Marikana Commission: Riah Phiyega's impossibly hazy memory

National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega appeared at the Marikana Commission on Wednesday to clarify questions on how decisions were made from the top. Instead, she further tarnished the SAPS position in the inquiry, painting top officers as uninterested in operational matters and effectively laying the blame at the feet of ground commanders. By GREG NICOLSON.

Riah Phiyega listened to chairman Ian Farlam. “You swear that the further evidence you give to this Commission will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” In a floral skirt, teal blouse and blazer, with matching pearl earrings and necklace, Phiyega agreed.

The national police commissioner appeared in front of the Marikana Commission again on Wednesday for the last time before the inquiry wraps up. As the top cop in August 2012, when 34 mineworkers were killed in a single day and 10 people were killed in the preceding week, Phiyega's testimony is crucial to the Commission's goal of pursuing truth and restorative justice. She is ultimately responsible for the police operations. She's also the link between alleged political influence and SAPS actions.

On Wednesday, however, Phiyega stonewalled Farlam who for most of her appearance quizzed her on issues that either hadn't been resolved or had come to light since Phiyega's previous lengthy appearance. To most questions, she simply said she doesn't remember what happened over two years ago. In her silence, she painted a picture of a leader unwilling to cooperate with the inquiry, senior police officers who failed to perform their duties, and an SAPS that has tried to mislead the Commission.

Farlam wanted to talk about the extraordinary meeting of the police management forum on 15 August when top provincial and national officers discussed Marikana. It was in this meeting when the decision was taken to implement the disperse, disarm and arrest plan the next day, which ultimately led to the massacre. Incredibly, the police didn't hand over any evidence of the meeting nor mention it when they made their submissions to the Commission. It only came out later.

“You're now seriously stating we would be in error if we find SAPS didn't cooperate [with the Commission]?” Farlam put to Phiyega. Only after a third party pointed them towards the meeting did the Commission find out about it. There was nothing untoward, she claimed, and when requested, they admitted the meeting took place. “It certainly appeared to us to be a secret when it came out at a later stage,” said Farlam.

Phiyega agreed the Marikana strike was the most challenging public policing situation during the democratic era, but she could not remember details of the meeting which approved the plan to tackle it. In the hour-long session on 15 August 2012, North West Provincial Commissioner Zukiswa Mbombo made a presentation for 10 to 15 minutes and the SAPS from different provinces also discussed sharing the necessary resources for the operation. Beyond that, Phiyega said she didn’t have a “photographic memory” and could not remember “pedantic details” about what happened in the meeting.

“It's very important for us to know why the decision was taken to proceed on Thursday morning,” said Farlam. “It's important for us to find out was exactly was said.” Phiyega didn't help, but she was clear about what didn't happen in the meeting. While most of the country's provincial police commissioners were present, some of whom come from policing backgrounds, Phiyega said no specific details of the plan to confront the mineworkers were discussed before it was approved.

“Are you seriously suggesting that the meeting endorsed the proposal without knowing what the details of the response were?” asked Farlam. Phiyega's response was that police know how to conduct disarming operations and they're are essentially the same. She said this despite two officers being hacked to death when a disarming operation went wrong on 13 August. Incredibly, reflecting on the meeting on 15 August, Phiyega could not recall any of the country's top police officers raising the fear of further bloodshed while they decided to approve the plan.

While shocking, it also seems extremely unlikely given the volatile situation in Marikana at the time and widely publicised problems with policing protests. Yet if Phiyega acknowledged they knew and spoke about the dangers, the next question is, so why did they implement the plan, or why this plan, and why wasn't greater precaution taken?

Farlam, however, seemed shocked. “The fact that the proposal was endorsed by the meeting, the fact that the people there all agreed to make resources available as required, surely means that they cannot evade responsibility and say, 'We knew about the plan. Sure go ahead. We'll make resources available. And if it goes wrong because it's managed badly or defective planning, that's nothing to do with us.' Surely there comes a time when responsibility must rest with those people in that meeting as well.”

He was equally surprised that Phiyega had no recollection of a conversation with SAPS expert witness Cees de Rover about political influence on police decisions at Marikana. “My questions have been straightforward on the issue; the answers have not been,” De Rover said last week, claiming Phiyega was evasive. Farlam said surely she would remember being asked if political pressure played a part in the death of 34 people in a day. Phiyega said she couldn't remember and refused to engage the chairman's questions.

Already evasive and difficult, the national police commissioner's credibility was shot when Farlam brought up the review panel. When Phiyega had appeared at the Commission before, she was asked whether the SAPS had established a review on certain issues related broadly to Marikana and Phiyega said she had not. But when a police hard drive was analysed, it emerged a review panel had been established and Phiyega's signature was on the call up instructions. No evidence the panel existed was voluntary handed to the Commission by the police despite their commitment to do so with all relevant information at the start of the inquiry.

It is impossible to look at Phiyega's cross-examination on Wednesday and believe she's being honest.

While she plays the amnesia card and tries to distance the country's top officers from the details of the plan to confront the miners, she opens up herself and other officers to allegations of incompetence and dereliction of duty. But by doing so she shifts the greater responsibility to the commanders on the ground who she says the SAPS relied on.

Phiyega is also putting a wall between the police and the politicians who got involved in Marikana. Last week, De Rover, a policing expert who has worked in over 60 countries, said he couldn't fathom a situation where politicians were not involved.

If there was any doubt that Phiyega was untruthful, Advocate Dali Mpofu showed her the transcript between the SAPS's Mbombo and Lonmin's Bernard Mokoena on 14 August 2012. In relation to the police ending the strike, the two speak of Cyril Ramaphosa, Julius Malema, the pair's relationship in the ANC disciplinary committee, problems with Malema potentially ending the crisis, and nationalisation of the mines. Asked about the political nature of the discussion and whether it is legal for the SAPS to use policing operations to influence party politics, Phiyega responded, “What's political about this?”

“They could have used different words, but what I hear is people who are interested in ending a protest.”

Let us say it once more: It is impossible to look at Phiyega's cross-examination on Wednesday and believe she's being honest. DM

Source: Daily Maverick

Zuma on nationalisation and working with Ramaphosa

PRESIDENT Jacob Zuma has welcomed the prospect of working with businessman Cyril Ramaphosa as his deputy, saying "it would not be the first time" that he has worked with the man who was once tipped to take over from Nelson Mandela as president of the African National Congress (ANC).

Mr Zuma is set to be re-elected to lead the ANC at the party’s elective congress in Mangaung later this month. However, his current deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe — who has been nominated by three provinces and the youth league for the position of party president — is likely to lose out to Mr Ramaphosa.

Mr Ramaphosa has garnered more than 1,800 nominations for the position of deputy president, while Mr Motlanthe has received about 160 nominations to retain his current position in the party.

In an interview with the UK’s Daily Telegraph published on Thursday, Mr Zuma praised Mr Ramaphosa when asked about the prospect of working with the business tycoon.

"It would not be the first time I worked with Cyril Ramaphosa. When he was the secretary-general, I was his deputy. So it would not be the first time, if he is elected," Mr Zuma told the paper.

He said that he was ready for a second term as president of the ANC.

The party’s elective conference in Mangaung will also be keenly watched by business — with the hope that economic policy will be clarified.

One of the burning issues up for possible debate is that of nationalisation of South Africa’s mines. Mr Zuma told the paper that the party would increase the pace of economic reform but would not "break" existing businesses to do so.

"Nationalisation is not the ANC policy," he said. "There are fundamental issues that need to be dealt with. It would be useful to do it quickly but we’ve got to balance things because we don’t want to break things in order to move forward."

Source: Business Day

ANC KZN backs Jacob Zuma for ANC Presidency

ANC KZN NOMINATION CONFERENCE STATEMENT

25 November 2012

The African National Congress (ANC) in KwaZulu-Natal on Sunday concluded its successful two-day conference which was characterized by frankness, robustness and a comradely spirit that made all sessions to be enjoyable and enlightening.

The conference was convened to consolidate KwaZulu-Natal's policy positions and to combine the province's nominations for preferred leadership to be elected in the National Conference of the ANC to be held in Mangaung in December 2012.

The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal is happy that the conference was characterized by very productive debates on policy issues. Debates spanned from various and diverse views and individual expressions, scientific theory of our revolution to the experience gained through our daily involvement in our community struggles and serving within state institutions and platforms of service delivery.

Our province is once again leading the way by forsaking the foreign tendencies of coming to conferences for the sole purpose of voting for positions. The conference made history by dedicating more focus on policy matters in order to shape the transformation agenda and usher in a better life for all our people.

The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal strongly believes that the difference in the paths and direction the ANC will take post Mangaung depends on the thoroughness of the discussions and preparations to resolve issues that plague our country not on the face of the leadership cadres elected.

"Today (Sunday) we are concluding what has been a very democratic process. Our branches nominated their preferred candidates freely. The fact that more than one name per position were nominated was a clear indication ANC is a democratic organization," said ANC provincial Secretary, Sihle Zikalala.

After a very vigorous nomination process, ANC branches in KwaZulu-Natal nominated the following cadres:

President: Cde President Cde Jacob Zuma [unanimous]

Deputy President: Cde Cyril Ramaphosa [841 votes]

National Chairperson: Cde Baleka Mbethe [863 votes]

Secretary General: Cde Gwede Mantashe, [unanimous]

Deputy Secretary General: Cde Jessie Duarte [834 votes]

Treasure General: Cde Zweli Mkhize. [833 votes]

The conference emphasized the importance of discipline, unity and political maturity to ensure that the ANC will remain united after the Mangaung conference.

Statement issued by the ANC KwaZulu-Natal provincial secretary Sihle Zikalala November 26 2012

Source: Politicsweb

South Africa after the Marikana massacre

The police massacre of striking miners at Marikana is a watershed for post-apartheid South Africa and for the international class struggle.

It demonstrates in the starkest form imaginable that the perspective of “black empowerment” and the “National Democratic Revolution” providing the basis for overcoming economic and social oppression has failed utterly. The central lesson of Marikana is that the fundamental division within society is class, not race.

The African National Congress, having come to power in 1994 as a result of immense sacrifice and revolutionary struggle by millions of workers, has revealed itself to be every bit as ruthless as its white predecessors in enforcing the most brutal exploitation on behalf of the major global corporations.

The ANC sent in the police to shoot, kill and maim striking workers whose sole crime was to fight for the right to live as human beings and not beasts of burden. Now, after the police have killed 36 and wounded another 78, some 270 imprisoned strikers are being charged with the murder and attempted murder of their colleagues under Apartheid-era “common purpose” laws designed to blame the victims for “provoking” police violence.

The Marikana miners are paid less than $500 a month for living in squalid communal huts and working in hazardous, back-breaking conditions for the UK-based Lonmin, extracting platinum that sells for over $1,400 an ounce. Their fate, worse still, is shared by millions in what has now become the most unequal country in the entire world.

Meanwhile the ANC has spawned a grasping layer of black bourgeois, with a reputation for unparalleled corruption and repression. It is synonymous with terms like Black Economically Empowered (BEE) companies and “tenderpreneurs”—those who have enriched themselves by acting as front-men for the transnational corporations or who have used their control of the state apparatus to secure a direct role in exploiting the working class.

Even as charges were being brought against the arrested miners, South African Minister of Mining Susan Shabangu was reassuring “our investors, incumbent and prospective” at a gathering of mining executives in Perth, Australia, that President Jacob Zuma is “determined to isolate bad elements in our society.”

The ANC in turn relies upon its partners in the Tripartite Alliance—the South African Communist Party and the COSATU trade union federation—to impose the dictatorship of global capital and the South African bourgeoisie upon an increasingly restive population.

The Stalinist SACP insisted throughout the struggle against apartheid that black majority rule of a capitalist South Africa was a necessary stage in an eventual transition to socialism. It has portrayed COSATU as a bastion of working class power within government that would guarantee this transformation.

Events have proceeded in an entirely opposite direction. For services rendered, SACP leaders were granted key roles in the post-apartheid regime and a share in the spoils of office. COSATU and its affiliated unions have functioned as an industrial police force and a mechanism for the self-enrichment of the bureaucracy.

Philip Hirschsohn, Professor School of Business and Finance at the University of the Western Cape, pointed out last year how the trade unions have taken on “oligarchic characteristics.”

The position of shop steward has become a mechanism for securing management positions, as part of the “emergence of entrepreneurial and career unionists,” with SACP membership a favoured “stepping stone” for “access opportunities in managerial ranks or in government.”

Former NUM leader and high-ranking ANC politician, Cyril Ramaphosa is now the 34th richest man in the whole of Africa, with a net worth of $275 million. One of his many companies has a contract to supply labour at Marikana in a form of indentured slavery. He is paid R12 000 ($1500) per worker per month by Lonmin, but only pays his workers R4000 ($500) per month.

Its role as an adjunct of management has meant that NUM membership has declined to less than 50 percent of employees in many mines; most of these are skilled white collar and surface workers. The strikers at Marikana are either members of the breakaway Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) or not unionized at all.

The NUM, COSATU and the SACP have all called for police to clamp down on the strikers, defending the massacre and urging the suppression of the AMCU. NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni said of the Marikana massacre that, “The police were patient, but these people were extremely armed with dangerous weapons.”

This has not prevented the pseudo-left groups internationally from opposing the necessary break from COSATU and its affiliated unions, without which any struggle against the ANC is impossible.

The South African affiliates of the Committee for a Workers International, the Democratic Socialist Movement, instead urge “workers in both unions to demand united solidarity action, beginning with a local general strike” and ending in a “national general strike”—all presumably led by the NUM and COSATU.

The Socialist Workers Party in the UK is more despicable still, writing on August 17, “Whatever its intentions, AMCU has sometimes been used to introduce disunity at a time when workers face big challenges. It would have been better for the workers who formed the rival union to fight among the NUM rank and file and shift its policies from below.”

Support for the NUM and COSATU is support for the ANC and the Tripartite Alliance government. It is support for the continuation of capitalism and imperialist oppression.

The theory of Permanent Revolution provides the political basis for the workers and youth of South Africa to conduct the life-and-death struggles that lie ahead. The evolution of the ANC is a graphic confirmation of Leon Trotsky’s insistence that bourgeois nationalist movements, tied as they are to capitalism and organically opposed to ending the brutal exploitation of the workers and poor farmers, are incapable of carrying through the struggle for democracy and liberation from imperialist domination.

The working class, mobilising all the oppressed rural and urban layers, must break with the ANC and its defenders in the SACP and the trade union apparatus and build their own socialist party.

A workers government must be established to take the entire economy into social ownership and utilise the vast natural wealth presently monopolised by the super-rich to meet the needs of all for decent jobs, housing, education and health provision. This revolutionary struggle must be extended throughout Africa and internationally through the construction of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the world party of socialist revolution.

Chris Marsden

Source: World Wide Socialist Web Site

South Africa: Political Elites

Although change was evident at all levels of society as South Africa began to dismantle apartheid during the 1990s, particularly dramatic changes were occurring in the country's political and social leadership. Not only were new leaders emerging on the national level, but shifts were also occurring within political organizations, as new political expectations and aspirations arose and as new demands were placed on political leaders at all levels.

Since 1948 the country's governing class, the political elite, had been dominated by Afrikaners. Afrikaners held most high positions in government, including the legislature, the judiciary, the cabinet, and the senior ranks of the military and security services. Afrikaners also came to dominate the larger community of leaders, the power elite, by assuming important roles in the civil service bureaucracy, and to a lesser extent in business, the universities, and the media. Afrikaner dominance was reinforced by the rules of apartheid, in large part because the government's security and intelligence services helped to enforce the rules of apartheid through other institutions.

In general, during the apartheid era, English-speaking whites were less important in the political and power elites. They played only secondary roles in most areas of government. English speakers were, nevertheless, prominent in commerce and industry, where the Afrikaners' success had lagged behind their political achievements, as is explained by Thompson and Prior. By the 1980s, English-speaking whites also held important positions in universities and the media, and in a few areas of government.

In the early 1990s, these political and power elites were evolving, as is demonstrated in the authoritative survey of elites, Who's Who in South African Politics, by the South African writer Shelagh Gastrow. Gastrow divided South Africa's dominant political leaders into four major categories: political leaders within the Afrikaner community, most associated with the NP; an older generation of black opposition leaders, most within the ANC; a younger generation of leaders emerging from the Black Consciousness Movement; and a new group of labor leaders who had risen to prominence as the trade union movement strengthened during the 1970s and 1980s. A fifth category might be added--according to South African political scientist Roger Southall, who reviewed Gastrow's book--the small number of white political leaders who attempted to reshape white politics along nonracial, democratic lines.

A subsequent revised edition of Gastrow's book identified 118 individuals--110 men and only eight women--as constituting South Africa's evolving political elite in 1992. Among the obvious changes occurring at that time was the emergence of formerly imprisoned, exiled, or banned opposition leaders, who had been released from prison or had been legally recognized since early 1990. They could then be legally quoted in the country's media, and their ideas were being widely disseminated. In addition, new challengers arose to replace formerly entrenched leaders, especially conservative blacks, coloureds, and Indians who had gained office through various forms of state patronage in the black homelands or in other institutions of government.

Changes were also occurring within the senior ranks of the organizations from which the country's new leaders had emerged. As the ANC, for example, was forced to cooperate with former opponents, especially the NP, in pursuing national goals, new alliances and friendships were formed, shaped in part by a pragmatic appraisal of the political realities of the time. In addition, former opposition groups--especially the ANC--began to revise their rhetoric from that of guerrilla opponents of government, or "states in exile," to adapt to their new positions of responsibility. The ANC's best educated, skilled technocrats, capable of managing governmental and other bureaucracies, were gaining particular prominence.

At the same time, a greater distance was developing between these educated elites and the less educated rank-and-file within their own organizations. In particular, there was a growing distance between the ANC and its radical youth wing in late 1994 and 1995. There was also a growing distance between the ANC leadership and their former ally, the South African Communist Party (SACP). Ties between these two organizations had not only been close in the past; their membership and leadership rolls had overlapped.

In some cases, the new elites appeared to have more in common with members of rival political organizations than with their organization's own members. Several new government leaders, for example, were drawn from traditional African elites--royal families, chiefs, and influential clans. President Mandela, while a university-trained lawyer, is also a descendant of a leading family among the Thembu (Tembu), a Xhosa subgroup. Like Mandela, the prominent Zulu leader and minister of home affairs, Mangosuthu (Gatsha) Buthelezi, is university-educated and the product of aristocratic origins. Buthelezi, a member of the Zulu royal family, is also a chief within the Buthelezi sub-group (also, "tribe") of the Zulu.

Other members of South Africa's new government also represent ethnic elites. For example, the minister of public enterprises in 1995, Stella Sigcau, is the daughter of a well-known Pondo paramount chief, Botha Sigcau. Stella Sigcau also had served as chief minister in the Transkei government during the early 1980s.

Many former ANC officials who were in government office in the mid-1990s had worked to overcome factional differences based on ethnicity during the apartheid era. Although the ANC is often stereotyped as "Xhosa-dominated," and a number of its officers are Xhosa, several ethnic groups have been represented in the ANC's senior ranks. Thomas Nkobi, treasurer general from 1973 through the early 1990s, represents a subgroup within the Zimbabwe-based Shona people. Former Secretary General Cyril Ramaphosa and National Working Committee member Sydney Mufamadi are Venda (VaVenda--see Ethnic Groups and Language, ch. 2). Ramaphosa's former deputy, Jacob Zuma, is one of several Zulu leaders who rose to prominence within the ANC. The ANC's former security and intelligence specialist, Patrick "Terror" Lekota, and former MK leader Joe Modise are Sotho (BaSotho). Several popular regional leaders are Tswana (BaTswana). In general, these leaders have rejected arguments that favored the use of ethnicity to define political factions.

Age differences appeared more divisive than ethnicity within the ANC during the early and the mid-1990s. There were heated debates over questions of political succession, as the ANC's aging leaders--many over the age of seventy--faced challenges from the generations below them. Nelson Mandela was seventy-five years old when he was elected president in 1994, and several other ANC leaders were more than seventy years of age. Their most likely successors--especially Mbeki, Ramaphosa, Zuma, and the ANC's former director of intelligence, "Mac" Maharaj--were roughly two decades younger. Some of the ANC's younger militants threatened revolt against senior party figures in the early months of the new government, as their demands for jobs, homes, and improved living standards continued to be unmet. Criticism of the "older generation" was fueled in late 1994 and early 1995, when the president's former wife, Winnie Mandela, clashed with the government and was ousted as a deputy minister, as she championed the grievances of the ANC's militant youth.

As the apartheid system was being dismantled, some members of the Afrikaner elite in government, the civil service, and the security services reacted with impressive flexibility. By adapting quickly to the new environment, many of them not only retained their valued positions in the bureaucracy but also won new respect from former adversaries. As the ANC assumed responsibility for the security establishment, the police, and the intelligence services, ANC leaders were often able to work closely and cooperatively with Afrikaners who had once been so effective in excluding blacks from the political process.

The shift in power and influence among the country's political elites had begun well before the April 1994 elections. An important arena in which this power shift occurred was that of the political negotiations concerning the interim constitution of 1993. During those negotiations, as difficult and unpromising as they sometimes appeared, then-governing whites began, some for the first time, to view their black counterparts as legitimate partners in the decision-making process. At the same time, many black leaders adjusted smoothly to the new climate of political tolerance.

More about the Government of South Africa.

Source: U.S. Library of Congress

Miners give team cold shoulder

Angry striking workers at Lonmin's Marikana mine shunned President Jacob Zuma's inter-ministerial committee yesterday, rejecting help in organising a memorial service for those killed last week.

They said Zuma's failure to address them after the killings showed he did not care about their struggle for better living conditions.

Zuma has called for an inquiry into the killing of more than 40 people, including two police officers, and Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane is leading an interministerial team to assist families affected by the massacre.

But Chabane's team received a hostile reception from the North West miners.

The striking workers vented their anger at the ministers and presented them with cartridges they had retrieved from the scene of the Thursdays' shooting.

Xolani Ndzuza, the leader of a committee set up to represent the striking workers, spat on the ground before telling workers to reject an offer for the ministers to be involved in preparations for the memorial service scheduled for tomorrow.

"The memorial service that you say you want to organise for us, we don't want it.

"We don't welcome your help. The person who helped us is Julius Malema [expelled ANC Youth League president]. He is the one who told us that Cyril Ramaphosa sits on the board and spends millions buying animals. We don't want the R2-million he said will assist with the burial services."

Defence Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, speaking on behalf of the ministerial committee, had earlier defended Zuma's failure to address the crowd, saying he had visited injured workers in hospital and "it was too late" in the day for him to meet the other workers.

"We agree with you that blood was spilled. It is not what we would have wanted. As the government, we would like to assist you to organise [Thursday's] memorial service," she said.

The committee had set up a desk at Rustenburg's municipal offices to help families track down missing relatives, who were either dead or injured in hospital, she said.

The ministerial committee said 33 of the 34 bodies had been positively identified, with one being a citizen of Lesotho.

Addressing journalists at the Marikana police station earlier, Malema said the workers had opened two murder charges, the first against the NUM security guards who had allegedly shot dead several striking workers two weeks ago. The second was against the police for the slaying of 34 workers at the Marikana hill last week.

Malema said he had helped workers open cases because he did not have confidence in the commission of inquiry set up by Zuma.

"Opening a case at the police is a process that we believe in . it will not be manipulated by political processes. With a commission of inquiry, we don't know the terms of reference, the judges that are going to be appointed or the criteria ."

Malema said a group of lawyers who had volunteered to help with the case were considering applying for an interdict to secure the release of 259 workers from jail to allow them to mourn the death of colleagues.

Source: Times Live

French Communist Party backs killing of South African miners

The World Socialist Web Site notes with contempt the French Communist Party’s defense of the massacre of 34 striking South African platinum miners by police at Marikana.

After sympathetically quoting South African President Jacob Zuma and cynically expressing its “indignation and horror” at the violence, the brief communiqué published August 17 by the Communist Party (PCF) states: “The PCF reaffirms its solidarity with all the political and trade union forces in South Africa in their struggle to reduce inequality, for progress and for social justice under the true rule of law.”

It is public knowledge that the “political and trade union forces” defended by the PCF ordered and defended the massacre. The African National Congress (ANC) government’s national police commissioner, Riah Phiyega, declared after the massacre that she “gave police the responsibility to execute the task they needed to do.” She opposed any prosecution of those responsible for the miners’ deaths, saying, “This is no time for finger-pointing.”

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), whose former president Cyril Ramaphosa has gone on to amass a fortune of $275 million, has opposed the miners’ strike. NUM General Secretary Frans Baleni defended the police, stating, “The police were patient, but these people were armed with dangerous weapons.”

The PCF’s fellow Stalinists in the South African Communist Party (SACP), who historically have supported the ANC, dismissed the police killing of strikers as “worker-to-worker violence.”

The massacre of South African miners is an event of international significance, testifying to the murderous hostility of bourgeois “left” parties and the trade union apparatus towards any militant movement of the working class that threatens to escape the suffocating grip of the official unions. It is also a sharp warning to the working class internationally.

By praising police toadies in South Africa as fighters for justice and the rule of law, the PCF is signaling that it and PCF-affiliated unions like the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) will not object to similar acts of police violence to crush strikes in Europe.

The rest of France’s petty-bourgeois “left,” which operates within the CGT and with the PCF on the periphery of France’s social democratic government, is maintaining a telling silence on this outrage. As of this writing, five days after the killings, the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) has still not commented on the Marikana massacre on its web site.

As for the Workers Struggle (LO) group, the CGT’s most dogged promoter, it has published only one brief, eight-line news dispatch on the massacre. LO is totally silent on the role of the ANC and NUM, but concludes: “Whatever some kind souls may claim, the class struggle is still present, sometimes ferocious. This is proof.”

LO’s platitudes are calculated to allow the French petty-bourgeois pseudo-left to maintain its political support for the organizers of the Marikana massacre.

Source: World Socialist Web Site

Marikana and the man with the green blanket

The women of a South African community are coming to terms with a week of bloodshed that culminated with the deaths of 34 workers shot by police on Thursday during a protest at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana.

A stick to being used to beat Zuma? Just a thought …  
Marikana action is a strike by the poor
Marikana was a war zone: Burger

Let justice, fairness be our guide

FIRST up, I must confess that I am one of those who secretly (or maybe not so secretly) celebrated the unceremonious ousting of Thabo Mbeki from the presidency of the South African republic. He had caused so much harm to the country that it seemed okay for the ANC to give him a solid punch in the ribs and make him feel the pain that he had made others feel. As I watched his farewell address that Sunday night in September 2008, a part of me sadistically enjoyed seeing the humiliation he was being subjected to. Never mind that it was all wrong, unprocedural and, most likely, unconstitutional. I, and many other South Africans, were just happy to see the back of someone, who had suffocated the nation with his near tyrannical leadership style and his icy heart. Yes, today we miss his intellect and vision, but we should never forget the ditch into which he nearly drove us. However, nothing can detract from the fact that the bloodless 2008 coup set a bad precedent for our republic.

We should make sure that even if the ANC does not give President Jacob Zuma a second party term in December, the party should under no circumstances be allowed to cut short his presidency. As torturous as this might be, principle should trounce passions. In the past week, the demise of ANC Youth League president Julius Malema was widely celebrated. When ANC bigwig Cyril Ramaphosa - who chairs the party's national disciplinary committee of appeals - confirmed the youth leader's guilt and sentence on Saturday, there was a collective sigh of relief from Constantia to Khutsong. Finally, the Mario Balotelli of our politics had been red-carded. One might argue that this was rightly so.

Like Mbeki, Malema has done a lot of harm to the country. It is therefore easy to understand why we are all inclined to ululate as he is blindfolded and led to the raised platform where he will hang until his neck breaks. Except for the fact that he swears by the skull and crossbones that symbolise the venerable 75-year-old South African institution called Orlando Pirates, Malema has no saving graces.

I had hoped against all hope that the honourable men and women on the ANC's appeals committee would rise above self-interest politics and allow their integrity to dictate their decision-making. At this juncture, as the comrades are wont to say, we should pause and ask ourselves if it is right and proper that Malema should be executed in this fashion for the sake of political expediency.

No doubt the country will be a much better place without Malema on newspaper front pages and at the top of broadcast bulletins every other day. His divisive verbosity will not be missed. Investors will nod. Ministers and policy-makers will no longer have to waste their breath explaining that nationalisation is not official policy but one young man's thoughts in the bath. Minority interest groups will have to find a new bogey. Farmers will not see Robert Mugabe on their doorsteps. The cantankerous chief from Ulundi will be less concerned that his grandchildren will be recruited into the ANC against his will. Hellen Zille and Lindiwe Mazibuko will be subjected to fewer insults. Mazibuko can make her tea and Zille can inject herself with botox with gay abandon. South Africans will not be subjected to to the sewer rhetoric that Malema had reduced political discourse to. Most crucially, Zuma's re-election strategists will sleep easier and plan better for the ANC's Mangaung elective conference. (That is all, of course, assuming that Malema is finished, which is far from conclusive at this point. Like Mgqumeni of Nquthu, Malema might rise from the dead and wow the masses again.)

But is the imminent execution right and proper? Is the elevation of political short-term gain above principle the right thing for a country that is trying to deepen and entrench a democratic culture? This lowly newspaperman thinks not.

Let's just take a cold look at the sins Malema is said to have committed against the ANC. As leader of the ANC Youth League, he led the charge against Botswana's governing party. He called for regime change in that country, labelling Ian Khama's government a puppet of Western imperialism. He did not call for a military overthrow of the government, but rather the unification of opposition forces for the democratic removal of the Botswana Democratic Party. By the way the "D" part of the party's name is almost as appropriate as North Korea's depiction of itself as democratic.

Now many in the ANC - including the secretary-general, members of the national executive and officials of other party structures - have pronounced themselves on foreign policy issues. Be it Zimbabwe, Israel, Swaziland or Tibet, we have heard differing views from individual members of the ANC leadership. Having read the national disciplinary committee's reasoning on the matter, I am still none the wiser as to why Botswana should be a holy cow, other than the fact that it has more cattle than human beings in its sovereign territory.

Malema's other serious offence was the unfavourable comparison of Zuma's leadership to that of Mbeki. Now what, pray thee, is the crime comparing the talents of the country's leaders? How are we to grow if we do not publicly share our views on the respective qualities of those who lead us? It would be a travesty if we were to create a culture where South Africans - and ANC functionaries in particular - were not able to evaluate the contribution of leaders to the development of our republic and our world. There were many other pots, spoons and saucers (euphimistically known as charges) thrown at Malema during a process in which the kangaroo court label can be deemed apt. It is a process that, as much as we may resent Malema, we will live to regret.

Rather than rushing to execute Malema, the ANC and the country should take some lessons from his rise and fall. In the rise of Malema, we should take care not to empower a demagogue to occupy centre stage in our discourse. Malema the hero and Malema the ogre were not the creation of the media and the South African public. The ANC gave birth to him, fattened him and unleashed him on an unsuspecting nation. It suited Zuma and his leadership to have an uncontrollable bloodhound to take on their opponents and external opponents. He was empowered to be the Malema that he was. The more despicable he became the more useful he was. Not once did the ANC give a care about the negative effect he was having on our body politic or the damage he was doing to our international standing. In its centenary introspections, the ANC should give careful thought to how it creates and nurtures monsters such as Malema.

Those outside the ANC should also think about how we deal with the monsters that the governing party creates. Do we empower the monsters by demonising and fearing them? Do we in the media give undue attention to the monsters that the ANC or any other societal force creates? Do we have a choice? Having done so, the ANC and the country should think seriously about the place of principle in our public discourse and the conduct of our politics.

We should make sure that no matter how much we resent, hate and fear an individual, these emotions should never compromise our commitment to justice and fairness.

Principle should always be our guide. Yesterday it was Mbeki. Today it is Malema. Tomorrow? ...

Written by Mondli Makhanya, editor-in-chief of Avusa Media newspapers

Source: The Sowetan

Poisoned: The man who blew the whistle on Mpumalanga's hit squad

A confidential autopsy report says that Mpumalanga politician James Nkambule, who died suddenly last week, was poisoned. Nkambule, 37, was the whistle-blower who earlier this year claimed that politicians were behind assassinations in the province. He alleged that corruption surrounding the building of the province's multibillion-rand Mbombela stadium for the World Cup led to the deaths.

Nkambule collapsed and died at his home in Mjindini on Thursday night last week. At the time he was attempting to get a Mozambican man - who he believed to be the hit man - placed in the witness protection programme. The autopsy, conducted by Mpumalanga chief medical officer Dr Gantcho Gantchev, concludes his death was "unnatural". In the postmortem report, Gantchev describes "white foamy material" found in Nkambule's throat and windpipe, and about 30ml of brownish fluid "suggestive of ... poison ingestion" in his stomach. Gantchev told the Sunday Times: "There is no smoke without fire." "They killed him, they killed my dad," Nkambule's daughter, Buhle Nkambule, said on hearing the news. Toxicology tests will establish the type of poison and when it entered his system.

Nkambule first rose to prominence in 2001 when he claimed there was a plot to overthrow then president Thabo Mbeki. He had been branded a "professional liar" by the ANC after publicly accusing members Mathews Phosa, Tokyo Sexwale and Cyril Ramaphosa of being behind the move.

The ex-ANC member also recently claimed that Mpumalanga premier David Mabuza paid R400000 towards President Jacob Zuma's wedding last year. These claims were never denied by the Presidency. His wife, Claudia Xwabe, said this week that Dr Gantchev had told the family that the postmortem showed there was "a drug in (Nkambule's) body".

On Friday, police confirmed that "foul play" was suspected. "We have opened an inquest into the death," said provincial police spokesman Captain Leonard Hlati. Nkambule had recently met with police commissioner General Bheki Cele to discuss efforts to bring a Mozambican man, known in the criminal underworld as "Josh", to South Africa, where he was to be placed under a witness protection programme. Josh was to testify against prominent figures regarding the death of former Mbombela municipality speaker Jimmy Mohlala. Mohlala was killed after he blew the whistle on irregularities in the awarding of tenders to build the R2-billion Mbombela stadium. Mohlala's name was on a hit list of nine municipal officials opposed to awarding the contract for the construction of the stadium.

Josh has since claimed in an affidavit, now in the possession of the police, that he was hired by Mpumalanga officials and a soccer boss as a "cleaner" from 2000 until 2009 to eliminate political and business opponents. His work included smuggling drugs, poisoning people and carrying out other "hits". He said that the people he targeted included Nkambule; a former mayor of the Gert Sibande district council, Andries Gamede; Scopa chairman Fish Mahlalela; and Mbombela mayor Lassy Chiwayo.

He further alleged that Govan Mbeki municipality chief financial officer Joshua Ntshuhle's car was driven to Malawi to make it look like he had vanished. Ntshuhle went missing in December 2005, days before he was due to testify in the fraud and corruption trial of the municipality's marketing manager, Sibusiso Sigudla. The gangster further claimed that he was hired, along with three Zimbabwean nationals and a fellow Mozambican, to kill Mohlala. He said four of the men who helped carry out the hit on Mohlala had since been killed.

Nkambule recently slammed the police investigations into the murders - which might have also exposed the tender irregularities - as slow. He was due to appear in court this week on charges of fraud and defeating the ends of justice after police accused him of fabricating the sworn statement by Josh.

The Sunday Times has established that the police have yet to question anyone in connection with Nkambule's earlier complaint that he had been poisoned. The politician had maintained he was poisoned in 2006 by political opponents, leaving him having to be hospitalised several times. In August last year, Nkambule said, Josh approached him and confessed that he had poisoned him on instructions from a senior politician. In a statement seen by the Sunday Times, Josh details how he was handed "a small bottle that was full of liquid substances" in 2006, and instructed to infiltrate a company catering for a matric dance in Barberton where Nkambule was a guest speaker. "I did in September 2006 ... empty the bottle ... in James Nkambule's food and I went to personally serve him at his table," he said in his statement.

Josh claimed he was prompted to confess to Nkambule after he learnt that his fellow assassins had all been executed to destroy evidence. Nkambule submitted the statement to police in February - whereupon he was arrested on suspicion of fabricating the statement. Hlati this week rubbished Nkambule and Josh's claims: "We did not question any person because we did not receive any statement from Josh," he said on Friday. "If you have this Josh, please produce him."

Source: Times Live

Mining shaky ground:"Shades of Zimbabwe"

South Africa might well have said goodbye to significant new foreign investment in its mining industry. Foreigners can be unforgiving when they see what they believe are attempts to grab their assets. Which is precisely what they believe is happening with the recent, though quickly rescinded, ban by the Department of Mineral Resources of normal by-product metals sales by London-registered platinum miner Lonmin.

Understandably, politically connected opportunists were seen as being actively helped by the department in their attempts to acquire mining assets cheaply and beyond the legal requirement that 25% ownership of mines be transferred to BEE interests by 2014.

"Shades of Zimbabwe," fund managers muttered. An earlier, similar stratagem directed at an Anglo American subsidiary, Kumba's Sishen Iron Ore, was initially largely overlooked as being an aberration. Now, the word "greenmail" is commonly heard in London. Kumba felt it had adhered strictly to the rules. When global steelmaker ArcelorMittal missed the April 2009 deadline to convert its prospecting rights - a preliminary to granting mining rights - over 21.4% of Sishen's Northern Cape mine, Kumba itself applied to the department for the rights.

Strangely, before it had considered Kumba's legitimate application, the department awarded the Sishen prospecting rights to the hitherto little-known Imperial Crown Trading - which is closely linked to the presidency and ANC top brass. That effectively sterilises part of Sishen, where mining goes back decades. Imperial has no mining skills, credentials or even visible cash - just political connections. Reportedly, it somehow got its hands on Kumba's application documentation and put in a later bid. The Department of Mineral Resources's first-come-first-served rule was ignored. When challenged earlier this year, mines minister Susan Shabangu blustered that she saw nothing sinister in granting rights to people with affiliations to the ruling party. That was just after she and Anglo CEO Cynthia Carroll had been cosying up to each other at a Cape Town mining conference at which all was sweetness and light. Shabangu was touting SA's mining investment merits and Carroll was making emollient statements about Anglo's commitment to South Africa.

Kumba is mounting a legal challenge to the Imperial award. But, in a new twist this past week, Imperial struck an R800-million deal to be taken over by ArcelorMittal, sweetened by a share in a R9-billion 26% stake in the steelmaker's South African mills - all provided that Imperial can deliver the Sishen rights to the steel company. Some favoured individuals are hoping to make quick fortunes, and they are not the ordinary South Africans BEE is supposed to benefit. Wheels within political wheels. If this deal goes through, a good part of the steel mill's stake will be owned by the Gupta Group, controlled by the Indian Gupta family, which finances the ANC and the party's new daily newspaper - set to hit the streets next month. Gupta has Jacob Zuma's son, Duduzane, on one of its boards. Neighbours say that Duduzane occupies a house provided by the Guptas in Saxonwold. How much closer can one get?

The Lonmin imbroglio was strikingly similar. The platinum miner's application to convert old-order to new-order mining rights has been grinding its way through the Department of Mineral Resources's sluggish approval process for months. But Lonmin had temporarily excluded from its application a tiny piece of ground over which rights were subject to negotiation. Prospecting rights on that area were rapidly granted by the department to the mysterious HolGoun group, controlled by Sivi Gounden. Gounden is reputedly a BEE-enriched individual believed to contribute anonymously to ANC coffers. He is, crucially, also a former director of Lonmin and a former director-general of public enterprises under the ANC government. In October, Gounden abruptly resigned his Lonmin directorship, citing pressure of other business. In Lonmin's last annual report he was dutifully praised by chairman Roger Phillimore for his insights. That sort of encomium is often par for the course, irrespective of the real reasons for a departure.

Lonmin is challenging the HolGoun claim. Lonmin might have preferred to keep the matter private while negotiating, but the department's ban would have had a potentially material effect on the company and it had to be disclosed in terms of stock exchange rules and corporate legislation. After one abortive start, Lonmin is now fully BEE-compliant, moored to Cyril Ramaphosa's unlisted Shanduka investment company, which holds indirect stakes in Lonmin's two mines and its smelter.

Why, fund managers ask, should there have been a total ban on established, normal by-product sales, particularly as HolGoun's prospecting claims cover only a tiny part of Lonmin's property? Was it "greenmail", or a crude attempt to induce Lonmin to transfer more to other BEE wannabes? Certainly, there is a lacuna in South Africa's current mining legislation. But Londoners, with Kumba in mind, believe the Lonmin ban represented another example of official processes being abused to enrich ruling-party stalwarts, or, at least, of incompetence in the Department of Mineral Resources. That might be insulting to the independence of our government departments but, unfortunately for us, the belief is a reality to fund managers, who are increasingly questioning this country's investment merits.

It is, perhaps, telling that the latest international investment climate rankings by Canada's authoritative Fraser Institute downgraded South Africa to a level below the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Miners must go where minerals - particularly the platinum mined by Lonmin and Anglo's Anglo Platinum - are found. Auto plants can be moved elsewhere, mines can't. Nonetheless, there are many new mining opportunities around the globe. It's all a deterrent to new investment crucial to the development of an emerging economy such as South Africa's. As one mining executive put it: "The ANC needs to wake up to reality."

Source: Times Live

South Africa: 3 Cleared Of Coup Accusation

Three of the country's leading black businessmen, all central figures in the anti-apartheid struggle and senior members of the governing African National Congress, have been cleared of accusations that they were plotting to oust President Thabo Mbeki. The accusations against Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale and Matthews Phosa were widely denounced as absurd and dangerous when they were made in April.

In announcing the results of the investigation, Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete, who first accused the men, expressed his ''profound apologies'' to them and their families.

Source: New York Times

Three Businessmen Accused of Plot to Oust South African President

After weeks of whispers about political jousting and maneuvering within the governing African National Congress, the minister of safety and security has accused three leading members of the party of plotting to oust President Thabo Mbeki. The announcement that the three, Cyril Ramaphosa, Tokyo Sexwale and Matthews Phosa, all prominent businessmen, were under investigation was front-page news today and it left some government officials reeling. All three were fighters for liberation during the apartheid regime.

Mr. Ramaphosa and Mr. Sexwale have long been viewed as potential rivals to Mr. Mbeki although both men have left politics to pursue lucrative careers in business. Opposition politicians quickly condemned the investigation as an attempt by Mr. Mbeki to neutralize opponents who might be tempted to deny his hopes for a second term. A.N.C. officials denied that the probe was politically motivated.

The investigation became public on Tuesday night when Steve Tshwete, minister of safety and security, announced on national television that the three men were believed to be running a disinformation campaign against the president. Of particular concern, Mr. Tshwete said, were rumors charging Mr. Mbeki with orchestrating the assassination in 1993 of Chris Hani, the revered South African Communist Party leader. Two right-wing whites were convicted of killing Mr. Hani, who was one of Mr. Mbeki's rivals for the position of deputy president to Nelson R. Mandela.

Mr. Tshwete said rumors linking President Mbeki to the death of Mr. Hani might have led Mr. Hani's supporters to turn on the president. ''There are sworn affidavits of a plot and disinformation campaign and we have to investigate to see to what extent does it compromise the safety of the president so that we can take the necessary precautions,'' Andre Martin, a spokesman for Mr. Tshwete, said in an interview this afternoon. Officials refused to divulge further details of the reported plot today, but Mr. Tshwete said that the government was bolstering Mr. Mbeki's personal security.

The allegations are the most recent hint of factional fighting within the party. Mr. Mbeki, who succeeded Mr. Mandela in 1999, has been viewed as increasingly vulnerable in A.N.C. circles. Polls indicate that his popularity has slipped, and he has stumbled in his handling of the AIDS epidemic and some other issues. In a surprise public statement earlier this month, Deputy President Jacob Zuma unexpectedly denied rumors and ''unverified, so-called intelligence reports'' that he might stand for the position of A.N.C. president. Earlier this year, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, president of the African National Congress Women's League, denied that she was spreading malicious rumors about Mr. Mbeki. Mr. Sexwale and Mr. Phosa vehemently denied today that they were plotting against the president.

Mr. Ramaphosa, who was once the A.N.C.'s secretary general and is now chairman of a powerful media and telecommunications company, helped lead the negotiations that brought an end to all white rule and was Mr. Mandela's first choice as a successor. Mr. Sexwale, who was imprisoned by the apartheid government and later ran the provincial government that includes Johannesburg, ''is more than satisfied'' with running a black empowerment company with interests in diamond and platinum mines, his family said. ''Our country faces real and serious socio-economic problems, most of all poverty,'' the family said in its statement. ''It is an unwarranted, precious time-wasting exercise to be diverted by gossip and rumor-mongering based on cooked-up stories.''

Mr. Phosa, who served as an A.N.C. legal adviser under apartheid and led the province of Mpumalanga before moving into business, described the allegations as ''insulting the intelligence of ordinary South Africans.'' Leaders of the opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, describing the investigation as an abuse of government powers. Mr. Mbeki declined to discuss the issue today, but in a TV interview on Tuesday, he urged the so-called conspirators to abandon their plotting and to declare their ambitions.

Source: New York Times

South Africa: the fraud of "black empowerment"

With less than two weeks before elections take place in South Africa, a share option scandal has broken out involving the country's biggest black-owned company, New African Investments Ltd (Nail), which has interests in financial services and the media.

The scandal has brought into sharp focus the African National Congress (ANC) government's policy of "black empowerment", which has enriched a tiny minority of black businessmen and government officials over the past five years.

Along with many companies in South Africa, Nail is in financial difficulties. Institutional shareholders objected when four company directors, who control almost all the voting shares, attempted to award themselves more than R130 million (£13 million) of share options in a subsidiary company. Two of the directors, Nthato Motlana, a Soweto doctor and one-time anti-apartheid activist, and Jonty Sandler, a white entrepreneur, were forced to resign. Motlana accused "white shareholders" of fomenting the revolt. Black financial commentators sprang to the directors' defence, arguing that lucrative option deals were normal in white businesses.

The two other directors involved, Dikgang Moseneke and Zwelakhe Sisulu, extricated themselves by making abject apologies. They have been discussing with financial institutions about how to turn around the company, which has a market capitalisation of R7 billion (£693 million). They both declared that severe cutbacks were necessary: "It will have to be surgery, not bandages and ointment."

The scandal follows the departure last month of Cyril Ramaphosa, Nail's deputy chairman, who was forced to resign by fellow directors for reasons not yet explained. Ramaphosa was the founder and former leader of the National Union of Mineworkers and general secretary of the ANC, who negotiated the end of white minority rule on its behalf. Today, he is one of the country's foremost super-rich black businessmen and is chairman of Anglo-American and South African Breweries.

On coming to power in 1994, the ANC government abandoned the "socialist" rhetoric it had used to mobilise the South African masses against apartheid. Instead, it insisted that "political liberation" should be followed by "economic liberation", i.e., that blacks should benefit from "affirmative action" in employment, government contracts and privatisations. The government programme of "black empowerment" was aimed at facilitating the "creation of large black-owned businesses". Hundreds of new companies have been launched in the past five years.

At least nine black-controlled investment consortia, or black empowerment groups, have been established. They have gained a stake in several of South Africa's biggest corporations: South African Breweries, Times Media, PO Holdings (information technology) and Metropolitan Life (insurance). Black boardroom involvement is a virtual necessity for bidding on big government contracts.

The government also recently passed quota-based affirmative action legislation in the awarding of government contracts, licenses and privatisation schemes. Companies deemed to have a substantial black ownership are awarded a 15 percent price advantage when bidding for public contracts. A condition for the new license to be issued in July to a cellular telephone company is that a black empowerment group must maintain a shareholding in the company making the bid.

Several local authorities are organising private sector partnerships with international companies like Saur International of France and Biwater of the UK, to help run water, sewage and other services. This means that black empowerment groups will be participating in the commercial supply of water in the townships, under conditions where many consumers cannot afford to pay water bills and are returning to traditional sources of water. The national transport department is also drawing up plans to bring private companies in to run the municipal airport and bus services.

In September 1995 only 1 percent of the market capitalisation on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange was under black control. Today, the figure has risen to 16.3 percent. Last year, black companies made 130 major investments worth R21 billion (£2.1 billion) compared with R5 billion (£0.5 billion) in 1997 and R1.6 billion (£0.16 billion) in 1996. A new generation of black tycoons has been created, including Ramaphosa, Moseneke and Sisulu, Nail's directors.

This has the backing of the most farsighted representatives of big business. In a Financial Times review of the book Empowered but not yet enriched Philip Gawith wrote of the importance of having more "comrades in business". "When the bright young blacks have turned their backs on politics and are intent instead on making a fortune, that will be the signal that South Africa has grown up," Gawith writes.

Harry Oppenheimer, a major shareholder in Anglo-American, a mining company that dominates the South African economy, said recently, "It was vital to make it possible for black people to control some of the big companies in South Africa. It was the right thing to do—part of a necessary response to the efforts for peace made by Mandela and his colleagues. You felt business had to match their efforts.... We owe an immense amount to Mandela. If it had not been for him, we would not have had the peaceful transition."

Anglo-American organised the finance for a spin-off company, Johnnies Industrial Corporation (Johnnic). The National Empowerment Consortium (NEC) purchased it, with Ramaphosa as chairman. Some companies operate as joint ventures with white businesses. Others fulfil government requirements by appointing one or two blacks to the board, allotting a slice of equity to a fledgling empowerment group and appointing a few black managers.

Global crisis upsets black empowerment

Few black South Africans have money of their own to buy into such equity, so almost every empowerment deal has been built on debt. The banks made arrangements for these "capitalists without capital" by setting up a "Special Purpose Vehicle" (SPV) and issuing shares with a life of three to five years. The shares are pledged as security for the loans used to buy them. This means that the SPVs depend for their success on continually rising share prices and moderate interest rates. In the context of the present economic instability, the banks are the real beneficiaries of black empowerment.

The economic outlook for South Africa is bleak. The economy has been hit by a collapse in the world price of gold, a commodity that plays a crucial role in the country. In 1980 the price of gold was $850 an ounce; last week it fell to a 20-year low of less than $280. Gold has traditionally been held as a hedge against inflation and a safe haven from turbulent stock markets. But the IMF is proposing to sell off 150 tonnes of gold, 10 percent of its gold reserves. The Bank of England has also announced plans to auction off half the UK gold reserves in July. Anglo-American, which controls the world's diamond industry and is the largest gold and platinum producer, is leaving the Johannesburg Stock Exchange next week and will move its primary listing to London.

Last October share prices collapsed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The JSE's all-share index fell by 40 percent from its high point only six month earlier. The banks and financial services index lost almost 60 percent in the same six-month period, threatening many black empowerment companies like Johnnic, where shares values have fallen by 50 percent. Funding arrangements for its black investors expire in less than a year. If the share price does not rise rapidly the lenders could reclaim their security and the empowered black owners would get nothing, wiping out black ownership on the JSE.

The ANC government has appointed Ramaphosa to head a newly appointed commission to look into ways of "putting the movement on more solid foundations". One proposal is for more active participation by black-owned companies in the mining industry. At present, about two-thirds of mineral rights are privately owned and one third belong to the state. The government is planning to vest all mineral rights in the state so that black-owned companies can be given access to South Africa's plentiful minerals. Deep gold mines will not be affected by the plans because they require extensive investment in capital equipment beyond the means of small black-owned companies.

Anglogold, the world's largest mining company, has announced it is shedding its high cost operations to focus on its core assets. A year ago it sold off seven loss-making shafts from the Vaal Reefs gold mine to African Rainbow Minerals (ARM), a small black empowerment company. Last week ARM bought another six shafts. Other mineral reserves, like scattered deposits of shallow coal, are also being transferred to small black-owned companies. The only way these companies can survive on the world market is by increasing the exploitation of the predominantly black labour force. The massive speed-up will have terrible consequences for workers in an industry that already has one of the highest accident rates in the world.

The ANC and the "fat cats"

The ANC election manifesto calls for "A better life for business people", stating: "The ANC recognises that South Africa's business people are critical partners in the development of our country." The manifesto cites one of the achievements of the past five years as "the removal of apartheid barriers hampering economic growth and development and the introduction of better conditions for investment." Another is the creation of "conditions for the participation of black people and women in the economy as entrepreneurs and owners of wealth and the encouragement and growth of small and medium business."

Peter Vundla, an advisor to Thabo Mbeki, who is set to succeed Nelson Mandela as South African president, recently told Victor Mallet of the Financial Times that he has "no problem with fat cats".

Government claims that its policy of black empowerment provides an escape route from the squalor and misery of the townships are completely hollow. This programme is used to divert attention from the desperate problems confronting the working class, by transforming every social issue into a question of race. It enables a narrow layer of super-rich black entrepreneurs to enter South Africa's capitalist class, whilst the vast majority of the population remain deprived of their rights to education, a healthy life and employment.

Mbeki and the ANC are committed to implementing IMF austerity polices. In an attempt to attract greater investment from the transnational corporations they are offering a partnership with black consortia as a means of controlling the working class and imposing the necessary draconian conditions.

Source: World Socialist Web Site

The Bhisho Massacre: the day 29 people died

Bhisho, the administrative capital of the Eastern Cape, was once the capital of the Ciskei, a so-called homeland of South Africa. It gave its name to a massacre that happened there on September 7 1992 when Ciskei strongman Oupa Gqozo's troops opened fire on an ANC march heading into the capital. Twenty-eight protesters and one soldier died. Hundreds of others were injured.

At that time, negotiations for South Africa's non-racial constitution had broken down amid accusations that the ruling National Party was fomenting "third force" violence in black townships. Another stumbling block was the refusal of Gqozo to participate in negotiations and undertake to give up the homeland's "independence". The meeting at the stadium in Bhisho was organised by the ANC to protest this, to demand free political activity and an end to state violence and repression in the Ciskei.

About 80 000 people - including Chris Hani, Cyril Ramaphosa, Steve Tshwete and Harry Gwala - marched from King William's Town to Bhisho, chanting "no more slavery".

Disastrous miscalculation

Determined to peacefully occupy Bhisho and force Gqozo's resignation, Ronnie Kasrils, a stalwart of ANC protests, led a section of the marchers through a gap in the razor wire erected to contain them. In his autobiography Armed and Dangerous: My Undercover Struggle with Apartheid, Kasrils writes: "By not charging in their [soldiers] direction, by giving them a wide berth, we would avoid confrontation." The organisers and the demonstrators believed that with the eyes of the world on them, Gqozo's troops would not dare open fire.

But this was a disastrous miscalculation. Ciskei troops opened fire, ostensibly on the orders of Gqozo.

Recounting it later, Kasrils writes: "One moment I was running, my comrades with me. The next instant, without warning, the soldiers opened fire." Kasrils hit the ground, but bullets cut into the crowd following him. Petros Vantyu, his bodyguard, was one of those hit by the gunfire. "As I began to crawl towards him, the gunfire broke out again, as angry and prolonged as before, and I froze where I lay. The sinister whirr of projectiles overhead, followed by four dull thuds, made me realise with horror that they were firing grenades as well."

Deadlock breaker

An official investigation revealed that the first fusillade lasted one-and-a-half minutes, while the second lasted a minute. More than 425 rounds were fired. At the end, bodies lay scattered in pools of blood along the line of razor wire erected to contain the marchers.

Gqozo denied giving the order to fire. He accused ANC demonstrators of opening fire first, killing a soldier. He said his troops had acted with restraint. Then-president FW de Klerk said at the time that the massacre resulted from the ANC's failure to observe march conditions agreed with Ciskei authorities. "I did not start mass action, the ANC did. It is a fallacy, an unsubstantiated lie, that my government was involved," he said.

But Nelson Mandela differed with him. "The creation of a climate for free political activity, including in the homelands, is an important condition for us to return to the negotiating table. An enormous responsibility rests with the South African government to create that climate."

In the end, massacres in Bhisho and Boipatong, where 49 people were killed, acted as deadlock-breaking mechanisms. Key players in the negotiation process were forced to rethink their strategies and options. The spiral of violence gave way to the reopening of talks and South Africa once again resumed its journey towards democracy and freedom, which culminated in the country's first democratic elections in 1994.

Source: Buffalo City Metro

South Africa Talks in Deadlock; De Klerk Confers With Mandela

Negotiations on South Africa's future deadlocked today, prompting President F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, president of the African National Congress, to meet to try to devise a solution. After the two leaders met with their advisers and then for more than an hour with each other, Mr. Mandela said they would report the outcome on Saturday. He described their meeting as "substantial," the South Africa Press Association reported, but did not say what they had decided. A resolution of the impasse would pave the way for the creation of a transitional government that would draft a new constitution extending political equality to blacks.

The cause of the deadlock was the inability of one of five working groups created by the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, as the negotiating forum is called, to agree on one of the proposed guidelines for a new constitution. The disputed point is the size of the legislative margin of approval for constitutional provisions covering regional issues. The dispute, which erupted in invective between the Government and the congress, blocked the presentation of progress reports by the four other working groups on the country's future. But Mr. Mandela told journalists that it would be naive for anybody to think that there would be no deadlocks in the negotiations. "While there is a will to address problems, there is hope those problems will be solved," said Mr. Mandela, who sounded noticeably more relaxed than his subordinates did earlier today. "We are confident that in the weeks or months that lie ahead we will be able to make good progress," Mr. Mandela said before meeting with Mr. de Klerk.

The convention, which opened last December in a mood of enthusiasm, created the working groups to consider aspects of the transition and submit their plans to the current meeting. But as the second full session of the convention confronted real issues today, the good will soured. The Government and the congress accused each other of derailing the talks, and some smaller parties took sides, splitting the convention nearly down the middle. "The Government continues to lack the will to negotiate seriously," charged Chris Hani, the head of the South African Communist Party, a congress ally. Foreign Minister Roelof F. Botha railed against what he called the "A.N.C.-Communist-Marxist school of belief" that "a winner takes all and grabs the power." Cyril Ramaphosa, the secretary general of the African National Congress, said at a news conference that he saw very little chance that agreement would be reached on the convention floor. "We have become convinced that the South African Government didn't come to today's working group meeting with the clear intent of signing an agreement," Mr. Ramaphosa said.

The Government delegation said the failure to agree on one point should not obscure what its negotiator Tertius Delport called "substantial and very important progress" on other fronts. The Government side proposed that the convention consider the reports of the other working groups, leaving the unresolved issue for discussion later. Mr. Delport cautioned against haste. "We're not dealing with the question at which time the Sunday school will start," he said. "We're dealing with the future of our country." But Mr. Ramaphosa rejected a piecemeal approach and said the entire package must be considered. He and other congress officials accused the Government of trying to postpone the eventuality of majority rule. "We do not want to be caught in a position where the transition goes on forever," said Mohammed Valli Moosa, a negotiator for the congress.

The disagreement involved the margin of approval that would be needed for constitutional provisions dealing specifically with regional issues. The African National Congress says it should be 70 percent of the votes in a elected constitution-making legislature; the Government has held out for 75 percent. These two key participants reached virtual consensus on other proposed guidelines, but the 5 percent gap has stalled unrelated issues that were scheduled for discussion and approval at the negotiations. Their inability to close the modest 5 percent difference reflected in part their exasperation after hours of negotiations, and also their unwillingness to appear to their constituencies to be giving too much ground. The regional issue is a delicate one. The governing National Party and some of the other 18 political parties and organizations in the talks believe that the interests of minorities, including whites, can be better protected if power is decentralized down to the regional level, even though whites do not form the majority in any region.

The National Party also wants the new Parliament to have a second chamber, called a Senate, whose members would be elected regionally rather than nationally. The African National Congress and the Government had already compromised on the margin by which a constitution-making body should enact legislation. The congress initially proposed a two-thirds majority, while the Government wanted 75 percent. They agreed upon 70 percent for most constitutional provisions and 75 percent for the bill of rights, but differed over the regional issues. Each side also introduced further conditions. The Government said its proposed Senate should have equal authority in approving the constitution, giving it a potential veto over what the first chamber drafted.

And the African National Congress said that if the constitution-making body could not pass its provisions by a sufficient majority, after six months the unresolved issues should be put to a public referendum. The congress and the Government have agreed that the transition take place in two stages, with an appointed executive council supervising the government during the initial stage. They also agreed that an interim legislature elected by universal franchise should draft the new constitution.

Source: New York Times