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Volume 11, No. 11, 29 March 2012 |
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Red Alert The E-Tolls, Strange Bedfellows and Ideological Confusions: A Response to Cde Jeremy Cronin |
Irvin Jim, NUMSA General Secretary
Cde Jeremy Cronin (JC) presents an interesting view on e-tolls. Beginning in his usual style by constructing extremes and then locating protagonists in those extreme boxes of his, he proceeds to steer a "level-headed middle road" that sounds "reasonable" and "respectable". This is vintage Cronin! However his middle road, when APPROPRIATELY analysed, is flawed, and a manifestation of serious ideological confusion.
To begin with, he differs with COSATU’s approach to the "user-pay principle" on the grounds that, even in socialist Cuba, people pay for household electricity. He then attempts to draw a link between household electricity and roads: "Roads, like household electricity, are (or should be) a public good". This is simply wrong. A public good is non-rival and non-exclusive, i.e. its use by one person does not exclude others from using it. Household electricity is therefore not a public good for the obvious reason that it belongs to a specific household and excludes other households. Electricity is a necessity, an essential good, which is in our case largely produced by the public entity Eskom. But this does not mean electricity is a public good. Either Cde JC confuses public sector-produced goods with public goods, or he confuses goods that are necessities to be public goods. Interestingly the ordinary working class fully knows the difference.
What then, is COSATU’s view on the "user-pay principle"? COSATU’s view is that the user pay principle should not be used on public goods and essential goods that are produced by the public sector. This does not at all mean that "users must not pay", that would be ridiculous. What it means is that the manner in which pricing should occur should be redistributive, being sensitive to the deep inequalities that are embedded in our society. In other words, the pricing of such items should shift resources from the upper classes to the lower classes. That is why COSATU would continue to oppose the application of cost-recovery pricing on the working class, because such a pricing does not respond to the deep-seated inequalities that prevail in our society even if IT IS APPROPRIATELY APPLIED. Indeed the user-pay-principle, with its cousin "cost-recovery", IS based on "free market principles".
Advantages of e-tolls and de-commodification?
Cde JC lists five advantages of tolls, if they are WISELY and APPROPRIATELY applied. We deal with each of these so-called advantages and show that they can, IN FACT, be achieved without tolls.
Cde JC claims that "First, tolling can enable road maintenance and construction off-budget - relieving the budget for other priorities". However, the budget can be relieved primarily through progressive taxation, not through some de-centralised, private and market-based instrument such as e-tolling. Tolling essentially individualises the robbery by the ruling capitalist class of what the lower classes had already wrestled from them. It therefore opens a new avenue for the ruling capitalist class to extort more value from the lower classes. Progressive taxation is the most powerful and precise means to wrestle social surplus from the upper classes and diverting it to the lower classes. Why is Comrade JC not advocating for progressive taxation?
Cde JC claims: "Secondly, a tolling project enables a public entity like SANRAL to borrow money on the markets up-front (using the collateral of its national road network). This enables SANRAL to run a major, multi-year construction project more effectively and with greater confidence than with annual budget allocations". But all this can be easily achieved through progressive taxation, which would systematically and directly link the rate of cash-flow into state coffers with the rate of growth of profits, particularly the rate of growth of profits of the ruling capitalist class. Viewed in this way, e-tolls become the most inefficient and regressive way of raising surplus to finance public infrastructure. It is a blunt instrument that raises the costs of production across the board, regardless of the value that is being carried on the road, the wage rate that is earned by a car owner and the profit-rate of the enterprise that uses the road.
Cde JC claims that "Thirdly, tolling can - if WISELY and APPROPRIATELY used - introduce a degree of equity into road-use. A single-axle of a large road freight truck causes 40,000 times more damage to a road surface than the average light vehicle!" In Cde Jeremy’s view, trucks must pay more because they are heavy. This view is crude and represents a degraded un-Marxist view of "value-as-weight", the heavier the vehicle the more it should pay. Nothing can be more wrong. To demonstrate the problem, suppose a single-axle truck carrying bricks for RDP houses uses the highway. According to Cde JC, this truck must pay more than a small van that carries 10 000 Ipads. There is nothing equitable in this. There is nothing Marxist in this view, but crude mechanical thinking that opens communists to unnecessary ridicule; it is vulgar economics. Interestingly, the ordinary workers know that value is determined by the labour content of commodities and not their weight.
Cde JC further claims: "Fourthly, tolling (and particularly electronic tolling) can also be used to achieve better developmental and sustainability outcomes as part of what is referred to as travel demand management (TDM)". But travel demand and road use is primarily due to the apartheid spatial development pattern, combined with neo-liberal disinvestment in public transport. Without rooting so-called "travel demand" to this historical realities, Cde JC effectively ventures into "consultant-speak", which is elevated above the experiences that the lower classes confront in relation to public transport and spatial development. He talks about "time-of-day concessions on trucks, to encourage trucks to move at off-peak periods, etc." and he conveniently forgets that this would directly disrupt the production process by delaying deliveries. In short the economy would grind to a low gear, if not to a stop-start mode, or raising the costs of inventory storage to smooth production. Therefore, from this perspective, e-tolls increase inefficiency.
Lastly, Cde JC says "Fifthly, IF THERE ARE EFFECTIVE PUBLIC TRANSPORT NETWORKS IN PLACE, e-tolling infrastructure can be used for "congestion charging"". But are the effective public transport networks in place?
In short, whether APPROPRIATELY used or WISELY applied, e-tolls are a bad idea, period. From a bourgeois standpoint, it is obvious that e-tolls do not correct "market failure" but perfect distortions. They are inequitable even from within the bourgeoisie as a class. That is why the DA opposes e-tolls, a point that Cde JC incorrectly, superficially and simply reduces to Jack Bloom’s "lifestyle". On the other hand the working class opposes e-tolls because they are blunt and thoroughly regressive.
The DA, COSATU and JC: Who is Ideological Confused?
Cde JC claims that COSATU and the DA are strange bedfellows and that COSATU is ideologically confused.
The confusion, according to Cde JC is obvious because the DA and COSATU agree on e-tolls. Hence he takes it upon himself to provide ideological clarity. He saw in the standpoints of the DA and COSATU a "flirting affair" and "budding romance" that should not have taken place. Consequently, as usual, he comes forward with "a number of conceptual and factual clarifications".
We have shown above that if the working class follows what cde JC says, things would be as clear as mud. Ideologically, Cde JC himself fails to see that the working class and the bourgeoisie can agree, but for different reasons. Capitalism is a UNITY OF OPPOSITES. For example, the working class demand democracy and so do sections of the bourgeoisie. There is no ideological confusion in that. Similarly, the demand to scrap the bad idea of e-tolls is also in UNISON with the demand by sections of the bourgeoisie. However, it is simply wrong for a Marxist to forget the contradictions that are embedded in many such unities. In this sense cde JC’s piece is a one-sided spectacle, which conveniently emphasises the UNITY of opposites and not their CONTRADICTION. Interestingly, the ordinary workers are not as confused as cde JC thinks.
Let us explain why Cde JC is wrong about the DA’s Bloom (and white opposition to e-tolls). Road construction and maintenance, like all large-scale infrastructures that require massive amounts of capital, have very low rates of profit and turnover. The capitalist state would ordinarily finance such infrastructure through the public purse, in which the capitalist class as a whole contributes in proportion to the profits they appropriate. By thus externalising the costs of public infrastructure, the average rate of profit in the economy becomes higher. Smaller capitalists are subsidised by larger ones. But monopoly capitalists are few in number and smaller ones are many. This is the crux of the DA opposition to e-tolls, because the many smaller capitalists and upper middle class are their constituency. It is a simple case of numbers within the capitalist camp, it is not a case of "lifestyle".
Now e-tolls will internalise the costs of transport into the costs of production for smaller capitalists, because the latter intensively use roads. This will in turn reduce their rate of profit and therefore redistribute profits from smaller capitalists towards monopoly capitalists. In short the lower strata of the mass within the capitalist class will be hit worse by the e-tolls, compared to monopolies. This is very obvious. For example banks do not intensively use roads or highways. The mines have by and large outsourced transport to smaller capitalists, and so they are not affected, and so on.
To think that lifestyle is the main reason for the DA to oppose e-tolls is to be irrational and ideologically confused. The white population hardly uses highways as a "lifestyle" because they stay in suburbs; they use "street" roads because they stay close to their workplaces. To think that e-tolls do not prop up the profits of the ruling section of the capitalist class, that they can decommodify roads, is to be ideologically confused.
On the other hand, the working class opposes e-tolls because they are a backward way of financing infrastructure, even if it uses modern up-to-date technology. Firstly, the vast majority of the lower Black middle class who own cars and stay far from their workplaces will be negatively affected (teachers, nurses, doctors, and other professionals). Secondly, many of these lower middle classes provide jobs to a number of people as domestic workers; they will then be forced to cut back domestic workers. Thirdly, e-tolls are blunt and regressive, as we have explained above. In short, e-tolls are a bad idea and indeed "dismantling e-toll gantries" is a good idea.
Lastly, Comrade Jeremy Cronin in his article makes the following assertion as a benchmark for our country’s e-tolling system "......e-tolling infrastructure can be used for "congestion charging". This is being used very successfully in many cities, London being an excellent example." This is said at a time when David Cameron, Prime Minister of Britain, made an announcement that public roads stand to be privatised in Britain. What an excellent example.
A response to Irvin Jim
Jeremy Cronin, SACP Deputy General Secretary
I welcome cde Irvin Jim’s polemical response to my Umsebenzi Online piece published two weeks ago ("The e-Tolls, strange bedfellows and ideological confusion"). It is important that the socialist left in South Africa sustains (or is it a question of reviving?) the traditions of vibrant left debate. In so doing, hopefully we will help to shift the centre of gravity of public discourse and debates, and we will help each other to sharpen and develop a socialist agenda for our country – however much we might differ along the way.
First, let me state up-front, for those who may have missed the original article, that the SACP’s position (and indeed my own) is that the R20bn spent on Phase A1 of the Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project (GFIP) was a serious strategic mistake. Adding extra lanes and other improvements to 180kms of freeways used predominantly (but NOT exclusively) by the middle classes, in a province in which some 60% of households have no access to a car whatsoever, was (and is) emphatically not a working class or pro-poor priority.
Moreover, the project is unlikely to achieve its own limited principal objective. In the "feasibility" study done by the UCT Graduate School of Business, relieving congestion was seen as the main strategic objective of this multi-billion rand project. Yes, there are serious congestion challenges in Gauteng and in some other metropolitan areas. But international evidence is overwhelming that expanding freeway systems (even with tolling) seldom relieves congestion beyond a short window period of a few years at most. More freeway space induces more traffic and also spurs property speculators to drive greater urban sprawl with more outlying golf-estates, shopping malls, and corporate office blocks of the kind that have spread like the plague across the Midrand and all those other car-commuting middle class localities.
The way in which to resolve congestion and (especially in the South African case) to democratize and deracialise our cities is to prioritise public transport; to shift much more freight off the roads and on to rail; to ensure mixed-use and mixed-income spatial development, with higher levels of settlement density; to construct good corridor development along public transport routes; and generally to reassert democratic, participatory public control over land-use planning and infrastructure priorities.
These have been the consistent grounds upon which the SACP (often alone –until the recent e-toll crisis) has criticized the strategic wisdom of the whole GFIP proposal. Whatever the merits of cde Jim’s critique of GFIP, he fails to locate the e-toll debate within a wider class, national democratic and, indeed, socialist strategic context. The DA’s Jack Bloom, along with the big car-hire corporations like Avis and Budget are saying: "We don’t want to pay e-tolls. We have already paid for this infrastructure out of our taxes." (As if it were only companies and the DA’s constituency that paid tax). Cde Jim’s position is that the expanded and enhanced freeway system in Gauteng should be paid for by a more progressive taxation system. I don’t disagree with cde Jim that our tax system could be considerably more progressive. But notice how, while cde Jim’s position is somewhat more progressive than that of Jack Bloom or Avis, he is not fundamentally challenging the paradigm itself. Nowhere does he challenge the wisdom of focusing on a multi-billion rand public expenditure on a freeway expansion in the richest province in our country. Nowhere does he ask serious questions about making a revolutionary impact on the mobility and access challenges facing the South African working class and popular strata. If we DID have a more progressive taxation system, would he want to saddle it with this R20bn rand price tag? Would he want to proceed with the remaining 400-odd kilometres in the planned GFIP programme?
I will come back to these matters shortly. But first let me respond briefly to a sampling of the arguments leveled against me by cde Jim.
Item number one – defining a "public good". Cde Jim begins by getting into a tangle over the definition of a "public good". Roads are (or should be) a public good, he says. I agree. But, he adds, household electricity is a "social necessity", not a public good. The basis for this distinction, according to Cde Jim, is that household electricity is consumed "privately", while "a public good is non-rival and non-exclusive, i.e. its use by one person does not exclude others from using it." Cde Jim may well be right that this is how a "public good" is defined in conservative, first-year university economic text-books, but it is a definition that can easily obscure many critical things. For instance, a free-way that is not tolled might very well offer theoretical free access to all. The use of it by one car doesn’t exclude another car. But this is vulgar economics. Freeways by design exclude many categories of users – pedestrians, donkey carts and cyclists. Dozens of coal trucks operating daily on a rural road quickly destroy the road surface and therefore deny this resource to others in the short to medium term.
Road design is always about rivalries and exclusions, and these always ultimately have a class dimension. On the N2 in Cape Town, for instance, there is an exclusive public transport lane for the morning peak period from which private cars are excluded. This has been of great benefit to workers from Khayelitsha and Mitchells Plain commuting to work in minibuses and buses, lessening travel times by as much as 25 minutes. BUT, on the homeward bound trip in the evening there is NO dedicated public transport lane. Why? Getting workers to work on time is of shared interest to workers and bosses alike. But getting home to a distant dormitory township to be with your family, or to attend a civic meeting, or a school governing body – well, that’s no longer the boss’s time.
Without getting more tangled in definitional niceties, as far as the SACP is concerned the struggle for socialism is the struggle to decommodify all socially necessary and useful goods and services by affirming them as public resources. How these resources are consumed – whether out in public (as a park, or a beach, or a road) or in a household (water, electricity) is irrelevant to the basic socialist principle of socializing and (where necessary) rationing public resources and services in favour of the working class and popular strata. Cde Jim’s distinction based on the manner of consumption fails to break with the classic liberal public vs. private paradigm.
Which brings me to the next confusion.
Item number two – "users shouldn’t pay/users should pay". I invite readers to scan carefully, in slow motion replay, the heart of cde Jim’s argument which is contained in the following sentences:
"COSATU’s view is that the user pay principle should not be used on public goods and essential goods that are produced by the public sector."
The next sentence goes on: "This does not at all mean that ‘users must not pay’, that would be ridiculous."
But hang on, what exactly is being said here? Is he saying: A. That users shouldn’t pay; or B. That users should pay? Could it be that what he is saying is that direct users shouldn’t have to pay for public and essential goods produced by the public sector, and that these should be paid through a progressive taxation regime? (As we will see in a moment, this isn’t what cde Jim is consistently saying. But perhaps he is happy for us to get the impression that this is what he is saying, when in fact he is saying something else.)
He goes on: "What it means is that the manner in which pricing should occur [i.e. we are no longer speaking just about funding out of the general fiscus] should be redistributive, being sensitive to the deep inequalities that are embedded in our society. In other words, the pricing of such items [i.e. "public goods" and "essential goods"] should shift resources from the upper classes to the lower classes."
I agree 100 percent with these last two sentences (apart from the rather Victorian notion of "upper" and "lower" classes). These last sentences are, indeed, a neat summary of the core of my argument in my intervention last week. I agree that in principle public goods like roads should be funded primarily and overwhelmingly out of the general fiscus, resourced by progressive taxation. But I also agree that for progressive rationing purposes, charging users for access to public goods can also be considered. Particularly in a class society, and particularly in SA, not all users are equal, and there should be positive class discrimination applied in pricing. What I was arguing last week was that getting certain categories of users to pay for a public good like a road CAN be a means for a progressive class redistribution of what should be a public resource. There are some elements of this in the current GFIP toll proposals – the complete exemption of buses and minibuses, for instance. But overwhelmingly (with or without tolls) the GFIP process represents an anti-working class biased allocation of R20bn for infrastructure that caters largely (although not exclusively) for the needs of the relatively wealthy. For instance, a recent vehicle count on the road network that is about to be tolled revealed that buses and minibuses only constitute a paltry 2% of the traffic!
This whole critical section of cde Jim’s intervention amounts to an obfuscation. He is basically saying "we reject the user-pay principle" but "we accept user-pay in practice" – provided the practice is appropriate (and that last part was exactly my argument).
Item number three – my so-called "degraded un-Marxist view of value-as-weight, the heavier a vehicle the more it should pay." - I wasn’t arguing that the heavier a loaded vehicle is, the more valuable it is. I was saying that a single axle of a loaded large truck, regardless of whether it is transporting horse manure or platinum, causes approximately 40,000 times more wear and tear to a road surface than a car. And this is why it is legitimate in a tolling situation to charge large trucks more than cars for the use of a public road (although no-one is suggesting that the charges should be tens of thousands times more). Public roads are paid for and maintained at public expense. Why should we be massively subsidizing private truck operators (a sector dominated by major corporations)? This has particular relevance given the necessity of shifting much more freight off our roads and onto rail. One of the reasons why our PUBLICLY-owned Transnet Freight Rail has become uncompetitive against private road freight is that TFR has to pay for its own infrastructure and its maintenance. Shifting freight onto rail has several important economic and social objectives – making our roads safer, preserving our roads better, cutting down on economically wasteful road congestion, and switching to a more energy efficient and less polluting mode. Positively discriminatory user-charges in this case can therefore help to achieve progressive objectives. None of this has anything to do with a weight = value argument!
Item number four (and perhaps the most ludicrous of cde Jim’s arguments) – I wrote last week that a progressive version of e-tolling is to be found in many cities with good public transport networks applying "congestion charging" – basically tolls to discourage private cars and commercial vehicles from entering CBDs. I mentioned London (I could have cited many other cities) as one excellent example of how congestion charging has liberated public spaces for pedestrians, young children and the elderly, and for public transport modes, while transforming what were once congested, polluted, and unfriendly places. Cde Jim’s response to this argument is that the current British Prime Minister, David Cameron has announced an intention to privatize public roads! Go figure! That’s a bit like arguing that the German Karl Marx was wrong because look what the German Angela Merkel has been saying lately. Congestion charging and other socially transformative measures were introduced into London, as it happens, by the independent socialist mayor, Ken Livingstone, with strong support from the trade unions and progressive social movements and in the teeth of opposition from property speculators, the Conservative Party and, indeed, many of Livingstone’s former colleagues in the reformist Labour Party.
But enough of detailed rebuttals. Cde Jim has been in the forefront of a campaign to discredit the participation of leading SACP comrades in government. I don’t believe that this particular anti-participation argument has been used in his current polemic with me - or if so, only subliminally. But in other cases cde Jim has often explicitly said that participation in government by SACP leaders invariably leads to selling-out on socialism and the working class. I don’t have a problem with comrades being vigilant about the danger of governmental co-option - which, of course, exists as a danger. Vigilance in this regard is critical, provided the vigilance is not factional or populist. However, it is not just positions of authority in government that can lead to cooption and opportunism. In the course of the mining debate, many comrades in the National Mineworkers’ Union wondered why the general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers’ was so vociferous in support of nationalizing the mines and so silent about nationalizing other monopoly sectors of the economy (the auto sector for instance). By the way I think that calling for the nationalization of the auto sector wouldn’t be a very viable idea in the present, and I have never for one moment imagined that cde Jim’s positioning in this regard was as a result of cooption by Volkswagen, BMW or GM. Nor do I imagine that the considerable overlap in his views on e-tolling with those adopted by Avis, Budget Car Hire or the Automobile Association has anything remotely to do with the same kind of auto sector cooption.
But let’s agree that we all need to be vigilant about the possible limitations of perspective that our various positions of authority are liable to foster. I hope that cde Jim will carry his justifiable dissatisfaction with the GFIP project beyond mere oppositionism and beyond the important but limited question of how we should pay for the Phase A1 R20bn public debt that we now have. The broad public dissatisfaction with the project creates space to provide concrete leadership on a much wider set of strategic issues. What are the key working class and democratic infrastructure priorities in our country? How do we de-racialise and democratize our towns and cities – whose spatial arrangements continue to impose a huge (non-electronic) toll on the lives of working class and popular strata? How do we move from simple oppositionism to asserting, through state and popular power, a working class hegemony over town planning, land-use management, and the provision and pricing of transport and transport infrastructure?
Proletarian communities continue to be stranded in distant dormitory townships and informal settlements, and condemned to daily migrancy, travelling over long distances to work and basic amenities. The original sin in the GFIP project was not the decision to toll, but the decision to proceed with a multi-billion rand infrastructure project that will reproduce and entrench the many racial and class spatial inequalities and economic inefficiencies that afflict the Gauteng province and, indeed, the rest of South Africa.
Prince Mashele, a reactive response to Polokwane and the recall of former President Mbeki
By Alex Mashilo, YCL SA Gauteng Provincial Secretary
Just some three observations about Prince Mashele are perhaps worth highlighting.
First, his writings mainly in the media appear after the 2007 ANC 52nd National Conference (Polokwane). Those concerning the ANC are mostly a reaction to former President Thabo Mbeki not being re-elected for a third term, and further being recalled as President of the Republic. My apology to former President – that is the true reflection of the character of Prince Mashele’s articles and commentary on the ANC.
Secondly, Mashele’s reactive tendency is alarmist. Death is the common thread in his alarmism. Shortly after Polokwane he penned an article that saw him invited in Mahlambandlovu, Tshwane in early 2008. I attended the session during which he argued that Polokwane signalled the death of the ANC.
In September 2008 President Mbeki was recalled by the ANC through its internal mechanism. He had to resign because it is the ANC that first and foremost put him forward for the position through its internal mechanism and not what one Reverent Frank Chikane to the contrary wants us to believe. Both Mashele and Chikane worked in the Presidency with former President Mbeki as both Head of Government and State.
Reacting not only to the recall as an exasperation, but also to Polokwane as the premise, a grouping that formed the bedrock of organisers for the re-election of former President Mbeki in Polokwane splintered from the ANC and formed COPE. As well known, the death of the ANC did not come. To the contrary, it is COPE that entered the path of living under the shadow of death, early in its infancy. South Gauteng High Court assumed the responsibility of COPE’s highest decision making body. Others have since been running away and returning back to the ANC. In favour of being an organiser of negative perception against the ANC and its leadership, in particularly President Jacob Zuma as the main target, Mashele framed positive views, the so-called independent political analysis about COPE based on the so-called values that "distinguished" COPE from the ANC. Well, History has dealt a blow to that.
For Mashele’s alarmism of death, "Polokwane sounded a death knell to our country’s culture of accountability and respect for the rule of law" (City Press, 2008-03-29). Again history has dealt a blow to this so-called independent political analysis. Government as led by President Zuma has taken accountability and respect for the rule of law decisions which were not taken when Mashele and Chikane served in the state. Appointment of a commission of enquiry into the so-called arms deal and the release of the so-called oil-gate report are but two examples.
As if that was not enough, Mashele saw the death of the rest of our society. Well, to the contrary, our society lives. But very quickly Mashele forgets about his death of our society. He writes about President Zuma and society. What does he say? There are many myths in Mashele’s toxic articles against President Zuma. For now we take but two, the intellectual and education.
Addressing the question of what an intellectual is, in 1942 Mao Tse-Tung had to write: "But we all know there are many intellectuals who fancy themselves very learned and assume airs of erudition without realising that such airs are bad and harmful... They ought to be aware of the truth that actually many so-called intellectuals are, relatively speaking, most ignorant and the workers and peasants sometimes know more than they do". I am afraid Mashele’s articles places him in this category of the so-called intellectuals.
Mashele suggests that by simply attending school one becomes an intellectual, that President Zuma is not an intellectual, and that therefore he is "uneducated". To the contrary, being brought up in schools that are cut off from the practical activities of society all the way through to a university of the same kind, graduating and reckoned to have a stock of learning, proved Mao, does not automatically make one an intellectual.
What is important, writes Mao, is to be good at applying the knowledge imparted both in life and practice. But that is not enough for an intellectual, writes Mao. Most importantly is to be involved in knowledge production and not be trapped in ready-made book knowledge prepared by predecessors in summarising their experiences. To be involved in knowledge production, an intellectual must combine theory and practice. Desktop criticisms such as the ones assembled by Mashele do not make one an intellectual either.
No doubt, schooling, particularly when not isolated from the practical activities of society, has an important role in education and developing intellectuals. But this is not to say, contrary to what Mashele wants us to believe, those who could not attend school, college and university, must be generalised as "uneducated" and "not intellectuals". For example, while it took almost twelve years or even more to teach Mashele, flanked by teachers who probably also taught him how to hold a pen, to read and write as but only two of the many activities in school education, President Zuma is able to read and write without the same. That President Zuma achieved by himself under very tremendous circumstances unknown to Mashele’s life and practical experience.
President Zuma’s intellectual capacity is well known but not to ignorance, and, similarly not to Mashele. This is not only the question of the role President Zuma played in the liberation struggle both underground and in exile, which Mashele dismisses as something that cannot be proven of which he is wrong in the extreme. To the contrary, it can be proven, and it has been recognised.
Following the return from underground and exile, President Zuma was elected in various capacities in the leadership collective of the ANC. Those who are not ignorant know that President Zuma served simultaneously both as ANC National Chairperson and KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Chairperson, how this came about and what organisational changes it brought in the ANC. President Zuma’s intellectual contribution helped bring an end to violence in KwaZulu-Natal and some parts of Gauteng Province.
President Zuma engages on complex questions our intellectual the prince is far from grasping. President Zuma is a strategist and an organic intellectual, a point that Mashele dismisses with absolutely no substance and substantiation. As an organic intellectual, President Zuma belongs to the ANC-led national liberation movement in which together with others in the membership and leadership collective form part of the thinking and organising activists. Were we to list President Zuma’s intellectual achievements papers and in fact books will be filled. For example some of those who Mashele call intellectuals still have to account to their intellectual credentials about Polokwane, which Mashele’s partiality decries, as an intellectual outcome.
Also, to argue as Mashele does that ANC members are intellectually undeveloped is wrong in the extreme. Likewise, to suggest that they are uneducated in the formal sense is also wrong in the extreme. Actually, Mashele still has a long way to go to match the qualifications credentials of many of ANC members.
