First Published: The Call, Vol. 6, No. 21, May 30, 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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As the Soviet-directed invasion of Zaire meets with serious setbacks, the revisionist Communist Party U.S.A. (CPUSA) dutifully repeats every Kremlin denial of involvement in the conflict.
Through their newspaper, the Daily World, the revisionists have condemned foreign “interference” in what they call an “internal affair” of Zaire. It is well-known, points out the Daily World, how the Soviet Union has “respected the independence of other countries.” Continuing with this preposterous lie, the revisionists say it has always been the principle of the new czars that “every people can manage its internal affairs on its own, only on its own.”
In 1968, the same Daily World was full of praise for the “respect” Soviet social-imperialism showed towards Czechoslovakia’s independence. There too, a Soviet invasion helped another country “manage its internal affairs” by overthrowing a government opposed to domination by social-imperialism.
After slavishly defending the most open Soviet aggression in the past, the revisionists of the CPUSA have not found it difficult to repeat Soviet lies about Zaire.
It is understandable, then, that the Daily World can write article after article condemning U.S., French and third world aid to the Mobutu government in Zaire and yet have nothing to say about how the invading army is supplied. After all, the Kremlin has denied giving any aid whatsoever to this “widespread popular uprising.” It is obviously too much to expect the Daily World to say why Mbumba, the leader of the invaders, was in Moscow in November, and how his troops came to be armed with the most up-to-date Soviet weapons.
The Daily World maintains a similar silence about what the Katangan mercenaries, who are referred to as an “indigenous popular resistance,” have been doing for the last few years in Angola, now occupied by Soviet-Cuban troops.
The revisionists devote numerous pages to attacks on Mobutu’s government, but they do not dare describe the background and character of Mbumba’s invasion force, whom they are promoting as the liberators of Zaire.
The fact is that these mercenaries they are calling a “liberation front” first tasted combat against their own people, in the pay of Belgian colonialism. Known as the Katangan gendarmes, they formed the core of the puppet army of Moise Tshombe, which tried to maintain Katanga (now Zaire’s Shaba province) under Belgian control.
In the Daily World’s recent attack on the OL, they called Mobutu “the CIA’s hit-man in the murder of the martyred Patrice Lumumba.” This shows how far the revisionists take their contempt for African opinion. It is well-documented that the death of the patriot Lumumba is in fact attributable to Tshombe and the Katangan mercenaries whom the Daily World is now supporting.
The loyalties of these Katangan gendarmes shifted from the Belgian and French colonialists over to the Portuguese in Angola. There, these “revolutionaries” took up arms against the Angolan people’s struggle for independence.
After the overthrow of the Portuguese fascist government, pro-Soviet forces in the new government recruited these mercenaries to fight with the Soviet-Cuban invaders. They were then used against two of the Angolan liberation movements.
Once they began fighting on the side of Soviet imperialism, the magic of revisionist propaganda and Soviet indoctrination quickly transformed these mercenaries who had so many times sold out their own people into a “liberation army.”
Some of the tactics of the revisionist press become clearer when we see these Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde changes. Mobutu, because he had opposed Soviet domination in Africa, becomes a “puppet” of U.S. imperialism, and the Kremlin’s army of mercenaries becomes “progressive,” even a “liberation front.”
Playing on worldwide hatred of U.S. imperialism, the revisionists go further and call all the governments which have aided Zaire “reactionary.” They call all forces throughout the world which oppose Soviet hegemony “reactionary” and “agents of U.S. imperialism.” Similarly, all forces which support Soviet social-imperialism become “progressive,” even “revolutionary.”
But when the Daily World and its Soviet masters put China, Egypt and member states of the Organization of African Unity into the same bag with U.S. imperialism, we have to remember how revisionists use words. These same people called the pro-Soviet fascism of Indira Gandhi “progressive” and all its opponents, who included the masses of Indian people, “reactionaries” who were “serving U.S. imperialism.”
Not content with revising Marxism, the revisionists revise language as well. An invasion becomes a “popular uprising,” Soviet subversion becomes “noninterference” in Zaire’s internal affairs, a mercenary army which sold out to imperialism long ago becomes a “liberation front,” and all opponents of Soviet aggression become “reactionaries.” If the revisionists could change history as easily as they change the meanings of words, all of Africa would soon follow Angola and fall under Soviet domination.