Free Mzwakhe Mbuli!
By Dorothy Flynn
Mzwakhe Mbuli, South Africa's beloved poet, musician and movement hero, has been incarcerated for 14 months. He is being held at the Pretoria Local Prison awaiting trial on January 22 for bank robbery. He has been denied bail five times, in several courts. In his cell, 65 prisoners share one toilet.
The ANC leadership seems to have forgotten this grassroots superstar, but the South African people have not. He is known to them simply as "uMzwakhe". Each court appearance has brought loudly supportive throngs. More than 2000 have visited him in prison.
It is no secret that apartheid justice was not buried with apartheid. In an interview from prison with the New York Village Voice, Mzwakhe reports that black prisoners in the "new" South Africa routinely arrive with dog bites.
An international alert has been sounded by International Freedom of Expression Clearinghouse on behalf of Mzwakhe. Initiated by International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee, this alert is also a demand that the government present the evidence on which its action against the poet is based. Index on Censorship's publication Banned Music lists Mzwakhe.
Known as "the people's poet", Mbuli describes himself as a musician who deals with truth. Truth has been hard on him lately. Fearlessly outspoken, he was a natural target under apartheid and subject to arrest for performing and recording.
Forced underground, Mzwakhe never stopped appearing at rallies and funerals, delivering poems to enthusiastic crowds. He poetically eulogised many felled by apartheid and the struggle within kwaZulu/Natal.
Mzwakhe didn't just create music and dub poetry. He mourned with the people. Because they memorised his poetry and constantly performed it, they kept his words alive everywhere. Even people who could not read became poetry fans.
Mzwakhe's poetry honours the amaZulu tradition of singing to ease the hearts of grieving people. Mzwakhe Mbuli murmuring in the background was — and continues to be — the sound of South Africa trying to recover. The people are comforted because they know he shares their grief, pain and rage.
Leaders sought out Mzwakhe because of his gift of words. Following the praise poem he performed for Mandela's inauguration in 1994, Mzwakhe tasted even greater success. The activist artist, a product of the Soweto uprising generation of "young lions", had arrived. Then things got crazy.
Mzwakhe continued to speak out against corruption and drugs, and protested against the political violence in kwaZulu/Natal. The Inkatha Freedom Party attempted to ban his 1996 album KwaZulu Natal. Later that year, someone fired nine bullets into his car in an attempt to assassinate him.
In 1997, Mzwakhe released a gospel album, uMzwakhe Ubonga uJehovah, which quickly went gold. But like people from kwaZulu/Natal province, the people's poet found his life and his nation's violent history tangled in treachery.
In 1997, Swazi officials brought him news of South African police involvement in drug corruption. Mzwakhe planned to discuss this information with Mandela. Then all hell broke loose.
Mzwakhe was lured to Pretoria by someone who claimed to have information about the attempt on his life. He met someone who handed him a bag said to contain the information and told him to leave. As he left, police pulled him over and arrested him for bank robbery. The evidence: money in the bag given to him.
Mzwakhe was denied bail and was later sent to the death row cells at the same maximum security prison where he was tortured and held in solitary confinement in 1988.
One of his cell mates was the man who murdered Mzwakhe's close friend, South African Communist Party head Chris Hani.
The government insists Mbuli's treatment is normal. Helen Suzman, an internationally respected former member of the South African parliament, has called his conditions "appalling".
The Campaign for Release of Mzwakhe Mbuli asks people to write to the South African government and to raise awareness of his case by urging community radio to play his music.
In kwaZulu/Natal, life remains mysterious and violent, especially for people who talk about the violence and mystery. In South African prisons, Amnesty International reports, there are still many deaths in custody. Crowded cells still hold people who, like Mzwakhe Mbuli, refuse to be silenced.
Send e-mail protests to <Mandela@anc.org.za>. To contact Mzwakhe, write to Mzwakhe Mbuli, Pretoria Local Prison, Private Mail Bag x45, Pretoria 0001, South Africa. The Campaign for Release of Mzwakhe Mbuli can be contacted at <Mzwakhe4u@aol.com> or write to PO Box 390058, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA, phone 1 781 440 9248.