Propaganda Putsch Posing as Anti-Xenophobia

Class Struggle in Southern Africa via the US Black Colony

The Black Commentator on June 26 featured three cartoons depicting the violence in South Africa, the first accompanied by a brief text on the struggle inside Zimbabwe. A startling aspect about each of the three cartoons was their anti-African depictions. Each cartoon seemed to criticize the attacks by South Africans against workers from neighboring countries.

The cartoons couched this depiction in a way which held all South Africans responsible for the attacks. As if South Africans were united in reactionary consensus against the influx of workers from Mozambique, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Swaziland.

However, those of us who participated in anti-apartheid work from the Seventies thru the Nineties recall the spate of reactionary violence by the neo-colonialist Inkatha against the South African liberation movements. As paid thugs of the apartheid regime, Inkatha behaved as a counterrevolutionary force militating against fighters and workers based inside South Africa.

This so-called xenophobia must be contextualized. It is not "black-on-black" crime. Neither is it tribalism. It is not xenophobia, either. Africans from neighboring states have been working in South Africa at least since the Forties. That is not xenophobia when the liberation movements thru out Southern Africa were knit together as one large family fighting an enemy at once foreign and yet taking root on African soil. Counterinsurgency has nothing to do with xenophobia, but with preserving the status quo set by Imperialism.

By the same token, to plant the South African flag in the back of a figure with "Zimbabwe" written across its back feeds the impression that Zimbabweans have nowhere to turn. This has more to do with The Black Commentator's axe-grinding of the sort reminiscent of its Inkatha cousins. That is not art, it is typical Imperialist propaganda.

If you want xenophobia, read the blogosphere's inflammatory, racist comments on Barack Obama's bid for the White House.

South Africa is immersed in a power struggle which has enveloped African people since the anti-colonial movements picked up steam. It derives from the political expression of the African petty bourgeoisie and all its attendant inadequacies. Contradictions within Zimbabwe and South Africa, respectively, are remnants of ages old scores which have not been settled despite decisive, anti-colonial victories. South Africa's problem is derivative of the world wide struggle against Imperialism, colonialism and capitalist domination.

People are moving ahead despite Bill Fletcher and Horace Campbell. Campbell's divisive position on Zimbabwe was upheld at the BRC tenth convention held this past month in St. Louis. Meanwhile, Fletcher continues to use The Black Commentator to attack the Southern Africa liberation movements.

Southern Africa continues to symbolize and represent black America's own anti-colonial sentiments, with many proud moments and a few not-so-proud ones. But we still salute the internationalist Black Liberation Movement thru out that region.

That's why people use their ability to look thru the smoke screens of an analysis posing as revolutionary, posing as Leftist, posing as black. Campbell, as late as 2003, stated in a Black Commentator article that Jonas Savimbi, the notorious stooge paraded by Ronald Reagan as a "freedom fighter", belonged to the anti-colonial trend. In this period, individuals like Fletcher and Campbell will be seen in the black community for what they really represent.

People in thru out the US, the Caribbean and Africa kno that the Zimbabwe question offers up some critical points. Yet the people are not poised to allow US Imperialism to intervene. They are unprepared to play the sucker role for attacks against African people anywhere by a bloodsucking capitalism. African people united will never be defeated!