Salim Vally and Patrick Bond
A quick and somewhat bloody ”teach-in” on foreign policy was held at the Wits
University Great Hall last Friday, in the form of a vibrant human rights protest.
United States Secretary of State Colin Powell was forced to spend an extra hour
hemmed in on campus by demonstrators, learning why the US is now widely regarded
as the world’s main rogue state. Wits students engaged in non-violent civil disobedience and blocked the US delegation’s exit. For their trouble, security
forces roughed up students David Masondo and Nick Dieltens, who both received
nasty facial and head wounds.
Throughout the day, members of Powell’s security entourage patrolled the campus,
on occasion ripping down posters critical of US foreign policy. A student was
also ”requested” to cover up his Che Guevara T-shirt because it was deemed ”offensive”.
This arrogance and coercion seems to have been the trend throughout Powell’s
tour of Africa. Aids activists in Kenya say they were prevented by US officials
from unfurling a banner that read: ”Put lives before profit.” Nevertheless, in
spite of Powell’s militaristic buffer, the message got through: while he may
have a respectful audience in Pretoria (and in banal Sunday Times coverage),
he’s more often considered, as a sign said: ”The Butcher of Baghdad.”
It was appropriate that the Bush administration’s envoy received such an inhospitable welcome for several reasons. Firstly, Powell is personally responsible for an attempted cover-up of the horrific 1968 My Lai massacre of
women and children by US forces in Vietnam; for participating in the mid-1980s
cover-up of the Iran-contra Arms Scandal; and for covering up and downplaying
1991 ”Gulf War syndrome” diseases and violations of the Geneva Convention associated with the mass slaughter of retreating Iraqi troops.
Secondly, Powell’s responsibilities for human rights violations continue, through:
l Washington’s coddling of the apartheid state of Israel, which with US financial and military support is killing hundreds of Palestinians.
l The illegal blockade of Cuba, in the wake of at least 17 CIA assassination
attempts on Fidel Castro.
l A $1,5-billion escalation of an alleged ”drugs war” in Colombia, which in reality is merely another failing counterinsurgency in the tradition of Indochina, Central America and Southern Africa.
Thirdly, there are other features of the Bush administration’s disregard for the
rest of the planet’s citizens that Powell should have answered for:
l The refusal to honour more than $1-billion in United Nations dues.
l The retreat from international efforts to curb illicit money laundering.
l The rejection of obligations to stop trashing the environment through the Kyoto Protocol on carbon dioxide emissions.
l Massive military expenditure in the form of the ”Star Wars” missile defence
programme.
l A new attack by the US Office of the Trade Representative on Brazil’s ability
to produce anti-retroviral generic drugs to combat HIV/Aids.
l The recent refusal by Washington to fund organisations that provide family
planning and abortion services in the Third World.
l Sabotage of Korean peace talks.
l The nomination of men with appalling human rights records to the United Nations and Organisation of American States.
l Insistence on Third World countries’ repayment of illegitimate foreign debt to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
l Ongoing demand that other countries adopt the World Bank and IMF free-market
”structural adjustment”, which cut the living standards of Africans while promoting transnational corporate and banking interests.
l Continuation of the extremist trade liberalisation process of the World Trade
Organisation and African Growth and Opportunity Act, while hypocritically retaining protectionist tariffs at home.
No one should really be surprised at the aggressive record of the Bush regime in these vital areas, though, given its origins in a banana-republic election in
Florida. Thanks to Governor Jeb Bush and five white Supreme Court judges, African-American voters were blatantly disenfranchised. Though Powell is black,
he serves alongside people who have promoted apartheid and repression of Africans. Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, voted in favour of keeping
Nelson Mandela in prison and against anti-apartheid sanctions in the US Congress
during the 1980s. As the CEO of the oil services company Haliburton during the
1990s, Cheney sustained the Sani Abacha regime in Nigeria. And while the Middle
East, Colombia and Cuba are just three current sites of US aggression, our region knows Washington’s history of meddling all too well:
l The CIA’s decades-long support of the apartheid regime.
l Encouragement of Pretoria’s invasion of Angola in 1975.
l US patronage of Renamo’s war in Mozambique.
l Ronald Reagan’s ”constructive engagement” policy, which prolonged apartheid’s
life during the 1980s.
During his term as US president, Bill Clinton apologised to the people of Central America for America’s record of malign intervention, and Powell should
have done the same while here.
The critique of US foreign policy may be loudest when students protest, but it
behoves the Department of Foreign Affairs to consider why Washington’s international illegitimacy was confirmed by the US’s own peers in the UN. Over
the past few weeks the US was stripped of its seats on the UN Human Rights Commission and UN international drug monitoring board. Human rights activists
across the world celebrate the growing rejection of the world’s most dangerous
rogue nation, including its main foreign policy representative, Powell.
Will a US delegation return to Johannesburg next September for more evidence of
international opposition to Washington’s multifaceted war on the planet at the
Rio+10 Summit on Sustainable Development?
Salim Vally and Patrick Bond are Wits staff members. Bond is the author of the
forthcoming book Against Global Apartheid