From: nyxfer%panix.com@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (N.Y. Transfer)
Subject: NEWS: ANC Blood on deKlerk's Hands/WW
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
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Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 21:45:34 GMT



Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit

                  ANC blood on De Klerk's hands:
         South African puppet troops machine-gun marchers

                        By Leslie Feinberg

African National Congress leaders are demanding that South
African President F.W. de Klerk oust the puppet government of
Ciskei. At least 24 Black marchers were massacred and almost 200
wounded on Sept. 7 when the Ciskei military--armed and backed by
Pretoria--raked a march of 50,000 ANC supporters with machine-gun
fire.

The South African government has rejected the ANC demand,
claiming that Ciskei is independent. Ciskei is one of 10 Black
"homelands" established by the racist South African regime in the
1960s. While the Pretoria regime claims Ciskei is an independent
nation, no other country in the world recognizes it.

This event immediately recalls the many killings of ANC
supporters in recent years, some by members of Inkatha, that have
been labeled "Black on Black" violence by the bourgeois press but
were proven to be organized by terrorist detachments of the
apartheid police and army. In some of these incidents, members of
the police themselves have finally come forward and confessed.

De Klerk responsible

In response to the massacre, protesters skirmished with police
outside the Ciskei "consulates" in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
The ANC has warned that the mass murders could spark an outburst
of popular rage.

The ANC issued a statement after the massacre promising to
continue its struggle to "attain free political activity in the
Ciskei" and other so-called homelands.

"We are blaming de Klerk for this," stressed Cyril Ramaphosa,
secretary general of the African National Congress, "and we do it
without hesitation." Ramaphosa was one of the protesters forced
to dive for cover when troops opened fire on the unarmed
demonstrators.

De Klerk blames ANC

Rather than trying to distance themselves from the bloodbath,
President de Klerk and Minister of "Law and Order" Hernus Kriel
attacked the ANC for having led the peaceful march. They then
sent troops to bolster the Ciskei's puppet military force.

Foreign Minister Pik Botha accused the ANC of trying to seize
power. He said the central government would refuse to engage in
negotiations until the ANC abandons mass action and "communist
plans."

The liberation movement in South Africa has tried every peaceful
means to force the racist regime out of power. It entered into
negotiations aimed at preparing for a transition to majority
rule. Then it staged a month of peaceful mass actions culminating
in a nationwide general strike on Aug. 3 and 4 that was so
effective city centers became ghost towns. All this showed that
the vast majority of South Africans consider the ANC their true
representatives.

But the citadel of the wealthy--from the owners of the gold and
diamond mines to the Wall Street ruling class that backs them all
the way--has unleashed state terror to block any peaceful
transfer of power to a multi-racial, popular provisional
government.

Just a few months ago, the Pretoria government was negotiating
with the ANC. It hoped to convince world public opinion that it
was no longer the regime that perpetrated the infamous
Sharpeville massacre of 1960.

But after 39 Black South Africans were slaughtered in the Black
township of Boipatong near Johannesburg, the National Executive
Committee of the ANC broke off the negotiations in June.

The NEC stated at that time, "We cannot tolerate a situation
where the regime's control of state power allows it the space to
deny and cover up its role in fostering and fomenting violence."

In July the ANC monthly publication Mayibuye exposed government
plots called Operation Thunderstorm and Operation Springbok, a
two-pronged violent strategy to prevent the ANC from heading any
South African government.

This latest massacre has led to no impassioned outcries in the
imperialist media of the type leveled against Iraq or Yugoslavia.
Neither George Bush nor Bill Clinton has commented on it yet,
even though talk is cheap.


(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; "workers@igc.apc.org".)

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