Down with the Consultative Conference Idea! It is a diversion towards disaster Dominic Tweedie, Communist University, Johannesburg, 3 September 2016 ANC Gauteng Chairperson Paul Mashatile said, in a speech to the PEC on 2 September 2016: "What we need in my view is a broad consultative conference convened by the ANC. As the PEC, we should start a process of consulting and engaging various formations like churches, veterans, progressive businesspeople and others that we will identify prior to that conference." This is the same weak, diversionary call as was made by the SACP Central Committee last weekend. Think about the programme of the next sixteen months. It is a programme of constitutional development of policy, and of leadership selection, which will be disrupted by this ad hoc conference with bishops and all sorts, that is proposed by the SACP and the ANC Gauteng chairperson. To the base The liberation movement's programme starts now, with the writing of discussion documents. All of us should be doing it. Christmas will be early this year. People are exhausted. In the New Year, discussion documents must go to branches (not to the top first, but to the base first). The ANC's National Policy Conference is in June 2017. That prepares for the National Conference in December. We can't very well have three conferences in the same year. Meanwhile, the COSATU Central Committee (a full-scale conference) will meet in May 2017, prior to the ANC NPC. Preparations for the COSATU Central Committee are already under way. The SACP will have its National Congress in July, with similar, very taxing, prior preparations to the ANC's and COSATU's. COSATU Affiliates also have their programmes. SADTU will have its nine provincial congresses, for example. In addition, now, ANC-led councils, and ANC oppositions in councils, are in the process of getting to grips with their work, together with their ANC ward structures. The year 2017 will begin with the January 8th Statement and proceed through the ANC and cabinet lekgotlas to the SONA and the budget and all of the ministerial budget statements. Disruption A Consultative Conference in the context of all of this legal and substantial, democratic and constitutional activity does not make sense. It is nothing more than a disruption. Mashatile went on, in an emotional way, about the Morogoro and Kabwe Consultative Conferences, which we know about. But these took place in exile, in circumstances where it was not possible to go through proper constitutional processes. We do not have to make a virtue now, of what was only a necessity, then. It is a proposal for going backwards. The aim of the liberation movement at that time was to make democracy possible in South Africa. Now that we have it, do we really want to go back to bush conditions? Why? Sentiment? Romanticism? Or childish make-believe and let's-pretend, like the EFF, and like others who suffer from struggle-envy? Or, is this call for a Consultative Conference now just as an expedient to avoid exercising the democracy of the movement, pre-empting it, and second-guessing it? Of course, this is exactly what it is. What is necessary now is to use the mechanisms that people sacrificed to create, and not put them aside for the sake of a non-binding event, with an open-ended and eclectic guest list. What can you do with a consultative conference? You can only offer its deliberations to the tender mercies of the anti-liberation-movement media. And what they will do with it is to crucify the movement all over again. For sure! Who benefits? The proposal for an ANC Consultative Conference, now, is a proposal that will create a guaranteed disaster for the ANC. Is that the intention? We have no time for this. We have work to do. Use the ANC Constitution. Use the structures that were created at the cost of people's lives. Everything that needs to be done can be done democratically. The tendency to jump outside these structures, into un-democratic, ad hoc and extra-constitutional, parallel, or temporary arrangements, so as to create favourable paths to power for certain individuals, must be rejected. VC __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 14062 (20160902) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com -- -- 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] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/yclsa-eom-forum/002e01d205c0%244820e220%24d862a660%24%40com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
