Class Confirmed

Yesterday’s SACP Gauteng Provincial Council ground on for six hours or more of mainly monologue. The Secretary set the comrades an endurance test once again. It’s as if he thinks he is no longer Vishwas Satger but has become Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez. He was finally obliged to concede in a few short minutes what was clear from the start (and at the previous PC). The delegates want an election as soon as possible to replace the six missing PEC members. All the platform’s manoeuvres failed, and were bound to fail. “State Power” was also monologued, but hardly discussed. The Khutsong issue could not be resolved because of conflicting reports of decisions taken elsewhere. On Gautrain, the PEC proposed a rival initiative to that of COSATU, without really explaining why. On the Gauteng “Global City Region” boondoggle, the platform revealed its absence of serious urban theory. Satgar's reliance on a formulaic opposition of blanket “neo-liberalism” with a liberal, unscientific, ag-shame reference to “workers and the poor” was inadequate. In this matter slogans, though necessary, are insufficient. Mike Davis’s critique dispatched by the CU on Saturday refers. Peter McLaren whose coming SA tour was announced here yesterday (thanks to information from Patrick Bond) is not just a critical pedagogist (the most prominent in the world). He is also one of the foremost exponents of humanist Marxism in opposition to irrational theories of post-modernism, including post-modernist feminism. As such he is consonant with Angela Davis, Evelyn Reed, Meera Nanda, Teresa Ebert and James Heartfield, whose works we have previously studied in the CU. See the linked article from his web site, written with Valerie Scatamburlo-D’Annibale. YCL National Chairperson David Masondo has written an excellent antidote to the wave of Mother-Grundyism cooked up around the recent Zuma trial. See linked Sunday Times article. Robert Greig is ratty about the recent Government-sponsored “Native Club”. His writing has such a sharp bite to it that it is a pleasure to read even if one can’t quite get as indignant as he does in such a case. Surely if the “Native Club” is so dubious, it will collapse in its own contradictions? And if not, not. Professor Sipho Seepe’s observations were more measured, and more useful. See linked Sunday Independent article. CIVICUS is a meta-NGO based in Johannesburg and headed by Kumi Naidoo, an otherwise respectable struggle veteran. We had a go at him and his non-anti-imperialist outfit recently. Now it gets a mention in a thorough critique of missionary NGOs by Joan Roelofs in Counterpunch (see link). The struggle continues. India continues to provide an open laboratory for revolutionary practice. In the case of the linked Counterpunch article by Vijay Prashad the long experience of Indian communists of combining electoral politics with dual-power institutions, called panchayats, is of interest to South African communists involved in campaigns in similar circumstances. It would be nice to have a closer and more detailed comparison done by an Indian or South African communist. See link. The Communist University wiki web site (amadlandawonye) has risen one place and is now fourth in the world total of 3745 public wikispaces in terms of “page views”. The top-25 league table is here. The statistics of the site itself are also very interesting – see here. Why not help us by making the CU your home page? If you do that, then each time you open your computer it scores a “view” for the CU. Click on these links: Class Dismissed, Valerie S-DA, Peter Mclaren (8607 words) Leave private life out of this, David Masondo, Sunday Times (748 words) State and intellectuals in lethal dance, Robert Greig, Sindy (1290 words) NGOs and the Imperial Uses of Philanthropy, Counterpunch (2153 words) The Indian Road, red panchayats, dual power, Counterpunch (2096 words)