The Central and the Concrete

Here, linked below, is the full COSATU CEC report, issued to the media yesterday.

Second item is a report from Politicsweb about Public Enterprise Minister Alec Erwin’s performance in Parliament.

Third item is an interview from the US publication Counterpunch, about conspiracy theory, and how it can be a barrier to organisation.

The SACP holds its Central Committee meeting from today.

The SACP Johannesburg Central branch holds its General Meeting (BGM) at 10h00 on Sunday, at SATAWU offices, 13th floor, 29 Kerk Street (between Harrison and Loveday Streets), Johannesburg.

James Tweedie of the Morning Star, London’s communist daily newspaper, has counted the Communist University’s editions (including the ones prior to the introduction of the CU Google Group towards the end of 2005) as being in excess of 975.

That means that if we continue at the present pace we will pass the 1000-edition mark some time next month, March 2008. The e-mail circulation should by then be well over 1600 according to the membership of our two Google groups (one being the “with-attachments” group).

At some point in June 2008 we will celebrate a total of five years of the CU’s existence as a study circle.

What has been its effect? There is no measure of that.

If there could be a measure, we would like it to count the number individuals the CU has brought into the Communist Party, whether in South Africa or elsewhere.

Then we would like to measure the number of plain communist party members who have become actual communists because of CU study circles, whether in Johannesburg or elsewhere.

Party members are not automatically communists. They become communists, if at all, after they join the party, and then they have to be maintained as such, and all of this through collective study.

Finally we would like to know, from out of the communists we have helped to make, how many of them have found themselves educating, organising and mobilising the masses of this and other countries.

The task of the communists is not just to be but also to do, and what they do as communists is to educate, organise and mobilise the masses for the masses' own interest.

The pictures are of black women workers in the USA, from the time of the 1914-1918 World War, taken from the on-line book “Rosie’s Mom”.

Click on these links:

COSATU Central Executive Committee, 25-27 February 2008 (4823 words)

Erwin keeps South Africa in the dark, James Myburgh, Politicsweb (892 words)

Conspiracy Theory and Fears of Betrayal, Counterpunch (3099 words)

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