US star Glover to grace Numsa congress
AMERICAN actor and political activist Danny Glover, who is in South Africa this week was set to address Numsa’s national congress in Cape Town last night.
The union’s acting spokesman Patrick Craven said yesterday Glover would be the guest speaker.
About 1 077 voting delegates representing 346 870 National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) members had gathered for the national congress at the city’s International Convention Centre, where several ANC and union leaders, including Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and former Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, delivered speeches.
Glover is famed for roles like Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon series as well as The Color Purple, To Sleep with Anger and Angels in the Outfield.
Less well-known is his role in student politics while attending San Francisco State University (SFSU), where he became a member of the Black Students’ Union.
The union, along with the Third World Liberation Front and the American Federation of Teachers, collaborated in a five-month student-led strike to establish a Department of Black Studies. The strike was the longest student walkout in US history, according to media reports.
It not only help found the first Department of Black Studies at SFSU but also the first School of Ethnic Studies in the United States.
It was in 1999, a few years after working as a cab driver, that Glover decided to start a campaign to raise awareness about African American passengers being passed over for white ones.
Subsequently, a campaign called Operation Refusal was launched in which the licences of cab drivers who favoured white passengers over black ones were suspended.
His long history of union activism includes support for the United Farm Workers, Unite Here, and a number of service unions.
Addressing delegates earlier this week, Numsa President Andrew Chirwa criticised organisations such as Afriforum for being “quiet when their members put a black man in a coffin”.
He was referring to the highly publicised court case after a video went viral on Facebook last month showing one man trying to put another in a coffin with a threat of setting the coffin on fire.
“They [Afriforum members] are quiet when their racist members beat up and abuse our members on their farms. The struggle against racism for us is in totality with the struggle against oppression and we will not be apologetic about that.”
Craven said the gala dinner, at which Glover would deliver the keynote address, was scheduled to start at 6pm yesterday.