 On March 10, members of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa on NUMSA and the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party marched to the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria to demand freedom for Mumia Abu Jamal. Mumia is a political prisoner who has been incarcerated for over 40 years in the United States. He was a member of the Revolutionary Black Panther Party. Friday's action was organized as part of an ongoing month-long global solidarity campaign demanding Mumia's release. This is a demand to say. He's a political prisoner who has been a victim of wrongful arrest. He must be released. Justice must be done. And we will not rest beyond the 16 to embark on an international campaign. And our message to the judges, do the noble thing. Make sure that justice prevails, release Mumia. He deserves his freedom. 68-year-old Mumia was imprisoned in 1981 after being convicted for the killing of a police officer Daniel Faulkner in the city of Philadelphia. A former Black Panther, he had been violently targeted and surveilled by state forces since he was a young teenager. His trial and subsequent sentencing in 1982 were marked by severe official misconduct, corruption and blatant racism. Abu Jamal has since been incarcerated under inhumane conditions including severe medical neglect. The struggle for the civil rights movement in the 1960s captured the imagination of the world. Figures like Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X became global icons. They fought and died for human justice. One would have thought that today the brutal system of oppression would have withered away and that the struggle for justice and humanity would prevail and win the day. To our disappointment as peace-loving South Africans, a Black man in America is always guilty in the eyes of the police. Noomsa stated that officials from the embassy refused to come out to receive a letter from the Union, following which some of its members were escorted inside a heavy police personnel. In 2018, after Abu Jamal had already spent some 36 years in prison, six boxes of evidence discovered in the Philadelphia District Attorney's office revealed how the prosecution had arrived witnesses, including the main witness, Robert Chaubert, who had claimed to have seen Abu Jamal shoot Faulkner. There were also notes written by the prosecutor Joseph McGill, tracking the race of prospective jurors in an attempt to exclude Black people from the jury. Following the discovery of the six boxes of withheld evidence, Abu Jamal's defense fled a petition for a new trial. Judge Lucretia Clemens of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas has stated that she will make a final ruling on the petition for a new trial within 60 to 90 days. With the deadline set to expire on March 16, organizations globally including the International Long Short and Warehouse Union Local 10 and Noomsa have ramped up their efforts to demand Abu Jamal's freedom.