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