Linkage between racism meet, attacks seen

By M. S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, SEPT. 13. Reports of and reactions to the terrorist outrage in New York and Washington two days ago continue to dominate the public discourse in South Africa. For the second day in succession, both print and electronic media were preoccupied with the news and analysis from the United States, to the near- total exclusion of domestic developments. Public figures continue to offer comments on the events.

However, in all this profusion of saturated coverage and analysis is the absence of any reference to the long and well known facts that the widely suspected perpetrators of the outrage as well as the ideology that animates them have been the creations, indeed, creatures, of the U.S. itself.

Thus, there is no reference to the fact that the suspected ``mastermind'' behind the outrage, Osama bin Laden, and his host in Afghanistan, Taliban, are both the creatures of the U.S., created and financed in the early 1980's by it, driven by its hatred of the Soviet Union and what it chose to saw as its proxy, the democratic transition that had taken place in Afghanistan in 1979.

These instrumentalities forged by the U.S., with the active assistance of Pakistan, were later used to undermine and finally destroy the Soviet Union as well. The so-called Afghans who spawned from these developments have since been deployed in wide areas of Europe and Central Asia to further undermine the residual Russia, still the only state which has the potential to challenge the present status of the U.S. as the only ``super power'' and, more crucially, where the Communist Party has not been destroyed.

Another aspect of South African reaction at the popular level to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon is the failure to note the symbolism of these structures within the framework of a world being constructed by the U.S. - globalised capitalism and a lone military superpower. Instead, even seemingly less outraged reactions sceptical of U.S. claims to moral authority, commitment to democracy and human rights are informed by a shallow anti-Americanism, barely concealing the underlying envy and the eagerness to join the very structures and the system so loudly despised.

Another curious feature of South African reaction at the popular level is the linkage seen between the U.S. decision to send a ``low level'' delegation to the recent World Conference Against Racism in Durban and, later, to withdraw even that delegation, and the events of Tuesday.

Central to this reading are the perceived differences between a U.S. Secretary of State supposedly sympathetic to African aspirations who was eager to lead the delegation to the conference and a U.S. President supposedly less than sympathetic to issues of concern to Africa like reparations for slavery and colonialism and Palestine, the two issues which eventually dominated the conference.

There are no indications of a retreat from such self- imposed amnesia and illusions.

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