17 January 2007

Legalising Ourselves


We understand that the new Central Executive Committee of PUDEMO of Swaziland, elected at its 6th General Congress in December 2006, is as follows:

1. President - Cde Mario Masuku
2. Deputy President - Cde Dr Gabriel Mkhumane
3. Secretary General - Cde Sphasha Dlamini
4. Deputy Secretary General - Cde Stuckie Motsa
5. Treasurer General - Cde Vusi Mnisi
6. National Political Commissar - Cde Vincent Dlamini
7. National Organising Secretary - Cde Armostrong Robinson

The announcement adds: Together with four additional members, who include a Secretary For International Affairs, plus the regional Chairpersons and Secretaries of the five regions of PUDEMO, as well as the Presidents and Secretaries General of the youth and Women's league, constitute the National Executive Committee of PUDEMO, which will lead the movement for the next four years.

It is approximately 1,500 kilometres from Mbabane, Swaziland to Cape Town, South Africa. It is less than 3,500 kilometres from Mbabane to Mogadishu, Somalia. When the people of Somalia began to build their own order, and threw out the competing mafias that were ruining their lives, they did it by means of a Civil Society movement called UIC. Soon, Civil Society movements will be gathering in the great city of Nairobi, in the adjacent Republic of Kenya, in a gathering without a structure called the World Social Forum. Will they support their fellow Civil Society movement, the UIC of Somalia? After all, this was one Civil Society movement which did actually take a country over from below. We predict the WSF will not do so. We predict that the WSF will do nothing at all about Somalia next week, although we would prefer to be wrong in this prediction.

Meanwhile the puppet junta in Somalia has ordered the country’s radio stations to close down. This is the freedom and democracy that the USA brings.

The Swazis should take note of all this. The US would like to say: nobody makes revolution, or even regime change, unless we say so. If you do it yourselves, we will come in with military force and restore the old regime. They are now in Somalia. So they are a lot closer to Swaziland than they were even just before Christmas, when PUDEMO was holding its 6th Congress.

Does PUDEMO have a policy to deal with such circumstances? Does it have a diplomatic mission at the United Nations, and a diplomatic presence in the key countries of the world as, for example, the ANC did prior to liberation (with its Chief Rep system)? Not yet, seems to be the answer.

The YCL has issued a press release on the situation revealed by the case of the Ndlebe family. The ANC Youth League has published its fortnightly Hlomelang. And the Communist University programme now includes names of those who will be opening the discussions for the next few weeks. The first section of the year’s programme is dedicated to studying how to avoid the predicament of illegality presently faced by the Somali UIC, and in another way, by PUDEMO. See the three links below.

Tomorrow at 10h00 at the 10th floor, COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein, SACP Deputy GS Jeremy Cronin will be giving the Joe Slovo Memorial Lecture for the Chris Hani Institute on the topic of The Legacy of Comrade Joe Slovo. No doubt this will be equally relevant, since Cde Joe Slovo is the one who led the SACP out of illegality, having lived through the whole period of its previous clandestine existence.

Click on these links:

We deserve better, YCLSA (356 words)

Hlomelang, January 2007 (newsletter)

2007 Study Group Draft Programme, revised, with links (schedule)

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