Illusion and Reality

The Weekender’s Kevin O’Grady tells it like he sees it. Last week he exposed the nature of the job stats. Although his article was sober and in no way exaggerated, at least one reader, Leonard Seelig, was indignant. This week O’Grady explains again, even more patiently and carefully, that a job is a job when it can lift a person out of poverty. That’s what COSATU calls a “quality job”, the kind we all need and want. Most of the new jobs are not of that kind, unfortunately. See the top linked document below. Vukani Mde on the other hand has taken on the demeanour of a grumpy old fart this week. Who would have thought it was in him? It seems that the young whites who blacked their faces for a demonstration got right up Mde’s nose. And it looks like they have got their answer. They and all the other whites are “4-million permanent tourists” in South Africa, according to Mde. It is not the answer they hoped for. It’s more or less than what they were complaining about in the first place. Still, better out than in. See the link below. Kgalema Motlanthe, as the Secretary General of the ANC, knows very well that it takes all sorts to make a world. He reaches this conclusion in his responses to questions from Xolani Xundu and Moipone Malefane of the Sunday Times (see the interview linked below). The journos still feel obliged to try to drive our good Comrade Kgalema like a bull into a boma called “Zuma Affair” but he is more experienced than they are, and manages to say a lot of good things in spite of the one-track-minded questions, including remarks about the urgent need for political education as the basis of the movement. Maybe Vukani Mde has a point about “permanent tourists”, although it’s hard to see why this category should be co-terminous with “white”. There are all kinds of people in South Africa who are on a trip of their own, far removed from the reality that ordinary people can see, touch and measure. The newspapers indulge such fantasies with acres of ballyhoo. One of them is the Gandhi bandwagon, here very well debunked in a short letter to the Sunday Times thanks to C Mathey, linked below. Another is the sky-pilot’s tour led by bishop-for-life D Tutu, not linked. The less said about that one the better. Yet another weird trip is the one based on the peculiar idea that we have just had a presidential election in this country. Actually, South Africa never has presidential elections at all. The President of the ANC will be elected, along with other office bearers, by delegates to their National Conference, probably in December 2007. The ANC will contest a parliamentary election in 2009. The winning party in that election, whether it be the ANC, the SACP (which may also contest that election), or any other one, will only at that stage have to decide who the president of the country will be. It is not those who have supported ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma through his trials who have illusions about this. It is the ones who were happy to see political matters decided in the courts, so long as the results were to their liking. These are people who have no trust in democracy because they don’t trust the common people of this country. Some of the ones who don’t trust democracy are white, but unfortunately a lot of them are also black. SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande’s open letter to Mathatha Tsedu, Editor of the City Press, was first published in full in the latest Umsebenzi Online. Now the City Press has printed a shortened version of it, together with another letter from SACP National spokesperson Malesela Maleka. See the linked item below for these two letters. Tsedu’s original article last week was an attempt to build another set of myths, for the comfort and gratification of his backers, both black and white. Why don’t we be frank on the Communist University and just repeat openly what the City Press has cut from Cde Nzimande’s letter: that Tsedu is “telling lies, without even blinking an eye”? Why disguise reality for the sake of such peoples’ vanity? It only encourages them to spin even more lies. There is a lot of skinder in yesterday’s City Press about the ANC National Executive Committee and the hoax e-mail story. Better to wait for the official announcements today. Since the above was compiled, two very important additional Items have arrived. One is COSATU GS Zwelinzima Vavi’s salute to Thozamile Gqwetha, who was laid to rest on Saturday. As well as being a full and fitting tribute to the late trade union pioneer Comrade Gqwetha, it is also a powerful statement of the need to build on the work of our forebears without resting and in the same spirit, although in new conditions and with fresh kinds of danger to face. See the second last linked item. The last item is COSATU’s denunciation of the “skinder” referred to above that appeared on the front page of the City Press, which comes from “sources” who can only be incontinent members of the ANC National Executive Committee, whom Comrade Vavi has called Mzekezeke. This dispatch will be sent Sunday night for Monday morning. Click on these links: A job is a job when it can lift poverty, Kevin OGrady, Weekender (585 words) Inequality still writ in black and white, Vukani Mde, Weekender (438 words) No ambitions for highest office, Xundu and Malefane, Sunday Times (1477 words) Myths about Gandhi, C Mathey, Sunday Times (299 words) Letters, SACP GS B Nzimande and Spokesperson M Maleka, C Press (646 words) A tribute to Thozamile Gqwetha, COSATU G S Zwelinzima Vavi (2088 words) COSATU Media Release on City Press report (355 words)