I was pleasantly surprised to find a sample copy of the revamped version of "Debate" in my mailbox yesterday. The last time I saw "Debate" was when it was a rather dry looking journal--although the content was hard-hitting. Now "Debate" has the same kind of leading-edge commentary in a highly attractive magazine format accompanied by first-rate photos. Congratulations are in order to the folks who put the magazine out. They are all comrades of our Patrick Bond, stalwart of this and other progressive mailing lists. Subscription information on "Debate" can be obtained from [EMAIL PROTECTED] Here is a sample article: ==== The Legacy of the Oppenheimer Empire by Oupa Lehulere J B Marks is a hero and icon of the National Union of Mineworkers. One wonders how he would respond if he were to hear the praise that Harry 0 received from the leaders of black mineworkers. After all, JB Marks’ memory of the kind of industry Harry 0 helped to build was that it drove 100 000 black miners down the shafts at point of bayonets. That was a long time ago, in 1946, and since then South Africa has become a strange place indeed. The leaders of black mineworkers are however not alone in this strange land. Among many cultures, and in particular among Africans, it is customary that one does not speak badly of the dead. It might explain why the President now asks South Africans to praise the work he [Harry O] bequeathed to South Africa~ The leadership of the liberation movement has praised Harry O for precisely those of his activities that still cast a dark shadow over our new democracy: his business activities. Should we be proud of this legacy? Apartheid The Anglo American Company (AAC) was formed in 1917, seven years after the formation of the Union of South Africa, and four years after the 1913 Land Act. These two events, the Act of Union and the Land Act, became synonymous with the rise of the AAC to economic and political dominance in South Africa. The AAC was formed with the blessing of the new, whites’ only, Union of South Africa government. One of the important directors of the new company was one FC Hull, the Finance Minister of the first Union government. The founder of the company, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, was himself an MP in the Union parliament. Later on, the son Harry O also became an MP. Both Hull and Sir Oppenheimer used their connections with the South African state to good effect in building up the AAC diamonds empire. Backroom deals with the state and legal interventions in parliament ensured the early domination of the diamond industry by the AAC. The AAC’s— and De Beers’ — close relationship with the apartheid state, established in these early years, was to continue for the entire century. Today, this continuing closeness can be seen in the tears shed by the new ruling elite on the occasion of Harry Os death. There is now a new legend that portrays Harry O as being an anti-apartheid campaigner. Nothing could be further from the truth. Besides the fact that Oppenheimer companies grew by leaps and bounds under apartheid, Harry O and his father were active collaborators with the apartheid state. They were instrumental in setting up the state-owned National Finance Corporation in [1949 and they propped up the South African economy when it was faced with capital flight after the Sharpville massacre in 1960. As a trustee of the South African Foundation during the Verwoed government, Harry O had the task of promoting and polishing the image of apartheid. If there is still any doubt about Harry Os attitude to apartheid, then the AAC statement settles it: according to the statement Harry O ‘would never have acted unconstitutionally.' And apartheid was after all the constitution~ It all sounds very familiar, doesn’t it? This, however, could not be otherwise. The Union of South Africa itself owed its birth to the interest of gold mining. As South Africans celebrate, or mourn, the Anglo-Boer War, few seemed to remember that behind the ‘Boer’ and ‘Brit’ struggle, and the Africans caught in the crossfire, there was the fundamental struggle for the control of the gold mines of the Witwatersrand. Thus, the formation of the Union in 1910 was nothing but the victory of mine-owners over the old Boer republics. In the same vein, the discovery of gold and diamonds ensured that the process of land dispossession lost its piecemeal and, so to speak, accidental character. It is therefore no accident that one of the first important legal initiatives of the new Union government was the Lend Act in 1913. This act created the economic pressure necessary to force Africans to go and work on the mines w slave labourers. Slave labour The entire mining industry in South Africa, of which the C was the leading company, is unthinkable without heap, migrant, black labour. This was true yesterday as tis true today. In order to maintain and ensure the continuing supply of cheap black labour the mining industry also needed an instrument of coercion. The apartheid state was such an instrument. Key moments in the evolution of the AAC’s dominance of mining — and manufacturing — coincide with major defeats of the South African working class, both black and white. These landmark dates are the 1920 black miners’ strike and the 1922 Rand Revolt, the 1946 (black) mineworkers strike, and the banning of the liberation movements in 1960. One illustration will suffice here. Speaking in 1925 after the defeat of the Rand Revolt, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer remarked that the profitability of the mining industry could not have been restored ‘without the reorganisation of underground work dating from the 1922 strike’. The Oppenheimer dynasty was not an ‘unfortunate’ victim and unwilling beneficiary of apartheid. On the contrary, with sometimes striking foresight, it understood the long-term gains of being loyal to apartheid, of not acting ‘unconstitutionally. After all, apartheid did not produce the mining industry and its institutions of repression: the mining industry and its institutions produced apartheid. All the trappings of apartheid — pass laws, migrant labour, compound housing, the colour bar, the reserves, violent repression, low wages — were pioneered in the mining industry. After more than a 100 years of the gold mining industry, it has become impossible to distinguish the colour of gold from the colour of mineworkers blood. For every ton of gold mined by Harry O and his friends over these 100 years, there is an unmarked tomb for the unknown worker in the bowels of the earth. Anglo and the ANC in power In one of the many obituaries for Harry O, Chris Barron remarked that he ‘lived most of his life surrounded by sycophancy’. Most of the new ruling elite was for a long time denied the opportunity to share in this sycophancy. One has to admit, however, that the new ruling elite has made up the time lost. The outpouring of grief and a sense of loss for Harry O show how far this group has travelled from its stance of nationalising the commanding heights of the economy. More than 150 years ago Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote that ‘the Executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. The collapse of Stalinist socialism notwithstanding, one has to admit that those two old subversives have again got it right: the ANC in power has become but a committee to manage the common affairs of the whole capitalist class. As a party in power, the ANC has shown a remarkable subservience to the direct and immediate interests of the most powerful sections of the capitalist class. Should we then be proud of the legacy of Anglo and Harry O? Well, it depends on which side one’s bread is buttered these days. For the millions of working people in South and Southern Africa, there is very little to be proud of. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
