Further to our previous report on South Africa we have now veterans of the anti - apartheid movement making comparisons of present-day South Africa with "Bantustans" .
From a Fort Hare University seminar
Poet and activist Professor Dennis Brutus , who worked in the same chain gang with Mandela on Robben Island, labelled the country’s new elite “Bantustanis”.
The country met three conditions to qualify as such an entity:
“You set up a bunch of leaders who become your political stooges;
You have large reserves of cheap labour; and
You create your own elite who are beneficiaries of the system.”
Brutus continued by saying that the majority of South Africans were living under worse conditions than those experienced during apartheid. “The whole process of transformation is meaningless,” he said.
Outspoken East London doctor Costa Gazi, sitting in the audience, said “Our government is acting like a Bantustan government because they are protecting the rights of the privileged.”
Commentary and analysis to persuade people to become socialist and to act for themselves, organizing democratically and without leaders, to bring about a world of common ownership and free access. We are solely concerned with building a movement of socialists for socialism. We are not reformists with a programme of policies to patch up capitalism.
1 comment:
interesting, but is this not what governments noemally do - protect the elite - whether old or now consisting of 'new' members; they always seem to care more about them than the masses - clearly shown in south african when universal sufferage was bought in, but the economic position of almost all non-whites remained the same.
Without socialism, or economic freedom, people will always be in some kind of slavery.
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