap victims of the violence who had fled there. to prevent them giving evidence to the police. On the following Monday a delegation from Inkatha arrived at the Inkatha thug.
clinic, demanding that it stop 'supporting ANC and ACO'. Clinic workers were told by Inkatha war-lord Peter Simphosa that Inkatha members were 'poised to attack.
It seems that Inkatha intends depriving the Alexandra community of one of its few quality services. The annual report of the clinic points to the parallel between these attacks on health services and the way in which the South African state through RENAMO destabilised the health service in Mozambique. It says: "Destruction or disintegration of the Alex Health Centre would be a very severe blow to the morale of the community and it must simply not be allowed to happen".
The PMDC was established be the Hostels Committee of the Alexandra Civic Organisation. There are three hostels in Alex. The majority of the residents of the men's hostels. Nobuhle (where Philemon lived) and Madala. have been driven out by Inkatha thugs. The women residents of Helen Joseph hostel are under continual threat from the police. SADE and Inkatha. I was shown round the hostel by two members of the hostel committee, comrades Dorothea (a garment worker) and Violet (who works for a chain store).
The conditions under which the women are forced to live are appalling. Four women share a room roughly ten foot square. Each of them has a locker five foot tall and two foot wide for her clothes. As Dorothea explained, the clothes are so closely squashed together she has to iron them again when she takes them out. One woman whom I met had her children staying with her over the school holidays, six kids had to sleep on an area of floor five foot by five foot. Two hundred women share five bathrooms (Violet has to get up at Sam in order to be sure laundry with only two sinks and a barrack-like kitchen with half a dozen primus stoves. For this they are asked to pay R27.00 a month (including R2 for 'services' despite not even having electric sockets in the rooms). But 90% of the 4.000 residents have been on a rent strike since July 1990.
In the kitchen I was shown a bullet hole, where the SADF had shot into the room during an attack in July. The soldiers had rampaged over the hostel, searching for arms. Dorothea explained how she had confronted a soldier who had knocked her possessions about: 'don't kick my things when you run around with the red doeks (Inkatha)' she told him, 'you only want to take the arms back to the red doeks' One soldier had tried to rape a woman in the bathroom. Fortunately her daughter came to her aid.
The women suffer perpetual fear of attack not only by the state and Inkatha, but also by the Tsotsis (gangsters) who roam the township. Violet told me: "There is no security. theft is here, rape is here, there is even killing in the hostel'. One woman was stabbed with seven holes right inside the gates of the hostel. In such an emergency: in the event of an attack by Inkatha: or even if a resident is taken ill. or goes into labour, there is no telephone for the 4,000 women to summon help. Violet told me how one sick woman had "died in front of our eyes'. The hostel authorities do almost nothing to maintain the premises. I was shown windows which have been broken since 1986. As we walked past a piping duct which was broken and gaping open. Violet explained that the building was infested with rats. As if on cue. a two foot-long rat scuttled past the hole. In hot weather the rats roam the corridors to such an extent that the women cannot leave the doors to their rooms open.
Recently the residents have forced the authorities to employ someone to clear up the rubbish. When repeated requests produced no results they collected all the rubbish they could find and dumped it on the manager's office doorstep. Action was soon forthcoming. The militancy of these women, and their strong support for the campaign of self-defence. has marked them out for threats from Inkatha. who regard the continued existence of even one strongly Congress hostel in Alex as a threat to their position. On the weekend of 7-8 December a chalked message appeared on one of the hostel staircases, announcing an Inkatha meeting in the hostel at 12:00 on Christmas Day (when the hostel would be almost empty). 'Be ready: it said The message might have been a hoax, but for women who have lived in the midst of murderous Inkatha attacks for 15 months, there is no alternative but to take it deadly seriously. O
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