Conspiracy Theories

The Communist University meets this evening at 17h00 in the SACP boardroom, 3rd floor, COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein.

In case you have forgotten it during the Easter break, the topic is the ANC “Green Book” of 1979.

There are a number of comrades in the SACP who are eager to “prove”, by means of documents said to be lodged at Wits University, that the ANC “officially adopted” the Green Book.

It would then follow, presumably, that the Green Book could be cashed like a cheque, and the present-day ANC NEC and leadership in general would shame-facedly hand over the keys to socialism that they had wrongfully denied us for so many years.

This is double foolishness. It is first and foremost a conspiracy theory, and secondly, it is not political.

Conspiracy theories are useful, because conspiracies do exist. But when conspiracy theory becomes a substitute for politics, then we have moved into a “Twilight Zone”. A hundred Green Books sworn on the Bible, the Koran and the Tibetan Book of the Dead would not, of themselves, change the political balance of forces in the present moment, at all.

We study the Green Book for the lessons that may be in it, if we can find them in dialogue. We should not expect to find in it a stick to beat the current ANC leadership with. See the link below.

Sanders Research is a conspiracy-theory web site, and one of the best, no doubt. Another one the CU keeps an eye on is xymphora. The second part and final part of the Lockerbie cover-up story we started yesterday is linked below.

What actually happens in politics is that decisions are ground out in a sustained hard-slog process, often face-to-face with the class enemy. A good example is COSATU’s pursuit of justice in the Rustenburg Platinum Mines case (see Rudi Dicks’ account of it from today’s Business Report, linked below).

You can be sure that no dispatch rider will gallop into the yard of the Constitutional Court at a late stage, hot-foot from Braamfontein, carrying a decisive, dusty document dug from the bowels of the Wits University archives, and save the day thereby.

No, the business will be done more like a cricket innings, out in the open. Mostly, slow and steady wins the race.

Click on these links:

1979, ANC, The Green Book (10658 words)

Lockerbie Cover-up Part 2, The Lie Unravels, Sanders Research (1938 words)

Court returns us to apartheid workplace, Rudi Dicks, B Report (1112 words)