The Congress of the Rich People is a perfect name as its consultative meeting was held at the place for the rich - Sandton. Not even community members at yonder like Alex were able to attend let alone those as far as Sekhukhune or Giyani in Limpopo. But Shikota group have the audacity to brand the ANC as apostates while calling themselves the Congress of the People. Which people? A privileged few living posh lives and getting interest-free loans from state institutions under the pretext of advancing BEE? Their agenda is to pursue narrow political interests to suit their own whims and piggyback on the legacy of the Congress movement led by the ANC. I simply refer them as piggyback club of elites calling themselves a party in order to destabilise our movement by abruptly using any name that is historically identifiable with the ANC to deceive and confuse the voters. While the leadership is pursuing the matter in terms of the provision of the Electoral Act and/or the court. All of this shouldn't distract us from the greatest challenge of continuing the work for organisational renewal and unity in order to position the ANC to the centre stage of life in our country. This includes enlisting ourselves with branches to take part in door-to-door campaigns to encourage the people of SA to put their trust in the ANC and its alliance partners, whose goal is to attain the basic tenets of the Freedom Charter - a blueprint strongly influenced by the South African Communist Party. To achieve all of this, it’s important to articulate Polokwane resolutions which require us to restore legitimate democratic process and accelerate the programme to improve the quality of life and push back frontiers of poverty and underdevelopment in our communities. The hard work has begun comrades, let's encourage general membership not to substitute activism with violence and unjust actions when confronted with adversity and provocation engineered by Shikota and company. Much as there may be other elements in our midst taking advantage of this situation, as true cadres we have an obligation to be exemplary members of society and call order where it's necessary. Wild dogs are barking all the way to the polls with empty rhetoric about the Freedom Charter but our role is to take control of the situation to ensure that the ANC wins another overwhelming majority in 2009 elections.
Viva PYA, Viva ANC, Viva SACP, Viva Cosatu! - Morgan Phaahla, Ekurhuleni --- On Mon, 11/17/08, bongani hanise <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: bongani hanise <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [YCLSA Discussion] The Congress of the Rich People To: [email protected] Date: Monday, November 17, 2008, 2:55 PM Congress of (Rich) People They never struggled to be poor. The upcoming political party which believes in stealing other party?s history is mistakenly calling itself the congress of the people. This party is not the Congress of People but Congress of the rich, is established to defend the bourgeoisie democracy that was established by the 1996 class project led by the former state president Thabo Mbeki. The majority of the people who are involved in this organisation are those who were in government for the past 14 years. Also the majority of them with their families have benefited from the broad based economic policies that were implemented under the leadership of Thabo Mbeki. Today they claim that the ANC has been hijacked by both the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions. So they are establishing the new party so that they can defend democracy, bourgeoisie democracy. These people cannot stand the fact that the working class has control over the direction and leadership of the party. There are four points that I would like to highlight about those who are aligned or will be leaders of the Congress of the (Rich) People. First the majority of them although they claim that they represent and seek to defend democracy, are anti-democracy themselves. They claim to be democrats how come they did not respect democratic elections? These people were defeated in Polokwane and they did not accept the leadership that won in December. My question is will they be able to accept the elections result next year? I think they will not accept them. They will complain and make claims that elections were not free and fair, that they were threatened by the party in government which is the African National Congress. This claim will not be new as the United Democratic Movement had claimed in the past. The second point is that these people do not or not want to understand the document titled ?Through the eye of the needle? when it says that to be an African National Congress leader in not an entitlement. People like Lekota and Shilowa have stayed in power for so long that they thought they have an absolute right and that they are entitled to be leaders of the ANC. This is characteristic of many of the heroes of liberation movements in Africa. Thirdly, these people are very much concerned not in serving the poorest of the poor people but of servicing their stomachs. As Smuts Ngonyama had said that he ?never joined the struggle to be poor.? Finally we see so-called intellectuals being involved with this new party, person like Barney Pityana who is an academic giant but a political dwarf. He once claimed that he was an ANC member without a valid membership. How can a person be a member without a valid membership? May be ?akabhadlanga? to quote Terror Lekota. Bongani Hanise --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [EMAIL PROTECTED] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [EMAIL PROTECTED] . -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
