I find that some of your arguments comrade Ray, provide theoretical torch-light to the debate, much needed in the PAC which has of late been infested with ordinariness of proportions that must worry us.
In my earlier post I asked whether Marikana means anything to us, the PAC and whether the many visitations by our members, individually, were any organisational and impactful. In the end I opined in the negative. And in fact some of these visitations and the confident talk around Marikana is founded on assumptions, assumptions that this is new and first. It is not an easy drive to convince the new that their newness to campaigns does not equate the newness of the party to campaigns. We have had opportunities like Marikana countless times, and most of them were lost on account of non organisational visits and pronouncements. I will not count Sharpeville, because it unlike this one, was organisational and truly ours. The same, perhaps not wholly, can be said about June 16. Many times, I have personally led community campaigns for the PAC. Some of them, many against this govt with massive support as student leader in the collective, many of them as youth leader against 'racism', community killings,services protests, platinum mine evictions supported by govt etc. These are not campaigns we read about, but once we led. This story is the story of many comrades on this platform. The point is that because many of these lacked organisational founding, fizzled off. We appeared on TVs and spoke on many Radio stations about all of these, and with the public fully in support. But they all went up into oblivion because they lacked organisational compass and that centre of command. From these incidents, some of which I led and others involved as a participant, I learnt huge lessons. Populism, and popularity seeking visits so that ' I can say I also met the Marikana workers' is as dangerous as is completely futile. All these infuriates in the shortest term the victim when they realise that the visit or pronouncement was nothing but a vote seeking crusade or a feel good exercise. They will pick this up !! Some of the past campaigns I alluded to, at least were ours, engineered and led by us, what with the accident, politically for us, of Marikana. That is why we must, I repeat, rally each other so we all wake up to the centrality of a program underpinned by uprisings, campaigns at all levels, school, factory, mine, bank, unemployed etc. This is the task at hand and is pointedly number one. We can't just see and walk into every day. We must shape events by engineering them as vanguard for the millions who want to rise but lack mass leadership. The brave Marikana workers were testimony to this hunger for leadership. I trust we will converge on the need for a political program so that true-ness and the courage of the PAC can take its place. I am an African of the PAC make. Matome Mashao Sent from my BlackBerry® -----Original Message----- From: "Nkrumah Kgagudi" <[email protected]> Sender: [email protected] Date: Thu, 30 Aug 2012 10:52:46 To: <[email protected]> Reply-To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [PAYCO] Does Marikana mean anything for us ? Comrades Responding to the above inquisition I will borrow greatly from Lenin polemic A political party's attitude towards its own mistakes is one of the most important and surest ways of judging how earnest the party is and how the party fulfils in practice towards its class and the working people. Frankly acknowledging a mistake, ascertaining reasons for it, analysing the conditions that have led up to the rise or emergence of a mistake(s), and thrashing out the means and methods of rectification -- that is a hallmark of a serious party; that is how it should perform its duties, and how it should educate and train its class and the working mass of our people. By failing to fulfil this duty and give the utmost attention and consideration of their patent error, the party as in the PAC can be argued then it is not a party of a class, but a circle ( not a revolutionary circle but a mere circle), not a party of the masses, but a group of intellectualists and of a few workers who ape the worst features of intellectualism. When the constitutional court ruled in against SATAWU and made SATAWU which is effectively workers who are members of SATAWU to be liable for damages costs during the SATAWU strike action around 2008/9 and the recent attempts whereat in the Labour Relations Acts proposed amendments there is an attempt to make trade unions liable for any damages that may arise during the industrial strike action these precipitated by the increase of strike actions and employers (companies) resorting to usage of amangundwane as a labour that will drive the company's production and with deeply rooted labour aristocracy , the argument advanced has been that the legislator's political interests to limit and control effectiveness of trade unions therefore rendering trade unions to be ineffective and become a real buffer; the implication of these developments will propel workers to formulate alternative forms of engagements to pursue their immediate demands. The Lonmim Marikana is an additional development whereat workers independent of their trade unions became united and handed their demands to the Lonmim Management. Lest we forget that at Lonmim Marikana there are four trade unions, namely NUM, AMCU, UASA and Solidarity, amidst these trade unions workers rose independently against the exploitative employer. At Impala Platinum mineworkers staged an underground protest action and seized control of NUM office, formed an interim workers committee that was mandated to advance workers immediate demands. Effectively there is a rising realisation among the black workers about the role and character and content of today's trade unions in South Africa, this realisation has effected and propelled workers to forge alternative method to advance their interests. In 2010 at Kopanong Conference centre, NACTU National Workshop whilst critiquing the NEW Growth Path and the state of south Africa, driven by frustrations about absence of any transformation - one of the participant who happened to be a trade union leader crudely asked " Why as workers we do not takeover these companies and government?". There has been a gathering that led to the formation of Democratic Left Front (DLF), some few year(s) September National Imbizo (SNI) was formed, recent efforts in Western Cape is an attempt to re-launch United Democratic Front (UDF). These experiences and developments logically points to the most basic aspect that the people and workers in the country are seeking for ways and means to advance their interests, they seek to create a voice! As these workers and the working masses continue seeking the means, for an alternative path for social transformation, they do this in absence of a party! The most sad occurrence and the bitter reality is that these workers and the working masses of our country are not looking at the PAC as an alternative force to fight the neo-colonial capitalist system! As a party, our current ideo-political or politico-ideological perspectives which exposes a political fantasy and somewhat reformist and conformist attitude to the neo-colonial capitalist dominant mode of production driven by subjective interests contrary to workers' class interests and those millions who face abject poverty on daily basis. South Africa has an estimate 15 million people depended on social grants and a third of south Africa's population live in poverty stricken conditions or abject poverty, Cde Ntoni in his writing argued that In Africa, any "freedom" that fails to redress dehumanisation of man, his subjugation to and commoditization as an appendage to private property, and the alienation/enstrangement of his labour, is no freedom at all." Poverty is viewed as a deficit of freedoms and related determinant thus inhibiting and thwarting human development. Answering the inquisition, "Does Marikana mean anything for us?", my advance and reply is that in the NDR and Permanent Revolution document by Cde Ntoni, he advanced the following perspective "Whither South Africa: Reformation or Revolution? From the outset it must be stated that the liberation movement, not only in South Africa, but throughout Africa and the world, has not always paid sufficient attention to the criticality of the question of reformation versus revolution. For a very long time in South Africa, the African liberation movement confined itself only to bourgeois democratic tasks of national independence, freedom from national and racial oppression and equal rights. In 1959, more than 60 years since the founding of the first liberatory organisation in South Africa, the Pan Africanist Congress was the first African liberation movement in South Africa to break away from the bourgeois democratic tradition, and to embrace openly socialism as its objective. The Pan Africanist Manifesto 1959 acknowledges this historic point : 'The highest organisational form and structure in which the African liberation movement has found concrete expression in South Africa in the Pan Africanist Congress...' and one facet of its historic role was to "create an organisational machinery for the galvanising of the oppressed, exploited and degraded African masses into an irresistible social force bent upon the destruction of all factors and forces that have reduced the stature of man and retarded his growth; and also bent upon the creation of conditions favourable for the restoration of man's worth and dignity, and for the development of the African personality." Post 1990, the PAC has not risen to pursue the historic role entrusted to us as rightly captured, we have not developed the required organisational machinery that should assume and pursue the ultimate goal instead today the PAC is at its worst and lowest organisational and political ebb that is being trapped in the current neo-colonial-comprador bourgeoisie democratic traditions. According to Karl Marx, "While the democratic petty bourgeois want to bring the revolution to an end as quickly as possible, achieving at most the aims already mentioned, it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far. After the February 1917 Russian Bourgeois Democratic Revolution that established the Provisional Government, Lenin wrote in his April 1917 Theses that, "The specific feature of the present situation in Russia is that the country is passing from the first stage of the revolution-which, owing to the insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat, placed power in the hands of the bourgeoisie-to its second stage, which must place power in the hands of the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants." It is crucial to emphasise that insufficient class-consciousness and organisation of the proletariat is primarily a failure on the part of the revolutionary party, and not a mechanistic deterministic course of history. Trotsky put this issue in perspective in 1937, that "The Paris Commune proved that the proletariat, without having a tempered revolutionary party at its head, cannot wrest power from the bourgeoisie.. Comrades, the document NDR and Permanent Revolution advanced a reply to the question "Does Marikana mean anything for us? I think the most fundamental question is "From the 1959 Pan Africanist Manifesto, What hath become of the PAC today?" to reply a non-responsive party to the probable rising consciousness among workers and the unemployed masses of our country! Shango lasho Nkrumah -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: 24 August 2012 08:15 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [PAYCO] Does Marikana mean anything for us ? Like many of us I was astounded at the brutality visited on our people in Marikana, particularly its planned side. In spite of the above and the many condemnations and visitations of support, I have been at critique with my innerself, probing what this means if anything for us, us members of the party of Lembede and Sobukwe. Answers to this question have been hard to postulate. In contrast it has been less hunty to find answers on what it means for the country and our people. On this front, I am certain our people have gained the confidence that the ruling regime can be confronted and that a revolutionary change is possible. Many who doubted the resolve and competence of our people to rise are having to review in shame their scripts of label and prophesy. Our people will rise and there in Marikana, in their poverty without any fighter jet nor a hippo have gone on a face off with the system, capital whose political face is the ruling party as its appendage. That is how I believe our people interprete these events. But back to my point, what does it mean for the PAC if anything? I will make an attempt at this question hereunder. In depart I acknowledge all our leaders and comrades who made visitations of support and those of who added to the many voices that expressed disgust and condemnation of the state sponsored partisan massacre of our people. To be honest, and I am not in any way down playing the massacre, it means nothing more for the PAC than it means to all other parties including the ANC. I insist that we learn from history. The ruling party has on many occasions brutalised our people only to be followed even better by the same section that bore the brunt of these attacks. The truth is that while the poor vent their anger at the administering party, they do not necessarily identify this as the chief enemy defending capital and its killer philosophy. And in fact they are very doubtful of a new entrant worse if that entrant has no name and repute such as our PAC is and has been for a few years now. I am certain that the average Marikana resident and worker will look at the PAC s overtures and say but can they lead us against the regime? Are they better than the ruling party ? Can they stand with us to face these bullets ? I suggest the workers will pass a negative on us. Remember it is these workers that have been voting against and away from us as part of the commuties for over 17 years now. We can't expect that now that they are in desperation they will judge us positively, they will in fact be more cautious and edgy which is what we all do when death befalls. Many of our members have visited these communities. I wonder, very seriously, what they say when they get there. This is critical !! In situations like this, every act and word is markedly noted. The danger of saying things we have no capacity to follow through on far outweighs that of just not going there at all. The masses will be punitive in the extreme. That is why all these visits must and I trust it was so, follow one chain of command. It must not be out of the goodness and enthusiasm of a comrade to go there and converse with the victims. The message we carry must be well carved, uniform and punchy. Most critical it must be one we are prepared to act on and have made immediate resourse capacity to make true. This is what you do when you deal with disaster and the victims, especially because that space is contested. The only real lesson for us to draw is to note in our minds and hearts that spontaneity and show room won't take us far. We knew the ruling regime will react this way - kill our workers, we know now that soon there will be assassinations, arrests and many other calamities. It is reaction of the highest magnitude to await occurence of these and then make all these visits and condemnations. Our party cannot function like that. We have the power of preemption and organisation. This is why we need a program of action, agree on it, so that we drive these uprisings, they must become ours just as they are for the masses. We need to drive one agreed program so that our visits are organisational and uniform in form and purpose. We need to rally each other around this point. My piece. I am an African of the PAC Matome Mashao Sent from my BlackBerryR -- Sending your posting to [email protected] Unsubscribe by sending an email to [email protected] You can also visit http://groups.google.com/group/payco Visit our website at www.mayihlome.wordpress.com -- Sending your posting to [email protected] Unsubscribe by sending an email to [email protected] You can also visit http://groups.google.com/group/payco Visit our website at www.mayihlome.wordpress.com -- Sending your posting to [email protected] Unsubscribe by sending an email to [email protected] You can also visit http://groups.google.com/group/payco Visit our website at www.mayihlome.wordpress.com
