Cambridge Common

Some background: In Soweto, one of the groups I've been working with is called the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee [SECC], which is a social movement that formed five years ago in response to the privatization of the government's electricity services, which left most poor people unable to afford electricity. Right now the SECC struggle focuses on the same issue with the privatization of water, and the tactic in each struggle is to simply reconnect (repeatedly if necessary) water and electricity for free (illegally) for people who need it. I will attach a version of a short article that I co-wrote for the SECC newsletter, which explains the seriousness of the water issue (mind you, it is in SECC language).

Yesterday afternoon I was called by a member of SECC, who let me know that a confrontation had arisen between, on the one side, the electric company (Eskom) and the police, and, on the other side, a group of community members and activists from the SECC. Eskom—whose (domestic) shareholders fill the ranks of the ruling ANC—had decided that in the run-up to the local election, they would disconnect the electricity connection from Trevor Ngwane, the lead SECC organizer's house; Trevor and four other SECC members are for the first time contesting seats against the ANC in the local government election, so it seemed ironic that the company would choose now, after five years, to forcefully disconnect. I was asked to transport people
and film what was happening, which I did. When I arrived, the Eskom employees had already been to the house twice—once without the correct paperwork, and once, they decided, without enough police protection.

You know, I have always been trying to think about issues of social justice in terms of the larger theoretical and political issues at stake, but sometimes it feels contradictory; i.e. only slightly-relevant or elusive theoretical stances on issues of obvious basic living—like people's right to quality food, shelter, work, and education. However, when the police open fire on people for demonstrating—loudly, but non-violently demonstrating,—when you film them aiming guns and firing rubber bullets at people who are begging them to stop, when they shove and hit elderly dissenters, when they perform "crowd control" by firing into people's homes, and—I guess this is what I'm feeling the most—when you look up from filming all this and realize that you are the one on the opposite end of a shotgun barrel that is firing rubber bullets… That's when all that theory hits home in a deep way. That's when you see once and for all, without a shadow of doubt, that the police—working public security for a private corporation and the political party that constitutes at least part of that corporation—is nothing more than a mechanism of repression, to stop dissent, to maintain unlivable conditions that make other people lots of money, and not, by any means, to serve and protect.

On this Indymedia South Africa link-- http://southafrica.indymedia.org/ --is a very edited 1.3 minute take from the footage I shot yesterday. It leaves out a lot: the demonstration that followed the disconnection, people bleeding and being taken to the hospital, people in solidarity supporting one another after the police left; and I should note that I also didn't catch on tape the worst of it. But at least it gives a feel. Peace everyone, and in case you're worried, don't be; I'm in good hands.

Dave