At the time Tiro was killed, a Bureau of State Security (BOSS) agent who had infiltrated the ANC, Craig Williamson was working for IUEF. When Inside Boss by Gordon Winter was about to be published in 1981, Craig Williamson who was in Europe, probably in Switzerland where the IUEF was headquartered, ran back to South Africa. Because there is no statute of limitations in murder cases, I think in all fairness and in the interests of justice, the Botswana government should institute extradition proceedings in respect of Craig Williamson to go and stand trial for the murder of Tiro. Craig Williamson will reveal his accomplices.

Winter, a former spy for the South African government, reveals in his book that Tiro was killed by the Z-Squad. That circus which was called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) failed to investigate Tiro’s death. The TRC was a product of the imperialist-brokered secret negotiations between the Apartheid government led by the National Party and the ANC. After it has come to power through a rigged election in 1994 (see FW de Klerk’s book The Last Trek: A New Beginning), the ANC-led government has helped cover up Tiro’s assassination by bungling investigations into Tiro’s death. That’s why Nelson Mandela couldn’t mention the assassination of Tiro in his book Long Walk to Freedom published in 1994 but mentions the assassination of a white woman Ruth First who was also killed by a letter bomb years after Tiro’s death.

In his January 8 statement this year, ANC President Jacob Zuma also mentioned Ruth First but didn’t mention Tiro. I don’t remember hearing or reading former President Thabo Mbeki mentioning the assassination of Tiro. During their secret negotiations the ANC and National Party government agreed not to reveal the names of former Apartheid government spies from both the ANC and the white minority government. Why would the ANC protect former Apartheid spies if it didn’t have an axe to grind? By avoiding to mention Tiro’s killing through a letter bomb, coupled with the shoddy work of the TRC regarding investigations into Tiro’s death, gives one the impression that the ANC had a hand in the demise of Tiro directly or indirectly. Otherwise why would its leaders behave the way they do?

In his book Preparing for Power: Oliver Tambo Speaks, published in 1987, the late Tambo laments the fact that the Black Consciousness Movement was going to supplant the ANC. The ANC and the SACP in exile were hostile towards the BCM. The reason these organisations were negative towards BCM was that BCM had stolen the limelight from the ANC and Tiro himself did in less than a year what the ANC couldn’t do in thirty years. After his expulsion from Turfloop in 1972 following his scathing critique of the Bantu Education Act of 1953 he went to teach at Morris Isaacson High School where Tsietsi Mashinini, who led the 1976 student uprisings was a student. It was because of Tiro that High School students were conscientised and ultimately rejected Apartheid and its trappings like Bantu Education. Tiro had taken the baton from Zeph Mothopeng who was a fierce ciritic of Bantu Education in the early 1950′s. Mothopeng was a founding member of the PAC and was eventually convicted in 1978 for organising the Soweto Student uprisings.

It was at Morris Isaacson that Tiro introduced his students to the philosophy of the Black Consciousness Movement and started a campaign to encourage students to question the validity and content of the history books prescribed by the Department of Bantu Education. The Principal of Morris Isaacson was put under pressure by the Apartheid government to fire him. Thirty eight years after Tiro’s death we still have mediocre history text books prescribed by the Freedom Charter government of the ANC and ANC officials who distort and falsify history at public platforms and in the media.

In late 1973 Tiro got wind of the news that the Apartheid authorities wanted to arrest him and fled to Botswana where he played a leading role in the activities of the South African Student Movement and South African Student Organisation and Black Peoples Convention. He was instrumental in forging links with militant and revolutionary groups such as the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. He travelled to all parts of Southern Africa. He won more support for the Black Consciousness philosophy.Tiro was born in Dinokana in 1947 where he started his Primary school and matriculated at Barolong High School in Mafikeng and went to Turfloop University known as the University of the North. How do Turfloop University, Barolong High and St Josephs College in Kgale honour this great son of the soil?

By Sam Ditshego
(The writer is a member of the Pan Africanist Research Institute (PARI))

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ANC Today

What was the fundamental objective of the ANC when it was formed in 1912? Did the present ANC leaders, especially since June 1955 pursue the primary goal of the 1912 ANC as envisaged by the founding fathers including the African Kings amongst them? Is the present ANC 100 years old or 57 years old? Does it have the same objectives and policies as the 1912 ANC? Why was South Africa last to be “liberated” on the African Continent, and without repossession of the land, economic power and with so much poverty among the African people?

On the 8th of January 1912 when opening the inaugural conference of the ANC (then called the South African Native National Congress [SANNC]), Dr. Pixley ka Seme said, “Kings of the royal blood and gentlemen of our race, we have gathered here to consider and discuss a scheme my colleagues have decided to place before you….In the land of our birth, Africans are treated as hewers of wood and drawers of water. The whites have formed what is known as the Union of South Africa in which we have no voice.”

African kings had fought many wars of national resistance against colonialism for over 2OO years until their spears succumbed to the guns of the colonial aggressors. All had their lands forcefully taken from them. Others like King Hintsa had fallen by the bullet of the foreign invader in combat defending the African country against rapacious colonial forces.

What Precipitated Formation of ANC in 1912?

An ANC leader, Dr. S. Moridi Molema described these colonialists in 1952 as “men who are nothing else but robbers, villains and traitors to the highest and noblest teachings of Christianity which they so blatantly profess, men shockingly contemptuous of their conscience and now in a frenzy of self-adulation preparing to embrace each other and shake their bloody hands…and ready to commence another evil era of rapine and oppression.”

The colonial laws that precipitated the formation of the ANC in 1912 were the Union of South Africa Act 1909 and the Native Land Act 1913.The British Parliament enacting the Union of South Africa read as follows: “1. This Act may be cited as the South Africa Act 1909…44. The qualifications of a member of the House of Assembly shall be as follows: He must… be a British subject of European descent.”

In 1909, there were five million Africans in Azania (South Africa). But this union of colonial settlers was as follows: Cape Colony (167,546), Natal (34,784), Transvaal (106,493), and Orange River Colony (41,014). This was a total population of 349,537 colonial settlers according to the 1904 Census. The five million indigenous Africans remained helpless spectators as the tragedy of their land dispossession unfolded before them. The draconian British colonial law was followed by another genocide law called the Native Land Act 1913. This colonial law allocated 93% of the African country to 349,837 European settlers and 7% to five million Africans.

Sol Plaatje who became the first Secretary of ANC in 1912 wrote about why Africans were dispossessed of their land: “In the harvest of 1911, there was panic among white farmers because an African had garnered 3OOO bags of wheat and another 1,6OO bags…in a neighbourhood where their white neighbours reaped 300 to 400 bags of wheat. African export produce was looming in the not distant future. Then public opinion which in this country stands for white opinion asserted itself. ‘Where will we get servants?’ It was asked, ‘if the Kaffirs are allowed to become skilled? A Kaffir with 3000 bags of wheat! What will he do with the money? If they are inclined to herd pedigree stock let them improve their masters (whites) cattle and cultivate for them.”

Earl Glen, a British official had put the issue of land dispossession of the African in South Africa, colonially clear: “The Africans are generally looked upon by Whites as an inferior race whose interests must be systematically disregarded when they come into competition with their own, and should be governed with a view to the advantage of the superior race. For this reason two things must be afforded to white colonists obtaining LAND…the Kaffir should be made to furnish as large and cheap labour as possible.”

ANC Founders In Talks With King George V On Land Dispossession In 1914

There was now, panic among the African leaders and their people. On 20th July 1914, the leaders of the newly formed ANC armed with the mandate from the kings and African people of this country went to England to present a petition to King George V, protesting land dispossession of the African people. They were President John L Dube, Secretary Sol Plaatje, Walter Rubusana, Thomas Mapikela and Saul Msane.

In part, their petition read that Africans “loved their country with a most intense love…that their land had been taken away from them, their military and other institutions brought to nought.” The petition of the five ANC founders demanded “that the natives ( Africans) be put into possession of land in proportion to their numbers and on the same conditions as the white race.” The African leaders to London achieved nothing except for a London daily newspaper favourable report on the cause of their mission in England which read thus “In carving out estates for themselves in Africa, the white races have shown little regard for the claims of the black man. They have appropriated his LAND and have taken away his economic freedom and have left him in a worse case than they found him….That the African has been dispossessed may be illustrated by the facts in regard to the Union of South Africa. Here blacks compared with whites are in the proportion of FOUR to ONE, but are in legal occupation of only one fifteenth of their land…the deputation of Natives (ANC leaders) now in England have appealed to the imperial government for protection. They asked for the suspension of the Native Land Act 1913….”

“Settlers Are Receivers Of Stolen Goods “ – A British Humanitarian

Some justice conscious Whites spoke about the land dispossession of the African people. Here are a few examples:

a. “The active seizure by force or guile of lands actually in possession of the Africans was a blunder of the first magnitude and an act of injustice.” – Sir Godfrey Lagden;

b. “The mistake we made in South Africa in the past was our failure in reserving sufficient land for the future of the natives and the problem we have in consequence on our hands is one of the most difficult.” – Jan Smuts in 1930;

c. “Aborigines have had wholesale robbery of territory committed upon them and settlers have become receivers of stolen goods.” – Blackhouse, a British Humanitarian told his own British government.

The Present ANC Repudiated Land Dispossession Of Africans 57 Years Ago

The present ANC is not 100 years old. It abandoned the fundamental objectives of the 1912 ANC fifty seven years ago. In 1955, a section of the 1912 ANC leadership was captured by a section of the white ruling class. Despite the background of the Union of South Africa Act 1909 and the Native Land Act 1913, in 1955 the authors of the Freedom Charter preamble falsely proclaimed: “We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white…and therefore, we the people of South Africa black and white together, equals, countrymen and brothers adopt the Charter.”

This was a colossal colonial fraud. 57 years after this deception there are two “nations” in South Africa. One is extremely rich and white minority and the other is extremely poor and 80% African majority. In 1943, 1944, 1948 and 1949 the Congress Youth League had formulated Four Freedom Documents. The 1912 ANC had adopted these documents as its policy. It implemented them under Presidents A.B. Xuma, Dr. James Moroka and Chief Albert Luthuli. The Freedom Charter defectors threw them into the political dustbin and replaced them with this so-called Freedom Charter.

On the economy the 1944 document had proclaimed, “The Congress Youth League holds that political democracy remains an empty form without substance unless it is properly grounded on a base of economic democracy….Land: The re-division of land among farmers and peasants of all nationalities in proportion to their numbers….The improvement of land, the reclamation of denuded areas and conservation of water supplies….Education: The ultimate goal of African Nationalism in so far as education is concerned, is one hundred percent literacy among the people in order to ensure the realisation of an effective democracy…. Some of the means to that end are: Free compulsory education for all children, with its concomitants of adequate accommodation, adequate training facilities and adequate remuneration for teachers…..”

A Section Of The 1912 ANC That Rejected The Freedom Charter Declared:

“Following the capture of a portion of the Black leadership of South Africa by a section of the white ruling class, the masses of our people are in extreme danger of losing sight of the objective of our struggle…. This captured leadership claims to be fighting for freedom when in truth it is fighting to perpetuate the tutelage of the African people. It is tooth and nail against Africans gaining effective control of their LAND….It has completely abandoned the objectives of freedom. It has joined the ranks of the reactionaries. It is no longer within the ranks of the liberation movement….These leaders after doing a dirty job namely, seeing to it that the African is deprived for all time of his inherent right to control his country effectively, of seeing to it that whatsoever new social order is established in this country, the essentials of white domination are retained, even though its frills and trappings has been labelled multi-racialism by their masters.” – Excerpts from THE PAN AFRICANIST MANIFESTO adopted by the PAC in 1959.

“The Declaration In The Charter Uneven” – ANC President, Albert Luthuli

The ANC President Luthuli did not know who drafted the Freedom Charter. “I can only speak vaguely about its preparations that went before….” he wrote in his book LET MY PEOPLE GO (First Edition). “The main disadvantage from which it suffered was that the branches submitted materials for the Charter at a very late hour – too late in fact, for the statement to be boiled down into a comprehensive statement. It was not possible for the National Action Committee to circulate the draft carefully….The result is that the declaration in the Charter is UNEVEN.”

The ANC President who was elected according to the fundamental objectives and policy of the ANC as founded in 1912 has said that the Freedom Charter is open to criticism and is vague. There was definitely a fundamental change in the policy of the 1912 ANC in 1955.

A section of ANC leaders and members of the ANC who stood by the fundamental objectives of the ANC as constituted in 1912 declared, “In 1949, we got the African people to accept the nation-building programme of that year. We have consistently and honestly stuck to that programme which according to us is in irreconcilable conflict with the 1949 programme of action seeing that LAND no longer belongs to the African people….

In numerous ANC conferences, we have made it clear that we are committed to the overthrow of white colonial domination and restoration of land to its rightful owners. We are now launching openly on our own, as custodians of the ANC policy as it was formulated in 1912 and pursued up to the time of ‘Congress Alliance’.”

The 1955 ANC Is The Anti-thesis of the 1912 ANC

The fundamental change in the 1955 ANC policy is affirmed by Ernest Harsh the author of SOUTH AFRICA: WHITE RULE BLACK REVOLT, when he writes, “Because of its hostility to militant African Nationalism and its policy of seeking blocs with white ‘democratic’ forces, the South African Communist Party bore a certain degree of responsibility for the change in the ANC policies.”

In 1984, General Sebastian Mabote, the Chief Commander of the Mozambican Army explained on behalf of President Samora Machel why his country agreed to support the Zimbabwe freedom fighters in Rhodesia, but was not prepared to give the same measure of aid to the ANC of South Africa. He said, “The Zimbabwe guerrillas are fighting for self-determination, independence and liberty. In South Africa the ANC is carrying on a fight for civil rights and not an armed struggle for national liberation.” – (Sowetan 10th March 1984)

Consequences Of Changing 1912 ANC Fundamental Policy In 1955

The 1955 ANC became a civil rights movement. In 1994 it negotiated “democracy” and not equitable redistribution of land and resources according to population numbers. The Native Land Act 1913 through which Africans were dispossessed is entrenched in Section 25(7) of the “New South Africa” constitution. This civil rights movement and “Freedom Charter” ANC government has laws for issues the dispossessed people of this country never asked for. Some of them are on homosexuals, same sex marriages, abortion “on demand,” prostitutes who are now called “sex workers” and so on. Their government is infested with endemic corruption that is destroying the country because the Charterists have lost the 1912 ANC vision for this country.

The negotiations the ANC pursued at CODESA with the apartheid Nationalist Party in 1994 were not in accord with the fundamental objectives of the 1912 ANC. John Pilger in his book, BETRAYAL OF SOUTH AFRICAN REVOLUTION reminds how in September 1985 the Freedom Charter ANC leaders met a group of whites in Lusaka, led by the chairman of the Anglo-American Corporation, Gavin Relly. The Johannesburg stock market had crashed and the apartheid regime defaulted on its debt and the chieftains of South African capital took fright. Their message to the ANC leaders in exile was that ‘transition’ to a black-governed liberal democracy was possible, only if ‘order’ and ‘stability’ were guaranteed. This was reference to a “free market” state where social justice would not be a priority.

What followed later were secret meetings that took place in England. This is the very England where King George V had ignored the land dispossession of Africans raised there by the founders of the ANC. This time the meeting was with the Afrikaner elite.

As Pilger puts it, “The prime movers who had underpinned and profited from apartheid – such as the British mining giant Consolidated Fields, picked up the bill for the classical wines and malt whisky scoffed around the fire place at Mells Park House. The aim was for the Pretoria regime to split the ANC between the exile moderates with whom they could do business and the majority who made up those resisting in the townships.”

Prof. Sampie Terreblanch observes, “The ANC’s core leaders effectively sold its sovereign freedom to implement an independent and appropriate socio-economic policy for a mess of potage when it entered into several compromises with the corporate sector and its global partners. These unfortunate transactions must be retracted or renegotiated.” – (A HISTORY OF INEQUALITY IN SOUTH AFRICA 1652- 2OO2).

If the leaders who founded the ANC in 1912 and those who presented a petition on land dispossession of the African people to King George V were alive, this year, what would they say? How would African kings and those warriors who died in those many battle fields to defend this country against colonialism, feel when they see that for 57 years, the land question in South Africa has not been a fundamental issue with this ANC since 1955? It is now buried in the “miracle” “rainbow nation.”

If “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white…equals, countrymen and brothers…” why is the ANC spending billions of Rand it has not got, buying land for blacks from whites on an exploitative ‘willing seller – willing buyer’ basis and inflated selling prices?. This is getting the ANC government deeper in debt without resolving the land question in South Africa.

The demand that was made by the 1912 ANC leaders “that the Africans must be put into possession of land according to their numbers” has not been met. This primary demand of the African national liberation struggle was betrayed in 1955. Section 25 of the “New South Africa” constitution is the same thing as the Native Land Act 1913.No sane nation has ever commemorated its genocide or spat on the graves of its ancestors.

By Dr. Motsoko Pheko
(The writer is the author of several books, the latest of which is HOW FREEDOM CHARTER BETRAYED THE DISPOSSESSED. He is the former Representative of the victims of apartheid at the United Nations in New York and at the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva as well as former Member of the South African Parliament. Cell 0761414204)

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Zuma addressing the ANC Celebrations

I don’t want to dwell on whether or not the delivery of ANC President Jacob Zuma’s speech on the occasion of the ANC’s centenary celebration was or wasn’t well delivered. I would rather delve on the contents of the speech.

Zuma began his January 8th statement marking the centenary of the founding of the ANC with a self-contradictory statement which is also controversial. He quoted the preamble of the Freedom Charter which states that “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white”. Zuma then said, “in 1913 the Land Act was enacted which dispossessed the Africans of their land”. He didn’t say “all who live in South Africa, black and white were dispossessed of their land”, he said the Africans were dispossessed of their land. How then does South Africa belong to all who live in it, black and white when South Africa was usurped from Africans? The founders of the PAC who were known as the Africanists said it in 1955 when the Freedom Charter reared its ugly head that it didn’t make sense because it was a betrayal of African Nationalism and of the material interests of the African people. They also demanded to know its author whose name was never revealed. In his book Young Mandela first published in 2010, David James Smith reveals that the Freedom Charter was written by a white Communist Party member, Rusty Bernstein. The Freedom Charter is also a repudiation of the African people’s anti-colonialist stance of “Africa for the Africans”.

Zuma also said the Freedom Charter was Professor ZK Matthews‘ idea. It’s true that it was his idea which he raised at the regional ANC conference in August 1953 and later drafted a memo to define more clearly his ambition for a dream of freedom for all, a blueprint for a democratic, non-racial South Africa. However, the contraption that Bernstein wrote was not what Professor ZK Matthews envisaged. Zuma and many in the ANC who claim that the idea of the Freedom Charter was Professor ZK Matthews’ invariably fail to mention that he then took no further part in the exercise, never even saw the draft charter that was drawn up and did not attend the conference himself because he felt sidelined and excluded from the process that he had set in motion. The campaign fell into the hands of a National Action Council, which offended the Africanists by being neither exclusively African nor giving sufficient prominence to the ANC.

Bernstein didn’t think anyone ever actually read and agreed to the draft before it went to the press. Professor Matthews was not alone in never seeing the draft. The ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli was never shown a copy either because at the time he was banned and still in Groutville. Former ANC President Dr AB Xuma had written a letter which complained that the new leadership was forgetting its old values and was too quick to join with other races and that the ANC was losing its identity. That new ANC leadership suppressed Dr Xuma’s letter, reading only parts of it. That same leadership had difficulties adopting the Freedom Charter.

In his January 8th statement Zuma repeated the blatant lie that of the 134 political prisoners executed at Pretoria Central Prison between 1961 and 1989 the majority were from MK. He does not even understand elementary arithmatic that if more than 100 out of 134 executed politica prisoners belonged to POQO, the erstwhile military wing of the PAC and forerunners of APLA, then the remainder are the minority who belonged to other organisations such as MK, including one white man who belonged to ARM. If the media is worth its salt it should take on Zuma on this issue to explain why he deliberately keeps on lying to the public that the majority of those hanged belonged to MK. I think the PAC leadership should also take up the matter and thereafter call a media conference to explain to the nation the exact facts about how many POQO cadres were hanged and how many MK cadres were hanged and put this issue to rest once and for all.

Zuma mentioned that the 21 March, 1960 anti-pass campaign which culminated in the shooting of peaceful protesters in Sharpeville without saying who organised it and what for. He then jumped to state that the ANC and PAC were banned after the Sharpeville massacre. He said after the banning of the ANC and PAC the MK embarked on armed struggle. He didn’t say both MK and POQO embarked on armed struggle because that’s exactly what happened. POQO was formed on 11 September 1961 three months before MK and they celebrated their 50th anniversary last September. Zuma also mentioned the Sobukwe Clause but didn’t mention who Sobukwe was and which organisation he belonged to. Those who don’t know perhaps thought he was a member of the ANC.

Just like Sharpeville, Zuma obfuscated the issues of the PAC and its founding President Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe. The Apartheid government feared and respected Sobukwe. Now the ANC government also fears and grudgingly respects him.

By Sam Ditshego

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Sobukwe addressing delegates at the inagural congress of PAC

If I were to compare Dr Pallo Jordan‘s article headlined, “On a century of movement” in the Mail & Guardian of December 23 with the growth and development of a baby, then it is born and walks and skips the intermediary stage of crawling. How can an erudite person who hails from South Africa write about a century of South Africa’s struggle for liberation without mentioning the PAC and POQO, the forerunners of APLA, and the 21 March 1960 Sharpeville and Langa anti-pass campaigns organised by the PAC and followed by the shooting of peaceful demonstrators, and jump to write about the Black Consciousness Movement and the 1976 uprising? I think even members of the BCM itself would be bamboozled.

How can Dr Pallo Jordan fail to mention an organisation that forced the Apartheid government to proscribe both the PAC and ANC in April 1960 if he is serious at all and expect to be taken seriously? How can Pallo Jordan not mention an organisation that forced the Apartheid government to institute a commission in 1962 headed by Justice H. Snyman to look into POQO activities? The Snyman Report of 25 June 1963 revealed that POQO intended to violently overthrow the government in 1963 in order to create an African socialist state representing Black South Africans. Snyman observed that, in view of the existing law, the state had to prove connection between POQO and the banned PAC, and he suggested retrospective legislation. Minister of Justice B J Vorster subsequently created a retroactive 90-day detention law, the General Law Amendment Act (no. 37 of 1963), declaring “reactionary organisations existing since 7 April 1960 unlawful”. This was because of POQO, the military wing of the PAC and forerunners of APLA and not because of MK and the ANC.

How can Pallo Jordan fail to mention the PAC and POQO in our struggle history going back a hundred years? It is because he wants to conceal the fact that the much-vaunted ANC has, after all, not contributed in our struggle for liberation more than the PAC did as purported by the ANC and the media locally and internationally. Just a week before the publication of Pallo Jordan’s article under discussion, the ANC-led government honoured 134 political prisoners who were hanged between 1961 and 1989 at the Pretoria Central Prison. More than 100 of those executed were members of POQO but President Jacob Zuma failed in his speech to mention that more than 100 of those executed were POQO members, let alone to acknowledge the presence of POQO among those executed political prisoners. Jordan, Zuma and many in the ANC are guilty of intellectual dishonesty and falsification and distortion of history.

There is also inconsistency and confusion in ANC policy positions. The ANC has honoured POQO members whom Nelson Mandela described in his book Long Walk to Freedom as terrorists. Another inconsistency and confusing can be found in the late Oliver Tambo‘s book Preparing for Power, publised in 1987 with a foreword by Nelson Mandela and Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom. In his book Tambo wrote that the ANC was not interested in unity with the PAC. However, in Long Walk to Freedom, published in 1994 Mandela wrote that it was the PAC that was not interested in unity. However, Unity Movement leader the late IB Tabata wrote in his book Imperialist Conspiracy in Africa, published in 1974 that unity between the PAC and ANC was blocked by the SACP. In the early 1990′s around 1992 Stephen Ellis and Tsepo Sechaba wrote in their book Comrades Against Apartheid: The ANC & SACP in Exile that the SACP controlled the ANC and that Joe Slovo was rabidly anti African nationalism which explains why the SACP blocked unity between the PAC and ANC.

If ANC leaders such as Dr Pallo Jordan are so confused as to present such a partisan and garbled version of South Africa’s history of the liberation struggle, what is posterity going to learn about our history? Are the likes of Pallo Jordan reliable sources to transmit our history of the liberation struggle to posterity? Readers should read David James Smith’s Young Mandela and compare its contents to what Mandela wrote in his Long Walk to Freedom. The truth lies somewhere in between. Long Walk to Freedom is replete with self-praise while Young Mandela does not praise Mandela nor the ANC.

By Sam Ditshego(The writer is a member of the Pan Africanist Research Institute (PARI))

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All wars were about land. Every liberation struggle is about the restoration of indigenous people’s effective control of their land from foreign domination. Final analysis of any armed conflict will find that the source of disagreement is the land.

Land was the root cause of English and Dutch skirmishes in Africa. China and Japan war was over land. Palestinian and Israeli conflict comes down to land. European tribal brawls, erroneously called world wars were about territorial control, which is land.

There is a reason behind people’s willingness to sacrifice their lives for land and that is absolute control of land, which endows absolute authority over human beings on the land. This absolute dominion source is that the land serves material and spiritual interests for human beings.

The material interest derived from land is food, health and luxury, which land provide through agriculture and industry. There can never be industry without raw material from land, land for production and logistics facilities.

Plants cultivation and feed stock grazing happen on the land. Healing herbs and chemicals used for medicinal purposes are found on land. Industry produces implements for agriculture to produce life sustaining food, health and luxury. Availability of comfort can only be guaranteed through ability to sustain the control of land hence the hectic investment in war expertise and apparatus by rulers of the land.

The Roman Empire built military industry complex to sustain its hegemony on the world for a millennium to secure its good times. Europe‘s balance of arms policy of nineteenth century created peace among European nation-states. They agreed not to contend each other land which gave them impetus to annex land in other continents which they largely awarded to European peasantry. America‘s effective control of land through its IMF and World Bank necessitated the establishment of military bases in other people’s land and building of military industry complex to sustain its lavishness life.

By Sbusiso Xaba

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William Mpofu’s misleading article which appeared in the Sowetan newspaper of 22 September titled “the scourge of African tyrants” should not and must not be allowed to go unchallenged because it is a compendium of misinformation and factual errors. It is also misleading and contains historical inaccuracies. Mpofu wrote that, “From Kwame Nkrumah to Robert Mugabe, African dictators have invoked the spirit of African unity and black solidarity against the vampiric Western imperialism with the right hand while with the left subjecting their people to cruel bondage and violence”.

Those who have read Walter Rodney‘s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” will understand that cruel bondage and violence in West Africa were introduced by leaders of Western countries during the Atlantic slave trade. At the time Mpofu’s article was published, the US and some Western countries under the auspices of NATO were on their sixth month of bombing Libya for the sake of accessing that country’s resources so that China should be dependent on the US for oil. Mpofu continued, “another truism of the underdevelopment and impoverishment of Africa is that African despots have looted natural resources, plundered economies for personal enrichment and deployed violence of the worst magnitude to crush opponents”.

Most African countries became independent about fifty years ago with Ghana three years earlier, Zimbabwe thirty years ago, Namibia twenty-one years and South Africa seventeen years ago. What these despots looted and plundered in that relatively short period of time (about half-a-century and less) is a drop in the ocean compared to what the West looted and plundered for about five-hundred years and continues to loot and plunder.

Mpofu also writes, “Nkrumah is still being presented in mainstream African historiography as a role model of good leadership and governance. But a closer look at Nkrumah’s political legacy reveals an alarming dictatorship and a saddening poverty of thought of a leader who suffered a debilitating god complex that left Ghana in particular and Africa in general poorer”. For Mpofu’s information, Nkrumah was truly an inspiration to Africans at home and abroad. He is one of Africa’s shining stars. One writer put it like this, “…the name of Nkrumah became the beacon that led us to the quest for national liberation and ignited anew our desire to reclaim our heritage and our national pride”.

Nkrumah’s vision for Africa and his analysis of neo-colonialism left us analytically richer. We are poorer today because of his absence and not because of his poverty of thought. Paying tribute to Nkrumah after his death, Ghana’s head of state at the time Colonel Acheampong said, “In his lifetime he waged a relentless war against colonialism and racism, and even after his death his spirit will, no doubt, continue to inspire the valiant fighters against the twin enemies of Africa. Today we mourn the loss of a great leader whose place in history is well assured. We join world leaders in paying tribute to this worthy son of the soil”.

Now Mpofu wants us to erase all that with the stroke of a pen. There is no doubt in my mind that Nkrumah made blunders. He is fallible just like everybody else. After all, he was human. The dismissal of the Chief Justice after some persons accused of plotting against his life were acquitted by the courts and demanded that the National Assembly bring an amending act that made the acquittals null and void are examples. It has also been argued that another factor that undermined Nkrumah’s government was corruption among the government and party members at the highest levels.

The declaration of Ghana as a one-party state made the situation worse and opened him up for criticism by locals and foreigners alike. Nkrumah’s problems were exacerbated by divisions in society, the difficulty of turning around in nine years, an economic system that had served the interests of the colonial powers for a century, the intransigence of an educated elite that was concerned only with its own advancement, and a civil service of colonial bureaucrats whose loyalty was to the mother country rather than the local populace made it difficult for Nkrumah to accomplish all that he had hoped.

Mpofu claims that, “At some point under the leadership of Nkrumah, Ghana had more political prisoners than apartheid South Africa jails”. In my book every person not classified as white in apartheid South Africa was a political prisoner. Mpofu also fails to mention that on December 23, 1962 Nkrumah ordered the release of all political prisoners who were detained under the Preventive Detention Act of 1958. Finally, there is documentary evidence that Nkrumah was toppled by the CIA and not the people of Ghana as Mpofu want us to believe. I refer your readers to Karl Evanzz’s book The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X which is based on more than 300,000 declassified CIA and FBI documents.

By Sam Ditshego

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Eskom

On the 14th November the Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan, in the presence of a World Bank official and on behalf of the government of South Africa, signed for a R1.9 billion loan from the World Bank. The money is to be used for Eskom’s electricity generators. The loan is payable in forty years at 0.25% interest. A country that accepts a World Bank loan is required to enter into an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The World Bank and IMF work hand in glove.

It is unbelievable that in the 21st century South Africa can borrow money from the World Bank when there are known problems associated with amortisation and interests. The World Bank most probably insisted on land as collateral. World Bank loans are used to ensnare countries into an unending debt. The World Bank and IMF loans employ conditionalities which involves highly controversial requirements such as austerity or privatization of key public services. Conditionalities imposed on borrower countries are known as Structural Adjustment Programmes.

These Bretton Woods institutions often attach load conditionalities based on what is termed the ‘Washington Consensus‘, focusing on liberalization of trade, investment and the financial sector deregulation and privatization on nationalized industries. Often the conditionalities are attached without due regard for borrower countries’ individual circumstances and the prescriptive recommendations by the World Bank and IMF fail to resolve the economic problems within the countries. IMF conditionalities additionally result in the loss of a state’s authority to govern its own economy as national economic policies are predetermined under IMF packages. Issues of representation are raised as a consequence of the shift in regulation of national economies from state governments to Washington-based financial institutions in which most developing countries hold little voting power. The IMF packages have also been associated with negative social outcomes such as reduced investment in public health and education.

Other observations about the World Bank financed projects include the following: (1) finance of construction of hydro-electric dams which resulted in displacement of indigenous peoples of the area; (2) the World Bank’s undemocratic governance structure which is dominated by industrialized countries is biased in favour of the private sector; (3) the World Bank continues its financial support for heavily polluting industries which includes coal power; (4) the World Bank working in partnership with the private sector undermines the role of the state as the primary provider of essential goods and services, such as healthcare and education, resulting in the shortfall of such services in countries badly in need of them; (5) the World Bank’s private sector lending arm – the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – has also been criticized for its business model, the increasing use of financial intermediaries such as private equity funds and funding of companies associated with tax havens; (6) the World Banks’ views and prescriptions undermine eliminate alternative perspectives on development; and (7) the World Bank and IMF governance structures are dominated by industrialized countries.

Decisions are made and policies implemented by the leading industrialized countries of the G8, excluding Russia, because they represent the largest donors without much consultation with poor and developing countries. It has been reported that the Eskom generators which the World Bank loan is going to finance are going to be built by Hitatchi. Hitatchi was awarded a lucrative tender to build those generators by the ANC government. At the same time the ANC’s investment arm and fund-raising outfit Chancellor House is a shareholder in Hitatchi. It means the ANC has borrowed money from the World Bank to use in the tender it has awarded itself. Where is Cosatu and the so called communists, some of whom are cabinet ministers? The PAC’s rejection of this dubious World Bank loan will set it apart from political parties such as the DA and demonstrate which political party represents the aspirations of the African people and has the interests of the poor at heart.

By Sam Ditshego

(The writer is a member of the Pan Africanist Research Institute which does research for the PAC and holds a post graduate certificate in Development Economics and Policy Making)

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Pan Africanist Congress of Azania's First President Robert Sobukwe

From its inception on 06th April 1959, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) in South Africa, whose first President was Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, agreed with Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah that “The longer we wait the stronger will be the hold on Africa by neo-colonialism and imperialism.” That “If Africa was united, no major bloc would attempt to subdue her by limited war because, from the very nature of limited war, what can be achieved by it, is itself limited. It is only where small states exist that it is possible, by landing a few thousand marines or by financing a mercenary force that they can secure a decisive result.”

Nkrumah emphasised this important point for Africans when addressing the African Heads of State and Government on 24th May 1963. He declared, “No sporadic act nor pious resolutions, can resolve our present problems…As a continent we have emerged into independence in a difficult age, with imperialism grown stronger, more ruthless and experienced, and more dangerous in its international associations. Our economic advancement demands the end of colonialist and neo-colonialist domination of Africa.”

What has now happened to Libya under Muammar Gaddafi must drive home forcefully, what the Pan Africanists have been hammering on, all these years. Imperialism is not dead, despite its perfidious rhetoric.  NATO and United States of America invaded Libya in February 2O11 to have access and control of the oil wealth of Libyans under the pretext of “protecting civilians.” Libya is the most bombed country in Africa by NATO and America this century, killing thousands of civilians it purported to protect.        

The imperialist invasion of this part of Africa has now been falsely called “Libyan Revolution.” This beginning of the Second Berlin Rape of Africa is not about violation of human rights in Africa. It is about accessing Africa’s riches for the benefit of Europe and America. This is to perpetuate Africa’s poverty and her dependency on “foreign aid.”

It is, therefore a suffocating stink on the history  of the “Freedom Charter” ANC government that it voted for the NATO illegal bombing of Libya with imperialist countries in the United Nations Security Council such as the USA, Britain and France. At least, China and Russia abstained although outright opposition would have saved many lives and stopped the destruction of Libya’s infrastructure.

Even Germany could not vote for this perilous Security Council Resolution 1973/2011 that authorised terrorist attack on Libya. How is this ANC government vote different from the way the apartheid colonialist regime voted when it was illegitimately in the United Nations?

The United Nations resolution resulted in NATO and USA soldiers secretly fighting side by side with anti-Gaddafi rebels in the same manner the USA and Britain did in Iraq against Saddam Hussein. The USA and British allies had consistently peddled the false accusation that Hussein possessed nuclear weapons. In Libya it is NATO planes of aggression inside Libya that attacked Muammar Gaddafi at Serti, his home town and killed him.

In 1961 Patrice Lumumba died at the hands of the United Nations that was manipulated by the same Western imperialist countries to protect their continued looting of Congo’s resources. The geo-historical parallels must be examined and constantly interrogated.  

Rumblings which the ANC government made after the brutal murder and death of Colonel Gaddafi are tantamount to crocodile tears, a continuum in their traditional culture of hunting with the dogs and running with the hare. What the imperialist countries did to Patrice Lumumba using the United Nations in 196O is a clear lesson of the extent to which they are barbarously committed to achieving their nefarious schemes. The ANC should have learned this lesson fast. It is inconceivable that a government under leaders like Robert Sobukwe, Zephania Mothopeng and other Pan Africanists such as Kwame Nkrumah and Ahmed Sekou Toure would ever have voted for the overthrow of an African government by imperialists under the perfidious cover of “protecting civilians.”   

NATO and America flew their war planes to Libya not to “protect civilians.”  NATO and America invaded Libya to replace an anti-imperialist government with a puppet regime. This is what they mean by “regime change.” Once they had killed Gaddafi, they announced that their “mission is accomplished” and there was more euphoric celebration in the imperialist capitals of the world than in Libya.    

The overthrow of brutal governments is the work and responsibility of the oppressed masses not malevolent external forces. Imperialists are oppressors and oppressors cannot liberate the oppressed. Imperialists intervene in territories over which they have no jurisdiction or invitation in order to protect their own interests and install puppet regimes. The political history of Africa is replete with illustrations that confirm this.

The United Nations General Assembly should in fact dismantle the Security Council veto which is primarily controlled by imperialist countries that are the principal war criminals in the world today and root cause of global instability.    

If the United Nations delays reform of the Security Council, it will inevitably cause the UN’s demise in the same way as its predecessor, the League of Nations. The International Criminal Court has shown signs of being a tool of imperialism; hence George Bush of America and Tony Blair of Britain have never been summoned before this court for their crimes against humanity, especially in Iraq.

This court has charged only African leaders and is hunting for some more. The African Union must use its own judicial mechanism to charge and punish African leaders who have the propensity for tyranny. The United States of America has not even signed the Statute of the International Criminal Court. African leaders must stop subjecting Africa to racists and incorrigible former practitioners of slave trade and colonialism for which they have yet to pay trillions of dollars as reparations to Africa for the genocide they have committed against Africa’s people.   

Leading NATO countries such as Britain, France and Italy are reported to be in huge debt. The United States of America alone has a reported debt of one hundred and fourteen trillion US dollars. Africa has riches. Like during the enslavement of Africans and the colonisation of their countries, the bankrupt Western countries hope once again to salvage their crumbling economies by turning Africa into their looting ground once again, through barbaric terrorist militarism. How different are they from armed bank robbers or from armed “terrorists” they claim to be fighting?

Africa has resources. They are for Africans. God meant them to be for the benefit of the children of Africa. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) alone, when developed can feed and provide electricity to the rest of Africa. DRC is 905355 square miles. It is the size of the following twelve European countries combined: Britain, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Amernia and Albania. The untapped wealth of Congo is about more than 24 trillion US dollars. This is equivalent to the Gross Domestic Product of Europe and United States of America put together.

Only Pan Africanism can secure the interests of Africa. Only a united Africa protecting and defending the interests of her own people collectively can defeat these imperialist blood suckers. END 

By Dr. Motsoko Pheko
(The writer is a former Representative of the victims of apartheid and colonialism at the United Nations in New York as well as at the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. He is also the former President of the Pan Africanist Congress and former Member of the South African Parliament. He is one of the most prolific African writers. He writes on history, politics, law and theology. This article is an extract from one of his latest books HOW FREEDOM CHARTER BETRAYED THE DISPOSSESSED)  

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"Martyrdom is victory!"

Muammar Gaddafi was buried at a secret location because Libyan interim rulers say they are preventing people from going to pray at his grave. This sounds bizarre. How can people go and pray at the grave of an unpopular person? We were informed by the western media that he was unpopular.

Gaddafi was buried following an autopsy (post mortem) confirmed that he was killed by a bullet to the temple (Patrice Lumumba was shot the same way in January 1961 by Frank Carlucci). Libya‘s chief pathologist, Dr Othman al-Zintani made the autopsy confirmation, but refused to elaborate on Gaddafi’s final moments, saying he would first deliver a full report to the attorney general.

Libyan rebels posted a YouTube video of a young fighter claiming that he had shot Gaddafi in the head and chest. That young fighter is Sanad al-Sadek al-Urebi. Libyan authorities have said that they would not prosecute him if evidence emerged that he was the killer. Instead he would be treated as a national hero. International law must apply equally without duplicity, selective morality and double standards. NATO and NTC rebels have committed war crimes in Libya.

The media in the US had a field day celebrating the assassination of Gaddafi. His convoy was attacked by a US drone aircraft together with NATO, the French and the British planes after which he was attacked by the NTC rebels. Drone planes are meant for assassinations. An estimated death toll in Libya from NATO air strikes is between thirty and fifty thousand people. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan described them as a Coalition of Demons.

The African Union must set up its own war crimes court on the continent. The conflict in Libya is far from over because resistance in many regions of that country continues contrary to propaganda by NATO forces. Dr Christof Lehmann wrote that fierce resistance of Libyan Military, Tribal and popular forces have not only succeeded in pinning the world’s leading military alliance, NATO down to the Libyan war theatre, it has probably been the greatest strategic asset for Syria, Iran and Pakistan, which are targeted for NATO’s next phase of a multi staged global conflict.

While most media repeat the narrative that most of Libya is “liberated”, the facts on the ground are unchanged. Most of Libya is firmly under the control of Libyan forces. The AU must demand the body of Gaddafi for proper reburial by his people, that Sanad al-Sadek al-Urebi be declared persona non grata by all African states and other supportive countries that respect international law, be arrested and brought to trial for the murder of Gaddafi and NATO forces and some members of the NTC face charges of war crimes and that NATO forces must leave Libya with immediate effect.

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Post-modern Africa's First Matyr Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi

The Washington-led decision by NATO to bomb Gaddafi’s Libya into submission over recent months, at an estimated cost to US taxpayers of at least $1 billion, has little if anything to do with what the Obama Administration claims was a mission to “protect innocent civilians.” In reality it is part of a larger strategic assault by NATO and by the Pentagon in particular to entirely control China’s economic Achilles heel, namely China’s strategic dependence on large volumes of imported crude oil and gas. Today China is the world’s second largest imported of oil after the United States and the gap is rapidly closing.

If we take a careful look at a map of Africa and also look at the African organization of the new Pentagon Africa Command—AFRICOM—the pattern that emerges is a careful strategy of controlling one of China’s most strategically important oil and raw materials sources.

NATO’s Libya campaign was and is all about oil. But not about simply controlling Libyan high-grade crude because the USA is nervous about reliable foreign supplies. It rather is about controlling China’s free access to long-term oil imports from Africa and from the Middle East. In other words, it is about controlling China itself.

Libya geographically is bounded to its north by the Mediterranean directly across from Italy, where Italian ENI oil company has been the largest foreign operator in Libya for years. To its west it is bounded by Tunisia and by Algeria. To its south it is bounded by Chad. To its east it is bounded by both Sudan (today Sudan and Southern Sudan) and by Egypt. That should tell something about the strategic importance of Libya from the standpoint of the Pentagon’s AFRICOM long-term strategy for controlling Africa and its resources and which country is able to get those resources.

Gaddafi’s Libya had maintained strict national state control over the rich reserves of high quality “light, sweet” Libyan crude oil. As of 2006 data Libya had the largest proven oil reserves in Africa, some 35%, larger even than Nigeria. Oil concessions had been extended to Chinese state oil companies as well as Russian and others in recent years. Not surprisingly a spokesman from the so-called opposition claiming victory over Gaddafi, Abdeljalil Mayouf, information manager at Libyan rebel oil firm AGOCO, told Reuters, “We don’t have a problem with Western countries like the Italians, French and UK companies. But we may have some political issues with Russia, China and Brazil.” China and Russia and Brazil either opposed UN sanctions on Libya or pressed for a negotiated settlement of the internal conflict and an end to NATO bombing.

As I have detailed elsewhere, Gaddafi, an old adherent of Arab socialism on the line of Egypt’s Gamal Nasser, used the oil revenues to improve the lot of his people. Health care was free as was education. Each Libyan family was given a state grant of $50000 towards buying a new house and all bank loans were according to Islamic anti-usury laws, interest free. The state was also free of debt. Only by bribery and massive infiltration into the tribal opposition areas of the eastern part of the country could the CIA, MI6 and other NATO intelligence operatives, at an estimated cost of $1 billion, and massive NATO bombing of civilians, destabilize the strong ties between Gaddafi and his people.

Why then did NATO and the Pentagon lead such a mad and destructive assault on a peaceful sovereign country? Clear is that one of the prime reasons was to complete the encirclement of China’s oil and vital raw material sources across northern Africa.

Pentagon alarm over China

Step-by-step in the past several years Washington had begun to create the perception that China, which was the “dear friend and ally of America” less than a decade ago, was becoming the greatest threat to world peace because of China’s enormous economic expansion. The painting of China as a new “enemy” has been complex as Washington is dependent on China to buy the lion’s share of the US Government debt in the form of Treasury paper.

In August the Pentagon released its annual report to Congress on China’s military status. This year the report sent alarm bells ringing across China for a strident new tone. The report stated among other things, “Over the past decade, China’s military has benefited from robust investment in modern hardware and technology. Many modern systems have reached maturity and others will become operational in the next few years,” the Pentagon said in the report. It added that “there remains uncertainty about how China will use its growing capabilities… China’s rise as a major international actor is likely to stand out as a defining feature of the strategic landscape of the early 21st century.”

In a matter of perhaps two to five years, depending on how the rest of the world react or play their cards, the Peoples’ Republic of China will emerge in the controlled Western media painted as the new “Hitler Germany.” If that seems hard to believe today, just reflect on how that was done with former Washington allies such as Egypt’s Mubarak or even Saddam Hussein. In June this year, former US Secretary of the Navy and now US Senator from Virginia, James Webb, startled many in Beijing when he told press that China was fast approaching what he called a “Munich moment,” when Washington must decide how to maintain a strategic balance, a reference to the 1938 crisis over Czechoslovakia when Chamberlain opted for appeasement with Hitler over Czechoslovakia. Webb added, “If you look at the last 10 years, the strategic winner has been China.”

The same massively effective propaganda machine of the Pentagon, led by CNN, BBC, the New York Times or London Guardian will get the subtle command from Washington to “paint China and its leaders black.” China is becoming far too strong and far too independent for many in Washington and in Wall Street. To control that, above all China’s oil import dependency has been identified as her Achilles Heel. Libya is a move to strike directly at that vulnerable Achilles heel.

China moves into Africa

The involvement of Chinese energy and raw materials companies across Africa had become a major cause of alarm in Washington where an attitude of malign neglect had dominated Washington Africa policy since the Cold War era. As its future energy needs became obvious several years ago China began a major African economic diplomacy which reached a crescendo in 2006 when Beijing literally rolled out the red carpet to heads of more than forty African states and discussed a broad range of economic issues. None were more important for Beijing than securing future African oil resources for China’s robust industrialization.

China moved into countries which had been virtually abandoned by former European colonial powers like France or Britain or Portugal. Chad is a case in point. The poorest and most geographically isolated African countries, Chad was courted by Beijing which resumed diplomatic ties in 2006.

In October 2007 China’s state oil giant CNPC signed a contract to build a refinery jointly with Chad’s government. Two years later they began construction of an oil pipeline to carry oil from a new Chinese field in the south some 300 kilometres to the refinery. Western-supported NGO’s predictably began howling about environmental impacts of the Chinese oil pipeline. The same NGOs were curiously silent when Chevron struck oil in 2003 in Chad. In July 2011 the two countries, Chad and China celebrated opening of the joint venture oil refinery near Chad’s capital of Ndjamena. Chad’s Chinese oil activities are strikingly close to another major Chinese oil project in what then was Sudan’s Darfur region bordering Chad.

Sudan had been a growing source of oil flows to China since cooperation began in the late 1990s after Chevron abandoned its stake there. By 1998 CNPC was building a 1500 km long oil pipeline from southern Sudan oilfields to Port Sudan on the Red Sea as well as building a major oil refinery near Khartoum. Sudan was the first large overseas oilfield project operated by China. By the beginning of 2011 Sudan oil, most all from the conflict-torn south, provided some 10% of China’s oil imports from taking more than 60% of Sudan’s daily oil production of 490,000 barrels. Sudan had become a point of vital Chinese national energy security.

According to geological estimates, the subsurface running from Darfur in what was southern Sudan through Chad into Cameroon is one gigantic oil field in extent perhaps equivalent to a new Saudi Arabia. Controlling southern Sudan as well as Chad and Cameroon is vital to the Pentagon strategy of “strategic denial” to China of their future oil flows. So long as a stable and robust Ghaddafi regime remained in power in Tripoli that control remained a major problem. The simultaneous splitting off of the Republic of South Sudan from Khartoum and the toppling of Ghaddafi in favor of weak rebel bands beholden to Pentagon support was for the Pentagon Full Spectrum Dominance of strategic priority.

AFRICOM responds

The key force behind the recent wave of Western military attacks against Libya or more covert regime changes such as those in Tunisia, Egypt and the fateful referendum in southern Sudan which has now made that oil-rich region “independent” has been AFRICOM, the special US military command established by the Bush Administration in 2008 explicitly to counter the growing Chinese influence over Africa’s vast oil and mineral wealth.

In late 2007, Dr. J. Peter Pham, a Washington insider who advises the US State and Defense Departments, stated openly that among the aims of the new AFRICOM, is the objective of “protecting access to hydrocarbons and other strategic resources which Africa has in abundance … a task which includes ensuring against the vulnerability of those natural riches and ensuring that no other interested third parties, such as China, India, Japan, or Russia, obtain monopolies or preferential treatment.”

Caption: The China National Petroleum Company (C.N.P.C.) operates this exploration site southeast of Ndjamena, the capital of Chad. China has been investing in one African country after another. In large oil-exporting countries like Angola and Nigeria, China is building or fixing railroads, and landing giant exploration contracts in Congo and Guinea. In mineral-rich countries that had been all but abandoned by foreign investors because of unrest and corruption, Chinese companies are filling the void.

In testimony before the US Congress supporting creation of AFRICOM in 2007, Pham, who is associated with the neo-conservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, stated:

“This natural wealth makes Africa an inviting target for the attentions of the People’s Republic of China, whose dynamic economy…has an almost insatiable thirst for oil as well as a need for other natural resources to sustain it…China is currently importing approximately 2.6 million barrels of crude per day, about half of its consumption; more than 765,000 of those barrels—roughly a third of its imports—come from African sources, especially Sudan, Angola, and Congo (Brazzaville). Is it any wonder, then, that…perhaps no other foreign region rivals Africa as the object of Beijing’s sustained strategic interest in recent years…
Intentionally or not, many analysts expect that Africa—especially the states along its oil-rich western coastline—will increasingly becoming a theatre for strategic competition between the United States and its only real near-peer competitor on the global stage, China, as both countries seek to expand their influence and secure access to resources.”

It is useful to briefly recall the sequence of Washington-sponsored “Twitter” revolutions in the ongoing so-called Arab Spring. The first was Tunisia, an apparently insignificant land on north Africa’s Mediterranean. However Tunisia is on the western border of Libya. The second domino to fall in the process was Mubarak’s Egypt. That created major instability across the Middle East into north Africa as Mubarak for all his flaws had fiercely resisted Washington Middle East pollicy. Israel also lost a secure ally when Mubarak fell.

Then in July 2011 Southern Sudan declared itself the independent Republic of South Sudan, breaking away from Sudan after years of US-backed insurgency against Khartoum rule. The new Republic takes with it the bulk of Sudan’s known oil riches, something clearly not causing joy in Beijing. US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, led the US delegation to the independence celebrations, calling it “a testament to the Southern Sudanese people.” She added, in terms of making the secession happen, “the US has been as active as anyone.” US President Obama openly supported secession of the South. The breakaway was a project guided and financed from Washington since the Bush Administration decided to make it a priority in 2004.

Now Sudan has suddenly lost its main source of hard currency oil revenue. The secession of the south, where three-quarters of Sudan’s 490 000 barrels a day of oil is produced, has aggravated economic difficulties in Khartoum cutting some 37% off its total revenues. Sudan’s only oil refineries and the only export route run north from oilfields to Port Sudan on the Red Sea in northern Sudan. South Sudan is now being encouraged by Washington to build a new export pipeline independent of Khartoum via Kenya. Kenya is one of the areas of strongest US military influence in Africa.

The aim of the US-led regime change in Libya as well as the entire Greater Middle East Project which lies behind the Arab Spring is to secure absolute control over the world’s largest known oil fields to control future policies in especially countries like China. As then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is reported to have said during the 1970′s when he was arguably more powerful than the President of the United States, “If you control the oil you control entire nations or groups of nations.”

For the future national energy security of China the ultimate answer lies in finding secure domestic energy reserves. Fortunately there are revolutionary new methods to detect and map presence of oil and gas where even the best current geology says oil is not to be found. Perhaps therein lies a way out of the oil trap that has been laid for China. In my newest book, The Energy Wars I detail such new methods for those interested.

By F. William Engdahl
(This article first appeared on Set You Free News www.setyoufreenews.com)

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