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Volume 12, No. 9, 7 March 2013 |
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Red Alert Inequality and Crime - Development and Safety |
By Jenny Schreiner, member of the 13th Congress CC and Politburo
"Capitalism is a crime against humanity; it robs the people of the products of their labour, their sweat and blood; it creates a desperate population - people who can do anything to meet their material, psychological and spiritual needs. It reduces people to the status of caged and desperate animals." So says Cde George Mashamba as the Central Committee reflected on the violence of gang rapes and mutilation, of panga wielding mobs who not only kill but dismember bodies, of strike violence, of dragging a person down the road tied to the back of a police vehicle, of domestic murder, and all the other less publicised violence that occurs in our country. Even in instances where the crime being committed is property crime, in South Africa often this goes with gratuitous and extreme violence - serious assault, rape, torture and murder.
International experience has shown a close correlation between inequality and levels of crime, and in particular, crime that involves violence. The conspicuous consumption of the emerging middle class and the bling-age and techno-gadgets of the youth combine to create unrealistic materialist expectations and a culture in which the value of the person becomes gaged by "wereld se goed", commodities and things. The injustices that have been deeply rooted in the economy lay the basis for divisions and conflict in communities, in the workplace and ultimately for criminality. The wealth gap that devils this country impacts on the social psychology, in particular of the working class. It is in this material reality that the roots of the culture that violence is an acceptable solution lie.
The psychology of rape is not a crime of lust, but a crime of power where the rapist enacts out against his own sense of disempowerment by using violence against the vulnerable rape victim - even more so when the act of rape becomes a group act of viciousness. The working class legitimate anger at the poverty, unemployment and social deprivation is turned into a anti-social anger directed against institutions of authority, that include destruction of important social service institutions such as libraries, government offices, and even extending to the houses of local councillors. The establishment of a society which is safe for women to walk home at night, safe for children to grow up free from violence and substance abuse, safe for the elderly to live in their homes and enjoy their senior years, is dependent on South Africa reaching a phase of economic development in which jobs are created, poverty is eradicated and the ostentatious level of wealth and sickening inequality is a thing of the past.
We have the Freedom Charter - the aspirations of the nation for the future that we want to live. The phrase there shall be peace and security is a goal still far from achieved. We have current visions that speak to the need for a strategy that makes the people of this country feel and be safe. We have identified a number of initiatives that are necessary to improve the functioning of the criminal justice system - including the investigation of crimes, the effective prosecution of cases, the effective sentencing of offenders for rehabilitation and the actual enforcement of the sentences handed down. These are critical to ensure effective combating of crime and effective rehabilitation of those who have done crime.
But that will not solve the crime situation, nor deal with the violence of South African crime. What has been missing of the past decade is the over-arching crime prevention strategy that provides the integrated implementation framework for all the departments that have a role to play in crime prevention. The pillars of such a crime prevention were known to all of us in 1996 and are:
- Pillar 1: The Criminal Justice Process aimed to make the criminal justice system more efficient and effective. It must provide a sure and clear deterrent for criminals and reduce the risks of re-offending.
- Pillar 2: Reducing Crime through Environmental Design focused on designing systems to reduce the opportunity for crime and increase the ease of detection and identification of criminals.
- Pillar 3: Public Values and Education concern initiatives aimed at changing the way communities react to crime and violence. It involved programmes which utilise public education and information in facilitating meaningful citizen participation in crime prevention.
- Pillar 4: Trans-national crime programme aimed at improving the controls over cross border traffic related to crime and reducing the refuge which the region offenders to international criminal syndicates
As we have moved forward in crime combating over the past 18 years, have we kept these four pillars in mind and ensured implementation of initiatives to make these a reality in our communities? Are these still the correct pillars? Are there new strategic interventions that should be lifted up? Immediately, the need to focus on the role for street committees, ward committees, and community police forums in making our communities safe becomes clear. History is showing us the fallacy of having not sustained the National Crime Prevention Strategy as a long term policy framework that could be improved, refined, and cascaded into short and medium term implementation plans to embed crime prevention into the psyche of the South African nation.
Who is the driving agent of a national crime prevention strategy? Perhaps it was locating this role in the national policing environment rather than in the social development or local government environment that was a weakness, or perhaps it was the shift from the policy of visible community policing that contributed to the lack of momentum to hold onto the national crime prevention strategy? The Constitutional Assembly adopted a constitutional provision (s199) that there would be a single police service that must be structured and regulated by national legislation. We went further to say that the national police service must be structured to function in the national, provincial and, where appropriate, local spheres of government. (s205 (1) and national legislation must establish the powers and functions of the police service and must enable the police service to discharge its responsibilities effectively, taking into account the requirements of the provinces. We provided that national legislation must provide a framework for the establishment, powers, functions and control of municipal police services. It is time for us to review the powers given to police forces other than the single national police service, and ensure that there is no overlap of functions and that municipal police entities are focused on the implementation of municipal by laws and not dealing with the functions of the national police service.
That first democratic Parliament and the first democratic administration did detailed work on how to structure the police service and to shape the policy framework that directed the work of the police service, and concluded that the police should be demilitarised; should be focused on community policing; should established a trained detective service; should have the ability to undertake public order policing in full respect of the constitutional Bill of Human Rights. The decision to remilitarise was an ill-advised decision, albeit it motivated by a concern to instil discipline in the police and focus them on fighting crime. The urgency of reverting to the civilian police service cannot be over-emphasised. The Alliance needs to re-assert the role of Community Police Forums in visible and effective policing and building of safety in the community. Public Order policing is an integral function of any police service, and it is critical that the training and capacity building that had been done on the SAPS previously is put back in place. The removal of this training and capacity is and was short sighted. It is critical for a democratic and developmental state to be able to manage the policing of democratic protest, the protection of communities, state resources and property during the course of public protest - to not train the police on matters of this nature can result in the mishandling of such situations that have been seen in various instances over the past year.
The transformation of the judiciary needs to be understood as the transformation of the institutions and system of justice, and not just transformation of the colour or gender of judges. The Party has begun to look at the form of the justice system and is keen to explore forms of courts within the community, in which the community is able to deal with a level of disputes that can best be resolved through community decisions. This is a valuable element of transformation to be brought into the criminal justice system, and should replace the call for traditional courts to be embedded in law. It is of far more value to ensure that the desire for dispute resolution other than going to the district and regional courts does not rely on an undemocratic institution that is embedded in patriarchal cultures.
Cde George again concludes: "Crime is the provision of individual solutions to social problems. The social problems of poverty, inequality, unemployment, violence - gender violence against women in particular, cannot be addressed or resolved by individuals on their own, but by society in an organised and systemic manner - otherwise it leads to anarchic frantic efforts by individuals regardless of the impact of such efforts on society in general." There is the motivation for a national strategy to prevent crime and to mobilise the society behind that strategy. It is for the Party and its Districts to provide the learship to rebuild such a national campaign for prevention of crime.
Asikhulume!!
The Revolution will not be televised
By Mandlakhe J. Radebe
Cde Malesela Maleka and recently cde Thulas Nxesi have their fingers on the pulse with their analyses of the South African media. In his latest missive, cde Malesela correctly denotes that our media is rather a "Capitalist’s lapdog instead of SA’s watchdog" - a point aptly captured by cde Thulas as well. At the onset, it is important to note that in this fast globalising world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue against the obvious objective reality that the media is structurally linked to the capitalist economic system and is consequently its mouthpiece.
The role of the media in a democratic society is to generally ensure an informed citizenry. Some political theorists and media scholars have argued that the media must not only inform the public, but also must provide information that reflects the diversity of ideas and opinions. This would afford citizens a chance to choose the most meritorious from a wide range of views presented in the media. If our mainstream media were to be examined on this objective alone, it will certainly not stand scrutiny.
But we shouldn’t be too alarmed by the posture of our mainstream media. As is the case world over, a substantial number of our media is owned by big corporations that have other neo-liberal agendas. On the ownership pattern score alone, it is easy to locate the media within the broader social forces, with competing interests. A closer scrutiny of these social forces exposes the media as an integral part of the market forces and thus an interested party in the ensuing class contests.
It is the structural factors that result in the powerful economic elites exercising control over the circulation of ideas. As the often abused Marx and Engels quote goes: "The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it … the individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore thinking."
Indeed, the ruling class develops the definition of the social reality and constructs the image of a society for everyone. This image represents their class interests which in turn are often presented as interests of every member of the society. As Marx and Engels further argued this case thus: "... they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is itself-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch."
Part of the control of the media is manifested through its funding model which compels it to rely on advertising for survival. A simple logic of the media and its reliance on advertising is that it must attract an audience to sell to advertisers. This is bound to lead to editorial pressure and political discrimination. Herman and Chomksy (2002:16) have long argued this: "Political discrimination is structured into advertising allocation by the stress on people with money to buy … many firms will always refuse to patronize ideological enemies and those whom they perceive as damaging their interests, and cases of overt discrimination add to the force of the voting system weighted by income."
This reality of the media world debunks the old liberal myth that portrays the media as an independent watchdog. In our own unique South African context, perhaps there is some modicum of truth in this assertion as daily the media is indeed a biased ‘watchdog’ for the African elites, a point also deftly captured by cde Thulas. This role has largely been confined to what is perceived to be state corruption while the white economic elites are having a field day. Indeed, most of the corruptors of public sector officials are located within the private sector.
We don’t have to look further to realise how corrupt activities are deeply entrenched in South Africa’s private sector. However, our so called independent, watchdog media has either glossed-over or completely turned a blind-eye on a plethora of decadent activities committed by senior executives in the private sector. Corruption in the private sector is quite ubiquitous with excessive executive remuneration, creative accounting by companies, greasing of hands to secure contracts and tenders and anti-competitive behaviour to the detriment of the consumer - mainly the working class.
Price fixing on a wide-range of consumer products, from diesel to bread, has become almost a pastime for many private sector executives. These excesses are inflationary and erode the already emaciated salaries of the working class, thereby accentuating the inequalities that define our society. Yet our ‘watchdog’ media hardly devotes the time and energy to expose this as it does with the public sector corruption. By no means should this line of argument be misconstrued to suggest that corruption in the public sector should be allowed to fester. To the contrary, corruption must be rooted out and exposed!
This posture by the media is by no means an accident but rather a consequence of its ownership patterns. To this end, our media is a crucial player in the broader social contests on myriads of issues as highlighted by cde Malesela. Our media is openly biased even portraying those social forces that share the same agenda with them in positive light. Obviously the contrary holds. The case in point is the media’s posture towards social movements such as the Treatment Action Campaign and Section 27, whose actions are constantly described as acceptable. While on the other hand actions of anti-capitalist social movements like the Anti-Privatisation Forum (as reactionary this formation as it maybe) are portrayed as backward actions of loose cannons and hooligans.
Again, this is hardly surprising as many acclaimed international scholars such as Curran, Gurevitch & Woollacott (1982:18) have argued that: "the contents of the media and the meanings carried by their messages are ... primarily determined by the economic base of the organizations in which they are produced." Indeed, experience teaches us that our so called independent media is not immune from this objective reality. In fact, our media operates under a capitalist system, and like all businesses in this system, it must ensure profit maximisation through various means such as cost-cutting mechanisms as well as putting pressure on governments for political and economic reforms congenial to their class interests. Anything to the contrary will not make business sense, at least from the warped logic of capitalism.
Increasingly though, our media has been operating under a growing neo-liberal hegemony whose foundation was ingrained by the 1996 Class Project with its macro-economic policy - GEAR. It is an open secret that the key elements of GEAR contained budget reforms, privatisation and labour market flexibility. Our media industry has thrived under these conditions with its transformation heavily tied to the broader economic transformation. The end result is an unequal media landscape whose outlook is skewed against social classes outside of the capitalist market system.
The media as part of the market forces is orientated towards the prevailing economic power relations, and therefore its credibility remains suspect, at least in the eyes of the majority ordinary South Africans. By the way, this is the very same media that almost cheerfully complied with an illegitimate minority apartheid regime’s regulations. It must be noted though that there were pockets of resistance from what was then the alternative press, which was by and large donor driven and has since died.
It’s becoming more difficult to dispute the assertion that South Africa’s mainstream media predominantly serves the interests of the white capitalist class, just like it did under apartheid. This is due to the manner in which the media deals with societal discourses, which is reminiscent to its past where, according to Berger (1999: 82), "... the media served the dominant interests in the system because it was - in essence - an integral part of that system in terms of ownership and control, revenue streams, staffing, content and audiences." To a large extent, the legacy of the apartheid system persists and the vestiges of this structural link to the economic base are still the main feature in the current mainstream media. Therefore, the approach in which the media reports on societal issues is certainly influenced by its structural link to the capitalist economy.
Many proponents of the free, independent ‘watchdog’ media would want us to quickly forget this historical and structural link to the current narrative on broader societal issues. Some would even want to hide the fact that it was, by and large, this very media that, in the dawn of our 1994 democratic breakthrough, openly backed the apartheid era political parties, the Democratic Party (which has now reinvented itself as DA) and the National Party. Only two major newspapers, which can be located within the broader alternative press, the Mail & Guardian and Sowetan, backed the broader liberation movement. However, this historical fact should not be abused to exonerate the Mail & Guardian and Sowetan from the current structural bias.
Even though the transformation of media in South Africa, including ownership patterns, have resulted in an increased number of Black editors and journalists occupying more senior roles than prior to 1994, the issues affecting poor working class communities are still marginalised. This is due to structural factors and the location of the media within market forces. The media’s posture on ideological charged issues is generally informed by these factors. In the eyes of our capitalist driven media, working class community issues do not make commercial sense.
This further confirms the view that the media system is a tool that is used to advance values and objectives of the economic elites. It is clear that the media systems are purposefully created to inscribe the views and values of the ruling elite. Hence, the media is at the forefront of defending and arguing that there is no other alternative to the prevailing economic system. Our media daily advances capitalist views as opposed to state-driven measures. All of a sudden, the media that was prepared to tow the racist apartheid line is now suffering from amnesia on the precedent of state intervention that successfully addressed the socio-economic status of the Afrikaaners.
The attitude of some media workers and their defence of the current media system which marginalises poor working class communities is informed by naivety. This is part of the structural factors of the media where the environment has what van Dijk (2009) termed the ‘underlying ideological controls’. Briefly, the production process of news influences various discourses into a particular direction, obviously informed by its location within the market forces. Ultimately media owners and their appointed executives have the final say in what media organisation executes. Shoemaker and Reese (1991) aptly put it: "If employees don’t like it, they can quit. Others will be found to take their place, and routine can always be changed."
In this regard, various methods such as the manipulation of texts are utilised to advance the hegemonic struggle for meaning and representation of the capitalist class. Therefore, the media do not just reflect or sustain social consensus but rather play a key role in producing consensus around definitions that favour the hegemony of the powerful.
In a nutshell, the assertion of a free and independent media is nothing but sophistry. Subsequently, there is a strong case for a real public media in both the print and electronic space. There is a case to strengthen the SABC as the only legitimate public broadcaster in this country and ensure that it is not manipulated by opportunists with narrow selfish interests. The ongoing discourse by cdes Thulas, Malesela and many others has to be sustained if we are to sharpen our understanding of the role of the media in advancing the socialist revolution, of course at the terrain of the national democratic revolution.
Without doubt, the media is a fundamental platform in shaping the ideas for the broader society. It has become abundantly clear that our mainstream media, in its current form, is unashamedly biased towards the market forces. As American musician, poet and author, Gilbert "Gil" Scott-Heron once remarked "The Revolution will not be televised". Indeed, not under the neo-liberal and remote-controlled mainstream media.
Mandlakhe J. Radebe is the District Secretary of the SACP in Linda Jabane (Greater Johannesburg) and a member of the ANC.
The working class has lost the blossoming flower of its own revolution.
By Phatse Justice Piitso
The early morning of the 06th of March 2013 brought to the world the heartbreaking news that the heart of one of the most outstanding leader of the world working class and the leader of the Bolivarian revolution, the President of the Republic of Venezuela, President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias, has ceased to beat. We received the sad news that death has robbed us one of our most illustrious and great extraordinary revolutionaries who built the Republic of Venezuela as the birthplace of the Bolivarian socialist revolution for the liberation of the Americas.
The world has lost one of the most humbled and outstanding revolutionaries who spent to the fullest an entire life of unbroken loyalty, commitment, discipline and dedication not only to his people but also to the noble cause of the international proletariat movement. The mortal remains of this son of the working class will forever be imbued in the spirit of international solidarity. The revolution has indeed lost one of its own.
From the humble beginnings of the working class background, Cde Chavez became a career military officer. He founded the secretive Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement in the early 1980s when there was a growing discontent about the repressive regime in Venezuela. He was arrested after an unsuccessful coup in 1992. After his release from prison he founded a social democratic party, the fifth Republic Movement, which he led until 1998 when he was elected President of Venezuela.
He was inspired by the father of the Latin American wars of independence, Simon Bolivar. He as a result propagated the political ideology of Bolivarianism and socialism of the 21st century. Through the Bolivarian revolution he was able to draw a new constitution, establish participatory democratic councils, nationalized several key industries, increased government funding of health care and education, and significant reductions in poverty scales.
In collaboration with the revolutionary government of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro in Cuba, the revolutionary government of President Rafael Correa in Ecuador, the revolutionary government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, the socialist government of Evo Morales in Bolivia and many progressive governments of the Latin America, the pan regional union of the South American Nations, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the Bank of the South, and the regional television network Telesur were established.
Although we can accept that death is the necessary end, although we can accept that destiny can impose itself, the passing on of this great revolutionary of our times, is an immeasurable setback to the entire communist movement in the whole world. The world has lost a fearless fighter, a revolutionary, a caring leader, and indeed one of the few but the better sons of our revolution, who devoted his whole life for the noble cause of the struggles for the emancipation of the working class.
Cde President Hugo Chavez was one of the blossoming flowers of the world proletarian revolution. He indeed belonged amongst the few but the better, of those rare spices of men and women in the category of the human race. History will remember Cde Chavez for his distinguished leadership of successfully raising the Red flag at the doorstep of the most dominant and hostile leader of the world imperialism and neo colonialism, the USA.
During the special sitting of the All Russia Central Executive Committee which took place the same month on the 18th of March 1919, the leader of the Russian revolution Vladimir Lenin had to say the following revolutionary words in memory of the first organiser of his party Cde Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov
"Comrades, today, when the workers of all countries are honouring the memory of the heroic rise and tragic end of the Paris Commune, we have to inter the remains of Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov. In the course of our revolution, and in its victories, Comrade Sverdlov succeeded in expressing more fully and integrally than anybody else the chief and most important features of the proletarian revolution, and this, even more than his boundless devotion to the cause of the revolution, made him significant as a leader of the proletarian revolution.
It is this organisation of millions of working people that constitutes the best stimulant for the revolution and its deepest source of victory. And it is this feature of the proletarian revolution which, in the course of the struggle, brought to the fore those leaders who best expressed that specific feature of our revolution that was never seen in revolutions before, namely, the organisation of the masses. This feature of the proletarian revolution also brought to the fore Yakov Sverdlov, a man who was first and foremost an organiser.
The history of the Russian revolutionary movement over a period of many decades contains a list of martyrs who were devoted to the revolutionary cause, but who had no opportunity to put their revolutionary ideals into practice. In this respect, the proletarian revolution, for the first time, pro- vided these formerly isolated heroes of the revolutionary struggle with real ground, a real basis, a real environment, a real audience, and a real proletarian army in which they could display their talents. And in this respect, the most outstanding leaders are those who, as practical, efficient organisers, have succeeded in winning for themselves an exceptionally prominent place such as Yakov Sverdlov won for himself and rightly occupied.
If we survey the life of this leader of the proletarian revolution we see that his wonderful organising talents developed in the course of long struggle. We see that this leader of the proletarian revolution himself cultivated every one of his wonderful gifts as a great revolutionary who had passed through and experienced different epochs in the severest conditions of revolutionary activity.
He dedicated himself entirely to the revolution in the very first period of his activities, when still a youth who had barely acquired political consciousness. In that period, at the very beginning of the twentieth century, Comrade Sverdlov stood before us as the most perfect type of professional revolutionary, a man who had entirely given up his family and all the comforts and habits of the old bourgeois society, a man who devoted himself heart and soul to the revolution, and who for many years, even decades, passing from prison to exile and from exile to prison, cultivated those characteristics which steeled revolutionaries for many, many years.
However, this professional revolutionary never, not even for a moment, lost contact with the masses. Although the conditions of Tsarism condemned him, like all the revolutionaries of those days, mainly to underground, illegal activities, even then, even in those underground and illegal activities, Sverdlov always marched shoulder to shoulder and hand in hand with the advanced workers who, at the beginning of the twentieth century, began to take the place of the earlier generation of revolutionary intellectuals.
It was at this time that scores and hundreds of advanced workers took up activities and acquired that steel-like hardness in the revolutionary struggle which, together with the closest contact with the masses, made it possible to bring about a successful proletarian revolution in Russia.
History long ago proved that in the course of the struggles, great revolutions bring great men to the forefront and develop talents that had previously seemed impossible. Nobody would have believed that the school of the illegal study circle and underground activities, the school of the small, persecuted Party, the school of Turukhansk prison could produce this organiser who won absolutely unchallenged prestige, the organiser of Soviet power throughout Russia, the man, unique in his knowledge, who organised the work of the Party which created the Soviets and established the Soviet government which is now making its arduous, painful, bloody but triumphant advance to all nations, to all countries throughout the world.
We shall never be able to replace this man who had cultivated such an exceptional organising talent, if by replacement we mean finding one man, one comrade, with all these qualities. Nobody who has been close to Yakov Sverdlov and has watched him constantly at work can have any doubt that in this respect he is irreplaceable. The work he performed as an organiser, in choosing men and appointing them to responsible posts in all the various departments, will be performed in future only if we appoint whole groups of men to handle the different major departments that he had sole charge of, and if these men, following in his footsteps, come near to doing what this one man did alone.
But the proletarian revolution is strong precisely because its roots run deep. We know that it promotes new men to take the place of those who devotedly sacrificed their lives in the struggle, they are perhaps less experienced, possess less knowledge, and are at first less trained, but they are men who have broad contacts with the masses and who are capable of promoting from their ranks groups of men to take the place of the departed geniuses, to continue their cause, to continue along the road they pursued and to complete what they had begun.
In this respect we are fully convinced that the proletarian revolution in Russia and all over the world will promote group after group of men, numerous sections of the proletariat and of the working peasantry, which will possess that practical knowledge of life, that organising talent, collective if not individual, without which the million-strong army of the proletariat cannot achieve victory.
The memory of Comrade Yakov Sverdlov will serve not only as a permanent symbol of the revolutionary’s devotion to his cause and as the model of how to combine a practical sober mind, practical skill, close contact with the masses and ability to guide them; it is also a pledge that ever- growing numbers of proletarians, guided by these examples, will march forward to the complete victory of the world communist revolution".
Today the same month, 94 years after the befitting tribute by the leader of the Russian revolution in memory of Cde Sverdlov, we borrow his revolutionary words to bid farewell to one of the most outstanding organisers of our party Cde President Hugo Chavez.
He understood that the Marxist Leninist theory is the indissoluble unity of the revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice. He mastered the theoretical grasp that theory is a guide to our revolutionary activity and the best place to test it is the revolutionary battlefield. Therefore he nurtured Venezuela as the revolutionary battlefield to defeat the American led imperialism and neo colonialism.
President Hugo Chavez is the first Marxist Leninist statesman to lead the victorious Bolivarian Socialist Revolution at the helm of the revolutionary state of Venezuela and most of the Latin American countries. Under his leadership a truly inestimable wealth of the Marxist Leninist ideological legacy became and remain to be the property and a weapon of the party and the people of his country. Under his leadership the foundation stones for the construction of a true socialist state of Venezuela was laid.
Commander Chavez was completely inspired by the ideas of Marx and Lenin and more importantly by their irresistible logic and the profundity of their scientific conclusions of thoughts. He did not only study Marxist Leninist theory but equally used it to understand the socio economic contradictions and the task of the working class movement in Venezuela and the entire of the Latin America. He devoted most of his time as a party organiser to develop the socialist consciousness of the people of Venezuela and produced out of them men and women, capable of taking forward the task of the Bolivarian revolution for the liberation of the Americas.
He was the best teacher who illustrated his Marxist Leninist theory by giving examples with the concrete life of his listeners. He had the best way of expounding the most complicated questions of theory in more simplistic and comprehensible fashion. Through his popular lectures he would leave his listeners with rich knowledge, broaden their horizons, mould their class-consciousness and therefore built a solid base for their political understanding.
He did not only teach his people but also learned from them by studying their living and working conditions. His familiarity with the conditions of the working class afforded him with an invaluable sense of opportunity to draw conclusions and generalizations of his theoretical work about the pace and the impact of the Bolivarian revolution in his country and the region.
It was through his regular lectures that the people of his country defeated the imperialist philosophy that individuals are the makers of history. He resorted to the revolutionary teachings of our theory that the people are the makers of history. Therefore his philosophy was that outstanding individuals could play history insofar as they could take collective decisions with regard to the development of the socio economic needs of their people.
Cde Hugo Chavez was inspired by the idea of the guiding role, and the leadership of the proletariat in a revolution. He became convinced that without the victory of the people over imperialism and the growth of the vanguard party, the socialist revolution would be impossible. He advanced the idea of the revolutionary Bolivarian Alliance for the countries of the Latin America, with the understanding that the unity of the people of Latin America is the precondition for the success of our struggles against imperialism.
During the speech delivered at the graveside during the funeral procession of Cde Sverdlov, the leader of the world communist movement Vladimir Lenin had to say the following:
"We have lowered into the grave the remains of a proletarian leader who did more than anybody to organise the working class and to ensure victory. Now that Soviet power is spreading throughout the world and the knowledge is rapidly gaining ground of how the proletariat, organised in Soviets, is struggling to put its ideas into effect, we are burying a representative of the proletariat who set an example of how to fight for these ideas.
Millions of proletarians will repeat our words: Long live the memory of Comrade Sverdlov. At his graveside we solemnly vow to fight still harder for the overthrow of capital and for the complete emancipation of the working people...."
Today 94 years after the funeral of the greatest organiser of the party Cde Sverdlov, we lower into the grave the remains of a proletariat leader, Cde Hugo Chavez, who did more than anybody to organise the working class and endured their victory.
Now that the Bolivarian revolution is spreading over the Latin America and the whole world, rapidly gaining ground of how the proletariat, committees for the defense of the revolution, are struggling to put its ideas into effect, we are burying a representative of the proletariat who set an example of how to fight for these ideas.
The working class repeats its words when it says ‘long live the memory of Commander Hugo Chavez’. At his graveside we solemnly vow to fight still harder for the overthrow of capital and the complete emancipation of the working people.
History long ago proved that in the course of the struggles, great revolutions bring great men to the forefront and develop talents that had previously seemed impossible. Nobody would have believed that the school of the illegal study circle and underground activities, the school of the small, persecuted Party, the school of the prison at San Carlos Military stockade could produce this organiser who won absolutely unchallenged prestige.
The organiser of the Bolivarian revolution for the liberation of the Americas, the man, unique in his knowledge, who organised the work of the Party which created the committees for the defense of the revolution, and established the socialist Republic of Venezuela, which is now making its arduous, painful, bloody but triumphant advance to all nations, to all countries throughout the whole of the Latin America and the world.
More than ever before the world needs outstanding leaders of the caliber of Cde Hugo Chavez to take forward the revolutionary task of constructing a new world social order. We have indeed lost one of our own. We have lost the blossoming flower of the Bolivarian revolution and the entire progressive world movement. He was indeed a Commander in the long chain of human generations who contributed immensely in shaping and redefining the history of the working class struggles in the Latin America and the whole world.
Long live the living memory of Commander Hugo Chavez. Long live!
Phatse Justice Piitso is our former Ambassador to Cuba and the former provincial secretary of the SACP writing on his personal capacity.
