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i. d. a.j news notes Published by the United States Committee of the International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa P.O. Box 17, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 February 1984 Telephone (617) 491-8343 Ciskei: The Bloodiest Bantustan It is enough to study the gleaming, corpulent faces of the members Ciskei gained prominence in the South African and world press last of the Ciskei Cabinet, to look at their overstuffed vests and uneasy July, when the little band of brothers and colleagues pictured below be­ eyes, to get an idea of what these men are like. They are faces reminis­ gan to break up. A spray of machine-gun fire at the home of Foreign cent of banana republics where petty tyrants, propped up from the out­ Minister B.N. Pityi was followed by the quick return home from Israel side, protect their shaky positions with brutality. And in fact, the tale of of Lennox Sebe, who had cut short a visit in order to take steps against events in the Ciskei is full of echoes of other corrupt and manipulated his enemies. Charles Sebe, Lennox's brother and the head of a vast Cis­ states: palace intrigue, a bloated military, even a stadium where detain­ kei security empire, was demoted and then detained. In 1981 Charles ees are tortured, as in post-Allende Chile. Sebe had broken a record for repression among bantustans by detain­ The difference is that the Ciskei has not even the marginal respecta­ ing 318 people. Major-General Taillefer Minnaar, a white "security ad­ bility as a state that Thieu's Vietnam had, or Pinochet's Chile. It is an in­ viser" to the Ciskei and the head of the Mapasa Special Warfare Center, visible country, a legal fiction that nevertheless represses those under was also detained and referred to the Weskoppies Mental Hospital for its control more crudely and arbitrarily even than the South African observation. As more detentions followed-first 17 members of Cis­ government which created it. kei's Combined Forces, then Namba Sebe, the bantustan's Minister of Incorporating the Mdantsane township, South Africa's biggest black Transport and another brother of Lennox-an alleged plot was revealed township after Soweto, the Ciskei is-together with the Transkei­ whereby Lennox Sebe was to have been assassinated by a security-po­ one of the country's two "homelands" for its Xhosa-speakingpeople.lts lice crossfire at a public youth rally. Sebe reorganized his security forces unemployment runs between 20 % and 25 % and its population den­ to give himself the direct control his brother had held, and appointed sity is five times that of South Africa as a whole. Infant mortality has himself President for Life. been estimated at over 50 %. Per capita income in the Ciskei is less than One side-effect of press coverage of the fraternal warfare was to $400, yet $50 million has been allocated by the South African govern­ draw attention to the repression that had been going on all along. In its ment to build its new "capital" of Bisho. In the resettlement area of brutality toward the trade union movement the Ciskei has put even its Tsweletswele 40 % of the children are malnourished and 10 % have South African masters to shame. Not long before the shakeup in the kwashiorkor, yet the Ciskei's "President for Life" Lennox Sebe drives a Ciskei "government," the President and Vice President of the South Mercedes-Benz and owns a $2.7 million Lear Jet. When it was discov­ African Allied Workers Union-Thozarnile Gqweta and Sisa Njikelana ered that the jet could not land on the grass airstrip at Bisho, the -were detained in the bantustan for alleged ANC activity. It was National Assembly quickly passed an airport modernization bill. continued on page 2 ,J The Cabinet of the "Independent Republic of the Ciskei" CISKEI continued from page 1 impose its will on the Mdantsane community, but the resilience and strength of the community's resistance to him." Gqweta's eighth arrest without trial • Black homelands .r :",' I :' I Under these conditions the willingness to speak out of such public in three years, The target of harass- , /\ ~\., figures as Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, the Secretary General of the ..J". ~y' d 0 f I' )•., ment by Ciskei authorities an South African Catholic Bishops Conference, is even more heroic. After torture by South African police, ; l.~'.; j~- criticizing the Ciskei to a group of students at Fort Hare University in Gqweta had suffered a breakdown 'l'_"SOUTH SWAZILAND November, he was detained and held incommunicado, his third deten­ which left him "no longer the same AFRICA' ' tion since 1976. Despite strong protests, he is still detained, and except man," according to friends. In late LESOTHO • for an interview with a BBC reporter, granted at the whim of Lennox 1981 his mother and uncle had died CISKEI ~ Sebe, nothing was heard from him until his appearance in court months in a fire in King Williams Town, 0 250 after his arrest. after which it was found that the L-_'------'-M--=~es"___ ~ Some might argue that the Ciskei is an aberration, that it does not re­ door of their home had been wired flect the intention of South African plans for "separate development." shut from the outside. Police opened fire on the crowd that attended Yet the South African government, apart from an occasional mild re­ the funeral, killing Gqweta's girlfriend Diliswa Roxiswa. In November buke, has shown no signs of displeasure with its puppet nation. The 1983 Ciskei authorities detained Gqweta yet again. Britain and the US Ciskei has cooperated on the main points desired by Pretoria: it has ac­ had lodged strong protests over Ciskeian brutality only days before, cepted its nominal "independence" and it has made the most strenuous and this time even the South Africans seemed to feel their puppets had efforts to have itself accepted internationally as a real country. Lennox gone too far. Gqweta was released at once on orders from Pretoria, but Sebe was even the only leader of the ten bantustans to come out in South African Foreign Minister "Pik" Botha's public reaction to the favor of Prime Minister Botha's new Constitution, For the planners of protests themselves was bland. 'There are fewer shooting incidents in South Africa's "new dispensation," these things mean more than the Ciskei than in some European countries," he said. SAAWU had been large-scale cruelty and corruption that have marked the Sebe regime. banned in the Ciskei in October, under an order that made even the wearing of a SAAWU T-shirt illegal. By December itwas reported that Sources: ANC Weekly News Briefing Volume 7, Issues 27,31,48 and 51; lDAF News Gqweta was in hiding and that SAAWU's other officials were all in Notes Dec. '83; New York Times Magazine 9/25/83; Rand Daily Mail 10/28/83, 11/5183, detention, 11117/83; Sechaba May '83, Oct, '83, Dec. '83; Star Airmail Weekly 2120/84; Washing­ ton Post 11/11/83; Washington Times 11118183, SAAWU, whose 30,000 members are mostly residents of Mdan­ !sane, has had the misfortune to be a strong unregistered black union in a bantustan which has extreme ideas about the course of its develop­ As we go to press... ment and will tolerate no interference with them. Ciskei's Manpower Mini~ter Lent Maqoma, in calling for disciplinary training "along mili­ It was reported on March 9 that Father Smangaliso tary lines" for migrant workers, referred to those workers as the bantu­ Mkhatshwa had been released from detention. A regional court stan's "black gold." An armaments factory run by the so-called Ciskei ruled that the state had failed to make a case against him. Armaments Corporation or Ciskor opened in Dimbaza shortly before it was announced that an Israeli-owned factory would also be built in Dimbaza to manufacture underwear. Like Bophuthatswana, Ciskei has maintained close relations with Israel, hiring Israeli experts to encour­ Namibian Maneuvers age private investment, Lennox Sebe has travelled to Israel to negotiate arms sales, and his Lear Jet was rumored to have been owned by An Interview with Archbishop Trevor Menachem Begin. When the Ciskei took part in an international tourist Huddleston exhibition in Israel the sign at its pavilion touted it as A DEMOCRACY The Most Reverend Trevor Huddleston, the international President of DEDICATED TO THE QUALITY OF LIFE. At about the same time 23 young IDAp, gave the following interview on March 1, 1984, atthe endofhis bn'ef Ciskeian pilots left for Israel to be trained as the core of a Ciskei air visit to the Us. Before coming to Cambridge, Archbishop Huddleston had force. travelled to each ofthe Front-Line States ofSouthern Africa, speaking to The bantustan's most troubled business enterprise is now the Ciskei Presidents andForeign Ministers in allthe countries ofthe region about the Transport Company, 50% owned by the Ciskei's "government." [n politicalsituation. We askedhim to tell us what he had found regarding the July, when the Company saw fit to raise fares by 11 %, the response O"itical issue ofindependence for Namibia. was a nearly total bus boycott which forced it to sell a third ofits fleet of 650 buses and to layoff 330 employees. The price has been steeper for At the time ofthe Cape Verde meetings in January, there were reports the boycotters, though. Some workers have had to walk 20 miles a day that US, South African and Angolan officials were forging some sort of simply to reach the Central Station and catch a train to their jobs in East deal, part ofwhich wouldexclude SWAPO from negotiations overNamib­ London, and then to return at night.
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