ANC rep urges action for Lubicon cause

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The Lubicon Lake Cree are going through what early South Africa experience and should continue their fight, says a representative of the African National Congress.

Peter Mahlangu, said early South Africa was seized by outsiders and taken away.

"We were deprived of our own land by people who came to our country," he declared at a rally Oct. 21 marking the one year anniversary of a Lubicon blockade to lands near Little Buffalo that garnered international attention.

"What is important here today is that the people, the Lubicon people, are standing up for themselves. I think what has sustained us in South Africa is the knowledge that we are right, knowing that nobody has any rights to our land except us,"

Mahlangu added.

"That's why people have died, that's why our people have been imprisoned...the people of South Africa are not going to back down on their demands."

Black South Africa supports the Lubicon because he land belonging to them are exploited by the same renewable resource companies, he said.

But time is on the side of people who are oppressed and exploited because the oppressors will eventually back down, Mahlangu declared.

He believed that persistence will pay off in the end, using his people as an example.

"No government, no form of arms or whatever pressure is going to stop the people of South Africa from marching forward to a democratic non-racial South Africa."

The land the Lubicon lay claim to belong to them, Mahlangu said. "Nobody has any right to deprive them of what belongs to them."

The Lubicon must not stand alone, though, all Canadians must stand with them in their fight to get a just settlement, said Sammy Moghrabi, a representative from the Young Muslims of Canada, which has a membership of 250,000.

The federal government is "working to destroy the indigenous and underprivileged people." This must be fought, he said.

People should actively support the Lubicon because he predicted other ethnic minorities will soon be subjected to the federal government's harsh treatment.

The trouble is that people do not care, he said.

People would rather wait in line for a half-hour to watch a movie than attend a rally or write letters of support on behalf of the Lubicon band, lamented Moghrabi.

Other ethnic minorities should especially get involved since a lot come from countries that have had oppressive governments.

They should also realize that Lubicon rights to self-sufficiency are being violated, he said.

"That's why we're here, not just as Muslims but as human beings."

Moghrabi noted that "protests are the stepping stone to direct action, which we will be a part of."