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Series 9: Newsletter Editor’s
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Metroland Article on
Southern Africa, 1992
10 ¢e¢ METROLAND @ Oct. 15-21, 1992
he bride wore white. The groom
inanelegant black tuxedo, was
well-dressed too And the stun
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eflected brightly off the bridesmaid
purple satin dre St
fe ir Vern Mi helson anc
hone ri t the twoact ts fr 1 thie
Cantal Distr Ct Coaite Aya rst
Apartheid and Racism traveled te
Me ynbique, South Africa and Namuil
Phe ited squatter camps and tribal
homelands, saw elegant cities hard by
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welcomed political prisoners who had just
been released from jail
But for all that, there was something
special about the invitation to join a
wedding party in Ovamboland, an eight
hour drive north from Windhoek
Nar
COUSIN
hia’s capital city. The groom was a
of Helmut Angwula, Namibia's
Minister of F sand Marine
Like many other southern
Resources
Africans Michelson and Kawola visited.
Angula was an old friend. While an exiled
official of the South West Africa People’s
. atts
ieanization, he came to Alhany to rally
ryvaniza
EPPO for fis natior independenc e figrtit
against South Africa's apartheid
government
If asrreat honor te hi ited te at
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Nesbitt, founder and executive director of
ibique Solidarity Office. Nesbitt,
‘fi African-American whe lives in Chicago
pad ganize the trip and traveled with
Mi ind Kawola in Mozambique and
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make ta survive. We saw water holes that
re drying up, and we saw people walking for
miles looking for water and tending cattle.”
Michelson says. “We sometimes Saw
people having to get water from the same
water hole the cattle were drinking from.”’
Back in Windhoek, which has the flavor
and stvle of a modern European city, the
activists visited Katatura, a black township
on the outskirts of town. ‘Tt was as
Oppressive as any township or squatter Campy
we saw in South Africa,” Kawola recalls
“After two years of independence, why
does this still exist?’ Michelson asks
rhetorically
National elections were held in 1990. she
explains, with SWAPO the winner. But the
towns have yet to hold local elections, So,
much of country is still under the control of
the same government and civil service that
ly freed from forced mililary servivy
be
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(l-r) Eileen Kawola and Vera Michelson, hark from Af
TIC
Two Capital Region activists report on the
continuing struggle against apartheid
ruled during colonial days. As part of the
{inited Nations: newotiated agreement that
ietl fo South Afneca’s withdrawal from
Namibia, the country’s whites will retain
their government jobs for life. And South
Africa still controls Walvis Bay, the
country’s main South Atlantic port
So SWAPO looks to the future. “Thev
are focused on educating the young people
to expect their new constitutional rights,”’
Michelson says. The youth will have learn to
claim all the rights their parents fought for
he travelers began their African
sojourn July 2 in Johannesburg.
South Africa's largest city, but left
almost immediately for Mozambique
“Enjoy your visit, or whatever you're
doing,” the pilot said ominously as the
commercial airliner descended to land at
the airport in Mozambique’s capital,
Maputo. The country, which won its
By Jeff Jones
independence 17 vears ago. has been
devastated by war and internal politi
confhiet
Like Nicaragua's Sandinistas, whose
dreams for independence were crushed by
war with the ULS.-backed contras. the
Mozambique Liberation Front, known as
FRELIMO, had to defer its vision while it
fought a civil war against South African:
backed rebels. In 1975, along with A ngola
and Guinnea Bissau, Mozambique won its
freedom from Portugal. In the early years
after independence, FRELIMO. left with a
bankrupt government by the fleeing
Portuguese, set out to bring education tea
population that was 93 percent illiterate
The country’s 1,300 public schools SOON
grew to some 7, 600.
Mozambique had this wonderful
socialist dream,” says Kawola, ‘which wot
crushed by the South Africans and anvone
in the world community who didn’t want to
see it exist.”
loday, after a decade of civil war with a
South Africa-backed group called the
Mozambique Resistance Movement
(RENAMO), there are fewer than 600
schools left. The country, like Somalia and
Namibia, is gripped by the worst drought of
the century, Without help, millions more
lives will be lost
“The drought in Somalia and
Mozambique is not the result of God,
African personality traits or accident.’ Says
Nesbitt. ‘It's the product of specific
policies and practices that have left Afri: a
unable to cope. The Mozambican drought
and famine would be manayxeable if not for
the war with South Africa.”
Mozambique was once one of the most
productive agricultural regions in all of
central and southern Africa, Now it’s not
only the poorest, but the most foreign-aid
dependent country in the world. It is deep
Oct.
in debt to the United States, Italy, the
World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund. ‘One of the things we are
pressing for now is forgiveness of debts,”’
says Nesbitt. “Mozambique will be paying
until 2085 on just the interest of its World
Bank loans.”
Author Joseph Hanlon, in Mozambique:
Who Calls the Shots?, his landmark study of
foreign aid, says that the West's largess has
been used to ‘subjugate Mozambique to its
pre-1975 status."’ Donors insist on setting
up their own channels for administering the
aid, circumventing existing government
structures, “thereby lowering the
confidence, responsibility and sovereignty
of the Mozambican government.”
“What struck me in Maputo,”’ recalls
Kawola, ‘‘is that two blocks away from
downtown, you see a squatters’ settlement
being set up. There are people all over
selling whatever they can to get some
money; charcoal, a couple of oranges.’
Meanwhile, the country's former exploiters
are coming back. For example, in Maputo,
FRELIMO had to sell its future party
headquarters, a former hotel, to South
African businessmen. And most of the
waterfront property along the city's Indian
Ocean coastline has been bought by South
Africans or Portuguese.
“Now the people who destroyed it are
back reaping the benefits,’ says Kawola.
r4 ur most chilling memory,
the one that will never go
away,’’ says Kawola, came the
afternoon the three activists met with six
ragged teenage boys who had been forced
to serve with RENAMO, the Mozambique
Resistance Movement. ‘The atrocities
these children had seen or even committed
were told in their eves—eyes so sad or
devoid of feeling.’
RENAMO was created by the Rhodesian
intelligence agency to patrol and harass
Mozambique’s borders when Rhodesia's
white government was trying to defeat its
own liberation movement. Rhodesia failed,
and today the country is called Zimbabwe.
But the South African Defense Force took
over RENAMO, with the goal of using it to
destroy independent Mozambique.
The organization became a darling of
right-wingers in the United States, too,
who saw it as a vehicle to disrupt another
socialist experiment. In that, it has
succeeded. But RENAMO has fought one
of the most violent wars in modern history,
killing and torturing more than a million of
its fellow citizens. Nesbitt calls it “a war of
mutilation.”’ Teachers and rural medical
workers are favorite targets.
RENAMO also has become known for
taking young boys, like the six who spoke
with Kawola and had been recaptured by
the Mozambican military, and forcing them
into service. Sometimes, the boys are made
to commit an atrocity against their family
or village to ensure that their home ties will
be severed.
“We asked them what they would like to
do now,”’ Kawola says. “They answered
that they would like to go to school and be
reunited with their families.”’ But one of the
boys isn't welcome at home. He had been
forced to tell RENAMO where his mother
was hiding. They found her and she was
abducted. She survived, but is afraid that if
her son comes home, she will be kidnapped
again. Another of the boys explained that
he had once killed someone with a machete.
‘| wanted to ask hard questions about
how they felt,"’ says Kawola. But they
looked se wounded, she didn't have the
heart, ‘I never asked, did you do
something to your family?”
But Kawola did ask if they were ever
afraid. Zamito, one of the boys, answered
that he had been “‘immunized”’ against
fear, ‘He told us that the boys would take
razor blades, slice a cut in their legs, and
put some kind of powder they were given
eeceweee
into the open wound. When the sore healed
over, they would prick the scar with a pin
whenever they felt fear—or hunger or
cold—and those feelings would go away.”
Zamito couldn't say what type of powder,
or drug, it was,
“Those kids, who should be going to
school and playing with their friends, were
learning how to terrorize and kill,”’ says
Kawola, an Albany public school teacher.
The boys have been reclaimed, she Says,
“but their childhoods are long gone.”’
Other Mozambican children have been
jailed with Mandela. Their son, a
journalist, arrived shortly thereafter,
coming from yet another funeral. Much of
the killing in recent years is due to fighting
between ANC supporters and Zulus loyal to
Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s
Inkatha Freedom Party.
Kawola stayed in a middle-class Soweto
house~it had electricity and a bathroom—
with the family of Yolande Chirwa, a
student who attends Hamilton College in
upstate New York. Chirwa often spends
her weekends in Albany, staying with
ANC leader Nelson Mandela (right) speaks at an anti-apartheid protest in South Africa.
relatively fortunate, On a visit to the
Ricatla region outside Maputo, Michelson
and Kawola visited the Mocatina Primary
School, where some 600 children, about
200 of them orphans, are taught by nine
teachers earning the equivalent of $25 a
month, [t's a school without walls, since
RENAMO would destroy it. The Capital
District Coalition Against Apartheid and
Racism plans to begin a fund-raising
project for the school.
Nesbitt, back in Chicago, reflected on the
recent U.N. decision to consider war-
crimes trials for those who commit
atrocities in the name of ‘ethnic cleansing’’
in the former Yugoslavia. “Why can't they
put on trial those who have been
responsible for the killing of over 1 million
people in Mozambique?"’ he asked bitterly.
Killa bunch of white folks in Europe, it’s
like playing with fire. Kill some black folks
in Africa, it’s like swatting flies.”’
After five days in Mozambique,
Michelson, Kawola and Nesbitt flew back
to South Africa. ‘T just sat on the plane and
quietly cried,"’ says Kawola. “And we
certainly did not see the worst of
Mozambique.”
ver the years, Soweto,
the community of 3 million black
South Africans near Johannesburg,
has become synonymous with apartheid.
“There's a clear division,” says Kawola.
“ Tohannesburg is such a big, industrial city.
And then you drive 10 miles, and you see a
green highway sign that says Soweto, and
the grass is all gone. It's dirt all over.”
During a tour of the township, the women
saw two funeral! processions within a haif-
hour. Even though the South African
government has legalized the African
National Congress and released the
organization's president, Nelson Mandela,
from jail, violence is still a fact of life in the
country’s black townships, squatter camps
and workers’ hostels. Townships like
Soweto were created to be reservoirs of
cheap black labor to serve the white cities.
Then Michelson and Kawola went to visit
Albertina Mama” Sisulu, a heroic figure
in the anti-apartheid struggle and the wife
of Walter Sisulu, an ANC leader who was
Kawola or other coalition members.
Later, in Cape Town, Michelson and
Kawola stayed with the families of two
students who had lived with them in
Albany while the ANC was still a banned
political organization. Today, Sean Lewis is
getting his doctorate at the University of
Pittsburgh in applied linguistics, and
Shobhna Gopal is a research biologist at
Mt, Sinai Hospital in New York City. But in
1989, this writer was asked not to publish
the students’ names ina METROLAND
article, for fear of retaliation against their
families,
In Cape Town, Michelson and Kawola
participated in an ANC “human chain"’
demonstration. Thousands of activists held
hands and surrounded the downtown
business district. It was a prelude toa
planned stay-away, an ANC show of
strength, that took place in August, shortly
after the women returned to Albany: More
than 4 million black and white South
Africans stayed away from work or school
for two days. It was a peaceful protest that
shook up both South African President
FW. de Klerk and Buthelezi.
And in Durban, the women stayed in
Kwamashu Township with Nathi Nceobo
and his family, Neobo lived in Albany in
1990 and 1991 with coalition members.
It was in Durban, a port city on the Indian
Ocean, that Michelson and Kawola saw
some of the most desperate living
conditions in a squatter camp.
“You think of [the camps] as temporary,’
Kawola says. But people can live there for
years. In Kwamashu, there was no
electricity, so there were no lights at night
and the people lived in fear of crime.
“Water is a concern every day,"’ Kawola
adds. They saw several hundred families
using a single outhouse. They saw one
water tap for 3,000 families, and it was
turned off each weekday at 5 PM. ‘‘People
spend hours getting to work,”’ she says,
then they have to come home and find water.
rs t's a very dangerous time,”
says Michelson of South Africa
after returning to Albany. ‘‘There
is an obvious danger because the state-
sponsored violence has disrupted the
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15-21, 1992 e METROLAND « 11
negotiating process. It's dangerous because
of the frustrations that build when
negotiations don’t happen the way people
had hoped. It’s dangerous because the eye
of the international community is not on
South Africa any more, like it once was.”’
The Capital District Coalition Against
Apartheid and Racism is certainly one
group that will keep watching southern
Africa. Formed in 1981 to lead
demonstrations against the South African
Springboks, a rugby team invited to play in
the Albany area that year, the coalition's
efforts have earned it an international
reputation.
“We find many people doing solidarity
work all over the country,”’ says Nesbitt,
whose own efforts have taken him to 48
states. ‘But [the coalition] stands out
because we don’t find people doing it at the
same level for so many years.”’
In 1990, the coalition presented SWAPO
with a check for $1,500, part of the city of
Albany's settlement with Michelson and
two others who were illegally arrested
during the anti-Springboks protests, In
Namibia, Michelson learned the coalition’s
money had helped purchase a computer
SWAPO used to keep track of the 1990
elections, And a $1,000 contribution, raised
during the coalition’s 10th anniversary
celebration last year, was used by the ANC
to set up a rural radio network in South
Africa.
Once negotiations started between the
ANC and the South African government,
however, worldwide pressure to boycott
South Africa faded. The country’s athletes,
for example, were allowed back into the
Olympics this year. In fact, efforts to create a
new South African government where whites
and blacks will have equal votes have stalled
In late September, Zulu leader Buthelezi
withdrew his Inkatha party from the talks.
According toa recent New York Times
story, Buthelezi has allied with the rulers of
two other black South African homelands.
And the Times reports that he has been
flirting’ with conservative whites ‘who
would rather see South Africa fragmented
into ethnic principalities than handed over
to Mr. Mandela.”’ The most ominous
scenario, the Times imagined, is that the
Zulu chief would lead a separatist bloc
aimed at shattering South Africa like
Yusoslavia.
“Our task,”’ says Michelson, ‘‘is to get
South Africa back on the agenda and
support the ongoing struggle there."
Instead of forgetting about South Africa,
Michelson wants to talk about the
“interconnectedness of the violence in the
whole southern Africa region.” As long as
Mozambique remains in turmoil, Namibia
fails to prosper and Angola totters on the
brink of a return to civil war, pressure on
the apartheid government to reform is
weakened.
“We're talking about the violence in
South Africa that is sponsored by
apartheid,’”’ Michelson concludes, ‘‘and the
violence apartheid has organized across its
borders."
Michelson and Kawola saw little, if any,
actual violence. During their nights in
Maputo, they heard gunfire in the streets,
and a visit to Mozambique's western border
area was impossible becuase of the fighting.
But they saw the day-to-day pain of life
under apartheid in three different
countries. “You realize how long its going
to take for that to disappear,'’ Michelson
says. ‘The struggle there will continue
until the people have freedom. They make
that very clear. That is not in question." @
Capital District Coalition
Against Apartheid
and Racism
Box 3002 - Pine Hills Station
Albany, New York 12202
A Project of the Social Justice Center
Thursday, September 24, 1992, 7:00-9:00 p.m.
Albany Public Library
Washington Avenue, Albany, New York
APARTHEID
IS NOT DEAD
AN EYEWITNESS REPORT
SLIDE SHOW AND DISCUSSION
CD-CAAR Members Vera Michelson & Eileen Kawola visited Southern Africa this past
July with Prexy Nesbitt of the Mozambique Solidarity Office. The delegation met with
government officials in Mozambique and Namibia and ANC officials in South Africa.
They spoke to people on the ground everywhere they went - including former RENAMO
boy “bandits” and families whose lives have been terrorized by RENAMO violence in
Mozambique; former SWAPO exiles and Cuban solidarity workers in Namibia; people
who have lost their homes to Inkatha violence, former Robben Island prisoners, and
squatter camp dwellers in South Africa. They also had the opportunity to visit with
families and old friends in South Africa.
At this September forum, Vera
Michelson and Eileen Kawola
will give a report on what's
happening in:
NAMIBIA, MOZAMBIQUE
and SOUTH AFRICA
(for more information, call 438-0309)
Siena College:
President's Office for Diversity, Committee on Teaching,
Women and Minorities Committee, History Club and
Phi Alpha Theta
present
Eye Witness Report and
Slide Show
from
Southern Africa
Robert Nii Nartey, Ph.D. - Assistant Professor of History,
Siena College
Vera Michelson and Eileen Kawola - anti-apartheid activists,
Capital District Coalition Against Apartheid and Racism
Michelson and Kawola were members of a fact finding delegation which recently
visited Southern Africa (Namibia, Mozambique and South Africa).
Place: Siena College
Route 9, Loudonville, New York
Roger Bacon Hall, Room 202
Date: March 3, 1993
Time: 8:00 p.m.
SP
