The Passing Show: Bare-faced Cheek (1960)

The Passing Show Column from the October 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bare-faced Cheek

No one could accuse the world's ruling classes of consistency. The ruling class of each country is devoted to one thing, and to one thing only—the preservation of its power. Our rulers love to proclaim their attachment to high-sounding and immutable principles—but if their interests demand it, they will change their tune overnight. Recently there have been enough somersaults performed by prominent politicians to make an acrobat green with envy.

Here are some instances which occurred recently within a space of two days.

Principles v, Royalties

The ruling class of Morocco gained its independence from France some years ago. In its struggle it reiterated the right of every people to independence, the iniquity of one country holding another in subjection, and so on. More recently another former French colony in northwest Africa, Mauritania, became self-governing within the French Community. It has now decided to declare itself independent in November. One would think that the Moroccan ruling class would welcome this new step by the ruling class of Mauritania—the Mauritanians are only doing what the Moroccans have already done, and are acting on the very principles upheld by Morocco during its struggle with France. But not a bit of it! The Moroccan Government is breathing fire at the news. It has banned a Moroccan newspaper which supported Mauritanian independence, and has threatened to go to the United Nations. For the Moroccan rulers claim that Mauritania is really part of Greater Morocco. The Moroccan Government, which denounced France for wanting to hold on to its empire, is now planning an empire of its own. This despite the fact that Morocco and Mauritania have not even got a common frontier: Morocco would have to take over part of Algeria to give it access to its new province.

Why are the Moroccan rulers so eager to get their hands on Mauritania, even though they have to eat so many of their own words in the process? It's simple. Large and very rich iron ore deposits have been found in Mauritania, and the mining of them is about to begin by the Miferma company. The royalties payable on the ore are a prize worth trying for. And what does the Moroccan ruling class care about principles, when they see a chance of rich profits from the Mauritanian iron ore?

Terrorism

Another recently independent Mediterranean state has also given an example of inconsistency. Cyprus is now self-governing: the Cypriot ruling class has taken over, having ousted the British. The Cypriot leader in this struggle was Makarios. now President of the Cyprus Republic. The struggle was carried on by terrorism, which is the name now given by a ruling class to any kind of armed internal opposition to its rule. This terrorism, which forced the British to relinquish the island, was led personally by Grivas, Makarios's close ally in the struggle. But Makarios, having won his battle through terrorism, has now turned against it. He recently appealed for all guns and ammunition to be handed in to the authorities, and said: "I am not prepared to tolerate any kind of terrorism.” Terrorism having made him President of Cyprus, Makarios no doubt now sees that he had better deny any opponents of his the use of the same weapon.

Free competition

The American Government is worried about the high tariff wall with which the six European "Common Market” countries propose to surround themselves. The U.S. delegate to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade conference said recently (The Guardian, 2/9/60):

Whatever serves unduly to insulate the community market from the competition of world prices is out of harmony with our common GATT objective for the expansion of international trade.  . . .  The system will work to the serious detriment of the US and other third country suppliers — in fact, to the community itself. 

When it is to their advantage, the United States government supports “the competition of world prices.” But at home, it has a different policy. When big new projects are opened to tender, any foreign firm competing is handicapped from the start. Several British firms have recently found that although their tenders were the lowest for American projects, it was an American firm that got the contract. Which all goes to show that any capitalist country’s government must look after its own capitalists first. And in the process, as in this case, it must often speak with two voices—one for home and one for foreign consumption.

Mandates

Mr. Louw, the South African Foreign Minister, is concerned about the threat by stevedores and dockers in Tanganyika to boycott all South African goods. He protested to the British High Commissioner in South Africa that Britain, as the mandatory power, had obligations to ensure “freedom of transit and navigation and complete economic and commercial and industrial equality.”

For the South African government to quote the League of Nations mandate in support of its protest must have called for nerve of the highest order. For South Africa itself was given a mandate by the League of Nations — the mandate over what had been German South-West Africa. After the second world war it incorporated South-West Africa into its own territory. To all protests it replied that the League of Nations had ceased to exist, and that its mandates had ceased to exist with it. Therefore it no longer had any obligations to help the inhabitants of South-West Africa to self-government, and indeed was entitled to grab the whole country for itself. The question of South-West Africa has been raised over and over again in the United Nations, and on each occasion the South African government has denied absolutely that a League of Nations’ mandate could any longer have any validity. And now the South African government itself has appealed to a League of Nations’ mandate in support of its protest over Tanganyika!

It seems that to be a minister or a government spokesman in the modern world, the prime necessity is bare-faced cheek.

Alwyn Edgar

War and capitalism in Africa (1999)

From the September 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

The president of Zambia, Frederick Chibula, recently declared the “dawn of a new era for Africa”. Such comments have become something of a regular occurrence amongst African and international “leaders”, including that messiah of the “new world order” Bill Clinton. The latest round of platitudes coincides with a period of instability and armament amongst the competing representatives of African capitalism.

Despite the signing of accords which appear to declare the desire of capitalist interests to accommodate each other’s interests in Sierra Leone and the Congo, Chibula made his comments at a time of simmering conflicts across Africa including a savage war between Ethiopia and Eritrea and a rampant civil war in Angola. Even in Sierra Leone and the Congo the accords thrashed out seem likely to fail, with international “peace-keeping” forces (the US and western Europe) not being committed as the interests of their ruling classes are not threatened.

Unlike the huge resources deployed to Kosovo where Western leaders wish to “protect” the Kosovo Albanian population from mass slaughter as a pretext for extending their influence in the Balkans at the expense of Serbia, the hypocritical face of capitalism is revealed once more. A blind eye and an arrogant shrug greeted and continues to greet the mass killing in Africa (in the case of the Sierra Leone conflict the British government was in fact implicated in the supply of arms to the conflict in contravention of its own “rules”, as if such things exist in capitalism’s wars).

Ethiopia and Eritrea

It is in the little-mentioned conflict (the press coverage being remarkably little) between the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments that Bill Clinton’s “new leaders of Africa” have revealed the degree to which the politicians of capitalism will sacrifice the lives of working-class men and women in the interests of profits. Originally intended as the leaders of a regional alliance for the US against the “threat” of Islamic Sudan, Presidents Issaias of Eritrea and Meles of Ethiopia descended into a quarrel in May 1998 ostensibly over a small area of barren and mountainous terrain. In reality it was over Eritrea’s new status as a potential African Singapore threatening Ethiopia’s commercial interests (principally coffee) and aims for economic self-sufficiency and protectionism.

Taking advantage of its coastal status and Ethiopian cheap labour and launching its own currency, to counter what it saw as an overvalued Ethiopian currency which hindered it exports, Eritrea began to threaten the interests of Ethiopian capital. Becoming landlocked in 1993, following the overthrow of the dictator Mengistu and Eritrea obtaining independence, Ethiopia perceived a threat to its cheap labour market from the new-independently Eritrea’s processing export industries and cheap Eritrean imports, and thus began to impose tariffs. The territorial boundaries between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which had previously been a matter of little formal control and even convenient administration by local authorities on either side of the borders, began in such circumstances to be marked by claims of encroachment and eventually an act of aggression which sparked off a war which may have already claimed as many as 50,000 lives.

In a country racked by civil war and droughts where the majority of men and women exist in dire poverty, its leaders see their interests served by spending vast sums on armaments and mobilising hundreds of thousands to mass slaughter. The death toll in this conflict between capitalists using working class cannon fodder has been particularly high with a ratio of dead to wounded of one-to-one (the average for most modern wars being one dead to three wounded). According to the Economist (8-14 May) “the death toll is high because the combatants use the weapons of the Korean war, the tactics of the first world war and the medical treatments of the 19th century”.

With war of course comes the massive displacement of populations with, in this instance, many tens of thousands of Eritreans forcibly ejected from Ethiopia. As with all wars the Ethiopia-Eritrea war has competing capitalist interests at its root and the mass slaughter and suffering of its workers as its consequence.

Central and southern regions 

This conflict, however, is only part of a general increase in tension between African governments whose interests are perceived to lie in the increased militarisation of the continent. This was most particularly evident in the central and southern regions. Indeed the wars in the Congo and Angola appear to be threatening to draw these regions into full-scale sub-continental war. Angola has threatened Zambia with invasion over its ruling-class support for the UNITA rebel opposition in Angola, a position also supported by some members of the South African ruling class. The Mugabe regime on the other hand supports intervention on the side of the Angolan government. Tension still runs high over the war in the Congo, with Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia and Chad drawn into the conflict in support of President Kabila and Uganda and Rwanda on the side of the anti-Kabila forces. Conflict over the Caprivi Strip between Namibia and Botswana also poses a threat, with the Zimbabwean ruling class supporting the former and the South African ruling class supporting the latter.

The underlying cause of this increase in tension is in the economic crisis facing the two most powerful economies of the region, Zimbabwe and South Africa, in the face of the global economic downturn. The ensuing economic competition between the rival ruling classes has forced the two governments to attempt to form regional alliances. Such action is taking on an increasingly military character with the Zimbabwean government, backed by Namibia, justifying its intervention in the Congo on the grounds of securing markets at the expense of South African multinationals. In another example of capitalist robbers fighting over their ill-gotten gains South Africa, backed by Botswana, asserted its influence over Lesotho to protect the interests of its ruling class following attempts by the Lesothon population to overthrow the existing dictatorial regime.

In such circumstances an ominous regional arms race is beginning to take place, with South Africa announcing at the end of 1998 a re-armament programme worth 20 billion rands. Botswana, South Africa’s main regional ally, has also been conducting a re-armament programme including the construction of a US-assisted military airbase. Zimbabwe, under the pretext of the conflict in the Congo, has also been spending billions of dollars on re-arming with its most recent purchase being over $1 billion-worth of Russian military equipment. A similar massive re-armament has taken place in Angola as a consequence of the intensifying civil war. It seems that the increasing trade war taking place between the capitalists of southern Africa may result in yet another war in which the workers fights for the interests of capital.

In the era of the “New World Order” capitalism once again proves itself to be an uncontrollable and destructive system of society. A system which accords the majority slave status and then expects them to die for their masters’ interests. The only solution to war and to the miseries of capitalism in Africa, as in the rest of the world, is for the working class to organise for common ownership and democratic control, a society where the root cause of war in the economic and strategic rivalry of a minority owning class is removed and the production and distribution of wealth is conducted in the interests of the whole community—Socialism. It is time the working class struggled for its own interests.

Colin Skelly

Uranium mining exposed (1992)

Book Review from the June 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Past Exposure. By Greg Dropkin and David Clark. Namibia Support Committee in association with People Against Rio Tinto Zinc, 37-39 Great Guildford St, London SE1 OES. £8.90 (post paid).

Inspired and encouraged by the Mineworkers’ Union of Namibia, Past Exposure is a highly technical yet eminently accessible expose of the deadly health and environmental hazards associated with the world’s largest opencast uranium mine, Rossing Uranium in Namibia which is largely owned by Rio Tinto Zinc.

Rossing’s manager of corporate affairs has dismissed the book as “a collection of distortions and half-truths cunningly woven together into a plausible text”. But the authors, Greg Dropkin and David Clark, use highly confidential internal company documents, personal testimonies made by mineworkers, and up-to-date environmental and medical research into the effects of uranium mining, to show that it is in fact Rossing Uranium which has been economical with the truth over a period of many years.

Dropkin and Clark demonstrate that, despite the company’s claims to operate within recognised international standards of health and safety, workers have been continually exposed to excessively high levels of silica dust and of uranium dust and radiation which cause, amongst other things, diseases of the chest and lungs, kidney failure, and cancer and hinder the mental and physical development of unborn babies.

In the case of radioactive radiation the authors show that there is no such thing as a safe level of exposure and that, even if there was, the company has not, despite its claims to the contrary, been properly measuring and monitoring the levels of radiation doses received by workers. The workers most exposed to silica dust and other health hazards tend to be black. The specialist in charge of monitoring chest complaints ascribes these to smoking and “ethnic" differences!

The detailed discussion of water pollution caused by uranium mining completely demolishes any company statement that it has not polluted any groundwater systems or the Khan river. Radioactive waste from uranium mills is stored in tailings dams. It leaks into the surrounding air and water and develops a serious long-term environmental problem. It seeps into the soil and enters food chains as well as poisoning the water. Rossing’s water management data is a well-kept secret but Dropkin and Clark estimate that

780 million gallons of tailings liquid seeped out in a twelve-month period . . . the contamination may be anywhere from the ground-water system to the Khan and/or Swakop rivers reaching the sea at Swakopmund.

Past Exposure has two main objectives. Its first is to empower the workers at Rossing Uranium in their efforts to negotiate a health and safety agreement with RTZ in line with agreements at other uranium mines, mostly notably Rio Algom, RTZ’s Canadian uranium mine. At this mine, as the authors point out in some detail, far superior though by no means perfect standards of health and safety prevail as a result of sustained and informed pressure put on the mining company by the Canadian mineworkers.

The publication of the book has already caused a stir in Namibia. Extracts were published in The Namibian newspaper which has as a result faced threats of legal action from the mining company. Since the publication of the book the Namibian government has requested the International Atomic Energy Agency in conjunction with the World Health Organisation to investigate issues of health, radiation exposure and waste disposal at the mine.

The book’s second main objective is to raise awareness about the hazards of the nuclear industry of which uranium mining is a primary feature. In the present economic recession miners are not only fighting for better health and safety agreements but also for their jobs in the face of savage redundancies. Like many workers around the world they are caught in that cruel contradiction of having to fight for a job that is useless or dangerous producing a commodity that is useless or dangerous, or face the prospect of unemployment.

This is a contradiction which the authors, as long-standing opponents of the nuclear power industry, acknowledge; and while they themselves would wish to see the end of the nuclear industry they point out that it is “most important that the workers employed at Rossing and elsewhere in the nuclear industry' should be engaged in a real debate about its future”.

It is difficult to see how the Namibia Support Committee who co-publishcd this book can square their anti-nuclear position and their obviously sincere support for the mineworkers of Namibia with their long history of support for SWAPO, the government of the Namibian state which gained its independence in 1990.

SWAPO does not appear to be interested in engaging in any serious debate over the future of the Namibian workers without a uranium mine. Nor would it be in its interests to do so. The nuclear industry is highly profitable and controlled on a global scale by a few multinational conglomerates. The Namibian economy is heavily dependent on uranium mining. If any Namibian government is to successfully ensure its position then it does so by working closely with those multinationals who control uranium mining.

As early as 1975 SWAPO was in negotiation with RTZ when they asked the company to issue a statement recognising SWAPO as the prospective Namibian government. In 1985, despite calling on all multinational companies to quit Namibia forthwith because they “fuel Pretoria’s war machine”, SWAPO made the following statement:

When Namibia is free we will certainly reach an agreement with [the multinationals] which will be beneficial to all of us. (Quoted in Plunder by R. Moody).

Beneficial to all but the workers in the Uranium mines and ordinary people around the world who in growing numbers watch with dismay as the world’s resources are plundered to fill the pockets of'a few leaving a trail of human and environmental devastation, the effects of which will be felt for generations to come.

Kerima Mohideen

"The company keeps saying that the uranium we work with is harmless but I never had a skin ailment until I started working in this area. Because they have never taken interest I conclude that Rossing are concerned about profits and not the health of workers. We desperately need outside expertise to tell us about the short-term and long-term effects of working with uranium. For this we need international help, especially from the international trade union movement'’.

—statement made by worker at Rossing Uranium mine in Namibia.