It seems that the question here is that of black self-organisation. In my home country of Britain we have self-organisation within trade unions and other sectors of society for black people, women, lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-gender people (LGBT), disabled people and other groups.
The key difference with South Africa is that black people are a minority in Britain. You can draw your own conclusions about how that relates to the following. I've reported for the Morning Star<http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php>newspaper from the British Trade Union Congress (TUC - the fraternal organisation to COSATU) Black and Minority Ethnic (BME - including Indian and Chinese people) conference once and the TUC LGBT conference twice. Firstly, both conferences were ghettoes, if you will permit this use of the word. If I hadn't been at those conferences then no-one would have known what happened, or even that they took place. Many of the debates there should have been had in the TUC's general conference, not tucked away out of site. Secondly, when I asked the platform at the BME conference whether Latin American immigrants (many of whom are partly or wholly of indigenous descent) or immigrants from Europe should be included in their section of the TUC, they dismissed it out of hand. They said that white European immigrants were not subject to the same kind of racism, at a time when they were. OK, some trade unions are organising separately among Latin American and Polish migrant workers, but both groups suffer from hyper-exploitation and racism, including from the press. I never reported from the TUC women's conference - because they apparently didn't like it when the Morning Star sent a male reporter! My final problem with the whole thing was that it encouraged what are sometimes called 'identity politics' - the elevation of the politics of gender, race, sexuality etc. above, and ultimately to the exclusion of, the politics of class. I understand that gross racial inequality continues in South Africa despite the creation 'Black Republic', but which issue is more important now - that of race or that of class? James 2009/8/5 Dominic Tweedie <[email protected]>: > It is in Bree Street, Newtown, Johannesburg, facing Mary Fitzgerald Square. > > > > 2009/8/5 Tumi Gopane <[email protected]> >> >> Hi Dminic >> >> Please provide the physical address for Museum Africa. >> >> Regards, >> Tumelo G. >> >> >> ________________________________ >> From: Dominic Tweedie >> To: [email protected] >> Sent: Wed Aug 05 07:45:39 SAST 2009 >> Subject: [YCLSA Discussion] Blacks Can't Be Racist, Andile Mngxitama, >> 15h00, Museum Africa, 8 August 2009 >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> > > > > -- > Blog at: http://domza.blogspot.com/ > Communist University web site at: http://amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/ > Subscribe for free e-mail updates at: > http://groups.google.com/group/Communist-University/ > Library of documents (CU "CD") at: http://cu.domza.net/ > [email protected] > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
