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The Internationalist No. 3 September-October 1997 No. 3 $2 Internationalist Africa For Permanent Revolution <u;· c: Ill iii Debate in the South African Left In Defense of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat r 2 The Internationalist September-October 1997 In this issue .... ICL Leaders' Frenzied Slanders Over the past several months, the leadership ofthe International Com­ Congo: Neo-Colonialism Made in munist League has waged a vicious campaign of slander against the Liga U.S.A ................................................. 3 Quarta-Internacionalista do Brasil and the Internationalist Group. This issue of The Internationalist inc1udes statements from the LQB (page 52) · Kabila Army's Genocidal Mass Murder and the IG (page 59) unmasking the ICL leaders' smear campaign. We of Rwandan Hutu Refugees ......... 11 also publish letters to the ICL from LQB militants Marcello and Ronaldo (page 68), and an open letter by the IG (page 48) on the ICL's denial that Debate in South African Left: In there is a popular front in Mexico at the very moment the Cardenista popular Defense of the Dictatorship of the front was voted into office in Mexico City. For reasons of space, this issue Proletariat ....................................... 15 does not inc1ude the July 25 Internationalist Group Statement," WV's Fren­ zied Slanders Can't Hide ICL Leaders' Brazil Betrayal," and a postscript Mark Twain and the Onset of the issued by the IG on September 1, "ICL Takes Slander Campaign to Bra­ Imperialist Epoch ........................... 20 zilian Labor Congress." These are being mailed to our subscribers and will be published in the next issue of The Internationalist. They are also U.S. Was Godfather of Colonial En- available on our web site (www.internationalist.org), or can be obtained slavement of Congo ...................... 24 by writing to the Internationalist Group, Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008. Teamsters St~ike Against UPS: All Out to Win This·Fight! ........................... 25 Brazil: Crisis of the Capitalist State 31 Mexico: Cardenas Popular Front Chains Workers to Capitalism ...... 37 . Cardenas and the Generals ............. 47 Mexico:To Fight the Popular Front You Have to RecognizeThat It Exists .............................................. 48 ~ Visit the Internationalist Group on the Internet LOB: Once Again on ICL Campaign http://www.internationalist.org of Defamation ............................. 52 Now available on our site are: • Founding Statement of the • Updates from the IG and LOB IG: ICL Leaders Escalate Smear Internationalist Group • Articles from Vanguards Operaria • Articles from The lnternation- • Geronimo Is Out! Now Free Mumial Campaign ................................... 59 alist No. 1 and 2 • Marxist readings Letters to the ICL From Members of the LOB ..............................-. ........ 68 :11:; lnternauonalist Outrage! NYPD Torture of Haitian A Journal of Revolutionary Marxism for the Reforging of the Fourth International Immigrant .............................. : .... 72 Publication of the Internationalist Group • EDITORIAL BOARD: Jan Norden (editor), Abram Negrete, Front page photo: South African workers Buenaventura Santamaria, Marjorie Salzburg, Socorro Valero. march for right to strike during battle over . Labor Relations Act, 1995. The Internationalist (ISSN 1091-2843) is published bimonthly, skipping July-August, by Mundial Publications, P.O. Box 3321, Church Street Station, New York, NY 10008, U.S.A. Telephone: (212) 460-0983 Fax: (212) 614-8711 E-mail: [email protected] Subscription blank graphic based on a Subscriptions: US$10 for five issues. poster by V.A. Rodchenko, Books (1925) No. 3 ®ED"" September-October 1997 September-October 1997 The Internationalist 3 From Mobutu to Kabila Congo president Laurent Kabila and his ministers. Nanzer/SIPA In. the middle of May, the forces of Laurent Kabila over­ During the Cold War, Mobutu served Washington and threw the decrepit regime of Mobutu Sese Seko (who died Sep­ Paris as their gendarme for the vast Central African region, tember 7) in Zaire, now again named Democratic Republic of propping up other puppet dictators like Bokassa in the Central Congo. The fall of the dictator who for more than three decades African Republic and ldi Amin in Uganda while he was ha­ acted as the linchpin for the African intrig~es of the imperialist rassing regimes aligned with the Soviet Union, such as Angola. powers marks the end of an epoch. He was one of the last of the He served as a base and rearguard for the Angolan marionettes "Big Men" installed by imperialism to safeguard its interests af­ of apartheid South Africa and the CIA: Jonas Savimbi's ter the end of direct colonial rule at the beginning of the 1960s. UNITA. In exchange for these services rendered, he accumu­ Mobutu was a former police· informer and sergeant in the Bel­ lated a fortune of billions of dollars raked off the considerable gian colonial militia, the Force Publique, who following "inde­ "aid" from the imperialist masters to their Third World sa-: pendence" was named head of the army of the Congo-Kinshasa. traps. But as a result ofthe counterrevolution that swept through As Washington's man, he. played a key role in the assassination East Europe and the USSR during 1989-92, Mobutu ceased·to of Patrice Lumumba, the radical nationalist leader who gave the fill a vital function in a U.S.-dominated "New World Order." chills to the Western capitals. With the aid of the CIA, Mobutu Washington eliminated its subsidies to Mobutu in 1991, and took over in a coup d'etat in 1965. His authoritarian regime stayed the already run-down Zairean economy plunged into an abyss. in power through a combination of ferocious repression against All that was needed was a push to bring down the decrepit any leftist opposition, and systematic corruption of a dodle elite, dictatorship. Kabila was the man picked for the job. the Zairean kleptocracy. Picked by whom? For Workers Revolution in Africa! 4 The Internationalist September-October 1997 The bourgeois press pres~nts the image of the guerrilla vs. the president for life. Kabila was sup­ posedly the man who came out of nowhere, the Guevarist guerrilla who went into the rain forest in the middle of the 1960s and didn't re­ appear until the mid-'90s. The Economist (17 May), the spokes­ man for the London bankers, wrote (with its usual sarcasm): "A failed Marxist revolutionary from a by­ gone rebellion, he was plucked from the footnotes of post-colonial history by the leaders of Rwanda and Uganda when they needed someone to lead the Tutsi upris­ ing in eastern Zaire." When Kabila rejected the insistent requests from Reuters Washington to negotiate the depar- Troops of the AFDL arrest civilian in Kinshasa. ture of Mobutu and form a coalition with the "moderate" op- ists, unleashed a genocide in 1994 that killed over half a mil- position around Etienne Tshisekedi, there was a rash of alarm- lion Tutsis and "moderate" Hutus before fleeing the country. ist articles from the unofficial mouthpieces for the Western Now the new rulers of Rwanda are establishing a Tutsi ascen- foreign ministries demanding that the new ruler of Congo- dancy in the region. In revenge for the 1994 genocide, they Kinshasa hold "democratic elections" soon. In a knee-jerk re- unleashed an offensive against the refugee camps in Zaire, kill- action, much of the left praised the self-proclaimed president ing not only former soldiers and militia members connected Kabila and his "Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Libera- with the previous regime, but also indiscriminately slaughter- tion of the Congo" (AFDL). ing any Hutus they found. One genocide was followed by an- However, contrary to right-wing sectors of the bourgeois other, which is still underway! press and a large part of the left, Kabila did not lead a leftist In the fighting between Kabila's Rwandan/Ugandan-sup- guerrilla movement but rather offered himself as a new neo-co- plied army and Mobutu's disintegrating praetorian guard, pro- lonial bourgeois ruler, less corrupt and more effective than his letarian revolutionaries would have given no support, political predecessor Mobutu, in order to better serve the intere~ts of im- or military, to either side. Both represented neo-colonial bour- perialism. His troops are not peasants rebels but instead consist geois forces. Against the recently installed capitalist regime of largely ofunits detached from the regular armies of Rwanda and "democratic" Congo-Zaire, the principal task must be to work Uganda. They are commanded by their officers, some of whom for the formation of a revolutionary workers party, based on were trained in U.S. military academies. Kabila signed fat con- · the Trotskyist program of permanent revolution and closely tracts with U.S. mining companies, for which he received mil- tied to the powerful proletariat of South Africa. Black workers lions in cash, as well as vital logistical aid. After conquering the played the key role in the struggle against apartheid slavery, capital of Kinshasa, he immediately outlawed all political activ- but their hopes of social liberation were betrayed by the bour- ity by forces_otherthan his AFDL and unleashed repression against geois-nationalist African National Congress (ANC) under anyoutbreakofpopularprotest.Inshort,onepro-imperialistdic- Nelson Mandela. At first allied with former apartheid presi- tator has been replaced by another. dent F. W. De Klerk, today Mandela's ANC governs alone Kabila's troops have carried out numerous massacres of thanks to the nationalist popular front with the COSATU union Rwandan Hutu refugees, whom they chased out of the refugee federation and the South African Communist Party (SACP), camps: In the tiny Central African countries of Rwanda and which subjugates the workers to their exploiters. Burundi, to the east of the Congo-Zaire, ethnic categories and Both in South Africa and in the Congo, the absence of a caste divisions overlap, leading to a particularly explosive so- revolutionary leadership has led to one defeat after another.
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