Copeman
You must expand the word 'Capital', do you refer to hard cash-money Or the requisite elements such as competent leadership and staff, infrastructure and systems. Hard cash is necessary but not a political and organisational solution for PAC, the requisite elements as stated including ideological coherence and unity are primary towards forward movement of the PAC. It is an ill-conceived idea that people vote a party because it has millions! A serious and determined political party including liberation movement are taken seriously by the people on the basis of how it conducts its affairs, visibility on daily issues affecting the people, a responsible leadership and organisational methods to resolve and manage inner party disagreement. A party with a leadership that rapes women, lies and insults other party members cannot be taken seriously by the people and people cannot entrust that party the responsibility to govern the country. The people are not idiots and cannot be fooled by opportunist leaders and a party that fails to make a convincing public statement. Today, PAC does nothing except commemoration of historic events! The party is failing on basic simple administrative functions such as production-distribution of membership cards and production of reports as to how many membership cards are outstanding, very basic and simple administrative tasks for clerks! 2014 national elections, we shall be running up and down with or without money asking for votes, as if 2014 national elections is our first experience. Today, it is probably twelve months before national elections in 2014 commonly held between the following months March - June, PAC has no plan, the recent NEC meeting held never placed priority on this matter. Secondly, let me clarify the advance I made on trade unionism, the advance I made does not suggest that PAC should adopt a trade union approach instead its briefly shows that workers namely employed and unemployed constitutes the majority of the population, by workers I refer to those who sell their labour to earn a wages this includes an estimated 17 761 000 employed workers plus 4 442 000 unemployed workers plus 14 795 000 not economically active amounting to an estimated 37 million workers. PAC should target 37 million workers simply because this is the same grouping that the PAC basic documents describes as the illiterates and semi-illiterates who constitutes the cornerstone of our struggle. PAC is surely not a party committed to capitalism, the third aim and objectives as espoused focus PAC to advance a socialist democratic transformation of the society, thus workers are the motive force to drive and lead realisation of the ultimate goal of the PAC leading to unification of Africa. WASP is a political party not a trade union, if it gets basics correct then it will be a different story. These basic are the same elements stated above. Thirdly, to summarise my earlier e-mail which describes PAC problem, in brief PAC lacks organisation and primarily organisational effectiveness, millions of rands will not resolve this problem. Fourth, dominant ideas in the society we live in today are ideas or an ideology of the ruling class we are confronted with capitalist and white supremacist ideas generations of Africans are subjected to; What people eat and where they live and where pray (what they pray for) occurs within a system defined and engineered on the basis of dominant ideas therefore the entire state machinery namely the education system, security and defense system, the media as a system, health system etc are based on the ideas of the ruling and dominant class. Our task is to craft an alternative social order, guided by the party ideology, as Amilcar Cabral teaches and encourage that we must craft our ideas in the manner that ordinary people will understand and relate. We cannot pigeon-hole and throw half baked and at time ill-conceived solutions/ideas and hope miraculously PAC can achieve ten parliamentary seats. If I use Western Cape province as an example it is one of the PAC province which is highly divided amidst many talented PAC members of all ages, so as long as Western Cape province PAC is ravaged by division forget about getting seat(s) for even if you get one seat in the provincial legislation the next thing is infighting for that one seat. Simply put, if you are serious about building and positioning PAC, then focus on what practitioners on organisational development will emphasize human being belonging to the organisation as members, unity of PAC members is the necessary point of departure to overcome and move mountains. The talent PAC has of members in Western Cape can greatly impact positively. Drive unification process of branches and members, create and organise open meetings for unity and to adopt plans of actions for mass mobilisation and constitutional structural functioning, those who are leaders must subject themselves to party structures starting from branches to regions and higher; Cde Anwar PEC and all existing parallel structures should therefore dissolve and members should create unified structures functioning in accordance of the PAC constitution. The strength of any organisation lies in unity, academics uses words such as coherence, alignment etc. Any person who led masses and protests and strikes know the amount of organisation, discipline, leadership and resources that goes into such programmes and to sustain a strategy and masses throughout until their demands are fully meet. PAC can be salvaged and it can rise only if its members through branches unite in regions and provinces by building strong structures that are vibrant and rooted in daily struggles of communities and workers in industrial (& workplaces) places. Shango lasho NKrumah From: Philip Copeman [mailto:philip.cope...@gmail.com] Sent: 03 April 2013 11:10 AM To: Nkrumah Raymond Kgagudi Cc: Lehlohonolo Shale; ntsiemohl...@gmail.com; Letlapa Mphahlele; anwar adams; payco@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Defending Africanist Socialist Democracy Comrade Nkruma I thank you for continuing this conversation. We all share the desire to see the PAC succeed. Pan Africanism has so much to offer Africa. Whatever took each of us to take the oath of allegience to the PAC, we are now the custodians of this movement. I think that the discussion is finally getting somewhere. We both define the problem in similar terms. Take comfort - I have seen The PAC worse. We can thank Letlapa for fixing a bad situation It may not be as good as we want but it is better than it could have been. When I hit the problem fractionalism in the PAC 15 years ago, my answer was simply to stand down and let the infighters have their infighting. This effectively laid me as non effective in the organisation. I spent the last 15 years avoiding the infighting and building personal Capital. So as not to get involved in infighting when I decided to return to active service to the PAC, (Brought on by Marikana) I decided to do so only from a position of membership, and to seek no leadership position whatsoever. So comrade if you are looking for selfless leaders, that is not me. I am happy to be a selfless follower, I don't like analysing PAC problems. I prefer looking for opportunities based on what we have. Let me put it to you that the problems that you detail are not so much "problems" as "symtoms". They are symtoms of a lack of capital. No organisation no matter how good in its intention can run without Capital. If we are going to sink into ideolocial discussion about the merits of capital at this point it will be of little benefit. There are a number of ways of attracting Capital to the PAC. All of them require compromise and discipline. If everytime such a proposal is put forward it is shot down by persons with their own agenda, we will never raise it. Capital flies at the first sign of discent. Comrade NKruma, we have a one really big difference in our thinking. We should not underestimate this difference, as it may be enough to keep us apart forever. The PAC is not, or ever has been - a workers party. I have a real problems with the faith that you put in the organised labor movement: 1) Organised labor is a population sector. And a small one at that. There are 4 Million organised laborers making up about 8% of the population. Any strategy that favours one group over another, workers over non workers or workers over aged or workers over youth. Is doomed to be an opposition movement. This must be obvious - even the ANC with its " broad church" has failed. If you favor one group of Africans over another you will ultimately fails as Apartheid did. 2) I have a great deal of experience of many different businesses in many different countries and my experience of the last 10 years is that is that the power of oganised labor is waning. Even if we did back this horse, it is fighting off a slippery base. The large scale manufacturing industries are crumbling to the power of Capital. They need less and less labor, In the globalisation process, labor does not scale. The small scale service industries do not benefit from regulated labor. Because of our political history, organised labor has a unusual grip on privilege in South Africa, but even this is a subordinate one. This is what the DA does with whites. Successful as they are, the DA tops out at 20%. Successful as COSATU is, it is always gogitn to be a subordinate player. - No need for a long rebuttal - I know we disagree on this. 3) In the organised labor space there is a major competitor - COSATU. They are simply not going to lie down. Yes they may be in a corrupt relationship with Government, but in the medium term furture getting more that 50% of them - or 2 Million votes - seems the maximum possible with such a strategy. The cup of patronage can never be satisfied. It is not enough that organised labor has put themsleves before 6 Million unemployed youth, this wil not satisfy them and it will not keep them in control of the ANC support base. As per the World Economic Forum global competitive index, we rank worst in employer/employee relations. Whats our offer? Make it even worse than that? 4) Rather than trying to put a side issue like labor in the centre of Pan Africanism, we would be far better off running an alliance with WASP and getting them to do the hard work of tackling COSATU. Hard work that is likely to lead to a long drawn out struggle in opposition and leading down an ever slippery slope as the power of labor is eroded. An alliance with them may be difficult because right now WASP has an unrealistic expectation. They will need to fail before they become more humble. Ultimately it matter not who wins between WASP and COSATU. Organised labor is a pressure group (like Agri SA or the Freedom Front). Pressure groups have no place in Dominant Governement, who must keep the good of ALL Africans primary. 5) I do not agree with you that the 10 Million workers out there are craving to be unionised. For the individual, unionised labor is a road to nowhere. It may be good for the union organisers, but for the purveyor of labor it is a dark miserable destiny. I work in the SME sector in over 80 countries including Venuezuela and in particular Equador where I have very good relationships with their SME communities. The future for the 10 Million non unionised workers is better suited to outcomes such as Thialand or Indonesia where labor is deregulated and used in service industries run by the SMEs. To these 10 Million workers, the labor movement is supefluous. 6) The idea of organised labor having leverage is a relic of the 20th century manufacturing boom. That boom is now over, Increased output does not require increased labor. It is simply wishful thinking to beleive that the clock can be turned back on this one. The battle between organised labor and bog business should be a private one. As a Pan African Government, our only rela concern shouold be that when the have finnished ther discussions they shocul create profitabel industries that are internationally competitive and capable of pay us a fair tax that we can redistribute to the low income sectors. So where does that leave us? Fortunately there is a bright future outside of the organised labor movement. There are great demographic sectors out there - broad based sectors that don't require segmentation by race or income: Youth (12 MIllion Between 18 and 30) Unemployed (6 MIllion) Small business 1 Million employing 10 Million Landless (5 Million) African Diaspora, (3 Million) These are groups with interests counter to that of organised labor. Groups to whom organised labor looks like a poverty trap. The message that we have to offer them is very different to the message to organised labor. When a kid has no job . no hope of a job, no hope of an education, no hope of a job even if he gets an education, you have to give them a very different message to the person that wants to work less and get an increase. My solution : Move to the issues that give us traction and momentum. Once we have traction and momentum we can have ideological discussions. Simplifying our message will enable us to get it out to a wider audience. On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 8:06 PM, Nkrumah Raymond Kgagudi <nrkgag...@gmail.com> wrote: Copeman PAC and particularly its national leadership has dismally failed to make a political case to attract many people namely the unemployed, poverty stricken, youths, students and workers. Secondly, the internal organisational environment is repulsive and less attractive. Inwards and self destructive methods have placed the entire party in a state of parallysis. Thirdly, the entire party is radarless! absence if strategic leadership and thinking! Where is the PAC heading to? Fourthly, the entire party face lack and dearth of required organisational capabilities. Five, there is a disjuncture of the political structure from the operational structure, actually the party has no operational structure and strategy, with the strategic apex dwarfed and technostructure non-existing. As, I argued the last time that COSATU, NACTU and FEDUSA joint membership does not exceed 3 million employees, there are more than 10 million workers not belonging to any trade union and majority of them are young workers below the age of 45 check HSRC research report on trade union membership and collective bargaining, also check the recent Census surveys. In actual fact some researchers are arguing that both COSATU and NACTU are threaten by workers seeking for alternative means and ways to advance and defend their interests since the trade union movement has been hijacked and used to serve interests of the labour aristocrat leadership which symphones workers' subscriptions for acquisition of shares, as workers basic workerplace daily and immediate issues are neglected by trade unions. Political reality on NACTU is this trade union federation political existence is insignificant its membership decline from 300 thousand to less than 90 000. PAC is passed by events daily and weekly from 34 Massacred Marikana mineworkers leading to mineworkers industrial protests that involved more than 80 thousands mineworkers to the recent death of SANDF soldiers in CAR some were APLA cadres, Etoll, what has become a quartely Petrol hike, electricity tarrifs increase, lenasia house demolitions, the rise of financial exclusions at universities, the rising unemployment, limpopo text books saga, collapse of governance in limpopo and eastern cape, rape and abuse of women, there are many incidents that took place in the country but the PAC across all structures has been vocally silent so on the eleventh hour you expects votes or people to identify with PAC when the PAC and its leadership has been nowhere when needed most by the masses! Lastly, PAC has been reduced to a party that exists solely to commemorate past events! It has lost its sense of purpose and direction, also its incapable to attract and sustain a support as a result of its internal weaknesses and most of its competent membership have abundon the PACsince they have become tired of internal infightings which have become a generational inheritence compounded by deceit and absence of both political and organisational progress. PAC must heal itself internally to regain lost membership density to enable the PAC to attract the envisage support base. PAC members from branches and regions must selflessly take leadership to drive this process of renewal. shango lashu! Mr. Raymond Mashilo Kgagudi Cellphone: 0749226361 Email: nrkgag...@gmail.com On 2 Apr 2013 18:53, "Philip Copeman" <philip.cope...@gmail.com> wrote: I suggest that for a while we leave ideological debates. Unbeleivably we both share the same goals of the PAC, it is the methods that differ. Mine is very quantitative. I know what a Gini coefficient of 54 means - it does not mean alleviation from poverty in Venezuela - that is an propogandist mythology, rather like the great Zimabwean Liberation. >From a strategic point of view, it is just simply putting ones head in the sand to not see the simple reality facing us: 87% of the voters of South Africa vote for the ANC and their Western Cape Branch, the DA. These 87% favour continuation of racial classification, entrenchment of property rigths, upholding and maintenance of the constitution, xenophobic exclusion of northerners, corrupt socialism that favours taking from the rich and giving to the middle classes. In summary upholding the status quo. This is not me talking - this is 87% of our countrymen. Everyone else including people as disparate as the the Freedom Front and Azapo fit into the other 13%. Smell the thorns - Right now our fellow countrymen's wishes differ sharply from that of The PAC. What do we do? 1) As we can't even agree between ourselves and any attempt to move us forward is branded divisory and - I love this term - "neo liberal", it seems obvious to me that we need to simplify the message of the PAC. That is where I get to the idea that focusing exclusively on the unification of Africa sidelines the unsolvable debates that we have about income distribution. 2) We can simply chuck it all in and turn the PAC into a burial society, that only looks backwards to its past achievements and as our members die off we become less and less an less relevant until we too die. This is effectively what we are doing now. In each election our support has shrunk and we can expect, under the current message to lose even more, this time possibly losing all seats in parliament altogether. If we are gogitn to do thsi, then lests sign up for a decent funral policy and start negotiating a group discount. 3) We can look to reinvent ourselves, pick up the huge and proud history that is the PAC and turn that into something that carries the message of Pan Africanism forward. What that message is we should decide on quickly - more members will die before the week is out. Do I beleive that a reactionary ideology - "seizing the organs of state" from the 87% is going to succeed - no I don't. 4) We can dismiss our fellow Africans as fools and set out preaching a reeducation program to them. Here I caution you that you are likely to hit more resistance from them to the "Great Socialist Revoultion" Young people today don't respond to this type of talk, and thats not me talking - just ask them. 5) We could write South Africa off as a lost cause, skip it altogether and just focus on the rest of Africa. However I would caution that this is also likely to lead to extinction. If we cannot formulate a coherent strategy here, we are less likely to be able to do it in areas where we have even less rescources. We have become a bitter disaprate group that can only criticise the work and decisions of others. We rarely put forward positive intiatives of our own. To see a great Speech - see Anwars acceptance speech of the road renaming on Sharpeville day - that is a direction worth following. The standing ovation that it recieved, not from The PAC, but from the genereal public, should give us a hint of what we have to do. One thing is certain. If we continue to do nothing to change, extinction is inevitable. The PAC needs to learn to start saying YES. It is YES or die. -- He who lights his candle from mine, does not diminish my flame. 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