International Brigade

COSATU GS Zwelinzima Vavi will be the main speaker this evening at Constitution Hill (Women’s Jail Atrium, 1 Kotze Street) at 18h00 the occasion is the launch of a book called “Trade Unions and Democracy”, published by HSRC. The Palestinian heroine Leila Khaled met with COSATU office-bearers and later addressed the media in COSATU House yesterday, making a powerful impression. Together with COSATU’s President Willie Madisha she made the call for a huge international mass movement to put a stop the assault upon humanity that the unrestrained Israeli colonialist aggression represents. COSATU will use all its international influence to this effect. COSATU calls upon the South African government to withdraw its ambassador from Israel and send the Israeli ambassador in SA back. See the linked statement. Today in the morning there will be a further planning meeting of an ad hoc steering committee charged with planning the Free the Cuban Five campaign in September and October this year. On July 26th there will be a general meeting to further consolidate the plans and also to celebrate the Cuban national day. See the linked minutes. Those who hide their past are condemned to repeat it. The Spanish Civil War (in which the communist writer on liberty, Christopher Caudwell whose work the Communist University has often studied, was killed) was an enormous historical event, quite recent in time. It is not known how many communists and other democratic republicans were killed there in battle or later, in cold blood. The linked article tells a lot of this history but by no means all of it. More Spanish communists and republicans were killed in the German Nazi concentration camps, for example. But the article gives a good idea of what lies under the carpet of European appearances of respectability. Click on these links: COSATU meets Leila Khaled (719 words) Free the Five meeting 060707 (925 words) Spanish Civil War, 70 Years On - Deafening Silence, Counterpunch (3071 words)

Working Class Action

Leila Khaled, the freedom fighter and ambassador for the Palestinian people, will meet COSATU officials today in COSATU House. See the notice linked below. 280 bus drivers are on strike in Mafikeng. The employers are former TGWU trade union members, who bought the company in a BEE deal, but have proved to be as bad as any other bosses. The striking drivers have COSATU’s support. See the linked press release. NUMSA is mobilising and leading demonstrations against the imperialist moves in the WTO concerning non-agricultural market access (NAMA) whereby the big monopoly finance bourgeoisie would call the shots all over the world, and the rest starve. See their explanation linked below. Three more COSATU Provincial Congresses will debate Fundamental Change this weekend. Democracy is alive and well among the working class. On July 24th at 18h00 the liberal Denis Beckett will lead a panel discussion on Constitution Hill. This, too, is a small part of democracy. See linked notice. Tomorrow (July 20th) at the same venue (as previously announced) COSATU GS Zwelinzima Vavi will be speaking at 18h00 at the same venue. Click on these links: Leila Khaled to meet COSATU, Invitation to the media (Notice) COSATU supports striking bus drivers (248 words) NUMSA plans marches over tariff reductions (661 words) Three more COSATU Provincial Congresses this weekend (182 words) State of the state panel discussion Con Hill 060719 (Notice)

Enough

“This society no longer recognizes any boundaries, geographical or moral”, wrote an Israeli about his fellow-colonists, quoted by Kathleen Christison in the article linked below. The horrible hypocrisy of the colonial Israeli warmongers and their imperialist supporters even gets noticed in the Johannesburg Business Day (see link). The knowledge of good and evil and the righteous rage against the racist destroyers is not much use. The enforcement of peace in this case needs huge masses of organised people. In London on Saturday there will be a march. It’s a start. Meanwhile, in South Africa, another kind of hypocrisy arises in the shape of the backward-looking pseudo-movement called Solidarity, small but in some ways similar to the Israeli colonialists. COSATU is not supporting them in their latest outburst. See link. The ANC-COSATU bilateral yesterday was not very exciting. See the link below for a very brief report. Political schools are to be part of the way forward. That can’t be bad. Within the South African Communist Party, a meeting of the SACP Gauteng Provincial Council at the weekend elected Zico Tamela, formerly Johannesburg District Chairperson, to be Chairperson of the Province. Jacob Mamobolo was elected to the position of Provincial Deputy Secretary. Additional Member positions will be filled later. Comrade Tamela is a founder member of the SACP Johannesburg Central Branch’s Communist University. Viva! In Mpumalanga the SACP Provincial Congress concluded successfully with a full and properly-elected leadership. See the linked item below. Click on these links: Insane Brutality of the State of Israel, Christison, Counterpunch (868 words) Dishonesty of language of terrorism, Crispin Hemson, Business Day (277 words) COSATU not supporting Solidarity (248 words) ANC-COSATU Bilateral 060717 (219 words) SACP Mpumalanga 6th Provincial Congress report (644 words)

Write, Act, Write

Ron Press is a poet (see the link below). His poem starts: “It is not genetic and not all Jews are affected.” Says Gilad Atzmon (see the second link): “Israel is a racially orientated democracy.” Atzmon is a musician and also the author of a novel called “A Guide to the Perplexed”. This title is borrowed from a work of the immortal Jewish philosopher, Moshe ben Maimon, called Maimonides, or by some “Rambam”, who was born 1135 in Moorish Spain. Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel and served in the Israeli military, but now lives in London. The Palestinians are going to free themselves, but who will save the Jews? Their noble heritage is not represented by colonial Israel. As before, it is to be found all over the world, but hardly in that colony, and least of all in the killer Israeli military forces. Gilad Atzmon seems to know why. Probably that is why he is in London, and not in his native Israel. Join the Palestine Solidarity Campaign at http://www.palestinecampaign.org/ . The visit of Jacob Zuma to Clive Derby-Lewis and Janus Walus, the jailed murderers of the late Chris Hani, is a mystery wrapped in an enigma (see the link below). At least it must be clear by now that we don’t know the whole story about the assassination plot and the killing. So why do some people, such as the Scorpions/NPA, not want that story to be investigated? Another poet is Jeremy Cronin, writing prose this time (see the linked article below), but giving us a poetic word: “metonymy”. We live and learn. Click on these links: Mashuganas, Ron Press (Poem) Echoes of the Wehrmacht, Gilad Atzmon, Counterpunch (1253 words) Zuma prison visit to Derby-Lewis and Walus, Monare, Sindy (909 words) Shifting discourse on racial identity, Jeremy Cronin, Sindy (1697 words)

Mobilise Mass Support

The SACP Johhannesburg Central Branch meets today at 10h00 in the SATAWU offices, 13th Floor, Old Mutual Building, 29 Kerk Street, between Harrison and Smit. This is the last BGM of the current term. The Annual General Meeting is scheduled for August 20th. A meeting between a ministerial delegation of the South African Government and a 60-strong delegation of SA Muslims on July 13th stated, inter alia, the following: “The government and the Muslim delegation unequivocally expressed their condemnation of the current Israeli military offensive both in Gaza and in Lebanon and called on organs of civil society in South Africa to mobilise mass support and solidarity for the Palestinian people.” See the linked document below. The only way to mobilise mass support is through mass democratic organisation. To enquire about joining the Palestine Solidarity Campaign send an e-mail to info@palestinecampaign.org . The SACP has responded to the vulgar brush-off that the ANC National Working Committee tried to give to the SACP discussion document on State Power last month. See the link below. SATAWU still has problems with certain employers in the security industry, even after the settlement of the recent three-month-long strike. These reactionaries are hanging back and playing for opportunities to turn the clock back. See the link below. A year ago it was difficult to find anything in the press that fully reflected the concerns of the majority of ANC supporters. But now, for example, articles in the Weekender by Karima Brown and Vukani Mde reflect what is happening much more closely, even if not perfectly. See the two linked articles below. COSATU’s economist Neva Makgetla, in a short but lucid article from Business Day, shows reasons why COSATU is looking for Possibilities for Fundamental Social Change. See the link below. Lastly there is an event on Constitution Hill at 17h00 on Wednesday. This will be a panel discussion on the “legacy of suffering”, with three listed speakers plus chairperson. Such an arrangement leaves only a fraction of the avaialble time for discussion on the floor. Hence it becomes like watching a TV chat show. The Con Hill event on the following day (Thursday, July 20th, 18h00) is more to the style of the Communist University (as well as taking place in our usual venue) with only one main speaker, namely COSATU GS Zwelinzima Vavi. See the link. Click on these links: SA Muslims not targeted by SA government, Pahad and Jeenah (388 words) SACP PB response to ANC NWC, leading NDR or managing capitalism (6626 words) SATAWU on Fidelity Springbok unilateral abuse (369 words) Calls for Hani, Mbeki probes test NPA, Brown and Mde, Weekender (769 words) Navigating the great divide, Brown and Mde, Weekender (1056 words) Import boom leaves poor in the dust, Makgetla, Business Day (718 words) Con Hill 060719 17h00, CSVR Legacy of suffering seminar, invite (Notice)

Join The Palestine Solidarity Campaign

It is shocking when police fire upon a demonstration in a legal strike and arrest 200 people. Yet somehow people regard this as normal in South Africa these days (see link below) Jews are supposed to be a light held up for the world, which is a wonderful thought, like the idea of “l’Ouverture” (Toussaint), or “Mwalimu” (Nyerere), meaning respectively the opener and the teacher. The Jews were all supposed to try to be like this: moral leaders for the world. In the colonial state of Israel, Jews have become monsters. Their killing has no limit. If “Western” public opinion should trouble them, they give the Palestinians a little food, the better to be able to kill them later on. Western opinion allows killing, but pictures of starvation are unacceptable. See the linked article. It cannot be normal or acceptable for such things to happen whether here or in China, for example. See the ITGLWF report linked below or go to their web site for reports from Nicaragua and other places. Of course comparisons are generally odious. None of this is acceptable, whether here in South Africa or anywhere. But right now the Israeli aggression is the worst thing happening. If you go to the web site of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign you can actually join an organisation which is doing something political about what is happening. The SACP is sending a delegation to China – see the link below for details of this significant exchange. The Harold Wolpe Seminars are back at last. The next one is on August 2nd. The reformist political trajectory of this programme has not changed, however. Developmentalism is first and foremost a denial of class struggle. As such it is obscurantist. Class struggle is still, as it has always been, the motor of history. There is no development without winners and losers. The question is always, who are the losers, and who the winners? Professor Peter Evans wants the winners to be a priestly caste of elite “Castalian” bureaucrats. Of course this is an impossible outcome and its proposal will only serve the imperial monopoly finance bourgeoisie. Developmentalism is nothing more than anti-communism. It is a weapon against the working class. For the memory of the late Harold Wolpe, comrades should flock in numbers to oppose this ideological assault in his name. See the notice linked below. Click on these links: COSATU and CEPPWAWU condemn police action against demo (602 words) Israelis feed so as to continue to kill, Tanya Reinhart, Counterpunch (1208 words) SACP high level 85th Anniversary delegation to China (276 words) ITGLWF concern with factory in Guangdong, China (368 words) 17h15 060802, Con Hill, Developmental State, Wolpe Seminar (Notice)

Battle Lines

The Communist University gathers tonight at the Women’s Jail, 1 Kotze Street, Braamfontein, at 17h00 to debate “Dialectical Materialism” (using John Hoffman’s “Dialego” chapter “What is Dialectical Materialism?”) versus the critique of this formulation which claims that it is a bowdlerisation or vulgarisation of Karl Marx’s work promoted by Kautsky, Plekhanov and Stalin after Marx’s death (using Cyril Smith’s “How the Marxists Buried Marx”). We must practice to defend our arguments when they are pitted against opposing ideas in “real time”. Next week on July 21st we will gather again to discuss Frederick Engels’ “Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” (see linked text below). SACCAWU is the main retail workers’ union in South Africa. It is affiliated to COSATU. It is shaping for a dispute with Shoprite Checkers, one of our biggest retail chains. See link below. Sean Muller is a young South African writer who had a thorough, concise and highly lucid piece published yesterday in the Business Day, on South African transport. He already and explicitly anticipates the impact of the SACP ’s forthcoming Red October campaign. See the link below. The USA is plotting aggression against Cuba and possibly at the same time, Venezuela. See the two different linked articles below, both from US on-line publications. Mr. Danger is at it again. Click on these links: Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels, 1884 (8306 words) SACCAWU battle lines drawn with Shoprite Checkers (702 words) Revolution of wheeled variety needed, Sean Muller, Business Day (844 words) The sinister intent and new measures of the Bush Plan against Cuba (1948 words) Washington Plots Regime Change, Pertierra, Counterpunch (1507 words)

Truth Must Come Out

Seen out of the back of a moving car, things grow smaller until quite quickly a large building might be reduced to a speck, or become altogether invisible. Chris Hani was murdered at Easter time thirteen years ago, in 1993, but his image in the mind does not grow smaller. Even young people who could hardly have known about him when he was alive uphold his memory far above others. The SACP responded to the NPA/Scorpions’ opinion, disrespectfully issued through their media spin-doctor Makhosini Nkosi, to the effect that they would refuse to take the investigation of Comrade Chris’ death to its logical conclusion. See the linked News24 article, which is combined in one document with the SACP’s statement. The Zinedine Zidane and Marco Materrazzi story has more to it than a single head-butt. You can see the head-butt in a mini-video in the linked document below (courtesy of “Mortal Kombat”, wahtever that is). You can also read Dave Zirin’s reasons why he continues to wear his Zidane Jersey. Click on these links: Hani murder right-wing plot, News24, plus SACP statement (933 words) Confronting Racism Head On, Dave Zirin, Counterpunch (924 words)

Clearance

"How is anyone, including the president, “cleared” of wrongdoing without first being investigated?" This is the question asked by Karima Brown yesterday in the Business Day, following the NPA/Scorpions' announcement (by the unfortunate Makhosini Nkosi) that the President had been "cleared" although no investigation had taken place because it was not “warranted”. When an emperor has not clothes, and everybody knows, then there is nothing for him to do except run for cover. Poor Makhosini, who was once a small-time emperor of the airwaves, hasn’t got the message yet. His former colleagues in the press used to cut him a lot of slack, but no more. The game is up. The exposure is complete. See the linked article below. The SACP’s 6th Mpumalanga Provincial Congress is to take place at the weekend – see the linked notice. The SACP yesterday issued an important statement concerning the Sahrawi Republic. Western Sahara is the last colony in Africa that has not yet achieved territorial independence, thanks to the invasion and occupation of its land by neighbouring Morocco after the withdrawal of the previous colonial power, Spain. Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary of COSATU, will speak on Constitution Hill on Thursday, July 20th. Start time is 18h00 and the venue is our familiar Women’s Jail. An obituary was sent in. It is eloquent and strongly felt, and it is of a man, Prof Chachage, who believed in free universities and in popular liberation, and who was loved. The CU salutes such people. Click on these links: Cleared without being investigated, Karima Brown, Business Day (753 words) SACP Mpumalanga 6th Provincial Congress, 060714 (Notice) SACP statement on developments in Sahrawi Republic (281 words) Vavi, Trade Unions and Democracy, Con Hill 060720 (Notice) An Obituary - Prof Chachage (Notice)

Solidarity For Palestine

A media briefing on Palestine took place yesterday afternoon in COSATU House, Braamfontein. It was well attended. The French in Algeria used to call the kind of action the Israelis are engaged in “rattonade”. This is a term full of racism but is at least a lot more frank than the Israeli colonialists presently are about what they are doing. The Israelis have announced that their actions have no time limit. This much is true. The Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank are not “punishments”, collective or otherwise. Punishment in all cases has a limit. Even a death sentence is supposed to be a single and final act. The Israelis cannot stop. Even if they were to drive the all of the Palestinians completely away from their land in a second NAKBA, they would still be compelled to find further victims in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and even further afield. The Israeli colonial state has no other basis than violent and continuous attack. While claiming eternal victimhood, it must victimise, and so it must have victims. It must always find more. The shining towers of Tel Aviv are soaked in blood. Blood is their nature, from which they cannot escape. Their only possible escape would be to peace, but the Zionist entity is incapable of peace. It is in a state of antagonistic contradiction. It must continue to defeat, or it will be defeated. There is nothing else in it. It is often said, and was said again yesterday, that the South African experience might help in Israel/Palestine. We know that colonialism is a relationship of violence that is only maintained by the conscious continuous application of otherwise arbitrary violence. Let there be no dilution of this understanding. The first condition of peace must be the utter defeat of colonialism. This is what we know. What we also know is that it is only a mass democratic movement, both inside the country and outside of it. It exists in Palestine. But if the international solidarity movement does not have a mass and democratic character it will fail to fulfill its part in the necessary anvil-and-hammer-of-peace combination. Yet there are no membership cards on offer, no constitution in view, nor any annual conference or AGM. This is not how it was with the Anti-Apartheid Movement. The AAM was democratic and open to all comers. Its badge was proudly worn by millions, and represented democratic membership and rights, and much more than identity or attitude. It was a token of personal agency. This, also, must not be forgotten. There has to be a mass, democratic movement of solidarity for Palestine, outside Palestine, if any political relief is to be given to the Palestinian people. Yet the illusion still persists that funded NGOs can somehow do the job, in a cheap-and-easy substitution for the difficulties of mass organisation and leadership. NGOs cannot do the job. For the sake of the Palestinian people the south Africans should be saying, from their own experience: you must make this solidarity movement democratic, comrades, or it won't work. Click on this link: Media Statement on Palestine (1643 words)

Scoundrel Time

The front-page article by Simpiwe Piliso of the Sunday Times about the increase in dollar millionaires in South Africa, linked below, is worth reading. It speaks for itself. There is no way to enhance it or summarise it. One must know this situation. The reporter has done a good job, and you will not read such an exposure every day in the bourgeois press. Read it for yourself, and know what is happening to this country. The formation of a black section of the big bourgeoisie is only part of this story, because the great majority of the new millionaires appearing are obviously still white. The answer is not to individualise more artificial black millionaires, but instead to further socialise both production and ownership of the means of production. As for the article on the ANC being a house divided, also linked below; it may be a little over-cooked. Of course the ANC is not a monolith. But what is wrong if branches “take matters into their own hands”? That’s what is called democracy. The reporters Mbhele and Malefane fail to note a very important thing about the Umrabulo article they make so much of in other ways. Namely, that the document proposes a procedure for managing succession that is outside the ANC constitution. That being the case, it is not surprising that Kgalema Motlanthe, the ANC Secretary-General and hence guardian of its constitution, insisted on attribution going to individuals, and not to the ANC as a whole. He had to do that. This article is notable in another way. It takes up a full page of the broadsheet Sunday Times, less the space taken by a quite large photograph and seven small display advertisements. It is an average kind of page. The article is nearly 3000 words long. This gives a good measure of how many words are available on such a page (approximately A2 size), and a baseline from which the number of words in an entire broadsheet newspaper could be calculated. It’s a pleasure and a privilege to be able to relay another of Ron Press’s poems again. Thank you, Comrade. These poems of Ron Press’s are like mental revolutionary half-bricks: handy and powerful. Click on these links: SA millionaire boom, Simpiwe Piliso, Sunday Times (874 words) House divided cripples ANC, Mbele and Malefane, Sunday Times (2887 words) Darkness, by Ron Press (Poem)

Marx V Marxists and other contradictions

A part of the Scottish people spoke Scots Gaelic in the past, and some still do. This language is related to the other Celtic languages of Brittany, Cornwall, Wales and Ireland. It was once also spoken by substantial numbers of Black Americans, as is recorded in a recent Counterpunch article where an eye-witness is quoted concerning the jazzman Dizzy Gillespie, thus: "Dizzy used to tell me tales of how the blacks near his home in Alabama and in the Carolinas had once spoken exclusively in Scots Gaelic.” Other Scots speak a language (“Broad Scots”) somewhat similar to English. The high point (c.1500) of the early literature in this language was the time of the “makars” (makers). These poets had a way of challenging each other to a contest called a “flyting”. The rivals had to compose their work on the spot and in the face of an opponent, who would then try to surpass the first one and dismiss his arguments in return, and so on. A famous example of this genre is “The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie”, being a competition between the poets William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy. When Clement Mokone proposed that the Johannesburg Communist University should discuss “dialectical materialism”, Dominic Tweedie proposed a flyting. Clement chose “Dialego” (John Hoffman) on “What is Dialectical Materialism” as his text, while Dominic has chosen “How the Marxists Buried Marx”, by Cyril Smith (see the links below for these two texts). This flyting will take place next Friday, July 14th, in the Women’s Jail, 1 Kotze Street, Constitution Hill at 17h00. Please come and join in. The town planners of Johannesburg seem to be nearly all white, of a certain age, and hostile to one another, but even more hostile to people they consider to be below their rank. Consequently their debates have been sterile for many years past. This circumstance has been a tragedy for those whose lives could have been relieved of burden, had the academics and professionals been concerned to illuminate rather than to obscure. See the link below for a rare article by Dr Glen Mills. It quotes the great John Turner, humane champion of the settling urban petty-bourgeoisie. The Communist University knows that Mills’ opponents are already sharpening knives to cut his article to pieces with. It would have been just the same had Mills quoted (contradicting Turner) Frederick Engels, the champion of the mobile urban proletariat. Such is the miserable, closed, static world of the Johannesburg planners. If one makes a move, the others rush to crush it. The Johannesburg YCL's study circle will meet at 11h00 on Sunday, July 9th, in the SATAWU offices, 13th floor, Old Mutual Building, 29 Kerk Street, between Harrison and Loveday to discuss excerpts from Lenin’s “Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder” Next week, presumably at the same time and place, our YCL will discuss Lenin’s 1923 “On Co-operation”. See the link below. Click on these links: Dialego, Chapter 2, What is Dialectical Materialism? John Hoffman, 1976 (4320 words) How the Marxists Buried Marx, Cyril Smith, 1998 (13629 words) Thinking out of the matchbox, Glen Mills, Business Day (1197 words) On Co-operation, Lenin, 1923 (2611 words)