ANC and COSATU

According to James Tweedie, ace reporter of the London’s communist daily newspaper the Morning Star, this should be the 999th issue of the Communist University. The number on the post should be 633; this numbering began when the CU started using a Google Group - http://groups.google.com/group/Communist-University - in 2005, and a blog, http://domza.blogspot.com/ , mashed together with a wikispace web site, http://amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/ .

Before that, e-mails were sent to an ever-growing copy-and-paste list.

The first beginnings of the CU were meetings held in the Hypercube Resource Centre in June 2003; so it is approaching its 5th Anniversary. Maybe it has done some good. Perhaps it has. At least, it has been part of a general growth of political education in South Africa.

As a Freirean thing, the Communist University is not likely to become an institution, or to be benevolently taken under anybody’s wing, or to be in secure possession of bricks and mortar. Wherever it hangs its hat is its home. Apart from what is stored on the Internet, the CU is no more secure than it was in 2003. It could fold any day. The reason it does not fold is that people keep coming to our weekly gatherings. Those old-fashioned study-circle sessions remain the power-house of the whole affair.

One more thing should suffice for today. That is to mention the Marxists Internet Archive, upon which we have relied all along, from the first days when searching the Internet for material to print, then later to put on floppy disks, then later on CDs, and at last in 2005 on to the Internet. We will reflect more about the CU in the next post, but never forgetting that without the MIA there would probably not be anything to write about.

The first, second and third linked items concern the inter-state significance of ANC President Jacob Zuma’s visit to Angola, made on the 20th Anniversary of the battle of Cuito Cuanavale.

Whether Cde JZ stepped on his predecessor’s toes or not, or had revenge, as the journalists would have us believe, is not the real point here. The point is that Cde JZ appears to have opened the road between Angola and South Africa, two large and powerful countries with a long history of past revolutionary solidarity. The flag is that of the ANC’s ally since Kongwa days: the MPLA.

If Zimbabwe can also come right this week, then South Africa has a great deal to thank Cde JZ for, and to thank what used to be called the “Zuma Camp” for. The working-class components of the so-called Zuma Camp, especially COSATU and the SACP, were the ones who put the Zimbabwe question on the South African agenda. Now, increased mutual trade is gong to help us all.

We also feature a major speech of COSATU GS Cde Zwelinzima Vavi to ECSECC in the Eastern Cape; and an article about COSATU by the respected journalist Karima Brown from the Business Day newspaper. Click on the fourth and fifth links.

Click on these links:

ANC President Jacob Zuma on his return from Angola 24 March 2008 (747 words)

Zuma steps on Mbeki’s toes with Angola visit, Hajra Omarjee, Bday (653 words)

Zuma's revenge, R W Johnson, Comment is Free, The Guardian (512 words)

Challenges for a poor province like E Cape, Z Vavi to ECSECC (2928 words)

Why COSATU should focus on core business, Karima Brown, Bday (682 words)

Events Diary