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May 2020 |
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Schreiner Jenny |
A Short Note on the New Format of Umsebenzi
Dear Readers
Unfortunately, because of Covid-19 and its economic and financial impact, Umsebenzi, like most publications, has been affected and we are unable to produce or print Umsebenzi in the standard format and cannot include any photographs. We will revert to the standard format when conditions improve.
We thank you for your understanding and convey good wishes.
The Editorial Committee
A Tribute to a Working Class Hero: We Forever Stand in Solidarity with the Working Class in Your Name, Cde Denis Goldberg!
Jenny Schreiner
We dip our red banner in salute to Cde Denis Goldberg, Party stalwart, MK soldier, ANC leader, who died at his home in Hout Bay late on the night of 29 April 2020 at the age of 87. The SACP extends our condolences to Deidre Abrahams, his son David, and his grandchildren, to his family, comrades and friends.
Comrade Denis devoted 67 years of his life to active involvement in revolutionary organisations and service to the liberation struggle, 63 years of which were spent in the South African Communist Party. His consciousness and his actions were always shaped by a deep solidarity with all working and oppressed people and a commitment to defend the rights of the working class of South Africa and of the world.
As late as February this year, Cde Denis called for Communists to never lose sight of the centrality of solidarity with the working people. How extremely relevant is this call in our struggle to defeat the covid19 pandemic and to ensure that the most vulnerable in our society are safe from the virus, are able to put food on the table and to have shelter and water as required for human life.
Denis Goldberg was born in Cape Town on 11 April 1933 to Annie and Sam Goldberg, immigrant Jews whose parents had fled the anti-Jewish pogroms in Lithuania to London in the latter half of the 19th century. Annie and Sam Goldberg were politically active Communists in London before they moved to South Africa. They were active in the Woodstock Branch of the CPSA, while Sam ran a series of small businesses. Denis Goldberg's family, unlike the average white South African family, was one that welcomed people of all races into their home. Denis was politicised as a child reading newspaper articles about the rise of fascism in Europe and following the events of the war under the guidance of his father.
In March 1950, aged 16, Goldberg went to UCT to study civil engineering and graduated with flying colours! During this time, he played rugby for the UCT first team, while at the same time joining the Modern Youth Society in 1953. The Modern Youth Society was a broad left oriented youth movement that provided a home for young people of all races to interact, to engage in robust debate about the events of the world and the country, and a space for social interaction.
The Modern Youth Society gave many young South Africans the opportunity to participate in the World Youth Conferences of the 1940s and 50s. Many of the young members of the Modern Youth Society joined the CPSA or were recruited into the underground SACP.
In his final year at UCT, Denis met Esme Bodenstein, who also came from a family active in the Communist Party, and they married in January 1954. Their daughter Hilary was born in 1955 and their son David in 1957.
Cde Denis was active in forming the Congress of Democrats, the home of white Congress activists in the 1950s, and served on its executive. In the campaign leading up to the Congress of the People, Cde Denis was tasked by the organising committee in Cape Town to organise the residents of the Loyolo informal settlement in Simonstown. He spent every weekend in the community assisting in the discussion of the demands they wanted to take to the Congress of the People, and in electing their delegate. He was employed as an engineer on the South African Railways. Because of security police monitoring of this community, he lost his job. Much to the frustration of the comrades chosen to travel to Kliptown, the Western cape delegation was stopped by police in Beaufort West and held in jail to prevent them from attending the Congress of the People.
In 1950 the Communist Party of South Africa had disbanded itself ahead of the passing of the Suppression of Communist Act in June. The Party reconstituted itself and held its first underground congress in 1952. It was no longer a Party that people could decide to join. Party members were invited to join the Party in the 1950s. In that invitation process, recruits knew the prospects of jail, torture and even death awaited them. Comrade Denis was recruited into the SACP by Cde Bram Fischer in 1957.
He headed a Party unit, which included Blanche La Guma, and Liz Abrahams.
This unit played an active role in SACP pamphlet distribution in Cape Town, distributing pamphlets door to door late at night, and using the roof of his car and the power of the south-easter wind as a distribution mechanism for areas where the risks of distributing by hand was too great - that is the creativity of a Communist engineer!
During the State of Emergency in 1960 Cde Denis Goldberg and his mother were detained for four months and consequently he was dismissed from his job at the Athlone Power Station. Esme Goldberg worked as a physiotherapist to ensure some stable income for the family during this period. But getting fired did not to deter him from his contribution to our revolution.
Cde Denis was part of the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 and served as a technical officer. Together with Cde Looksmart Ngudle, Denis Goldberg set up a training camp for MK recruits in Mamre, outside Cape Town in December 1962. This was the first MK training centre inside South Africa, despite the fact that it had to be abandoned due to security police interest.
In 1963, Cde Denis travelled to Johannesburg to get permission from the MK High Command to leave the country for training outside of our borders. While there, Cde Denis helped in the broadcast of the speech by Walter Sisulu on 26 June, Freedom Day, that showed the people that the ANC was still active despite the repression. The radio transmitter used in this historic speech was made by Lionel Gay, a physics lecturer at Wits.
A new property was bought near Krugersdorp called Travallyn for use as the MK arsenal. Cde Denis was given responsibility for arms manufacture at Travallyn and opened negotations for production equipment from factory owners, wholesale distributors and machinery merchants, using a string of pseudonyms.
On 11 July 1963, he along with other comrades, was arrested at Liliesleaf, subjected to abusive interrogation combined with attempts to turn him as a witness against his comrades; he was told of the death of his comrade and friend Looksmart Ngudle, the first person to die in police detention on 5 September 1963. At the same time, Cde Esme was held in detention for 38 days and threatened amongst other things with having her children removed from her. After 90 days of detention, Cde Denis and other comrades were charged in the Rivonia Trial. The Mamre training camp was part of the charges against Cde Denis in the Rivonia Trial. He was the youngest of the trialists, aged 31, at the time of sentencing, and the only white comrade sentenced - to three terms of life imprisonment, which due to racial segregation he served not with his comrades on Robben Island, but in Pretoria Central Prison. Cde Denis was a firm proponent of non-racialism, recognising that to live a privileged life while others were oppressed and exploited was living a lie, which he did not want for himself or his children.
While on trial there was a discussion of an escape plan, and it was during this time that he insisted that Esme and his children go into exile in case there were repercussions if the escape plan succeeded. So, Esme, Hilary and Brian left South Africa in December 1963, but Denis was unable to escape. The Rivonia trial was both a massive defeat in the sense that it locked up our leadership and delayed the armed struggle, and on other hand was a massive ideological victory. Cde Denis as a young white comrade also represented a very symbolic position in that trial reflecting the non-racialism of the movement and his personal commitment to it.
Cde Jeremy Cronin who was sentenced in 1976, having joined the SACP in 1968, joined Cde Denis in prison and found him a very humble person, who was recognised as a leader of white political prisoners even by the warders. Warders consulted him on their marital problems, and legal and other issues True to the principle that learning is a lifelong activity, he studied in prison and acquired degrees in Public Administration, History and Geography, and in Library Science. He had almost finished a law degree when he was released from prison. He was joined in prison by Cde Bram Fischer, the same person who had recruited him into the SACP, and when Cde Bram was diagnosed with cancer, it was Cde Denis who helped to care for him.
In his 22 years inside, his wife was allowed to travel to South Africa to visit him only twice, with four years between visits, and then no more. After his release, he was given a pack of letters from Esme, that the prison authorities had withheld from him. His children were allowed to visit more regularly. Cde Denis was involved in the planning of the escape from Pretoria Central, and at one time was going to be part of the team, but in the end only three could escape and Cde Denis withdrew and acted as a distraction to the warders while Cdes Tim Jenkins, Stephen Lee, and Alex Moumbaris escaped.
Having served 22 years, in 1985, Cde Denis was released from prison as a result of an international campaign driven by his daughter Hilary, and supported by a campaign for release of Jewish prisoners across the world. This process involved him committing to not being involved in the armed struggle. Cde Denis was reluctant to go along with this until he got confirmation that both the ANC and his comrades on Robben Island were in support of this release. Cde Denis went into exile to London to join his family and took up active political campaigning against the Apartheid state.
In reflecting on his prison years, Cde Denis stated that he did not regret a single day of his life in the liberation struggle, but acknowledged that his choice of struggle and the consequence of life imprisonment was very difficult and painful for his children, as it was for children of ll political prisoners. He acknowledges that the families of white comrades, precisely because of the apartheid system and the conservative attitude of the majority of white South Africans, did not benefit from the social solidarity that was so prevalent in the black communities towards our black heroes.
In London he resumed his work in the ANC in its London office from 1985 to 1994. Cde Denis and Cde Esme were regular participants in Party meetings held at the house of Cdes Brian and Sonia Bunting in London. He served as a spokesperson for the ANC and also represented the ANC at the Anti-Apartheid Committee of the United Nations. He has been recognised internationally for his work against apartheid, for sustaining international support and the Anti-Apartheid movement, one of largest solidarity movements of latter half of the 20th Century. His commitment to internationalism never wavered, and his stand against Zionism and the Israeli state oppression of the Palestinian people was unshakeable.
Cde Esme Goldberg died in February 2000, after emergency surgery. In 2002, Cde Denis married Eldegard Nkobi in London, and just days afterwards, his daughter Hilary died suddenly. Cde Denis left his son and grandchildren in London and returned with Nkobi to South Africa in 2002 and was appointed Special Adviser to Cde Ronnie Kasrils, then Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, until 2004. Cde Eldegard Nkobi died in 2006 losing the battle against lung cancer. Cde Denis spent the last years of his life with Deidre Abrahams.
Cde Denis remained proud of the achievements of our democratic breakthrough and the progressive constitution we have, but always said A luta continua! He saw the democratic breakthrough as a bridgehead for further advances, not as an end in itself. Along with other surviving Rivonia Trialists, Cde Denis was very critical of state capture and the corruption that undermined the goals of the national liberation struggle, and he used his authority and standing to say this very openly, but never without hope in the organisations and the commitment of millions of South Africans to the goals of the Freedom Charter.
In 1988, Cde Denis received the Albert J Luthuli African Peace Award from a group of 12 US organisations. In 2000 he received an honorary doctorate from the Medical University of South African (Medunsa), now the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University. In 2009 he received the Order of Luthuli for his contribution to the liberation struggle and his service to the South African people.
Building on his international work, Cde Denis continued to travel internationally, speaking about South Africa and the work still required to transform it. In 2009 he presented a paper on the South African transition to democracy and the banning of torture. In 2010, Cde Denis published The Mission: A life for Freedom in South Africa (Johannesburg, STE, OCLC 723667119) and in 2016 he, along with Pallo Jordan, published A life for Freedom: The Mission to End Racial Injustice in South Africa (University Press of Kentucky, ISBN 97808131166858) In 2012 he contributed to a series of Mandela-Tambo Lectures organised by the City of Glasgow College, in association with the SA High Commission.
In 2012, Cde Denis was recognised by the Gandhi Development Trust in Durban, with the Military Veterans Medal Mahatma Gandhi Satyagraha Peace Award and in the same year received a World Scholar award from City of Glasgow College, and in 2018 and honorary doctorate from Heriot-Watt University, Scotland.
In 2019, Cde Denis was awarded the Isithwalandwe, the ANC's highest honour.
Cde Denis, motivated as always by solidarity with the working class, was very active in local grassroots fundraising for community projects, and in talking to young high school students about the past and their responsibilities today. Cde Denis remained an activist to his last breath, with wonderful plans for community development in his home area of Hout Bay. In his honour, his foundation will ensure that the House of Hope, an arts, cultural and educational centre to be based at the Hout Bay Museum will sustain his legacy. Cde Denis, an avid art collector over his life, has left his art collection to the Hout Bay Museum and the House of Hope
In July 2019, Cde Denis was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer after collapsing during a speaking tour in Germany. He underwent extensive chemotherapy which shrank the tumour, but the cancer returned in March 2020. Cde Denis battled ill health with the same indomitable spirit that he fought against apartheid and capitalism. It is for us to pick up his fallen spear and ensure that the right to access to safe and affordable water is a reality for all South Africans.
A giant has fallen! A revolutionary has breathed his last breath! As we salute our fallen comrade and express out condolences to his family and to his comrades, let us ensure that the socialist society that he lived and fought for becomes a reality.
Hamba Kahle Cde Denis Goldberg!
* Cde Schreiner is an SACP Politburo and Central Committee member, former MK combatant, political prisoner, Director General and MP.
Significance of May Day
Jenny Schreiner
May Day has its origins in the struggles of workers in United States, Europe and Australia for an 8 hour day. Workers at the time worked 12, 14 and even 16 hours a day in bad conditions and for very low wages. May Day has always been marked as a day of collective protest against an unjust economic system and a day of solidarity with workers the world over.
May Day is a great symbol to workers everywhere that the working class of the world faces the same problems and needs. Problems of low ages, long hours, poor condtiions, and lack of control over decisions affecting workers' lives. The needs include a new world free from poverty, exploitation, oppression and violence. It is the expression of the world-wide workers struggle for a decent life. It is also a day for remembering comrades who have fallen in the workers' struggles.
1880s Strikes for an 8-hour working day
1 May 1886: 40 000 people go on strike in Chicago USA. They demand an 8-hour working day. 310 000 workers from 11 000 factories across the United State join them.
3 May 1886: Police shoot and kill six striking workers in Chicago
4 May 1886: Striking workers on a peaceful protest march at Hay Market Square Chicago. A bomb was thrown at the police, and police smash union offices. Union leaders are arrested. Four labour leaders are hanged. All over the world workers protested against this. The strike was a big success and many employers in the United States introduced an 8-hour working day
In London, in 1888, there was a massive strike by the matchgirls over fines being deducted from their pay. Against all odds they won. The East End of London rang with the womens' victory. Other quickly learnt the lesson of organised action, leading to strong organisation of the gas workers and the dock workers, leading to a dockworkers strike.
Strike Action in all Capitalist Countries - The First May Day
In 1889, the Second International, a socialist organistion meeting in Paris called for a mass stay away and worker's day in all capitalist countries. There were over 400 delegates representing 22 countires. Eleanor Marx, the youngest daughter of Karl Marx, was the interpretar in the British delegation. The main reoslution of the Congress concerned the 8 hour day, and the Congress fixed 1st May 1890 as the date for a mass demostration simultaneously in all countries in which workers will call upon the public authorities to reduce the working day by law to 8 hours.
Eleanor Marx, Edward Aveling, Will Thorne and British socialists started building for May Day, touring the country speaking at meetings and demonstrations. Wherever Eleanor spoke she stressed the need for interatnional solidarity and, above all, involving women in the new progressive union and socialist movement.
As across the globe workers organised towards May Day, the police counter-organised. Governments across Europe were scared of what might follow as the working class began to realise its class power across Europe. The demostrations were massive, involving millions of workers. May Day 1890 was observed in 14 countires. Millions of workers found strength in the international solidarity of all working people. This resulted in intesnified repression by bosses and governments. The largest protests were in Austria and Hugary - where 4000 attempted to liberate the prison in Prossnitz. In Germany strikes were illegal and socialists were imprisoned, yet 25 000 workers came out on strike in Berlin. In London 300 000 took part.
Engels said of the rally " All in all the most gigantic meeting that has ever been held here … I can assure you I looked a couple of inches taller when I got down from that old lumbering wagon that served as a platform, having heard again for the first time since 40 years, the unmistakeable voice of the English Proletariat. The real socialist mass movement was begun with May 4th."
Eleanor Marx speaking to this demostration said:" I am speaking not only as a trade unionist, but as a socialist. Socialists believe that the eight hour day is the first and most immediate step to be taken and we aim at a time when there will no longer be one class supprting two others, but the unemployed both at the top and the bottom of society will be got rid of. This is not the end, but the beginning of the struggle; it is not enough to come here to demostrate in favour of an eight hour day. We must not be like some Christisns who sin for six days and go to church on the seventh, but we must speak for the cause daily, and make the men and especially the women that we meet come into the ranks to help us. Rise like lions after slumber, in unvanquishble number, shake your chains to earth on you; ye are many - they are few."
May Day in South Africa
In 1895, the first May Day demonstration took place in Johannesburg. It was organised by the Johannesburg District Trades Council and only white workers participated.
In 1906 the first May Day celebrations in Cape Town took place.
In 1914, the government of Botha/Smuts acted to smash the rising tide of working-class indignation. The Assembly Bill was also announced, the first of many laws used by the government to trample the rights of the working people. Until 1917 May Day was marked only by white workers.
In 1915 the International Socialist League (ISL) was formed, and it opposed the First World War as did many progressive unions across the world. The ISL, the fore-runner of the CPSA, passed a resolution which stated "We pledge our energies to the New International for the building up in South Africa of such industrial labour solidarity as can alone destroy capitalism, militarism and war, and in the fullness of strength unfold itself into the socialist commonwealth"
In 1917, the ISL challenge the racist ideas of the existing white trade unions by inviting Horatio Mbhele, a Transvaal ANC activist, to address a May Day rally. The meeting was broken up by soldiers and civilians who, amid war fever, were enraged by the ISL's anti-war and non-racial position. The ISL however continued to move towards full acceptance of non-racial principles, recognising that racial divisions were weapons of exploitation.
In 1921 a strong contingent of African and coloured workers attended an ISL rally in Durban. In the 1920s, the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) under Clements Kadalie stressed the need for Africans to participate in May Day activities. The ICUs stance reflected the aim of May Day: to unite all workers everywhere.
In 1922, the White workers who had won the right to May Day as a paid holiday lost that after the 1922 White Mineworkers Strike
In 1925, the ICU resolved that May Day celebrations should recognise the unions solidarity with workers in India and the Black workers in America and pledged "to do everything in its power to organise all Non-European workers in the Unions and throughout the African continent". It sent May Day greetings to the victorious Russian workers, British miners and other workers who are faced with an attack on their conditions of life"
In the early 1930s, May Day was celebrated by both conservative and progressive worker organisations. The registered unions and bureaucratic labour movement passed long resolutions supporting international solidarity of labour and the struggle against world imperialism, yet their meetings were closed to African workers.
The Communist Party, on the other hand, organised huge non-racial rallies, but when the police disrupted these rallies, they assaulted only the black workers. In the 1931 May Day rally organised by the CPSA in Johannesburg, Cde Izzy Diamond spoke on the massive unemployment. At the end of the speeches a thousand people marched through the centre of Johannesburg and attacked the Carlton Hotel and the Rand Club both symbols of mine bosses' wealth. Several demonstrators were arrested, and Izzy Diamond was jailed for a year.
May Day in 1937 saw more large-scale celebrations with a huge rally held in Cape Town where workers organised into unions across various industries joined with speakers from the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and the National Liberation League.
Speakers stressed the need for workers globally to unite and read messages of solidarity from across the world. A concrete contribution to international solidarity and the struggle against imperialism was made when workers donated money to buy an ambulance for those fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War.
The Congress of Non-European Trade Unions (CNETU) played a major role in May Day celebrations during the early 1940s, uniting workers with slogans like "We want bread" and "Work for wages"
1950 saw the most significant May Day event in South African labour history. In the face of the repression of the apartheid government, the Communist Party, ANC, Natal Indian Congress, Transvaal Indian Congress and CNETU organised scores of meetings around the country before May Day, where people demonstrated against the Suppression of Communism Bill, and called for better wages and working conditions.
They called for a massive strike on May Day to oppose the National Party's actions. The government banned meetings and army units patrolled the streets. Loudspeaker vans toured the townships, ordering workers to go to work. Pretoria townships were occupied by the army. But despite this intimidation the strike was widely observed. In many places the strike was a success. In the Rand, the apartheid police opened fire on workers in Alexandra and Sophiatown and killed 19 workers.
After 1950, May Day activity declined in the face of increased repression. Only the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and the Congress movement kept the tradition of May Day celebration alive. The Guardian, a left newspaper, continued to bring out special May Day issues until it was banned in 1963.
In the extreme repression of the 1960s and 1970s May day was not marked by workers in South Africa.
From 1980, workers again organised to mark May Day. In 1984 FOSATU unions fought for the demand that May Day be a paid holiday.
In some factories such as Sarmcol and PG Glass this right was won.
In 1985 in the time of the UDF, massive May Day rallies were organised by the trade union movement across the country and supported by the UDF organisations. There were various demands made on May Day including:
- May Day to be a paid public holiday.
- The right to full employment at a living wage.
- Housing for all, reasonable rent and decent transport.
- Unemployment, medical and insurance benefits
- Full democratic rights for all.
- Unbanning of organisations and individuals, release of political prisoners
- 40-hour week and a ban on all overtime
- Scrapping of racist legislation.
- The right of domestic workers and farm workers to organise.
- A price freeze on trade commodities
In 1989, the government bowed to pressure from Cosatu and other trade union organisations. They declared the first Friday of May (and not May 1st) to be Labour Day. It was in 1991 that May Day was celebrated for the first time as a full paid holiday. This is now embedded in law through the South African Public Holidays Act (Act No 36 of 1994).
The Alliance has recently taken a resolution that May Day must not just be a public holiday but a trading holiday - which would mean that workers would not work on May Day - this is still to be implemented by government.
May Day is a day of power that the working class has built through united action.
* Cde Schreiner is an SACP Politburo and Central Committee member, and former MK combatant, political prisoner and MP.
Covid-19 and Beyond: The Left Poplular Front and the Struggle against Neo-Liberalism and Capitalism
Bheke Charles Stofile and Dr Lehlohonolo Kennedy Mahlatsi
The swift action by President Cyril Ramaphosa in mitigating the spread of the novel Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) is commended. However, history has proven that the crisis-ridden system of capitalism and neo-liberalism poses serious challenges in providing solutions to any calamity. With all its limitations and failures, the system can be characterised as a disease rather than a cure. It cannot bring solutions to the challenges facing humanity. Amidst the crisis of capitalism, we have seen the rise of a deadly novel COVID-19 virus taking over the world by storm.
In the development of capitalism, imperialism has certainly, over the years, sought through various ways to sustain itself as a dominant global system. In its attempts to rescue itself from problems of capitalism, imperialism has created a world system dominated by multinational monopolies that resulted in concentrating wealth amongst the few. In whatever capitalism does, it is driven by protection of profit maximisation to the exclusion of the working-class.
Engels used the term "social murder" in one of his seminal works, The Condition of the Working Class in England, in 1844, to capture the mass immiseration and premature deaths of the industrial working class from starvation, disease and injury because of unsafe working conditions and insanitary slum housing provided by private landlords. He wrote that:
"when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live - forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence - knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual … social murder."
He argued that social murder was the result of unregulated private greed, in which a capitalist class knowingly forced people to work and live in deadly conditions and ignored calls to improve those conditions despite mounting evidence of their murderous nature. Capitalism creates wide class and imperial disparities, ensuring that the worst environmental perils bear down on the poorest and most vulnerable, while the rich are relatively safe, giving new meaning to Engels's charge of "social murder."
The left scientists, Rob Wallace, Alex Liebman, Louis Fernando Chaves and Rodrick Wallace (2020),- argued in COVID 19 and circuits of Capital, published electronically by Monthly Review, that both the origin and spread of COVID-19 can be seen as related to the circuits of capital. They wrote that the failure to prepare for the outbreak did not just start in December when countries around the world failed to respond once COVID-19 spilled out of Wuhan. They argued that in the United States, for instance, it did not start when Donald Trump dismantled his national security team's pandemic preparation team or left seven hundred Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) positions unfilled. Nor when the United States axed CDC expert jobs in China months before virus outbreak. Nor did it start with the unfortunate decision not to use the already available test kits provided by the World Health Organization.
They cogently observed that the delays in early information and the total miss in testing will undoubtedly be responsible for many, probably thousands, of lost lives. They stressed that the failures were actually programmed decades ago as public health was simultaneously neglected and monetised.
The United States that has killed millions in its quest for global supremacy and has utterly failed the most basic test of legitimacy: the ability to protect its own population. A country captured by a regimen of individualized system of capitalism, just-in-time epidemiology-an utter contradiction-with barely enough hospital beds and equipment for normal operations. Covid-19 has laid bare a fundamental truth: that capitalist healthcare is a contradiction in terms since capital-like the killer virus-cares for nothing but reproducing itself.
Prof. John Bellamy Foster (2020) in Catastrophe Capitalism: Climate Change, COVID 19 and Economic Crisis (Monthly Review) emphasized the dialectical interconnection between the environmental, economic and health crises. He said that it is important to understand that the planetary ecological crisis and the faltering of the global capitalist economy are dialectically interconnected elements of the structural crisis of capital that defines our age. As a result of climate change, COVID-19, and the developing financial crisis of global capitalism, it has suddenly become easier to imagine the end of capitalism than the end of the world, and indeed the former would likely preclude the latter.
The normal functioning of neoliberal capitalism has to be put on hold to deal with the scale of the health crisis and arrest the severe economic shocks the global economy is experiencing. The possibilities of an alternative to neoliberalism, even to capitalism have to be explored. However, the global spread of the Coronavirus is not the underlying cause of the economic crisis. It is a trigger, something from outside the economic system, that brings all the underlying weaknesses of the capitalist system to the surface and makes them worse. The epidemic specifically amplifies the economic and social crisis. It also reveals the fragility of the capitalist system and the dangers it poses for the working classes.
South Africa is no exclusion from this reality, and therefore what is paramount is that the South African Left must rise in defence of the working-class. Considering the corona virus outbreak, and given the socio-economic conditions charactering of our country, our small peasantry or informal businesses in general are forced to close because of the pandemic covid-19 viruses. Most working class and poor communities that make ends meet through participation in the so called second economy are suddenly plunged into worsened poverty.
The business rescue efforts are almost guaranteed for the well-established entities but unlikely to cover the rural and informal economies, run mostly by the working class and poor. The rise of small and medium enterprises is a threat to big capital, and in the interests of concentration and monopolisation, they are unlikely to be assisted. This requires a refocused left-political force, whose agenda is undiluted, with no middle-road or fence-sitting. The programme of the left popular front must clearly be anchored on a drive to change the economic base, because without this, the system will continue post-Covid-19 to subject the rural and urban small businesses and working-class wholly to conditions of squalor and hopelessness.
Capitalism operates across complex interlinked terrains and manifests itself in race oppression, class exploitation and gender inequality. Humanity today faces the challenge of stopping the spread of COVID-19 in a unified and coordinated manner. The capitalist system has failed. Now humanity, in line with freedom as necessity, will have to move on to the struggle to build a new more sustainable, more egalitarian world, relying on the material means at hand together what is new and creative that we can bring to bear in a more collective order. Most of the African countries are facing the poor state of the public health systems across most countries in the South, which tend to be underfunded and lacking in adequate medicines, equipment, and staff. This is particularly significant for understanding the threat presented by Covid-19. Moreover, workers involved in informal and precarious labour often live in slums and overcrowded housing - ideal conditions for the explosive spread of the virus.
It is important that the Left strive for the protection of front-line workers exposed to the virus, and of other vulnerable communities, including the homeless, migrants, and refugees from discrimination and attack in this time of crisis. The second, more radical phase of the National Democratic Revolution enjoins the Left to fight for the universal healthcare and basic services like education, housing, childcare, elderly care, water, electricity. What we are witnessing is just further evidence of how unsustainable the capitalist system is. While some seek to put humanity at risk, others offer material solidarity and cooperation. The current fight is not just against COVID-19, but for a more humane world, one in which solidarity is the basis for relations among people. The current system, one in which elites put the interest of companies ahead of the interests of people and their health during a pandemic, is unsustainable. We need to change the system to save humanity.
Homelessness remains a question of interest, the Left must never at any moment neglect the fact that amongst the working-class, there is a continuous reproduction of hunger and the lack of proper Healthcare facilities. The majority of the working-class cannot afford medical aid and the implementation of the National Health Insurance (NHI) can no longer delayed. If anything, the lockdown and impact of Covid-19 have cast light on the continued relevancy of this reality. Covid-19 revealed the relevance of the South African Communist Party's Triple H (Housing, Health, Hunger) campaign as spearheaded by our late General Secretary, Cde Chris Hani. This campaign must be intensified to minimise the impact of the deadly disease.
* Cde Stofile is the SACP Free State Provincial Secretary and Dr Lehlohonolo Kennedy Mahlatsi is an SACP Free State PEC Member.
They write in their personal capacities
Covid-19 must not roll-back our National Democratic Revolution
Joyce Moloi-Moropa
The economy has posed major challenges since 1994. Our Alliance has worked hard to address this
We started with the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) under President Nelson Mandela It was subsequently abandoned by Cde Thabo Mbeki through the Growth, Employment and and Redistribution (GEAR) policy that projected the completely dangerous wholesale privatisation of state assets and which was met with resistance especially from the the SACP and Cosatu.
The National Development Plan (NDP) in 2011 was projected as a new strategy for fast-tracking development and closing down the gaps between the poor and the rich. The NDP programme equally proved to be very weak.
With the removal of Cde Mbeki as President and Cde Kgalema Matlanthe stepping-in as the caretaker President, not much could be achieved as it was too short a term. Then came Cde Jacob Zuma's term and the resolution of the ANC on Radical Economic Transformation (RET) - but which aimed to serve the interests of a new elite. Cde Zuma's leadership re-enforced factionalism within the ANC, boldly projected looting, corruption and flouting policies of the organisation without fear, because of his following from within the ANC, causing divisions and isolating components of the Alliance that opposed him.
All these economic attempts across various Presidents struggled to jack up the economy and were attempted while the capacity of the state was extremely weak. Quitgood attempts were swayed away by the existence of the strong capitalist and imperialist cartels that managed to plan ahead of government and swallow any attempts that sought to favour the working class and the poor. Organised businesses pro-actively penetrated government and dominated procurement. Unless the state and its organs are sufficiently strengthened, and are deliberately biased towards the workers and the poor, we will remain with this huge gap between the rich and the poor and will be unable to rise to the plight of our people.
Some good work attempts have been made to reach out to communities. Establishments of the Community Development Workers (CDW's), Community Policing forums (CPF's), Community Health Workers (CHW), School Governing Bodies (SGB's) and many more structures are examples.
At present the impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic can be reduced through these structures spreading socio-education and good practices and monitoring and evaluating government programmes directed at the citizens.
Coordination of various activities for all government departments can be strengthened through strong democratic involvement of the people on the ground to participate and feel included in a responsible and accountable way. This is because we now need to be truly entrenched amongst the masses of our people.
For the purpose of this period, it is important to note that government through the department of Higher Education and Training (Dhet), specifically the Education Training and Development Practices (ETDP) Seta, has a huge database of accredited facilitators who work on a consultancy basis as trainers for private training companies. The Seta concerned can then, tap from that database and re-skill the Community Development Facilitators (CDF's) as they are called, to collate information from various street committee leaders, districts and provinces.
This will include the Alliance's established campaigns such as Know Your Neighbourhood, whereby Party cadres should be in the forefront. In the form of a door-to-door ANC campaign, Community Health Workers should be capacitated to do testing for COVID-19 while liaising with street committees. Districts/Regional reports need to be produced identifying challenges noted amongst communities. This will assist government to follow up on those challenges documented in the data generated by community leaders on the ground.
This process can assume a form of a model that was learnt in Cuba by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee of Public Service and Administration during their visit to learn how a participatory single public service operates to include people on the ground.
It may be a much smaller economy, but undoubtably, the Cuban model of how the state functions in conducting its affairs, is the most attractive model we would like to align with. Why would the Cubans be the only ones who solely encompass the values of the human solidarity in full and no other country attempts to follow its practise in the world?
Right now, this whole world views Cuba as the only country that displays selflessness by deploying its doctors around the world to assist with the Covid-19 pandemic, despite the state of their economy and having to survive the cruel United States blockage meant to starve Cuba's economy. They are still willing to share the little they have with the entire world. Unlike most countries and banks, they assist with no intention to capture anyone. We need to utilise this crisis to strenghen the National Democratic Revolution (NDR).
It also means we have to to pose the question as to which other economic model can be executed and developed to sustain the lives of our masses? Why not socialism? Why can we not use this current space to enforce a culture of humanness?
* Cde Moloi-Moropa is the SACP National Treasurer and a former MP.
Women and Covid-19
Precious Banda
"Our revolution is not a public-speaking tournament. Our revolution is not a battle of fine phrases.
Our revolution is not simply for spouting slogans that are no more than signals used by manipulators trying to use them as catchwords, as code words, as a foil for their own display.
Our revolution is, and should continue to be, the collective effort of revolutionaries to transform reality, to improve the concrete situation of the masses of our country."
Thomas Sankara
I will be showing how pandemics have a general effect of exacerbating pre-existing inequalities. This means even with Covid-19, it will surely amplify gender inequality. I will limit it to selected dimensions to expose social reproduction and power relations. The face of Covid-19, just like poverty and landlessness, is a woman .
In 2019, StatsSA released its inequality trends report that confirmed the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment which affects black, poor, working class and rural women in a particular manner. So before Covid-19 arrived in South Africa, the working class, the majority of whom are women, were already pre-disposed to bearing the brunt of poverty, unemployment and inequality. The hierarchy of vulnerability places the poor, especially women at the tail end of this, thus the most exposed. Bourgeoisie Women (white and black) may be at the tail end in relation to their male partners, but are not at the tail end in relation to working class men.
ECONOMIC AND LABOUR DIMENSIONS
Working class women faced with the lockdown and economic slow- down find it even more difficult to get a job. Those who qualify remain condemned to social grants, but for those not on social grants it is worse. Many women survive on scouting for daily piece jobs of washing and cleaning will no longer be able to do such jobs. They cannot afford to panic buy and stock up no matter how threatened they are.
The women who sell food, fruit and veggies at the taxi ranks and streets usually target commuters who use public transport.
Their biggest cash is during social grant payments. While formal businesses are allowed to sell food, including fruit and veggies, no one thought about the informal traders until after five days or more into the lockdown. The sad part is that they lost out from the recipients of the social grants who usually buy from them. The worrying factor is that there was inadequate thought of safety measures that must be implemented in informal businesses without disrupting their trade and over the days of implementation, corrective interventions were put in place precisely through women and their organisations raising the issues with government who responded accordingly.
Most people who sell fruit and vegetables and cook by the street are single mothers who carry the burden of feeding their families from hand to mouth through the very business activities that were disrupted. Though we are facing a serious economic crisis as a result of the impact of Covid-19 on capitalist productivity and sustainability, the capitalist retail sector continued to thrive and benefit from panic buying
The sex workers who are mainly women are another sector that has not been catered for during the lockdown. With the lockdown, their activities have been suspended and it means no income to sustain and feed their families. In defining interventions for different sectors, the government must consider allocating a grant that must benefit sex workers, this will also show our commitment to decriminalising sex work. To allocate a grant to sex workers will affirm that sex work is indeed work.
The majority of workers are unskilled and low skilled and mostly women. This means that with the non essential services labour as declared by National Command Council the primary victims of the lock-down are women, and with the lockdown being extended, they may be the first to lose their jobs with companies restructuring their operations due to the strain imposed by the lockdown.
Again, majority of essential services workers in the supermarkets and in health are women. They are exposed to the virus as frontline staff and may be required to work extra hours, and institutions, due to pressure, are unwilling to give them leave. They are stretched to physical and emotional limits, still with the additional burden of domestic duties at home. There should be an equal gender division of labour in the household to address this.
Other employers whose services are not essential have forced their employees to take leave despite announcements made by our ministers on behalf of the NCC, and no mechanism has been put in place to ensure that workers are not being compromised. We need more vibrant and unflinching trade unions to be firm to respond to all these challenges because the future of work as we know it is at stake. Moreover, it is at times like these when industries may resort to using machines and robots for production to continue.
Covid19 has exposed the unequal society we live in. It has posed a serious threat in informal settlements and townships were the poor and the working class live in crowded and hungry homes. The child headed households whose daily struggle is to at least have bread have had to consider buying soap and bleach in order to prevent infection from this virus. The face of poverty is still a woman, meaning it is women that will have to oversee majority struggling families during this pandemic.
HEALTH DIMENSIONS
In South Africa the source of the virus has been from those that travel or are from other countries where infection have been high. This led to local infections that place an extreme health burden on women especially working class women. There is the case of a Covid-positive 28 year old in Khayelitsha who works in suburbia infecting her mother, child and nanny. She stayed for more than 24hrs in a local District Hospital where the hospital didn't want to treat or help her, claiming they are not trained to treat Covid-19 patients. Her three year old child suffered as she had to look after her child whilst being sick. As a consequence of her infection, all of them had to be tested but after a long wait and struggle and the stigma in the community.
Most of these women do not have medical aid and will have to rely solely on the services of the public institutions that are overburdened and slow to test and respond to the pandemic. Covid19 is a compelling case for the urgent and swift implementation for NHI in the interest of poor women of our Country.
Until 7 April, baby clothes were not regarded as an essential need. Expecting women mostly to buy baby clothes after they have delivered the baby: this is a reality of working class mothers. But when planning for the lockdown conditions, the NCC never thought about this or reimagined this critical reality that becomes a burden on women as they nurse their newly born.
We came across new mothers and those who were due to give birth expressing this frustration. It was only attended to 12 days into the lockdown. These are the lessons the Women's and Social Development departments need to respond to.
SOCIAL DIMENSIONS
The Khayelitsha case exposed the social challenges, where this woman was stigmatised and whilst in hospital, her landlord evicted her through a voice note, citing how she placed the landlord's family at risk. Such stigmatisation led to another young woman from Nyanga who was mistaken for the Khayelitsha victim and harassed and had to go on social media to explain that she is Covid-19 clean.
Stigmatisation by communities is not a new phenomenon as it was seen during the HIV/Aids pandemic where women were insulted and called names as having caught the virus was supposedly due to promiscuity, others were declared to have ancestors and advised to undergo initiation to be traditional healers. Activists, organisations and government should be doing a lot of work to ensure effective public education during this time to avoid similar narratives about covid-19.
The Minister of Police announced the alarming numbers of GBV (gender-based violence) and other abuses of women during this lockdown period. A lot of people were shocked and they forgot that the Covid19 outbreak happened at a time when we were already in a war against GBV. A war that goes on year in and year out, with mainly women dying at the the hands of men. The government and society must address the safety of victims of GBV and child abuse in the context of a lockdown in which victims are forced into closer and more confined contact with their abusers.
Members of the LGBTQIA+ Community are also locked down in homes and places with people who are homophobic and continue to stigmatise them. Without a lockdown, they can go to school, work, and visit places that are conducive and less tense. Our society needs a lot of transformation to be a better place for all of us to live in. We need an integrated women, children and LGBTQIA+ concrete approach to sexual and gender abuse.
Just like the festive season, the lockdown is a time for servitude for women, especially wives and daughters. Women who are usually rescued from house labour because of movement do all sorts of hard domestic labour in the home while men enjoy watching TV, sleeping and acting to be busy. Patriarchy in the home will reinforce itself and when the lockdown is over, women would have fully served like they do during festive season. Cases of mental health will also go high and risk being unattended to because of the lockdown.
Social workers should be finding smart ways of providing support for girls, women and households marred by domestic violence.
The GBV call centre must not only be publicised alone but interactive initiatives like the GBV robot must be taught in all public media and social networks so that women and children are taught to detect elements of abuse through the GBV robot. The GBV call centre must be expanded and also linked with police so that callers are automatically given case numbers that police can follow up.
EDUCATION DIMENSIONS
The Covid-19 outbreak compels all children to find means to learn from home. What does that mean for working class children?
Some of their parents cannot read or write because we still struggle with adult literacy. Many stay with grandparents, particularly grandmothers. A smart cell phone with online facilities might seem like an easy gadget to own but not for rural parents and children where even if one is owned, the digital divide still prevents universal connectivity. Moreover, in cases where they have a smart phone and connectivity, it is not sophisticated enough to receive worksheets from school via WhatsApp and the cost of data bundles are a serious challenge.
Ever since schools closed due to the outbreak of the Covid-19, our messaging has been to encourage online learning and the Department of Education has been sharing links to sites where learners can get study material. It is difficult for a child who stays in an overcrowded home to study and pay attention uninterrupted. Data bundles are a luxury to poor people and they stay in villages and areas where free Wi-Fi does not exist. With all the online facilities of study being made available, it means we are systematically excluding them. By the time schools are open, they will be behind compared to their counterparts who had access to data.
The lockdown is a necessary intervention to flatten the curve of covid-19 and its impact is viciously harder on the working class and lower middle classes. This calls for the government and society to challenge data and network companies to contribute towards the learning of the poor by availing free data bundles to each number on their network so that parents and those who can access school work. Multi choice must also offer all DSTV channels and extra educational resources for free during the lockdown.
The other group we need to think about are learners who benefit from feeding schemes in schools. For some of these learners, the meal at school is the only guaranteed meal that they have. Meals at home are usually uncertain because parents are unemployed or underemployed. The lockdown means that these children will be deprived of their only guarantee meal at school. The reliance on the School nutritional programmes by working class children is a serious reality we cannot discount. The Covid-19 impact on the educational system will add to the stress and depression of women as they will carry this burden on their shoulders. A girl child in a household with an abusive father or uncle is now permanently exposed to probability of being violated because they are not at school but at home indoors.
With all this burden, the girl child is likely to be subjected to house chores instead of school work. Let's all ensure we give the necessary support to the labouring girl child in our neighbourhood by checking up on them and guiding them to do schoolwork through phone calls and WhatsApps.
During the lockdown, all little acts of caring counts, we must be the girl child's keeper so that she excels with her schoolwork. Inevitably, children will not just go hungry but will be left behind on schoolwork. Our schools must prepare for a proper catch up programme for those who could not receive any work from home or those who had no literate elder to assist them with schoolwork.
We must introduce the smart learning from primary and secondary schools and not only for times like these. This intervention must be first rolled out in all Rural areas ascending to cities and semi urban areas. Interventions through online classes during the Covid19 pandemic that ignore the real conditions and lived experiences of the majority of South African children not only denies working-class children the right to equal education but also strengthens capitalist social reproduction.
This requires the Department of Postal and Telecommunication Services to invest and expedite the roll out of the SA Connect programme, National Treasury underfunded. It also entails the achievement of "data must fall", which the Competition Commission has started, but must become a major programme to enable closing the digital divide between urban and rural, and between the wealthy and the working class
If we refuse to change this trajectory, it will hit harder on the girl child and her mother as they will be forced back to the kitchen against their will. The reality is that not all girl children will return to school because of the harsh conditions they will have faced during the lockdown.
The Covid-19 pandemic hits at an unequal society and women will be be extra burdened. Health, labour, social and economic implications suffered are particularly severe based on the location and positioning of women, and in particularly black working class and poor women in society. Never before has the case for gender and social transformation been more urgent than now.
Gender equality is a product of social, political and economic transformation, it is therefore not achievable without fundamental transformation of the mode of production and its ideological and political superstructure.
We must all adhere to the regulations that have been put in place and stay at home to reduce and cut the spread of Covid19. As the economic conditions get harsher on the majority poor women in our fight against Covid19, we cannot afford to have increased infections. The hospitality industry is called upon to donate soap and shampoos to working class communities that cannot afford to buy soap. Each industry must give something to the fight against Covid-19. The people must give themselves up by adhering to all regulations and being patriotic.
Inequality in society makes the lockdown particularly harsh for huge families staying in small houses, but it is better than being outside and contacting people as it puts our very families and poor communities at risk. Let us be safe as we continue to confront patriarchy and capitalism during this pandemic.
In our fight against this dangerous virus, we must not leave behind the marginalised groupings in society. We must fight patriarchy. GBV and Covid19 till we win. Everything for the revolution and nothing against it!
* Cde Banda
Inequality, poverty, working class youth and COVID-19
Mabuse Mpe, National Chairperson of the YCLSA
The Covid-19 pandemic is causing major changes today to the political economy, which will continue to constrict opportunities for the majority of the people of the world to lift their standard of living, while the richest 1% of the world get richer. The pandemic will lead to the expansion of the gap between the poorest 56% and the richest 1%.
This article looks at the current urgencies brought about by the pandemic and poses questions about the role of the working-class youth in mitigating the impacts of the pandemic. The article focuses mainly on income inequality as compared to other forms of inequality (e.g. education, health etc.). It argues that the pandemic, including the lockdown measures will lead to increases in inequality as a result of drastic destabilisation to world economies.
In South Africa the impact will be enormous, given that the economy has long since been teetering on the brink of recession, shedding jobs and sending many into destitution and further poverty.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has found that global income inequality has been on a steady rise:
"We find that the wealthiest 61 million individuals (or one percent of the global population) had the same amount of income as the poorest 3.5 billion (or 56 percent) as of 2007" (Global Inequality: Beyond the Bottom Billion - A Rapid Review of Income Distribution in 141 Countries, UNICEF, 2011, p.20).
The same study notes:
Moving up the distribution pyramid, children and youth do not fare much better: more than two-thirds of the world's youth have access to less than 20 percent of global wealth, with 86 percent of all young people living on about one-third of world income. For the just over 400 million youth who are fortunate enough to rank among families or situations atop the distribution pyramid, however, opportunities abound with more than 60 percent of global income within their reach.
The socio-economic constraints faced by many young people and the inequality perpetuated by these restraints, are embedded in the very relations of unequal ownership and increasing exclusion. As the increasing inequality has come to define humanity, it is clear that social action must be strengthened to confront capitalism.
Humanity in the rush for profits at all costs has caused major alterations to climatic conditions with major risks to food security and environmental health. The United Nations warns that "climate change can generate a vicious cycle of increasing poverty and vulnerability, worsening inequality and the already precarious situation of many disadvantaged groups" (World Social Report 2020, p.100).
The SACP declared that we must make "green issues … a question of the quality of everyone's lives" (African Communist, 1st Quarter, 1991, p.60). It remains important therefore that all efforts towards environmental improvement must be grounded in all our attempts to develop society and build a more equitable economy, and equally toughen regulations against pollution by capital and the state.
We cannot discuss South African working class youth matters outside of a discussion of world context of the pandemic. The results of war and strife globally impact on the standard of living of youth living in poverty as they plunge them deeper into poverty. These youth find themselves in the crossfire of wars they never caused, wars that have produced enormous dislocation of multitudes of young people, many orphaned, and living in foreign countries as refugees with little opportunities for personal advancement. Today as the Covid-19 pandemic rages on across the world, the conditions faced by refugees, especially children and youth, have become even grimmer, with a further decline in the standard of living and an increased threat to life.
The Covid-19 pandemic has removed many youth from the streets of protest where they have found expression for their demands for a better world.
In a press release on the pandemic and its impacts on "the global world of work" (March 18, 2020 (https://www.ILO.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS738742/lang--en/index.htm)), the ILO warned that "the effects will be far-reaching, pushing millions of people into unemployment, underemployment and working poverty".The ILO states that, across the word, full or partial lockdown measures are now affecting almost 2.7 billion workers, representing around 81 per cent of the world's workforce. Thre has been an exposure of the fault lines in health systems of even the most adanced capitalist systems.
The lockdown has meant closure of non-essential industries and "businesses across a range of economic sectors are facing catastrophic losses, which threaten their operations and solvency, especially among smaller enterprises, while millions of workers are vulnerable to income loss and layoffs" the ILO stated (7 April 2020). Particular industries identified by the ILO include "retail trade, accommodation and food services, and manufacturing", which employ about 1.25 billion workers and represent almost 38% of the global workforce. Such is the devastation wrought by the pandemic already.
South Africa gives a healthy impression of a resilient people, unified under very trying times, radiating immense confidence, with a strong belief that a solution shall be found and lives will be saved sooner. This attitude has not been unseated by the challenging state of our economy, or stifled by visibly slow global growth and South Africa's own historical and structural inadequacies. While there is ample support for the lockdown as the most viable means to ensure social distancing and containing the spread across all sectors of society, we are however also fully aware of the challenges deriving from the lockdown.
South Africa's growth forecast is now revised downward, with a major decline in the economy predicted for the quarters ahead and industries such as construction, mining, manufacturing, food and beverages etc. have been just as hard hit. It is important to note the anomaly of reporting, where only reports on the formal sector have circulated to describe the impacts of the pandemic.
While the formal sector is accounted for both in formal statistics and perhaps in aid packages lined up to ameliorate the economic impacts of the pandemic, such targeting has been poor as regards the informal sector.
Yet the informal sector is home to just under million people who are today forced to stay at home under lockdown and yet remain unaccounted for in most emergency relief or stimulus packages. According to Eddie Rakabe (Informal business relief isn't hitting the mark, Fin24, 20 April 2020): "People in this sector do not have the privilege of legal employment contracts, insurance for loss of income or social security, social networks and saving buffers to protect themselves against unforeseen economic risks"
The broader crisis has already struck serious blows at the economic and labour markets, and thus bound to worsen the very conditions of growing inequality. Low income employment in the formal sector, gives the bottom rungs of the working-class similar disadvantage especially in the lack of savings, health insurance and similar facilities, causing major distress under existing conditions of job uncertainty.
The challenges faced on the economy and health have presented the youth with a much complex post-pandemic global environment that will demand non-stop youth activism across the world, especially led by working class youth, because they are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of not only the current pandemic, but also the ongoing economic slump that has engulfed most of the world since 2008.
Cooperation and mobilisation among young people living in poverty across national, regional and global environments must be strengthened and spurred on by clever usage of technology, especially the Internet of Things, which has provided young people with opportunities to build a widespread progressive consciousness, mobilisation, communication and organization around challenges faced by young people living in poverty and despotic rule.
To a degree, the lockdown measures have brought their own contradictions, with some certainly invoking authoritarianism as seen in some parts of the world, including South Africa, with security forces harassing, brutalising and terrorising people seen to be contravening lockdown measures, severely restricting freedoms of movement or association. On the other hand, we have seen that organised young people have not adequately participated in the design of measures of the lockdown or those meant for economic relief.
It will be important that organised youth among the working class participate in both the design and the execution of recovery planning. They must point to the correction of challenges produced by neo-liberal planning, which to a great extent is bound to further restrict public expenditure in the post-pandemic period.
There's growing evidence that today's young adults are strongly dissatisfied with fundamental aspects of political and economic systems globally. In South Africa the mass of our youth population suffers major challenges of rising unemployment, dehumanising poverty and increasing inequality, interpersonal violence, social and economic exclusion, and alienation, all of which continue to rise due to capitalism and neo-liberal policies. According to Statistics South Africa youth aged 15-24 years are the most vulnerable in the South African labour market as their unemployment rate was 55, 2% in the 1st quarter of 2019. Among graduates in this age group, the unemployment rate was 31, 0% during this period compared to 19,5% in the 4th quarter of 2018.
These conditions require fresh ideas to defeat the alienation of the youth by the capitalist system. The youth, led by working class youth and informed by working class ideology must be in forefront, not in only the generation of revolutionary ideas, but in physical organisation around issues affecting young people.
Today we need also to ask South African working-class youth what kind of vehicle is needed for the mobilisation of the youth towards a socialist cause and the resolution of the challenges affecting the youth most adversely, including the emancipation and empowerment of women.
The ultimate capability and success of any country lies in its determined youth - a youth that is purposeful, united and objective in the analysis of its strengths and weakness. Will we be able to build a revolutionary working-class consciousness under conditions in which more than 50% of working age youth linger outside of the environment of work? How do we work around this glaring contradiction?
As more than half of working age youth find themselves in conditions of widespread unemployment and drawn largely into civil mass protests, are we able to harness these platforms to become bedrocks to sharpen the mobilisation, organisation and ideological capacities of youth to gain greater leverage in our broader struggles against the ills of capitalism?
Because this will be based on learning and praxis it is equally important that a revolutionary culture of learning is cultivated even under the discouraging conditions faced by working class youth. To the extent that learning is critical in achieving these aims, it will be important that experienced cadres within the SACP and the Alliance form part of the revolutionary educational environment through a healthy intergenerational mix of cadres committed to building a formidable working-class movement, while understanding the inherent contradictions, both antagonistic and non-antagonistic that will develop in such interactions.
When the youth is revolutionised, organised and united, there is no course of struggle that will fail.
Cde Mpe is the National Chairperson of the 5th National Committee of the YCLSA
End Notes
1. https://www.unicef.org
2. African Communist (AC), 1st Quarter, 1991, p.60 and 61)
3. (March 18, 2020 (https://www.ILO.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS738742/lang--...)
4. Eddie Rakabe in Informal business relief isn't hitting the mark (Fin24) 20 April 2020
5. www.stasa.gov.za
Transform the TVET Sector to be First Choice Institutions!!!
Tinyiko Ntini
1. Introduction
Our education system still suffers from some of the apartheid patterns which entrenched ideas of our colonisers and continue to endorse a banking concept methodology. The triple challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality faced by young people in particular, extends the systematic exclusion of children of the working class and the poor. Our right to education has seriously undermined and education is now a commodity where institutions are profit-driven. The privatisation of education then delivers luxury and well-resourced education to the wealthy, but excludes working class youth from quality education. This extends to the deliberate weakening of public education to promote the need for private commodified education.
Some of these challenges persist because of the structure of our economy which remains largely in private hands. Furthermore, the financial sector equally traps the poor and working class through educational loans they cannot sustain thus making it difficult for the private sector and the financial sector to invest in development of our education system. Instead the current model feeds these sectors, meaning that those who pursue education private education due to capacity constraints in public sector institutions are therefore indebted to the private sector due to loans that requires years to service.
This neo-liberal approach to education teaches our youth in particular students that the market is the panacea to the problems facing human society. On the contrary, it is because of this market that society is vulnerable and faced with the triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality.
Since the transition to vocational education through the introduction of the National Certificate Vocational (NCV) curriculum in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges, we noticed some policy challenges. NCV is the equivalent of a high school curriculum and has the same evaluation system (with the exclusion of practical training), and persisting challenges such as the high school model of evaluation amongst others. This has made this sector a glorified high-school. Despite our democratic government investing a lot of resources in the sector, there are still serious challenges that need a collective effort to confront and challenge the nature of our education system.
The TVET [formerly Technical Colleges then FET] sector has for years been focused on in relation to the transformation of the sector, the low pass and throughput rates; the limited range of programmes offered; and the restrictive nature of centrally administered curricula.
The transition to vocational education, from the FET to TVET college subsystem and its new location in the post-school education and training system, poises the sector to be a significant locus of delivery of vocational and continuing education and training in order to meet the critical skills shortage required by the economy and necessary for industrial development.
While we acknowledge the mobilisation around TVET colleges and the TVET system, manifested in the "TVET must Rise" slogan, the programme of action around TVET transformation must be based on the concrete challenges faced by the sector. This is because the challenges faced by the TVET sector are unique to the nature of the sector- ranging from the operations of TVET colleges, the curriculum and the centralized marking system on examinations.
There has been uncertainty in terms of the curricula especially when much focus was on the NCV rather than the previously trusted Report 191 (Nated). We witnessed labour instability and students' mass action as the transition from the formerly FET system to the current TVET system, mainly due to the difficulty that the transition posed on Nated students.
Education is a site of struggle thus meaning it will be contested by contending classes in the society. Education is part of coercive elements of the superstructure which is used to entrench ideas of the ruling class. The sudden focus on NCV is not unique, is partly fuelled by inconsistencies regarding the imbalance of trades between TVETs students and university students, a challenge which poses a danger of sustaining trades in university studies due to industries requirement of TVET skills as compared to universities.
2. Challenges with the TVET Sector and its Curriculum
Our TVET colleges are already starved of academic staff. This is an important centre of contest in the battle of ideas, and the Progressive Youth Alliance (PYA) should take a lead in a co-ordinated campaign for young professionals to volunteer services as lecturers in TVET colleges - meaning that there will have to be a programme to up-skill the colleges with pedagogy and methodology rather than to only rely on immediate graduates from same TVET colleges.
Learning from Paulo Frèire, only a liberatory education system will assist the country to move forward in its quest to be a developmental state. The transformation must include the articulation of our economic sectors within the education system in creating a people's economy and advancing the struggle for social and economic justice.
"Why not discuss with the students the concrete reality of their lives and that aggressive reality in which violence is permanent and where people are much more familiar with death than with life? Why not establish an "intimate" connection between knowledge considered basic to any school curriculum and knowledge that is the fruit of the lived experience of these students as individuals?
Why not discuss the implications, political and ideological, of the neglect of the poor areas of the city by the constituted authorities? Are there class-related ethical questions that need to be looked at here? A pragmatic reactionary educator would probably say that there is no connection between one thing and the other. That the school is not the Party. That the function of the school is to teach and transfer contents-packages-to the students, which, once learned, will operate automatically". Paulo Freire - Pedagogy of Freedom, Ethics and Democracy.
Numerous debates have emerged about the purpose of the NCV and the extent to which it responds to the markets or corporates. In particular, there appears to be uncertainty about whether the NCV is preparing learners to enter particular occupations and if so, which ones, or whether the NCV is primarily a foundational programme that prepares learners to access an occupational learning programme. NCV should serve as a tool of preparing young people to be active participants in the economy of our country.
This uncertainty has then raised the question pertaining to the intended target in terms of who is actually required to study the NCV programme, and the extent to which curricula is appropriate for its intended purpose and the cost effectiveness of the programmes.
Further, there is a concern about the level of throughput and the high numbers that appear to be exiting the qualification prior to completion as well as the large numbers that are repeating subjects. Simply put, students who passed grade 12 studying an NCV programme in engineering, for example, will repeat the mathematics that they study and passed in grade 10, 11 and 12, over the same period of three years, which is unnecessary.
There is also a related concern about the fundamentals within the NCV curriculum. This relates to both the question of whether certain students should be exempt from fundamentals if they have already achieved their grade 12 and on the other end of the spectrum whether certain programmes should have less stringent requirements for the fundamentals.
Although the NCV qualification was phased-in as the N1-N3 Ministerial- approved programmes were phased out, these qualifications differed materially in terms of purpose, design and structure. The NCV therefore does not have a precedent qualification to which it may be benchmarked, and in the absence of such a benchmark has often been compared against Report 191/ Nated programmes, the National Curriculum Statements (NCS) of the National Senior Certificate (NSC) and Learnerships.
Amongst the challenges within the sector, these are common across the country:
- TVET system poses a confusing mix of overlapping and competing programmes, mostly in regard to the NCV curriculum, e.g. same programme enrols both students with matric and those who are supposed to go for Grade 10.
- Lack of proper administration of bursaries {NSFAS} in colleges because results are never released on time and pending results can take weeks or more than a month before they are released
- Lack of strong institutional and governance of the TVET system.
- Lack of transformation of the management teams, labour stability, staff commitment and productivity.
- Lack of student accommodation which affects academic performance of our students.
- Not sufficient campuses to respond to the amount of labour required by the labour market
- Inadequate skills and qualifications of lecturers.
- Umalusi as a quality assurer while at the same time it deals with basic education, which often results in not releasing results on time, pending results, leaking exam papers which affects the students across the country.
- Lack of articulation of the TVET, HEI, SETAs and other institutions.
- No recognition of TVET programmes by the HEI despite TVET Colleges seeded to Higher Education since April 01, 2014.
3. What possible solutions can make the TVET sector more attractiven?
It is urgent for the department to consider a curriculum review in the TVET Sector and to invest in massive infrastructural upgrade. Implementation of a monitoring, evaluation and research system for TVET, community colleges, universities and training institutions. There is also a need to consider t the indicators for monitoring and evaluating NCV going forward should be considered. This should include the development of key indicators for determining the success of the programme as well as indicators pertaining to the inputs of the programme.
The review of the NCV curriculum should consider whether the current assessment policies and practices are optimal and what changes may be required. The current assessment policy disadvantages students and policy changes should be effected which will internalize assessment in TVET colleges the same way it is done in universities and private colleges. In particular there is a need to consider the requirements of the external assessments of written and practical assessment components that are externally set and marked by the Department of Higher Education,; and externally moderated by an appropriate ETQA instead of Umalusi". This is to deal away with pending results and the pressure on Umalusi to assess both grade 12 and TVET colleges. The Nated courses are administered, assessed and their certificates released by the Quality Council for Trades and Occupations (QCTO) which can be given same mandate when it comes to the NVC programmes.
The introduction of a policy to map the relationship between SETAs and HEIs, and TVET colleges will have a dual mission meaning that they should provide large numbers of school leavers and out of school youth with access to occupational programmes that can enhance employability or lead to job creation.
The ministry through its TVET sector unit should convene a TVET Summit which will bring together Labour, Students' Structures, College Principals and Councils under one roof to confront all these challenges.
4. Lessons for TVET colleges from the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown
The COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of institutions at both Basic Education level and Higher Education Institution levels as a result of the lockdown announced by National Government has lessons for the higher education sector, especially TVET colleges.
Firstly, those who were supposed to write their Nated trimester exams were not or will not be able to do so. These are mostly engineering related courses. The reality is that if the lockdown, even in a phased manner, was to be extended for more than four months, these students would have missed two trimesters. These courses do not have any module to assist with computer literacy; not even basic computing skills. Therefore, there is no way that students were going to be able to partake in any online classes or even online examinations.
Secondly, many TVET colleges do not have an online student portal. This means that for online education to take place during the lockdown, massive training for student portal would have to take place. This would have to create a programme for the entire TVET system due to inequalities that we have both in the TVET system and in society generally, such as travelling costs, network coverage and some students not having any computer literacy skills.
Thirdly, the majority of TVET campuses are in rural and remote areas and students suffer from network coverage, find it difficult to access internet cafés and high data costs impede their access e to technology. If the option of e-learning is to be considered, it is likely to exclude majority of TVET students and even lecturers.
Lastly, students in the TVET sector do not get the same allowances from the National Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) as university students. However, it is TVET students, especially those who are studying Nated trimester courses who are on the receiving end on the lockdown. They cannot afford residences that offer free Wi-Fi, neither do they have sufficient resources such as university students.
5. CONCLUSION
The purpose of this discussion is to spark a debate around the possible review of the NCV curriculum because of the challenges that were encountered and to redesign the sector. The argument for the review of the NCV curriculum is based on the premise that many college lecturing staff were not thoroughly trained towards its delivery as an occupational learning programmes and lacked the necessary skills to teach it. This is because NCV is regarded as equivalent to grade 10, 11 and 12 in high schools and therefore, ordinary high school teachers can also be in this space. In some colleges, they normally take students who have just graduated from the programme to be lectures. Its basic education style requires high school teachers which degenerates the programme and the purpose. Dealing with the methodology and registering them with South African Council for Educators (SACE) will enable lectures to properly deliver this programme.
The struggle to make the TVET sector institution of first choice is an important one, and one that the young people whose talent lies outside of the academic arena are entitled to. It cannot be business as usual when 50 Colleges with more than 256 campuses will fail to enrol more students than the number of students that the 26 universities accommodate. This is mainly because these colleges offer only 10 qualifications compared to universities that offer more than 3000 qualifications.
* Cde Tinyiko Ntini is the National Secretary for the YCLSA.
Covid-19 and education inequalities
Mcebisi Mnconywa
What started as a pulmonary fever in Wuhan last year ended up being a world covid19 pandemic. As it spread across countries, it had no boundaries of race, colour, class or creed. It weakened economies leaving both employers and employees in an anxious mood about the future. In South Africa there was already a technical downslope of the economy and poverty and unemployment rates were already above imagination. There is no vaccine for the pandemic. The only way to prevent it is by washing hands, keeping the social distance, using face masks and avoiding crowded places.
It is in the crowded places and direct human contact where the virus spreads rapidly. That's why governments are forced to apply the most difficult preventative measures which force people to stay at home.
The lockdown necessarily disrupted the school calendar.Most Model C schools were able to release their report cards of term 1 to the parents either directly or in most cases by emails. The majority of the poor income schools were still in the preparatory stage of releasing the term 1 report. This means most of these schools didn't release the term 1 reports to parents. The challenge is that there is a shortage of IT skills or personnel. Some schools have one or no computer lab and not enough qualified personnel. The correct action of the abrupt closure of schools impacted immensely on those communities. This happens under one single education system though it seems to be two different education systems.
What compounded the impact of inequality further was the pronouncement on the extension of the lockdown to enter season 2 which ended on 30th of April. This caused a lot of anxiety to the education authorities and the society. Professor Jansen said "let's face the facts, 2020 school year is lost"(The Times 09 April). The Department of Education panicked. They spontaneously introduced digital learning programmes on DSTV, assuming that all learners have access on pay-TV.T hey used TV personnel as presenters of teaching programmes.
The central question here is in which country do the education authorities live, or have they lost touch with the ground? . This resulted in a strongly worded response from Cde Mugwena Maluleke Sadtu General Secretary "DBE has never consulted with SADTU about plans to hire celebrities to teach. We totally reject any plan that seeks to undermine the teaching profession".
The use of e-learning left the poorest of the poor at the receiving end. Some families are orphaned and child headed; some parents are grandparents as the actual parents of the learners are nowhere to be found; others are led by single women;, others are unemployed and rely on social grants. One needs to have a computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone to pursue the e-learning lessons.
One needs to have data bundles or connection to a Wi-Fi. Where does someone who can't buy bread get money to buy data bundles? For a child to operate this equipment there is a need of discipline. Apart from the parents, teachers don't have this digital equipment at their homes. The planned lessons that are sent to the teachers must be finalised and adapted before they are sent to parents and unfortunately for the teacher, the internet cafés are closed under lockdown regulations.
What needs to be done? We need a revolution. Chairman MaoTse Tung explained "a revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing an embroidery. It cannot be so defined, so leisurely, gentle, so kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows the other." The current crisis of the pandemic is uncovering the institutionalised class divisions of more than 300 years. Class divisions that are so embedded that quick solutions will never assist our education system alone but the whole country needs to grab this opportunity and use it for total economic transformation.
The Bolshevik revolution came after a crisis of the World War 1 which left the realities of hunger, poverty and houses. The Russians have no option but to defeat the Tsar. We have no option but to defeat capitalism and replace it with socialism which is itself a transition to a classless society. In order to do so you need an organisation to lead the masses.
Since 1953 the best education has always been reserved for the rich people, in 1980 the Education Act was repealed and in 1994 the old act was scrapped. However the remnants of Bantu education are still deeply rooted in the two classes that coexist. The past imbalances are still rife in education and the corona virus has exposed that as if nobody knew about them before.
Clearly, we need an ideal school as once proposed in Nedlac. We definitely need to correct these imbalances if we have to embark on building a developmental state. A school in the 21st century in a digital world needs an infrastructure that is compatible with digital activities. The MEC of Gauteng, Cde Lesufi Panyaza introduced tablets at school,but how were they going to help a child in rural areas? The DBE once had a programme to give each teacher a laptop which was going to be subsidised., Where is that program because it is needed more than ever before? Teachers need to be empowered to be fit for the purpose and the primary target should be the teachers in rural areas and townships. We are forced to be biased towards them because of the deep-rooted structural problems that exist.
I want to partly agree with those who say 2020 is a lost year in terms of the school calendar, however we need to look back in our history. In 1980 there was a nationwide uprising, if there was any schooling it took place far less than what was expected of a full year, so too in 1985. In both these instances there was no digital technology in schools. Did it mean that no exams were written? Did it mean that all learners had to repeat classes? The answer is no.
Learners wrote exams on the little that they had studied before the riots. The point I am making is that all learners this year went to school the whole of the term 1. There are chances of going back to school for the last two terms of the year. With a "catch up", learners can cover enough to be examined for the grade they are in.
Learners that need a special attention are the grade 12s more especially those from the working-class and poor communities. Grade 12 learners need to occupy the whole school in respect of the social distance regulations. All the teachers of grade 10 upwards will need to join the grade 12 teachers as back up to cope with the split classes.
This arrangement will work much better than allowing learners to be taught by TV celebrities. Of course, the 2020 school calendar will have to be extended to January 2021 when exams and marking will be finalised. Schools and universities will have to open registration until the end of February.
Cde Mnconywa is a member of the Provincial Working Committee of the SACP in the Western Cape, writing his own views
Defend collective bargaining…Defend the hard won workers' rights...fight a fierce fight against capitalism
Benson Ngqentsu
Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. This clarion call by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto is still relevant today as it was in 1848. This calls for workers to remain vigilant so long as they operate under the conditions of capitalism.
In doing so, workers must not be seen to be managing the survival of capitalism but must at all times advance their class interests. This is particularly important in the current juncture where governments across the world will be put under duress by the Bretton Wood institutions like World Bank and the IMF to adopt neo-liberal policies if they are to be supported during the economic recovery period.
In South Africa, all the indications already exist, as a result the Minister of Finance has already started analyzing complex, structural challenges of our economy through the narrow spectacles of neo-liberalism. This posture is problematic in many ways.
Firstly, it fails to grasp the root causes of the structural challenges and their historic relationships with colonial interests, in fact it suggests that the colonial relationship was withered away by the 1994 democratic breakthrough.
Another challenge of the Minister's posture is that he seems to think that the South African economy can be revived by the already made imported solutions regardless of our own unique history, living experience and environment.
These solutions disregard African values of collectivism and indigenous knowledge of development, which remain untapped despite the self-determination of African societies, including South Africa. Above all, it seek to undermine our national sovereign as a country.
It is these imported solutions that always seek to renew the liberalism of South African society through the back window. The experiences of the 1996 class project teach us that it is the working class that will bear the brunt of the liberal offensive, particularly the workers and the poor. Therefore, workers in the public service in particular and across all sectors of the South African economy must remain vigilant and coordinate their responses to this neo-liberal offensive irrespective of their trade union or political affiliation.
Already, there are concerns that government may not honor the 2018 multi-year wage agreement agreed upon by both labour unions and government at the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council whose last leg was 1 April 2020. If these reports are true, this is a clear indication of the direct attack on collective bargaining, a hard-won worker's rights. This is a first salvo that must be confronted by all revolutionaries!
As usual, this liberal offensive directed at the workers is engineered from the National Treasury. Maybe the labour movement was correct to call for the axing of the Minister of Finance but that was also not going to be enough though.
Recently, the Daily Maverick carried a story that Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni, is eager to review the agreement to cut the public sector wage bill by R160-billion over the next three years as it is the single largest component of government expenditure - at R639-billion for the 2020/2021 financial year.
This is obviously based on the fallacy that the public service is bloated. How can a public sector be bloated while there is a chronic need for more police, health workers, teachers etc. to fully deliver on and realise the rights bestowed upon all the citizens by our hard-won constitution? We are told that if the wage bill is not cut, public finances will deteriorate further as the National Treasury expects the fiscal deficit to increase by a percentage point from the current 6.8%.
However, no one tells us what will happen to service delivery which is already hit hard by the vacancies in the public service. This begs the question as to in whose interesst will these salary cuts will be implemented. In the past, this question has irritated a lot of my comrades who do not realised that the Nasrec honeymoon is over. In fact, my comrades fail to grasp that there can never be a new dawn for the working class in a class divided society.
For all to know, the concept of cutting the wage bill is found in the vocabulary of the Bretton Wood institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. Therefore, working class organisations must reject any attempt by this government to reinvigorate an outdated austerity and Washington Consensus agenda. This is a call that must be made by all the progressive organisations to reverse the IMF's imposed measures that are an anti-thesis of the South African society that we want and need.
Therefore, the mooted war by the public service trade unions over the wage increases should not be reduced to a mere battle between public sector workers and their unions and government, but as class battle. A class battle requires a unity of a range of forces behind one common objective, crush capitalism and replace it with socialism.
Further, based on the current credit ratings, the Minister of Finance will go running to the IMF and World Bank, a move that will empower these Institution to impose their misplaced solutions. Against this background, it is clear that our class enemies are ready for the aftermath of the current crisis.
* Cde Ngqentsu is the SACP's Western Cape Provincial Secretary
From each according to their ability, to each according to their need?
A Letter to the SACP
Michael A. Dover
I write from the United States as a rank-and-file long-term supporter of the South African liberation, beginning in 1974 with the circulation of the US-based NAIMSAL petition. First, may I express condolences on the death of your comrade Denis Goldberg. Second, I am hoping you and your colleagues are well; my thoughts are with you and the people of South Africa during this difficult time.
Although my primary solidarity work was with the people of Chile, our office was down the hall from the American Committee on Africa. I had already met comrades from the ANC and SACP at a reception at the World Congress of Peace Forces in Moscow in 1973. I made it a point to be a mail subscriber to The African Communist for many years, and more recently have been a regular reader of the online Red Alert. I met Joe Slovo at a Nation conference in the early 1990s and was very much influenced by his work Why Socialism Failed. I am not a Communist; I am a member of the North Star Caucus of Democratic Socialists of America, but have decades of experience on the organised left and in organising social workers for work for social justice.
I think it significant that your current piece by Jeremy Cronin, "There is no going back – but where are we going forward, published in Umsebenzi Online, Vol. 19, No. 13, May 2020, cites the work in The New Republic of Kate Aronoff, on Covid-19 in Ecuador. I had earlier read an article in the New York Times on the impact of the pandemic on Ecuador. Clearly, this is a time to build on cognitive and compassionate contributions from any source as we forge the path forward.
I am particularly interested in bringing this to the attention of Jeremy Cronin and of General Secretary Blade Nzimande, under whose name was released the important Draft Working Paper: "We can’t go back to the crisis before the crisis: Response to coronavirus, economic and social reproduction crises, published as a special issue of Bua Komanisi, Vol. 13, No. 1, April 2020. If a final such report has been released, I would very much like to read it.
In my view, South Africa has the democratic institutions, constitution, and history of revolutionary commitment which can help shape the future of humanity. Since what the General Secretary Nzimande refers to as the 1994 "radical democratic breakthrough, there has perhaps never been a more decisive moment for how to conceptualise the path forward to what he called "a new society based on the values of solidarity, of social need and not private profit. However, it seems essential for us at this key time to embrace a fuller theoretical understanding of that very question of need.
This is the question on which I have been working since the early 1990s, drawing on the important book of Len Doyal and Ian Gough, A Theory of Human Need (1991), recently re-stated in Gough’s important Heat, Greed and Human Need: Climate Change, Capitalism and Sustainable Wellbeing (2017). Gough’s chapter two and his previous article in the Cambridge Journal of Economics re-state the theory in a way applicable to the issue of climate change addressed by Jeremy Cronin’s above referenced article.
In order to forge a viable revolutionary democratic progressive pragmatic alternative to neoliberalism, within the reality of mixed economies which neoliberals wish to bend to the will of the wealthy, our ideological and programmatic alternatives - and the theoretical foundations of them - needs likewise to re-centre on the fundamental question of human need, too long neglected by theory on the left.
For reasons perhaps of serendipity and of the privileges afforded me during my political and academic life, I’ve recently published A Needs-Based Partial Theory of Human Injustice (Humanity & Society 2019, Vol. 43(4) 442-483) which I wish to bring to your attention, not so much for my own contributions to it - which draw upon a single historical example inspired by Joe Slovo’s work - but for its original graphical juxtaposition of the two prevailing theories of human need, which together can fundamentally guide how we conceptualise human need.
Our moral and political justification for any programmes going forward must be based upon a fundamental focus on the human social suffering - both physical and psychological - that results from unmet human needs generally and wrongfully unmet needs in particular. We must reframe the crisis we face, not in terms of capitalism vs. socialism - as if we have always had the solution to humanity’s dilemma - but as an historical opportunity to return to the fundamental wisdom of Marx’s statement, as discussed recently by philosopher Gillian Brock:
Marx famously wrote that in the higher state of communist society, resource distribution would be governed by the principle ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ (Marx 1977, 569). But he prefaced this by pointing out that this could only happen once ‘the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly’ - that is to say, scarcity had been overcome.
As this analysis indicates, it has often been assumed that implementation of the implications of Marx’s slogan must be deferred and relegated to some later almost utopian period of human development, not aspired to at the present time. I disagree.
It seems to me that the juxtaposition of the crises of climate change and Covid-19 demand that this be the present platform of progressive advocacy. This does not mean an apocalyptic appeal to anarchist advocacy for the destruction of the state or pseudo-communist efforts towards the withering away of the state. Nor does it mean an effort to wish away the reality of our mixed economy and to abolish private property entirely.
Rather, the key question becomes how to achieve what I refer to as a "revolutionary democratic emphasis on the best mix of public, non-profit and market sectors to fund and deliver services, benefits and social production which can address human needs consistently with human rights, and with a reduced emphasis on property rights. I concluded this in an analysis whose publication was delayed by my need to complete my partial theory first. I am now prioritising this analysis and see and seeking an appropriate forum.
I conclude that pragmatism demands that "social power should be contingent upon the historically specific application of the principle of ‘minimum necessary social intervention’; various emphases on property rights, human rights and human needs, and that the essence of the current struggles for power are between three poles of social theory:
- Neoliberals who wish to bend the state and transform the economy in the interests of defending property rights via minimum social intervention, except when massive bailouts are necessary to protect the needs of capital.
- Pragmatic "third way liberal pragmatists who seek an ultimately unstable balance between the needs of capital and the needs of people, or who regress to a utopian social democratic contention that we can achieve grade to grave security without a fundamental change in property rights.
- Progressive pragmatists, who stress "revolutionary democratic emphasis on the best mix of public, non-profit and market sectors to fund and deliver services, benefits and social production which can address human needs consistently with human rights; reduced emphasis on property rights.
The strange thing about my conclusion in this regard is that I realised I was on the same political row as the neoliberals, in that they - too - are pragmatists. It is this which differentiates them from elites in the other social formations outlined in my analysis, from for instance social conservatives, libertarians, and authoritarians. It seems to me that the left must join into rather than evade the question of pragmatism. If we remain in box 3 of my analysis, "orthodox/revolutionary Marxism in a dogmatic fashion, we risk not being able to win the day. If, however, we engage with pragmatism, our platform can be much more appealing than that of the neoliberals.
At this point in history, even if one in principle adheres to the dialectical dictum "minimum necessary social intervention - in which I strongly believe if we wish to avoid totalitarianism - we need a truly massive social intervention. Such an intervention must mobilise all of civil society and must transform the economy. But our goal should not be the goal of achieving a utopian notion - actually an arguably dystopian vision - of some allegedly more enlightened state socialist command administrative system. The majority of society does not wish this upon ourselves regardless of class status.
Rather, we need a solid progressive pragmatic ideational foundation for an alternative way of governing our mixed economy in a democratic manner. The concepts stemming from the socialist tradition are a necessary but not sufficient foundation for progressive social change. A viable revolutionary democratic alternative to neoliberalism is defined as progressive pragmatism.
It is one whose moral and political principles can win majoritarian support if properly pursued. It is fundamentally different in conception from the ideational foundations of other past state formations. The concept of human need, however, is easy to twist to tailor political predilections. Accordingly, it is important to rely upon advances in social science and philosophy to conceptualise human need, not rely upon outmoded ideological inspiration.
I would contend we have long had a "mixed economy of public, non-profit/religious and market organisations and institutions. The question is: what is the best mix in any one policy domain? To help resolve that, I propose an original dialectical concept - minimum necessary social intervention - as the conceptual key to the political and moral viability of any form of pragmatism.
At certain historical conjunctures, the minimum necessary intervention may need to be transformational. But we do not seek change for changes sake. In fact we aspire to a new normality in which we evade and in principle avoid the over extension of the state into our lives. That is why the principle I propose - minimum necessary social intervention - can be a point of principle on which we can and should agree.
In the normal course of events, we should aspire to merely thinking "within the box of the various combinations of sectors which can be relied upon to fund and/or to deliver social interventions (public, non-profit, market, households). We would use class, organisational and institutional analysis within each policy domain to ascertain what is the best mix of sectors to fund and to deliver the necessary services and benefits required to address human needs consistently with human rights.
But these are not normal times. At this time, we must strongly assert our need to use human rationality and caring and actively struggle to defeat human injustice and strive towards human liberation. We must insist on this, and insist upon it in on no uncertain terms.
In doing so, we are not seeking to impose upon society our own political views. We are calling for an exodus from cruelty. We are seeking redemption not revolution. And we are saying, look here: people are suffering and this must stop, and it can be stopped by refocusing now, not in centuries to come, on addressing human needs in the here and now.
We can meet human need, and we can meet human need without frying the planet, as the almost immediate impact of reduced pollution and fossil fuel use during the last few weeks has shown us, in what has been so far a cruel historical experiment.
We can move forward as you say no to a return to the past but to a present in which we pause and ask ourselves what we truly need, and make that the starting point for all of our decisions, both personally, professionally and politically. I very much appreciate this opportunity to share with you some of my conclusions in this regard.
Cde Dover is based at the School of Social Work, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, USA and author of "Covid-19 Resources for Helping Professionals A Needs-Based Partial Theory of Human Injustice
A poem dedicated to
To Dan Sematla
I will come through the cold night
I will come through the locked gates
I will come through empty streets
I will come through the sheer silence
When the capitalist world runs amok
And snatch away that cream
And steal that anchor
And unbind the glue that binds you
And silence the vocal
And kick down hope in you
Polarise you further
Disorganise you further
Unpolish that rough diamond
Abort that self made offspring
Degerminate that seed
Deinternationalise the internationalised
Desolidify the solidified
Blacken that deep thick red
But death be bully no more
The spear shall rise again
The red shall blossom again
And brazen into sharp sickle
And mellow into bold hammer
By Rampedi Mothapo
Cde Sematla was SACP Limpopo Provincial Organiser, Castro Pilusa District Executive Committee member, and ANC Festus Mothudi Branch Secretary. He sadly passed away on 29 March 2020. Hamba Kahle, Cde Sematla.
Cde Mothapo is a member of the Sephakabatho Maja Branch of the SACP in the Castro Pilusa District, Limpopo Province. He writes in his personal capacity.
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