tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/south-african-communist-party-23363/articles
South African Communist Party – The Conversation
2023-07-26T14:31:46Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210413
2023-07-26T14:31:46Z
2023-07-26T14:31:46Z
Essop Pahad: a diligent communist driven by an optimistic vision of a non-racial South Africa
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539332/original/file-20230725-17-w2ef8i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Essop Pahad was a confidant of former president Thabo Mbeki.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bongani Mnguni/Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The death of South African freedom struggle stalwart <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/essop-goolam-pahad-mr">Essop Pahad</a> (84) <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2023-07-06-essop-pahad-close-confidant-of-thabo-mbeki-dies-aged-84/">on 6 July 2023</a> prompted <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/opinions/analysis/tribute-chirpy-and-thoughtful-essop-pahads-legacy-will-forever-be-remembered-in-sas-history-20230706">tributes</a> from his former comrades. There were also less respectful obituaries referring to him as Thabo Mbeki’s “<a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/obituaries/obituary-essop-pahad-mbekis-consigliere-would-fight-you-intellectually-too-20230707">consiglieri</a>”, because of his role as the former president’s “right-hand man”.</p>
<p>Any examination of Pahad’s full political record will take you back to the heroic phases of South Africa’s liberation history, when prospects for a democratic South African government seemed very remote. As a teenager in the 1950s he was busy in the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress. This was the equivalent of the youth league of the liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC), for Indian South Africans. In those days, reflecting apartheid’s distinctions, even radical resistance to it was racially differentiated.</p>
<p>He was one of a small group of activists who, in the 1950s and early 1960s, made a decisive contribution in pulling the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03465.htm">Congress Alliance</a> – a front of organisations allied to the ANC – leftwards, and encouraging an optimistic vision of a future non-racial South Africa.</p>
<p>In my own <a href="https://jacana.co.za/product/red-road-to-freedom/">research</a> on the South African Communist Party’s history, groups like the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress were game-changers. They were influential despite their small organised followings. Understanding Pahad’s political ascent helps to illuminate the history of the South African left and the wider liberation movement in which it immersed itself. He belonged to a political network constituted as much by friendships as shared ideas.</p>
<p>At the congress’s annual general meeting in 1958 he proposed a resolution on sport. Sadly, that is all the meeting’s agenda tells us. I’d like to think it was about cricket and its segregation, a key preoccupation for young Indian activists at that time, for Pahad was a lifelong cricket fan.</p>
<p>In old age he was a regular visitor to the Long Room at the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/wanderers-cricket-stadium-johannesburg">Wanderers Cricket Stadium</a> in Johannesburg, one reward for becoming a notable that he would enjoy. As a student at Sussex University between 1965 and 1970, he once organised a party for the visiting West Indian test side. Inheriting a family ethic of generous hospitality, he provided such a warm reception for the visitors that the following day they were <a href="http://cricmash.com/society-and-politics/mbeki-pahad-and-the-1966-west-indians">so badly hungover they lost their match</a>.</p>
<h2>The early years</h2>
<p>Pahad’s childhood was politically configured. His parents Goolam and Amina Pahad belonged to the group that directed the Indian congresses in the mid-1940s into confrontation with a government seeking to dispossess Indian landowners. Goolam was a successful businessman and he owned property in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/destruction-sophiatown">Sophiatown</a>. Pahad employed ANC leader <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/sisulu-walter-1912-2003/">Walter Sisulu</a>, supporting his efforts to become an estate agent.</p>
<p>Through Sisulu, the Pahads became friendly with the angry young men who would become ANC leaders in 1949, often providing them with food and a place to sleep so they could avoid late <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">night pass law</a> arrests for being in town after the curfew.</p>
<p>Even without guests, the Pahads’ apartment would have been crowded. Goolam and Amina Pahad had moved to the inner city of Johannesburg shortly after Essop’s birth in 1939 in <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/essop-goolam-pahad">Schweitzer-Reneke</a>, in today’s North West province. They wanted good schooling for their five sons.</p>
<p>Both Essop and his younger brother <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/aziz-goolam-hoosein-pahad-mr-0">Aziz</a> did well enough to obtain entry to the University of the Witwatersrand. This was despite or perhaps because of their participation in one of the Congress Alliance-sponsored “Cultural Clubs” that were set to protest the introduction of the inferior <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/anc-protest-bantu-education-act/">Bantu Education</a> for the black majority.</p>
<p>The clandestine Communist Party’s key theoretician <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/michael-alan-harmel-posthumous">Michael Harmel</a> led the club that they joined. Perhaps through his agency, Pahad joined the party. The Transvaal Indian Youth Congress was led by party members and its political affiliations were very evident in its journal, New Youth. Pahad remained politically animated as a university student, joining the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress’ executive.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-communists-have-shaped-south-africas-history-over-100-years-165556">How communists have shaped South Africa's history over 100 years</a>
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<p>In mid-1962 <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/safricas-once-exiled-anti-apartheid-veteran-essop-pahad-dies-84-2023-07-06/">he was arrested</a> for trying to organise a strike, a contribution to the ANC’s continuing effort to secure a national constitutional convention. By this time he had formed a friendship with <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki-mr-0">Thabo Mbeki</a>, whom he got to know after they met at the Rand Youth Club, a key assembly point for activists, sponsored by Sisulu. Mbeki was then staying in Johannesburg, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/thabo-mbeki-1942-timeline">completing his A-levels through correspondence</a> after expulsion from Lovedale College for leading a class boycott.</p>
<h2>Exile years</h2>
<p>Pahad’s friendship with Mbeki deepened when he joined him in Britain after his departure from South Africa in 1964, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/safricas-once-exiled-anti-apartheid-veteran-essop-pahad-dies-84-2023-07-06/">prompted by a banning order</a>. Mbeki was enrolled at Sussex University and he persuaded Pahad to register. Pahad would complete <a href="https://www.sussex.ac.uk/broadcast/read/61351">an MA and a doctorate at Sussex </a> between 1965 and 1971, producing a workmanlike dissertation about the South African Indian Congresses.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539515/original/file-20230726-27-pmd1te.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Essop Pahad addresses a protest meeting in Amsterdam in 1985.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sepia Times/Universal Images Group/Getty Images</span></span>
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<p>Mbeki also <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/opinions/columnists/guestcolumn/excerpt-while-thabo-mbeki-moved-quietly-essop-pahad-would-stand-up-and-shout-20230707">introduced him to Meg Shorrock</a>, whom he married in 1966. That year with Mbeki he helped establish a non-racial ANC Youth and Student Section. He was immersed in campus student politics as well as organising Vietnam solidarity events. He spent a year in 1973 at the <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02426/05lv02626.htm">Institute of Social Sciences</a> in Moscow.</p>
<p>Pahad’s most conspicuous activity during his exile was his deployment in Prague at the <a href="https://www.servantleader.co.za/essop">World Marxist Review</a>; acknowledgement by the Communist Party of his status as a reliable theoretician. He and Meg lived in Prague between 1975 and 1985, and their two daughters were born there, attending Czech schools. I interviewed them in 2018 because I was exploring the South African Communist Party’s Czech connections.</p>
<p>The Pahads remembered a happy period of their life. They found plenty to admire in post-Prague Spring Czechoslovakia, though they both perceived that the Czech party had lost public support. Back in London, Pahad would work closely with Mbeki, acting as an intermediary in the discreet diplomacy that Mbeki was conducting with South African officials and businessmen.</p>
<h2>Right-hand man</h2>
<p>Pahad would return to South Africa in 1990 following the unbanning of the liberation movements, making a new home for his family in Johannesburg. Unlike Mbeki, Pahad remained a communist. One view of his continuing affiliation is that he remained in the party at Mbeki’s behest to watch over its internal affairs, but there is no reason to doubt his continuing commitment to communism. At that time Mbeki’s future succession to the presidency was uncertain and the party was one key constituency. But it is true that Pahad’s subsequent political career would be defined by his status as Mbeki’s trusted friend, his best man as it were, a function he actually performed at Mbeki’s wedding <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/pahad-gives-his-perspective-418057">in 1974</a>.</p>
<p>So, during the <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/nelson-rolihlahla-mandela">presidency of Nelson Mandela</a> (10 May 1994-16 June 1999) he served as Mbeki’s “parliamentary counsellor”. He was essentially responsible for keeping the ANC House of Assembly caucus in order, and after Mbeki’s accession to the presidency, Pahad became a <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/essop-goolam-pahad-mr">minister in the president’s office</a>. </p>
<p>These were not posts that would define him as a policymaker. Rather his reputation as a member of government was as an “enforcer” quelling rebellion. “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/sep/23/mbeki.southafrica">Who the fuck do you think you are, questioning the integrity of the government, the ministers and the president?</a>”,
he admonished the ANC members of the Select Committee on Public Accounts who wanted a full inquiry into the corrupt 1999 <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4006895">multi-billion-rand arms contract</a>.</p>
<p>Subsequently he was a vigorous defender of Mbeki’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-mbekis-character-and-his-aids-denialism-are-intimately-linked-54766">positions on HIV and Aids</a>. Pahad himself believed that Mbeki was unfairly characterised as an Aids “denialist”.</p>
<h2>Diligent</h2>
<p>When Pahad was given a job, he did it efficiently. He surprised even his critics with the diligence with which he supported the offices placed under his authority as minister, for example urging municipalities to “mainstream” disability rights. </p>
<p>Characteristically loyal, he resigned when Mbeki was displaced <a href="https://www.gcis.gov.za/content/newsroom/events/pahad-briefs-media-cabinet-resignations-24-sep-08">in 2008</a>.</p>
<p>In retirement he presided over the <a href="http://www.sadet.co.za/">South African Democratic Education Trust</a>, the incubator of a remarkably non-partisan multi-volume history of the liberation struggle, founded his own journal, <a href="https://journals.uj.ac.za/index.php/The_Thinker/about/editorialTeam">The Thinker</a>, and remained actively engaged on the editorial board of <a href="https://print.media.co.za/new-age/">New Age</a>, the newspaper funded by the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-22513410">Gupta family</a>, which stands accused of <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-itll-take-for-the-guptas-to-face-corruption-charges-in-south-africa-184952">orchestrating industrial scale corruption</a> under former president Jacob Zuma.</p>
<p>He had <a href="https://amabhungane.org/stories/guptaleaks-how-ajay-gupta-was-trusted-with-crafting-sas-global-image/">invited Ajay Gupta</a> to join the International Marketing Council in 2000, an appointment that he subsequently regretted. He may have had other personal regrets but unlike many of his comrades, he rarely spoke about his own political journey. </p>
<p>His life had its own integrity, defined by fixed loyalties and enduring friendships; not such a bad epitaph.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210413/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tom Lodge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
When Essop Pahad was given a job, he did it efficiently. He surprised even his critics with his diligence.
Tom Lodge, Emeritus Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Limerick
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/174471
2022-01-10T15:48:43Z
2022-01-10T15:48:43Z
Historian offers comprehensive and up-to-date take on South Africa’s Communist Party
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439822/original/file-20220107-33062-bo50di.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African President Cyril Ramaphosa addresses a meeting of the SACP in 2015. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GCIS: Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Communist Party of South Africa was formed in July 1921. To mark its centenary last year, renowned South African historian Tom Lodge <a href="https://www.loot.co.za/product/tom-lodge-red-road-to-freedom/jssb-7247-ga90?referrer=googlemerchant&gclid=CjwKCAiA5t-OBhByEiwAhR-hm6OaW-KlOjRMByLvjvPZIQ1L1hYLP6oNj2xHlUqMgskisxFlC9cR5RoCBkUQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds">published</a> Red Road to Freedom: A history of the South African Communist Party, 1921-2021.</p>
<p>It’s a welcome addition to the literature on the oldest communist party in Africa.</p>
<p>Most of the existing literature on the Party is about its early history until 1950. Some of the books were written by party members such as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/eddie-roux-time-longer-rope-review">Eddie Roux</a>, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/class-and-colour-south-africa-1850-1950-h-j-and-r-e-simons">Jack and Ray Simons</a>, and <a href="https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/bunting-brian/kotane/index.htm">Brian Bunting</a>. </p>
<p>In the last two decades, a number of publications on the Party or leading members appeared. <a href="https://jacana.co.za/author-2/eddy-maloka/">Eddy Maloka</a> wrote two publications, <a href="https://monthlyreview.org/press/alan-wieder-morning-talk/">Alan Wieder</a> concentrated on Joe Slovo and Ruth First, while <a href="http://ukznpress.bookslive.co.za/blog/2015/02/16/steven-friedman-explains-why-the-contribution-of-harold-wolpe-is-still-relevant-today-video/">Steven Friedman</a> concentrated on Harold Wolpe. Some (auto)biographical publications or memoirs also appeared in this period on <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1200391.Slovo">Joe Slovo</a>, Govan Mbeki, Chris Hani, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347815776_The_Fabric_of_Dissent_Public_Intellectuals_in_South_Africa">Mzala</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/anc-spy-bible-a-real-life-south-african-thriller-but-too-much-left-unsaid-134803">Moe Shaik</a> and <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Bram_Fischer.html?id=V4oFAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y">Bram Fisher</a>.</p>
<p>Most of the publications are chronologically organised and few take a thematic approach. Policy analysis and exegesis are in most instances largely absent. A good example is what the party meant by its notion of <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/colonialism-of-a-special-type-lives-on">“colonialism of a special type”</a>. First formulated in 1950 and included in the party’s 1962 party programme, it remains a major ideological pillar of the party. </p>
<p>But its ideological and strategic implications aren’t explored. This includes explaining how the approach enabled a merger between socialism and liberatory nationalism, how it underscored the two-stage revolutionary strategy of a national democratic revolution followed by a socialist revolution, and for justifying the Tripartite Alliance between the party, the African National Congress and the trade union federation (first Sactu and later Cosatu).</p>
<p>Also largely absent is a history of the more recent developments, as well as a political analysis of the party’s role between 1960-1990 and as part of government since 1994. </p>
<p>Lodge’s book fills some of these gaps. It is therefore academically and historically very important. Eddy Maloka, also an author on the party’s history, assessed its value as follows (on the book cover):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tom Lodge takes us on a century-long tour of the history of the South African Communist Party, through the fractal coastline of this party’s ideological evolution, to the hinterland of its organisational dynamics and relations with other actors. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The Cold War</h2>
<p>The Communist Party of South Africa was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/suppression-communism-act-no-44-1950-approved-parliament">banned in 1950</a> by the new National Party (NP) government, which believed that the Soviet Union’s support for it would exploit South Africa’s domestic politics for its own purposes. After the party reestablished itself underground as the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 1953, and after its ally, the African National Congress (ANC) was also banned by the apartheid regime in 1960, a close alliance between them developed. </p>
<p>After the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville massacre</a> in 1960, followed by the banning of the ANC and other liberation organisations, and when the NP government refused to convene a national convention in 1961, leaders in the party and a number of prominent ANC leaders (but not the ANC’s President Albert Luthuli) decided to establish an armed wing, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">Umkhonto we Sizwe</a>. Its first sabotage acts were launched on 16 December 1961. </p>
<p>The resort to armed struggle and the party’s involvement in the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, brought the two movements much closer together during their time in exile.</p>
<p>The members of Umkhonto we Sizwe’s High Command were arrested in 1962 in Rivonia, a Johannesburg suburb. They were busy with Operation Mayibuye as a blueprint to stage a revolutionary insurrection in South Africa. They included Party members such as Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Ahmed Kathrada and ANC leaders like Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. They were charged with sabotage (and not treason) and therefore did not receive the death penalty but very long prison sentences.</p>
<p>If one looks at the Umkhonto we Sizwe accused in the Rivonia trial in 1963, most of them were also members of the Party.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two men field questions at a press conference while seated with their backs to Communist Party posters" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440001/original/file-20220110-25-1lfyd7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/440001/original/file-20220110-25-1lfyd7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440001/original/file-20220110-25-1lfyd7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440001/original/file-20220110-25-1lfyd7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440001/original/file-20220110-25-1lfyd7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440001/original/file-20220110-25-1lfyd7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/440001/original/file-20220110-25-1lfyd7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former South African Communist Party leaders Joe Slovo, left, and Chris Hani in Soweto in 1991.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Walter Dhladhla /AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During most of the Cold War, the South African Communist Party’s close alignment to the Soviet Union and to the ANC, pulled the liberation struggle in South Africa into the global ideological camps of the Cold War, in the same way as the movements in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and other liberation wars. In this respect, the South African Communist Party was often regarded as the power behind the ANC’s throne.</p>
<p>The 30 years in exile were divided between establishing bases in African countries, training Umkhonto we Sizwe mainly in Angola and establishing international relations with many continents. The Party’s main base was in London but with close relations especially in the Eastern bloc. Peace processes in Southwestern Africa and the demise of the Soviet Union as its main sponsor, created new opportunities for dialogue and radical political changes.</p>
<p>After its unbanning in 1990 together with the ANC, the relationship continued but its nature changed dramatically. The liberatory strategy changed from targeting the National Party government, to being the government itself. Party leaders became members of that government.</p>
<h2>What’s covered, and what’s not</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/tom-lodge-1256885">Tom Lodge</a> is a trained historian. Most of his early publications were good historiographies. He joined the University of the Witwatersrand’s Department of Political Studies and in the 1980s, and testified for the defence in several ANC trials. He published extensively on the ANC’s politics, and later also on elections.</p>
<p>This book is a return to his earlier works. In the more than 500 pages (excluding the end notes, index and bibliography) and in nine chapters, he presents the most extensive history of the South African Communist Party.</p>
<p>The first six chapters are focused on the period until 1950, and the last three chapters cover the last 70 years.</p>
<p>There are some areas and issues that could have done with more attention. For example, deeper political analysis of the latest 30 years after the Party was unbanned and decided to become a “mass party” as opposed to membership on invitation, as well as its role in the ANC governments. This would provide more insight into the party’s political approach.</p>
<p>In addition, the Party’s ideological evolution deserves special attention. For example, its 1962 party programme, “The Road to South African Freedom”, can be linked to the ANC’s Morogoro programme (1969), “The Strategy and Tactics of the South African Revolution”. The two documents created a common approach to their revolutionary strategy, which is very important for understanding their longstanding alliance. But Lodge only briefly discusses this on pages 354-355. </p>
<p>Another omission in my view, concerns Joe Slovo’s paper “Has Socialism Failed?” (1990). It is mentioned on page 457 but its implications for the party’s reassessment of its ideological position after the fall of the Berlin Wall were not considered. More recently, the Party has revised “The South African Road to Socialism” (2007, 2012) as its programme. It receives more attention than the other programmes on page 479 but it does not explain how a communist party in a multiparty democratic dispensation sets out a vision for itself.</p>
<p>Chapter 9 distinguishes itself from the others and presents a political analysis of the party dynamics, such as its choice to participate independently in elections. It includes brief references to the party’s milestones but a more in-depth discussion could have addressed the shortcomings of the older publications.</p>
<p>For readers who want a comprehensive, up-to-date and accessible publication on the South African Communist Party, this is without any doubt the best one. As a Wits academic, Lodge, who now is associated with Limerick University in Ireland, had many personal experiences with people and events discussed in this book. It was therefore not merely a research or academic exercise for him.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174471/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dirk Kotze does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The resort to armed struggle brought the Communist Party and the African National Congress much closer together during their time in exile.
Dirk Kotze, Professor in Political Science, University of South Africa
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/137670
2020-04-30T16:13:06Z
2020-04-30T16:13:06Z
Denis Goldberg: Rivonia triallist, liberation struggle stalwart, outspoken critic
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/331825/original/file-20200430-42962-tluz74.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rivonia trialist Denis Goldberg speaking at a gala event in 2011 to honour the surviving members of the Rivonia Trial.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/denis-theodore-goldberg-1933-2020">Denis Theodore Goldberg</a>, one of the stalwarts in the fight against apartheid in South Africa, has passed on at the age of 87. He was one of the two last remaining activists who were tried for sabotage in 1963-1964 along with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Ahmed Kathrada. </p>
<p>Goldberg was born into a family of communists in Woodstock, Cape Town, in 1933. His London-born parents were descended from Lithuanian Jews. His childhood home was one where people of all colours were welcome and were among his friends, very unusual in white South African homes of that generation.</p>
<p>He spent more than two decades of his life behind bars at Pretoria Central Prison at the end of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia trial</a>. Because of apartheid laws he, as a white person, could not be sent to Robben Island, where all black political prisoners and his fellow triallists were sent. </p>
<h2>The revolutionary road</h2>
<p>Goldberg enrolled for a civil engineering degree at the University of Cape Town in 1950, the year the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/suppression-communism-act-no-44-1950-approved-parliament">Communist Party of South Africa</a> was banned. He participated in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/chapter-2-denis-goldberg-and-modern-youth-society-z-pallo-jordan">Modern Youth Society</a> along with other leftists, and joined the underground <a href="https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv03445/04lv03446/05lv03462.htm">South African Communist Party</a> in 1957 when it re-formed.</p>
<p>In 1953 Goldberg was organising meetings at Loyolo settlement in Simonstown, to encourage support for the planned Congress of the People in 1955. The meeting brought together the Congress Alliance, comprising the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People’s Congress, the South African Congress of Trade Unions, and the Congress of Democrats, on 25-26 June 1955. </p>
<p>The Special Branch, the political wing of the apartheid police, reported this, and the state-owned railways fired Goldberg from his job.</p>
<p>The meeting culminated in the adoption of the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter</a>, which became the congress movement’s blueprint for a free, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-legacy-of-south-africas-freedom-charter-60-years-later-43647">non-racial South Africa</a>.</p>
<p>Goldberg was also active in this decade in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-african-congress-democrats-cod">Congress of Democrats</a>, a leftist organisation affiliated with the ANC, whose membership was in those years restricted to Africans.</p>
<p>In 1960 he participated in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/anti-pass-campaigns-1960">anti-pass protests</a>. Then, all black people were required to carry identity documents that controlled their movements. The document was derisively known as the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994"><em>dompas</em></a> (dumb pass). </p>
<p>He was detained without trial for four months under the state of emergency, as was his mother. This resulted in his being fired from his job working on constructing the Athlone power station.</p>
<p>When the apartheid regime banned the ANC and the rival Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1960, Goldberg was one of the founders of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC, planning an armed rebellion. Goldberg helped organise the first MK training camp inside South Africa, and was MK’s technical officer.</p>
<p>On 11 July 1963 the Special Branch raided Liliesleaf farm outside Johannesburg and detained him, along with Walter Sisulu and other top ANC leaders. After months of detention, the state charged him and others with sabotage. Mandela, already serving a jail sentence for leaving the country without a passport, was added to the accused. This started the famous Rivonia trial.</p>
<p>It remains a matter of speculation why the accused were charged with sabotage and not high treason. The probable reason is that under the then new Sabotage Act, steered through parliament by Balthazar Johannes Vorster, minister of police, any accused were guilty until proven innocent. This made it easier for prosecutors to jail those who came before the courts.</p>
<p>Eight accused were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. At 31 years of age Goldberg was the youngest. Apartheid segregated prisoners. Goldberg was sent to jail in Pretoria, while his fellow accused were all flown to Cape Town for transport to Robben Island prison.</p>
<h2>Prison, and after</h2>
<p>Political prisoners were treated vindictively. Goldberg was denied any visitors for four years. He was allowed to send and receive only one letter, not exceeding 500 words, per six months. But many of the letters from his wife, Esme Bodenstein, were not handed to him. </p>
<p>It was only in 1980 that political prisoners were allowed to read newspapers.</p>
<p>In 1974 Goldberg took on the task of caring for Bram Fischer, the communist party leader and their former defence lawyer, when he was dying of cancer in the row of cells.</p>
<p>In 1985 Goldberg was released. He flew to visit his daughter in Israel; and then lived with his wife in London. After his wife passed away in 2000, he returned to South Africa in 2002 with his second wife, Edelgard. Ronnie Kasrils, then minister of water affairs and forestry, hired him as special advisor for two years.</p>
<p>Goldberg used his prestige to <a href="https://www.capetalk.co.za/articles/258300/we-made-a-mistake-anc-stalwart">speak out</a> against the corruption that peaked during Jacob Zuma’s decade as president. As one of the idealists who worked for the ANC before it came into office in 1994, corruption and state capture was repugnant to his generation.</p>
<p>In retirement, Goldberg launched fund-raising for the Denis Goldberg House of Hope in Hout Bay, a suburb of Cape Town. His House of Hope would offer opportunities in art and music to local disadvantaged children.</p>
<p>Retirement added to all the honours he received. In 2019 the ANC awarded him its highest decoration, the Isithwalandwe. He was awarded four honorary doctorates, from Medunsa (now Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University), Heriot-Watt University (Scotland), the University of Cape Town, and Cape Peninsula University of Technology.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/andrew-mokete-mlangeni">Andrew Mlangeni</a> is now the sole survivor of the Rivonia trial.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/137670/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is an ANC member, but writes this obituary in his professional capacity as a political scientist.</span></em></p>
Goldberg was the youngest Rivonia triallist. Segregated prisons meant he was sent to Pretoria, while his fellow accused were incarcerated on Robben Island.
Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western Cape
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/122652
2019-09-02T12:47:19Z
2019-09-02T12:47:19Z
Politician who turned down a bribe offers a recipe to end South Africa’s malaise
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290322/original/file-20190830-165977-1dizvg6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mcebisi Jonas appears at a commission probing grand corruption in South Africa.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alon Skuy © Sunday Times.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A book whose author has <a href="https://qz.com/africa/825869/state-capture-report-south-africas-deputy-finance-minister-mcebisi-jonas-turned-down-a-44-million-dollar-bribe-from-the-guptas/">refused a R600 000 000 bribe</a> is a <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2019/08/14/euphoria-around-ramaphosa-s-new-dawn-quickly-dying-says-mcebisi-jonas">book that comes highly recommended</a>. But be warned. The book, After Dawn: Hope after State Capture, is devoid of all autobiography, except one page mentioning Mcebisi Jonas’s feeling of loss when being offered that bribe.</p>
<p>The book contains no biographical details. They are, nevertheless, <a href="https://www.gibs.co.za/news-events/events/forums/Pages/deputy-finance-minister-mcebisi-jonas.aspx">fascinating</a>. For example, he became politically active at the age of 14, and went on to leave South Africa for military training in Angola and Uganda. On his return from exile, his task was to play a crucial role to set up the African National Congress (ANC) and Communist Party structures in the Eastern Cape province.</p>
<p>The book is written to be readable: each chapter starts with a half-page box summary of its main points. After Dawn repeatedly stresses:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>None of the ideas put forward in this book are new, in fact they echo our existing policy … what is required is to put these ideas into action (page 202)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“These ideas” turn out to be a passionate advocacy from cover to cover of the almost forgotten <a href="https://nationalplanningcommission.wordpress.com/the-national-development-plan/">National Development Plan</a>. This was a comprehensive policy document drawn up by a special ministerial body first constituted in 2009 by then-President Jacob Zuma. It was, however, <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-national-development-plan-can-be-resuscitated-heres-how-84707">never implemented in full</a>.</p>
<p>Jonas has two overarching themes. The first is one of structure. That South Africa’s state-owned enterprises, national, provincial, and municipal bureaucracies must be purged of kleptocrats and incompetents to become meritocratic. The <a href="http://www.psc.gov.za/">Public Service Commission</a> – which was designed to keep the public service honest – must regain its powers to hire and to fire. Political appointees must be confined to the ministries, not departments.</p>
<p>Jonas’s second theme is agency. The task of these meritocratic bureaucracies should be to enable entrepreneurship, and to become entrepreneurial themselves. State-owned enterprises must once again pay their own way, be partly or wholly sold off, or re-absorbed into the line functions of a department.</p>
<p>All this is no less fascinating in its implications for being familiar, well-trodden ground. John Kane-Berman, veteran policy fellow of the Institute of Race Relations, regularly churns out blogs warning all and sundry that the ANC and its communist National Democratic Revolution is steering South Africa directly to communism.</p>
<p>It is clear that Jonas – an ANC leader so senior as to have formerly been a deputy minister of finance – has a communist party history which has left him on economic policy as post-Marxian as the current Communist Parties of China and Vietnam. </p>
<h2>Morale booster</h2>
<p>This book is definitely a booster to morale. Jonas reminds South Africans that their country achieved 5.3% economic growth in 2005. And that he believes it can do it again. </p>
<p>Another point worth boasting about is that the annualised returns on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange are, over the long term, the highest in the world. (p.30) </p>
<p>Jonas argues that South Africa does not lack ideas. Where it falls short is implementation. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>….unlike Singapore, our focus in South Africa has too often been on the plan, rather than on what needs to be done and how to get it done. We stumble at the point of implementation. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jonas is clearly sympathetic to the concept of a German or Swedish style class compact to facilitate a return to economic growth. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290299/original/file-20190830-165981-15oyg2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290299/original/file-20190830-165981-15oyg2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290299/original/file-20190830-165981-15oyg2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290299/original/file-20190830-165981-15oyg2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290299/original/file-20190830-165981-15oyg2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290299/original/file-20190830-165981-15oyg2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290299/original/file-20190830-165981-15oyg2j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jonas holds up Singapore as a model for South Africa to strive to emulate. He concedes that every country has its own idiosyncrasies and that not everything that works in one will work in another. Nevertheless, he expounds the virtues of the island nation’s early obsession with making sure that the majority of the population felt a sense of belonging. And making Singapore relevant to the world. This required absolute clarity of vision about what the country stood for. </p>
<p>Jonas’s favourite economists are <a href="https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/ricardo-hausmann">Ricardo Haussman</a>, César Hidalgo, and Sebastián Bustos (p.155). He particularly admires the way the three academics have developed the concept of economic complexity. As Jonas explains, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>this is a measure of the knowledge in a society (as measured by the notion of ‘person bytes’) as expressed in the products it makes. This, in turn, is closely linked to a country’s level of development and is predictive of its future economic growth</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This, they argue, makes it possible to calculate the economic complexity of a country based on the diversity of exports, their ubiquity, or the number of countries able to produce them. He notes that South Africa has failed to undergo complexity-led transformation. In fact, its portfolio of exports has declined since 1994.</p>
<p>Many of Jonas’s recommendations are in the National Development Plan. One central theme is: remove constraints to competitiveness. </p>
<p>South Africa needs a comprehensive push to higher job productivity because it cannot compete against low-wage countries. It needs to incentivise innovation and double its spend on research and development. Human capacity needs to be expanded. And it shouldn’t hesitate to import skilled persons. </p>
<p>The country’s vision must be to accelerate economic inclusion. To this end it needs a corruption-free, high-performance state. This in turn requires the nature of politics to change, including reform of the ANC.</p>
<p>This is a recurring theme for Jonas. He repeatedly emphasises the need for the ANC to reform itself. He believes strongly that this is vital if South Africa is to move onto a faster growth path.</p>
<h2>Quibbles</h2>
<p>I have some minor quibbles. The parsimonious publisher has not used colour, meaning that all the tables have lines in confusing shades of blurred greys. </p>
<p>As far as the substance is concerned, I disagree with Jonas that digital voting systems can prevent ballot fraud (p.215). A desktop search turns up numerous examples of error or fraud that have occurred in the US and other digital voting countries. </p>
<p>After Dawn deserves the media exposure it is getting. Popularising the ideas and arguments in the book will help them gain traction, and help marginalise the conspiracy theories and smears being pumped out by the kleptocratic fight-back campaign trying to derail efforts to clean up the country’s political and economic systems.</p>
<p><em>After Dawn, by Mcebisi Jonas. Picador Africa, imprint of Macmillan. Johannesburg. 2019. 277pp. Foreword by Cyril Ramaphosa.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122652/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is a member of the ANC, but writes this review in his professional capacity as a political scientist.</span></em></p>
This book is a booster to morale. It tells South Africans they can enjoy the impressive economic growth they once achieved.
Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western Cape
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/116843
2019-05-14T13:49:35Z
2019-05-14T13:49:35Z
Ahmed Timol: the quest for justice for people murdered in apartheid’s jails
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274128/original/file-20190513-183089-6ka6yi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ahmed Timol's funeral in 1972.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/photo-gallery">ahmedtimol.co.za</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On 27 October 1971, the parents of South African anti-apartheid activist <a href="http://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/about">Ahmed Timol</a> were informed that their son had committed suicide by throwing himself out of the window of room 1026 of John Vorster Square, the notorious police headquarters in central Johannesburg. </p>
<p>Timol was a member of the South African Communist Party. He was also a well-loved teacher. His family was convinced that he was murdered by the security police. This view was widely accepted by everyone who opposed the apartheid state at the time. </p>
<p>Writing under his pen-name “Frank Talk”, the black consciousness leader Steve Biko <a href="http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/sites/default/files/pdf_files/sajan72.pdf">expressed</a> his disdain for the patently fabricated claims: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The late Ahmed Timol was ‘prevented’ from dashing through the door but it was found impossible to stop him from ‘jumping’ through the 10th floor window of Vorster Square to his death. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Biko’s article appeared in the widely-circulated newsletter of the South African Students Organisation in early 1972. Not long after that the banned African National Congress (ANC) submitted a <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/memorandum-submitted-by-the-african-national-congress-of-south-africa-to-the-un-decolonisation-committee">memorandum</a> to the United Nations calling for South Africa’s expulsion from the world body and for the denunciation of apartheid as a crime against humanity. </p>
<p>The memorandum asserts what was common-knowledge at the time – Timol’s death was not the result of suicide but of murder. A short time later Magistrate JJL de Villiers ruled at an inquest that no one was responsible for Timol’s death.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274130/original/file-20190513-183100-12nja9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274130/original/file-20190513-183100-12nja9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274130/original/file-20190513-183100-12nja9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274130/original/file-20190513-183100-12nja9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274130/original/file-20190513-183100-12nja9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274130/original/file-20190513-183100-12nja9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274130/original/file-20190513-183100-12nja9a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ahmed Timol.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/photo-gallery">ahmedtimol.co.za</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It took 46 years for the truth about Timol’s murder to be <a href="https://ewn.co.za/Topic/Ahmed-Timol">recognised</a> in a <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-apartheids-victims-bring-the-crimes-of-south-africas-past-into-court/">court of law</a>. Although there have been significant cases that have provided evidence of the transformation of South Africa’s criminal justice system post-1994, this case is the first to enact what can be properly understood as restorative justice.</p>
<p>A judge has ordered that Joao “Jan” Rodrigues, a Security Branch clerk and ostensibly the last person to have seen Timol before his death, be charged with Timol’s murder and with defeating or obstructing the administration of justice. Rodrigues has sought a <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-02-20-no-reason-not-to-prosecute-joao-rodrigues-argues-timol-family/">permanent stay of prosecution</a> and the judgement in the matter has been reserved. </p>
<p>If the stay is granted it will apply not only to Rodrigues but to all former Security Branch and former state agents who would effectively be exempted from being held to account for their actions in the future. Rodrigues’s defence has argued that a trial against him would be unfair due to the time that has lapsed since Timol’s murder. </p>
<p>In another recent development South Africa’s Minister of Justice announced the re-opening of the inquest into the death of trade unionist <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/another-apartheid-era-inquest-to-be-opened-by-police-20190426">Neil Aggett</a>, who allegedly committed suicide after being detained and tortured by the Security Police in 1982. </p>
<p>In a similar way to those who committed crimes as part of the National Socialist regime in Germany during the Second World War, almost all of the apartheid-era perpetrators have been absorbed into civilian life and have not been punished. </p>
<p>The re-opening of these cases creates the possibility for the perpetrators to be tried for committing crimes against humanity. This has the potential to radically shift how people think about what apartheid was, how it continues to affect the present, and how people experience and understand impunity and injustice.</p>
<h2>Victims of violence</h2>
<p>In 1995 a court-like body called the <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> (TRC) was assembled in South Africa. Anybody who felt they had been a victim of violence during apartheid could come forward and be heard. Perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from prosecution. Hawa Timol testified about her son’s murder.</p>
<p>However, not one of the Security Police officers involved in Timol’s arrest and interrogation came forward. Nor did anyone ask for amnesty for their part in Timol’s murder. In 1971 he was the 22nd person to die in detention at the hands of the Security Police since the introduction of detention without trial. Timol was the seventh person to have allegedly committed suicide.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274132/original/file-20190513-183083-1yx89b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/274132/original/file-20190513-183083-1yx89b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274132/original/file-20190513-183083-1yx89b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274132/original/file-20190513-183083-1yx89b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274132/original/file-20190513-183083-1yx89b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274132/original/file-20190513-183083-1yx89b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/274132/original/file-20190513-183083-1yx89b7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ahmed Timol was a teacher at the time of his death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/photo-gallery">ahmedtimol.co.za</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Following the TRC hearings, Imtiaz Cajee, Timol’s nephew, vowed to seek justice for his family. His extensively researched book, <a href="http://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/publications">“Timol: Quest for Justice”</a>, was published in 2005. </p>
<p>In 2017 the Timol inquest was finally re-opened. On 12 October Judge Billy Mothle <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/documents/ahmed-timol-was-murdered--justice-billy-mothle">delivered</a> a landmark judgement and overturned the findings of the 1972 inquest. The judgement affirmed what the Timol family had maintained all along – Ahmed Timol did not commit suicide but was murdered by members of the Security Branch of the South African Police after being interrogated and tortured. </p>
<h2>Justice delayed</h2>
<p>In 2003 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/report/">final report</a> was released. Three hundred cases involving gross violations of human rights were handed over to the National Prosecuting Authority on the understanding that they would be investigated and that those responsible would be prosecuted. </p>
<p>In 2015, the state’s failure to pursue the TRC cases was exposed when Thembi Nkadimeng sought to compel the National Prosecution Authority to prosecute the Security Branch officers accused of torturing and murdering her sister, Nokuthula Simelane, an anti-apartheid activist who was abducted in 1983. It emerged that ‘political interference’ ensured that the matter was blocked.</p>
<p>On 5 February 2019 ten TRC commissioners wrote a <a href="https://www.ijr.org.za/2019/02/08/ijr-endorses-letter-by-former-trc-commissioners/">letter</a> to President Cyril Ramaphosa. They called for a commission of inquiry to investigate why the TRC cases have not been pursued. In their letter, the commissioners argue that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The failure to investigate and prosecute those who were not amnestied represents a deep betrayal of all those who participated in good faith in the TRC process. It completely undermines the very basis of South Africa’s historic transition. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The re-opening of the Timol and Aggett cases deepens public knowledge and understanding of the many cases of people who were tortured and murdered under apartheid. It also serves as a reminder that those responsible for committing atrocities have almost without exception evaded responsibility and have never been held accountable for their deeds.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116843/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kylie Thomas receives funding from the National Research Foundation, South Africa. </span></em></p>
In South Africa’s criminal justice system post-1994, the Timol case is the first to enact what can be properly understood as restorative justice.
Kylie Thomas, Associate Researcher at the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice at the University of the Free State, University of the Free State
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/116436
2019-05-07T13:22:06Z
2019-05-07T13:22:06Z
Mandela’s lawyer Bram Fischer: a man who paid the ultimate price
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272524/original/file-20190503-103068-11lm95v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Actor Peter Paul Muller as Bram Fischer in the film 'An Act of Defiance'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In October 1963 Nelson Mandela and nine of his African National Congress (ANC) comrades went on trial in South Africa’s capital Pretoria on charges of sabotage. In what became known as the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia Trial</a>, they hired Bram Fischer, an Afrikaner as their senior advocate. This made Fischer an Afrikaner fighting an Afrikaner government. He was also a senior leader of the South African Communist Party (SACP). He clandestinely belonged to the underground party, which was not only banned in South Africa at the time, but as the epitome of the <a href="https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/17487/thesis_hum_2002_cartwright_katherine.pdf?sequence=1">“red peril”</a> was probably more hated than the ANC by the apartheid regime.</p>
<p>The Rivonia Trial could have ended – as the state advocated – with the men being sent to the gallows. In the end the court sentenced eight of them to life imprisonment due in no small measure to their <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abram-bram-fischer">defence team’s work</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272526/original/file-20190503-103045-1pbthw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272526/original/file-20190503-103045-1pbthw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272526/original/file-20190503-103045-1pbthw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272526/original/file-20190503-103045-1pbthw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272526/original/file-20190503-103045-1pbthw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272526/original/file-20190503-103045-1pbthw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272526/original/file-20190503-103045-1pbthw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Actor Sello Motloung (standing) portraying Nelson Mandela in the film, ‘An Act of Defiance’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Soon after the trial Fischer was arrested for contravening the Suppression of Communism Act. In 1966 he was found guilty of violating the act and conspiring to commit sabotage – he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abram-bram-fischer">died</a> on 8 May 1975.</p>
<p>A new film has put the spotlight again on the court case. <a href="https://city-press.news24.com/Trending/an-act-of-defiance-is-a-polished-struggle-film-for-the-patient-viewer-20190426">“An Act of Defiance”</a>, zones in on the Rivonia Trial. It’s a timely reminder of the sacrifices, fears and dangers experienced by a group of people, across the racial spectrum, who sought to bring apartheid to an end. Understanding Fischer’s role is crucial to adding nuance to the country’s historical narrative, at a time when South Africa’s history and politics are being <a href="https://theconversation.com/race-still-colours-south-africas-politics-25-years-after-apartheids-end-115735">viewed</a> in the starkest of narrow black-and-white terms.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2W2P9EglmNE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer of ‘An Act of Defiance’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Prominent family</h2>
<p>Born in 1908, Bram Fischer was the son of a prominent family in the Free State colony (it later became a province of South Africa). </p>
<p>Bram’s grandfather, Abraham Fischer, served as the president of the Orange River colony. His father, Percy Fischer, became Judge President of the Orange Free State. They belonged to a community where status mattered, and given their position, Bram could easily have ascended to the highest ranks of the Afrikaner political establishment. </p>
<p>It’s this that makes his sacrifice of the spoils of his political inheritance so significant. </p>
<p>At school in the late 1920s, Fischer was drawn by his mentor, historian <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/leo-marquard">Leo Marquard</a>, into Bloemfontein’s Joint Council of Europeans and Africans. Years later, he recounted that, at his first meeting, he was compelled, for the first time, to shake hands with a black man. Years of racial indoctrination turned it into an unsettling experience, and the moment became a turning point. </p>
<p>Fischer began to question his own reaction, and as he later said from the dock at his own trial,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I came to understand that colour prejudice was a wholly irrational phenomenon, and that true human friendship could extend across the colour bar once the initial prejudice was overcome. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the years that followed, Fischer’s path began to diverge from that of other talented young Afrikaner nationalists. Since his teenage years, he had nurtured his secret atheism – which would later be no secret – at a time when the Dutch Reformed Church dominated Afrikaner lives, as it would for most of the 20th century. </p>
<h2>As a young man</h2>
<p>By the age of 23, he had declared his opposition to segregation. He won a Rhodes scholarship to the University of Oxford and used the opportunity not only to visit the European continent at a time when National Socialism was on the rise, but also the Soviet Union. And he had met Molly Krige, an independent, free-spirited and unconventional young woman, who would later become his wife and political partner.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272525/original/file-20190503-103049-1h89gsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272525/original/file-20190503-103049-1h89gsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272525/original/file-20190503-103049-1h89gsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272525/original/file-20190503-103049-1h89gsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272525/original/file-20190503-103049-1h89gsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272525/original/file-20190503-103049-1h89gsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/272525/original/file-20190503-103049-1h89gsj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Actress Antoinette Louw as Molly Fischer in ‘An Act of Defiance’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1935, Fischer began working at the Johannesburg Bar. It was the beginning of a stellar legal career. It was also during this time, in the years before the Second World War, that he joined the Communist Party. It would draw him and Molly into the network of organisations and individuals who worked together to oppose apartheid. The Fischers’ home in Johannesburg became a meeting point for the leadership, and their swimming pool a place where the races could mix, in defiance of petty apartheid.</p>
<h2>The Rivonia trial</h2>
<p>As the apartheid regime became more brutal, Bram and Molly’s political involvement deepened, and they became regular targets of the Special Branch. They had to weather banning orders, and Molly imprisonment, all the while raising two daughters and a son with cystic fibrosis. Bram was being called on, more and more frequently, to defend those who fell foul of the apartheid state. </p>
<p>Bram and Molly could not attend the Congress of the People in 1955, as they were both banned, but Bram became a member of the defence team in the Treason Trial that followed. This would become the prequel to the trial for which he would become famous: the Rivonia Trial, at which he took on the role as leader of the defence. </p>
<p>The Rivonia Trial became a battle to avert a death sentence. That a sentence of life imprisonment was handed down was not only due to intense international pressure, but also due to the skills of the defence team.</p>
<p>But for Fischer, personal tragedy trumped whatever relief he might initially have felt. The day after the trial, Bram, Molly and a young woman named Elizabeth Lewin, drove to Cape Town. Their car was involved in an accident and plunged into a pool of water. Bram and Elizabeth survived, but Molly drowned. It was the beginning of Bram’s unravelling.</p>
<h2>Matter of time</h2>
<p>It was only a matter of time until the apartheid authorities, which had been biding their time, would begin to pursue Bram Fischer himself. Within a matter of weeks, he was detained and released. In September 1964, he was detained again, but allowed to leave for London to argue in an important case. Many urged him to remain in the UK, but he returned to South Africa to stand trial. </p>
<p>Shortly after his trial commenced, though, he skipped bail and went underground. But the isolation of being underground was akin to solitary confinement. His grief and the stress of hiding took their psychological toll. It was only a matter of time until he was recaptured.</p>
<p>Bram Fischer was sentenced to life imprisonment in May 1966. At his trial, he invoked his Afrikaner pedigree as a driving force for his opposition to apartheid. Fischer <a href="https://www.academia.edu/26141157/Bram_Fisher_Afrikaner_Revolutionary">told</a> the judge from the dock:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Surely, my Lord… there was an additional duty cast upon me, that at least one Afrikaner should make this protest.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By 1974, Fischer’s fellow prisoners smuggled news out that he was suffering from cancer. This led to a campaign for his release, and he was finally released to his brother’s house in Bloemfontein a few weeks before his death. His ashes were <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/abram-bram-fischer">impounded</a> by the state so that they couldn’t be used to create a shrine for the resistance movement.</p>
<p>Bram Fischer has been idealised in a post-1994 context, and rightly so. He was raised in a position of privilege, but he used it to defy the injustice of the society that raised him. For this, he paid the ultimate price.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116436/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lindie Koorts is affiliated to the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State. She receives funding from The British Academy in the form of a Newton Advanced Fellowship, and incentive funding from the National Research Foundation. The views expressed in this article are her own. </span></em></p>
South African lawyer Bram Fischer has been idealised in a post-1994 context. He was raised in a position of privilege, but he used it to defy the injustice of the society that raised him.
Lindie Koorts, Postdoctoral Fellow in History, University of the Free State
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/101868
2018-08-26T09:26:58Z
2018-08-26T09:26:58Z
What changing the ownership of South Africa’s central bank will, and won’t, do
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233250/original/file-20180823-149484-k2vzt3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s second largest opposition party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), has lodged a parliamentary <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2018/08/17/eff-introduces-bill-to-nationalise-central-bank">motion</a> to amend laws that govern the management and ownership of the country’s central bank. </p>
<p>Judging by the content of <a href="https://www.parliament.gov.za/storage/app/media/Docs/bill/acae4cfa-4826-4356-a032-f84f64dc73bc.pdf">the South African Reserve Bank Amendment Bill</a> the EFF is clearly intent on upping the ante on economic policy ahead of the national elections in 2019. The amendments come hot on the heels of the party pushing for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/anc-expediency-is-messing-up-south-africas-land-reform-process-101218">expropriation</a> of land without compensation. The EFF was formed five years ago after it split from the African National Congress, positioning itself on the left of the political spectrum.</p>
<p>The EFF on its own won’t be able to affect the Reserve Bank change given that it only has 25 MPs in parliament. But the ANC has also thrown its weight behind the idea, adopting a <a href="https://theconversation.com/nationalising-south-africas-central-bank-isnt-bad-per-se-just-whats-done-with-it-90031">resolution</a> at its national conference last year to nationalise the South African Reserve Bank. </p>
<p>It’s not the call for the nationalisation of the central bank, per se, that’s raising concern. It’s how its been dressed up by the EFF and the prevailing political environment.</p>
<p>What the EFF wants to achieve is control of monetary policy by politicians. This would be dangerous for South Africa. Experiences from other countries that do this, like <a href="https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-business-sc-economy-byo-120846.html">Zimbabwe</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-economy/imf-projects-venezuela-inflation-will-hit-1000000-percent-in-2018-idUSKBN1KD2L9">Venezuela</a>, are not good. They are all economic basket cases.</p>
<p>The fact is that a change of ownership of the South African Reserve Bank would not in and of itself be a disaster. Most central banks in the world have a share ownership structure that has the state as the majority, or only, shareholder. The South African Reserve Bank is <a href="https://econrsa.org/system/files/publications/working_papers/working_paper_724.pdf">one of only eight</a> central banks in the world with private shareholders. But this does not equate to politicians running central banks. There are governing structures in place that ensure that central banks – even if the majority shareholder is the state – are free to implement monetary policy without political interference. </p>
<h2>Ownership isn’t the point</h2>
<p>South Africa’s central bank has come under attack over the years. Many of the attacks have come from the left – within the ruling party and its allies the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party.</p>
<p>The unhappiness has revolved around the <a href="https://www.fin24.com/Economy/the-sarb-must-serve-the-people-20170703-2">role</a> of the South African Reserve Bank – particularly its focus on keeping inflation under control by sticking to an inflation target – and its perceived failure to inspire economic growth. These concerns are now being manifested in the debate about the bank’s shareholding structures.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the debate is informed by the mistaken view that private shareholders affect monetary policy. The corollary is that nationalisation would give the government, as the major shareholder, control over central bank policy. </p>
<p>Both assumptions are wrong. </p>
<p>Even though South Africa’s Reserve Bank has private shareholders, they have absolutely no say over monetary policy. Similarly, the state doesn’t dictate monetary policy in the vast majority of central banks that have governments as their major holders.</p>
<p>What this means is that changing the shareholding of South Africa’s bank won’t change the way the bank is run. </p>
<p>The bank main mandate – to keep inflation under control – is in fact anchored in the country’s <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng.pdf">Constitution</a>. To change this focus would require a change in the constitution.</p>
<p>Private shareholders of the South African Reserve Bank have very little influence over it. They play no role in the day-to-day management of the institution and also no role in the appointment of the executive management, the Governor and deputy governors.</p>
<p>Their powers are limited to electing a minority of board members, the right to attend the ordinary general meeting of the central bank where they also approve the minutes of the previous year’s meeting and the annual report of the bank, and the appointment of the external auditors. </p>
<p>The private shareholders are also entitled to receive a dividend of 10c per share per annum (before dividend withholding tax of 20%). But no individual <a href="http://journals.co.za/docserver/fulltext/sabr_v21_n1_a1.pdf?expires=1534767451&id=id&accname=57716&checksum=E20513C75F94003F4E8F1600A9AD7E">shareholder</a>, or group of shareholders, can hold more than 10 000 shares. This is to prevent any concentration of power. This means that in any given year the maximum a shareholder can be paid in dividends (after dividend withholding tax) is a paltry R800.</p>
<h2>Expropriation without compensation</h2>
<p>The EFF bill is styled as an amendment to the existing <a href="https://www.resbank.co.za/BanknotesandCoin/CurrencyManagement/Documents/SA%20Reserve%20Bank%20Act%2090%20of%201989.pdf">South African Reserve Bank Act</a>. The bill aims to change the ownership of the bank through nationalisation. The state would, under this scenario, own 100% of the bank.</p>
<p>The bill also seeks to move functions currently entrusted to private shareholders to the minister of finance. These include the appointment of some board members and the appointment of external auditors. </p>
<p>Giving the minister the power to appoint certain board members doesn’t make sense given that the SA Reserve Bank Act currently stipulates that the President of South Africa appoints the majority of the board members (including the governor and deputy governors). Giving the finance minister the power to appoint some board members would create two classes of board members – a nonsensical state of affairs.</p>
<p>More disconcerting is the fact that the bill makes no provision for any compensation for current shareholders. The bill simply transfers ownership from shareholders to the state. </p>
<p>The proposed amendment goes as far as to state that the change of ownership will have no financial implications. This may be taken as confirmation that provisions on compensation were not inadvertently omitted or left to be considered later. The stated objective is clearly nationalisation without compensation.</p>
<p>This comes on the back of efforts to push for the expropriation of <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/it-is-ordinary-south-africans-turn-to-speak-about-expropriation-constitutional-review-committee-20180621">land</a> without compensation. </p>
<p>Both moves set a dangerous principle and put South Africa on the dangerous slope of economic disintegration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101868/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jannie Rossouw holds shares in the SA Reserve Bank and previously worked for the central bank. He is a C-rated researcher by the NRF and received financial assistance from the NRF in support of his research.. </span></em></p>
The push to nationalise South Africa’s Reserve Bank is informed by the mistaken view that private shareholders affect monetary policy.
Jannie Rossouw, Head of School of Economic & Business Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/92051
2018-02-20T13:01:19Z
2018-02-20T13:01:19Z
South Africa must resist another captured president: this time by the markets
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207235/original/file-20180221-132680-1l9blwl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cyril Ramaphosa addresses MPs after being elected president of South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The African National Congress (ANC) has made a dangerous habit of bringing post-apartheid South Africa to the brink of instability and the common ruin of all. The <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2018-02-14-president-jacob-zuma-resigns/">resignation</a> of former President Jacob Zuma and his <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/live-goodbye-zuma-hello-president-cyril-20180215">replacement</a> by Cyril Ramaphosa was such a moment. It brought home the point that the over-concentration of power in the office of the president has clearly not worked. </p>
<p>A rethink on president-centred politics and the threats it poses to the democracy are crucial for the post-Zuma period. South Africa needs to re-imagine democratic practice, leadership and how power works. </p>
<p>Some sections of South African society have reduced the Zuma problem to a corruption problem. Dismantle Zuma’s <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/zuma-turned-sa-into-mafia-style-lawless-kleptocracy-saftu-20170805">kleptocratic network</a>, the argument goes, and all is solved. Zuma’s demise and a few high profile prosecutions will suffice. </p>
<p>But another view on the Zuma problem – and one with which I concur – suggests it is a problem of contending class projects inside the ANC. The <a href="http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/1789">neoliberal class project</a> under Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki saw South Africa integrated into global markets. It maintained stability through modest redistributive reforms. This project laid the basis for a new black middle class to <a href="https://monthlyreview.org/2003/01/01/neoliberalism-and-resistance-in-south-africa/">emerge</a> while systematically <a href="http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/14466/theresponsesoftradeunionstotheeffectsofneoliberalisminsouthafrica.pdf?sequence=1">weakening</a> labour and the left.</p>
<p>But it <a href="https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-neoliberal-squeeze-on-post-apartheid-democracy-reclaiming-the-south-african-dream/28453">surrendered</a> the state (including the presidency) to transnational capital and the power of finance. </p>
<p>The Zuma project, on the other hand, <a href="https://www.fin24.com/Opinion/zumas-radical-economic-transformation-is-state-looting-20170404">advanced looting</a> as the basis of accumulation and class formation. The <a href="https://www.news24.com/Columnists/MaxduPreez/the-fatal-flaw-in-project-state-capture-20171205">extra-constitutional state</a> that emerged deepened the macroeconomic, institutional and legitimacy crisis of the ANC-led state. The left and labour, aligned with the ANC in the tripartite alliance, were <a href="https://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-opinion/sa-workers-must-brace-for-a-dark-new-year/">co-opted</a> and divided. Both these projects are entrenched in the ANC.</p>
<p>Now what? Messiah-centred presidential politics is extremely dangerous. This is particularly true in a country of extreme inequality and with a formal concentration of power in the office of the president. If politics is not represented, thought and acted beyond this, South Africa is going to repeat historical mistakes.</p>
<p>Since the ANC’s December 2017 conference the media, the banks and international institutions have been talking up a narrative of the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2018/01/25/the-gaining-rand-and-the-cyril-effect-what-it-means-for-your-pocket_a_23343014/">“Cyril effect”</a>. Zuma’s removal is attributed to this. In fact the Cyril effect is a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2018/02/12/will-sas-economy-really-benefit-from-the-cyril-effect_a_23359238/">narrative</a> of capture of South Africa’s new president by transnational and financial capital.</p>
<p>South Africa’s democracy cannot afford another captured president beholden to <a href="https://www.fin24.com/Economy/ratings-agencies-note-ramaphosas-election-but-swift-upgrade-unlikely-20180215">credit rating agencies</a>, <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/opinion-ramaphosa-isnt-the-only-winner-so-is-the-rand-12486405">currency fluctuations</a>, investment flows and business <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/safrica-economy/south-african-mining-seen-a-winner-as-ramaphosa-woos-investors-idUSL8N1PJ4EN">perceptions</a>. South Africa’s democracy has to be grounded in the needs of its citizens and the mandates given by its Constitution.</p>
<h2>The ‘Cyril effect’ is hyperbole</h2>
<p>The end of Zuma was in fact not because of the Cyril effect. In the main Zuma was removed by the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-17450447">people’s effect</a> which connected the dots of corruption, a mismanaged state and rapacious capitalism. </p>
<p>This resistance was expressed over 15 years through various institutions and social forces. These included:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Battles inside the South African Communist Party (SACP) against <a href="https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/south-africa-zumafication-left-politics-alliance">Zumafication</a> but which led to expulsions;</p></li>
<li><p>By feminists during Zuma’s rape trial and subsequently through <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-10-09-rememberkhwezi-zumas-rape-accuser-dies-never-having-known-freedom/#.Wovpsa6WbIU">#RememberKhwezi</a>;</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.zapiro.com/120520st">Artists</a> and cartoonists lampooning Zuma, including with <a href="https://www.zapiro.com/">shower heads</a>;</p></li>
<li><p>The ongoing struggles in communities against <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-ancs-path-to-corruption-was-set-in-south-africas-1994-transition-64774">corrupt officials</a>;</p></li>
<li><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/marikana-shining-the-light-on-police-militarisation-and-brutality-in-south-africa-44162">Marikana massacre</a> in 2012. This produced rage among workers and major realignments away from Zuma’s ANC;</p></li>
<li><p>The <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2014/04/20/Numsa-calls-for-Zuma-to-resign">call</a> by trade unions like the metalworkers’ Numsa for Zuma’s removal;</p></li>
<li><p>The <a href="http://www.polity.org.za/article/sa-statement-by-the-sidikiwe-vukani-vote-no-campaign-calls-on-south-africans-to-endorse-campaign-16042014-2014-04-16">Vukani-Sidikiwe</a> campaign during the 2014 elections which opened up a national debate on how citizens should vote; </p></li>
<li><p>The rise of #ZumaMustGo Campaign. This was in response to the sacking of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-removal-of-south-africas-finance-minister-is-bad-news-for-the-country-52170">Nhlanhla Nene</a> as finance minister in December 2015. The NUMSA-led United Front played a crucial role in this;</p></li>
<li><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-zumamustfall-and-feesmustfall-have-in-common-and-why-it-matters-53115">#FeesMustFall</a> movement. Students’ demands included labour insourcing as well as quality, decommodified and decolonised higher education;</p></li>
<li><p>The <a href="https://www.news24.com/elections/results/lge">2016 local government elections</a>. These were a harbinger of seismic political realignments against the ANC in key cities;</p></li>
<li><p>The role of <a href="http://amabhungane.co.za/">investigative and nonpartisan media</a> in probing corruption scandals. And the publication of the <a href="http://www.gupta-leaks.com/">Gupta-leaks</a> as well as <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/book-categories/new-releases-65840/a-simple-man-kasrils-and-the-zuma-enigma-detail">“A Simple Man”</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/two-books-that-tell-the-unsettling-tale-of-south-africas-descent-87044">“The President’s Keepers”</a>;</p></li>
<li><p>The courageous role from 2010 onwards of then <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thulisile-nomkhosi-madonsela">public protector Thuli Mandonsela</a> in drawing attention to ethics and legal violations by Zuma;</p></li>
<li><p>Court decisions affirming the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/display-judicial-independence-south-african-court-denies-zuma-again">judiciary’s independence</a> in relation to Zuma;</p></li>
<li><p>Zuma’s miscalculation in <a href="https://theconversation.com/stakes-for-south-africas-democracy-are-high-as-zuma-plunges-the-knife-75550">firing finance minister Pravin Gordhan</a>, the rallying of activists and the rise of <a href="http://www.savesouthafrica.org/">#SaveSouthAfrica</a>. What followed were some of the largest post-apartheid <a href="https://theconversation.com/rebellion-is-on-the-march-against-zuma-but-will-it-be-enough-to-oust-him-75862">protest marches</a>;</p></li>
<li><p>The powerful voice of liberation struggle veterans like <a href="https://theconversation.com/ahmed-kathrada-exhibit-a-of-the-values-imbued-in-south-africas-freedom-charter-75339">Ahmed Kathrada</a> and others who called for Zuma to resign.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>The ANC’s legitimacy crisis</h2>
<p>As a result of all this activity the crisis of legitimacy in the ANC – and the ANC state – has deepened. This has placed immense pressure on the party to act. In this context, Ramaphosa is playing out his role out of necessity and to secure the ANC’s electoral fortunes.</p>
<p>For middle class and rich South Africans Ramaphosa’s <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/speeches/state-nation-address-president-republic-south-africa%2C-mr-cyril-ramaphosa">state of the nation</a> speech represented a return to normalcy – a democracy that works for a few. That’s not to say that the new president didn’t make some important announcements in his state of the nation address. This included his comments about state owned enterprises, redistributive state programmes and anti-corruption mechanisms. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, the speech struck chords that resonated with the “return to normalcy” narrative.</p>
<p>But South Africans can’t repeat the mistake made in 1994 when progressive civil society <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2012.666011?scroll=top&needAccess=true">demobilised</a>. The people’s effect has to continue to shape a post-Zuma democracy in the interests of all. The ANC has abused majority support and cannot be trusted with the future of South Africa.</p>
<p>People’s power has to be strengthened and continuously mobilised around strengthening democratic institutions, ending corruption, fundamental economic transformation and advancing systemic alternatives to the climate crisis.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92051/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vishwas Satgar receives funding from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the National Institute of the Humanities and Social Sciences. He has been engaged in various activist initiatives against the Zuma Regime. </span></em></p>
Jacob Zuma was removed by the people’s effect, which connected the dots of corruption, a mismanaged state and rapacious capitalism.
Vishwas Satgar, Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/88345
2017-12-04T13:24:40Z
2017-12-04T13:24:40Z
History explains why South Africans on the left argue for free passes for the rich
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197288/original/file-20171201-10169-1t1v68h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students from Wits University, in Johannesburg, during a protest for free education.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In a society like South Africa in which one racial group has dominated another, poor people are ignored in economic debates by those who claim to speak for them. </p>
<p>Take the calls for <a href="https://www.fin24.com/Economy/treasury-rocked-as-budget-chief-quits-20171113">free higher education</a> which featured prominently in student protests over the past two to three years. They are back in the limelight because President Jacob Zuma’s desire to spend billions on providing free tertiary education has prompted a public controversy in which he was accused of wanting to bankrupt the Treasury for political gain. Although it later became clear that Zuma only wanted to pay for students whose household incomes were below <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017-11-11-how-treasury-blocked-zumas-free-education-plan/">R350 000 a year</a>, the reports revived interest in the free education demand.</p>
<p>Outsiders might find something curious about the higher education fees debate in South Africa. The demand that no-one should pay is an article of faith among people who occupy the left in the country. The view that the well-off should continue to pay so that the poor are funded is seen as a sign of conservatism. Elsewhere in the world, it is the left which wants the rich to pay for services to the poor. </p>
<p>This is no isolated case in South Africa. Another example is <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/gauteng/gauteng-drivers-dont-give-two-hoots-for-e-tolls-9709924">electronic tolling</a> (e tolls) in the country’s economic heartland, Gauteng. Vehicle owners, including companies, pay the toll. People who use busses and minibus taxis, the vehicles of the poor, don’t. Anyone suggesting that it’s fair to expect people who own trucks and busses to pay for roads on which poor people can ride for free is likely to be dismissed as a right-wing zealot.</p>
<p>How did the interests of wealthy students and their families, or the owners of vehicles, become those of the left and <a href="https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/80525/tollsk/">social justice campaigners</a>? Around the world, the views of well-off groups are often presented as those of everyone. The South African oddity is that those who in other societies would be arguing against free passes for the affluent, argue for them.</p>
<p>To see why, we must look at the history of the campaign against minority rule, which I discussed in a <a href="http://ukznpress.bookslive.co.za/blog/2015/01/26/excerpt-race-class-and-power-harold-wolpe-and-the-radical-critique-of-apartheid-by-steven-friedman/">book</a> on radical thought.</p>
<h2>Economic inequality versus race</h2>
<p>The first campaigners for economic change in South Africa were socialists and trade unionists who immigrated from Britain. They took the standard left view of the time – racial divisions were created by bosses and other fat cats who hoped to hang onto their privilege by dividing the workers. Because both black and white workers were exploited, they argued, they could and should unite against their common enemy, economic exploitation.</p>
<p>Within a few years, the view that economic inequality mattered more than race was killed by <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/account-events-rand-rebellion-1922">striking white miners</a> who, in 1922, added to a banner reading “Workers of the World Unite” the words and fight for a white South Africa’. </p>
<p>Competition for jobs from black workers was one reason the miners gave for the strike. For the next seven decades, white workers made it clear that the privileges which their whiteness offered were more important to them than their supposed common interest with black workers.</p>
<p>The view that race was more important than economic inequality was shared by those who fought against apartheid. Although left-wing activists, particularly in the South African Communist Party, were active in the African National Congress, they gave up early on the idea that race could take a back seat to the fight for economic change.</p>
<h2>Racial equality versus private ownership</h2>
<p>In the late 1920s, the <a href="http://domza.blogspot.co.za/2009/09/origin-of-national-democratic.html">Communist International</a>, to which the communist party belonged, adopted the theory of “national democratic revolution”. It committed communists to fight against colonialism and racial domination in colonised countries – the battle against capitalism could wait. </p>
<p>In South Africa, this “revolution” which even today is seen by some on the right as a call to destroy the market economy, was always about fighting for racial equality, not abolishing private ownership. Those who complain that the ANC has not delivered on this “revolution” are saying it has not done enough to end <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/anc-policies-serve-white-monopoly-capital-jimmy-manyi">white control</a> of the economy, not control by private owners.</p>
<p>While the ANC often used left rhetoric, <a href="http://www.armsdeal-vpo.co.za/special_items/profiles/mbeki_chief.html">black intellectuals and activists</a>, including those in the South African Communist Party, reminded white colleagues who wanted to emphasise economic inequalities that racial inequality was more important.</p>
<p>This view was shared by <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/pan-africanist-congress-pac">movements to the ANC’s left</a>. Instead of denouncing it for fixating on race rather than economic divisions, they argued that apartheid was a form of “racial capitalism” in which racial and economic exploitation was so intertwined that one could not survive without the other. While this meant that they could fight against racism while claiming they were fighting for socialism, it made race the central issue. </p>
<h2>The enemy was white minority rule</h2>
<p>The South African left may have read different books and chanted different slogans, but it endorsed the mainstream view that the key issue was racial inequality. Left-wingers earned their credentials by fighting harder against racial minority rule, not by fighting for economic equality – and they found no shortage of left-wing theories and slogans to justify this.</p>
<p>This history has shaped thinking, ensuring that there has never been a strong lobby, or an influential body of opinion, stressing the interests of the poor. If the problem is racial domination, it follows that economic differences within racial groups matter less, if at all. And so, it seems natural to demand changes which would benefit the rich by lumping them with the poor.</p>
<p>Since this prompts people to endorse policies which are biased against the poor, this analysis might seem to be a warning against racial thinking on the economy. It is not. The reason why race has always mattered more than economic inequality is that it is more important: black scholars and activists who emphasise race do so because this squares with their experience not only under apartheid, but now.</p>
<p>The point is illustrated, again, by the student protests demanding free higher education. A careful look shows that they are essentially about race – the protesters are rebelling against what they see as a failure of higher education institutions to take them seriously.</p>
<p>Two decades ago, the left-wing scholar <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/harold-wolpe">Harold Wolpe</a>– who started his academic career trying to convince the ANC and South African Communist Party that apartheid was simply a product of capitalism but who changed his position when he recognised how important race is in South Africa – wrote a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03050069529155?needAccess=true">paper</a> on higher education change. He argued that historically white universities were expecting black students to change to fit into their culture rather than changing to meet the needs of new students as the racial make-up of their student bodies changed. It’s this failure to accommodate black student needs which prompted the student slogan “Fees Must Fall”. </p>
<p>The history described here shows why it seems almost automatic to present this demand for racial change in an economic slogan which would again send the poor to the end of the line.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88345/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Friedman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The South African oddity is that those who in other societies would be arguing against free passes for the affluent, argue for them.
Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85838
2017-10-25T12:18:10Z
2017-10-25T12:18:10Z
South Africa’s ANC is celebrating the year of OR Tambo. Who was he?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190606/original/file-20171017-30390-1bx309e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Oliver Reginald Tambo served as ANC president from 1967 to 1991.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">Oliver Tambo’s</a> name and reputation are <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781770100756">lauded</a>, not least because he succeeded, remarkably, in keeping the African National Congress <a href="http://www.anc.org.za">(ANC)</a> together as a liberation movement during an <a href="http://www.whyjoburg.com/oliver-tambo.html">exile lasting 30 years</a>. Despite this legacy, the ANC, now South Africa’s governing party, has seen a year culminating in what is, arguably, its greatest crisis. Today, factions within the ANC nostalgically point to the <a href="http://www.sabc.co.za/wps/portal/news/main/tag?tag=OR%20Tambo%20Memorial%20Lecture">example of Oliver Reginald Tambo</a> , or OR as he was affectionately known in party circles.</p>
<p>Evidence of <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/the-race-corruption-a-big-problem-for-anc">systemic corruption</a> and <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/09/04/mkhize-we-must-face-up-to-the-problems-of-factions-inside-anc">factionalism</a> for personal gain within the ANC are blamed for the failure to deliver improved living conditions to the poorest communities. The loss of three major metropolitan municipal councils in the industrial heartland testifies to diminished <a href="https://theconversation.com/sharp-tongued-south-african-voters-give-ruling-anc-a-stiff-rebuke-63606">confidence in the ANC</a>.</p>
<p>By contrast, in the year of his <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/splash/index">centenary</a>, Oliver Tambo is held as an exemplar of integrity, personifying the ideal of a leader who for 50 years selflessly served the movement, consistently holding up the goals of a humane and caring society.</p>
<p>But who was this much talked about Tambo? And what lessons can be learnt from his leadership?</p>
<h2>Exile</h2>
<p>In 1960, after the <a href="http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?id=65-259-E">Sharpeville massacre</a>, then ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli instructed Tambo to leave South Africa as an international <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">diplomat of the ANC</a>. His task was to mobilise a worldwide economic boycott.</p>
<p>With hindsight it was a prescient judgement call. The military wing of the ANC <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">Umkhonto we Sizwe</a> was launched a year later and within two years leaders of the ANC were facing charges of treason in the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia Trial</a>. The trial, which stretched through 1963-1964, led to life sentences for the leaders of Umkhonto we Sizwe, which included <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/walter-ulyate-sisulu">Walter Sisulu</a>, <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>, <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=2360">Govan Mbeki</a> and <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/mr-ahmed-kathrada">Ahmed Kathrada</a>.</p>
<p>Tambo’s task was to alert the world to the horrors of apartheid South Africa, and to seek assistance and support from newly independent states in Africa. It was to be more than 30 years before he returned home in <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/oliver-tambo-returns-exile">December 1990</a>. During this time, his integrity combined with his keen intellect and natural warmth impressed many people in diverse countries around the world.</p>
<h2>Consensus seeker</h2>
<p>Tambo was a careful and astute listener. He followed the indigenous African consensus system of decision making, crafting a conclusion that included at least some of the opinions of all participants.</p>
<p>He believed that the ANC should maintain the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">“high moral ground”</a> and that it should be a broad umbrella under which all enemies of apartheid could shelter and enrich the movement, irrespective of their political beliefs. He was also cautious, likening the challenge of the liberation struggle to the traditional <em>“indima”</em> method of ploughing a very large piece of land. He <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">explained</a> at a Sophiatown meeting in 1953.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s a point where you must start. You can’t plough it all at once – you have to tackle it acre by acre…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of Tambo’s strengths was his constructive and creative response to criticism. In 1967, for example, following the failure of Umkhonto we Sizwe cadres to reach the borders of South Africa after a battle at <a href="http://www.sadet.co.za/docs/rtd/vol1/sadet1_chap12.pdf">Wankie in “Rhodesia”</a> (now Zimbabwe), Chris Hani and others, disillusioned with the leaders’ lethargy, released an <a href="http://www.loot.co.za/product/hugh-macmillan-chris-hani/pyjg-2664-g860?referrer=bookslive">angry memorandum</a>. In an interview I did with Hani in Johannesburg in 1993 he admitted: “We blew our tops.” They accused the leadership of Umkhonto we Sizwe and the ANC of getting too comfortable and losing their appetite to return home – they had become “men in suits, clutching passports”.</p>
<p>The response by the leadership was outrage – the Secretary-General Alfred Nzo called for Hani’s execution for treason. But Tambo immediately began organising a conference of elected representatives of the branches around the world. A message was sent to Robben Island to inform ANC leaders jailed there, including Nelson Mandela, of this development.</p>
<p>It was time for frank conversation and a comprehensive, considered assessment. The outcome was the historic and constructive conference at <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/morogoro-conference">Morogoro in Tanzania</a>. The conference took on a more inclusive and democratic direction for the ANC, foregrounding the political aims over the military, and identifying the importance of mobilising workers at home.</p>
<h2>Challenging 1980s</h2>
<p>In the 1980s Tambo was faced with a more serious challenge. International attention against apartheid was growing; he was travelling extensively, persuading ordinary people to undermine apartheid by boycotting its products and banks and denying it arms. Alarmed, the apartheid regime sent spies into ANC camps on the continent, infiltrating top committees in Lusaka and other ANC structures.</p>
<p>The panic that ensued turned the spotlight on the flaws of the Umkhonto we Sizwe leadership. Human rights abuses of suspected spies and “ill-disciplined cadres” led to <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media%5C1996%5C9608/s960822l.htm">unlawful deaths and executions</a>.</p>
<p>Tambo’s <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02582473.2012.675813">cautious response</a> was criticised by the leadership of both ANC intelligence and Umkhonto we Sizwe for “impeding investigation” into the spies, owing to “his sense of democracy”. The chief culprits of these human rights abuses were formerly trusted peers of Tambo. He faced the dilemma of blowing the ANC wide apart if he challenged them. Instead, he resorted to the compromising strategy of redeploying them to other sections of the movement, such as education – perhaps leaving an unfortunate legacy for today’s ANC.</p>
<h2>Enduring legacy</h2>
<p>Tambo was to set in motion a process that culminated in South Africa’s democratic constitution. He:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>subscribed Umkhonto we Sizwe and the ANC to the Geneva Convention, which imposed a strict adherence to human rights.</p></li>
<li><p>set up a <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/stuart-commission-report">commission</a> of trusted senior comrades to look into the conditions in the ANC’s camps in Africa as well as abuses. The commission’s report was highly critical.</p></li>
<li><p>summoned an consultative conference in Kabwe in 1985 that reaffirmed ANC’s humanist values, addressed gender inequalities and formally accepted whites in official positions.</p></li>
<li><p>appointed the movement’s top legal minds to research and craft a constitution for the ANC; it was inspired by the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter</a>, which had been drawn up in 1956 after extensive consultation with ordinary people. It opened with the ringing words:</p></li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
<p>South Africa belongs to all who live in it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>South Africa’s new democracy essentially incorporated many of the clauses in the charter’s the path-breaking <a href="https://www.gov.za/DOCUMENTS/CONSTITUTION/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-1">1996</a> constitution.</p>
<h2>Tambo’s insights remain relevant</h2>
<p>Reporting to his first conference inside South Africa in December 1990 after the unbanning of the ANC, <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/president-or-tambos-opening-address-ancs-48th-national-conference">Tambo warned that </a> “suspicions will not disappear overnight, the building of the South African nation is a national ask of paramount importance. </p>
<p>And he warned:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The struggle is far from over: if anything, it has become more complex and therefore more difficult. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He also reflected that "we were always ready to accept our mistakes and correct them.”</p>
<p>Faced by crises in the ANC, Tambo had always been ready to listen, responding constructively and creatively with new policies to meet the challenges of the time. </p>
<p>This is the enduring legacy of Oliver Tambo: many seasons later, many continue to gain insights and learn relevant lessons from his responses to the universal, human condition of our time. But whether they heeded this call is a moot point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have devotedly watched over the organisation all these years. I now hand it back to you, bigger, stronger - intact. Guard our precious movement.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85838/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luli Callinicos is author of Oliver Tambo: Beyond The Engeli Mountains published by David Philip Publishersin 2004. She received a Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Grant (1993), Ford Foundation (2000) towards writing the biography of Oliver Tambo. She serves on the MISTRA Council of Advisers, National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciens Board member, also on Council of Robben Island Museum.</span></em></p>
Factions within South Africa’s ANC nostalgically point to the example of Oliver Reginald Tambo whose seen as an exemplar of integrity, personifying an ideal leader who served the party selflessly.
Luli Callinicos, Researcher and founder member of the History Workshop, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/86007
2017-10-22T11:11:53Z
2017-10-22T11:11:53Z
Timol inquest opens new door to justice against apartheid atrocities
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191207/original/file-20171020-22957-1t0l90s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bishop Desmond Tutu during South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission process. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A powerful legal precedent that promises to see the reopening of other apartheid era crimes has been set in motion thanks to anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol’s family. They pushed for a new inquiry into Timol’s death, in 1971, while in police custody. An inquest held a year later found that he committed suicide while in detention. Now a judge has found that Timol was <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2017-10-12-court-rules-timol-was-pushed-to-his-death/">pushed to his death</a>. The outcome refocuses the spotlight on how societies deal with authoritarian pasts. </p>
<p>In 1989 the Prime Minister of Poland, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, famously called for a “thick line” to separate the past and current political dispensations <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=CLyDDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA163&lpg=PA163&dq=poland+thick+line&source=bl&ots=kZnA6-zHmj&sig=H2pLC1H_L-nweYryHOMbnfXy4cQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjw4fWCz_zWAhXpAcAKHZqMDzIQ6AEITDAI#v=onepage&q=poland%20thick%20line&f=false">in Poland</a>. The country was emerging from more than 40 years of communist rule that had been toppled by a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX2hlHRtA6E">popular uprising</a>. Mazowiecki called for those who had been in power to be absolved of responsibility for their crimes to enable Poland to move forward. </p>
<p>South Africa, meanwhile, opted for a trade-off between culpability and truth after the fall of apartheid. Apartheid era offenders were required to give full disclosure of their crimes in exchange for amnesty. This was done under the auspices of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/truth-and-reconciliation-commission-trc">Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)</a>. </p>
<p>The TRC built on the precedent of similar commissions set up in South American countries that had been through <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/173220">military rule</a>. The TRC gave South Africa great international attention as it was viewed as a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/826001?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">stellar success</a>. As a result South Africa has been held up as a benchmark of how to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Truth-and-Reconciliation-Commission-South-Africa">deal with post conflict situations</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191263/original/file-20171022-13995-1vxga8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191263/original/file-20171022-13995-1vxga8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191263/original/file-20171022-13995-1vxga8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191263/original/file-20171022-13995-1vxga8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191263/original/file-20171022-13995-1vxga8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191263/original/file-20171022-13995-1vxga8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191263/original/file-20171022-13995-1vxga8k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ahmed Timol.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ahmed Timol Family Trust</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The model has been applied in different scenarios, ranging from Ireland’s <a href="https://www.prlog.org/10758180-the-truth-and-reconciliation-commission-for-ireland-and-britain.html">sectarian conflict</a> to Canada’s treatment of its <a href="http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=10">First Peoples</a>.</p>
<p>But more than 20 years after the formation of the TRC South Africans have become <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/trc-failed-to-meet-needs-of-victims---tutu-274862">increasingly restive</a> about its success. Critics say that rather than achieving truth and reconciliation, <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/opinion-and-analysis/2016-04-10-20-years-after-the-trc-hearings-south-africas-pain-persists/">truth was sacrificed for reconciliation</a>. </p>
<h2>Dealing with the past</h2>
<p>The transition in South Africa was informed by the 1980s series <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2633794.pdf">Transitions from Authoritarian Rule</a>, edited by Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead, in the wake of authoritarian regimes collapsing in Latin America.</p>
<p>In comparing these transitions, they spelt out the steps societies would take in the future. Beginning with liberalisation, where general rights would be extended to all, they predicted that societies would then move to democratisation, where political rights would be democratised. The last step, socialisation, would provide social and economic equality.</p>
<p>As Wits University academic David Everatt has <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589346.2011.548662">observed</a>, this reasoning looks increasingly determinist. This is because it is obvious that South Africa and other post-authoritarian regimes have struggled to match the steps of liberalisation and democratisation with socialisation.</p>
<p>In effect, the steps set out in the <em>Transitions</em> series were also advocating for a “thick line” approach to dealing with the past. This underplayed the collective psychological trauma borne by those emerging from authoritarian societies, as was the case for black South Africans. </p>
<p>But the fundamental criminality of the apartheid system has provided ample grounds for families of victims to reopen inquests. </p>
<p>The desire of individual families, such as the Timols, to get to the truth of the death of their loved ones – and if possible, to see those responsible prosecuted – has ensured that further cases will be opened. </p>
<p>It has by no means been smooth sailing though: take the case of Neil Aggett, the trade unionist who died in police detention in 1982. A biography on Aggett written by Beverley Naidoo in 2012, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Death-Idealist-Search-Neil-Aggett-ebook/dp/B009CGYFOU">Death of an Idealist</a>, led to an article in a local newspaper <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2012-11-09-00-neil-aggetts-tormentor-does-work-for-state">exposing</a> how one of Aggett’s main interrogators, Stephan Whitehead, had gone on to enjoy a successful career in the security forces after 1994.</p>
<p>The Neil Aggett Support Group – formed by his friends, family, lawyers and activists – wrote an <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/justiceministerradebe-aggett-appeal-letter.pdf">open letter</a> to Jeff Radebe, the then-Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development in February 2013. They called for the prosecution of Whitehead, who did not apply for amnesty to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. But the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2013-09-20-neil-aggett-death-investigation-questioned">failed to take action</a>. </p>
<p>Their experience mirrored that of Timol’s family who had faced obstacles at every step. Timol, a South African Communist Party member, died in very similar circumstances to Aggett’s at the same John Vorster Square in 1971.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191208/original/file-20171020-14009-ujmaju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191208/original/file-20171020-14009-ujmaju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191208/original/file-20171020-14009-ujmaju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191208/original/file-20171020-14009-ujmaju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191208/original/file-20171020-14009-ujmaju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191208/original/file-20171020-14009-ujmaju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191208/original/file-20171020-14009-ujmaju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=474&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Imtiaz Cajee, Ahmed Timol’s nephew, during the inquest into his death.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ANA/Jacques Naude</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Timol family saw an application they filed in 2003 <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-09-22-history-suppressed-what-didnt-get-revealed-at-the-timol-inquest/#.Wencqo-Czcs">turned down by the NPA</a>. In 2016 the family presented new evidence that finally led the NPA to <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/thepost/joy-at-landmark-timol-verdict-11622336">reopen the inquest later that year</a>. </p>
<p>The Timol family have finally won what they fought so hard to achieve. The judge’s finding that Timol was <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2017-10-12-court-rules-timol-was-pushed-to-his-death/">pushed to his death</a> has set a powerful legal precedent that promises to see other apartheid era crimes reopened. </p>
<p>To some extent the atrocities of apartheid have been contained for the past 20 years as a result of the country’s truth and reconciliation process. But the Timols, in their search for justice, have reminded South Africans that there can be no thick line separating the past from the present.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86007/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Macqueen has received funding from the National Research Foundation and the University of Pretoria.
He is affiliated to the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP), at the University of the Witwatersrand, as a Research Associate.</span></em></p>
Inquests into atrocities committed under apartheid are important because many South Africans are beginning to question whether justice was done under the country’s truth and reconciliation process.
Ian Macqueen, Lecturer, Department of Historical and Heritage Studies, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85262
2017-10-05T13:09:46Z
2017-10-05T13:09:46Z
Why, a decade on, a new book on Zuma’s rape trial has finally hit home
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188973/original/file-20171005-9797-geiihf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supporters of President Jacob Zuma in full cry outside the court during his 2006 rape trial.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2007, barely a year after the man who went on to become South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, was acquitted on a charge of raping a young woman called “Khwezi” (the name given to Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo during her rape trial), gender activist <a href="http://victordlamini.bookslive.co.za/blog/2007/10/29/podcast-mmatshilo-motsei-on-writing-healing-and-activism/">Mmatshilo Motsei</a> published <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/jacana-news/2321-south-africa-is-now-ready">“The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court”</a>. The book was an unsparing account of a society that allowed a prominent man to get away with acts of violence, of a criminal and justice system that was broken for the vast majority of those who were sexually abused, raped and tortured, and of a political system that had lost its compass. </p>
<p>Motsei was eminently qualified to write the book, as a survivor herself and as one of the pathbreaking group of activists who had begun the movement to end violence against women. Few read her book. Those that did were feminist activists and scholars who felt that she had given voice to their concerns, that she had released a collective howl from the gut. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188976/original/file-20171005-9750-10fha52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188976/original/file-20171005-9750-10fha52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188976/original/file-20171005-9750-10fha52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188976/original/file-20171005-9750-10fha52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188976/original/file-20171005-9750-10fha52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188976/original/file-20171005-9750-10fha52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188976/original/file-20171005-9750-10fha52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cover of Redi Tlhabi’s book on ‘Khwezi’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Ball</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hardcore Zuma loyalists almost certainly did not read the book. Nevertheless they opened a new battlefront against Motsei, attacking her both publicly and privately.</p>
<p>Ten years later, broadcaster Redi Tlhabi has resurrected the story with her new book <a href="http://www.jonathanball.co.za/component/virtuemart/khwezi-the-remarkable-story-of-fezekile-ntsukela-kuzwayo-detail?Itemid=6">“Khwezi: The Remarkable Story of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo”</a>. This time the <a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/tshisa-live/tshisa-live/2017-09-28-redi-tlhabis-book-on-khwezi-flying-off-the-shelves/">public response</a> has been very different. <a href="http://www.news24.com/Books/book-news-redi-pulls-in-the-crowds-20171001-2">Record-breaking audiences</a> have attended book launches. And radio conversations reveal a rapt public entirely consumed with the injustice done to Khwezi. The book sold out within weeks and is in reprint. </p>
<p>What has changed, many wonder? It is certainly not the story. </p>
<h2>The story hasn’t changed</h2>
<p>Kuzwayo’s story was first told in excoriating terms in 2006 by feminist academic <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-08-11-00-a-beautiful-feminist-mind-divorced-from-self-indulgence">Pumla Gqola</a>. It was also told by Motsei and numerous academics analysing the violent condition of life for women and queer people in South Africa. </p>
<p>These accounts zeroed in on the shortcomings of the trial that allowed evidence that should not have been permissible, the social norms that denied women sexual desire and that demanded of women compliance with a patriarchal rendering of what constituted a rape-able person – certainly the child Khwezi, raped by at least one man in her community, was deemed to be consenting.</p>
<p>They exposed the almost complete inability of progressive organisations such as the African National Congress (ANC) and its <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/kids/tripartite-alliance">tripartite</a> allies, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and trade union federation Cosatu, to treat women and queer people as right-bearing members. All of these stories have been told, many times.</p>
<p>What’s different this time is that Tlhabi speaks into a South Africa that has changed. The pact of complicity that surrounded Zuma has broken. There are still those who are prepared to die for the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4708960.stm">“100% Zuluboy”</a> as the T-shirts at the rape trial proclaimed. But they are no longer as powerful. </p>
<p>The tripartite alliance has <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/cosatu-and-sacp-lose-patience-with-anc-20170918">fractured </a>into innumerable <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2017/09/18/the-anc-is-a-party-at-war-with-itself-and-the-casualties-are-piling-up_a_23213372/">feuding</a>, <a href="https://www.biznews.com/undictated/2017/10/03/eastern-cape-anc-elections/">chair-throwing</a>, accusation-hurling bands of people without an ideological or moral centre. Zuma is now an acceptable target of vitriol. His endless <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-08-11-00-zumas-ghosts-return-to-haunt-him">Pyrrhic victories</a> against those seeking to remove him from office have created a vast constituency of <a href="https://theconversation.com/zumas-critics-within-the-anc-are-vocal-but-will-they-act-75587">critics</a>, not united by ideology, political affiliation or social identity but by a sense that something needs to change. It’s safe to hate on Zuma.</p>
<p>The moment does offer an opportunity, evident even to a jaded, cynical feminist. Tlhabi’s book has stepped into this political space with a clear-eyed argument about the small and everyday violations of women that make possible a culture of rape, “a war on women’s bodies”, to use Pumla Gqola’s <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2006-11-27-the-hype-of-womens-empowerment">terms</a>. </p>
<h2>Forthright style</h2>
<p>Using her forthright style, and staking a reputation for honest and fair comment that was built over a long period as a host in talk radio, Tlhabi challenges South Africans to consider the violence that is normalised and invisible in human interactions. She invites people to consider everyday terms, she uncovers the assumptions behind legal terms, she shows readers how to read the discourses that underpin a rape culture. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188969/original/file-20171005-9802-ny6fbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188969/original/file-20171005-9802-ny6fbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188969/original/file-20171005-9802-ny6fbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188969/original/file-20171005-9802-ny6fbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188969/original/file-20171005-9802-ny6fbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188969/original/file-20171005-9802-ny6fbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188969/original/file-20171005-9802-ny6fbb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jacob Zuma at his 2006 rape trial.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the trial, Zuma’s lawyers painstakingly presented Khwezi as a woman who was untrustworthy, inconsistent, hyper-sexualised and entirely to be dismissed. Tlhabi gives us Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo: a likeable, funny, garrulous, trusting woman, a loyal if exasperating friend and a caring daughter, someone who was loved by her friends and comrades. </p>
<p>Her family was the ANC, to be sure, but it was also a collective of feminist friends (old and young) who held her through the worst nightmares of the trial and subsequent re-exile. She shows us how one rape, one abuse, leads to another, that this violence is part of a never ending cycle.</p>
<p>Tlhabi is at pains simultaneously to honour the particular biography of Fezeka, while reminding readers that Fezeka is every woman. She does this well, mapping the single story against a contextual landscape of statistics and historical patterns of violence against women.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188971/original/file-20171005-9774-1l0ckdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188971/original/file-20171005-9774-1l0ckdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188971/original/file-20171005-9774-1l0ckdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188971/original/file-20171005-9774-1l0ckdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188971/original/file-20171005-9774-1l0ckdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188971/original/file-20171005-9774-1l0ckdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188971/original/file-20171005-9774-1l0ckdi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=521&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Anti-rape protesters at Jacob Zuma’s 2006 rape trial in Johannesburg.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fezeka died, tragically and unexpectedly, just a year before the book was published. Her death, too early, is a dramatic end to the personal story. But the publication of the book gives her a public life that, perhaps, she might have felt valorised the experiences that the trial so powerfully cast as lies. </p>
<p>The real lies, of course, are political. Fezeka was let down over and over again by a movement that she loved and trusted. Some leaders – such as Communist stalwart and Zuma critic, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ronald-ronnie-kasrils">Ronnie Kasrils</a> – come out of this sorry story <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/kasrils-to-give-r500k-defamation-money-to-khwezi-20160823">well</a>. Most, however, do not. </p>
<h2>‘Burn the Bitch’</h2>
<p>Throughout the trial, while Zuma played to the rabble of supporters outside the court, the ANC leadership watched in silence. It was silent when he sang his archetypal phallic and violent anthem “Awuleth’ Umshini wam’” (Bring me my machine gun) outside the court room, and silent when members of the ANC carried banners saying <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2006-03-21-timeline-of-the-jacob-zuma-rape-trial">“Burn the Bitch”</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J0WtzQHhPnY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Jacob Zuma at his rape trial in 2006 singing Awuleth’ Umshini wam’ a minute into the video.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And, perhaps, the leaders who were not silent were the most shocking. The ANC Women’s League mobilised actively against Fezeka both in public and in private. They were the storm troopers of patriarchy. </p>
<p>In 2007, unity in the ANC was mobilised against truth and justice. Cosatu and SACP leaders and activists thought that the rape trial was a distraction from the “real” issue of “returning the ANC to the branches”. “One fool at a time,” to coin Fezeka’s favourite line, the ANC and its allies fell behind Zuma.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188974/original/file-20171005-9792-1c2ka76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188974/original/file-20171005-9792-1c2ka76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188974/original/file-20171005-9792-1c2ka76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188974/original/file-20171005-9792-1c2ka76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188974/original/file-20171005-9792-1c2ka76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188974/original/file-20171005-9792-1c2ka76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188974/original/file-20171005-9792-1c2ka76.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jacob Zuma supporters at the court in Johannesburg during his 2006 rape trial.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hutchings/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And no opposition political party offered meaningful support to Fezeka, happy perhaps to leave this dysfunctional family of the ANC to disintegrate.</p>
<h2>What’s changed</h2>
<p>South Africa has changed. In the wake of the trial, a new and assertive feminist movement seeded and grew. It began with the women’s rights organisation, <a href="https://oneinnine.org.za/">“One in Nine”</a>, formed expressly to support Fezeka, and has ballooned well beyond that. </p>
<p>Its daughters are everywhere - the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2016-08-06-four-women-the-president-and-the-protest-that-shoock-the-election-results-ceremony">four young women</a> who held up banners during a Zuma speech at the Independent Electoral Commission in 2015, the <a href="http://www.agenda.org.za/feminisms-womxns-resistance-within-contemporary-african-student-movements/">queer black feminists</a> on university campuses who are no longer prepared to tolerate violence in the name of unity, the artists and musicians and writers who are framing experiences in new ways. They too, are part of a new moment that makes possible a new conversation. </p>
<p>Yet. Yet. At least this reader, observing the hype surrounding the book, is still plagued by the question of who is listening, and what messages are being absorbed into South Africa’s political DNA. Will this book provoke the urgently needed attention to violence by the government, the police, the courts? Will people listening and reading ask themselves if they have enabled a culture of rape?</p>
<p>It isn’t just Jacob Zuma who stands accused of rape, after all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85262/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shireen Hassim receives funding from the Andrew W Mellon Foundation for research on gender and intimacies. She is a Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and the Matina S. Horner Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. </span></em></p>
South Africa has changed since Jacob Zuma’s 2006 rape trial. In recent years, a new and assertive feminist movement has emerged and attacks on the president have become common cause.
Shireen Hassim, Professor of Politics, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/82399
2017-08-13T09:17:59Z
2017-08-13T09:17:59Z
What’s happening inside the ANC, not parliament, is key to why Zuma prevails
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181812/original/file-20170811-13511-8ns7li.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Supporters of President Jacob Zuma reacting to the vote of no confidence proceedings in parliament.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Rogan Ward</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What matters inside the African National Congress, the party that governs South Africa, is not necessarily what matters outside it. This obvious point is missed by much of the commentary on the latest unsuccessful <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/08/08/zuma-survives-no-confidence-vote">motion of no confidence </a> in President Jacob Zuma – and in much discussion of South African politics.</p>
<p>One result of ignoring this reality is the claim that the vote seriously <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2017-08-09-analysis-even-as-he-wins-his-8th-no-confidence-vote-zuma-appears-weak/">weakened Zuma</a> because several dozen ANC members of parliament supported the motion or abstained.</p>
<p>This was the first time some ANC MPs supported a motion of no confidence in an ANC president. But, while Zuma came <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/08/08/zuma-survives-no-confidence-vote">within 21 votes of losing</a> in parliament, he was probably backed by 80% or more of the ANC caucus. Most of the votes against him were cast by opposition MPs, who do not have a say in who is ANC president, not ANC members, who do. </p>
<p>Unless parliament passes a motion of no confidence in him, which is not on the cards any time soon, his future depends on whether he was weakened in the ANC, not parliament.</p>
<p>Within the ANC, Zuma’s future is not the absorbing fixation it is outside it.</p>
<h2>Loyalty amid factionalism</h2>
<p>For many outside the ANC, politicians are defined by whether they want Zuma to go. Inside it, the key reality is a battle between two factions: Zuma’s is accused by its opponents, whose likeliest presidential candidate is deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, of using public office to advance private interests. While Zuma is supported by one and opposed by the other, both know he does not shape what the ANC and government do on his own – he acts as part of a faction. If he goes and the faction wins, nothing changes and so for both sides, winning the factional battle is far more important than Zuma’s fate.</p>
<p>The contest is centred on winning the leadership elections at the ANC’s <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/54th-national-conference">December national elective conference</a>. What both sides do, they do with that in mind – Zuma’s fate is a product of this battle.</p>
<p>Key figures in the factions also want to run an ANC in good shape to win the next election and so they worry about splitting or damaging the organisation. If doing what matters to people outside the ANC risks harming it, they will not do it.</p>
<p>There is no evidence yet that the vote weakened Zuma’s faction. Because the vote was secret, we don’t know which MPs voted for him to go. But common sense suggests that they are not pro-Zuma faction members who changed sides but staunch members of the group which wants him gone. So the anti-Zuma group has not grown because some of its members expressed themselves more forcefully.</p>
<p>Nor does it show that the tide within the ANC is moving against Zuma. What matters inside the ANC, but not outside it, is loyalty to the organisation. For many years it was banned and under constant attack – this produced a culture in which the default position is to close ranks in the face of what it sees as outside attack. This made the dissent by ANC MPs a huge step for them. But there is no reason why their view should be shared by others – given the premium on loyalty, their decision could help the pro-Zuma faction by discrediting its opposition.</p>
<p>This misfit between the logic of ANC politics and that outside it explains other aspects of the no confidence vote which have caused confusion. One is that figures such as secretary-general Gwede Mantashe and chief whip Jackson Mthembu <a href="http://city-press.news24.com/News/no-confidence-vote-not-about-zuma-but-about-anc-mantashe-20170808">worked to get ANC MPs to defeat the motion</a> although they oppose Zuma’s faction; the SA Communist Party, which has <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/zuma-must-go-sacp-20170331">called on Zuma to go</a>, did not ask its members to support the motion.</p>
<p>They did this not because they have switched sides but because they believed Zuma’s defeat in a no confidence vote was unlikely – and would not help them if it happened. The opposing faction would still be there, as strong as before. They might be strong enough to replace Zuma with another member of the faction, changing nothing. Or, more likely, the deadlock between the factions would tear the ANC apart and might allow the opposition to elect a president by default. So they preferred to feign loyalty and to work to take over the ANC in December.</p>
<h2>Balance of power</h2>
<p>This means that the overwhelming ANC caucus vote against the motion does not tell us that the faction to which Zuma belongs is winning and will control the ANC after December. Many MPs who voted against the anti-Zuma motion may be part of the faction which wants him gone: they may have voted as they did because the leaders of their faction told them that strategy made this necessary. So the balance of power in the ANC, which decided who will lead it next year, may not have been affected either way by the no confidence vote.</p>
<p>What is happening inside the ANC may not be morally uplifting. But nor is it about foolishness or hypocrisy. It stems from decisions which are entirely logical if what matters inside the ANC matters to you. If everyone outside the ANC wants to grasp what is happening and where it might lead, they need to understand what matters inside the ANC.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82399/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Friedman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Unless parliament passes a motion of no confidence in him, which is not on the cards any time soon, Zuma’s future depends on whether he’s weakened in the African National Congress, not parliament.
Steven Friedman, Professor of Political Studies, University of Johannesburg
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/76609
2017-04-25T19:41:21Z
2017-04-25T19:41:21Z
South Africa has a new trade union federation. Can it break the mould?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166582/original/file-20170425-12468-17hcapr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Delegates at the launch of the South African Federation of Trade Unions.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Star/Nokuthula Mbatha</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The newly launched trade union grouping in South Africa – the South African Federation of Trade Unions <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/04/21/saftu-launch-marks-end-of-long-journey-since-numsa-left-cosatu">(Saftu)</a> – promises to be a voice for the growing numbers of unorganised and marginalised workers in the country. But, as the secretary of the South African Informal Traders Alliance warned delegates, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Don’t break our hearts with false promises.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Historically, trade unions in South Africa have played a significant role in shaping the political landscape, especially during the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43157717">struggle against apartheid</a>. But the union movement has declined globally in influence as the growing informalistion of work has eroded its power and unions are seen as protecting the special interests of those in regular employment.</p>
<p>With increasing numbers of people outside the formal employment net, unions have had a tough time defining their role. Yet the rights won by South African workers in the struggle for democracy continues to give them a degree of influence unsurpassed in post-colonial Africa.</p>
<p>The new federation was conceived over two years ago in the wake of the <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/Labour/News/Cosatu-to-lose-millions-over-Numsa-split-20141112">expulsion</a> of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa from trade union federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu). The expulsion signified growing political realignment in the country given that Cosatu is in an alliance with the governing African National Congress. The union’s expulsion <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2015-03-30-cosatu-fires-zwelinzima-vavi">was followed by</a> that of the Cosatu general secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi. </p>
<p>So what difference is the new federation likely to make to the lives of workers in South Africa, as well as the very large number of unemployed people and those in the informal economy?</p>
<p>Significantly, the new federation is not the outcome of a surge in worker militancy. Instead, it’s a response to the perceived failure of existing unions to provide an adequate voice and service to their members. The new federation is in fact the product of the crisis facing traditional trade unions across the globe.</p>
<p>A strength of the federation will be its ability to combine the experiences of long standing union leaders with a new generation of unionists disillusioned with the governing party and its two <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=2051">alliance partners</a> – Cosatu and the South African Communist Party. </p>
<p>With nearly 700 000 members, it’s the second largest federation in South Africa after Cosatu. But the challenges facing an attempt to “cross the divide” between organised workers and the growing <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/precariat-global-class-rise-of-populism/">precariat</a> – those in casual, outsourced and informal jobs – will require strategic leadership willing to move out of the comfort zone of traditional unionism, recruit unfamiliar constituencies and experiment with new ways of organising.</p>
<h2>Challenges facing the new federation</h2>
<p>The first challenge will be to break with the bureaucratic practices that have seen many union leaders gradually distanced from their members. If the practices of “business unionism” – where unions come to mirror the values and practices of business – are to be challenged, two big issues will need to be revisited. These are union investment companies and the gap between the salaries of some union leaders and their members. </p>
<p>The new federation could make its mark within the labour movement by taking lifestyle issues seriously and, in particular, the wage gap within its own ranks.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166505/original/file-20170424-27254-f2svy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166505/original/file-20170424-27254-f2svy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166505/original/file-20170424-27254-f2svy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166505/original/file-20170424-27254-f2svy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=646&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166505/original/file-20170424-27254-f2svy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166505/original/file-20170424-27254-f2svy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166505/original/file-20170424-27254-f2svy8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=812&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Zwelinzima Vavi, secretary general of the new trade union federation Saftu.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/John Hrusa</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The second challenge is around political diversity. What was striking at the launch was the wide range of political and ideological views. An illustration was the lively debate over the <a href="http://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/2017/04/24/new-union-federation-anti-politics-pro-workers/">relationship</a> between pan-Africanism and Marxist-Leninism. </p>
<p>But there was consensus that there should be no party political affiliation. Saftu, it was agreed, should be politically independent. The challenge will be for the new federation to be a genuine forum for political debate, respecting different views, and even allowing different ideological factions to be institutionalised.</p>
<p>The most difficult challenge arises from the shift from industrial unions to general unions. The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa led the way when it extended its scope to include a variety of economic activities beyond metalworkers. This included, for example, university cleaners and bus drivers. Furthermore, many of the Saftu affiliates are general unions. </p>
<p>How to deal with the danger of internal “poaching” of members was extensively discussed at the launch. Will the protocols proposed in the report of the steering committee prevent divisive conflict in the future? </p>
<p>Another major challenge facing Saftu is the need for innovative strategies on new ways of organising. It’s not clear how the federation intends to recruit the new constituencies of women, immigrants, low paid service workers, outsourced workers and the growing numbers of workers in the informal economy. Experiments in organising precarious workers, such as the <a href="http://www.cwao.org.za/contact.asp">Casual Workers Advice Office</a> in Germiston, need to be examined as they could provide ways of crossing the divide between the old and the new.</p>
<p>Another difficult challenge will be defining the federation’s position on economic policy. Harsh criticisms were made of the proposed national minimum wage of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-search-for-a-national-minimum-wage-laid-bare-south-africas-faultlines-69382">R20 an hour</a>. But maybe it is time to confront the dilemma that for many workers a bad job is better than no job. Has the time not arrived to go beyond the demand for decent work to explore what kind of role trade unions have in a developing country such as South Africa, in the context of a uni-polar world, dominated by neo-liberal capitalism? </p>
<h2>New ways of organising</h2>
<p>The leaders of the new federation are confident that a number of Cosatu affiliated unions will join, or if the unions don’t, their member will come across. But will the federation be able to break out of the old organising straight jacket? </p>
<p>To organise the low paid and the precarious is an ambitious task. There’s growing evidence that innovative strategies to bridge the informal-formal “divide” are emerging in the Global South with successful attempts emerging in <a href="http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:291569/FULLTEXT01.pdf">other parts of Africa </a>. For example, in Ghana an alliance of informal port workers with national trade unions has been formed and is proving to be effective.</p>
<p>Labour scholar, <a href="http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3755&context=jssw">Rina Agarwala</a>, has challenged the conventional view that informalisation is the “final nail in the labour movement’s coffin”. Informal workers in India, she demonstrates, are creating new institutions and forging a new social contract between the state and labour. New informal worker organisations are not attached to a particular party, nor do they espouse a specific political or economic ideology.</p>
<p>It’s too soon to pronounce on the future of the new federation. But it’s clear that workers are increasingly rejecting traditional trade unions and forming new types of organisations that bring workers together to promote their rights and interests. The future lies with unions that are forward looking and see the global economy as an opportunity for a new kind of unionism. </p>
<p>Saftu needs to draw on these experiences if it’s to fulfil the promise of its launch.</p>
<p><em>Edward Webster will soon be launching a collection of research based essays on precarious work in India, Ghana and South Africa. <a href="http://www.ukznpress.co.za/?class=bb_ukzn_books&method=view_books&global%5Bfields%5D%5B_id%5D=518">Crossing the Divide: Precarious Work and the Future of Labour</a>, together with Akua O. Britwum and the late Sharit Bhowmik.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76609/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edward Webster does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
South Africa’s newest trade union federation, Saftu, comes at a time of declining political influence by unions, compared to during the struggle against apartheid. They are also seen as elitist.
Edward Webster, Professor Emeritus, Society, Work and Development Institute, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/64715
2017-04-09T08:50:33Z
2017-04-09T08:50:33Z
Remembering South African struggle hero Chris Hani: lessons for today
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139576/original/image-20160928-27034-7l1lh9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the South African Communist Party (SACP) sing and dance with a poster of Chris Hani.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The “what if” game is popular with the media and the <a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/commentariat">commentariat</a> in South Africa. A popular example is “what if …” South African Communist Party (SACP) leader <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thembisile-chris-hani">Chris Hani</a> were still alive.</p>
<p>What, for example, would he say about the SACP’s <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/kids/tripartite-alliance">tripartate alliance</a> partner, the African National Congress? What would he say about the state of the alliance after recent calls by both partners, the SACP and union federation Cosatu for President Jacob Zuma <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2017-04-04-cosatu-the-time-has-come-for-president-jacob-zuma-to-step-down">to step down</a>?</p>
<p>These questions are being asked again on the anniversary of Hani’s <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/stnews/2016/03/10/Remember-How-the-Sunday-Times-covered-Chris-Hanis-assassination">assassination</a> on April 10, 1992 by two rightwing extremists.</p>
<p>But such use, often by the liberal media, of Hani’s name (and those of other fallen cadres of the liberation movement) is problematic. It seeks to isolate Hani from the movement that produced him, presenting him as an exception it can then appropriate.</p>
<p>Hani’s name is also regularly invoked by the SACP and the ANC come election time. Many campaign posters call on supporters to “Do it for Chris Hani”. Here, the summoning of Hani’s memory has become little more than empty rhetoric. </p>
<p>A more useful exercise may be to reflect on Hani’s life, actions and beliefs, and their significance for today. </p>
<h2>A popular hero</h2>
<p>In his book “<a href="http://jacana.bookslive.co.za/blog/2014/11/21/new-pocket-biographies-chris-hani-thomas-sankara-patrice-lumumba-and-haile-selassie/">A Jacana Pocket Biography: Chris Hani</a>” historian Hugh Macmillan argues it was Hani’s physical and moral bravery, his compassion and humanity that made him a “popular hero” – the words used by French philosopher <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2004/oct/11/guardianobituaries.france">Jacques Derrida</a> to describe Hani in his <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=sEENbAP5FZsC&redir_esc=y">Spectres of Marx</a> lecture.</p>
<p>Hani helped build a culture of internal criticism in the ANC. In 1969 he and six other commissars and commanders of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the ANC’s military wing, signed what became known as the “<a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/%26lsquo%3Bhani-memorandum%E2%80%99-%26ndash%3B-introduced-and-annotated-hugh-macmillan">Hani memorandum</a>”. The memorandum <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2016/08/10/time-for-a-hani-memo">outlined</a> the “frightening depth of the rot in the ANC”, accusing its leadership of careerism, corruption and persecution by the party’s security.</p>
<p>Hani’s memorandum was the catalyst for one of the most significant events in the history of the ANC in exile, a conference in Morogoro, Tanzania. But it was viewed as treacherous by some within the leadership, particularly those it had criticised. Hani and his comrades were expelled from the ANC and only reinstated after the Morogoro conference. </p>
<p>Russian scholar <a href="http://www.inafran.ru/en/node/350">Vladimir Shubin</a> has <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/book-categories/current-affairs-a-history/anc-a-view-from-moscow-detail">argued</a> that it was largely thanks to the memorandum that the delegates to the conference included rank and file MK members and not just the leadership.</p>
<p>The Morogoro conference opened ANC membership to non-Africans. It also adopted the important “Strategy and Tactics” <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/strategy-and-tactics-statement-adopted-anc-morogoro-conference-april-may-1969-abridged-0">document</a>. This provided – for the first time since the ANC’s banning in 1960 – a systematic assessment of the conditions of struggle and an overall vision for defeating apartheid in a time of deep political demoralisation. </p>
<p>The conference was a moment of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/sadet1_chap14.pdf">self-reflection</a>. It helped the ANC to overcome the state of crisis and demoralisation that had set in. </p>
<p>The ability of the leadership of both the ANC and its closest ally, the SACP, to reassess circumstances, interrogate these and themselves, and learn from past mistakes to overcome difficult moments is one of the most important lessons from their history. This tradition of internal debate has become eroded, and criticism keeps being silenced as <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2017-04-05-fighting-violations-of-what-the-anc-stands-for-is-not-sowing-disunity/">sowing disunity</a>.</p>
<h2>Disrupting notions of masculinity</h2>
<p>A famous quote by Che Guevara states that “the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love”. Leaders like Hani were moved to act by their hearts as well as by reason. The decision to join the liberation struggle was one of reason – a conscious rejection of apartheid oppression and inequality. But it was also a choice informed by “revolutionary love” or a “love for the people” – shaped by a sense of justice and by compassion, as well as by a vision, the ability to imagine a different future.</p>
<p>As struggle veteran and public intellectual <a href="https://raymondsuttner.com/about/">Raymond Suttner</a> points out in <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/book-categories/current-affairs-a-history/recovering-democracy-in-south-africa-detail">Recovering Democracy in South Africa</a>, what is new and alarming about many of the ANC’s current leaders is their callousness. The plight of the poor no longer evokes compassion or empathy from a government that is supposed to represent them.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=823&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/139578/original/image-20160928-27047-133qk2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1034&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chris Hani salutes at a rally of the African National Congress (ANC) in this file picture taken December 16, 1991.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mike Hutchings/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both Suttner and Macmillan also highlight Hani’s commitment to disrupting notions of heroic masculinity. In his book Macmillan tells the story of one of Hani’s comrades <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thenjiwe-mtintso">Thenjiwe Mtintso</a> who credited him with introducing her to the gender content of the liberation struggle when she arrived in exile.</p>
<p>Hani’s concern with gender issues can also be seen in his reaction to the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/Aspects_of_the_experiences_of_10_women_in_MK.pdf">abuse of women</a> in MK camps. He <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/anc_underground_mplan_rivonia.pdf">introduced a rule</a> that prevented officers from forming relationships with new women recruits.</p>
<p>By looking at the life of people like Hani South Africans can recover the possibility of alternative and gentler types of masculinity to the prevailing models of patriarchal, machoist, militaristic and violent manhood.</p>
<h2>Communist for life</h2>
<p>At the time of South Africa’s transition to democracy Hani decided to resign from ANC structures and concentrate his efforts on building the SACP. He understood that there would be a need to build the party for it to be a truly democratic and democratising force in a post-apartheid South Africa intent on taking the struggle of the working class and the poor forward.</p>
<p>While the SACP would have to redefine itself in the new South Africa, Hani believed that it should be the main agent of change. That’s where his loyalty to the party was rooted.</p>
<p>Hani was not a communist in passing. He immersed himself completely into the liberation struggle. And it was “a communist as communist”, to <a href="http://bat020.tumblr.com/post/47613716841/jacques-derrida-on-chris-hani">quote</a> Derrida again, that his assassins were out to get.</p>
<p>The story of his life –- and that of many others –- is exemplary of this total commitment and willingness to sacrifice one’s life for an ideal. It was ideas, a political project and the movement that counted – not individuals, because no one would have made it on their own. </p>
<p>This may be difficult to imagine in today’s society where individualism and self-interest reign supreme and personalised politics has become the norm. But it was by doing things with, and for others, as part of a collective movement that people like Hani found their self-realisation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64715/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arianna Lissoni does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The name of ANC struggle hero Chris Hani, who was assassinated in 1993, is regularly invoked to win political arguments in South Africa.
Arianna Lissoni, Researcher at History Workshop, University of the Witwatersrand
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/69517
2016-11-29T09:48:26Z
2016-11-29T09:48:26Z
A new centre of power through mass mobilisation is needed in South Africa
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147900/original/image-20161129-10975-ppguyu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Demands to recall South African President Jacob Zuma reached a climax at the governing ANC's national executive meeting.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s governing African National Congress <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/">(ANC)</a> has long argued that the elected president of the party should also be the executive head of the country to avoid creating <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2007-06-27-anc-debates-two-centres-of-power">two centres of power</a>. Otherwise the centre of power in the party would inevitably be at odds with that of the president of the country. </p>
<p>But the idea that by taking this route it would avoid conflict has come to nought. Jacob Zuma is president of the party as well as the country. But the ANC and the government, the executive in particular, <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-11-27-zuma-to-launch-fight-back-as-anc-nec-present-motion-for-the-president-to-step-down">are at war</a>. </p>
<p>Senior members of the national executive committee of the ANC tabled a motion for Zuma <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/motion-for-zuma-to-step-down-tabled-at-anc-nec-meeting-reports">to step down</a>, echoing similar calls by <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/11/anc-icons-demand-jacob-zuma-resignation-vote-161109132942397.html">party stalwarts</a>. It is now evident that South Africa has two centres of political power. </p>
<p>One can speculate as to who holds the reins within the ANC and is increasingly at odds with the presidency. What is clear is that all is not well in the party structures. </p>
<p>Because of this my contention is that South Africa needs a third centre of power. The country needs a mass democratic movement to confront the mismanagement that will otherwise beset it. </p>
<p>To an extent South Africa has been down this road before, to great effect. In the 1980s leaders such as <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cheryl-carolus">Cheryl Carolus</a> and Reverend <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/reverend-allan-aubrey-boesak">Allan Boasak</a> were instrumental in creating the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/organisations/united-democratic-front-udf">United Democratic Front</a> which rallied diverse people around a single purpose: co-ordinated mass action to oppose the apartheid regime. This time such a movement will need to focus on enhancing good governance to ensure socio-economic development. </p>
<p>This should draw together a host of players ranging from not-for-profit organisations to religious bodies and active citizens who want to save the country.</p>
<h2>Business is powerful, but not organised</h2>
<p>The business community has held a significant amount of sway over the direction the country has taken since democracy <a href="http://www.rdm.co.za/business/2016/11/15/government-and-business---where-did-it-all-go-wrong">in 1994</a>. At its core, the policy regime of the last two decades has been a <em>de facto</em> settlement by way of compromise between political elites and big capital.</p>
<p>Organised labour, through the guise of its <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/kids/tripartite-alliance">alliance partnership</a> with the ANC and the South African Communist Party, has served to cement this corporatist pact between the <a href="http://unbc.arcabc.ca/islandora/object/unbc%3A6679/datastream/PDF/view">private and public sectors</a>. So while the business sector remains an influential actor on the national scene, the lack of unity and coordinated effort by business has neutralised its capacity to steer the state.</p>
<p>The country’s business sector is led by two main bodies; <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/business/companies/busa-warns-eskom-on-nuclear-plans-2093258">Business Unity South Africa</a> and <a href="http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/blsa-appoints-mabuza-as-chair-as-it-unveils-new-leaders-2016-10-21/rep_id:4136">Business Leadership South Africa</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://cajnewsafrica.com/2016/11/25/exclusive-council-fears-lack-of-sa-transformation-could-spark-turmoil/">Contending voices</a> such as those of the Black Business Council and upstart Progressive Professionals Forum are eroding <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2016/11/05/some-relief-for-eskom-as-2-organisations-show-it-support">the voice of business</a>. The latter groupings are breakaway factions of <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2011-09-12-black-business-council-wrong-step-in-the-right-direction/">organised business</a> who favour a more aggressive <a href="http://www.thenewage.co.za/bbc-calls-for-radical-economic-transformation/">transformation</a> agenda and stronger alignment with President Zuma’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHKaIvMZqKg">administration</a>. </p>
<p>This erosion is laid bare by the fact that business only mobilised and <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/business/news/banks-showed-zuma-his-limits-1960890">reacted</a> once international markets had punished the president and the country after <a href="http://nenegate.biznews.com">Nenegate</a>. This was the scandalous expulsion of finance minister Nhlanhla Nene in December 2015. Zuma’s appointment of a new finance minister has historically been handled with due care for the management of business confidence and <a href="http://www.financialmail.co.za/features/2015/12/10/zuma-fires-finance-minister-nene-rand-crashes-to-record-r1538us">perceptions</a>, but BLSA and BUSA groupings were caught entirely unaware of the <a href="http://allafrica.com/view/group/main/main/id/00040315.html">impending change</a>. </p>
<h2>Two centres, no progress</h2>
<p>The implication of a split in the political centre of power is that South Africa’s national development project will be <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-can-expect-zero-growth-its-problems-are-largely-homemade-62943">gridlocked</a>. Except for a handful of localised multi-stakeholder projects, such as those driven by Premier David Makhura’s <a href="http://www.southafrica.info/about/government/mega-projects-080415.htm#.WDwuxncy9E5">Gauteng government on a local level</a>, very little will be achieved between the social partners of government, business and labour under these conditions. </p>
<p>It also means that these two centres will drive different agendas. The party will be steering towards immediate political imperatives such as securing votes in the 2019 national and provincial elections. On the other hand, the increasingly isolated, defensive and desperate executive is likely to close ranks and attempt to <a href="http://www.rdm.co.za/politics/2016/11/20/how-zuma-s-securocrats-are-closing-down-the-public-space">use the security cluster</a> with increasing vigour as a weapon against its opponents.</p>
<h2>New centre of power</h2>
<p>What remains to be done by those who continue to hold a vision of a democratic, progressive and increasingly equitable society?</p>
<p>Their task is to construct from civil society a <a href="http://www.dispatchlive.co.za/politics/2016/11/24/zuma-rattled-save-south-africa-campaigns-potential-says-section27s-heywood/">new centre of power</a> – people power, citizen power, built on the power of just claims, energised by the power of righteous indignation. After all, the power of a society rests in its people and only then in its <a href="http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_democSocPwrAnal.html">institutions</a>.</p>
<p>South Africa again needs a mass democratic movement. The main actors in such a force for common good will inevitably have to include <a href="https://theconversation.com/dangerous-echoes-of-the-past-as-church-and-state-move-closer-in-south-africa-65985">churches, mosques and temples</a>. These civil society groups enjoy a shared representation of the vast majority of citizens, with around 81% of the population self-identifying as Christians, many of whom regularly participate in faith community practices. This force will also have to include trade unions and community organisations, NGOs and rights activists. </p>
<p>There are early signs of the emergence of just such a <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2016-06-05-i-am-the-third-force/">third force for good</a> in the likes of the <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2016-10-25-save-south-africa-whose-protest-is-it-anyway">SaveSA movement</a>, the Socio-Economic Future of South Africa convened by the <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-02-18-a-return-to-civil-action-clergy-to-spearhead-new-movement-to-tackle-crises-in-south-africa/">Archbishop of Cape Town</a>, and the public call to prayer for a change in national leadership by <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/saturday-star/opinion-prayer-a-weapon-to-fight-injustice-2087156">Reverend Moss Ntlha</a>. </p>
<p>For a project of mass mobilisation to succeed, South Africans who have been deeply loyal to their liberation movement masters will have to take back their agency and right of refusal. ANC membership would need to become a choice and not a <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2016/06/10/anc-has-been-reduced-to-a-shady-network-of-patronage-and-corruption-maimane">birthmark for privilege</a>. Liberation credentials will again have to be hard earned. But this time liberation will mean holding one’s friends in high office and those in the boardrooms to account.</p>
<p>South Africa now has two centres of power. It needs a third if it is to navigate the polar risks of <a href="http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2016/11/25/zuma-turns-to-high-court-to-review-state-capture-report">state capture</a> and <a href="http://www.mistra.org.za/Library/ConferencePaper/Documents/South%20Africa's%20Developmental%20Capacity.pdf">state incapacity</a> and forge a path to inclusive prosperity. Is the country’s labour movement awake to this reality? If the clergy have come to this conviction, can the men, women and young people who do not benefit from the country’s system of patronage be mobilised to shoulder this task?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marius Oosthuizen has previously received funding from faith-based Foundations such as the Maclellan Foundation, agencies such as the British High Commission and a variety of research grants. He is affiliated with SEFSA, the Socio-Economic Future of South Africa, a civil society dialogue initiative to secure the future of South Africa.
</span></em></p>
There are early signs of the emergence of a third force for good in South Africa in the likes of the Save SA movement and Socio-Economic Future of South Africa convened by the Archbishop of Cape Town.
Marius Oosthuizen, Full time faculty, Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/69119
2016-11-21T20:53:39Z
2016-11-21T20:53:39Z
Why South Africa can’t deliver on the social contract set out in its constitution
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146669/original/image-20161120-19371-8byiwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa protesting against youth unemployment.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Rogan Ward</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa is facing a cluster of crises. </p>
<p>There is a crisis of legitimacy <a href="https://polotiki.com/2016/11/06/anc-must-ask-president-jacob-zuma-to-resign-and-for-cde-cyril-ramaphosa-to-complete-his-term-as-president-of-the-republic-mathole-motshekga/">around President Jacob Zuma</a>. A crisis around <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-compromises-and-mistakes-made-in-the-mandela-era-hobbled-south-africas-economy-52156">the validity of the pre-1994 settlement</a> which has not delivered on its initial promises. There is a generalised <a href="https://theconversation.com/zuma-and-anc-run-out-of-road-as-bad-news-piles-up-68197">political crisis</a> within the governing African National Congress (ANC) and tripartite alliance. There is a <a href="http://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/labour/2016-09-01-large-new-labour-federation-will-be-apolitical-zwelinzima-vavi-says/">crisis in the labour movement</a> and its institutions. There is a crisis of growing populism.</p>
<p>There is the economic crisis of <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/double-trouble-for-sa-over-soaring-unemployment-20160510">rising unemployment</a>, stagnating social mobility and a growing population of <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-04-18-the-great-reversal-stats-sa-claims-black-youth-are-less-skilled-than-their-parents/">unskilled youth</a>. There is the crisis of <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-can-expect-zero-growth-its-problems-are-largely-homemade-62943">low economic growth</a>. There is the lingering crisis of the degrading poverty and social breakdown in communities, crime, abuse of women and children, vulnerability and despair.</p>
<p>There is a deep systemic crisis in all levels of education, where significant government resources are budgeted but where the situation for the majority of young people has <a href="http://city-press.news24.com/News/shocking-stats-for-sa-youth-20160427">worsened over time</a>.</p>
<p>South Africa’s problem is that its <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-wait-for-a-beautiful-leader-south-africa-rather-rely-on-the-constitution-68757">constitution is a perfect brochure</a> of the nation it aspires to be. But the contractors entrusted with its future have an entirely different project in mind. </p>
<p>None of these crises are fundamentally new. But they all have their origin in long-standing legacy issues rooted in South Africa’s apartheid and colonialist past.</p>
<h2>Legacies</h2>
<p>These legacies have precipitated a mismatch between South Africa’s political-economy, the nexus of political and economic power, and the society whose aspirations the system is meant to address. Democracy unlocked a path to political rights for all South Africans. But socio-economic rights have remained illusive for millions. </p>
<p>This dire reality has been masked, for a time, by the progressive fiscal spending of the state. Since 1994 this has favoured the poor in the form of social grants and enormous social infrastructure programs for <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/south-africa%E2%80%99s-key-economic-policies-changes-1994-2013">access to basic rights</a>. But none of this has translated into long term economic upliftment. </p>
<p>The state’s approach to disbursements has meant that dependence on the state has ballooned in terms of direct cash transfers as well as rapid growth of the government wage bill. At the same time state efficiency has been degraded. </p>
<p>Coupled with other weaknesses in the state, South Africans have increasingly become frustrated with the low pace of change. People have expressed their dissatisfaction in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/political-violence-in-south-africa-points-to-rising-tensions-in-the-anc-61440">form of mounting protests</a>. And in latest local government elections they also <a href="https://theconversation.com/major-shift-in-south-african-politics-as-the-da-breaks-out-of-its-cape-enclave-63619">withheld their vote for the ANC</a>, or voted for opposition parties.</p>
<h2>Only a few enjoy economic benefits</h2>
<p>At the same time South Africa’s highly consolidated economy has increasingly benefited only the elite at the exclusion of the unskilled. Except for a small club of politically connected beneficiaries, most people have looked to the state rather than to business for relief. This has translated into economic growth without expansion in the labour market. </p>
<p>In addition, poorly performing state owned enterprises such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-africas-power-utility-isnt-in-great-financial-shape-68441">Eskom</a> have precipitated the impact of rising energy costs while rising demands from labour have put old business models under cost pressures. All this has led to a lack of investment locally.</p>
<p>In addition, the stubborn spatial divides precipitated by apartheid policies have meant that millions of the most vulnerable South Africans are structurally excluded from participating in the formal economy. Even if there were jobs, they would come at great personal expense in the form of travel time and costs. And while the informal economy has grown, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/20/south-africa-xenophobic-violence-migrants-workforce">the influx of migrants</a> from neighbouring states and countries such as Ethiopia and Pakistan has introduced vigorous competition between traders in the informal sector.</p>
<p>More recently a destabilising youth bulge, a cohort of South Africans increasingly indifferent to the pre-and post 1994 Rainbow Nation narrative has come to the fore. This is manifest in the emerging #Fallest culture, calling for change in the form of <a href="http://thoughtleader.co.za/mariusoosthuizen/2016/10/14/fallist-culture-the-emergence-of-african-fascist-nationalism/">#RhodesMustFall</a>, <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/gauteng/afrikaansmustfall-sparks-mayhem-at-tuks-1988175">#AfrikaansMustFall</a> and more recently <a href="https://theconversation.com/university-fees-in-south-africa-many-questions-lots-of-anger-and-fires-to-fight-65681">#FeesMustFall</a>. This is a groundswell that I believe has only just begun.</p>
<h2>New economic regime needed</h2>
<p>There are competing narratives of why the status quo has emerged.</p>
<p>The narrative emerging from the ANC and its alliance partners the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions is that corporate South Africa, and big business in particular, have not demonstrated a <a href="http://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/2016/03/29/mbeki-blames-business-community-for-governments-struggling-economic-policies/">patriotic loyalty to South Africa</a>. This, they argue, would translate into investment and higher growth and more rapid racial transformation. </p>
<p>In turn big business has argued that the failings of the political establishment and grotesque shortcomings of the current executive have been at the root of its <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/safrica-businesssentiment-rmb-idUSJ8N18G04M">reluctance to invest</a>. </p>
<p>Narratives from civil society have included criticism of the middle class and previously advantaged communities for refusing to share in the wealth of the country. And emerging on the left has been a narrative, increasingly echoed by the youth, that South Africa’s negotiated settlement was a victory for white monopoly capital at the expense of the legitimate claims of the black majority.</p>
<p>The hard truth is that South Africa has limited options for developing its economy to address its social ills. This is because of the historical interdependence of the country’s economy on its large industrial state owned enterprises for cheap production inputs, in addition to its more recent openness in terms of foreign investment in securities and the currency. </p>
<p>In essence, productive capital is in the hands of a few who do not depend personally on South Africa’s long term stability. On the other hand political power is centralised in the hands of a small elite which is now interdependent on the holders of capital domestically and abroad. Individuals in this elite rely on their political positions to sustain their economic advantage. </p>
<p>This means that the bulk of South African society is excluded both economically and politically from the means to address their plight and often lack the conditions suitable to taking an entrepreneurial route to upward mobility. </p>
<p>In essence, South Africa’s post apartheid economy is unable to deliver on the social contract enshrined in the constitution. In its current form the political economy of the country simply cannot address the discrepancies between the society envisioned in the constitution and the lived reality of citizens rapidly enough. </p>
<p>South Africa’s choices are not between clear and simple “left” versus “right” economic ideologies. Rather, its future rests on an intricate set of inter-dependencies that match opportunities for capital with inefficiencies in the national development system. And South Africa needs a new economic regime that, over time, dynamically matches the structure of its labour market as skills are developed.</p>
<p>But neither the social capital nor the institutional mechanisms exist to bring this about.</p>
<p>As far as I can see the only path out is for the sleeping giant of civil society to awake to this reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69119/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marius Oosthuizen receives funding from organisations such as the British High Commission and a variety of research grants. He is affiliated with SEFSA, the Socio-Economic Future of South African, a civil society dialogue initiative to secure the future of South Africa. </span></em></p>
South Africa’s problem is that its constitution is a perfect brochure of the nation it aspires to be. But the contractors entrusted with its future have an entirely different project in mind.
Marius Oosthuizen, Full time faculty, Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/52915
2016-01-08T12:28:32Z
2016-01-08T12:28:32Z
South Africa’s governing party celebrates 104 years amid growing disaffection
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/107646/original/image-20160108-3301-pkxju6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's governing African National Congress celebrates its 104th anniversary this year, ahead of crucial local government elections. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa’s governing African National Congress celebrates its 104th birthday in 2016. In keeping with tradition, the party’s president Jacob Zuma will deliver the annual <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/list.php?t=January%208th%20Statements">January 8 statement</a>, mapping out the party’s main activities for the year ahead.</p>
<p>Historically, the statement has set the tone for government and informed the president of the country’s annual state of the nation <a href="http://www.gov.za/state-nation-address-2015">address</a>, at the opening of Parliament in February. </p>
<p>The event will be keenly watched to, among other things, gauge what the party considers to be the main challenges facing the country; and how it plans to lead in navigating them. </p>
<p>Among the reasons Zuma’s speech will be closely watched include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>It comes in the same week that <a href="http://businesstech.co.za/news/government/108103/anc-defends-white-south-africans-in-racism-row/">racism</a> dominated national discourse. There have been numerous calls for it to be either criminalised or punished <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/01/07/south-africa-racism-fight/78404322/">more harshly</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>The devastating blow to the economy caused by his recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-removal-of-south-africas-finance-minister-is-bad-news-for-the-country-52170">firing</a> of Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene. Zuma’s handling of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-zumas-actions-point-to-shambolic-management-of-south-africas-economy-52174">issue</a> saw mounting calls for his <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2015/12/17/Over-6000-attend-ZumaMustFall-marches">dismissal</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>Upcoming municipal elections, which come amid <a href="https://theconversation.com/annulled-local-byelections-shed-light-on-the-state-of-south-africas-democracy-52100">declining electoral support</a>. </p></li>
<li><p>Rising disaffection with the slow pace of change, as shown by <a href="https://theconversation.com/protests-soar-amid-unmet-expectations-in-south-africa-42013">soaring</a> popular protests about poor delivery on key socioeconomic issues. Unemployment, poverty and inequality remain <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africa-why-economic-freedom-is-proving-to-be-the-ancs-undoing-48339">stubbornly high</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>Growing anger at rampant government <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Hundreds-march-against-corruption-in-Cape-Town-20150930">corruption</a>, culminating in marches by civil society.</p></li>
<li><p>Recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/topics/university-fees">student protests</a> against rising university fees as well as against racism and vestiges of colonialism in curricula. </p></li>
<li><p>Stubbornly high <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-is-south-africa-the-most-unequal-society-in-the-world-48334">inequality</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-fresh-look-confirms-national-minimum-wage-would-be-good-for-south-africa-51209">poverty</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-a-wage-subsidy-can-alleviate-south-africas-youth-unemployment-46902">unemployment</a>.</p></li>
<li><p>Rising <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-south-africas-governing-alliance-is-doing-some-serious-stock-taking-44046">factionalism </a> that has weakened the governing tripartite alliance with the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party.</p></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52915/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Pundits will closely watch President Jacob Zuma’s January 8 statement to see what he and the governing ANC consider to be priorities for the country in 2016.
Thabo Leshilo, Politics + Society
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/52161
2015-12-11T17:14:59Z
2015-12-11T17:14:59Z
Why South Africa should gird itself for tumultuous times
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/105504/original/image-20151211-8326-4s574v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa's nuclear deal with Russia is part of the backdrop to the current crisis.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Alexei Nikolsky</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South African President Jacob Zuma’s latest cabinet reshuffle in the Ministry of Finance is arguably the most controversial of all his executive decisions. It is the seventh <a href="http://city-press.news24.com/News/The-mystery-of-Cabinet-reshuffles-20150503">cabinet reshuffle</a> since he became president in 2009 and the third since 2014.</p>
<p>Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki only reshuffled their cabinets after general elections. The Zuma era, on the other hand, has been characterised by a high turnover, not only of cabinet members, but also senior public officials and executives in state-owned enterprises.</p>
<p>Zuma’s latest decisions - initially to remove Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene but then four days later to succumb to pressure and <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35089312">replace</a> his new appointee <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/meet-david-van-rooyen-the-man-who-must-fill-nenes-shoes-20151210">David van Rooyen</a> with <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-13/south-africa-s-zuma-appoints-pravin-gordhan-as-finance-minister">Pravin Gordhan</a> - has left everyone speculating as to the real reasons. Gordhan is a much more prudent appointment but a major political concession from Zuma.</p>
<p>What does it tell us about how decisions are being taken?</p>
<p>Some argue that it is indicative of Zuma’s uncontested power in the governing African National Congress <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/">(ANC)</a>; that he has developed an almost autocratic presidential style.</p>
<p>Another argument is that it is symptomatic of his predicament in the ANC. This line of thinking is informed by the fact that the ANC is weaker than it’s been since coming to power in 1994.</p>
<p>The ANC has been losing membership – more than <a href="http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/007110004a25f5b7bd09ffa53d9712f0/ANCundefinedlosingundefinedmembersundefinedinundefineddroves-20150910">450,000</a> members on Zuma’s watch.</p>
<p>And a key player in the <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/kids/main.php?id=14">tripartite alliance</a>, the trade union federation <a href="http://www.cosatu.org.za/">Cosatu</a>, split earlier this year resulting in a drastic <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/cosatu-membership-down-by-thousands-20151117">drop</a> in membership. The split saw the metal workers’ union Numsa expelled over differences about the federation’s relationship with the ANC. </p>
<p>In addition, seasoned and senior party members have begun to voice their concerns about Zuma. Former president and ANC leader Kgalema Motlanthe’s recently made harsh criticism of his leadership. He also declared that the tripartite alliance was <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/2015/11/02/tripartite-alliance-is-dead-says-motlanthe">dead</a>. </p>
<p>His comments followed those of another party stalwart, <a href="http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Chikane-warns-of-ANCs-demise-20151003">Rev Frank Chikane</a>, who warned that the party faced the danger of losing future elections. </p>
<p>To add to Zuma’s woes, the contest for who takes over from him has begun. Current deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa has put his hat in the ring. And the trade union federation has implied it will support him as <a href="http://www.msn.com/en-za/money/topstories/why-cosatu-wants-cyril-ramaphosa/ar-AAfMEuF?li=AAaxc0E">Zuma’s successor</a>.</p>
<h2>Paranoia</h2>
<p>The growing factionalism in the ANC has left Zuma unsure who he can trust, even in his own province KwaZulu-Natal. The result has been signs of growing paranoia, particularly about possible critical or independent voices in the ANC. He considers all as threats to his position. </p>
<p>In the past, Zuma built a stronghold of support, through patronage, in the government’s security cluster – police, state security, military and prisons – which he staffed with his acolytes. </p>
<p>He did the same with the National Prosecuting Authority and some of the parastatals, using the appointments to secure support for himself. </p>
<p>The latest intervention against his minister of finance shows two things:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>how far he is prepared to go to protect his supporters in state-owned enterprises who serve his self interests. Nene had taken a hard line against a disastrous <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/business/companies/nene-tells-saa-to-lease-airbuses-1.1956115#.VmrHS0p97IU">financial decision</a> taken by South African Airways chairperson Dudu Myeni, who is <a href="http://www.biznews.com/leadership/2015/08/13/breathtaking-the-world-according-to-saa-chairman-dudu-myeni/">close</a> to Zuma; and </p></li>
<li><p>how important state finances are to him as a tool to develop a personal style of diplomacy with leaders on the world stage. Here deal-making, whether for <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-nuclear-power-would-be-a-bad-option-for-south-africa-42499">nuclear electricity</a> or <a href="http://www.saiia.org.za/opinion-analysis/south-africa-china-relations-evolving-cooperation-collaboration-and-competition">Chinese trade</a>, is the key objective and source of pride for Zuma. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>By applying a rational assessment of what the country could afford, Nene had become a “spoiler” for Zuma.</p>
<p>Zuma’s controversial statement that, in his eyes, the ANC <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2015/11/08/The-ANC-comes-first-not-the-country-Zuma">comes before</a> South Africa, set the tone. It is not unreasonable to extend this to mean that the ANC and the state provide him with a platform on which he can take decisions based on in his own interests, or those of his closest supporters.</p>
<p>Once a person believes that history is on his side he begins to believe that it legitimises his claim to the resources of the state. In Zuma’s case this became evident in his defence of the use of state resources to build his <a href="http://www.publicprotector.org/library%5Cinvestigation_report%5C2013-14%5CFinal%20Report%2019%20March%202014%20.pdf">Nkandla</a> homestead.</p>
<p>Any lack of co-operation by his ministers is regarded as opposition or even betrayal. Non-threatening ministers, such as the new finance minister, <a href="http://www.rdm.co.za/politics/2015/12/10/finance-minister-van-rooyen-was-chased-from-khutsong-by-community">David van Rooyen</a> and minerals minister <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/politics/2015/09/25/new-mineral-resources-minister-mosebenzi-zwane-riles-anc-industry">Mosebenzi Zwane</a>, are therefore logical choices.</p>
<h2>The end is in sight</h2>
<p>Zuma has lost control over who succeeds him as ANC president. This is evident from the fact that the union federation has passed a resolution backing Ramaphosa for the post. This has elevated someone who is outside the Zuma circle to the position of a real contender for power.</p>
<p>It means that the transition has already started and that Zuma could lose his hold on power by not having his favourite take charge. </p>
<p>A decline in ANC support in the local government elections next year will hasten that process. The ANC’s National Conference will follow <a href="http://www.rdm.co.za/politics/2014/10/20/how-the-battle-for-the-anc-leadership-in-2017-will-unfold">in 2017</a>, by which time it will be too late for him to turn the tide in his favour. </p>
<p>Ramaphosa’s increasing prominence will increase Zuma’s paranoia about who in his cabinet has already silently joined the Ramaphosa camp. A similar scenario unfolded ahead of the ANC’s Polokwane conference in 2007. That resulted in Zuma ousting Mbeki as ANC president, culminating in Mbeki being recalled as president of the country.</p>
<p>Speculation is rife that more ministers are in Zuma’s firing line. These include Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies and Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe.</p>
<p>In effect, a silent rebellion is in the making. In the process most of the ANC’s internal democratic conventions, such as consultation, will be under pressure.</p>
<p>Nene’s dismissal heralds the beginning of a tumultuous period in the ANC.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52161/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dirk Kotze does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
President Jacob Zuma’s era has been characterised by a high turnover, not only of cabinet members, but also senior public officials and executives in state-owned enterprises.
Dirk Kotze, Professor in Political Science, University of South Africa
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.