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Volume 12, No. 6, 14 February 2013 |
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Red Alert Mobilising to fight the scourge of violence against women and children |
Blade Nzimande, General Secretary
The latest public and media exposition of a series of grotesque incidents of rape, epitomized by the rape and murder of Anene Booysens in Bredarsdorp, has further underlined one of the most serious challenges facing South African society. This is a moment that requires both a broader societal reflection as well as focus on the organizational challenges posed by this.
The SACP has joined millions of other South Africans in their outrage against the latest incidents of rape. We pledge to continue mobilizing all our structures and our people to confront the scourge of the violence against women and children in all its manifestations.
These incidents of sexual violence against women and children are partly a reflection of some of the very serious challenges of social disintegration facing some of our communities, especially the working class ones. The combination of poverty and patriarchy has often turned anger inward in some of our poorest communities. While the scourge of rape, women and children`s abuse faces all communities, it is true that it tends to assume its most violent and grotesque forms in poorer communities.
Whilst sections of our society have often legitimately turned to government to deal with these matters, the SACP rejects the stance of some of the opposition parties, the media and other opportunists who put all the blame on government for the scourge of violence against women and children. The SACP of course supports engagement with government on its strategies to deal with this, but this is a broader societal challenge, that must be tackled as such. It places particular responsibility on the shoulders of especially progressive organized formations in our society, whether they are political, civic, social or economic, including government. Of course government must be robustly engaged around issues such as the necessity for specialized courts or police units that must deal with crimes against women and children. Whether we go this route or not, it is very urgent that the capacity of the criminal justice system is strengthened to deal swiftly and effectively with crimes against women and children.
Indeed for the SACP, the principal structural foundation for violence against women and children is the capitalist system - a system that reproduces, and in fact often thrives on, class, racial and gender inequalities, including reinforcing patriarchy in society. Within this context not only does capitalist exploitation impoverishes workers and their communities, but particularly creates conditions for the super-exploitation of women workers and their diminished status in society. For the SACP the struggle against violence against women must be premised on a broader struggle against capitalism.
It is important that we intensify the struggle to confront the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment in the current period. It is in the context of these challenges that the breeding ground for patriarchy and violence against women is to be found. Much as the struggle to defeat violence against women and children has a moral dimension, but it cannot be won simply on this front. It will in the end be won in organized struggles, led by the working class, for the radical transformation of our socio-economic terrain. But even this struggle on its own will not succeed, unless premised on the organization of women as part of the overall struggle for radical socio-economic transformation.
In order to deal with this scourge it is important that the struggle against violence against women and children becomes an everyday people`s struggles rather than something that is periodically highlighted when cases like those of Anene hit the media. Media driven struggles are not capable of a sustained battle against the scourge of violence against women, as it tends to be sensationalist, important as the role of the media is in this struggle. Media driven responses can assist to highlight these cases, but have the limitation of encouraging our people to respond primarily to cases that have been publicized.
The principal challenge for all progressive social and political formations is that of mass mobilization in our communities against violence against women in general, and particularly against the scourge of rape. The ANC`s call for the establishment of street committees is one important platform through which we can mobilise local communities and even households in order to conscientise, mobilise against, and expose the perpetrators of violence against women. Women should also be organized to play a prominent role in our street and area committees, so that they themselves become the principal drivers in the transformation of our streets, localities and households. The struggle against violence against women and children must be at the centre of the challenge to rebuild vibrant street and area committees.
The struggle against the scourge of violence against women must also be elevated into all of our sectoral formations and struggles. All of our activists in these formations must ensure that the issue of women`s struggles and dignity feature prominently. This means that fighting the scourge of violence in society must be part of the activities of these bodies - whether they be school governing bodies, the churches, civic organization, stokvels, co-operatives, trade union collectives in the workplace, etc. Every terrain of struggle and organized activity must simultaneously become a terrain for intensifying the struggle against violence directed at women.
In the light of the above, particular responsibility rests with the voting district (VD)-based branches of the SACP. These structures are closest to the households in our various communities, and the SACP is deliberately restructuring itself to get closer to our communities. We also expect our branch cadres to actively participate in all the sectoral structures at local level, and also ensure that the issue of women`s struggles and dignity is placed at the centre of the activities of these structures. This is in fact the vanguard role that the SACP branch can play at local level.
It is also of absolute importance that we incorporate a strong component on women`s struggles, patriarchy and transformation of gender relations into all of our political education activities. Dedicated pamphlets and guidelines must be developed to be studied and used by our own cadre. This will serve a double purpose of empowering our own cadres and well as educating them as some are not themselves innocent on these matters, as well as to develop a commissariat capable of educating communities broadly.
The history of the struggles against women`s oppression as well as our own history of the struggle against apartheid tells us that this is a struggle that will be won through hard work on the ground amongst our communities. And it is only a principled co-operation between mobilized communities and state organs that will ultimately defeat the scourge of all forms of violence in our society, including violence against women. It is also on the terrain of fighting violence against women that we must intensify the struggle and propaganda against the capitalist system.
Asikhulume!!
We are occupying the forefront trenches in the mist of the enemy to defend the gains of our national democratic revolution
By Phaatse Justice Pitso
In his collected works volume ten about the revolutionary office routine and revolutionary action, the leader of the world communist movement and the Russian revolution Vladimir Lenin, would say this about the role of the enemy in a transition:
"There have been cases in the history of revolutions when an assembly was nominally constituent, while in actual fact real force and power were not in its hands but in the hands of the old autocracy. This was the case in the German revolution of 1848, which explains why the "constituent" assembly of that period, the notorious Frankfurt Parliament, acquired the shameful reputation of a contemptible "talking shop.
That assembly babbled about freedom, decreed freedom, but took no practical steps to remove the government institutions which were destroying freedom. It is quite natural, therefore, that that pitiable, assembly of pitiable liberal-bourgeois prattlers withdrew from the scene in ignominy".
This contradiction cannot be explained by simple formal logic. But it is fully explained by the logic of the class interests of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie is afraid of complete freedom, of full democracy, for it knows that the class-conscious, i.e., socialist, proletariat will use this freedom to fight against the domination of capital.
Therefore what the bourgeoisie really wants is not complete freedom, not the full sovereignty of the people, but a deal with reaction, with the autocracy. The bourgeoisie wants parliamentarism in order to ensure the domination of capital rather than that of the bureaucracy, and at the same time it wants the monarchy, a standing army, the preservation of certain privileges for the bureaucracy, because it does not want to allow the revolution to reach its final goal, because it does not want to arm the proletariat".
In his work Vladimir Lenin was expounding on the arguments expressed by Karl Marx on his critique of the Gotha draft Program of 1875. In his critique Marx argues that between capitalist and communist society lies a period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. That this corresponds to a political transition period, in which the state cannot be anything else but the dictatorship of the proletariat. He further argues that the victorious proletariat cannot seize the ready-made machinery of the State and use it for its own purposes. It must build a new organization, based not on the government of men, but on the administration of things.
The most complex question we have to ask ourselves in relation to our own specific South African conditions is, what is the role of the antagonistic forces in the current phase of our struggles of the transition to democracy. What is the role of the remnants of the Apartheid regime in the current phase of our transition from Apartheid colonial society to the construction of a national democratic society? What is the role of the enemy of our national democratic revolution in the current phase of our transition, when the new democratic society has to be born out of the old Apartheid colonial society?
We are navigating through the most complex and difficult political process of a transition to construct a national democratic society out of a deep-seated structural framework of the apartheid colonial socio economic relations. The socio economic and political landscapes upon which we are building the foundations of the new national democratic society, is still dominated by the birthmarks of the old apartheid society from which we are emerging. Our transition is about the revolutionary transformation of the apartheid colonial society into a new national democratic society.
Historical necessity has made the old apartheid colonial society to be a foundation upon which the new ideal democratic society is built and therefore the footprint from which the new society derives its existence. Our national democratic revolution is qualitatively transforming the architectural remains of the decomposing Apartheid state to build the foundations of a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous society. The contradictions between the antagonistic and the non-antagonistic forces arise out of the scientific formula from which a national democratic society is born out of the old Apartheid colonial society
The fundamental question remains to be that in this complex process of the rapture of a new society out of the old, what will be the posture of the antagonistic forces. What will be the reaction of the antagonistic forces as the architectural remains of the decomposing Apartheid state give rise to the birth of a new society? Will they understand this as a necessity, will they comprehend the thesis that for society to take two steps forward, that the new has to be born out of the old. Will they appreciate the pain of the rapture of the historic moment?
The South African working class is faced by the most difficult task of resolving the three and half centuries old socio economic contradictions imposed on our people by imperialism and colonialism of a special type. We have the task to eradicate the daunting legacy of poverty, disease and underdevelopment that have over the years became the principal feature of the South African society. At the same time we have to appreciate the realities that the tasks of constructing a new democratic society out of the foundations of Apartheid colonialism is the most complex one.
Over the centuries of the history of the struggles of the working class movement, imperialism has been presenting a hypothesis that liberation movements are incapable of advancing the objectives of the struggles for the freedom and emancipation of its own people. This notion has been contrary to the Marxist-Leninist theoretical expression that the working class is the most reliable force capable of taking any revolution to its logical conclusion. Imperialism is negating the scientific materialistic view that the working class has the capacity to lead itself to the completion of its socio economic freedom.
On the contrary the hypothesis of imperialism in its negation of the scientific thesis of the new society born out of the old, has been to give the working class a minimum of twenty years to preside over any transition to democracy before it could witness its own demise. In our own peculiar South African situation, the antagonistic forces under the umbrella of the DA, have determined a timeframe that by 2019, our popular government led by the ANC, elected on the will, wishes and aspirations of the people of our country, will see its own demise.
The outstanding revolutionary and the leader of the Chinese revolution Chairman Mao would say:
"During transition the proletariat seeks to transform the world according to its own world outlook, so does the bourgeoisie. The overthrown bourgeoisie, in its conspiracy for restoration and subversion, always give first place to ideology; always take hold of the ideology and the superstructure.
The representatives of the bourgeoisie, by using their position and power usurped during their control of old state, will do all what they can to spread bourgeois and revisionist poison through the media of literature, the theatre, films, music, the arts, the press, the radio, publications and academic research and schools. They do this in an attempt to change the outlook of the people in order to restore their exploitative regime.
If our proletarian ideology does not take over the position, then the bourgeois ideology will have free rein; it will gradually nibble away and chew you up bit by bit. Once proletarian ideology gives way, so will the superstructure and the economic base and this mean the restoration of capitalism".
From this point of view of the objective realities facing the South African working class in the current phase of our transition, the inevitable consequences are proving that the motive forces of our revolution, the black people in general and the Africans in particular, are taking forward the noble objectives of their revolution, under hostile conditions dominated by the enemy of our revolution. The DA has distinguished itself by its inherent character, to be the true representative and the face of all the antagonistic forces opposed to the noble objectives of our national democratic revolution.
The DA is using the resources of our economy they have accumulated throughout the centuries of the racist Apartheid rule, to do all what they can do, to undermine the revolutionary program of the ANC led government, to transform the socio economic conditions of the South African society. It is dispensing the massive influence it still has on the commanding heights of our economy, to undermine the cause of our revolution through the media of literature, the theatre, films, music, the arts, the press, the radio, publications and academic research and schools. It other words the overthrown Apartheid bourgeoisie is attempting to restore back the exploitative Apartheid superstructure.
The DA is determined to be an impediment to the collective effort of the people of our country to eradicate the daunting centuries old legacy of imperialism and colonialism of a special type. The reality is that the antagonistic forces from both within and outside the ranks of our liberation movement, in close collaboration with the international monopoly capital, are hell-bent to oppose our revolutionary efforts to transform the socio economic contradictions of the South African society.
Dialectical materialism teaches us that the enemy of our revolution does not necessarily die. Historical circumstances over the years have proven that instead of the enemy of our revolution dying, it will always change its character and form. In this specific instance it will always change its character and form to adapt itself to the new conditions presented by the realities of our transition to build a new democratic society. It is for this obvious fundamental reason that we at all times, in our continuous work of the analysis of the balance of forces, locate the role of the enemy of our revolution.
The Democratic Alliance is attempting to occupy every inch of a square meter across the length and breath of the political landscape of our country, to restore back the policies of the Apartheid colonial order. The DA has become a chameleon trying to master the traditions and culture of our national liberation movement. Madam Helen Zille is singing our own liberation songs and masquerading as an instant hero of the history of liberation struggles of our country. The DA has unleashed a low intensity counter revolutionary activities everywhere under the sun of our mother earth. Its counter revolutionary activities are everywhere in our mist, in the sea, air and our land.
It is true that our national democratic revolution cannot be embroiled in antagonistic contradictions without the involvement of the historical enemy of the revolution. Therefore it is important that we move from the premise that the location of our enemy is in the heart and soul of the DA. We are not just pressing the alarms of panic about the existence of the enemy of our revolution, but the DA through its leader Madam Helen Zille, has proven that it is not commitment to our noble cause of resolving the socio economic contradictions of our society.
The increasing low intensity counter revolutionary activities unleashed by the DA against our national liberation movement and our collective leadership, especially our President, Cde Jacob Zuma, is a perilous thread not only to our movement, but to the future of the people of our country. Its antagonistic posture to our collective effort to spearhead the transition for the transformation of our country is a living testimony that our battle to eradicate the Apartheid superstructure is far from over. We therefore need the determination of all the people of our country to occupy the forefront trenches of our revolution, in defense of our hard won freedoms and democracy.
There is a growing opportunistic phenomenon emerging from the ranks of the Democratic Alliance to claim easy victories and glory to the heroic struggles won by our people against the repressive racist apartheid regime. On the 09 of January this year, during the occasion to celebrate the 23th anniversary of the unbanning of the liberation movements and the release of the political prisoners organised by the FW De Klerk foundation, the former and the last President of the Apartheid regime, President De Klerk, use the opportunity of the occasion organised by his foundation, to attack the ANC and its authenticity as the genuine leader of the struggles of the people of our country.
Former President De Klerk used the opportunity afforded by his foundation to create a false impression that the political process that followed the unbanning of the liberation movements and the release of the political prisoners, was a gesture of goodwill from him, the Good Samaritan. It is a dream come true and indeed the highest form of hypocrisy, that the former head of state of the brutal racist Apartheid regime, in his wishful thinking, can parade himself as the hero of the struggles of our people. The truth contrary to his pathetic wishful thinking is that the demise of the Apartheid regime was a result of the unprecedented struggles waged by our people in solidarity with the progressive people of the world.
By early 1984 apartheid regime was already at the verge of its virtual collapse as a result of the rolling mass action that made it ungovernable, the heroic military operations by our glorious peoples army Mkhonto we Ziswe and the international campaign to impose economic sanctions against the Apartheid regime led by the Anti apartheid movement throughout the countries of the world. The combinations of all these factors as a result of the determination of the struggles of our people rendered the Apartheid regime isolated from the world.
In 1986 as part of the campaign to isolate the brutal Apartheid policies that were declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations General Assembly, the American Congress passed a Comprehensive Anti apartheid act against the regime. Progressive Congressmen and women and Senators defeated the attempt by former President Ronald Reagan, to veto the passing of the act into the law. The overwhelming vote was 308 to 77 in the House of Representatives and 78 to 21 in the Senate. Many of the European countries and countries like Japan in the Far East followed the American Congress to impose economic sanctions.
The Anti-Apartheid Act was passed unanimously as a legislation to ban new investments and new loans to the racist apartheid regime. It further prohibited the importation of steel, iron, coal, uranium, agricultural products and military supplies, and export of a number of products including nuclear and computer technology to South Africa. The act also ended the South African quota on the export of sugar and the landing rights of the South African planes.
We give these details to remind De Klerk and the Democratic Alliance that it was not the gesture of goodwill by the leadership of the Nationalist Party, but the victories of the struggles of the people of our country that saw the demise of the notorious Apartheid regime. It is ridiculous that twenty years down the line of our democratic dispensation, a prodigal son and a daughter like the former President FW De Klerk and the leader of the DA Helen Zille can claim the victories of the struggles of our people against the brutalities of the racist regime.
Again this week on the 09 of February, on the occasion of the day that marked the release of our international struggle icon and the father of the South African revolution, President Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela, the shameless leader of the Democratic Alliance Helen Zille, wanted to celebrate the historic day on behalf of the people of our country. The shameless hypocrite wanted to separate the achievements, the collective wisdom and the leadership of the ANC from that of our former President Mandela. He wanted the people of our country to appreciate the leadership of Mandela from that of the collective of our liberation movement.
These are the indications that the enemy of our revolution is hard at work to reverse back the tremendous gains of our national democratic revolution. It is therefore important that we counterpose the increasing attempts by the existing remnants of Apartheid regime under the leadership of the DA, to undermine the legitimacy of the ANC as the only true representative of the struggles of our people into the future. It will only be through our determination that we can demystify the distortions and hypothesis by the DA that the people of our country are unable to determine their own destiny.
Phatse Justice Pitso is a former Ambassador to Cuba and the former Provincial Secretary of the SACP in Limpopo writing this article in his personal capacity.
