All Down To Boksburg

The 21st Anniversary all-day event for COSATU is at Boksburg Civic Centre from 10h00 today. Directions to the venue are as per the linked sheet below.

On Friday the Communist University meets at 17h00 in COSATU House for the last time this year. On Saturday there is an SACP Johannesburg Central Branch party at Cde Martin Rall’s place from 18h00 until late, which is also a farewell to Cde Martin, who is going to Argentina in March.

Concerning the Zim event (previously scheduled for Saturday from 12h00 to 19h00 at Xarra Books) the organisers have sent the following message: “Please note that we have changed the date of this weekend’s Freedom In Our Lifetime Festival. It will now take place on Sunday the 10th as opposed to Saturday 9th. Also please note that this freedom festival is free entrance.”

Announcing a date and then later changing it is not good organising, comrades.

Umsebenzi Online came out yesterday. It is the last one before the YCL National Congress, which takes place between 13th and 17th December, in other words between Wednesday and Sunday next week. SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande calls on the YCL to build itself as “South Africa’s Political School for Communism”. See the link below. The rest of the issue is taken up with the SACP statement on the occasion of the reburial of the remains of the late Cde Moses Mabhida, former General Secretary of the SACP, which has been posted here before.

RW Johnson and Khehla Shubane are two liberals who have a space in the Business Day each week called “Face Off”, where they try out their pet theories against each other (see the link below). Sometimes these are wacky and sometimes they are spiteful, but sometimes they hit the nail square on the head, as Johnson did yesterday, when he wrote (concerning Jacob Zuma):

“It doesn’t matter much what case is brought against him now: the ANC rank and file will see it as yet another unfair attempt to use the courts as an instrument of factional struggle. Even a guilty verdict won’t hold water with them now. Indeed, even the verdict against Schabir Shaik looks very unsafe: the court found no evidence of a straightforward bribe, just a symbiotic relationship it didn’t like. You could have said all the same things about Mbeki’s relationship with Sol Kerzner. Things could unravel a whole lot more in 2007.”

The ANCYL responded yesterday in characteristic style to the new threats of the Scorpions/NPA against Comrade Zuma. See the linked statement.

The Saturday Star’s blustering News Editor Willem Steenkamp has written to the CU asking for private talks. This is the editor who published the article by Michael Schmidt that set PUDEMO up for a new round of police brutality and repression. Like the Scorpion Vusi Pikoli, Steenkamp would like to have the power to turn his own public exposure on and off when it pleases him. See the attached link. We have nothing to say to him in private. If you wish to write to him (his e-mail address is on his message), please send a “CC” to the Swaziland Solidarity Network Forum at sa-swaziland-solidarity-eom-forum@googlegroups.com . In any case, join that group here. One of our researchers has turned up a document called “A history of anarchist mass organisational theory and practice” – By Michael Schmidt. As Marx and Engels were to Proudhon and Bakunin, so we are to Michael Schmidt.

Click on these links:

Umsebenzi Online, Vol 5, No. 69, 6 Dec 2006, YCL, Mabhida (4160 words)

How will this year be remembered, Shubane, Johnson, B Day (1605 words)

ANCYL response to reports of fresh Zuma probe (380 words)

Email from S Star News Editor Willem Steenkamp, 6 Dec 06 (263 words)

Directions to Boksburg Civic Centre Hall (directions)