Copeman
I find your suggestions laughable and fit for April fools gimmicks! WASP formation has been spearheaded by former PASMA and PAC members who became disillusioned by absence of political direction and continued infighting within the PAC, they joined DSM through it they formed WASP. Secondly, WASP is purely commitment to a working class socialist programme along traditions of Trotskyism by reducing WASP to being interested only on workers' rights it's a distortion, check the website of CWI to acquaint yourself with WASP-DSM-CWI. Thirdly, your strategy is highly questionable, your propose a front with Freedom Front-WASP-PAC! How on earth can Freedom Front form a front with PAC? Is PAC that desperate for votes, to extent there is willing to bed with any capitalist formations and some nationalist racist formations? Fourthly, PAC cannot make a political front with anyone, read through the basic document to guide your actions and thoughts, your capitalist interests are a serious threat to PAC's objective on establishing a socialist democracy! By now you should be aware that ideologically and in terms of strategy we are miles apart and diametrically opposed, it matters less that you carry a PAC membership card, I suggest it must be withdrawn by your branch and REC and PEC and NEC. Regards Nkrumah From: Philip Copeman [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 04 April 2013 10:57 AM To: Nkrumah Raymond Kgagudi Cc: Lehlohonolo Shale; [email protected]; Letlapa Mphahlele; anwar adams; [email protected] Subject: Re: Defending Africanist Socialist Democracy On a separate track, has anyone made contact with WASP? Think more sellout than zealot. A election coooperation with WASP can be very useful. There is motivation for collusion with everyone. (even the Freedom Front) With election cooperations - work on a concept from Obama called "Voter coallitions". It is not about the ideology but about how we can help each other to attain the goals that we want. So Obama did this with the anti gun lobby and the abortion lobby. It matters not that abortionists want guns or gun owners want abortions, but rather than by working with each other they are both able to advance their own particular causes. WASP wants worker rights- we want African unification. We both want to kick COSATUs butt. No matter how self critical we are about the PAC - WASP has still to encounter these problems. We would be able to help them through these before they occur. These are the real assets they bring to the table: 1) NEW Parties always do disproportionately well. Its the honeymoon factor. It is about 1 Million votes (10% of turnout) that swings to anything new. Agang and Wasp are the front runners to pick up this vote. 2) WASP have a membership that is employed. Ours is unemployed. When they call a rally, their memebrs get paid free day off work. When we call a rally we have to pay the umemployed to attend. What the PAC brings is Actual presence in Parliament. A national as opposed to a Vaal based membership. A political history. Get the name and contact details of an intelligent strategist at WASP and we can craft with them a cooperation strategy that works for both PAC and WASP. Then we present a coherent plan to our leadership and in settler speak bobs-your-uncle and we have 1 Million votes working for us. -- He who lights his candle from mine, does not diminish my flame. Thomas Jefferesen On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 8:06 PM, Nkrumah Raymond Kgagudi <[email protected]> wrote: Copeman PAC and particularly its national leadership has dismally failed to make a political case to attract many people namely the unemployed, poverty stricken, youths, students and workers. Secondly, the internal organisational environment is repulsive and less attractive. Inwards and self destructive methods have placed the entire party in a state of parallysis. Thirdly, the entire party is radarless! absence if strategic leadership and thinking! Where is the PAC heading to? Fourthly, the entire party face lack and dearth of required organisational capabilities. Five, there is a disjuncture of the political structure from the operational structure, actually the party has no operational structure and strategy, with the strategic apex dwarfed and technostructure non-existing. As, I argued the last time that COSATU, NACTU and FEDUSA joint membership does not exceed 3 million employees, there are more than 10 million workers not belonging to any trade union and majority of them are young workers below the age of 45 check HSRC research report on trade union membership and collective bargaining, also check the recent Census surveys. In actual fact some researchers are arguing that both COSATU and NACTU are threaten by workers seeking for alternative means and ways to advance and defend their interests since the trade union movement has been hijacked and used to serve interests of the labour aristocrat leadership which symphones workers' subscriptions for acquisition of shares, as workers basic workerplace daily and immediate issues are neglected by trade unions. Political reality on NACTU is this trade union federation political existence is insignificant its membership decline from 300 thousand to less than 90 000. PAC is passed by events daily and weekly from 34 Massacred Marikana mineworkers leading to mineworkers industrial protests that involved more than 80 thousands mineworkers to the recent death of SANDF soldiers in CAR some were APLA cadres, Etoll, what has become a quartely Petrol hike, electricity tarrifs increase, lenasia house demolitions, the rise of financial exclusions at universities, the rising unemployment, limpopo text books saga, collapse of governance in limpopo and eastern cape, rape and abuse of women, there are many incidents that took place in the country but the PAC across all structures has been vocally silent so on the eleventh hour you expects votes or people to identify with PAC when the PAC and its leadership has been nowhere when needed most by the masses! Lastly, PAC has been reduced to a party that exists solely to commemorate past events! It has lost its sense of purpose and direction, also its incapable to attract and sustain a support as a result of its internal weaknesses and most of its competent membership have abundon the PACsince they have become tired of internal infightings which have become a generational inheritence compounded by deceit and absence of both political and organisational progress. PAC must heal itself internally to regain lost membership density to enable the PAC to attract the envisage support base. PAC members from branches and regions must selflessly take leadership to drive this process of renewal. shango lashu! Mr. Raymond Mashilo Kgagudi Cellphone: 0749226361 Email: [email protected] On 2 Apr 2013 18:53, "Philip Copeman" <[email protected]> wrote: I suggest that for a while we leave ideological debates. Unbeleivably we both share the same goals of the PAC, it is the methods that differ. Mine is very quantitative. I know what a Gini coefficient of 54 means - it does not mean alleviation from poverty in Venezuela - that is an propogandist mythology, rather like the great Zimabwean Liberation. >From a strategic point of view, it is just simply putting ones head in the sand to not see the simple reality facing us: 87% of the voters of South Africa vote for the ANC and their Western Cape Branch, the DA. These 87% favour continuation of racial classification, entrenchment of property rigths, upholding and maintenance of the constitution, xenophobic exclusion of northerners, corrupt socialism that favours taking from the rich and giving to the middle classes. In summary upholding the status quo. This is not me talking - this is 87% of our countrymen. Everyone else including people as disparate as the the Freedom Front and Azapo fit into the other 13%. Smell the thorns - Right now our fellow countrymen's wishes differ sharply from that of The PAC. What do we do? 1) As we can't even agree between ourselves and any attempt to move us forward is branded divisory and - I love this term - "neo liberal", it seems obvious to me that we need to simplify the message of the PAC. That is where I get to the idea that focusing exclusively on the unification of Africa sidelines the unsolvable debates that we have about income distribution. 2) We can simply chuck it all in and turn the PAC into a burial society, that only looks backwards to its past achievements and as our members die off we become less and less an less relevant until we too die. This is effectively what we are doing now. In each election our support has shrunk and we can expect, under the current message to lose even more, this time possibly losing all seats in parliament altogether. If we are gogitn to do thsi, then lests sign up for a decent funral policy and start negotiating a group discount. 3) We can look to reinvent ourselves, pick up the huge and proud history that is the PAC and turn that into something that carries the message of Pan Africanism forward. What that message is we should decide on quickly - more members will die before the week is out. Do I beleive that a reactionary ideology - "seizing the organs of state" from the 87% is going to succeed - no I don't. 4) We can dismiss our fellow Africans as fools and set out preaching a reeducation program to them. Here I caution you that you are likely to hit more resistance from them to the "Great Socialist Revoultion" Young people today don't respond to this type of talk, and thats not me talking - just ask them. 5) We could write South Africa off as a lost cause, skip it altogether and just focus on the rest of Africa. However I would caution that this is also likely to lead to extinction. If we cannot formulate a coherent strategy here, we are less likely to be able to do it in areas where we have even less rescources. We have become a bitter disaprate group that can only criticise the work and decisions of others. We rarely put forward positive intiatives of our own. To see a great Speech - see Anwars acceptance speech of the road renaming on Sharpeville day - that is a direction worth following. The standing ovation that it recieved, not from The PAC, but from the genereal public, should give us a hint of what we have to do. One thing is certain. If we continue to do nothing to change, extinction is inevitable. The PAC needs to learn to start saying YES. It is YES or die. -- He who lights his candle from mine, does not diminish my flame. Thomas Jefferesen -- -- 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 --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Pan Africanist Youth Congress" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
