Nelson Mandela RIP
‘During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.’
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14 responses to “Nelson Mandela RIP”
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The South Africa that Mandela helped build and has left behind is a semi-colonial nightmare for the working classes. In most cases workers are worse off than they were under apartheid living in the most wretched shanty towns and grinding poverty. They are shot down by the police with even less mercy than was shown by the Boers. Today’s South Africa is a crystal clear example of the treachery of Stalinist popular frontism which subordinates the working classes to the political programme of the petit bourgeois national capitalists whose opposition to the colonialists and imperialist capitalists turns out to be even less than skin deep. Mandela’s South Africa is a living advertisement for Permanent Revolution and the political independence of the working classes.
Your assertion that the workers were “in most cases” better off under Apartheid is historically illiterate at best and racist at worst.
Just had to turn off the Jeremy Vine Show when Bliar came on. So now all the cockroaches are crawling out … RIP Madiba.
… also pretty sickened to see Cameron praise him. Hypocritical bastard. People should remember that Cameron’s heroine Thatcher called Madiba a terrorist.
Kevin O’Connor Islington left unity
Although Nelson Mandela and the ANC did a great job in overthrowing the apartheid regime in South Africa one cannot be blind to the present ANC control of present day South Africa.
The white wealthy capitalists still mainly run the countries economy they allow a few ANC and Communist Party appointments on the board. Also one must not overlook the recent massacre of striking miners. This outrageous action was supported by the South African Communist party.
Forward to the socialist transformation of South Africa.
Thatcher said in 1987: ‘The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation … Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land’. Under Thatcher, economic sanctions were largely resisted. Some equipment useful to the police and army continued to get through.
Her stand had divided the Commonwealth 48-1 at three conferences after 1985, but had brought her influence in South Africa’s white community. Rejecting the U.S. policy of disinvestment as a mistake, she argued a prosperous society would be more receptive to change.
She eventually changed her mind. In October 1988 she said she would be unlikely to visit South Africa unless Mandela was released from prison and in March 1989 she stressed the need to release him in order for multi-party talks to take place, urging that the African National Congress’s promise to suspend violence should be enough to permit his release. Thatcher met South African president-in-waiting F.W. de Klerk in London in June 1989, and stressed that Mandela must be freed and reforms put in place before she would visit the country. In July 1989 she called for the release not only of Mandela, but also Walter Sisulu and Oscar Mpetha, before all-group talks could continue.
Thatcher therefore welcomed de Klerk’s decision in February 1990 to release Mandela and lift the ban on the ANC, and said the change vindicated her positive policy: ‘We believe in carrots as well as sticks.’ However, her call to the world to reward reforms was countered by Mandela himself, who while still in jail argued sanctions must be maintained until the end of white rule.
Thatcher’s opposition to sanctions left her isolated within the Commonwealth and the European Community, and Mandela did not take up an early offer to meet her. When he did, she put great pressure on him to accept free market solutions, which is what actually happened in the negotiations, As Naomi Klein has written, the ANC had all its eyes on the narrowly political question of the constitution, just like all the independence movements before it, while Mbeki was left free and virtually unaccountable to bow to Washington’s demands to ditch the long-held ANC policy of nationalisation and allow the unfettered international market to operate.
It is that economic structure – the essence of neo colonialism – that has determined the developments of the last two decades, with the resultant scary crime rates, grinding poverty, inequality and corruption.
Thatcher, unfortunately, is always demonised on the Left, so her part in pusshing Mandela towards the worst aspects of the transition – the economic arrangments – goes unobserved. The moralist Left just wants a couple of quotes like the ones I put at the front of this to enable them to jump up and down in indignation. but there is much more to understand if we are not to fall for the way in which the media are continuing to focus on Mandels the legend rather than the actual history of South Africa.
A very good article here, complete with stats on the growth in South Africa profitability and the rising rate of labour exploitation under the ANC governments, starting with Mandela. What the ANC achieved was the formal equality under law for the majority that is so prized a part of bourgeois liberalism; what it turned its back on, admittedly under enormous duress, was any attempt to combine this with economic emancipation:
http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/mandelas-economic-legacy/
Two Good posts John. The continuing harsh economic life reality for most Black South Africans outside of the small new Black Middle Class/ANC cadre is something seldom, if ever, covered on UK mainstream media. Al Jazeera has done some good programmes though, and it is impossible not to be shocked at just how little the ANC has actually done to improve the lot of the mass of citizens – even those living in the vast serviceless and electricityless shanty towns in sight of the wealthiest South African cities – never mind those out in the countryside.
The police murder of 34 striking miners at Marikana mine, owned by a British company Lonmin, one of whose well paid directors is Cyril Ramapoza, the former leader of the Mineworkers Union and Deputy leader of the ANC, and its cover up and normalisation by leading figures in the ANC-SACP-COSATU alliance, is just one vivid exemple of just what a corrupt and viciously collaborationist post Apartheid regime the ANC has actually overseen – under at least partial ideological cover of the “Saint Mandela ” legend.
I agree with the above that clearly Mandela helped capital in South Africa to increase profits, intensify exploitation and reduce the living standards of the working class. This is part of the reason why the ruling class is so grateful to him. Of even greater importance is the fact that without him and the South African Communist Party certainly the stability of the regime and possibly even the rule of capital itself were in question – this fact renders them so utterly effusive in their praise – they know they were in real danger without him and the SACP to prop up their rule. The fact he carried out this act of gross robbery and deception without anyone appearing to notice has other bourgeois operators drooling in envy and admiration.
Penney et al = utter unpolitical, sectarian garbage: good luck all the good people within LU, you’ll need it with these ‘comrades’.
Madiba was an inspiration to two generations of internationalists – but not only this, he and the ANC alliance inspired the people of the world that change against all the odds is possible and undermined the dominance of post-collonialism and racism decisively. To negate this is worthy of utter contempt and condemns those who spout it to the margins.
Ben, You haven’t provided a single fact to contradict the assertions made to demolish the ” Saint Mandela myth” . If you want to be taken seriously in backing the dominant capitalist “narrative” about Mandela, you really need to assemble some hard facts.
Unfortunately your total “buying into” the capitalist media’s “Saint Mandela” myth doesn’t address the all too evident harsh realities of the ANC’s abject collaboration , once in power, with the continuation of the underlying existing grossly unequal Apartheid era economic and White privileged social structure in South Africa – other than for the ANC leadership, and a new small Black Middle Class getting a share in the loot.
I think you should address the real facts contained in John Tummon’s , and many other’s two posts – rather than just uncritically regurgitating the capitalist media’s bogus “narrative” so uncritically. In power Mandela and the ANC/CPSA clearly betrayed all their promises to the Black majority for a better life under Black majority rule – and hence also betrayed all those internationally who had vested so much hope in the corrupt Stalinists of the ANC. Just face it, Ben, Mandela was just the cuddly front man , hiding the corrupt collaborationist reality of the ANC.
Ben, just read this by Naomi Klein – a very well researched article on the crucial early years of the transition from Apartheid to the current state of the country with the greatest inequality on the planet:
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2011/02/democracy-born-chains
Klein set out to find out the following for herself: “Part of what I wanted to understand was how, after such an epic struggle for freedom, any of this could have been allowed to happen. Not just how the leaders of the liberation movement gave up the economic front, but how the ANC’s base—people who had already sacrificed so much—let their leaders give it up. Why didn’t the grassroots movement demand that the ANC keep the promises of the Freedom Charter and rebel against the concessions as they were being made?”.
If you want to delve further into this, try the South African author Klein interviewd as part of her investigation into how liberation turned so sour:
Willaim Gumede’s ‘Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC’.
Alternatively, you could ignore expert analysis backed up by empirical evidence and stay rooted in your existing views, but then you you would open youself up to the accusation of being closed minded.
A Marikana story that isn’t being told
By Solly Mapaila, SACP 2nd Deputy General Secretary
“Since February there has been a reign of terror in these townships” (a worker). “AMCU thugs burnt my car yesterday (1st September 2012,” (the local SACP branch secretary). “I’ve had to flee with my family from my shack on the Lonmin side of the settlement. We left behind all our possessions, a TV, a microwave. It’s too dangerous to go back there” (a NUM shopsteward). “If you wear a red T-shirt they will target you” (a worker).
These are some of the shocking things that we were told at the first community mass meeting convened by the SACP in Marikana last Sunday since the tragedy that befell that community. In a packed hall it is difficult to say the exact number of people present. I think there were between 700 and 1000 community members, many of them mine-workers from the nearby Lonmin and Impala Platinum mines and some old women concerned by the violence and disruptions of normal social life in the area.
We knew we were going into a terrorized community and it brought back memories of massacres like Boipatong in the early 1990s. In a tense situation like this, we had not expected such a large turnout. However, it was clear that those who were there were anxious to tell us of their traumatic experiences that stretched back over many months, if not years.
“In the days before the August 16 shootings the strikers were sleeping on the koppie”, one older workers explains. “The inyanga told them they mustn’t come near to women or the muti to protect them from bullets wouldn’t work. They are still going to the koppie now, but only during the day-time. Every morning AMCU thugs go shack to shack to grab any men they find to force them to go to the koppie.”
A woman in the gathering agrees that vigilantes search homes for men. “They don’t just take our men, they steal things. And worse, with our men gone tsotsis also come and steal and rape.” Another worker explains, “That’s why most workers have actually gone home to the rural areas. It always happens when there is violence like this.”
The view that much of the work-force is no longer at Marikana might be confirmed by reports that only 120 of the 270 men arrested on August 16 were actually Lonmin employees. However, we must also be careful about this statistic. Around one-third of Lonmin’s work-force are contract workers who are therefore supposedly the “employees” of the contractors and not of Lonmin. Nevertheless, it is clear that many of the “strikers” are probably unemployed men, some retrenched from the previous AMCU-inspired unprotected strikes at the nearby Implats mine, others are just press-ganged to the koppie or even unemployed hangers-on desperate for a jo
– See more at: http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=3736#sthash.nVSA5ORe.dpuf
Readers not fully familiar with what is actually going on in South Africa may be a bit bemused by Nick Wright’s SA Communist Party-sourced post here. They will be surprised to learn that “The AMCU thugs” referred to are actually the miner militants belonging to the radical, combative , independent ,Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) – which has been fighting resolutely for workers rights in the mines, against the collaborationist treachery of the ANC/South African Communist Party supported National Union of Mineworkers – now little more than a company union.
The NUM, and ANC/SACP leadership are fully implicated in the planning and carrying out of the 2012 Marikana Massacre of striking miners. Yep, in short this entire post and all the stuff produced by the SACP propaganda machine are self serving lies – pushed out to bolster the continued self enrichment of the collaborationist ANC/SACP elite in today’s ever more unequal South Africa – and the attempt to smash the rising tide of worker resistance.
Fortunately, as the mass booing of President Zuma at Mandela’s funeral clearly showed – the mass of Black South Africans are increasingly wise to the reactionary nature of the ANC .
There is indeed currently a violent worker on worker and worker v state machine and mining company war going on in many of the mining townships – and Nick Wright’s ANC/SACP chums are on the wrong side .