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30 January 2014 On bourgeois collaboration of Zille and Ramphele, and left-wing adventurism of NUMSA Unity without struggle is right-wing opportunism; struggle without unity is left-wing recklessness!!! Sonwabile Ngxiza, Battle of Ideas Commission, SACP, Brian Bunting District In the recent past the South African public and the international observers have been treated to a comedy in the South African political scene a few months before the 5th general elections. First, it was the NUMSA Special Congress in December 2013 and the ongoing political school calculated as a ploy to legitimize an agreement of a clique to pull out of COSATU and contrive a stillborn “Movement for Socialism” while flirting with EFF anarchists. Second and more bizarre is the defecting leader of Agang SA to the Democratic Alliance. Both situations have left people with a bewildering sense of awe, intrigue and complete disgust. Attempting to dissect these situations requires analysis of the underlying logic of these tendencies ie to weaken the revolutionary movement and slow down the development of a class struggle! The case of exaggerated struggle credentials In this attempt a treatise of these tendencies let us start with the latter situation, that of a defecting leader of Agang. In a radio interview on Metro FM on 28 February 2014 Zille explains her relentless pursuit of Mamphela to join the DA. To paraphrase her, she said “politics is about additions, making the circle bigger and Mamphela brings the credentials of anti-apartheid struggle in the Black Consciousness Movement to the DA.” In this way Zille, firstly, agrees with the conclusion by many analysts that the DA has reached a ceiling and secondly they need a political messiah with “struggle credentials” as the DA is a party of oppression. Both reasons (for “renting a black leader” - as Secretary General Mantashe characterized the situation) are flawed and will not produce the expected result. The DA will not grow because it’s a white minority party and a shopsteward of capital - domestic and foreign. It does not represent the interests of the majority. Its policies in the Western Cape where it has governed for the past 5 years have inflicted untold misery to the people of the Western Cape particularly the African and Coloured majority. The residents of Hangberg know the savage brutality of Helen Zille’s metro police when residents resisted eviction from their land. People in Chartsworth, Mitchell’s Plain and Gugulethu are land hungry under the DA. Conditions under which the poor majority live are appalling with poor service delivery such as housing, sanitation, water, electricity and refuse collection. It is Helen Zille who calls indigenous Africans in the Western Cape refugees – deserving of living in sub-human conditions! The DA support would not grow, not only because of its role in the oppression the Black majority. The DA will also not grow because in the experiment of the Western Cape it has shown unashamedly that it protects and advances interests of the white middle class and big business. The infrastructure developments and expenditure of money from the national fiscus is directed to develop luxuries in the affluent areas like building bicycle lanes in Tableview, Blouberg and Milnerton. These same middle class areas are prioritized for development of the Bus Rapid Transport whereas the bulk of the population in urgent need of transport is located in Khayelitsha, Mitchell’s Plain, Phillipi, Delft to mention a few. The poor farm workers in De Doorns know that the DA led provincial government sided with the farmers when they only demanded a decent salary and working and living conditions. The DA will not grow for the above reasons that people of South Africa have witnessed. Neither will it increase its presence in poor Black communities by “renting a black leader”. Who is Mamphela Ramphele? She is associated with the founder of the Black Conscious Movement, Steve Biko. She was not the leading force she is made out to be in that movement. If she was such a formidable force she would have continued to inspire the movement long after Biko passed but that is not the case, as we all know! She is just basking in the glory of Steve Biko. So, what are these struggle credentials she will bring to the DA - an exaggerated role of an anti-apartheid activist by association to Steve Biko? If this was any meaningful in present day South Africa the BCM would still be alive. It’s dead because this legacy is irrelevant to the majority working class. The student movement remembers Ramphele the ‘defector’ as someone who presided over exclusion of students at the University of Cape Town and effectively suppressed student political activism. The working class under the leadership of NEHAWU remembers Ramphele as who intensified casualisation and outsourcing while at the helm at UCT. The working poor worldwide remember Ramphele as someone who maintained the exploitative paradigm of structural adjustment during her tenure as an Executive Director at the World Bank. The people are not fooled by this ‘defector’! This ‘defector’ does not enjoy popular appeal and she worsened matters by betraying the few that joined her Agang SA. Any grain of credibility she possessed has been shattered by the decision to ‘defect’ to the DA prioritizing her own interests of getting into the opposition benches of Parliament. The DA is a party that safeguard elite interests! Mamphela the ‘defector’ is no different to this as she too is part of the exploiting elite in her role in the World Bank as well as Goldfields mining company which kept workers toiling in dangerous conditions earning peanuts! The DA is the party of the middle class elite and big business. They try to confuse the masses by claiming to represent their interests and by their slogans “equal opportunity society”. They undermine the intelligence of the masses as all bourgeoisies do. “Bourgeoisie ideologists, and also reformists and revisionists try to obscure the connection between parties and classes.”[1] The DA as a party represents the exploiting class, the White minority interests hence their opposition to progressive policies of Broad Based Black economic Empowerment and Employment Equity which redresses the imbalances of the legacy of apartheid. On this subject Lenin wrote: “The division of any society into different political parties is revealed most clearly of all in times of profound crises shaking the whole country... all phrase-mongering, all that is petty and extraneous, is brushed aside by the gravity of the struggle; the parties strain every nerve and appeal to the masses, and the masses, guided by their unerring instinct and enlightened by the experience of an open struggle, follow the parties that represent the interest of a particular class”[2] The leader of our Revolutionary Alliance, the ANC has just marked 102 years of unbroken struggle for total liberation of the downtrodden masses and thus the people of South Africa cannot be fooled. Let us now turn our attention to the left-wing adventurism of NUMSA For some time now the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA) has been instigating a rupture in the Alliance by provoking the SACP and the decision to deploy leaders into government. When this mischief failed they used the divergences around the National Development Plan (NDP) as a weapon and became a wedge driver in the ANC led revolutionary Alliance. NUMSA convened a Special Congress in December 2013 and its much publicized resolutions include withdrawal of support for the ANC elections as well as ceasing financial contributions to COSATU. By so doing NUMSA ostensibly defined itself outside the Alliance and its calls for a formation of a “movement for socialism” are tantamount to declaring itself an opposition to the Revolutionary Alliance. Whilst comrades in COSATU as well as ANC and the SACP have adopted a principled position not to yield to provocation but rather focus of constructive resolution of the challenges in the labour movement, NUMSA has been unceasing in its vitriolic attacks. The NUMSA leadership clique has been parroting the idea that the ANC and the SACP have betrayed the masses in government and that the latter has sold out! The NUMSA leadership clique has been flirting with the Anarchists in the form of the so-called “Economic Freedom Fighter” as well as the Workers and Socialist Party. NUMSA also held a week long political school to “take forward the special congress resolutions” including establishing a “movement for socialism.” The NUMSA leadership clique is suffering from an extreme deficiency of understanding that “struggle without unity is left-wing recklessness”. To borrow once again from the Fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy: “Left” revisionism, “leftist” adventurism flying the flag of radicalism and “superrevolutionism”, denies the significance of objective conditions in evolving revolutionary tactics, denies the importance of organizational and educational work among the masses… It also rules out the possibility of agreement and compromise, the use by the working class of the bourgeois state, parliament, and other institutions at a certain stage of its struggle: on this point “left” revisionists are in agreement with the anarchists”. The leadership clique of Irvin Jim is consumed by adventurism and suffer from what Lenin called an “infantile disorder”. They are consumed by sloganeering and “phrasemongering” paying lip-service to dictatorship of the proletariat while in practice deny its essence. They are consumed, seduced and are victims of the corrupting vagaries of capitalism as Irvin Jim has vested business interests and uses union resources for self-enrichment. They pretend to be radical militants when by night are squandering union funds. The tendency of Irvin Jim is no different from flawed character of Julius Malema, the two are birds of the same further. Malema once misguidedly characterized the ANC Youth League as the vanguard of the working class whilst he as a parasitic bourgeoise was living lavishly, squandering millions in tender fraud and building, then demolishing luxurious mansions worth millions. In the same vain Jim dreams of a trade union being a vanguard of the working class. To correct this misguided logic of the NUMSA leadership clique we must assert that: “The party of the working class is the advanced, politically organized and active part of the working class; its vanguard.”[3] In fact: “All other organisations of the proletariat – trade unions, cultural and educational associations, etc. – serve as necessary means in the class struggle but they cannot solve the fundamental problem, the problem of abolishing the capitalist system and carrying out a socialist revolution”[4] Irvin Jim, just as Trosky did in Russia, ignores the character of our revolution and has no clear conception of the transition from this revolution to the socialist revolution. They are characterised by a belief in the omnipotence of political means and methods, which are allegedly capable of bringing about a transformation of the economy regardless of the operation of economic laws. This adventurist policy, as experience has shown, sooner or later leads inevitably to disaster.[5] In conclusion, both Zille’s “rent a black leader” strategy and Irvin Jim’s “leftist” adventurism are doomed to fail. Zille’s strategy is bankrupt and will to fail dismally in its attempt to woo the workers and the poor majority of whom are black still largely afflicted by the legacy of colonialism and apartheid. Jim’s reckless gamble will fail due to his ignorance of the character of our revolution! · Sonwabile Ngxiza is Deputy Secretary of Brian Bunting (Cape Metro) District and Convener of the Commission on the Battle of Ideas Sources: Fedor Vasilʹevich Konstantinov <http://www.google.co.za/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Fedor+Vasil%CA%B9evich+Konstantinov%22> (1982) the fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy, Progress Publishers Lenin, Political Parties in Russia, vol. 18 p. 45 Those interested in publishing this article, or other articles by the same author, should contact Masonwabe Sokoyi on 074 177 2068, or e-mail [email protected] _____ [1] See the fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy chapter on classes and class struggle, p. 272 [2] Lenin, Political Parties in Russia, vol. 18 p. 45 [3] See Fedor Vasilʹevich Konstantinov <http://www.google.co.za/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22Fedor+Vasil%CA%B9evich+Konstantinov%22> (1982) the fundamentals of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy chapter on classes and class struggle [4] ibid p. 273 [5] ibid p.302 -- -- You are subscribed. 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