Socialist Party of Zambia President Fred M’membe Threatened with Arrest

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch.

The Communist Party of Swaziland (CPS) reported on February 28 that the police force of Africa’s last absolute monarchy has shot and disappeared one of their members, Mvuselelo Mkhabela, age 21. “Comrade Mvuselelo was badly shot at and dragged to the police van helplessly and his whereabouts and condition is unknown and the armed to teeth police force continued its attacks to the protesting community,” CPS tweeted. Reportedly this abduction happened at around 13:00h (local time) on February 28.

This latest act of violence by the Swaziland police force comes amid an uptick in police repression of recent protests against the “farcical” parliamentary elections. CPS claims that the elections are a farce because the parliament itself is under the control of the monarchy, so the electoral process constitutes “a tool used by the absolute monarchy to sanctify King Mswati’s decision.” Mvuselelo himself was arrested and tortured earlier this month for protesting these elections, which are set to occur this August. Shortly after his arrest, Mvuselelo told Peoples Dispatch, “Often, when [police] invade communities, there is no one to defend the family or the individual from the wrath of the regime. This cannot go on.” Mvuselelo was abducted today in one such police invasion.

Communists in Swaziland have been involved in a struggle against the monarchy for decades. In recent months, the regime led by King Mswati III has intensified attacks against pro-democracy activists, including the assassination of human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko, threats against union leader Sticks Nkambule, torture of union leader Mbhekeni Dlamini, and more.

“Mvuselelo’s consciousness and commitment to the just course of the people of Swaziland fighting for democracy in the face of a militarized system of oppression presided by Mswati and his political elites remains unwavering,” CPS wrote in a tweet.

The world is shocked by the image of an 11-story residential building in Gaza collapsing because of a bomb dropped by the Israeli Defense Force, one of the most advanced armies in the world thanks to U.S. support. But in the United States, Andrew Yang, former presidential candidate and now candidate for mayor of New York City, proudly proclaims he stands with the “heroic people of Israel” who are under attack from the vicious, occupied Palestinians, who have no army, no rights and no state.

But as politically and morally contradictory as Yang’s sentiments might appear for many, the alternative world of Western liberalism has a different standard. In that world, liberals claim that all are equal with inalienable rights. But in practice, some lives are more equal and more valuable than others. 

In the liberal world, Trump is condemned for attempting to reject the results of the election and indicating he might not leave office at the end of his term. But as soon as Biden occupied the White House, one of his first foreign policy decisions was to give the U.S.-imposed Haitian president, Jovenel Moïse, a green light to ignore the demands of the Haitian people and the end of his term in February. He remains in office.  

In the liberal world, the United States that has backed every vicious right-wing dictator in the world since the Second World War, orchestrates coups, murders foreign leaders, attacks nations fighting for independence in places like Vietnam, trains torturers, brandishes nuclear bombs, has the longest-held political prisoners on the planet, is number one in global arms sales, imprisons more people than any other nation in the world, has supported apartheid South Africa and is supporting apartheid Israel—while championing human rights! 

In the liberal world, the United States can openly train, fund, and back opposition parties and even determine who the leader of a nation should be, but react with moral outrage when supposedly Russian-connected entities buy $100,000 worth of Facebook ads commenting on “internal” political subjects related to the 2016 election. 

In the liberal world, Democrats build on racist anti-China sentiments and the identification of China as a national threat, and then pretend they had nothing to do with the wave of anti-Asian racism and violence. 

In the liberal world, liberals are morally superior and defend Black life as long as those lives are not in Haiti, Libya, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, all of Africa, and in the jails and prisons of the United States.

In the liberal world, you can—with a straight face—condemn the retaliatory rockets from Gaza, the burning of a police station in Minneapolis, attacks on property owned by corporations in oppressed and exploited communities, attacks on school children fighting back against police in Baltimore, and attacks on North Koreans arming themselves against a crazed, violent state that has already demonstrated—as it did with Libya—what it would do to a state that disarmed in the face of U.S. and European aggression. 

And in the liberal world, Netanyahu is a democrat, the Palestinians are aggressors and Black workers did not die unnecessarily because the United States dismantled its already underdeveloped public health system. 

What all of this is teaching the colonized world, together with the death and violence in Colombia, Haiti, Palestine and the rest of the colonized world, is that even though we know the Pan-European project is moribund, the colonial-capitalist West is prepared to sacrifice everything and everyone in order to maintain its global dominance, even if it means destroying the planet and everyone on it. 

That is why Biden labels himself an “Atlanticist”—shorthand for a white supremacist. His task is to convince the European allies it is far better to work together than to allow themselves to be divided against the “barbarians” inside and at the doors of Europe and the United States.

The managers of the colonial-capitalist world understand the terms of struggle, and so should we. It must be clear to us that for the survival of collective humanity and the planet, we cannot allow uncontested power to remain in the hands of the global 1 percent. The painful truth for some is if global humanity is to live, the Pan-European white supremacist colonial-capitalist project must die.  

This article was originally published in Black Agenda Report.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was awarded the U.S. Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.  

Editor’s Note: Light editing conformed this Peoples Dispatch article to TF’s style.

On June 7, 2021, then Atlanta city councilwoman Joyce Sheperd introduced a city ordinance to lease 381 acres of public land to the Atlanta Police Foundation for a police training facility, then budgeted at $80.6 million dollars. “To her surprise,” writes the activist group Defend the Atlanta Forest, this ordinance was met with massive public opposition.

Leading up to a meeting on June 16, 2021 of Atlanta city council’s finance executive committee, Atlanta residents called in 3 hours and 41 minutes of public comments in the form of pre-recorded messages. Most comments were in opposition to the project. Protesters showed up at Shepherd’s house during the meeting itself, chanting “No Cop City! Keep Atlanta green!” The construction of the training facility would cut down part of Atlanta’s South River Forest, which provides environmental protection against flooding and extreme heat. Shepherd quickly arranged to have police cars stationed outside of her home in response to the peaceful protest.

On September 6, 2021, Atlanta residents called in over 17 hours worth of public comment regarding the new training facility ordinance—of the 1,166 comments called in, 70 percent of them were opposed to the project. The Atlanta City Council ignored the overwhelming opposition and voted 10-4 in favor of building what activists have dubbed “Cop City.”

Cop City, if built, will contain a mock city of Atlanta, where police will practice urban warfare tactics. The facility will also include a Black Hawk helicopter landing pad, explosive testing areas, firing range, and an emergency vehicle driving course. The price tag on the project has since ballooned to $90 million dollars—$60 million to be raised by the Atlanta Police Foundation and $30 million coming from the pockets of Atlanta residents.

Atlanta has one of the largest Black populations out of U.S. cities, with almost half of Atlanta residents being African American. 18.5 percent of Atlantans live in poverty, a rate which is higher than that national average of 11.6 percent. “Operation Shield”, another Atlanta Police Foundation project launched in 2007, developed a network of 11,000 cameras and license plate readers, rendering Atlanta the most surveilled city in the country.

Defend the Atlanta Forest, a group which has emerged as a leader of the opposition to Cop City, writes, “At over 300 acres, Cop City will be the largest police training facility in the United States and is slated to include a mock city where police will train with firearms, tear gas, helicopters, and explosive devices to repress protest and mass unrest, much as they did during the 2020 George Floyd protests. Cop City will hyper-militarize law enforcement, equipping police with a site to train for the suppression of Atlanta’s diverse Black and working-class communities.”

I'm not sure people know just how bad the "cop city" project in Atlanta would be. They want a whole mock city to practice police repression. pic.twitter.com/dWTPtO7VIb

— Read Jackson Rising by @CooperationJXN (@JoshuaPHilll) January 21, 2023

Who’s Backing Cop City? 

The anti-police brutality protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 caused a cultural shockwave, forcing the hand of even the most powerful corporations. Companies released statement after statement condemning police violence and racism. Some of those same corporations have become the most significant backers of Cop City.

Six days after the death of Floyd, shipping and retail giant Amazon tweeted, “The inequitable and brutal treatment of Black people in our country must stop.” Private logistics company UPS pledged millions of dollars towards racial justice organizations and historically Black universities following the killings of Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor. In 2020, Wells Fargo bank claimed that it had paused donations to police foundations.

All of these major corporations have become a part of the corporate network now backing Cop City. Other companies in this network include, but are not limited to, Inspire Brands (which includes Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin Donuts, and others), Waffle House, Chick-fil-a, JPMorgan Chase, and Home Depot. Many top executives at these companies have existing or former ties to police organizations across the country, including the Atlanta Police Foundation.

Activist Dies Fighting Cop City

Many resisting the construction of Cop City have labeled themselves “forest defenders,” in regards to the hundreds of acres of forest set to be destroyed through the building of the police training facility. One such forest defender, Tortuguita, was killed on January 18 during SWAT operations to clear up a protest camp in the Weelaunee Forest, which activists have been occupying for over a year to resist Cop City construction.

Georgia State Patrol (GSP) troopers claim that 26-year-old Tortuguita refused to exit their tent and shot at officers, injuring one. Police then responded by shooting and killing the activist. However, activists are demanding an investigation into the murder, as GSP claims there is no body camera footage and Tortuguita was not known to own or carry a gun.

Tortuguita’s death is not an outlier, and is in fact part of a pattern of criminalization of protest in Atlanta: “forest defenders” have been beaten, pepper sprayed, violently arrested, or otherwise attacked by police since June 2021.

There have been several protest actions following Tortuguita’s murder, including an explosive protest on Saturday, January 21, which right-wing officials slammed as “terrorism” due to incidents of property destruction. Infamous Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Green published a string of tweets demanding that “BLM” and “Antifa” protesters be labeled as “domestic terrorists.”

In 2021, I called for BLM and Antifa to be declared domestic terrorist organizations.

Tonight, with the violence and rioting in Atlanta, I’m renewing that call.

We must treat these thugs just like we treat any other group using political violence to intimidate their enemies. https://t.co/sqPHQeIDbj

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) January 22, 2023

One of the accusations hurled at protesters by authorities is an old one: That those demonstrating are in fact not from Atlanta or are not part of the communities most affected by policing. This “outside agitator” conspiracy is identical to accusations against 2020 anti-police brutality protesters: That those opposed to police violence are not genuinely oppressed or working class, instead, they were wealthy white people looking to stir up trouble.

In response, Atlanta activists have dug up an interesting piece of information about Cop City: Almost half—43 percent—of trainees at the facility would be recruited from out of state. A massive influx of police from across the country would convene in Atlanta to learn the latest tactics in police repression. These police trainees are the true “outside agitators,” activists say, and also a reason why anyone in the United States, not only those from Atlanta, has a vested interest in fighting the construction of Cop City.

the majority of trainees at #copcity would come from outside atlanta. the offense is translocal & so our resistance must be. pic.twitter.com/6xJSUg1kQr

— cop city will never be built (@MariahforAthens) January 24, 2023