As one of the participant organisations at the 28-29 October 2010 COSATU-convened conference with civil society, the Alternative Information and Development Centre (www.aidc.org.za and www.amandla.org.za) is extremely disappointed with the official response of the ANC's National Working Committee (NWC) to the conference. We call on civil society to defend their rights of freedom of association and expression, which the ANC statement brings into question. In its lengthy statement issued yesterday, the ANC NWC misrepresented what the conference was about. In doing so, it displayed extreme paranoia and ineffective leadership that is reminiscent of the Thabo Mbeki era.
It is regrettable that this important civil society initiative, led by COSATU, TAC and Section 27 to develop a principled struggle against corruption and neo-liberal policies, receives this irrational response from the ANC leadership. Worse is that the ANC NWC statement casts unfounded personal aspersions against Comrade Zwelinzima Vavi, the COSATU General Secretary. With the depth of the socio-economic crises we face in this country, the AIDC would have expected the ANC NWC to focus its attention on far more important issues, such as the continuing jobs bloodbath, than to worry about finding ghosts and enemies under every carpet in our society. AIDC believes that the letter, intent, spirit and outcomes of the conference must be defended. We must not be intimidated and we will not stand by and let progressive organisations of our people be attacked by an ANC leadership that is failing to lead society away from the avarice of greed, neo-liberal service delivery, inequality, joblessness, and capitalist exploitation. The ANC NWC statement is in fact a clear call to civil society and the mass of our people to intensify and sustain disciplined mass struggles that challenge capitalist power and neo-liberal economic policies, and that advance pro-poor policies for deepening democracy and advancing social justice. The fight against, what COSATU has correctly called the predatory elite, and their efforts to transform the state into a predatory one, must be resisted with all our combined strength. In fact, these struggles were at the heart of the COSATU-civil society conference that the ANC NWC has attacked. The conference was a significant step in another regard: In endorsing the goals of, and strengthening COSATU's Growth Plan Towards Full Employment document, the conference underlined the need to directly and consistently challenge the continuity of neo-liberal economic policies. The need to move away from neo-liberal economic policies has great potential to change the economy and create jobs whilst also laying the foundation to challenge the exploitative logic of the capitalist system. None of these are possible without sustained social mobilisation. Instead of blocking these, the ANC leadership should be at the forefront of using its governmental power and a mobilised populace to advance pro-poor economic policies. The AIDC calls on civil society not to be side-tracked by the ANC NWC statement. Instead, civil society must do everything in its efforts to ensure the effective implementation of the conference resolutions. As the publisher of the Amandla magazine, the AIDC will use the pages of Amandla to take forward important debates in this regard and thereby contribute to the strengthening of mass movements for social justice. Finally, the AIDC salutes COSATU, TAC and Section 27 for convening the conference. We further salute COSATU for its principled response to the ANC NWC statement. For Comment contact: Mark Weinberg AIDC Deputy Director 0741036704 From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Dominic.Tweedie Sent: 03 November 2010 06:38 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [YCLSA Discussion] ANC statement following civil society press conference ANC Statement, 3 November 2010 The civil society press conference We note and have no intention of responding to the civil society statement issued today, we none-the-less find it very unfortunate that some leading figures of civil society have all of a sudden found it appropriate to call the ANC structures particularly its NWC a "dubious" structure. We have also noted with concern statements made by some leaders of civil society that some leaders of the ANC have "questionable moral integrity", and furthermore, the leaders of civil society named these ANC leaders. We have advised our leaders named in today's civil society press conference to seek legal recourse. The ANC will give all support to these leaders as they take these legal steps because it is our firm belief that the attacks on their persons is unjustified and borders on defaming their good names. The ANC stands by the NWC statement on civil society conference as issued yesterday, 02 November 2010. We want to reiterate that at no stage did our statement indicate a gripe with any formation of civil society. The statement indicated that our biggest concern is directed at COSATU as our ally of having being key to the organisation of the civil society conference that dealt mainly with matters of government. It is very unfortunate that the organisers of this conference became the prosecutors, the juries and hangman of government performance over the past sixteen (16) years, without affording government an opportunity to state its case either at the conference or before the conference itself. Our government was therefore found guilty in absentia by union leaders and leaders of civil society. We were also equally perplexed that COSATU being part of the liberation movement and the Alliance, found it appropriate that it could lead attacks on the liberation movement - the ANC - and our government without affording those that it attacked, its allies, the ANC and the government, at least an opportunity to respond to the criticism so as to show objectivity and maturity if the objective was the advancement and the deepening of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) that all of us pursue. It is for the reasons above that our statement yesterday cautioned COSATU that such action might be interpreted as the first sign in a step to implement regime change in South Africa. Our statement also said such interpretation could find expression in what happened in other countries in Africa where labour leaders and civil society formations were key in regime changes in those countries. We therefore have no intention whatsoever of apologising to anybody on what we have said. In fact, we and our government deserve an apology. Issued by: Jackson Mthembu ANC National Spokesperson African National Congress 54 Sauer Street Johannesburg 2001 03 November 2010 Enquiries: Ishmael Mnisi 082 333 5550 -- 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] . -- 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] .
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