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The African National Congress (ANC) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) are largely dominated by the Stalinists of the South African Communist Party (SACP).
The ANC was formed in 1912 as a response to the formation of the Union of South Africa (1), a colonialist government dominated by the English. It’s goal was never to lead the struggles of African nations or the struggles of city workers and miners. The ANC always saw its role as representing the emergent African middle classes and small business owners in the cities. That always limited its ability to appeal to workers, miners, farm workers, the unemployed and those living in poverty.
The ANC pretends to be an African nationalist movement but it certainly does not represent the interests of African workers. When the ANC did try to recruit workers it was a ploy to use them as cannon fodder in their fight against Afrikaner (Boer) Apartheid regime. Since replacing the Afrikaner government in 1994 the ANC has secured a continuation of colonialist ownership of the commanding heights of the SA economy while carving out of share of middle level economic control through the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) program. They promoted a ‘trickle down’ theory that the rise of ANC millionaires would somehow create general wealth among African workers.
Trickle down didn’t work in the USA and it doesn’t work in the RSA.
“The unemployment rate in South Africa was last reported at 24.9 percent in the second quarter of 2012. Historically, from 2000 until 2012, South Africa Unemployment Rate averaged 25.5 Percent reaching an all time high of 31.2 Percent in March of 2003 and a record low of 21.9 Percent in December of 2008 .” It’s likely much higher because this rate, like the US ‘official’ rate only counts those looking for a job. (2)
“Eighteen years after the end of apartheid, South Africa is now judged to be one of the most unequal societies in the world and its 19 million children bear the brunt of the disconnect. The UNICEF report found that 1.4 million children live in homes that rely on often dirty streams for drinking water, 1.5 million have no flushing lavatories and 1.7 million live in shacks, with no proper bedding, cooking or washing facilities. Four in 10 live in homes where no one is employed and, in cases of dire poverty, the figure rises to seven in 10.” (3)
The alliance of the ANC, SACP and COSATU, like the alliance of the Democrats and Republicans in the US, has spearheaded the attack on militant unions and on the standard of living of workers. Like ‘trickle down’, that hasn’t worked. There have been large strikes by government workers, miners and others which COSATU couldn’t prevent, although it had limited success in betraying some of them. “Strikes across South Africa have resulted in 2 806 656 working days being lost in the labour market in 2011, says a labour department official. (4)
The ANC is in the process of splitting with significant forces moving left and calling for a socialist solution to the problems facing SA workers and unemployed workers. The situation is further enhanced by the explosions of the ‘Arab Spring’, in reality a rising of Arab and muslim workers across the region which, although its development has yet to produce mass workers parties much less a workers government, is galvanizing workers across the world, from Athens to Madison to South Africa. The unemployed are also finding a voice.
The murderous attacks on the mineworkers mark a turning point in politics in SA. The ANC/COSATU/SACP alliance is becoming increasingly discredited, is unraveling and opposition to them is sure to crystallize in new working class groups who’ll be able to defeat them.
(1) The South Africa Act of 1909 was an Act of the British Parliament which created the Union of South Africa from the British colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Orange River Colony, and Transvaal. wiki
(2) http://www.tradingeconomics.com/south-africa/unemployment-rate
(3) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9280481/More-than-half-of-South-Africas-children-live-in-poverty.html
(4) http://mg.co.za/article/2012-08-08-labour-strikes-working-days-lost
21 Comments
Bill, can you explain this? The construction of the sentence may be causing me to read it incorrectly:
“The ANC is in the process of splitting with significant forces moving left and calling for a socialist solution to the problems facing SA workers and unemployed workers.”
I’ve been reading about the strike, the murders, the charges…with zero understanding of the history, alliances, organizations. Poking around for the past half hour, I found this piece by Wm. Bowles. Is he close?
A few things stick out as relevant to what’s going on in the states. The bits about Mbeki throwing in with Blair and Clinton, the ad agencies (we forget that level of PR brought to bear on issues/candidates, at our peril).
Thanks for the first steps in some education.
‘Labor aristocracy’. Sounds familiar.
Guess I’d meant: is it more that the leftist forces are moving away from the ANC than the opposite?
I meant to say that the ANC and COSATU, which pretend to be leftist but which are rightist at their core, are splintering and splitting and that left wing groups will form the groups and individuals that split.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/26/union-anger-jacob-zuma-anc
http://www.unionbook.org/profiles/blogs/south-africa-useful-overview-of-marikana-massacre-and-tensions
SA has a long tradition of socialist and working class groups to the left of the SACP and the ANC and they will be jumping into the fray.
The ANC/SACP government faces problems that will cripple it and one thing that is very likely is that the SACP Stalinists will begin a campaign of physical violence against workers groups and political tendencies who criticize their rule just as they did in Spain in 1938 and 1939.
COSATU attacks miners, defends polic http://www.iol.co.za/news/special-features/malema-uses-death-misery-dlamini-1.1373780
A good general source on developments in the RSA is http://www.amandlapublishers.co.za/special-features/markikana–lonmin-massacre
The comments above are for Wendy. And thanks for the link to Bowles – it was informative.
And thank you, Bill Purdue. Will bookmark some of those sites.
Looks as though the murder charges against the 270 miners have been dropped for now. (Final charges will be made later after ‘investigations’ are complete.
To what you’re saying here:
The ANC is walking on thin ice here.
They have to do as they’re told by the mainly English owners of the mines and other heavy industry and they want to avoid provoking a general strike. Look for them to vacillate, trying to placate both sides and to fail in that attempt. There are hundreds of other minesites and industries, including many in the service sector, and public employees ready to strike.
We’ll see if anyone has the foresight to call for a general strike.
The basic reason this de facto apartheid still exists, is that Mandela did not have international economic cognizance of the interim constitution they initially agreed to when developing their new constitution. Too many pots in the fire.
By the instance of the IMF, (who withheld additional loans until accepted) all previous property rights of the existing white owner class, was to be held and recognized as inviolable by any formative democratic government’s constitution. Fear of communistic nationalization of property, the gold and diamond mines, were the priority in the transition to black multiparty rule.
Mandela didn’t realize that all existing property rights, financial control within the new government, the currency, existing loans, and recognizing all the previous governmental commitments, would hamstring the long-term financial / natural resource control of the new government. Their FED in a sense became internationalized within the context of the new governments ability to control its future budgets.
SA was granted but limited sovereignty of the country.
SA did pass from an apartheid regime to a wage slavery regime, just as the US did in 1865.
for Hermit. The RSA is a neo-colonial country run by the ANC to protect the interests of mainly English capitalists. As many people have pointed out, DeKlerk, the Afrikaners and the English did not commit political suicide. They were assured that what people thought was a revolution 18 years ago would only go so far. No one can predict the pace of events, which in terms of developing into a pre-revolutionary situation are in their infancy. Nevertheless the contradictions between what the colonialists and the ANC want and what they’re able to deliver places everything on the table.
I agree with you Bill on your (btw rec’d) assessment that these new atrocities can indeed put everything back on the table. To include a consideration of the incomplete nature of the revolution.
That is most likely why the murder charges were dropped,… too much for the required court cases to handle. Inthat a coherent discussion at law of those remaining human rights of a SA citizen, in comparison to that of their status as an international employee with no right to strike, would bring the nature of the wage slavery into too much focus. Just whose citizenry are these folks anyway?
That unwanted judicial attention might break the English’s hold on their “property rights” of de facto slaves and provide a meaningful international redefinition of freedom. I fervently hope as much, but fear the bloodshed to make it so.
As joss would have it, after I posted comments here, I ran into a piece at Counterpunch by Chellis Glendinning that skittered me off on a quest to discover how it may really be going in Peru. I’d seen some stats on clear-cutting forests, GMO plantations, Indigenous repression (argh) and a few stories about Evo’s burgeoning embrace of neoliberalism, for instance, that only two of the big mining outfits have been nationalized.
If I can a post together as a bit of an open thread designed to kick it around, I hope you’ll take part; I’m sure you’d add a lot.
One socialist author wrote that we shouldn’t over-romanticize the rhetoric, hold too tightly to the hopes, but instead offer a critical examination. Sounds right to me. ;o)
Pardon my addled brain; I just woke from a nap. I’d meant, of course, Bolivia.
I was looking for some supporting statistics but couldn’t find anything to support my wager that the wages paid to the miners haven’t even come close to the increase in the price of an ounce of gold this last decade. Just under $1700 today, $275 ten years ago. But just a guess.
Bolivia, lol. ;^)
Well, platinum in this case…but: Are you making sport of an old crone’s addle-patedness, dear? Huh! (You get my message about that other post?)
There’s been plenty of bloodshed over the last three centuries, rivers of blood caused by the Dutch and English invasions and occupations of African territories and before they leave they’ll no doubt spill more blood.
What’s needed there is what’s need here, massive workers parties led by socialists and revolutionists whose goal is the creation of a workers government. Lets hope that the new radicalization of workers in SA opens the door for such parties.
Violence always comes from the right.
Platinum is precisely right, got sidetracked reading about some gold miner’s associated support for the massacre. Your editorials are so nice, Ludwig would pounce unmercifully. lol
Your addle-patedness is oft the more enlightening aspects to me. What may appear as a stagger in train of thought, is a interesting tangent nonetheless, as if you didn’t know.
Got it, and plugging some of our thoughts into the last paragraphs of Didero to see if your hear a similar Tiiiinnnng.
Are you “hermit” or weasel?
Merely mentioning one of our sticklers for detail, a complement from a weasel that has observed your pounces.
Didion.
;o) (she thinks)
Not to veer off from the global need for workers’ parties, but if this becomes known, I’d think it would cause some additional furor:
“Some of the miners killed in the 16 August massacre at Marikana appear to have been shot at close range or crushed by police vehicles. They were not caught in a fusillade of gunfire from police defending themselves, as the official account would have it. GREG MARINOVICH spent two weeks trying to understand what really happened. What he found was profoundly disturbing.”
Reports in the British press sure didn’t mention *that*. We got the ‘fusillade of gunfire’ story.