Bitter fruits of imperialist divide and rule goes to polls VOTING is taking place in the historic elections in South Africa as this issue of Socialist Outlook goes to press.
Pressure on Inkatha leader Buthelezi from his black supporters unwilling to miss out on their first-ever chance to vote played a key role in his last minute retreat from a boycott. This could yet expose the extent to which the ANC has won support among Buthelezi's Zulu base.
The next issue of Socialist Outlook will contain detailed analysis of the results of these elections and the showing of the Workers List Party candidates promoted by the Workers Organisation of Socialist Action (WOSA). THE GIANT US Teamsters Union, which in February defied a court order to stage a successful one-day strike against United Parcels Service is now wracked by internal struggles.
The new-look national leadership headed by general president Ron Carey, elected on a radical platform two years ago, has hit back at the efforts by reactionary oldguard (often mob-connected) local and regional officials to sabotage and scab on the UPS strike and cripple the union's strike fund.
Carey has sent agents to investigate the finances of all four Teamster regional bodies, the power base of the old guard. His declared aim is to divert the money to the national office, which pays out strike pay, now increased to $200 a week.
WORLD NEWS Since taking over, Carey has led a victorious strike of car-haulers, and defied the "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The ceremony of innocence is drowned' 15,000 are estimated killed in the carnage on the streets of Kigali, Rwanda's capital.
The downing of an aircraft carrying Rwanda's President, General Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundi's President, Cyprien Ntaryamira caused their deaths.
It unleashed a frenzy of vio lence combining carefully planned executions and massacres with moh attacks.
Western television and print media have concentrated on the murder of 11 Belgian troops serving with a United Nations force; and the evacuation of European expatriates.
The media have fed racist myths about Africa by reporting the atrocities as 'tribal bloodletting'. This is as inaccurate and offensive as it would be in describing the war in ex-Yugo slavia.
Habyarimana's assassination was almost certainly the work of the Presidential guard. This was The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everwhere.
WB Yeats. a coup attempt by a group of elite officers who belong to the same ethnic group as the late president, the Hutu.
Their motive was to safeguard their power and privilege as army officers and as members of the dominant ethnic group. Under the Arusha accord negotiated last year between Habyarimana's government and the rebel Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) there would have been a multi-ethnic government and a smaller army with reduced political clout.
The RPF is numerically dominated by Rwanda's second largest ethnic group, the Tutsi. But it has Hutu soldiers and its chairman, Alex Kanayarengwe, is himself a Hutu.
The RPF had the most to lose by any break-down in the UN sponsored peace process. It has become one of a number of factions fighting in Kigali. The others are the Army, the Presidential Guard, the gendarmerie and the youth wing of the ruling party.
Much of the violence has been intra-ethnic. Hutus bewhich is persecuted by em100 miles ZAIRE UGANDA Kigali 'RWANDA TANZANIA Bujumbura BURUNDI longing to rival opposition parties have been targets of Hutu members of the ruling party.
There have also been interethnic massacres. Hutus fearing that the RPF will favour Tutsis have turned on their neighbours.
Agents
For centuries Hutus were ruled over by a feudal aristocracy of Tutsis. When the Belgians colonised Rwanda and Burundi, they maintained the Tutsis as their local agents. Using the tactic of 'divide and rule' they pitted one group against the other.
Hutus and Tutsis share the same names and culture. They speak the same language, Kirundu, and have inter-married for generations.
The UN's role has been as despicable as that of the Western media.
2,500 troops have been stationed in Rwanda since October 1993 to implement the Arusha accord.
The "Guardian' of April 12, 'A few yards from the French troops, a Rwandan woman was being hauled along the road by a young man with a machete. she looked at the foreign soldiers in the desperate, terrified hope that they could save her from death.
But none of the soldiers moved. "It's not our mandate," said one leaning against his jeep as he watched the condemned woman.' 'It's not our mandate'. African lives never are.
Where do Rwandans go from here? They could heed the words of a leading human rights activist, Professor Charles Ntampaka.
"The only way to change things is if politics is based on the majority of ideas rather than the ethnic majority. It's true that there's a definite ethnic problem. But the ethnic problem only arises when there's a change of power. The bigger problem is economic - rich against poor, and the rich encouraging the poor to fight?