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Page A4-The Chronicle, Thursday, November 15, 1984 Winston-Salem Chronicle Founded 1974 ERNEST H. PITT, NDUBISI EGEMONYE **■•■*►* Co-Founder ELAINE L. PITT rqBIN ADAMS MICHAEL PITT Office Manuner Assisiani Editor Crrcidalion Manaxer Tragedy in Africa It’s sometimes hard to grasp the tragedy, horror and senselessness of starvation as you sip your morning cup of coffee and nibble a Danish you’re not really hungry for. Half a world a way, however, drought-induced famine is painfully real and threatens to fell millions unless someone acts soon. “Disputed borders, ethnic rivalries, drought, soaring birth rates and grinding poverty have born in upon fragile social political structures,” reads a somber release from Africare, “reducing the great dream of independence and prosperity to the grim reality of starvation, death and human misery beyond imagination.” Even so, politics and benign neglect have hampered the desperately-needed relief effort. The drought and famine in sub-Sahara Africa are- nothing new. The International Conference on Assistance To Refugees in South Africa focused on both in July. The Africare release we quoted earlier was mailed in May. And a UNICEF official in Ethiopia has noted: “We have been asking for help since 1983. It seems you have to have thousands of corpses before anyone will sit up and take notice.” U.S. and British aid may have taken so long to arrive because of Ethiopia’s Marxist government, which has close ties to the Soviet Union and has been incredibly callous to the starving millions in its own right (it held a $100 million celebration two months ago to celebrate the roup that brought the present government to power while six million refugees wandered aimlessly in search of food). But, while politicians point holier-than-thou fingers at one another, men, women and children die. While this country enjoys huge surpluses of grain, nearly 200 Ethiopians starved to death daily in late October and early November. In fact, given what our nation is capable of offering, the current trickle of U.S. aid is not nearly enough. “Something is very, very wrong,” said House Speaker Tip O’Neill in Time magazine last week. “We turn on the news and we see African children starving to death, and we get no explanation whatever of why we .Americans are allowing this to happen.” The American aid package of $45 million is indeed miniscule based on what this nation can do - and the millions it pumps, on the other hand, in military aid to allies whose morals and intentions are, at best, ques tionable. Too, the media attention given the problem seems to pale considerably when compared to the ink, film and tape com mitted to Poland, whose inhabitants happen not to be black. “When the god gives rain, we can live again,” a tribeswoman told a United Press International reporter recently. We only hope her deity is more reliable than her fellow man. Crosswinds Helping ourselves? Our apartheid policy has failed istence -- are a threat to i By JOHN E. JACOB Special to the Chronicle American policy toward South Africa has failed, and it must be replaced. Continued appeasement of apartheid can only hasten the onset of large- scale violence and subversion of real U.S. interests. The “evil empire” of South Africa tries to present a human face to the world through huge public relations expenditures that attempt to portray the country as a multi racial paradise. In reality, it is a racist state in which four and a half million whites have citizenship privileges and power denied to over 24 million blacks. South Africa pretends that the apartheid system is being replaced by a liberalized system of greater democaracy. But nothing could be further from the truth. The govern ment did institute a major con- situtional change by granting partial political rights for In dians and what South Africa calls “coloreds” — people of mixed racial descent. But even that cosmetic ploy backfired. Most eligible voters boycotted the elections. They From The Carolinian, Raleigh, N.C. A story recently published that the largest black land cooperative in existence today is about to fold should prompt many to question how serious the black community is in its wish to survive and progress in America. In other words, some of the things the black community could do for itself, it refuses to do, but yet it wishes to cry racism, discrimination and oppression. New Communities, Inc., is a 14-year-old land trust own ing 4,387 acres of land. It is cooperatively owned and operated and plants 2,000 acres of peanuts, corn, soybeans, sugar cane, grapes, watermelons, vegetables and pecans. It raises livestock also, and had hoped in the future to build homes and deliver social services to occupants and others. Now, the organization faces a forced selling of 3,000 acres this month and the remainder soon thereafter. The culprits are allegedly five years of drought, the government’s policies in the Farmer’s Home Administra tion, racism and the greed of Southern land speculators. From another perspective, the culprit could simply be the traditional failure on the part of the black community to unite and employ its own resources to protect its own in terests. Belatedly, many well-known personalities are being sum moned to help rescue the project; Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, Julian Bond, Coretta King, John Lewis, Joe Lowery, Vernon Jordan, M. William Howard, Wyatt J. Walker, Dorothy Height and Walter Fauntroy. But popular black personalities are not the answer to black problems. What are the resources that one expects these individuals to muster? At best, they are political and at worst, they are rhetorical. The black masses, that centuries-old sleeping giant, must Please see page A5 Jacob recognized that instead of sharing real power, the government was simply trying to split the black majority from their natural allies in the non-white community. Meanwhile the goverment was keeping on the pressure against black trade unions, which constitute a major challenge to apartheid’s economic oppression of blacks. Black unions in South Africa - by their very ex istence - are a threat to the system. Four out of five workers in the country are black and if they organize, make economic demands and pursue citizenship and political rights, the sytem could crumble. So the authorities passed laws outlawing what in the United States would be normal labor rights and brutally im prisoned strike leaders and union officials. With South Africa’s economy in trouble, the huge gap between black and white earnings is growing even faster than in the past. As it is, the typical white worker earns bet ween four and five times the wage of the typical black worker. South Africa’s strategy is to define blacks as citizens of “homeland” areas that most have never even seen. That way, blacks are prevented from exercising citizenship rights in South Africa itself. South Africa’s only hope is for whites^and blacks tO^come,. to a new basis for living together in a unified state. But the white minority will not even consider this alternative without pressure. Bishop Tutu fights for us all By DR. CECIL ABRAHAMS Special to the Chronicle In awarding the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize to the black South African anti-racist leader. Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize committee has for a second year in a row recognized the immense im portance of dissent in a world where unquestioning confor mism has encouraged both totalitarian and democratic governments to ride roughshod over the rights of ordinary people. Last year. Lech Walesa of the Polish labor union Solidarity was honored for his unflinching leadership role in establishing free labor unions in a totalitarian state. Whereas Walesa’s protest was focused more narrowly. Bishop Tutu, who was the runner-up last year, has concentrated at great personal risk on the complete dismantling of apartheid and the establishment of a peaceful, harmonious and tru ly non-racial society. Born into a humble home in Klerksdorp, just outside Johannesburg, South Africa, Tutu studied for and entered both the teaching and religious vocations. In the teaching pro fession, he came face to face with the inferior education that the racist regime desired to force down the throats of black children. Feeling that he could be of even greater service to the op pressed black community in a religious vocation, he entered an Anglican seminary when he was already 27 years old. A part of his training took him to England, where he served for two years as a parish priest in London. Upon his return from England, Tutu served as chaplain to the black students at the then-well-known Fort Hare University College. It is Letters with the black people and to protest the Group Areas Act, which forbids the living together of blacks and whites. Later, Desmond Tutu was appointed Secretary-General of the South African Council of Churches, an ecumenical affiliate of the World Council of Churches. It is in this posi tion where Tutu has scored most of his national and inter national successes against the racist regime. In winning the Nobel prize. Bishop Tutu has indicated clearly that he sees this not as a “The prize ...as Bishop Tutu has so clearly indicated, is an award to everyone that refuses to cower to unjust laws. ” here that people such as Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo studied. It is here that Tutu’s dissidence grew in tensely against the racist regime. Tutu ws the first black prelate to be appointed Dean of the Anglican Cathedral in Johannesburg. And to set the mark of his deanship, he refused at the outset to live in the spacious home attached to the cathedral. Instead, he chose to live in the black township of Soweto to demonstrate his solidarity A different alternative To The Editor: Two elections took this week -- one in on Nov. 4 and one in'tijj United States on Nov. 6, tiii Nicaraguan election democratic and a gain t(, workers and farmers; thcUs election was not. North Carolina is a perfei example of this. Thoiiglitli( Socialist Workers party metil legal and financial quirements to obtain balloi status, we were denied virtial. ly all access to the media aij excluded from all poliijg debates. The reasons for this denial are simple. Unlike the ivj parties of the rich, iln Democratic and Republic® parties, the Socialist Workeis candidates raise real solutioi to the problems facisj workers and the poor. Our program explains hot workers and farmers canbniH an anti-war movement to slop U.S. intervention into Cenlii America and use the trilliop. dollar war budget to meelil social and human needs. also explain that essentials solving our problems of n, racism, sexism and unemploy ment is a break from the m parties who represent ih bosses and the wealthy. Independent political actioi and not a vote for “lesseiil two evil” candidates can eil the crises facing workers ®l farmers today. We expliii that working people need o» own political party, a lahoi party based on a fighting liai union movement. Our campaigns also exp the barrage of lies put forthli Washington and the press« this country regarding til Nicaraguan revolution. What do free elections reii look like? Like those i Nicaragua, where ail parlie had equal access to the balloi; had equal access to campaip funds and equal access to Ih media. And where, by lay candidates had to explain Ihs program to the people, ail not the personalities of Ihii opponents. And becauseeqoi amounts of money were imi available by the governnid for all parties, the election could not be bought by I* biggest spender. The exanipl of the Nicaraguan revoluliil a workers’ and farni® government in power, is Washington and its press fit the most. This is what the candiil* of the Socialist Workers PK explain. The war a!!®* working people and fan*' here and abroad will nd f away after Nov. 6 no W® who is elected. In factiil' Ik intensify and deepen SWP will also intensifyo#' personal victory, but as a recognition by the world that thousands and thouysands of men and women engaged in a struggle to bring not only a truly democratic South Africa society to the fore, but in fact to encourage the struggle of everyone else who, on big or small scales, is trying to remove the yoke of oppression from their backs. Dissent is an ancient prac tice. It existed long before civilized societies. Oral histories in Africa and Asia Please see page A5 forts to explain the Mil working people and fat®*'i this country. j U.S. out of America! Jobs, not war! Candidate, L'S**' Gt««#' »elco» The Chronicle reader reaction and n Letters must bear a sii address and telephone ® for verification and sW mailed to the Chronicle, Box Winston-Salem, N.C 0' H6V- ML YOU CAWDlOXIeS foR CDN6RE.SS- Tons Mnue.v wpegies nee ovttR Money (AABT wants 16 mfw eei eucreo WEW m ftUIICM. kCTOF CoiAM'free STANOwe by To Stve YOU Mouiy 30t.T Flu OUT A snoot QUESnoNNNRE OW VotiR rosnioNs...
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Nov. 15, 1984, edition 1
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