SOURCE: DEBATE mailing list
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'Hammer Week' for Phiri community activists

A bombardment of litigation against community activists is scheduled for
this week beginning 3 November. In what is being dubbed 'Hammer Week' by
the legal team representing the accused, 16 (sixteen) residents of Soweto
will be placed on trial in separate cases for fighting for the basic
provision of water services. Each of the seven cases refers to the
uprising in Phiri, Soweto, in early September this year against
Johannesburg Water's installation of prepaid water meters. Despite
intimidation, the arrests, detentions and trials, this struggle against
the technology of prepayment for water is continuing in Phiri.

Interdict invokes Apartheid era police state

The trials scheduled for this week are the outcome of overriding
democratic freedoms for the water company's narrow interests. Most of the
charges brought against those protesting the imposition of the prepaid
meter system were fabricated by a draconian interdict granted to
Johannesburg Water (JW). The city's water utility company was able to
enforce its programme by convincing the High Court that the democratic
right to express dissent and protest had to be suspended. Under the
interdict, any person found within 50 meters of JW's construction sites in
Phiri who expresses opposition to the laying of the pipes and meter
installation will be deemed to be interfering with the work of the
company. Whether raising their concerns by querying JW personnel or by
collectively protesting JW's new regime of water consumption, Phiri
residents were suddenly possible targets of arrest by the police and
private security personnel.

Banning order/bail conditions

Posted as high as R1.200, bailing the 16 accused out of jail was only made
possible by desperate fundraising on the part of the Anti Privatisation
Forum and only after many activist were held for over two week without a
bail hearing. But once out of jail, the bail conditions further restricted
them to a state of virtual house arrest. Now without the freedoms to join
meetings concerning JW's programme or to participate in any actions
against it, the intended effect of the bail conditions was to suppress any
disruption of construction works. The severity of these conditions imposed
on the accused forebodes a longer term quietening of protest. The
prosecutor's office appears intent on ensuring that the harshest sentences
are meted out. The signs are clear that 'democracy' in South Africa has
borrowed the methods of the past to enforce control of poor communities.

Prepaid water meters threaten the right to life

More than limiting free expression of dissent, JW's interdict intimidates
those struggling for the more fundamental right to water - the right to
life. Prepaid water meters endanger the lives of those consumers who are
unable to afford the tokens that open access to water. For this very
reason of commercialising people's need, prepaid water technology was
outlawed in the United Kingdom. In a country where the majority of the
population is poor, this legal precedent has to be followed as a matter of
necessity. Using legal processes to rather silence protest in Phiri strips
the law of its supposed independence, and erases the most basic provisions
of the Bill of Rights.

The Water Warrior Cases

State vs. Nthabiseng Monamati
3 November

State vs. Trevor Ngwane and Jerry Mphotho
4 November

State vs Mildred Mathobela and 4 others
6 November

State vs Thabo Madisane and Tshepo Mkwanazi
11 Novemeber

State vs. Derek Maredi and three others
13 Novemeber

Charges range from: intimidation, incitement, malicious damage to
property, assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, defeating the
ends of justice (by breaking court interdict), resisting arrest and
interfering with a police officer on duty. Some comrades face more than
one charge each. No fear. A luta continua!