>>NNA Breaking News Update 11/29/98<<
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NNA Breaking News Update 11/29/98
1. This Week on American Dissident Voices
2. 4 charged with plot to shoot
3. Old Hangtown succumbs to political correctness
World News
4. More Russians pin problems on Jews: Historical bias grows as
economy teeters
5. Scottish National Party Not So Scottish/Nationalist
6. Australia's Jews get their say
7. Controversial French writer publishes new book on Holocaust
8. UK Immigrants soak up ?500 million a year in welfare alone
9. Anti-corruption official slain
10. Another idea: 'skinhead police'
11. 'They refused to put me on a drip - because I am white'
12. Post-apartheid, downtown decays
13. Zulu Leader Tried to Prevent Black Rule in SA
---------------------------------------------------------------
US News
[All readers need to listen to this program. Dr. Pierce gets out the
fire and brimstone and lets you have it with both barrels. This is a
must-listen-to program.]
This Week on American Dissident Voices
What We Owe Sam Dash
by Dr. William Pierce
National Alliance Chairman
Dr. Pierce discusses the latest developments in the Clinton situation.
By now it should be clear the problem is more than a corrupt president
and a few other bad apples, the system is rotten through and through.
http://www.natall.com/internet-radio/
--
4 charged with plot to shoot
Police say York County teens and a man planned to gun down black
and Jewish students.
PhillyNews
DOVER, Pa. -- The talk began at a bus stop, early one morning last
week: Students were planning to take guns to their high school, police
say.
It was jarring news for school officials, who learned of the alleged
plot a day later, on Thursday morning. More disturbing for some were
the intended targets of the four suspects, who were all arrested by
Friday. They allegedly were going to shoot black and Jewish students.
"You hear about it happening in other areas, and it's a wake-up call,"
said Sue Gutshall, a spokeswoman for the Dover Area School District
in rural York County, where students returned to school besieged by
news crews yesterday. "Most definitely a wake-up call."
Police arrested a 19-year-old high school dropout, Donald Lee Smith,
on Thursday night, and alleged that he recruited the other three. On
Friday, police picked up three Dover Area High School students who
they say were his accomplices: William Altland, 17; and Neil Storm
and Timothy Musser, both 16.
Guns were not found during searches of the suspects' homes, said
Chief Carl Segatti of the Northern York County Regional Police
Department. But the threat has been taken seriously.
"If we had not believed it was a serious threat to the safety and
well-being of the students, we would not have brought the serious
charges that we brought," Segatti said.
Those charges, leveled against all four, are criminal conspiracy to
commit murder, criminal conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, and
criminal conspiracy to commit ethnic intimidation. Smith also has been
charged with solicitation to commit murder, aggravated assault, and
ethnic intimidation.
The three juveniles, who are being charged as adults, were released
to their parents. Smith is being held on $50,000 bail at the York
County Prison.
Neither those arrested nor their parents could be reached for comment.
There are few black or Jewish residents in this overwhelmingly white
rural community, about 130 miles west of Philadelphia.
In a school district of about 3,500, there are 35 black students,
Gutshall said. And while she did not have figures for Jewish students,
she said there were not many. In the zip code for 17315, which
encompasses Dover Township, there were 19,904 white residents and
76 black ones in 1990.
Stephen Busch, the executive director of the York City Human Relations
Commission, said educators and officials address each incident, but
fail to tackle the prevailing attitudes that lead to more.
"We have an underlying issue, which is the white supremacists'
activity in Pennsylvania," Busch said. "It is growing violent in
nature."
Police say the alleged plot in Dover was remarkably similar to the
school shooting carried out by two students in Jonesboro, Ark., in
March. They alleged that one of the Dover students was to pull a
fire alarm inside the school. Afterward, the four were to position
themselves across from the school, and shoot black and Jewish
students as they exited the building. Smith would supply the guns.
The plan did not get far. Several middle school students, who heard
rumors at the bus stop Wednesday morning, told their principal,
Michael Kell. He reported it to Robert Hamilton, the high school
principal, who called police.
--
Old Hangtown succumbs to political correctness
(AP) PLACERVILLE, Calif. -- No investigations. No trials. A hangman
just cinches a scratchy rope around the unfortunate's neck -- guilty
or not -- to the jeers of a drunken crowd.
Vigilantes of the 1849 Gold Rush lynched so many people in this Sierra
Nevada town, 110 miles east of San Francisco, that it's still
informally called Hangtown.
Tourists gawk at a lifelike dummy hanging by a noose along Main
Street. Nooses and "Hangtown" are on everything from signs to the
Placerville city seal.
But some residents have been murmuring their discomfort over the
celebration of the violent legacy of this town of 9,000, which is
attracting ever more city-slicker refugees.
Last year, critics again called -- unsuccessfully -- for removal of
the hanging dummy.
The murmurs rose to a ruckus earlier this month when the police chief
of 19 years proposed painting "Old Hangtown" on the doors of four new
patrol cars and putting a noose in place of the second "o."
"I never had any remote idea it would get to this point," says Police
Chief Steve Brown.
Critics said it could be seen as a cruel symbol for vigilante
justice. They brought up the mass murder of Jews during World War II
and lynching of blacks in the South, Brown says.
Councilwoman Marian Washburn says she felt the noose "projected a
lawless image."
Over the objections of Washburn and another council member, the board
backed the chief and voted for the design. But new council members
chosen in an election will shift the board's makeup against Brown
once they take office, and the chief has dropped his proposal.
"A vocal minority didn't see the historical significance of the
noose. And it's not a battle I choose to fight at this time," Brown
says.
Then Brown found himself in trouble with noose supporters.
"I cannot believe that something this tongue-in-cheek that brings
tourists to our town is such a problem with some narrow-minded
people," Doug Noble wrote the local newspaper. "Every year, someone
decides that the noose, hangman or something else in town is
'politically incorrect."'
Noose supporters cite Salem, Mass., as an example of a town
capitalizing on its history of burning witches at the stake with
museums and tours.
A year ago, noose supporters rebuffed critics' efforts to remove the
dummy dangling along Main Street in worn-out boots, jeans, suspenders
and red plaid shirt.
The dummy hangs from the second story of the 147-year-old Hangman's
Tree saloon, built over the stump of the original hanging tree.
Inside, where a hangman's ghost supposedly lingers, a noose swings
from a fake tree. Songs on an old juke box include "The Hanging
Tree," in which Marty Robbins warbles, "They carried me to the
hanging tree."
"We've got too many people trying to come up here and change history.
This town was built on the Gold Rush and vigilantes," says bartender
Robin Elliott. "It's big- city people who have never lived in a small
town and they want to change it."
--
World News
More Russians pin problems on Jews: Historical bias grows as
economy teeters
Los Angeles Times
MOSCOW -- Amid economic collapse, Russia has at least one growth
industry: hatred.
In recent weeks, following time-dishonored tradition, some Russians
have been blaming the country's woes on Jews. The new wave of
anti-Semitism is not just gutter talk. Diatribes laced with racial
slurs have echoed repeatedly in Russia's highest forums -- on national
television, in front of the Kremlin and in Parliament. Some political
leaders have shown support, or at least stood silent, while their
compatriots have spewed vitriol.
It's ugly, but no one is yet sure whether it's dangerous. "There could
easily be isolated incidents of violence," said Alexander Motyl, who
studies Russian ethnic issues at Columbia University. "But I'm
doubtful this could lead to sustained outbreaks, at least for some
time."
Anti-Semitism is as perennial in Russia as the snow. It tends to
arrive in force during seasons of economic discontent, and it lurks
beneath the surface the rest of the time as stubbornly as permafrost.
Nonetheless, the current storm is unusual in both strength and
breadth. It began in early October when a prominent and notoriously
acid-tongued general, Albert Makashov, disgorged a stream of abuse
during a public rally outside the Kremlin. His remarks were largely
incoherent except for the use of a Russian epithet for Jews and the
general suggestion that they should be identified and punished.
Makashov is a Communist deputy in the Duma, Parliament's lower house.
Liberal lawmakers drafted a mild motion denouncing the general's
remarks as "cause for concern." However, when it came up for a vote,
Communist lawmakers abstained and the motion failed.
The controversy has intensified, with much of the discussion focusing
on whether the Communists, and party leader Gennady Zyuganov in
particular, are promoting anti-Semitism.
Even the Kremlin has been drawn into the fray, demanding a firmer
response from law enforcement against "extremism." Federal prosecutors
complied, opening an investigation into whether Makashov's remarks
were an illegal incitement to violence.
"When the situation in the country becomes difficult, many feel an
urge to look for enemies and culprits. You know which ethnic groups
are being mentioned in this case," said Dmitri Yakushkin, spokesman
for President Boris Yeltsin.
Czarist Russia herded Jews into the region called the "Pale of
Settlement," and it gave the world the word "pogrom."
In Soviet times, Jews were excluded from some universities and
professions and targeted by thinly veiled campaigns such as attacks
on "cosmopolitanism."
In the free-for-all post-Soviet period, racists and neo-Nazis have
discovered new freedom to promote their ideas, and skinhead attacks
against nonwhites are reported to be on the rise.
For the time being, said Alan Rousso, director of the Carnegie Moscow
Center think tank, the debate is generating a "permissive atmosphere"
that could lead to some incidents of violence.
However, the Communists remain an opposition party without the levers
of state control and riven by internal disputes. And so far none of
the strong nationalists -- primarily former Gen. Alexander Lebed and
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov -- are jumping on the anti-Semitic
bandwagon.
"I don't think there's a Hitler in Russia right now," Rousso said.
--
Scottish National Party Not So Scottish
By Vincent Breeding
NNA Editor
(NNA) Scotland - The Scottish National Party retained its seat in the
European Parliament this week defeating Conservative Struan Stevenson
and Labor's Kathleen Walker Shaw.
The election victory of a Nationalist Party is normally of great
interest to Nationalist around the world. What is hidden behind the
"Scottish National Party" name is a disaster for Nationalism and a
blight on Scotland. Alex Salmon, Scottish National Party chairman is
not Scottish at all, but a Jew, who has publicly stated that the
first piece of legislation they will propose in the new Scottish
Parliament, will be the strongest Hate Crime bill in the World.
This Bill will effectively silence all criticism of forced
Multi-Culturalism in Scotland.
This turn of events had caused outrage in Scotland, where the SNP is
pushing for even more liberal citizenship laws.
"In Dundee they used to own a social club called the "1314" which
banned members of the Armed Forces, even the Scottish Regiments!"
states one outraged Nationalist adding "...the SNP are the original
Kosher Nationalists. A victory by them is nothing to be proud of by
true racial Nationalists."
--
Australia's Jews get their say
The Australian
ON the eve of the second international Holocaust stolen assets
conference, the Australian Jewish community yesterday celebrated the
Federal Goverment's decision to send a representative.
The 120,000-strong Australian Jewish community has the highest number
of Holocaust survivors per capita outside of Israel.
But distance has always frustrated the community's ability to lobby
for the handover of property, bank accounts and other possessions
confiscated during the Holocaust era.
For the first time, Australia will be represented by a diplomat when
the conference begins in Washington on Monday.
"There is a tyranny of distance when it comes to fighting and
negotiating restitution on a day-to-day basis," says Nina Bassat,
a Jewish community leader from Melbourne.
"We have to work much harder to mitigate that disadvantage."
Ms Bassat arrived in Australia from Poland in 1949 as a stateless
person, aged nine, with her widowed 28-year-old mother, Hadssa
Teicher.
Ms Bassat stresses that she sees herself as a survivor - but not a
sufferer.
"There's an important difference," she says. "My father was killed
in Poland when I was two years old - my mother had to cope with that
and keep us in hiding so as to avoid being sent to a camp. But I was
only a tiny child."
Ms Bassat is pushing for the bulk of money or property received from
the restitution process to be given to those survivors who now live
in poverty with no family.
"There are elderly Holocaust survivors in Australia who are living in
particularly desperate situations," Ms Bassat says. "Many of them are
very old, with no one to care for them because they lost their
families during the war.
"They are surviving in tiny rented flats on pensions, from which
they must pay for medicine and treatment."
The Washington conference will be attended by 44 nations and 13
non-government organisations and will focus on looted art works and
prewar insurance policies.
It follows the Nazi Gold Conference, held in London last year.
The Australian Jewish community is also fighting to secure its share
of money from the Swiss Funds for Needy Holocaust Survivors.
However, the Swiss fund has indicated each survivor who applies will
receive only $300, with the money expected to flow from April next
year.
Ms Bassat hopes those who receive money and are financially secure
will consider giving it to survivors in real need.
In regard to restitution, Ms Bassat says she's never spoken to a camp
survivor who felt the return of property or bank accounts could "make
up for anything of what they really lost".
"The feeling is you're only going to get back what you're entitled
to and even that will probably be too little too late for survivors
who experienced the Holocaust as adults.
"Many of them are now aged in their mid-70s to mid-80s."
Some survivors refuse to lodge restitution claims because they feel
any former possessions are now tainted, she said.
Ms Bassat still holds a property title certificate to her maternal
grandfather's apartment block near Krakow in Poland.
"We don't expect to ever see it - even if we did, it would only
represent a tiny part of what my family lost," she said.
--
Controversial French writer publishes new book on Holocaust
Reuters News Service
PARIS - A French writer sentenced for questioning traditional accounts
of the Holocaust has published a new book about Jews, Israel and World
War II persecution even as a court reviews his appeal against the
earlier sentence.
The new work by Roger Garaudy, 85, entitled "The Trial of Israeli
Zionism," was distributed to journalists on Tuesday.
His first book, "The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics" sparked a
storm of protest in the West but made him a hero in some Middle
Eastern states.
It also led a Paris court last February to fine him $20,000 under a
French law that prohibits the questioning of World War II crimes
against humanity.
The appeals court, which met on Wednesday and was to give its verdict
within a month, heard Garaudy's lawyers ask for the overturning of
the lower court sentence.
A public prosecutor requested earlier this week that the penalty be
stiffened and Garaudy sentenced to a prison term of unspecified length
as well as a lesser fine.
The legal case triggered a wave of sympathy for Garaudy in parts of
the Arab world and in Iran, where he met and received support from
supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in April.
A university professor, Garaudy was born a Protestant and converted
to Catholicism before becoming a leader of France's Communist party
following World War II.
He was forced out of the party during one of its periodic "witch
hunts" and converted to Islam in the 1970s.
Garaudy's latest book, whose cover is an Islamic green, was published
by an unknown firm which printed no address.
Lawyer Michel Zaoui, vice president of CRIF, an umbrella group for
French Jewry, said concentration camp survivors were reading the new
book to see if they would seek legal action against that work as well.
"We know who his readers are since they are sitting side by side in
the audience at his trial: neo-Nazi skinheads and ultra-leftists
wearing Palestinian keffieh headdresses as scarves. They hate each
other but they hate Jews more," Zaoui said.
--
UK Immigrants soak up ?500 million a year in welfare alone
(NNA-UK) LONDON - Finally some more practical steps are being taken
and a few, only a few, truths are being recognized about the
immigration crisis that is threatening the UK.
?500 million has finally been admitted to being spent on benefits
alone for the flood of illegal immigrants and Asylum seekers that are
pouring into the UK.
The dramatic rise in the numbers of these people from approximately
4000 a year in 1988 to 38,000 has created an unprecedented demand upon
the British taxpayer. Many of these immigrants arrive in Britain in
admission that their own countries are wrecked and seek an easier
life, or at least a paid holiday at the British taxpayer's expense.
There are nearly 100,000 immigrants whom have been refused residence
but for whom the British taxpayers will have to wait until the year
2002 before the business of deportations can get underway, thanks to
the indifferent actions of the Blair government. Instead of dealing
with the problem in a speedy and positive manner in returning the
immigrants to where they came from, all sorts of manipulative
practices have been started "to try and alter the balance of the
problem."
Some of the stalling efforts by the Blair government include a special
appeals court that has been set up to listen to all the appeals that
are made when the applications for asylum are initially turned down.
This has been set up to get through the current pile of 23,000
backlogged cases waiting to be heard, and also replacing the welfare
cash payments for food vouchers, which will all be operated through a
new national agency. What is the pity though that the millions of
state school children, many of whom are in classes of over 30 pupils,
will not be having a national agency specially set to deal with their
critical problem of classroom overcrowding. A typical under investment
caused by a lack of government funds, money, which typically is spent
on the immigrants. The Blair government is effectively robbing the
future generation of their educational birthright and sowing the
seeds of further social decay of a once great White nation.
--
Anti-corruption official slain
Reuters
EXICO CITY - A senior Mexican police officer heading corruption
investigations within the force has been gunned down, gangland-style,
in a posh Mexico City neighborhood, officials said yesterday.
Police said they had not ruled out the possibility that Mexico City
Judicial Police commander Eduardo Linares, who was killed Wednesday
night, was shot by members of the force who had been targeted in
anti-corruption probes.
Linares and a junior judicial police officer, identified as Eduardo
Tellez, were killed when several gunmen ambushed their car in the
Coyoacan neighborhood in southern Mexico City, police said. Linares
was hit by at least 10 rounds.
Mauricio Tornero, who heads the judicial police, a plainclothes
detective force answering to the capital's attorney general, said
the killings would not deter efforts to clean up the force.
``There will be no truce for judicial police ... who commit crimes,''
Tornero told reporters. ``They will not be police. They are going to
jail because they are criminals.''
The Mexican government took steps this week to weed out criminal
elements from the notoriously corrupt and ineffective police force.
On Monday 35 members of the 94,000-strong city police force were
arrested after checks showed they faced warrants for crimes ranging
from murder to robbery.
This story ran on page A08 of the Boston Globe on 11/27/98.
--
Another idea: 'skinhead police'
The Prague Post
Police, government disagree over how to fight recent wave of violent
racist attacks
A recent spate of incidents involving organized skinhead actions
has prompted the government to propose a plan to create a new police
unit dedicated to curbing racist violence. But Interior Ministry
officials are not in favor of the move.
"No unit against skinheads is planned," even though increased
skinhead activity is a reality, asserted Jan Decker, spokesman
for the Interior Ministry. "We are only going to strengthen the
anti-extremist unit so that it will monitor the skinhead movement
more effectively than before," he said. The police can't just act
against citizens because they have short hair and dress like a
skinhead, he added.
Deputy Prime Minister Pavel Rychetsky asked the interior minister
Nov. 17 to establish a special police unit dedicated to monitoring
and combating extremists in the skinhead movement. Rychetsky's
initiative came a week after Prime Minister Milos Zeman and members
of his Cabinet admitted that there are serious deficits both in the
prevention of extreme and racially motivated acts perpetrated by
skinheads and in the sentencing of members of the skinhead movement.
Human-rights activists have long complained about the failure of
the Czech legal system in punishing racial attacks.
The most recent fatal incident concerns four young men who are
accused of beating Milan Lacko, a 40-year-old Romany (Gypsy), and
leaving him in the road. Lacko died after a truck ran over him. The
men received suspended sentences ranging from 15 to 22 months on
Oct. 26.
Tomas Kraus, executive director of the Czech Jewish Federation, said
he believes skinheads are encouraged by the outcome of such cases.
"After the verdict was read in the Lacko case, skinheads have become
more courageous," he said. "Every skinhead in the country must have
been shouting [with glee] when that verdict was announced."
Whether or not they are related, a string of reported skinhead
attacks followed the Lacko verdict.
A cross was burned in apparent remembrance of the murder of a
Sudanese student murderd at the Prague School of economics. A
soldier was stabbed in Prague after he told three young men who
appeared to be skinheads that he was Jewish. A Jewish cemetery in
Trutnov, east Bohemia, was desecrated by unknown perpetrators one
day after the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the ransacking of
Jewish stores in prewar Germany and Austria.
Experts agree that skinhead activity in the Czech Republic is better
organized than ever before.
"You can read their skinhead newspapers, where foreign neo-Nazis
are interviewed," said Petr Horak, director of Freedom Monitor, a
nongovernmental organization that monitors skinhead activity.
"[The foreign skinheads] congratulate local skinheads for doing a
lot of work over the last few years to become really well known in
the neo-Nazi world." Czech skinheads cooperate with leaders of
groups all over Europe, he added.
Stanislav Penc, co-founder of the Documentation Center for Human
Rights, said large meetings of European skinhead groups are held
in the Czech Republic because local police don't bother them too
much. "Police just close their eyes to it," he added.
Penc agreed, however, that creating a special anti-skinhead squad
would not solve the problem. "The government already founded an
[anti-]extremist unit in 1995," he said. "The legislation is there.
It's good. But it's not being applied."
A police investigator dealing with racially motivated crimes, who
didn't want to be identified, agreed. "The problem is not in the
law; it is in insufficient enforcement of the law," said the
investigator. "And tougher sentences would definitely deter these
criminals."
The investigator said he believed it is up to police investigators
to look for racial motivation in some crimes. For instance, he said,
if football fans, dressed in skinhead regalia, march from a stadium
shouting "Juden raus" [Jews out], police should not treat it as a
simple disturbance of the peace as they usually do, he said. "It is
a racial crime."
Police statistics indicate there were 133 nonviolent racially
motivated crimes reported in the first half of this year. The
total for all of last year was 139. But, according to the same
statistics, there were only four violent racially motivated crimes
in the first six months of this year, compared with 69 charges of
racial violence filed last year.
Jiri Dvoracek, police anti-extremist specialist, said the number of
violent racial attacks in statistics is lower this year because
police investigators don't consider most violent acts to be racially
motivated. Dvoracek added that the level of violence of racially
motivated attacks is on increase. "It's not only brutality, but also
damage to property -- for example, throwing burning Molotov cocktails
into Romanies' houses -- has increased sharply," Dvoracek said.
--
'They refused to put me on a drip - because I am white'
South African Sun Times
A WOMAN with severe dehydration, vomiting and diarrhoea claims she
was denied an urgently needed drip at a hospital on the West Rand
because she is white.
Kathleen Dreyer, 55, who worked as a nurse in the early '60s, said
that after being rushed to Leratong Hospital by ambulance on Monday
she was "chucked" onto a trolley so soaked with blood that her
nightie and gown became drenched.
She said she was given two injections without her arm being cleaned
first and was told she could not be put on a drip as a doctor had
ordered because "there were no drips for whites".
When she complained about the blood and refused to get back on the
trolley after having chest x-rays, she said she was told that she
was "making trouble for myself".
She alleged she was not allowed to use a phone to call her husband
to fetch her because she had no money. In desperation she dialled
the police emergency number, 10111, and they contacted her husband.
"I said to my husband: 'Please come and fetch me, I am full of
blood.' " Then, "praying to God to please help me get out of here"
she fled to the front gates in her blood-soaked gown and waited
there for him. "It was like a nightmare," she said.
The next day she was taken to the Discoverers Memorial Hospital, now
a day clinic, in Roodepoort, where she was put on a drip.
Rae Baur, the Democratic Party's Roodepoort branch chairman, said
doctors at Leratong had told her that nurses had "no time to clean
up".
"It's a butcher's shop out there," she said.
Baur said she received constant complaints about conditions at the
hospitals and the way patients were treated, including cases of
"insidious racism".
One of the most shocking cases involved Kotie Vermaak, who was taken
to Leratong with pneumonia in July. She was left untended on a
trolley for hours until her family rushed her to Helen Joseph
Hospital, where she died.
--
Post-apartheid, downtown decays
As poor blacks flock to Johannesburg, big businesses are leaving.
INQUIRER
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Before Nelson Mandela became president,
tourists flocked to Iyavaya, a restaurant in a hip, multiracial
district called Yeoville on the edge of downtown Johannesburg.
Yeoville was Johannesburg's South Street. It had lively gift shops,
galleries, record stores and eateries. Iyavaya -- which means It's
happening in South African slang -- served traditional African stews
and dishes. It advertised itself as "A Taste of Africa."
But Yeoville eventually gave tourists more of a taste of Africa than
they apparently cared for.
After South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, poor blacks
who had been segregated into apartheid-era townships were free to
move into places such as Yeoville. Waves of illegal immigrants from
Nigeria, Mozambique and Zimbabwe then poured in. Both groups brought
with them the legacies of the disadvantaged.
Funky became seedy. Drug dealers appeared on the street corners.
The police disappeared. Crime increased. Hotels and travel agents
began steering tourists, most of them white, away.
On some nights last year, not a single customer came to Iyavaya.
"Whites looked around and said, 'Where did all these black faces come
from?' " said Leon Plutsick, the restaurant's owner. "The blacks
had all been hidden away during apartheid."
In June, Plutsick threw in the towel and shut down his 10-year-old
restaurant. He reopened it in a shopping mall in Johannesburg's
largely white northern suburbs.
What happened in Yeoville has happened across downtown Johannesburg,
a city built up in the last century on the ridge that contained South
Africa's famous, but now depleted, gold reserves.
One by one, most of the big blue-chip companies that were the anchors
of downtown Johannesburg have moved to the suburbs.
This month, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange announced it was moving
to new glassy headquarters in Sandton, the commercial heart of the
northern suburbs. The exchange's announcement set off a new wave of
public hand-wringing over downtown's decline.
Many whites say the decay of Johannesburg is emblematic of South
Africa under its new black-led government, which they say has been
unable to stop an upsurge in violent crime and has neglected services
such as street-cleaning.
"Maybe you could solve the problem by pouring billions of dollars
into it," said Edwin Rode, a real-estate consultant. "But we haven't
got the dollars and we haven't got the political will anymore."
But an increasing number of small black-owned enterprises have
moved into Johannesburg's central core, giving hope to those who
say South Africa's future lies with the growth of black businesses.
"Socially, it's a good thing that blacks have moved in," said Chap
Tchabanyane, a spokesman for Gondo Security Co., one of the new
black-owned firms that has moved into the gleaming Carlton Centre.
But Tchabanyane acknowledges that downtown has gotten a bit rundown.
"The Africans who moved into the city should have the same attitude
toward it as the people who were here before," he said.
The stock exchange was one of the last holdouts to remain downtown
after a decade of business exodus. Most big brokerages had already
moved to Sandton, as had most investment banks and most corporate
headquarters.
De Beers, the diamond-mining and -marketing giant, this year moved
out of downtown. Real-estate analysts were quoted as calling the
move "symbolically devastating."
The Carlton Hotel, once the city's most prestigious hotel, shut down
last December, and owners decided not to reopen this year after
Gauteng province turned down its bid for a casino license. All six
of the province's gaming licenses went to suburban locations.
The U.S. Consulate has moved its offices to a suburban location.
Most of the city's newspapers have moved out, too.
Things have gotten so bad that the government acknowledged this year
that it was considering converting Ponte Tower, a cylindrical
apartment building and one of the most prominent buildings in
Johannesburg, into a high-rise prison.
In truth, Johannesburg's decay began long before Nelson Mandela came
to power. Real-estate experts said the previous government restricted
parking garages downtown in an attempt to steer commuters to public
transportation. Instead, businesses started moving to the suburbs to
escape the congestion.
With the coming of Mandela's African National Congress, however,
there was a deliberate effort to "Africanize" the European-style
downtown. Regulations governing peddlers were lifted, filling the
sidewalks with so many fruit and vegetable hawkers that there was
little room left for pedestrians.
"Now it does look like Africa," said Rode, the real-estate consultant.
"All the whites have left."
Parking, once so precious that visitors had to telephone ahead to
reserve a spot, is now so abundant that many public parking garages
have simply sealed off unused floors. The city removed downtown
parking meters a year ago, allowing unregulated "parking attendants"
to collect tips for watching vehicles.
Publicly, companies say they are moving out because their clients
have moved. Privately, they say they are unable to recruit white
employees to work downtown.
"We have a client that now leases 8,000 square meters of space that
is looking to move out," said Gary Fromentin, the chief executive of
Lyons Property Co. "They can't attract good staff when people find
they have to come into town to work."
The stock exchange, which will move out of its 10-story headquarters
in two years after it finishes its new home in Sandton, said its
decision stemmed from the closing of its trading floor two years
ago after it began electronic trading.
Fear of crime near the stock exchange was also a concern, said
Russell Loubser, the executive president of the stock exchange.
"I'm not going to try to play the political role and say crime wasn't
a factor," he said.
In economic terms, the exodus is devastating. Office space in
downtown Johannesburg, which a decade ago rented at prices equal
to Sandton rates, now commands a quarter of those suburban rates.
Even so, downtown buildings bristle with "To Let" signs.
Property values have plummeted. Anglo American Properties, the owners
of the 50-story Carlton Centre, once valued the building on its books
for $200 million. Now it's for sale. Asking price: $7.5 million.
Yet downtown is hardly a ghost town. Although it's relatively easy
to drive downtown, there are plenty of pedestrians. On Saturdays,
the streets are full of shoppers who travel in by public
transportation from black townships.
Vacancy rates have increased from 13 percent to 20 percent in the
last four years, according to the South African Property Owners
Association. But they are not as high as some brokers might have
expected.
"The face of Joburg is changing rather than emptying out," Fromentin
said. "The kind of tenant who's interested in downtown is -- how do
I say it -- one of the new South African tenants, a product of
affirmative action."
There are advantages downtown. Traffic is no longer a problem; the
rush-hour jams are located in the northern suburbs now. Labor costs
are significantly cheaper.
And not all blue-chip companies have left downtown. Last year, ABSA
Bank Ltd. decided to keep its headquarters downtown rather than face
the huge cost of moving. It is spending $100 million over three years
to build a six-block complex where 4,500 people will work.
"All cities all over the world have gone through their phases of
decline," said Gert Dry, group general manager of ABSA Logistics
& Properties. "We believe Johannesburg has gone down to its lowest
ebb."
ABSA believes the suburban areas such as Sandton are not designed
to handle the intense influx of white-collar workers. The cost of
land downtown was so inexpensive compared with Sandton that ABSA
could devote more resources to building a secure, comfortable
environment for its employees, Dry said.
Meanwhile, a more ominous trend for South Africa is developing. Anglo
American Corp., the country's biggest company, which has huge holdings
in nearly every industrial sector, announced last month that it was
merging with its offshore sister company and consolidating its
headquarters in London.
Anglo said that it would maintain its South African operations in
Johannesburg and that listing overseas was done to improve access
to cheaper credit and reflected no lack of confidence in South Africa.
But South Africa's labor unions and political left interpreted the
move as the latest white-dominated institution to distance itself
from South Africa, a phenomenon known here as the "chicken run."
--
Zulu Leader Tried to Prevent Black Rule in SA
CAPE TOWN - Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi had a close relationship
with the apartheid secret police and plotted with white right-wingers
to derail the country's historic 1994 all-race elections, his former
aide has claimed.
The weekly Mail and Guardian newspaper said Friday that the aide,
Walter Felgate, made these dramatic allegations in closed-door
testimony last year to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Felgate, one of Buthelezi's closest confidants for years, defected
from the Zulu leader's Inkatha Freedom Party to the ruling African
National Congress shortly before testifying to the TRC.
Felgate, according to the report, claimed Buthelezi received monthly
briefings for more than 20 years from top intelligence agents of
former apartheid-era leaders prime minister John Vorster and president
P.W. Botha, and from apartheid generals.
According to Felgate, Buthelezi also had secret meetings with members
of the Bureau of State Security, the apartheid secret police since
1973.
These continued up to and even beyond the 1994 elections, Felgate
claimed.
Through his links with military operatives, Buthelezi oversaw the
militarization of Inkatha in the 1980s, a period that coincided
with an outbreak of bloody territorial fighting in the KwaZulu-Natal
province between IFP and ANC members.
The warfare, which was characterized by massacres and late night
attacks on homes of political opponents, continues sporadically to
this day and has seen some 20,000 people killed since 1987.
IFP members were trained by the then South African Defense Force at
Caprivi Strip, a Namibian panhandle on the Botswana border.
After the initial training, according to Felgate, the IFP members
were relocated to a secret camp in northern KwaZulu-Natal province,
where they were trained to disrupt the 1994 elections.
Buthelezi formulated a secret conspiracy with right-wing whites to
prevent the election by triggering a civil war, he claimed further.
However the plans were abandond when Buthelezi decided just days
before the poll to take the IFP into the election, which was won
by the ANC by a landslide.
Responding to the claims, Buthelezi, who is home affairs minister
in President Nelson Mandela's national unity government, said Felgate
had lied to the commission.
Buthelezi said in a statement that Felgate was motivated by revenge.
"One would wonder why, if I was the terrible person Felgate wishes
to portray me as, he served me for 17 years and turned against me
only when I ... did not fulfil his aspirations for a cabinet post."
Accusing the Mail and Guardian of gutter journalism and a campaign
of vilification, Buthelezi said: "The TRC itself chose to ignore
the lies and utter nonsense contained in the (newspaper) report,
and it is well-known that the TRC has not shown a great deal of
respect or friendship for me."
Buthelezi also said there was "not a shred of evidence" to back
Felgate's claim that he had been part of a right-wing conspiracy
to trigger civil war to prevent the 1994 elections.
--
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