Organisational Renewal, Institutional Hygiene

These Communist University e-mailings are based on material picked up from the print media, other web sites, and e-mailed documents such as press releases; these are archived and linked to the introductory blog and e-mail messages like this one.

The majority of newspaper articles can be found on the Internet. The hard copy will still sell as an artefact in its own right, and as an entry point to the Internet. Some proprietors consequently have no fear that the Internet will do them anything but good. But others have strange, hybrid policies born of insecurity.

The Mail and Guardian has an infuriating policy of holding back its most attractive articles for up to a week. They are perversely convinced that this is better for the paper, whereas it is only going to antagonise the readers. Likewise the City Press and The Citizen. They put up some articles and not others.

As a result, the article “To complete the revolution”, by ANC SG Kgalema Motlanthe in Friday’s Mail and Guardian is not available to us. This is a pity. The fact that the Secretary General had chosen to lead the discussion of the ANC’s conference documents in the public realm was itself a kind of “democratic breakthrough”. But thanks to the Mail and Guardian, the door shuts again. How sad!

What we do have is the unattributed section from Friday’s “ANC Today”, and luckily also today’s front-page City Press article, both about the Organisational Renewal document. This is a large and important discussion document which will have an impact on the June Policy Conference and on the December 52nd National Conference of the ANC. See the links below.

Speaking of organisational renewal, the same Mail and Guardian reveals that Danisa Baloyi is (or was) a director of no less than 71 companies. The first of these to dismiss her following the collapse of her crooked Fidentia business and the loss to 50,000 widows and orphans of death benefits from their late husbands’ and fathers’ faithful contributions was ABSA Bank. Apart from companies, Baloyi had appointments to prestigious positions. This week she also resigned as Chancellor of the University of Fort Hare. We fully expect to hear of at least 70 further resignations by Baloyi very soon. See the link below.

Counterpunch is a great gatherer of material from diverse sources and places. In the linked article by Roger Burbach there is an account of a close tactical battle following the recent election victory in Ecuador of the new President, Rafael Correa. “Never before has it been so clear that it is the people who make history”, says an open letter by Ecuador’s popular movements. Viva!

There are reports in the papers concerning the Western Cape and Gauteng Provincial Congresses of the SACP, but nothing has as yet come the CU’s way directly. Nor have we heard of the results of this weekend’s Political Bureau meeting. These are matters we look forward to hearing about in the coming week.

The picture above is of the late former General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, Comrade Chris Hani, who was murdered on April 10th, 1993.

Click on these links:

Introspection, renewal strengthens movement, ANC Today (994 words)

Limit Mbeki hire-fire powers – ANC, Sthembiso Msomi, City Press (455 words)

Dear Danisa, Jocelyn Newmarch and Maya Fisher-French, M and G (841 words)

Victory in Ecuador, 23 March 2007, Roger Burbach, Counterpunch (1242 words)