Johannesburg - Liv Shange, the left-wing activist the ANC blames for the “anarchy in Marikana”, may not be able to return to South Africa with her three children in time for the new school term.
Shange, a Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) and Workers and Socialist Party (Wasp) leader, is due back in the country on July 14, the day before schools across the country re-open.
She is is currently in Sweden visiting her parents with her children – five-year-old daughter Nomanyano, son Nila, 8, and her husband’s daughter from a previous relationship, 14-year-old Naledi.
The Sunday Independent reported last week that ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe had sparked a diplomatic row when he accused Shange of being behind the “anarchy in Marikana”, a reference to her role in organising strikes in the platinum and gold mines of North West and on the West Rand of Gauteng.
Home Affairs is probing the legality of her residence status in South Africa, and may not allow her back into the country.
But this week Shange described the move as “the ANC’s low attempt at scapegoating me and the DSM to undermine the support for workers’ struggle and independent organising”. The DSM described the move as an “abuse of state resources for the purposes of a political witch-hunt”, and urged the government to stop repression of trade union, community and political activists.
In response to the probe, DSM and Wasp leaders have asked people to sign a petition to force the government to allow her back in the country.
The organisations want Shange to be issued with a spousal visa and allowed to apply for permanent residence.
“Liv is only the latest in a long line of scapegoats the ANC government, the SA Communist Party and some Cosatu leaders have blamed for the heroic uprising of the mineworkers last year,” said DSM general secretary and Wasp co-ordinating committee member Weizmann Hamilton.
“Mantashe apparently believes that the mineworkers are incapable of apprehending their own conditions and acting to free themselves from slavery,” he said, accusing the ruling party’s secretary-general of invoking xenophobia as part of a political attack.
Hamilton said fingers had been pointed at expelled ANC Youth League president Julius Malema, a Mpondoland vigilante mafia, sangomas, and now the DSM and Wasp.
“To bar her from returning to what is now her home, and separate her from her children, who are all South African citizens and who need to return to school, would amount to a human rights abuse,” he said.
Hamilton said that almost two years had passed without any response to Shange’s appeal after her application to extend her spousal visa was rejected.
Several queries to Home Affairs on the status of Shange’s spousal visa also have not been attended to, according to Hamilton.
Home Affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa did not respond to questions about the department’s probe, and whether Shange would be allowed back into the country.