Workers have no country

  

'Recalling the struggle of South Africans and the ruling ANC against an apartheid state that was defeated only three decades ago, Ramaphosa said in a video shared on his X account on October 14, that South Africa has always pledged solidarity with the Palestinian cause.'

Foreign Minister Pandor made a similar sttement last year: ‘As South Africans, we find similarities in our past with the Palestinians, and now I remember the funeral of Shereen Abu Akleh and what happened to her coffin. It reminds me of the gravesites that we had to carry out under the persecution of the apartheid soldiers’ (South Africa calls for holding Israel accountable for ‘inhumane conditions’ Palestinians live under, Middle East Monitor, 17 June, 2022).

In May that year Nokuthula Mabaso, an Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) leader was buried following her assassination in front of her children. She was the third activist of the shack dwellers’ movement to be killed in less than two months.    To date, 24 Abahlali activists have been killed.   Members of AbM are thus well acquainted with the state as a coercive machine of class oppression and likely know the fairytale Freedom Charter adopted by the ANC in 1955 envisaged a post-Apartheid South Africa where ‘The police force and army… shall be the helpers and protectors of the people’, ‘the right to be decently housed’ enshrined and ‘Slums shall be demolished …‘.   AbM are credited with starting UnFreedom Day, which coincides with the official South African holiday called Freedom Day, the orthodox annual celebration of the country’s first non-racial democratic elections of 1994. On the 16 August 2012 17 workers were killed and 78 wounded by the police in the Marikana Miners’ Massacre, the most lethal use of force by South African security forces against other workers since 1976. Worse still, former President Mbeki’s support for alternative remedies such as vinegar rather than antiretroviral drugs saved the state’s funds at a cost of at least 300,000 lives. 

And ‘More than two decades after South Africa ousted a racist apartheid system that trapped the vast majority of South Africans in poverty, more than half the country still lives below the national poverty line and most of the nation’s wealth remains in the hands of a small elite’ (NPR, 2 April, 2018) led by billionaire Ramaphosa.

A weaker ANC

1) 26 million people in South Africa today face abject poverty, 25 million of these are African
2) In 2004, 48% of South Africans were living below R524 a month, in 2011 this increased to 52.3%
3) There are now more people in South Africa living in shacks as there were in 2009 (13.4% in 2009, 14.1% in 2012)
4) In May 2008 there were 5.1 million unemployed people in South Africa, today there are more than 7 million
5) South Africa remains the most unequal country on the planet, our Gini Coefficient, which is a measure of inequality, increased from 0.66 in 1993 to 0.7 in 2008.
6) Between 2009 and 2012, 271,000 jobs in manufacturing have been lost and between 2007 and 2010, manufacturing declined from 17% of GDP to 15%.

The ANC received 62.15% of the valid votes cast, but 64% of South Africans did not vote for the ANC. Combined, out of the total potential and actually registered voters in South Africa today, analysis of election statistics confirms that the ANC has been, this year, elected into government by a mere 36 per cent of all those who were eligible to vote. There is diminishing support for the ANC in the voting trends since 1994. From a high of 53.01% in 1994, the ANC has disastrously dropped to 36.39% of the share of votes in 2014. This is the true story that reflects the reality of the loss of confidence in the ANC.

From here 

No crock of gold at the end of the rainbow nation

April 27 marked the 20th anniversary of South Africa's first democratic elections. Many things have improved in South Africa since 1994, to be sure. State racism has ended. People have rights. Yet, everyday life for most South Africans remains a struggle and with it the sense of disappointment that accompanies it, given the gap between the expectations of liberation and the state of abjection that the majority continues to inhabit.

South Africa's unemployment rate in 1994 was 13 percent - so bad that most were convinced it could only get better. Yet today it is double that, at about 25 percent. And that's according to official statistics; a more reasonable figure, according to most analysts, is probably closer to 37 percent. The situation is particularly bad for young people. The Economist recently reported that "half of South Africans under 24 looking for work have none. Of those who have jobs, a third earn less than $2 a day."

 South Africa also boasts a reputation for being one of the most unequal countries in the world. Not only has aggregate income inequality worsened since the end of apartheid, income inequality between racial groups has worsened as well. According to the 2011 census, black households earn only 16 percent of that which white households earn. About 62 percent of all black people live below the poverty line, while in the rural areas of the former homelands this figure rises to a shocking 79 percent.

In 2006, still 70 percent of South Africa's land was under the control of whites, who constitute a mere 10 percent of the population. The ANC's Black Economic Empowerment programme has succeeded in minting new black millionaires (South Africa has 7,800 of them now), but can't seem to manage the much more basic goal of eliminating poverty.

 South Africa's mineral wealth, including some of the richest seams of gold, platinum, and coal in the world, remain in the hands of corporations such as British-owned Anglo American. The finance sector, which has ballooned to a dangerously large 21 percent of the country’s GDP, remains mostly monopolised by four white-owned conglomerates.

The World Bank and the IMF have long praised South Africa for its accomplishments since 1994, and friendliness toward foreign direct investment. The apartheid National Party was determined that the transition would not undermine key corporate interests in South Africa, specifically finance and mining. They were willing to bargain away political power so long as they could retain control over the economy. And so they did. The ANC retreated from its position on nationalisation and an IMF deal signed just before the transition deregulated the financial sector and clamped down on wage increases. The central bank, left in the hands of the old apartheid bosses, was insulated from democratic politics and its mandate limited to targeting inflation instead of employment or growth.

The National Party only managed to extract these concessions because they had successfully divided the resistance movement between moderate elites, such as Thabo Mbeki, who had spent many years in exile, and the more radical activists who were at the forefront of the struggle within South Africa itself. The latter were largely unrepresented in the economic negotiations, while the former enjoyed a sort of royal treatment, including a now infamous series of secret meetings in the United Kingdom with major figures in mining and finance. Mbeki, a self-proclaimed Thatcherite, was easy to convince. He already believed in the basic neoliberal principles that the National Party were hoping to institute.  For him, the route to prosperity for the new nation depended not on nationalisation and redistribution, but on global market integration and foreign investment, which would supposedly grow the economy and trickle down to the poor.

Still, when the ANC assumed power in 1994 it implemented a progressive policy initiative known as the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). The RDP was designed to promote equitable development and poverty reduction, mostly through public investment and the mass rollout of social services to connect millions of people to housing, electricity, water, and clinics. This was abandoned a mere two years later.  Mbeki and then Finance Minister Trevor Manuel held clandestine discussions with World Bank advisors toward drafting a new economic policy known as GEAR (Growth, Employment, and Redistribution, even though it accomplished precious little of the latter). It was implemented in 1996 despite significant resistance from within the unions. GEAR amounted to neoliberalism: more privatisation, lower trade barriers, and looser financial controls.

When the ANC came to power with a landslide vote in 1994, they did so on the promises of the Freedom Charter. Penned in 1955, the Freedom Charter expressed South Africans' demands for the right to work, housing, freedom of movement, and - most radically - economic justice. "The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people," the Charter reads. "The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole, [and] all other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the wellbeing of the people." Most South Africans agree that these promises have been betrayed.

South Africa is ablaze with discontent, earning it the title of "protest capital of the world". Early this year some 3,000 protests occurred over a 90-day period, involving more than a million people. South Africans are taking to the streets, as they give up on electoral politics. This is particularly true for the young: Nearly 75 percent of voters aged 20-29 did not participate in the 2011 local elections. So far the protests have been focused on issues like access to housing, water, electricity, and other basic services, but it won't be long before they coalesce into something much more powerful, as they did during the last decade of apartheid. There are already signs that this is beginning to happen. The Economic Freedom Fighters, founded by Julius Malema, the corrupt former leader of the ANC Youth League, is successfully mobilising discontented youth and making a strong push to nationalise the mines and the banks. NUMSA, the metal workers union, recently broke ranks with the ANC in a historic turn that could open the way for a labour-based opposition to the ruling party for the first time since 1994.

The government's response has been a mix of police repression - including the recent massacre of 44 striking miners at Marikana - and the continued rollout of welfare grants, which now provide a vital lifeline to some 15 million people. The grants are a stop-gap solution to the failure of trickle-down economics, a way of papering over the contradictions of South African capitalism; everyone is aware that without them poverty and inequality would be so unbearable that the country's already tenuous sense of social stability would come crashing to an end. The ANC's legitimacy is beginning to unravel and consent among the governed has begun to thin as the ANC scrambles to shore up its symbolic connection to the liberation struggle.

 The revolution that brought us the end of apartheid has accomplished a great deal, to be sure, but it has not yet reached its goal. Liberation is not yet at hand. What is democracy if it doesn't allow people to determine their own economic destiny or benefit from the vast wealth of the commons? What is freedom if it serves only the capital interests of the country's elite?

Adapted from AlJazeera article by Jason Hickel, lecturer at the London School of Economics

Lost Dreams So Dream Again

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa said on Sunday that it will, in time, launch a political party.  NUMSA spokesperson Castro Ngobese said the organisation had not yet formed a political party, but would do so at the appropriate time. Contesting the 2014 elections however was off the table. NUMSA would convene provincial and national consultative meetings to share the content of its resolutions on the United Front and Movement for Socialism. During Numsa's January Marxist-Leninist Political School, meetings were held with the leaders of some of the social movements and community structures, to begin the process of mapping out how they could work together.

"We need a movement for socialism," general secretary Irvin Jim told reporters. The party, to be called the United Front and Movement for Socialism, would be aimed at uniting the working class and mobilising around issues affecting workers. He said work was underway to mobilise the working class in all its formations, for the radical implementation of the Freedom Charter, the ANC's document of goals and aspirations for the country.

Jim said the leadership of the national liberation movement as a whole had failed to lead a consistent radical democratic process to resolve national, gender, and class questions post-1994 – the year of South Africa's first democratically elected government. He said the leadership was predominantly drawn from the black and African capitalist class, which "kowtows" to the dictates of white monopoly capitalist and imperialist interests. "It is half-hearted and extremely inconsistent in the pursuit of a radical democratic programme and has completely abandoned the Freedom Charter," he said. "We need to organise ourselves as a class, which is why we need a movement that will contest the elections at the appropriate time," said Jim.

The NUMSA and its leadership have indeed identified the solution to the problems caused by capitalism - a class party for socialism.

The Freedom Charter, adopted by the African National Congress in 1955, called for “restoring national wealth to the people” (understood as nationalization of the mines, banks and “monopoly industry”), “re-dividing the land among those who work it to banish famine and land hunger,” improved pay and working conditions, free health-care, universal literacy, and decent housing for all.

How did the main reform goals of the Freedom Charter come to be abandoned? The ANC hierarchy came under relentless pressure from local and international business, the pro-business media, foreign politicians, the World Bank and IMF. It was a process more of seduction than intimidation, aimed at integrating a set of new partners into the institutional structure and social milieu of the global capitalist class. Capitalists are often willing to accept a measure of social change, provided that they can set its limits and those ensured that when the ANC did take office it would be unable to act against white business interests. A new clause of the constitution made all private property sacrosanct. Power over economic policy was ceded to an “autonomous” central bank and international financial institutions. The mobility of capital and the globalization of the capital and other markets make it impossible for countries to decide national economic policy without regard to the likely response of these markets. And the markets punished the slightest sign of deviation from the “consensus” with capital flight and speculation against the rand.  To win the markets’ confidence the ANC had to cast off its “revolutionary” and “Marxist” past.  “Just call me a Thatcherite” – quipped Mbeki as he unveiled his new “shock therapy” programme in 1996.

It is not altogether fair to say that the ANC “sold out” and are traitors to the “cause" They simply saw no escape from the web spun by global capital.  There is no escape. Socialists have long said that socialism cannot be established in a single country. Now we also know that under conditions of globalization even a meaningful programme of reform cannot be implemented in a single country. Capital is global. That is its trump card against any attempt to defy its dictates that is confined within national boundaries. The resistance to capital must also be organized on a global scale if it is to have any chance of success.

If a new government of the NUMSA’s United Front and Movement for Socialism tried to give its voters the tangible benefits they expected,  the strands of the tentacles of world capitalism will also tightened around it and they too will  discover that its powers are throttled. 

Dump the ANC !

Following on from the earlier call from NUMSA to disaffilate from the ANC, further developments have arisen.

In a speech to the eighth Pan African Congress at Wits University, suspended Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said workers should consider how they were being represented in government.
“Workers around the world, not only in Africa, have always elected political elites that have implemented policies that do not serve their political and economic interests...Perhaps we need to think very hard about how we should politically organise workers to represent their own interests in the state”

Author and political commentator, William Gumede says “The ANC has unfortunately moved towards a leadership serving the elites and it is now difficult for ordinary rank and file workers to have a direct say in policy direction. Ordinary supporters are being excluded out of the economy while the elite live in a bubble. The social gap is becoming too wide.” He said the clash of classes was also playing out in the unions, which was why some of them, such as the National Union of Mineworkers, were under pressure. The conflict of different class interests could cause further fracturing in trade unions, in Cosatu and the ANC. Gumede estimates that about 40% of the ANC is deactivated at present – either through disillusionment, sidelining, factional battles or apathy.
 He said a strong Cosatu could have fought to take over the ANC from within. If that were not possible, the option was to move out of the alliance and lobby from outside. But, says Gumede, this is a “scary and difficult” consideration for anyone trying to chart a path away from the alliance. They would be cut off from patronage and resources from the state and state-owned enterprises, and would have to survive with no money for a while until they could establish themselves.

Rejected, the ANC and SACP !!

It is gratifying to Socialist Banner to witness at long last the ANC and the South African Communist Party being rejected by the workers, although it is not before time and need not have been as a result of the bloody slaughter of the miners’ union members by the ANC government.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, which calls itself  “the biggest union in the history of the African continent,” with 338,000 members, announced after a special congress that it would seek to start a socialist party aimed at protecting the interests of the working class.

"It is clear that the working class cannot any longer see the ANC or the SACP as its class allies in any meaningful sense," said Numsa leader Irvin Jim. “”..the ANC does not have an agenda for the working class. Why must we support it? If the ANC is not willing to support the interest of the working class, what must we do? That's our challenge. That's why we are being hated. We say ANC must ban labour brokers, do away with the national development plan and stop privatising public roads. Why must we fear to say that when the ANC by its own nature is a multiclass organisation?" said Jim.

 It would now recruit openly in all the mining industry and welcome rival union National Union of Miners members who wanted to join Numsa. "We are no longer going to reject any worker who comes [from the NUM] to Numsa. If people want to take that as poaching, well, workers are not rhinos but human beings. The focus on Numsa membership must be rejected. [Cosatu] Public sector unions are recruiting among themselves. They [those opposed to the idea of Numsa recruiting in other sectors] can go to hell. We will recruit workers that come to us and want to belong to the organisation."

Hopefully, this will be the first step in the creation of one big industrial union for mining workers.

Socialist Banner, however, wonders just what is meant by the intended socialist party and sincerely hopes that it will not be yet another reformist organisation but truly revolutionary in its aspirations. 

Quote of the Day

South Africa's largest trade union today said the ruling ANC, a traditional ally, should be brought down like the apartheid regime if it did not deliver on its promises. Speaking at a special congress, National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) secretary general Irvin Jim said government policy was failing to address poverty, joblessness and inequality.

"If the ANC does not deliver the goods you must do to it what you did to the apartheid regime," he said, saying he was quoting Nelson Mandela's words to the labour movement 20 years ago. 

Shamed by the ANC

ANC stalwart Dr Frene Ginwala wept on Saturday when she talked about how the ANC had failed to reduce poverty while allowing corruption to eat into its moral fibre.

The former and longest-serving Speaker of the National Assembly said she was ashamed of how the ANC government had become.

“I’m ashamed that we have not reduced poverty and the tremendous damage it has caused. We should have done better. We don’t deserve to be elected after failing to listen to the people. Why are people crying? Why are we not listening? Why are universities not engaging in dialogue?” said Ginwala.

South Africa's Capitalism

An excellent analysis of South Africa and the ANC from the anarchist organisation Zabalaza
The African National Congress represents primarily the interests of both the emergent black capitalists and of the (largely black) state managerial elite. Despite the myth of common black interests, the black elite is anti-working class. The ANC is undeniably full of factions but these conflicts have nothing to do with real political divisions or principles; they arise from vicious elite competition for access to the wealth and power provided by high state office itself, like access to tenders. Given the powerful hold of (largely white-run) conglomerates in the private sector, naturally the emergent black elite must rely primarily on state office for enrichment and accumulation. But the state has only so much space – thus the viciousness of the conflicts, paralleling the viciousness of corporate clashes. The ANC is key to getting office, so this translates into a struggle within the ANC. The system generates the ANC factions, and the factions are no threat to the system: these are tertiary contradictions, equivalent to boardroom fights in private companies.

At the heart of the new South Africa is a balance between two ruling class sectors based on mutual dependence: the (largely black) state elite and the (largely white) private corporate elite, allied against the (largely black) working class (as well the Coloured, Indian and white working class). The state elite needs capital accumulation to fund and arm itself; the private elite needs the state’s power to maintain capital accumulation. The ruling class has two wings: private capitalists centred on means of production in corporations, and state managers, centred on means of administration and coercion in the state. The two are bound by common interests, but neither the mere tool of the other.  The mutual interests of the two ruling class sectors are profound. They are concretely expressed in a shared programme of South African expansionism, working class containment and neo- liberalism, exemplifying the primary contradictions between the ruling class and the working class.

Each wields highly centralised resources, via the state bureaucracy, including state companies on the one hand and large private conglomerates on the other. In South Africa, by 1981, the state and eight private companies held 70% of the total assets of the top 138 companies; today, 10 companies control 50% of Johannesburg Securities Exchange capitalisation, matching state monopolies in electricity, rail and so on. There is also a powerful, wealthy black elite centred on the state, wielding an Africanised army and police; and the state bureaucracy, perhaps 30% of the economy through the state, which owns banks, Eskom, harbours, rail, transport, mass media, the weapons industry and South African Airways, plus 25% of all land (including 55% in the provinces of Gauteng and the Western Cape).So “inseparable” are they that the corporate elite uses its private wealth to access state power, and the state elite uses its state power to access private wealth. Both ruling class wings share lives of privilege and power: for example, the top 15 earners in South African state companies got R103 million annually (2010), in a country where 50% of the people get 8% of national income. The ANC government is allied to big business, and the state elite does not represent “the people”, but its own class interests.

Despite (white) corporate hesitancy on BEE, around a quarter of JSE-listed company directorships are held by people of colour, with the proportion of senior managers in the private sector at 32.5% (2008). The top 20 richest in South Africa (using disclosed share data) include old white money, like the Oppenheimers, and new black money, like billionaires Tokyo Sexwale, Cyril Ramaphosa, Patrice Motsepe and Lazarus Zim. Combined with the 25%+ of the economy under state control, it is clear the black elite is far from economically powerless, and it is a myth that the “means of production” are all in white hands, or that the ruling class is mainly white. The ruling class is more than just the capitalists, and not all capitalists are white. However, as the JSE figures show, the private sector remains dominated by white capitalists, just like the state sector remains dominated by black state managers. This is the basic division in the ruling class, generating secondary contradictions.

Not every black is poor; not every white rich. Class is the fundamental mediator. Obviously all whites – including the white working class – benefited from apartheid, and this has had long-term effects. But white South Africa was (and is) deeply divided by class, often violently: consider the strikes of 1913, 1922, 1942, 1979. Meanwhile, under apartheid there was a powerful, if subordinate, black elite with state power, notably through the homelands: consider Lucas Mangope of Bophuthatswana and Bantu Holomisa of Transkei. Today, hundreds of thousands of poor whites live in squatter and trailer camps, while state-led BEE means that a small black elite trades on its race “as a means of justifying entitlement”. No country, not even South Africa, has ever featured universal white privilege and universal black oppression.

The ANC state, despite its talk of national liberation, is an obstacle to the full emancipation of the working class because, first, the state/corporate elite can only exist through the domination/exploitation of the working class in general, through perpetuating poverty, subordination and authoritarianism. And secondly, the conditions of the black, Coloured and Indian working class are deeply marked by an apartheid/colonial legacy in education, housing, health, transport and land that cannot be removed within capitalism or the state system, but only through a society of self-managed, participatory, planned production and distribution for needs, not profit and power, and the abolition of social and economic inequality.

The black elite have achieved their national liberation with the capture of state power; it is now an obstacle to the complete national liberation of the black, Coloured and Indian working class – and of the full freedom of the white working class too. Black nationalism, the official ANC ideology, speaks of a single black interest; it covers the reactionary black elite in the flags of suffering and of struggle. It is mistaken to keep reverting to the easy (but always flawed) black nationalist politics of the 1980s to try and understand the 2000s. Black (like white) nationalism was always flawed, was always an obstacle to completing the national liberation struggle of the black, Coloured and Indian working class. To continue to use nationalist politics is disempowering, confusing and positively harmful. It ignores class, creates illusions in the ANC and disguises the true nature of the black elite. And most dangerously, it easily translates itself into direct racism against the minorities – Coloureds, Indians, whites and immigrant blacks – who make up at least 25% of the population. Cosatu suggests that the ANC is the party with a “working class bias” and the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) a party of “big capital”, but the ANC openly backs “big capital” and its leaders include billionaires like Ramaphosa and Sexwale, and multi-millionaires like Malema and Jacob Zuma. Moreover, “big capital” contributes heavily to the ANC coffers because, as Zuma admits, “investing in the ANC … is good value for your money”. The DA is really a coalition of minority voters, small business and white conservatives, with no serious buy-in by “big capital” outside the Western Cape. The ANC has no “working class bias”, as Cosatu insists but is a party of the ruling class and its “class bias” is against the working class.

Some Trotskyists claim  the ANC government is the tool of big business, either by being bribed (the “sold out its principles” theory), or by having no choice (the “victim” theory). The “sold out” theory’s flaw is that the ANC has never been anti-capitalist, nor for radical change; it has betrayed nothing. Its aim was only the end of apartheid, not socialism. The victim theory’s flaw is that the ANC state wields enormous power through its control of the armed forces and state bureaucracy. It is precisely because of its autonomous power base that it enacts measures (violation punishable by law) like affirmative action/tendering and other BEE measures, and defies private corporate opinion on a host of issues such as foreign policy. The ANC often blames “globalisation” for unpopular choices when speaking to the unions, but let us not conflate useful alibis with the facts.

The ANC is a top-down party, run by small cabals of the rich and powerful with enormous state and corporate resources, the prospect of Cosatu calling them to account is less than zero. Rather the ANC uses Cosatu (and the SACP) to extend the power of a hostile state against the working class itself. Measures to undermine the working class include the direct co-optation of leaders into top ANC government positions, institutions that systematically bureaucratise the unions like the corporatist National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) and political manipulation through a pseudo-revolutionary rhetoric that presents the ANC as a movement of the black poor. Two examples suffice: former Cosatu general secretary Sam Shilowa rocketed through the ANC to become a wine-collecting multi-millionaire [33]; SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande was rewarded for his Zuma support with a ministerial job, immediately buying a R1.2 million German luxury car.

The ANC retains a mass working class base; let us have no illusions, nor engage in the fantasy that widespread township protests over the last 10 years are a “general urban uprising” against the government. True ANC membership is only 700 000, compared to five million in unions, and true, only 25% of the eligible voting age population votes ANC. However, the ANC faces no serious political rivals. Low votes are mainly due to people not voting in ANC township strongholds, not widespread political opposition. Where left-wing movements run candidates, like Operation Khanyisa Movement (OKM), these are regularly defeated. So long as the political subordination of the working class to the ANC, and therefore to the ruling class, continues, the working class is trapped. It is necessary to reject the notion that spontaneous and militant actions are inherently radical, or that a revolution can happen spontaneously. This is not true. Unless the masses have a revolutionary vision, they will simply repeat the errors of the past years, the error of putting our fate into the hands of new masters. That is precisely why Malema could use the poor’s frustration to promote an elite agenda, precisely why Zuma could ride Cosatu frustration to the presidency. No revolutionary ideas, no revolution.

The legacy of apartheid cannot be eradicated under capitalism and the state in present conditions but as part of the project of constructing a self-managed planned economy, a universal and international federation of humanity. 

Full article here

Born-again robber baron

A hero of South Africa's struggle who is now a business tycoon has been accused of having the blood of Marikana mineworkers on his hands after the release of emails he sent to mine management and government ministries. Cyril Ramaphosa, who 25 years ago led the National Union of Mineworkers in a key strike against the white minority regime, was criticised for betraying the very people he used to represent.

 His business interests include a seat on the board of Lonmin, the company that owns the platinum mine where, two months ago, a wildcat strike led to a police massacre of 34 workers. Ramaphosa sought to intervene with senior government figures on Lonmin's behalf. On the eve of the killings, he called for action against miners engaged in "dastardly criminal" conduct.  Ramaphosa had called for action to deal with the "criminals", whose crime was to seek a wage increase. Ramaphosa warned the police minister, Nathi Mthethwa, to come down hard on the strikers, and was lobbied by Lonmin management to "influence" Shabangu and advised her that "silence and inaction" on the events was "bad for her and government". E-mails showed a direct collusion between Ramaphosa, Lonmin, mineral resources minister Susan Shabangu's department, the police ministry and state security agencies.

Co-author of the post-apartheid constitution, a patrician figure in the governing African National Congress Ramaphosa has been touted as a possible deputy to President Jacob Zuma in an ANC leadership election in December.

come fly with me

Just days after his ruling African National Congress party discussed ways to alleviate the growing gap between rich and poor people in South Africa, President Jacob Zuma is on the verge of purchasing a $230-million presidential jet. The Boeing 777 aircraft, seating about 300 people, will cost $150 million to purchase and another $80 million to customize.

South Africa’s Defense Department, which supervises the transport of senior government officials, may also purchase a second private plane -- a Global Express 600 -- for Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe at a cost of $28 million.

Opposition politicians are outraged over the proposed lavish expenditures in a country where at least one-quarter of the population is unemployed and 40 percent live on less than $49 per month.

ANC Nationalism

....While there were times, throughout the 20th century struggle against the apartheid system (and state), when the movements of African nationalism imbibed certain progressive elements and ideas (e.g. common struggles of all oppressed peoples against colonialism/imperialism), it remained what it was (nationalism) and within what gave it any meaning (the nation state). Given also that such (black) ‘African nationalism’ was in constant ideological and practical ‘competition’ with (white) ‘Afrikaner nationalism’ (in control of the state), South African nationalism was further constructed by the realities of that competition/struggle. This created an even deeper sense of national ‘uniqueness’ and thrust towards a reclaiming of a differentially applied, ‘true’ nationalism.

When the dominant African nationalist force, the ANC, won the 1994 elections, it took political control of an existent national state that had been built to secure the dominant interests of a (white) national bourgeoisie. There was a changing of the nationalist ‘guard’. The only difference was that now, the state was in the hands of a movement whose main aim was to build, and secure, the interests of a black nationalist (as opposed to white nationalist) bourgeoisie, notwithstanding the ANC’s constant claims of the leading role of the working class. In this sense then, the democratic victory of 1994 represented, above all else, the triumph of a majority (black) nationalism over a minority (white) nationalism.

This politically, state-centred ‘changing of the nationalist guard’ was overlaid by the ANC’s acceptance (indeed, embracement) of South Africa’s capitalist political economy, within the context of a dominant, global capitalist neo-liberalism. The two went hand-in-hand. What was thus demanded was the creation of a dominant discourse of ‘nation-building’ as a means to politically legitimise the role and character of the ‘new’ state and the ‘place’ of those under its command. The majority black population who had, historically, been denied any meaningful national or international ‘belonging’, were told that they could achieve both because they were now the ‘real’ owners of a nation state dedicated to securing their national identity, interests as well as their (nationally-located) international status and position.

Over the last several years, what has been consciously, politically constructed then is a ‘new’ kind of nationalist popular hegemony (ideology), congruent with a ‘new’ national identity and politics but within the same historical framework of capitalist development. This macro-design creates the illusion (and the accompanying politics) that the struggle for political and socio-economic liberation by the black majority was, and remains, defined by the active and loyal participation of an ‘authentic national subject’ bounded by the ‘new’ nation state and a ‘new’ nationalism. 

To a large extent, this South Africa specific example of the ‘naturalising’ of nationalism, alongside its capitalist twin, has worked.  Despite regular and even increasing shows of dissatisfaction with the performance of the state and the maldistribution of socio-economic benefit, there is no sign that the majority has jettisoned the ‘national popular project’. Nor is there any sustained sign of the same at the global level.

 The reality is that the capitalist system, at a global political and institutional level, fundamentally remains a constellation of various nationalisms. While such nationalisms might be differentially ‘practiced’ in tandem with the changing nature of the capitalist system of production, accumulation and distribution, they are fundamentally grounded in a common ideology, which, over time, always ‘returns’ to the source. Even the presence of "socialists/communists" in the management and leadership of the nation state and/or the nationalist movement has proven time and again to make little difference in this regard, although it might make a difference in relation to how the national cake is cut.

As can be so plainly seen as a result of the latest capitalist crisis, the role of the nation and nationalism has done anything but engage in a disappearing act. Indeed, that role has taken on greater importance/centrality. This is the case not only in reproducing the conceptual/spiritual power of the ‘nation’ and the politics of nationalism which allows varying degrees of popular support/impetus (whether as applied to ‘opposition’ and/or acquiescence) but in resurrecting the specific role of the national state in ‘rescuing’ and/or managing the key component parts of the capitalist system itself – and thus temporarily ‘addressing’ the crisis.

Not surprisingly, it is the billions of poor and working class people that have borne, and will continue to bear, the dominant burden of these acts of systemic reproduction. It is when this majority of humanity, of whatever national ‘identity’ or place, no longer accepts and embraces the janus-faced ideology of nationalism that there will emerge the real possibility for breaking the back of a capitalist system whose trump card always has been, and always will be, the cul-de-sac of nationalism.



extract from Dr. McKinley article
Link

THE TRAGEDY AND THE FARCE

"Tradition has it that whenever a group of people has tasted the lovely fruits of wealth, security and prestige it begins to find it more comfortable to believe in the obvious lie and accept that it alone is entitled to privilege." - Steve Biko

Despite celebrations of freedom on 27 April every year, severe and widespread poverty persists in South Africa. Our education system is in tatters, the future of many black kids has been declared futureless. Unemployment is sky rocketing, wasting the talents of many young people who are condemned to a life of permanent poverty. Many black people continue to lack access to electricity, clean water and proper sanitation. Many are under nourished.

All these things are happening when the elite and the government officials are living affluent lives. The president has just built a mansion in Enkandla to the tune of more than R400m. Malema has also built a house to the tune of R16m. Every weekend the elite host parties and weddings that cost no less than a million while the people they claim to represent go to bed on an empty stomach and live in absolute poverty. They do not find this morally troubling. They have no conscience, otherwise they would not shoot us with rubber bullets when we protest because they have neglected us. Power and wealth forms a hard shell around their consciousness so that they do not see that it is fellow human beings suffering in the poverty around them.

We live in a society where the unemployment rate is said to be 23% while the truth is different but the government is committed to falsifying figures. The real unemployment rate is closer to 40%. We live in a society where to be black and unemployed is held to mean only one thing - laziness and expecting too much from the government. We live in a society where to speak out against government injustice is said to mean that you are lazy and ungrateful. We live in a society where people that speak out against the injustice that we live with every day means that we are told that we are being used by someone else. We live in a society where the poor are denied basic health care because of our inability to pay. Every time the poor go to the clinics we are certain of getting a Panadol pill regardless of our illness. We live in a society where the affluent elite live in their fortress and bubbles and see nothing wrong with the excessive amount of poverty and inequalities. They see the poor majority as a threat to society. They do not see this society as a threat to the majority. Yes we live in a society where slavery, colonialism and apartheid were abolished and yet the majority of black people live below the poverty line.

Apartheid was only abolished on paper not in real life. What is the difference between the secrecy act of apartheid and the current protection of the information bill? What is the difference between the apartheid homeland leaders and chiefs and the current traditional courts bill? What is the difference between the death of Hector Peterson in  1976 uprising and the recent murder of Andries Tatane? What is the difference between the corrupt apartheid government and the current government that is corrupt beyond repair. Think of the arms deals and all the local municipalities that have become milking cows for the leadership of the ruling party, and then spot the difference. Think of Zuma’s mansion in Enkandla, paid for by the taxpayer’s money and think of the mud house that are surrounding his mansion, mud houses that are crumbling down.

Our leaders are part of the machine that is oppressing us today. They have become stooges of capital. They have not confronted white racism seriously. We are important as far as voting is concerned to them but all they see in us is that we are voting cattle. Our new elite has taken the old masks of the colonialists and is proudly wearing them. The new elite has nothing to do with transforming the nation except to camoflage capitalism.

This whole society needs to be transformed. It needs to be opened up to the participation of the people. Political power and control over resources must be shared. We need revolutionary change. Our unity has never been as urgent a necessity as it is today. The students and the youth, the rural and the poor, the Unemployed People’s Movement and other movements such as Abahlali base Mjondolo, Ilizwi Lamafama, etc. need to unite and form once progressive bloc. We are the agents of change not the new elite that has betrayed the struggle. We need to unite outside their movements because they have privatised our struggle. Like the formation of the Black Consciousness Movement did in the 1970s, we need to unite in our own space, define our own struggle and politics and shake the foundations of capitalism. Forging a real unity of poor people’s movements. The Unemployed People’s Movement was formed in August 2009 to respond to the crisis of unemployment and the commoditization of essential services in a society dominated by corruption and greed. As Steve Biko said, we blacks are tired of standing at the touchlines to witness a game that we should be playing. We want to do things for ourselves and all by ourselves. This is a realisation that we are the protagonists of our lives and nobody will free us but ourselves; we – the unemployed - will have to be our own liberators.

 “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce” - Karl Marx. Apartheid was the tragedy, the post-apartheid economic divide is the farce.

Taken and adapted from
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/81680

Comrades?

Freedom and democracy in post-apartheid South Africa has meant white minority rule being replaced by rich minority rule. People pretended as if they were freedom fighters while they were freedom robbers. They were wolves wearing the attire of the Freedom Charter and so we thought that they were lambs

Do we still call them "comrades" those who steal the money that is supposed to go the poor? How can we call somebody who got rich by stealing from the poor a comrade?

Why in such a good country are there people sleeping on the roads while billions goes missing from the money set aside to develop the people? Even now, even with everything that we have seen, with the mansions and sports cars and Johnny Walker Blue on one side and old ladies looking for rotting food in rubbish bins on the other side, when people are arrested for stealing from the people others will come with placards written 'innocent until proven guilty'. But at the time when that person was committing the crime he or she never thought anything about the people. Is politics now just about each little group supporting their own thief so that they can get something too?

Are we really free? Democracy has made some of us multimillionaires but these multimillionaires are not even willing to help those that are suffering. Was this country and its resources created for them? The Freedom Charter said that "South Africa belongs to all who live in it". It didn't say that "South Africa belongs to the whites now but in the future it will belong to the rich".

Those who have become rich are trying to redefine freedom and democracy to suit themselves. Those who have remained faithful to what freedom and democracy really mean, to what they meant when the people got united, are labelled as traitors of our new democracy. If you say in 2012 what you said in 1994 or in 1984 or in 1976 or in 1960 you are a traitor.

How on earth can they sleep peacefully when they know  that the people that elected them to improve their lives are sleeping on the road?

These people that are ruling us know they told us that there is not even one country in the world that has got such a good Constitution like our country. But now they are planning to amend it. They say that the Constitution is the reason why the poor are still poor! In fact the real reason is that poor people are using the Constitution to know the truth. We are using the Constitution to defend ourselves. They say that they want to change the Constitution and that they are the real custodians of human rights and the people's dignity. They say that they are the ones that really want equality. But where are the views of the people on the ground? Have they ever visited the people to seek their views?

Why all of a sudden is there this plan to amend the constitution? The government has been in power since 1994. Is it because corruption is escalating and because protests are escalating? They didn't start with the Constitution. They started with the newspapers. They wanted to make sure that the newspapers are not exposing their secrets. Some of these same newspapers exposed our struggles while we were under white minority rule but know that we are under rich minority rule they want to cut their wings. What is it that they are intending to do to us? Why do they want to ensure that we don't have all the information that we need to understand things properly? It was the newspapers that exposed how the bosses of Aurora Mines were getting so rich while they were not paying their workers. People on the ground must ensure that they oppose this autocratic thinking and that the stands as united as against the rule of the rich minority as they did against the rule of the white minority. Democracy is the rule of the people. It is not the rule of a rich minority instead of a white minority.

We have not forgotten that they told us that there will be nothing that they will do without the people. But when they say 'people' who are they referring to? Do they just mean the people like them, who are becoming richer as the rest of us become poorer? One thing is for sure. If you do not belong to a political party and you believe in a living politics, if you believe that poor people can think and that we should all make this country together then it means that you are not a human being. We thought that are our involvement in the struggle to liberate ourselves we would harvest the fruit of our toil. But it seems as if we were just wasting our time and energy for those who now think for us. These days it looks like the politicians think that they can do whatever they want. But we still remember that they were supposed to be taking our agenda forward. They were supposed to be working for us, not stealing from us and repressing us. While they are planning to amend the Constitution we are dying in shack fires, from floods and from AIDS. Many of us are looking for work every day and are becoming exhausted and depressed. Some of us that have work are not treated as human beings at work and still have to live in shacks because the pay is so bad.

During the World Cup so much money was wasted to make things for the visitors from all over the world. Our government loves to impress rich people from other countries but we don't count to them. They are ashamed of us. In fact we must be evicted so that we can be hidden away from international appearance. But of course when the elections come then these same people will be needed to vote.

We are still living under minority rule. The minority passes the laws that it wants, it uses its muscles to force the people to accept its domination. The rule of the rich minority is very similar in some ways to the rule of the white minority. Instead of trying to eradicate racism in South Africa the government is just making sure that no one will stand in their way so that they can do what they like. Whether we like to talk about it or not Africans are still regarded Africans, Indians are still regarded Indians and whites are still regarded as whites. The government is not looking for ways to change this so that we can all just be South Africans. We are still treated according to the colour of our skins. Some racists are using poor African security guards to do their dirty work. This is even happening in the shopping malls which are supposed to be places in which all that counts is your money. We really have a gift for ignoring things that are true but that will create division. Sithi ke thina za sithetha inyaniso ikrakra (truth is bitter).

Now is the time for us all to realise that there is a struggle inside every struggle. Now is the time when we must stop being used as the tools of the capitalists and make sure that what belongs to the people must go to the people.


Taken and adapted from here 
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/81688

ANC elite

In his Communist Manifesto Karl Marx wrote that, 'Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class...The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie'. Here Marx is referring to the ability of the bourgeois to translate economic power into state power, thus reducing our governments to mere managers acting in the interests of capital and not the people. This has happened to governments around the world. But here our politicians are not mere managers. They are, like in Russia or India, a predatory elite with their own class interests and they support capital and repress the people as long as they can get their own share...

...The commanding heights of the economy continue to reside in the hands of a tiny elite, most of which is white. Unemployment is skyrocketing. Most young people have never worked. Anyone can see that there is an excessive amount of poverty in South Africa. There are shacks everywhere. In fact, poverty reigns supreme in our country. Every year Jacob Zuma promises to create new jobs and every year unemployment grows....

...Poverty and inequality are getting worse. The government is increasingly criminalising poverty instead of treating it as a political problem. When people try to organise they are always presented as a third force being used to undermine democracy and bring back racism. But it is the ANC that has failed to develop any plans to democratise the economy. It is the ANC that has failed to develop any plans to democratise the media. It is the ANC that disciplines the people for the bourgeoisie - a role that they are very comfortable to play! It is the ANC that follows the line of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It is our local leaders who are taking the leap from their old bosses, stealing from us, treating us with contempt, acting like the former colonial government and oppressing us. During the struggle our leaders embodied the aspirations of the people. But once they took state power they didn't need us any more. We were sent home. We are only called out to vote or attend rallies. But all the time our people are evicted from farms, paving way for animals as farms are turned into game reserves under the pretext of tourism. Our people are evicted from cities. Our people are denied decent education. The party has become a mixture of what Marx would call an instrument of power in the hands of the bourgeoisie and what Fanon would call a means of private advancement.

Biko wrote that 'This is one country where it would be possible to create a capitalist black society, if whites were intelligent, if the nationalists were intelligent. And that capitalist black society, black middle class, would be very effective ... South Africa could succeed in putting across to the world a pretty convincing, integrated picture, with still 70 percent of the population being underdogs.'...

The only way to truly honour the struggles of the past is to stand up for what is right, now. The struggle continues and will continue until we are all free.

Ayanda Kota chairperson of Unemployed People's Movement in South Africa.

Full article at http://allafrica.com/stories/201201130953.html

Orwell's South Africa

Some reent developoments in South Africa re-affirms that the State exists to be the mouth-piece of the capitalist class.In recent years South Africa's press has been increasingly occupied by the rise of the "tenderpreneurs" – a new, wealthy elite who use their political connections to benefit from state contracts through the largely discredited Black Economic Empowerment programme that was meant to improve the lot of disadvantaged blacks but has helped to create a new, narrow elite. A company headed by Jacob Zuma's 28-year-old son Duduzane was shown to have received more than £80m in shares from Arcelor-Mittal. The company said the stake in the South African arm of the steel giant was allocated for "strategic assistance" with meeting its BEE requirements. Other beneficiaries included the reported girlfriend of the deputy president and an "empowerment advisory counsel" to the President. ANC Youth League Julius Malema boasts about his lavish lifestyle and links to firms that have earned millions of pounds in state contracts.

The South African government has been accused of resorting to censorship policies reminiscent of the Apartheid era in a bid to silence its critics in the media. The ruling African National Congress is pushing a series of measures which would, opponents say, undermine freedom of speech, criminalise investigative reporting and threaten whistleblowers in the civil service with lengthy prison sentences. The Protection of Information Bill, currently before parliament, where the ANC holds a two-thirds majority, is part of two-pronged effort to bring the media under closer control. The second stage is a proposed Media Tribunal which would make South Africa's press – often accused by the government of being anti-ANC – answerable to parliament.The information bill would give the power to heads of government agencies to classify whole swathes of information on the grounds that it was in the "national interest". This would then make disclosure of related information a criminal offence punishable with up to 25 years in prison. Lawyers are concerned with the vague language employed in the current draft with the national interest defined in terms such as "the survival and security of the state". The country's leading legal body, the General Council of the Bar, said several provisions of the bill were "plainly contrary" to freedoms enshrined in its constitution.

A petition of writers whose work was banned under the Apartheid regime drafted by Gordimer, André Brink, Njabulo Ndebele, John Kani and Achmat Dangor explain that "We are threatened again, now with a gag over the word processor." The writers described the tribunal as the "descent of a shutter over the dialogue of the arts" and the creation of the "Word Police". Critics accuse the ANC of exhibiting a paranoid tendency in response to legitimate journalistic criticism of abuses of power.

Child poverty alongside "Youth" riches

A new OECD working paper on trends in poverty and income inequality in South Africa has found that more than half of all South Africans (54%) are poor but, among children below 10, as many as two out of three are poor. "This implies that among all poor South Africans, one in three is a child," said the OECD.


The national poverty line of 515 rand a month, or about US$4 a day, which is used for national policy making. International comparisons of lower-income countries often use the World Bank poverty line which is US$2 a day. Under this lower line, the aggregate poverty rate in South Africa is 30% but if the standard OECD poverty line, which is below half the average income, the poverty rate is 26%.

The report, based on the most recent information on incomes available, for the year 2008, indicated that South Africa's levels of income inequality and income poverty did not decrease between 1993 and 2008. According to some estimates, aggregate inequality even slightly increased. Inequality between racial groups decreased, especially during the 1990s. This did, however, not lead to a decrease in the aggregate because inequality within population groups increased, especially among Africans.Rising inequality within the labour market - higher unemployment and greater wage inequality - lies behind the increased levels of inequality.

"Poverty has increased, especially in urban areas...Race-based redistribution may therefore become less effective over time relative to policies addressing increasing inequality within each racial group and especially within the African group."

While at the same time we read that Julius Malema , head of South Africa's ANC youth league , has been accused of making 130m rand (£11m or $17m) from state contracts since 2008.He reportedly used some of his earnings to buy two lavish homes and three luxury cars, including an Aston Martin.
Malema has always presented himself as someone who understands poverty, because his mother was a single parent who worked as a cleaning lady in rural Limpopo.

From our companion blog , Socialism Or Your Money Back

South Africa has a new political party called Congress of the People. But given that "..it is expected to adopt many of the policies pursued by the ANC government under Mbeki", COPE, as it is otherwise known, is perhaps best not described as 'new' but rather an ANC re-tread.

Whether therefore voters in the next election choose one congress or the other is moot. One can hope that the garlic & vinegar days of HIV/AIDS treatment are over and the new government will not be tempted to follow Zuma's example of HIV prevention (taking a shower after unprotected sex with an infected woman) as an excuse for abandoning effective but costly treatment with antiretrovirals. A recent study by Harvard researchers estimated that the ANC are responsible for the premature deaths of 365,000 people earlier this decade.

But is there any reason to think that that there will be no more billion $ arms deals ('dodgy' or otherwise), a reduction in the hundreds of thousands of homeless people, less xenophobia, better sanitation, etc? No. The horrors of apartheid have passed, but economically South Africa is still one of the most unequal countries in the world. Almost all the land, mines and industry remain in the same (mostly white) hands. Almost half the population lives below subsistence level. Unemployment is widespread; children scavenge on dumps and landfill sites from sunrise to sunset seven days a week. Life expectancy is falling (a drop of 13 years since 1990) as AIDS, drug-resistant TB and other diseases spread.

Little wonder then anti-aparthied activist Rassool Snyman felt compelled to state:

"They never freed us. They only took the chain from around our neck and put it on our ankles."

Zuma said recently that the ANC would be in power until Christ's second coming. In reality, this is probably a desire for a electoral system such as that in Turkmenistan where the turnout reached 93.87% in the election for 288 candidates, all of whom support the policies of President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. Whatever, if Mosiuoa Lekota of COPE is to be believed "Public servants now talk in whispers when they discuss COPE. They report that they risk their jobs if they are seen to befriend us. Tales of spying on each other, as under apartheid, on who attends COPE meetings, abound" and "Songs threatening or encouraging the hatred of and the killing of COPE leaders have been composed and are sung at meetings,".

True liberation for the workers of South Africa and across the world will not take place before they act consciously and democratically (i.e. without leaders) to shed the chains of wage slavery.

Politics of Poverty

It has come to pass that many countries in Africa that have adopted the 50 percent plus one presidential vote (Constitutions) are being engulfed in political instabilities whenever the political opposition fails to win an outright majority. We saw this happening in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Presidential elections in Africa are conducted under corrupt means—vast amounts of tax payers’ money are wasted in order to dupe the voters. Political hooligans and thugs are employed to woo the voters. Ethnic and tribal loyalties are manipulated during general elections.

The judiciary and electoral commissions cannot be trusted enough (transparent) by the political opposition and the Western election observers. The infighting, tensions anddivisions inside the ANC may only help to highlight the gullibility of politicaltransparency in South Africa. The judiciary feels that Jacob Zumu must face seriouscriminal offences, whereas the ANC supporters and COSATU believe the judiciary is playing games.

The recent outbreaks of xenophobia attacks against foreigners is not a surprise to theWSM—indigenous blacks in South Africa are living under difficult times.Unemployment and urban poverty are on the increase in South Africa.

It is a fact that South Africa is a relatively developed country, but it is surprising tonote that indigenous blacks are experiencing the vicissitudes of urban poverty and squalor.

Economic development brings with it unforeseen social and economic problems.Economic and social reforms are everywhere failing to bridge the gap between the rich and poor. Social uprisings, student riots and ethnic protests have come to epitomise the character of political consciousness in less developed countries.

It is quite evident that the dilemma of land distribution (indiginisation) is so rife in Africa where globalisation has entailed the massive exploitation of idle natural resources (oil and mineral reserves). The recent increase in oil and food prices combined with the so-called “credit crunch” has led many African countries to experiment with the production of biofuels. The production of wheat and sugar cane to make biofuels will be a death sentence in Africa in the sense that it will mean sacrificing the lives of innocent poor workers and peasants who are already experiencing hunger and poverty. Nobody can deny the fact that global warming is taking place in Africa, but what is difficult to accept is whether African political statesmen have the ability and ingenuity to weight the scientific arguments being propounded to arrest the effect of global warming on economic development as such.

The dilemma of income inequality is generally greater in Africa compared with western Europe. Extreme poverty engenders widespread hunger, malnutrition, lack of clean water, death from preventable diseases, inadequate shelter, illiteracy and other less obvious inequalities. The poor have no bargaining power—they have no importance among foreign governments and corporations. A world of free access for all and common ownership is the only way to eliminate poverty.

K. MULENGA, Zambia

ANC - Force of Repression

Spotted on World in Common .

Statement of Support & Call for Solidarity with Sebokeng Community Struggle

On Tuesday morning, 14th of August, over 1000 community members from Sebokeng's "informal settlement" attempted to blockade the Golden Highway between Sebokeng and Johannesburg in protest at the ANC government's inadequate service delivery since its election in 1994.

The police arrived in numbers and fired randomly at the communitymembers, allegedly with live ammunition, seriously injuring 6 people and injuring others, including small children.

Thirty-five people were then arrested and taken to the Sebokeng police station, and are being charged with public violence and illegal gathering. When leaders of the Anti-Privatisation Forum and Coalition Against Water Privatisation, under whose banner the protest was held,arrived at the police station to enquire about the situation and try and have their comrades released nine of them were also arrested, for addressing a community gathering.

The fact that the SAPS police, under the ANC, can shoot with impunity at poor people who are merely attempting to have their most basic human rights met reminds one of the Apartheid era police. And it only goes to prove that all governments, even those democratically elected,soon turn on those they are supposed to represent, in order to defend their newly acquired wealth, power and privilege. We know very well by now that the ANC is not concerned with providing for the majority of the population in South Africa and delivering on the promises that got the ANC into power, but that it is only concerned with making a profit out of the people, and further enriching the already disgustingly rich new back elite. Even if it means charging the poorest of the poor for the most basic necessities and essential human rights such as electricity and water, which are laid down in the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights, of which South Africa is one of the signatory states, as well as in the ANC People's Charter.We take the following stand:

1. We are absolutely disgusted by the ANC leaders, who flagrantly flaunt their wealth in the face of so many poor and hungry people. Weare equally disgusted by the police responsible for this atrocity, who have once again shown us that their role is not that of serving and protecting the people, but serving and protecting the interests of big business and capital.

2. We are encouraged and inspired by this bold action by the people of Sebokeng which, by sabotaging the circulation of goods and obstructing the flow of money, struck at that which the government – through the police – most wishes to protect, big business and capital. It is important to note that these protests come only after years of the community having exhausted all legal means - including ANC Alliance channels - to have their voices heard.

3. We wholeheartedly support the poor communities of the Vaal, and all those across South Africa, who are struggling for their basic rights.We are not convinced, however, that the ANC government, or any other for that matter, will ever adequately deliver to the people. But we support these struggles nevertheless as necessary for building the confidence and power for a larger struggle. The struggle for total liberation, that is, the struggle for the people to own and control all the industries and the land, for them to be in control of the communities the live in, and to have power to decide over all thatwhich affects them.

4. The ZACF - which has done numerous workshops in Sebokeng, and has good relations with community activists - calls on all our comrades around the world, and everyone who supports the struggle of the poor and working poor for a dignified existence, to please organise actions in solidarity with the struggling people of Sebokeng.

5. We call on everyone who can to picket South African embassies, as well as to send protest letters and make phone-calls to the Sedibeng District Council Mayor, Mr. Mlungisi Hlongwane, Media Liaison toMinister of Safety and Security Mr Trevor Bloem or to carry out any other actions you deem fitting to protest this atrocious act, and warn the ANC government against the course of action they have take. Which is to declare war on the poor, and decree a new form of Apartheid, social Apartheid, which excludes the poor from their rights to a dignified life.

In Solidarity with the struggling people of Sebokeng,

Jonathan Payn - Federation Secretary

Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation

international@zabalaza.net

Update:-

A proposed protest march to Sebokeng police station has been postponed until a proper decision has been reached, involving the appropriate structures. This is because it is too late to notify the police, andthe march will thus constitute an illegal gathering (sound familiar?),which would probably result in the arrest of many more comrades.

The arrested comrades are still being held, and the hearing has been postponed until Thursday. Bail is not yet set.

Protest E-Mail Addresses:-

Ministry of Safety and Security bloemb@saps.org.za

peternk@saps.org.za

Mayor Mlungisi Hlongwane sibongiler@sedibeng.gov.za