In this issue:

COSATU Challenges South African Government on Privatization

Ivory Coast Fighting Poses Regional Risk, Says London Analyst

African Peacekeeping Troops to Ivory Coast

Former Nigerian Presidents Urge End to Impeachment Push Against Obasanjo

South Africa to Foreign Minister Straw: Cut Out the 'Megaphone Diplomacy'

AIDS Paupers Buried 'Three to a Grave' in Johannesburg

From the Vol.1 No.31 issue of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published October 7, 2002
AFRICA NEWS DIGEST

COSATU Challenges South African Government on Privatization

In the midst of a global economic collapse, and growing evidence—in Argentina and Brazil, among others—that privatization destroys the "general welfare" concept of government, privatization was challenged in South Africa, in a two-day strike Oct. 1 and 2.

Some 180,000 members or more of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and supporters joined the national strike, calling for an end to privatization, the creation of jobs, and lower prices. COSATU said a number of organizations not affiliated with the trade-union federation participated in marches countrywide.

On Oct. 2, COSATU challenged the South African government to hold a referendum on privatization, to test whether the government has grassroots support for its privatization program. The challenge was issued by Andre Kriel, deputy general secretary of the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union. Kriel told SAPA the referendum proposal was a position he had been asked to put across by COSATU's leadership, which believed that the government is misreading public sentiment with respect to its economic policy. "Government claims that South Africans support privatization. We say, put these claims to the test. We demand a people's referendum on privatization," Kriel said. He continued: "We are not surprised that the rich do not understand this. It is because they are still able to afford everything despite privatization."

About 2,000 COSATU members and supporters marched on Parliament and presented a memorandum demanding steps to end job losses and tackle soaring food prices and general inflation. Willy Madisha, COSATU president, told a rally in Cape Town: "This is the beginning of the long struggle against privatization."

A document drafted by COSATU's six top national office bearers calls on the federation's 2 million members to prepare themselves for a protracted struggle and pursue a "multifaceted strategy of engagement" to exert pressure on the African National Congress (ANC).

The ANC Youth League charged that COSATU was trying to unseat the government through its anti-privatization campaign, and that COSATU leaders were trying to turn the union federation into a political party. A COSATU spokesman, Vukani Mde, responded that the issues raised through the strike were serious issues with respect to the future of the country. "People are reaching bizarre conclusions ... How does someone [i.e. critics of the strike] conclude COSATU is counter-revolutionary?"

Ivory Coast Fighting Poses Regional Risk, Says London Analyst

"There is now a serious risk that Ivory Coast will fracture along ethnic lines, leaving the government in control of little more than the economic capital Abidjan and the area around it," according to an analysis from London's Reuters "AlertNet". Reporter Thalia Griffiths states, "The collapse of Ivory Coast has enormous implications for the whole region." She quotes a diplomat who says, "This has been preparing for years and no one has taken any notice."

Griffiths says that "An ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States] mediation team has been appointed, but deployment of peacekeepers risks formalizing the division of the country." Then, after reporting as fact, contradictory information about who did what to whom in triggering the rebel uprising, Griffiths admits, "It is not entirely clear what happened, or even who the rebels' leaders are." In spite of that, she ends with this quote from a "policymaker": "The UN needs to get involved in mediation and put pressure on [President] Gbagbo to negotiate."

The picture described by Griffiths coheres with a scenario outlined by author Robert D. Kaplan, a neo-conservative advocate of the "unilateral American empire" doctrine. Kaplan's piece, in the Atlantic Monthly back in February 1994, was entitled, "The Coming Anarchy," said that Ivory Coast would have to fall apart. While much of the disintegration there has been accomplished by the policies of the International Monetary Fund in the country, Kaplan's targetting of Ivory Coast is along the lines of the writings of Trilateral "universal fascist," Samuel P. Huntington, a revered figure in Kaplan's books and lectures. Huntington is the popularizer of Bernard Lewis' Clash of Civilizations doctrine against Islam, virtually a manual for religious war of the Thirty Years' War variety.

African Peacekeeping Troops to Ivory Coast

African leaders meeting in Accra, Ghana Sept. 29, resolved to send peacekeeping forces, including mediators, to Ivory Coast. The peacekeeping operation will also immediately begin negotiations between the Ivorian government and rebel forces, who have been locked in fighting that dominated headlines when French and American residents were ordered evacuated by their governments (and evacuated by French and U.S. troops).

The peacekeeping agreement was reached at a summit of ECOWAS, where Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo and South African President Thabo Mbeki, as chairman of the African Union, were among the attendees.

The Ivorian government does not want fighting troops, even from ECOMOG, the military wing of ECOWAS. And a spokesman for the rebels, Tuo Fozie, is quoted by Reuters Sept. 29 as saying, "If ECOMOG comes here there won't be peace for 20, 30, 40 years. There must be justice." The rebels are said originally to have been 750 members of the Ivorian Army who took up arms Sept. 19 when they were told they would be demobilized—that is, fired—in December.

Meanwhile, President Gbagbo is asking African countries and France—the former colonial power—for diplomatic support and for transport, field communications, munitions, and other supplies.

Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade, who currently heads ECOWAS, in addressing the summit said it was necessary to find a "quick solution to a military mutiny." ECOWAS Executive Secretary Mohammed ibn Chambas told reporters, on arriving in Accra, that "No government which comes to power through a coup will be recognized."

Former Nigerian Presidents Urge End to Impeachment Push Against Obasanjo

Former Nigerian President Shehu Shagari has been joined by another former President, Gen. Yakubu Gowon, in efforts to stop the impeachment of Nigeria's current President, Olusegun Obasanjo, the Vanguard of Lagos reported Oct. 3.

The two former Presidents addressed a letter Sept. 28 to President Obasanjo, Senate President Anyim Pius Anyim, and Speaker of the House Ghali Na'Abba, which includes this passage: To resolve "the impasse between the Legislative and Executive arms of the government, we wish to inform you that we have agreed to broker a meeting between both arms of government.... In view of this ... we are requesting that both parties should stay all actions and reactions with regard to the impeachment proceedings pending conclusion of these efforts. We as former Heads of State and Presidents make this plea solely in the national interest and without prejudice to your Constitutional responsibilities."

The merit of the Shagari-Gowon combination is that it appeals to instincts for Nigerian nationhood, as opposed to sectional interest. President Shagari is from the Hausa and Fulani (Muslim) North, and Gen. Gowon is from the Ibo (Christian) East. Both sections are easily roused against President Obasanjo, who comes from the Yoruba South.

South Africa to Foreign Minister Straw: Cut Out the 'Megaphone Diplomacy'

South Africa and other African countries will not bow to pressure to "declare war" on Zimbabwe, Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said last week. In what the major Johannesburg paper, Sunday Times, on Oct. 6 termed the government's strongest defense of its approach to Zimbabwe against the British approach, Pahad said that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw could come up with a "concrete proposal" on how to resolve the crisis. "We don't believe that their megaphone diplomacy and screaming from the rooftops has helped anyway.... If it is not diplomacy we pursue in dealing with Zimbabwe, then it is war. We will not go to war with Zimbabwe," Pahad said. "We do not need to be lectured to about democracy, respect for the rule of law, and human rights. Southern African states are conscious of our responsibility and of the economic and political impact of the situation in Zimbabwe. But we cannot be like people far away who keep shouting about Zimbabwe."

His remarks were made in response to Straw's "disappointment" at the outcome of an end-of-September meeting of the Commonwealth's troika on Zimbabwe (the leaders of Nigeria, South Africa, and Australia), which did not reach a consensus on further punitive action against Zimbabwe. Straw said this week that he shared Australian Prime Minister John Howard's "acute disappointment" about the troika's refusal to agree on tougher anti-Zimbabwe measures.

AIDS Paupers Buried 'Three to a Grave' in Johannesburg

Because of the AIDS death rate among the poor of South Africa, Johannesburg paupers are buried three to a grave at Ennerdale Cemetery, which conducts about 50 paupers' funerals a week; there are rows upon rows of graves, with nothing more than a numbered steel plate marking where they rest. The situation is similar in Pietermaritzburg, which will run out of grave space at Mountain Rise, Azale, and Sinathing cemeteries by the end of next year. Impoverished parents who know their newborns are HIV-positive, don't waste money on taxi fare to register the birth at a Home Affairs office. They bury the babies, and don't register the deaths either.

At Kagiso near Krugersdorp, a woman who has collected stray animals for years from a local garbage dump now finds people dying of AIDS. Their families dump them there, knowing she will take them to a local hospice. In KwaZulu-Natal, people near death are taken in wheelbarrows and dumped at hospitals by family members, who "wait for their loved one to die and, because they know the dates of pauper funerals, they go and wait for the burial. Many people can no longer afford funerals," says Liz Towell of Sinosizo, a Roman Catholic AIDS care organization in Durban.

Sister Irene Bopela, who runs Ntabeni Clinic in Munster on the KwaZulu-Natal south coast, says it took one family six weeks to bury an HIV-positive mother, because they had no money. "Her eight-year-old son now heads the household, which includes one-year-old twins who are HIV-positive and a five-year-old ... who has tuberculosis."

Johannesburg is constructing four new cemeteries. A crematorium capable of burning 50 bodies an hour is being built at Germiston. In Tzaneen, the richest man in the town is reputedly Dirk Redelinghuys, who owns 56 hearses; his company is also building new cemeteries.

Suicide rates are growing among young people who test HIV-positive. Mortuaries on KwaZulu-Natal's south coast, GaRankuwa in North West Province, and Burgersfort and Lydenburg in Mpumalanga report a high incidence of young people dying from rat poison. A doctor at Johannesburg Hospital is quoted, "I don't want to come to work in the morning, because there is nothing we can do. There are just people dying around us."

This information appeared in a profile published in African Eye News (Nelspruit, South Africa) on Sept. 30.

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