This was a heterogeneous movement. It included Bizima Karaha, Kabila's former Foreign Minister, and D. Bugera, one of the co-founders of Kabila's AFDL in 1996. Both men were considered close to the Rwandan regime. Another rebel was Shambuyi Kalala, a Maoist, and former propaganda chief of the AFDL. They were joined by well-known opponents of Mobutu who had not been co-opted into Kabila's regime. The RCD's president was Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba, History Professor at Daar Es Salaam University. Other prominent rebels were "dinosaurs" South Africans conden Workers Organisation for Socialist Action (WOSA) condemns the incursion of South African troops into Lesotho. This military fiasco has led to the deaths of tens of people, including civilians, and the maiming for life of many others.
Besides questions of "international law", WOSA notes that this ill-considered attempt to intimidate the people of an independent state most of whom are our worker brothers and sisters in the mines of Gauteng and the Free State, on the farms of the northern provinces and in the factories and offices of our cities, will have consequences for which South Africa will have to pay for many years to come.
Coming so soon after the fiasco of the "peace" initiative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this militaristic extreme demonstrates that South Africa's so-called foreign policy is in a shambles and that the new regime sees itself as the sub-region's sub-imperialist policeman acting under the cloak of the Southern Africa Development Council (SADC) [a regional co-operation group dominated by South Africa]. It is an ineffectual, counter-productive and destructive force which, essentially, increases the sufferings of ordinary citizens and workers.
We reject and oppose the doctrine which was agreed on by the SADC leaders in Mauritius earlier this month. That doctrine amounts to a guarantee of permanent tenure for the incumbent middle-class regimes, most of which are the very opposite of even the limited liberal democracy we still enjoy in the new South Africa.
This action also demonstrates that elements of the apartheid old guard and the present office-holders in South Africa will combine to suppress any mass democratic challenge to their power. This is one of the most sinister implications of this action from the point of view of those from the Mobutu regime. Men like Thambwe Mwanba, founder of the conservative
Union of Independent Democrats (UDI)
But the real weight in the rebellion was held by the military men, not the civilians. Many of the soldiers had loyally served Mobutu, and had been hiding from justice in eastern Zaire, waiting for just such a moment. *
Notes
1. Le Soir, 20 August 1998
2. Quoted in Le Monde, 26 August 1998.
3. Communiqué of the Comité pour le respect des Droits de l'Homme et de la Démocratie au Rwanda, 8 August 1998. Contact: tel. +32 2 2171629 4. Quoted in Le Soir, 29-30 August 1998. 5. Quoted in Le Soir, 27 August 1998. 6. Quoted in Le Soir, 20 August 1998. 7. Quoted in Le Soir, 27 August 1998. 8. Le Soir, 29-30 August 1998. in Lesotho incursion of us who stand for the socialist alternative in southern Africa.
The most lasting and most tragic result of this insane move will be the hatred of all things and people South African that the South African troops have engendered in the breasts of our worker brothers and sisters in Lesotho. The inevitable consequence will be an even more disastrous increase in the levels of hatred of foreign workers among South African workers, especially among the unemployed. It could take decades to heal this unnecessary wound.
As revolutionary socialists, we call on all workers and socialist of southern Africa to join the South East Africa Forum which will be launched in Mauritius at the end of 1998 so that we can fight as a united force against the antiworker and anti-democratic policies and practices of the middle-class governments of the sub-region.
We say that as the producers of the wealth of these countries and as citizens entitled to our human rights, we shall not be dragooned into wars and other international conflicts calculated to ensure the profits of the international and local capitalist classes. There is no doubt, for example, that, as in the Congo, the decisive reason for this intervention is protection of the interests of South African and foreign capitalist investors. They want to secure the Lesotho Highlands Water Project and its ramifications for the Free State and Gauteng mines.
WOSA makes a special call on the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) to come out clearly against the South African military adventure in Lesotho from where many, if not most, of its members come. The workers have no fatherland. An injury to one is an injury to all. Let us stand together against all racism, national chauvinism and capitalist exploitation. * *This resolution was approved at the 5th National WOSA Conference, Johannesburg, 25-27 September 1998. See page 34 for more details.