SA Institute of Race Relations: "ANC is dying and will lose majority by 2024"

(excerpts from SA Institute of Race Relations article)

South Africa after the ANC

Research and Policy Brief: South Africa after the ANC - 2nd July 2012.

- Frans Cronje

Few analysts are prepared to make bold forecasts about South Africa’s future political landscape. This paper breaks from that pattern and argues that the ANC is dying and will lose its parliamentary majority at or before the 2024 national election. 

We do not make this forecast recklessly but rather because the evidence points overwhelmingly in this direction.

The first point is that ANC support among South Africans is falling very quickly. 

It is true that the ANC won 63% of the national vote in 1994 and increased that to 65.9% in 2009. However, this figure is misleading as it ignores the growing number of people who are choosing not to vote at all. For example in 1994 54% of South Africans who could have voted, voted for the ANC. By 2009 that percentage had fallen to just 39%. 

This means that while more than 5 out of 10 South Africans turned out to vote for the ANC in 1994 that figure had fallen to less than 4 out of 10 in the 2009 election. In a sense the ANC, for all its pretention as the ‘will of the people’, is now a minority government.

The decline in ANC support generally did not result from another opposition party drawing its supporters. The DA did very well in its own right, increasing its support from just 2 out of every 100 South Africans in 1994 to 1 out of every 10 in 2009. However, it achieved this growth more by cannibalising other opposition parties, and possibly by attracting new young voters, than by eating into the ANC support base.

The decline in ANC support rather occurred as a result of a growing number of people losing confidence in the ANC. The evidence for this lies in the fact that the same period saw the number of protests against the government take off. The research company Municipal IQ reports that the number of major service delivery protests in South Africa increased from 10 in 2004 to over 100 by 2010. Data from the police suggests that they are now responding to three protests every day.

The decline in ANC support has its origins in two other spheres. The first is the overall failure of the public school system. Only 1 out of every 2 black South Africans who enter grade one will ever reach matric and only 1 out of 10 will pass maths. Hence black South Africans are generally too badly educated to prosper in the formal economy. As a result, they have limited means to increase their own living standards outside of what the State, and by extension, the ANC can give them. It is quite logical therefore that when they are frustrated by their living standards they protest against the same State and ANC.

Related to the failure of education is the failure of the labour market to generate sufficient jobs. Today only 1 out of every 2 black South Africans entering the labour market will ever find a stable job. 

Part of the reason is their poor level of education. Another is government hostility to the private business sector, which has stunted South Africa’s economic growth. South Africa averages half the growth levels of its BRIC partners.

Take just two current examples. First the government has announced that it intends to place ownership restrictions on the private security industry. 

The message is that private foreign investment is not welcome, and must be strictly regulated. 

Secondly it has been announced that the government is considering further taxation on the mining industry. As Michael Spicer pointed out in a letter to Business Day it is simply foolish to think that you can add further burdens to a declining industry at a time of great international economic uncertainty.

These two examples are instructive because they are typical of the approach the ANC has taken to private business and investment since 1994. 

In the heady days after the 1994 transition such an approach could perhaps be understood from a communist-inspired liberation movement not well versed in the management of a modern economy. That this approach continues today, long after the ANC has identified the threat to itself in high levels of unemployment and low growth, is to suggest that it is not serious about addressing these threats.

How else must it be understood that ANC delegates apparently devoted much time at their recent policy conference debating whether to call their policy the ‘second transition’ or the ‘second phase’ while around them their Rome was literally burning in a number of townships around the country. 

Likewise the reform of agricultural land, which contributes just 3% of GDP and 5% of employment, apparently enjoyed extensive attention as a means to reduce national poverty and unemployment rates!

Rather than actually addressing South Africa’s problems, the ANC has tried to place the blame for its failures elsewhere. 

Jacob Zuma told delegates at the policy conference that the problem was that the structure of the South African economy had not changed sufficiently since 1994 and was largely in white hands. He is of course correct that whites are far more likely than blacks to hold professional positions or start and run successful businesses. 

However, that he even raises white ownership of the economy as a key problem suggests that at some level he believes that, despite failures in both growth and education, black South Africans could nonetheless have attained white standards of living and expertise in business. There is no content or logic to such arguments. 

That the ANC president makes them suggests that his party has run out of ideas.

The same is true when it comes to corruption. This is without doubt an issue that is important in any diagnosis of the ANC’s flagging support. 

There is much evidence that what the media likes to call ‘service delivery protests’ is often the angry response of communities to corruption perpetrated by their ANC representatives. 

A senior police general, who happens to be black, has communicated to us that he is sick and tired of deploying his members to stamp out protests that result from ANC councillors, often repeatedly in the same municipality, stealing money that is meant for community projects. 

Despite Jacob Zuma’s exhortations to the party to root out corruption in its ranks, the DA’s research head, Gareth van Onselen, points out that the party has in fact, under Zuma, placed a number of candidates convicted of fraud and corruption on its election lists. 

Even the head of its political school, who is responsible for guiding the ANC’s emerging leaders, is a convicted criminal. This is not a party that takes corruption seriously or believes it to be a problem.

What the above shows is that the ANC is not serious about addressing the failed education, low growth, unemployment, and corruption that underpins its flagging support.

If it is not addressing the reasons for its decline, it follows that the party must be in terminal decline. 

All that remains to be done is to speculate which election will see the party’s national support levels dip below 50%, opening the door to a coalition of opposition parties to govern South Africa. 

On current trends we think that 2014 is too early, 2019 is plausible but uncertain, and 2024 is probable. 

To argue against this conclusion is to suggest that despite flat economic growth and failed education, ANC support will not just be sustained, but that the established trend of declining support will be reversed. This is not possible.

As in all things, once we have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. 

The truth for South Africa is that it is time to consider what the future may look like without the ANC. Who will lead the country and what will their policies be? 

That these questions are not being asked shows how unprepared many businesses and other organisations are for the changes that may grip South Africa over the next decade. 

Of course the party may fight a desperate rear-guard battle to try and save itself. 

There is already evidence that some in its ranks are considering radical policy changes including seizing land, property, investments, and assets without paying compensation. 

However, without a two-thirds or three-quarters parliamentary majority, the ANC cannot bring about the constitutional changes that would permit this. 

Even if it could, such polices would simply kill off any growth and investment and so hasten its now inevitable political demise.

SA Institute of Race Relations comments on the ANC National Democratic Revolution

(Excerpts from South African Institute of Race Relations article)

Address by the Institute's Head of Special Research, Dr Anthea Jeffery, to the conference on ‘the national democratic revolution, land ownership, and the Green Paper on land reform’ in Pretoria on 31st May 2012.

Research and Policy Brief: The National Democratic Revolution (NDR): Its Origins and Implications - 31st May 2012.

In the post-apartheid period, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has persisted in its determination to implement a National Democratic Revolution (NDR). 

The ANC makes no secret of this, regularly re-affirming this objective at its five-yearly national conferences. Its commitment to continuing revolution has enormous ramifications for the country and has already cost South Africa dearly. 

Yet neither the goals of the NDR nor the thinking which underpins it has ever been given much attention by the Media. 

The topic seems to be off-limits to the Press, which earlier generally ignored the first stage of the revolution – the people’s war strategy which gave the ANC its domination over the new South Africa – and now largely overlooks the NDR and its ramifications.

[The NDR theory] was endorsed by the South African Communist Party (SACP) in its 1962 programme, Road to South African Freedom. 
Here, the SACP urged a ‘national democratic revolution to destroy white domination’. 
The ANC, it said, must overthrow the ‘colonial state of white supremacy’, ‘democratise’ the new state by ‘making it fully representative of the population of South Africa’, use the new state to suppress the former ruling classes and transform society, and then defend the gains of the revolution through a ‘vigorous and vigilant dictatorship…by the people against the former dominating and exploiting classes’ and any attempt to ‘restore white colonialism’;

At the Morogoro Conference in 1969, the ANC endorsed this perspective and committed itself to a national democratic revolution (NDR) to correct ‘historical injustices’ by destroying existing economic and social relationships. This would give rise to a new society based on the core provisions of the Freedom Charter: a document adopted in 1955 with significant communist input.

At its national conferences at Mafikeng (in 1997), Stellenbosch (in 2002), and Polokwane (in 2007), the ANC repeatedly recommitted itself to the NDR via the Strategy and Tactics document it has adopted at each of these gatherings.

The Mafikeng document identified the key goal of the NDR as being ‘to liberate Africans in particular and black people in general from political and economic bondage’ by transforming the machinery of state, using a cadre policy to give the ANC control over ‘all centres of power’, ‘redistributing wealth and income’, and ‘de-racialising South African society’ through ‘a consistent programme of affirmative action’.

The Stellenbosch document mainly reaffirmed the 1997 one but included a short Preface which stressed the need to ‘eliminate apartheid property relations’ through ‘the deracialisation of…wealth, including land’ and the ‘redistribution of wealth and income’. This would involve a ‘continuing struggle’ which would intensify over time. ‘Because property relations are at the core of all social systems’, the tensions arising from redistribution would have to be managed via ‘dexterity in tact and firmness in principle’.

The Polokwane document (the current one) reaffirmed the need for affirmative action until such time ‘as all centres of power and influence become broadly representative of the country’s demographics’. It called for the ‘de-racialisation’ of wealth (including land), along with management and the professions. It also urged a strong state able to ‘direct national development’ and stressed the importance of cadre deployment to all centres of power.

A discussion document, prepared for the national general council of the ANC in September 2010 said the global financial crisis had demonstrated ‘the bankruptcy of neo-liberalism’ and opened up space for ‘progressive alternatives’. 

The discussion document identified the Freedom Charter as the ANC’s ‘lodestar’, and said the major current task of the NDR was to ‘build a national democratic society’ which would address the historical injustice via the redistribution of land and other resources, affirmative action, and ‘the eradication of apartheid production relations’.

In 2012 the ANC has released a new discussion document on ‘The Second Transition: Building a National Democratic Society and the Balance of Forces in 2012’. 

This, it says, requires ‘a second transition’ that moves beyond democratisation (the focus of the first transition) to ‘the social and economic transformation of South Africa over the next 30 to 50 years’.

The implication is that this framework will thus have to be changed. In addition, the document suggests that the ANC is no longer willing to stick to an earlier ‘implicit bargain’, in which the organisation ‘committed to macroeconomic stability and international openness’, while ‘white business agreed to participate in capital reform to modify the racial structures of asset ownership and invest in national priorities’. 

The Strategy and Tactics documents, along with the 2010 and 2012 discussion documents outlined above, are public documents which are carefully phrased and often express worthy aims (to heighten state efficiency, increase economic growth, expand infrastructure, and improve education). However, they also make it clear that the ANC’s key objective is not to reduce inequality by growing the economic pie but rather by taking existing wealth from whites and transferring it to blacks. Though progress in the redistribution of wealth has thus far been slow, the ANC expects its pace to quicken as the balance of forces shifts further in favour of this.

According to the SACP and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), the NDR provides the foundation for a shift to a socialist and then communist society.

...from 1984 to 1994, the people’s war strategy was used to give the ANC the degree of domination needed to drive the NDR forward in the post-apartheid era. This required, in particular, the weakening or elimination of black opposition – and the people’s war was singularly successful in achieving this.

...the ANC sees itself not as an ordinary political party bound by the ordinary rules of the political game but as a national liberation movement responsible for implementing the NDR and thus as uniquely entitled to rule. 

This makes it contemptuous of Parliament, opposition parties, a free press, an autonomous SABC, independent civil society, and adverse electoral outcomes, as in the Western Cape. 

Hence, contrary to what many journalists have said, there is nothing ‘baffling’ about its recent initiatives to clamp down on the Press or weaken the Democratic Alliance in a variety of ways.

...the ANC does not regard itself as bound by the Constitution.

It sees this not as a solemn pact but simply as a tactical compromise which can readily be changed as the balance of power shifts in the ANC’s favour. This stance has long been hinted at by ANC leaders, but is now being more openly expressed. 

The NDR also means, of course, that the ANC has no principled commitment to key constitutional safeguards, including press freedom, property rights, and an independent Judiciary.

Fourth, cadre deployment has been used to give the ANC control over all the ‘levers of state power’, including parastatals and the public broadcaster. The aim is to use cadre deployment to extend ANC control to the Judiciary, the Press, business, universities, and influential organisations in civil society.

In the economic sphere:

...the goal of demographic representivity in all spheres means that targets for redistribution that fall short of this are likely to be increased in due course. Thus, for example, in revising the Mining Charter in 2010, the minister – along with many journalists – implied it was a big ‘concession’ that the ownership target was being kept at 26% by 2014; and this target may well be raised in time.

...implementation of the NDR requires a strong ‘developmental’ state and provides a continual impetus towards ever more state intervention.

In the social sphere:

First, the NDR promotes an increasing dependence on the Government. The aim is seemingly not to encourage self-reliance and economic independence but rather to ensure that people rely on the State for money, goods, and services given to them via social grants, free housing, free basic electricity and water, free education, free health care for many, and subsidised transport.

Second, key additional aims (at least for Cosatu and the SACP) are to ‘roll back’ market provision in areas such as health and education. In the context of National Health Insurance proposals, for instance, Cosatu would like to ‘get rid’ of private health care and bring all health care services under state control, which will further reinforce dependency on the Government.

Third, similar thinking seems to underpin current proposals on land reform and rural development. As the Land Tenure Security Bill of 2010 shows – and the green paper on land reform of 2011 demonstrates even further – the aim is no longer to build up a new generation of independent black farmers owning their own land. 

Instead, land reform beneficiaries are to be confined to leasehold ownership, while communal land tenure in former homeland areas will be retained. 

In addition, those who move to the proposed new agri-villages will have nothing but temporary permits to live and farm in these settlements and will be subject to eviction by state officials if they don’t farm well enough. 

Far from extending land ownership to many more black South Africans, the 2010 bill and the green paper will bring about incremental land nationalisation. There will be no big-bang approach, but the Government will gradually assume ownership of ever more land while more and more South Africans find themselves without individual ownership and dependent on the State’s permission for their occupation of the land on which they live or work.

Important countervailing factors

From within the ANC:

First, the ANC recognises that the ‘balance of forces’ must be correct before progress can be made with the NDR. 
As with other revolutionary movements, it accepts that it may be necessary to take one step back – though its ultimate aim is then to take two steps forward.

Second, the ANC understands that the collapse of the Soviet Union brought about a fundamental shift in the global environment. This has inhibited the rapid post-apartheid implementation of the NDR which it had earlier anticipated. 

...the ANC recognised at Polokwane, affirmative action and BEE have ‘opened up enticing opportunities’ for its cadres, including ‘unprecedented opportunities for individual material gain’. 

The ANC’s discussion documents in 2010 and 2012 also recognise that its cadres are increasingly involved in factional strife, that state resources are being used to fight internal battles within the organisation, and that the votes of ANC members are being ‘bought’ to influence electoral outcomes. 

This is all part of the ‘challenge of incumbency’, it says. It is thus (once again) seeking to develop ‘new’ cadres with strong self-discipline and revolutionary morality, but these attempts are no more likely to succeed than earlier efforts have done.

Conclusion:

The ANC’s commitment to the NDR means that the emphasis since 1994 has not been on stimulating growth but rather on bringing about the redistribution of existing wealth from whites to blacks. 

This is particularly evident in BEE rules, in mining and water laws, in land reform policies, and in recurrent calls for nationalisation (which could be used to prepare the way for confiscatory taxes or other interventions, as in the mining sector). 

Full implementation of the NDR will deter investment, stall economic growth, worsen poverty, and increase dependency on the State. It will undermine the Constitution, give the ANC totalitarian control, and betray the bright hopes of the 1994 transition.

 Fortunately, there are many countervailing factors that militate against the success of the NDR. However, there is also no room for complacency. 

Instead, it is vital to alert South Africans to the threats implicit in the NDR and to do very much more to expose its false premises and damaging outcomes.

(Full article can be found here )

SA: "Only a matter of time before the bomb explodes"

South Africa: Only a matter of time before the bomb explodes

by Moeletsi Mbeki

I can predict when SA’s "Tunisia Day" will arrive. Tunisia Day is when the masses rise against the powers that be, as happened recently in Tunisia. The year will be 2020, give or take a couple of years. 

The year 2020 is when China estimates that its current minerals-intensive industrialisation phase will be concluded. 

For SA, this will mean the African National Congress (ANC) government will have to cut back on social grants, which it uses to placate the black poor and to get their votes.

China’s current industrialisation phase has forced up the prices of SA’s minerals, which has enabled the government to finance social welfare programmes.

The ANC inherited a flawed, complex society it barely understood; its tinkerings with it are turning it into an explosive cocktail.

The ANC leaders are like a group of children playing with a hand grenade. One day one of them will figure out how to pull out the pin and everyone will be killed.

A famous African liberation movement, the National Liberation Front of Algeria, after tinkering for 30 years, pulled the grenade pin by cancelling an election in 1991 that was won by the opposition Islamic Salvation Front. In the civil war that ensued, 200 000 people were killed.

The former British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, once commented that whoever thought that the ANC could rule SA was living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Why was Thatcher right? In the 16 years of ANC rule, all the symptoms of a government out of its depth have grown worse.

• Life expectancy has declined from 65 years to 53 years since the ANC came to power;
• In 2007, SA became a net food importer for the first time in its history;
• The elimination of agricultural subsidies by the government led to the loss of 600 000 farm workers’ jobs and the eviction from the commercial farming sector of about 2,4-million people between 1997 and 2007; and
• The ANC stopped controlling the borders, leading to a flood of poor people into SA, which has led to conflicts between SA’s poor and foreign African migrants.

What should the ANC have done, or be doing?

The answer is quite straightforward. When they took control of the government in 1994, ANC leaders should have: identified what SA’s strengths were; identified what SA’s weaknesses were; and decided how to use the strengths to minimise and/or rectify the weaknesses.

A wise government would have persuaded the skilled white and Indian population to devote some of their time — even an hour a week — to train the black and coloured population to raise their skill levels.

What the ANC did instead when it came to power was to identify what its leaders and supporters wanted. It then used SA’s strengths to satisfy the short-term consumption demands of its supporters. In essence, this is what is called black economic empowerment (BEE).

BEE promotes a number of extremely negative socioeconomic trends in our country.

It promotes a class of politicians dependent on big business and therefore promotes big business’s interests in the upper echelons of government. 

Second, BEE promotes an anti-entrepreneurial culture among the black middle class by legitimising an environment of entitlement. 

Third, affirmative action, a subset of BEE, promotes incompetence and corruption in the public sector by using ruling party allegiance and connections as the criteria for entry and promotion in the public service, instead of having tough public service entry examinations. 

Let’s see where BEE, as we know it today, actually comes from. I first came across the concept of BEE from a company, which no longer exists, called Sankor. Sankor was the industrial division of Sanlam and it invented the concept of BEE.

The first purpose of BEE was to create a buffer group among the black political class that would become an ally of big business in SA. This buffer group would use its newfound power as controllers of the government to protect the assets of big business.

The buffer group would also protect the modus operandi of big business and thereby maintain the status quo in which South African business operates. 

That was the design of the big conglomerates. 

Sanlam was soon followed by Anglo American. Sanlam established BEE vehicle Nail; Anglo established Real Africa, Johnnic and so forth. 

The conglomerates took their marginal assets, and gave them to politically influential black people, with the purpose, in my view, not to transform the economy but to create a black political class that is in alliance with the conglomerates and therefore wants to maintain the status quo of our economy and the way in which it operates. 

But what is wrong with protecting SA’s conglomerates?

Well, there are many things wrong with how conglomerates operate and how they have structured our economy.

• The economy has a strong built-in dependence on cheap labour;
• It has a strong built-in dependence on the exploitation of primary resources;
• It is strongly unfavourable to the development of skills in our general population;
• It has a strong bias towards importing technology and economic solutions; and
• It promotes inequality between citizens by creating a large, marginalised underclass.

Conglomerates are a vehicle, not for creating development in SA but for exploiting natural resources without creating in-depth, inclusive social and economic development, which is what SA needs. 

That is what is wrong with protecting conglomerates.

The second problem with the formula of BEE is that it does not create entrepreneurs. 

You are taking political leaders and politically connected people and giving them assets which, in the first instance, they don’t know how to manage. 

So you are not adding value. 

You are faced with the threat of undermining value by taking assets from people who were managing them and giving them to people who cannot manage them. 

BEE thus creates a class of idle rich ANC politicos. 

My quarrel with BEE is that what the conglomerates are doing is developing a new culture in SA — not a culture of entrepreneurship, but an entitlement culture, whereby black people who want to go into business think that they should acquire assets free, and that somebody is there to make them rich, rather than that they should build enterprises from the ground. 

But we cannot build black companies if what black entrepreneurs look forward to is the distribution of already existing assets from the conglomerates in return for becoming lobbyists for the conglomerates.

The third worrying trend is that the ANC-controlled state has now internalised the BEE model. 

We are now seeing the state trying to implement the same model that the conglomerates developed.

What is the state distributing?

 It is distributing jobs to party faithful and social welfare to the poor. 

This is a recipe for incompetence and corruption, both of which are endemic in SA. This is what explains the service delivery upheavals that are becoming a normal part of our environment. 

So what is the correct road SA should be travelling?

We all accept that a socialist model, along the lines of the Soviet Union, is not workable for SA today. 

The creation of a state-owned economy is not a formula that is an option for SA or for many parts of the world. 

Therefore, if we want to develop SA instead of shuffling pre-existing wealth, we have to create new entrepreneurs, and we need to support existing entrepreneurs to diversify into new economic sectors.

Mbeki is the author of Architects of Poverty: Why African Capitalism Needs Changing. This article forms part of a series on transformation supplied by the Centre for Development and Enterprise.

'ANC instigating Western Cape Unrest'

Co-operative Government in the Western Cape 

By Dave Steward and Amore Rossouw

Recently, traffic reports on breakfast radio stations in the Cape region have routinely carried warnings that this or that road has been closed due to service delivery protests. 

On 25 June one such protest occurred in Botrivier. 

What aroused suspicions was the fact that “Die Burger” received an SMS notification from James Pheiffer, a local ANC leader, before the protest actually began. 

The incident raised, once again, questions about ANC involvement in the instigation of service protests; about the permissible limits of opposition politics; and about the constitutional requirements of co-operative government.

The Botrivier protest was not the first in the Theewaterskloof area. Earlier this year there were similar service delivery protests in Grabouw and Villiersdorp. The trigger in Grabouw was the lack of space for the large number of recent immigrants from the Eastern Cape in the local Umyezo Wama Apile School. 

The incident culminated in an ugly clash between black and coloured communities and an attack on the predominantly coloured high school, which resulted in two classrooms being gutted by fire.  

In the wake of the violence the DA’s Western Cape leader, Theuns Botha, claimed that the  violence had been planned months in advance by an ANC task team established with the objective of reclaiming power in Western Cape. 

Botha accused the ANC of attempting to bribe DA councillors and coalition partners to support a motion of no-confidence in the Theewaterskloof Council with a view to forcing by-elections. He added that if these tactics failed  “local activists are co-opted to foment violence under the guise of ‘service delivery protests’".

According to Botha, affidavits had been filed at the Caledon police station over a month before the violence in Grabouw and Villiersdorp. They attested that ANC leaders had recruited John Michaels, a local ANC affiliate, to facilitate the bribery of DA councillors. 

The councillors were promised jobs, cash and leadership positions if they supported the proposed no-confidence motion in the Theewaterskloof council.

According to the affidavits, Michaels told DA councillors that the ANC would make their wards ungovernable if the no-confidence motion failed.  

The ANC succeeded in persuading a DA councillor, Cathy Booysen, to defect but failed to obtain sufficient support for the no-confidence motion. According to Botha the subsequent unrest in Grabouw was designed to help Booysen to win back her ward on behalf of the ANC in the by-election which took place on 28 March. 

However, she lost and the DA retained the ward.

The most recent manifestation of the ANC’s campaign to reclaim the Western Cape has been its reaction to the provincial government’s decision to close 27 under-performing, under-populated or under-resourced schools. 

In a speech on 1 July the ANC‘s Western Cape leader, Marius Fransman, took full advantage of the propaganda opportunities presented by the proposed closure. 

In his speech Fransman:

•  continually compared the DA Government in the Western Cape with the pre-1994 “Apartheid” government;

•  consistently misled his audience by claiming that the DA government was not prepared to consult with communities about the proposed closures;
•  repeatedly played the race card:
“The DA government has since 2009 shown that its commitment to delivery and engagement is only with the white constituency and for the protection of white privilege only. Our communities are only important to it when it is time to vote.”
•  darkly threatened mass action if the ANC did not get its way:
“If the DA government of today does not want to engage with the community directly, then we must revert to the same tactics that made the “kragdadige” apartheid government listen to us by ensuring united community mass action in defence of our rights.”

We should consider the implications of Fransman’s rhetoric. 

By continually comparing the DA government in the Western Cape with the pre-1994 government, he was actually questioning its legitimacy. By playing the race card he was consciously fanning and exploiting racial animosity; and by threatening to adopt the tactics against the DA government that the ANC and its formations had used against the “kragdadige apartheid government”, he came close to advocating insurrection.

He also lent credence to  charges that the ANC is actively fomenting unrest and protests against the elected government of the province.  

Full article can be found here:

Co-operative Government in the Western Cape

Narysec, the NDR and the GDR Constitution

Earlier this year the Minister of Defence and Military Veterans stated that   
20 000 young people will be trained by the SA National Defence Force (SANDF) as part of the National Rural Youth Service Corps (Narysec).

The Minister stated that the service would not offer training for military engagement but rather focus on the 'potential of military training to promote discipline, self-esteem and a sense of belonging to the national community'.

One of the aims of Narysec according to its website are "to create a major countryside revolution for socio-economic freedom through nation-building and community service."

Trainees will also be learning of "the impact of land accumulation by dispossession" and "how land reform can be a radical and rapid move from the past without impacting on agricultural production."

According to Rural Affairs Minister Gugil Nkwinti: "These non-military youths will become our Agents of Change…"

The Department of Rural Development and Land Reform is in charge of recruitment and has urged recruits “to emulate the young revolutionaries of the 1976 generation.”

According to a budget vote speech by the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, participants of Narysec will be beneficiaries of land under the Pro-Active Land Acquisition Strategy - PLAS.

Members of both the ANC Youth League and Young Communist League have been invited to join Narysec.

It should be noted that Youth groups of opposition political parties have not been invited to take part and are therefore excluded from the training programme. 

The DA states: "This programme poses a huge risk for the Defence Force because it can be used far too easily as a backdoor to provide militia-training for the ANC Youth League," and that "The parliamentary standing committee was never informed about this."

The reply from the Ministry of Defence has been that even though training takes place at military bases, no military training takes place "but we teach them how to salute and parade and we show them the guns".

The fact that the Youth League of a ruling party is being trained at a military base and 'shown' guns should in itself be quite worrying.

Besides the indoctrination of the ruling party's views, the main cause for concern should be of mobilisation.

The ruling party aims to have at least 20 000 people trained, who are loyal to a single political party.

The reason why such schemes are generally not tolerated in a democratic state is because of the potential for the ruling party to have a militarised group available outside the ambit of the Defence Force.

An alternative military unit or militia.

Which instead of serving the state, serves the ruling party.

The main purpose of a militia is to enforce the will of their political party, to ensure implementation of ideological programmes and to serve as a counter-weight to the military and police forces.

A militia serves as the last bastion of defence for its party and leaders.

If elements of the population turn against the government, or the Armed Forces or Police refuse to obey commands, then at least the ruling party still have thousands they can mobilise.

Most of the highest leadership of the ANC and its National Intelligence Agency were educated in the Eastern Bloc, Soviet Union, Cuba, China and even North Korea.

Militias were used in all Eastern Bloc countries, the strongest examples being the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and Czechoslovakia. The militia was independent from the Armed Forces and of course loyal only to the Party. The youth would first be part of a Youth group and indoctrinated to defend the Party. Afterwards, as a young adult they could join the militia where they would also be trained militarily.

In East Germany the older people would joke that the Hitler Youth had only changed its name and the colour of its uniform! 

Even they could see the irony in how the Free German Youth was just a rebadged version of the Hitler Youth.

Interestingly, the forage caps worn by the 'Free German Youth' of East Germany are in fact quite similar to those adopted by Narysec.

For anyone trained and educated in Communist theory and striving for a centralised system to achieve the ANC's claims of 'worker hegemony in all sectors of the state and society ' and the 'workerisation' of society, the forming of a militia is seen as a necessary means to implement such a system.

On the ANC's website, it is claimed that the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) was forced to balance its interests due to the collapse of its main international backer; the Soviet Union.
The NDR was therefore forced to compromise or face potential economic collapse of the country.

The aim of creating 'East Germany in Africa' and of total nationalisation and full-scale revolution was no longer possible.

The 'revolution' according to the ANC is therefore only partly complete.

The aim of the NDR is to move the first-phase of the revolution, the so-called 'Democratic Phase' to one of Socialism.
Cadre-deployment of ANC and SACP members into areas of the state which are supposed to be independent from government and the ruling party is one of their stated tactics in implementing the NDR and ensuring 'social cohesion'.

President Zuma himself has even recently mentioned the need for a 'Second Transition' and a new Constitution.

According to the ANC:

The 1996 Constitution ‘may have been appropriate for a political transition, but it has proven inadequate and even inappropriate for a social and economic transformation phase.'

The reason being that the current Constitution had to be created by balancing the interests of all groups in the country. The ANC was forced to compromise in order to gain international acceptance and support. Nelson Mandela has also stated the same.

The proposed new Constitution has been refered to by some critics as the GDR Constitution, due to the reason that it seems to be modelled on the constitution of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).

The proposed new 'GDR Constitution' according to an article on Politicsweb has:
"...much emphasis on the role of the courts as a motor of socio-economic transformation. The way in which Minister Radebe has employed the term ‘transformation' is reminiscent of how this is understood in socialist theory of state. 

Since he studied at the Karl Marx University in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1980/81, obtaining an LLM in 1981 and then proceeded to study at the Lenin School in Moscow, it is possible that he may conflate the foundations upon which socialist states rested with central pillars underpinning a constitutional state.

To start with, students who wanted to study law in the GDR were selected for their reliability to implement the Marxist-Leninist concept of law and such studies were supervised by the Stasi. 

Unless you were a member of the communist party, you could not study law or become a judge.

Records in the Stasi Archives preserved information for posterity that 26 ANC students studied at various Stasi universities in the DDR during 1980, including a number of students studying at Leipzig with the blessing of the Stasi."

The new Constitution aims to create a “developmental state” that “drives and controls economic growth. “

Other proposals include “recruiting children for the ANC from the day they are born, establishing a state-owned publishing company to iron out problems with textbook distribution, introducing compulsory community service for all university graduates and pushing ahead with a media appeals tribunal.”

The new Constitution also would introduce a 'BEE code' for the print media sector. 

According to the ANC, SA's “first transition”, was a “political transition” aimed at creating a “framework based on the sunset clauses of the negotiations”.

The sunset clauses refer to land and property ownership.

The ANC states that the current clauses dealing with land and property ownership are “inadequate and even inappropriate for a social and economic transformation phase”, or the “second transition.” 

The ANC claims that South Africa is currently entering the Second Transition.

The ANC says that Constitutions are “living documents and reflect the stage of development of a given society” and as a result, “there may well be elements of our Constitution that require review because they may be an impediment to social and economic transformation”.

Another debilitating factor according to the ANC in achieving the NDR includes the “narrow mandate of the Reserve Bank or the relationship between and powers of the different spheres of government”.

In conclusion, it is arguable that the formation of a militia and the creation of a new Constitution inspired by a Communist state goes hand-in-hand with achieving the proposed outcomes of the so-called National Democratic Revolution.

Sources:
ANC wants new Constitution
SANDF to train 20 000 youths
Jeff Radebe, the Judiciary and the East German Model

BEE Race Laws increasing Inequality

(Excerpts from Business Report article)

Two prominent government leaders, former SA Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni and former president FW de Klerk, have both questioned black economic empowerment (BEE) policies that appear to have marginalised white people.

The former president said at the Cape Town Press Club that BEE policies had failed to address inequality “and might even have aggravated it” and proposed that affirmative action should be based not on race but on relative disadvantage. This would constitute a non-racial test.

Mboweni said that the Employment Equity Act was not meant to marginalise white people.

“Now most of the black managers appointed to positions in companies or the public sector see it as their responsibility to exclude white applicants for jobs… that is not what (the policies) were intended it to be … If you continue on that path, South Africa, your dream won’t only be deferred… it will be destroyed,”

De Klerk, who delivered the annual Barry Streek Memorial Lecture, said: 
“When black, coloured or Indian candidates from the privileged education and income group are advanced over white candidates from a less privileged education and income group, the result does not promote the achievement of equality.

“It is simply unfair racial discrimination and points to the injustice and irrationality of using race as the determinant of advantage and disadvantage.” Affirmative action benefited the top 15 percent of rich South Africans.

The BEE programme prescribed the future prospects of South Africans on the basis of their race and gender “and not on individual merit”.

On that basis the correctional services department was “doggedly refusing to promote coloureds in the Western Cape because they exceed their national demographic quota of 8.8 percent”. 
Absurdly, they were told that if they were to be promoted they would have to move to other parts of the country “where they are under-represented”.

Centre for Constitutional Rights: ANC supporting Youth League to make Western Cape 'Ungovernable'?

ANC YOUTH LEAGUE STATEMENTS ABOUT MAKING WESTERN CAPE "UNGOVERNABLE" TREADING A THIN LINE

Adv Johan Kruger, Centre for Constitutional Rights

The Centre for Constitutional Rights noticed with utmost concern recent statements and an apparent campaign by the Youth League of the African National Congress (ANCYL) to make the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape "ungovernable". 

Although the Constitution indeed guarantees the right to assemble, demonstrate, picket and present petitions in a peaceful and unarmed manner, when such demonstrations and petitions include threats to destabilise a democratically elected government, such actions are not only undemocratic and unconstitutional, but also possibly illegal.

On 1 August, the Dullah Omar region of the ANCYL delivered a memorandum, (written on behalf of itself, the ANC, the ANC Women's League, the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association and the Congress of Democratic Taxi Associations), to the Premier of the Western Cape demanding certain actions from the provincial government. The memorandum, according to SAPA, threatened that unless these demands were "positively responded to within seven workings days...the young people and the above-mentioned stakeholders will make this city and province ungovernable!". 

ANCYL regional committee member, Loyiso Nkohla, was subsequently quoted as saying: "If the attitude [from the local and provincial governments]is positive then we will report that to the people but if it is not, we will shut this city down". As a result, the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape provincial government laid criminal charges, in terms of the Intimidation Act 72 of 1982, against the ANCYL and other organisations involved in those threats.

The ANCYL's calls to disrupt governance in Cape Town and the Western Cape were followed by renewed violence in Khayelitsha and Philippi, and by an incident in which two people were killed as a result of the stoning of a bus by protesters. More recently, ANCYL protesters disrupted a community meeting in Khayelitsha that was to be addressed by Patricia de Lille, the Executive Mayor of Cape Town. Following the failed meeting, the mayor cited the incident as an example of how the ANCYL was carrying out its threat to make the city ungovernable. 

The Western Cape ANCYL regional secretary, Mfuzo Zenzile, subsequently replied that making the province "ungovernable" did not amount to embarking on violence. His statement, nevertheless, continued to echo the ANCYL and Nkohla's call to make the province ungovernable - whether through violence or otherwise.

These latest statements by the ANCYL, as well as their continuous militant talk (such as a statement by ANCYL deputy president, Ronald Lamola, calling for "an act as forceful as war to bring it [land] back to the Africans"), are not only disquieting, but also raise some worrying questions: Do these threats reflect the ANC's tacit approval of the actions proposed by the ANCYL?; alternatively, has the ANC leadership lost control of factions within its movement?; or even worse, has the ANC lost control over such factions, but still tacitly supports some of their actions because they are in the ANC's strategic interest? 

The ANCYL's campaign to make the City of Cape Town and the Western Cape ungovernable resonates with the threat made on 1 July by the ANC's Western Cape leader, Marius Fransman, that: "If the DA government of today does not want to engage with the community directly, then we must revert to the same tactics that made the "kragdadige" apartheid government listen to us by ensuring united community mass action in defence of our rights."

The ANC's failure to reprimand the ANCYL for its calls for the destabilisation of a province inevitably raises the question of whether the ANC tacitly supports such statements and threats. According to ANC chief whip in Cape Town, Xolani Sotashe, the ANC does not associate with "anarchy". If so, why do they not reprimand the ANCYL when it makes statements to the contrary? 

It is interesting to note that the ANC was quick to instruct ANCYL Limpopo chairman, Rudzani Ludere, to withdraw his recent calls to disrupt, and throw stones at, the Limpopo provincial government. ANC Limpopo secretary, Soviet Lekganyane, said that Ludere’s statements "were harmful not only to the person against whom they are made; but they also bring the organisation into disrepute and are dangerous to the unity and cohesion of the movement". It thus appears that the ANC does not hesitate to insist on "unity and cohesion" and to reprimand its members when they threaten to disrupt ANC-controlled provinces.

Secondly, if the ANC has indeed lost control over factions within the movement, it would raise serious questions over its own integrity and cohesion as a ruling party. A recent research report by The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation and Wits University entitled, The Smoke That Calls, concluded that active and high-profile ANC members are almost certainly playing a leading role in at least some of the protest hotspots in Gauteng and Mapumalanga, often involving violence. 

With reference to the violence in Cape Town, ANC chief whip Sotashe was most recently quoted as saying that "[w]e have picked up some SMSes that...suggest the Youth League met and organised the violence, but we have established that it was not [them]". Instead, he insists that a "third force" must be blamed for "destabilising certain areas, exploiting poor people for their own agendas". Despite a denial by the ANC and the South African Police Service (SAPS) interim announcement that they have not yet found any link between the violence and the ANCYL, obvious facts and inferences raise a disturbing possibility that rogue factions within the ruling party might be using service delivery protests to pursue their own agendas.

Finally, whether or not the ANCYL in the Western Cape has been acting with the ANC's approval, the organisation may have concluded that the actions of the ANCYL will, in any event, promote its own strategic goal of winning back the province. The ability to achieve its strategic goals though a situation of plausible deniability and without being held responsible for the actions of the ANCYL, would arguably be the best outcome for the ANC.

The thread running through all of these questions is whether the ANC is after all willing and able to govern within the confines of the rule of law and a constitutional democracy? The recent statements and behaviour of the ANCYL in the Western Cape, viewed together with recent inflammatory remarks by ANC Western Cape provincial leader, Marius Fransman, leads to the conclusion that the latest surge of violence, especially in Khayelitsha, was almost certainly not coincidental. 

It is obviously possible that some protests may well be related to service delivery concerns. However, calling for the disruption of a democratically elected government and promoting actions, often involving violence, that are aimed at making any part of South Africa ungovernable, is unconstitutional, undemocratic and almost certainly illegal. Apart from criminal charges of intimidation already laid against the ANCYL, their statements and actions may very well be treading a thin line between rhetoric and sedition - the latter defined by the SAPS as "unlawfully and intentionally taking part in a concourse of people violently or by threats of violence challenging, defying or resisting the authority of the State; or causing such a concourse".

Be that as it may, statements calling for any legitimately and democratically elected government within South Africa to be made "ungovernable", are irreconcilable with constitutional democracy and should not be tolerated as acceptable political discourse in a democracy based on the rule of law. On the contrary, such statements should be condemned and denounced, as those involved are not only undermining fundamental principles of constitutional democracy - but are almost certainly also on the wrong side of the law.

Centre for Constitutional Rights