The Unlock Apartheid’s Jails Campaign, initiated by The Africa Fund, fought for the release of detainees and political prisoners in South Africa. This compilation of documents included a letter from Dumisani S. Kumalo, a coordinator of the campaign, as well as various newspaper articles attached by him that detail the success of the campaign on focusing the nation’s attention on South Africa’s prisoners of conscience.
On June 21, 1990, U.S. political prisoners sent a statement to Nelson Mandela, who, at the time, was the Deputy Vice President of the African National Congress. In the statement, US political prisoners compared the criminalization of radical and progressive movements for social and political change within the US to what was happening in South Africa as well as contrasted the ways in which racism presents itself in both countries. They seek to relate to Mandela as because of his political views and activities on behalf of the African American community, he was a political prisoner himself. Additionally, they express solidarity with those in South Africa, who like them, are fighting a struggle for freedom against racial oppression.
In this document, Angela Y. Davis begins with a discussion of unjust laws and black resistance. After historical analysis, Davis begins to discuss the judicial system and the political prisoner. This document ends with an examination of the struggle against fascism and racism.
“As the black liberation movement and other progressive struggles increase in magnitude and intensity, the judicial system and its extension, the penal system, consequently become key weapons in the state’s fight to preserve the existing conditions of class domination, therefore racism, poverty and war.”