Category Archives: John Minto

GPJA: Picketing South Africa 20 years on…

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17 August 2012
Media Release:

Picketing South Africa 20 years on…

For the first time in 20 years New Zealanders will picket a South African
government institution in Auckland tomorrow in protest at yesterday’s killing
of striking mine-workers by South African police.

The appalling scenes where up to 18 workers were shot dead are reminiscent of
the darkest days of apartheid – the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 and the
murder of black school children in Soweto in June 1976 come immediately to
mind.

The precise details of the killings are unclear but irrespective of this the
blame lies squarely with the ANC government which has been in power for 18
years while conditions have become worse for most South Africans.

The mineworkers strike and the struggle for decent housing, health, incomes
and education are the same struggles the ANC once supported but have turned
their backs on since gaining power.

They have betrayed the core principles of the historic “Freedom Charter” and
instead followed free-market economic policies which has meant little change
in the lives of the poorest South Africans while a wealthy elite, which
includes a few black faces now, has become obscenely rich.

Race-based apartheid has been replaced with economic apartheid.

New Zealanders didn’t protest on the streets to pave the way for a small
number of black millionaires to be created at the expense of the majority.

Last year in a withering attack on the ANC Bishop Desmond Tutu said the ANC
government was in some ways worse than the old apartheid regime and told South
African President Jacob Zuma that the day would come when people would pray
for the defeat of the ANC.

For many that day can’t come soon enough.

The picket will be held outside the new South African consulate in Auckland at
1 Kimberley Road, Epsom, Auckland from 2pm tomorrow, Saturday 18th August.

Included on the picket line will be some veterans of the anti-apartheid
struggle.

John Minto
GPJA Spokesperson
Ph (09) 8463173 (H)
Mob 0220850161
johnminto@orcon.net.nz

Sunday Argus: ‘No land, no home, no vote’

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http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=vn20090419064424658C843460

‘No land, no home, no vote’

By Susan Comrie

The new bank-bonded houses on Symphony Way in Delft are standing empty – bright signs invite people to “come in and have a look” – but around the perimeter the razor-wire fence sends a different message.

Just metres away, the Symphony Way pavement dwellers look on angrily.

They have spent the past 14 months living in makeshift homes along this small section of road in Delft after they were evicted from houses they illegally occupied in the N2 Gateway Project in February last year.

Earlier last week veteran New Zealand anti-apartheid activist John Minto, the man who helped spearhead protests against the Springbok tour there in 1981, flew out to stand in solidarity with the remaining 127 families who, 15 years after apartheid ended, say life is no better for them.

“Symphony Way is a microcosm of the bigger problem in South Africa,” says Minto. “We didn’t expect things to change overnight – we didn’t expect miracles.

“But when we were protesting during apartheid we didn’t do it to make a few black people rich. It’s a huge disappointment.”

The New Zealand activist has been a thorn in the side of several governments, leading protests against human rights abuses by the US and Israel, and attracting international attention with the 1981 anti- Springbok protest under the banner Halt All Racist Tours.

Standing outside the Symphony Way creche, where earlier last week Minto spent the night, he explains that rugby was never the issue – instead he and others saw a chance for New Zealand to “punch well above its weight” to ensure there was nowhere safe for the apartheid government to hide.

Now in his 50s, Minto is turning his ire on South Africa’s democratically elected government, claiming the poorest citizens are still living under a form of apartheid.

“In South Africa the links between politicians and business are very strong, but the links between politicians and people are very weak.

“Fifteen years is a bloody long time to prove yourself… If the ANC couldn’t deliver 15 years ago they should have told people ‘It will take 25 years before we can give you houses’ – at least that would have been honest.”

The people of Symphony Way have long given up hope that the ANC government or the DA-led city council will change anything.

While posters for political parties line most other roads in Delft, there are no signs of election promises past the heavily barricaded entrance to the Symphony Way settlement – residents have announced that they will boycott the elections.

“We refuse to vote,” says resident Kareemah Linneveldt. “We say, ‘No land, no home, no vote’.”

Of the many families who originally set up home in Symphony Way, some have accepted the city council’s offer of shacks in Blikkiesdorp, the temporary relocation area down the road in Delft.

However, many residents say they are terrified to move – just a few weeks ago, a 16-month-old baby was raped in Blikkiesdorp.

Minto’s decision to come to South Africa now to highlight the problems of Symphony Way may look carefully calculated, but he chuckles at the suggestion that the timing of his trip was more than co-incidence.

His decision to meet Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, whose criticisms of ANC president Jacob Zuma have made him persona non grata with the ruling party, makes that harder to believe, but Minto says he has “gone past worrying about giving deliberate slights to the ANC”.

“I hope to be here as an observer, but also as someone willing to say that the emperor has got no clothes on – that the emperor is almost naked.”

For the residents of Symphony Way, that realisation came a long time ago.

* This article was originally published on page 8 of Sunday Argus http://www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4942312 on April 19, 2009

Mercury & SABC: Shack-dwellers ask Minto to revive protest era

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http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=4943041

Shack-dwellers ask Minto to revive protest era

April 20, 2009 Edition 2

Mercury reporter

A former anti-apartheid activist, New Zealander John Minto, has been approached by the Durban-based shack-dwellers’ organisation, Abahlali baseMjondolo to help shack-dwellers in South Africa by talking to the government on their behalf, according to the SABC news website.

Minto attended Abahlali’s meeting in Durban at the weekend.

The organisation invited Minto to witness the plight of shack-dwellers and use his international clout to assist them in getting proper houses.

Abahlali chairman Sbu Zikode said Minto had been asked to use tactics that were used by New Zealanders to put pressure on the apartheid regime to abandon the system.

Minto had been roped in to intervene since the government “had a tendency to engage better with international dignitaries”, Zikode said.

Minto has said he wants to see first-hand what the experience of South African shack-dwellers is after 15 years of democracy. He said many people in New Zealand were disappointed with South Africa because during apartheid the quest was for freedom, but in post-apartheid only a few had enriched themselves.

About the request by Abahlali to use apartheid era tactics in helping their cause, Minto said he would have to consult his fellow countrymen.

Meanwhile, the KwaZulu-Natal Housing Department said it respected Minto for the role he played in the demise of apartheid, but his comments had limitations.

Spokesman Lennox Mabaso said it would have been impossible for the government to eradicate the damage that took 350 years to create.

He also criticised Minto’s comments, saying it was premature for him to make comments about housing progress having only been in the country for less than a week.

This entry was posted in John Minto, Mercury Reporter, SABC on by .

John Minto to Visit Abahlali baseMjondolo on Saturday, 17 April 2009


John Minto is honoured by the militant poor, Kennedy Road, 17 April 2009

Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement
Friday, 17 April 2009

John Minto to Visit Abahlali baseMjondolo on Saturday, 17 April 2009

In January 2008 John Minto, a militant anti-apartheid activist from New Zealand, shocked the ANC by announcing, in an open letter to Thabo Mbeki, that he would refuse, on principle, to accept an award from the ANC. John stated clearly that:

Receiving an award would inevitably associate myself and the movement here with ANC government policies. At one time this may have been a source of pride but it would now be a source of personal embarrassment which I am not prepared to endure.

John’s open letter to Thabo Mbeki is online at: http://abahlali.org//////node/3248

Abahlali were deeply impressed by John’s decision, a decision which very few people would take for the benefit of shack dwellers, the poor and all those who were meant to benefit from the struggle waged by the Halt All Racist Tours movement against apartheid South Africa. We salute that struggle as we salute John’s refusal to accept an award from a small black elite who only enrich themselves at the expense of the poor.

The question of honour is very important. While so many rush to be honoured by a system of oppression, often as a reward for silence or complicity, John took a clear position that such honour is in fact shame. We have often said that our struggle has to put the last first. At the very practical level this means that the needs of those who suffer the most must be given the most urgent priority – we need toilets, and houses and clinics before stadiums. It is a kind of madness to build an unnecessary stadium in a city where children still die from diarrhoea and in shack fires.

But the need to turn the world upside down so that it stops being mad is not only a question of practical priorities. We also need to turn the meaning of honour upside down. Sometimes there is real honour in being arrested, beaten, being fired from your job or slandered. Sometimes there is real honour in earning the respect of the most humble people, the forgotten people, those who do not count in the eyes of the system. This was true when people like John stood up to apartheid. It is still true now.

John Minto recognised that it would be a shame to be honoured by the same ANC that has betrayed the poor. We appreciate and recognise his initiative in denying the award from the ANC in solidarity with the poor and with the struggles of the poor. In Cape Town he has already been welcomed and honoured by the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign. He spent a night on the pavement with the shack dweller’s of Symphony Way who are facing eviction to one of the notorious ‘transit camps’. In Durban he will be welcomed and honoured by Abahlali baseMjondolo. We are told that in Johannesburg he will be welcomed and honoured by the Anti-Privatisation Forum.

In this world we must all make choices. Sometimes those choices are hard. Sometimes they carry a heavy price. John has made a clear choice. He has a clear position on which side he is on in the struggle for a world where honour and shame are turned the right way round.

John will attend the regular Abahlali Saturday meeting in the Kennedy Road settlement at 12:00 noon. This meeting, like all of our meetings, is open to all, including the media.

(Our comrades who are not in Durban and cannot attend this meeting might like to know that at 2:00 p.m. on the same day Abahlali baseMjondolo will be featured in an Irish radio programme. It can be heard online at http://www.rte.ie/radio1/saturdayview/)

For more information and comment on John Minto’s visit to Abahlali baseMjondolo please contact:

S’bu Zikode: 083 547 0474

Zodwa Nsibande: 082 830 2707

Short Bio on John Minto

John Minto is visiting to South Africa for two weeks from 12 to 26 April.

John is a political activist who was spokesperson for HART – the New Zealand Anti-Apartheid Movement during the 1980s and was the public face of the campaign to stop the 1981 Springbok tour to New Zealand. (He was arrested numerous times during the protests and has a medium-sized criminal record!)

Early last year there was public controversy when he wrote a letter to Thabo Mbeki rejecting a nomination for the Companion of OR Tambo Award as he said the anti-apartheid campaign was not waged simply to enrich a few black millionaires but to bring economic and social change to benefit all South Africans (M&G article).

He is very critical of the economic policies of the ANC, in particular it’s reliance on free-market strategies which wherever they have been applied bring wealth to the few at the expense of the many.

After completing a physics degree John trained as a high school teacher and has taught most of the last 25 years. However he currently works for Unite Union – a trade union for low-paid workers in New Zealand. He is a spokesperson for Global Peace and Justice Auckland and the Quality Public Education Coalition.

It is John’s first visit to South Africa. The main purpose of the visit is to see first hand the development of post-apartheid South Africa and meet with groups struggling for a better deal under ANC policies. For example he will visit groups such as Abahlali baseMjondolo (the Durban-based shack-dwellers movement), Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, the Anti-Privatisation Forum and meet with union representatives and activists in Ditsela (Development Institute for Training, Support and Education for Labour). He will address two university-based seminars – in Durban and East London.

He will also be meeting with South African activists from the sports boycott era. John is 55 years old with two teenage boys and lives in Auckland.