Afri-Forum Youth Must Get a Life

11 November 2010



We are perturbed and disappointed that the Afri-forum youth has the temerity to believe that a racist poster purporting to express the views of SASCO is real and part of our policy. The poster is a hoax and does not represent the views of our organization at all. None of our structures made that poster. It is only those that want to de-campaign SASCO by creating false posters in our name that would have the time to produce such absurdities in our name. These things occur consistently in white campuses and usually produced by white racist students who want to portray SASCO as racist in order to mobilize anti-SASCO sentiment among students.



This occurs so often that we do not have the time to refute every hoax that is produced by racists in our name. We do not have proof that the so-called poster has ACTUALLY not been produced by Afri-forum members in order to later cry foul against our organization and present us as racists and xenophobes. We are convinced that there are forces that seek to tarnish the good name of our organization.



We are not an organization only for South Africans, our structures have a lot of foreign nationals in leading positions including in our National Executive Committee and within our officials. We do not treat our members as South Africans and others as foreign nationals. Everybody is one. We have a lot of African, coloured, Indian and white comrades in our structures, it is therefore also untrue that we are a racist organization. We have also always made it clear that comrade Julius Malema has nothing to do with our organization except from the fact that he is President of a fraternal structure. We even said “[w]hen we deal with our structures the name Julius Malema does not even form part of our vocabulary”.



If Afri-Forum youth intended for us to collectively deal with the issue of the hoax-poster, they would have engaged with us directly. Being the publicity seekers they are, they spoke to the media instead. We will not bother ourselves to respond to Afri-forum youth, they will receive a response from the media they spoke to in the first instance. We call on the leadership of Afri-forum youth to stop grandstanding and playing to the gallery. The problems that face the youth in our society are far-reaching and need more than anger, egos and cheap publicity stunts to resolve such as those from Afri-forum youth.



Revolutionary songs are banned and cannot be sung because of Afri-forum youth and we have not raised a word in protest simply because we sought to ensure that we unite the country. Is Afri-forum not satisfied with the damage it does to the unity and cohesion of our society? We find it baffling that it is always Africans that are mobilized to be moderate and understanding while our new democrats whose parents benefited from apartheid are the ones that must tell us what is and what is not. If Afri-forum wants to take us to the Human Rights Commission for a hoax-poster, let them do so, they have time. We are busy trying to resolve the effects of apartheid in the education system.



For details Contact:

Mbulelo Mandlana (President)

071 879 3408

Or

Lazola Ndamase (Secretary General)

082 679 8718

Breaking the Ice, a Response to "An Old Stranger in the Mist ( Julius/ Manamela)" by Nqaba Bhanga

(Note: To read Nqabas Article click on the title)

Comrade Cabral always moved from the premise that we must, “tell no lies, and claim no easy victories” and I think that is just but one thing that our ‘Stranger’ (Nqaba Bhanga) can learn from this fearless revolutionary. In response to the bile that he wrote, I must admit that it would be a difficult exercise to talk to the issues that are raise by Nqaba without talking to him as an individual, who is a COPE member, but I will try. Marxism has taught us well that there is no one who can raise issues impartially without representing and or defending his or her own class interests and we for sure know the class interest that Nqaba is representing.

Upon reading the article, it becomes apparent that despite his years in the movement Nqaba did not in anyway grasp the essence of the revolutionary alliance, if that is not so, he is clearly suffering from historical amnesia and the tragic accident that caused that is known to all of us.

Our alliance is premised on the realisation of the Freedom Charter objectives, which the ANC/ ANC YL views as ultimate objective whilst the SACP/YCL, including COSATU views them as minimum goals towards the realisation of the ultimate objective, which is socialism. Failure to grasp this can be remedied with political education. Equally so, knowing this whilst intentionally distorting it is tantamount to political thuggery.

Yes indeed the YCL is a youth wing of the SACP, but due to the nature of the alliance the YCL has the same interest in the direction the ANC takes because that direction is part of the realisation of its ultimate objectives. What Nqaba seems to suggest is that there was no reason for the alliance in the first place and that the alliance was just a mere unity of convenience. This is a clear historical distortion and similar to Nqaba, people who have held this view have either being expelled by the movement or left on their own. Turning the ANC into a narrow nationalist movement is a horrendous mistake to ever make and Cde Mbeki for sure knows that.

Nqaba wrongly asserts, “The Polokwane Development missed a every (very) important point, defining a tactical relationship and strategic relationship.” This is wrong in that Polokwane adopted the Strategy and Tactics document that explains the nature of our struggle, more especially on how that struggle should be waged. It can be said that the Strategy and Tactics document is not a document of the alliance but of the ANC but it has clear linkages to the party programme, “South African Road to Socialism.” A person who cannot see this is either a narrow nationalist or an anti-communist; we can forgive those that did not give themselves enough time to read these documents.

Nqaba fails to assert that the main problem here is between those who want to use the movement for personal enrichment and those that view this as a compromise on the programme and therefore intolerable. It is not a clear conflict between petty bourgeoisie/nationalist and communist, as many nationalist disagree with this ‘new tendency’.

Yes indeed the divergent opinions from the YCL and ANC YL leaders must not be individualised, but they should be located within the broad scope of those who want to abuse state power and benefit from tenders (some nationalist) and those who believe that some of these acts are refocusing us from our strategic mission (communist, but not all of them).

The battle is indeed ideological, but not in the narrow terms as Nqaba puts it, but because of those who disagreed with the 1996 class project not only because they were contra to its state looting and corrupt agenda, but only because they were not part of the abusing inner core and they therefore thought Polokwane brings the opportunity for looting, communist such as Gwede, Buti, Blade and others therefore become obstacles to this agenda, hence the rise of narrow nationalism and anti-communism. It’s similar to tribalism. Lest we forget that the ANC was formed to unite the people of South Africa.
Tell no lies

The Looming ANC NEC Class War Warrants Intensive Political Education

Calls for intensification of political education made by many including the ANC Secretary General Cde. Gwede Mantashe in his contribution to the ANC today of 16 October sheds some light into the nature and direction that the movement is supposed to be going.

Comrade Gwede’s contribution is a wake-up call and it will assist us towards the resolution of the problem that Cde. Gugile Nkwinti pointed out about 9 years ago when he made an observation that comrades who are properly trained in the movements’ policies and programme are a diminishing proportion of the people that currently populate it. This leads to a situation where it is easy to buy them.

The Communist Manifesto’s assertion that the history of all hitherto existing society is that of class struggle is true reflection of society, but equally so the theory of the National Democratic Revolution which talks about the class alliance between the working class with some sections of the middle and upper class, who share the same objectives with those of the working class, is also relevant.

In the South African context, this is reflected in the Revolutionary Alliance of three different but interrelated and interdependent organisations. This Alliance is led by the ANC, which is a mass liberation movement, with working class organisations such as SACP and COSATU as allies.

The SACP is a working class organisation that strives for Socialism and COSATU is a revolutionary trade union movement which transcends petty economic analysis of work place struggles as it gives them political content and locates them within the working class struggle for socialism.

The ANC on the other hand is a multi-class organisation which is biased towards the working class. Because it is a multi-class this means its ideological position is shaped and revived by different sections of society and in most cases these are classes which are supposed to be in antagonistic terms in society.

The current NEC of the ANC is indicative of this and the current differences also bring this to mind. The fact that the ANC is multi-class, does not mean that the ANC is ideological neutral and neither does it mean it performs some form of a ‘class balancing act’.

Honest comrades have been forever saying that the ANC has an ideology which is premised on the principles of the Freedom Charter and clearly articulated in the programme of the National Democratic Revolution.

Comrade Gwede is right the current ANC Strategy and Tactics document recognises the leading role of the “African majority working class” in the National Democratic Revolution. This basically means that the middle class and the emergent black elites joined the ANC because they agreed with this agenda of the working class.

Throughout the period in which this revolutionary alliance has been in public office, there has been a systematic campaign to project the ANC as a neoliberal capitalist organisation in alliance with working class organisations such as COSATU and SACP. This has been mostly done by those from the emergent capitalist class, but also by some within Marxists circles (“The Sectarian Left”).

This has been the cause for many differences in the movement and this can be illustrated by the emergence of the ‘1996 class project’ which has, in some way, rolled back, but replaced now by what the SACP Special Congress Discussion Document calls the “new tendency”.

The call for intensification of political education will indeed help us navigate through these and many other challenges because it will help us understand that it is the emergent or aspiring capitalist who ideological joined the working class in the ANC and the movement at large and not the reverse.

Political education will teach us that communist are people who are with and for the workers and the poor hence they will always contests any privatisation, flawed tender process and javelin throwing even if these benefits people within the ranks of the movement.

This is the reason why communist will always be in conflict with sections of the emergent capitalist class. Political education will therefore show us as to where these whole anti-communist sentiments come from and why they will always be in the movement and how they can be dealt with.

Political education will lead to political and organisational independence as it will teach us as to how to deal with influence of money in our movement. It is political education that will help us formulate a pragmatic approach to the challenges we are facing and not just interpret them as a attack against Gwede Mantashe, Blade Nzimande or Phumulo Masualle and others.

Political Education will help us navigate thought these problems by teaching us that “Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.”

Revolutionary Regards

Threats on Our South African Road to Socialism

I writing this after the statements attributed to Billy Masetlha in the Mail and Guardian and I think it is improper to just think that Billy Masetlha’s statements we a distortion or fabrication by the newspaper. When we said we want the President of the ANC to serve another term, we said that it is, amongst other things, because some people are already engaged in these debates and are beginning to position themselves and what we see is that they do not have an agenda to advance the cause of the people but want to serve their narrow BEE interest.

A frank analysis of this tendency is provided by the SACP Special Congress Discussion Document titled, “Building Working Class Hegemony on a Terrain of the National Democratic Struggle.”

In analysing the balances of forces in the battle of ideas the document indicates that,“Over the past several years, in the battle of ideas within our movement a broad front of tendencies and ideological orientations got to be mobilised against the “1996 class project”. The SACP played a leading role in this process. However, it would be an error for the SACP to imagine that within this broad front everyone agreed with the positions of the Party, or necessarily disagreed with the core underlying ideology of “the 1996 class project” (as opposed to having personal grudges, for instance, against it).”

This paragraph does not need to be unpacked and elsewhere in the document it is analysed as to why these people got to be mobilised against the 1996 class project, even thought they did not disagree with the core underlying ideology of the project. It states that this was because they, like SACP and COSATU, dismissed the manner in which the 1996 class project abused the state in order to advance its factionalist ends.

In analysing these concerns the document states that, “In other cases the concern appears to have been more opportunistic – i.e. a grievance at being excluded from the abusing inner circle – rather than a principled rejection of the idea that personal wealth, or access to bureaucratic power should be used to advance personal accumulation interests.”

We must always take these issues into cognisance and we must be always ready to fight against what comrade Mao calls ‘non-antagonistic’ forces within our movement. Cronin puts it bluntly that “The fact that they are “non-antagonistic” does not mean that they are not real political contradictions ultimately located in objective realities.”

A Ground for Building Working Class Hegemony

Comrades this is an attempt to start the debate around the SACP Special National conference Discussion document titled “Building Working Class Hegemony on the Terrain of a National Democratic Struggle (2009).” This is an insightful document.

Another thing is that there are discussions about the YCL provincial conference, some other comrades have already started discussing the personalities that should lead, but what we must know is that at the end of the day and similar to the outcomes of the ANC recent ANC conferences, the working class must lead.

The silence of Communist in the Eastern Cape in the SACP pre-conference debate raise diverse interpretations and here we don’t attempt to deal with them but what is important is an account on the silence, if there is any.

The watershed Eastern Cape ANC provincial conference could have never came at a better time than when the South African Communist Party is preparing for its Special National Congress in Limpopo this December.

It is an undisputable fact that the provincial conference refocused our energies, and we are still having conference hangover, but here we want to connect where our energies are and how this place connects with the whole discussion on “Building Working Class Hegemony on the Terrain of a National Democratic Struggle.”

The SACP provincial secretary’s pre-conference article, “Enrichment of few must be stopped at ANC conference ...” goes a long way in explaining the link between the EC conference and the SACP pre-conference debates.

The ANC is a class contested national liberation movement and it can be said that in the EC conference the working class was faced with a tough contests by sections of the new black capitalist class.

In that conference the foreign capitalistic tendency that seeks to redefine the National Democratic Revolution and reposition the ANC as a capitalist organization, which is in alliance with the working class was defeated. It was boldly stated that the situation was the reverse.

This tendency was dismissed and defeated because it tries to paint a picture that the ANC is a capitalist organization and the working class has joined it because they agree with the agenda of capitalist.

Dismissing and defeating this tendency can indeed be linked to “Building working class hegemony on the Terrain of a National Democratic Struggle.” We must always know that we will always encounter these types of tendencies on our ‘South African Road to Socialism.’

Communist Participation in Liberal Parliaments: Reconciling the David and the Dominic Documents

(Note: You can access the documents by both David Masondo and Dominic Tweedie by clicking in the title of this post).

I don’t see any fundamental difference between what comrade David and Dominic are saying on their documents. As a person that has been following the debates in the YCL Discussion Forum, which I think got out of hand and strayed away from the conceptions of both documents, I believe it is proper for me to reconcile the arguments posed in both documents.

In his document comrade Dominic argues that, “The number of seats held by the communists is not critical. The presence of communists in parliament is tactical. In some circumstances there might even be a boycott of elections or of parliament. But as a rule the communists have good reasons for wanting to be in parliament.” This point has no difference with the arguments of comrade David as he does not argue for a mere increase in the number of communist in parliament, but stress the need for them to be accountable to the SACP, as the title of the document explains.

Comrade Dominic goes on to correctly argue that parliament, “is a relatively minor site of struggle and views on parliamentary tactics should therefore never be allowed to divide or split the revolutionary forces.” In relation to the first argument of Comrade Dominic comrade David is scared of the fact that in the current arrangement Communist are not represented in Parliament, as those that are there do not report to the party of Communists. Bear in mind that comrade David is not saying we should have communist in parliament accounting to the SACP and it ends there, he treats communist participation in parliament tactically.

Comrade David’s document also says nothing about a break of the SACP with the ANC, unless comrade David said this in an informal discussion with Dominic, until this come to the fore, those remarks (if there are any) remain unknown.

The main point that clearly connects the document is when comrade Dominic argues that, “Parliament is part of the enemy camp and party members go there as agitators to carry out party decisions under the command and control of the party leadership outside parliament..” Comrade David wants party cadres in parliament to be accountable to the “party leadership outside parliament”, and the title of his document says a lot about this (Independence of the SACP in the post-2009).

David’s document can be summed up by his quote when he says, “SACP cadres are in the legislatures as ANC members and under the whip of the ANC, and the modes of accountability as well as the tasks of communists in the legislatures in relation to the independent role of the Party in the legislatures are not very clear.”

I am more than convinced that there is no point of fundamental difference in both documents, but these things are expressed differently in both documents. Both cadres should be commended for drafting these documents and the documents should not be viewed as in opposition to each other.

Lastly I admire comrade David for not reducing himself, to the fruitful but rather unhealthy email debate in the forum, where this was reduced into this person knows this Marxist document and can quote it very well and that one has made a spelling mistake and that one has mistakenly said the Congress of the People organised the Defiance Campaign rather than the Congress Alliance.

In as much as comrade Dominic follows the Critical Pedagogy, he does not live it, because he tends to scare most of us with classical Marxists documents and big references, every time when he is engaged. This is not to say referencing is wrong, but we should remember that this is a Young Communist League Discussion Forum, hence young communists, like me, decide to abstain in discussions where Dominic is involved.

Aluta Continua

Assessing the Class Character of the Recent Community Protests

The articles by Richard Pithouse and Dr Xolela Mangcu which appeared on Business Day of 23 July 2009 are indeed thought provoking and fruitful for those who are interested in the resolution of the recent community protests and any other protests.

The Richard article is sparking a debate about the nature and form of our political system. Unlike those that don’t know him, I am grateful that I have an opportunity to be lectured political philosophy by him at Rhodes University. I thought that I would not do justice to his article if I just responded without directly getting clarity on some of the things he is talking about in the article, so I have just approached him and he has tried (though not satisfactory) to clarify me on some of the issues that comes out upon engaging with the article.

Firstly I totally agree with him and Xolela Mangcu when they argue that viewing the protests as some form of revolt against “poor service delivery” and if “service delivery” is enhanced they will eventually stop is rather simplistic and ignores their underlying cause. As Richard stress it is indeed true that, “ These protests are much more fruitfully understood as a demand for a more inclusive mode of development, in the double sense of including poor people in cities and of including all poor people in developmental project.” What is that mode of development and who leads it, are questions we want to know.

Richard does not provide any workable solution to the problem that he has just pointed out. When I approached him he said the reason why he did not do that is because of editorial economy, in other words newspaper space. I then asked him about what he would have said if he had more space. He said he would stress for democratisation of local politics, where the would be strong community movements that would make sure that the councillor is hold into account and that all the needs and demands of the people are not only listened to but are taken seriously.

He also said democratisation of political party politics should also be central and that things should be done from a bottom-up approach not a top-down one. I agree with him on this, it is indeed true that a municipal ward of 4, 000 people cannot be led by 400 paid up members of a certain political party, and the people are only there to vote during elections. But how to do this is what Richard does not provide.

The reality on the ground (perhaps for me) is that there are few popular community or social movements in our communities, which are outside the liberation movement and do not support or are aligned to a particular political party. Even when they exist, not even half of the communities in which they are located in participate in them. What we need from intellectuals such as Richard is how to mobilise our communities, not to launch a movement against political parties but to strengthen, advance and deepen democratic participation within our political parties, more especially the liberation movement.

Xolela Mangcu proposes that we use the Black Consciousness Movements “strategy and philosophy of community based self-reliant development”. What is of importance in Mangcu’s article is his stress that we need to have a community mobilisation strategy that accommodates both the “width” and “ depth” approaches to housing policy.
At least Mangcu does not make the mistake made by Richard, but he also does not explain what he mean by a community mobilisation strategy, instead he challenges us to look at examples around the world.

I am not basically suggesting that these intellectuals should come up with technocratic ideals or bullet points on what should be done to address the situation, but I am stressing that they ignored the economic system we live under.

The two articles on the main, fail to acknowledge that capitalism is the real enemy of the people here and that the people are locked into poverty because of the structural discrepancies that it always reproduce. For as long as capitalism is the dominating mode of production and distribution there will always be public protests, in which the state ( regardless of which political party is in government) will always be on the wrong side, ready to repress with police and even reinforce with the army. This is basically why in Marxists circles the capitalist state is best understood as “a product and manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms,” and even further as “an organ of class rule.”