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Speaking of the African Communist Party at the time of Mandela's
Kingship...
Let us remember Chris Hanny!... The King was jailed but the Communist
Chris Hanny killed.
On Dec 7, 2013, at 9:36 AM, shaun may wrote:
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If Jeff Rubard takes a visit to the townships surrounding Jo'burg,
CT and Durban he will find that their "frustrations" are of a
qualitatively different order to his or mine. He will also find that
the "seeming failure" he refers to is not as "seeming" as it "seems"
to be. "Revelation" will be an understatement to say the least. It
would definitely serve to give all hand-wringing, Mandela-
worshipping liberals - such as we find in the British Labour Party
and Liberal Democrats and the American Democratic Party - a gut-
wrenching, political experience and lesson in the "post-apartheid"
"freedom" and state of "national liberation" in South Africa. ["Is
this what we fought for?", Bob Myers book, Index Books, comes to mind]
Of course, Mandela, like King, was a progressive figure in the
history of the struggle for emancipation and it would be absurd to
deny that. But what they held in common was their implicit
acceptance of the dominance of the root relation of the "status quo"
i.e. the rule of capital. Both struggles were for democratic rights
within the conditions of the capitalist order. The state power of
capital within the US and SA was able to concede and accommodate the
demands of the LEADERSHIPS of these movements.
The anti-communist "Communist Parties" - including the SACP - made
peace with the capital order many years ago. Mandela's membership of
the central committee of one of them (which, as part of UWS,
tortured and executed its own revolutionary socialist militants in
its camps in Angola) is, as we say in here Yorkshire, neither nowt
nor summat. The leadership of the SACP is now part of government in
SA which is ably performing its services for transnational capital
as we recently saw in the bloody massacre of striking miners. To
refer to the SACP or Mandela as "communist" is more than a mockery
of the word.
The struggle against the apartheid regime by the ANC leadership was
never a socialist struggle. It always had a limited, national
bourgeois class character regardless of all the "revolutionary" and
"liberation" bluster that animated it. Mandela, educated as a
lawyer, was, essentially, a bourgeois liberal nationalist and he
died as one in praise of the capitalist order. Accordingly, he never
"betrayed" because was never in such a position to do so. The rule
of capital with a reactionary white supremacist mask was replaced
with its rule by a black "democratic" bourgeois nationalist one. The
chairs have been re-arranged but the master remains at the head of
the table. This is not to deny that a move forward has taken place
but one which is simultaneously a return to the old but at a higher
stage under altered conditions.The conditions are now more
favourable for the proletariat but the old enemy remains to be
vanquished.
Of course, what the youth today must learn from the "Eastern Bloc"
is a lesson in what socialism is not. In that regard, it remains a
"teachable moment" as does the process whereby the bourgeois
nationalist leadership of a grass-roots movement for emancipation
can dress itself up in the garb of revolutionary rhetoric and
socialist phraseology. Today, the leadership of the ANC is the
personification of the interests of transnational capital in South
Africa. And if workers strike, they run the risk of being machine-
gunned by the "armed bodies of men" of its state power.
Mandela has been praised and feted by the global representatives of
capital. Here, in the UK, the BBC reporters are almost blubbing into
their microphones and falling over themselves to suggest political
beatification. It's almost as nauseating as the praise they gave for
Thatcher at her state funeral. Jeff Rubard remarks that all this is
"interesting from the standpoint of poli.sci". Well, we can leave
that to the "political scientists" in the universities, and in the
political institutions of the enemy class. It is far more
"interesting" from the perspective of a revolutionary criticism of
the ANC, its origins and the historic trajectory it has taken. It
has ended up as capital's best friend on the continent of Africa.
God bless Madiba.
Shaun May
http://shaunpmay.wordpress.com
http://spmay.wordpress.com
Take it easy (favourite motto of Engels)
Doubt everything (favourite motto of Marx)
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