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Fatigues for Freedom Fighters: Victory to the Southern African People

By VVAW

When we were in Vietnam we wore our uniforms to fight for the wrong side. After fighting like hell to protect some rich bastard's rubber plantation, being treated like dirt in the military, and then returning to the streets to find the recruiters' promises of jobs and good VA care were so much crap, many vets though back and discovered that we had more in common with the people we were fighting against—the Indochinese—than the rich bosses who sent us over there for their profits.

Ok, we wore those filthy rags for the rich once! But now we are going to take them and use them for something good. The people of South Africa are standing up against their racist government and fighting back against the many forms of oppression they face. The rich of this country have a big stake in keeping people working like slaves in the gold, diamond, coal and uranium mines where they make big bucks for the corporations.

Our fatigues are going to the Pan Africanist Congress which is a political organization of the South African people and has started guerilla warfare in that country. They have a small but growing army with basecamps in Tanzania where they are conducting training. VVAW supports the fight of these people for freedom and demands that the U.S. and the USSR get the hell out of their country. In fact, some of the first groups of armed fighters in South Africa are using fatigues that VVAW donated last year at African Liberation Day.

We call it the FATIGUES FOR FREEDOM FIGHTERS Campaign. We are collecting uniforms, boots and web gear to be turned over to a representative of the PAC at his year's African Liberation Day activities. The fatigues we're collecting, enough for a company, are a real material aid to them as well as a psychological lift because of the international support they represent.

The PAC does not have too much in the way of resources since they not sell out their struggle to either superpower—the U.S. or the USSR. The U.S. is only interested in supporting liberation struggles as a hedge against the governments they support, like vorter's in South Africa, with all kinds of strings attached to the aid. The USSR's "support," as in Angola, amounts to occupation by Cuban troops. The PAC wants nothing to do with either sellout.

VVAW is setting up our Fatigues for Freedom Fighters display at schools, shopping centers, etc, and handing out our leaflets wherever we do work. We are encouraging vets to donate fatigues—they can be sent to VVAW, P.O. Box 20184, Chicago, IL 60620 or given to members of the local VVAW Chapter—and for vets or non-vets who don't have fatigues to donate, we are collecting money to buy boots (these are particularly important to the Freedom Fighters in part because of the distance they have to travel). Response so far has been very good, and we expect to be successful in building more support for the struggle in South Africa, and in unifying and organizing veterans to fight the rich here at home!