The Conjuncture

By our normal selection criteria there is way too much material today and time has already run out. What can we do? The aim of the mailing is to present the up-to-date end of the study spectrum that extends from pre-history, through the class struggles of the past ten thousand years, and up to now. As Karl Marx wrote in 1845, the point is to change the world, and that can only be done in the present. The distinction between history and journalism is artificial, and bourgeois. Revolutionaries work to narrow the gap between theory and practice until there is no gap. But this is not easy. Moments like this, having so many dynamic abstract parts, confront the student with the temptation to make arbitrary choices. Instead of seeking out the concrete and critical nature of what we like to call the “conjuncture”, students could easily just pick a couple of juicy parts and ignore the totality. The “conjuncture” means the meeting and clash of contradictory forces at a particular time, producing the concrete character of the moment, which is always a “unity and struggle of opposites”. What has been happening in fact? The day before yesterday the health sector union and COSATU affiliate NEHAWU issued a short statement following its National Political School. Among other things it said: “An emergency National Executive Committee was convened on the 28th August 2006 during the course of the political school. The NEC noted with concern the recent media reports about our federation. Of extreme concern is the growing tendency to leak information in the run up to the federation’s congress and those of its affiliates… “In the light of the recent developments, our special NEC resolved to review our initial position of retaining all COSATU National Office Bearers. Our new position is that we retain all national office bearers except for two positions.” The following morning COSATU announced that “…First Deputy President, Joe Nkosi, yesterday submitted his resignation, with immediate effect, to the COSATU General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, at the SADTU Congress. The reasons he gives are that he is studying and has to look after a sick child.” Meanwhile COSATU affiliate SACTWU has reached agreement with 9 clothing employer associations under the auspices of the clothing sector bargaining council. This affects 80,000 workers in 1.000 workplaces amounting to increases of between 5% and 8.3% or a total of R100m in a full year. The Communication Workers Union (CWU) has signed a Recognition Agreement with the South African Press Association. Such agreements are historic milestones in the life of any union. Now that there is a progressive union with such an agreement in place, and a COSATU affiliate at that, there is nothing to stop all you scribes out there from joining up with the CWU. In another announcement from COSATU strongly welcomed the renaming of the Gauteng airport as the Oliver Reginald (“O.R.”) Tambo airport. So does the Communist University! So far we have covered five salient events within the “conjuncture” without archiving any particular documents, but the last one had better be put up in full, or as they say, “verbatim”. It is Jacob Zuma’s speech to the SADTU Congress, which was done at the insistence of the delegates, when the ANC showed reluctance to release its Deputy President for the task. Too many media pundits and politicians claim that JZ has nothing to say, but that is because they don’t pay attention to what he does actually say. See the link below. SADTU’s post-Congress press conference is scheduled to take place at Gallagher Estate at 15h00 today, when the COSATU-affiliated teachers’ union will announce its new national office bearers. Click on this link: Address by ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma to SADTU Congress (3297 words)