Respect

[CU for Tuesday, 13 October 2009]

At long last, the SACP web site is carrying the Communist University!

This is a great honour. It is the high point of more than six years’ work since June, 2003 when the first Communist University study circle sessions started in Johannesburg, convened by Makhi Ndabeni, Zico Tamela, and Dominic Tweedie [The image is of Domza, the VC, for the first and last time].

Click here to go to the main Communist University index page on the SACP web site

It’s great to see that the SACP site is now also carrying a link to the Marxists Internet Archive, which has always been the biggest single source of material for the Communist University. The MIA is a huge library and resource, and is a great boon to the world.

The CU’s blog/e-mail output since July 2009 has been oriented towards reviewing and re-publishing the original set of “Generic Courses” that were put up on the CU “amadlandawoye” Wikispace web site in 2005.

These will now number eight, of which five have so far been put up on the SACP web site. The full set of 8 will be (links are to CU Google-group sites):

• Basic Communism
• No Woman, No Revolution
• Karl Marx’s Capital, Volume 1
• Lenin’s “The State and Revolution”
• National Democratic Revolution (NDR)
• Urban/Rural, Local/Provincial Development (awaiting SACP discussion documents)
• Anti-Imperialism, Peace and Socialism (under construction)
• Philosophy, Religion and Revolution (under construction)

“NDR” and “Urban/Rural, Local/Provincial Development” have been prepared as contributions to the discussions around the 2009 SACP Special National Congress.

The final total number of prepared discussions in these eight Generic Courses will be 100. Each one has a corresponding downloadable MS-Word file, plus an “opening” text of commentary and continuity from the CU. There are also 78 additional (optional) downloadable files for further reading or supplementary discussions.

On hundred weekly sessions would stretch over a period of between two and three years; but in practice, other material would be used, such as some of the 20 issues of Umsebenzi Online that are published each year, for example.

So we can now say that the availability of material for study-circle dialogue from the SACP web site is abundant, and is not a constraint to political education in South Africa.

Naturally, comrades from other African countries, and from other parts of the world, are very welcome to use this material. This is the free university for people who love to read and who love dialogue.

Viva SACP, Viva!