NEW CALEDONIA
Colonialism breeds violence ON MAY 5, thousands of anti-colonialist militants marched through Paris to commemorate the massacre of 19 Kanak independence fighters by French troops a year earlier on the New Caledonian island of Ouvéa. The day before the demonstration a new tragedy struck the Kanak independence movement: two leaders of the FLNKS [Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front] were assassinated in Ouvéa by another member of the Front.
Last August, the FLNKS signed agreements with the French government on New Caledonia's development and future status, known as the Matignon Accords [see box]. The assassin, Djubelly Wea, was a well-known opponent of the accords. Even so, the reasons behind the attack remain unclear. CLAUDE GABRIEL
The Matignon Accords
THE MATIGNON ACCORDS were agreed in June 1988 under the auspices of new ly-elected Soclalist Prime Minister Michel Rocard. They called for the division of
New Caledonia Into three reglons, direct rule from France for 12 months, a programme of economic ald and a decisive referendum In the colony on Independence In 10 years time. The accords themselves were passed by an 80% majority In a referendum In France on
November 6, 1988, with a turnout of
60%. * tant components of the Front to accept the compromise put forward by Tjibaou.
However, worried by the derisory results of its media-circus referendum and by the "No" vote from the French settlers, the government hesitated to make even the smallest reforms. This reached the point where Tjibaou felt compelled to tell an
HE DEATH of Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwéné Yeiwéné is the most serious test that the Kanak independence movement has ever faced. The liberation struggle has lost many fine militants, but the shooting of the two main leaders of the Union Caledonienne (UC) by Djubelly Wea - himself a member of the FLNKS — during a Kanak remembrance ceremony at Gossanah, dealt a different sort of blow.
It is difficult today to say what the reasons for this act of vengeance were. According to some reports, it was Yeiwéné Yeiwéné alone who was the intended target of the attack. The press has also claimed that when Djubelly Wea came out of prison he asked — in vain — to participate in the negotiations in Paris on behalf of the tribe that had been most directly affected by the massacre in the cave.
There has also been talk of a possible disagreement with "Yéyé" about the seizure of hostages at Fayaoué police station on the island of Ouvéa in 1988. This action was a part of an overall strategy promoted above all by the UC. With a few exceptions, Ouvéa remained isolated. We can imagine what resentment this caused people such as Djubelly to feel towards the leadership of the UC.
Opposition to the Matignon Accords exists in the FLNKS. But there is no organized, let alone united, current. There are people critical of what happened a year ago in all the parties in the Front...Some tribes are also more critical than others. The FULK [Kanak United Liberation Front, of which Djubelly Wea was a member] denounced the negotiations from the beginning and has continued to state its opposition to the accords. But the organization has offered no clear explanation of the basis of this opposition, nor a strategic alternative, so that the reasons for its position are not clearly understood by other Kanak militants. The FLNKS has been severely shaken by the agreements reached last summer, but there is no evidence that a real political alternative to the line of the majority of the FLNKS was developing.
Amnesty for those who perpetrated the massacre
Rocard [the French prime minister] has been giving the impression that he shares the sorrow of the Kanaks. However, some recent events should not be forgotten. For example, when Jean-Marie Tjibaou was having difficulty in getting the government proposals accepted by the FLNKS and his own organization [the UC], French minister Le Pensec impatiently and tactlessly proclaimed that "there can be no question of any renegotiation"
And then there was the "grand pardon" proposed by the same Le Pensec to the imprisoned Kanak militants — a miserable attempt by the Socialist minister to blackmail a people in struggle — which also involved a total amnesty for the troops responsible for executing the 19 Kanaks murdered in Ouvéa last year.
The Rocard government got its plan through by applying pressure. It was not concerned with formalities and has exploited all the difficulties of the FLNKS leadership. The goal was simply to get signatures on the document. The whole business opened wounds and left scars. The attempts to sow division in the Front made the drama at Gossanah possible.
In addition, the "accompanying" measures that were supposed to remedy the socio-economic inequalities that exist in New Caledonia were constantly delayed. But it was these very promises that had finally persuaded some of the more reluc-
Australian magazine: "We've been conned; we're going round in circles"
It appeared on the surface as if the govemment's policy had resulted in a compromise. But in the heart of the Kanak regions things were getting worse. Although Rocard's project did not split the FLNKS, the structure of the independence movement was not what it was. A number of the FLNKS' local fightback committees stopped functioning, discontent began io spread, and each party [in the Front] increasingly pursued its own line.
In the recent municipal elections, the Front was disunited. In some places, such as Ouvéa, there were two competing slates, one from the UC, the other a unity slate. Rocard was jubilant. The time had come for financial aid, loans and "development" projects to deepen the centrifugal forces.
Militants wanted to preserve political unity
The "Rocard method" turned out to be all too expeditious. The Matignon Accords were signed because at that time the FLNKS was a unitary force among the Kanaks, despite internal differences. Behind the personality of Jean-Marie Tjibaou and despite doubts and fears, the majority of militants wanted to preserve political unity — which was also their people's unity. The cavalier way in which the accords were worked out, and then their implementation in practice, has turned this situation inside out.
At Gossanah, some militants of the FLNKS imagined that they could turn the situation round by killing Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwéné Yeiwéné. All they have done is to deepen the divisions. *
[Abridged from an article in the May 11 issue of Rouge, newspaper Four inter French section of the 13 Fourth International.]
SOUTH AFRICA N EW POLITICAL and strategic challenges have appeared, and the mass movement has found itself without a political perspective. Major bourgeois liberal sectors have shown that their search for a soft way out of apartheid fitted in quite well with the new, more repressive labor laws that the government adopted at the start of 1989. The perspective of a large-scale crisis of the system, helped along by a rise of the liberal opposition and stronger international pressures, has gradually faded.
To the contrary, despite the international crisis rocking the National Party over who is to succeed the president, Pieter Botha's government regained the political initiative and repressed the mass movement, while at the same time proposing structural reforms. The uneasy liberal voters looking for a moderate solution increasingly cast their ballots for Botha's party, while a section of Afrikaner voters slid towards the extreme right.
The mass movement did not approach this situation in the best of shape. Notably, it failed to achieve unity in the stormy years from 1984 to 1986. The trade-union movement, represented mainly by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), showed a certain capacity to centralize struggles and resist the repression. But the community movement, represented mainly by the United Democratic Front (UDF), experienced growing difficulties.
The UDF's weakening is undoubtedly a result of the repression. The regime went after the UDF in the conviction that it was the ANC's main instrument in the country. But other elements also contributed to this movement's difficulties. First of all, the UDF proved to be a vague project, combining the features of a rank-and-file mass movement with a tendency for the leading personalities to become independent.
### Making the country
"ungovernable"
Over the entire period of 1985-86, there was a very strong radicalization in the townships, especially among the youth. This movement took its inspiration largely from the ANC's slogans, and gradually became imbued with the idea of a victory in the short-term. The central slogan was to make the country "ungovernable." But very quickly some claimed that this was already the case, and the ANC's propaganda then focused on the emergence of "dual power."
The first signs of uneasiness appeared when a way had to be found to end the schools boycott. In the ranks of the UDF itself, and certainly among the parents, the need began to be felt to bring to a close a movement whose objectives seemed unobtainable.! Then, it became clear little by 14 thee that despit a fantastic breadth o- little that despite the fantastic breadth of International Viewpoint #164 • May 29, 1989 ship of forces did not make it possible to pose the question of power. The means available at the time were insufficient to resolve the new strategic problems posed - workers' control in the factories, the question of revolutionary mass violence, the monolithism of the repressive apparatus and so on.
With hindsight, it is easier to understand what the ANC's strategy was. The Congress had a combined project — to push the mass movement as far as possible and link it up with a growing pressure from the liberal opposition. It was expected that the result of this would be a crisis of the regime, which would facilitate a reorganization of the entire system, with the help of various sorts of foreign intervention. So, the leading lights of the UDF were used mainly to build a bridge to liberal and Western circles. This strategy did not work, inasmuch as the center of white liberalism in South Africa is not made up of petty-bourgeois democrats but of real capitalists. Moreover, the mass movement appeared so powerful that these circles feared an uncontrollable social dynamic.
Question of unity and tactical alliances
The second problem that arose was unity. Two questions were posed simultaneously in the country. The first was unity of the working class and the disinherited masses. The second was tactical alliances with Black or white bourgeois and petty-bourgeois sectors. But the policy followed by the UDF, and therefore by the ANC, was not that. In reality, the Freedom Charter [ANC's political program] was used as a rallying symbol by the ANC for a very specific sort of "unity" policy. It's purpose was not to assemble the bulk of the working class and, alongside this, to pose the question of alliances with other social sectors. It was rather to cut off a section of the proletariat vertically in order to include it in a broader Chartist front.