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Justice
On Trial in South Africa
With the dawn of this new millennium, a new South Africa seeks to be born after a half-century's nightmare of racist violence and injustice. Ironically, on of the scales of justice lies the fate of Mzwakhe Mbuli, the immensely popular "People's Poet" and musician who symbolizes cultural resistance to the apartheid lie. Mbuli, who was arrested in late 1997 and found guilty in early 1999 of bank robbery, now languishes in Leeuwkop Maximum Security Prison while preparing a second appeal to be heard in the next few months at the Supreme Court of Appeals. What is at stake in this case, with its heavy political overtones, is not simply the fate of an internationally recognized cultural icon but the very credibility and integrity of the justice system in the new South Africa. The country's justice system under democracy will be tried and judged by the outcome of Mbuli's case in the eyes of not only his own countryfolk but of the world.
Mzwakhe Mbuli has been incarcerated
for more than three years, during which South Africa's most popular and
important theme was truth and reconciliation. The unique work of the Tru
Nobel laureate Tutu has described the TRC process of amnesty in exchange for full disclosure and admission of guilt in public as "restorative justice where the primary purpose is the healing of a rupture, the restoration of harmony, the redressing of the balances." The precedents of the recent Mbuli arrest, trial and initial appeal do not square with this image or with that of the integrity and history of the Peoples' Poet. It remains to be seen whether the African National Congress (ANC) government can establish law and order in a nation over which for more than 50 years the culture of racist violence and domination reigned as though might made right. Will further retributive justice be taken against those who perpetrated criminal acts of violence but who neither admitted guilt or responsibility nor sought TRC amnesty?
South Africa's former Minister of Justice Dullah Ohmar and the Rev. Barney Pityana, an Anglican priest who chairs South Africa's Human Rights Commission, visited Vancouver, Canada in late 1998. During their visit they admitted that the bureaucracies of the justice, police and other governmental institutions had been slow and difficult to change from the apartheid ethos of racist power and control to one of equitable and nonracial democracy. Indeed, corruption and violence persist throughout society. The ANC struggles to nurture instruments of government in every field and region, which are locally controlled for the first time, after a half-century of central authoritarian and minority rule of a police state.
People began memorizing and performing Mbuli's poems in the early '80's before they were ever published or set to music. His first recorded album, "Change Is Pain," included these telling titles: Behind the Bars, Now is the Time, The Day Shall Dawn, What a Shame, The Last Struggle. Released in 1985, the album and Mzwakhe were banned, and he was forced to flee from his home and family and live underground. Later detained without trial, he wrote his second album of music, entitled "Resistance Is Defence," while in solitary confinement, without benefit of pen or paper. As critic Christgau notes, Mbuli's poetry and music "were launched when apartheid was a fortress and Afro-pop barely a rumour." As the informally named "Peoples' Poet," he became the cultural embodiment of the political struggle which the United Democratic Front openly and the ANC covertly waged - at first with P.W. Botha's and later with F.W. DeKlerk's apartheid regime, characterized by violent intransigence and increasingly pervasive "dirty tricks." These tricks included sending maiming letter bombs to expatriates, and blowing up the offices of the Southern Africa Council of Churches - while blaming the ANC for these actions!
As internal pressures mounted and international sanctions and other political and economic forces finally increased to end apartheid, Mzwakhe Mbuli became head of the important Cultural Affairs desk of the ANC during the turbulent late 1980's and early '90's. No doubt there were some people who disagreed with his decisions in a role which was guaranteed to not please everyone. In 1989, Mbuli was filmed and featured in South Africa in the Vancouver written and directed documentary "Songololo: Voices of Change." Co-starring actress, musician and dancer Gcina Mhlope, who is also from Johannesburg, the OXFAM-Canada initiated Canadian NFB/Telefilm production vividly portrays the importance of culture in the anti-apartheid struggle. Mhlope and Mbuli were both deeply impressive, effusive and magnetic at the Vancouver world premiere in October 1989, displaying infectious humour and hope in the face of their pain.
With the release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990, the freedom and fame of the People's Poet expanded rapidly. He recorded a series of albums with EMI including a 1994 album with songs of reconciliation. A greatest hits album, "Born Free but Always in Chains," was released by EMI in 1999 including also some new material recorded in prison. At his zenith, by invitation he performed a tribute, "Izigi" (Footsteps), introducing Mandela at his Presidential Inauguration. He had earlier released the extremely popular "Kwazulu Natal" album in 1996, pleading for an end to the continued Zulu on Zulu carnage between ANC members and Gatsha Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) supporters. This stop-the-violence call was not taken kindly by some members of the IFP; at one point there was a request for banning of the album's title song. Later that year, Mbuli's car was sprayed with nine bullets in the third attempt to assassinate him. To date, no one has been charged with the crime. Some people believe Mbuli's complaint about police failure to charge anyone with the crime led to his arrest. In 1997, Mbuli also released the award winning "Mzwakhe Ubonga Ujehova" (Mzwakhe Praises God) featuring songs on Christian gospel themes - but then the sky fell.
On October 28, 1997 Mzwakhe Mbuli was arrested in Pretoria with two others on charges of bank robbery. Denied bail on five occasions, ostensibly for risk of flight, he was held first in Pretoria Central Prison, then in Pretoria Maximum Security Prison for the ensuing 15 months. Held in a cell with 64 others with one toilet and one flush bucket of water, Mbuli was left to rot in what Helen Suzman described as "appalling conditions." Suzman, the 84-year-old white liberal grande dame of South African politics - who was for a long time apartheid's sole opponent in Parliament and until recently was a member of the Human Rights Commission - has visited Mbuli faithfully every month since his arrest in 1997 and proclaims his innocence. Mbuli has likened her to a second mother. Others held in cells near Mbuli's at Pretoria Central Prison when he was arrested included Eugene de Kock and Janus Walusz, who were both guilty of multiple apartheid killings. In fact, Mbuli was put in the same cell as de Kock, who was the admitted murderer of Mbuli's close friend, Chris Hani, another hero of the liberation movement. As for Mbuli being a flight risk, he had numerous opportunities to flee the vicious apartheid system - including his Vancouver visit - but he never fled.
So the question is raised of why Mbuli's case has been treated so callously, given his enormous contribution to the liberation struggle and to the African National Congress itself. Perhaps his integrity itself is the answer. Mbuli has always been outspoken in his denunciations of injustice, inequity and corruption. Unlike many others, he didn't stop speaking out after the first democratic elections brought the ANC to power. It is alleged that he was informed by Swaziland sources of drug smuggling by high level ANC government officials and that, lacking the ability to meet directly with Mandela due to the President's travel schedule, he reported this information to government security representatives shortly prior to his arrest. He claims to have been framed, and the circumstantial evidence presented at the trial and the appeal provide sufficient latitude for the claim. Police allege they found a bag in the back of his car with cash and a weapon they allege were used in robbery of the First National Bank in Pretoria moments earlier. Mzwakhe denies having ever left the vehicle and claims he was lured to a rendezvous where he understood he would be given information in a bag relating to the attempt on his life. An unknown person threw the bag through a car window and disappeared seconds before police pulled the car over and arrested its occupants. Mzwakhe has no previous criminal record including the bogus grenade arrest and by South African standards would be considered an affluent individual with the proceeds of his recordings alone. What motivation would there possibly be for him to rob a bank in broad daylight?
The circumstances of the case are extremely questionable at best. The surveillance cameras in the bank were turned off on the day the robbery took place, which was an extremely fortuitous and rare coincidence in super security-conscious Pretoria. Only two of the six alleged witnesses to the event identified him, despite Mbuli's imposing stature and lack of disguise. There were Independent Complaints Directorate complaints filed about reports of police coaching and bribing witnesses to identify Mbuli. One newspaper headline read, "I Lied to Nail Mbuli!" One of the arresting police officers committed suicide the night before the trial began. Press reports have alluded to disaffection by Mbuli with the ANC given his callous bail and jail treatment, a charge he has denied even though no important ANC figure visited him prior to the trial. Indeed, the ANC took the unusual step of issuing a pretrial statement stating that Mbuli had received no special high level ANC visitors as some press had reported, and that it was relying fully on the judicial process. In a court system in which a recalcitrant and defiant P.W. Botha - found in contempt of the TRC - was deemed too old to go to prison (but healthy enough to remarry), the People's Poet rightfully asks: Why? He has also been critical of the TRC process and has baldly stated that it has failed to reconcile the nation to date. U.S.-based world music writer Ron Sakolsky, who interviewed Mzwakhe at Pretoria Prison, quoted Mzwakhe as saying, "The TRC work is not yet over, it cannot be over," in a Village Voice article "Apartheid Justice." He also quoted Mbuli as saying, "Life after Mandela won't be easy. The rot has started in government. South Africa is a country of two nations: the poor black nation and the rich white nation." Such honest critiques must not sit easily with those who prefer to speak of the "Rainbow Nation." The Mbuli family has suffered great personal and economic hardship as a result of his more than three-year-long imprisonment. His bank accounts have been frozen, and there has been an eerie silence from those in high places including the ANC with regard to his treatment. Still, there is no doubt that both within and beyond South Africa, Mzwakhe Mbuli remains the Peoples' Poet. Thousands of people have crushed against the visitors' glass at the various prisons to greet him. Although many South African musicians have been afraid to speak out publicly on his behalf, privately they attest to their belief in his innocence. Robert Christgau voices the shared concern of many within and outside of Azania: "Yet oddly, or perhaps not, Mzwakhe Mbuli is unique among South African musicians of his stature in his refusal to let up on the scrutiny" of social justice in his country. "But," Christgau continues, "we were naive enough to hope that the police state would wither away - and to believe that if democracy means anything, then the impossible balancing act the ANC is stuck with deserves and in fact demands artistic scrutiny!" To which all those who supported the anti-apartheid struggle for long years would respond - Amandla, for total scrutiny! Mzwakhe gave Christgau the title for his Village Voice piece: "Not Yet Uruhu." Some will remember the great birth of that African concept of freedom in the post-colonial struggles of the 1950's and '60's. Mbuli says South Africa is not yet free. He says it in his fifth language, in an extract from one of his recent fact-based poems written in Pretoria Central Prison, with typical simplicity and honest force:
Truth and reconciliation in accordance with the TRC process can greatly assist in restoring justice to a deeply wounded society. Let us pray that they will be finally discovered in the Mzwakhe Mbuli case.
The Rev. Tom Anthony is an Anglican priest who led Anglican Church of Canada delegations to Southern Africa in 1975 and 1980. Long involved with the struggle against apartheid, during his 1980 visit to South Africa, he was jailed with Bishop Desmond Tutu and more than 50 other church leaders. He helped find production funds for "Songololo" from Canadian churches and OXFAM-Canada and met Mzwakhe Mbuli while in Vancouver. He is a former staff member of the British Columbia Human Rights Commission and former chair of the Anglican Church of Canada Human Rights Unit. Related Links: For more information about this case, visit the Free Mzwakhe Mbuli web site at www.mzwakhe.org, which has an online Petition of Support.
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and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) chaired by the indomitable Archbishop
Desmond Tutu delivered its major policy report just two years ago, but
important follow-up work on specific cases has continued in the TRC's
Amnesty Committee. In fact, in September 2000 a former South African security
police officer was granted amnesty by the TRC for disclosing the placement
by security police of two grenades in Mbuli's Soweto house in 1987 to
create "evidence" as grounds for arrest of Mbuli at 3 a.m. A long three
years later, Mbuli was acquitted of the charge, yet still had to withstand
ongoing harassment by the apartheid regime. In that interim period their
home had been bombed. Ironically, the current charges against Mbuli include
possession of a hand grenade that police allege they found in his vehicle.
The
Mzwakhe Mbuli case is a critically important test of whether justice will
be done and will be seen done in that diverse and beautiful land. Greatly
influenced as a young man in the mid-70's by the township youth revolution
in Soweto and elsewhere (like Steve Biko of "Cry Freedom" film fame and
countless others of their generation), Mzwakhe became the voice of the
oppressed. "As an artist he uniquely personifies an anguished, frustrated,
defiant yet compassionate expression of talent and soul, struggling to
help South Africa find its way free from racist power domination," comments
Robert Christgau, senior editor and music critic of the New York Village
Voice newspaper. Famous for his appearances at the 1980's funerals
of apartheid victims in the townships with his imposing six foot-four
frame and deep resonant Zulu baritone reciting simple but powerful poetic
phrases, Mbuli articulated Azania's pain and the commitment
to end racial oppression.
Concern
continues to build worldwide for due process in this case. The International
Committee on Writers in Prison of PEN, the world writers' association,
issued an alert in late 1998 calling for expressions to the South African
government for fairness and due process in the Mbuli case. This alert
has also been circulated worldwide by the Toronto-based International
Freedom of Expression Exchange Clearing House [IFEX], and there are supportive
and active groups in the U.S., Denmark, Australia, Canada, Spain, the
U.K. and South Africa.
