Leadership and Mass Determination

The basis of the Communist University is: When the struggle intensifies, the necessity for political education intensifies. Political education should never be suspended, and least of all in times of heightened activity. But in all struggle there is “attrition” - meaning the wearing down of forces, and so it is that the CU has lacked the resources to continue during the days of the COSATU 9th Congress. The next session of the Communist University will be at 17h00 on Friday, September 29th in the Women’s Jail, 1 Kotze Street, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg. The topic will be the outcome of the COSATU 9th Congress. For reading we will use the documents linked below, plus suitable critical writings that we anticipate will appear during the week, e.g. from SACP Gauteng Provincial Chairperson Zico Tamela, and we hope, from “Umsebenzi Online”, which usually appears on a Wednesday. The first linked document, from the Business Day, by Vuyo Mvoko, is a recognition at last from the pages of the bourgeois press that it is a matter of “foot soldiers”, as he puts it, and not of “big men” such as Jacob Zuma or Thabo Mbeki. When the masses are consciously united in action, the leaders are relays and avatars of the vox populi, the voice of the people, which the Romans said was vox dei, the voice of God. (We will read about and discuss the question of mass popular agency in the following week, using Heartfield’s “Death of the Subject Explained”). But Mvoko is wrong to imply in his second last paragraph that the “Zuma denialists” have no foot soldiers. All the anti-Zuma press coverage (including Zapiro cartoons) has been tainted with a vile pollution of racism. Zuma is not good enough, according to the settler mentality, because at bottom he is unassimilated, or not evolved. He is an unreconstructed black man, according to this heavy and obvious sub-text. He, it is currently implied, is what the colonial Governor of Kenya called Jomo Kenyatta: “a leader to darkness and death”. Mvoko is not guilty of this racism, but is somehow unable to spot in this context the large and well-resourced white foot-soldier constituency which is very strongly in tune with such innuendo. Of course, just as in the case of Jomo Kenyatta, as soon as Jacob Zuma looks like succeeding, this same white bourgeois constituency will start flocking to his side, trying to crowd out his proletarian supporters. If the Kenyatta example is anything to go by, this switch will happen very fast. It may well be happening already. It is a test that Jacob Zuma faces, and we as political students must watch closely how he deals with it. COSATU is highly organised and militant. See the linked report on the strike wave. This was the starting situation of the 9th Congress, when the incumbent President of the federation made his very revealing opening remarks, also linked below. SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande addressed the Congress at the beginning of the third day and was very well received. His speech is also linked below. (It was later the same day that the news came through that Jacob Zuma’s case had been “struck off”). The Final Declaration of the Congress (linked below) is among its first fruits. We can use it to assess the Congress. When the amended texts of the resolutions come through they will also be passed on. Another part of the first fruits is the new set of office bearers, which as it turns out is not a lot different from the old, and it therefore feels that it must find internal means of renewal in a bosberaad. See the extraordinary and very frank final linked document. Let us hope that the means of renewal will be the tried and tested ones of unity in action, and not some touchy-feely Arcadian psycho-nonsense. As we may be permitted to say on a holiday weekend: It takes Tutu tango; three’s a crowd; six is politics. Click on these links: Only Zuma denialists say it was not a victory, Vuyo Mvoko, B Day (881 words) COSATU on Strike Statistics 060922 (309 words) Opening by COSATU President Willie Madisha to 9th Congress (5381 words) SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande to COSATU Congress 060920 (6271 words) Final Declaration of the 9th COSATU National Congress (2733 words) COSATU NOBs elected 21 September 2006, meeting to come (448 words)