Cosatu: "Guerrilla military skills of MK needed on ground"

(Excerpts from Politicsweb article)

A speech by Cosatu's president to the MK Military Veterans Association....

Input by Sidumo Dlamini, COSATU President, to the Conference of the MKMVA held at Birchwood Conference Centre, October 15 2012

Comrades,

I think it is important that right from the onset I clarify some of the basic things about COSATU, the African National Congress and MK.

Firstly, we come to address this congress not as friends of the ANC, but as strategic revolutionary allies who shared, and continue to share, the trenches of war against colonialism of a Special Type with the ANC.

Secondly, we did not and continue not to participate in this struggle simply as beneficiaries but as part of the South African working class whose hard conditions of life compelled them to be at the forefront amongst the ranks of the Congress Movement to attain the National Democratic Revolution vision.

We know that we are the most organised detachment of the working class and therefore we subject ourselves to the revolutionary discipline of the working class as a whole, which is the conscious and uncompromising leading detachment of the motive forces of our revolution as led by the ANC.

We know that the working class has the responsibility of uniting the widest range of classes and social strata in a common struggle for the realisation of the strategic objectives of the National Democratic Revolution.

The history of our revolution bears testimony to the facts that you are our own.

It was not a mistake that amongst the members of the Luthuli Detachment who participated in the Wankie Spolilo operation, which was the first MK group...were amongst the first to receive military training in the Soviet Union.

The 1978 Politico-Military Commissions Report contained what was later to be popularly referred as the Green Book said that "the armed struggle must be based on, and grow out of, mass political support and it must eventually involve all our people. All military activities must at every stage be guided by and determined by the need to generate political mobilization, organization and resistance, with the aim of progressively weakening the enemy's grip on his reins of political, economic, social and military power, by a combination of political and military action."

As COSATU, we later saw comrades testifying in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission [TRC] on their roles as commanders of the MK units.

Amongst those many units was the called "Operation Butterfly Unit".

Amongst those...who testified that the limpet mines which exploded on 27th September 1985 at OK Bazaars, and Game in Durban West Street, were directed at the dispute between unions and management which was refusing to accede to workers demands. 

Sasol had become a symbol of South African independence. It was South Africa's answer to the oil embargo and through those struggles, the apartheid project was disrupted. History will show that MK targeted and bombed SASOL twice.

We want to challenge the MKMVA to make their project to detail the historical facts which must demonstrate the organic relationship between MK activities and trade union struggles.

Actually, you must consider having a joint political education project with COSATU on this matter. The history of our revolution must be written by those with first- hand experience and MKMVA must lead that process.

What we have seen and continue to see happening in the mining sector is not without its own historical, political and economic basis.

And any genuine revolutionary, who is genuine about freedom, will not use those platforms to attack the movement but use them to deepen class war against the class enemy which are the employers.

The fact of the matter is that workers of this country are paid less as compared to the wealth they produce and also incomes of their bosses.

We want to warn those who continue to kill our people, and those who continue to insult the leadership of our movement and setting up units to destabilize and weaken the NUM: Our patience is not endless!

We will soon be calling on our people to defend themselves.

Comrade, Chris Hani taught us that it is those, who knows how to fight, who will be the first to call for peace.

We call on members of the MKMVA to work with our structures on the ground as we explain facts to people...

We've got to have MKMVA members using their guerrilla military skills to work with us on the ground to defend this movement and our revolution as a whole which is being threatened by demagogues, who are seeking political survival by all means and at all costs, even at the cost of the very revolution they claim to advance.

We are coming from our 11th National Congress drawing inspiration from the recommendations of the ANC policy conference which called for radical second phase of our transition. 

We are now preparing for the ANC 53rd Conference to be held in Mangaung and we are going there to argue that the radical phase of the second phase of our transition will require the programme of the movement must be clearly biased towards the working class.

And also that it must be based on an agreed platform which is implemented by government; that we deliberately build an activist interventionist state and that the ANC-led Alliance should constitutes the strategic centre of power which directs the National Democratic Revolution [NDR]. 

And the ANC shall always reflect this dominant character without underplaying the other class interests.

In our view comrades, there can be no radical second phase of transition if the ANC does not prepare to generate a programmes that are driven and supported by the masses.

It is actually the ANC's adherence to the mass line which took us to the 1994 breakthrough, albeit with the emergence of alien tendencies which began to emerge during the negotiations in which the masses began to be treated as secondary.

The period we are going through and the period of the radical second phase of our transition will require the political commissars and real commanders must practically occupy the front ranks of our revolution.

We want practical answers from the MKMVA!

Issued by COSATU, October 14 2012

Friends of Gaddafi

South Africa has still refused to recognise the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC) as the official government of Libya. 

They still recognise Gaddafi's regime as the legitimate government.

They have also blocked the releasing of £1 billion in frozen accounts from Gaddafi to the NTC.

Zuma has defended the ANC's actions by saying that the Nato backed Revolution has undermined the “African Union's efforts and initiatives to handle the situation in Libya”.

He also stated that the new government should be partly comprised of Gaddafi's regime:

“Our expectation as the South African government, consistent with the AU, is that this will be an all-inclusive process. So you will have elements of the NTC as well as elements of the regime or government of Colonel Gaddafi.”

He has also stated that several nations had used the UN resolutions “to further interests other than to protect civilians and assist the Libyan people”..

The stance from Zuma and the ANC comes as no surprise.

Gaddafi supported the ANC during Apartheid by providing financial support and weapons as well as specialised training in sabotage and terrorism.

Gaddafi has also donated generously to the ANC since they have come to power.

Likewise the African Union has also received generous donations and full support from Gaddafi.

He also personally gave Zuma $2 million to cover the costs of his rape trial.

This information had been leaked to the local press by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and stated that Zuma had personally flown to Tripoli to receive these funds.

His visit had been preceded by the leader of the SACP and representatives of Cosatu, his biggest backers in the ousting of Mbeki as president of the ANC and the country.

It is highly likely they were negotiating assistance for their presidential candidate.

This may be one of the biggest reasons for Zuma's support, since Gaddafi had personally helped him when he needed help the most.

The ANC had also till recently offered Gaddafi asylum in South Africa which would have allowed him to escape prosecution for his crimes and access to some of his funds. And with the rest of the AU they refused to recognise the UN arrest warrant against Gaddafi.

The hypocrisy and irony of the ANC choosing to support a dictatorship instead of a democracy supported by a popular uprising is hard not to notice.

Considering that the ANC relied heavily on international support and funds in achieving their objectives the hypocrisy is even more striking.

The ANC has stated that their policy is to not interfere in the affairs of other African countries, their choice of dealing with the situation without a UN resolution would be via so-called 'quiet diplomacy' which entails no sanctions or military intervention but only dialogue.

This was used in Zimbabwe and proved to be a catastrophic disaster leading to the virtual collapse of the country with an imploded economy, massive unemployment, hunger and repression.

Their second method, now that Gaddafi and his regime have effectively been ousted, is to allow them back into government via a 'national unity' type government.

Once again these are exactly the same tactics used in Zimbabwe.

The ANC encouraged and helped facilitate a government of 'national unity' between Mugabe's Zanu-PF and the opposition MDC.

This has led to the MDC being almost totally controlled and virtually absorbed by Zanu-PF who still have total control of the country and with no signs of any change in sight.

The ANC support Mugabe because he supported them in the past and because they did not want to see a fellow 'liberation party' removed from power by a so-called 'neo-colonialist' party even though they had lost the election.

Likewise the ANC support Gaddafi and his regime because they received support in the Apartheid-era and have since they've been in power have continued to receive donations to their party.

And more recently Zuma has personally been given funds by Gadaffi.

One would have thought that the ANC would have put the priorities of millions of people before those of a single dictator and his clique.

By supporting Gadaffi, they would have accepted misery and repression of the entire Libyan population if it guaranteed them the continued funds and anti 'neo-colonialist' stance of Gadaffi and his AU support.

The fact that the ANC openly supports Gaddafi and his regime says much about them.

Prepare for Nationalisation.

The general-secretary of Cosatu has said that nationalisation is going to happen. 
And the task team created by the ANC regarding nationalisation was not looking at it's feasibility but rather at what type of model to implement.

He said that all parties present at the last ANC national executive meeting supported nationalisation.

And that if the ANC had proposed a study merely looking at the feasibility of nationalisation it would have been immediately rejected by all parties at the meeting. As far as the tripartite alliance is concerned, nationalisation is a given fact.

Nationalisation would mean the state seizure of mines,banks, pensions, and all mineral wealth and farmland.

No compensation would however be given for land.

The general-secretary said it's a natural asset that should be owned by the state and used by farmers.

The mines and banks would be given compensation but “not in a way that will cripple the state”.

This essentially means that they won't pay market value for the mines and banks as even a fraction of this amount would cripple the state.

The ANC supported nationalisation in their national executive meeting, so there is obviously large support within the ANC.

Nationalisation is after all one of the main pillars on which the ANC's founding document the Freedom Charter is built.

The National Democratic Revolution (NDR) cannot be fully implemented without nationalisation as “worker hegemony in all sectors of the state and society” would otherwise not be able to be achieved.

The fact that the ANC has publicly been silent in condemning nationalisation comes as no surprise. The next phase after the NDR is the full socialisation and so-called“workerisation” of society.

Interestingly this is very similar to the North Korean term of “workingclassization” (which their regime has insisted is a proper English word!).

In effect they are the same thing, to have only one class in society, the working class.

A 'classless' or in this case a 'single-class' society is one of the main principles of a Communist state, alongside state ownership of all land, resources and industry.

And this is what the ANC, the tripartite alliance and the ANC Youth League are saying they support.

Mining provides the most foreign investment for the country and is almost solely responsible for allowing SA to be a middle-income country with a decent strength currency and exchange rate.

While the farming industry, even though farmers are half the amount since 1994, still provides food for the nation.

Yet the government still wants to seize control of these sectors no matter the damage it would do to the economy and food production.

Several African countries have publicly warned the ANC not to nationalise the mines and land since it has failed in their own countries.

These types of policies have proved to be disasters in all other African countries leading to collapsed economies, civil war and famine.

Let us hope the same does not happen to South Africa.

Unemployment a 'post-apartheid phenomenon' in SA.

This is an abridged version of an article from Business Live:

SA's unemployment rate rose from about 7% in the mid-1970s to 13% in the mid-1990s and 25% in the late 2000s.

 "To the South African government this is an inconvenient fact, since it implies that current high levels of unemployment are largely a post-apartheid phenomenon and not, as many officials and academics would prefer it, a legacy of apartheid," recruitment company Adcorp said on Monday as it released its employment index for June.  

Adcorp said the acceptance that unemployment had current rather than historical causes was the necessary first step in fixing the problem. 

"So long as we cite historical causes, we live in a fantasy world where unemployment can only be addressed when the legacy of apartheid itself is finally addressed.

Turning to the question of whether or not unemployment in SA could be fixed, the company said this would largely entail (a) unravelling the post-1994 changes that have caused the unemployment rate to nearly double over that period; and (b) bringing millions of informally employed people into the formal sector.

"This essentially requires revising two areas of the Labour Relations Act of 1995, namely collective bargaining procedures and protections against dismissal."

According to the World Economic Forum... SA's labour laws and regulations ranked 133rd (the seventh lowest) among 139 countries in the world, particularly in three areas: hiring and firing practices (135th), conflict in employer-employee relations (132nd) and flexibility of the wage-determination process (131st). 

All three areas were governed by the Labour Relations Act, Adcorp said.

Apartheid was regarded as a capitalist system designed to suppress wages and working conditions for black South Africans.

"As the Free Market Foundation argues, apartheid was neither capitalist nor market-oriented, nonetheless, labour market reform - more so than the Constitution itself (which was introduced only later, in 1996) - was an overriding objective of the new coalition government."

However, the industrial peace to which the Labour Relations Act aspired failed to materialise, Adcorp said.

"In 2010 there were more working days lost due to strikes and work stoppages than at the peak of 'rolling mass-action' under apartheid.

"....SA will lose 24.9 million days due to strikes and work stoppages in 2011 - an increase of 22% over 2010."

"As the World Economic Forum notes in its 2010 Global Competitiveness Report, SA has the eighth-highest level of industrial conflict in the world - despite having, in the South African government's view, some of the world's most progressive labour legislation."

Adcorp contended that the Labour Relations Act had moved SA backwards rather than forwards.

"Firstly, dismissal protections - which make it exceedingly difficult to fire workers who fail to perform or even to show up for work - have made falling labour productivity an endemic rather than occasional or isolated problem.

"...SA's hiring and firing practices rank the fifth-worst in the world."

Secondly, the collective bargaining process - which gave significant power to trade unions and bargaining councils - had allowed two-digit wage escalations to co-exist with falling labour productivity.

"...SA's wage determination process is the ninth-most inflexible in the world. The inability to get workers to perform, and the inability to pay them for their performance, are the single biggest drivers of low employment, which in turn is the primary cause of high unemployment."

As a result, big and small employers alike were considering how to mechanise, automate and generally do away with labour: the labour intensity of production for SA as a whole had fallen by 16% since 1994.

Employment had dropped sharply at an annual rate of 8.3% during June, the second consecutive monthly decline.

This represented a loss of 127,100 permanent positions and 5,712 temporary positions.