TOM MBOYA

'Anti-communism became an important objective of trade union foreign policy, and the AFL-CIO (the AFL merged with the rival CIO in 1955) obtained as Director of its Department of International Affairs Jay Lovestone, former general secretary of the American Communist Party and now a professional anticommunist, who was one of the Central Intelligence Agency's most important contact men? - Ioan Davies, 'African Trade Unions', p. 201. (Penguin 1966.)

On July 5, 1969, the Kenya political leader and Minister of Economic Planning, Tom Mboya, was assassinated in Nairobi.

Within week Kenya police had arrested Nahashon Isaac Njenga Njoroge, (32). In court, the police claimed that Njoroge, a Kikuyu, had said when arrested: 'Why do you pick on me? Why not the big Asked who the big men' were, he kept silent.

Although Njoroge denied saying this, and denied responsibility for the shooting, he was found guilty and hanged.

The British Press, true to its usual treatment of African affairs, concentrated on emphasizing possible tribal implications-suggesting that the affair was all the result of rivalry between the Kikuyu and Mboya's own Luo tribe for political supremacy in Kenya. The police, having got someone for actually pulling the trigger, do not appear to have gone very far in finding out who had pulled the strings.

But whatever part, it any, tribalism played in the Mboya killing, its importance was grossly exaggerated.

As a Minister in the Kenya government and a leader of the ruling party, KANU, Mboya's importance was never that of a tribal leader, but of a former trade union leader who, the course of his political career, became associated with America's Central Intelligence Agency. He rose to be a Minister responsible for promoting anti-union legislation and one of the most powerful men in Kenya politics. The rivalries which formed the background to his assassination were not tribal but international.

The initials CIA have become notorious among politically-conscious workers and colonial peoples throughout the world. They are a byword for aggression and reactionary intrigues carried out on behalf of American imperialism.

WAC the CIA which launched the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, aimed at overthrowing Castro, in April 1961. It was the CIA, also, which directed the programme spy-flights over the Soviet Union, brought to an end in May 1960 when a U2 reconnaissance plane piloted by Gary Powers was brought down over the Urals.

Among the more successful CIA operations was the part it played, in 1953, in the overthrow Mossadegh government in Persia, which had nationalized the oil Kermit Roosevelt; who was the CIA agent in charge of this operation to open Persia for American oil companies, , was made a vice-president of the Gulf Oil Corporation in 1960.

In 1954, the Arbenz regime in Guatemala, which had upset the US-owned United Fruit Company by its land-reform policies, was overthrown by a combination of air-raids from over the border and a military coup from within-both directed by the CIA.

The new military regime returned to United Fruit the land which Arbenz had taken over and repealed amendments to a 1947 law protecting trade union rights. It - passed Preventive Penal Law Against Communism, which involved setting up a special Defence Committee empowered to meet in secret and classify people as 'communists' ', rendering anyone so classified subject to various restrictions and liable to arbitrary arrest and detention.

So Guatemala was made safe for 'democracy'-and the United Fruit Company.

The CIA is not just an intelligence-gathering organization, but a secret arm of US imperialism, able to use its agents, money, and arms, to intervene in any country to further the interests of American big business and the capitalist system in general.

Towards the end of World War, II, the United States clearly emerged as the leading imperialist power in the world. The Bretton Woods agreement of 1944, and subsequent arrangements, made American capitalism responsible for maintaining the capitalist system as •a whole. As the world's banker, it also had to become the world's policeman.

The CIA was officially established on September 18, 1947, replacing the wartime OSS with a much more extensive and powerful organization. The National Security Act of 1947 laid' down its intelligence functions, and also empowered it 'to perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct'.

The following year, worried about events in Czechoslovakia and the support for the Communist Party in Italy, the National Security Council authorized a special CIA division to be responsible for carrying out special secret operations in other countries that must not involve the US government.

In 1949, the Central Intelligence Agency Act was passed, giving the CIA Director the right to spend money 'without regard to the provisions of law and regulations relating to the expenditure of government funds'.

This was an important step in enabling the CIA to operate without too much Congressional or public examination.

In December 1963, exPresident Truman, who was head of state responsible for establishing the CIA, wrote that he had become 'disturbed' by the CIA's expansion beyond its original assignment.

It has become an • operational and at times a policymaking arm of the government,' he wrote.

One area in which it has played an important part in determining US policy is Vietnam. It was involver even before US troop IS were officially committed.

The Michigan State sity was supposed to have an aid mission in South Vietnam to assist in training officials and police officers. But of this five-man team, only three were genuine university staff. The other two were CIA agents! It was through such means that the US sought out suitable stooges to rule South Vietnam.

Truman sald he was i disturbed by the ClA's expansion beyond Its original assignment.

When open interference in South Vietnam was prohibited by the Geneva Agreement, this under-cover work prepared the way for military involvement.

The Michigan State University was provided with a 'sweetener' in the form of CIA money for research to keep its mouth shut.

A number of American universities have received such funds and have set up various projects to carry out research for the CIA. Large numbers of American scholars — sociologists, economists, political scientists, psychologists, etc.— have become effectively on the CIA payroll. Usually the funds are channelled through various supposedly 'private' foundations and similar fronts, in which the CIA work in cooperation with the big corporations. The activities of these academic mercenaries are not always confined to 'research'.

On November 17, 1966, the annual convention of the Anthropological Association in Pittsburg was addressed by its former president, Dr Ralph A. Beals, who, according to a New York Times' report, told them that scholars who went abroad to carry out their work were offered generous sums to serve as intelligence agents. He also alleged that some intelligence agents were posing as anthropologists.

The CIA also makes use of various organizations which are supposedly independent of the government.

On February 14, 1967, it was revealed that the Nationa Student Association had secretly received millions of CIA dollars to finance political activities in student movements abroad. The money was channelled through various conduits, such as the San Jacinto Foundation of Houston, the Foundation for Youth and Student Affairs of New York, the _J. M. Kaplan Fund of New York, and so on, It was also revealed that scholarships for African students in America were similarly financed.

The disclosures caused a great deal of commotion in America and abroad. But Victor Reuther, international affairs director of the United Automobile Workers' union headed by his brother Walter, declared that the CIA involvement in the student movement was nothing compared to its activities in the American labour movement.

CONTINUED ON

To try and give some semblance of international legality to its continued rule. in Namibia (South West Africa) the South African government is setting up 12 so. called Bantustans in the territory.

The establishment of these areas, which are nominally accorded a certain amount of self-government, is aimed at thwarting the United Nations demand that Namibia be given independence as a single undivided country.

South Africa originally held the former German colony under a mandate from the League of Nations which was later transferred to UN jurisdiction.

But for years the United Nations has been trying vain to implement its decision ending the mandate and granting independence to the Namibians.

Further talks on the future of the country were held recently between UN secretary Kurt Waldheim and the South African government-but the issue remains unresolved.

The government of Balthazar Vorster maintains that the policy of setting up homelands' for the various African tribes in the country amounts to implementing the UN resolution.

It is pushing ahead regardless of protests from the UN, which has proved impotent to protect the inhabitants of its mandated territory.

The Bantustan policy for Namibia was first drawn up in outline by the government Commission of Inquiry into South West African Affairs in 1962-1963.

The commission was set up to plan the application of the apartheid policy (so-called 'separate development') and its report has since been the basis of South African government policy.

In accordance with the racialist theories of white Some of the most powerful resistance to the South African Homeland policy has come from the Damara people, who were previously regarded as extremely docile.

After the Ovambos, they are the second largest group affected by the government's policy.

To and overcome their 1o ury ana overcome ineir opposition to the original proposals, which would have involved the migration of almost all the Damaras, the government is now offering a compromise.

In return for a relatively fertile chunk of 'white' farmland it proposes to exclude from the future Damaraland supremacy, the commission divided the population into 12 ethnic groups: nine African, one white, one Rehoboth and one coloured, each to be confined to a consolidated 'Homeland'.

The greater part of these areas were in the north of the country where there have long been African 'reservations' — along the coast and the Angola border and in the desert and semi-desert regions of the Kalahari.

Scattered in the predominantly white farmlands in the south were 'Homelands' for the Rehoboths (mixed - race German-speaking community) and the Namas.

The 'Homelands' allocated to the 1l non-white groups are naturally inferior and cannot possibly be economically self-suporting: this is essential if the white employers are to have a ready source of cheap contract labour to work for them.

To implement this poliot families from all parts South West Africa are being uprooted and transported to their newly-designed 'Homelands', many of them far from the areas where they previously lived.

The commission's report itself gives a glimpse of some of the conditions in the areas to which the various groups are being forcibly transported.

Okavangoland in the north-east the extensive grassy plains in the south of the area can be grazed only as long as stored rainwater is available in the pans, while portions adjacent cannot be utilized at all because of lack of water.

Soils in the central area are already being extensively cultivated so that it is doubtful whether any increase in grain yields can be expected in these parts.

And it adds cynically that irrigation would be uneconomic and therefore cannot be recommended.

Owing to the unfavourable rainfall and the absence of large-scale irrigation possibilisome of its most arid areas.

What it has not told the Damaras is that these 'useless' lands are rich in minerals and that extensive mining concessions have already been granted.

The facts, as disclosed in the Johannesburg 'Financial are as follows:

The proposed Damara Homeland comprises 4.8 millon nectares or wastelana. -.:11:-- LOnly 7,736 Damaras out of 64,973 were living there, according to the 1970 census. The majority exist by working on the tin mines nearby or keeping goats and sheep.

Apart from ten headmen paid a stipend of about £30 a month by the authorities, there is virtually nothing to keep an ties the Kaokaoveld, in the North-West, will always have o import its Iood requirements.

In Namaland, the commission reported that, as in practically all other 'Homelands' the region will remain dependent for its staple food supplies on other areas.

Tswanaland — where under 3,000 people are to constitute a 'nation'—is not at present permanently inhabited, accoraing to the commission, which adds that owing to the low rainfall field husbandry is not likely to play a part in the economy of the inhabitants of this region.

The Bushmen who are being pushed into 'Bushmanland' will be even worse off.

Apart from wild plants it is virtually impossible to produce sufficient food for them, the commission said, adding that 'the Bushmen will always have to depend on environmental sorces of subsistence and on imported supplies' Even as a political concept, some of the 'Homelands' were theoretical, to say the least, Damaraland. for example, is an arra of land where less than 6 per cent of Damaras then lived. economically active Damara in the area. The Damaras have described the allocated Homeland as 'a chicken run'.

It is one of the most depressingly neglected parts of the country. That is why the Damaras have described the proposal to make it their Homeland as another step in the policy under which 'we are being systematically disinherited ana made strangers in our own land. We have been deprived of all humar: rights and forced to live in a form of slavery' •Seemingly in acknowledgement of the claim that the offered land cannot sustain the Damaras, the Department of Bantu Administration and Development has raised the possibility of transferring a To implement its policy the government has already bought more than 3 million hectares of land from white farmers at inflated prices: the ultimate bill is to be footed by the inhabitants of the 'Homelands'.

Nearly a third of those who are allocated to the 'Homelands' do not live in the areas designated by the government: they will be forced to move.

In some instances virtually the entire 'nation' as constituted by the government will have to move: 95 per cent of the Damaras live outside their designated area, as do 93 per cent of the Nama.

To drive the unwilling people into their 'Homelands', the authorities resort to measures like cutting off their water supplies and refusing their stock access to waterholes.

Nevertheless the people of South West Africa have resisted with great tenacity and heroism the plan to rob them of their lands and herd them into the Bantustans. The massive Ovambo strike last December has been followed by other acts of resistance.

The essence of the apartheid scheme in South West Africa is completely to deprive the portion of the eastern white farmland in exchange for the apparently useless southern and centra part of the territory.

This is a virtual wilderness but for the presence of prospectors and geologists excited about the likelihood of a uranium find.

Prospecting rights at Spitzkop have been granted to the Bantu Mining Corporation, the David Graaf Investments, Di Gamma Mining (an Anglo-Vaal subsidiary) and Dr Peter le Riche. Concessions at Trekkopje have been granted to Goldfields, O'Kiep Copper and Desert Finds (Pty) Ltd The 'Financial Mail' ments:

'Whether these Above: Africans being deported from original homelands to 'new homelands'. inhabitants of the Bantustans of any rights outside the confined 'Homelands'.

They become "temporary, sojourners' in the vast 'white' area who are tolerated only if they agree to work for rock-bottom wages on semi-slave contracts.

And even within their own areas, the inhabitants of the Bantustans are allowed only the most limited political, economic and social rights.

The real power is in the hands of the South African authorities who control the purse strings. There is the usual grotesque disparity between their expenditure on the Bantustans and • that on the wealthy 'white' farmlands.

For the 514,000 non-whites, the government allocates 35 per cent of the budget. The rest goes to provide for the luxuries of the 96,000 whites.

Meanwhile, Waldheim continues his polite exchanges with the South African racialists..

(Much of the information in this article is taken from 'X-Ray', bulletin of the Africa Bureau.) yield the same pronusing results as Rossing, near Swakopmund, where Rio Tinto Zinc holds a uranium • concession, only time will tell. But even if they do, it will make no difference to the Damaras since discovery of oil, precious minerals and stones and uranium in the Homelands remains the sole preserve of the State in the granting of mining rights. The best the Damaras can hope for under these circumstances, therefore is the creation of a few more jobs on the mines.' As the 'Mail' cynically adds: "This hardly seems the way of going about sharing the wealth of the country' But then, who said anything about sharing the wealth?

RIGH THE