No Nonsense

The statement of the ANC Electoral Commission Chairperson, Bertha Gxowa, linked below should be well noted.

This morning, there are suggestions in the press that there is to be a further NEC meeting “half an hour before the start” of the Polokwane Conference, allegedly to call into question the Secretary General’s report. If this is true, then it is highly improper. The NEC members can raise any objections they may have from the Conference floor. They should not be trying to stifle Comrade Kgalema Motlanthe before he even speaks.

If it is true that outgoing NEC members are trying to do this, then it is likely that they are going to try to raise further procedural difficulties for their own, sectarian, tactical reasons. One possible dirty tactic would be to question the electoral process. Therefore note the exemplary way that Comrade Gxowa has gone about her work, and be prepared to help to stop any interfering nonsense.

COSATU GS Zwelinzima Vavi’s long interview with the London business newspaper, the Financial Times, covers a lot of ground and reveals, quite well, many of the strengths and the weaknesses of South African organised labour at this time. See the second linked item.

Cde Dinga Sikwebu has made a public contribution to the discussions around the ANC’s Polokwane, Limpopo, 52nd National Conference, in the South African Labour Bulletin. His argument, on a brief reading of the lengthy text, is not only that Limpopo will not be Morogoro, but also that Morogoro was not really “Morogoro”, in the sense that “Morogoro” stands for a commitment to socialism. So, what?

Cde Dinga undermines the famous Morogoro “Strategy and Tactics” document by suggesting that the actual Morogoro event was preoccupied with other things. In that case, you have to wonder: Why did Cde Dinga want to set up this comparison in the first place? If he is saying that our problems are now, and not to be fixed in relation to any document of the past, then that must be true. We study the past, and the present, for education, and not because we are in search of dogma. In that case let comrades rather demolish the new “Strategy and Tactics”, the one that floats the idea of a semi-fascist “National Democratic Society”, rather than tilting at a document that is nearly forty years old.

A young lion, Comrade Sphiwe Xolani Thulani Mkhize ka Mphungwa, has produced a wonderful piece of writing and requested the Communist University to publish it, and it is an honour for us to do so. Please keep writing, Comrade Sphiwe. See the final item below.

Cde Sphiwe’s piece is also about the Polokwane ANC conference. By all means contrast and compare it with Cde Dinga’s experienced style. Are the young lions as good as the old lions? If they are not, yet, then they certainly need to be, and the sooner they catch up, the better for all of us.

Good luck to all delegates to the 52nd ANC National Conference. For four days from Sunday, they will constitute the ANC, whose flag we fly today. May those delegates do their work well!

Click on these links:

Statement from the ANC Electoral Commission (252 words)

COSATU GS Zwelinzima Vavi interview, Financial Times, London (2489 words)

Can Limpopo be another Morogoro, Dinga Sikwebu, Labour Bulletin (2475 words)

Did fallen heroes fight and die for this circus? Sphiwe Mkhize (1208 words)