The Death of the Post-Apartheid Dream

A shocking news story...

If you have not heard Abahlali baseMjondolo, the shack dwellers movement of which I spoke often at Crotoff, has been attacked in the Kennedy Road settlement by an armed mob chanting ethnic slogans and backed, fully, by the ANC. Many were beaten and two were killed. As the community defended itself spontaneously two of the attackers were also killed - with their own weapons. The police refused to intervene and then arrested eight of the local Abahlali leaders in the settlement on murder charges. Most of these who were arrested were in fact at a dance performance in another part of the city at the time. The others, including S'bu Zikode who some of you know something about, had their homes destroyed and had to flee the settlement. ANC politicians and the police were present while the houses were destroyed. The settlement is now controlled by an armed pro ANC group who have the full backing of the police and the party. Abahlali are banned from the settlement, which they were elected to lead, on the pain of death. At least a thousand people have fled and many are sleeping rough.

This will all be terribly familiar to those of you who know something about the struggles of popular movements in places like Brazil, Mexico or Nigeria. For us this is very familiar from the 1980s when the apartheid state employed these tactics but none of us expected to see this in South Africa after apartheid. It came out of the blue. We are totally shocked and really don't have the resources to deal with it - we are struggling with basic things like accommodation and food for the displaced. We are also struggling with the organised propoganda from the state. The media has been told that the settlement has been 'liberated from criminals'. The ANC are openly celebrating the 'liberation' of Kennedy Road and are threatening to arrest S'bu Zikode too. They are calling the movement 'criminals' and, at the same time, saying that the human rights entrenched in the post-apartheid order are giving criminals a free ride and that police need to be given permission to shoot to kill. Our criminals are your terrorists - people who are defined as being outside of the protection given to those that count.

Please have a look at the Abahlali website - http://www.abahlali.org - and share the information there widely. There is a particularly strong statement from Bishop Phillip - who struggled with Steven Biko and who has, in the face of this attack, decided to cross the river into open opposition to the state once more.

Democracy - U$ Style

Democracy, the dream of many and the idea so many have died for in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has long known has had a double meaning. For U$A it translates as 'people we like in power' whereas its opposite, 'dictatorship' is 'people we don't like in power'. Here is proof - elections in Kenya which the EU observers say were not fair at all, the bastion of democracy says different;

The US, however, which enjoyed close cooperation with the Kibaki government on anti-terrorism matters, congratulated the president on his reelection and said it supported the electoral commission's decision.

State Department spokesman Robert McInturff said: "The United States congratulates the winners and is calling for calm, and for Kenyans to abide by the results declared by the election commission"

Yet when Chavez looked poised to win his election, the U$A decided that this vote looked dodgy;

Chavez appears to be in line to defeat his main rival, Manuel Rosales, governor of the country's far-western Zulia state.

Political adversaries of the government have expressed concern about the honesty of the balloting process - concerns shared by Stephen Johnson, a senior policy analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Since coming into power, Johnson said, Chavez has moved to install a "crony congress" and to impose tight controls on the news media.

"A climate of fear and intimidation" had taken hold, he said..."It is a dictatorship with the fig leaf of democracy,"

Like we should expect any more from the staunch supporters of those democratic lands of milk and honey such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan...
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PS - I got 'The Strange Death of David Kelly' by Norman Baker MP for xmas and its a great read, more on the book once finished...
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Bliar's African Legacy

As Bliar swans around Africa on his 'goodbye, good riddance' tour. The ongoing war in Iraq is following a fairly classic pattern of an insurgency, as the guerillas learn and adapt to become better at killing the occupiers. You can see this in the most recent attack;

"Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq ran a sophisticated sting on US troops in Diyala province on Memorial Day, killing 8 GIs. First, they shot down a helicopter with small arms fire. Two servicemen died in the crash. The guerrillas knew that a rescue team would come out to the site. So they planted a roadside bomb that killed the rescuers. And, they knew that yet another rescue team would come out to see what happened to the first. So they planted roadside bombs and destroyed the second team, as well."

So the occupiers take to the air to avoid being killed – using air power to hammer the enemy;

"What we do know is this: Since the major combat phase of the war ended in April 2003, the U.S. military has dropped at least 59,787 pounds of air-delivered cluster bombs in Iraq -- the very type of weapon that Marc Garlasco, the senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch (HRW) calls, "the single greatest risk civilians face with regard to a current weapon that is in use." We also know that, according to expert opinion, rockets and cannon fire from U.S. aircraft may account for most U.S. and coalition-attributed Iraqi civilian deaths and that the Pentagon has restocked hundreds of millions of dollars worth of these weapons in recent years."

Hundreds of millions that would be better spent in Africa, the scar on the conscience of the world on things like clean fresh drinking war or AIDS treatments, but no, its being spent on bombs to drop in an unwinable war. So where does Bliar's visit to Africa link to Iraq? This little gem of information;

"Outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair is to intervene this week to try to prevent 700 South Africans – the equivalent of more than one battalion – being forced to quit the British Army because of a proposed anti-mercenary law...Mr Blair is to raise the issue in talks with Thabo Mbeki, the South African president, during his farewell tour of Africa. The South African parliament passed the Prohibition of Mercenary Activities Bill late last year...The draft legislation is aimed at curbing an estimated 20,000 South Africans hiring themselves out as soldiers of fortune in various Third World conflicts, or volunteering for foreign armies."

Bliar's African legacy – South Africans in the British Army fighting in Iraq. Nice.