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From Brixton to Black Lives Matter: international resistance to racism


Johannesburg-based broadcaster Jacqui Hlongwane spoke about her late mother, Jane Hlongwane, who was general secretary of the Steel Engineering and Allied Workers’ Union and a Black Consciousness Movement activist, and growing up in apartheid South Africa: “As black children, we had to go to a different school and even a separate swimming pool.” Hlongwane wanted to make a difference by working in the media. After graduating from Witswaterand – “a top South African university” – she got a job at a television station, where she became programme manager. However, she noted: “Since 1994, we have had black majority rule but the privileged white minority population are doing a lot better than black people.” Grassroots Black Left activist Sophia Mangera, born in South


INTERNATIONAL speakers came together to mark the UN’s anti-racism day in a webinar organised by the NUJ’s black members’ council, writes Marc Wadsworth. They included a senior broadcasting executive from South Africa, a Jamaican newspaper editor and a leading American civil rights lawyer. The 40 Years of Resistance: From the Brixton Uprisings to Black Lives Matter event heard from Pan Africanist Congress of Azania activist Lindiwe Tsele, aged 86, who recounted what happened in 1960 in Sharpeville, South Africa, when at least 69 mainly young black protesters were shot dead by police. The protesters were peacefully demonstrating against a law


that forced them to carry identity cards because they were black. “Many of them were shot in the back when they were fleeing the scene,” said Tsele. “Apartheid was an evil form of white supremacy used to oppress black people in their own country.“


Africa and politically active in Lewisham from her teens, spoke about the racist activity of the National Front that culminated in the 1981 New Cross fire in which 13 young black people were massacred. The huge Black People’s Day of Action march resulted. Police failed to find the murderers. Weekly Gleaner editor George Ruddock said The Voice, a British black national newspaper, was founded a year after the Brixton disturbances of 1981. Justice4Grenfell campaign co-ordinator Yvette Williams backed US speaker Vanita Banks, who answered a question by NUJ national executive council member Natasha Hirst. Hirst asked what white people could do to give solidarity to black people. Participants felt the establishment of a sustainable anti-racist


movement that would be a fitting tribute to fallen heroes should be explored. They were keen the incredible Black Lives Matter momentum should not be lost.


Rusbridger quits Irish media commission


ALAN RUSBRIDGER, a former editor of The Guardian, has left his role on Ireland’s Future of the Media Commission. This followed controversy


arising over his employment of a columnist who, it emerged, had supported the IRA. Roy Greenslade, a former senior editor at The Sunday


Times, The Sun and the Daily Mirror, recently revealed that he had supported the IRA’s use of violence during the Troubles and had


concealed the fact to protect his employment. Rusbridger said he was leaving the commission so as not to distract from its work.


Greenslade, a seasoned media commentator, left his role as honorary visiting professor of journalism at City, University of London, in March after his support for the IRA was made known.


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As black children, we had to go to a different school and even a separate swimming pool


Jacqui Hlongwane


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