Radical Swedish activist may be denied re-entry to SA
LIV Shange’s husband, Xolani, and her three children are South African. A Swedish citizen, she has lived here for almost a decade, speaks fluent Zulu and calls this country home. But today at OR Tambo airport, she could be barred from entering South Africa with her children after having spent the school holidays visiting relatives in Sweden.
Shange is a persona non grata to ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe, owing to her radical socialist activism on the platinum belt. Last month, Mantashe told a business forum that “people who are from far away . . . Swedish, Irish” were “a force behind the anarchy that is happening in the platinum industry”.
The “Irish” in Mantashe’s remark referred to Irish Socialist Party MP Tony Higgins, who attended the March launch of the Workers and Socialist Party (WASP) of which Shange is a member. WASP is a coalition of left-wing groups that will stand in next year’s elections.
“It’s absurd,” said Shange this week from Sweden. “The way I’ve been singled out is reminiscent of the way apartheid politicians used to blame foreign whites for corrupting the ‘poor little miners’.”
The Department of Home Affairs has been conducting a “security and immigration investigation” into Shange. It has also mysteriously lost the record of a spousal visa that Shange was granted after she married in 2004 — and insists she reapplies for a new one.
Liv met Xolani Shange at a socialist conference in Belgium in 2002. She came to South Africa in 2004, and graduated with a degree in Zulu and economic history at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2007.
Xolani said this week that he would consider legal action if Liv was denied entry. WASP spokesman Mametlwe Sebei said party members would gather to meet her at the airport today.
“We are calling it a reception or a protest, depending on whether Comrade Liv will be allowed to enter the country or not.”
Shange’s passport with her visa was stolen by a mugger in 2010. She gave the visa reference number to the department and applied to transfer it to her new passport. Three years later, she is still in limbo, with a new application pending.
Shange cannot rule out the possibility that her visa woes are because of bureaucratic bungling. “But I have good reason to suspect that it’s not just incompetence.”
Members of WASP, such as Sebei and mineworker Elias Juba, helped worker committees to organise strikes on the platinum belt last year.
At the time, Shange was conspicuous at gatherings because of being white, female and Zuluspeaking.