skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Ungdomshuset has been demolished. So what? This apartment and general-purpose building in Copenhagen was a hippy paradise. So what has that got to do with politics? Sure, there were a lot of police on the streets of Copenhagen, a few burning barricades, and it even made the 7 o’clock TV news in South Africa. But there will be no revolution in Denmark. So who cares?
CU cares. For one thing, the origins of International Women’s Day (today) were right in that building. See the linked article by Aniket Alam from Counterpunch for the whole, fascinating story and some good politics.
It’s time to have a proper women’s movement again, properly organised, with constitution, office bearers, individual membership, branches and an annual conference. It’s time to turn away from hippyism and back to the kinds of organisation that have served the working class best.
From the organised working class of South Africa comes the second item linked below, which is COSATU’s brief and to-the-point statement on International Women’s Day.
The pictures are of Alexandra Kollontai (above) and Clara Zetkin.
Click on these links:
Women’s Day, Lenin, Copenhagen riot, Aniket Alam, Counterpunch (789 words)
International Women’s Day, COSATU Media Release (429 words)
If you ever wondered what all the stuff about “motive forces” was all about, wonder no more. In a crisp “Umsebenzi Online”, hardly more than two pages long, SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande sorts the whole thing out in what ought to be conclusive fashion.
Next week, on Wednesday, March 14th at 17h00 in the SACP boardroom, 3rd floor, COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein, the Communist University will discuss Che Guevara’s “Message to the Tricontinental”. See the link below. This is the last in our set under the heading “Love not War”. The set that follows will be on “State Power”. See the programme here.
The YCL Johannesburg Central Branch has issued its political education programme. See the link below.
Finally, a long article from Counterpunch by Gilad Atzmon attempts to make sense of Judaism, Jewishness and Israel while avoiding class struggle. He riskily takes on Lenni Brenner, who is twice as old and twice as smart. Let’s hope Lenni responds. Atzmon is still worth reading, if only for his account of the story of Esther. See the link.
Click on these links:
Umsebenzi Online, Vol 6, No. 4, 7 Mar 2007, NDR motive forces (1531 words)
1967, Che Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental (5559 words)
YCL Jhb Central Political Classes 2007 (list)
Purim from Esther to AIPAC, Gilad Atzmon, Counterpunch (5819 words)
The Communist University meets today to discuss Mzala’s “Cooking the rice inside the pot” at 17h00 in the SACP boardroom, COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein.
J Arthur Brown, the bragging bully Fidentia crook who helped take billions off the widows and children of (especially) migrant mineworkers (who probably saw very little of their families during their working lives) has been arrested and charged, together with Graham Maddock, the crook accountant. These men are so far still defiant and confident in the righteousness of the capitalism that crushes the hopes of the poor for the sake of the fantastic Ferrari life of the rich. They have time to think about it now.
Some think about crime in terms of stereotypes like “The Godfather”, as if there has to be a boss and a pyramid hierarchy. This was not the case at Fidentia. Maddock was already a big crook before Brown came along, and the crooked corporate vehicle that became the Fidentia monster was already in place.
Others like Baloyi and Goodwin likewise had their own bases. They did not wait for Brown’s orders. These were colleagues in crime, not subordinates. They were crooks in their own right. That is why it is only a small victory to have Brown and Maddock behind bars, and wrong to call them “kingpins”, as today’s Business Day headline does. Because most of the bad seed is still out there.
In particular, the crook trustees who sold their trusts away to the Fidentia cronies are still walking around free. They must all be picked up and dealt with. Criminal charges are not enough for them. They must pay up their money to the widows and orphans, and be cut right back to the same condition as those poor widows and orphans.
The remainder of Sunday’s exceptional crop of articles is linked below. One of the values of the CU archive is that it now contains so many names, and is searchable. So if, for example, a crook like Danisa Baloyi who seems to be untouchable, should start menacing you with libel action in court, you can always run a search for “Baloyi” in the CU site and get a good selection of articles to defend yourself with. If you do it today you will get 5 articles with “Baloyi” in the title and 10 with “Baloyi” in the body text. You can also search the CU blog. “Baloyi” in the search box (top left) gets six replies there as of today.
Sunday’s papers had a large number of articles that named names. For example the collapse of the SABC (so evident now if you listen to the radio) in terms of staff rushing for the exits is treated in detail by the City Press (linked); as well as in terms of John Perlman’s departure (Sunday Independent link).
Then there is the case of the four lawyers where three ganged up on the other one and lost. These were Mandela, Bizos and Trengove versus Ayob. Bizos and Trengove say they were trying to defend Mandela’s reputation, but if they had deliberately set out to show off the hero’s feet of clay they could not have done a better job. And incredibly, this was the second round of this nonsense. These guys just could not learn. Mandela lives in the hearts and minds of the people. He is not a “brand”, even if he thinks so himself. What was Bizos thinking? Surely, there is no fool like an old fool. See the two links.
The bourgeoisie is not an abstraction. It is a concrete and internally-contradictory collection of abstract parts, who happen to be individual human capitalists with names. In the last three linked articles, each one interesting for itself, large numbers of individual South African capitalist players of today are named and some of their interrelationships are shown up. More for the reading, and more for the archives.
Click on these links:
SABC bosses meet re staff exodus, Cecil Motsepe, City Press (653 words)
Perlman considers options SABC, Edwin Naidu, Sunday Independent (577 words)
R7K payout to Mandela kids led to spat with Ayob, Gordin, Sindy (677 words)
Madiba set me up - Ayob, Sefara and Mapiloko, City Press (992 words)
Kebble cash trail leads to BEE circle, Chiara Carter, S Independent (690 words)
Big names targeted by Scorpions, Mapiloko and Sefara, C Press (585 words)
Telkom bans the usual suspects, Simpiwe Piliso, Sunday Times (700 words)
The last time the CU had Kwame Nkrumah’s photo at the top, there were people who did not know who it was. This time round, on the 50th Anniversary of Ghana’s Independence, there should be no mistake. Cameron Duodo gave a stirring eye-witness account of the event in Sunday’s City Press. See the link below.
Do you understand what is going on at the level of the SA Public Investment Corporation? The interview given by Brian Molefe to Chris Barron, published in the Sunday Times, may help. Here is a state institution using taxpayers’ money to ensure that capitalism has its roots spread wider in the population than before. We support that, don’t we? We support Brian Molefe, at least. See the link for this very interesting interview.
Another Anniversary that passed this week is that of the Venezuelan “Caracazo” of 1989. This event roughly corresponds to June 1976 in South African history. Without it the course of subsequent history would have been different. You don’t have to buy the stuff about “World War IV”, but see the link below.
Venezuela’s Communist Party has been meeting to discuss amalgamation in one big “Chavista” or Bolivarian formation. It looks like they are going to reject this option, and rightly so. See the very fair article from the International Herald Tribune, linked below.
Venezuela is a black country and a Caribbean country, as well as an Indian country with white colonial settlers, some of them historically progressive and revolutionary figures (e.g. Miranda, Bolivar). There are dialectical complexities there as much as here. But no doubt the old-fashioned kind of racism can still be found there at times.
Certainly, racism can still be found in South Africa any time, any day. Steve Dlamini-Kabini in Sunday’s City Press, and Xolani Xundu in the Sunday Times, give clear-cut examples of something which is not nice to think about. But there it is. It is undeniable. See the two linked articles below.
If you should still prefer to think that racism is rare or insignificant, read the evidence with your own eyes in the words of the racist Dan Roodt, published in the same Sunday Times, facing Xolani Xundu’s article. This is typical of the racism of the 20th century. It reveals just as much of itself as it dares at any moment, leaving the rest to be guessed at without doubt, but if necessary deniable.
What makes it certain that Roodt is a racist of the worst kind is the change in his tone when he thinks circumstances are a little more favourable to him. Where he used to pretend to be an intellectual, now he openly takes on the clothes of the demagogue and the bully.
In this article Roodt has gone too far. There is no way that he can disguise himself from now on. His words are on record. Sorry that they are shocking and repulsive, but from time to time one must know. Even if you did not care to read this article on Sunday, it is worth looking at it now, so that you can see that there is no confusion about this. This is a nasty, unmistakeable racist who needs to be opposed. This is danger. See the link.
Click on these links:
Africans independent, Cameron Duodo, City Press (665 words)
Success won’t go to head of Brian Molefe, Chris Barron, S Times (1478 words)
Caracazo, George Cicciarello-Maher, Counterpunch (2192 words)
Venezuela communists resist single party, AP, Int Herald Trib (670 words)
Racism in the motoring industry, Steve Dlamini-Kabini, C Press (651 words)
Racism died in 1994 - NOT, Xolani Xundu, Sunday Times (753 words)
Longing for De la Rey, Dan Roodt, Sunday Times (826 words)
Suddenly yesterday in the S A Sunday papers, or in three of them, there was a blaze of brilliant writing, such that there are at the moment of writing, adding a few others, there are more than 20 items waiting to be archived and linked to the Communist University’s “LATEST NEWS” page. This is not counting SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande’s Cape Town speech, which is not yet in, and two great articles from Friday’s Mail and Guardian, by Tumi Makgetla and Virginia Tilley, which are not yet on the M&G web site.
So we will stretch our usual limit from five to seven today, and hope to work the rest in during the week. The first place goes to humour, something we cannot do without. The Karen Bliksem column of the Sunday Independent rejoices with affectionate irony at the “canonisation” of St John Perlman (“L’Ouverture” to the CU). And Andrew Donaldson’s “Eish!” column takes the piss out of the “De La Rey” song in a riotous style not seen on these shores since Tom Sharpe left the country several decades ago. Do not fail to click on the links!
No doubt the satirists will get their wicked hooks into Danisa Baloyi at some stage. But as yet not even Zapiro has been able to get a laugh out of the money-grabbing world of the “Queen of BEE” yet. Julian Rademeyer lays the groundwork with a deadpan contrast between Baloyi, the “buffalo in high heels”, who thinks she is “the only South African left who is law-abiding”, and some of the victims of Baloyi’s Fidentia shenanigans like Nthabeleng Moqhala, Maseabata Kori, and the young people in their care. See the link below.
The City Press’s S’Thembiso Msomi has produced and unusually (for him) balanced and thoughtful (but far from perfect) article about COSATU. He seems to have realised at last that clichés and stereotypes can only get you so far in journalistic life and that sooner or later the requirements of aude alteram parte (see Karen Bliksem) do have to be honoured to some degree. See the third link below.
Duma Gqubule does not claim any “left” credentials. He describes himself simply as a businessman. But in his Sunday Times Business section this week he has brutally demolished the economic policies, or lack thereof, sparing no-one in the government, and least of all the President, and leaving them ruthlessly exposed. This linked article may mark a turning point.
Not to be outdone, Moeletsi Mbeki, the President’s brother, mounts a surgical dissection of BEE, showing that in the form we have it, it is a white-designed and executed policy, for the furtherance of white corporate aims. See the second last link.
Lastly, Kenneth Rexroth, who died 25 years ago, once wrote an excellent and humorous short piece showing why everybody should read Edward Gibbon’s famous and unique “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”. Rexroth’s article was reproduced on Counterpunch this weekend. Prepare to be astonished if you have never heard of Gibbon before.
Communists take the long view of history. Gibbon is the ideal guide to the approximately 1500-year history of the Roman Empire from the fall of the Republic to the conquest of Constantinople (Istanbul) by the Ottomans. But it is also much more than that. Click on the final link.
Click on these links:
A high five to St John, Karen Bliksem, Sunday Independent (1031 words)
Nation in grip of a liedership crisis, Andrew Donaldson, S Times (649 words)
Trustee Baloyi indifferent, hopes fade, Sunday Times (1087 words)
Left pushes for pact, Sthembiso Msomi, City Press (1335 words)
Mbeki slash-and-burn economics, Duma Gqubule, Sunday Times (1248 words)
How SA kissed redistribution goodbye, Moeletsi Mbeki, S Times (731 words)
Gibbon, Decline and Fall, Kenneth Rexroth, Counterpunch (1324 words)
Fifty thousand people, and perhaps a few more than that, have been hit by a disaster. All their names and addresses are known. Yet in our present society, nobody can respond to their needs. The government will not take part of its ten million Rand “surplus” and help these poor widows and orphans. It is afraid that a “precedent” will be set and that it may become by this precedent the guardian of all such widows and orphans.
At least we can say that the bitter truth is being faced in some places. Glynnis Underhill of the Saturday Star “Personal Finance” section puts the situation in a sharp, strong light. So does her colleague Bruce Cameron, who concentrates his fire on the trustees, and quite rightly so. See the first two links below
Some people have been saying that the trustees were too simple, or needed more training. Others have said that trustees have been lazy, and only attend meetings for the stipend they receive. But all these speculations simply take the eye from the ball. It is certain that the problem here was none of these things.
The problem was that some of the trustees were themselves crooks, and were in league with other crooks. Other trustees who were conscientious, were victimised and suppressed, or pushed out. If the problem is not seen for what it is, there will be no proper remedy. The crooks must be sought, caught and charged, starting with those of them who were trustees first of all, because all of the trustees’ names are on record.
To find out who the crooked ones are, a spreadsheet needs to be made with all the trustees of the three main boards, that of Living Hands, Mineworkers Provident Fund, and Kopano Ke Matla, down all the years from their beginnings. Beside this chart should be placed a chronicle of the events, so that it can be seen who were trustees when those events occurred. Then those trustees should be found and interrogated, until we know everything.
In Nepal, a process similar to what happened in South Africa after 1990 is under way. The US Ambassador there is shamelessly lobbying all other parties to exclude the liberation movement, always referred to as “the Maoists”. According to the report below, which may not necessarily be true, the Indian Ambassador to Nepal is doing the same as the US one. He is none other than the hard-smoking, convivial and witty Shiv Shankar Mukherjee, formerly Indian High Commissioner in Pretoria.
The US tactic is the same as that used against the Irish Republican Army by the British. Once the peoples’ armed formations agree to disarm, with all the modalities that are put in place, the peoples’ enemies loudly start trying to undermine confidence, by accusing (in Nepal’s case) the communists of secretly evading the agreement.
This tactic is designed to make the communists fear that the agreement will be breached by the other side. In Nepal’s case the other side means the autocratic anti-popular monarchy, supported by the USA. In effect it is a threat of attack on the liberation movement at the vulnerable moment when they are disarming. It is a calculated attempt to destroy the process. This is typical of US tactics. Let us hope that the Indians have more sense.
Click on these links:
Widows and orphans go hungry, Glynnis Underhill Saturday Star (312 words)
Now you see it, now you don’t, Bruce Cameron, Saturday Star (738 words)
India, US envoys oppose Nepal Maoist entry IRNA (201 words)
There are no other statements quite like the COSATU Central Executive Committee’s. The CEC is the (usually) three-day high-level delegate gathering of COSATU’s 21 affiliates. These statements are like revolutionary bulletins from the Smolny Institute in 1917 (see also “Ten days that shook the world” by John Reed). They are full of detail and specificity, but also full of fundamental theoretical challenges. For example, are apparent “shifts” in government policy to be denounced as mere window-dressing and reformism that disguises the continuing vicious dictatorship of the bourgeoisie?
Or, is gradualism at last successfully materialising after more than a century since Eduard Bernstein published “Evolutionary Socialism” in 1899, triggering Rosa Luxemburg’s 1900 response in the form of “Reform or Revolution” and V I Lenin’s 1902 riposte in the form of “What is to be done”, the book sometimes regarded as the blueprint of the communist parties?
Or is it simply a matter of picking up the incidental gains of working-class pressure, the better to consolidate the revolutionary potential of the working class? Read this week's CEC statement via the link below, and make up your own mind.
The Financial Mail is playing a strange role in the Fidentia scandal. Two weeks ago when the furore around the billion-Rand rip-off from poor widows and orphans of deceased mineworkers and other workers was at its height, the FM had absolutely nothing to say about it. The next week they carried a full-page interview with chief crook J Arthur Brown, basically giving him a free platform to trot out his pork pies (lies).
But this week the FM comes out with an attempt by one Prakash Naidoo in which this reporter, wittingly or otherwise, misleads his readers into thinking that COSATU is somehow a perpetrator and not a victim of the Fidentia scam circus. He omits altogether to mention that COSATU’s savings management in Kopano Ke Matla is governed, just like Living Hands and the Mineworkers Provident Fund, by a board of overseeing trustees. It is high time these journalists investigated who all these trustees are and were in the past, and sorted the sheep from the goats. See COSATU's full response to the FM article via the link below.
In an otherwise brilliant article, Moneyweb’s Barry Sergeant also begins to lead off into the blue, instead of grilling the people who had been set to watch over these assets. These are the trustees, or former trustees. Sergeant is more interested in the “big wheels in the background” such as a man called Goodwin.
Well, fine, but as the liberated slave said: “I know who bought me, but what I want to know is: Who sold me?” Who sold the beneficiaries down the river? Who sold them away into the hands of the Browns and the Goodwins? See the link below for Sergeant’s nevertheless wonderful article.
In the hard-copy version of the Mail and Guardian there is a very good article by Tumi Makgetla, which does return to the question of the trustees. It is not yet on the Internet.
Finally, the reflector of labour in the columns of the bourgeois business press, Terry Bell, comes out clear in defence of the right to organise and nails the reactionary, backward nature of the employer Vodacom, in the face of the workers' efforts to organise there. What is Vodacom? Are they spies, that they can’t have a union? The union is the Communication Workers Union (CWU) by the way and it needs maximum worker solidarity right now. For shame that employers should flaunt this kind of arrogance in liberated South Africa! See Terry Bell’s article via the link below.
Click on these links:
COSATU CEC statement, 1 March 2007 (5589 words)
COSATU response to the Financial Mail (769 words)
From Kebble to Brown, Barry Sergeant, Moneyweb (778 words)
Vodacom shows unions need a voice, Terry Bell, B Report (805 words)
There will be tribute to the great John Perlman, the free minded broadcaster hounded from the SABC, printed as an advertisement in this coming Friday’s Mail and Guardian. If you would like your name to appear on it, please email your name to this address: fionagar@mweb.co.za or Robbiep@xsinet.co.za before 11h00 on Thursday, March 1st.
The Communist University, too, is under pressure right now. People are saying: if you don’t do so-and-so, it will turn out badly for you. Nothing is certain. Everything is relentlessly pushed towards the condition of absolute insecurity. Always, there is the diminishment of resources, the contempt for the question of resources, the denial of resources, the interception of resources, and even the outright destruction of resources.
The Communist University lives off “the smell of an oily rag”. Maybe there is no other way for revolutionaries. Let that not be John Perlman’s fate. Long live!
The USA is going to sit down with Iran and Syria. The first meeting, at the ambassadorial level, will be held next month. Then Rice will sit down at the table with the foreign ministers from Damascus and Tehran at a second meeting in April elsewhere in the region, possibly in Istanbul.
Unless the USA is planning treachery, this must be good news. Very good news.
Next week on Wednesday, March 7 at 17h00 in the SACP boardroom the Communist University will meet to discuss “Cooking the rice inside the pot” by the late “Comrade Mzala” (Jabulani Nxumalo). Comrade Castro Ngobese, ace spin-doctor of the YCL, will open the discussion. See the link below.
There is a great blogger called As’ad AbuKhalil. He blogs under the banner of The Angry Arab. As’ad’s blog featured a link to an obituary for a US academic called Frank Snowden (see the second link below). Snowden was a historian of blacks in antiquity, and especially the classical antiquity of ancient Greece and Rome. “Whites in the ancient world rarely equated blackness with subordination, Dr. Snowden argued, because the black people they encountered were rarely slaves. (Most slaves in the Roman Empire, for instance, were white.) Instead, they met blacks who were warriors, statesmen and mercenaries.” See the link below.
It is two hundred years since the abolition of the slave trade in England, and a film has been made to interpret the event for the gratification and self-congratulation of British people. To read just how exceptionally bad and insulting this film is, please click the last link below. Let us hope that this travesty is never presented in South Africa, or if it is, that huge demonstrations cause it to close.
Click on these links:
1985, Mzala, Cooking the rice inside the pot, Sechaba (3517 words)
Frank Snowden, historian of blacks in antiquity, dies, N Y Times (751 words)
Whitewashing the Slave Trade, Peter Linebaugh, Counterpunch (1589 words)
The SACP Central Committee met this weekend (preceded by a Policy Dialogue with 180 delegates from around the country) and has issued its statement. See the link below. The entire document is a substantial rehearsal of communist principles with detailed reference to the specifics of the present situation in South Africa, and to the tasks of the other partners in the Alliance. This document will lift Party morale and help set the course for a successful and historic 12th National SACP Congress in July.
Here are some highlights of the document:
“…what is impeding substantial progress is the continued colonial character of the economic growth path within which we remained locked.
“This growth path… actively reproduces under-development.
“…policy development without mass mobilization and participation is bound to fail.
“The exact modalities of the SACP’s involvement within an ANC Alliance [election] campaign will… be a matter of intra-alliance discussion and agreement.
“The 12th Congress will consider, amongst other things, a range of proposals around the restructuring of the SACP, particularly to ensure that our elected structures are more firmly rooted in activity-based responsibilities, and also that our basic, branch-level structures are more compact and more rooted within localized communities.”
Needless to say, the document outrightly rejects any suggestion of “an SACP go-it-alone stance that simply plays into the hands of those who dream of break[ing] the alliance and marginalizing the SACP.”
The Communist University will convene on Wednesday, February 28 at 17h00 in the SACP boardroom, 3rd Floor, COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein, to discuss the draft of the document discussed at the Augmented CC in November 2006 called “The South African Road to Socialism”. That document in its final form is set to be published in a new “African Communist”, soon. It may be that comrades will think it better to wait for the definitive version. In any case, the current CC statement will also be made available.
Nearly a year ago Judge Mohamed Jajbhay told the Johannesburg Metro Council that it must not throw people on to the streets. The Johannesburg Council took the matter to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) and the case was heard this week. The verdict is “reserved”, meaning that the SCA judges are thinking about it before giving their decision.
If the SCA reverses Jajbhay’s historic judgment, the Metro council will without doubt attempt an orgy of evictions in Johannesburg, and the evicted people will need organised support on a scale not yet seen.
But if the Jajbhay decision stands up as it should, then the Metro Council will just have to get down and do what it is supposed to do, and that is to accommodate the people who make their living in the Inner City, and stop trying to harass and hound them in the hope that they will disappear from the earth.
It seems that crooks have been helping themselves to peoples’ pension funds for years in this country. It also seems as if the law has as a rule taken a very long time to catch up with such crooks. Wiseman Khuzwayo, journalist and struggle veteran, writes up the low-down for the Business Report on a scandal involving at least two entities, Alexander Forbes and Lifecare (see the link below). It seems that the National Prosecutions Authority (NPA) is not keen to take this one on, and has had to be bolstered up by a “private prosecution” involving the Financial Services Board (FSB) and Business Against Crime, a business-oriented NGO (BONGO).
Comrade Wiseman does not quite make clear why the NPA is not stepping up to do its proper job by itself. A good guess would be that the NPA has blown its budget on its very expensive, failed, politically partisan pursuit of Jacob Zuma. This would also explain why we have not heard a peep out of the NPA yet in the matter of the 50,000 widows and orphans frauded of benefits paid for out of lonely mineworkers’ meagre wages, by J Arthur Brown, Danisa Baloyi and others in the “Fidentia” imbroglio.
Click on these links:
Yes to the sovereignty of the people, SACP post-CC Statement (1837 words)
Jajbay judgement appeal verdict soon, Russel Molefe, City Press (737 words)
FSB, BAC fund private prosecution, Wiseman Khuzwayo, B Report (863 words)
South Africa was and is still described as colonialism of a special type, where the colonisers cohabit in the same country as the colonised people. Although the colonisers live by exploiting the labour of the colonised they like to regard themselves as having an economy of their own (the “first” economy) while the poor majority have another one, the “second” economy. It South Africa this division was conceived in racial terms in the past, and the racial divide between rich and poor persists.
But if we are going to say that colonialism of a special type was a function of race, or that race was a necessary part of it, we may be wrong. The pattern of Indian “development” described in the linked article below by Aseem Shrivasta is very familiar to South Africans, yet it does not appear to depend on racial difference.
Meanwhile, according to the Weekender, the SACP commission that was appointed by the Special National Congress in 2005, which is in fact the same in composition to the SACP Political Bureau, is about to or has already delivered its recommendations. The Weekender treats these questions in a mundane fashion (funding, risk of humiliation et cetera) as if the SACP is a bourgeois party. Perhaps the report itself does so, too. We must wait and see. The questions put by the previous article on India do seem the more urgent ones at this stage. See the linked article by Vukani Mde and Karima Brown.
Raymond Suttner, with the help of Michael Schmidt’s editing, finds himself in territory half way between these two other articles, grappling with questions of mass and class together with electoral questions. The linked article appeared in the Saturday Star.
Finally, YCL National Secretary Buti Manamela uses the YCL’s on-line magazine “The Bottom Line” to comment on the recent case of former YCL Deputy National Secretary Mazibuko Jara’s ambitions concerning the SACP Western Cape Provincial leadership and the SACP’s 12th National Congress in July. In the same linked document you will also find an article by YCL National Organiser George Raphela on the YCL’s attitude to Burma.
Click on these links:
Developer Model of Development, Shrivastava, Counterpunch (3723 words)
Crossroads for communists, Mde and Brown, Weekender (1002 words)
Mass factor, Suttner and Schmidt, Saturday Star (2049 words)
Through the eye of the M and G, and Burma, YCL Bottom Line (3294 words)
The SACP General Secretary, Dr Blade Nzimande, writes every fortnight as a rule in Umsebenzi Online. English is his tenth language but he is a master craftsman in it. In the edition that came out yesterday Cde Blade writes frankly, humorously and humanely about language in a democratic South Africa, including Afrikaans. Please see the link below.
The Communist University’s attempted contribution to the language question in South Africa is our own gateway to the Wiktionaries. Wiktionary is a free, on-line facility whereby if there were enough people taking part, the ordinary speakers of our eleven official languages could probably build full dictionaries of each of those languages in a matter of days. Every language needs its own dictionary in the language itself. Yet many South African languages are deficient in this respect. The English wiktionary is of course huge, because there are contributors in many countries. But the Afrikaans wiktionary is also well advanced, bearing out Dr Blade’s suggestion that the Afrikaners have much to share with the other language groups about preserving and advancing the condition of a language. Laat ons praat! Asikhulume!
At last, other comrades are writing as well. Today we present, on the 16th anniversary of the death of “Comrade Mzala” (Jabulani Nxumalo), a tribute to this great intellectual, who died young in exile in London, by Seshupo Segole (see below). Build the Alliance, he writes. The Communist University Mzala Archive is here.
We also present Kaizer Mohau’s lively polemic contradicting Mazibuko Jara (see below).
There was more feedback in recent days, mostly very appreciative, but in one case quite angry. The irate comrade wrote concerning the new ANC discussion document:
“Aside from petty personal attacks on individuals, rhetorical flourishes and armchair accusations that other people are cowards it would be interesting to know if the CU has anything constructive to say about the ANC's debate on strategy and tactics.
“Is it all in vain unless we have a 'revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat'? If so, I don't see why you even bother to comment on the ANC and its debates. Why not refocus your energy on destroying the ANC, since 'for it the struggle ends with bourgeois democracy' and re-constituting an SACP, purged of all bourgeois elements and 'right wing deviationists' in preparation for the envisaged dictatorship. You'll find a good models in the CPSA of the 1930s!”
Let’s just say that it is early days. The ANC discussion document is only just out. It needs to be tested, thoroughly and hard, if it is going to prove strong enough to be a common basis for the continuing and necessary class alliance (which as yet hardly features in the draft). “Alliance” is actually mentioned only twice in the 13,000 words, the main occasion being on the page where the ANC is chillingly described as the “ultimate strategic centre of power” with the "Tripartite Alliance" being in support of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) “as commonly understood”. Of course this begs the question of the whole exercise. What exactly is that common understanding of the NDR, if it exists at all? And what should it be?
In testing this document, we test our own communist ideas too, and lay them open to dispute, as the comrade has noticed and taken full advantage of. We did call the document cowardly (but not any individuals). Perhaps that was rude in any case. But remember the words of Karl Marx at the end of Value Price and Profit: “By [the working class] cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement.” For communists this is the basic class question of whether the working class is going to fulfill its historic destiny, or not.
The comrade is furiously defensive of the ANC, to the point where he sees discussion of the ANC’s own discussion document as evidence of a desire to “destroy” the ANC. Yet the original, 1969 “Strategy and Tactics“starts with two references to socialism in its very first sentence and concludes with a long and crucial section on the working class. The use of this famous title to sell a new document which is opposite in character to the original is actually intended to be destructive of the historical memory of the South African people. It is intended to write the communists out of history, just like a US Hollywood film would do. So who is destroying who, actually?
Also, nobody in the CU has ever advocated purges. In general, purges only re-locate, and do not solve problems. Liberals and social democrats are constantly being drawn towards the Party. They bring their politics with them. The solution is to put them to work and at the same time to educate them. Even ultra-left entryists, with their subterranean double life, can be tolerated up to a point. They should be constantly encouraged to contribute their ideas to the Party, openly. What becomes intolerable is unprincipled secret horse-trading between these fringe factions, against the elected leadership and outside the open constitutional process of the Party. In this connection, see the page on the SACP web site where answers are given to the recent questions of the Mail and Guardian newspaper concerning the ambitions of Mazibuko Jara and related issues.
The Bolivia Information Forum looks like a useful resource. Their bulletin (linked below) contains very interesting material that we have not been hearing about through the bourgeois media. See the link below. The contact is: Alex Tilley, Coordinator, Bolivia Information Forum, www.boliviainfoforum.org.uk, enquiries@boliviainfoforum.org.uk
Click on these links:
Language in a democratic SA, Blade Nzimande, Umsebenzi Online (2096 words)
Build the alliance, tribute to Mzala, 16 years on, Seshupo Segole (2015 words)
SACP for Socialism not socialitism, Kaizer Mohau on Mazibuko Jara (1387 words)
Bolivia Information Bulletin 5, February 2007 (109 KB PDF download)
Ungdomshuset has been demolished. So what? This apartment and general-purpose building in Copenhagen was a hippy paradise. So what has that got to do with politics? Sure, there were a lot of police on the streets of Copenhagen, a few burning barricades, and it even made the 7 o’clock TV news in South Africa. But there will be no revolution in Denmark. So who cares?
