BY DOROTHY FLYNN
The Pretoria High Court's November 10 rejection of famed anti-apartheid poet Mzwakhe Mbuli's appeal demonstrates the difficulty of dismantling apartheid, especially when the system's engineers and foot soldiers have been retained. Mbuli was convicted last year on trumped-up armed robbery charges. He has been in Jail since 1997. He must now go to the Supreme Court of Appeals to find justice.
Mbuli's appeal trial opened on November 9. Defence attorneys for Mbuli laid out the problem areas: lack of evidence; lack of fingerprints; shoddy police work and contradictory evidence. The presiding judge criticised the prosecution's errors and omissions.
The next day, the judge insisted that the presence of a bag in Mbuli's car was the overriding evidence of guilt. While he claimed it was "hardly likely" that police collaborated to frame Mbuli, he admitted there were problems and granted immediate leave for appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals in Bloemfontein. The High Court was unwilling to assume responsibility for reversing a lower court decision.
Mbuli could not have asked for a better advocate than former MP Helen Suzman. Until the appeal, she remained a vigilant but quiet observer. At the High Court, paparazzi and reporters fluttered around the widely respected 84-year-old woman, who was for 15 years a critic of apartheid from within South Africa's white parliament. Suzman told reporters she had confidence that Mbuli was an innocent victim of a conspiracy because he had threatened to blow the whistle on drug trafficking officials.
Suzman dismissed the notion that her interest in Mbuli was extraordinary, and said she has been visiting people in prison for 30 years; what she does for Mbuli is no different than what she has done for others. She rejected the idea that it was "hardly likely" that police had conspired against Mbuli. In a letter to the editor of the Weekly Mail and Guardian, she asked, "Why [is it 'hardly likely'] ... when, as we have recently observed, the police are capable of gross brutality?"
South Africans are up in arms about a "training" film of police allowing dogs to viciously attack black people in custody. The film showed six officers laughing and inciting the dogs to get the "kaffirs". Mbuli first brought to light the travesty of police dogs being set upon black suspects when he was in prison, reporting that many arriving inmates had suffered dog bites.
This racist police mind set is shared by many in the corrections department. Until he was recently removed from his post, the head of the prison in which Mbuli is being held said inmates belonged in a game reserve. The prison head once refused to allow Suzman to visit Mbuli. Suzman noted when Nelson Mandela was jailed in Robben Island under apartheid, she visited whenever she wanted, but under the rule of the ANC's President Thabo Mbeki, she had to make an appointment to visit Mzwakhe Mbuli.
Suzman's public involvement case has prompted renewed coverage of Mbuli's case. The London Guardian has published a story. In Soweto, the Sunday World ran an editorial urging a full investigation of Mbuli's charges of drug trafficking among government officials.
A fund raising event for Mbuli's Supreme Court appeal was held on November 25 in Liverpool, Britain, at The Picket. A wide array of artists joined the festivities. Events are to continue in a variety of places around the world to show solidarity for Mbuli.
The rejection by the High Court of Mbuli's appeal was shocking and disappointing to many, including Mbuli's family. Two of his children had expected he would celebrate their birthdays with them and had to instead go to see him again in prison.
As Mzwakhe Mbuli promised on his recent "greatest hits" album, Born Free but Always in Chains, he will be back. He has said from the start that the truth will set him free. Some supporters who have been anxious to see Mbuli free have also harboured the fear that if Mbuli was released without the conspiracy that put him behind bars being exposed he would be forever in danger. It is time for the chains to come off once and for all.
For information about the Mbuli's case, coming events and ways you can lend support, visit the Free Mzwakhe Mbuli web site at <http://www.mzwakhe.org>. Email <campaign@mzwakhe.org> or phone +1 617 876 3169. Mzwakhe is glad to get mail at <mzwakhe@mzwakhe.org>.