All Human Life

The Jacob Zuma rape trial is close to collapse. The best court reports have been the ones posted to the Friends of Jacob Zuma web site (see below, for a compilation up to Thursday). The Business Day says very little while the Star and the Mail & Guardian are mostly reporting what is happening outside the court. But yesterday’s Mail & Guardian front-page headline asked: “Jacob Zuma: can he claw back?” The corruption case has fallen apart because of President Mbeki’s admission that the crucial letter was his, not Zuma’s. Now the rape case is falling apart. Yet the Mail and Guardian still tries to suggest that Jacob Zuma is some kind of reptile (with claws) and the cartoonist Zapiro has returned to his vulgar cheap-and-ugly mode. The journalistic middle strata are neurotic. Meanwhile, let us honour our labour movement pundits, who are still too few in the mass media. These are the ones who write opinion pieces from a working-class perspective, such as COSATU’s economist Neva Makgetla and the unaffiliated freelance struggle veteran, Terry Bell. See links. The CU point of view is that if you don’t write, you can’t claim that you have been excluded from the media. Makgetla’s and Bell’s example shows that good writing in the working-class interest can and does get published even in the heart of the bourgeois press. First we must write, then try to get published, and then if we fail there are grounds for complaint. There are many ways to publish, including the CU itself. The Johannesburg District of the SACP’s Political Education sub-committee meets tomorrow morning, Sunday March 12th at 10h00 at the SAMWU office, Renaissance Centre, Gandhi Square. The topic to be discussed is “How to be a good Communist”, by Liu Shaoqi (linked below). These District sessions are designed for Political Education officers of branches, but all are welcome. Links: Zuma Rape Trial reports, Friends of JZ (11042 words) Value ANC successes without denying failures, Makgetla, B Day (726 words) Wrong idea of consensus steers Transnet machine, Bell, B Rep (807 words) 1939, Liu Shaoqi, How to be a good Communist, C1 (2546 words)