ANC – Page 6 – praag.org

ANC councillor assassinated in KZN

An African National Congress councillor has been shot dead in Ulundi, KwaZulu-Natal police said on Monday.

“We can confirm that an ANC councillor was shot dead at his home on Sunday at 7pm,” Lt-Col Vincent Mdunge said.

He said a man knocked at the door soon after the councillor had returned home from a meeting in Nongoma. His son opened the door and a man asked to see the councillor.

“The man fired shots at him when he emerged. He tried to run into his bedroom but it was too late… he suffered multiple gunshot wounds and was declared dead at the scene.”

He said the motive for the shooting was not known and no arrest had been made. A case of murder was opened.

KwaZulu-Natal co-operative governance MEC Nomusa Dube said she was saddened by the councillor’s murder, identifying him as Makhosonke Msibi.

“According to the reports councillor Msibi had just returned home from his party’s recruitment campaign in Nongoma when an unknown gunman entered his house and shot him at point blank range in full view of his family members,” she said in a statement.

“We are deeply saddened by the brutal killing of one of the committed and tireless servants in the field of local government in the province,” she said.

The death of Msibi was a blow to the province’s democratic system of local government and the development of the Zululand district as a whole.

“We do not know the cause and the motive. We are, however, worried that the killing of councillors is becoming a disturbing trend, noting that it is not happening for the first time,” she said.

“If this cowardly use of violence was carried out with the intention to subvert the will of the people it will not succeed.” – Sapa

Unrest in Fochville continues

Gauteng police are monitoring violent service delivery protests in Fochville, near Carletonville night and day.

Residents in the area have launched protests over a housing backlog. On the second day of protests, police said 35 people were arrested and two people injured, including a police station commander.

“We are monitoring a service delivery protest which erupted yesterday in the early hours of the morning. The protesters went into schools and let the children out in order to mobilise and the children were stoning vehicles as well as the police officers,who had come to quell the situation,” Gauteng police spokeswoman Katlego Mogale said.

“It continued throughout the night where several spaza shops were looted.”

Dozens of foreign shop-owners had to flee the area as community members went on the rampage, blockading roads, stoning cars and looting shops.

Police were kept on their toes as residents also set alight cars and threw petrol bombs at officers.

Rubber bullets were fired and a police water cannon used to extinguish fires.

The violence escalated later and that is when we called the police and they fetched us from there. Another shop owner was beaten by the mob and he was injured. They chased him down the street and they hit him with a rock,” foreign shop-owner Musa Ibrahim said.

Residents also targeted local councillors’ houses, burning down several houses and a liquor store.

“Today early in the morning they burnt the houses of the council. It is about three houses of the councillors representing the ANC,” member of the provincial legislature Nompi Nhlapho said.

Battle for Tlokwe is on

There’s a lot at stake for the ANC in today’s by-elections in Potchefstroom, with control of the Tlokwe municipal council at stake.

Nine by-elections due to take place in various wards in the North West, after the ANC expelled 14 councillors for joining forces with the DA in order to vote their mayor out of office.

Presently the ANC has 20 seats and the DA 19, while the remaining three are split between Cope and the Freedom Front Plus.

Several high-ranking ANC officials have been in the area recently. Last week Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini handed out food parcels to the community.

However, she has denied accusations that she was trying to buy votes.

Political analyst Susan Booysen says the ANC has much to prove in this election.

“Let’s say they come out with 55% or 60% of the vote in a ward where less than two years ago they had 91%. That would be seen as serious embarrassment for the ANC. The ANC does not want this kind of embarrassment less than a year before a big national election.”

Booysen said the biggest threat is not the DA but a former ANC branch chair who is standing as an independent candidate.

The Independent Electoral Commission will announce the results at midnight on Wednesday. – eNCA

Winnie tries to make a comeback

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela — she changed her last name from simply Mandela after her divorce from Mr. Mandela in 1996 — is very ostentatiously trying to re-enter politics.

Madikizela-Mandela is eager to claim part of the Mandela legacy. “Nobody knows him better than I do,” she told Britain’s ITN network.

And this move comes after years of political eclipse and a long slide, beginning in the 1980s, from her previous status as the most famous of South Africa’s female freedom fighters after her involvement in the murder of a follower.

“She has always wanted to be close to the action in the Mandela household,” said Justice Malala, a political commentator and former publisher of The Sowetan newspaper. He said a recent Soweto news conference and her subsequent interview with British television “showed that, once again, she is trying to do that. The question is whether there is any legitimacy to that, or whether she is a spent force.”

Of all the major figures who came to global prominence during the South African liberation struggle, Ms. Madikizela-Mandela was also the most outspoken revolutionary and anti-white, which explains her fall from grace.

For many of the years just before Nelson Mandela’s release from 27 years in prison, she was his public face, bringing word of his thoughts and his state of mind.

Rumors however circulated even back then of thuggish behavior by a club she had formed for young Soweto men — the Mandela United Football Club — and these whispered accusations came back to haunt her shortly after her husband’s release in 1990.

The following year she was convicted of kidnapping and assaulting a minor, a 14-year-old, James Seipei, who went by the name Stompie Moeketsi. The authorities said he had been fatally beaten by members of her football club, on her orders, because he was suspected of being an informant. She received a six-year sentence that was later reduced to a fine.

The next year, though, she and Mr. Mandela separated.

While she was given a role in the Mandela government, after Mr. Mandela was named president in 1994, she had little power. She was deputy minister of arts, culture, science and technology, but was later fired by Mr. Mandela after a series of incendiary comments and accusations of financial mismanagement.

She has retained her popularity, especially among some young and radical township residents.

“She has, over the past 19 years, attached herself to a sort of radical fringe in the ANC,” Mr. Malala said, referring to the governing African National Congress. “She always attached herself to whatever seemed to be the radical idea of the day, but nothing ever came of it.”

Her public troubles did not end with the Stompie Moeketsi case, though.

In 2003, she was convicted of theft and fraud for her role in a bank swindle in which ANC stationery was used to obtain loans for nonexistent employees. That sentence, too, was suspended.

In March, the police exhumed what they believe might be the bodies of two young Soweto activists who disappeared in 1989, shortly after the father of one of the activists saw them in a vehicle with Ms. Madikizela-Mandela and members of her football club. The father said she had told him that his son was “an apartheid spy.” That case is still under investigation.

Not long after the exhumations, the police showed up on her doorstep in Soweto — trailed by local journalists — to confiscate some of her artwork and possessions to pay a debt of about $5,000 to a private school that had admitted her grandniece. No one answered the door, and the debt was quickly paid by her lawyer.

In recent weeks, though, she gingerly reasserted herself on the public stage, showing up several times to visit her ailing former husband in the hospital in the capital, Pretoria, where he had been clinging to life. That recent Soweto news conference was widely seen as a declaration that she intended to claim her share of the Mandela legacy, as did the interview with ITN.

“When it suits the media, I am a murderer,” she told the British interviewer, while insisting that all the charges against her were “manufactured by the system I was fighting against.”

There is much skepticism here about whether she will be able to pull off yet another political resurrection after her ex-husband’s death.

“She has always felt that she played a major role in the Mandela story,” said William Gumede, a professor of public management at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

“Winnie has argued that she played 80 percent of the role in elevating his status while he was in prison,” Mr. Gumede said. “What she wants now is not so much political power as a place in the Mandela family. But then, they all want a slice of Mandela now.”

‘Reclaim Tlokwe from baases and madams’

Residents of Tlokwe, North West, should back the ANC in next year’s national elections, the SA Communist Party said on Sunday.

“The SACP calls upon all ANC members and SACP cadres, including Cosatu members to ensure that we mobilise the people of Tlokwe to vote for the ANC overwhelming [sic], so that we can rightly re-claim this municipality from the party of the baases and madams,” SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande said in a speech prepared for delivery.

He was speaking at the Ikageng Stadium in Potchefstroom ahead of the party’s 92nd birthday celebrations next month. The celebrations would be held in Tlokwe, the municipality which has its seat in the town.

Nzimande said they condemned those African National Congress members who had voted with the Democratic Alliance and other opposition parties to unseat ANC mayor Maphetle Maphetle.

He was replaced by DA councillor Annette Combrink in July, the second time since November. The North West ANC’s disciplinary committee expelled the councillors concerned, resulting in them losing their seats.

Nzimande said the ANC should fix the problems in the area.

“It is important that the ANC itself must act with speed to attend to whatever problems, including suspected corruption, against its own cadres. But, no matter what grievance any ANC cadre may have, this cannot be translated to the betrayal of the ANC,” he said. – Sapa

Tlokwe: Food parcels to ‘buy votes’

The SA National Civic Organisation (Sanco) has accused Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini of trying to buy votes in Tlokwe, in the North West, with food parcels, the Saturday Star reported.

Sanco regional secretary James Gadinabokao reportedly said that Dlamini distributed parcels ahead of ward by-elections in an attempt to buy votes.

“This is a blatant abuse of state resources to campaign for votes,” he said.

“Why does the minister choose to go to Ward Nine, where by-elections will be held, of all the poverty-stricken areas in Tlokwe?”

Dlamini denied this was the motivation behind the relief efforts and said there were more than 17 000 child-headed households in Tlokwe.

“We are not going to stop our programmes because there are by-elections. The problem of malnutrition in this area is a concern for us.”

However, according to the report, a representative from the DR Kenneth Kaunda municipality warned residents on Friday that if the ANC-led government lost power, they would lose grants and food parcels.

Tlokwe’s ANC mayor Maphetle Maphetle has been unseated twice when ANC councillors voted to replace him with Democratic Alliance councillor Annette Combrink.

The ANC’s North West provincial disciplinary committee expelled the councillors concerned, resulting in them losing their seats.

The by-elections are scheduled to take place on Wednesday. – Sapa

ANC: Racial tension in DA

The DA’s two Gauteng premier candidates indicated racial tension within the party, the ANC in the province said on Wednesday.

“The fact that the Democratic Alliance has two premier candidates is a distinctly inauspicious sign that the party is in a state of mess, confusion and leadership squabbles,” African National Congress Gauteng chairman Dumisa Ntuli claimed.

He was responding to the news that the Democratic Alliance’s Gauteng leader Jack Bloom and party spokesman Mmusi Maimane would vie for selection as the party’s preferred candidate for premier.

“It is a clear indication that there are deeper fights taking place between blacks and whites because of greed, factional battles and rupture caused [by] lack of policies and identity. We know that the DA is a white party and always want to hides behind a façade of a black face.”

Maimane dismissed Ntuli’s comments as political rhetoric aimed at diverting public attention from the ANC’s failings.

“They have no delivery record and are losing credibility. All they want to argue is race,” he said.

Attempts to portray the DA as a white party contained the implication that the ANC was therefore a black party, Maimane said.

The focus on race issues showed the ANC had departed from the non-racial principles of its former president Albert Luthuli, he said. – Sapa

Egypt deplores SA’s claim of Morsi legitimacy

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry expressed its extreme dissatisfaction with South Africa’s statement on the most recent events in Egypt.

South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation had declared its rejection for the latest events which caused former president Mohamed Morsi’s ouster and the constitution’s suspension.

These measures oppose the conventions and customs of the African Union, the department said.

South Africa’s continued claim of Morsi’s legitimacy insults millions of Egyptians’ will, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“It is sadly ironic that Egypt was among the first to defend the rights of South Africans in their fight against apartheid whereas South Africa’s current government takes a negative stance regarding the Egyptians’ attempt to rectify the course of their revolution.”

Thousands of supporters of ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi have defied a new warning from the military-backed cabinet and are continuing their sit-ins in the capital, Cairo.

The country’s interim leaders have ordered police to end ongoing protests at two sites in the city.

But Mr Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood said they had no option but to continue the month-long sit-ins.

The United States has again urged Egypt to respect freedom of assembly.

Pro-Morsi demonstrators want to see the Islamist leader reinstated. He was removed by the army on 3 July, after just one year in office.

They have defied previous threats of removal, despite clashes with security forces that have left dozens dead.

The Egyptian interior ministry says gradual steps will be taken to disperse the crowds.

“The continuation of the dangerous situation in Rabaa al-Adawiya and Nahda squares, and consequent terrorism and road blockages, are no longer acceptable given the threat to national security,” it said in a statement on Wednesday.

Police had been tasked to end the demonstrations “within the law and the constitution”, it added.

‘Attempt to terrorise’But Essam el-Erian, vice president of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood’s political party, said the protesters would not be deterred by the latest threats.

“There are expectations of a massacre taking place in front of the eyes of the whole world,” he said.

“The free people in Egypt and the world must stand against this stupid cabinet mandate for the police to end the sit-in protests.”

The main protest sit-in is at a square near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in the capital’s north-east, where clashes erupted on Saturday in which some 70 people were killed, and in Nahda Square near the main campus of Cairo University.

“Nothing will change,” Brotherhood spokesman Gehad el-Haddad told AFP news agency after the cabinet threat.

He dismissed the dispersal announcement as an “attempt to terrorise Egyptians” and said the decision to clear the camps had been taken by a “gang” that had no respect for the law.

Another Muslim Brotherhood member, Mohamed el-Beltagy, told Associated Press the army had forgotten “its main role in protecting the Egyptian borders and decided to kill its people”.

The government has not given details of when the clearance could happen.

US state department spokeswoman Marie Harf appealed for it to avoid violence.

“We have continued to urge the interim government officials and security forces to respect the right of peaceful assembly,” she said.

“That obviously includes sit-ins. So we’ve made that point publicly and privately, and we’ll continue to do so.”

Official visitorsMeanwhile, three top Muslim Brotherhood figures have been referred to court on charges of inciting violence.

Brotherhood leader Mohammed Badie, his deputy Khairat al-Shater and senior leader Rashad Bayoum face trial over allegations of inciting the killing of protesters outside of their headquarters last month.

An African Union delegation confirmed on Wednesday that it had met Mr Morsi, who has not been seen in public since being ousted.

He had received no official visitors until Tuesday, when he met EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton who said he was “well”.

The ousted leader has been formally remanded in custody at an undisclosed location, according to a judicial order.

He has been accused of the “premeditated murder of some prisoners, officers and soldiers” when he and several Muslim Brotherhood leaders were freed during a breakout at a Cairo prison in January 2011.

He is alleged to have plotted attacks on jails in the uprising that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak.

Mr Morsi is also accused of conspiring with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip and has strong links with the Muslim Brotherhood.

He was overthrown by the military after mass rallies in which millions of Egyptians calling for his removal took to the streets. – Aswat Masriya/BBC

Who is Naspers?

by Albert Brenner

The bewildered herd must be governed by a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality. (Walther Lippmann)

Knowledge is power… and power is money. In order to make big money, you need big money.

The first big fund to invest in Naspers was Comerica Foreign Equity. This fund is run by World Asset Management, the investment arm of HSBC. This bank has its main (private) office on Tortola, the largest of the British Virgin Islands.

And guess where Naspers’s investment arm, MIH Holdings Limited, is located? Yes, in the exact same street of this tax-haven of the (mostly) British elite. Just think about the above every time you pay a small fortune to watch M-Net, SuperSport, DSTV, et cetera.

Now, HSBC is the world’s 3rd largest bank with $2.36 trillion in assets. Formerly known as Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation, HSBC is one of the most unscrupulous banks ever. It has been the cash cow of the British elite since its inception as a repository for British Crown opium proceeds accrued during the Chinese Opium Wars.

Armed with a royal charter, Lord Shelbourne started the Chinese opium trade in 1783 with merchants from the East India Company. Shelbourne’s main spin-doctor was Adam Smith. The latter worked for the East India Company, which was formed from the slave-trading Levant Company and later became known as Chatham House. The latter is home to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), the second most influential think tank in the world.

The RIIA was founded in 1920. Its American sister institute, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), was founded one year later. Walther Lippmann, the Pulitzer-Prize essayist, journalist and mass-media genius was one of the founding members of the CFR. But more about him later. Needless to say, these two organizations, the RIIA and CFR, work hand in hand.

Now, the CFR is run by some of the best brains in America. They are truly exceptional people. They basically run the State Department, the CIA and are connected to nearly everybody that matters in the business and academia in America, and globally.

The CIA operates under the cover of various organizations when it comes to furthering America’s strategic and economic interests. The Ford Foundation is one of the main fronts of the CIA (i.e. the CFR).

In June 1985, this foundation hosted the first ever meeting between the ANC and the Broederbond (i.e. the NP).

The conference took place in Glen Cove, Long Island on June 1st. The main players were Professor JP De Lange (Head of the Broederbond) and ANC officials, Thabo Mbeki, Mac Maharaj and Seretse Choadi.

This meeting did not produce the results the CFR were hoping for. So they summoned the (economic) artillery, David Rockefeller.

Along with being a CFR director for 46 years, David Rockefeller served as chairman of the board from 1970-85 and was the organization’s honorary chairman till 2001. During this time, he was also chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank.

On 31st July 1985, Chase Manhattan decided not to roll over South Africa’s debt. Apparently Pik Botha’s traitor heart nearly stopped beating: “I will never forget the night of July 31 when [Minister of Finance] Barend du Plessis phoned me … [He said]: ‘Pik, I must tell you that the country is facing inevitable bankruptcy … The process has started.'” (source).

The rest is history.

So what has this got to do with Naspers? Well, it just shows that Naspers is just another appendage of interest groups beyond the borders of South Africa. In other words, it does not serve the interests of South Africans. But then, neither do other media giants in South Africa.

Caxton/CTP’s chairman in the early 1990s was Van Zyl Slabbert, who also became the chairman of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Slabbert was the useful idiot of CFR member George Soros. The latter, through his Open Society Foundation, sponsored Slabbert and super-useful idiot Max Du Preez… especially with his anti-Afrikaner Vrye Weekblad newspaper.

So, every time you hear about the Davos Afrikaner called Koos Bekker, the big boss of the 33rd largest media company in the world called Naspers (worth R344 billion or $34,88 billion) just know that he is just another witting puppet on an Anglo-American string.

He is just like those rich Boer farmers who became hensoppers during the Anglo-Boer War… selling out their own people purely for profit. Nothing more, nothing less.

Meaning that the “Who is Naspers?” question is not really that interesting. The really interesting question is the “why” behind Naspers.

Answering this question will take us through the wonderful worlds of Baudrillard (e.g. see my article Mandela’s Empire), Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the Washington Consensus, Bretton Woods, Walther Lippmann’s Public Opinion… all the way back to Edmund Husserl`s phenomenology (e.g. see my article Why Mandela).

It is a fact that people can only make sense of Reality through “ideal meanings”. Those ideal “pictures in your head” prevent you, more often than not, to “… come to judgment by critical thinking” (Walther Lippmann).

Journalism is “intelligence work” and journalists are a link between policymakers and the public, according to Lippmann.

Meaning that journalists (and the media companies that employ them, e.g. Naspers) always sanitize the Truth at the behest of their pay-masters…

(to be continued)

‘ANC is coming unstuck’

A poor showing by the ruling party at next year’s general election will likely cost President Jacob Zuma his job, political analyst Nic Borain said on Thursday.

Speaking at a Cape Town Press Club lunch, he said the signs were that “the ANC’s glue is coming unstuck” after the Marikana shootings last year.

“They [the ANC] are taking this 2014 election extremely seriously. They’re going to fight tooth and nail to [win it].

“They know that if they drop below 60%, they’re in trouble. Jacob Zuma will be in trouble… “

Responding to questions, Borain – a local independent analyst, who spoke on “the impact of the current mining troubles” in South Africa – suggested the rise of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (Amcu) was a turning point for ANC supporters.

Support for it had been triggered by unhappiness with the ANC-aligned National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

“There was a huge defection [from] the ANC support base in the platinum sector.”

This had later spread to the gold sector, where it had risen – according to some sources – to 30%.

“Jacob Zuma is now losing support among urban black people,” Borain said.

Prediction

Asked to predict the likely showing of the ANC at next year’s elections, he said a “worst-case scenario” was the ANC retained 65% of the vote.

He suggested a more-likely “best scenario” would see the ANC get 59% of the vote. This, he said, would lead to ANC leaders negotiating a “controlled exit” for Zuma, who would want to be assured he could leave with his wealth intact and not facing corruption charges.

“The ANC is not going to accept this kind of loss.”

Borain said a third scenario, involving the ANC garnering only 51% of the vote, was “very scary”.

“If that happens, all bets are off.”

Pushed to suggest how political parties might fare in the coming election, he estimated the ANC would take 58%, the DA 26%, a figure he later revised to 30%, and newly-formed Agang SA about 2%.

On the DA, Borain said the main opposition party would find it “difficult to overcome barriers to its growth”.

On the future prospects of Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) – whose leadership he described as “the clowns and fools of our politics” – Borain said they could take up to 5% of the vote.

“But I can’t see them getting out to vote,” he added. – Sapa

Agang supporters arrested

Mzombane in Mokopane, Limpopo, has been suffering from a lack of basic infrastructure, including electricity, running water, roads, schools and clinics.

The community of Mzombane, led by Agang SA supporters, approached the Mayor of Mogalakwena to discuss their concerns about standards of living and lack of service delivery. They were promised an audience at 1pm today, but on arrival for the agreed meeting the Mayor, T Mashamaite, did not appear.

Instead, a local councillor came in his place and in a bizarre twist, told the assembled community members that those who wanted candles, food parcels and jobs should follow him. Preliminary reports from the meeting show that he was told to leave by the people whose concerns were not being addressed. The meeting ended in chaos.

Subsequently, three Agang SA members were rounded up and arrested; charges are unconfirmed. They were held in the Mahwelereng police station while members of the community were outside demanding their release. Following intervention by the local leadership of Agang SA, they were released pending a court appearance.

“Agang SA is in contact with the community and its members on the ground to provide legal advice and support to secure their release. We are following the situation closely and will provide updates as soon as we have more information,” said Thabo Leshilo, Director of Communications for Agang SA.

The three Agang SA supporters later had their case postponed. The magistrate ruled that more time was required to investigate the charge of malicious damage to property.

Agang SA’s Director of Communications Thabo Leshilo joined around 60 Agang SA supporters in Mahwelereng court.

“Agang SA is providing on-going legal support to these citizens. They were released without bail and the case will now be heard on the 31st July,” said Leshilo.

ANC does not want to ‘castrate rapists’

The ANC on Tuesday called on Cosas not to take the law into its own hands by castrating rapists.

“Our position is that we have law enforcement agencies in this country and anybody who commits crime must face the might of the law,” said African National Congress spokesman Keith Khoza.

“It is not the responsibility of Cosas to do that. We call on Cosas to recognise that there are law enforcement agencies. Where crime has been committed people must not take matters into their own hands,” he said.

Earlier, the Congress of SA Students (Cosas) threatened to castrate rapists.

“We are going to take the law into our hands… starting from cutting off private parts of those who rape our brothers and sisters, not to forget removing drug dealers in our communities because we know where they live,” said Cosas president Thlologelo Malaji.

“Our community members must stop living in fear and assist us to remove all the ills of society,” he said.

Malaji said Cosas had decided not to sit back and watch the future of the youth taken away by the “ills of society”.

“We call upon all stakeholders in the education sector… to take part and contribute in the struggle to improve the education of our country, ensuring that our students receive the best education,” he said.

Cosas would call mass meetings of parents, pupils, and others to discuss the state of education in the country.

“Core to these discussions… is the continuous disruptions of the culture of teaching and learning due to protests.”

Malaji said Cosas was also concerned about the number of schools, especially high schools, that did not have feeding schemes.

“If a child in a primary school has been depending on the feeding scheme, in high school their background is still the same. Where will that child get assistance if the feeding scheme is no longer there?” he asked.

He said the quality of the food being served in the feeding scheme was concerning.

Malaji said Cosas would also continue to oppose the publication of matric results in newspapers.

“As a students’ organisation, we still maintain that matric results should be a private matter between the matriculant and the department of education.” – Sapa

Kasrils sees ‘his’ ANC slide

Kasrils and Mandela sing about killing whites — Kasrils and Mandela sing about killing some whites

Anti-apartheid activist and former spy boss Ronnie Kasrils has lashed out at the government, saying it has “stumbled, faltered and lost its way”, according to a report.

“It is necessary to put the ANC back on course,” Kasrils reportedly said at the Eastern Cape launch of Democracy from Below (DfB) in Mdantsane, Dispatch Online reported on Monday.

“We must have far more open debate about what is wrong. This is not what we fought for. We fought for accountability and transparency,” he was quoted as saying.

The campaign was meant to put pressure on the government, the Dispatch Online reported.

Also present at the launch was former deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge.

According to the Dispatch Online, she said the DfB did not want to participate in governance “only every five years”.

“We are all from different organisations. We have a right to demand accountability… democracy is two-legged — voting and participating.

“Freedom is not limited to the ability to vote, it stretches further than that.”

Kasrils reportedly said democracy was not limited to politics and that participation by everyone was vital.

“… It must spread to the economy and the land. We must also not be afraid of nationalisation.”

The Dispatch Online reported that the DfB, which is not a political party, was officially launched in Cape Town last week. – SAPA

All-white cast of SA’s revolution speak up

Liliesleaf: Instigating violence in SA, a white passtime — Liliesleaf: Instigating violence in SA, a white pastime

SOUTH Africa’s “born free” generation has no interest in the nation’s history, Liliesleaf Trust chief executive officer Nicholas Wolpe complained yesterday while marking the 50-year anniversay of the arrests of the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) leadership.

“South Africans in general do not understand the importance of our history,” he said. “We don’t celebrate what our legacies really mean, which is clear when it comes to Heritage Day changing into Braai Day. We need to identify who and what we are, who was born three months before the arrests of Nelson Mandela and other key leaders of the liberation movement on July 11, 1963.”

Wolpe said visitors to the farm always appeared shocked that there had been white people involved in the liberation struggle. “Sites like Liliesleaf Farm are important to future generations, as they preserve the country’s history,” he said.

“If we do not continue having discussions about the past, one day we might wake up to our history no longer being there.”

The anniversary featured a handover of a Memory of Legacy set of medallions. “A gold medallion commemorates the farm raid, a silver medallion the Rivonia trial and another gold medallion honours the escape from Marshall Square,” said South African Gold Coin Exchange executive chairman Alan Demby, who handed the set to Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe. – The Citizen