No Drum Majorettes

The Communist University convenes this evening at 17h00 in the Women’s Jail, 1 Kotze Street, Constitution Hill, to discuss the SACP Central Committee’s discussion document on State Power. Next week (Friday June 2nd) at the same time and place we will discuss Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s 1967 paper “African Socialism Revisited” (see link below). The matter at issue between Kwame Nkrumah and Leopold Senghor is scientific socialism versus irrational “negritude” (Africanism). It is an exact parallel with the contradiction we have dicovered in feminism between the historical materialism and humanism of Angela Davis and Meera Nanda on the one hand, and the post-modernist, anti-scientific, cultural-relativist position of Vandana Shiva and Judith Butler on the other. In both cases, that of Africanism and that of feminism, resolution of this contradiction lies in a proper answer to the question: “What is freedom?” Yesterday was a day of releases of substantial documents from COSATU, the SACP, the ANC and the YCL. These are organisations that give content to our democracy. COSATU’s CEC statement has made headlines all day for the warning included in it that South Africa may be approaching a condition of a dictatorship (without drum majorettes). Serious as this is, there is much more in the COSATU statement. The document is a good example of how such reports should be given. It is broken into clear parts, each of which deals with a distinct but critical matter in a direct and frank manner. Long live working class democracy! See the link below. At the NUM congress in Midrand, SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande addressed 1000 delegates on the CC discussion document, urging them to take it back to the shop floor and discuss it. This speech of our GS can assist us in our discussion this evening. See link below. ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma addressed the same Congress. See linked document below for a transcript of his speech. The YCL announces the launch of Youth Month from a rally to be held in Khutsong on May 27. Khutsong is the area that was bureaucratically cut away from Gauteng in contempt of the express wishes of the residents, as revealed in a consultation exercise initiated by government. When government failed to get the result it wanted, it over-rode the process it had started itself, showing bad faith. See the link below to a notice of this event. The ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) meets today. The atmosphere is electric. Will there be storms? Will there be catastrophe or peace and new growth? Click on these links: African Socialism Revisited, Nkrumah, 1967 (2587 words) COSATU CEC Media statement 25 May 2006 (2778 words) SACP GS Nzimande, Options of working class relationship to state power (3142 words) Deputy President Jacob Zuma to NUM Congress 24 May 2006 (2746 words) YCL Youth Month and 84th Anniversary Rally Khutsong 10h00 May 27 (Notice)