Not working: For all Numsa’s talk about forming a new labour party
Malema is no fascist Führer
There are currently two powerful forces on the South African left: the Economic Freedom Fighters and the workers’ party or broad front proposed by the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa). These forces have great potential to challenge the current reactionary coalition misruling the country.
Yet both have flaws.
The EFF, hastily constructed out of the old ANC Youth League with a few hangers-on and allies in order to contest the elections, badly lacks internal organisational legitimacy and urgently needs to harmonise its membership with its leadership through elective conferences. The danger with this is that the ANC is a past master at disrupting or hijacking such conferences. But the facts must be faced: for the EFF to succeed in the local government elections it needs local leaders with credible authority in the party, and this requires structured local organisation.
Numsa’s proposed political party does not even exist yet, nor is there any clear sign of what form it will take or how it will function. This is largely because Numsa’s leadership is uncertain about the consequences of a full-scale challenge to the ANC, except that it would certainly damage the union. Therefore they teeter on the brink. Yet time is running out; they missed the national elections and if they go on dithering they will miss the local ones too.
These problems, which need to be rectified before the local elections, are insignificant compared with the biggest problem of all. It is clear that Numsa and the EFF have essentially the same agendas for the country. They should therefore enter into some kind of alliance against the plutocratic capitalist hegemony in South African politics, and could thereby multiply their current support bases and become serious contenders for national political power.
Sadly, however, the radical left is fond of infighting. Nothing could be more disastrous than for the two most powerful forces on the left to start attacking each other. This would almost inevitably undermine the public’s faith in their political commitment, and the result would be a painful failure in the 2016 polls.
This failure is the goal of Imraan Buccus’s article A democratic option needed for Malema-tarianism). It aims to stifle actually existing leftist success. Buccus’s proposal is a plan for a civil war within what little exists of the left. He claims the EFF is not, in fact, left wing at all, but is instead a fascist movement.
This claim was evolved by the South African Communist Party (SACP) for use against the ANC Youth League at the time when the league was rightly criticising the SACP for having betrayed its principles and abandoned socialism. The SACP never justified the claim – it was simply a handy smear. It positioned the SACP as socialists (which they are not) and the league as “nationalists”.
Buccus declares, without substantiation, that Julius Malema is “authoritarian” (more so than Irvin Jim?) and cites the EFF’s failure to abide by parliamentary rules as evidence that it is beyond the pale.
What is a fascist organisation? It is an extremist nationalist and racist organisation, violently hostile to socialism and liberalism, and devoted to violence for its own sake. It demonises its enemies through mythologies and conspiracy theories, and its primary concern is that all must obey a semidivine leader and that a clear hierarchy of power is established.
It is obvious that the EFF fulfils almost none of these criteria. It is not nationalist (there is nothing in any EFF statement about the glorious destiny of our wondrous land) and certainly not racist. Its intellectual roots are in socialism. Its rare endorsements of violence have been instrumental (aimed at cutting the Gordian knot of passivity in our society, which has tolerated far too much from the oligarchy).
It is hardly a conspiracy theory to claim that white colonists stole the land and minerals, or that white and foreign capitalists are benefiting unfairly from the current sociopolitical situation. Whatever Malema might wish to be, he is certainly not the unchallengeable Führer of Buccus’s fantasies. – Mathew Blatchford, Fort Hare
Gwede, spare us the dressing-down and act
Gwede Mantashe ( Mantashe on ‘ANC backstabbers and the lying media’) subjects us to tautologies of ignorance and torrents of quasi-Marxist tripe. Examples include the “alternative opposition party” and “when I was in Mexico … pledging solidarity with comrades”.
Do us a favour. Get the government to pledge to improve the country.
Mantashe thinks solidarity means supporting the leadership regardless of its actions. This shows his contempt for the voter, or anyone else who asks: “Why we are only enriching members of the ANC who claim to represent us?” In South African Communist Party-speak, solidarity means acquiescence to the leadership.
Mantashe’s audacity in telling people not to question the direction of the ANC is beyond belief. “Solidarity is a selfless pledge of support” for a leader, he says – meaning 20 years of ANC fat cats revelling in the trough.
Totally absent from this is South Africa. All Mantashe wants to build is the ANC. The country is never on his agenda. This communist doesn’t see how the mining houses have diverted their efforts from improving the lot of their workers. Instead, they chose to enrich the “leaders” Mantashe champions, not the workers. If the mining companies had used the mining charter to share the wealth collected by Mantashe’s colleagues, maybe the Marikana massacre would not have occurred.
When Mantashe realises he is promoting a controlling organisation, the deployments of which have created the chaos that is South Africa today, there may be hope. Until then, his claimed goals of greater knowledge and solidarity will be as elusive as the Second Coming. – Tom Morgan
? Mantashe wrote a thought-provoking article. But it makes one wonder: How can he not notice that the dishonesty of many selfish comrades (and his president) has destroyed the once-proud ANC through what he refers to as “entryism in action”? – David Marks