AFTER BEING held in jail by the apartheid regime for seven months Moses Mayekiso, general secretary of the Metal and Allied Workers Union (MAWU), and four other community leaders from Alexandra -Mzwanele Mayekiso, Mdakane and Obed Bapela — have been committed for trial on 3 August at the Rand Supreme Court. They are charged with high treason — a charge that carries a possible death sentence.
The 160 page indictment against the five asserts.
throw, usurp or the authority of the state wild scarnious defy or subvert the authoritv of the state. I hey are acAlexandra and render the area ungoverestablishing what the state itself calls 'organs of people's power'.
These organs peopeople's courts, and street lock and area committee Other accusations include that they campaigned the Alexandra town council, 'so-called colPaul Ishabalala, Richard laborators'; and that they organisea d and changed street names.
This is the first time the charge of treason has been brought acaist activists in. volved in building organisafact that one of those on trial is the general secretary of a major union within COSATÚ, the Confederation of South African Trade Unions, also symbolises the strong ana ever-growing links between the trauc union movement and the community-based people's Comitees.
Messages of protest from the labour movement in this country can play an ing the of this for : live. but the AEU the the case of Moses an between the AEU MAWU The such al. altci organising a special meeting to near a representative oi the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU)
meeting, SACTU representative explained the repression being meted out against unions in South Africa.