Articles by Farrukh Dhondy

September 25, 1976 UNITED KINGDOM Bloody Carnival Farrukh Dhondy BRITAIN has its own Soweto, and fears it. On the bank holiday which marks the end of August a full blown urban riot took place on the streets of Notting Hill, London. 325 policemen were sent to hospital with injuries, shops were looted, police vehicles were stoned. The Metropolitan Police faced their first major defeat at the hands of young British West Indians. It happened at the end of Carnival, the only black festival of national significance to enliven the ghetto annually.


United against the Blacks Farrukh Dhondy THE new Race Relations Act of this Labour Government passed uneventfully through its last stages in the House of Commons. The numbing sensationalism of Enoch Powell's latest outburst on race was the only newsworthy item of the debate. Powell came out of the dark shadows of innuendo and abuse and delineated his political programme on race. The same evening speaking to a chamber of Commerce in a garden suburb, Powell went further. He defined his philosophy and the logic of his political platform. No good tinkering with welfare or fighting over he said. No hope for Britain, econo- pally or otherwise, until it rectified the aberrations it has suffered in its concepts of nationhood. Like other populist fascists before him. Powell allowed his political programme to flow from a mythological assertion about a sacrosanct idea of Britishness.

apartheid is morally an evil thing. But when they think of dividends they dither. This is a kind of cor- ruption.
Q: Do you think that after Kissinger's African tour, it would come to a concerted action from the western world?

SOUTHERN AFRICA Beginning of the End Farrukh Dhondy THOSE whom the gods would destroy they first make mad, The hand of nemesis is upon Rhodesia and around the throat of the pirate regime of Ian Smith, Lardner Burke and the rest of the Rhodesian Front who have ruled Zimbabwe for the last ten years in the name of the 270,000 whites. Smith himself recklessly dismissed the offer of the negotiating services of the British government and sent Greenhill, Britain's special envoy, scurrying home empty handed. The Rhodesian foreign affairs Minister, P K Van Der Byl, urged the white population to remain calm, characterising Mozambique's decision to close the 700 mile border with Rhodesia as a 'psychological warfare campaign'. Van Der Byl put on a bizarre performance of whistling in the dark when he appeared on television to tell his supporters that president Machel of Mozambique was having a lot of tremble holding his people down, and that the closure of the-border, the full implementation of UN sanctions and the noose that the guerillas have thrown around Rhodesia, were merely indications that the blacks of Mozambique needed distractions from their own troubles. He then went on to attack the foreign press for making analyses of the beginning of the end, saying ''anyone would think that the Martians were about to invade". Of course Van Der By] knows better than he makes out. The BBC, which has been pumping out footage on the plight of white settlers, showed the British public the ranch houses of Rhodesia which have been converted into small fortresses. Every white farmer and rural industrial manager has an arsenal of weapons, wire fences to prevent guerillas getting in or his own black labour getting nit, and radio links to immediate support from troops, tanks and helicopters. The head of the Rhodesian airforce was quoted as saying that his small but well-trained force could eventually wipe out the guerillas and deal with Russian missiles that are being import ed through Mozambique.

years the Americans have agreed to sell a minimum of 30 million tons of grain, including wheat, to the Soviet Union, who in return will deliver 50 million tons of oil. Also, the moratorium, imposed by the American government in August last, on further Soviet grain purchases this year has been lifted.