We Name Names

The Communist University meets today to discuss Mzala’s “Cooking the rice inside the pot” at 17h00 in the SACP boardroom, COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein.

J Arthur Brown, the bragging bully Fidentia crook who helped take billions off the widows and children of (especially) migrant mineworkers (who probably saw very little of their families during their working lives) has been arrested and charged, together with Graham Maddock, the crook accountant. These men are so far still defiant and confident in the righteousness of the capitalism that crushes the hopes of the poor for the sake of the fantastic Ferrari life of the rich. They have time to think about it now.

Some think about crime in terms of stereotypes like “The Godfather”, as if there has to be a boss and a pyramid hierarchy. This was not the case at Fidentia. Maddock was already a big crook before Brown came along, and the crooked corporate vehicle that became the Fidentia monster was already in place.

Others like Baloyi and Goodwin likewise had their own bases. They did not wait for Brown’s orders. These were colleagues in crime, not subordinates. They were crooks in their own right. That is why it is only a small victory to have Brown and Maddock behind bars, and wrong to call them “kingpins”, as today’s Business Day headline does. Because most of the bad seed is still out there.

In particular, the crook trustees who sold their trusts away to the Fidentia cronies are still walking around free. They must all be picked up and dealt with. Criminal charges are not enough for them. They must pay up their money to the widows and orphans, and be cut right back to the same condition as those poor widows and orphans.

The remainder of Sunday’s exceptional crop of articles is linked below. One of the values of the CU archive is that it now contains so many names, and is searchable. So if, for example, a crook like Danisa Baloyi who seems to be untouchable, should start menacing you with libel action in court, you can always run a search for “Baloyi” in the CU site and get a good selection of articles to defend yourself with. If you do it today you will get 5 articles with “Baloyi” in the title and 10 with “Baloyi” in the body text. You can also search the CU blog. “Baloyi” in the search box (top left) gets six replies there as of today.

Sunday’s papers had a large number of articles that named names. For example the collapse of the SABC (so evident now if you listen to the radio) in terms of staff rushing for the exits is treated in detail by the City Press (linked); as well as in terms of John Perlman’s departure (Sunday Independent link).

Then there is the case of the four lawyers where three ganged up on the other one and lost. These were Mandela, Bizos and Trengove versus Ayob. Bizos and Trengove say they were trying to defend Mandela’s reputation, but if they had deliberately set out to show off the hero’s feet of clay they could not have done a better job. And incredibly, this was the second round of this nonsense. These guys just could not learn. Mandela lives in the hearts and minds of the people. He is not a “brand”, even if he thinks so himself. What was Bizos thinking? Surely, there is no fool like an old fool. See the two links.

The bourgeoisie is not an abstraction. It is a concrete and internally-contradictory collection of abstract parts, who happen to be individual human capitalists with names. In the last three linked articles, each one interesting for itself, large numbers of individual South African capitalist players of today are named and some of their interrelationships are shown up. More for the reading, and more for the archives.

Click on these links:

SABC bosses meet re staff exodus, Cecil Motsepe, City Press (653 words)

Perlman considers options SABC, Edwin Naidu, Sunday Independent (577 words)

R7K payout to Mandela kids led to spat with Ayob, Gordin, Sindy (677 words)

Madiba set me up - Ayob, Sefara and Mapiloko, City Press (992 words)

Kebble cash trail leads to BEE circle, Chiara Carter, S Independent (690 words)

Big names targeted by Scorpions, Mapiloko and Sefara, C Press (585 words)

Telkom bans the usual suspects, Simpiwe Piliso, Sunday Times (700 words)