Umsebenzi Online Volume 15, No. 04, 3 February 2016 In this Issue: * Former President Thabo Mbeki personalises complex political issues and continues to isolate SACP leaders * The SACP and Cosatu have not been silent, rather, it's Eusebius Mackaiser who is either ignorant or selective if not both Red Alert Former President Thabo Mbeki personalises complex political issues, continues to isolate SACP leaders BY ALEX MASHILO In his letter - "Dare you ponder the obvious: of course Mbeki is aloof" - Thabo Mbeki sets himself the task to dispel the notion that he was aloof. He writes: "However, in my specific case, the charge of being 'aloof' rested on the assertion that whether intentionally or not, my very style of leadership meant that I deliberately chose to be 'not in touch with the people', (and the membership of the ANC), obviously having 'arrogated to myself the status of being the source of all wisdom.'" In "Former President Thabo Mbeki still doesn't get", published by Umsebenzi Online on 20 January and The New Age on 22 January, SACP First Deputy General Secretary Comrade Jeremy Cronin sufficiently responded to Mbeki, at least for now. The response remains valid in all respects, even to Mbeki's "Dare you ponder the obvious: of course Mbeki is aloof", as if the latter was not penned and published thereafter. In addition, it is important to underline that Mbeki is the first former ANC President to announce - in the very first elections once it was no longer about campaigning for him to hold on to the position - that his vote was a secret. This was the first election after the ANC's 52nd National Conference held in Polokwane in December 2007 where, as he says, he contested the position of ANC President and did not win. The majority of ANC delegates at the congress, representing ANC membership - which he says he was not distant from - did not vote for him. By so doing, the delegates clearly expressed the views and implemented the mandate of ANC membership. Mbeki does not give any account why people who he says he was very close to took the decision. Instead of maintaining his "HIV does not cause Aids" denialist tendency, he should acknowledge that, like all other human beings, he has his own weaknesses. Unless he presents a compelling motivation, he must recognise that it was, among others, because of, and to those weaknesses that the membership responded in that way. This does not mean he was not good at other things. Neither does it mean that he did not have strengths. All along, ANC cadres such as myself worked very hard under Mbeki's leadership as ANC President. One of my memorable campaigns was when I was involved with other comrades in organising his visit to Ford Motor Company of Southern Africa in Silverton, Tshwane, where I was working at the time and also serving as one of the leading shop stewards representing workers. During the campaign, Mbeki did not call on workers to make their vote a secret. He declared that his vote belonged to the ANC. He campaigned for workers, similarly, to both vote for the ANC and mobilise others to do likewise. It was after he announced that his vote was a secret that I have never heard him campaign for others to vote for the ANC. The inconsistency reveals one characteristic feature of Mbeki: he can personalise complex political questions and isolate individual comrades. This is what he has done in the last three weeks when he isolated Comrade Jeremy Cronin following which he isolated the SACP General Secretary Comrade Blade Nzimande, a few days ago. In between, he penned a letter alleging that there was a lie that President Jacob Zuma, then his deputy, was removed from his position and that this played itself out at the ANC National General Council in 2005, where no national executive committee member stood up to correct it. A question can be posed, where was he, Mbeki, as the leader of that National Executive Committee? He was very much present. Did he stand up to make the correction he claims no one from the National Executive Committee stood up to correct? No he did not. Why would he, a decade after the meeting pen its minutes that have not been discussed and adopted by the collective. It is also ironic that Mbeki speaks about the National Executive Committee as if he was not its leading member thus outsourcing the very role he should have played in his capacity as ANC President and attributing blame on all others except for himself. Well, that Mbeki. Currently we are facing serious economic problems: high levels of inequality, unemployment and poverty, among others. What does Mbeki do? He chooses to focus on himself as a person. This self-centredness and trivialisation of complex phenomena will not assist us as a country. The only thing it can achieve is to exacerbate tensions and cause further problems. Especially at the current time when the rest of our movement must unite behind the clarion call for a second, more radical phase of our democratic transition and prepare to win local government elections, Mbeki will cause problems for the ANC and the alliance through such conduct. What we need, and perhaps this is more important, is to have a discussion on the relationship between the economic problems that we are facing today and the policy decisions - including those that were presented as non-negotiable - that were driven under Mbeki's leadership. This in addition to going to the root of the problems in colonial and apartheid oppression, racist capitalist exploitation and the multiple crises of capitalism as a world system! * Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo is SACP Spokesperson, and writes in his capacity as Professional Revolutionary. A shortened version of this piece was first published by The New Age on 3 February 2016. The SACP and Cosatu have not been silent, rather, it's Eusebius Mackaiser who is either ignorant or selective if not both Eusebius Mackaiser's "The wages of political expediency" published by Independent newspaper titles The Star and Pretoria News (1 February 2016) refers. He claims that the SACP and Cosatu have been quiet all along when things were going wrong and all of a sudden want to make news about old news. Mackaiser's example is that both the SACP and Cosatu have recently come out publicly against corporate-state capture and renting-seeking. Mackaiser makes use of the Gupta family as an example and the parasitic or perhaps mutually beneficial relationship that they allegedly have with some leaders. He makes no mention of former DA leader Helen Zille's letter Atul Gupta thanking them for their financial contribution to the DA. The letter was read by SACP General Secretary Comrade Blade Nzimande in Parliament February last year to expose the DA's hypocrisy. By claiming that both the SACP and Cosatu are only raising issues such as this for the first time is hypocritical of Mackaiser. There are many other occasions before, where the SACP raised issues such as this, including the recent one relating to corporate-state capture and rent-seeking. For the record it was not the first time that the SACP raised the matter. That Mackaiser was not aware exposes his own ignorance on matters he would like to claim authority on using his columns. Another example that he gives is that both the SACP and Cosatu have expressed their concerns publicly about the new tax laws. The laws will curtail workers provident fund lump sum withdrawals to one-third, while restricting the remaining two-thirds to retirement annuity. As the SACP has said, there is no comprehensive social security that has simultaneously been put in place to cover workers with adequate social protection in the event of job loss. Especially workers in the private sector are vulnerable to cyclical business downturns and structural economic crises. In most cases, this sees many of them face retrenchments and evictions and other forms of repossessions if they fail to make repayments on those properties and goods that they have acquired on loans. In the absence of comprehensive social security, affected workers among others relied on their lump sum provident fund withdrawals if these were sufficient to settle their balances on housing loans for example. Related to economic issues, Mackaiser says the SACP and Cosatu have become vocal only now whereas the problem of the economy, which he simplistically reduces to sluggish growth, is simply not new. This is of course rubbish. Both the SACP and Cosatu have been at the forefront of the struggle for policy changes in this country in order to address and ultimately resolve the economic problems we face. The SACP and Cosatu have, and correctly so, expressed their views publicly on all the above issues. But the allegation that they are doing so only now after they have been silent about is baseless, grossly ignorant and malicious. Mackaiser's allegation suggests that he has not only bought into, but he is actively propagating the liberal oppositionist mantra that to be seen to be independent the SACP and Cosatu, or anyone for that matter, must be seen criticising - and with prejudice for that matter - and on the other extreme even attacking the ANC and its leaders all the time. This is not the way the SACP, Cosatu and alliance work. The SACP and Cosatu are constructive and comradely when they criticise, not destructive. Instead of rushing to the media, we start internally by directly engaging other comrades and hearing their side of the story. The SACP and Cosatu are in alliance with the ANC - not in opposition to it. There are internal platforms to engage and processes to deal with issues within the alliance and report back in all alliance components. There has been no silence from the SACP and Cosatu on the issues. Of course over and above the internal alliance and organisational mechanisms there are times when it becomes necessary to make public statements and clarify certain questions publicly. This has happened not only recently but all the time. Mackaiser must read and if need be consult widely, including both the SACP and Cosatu documents. This will help him resist writing ignorant and selective content in the space he enjoys at the Independent titles. * Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo is SACP Spokesperson, and writes in his capacity as Professional Revolutionary. A shortened version of this piece was first published by The Start but in its letters section on 3 February 2016 Umsebenzi Online is an online voice of the South African working class -- -- 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/d/optout.
