President Jacob Zuma used the ANC’s January 8 birthday rally to absolve his government from responsibility of the energy crises gripping the country, according to reports from the ANC shindig in Cape Town.
Zuma told over 50 000 of ANC supporters gathered at the Green Point Stadium on Saturday that “the ANC government should not feel guilty for the lack of power in the country”.
“The energy problem is not our problem today. It is a problem of apartheid which we are resolving,” he said.
Zuma reaffirmed comments he made in the past that apartheid was responsible for the rolling blackouts affecting the country.
“The reality is that we are dealing with the legacy of apartheid, which was skewed to deal with the minority and not the majority,” the president said.
Once upon a time, under National Party rule, South Africa had the cheapest power in the world, with excess production exported or sold at risible rates to aluminium smelters. Yet yesterday the country had to contend with a new round of “load shedding” as the state utility Eskom ran out of electricity again. The power utility said it was due to “high electricity demand and the unavailability” of some generating units. Stage one allows for up to 1 000MW of the national load to be shed, stage two for up to 2 000MW and stage three for up to 4 000MW.
Eskom has been fanatical about affirmative action and has laid off scores of white engineers, leaving the company without engineering and financial expertise but with high-salaried affirmative-action freeloaders.
“When commentators comment on energy they forget this (that apartheid was responsible for the lack of energy). They want to put the blame on the democratic government,” said Zuma.
However, Zuma refuses to shoulder any blame for the electricity mess in South Africa.
“The ANC government is accelerating the pace to bring the Medupi and Kusile power stations onto the grid and we are licensing independent power producers,” he said.
“We continue to evaluate options to maximise our energy mix including coal, gas, nuclear, solar and renewables,” he added.
A nuclear plan has also been announced by Zuma.
“The ANC is therefore putting energy as one of our apex priorities,” he said.
‘Monopoly capital’
Zuma’s speech focussed on the Freedom Charter, a Marxist document drawn up by Rusty Bernstein and others in 1955 and has since served as a central party manifesto to both the Communist Party and the ANC. He warned against monopoly capital:
“We must break the stranglehold of monopoly capital on our economic development. It is imperative that the Competitions Commission continues to address monopolistic, collusive and anti-competitive behaviour and become even bolder in their preventative and punitive measures.”
Zuma’s statements on the economy were warmly received by the Communist Party and its main trade union, Cosatu.
Cosatu President Sdumo Dlamini said he was “satisfied that the president raised the debate of racial transformation in the financial sector”.
“But it will remain a speech if there is no implementation,” he added.
Zuma wants banking to become more affordable too.
“Banking has become much more accessible to the majority of South Africans, but the excessive bank charges and fees mean that many people still cannot afford bank services,” he said.
The ANC is also preparing to implement a Zimbabwe-style “land reform” in South Africa, pushing white farmers off the land.
“We commit that the land will be returned to our people and the ANC calls on its government to act with the necessary speed to put the legislation in place, this year, to ensure that this happens.”
Hundreds of South Africa’s commercial farmers have now gone home after TAU SA’s yearly congress in Pretoria. In the north of the country they wait for the summer rain: their soil is prepared, the seeds are planted and the days grow hotter. Eyes look skyward for the first signs: they wait for the whip of the pre-storm wind, for that scent of moisture, for the quick darkening of the sky. Fifty three million South Africans depend on the country’s commercial farmers for their daily bread.
In his keynote Congress speech, TAU SA president Louis Meintjes covered many points – government propaganda on how “the whites” stole black land; farmworkers’ “rights” (but nothing about the rights of those who created the farms); how the country is run from Luthuli House, making the claim that SA is a democracy something of a farce. Then there’s the ubiquitous Freedom Charter, trotted out at every turn by the ANC, an outdated manifesto, written by white communists (notably Rusty Berstein), whose so-called principles are today only supported by countries like North Korea.
Then there’s the government’s 50/50 plan – the “sharing” of private farms with the workers which has elicited guffaws around the world and caused many potential investors to run for the hills. TAU SA says this latest caprice is a bridge too far. It is patently unacceptable, for many reasons but not least that it will cause hardship and hunger.
Then followed the president’s key question: where will it stop? Each demand’s acquiescence is followed by another demand. Despite reams being written about the empirical impracticality of the ANC’s farm policies, it is clear the government takes no notice. Willy nilly it surges ahead with plans and notions and white papers and green papers, each more ludicrous than the last. Communism’s DNA is well entrenched at Luthuli House, despite its spectacular failures in the twentieth century.
It should be therefore no surprise that the government proffered this policy during pre-1994 negotiations for the transfer of power in South Africa. It is a pity that many who negotiated with the ANC did not take cognizance of communism’s awful legacy.
Book
In his book How Communists Negotiate by American Admiral C. Turner Joy (MacMillan & Co, NY 1955), this Commander in Chief (UN Command) of Naval Forces in the Far East and American representative at the South Korean Armistice Conference at the end of the Korean War set out how the North Korean communists meticulously planned to get as much as they could without giving away anything to the other side. Virtually all of the processes he outlined regarding the negotiation process there were repeated by the ANC pre-1994.
His chapters include “Setting the stage”: Turner says the communists carefully consider the physical circumstances of the negotiating venue. (Remember the luxury game farms and the joint fishing trips of the Codesa protagonists. Then there were the well-dressed ANC big wigs in West Africa sporting English tweeds, briar pipes and a good British accent).
Chapter Two of Turner’s book – “The Delegation” – outlines how the very best intellectual minds and people of good appearance headed the communist teams at Korea. In pre-1994 SA, no rabble nor any toyi toyi-ing mobs were anywhere near the discussion venues. Chapter Three discusses the “Loaded Agenda” – “the Korean communists sought an agenda composed of conclusions favorable to their basic objectives, with some allowances for compromises if it suited them”, wrote Turner.
(It is rumoured that the Mozambican president Samora Machel told Nelson Mandela not to frighten SA’s whites because he would need them during the transition period so that the country wouldn’t disintegrate, as did Mozambique after independence. This practical approach to preserve the functional status quo during the early period after 1994 was sold as forgiveness and reconciliation on the ANC’s part, while in reality it was a calculated policy to preserve stability.)
Chapter Four – “Incidents” – refers to the communist policy of creating violent clashes and disturbances during the negotiation process in order to unnerve the other side who long for peace and want to hurry up the peace process to avoid further violence. (Nelson Mandela refused to renounce violence as a condition for his release. In fact after his release in 1990, violence increased exponentially until power was transferred in 1994.)
The Veto
The chapter on “The Veto” illustrates a Machiavellian method used to increase the chances of compromise from the other side. The stubborn recalcitrance of the North Korean side was designed to irritate the Americans into accepting some points in order to move ahead as they were tired of the delaying tactics.
Turner’s assessment of how the communists decide what is the truth and what is not is contained in the fascinating chapter “Truth and Consequence”. He says “the distortion of truth as practiced by the communists is a science”. (Remember Bishop Tutu’s assertion that there were “four kinds of truth” in his Truth and Reconciliation Commission summing up! Then we have the current “truth” about land theft, and a new “truth” about South Africa’s history, designed to engender a feeling of guilt among whites. This is entirely misplaced: without white settlement of Southern Africa, there would have been no present-day South Africa.
Whites found people who had no written language, who created no infrastructure and whose lives were beleaguered by battles with other tribes. They had no land titles and lived in primitive dwellings surrounded by sparse agriculture. Why the guilt among whites?)
Inches and Miles
The chapter most apt in relation to the TAU SA president’s speech is entitled “Inches and Miles”. Here Turner puts the case of “give an inch and they’ll take a mile“ so succinctly. He says:
“Communists regard any concession made by their opponents as a sign of weakness. Many Westerners entertain the notion that to accept some part of a communist negotiating proposal will encourage the communists to respond in kind.
“On the contrary such action is likely to induce an even more adamant attitude on their part. If Western negotiators agree to a communist proposal without insisting on an equal concession on another point, the communists conclude that their opponents are in a weak position and then they demand more.”
Thus the “fundamental techniques” to which Turner refers as part and parcel of communists’ negotiating processes are being used in South Africa 60 years after this Korean episode.
Anybody who cared to read a South African Communist Party directive on Reform and Revolution which was circulating in the mid-eighties would have seen that the doctrine was as sacred then as it was from the early days of communism. In para 13.2.3, it says “at the same time we must not mechanically dig in our heels against any future possibility to negotiate or compromise with other forces. We must remember that virtually all revolutionary struggles in the post-war period (Algeria, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique) reached their final climax at the negotiating table.”
The TAU SA president asks: Do we know what we are supporting? Where will it stop? My personal opinion is that it is irresponsible to support any policy unless you know where it will end and what will be the final goals. He asks the ANC government: what is your end goal and when will you stop?
Herein lies the rub. Give and give and more will be asked of you until there is nothing more to give. Feed the crocodile and it will turn around and devour you. The ANC government cannot be allowed to usurp the commercial farming sector. It is to no one’s advantage. Indeed, it is a catastrophe waiting in the wings.
Human Settlements Minister Lindiwe Sisulu wants to end to free government housing.
“Somebody has to have the courage to say this is not what we intended,” she said. Free housing was not in the Freedom Charter, which talked of there being houses, or in the constitution, which set out the right of access to adequate shelter.
Currently there are many reports of beneficiaries of free government housing selling their homes, often for next to nothing and without the right paper work.
In her budget speech this week Sisulu said it was do-able to provide 1.5 million housing opportunities over the next five years.
This included about one million brick-and-mortar free government houses, with 50 mega-projects of at least 10 000 units to get under way within 100 days.
The remainder would be made up of site and service spots, where people could build their own homes, affordable rental accommodation and the financing in the gap housing market for those earning too much to qualify for free homes and too little for commercial mortgages.
Land is at the heart of state housing provision in integrated human settlements. Sisulu is determined suitable land will be identified and acquired: “We might think of expropriating for this purpose.”
But as the Lwandle evictions in a freezing mid-winter cold spell showed, the DA-controlled Cape Town council and provincial administration, the government-owned SA National Roads Agency and the national transport and human settlements departments will be subject to a ministerial inquiry.
Sisulu is adamant the lessons from this eviction will be applied countrywide and, if necessary, the Prevention of Illegal Eviction Act will be amended to ensure every party is aware and sticks to its obligations.
ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has accused Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF of using Julius Malema’s party to destabilise the ANC in Limpopo.
Mantashe also accused Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) of distorting the Freedom Charter.
He was addressing political journalists and their editors during an ANC monthly political briefing in Joburg on Monday.
Mantashe said the EFF’s call for grabbing land without compensation and the nationalisation of mines had been influenced by Zanu-PF.
He said the EFF had adopted Zanu-PF’s policy despite the fact that Robert Mugabe’s party had destroyed the Zimbabwean economy.
“The EFF has the influence of Zanu-PF. There have been active engagements between its leaders and with Zanu-PF. Zanu-PF is using them to destabilise the ANC in Limpopo.
“Zanu-PF destroyed the economy of their country. In 1980, the value of the Zim dollar was R1.50 and today it has no value. It is a massive destruction of the economy. I do not want South Africa’s economy to collapse,” Mantashe said.
He also lambasted Malema for allegedly distorting the ANC policy on land, saying the Freedom Charter never advocated nationalisation of mines and land grabs without compensation.
“The Freedom Charter never wanted to take land by force. The charter states that the land is owned by all those who work it. We never propagated the nationalisation of mines. It is not what the Freedom Charter is saying,” Mantashe said.
He said the ANC would not encourage a Zimbabwean-style land grab but would rather allocate farming land to people who had a passion for farming.
“We are not going to give people farms who will in future just use these farms as places for weekend braais. We are going to give land to peasants who are going to use the farms to succeed,” he said.
Mantashe said his party was looking forward to the establishment of its proposed task team to be set up by President Jacob Zuma. One of its priorities would be to stabilise the mining industry. – The Star
Yesterday NUMSA, the National Mineworkers Union of South Africa, issued a document replete with Marxist references to the class struggle, calling for the nationalisation of mines in South Africa. It based its policy position on two fundamental ANC documents: the Freedom Charter and the Morogoro Conference of 1969 when the ANC was still firmly tied to the old Soviet Union.
Here follows the whole statement by NUMSA:
White domination persists in South Africa – Irvin Jim
Irvin Jim
08 February 2012
NUMSA GS says without nationalisation black people doomed to remain at bottom of society
Press Statement on the Nationalisation Report of the ANC
“In our country – more than in any other part of the oppressed world – it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of the wealth of the land to the people as a whole. It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy. To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root of racial supremacy and does not represent even the shadow of liberation.” (Morogoro Conference of the ANC, meeting at Morogoro, Tanzania, 25 April – 1 May 1969)
The National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA) is extremely disturbed and dismayed by the statements made by two ANC Ministers in the Mining Indaba during the course of this week, in Cape Town.
Numsa as part of a Cosatu delegation in the ANC Economic Transformation Committee (ETC) did have the opportunity to see the Nationalisation Report last week but we were not given copies as the Report was embargoed.
We were advised that the Report would be tabled in the ANC NEC and the NEC was to define the process on how the Report was to be circulated in the branches of the ANC and to components of the Alliance for debate in preparing for the coming ANC National Policy Conference.
WE find it very disturbing that the Report has been unofficially released to the media before the structures of the ANC and its Alliance could see it.
We further find it quite unfortunate that two ANC ministers have found it fit to use the Report in support of their private views against nationalisation of mines and other strategic economic sectors. As we show below, the ANC NGC in 2010 was unanimous in support of the nationalisation of mines and other strategic economic assets in the country.
Numsa takes the view that both Minister Susan Shabangu and Trevor Manuel have acted completely without any ANC mandate in deciding to speak for the ANC government and for the ANC and the Alliance that there will be no nationalization of mines and key strategic sectors in the economy. Their unilateral pronouncement goes completely against the ANC’s position which says – it is the ANC who leads government and not government leading the ANC. Numsa therefore reject with contempt their cheap manipulation of our democratic processes in the movement.
We have also noted that in the recent past right-wing global rating agencies have been doing the same in threatening our movement should nationalisation take place. These seek to make sure that there is no fundamental change in the vested Apartheid white monopoly economic interests, thus guaranteeing that black people in general and Africans in particular remain at the bottom of South Africa’s economy and society and detained forever in poverty, unemployment and inequality.
Below we restate in our view, the current and historic position of the ANC and its Alliance on this extremely important matter of nationalisation of mines and strategic economic assets of the country.
A. Nationalisation and ANC Policy
1. The basic revolutionary socio-economic programme of the ANC is the Freedom. The core tenet of the Freedom Charter states that:
“The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people; The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the Banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole; All other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well-being of the people; All people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions.”
In this regard we fail to understand the constant refrain that nationalisation is the ANC policy because in our understanding the representatives of our people who gathered in Kliptown in 1955 adopted this policy position of the ANC.
2. The restoration of the wealth of the country to the people is, has been, and will always be, at the heart of the struggle to liberate all South Africans, today and tomorrow.
3. The transferring to the ownership of the people as a whole of the mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry is the basic foundation and only basis upon which lasting peace and a common nationhood can be created in South Africa.
4. To reinforce these fundamentals of the liberation struggle, the ANC at its Morogoro Conference further stated that:
“In our country – more than in any other part of the oppressed world – it is inconceivable for liberation to have meaning without a return of the wealth of the land to the people as a whole. It is therefore a fundamental feature of our strategy that victory must embrace more than formal political democracy. To allow the existing economic forces to retain their interests intact is to feed the root of racial supremacy and does not represent even the shadow of liberation.”
5. The roots of South African racial supremacy would be well nourished if the existing economic forces were to be allowed to retain their interests intact. This is a very self-evident truth. In South Africa, real poverty is black and African, and wealth is white and European.
6. In the 2010 ANC National General Council – the policy forum of the ANC – the Economic Transformation Commission reported thus:
“There was greater consensus in the commission on the nationalisation of mines and other strategic sectors of the economy. The NGC therefore mandated the NEC to ensure further work be done, including research, study tours and discussions, and to report to the Policy Conference for decision at National Conference in 2012.”
7. We have quoted the documents above to show the centrality, the revolutionary significance, of the unchanging core demand of the liberation struggle in South Africa – to return the basic wealth of the country to the people as a whole.
8. All ANC Policy and other documents have always faithfully reiterated this demand. The demand to return the wealth of the country to the people as a whole, including by transferring this wealth into the hands of the people (nationalisation) is a central and defining feature of the ANC. To deviate from this is un-ANC.
B. Revisionism, distortion and vulgarisation of the main strategic objective of the struggle for liberation in South Africa
1. The restoration of the basic wealth of the country to the people was, and still is, the essence, the reason, the strategic objective, of the struggle for liberation in South Africa. Only this could end racial supremacy and Colonialism of a Special Type (CST). Only this could guarantee peace, equality and restore the dignity of all the people of South Africa.
2. It is now clear that long before the 1994 democratic breakthrough, elements of English, Afrikaner and African elites had begun to work very hard to dilute the essence of the struggle for liberation in South Africa, by peddling a version of freedom and democracy that would allow the essential existing economic forces to retain their interests intact.Thus the new South Africa after 1994 was handed down a constitution offering democratic freedoms but in essence made private property sacred in a country in which the majority had no property – to be more precise, the country’s constitution fails to address the land stolen from our people through the 1913 Land Act!
3. Since 1994, we have seen a progressive watering down, weakening and erosion of the essential and basic revolutionary demand of the liberation struggle – the returning of the wealth of the land into the hands of the people as a whole.
4. A very dangerous revisionist tendency is one that simply re-interprets the demand in narrow legalistic and technical terms, and thus attempts to convince us that some of the reforms (charters, taxation, and BBBEE) the ANC government has put in place since 1994 amount to “transferring the wealth of the land into the hands of the people”.
5. A further equally dangerous tendency is simply to vulgarise and distort the core revolutionary demand of the liberation struggle – the demand to transfer all the major wealth of the country into the hands of the people, thus restoring the country to all its people – by simply reducing it to the question of the nationalisation of mines, and even this is further mired in financial and technical obstacles!
6. The core revolutionary demand of the freedom struggle in South Africa is very clear: The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people!It is all the “national wealth” and not just the mines, which must be restored to the people. All other industries must be subordinated to the imperative to develop the people and provide for them. This distortion seeks to diminish and conceal the other wealth which must equally be restored and transferred to the people as a whole.
7. Implicit in the demand is not just the revolutionary need to uproot racial supremacy and restore the dignity of all our people, but also a very strong anti-imperialist demand.
8. A most vulgar postulation is one that simply says after 1994, we are all free to share in the country’s wealth, and it is now each person for themselves and all the government has to do is make the country business friendly. Thus all over the country we find business and enterprise promotion NGOs and sometimes these are assisted by monopoly industries.
C. The persistence of white monopoly capitalism in South Africa, post 1994
1. Anyone with the barest minimum of knowledge about the state of the South African economy and society, 17 years after “democracy” will not fail to notice the persistence of white domination of the economy and society, notwithstanding the small sprinkling of black and African capitalists.
2. The South African economy continues to be dominated by the Minerals/Energy/Finance Complex which is largely white owned. The white population continue to in fact grow their domination of social and cultural life of the country.
3. Poverty and unemployment are largely black, and African, with African females and youths faring the worst.
4. South Africa has become the most unequal place on Earth today. At the bottom, of course are black and African people, and at the top, are white people. The facts to illustrate this are there for all to see.
5. Black and African people are condemned to inferior public sector education and health facilities, while the white population enjoys first world schools, hospitals and shopping malls. Of course the trick today is that there is no Group Areas Act and you are simply told to get on with it as an individual and make your money and you will join the white population!
6. As a result of the lamentable failure to radically restore the basic wealth of the country to the people as a whole, 11 percent of the South African School system accounts for more than 70 percent of Matric passes.
7. An average white male in South African earns anything above R19 000, 00 per month while a black male earns just about R2 400, 00!
8. Ultimately of course, the life expectance of a white person in South Africa today stands at about 70 years, while that of a black person is at 48 years – some 22 years less!
D. The struggle continues, and it is a class struggle!
1. At Numsa we are not surprised that the 2010 ANC NGC Resolutions which clearly indicated that there was consensus on nationalisation are being manipulated and shoved into the dustbin.
2. At Numsa we are not surprised that rather than investigate what the most appropriate forms of nationalisation of mines and other strategic sectors of the economic would be, the ANC Report has done everything to confirm that nationalisation of the mines would be a “disaster” for South Africa. Knowing the dominance of white monopoly capital in general and white mining and financial capital in particular, our political and social life post 1994 we did not expect anything less than this distortion of the ANC NGC Resolutions.
3. Further, we at Numsa do not think that the struggle to restore the wealth of the country to the people as a whole will ever be won via research teams and Conference Resolutions. As a working class, and industrial working class formation our experience teaches us that capital concedes nothing without a fight!
4. Thus we are not surprised that elements deployed by the ANC in government to implement ANC policies have been very busy trying to assure capitalists that government in South Africa does not belong to the ANC and that it is not government policy to nationalise! Those ANC deployees who advocated the neo liberal macro economic framework in 1996 continues to champion a failed and discredited neo liberal policy framework which stands in direct opposition to the ANC’s progressive and revolutionary agenda as contained in the Freedom Charter.
5. The people who voted this government into office suddenly do not exist. This is as it should be, as the dominant class in this country is that of white monopoly capitalists!
6. At Numsa we must serve notice to the people of this country: the black and African working class are fast losing patience at the pace at which their conditions of extreme poverty are being dealt with.
7. The success and sustainability of the 1994 democratic breakthrough in this country rests on the extent and speed of restoration of the wealth of the country to the people as a whole, including transferring the national wealth to the people. Anything less than this is a recipe for disaster.
8. At Numsa we will continue to mobilise the working class and to demand in the revolutionary alliance for the speedy implementation of the entirety of the Freedom Charter.
9. In the ANC Policy Conference Numsa will demand for the restoration of the basic wealth of the country to all the people as a whole.
10. In the National Conference of the ANC this year Numsa will demand the transferring – nationalisation – of the mines and other strategic economic sectors into the hands of the people as a whole. This is what we understand the struggle for liberation, democracy and equality in South Africa to be all about. Anything short of this is a betrayal of all our 100 years of struggle and sacrifice against racist white monopoly capitalism.
Statement issued by Irvin Jim, NUMSA general secretary, February 8 2012
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
