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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 178 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 178, September 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Across the continent of Africa the effects of the world crisis are seen in the slaughter of Rwanda, the mass strikes in Nigeria and the struggles of impatient black workers in South Africa. Simon Hester and Manny Tanoh look into the roots of the Rwandan tragedy but show that not all politics in Africa today are those of despair
Until 1994 most people had never heard of Rwanda. A few may remember the film Gorillas in the Mist about the rare mountain gorilla found on Rwanda’s lush mountain sides. But now another African tragedy has filled every front page in the world. Television news has brought horror, disease and death into our homes. Rwanda’s nightmare has touched the hearts of millions. The sheer scale of suffering is horrific – more than 500,000 killed in only a few weeks, millions more facing displacement as refugees, starvation, disease and death.
The piles of dead bodies in Rwandan refugee camps are a silent rebuke to the bleating ministers of Britain, France and the US who promise much but deliver very little. They can spend billions on wars and weapons of destruction, moving large numbers of troops and resources around the world at very short notice, but cannot supply dying Rwandans with the basics for survival – food, clean water, shelter.
Rwanda’s nightmare has been given the full colour supplement treatment. Lots of horror, plenty of shocking pictures, but next to no explanation. There has been a widespread acceptance that the carnage is the result of inexplicable ethnic rivalry between tribal peoples.
But Rwanda is far from remote. Since German colonisation in 1890 it has been increasingly drawn into the chaotic rhythms of the world capitalist system. Rwanda’s turbulent political history can only be explained by looking at the way colonial and post-colonial regimes have subjected Rwanda to the logic of capitalism.
Rwanda is a small, extremely fertile landlocked country of 8.2 million people. Unusually for Africa the population consists of one single nationality – the Banyarwanda. Hutus make up 84 percent of the population, Tutsis 15 percent. The division between these different ethnic groups was originally based on wealth, not ethnicity. In the old kingdom of Rwanda (well established by the l7th century) land was divided between regional clans.
Within the clans a Tutsi dominated hierarchy controlled access to land and animals. Hutu peasants gave up unpaid labour in exchange for land and animals. There never were separate ‘tribes’ with separate languages and cultural customs or even ‘tribal’ territories. Hutus could become Tutsis by acquiring more wealth.
Successive colonial powers, Germany and Belgium, magnified and politicised existing divisions between Hutu and Tutsi out of all recognition.
When the Belgians introduced compulsory passes for all Rwandans in the 1930s, a differentiation between Hutu and Tutsi was vital to their ‘divide and rule’ strategy. Attempts were made to categorise people using racial characteristics – skin colour, nose and head sizes. They failed. The dividing line between Hutu and Tutsi could only be based on wealth. A Tutsi was defined as someone who owned ten or more cattle and the division rigidly enforced. Traditional Tutsi leaders were expected to police the new order. Numerous new chiefdoms were arbitrarily created, paid salaries by the colonial administration and encouraged to levy taxes and ‘customary’ tributes. Hutu resistance was brutally suppressed, with many killed. Mutilation and amputation were favoured Belgian punishments – carried out by Tutsis. By the 1940s thousands of Hutus had fled from the barbarism to Uganda.
The racist pass system stopped any possibility of ‘overcoming Hutuness’. The divisions were legally fixed and inflexible. Simultaneously growing numbers of Tutsis with no access to the colonial gravy train faced impoverishment. The establishment of cash crops (principally coffee) robbed many of their land. In 1952 the Tutsi Mwami (king) abolished the traditional custom of exchanging labour for land which had given even the poorest peasants some – extremely unequal – rights to land. It was this act which fuelled a mass revolt by farm workers and peasants in 1959 which overthrew the Tutsi aristocracy.
With breathtaking cynicism the colonial authorities changed sides dramatically, backing the Hutu dominated ‘revolution’ and fanning anti-Tutsi discontent. The Belgians had been increasingly concerned at the growth of a small but restive urban middle class who were inspired by radical nationalist ideas and the anti-colonial movement across Africa. Most of them were Tutsis. Years of pent up Hutu rage, coupled with anti-Tutsi Belgian propaganda, directed the revolt against all Tutsis. Thousands were killed, and many more fled across the borders. In 1961 the Party for the Emancipation of Hutus which had won limited local government elections proclaimed independence.
The new Hutu ruling class maintained the developments of the colonial period. Rwanda continued to depend on coffee exports, and nothing much changed for the overwhelming majority – both Hutu and Tutsi.
Periodic pogroms of Tutsis were launched by the Hutu rulers to deflect discontent. But the weakness of Rwandan capitalism in the face of the collapse of commodity prices in the early 1970s caused splits in the ruling class. In 1973 army commander General Habyarimana staged a successful coup. He formed a new party of government, the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (MNRD), concentrating power in the hands of Habyarimana’s Akazu (or clan).
Increasing numbers of Hutus opposed the MNRD, but faced ruthless repression. The tiny trade union movement was tightly controlled and coopted by the MNRD. Control in the countryside was maintained through a network of cooperative groups overseen by MNRD loyalists. Even the Catholic Church had a seat on the Central Committee. Ethnic politics was encouraged. Tutsis were excluded from the army and Hutu soldiers forbidden to marry Tutsis. With increasing poverty and growing pressure for access to land, government propaganda stoked up fear of Tutsi Inyenzi (cockroaches) taking Hutu land.
But opposition grew, calling for an end to military rule and for multi-party elections. The crippling economic crises of the 1980s put the government under enormous pressure. Coffee prices plummeted in 1987 and 1989. Gross Domestic Product fell by 17 percent in three years. In 1990 the desperate Habyarimana government adopted the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programme in exchange for continued credit and foreign aid. Rwanda faced massive cutbacks in public spending.
In neighbouring Uganda the victory in 1986 of the National Resistance Army led by Yoweri Museveni boosted the anti-MNRD opposition. Many Tutsi refugees from 1961 had fought alongside Museveni. They formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front, dominated by Tutsis but with significant Hutu involvement. In October 1990 they invaded Rwanda from Uganda.
The government was saved from military defeat by French intervention. The huge inflow of arms and military personnel maintained the MNRD in power and increased its repressive capacity. The army grew from 5,000 to 30,000 in two years. The government organised its land overseers in the rural cooperatives into a militia – armed and trained by France.
The elite presidential guard launched a reign of terror on opposition activists. A pro-government radio station kept up a steady and murderous stream of anti-Tutsi propaganda.
The regime’s French backers knew exactly what was going on. But Habyarimana’s government came under increasing pressure from Belgium and the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to agree to a power sharing deal with the RPF. The OAU wanted to assert its own tattered authority and to prevent the Rwandan civil war destabilising the whole of Central and East Africa. Two peace accords were agreed but subsequently reneged on by Habyarimana. However, opposition parties were legalised and moderate Hutu oppositionists brought into the government. The elite around Habyarimana could feel their power eroding.
On 6 April this year President Habyarimana was killed when his private plane (a personal gift from Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, son of the French president and presidential adviser on African affairs) was shot down. He was returning from a summit in Tanzania which had brokered a third and ‘final’ peace deal with the RPF. All the evidence suggests that members of the presidential guard shot the plane down.
The killings began. The presidential guard systematically murdered Hutu ‘moderates’ starting with members of the govemment, including Agatha Uwilingiymana, the newly installed Hutu prime minister. The initial wave of killing was political, targeting opposition politicians, human rights activists and all potential rivals to the Akazu clan.
Then the well armed Interehamwe militias were unleashed. Hutu civilians were coerced by the militia to murder their Tutsi neighbours. In a few short weeks up to 45 percent of the Tutsi population were killed. But government power was collapsing in the face of a renewed assault by the RPF.
The French invasion of Rwanda from bases in Zaire was a desperate attempt to save the government yet again. Their so called safe haven in Rwanda’s south west corner was always a lie. Up to a thousand elite troops from the foreign legion arrived, but next to no food or humanitarian aid.
British and US forces operating from bases in Uganda have moved in to back the new RPF government. They are desperate to maintain stability in a poverty stricken region strained by millions of refugees. The prospect of war spreading into every neighbouring country is very real. Burundi is about to explode. Uganda has backed the RPF in order to get Rwandan refugees to return home. A refugee camp on the Rwandan border is now Tanzania’s second biggest city!
The pressure on overstretched resources by large movements of refugees is creating huge tensions. The US and Britain have huge economic and strategic interests in the entire region and need locally recognised, stable governments to protect them.
The United Nations, as in Somalia, has proved itself to be an extension of the foreign policy objectives of the major imperialist powers. It did not object when the French invaded and within a month had rubber stamped US threats of an invasion of Haiti.
But, more significantly, a ‘peacekeeping operation’ maintains the divisions by assuming that Hutus and Tutsis can never live together in peace. This is not true and can only lead to even more massive waves of refugees. It was relentless government propaganda that created the fear of RPF reprisals in the minds of millions of Hutus and sparked the mass exodus to refugee camps in Zaire.
The will of the Rwandese people has been ignored in the midst of the chaos and international power politics. They are not a hate filled irrational people as has so often been portrayed. The stories of the slaughter of Tutsis are countered by many instances of heroic resistance to the death squads. Hardly any Tutsi alive in Rwanda today was not offered support and protection by Hutu neighbours at great danger to themselves. But in a country with extreme pressure for land, yesterday’s divisions and today’s poverty are deadly when exploited by sectarian ruling class interests.
There is an alternative. It will come when the oppressed and exploited unite across the artificial barriers created by colonialism and the Rwandan ruling class.
A glimmer of the potential for class struggle came in 1993 when workers in the African Development Bank in Kigali took over the running of the bank when it was earmarked for closure by the government, in accordance with IMF recommendations. Hutu and Tutsi workers stood together against their local and foreign exploiters.
If such struggles had been copied across Rwanda, the story today would be very different. They are also the only hope for the future.
The Rwandese people cannot rely on the new RPF government. Its path to power – invasion and war – excluded the majority of Rwandese. The power sharing agreements with the old regime specifically excluded the radical opposition. Prominent leaders of the RPF have already served in the internal security apparatus of the Ugandan government where they were quick to use extremely repressive measures to put down popular protests. Uganda has warmly welcomed the attentions of the World Bank and the IMF. There is every reason to expect the new Rwandan government to do likewise. The economic crisis and the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme that created the rapid descent into extreme poverty will continue. New struggles will rise.
This is the universal experience across Africa. The effect of the crisis has been to create huge splits in the various ruling classes and to massively increase the gap between rich and poor. Ethnic tension and tribalism are rising across the continent as governments seek to deflect the anger away from themselves.
But at the same time Africa has witnessed a wave of working class fightback not seen since the great anti-colonial struggles of 30 years ago. General strikes have hit dozens of countries. Dictators have fallen. Millions of Africa’s huge working class have tasted their potential – to smash through the tribalism and to seriously challenge capitalist power at its weakest link. The future is in the balance.
Nigeria is at the other end of the spectrum of the crises that engulf Africa. Millions are fighting back. Since June the 150,000 strong oil and gas workers’ unions have spearheaded mass strikes which have paralysed Africa’s most populous country.
Key to the workers’ demands is an end to military rule and the reinstatement of the results of the June 1993 elections won by billionaire tycoon Moshood Abiola. The military government has employed all means – murder, mass arrests, tribalism – in an attempt to defeat the incredible wave of militancy. But the leadership provided by the oil workers has generalised anti-government action. Rank and file pressure forced the extremely reluctant trade union bureaucrats to back a general strike.
The country was paralysed as millions responded to the strike call. In some areas workers and market traders formed committees to co-ordinate supplies.
Disgracefully, the Nigerian Labour Congress (equivalent of the TUC) suspended the action after two days, urging a return to peaceful negotiations.
Yet the workers’ action shows that the power of government and transnational companies can be taken on and broken. Shell’s operations, which account for half of Nigeria’s oil output, have ground to a halt. Oil provides 90 percent of Nigerian government revenue. Both ‘giants’ are desperate for a settlement.
So are the trade union bureaucrats whose ‘negotiating’ functions will be redundant if rank and file workers win an outright victory. Last year angry workers occupied and burnt down the NLC’s national headquarters, declaring the secretary general a wanted man!
But the movement suffers from the absence of workers’ self organised politics. Most workers know they cannot rely on Abiola, Nigeria’s Berhisconi.
Abiola is a member of the ruling class who has profited enormously from workers’ exploitation. He is also a long time associate of the military rulers.
The widespread distrust of Abiola betrays the movement’s lack of clarity about its alternatives. This can lead to its defeat.
The behaviour of the NLC leadership has spread confusion and demoralisation in many regional organisations making them vulnerable to tribalist government propaganda. If such divisive tactics succeed, the cost will be to bring Nigeria closer to a civil war which would dwarf the Rwandan nightmare.
This danger can be completely averted if an independent socialist organisation of workers can provide clear and resolute leadership necessary for united action.
After 100 days in office President Nelson Mandela’s support amongst South Africa’s black workers is being sorely tested. His supporters in big business cannot believe their luck. It is ‘business as usual’ in South Africa – low wages, racism, unemployment and poverty. But the heightened expectations have unleashed the biggest wave of working class struggle since 1987.
Pay and racism at work are overwhelmingly the main grievances. 30,000 car workers have downed tools over wages. A high profile strike by Pick’n’Pay supermarket workers won pay rises. ‘New South Africa – same old police’ became a favourite chant on picket lines.
By July 1.4 million strike days had been recorded. The union leaders, close allies of Mandela’s ANC government, are facing difficult choices. On the one hand Mandela is demanding that they stop the strikes. But the pressure from below is enormous. So far regional and national union leaders from the main federation, COSATU, have managed to prevent concerted simultaneous action across different unions. The return of the highly successful anti-apartheid weapon, the ‘stayaway’, would prove a major challenge to Mandela. Already his pay restrictions in the public sector are under severe threat. Big business is expecting him to hold the line. Ex-president de Klerk’s National Party is threatening to leave the government coalition.
Events are proving that South Africa’s black working class cannot expect results from the ANC government they voted for. The common pre-election worry among many activists that Mandela would behave like Mugabe in Zimbabwe is becoming all too apparent.
Workers are having to fight independently of, and often against, the ANC. So far they do so in anger and sorrow. But the opportunity is opening for militants to create a socialist alternative that can link up all the struggles and direct them against the heart of South African capitalism.
In neighbouring Zimbabwe the temperature is also rising.
In February, against the advice of the Zimbabwean Congress of Trade unions (ZCCU), the country’s postal workers went on strike for a 12 percent pay rise. They were all sacked and their leaders arrested. The resulting furore forced the ZCTU to threaten a national solidarity strike. The government caved in. Inspired by this victory workers at Harare University threatened a strike unless all their colleagues suspended after a strike last year were reinstated. They won immediately.
April saw junior doctors on illegal strike for 40 percent. Court prosecutors struck in May demanding 65 percent across the board – backdated to June 1993. Teachers and bank workers have also moved into action.
President Mugabe’s use of draconian anti-strike laws is clearly losing its ability to intimidate workers. The ZCTU, for so long a tame ally of the government, has been forced – however hesitantly – to back workers’ demands for fear of being sidelined altogether.
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