ZACF Response to The Times of Swaziland

ZACF Response to The Times of Swaziland
by Jonathan - ZACF

Zabalaza DOES NOT claim bombing of police van

A letter to the editor of The Times of Swaziland, which carried an article in the January 15th edition falsely saying that the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation claimed responsibility for bombing a police van.

In The Times of Swaziland, Sunday Edition of January 15, under the headline "Zabalaza's claims of bombing police van" by Mduduzi Magagula it seems to us that he has misread the report when he says "Also shocking in the claims is that they stoned and petrol bombed a police vehicle in Manzini during a PUDEMO organised demonstration recently."

The newspaper quotes our website as saying “Our organisation together with PUDEMO comrades took control of a certain territory around Manzini and it is then that an armored police “hippo” wandered into comrade controlled territory, was stoned and petrol bombed,”

What Zabalaza actually said can be read at http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1462 :

"Countering Saturday's SWAYOCO demonstration in which the ZACF participated, the Royal Swazi Police fired warning shots and in the resulting chaos, arrested "MK" and seven SWAYOCO comrades. Last month, however, the shoe was on the other foot, when an armored police "hippo" that wandered into comrade-controlled territory found itself stoned and petrol-bombed."

Nowhere did we claim, nor have we ever done so, to have stoned or petrol bombed a police vehicle, or any other symbol of oppression for that matter. In fact the ZACF has consistently been against terrorism in favour of mass popular mobilisation. Which can be seen in our public statements on the September 11 WTC attacks (found online here: http://www.zabalaza.net/recent/wtc_911_attacks.htm), the bombings in Madrid (found online here: http://www.zabalaza.net/news/news02.htm) and in London (found online here: http://www.zabalaza.net/news/news03.htm).

Continued...