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Volume 13, No. 10, 13 March 2014 |
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Red Alert Irvin Gymnastics - the devious art of political contortionism |
By Cde Jeremy Cronin
The NUMSA leadership clique under Irvin Jim is increasingly ratcheting up its reckless game of brinkmanship, organisational dissidence and electoral boycotting. Despite the rhetoric, the project plays directly into the hands of the most reactionary, anti-worker forces in our society. No wonder an array of neo-liberal commentators are hailing it as the future political "game-changer", just as they once hailed Cope and, more recently if very briefly, Agang.
Because of its location within the working class movement, however, the capacity of the Jim project to cause damage should not be underestimated. It is a project brimming with destructive sectarian intent, and therefore devoid of any sustainable capacity to unify and advance working class power and struggle. Like COPE, it will end in tears, wrecked on its own inner competing ambitions. It is both narrowly sectarian AND an eclectic potjiekos brew of conflicting ideologies. It is simultaneously rigidly dogmatic AND erratically opportunistic. It is a project of political contortionism, riddled with contradictions:
It wants to transform a trade union, NUMSA, simultaneously into a broad general workers' union AND a tightly-knit, "Marxist-Leninist" "red union" that uses union resources to act as a pseudo-vanguard party. The Jim project likes to decorate its statements with quotes from Lenin, but nowhere does it quote what Lenin actually had to say about trade unions. The Jim clique chooses not to cite Lenin critiquing trade unionists seeking to substitute themselves for a political party. Nor do they mention how Lenin castigated with biting sarcasm the "imprudent Left Communists" who "stand by, crying out 'the masses, the masses!'…and invent a brand-new, immaculate…'Workers' Union', which is guiltless of bourgeois-democratic prejudices…a union which [at the same time] they claim will be (!) a broad organisation." (The exclamation mark is Lenin's.)
Some commentators (Carol Paton writing in the Business Day, and citing Alec Erwin, for instance) characterise the Jim project as a familiar return to the "workerism" of the 1980s. It is true that there are strong workerist features in the Jim project, particularly in the syndicalist tendency noted above - manipulating a union organisation as a vehicle for party (or personal) political ambitions. However, we should remember that there were always two different "workerist" tendencies in the 1980s, especially within NUMSA itself. The one was stridently anti-capitalist, advancing a platform of a war of class against class. The other was more firmly rooted in centrist, social democratic corporatist traditions.
So which of these characterises the Jim project when it dons workerist clothing? The answer is sometimes the one, sometimes the other, and neither consistently! We are all familiar with Jim's anti-capitalist rhetoric - the capitalist media loves to act as a megaphone for his radical posturing. But there is also another Jim, a corporatist Jim, whom we occasionally glimpse in the media. This is the Jim, for instance, who complained to a media briefing in September last year that the "employers were no longer treating the union as an 'insider' but rather an adversary." He told the Business Day that "this called into question the hard-fought right of collective bargaining."(Business Day, 30 September 2013)
Using an anti-ANC-SACP ticket, the Jim project wants to appeal, amongst other things, to NUMSA's own long-standing and relatively principled ultra-left minority tendency with roots in Trotskyism. But (borrowing from a trick learnt from the DA's "adopt a Madiba" tactic), the Jim clique also brands itself as the "true" upholders of the SACP's revolutionary legacy, in contrast to the supposed positions of the present-day SACP leadership. The clique quotes favourably from the SACP's 1989 "Path to Power" programme, the Party's characterisation of minority rule in SA as "colonialism of a special type", necessitating a national democratic struggle in alliance with the ANC, etc. But these are precisely the strategic perspectives on which the relatively principled ultra-left within NUMSA has always opposed the ANC-SACP alliance! (Without trusting Jim, they - the Trotskyist ultra-left in NUMSA - are happy to go along for the ride for the moment, seeing in Jim a useful battering ram to achieve their long dreamed of Alliance break-up).
As long as NUMSA understood itself to be a progressive trade union whose prime focus was to recruit and school the maximum number of workers in the metal and related sectors, regardless of the individual workers' political affiliations, the contest of different left tendencies within the union was not a problem (in fact, it was often a strength within NUMSA). But the Jim clique's attempt to transform NUMSA into a "vanguard" formation will lead (and already is leading) to the fragmentation rather than unity not just of COSATU, but NUMSA itself.
For instance, the clique constantly evokes the important NUMSA/COSATU traditions of shop-floor democracy, but quickly forgets these when NUMSA workers in Rosslyn invite the SACP to address them in a lunch-time meeting in February this year. The workers, many of whom are SACP members, were forbidden to proceed with the meeting. They were instructed top-down that NUMSA "no longer has any relationship with the SACP".
This bureaucratic enforcement of a sectarian line is paraded by the Jim clique as an example of "democratic centralism", of "revolutionary discipline" - but the very same clique is happy to undermine collective discipline and decision-making when it suits them. This is glaringly obvious in the case of the clique's decision that NUMSA should organise along so-called "value chains", rather than within an industrial sector. There may (or may not) be merit in this approach. However, for the moment, it stands in blatant contradiction with the most important founding principle of COSATU - "one industry, one union". When confronted with this act of defiance by COSATU and asked to explain why their membership of the federation should not be suspended, the Jim clique responded that the "value chain" approach was "merely a proposal for further discussion in the federation". In practice, however, the clique has simply gone ahead, unilaterally implementing this and other sectarian "points for discussion".
The Jim project has cobbled together the leaderships of eight other unions in a factional bloc within COSATU on a "save Vavi" cult of the personality ticket. NUMSA has been paying the federation affiliation fees of some of these unions, while at the same time poaching (with "vanguard" arrogance) members of these unions from under the noses of these very same (hired) friends. Notice that, besides money, the only thing that holds this bloc together is a "save Vavi" sentiment - which, by the way, does cde Vavi no favours by linking him into a divisive, sectarian agenda. The vast majority of the worker memberships of these unions (and indeed of NUMSA itself) while they may feel sympathy for cde Vavi, do not support Jim's anti-ANC, anti-SACP views. Moreover, they are deeply concerned about Jim's adventurist brinkmanship, fearing rightly that if not checked it will lead to the implosion of COSATU with a ripple effect on every single union.
The Jim project preaches anti-corruption, while seeking by every trick in the book to prevent cde Zwelinzima Vavi from having to answer to serious charges within the federation. It correctly castigates corruption that is inherent in a capitalist dominated society, while at the same time secretly flirting with the EFF, led by the most corrupt representatives of tenderpreneuring and capitalist compradorism. Notice also how Jim and his clique have failed to clarify the detailed concerns raised by the SACP in regard to NUMSA's investment companies. When we suggested that it might reassure NUMSA members if Jim and his deputy general secretary (and business partner) Karl Cloete undertook life-style audits, we were told that they would do so if SACP general secretary, cde Blade Nzimande did likewise. They had forgotten that cde Nzimande has precisely undertaken such an audit! Since then we have heard absolutely nothing except deafening silence on this score from the Jim clique.
The Jim clique portrays the current ANC-led state as nothing but the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", yet the same clique doesn't hesitate to take its own federation COSATU to court, placing decisions on internal COSATU organisational procedures in the hands of the (arguably) more conservative wing of this supposed "bourgeois dictatorship" - the judiciary.
The clique tells us that for 20-years the ANC-led government has done "nothing for the workers and the poor", and yet NUMSA is the industrial union that has benefited most from government programmes. Over the past five years, in the context of the global capitalist crisis and weaknesses in the auto export market, the ANC-led government has invested R22bn in 183 auto sector projects, preserving 46,000 jobs and adding 9,850 more jobs. Government (with the support of NUMSA) is also using the leverage of public procurement to re-industrialise and expand jobs, including in the metal sector. For instance, at least 80% of bus bodies, 65% of rail rolling stock, 100% of power pylons, 90% of telecom cables procured by the state and SOEs must be locally manufactured. Already these procurement requirements are resulting in a switch from imports to local manufacturing and local jobs.
The Jim clique was among the first of many to jump opportunistically onto the band-wagon of the terrible Marikana tragedy - but they did so with entirely ignoble sectarian intentions. In the name of the NUMSA CC they condemned the "savage, cowardly actions and excessive force used by the police, which invariably ["inevitably"?] led to the deaths of 44 workers…" As the proceedings at the Farlam commission underline, the police, and particularly their command structures, have a great deal to answer for, and not just in regard to Marikana. But the NUMSA statement on the Marikana death-toll deliberately obscured the fact that the first ten of the 44 deaths at Marikana in the tragic week of mid-August 2012 were not at the hands of the police, but included two policemen, two security guards protecting the National Union of Mineworkers' offices, and six NUM members - all killed by anti-NUM vigilantes seeking to violently displace NUMSA's fellow COSATU affiliate from the platinum mines around Rustenburg. In the months and years before and in the year and a half since, there have been many more deaths of NUM members at the hands of these vigilante forces. We have yet to hear a single word of working class sympathy or concern from the Jim clique.
The same statement in the name of the NUMSA CC did another classical piece of Jim gymnastics when it told us, on the one hand that the Marikana tragedy was proof that the police were simply an instrument of bourgeois rule and "will do anything to defend the property rights and profits of this class, including slaughtering the working class". And then, a few sentences later, pleaded that these "organs of class rule, particularly the police, should not be used recklessly and violently to intervene in industrial disputes involving workers and bosses." Leaving aside the presumption that what was at play in Marikana was a simple "industrial dispute between workers and bosses", what does this sentimental pleading mean - that the organs of supposed "bourgeois class dictatorship" shouldn't be unduly reckless or violent as they go about their inevitable slaughtering work?
The confusion thickens when, later in the same statement, economic policy matters are discussed. The statement calls for "strengthening of the state sector in mining in particular…" But we have just been told that the post-1994 state and government's "strategic task and real reason for existence is the defence" of the capitalist "Minerals/Energy/Finance Complex"! If there is any logical consistency in all of this, then the Jim clique must be calling for the mines to be taken over by a state that operates in the interests of mining capitalists!
And finally, on a related note, observe how the Jim clique constantly calls for the nationalisation of the mines, the banks, SASOL, and of "white monopoly capital" in general - but no mention is ever made of nationalising a highly oligopolistic auto sector! But, then, that is the sector in which much of its membership is located.
There is only one word for all of these ideological contortions, this virtuoso display of political gymnastics - that word is: OPPORTUNISM.
[This is the first of a two part intervention on "Irvin Gymnastics". In the second instalment we will locate the historical origins of this sectarian agenda and locate it within the context of the changing trade union terrain in SA.]
Cde Jeremy Cronin is SACP 2nd Deputy General Secretary
'Poo protests:
People want a council and councillors that listen
By Cde. Jeremy Cronin
Globally, more than one billion people now live in informal settlements. In his classic study of this burgeoning reality (Planet of the Slums), Mike Davis documents the many desperate challenges facing the inhabitants of these settlements. Amongst the most dehumanising of challenges is how to deal with (to put it delicately) human waste.
It's not a new phenomenon. "In the 1830s and early 1840s, with cholera and typhoid rampant in London", Davis notes, "the anxious British middle class was forced to confront a topic not usually discussed in the parlour." Polite society was shocked into the realisation that millions of fellow Londoners were virtually living in excrement. In nearby Manchester, Friedrich Engels found that in some streets "over two hundred people shared a single privy". What happened over the course of one and a half centuries in Europe, with capitalist-driven rural impoverishment and desperate migration into towns, is now occurring on an incomparably larger scale and in just a few decades across the cities of the South.
Over the past year, suburban Cape Town was temporarily forced out of its amnesia by "poo protests" rudely breaching the old apartheid cordon sanitaire. We can count ourselves lucky. In Nairobi's Kibera slum residents rely on "flying toilets", waste in plastic bags thrown onto the nearest roof or path. The dilemma has been turned into a minor entrepreneurial activity. One Guardian journalist reports that car commuters at traffic lights in Nairobi are confronted by "10-year olds with plastic solvent bottles, brandishing balls of excrement - ready to thrust them into an open car window…" Trick or treat.
This is part of a wider context in which the SA Human Rights Commission held a media launch in Cape Town yesterday for its water and sanitation report. The report paints a mixed picture. By third world standards SA is doing relatively well. Nearly 60 percent of South Africans have access to flush toilets, nearly 30 percent have pit latrines, mostly of the unventilated variety. But, as the report notes, these bald figures conceal many absolutely degrading sanitation realities affecting millions of South Africans. Especially affected are those living in crowded informal settlements, over two hundred of which are to be found in greater Cape Town alone.
On Monday I was in Site C Khayelitsha with leaders from dozens of these informal settlements. The meeting was organised under the umbrella of a fast-growing social movement, Ses'khona, meaning "we're here" - which is to say, we're not aliens, we demand rights to the city. The meeting was dominated by feisty inputs by grass-roots leaders, mostly women. It was clear that the principal leaders of the movement, the two former ANC city councillors, Andile Lili and Loyiso Nkohla, enjoyed significant support.
I was reminded of what Chris Hani once said about there being a difference between "public opinion" and "popular opinion". The two former councillors achieved considerable public notoriety for their role in the poo protests, but, if anything, public notoriety has come with popular admiration. In a country in which there is a growing sense of alienation from the political caste especially at the local level - here were two councillors who, communities felt, listened to and marched with them.
Nor, in my opinion, was the strategy behind the poo protests entirely wrong. It was an attempt to carry anger and protest out of the confines of the informal settlement. Instead of factional, or tender procurement, or xenophobic rivalries being played out within the township, this was an attempt to raise the wider questions. Why are the resources of our city not shared more equitably? Why should we take pride in Cape Town being World Design Capital 2014 when so many of us are forced to live in the most squalid circumstances? A good strategy (appreciated in the court of popular opinion) was damaged (in the court of public opinion) by a problematic tactic, the emptying of porta-potty contents in public spaces. Public opinion was mobilised against popular opinion, a valid message became a dropped call in influential places, and victims were transformed into perpetratrors to be sanctioned.
There is no longer an appalling odour in the concourse of our prize winning Cape Town International Airport, but it's still there in many parts of Khayelitsha. After the Monday morning engagement, we went on a walk-about. Friedrich Engels would not have been surprised - stinking cesspools, sewage bubbling out of man-holes (from formal houses that had water-borne sanitation), and over there a stack of two-hundred or so empty porta-potty one-gallon containers. They were not exactly clean, but at least they had been emptied by the council and returned for collection. Each had a family name on it. "How often are they emptied by the council?" I wondered. "It's supposed to be every three days, sometimes it's more than a week", one resident informed us. "The container gets full in two days, then we have to live seven people in one room with that thing."
Although it's election season, I was at pains not to overly politicise matters - as if there were not similar problems in many ANC controlled municipalities. I was also careful not to suggest there were easy solutions. Getting bulk infrastructure into a jam-packed informal settlement, often poorly located in the first place, is not straightforward. No-one disagreed. Everyone understood resources are not unlimited, although one resident wondered why the City Council could plead financial constraint and still spend millions on a new logo that he said, with a sly chuckle, looked just like his porta-potty toilet seat. No-one expected miracles. They certainly didn't want pre-election political promises.
What they do want is a council and councillors that listen. They want to participate actively in planning priorities for their settlements. Above all, they want to regain a sense of basic dignity - a dignity that those of us who have functioning sanitation easily take for granted.
Cronin is SACP 1st Deputy General Secretary, the article was first published in Cape Times, 12 March 2014.
Israel: Apartheid, expansionist colonialism of a special type
By Alex Mashilo
Today is the third day in 2014 of our annual international solidarity week with the people of Palestine, and in condemnation of Israeli apartheid which must come to an end with immediate effect. The situation facing the people of Palestine under Israeli oppression and exploitation bears many similarities with the situation that faced the Africans in particular and black people in general under colonialism and apartheid.
In 1928 following the 6th Congress of the Communist International the Executive Committee of the Communist International characterised South Africa as thus:
'South Africa is a British Dominion of the colonial type. The development of relations of capitalist production has led to British imperialism carrying out the economic exploitation of the country with the participation of the white bourgeoisie of South Africa (British and Boer). Of course, this does not alter the general colonial character of the economy of South Africa, since British capital continues to occupy the principal economic positions in the country (banks, mining and industry), and since the South African bourgeoisie is equally interested in the merciless exploitation of the' [of the African people].
In 1962 following the declaration of South Africa as a republic on 31 May 1961 but with national oppression, gender domination and class supper-exploitation maintained and reinforced by the apartheid regime the South African Communist Party (SACP) characterised South Africa as a colony of a special type. In this colony of a special type the colonisers and the colonised occupied the same territory but under conditions of segregated settlements and separate development for the colonisers based on the under-development of the colonised.
As other scholars have observed, every system breeds its own intellectuals. 'Colonialism of a Special Type' and apartheid in South Africa too gave rise to their own intellectuals whose function was to distort history and facts through a propaganda of falsehoods. A point inextricably linked with this, in its 1962 programme the 'Road to South African Freedom' the SACP noted as follows.
'The White ruling classes, and especially the leaders of the Nationalist Party have manufactured a version of the past and present of this country which they systematically attempt to impose everywhere, from the schoolroom to international opinion. According to this picture, the early White settlers penetrated peacefully into a virtually unoccupied country. The African population, who are depicted as savage barbarians without culture, achievements or history, are represented as relative newcomers who entered the country at about the same time as the Whites, and conducted aggressive wars and raids against them. The impression is given that African occupation was always more or less confined to the present Reserves - the "Bantu Homelands."
As the Party points out in the programme: 'This version of South Africa's past is entirely false'.
Drawing from the South African lesson, the key question in view of all of these as we proceed, is how we would today characterise Israel, its occupation of Palestinian territories and relationship to the Palestinian people. There is no doubt Israel is a Zionist apartheid state. But, as a matter of fact, Israel simultaneously advances 'Colonialism of a Special Type' on an expansionist basis based on continuous expropriation and occupation of but not exclusively Palestinian territories. This reminds us of the words of one of the outstanding revolutionaries, comrade Joe Slovo, who exposed the link between oppression and capitalist exploitation when he said:
'It's not difficult in South Africa for the ordinary person to see the link between capitalism and racist exploitation, and when one sees the link one immediately thinks in terms of a socialist alternative' (Interview by Gaye Davis, 11 February 1991).
A Zionist apartheid state, expansionist colonialism of special type and capitalist exploitation
While we focus on the human oppression by one people over another in Israel/Palestine, who profits from the occupation and the subjugation of another people? Indeed it must be capital that takes glory in seeing the undignified and miserable lives Palestinians live. It's this capital that along with victim complex allows Israeli politicians and general Israeli public to drown out almost universal condemnation of their human rights abuses.
US military industrial complex
Apartheid Israel is an extension of but not exclusively the US military industrial complex which profits from murder, enslavement and colonisation of indigenous people. In the same way as Britain played the role of a dominant imperialist force in South Africa, the US plays a similar but more intensified and direct interventionist role in Israel's relationship to the Palestinian people. US imperialism is a major beneficiary of Israel's oppression and racist exploitation against the Palestinian people. No wonder the US offers automatic support to Israel against the Palestinian people.
Israeli army and private security companies
Like the US, the Israeli army also outsources some of its security functions. The outsourcing serves to provide the colonial master with a front and cushioning. When inevitably mercenaries act with great cruelty towards people, the governments occupying the other countries are able to distance themselves from the human rights abuses and say an investigation will take place into the private company supplying security. Meanwhile, the private security companies used remain in place while giving kickbacks to politicians for lucrative government tenders.
Private security companies provide the infrastructure for Israeli apartheid wall which is illegal in international law. At 9 metres high, the wall encircles Palestinian villages and cuts through homes and fields destroying normal life for Palestinians. A DA and Agang SA funder Nathan Kirch owns Magal Security which supplies the apartheid wall with surveillance equipment. The SACP as well as other progressive organisations condemned the DA, Agang SA and their funder Nathan Kirch for their support and connection with human rights abuses.
In response to the state-private security oppressive and accumulation axis, there's an ongoing international campaign to boycott G4S - the largest private security company in the world which has extensive connections with the daily occupation and oppression of Palestinians. In February 2013, a Palestinian prisoner Arafat Jarakat died in a G4S administered prison. Israel claimed his ribs were cracked during resuscitation efforts but we are aware from our own history how political prisoners mysteriously die while incarcerated.
The face of global capitalism is brutal. The Mangaung prison in South Africa was taken away from G4S and placed under administration after prisoners complained and rioted against abuses by guards. This send a strong message against privatisation and outsourcing of state functions. In addition, G4S has also been accused of disregarding SA labour laws and of a racist behaviour.
Israeli financial sector
The Israeli financial sector is one of the major beneficiaries, and by that virtue also one of the driving forces of the occupation of the Palestinian land. Israeli banks give loans and mortgages to Israeli homeowners in the Occupied West Bank. These banks lend construction companies money to build in the Occupied West Bank - against international law. They also provide business and branch services to Israeli municipalities and businesses in the West Bank. Palestinians who are forced to use Israeli currency according to the 1993 Oslo Accords and Paris Protocols, are reliant on Israeli banks, even in their own areas. Israeli banks charge high commissions to Palestinians for these services, and impose limitations on the transfer of money. Actions by Israeli banks have also left the tiny strip of Gaza in the state of a financial crisis in the aftermath of disengagement.
Israel's wine industry
We are painfully reminded 101 years later of the aftereffects of the Land Act and subsequent dispossession of people in South Africa. While millions of Palestinians live in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria as refugees who are stateless, Israel colonises their land for growing their wine industry. The Israeli export institution redraws the map of the wine regions of Israeli wine in a way that deliberately blurs the distinctions between areas inside the State of Israel and occupied territories. Israeli manufacturers of wine conceal information concerning the exact location of the vineyards from which they receive the grapes, by among others using vague descriptions. Palestinian land is very fertile and serves as ideal conditions for plating grapes and vineyard. Israelis use the wine route on Palestinian land to attract tourists and further whitewash and normalise their land grabs.
Israeli Pharmaceutical companies
Palestinians are forced to buy medical drugs from Israel, instead of Arab neighbours. This privileges drugs registered in Israel which are mainly imported from the West, including the EU and North America, and from Australia in the South. This rule gives Western drug companies a captive market over Palestinians. Cheap generic drugs that are manufactured largely in India, China, and Russia are also banned by Israel. Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Bayer among other drug companies don't have to cross checkpoints and have easy access to the West Bank. They aren't subject to import and custom tariffs and even sell their drugs to an Arab speaking population without Arabic labels causing major problems for patients.
In conclusion
It's impossible to separate capitalism from Israeli apartheid. But where do we as activists, revolutionaries and internationalists go from here? International activists struck at the very heart of capital in the struggle for a free South Africa. Students withdrew their money from Barclays Bank and Kodak faced an international campaign. South Africa was left broke, in debt and isolated from the world. As consumers we need to twist capital for our needs. While we struggle against capitalism and for a just and peaceful world, we can use our power against capitalism in the struggle for a free Palestine.
Private security company G4S has promised to pull back on its operations in the Occupied West Bank due to public outcry and the fear of losing lucrative contracts in other countries.
We must add to the pressure on G4S which has contracts with major SA banks and some municipalities. In general we must wage a just war against companies profiting from Israeli apartheid. It's through these actions we show our solidarity as citizens of the world as well as our power to overcome capitalism. Particularly we must mobilise sustained mass action against Israeli apartheid and colonialism.
Let's deepen and intensify the struggle against capitalist exploitation and its highest form imperialism! The victory of this struggle is the victory of universal human emancipation and freedom!
Mashilo is YCLSA Deputy National Secretary and SACP Spokesperson, and writes as an activist in the revolutionary movement
References:
http://www.iol.co.za/business/news/apartheid-lawsuit-dismissal-a-blow-1....
http://www.whoprofits.org/reports
