Mobilisations

Today at 11h00 at the Sunnyside Park Hotel, Comrades Oupa Bodibe (head of NALEDI) and Ashwin Desai (of CCS) will debate “State Power” under the auspices of the Chris Hani Institute. The SACP has issued a statement on the deaths of 14 teachers, SADTU members, from a single school in a single road accident; and also the deaths of four policemen in the Jeppestown shootout. See linked document below. SACP Deputy GS Jeremy Cronin gave a press conference in Cape Town yesterday. The Star reported his remarks on transport, including road accidents (Cde Cronin is also chairperson of parliament’s transport portfolio committee). News24 reported the same press conference but covered only the political aspects and whether it will be possible for the SACP to have its own candidates and still remain in an alliance with the ANC. Cde Cronin thinks it is not a good idea to try. See two documents linked below. As requested by a comrade by e-mail, the South African Labour Relations Act and Basic Conditions of Employment Act, in their latest amended form, are now archived on the CU web site, as downloadable files (one is a Word file and the other a PDF). See links below. More and related material can be found on the Department of Labour site. The Johannesburg YCL political school is now meeting on Sunday, and not as per the previous schedule. They will be discussing excerpts from “Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution” by V I Lenin. Please refer to the YCL for details of time and venue. Also today, Israeli war machines are advancing into Gaza, as they have been doing for nearly 50 years, to kill and to destroy. The Israeli colonialists came into power in the same year as the Nats in South Africa. Down with colonialism! Click on these links: SACP on SADTU members accident and Jeppestown killing of 4 police (324 words) Fix transport woes, Cronin, Star (390 words) Alliance split would hurt SA, News24 (630 words) Labour Relations Act, Amended, South Africa, 2002 (1019KB Word download) Basic Conditions of Employment Act, Amended, South Africa, 2002 (534KB PDF download) Two Tactics of Social Democracy, Lenin, 1905 (10805 words)

Picking Up The Pieces

After depriving the Communist University of its land-line connection for the best part of a week and the voice phone for nine days, Telkom phoned to ask if we would like a cellular phone from them. No, thanks. The press comment during that time has to be water under the bridge for us. The links below will be confined to major Alliance statements, starting with the ANC’s response to the SACP “State Power” discussion document. Umsebenzi Online, as well as SACP GS Dr Blade Nzimande’s piece on Intellectualism and anti-Intellectualism, also carries a press statement in response to the ANC’s response. The YCL also responded to the ANC and also to the SABC banning scandal in one press release. In another riposte, COSATU reminded Smuts Ngonyama of the nature of the Alliance. Meanwhile, police were rampaging around the offices of COSATU affiliates in Upington. COSATU GS Zwelinzima Vavi addressed the ICFTU Executive Board in Brussels with an important input. Then ANC Today, the on-line weekly magazine that also carries President Thabo Mbeki’s blog, launched another (anonymous) broadside at the SACP’s document. Ki kulacho, ki nguoni mwako. Click on these links: ANC response to SACP discussion document, bilateral, 19 June 2006 (7167 words) Umsebenzi Online, 21 June 2006, Intellectuallism and anti-Intellectualism (2524 words) YCL on ANC briefing notes and on SABC censorship (460 words) COSATU response to Smuts Ngonyama (295 words) COSATU, Union offices stormed in Upington, 21 June 2006 (352 words) COSATU Input to ICFTU Executive Board, Brussels, 22 June 2006 (1042 words) God save us from false prophets, ANC Today, 23 June 2006 (3116 words)

Who's Who

The Communist University meets this evening at 17h00 in the Women’s Jail, 1 Kotze Street, Constitution Hill, to discuss Chapter 4 part C of “What is to be Done” by V I Lenin. This work makes very clear the difference between a trade union and a political party, and hence the general difference between the mass, the party, and the class. It should also begin to make clear the unique nature, as a class, of the proletarian workers. This class sells its labour power, produces surplus value (thereby maintaining capital) and is organised in turn by capital, as well as exploited by it. The linked short piece on trade unions by Dominic Tweedie from the forthcoming Umsebenzi (by permission) on trade unions may assist in understanding this general relationship, or at least part of it. In the next session (June 30th, same time and place), we will look at Capital Volume 1, Chapter 1 (see link below) by Karl Marx, and after that proceed to Marx’s “Value Price and Profit”, so as to understand the question of surplus value more precisely. Having understood the unique position of the modern working-class proletariat, we should be in a better position to differentiate between it and its allies (which are not identical with itself). The communist parties have always advocated alliances. That is the reason why the SACP’s symbol, like many other communist parties, is the hammer and the sickle. The hammer represents the proletarian working class. The sickle represents the petty-bourgeois peasantry, and by extension, the urban petty-bourgeois poor. This alliance is not optional. It is essential if the workers are to achieve their aims. The Communist University is still crippled. Telkom keeps promising, but has done nothing to repair the connection we rely on. Anyone who wishes to help could call (free) 0800 375 375, and press 3 (“to check progress of a fault”). Then give the reference 23ARK180606 and ask them when it is going to be fixed. Click on this link: Trade Unions, Dominic Tweedie, Umsebenzi June 2006 (388 words) Capital, Volume1, 01, Commodities and Money, parts 1, 2 and 4, Marx, 1867 (9044 words)

Ostracism

The public broadcaster (SABC) has been using “analysts” as a way of fixing the meaning of what they report in the news within a controlled range of interpretations. A reporter relates the facts, and then the snobby anchorperson immediately turns to the pompous “analyst” to voice out the previously-approved meaning of the event. All three types of people (reporters, anchors and analysts) co-ordinate their presentation to give an impression to the viewer or listener that theirs is the only possible or at least the only reasonable way of understanding the political matter in question. It is safe to assume that Communist University students are wise to the way the news is spun on the SABC in this way. The e-TV News is practically the same. If anything it is even more patronising than the SABC, and that is normal. The capitalist commercial media might feel obliged to match the standard of the public broadcaster, but they are not likely to exceed it. Now Snuki Zikalala, the manager of SABC news, has managed to destroy the whole carefully-constructed illusion at one stroke. By black-listing Vukani Mde, Karima Brown, William Gumede, and Aubrey Matshiqi (see linked Sowetan article) he has blown the whole game right open. All “analysts” have now crudely been given notice that if they say anything Zikalala’s goons don’t like, that is the last time they will be welcome on SABC. What is more, all the viewers and listeners will also know that the previously tacit system is now explicit and blatant, or as the US Imperialists have it: “in your face”. This is a very shocking situation. So long as Snuki Zikalala is in post, there can be no more credibility where the public broadcaster is concerned. It is hard to see how Dali Mpofu can stay on, either. Or rather, they can stay, but the SABC is not likely to be taken seriously until they have both gone, and the news service reconstructed in a way that restores some trust. This is not a reversible situation. The set-up will have to change radically. The snooty “celebrity” anchor people will have to go. The whole idea of pre-cooking the news has to go. Real people have to take over and bring the content to us fresh and raw. People, that is, who refrain from using verbal and grammatical tricks. The most believable people now are four: Mde, Brown, Gumede and Matshiqi. More names have been added to the list (which is rapidly becoming a roll of honour) such as Vuyo Mvoko, Xolela Mangcu, Sipho Seepe, Moeletsi Mbeki and Zehir Omar. Those still appearing on SABC now have to carry the stigma of being Zikalala’s stooges, whether they are or not. This is the unintended but inevitable consequence of black-listing. Of course we do not need to exaggerate the politics of the ostracised ones. None of them are communists. The commies were frozen out long before. John Perlman on SAFM Morning Live this morning at about 07h15 rescued his own credibility to a large extent while interviewing the SABC management spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago. The latter, grasping at a newly-famous phrase for support, kept claiming that the bannings were “only a discussion document!” Perlman pressed on and eventually insisted that he knew from his experience that these bans are being applied already. Kganyago said: “Well, I am not in the News Room”, to which Perlman replied: “I am!” This is a crisis “of our young democracy”. It is one of those occasions when a previously deadening and meaningless cliché all of a sudden comes to life. Karl Marx had his own pet phrase for such moments: Hic Rhodus, hic salta! The Communist University has its own problems, courtesy of a Telkom ADSL line fault reported on Sunday and not yet fixed by today, Wednesday. CU has to go wireless. Telkom’s copper cables are not being properly cared for any more. If today’s edition reached you late, this is the reason why. Click on these links: SABC blacklists disloyal critics, Kingdom Mabuza, Sowetan (335 words)

Publish And Be Damned

The ANC National Working Committee has produced an 11-page response to the SACP’s discussion document on "State Power". This response has been given to the media but is not yet on the ANC web site. The CU has a hard copy only. The impression it gives is that the writers think that the SACP discussion is not about South Africa but about them, the ANC. On the first page the NWC document refers to the ANC as the “ruling party”, in contradiction of the ANC National General Council which last July reaffirmed that the ANC is a liberation movement, and not a party. The ANC NWC has nothing to say about the question of SACP candidates in elections. They must know that this is the main reason for the SACP Commission (for which our discussion document is only a guide). The tone of the NWC reply is impatient and condescending. It tells off the SACP for “subjectivism” and ignores the question of freedom. Without the “subject” there is no freedom. When their document surfaces in electronic form, it will go up on the CU site and be distributed by e-mail. In last Saturday’s (Business Day) Weekender Hopewell Radebe opened a piece on Dali Mpofu’s difficulties at the SABC as follows: ‘When the courtesan Harriette Wilson threatened to publish her memoirs and the contents of secret letters she had received from the Duke of Wellington, he is said to have replied: “Publish and be damned!”’ Now comes a letter from Ronald Suresh Roberts, which the Business Day has published for this literary courtesan in the same bold Wellingtonian spirit. And indeed, spiteful though Roberts is, his incontinent viciousness is not going to forestall his own damnation in this case. By accusing Vukani Mde of being “embedded” (because Mde once worked for COSATU) Roberts has managed to insult the major part of South Africa’s press corps, namely all those who have come through the ranks of the movement, and gone on to the mainstream media or to government. What on earth got into him? Of all examples of embeddedness, his own was among the most flagrant (when he was running Kader Asmal’s amen corner). The accuser accuses himself. All his bluster and reckless hazard of his own reputation was quite wasted, of course. The lack of good coomunication between COSATU and the government cannot be denied. It is a truth generally acknowledged. Even the ANC (in the current discussion paper on leadership) shows this awareness by proposing four permanent seats for COSATU on its National Executive Committee. Far from damaging Mde’s career prospects, Roberts has only added to his own professional notoriety. If he continues to make a virtue of unpleasantness he may find himself not published any more but only damned as a simple bore, and rightly so. See his letter, linked below. Zalmay Khalilzad is the US ambassador, or viceroy, in Iraq. A message from himself to Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, recounts what is going on among the three Iraqi women and six Iraqi men who work in the “Public Affairs Office” of the huge US embassy (as big as Vatican City) in the closed-off “Green Zone” in Baghdad. This ambassador seems to be in the position of so many whites under the old regime, who had no contact with reality other than through their domestic employees. Helena Cobban on her distinguished blog “Just World News” sets out the background and the significance of this communication, which appears to be genuine. See link below. e-Naledi is an e-mail magazine from the National Labour and Economic Development Institute. See the linked version below. It includes reference to a book called Labour Pains: Women’s Leadership and Gender Struggles in COSATU, by Liesl Orr, available from NALEDI. To subscribe to e-Naledi, contact lebogang@naledi.org.za . Click on these links: Impartial truth, Ronald Suresh Roberts, Letters, Business Day (393 words) Khalilzad reports things falling apart, Helena Cobban, Just World News (1321 words) E Naledi 15 June 2006 (423 words)

Uyindoda eMadodeni

In pure class terms, the working class has two possible choices of alliance partner, or it could try to “go it alone”. One option is for the working class to go with the big bourgeoisie in a corporatist pact. There was a small group of enthusiasts who promoted this idea in the early 1990s, led by Professor Eddie Webster. The product of that agitation was NEDLAC. Corporatism has never been fully consummated in SA, however, because neither partner really fancies the other one. Plus it has a bad name, inherited from Benito Mussolini’s association with the term “corporatism”. The Italian Fascist version was the descendent of anarcho-syndicalism, just as ours is the descendent of South African “workerism”. But nobody wants corporatism any more. “Going it alone” as a class would simply mean the working class abandoning the other main section of our population, namely our long-time allies the peasant and urban petty-bourgeoisie. These are the ones referred to as “the poor” in the SACP’s slogan: “With and for the workers and the poor”. Such an abandonment would result in a liberal or reformist pan-bourgeois pact against us, of the kind that exists in many so-called “social-democratic” countries. Such a pact would at first exclude the revolutionary proletariat from power and then infiltrate it, splitting it and “bourgeoisifying” it until bourgeois ideology rules supreme over all three main segments: monopoly-bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, and working-class. “Going it alone” is just another form of liquidationism. The only revolutionary road is an alliance of the workers and the poor petty-bourgeois against Imperialist monopoly finance capital. This is what our tripartite alliance (institutionalised around the African National Congress) has been in the past and can be in the future. Those who think that the popular movement that we have built can be abandoned are forgetting that this would put the actually-existing ANC straight into the hands of the monopoly bourgeoisie as a free gift, and leave the task of building another institutional vehicle of popular alliance to take its place, or rather to compete with it. The clear realisation of the necessity of a popular anti-monopoly alliance in South Africa, and hence the defence of and strengthening of the presently institutionalised Tripartite Alliance, is personified in the full array of senior alliance figures in Durban on June 16th (see first linked article). The only significant exception was the outgoing ANC and State President, Thabo Mbeki. He was in Soweto on that day, doing an artificially-contrived walkabout for the cameras. The big headlines, however, were correctly given to the Zuma-Nzimande-Vavi Pact. We have seen the future, and it rocks! None of the above precludes the SACP standing its own separate candidates in elections. On the contrary, an elected SACP will be a stronger component of the present Tripartite Alliance, making the whole alliance stronger. But the important thing is the underlying class alliance, of workers with the poor, (which is to say with the petty-bourgeoisie), against monopoly capital. The three discussion documents of the ANC, SACP, and COSATU are all now downloadable as PDF files from a page on the Sunday Times web site. They are still available, with links to other historic and relevant documents, from the Communist University’s amadlandawonye site, here. The Sunday Times’s three separate commentaries (linked below together in one document) constitute the first contribution to all three discussions (which are really one discussion) at the same time. Well done, Sunday Times! Christelle Terreblanche’s article in the Sunday Independent (linked) is not as good. The Sindy does much better with the case of Khalid Rashid, in its editorial and in its report of the Wits Law Centre’s research on the whole question of renditions from South Africa. See the linked document below, which contains both articles. Finally, the son Neil, of two South African revolutionary stalwarts, Ben and Mary Turok, has reinstated a materialist theory of the universe that looks like putting the mystical “Big Bang” theory into the dustbin of history (science section). See the last link below. As Bishop Tutu might exclaim (but probably not in this particular case): Wheeeeeee! Click on these links: Zuma stars as saviour of the movement, Harper, Sunday Times (782 words) COSATU laments, ANC tackles, SACP mulls, Xundu and Boyle, S Times (1758 words) Cosatu will have to make friends, win influence, Terreblanche, Sindy (1037 words) Khalid fiasco undermines the rule of law, plus Wits Law Clinic, Sindy (1405 words) South African gives radical history of time, Philp, Sunday Times (726 words)

Communists Soaring

What a pleasure it is to see a big headline saying: Communist Numbers Soar! This was on the top of the front page of The Weekender, the Business Day’s new Saturday paper, yesterday. Although it costs nearly ten rand, this one was well worth the money. Not only is the top story (linked below) music to Communist University ears. The rest of the paper is full of goodies, too. Maybe the best of all is Vukani Mde’s set of bite-sized chunks in his Political Diary. Every one’s a winner! See the second link, below. If you don’t get at least six good laughs out of it, you probably need therapy for depression. This man is on the top of his form. He can write about anything. Even the mention of the death of his friend, Jabu Sithole is done lightly, yet respectfully, and does not seem out of place at all. Look well, O students of the Communist University. This is a master craftsman at work. The SABC under Dali Mpofu is well dealt with in the Weekender’s (linked) editorial. Mpofu’s air of glibness and charm, tinged with a hint of menace, may well not be sufficient to carry off the trick of hegemonising the airwaves as a new condescending “Auntie” in the mould of the old BBC. The days when such a thing was normal are gone. Mpofu may have to bend if he is not to break. Right now he looks as if he is losing it, like a performer “dying” on stage. He should take a holiday. Jacob Dlamini uses a visit to William Kentridge’s exhibition (“Black Box/ Chambre Noire”) at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in Joubert Park as an occasion for a short but brilliantly perfect exposition of the thought of the recently deceased urbanist Jane Jacobs. It would be a wonderful thing indeed if more of our journalists were even a little bit more able to appreciate the true nature of cities. If only a few of them could achieve again what Dlamini has done in this one (linked) article, it would be a liberation. The Weekender’s report of the June 16th youth rallies on Friday are opportunisitcally pegged to the appearance of Billy Masetlha at the Durban event. Surely the statement of ANC Youth League president Fikile Mbalula was more significant? He said (as reported towards the end of the article) that the youth would determine their leaders and would not allow themselves to be ruled by “surprise leaders". That one hit the target all right. Long may this blaze of great writing continue in the Weekender. South Africans have always been able to do this thing, given the chance. Here is an example of the chance well taken. Click on these links: Communist numbers soar, ANC leaders row, Brown, B Day Weekender (999 words) Political Diary with Vukani Mde, Business Day Weekender (1383 words) SABC problem, bias or bungling, Editorial, B Day Weekender (663 words) No still life in teeming Joubert Park, Jacob Dlamini, B Day Weekender (814 words) Masetlha opts for Zuma rally, Musgrave and West, B Day Weekender (616 words)

What's Goin' On?

When newspapers write about people and things that you know, they always look stupid. A reporter who has only had a short time to learn the facts is bound look superficial from the point of view of an insider. That is understandable. It is different matter when the writer is obviously attempting to mislead. Such is the article of Matuma Letsoalo in this week’s edition of the Johannesburg Mail and Guardian, linked below. So as to invent an imaginary stampede heading out of the doors of COSATU House, Letsoalo has totted up all the people who have left in the past eighteen months, pretending that they have all left at once. Then Letsoalo carefully avoids mentioning that NALEDI, where three of the people have gone to, is COSATU’s own think tank (it is located right inside COSATU House). One of the latter three is Neva Makgetla. If asked, Neva tells people that she does not regard it as a move at all. At NALEDI she is still working for COSATU. Yet her picture appears in the hard-copy M&G under the heading “Senior officials quit Cosatu” and next to the caption “Zwelinzima Vavi is losing his left-hand woman”. This is gutter journalism. It gets worse. Tanya van Meelis has gone to Standard Bank. This is not mentioned – only that Tanya moved “for personal reasons”. So she needed more money? So what? That is neither grounds for condemning COSATU nor Tanya van Meelis, who has done tremendous research work for the movement, especially on the WTO issue. Both these comrades have addressed the Communist University in the past, by the way, for which we are grateful and which we do not forget. Yolanda Mokhantso, whose name the M&G manages to mis-spell in two different ways in the same article, has recently had a child and her husband has been sent by his employer to another province. All of these normal movements of people in and out of a large organisation are put down by Letsoalo to one imaginary detrimental thing or another. What for? One of the quoted anonymous sources gives the game away a few lines before the end, by referring to the upcoming 9th COSATU Congress, which is scheduled for September. Once again, the Mail and Guardian is scrounging around for tittle-tattle in the hopes of being able to interfere in somebody else’s business. How pathetic. A better example of journalism is the veteran Allan Greenblo. This is the person whose book on Sol Kersner was banned following aggressive legal action by Kersner, a far richer man. Greenblo lost that battle, but honourably. He concludes this (linked) article by saying that South Africa “needs broad-based BEE that is broad-based BEE, which can help finance ownership equity, skills development and social upliftment, not a huge transfer of wealth as an end in itself.” True enough. Last week’s Mail and Guardian carried an article by Zehir Omar, the lawyer for the family of Khalid Mahmood Rashid. Rashid is the man who (as this week’s paper has it from a government statement) was “deported as an illegal immigrant with the help of Pakistani authorities because of his terrorist connections”. As Prof. Shadrack Gutto pointed out on the radio yesterday, this statement alone is enough to cook the government’s goose. Pakistan has a death sentence for “terrorism” and our government is not supposed to send people under these circumstances without a guarantee that the death sentence will not be applied. The government has also threatened the lawyer Omar himself with imprisonment. Joel Netshitenzhe has said that the government can’t be expected to know about individual cases when there are so many deportations all the time. But the SA government did know all about Rashid’s so-called “terrorist connections”. The government seems to be digging a bigger hole for itself with each passing day. Omar’s article eventually appeared on the Internet. Here it is, linked below. You will sometimes read, from miserable Imperialist outlets, that Che Guevara made no impression in Bolivia, where he was murdered by the CIA and their paid local thugs. The linked article from Granma shows what a lie that is. President Evo Morales of Bolivia honoured Che Guevara’s memory in the village of La Higuera, to popular acclaim, in a remarkable and moving event. Lenin’s “What is to be Done” is the clearest exposition of the dialectical relationship between vanguard and mass. Without an understanding of this relationship it is not possible to organise effectively beyond the level of “economism” (reformist trade unionism). See the linked text below, which the Communist University will discuss next Friday. Click on these links: Senior officials quit Cosatu, Matuma Letsoalo, Mail and Guardian (626 words) Broad-based BEE a synonym for elitism, Greenblo, Business Report (743 words) Minister hides behind state security, Zehir Omar, Mail and Guardian (853 words) Following the path of Comandante Guevara, Evo Morales, Granma (629 words) ‘What is to be Done’, Chapter 4, C., V. I. Lenin, 1902 (5767 words)

Soweto Plus 30

June 16th this year has a special significance. Not only is it the 30th Anniversary of the Soweto Uprising of 1976. It also coincides with a new uprising of militancy and political consciousness among South Africa’s youth. This is evidenced by the spectacular growth of the Young Communist League of South Africa over the last three years to its present membership of 30,000, as well as the parallel growth in militancy of the ANC Youth League during the same period, and the strong fraternal bonds between the two organisations. The YCL is to hold its First National Congress this year in Umlazi, at Mangosuthu Tecknikon from the 13 – 17 December 2006. There will be a total of 1500 delegates present, drawn from local structures. The June 16th (Youth Day) statements of the SACP, COSATU and the YCL are all linked below. The messages of President Thabo Mbeki, the ANC, and the ANC Youth League are all in ANC Today, published yesterday. The South African Municipal Workers’ Union (SAMWU) is in a negotiating process. For the Communist University, these procedures are of great interest. Watching them, we are able to learn how workers struggle tactically to defend their position under conditions of capitalist state power. In this case a facilitator has framed a proposal (see link) which now goes out to membership for their approval, or rejection. Zimbabwe Solidarity Forum is an ad hoc network of “civil society formations” essentially led and held together by an NGO, the Centre for Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR), supported by the SA NGO Coalition. It will meet at 10h30 on June 22 in Braamfontein (see linked notice). It is in the nature of such a body, without formal membership or constitution, that one can never be sure of who has the right to be informed of or to attend their meetings. Clearly in the circumstances, and in the absence of any other substantial broad forum for Zimbabwe in South Africa, it needs the greatest possible support. An e-mail address is given. The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) is a think-tank and a child of the old liberal-monopoly-capitalist Urban Foundation, which was unbundled in the early 1990s. Its current Senior Research Fellow and former director is Steven Friedman, the very model of a post-modern “analyst”, in which capacity he now has a host of imitators. The current director is Chris Landsberg, of “Native Club” fame. Like the CSVR, the CPS is fond of invoking the phrase “civil society”, and so conjuring up an imaginary legitimacy free of all material evidence of any democratic content. For its latest attempt at projecting influence from leafy Rosebank, the CPS is joining forces with the CSVR to invoke yet another indeterminate buzz-phrase: “developmental state”, which in the CPS’s case is an undeveloped mental state, willfully uninformed of the expressions of organised masses of people. The deliberate exclusion of the vanguard and mass movements (SACP, COSATU and ANC) from the latest CPS/CSVR programme, in favour of nebulous “civil society”, at a time when all three major structures of our leading Alliance have recently launched their own debates on the state, is only like a ram trying to bust a billion-kilowatt dam: high hopes. Those with time on a Tuesday morning to “engage” with these ladies and gentlemen should respond to the notice linked below. But this is a sideshow, to be honest. There is no Communist University today. It is a public holiday, and many comrades will be spending the day at rallies. The reading for next week is here. More on this tomorrow. The Johannesburg Central Branch of the SACP will hold this month's BGM on Sunday, June 18th. This is one week earlier than originally planned. The reason for the change of date is to avoid a clash with the SACP Johannesburg District Congress, which is to take place the following weekend, on June 24th and 25th. The BGM will debate the SACP “State Power” discussion document, and elect delegates for the District Congress. Click on these links: SACP on 30th Anniversary of 1976 Students Uprisings (1940 words) COSATU National Youth Day message, 16 June 2006 (1044 words) YCL of SA, June 16 30th Anniversary message (1370 words) SAMWU, Proposal being considered by members (251 words) Zimbabwe Solidarity Forum meeting, CSVR, 22 June 2006, 10h30 (notice) Civil Society Developmental State, CPS, 27 June 2006 11h00 (notice)

Problems of Peace and Socialism

The CU overlooked a good article in Sunday’s City Press by YCL National Chairperson David Masondo, and this was pointed out by a subscriber. Here is the article, linked below. Business Day carried a report on Tuesday about oil and gas drilling in Cuban waters, from the US news agency, Bloomberg. It is not immediately clear whether it is good news or bad. If Cuba has its own oil, that is great news. See the linked article. Bongani Masuku is the Secretary General of the Swaziland Solidarity Network. Linked below is his latest article about HIV/AIDS in Swaziland. The shocking story of Nepalese Communist Party leader Chandra Prakash Gajurel being sentenced to 3 years “rigorous imprisonment” in India for a passport violation (which he denies) was found by accident. The sentence mainly seeks to legitimise an incarceration which has already happened. See link. Lastly, a (linked) article from a US specialist business magazine about the use of wikis in organisations. The SACP, or the ANC, for example, could have collaborative wikis in each branch, district and province and for specialised purposes as well. Click on these links: Mbembe false prophet analogy faulty, David Masondo, City Press (546 words) Cuban Oil and the US embargo, Bloomberg, Business Day (1088 words) HIV and AIDS, a political question in Swaziland, Masuku, SSN (1232 words) Nepalese Communist sentenced to 3 years in India, The Hindu (219 words) Working with wikis, Paul Gillin, SearchCIO (2145 words)

A Young Movement

The Young Communist League meets this evening at 17h00 in the SATAWU offices, 13th floor, Old Mutual Building, 29 Kerk Street, (between Loveday and Harrison), Johannesburg. They will discuss the March, 1850 Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League, by Karl Marx, in which he mentions “permanent revolution” – meaning a completed revolution and not a half-baked one. Next week at the same time and place the YCL will discuss Joe Slovo’s 1988 “The SA Working Class and the NDR”. See the link below. The YCL held a packed press conference yesterday and touched on various significant and even controversial things. See their own actual statement, linked below. As the CU some time ago suggested it might, the Business Day has moved a long way towards supporting Jacob Zuma for president of the republic. See Business Day political editor Karima Brown’s article below. COSATU’s Gauteng Province marched yesterday to the Australian High Commission in Pretoria and handed over the memorandum linked below, in solidarity with Australian workers facing anti-working-class legislation under the Howard government. Cuba is to be the next chair of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM). The linked document gives a lot of information on the XIVth NAM Summit and the Cuban-style Online Debate around it. See the linked document and find out how to participate. AND LAST, BUT NOT LEAST! COSATU’s Political Discussion Document is out and contains plenty of challenging material to respond to (e.g. on “business communism”!). This document is to form the basis for debate at COSATU’s 9th National Congress in September. It will be the subject of a press conference this morning at COSATU House, 1 Leyds Street, Braamfontein at 11h00. You saw it here first! The link is below. Click on these links: SA Working Class & National Democratic Revolution, Slovo, 1988 (14985 words) YCL on SACP, Intelligence, Youth Month, and 1st National Congress (1798 words) Business and President Zuma, Karima Brown, Business Day (819 words) COSATU Gauteng memorandum to Australian High Commission (619 words) Online Debate, Cuba, venue of the XIV NAM Summit (1372 words) COSATU Political Discussion Document for 9th Congress, draft 5 (14712 words)

Capitalism is Capitalism

Tokyo Sexwale bought his wife an 8-seater Lear Jet for a Valentine’s Day present. This is the kind of thing you can do if you are “deployed to the private sector”. And if Comrade Tokyo should be re-deployed back into politics, would Judy get to keep the jet? You bet she would! Khathu Mamaila does not usually criticise the bourgeoisie in his City Press column, but this example of conspicuous consumption was just too much even for him. See the linked article below. The SACP’s discussion document on “State Power” (729 views) is one of the most popular pages on the Communist University web site. At the bottom of that page, links are provided to many other related documents. Not so many people have viewed the ANC NEC discussion document on challenges of leadership as yet (63 views). Linked below is the City Press’s short version of it. The truly sensational reports in the Johannesburg Star carried here two days ago have brought forth a response, kindly sent to the CU by Dale McKinley. It is by The Reverend Nicholas Mkaronda of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition and it is linked below. It includes the following paragraph: “I want to first of all thank the newspapers for bringing these stories to light, and must say that I do not doubt in any way their observations about the issues of Zimbabwean refugees at the church. I think one of the roles of the media is to inform society of the burning issues in a community. Thank you very much.” This is a lot different from Hassen Lorgat’s letter to The Star yesterday, which starts off like this: “The article "Place of worship now a den of inequity" (The Star, June 8) by Solly Maphumulo, with a picture of a once "posh church", is a hatchet job that should not be allowed to pass off as quality journalism. It is motivated by xenophobia.” Lorgat is the Communications Manager of the SA NGO Coalition. In an inter-union dispute over affirmative action, COSATU affiliate NUMSA lambastes FEDUSA and others for seeking to put a time limitation on affirmative action that is unrelated to the achievement of the general goals of that policy. See the linked item below. Today’s Young Communist League Press Conference will inform us of the YCL’s initial response to the SACP discussion document, their demand for release of certain papers from the Intelligence Ministry, and their plans for the current YCL Youth Month. See the notice link below. There are two COSATU marches today in Gauteng. About 1000 FAWU members will be marching to the head office of Kraft Foods SA at Woodmead (Woodlands Office Park) at 13h00. The union will be handing over a memorandum detailing a list of demands. And the Gauteng Province of the Congress of South African Trade Unions will be picketing at the Australian High Commission, 292 Orient Street, Arcadia, Pretoria, (Opposite USA Embassy) from 12h00 till 14h00, in solidarity with the Australian Council of Trade Unions, who are fighting against draconian new labour laws passed by the Howard conservative government. Click on these links: Capitalism is capitalism, Khathu Mamaila, City Press (733 words) The ANC’s future, by the ANC, City Press (2301 words) Response re Jhb Central Methodist Church, Rev N Mkaronda (2020 words) NUMSA, Limiting affirmative action will distribute resentment (363 words) YCL press conference, State Power, conspiracy, youth month POA (notice)