Issue 20, Vol 10: 10 October 2013 In this issue:
Barney Chows the law of E-Tolls SA deserves a progressive Financial Sector Barney Chows the law of E-Tolls By Buti Manamela, National Secretary This week, the Supreme Court of Appeals (SCA) dismissed the application by the Opposition To Tolling Association (OUTA), who then vowed to challenge the matter further in the Constitutional Court (ConCourt). Such is the beauty of post-apartheid South Africa. You can challenge any law, and its constitutionality, until you are blue. In this same week, there were various judgments from the ConCourt which invited either the ire or adulation from different corners of our country. Because the law is made by men and women with subjective views, and is also adjudicated upon by these men and women, it is pretty tough for any law to stand the test of our class society without ire. But it was the ire of one Barney Mthobothi that pushed me against the couch and nearly got me choked on my lime and soda. This wise former editor of the Financial Mail won my admiration for being a words bank, but this time I was not sure if I could bank on the ideas that his words were expressing. The old mule told the twitterati (yes, he is on Twitter) that “e-Tolls now have the legitimacy of the law. But the law is not justice”. He reminded us his followers that “apartheid was also the law”, and he is right. I am certain in his days at the Financial Mail he would have expanded his jurisprudence extensively through the authority of his editorship. But does that give anyone the right to equate the decision of a democratically elected government to a system that was declared a crime against humanity just because it is swindling from you R500 per month? Let me make some points clear before we get into ‘the law according to Barney’. Paying for tolls by South Africans is an unjustified means of paying for the beautiful roads that we cruise in on a daily basis. This is equal to double-dipping from the taxpayer’s purse and the Gauteng e-tolling will become the most expensive manner of paying for road maintenance. This is more so because the profits will be going not into the building of new roads but into the private pockets of the greedy. We have to stop this collusion between our government and its agency (SANRAL) with the capitalist class to milk the pockets of (mainly) the working class and the poor. The absence of a reliable public transport system will force our people to use these roads and thus push them further from the prosperity line. It is not enough to exempt buses and taxis since it has been shown that they hardly use freeways. I also agree with COSATU that tolling roads may increase the cost of food and other basic household goods. E-tolling in particular is wrong and should be opposed until we are blue (and definitely not the DA blue, which has milked this cow to bleed and turned Mmusi Maimane as the new FreeToll Fighter whilst making this their poo-war-version come elections). For the record, I care less if Maimane, Mthombothi and their classmates part with R500 a month to tolling, and surely they care less. I am also certain that the bravado they promise to display by evading the law and not buying tags is just a façade. When some of them could not withstand the smell of teargas or throw a petrol bomb during apartheid, what reason would they have to lose time in jail for a mere R500 a month which they could waste on a good bottle of Pinot Noir. There is only one reason why we have the FreeToll Fighters, and that reason is politics. That is why the DA wasted no time to pull up billboards to shame the ANC government on e-tolls. (NB: Be careful what you wish for, you may soon have poo-boards all over Cape Town inscribing the words--#BroughtToYouByLille). The rest of the people who are being rallied to oppose this laws by OUTA are the insignificant others whose plight is being used to serve political ends. I am not in any way suggesting that we should only oppose laws which affects us directly, but any opportunistic opposition to any law of this government should be condemned. But there is also a reason why Mthombothi et al are angry with COSATU. How dare they find time to strike against BMW and SAA for wages when they have other pressing issues such as bringing down the tolling gantries and burning service offices of e-tolls? How dare do they suspend Zwelinzima Vavi, the only capable voice of the voiceless on e-tolls? Why are they putting their alliance with the ANC as primary, instead of walking out and forming a new party that will outlaw tolling? They are the missing piece in the chess board to bring down the government as the law has not brought justice. COSATU, for them, should be doing what money cannot buy, that is, get the people behind this unjust tolling by the ANC. The YCL has joined demonstrations nationally to practically oppose e-tolling and will be doing so until this law is reversed. But in doing that, should we (like Mthombothi) refer to a democratically elected government as synonymous to apartheid, a system that was declared a crime against humanity? This is a democratic government elected by the majority of our people. It enjoys the blessing of more than 60% of South Africans. To equate it and its laws to apartheid is nothing short of undermining their intelligence. Mthombothi’s twitter rants reminded me of an old adage that says if the people do not like the government, then the government should elect a new people. He wishes away the democratic right of the majority, which I concede may be wrong, to do what it believes should be right. Mthombothi wants to elect a new people to elect a new government that will elect a new constitutional court that will reverse e-tolls. There is everything right in questioning the connection between the law and justice. The Rivonia Primary School does not see justice in a law that prevents them from excluding a child from being their learner. Many parents are irked by a judgment that suggests that there should be alternative forms of prosecution of children who may have entered into a consensual sexual relationship. There are people in Prieska who are not be happy that their taxes have been used to build an autobahn for Jozi, and are justified to demand that the budget should have been used for running tap water. But I don’t hear all of these people yelling apartheid and all. The judgment on e-tolls by the SCA exposed the opportunism and contempt we mete out to jurists if we disagree with them. This reaction reminded me of a diner who was accustomed to a dish of a bull’s testicles after every tauromachia (bull’s fight). One lunch afternoon he was in awe at the small size of the testicles, and approached the waiter for answers. The waiter simply said in response: Señor, Hoy, el toro ganó (Sir, today, the Bull won). So chow the meal, Barney, for today, justice is on the bull's side. That’s the Bottomline, cos the YCLSA said so! Buti Manamela, National Secretary SA deserves a progressive Financial Sector By Fezile Sonkwane On 06 October 2013 communists, workers and the community of Thabong in Welkom converged at the Thabong community centre to launch the South African Communist Party's "2013 Red October campaign". Interestingly, the focal point for this year's Red October campaign is the radical transformation of South Africa's financial sector to enable it to better serve the people. Caring and thinking South Africans ought to display gratitude to the SACP for bringing this debate forth especially in this epoch of economic disparities and capitalist globilisation, which by the way, affects ordinary men and women. Samir Amin - Egyptian philosopher and economist, avers in his book The Liberal Virus that: "social effectiveness is equated by liberals with economic efficiency which, in turn, is confounded with the financial profitability of capital. These reductions express the dominance of the economic, a dominance characteristic of capitalism. The atrophied social thought derived from this dominance is 'economistic' in the extreme. Curiously, this approach, wrongly directed at Marxism, in fact characterizes capitalist liberalism." Combined, the financial services sector has over R6 trillion in assets, of which, the banking sector assets represent just over 50 percent. The financial services sector contributes about 10,5 percent to gross domestic product (GDP), taxes amount to over 15 percent of GDP and employment represents about 4 percent. The SACP is well aware that there is a dire need for Community Re-investment Programmes. The financial services sector is sitting on trillions of Rands in reserves. Significant amounts for this can be invested in job creating, productive sectors of the South African economy, including manufacturing and infrastructure programmes. Thousands of young people remain unemployed yet the bosses in the financial sector are sitting on such vast resources. The Community Re-investment Programmes should compel the financial services sector, especially the banks to invest massively in the development of the country and its people, rather than on short-term speculative activities of trading money with money. Once more, Amin goes further to avow that: "the development of the generalised market and of democracy is decreed to be complementary to one another. The question of conflict between social interests which are expressed through their interventions in the market and social interests which give meaning and import to political democracy is not even posed. Economics and politics do not form dimensions of social reality, each having their own autonomy, operating in a dialectical relationship; capitalist economics in fact governs the political, whose creative potential it eliminates." The SACP's financial sector campaign brought us gains such as the credit amnesty for example. SA now has progressive legislation in the form of a National Credit Act and we have National Credit Regulator (NCR) which is now a vigilant monitor on the mainstream financial players. We have witnessed the excellent work the NCR has undertaken in dealing with illegal activities of the "loan-sharks" or "Mashonisas". As an outcome of the SACP's initial campaign we had the launch of Mzansi account, a product that has reached up to 10 million initially unbanked, mainly the poor and the working class. The banks are not in favour of the Mzansi account because that was an imposition on them. There are attempts to close down Mzansi account; all is been done to undermine this account through various commercial propositions for "low cost banking". On the other hand there is a need for consumer education and financial literacy programmes for the poor and working class consumers of financial services. The financial services sector has a huge obligation and responsibility in financial consumer education. According to The Banking Association of South Africa, the banking sector in SA employs over 150 000 people with the bulk of this amount represented by the four major banks - Nedbank (28 494), ABSA (34 244), FNB (36 398) and Standard Bank (45 755). The SACP calls for the pension fund industry to invest in the development potential of our country. In particular union investment schemes should be used to help government to redress infrastructure backlog, particularly in the rural areas and the townships. Billions of Rands from workers' funds are used to build malls and thus feed into the current consumerist trajectory. It is important for all of us to demand that such monies are strategically utilised to create massive employment opportunities, especially for the working class youth of this country. The youth wants jobs! Selected References: Amin, S. 2004. The Liberal Virus. New York: Monthly Review Press. The Banking Association of South Africa. 2012. 2012 South African Banking Sector Overview. http://www.banking.org.za/index.php/our-industry/2012-south-african-banking-sector-overview/ Date of access: 08 October 2013. Nzimande, B. 2013. South African Communist Party Red October Statement. http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=4106 Date of access: 07 October 2013 Sent from my iPhone -- -- 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 received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
