Congress of the People in the Mother City

Archive for July, 2009


We’re being taken for a ride

In Editorials on July 31, 2009 at 10:50 am

It must be nice to be Jacob Zuma and his administration. To be ideologically everywhere without being anywhere. When the circumstances suite you blame the previous administration for what your supporters carelessly call ‘neo-liberal’ agenda. And you ground yourself on leftist tactical doctrines of the so called National Democratic Revolution (NDR) in front of the workers and the poor.

When elected, to appease the markets, you declare that the previous policies, including the neo-liberal agenda, are a collective decisions of the organization (ANC), and so will not change. Then you take credit for sound fiscal policies of the past, while blaming all th


A TRIBUTE TO KOLAKOWSKI: THE BALANCE SHEET OF ANC GOVERNMENT

In Discussion on July 31, 2009 at 9:16 am

Fifteen wasted years: this must be the balance sheet of the African National Congress as the unchallenged party of government.
In terms of the great mass of South Africa’s citizens, whom it purports to represent, and who have presented it with one mandate after another to act as their representative, it has failed – by any reasonable test.

No party ever came to government with such an overwhelming mandate from the people, and with such immense goodwill internationally. Few dissipated that trust so convincingly.

Not that the ANC as the single majoritarian party of government, politically, did not from the beginning face immense challenges in terms of society, economy and culture. This was a given, the bottom line.

The centuries-old divisions in the society along the line of race, its stratospheric polarisation between extremes of wealth and poverty, the inherited deadweight of mass illiteracy and sub-literacy, abysmal conditions in housing, healthcare, sanitation: these and many others were the challenges set to ANC government in 1994, as daunting as they would have been to any other party in South Africa, or the world, for that matter. No easy walk to freedom, and human betterment, indeed.

The question is, what did the ANC do with this gift of state power, for which it had yearned for almost a century, and for which so many of its followers had made great sacrifices.

Here one has to say that at best its achievements have been modest. Often they have been pitiful. In crucial matters they have been disastrous, as would be accounted by honest reckoning in any society.
By my own judgement, its most terrible failure has been in education.

This was one variable, in my view, which ANC government could and should have seized upon from the beginning, and said to the whole society: “We have limited resources, there are great competing needs, but this above all – with dedication and good sense and common effort – can raise up and prepare for the future a new generation that will be better fitted to solve the country’s problems than ourselves.”

The society could have been asked to sacrifice some more for its children, so that South Africa could have been transformed in as short a time as possible into a high-skilled and more highly cultured society, at the same time as its old economic foundation in a mass of unskilled and semi-skilled labour had become increasingly redundant, in a world of globalised economy. The greatest possible resources, and the greatest possible assemblage of teaching skills and idealism, could have gone towards this mission, which would have drawn upon and enhanced the most profound aspirations of the society, and harvested great international support.

Its institutions of first-world quality in third-level education and its pockets of international-standard excellence in primary and secondary education could have been drawn upon as resources in raising up the lower depths. A planned, sober, determined effort stretching across the whole of the society, founded on a true respect for education and the mind and soul of the human person, could have done this.

Instead… the materialistic scramble for personal wealth, at any price. The rancour, the power-play, the strutting about of Great Men (and a few women), the arrogance of office, the delusions. The false gods. Style, instead of substance. Fifteen wasted years.

I thought about this when reading the obituary of a philosopher who died last week, a man born in 1927, the year in which the ANC president of that time, Josiah Gumede, made the first visit by any ANC member – the first of many such – to the Soviet Union, that great sunken wreck of so many South African political aspirations.

Leszek Kolakowski was born in Poland, a country that knew well the feel of foreign occupation, which during his liftetime – during his childhood and youth – suffered its most terrible Calvary at the hands of both Germany and Russia, its historic oppressors, situated to its west and east. Like a good number of young Poles of his generation, he was grateful when the Russians (who had invaded his country in tandem with the Germans at the beginning of the Second World War) chased out the Germans towards the war’s end, and made themselves its new masters. He became a marxist, and joined the Polish Communist youth organisation. Why not?

Well, he found out why not. Kolakowski’s journey of consciousness up until his death last week ran parallel to the ascent of the South African Communist Party to a never-before reached eminence and power in the state.

The failure of ANC government – in which there has never not been a string of ministries in the hands of serving or former members of the CP – can be examined in the light of Kolakowski’s diligent, lifelong re-examination of his own former Communist Party conscience. Readers can follow this journey for themselves here.

Author of the three-volume Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth and Dissolution (1978), published after he had fled his native country, Kolakowski has home truths to tell about the men of power who led Russia onto the rocks, and who have helped guide South Africa into the swamp.

In this thoroughgoing study, he characterised marxism as “the greatest fantasy of our century… [which] began in a Promethean humanism and culminated in the monstrous tyranny of Stalin”. A fantasy that still strides the narrow world like the living dead at the southern tip of Africa, after having been buried almost everywhere else. A visit to Moscow in 1950, when the General Secretary was still doing his work, had opened his eyes to what he would later describe as “the enormity of material and spiritual desolation caused by the Stalinist system.” The great bulk of South African luminaries were still to make their sacred pilgrimage thither….

Written more than 50 years ago, his 72 definitions of What Socialism is Not – banned in Poland, but widely read underground – contained words that still buzz in the ear in South Africa today. “Socialism is not: a society in which one man is in trouble for saying what he thinks while another is well-off because he does not say what he has on his mind; a society in which a man lives better if he doesn’t have any thoughts of his own at all; a state which has more spies than nurses and more people in prison than in hospital; a state in which the philosophers and writers always say the same as the generals and ministers – but always after they’ve said it…”

He was particularly scathing about the nice, left-liberal apologists for marxist regimes, who argued that “economic progress” in communist countries or the necessities of the National Democratic Revolution somehow justified a lack of political freedom: “This lack of freedom is presented as though it were a temporary shortage. Reports along these lines give the impression of being unprejudiced. In reality they are not simply false, they are utterly misleading. Not that nothing has changed in these countries, nor that there have been no improvements in economic efficiency, but because political slavery is built into the tissue of society in the Communist countries as its absolute condition of life.” He dismissed modern manifestations of marxism, as in the SACP, Cosatu and the ANC today, as “merely a repertoire of slogans serving to organise various interests”.

It could not be better put. After 15 years of squandered government, a reading of Kolakowski is as good a curative as any for the South African disease of Radical Chic.

Salute to an honest thinker.


The ANC’s surrender to populism

In Discussion on July 28, 2009 at 4:53 pm

Paul Trewhela in his interesting piece on the ANC and the nationalisation of the mines “debate“, puts his finger on the truth when he identifies the dominant characteristic of the new look ANC as populist. Unfortunately, he is still busy chasing Stalinist and Maoist ghosts though, and this detracts from his otherwise razor-sharp analysis.

The real issue is, as he identifies, the paucity of analysis of the current post-colonial, post-apartheid and now the post-global economic crisis situation. Trewhela’s description of the exclusion of certain groups within the ANC post-Polokwane and the subsequent formation of COPE does not adequately address the full scope or the entire support base of this new organization.

Not even a half-way adequate Marxist analysis is provided by the “Left’ in the ANC. Neither is there any sense of direction from even social-democratic forces in the ANC. Even the once powerful national democratic discourse that led the drive for change in South Africa no longer comes from the ANC.

Whatever the latter’s radical limitations, this project was able to hold together a real united front against the apartheid regime. The crisis of this project has been its failure to coherently offer direction after the democratic breakthrough of 1994. Trewhela hints at this reality, but does not follow through.

The ghosts of socialist Christmases past; Stalin, Mao and the one he does not mention, Trotsky, unfortunately make Trewhela’s contribution guilty of the very thing he charges others with; it is stuck in a past paradigm. Claims that “Stalinists” wrote the Freedom Charter or controlled the Congress of Democrats, or that Mao influenced or did not influence South African political leaders does not give answers to what has happened to the revolution in South African post 1994.
The fact the someone with the same surname as Ben Turok, maybe even a relative, suffered at the hands of Stalin’s murderous regime adds nothing to the debate. The reality is that at the time the Freedom Charter was drafted, nationalisation was a policy held in high regard all over the world, in developed and developing countries, in the north, south, east and west. The state had a legitimate role to play in running enterprises in all countries, even the USA, though they would never call it by its name then or even now as banks have been taken over by the central government to mitigate against the effects of the global financial crisis.

The question is: what is the relevance of a policy of nationalisation today and can it advance the interests of the majority of poor, unemployed South Africans? It is quite clear that such a debate is sterile. The issue is not whether to nationalise or not, but what role the public sector can and must play in providing essential goods and services where the market fails. But before addressing that, some of the useful insights that Trewhela does bring to this debate need consideration.

Firstly, he is right in his assertion that Polokwane was a watershed. It dispatched a whole section of the ANC, closer to 50%, into the political wilderness. Many of these did not join COPE, precisely because COPE was not formed by the Mbeki “faction” of the ANC.

A number of forces were there at the foundation of COPE; some disillusioned ANC members, both from the right and the left, some people who had never been in the ANC or even a political party and even some opportunists. Let’s face it, every party has them.

What was significant about the post-Polokwane moment was that people stood up to resist what Trewhela rightly calls the reduction of the ANC to a “no nuthin” party and, importantly, the fact there had been no other party with any unifying, popular, non-racial vision for the future.

Trewhela is right when he states that the ANC is now entirely populist, devoid of any substance. This is partly because of the similar collapse of the SACP and COSATU from being organisations who offered, however limited, some vision to South Africans to being simple appendages of the new populist ANC. This phenomenon is not dissimilar to the Peronist movement in Argentina; populism that has captured the imagination of the working class.

Trewhela’s point about the ANC not being a real parliamentary party and the parliamentary system not being truly democratic is crucial. The arrangement post 1994 was fine for one election, but the failure to create a proper constituency based system has robbed the electorate of the country of any real influence, other than to elect a head of state, who as we have seen, can then be removed by his colleagues if they don’t like him!

This is why many people, including those in COPE, have been arguing so strongly for electoral reform. Trewhela and others may well not like the outcome of a constituency based system, for there is no guarantee it would produce a better parliament in terms of the general quality of members. But if the constituency system elects fools to serve the nation, they would at least be fools that were democratically chosen as opposed to those selected by other fools in a smoke filled room.
As for the “Chinafication” of the ANC, it is clear there are those who would relish this. There have been moves to centralize power, create a super-cabinet; a self-selected inner cabinet of Zuma’s most loyal supporters, his kitchen cabinet. Such moves have been defeated, partly because of the sociology of the new ANC – it is about personal ambition and accumulation, not collective leadership – and partly because the loose conglomeration of forces that produced the Polokwane result, do not trust each other.

There may be some variant of a type of socialist among them, but real socialists are an endangered species in the ANC. They have all been forced to accept the market, global financial and trade rules and practices and a relationship of subservience to capital. The oligarchs of the ANC who mediate between capital and the poor masses are extremely powerful. They fund the ANC, COSATU and the SACP, so we now see a COSATU that is disciplining workers to accept salary negotiation offers they do not want. The SACP, previously inciting the kinds of protests seen recently in municipalities and in supermarkets, now calls such activities counter-revolutionary.

In reality, the post-Polokwane period has seen a new deal between sections of capital, the leadership of organized labour and the political leadership of the ANC and SACP. It is one premised on a fundamental disbelief in the possibility of socialist or even social democratic transformation of our society. The SACP, after Joe Slovo’s famous critique of the failures of “really existing socialism” in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, adopted the view that socialism could only come about through the thoroughgoing democratization of our society.

It is clear that it has abandoned this view and now that there is an accord between the leadership of the ANC, SACP and COSATU on the post-Polokwane project. The Communist Party has mortgaged the working class and the poor to this project for the sake of a few cabinet posts.

The new deal from the tri-party alliance is simple; massive expansion of government expenditure on political appointments, the continued injection of funds in to inefficient state-owned enterprises and agencies, bloated local and provincial government who in turn employ private consultants to run these and the continued super-profits of monopoly finance capital, who have weathered the global crisis better than all of us due to the protection given by the remnants of apartheid trade and industrial policies and legislation.

This capital in turn, protects itself by pulling the new oligarchs around it, who pretend they are entrepreneurs but in practice are simply rent-seekers, paid to do nothing but sit on boards, lobby for government tenders and play the occasional round of golf with their old-new masters. One way in which this scenario resembles China is the huge cost of this project for our society.

Rent seekers never produce, they simply appropriate. The working class, the poor, the middle class and professionals in South Africa are being taxed twice, just as the Chinese people are by their government and the CPC. We pay taxes to the government and taxes to the ruling political elite. In both cases it is squandered.

The difference is that in China the scale is so massive, what the political elite takes as tribute is miniscule. In South Africa this looting is blatant, hence the protests in municipalities, strikes by workers in the public and private sector and rumblings among those sections of capital not included in the post-Polokwane deal.

The only way this project can be defeated is to mobilise all South Africans to:
• Understand and defend the constitutional dispensation won by the people of South Africa after a protracted struggle. This includes completing the democratisation of the country, including constituency based elections for parliament.
• Fight corruption, maladministration and wastage of resources in all its forms and ensure decent services are delivered to all.
• Open up the economy so that all people have the opportunity to set up enterprises or look for work.

That this has to be done under a new flag and in a new organization has been clear for a while. The old one has been captured, not by Stalinists, Maoists or any other left wing bogeyman, but by right wing, anti-democratic populists who are there to apply the lubrication for the continued exploitation of the poor, the working class, the men, women and children of our country who have been betrayed by the greed of a political elite that has ceased to serve the people and now only serves itself. In this scenario, public enterprises could never be run efficiently, since what determines their success or failure is the clean, efficient and effective management.

Phillip Dexter, MP, is the Congress of the People’s national spokesperson


Shame on you, Tokyo

In Discussion on July 28, 2009 at 4:40 pm

DEAR Mr Sexwale

If there is one ANC leader who has always had my respect it is you, sir.
Your recent dressing down of the reckless threats made by the Umkhonto we Sizwe Veterans’ Association to render the Western Cape ungovernable, demonstrated level-headedness.

However, your claim that the current service delivery protests are against the previous administration — and not the Zuma administration — is hypocrisy.

The ANC manifesto for the 2009 elections claimed that the previous administration was so successful that the electorate should give the ANC a new mandate to govern.

So, to attempt to disown what is an ANC failure, resulting in a dysfunctional local government, is taking the people for a ride.
A former president of the country could not on his own have come up with the disastrous deployment policy that is largely responsible for incompetence in municipalities.

The ANC has not denounced this policy. It is shocking that out of political expediency you, an ANC member, should seek to create a false dichotomy between its former deployees and the new flavour of the month, the Zuma brigade.

ANC structures all over the country had a hand in determining the deployments that have mired municipalities in bankruptcy.
Not so long ago, you were the ANC-appointed premier of Gauteng, where some of these riots are now occurring?

If you were part of the “previous administration”, then those protesters are protesting against you too.
Your conduct is, unfortunately, becoming a trend — an attempt to rubbish the legacy of former president Thabo Mbeki even if it results in a self-inflicted wound that hurts the so-called collective leadership of the ANC.

It’s time you and all in the ANC took responsibility and stopped blaming third forces, former deployees and the opposition for what is a mess of your making.

There is no way that the opposition should keep quiet in the face of the lives of South Africans being destroyed.

It is reasonable, as President Zuma requests, to give the administration a chance to resolve these issues, but it is a bad starting point to play the blame game at the expense of the dignity of our people.

Shame on you, Mr Sexwale. You owe the people who trusted you with their vote an apology.

• This is an edited version of an open letter from the political advisor to Cope’s parliamentary leader, to the Minister of Human Settlements Tokyo Sexwale


Reality Hitting

In Editorials on July 27, 2009 at 9:03 am

We said, you must not give people unrealistic expectations, especially during the time of recession. They said we will weather the storm and escape the worst of it; create at least 500 000 jobs by the end of the year. Reality is now hitting them on the face.

We said you cannot buy votes by food parcels, because you raise unrealistic expectations and dependency on people. They wanted the vote at whatever price, and maintained their habit of saying whatever they want to do with impunity. They said our people understand and are forgiving of our mistakes and lies. Now people are going to supermarkets, getting food parcels without paying for them, and sending the bill to JZ and the ministry of Social Development. Reality is hitting them in the face.

We said you cannot sustain long term governance on rhetoric, lies and bloated promises. They brought us Vavi to misrepresent the workers; Malema to bloat the hopes of the youth, and Ndzimande to lie to the poor with obsolete ideologies he himself does not even understand. Now our country looks like an apartheid state where order can only be maintained by a police force. We look like a country at war with itself. Reality is heating them on the face and all they can do to respond is to suspect a third force that is instigating the people.

We told them the impatience of people on the ground is reaching crisis levels. We said to speed up service delivery you need to employ qualified civil servants, correct and train the attitude of those already in civil service. They said they wanted to deploy cadres in civil service that’ll promote the so called National Democratic Revolution (NDR). Now as the beginnings of the real revolution is in the offing they are looking for someone, anyone, to blame. ‘Third force’; now where did we here that before? O! it was the apartheid regime during its moribund years.

We said there’s a political leadership crisis and dearth of vision in this country. They said the country is on course, except it was misled by the influence of neo-liberal economic policies; so they brought to the helm a leader who has no clue about anything except he wanted to be a president, and was prepared, like no other ANC leader before, to allow the leftist influence to overwhelm the ANC. They were betting to sing us out of the crisis with umshini wami; and delay the crisis by changing the names of programmes and government departments to speciously deal with it.

We said we need to change the political narrative of this country; find other progressive ways to keep up with the social spirit of the people on the ground. They said they were fine with ignorance and incompetence as ways to advance the NDR, so they filled crucial government post with only those that meet their criterion. We said this NDR thing cannot continue being subject to the caprices of the elite. They said yes things will change, and promise if necessary heads will roll. Instead only the supporters of Thabo Mbeki were got ridden of; key positions filled with supporters of the new king (JZ) as reward to their support.

The astute changed with times and circumstances; drank and danced to the king’s health on their knees, negotiating their tricky change of coats with finesse. Everyone had to identify for themselves what compromises or betrayals they were prepared to take; policies were no longer pointers for anything. Terminal confusion settled in all things, and the only alliance politicians respected was to their wallets. Meanness and deviousness acquired the Machiavellian streak. When we objected, they said we were bad losers, even those of us who were never part of the ANC.

We asked where are practical guides of what they mean to do to get us out the crisis. They said the Ministries in the Presidency will provide us soon; next they supplied us recycled ineffective programmes. When we demanded clear directives we were told we being unpatriotic and unreasonable. When will these people ever learn anything and be done with this comedy of errors?


Dear Lynda

In Discussion on July 15, 2009 at 10:32 am

Dear Lynda

Since I had the pleasure of interacting closely with you during your primary days as the second deputy president of the Congress of the People – I have followed the news of your resignation with keen interest. Strangely, it took you longer to quit than I had anticipated.

Prior to your astounding selection in Bloemfontein, your name had been mentioned to me. The context was my frustration with the poor state of our website. In this regard, you were apparently the next thing after sliced bread. We subsequently met briefly at the Rivonia offices you had donate(d) to the party. You disappointed unfortunately – and the website continued to struggle.

Can you imagine my shock when I was informed that your name would be amongst the top office bearers? Coming soon after the US had elected Barak Obama as its first black president and other similar developments closer home, however – I reckoned that even in South African everybody could be president.

Although the circumstances of the bizarre move were fully explained to me – I remained extremely sceptical. For the first time Lynda, that morning I had the strange feeling that COPE was beginning to flounder. You were our Sarah Palin, explained an equally baffled friend and colleague. Ironically, the governor of Alaska has also quit – and has “left her options open” leaving us all guessing about her next move.

You see, one of the reasons I bought into the COPE project was because I thought there was an opportunity to attract prominent and credible South Africans of all races – accomplished community, business, church and civil society leaders who shared a common desire for a prosperous, corruption free and glorious South Africa.

The pitch to me had included promises that there were men and women of honour – mentioned by name – that had undertaken to be part of this new phenomenon. However, your appointment proved to be a damn squib. You were not in the same league – you still had to earn your strides.

Therefore I understood completely your utter disbelief when the news was broken to you minutes before the announcement. You trembled as we drove in Mbhazima Shilowa’s car towards the media conference venue. Whilst we tried our best to prepare you for the press occasion – your utterances at the briefing made it clear to me that the whole thing had not yet sunk in.

Although you had, out of the blue, been elevated to his equal in this new organisation – Shilowa’s humility was incredible. His mission was to make you look good and his instructions were crystal clear: “Make sure she is protected from the pressure of the media – make her feel comfortable.” You burst into the political limelight with the promise that your political profile will be built over time.

A few days later, however, you demanded bodyguards – and became embarrassingly paranoid. You gave all away in the in the presence of a young journalist when you started “seeing cars” that were following us. You were somewhat delusional. This was my worst trip to Parys. I cringed every time a question was posed to you – and there you were huffing and puffing.
It was on this journey that I fully appreciated the assertion that “the problem with political jokes is that they get elected”. I took the brief and therefore had to skew in this mess.

We went on to travel to Cape Town for your maiden rally address. You had to speak from the heart with the help of some prepared notes – you went off key with your first salute: “Viva men!” I nearly fell off my chair – but the warm people of Khayelitsha were understating despite the loud laughter. It was when they started clapping every time you would hem and haw that I realised these people had figured out that we had sold them a dummy this time around.

A couple of weeks’ later signs of haughtiness began to emerge. I watched you in disbelief being contemptuous to some of our admired leaders. Impressively, they were very patient with you. Your ego became seriously bruised when your name would never be mentioned during the leadership and parliamentary list process speculation in the press.

Unfortunately, and to your absolute annoyance, the communications division could do nothing to assist you. You took yourself too seriously. The emergence of Dr Dandala as a presidential candidate took you off guard. However, that can never explain your complete disdain for one of the finest men I have ever come across. You never accepted his nomination – and blame him for the inadequacies of the party. We had lost all the bi-elections longer before Dr Dandala’s nomination.

I am deeply hurt by your utterances and sheer dishonesty, Lynda. Why would you vilify a man that embraced you and force us, as ordinary members of COPE, to prefer one leader over the other? Do you remember when I learnt of your newly found divisive tendencies, hosting factional meetings at your house, you and I had a heart to heart. With tears running down your face in that small meeting room in Friekka Road– you couldn’t explain how you got trapped in this jumble. We both agreed factional tendencies were destructive.

These are all our leaders – we respect them. However, they are not bigger than the organisation. They will all come and go, you included, but COPE will remain. We as ordinary members of COPE are in the process of crafting a clear vision for our organisation that will go way beyond the next elections. The major difference between you and us is that you are worried about the next polls and your position. We are concerned about the next generation.

Cope to us is a way of life. The current leadership’s mandate is take us to a certain point. From there on – other capable leaders will emerge. The media is already littered with different versions of our obituary, confusing a natural cleansing process with a demise. You have done your bit in assisting the process.

It is true sometimes when they say, “politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.” You are now in the trash bin as far as COPE is concerned. The wheat is separating from the chaff.

No hard feelings.

Kind Regards

Sipho Ngwema


What’s Your Brand?

In Blogs on July 13, 2009 at 8:02 pm

I have been thinking and perhaps got to a point of asking myself about the brand that I represent. After I have had an emotional conversation with my friends about language and identity and lack thereof. I then asked myself, what do people put on themselves as being the ultimate important identifier of themselves? something which put one as being different from the other, your identity, what differentiates you from the next person?

Having examined myself, I came with a short definition of who I am, and the brand that I represent. I represent a nation of the oppressed that has vanquished oppression and has chosen life over bitterness and hatred, a brand that indicates the strength of human spirit over adversity. I represent the brand of my forefathers, the founding fathers of our resistance actions against the oppressors. I carry with me the pride and spirit of my ancestors, the founding fathers of the Nguni speaking people, Ngwane ka Matiwane, Makana and many others, and ultimately, I am an embodiment of Xhosa, Zulu, and Ndebele speaking nations. I am proud of my uniqueness, my blood has that of the fallen warriors in the frontier wars of resistance. I am proud of being born from amaZizi, ooJama, ooFakade, ooSjadu, ooNgxiwa inoboya, ooDlamini, (sibajonga sibajadule). My roots originate from abaThembu, ooQhudeni, ooNgoza, ooMathibathibane, ooThukela, ooMpafana. Yes, indeed, I am representing a brand that’s stronger than resources that are invested in many global corporate brands. My brand represents the undying spirit of my native people. What’s your brand, what do you represent, who do are and what message are you sending to the world about your brand?

*Azania Matiwane Blogs @ Name and Shame Them:


Cui Bono?

In Editorials on July 9, 2009 at 10:25 pm

Let us be generous and say everything Simon Grindrod says in his letter of resignation to the General Secretary of Cope is true. We are still left with a nudging question, cui bono? Who benefits by this recycling every criticism that was ever slung on Cope as he decide to resign from being active on its leadership structures? What motivates him? What is Grindrod after in this painting himself as a diligent Hercules who was prevented from cleaning the dirty stables of Cope by certain individuals, some of who he names, in its leadership?

It is clear from his letter that Grindrod has an axe to grind against the individuals in the leadership of Cope, and not the organization and its followers per se, whom, together with himself, he pities for being duped. “It is becoming my view that a great fraud has been perpetrated against the South African electorate and I will no longer be part of leading it. I now regard the rhetoric of ‘deepening democracy’ as totally baseless and regret being overwhelmed by the exciting potential this had for our country. I regret even more that I convinced others likewise … I have promoted and defended COPE on public platforms for many months. It is accordingly disappointing to experience firsthand the recent responses of fellow leaders on several issues of fundamental importance to the long term viability of the party.”

Grindrod has chosen not to leave Cope but “remain an ordinary paid up member of COPE to await the day when the party recaptures its original beliefs and principles.” He does not say how the party is suppose to capture this original spirit, but has decided to take himself out of the leadership equation for that arduous process, since he tried and failed. “Accordingly, as a matter of conscience, I resign from the national working committee (CWC) and national executive committee (CNC). I am no longer confident that leadership is either accountable or representative of the true needs and wishes of members.”

I ask the question again. Cui bono? Who benefits from all this process? Certainly not Cope, which is thrown into disarray by Grindrod’s actions for the second time. Despite the pretense that he’s doing this for the greater good of the party I’m pretty much sure Grindrod is aware the party would not benefit, not in a short term at least. Perhaps he sees himself as a prophet that will not be appreciated in his era but at a later date for saving Cope from itself.

Grindrod talks a lot about puppet masters pulling string behind the scenes of Cope, naming and insinuating the former president Thabo Mbeki on national level, and James Vumile Ngculu on provincial level. I think Grindrod forgets for a minute how Cope was formed (by breaking away from the ANC), and the last straw that led to that formation was putsch of former president Mbeki. Is it natural that the breakaway members of the ANC be at the helm of Cope? Yes. Is it desirable that it be so forever? No. And some of us, especially those who were never part of the Tripartite Alliance, with assistance of some who were there sometimes, are doing everything in their power to change it.

Sure most of us came to Cope for different reasons, others seeking positions of power and money, others with greater excitement, naïve and cocksure perhaps; thinking that it’d be a haven for free spirits and flamboyant way of doing politics. We are now waking up to a rude awakening that this is a political party that requires us to first establishment and build the strong democratic culture we want to see extended to the rest of the country in our own party. We are realizing that there are no instant easy answers, or quick download for good democratic principles and ready made structures. We must build them ourselves. Luckily we seem to be up to the challenge and commitment to the party.

There’s a time for talk and self-analysis. But self-analysis is no substitute for the practical actions we need to undertake in establishing democratic institution, which alone can guarantee the freedoms we’ve gained and seek to consolidate. At this particular moment the best to advance this cause is by creating a platform for a free and fair coalition of our characters and different aspirations, which the coming elective conference is suppose to accomplish. Hopefully there we’ll be able to democratically elect the representative leaders we want.

What is regrettable and prevalent within Cope, is the attitude of thinking only oneself is a proper leader; the inability to work with interim structures placed before us if they don’t include our own selves. Interim structures by definition are flawed since they are not democratically elected, for one. And until Cope has proper structures on the ground, in good standing order, it has no ability to democratically elect its leaders. This is why the only call that makes sense at this moment is that of building structures on the ground towards the elective conference.

As for the issue of former president Thabo Mbeki, every South African has a right to motivate themselves under any leader of their choice. Some of us get inspirations in his philosophy and writings (I am an African); others in the spirit of Mandela; others even in the pride of Black Consciousness as espoused by Steve Biko. Grindrod’s problem with this betrays the distasteful tendency of wishing to prescribe and twist freedom to only one’s own understanding. Democracy presupposes tolerance for other people’s likes even against our own grain sometimes.

Delving a little deeper to the motives why Grindrod has chosen the media path to make his point to Cope’s leadership one is left with suspicions that it was done only to point a finger at them at Cope’s leadership, and as a mode to revenge himself for what has happened since after elections. (This is not about deflecting criticism, after all as I’ve already indicated, there’s nothing new in what Grindrod is saying.)

It’s no secret that Grindrod was extremely disappointed when he couldn’t go to parliament, through a decision taken on the Cope provincial caucus, he was present in, to bring someone outside the Metro to balance the scales. Ideally this should have been foreseen from the beginning. The situation where seven provincial candidates coming from the Metro should not have been allowed, but since I don’t know the criterion used to draw that list, I shall not labour the point.

For Grindrod to make himself as holier than the rest of us; putting himself above it all as if he was against decisions, like putting Dr. Allan Boeask and Dr. Mvume Dandala, is hypocrisy of highest order. Those of us who remembers recall Grindrod was one of those who motivated us for these moves. Perhaps he was still in good terms with the leadership he now despises. Or could it be he now has found himself a new masters; after all the people who are supposed to have asked him to resign as the Deputy Mayor under the banner of the ID are now Cope’s dissident puppet masters, the only ones Grindrod conveneintly fails to name in his leeter. Perhaps the puppet is now dancing to another tune.

Cope is in a painful stage of pruning and purging the fleas, thanks to the likes of Grindrod. We now have to get rid of the debris collected due to the quick manner by which the party was formed. Pruning is never nice, but a pruned tree gives forth full harvest in its due season. COPE will stand the test of time, because it is founded on timeless values, beyond the anger against the violations of oue constitution. It’ll grow because it is committed to uplifting the people of this land by constituional values. It might take a little longer than most of us anticipated, but those who stay will see the sunrise; in fact the new dawn is already incandescent on the morning skies. This is why those who acknowledge our potential are so afraid of its realisation. Let us not allow ourselves to be distracted, even by those who pretend to be acting our behalf.

Let us go to the trenches, dirty our hands to build this organization. We have far too many enemies who stand to benefit by our failure. In every democratic political organisation, people come and go for different reasons. Sometimes they don’t find what they were looking for so they leave. That’s the nature of things politcal. No political party is immune from leadership squabbles; it is the manner by which it resolves these that determines the character of a party.

There’s no question about Grindrod’s has passion for freedom, but he also has purblind eye for conducting himself under material stress. He is, as the saying goes, too much of a manager of his own brand; utterly lacking in any sense of reticence, and given to too much rambling self-exposure. Perhaps at some stage he’ll have to learn the value of political equipoise and constancy, which, by the way, are the sources of authority and trust.

In all relations, once the trust is lost you are just delaying the inevitable, which is why personally I no longer see any value in Grindrod staying with Cope. I also despise his tendency (which is naturally the trick of half-hearted dishonest dissidence who want to look like reformers) of taking a spark of truth, exaggerate and twist it to serve his dubious purposes.

Grindrod’s ultimate aim, I suspect, is to discredit and tarnish the present leadership of Cope to an extent that it stands no chance of re-election during the coming elective conference. I could even accept that as the normal democratic process, mudslinging your opponent and all, if only I believed Grindrod’s commitments to the party. What has also come out clear in all this process is that Grindrod is a conniving opportunist. Not only is he positioning himself as a daring democrat, but dares Cope’s leadership to expel him so he may get additional stature of being a martyr. He’s not only just conniving but shrewd.

Sales Talk

In Editorials on July 9, 2009 at 10:22 pm

I’m not sure why people act surprised at the calls of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL), supported by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party Youth League (SACPYL), for the nationalization of our mines. They are of leftist persuasions and have always had these goals. The influence of the SACP is at its highest point within the Tripartite Alliance (TA), which is why they feel now to be an opportune moment to play this card. What’s happening here is the alliance partners exposing the emperor (ANC) has no clothes with all its ping-ping between irreconcilable philosophies, and relying on ambiguities and sales talk to buy time.

Never mind the Secretary of the ANC’s dismissal of the calls, its cat and mouse game they play with the markets. As we all should know by now, the ANCYL is the dipstick of Tripartite Alliance (TA) officials to test the political and financial waters.

Throughout its history the African National Congress (ANC) has survived mostly through what I’d call ‘good sales talk’ and ‘ideological ambiguity’. The ANC knows how to speak the language of the listener, to say what it thinks you want to hear until an opportune moment when it follows its own agenda. Their politics have grown with the years in lack of integrity; you take them at their word to your peril. This is the lesson the South African public has not yet completely understood.

The ANC’s reliance on sales talk and ideological ambiguity became apparent when apartheid was defeated, when the tie holding people of different political persuasions broke. To resuscitate and redirect the spirit of unity they emphasised the history and ties of what it calls the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). The definition and time frame of NDR are, true to character, vague and ambiguous. The more it became obvious that the ANC lacked the capacity to fulfil its promises, especially to the poor, the more it relied on empty rhetoric to fire up the spirit of NDR.

When the populist talk was fired up, and Thabo Mbeki with his purported neo-liberal agenda was used as a scapegoat for its failures, the ANC gained room to manoeuvre. Strangely enough, among the first things Jacob Zuma said when he was elected president was to assure the markets and the public at large that the economic policies followed by Mbeki were the policies of the ANC, and thus not about to change. This brought to shop another example of the ANC’s double talk and use of ambiguities.

When you understand the influence of the SACP on the propaganda thinking of the ANC, you’ll realise the inconspicuous origins of the good sales talk and ideological ambiguities. They are grounded in the Marxist tactical doctrine of the theory of social revolution. In this understanding, the social revolution is complete conquest of political and economic power by ‘the people’ from the capitalist class, even by force if the need arises. In as far as the economic power of South Africa is mostly still in the hands of the few, mostly white, the continuation of the NDR will get shop in the black majority stables. What is vague is who ‘the people’ actually are.

COSATU believes that the workers, the proletarian class, are ‘the people’. The SACP perhaps sees the people to mean the Communist proletarians. The ANC, as usual, is vague on the point, but in practise promotes the creation of black middle class as the symptom of ‘the people’ taking over power. The reality, despite the hype about ‘the people’, is that everybody is working towards the realisation of bourgeois class trappings, only in this Marxist jargon it is called empowerment.

The concealed aim of overthrowing the capitalist class is not only rhetoric but an aim to replace it with the new elite, albeit with the pretensions of being working class. Marx’s argument, in Capital, neglected the possibility of communists being seduced by consumerist tendencies that have proven to be the major stumbling block towards the establishment of the true socialist revolution. So in old soviet style, the true revolution shall be founded in the creation of more fat cats from the working class.

The systematic use of ambiguities enables the TA to extend the realm of prospective followers and recruits. It is a tactical advantage that has served the ANC well throughout the years but is now beginning to be a disadvantage. Amongst other things it led to the establishment of the Congress of the People. Essentially Cope is a split of the moderate group from the TA from those with perceived radical nationalist and communist persuasions. The yawning gap between these two groups is much greater than most South Africans tend to believe.

At its roots, the difference between these moderates and radicals is the understanding of what democracy really means. To the radical collectivists and nationalists, as it was to Lenin, ‘democracy is . . . only one of the stages in the course of historical development’. They see no qualms even in engaging in illegality and violence to promote the NDR, as seen in our recent history. The radical group, with Marxist persuasions, does not just believe in social revolution, but in a firm resolution never to allow its opponents to gain political influence again.

There’s in my mind no doubt that COPE (and this is not just propaganda talk) is the only party capable of realigning the South African politics, and able to stop the TA from cultivating more misery for all of us. The question is whether Cope is up to the challenge. Cope’s task is the difficult work of liberating South Africa from the bad model that the TA liberation mindset was founded on and is locked into. It has to de-Sovietise our politics, let in fresh politics and light into the room, so that the entire South African society can breathe freely, and be able to look into anything and everything without fear of reprisal.

South African politics, and society at large, will remain slave, and even be defeated by its bad past under the TA government and dominance. Cope is the only party that can honestly dismantle the chains of our minds, which, as Steve Biko pointed out, are the most difficult of all chains to break. Fear of Freedom, as Erich Fromm called it, is what is holding the South Africans back, and what the parasitic politics of the TA is feeding on.

As for the ANC, the beloved broad church, it is now nothing more than a prisoner to many elements of its bad history that in the end cannot bear the light of day. It is frightened of genuine inquiry, constructive criticism, accountability, transparency – in a word, it has lost the free spirit of enquiry. Cope, provided it has the courage not to imprison itself in part of the bad past that runs through its genes, is in a position to claim the best of South Africa’s past history for its own heritage, and to disclaim the worst. This has now become crucial for the survival of this country.

If South Africa is to develop and not squander its potential, if it is to overcome its problems, and take an equal place in the world in a real and not just a shopwbiz way, and if real inequality is to be put to an end, Cope must take the position prepared for it by history. At present its polity is still inferior, and the status of the helot from the past has not been overcome even within it.

Marx and Engels were of the opinion that one of the three laws of Dialectical Materialism was that of negation. Simplified, this expresses the reality that the new is always born out of the womb of the old, and is thus stamped with the birthmarks of the old. This is in some ways true of COPE, what with the mentality of relapsing into old ways and bad habits of the TA now and then, the rock it was hewn from. But the Austrian-English philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, warned against the deceptive nature of “family resemblances” when he observed that members of a so-called set often possess no single characteristic in common. And family members may violate all norms of the clan by creating a career in opposition to family values, rather than being shaped by them. Better still, rebels sometimes honour their family roots through breaching traditions in order to fulfil their deeper beliefs.

The advantage of COPE is that it has a new platform to adopt new ways and a progressive open culture. It has real means for renewal and injecting fresh thinking, especially from the majority within it who do not come from the TA tradition. The same cannot be said of what is now becoming clear are irredeemable, settled, bad habits in the present TA.

There are two traditions in conflict here; one is exposed but still stronger. Its fear of franchise, clearly seen in the Soviet top-down apparatus, with decisions being made in the smoke-filled kitchen in the mansion. Though it relies on populist rhetoric, it doesn’t actually trust the people. The other stands for constituency democracy, the separation of powers, habeas corpus (aggressive respect for the constitution of the country), and transparent governance. It is a vision of governance that seek to extend personal autonomy to as many people as possible without neglecting the need for an egalitarian society.

Which one will eventually prevail, only time will tell; and time hath my lord, a wallet at his back. As we speak the townships are burning again; after all, good sales talk can only go so far before people see through it.


On the Dissolution of the SABC Board

In Speeches on July 1, 2009 at 1:48 pm

COPE INPUT SPEECH ON NATIONAL ASSEMBLY DEBATE ON THE DISSOLUTION OF THE SABC BOARD

Honourable Speaker
Honourable Members

Today the chickens have come home to roost. What we have always suspected have now come to pass. Executive members who plunged the SABC into financial disaster remain in their jobs, while Board members who together with workers at the SABC tried to correct the situation are being dissolved.

South Africa is paying a very high price for the recommendation before the House to dissolve the Board. Those of you who regards this as a victory over a board you have always wanted to dissolve from day one be warned. This is a hollow victory.

All it has done is to ruin the integrity of our democracy, of Parliament as a constitutional entity, of the public broadcaster as an independent body and of several highly qualified, dedicated members of the Board who were prepared to serve their country as non-executive members of the public broadcaster.

Instead of enforcing accountability in terms of the Constitution, the Broadcasting Act and the Public Finance Management Act, the ANC was playing politics by colluding with certain elements in the SABC management while casting a blind eye to the many serious financial challenges and irregularities that the Corporation faced.

Speaker, even if only 10% of the alleged irregularities tabled in the Committee is true, several senior managers should be charged and prosecuted and if found guilty serve time if we are serious about implementing the PFMA.

What are some of the allegations?
• That ANC T-shirts were printed on the account of the SABC;
• That some members of management did not declare their vested interests in procurement processes;
• That management work was outsourced to consultants, to the extent that management wanted consultants to attend Board meetings on their behalf;
• That management would interfere in tender adjudication and split tenders so as to avoid subjecting tenders to Board approval;
• That management created expectations with preferred bidders that their tenders would be accepted, even if their tenders did not fall within the budget;
• That management suggested to the Board to reach an out of Court settlement with an unsuccessful bidder.

COPE supports the motion on condition that the very serious allegations be investigated to the bone. We insist on transparency – on a forensic audit of management practices and irregularities and very important – on real action in terms of the PFMA.

This sad chapter in the history of the SABC is the first real test for parliament to root out fraud and corruption regardless of party political affiliation. We have a duty to protect the public purse as well whistle blowers against any form of harassment and intimidation.

We call on a full investigation of the SABC executives and their role in embezzling the public funds. We call on the ANC to return the money they received in the form of T shirts. We call on them to tell the country what other benefit they received from the public broadcaster. We will leave no stone unturned to recover public funds which were used inappropriately including that which went to the ANC.

We challenge the ANC to now restore the integrity of the SABC and Parliament by exposing the wrongdoings of their highly placed political comrades in the SABC.

I thank you.

*Mbhazima Shilowa is COPE’s deputy president and Parliamentary Chief whip