March 1998
Take
Socialism Forward - SACP/COSATU
The national
leaderships of COSATU and the SACP met in a high-level, all-day bilateral on
February 12 - the focus of the discussion was taking the socialist project
forward. The discussion between the leaderships of the two major socialist
formations in our country occurred against the background of important strategic
resolutions on socialism taken at COSATU's Congress in September last year. It
also occurred in the immediate context of the ANC's December national
conference, in which the ANC reaffirmed, without any complexes, that its two
major alliance partners were socialist.
Both the SACP and COSATU acknowledged the need to move increasingly from
broad brush strokes to the mapping out of concrete and specific
socialist-oriented policies and programmes of action.
Among the major organisational decisions taken at the bilateral were:
- The implementation of the COSATU Congress resolution on building SACP
work-place units. Most, although not all, of our Party base structures are
residential. Both the Party and COSATU acknowledge the need to build a
communist party political presence at the work-place itself. But how, in
doing this, do we avoid creating parallel structures, SACP structures that
second-guess, or even undermine the democratic trade union structures? While
these things have to be worked out in specific circumstances, the bilateral
agreed that there would need to be a clear understanding that the role of
the SACP structure would not be a trade union role but rather an ideological
and political education role. According to circumstances, the work-place
SACP unit may be based on an industrial location, cutting across several
work-places and COSATU affiliates. This could be one deliberate
organisational arrangement to safeguard against the danger of an overlapping
between a union structure and an SACP structure. - Both formations will expand the already significant cooperation in
joint-political education work. - Concrete proposals were made and are being followed up on the COSATU
resolution to provide material support to the SACP.
The bilateral also considered initiatives around socialising the economy. It
was agreed to pursue an in-depth project of research, and of practical work
around the co-operative sector. The more strategic use of worker investment
initiatives was also discussed.
On the critical question of democratising and transforming the public sector,
the bilateral agreed that we must work to ensure the effective implementation of
the Tripartite Summit resolution to establish an alliance task group, under ANC
President, Thabo Mbeki. The bilateral also agreed that the tripartite alliance
must ensure that there is a common alliance strategic perspective on job
creation ahead of the Presidential Job Summit due later this year. It is
imperative, in this regard, that we resist the attempt of business to set a job
creation agenda that centres around labour market "flexibility".
Finally, the bilateral discussed how, as the ANC's two leading partners, we
shall work to strengthen the ANC's election campaign in 1999.
Conflict
in the Middle East
The Long Arm of Imperialism in Crisis
Despite the recent 'diplomatic solution' over the issue of Iraq's
'compliance' with United Nations (UN) weapons inspectors, the ongoing
war-mongering of the US government and a few of its Western allies, has much
more to do with the longer-term strategic interests of imperialism. As was the
case in the 1991 'Gulf War', the real reason behind all the 'good guy versus bad
guy' propaganda, is to ensure continued and unhindered access to the Middle
East's vast oil reserves. Only this time, the barons of imperialism are finding
their task made more difficult by the rising tide of opposition on a global
scale.
In its initial
attempts to rally support behind its threat of military action against the Iraqi
regime of Saddam Hussein, the US government presented its actions as an attempt
to force compliance with UN resolutions stemming from the 1991 conflict. This
time around though, many Western countries joined much of the rest of the world
in rejecting the use of force. The opposition was directed not only at the
inevitable shedding of innocent blood but also at the hypocrisy of the US
government, itself the most common violator of UN resolutions (e.g., on Cuba and
Palestine).
Likewise, the claims of the US government that it wants Saddam ousted are
phony. Prior to the 1991 conflict, Saddam was a key ally of the US in the
region, ensuring secure access to vast oil reserves during the Iran-Iraq war. It
was the US that ensured Saddam could carry out a campaign to crush the
democratic forces in Iraq, and the progressive Kurdish forces, immediately
following the 1991 conflict. The sole basis for the continuous war-mongering of
the US government is unlimited access to, and control of, the oil reserves in
the region. Indeed, the history of US imperialism confirms that it is not
'democracy' or any concern for ordinary people that drives policy. Rather, it is
in the service of monopoly capitalism that the US government acts, whether in
the Middle East or any other region in the world.
The 'problem' for the imperialists though, is that their strategy has
backfired, both inside and outside Iraq. As a result of the economic blockade
enforced on Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, conservative estimates put the number
of civilian deaths at one million Iraqi citizens. Besides the gross inhumanity
of such a blockade, it has served to strengthen the oppressive capacity of the
Iraqi regime in dealing with internal opposition, in rallying the Arab world in
defense of Saddam and resurrecting an international anti-war, anti-imperialist
movement.
As the Communist Party of Israel correctly observes, US policy has been one
of "military dictate and starvation". On the internal front, the Iraqi
Communist Party has called for world-wide struggle to prevent "US
imperialism and its allies from using force against our country and
people", for a lifting of the blockade and for the "Iraqi people to
rise up and overthrow the dictatorship." No doubt, the increased global
reception of such sentiments is causing the US bureaucrats and oil barons many
sleepless nights..
While the popular calls for a lasting peace in the region are a welcome sign
that the forces of narrow nationalism and reactionary militarism are fast losing
their past strength, it is not enough to call for the US to stop its war
mongering. There must be a simultaneous struggle to support the mass popular
forces in the entire region to overthrow undemocratic regimes and undermine the
capacity of imperialism and its regional puppets to dictate the political and
economic choices of the people of the Middle East. It is through such struggles
that the fundamental basis for social and economic conflict - capitalism's
pursuit of resources and profits - can potentially be undermined.
In this vein, the fact that military (air) strikes have not been launched,
has a great deal more to do with growing opposition to the war hysteria of the
US government and monopoly capital (specifically the oil multinationals), than
it does with the so-called 'diplomatic' agreement forged between the Iraqi
regime and the UN. From Nepal to Jordan to the United States and Canada, a storm
of popular protest has erupted. It is fear of such protest turning into mass
popular struggle that would threaten the core interests of monopoly capital,
which has temporarily forced the US to back down from the military option.
What is going on in the Middle East (from Iraq to Israel) is shaping up as a
classic confirmation of the inability of capitalist imperialism, and its
regional variants, to manage gathering crises. Consistent with its historical
development, imperialism's attempts to forcefully implement the agenda of
capital are galvanising social forces that are increasingly 'unmanageable' (even
if for different reasons). What is happening in East Asia is merely the flip
side of the same imperialist coin.
Such a situation presents a range of opportunities for socialist and
progressive forces to make serious inroads into the power of the core
imperialist countries and their regional allies to dictate (either militarily or
economically) choices. The longer the arm of imperialism stretches in its
constant search for capitalist accumulation the more vulnerable it becomes. The
anti-capitalist forces might not be in a position to cut off the entire arm, but
the fingers of imperialism are certainly looking vulnerable.
Cuba
Castro Welcomes the Pope
The recent visit of the Pope to Cuba led to a flood of predictions about
the imminent fall of the Cuban government and the collapse of Cuba's socialist
system. Nothing of the sort has happened. The vast majority of Cubans know that,
despite many problems, their socialism is far better than anything capitalism
has on offer. Below, we offer readers an edited version of President Castro's
speech welcoming the Pope to Cuba.
Your Holiness, the
island whose soil you have just kissed is honoured with your presence. You will
not find here those peaceful and good-natured native inhabitants that populated
it when the first Europeans reached this island. The men were almost all
exterminated by exploitation and slave labour that they were unable to resist;
the women were converted into objects of pleasure or domestic slaves. There were
also those who died under the blade of homicidal swords, or as victims of
unknown diseases imported by the conquistadors. Some priests left heart-rending
testimonies of their protests against such crimes.
Throughout the centuries, more than one million Africans, cruelly uprooted
from their distant lands, took the place of the indigenous slaves that had
already been wiped out.
They made a considerable contribution to the ethnic composition and origin of
our country's current population, in which the culture, beliefs and the blood of
all those who participated in this dramatic history is mixed. It is estimated
that the conquest and colonisation of the entire hemisphere cost the lives of 70
million indigenous people and led to the enslavement of 12 million Africans.
Your Holiness, another genocide is being attempted today, so as to bring to
its knees, through hunger, disease and total economic strangulation, a people
which refuses to submit to the dictates and the sway of the most powerful
economic, political and military power in history - a power that is far more
powerful than that of Ancient Rome, which for centuries threw to the lions those
who refused to renege on their faith.
Like those Christians atrociously slandered in order to justify the crimes,
we, similarly slandered, would prefer death one thousand times before renouncing
our convictions. Just like the Church, the Revolution also has many martyrs.
In your long pilgrimage throughout the world, you have seen for yourself much
injustice, inequality, poverty, unemployment, hunger, disease and lives that
could have been saved and are lost for a few cents. You have seen illiteracy,
child prostitution, children working from the age of six or begging in order to
live, marginal neighbourhoods where hundreds of millions of people live in
inhumane conditions. You have seen discrimination for reasons of race or gender,
entire ethnic groups ousted from their lands and abandoned to chance,
xenophobia, contempt for other peoples, cultures destroyed or under destruction.
You have seen under-development, usurious loans, uncollectable and unpayable
debts, unequal terms of trade, monstrous and nonproductive financial
speculations, an environment mercilessly destroyed, at times beyond repair,
unscrupulous arms trading for repugnant commercial ends, wars, violence,
massacres. You have seen generalised corruption, drugs, vices and an alienating
consumerism imposed as an idyllic model on all peoples.
Humanity has grown almost fourfold in this century alone. Thousands of
millions of people are suffering hunger and a thirst for justice; the list of
people's economic and social disasters is interminable. I am aware that many of
them are a motive for Your Holiness' constant and growing concern.
I have had personal experiences that have allowed me to appreciate other
aspects of your thinking. I was a student at Catholic schools up until I went to
university. I was taught then that to be a Protestant, a Jew, Muslim, Hindu,
Buddhist, Animist or a participant in other religious beliefs constituted a
dreadful sin, worthy of severe and implacable punishment.
More than once, in some of those schools for the wealthy and privileged,
among whom I found myself, it occurred to me to ask why there were no black
children there. I have never been able to forget the totally non-persuasive
responses I received.
Years later, the Vatican Council II, convened by Pope John XXIII, took up
some of those delicate questions. We are aware of Your Holiness' efforts to
preach and to practice respect toward the believers of other important and
influential religions that have spread throughout the world. Respect for
believers and non-believers is a basic principle that we Cuban revolutionaries
have inculcated in our compatriots. Those principles have been defined and are
guaranteed by our Constitution and our laws. If difficulties have arisen at any
time, that has never been the fault of the Revolution.
We cherish the hope that, one day, no adolescent in any school in any region
of the world will need to ask why there isn't a single black, Indian, Asian or
white child in it.
What can we offer you in Cuba, Your Holiness? A people with fewer
inequalities, fewer unprotected citizens, fewer children without schools, fewer
sick people without hospitals, more teachers and more doctors per inhabitant
than any other country in the world visited by Your Holiness; an educated people
to whom you can speak with all the liberty you wish, and with the security that
this people possesses, talent, a high political culture, deep convictions,
absolute confidence in its ideas and all the awareness and respect in the world
to listen to you.
There is no country better equipped to understand your felicitous idea, such
as we understand it and so similar to what we preach, that the equitable
distribution of wealth and solidarity among human beings and peoples must be
globalised.
Welcome to Cuba
|
| Reader's Forum |
A Dream
A contribution to Umsebenzi from comrade Mike Mashabela, Nurse's
co-ordinator for NEHAWU's Kwamhlanga branch.
I dreamed of a dream that defeated my imaginations. Yes, I dreamed. I dreamed
of South Africa being led to freedom by cde Madiba, the first African President
od democratic South Africa.
There was jubilation and ululations from the rainbow nation as he carried the
candle stick of leadership and brought unity to different racial groups in our
country.
There was hope and life in the face of South Africa. However, the westerly
winds soon blew out the candle stick in his hands and the darkness of confusion
set in.
The Western world, led by the I.M.F. and World Bank, realising the darkness
in our country, offered a sophisticated candle stick and promised that it would
put South Africa in the light - a light that shines beyond its borders and into
the surrounding sea.
To the detriment of all however, their light only covered ten percent of the
country - the rest was left in the dark as the doors of education and learning
were closed. It became a fertile soil for drug trafficking, murder, hunger, low
wages and mass retrenchments. The whole country began to resemble the biblical
Sodom.
Education became a privilege and the socio-economic life of the nation became
a survival of the fittest. The whole country suffered from anxiety and a panicky
disorder. Realising the loss of people-power for the human, energy-driven IMF
candle, the casualties were given free medical services for early recovery, in
order to continue providing cheap labour.
Then I saw comrade Chris Hani coming out of his grave, and in his hands he
held a powerful light that destroyed the darkness of confusion. The doors of
education and learning were opened and the country drifted towards social order.
Yes, I dreamed. I dreamed a dream that society lives through social norms and
values. Lest we forget the Vietnam holocaust, South Africa shall drift into the
sea of drunkenness. Our children, the youth of our country, shall be slaves of
our ignorance.
Let us feed our children with the milk of human-kind, for the future of a
nation depends on the adequate socio-economic development of its youth.
Yes, I dreamed a dream that provoked my emotions, the emotions that are the
burning oil of our national democratic revolution.
AMANDLA - SOCIALISM IS THE FUTURE!
Left
|
International
Solidarity - Appeal for Funds
The Stand Children's Trust
As many readers of Umsebenzi are aware, two socialist activists, Kurt Stand
and Theresa Squillacote, were arrested in the USA on October 4 1997 and charged
with "spying" for the former GDR, and attempting to "spy"
for the Republic of South Africa. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
allegedly found a letter Theresa had written to comrade Ronnie Kasrils while
searching her house, and sent her a bogus return letter forged with comrade
Ronnie's signature. When she met with undercover FBI agents posing as South
African intelligence officers, she was arrested and charged along with her
husband (Kurt Stand) with conspiracy to commit espionage. The US government
subsequently issued a mild 'apology' for fraudulently representing South African
government officials, but has proceeded to hold both Theresa and Kurt without
bond for over five months, whilst preparing to formally indict them. A trial is
expected in June or July.
Comrades in the USA have set up a Trust Fund for the two children of
Theresa and Kurt. Rosa is 13 years old and Karl is 15. The children are being
cared for by friends, who are staying with them in the family home. While some
monies have been raised for the Trust, the expenses of caring for the children
continue to mount. The SACP is requesting all internationalists to consider
sending contributions, made payable to the Stand Children's Trust and
mailed to:
Stand Children's Trust
c/o NLRB Credit Union
1099 14th Street NW
Washington D.C. 20570
U.S.A.
Long live internationalism!
|
Red Star and Thumbs Down
to the masses of Indonesia for their increased popular resistance to the to 3 Thumbs Down to US Ambassador to 2 Thumbs Down to Stella Sicgau |
Multilateral
Agreement on Investment
New Movs to Entrench Capitalist Domination!
Just when progressives around the globe thought that they had a firm grasp
on the strategy and tactics of 'globalisation', along comes the Multilateral
Agreement on Investment (MAI). Presented as a "global treaty" which
will create "a constitution of a single global economy", the MAI is,
in truth, the latest attempt to ensure that trans-national corporations (TNC's)
have almost absolute control across the world.
At a time when
imperialism continues to force national governments to dance to the tune of
TNC's, the MAI represents a further attempt to restrict the power of the public
sector. Its main goal is to reduce the ability of the state (at all levels) to:
affect economic development in favour of the majority; institute progressive
environmental and labour standards; and retain and develop domestic industries.
Prepared by the 28 member countries of the European-based Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the MAI seeks to apply a
deregulatory agenda to areas not covered by existing global trade and investment
treaties. This would include trade in currency, stocks and bonds as well as the
ownership of land and natural resources. The MAI would also allow corporate
capital to by-pass progressive developmental measures that have been instituted
by various states, such as environmental regulations, requirements for job
creation and protection, social clauses in public contracts etc.
Put simply, if MAI is instituted it will effectively hold national and local
development hostage to the 'free market' dictates of the TNC's. Any country that
is signatory to the MAI, a process that will itself not necessarily be
'voluntary', will face a situation where existing national and/or local
requirements for 'investment' will be jeopardised.
The MAI goes beyond previous efforts by imperialism to make the world a
shopping centre for capitalists. It will give TNC's the right to sue and collect
compensation from national and/or local governments that exercise various
controls on investment behaviour that are in conflict with the dictates of the
MAI. In effect, globalised capital will be the 'new' government, and the MAI
will provide it with the legal framework within which to undermine national and
local sovereignty. Local and national governments would have no right to sue
corporations on behalf of their people.
The capitalists have done everything in their power to ensure that the
majority of people in the respective countries are not informed of their MAI
plans - that there is no open debate or public scrutiny. Fortunately, they have
failed! Already, there are mass campaigns beginning in the USA and some European
countries to stop the MAI dead in its tracks. It is incumbent on all progressive
forces to join in this all-important struggle against further capitalist
dictatorship.
DOWN WITH THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE
TNC's!!
Ode to the bourgeoisie
By Dale T. McKinley
Shards of insecurity rip the whole
A thousand pieces of nothingness.
Spikes of fear stand as guardians,
a heap of brokenness
masquerading as life.
Panderers to the shallow of immediacy
Trapped in a self-made maze.
Layered prisoners of acceptance,
immobilised,
by meaningless expectation.
Actors playing out pre-cast roles
unable to touch their own magic.
Denying the common soul, of soul itself,
marching in empty unison.
Disconnected threads of apparent existence.
A distorted tapestry of endless apparitions,
lurching towards nowhere.
