Britain honored Nelson Mandela by unveiling a 9 feet (2.7 meter) bronze statue showing the anti-apartheid leader gesturing during a speech .
Fellow socialist bloggers on Socialism Or Your Money Back had posted an earlier story about their attitude to this politician .
The same blog also posted an article on another part of South African history which should be remembered , yet , no statue has been raised in London to those now anonymous and nameless workers who died under a hail of police bullets to oppose apartheid .
On both issues , for us socialists , the question is how long will it be before the great oppressed in South Africa (but everywhere really) come to realise that swapping one ruling class for another, regardless of their skin colour, does not end exploitation ? The poor in South Africa are as poor as they were under apartheid , the wealthy just as rich . The poor have exchanged one master for another and they both conform to the stereotypes of capitalism. We own; you do not. We control; you do not. We live in luxury; you live in poverty. Nothing changes; everything stays the same. Mandela notwithstanding.
We refer you to a related previous posts on this blog -Rand-Lords , Comrade Capitalist , ANC - Repressive Force
If Socialist Banner doesn't suffice to persuade then this story may :-
"...It is now 13 years since South Africa turned its back on the oppressive era of apartheid and, in a remarkably peaceful transition, embraced democracy...many of the fruits of freedom have gone to the former black revolutionaries who now hold cabinet posts, sit in Parliament, and hold other government positions with substantial salaries and perks...Shantytowns have not been replaced with affordable housing. Water and electricity and other basic requirements of the infrastructure to support democracy are still lacking for many. Official agencies are sometimes bastions of bureaucratic incompetence and corruption...Though opportunities have arisen for some upper-class blacks to prosper in business, many others still live in squalor. For many, the jobs that they thought would come overnight with democracy have never materialized. Unemployment is running around 25 percent.Thus the big cities such as Johannesburg have become seedbeds for robbery and violent hijacking, making crime South Africa's biggest problem...Crime is apparently not racially motivated. It is black upon affluent black as well as black upon affluent white. It is the war of the have-nots against the haves..."
1 comment:
bit like most 'national liberation' movements - one set of rulers is either replaced outright, or supplemented with some rulers from the previously 'oppressed majority'.
These newbies who are taken into the arms of the old ruling class - realise they are in charge in name only - and must stick to the divisive capitalist agenda which divided their 'country' more before than aparthied/imperialism ever did.
Not to say that these are not disgusting ways to treat fellow humans; but only that the onset of an international free socialism will really 'set the captives free'
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