Africa. Year 1981 (USSR) 1982



Bright sun, warmth, the aroma of tropical flowers celebrated New Year Africa. On both sides of the equator over an area of ​​more than 30 million square kilometers stretches the hottest continent of the planet.
Vadim Lobachenko, commentator:
475 million people from hundreds of large and small nations and nationalities celebrated the New Year in Africa. The year 1981 was for them a year of hard trials and persistent struggle with the forces of nature, archaic orders, and the greed of those who want to return Africa to yesterday. Our program is about the problems that continued to be solved by the African peoples in 1981 and that will be solved in the New year, 1982.

New Year's harvest
The roof of Africa is called the highlands in the East of the continent. Only on mountain peaks can you see snow in Tropical Africa, in the land of eternal summer. The highlands are usually cooler than the African lowlands. But now it’s hot time: the New Year’s harvest is coming to an end. First of all, daily bread, cereals: wheat, corn, tefa-local millet and barley.
Fishermen have their own passion. It is not easy to wield ancient networks. Everyone wishes the fishermen good luck. But recently, the catches in African rivers and lakes have been getting scarce. And the new year's harvest was unfortunately not very rich. Even worse is the harvest of 1981 in the low-lying areas of East Africa and the vast Sahel, that is, the sub-Saharan region. All this is the result of the great African Drought of 1981, a severe drought that has painfully affected dozens of countries on the continent. Even a bowl of water is a problem here. It is patiently extracted from deep wells dug in the bed of a dry river. The current severe drought has further worsened the already difficult economic situation in Africa, where 20 countries are among the world's poorest, and this is despite its enormous natural resources. The roots of economic hardship, poverty, and misery in modern Africa date back to centuries of colonial plunder. Capitalism has been a parasite on the blood and suffering of Africans for centuries. Today, it is not willing to give up the exploitation of Africa. Only the methods have changed, but not the essence of the robbery, instead of shackles and whips of colonial times, bonded loans and clever "price scissors"are used. These scissors are called the gap between the rapidly rising prices of imported industrial goods from the West and artificially low prices for traditional African exports. The hands of African dockworkers carry coffee and bananas, cocoa and peanuts, and other gifts of the tropical land to the holds of European and American ships day and night. The black hands work harder and harder, but they get less for their work. In the mid-1970s, Africans needed to send 20 tons of sugar to Europe or America, and in return get 1 tractor. Now for such a tractor you need to load almost four times more. The price scissors are in the hands of Western monopolists, who are increasingly deceiving them and hurting Africa more and more. The law of the jungle always reigns in the capitalist market.
There are many exotic animals and birds in the vast expanses of jungles and savannas of Africa. Elephants, lions, graceful antelopes, zebras and giraffes. All this wealth of humanity is one of the wonders of Tropical Africa. Here the rarest birds and animals can live in the wild, but they can also disappear here, because they also make money dealers from across the ocean and their henchmen, local poachers. Ivory has risen in price, has become worth its weight in gold, and the value of the Tusk outweighs the life of a huge elephant. In Europe and America, the latest fashion is Golden-spotted skins of leopards and cheetahs, striped carpets of zebras. A checkbook for business owners is more important than the red book of endangered animals. It includes the Cheetah and many other African animals. The law of the capitalist jungle also affects the inhabitants of the jungles and savannas of Africa.

According to the law of the jungle
The year 1981 was a year of undisguised us arbitrariness in Africa. Washington when the Republican administration was thrown to the side of the Pharisees arguments about friendly feelings toward African peoples. The liberation struggle of the peoples of African countries was labeled as terrorism. At the same time, Washington opened its arms to South African racists, the number 1 enemy of independent Africa. A meeting in the American capital with the emissary of the racist regime, foreign Minister Botha, was arranged with pomp. The American authorities openly declared racists friends and allies. They are indeed allies in plundering and oppressing millions of Africans.
Apartheid is the same inhuman law of the jungle. It provides a 25% return per year for the West's multibillion-dollar investment in Southern Africa. In addition, the apartheid regime guarantees NATO countries their military bases, along with supplies to the United States and other Western countries of uranium and chromium, vanadium, manganese and other strategic importance products from the raw Klondike, Southern Africa. In exchange, Washington and its allies guarantee impunity for the racist regime of South Africa, their mainstay on the African continent. And Pretoria responds to the rise of the national liberation movement in Southern Africa by increasing repression.
Half a million people exceeded the number of the army of South Africa. They need to add thugs from special units of the security forces, police formations of Bantustan reservations. A month ago one of them proclaimed Ciskei pseudoindependence. True, the fake flag of this pocket state of Pretoria collapsed already at the ceremony, as well as Pretoria's attempt to pass off the Bantustans to the outside world as sovereign States of Africans failed miserably. The racists have allocated only 13% of the country's territory for them, the most impoverished and deprived of natural resources areas. Pretoria is trying to drive South Africa's 20 million Africans there. Their homes in the vast European zone are being scrapped or, better yet, in the hands of white masters. Well, if a natural human protest against arbitrariness is born, racists turn on a well-functioning police terror machine. All 12 months of the past year, it operated at full capacity. The police have received an unequivocal order, as monstrous as it sounds: to shoot, to poison gas, to kill the rebellious Africans. This machine is well known in African villages in South Africa, no car is not installed a loudspeaker, although the use of punishers is echoed around the world, this gas - sifter-a fanatical innovation of racists, a South African murderous model of 1981. All this for the peace of mind and the well-fed, very well-fed life of white racists. Their average income is the highest in the capitalist world. From excessive satiety and various excesses, for example, a gold bathing suit, together with accessories, it costs 500 thousand dollars. South African gold, extracted by workers in ancient mines, where frequent collapses and explosions, how many of them died for the whim of racists, about this in Pretoria there is no data. But there is hatred, the Holy hatred of Africans for the apartheid regime, in a song sung by the most famous singer from South Africa, Miriam Makeba. This is the voice of a suffering, struggling South Africa. The song Miram Makeba tells about the tragic fate of workers in the mines of South Africa. They and their families live in poverty and the workers are cursed to death for gold and diamonds for the white masters, for the businessmen across the ocean.
The year 1981 was a year of particularly large-scale protests by the African population against the racist regime. Despite the repression, the African proletariat held about 300 major strikes last year. The past year was also marked by extensive and successful combat actions of the Umkonto we Sizwe, the spear of the nation. In the ranks of this militant organization, South African Communists, members of the African national Congress, and other patriots. The 18th Assembly of African heads of state and government in Nairobi in June 1981 called on all progressive humanity to increase assistance to the anti-racist movement in South Africa and Namibia.
In 1981, all attempts by racists to solve the problems of Namibia by military means failed. And this is despite the fact that the occupation army of South Africa in Namibia exceeded 100 thousand people. But the entire YUAR army could not break the active struggle of the Namibians under the leadership of SWAPO, the people's organization of South-West Africa. Says a member of the Central Committee of SWAPO, comrade Hai Dongo: now in Namibia there is a life-and-death liberation struggle. It is supported by the entire Namibian people, by all progressive humanity. We believe in ultimate success, because our struggle is fair. Stressed comrade Hai Dongo. But in Namibia, as in South Africa itself, the patriots have to fight an uphill battle against the United front of Pretoria and the Western monopoly. The main thing for Western businessmen and racists is to give high profits, unique diamond mines belonging to them and the richest uranium developments, so that the extraction of other minerals goes on smoothly. All this is given out on the mountain by working hands, which have numbers like convicts. This is the racist order, the true order, it does not spare either adults or children. Children's cemetery on the outskirts of the Namibian capital Vinduja. Due to poverty and the epidemic in Namibia, one in three black children die before they reach the age of 5. Clinging to the Namibian land with all their might, racists are ready to drive an entire nation into it.

"Wild geese" and their owners
This is also the work of racists in South Africa. South of Angola August-September 1981. It was then that a large-scale invasion of Angola by South African troops took place from the territory of occupied Namibia. South Africa's aggression against Angola, as well as numerous armed provocations by racists against other African States, is the result of Washington's new African policy and its active support for Pretoria. Both Pretoria and Washington are ardent haters of the revolutionary forces in Southern Africa, and above all in Angola. The South African aggressors were fighting in the South of Angola, but the point of their attack was aimed at the people's government in Luanda. The purpose of the South African invasion is to undermine the people's power and create a zone of destabilization in the South of Angola under the control of the UNITA group. The leader of UNITA Savimbi is a long-time agent of the CIA and the YUAR intelligence service. The United States recently promised to dramatically increase military aid to the Savimbi gangs that are being held in Pretoria. Before the invasion of Angola, UNITA bandits receive military training at YUAR military bases in Northern Namibia. These black mercenaries train together with white mercenaries. Among the "wild geese", so called mercenaries in the West, many Americans, participants in the dirty war in Vietnam. Racists used their experience as professional killers. It is paid handsomely and at a fixed price: $ 500 for a hit tank, $ 300 for the murder of a patriot. There is also a particularly dirty job: smeared with black paint, dressed in the uniform of Angolan soldiers or SWAPO fighters, corrupt geese terrorize Africans in Namibia and southern Angola. Their task is purely provocative - to set up the local population against the NPLA and SWAPO, and at the same time give an excuse to the yellow press in the West to shout about certain atrocities of patriots. Mercenaries of all stripes have been the shock troops of world reaction in Africa for many years. Pretoria and its overseas backers are actively using paid assassins not only against Angola, but against all independent African States, including Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.
Pretoria would like to see the situation in Africa as in this scene at the press conference of South Africa's foreign Minister, Botha, so that Africans were once only in the service of white masters. Botha bluntly stated that South Africa is ready to bring to its knees any state of Black Africa, whose policy does not suit Pretoria. Last year, South Africa's aggressive action against the independent African Republic of Seychelles. On November 25, a group of armed mercenaries recruited in South Africa attempted to overthrow the progressive government of the Republic of Seychelles. About a hundred of these Islands lie in the Indian ocean off the East coast of Africa. Paradise Islands are also called the Seychelles for the eternal spring climate, for the magnificent beaches and rich tropical vegetation. But Paradise is not without problems. Until 1977, the year was dominated by the clan of businessmen and landowners. In June 1977, the former regime was overthrown and the government of Albero Rene came to power. Deep socio-economic transformations have begun in the Paradise Islands. The government of Seychelles actively supported the struggle of African peoples against the apartheid regime and advocated the elimination of military bases in the Indian ocean, primarily the American base of Diego Garcia. This bold, principled course has earned the hatred of both Washington and South Africa's racists. The self-styled gendarme of Africa, Pretoria, was behind the mercenary pirate RAID. The money for them, according to The star newspaper, came from American sources. The destruction at the airport in Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles, suggests a hot battle, during which the mercenaries were defeated. The mercenary gamble against the Seychelles had failed miserably. This is symbolic. This is a kind of annual result of all efforts on the part of South Africa and world imperialism to reverse the national liberation processes in Africa. Most of the wild geese, friends of these two mercenaries, escaped from the Seychelles to South Africa on a hijacked plane, but some of the mercenaries were captured by the Seychelles. These mercenaries told reporters about those who hired them, and how many dollars they were paid in cash.
Known attraction of this disease to oil in businessmen. Oil is not only the life and blood of the world economy, but also the source of huge profits for oil companies, especially American ones. Intensive oil production in Africa has only begun in recent decades. To the already known large deposits in North and West Africa in 1981, new oil deposits were added to the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Tanzania, there are reports of oil or gas in Chad, Ethiopia, and other African countries. It seems that Africa is washed not only by the Indian and Atlantic oceans, but also by an ocean of oil. Oil production is a reliable aid to the economic development of independent Africa. An example is Algeria or Libya, where oil and gas exports provide a solid Foundation for industrialization and accelerated socio-economic progress. But oil is like a magnet and attracts its own selfish predators, including those in American military uniforms. They have a clear task-to protect the vital interests, and therefore the high profits of American and multinational corporations. The American military is at home over a chain of bases in Africa, on the island of Diego Garcia, and in Kenya, Egypt, Sudan, and Somalia. However, the activation of the United States and other Western countries in Africa is causing a growing backlash from countries in this region. An example of this is the conclusion of the Treaty of friendship and cooperation between Ethiopia, Libya and the people's Democratic Republic of Yemen in August 1981. These 3 countries are the target of particularly malicious attacks by local and global reaction. It is characteristic that the American maneuvers "pride-Star" took place in countries neighboring the participants of the 3-party agreement. Says Ethiopian foreign Minister Feleke Gedle Giorgis: "the Maneuvers and military preparations that the Reagan administration is making are aimed at undermining peace and stability in Africa. They are a serious threat to the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of progressive countries that oppose imperialism, racism and Zionism, as well as their policies of domination and exploitation."
One of the most popular slogans of revolutionary Ethiopia "Neshenefale" - "We will win". This slogan was born during the fierce struggle of revolutionaries with bands of monarchists, landlords and separatists, with the Somali aggressors. These enemies of the Ethiopian revolution were defeated thanks to the United actions of the army and people, the active support of the Soviet Union and other countries of socialism. But the slogan "Neshenefale" lives, for continuing the hard fight against enemies inside and outside the country.

Russian is spoken in Africa
Addis Ababa is the capital of Ethiopia. New flower-this is how the name of the city is translated. It really looks updated and blooming now. Recently, 7 years of victory of the people's revolution in the country were celebrated here. 7 years is only a moment in the 3-thousand-year history of Ethiopia, but it was like a creative explosion. Instead of a backward feudal Empire, another country that took the path of socialism flourished on the map of Africa. Socialism is the future of Africa, it is not a slogan now, it is the conviction of millions and millions of Africans. In Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Madagascar, and other African countries with a socialist orientation. They already cover a third of the territory of Africa, and one in four Africans live in them. The largest of these countries is Ethiopia with its 32 million inhabitants. Before the revolution, 93 out of every 100 Ethiopians could not read or write. This was quite acceptable to the Imperial authorities, an illiterate person-outside of politics. The revolution gave ordinary Ethiopians rifles to protect themselves from the enemy, keys to factories and farms, pencils and pens to fight ignorance. 10 million Ethiopians have learned to read and write in recent years. And one of the first words they wrote in literacy courses was "abiot", which means revolution, because this word is the beginning of their new life.
The fight against social and economic backwardness is not the same in different African countries, but its main directions are very similar. This is the creation and strengthening of the public sector in the economy, deep socio-economic reforms, and the leadership role of the vanguard party. And all countries that are firmly on the path of a new society are equally firmly and consistently pursuing friendship with the Soviet Union and other countries of socialism. From them they draw support in the struggle for political and economic liberation. As stated by Leonid Brezhnev, the CPSU will continue to consistently pursue a course to develop cooperation between the USSR and the liberated countries, to strengthen the Union of world socialism and the national liberation movement.
Thousands of Soviet specialists, people of international duty, work in Africa. They help African countries build national industries, health systems, and rebuild agriculture and education. Over the years of cooperation, tens of thousands of Africans were educated in the Soviet Union. During the construction of various facilities in Africa, Soviet specialists trained 150,000 local skilled workers and technicians.
For a third of a century, the Soviet hospital "Balcha hospital"has been operating in Addis Ababa. 2.5 million Ethiopians studied under Soviet doctors. Like all of Ethiopia, the Soviet hospital has been greatly updated in recent years. A new building was built with funds provided by the Soviet Red cross. But the excellent qualifications, high humanity of Soviet doctors, and their friendship with Ethiopian doctors remained the same. Many of the Ethiopians have been working in a Soviet hospital for decades, have completed medical courses here, and have learned to speak Russian. "I'm Asafat Of Efrat. I worked at Balcha hospital for 25 years. I came here as an orderly, and now I'm a senior paramedic. The Soviet doctor works all the time. Many thanks to the Soviet doctor for teaching me." Unselfish, effective assistance and support from the Soviet Union and all the countries of socialism is an important factor in the socio-economic development of independent Africa and the successful fight against the machinations of its enemies. This was the case in 1981, and with this the African peoples met the new year of 1982. Any holiday in Africa is a mandatory mass dance and song, it seems that music is in the blood of Africans. Each of the many peoples and nationalities has its own unique, colorful dances and songs. They contain the anxieties and hopes of Africa, its dreams. Dreams of freedom, happy laughter of children, prosperity and lasting peace, this highest dream of humanity