Union refuses to unload arms ship
Sapa Published:Apr 17, 2008
(below, please also see the statement by Zabalalaza in Solidarity with Satawu workers)
Opposition to a shipment of arms being offloaded in Durban and transported to Zimbabwe increased today when South Africa’s largest transport workers union announced that its members would not unload the ship.
SA Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) general secretary Randall Howard said: “Satawu does not agree with the position of the South African government not to intervene with this shipment of weapons.
“Our members employed at Durban Container Terminal will not unload this cargo neither will any of our members in the truck driving sector move this cargo by road.” He said the ship, the An Yue Jiang, should not dock in Durban and should return to China.
South Africa cannot be seen to be facilitating the flow of weapons into Zimbabwe at a time where there is a political dispute and a volatile situation between the Zanu-PF and the MDC.”
“The view of our members is that nobody should ask us to unload these weapons,” he said.
Satawu said it planned to engage support from the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu).
Defence secretary January Masilela told Sapa today that the scrutiny committee of the National Conventional Arms Control Committee’s (NCACC) scrutiny committee, which he chairs, had approved the conveyance permit on Monday already.
He said a inspection team from the NCACC would still have to ensure the cargo met the requirements of the permit before the cargo could begin to be transported to Zimbabwe. The permit would be endorsed by the NCACC when it meets next month.
Asked about the controversy surrounding the shipment Masilela said: “This is a normal transaction between two sovereign states. We are doing our legal part and we don’t have to interfere.”
In Cape Town, government communications head Themba Maseko said the country could not stop the shipment from getting to its destination as it had to be seen to be “treading very carefully” in its relations with Zimbabwe, given the complexity of facilitating talks between the Movement for Democratic Change and Zanu-PF.
Chris de Vos, the secretary general for the United Transport and Allied Trade Union, said the union was “not happy” about the arms shipment being transported through South Africa.
“We are going to request an urgent meeting with the management. We are aware that members are very uncomfortable with the situation,” he said.
He said that while no decision had been taken by the union on offloading the weapons and arms, the union leadership was not in favour of the weapons being transported.
Democratic Alliance defence spokesman Rafeek Shah said the government’s approval to allow the arms to be shipped was “the surest sign yet that government has completely lost the plot on the Zimbabwe issue”.
Shah said: “The world’s astonishment at President (Thabo) Mbeki’s political defence of Robert Mugabe will likely turn into outright anger as we are now not only denying the existence of a crisis in Zimbabwe, but also actively facilitating the arming of an increasingly despotic and desperate regime.”
Kallie Kriel, AfriForum chief executive, said the organisation intended organising “an extensive campaign of peaceful demonstrations in an effort to prevent a consignment of Chinese arms from being transported from Durban across South African territory to Zimbabwe”.
The SA Institute of Race Relations said on Thursday: “It would be unconscionable for South Africa to allow an arms consignment through its borders en route to Zimbabwe.”
Spokesman Frans Cronje said that if the shipment went ahead, “South Africa’s culpability in the Zimbabwe crisis would then be without question”.
Noseweek editor Martin Welz told Sapa yesterday that “the cargo ship was openly delivering a containment of arms for Zimbabwe”. He said he had copies of all the documents, including the bill of lading and a packing list.
The controversial cargo packed into 3,080 cases included three million rounds of 7.62mm bullets (used with the AK47 assault rifle), 69 rocket propelled grenades, as well as mortar bombs and tubes. The cargo is, according to the documentation, valued at R9.88 million. Welz said: “It’s very detailed and even has the phone numbers.”
Increased media interest around the shipment prompted both the SA Police Service and the SA Revenue Service to send their top public relations officers to Durban to deal with media enquiries.
Adriao said he would only comment on the ship once it had docked in port while Lackay said that the work of the SARS “is guided by the SARS Act and the confidentiality provisions in the Act”.
Lackay said: “SARS Customs does not release cargo until the Customs declaration has been processed and the requirements of the any other legislation have been adhered to. On the basis of the documents submitted by the shipping line – the company operating the vessel – SARS Customs decides whether there is a potential risk, whether cargo must be inspected and whether or not goods will be detained.
“These are standard Customs procedures that apply daily to any cargo vessel entering a South African port of entry. At this time the vessel.
“An Yue Jiang is at outer anchorage or off-port limits and therefore the cargo is not deemed to have been imported into South Africa yet,” he said.
Zabalaza: The Working Class Takes a Stand: Stop Chinese Arms Shipment to the Zimbabwean Regime!
We welcome and support the decision by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union for their workers neither to unload nor transport the shipment of Chinese-made armaments destined for Zimbabwe. This is a very encouraging sign of working class solidarity and internationalism, and we hope that such actions will indeed prevent this weapons consignment from reaching its destination – the Zimbabwean Defence Force.
At the same time, if the transport workers should fail, if President Robert Mugabe’s friends should find a way to bypass their resistance, all who stand with the Zimbabwean people should be ready to take a stand. Should the action taken by Satawu fail to prevent the armaments from being transported across South African territory to Zimbabwe, we call on all progressive elements across the country to intervene.
On 29 March 2008, parliamentary, presidential and local elections were held in Zimbabwe. This represented the last-gasp attempt of the Movement for Democratic Change to oust the 28-year-old regime of incumbent President Robert Mugabe, after a series of contestations since 2000 had resulted in an impasse.
The results of the parliamentary election show that the MDC has a narrow majority, but the results of the presidential election have been unaccountably delayed – presumably to allow Mugabe’s regime to reassert its authority over the masses of the people who have been brutalised and impoverished.
These facts are well known to the world’s progressive forces and to those who struggle for economic, social and political justice and equality. Now, in the hour of Mugabe’s ultimate betrayal, a new threat has arisen in the form of a shipment of Chinese armaments – including rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 assault rifle rounds and mortars – which, we fear with justification, will be used to forcibly suppress the democratic forces in Zimbabwe, and could lead directly to the murder of thousands of Zimbabwean people.
We are fully aware of the heroic resistance of the Zimbabwean people to racist domination and their successful defeat of the regime of Ian Smith in 1980. This resistance was both pluralistic via the guerrillas of both Zanla and Zipra, and multiracial – even if the majority of white “Rhodesians” chose to abandon their country after independence.
But we are equally aware of the grievous injury done to the cause of the people by Mugabe’s paranoia over the years – even if this paranoia was well-founded on apartheid attempts on his own life – and the dead of Matabeleland [1] and the displaced of Operation Murambatsvina [2] cry out for social justice.
Now, with the whole world watching – and the Southern African Development Community vacillating as predicted in its usual ineffective “engagements” – Mugabe has again stolen not only a march on the opposition, but the future of his people.
Journalists are being expelled and election observers have already fled the roost, allowing blood to flow in the streets unseen and unchecked: scanty reports now emerge of torture, murder, evictions, dispossessions and beating.
And now we have caught, red-handed, a Chinese shipment of arms to this regime, a regime that by all accounts is in terminal decline, with the highest inflation rate in the world and an elite that is already displaying the most grotesque elements of social decay imaginable.
We call on all progressive groups, organisations and individuals to physically prevent, whether peacefully or with necessary force, the shipment of arms to one of the world’s most despised pariah dictatorships. This call extends to the progressive world community to do whatever they can to bring this to public attention and to prevent possible massacre.
This could include:
* Targeting and putting pressure on South African Port Authorities not to allow the consignment to come onto land.
* Targeting South African, Chinese and Zimbabwean embassies and diplomatic missions with pickets, protests and other non-violent direct actions – against representatives of these governments – and not the ordinary citizens of these states. (We will not tolerate any actions against Chinese, Zimbabwean or South African people on the basis of their ethnicity and/ or nationality).
* Gathering intelligence about the whereabouts, planned route and mode of transport for the armaments, and publicising these.
* Blockading these routes in a non-violent manner with an eye to preventing the armaments from reaching their destination.
* Blockading the South African border with Zimbabwe should the armaments reach it.
* Supporting and sustaining the transport workers in their refusal to unload and transport the weapons.
* Defending the transport workers and anyone else who faces repression as a result of their efforts to stop the weapons reaching their destination.
* Link this struggle directly to global opposition to China’s campaign to suppress the Tibetan people and turn the 2008 Olympics into a replica of the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany – where nationalist sporting events were used as a cover for gross human rights abuses.
What we know:
* A Chinese ship, An Yue Jiang – owned by the parastatal Chinese Ocean Shipping Company – carrying armaments destined for Zimbabwe has anchored at Durban harbour.
* The shipment contains almost three million rounds of ammunitions for small arms and AK-47s, about 3 500 mortars and mortar launchers, as well as 1 500 rockets for rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and is valued at R9,88million.
* The ship’s cargo documentation was allegedly finalised just 3 days after the Zimbabwean elections.
* The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union has refused to unload or transport the arms consignment, although this does not mean someone else won’t.
* About 10 Chinese soldiers armed with pistols have been seen with Zimbabwean military officials in Harare.
THIS SHIPMENT WILL BE STOPPED BY THE DIRECT ACTION OF THE PEOPLE!
MUGABE WILL FALL! BUT WE, THE AFRICAN PEOPLE, WILL STAND IN HIS STEAD!
Footnotes:
[1] The Matabeleland Massacre, between 1982 – 1983 was an attempt by ZANU-PF on the ethnic cleansing of people of the Ndebele ethno-political group living in the Matabeleland region. An estimated 20 000 people were murdered.
[2] Known in English as Operation Drive Out Trash, Operation Murambastvina was a large scale government campaign to forcibly clear out slum areas, effectively displacing an estimated 2.4 million people. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Murambatsvina
http://www.zabalaza.net
by Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front – ZACF Thursday, Apr 17 2008, 11:29pm
zacf@zabalaza.net address: Postnet Suite 47, Private Bag X1, Fordsburg, 2033, South Africa phone: 00 27 (0) 82 334 6665 or 00 27 (0) 84 946 4240
Stumble It!
Solidarity is needed and an obligation.