Educate, Organise, Mobilise

The COSATU 9th National Congress is the political event of 2006. It is already an example of democracy in action. COSATU’s pre-Congress document on “Fundamental Change” is being discussed in structures all around the country. The 9th Congress programme linked below is taken from COSATU’s web site. The proposal for a consumer boycott against the Israeli colonialists is arising more or less spontaneously in many different places. Linked below is an invitation to an education workshop to be run by the Anti-Racism Education Forum this coming Saturday in Durban, which is also a planning workshop for this consumer boycott. Gilad Atzmon was born in Israel but lives in London. He is proud of being a jazz saxophonist. Let’s hope his playing is as good as his writing, which is in the tradition of the great Jonathan Swift. Click on these links: COSATU 9th National Congress Programme, 18-21 September 2006 (418 words) AREF boycott campaign planning, IPCI, Durban, 09h30 Sat 12 Aug (909 words) Operation Security Roof, Gilad Atzmon, Counterpunch (912 words)

Truth Comes Out

SACCAWU is to go on strike on Thursday at all outlets of Shoprite Group. These include Shoprite, Checkers, OK Furniture, OK Foods, OK Mini Markets, House & Home, Hungry Lion, Usave, Freshmark, 8 ‘til late, Computicket, Rainbow Finance, Meat Market, Sentra. SACCAWU is also calling for a full-scale boycott of all these outlets. See the linked item below. Peter Bruce is the editor of the Business Day. He likes to say: “The truth will always come out”. But last year he sacked David Gleason for exposing the lethal struggles between bourgeois factions in the ANC. Now Karima Brown (see linked item below) writes in the same Business Day of the “newly rich” that: “Their intervention in the party’s succession challenge has been all but destructive as various business interests attempt to “buy” ANC factions.” What was once denied has now to be accepted. The truth is coming out. The SACP Central Committee meets on Friday and Saturday with a long and important agenda, set out in the document linked below. This may be a good moment to revise certain aspects of our newly-published SACP Constitution. The next document linked below contains a page of relevant extracts from our Constitution about the relationship between structures within the SACP hierarchy. The well-known blogger Xymphora has added his weight to the call for a boycott of Israel. See the linked document. The MDC (Mutambara) is one part of the split legacy of Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change. The MDC(M) in South Africa is organising a march against arbitrary night-time raids on the flats of Zimbabwean victims of the Mugabe regime in Johannesburg. The march will assemble at Berea Park in Hillbrow tomorrow at 10h00 and will proceed to the office of the Gauteng MEC for Community Safety at 78 Fox Street, Johannesburg, where a petition will be handed over at 13h00. Click on these links: SACCAWU announce August 10 strike, boycott of Shoprite Group (1467 words) A few billion reasons to question ANC, Brown, Business Day (790 words) SACP to hold Central Committee meeting August 11 and 12 (244 words) Selected extracts from the SACP Constitution (283 words) The anti-Zionist boycott, Xymphora (1150 words) MDC Mutambara march, Berea Park to Fox Str, 10h00 August 10 (161 words)

Profit versus People

Failure to stamp the authority of working class women in… (the Progressive Women’s Movement)… can only lead to the hijacking of this movement by elitist and BEE-type interests, thus reproducing and exacerbating the very widening class inequalities in broader South African society. A women’s movement can only be said to be progressive if it prioritises addressing the interests of working and poor women. So says the SACP in a long e-mail statement, which is not on the SACP web site. The most recent press statement on that site is dated December 2005. From the Sunday Times web site, here (linked below) is SACP GS Dr. Blade Nzimande’s powerful article, published in hard copy on Sunday. Jeremy Gordin in the Sunday Independent gently reminds its readers that the trial of Jacob Zuma is about a human being, as the judge seems to have found it necessary to point out to prosecution attorneys such as Wim Trengove. This investigation has gone on for six years already. Charles Dickens wrote of a fictional case (“Jarndyce v. Jarndyce”) which went on for longer. But is that the kind of record South Africa wants to break? Prof. Devan Pillay is one of the contributors to “Trade Unions and Democracy”, a book edited by his colleague Prof. Sakhela Buhlungu. This book is criticised by somebody called Dominic Tweedie, a person not completely unknown to the Communist University, in the linked letter to the Sunday Times (Business Section) below. Prof. Pillay has joined with some North European bedfellows to form a well-heeled rival to the Communist University called the Global Labour University (GLU). This other University believes that there is something called “the state” that is separate from society but can be linked with society actors in bed. In fact the state can hop from one bed to another, so as to satisfy many actors. Read about this in the linked document and especially the downloadable PDF file linked within it. The bed-hopping state is explained there as clearly as it possibly can be. GLU is calling for papers to be presented during a three-day workshop at Wits University starting on April Fool’s Day, 2007. A paper based on Lenin’s The State, or better still, State and Revolution would obviously be very useful to these holy innocents. Would Devan and the funders (FES et cetera) accept it? Who can tell at this stage? NUM has settled with Kumba. See the linked statement below. In Swaziland, the struggle continues. Police shoot and wound demonstrators. See the linked articles (two in one) from the Times of Swaziland. Click on these links: Policies have put profit before people, Blade Nzimande, Sunday Times (822 words) Status quo versus human being, Jeremy Gordin, Sunday Independent (1539 words) COSATU stands up for the unemployed, Tweedie, Sunday Times (437 words) Labour and the Challenges of Development, GLU, Devan Pillay (Notice and download) NUM calls the Kumba strike off (314 words) Comrade shot by police, Mduduzi Magagula, Times of Swaziland (711 words)

A Great Cause

Here are four texts, all by women, as it happens. Women did take part in our armed struggle but the organising of non-military people was more crucial. The political struggle is always primary over the military struggle (e.g. see Bill Pomeroy’s “On the Time for Armed Struggle”). Women have always been prominent in the mass political movements. Professor Virginia Tilley is the author of “The One-state Solution”, published last year. She has been working in Gauteng, South Africa for some time. With a Johannesburg by-line she has written for Counterpunch this weekend as follows: “It is finally time. After years of internal arguments, confusion, and dithering, the time has come for a full-fledged international boycott of Israel”. Read the full statement in the document linked below. Christabel Gurney was an activist in the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) in Britain from very early on. She was an organiser of the West London Anti-Apartheid, and the editor for a long time of the national publication “Anti-Apartheid News”. The linked document of hers (below) about the origins of the AAM contains many lessons, explicit and implied, about principles of organising, boycotts in particular, and the specificity of struggles and the individual personalities that must always be involved in any movement. Esther Barsel is active in the South African Communist Party (SACP) Johannesburg Central branch, and is a Central Committee member of the Party. One of her first assignments years ago was to work for the Friends of the Soviet Union (FSU) on the Witwatersrand. This was an international solidarity movement with specific and general characteristics, from which lessons can be learned. See the linked document below. The short paragraph at the end of her document, extracted from a longer and general memoir written by Mosie Moolla, is significant. Cde Moolla has had a long diplomatic career which included the Afro-Asian Soldarity Organisation in Egypt, ANC Chief Representative in India, and since liberation, South African Ambassador in Iran and in Pakistan. When he says that the FSU “played a seminal role” he knows what he is talking about. Such movements can at times seem mundane to the participants at the time but they have a huge historical effect. They have a long historical tail. Cheryl Walker published “Women and Resistance in South Africa” in 1982. This book stands out among all the literature on South African women, and especially for the attention it gives to organisational matters. The passages in the linked extract below concerning the NEC of the Federation of South African Women (FedSAW), and the question of mass individual membership versus federal structure, mirror discussions still taking place this week around the nature and constitution of the new Progressive Women’s Movement, to be launched on Wednesday in Bloemfontein. The Communist University distribution has taken shape under a number of constraints. One is that about 5% of recipients still want the documents as attachments, in addition to links to the archive at http://amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/ . It is unreasonable to send much more than about 200KB of files in this way. Hence the documents sent out with any single posting are limited; and this turns out to be a good discipline. For this reason some documents that would have been sent today, will be held over, although they have already been archived (here). These include SACP GS Blade Nzimande’s Sunday Times article and Jeremy Gordin’s reflections on the Zuma court case hearing last Monday, which court will reconvene on September 5th. Click on these links: The Case for Boycotting Israel, Virginia Tilley, Counterpunch (2831 words) A Great Cause, Origin of Anti-Apartheid Movement, Christabel Gurney, 1999 (13863 words) Friends of the Soviet Union, Esther Barsel and Mosie Moolla (350 words) Federation of SA Women, NEC and Membership problems, Cheryl Walker, 1982 (3259 words)

A Great Cause

Here are four texts, all by women, as it happens. Women did take part in our armed struggle but the organising of non-military people was more crucial. The political struggle is always primary over the military struggle (e.g. see Bill Pomeroy’s “On the Time for Armed Struggle”). Women have always been prominent in the mass political movements. Professor Virginia Tilley is the author of “The One-state Solution”, published last year. She has been working in Gauteng, South Africa for some time. With a Johannesburg by-line she has written for Counterpunch this weekend as follows: “It is finally time. After years of internal arguments, confusion, and dithering, the time has come for a full-fledged international boycott of Israel”. Read the full statement in the document linked below. Christabel Gurney was an activist in the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) in Britain from very early on. She was an organiser of the West London Anti-Apartheid, and the editor for a long time of the national publication “Anti-Apartheid News”. The linked document of hers (below) about the origins of the AAM contains many lessons, explicit and implied, about principles of organising, boycotts in particular, and the specificity of struggles and the individual personalities that must always be involved in any movement. Esther Barsel is active in the South African Communist Party (SACP) Johannesburg Central branch, and is a Central Committee member of the Party. One of her first assignments years ago was to work for the Friends of the Soviet Union (FSU) on the Witwatersrand. This was an international solidarity movement with specific and general characteristics, from which lessons can be learned. See the linked document below. The short paragraph at the end of her document, extracted from a longer and general memoir written by Mosie Moola, is significant. Cde Moolla has had a long diplomatic career which included the Afro-Asian Soldarity Organisation in Egypt, ANC Chief Representative in India, and since liberation, South African Ambassador in Iran and in Pakistan. When he says that the FSU “played a seminal role” he knows what he is talking about. Such movements can at times seem mundane to the participants at the time but they have a huge historical effect. They have a long historical tail. Cheryl Walker published “Women and Resistance in South Africa” in 1982. This book stands out among all the literature on South African women, and especially for the attention it gives to organisational matters. The passages in the linked extract below concerning the NEC of the Federation of South African Women (FedSAW), and the question of mass individual membership versus federal structure, mirror discussions still taking place this week around the nature and constitution of the new Progressive Women’s Movement, to be launched on Wednesday in Bloemfontein. The Communist University distribution has taken shape under a number of constraints. One is that about 5% of recipients still want the documents as attachments, in addition to links to the archive at http://amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/ . It is unreasonable to send much more than about 200KB of files in this way. Hence the documents sent out with any single posting are limited; and this turns out to be a good discipline. For this reason some documents that would have been sent today, will be held over, although they have already been archived (here). These include SACP GS Blade Nzimande’s Sunday Times article and Jeremy Gordin’s reflections on the Zuma court case hearing last Monday, which court will reconvene on September 5th. Click on these links: The Case for Boycotting Israel, Virginia Tilley, Counterpunch (2831 words) A Great Cause, Origin of Anti-Apartheid Movement, Christabel Gurney, 1999 (13863 words) Friends of the Soviet Union, Esther Barsel and Mosie Moolla (350 words) Federation of SA Women, NEC and Membership problems, Cheryl Walker, 1982 (3259 words)

A Great Cause

Here are four texts, all by women, as it happens. Women did take part in our armed struggle but the organising of non-military people was more crucial. The political struggle is always primary over the military struggle (e.g. see Bill Pomeroy’s “On the Time for Armed Struggle”). Women have always been prominent in the mass political movements. Professor Virginia Tilley is the author of “The One-state Solution”, published last year. She has been working in Gauteng, South Africa for some time. With a Johannesburg by-line she has written for Counterpunch this weekend as follows: “It is finally time. After years of internal arguments, confusion, and dithering, the time has come for a full-fledged international boycott of Israel”. Read the full statement in the document linked below. Christabel Gurney was an activist in the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) in Britain from very early on. She was an organiser of the West London Anti-Apartheid, and the editor for a long time of the national publication “Anti-Apartheid News”. The linked document of hers (below) about the origins of the AAM contains many lessons, explicit and implied, about principles of organising, boycotts in particular, and the specificity of struggles and the individual personalities that must always be involved in any movement. Esther Barsel is active in the South African Communist Party (SACP) Johannesburg Central branch, and is a Central Committee member of the Party. One of her first assignments years ago was to work for the Friends of the Soviet Union (FSU) on the Witwatersrand. This was an international solidarity movement with specific and general characteristics, from which lessons can be learned. See the linked document below. The short paragraph at the end of her document, extracted from a longer and general memoir written by Mosie Moola, is significant. Cde Moolla has had a long diplomatic career which included the Afro-Asian Soldarity Organisation in Egypt, ANC Chief Representative in India, and since liberation, South African Ambassador in Iran and in Pakistan. When he says that the FSU “played a seminal role” he knows what he is talking about. Such movements can at times seem mundane to the participants at the time but they have a huge historical effect. They have a long historical tail. Cheryl Walker published “Women and Resistance in South Africa” in 1982. This book stands out among all the literature on South African women, and especially for the attention it gives to organisational matters. The passages in the linked extract below concerning the NEC of the Federation of South African Women (FedSAW), and the question of mass individual membership versus federal structure, mirror discussions still taking place this week around the nature and constitution of the new Progressive Women’s Movement, to be launched on Wednesday in Bloemfontein. The Communist University distribution has taken shape under a number of constraints. One is that about 5% of recipients still want the documents as attachments, in addition to links to the archive at http://amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/ . It is unreasonable to send much more than about 200KB of files in this way. Hence the documents sent out with any single posting are limited; and this turns out to be a good discipline. For this reason some documents that would have been sent today, will be held over, although they have already been archived (here). These include SACP GS Blade Nzimande’s Sunday Times article and Jeremy Gordin’s reflections on the Zuma court case hearing last Monday, which court will reconvene on September 5th. Click on these links: The Case for Boycotting Israel, Virginia Tilley, Counterpunch (2831 words) A Great Cause, Origin of Anti-Apartheid Movement, Christabel Gurney, 1999 (13863 words) Friends of the Soviet Union, Esther Barsel and Mosie Moolla (350 words) Federation of SA Women, NEC and Membership problems, Cheryl Walker, 1982 (3259 words)

Heart and Soul

The Johannesburg Central YCL meets this morning at 11h00 in the SATAWU offices, 13th Floor, Old Mutual Building, 29 Kerk Street, between Loveday and Harrison, to discuss a compilation of Lenin’s works on women. The document we will be discussing at the Communist University on Friday August 18th at 17h00 at the Women’s Jail is not the one linked (by mistake) to this circulation last Friday. The one we will be discussing is the one linked below, written by Lenin in 1900. This is the document that was distributed to some comrades in hard copy on Friday. (There will be no session on August 11th). “You cannot have a Gear economy and an RDP soul.” That is Vukani Mde’s conclusion to his short critique of President Thabo Mbeki’s sermon at the Wits University Great Hall last weekend, linked below. Also linked below is his equally sharp criticism of the eTV television news. The “independent” commercial station is even more servile than the “public broadcaster”, SABC, is at present. The Israeli colonialists have the cell phone numbers of their victims in Gaza. They ring up and say “we have a death warrant on your home” and tell the people to get out while they destroy it. See the linked document. Tomorrow we will feature Virginia Tilley’s latest Counterpunch article, which calls for an international boycott of Israel. The next YCL study text is to be Alexandra Kollontai’s “Social basis of the Woman Question” of 1909, linked below. Click on these links: Lenin, Attitude of Worker's Party to Religion, 1900 (4419 words) Mandela, Mbeki, and the end of humanism, Vukani Mde, Weekender (507 words) eTV even worse than SABC news, Vukani Mde, Weekender (409 words) Israeli colonialist death warrant for your home, Ernshire, Counterpunch (2670 words) Kollontai, Social Basis of Woman Question, 1909 (6618)

Street versus Boardroom

Venezuela has done what South Africa should have done long ago – withdrawn its ambassador to Israel. In fact we should do much more than that. See the link from Al Jazeera below. Especially we should stop South Africans going to fight for Israel (and for Britain and the USA). Legislation going through parliament can achieve that, but British ambassador Paul Boateng in particular is lobbying against it. What business has he got to be in our parliament arguing a partisan case? The Israeli colonialists are stupid as well as disgusting. See the linked report from Lebanon below. COSATU has condemned the increase of interest rates, and declared support for current strikes, including remarks on President Thabo Mbeki’s speech, given in the Great Hall of Wits University to an invited audience last weekend. See the linked statements below. Vukani Mde’s comments in the Weekender upon the same presidential speech will be relayed from here tomorrow. The South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) is strong, class-conscious and united. It is more than a society of the employed. It is a self-conscious element of educators of society. Its National Congress later this month will have the theme: "Empowering educators to reposition SADTU for peoples' education and working class power." These teachers are serious revolutionaries. They are well aware of the role they must play. The linked SADTU NEC report also announces the nomination of Cde. Willie Madisha for a further term as President of COSATU. In Mexico there are huge protests taking place in the streets. Bourgeois elections are losing credibility all over the world, even as they are being presented as “transition” in other parts of the world, like the DRC. Why do we think we can trust the bourgeoisie to hold an election? Without the street, there is no democracy. Click on these links: Venezuela pulls out Israel ambassador, Al Jazeera (211 words) Adjusting the Heroic Commando Raid Story, Roger Assaf, Counterpunch (643 words) COSATU strongly condemns MPC interest rate increase (286 words) COSATU supports strikers and draws lessons (808 words) SADTU, NEC decisions, Madisha nominated for COSATU Presidency (895 words) Boardroom versus Street, Laura Carlson, Mexico City, Counterpunch (1025 words)

World In Action

The Communist University will convene this afternoon at 17h00 in the Women’s Jail, 1 Kotze Street, Constitution Hill, to discuss the COSATU pre-Congress document “Possibilities for Fundamental Social Change”. Next week we miss a session because of Women’s Day. We reconvene on August 18th to discuss “Classes and Parties and their attitude to religion and the Church” by V I Lenin (1909). See the link below. Commander In Chief is what they call him. That’s President of Cuba Fidel Castro. He’s less than completely well for the moment. Yet he has written a unique statement, full of humour and courage. See the first linked item below. COSATU is calling for a soccer indaba. See the link below. There will be a combined march of COSATU affiliates in Rustenburg on August 16th in connection with the Provincial Hospital dispute, led by NEHAWU and DENOSA. See the link below. In the giant dispute between NUM and Kumba, agreement is so near yet so far away. See link. In another giant dispute, 50,000 workers organised by SACCAWU face off against Shoprite Checkers, the retailer. See the link below. There is too much material today. Items held over include COSATU’s condemnation of the interest-rate rise, a COSATU item on various low-pay disputes and lessons to be drawn, and a report from the SADTU NEC. These items will be put up on the “Latest News” section of the CU web site as soon as possible. Click on these links: Message sent by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro (255 words) Classes and Parties, Attitude to Religion, Lenin, 1909 (3414 words) COSATU welcomes Carlos Alberto, calls for a soccer indaba (737 words) NEHAWU and DENOSA Rustenburg to march with COSATU August 16 (186 words) NUM, Kumba talks at the brink (315 words) SACCAWU, 50,000 workers versus Shoprite Checkers (332 words)

The Question Is Put

Professor Peter Evans is a very charming person. He is from California and gave the Harold Wolpe Seminar at the Fort on Constitution Hill in Johannesburg last night. His presentation was a revelation of the most sincere and elaborate kind of liberal reformism imaginable. In his mind the state, and the development of society, can and should be essentially reduced to the agency of a cadre of meritocratic civil servants - a benign bureaucracy. He calls this situation not fascism but “embedded autonomy”, hoping by combining these words to evade their mutual contradiction. Evans’ “autonomy” means that the civil servants decide without having to account (except to each other), while “embedded” is supposed to mean connected, either, as in the past, to a national bourgeoisie or, wishfully, in the future, to a “vibrant” pluralist “civil society” where no single class would dominate, leaving the civil servants even more powerful by default. “Power to the People” it is not. What Rosa Luxemburg wrote at the end of “Reform and Revolution” in relation to Eduard Bernstein applies to Peter Evans and to his South African supporters such as Stephen Gelb and Devan Pillay: “’What? Is that all you have to say?’ Not the shadow of an original thought! Not a single idea that was not refuted, crushed, reduced into dust by Marxism several decades ago! It was enough for opportunism to speak out to prove it had nothing to say.” In other words the reformists, by parading their illusions, are helping us to shed our illusions. The final page of Karl Marx’s 1847 “Poverty of Philosophy” is equally direct: “It is only in an order of things in which there are no more classes and class antagonisms that social evolutions will cease to be political revolutions. Till then, on the eve of every general reshuffling of society, the last word of social science will always be: ‘Le combat ou la mort; la lutte sanguinaire ou le neant. C'est ainsi que la question est invinciblement posee.’ [George Sand, from the novel Jean Siska: ‘Combat or Death: bloody struggle or extinction. It is thus that the question is inexorably put.’]” The contradictions are sharpening, whether we like it or not. Likewise in the new Umsebenzi Online, the class conflict within the women’s movement becomes more critical with the proposed formation of a formal Progressive Women’s Movement. The anonymous criticisms of ANC Today are also sharply and fully dismissed in this Umsebenzi Online, in a way that turns the “State Power” debate around and takes it a lot further forward. Let us hope that Professor Evans has a chance to read this, and also his supporters. These are not two separate debates. They form one debate. See the linked issue below. The same debate surfaces in COSATU GS Zwelinzima Vavi’s two recent speeches given during the Durban events of the past week, covering both national and international questions, and linked below. There is to be a MARCH on August 8th in Woodmead against the cruel transnational employer “Kraft”. See the linked notice from FAWU, with support from NUMSA. Finally, see the linked document of COSATU’s wishes for Cuban President Fidel Castro’s speedy recovery. Click on these links: Umsebenzi Online 02 August 2006, Women, and SACP Response to ANC Today (6155 words) COSATU GS Z Vavi to 85th Anniversary of SACP, Pietermaritzburg, 2006 (1942 words) COSATU GS Z Vavi to ITWF Congress, Durban 2006 (1057 words) FAWU March to Kraft HO 10h00 Woodmead 060808 (350 words) COSATU sends best wishes to Fidel Castro (256 words)

The Struggle Continues

There were problems with the Internet this morning. In any case there are only two items. One is the announcement that President of Cuba Fidel Castro is taking some sick leave after 50 years or so on the job. We wish him a quick recovery. See the linked item from Prensa Latina. The other is a piece from Uri Avneri in Israel, thenks to Counterpunch. Israel boasts that 20,000 of its troops are in Lebanon. What will they do there? How many will cross back again? Click on these links: Fidel Castro Delegates Functions for Health Reasons (612 words) Syria in the gunsight, Uri Avnery, Counterpunch (1954 words)

Solidarity

Everybody who can get to Elandsfontein at midday today should do so in solidarity with the Kraft Foods strikers. See notice linked below. These workers have been out since May 25th. Their union FAWU has worked hard to build support for the strike both nationally and internationally. Yesterday’s decision in the Pietermaritzburg High Court to postpone ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma’s corruption trial is regretted by COSATU. The linked statement is a concise and clear statement of why it is that the treatment of Jacob Zuma has been and continues to be so completely unacceptable to the organised working class as a whole, COSATU in particular, and the general oppressed of this country (who know injustice when they see it). All, in fact, except for a thin and fractured layer of frankly middle-class and bourgeois people who thought this unjust campaign was a chance to assert their superiority. In connection with solidarity, and with falsely superior or vicarious morality, please see the linked transcript of the Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture given last Friday in Durban by Ashwin Desai. Ashwin mercilessly criticises the “social movements” movement or SMI (Social Movement Indaba) of which he has long been a very prominent part, especially since the publication of his 2002 book, “We are the poors”. Let’s hope his criticism is taken in good spirit. The general sense of it seems to be that we all need to break down the compartments that have been separating activists, and unite in action. But read it, comrades. This is criticism and self-criticism, all right. It is very surprising. It pulls no punches. Click on this link: COSATU, Solidarity action in support of strikers at Kraft Foods (144 words) COSATU on Pietermaritzburg High Court decision (363 words) Vans, Autos, Kombis and Social Movements, Ashwin Desai (5854 words)