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COSATU’s Jobs and Poverty Campaign Questionnaire is for everybody, and not just union members. It is a way to give feedback on the single most critical question of the times – how to put everybody to work in this country. It also carries a very good, short summary of the general situation and recent history of this campaign. Don’t ever say nobody told you about it. Follow the link below to the two-page, 40 KB MS-Word file download, fill in the questionnaire, and e-mail it to the address given on the form.
Barry Sergeant’s Moneyweb summary of the Danisa Baloyi scandal is like the proverbial bikini. What remains concealed is more important than what is revealed. For example, the Baloyi affair is described as being “on the outskirts of the Fidentia meltdown”. Yet even the incomplete rehearsal of the facts given in the article show very clearly that it was Baloyi who was right at the centre, and not, for example, J Arthur Brown, the punk gangster and man of straw who now cannot even manage to raise his bail.
What game is Sergeant playing? Not only does the chronicle he lays down have obvious loose ends (Follow the link below and read the article carefully). But also, there are glaring facts in the foreground of the picture that Sergeant has not yet pursued or followed to their logical conclusion. That conclusion must be that Baloyi is a bigger crook than Brown, by far, and that there are many other crooks in this affair, big and small, who need to be taken in and dealt with in the full rigour of the law, very soon.
Judging by this and other reports in other outlets, journalists, although no longer scared of Brown, are still scared of Baloyi. Or, it may be that the journalists are somewhat complicit, or under instruction. Their bosses may have told them to sell Brown as the fall guy, and not to take too many shots at the bigger game, like Baloyi. But such a plan cannot work. Baloyi is just too obvious.
The ANC National Executive Committee met last week and issued a statement on Saturday. It includes a list of the discussion documents that will be issued prior to the ANC Policy Conference in June. In effect, it is the agenda of that conference. See the link below.
SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande made a speech last week at a FAWU-organised seminar in Johannesburg, which is still making ripples a week later. The reactionaries of the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU) are so upset by the speech that they are inventing a fantasy of land invasions led by proletarian infiltrators from the cities, masterminded by the SACP. This was reported in yesterday’s “Citizen”. Unlike The Citizen’s readers, you have the advantage of being able to read the full, original speech just by clicking on the link below. And by the way, it is well worth the small trouble. This is a major, defining speech on the state of, and remedies for, rural South Africa.
Finally, for DITSELA in general and Gino Govender in particular, see the last link for V I Lenin’s “Speech Delivered At An All-Russia Conference Of Political Education Workers Of Gubernia and Uyezd Education Departments” on November 3, 1920. This is a yardstick by which to judge DITSELA’s “Worker Education and Culture Festival”. If Comrade Gino should still be suffering under the delusion that culture is possible without criticism, then Lenin’s statement that: “Any attempt to avoid taking sides in this issue must end in fiasco” may give him pause. Remaining doubts about the matter may be cleared up tomorrow, when we will run Lenin’s short piece on “Proletkult”. Should that still not do the trick, we would refer the DITSELA comrades to the Communist University’s very full section on Critical Pedagogy, in the sincere hope that they have not forgotten how to read, or why they have to read.
Click on these links:
COSATU Jobs and Poverty Campaign Questionnaire (questionnaire, download)
Baloyi sheds her velvet gloves, Barry Sergeant, Moneyweb (1312 words)
Statement of ANC National Executive Committee, 17 March 2007 (1228 words)
SACP GS B Nzimande to FAWU, building class power in countryside (3081 words)
1920, Lenin, to Political Education Workers Conference (4019 words)
The SACP has pronounced on Zimbabwe at last, and in grand style, in the form of an Umsebenzi Online with a treat of an article by GS Dr Blade Nzimande, plus a Statement, which although rather difficult in its prose, contains good guidelines as you would expect from the vanguard party. The SACP fully supports the solidarity demonstrations in South Africa that will coincide with the Zim stayaway of 3rd and 4th of April, 2007, which are the Tuesday and the Wednesday of Easter Week.
At least seven ZCTU organisers have been arrested while distributing leaflets for the stayaway. Three of them were grabbed in Masvingo, and charged with littering and distributing material that has the potential to cause an uprising (Viva!). They are Tennyson Muchefa from the National Engineering Workers' Union, Douglas Dzimiri from the Zimbabwe Domestic and Allied Workers' Union, and Gilbert Marembo, a ZCTU staff member. The other four were arrested in Bulawayo. We do not have their names yet. See the linked document for the ZCTU’s statements concerning these arrests.
The day-to-day record of last year’s stayaway and the repression that surrounded it are here, on the Kubatana site. These pages show how courageous the ZCTU is to mount another stayaway, and to promise further action on a three-monthly basis.
Both COSATU and the SACP have issued statements to mark Human Rights Day (Sharpeville Day). See the links below. The ANC issued a major statement on Saturday, following the National Executive Committee meeting of 15-17 March, which we will look at more fully, tomorrow.
Lastly, in the Johannesburg newspaper The Star, a letter appeared yesterday about Somalia which shows that the truth will always come out and that people are not fooled by US Imperialist propaganda. See the link below.
The YCL’s young ace spin-doctor Castro Ngobese also had a letter published yesterday, in Business Day. Click here to read it.
Click on these links:
Umsebenzi Online, Vol 6, No. 5, 21 Mar 2007, Zimbabwe (2338 words)
Latest on ZCTU Arrests (348 words)
COSATU statement on Human Rights Day, 21 March 2007 (976 words)
Finance a basic human right, SACP Human Rights Day statement (806 words)
Ethiopian state and Yusuf lack legitimacy, Dirk Spilke, The Star (567 words)
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions general strike of Easter Week 2007 is in support of a set of demands announced in a communiqué on February 24th (see the link below).
The communiqué refers to the demands of 13th September 2006, which are available from the Sokwanele web site. See the second linked item below.
Also referred to is the Kadoma Declaration which is available on the AllAfrica site. See the link below
What we have not yet found is the text of the Prices and Incomes Stabilization Protocol that the communiqué refers to. But it is clear from the ZCTU statements that this deals with the situation of inflation in Zimbabwe, reported elsewhere as between 1600% and 4000% per annum; and the fact that most wages are below the Zimbabwe Poverty Datum Line (PDL).
Kubatana.net is another good source for Zim documents, such as their archive on last year’s Zim stayaway.
The timing of Friday’s COSATU seminar on Zimbabwe (and Swaziland) is now a bit clearer and more detailed. Prime time will be from about 09h30 to 11h30. See the notice linked below.
Finally, John Woolman, an American Quaker of the 18th Century, understood capitalism very well. Capital is a relation and not a thing. It is “the power which stands in the separation”. See the link.
Don’t forget to go to this page and fill in the Labourstart petition on Zimbabwe, which automatically goes to a whole lot of Zim government offices when you put ion your name and address and click “send message”.
Tomorrow is Sharpeville Day. There will be some kind of march in Johannesburg from Library Gardens to Constitution Hill, some time after 09h00, in the interest of a list of “human rights” causes including Zimbabwe. What organisation is calling this march, we do not know.
Click on these links:
ZCTU communiqué of February - 24 demands and strike date (456 words)
Archive of ZCTU 13 Sept 2006 demands, Sokwanele (298 words)
Kadoma Declaration, Shame Makoshori, Zimbabwe Independent (580 words)
Programme on Swaziland and Zimbabwe, 23 March 2007 COSATU (notice)
A Plea for the Poor, John Woolman (573 words)
“COSATU is mobilising its members for a demonstration in Johannesburg on 3 April, in a massive show of solidarity with the struggle for democracy in Zimbabwe, in particular with the general strike called for 3-4 April 2007 by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, and calls upon all South Africans, and Zimbabweans living in South Africa, to join us.”
The picture here is of Wellington Chibebe, General Secretary of the ZCTU.See the first linked item for the full COSATU announcement and for further details of the outrages that continue to be perpetrated in Zimbabwe.
Mohau Pheko is “wondering whether recent events in Harare are not the makings of an over-productive mastermind trying, through make-believe scenarios, to evoke sympathy and outrage for what may actually be seeds of deception.” She gives an account of the split of the MDC, linked below.
The general movement for democracy in Zimbabwe would look much more solid if the MDC were to come out with a clear endorsement of the stayaway scheduled for Easter Week, next month. Even better would be if all concerned were to start mapping out the equivalent of a Freedom Charter for Zimbabwe. That would allow the movement to look forward together and to shed the baggage of the past.
The black bourgeoisie in South Africa wants talks about the leadership succession in the ANC. All the more reason why the organised working class should be given the same, or better privileges. See the link below.
Finally, Paul Craig Roberts has written another fine article, this time about the victim of US torture, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the collapse of the whole Gitmo-and-rendition circus.
Click on these links:
COSATU condemns latest atrocities in Zimbabwe (387 words)
Peering through layers of Zimbabwe deception, Mohau Phelo, Sunday Times (889 words)
Black business joins succession debate, Siyabulela Qoza, City Press (574 words)
Confession Backfired, Paul Craig Roberts, Counterpunch (860 words)
Labourstart has set up a great page where you can fill in your name and details plus a message (or use a default message). Thanks to Patrick Craven for this link. When you click "Send Message" it sends to nine different Zimbabwe government addresses. It's a pretty good piece of work. Please use it and pass it on. Find it here.
Another good link is the Kubatana site, which is a vast archive on Zimbabwe. In particular, the page called Strikes and Protests 2007- Save Zimbabwe Campaign has photos of the events of the last week, including the Highfields rally and the appearance at court of the MDC leaders.
Gift Tandare was killed by police gunfire at Highfields one week ago. Reports have been intermittent and not complete but it seems that the young man’s body was taken away by the police, returned to the family, and now taken again. There was also a police raid and shooting at the funeral house, on Tuesday. The whole thing must be a nightmare for the family. The report is from Violet Gonda on the SW Radio Africa site. SW Radio Africa broadcasts on shortwave and medium wave but from where, it does not say. Possibly it is from London.
COSATU is advertising a whole-day gabfest on the comparison between Zimbabwe and Swaziland next Friday. See the linked item below.
The following week there is an event organised by DITSELA, the interdenominational and ecumenical trade union education NGO, styled “Worker Education and Cultural Festival”. This is a bit more happy-clappy than the practical writing and radio-technique sessions that we had been expecting. There does not appear to be anything in the programme about the Internet or e-mail, either. But it may be some people’s cup of tea. See the link.
Castro Ngobese is an organic intellectual. He is a living festival of political creativity and agitational propaganda. The young spin-doctor of the YCL has now taken on the mighty Sunday Times, the newspaper with the biggest circulation in South Africa. See the fourth link below.
The last linked item has relevance for the Zimbabwean struggle, although it is from Cuba via Cuba’s South African Embassy. It is a brief report with links to two longer documents, mainly concerning the Cuban struggle for an honest treatment of human rights at UN level, and a rejection of the use of “human rights” as an excuse for aggression by the Imperialists against the countries of the South. The picture above is of Fidel Castro, the great Cuban revolutionary, recently ill but getting better.
Click on these links:
CIO seize Tandare body, Violet Gonda, SW Radio Africa (576 words)
Seminar on Swaziland and Zimbabwe, 23 March 2007, COSATU (flyer)
Worker Education, Culture Festival, 26-30 March 2007, Elijah Barayi (form - download)
The barrel of the Sunday Times, Castro Ngobese, Hlomelang (1396 words)
Cuba for South Justice in UN Human Rights Council, Embassy of Cuba (468 words)
Next week there is a public holiday on Wednesday, so the Communist University will not meet. The next session will be on March 28th, in the SACP boardroom, 3rd floor, COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein, at 17h00. The discussion will be based on the 1962 SACP “Road to South African Freedom” (linked below). This is the first in the set called “State Power”. Overall it has to do with the question of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) and socialism.
It is true that what is commonly called the “State Power Debate” does not in the main deal with the question of the State. We will get closer to that basic and indispensable idea in the next following set, which is called “Bonapartism and Reformism” and finishes with (pictured) Lenin’s “State and Revolution”. See the entire programme, with links to the texts, here.
We have no new documents on Zimbabwe today. The newspapers are full of it but they are only taking up old postures, like human statues. The announcement that precipitated the present series of actions in Zim is temporarily and willingly forgotten. That was the February 24th announcement by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) that there is going to be a general strike in Zimbabwe on the 3rd and 4th of April. This announcement is what concentrated the minds of all the other opposition formations to unite in the action at Highfields on Sunday, March 11th, creating the occasion for the police brutalities that have made headlines around the world.
A lot less, indeed practically nothing, is being said in the world’s media outlets about the subsequent raid on the ZCTU Offices, on Tuesday, March 13th, when among other things the federation’s Financial Administrator, Galileo Chirebvu, was taken away by the Zimbabwe CID. But the strike call still exerts its dominant pull on the Zimbabwean polity. The topic will have to return to the headlines unless the bourgeois media has decided to retreat altogether into fantasy, as it sometimes does.
It is even possible that President Mugabe, Bonapartist that he is, will realize that the working class and not the peasantry holds the key to the future - and change alliances! That would be a “turn-up for the book” as they say in England.
In any case as the strike date approaches all the neo-colonial actors will become uneasy. This is because most of them (both “left” and right) have as little desire as President Mugabe currently has to see a rise in the power of the working class in Zimbabwe. Many of the voices raised in solidarity today disguise dreams of a new boom in NGO activity in Zim, with all the accessories such as 4x4s and game parks, but above all with unchallenged moral superiority. The working class is the fly in their ointment.
We’ve seen it all before. But it may not turn out like that. What neo-colonialism can look like in 2007 is shown by the second linked item, on Kenya and Somalia. This is the neo-con style of neo-colonialism. It involves “extraordinary renditions”, a military command over the entire continent (“Africom”), a “Secretary of State For Africa” (Jendayi Fraser) in Washington (or flying around), and no doubt a lot more as well. It may even be that the current instability of the Internet, and especially e-mail transmission, may have to do with the installation of new US surveillance systems. If so, let’s hope they get their work done quickly and get it properly stabilised, so that we can all go about our business without unnecessary and unexplainable delays.
US politics is thin gruel compared to what we are used to. It is deeply boring to have to spend time reading about the machinations of evangelical Christians in the USA and the shallow personalities who inhabit the venal purlieus of the Washington “Beltway”, and the even more banal state capitals and backwoods of the Anglo-Saxon colony in America. In case we may need to get used to it, the last linked item gives a slight introduction to the way “Africa” is dealt with in the USA.
Click on these links:
1962, SACP, The Road to SA Freedom (18552 words)
Kenya defends secret transfers of prisoners, S Bengali, McClatchy (687 words)
Neocons, Evangelicals and Africa, Con Hallinan, Counterpunch (1329 words)
Cde Jesus Raphael Mora Gonzalez is from the Cuban YCL. He will be opening a public discussion at SS1 Umthombo Building at Wits University today at 16h00. For more details follow the link below. It leads to a downloadable MS-Word file, as well as to the bare text of the flyer.
Yesterday saw the opening of the National HIV/AIDS Consultative Conference. See the link below for the speech of COSATU GS Zwelinzima Vavi at this (billed-as) watershed event.
The ANC issued a careful statement on Zimbabwe yesterday, three days after what they choose to call the “alleged assault" on Zimbabwean leaders, which left Morgan Tsvangirai, for example, in hospital (see picture).
The ANC Women’s League has felt itself obliged to respond to what it calls “attacks” (not “alleged” on this occasion) on its President, who is minister of Home Affairs Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, by the YCL.
The YCL has made a spirited response and insists that it was right about the problems at Home Affairs, and that the minister herself has since acknowledged this. As the YCL has pointed out, at least half of the victims of the mess at Home Affairs must be women.
The YCL accuses the ANC Women’s League of trying to create a “gender cult”. This is a discussion worth having. The ANCWL and other formations have taken a turn away from organising and towards gender mysticism, typified by the undemocratic so-called Progressive Women’s Movement. It is high time the trend towards uniformed leader-worshiping gender cults was challenged and halted in South Africa..
Click on these links:
Cde Jesus Raphael Mora Gonzalez, Cuban YCL at Wits 15 March 16h00 (flyer)
COSATU GS Vavi, for Civil Society, at HIV-AIDS Conf 14 March 2007 (1204 words)
ANC statement on current situation in Zimbabwe (208 words)
Attacks on Minister of Home Affairs and President of ANC WL (335 words)
YCL on Home Affairs Minister, response to ANC WL statement (608 words)
You received COSATU’s statement following the raid on the ZCTU offices in Harare, Zimbabwe yesterday, as a special despatch because of the urgency of the situation. The first linked item below is the subsequent statement issued by the ZCTU itself. In the statement it is recorded that ZCTU Financial Administrator Galileo Chirebvu was taken away by the Zimbabwean CID. This comrade has not yet been released, to our knowledge.
The South African YCL has not hesitated to come out with a strong expression of solidarity for the Zimbabwean masses in a brief but comprehensive message which is a good model of how such messages can and should be written. The YCL correctly reminds the reader of the major upcoming event, namely the general strike called by the ZCTU for 3rd and 4th April, 2007, and the necessity to display huge solidarity on the South African side on those two days. See the second link.
We still await the statements of the SACP, the Zimbabwe Solidarity Forum, the ANC, the ANC Youth League, and the ANC Women’s League on the new Zimbabwe situation following the events of the last three days.
But following the cold, miserable, hand-washing statement of SA government spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa to the effect that “the problems of Zimbabwe will be resolved by the people of Zimbabwe”, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad has now been forced to express himself in rather stronger terms. See the third link below, to the report in The Citizen.
The best full summary of the day’s events we have seen is the one gathered up by Associated Press for CNN, linked below. This is also the only one we have seen that mentions says anything about the condition of Arthur Mutambara, who appears to have survived, but with head injuries. The image above is of Morgan Tsvangirai, taken at his court appearance yesterday.
Finally, and for the record, the main BBC report is linked below. Notice that neither The Citizen, nor the CNN, nor the BBC give attribution to individual journalists for these breaking-news compilations.
The Communist University wiki web site, amadlandawonye, passes the figure of 450,000 page-views today, while its daily archive moves through the third month of its third continuous year.
This is nearly one-and-a-half times as many hits as the main COSATU web site (303,000) although the COSATU site has been counting twice as long. What makes the difference?
This daily blog is what makes the difference. This is because it draws people’s attention to the new material that is going on the web site. The blog also has a considerable readership of its own, both as e-mail and as a free-standing web log.But of course, just when we are confident enough to make these small claims, at that moment we find that familiar difficulties rear up again. Yesterday there were problems of unwanted repeat postings (message going out three times although posted only once). Today there is a problem of no posting (message sent to blog but not forwarded to the list), making it necessary to re-post. There is a risk that it will arrive twice again. Please accept apologies if that should happen.The Communist University meets this evening at 17h00 to discuss Che Guevara’s 1967 “Message to the Tricontinental”. This is the message of internationalism, comrades, never needed more than now.Click on these links:
ZCTU Offices Raided (126 words)
YCL condemns violation of rights in Zimbabwe (337 words)
Pahad calls on Zim to respect rule of law, The Citizen (294 words)
Zimbabwe opposition leader taken to hospital from court, CNN (1172 words)
S Africa in Zimbabwe rights call , BBC News (630 words)
Vuvuzelas will be heard from dawn on April 3rd, 2007, the first day of the General Strike called by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU).
People will start gathering early on that day in solidarity in Johannesburg’s Beyers Naude Square (Library Gardens) and expressing themselves loudly and waking up the city to what is happening across the border. Be there! Be part of it!
When the crowd is full and ready, there will be a march through the financial district past the biggest monopoly finance houses (Goldfields and Anglo American) and the Chamber of Mines to the Zimbabwe Trade Consulate in Anderson Street.
This revolution may or may not be televised but it is already being electronically assisted! See the linked items below, all original. Contact details are given wherever possible in the documents, usually at the end. Media people should follow them up.
COSATU as usual has made one of the best and earliest statements. COSATU will be the backbone of solidarity action in support of the ZCTU in the build-up to the April 3rd/4th stayaway action, from now on without stopping.
The other original documents linked below are:
A statement from the Save Zimbabwe Campaign, which was the vehicle for unity in action last Sunday involving MDC-Mutambara, MDC-Tsvangirai and the NCA of Lovemore Madhuku (pictured above) among others.
Next is the NCA’s own statement. It seems that the comrade who was shot and killed was an NCA cadre by the name of Gift Tandire, NCA Youth Chairperson for Glenview, Harare.
OSISA is a Soros/Microsoft Human Rights-type NGO based in Johannesburg. They have issued a long statement with some useful detail. Welcome, comrades, and thank you! See you on the 3rd if not before.
SW Radio Africa is the source by which the Save Zimbabwe Campaign statement came through. The last item is their own report of the torture in detention of Morgan Tsvangirai and others. They have radio and a web site and a contact by the name of Violet Gonda. See the document.
Concerning the last item, the following is made up of extracts from an e-mail exchange:
We have launched a phoning solidarity from here. We are calling the police stations every four hours. Making these murderers know that the people will demand accountability from them. The landline number is +2632064212 and the leading persecutors are said to be Mavhenyengwa and Marume.
You can join in. Or you can find other telephone numbers, fax numbers, and e-mail addresses and bombard officials of Zimbabwe state structures with solidarity messages and queries about the detained and tortured comrades.
To get yourself better integrated into the electronic network of Zim Solidarity, go (now!) to http://groups.google.com/group/zimbabwe-fight-on-dont-mourn and become a subscriber. This is the biggest and liveliest available e-mail group at the moment.
Click on these links:
COSATU condemns MDC arrests (421 words)
Save Zimbabwe Campaign press statement re Mar 12 (628 words)
NCA Youth Chairperson Murdered (414 words)
OSISA statement on Zimbabwe Rights Abuses (1021 words)
Zimbabwe leaders tortured in detention, SW Radio Africa News (662 words)
The Zimbabwe news came late yesterday evening via http://groups.google.com/group/zimbabwe-fight-on-dont-mourn. By the way, that is a good group to join. Just click on the link and try to sign in. If you do not have a Google password you may have to “create an account” before you subscribe to the group.
The headline was “Mutambara, Tsvangirai arrested ahead of joint rally” and it says “Arrested alongside Tsvangirai and Mutambara was Lovemore Madhuku, the chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) pressure group and several other officials from both factions of the MDC. These include Job Sikhala, Tendai Biti, Willas Madzimure, Sekai Holland, Nelso Chamisa, and Mike Davies.”
The political significance is that the main formations have created a unity-in-action, which is the essential pre-requisite for progress. This is no doubt why the Mugabe regime has come down so heavily. One person was killed.
But what is also interesting is that the Reuters report in the Johannesburg Business Day only mentions Tsvangirai and the report in the Johannesburg Star, also from Reuters (a British company and no doubt riddled with spies), is headlined “Tsvangirai”, has a picture of Tsvangirai, and only mentions Mutambara and Madhuku in one brief sentence in a long report.
Like Mugabe, Reuters is not interested in the unity message. It wants to boost Tsvangirai at the expense of the others. The report linked below may have come more from the Mutambara (pictured above, for the sake of balance) side, for all we know. But at least it stresses the combined nature of this action, which if it is true makes a revolution more than possible in Zimbabwe, and close to inevitable.
As with the South African struggle against apartheid, the struggle to renew Zimbabwean democracy is going to attract all sorts of latecomers and arrivistes with agendas. The way to keep on course is to watch the working class. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions has called a general strike for the 3rd and 4th of April, 2007. As South Africans, wherever you may be in the country, you must devise your own response so as to manifest your solidarity with the Zimbabwean workers and common people in the build-up to the stayaway and on the two days of the action.
Meanwhile US President George Bush is in Latin America, causing protests wherever he goes. President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is also doing a tour, and getting a great reception from large crowds.
A more important event for the USA is their meeting with representatives of Iran and Syria and others in Baghdad. See the long Asia Times article. The last article is Virginia Tilley’s of ten days ago, held back for nearly a week by the Mail and Guardian, but still worth reading and archiving.
Click on these links:
Mutambara, Tsvangirai arrested before joint rally, Chimhashu, newzim (808 words)
Iran and US talking, M K Bhadrakhumar, Asia Times Online (2486 words)
Africa and the war on terror, Virginia Tilley, Mail and Guardian (866 words)
Andrew Donaldson is not going to let the De La Rey craze go until its milked for every possible laugh. He does pretty well this week. See the first item. Also in the Sunday Times, but not shown here, is the report of South Africa’s first gay divorce. Bourgeois marriage overtakes the gays, and turns full circle.
Just as a sample of the humour of more than 40 years ago, click on the second item, which consists of Lenny Bruce taking the piss out of the “Lone Ranger” (and not forgetting Tonto). The US FBI persecuted Lenny Bruce and he died young.
The Siyahleba column of the City Press is impressed with the spin-doctor work of Castro Ngobese. See the third link, and the picture of Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula on the right.
Regarding that item, and the next linked one about Manto Tshabalala’s husband, Mendi Msimang, allegedly going to her employer to have her retired from her job, there is something strange going on here in the City Press.
On the one side they are continually celebrating women’s independent success, and on the other here we have the two husbands of two important woman ministers, who are now held to be in charge of, or responsible for, or protecting, their wives in terms of their work. Read the fourth article and see if you can get the reason why Mendi Msimang can discourage his wife from carrying on, while Diane Kohler-Barnard of the DA cannot do so. Surely the one is as bad as the other?
Continuing with women, the Living Hands collapse, otherwise called the Fidentia scandal, affects a lot of poor people, and not just the crooks who were responsible, many of whom are no doubt still at large. The Sunday Independent’s Glynnis Underhill found some of the victims and talked to them. See the article below. Justice delayed ins justice denied.
Click on these links:
No more beer or crime talk at braais, Andrew Donaldson, S Times (611 words)
Lenny Bruce still good after 40 years (759 words)
No safety and security for Nqakula in SACP, Siyahleba, City Press (146 words)
Let my Manto leave office, Mpumelelo Mkhabela, City Press (717 words)
Fidentia victims left to go hungry, Glynnis Underhill, S Independent (872 words)
COSATU and Zimbabwe Solidarity Forum have called a planning meeting for today (March 9th) at 09h00, at 3rd floor COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein, in the SACP boardroom. The principal focus will be on the general strike called by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions for the 4th and 5th of April. It is vital that this meeting is as broad and as can be and creates an extensive, voluntary, democratic movement that will be up to the necessary scale for the tasks at hand. Sekunjalo! Tuendeni! Hasta la Victoria Siempre! Miss no opportunities! Lose no time!
In 1981 Alan Brooks and Jeremy Brickhill published a prophetic book about the 1976 South African student uprising called “The Whirlwind before the Storm”. Today comes news that there are student class boycotts nationwide across Zimbabwe. The storm is coming to Zim. The whirlwind is already there. See the first item below.
Another event to note is Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s public lecture, “Globalisation and African leadership: reading from the Wizard of the Crow”, to be given at 18h30 on Thursday, March 15th at the Wits Great Hall, Braamfontein. Thanks to Xolela Mangcu for flagging that for us in his Business Day column.
FAWU is calling for a consumer boycott of Premier Milling products, in particular Iwisa mielie-meal and Blue Ribbon bread products. Don’t buy them. Buy alternatives. Spread it around. See the second linked item below for details of the dispute and the action, including secondary strike action.
The next linked item, on the “Nature, role and work of the Communist Party”, by Sam Webb, National Chairman of the CPUSA, comes highly recommended. Read it while you still have the time. Zimbabwean comrades and Zim-solidarity comrades should read it, too. Among other things it says: “A go-it-alone strategy by the working class or anyone else is a surefire recipe for defeat.”
Today (March 9th) is the 60th Anniversary of the Three Doctors’ Pact, (referring to Drs Xuma, Naicker and Dadoo) which as the ANC (see link below, and picture above) correctly notes “was a precursor to the Congress Alliance, which brought together African, Indian, coloured and white democrats.” This is how the business gets done.
We are united, yet each has his or her own voice. In the denunciation of the letting-off by the SABC board of “His Staliness” (as Zapiro called him) Snuki Zikalala the SACP, COSATU, YCL and ANCYL all express themselves firmly and characteristically. On the other side, let it be seen by all this that good journalists like John Perlman are well loved and valued by the people, whatever toffee-nosed snobs may sometimes say about journalists in general. And good politicians are well loved, too.
Just to prove that we allies can still have our differences, and are not afraid to express them, see the last item, which is an objection by ANC spin-doctor Smuts Ngonyama to YCL spin-doctor Castro Ngobese who called Minister of Home Affairs Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula “a decoration”, among other things, as Comrade Ngonyama takes care to remind us. See more of this dance of the spin-doctors via the link below.
Click on these links:
Student class boycotts all over Zim, ZNSU, The Student (323 words)
FAWU call - secondary strikes, consumer boycott of Iwisa and Blue Ribbon (393 words)
Nature, role and work of Communist Party, CPUSA NC Sam Webb (14247 words)
60th Anniversary of the Three Doctors Pact, ANC statement (457 words)
Snuki warning not enough, SACP, COSATU, YCL, ANCYL (1114 words)
ANC statement on YCL attack on Home Affairs Minister (343 words)
COSATU’s Jobs and Poverty Campaign Questionnaire is for everybody, and not just union members. It is a way to give feedback on the single most critical question of the times – how to put everybody to work in this country. It also carries a very good, short summary of the general situation and recent history of this campaign. Don’t ever say nobody told you about it. Follow the link below to the two-page, 40 KB MS-Word file download, fill in the questionnaire, and e-mail it to the address given on the form.
