Is China Africa´s new imperialist power?: Zabalaza #7

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anarcoafricanista
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Registrado: 26 Jun 2006, 15:37

Is China Africa´s new imperialist power?: Zabalaza #7

Mensaje por anarcoafricanista » 16 Mar 2007, 14:41

Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism #7 http://www.zabalaza.net/index02.htm
December 2006

IS CHINA AFRICA'S NEW IMPERIALIST POWER?

by Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt

The African tour of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, centred on fostering trade relations between China and African and Arabian countries, highlights an important recent development.

Revolutionaries in Anglophone Africa have always seen Britain and France as the dominant imperialist powers on the continent, but other forces are emerging from the shadows to challenge their continued post-colonial dominance - and it's not just the United States.

Southern African anarchist-communists would normally see the former British colony of South Africa as acting as a sub-imperialist power on behalf of the big capitalist powers and its own capitalist ruling class in the region, a sort of regional policeman as it were: if British interests in Swaziland are threatened by the democracy movement, we are sure that South African military might will intervene (as it did against Lesotho in 1998) to shore up the Swazi elite.

But the international scene is changing and today we can chart the rise of the People's Republic of China as one of Africa's most powerful kingmakers, whether backing the genocidal regime in Khartoum, or embarking on large-scale building projects including the new Luanda airport (in exchange for 10,000 barrels of crude oil a day) and the Number One Stadium in Kinshasa, a city that with its giant gold statue of a fat, Mao-like Laurent-Desire Kabila is looking like a city on the Yangtze River instead of the Congo (the DRC's mimicry of the Chinese national flag, before adopting a new flag this year, was too obvious to miss).

STATE CAPITALISM

Unlike the old Soviet Union, China has managed to engineer a successful transition from closed State-capitalism (the Maoist era) towards an export-orientated neo-liberal model. Its rapid economic growth and cheap goods - overseen by the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP - may see the country overtake the US as the largest manufacturing power worldwide by 2010.

This capitalist boom has been built on the back of a brutal suppression of the working class and peasantry. Strikes are illegal, dissidents are murdered, and the top 20% of households earn 42% of total urban incomes while the poorest 20% receive just 6%.

There has been a sharp rise in class struggle, with strikes rising from 8,150 in 1992 to 120,000 in 1999. Last year residents of the village of Huaxi, Zhejiang province, battled the police and local officials in hand-to-hand combat in April and drove them off. In December, hundreds of villagers armed with dynamite and petrol-bombs attacked police in Dongzhou, Guandong province, after police killed 20 villagers who had protested against land seized to build a power plant. A source close to the CCP central committee revealed last year that some 3-million workers took part in protests last year.

This is a country where the official monthly minimum wage is US$63 (compare that to US$45 to US$55 in rural and urban Vietnam, respectively, levels won by Vietnamese workers last year by embarking on wildcat strikes against their communist bosses), which has probably the worst mining fatality record in the world (the official Xhinhua News Agency figure is 5,986 dead in coal mines alone in 2005, resulting in some cases in miners armed with dynamite attacking their bosses), and multinational sweat-shop operations such as Nike and McDonalds setting up operations in special "economic exclusion zones".

While terror and repression fuel China's economy, the country's capitalist ruling class looks outwards for cheap labour, raw materials and fuel supplies. Africa, economically sidelined in the world economic crisis starting in the 1970s, has suddenly become hot property. In 2005, the overall African economy grew at 5% - it's fastest in decades - as demand for African raw materials shot up, with Chinese demand playing a key role. The 1980s and 1990s saw Africa fall off the investment map, with Africa getting less than 1% of all private direct investment to "third world" countries in 1995. Chinese (and South African) capitalists have increasingly taken the gap, and the trend is reversing.

CHINA IN AFRICA

China clandestinely traded with apartheid South Africa despite its funding of liberation movements in the country and in neighbouring countries like Zimbabwe. Formal relations with South Africa were re-established in 1998.

According to Martin Davies, the director for the Centre for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University (and a businessman with interests in Shanghai), last year, trade between China and Africa soared to US$35-million, with Chinese investment primarily centred on the oil industry, especially in Nigeria, Angola, Sudan and Equatorial Guinea.

Grim conditions in these countries have hardly worried the Chinese dictatorship: whether it is the total lack of democracy in Equatorial Guinea, the state-driven race-war in Sudan, or the fact that the blatant theft of oil wealth by the ruling cliques in Angola and Nigeria has fuelled conflict, with UNITA and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, respectively trying to win back a slice of the pie.

So it will come as no surprise that Chinese helicopter gunships have been used against civilians in Darfur, according to human rights activists. China - which maintains an electronic listening post on the Comores - gave Sudan massive military aid between 1996 and 2003, including jet fighter aircraft, shipped tons of arms to Ethiopia and Eritrea prior to the outbreak of their border war in 1998, and has sold jets, military aircraft and radio-jamming equipment (to prevent outside broadcasts being heard inside the country) to the Zimbabwean regime.

SOUTH AFRICA

China has greased its imperialist wheels in Africa by scrapping over US$1-billion in debt owed by 32 African countries and the SABC reported this year that South Africa's trade with China is growing at 26% annually.

South Africa is China's largest trade partner in Africa, with trade growing 400% over the last six years. South Africa supplies iron ore and other raw materials, and receives manufactured goods - and a new trade agreement will see China limit textile exports but strengthen co-operation in areas like nuclear energy. Meanwhile, South Africa's trade with traditional partners like Britain is shrinking.

However, the importance of relations with China is relatively limited, given the strength and diversity of South African capitalism. On the other hand, Chinese investment looms very large in weak economies like those of Equatorial Guinea. China's interest in securing direct raw material supplies - for example, oil outside the OPEC cartel - means we can expect these relations to intensify, and African elites to solidify their links with the East Asian power. Africa now provides around 30% of China's oil imports.

SOLIDARITY OR XENOPHOBIA

But what does all this investment in guns, ore and oil mean? COSATU has reacted with alarm to a deal struck between the South African and Chinese governments, warning that with the country flooded with cheap imported Chinese clothing (a 480% increase since 2003), the already-fragile domestic textile industry (62,000 jobs lost in the same period) could collapse.

COSATU leaders were embarrassed last year when members of their affiliated SA Clothing and Textile Workers' Union demonstrated against the fact that the congress' red T-shirts were made in China. Many mainland Chinese textile operations have relocated to Africa in order to by-pass European and American quotas on Chinese imports, but they have often brought with them brutal working conditions. At the same time, COSATU and its ally, the SACP continue to praise China as a socialist country.

Neither position is correct. COSATU's "Buy South Africa" campaign will do nothing to stop cheap Chinese imports. It promotes anti-Chinese racism and feeds into the poisonous xenophobia that afflicts the local working class. It also suggests that all South Africans, capitalists and workers alike, have a common interest. Nothing is further from the truth: South African capitalists are not the friends of South African workers.

Further, the ANC's GEAR policy promotes free trade, so there is no prospect of the wave of imports subsiding in meaningful terms. COSATU is left with making futile appeals to the morals and patriotism of the South African ruling class - appeals that will achieve nothing. South African capitalists are developing a pact with Chinese capitalists: if these rivals can unite, why can't the working class learn the lesson, and defend Chinese labour?

THE "CORE OF ENTERPRISES"

As we have noted in these pages before, both GEAR and NEPAD aim at attracting more trade and more foreign investment, and China fits both bills. Meanwhile, Intelligence Minister (and ageing Young Communist League politburo member) Ronnie Kasrils enthused in a glossy book China Through the Third Eye: South African Perspectives - funded by the China Chamber of Commerce and Industry in SA - that China's building boom, including the controversial Three Dams project on the Yangtze that will displace 1-million people, "is a construction engineers' dream". This is a good thing, it seems: "If China is to remain a sustainable economy, it has to speed the transition from a rural to an urban society, from an agricultural to an industrial economy."

Chief state spin-doctor Joel Netshitenzhe claimed in the same book that "South Africa and China share mutual goals as both countries are committed to ensuring a better life for all their citizens. Both aim to lower the levels of poverty." Given the state-enforced poverty of the Chinese people, one wonders what Netshitenzhe has in mind when he praised the role of the Chinese state propaganda machine for "the rigour and focus with which China uses information to mobilise people around common objectives and a shared vision..."

A chill settles in one's bones when one reads him hailing the "diversity of voices" in the Chinese media, while studiously ignoring state censorship and the complicity of Western search engines such as Yahoo in helping China jail political dissidents.

The view of SACP deputy secretary general and one-man think-tank Jeremy Cronin is even more revealing. The SACP, terrified that the bubble of "real, existing socialism" was washing down the drain with the restructuring of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China, sent a delegation there in 2001 to check things out.

Cronin and his delegation were clearly wowed by their CCP hosts: he quotes a 1999 central committee document that "The public-ownership economy, which includes the State-owned economy, is the economic basis of China's socialist system... China must always rely on and bring into full play the important role of the SOEs to develop the productive forces of the socialist society and realise the country's industrialisation and modernisation..." China, it seems, is socialist as well as capitalist! What are we to make of such confused thinking?

"To manage SOEs well in general, efforts must be made to establish a leadership system and organisational and managerial systems in them that conform to the law of the market economy and China's actual situation, to strengthen the building of their leadership, to give play to the Party organisations as the political core of enterprises, and to adhere to the principle of relying on the working class wholeheartedly..." And "rely" they do, for China's miracle is built "wholeheartedly" on exploitation and terror!

A CHANGING OF THE GUARD?

So, Chinese communism is finally revealed as nothing more than a modernisation programme guided by authoritarian marketing and management gurus who double as Party bosses! And the Party itself is revealed as a clique of commissars that rides on the working class!

Cronin admits that the delegation "did not have sufficient time to gauge the degree to which" the central committee's stated commitment to workers' "democratic decision-making" and "status as masters of their own enterprises" - capitalist enterprises steered by the party - but he thought it significant that these cheap words had been put on paper.

Cronin lauds the regime for the "fairly clear socialist agenda [that] shines through..." "There is no reason," he huffs, "why markets should not exist under socialism" - a liberal interpretation that allows for the coexistence of "the emergent small and medium privately owned service sector". Where exactly "socialism" "shines" is not clear.

From such mixed economic thinking arises a confused politics, based on industrial and market requirements rather than people's needs, where in Cronin's view, wage increases in the public sector, adopted purely to stimulate market demand qualify as "socialist".

So what we have is an ANC/SACP government that is not only increasingly trading with, but ideologically inclining itself towards, the world's last large totalitarian state, a state that is so blatantly capitalist and simultaneously anti-labour that Cronin's skill as a poet fails to gild the brutal reality. The SACP's state-capitalist thinking has finally manage to find, in the Chinese example, a happy marriage with neo-liberalism.

PROTECTIONISM OR CLASS STRUGGLE

Chinese goods are cheap because Chinese labour is cheap. If COSATU wants to protect local jobs - and show its commitment to the international working class struggle - it should support trade union organising in China, and step up the class struggle at home and in southern Africa. Neo-liberal capitalism thrives on pitting cheap labour in one country against even chepaer labour in another, in a race to the bottom. The only way out is international solidarity and class struggle, starting with a struggle for an international minimum wage and universal union rights.

China has a proud tradition of class struggle - and this does not mean the CCP and Mao! Back in 1913, anarcho-syndicalists built the first trade unions in Canton, rising to challenge reformist and communist unionism in all the big industrial centres such as Shanghai in the 1920s. Armed anarchist peasant movements controlled huge swathes of territory in Fukien province and in Kirin province, Manchuria, in the 1930s and anarchist guerrillas fought alongside communists in the resistance to Japanese imperialism in the 1940s.

But after the Maoist coup d'état of 1949, China's estimated 10,000 anarchist trade unionist militants were driven underground and Makhnovist-styled guerrillas such as Chu Cha Pei were forced to retreat into the hills in Yunnan province from where they continued to harry the new ruling class headed by Mao and his entourage of warlords and state-capitalists.

As Africa increasingly becomes the back-yard of China's oil-driven imperialism, one has to ask firstly, whether the government will try to mimic the worst aspects of China's enforced civil peace, a development that would prove a serious challenge to our own working class.

ANARCHISM OR MARXISM

We have no interest on following those leftists who hope for an end to "capitalist restoration" in China: China has been capitalist since Mao took power, and any Chinese revolutionary movement must jettison Marxism and its Maoist variant. Nor can we agree that China is - in fact - "socialist," despite what SACP leaders may think.

Capitalism is a class system, and a class system means class struggles. Sooner or later China's working class will rediscover its proud fighting tradition and take charge of its own affairs to the exclusion of parasitic Party leaders and capitalists - what is called in Chinese wuzhengfgu gonchan, or common production without government, in a word, anarchist-communism - and bury the CCP.

But until that day, there is a more serious question we have to ask, one with implications beyond our borders: will China replace Britain as South Africa's imperialist power, a changing of the guard, so to speak - leading to South Africa embarking on military expeditions in Africa to protect Chinese capitalist interests. All serious anti-imperialists must consider and plan for the possibility of Africa becoming the future battle-ground between US-backed Western and Chinese expansionist interests, and unite the continent's people in a battle against the oil barons.


http://www.zabalaza.net/pdfs/sapams/zab07.pdf

anarcoafricanista
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Registrado: 26 Jun 2006, 15:37

Mensaje por anarcoafricanista » 16 Mar 2007, 14:43

R 10 YEARS OF GEAR: COSATU, THE ZUMA TRIAL AND THE DEAD END OF ALLIANCE POLITICS

Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism #7 http://www.zabalaza.net/index02.htm
December 2006

AFTER 10 YEARS OF GEAR:
COSATU, THE ZUMA TRIAL AND THE DEAD END OF ALLIANCE POLITICS

by Lucien van der Walt

South Africa's transition, as we stated in Workers Solidarity in 1998, went sour a long time ago. Overthrowing apartheid was a tremendous victory, but not enough. It was soon overshadowed by the ANC's neo-liberal policies, which built on those adopted in the last years of the apartheid regime.

LOST IN TRANSIT

As an increasingly multiracial ruling class consolidated its position, the working class retreated. This retreat was - and remains - fundamentally a question of politics and strategy: COSATU and the SACP had no idea how to deal with the new situation. Having spent years believing the ANC would, like Moses, lead the people out of bondage in Egypt, they now found themselves in a strange new country. Apartheid was gone, but slavery was not. The supposed Moses now looked a lot like Pharaoh, but COSATU and the SACP remained part of the Tripartite Alliance.

ALL GEARed UP

The miserable conditions in the townships continued, mass unemployment - which started in the 1970s - continued to grow, and neo-liberalism accelerated. 30% of TELKOM was privatised in 1996 and a further 20% was listed in 2003, and ESKOM and the SA Post Office were commercialised. While the GATT (now the World Trade Organisation) required tariff protection on telecommunications to fall to 20%, the government set itself the target of zero protection, and also opened up other controls over trade and capital movements. These approaches were consolidated in the 1996 Growth, Employment and Redistribution Strategy (GEAR), but did not start with it.

The unproductive financial sector shot up to 20% of the entire SA economy, although it employed only 1% of the workforce, while manufacturing and mining shrunk, with perhaps 1 million jobs lost in these sectors plus agriculture. The electricity and water grid was expanded, but with cost recovery applied, 10 million people suffered water cut-offs and 5 million were evicted.

SAVING THE ANC'S SOUL

In this situation, COSATU and the SACP chose to try and save the unhappy marriage with the ANC. Afraid of being isolated from the seats of the mighty, flattered by pats on the head by ANC leaders, tempted by job offers, and unable to break with an almost religious loyalty to the ANC colours - and a well-established tendency to uncritically worship ANC leaders - union and Party policy makers spent fruitless years trying to redeem the ANC.

Reinforcing this approach was the longstanding, and seriously flawed, view that South Africa must have a two-stage "revolution": a "national democratic stage," led by the ANC, to end racism, followed by a "socialist stage," in a vague future.

"Intervening" in the ANC, "contesting" it, "saving" its soul: these were the terms used to justify this approach. The fact that the ANC was - and always had been - a capitalist party that aimed to open up, as Nelson Mandela stated back in 1956, "fresh fields for the development of a prosperous non-European bourgeois class," was ignored.

BEE-llionaires

The fact that the major debate within the ruling ANC after 1994 was on how to link neo-liberalism to Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) - the deliberate creation of the "non-European bourgeois class" - was ignored. The fact that the ANC had struck a deal with the apartheid-era ruling class, and had now joined it, was ignored.

COSATU and SACP positions moved from the naïve (the idea that the ANC would drop neo-liberalism if only it would let COSATU provide good advice) to the paranoid (there was a conspiracy against "transformation"). For organisations that spoke in the language of class struggle, there was nothing in the way of a class analysis of the realities of the situation.

COSATU and the Party were ignored by the ANC, and periodically insulted - except at election times, when their financial support and influence were eagerly sought. After elections, of course, it was business as usual, with South Africa's particularly vile brand of capitalism flourishing. By 2006, the economy was booming, reaching 5% growth, the number of families with more than $30 million each shot up four times, but the income of the bottom 40% of the population fell by nearly half.

ZUMA AND COSATU

This situation has played out in the Jacob Zuma controversy. Zuma, a leading ANC member, deputy president of South Africa, and head of the State-sponsored "Moral Regeneration Campaign," was found to have been involved in corruption around the arms deal. His associate, Durban businessman Shabir Shaik, was found guilty in 2005, and Zuma himself now faces charges.

Mbeki, not a man to tolerate rivals in the ANC, used the opportunity to oust Zuma from office. Another bombshell followed, when Zuma was accused of raping a close family friend who, it transpired, was HIV-positive.

Now, it was fairly clear that corruption was not the main factor in Zuma's dismissal. His replacement in office, Phumzile Mlambo-Nguka, was almost immediately involved in a scandal. She used a Falcon 900 executive jet of the SA Air Force to take her husband, children and friends on a holiday to the United Arab Emirates. It was also clear that Mbeki, an autocrat of the first water, was more than happy to use the judiciary and the State intelligence services to resolve internal disputes in the ANC.

COSATU'S POSITION

There was also nothing surprising in the fact that Zuma used every trick in the book to whip up support at the rape trial, ranging from crude Zulu nationalist appeals to a legal team that effectively put his accuser on trial. Mobilisations outside the courthouse drew in a wide range of groups, with many reactionary features, ranging from slogans like "Burn the Bitch" to placards saying "No Woman for President."

A whole cult was built up around Zuma. The Friends of Jacob Zuma stated: "We, the people, will ensure that this man of honour, who dedicated his life to liberating us, will finally have the right to defend himself." One protestor carried a cross, with a Zuma picture, claiming that this "man of honour" was being persecuted "just like" another "man of honour," Jesus Christ. This seems ridiculous, but it was typical of the Zuma mobilisations.

What was most surprising - at least at first glance - was COSATU's almost uncritical support for Zuma during 2005 and 2006. The SACP was a bit more divided, but its Youth League was in the forefront of the Zuma mobilisation and the Friends of Jacob Zuma organisation.

STRANGE FRUIT

This seems strange at first, but it is the logical outcome of the dead end in which COSATU and the SACP find themselves after ten years of "engaging" the ANC, after ten years of futile complaints about GEAR, after ten years of COSATU policy documents gathering dust at Shell House.

Unable to break with the ANC, and unable to change it, the union and the Party placed their hopes in Zuma. Zuma had never uttered a word against GEAR, against capitalism or against neo-liberalism but he had one good point: he was not Mbeki, and it was hoped that he might be a new Moses to lead the people. After all, according to COSATU and SACP thinking, there must always be a great leader: the masses need to be led.

The "support for Cde Jacob Zuma," Blade Nzimande of the SACP recently told the NUM, exposed popular opposition to the crises of corruption, factionalism and personal careerism" in the ANC, "crises" that were "inherent in trying to build a leading cadre based on capitalist values and the symbiotic relationship between the leading echelons of the state and emerging black capital." The Party Youth League grandly stated that "Our defence and support for Jacob Zuma is the defence of the constitution."

Meanwhile, speaking of the upcoming Zuma corruption trial, Zweli Vavi of COSATU called for Zuma to be reinstated in his positions: ""We will ensure that whenever comrade Zuma appears in court, our people will demonstrate en-masse."

EXODUS WITHOUT A MAP

Nothing can better express the bankruptcy of the political outlook of COSATU and the SACP than these positions. Zuma is no different to Mbeki: another rich politician, another false Messiah who misleads the working class, another ANC scoundrel who would implement GEAR as much as Mbeki. In no way whatsoever would he break with the ANC policy of developing "a leading cadre based on capitalist values" and a "symbiotic relationship between the leading echelons of the state and emerging black capital."

However, there is nothing surprising about the COSATU and SACP position. Bound to the ANC by fear, flattery and a failed strategy - the two-stage theory that the ANC will open the door to socialism - and blinded by its traditional devotion to Congress and its leaders, the two organisations remain in a dead end. The fact that many of their leaders are only too eager to join the ANC leadership at the capitalist feast does not help either. In this situation, support for Zuma is certainly tragic but almost inevitable.

Support for Zuma allows the ANC to remain sacred and untouchable, and the politics of relying on a saviour untouched. A hard look at the nature of the transition can be avoided, and a serious struggle against capitalism postponed, yet again. All problems could be blamed on Mbeki and his faction: Zuma has been discovered to represent the shining soul of the ANC; Mbeki became Satan overnight. In return for COSATU and SACP backing in the Alliance and internal ANC battles, the structures hoped Zuma might - just might - be nicer than Mbeki and might - just might - listen to the working class for a while.

This is what the pro-Zuma mobilisations by working class organisations mean. The outcome of a disastrous politics, they don't take the working class out of the dead end that loyalty to the ANC involves. The only way out is a break with the ANC, not a false choice between Mbeki and Zuma. The ANC is not the solution: it is a large part of the problem faced by the workers and the poor.

anarcoafricanista
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Mensaje por anarcoafricanista » 16 Mar 2007, 14:48

Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism #7
http://www.zabalaza.net/index02.htm
December 2006

A FREE WORKING CLASS NEEDS FREE MINDS: MAY-BEE ANOTHER DAY

By PN


Most workers know increasingly little about May Day. Many have simply
forgotten it's meaning, and some are disillusioned. Instead of calling
it "Our day" many mindlessly speak of "Worker's Day," and think "Long
weekend". And the bosses give workers time off, appearing lenient and
generous, making the workers seem ungrateful, with no excuses to
complain.

GET RICH ON MAY DAY

Taking advantage of the apathy, enterprising bosses cash in on soccer
events, brewery production and other activities. They benefit from the
pain of workers and their communities, and take control of the minds and
lives of the masses, and distance them from discussing - and questioning
- their endless miseries.

Yet the workers are the ones who produce everything, yet have neither
control nor ownership of anything. We own our labour, but without food,
cannot exist at all. So, we are bound to sell our labour for next to
nothing, to the bosses who control everything we need to survive.

And the bosses have made it impossible for the working class people to
think and do things independently through laws and media under their
control. They use these as tools to protect and advance their interest
at our expense. Social needs are distorted by profit and power; the
wealth of society is not used to keep us alive, happy and healthy, but
to divide us.

In recent years many entertainment enterprises have been booming,
particularly in the south of Johannesburg region. The youth and the
unemployed are drawn into immoral activities, and accept highly
exploitative jobs just to make sure they don't miss the weekends,
especially the long ones.

Drinking beer and being a soccer fan has become a national hobby, and
used as a sign of patriotism: "love your country and be proud of the
black government". Even commemorations of human rights milestones like
Sharpeville, June 16 and Women's Day get drawn into the circle of
unthinking entertainment, escape from hard realities and empty
patriotism.

KWAITO AND CLASS STRUGGLE

Community radio stations were set up to convey the views of ordinary
people, allowing previously disadvantaged opportunities to express
themselves. The Kwaito music style seemed to be a promising weapon to
raise issues and awareness, because of its origin within black townships
and its reflection of our lives in the communities.

But this has not happened. Kwaito has been commercialised, and has
nothing to do with advancing the minds and lives of the people. The
everyday hardships of communities are presented as a hip lifestyle
choice, something to laugh about.

Instead of raising political issues, DJs and Kwaito glorify the
hardships of people, and make a living - like soccer and media stars -
ambassadors between the rich and poor, earning large amounts of money
and middle class lives.

Major companies move in Nike, Sasol, Coca Cola, Absa, Vodacom, Nokia,
MMW etc. - as sponsors, shaping people's minds, and leaving no stone
unturned. The masses, particularly the youth, who adore these stars,
take them as role models. But few can make it out of poverty, they end
up frustrated, with time wasted and nothing achieved during a vital
period of their lives. Rather than explore, improvise, demand and enjoy
life to its fullest, they become mentally crippled and caught up in
social and family demands.

UNEMPLOYMENT AND LOW WAGES

Those who are unemployed are faced with a pitiless situation of mental
and physical slavery. Their families close doors on them, calling them
loafers who belong nowhere in society. They are driven to the job
market, with its crumbs and exploitation. Like sheep, they wait at the
slaughtering pens, hoping to be next under the knife when the bosses
need new blood.

Many dream of work, and slaves to capitalism. The bosses appear as
kindly people who care and doing everything to save lives by doling out
a tiny number of jobs. And their mask of sympathy soon falls away.

Workers are thrown on the street for asking for clarity on contracts,
and the other workers learn to take care never to slightly upset their
masters, because there are hundreds other unemployed workers waiting and
starving, ever ready to jump to slaughtering pens. The workers fight
amongst each other, and the bosses become kings and queens, on guard 24
hrs a day. The governments back up the bosses, and the workers demands
for safety and a living wage are drowned out by the bosses' demands for
higher profits - despite already having sucked the workers dry.

The bosses are automatically excused for job losses and the workers are
the scapegoats. We are constantly reminded to protect our jobs, and
avoid trouble, because getting a job is almost impossible. Workers'
rights are walked over: the bosses alone decide, because if their
interests are not respected they will leave the country; other bosses
won't set their foot in the country. This would leave the workers alone,
and stranded, with no one to turn to and ask "Please, I want to be your
slave".

Wages are cut, as an excuse to employ more workers, or as an excuse to
retain existing workers. Workers' confidence is shattered, and their
basic needs become unthinkable: women give birth at work to keep their
jobs safe.

IMMIGRANTS AND DIVIDED LABOUR

It is common for bosses to prefer workers coming from countries
devastated by civil wars and famine. These workers are desperate,
rightless, often "illegal," and easy prey to bosses who can avoid any
responsibilities to cover for workers' health and safety. The immigrant
workers are not citizens, and the labour laws do not apply. This way
bosses don't have to worry about the precautions and safety equipment
and measures expected by the labour laws.

Because of these workers' extreme desperation, they have to accept
anything the boss decides. They have no one to turn to. The government
plays its part, smashing any possibilities for these people to raise
their heads, by randomly harassing and arresting them for identity
documents.

South African workers are pitted against the immigrants, told that they
are lazy, and instructed to "ask Mandela" for a job. In a situation of
mass unemployment, this provides breeding grounds for xenophobia and
hatred from South African workers against their fellow workers from
neighbouring countries. Blaming immigrants, rather than bosses, for
their misery, some South African workers call the immigrants insulting
names, and inform the police who the immigrants are, and where they
stay. This behaviour is driven by the jealousy and hatred that is the
by-product of poverty.

ETHNIC CONFLICTS

But this is not only happening to the immigrants. Amongst the African
workers there is a good deal of prejudice and distrust, especially in
the townships, hostels and squatter camps where migrants from different
parts of the countryside converge to find jobs. Many treat their shacks
as temporary camps, and long to return to the country.

The mindset of ethnic rivalry and the belief in a return to the country
makes it difficult for these communities to challenge the government
policies affecting our lives. Ideas like " This is not our home, we are
only here to work, as long as we have a place to sleep," and "There's no
use to fight for people who'll turn their back on you tomorrow, and "We
cannot be ruled by such-and-such nationality" are common enough. Such
sentiments were the grim centre of the cloud that hovered above the ANC
versus IFP massacres in the 1990s.

These ethnic divisions were also used during the rise of the mining
industry, where jobs were allocated on an ethnic basis, and workers were
housed in different ethnic hostels. People from a particular ethnic
group were, for example, often mine police. The chiefs played a role
too, recruiting people, providing written permission to work on the
mines, and the government did not allow the workers to settle in town.
They were always reminded that they belonged in the countryside and were
harassed and arrested by the police for pass offences.

So working class people's identities were deeply shaped by where they
came from, and the language they spoke. Whether immigrant, or Zulu, or
Xhosa, the worker often saw fellow-workers as aliens stealing jobs, as
traitors who stole the national wealth. Today we see this with
xenophobia, but also with the view that the ANC is a Xhosa party, and
that its capitalist policies were somehow caused by Xhosas - rather than
the ruling class.

The chiefs remain powerful, and the politicians use ethnicity and other
legacies of the past to lead the working class astray. This allows them
to implement their neo-liberal policies, without collective questioning
from the masses who vote these crooks into power. And all of this is
presented as in the ordinary people's interest.

It is called democracy and gender-equality because a few wealthy black
people drive fancy cars and mingle with wealthy Whites. The people are
told anyone can get rich: "just listen to the your black government"; if
you are poor, it is your own fault.

FREE YOUR MIND

These mental illusions - "get rich quick," "the immigrants steal jobs,"
"the struggle is over" - must be identified and rooted out so we can
become healthier and strong again. Surely we need to take care of things
that benefit our communities at the end of the day, and leave aside
anything that has a possible threat to our lives.

Surely the working class can take back its traditions, with community
soccer teams and genuine community media controlled collectively by the
people. These must be used as weapons to defend and protect ourselves
from the enemy.

Every human being must know and be aware on the tricks of the class
enemy. Those who choose to become traitors must do so - but not at our
expense.

Responder