Who owns the succession debate? Dear Comrades, having been reading some of the postings regarding the above subject one is more concern about the approach many comrades are applying. I think Comrades are bottle-necking the debate by focusing on the ownership of the succession discourse rather than on other issues including the timing of this debate.
For me the issue is not the ownership of the discourse but the timing of raising this issue of succession. It has emerged that the bottlenecking of this is clearly exposed by the failure on the part of the comrades to locate and define the role to be played by each partner in the revolutionary Alliance led by the ANC – It will then come to light that each Alliance partner has an interest in terms of influencing its hegemony on day to day political developments in the country. I will argue that in all revolutionary honesty there was nothing wrong with COSATU raising this matter of succession – COSATU and the SACP have over time influenced many strategic positions even before the ANC could articulate its own perspective and at no stage has these two formations criticized for that – why now ? If we are genuine with the assertion that all Alliance partners are equal then we should act in line with this assertion. The SACP for instance, represent the working class and the poor of this country as such COSATU represent the employed workers – and both the Party as the Vanguard of the working class and the poor and COSATU as the representative of workers have the right to contest the ANC. It was due to the role played by the Party and COSATU that we were able to safe the ANC from being hijacked by the 1996 class project on behalf of the Capitalist class in this country. And it must follow that the ANC and its Leagues in their nature and character of being omnibuses – cannot inherently lead the revolution to its logical conclusion in which the three contradictions (i.e) National, class and gender are resolved in favor of the working class and the poor. While this influence over the ANC should not take the character of seeking to disrespect the leadership role of the ANC in the National Democratic Revolution, it should equally not mean compromising the independency of other Alliance formations. For many years the Alliance has always respected the strategic role of each Alliance component, it must never be otherwise, the fact that now the Alliance is accorded its important function in the unfolding NDR we should seek to deepen this unity of the democratic forces rather than entertain journalists and commentators about our understanding of English by attacking each other. The concern I have with regard to the raising of this of succession discourse now is that we are becoming “too believing” that the current administration under Cde Jacob Zuma will never make strategic mistakes and as such I think we ignore the basic laws of political science. Comrades knows that it was not our understanding in 1997 that Thabo Mbeki will turn into a political monster that he is today – that is why we ended up giving him too much powers and left the organization with cheap administrative powers. Comrades, it must be understood that today if you ask me, whether Comrade Jacob Zuma must go for the second, third or fourth terms I will definitely agree with you – but equally I will raise as an ANC cadre the issue of too early to tell. The current Admin comrades is not a one man show and for me this means we should be confident of the entire collective not base our confidence in one leader, this is dangerous and many revolutions in the world collapsed or degenerated into some other things due to this phenomenon. We are even less than six months into the fourth term of the democratic dispensation and already there are Ministers who have insulted the workers and the poor of our country – by making silly statements showing their disregard for those the ANC have defined in its strategy and Tactics document as the main motive forces of our revolution. So I wish COSATU and the SACP are not intimidated by those who feel that they should play the junior roles as components of the ANC led Alliance. LET US TALK AND DEBATE! --- Sent from UnionMail Service [http://mail.union.org.za] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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] . -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
