Newspaper Page Text
January 31, 1985/The Maroon Tiger/Page 17
REAL POLITICS
South Africa - The International Outlaw
The Devil’s
in Bhopal
By Charles A. Carpenter
Political Affairs Editor
December 3rd, 1984 in north
central India, a Union Carbide (a
U.S. based transnational cor
poration) pesticide manufac
turing plant spewed 25 tons of a
lethal pesticide ingredient called
methyl isocyanate over an area
25 square miles in size. Included
within that 25 mile radius was a
city of 900,000 people. Located
approximately 500 miles south of
New Delhi and serving as the
home of that Union Carbide
plant is the city of Bhopal.
Witnesses said that following the
two-hour toxic jettison, the city
resembled a "giant gas
chamber.” Within forty-eight
hours over two thousand people
were dead. Hospitals reported a
death a minute. Funeral pyres
burned around the clock. Mass
graves overflowed. The flies and
vultures staked out massive
claims. Within a week 100,000
people were reported injured.
Death by methyl isocyanate
inhalation is not aneasy one.The
gas caused the moist inner
tissues of the lungs to swell and
precipitates fluid build-up
therein as well. In effect, the
victim simultaneously chokes
and drowns in his own bodily
fluids.
Survivors commented that
they had not heard the warning
sirens sound, while others were
not told what these sirens meant.
Others still knew only of the
incident which they called “the
devil's night.”
To this editor, history and
unanswered questions make the
Bhopal incident a very suspicious
one indeed. I’ll deal first with the
unanswered questions.
An incident of such magnitude
and potential implication by
virtue of its own weight gives rise
to certain questions. One of the
more relevant has to be the poor
safety precautions. Why was
there not some sort of evacua
tion plan in the event of a
mishap? Why were not the
residents of the surrounding
environs informed as to the
nature of the plant and given
some orientation regarding the
warning sirens and their mean
ing? Apart from the safety
questions looms the largest
question of all, why given the
size of the plant and the number
of American employees, was
there only the one American
fatality.
Let us now deal with the
historical concerns.
In early November of last year,
the United States government
proudly announced its inten
tions to destroy its vast, old cache
of chemical weaponry. This
particular announcement
followed by several months a
report citing Soviet usage of
chemical weapons in their
Vietnam-like battle in
Afghanistan. So? Well, given the
“bilateral” arms limitation
mindset of this Administration,
its "one upsmanship” defense
policy, and the current fervor of
the Perennial "Red Scare,” does
it not seem strange that the U.S.
would unilaterally, and in full
awareness of the Soviet’s con
tinued use and development of
chemical weapons, destroy its
own supplies of chemical
weaponry? It would be very
(Continued on Page 13)
By Charles A. Carpenter
Political Affairs Editor
In my last essay on South
Africa, entitled “South Africa
Join theWinningSide,” I discuss
ed the atrocities perpetrated by
the South African government
against blacks within its borders.
Herein I will address similar
barbarity carried on outside the
South African borders.
Although the stench of Prime
Minister Botha’s representatives
can be detected in many coun
tries, it is the strongest in
Namibia. Namibia is a large land
mass of some 318,261 square
miles, or roughly about the size
of Texas and Oklahoma com
bined, extending along the
Atlantic coast of the south
western part of Africa and
bounded on the north by
Angola, on the north-east by
Zambia, on the east Botswana
and to the south by South Africa.
Namibia shares a colonial past
with other African nations. From
about 1884 until World War I, it
was occupied and administered
by Germany, which called it
South West Africa. During the
First World War, neighboring
South Africa invaded and oc
cupied the Territory. With Ger
many’s defeat, South West Africa
became the responsibility of the
League of Nations under its
Covenant.
The Pretoria government
wished to incorporate South
West Africa into the Union of
South Africa, but the League, in
1920, chose instead to declare it a
mandated Territory of category
“C” status, under which South
Africa was expected to “Promote
to the utmost the material and
moral well-being and social
progress of the inhabitants of the
Territory.”
However, South Africa intend
ed to annex and colonize the
Territory, to exploit its resources
and people and to expand its
perverted policy of apartheid
into Namibia. This became clear.
Following the desolution of the
League of Nations and the foun
ding of the United Nations in
1945, South Africa refused to
comply with the UN’s request to
transfer the League mandate to
the similar UN Trusteeship
System. In fact, at the very first
session of the UN General
Assembly in 1946, it sought to
incorporate the Territory. The
General Assembly, of course,
rejected the request, but much
to its chagrin, South Africa
asserted that it would do as it
pleased. And in 1948 South
Africa proceeded to introduce
apartheid into the Territory and
to treat it as a part of South
Africa. As of January 18, 1985,
things remain much the same in
Namibia.
Today population figures are
difficult to confirm, but a recent
study for the United Nations
Institute for Namibia places the
population at about 1,250,000,
comprising about 1,045,500
blacks, 100,000 whites and about
70,000 personnel of South
Africa's illegally occupying arm
ed forces.
Although whites make up less
than 10% of the population, the
South African authorities have
assigned to them the most
productive 43% of the land. The
African majority is confined to
“homelands,” such as in South
Africa proper, on the most
. impoverished 40% of the land.
For their very survival, black
Namibians are forced to migrate
from the bantustans or separate
homelands to the white areas to
seek gainful employment. They
thus provide a cheap, and plen
tiful supply of labor to the white
owned economic enterprises.
The UN has been unable to
change South Africa’s position as
colonial ruler of Namibia. The
Namibian people have,
meanwhile, kept up their efforts
to achieve self-determination
and to free their country from
South African control. In 1960,
the South West African People’s
Organization (SWAPO) was
formed. SWAPO, which was
recognized by the General
Assembly in 1973 as the authentic
representative of the Namibian
people and in 1976 as the "sole
and authentic representative of
the people of Namibia,” leads
and coordinates the political,
military and social struggle for
Namibia’s freedom.
In 1966, the General Assembly
revoked South Africa's mandate
over Namibia and placed the
ccntry under direct UN con
trol The following year the
Assembly established the UN
Council for Namibia and gave it
the mandate to administer the'
Territory of Namibia until in
dependence.
The Security Council, in 1970,
declared South Africa to be in
illegal occupation of Namibia
and called upon all states to
refrain from dealing with South
Africa in all matters, especially
those economic in nature.
I n support of these actions, the
International Court of Justice in
1971 upheld that South Africa’s
continued presence in Namibia
was illegal, that it should
withdraw immediately and that
all UN Member States should
recognize the illegality of South
Africa’s presence in Namibia and
the invalidity of its acts concer
ning Namibia.
The impetus for South Africa’s
tenacity in holding on to this
half-barren slab of land becomes
clearer. Mined by what amounts
(Continued on Page 12)
Farrakhan: The Man Behind The Words
By Lisa Kinard
Staff Writer
A well-worn Holy Qu’ran and
a Holy Bible lay on a small table
in a room at the Atlanta Hyatt-
Regency Hotel. A lamp il
luminates both holy books as a
slim, well-dressed man sits at the
table. He looks much younger
than his 51 years.
This former calypso singer is a
humble, articulate and soft-
spoken man who abounds with
energy behind a pulpit or a
podium. But he is tired today
after traveling from Philadelphia
to Atlanta to speak at several
churches and radio stations,
although his weariness does not
show on his face. He smiles
exposing perfect white teeth,
and asks if he can remove his
bow tie, a trademark of the Black
Muslims in America. He fiddles
with a ring on his left hand, a
large gold ring embedded with
diamonds and an engraving of
the Honorable Elijah Muham
mad. His followers in California
gave him this ring. He laughs to
his national assistant, Brother
Abdul Akbar Muhammad, about
a man in Libya who noticed the
ring and said, “That is too much,
too much.” His assistant is
preparing a tape recorder to
record this interview. Everything
is taped and filed for reference
or future use.
In deep thought, the soft-
spoken minister, who is feared
and admired by millions, looks
down at the table and his hands
as he begins to recall his early
years.
Minister Louis Farrakhan, the
National Representative of the
Hon. Elijah Muhammad and self-
proclaimed “most repudiated
Black man in America,” was born
in Bronx, New York, on May 11,
1933 to Caribbean parents. He
never knew his father. His
mother was from a small island
called St. Kitts in the Eastern
Caribbean. They moved to
Boston, Massachusetts, when he
was 3 and lived in a
predominately Black section
called Roxbury.
An extremely gifted child.
Farrakhan was an honor student
throughout grade school. In the
seventh grade, he decided to
attend one of the oldest high
schools in the nation and the
most prestigous in Boston, the
Boston Public Latin School.
There he became acquainted
with Latin, Greek and other
higher studies.
“I was exposed to the hatred of
Black people by Boston whites. I
didn't get along very well in that
school environment. So, I went
back to my old grammar school
to complete my eighth year. I
graduated from there and went
on to high school.
"As a youngster I was always
concerned with the plight and
suffering of Black people. And I
wondered many times if God
were just and he sent deliverers
for oppressed people in the past,
where was the deliverer for Black
people from the terrible oppres
sion that we were suffering from
in this country from the white
people. I began to search...” he
said, while vividly recalling his
initial association with the
church.
His mother, he remembers,
was a very religious woman, and
a member of the Episcopal
Church. "The church I belonged
to was not vibrant. The preacher
was not fiery. So, I wondered
about other religions and other
ways of worshipping God.”
Eventually, after graduating
from high school, he moved to
the South to experience for
himself the segregation directed
against Blacks.
"My experience with segrega
tion made me see the hypocrisy
of the practice of Christians,
particularly white Christians. So I
decided I would look for another
faith, because this must not be
the true faith, if Black people
were suffering so much as
Christians from white persons
who claimed to be Christians.
"So, I heard of the Hon. Elijah
Muhammad and one day in 1955,
I was playing in a nightclub in
Chicago, Illinois, down on Rush
Street called the Blue Angel, it is
no longer there. I went to the
Muslim convention, heard Elijah
Muhammad, and decided to
become a Muslim.
“I met Malcolm X a few years
earlier, but I didn’t think that I
(Continued on Page 18)