Profound statement, we need to make the practical version of this address fashionable. The YCL has indeed responded to the realities of our country and surely presented the views of the working class youth, I personally echo the same "aluta continue"
Avant garde! -----Original Message----- From: "Khaya Xaba" <[email protected]> Sent: 2014-01-06 12:34 To: "yclsa-eom-forum" <[email protected]> Subject: [YCLSA Discussion] YCLSA Message in Memory of Joe Slovo, 6 January 2014 YCLSA Message in Memory of Joe Slovo, 6 January 2014 Leaders of the SACP, ANC, COSATU, SANCO, ANCWL, Progressive Youth Alliance, the family of Joe Slovo, Commissars of uMkhonto we Sizwe and all our people who have come here to, once again, pay homage to the memory of Joe Slovo. Greetings from the YCLSA There is no doubt why we selected to name our Right to Learn Campaign after Joe Slovo. One of the foremost theoreticians and activist of not only the SACP but the entire liberation movement. It is befitting that a commander in chief of uMkhonto we Sizwe and its founding member, together with Nelson Mandela and others, be remembered now only for “Liberation First and Education Later” but should be associated with the slogan of making education fashionable. But Joe Slovo was also one of those key activists of the SACP whose love for education was unsurpassed, and believed not only in formal education but also political education and cadre development for socialism to be anchored amongst the masses beyond sloganeering. We are saying these because there also seems to be a fallback into sloganeering when the ability of some of our cadres to make an informed analysis fails. We are inundated with slogans such as “the ANC has failed” and “the ANC has done nothing for the working class and the poor for the last 20 years” and “Zuma must resign” or “Zuma must be tried at the International Court of Justice”. To some of these people we say, and to paraphrase Mzwakhe Mbuli: “Why do you have a short temper here within the Alliance and in COSATU but when confronting capitalism, you exercise the highest level of patience and obedience” In fact, this is not a failure of individuals but a failure of the movement in its totality to ensure that all of its cadres undergo political education before they assume critical office Why does both our history, and that of Joe Slovo, matters to young people today. We should never succumb to the insistence that we should not commemorate important historical events and personalities. For the youth, these commemorations should remind us of the historical connections that we have with past generations and to expose some of the individuals who today wants to claim that they played no part in advancing apartheid as a system, the majority of whom are in business and in the Democratic Alliance. We should also use history in order to prevent our country from falling into the apartheid abyss that it was. But history also reminds us why there are political, economic and social inequalities amongst races and that although a lot has been done through BEE and other progressive policies of the ANC led government, a lot more needs to be done to reverse that history. In an interview with one of the journalists immediately after the official unbanning of the ANC, SACP and other political formations, Joe Slovo was quoted as having said that "From our point of view there can be no liberation without economic liberation, and I'm not talking about socialism—yet. If they're going to dig in on the issue of entrenching the status quo in relation to the economy, and hold on to what they have, then I'm afraid; aluta continua." We should echo the words of Joe Slovo, and Nelson Mandela, when they declared that the struggle continues. Both of them, together with other leaders of the alliance, during the negotiations with the De Klerk led apartheid regime, understood that majority rule will not immediately translate into tangible economic liberation. They understood that the will and mandate of the ANC-led government will for some time be contested by various forces who are hell-bent to use whatever political power they have in their hands to protect the interests of the few. As part of commemorating the memory of Joe Slovo, and within the context, we believe that the following should be considered as the challenges facing our liberation movement in relation to the emancipation of young people from economic and political liberation: Þ Firstly, the triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality which are exacerbated by the resistance to policy of transformation and a change in allocation of resources in changing the quality of lives of our people. Most of the drastic changes made, be it in housing, education, healthcare, infrastructure, communications, rural development, safety and security, are changes which government have singlehandedly introduced since 1994. There has never been, in the history of this country, so many lives changed for the better in such a short space of time. We must dispute the lie that our people are “gatvol” with the ANC, and say the truth that the resistance to change by the old regime has led to persistence in the economic inequalities of this country. It is also baffling that some people who, together with the old-capitalists regime in its quasi-compliance with ANC government policies, have immensely benefitted, now have the courage to echo the sentiment that the ANC has failed. Þ Secondly, the conglomeration of various political forces whose intention is to unseat the ANC in election and use that platform to assert a reactionary and neo-liberal political and economic trajectory. These forces are led by the Democratic Alliance and Helen Zille. Their common fight, although they have narrowed it against the President of the ANC, is essentially a fight to reverse the gains of the last 20 years of freedom. Their internal contradictions includes the old Nats die-hards who were not excited by the fact that De Klerk has succumbed to the pressure exerted by young people on his regime together with those who claim to represent a distorted version of a so-called “open-opportunities society”. Thus, they backtrack on their support for Employment Equity laws, banning of labour brokers, changes in LRA, principles such as equal pay for work of equal value and many other progressive ANC policies. Þ Certain section of the media whose major preoccupation is the removal of the ANC from government, and have tacitly taken (but not pronounced) an editorial opinion on who should be voted for. The media has ceased to be a center for information, but has become a platform to ridicule, mock, insult, denigrate, slander and distort information as it relates to the President of the ANC. Newspapers such as The Mail & Guardian are nothing but the mouthpiece of the opposition, business and multinational capital and are on the verge of pronouncing a coup against the ANC and the President. Television channel e-news and radio station 702 are nothing but the mouthpiece of the DA and the opposition, and have election after election declared the ANC as having lost even in the face of a major electoral victory. The media has declared those who oppose the ANC, its allies and the government as heroes who speak truth to power and are not power hungry. These includes individuals such as Thuli Madonsela and Irvin Jim, giving them more airtime than another people and declaring them as newsmakers and heroes who are here to save the day whilst in the process declaring those who defend the government and the progress it has made as sycophants hungry for power. If you read all the newspapers of yesterday, all of them are against the ANC and its government, whilst some are intended to proclaim the opposition as going to overtake the ANC in the next elections. Þ The use of public institutions such as the Public Protector to undermine the ANC-led government and do nothing against the private sector who have colluded in prices to rob the working class, bribed public servants, distorted their incomes and basically failed to deliver in some instances services that are due to the public. The person of the public protector has brought shame to that institution as evidenced by her actions on the security upgrades on the house of the President and also with the IEC investigations on allegations of corruption by its now Chairperson. In all of these comrades, we must accept responsibility for all the failures and successes of our movement and ensure that we focus on elections. One of the key actions by both Joe Slovo and Nelson Mandela, after unbanning, when faced with a hostile police and military, media, public institutions, the courts, was not to throw their hands in despair but to use the masses as the bush within which to defend the ANC and the alliance. As Slovo himself declared: "we don't believe we have a natural right to lead workers. We must be the vanguard not by law but through social mobilisation and acceptance. If we can't achieve that, we've no right to represent them in any kind of power structure." We must talk to the people in a language that they understand which the truth about our weaknesses is and whilst we lay bare to them, through evidence, our achievements, never hide the challenges that we face ahead. If there was corruption, for instance in the security upgrades of the house of the President as shown by the report from the security cluster Ministers, we must never hide the perpetrators nor shield them from justice. They must face the full might of the law. If we have missed various steps as the Party in our social and political mobilization of the masses, we must never fear to admit these when confronted by the working class and the poor. Let us go and use these elections campaign not as an act to get votes, but as a means to renew our mandate as was given to Joe Slovo and Nelson Mandela in 1994. We cannot correct the falsehood that is spread about our movement through press statements, but only through direct engagements and contact with our people. Beyond the agenda defined by the media, which our people should see through in time and will distinguish this from the truth we will be presenting to them, we should iterate what the needs, interests and aspirations of young people are. We are not the “born-frees” for in general, the conditions of poverty, unemployment and inequality that faced our parents are still persistent. In order for us to be free, we wish to articulate the following Youth Master Plan that must echo in all corners where there are young people; this includes: Þ Quality Jobs for the unemployed youth and opportunities to become entrepreneurs; Þ Free, Compulsory and Quality Education for the illiterate from basic to further to higher education; Þ Safety and Security for children and young women from physical and sexual abuse; and Þ Focused rural development which will empower young people in the countryside. Þ Accelerated land redistribution and restitution, and the empowerment of our people to become the workers of the land through an agrarian revolution instead of either selling the land back to those whom were repossessed or turning them into game farms; Þ Empowering our communities and workers in mining areas to have greater ownership of the mines and to use the proceeds from this to better the quality of their lives; Þ Making available more land for housing and settlements, sustainable farming, public institutions such as libraries and recreational facilities and many other amenities needed by young people; Þ Mobilizing our youth not as victims of the apartheid capitalist regime but as a motive force for change in their lives. As youth, we have said before and will say it again, we do not want handouts but we want a hand up. We want to be empowered with skills in order to change our lives and not be condemned to a cycle of poverty. This will expose the opportunistic DA whose preoccupation is in blaming the President irrespective of the progress made since 1994 by the leadership of Mandela, Thabo Mbeki (1999-2008), Kgalema Motlanthe (2008-2009) and Jacob Zuma (2009-2019). It will also expose the filthy rich Mamphele Ramphele who behaves like the control freak auntie at weddings who wants the buffet to be closed and cakes to be locked out just because she is full and wants to take a doggy bag. It will expose the so-called Economic Freedom Fighters whose leaders make their names by breaking the law at every corner. Let us go all out and do it for Joe SLOVO. Let us go to schools, universities, workplaces, villages, farms, townships, suburbs and everywhere else and mobilise the youth to sing in unison: Aluta Continua! The Struggle Continues! @butimanamela -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. 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