It is never a good sign when an organisation or individual completely overreacts to perceived criticism. As the simmering discontent of South Africa’s underclass boils over into open revolt and violence and as corrupt shoot-to-kill cops are increasingly deployed in places as far flung as Marikana, De Doorns and Sasolburg to protect the old and new elites from the wrath of the dispossessed, some politicians are increasingly resembling Lady Macbeth, driven by their guilt and shame to commit ever more heinous misdeeds. The hysterical and often undemocratic response of various ANC and SACP structures to the silly First National Bank (FNB) advertising campaign is a case in point.
In Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”, Lady Macbeth urges her husband to kill Duncan, the king, to allow Macbeth to satisfy his ambitions of becoming king. She overrides all of her husband’s objections by challenging his manhood and he relents and kills Duncan. Later Lady Macbeth becomes racked with guilt and sleepwalks through the palace, haunted by the murder of the former king. In this trance she tries to wash off imaginary bloodstains from her hands, shouting: “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.”
The response of the ANC, the ANC Youth League and the SACP to the FNB campaign resembles the attempts of Lady Macbeth to clean imaginary bloodstains from her hands.
“What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?”
The FNB campaign includes videos of young South Africans apparently speaking their minds. In one of the videos a participant says: “Stop voting for the same government in hopes for change – instead, change your hopes to a government that has the same hopes as us.”
The ANC Youth League and SACP joined the ANC in slamming the campaign, with the league saying it was “deeply angered and disappointed” by the bank’s “treacherous” campaign. On Sunday, Youth League spokeswoman Khusela Sangoni-Khawe said FNB had failed in trying to “recreate an Arab Spring of some sort in South Africa” and said it “uses children to make unproven claims of a government rife with corruption. We call upon South Africans to close ranks against what is a treacherous attack on our country.”
ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu said the ANC (who is never directly mentioned in any of the videos) was “appalled” by the campaign in which the ANC, its leadership and government were “under attack” the campaign was an “undisguised political statement that makes random and untested accusations against our government in the name of discourse. While we believe that people are entitled to their views, we don’t accept that young kids should be used as proxies to articulate political views espoused, as in the case of the FNB advertisement.”
“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!”
These vehement reactions to what appear to be rather mild criticisms of the government and platitudes about one’s right to vote for the party of one’s choice (widely accepted in any functioning democracy) are curious for several reasons.
First, whatever one might think of FNB and its advertising campaign (and I am not a fan of the campaign or of the lily-livered manner in which the bank caved in to political thugs), the manner in which several ANC and SACP spokespersons conflated the ANC with the state and with the country is worrying. The ANC is not the state. Neither is it the sole representative of the South African people. South Africa, in the words of the Freedom Charter, belongs to all who live in it – it does not belong to the ANC. Like any political party, the ANC deserves to be praised when it does something well and deserves to be criticised when it abandons the poor that it professes to love and serve.
Second, the statement that the FNB campaign is treacherous and tries to recreate the Arab Spring, is anti-democratic and – I am sorry to have to use such an emotive term – proto-fascist. There is nothing wrong with telling people that they should refrain from voting for the governing party. Voting for whomever one pleases is at the heart of political freedom in a democratic state. Every democratic election is based on a fair and free contestation between political parties in which we are all allowed to express our preferences.
We are also all free to try and convince others to vote for the ANC, to vote for the DA, or to vote for the TP (Tender Party), for that matter. It is probably not a great business model for a Bank to get involved in an advertising campaign that might alienate the majority of voters, but if it does, there is nothing treacherous about it. If FNB had not pulled the adverts I might even have lauded the bank for putting its principles (which one may agree or disagree with) before naked profits.
The Arab Spring refers to various uprisings organised by oppressed populations in countries where citizens did not enjoy political rights and where democratic contestation and free and fair elections could not be held. To refer to an advertising campaign in which a teenager urges people in South Africa to vote for the party of their choice as an attempt to recreate an Arab Spring, suggests the ANC Youth league believes that South Africa is not a democracy, that its citizens are oppressed and do not enjoy political rights and that they will never be allowed to change the government by using their vote. Like Lady Macbeth wandering in a trance and trying to wash off imaginary bloodstains from her hands, the ANC Youth League is revealing rather more than it intended about its own undemocratic tendencies. Pity Jackson Mthembu will not display the same sense of outrage about this full-frontal attack on our democracy.
Whether one is a staunch ANC supporter or a supporter of the right wing Freedom Front Plus, if one supports democracy one will not be appalled by the fact that an institution has dared to criticise a political party. Only proto-fascists would be appalled by the fact that a bank has dared to broadcast statements criticising the government.
One might, of course, disagree with the sentiments expressed by the youngsters in the FNB produced videos, and the ANC has every right to express its disagreement with some of the statments made by the youngsters. But claiming that the sentiments are treacherous or that it is not legitimate to criticise the party displays the kind of undemocratic intolerance that cannot be associated with a party who supports democracy.
Personally I find that it is better to ignore attacks that are far-fetched or motivated by racism, hatred or a complete lack of information. That is what I do when I am criticised for something I have written. “Don’t feed the trolls,” I tell myself every time I read the unhinged invective of faceless loonies on my Blog. If the criticism is serious, one either responds to it by pointing out why and how it is wrong, or one takes it on board and changes one’s behaviour. Just a thought: use it, don’t use it.
One does not tell those who criticise that they are committing treason or that they are attacking the state merely because one happens (for the time being) to be the party of government.
I was reluctant even to enter this discussion, not because I am fearful of repercussions, but because what I have written here is so obvious and because all this fuss about a bank’s advertising campaign detracts attention from the far more important social and economic issues facing the country.
Maybe that is why the campaign has attracted such hysterical responses from the ANC and its partners. Like Lady Macbeth, whose paranoid dreams symbolises the fact that she is haunted by her guilt, the ANC reaction is perhaps a symptom of the fear and guilt that stalks the political class in South Africa. As Marikana, De Doorns and Sasolburg have shown, the poor, economically excluded and marginalised members of society have not benefited as handsomely from the end of apartheid as the members of the old (mostly white) and emerging (mostly black) middle classes.
While those in the chattering classes squabble about silly adverts made to promote the commercial interests of a big bank and argue whether these adds exploit children, many of those same children are dropping out of school or receiving a third rate education because of the cowardice of politicians who are too scared to take on a powerful union. While I write about the nature of democracy, members of social movement are harassed and tortured by the police. While Helen Zille spends her days on twitter, blaming the poor for the lack of services in their communities in Cape Town, millions of South Africans go to bed hungry, wondering whether this wonderful democracy will ever guarantee them a full stomach.
Source: Constitutionally Speaking
Showing posts with label Fascism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fascism. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Thursday, August 23, 2012
The far right's advocacy of supremacism
The far-right, (also known as the extreme right or radical right) refers to the highest degree of rightism in right-wing politics. Far right politics involves support of strong or complete social hierarchy in society, and supports supremacy of certain individuals or groups deemed to be innately superior who are to be more valued than those deemed to be innately inferior.[1]
The far right's advocacy of supremacism is based on what its adherents perceive as innate characteristics of people that cannot be changed.[2] This stands as a point of difference with the centre-right's attribution of behaviours, such as laziness or decadence, as the primary sources of social inequalities.[2] The centre right - unlike the far right - claims that people can end their behavioural inferiority through changing their habits and choices.[3]
The original far right, which emerged in France after the French Revolution, refused to accept the French Republic and supported a counter-revolution to restore the French monarchy and aristocracy.[4] The far right is commonly associated with persons or groups who hold extreme nationalist, xenophobic, racist, religious fundamentalist or reactionary views.[5] The most extreme-right movements have pursued oppression and genocide against groups of people on the basis of their alleged inferiority.[6]
Far right politics commonly includes authoritarianism, nativism and racialism.[8] Typically, the term far right is applied to fascists and neo-Nazis,[9][10][11][12][13] and major elements of fascism have been deemed clearly far right, such as its belief that supposedly superior people have the right to dominate society while purging allegedly inferior elements, and — in the case of Nazism — genocide of people deemed to be inferior.[14] The far right claims that superior people should proportionally have greater rights than inferior people.[15] The far right has historically favoured an elitist society based on belief of the legitimacy of the rule of a supposed superior minority over the inferior masses.[16] Far-right politics usually involves anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are deemed inferior and undesirable.[17] Concerning the socio-cultural dimension (nationality, culture and migration), a far-right position could be the view that certain ethnic, racial or religious groups should stay separate, and that the interests of one’s own group should be prioritised.[18]
The German political scientist Klaus von Beyme describes three historical phases in the development of far right parties in Western Europe after the World War II.[18][19]
From 1945 to the mid-1950s, far right parties were marginalised and their main objective was to survive rather than having any political impact. Far right policy had been discredited by Nazism, and was subsequently politically isolated. From the mid-1950s to the 1970s, the so-called "populist protest phase" emerged with sporadic electoral success. Characteristics of far right parties in this phase included charismatic leaders and a profound dislike of the political establishment, using an "us and them" model; with “us” being the “common man” and “them” being the politicians and bureaucrats. In the 1980s, electoral success of far right parties consolidated, while they used anti-immigration views as a main issue.
Source: Wikipedia
The far right's advocacy of supremacism is based on what its adherents perceive as innate characteristics of people that cannot be changed.[2] This stands as a point of difference with the centre-right's attribution of behaviours, such as laziness or decadence, as the primary sources of social inequalities.[2] The centre right - unlike the far right - claims that people can end their behavioural inferiority through changing their habits and choices.[3]
The original far right, which emerged in France after the French Revolution, refused to accept the French Republic and supported a counter-revolution to restore the French monarchy and aristocracy.[4] The far right is commonly associated with persons or groups who hold extreme nationalist, xenophobic, racist, religious fundamentalist or reactionary views.[5] The most extreme-right movements have pursued oppression and genocide against groups of people on the basis of their alleged inferiority.[6]
Far right politics commonly includes authoritarianism, nativism and racialism.[8] Typically, the term far right is applied to fascists and neo-Nazis,[9][10][11][12][13] and major elements of fascism have been deemed clearly far right, such as its belief that supposedly superior people have the right to dominate society while purging allegedly inferior elements, and — in the case of Nazism — genocide of people deemed to be inferior.[14] The far right claims that superior people should proportionally have greater rights than inferior people.[15] The far right has historically favoured an elitist society based on belief of the legitimacy of the rule of a supposed superior minority over the inferior masses.[16] Far-right politics usually involves anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are deemed inferior and undesirable.[17] Concerning the socio-cultural dimension (nationality, culture and migration), a far-right position could be the view that certain ethnic, racial or religious groups should stay separate, and that the interests of one’s own group should be prioritised.[18]
The German political scientist Klaus von Beyme describes three historical phases in the development of far right parties in Western Europe after the World War II.[18][19]
From 1945 to the mid-1950s, far right parties were marginalised and their main objective was to survive rather than having any political impact. Far right policy had been discredited by Nazism, and was subsequently politically isolated. From the mid-1950s to the 1970s, the so-called "populist protest phase" emerged with sporadic electoral success. Characteristics of far right parties in this phase included charismatic leaders and a profound dislike of the political establishment, using an "us and them" model; with “us” being the “common man” and “them” being the politicians and bureaucrats. In the 1980s, electoral success of far right parties consolidated, while they used anti-immigration views as a main issue.
Source: Wikipedia
Friday, April 6, 2012
Defiant Juju thumbs nose at ANC's bid 'to silence him'
In open defiance of the conditions of his suspension from the ANC, youth
league leader Julius Malema has addressed a church service in
Butterworth in the Eastern Cape. The SABC reported that Malema had spoken out against what he called
"individuals trying to silence him" at a second church service which he
had attended.
"I will never be silenced. There is nobody who has a right to silence me," the Dispatch Online quoted Malema as saying on Friday. "The right to speak was given to me from the day I was born." According to the Dispatch Online, Malema said he was not at the Last Move Ministries church to speak politics. "When everything is difficult out there, the only safe place is church because in church you don't discriminate. We are here to receive blessings. We want the church to pray for us because those that used to be our friends have turned against us. They have not only turned against us but plan our death," he was quoted as saying.
In a statement on Thursday, ANC Youth League spokesperson Floyd Shivambu said: "In celebrating Easter Friday and commemorating the life of Solomon Mahlangu, president Julius Malema will visit the Twelve Apostles' Church in Christ in Butterworth."
Mahlangu was an Umkhonto we Sizwe soldier hanged by the apartheid government in 1979. Malema was visiting the church in his capacity as the league's president, Shivambu said. He said Malema had not spoken at the Twelve Apostles' Church in Christ, but the embattled youth league leader had reportedly attended a second church service at Last Move Ministries, where he did speak.
This was Malema's first public appearance since the suspension. According to the SABC he was accompanied by members of the league's national executive committee, the provincial executive and National Youth Development Agency chair, Andile Lungisa.
On Wednesday, Malema was gagged and temporarily suspended by the ANC's national disciplinary committee (NDC), a move which forbids him exercising any duty as an ANC member, president of the ANCYL or member of the Limpopo provincial executive committee. Malema's temporary suspension from the party followed comments he made at a centenary lecture at the University of the Witwatersrand last Friday. Malema called ANC President Jacob Zuma a dictator and said he was suppressing the youth league. The ANCYL leader was informed on Wednesday morning of his immediate temporary suspension, and that the NDC would bring disciplinary proceedings against him. The NDC had instituted special measures because of Malema's repeated behaviour. Malema is appealing his expulsion from the ANC for sowing division in the party and for bringing it into disrepute. The appeals hearing was expected to take place on April 12.
The two disciplinary proceedings are separate.
Source: Mail & Guadian
"I will never be silenced. There is nobody who has a right to silence me," the Dispatch Online quoted Malema as saying on Friday. "The right to speak was given to me from the day I was born." According to the Dispatch Online, Malema said he was not at the Last Move Ministries church to speak politics. "When everything is difficult out there, the only safe place is church because in church you don't discriminate. We are here to receive blessings. We want the church to pray for us because those that used to be our friends have turned against us. They have not only turned against us but plan our death," he was quoted as saying.
In a statement on Thursday, ANC Youth League spokesperson Floyd Shivambu said: "In celebrating Easter Friday and commemorating the life of Solomon Mahlangu, president Julius Malema will visit the Twelve Apostles' Church in Christ in Butterworth."
Mahlangu was an Umkhonto we Sizwe soldier hanged by the apartheid government in 1979. Malema was visiting the church in his capacity as the league's president, Shivambu said. He said Malema had not spoken at the Twelve Apostles' Church in Christ, but the embattled youth league leader had reportedly attended a second church service at Last Move Ministries, where he did speak.
This was Malema's first public appearance since the suspension. According to the SABC he was accompanied by members of the league's national executive committee, the provincial executive and National Youth Development Agency chair, Andile Lungisa.
On Wednesday, Malema was gagged and temporarily suspended by the ANC's national disciplinary committee (NDC), a move which forbids him exercising any duty as an ANC member, president of the ANCYL or member of the Limpopo provincial executive committee. Malema's temporary suspension from the party followed comments he made at a centenary lecture at the University of the Witwatersrand last Friday. Malema called ANC President Jacob Zuma a dictator and said he was suppressing the youth league. The ANCYL leader was informed on Wednesday morning of his immediate temporary suspension, and that the NDC would bring disciplinary proceedings against him. The NDC had instituted special measures because of Malema's repeated behaviour. Malema is appealing his expulsion from the ANC for sowing division in the party and for bringing it into disrepute. The appeals hearing was expected to take place on April 12.
The two disciplinary proceedings are separate.
Source: Mail & Guadian
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Today they come for Malema…..
President Jacob Zuma is not a person who seems to take kindly to criticism (and neither is he someone who can take a joke at his expense). One might even claim that he seems a bit, well, thin skinned (if not, dare I say, dictatorial) in his attitude towards those who say things about him that he does not like. Not that Julius Malema has shown a lot of tolerance towards those within the Youth League who have dared to criticise him or who opposed his leadership at one time or another. In fact, these two leaders, may, ironically, be cut from the same kind of cloth.
A few years ago Zuma announced that he was going to sue Zapiro for R5 million because he claimed the cartoonist had defamed him after the cartoonist had published a cartoon in which he suggested Zuma was violating the justice system to avoid facing fraud and corruption charges.
It therefore comes as no surprise that the National Disciplinary Committee (NDC) of the ANC – ostensibly acting completely independently of President Zuma (yeah right!) – announced this morning that it was temporarily suspending Julius Malema from the ANC with immediate effect. The purported reason for this suspension is that Malema allegedly brought the ANC into disrepute. (Malema had already been expelled from the ANC earlier, but his appeal regarding the expulsion is to be heard only later this month.)
Apparently the ANC as an organisation is brought into disrepute if one of its members criticises the leader of the party in public. (Criticism might be the lifeblood of any democratic culture, but public criticism of leaders has now suddenly become alien to the culture of the ANC – at least if that criticism is levelled at President Zuma.) How any political party can remain democratic and how it can renew itself and correct mistakes, when its members are not allowed to criticise the party leader in public, is unclear. Maybe criticism can be communicated in secret messages with the assistance of the intelligence services?
Of course, this ban on any public criticism of a sitting leader is not based on a principle that was followed by President Zuma and his supporters during his fight with former President Thabo Mbeki. But I guess consistency and an abiding respect for high principles is not really what is in play here. What is at play is President Zuma’s future survival. Remember, he might well believe that he will either get a second term or he will go to jail for 15 years, so (in his eyes) there might not be time for niceties such as respect for democratic debate inside the party.
Malema now faces fresh disciplinary charges, which will obviously lapse once the ANC Appeal Committee confirms Malema’s expulsion – surely only a formality. This is after Malema criticised Zuma on Friday in the following terms:
It is under President Zuma that we have seen the youth of the ANC being traumatised, being expelled from their own home. It is under President Zuma we have seen a critical voice being suppressed We have seen under President Zuma, democracy being replaced with dictatorship. We have seen an intolerance….people, who become impatient with the youth….
The NDC did not say who complained about the utterances made by Malema. It did stipulate the following (once again rather draconian and probably not entirely enforceable) conditions that Malema will be required to comply with during his suspension:
Of course, the first thing to note is that this will bring the clash between the Youth League and the mother body of the ANC to a head, as Malema is forbidden from attending any Youth League meeting, which the League insists can operate free from the discipline of the ANC.
Members of the Youth League Executive (with or without Malema) will now have to decide either to defy this order of the disciplinary committee or face disciplinary charges and expulsion themselves. What happens if they continue arguing that the Youth League Executive members cannot be ordered around by the mother body and cannot say whether Malema should sit on the League’s Executive or not? What if the Executive continues meeting with Malema as its President? Surely they will all then have to be suspended as well and then ultimately expelled.
President Zuma seems to have learnt well from the “mistakes” of Thabo Mbeki and he is taking no chances with those who might oppose him. Cut off their heads before they can gather steam, seems to be his motto. Whether this is a democratic attitude or closer to the dictatorial style that Malema spoke about, I leave to the judgment of the readers.
Secondly, an order purporting to ban Malema from making any public statements on any matter pertaining to the ANC infringes on Malema’s right to freedom of expression. Our Bill of Rights can also bind private individuals, organisations and political parties and I am almost certain that when an organisation bans a member from making any statements about that organisation in public that organisation is in breach of the Bill of Rights. For this reason, the probably unconstitutional censoring of Malema by the NDC seems troubling, to say the least.
A further irony is of course that this immediate suspension and the draconian (and partially unconstitutional) nature of the “conditions” imposed on Malema during this latest suspension nicely seems to illustrate the point Malema was making in his speech about the intolerance of Zuma to dissent and the inability of the leadership to listen to and accept criticism of ANC leaders and policies.
By making these points I am not arguing that Malema was wise to make the statements that got him into trouble today. Neither am I claiming that I believe Malema is an eternal democrat who is saying these things because he really has the best interests of the ANC at heart. Yet, as I warned before, one must be careful to cheer on this silencing of debate and dissent inside the ANC merely because the person being silenced is someone with whose views one does not agree and whose downfall one might applaud.
Today they come for Malema. Tomorrow they might come for you or me.
Source: Constitutionally Speaking
A few years ago Zuma announced that he was going to sue Zapiro for R5 million because he claimed the cartoonist had defamed him after the cartoonist had published a cartoon in which he suggested Zuma was violating the justice system to avoid facing fraud and corruption charges.
It therefore comes as no surprise that the National Disciplinary Committee (NDC) of the ANC – ostensibly acting completely independently of President Zuma (yeah right!) – announced this morning that it was temporarily suspending Julius Malema from the ANC with immediate effect. The purported reason for this suspension is that Malema allegedly brought the ANC into disrepute. (Malema had already been expelled from the ANC earlier, but his appeal regarding the expulsion is to be heard only later this month.)
Apparently the ANC as an organisation is brought into disrepute if one of its members criticises the leader of the party in public. (Criticism might be the lifeblood of any democratic culture, but public criticism of leaders has now suddenly become alien to the culture of the ANC – at least if that criticism is levelled at President Zuma.) How any political party can remain democratic and how it can renew itself and correct mistakes, when its members are not allowed to criticise the party leader in public, is unclear. Maybe criticism can be communicated in secret messages with the assistance of the intelligence services?
Of course, this ban on any public criticism of a sitting leader is not based on a principle that was followed by President Zuma and his supporters during his fight with former President Thabo Mbeki. But I guess consistency and an abiding respect for high principles is not really what is in play here. What is at play is President Zuma’s future survival. Remember, he might well believe that he will either get a second term or he will go to jail for 15 years, so (in his eyes) there might not be time for niceties such as respect for democratic debate inside the party.
Malema now faces fresh disciplinary charges, which will obviously lapse once the ANC Appeal Committee confirms Malema’s expulsion – surely only a formality. This is after Malema criticised Zuma on Friday in the following terms:
It is under President Zuma that we have seen the youth of the ANC being traumatised, being expelled from their own home. It is under President Zuma we have seen a critical voice being suppressed We have seen under President Zuma, democracy being replaced with dictatorship. We have seen an intolerance….people, who become impatient with the youth….
The NDC did not say who complained about the utterances made by Malema. It did stipulate the following (once again rather draconian and probably not entirely enforceable) conditions that Malema will be required to comply with during his suspension:
He will not exercise any duty in his capacity as an ANC member, President of the ANC Youth League and/or Member of the Provincial Executive Committee of the ANC Limpopo Province;
He will not attend any meeting of the ANC or any of its structures, including the Leagues, except for the purpose of the NDCA hearing and the pending disciplinary proceedings to be instituted against him.
He will not address any meeting of the ANC or any of its structures, including the Leagues, whether as an invited guest, in his capacity as President of the ANC Youth League and/or as a member of the ANC; and
He will not make any public statement on any matter pertaining to the ANC.
Of course, the first thing to note is that this will bring the clash between the Youth League and the mother body of the ANC to a head, as Malema is forbidden from attending any Youth League meeting, which the League insists can operate free from the discipline of the ANC.
Members of the Youth League Executive (with or without Malema) will now have to decide either to defy this order of the disciplinary committee or face disciplinary charges and expulsion themselves. What happens if they continue arguing that the Youth League Executive members cannot be ordered around by the mother body and cannot say whether Malema should sit on the League’s Executive or not? What if the Executive continues meeting with Malema as its President? Surely they will all then have to be suspended as well and then ultimately expelled.
President Zuma seems to have learnt well from the “mistakes” of Thabo Mbeki and he is taking no chances with those who might oppose him. Cut off their heads before they can gather steam, seems to be his motto. Whether this is a democratic attitude or closer to the dictatorial style that Malema spoke about, I leave to the judgment of the readers.
Secondly, an order purporting to ban Malema from making any public statements on any matter pertaining to the ANC infringes on Malema’s right to freedom of expression. Our Bill of Rights can also bind private individuals, organisations and political parties and I am almost certain that when an organisation bans a member from making any statements about that organisation in public that organisation is in breach of the Bill of Rights. For this reason, the probably unconstitutional censoring of Malema by the NDC seems troubling, to say the least.
A further irony is of course that this immediate suspension and the draconian (and partially unconstitutional) nature of the “conditions” imposed on Malema during this latest suspension nicely seems to illustrate the point Malema was making in his speech about the intolerance of Zuma to dissent and the inability of the leadership to listen to and accept criticism of ANC leaders and policies.
By making these points I am not arguing that Malema was wise to make the statements that got him into trouble today. Neither am I claiming that I believe Malema is an eternal democrat who is saying these things because he really has the best interests of the ANC at heart. Yet, as I warned before, one must be careful to cheer on this silencing of debate and dissent inside the ANC merely because the person being silenced is someone with whose views one does not agree and whose downfall one might applaud.
Today they come for Malema. Tomorrow they might come for you or me.
Source: Constitutionally Speaking
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
African National Congress Acts to Silence a Critic
Julius Malema, the polarizing leader of the African National Congress Youth League, was abruptly suspended from the party on Wednesday, effectively silencing him within South Africa’s main political body as he fights for his political life. The announcement came after a speech on Friday in which Mr. Malema accused President Jacob Zuma of becoming a dictator, and after a highly unusual news conference on Tuesday by the party’s top leadership to denounce divisive squabbles.
The decision to silence Mr. Malema, analysts say, is less about finishing off his waning political prospects than an effort by Mr. Zuma to quell serious speculation that one or more senior party members will seek to unseat him as president of the A.N.C. and the country at the party’s leadership conference in December. Mr. Zuma himself rose to the presidency by defeating his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, in a leadership fight in 2007 in which Mr. Malema and the Youth League played a central role.
“It was beginning to look as if Zuma wasn’t in charge of his own organization,” said Steven Friedman, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy. “He needed to show who’s boss.”
The suspension is the latest and in some way the harshest punishment meted out against Mr. Malema, who was once one of Mr. Zuma’s most ardent supporters but has become a harsh critic.
Mr. Malema was convicted at the end of February in an internal disciplinary trial of sowing division within the party, and was sentenced to expulsion. The A.N.C., which prizes its reputation for fairness, allowed Mr. Malema to keep his membership while he appealed the expulsion, a process that will continue despite the latest decision. In the meantime, he had been using A.N.C. events and the support of some top party leaders to press his case with the rank and file, casting himself as the victim of a stultified elite wary of his radical ideas to help the poor. With his suspension, he has lost access to that platform. He also faces multiple investigations into his personal finances: he has become a wealthy man while leading the Youth League, and has been frequently accused of corruption.
Mr. Malema is no stranger to outrageous remarks. He revived the anti-apartheid struggle song “Shoot the Boer,” a term for white farmers, leading him to be convicted of using hate speech. He called a BBC reporter a “bloody agent.” Back when he was close to Mr. Zuma, he declared himself ready to die for the man. But on Friday, Mr. Malema apparently went too far when he attacked Mr. Zuma at a Youth League event to celebrate the A.N.C.’s centennial.
“It is under President Zuma we have seen a critical voice being suppressed,” Mr. Malema told a cheering crowd at the University of the Witwatersrand. “We have seen under President Zuma democracy being replaced with dictatorship.”
Also on stage was Mathews Phosa, the party treasurer and one of six members of the A.N.C.’s national executive committee. Mr. Phosa has been a supporter of Mr. Malema and a critic of Mr. Zuma. Mr. Malema has also courted Kgalema Motlanthe, a former president and now Mr. Zuma’s deputy, who appeared at another Youth League event where Mr. Zuma was harshly criticized. But both potential rivals appeared at Mr. Zuma’s side at a news conference on Tuesday, which was held by Gwede Mantashe, the party’s secretary general, in an effort to project a united front. The fact that members of the executive committee who seemed to be at odds with the president could be compelled to show up demonstrated that Mr. Zuma, despite deep divisions within the party, is likely to be re-elected, said Karema Brown, a veteran political analyst.
“It was an important show of force,” Ms. Brown said. “And of course it wasn’t a show of unity. It was a real demonstration of power. If he didn’t have that power, he wouldn’t have been able to get them to sit there.”
The A.N.C., like any big political party, has always struggled to keep its diverse membership and ambitious leadership under one big tent, though not always successfully. The most acrimonious and public infighting was that which led to the ouster of Mr. Mbeki, Nelson Mandela’s chosen successor, as party president in 2007. He was soon pushed out as president of the country as well, temporarily replaced by his deputy, Mr. Motlanthe, and eventually by the man he had previously fired as his deputy, Mr. Zuma. Every attempt to undercut the party’s power by splitting it has ended in failure. The most recent effort, the Congress of the People, founded by disgruntled supporters of Mr. Mbeki, has struggled to attract votes and has been riven by rivalries.
Source: New York Times
The decision to silence Mr. Malema, analysts say, is less about finishing off his waning political prospects than an effort by Mr. Zuma to quell serious speculation that one or more senior party members will seek to unseat him as president of the A.N.C. and the country at the party’s leadership conference in December. Mr. Zuma himself rose to the presidency by defeating his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, in a leadership fight in 2007 in which Mr. Malema and the Youth League played a central role.
“It was beginning to look as if Zuma wasn’t in charge of his own organization,” said Steven Friedman, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy. “He needed to show who’s boss.”
The suspension is the latest and in some way the harshest punishment meted out against Mr. Malema, who was once one of Mr. Zuma’s most ardent supporters but has become a harsh critic.
Mr. Malema was convicted at the end of February in an internal disciplinary trial of sowing division within the party, and was sentenced to expulsion. The A.N.C., which prizes its reputation for fairness, allowed Mr. Malema to keep his membership while he appealed the expulsion, a process that will continue despite the latest decision. In the meantime, he had been using A.N.C. events and the support of some top party leaders to press his case with the rank and file, casting himself as the victim of a stultified elite wary of his radical ideas to help the poor. With his suspension, he has lost access to that platform. He also faces multiple investigations into his personal finances: he has become a wealthy man while leading the Youth League, and has been frequently accused of corruption.
Mr. Malema is no stranger to outrageous remarks. He revived the anti-apartheid struggle song “Shoot the Boer,” a term for white farmers, leading him to be convicted of using hate speech. He called a BBC reporter a “bloody agent.” Back when he was close to Mr. Zuma, he declared himself ready to die for the man. But on Friday, Mr. Malema apparently went too far when he attacked Mr. Zuma at a Youth League event to celebrate the A.N.C.’s centennial.
“It is under President Zuma we have seen a critical voice being suppressed,” Mr. Malema told a cheering crowd at the University of the Witwatersrand. “We have seen under President Zuma democracy being replaced with dictatorship.”
Also on stage was Mathews Phosa, the party treasurer and one of six members of the A.N.C.’s national executive committee. Mr. Phosa has been a supporter of Mr. Malema and a critic of Mr. Zuma. Mr. Malema has also courted Kgalema Motlanthe, a former president and now Mr. Zuma’s deputy, who appeared at another Youth League event where Mr. Zuma was harshly criticized. But both potential rivals appeared at Mr. Zuma’s side at a news conference on Tuesday, which was held by Gwede Mantashe, the party’s secretary general, in an effort to project a united front. The fact that members of the executive committee who seemed to be at odds with the president could be compelled to show up demonstrated that Mr. Zuma, despite deep divisions within the party, is likely to be re-elected, said Karema Brown, a veteran political analyst.
“It was an important show of force,” Ms. Brown said. “And of course it wasn’t a show of unity. It was a real demonstration of power. If he didn’t have that power, he wouldn’t have been able to get them to sit there.”
The A.N.C., like any big political party, has always struggled to keep its diverse membership and ambitious leadership under one big tent, though not always successfully. The most acrimonious and public infighting was that which led to the ouster of Mr. Mbeki, Nelson Mandela’s chosen successor, as party president in 2007. He was soon pushed out as president of the country as well, temporarily replaced by his deputy, Mr. Motlanthe, and eventually by the man he had previously fired as his deputy, Mr. Zuma. Every attempt to undercut the party’s power by splitting it has ended in failure. The most recent effort, the Congress of the People, founded by disgruntled supporters of Mr. Mbeki, has struggled to attract votes and has been riven by rivalries.
Source: New York Times
Monday, April 2, 2012
Selling horse droppings as figs
In Afrikaans we have a striking saying describing rather accurately what the keepers of secrets (yes, the spies and double agents and professional liars in the intelligence agencies) are trying to do with its latest range of advertisements promoting the Secrecy Bill:
Apart from the fact that the government is not supposed to promote a Bill currently still serving before Parliament and not yet passed into law (as Parliament is currently seized of this matter, and the executive has no truck with the Bill until it is actually passed and becomes law), the advertisements are about as honest and truthful as your average Senior Manager at the Department of Public Works testifying at the Bheki Cele Inquiry.
The thing is, the Secrecy Bill has absolutely nothing to do with identity theft and neither has it anything to do with people fraudulently collecting pensions if they are not entitled to do so. Although section 8 and 9 of the Secrecy Bill deals with the protection of valuable information (which could include personal information about one’s ID held by the state), and although these sections state that such information warrants “a degree of protection and administrative control and must be handled with due care and only in accordance with authorised procedures”, the Bill does not actually criminalise the selling of your ID by a state official and is in no way dealing with identity theft. What a very small part of the Bill does (about 4 of the more than 50 clauses in the Bill) is that it prohibits any person from unlawfully and intentionally destroying, removing, altering or erasing valuable information.
A state official would therefore be punished in terms of this Bill if he or she deleted your ID information from the government database. What the Bill would not deal with at all is identity theft or pension fraud. The law already punishes fraudulent selling of your ID information to others as well as pension fraud, and this Bill has absolutely nothing to do with that. In other words this advert is deceitful and dishonest. This is perhaps not surprising, as the adverts were cooked up by the very spies who, we are told, we should trust with decisions about the need to classify state documents as secret or top secret. I would not trust these people when they tell me what the weather will be like tomorrow – let alone with these decisions that may well hide serious criminality and corruption. (General Mduli, are you there?)
Ironically, what the adverts do, is to illustrate beyond all doubt why this Bill is so dangerous. If these people are prepared to deceive the public so blatantly and openly, why would they not lie to us about the existence of wrongly and unlawfully classified documents which we might need to get access to in order to expose corruption or in order to expose the blatant flaunting of the law and undermining of our democracy by the intelligence services?
The “safeguards” in the Bill which the advert talks about are therefore illusory. If it is a criminal offense to be in possession of a classified document, and if one tries to get access to a wrongly classified document, the spies will merely claim that the document does not exist, finish en klaar. If one then claims to have seen the document, one will be arrested and charged for possessing a classified document and to admitting to having committed a crime and one could be sentenced to a long period in jail for possessing even an illegally classified document.
It is true that section 43 of the Bill states that a person who is protected by the Protected Disclosures Act may disclose documents despite any provisions in the Bill, which means that a very brave (some would say very stupid) state employee who discovers documents demonstrating criminal activity or corruption by the intelligence services, may leak such documents to, say, the Public Protector.
What the advert does not say is that the Public Protector will then immediately have to take the leaked documents showing serious criminal activity to the nearest Police Station where one of Richard Mduli’s cronies will be able to receive the document and “deal” with it to protect the intelligence services and those exposed as criminals or crooks in the documents. The Public Protector can then try and get access to the document via various means and after several years – and assuming rather optimistically – that the document had not been “lost” (in other words, destroyed), she might finally get access to that document – long after the crime was committed and the cover up effectively instituted, the witnesses “disappeared” or intimidated into silence or packed off to Tjikitjikistan as the undersecretary of culture.
Moreover, the advert seems to suggest that all active citizens are really no more than potential criminals, suggesting how the paranoid spies view us ordinary citizens. It says that the state has to protect its information from criminals, but it is exactly the kinds of information that we need as citizens that we will be “protected” from accessing. We will not ever again be able to know that intelligence services had concocted another Browse Mole Report to discredit the enemies of the sitting President. We will not ever again be able to know that the spies had taped telephone conversations between politicians or between NPA members. We will not know that senior ANC leaders have been spied on by the intelligence services because the President thought that these leaders might pose a threat to his political ambitions.
Of course, the adverts also display the kind of paranoia that is familiar to students of any fascist police state. Hence it suggests that we need to protect state secrets because if any of these secrets held by the state are ever released, our very freedom (the freedom curtailed by this Bill) will be threatened. Now, I for one cannot imagine what secrets the spies are keeping that are so earthshattering that it would threaten the very life of our nation and our Constitution if it were to be made public. Could it be information about financial donations made by foreign dictators to the President or the governing party? Information about the sex-lives of politicians illegally spied upon by the intelligence services on instructions from the President? Maybe there are documents proving that our spies are plotting to assassinate the President of the United States, which, if revealed, could lead to a US military invasion.
But I doubt that any of these documents exist and even if they did, we will be protected by its disclosure (and disclosure of the unlawful actions by the intelligence services who might have compiled these documents illegally), not by keeping them secret.
This Bill is about protecting the intelligence services and drawing a veil of secrecy over their often unlawful activities in order to enhance the powers of the spies, create a police state within a state and protect the leadership of the incumbent faction inside the ANC from embarrassment and from being ousted in quasi-democratic party elections. It is not about freedom but un-freedom, not about democracy but a threat to our democracy.
If you believe otherwise, I am sure you will also believe me when I say that you should please send me all your banking details (including password) immediately so that I can transfer a few million dollars into your account, which I will do because I need your assistance with transferring fabulous amounts of money into South Africa.
Source: Pierre de Vos: Constitutionally Speaking
“Hulle will ons nou wysmaak dat perdedrolle, vye is”. (“Now they want to convince us that horse droppings are really figs.”)
Apart from the fact that the government is not supposed to promote a Bill currently still serving before Parliament and not yet passed into law (as Parliament is currently seized of this matter, and the executive has no truck with the Bill until it is actually passed and becomes law), the advertisements are about as honest and truthful as your average Senior Manager at the Department of Public Works testifying at the Bheki Cele Inquiry.
Female Voice: “Are you following the whole debate about this new law everyone is talking about? Something about state information?”
Male Voice: “Yes. And I see why government worries. All this stuff about identity theft, people being long dead but collecting pensions, the list is endless.”
Female Voice: “But what about corruption? How will the government deal with that?”
Male Voice: “The bill makes it clear that if people try to cover up corruption they will go to jail for up to 15 years, and whistleblowers will be protected.”
Female Voice: “That’s good. But will we still be able to get the information we need from the government?”
Male Voice: “Yes. Our constitution gives us that right. As for the press, the bill doesn’t suppress press freedom at all. When you want information that is classified, you just have to apply for it. If you are still not happy, you can go to court and the judge will decide if it is in everyone’s interest.”
Female Voice: “Yes, sounds reasonable.”
Male Voice: “The thing is that government has to protect its information from criminals. There are spies out there that want to steal our information to develop their own countries at our expense.”
Female Voice: “I see. I want to familiarise myself with the bill more. There’s so much I didn’t know.”
Male Voice: “Great, ‘cause it’s really important that government protects its information. It is about protecting our country and its hard-won freedom. Ensuring that we all live in peace, security and prosperity.”
The thing is, the Secrecy Bill has absolutely nothing to do with identity theft and neither has it anything to do with people fraudulently collecting pensions if they are not entitled to do so. Although section 8 and 9 of the Secrecy Bill deals with the protection of valuable information (which could include personal information about one’s ID held by the state), and although these sections state that such information warrants “a degree of protection and administrative control and must be handled with due care and only in accordance with authorised procedures”, the Bill does not actually criminalise the selling of your ID by a state official and is in no way dealing with identity theft. What a very small part of the Bill does (about 4 of the more than 50 clauses in the Bill) is that it prohibits any person from unlawfully and intentionally destroying, removing, altering or erasing valuable information.
A state official would therefore be punished in terms of this Bill if he or she deleted your ID information from the government database. What the Bill would not deal with at all is identity theft or pension fraud. The law already punishes fraudulent selling of your ID information to others as well as pension fraud, and this Bill has absolutely nothing to do with that. In other words this advert is deceitful and dishonest. This is perhaps not surprising, as the adverts were cooked up by the very spies who, we are told, we should trust with decisions about the need to classify state documents as secret or top secret. I would not trust these people when they tell me what the weather will be like tomorrow – let alone with these decisions that may well hide serious criminality and corruption. (General Mduli, are you there?)
Ironically, what the adverts do, is to illustrate beyond all doubt why this Bill is so dangerous. If these people are prepared to deceive the public so blatantly and openly, why would they not lie to us about the existence of wrongly and unlawfully classified documents which we might need to get access to in order to expose corruption or in order to expose the blatant flaunting of the law and undermining of our democracy by the intelligence services?
The “safeguards” in the Bill which the advert talks about are therefore illusory. If it is a criminal offense to be in possession of a classified document, and if one tries to get access to a wrongly classified document, the spies will merely claim that the document does not exist, finish en klaar. If one then claims to have seen the document, one will be arrested and charged for possessing a classified document and to admitting to having committed a crime and one could be sentenced to a long period in jail for possessing even an illegally classified document.
It is true that section 43 of the Bill states that a person who is protected by the Protected Disclosures Act may disclose documents despite any provisions in the Bill, which means that a very brave (some would say very stupid) state employee who discovers documents demonstrating criminal activity or corruption by the intelligence services, may leak such documents to, say, the Public Protector.
What the advert does not say is that the Public Protector will then immediately have to take the leaked documents showing serious criminal activity to the nearest Police Station where one of Richard Mduli’s cronies will be able to receive the document and “deal” with it to protect the intelligence services and those exposed as criminals or crooks in the documents. The Public Protector can then try and get access to the document via various means and after several years – and assuming rather optimistically – that the document had not been “lost” (in other words, destroyed), she might finally get access to that document – long after the crime was committed and the cover up effectively instituted, the witnesses “disappeared” or intimidated into silence or packed off to Tjikitjikistan as the undersecretary of culture.
Moreover, the advert seems to suggest that all active citizens are really no more than potential criminals, suggesting how the paranoid spies view us ordinary citizens. It says that the state has to protect its information from criminals, but it is exactly the kinds of information that we need as citizens that we will be “protected” from accessing. We will not ever again be able to know that intelligence services had concocted another Browse Mole Report to discredit the enemies of the sitting President. We will not ever again be able to know that the spies had taped telephone conversations between politicians or between NPA members. We will not know that senior ANC leaders have been spied on by the intelligence services because the President thought that these leaders might pose a threat to his political ambitions.
Of course, the adverts also display the kind of paranoia that is familiar to students of any fascist police state. Hence it suggests that we need to protect state secrets because if any of these secrets held by the state are ever released, our very freedom (the freedom curtailed by this Bill) will be threatened. Now, I for one cannot imagine what secrets the spies are keeping that are so earthshattering that it would threaten the very life of our nation and our Constitution if it were to be made public. Could it be information about financial donations made by foreign dictators to the President or the governing party? Information about the sex-lives of politicians illegally spied upon by the intelligence services on instructions from the President? Maybe there are documents proving that our spies are plotting to assassinate the President of the United States, which, if revealed, could lead to a US military invasion.
But I doubt that any of these documents exist and even if they did, we will be protected by its disclosure (and disclosure of the unlawful actions by the intelligence services who might have compiled these documents illegally), not by keeping them secret.
This Bill is about protecting the intelligence services and drawing a veil of secrecy over their often unlawful activities in order to enhance the powers of the spies, create a police state within a state and protect the leadership of the incumbent faction inside the ANC from embarrassment and from being ousted in quasi-democratic party elections. It is not about freedom but un-freedom, not about democracy but a threat to our democracy.
If you believe otherwise, I am sure you will also believe me when I say that you should please send me all your banking details (including password) immediately so that I can transfer a few million dollars into your account, which I will do because I need your assistance with transferring fabulous amounts of money into South Africa.
Source: Pierre de Vos: Constitutionally Speaking
Friday, March 30, 2012
Democratic Left statement on ANC-SACP pro-Secrecy Bill march
PRESS STATEMENT: RESPONSE TO ANC-SACP-SANCO MARCH IN SUPPORT OF THE SECRECY BILL (THE PROTECTION OF STATE INFORMATION BILL)
The Democratic Left Front (DLF) condemns the ANC, SACP and SANCO for organising a anti-democratic march for today in Cape Town in support of the anti-democratic Secrecy Bill (the Protection of State Information Bill). Despite the fury of the anti-imperialist and revolutionary rhetoric used to justify this march, no democrat of any conviction in South Africa can stand silent whilst the ANC, SACP and SANCO threaten to use their mass power to trample on basic democratic rights to information. This march is the first warning shot in the use of the mass activist base of these organisations as storm-troopers for the authoritarian ruling elite. If ever there was ever a classic example of the extent to which the ANC and the SACP represent authoritarian populism, this march is it. This is typical of Stalinist propaganda that was used by anti-democratic regimes in the past. Today, the ANC and the SACP have created false bogeys of liberals, foreign infiltrators and aggressors, and espionage in order to clamp down on social dissent given their collective failure to transform capitalist South Africa.
The DLF stands unreservedly in full and firm support of the Right to Know Campaign (R2K), COSATU, the SA Human Rights Commission and other progressive organisations in South Africa who remain opposed to the Secrecy Bill. The DLF rejects the spurious allegations made by the ANC, SACP and SANCO in their statement announcing today’s march. The DLF fully endorses the R2K statement issued in response to the ANC-SACP-SANCO statement. The R2K is not dominated by foreign-sponsored NGOs and western-owned media agencies. The R2K is not misleading the public about the class orientation of the media. In fact, the R2K has not only opposed the Secrecy Bill but has also argued and mobilised for truly democratised and diversified media, something which the ANC government has failed to facilitate through the statutory Media Development and Diversity Agency. For all these reasons, the DLF reaffirms its endorsement of the R2K campaign.
The intention of the Secrecy Bill is to stifle the spaces that do exist for access to information and critically informed citizens. The Secrecy Bill is not fundamentally about protection information that threatens the security of ordinary working class South Africans, but about protecting spaces for the ruling elite to continue their plunder of the state. While recent concessions by the ANC have improved the Bill, it will still be extremely difficult, if not impossible to ensure transparency of the most shadowy of all state structures, the security cluster. The grounds for classification of documents, and the definition of national security, still remain overbroad, and will lead to documents that are of considerable public interest and importance being declared secret. The Bill also lacks an adequate public interest/public domain defence in case people come into possession of classified documents, or if they are released into the public domain. This has serious implications for activists, who may come into possession of classified documents exposing abuses of power.
The Secrecy Bill is merely symptoms of a much bigger problem. Jacob Zuma’s ruling elite, which was brought to power by the ANC’s Polokwane conference, is enhancing the coercive capacities of the state, and in the process centralising power in an increasingly unaccountable security cluster. The re-militarisation of the police, which has intensified state violence against protestors, attempts to drive unions out of the military, and the lockdown on transparency and accountability in the Ministry of Defence are also signs of the growing power of Zuma’s securocrats. The DLF fears that unless the growing power of the security cluster is checked, then South Africa may be well on its way to a national security state, which likely to contain growing dissent against service delivery and the capitalist system itself through repression.
Source: Constitutionally Speaking
The Democratic Left Front (DLF) condemns the ANC, SACP and SANCO for organising a anti-democratic march for today in Cape Town in support of the anti-democratic Secrecy Bill (the Protection of State Information Bill). Despite the fury of the anti-imperialist and revolutionary rhetoric used to justify this march, no democrat of any conviction in South Africa can stand silent whilst the ANC, SACP and SANCO threaten to use their mass power to trample on basic democratic rights to information. This march is the first warning shot in the use of the mass activist base of these organisations as storm-troopers for the authoritarian ruling elite. If ever there was ever a classic example of the extent to which the ANC and the SACP represent authoritarian populism, this march is it. This is typical of Stalinist propaganda that was used by anti-democratic regimes in the past. Today, the ANC and the SACP have created false bogeys of liberals, foreign infiltrators and aggressors, and espionage in order to clamp down on social dissent given their collective failure to transform capitalist South Africa.
The DLF stands unreservedly in full and firm support of the Right to Know Campaign (R2K), COSATU, the SA Human Rights Commission and other progressive organisations in South Africa who remain opposed to the Secrecy Bill. The DLF rejects the spurious allegations made by the ANC, SACP and SANCO in their statement announcing today’s march. The DLF fully endorses the R2K statement issued in response to the ANC-SACP-SANCO statement. The R2K is not dominated by foreign-sponsored NGOs and western-owned media agencies. The R2K is not misleading the public about the class orientation of the media. In fact, the R2K has not only opposed the Secrecy Bill but has also argued and mobilised for truly democratised and diversified media, something which the ANC government has failed to facilitate through the statutory Media Development and Diversity Agency. For all these reasons, the DLF reaffirms its endorsement of the R2K campaign.
The intention of the Secrecy Bill is to stifle the spaces that do exist for access to information and critically informed citizens. The Secrecy Bill is not fundamentally about protection information that threatens the security of ordinary working class South Africans, but about protecting spaces for the ruling elite to continue their plunder of the state. While recent concessions by the ANC have improved the Bill, it will still be extremely difficult, if not impossible to ensure transparency of the most shadowy of all state structures, the security cluster. The grounds for classification of documents, and the definition of national security, still remain overbroad, and will lead to documents that are of considerable public interest and importance being declared secret. The Bill also lacks an adequate public interest/public domain defence in case people come into possession of classified documents, or if they are released into the public domain. This has serious implications for activists, who may come into possession of classified documents exposing abuses of power.
The Secrecy Bill is merely symptoms of a much bigger problem. Jacob Zuma’s ruling elite, which was brought to power by the ANC’s Polokwane conference, is enhancing the coercive capacities of the state, and in the process centralising power in an increasingly unaccountable security cluster. The re-militarisation of the police, which has intensified state violence against protestors, attempts to drive unions out of the military, and the lockdown on transparency and accountability in the Ministry of Defence are also signs of the growing power of Zuma’s securocrats. The DLF fears that unless the growing power of the security cluster is checked, then South Africa may be well on its way to a national security state, which likely to contain growing dissent against service delivery and the capitalist system itself through repression.
Source: Constitutionally Speaking
'People's president' on the defensive
As the battle for leadership positions in the ANC intensifies, President Jacob Zuma has tightened up his security. His intelligence advisers are insisting that all who attend party and government events where he is speaking must be accredited, probably to avoid ugly scenes such as those witnessed during a speech in the Western Cape last month. Zuma's lecture on the ANC's second president, Sefako Makgatho, was disrupted by angry ANC Youth League members, who heckled him in front of international dignitaries and demanded to know why former league leader Julius Malema was expelled from the ANC.
Since then, Zuma's intelligence chiefs have been taking no chances and have barred anyone without proper accreditation from attending his public meetings. The decision has angered some ANC leaders, who accused him of using state security agencies to fight internal party-political battles in the run-up to the party's elective conference in Mangaung. Zuma is facing an internal revolt by militants in the party who want to replace him with his deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe. Last week, many ANC community members in Middelburg in Mpumalanga who could not produce accreditation were turned away by Zuma's heavily armed security detail. Zuma was delivering the Zacharias Mahabane memorial lecture, part of the ANC's centenary celebrations.
According to Clarence Maseko, the youth league's provincial secretary in Mpumalanga, hundreds of people were turned away at the entrance of the town's Steve Tshwete Hall. "The memorial lecture was convened under a big cloud of paranoia. The Steve Tshwete banquet hall has a capacity of 5 000 people but only 2 500 [people] were allowed because they were accredited," said Maseko. "[Even] people from around the area [Ekangala region] were turned away and not invited, as is tradition. They [ANC leaders close to Zuma] made sure people who attended were from outside. "They bussed in cronies from the Ehlanzeni and Gert Sibande regions [Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza's strongholds] because they sing praises of him and President Zuma. The people close to Mabuza and some intelligence agents thought the people from around would embarrass the president and disrupt his speech," Maseko said.
ANC spokesperson Keith Khoza this week said that the accreditation of community members was part of the party's efforts to improve event management. He said the Middelburg and recent Human Rights Day Kliptown events were not the only ones where people had to be accredited. "We did this during the Siyanqoba rally held at the FNB Stadium last year," he said. "The ANC could account [for] each and every person in that rally. It's a [new] system we are using … Those without accreditations can listen to the president on TV or radio. A lecture is not like public meetings; it's intimate."
However, some ANC leaders and critics of Zuma said it was a clear sign that the president was losing touch with the masses. A senior ANC leader said Zuma had become inaccessible even to some of the senior members of the alliance. "To secure a meeting with President Zuma can take years now. In the past, he was available to the leaders of Cosatu and the SACP [South African Communist Party], rightwingers, church leaders, bereaved families, but all this is now impossible," the leader said.
Political analyst Zamikhaya Maseti said the first victims of inaccessibility to Zuma were the working class who made up Cosatu. "They supported him with their lives in the run-up to Polokwane and now they deeply feel a sense of betrayal and alienation from a man who they thought would be a better listening president than his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki. But now, like Mbeki, whom they accused of aloofness and arrogance, he is always on international travel and is nowhere to be found on the ground," Maseti said. "The second disconnection people feel with Zuma is born out of his decision to discontinue the presidential imbizos made famous by Mbeki. If he is a man of the people, why did he get rid of the presidential imbizos, which were a great opportunity for the president of the country to interact with people, councillors, mayors, and listen to issues affecting them?"
ANC Veterans' League president Sandi Sejake said the issue of accreditation for ANC and community members was new and foreign to the culture and traditions of the ANC. "The ANC has changed a lot," Sejake said. "ANC members become important only when the party wants votes. It used to be a voluntary party. Today you go and buy a person. This [accreditation issue] is part of buying people. We are departing from the culture of the ANC."
Presidential spokesperson Mac Maharaj said: "The ANC, like any other political party or civil organisation, is responsible for ensuring that its events and functions are conducted in an orderly manner, without untoward disruption and without endangering life and property. To this end it is also able to call on the services of the SAPS, which would respond to any given situation on the basis of their own evaluation."
ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu said accreditation was not "a new thing". "It has always been the norm. For each and every indoor activity of the ANC, such as public lectures, people are required to have accreditation so that we are able to manage issues such as capacity. We do not ask people for accreditation to [attend] rallies."
Source: Mail & Guardian
Since then, Zuma's intelligence chiefs have been taking no chances and have barred anyone without proper accreditation from attending his public meetings. The decision has angered some ANC leaders, who accused him of using state security agencies to fight internal party-political battles in the run-up to the party's elective conference in Mangaung. Zuma is facing an internal revolt by militants in the party who want to replace him with his deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe. Last week, many ANC community members in Middelburg in Mpumalanga who could not produce accreditation were turned away by Zuma's heavily armed security detail. Zuma was delivering the Zacharias Mahabane memorial lecture, part of the ANC's centenary celebrations.
According to Clarence Maseko, the youth league's provincial secretary in Mpumalanga, hundreds of people were turned away at the entrance of the town's Steve Tshwete Hall. "The memorial lecture was convened under a big cloud of paranoia. The Steve Tshwete banquet hall has a capacity of 5 000 people but only 2 500 [people] were allowed because they were accredited," said Maseko. "[Even] people from around the area [Ekangala region] were turned away and not invited, as is tradition. They [ANC leaders close to Zuma] made sure people who attended were from outside. "They bussed in cronies from the Ehlanzeni and Gert Sibande regions [Mpumalanga Premier David Mabuza's strongholds] because they sing praises of him and President Zuma. The people close to Mabuza and some intelligence agents thought the people from around would embarrass the president and disrupt his speech," Maseko said.
ANC spokesperson Keith Khoza this week said that the accreditation of community members was part of the party's efforts to improve event management. He said the Middelburg and recent Human Rights Day Kliptown events were not the only ones where people had to be accredited. "We did this during the Siyanqoba rally held at the FNB Stadium last year," he said. "The ANC could account [for] each and every person in that rally. It's a [new] system we are using … Those without accreditations can listen to the president on TV or radio. A lecture is not like public meetings; it's intimate."
However, some ANC leaders and critics of Zuma said it was a clear sign that the president was losing touch with the masses. A senior ANC leader said Zuma had become inaccessible even to some of the senior members of the alliance. "To secure a meeting with President Zuma can take years now. In the past, he was available to the leaders of Cosatu and the SACP [South African Communist Party], rightwingers, church leaders, bereaved families, but all this is now impossible," the leader said.
Political analyst Zamikhaya Maseti said the first victims of inaccessibility to Zuma were the working class who made up Cosatu. "They supported him with their lives in the run-up to Polokwane and now they deeply feel a sense of betrayal and alienation from a man who they thought would be a better listening president than his predecessor, Thabo Mbeki. But now, like Mbeki, whom they accused of aloofness and arrogance, he is always on international travel and is nowhere to be found on the ground," Maseti said. "The second disconnection people feel with Zuma is born out of his decision to discontinue the presidential imbizos made famous by Mbeki. If he is a man of the people, why did he get rid of the presidential imbizos, which were a great opportunity for the president of the country to interact with people, councillors, mayors, and listen to issues affecting them?"
ANC Veterans' League president Sandi Sejake said the issue of accreditation for ANC and community members was new and foreign to the culture and traditions of the ANC. "The ANC has changed a lot," Sejake said. "ANC members become important only when the party wants votes. It used to be a voluntary party. Today you go and buy a person. This [accreditation issue] is part of buying people. We are departing from the culture of the ANC."
Presidential spokesperson Mac Maharaj said: "The ANC, like any other political party or civil organisation, is responsible for ensuring that its events and functions are conducted in an orderly manner, without untoward disruption and without endangering life and property. To this end it is also able to call on the services of the SAPS, which would respond to any given situation on the basis of their own evaluation."
ANC spokesperson Jackson Mthembu said accreditation was not "a new thing". "It has always been the norm. For each and every indoor activity of the ANC, such as public lectures, people are required to have accreditation so that we are able to manage issues such as capacity. We do not ask people for accreditation to [attend] rallies."
Source: Mail & Guardian
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Cosatu: Secrecy Bill will create a 'police state'
Cosatu will be the first to challenge the Protection of State Information Bill in court because it risks turning South Africa into a security state again, general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi warned on Thursday. Vavi said that although the Bill was redrafted under pressure from the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the version passed by the National Assembly last year still raised the spectre of abuse of classification to conceal corruption.
He told MPs the scope of the draft legislation was too wide, the penalties it imposed disproportionate, and the potential impact on South Africa's democratic values devastating. "You have to be concerned that the scope of the Bill is extended way beyond what is necessary ... it takes a huge swipe at everything that moves," he told a third day of public hearings on the secrecy Bill by the National Council of Provinces.
Cosatu's biggest fear was the Bill might "inadvertently draw us closer to a threat of entrenching a security state". "Back to where we come from -- the police state. Everything marked confidential and everybody seeing something marked confidential suddenly fearing 15 to 25 year imprisonment." Reminding MPs that he represented two million union members -- and voters -- Vavi said the Bill was ripe for constitutional challenge on several grounds and Cosatu would not be deterred by the fact that it would find itself on the same side as opposition parties. He singled out clause 3 (2) (b), which allowed the minister of state security to confer the power to classify information on any other state entity, and clause 49, which bans the publication of anything deemed a state security matter, as unacceptable. "You cannot give the minister a blanket right. What we fear is that if you give such a blanket right you might end up with the lease agreements between the police and the various agencies being classified. That is very, very dangerous. Please don't pass a law you will regret in future," he said. Had the Bill been law, these provisions and those that would send journalists to jail for disclosing state secrets might have meant that two scandal-tainted ministers sacked last year -- Sicelo Shiceka and Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde -- would still be in their posts, Vavi said. "Just close your eyes and think if we would have seen the backs of two ministers last year. We would have not known that if it had not been for the excellent work of the media," he said, adding that the Bill was not the place to address concerns about media ownership and bias.
"The persecution of the media would only exacerbate the problems of inaccuracy and bias. In our view, it is necessary to enhance investigative reporting in the public interest. However as the Bill places extensive restrictions on the access and disclosure of classified information, it would necessarily severely curtail this objective."
Vavi went on to bemoan the Bill's assertion, contained in clause 1 (4), that it trumped the progressive Promotion of Access to Information Act. "What it means is that fundamental piece of transformation becomes secondary to security legislation. We think that is very dangerous." Furthermore, the draft law's provisions on whistleblowers -- many of them union members -- who disclosed classified information to reveal wrongdoing was plainly unconstitutional. Clause 43 offered exemption from prosecution only if the revelations pertained to the whistleblower's employer and, in addition, shifted the burden of proof from the state to the accused. "We have said if these types of clauses go through then we will be left with no choice but to approach the Constitutional Court," he said. "We will be the first to arrive there. Our lawyers are standing very ready to do so."
Veteran human rights lawyer George Bizos, appearing on behalf of the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), listed seven fundamental flaws in the Bill and concurred that it violated the Constitution. The LRC agreed with Vavi's criticism of the heavy onus the Bill sought to place on those accused of breaching it, saying it could see somebody "condemned to 25 years in jail for being stupid".
Bizos urged MPs to refer the Bill to the Constitutional Court, warning that if it were enacted in its current form "there will be a very long queue of applicants to take the president, the minister of justice to court". He then deviated from his text to deplore the government's planned assessment of the Constitutional Court and Supreme Court of Appeal and urged the government to follow former president Nelson Mandela's example in respecting the courts.
Vavi said he found succour in the fact that Mandela's former defence lawyer shared his views on the Bill. "It gives us comfort that you are in the same corner," he said.
Source: Mail & Guardian
He told MPs the scope of the draft legislation was too wide, the penalties it imposed disproportionate, and the potential impact on South Africa's democratic values devastating. "You have to be concerned that the scope of the Bill is extended way beyond what is necessary ... it takes a huge swipe at everything that moves," he told a third day of public hearings on the secrecy Bill by the National Council of Provinces.
Cosatu's biggest fear was the Bill might "inadvertently draw us closer to a threat of entrenching a security state". "Back to where we come from -- the police state. Everything marked confidential and everybody seeing something marked confidential suddenly fearing 15 to 25 year imprisonment." Reminding MPs that he represented two million union members -- and voters -- Vavi said the Bill was ripe for constitutional challenge on several grounds and Cosatu would not be deterred by the fact that it would find itself on the same side as opposition parties. He singled out clause 3 (2) (b), which allowed the minister of state security to confer the power to classify information on any other state entity, and clause 49, which bans the publication of anything deemed a state security matter, as unacceptable. "You cannot give the minister a blanket right. What we fear is that if you give such a blanket right you might end up with the lease agreements between the police and the various agencies being classified. That is very, very dangerous. Please don't pass a law you will regret in future," he said. Had the Bill been law, these provisions and those that would send journalists to jail for disclosing state secrets might have meant that two scandal-tainted ministers sacked last year -- Sicelo Shiceka and Gwen Mahlangu-Nkabinde -- would still be in their posts, Vavi said. "Just close your eyes and think if we would have seen the backs of two ministers last year. We would have not known that if it had not been for the excellent work of the media," he said, adding that the Bill was not the place to address concerns about media ownership and bias.
"The persecution of the media would only exacerbate the problems of inaccuracy and bias. In our view, it is necessary to enhance investigative reporting in the public interest. However as the Bill places extensive restrictions on the access and disclosure of classified information, it would necessarily severely curtail this objective."
Vavi went on to bemoan the Bill's assertion, contained in clause 1 (4), that it trumped the progressive Promotion of Access to Information Act. "What it means is that fundamental piece of transformation becomes secondary to security legislation. We think that is very dangerous." Furthermore, the draft law's provisions on whistleblowers -- many of them union members -- who disclosed classified information to reveal wrongdoing was plainly unconstitutional. Clause 43 offered exemption from prosecution only if the revelations pertained to the whistleblower's employer and, in addition, shifted the burden of proof from the state to the accused. "We have said if these types of clauses go through then we will be left with no choice but to approach the Constitutional Court," he said. "We will be the first to arrive there. Our lawyers are standing very ready to do so."
Veteran human rights lawyer George Bizos, appearing on behalf of the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), listed seven fundamental flaws in the Bill and concurred that it violated the Constitution. The LRC agreed with Vavi's criticism of the heavy onus the Bill sought to place on those accused of breaching it, saying it could see somebody "condemned to 25 years in jail for being stupid".
Bizos urged MPs to refer the Bill to the Constitutional Court, warning that if it were enacted in its current form "there will be a very long queue of applicants to take the president, the minister of justice to court". He then deviated from his text to deplore the government's planned assessment of the Constitutional Court and Supreme Court of Appeal and urged the government to follow former president Nelson Mandela's example in respecting the courts.
Vavi said he found succour in the fact that Mandela's former defence lawyer shared his views on the Bill. "It gives us comfort that you are in the same corner," he said.
Source: Mail & Guardian
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Chairman stops info bill submission
An oral submission on the Protection of State Information Bill was stopped on Wednesday afternoon because it contained "political statements". Mark Weinberg, from the Alternative Information Development Centre, was interrupted when he mentioned "the rise of securocrats" and "the tendency towards greater conservative authoritarianism" in his presentation.
Raseriti Tau, the chairman of the ad hoc committee on the bill, told him: "Now, you are giving me problems now. I know that I am going to be accused of having denied you an opportunity to speak. We can't continue with this." He added: "There are serious political statements now that you are making now. You are making reference to the Polokwane conference and all those sorts of things. "Can we stop this presentation. We are not going to allow you to continue with this presentation."
Weinberg had said that the tendency towards greater conservative authoritarianism in South Africa had to be understood in terms in the context of the battle between various factions and groups fighting for influence in the ruling party and the state. "We also see the rise of securocrats," he said. "This so called... alliance of the wounded cobbled together pre-Polokwane is weakening and its fissures rupturing..." Tau then stopped Weinberg from continuing. "It would have been good if you were a lobby group and there is someone who was seeking funding for a protest," Tau said.
Source: Times Live
Raseriti Tau, the chairman of the ad hoc committee on the bill, told him: "Now, you are giving me problems now. I know that I am going to be accused of having denied you an opportunity to speak. We can't continue with this." He added: "There are serious political statements now that you are making now. You are making reference to the Polokwane conference and all those sorts of things. "Can we stop this presentation. We are not going to allow you to continue with this presentation."
Weinberg had said that the tendency towards greater conservative authoritarianism in South Africa had to be understood in terms in the context of the battle between various factions and groups fighting for influence in the ruling party and the state. "We also see the rise of securocrats," he said. "This so called... alliance of the wounded cobbled together pre-Polokwane is weakening and its fissures rupturing..." Tau then stopped Weinberg from continuing. "It would have been good if you were a lobby group and there is someone who was seeking funding for a protest," Tau said.
Source: Times Live
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
South Africans Protest Over Hearing for Zuma Rival
The police in South Africa on Tuesday confronted crowds of angry demonstrators supporting Julius Malema, the firebrand leader of the governing party’s influential youth league, as he attended a disciplinary hearing that could sway both his own political career and that of President Jacob Zuma before party elections next year.
Under attack by Malema supporters burning the party flag and throwing rocks and bottles, the police fired stun grenades and water cannons outside the Johannesburg headquarters of the African National Congress, in power since the first post-apartheid elections in 1994. Protesters chanting “Zuma must go!” also burned T-shirts and posters bearing the president’s portrait, according to Internet postings by South African news services in Johannesburg. The police erected razor wire barricades while a police helicopter hovered. At least one officer was wounded by a flying brick, a police spokesman said, and a South African news channel said one of its television crews was attacked near the party headquarters, Luthuli House.
The hearing on Tuesday came days after an elite South African police unit known as the Hawks said it was investigating Mr. Malema’s lucrative financial dealings, South African news reports said. It was not immediately clear when the internal disciplinary panel conducting the hearing would announce its findings. But the A.N.C.’s secretary general, Gwede Mantashe, announced later in the day that it was moving the panel to an unspecified location outside Johannesburg because of the violence. The panel is to resume deliberations on Wednesday.
In a statement on its Web site, the A.N.C. also condemned the mayhem and blamed it on the leadership of the youth league. “It is our view that those who have taken the responsibility to mobilize the crowds to gather outside Luthuli House — the leadership of the A.N.C. Youth League — should also take full responsibility for the violence, criminality and ill discipline that has accompanied these crowds,” the statement said.
Mr. Malema, 30, and other members of the youth league were appearing before the panel to determine whether they should be expelled or suspended for bringing the party’s name into disrepute after calling for the overthrow of the government in neighboring Botswana and criticizing the party leadership. If Mr. Malema is exonerated, South African analysts said, he may feel emboldened to challenge Mr. Zuma, to whom he brought decisive support in a leadership battle in 2007. But if Mr. Malema is sidelined, the party may be able to pack the youth league leadership with loyalists likely to throw their weight behind Mr. Zuma, ensuring his re-election as A.N.C. leader.
Under party rules, its leader is also its presidential candidate, so, the analysts said, the fight with Mr. Malema could determine the country’s future leadership. Mr. Zuma is currently visiting Norway.
The dispute between the two men reaches deep into South Africa’s post-apartheid society. With calls to nationalize mines and banks and to seize white-owned farmland, Mr. Malema has caught the imagination of the country’s disaffected youth, telling them that they are missing out on the economic fruits of political freedom. Referring to Mr. Malema’s travails with his party, Reuters quoted him as saying on Monday: “If the A.N.C. defines your future as expulsion, we are ready for that. This does not delay our economic struggle,” he said. “We see this as a setback for the revolution we are pursuing. We will continue to push for economic freedom in our lifetime.”
The hearing on Tuesday was the second involving Mr. Malema this year. In May, he was fined and ordered to apologize for sowing discord within the party and undermining its leader’s authority. On July 31, he publicly urged the ouster of President Seretse Khama Ian Khama of neighboring Botswana.
The episode was only one of many that have made Mr. Malema an irritant to the authorities as much as a champion among his more radical followers. While his statements have solidified his support, they have often troubled potential foreign investors and members of the country’s sizable white minority.
When he supported Mr. Zuma for the leadership of the party, Mr. Malema said he was ready to kill for him. He has called Helen Zille, the main opposition leader, a cockroach. While the South African government has professed neutrality in efforts to resolve the political and economic crises in neighboring Zimbabwe, Mr. Malema openly supported President Robert G. Mugabe. He once expelled a BBC correspondent from a news conference, saying he had “white tendencies.” Only months ago, Mr. Malema also stirred heated debate about the limits of freedom of expression and the definition of hate speech by singing a song from South Africa’s liberation struggle — “Shoot the Boer.” The word Boer is usually translated from Afrikaans as meaning white farmer but is sometimes used to refer to any white South African.
The party has shown increasing exasperation with him. Some of his statements last year prompted it to order him to attend anger-management classes. But party leaders rallied to Mr. Malema over his choice of songs, supporting his assertion that the “Shoot the Boer” refrain referred to the anti-apartheid struggle and did not represent a call for murder.
Source: New York Times
Under attack by Malema supporters burning the party flag and throwing rocks and bottles, the police fired stun grenades and water cannons outside the Johannesburg headquarters of the African National Congress, in power since the first post-apartheid elections in 1994. Protesters chanting “Zuma must go!” also burned T-shirts and posters bearing the president’s portrait, according to Internet postings by South African news services in Johannesburg. The police erected razor wire barricades while a police helicopter hovered. At least one officer was wounded by a flying brick, a police spokesman said, and a South African news channel said one of its television crews was attacked near the party headquarters, Luthuli House.
The hearing on Tuesday came days after an elite South African police unit known as the Hawks said it was investigating Mr. Malema’s lucrative financial dealings, South African news reports said. It was not immediately clear when the internal disciplinary panel conducting the hearing would announce its findings. But the A.N.C.’s secretary general, Gwede Mantashe, announced later in the day that it was moving the panel to an unspecified location outside Johannesburg because of the violence. The panel is to resume deliberations on Wednesday.
In a statement on its Web site, the A.N.C. also condemned the mayhem and blamed it on the leadership of the youth league. “It is our view that those who have taken the responsibility to mobilize the crowds to gather outside Luthuli House — the leadership of the A.N.C. Youth League — should also take full responsibility for the violence, criminality and ill discipline that has accompanied these crowds,” the statement said.
Mr. Malema, 30, and other members of the youth league were appearing before the panel to determine whether they should be expelled or suspended for bringing the party’s name into disrepute after calling for the overthrow of the government in neighboring Botswana and criticizing the party leadership. If Mr. Malema is exonerated, South African analysts said, he may feel emboldened to challenge Mr. Zuma, to whom he brought decisive support in a leadership battle in 2007. But if Mr. Malema is sidelined, the party may be able to pack the youth league leadership with loyalists likely to throw their weight behind Mr. Zuma, ensuring his re-election as A.N.C. leader.
Under party rules, its leader is also its presidential candidate, so, the analysts said, the fight with Mr. Malema could determine the country’s future leadership. Mr. Zuma is currently visiting Norway.
The dispute between the two men reaches deep into South Africa’s post-apartheid society. With calls to nationalize mines and banks and to seize white-owned farmland, Mr. Malema has caught the imagination of the country’s disaffected youth, telling them that they are missing out on the economic fruits of political freedom. Referring to Mr. Malema’s travails with his party, Reuters quoted him as saying on Monday: “If the A.N.C. defines your future as expulsion, we are ready for that. This does not delay our economic struggle,” he said. “We see this as a setback for the revolution we are pursuing. We will continue to push for economic freedom in our lifetime.”
The hearing on Tuesday was the second involving Mr. Malema this year. In May, he was fined and ordered to apologize for sowing discord within the party and undermining its leader’s authority. On July 31, he publicly urged the ouster of President Seretse Khama Ian Khama of neighboring Botswana.
The episode was only one of many that have made Mr. Malema an irritant to the authorities as much as a champion among his more radical followers. While his statements have solidified his support, they have often troubled potential foreign investors and members of the country’s sizable white minority.
When he supported Mr. Zuma for the leadership of the party, Mr. Malema said he was ready to kill for him. He has called Helen Zille, the main opposition leader, a cockroach. While the South African government has professed neutrality in efforts to resolve the political and economic crises in neighboring Zimbabwe, Mr. Malema openly supported President Robert G. Mugabe. He once expelled a BBC correspondent from a news conference, saying he had “white tendencies.” Only months ago, Mr. Malema also stirred heated debate about the limits of freedom of expression and the definition of hate speech by singing a song from South Africa’s liberation struggle — “Shoot the Boer.” The word Boer is usually translated from Afrikaans as meaning white farmer but is sometimes used to refer to any white South African.
The party has shown increasing exasperation with him. Some of his statements last year prompted it to order him to attend anger-management classes. But party leaders rallied to Mr. Malema over his choice of songs, supporting his assertion that the “Shoot the Boer” refrain referred to the anti-apartheid struggle and did not represent a call for murder.
Source: New York Times
Monday, May 31, 2010
Southern Africa: The Liberation Struggle Continues
Fifty years on from the beginnings of liberation in Africa, John Saul finds there is still much work to be done, especially in southern Africa where the final triumph over colonial and racial domination occurred.
In each of the the five sites of the overt struggle against domination – Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa – there are clear signs of recolonization. This time by capital. What we have seen is the virtual recolonization of southern Africa by capital. This is something new. It is not easy to disaggregate this "capital" into national capitals and see it as being the instrument of various nationally-based imperialisms and their several colonialisms.
Now, it is an "Empire of Capital" that is currently recolonizing Africa. Of course, this has been complicated by the still independent role that national states play in the imperial equation. Moreover, it is the case that such a "recolonization" has been accomplished with the overt connivance of indigenous leaders/elites – those who have inherited power with the demise of "white rule" but who, in doing so, have manifested much greater commitment to the interests of their own privileged class-in-creation, as opposed to those of the mass of their own people.
In short, it is not a happy world for the vast mass of ordinary southern African citizens – despite the freedom that they had seemed once to have won.
Some facts for South Africa may provide an indication of such a reality, one that has also scarred each of the five countries of the region that once became key sites of overt liberation struggle: Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. Indeed, the several country case-studies that comprise the body of this edition of AfricaFiles' Ezine will, cumulatively, give a very clear sense of this reality.
In Zimbabwe, in the brutal thrall of Mugabe and ZANU-PF has witnessed an even greater deterioration of national circumstances. ZANU-PF stewardship of the economy has been an unmitigated disaster, while its politics, through years of overt and enormously costly dictatorial practices, have produced a situation that is proving enormously difficult both to displace and to move beyond.
In South Africa, the economic gap between black and white has indeed narrowed statistically – framed by the fact that some blacks have indeed got very much richer (from their own upward mobility as junior partners to recolonization and from the fresh spoils of victory that this has offered them). Yet the gap between rich and poor is actually wider than ever it was – and it is growing.
A long-time and firmly loyal ANC cadre (Ben Turok) has himself published a book entitled The Evolution of ANC Economic Policy. In the book, Turok acknowledges both the contribution of ANC policies to growing inequality in South Africa, while reaching "the irresistible conclusion that the ANC government has lost a great deal of its earlier focus on the fundamental transformation of the inherited social system".
Source: AfricaFiles
Friday, April 9, 2010
Julius Malema and the Roots of Fascism in South Africa
I met a young man called Lubabalo Folose because I regularly pass through his place of work – O.R. Tambo International Airport near Johannesburg. Neatly dressed and always smiling, he shines shoes. A few years ago he persuaded me to let him shine my shoes “because if you are in the Treatment Action Campaign you must have clean shoes” he said.
Lubabalo’s shoe shining techniques are good but his analysis and questioning of contemporary politics is always more astute than many commentators. We have become friends because I have learnt more about sacrifice and hard work from this man who reminds me of my parents and grand-parents than from all our political representatives. Most days, Lubalo wakes at 03:00 and makes his way to the airport where he shines the shoes of lawyers who can earn R30 000.00 a day and business men (black and white) who make much more all use his services. At the end of the month (after working 240 hours excluding 100 hours travelling to work) Lubabalo takes home about R1000,00. He completed matric and wanted to become a nurse or teacher but he does not have enough money to improve his grades or to study through UNISA. He lives in a shack and he refuses to marry or father children until he has saved money. Lubabalo Folose works hard and earns about R4.00 an hour. Can he be regarded as fortunate because the majority of his peers will never have an income?
The average male farm worker in Vanwyksdorp where my friend and comrade Jack Lewis has a small-holding earns R300.00 per week and he has to decide whether to feed himself or his family. Women farmworkers earn even less. Similarly, clothing and textile workers earn starvation wages while many casual workers in the service sector hardly earn R2000.00 per month. Class and race inequality, the conditions of immiseration, unimaginable hardship combined with a riot in luxury are at the roots of an emerging fascism in South Africa.
Julius Malema is a cunning, dangerous and popular decoy for people in the state and powerful ANC leaders linked to business. They aim to cement their power, weaken democracy and extract every ounce of fat from the state. They use the anger of the unemployed, alloy it with sexism, patriarchy and envy to create a movement. Two obstacles bar the way of Malema, corrupt civil servants and business leaders to the bank: the over-privileged and very often racist white minority and the vast mass of poor and working people. White people are an easy target but not the central obstacle.
The Democratic Alliance and their business allies have similar objectives to Malema: ensure greater profits for business and protect privileged lifestyles. The mines, farms, the hotels, the casinos, retail outlets and tenders owned or eyed by Malema and his backers can only make excessive profits if they drive down wages and conditions of workers.
The divisive racism against white people must be combated but it is also a smoke-screen for an even more dangerous agenda. For enfeebled, entitled and greedy black business (and their powerful white counter-parts) to profiteer, the solidarity and organisation of working class people must be destroyed. Both white and black business and their representatives want to use the poorest, most vulnerable and marginalised people against the working class. How often do we hear the refrain from economists such as Nicoli Nattrass at UCT to political leaders such as Tony Leon and Helen Zille that the labour laws and the trade union “aristocracy” prevent business growth?
These paragons of constitutional virtue would not object to a constitutional amendment that removes fair labour practices Representatives of privileged and upper-class interests have no roots among the socially disenfranchised and this is what makes Malema dangerous. The arrogance of over-privileged white people also relies on the insecurity of white, coloured and Indian middle-classes to build a political power base. The AWB is an expression of the broad climate of racist invective from faceless white people on the internet, talk shows and private conversation that developed even before Malema. The big black business faction of the ANC cannot inscribe “Enrich yourself” on its banner instead it has to wear the garments of Robert Mugabe. Nationalisation and land occupations represent their route to power. The business people in the ANC who regard themselves as progressive have to openly condemn Malema.
The presence of the trade unions in the African National Congress together with an independent progressive civil society and socially engaged religious communities represents the real alternative and the possibility and probability of a more equal and just distribution of income and wealth. They are also the real target of Malema and his business faction. Right now, Cosatu must take the initiative to call together leaders and organisations of civil society, religious bodies and all labour federations to condemn the emerging fascism that uses the ANC for black business. Julius Malema must be condemned by every trade union leader.
Cosatu must build and lead a political campaign for fair global labour and trade standards, equal education, health for all, and sustained public investment. In addition, it must demand just and fair economic union in Southern Africa because our growth path will be strengthened with the development of Angola, DRC and the smaller countries in our region.
The ANC leadership has allowed this situation to develop. Only after they faced international media condemnation because of Malema (and his cruel antics that insults people of Zimbabwe) the leadership developed some backbone. As an ANC member, I ask that Julius Malema and his clique be removed from our movement.
Source: Zackie Achmat: Writing Rights
Lubabalo’s shoe shining techniques are good but his analysis and questioning of contemporary politics is always more astute than many commentators. We have become friends because I have learnt more about sacrifice and hard work from this man who reminds me of my parents and grand-parents than from all our political representatives. Most days, Lubalo wakes at 03:00 and makes his way to the airport where he shines the shoes of lawyers who can earn R30 000.00 a day and business men (black and white) who make much more all use his services. At the end of the month (after working 240 hours excluding 100 hours travelling to work) Lubabalo takes home about R1000,00. He completed matric and wanted to become a nurse or teacher but he does not have enough money to improve his grades or to study through UNISA. He lives in a shack and he refuses to marry or father children until he has saved money. Lubabalo Folose works hard and earns about R4.00 an hour. Can he be regarded as fortunate because the majority of his peers will never have an income?
The average male farm worker in Vanwyksdorp where my friend and comrade Jack Lewis has a small-holding earns R300.00 per week and he has to decide whether to feed himself or his family. Women farmworkers earn even less. Similarly, clothing and textile workers earn starvation wages while many casual workers in the service sector hardly earn R2000.00 per month. Class and race inequality, the conditions of immiseration, unimaginable hardship combined with a riot in luxury are at the roots of an emerging fascism in South Africa.
Julius Malema is a cunning, dangerous and popular decoy for people in the state and powerful ANC leaders linked to business. They aim to cement their power, weaken democracy and extract every ounce of fat from the state. They use the anger of the unemployed, alloy it with sexism, patriarchy and envy to create a movement. Two obstacles bar the way of Malema, corrupt civil servants and business leaders to the bank: the over-privileged and very often racist white minority and the vast mass of poor and working people. White people are an easy target but not the central obstacle.
The Democratic Alliance and their business allies have similar objectives to Malema: ensure greater profits for business and protect privileged lifestyles. The mines, farms, the hotels, the casinos, retail outlets and tenders owned or eyed by Malema and his backers can only make excessive profits if they drive down wages and conditions of workers.
The divisive racism against white people must be combated but it is also a smoke-screen for an even more dangerous agenda. For enfeebled, entitled and greedy black business (and their powerful white counter-parts) to profiteer, the solidarity and organisation of working class people must be destroyed. Both white and black business and their representatives want to use the poorest, most vulnerable and marginalised people against the working class. How often do we hear the refrain from economists such as Nicoli Nattrass at UCT to political leaders such as Tony Leon and Helen Zille that the labour laws and the trade union “aristocracy” prevent business growth?
These paragons of constitutional virtue would not object to a constitutional amendment that removes fair labour practices Representatives of privileged and upper-class interests have no roots among the socially disenfranchised and this is what makes Malema dangerous. The arrogance of over-privileged white people also relies on the insecurity of white, coloured and Indian middle-classes to build a political power base. The AWB is an expression of the broad climate of racist invective from faceless white people on the internet, talk shows and private conversation that developed even before Malema. The big black business faction of the ANC cannot inscribe “Enrich yourself” on its banner instead it has to wear the garments of Robert Mugabe. Nationalisation and land occupations represent their route to power. The business people in the ANC who regard themselves as progressive have to openly condemn Malema.
The presence of the trade unions in the African National Congress together with an independent progressive civil society and socially engaged religious communities represents the real alternative and the possibility and probability of a more equal and just distribution of income and wealth. They are also the real target of Malema and his business faction. Right now, Cosatu must take the initiative to call together leaders and organisations of civil society, religious bodies and all labour federations to condemn the emerging fascism that uses the ANC for black business. Julius Malema must be condemned by every trade union leader.
Cosatu must build and lead a political campaign for fair global labour and trade standards, equal education, health for all, and sustained public investment. In addition, it must demand just and fair economic union in Southern Africa because our growth path will be strengthened with the development of Angola, DRC and the smaller countries in our region.
The ANC leadership has allowed this situation to develop. Only after they faced international media condemnation because of Malema (and his cruel antics that insults people of Zimbabwe) the leadership developed some backbone. As an ANC member, I ask that Julius Malema and his clique be removed from our movement.
Source: Zackie Achmat: Writing Rights
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
‘Speak ZA’ – Bloggers for a Free Press
Last week, shocking revelations concerning the activities of the ANC Youth League spokesperson Nyiko Floyd Shivambu came to the fore. According to a letter published in various news outlets, a complaint was laid by 19 political journalists with the Secretary General of the ANC, against Shivambu. This complaint letter detailed attempts by Shivambu to leak a dossier to certain journalists, purporting to expose the money laundering practices of Dumisani Lubisi, a journalist at the City Press. The letter also detailed the intimidation that followed when these journalists refused to publish these revelations.
We condemn in the strongest possible terms the reprisals against journalists by Shivambu. His actions constitute a blatant attack on media freedom and a grave infringement on Constitutional rights. It is a disturbing step towards dictatorial rule in South Africa. We call on the ANC and the ANC Youth League to distance themselves from the actions of Shivambu. The media have, time and again, been a vital democratic safeguard by exposing the actions of individuals who have abused their positions of power for personal and political gain.
The press have played a vital role in the liberation struggle, operating under difficult and often dangerous conditions to document some of the most crucial moments in the struggle against apartheid. It is therefore distressing to note that certain people within the ruling party are willing to maliciously target journalists by invading their privacy and threatening their colleagues in a bid to silence them in their legitimate work.
We also note the breathtaking hubris displayed by Shivambu and the ANC Youth League President Julius Malema in their response to the letter of complaint. Shivambu and Malema clearly have no respect for the media and the rights afforded to the media by the Constitution of South Africa. Such a response serves only to reinforce the position that the motive for leaking the so-called dossier was not a legitimate concern, but a insolent effort to intimidate and bully a journalist who had exposed embarrassing information about the Youth League President.
We urge the ANC as a whole to reaffirm its commitment to media freedom and other Constitutional rights we enjoy as a country.
SpeakZA Blogroll
http://thoughtleader.co.za/siphohlongwane
http://rwrant.co.za
http://vocfm.co.za/blogs/munadia/
http://vocfm.co.za/blogs/shafiqmorton/
http://blogs.news24.com/needpoint
http://capetowngirl.co.za
http://thoughtleader.co.za/sentletsediakanyo
http://thoughtleader.co.za/davidjsmith
http://letterdash.com/one-eye-only
http://boyuninterrupted.blogspot.com
http://amandasevasti.com
http://blog.empyrean.co.za/
http://letterdash.com/brencro
http://6000.co.za
http://chrisroper.co.za
http://pieftw.com
http://hamishpillay.wordpress.com
http://memoirs4kimya.blogspot.com
http://thoughtleader.co.za/azadessa
http://watkykjy.co.za
http://fredhatman.co.za
http://thelifeanddeathchronicles.blogspot.com/
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/common-dialogue/
http://www.clivesimpkins.blogs.com/
http://mashadutoit.wordpress.com
http://nicharalambous.com
http://sarocks.co.za
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/stompies/
http://helenmoffett.book.co.za/blog/
http://01universe.blogspot.com
http://groundwork.worpress.com
http://iwrotethisforyou.me
http://fionasnyckers.book.co.za
http://attentiontodetail.wordpress.com
http://blogs.women24.com/editor
http://www.missmillib.blogspot.com
http://snowgoose.co.za
http://dreamfoundry.co.za
http://www.vanoodle.blogspot.com
http://www.exmi.co.za
http://cat-dubai.blogspot.com
http://alistairfairweather.com
http://www.zanedickens.com
http://www.nickhuntdavis.com
http://guysa.blogspot.com
http://book.co.za
http://baldy.co.za
http://skinnylaminx.com
http://blogs.african-writing.com/zukiswa
http://www.mielie.wordpress.com
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/gatherer/
http://thoughtleader.co.za/sarahbritten
http://stii.co.za
http://blogs.news24.com/FSB_AP
http://twistedkoeksuster.blogspot.com
http://whensmokegetsinyoureyes.blogspot.com/
http://trinklebean.wordpress.com
http://commentry.wordpress.com/
http://matthewbuckland.com
http://blogs.news24.com/colour-me-fran
http://gormendizer.co.za
We condemn in the strongest possible terms the reprisals against journalists by Shivambu. His actions constitute a blatant attack on media freedom and a grave infringement on Constitutional rights. It is a disturbing step towards dictatorial rule in South Africa. We call on the ANC and the ANC Youth League to distance themselves from the actions of Shivambu. The media have, time and again, been a vital democratic safeguard by exposing the actions of individuals who have abused their positions of power for personal and political gain.
The press have played a vital role in the liberation struggle, operating under difficult and often dangerous conditions to document some of the most crucial moments in the struggle against apartheid. It is therefore distressing to note that certain people within the ruling party are willing to maliciously target journalists by invading their privacy and threatening their colleagues in a bid to silence them in their legitimate work.
We also note the breathtaking hubris displayed by Shivambu and the ANC Youth League President Julius Malema in their response to the letter of complaint. Shivambu and Malema clearly have no respect for the media and the rights afforded to the media by the Constitution of South Africa. Such a response serves only to reinforce the position that the motive for leaking the so-called dossier was not a legitimate concern, but a insolent effort to intimidate and bully a journalist who had exposed embarrassing information about the Youth League President.
We urge the ANC as a whole to reaffirm its commitment to media freedom and other Constitutional rights we enjoy as a country.
If you don’t have this freedom of the press, then all these little fellows are weaseling around and doing their monkey business and they never get caught.~ Harold R. Medina
SpeakZA Blogroll
http://thoughtleader.co.za/siphohlongwane
http://rwrant.co.za
http://vocfm.co.za/blogs/munadia/
http://vocfm.co.za/blogs/shafiqmorton/
http://blogs.news24.com/needpoint
http://capetowngirl.co.za
http://thoughtleader.co.za/sentletsediakanyo
http://thoughtleader.co.za/davidjsmith
http://letterdash.com/one-eye-only
http://boyuninterrupted.blogspot.com
http://amandasevasti.com
http://blog.empyrean.co.za/
http://letterdash.com/brencro
http://6000.co.za
http://chrisroper.co.za
http://pieftw.com
http://hamishpillay.wordpress.com
http://memoirs4kimya.blogspot.com
http://thoughtleader.co.za/azadessa
http://watkykjy.co.za
http://fredhatman.co.za
http://thelifeanddeathchronicles.blogspot.com/
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/common-dialogue/
http://www.clivesimpkins.blogs.com/
http://mashadutoit.wordpress.com
http://nicharalambous.com
http://sarocks.co.za
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/stompies/
http://helenmoffett.book.co.za/blog/
http://01universe.blogspot.com
http://groundwork.worpress.com
http://iwrotethisforyou.me
http://fionasnyckers.book.co.za
http://attentiontodetail.wordpress.com
http://blogs.women24.com/editor
http://www.missmillib.blogspot.com
http://snowgoose.co.za
http://dreamfoundry.co.za
http://www.vanoodle.blogspot.com
http://www.exmi.co.za
http://cat-dubai.blogspot.com
http://alistairfairweather.com
http://www.zanedickens.com
http://www.nickhuntdavis.com
http://guysa.blogspot.com
http://book.co.za
http://baldy.co.za
http://skinnylaminx.com
http://blogs.african-writing.com/zukiswa
http://www.mielie.wordpress.com
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/gatherer/
http://thoughtleader.co.za/sarahbritten
http://stii.co.za
http://blogs.news24.com/FSB_AP
http://twistedkoeksuster.blogspot.com
http://whensmokegetsinyoureyes.blogspot.com/
http://trinklebean.wordpress.com
http://commentry.wordpress.com/
http://matthewbuckland.com
http://blogs.news24.com/colour-me-fran
http://gormendizer.co.za
Friday, November 3, 2006
Britain: Blair government defeats calls for Iraq inquiry
The ability of British Prime Minister Tony Blair to defeat calls for an inquiry into the Iraq war testifies to the insulation of the parliamentary process from any genuine democratic control.
It is more than two years since there was a full debate in the House of Commons on the Iraq war. In that time, the already massive opposition to the US-led invasion has become more entrenched—fuelled by the catastrophic situation created by the occupation. The vast bulk of the British electorate believe that Blair dragged the country into war based on lies and that the troops should be withdrawn.
Yet on November 1, the Blair government was able to face down a motion calling for an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the invasion by 298 votes to 273.
The circumstances surrounding the vote are politically instructive. The motion was brought by the two small nationalist parties, the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, and merely called for a committee of seven leading members of Parliament (MPs) to review “the way in which the responsibilities of government were discharged in relation to Iraq.”
It was then backed by the much larger Liberal Democrat Party, which has 63 MPs and which had opposed the Iraq war. But the possibility of a defeat for the Blair government was made real by the Conservative Party’s decision to support the motion. Until now, the Conservatives have supported Blair on Iraq—guaranteeing the government a majority even if it faced a substantial rebellion by Labour MPs.
The decision of the Conservative (Tory) Party to endorse the motion was not primarily an effort to exploit popular anti-war sentiment. That party’s attitude towards public opinion is much the same as the government’s. Rather, the volte face was motivated by concerns within the bourgeoisie about the extent of the crisis that Iraq has produced for British capital.
Recent weeks have seen statements by top military personnel, such as head of the army General Sir Richard Dannat, as well as numerous think tanks and analysts proclaiming the Iraq occupation to be a foreign policy disaster worse than the Suez crisis of 1956. In the United States, where anti-war sentiment is a majority position in the electorate, Iraq has dominated the congressional election campaign. Significant sections of the US and British ruling elite are anxious that the worsening quagmire in Iraq is jeopardising their broader geopolitical ambitions for the whole of the Middle East and beyond.
Amongst these layers, an inquiry of the character proposed in Parliament would be a vehicle for making the required “corrections” in neo-colonial strategy. In particular, it would seek to redress what sections of the bourgeoisie consider to have been a fatal compromising of the national interests of British imperialism on the part of the Blair government in pursuit of its “special relationship” with the US.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell argued from such a standpoint in favour of the motion, asking during the parliamentary debate, “Isn’t it now the time for a British strategy based on British priorities and not one which depends on the outcome of the American elections?”
Even given these strategic imperatives, the Tories were hamstrung by their own record on Iraq and their overriding concern that any inquiry not endanger either the ongoing Iraq occupation or the interests of British imperialism. To this end, they called for the inquiry to be held sometime over the next 12 months, consisting of private hearings under former military personnel. It was only when the government refused to concede to any inquiry that the Conservatives backed the motion.
Despite this reluctance, the Tories’ manoeuvring did serve to expose any pretence of significant oppositional sentiment within the Parliamentary Labour Party. Only 12 Labour MPs, as well as Clare Short, who last month quit the party, voted against the government. This is not even half of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, which constitutes the official left wing of the party and whose chair, John McDonnell, has announced he will stand for Labour leader when Blair finally resigns.
The scale of this collapse by the nominal “left” within the Labour Party can be judged by comparison with the oppositional vote over the war in 2003. On March 18 of that year, 139 Labour dissidents voted for an amendment opposing the invasion. But immediately war began, the vast majority of Labour dissidents fell into line. By June 4, 2003, only 11 Labour MPs supported a Liberal Democrat motion calling for an inquiry into whether the government had misled parliament over Iraq’s supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction.
In the three years since then, nothing has changed this political balance of forces within the Labour Party. The same handful of MPs register their formal protest, while the rest justify their support for Blair with claims that they “cannot stomach” voting with the Tories or doing anything that could endanger British troops.
Such arguments are grotesque. The Labour lefts have had no such difficulty in stomaching the government’s lies and attacks on democratic rights, or reconciling themselves to a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, including scores of British troops.
The inability of parliament to even debate Iraq prompted Guardian political columnist Simon Jenkins to observe that “This House of Commons is God’s gift to dictatorship.” Parliament had surrendered its “democratic function,” he continued, with opposition MPs rendered “incapable of performing democracy’s simplest ritual, challenging the executive.”
But how has this situation come about? Jenkins concentrates his fire on the failure of the opposition parties to hold the government to account, at one point declaring that the “Commons has become little more than an electoral college for the prime minister.” He insists that parliament has powers it has not used, explaining, “There is nothing to stop MPs debating what they like. There is nothing to stop a grand committee being appointed to inquire into the war. It can demand ‘persons and papers’ and subpoena anyone it likes. Even if select committees are too scared of the whips to act, Parliament is sovereign. It need not ask Downing Street’s permission to scrutinise.”
This misses the point. Who is supposed to do this?
Jenkins, in effect, berates the Tory opposition—the traditional party of big business—for its failure to bring a nominally Labour government to account. But parliamentary democracy has in reality been stripped of much of its actual substance by the fact that—whatever their tactical disagreements—all the major parties agree in principle on a course of militarism and social reaction, and all of them rest on an increasingly narrow social base of support anchored within the most privileged social layers.
Central to this evisceration of the democratic process is the transformation of the Labour Party into an instrument of a financial oligarchy.
The extension of democratic rights to working people was the product of mass political action conducted through the methods of the class struggle, which culminated at the beginning of the twentieth century in the formation of the Labour Party as the political representative of the trade unions. Labour’s degeneration and that of the unions themselves mean that the political views and social concerns of the working class no longer find even limited expression within the machinery of government. Rather, the business of government is predicated on preventing any popular interference with policies that are decided in the boardrooms of the major corporations and that are fundamentally opposed to the interests of the majority of the population.
Ultimately, the decline of parliamentary democracy is an expression of the acute and irreconcilable class antagonisms wracking society. It is impossible to secure a democratic mandate for war and colonial conquest, paid for through the gutting of social programmes and the impoverishment of working people. Official politics becomes a conspiracy against the social and democratic rights of the masses.
It is precisely because maintaining the political disenfranchisement of the working class is of such overriding importance that the bourgeoisie is unable to frankly examine an issue of such strategic import as Iraq. This accounts for the political paralysis identified by Jenkins—one that is highly destabilising for the ruling elite.
Even if the Iraq debacle should finally prompt a move against the Blair government by a section of the ruling elite—an outcome that can by no means be excluded—nothing progressive would result.
Everything now depends on the independent mobilisation of workers, youth and students against the Labour government and all the representatives of big business. At the centre of this is the building of a new and genuinely socialist party.
Source: World Socialist Web Site
It is more than two years since there was a full debate in the House of Commons on the Iraq war. In that time, the already massive opposition to the US-led invasion has become more entrenched—fuelled by the catastrophic situation created by the occupation. The vast bulk of the British electorate believe that Blair dragged the country into war based on lies and that the troops should be withdrawn.
Yet on November 1, the Blair government was able to face down a motion calling for an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the invasion by 298 votes to 273.
The circumstances surrounding the vote are politically instructive. The motion was brought by the two small nationalist parties, the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, and merely called for a committee of seven leading members of Parliament (MPs) to review “the way in which the responsibilities of government were discharged in relation to Iraq.”
It was then backed by the much larger Liberal Democrat Party, which has 63 MPs and which had opposed the Iraq war. But the possibility of a defeat for the Blair government was made real by the Conservative Party’s decision to support the motion. Until now, the Conservatives have supported Blair on Iraq—guaranteeing the government a majority even if it faced a substantial rebellion by Labour MPs.
The decision of the Conservative (Tory) Party to endorse the motion was not primarily an effort to exploit popular anti-war sentiment. That party’s attitude towards public opinion is much the same as the government’s. Rather, the volte face was motivated by concerns within the bourgeoisie about the extent of the crisis that Iraq has produced for British capital.
Recent weeks have seen statements by top military personnel, such as head of the army General Sir Richard Dannat, as well as numerous think tanks and analysts proclaiming the Iraq occupation to be a foreign policy disaster worse than the Suez crisis of 1956. In the United States, where anti-war sentiment is a majority position in the electorate, Iraq has dominated the congressional election campaign. Significant sections of the US and British ruling elite are anxious that the worsening quagmire in Iraq is jeopardising their broader geopolitical ambitions for the whole of the Middle East and beyond.
Amongst these layers, an inquiry of the character proposed in Parliament would be a vehicle for making the required “corrections” in neo-colonial strategy. In particular, it would seek to redress what sections of the bourgeoisie consider to have been a fatal compromising of the national interests of British imperialism on the part of the Blair government in pursuit of its “special relationship” with the US.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell argued from such a standpoint in favour of the motion, asking during the parliamentary debate, “Isn’t it now the time for a British strategy based on British priorities and not one which depends on the outcome of the American elections?”
Even given these strategic imperatives, the Tories were hamstrung by their own record on Iraq and their overriding concern that any inquiry not endanger either the ongoing Iraq occupation or the interests of British imperialism. To this end, they called for the inquiry to be held sometime over the next 12 months, consisting of private hearings under former military personnel. It was only when the government refused to concede to any inquiry that the Conservatives backed the motion.
Despite this reluctance, the Tories’ manoeuvring did serve to expose any pretence of significant oppositional sentiment within the Parliamentary Labour Party. Only 12 Labour MPs, as well as Clare Short, who last month quit the party, voted against the government. This is not even half of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs, which constitutes the official left wing of the party and whose chair, John McDonnell, has announced he will stand for Labour leader when Blair finally resigns.
The scale of this collapse by the nominal “left” within the Labour Party can be judged by comparison with the oppositional vote over the war in 2003. On March 18 of that year, 139 Labour dissidents voted for an amendment opposing the invasion. But immediately war began, the vast majority of Labour dissidents fell into line. By June 4, 2003, only 11 Labour MPs supported a Liberal Democrat motion calling for an inquiry into whether the government had misled parliament over Iraq’s supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction.
In the three years since then, nothing has changed this political balance of forces within the Labour Party. The same handful of MPs register their formal protest, while the rest justify their support for Blair with claims that they “cannot stomach” voting with the Tories or doing anything that could endanger British troops.
Such arguments are grotesque. The Labour lefts have had no such difficulty in stomaching the government’s lies and attacks on democratic rights, or reconciling themselves to a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, including scores of British troops.
The inability of parliament to even debate Iraq prompted Guardian political columnist Simon Jenkins to observe that “This House of Commons is God’s gift to dictatorship.” Parliament had surrendered its “democratic function,” he continued, with opposition MPs rendered “incapable of performing democracy’s simplest ritual, challenging the executive.”
But how has this situation come about? Jenkins concentrates his fire on the failure of the opposition parties to hold the government to account, at one point declaring that the “Commons has become little more than an electoral college for the prime minister.” He insists that parliament has powers it has not used, explaining, “There is nothing to stop MPs debating what they like. There is nothing to stop a grand committee being appointed to inquire into the war. It can demand ‘persons and papers’ and subpoena anyone it likes. Even if select committees are too scared of the whips to act, Parliament is sovereign. It need not ask Downing Street’s permission to scrutinise.”
This misses the point. Who is supposed to do this?
Jenkins, in effect, berates the Tory opposition—the traditional party of big business—for its failure to bring a nominally Labour government to account. But parliamentary democracy has in reality been stripped of much of its actual substance by the fact that—whatever their tactical disagreements—all the major parties agree in principle on a course of militarism and social reaction, and all of them rest on an increasingly narrow social base of support anchored within the most privileged social layers.
Central to this evisceration of the democratic process is the transformation of the Labour Party into an instrument of a financial oligarchy.
The extension of democratic rights to working people was the product of mass political action conducted through the methods of the class struggle, which culminated at the beginning of the twentieth century in the formation of the Labour Party as the political representative of the trade unions. Labour’s degeneration and that of the unions themselves mean that the political views and social concerns of the working class no longer find even limited expression within the machinery of government. Rather, the business of government is predicated on preventing any popular interference with policies that are decided in the boardrooms of the major corporations and that are fundamentally opposed to the interests of the majority of the population.
Ultimately, the decline of parliamentary democracy is an expression of the acute and irreconcilable class antagonisms wracking society. It is impossible to secure a democratic mandate for war and colonial conquest, paid for through the gutting of social programmes and the impoverishment of working people. Official politics becomes a conspiracy against the social and democratic rights of the masses.
It is precisely because maintaining the political disenfranchisement of the working class is of such overriding importance that the bourgeoisie is unable to frankly examine an issue of such strategic import as Iraq. This accounts for the political paralysis identified by Jenkins—one that is highly destabilising for the ruling elite.
Even if the Iraq debacle should finally prompt a move against the Blair government by a section of the ruling elite—an outcome that can by no means be excluded—nothing progressive would result.
Everything now depends on the independent mobilisation of workers, youth and students against the Labour government and all the representatives of big business. At the centre of this is the building of a new and genuinely socialist party.
Source: World Socialist Web Site
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