Revolutionaries must also be able to rebut, refute and counter-attack the false literature of the reactionaries. This article below is one of the worst examples of the counter-revolutionary "re-writing of history", made even worse by the collaboration of a former President's brother, himself once an ultra-leftist, and son of a brilliant communist, Moeletsi Mbeki.
Please therefore, if you can, hit reply, write a short comment, and send.What caught my eye was the statement that "companies played a pivotal role in the transition." This is a replay of the old "monopoly is a motive force" lie, the one that attributes principal historical agency to the high bourgeoisie.
What about you? What do you think is wrong with this article? Or is it all right, in your view?
*VC* Sunday Times *Many nationalisms still cripple SA**Moeletsi Mbeki and Johann Rossouw, Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 20 June 2010*
As the World Cup kicked off, South Africa prepared to show its best face to the world. But the country is tense and at a crossroads. Will it seize this occasion to emerge at last from more than a century of divisive nationalisms?
This has been a tumultuous year for South Africa so far, even by its own standards. Protests, at municipal level against poor services and corruption, are at a post-apartheid high. And the tone of public debate is increasingly tense. The April murder of Eugene Terre Blanche raised the spectre of racial conflict once again. Julius Malema, 29, president of the ANC Youth League, has become the country's most prominent politician, mixing brazen populism with racist incitement. South Africa is at a key juncture, and has been since the end of apartheid.
Today's state, economy and social order are largely the outcome of European colonisation and internal resistance to it. The roots of the two most important indigenous resistance movements, for Afrikaner and African nationalism, coincide with South Africa's first British-guided steps towards "exported" European modernity between 1850 and 1900. The first proto-nationalist African intellectuals and leaders were (ironically) products of British missionary schools in the Eastern Cape (home to most of the important ANC leaders). For them, English was a language of progress, and this dealt a fatal blow to cultural transmission in African mother tongues.
The combined effects of black exclusion from economic ownership and the loss of cultural memory since the end of the 19th century, in the face of the attraction of a European lifestyle, perhaps best explain why the ANC and its cronies in black business have excelled at conspicuous consumption and failed abysmally in increasing black economic production since the transition to democracy.
British colonial policies had major consequences on late 19th century forerunners of Afrikaner nationalism. The imposition of English in schools and especially churches in the Cape Colony led to fears of cultural assimilation among Afrikaner intelligentsia, mostly clergymen. Against this background, the main Afrikaner church, the Dutch Reformed Church, established the forerunner of the University of Stellenbosch and the first "Christian-National" schools in the 1860s and 1870s. These institutions produced the first generation of Afrikaner-nationalist intellectuals, and ensured the maintenance of Afrikaner cultural memory.
After the Anglo-Boer war, the British realised that it was in their interest to co-opt the Afrikaners, to ensure the stability of British state and economic control of the country. Afrikaners were never excluded from economic ownership, and since 1994 the combination of excellent Afrikaans universities and schools and a fierce attachment to the Afrikaans language has meant that Afrikaners countered their political emasculation with growing economic power. This is despite the reappearance of poor Afrikaners after 1994 (now as many as 300000 out of 2.5 million Afrikaners).
When Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first democratically elected president, three factors presented a genuine chance for the state, economy and social structure to become more reflective of the country's needs: Mandela's inspiring leadership, unprecedented national goodwill and relatively strong public services.
But there were not enough educated blacks (a legacy of apartheid) or productive experience, and racial attitudes hardened.
As a result a pattern of state patronage, an increasing gap between rich and poor, and weak service delivery became entrenched. It didn't help that the ANC government got rid of more than 120000 white civil servants from 1995 by offering them early retirement.
For nearly 10 years the ANC failed to maintain or invest in infrastructure, leading to a chronic shortage of electricity, negligible public transport, collapsing public hospitals and, perhaps most disastrously, collapsing black schools. Due to its historic association with English, the ANC elite ensured its domination over the state at the expense of the black majority, and failed to invest in mother-tongue education in primary schools.
By late 2009 it seemed clear that two key groups' patience with the ANC had run out: big business and the black youth of the townships and rural areas. The achievements of South Africa's large companies reached its high point from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s.
These companies played a pivotal role in the transition from Afrikaner nationalist rule to African nationalist rule. During these two decades, leaders of these companies patiently persuaded - and pressured - National Party politicians to abandon their white supremacist policies.
They also persuaded leaders of the black resistance movement - especially the United Democratic Front, Cosatu, the ANC and the SACP - to accept the preservation of South Africa's capitalist system.
The success of big business's strategy was embodied in the ANC's summary adoption of the neo-liberal Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy in 1996. Ironically, this was also the moment when large companies started shifting their head offices to London and disinvesting from South Africa. This was mainly because the African nationalists had no proven ability that they could control their followers. Second, the African nationalists' long-term survival strategy - consumerism for the elite and state welfare for the masses - did not convince several of the large companies that it would bring long-term stability to the country.
By late 2009, when Malema emerged as the nearly untouchable voice of angry young black South Africa (jobless and with even worse education than under apartheid, according to prominent black intellectuals and businessmen), big business's fears had proved well founded.
Among white South Africans, especially Afrikaners, there are growing signs of civil disobedience and a refusal to quietly remain part of the country's 5.6 million taxpayers while corruption increases.
The Afrikaner trade union Solidarity has grown to more than 120000 members and is excelling in trade negotiations, technical education and poverty alleviation schemes. Over the past two years, in more than 280 rural localities, Afrikaners have organised themselves in the National Ratepayers Union, effectively paying their municipal taxes into trusts and setting up parallel structures of municipal service delivery. These localities have apparently experienced far fewer violent municipal protests than elsewhere.
This confronts the ANC with the spectre of a growing Afrikaner "tax boycott", a real nightmare for its schemes of patronage and its system of social grants, paid out to 14 million poor recipients - and a vital aspect of neutralising black protest.
The DA and other opposition parties are working on an agreement for co-operation in the municipal elections of 2011.
Early this month it emerged that an ANC faction led by Malema made a failed attempt to undertake "disciplinary" steps against Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, a relentless critic of ANC corruption, especially in regard to the awarding of state tenders.
The move might hasten the moment at which Cosatu finally decides to quit the ANC alliance and form a workers' party. Past opinion polls have claimed that such a party would win up to 25% of the votes. Meanwhile, Cosatu has provided the ANC with organisational backbone in the past two elections.
With clear signs that the Malema faction is planning a full-scale assault on the top six leadership positions in the ANC at its next general conference at the end of 2012, the time for Cosatu to form a party is ripe. It will certainly present the ANC with its biggest electoral challenge yet, and take the country towards a genuine post-racial multi-party democracy.
The combined power of South African business, civil society and political parties could - just as it led to the end of apartheid - bring the country's century-long experiments with divisive nationalisms to a close. But for that, a genuine long-term vision of socio-economic development, cultural and linguistic diversity and state reform has to take hold before the patience of the country's long-suffering poor black majority or the deepening frustrations of its minorities boil over.
Mbeki is a businessman and political analyst. Rossouw is a writer and political philosopher
*From: http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/article510092.ece/Many-nationalisms-still-cripple-SA*
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