** Issue 1, Vol 10: 18 January 2012
*In this issue:*
- The challenges facing the South African society and the role of
compromises: A response to Steven Friedman <#13c4c976d78be44f_one>
- The year of political education and ideological training, the first
year of the decade of the cadre: 2013 <#13c4c976d78be44f_two>
[image: Viewpoint by Alex Mashilo]The challenges facing the South African
society and the role of compromises: A response to Steven Friedman
*By Alex Mashilo*
This week Monday, 14 January 2013 The Business Day published Steven
Friedman's analysis titled 'Could this be watershed year of negotiation and
compromise?'. In this piece Friedman discusses selected aspects of the
outcome of the 53rd National Conference of the African National Congress
(ANC).
Thematically Cyril Ramaphosa - the newly elected Deputy President of the
ANC, and the challenges facing the ANC and the South African society appear
to be at the centre of Friedman's analysis. Here we engaged with some of
Friedman's views.
In the run up to the 53rd National Conference of the ANC large sections of
the media in South Africa, but not all media houses, pull all stops in
unleashing themselves as part of the opposition to President Jacob Zuma.
This was manifested in many ways. Those advancing candidates challenging
President Zuma were showered with favourable media coverage in the press
and the electronic media - radio and television included. We have seen in
this regard a selected set of few branches that did not nominate President
Zuma being covered.
The opposition parties were likewise showered with media coverage. All
sorts of rhetoric and unfounded allegations fabricated against President
Zuma were promoted. Worst of all, lies were manufactured and sold at profit
through among others the press. This has become a feature of some sections
of the South African media to the extent there is a growing mistrust by
those who are not naïve, of large sections of the press as a credible
source of information.
But the agenda against President Zuma would not be stopped by the media.
The open declaration by the 53rd National Conference, of the ANC of an
unstoppable reality that has been underway - the re-election of President
Zuma - did not wake up large sections of the media from somnambulism. They
continued their anti-Zuma agenda, this time adopting the newly elected ANC
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa as the so-called alternative to President
Zuma and then supporting him in a fictitious race for leadership. In the
last volume of Umsebenzi (Thursday, 10 Januray 2013), SACP Spokesperson and
YCLSA National Committee Member Malesela Maleka adequately deals with this
agenda.
Friedman starts from a similar premise but of a different version. He
critiques much of what the media has been saying about Cyril Ramaphosa,
newly elected ANC Deputy President. But he does it in a manner that avoids
conflict with the media. He therefore does not make mention of who he is
actually engaging with or challenging about a wrongful idea that seeks to
elevate Ramaphosa and project him as the so-called alternative to President
Jacob Zuma and a solution to our collective problems. Unlike Friedman,
Maleka was forthright and unapologetic in dealing with this wrongful idea.
Maleka took the media to task and its wrongful agenda head-on, the agenda
of seeking to use Ramaphosa's election as ANC Deputy President to introduce
a fictitious race in the ANC for leadership and take side in it against
President Zuma and therefore pursue an attempt to divide the ANC. Friedman
must have acknowledged Maleka for a more or less similar line of thought on
the role of an individual in history and in dealing with this then engaging
with the all wrongful media created agenda about Ramaphosa.
What does Friedman say but saying he does not say: Like Zuma, Ramaphosa's
leadership is that of negotiating compromises as former unionist and ANC
chief negotiator in CODESA, and is therefore not visionary. Friedman then
comes back: what our society needs is a compromise. Spot the contradiction.
After dismissing Ramaphosa as an individual, the basis for the dismissal
being that he, like Zuma, is a compromises-facilitating and not a visionary
leader, Friedman contradicts himself. He prescribes a compromise as a
solution to the challenges our society is faced with. By the way it is
Friedman - nowhere else but in the same article - who says facilitating
compromises is what Ramaphosa, like Zuma, is best at. This is where
Friedman de-rails from the foundation laid by Maleka in dealing with the
wrongfully created agenda about Ramaphosa as an "alternative" to President
Zuma and a "solution" to our collective problems altogether with its
fictitious race for leadership in the ANC and for government through the
ANC.
In more direct words, Friedman's view can be summed up in two diametrically
opposed views: firstly, Ramaphosa's leadership, like that of President
Zuma, is not necessarily what our society needs at present because it is
good at facilitating compromises and that makes it not to be visionary;
secondly, the solution to the problems and challenges that our society
faces lies in facilitating a compromise between the state, labour and
business (private capital).
What is this? Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
Followed to its logical conclusion, Friedman's analysis could be understood
as also saying the leadership of Ramaphosa, like that of President Zuma, is
what the country needs as what is required, in his view, is a compromise in
confronting the challenges and problems faced by the South African Society.
Friedman's analysis, confusing as is, could nevertheless be seen as
appealing perhaps for a shift away in the media from the agenda of attacks
against President Zuma after failure to prevent him from getting re-elected
in Mangaung. If that is so, then Friedman's view is therefore itself some
version of a compromise in the media towards accepting reality. President
Zuma was not only re-elected to lead the ANC together with Ramaphosa, but
he was also conferred with a vote of confidence to continue leading the
government and therefore our country, now and in view of the 2014 elections.
But is Friedman correct that capacity to facilitate compromises makes one
not to be a visionary leader? According to this logic followed to its end,
Friedman himself is not visionary: he sees progress and the resolution of
our society's challenges lying in a compromise. There is nothing scientific
about saying facilitating compromises and being a visionary do not go
together.
On the contrary, it actually takes visionaries to enter into compromises
based upon an analysis between what is desired and what is possible at a
given point in time. But this does not mean that what our society needs to
resolve its challenges is a compromise between the state, private capital
and labour - with labour seen as trade unions by some default. Compromises
are, on the contrary, only a temporary management of a conflict or class
struggle pending a decisive victory of or capacity to achieve victory by
one class over another. It is to this extent that in so far as compromises
are adopted in revolutions such as ours they are necessary.
By the way the state, trade unions and private capital do not constitute
the totality of our society as suggested in Friedman's compromise analysis.
Neither do trade unions reflect the totality of the working class. Friedman
leaves others out, and in South Africa they are in millions.
But instead of a compromise as suggested by Friedman, which is an
instrument for temporary management of a conflict or class struggle in the
absence of a clear-cut victor, what our society needs is, ultimately, the
victory of the working class over the capitalist class underpinned by a
socialist revolution.
Were Friedman to reflect deeper into essence and not stop at the level of
appearance, he would find out that instead of the failure of the ANC to
resolve the challenges that our society inherited from colonial and
apartheid eras, the problem lies with the compromises that were adopted to
facilitate transition to the current democratic dispensation. But that
would not be sufficient. It would be helpful for Friedman to study the
balance of forces underpinning those compromises and the present challenges
facing our society. In this way, and being scientific, he could help us
move forward.
But one hint, the forces that are at play in the economy of our country are
not all national. There is a heavy presence of imperialist forces which
weigh heavily on the capacity of South Africa to move in its
self-determined direction. Therefore instead of dealing simplistically only
with some sort of a national question, we are faced with an international
question to settle. However, there are possible permutations and
limitations in both fronts. What is possible must be advanced to the
fullest degree while limitations must systematically be confronted. What is
true is that these go beyond a single individual and will overstretch the
period of any single leadership.
*Alex Mashilo is YCLSA Deputy National Secretary*
[image: Viewpoint by OJ Fourie]The year of political education and
ideological training, the first year of the decade of the cadre: 2013
*“**Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the
world” **Nelson
Mandela*<http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/367338.Nelson_Mandela>
*.*
*By OJ Fourie*
It is January 2013 and the African National Congress (ANC) has just emerged
decisive from its 53rd National Conference held in December 2012. Following
the conference the ANC made important pronouncements in its annual January
8th National Executive Committee Statement.
What lies ahead? In its national conference the ANC declared the next ten
years as the decade of the cadre. In line with this declaration the leading
formation of our national liberation and democratic revolution the ANC has
committed to implementing a decade-long programme of organisational
renewal. This is to safeguard the core values of the ANC and build its
transformative capacity as a leading force of our people and driver of
fundamental change. Extensive focus will therefore be placed on the
education and training of cadres.
The effective implementation of this decade-long programme must ensure that
the ANC, and the alliance, are united than ever before. The ANC must
remain and improve its capacity as the leasing and revolutionary formation
of the alliance, the government and indeed our society as a whole. Together
with the alliance the ANC must be rooted amongst the people. It must have,
strive to reproduce and multiply cadres who are the most committed,
conscientious, competent, disciplined and capable in both the organisation
and the various centres of power existing in our society including the
state.
Prior to the 53rd National Conference of the ANC, the Young Communist
League of South Africa (YCLSA) held a National Lekgotla (Strategic Planning
Session), from 23rd-25th of November 2012 in Johannesburg. The
Lekgotlaassessed the situation that our movement as a whole found itself
in. It was noted that some, but not all, of the problems and challenges
experienced by our movement are as a result of the lack of a
well-coordinated, thoroughgoing, coherent, mass and targeted political
education and ideological training.
This was partly manifesting itself in the emergence of ill-discipline,
hurling of insults as a substitution for a healthy and informed debate
partly as a measure of being a “revolutionary”, and the rise self-serving
private interests by some, associated with a diminishing spirit of service
to the people. Similarly, the YCLSA identified the need to intensify, and
therefore declared the year 2013 the year of, political education and
ideological training.
It is said that you must bend a tree while it is young in order to shape it
in the direction it should grow. We therefore have a great responsibility
in giving traction to the ANC’s programme of a decade of the cadre. As the
youth, we must ensure that we are trained and shaped in the right direction
to advance the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) as the road to
socialism in line with the programme of the Communist Party in South Africa.
The working class needs an effective youth organisation that will produce
progressive leadership. But our effectiveness as the future leaders of our
both our movement including the alliance and of society will depend on us
being politically educated and ideologically trained properly.
Coupled with this we must advance professional development through formal
schooling while problematizing and fighting to transform curriculum and to
orientate it towards producing solutions to the challenges and
opportunities facing society as opposed to the agenda of the capitalists.
This must be one of the central pillars of our struggle for free education.
We must further studying and advance academic excellence in higher
education and training institutions - colleges and universities - and
combine theory with practice through workplace training and community
service among others.
*OJ Fourie is an YCLSA National Committee Member *
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