I am sorry cdes, it looks like my emailing system kept on sending the same email a few times. please just delete them.
Regards, Tumelo G. From: Gugu Ndima To: [email protected] Sent: Thu Dec 03 13:32:41 SAST 2009 Subject: [YCLSA Discussion] A SICKENING NEW AFRICANIST TENDENCY EMERGING IN THE MOVEMENT A SICKENING NEW AFRICANIST TENDENCY EMERGING IN THE MOVEMENT ? There is an emerging but very dangerous tendency on certain components of our movement which is more pronounced lately as an obsessive psychosis, and has all the elements of dressing itself up as revolutionary so that all of us can excitedly ride on, but in actual fact( far from what it appears as it is) when closely interrogated, it is a sectoral bargain that has less to do with the revolutionary trajectory we seek to pursue in the broader scheme of the national democratic revolution but just a sectional advance. ? This emerging tendency is all about the obsession in protecting all those that are black, Africans in particular in higher positions of power on the basis of their just skin pigmentation and nothing else. Whether those black Africans, where they are appointed/deployed, are failing or are committing serious errors compromising those institutions is immaterial from this tendency. They get defended on the basis that they are a subject of a racial set up. But more often in this Africanist obsession is that there is less elaboration of such a racial set up, and in the main, it?s a pompous headline pursuance. The now popular but mechanical expression that ?in him we see an African leadership? has always been left unexamined as to conceal real issues at hand. And we are all guilty of not coming up in the challenge. ? It is true that in South Africa race relations are still very much part of our pastime. And indeed the solution is to confront it as and when it rears its ugly head. The reality of racism in this country notwithstanding, does not gives license therefore to pursue it (in a scattered fashion with no qualification of context and relevance) against everyone and to box anyone whom differs on basis that he belongs to another race. Nor should it be used to promote incompetence in our public institutions such as state utilities by our fellow black cadres. The Jacob Maroga issue is a case in point. No argument has been advanced in terms of his performance as a basis of the defense for him against the Board?s position. As we stand, South Africans are called upon to brace themselves for 45% electricity hikes for the next three years(and now the mocking 35%). This is despite government financial injections to the utility. Strategies presented to the Board were less responding to the challenges. The heavy-rain attack directed to Bobby Godsell as a racist, isolating him from the board (which in its representation is not all white) with no detailed act pointing to racial category was an infancy at best. In a bourgeois society like ours, when the company fails a CEO get fired or is asked to resign as a head of the institution! ? Similarly, the defense against Professor Jonathan Jansen in his appeasement of Reitz 4 white racists which was, more than anything else, for his personal acceptability to that white community of that province and major University constituency, at the alter of compromising justice is but another misnomer. Here is a classical coconut. Poor working class women had to be subjected to the worst sordid racial acts ever seen in the post apartheid university life. Jansen elected to ignore these acts and invites the students back in the campus accompanied with the withdrawal of the University charges against them. The workers are reduced to cash as reparation to their emotional and nationality abuse. In the light of this, underpinned by a heightened commotion including the Cabinet and a call for Jansen?s dismissal, the expression goes ?he is part of us and in him we see black leadership, we will defend him?. I wonder how many blacks in South Africa can agree that Jansen is a reflective triangle lens to which we all see ourselves. ? It could have been on similar lines, although very different, the Leonard Chuene saga and the defense he received on his handling of the Caster Semenya issue. At a time there was less appreciation of what has been the basis within which IAAF got involved from ASA processes in testing Semenya. It is an open truth now that the mishandling started at home and Chuene was managing the situation of which he later became economical with facts. Chuene was defended not on the basis of the appreciation of details informing the saga but on the basis of being an African sport administrator! ? ? The CEO of ARMSCOR Mr. Thomo is unfortunate not to get such a sympathy and defense because the Board Chairman is not Bobby Godsell but is comrade Popo Molefe despite being more abrasive than ESKOM Chairman in dealing with his CEO. The adage that ?In him (Thomo) we see ourselves, he is a black executive? did not come forth. ? The critical point is about the dangers that this Africanist obsession is going to bring. Positions of power are seen as an end product of the revolutionary task of what the national democratic revolution has to accomplish; as opposed to seeing positions of power in the state as meant to be locomotive engine in ushering in, advancing and expediting the real transfer of power (economic and political power) to the blacks in general and Africans in particular. This emerging tendency is by no means different from the politics of PAC that concerns itself, exclusively, with Africans as a living species. This is an extreme form of political degeneration so undialectical and gravitating towards African chauvinism. This thing started with the debate on the occupancy of the minority groupings of the economic cluster in Zuma?s cabinet as though this is the strategic objective of the revolution and it is spreading its tentacles as a preoccupation of African defense. ? Are we that under siege as black Africans in South Africa so that we are cordoning ourselves in a laager of African defense with big walls surrounding us? ? Khaye Nkwanyana Deputy National Secretary of the Young Communist League of SA ? -- Gugu Ndima+27 76 783 1516 -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. 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