PUDEMO STATEMENT – 16 JUNE 2014 IN MOCKERY OF THE STUDENTS MASSACRED ON JUNE 16 IN SOWETO 16 June 1976 is the date that South African student s took to the streets to protest an injustice and they were massacred mercilessly by the apartheid regime. The regime, in a quest to control black people, had decreed that the language of instruction in the classroom should be Afrikaans. Many were the atrocities perpetrated by the apartheid regime, including torture and murder, but the students found the prescribed tool of expression which was the language of instruction to be so intolerable that they made it their rallying point on that fateful day when live ammunition was sprayed indiscriminate on them. In defiance against the prescription of the manner and language in which they were forced to express themselves, they chose death. There is nothing more demeaning and enslaving than that another should prescribe the manner of expression that the other is then forced to assume. Not only is the language of expression of great importance, but the honesty and integrity of expression also plays a great role in people defining themselves as conscious beings, hence also the intolerable act of censorship. Today is the very day when that terrible day of 1976 will be remembered in South Africa. It is a proud day because a people stood up in defiance against being forced to express themselves in a scripted fashion. They insisted on expressing g themselves on their terms. Today there are eleven officially recognised languages in South Africa for the very reason that if there is to be freedom, people should express themselves, as fluently as possible, in a language of their choosing. On 2014 worker’s day, when workers gave the People’s United Democratic Movement President Mario Masuku and SWAYOCO Secretary General an opportunity to express themselves, - for the very reason that PUDEMO has been in the forefront in fighting for the rights of workers – the Tinkhundla regime rounded them up and threw them behind bars. The two were indicted on expressing themselves out-off of the prescribed script. Their expression at the May Day (worker’s day) neither posed danger, nor molested the norms and culture of the Swazi people, but such has never been the consideration of the Tinkhundla Regime but it has ever been obsessed with the protection of the status quo of accumulation by mostly the Dlamini royal family and their friends. Today Mario Masuku and Maxwell Dlamini have spent 43 days at the Zakhele Remand Centre because they dared express themselves in their own terms. Ever since the supposed independence of Swaziland, dissenting views have been met with brutality. Today, the 16 June 2014, Masuku and Dlamini will be appearing in court for the crime of daring to express themselves in the best way they know how. The very constitution, which Human Rights Lawyer Thulani Maseko has accused of unconstitutionality, expressly awards the freedom for people to express themselves unhindered, but in Swaziland freedom of expression is only allowed when it is within the unofficial prescribed script which is the very ideology that the apartheid regime was selling to the South African students at that time, where expressing oneself as a black person was mandated to the Bantustan and a number of similar institutions of contempt which took their orders from Pretoria. The Swazi Tinkhundla regime has a long recorded history of violating the three top freedoms which are freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of association. When Masuku and Dlamini appear in court today it will be on the crime of insisting on expressing themselves freely. PUDEMO refuses to be associated with the game of mockery that Tinkhundla regime is playing on the international community and gullible Swazis. It refuses buying into the “pretty please” melodramatics that the Tinkhundla regime recently displayed at the Labour Organisation (ILO) - and has been displaying on many other international forums - when for the umpteenth time it promised to get its house in order. It is through bitter experience that PUDEMO has become aware that even if Tinkhundla regime can amend the said pieces of legislation, it would not abide by them as clearly evidenced through the case that will be heard in the High Court today where the two have been arrested for expressing themselves, which is a freedom guaranteed by the constitution. If the regime can violate the supposedly cornerstone of legislative authority which is the constitution, surely it wouldn’t think twice of violating an Industrial Relations Act. Issued by: People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO) Contact: Brian Ntshangase (Spokesperson) Email: ntshangase.b@hotmail Phone: +268 785 23 678 : +27 81 091 2364
Posted on: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 12:58:21 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015