|
8th
International Conference |
Contribution
of
CPSA(ML), South
Africa
The government, parliamentary political
parties and media such as television and the major commercial newspapers have
all in the past few months been pouring out praise for the so-called ”10 years
of democracy” which they all depict as a special miracle of peace and stability,
a perfect example to the world that a negotiated settlement is the best way to
reach a ”win-win” situation that satisfies everyone.
And what could best illustrate
this than the April 14th elections 2004 that saw the ANC government
returned with a slightly increased majority on the one hand and its defeat of
the opposition Democratic Party (DP) in the western cape province and the
Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) in its heartland Kwazulu-Natal. In all of this, some
major re-alignments in bourgeois neo-colonialist politics occurred. The IFP came
out strongly allied to the DP whilst the Nationalist Party and the ANC have
become closer with NNP leader Martinus Van Shcalkwyk becoming a cabinet minister
in Thabo Mbeki’s government.
Prior to the neo-colonialist
elections many people in the mass organisations and individually especially in
the youth had expressed their indignation at the ANC government and openly said
they would not participate in the coming elections. Why should we vote at all?
Why vote for persons we do not even know? Why vote for disappearing councillors
who once elected would be unapproachable even going to the extent of relocating
to rich suburbs?
So indignant were many people that the dates for
registration of voters had to be postponed twice - and eventually after it had
been said that registrations were finally closed a person was still allowed to
go to a polling station, produce a bar-coded identity document and
vote!
In this situation all neo-colonialist parliamentary
parties went into mostly slum (shark) townships and other major townships where
the poorest people live and made heavy campaigns inviting people to come and
vote. If you voted, they said, you would have the power to change things! The
south African president and his deputy themselves flew to all corners of the
country for this kind of canvassing.
In this election 2004, more than at anytime before,
the fact that it was the election by the people for wealth , wealth that
controls politics, economy and culture of south Africa, was starkly
demonstrated. And because of the bickerings of the neo-colonialist parliamentary
parties amongst themselves a lot of information and background to their
competitors was exposed.
The monopolies and the big banks openly showed their
hand after Thabo Mbeki gave them an assurance publicly that their investments
would be safe - that there is nothing to fear because the people of South Africa
had the fullest confidence in the ANC.
As elections contributions and as their show of faith
in the ANC government, the Standard Bank of South Africa gave out R 5M to be
divided up R1,5 M to ANC, R1,5 M to the DP and the rest to be shared between
Inkatha, the PAC, the United Democratic Movement (UDM) and the newly established
Independent Democrats led by Patrice De Lille (formerly PAC MP). Then there was
a demonstration in Cape Town by
group of supporters by the racist Vryheids Front (VF) against Nedbank
wherein the latter’s contribution of R5M was indignantly returned to the bank on
the grounds that the ANC had been granted R42m for its campaign. Some of the
placards read: ”Sies Nedbank!” These and other episodes served to clearly show
as to for whom and who was being given the edge! There can also be no doubt as
to the contributions of the international super-monopolies, the mega banks and
individuals such as Rockefeller who had contributed R4bn to the ANC before the
1994 elections. And this only for the ANC media work during that
time!
In general the South African economy has been
underperforming in the last ten years or so even as the government and the
economists of the monopoly capitalist institutions are forever wanting to paint
a different rosier picture of today and the future. And their versions of
economic performance abounds with conflicting pictures because their aim is to
serve the ruling classes and confuse the masses and unsuspecting business people
who rely on them for dubious forecasts!
Ten Years or so ago every one of the south African
economic forecasters was certain that all that was needed was for the economy to
grow by 6% annually with inflation kept in single digits and down to about 2%,
then the unemployment levels would decrease to the point of full employment
nationally. The opposite has happened and the future continues to be
bleak.
None other than the neo-colonialist politicians
themselves have constantly reminded one another of 500.000 to a million jobs
lost in the past ten years - despite the fact that this is an understatement of
the decade. With factory-closures in response to cheaper imports, more devious
dismissals of workers together with hundreds of thousands in retrenched workers
with the collaboration of trade union and federation leaderships infused with
the petty-bourgeois mode of thinking that has come with the reactionary ideas of
the imperialist globalisation - these together with the fact that practiclly new
jobs are nowhere created for school-leavers and for people on the job market,
some for more than two decades - the unemployment levels have shot up to more
than 40% nationally and 60% and more than 90% in some regions described as the
poorest in South Africa.
At the same time the forecasted economic growth is
nowhere near 6% as it repeatedly hovers between 1,5% and 2% in the best years
according to the same economic experts but itself a revelation that things
remain bleak in this most important area affecting the livelihoods of millions
of workers and the poor of town and countryside. As for inflation, the strangest
of developments are happening.
Mid-way the ten years of this so-called democracy
when trade union negotiations more and more made inflation-rates a focal point
of all agreements, it was suddenly announced that calculation of the
inflation-rates would now be done according to newe international standards.
After this, the inflation-rate has stuck to single-digits even as prices of
basic food, fuel, transportation-rates, water, electricity and other items
whereby the working people are being bled white have continued to
sky-rocket!
In line with the reorganisation of international
production major efforts on the part of the South African government are afoot
to establish Export Processing Zones (EPZ’s) or so-called Special Economic Zones
(SEZ’s) as an attraction to foreign direct investors whereby they can reap
maximum profits including repatriation of all profits and labour flexibilization
that includes the right of the bosses to hire and fire workers at will and no
trade union protection for workers whatsoever. This reorganisation of
international production also means the movement of whole functions of a
multinational corporation to South Africa as is the case with VWSA and its
production of cars at ist Uitenhagen plant to the Peoples Republic of China and
now to European countries as well.
All these activities of the South African government
and its masters in the form of the supermonopolies and their megabanks do not
have much impact on the lessening of the unemployment levels because less
secure, contract labour is employed in fewer numbers than the more consistent
joblosses as a result of the structural crisis of imperialism and lean
production on the basis of the reorganisation of international production and
recolonization.
The South African neo-colonialist government, its
henchmen and the imperialists sell an unrealistic and idealist picture of
development of the past ten years in South Africa.
Within this past ten years or so, already bitter struggles have
been waged between progressive forces in general and the masses in the trade
unions have been affected while on specific issues, the union-federation
leaderships have been compelled to take up positions on the side of the workers
particularly against the government e.g. the May 10th 2001
nation-wide march against joblosses.
Most bitter have been the struggles in the civil
neighbourhoods, struggles that have given birth to self-organisations in the new
democratic mass movement. These are occurring around the issues of electricity,
water, housing and land. Already, heroes in the masses have emerged, have been
arrested several times and suffered torture at the hands of the secret police
some of whom come from the ranks of the special branch of the racist minority
regime. And most recently an organisation called Landless People’s Movement
(LPM) was openly physically attacked by the South African Police Services (SAPS)
to break-up their anti-elections demonstration on elections day April
14th 2004. Some leading activists were arrested and tortured ith
rubber and electrification. They have since been released and are suing the SAPS
and the policemen and policewoman involved. This case shall be part of more than
240 cases of torture used by the SAPS in the past 10 years and there have been
more than 200 cases of assault and attempted murder which have been reported to
the Independent Complaints Directorate against the South African
Police.
There are on-going peasant struggles as well. These
take on various forms and are spontaneous. There are also struggles for trade
union recognition and better wages by the agricultural labourers. These take the
form of legal battles which often end up in arbitrations or the labour court.
There are also anti-eviction cases which the agricultural workers and peasants
usually lose on the legal basis of the owner’s or new owner’s claims to legal
tenure and so on.
By and large, the student and youth movement is at
present dominated by reformism and a widespread reactionary anti-
authoritarianism which has buffled many people because of the overall conformity
to ill-discipline, substance and drug abuse, debauchery and every negative
tendency one can think of against progressive development and the unity of young
and old. This negative anti-authoritarianism is daily encouraged and even
consolidated by television, adverts, newspapers, the movies etc which
systematically and consistently spread and encourage the youth in
petty-bourgeois aspirations of all types and to think that imperialism as an
political-economic and cultural system is the only alternative for now and the
future - in one word the spread of the petty-bourgeois mode of
thinking.
Even so, the practical realities and hardships such
as the ever-escalation of fees of tertiary institutions. and exclusions from
study of poorer students have brought clashes between the students and tertiary
authorities where quite often the police are called in with the resultant campus
violence and the arrest of student activists such has been the case in April
this year about one week before the neo-colonialist national elections on the
14th, when the Witwatersrand University (about 2000) students made
the university to come to a standstill, demanding lower fees. Probably because
of the wish to uphold the 10 years of Democracy pipe-dream and not to serve as a
public embarrassment at this time, the university authorities quickly promised
to review the fees and other demands regarding the entrance requirements for
black students in particular.
Such are the real developments in the past decade of
the ANC-led neo-colonialism.
In conclusion the CPSA (ML) is today active in a
situation of the following developments:
·
All parties
that come from the old national liberation movement against the racist minority
regimes e.g. the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan African Congress of
Azania (PAC), the Azanian Peoples Organisation (Azapo) have jettisoned the
course of national liberation as anti-imperialist, have embraced neocolonialist
parliamentarism and are now parties of compradorisation who are prepared and
actually serve the interests of monopoly capitalists and their representative
institutions at home and abroad.
·
The
contradictions amongst the parliamentary parties in South Africa are at present
and foreseeable future non-antagonistic as all of them work very hard to make
the neo-colonialist order function to the best of their abilities. The
competition amongst them is who can best implement the structural adjustment
programme (SAP) of the IMF and World Bank – the first of which is the so-called
multi-party democracy around which every entrant shall compete for imperialist
sponsorship in political campaigns.
·
Despite the
humiliations suffered by parties such as the PAC of Azania who hardly won a
single seat in the national parliament, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) which
was dethroned in its heartland of Kwa-Zulu Natal and its leader ousted from the
ANC cabinet – despite this and other developments, there is an alignment of
previously unthought-of alliances such as the ANC and New National Party,
Inkatha and the DP with a full cabinet post for the Azapo leader. All of this is
happening in the background of compradorisation.
·
It has
become quite clear in the context of the recent elections that the separation of
the masses from their traditionl leaders is not to be overestimated but work in
the masses precisely toward this goal needs careful, systematic and consistent
work on the basis of the marxist-leninist mao zedong mass
line.
·
Recent
events have proved the correctness of the CPSA(ML) 3rd national
Congress in April 2001 that the following is happening in the democratic mass
movement and the civic or neighbourhood organisations:
-
Especially
in the townships neighbourhood organisations, the dissatisfaction in the masses
(residents) concerning their treatment by the local civic authorities, clerks
and councillors has forced the residents to form new associations to champion
the struggles against exorbitant water and electricity bills, rates and services
bills which include so-called ”tariffs” which no one can explain. The old civic
and residents associations are becoming unpopular and are increasingly being
seen as only the praise-singers of oppressive government policies which
pick-pocket residents. Under the weight of unpopular local government actions,
they are breaking up and giving way to more to more militant new democratic
civic and resident associations which are forming alliances with the CPSA(ML) on
a national political basis and in local struggles against local
authorities.
·
The national
and provincial leaderships of the congress of South African Trade Unions
(Cosatu) has been very inconsistent and reluctant to lead workers in struggles
against retrenchments, dismissals and even for wages mainly because of their
so-called alliance with the revisionist South African Communist Party. Forced by
workers, they have made national calls for strike, buckled under pressure from
the ANC and confessed that they do not intend to undertake political general
strikes and even went so far as cancelling strikes before they happened because
of claimed negotiations. Today and during the recent elections, they have come
out as the decisive Campaigners and mobilizers for the ANC win in the
neo-colonialist elections. And they together with Business South Africa and the
government signed an agreement called Programme 2015 by which there would be no
destabilisation of ”business” through strikes and other means until the year
2015, after which date there would be unfolded jobs for the millions. ”Give
business a chance” is the word that goes around such
circles.
·
The South
African economy is stagnant viewed from the long-term basis and develops within
the parameters of the structural crisis of imperialism and is also conditioned
by the crisis of overproduction from which the monopoly capitalists are finding
it difficult to emerge. And when talk of growth is being bandied about , this
refers mostly to investments in shares in the stock exchange (Johannesburg) and
the creation of new millionaires who do the running for the supermonopolies and
their banks - the compradorisation of former trade union leaders and former
members of parliament including ex-ministers. In such a situation ”job creation”
is a mythical phrase!