On October 31, Peter W. Botha,
brutal president of the apartheid regime in the territory that
is still known today by the colonial name of South Africa, died…
peacefully… in his sleep.
And in a display exemplifying the treacherous, sell-out, anti-African
nature of the African petty bourgeoisie, the African National
Congress government sent condolences to the family of this longstanding
enemy of African people, offered a State funeral, and even demanded
that flags throughout the country be flown at half-mast to honor
this guy.
Nelson Mandela, true to petty bourgeois form, said that Botha
helped to pave the way for a “multi-racial democracy.”
Botha, who was president of apartheid South Africa from 1978
to 1989, was known for his brutal ruthlessness and had jailed
and tortured thousands of Africans in attempts to maintain the
anti-African settler colonial State.
It is obscene that in a time when African petty bourgeois puppets
are being brought to international imperialist courts for crimes
they committed in the service of their imperialist masters,
forces like P. W. Botha are allowed to die peacefully.
In fact, while the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South
Africa saw fit to suspend the ridiculous one year jail sentence
it gave Botha, a number of Africans who fought in the liberation
struggle in the territory still languish in prisons today. Some
of whom were cadre of the ruling ANC party.
The State’s offer to give Botha a State funeral has been
met with much opposition in Azania. The Pan Africanist Congress
of Azania has called the offer an insult to African people and
an obvious appeasement to white power.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions stated, “His
hands were stained with the blood of hundreds who were murdered
during the struggle for democracy and liberation under his presidency.
The overwhelming majority of South Africans and the people of
the world will remember PW Botha only with hatred and disgust."
The ANC’s praise of Botha comes as no surprise to those
who understand who the African National Congress and the petty
bourgeois class it represents are. In fact, under the ANC’s
rule the conditions for African people have worsened while the
wealth of the white settler population wh still own 87 percent
of the land has grown.
The ANC serves only as a black face to cover the same colonial
system the African masses fought against under apartheid. The
revolution in Azania has been held up by this African petty
bourgeois force that has also grown rich at the expense of the
African masses.
While the African petty bourgeoisie has been able to realize
its aims and get rich by prostrating itself in bended knees
before white power, the African working class and poor peasants
can only realize freedom through the completion of the International
African Revolution and the unification and liberation of Africa.
Long live the Azanian front of the International African Revolution!
