HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA AND ANC 20 YEARS LATER

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1^st Draft of

“The history of South Africa and ANC 20 Years Later”

by IZ Memani

Chapter 1

1994

In 1994 South Africa managed to get its independence from an Apartheid regime which was mostly controlled by white supremacy after a negotiated settlement agreed at Kempton Park. It was after CODESA 1 failed to reach an agreement by all those political parties that were invited to participate in shaping the South Africa that we see today. One of the mostly critical agenda items was the question of the land, how will be the land shared among all South Africa who live in it. The PAC was of the view that white settlers should be expelled from the land and that the land should be taken back to its rightful owners, blacks who have suffered for the past 300 years or more. It is a well known fact that only 13% of the land  was allocated to blacks by those architects of Apartheid and that blacks were slaves in their own land and that white supremacy created a divide and rule principle. This was the turning point in the Kempton Park resolutions and that some of those from the PAC felt that the Property rights only protected whites as it was with their own terms and that they should continue owning those farms which were allocated to them by the National Party.

Despite these challenges our founding fathers of the South Africa Today fought for the principle that there should not be any war even though there were fights that were there even early before the dawn of democracy manifested in your train killings, Boipatong, SADF killing innocent people during 1990 to 1993. This was seen when to leaders of the Kempton Park resolutions not seeing eye to eye during this time in that  Mandela on one side would protect the operations of Umkhonto we Sizwe and De Klerk would defend the operation of the third force led by the SADF. Later AWB also came into the picture by demolition the Kempton Park entrance claiming that Afrikaners were under attack by these negotiations that were held at that venue.

To fast track the process we see all parties agreeing to take part in the first democratic elections which were held on the 27^th April 1994 where the ANC managed to secure a majority win in those elections with the birth of the democracy that we now all enjoy today. Mr Nelson Mandela was elected President of the country, the first black President since Jan Van Reebeck came into this land. The task ahead was not going to be easy as all members of the society were looking living the Freedom Charter, “South Africa belongs to all those who live in it”, was this going to be achieved? The purpose of this exercise is to look at South Africa 20 years later, what has happened? Have we managed to gain the principles of the Freedom Charter? Why do we have so many agendas in the rule of South Africa Today? Why there are so many political parties contesting elections every time we have elections? These are some but fey questions that this exercise will try to look into as we celebrate the 20 years of freedom from slavery and oppression by white supremacy.

In 1996 a Constitution of South Africa was agreed upon and signed by President Mandela in Sharpville which was celebrated by most sectors of our societies from the Religious, Business, Labour, NGOs, youth, and so on. Does this constitution need to be reviewed after 20 years? Are we still on the right track? Some of the research that I have conducted will include the some members of the churches who are of the opinion that this Constitution does not serve the interest that they thought it would bring by these freedoms that we enjoy today especially on the same sex mirages, freedom gained by foreign nationals, moral decay, children rights, and all the social ills that we face today, 20 years later after the democracy that we celebrate today. Roman Dutch law is seen as dominating the courts than the Customary Traditional law, is this good or a challenge as we witness more rape cases and abuse of children than it was the case during the years of Apartheid. If everyone has a right to live in this country, why do we have more violent abuse against women, children and the most vulnerable members of our society if this Constitution was intended to protect them? Why do criminals have more rights than the law abiding citizens? Why it is so easy for criminals to escape their punishment and come back to communities and repeat the same offences if this Constitution was intended to protect the majority of citizens? These were some of the questions that we need to be asking ourselves as we celebrate 20 years of our democracy.

My research on this topic also looks at the role that politicians play in the challenges that we face as a nation in that have they managed to assist the nation in addressing the social ills that we face or have they added salt in the wound. How long does it take for a nation to achieve social cohesion and start building the nation that was envisaged by our founding fathers when they created this Constitution that we celebrate 20 years later? My focus then looks at the ruling political party, the ANC as it has managed to create platforms for all of us to participate in shaping the democracy that we would want to see today. I have also looked at the role played by media, the opposition parties, state institutions, civil society, and ordinary citizens and residents.

South Africa has a rich history and a story to tell for other nations to learn from its experience since democracy was established in 1994, are we telling those stories to please our masters or are telling those stories to teach our next generations to learn and improve in the challenges that we face as a nation. It will not help all of us if we will keep on distorting to facts from reality. Do we want people to believe that we are celebrating 20 years of our freedom while only a few selected individuals have managed to manipulate the situation and have used power to concoct reality from fact? The Constitution is one document that as ordinary citizens should have learnt and mustered but the reality is that, foreign nationals have managed to understand and know it more than ordinary citizens and have managed to use these gaps in benefiting from the freedom that was gained 20 years ago.

TOWARDS MANGAUNG CONFERENCE

This paper is only based on the opinions and research that I have gone through in understanding the three administrations that have managed to run South Africa since democracy was established. I will only be serving as a doctor who has a patient that complains of pains all over the body, in order for me to assess him /her I will have to go through the basics so as a can diagnose the problem. Below you will find some of the topics that will assist us in checking where are we since the negotiations started after the unbanning of liberation movements. What was happening then during 1992? A year before the Interim Constitution was released to the nation, did the Patriotic Front Movement managed to achieve the intentions that was aimed for? Are South Africans happy with the developments that transpired since then? When looking at the first two administrations compared to this one, is there any progress and will people still vote ANC into power? Does our constitution really work for the entire South African population? I will not be able to answer all these questions and come up with the antidote that will cure AIDS or solve the challenges that we face as South Africans. When one look at the developments in Marikana or the Rustenburg mines, you will note that ANC is in a very awkward state than it was when it came to power. It is losing support and popularity faster than one would have taught and all this is because of leadership crisis that it faces as one of the participants of the tripartite alliance partners.

When looking at the Patriotic Front Movement intentions we realize that we are more divided as a nation than when we were in 1992 despite what was intended. We need the revival of the Patriotic Front Movement for all South Africans to have a spirit of having a one common goal even if we come from different backgrounds, in the topics below I will deal with this in a more detailed perspective when looking as to why ANC should refrain in participating as a political party but serve as the custodian of our democracy and become a cultural movement. If every South African can practice ANC traditions and promote policies that are aimed at the development of the African mind, we will be able to convince all countries in Africa to become nationalists and promote African way of life and the spirit of Ubuntu (Africanism). After 1994, our first president comes to power with the RDP programme that was aimed at the development of all South Africans, blacks in particular. I am of the opinion that this is an ongoing programme as we still have to build more houses, bridges, roads, and develop the infrastructure of our country. The challenge is that despite these efforts, not everything was perfectly done; before De Klerk stepped down he warned the Mandela administration in that it was an expensive exercise and would difficult to maintain. By then uTata did not see some of the challenges rose by one of the oppressors and wanted to do things his way, you will look at the cadre deployment strategies that was introduced by his administration. Mr Steve Tshwete was deployed to run the Sports, Arts and Culture Department because he was good in rugby at Robin Island, so “Steve you will run sport as you captained our team in prison”. I would recommend that this policy has become a pain in the back of ANC as we have unqualified people running departments without knowing what needs to be done, but are giving kickbacks to fellow cadres. One would have thought that the ministry of Monitoring would have resolved this crisis, but we are worse than we were since the current administration took over, why should we continue with people who cannot deliver?

A new administration need to come up and evaluate all contracts of government employees and those who do not qualify for certain positions need to be released as this has created a bad image of our country as we still have this backlog of unemployment and this gap between the rich and poor. GEAR and ASGISA policies did not come with any solutions either, thus when looking at the leadership question below, I am of the view that we had a leader and manager, manager but not a leader, and a leader but not a manager. We need someone who will become a leader and a manager in Mangaung so as we can have a better South Africa. The past will only help us in looking at the challenges that we have experimented, the present should assist us in shaping what we intend to achieve in the nearest future. That is what this paper will look at in addressing the challenges that the ANC faces, by conducting self introspection, self criticism, just as a parent who has a 20 year old problem child, what is it that you do? Do you chase that child away, so that he becomes a problem of other people? Or do you look at ways in which you can help and shape this child in becoming a better citizen as he has matured and can take part in the discussions around the table? It is no longer a child but an adult who can sit in the NEC meetings, as deployed by his constituency. You will also learn below on this, about the Fikile and Thabo versus Junju and JZ scenarios below. You don’t have to be autocratic as things might back fire on you and everyone in the family will vote you out. But if you nature, develop, shape and curve the child, and channel his energies to better use, you would have build a leader that you would envisage to achieve.

After having looked at the developments of the way our country is shaping under the current leadership, one gets very worried as to whether will we manage to move forward without any more loss of blood and lives as we move to the place where ANC was formed 100 years ago (1912). My concerns are based on the way on which things are moving and the belief that bullet vests will be the only protection needed as we move towards Mangaung. This will be the turning point for the lives of ordinary South Africans since we are all aware that these elections will be critical in shaping the history of South Africa. I have raised a few topics below that will look at challenges that we face today in trying to find solutions in shaping this ideal country. As we all know that ANC was formed on the principles of the consternation of ideas (battle of ideas) and democratic centralism that I believe that are not practical at some branch, provincial or national levels. I say this because in some cases ideas are suppressed by others who might be at positions and are not doing anything to improve the lives of ordinary people and when you raise your opinions it looks like you are challenging and defying the leadership. In the spirit of democratic centralism principle I am of the opinion that South Africa needs a mother who can lead us to the future and lead like Joyce Banda in Malawi through the mentorship of Thabo Mbeki and /or Motlante. But then, will two centers of power be acceptable within ANC? JZ has proposed that if elected in Mangaung, he will not stand as the country’s president in 2014, why now will he accept something that he opposed in Polokwane? What guarantee do we have that he will abide to this, come 2014?

Topics at hand are as follows: -

1.      Leadership needed to lead ANC after 2014

·         History of ANC Presidents

·         Role of President Jacob Zuma on Juliu Malema as ANCYL President

·         A Manager and Leader

·         Open Caucus at the Mangaung Conference

2.      History and Lessons learnt from the past

3.      Through the eye of the needle

4.      Status of ANC Branches

5.      Moral Regeneration and the our Societal Values

6.      Where are we in terms of NDR, Is Tripartite Alliance still relevant

7.      Should ANC be a cultural movement instead of being a political party?

1.                 Leadership needed to lead ANC after 2014

What kind of leadership do we need today that will build and unify the broad church movement that was formed early in the 1900s. You will see below that the ANC was formed with the intention of creating a better life for all South African citizens who live in it. Does then the current leadership that was elected at the Polokwane keep up with their promises? It will be yes and no at the same time, yes in that there has been a lot of an Infrastructural improvement, built up schools, and increase in membership in KZN. Not all Ministers are not looking at self-enrichment as the president is depicting himself to the nation with some ministers also promoting this way of life that is in contrast with the ANC principles.  Looking at the President, he has managed to keep up with his promises? No, on his opening address earlier this year, he has promised to create about 500 000 jobs and we have not managed to get response as to how far jobs have been created. We have only seen his son’s involvement in the DRC, his nephew with the Aurora mine, the 203 million Rands revamp of his house in Kandla, 60 billion Rands annual expenditure for his polygamist family life style. Below you will learn of ANC Presidents who were selfless in building up the organisation that most South Africans are proud to be associated with.

On his direct line or help line, no statistics have been reported as of today, it seem to be more of a public stunt nothing more, we need reports as to how many South Africans have benefitted out of this initiative. Though at first it seemed to be a good intention, not productive has come out of it as most of the people I have interviewed are not happy with the responses, at some cases the line been out of line. Departmental status, most departments have not been able to deliver on their promises except for a few that I can recall namely, Health, Safety and Security on shoot to kill, Home Affairs, Transport on e-toll, thus I call for open caucus system to be re-introduced as detailed below. After Polokwane, South Africans were promised key priorities, like youth employment, women empowerment, education, safety and crime free zone, rural development and others. Yes our President has managed to ensure that the country goes back ten years back (from what has been achieved by his predecessors) as he does not add value on the development of the African mind and only focuses on improving the conditions of lives of those who are close to him, his family, friends and the entire elite group seen to be enjoying themselves at the expense of the electorate that has voted ANC into power.

•          History of ANC Presidents

A good brief explanation appears on the ANC website, and I have taken some information from there in order for me to understand as to what needs to be done in order to improve lives of the ordinary citizens. I am of the opinion that Dr. Pallor Jordan should have been given an opportunity to give lectures about the history of ANC presidents as he has done before. He would have given a Nation some clear picture as to what happened during those years of struggle not what JZ has done, my question is what will happen when it comes to Mandela, Mbeki and him? Who will give those lectures? I would want to see a picture of our history being distorted for the benefit of public stunt. Our people need to understand the sacrifices that these leaders fought for, and this could have been extended to all those who have made their mark during this period, people such as Walter Sisulu, David Webster, Molly Blackburn, Cde Mzala, Andrew Mlangeni, and others. Mandela could not have been Mandela if Sisulu did not adopt him as a brother and tutored and shaped him to what he is today. Thus below, in the topic of looking whether ANC should refrain from political life and become a cultural movement than being a political party topic, my argument is based that most South Africans do not know their history and those who were born after 1994 are getting more lost. Thus most young people are getting attracted in bad experiments such as Satanism since the leadership is no longer consistent as it used to be. People are polluted with things that some leaders think are good for everyone but have never been tested to prove whether they have been good or bad, nothing is new under the sun, if we practice the culture of ANC as a nation we might understand as to why these leaders became part of the ANC. It will be sad that Thabo will not be attending his lecture this afternoon because the ANC is not in good space and thus I am also of the opinion that transition is needed in this organisation. The history of ANC leaders is as follows from the ANC website: -

John Langalibalele Dube

John Langalibalele Dube was born in Natal in 1871. He was the son of Rev. James Dube one of the first ordained pastors of the American Zulu Mission. John Dube's grandmother was one of the first Christians to be converted by the American Daniel Lindley. There are many contradictory views and judgements on Dube's life. Let us take a few samples. B.W. Vilakazi, a poet and author, wrote in 1946 that Dube was "a great, if not the greatest, black man of the missionary epoch in South Africa" and earlier A.S. Vil-Nkomo had written in the same vein: Dube was "one who comes once in many centuries - No one else in his education generation has accomplished so much with such meagre economic means. He was scholar, gentleman, leader, farmer, teacher, politician, patriot and philanthropist".

There were other judgements. To the Governor of Natal in 1906 Dube was "a pronounced Ethiopian who ought to be watched" and John X. Merriman, a Cape "liberal" described Dube in 1912 as a "typical Zulu, with a powerful cruel face. Very moderate and civilised, spoke extraordinarily good English ...". A little later he commented:  "Dube in conversation gave me a glimpse of national feeling which reminded me of Gokhale. How they must hate us - not without cause."

Howard Pim, another "liberal", found Dube frankly "puzzling": "I should say he was strong-willed and a great egotist; but his effect on me is curiously neutral. I am neither attracted nor repelled by him. Apparently the people who get on with him do so with the aid of a little flattery".

I.B. Tabata - in his characteristic style and fashion - referred to Dube (in his 1948 letter to Mandela) as a "principal of some secondary school in Natal" who was simply "a willing stooge in the hands of the Herrenvolk" and has 'led the Zulu back to tribalism, where they stagnate today". One can only agree with Shula Marks who comments that some of these remarks reveal more about the commentators rather than about Dube. Significance of Ohlange

Dube was educated at Inanda and Amanzimtoti (later Adams College). In 1887 he accompanied the missionary W.C. Wilcox to America. There he studied at Oberlin College while supporting himself in a variety of jobs and lecturing on the need for industrial education in Natal. He went back to Natal but soon resumed to the U.S. for further training and to collect money for a Zulu industrial school - as he called it - along the lines of the Tuskegee Institute.

In 1901 he was able to achieve his ambition on 200 acres of land in the Inanda district where he established the Zulu Christian Industrial School at Ohlange. Ohlange is within a stone's throw of Phoenix settlement where Gandhi started the newspaper, Indian Opinion, and not far from the dense religious settlement of AmaNazarethi, the Nazareth people, founded the prophet Shembe. One of Dube's achievements at this time was the establishment of a Zulu/English newspaper Ilanga lase Natal (Sun of Natal). He began to establish his political reputation.

The establishment of Ohlange signified a general ferment in the Amakholwa community at the turn of the century. This ferment expressed itself in the independent churches and political organisations which were being formed. There were other sources of influence. Dube was drawing on the prevalent thinking among Blacks in South Africa at the time, and this in turn was influenced by some trends in black thought in the USA. In Natal this black American influence was particularly strong at the time as a result of the American Zulu Mission. Dube's experiences in the States, especially the influence of Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Institute had shaped his ideas on Ohlange; the finances for his school came largely from the States and from the same sources who supported Tuskegee. But this was not more than inspiration for the founding of Ohlange.

His formative influences came from the American Zulu Mission in Natal. In the 1880s Dube was still a student at Amanzimtoti. The new head of the school, the missionary W.G. Goodenough, realised that the only way to obtain more aid was to satisfy the new government requirements to provide "industrial education' . In 1884-85 Jubilee Hall was built by the pupils of the school themselves. An industrial department was established which came to lay an increasingly important role in the life of the school

By the time Dube left for the States for the first time, printing, shoe-making, blacksmithing, bee-keeping, bricklaying, bookkeeping, book-binding and cartography were being taught at Amanzimtoti. This "industrial education" was the brain-child of the colonial government and what the missionaries did, was to support it as the American Zulu Mission general letter for 1889 confirms:

 "If the Zulus are ever to occupy any worthy status in this colony they must be educated in every kind of labour. Missionaries are looking forward with more and more favour upon the industrial training of the native as a valuable feature of: missionary work" This was Dube's introduction to "practical education" and self-help. He lectured and wrote on this subject. At the age of seventeen he preached to American congregations.

The colonial government soon changed its tactics: they no longer supported it, on the contrary they aimed at its suppression. The white workers and the government in Natal feared "competition" from African - and Indian - artisans in the 1890s. In 1893 government regulations discriminated against secondary schools and substituted an emphasis on "training the mass of the Africans to the lowest level of skill necessary for the labour market" with the result that Amanzimtoti was on the verge of collapse. In 1895 government grants were withdrawn from schools if the products of their industrial work were "allowed to be sold or disposed of in such a manner as to compete with general trade, or if the school was in any way responsible for or associated with the panting and publishing of any newspaper.

This regulation was directed against the Anglican St. Alban's College which produced the African newspaper, Inkanyiso, but the proviso was later used against Dube. We relate this story to dove home the point that Dube's choosing to start an African industrial school and three years later to pant and publish a newspaper on its premises was almost a path of confrontation - a direct challenge to the colonial authorities and the white workers.

Dube and the Bambata Rebellion

Dube bitterly opposed the arrest and trial of Dinizulu in connection with the 1906 Bambata rebellion and actively assisted in raising funds for his defence. Dinizulu, son of the last Zulu king was,.for Africans in South Africa, the symbol of past independence and at their identity as a people - and this is something which Dube, with his recollections of and pride in his African past, was to remain acutely aware of for the rest of his life. The Natal government attempted to suppress Ilanga lase Natal before and during the Bambata Rebellion - it was the object of constant suspicion. Dube publicised Dinizulu's arrest. His relations with the Royal House were to be strong and so enduring that by the 1930's he was acting as their chief adviser, and worked closely with the Regent, Mshlyeni. In 1909 Dube was a member of the delegation to Britain to protest against the Act of Union and in 1912 he accepted the Presidency of the ANC in spite of the pressures put on him by his preoccupation with education. It is said that in 1912 Dube addressed a group of Africans in Zululand to explain the new movement (the ANC) and appeal for unity. A member of the audience shouted:  "I thank Bambata. I thank Bambata very much. Would this spirit might continue! I do not mean the Bambata of the bush who perished at Nkandbla, but I mean this new spirit which we have just heard explained".

Dube's Political Role

When Dube came back from the States in 1905 (after his third visit) there were signs of tension between him and the white missionaries. Ilanga lase Natal attacked the decisions of missionaries on land allotment on the Reserves, and the Mission Reserve rent, as well as the social aloofness of missionaries and their lack of trust for the converts, inadequate selection of African officers and failure to defend African interests. In 1908 he resigned from the pastorate of Inanda. The tension between Dube on the one hand and the government and missionaries on the other hand was resolved in 1907 but he was constantly warned that he was "playing with fire". But in the columns of Ilanga and as part of many delegations of Amakholwa he protested and petitioned the government against the proposed legislations.

But ideologically Dube had accepted the missionary gospel It is true that generally the impact of missionaries on African culture and value systems has been superficial in Africa but for Dube and his generation and the one immediately after him .the "psychological conversion" if not "psychological colonisation" was almost complete. This was one of the sources of contradiction in the views and ideas of this generation.

Talking about the religious aspects of Dube we have said that the Whites were suspicious of Ethiopianism. If by Ethiopianism they meant that Dube and his colleagues were determined to prove and to demonstrate to the whites that the black man can run an educational institution without any white assistance, then we agree with them. That was basically the essence of Ethiopianism. But to them Ethiopianism meant something different - an equivalent of a devil, a black one at that.

Talking about Dube's political baptism, it should be remembered that he was detained during the Anglo-Boer war for alleged seditious statements. The Natal Native Congress was formed during the war Dube, together with Saul Msane, J.T Gumede, Stephen Mini, Mark Radebe, B. Cele, S. Nyongwana, Martin Lutuli expressed African feelings and brought African grievances to the attention of the government. Ipepa lo Hlanga, a non-missionary paper in Natal appeared, sponsored by the same group which rounded Congress and edited by Mark Radebe, but was later to be replaced by John Dube's llanga.

Ilanga, from the outset, was overtly political. Dube used his paper to stress the need for African unity and African representation and to air more specific grievances. It emphasised the need for education, financial help from white philanthropists. In September 1906, Dube was calling for a meeting of the Transvaal, Cape and Natal congresses and "welcoming signs that tribal antagonisms are dying down as indications of progress".

He was a bitter opponent of the 1913 Land Act. He spoke and wrote on this subject. In an article in 1914 he wrote:

 "It is only a man with a heart of stone who could hear and see what I hear and see and remain callous and unmoved. It would break your hearts did you but know, as I know, the cruel and undeserved afflictions wrought by the hateful enactment on numberless aged, poor and tender children of my race in this their native land. From the ashes of their burnt out kraals, kicked away like dogs by Christian people from their humble hearths, from the dear old scenes where their fathers were born and grew up in simple peace, bearing malice to none, and envying neither European nor Indian the wealth and plenty they amass themselves from this their land, these unfortunate outcasts pass homeless, unwanted, silently suffering, along the highways and byways of the land, seeking in vain the most unprofitable waste whereon to build their hovel and rest and live, victims of an unknown civilisation that has all too suddenly overwhelmed and overtaken them..."

Dube wrote and spoke strongly and emotively on the government's land policy. The 19i3 Land Act was so hydra-headed that it affected every stratum of African rural society. In 1914 Dube was one of the ANC delegates to London to protest against the Act. This delegation caused some controversy within the ANC. It was fed Dube had made some compromises on the principle of segregation. The bone of contention within the ANC was the Land Act. Dube was ousted from the presidency of the ANC. From this time onwards Dube concentrated his activities in Natal but in the 1940's Xuma influenced him to participate in the movement nationally with some success.

In the 1920s, like some of his generation (and the stratum of mission-educated Africans? he became involved in a series of. "liberal' attempts to establish "racial harmony" between black and white, such as the Smuts' Native Conferences established under the 1920 Act (which Dube left in 1926 on the grounds of their powerlessness) the Joint Councils and many missionary conferences. In 1926 he was one of the South African delegates to the international conference at Le Zoute in Belgium, a visit he combined with fresh fund-raising for Ohlange. He was involved in replacing the left-wing Gumede with Seme as president of the ANC in 1930 and in 1935 became a member of the All African Convention. He represented Natal on the Native Representative Council from 1936 until his death, in 1946, when he was replaced by Chief Albert Lutuli on the Council.

One of Dube's controversial actions was in 1930. He openly flirted with Hertzog's bills in the hope that they would at least Provide some extra additional funds for development. It should be remembered that Dube was ousted from the presidency of the ANC in 1917 for his apparent acceptance of the principle - if not the contemporary practice - of segregation. Dube forged an alliance with the segregationist, Heaton Nicholls, and he toured the country soliciting the support of African leaders in Johannesburg, Kimberly, Bloemfontein and the Eastern Cape for a bill on Land Settlement promoted by Nicholls. This provided for the allocation of seven million morgen of land, to be added to the already scheduled areas, and the provision of adequate funds. The problem was that, like Hertzog's proposals, Heaton Nicholls coupled his land schemes with an attempt to end the franchise of the Cape Africans. This scheme also envisaged the representation of Africans in-the senate. But this never materialised.

But all this did not discredit Dube. In 1935 he was elected to the Executive of the All African Convention. He became disenchanted with the government schemes -- at a meeting of the Natal Debating Society in 1935 he made a sharp attack on the government's policies, which Jabavu printed as a pamphlet: "Criticisms of the Native Bills". In it Dube expounded his nationalism and his rejection of African inequality and his belief in the principle of African representation.

Dube and Champion

John Dube's political history is a complex and contradictory picture - a reflection of the social contradictions in Natal and in South Africa - which were affecting the Africans most acutely. It was, in a sense, also an expression of a need for survival.

Long before the advent of Whites in Natal "traditional authority" and "custom" was breaking down through Shaka's wars and the consequent upheavals and repercussions. No wonder that the missionaries had it relatively easy to evangelise the Africans and the Africans responded by forming the Ethiopian movement. The Whites were hostile to Ethiopianism which to them was tantamount to a swear-word.

Dube's elite straddles two eras: he witnessed the dramatic changes in African life consequent upon industrialisation. He saw the destruction of African independence and conversion of his people from independent freedom fighters and warriors into "house-boys" and "garden-boys", of independent peasants into dispossessed rural and urban wage workers. He recognised the creation of an urban proletariat and tried to articulate some of its grievances but he could not provide the leadership this new class needed, nor could he empathise with its aspirations.

It was the new crop of leaders, notably Alison Wessels George Champion, a man of completely different style and background, with an urban constituency who were to play this role. From the mid 1920's until Dube's death in 1946 the two contended for dominance in African politics in Natal. Not that the views of the two were mutually exclusive. The same contradictions in Dube's politics were evident in Champion's activities as well. But Champion appealed to much more of a mass audience and was a leader of the "industrial" workers whilst Dube was still part of the religious Amakholwa community. Both showed the same swing between belligerence and servility in their attitude to Whites. But because of land shortage their priorities and even the political philosophy of self-help overlapped. Champion as president of the Natal ANC tried (not unlike Dube) to run the Natal ANC independently of the National Executive Committee.

Dube held contradictory beliefs and values: he was anti-communist but at the same time invited Edward Roux from the Communist Party to coach boys at Ohlange which Roux did.

The depression and drought in the 1930's made the land question even more acute. Dipping schemes were being violently rejected and tax-collectors forcibly ejected from villages; growing militancy in the towns particularly in Durban where squalor, stagnation wages and political repression were ever present; opposition to beer halls and pass laws was the order of the day and police brutality ever present - Johannes Nkosi; communist activist was murdered in Durban on December 16 1930. These were the years of depression and drought and the population increase convinced Dube, more than ever before, of the futility of "violence" in the face of white power; he tried to find an alliterative. The aftermath of the Bambata rebellion was still fresh In his mind; his deeply ingrained desire for law and order - an African tradition "reinforced" and distorted by missionary education - led to some of his inconsistency.

Dube took great pride in his Zulu past - and like many Africans from other ethnic groups - on occasions allowed it to dominate his actions but he was consistent in stressing the great need for African unity. He sympathised with the independent church movement: in 1936 he wrote a short biography of the prophet Shembe, founder of the influential independent church in Natal, the church of Ama-Nazarethi. He strongly believed that education and knowledge were the key to advance. Dube, being exempted from Native Law, could not be dealt with as summarily as both the Minister of Native Affairs and the Governor might have wished.

What should be noted is that Dube's strategy and ideology were outflanked by the times. He had not changed from being a radical to being a conservative as Eddie Roux suggests in his debatable book "Time Longer Than Rope". He died believing in racial equality; demanding justice and striving for African unity. These were revolutionary goals directly challenging the basis of white power and he believed in this to the end of his life. He fought all his life for the unity and liberation of the Africans - a unity and liberation he saw as coming through education, through working with sympathetic whites, through adoption of Christian values and, more importantly, through political organisation under the umbrella of the ANC.

Vil-Nkomo summed up his life when he wrote in Umteleli we Bantu on February 26,1946 that Dube:

 "has revealed to the world at large that it is not quite true to say that the African is incompetent as far as achievement is concerned".

 Sefako Mapogo Makgatho

 "We ask for no special favours from the Government. This is the land of our fathers. "

 S.M. Makgatho, ANC Presidential Address, 6th May 1919

The purpose of this article is to give a brief outline of the manner in which S.M. Makgatho carried out this mission under the changed conditions of his times.

Some Highlights of the Makgatho Era

S.M. Makgatho was born in 1861 at GaMphahlele, Pietersburg district, Northern Transvaal, and died in Pretoria, full of years and experience and wisdom in 1951, aged 90 years old. A cursory glance at the years - 1861-1951 shows that Makgatho was born the year King Sekwati died and Sekhukhune succeeded to the Marota throne in 1861; that in 1882, when Sekhukhune died, Makgatho was 21 years old and at school in Ealing, Middlesex, England, reading Education and Theology. As a keen student of South African affairs he followed Sekhukhune's odyssey closely, especially since they were blood relations and since these events were reported adequately in the British press at the time. He also witnessed at close range the politics surrounding the signing by Britain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, the United States of America, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Norway and Turkey of the General Act of the Conference of Berlin respecting the freedom of trade in the Basin of the Congo, navigation of the Congo, navigation of the Niger and rules for future occupation of the coast of the African continent, 26th February 1885.

From the very beginning Makgatho opposed this rape of Africa. He understood the immediate threat that it constituted not only to the vast natural resources of Africa but also to the freedom, independence and self-determination of her peoples. And so it was that in after years when he and his compatriots founded the African National Congress (1912) they adopted a political slogan that was applicable not only to South Africa but also to the whole continent of Africa - "Mayibuye i Afrika" (Come back, Africa) they cried. They also adopted a national anthem that expressed the hopes not only of the people of South Africa but also those of the people of Africa as a whole - "Morena boloka sechaba sa hesu; Nkosi Sikalel' i Afrika" (God save my nation; god bless Africa). The same Africa-wide spirit informed their choice of colours of the flag of the African National Congress - black, gold, green. It took decades of struggle and sacrifices by liberation movements across the continent to free Africa from the chains of political bondage forged for her at the Berlin Conference, 1884-1885. Makgatho played his part in that supreme effort.

Again, as a student in England, Makgatho was inspired by Keir Hardie of the Miners' Union and others who were to establish the British Labour Party in 1906. Indeed, in 1906, back home in South Africa, he and a group of young African teachers joined hands to form the Transvaal African Teachers' Association (TATA) as a trades union for African teachers and an instrument for the transformation of 'Native education' into a non-racial system of universal education for all of South Africa's children.

 Creation of the Racist State

In 1909 Makgatho witnessed the Imperial (British) Parliament enact the South Africa Act, which brought the Union of South Africa into being. He was revolted by Clause 35 (1) of the Act, which provided that henceforth no Black man could become a member of Parliament, no Black man could vote for others to represent him in the all-White South African Parliament, and that the handful of Black voters who had acquired franchise rights in the 19th century in the Cape Province and Natal Province would remain on the common voters' roll until disfranchised by a two-thirds majority obtained at a joint session. of the two houses of Parliament sitting together. That result was achieved by General Hertzog, leader of the first Afrikaner Nationalist government in South Africa, in 1936.

He also lived to see the 1936 legislation repealed in 1951 and replaced by the Bantu Authorities Act, 1951, which laid the legislative foundations for today's Bantustans. Needless to say, he opposed these developments with might and main.

But of course the South Africa Act did more than that: the inclusion of Clause 35 in the Act, by a Liberal Government headed by Liberal Prime Minister Asquith, created the first explicitly race state of our times. After that no~ serious-minded Black man could be a Liberal. For Blacks, Liberalism was dead as a dodo. Henceforth Black men looked elsewhere for salvation. This was so especially because after 1910 successive South African governments put one race law after another on the statute book. A few examples to illustrate this contention must suffice:

 * The Mines and Wages Act, 1911, created a mining and wages regime based on race and skin colour, on the shape of a man's nose, the look of his hair, the thickness of his lips and colour of his eyes.

 * So did the Defence Act, 1911, which, despite many amendments made to it over the years, remains essentially racist in conception enactment, administration, enforcement.

 * The Land Act, 1913, as amended by Hertzog in 1936, divided our country into two parts according to race - at present 9.9 % of the land is possessed and occupied (not owned) under effete land tenure systems by nearly 23 million Africans, whilst 90.1 % of the best agricultural and mining land is owned, possessed, controlled, administered, used, enjoyed, by four million White people drawn from the four corners of the earth.

 * In 1920 the race principles of the South Africa Act were applied further in the Native Affairs Commission Act, which created periodic "Native Conferences" where Blacks could let off steam instead of taking their rightful places in parliament. This process was carried a step forward in 1936, when the few remnants of Cape and Natal African voters were stripped of their franchise rights and offered instead three token White members of Parliament and a toy consultative body styled the "Natives' Representative Council (NRC). The Government took no notice of recommendations made by this body against race laws. The NRC was finally abolished by the Bantu Authorities Act, 1951, which, as stated earlier, laid the legislative basis for Bantustans. The establishment in 1984 of the tricameral parliament marks the culmination point in this process of the emasculation of Africans of all political rights by an all-White parliament.

 * The Industrial Conciliation Act, 1942, defined 'worker' to exclude Black workers; consequently Black workers were denied traditional trade union rights and privileges that their White counterparts enjoyed.

 * In 1930 White women were enfranchised on an equal basis with White men, thanks to a political process that had started in Enland under the inspiration, of Mrs. Pankhurst and other suffragettes. Even such a measure had the effect of excluding Black women, half the Black population of South Africa, from the franchise.

 * In 1935 a high-powered Inter-Departmental Committee on African Education shamelessly defined the aims and objectives of European education as being to prepare a White child for a place of superiority and baasskap in the State and those of African education as being to prepare a Black child for a place of inferiority in society, doomed to be a hewer of wood and a drawer of water for 'Whiteman boss' - shades of Bantu Education of the 'fifties and beyond.

Time and space do not permit us to go into details of other race laws, covering all aspects of South African life, enacted by successive South African governments from 1910, when the South Africa Act was enacted, to 1951, when S.M. Makgatho died. Suffice it to say all these laws, so-called, lacking the consent of the vast majority of the population, the African majority, and therefore illegitimate, derived their cue from the Act of Union of 1909 itself. Africans had no choice but to fight back. For Makgatho only one instrument was ready to hand - the African National Congress.

The ANC Aimed to Unite Africans

The African National Congress had established, with Makgatho's active participation, on the 8th January 1912, in response to the race clauses of the South Africa Act, 1909, and race laws enacted under that Act. The ANC aimed to unite Africans notjust in S Africa but also in Lesotho, Botswana Swaziland in particular; to fight the fore imperialism generated by the General A Berlin, 26th February 1885; to spearhead common struggle for freedom and determination; to destroy racism and to cr on its ruins a nonracial South Africa w traditional democratic rights would available to all, irrespective of race, colour, religion, sex, possessions, formal education and so on.

As stated earlier, S.M. Makgatho had helped establish the Transvaal African Teachers' Association in 1906 and its journal, the Good Shepherd, in 1923, to fight for equal education opportunities for Africans in South Africa. From 1906 to 1908 he served as President of African Political Union. He was President of the Transvaal Native Organisation from 1908-1912. Both organisations merged with the ANC in January 1912. From 1887-1930 he was an influential Methodist lay preacher. He participated in delegations and petitions to London (after World War 1, 1914-1918) on behalf of our people. When the ANC was established in 1912 he was elected President of its Transvaal section, the Transvaal Native Congress, from 1912-1930. He was President-General of the ANC itself from 1917-1924. From 1930-1933 he was a Senior National Treasurer of the ANC.

It may be said, in a nutshell, that during these momentous years Makgatho led our people as an educationist, theologian, editor of the Good Shepherd, and, with Advocate Alfred Mangena, of the Native Advocate. He led anti-pass campaigns, calling the pass "infernal" and "a badge of slavery. " He vigorously opposed the extension of the 'dompas' to African women. He successfully took the government to court over the Transvaal Poll Tax of #2 (a lot of money in those days). He led Africans in Pretoria in a successful campaign for the right, then denied them, to walk on street pavements in the city instead of competing with vehicles and horses for space in the middle of the road. Under his leadership Africans-won the right to use first class and second class facilities on South African trains instead of being confined to goods trains.

 Lessons from Makgatho's Experiences

One could go on to write about Makgatho and the wars in Sekhukhuneland and Zululand in 1879; about him and the Bambata Rebellion of 1906; about his attitude to the Boer War, 1882-1884, the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902, and the two world wars, 1914-18 and 1939-45; about his attitude to the League of Nations and the United Nations; his reaction to the two socialist revolutions of our times, the October Revolution that erupted in Russia in 1917 and the Chinese revolution of 1949; his anger at Fascist Italy's rape of Abyssinia in 1935; his reaction to the electoral victory of apartheid's Afrikaners in May 1948; his relations with Liberals, Socialists, trade unions, and with chiefs and villagers and so on. But space and time forbid. We cannot, therefore, elaborate on his leadership on all these issues. Suffice it to say that there are lessons to be learned from his experiences in all these fields of political thought and action. None of these achievements came anywhere near winning political, financial, economic, military, social, cultural power for the dispossessed and exploited African majority. None of this amounted to a root-and-branch transformation of South African society. But to apply such tests to Makgatho and his generation is to benefit from hindsight - and that is poor historiography. Let the last word be Makgatho's. It is taken from his Presidential Address to the Eighth Annual Conference of the ANC held on the 6th May 1919. He said this, inter alia:

"Chiefs, ladies and gentlemen, many changes have taken place since we last met at Bethlehem. The Native Lands Act still operates as mercilessly in different parts of the Union, and as a result many Native families are still working for White farmers only for their food. It will be remembered, after the representations of this Congress and the pleadings of our missionary and other friends, the government has consented to postpone for a year enacting the Native Affairs Administration Bill, which was nothing but the confirmation and perpetuation of the harsh provisions of the Native Lands Act and all its sorrows. Another Bill has likewise been postponed: that is, the Native Urban Areas Bill ... It says: no White man, under pain of #100 fine or six months' imprisonment, shall rent or sell a house to a Native in any town or village in the Union, unless that Native be a registered voter. This means that only a few Natives will retain the right to acquire town property in the Cape Province; and none at all in the other three provinces. How such a provision can be acceptable to us, only the government knows. It adds that men and women should not get work unless they carry passes, and pay a shilling a month for them.

Passes Can Never Be Acceptable

"And it is a proposition our people can NEVER accept. When the Bill came out, 1 was assured in the Transvaal that our people there would forestall it by organising a movement against the present male pass laws before their extension to our women. The passive resistance against male passes is now history in the Transvaal. There have been serious strikes and labour troubles among Europeans in South Africa. In every instance, where well paid White men, getting as much as # 1 a day or more, struck for higher pay, they got it; but our first strike for sixpence a day over two shillings and two-and-sixpence was met on the part of the government by violence, arrests, heavy fines and imprisonment. The White man, on the other hand, can strike at any time because he has no pass, but a Native worker going on strike commits a breach of contract - his service pass.

"Thereupon, at Bloemfontein, last July, the Johannesburg branch of the Transvaal Native Congress brought to the Executive Committee a resolution demanding the abolition of the pass law, so that Natives must work unshackled by contract passes. The resolution was duly sent to the government and the matter was discussed at various interviews between the Transvaal Congress leaders and the government officers, and also with the Prime Minister and other ministers at different times; the reply in each instance being that the matter will be attended to. Eventually, in March of this year, the Johannesburg Branch, followed by the Benoni and other Witwatersrand branches, decided to throw away their passes and secure the government's attention to our grievances by courting arrest. Thousands of men and women have been arrested and sentenced to fines and various terms of imprisonment with hard labour, and, refusing to pay fines, they nearly all elected to go to gaol. They were driven like cattle, trampled by mounted policemen under their horses' hoofs, shot at by White volunteers, and some men and women are in their graves as a result of their refusal to buy any more passes.

Compulsory Protection

"The principle involved has wide ramifications from both points of view. The authorities insist that they cannot abolish the passes, which are a 'great help to the Natives' ...

"What is so difficult for us Natives to understand is that a form of help should be forced upon us against our wish, that we should be fined, imprisoned and ridden to death by mounted policemen, with our women also under the horses' hoofs, and shot at, simply because we say we are not in need of the help that is offered. What kind of protection is so compulsory? While our people were shot at and clubbed by civilian Whites, and our womenfolk ridden down by the mounted police of Johannesburg, there was, at the same time, a strike of well-paid White men in the same city, agitating for more pay and less work.

"Not content with doing that, they forcibly seized the local government property, and practically ejected the constituted authority. Nobody shot at them. Their wives were not rid-, den down or beaten with sticks. The real reason for this insistent enforcement of the pass law is kept in the background. No mention is made of the amount of revenue raised from our people by means of this badge of slavery. The government retains a share of the spoils. The Transvaal Provincial Council alone gets #340 000 annually, from the scant earnings of our poorly-paid people, to build and maintain schools for White children, while our educational needs remain unattended. Thousands of Natives are suffering imprisonment at the present time, and, in spite of the law, many thousands since last month are courting arrest by working without any passes. And it is for you to call on the government to abolish the Transvaal and Free State passes ...

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, I am told that there is a difference of opinion as to the wisdom of sending a deputation to England. 1 cannot understand how anyone could call it a crime to send a delegation to the headquarters of the Empire. What sort of a king have we that we should never go to see him? Have we got the Republic already that we should not go to the seat of the Empire? At the December Special Congress he (that is, Sol Plaatje, Vice-President) was elected with myself and seven others to carry our grievances to the British public. Two of the delegates have already left, and as funds are forthcoming others will follow shortly ...

"Today we are informed that we are represented at the Peace Conference by Generals Smuts and Botha. Did any of the two generals ever inform any Native that they were going to represent him? I read that General Botha, on leaving Cape Town in a Japanese ship, told some Europeans that he was going to represent the two great races. So, where do we come in? And what do our two generals know about the abomination of the pass laws or the atrocities or the Native Lands Act, enacted by them? What do they know about our starving widows and dependants whose breadwinners fell during the Great War in German West and East Africa, on the ocean, in France and other battlefronts?

"Chiefs, ladies and gentlemen, if we send no representatives to the seat of the Empire now, our families will only have ourselves to thank; so let us do our best at this moment, so that when the hard time comes and the threatened class laws are enacted, posterity may not charge us with inattention.

"Our people in the Free State have also had their chapter of misfortunes. Like us in the Transvaal, their troubles are twofold - the need for a living wage and the infernal 'pass.' All this on top of the mischief of the Natives Land Act, which, in the Free State, allows the buying of land from Natives by Europeans, while it strictly prohibits any purchase or lease of land by a Native. Even sales between Native and Native are strictly forbidden.

 Shooting Outrages

"Chiefs, ladies and gentlemen, when we met at Bethlehem last year the Free State Natives were very restless because of the easy manner in which Natives were shot by farmers, without any protection from the courts, as the juries could always be relied upon to discharge every White man who shot one Native or a Native couple.

1 "When the Bethlehem Congress rose, four fresh shooting outrages were again reported in rapid succession. At a time like this, when we are face to face with some of the worst upheavals that ever overtook our people, it is imperative that we should stand together. We ask for no special favours from the government. This is the land of our fathers, and, in it, we wish to be treated at least as well as foreigners and with the same consideration extended to foreigners, including foreigners of enemy origin.

1t is my pleasant duty to express the thanks of our people to the small band of Englishmen in and out of parliament, together with our friends and sympathisers of the Missionary Associations, who have stood by us throughout the dark days under the pitiless yoke of the Native Land Act, and also during the present 1 no-pass' agitation. It is for us to see that their confidence in us is not misplaced.(2)** * * *

These are not the words of a dead man addressing dead issues. They are words addressing live issues concerning the day-to-day life of the Black man in South Africa today. And so we pay homage to Sefako Mapogo Makgatho (1861 till 1951), national figure from 1906 till 1951, founder member of the ANC, and its national President from 1917 till 1924 and President of the Transvaal ANC from 1912 till 1930, Senior National Treasurer from 1930 till 1933.

We pledge ourselves to continue his lifelong struggle for a South Africa that is legitimate, non-racial, non.-exploitative, free, independent, democratic, and playing its proper role amongst the nations of the world.

 References

(1) This Clause was based on Article 9 of the Grondwet van die Suid Afrikaanse Republiek, 1858, which denied equality between Black and White people. It in turn was followed by the Draft Constitution issued by the fascist Broederbond in 1942 and by the Republican Constitutions of 1961 and 1983.

(2) Karis and Carter, From Protest to Challenge, 1882-1964, Vol. I, pp. 107-110 (Hoover, 1972).

Sechaba June 1985

 Zaccheus Richard Mahabane

 By the late 1930's, when the ANC had declined to a new low under Pixley Seme's leadership, Mahabane was pressed back into service and from 1937 to 1940 was again president-general, this time when support for the Congress was gradually increasing.

Mahabane's political career spanned the years of crisis over the Hertzog Bills, and his views on the franchise issue reflected the complexity of the African dilemma. As the President of the Cape Congress and vice-president of the Cape Native Voters' Convection in the period before 1936, Mahabane took the public position that a separate voter's roll for the Africans would be acceptable if whites found the prospect of a common roll too menacing. Mahabane was a member of the 1936 All Africa Convection delegation that conferred with Prime Minster J. B. M Hertzog prior to the submission of the separate-roll compromise to Parliament. From 1937, while he was at the head of the ANC, Mahabane acted as vice-president of the AAC, and from 1940 to 1954 he served as the AAC's official vice-president first under Jabavu and then under Wycliffe Tsotsi.

As a leading personality in both the ANC and ACC, he did his best to promote the reconciliation of these organizations, but unity proved elusive and a merger was unreachable. Mahabane cooperated with Abdul Abdurahman in calling the series of non-European conference that met between 1927 and 1934. He become the President of the ACC in 1943, until 1956 when he was pressured to resign following his refusal to take part in Bantu Education school boards, thus violating the NEUM policy boycott.

From 1940s Mahabane concentrated much of his energy on church related activities and in particular the strengthening of the interdenominational African Ministers Federation, founded in 1945. In 1956, he was the principal convener of the Bloemfontein conference to discuss the recommendations of the Tomlinson Commission, and in December 1957 he chaired the follow-up multiracial conference convened in Witwatersrand. He died in 1970.

 Josiah Tshangana Gumede

 Responding to a question posed by the Africa Report editor Anthony J. Hughes on the ANC's traditional links with the South African Communist Party and the ANC's relations with the socialist countries, President O.R. Tambo replied:

 "The South African Communist Party supports and actively fights for the realisation of the demands contained in the (Freedom) Charter. It accepts the leadership of the ANC and therefore cannot but be an ally of the ANC as would be any other organisation that adopts the same position.

 "Official contact between the ANC and the Soviet Union goes back as far as 1927, when a delegation of the ANC, led by its president, Josiah Gumede, visited the Soviet Union and came back convinced of the support that our struggle enjoys from the Soviet government and people. Practical experience has shown our people and the ANC that President Gumede was not wrong in his assessment of 55 years ago. We stood together with the Soviet Union and the allied forces in fighting nazism during the Second World War. True to those positions, the Soviet Union . and other socialist countries stand with us to this day fighting the apartheid system, itself and its leaders pawns of nazi ideology and practice".

 (Africa Report, September - October, 1981)

It is for this reason that we shall attempt to trace the life, activities and ideas of Josiah Tshangana Gumede. (For one reason or another Mary Benson and Edward Roux call him James T. Gumede).

It is 55 years since Gumede went to the Soviet Union. This was not only a brave deed those days, it was a pioneering act. His work was not in vain. Today there are millions fighting for his ideals. They have taken up the banner that slipped from his hands.

There is another reason for assessing the life and times of Gumede namely to explain the whole policy of the ANC on unity in action - unity of African nationalists, Black nationalists, Hindus, Christians, Moslems, atheists and communists. A brief biography of Gumede will help to understand - to quote a phrase from Mandela's Rivonia speech - "why experienced African politicians so readily accept communists as their friends".

Early Life

Gumede's early life is little known. Born in Natal in the mid-19th century Gumede attended school in Grahamstown (Cape) and taught for some time at Somerset East in the Cape before going to Natal where he became advisor to Natal and Orange Free State chiefs.

It was in 1899 that Gumede and Saul Msane met Hariette Colenso to discuss the formation of an African political organisation and in 1900 together with Martin Lutuli and Saul Msane he became a cofounder of the Natal Native Congress and was for several years its general secretary.

In 1906 Gumede was a member of a delegation to Britain over the land laws of the Orange Free State. He acted as the agent of the Sotho people who had bought land in the Orange Free State. For leaving Natal without a pass (for which he had applied but which had not been granted) he was arrested and fined 10 pounds or 3 months on his return. This was regarded as a "piece of insubordination".

With Z.M. Mazuku he co-signed the constitution of Iliso Lesizwe Esimnyama - The Eye of the Black Nation - an organisation of Wesleyan Methodist converts and chiefs formed in the Dundee and Newcastle area of Natal in 1907.

Surely Gumede belongs to that generation of the founding fathers of the ANC. He was a member of the ANC delegation which went to petition the British Government in 1919. His name appears and reappears in the petitions of the time.

African nationalism and socialism

African nationalism - in the modem form and socialism emerged almost simultaneously. They ran parallel to each other but were facing a common enemy and therefore there was a basis for cooperation. The socialist movement emphasis on internationalism in South Africa at this early period was of great significance not only for the anti war propaganda (antimilitarism) - something very topical today in South Africa - but for the orientation of the white labour movement towards the plight of the emergent, racially discriminated and nationally oppressed black workers. It should be remembered that one of the greatest fears of the regime of the time was a united action of militant white workers/socialists and Africans.

There were joint actions of the ANC and the socialists. The socialists organised African trade unions. When the Communist Party of South Africa was formed in 1921 a firm basis for the elaboration of the relations with the ANC was laid. But the problem was that within the Communist Party at this time events seemed to outstrip theory.

The CP recruited Africans; black communists established ICU branches and therefore strengthened that organisation and they were elected to the National Executive of that body. There emerged the first generation of African communists such as Albert Nzula, Johannes Nkosi, Moses Kotane, J.B. Marks, Edwin Mofutsanyana, Gana Makabeni and many others.

Such was the situation in the 1920's. Things were not running as smoothly as we describe them today. There were problems. Many problems. All the same this background gives us a picture of what the situation was when history thrust Gumede into the forefront. He was not only a product of history but he influenced the course of events.

Gumede travels Abroad

In the late 20's important developments took place within the ANC. The ANC attended the inaugural Congress of the League against Imperialism which took place in Brussels from the 10th to the 15th of February 1927. At this congress at the Palais Egmont there were 174 anti-colonial fighters from all over the world. For the first time in history, representatives of the progressive labour movement of the capitalist countries were united with delegates from the labour movements and national liberation movements of the peoples still under the yoke of colonialism and imperialism on all continents. The aim of the participants was to take up the struggle for the independence of those countries and against imperialism on a wide front.

J.T. Gumede represented the ANC and the communist and ANC leader J.A. La Guma was there as well as D. Colraine of the South African Trade Union Congress. This Brussels Congress was attended by communists, anti-colonial freedom fighters from Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, bourgeois humanists and social democrats. Despite the heterogeneous nature of its composition and the difference in ideological and political conviction the necessity and the will to unite was an overriding factor. by Gumede spoke twice in Brussels. According to Otto Schnudel from Switzerland who was at this Brussels Congress and later became a friend of Gumede: "Its speeches made a deep impression on the assembly". (Basle, 19th December 1977).

Gumede analysed the plight of our people, their living conditions and resistance and on an optimistic note, he stated:

 "I am happy to say that there are communists in South Africa. I myself am not one, but it is my experience that the Communist Party is the only Party that stands behind us and from which we can expect something. We know there are now two powers at work: imperialism and the workers' republic in Russia. We hear little about the latter, although we would like to know more about it. But we take an interest and will soon find out who we have to ally ourselves with".

Gumede was not making a "diplomatic" statement - he was sincere in what he was saying and this sincerity did not stem from some moral and value judgements but from what he himself experienced. Gumede repeated this theme - or message - in his Presidential report to the annual conference of the ANC in June 1927:

 "Of all political parties the Communist Party is the only one that honestly and sincerely fights for the oppressed people".

It is interesting to remember that Gumede, this sincere nationalist and devout catholic had strongly opposed "Bolshevism" in 1917.

Back to the Brussels Congress. It is important to note that in Brussels, Gumede, La Guma and Colraine drafted a joint resolution and signed it adding "South African delegates" before it was adopted by Congress. This unity of South African revolutionaries, though it took place outside the country, was significant. The resolution demanded: the right to self-determination through complete overthrow of the capitalist and imperialist rule. Surely this was a step forward and Jack and Ray Simons are of the view that this resolution introduced an impetus and a new dimension in our view of the struggle; a concept which was later incorporated in the slogan of the "Black Republic".

After the Congress Gumede and La Guma travelled to Germany where they addressed large crowds in rallies organised by the Communist Party of Germany. Otto Schnudel has some interesting things to say about Gumede in Berlin:

 "Following the Congress there was in Berlin an informal meeting of the delegates who had come to the German capital, among them our friend Gumede. Berlin was to be the seat of the League Against Imperialism formed in Brussels.

 "I was present at that meeting, since for the next three years I was to work on the International Secretariat of the League Against Imperialism and for National Independence. Josiah Tshangana Gumede and I were standing side by side. He towered over most of those present with his tall, powerful figure. Most of the whites he had met until then had treated him with contempt, and that was why this Berlin meeting was so infinitely important. For the first time he stood as an equal among people of all races, all colours and various beliefs, united in brotherhood with the purpose of putting an end to the contemptible system of colonialism. Josiah Tshangana Gumede was so overwhelmed by this experience that his eyes were filled with tears. "I am so happy!" he stammered. Then he drew himself up and added: "I am going to fight!".

Gumede and La Guma proceeded to the Soviet Union. They returned to Moscow at the end of the year to attend the celebrations and commemoration of the October Revolution. They also participated at the Congress . of the Friends of the USSR. Gumede then made a trip through the Soviet Union. He chose to go to Georgia. A photograph of Gumede in Russian winter clothes with Georgian peasants shows how cheerful a man he was. Fifty years later his former interpreter, A.F. Plate, then a student now professor. of chemistry at the Moscow state University, told Sechaba:

 "Gumede considered as one of the greatest achievements of our country that the Socialist Revolution managed to united people of different nationalities in their struggle for common ideals. He emphasised the significance of this experience for all nations struggling, for their independence and considered that success in this struggle would highly depend on the unity of action of all forces fighting against racism and colonialism".

Back in South Africa

Gumede never forgot this experience. Back in South Africa he told large crowds:

 "I have seen the world to come, where it has already begun. I have been to the new Jerusalem".

Gumede called for a united front in the form of unity of action between communists and non-communists. He crossed the borders of South Africa into Basutoland (now Lesotho) where he addressed meetings of Lekhotla la Bafo (Common Man's League) which. was led by Maputseng Lefela. He was preaching the new gospel. The masses responded to his message: he was elected President-General and E.J. Khaile (a known Communist) was elected Secretary-General of the ANC.

Surely Gumede's trip to Brussels was a turning point in his life. He met anti-colonial revolutionaries from Asia (including Nehru), Latin America, Caribbean and Africa some of whom were "blacker than myself, speaking languages I could not understand". (He was surely referring to French). In the Soviet Union Gumede learnt a lot and his former interpreter, Plate, remembers:

 "In Tbilisi Gumede was given a good reception and had various conversations with Georgian leaders and Georgian peasants. One of these meetings was held in the 'house of the Peasant' a - place Where peasants coming to town could have a place to shop.

 "Gumede asked the peasants about their lives in detail ... We visited a number of Georgian villages and returning to the hotel every time Gumede compared the way of life of the Georgian peasants with the mode of life and labour (conditions) in his motherland".

I stand in astonishment

The growing influence of the Soviet Union seems to have had an impact on many genuine black leaders of the time. Dr Du Bois himself confessed in 1926:

 "I stand in astonishment and wonder at the revelation of Russia that has come to me. I may be partially deceived and half informed. But if what I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my ears in Russia is Bolshevism, I am a Bolshevik".

And the 4th Congress of the Pan African movement in 1927 stated:

 "We thank the Soviet Government for its liberal attitude toward the coloured races and for the help which it has extended to them from time to time".

These statements by leading black radicals demonstrate that Gumede's reactions were not an exception to the Me; the ANC was moving with the times and reflecting the dynamism characteristic of a revolutionary organisation. The very existence of the Soviet Union; the fact that in the Soviet Union racism has been completely eradicated and that the Soviet leaders treat any manifestation of racial chauvinism with great severity and the fact that the Soviet people show great sympathy - and actually render assistance to - the oppressed colonial people: these are factors which impressed Gumede and many black radicals. The Tsar was 'a great man'

There were other forces at work within the ANC. The conservative wing could not - and did not - remain neutral to the remarks and development of Gumede. One chief warned:

 "The Tsar was a great man in his country, of royal blood like us chiefs and where is he now? ... If the ANC continues to fraternise with them (the communists) we chiefs cannot continue to belong to it".

And another chief (not without regret and a sense of fear for a future social revolution) said:

 "It will be a sad day for me when I am ruled by the man who milks my cow and ploughs my field".

These forces succeeded in forcing Gumede to leave the position of presidency of the ANC in 1930.

But Gumede remained president of the League of African Rights on whose committee sat Modiakgotla, Bunting, Baker, Thibedi, Kotane and Kotu - communists and non-communists.

ANC - CP relations

We have already stated that the resolution of the Brussels Congress introduced a new dimension in our concept of the struggle in South Africa. This was elaborated, enriched and developed in the discussions La Guma held with Bukharin and other Comintern leaders. These leaders viewed our struggle from a somewhat different angle and perspective. Whereas up to then the Communist Party of South Africa regarded the struggle in our country as a working class struggle for socialism, the Comintern saw the importance of a national struggle uniting all oppressed people and classes against white domination and imperialism and for national liberation. The Comintern suggested the adoption of the slogan: An independent Native Republic as a stage towards a workers' and peasants' republic with full, equal rights for all races.

For the CP which had up to then advocated working class unity as the only way to socialism and equality of black and white, this new call for the support of the liberation struggle led by the ANC which was then regarded as reformist was indeed a new departure. The CP had reservations about the ANC; the communists were ready to unite with the ANC on specific campaigns and issues but the ANC was basically reformist -- they argued. The question of communists working to build and strengthen the ANC was never raised partly because the ANC was said to be serving the interests of the "African bourgeoisie" - and some of these people called "bourgeoisie" were very poor indeed!

Speaking about this period and these attitudes, Lionel Forman remarks:

 "The Party believed it was necessary to rally the masses on national slogans but under its own banner. Experience had still to teach the vital lesson that it was not in spite of, but in alliance with Congress that the Party would lead the struggle against national oppression".

In other words, the Black Republic slogan was a theoretical and practical political framework which set in proper perspective the relationship between African nationalism and socialism by stating that the concept of class struggle In South Africa must of necessity incorporate the principle of national self-determination for the Africans and other nationally oppressed Blacks. Gumede contributed tremendously to this realisation.

Gumede was instrumental in the leftward development of the ANC in the late 20's - though this was short-lived. He played a leading role in the move by the ANC to affiliate to the League Against Imperialism and by this act the ANC identified itself with the world-wide anti imperialist forces.

Conclusion

We have dealt at length with this question of the historic roots and genesis of relationship between African nationalism and socialism in South Africa. It is necessary. There are reasons for this. We shall mention a few:

 1. Our enemy - whatever form and colour it takes -- has always at different times deliberately distorted the relationship between the ANC and the CP. The ANC is portrayed either as a brainless organisation, without independent thought or initiative "controlled by communists who are white." The aim of and reasoning behind this distortion is clear. They are trying to tell our people that whether you are in or outside the ANC it is the same: "white control" is everywhere. They are trying to demoralise our people, disarming them and instilling a sense of hopelessness and preventing them from joining the ranks of the freedom fighters;

 2. The second reason why we deal with this topic at this length is that we want to make it abundantly clear that the ANC made its impact and contribution to the realisation of the urgent need for a solution of the national question. If perhaps the ANC was not articulate enough in bringing this point home, its very existence spoke louder than words. This contribution of the ANC was made independently. But this does differences, as a Christian, with communism not mean that the ANC was immune or insulated from the liberatory ideas of other organisations. But there is a difference between influence and control.

 3. Thirdly, and this is a fundamental, if not vital, issue - the question of relations between the ANC and CP was not only a theoretical question. This is a bread and butter issue. The two organisations emerged separately and independent of each other, fought separately and on different premises. At times they ran parallel to each other but were united by the struggle against the common enemy. As the struggle developed the two organisations came closer to each other and began to discover each other. As it happens in such cases the great teacher was our common experience and school was the practical political struggle. At times the fees were high - our sacrifices were great but we are sure to graduate at this school as comrades, friends, equals and countrymen.

President Lutuli expressed himself on the question of relationship between the ANC and the C.P. He expressed his differences as a Christian, with communism but went further to say:

 "Let me make it clear at once that I do not feel in the least defensive or apologetic about the position as it actually is it is often misrepresented. For myself I am not a communist ... In religion I am a Christian ... There are communists in the South African resistance and I cooperate with them ... The Congress stand is this: our primary concern is liberation, and we are not going to be side-tracked by ideological clashes and witch hunts. Nobody in Congress may use the organisation to further any aims but those of Congress ... Even in the days when the Communist Party was in its infancy, Congress did not debar them...

 Resistance movements cannot afford the luxury of McCarthyism, nor can they allow themselves to be divided up into innumerable little homogeneous groups. We are not playing at politics, we are bent on liberation".  President Lutuli was talking the language of President Gumede which is the language of President Tambo; the language of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

Source: Sechaba, December 1982

Pixley ka Isaka Seme

 Pixley ka Isaka Seme was born on 1 October 1881 and died on 7 June 1951. He was a founder and President of the African National Congress.

Seme was born in Natal, at the Inanda mission station of the American Zulu Mission of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

At age 17 Seme left South Africa to study in the U.S., first at the Mount Hermon School and then Columbia University. In 1906, his senior year at University, he was awarded the Curtis Medal, Columbia's highest oratorical honor. He subsequently decided to become an attorney. In October 1906 he was admitted to Oxford University to read for the degree of Bachelor of Civil Law; while at Oxford he was a member of Jesus College.

Seme returned to South Africa in 1911. In response to the formation of the Union of South Africa, he worked with several other young African leaders who had recently returned from university studies in England, Richard Msimang, George Montsioa and Alfred Mangena, and with established leaders of the South African Native Convention in Johannesburg to promote the formation of a national organization that would unify various African groups from the former separate colonies.

In January 1912 these efforts bore fruit with the founding meeting of the South African Native National Congress, later renamed the African National Congress.

  

Alfred Bitini Xuma

 Dr. Alfred Bitini Xuma was born into an aristocratic Xhosa family in the Transkei in 1893. He was educated locally and rose from herd boy, houseboy, horse trainer, teacher, shipping clerk and hotel and train waiter, to one of the country's most influential black thinkers and leaders.

When he had completed his local primary school education Bitini went to the Maritzburg Training Institute to study teaching. He taught at various schools, earning fourteen pounds a term, and as was the custom, gave his entire salary to his father.

Source: The Fifties People of South Africa, compiled and edited by Jurgen Schadeberg, 1987

Bitini read about the opportunities for education through self help in America. In 1913 he sailed for New York, where he entered various institutions and universities. He studied at night while he worked at the Alabama Steel Mills.

After graduating as a Doctor of Medicine, he went to Europe where he specialised in gynaecology and studied further in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

On his return to South Africa in 1927, Dr Xuma opened the surgery in Sophiatown and in 1931 he married Priscilla Mason of Liberia, West Africa. Priscilla died three years later, while giving birth to their second child.

In 1940 he married Madie Beatrice Hall in Cape Town.

After his freelance political activities in the 30s, Dr Xuma was elected president of the ANC in 1940. He set about rebuilding a scattered organisation against great opposition.

Dr Xuma signed a pact with Dr Dadoo of the SA Indian Congress for a united front between Indians and Africans. When more conservative members of the ANC complained that the Indians were "shrewd" and might dominate the ANC., Dr Xuma retorted: "if you cannot meet the next man on an equal footing without fearing him, there is something wrong with you. You are accepting a position of inferiority to him."

He acted as unofficial delegate of the African people at the United Nations in 1946. Although he was responsible for bringing a large element of young people like Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo into the organisation, by 1949 Xuma was found to be too slow and moderate, and was replaced by Dr J.S. Moroka. Dr Alfred Bitini Xuma died at Baragwanath Hospital, Johannesburg, in 1962.

 James Sebe Moroka

 Moroka, James S. President-general of the African National Congress from 1949 to 1952. A prestigious physician from a prominent landholding family in the Orange Free State, he had the status and boldness required for national leadership in the ANC but lacked the political astuteness to always guide the organization forcefully during his presidency. He was born in 1891 in Thaba. Nchu, a great-grandson of the Tswana chief Moroka who gave military protection to the Voortrekkers in the 1830s. After attending Lovedale, Moroka went to Scotland in 1911 and in 1918 graduated from the University of Edinburgh in medicine. The practice that he established at Thaba 'Nchu was lucrative, and Moroka—urbane and dignified-became a widely respected tiffure. even among local Afrikaners, many of whom were his patients.

First entering politics at the time of the Hertzog Bills, Moroka was immediately accorded a leadership role and accompanied the delegation of the All African Convention that confronted Hertzog in early 1936. When some in the delegation apparently expressed a willingness to give the prime minister's proposals a try, Moroka made clear his opposition to any compromise and thereby established a reputation for militancy that was eventually to carry him to national leadership in the ANC. When the AAC was organized on a firm basis in 1936, he became its treasurer. Believing that the way to expose the hypocrisy of the Natives' Representative Council was to get on it and then denounce it, Moroka stood as a candidate in 1942 and was elected from the Transvaal-Orange Free State constituency, thus dissociating himself from the AAC boycott policy. In 1946 he was in the forefront of those denouncing the NRC and the government; but he did not resign his NRC post until late in 1950, a delay that caused intense controversy in African political circles. By this time he had already served a year as president-general of the ANC, elected on the pro-boycott platform of the Programme of Action.

Moroka's election as president-general was, strictly speaking, unconstitutional, since he was not at the time a member of the organization. The Youth League, however, could find no other willing and suitably distinguished candidate to challenge A. B. Xuma, and at the last moment they agreed on Moroka and persuaded him to stand. Unlike Xuma and many other members of the "old guard" generation, Moroka believed in militant action and made no attempt to prevent Congress radicals from proceeding with plans for the imple­mentation of the Programme of Action. Insofar as he could, given the isolation of Thaba 'Nchu and its distance from ANC headquarters in Johannesburg, Moroka took part in the planning of the Defiance Campaign and used his considerable popularity with the African public to promote the new militant image of the ANC.

Because Moroka lacked a sufficient grasp of political complexities in the Transvaal, he blundered into several situations that caused dissension in the ANC and eventually led to his removal as president-general. In March 1950 he agreed to preside at the left-inspired Defend Free Speech Convention and in so doing inadvertently committed the ANC to support of the controversial stay-at-home of May 1. In early December 1952, when African and Indian leaders went on trial at the height of the Defiance Campaign, Moroka-perhaps taken aback at being charged under the Suppression of Communism Act and wary of the posible material consequences—dissociated himself from the other accused, engaged separate counsel, and entered a plea in mitigation that stressed his long friendship with and assistance to the Afrikaner people. As Albert Lutuli, Moroka’s successor, later remarked, "these things may have been true and laudable, but in Congress eyes the moment for drawing attention to them was ill-chosen." At tie ANC's annual conference of mid-December 1952, Moroka was defeated for reelection, with only the Orange Free State delegates giving him support against Lutuli.

Source: Thomas Karis and Gwebdolen M. Carter (eds.) From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1964, Volume 4: Political Profiles 1882-1964. Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, Stanford, California, 1972

Albert John Luthuli

 Chief Albert John Lutuli, the beloved President-General of the African National Congress (SA); one of Africa's greatest political figures of our times; the undisputed leader of and respected spokesman for South Africa's 14 million oppressed, exploited and humiliated inhabitants, passed from the scene of active struggle for political rights and national liberation in July,1967, when it is alleged he was run over by a train.

Chief Lutuli was a profound thinker, a man of powerful logic with a keen sense of justice; a man of lofty principles, a bold and courageous fighter and a statesman. He was a true African nationalist and an unflinching patriot. Although he grew up under tribal conditions and surroundings, he was uncompromising against racialism; tribalism and all forms of racial and sectional exclusiveness. He believed in and fought for full political, economic and social opportunities for the oppressed people of South Africa regardless of colour, creed, nationality or racial origin. A staunch anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, he fought and obtained the co-operation of all anti-apartheid, anti-imperialist progressive movements and organisations in South Africa.

As a practising Christian, Chief Lutuli genuinely and sincerely believed in the well-being, happiness and dignity of all human beings. Because of his convictions, he sacrificed all prospects of personal gains and comforts and dedicated his life to the cause and service of his fellowmen.

Chief Lutuli was born in 1898, away from Groutville but returned as a child to his ancestral home. He was educated in Mission Schools and at Adam's College in Natal where he later taught until 1936. In answer to repeated calls and requests from the elders of his tribe to come home and lead them, he left teaching that year to become chief of the tribe. He was not a hereditary chief as his tribe had a democratic system of electing its chiefs.

As far as the Africans were concerned,1936 was a year of political disturbances, economic plunder and uncertainty in South Africa. That year, the country was faced with the notorious Hertzog Bills. One of the Bills known as the "Representation of Natives Act" which rendered the then African vote in the Cape Province valueless. Under it the Native Representative Council was established. The other, the "Natives Land and Trust Bill", sought to limit the land to be owned or occupied by the African population of 12 million to 12.5 per cent of the land, while reserving the remaining 87.5 per cent for a population of less than 3 million Whites.

From the inception of his new calling, Chief Lutuli was brought face to face with ruthless African political, social and economic realities - those of rightlessness and landlessness of his people. The futility and limited nature of tribal affairs and politics made him look for a higher and broader form of organisation and struggle which was national in character.

Joined ANC

With this background, Chief Lutuli openly and boldly joined the struggle for the right of Africans to full and unfettered development. He joined the African National Congress in 1945. In 1946, he entered the then Native Representative Council. At that stage, however, the Council had for all intents and purposes come to its end. It was a useless and frustrating talking shop that had been brought to a standstill by the protest of members who questioned the brutal and savage methods employed by the police in dealing with the African miners' strike on the Witwatersrand in August 1946. It had also called upon the Government to abolish all discriminatory laws and demanded for a new policy towards the African population. It never met again and was eventually abolished by the Government. Chief Lutuli was elected Provincial President of the African National Congress in Natal in 1951. From that time he threw himself body and soul into the struggle. As a chief he was not allowed to take part in politics. But he defied his ban. When he was called upon by the Government to choose between his chieftainship and the African National Congress, he chose the African National Congress. He was deposed in 1952 and elected President-General of the African National Congress by his people the same year.

Chief Lutuli was a determined and courageous fighter, shaped and steeled in the various political and economic struggles that took place throughout the country. There were many bold and imaginative political and economic campaigns for demands envisaged both in the 1949 Programme of Action adopted by the ANC, and in the Freedom Charter. Some of the campaigns were violent, bitter and grim. These usually took the form of.

Militant Fighter

There is a wrong and unfortunate impression that Chief Lutuli was a pacifist, or some kind of an apostle of nonviolence. This impression is incorrect and misleading. The policy of non-violence was formulated and adopted by national conferences of the African National Congress before he was elected President-General of the organisation. The policy was adopted in 1951 specially for the conduct of the "National Campaign for Defiance of Unjust Laws" in 1952. What is correct, however, is that as a man of principle and as a leader of unquestionable integrity, Chief Lutuli defended the policy entrusted to him by his organisation and saw to that it was implemented. When that policy was officially and constitutionally changed, he did not falter.

Chief Lutuli was fundamentally a militant, disciplined and an uncompromising fighter who had joined and led an organisation of men who, like himself, honoured and respected the decision and resolutions of their conferences. Through his sincerity, devotion and dedication to the cause of African freedom and progress he was held in high esteem by all men of goodwill in South Africa and the world. . . These qualities also earned him hatred and the wrath of the enemy. Through fear of his ideas and stand the enemy banned and confined him to the Lower Tugela area from 1952 till his death on 21st July, 1967. His first ban for two years was in 1952. It was renewed in 1954. In 1959 he was banned for a further period of five (5) years which was again renewed when it expired. But he continued with political work till the last days of his life.

Charged with Treason

Notwithstanding the fact that he had been confined for practically all the time of his leadership of the African National Congress, he was arrested in 1956 and, together with other leaders of the liberation movement, was charged with High Treason. The trial opened in January, 1957 and concluded on 29th March 1961 when all the accused were found not guilty. Together with 2,000 other leaders he was arrested and detained for five months in 1960 under the State of Emergency declared by the South African Government on March 29th,1960

Chief Lutuli was truly a great political personality and leader. But his political greatness and organisational achievements cannot be divorced from his organisation and colleagues, some of whom have been hanged and others who are languishing in the prisons of the oppressors; men who assisted him in solving problems and in shouldering the heavy task of leadership, men whom he so ably led and directed during difficult and trying times.

The collection of speeches published here show the clearsightedness of this great leader. What is more it shows that the African National Congress did all in its power to change the policies of the racist regime in South Africa through peaceful means. It is only when every effort for a peaceful change was met by police violence and brutality did the decision to resort to armed struggle adopted by the organisation.

We hope that this edition of South African Studies will help its readers to a deeper understanding of the history of our struggle

 Oliver Reginald Tambo

 Born five years after the birth of the ANC, Oliver Reginald Tambo spent most of his life serving in the struggle against apartheid. 'O R', as he was popularly known by his peers, was born on 27th October 1917 in a rural town, Mbizana, in eastern Mpondoland in what was then the Cape Province (now Eastern Cape). His parents had converted to Christianity shortly before he was born.

At the age of seven he began his formal education at the Ludeke Methodist School in the Mbizana district and completed his primary education at the Holy Cross Mission. He then transferred to Johannesburg to attend St Peters College, in Rossettenville, where he completed his high school education.

From St Peters, Tambo went to study at the University College of Fort Hare, near Alice, where he obtained his Bachelor of Science Degree in 1941. It was at Fort Hare that he first became involved in the politics of the national liberation movement. He led a student class boycott in support of a demand to form a democratically elected Student's Representative Council. As a consequence he was expelled from Fort Hare and was thus unable to complete his Bachelor of Science honours degree.

In 1942, he returned to St Peters College as a science and mathematics teacher. At St Peters he was to teach many who later were to, play prominent roles in the ANC. Among these were Duma Nokwe who became the first black South African Advocate of the Supreme Court and a Secretary-General of the ANC.

It was while he was in Johannesburg that Tambo threw himself body and soul into the ANC. He was among the founding members of the ANC Youth League (ANC YL) in 1944 and became its first National Secretary. He was elected President of the Transvaal ANCYL in 1948 and national vice-president in 1949.

In the ANCYL, Tambo teamed up with Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, Ashby Mda, Anton Lembede, Dr William Nkomo, Dr C.M.Majombozi and others to bring a bold, new spirit of militancy into the post-war ANC. In 1946 Tambo was elected onto the Transvaal Executive of the ANC. In 1948 he, together with Walter Sisulu were elected onto the National Executive Committee. This was of great significance to the ANCYL's efforts to change the ANC.

Instrumental in achieving this transformation was the Programme of Action, piloted by the ANCYL from branch level to the 1949 national conference at Bloemfontein O.R. Tambo served on the Committee that drew up the Programme of Action, which was adopted as national policy in 1949.

The Programme of Action envisaged the transformation of the ANC from an organisation that held public meetings and occasionally petitioned the government to a campaigning movement that would draw in large numbers of people through mass actions, Involving civil disobedience, strikes, boycotts and other forms of non-violent resistance. It was through these means that the ANCYL hoped to change the ANC from an organisation addressing the African elite to a movement of struggle involving the mass of uneducated and unskilled Black workers.

Tambo left teaching soon after the adoption of the Programme of Action and set up a legal partnership with Neslon Mandela. The firm soon became known as a champion of the poor, victims of apartheid laws with little or no money to pay their legal costs.

During the Campaign of Defiance of Unjust Laws of 1952, Oliver Tambo was among the numerous volunteers who courted imprisonment by deliberately breaking apartheid laws. His law firm partner and colleague, Nelson Mandela was the National volunteer in chief.

The South African government's attempts to suppress the Defiance Campaign resulted in one of the first mass trials in South African legal history. Though he himself was not among the accused, Tambo was close to the trial. It resulted in the designation of Sisulu and others found guilty of organising the Defiance Campaign as statutory "Communists". (That is, though they were not Communists, in terms of the violations of the Suppression of Communism Act they had committed, the judiciary declared them "Communists" in terms of the statute.) One result was in 1955 Walter Sisulu, Secretary General of the ANC was banned in terms of the Suppression of Communism Act and ordered to resign his post as Secretary General.

Oliver Tambo was appointed to fill the post, pending ratification by the annual conference.

Hounded by banning orders and other restrictions, many of Tambo's peers were unable to attend the Congress of the People in June 1955.

Oliver Tambo was not only on the platform but also served on the National Action Council which headed the mobilisation for the COP. It was because of this role that Tambo found himself among the 156 accused in the marathon Treason Trial in 1956.

In 1958, Oliver Tambo left the post of Secretary General to become the Deputy President of the ANC. The following year, 1959, he like many of his colleagues was served with five year banning order. After the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, Tambo was designated by the ANC to travel abroad to set up the ANC's international mission and mobilise international opinion in opposition to the apartheid system.

Working in conjunction with Dr Yusuf Dadoo he was instrumental in the establishment of the South African United Front, which brought together the external missions of the ANC, the PAC, the SA Indian Congress and the South West African National Union (SWANU). As a result of a very successful lobbying campaign the South African United Front was able to secure the expulsion of South Africa from the Commonwealth in 1961. After this initial success the SAUF broke up in July 1961.

Assisted by African government, Tambo was able to establish ANC mission in Egypt, Ghana, Morocco and in London. From these small beginnings, under his stewardship the ANC acquired missions in 27 countries by 1990. These include all the permanent members of the UN Security Council, with the exception of China, two missions in Asia and one in Australasia.

The suppression of the 1961 stay-at-home strike led to the ANC adopting the armed struggle as part of its strategy. Tambo was again an important factor in securing the co-operation of numerous African governments in providing training and camp facilities for the ANC.

In 1965 Tanzania and Zambia gave the ANC camp facilities to house trained Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) combatants. In 1967, after the death of ANC President General Chief Albert J. Luthuli, Tambo became Acting president until his appointment to the Presidency was approved by the Morogoro Conference in 1969.

During the 1970s Oliver Tambo's international prestige rose immensely as he traversed the world, addressing the United Nations and other international gatherings on the issue of apartheid. He became the key figure in the ANC's Revolutionary Council (RC) which had been set up at the Morogoro Conference to oversee the reconstruction of the ANC's internal machinery and to improve its underground capacity.

When Portuguese colonialism collapsed in 1975, the ANC stood poised to take maximum advantage of the geo-political changes. Angola offered camp and training facilities for MK, and the long- standing relationship with Frelimo enabled the ANC to acquire diplomatic facilities close to South Africa.

In 1985 Tambo was re-elected ANC President at the Kabwe Conference. In that capacity he served also as the Head of the Politico-Military Council (PMC) of the ANC, and as Commander in Chief of Umkhonto we Sizwe.

Among black South African leaders, Oliver Tambo was probably the most highly respected on the African continent, in Europe, Asia and the Americas. During his stewardship of the ANC he raised its international prestige and status to that of an alternative to the Pretoria Government. He was received with the protocol reserved for Heads of State in many parts of the world.

During his years in the ANC, Oliver Tambo played a major role in the growth and development of the movement and its policies. He was among the generation of African nationalist leaders who emerged after the Second World War who were instrumental in the transformation of the ANC from a liberal-constitutionalist organisation into a radical national liberation movement.

In 1989 Oliver Tambo suffered a stroke, and underwent extensive medical treatment.

He returned to South Africa in 1991, after over three decades in exile. At the ANC's first legal national conference inside South Africa, held in Durban in July 1991, Tambo was elected National Chairperson of the ANC. He was also chairperson of the ANC's Emancipation Commission.

Oliver Reginald Tambo died from a stroke at 3.10am on 24 April, 1993.

 Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

Mandela's words, "The struggle is my life," are not to be taken lightly.

Nelson Mandela personifies struggle. He is still leading the fight against apartheid with extraordinary vigour and resilience after spending nearly three decades of his life behind bars. He has sacrificed his private life and his youth for his people, and remains South Africa's best known and loved hero.

Mandela has held numerous positions in the ANC: ANCYL secretary (1948); ANCYL president (1950); ANC Transvaal president (1952); deputy national president (1952) and ANC president (1991).

He was born at Qunu, near Umtata on 18 July 1918.

His father, Henry Mgadla Mandela, was chief councillor to Thembuland's acting paramount chief David Dalindyebo. When his father died, Mandela became the chief's ward and was groomed for the chieftainship.

Mandela matriculated at Healdtown Methodist Boarding School and then started a BA degree at Fort Hare. As an SRC member he participated in a student strike and was expelled, along with the late Oliver Tambo, in 1940. He completed his degree by correspondence from Johannesburg, did articles of clerkship and enrolled for an LLB at the University of the Witwatersrand.

In 1944 he helped found the ANC Youth League, whose Programme of Action was adopted by the ANC in 1949.

Mandela was elected national volunteer-in-chief of the 1952 Defiance Campaign. He travelled the country organising resistance to discriminatory legislation.

He was given a suspended sentence for his part in the campaign. Shortly afterwards a banning order confined him to Johannesburg for six months. During this period he formulated the "M Plan", in terms of which ANC branches were broken down into underground cells.

By 1952 Mandela and Tambo had opened the first black legal firm in the country, and Mandela was both Transvaal president of the ANC and deputy national president.

A petition by the Transvaal Law Society to strike Mandela off the roll of attorneys was refused by the Supreme Court.

In the 'fifties, after being forced through constant bannings to resign officially from the ANC, Mandela analysed the Bantustan policy as a political swindle. He predicted mass removals, political persecutions and police terror.

For the second half of the 'fifties, he was one of the accused in the Treason Trial. With Duma Nokwe, he conducted the defence.

When the ANC was banned after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, he was detained until 1961 when he went underground to lead a campaign for a new national convention.

Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military wing of the ANC, was born the same year. Under his leadership it launched a campaign of sabotage against government and economic installations.

In 1962 Mandela left the country for military training in Algeria and to arrange training for other MK members.

On his return he was arrested for leaving the country illegally and for incitement to strike. He conducted his own defence. He was convicted and jailed for five years in November 1962. While serving his sentence, he was charged, in the Rivonia trial, with sabotage and sentenced to life imprisonment.

A decade before being imprisoned, Mandela had spoken out against the introduction of Bantu Education, recommending that community activists "make every home, every shack or rickety structure a centre of learning".

Robben Island, where he was imprisoned, became a centre for learning, and Mandela was a central figure in the organised political education classes.

In prison Mandela never compromised his political principles and was always a source of strength for the other prisoners.

During the 'seventies he refused the offer of a remission of sentence if he recognised Transkei and settled there.

In the 'eighties he again rejected PW Botha's offer of freedom if he renounced violence.

It is significant that shortly after his release on Sunday 11 February 1990, Mandela and his delegation agreed to the suspension of armed struggle.

Mandela has honorary degrees from more than 50 international universities and is chancellor of the University of the North.

He was inaugurated as the first democratically elected State President of South Africa on 10 May 1994 - June 1999

Nelson Mandela retired from Public life in June 1999. He currently resides in his birth place - Qunu, Transkei.

 Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki

People like to identify Thabo Mbeki as an independent and original thinker, but one who remains close to the more visible leadership. His profile as a policy shaper and mediator in the movement has been built up over a lifetime of involvement. "I was born into the struggle," he says. His birth took place in Idutywa, Transkei, on the 18th of June, 1942.

Both his parents were teachers and activists. His father is a university graduate and there were many books in his home which Thabo read at an early age. Govan Mbeki was a leading figure in ANC activities in the Eastern Cape. Believing that sooner or later they would be arrested, Mbeki's parents decided that family and friends would also be responsible for bringing up the children. Mbeki therefore spent long periods away from home.

He joined the Youth League at 14 and quickly became active in student politics. After his schooling at Lovedale was interrupted by a strike in 1959, he completed his studies at home. Thereafter he moved to Johannesburg where he came under the guidance of Walter Sisulu and Duma Nokwe.

While studying for his British A-levels he was elected secretary of the African Students' Association (ASA). He went on to study economics as a correspondence student with London University. The ASA collapsed following the arrest of many of its members, at a time when political movements were coming under increasingly severe attack from the state. Mbeki's father was arrested at Rivonia and sentenced to life imprisonment.

He left the country in 1962 under orders from the ANC. From Tanzania he moved to Britain where he completed a Masters degree in economics at Sussex University in 1966. Remaining active in student politics, he played a prominent role in building the youth and student sections of the ANC in exile.

Following his studies he worked at the London office with the late Oliver Tambo and Yusuf Dadoo before being sent to the Soviet Union in 1970 for military training. Later that year he arrived in Lusaka where he was soon appointed assistant secretary of the Revolutionary Council. In 1973-74 he was in Botswana holding discussions with the Botswana government about opening an ANC office there. In 1975 he was acting ANC representative in Swaziland. Appointed to the NEC in 1975, he served as ANC representative to Nigeria until 1978.

On his return to Lusaka he became political secretary in the office of Oliver Tambo, and then director of information. From this position he played a major role in turning the international media against apartheid. His other role in the '70s was in building the ANC in Swaziland and underground structures inside the country.

During the '80s Mbeki rose to head the department of information and publicity and co-ordinated diplomatic campaigns to involve more white South Africans in anti-apartheid activities. When delegations of sports, business and cultural representatives visited Lusaka for talks they all expressed surprise to meet a man deeply engaged in the issues they brought to the table.

From 1989 Mbeki headed the ANC Department of International Affairs, and was a key figure in the ANC's negotiations with the former government.

Mbeki was hand-picked by Nelson Mandela after the April 1994 general election to be the first Deputy President of the new Government of National Unity.

At the 50th Conference of the ANC at Mafikeng, from 16-20 1997, Thabo Mbeki was elected as the new President of the African National Congress.

Thabo Mbeki was elected President of South Africa on 14 June 1999 and was inaugurated as President on 16 June 1999.

 He resigned as President of South Africa on 24 September 2008.

Jacob Gadleyihlekisa Zuma 2009 to present

He is the most expensive ANC President the ANC has ever had, ZUMAVILLE in Inkandla is the testimony to that. We would have expected the leader who is selfless and a servant to the nation but then? Most of his profile will be included once the ANC website is updated. The ANC at Mangaung will have to make sure that he is revealed from this position if it wants to redeem its image in the 2014 NPE elections. Marikana....ZUMAVILLE..... under performance of Departments...Unemployment increase......E-TOLL.... that is how he will be remembered.

•          Role of President Jacob Zuma on Juliu Malema as ANCYL President

I have been telling friends that what is happening between JZ and Junju is not new to our History, just few years ago; the former President T Mbeki had the same problem with Fikile Mbalula when the other was the State President and the other was the ANCYL President. What did happen? As a strategist, a strategy was developed to assist Mbalula to have table manners, people like Tony Yengeni were practical in ensuring that Mbalula’s future is natured and shaped to the one Mbalula is today. He got drunk, and woke up in the mountains, the kind of leadership did not play the man, but the ball, and thus Mbalula became a man and achieved table manners. Look at him today; he has qualities that show that he has some potential to become one of the serving ministers I forgot to mention on the departments that has produced positive results to this nation. In contrast to that, what did JZ do to Junju? NDC was set up to deal with him, they played the boy and not the ball, thus the future of Junju seems to be bleak. As a father of the Nation, JZ should have spoken to some leaders from Limpopo to look at how this Boy can acquire some NEC table manners, he would have been proud of the role he played in developing a YL President of his time, just as Thabo’s leadership (Tony Yengeni) did to Fikile.

As it was the case during the Mbeki era, ANCYL was not Seeing Eye to eye with Mbeki, it is the same Julius who was prepared to die for Zuma who does not even want to see Zuma taking the reins at Mangaung. If they could speed up the process and approach Mbeki for nominations and support the open Caucus system for the sake of building ANC and South Africa and the victory of 2014 elections. Spending 203 or 256 million Rands for the revamp of JZ’s private house does not justify that public monies should be spent as a national key house and that one will vote ANC in 2014. Being unemployed for the past few years shows lack of leadership that keeps on promising and not delivering, forget me not, forget me not, twisaver.  JZ has shown qualities of being selfish and has been the most expensive president since the 1994 elections in this country, unlike those presidents who have sacrificed their lives for the formation of this democracy that a few elite enjoy today and for me he cannot pass through the eye of the needle test. The challenge is that most of those who are benefiting would not want a situation in which they could lose the bone or fat in their mouth if JZ is released from his duties and a new president is elected. If we elect someone who is young and is not affected by these corrupt activities we see every day and we invest at least two terms for him or her under the tutelage of the leadership of Mbeki, Mutlante, Zuma and Mama Winnie we are guaranteed that we would have made a good investment.

•          A Manager and Leader

In most of the interviews I conducted when I was the Chairperson of Townsview Primary School for teacher candidates, I would want them to explain to us as to what they understood of a Manager and a Leader. I expected them to just be practical to show that I was the leader elected by parents to serve them on their needs; and that the principal would be referred as the manager since she had to ensure that day to day activities for the school are met. They would then waffle and tried to explain something I could not understand, only a few of them convinced me and I am proud that they were included to the school. Through the eye of the needle they were able to convince me that they met the criteria set, thus I managed to vote for them.

Briefly, Nelson Mandela was a leader and a manager at the same time for our country after 1994, Thabo Mbeki then became a manger but was not a leader as most journalist would claim that he was always outside the country and did not attend to our social ill of the day, and lastly on Jacob Zuma, I would argue that he is the leader especially for those who would attend gatherings and sing “Awu’ leth’ umshini wam” they would rely on him on leadership although some have changed their minds and cannot agree with me. South Africa needs a leader and a manger towards 2014 and who can that be? I am of the opinion that it should be a woman, but who I do not know, should it be Naledi Pandor, Mamphele Ramphele (not an ANC member but can be approached after Patrioitic Front Movement is revived), or any Mother who can lead not only ANC but South Africa as a whole. If gender parity really applies in the ANC, people will agree with this opinion where Motlante can only serve as Caretaker as he has done before after Mbeki. The Mangaung Conference can also opt for the re-election of Mbeki as ANC president in order to redeem the image of this organisation as it was done during the ZK Mahabane era in the 1930s. As a manager, the later can then make sure that day to day activities are implemented while the elected mother will be leading the country. Should we bring back the two centres of power to save ANC from the embarrassment that it will face should anyone other than the above be elected (more elaboration on this on Open Caucus input below).

•          Open Caucus at the Mangaung Conference

It will be only through open Caucus that we can have a leader and a manger at the same time after the Mangaung Conference. The ANC of today is no longer getting relevant weekly newsletters since Mbeki’s removal from office. That strategy of having an ANC President and South African President can ensure that we both have the leader and a manger at the same time as explained above. As a doctor, I would recommend that the ANC would have to elect the NEC at this Mangaung Conference first and postpone the election of the top six after six months by looking at the performance of those who are in power, and that the NEC would recommend as to who is better positioned to become part of the top six. The number of NEC members should also be doubled as we have a high number of tasks ahead of us. In the spirit of building the nation, we then need to amend the manner in which conferences are held as they are not helping ANC if we will have a gap of 18 months after the conference and the national elections. If the ANC conference could be held at least a year before the NPE like in December 2013. The space after this and the elections would leave time for the ANC to prepare itself for these coming elections, what will happen then after the Mangaung Conference? Will Thuli Madontsela start the investigations of Khulubuse and Mandela’s grandson Aurora dealings? Is she going to look at JZ criminal charges that are still pending and are with the NPA? Will she also look at ANC’s Arms deal and all corruption charges that needs to be investigated, these will assist everyone in moving forward in the spirit of reconciliation and those who need to apply for amnesty. If her office is not used to settle political scores, she will then need to become impartial, free and fair. Do all chapter 9 institutions deliver on the mandates given or are they just there to provide lip service? She will have to start investigating all these institutions as well starting by her own institution, what has happened since some of the cases were not looked at by the administration of Mushwana. 

If you remember during 2000, ANC opted for an open Caucus system that everyone had to convince voters as to why Cdes had to vote for him/her at that conference. This can be the only way that can help not only ANC but South Africa in general in moving to a better life for all dreams. The conference should opt for not the system of electing the top six, rather the election of all NEC members who should convince us as to why they should be elected and be part of the NEC, through the eye of the needle can be used in order to make sure that relevant people are elected.

I am of the opinion that, if Zuma needs to be changed, all NEC members should go through the same scrutiny as they have been part of this leadership and why now should they automatically become Presidents or part of the NEC? It has become clear to me that some have used Zuma to remove Mbeki from office for them to gain space for the 2012 Conference and now faces are coming forth. Plato on his arguments argues that one of the most threats of democracy is when gangs /cabal /groupings use their strategies to gain access to leadership position, then hell will be open for everyone to come. Is there collective leadership at this NEC? In yes, why have they kept quite when they have seen wrong things happening with JZ? Why did he had to cancel his trip from the SADC mission in Mozambique and attend the Marikana cricis? What is their input on the leadership style of JZ or they are afraid of dictatorship tendencies that Junju is crying for? They might be sidelined or fired from their lucrative positions that give them fat. Thus I am of the opinion that we do not have to go the Zimbabean route and allow for the creation of monuments that would be difficult to take them out of office. Why now do we have to hear of the deal that Motlante should remain the Deputy and would become the ANC face during the 2014 elections, is this not the creation of two centres of power? The very concerns that were raised in Polokwane when Mbeki wanted the third term for the ANC leadership position, if we go through this route, what guarantees do we have that JZ would go for this in 2014?

2.                 History and Lessons learnt from the past

What is it that we have learnt from these experiments since 1994? I will start with the New Age article by Genevieve Quintal’s article “Membership bust for JZ” of 01 October 2012 an interview with Mr. William Gumede. The interview looks at the reasons as to the increase of membership in KZN, Gumede expresses concerns that the increase in membership in KZN by ‘IFP members who joined ANC because Zuma is there’ as part of his campaign to get Zulu speakers to support his presidency shows we are going back to tribal tendencies that have been rejected by ANC since its formation. KZN will be the most province with most delegates in this conference and the intention is of ensuring that JZ becomes president no matter what, this has been expressed again by Sihle Zikalala, the Secretary of KZN that JZ must come up with some legislation that should deal with people who are opposing the office of the presidency. Did he (Sihle) not learn from Thabo’s style of leadership? In the article, Gumede continues to say ‘the problem with this is that they may support Zuma and not the ANC.... if Zuma is not there they might leave the ANC and this has raised “red flags”. I also share the same sentiment with Gumede in that ‘we don’t want anybody to mobilise support based on one ethnic group. The country needs the kind of leadership that can mobilise support across all groups’. With this approach the ANC will suffer as he continues to say ‘if you only win one region, it means when you govern there is going to be opposition all the time from within ANC. The presidency will be locked in a paralysis’, said Gumede. If you look at the how JZ has surrounded himself after becoming president, the minister of Safety and Security (Nathi Mthethwa); Inteligence (Siyabonga Cwele); Justice (Jeff Radebe) you will realise what Gumede tries to highlight in this article.

JZ is the most expensive president that SA has had ever since 1994 as stated above, as a polygamist, he could have been in a better position to practice this if he was just a businessmen, some religious cult leader or was some chief from Inkandla, but as a president he has set a bad precedent for in that public fund can be used for personal gain. What the Public Protector found on Junju should be the foundation of all investigations that needs her attention from Khulubuse Zuma and his family gains on public funds to the Arms deal investigations and those politicians who have set an example that it is not wrong to be corrupt.

3.                 Through the eye of the needle

Do we really have a leadership that can go through the eye of the needle these days? After waiting for developments for some two weeks and conducting some research on this topic, one has gathered that one has the opinion and should not only look at the blame game but be optimistic on the quality of leadership at hand. The challenge is that 2012 is supposed to be a good year for all, but it is only those who are in leadership who have been benefiting and getting a lot of attention in a negative way and this has proved that my point that the current leadership has to go through the test of going through the eye of the needle come Mangaung. The Marikana developments has called me to come back at this exercise and comment on the Secretary General of the ANC, Gwede Mantashe who has been totally against the Nationalisation of mines agenda which is one of the pillars of the ANC Freedom Charter. Why has the research conducted by ANC not provided any positive response to the call? If ANC leadership, government and the mining bosses have really colluded in the Marikana debacle, surely Polokwane was used to benefit those who are in the NEC and the beneficiaries of BEE practices that have not generated any employment opportunities it was intended to create for the poor. Innocent people have been killed in pretence that Nationalisation cannot work at this dispensation, while individuals are squandering monies intended for the benefit of poor unemployed citizens and government resources are used to fight the battle of the soul of ANC.

The kind of leadership elected at Polokwane shows that the ANC has created setbacks for itself instead of enjoying the fruits of this democracy that was created in 1994. 20 years later, the ANC still has to go back to the drawing board and look at whether the Patriotic Front managed to achieve to unite all liberation movements or not. I am of the opinion that we have to go back and look at ways in which partnerships can be forged between political parties that and that ANC should supersede and form a one political party that will look at the interest of ordinary poor South Africans. We need the leadership that can convince people that they are only working as servants and not kings or chiefs that do not promote unethical behavior immoral lifestyle that those who have spent most of their lives fighting for the liberation and creation of this democracy we are not enjoying today. As stated above, the ANC will have to do some self introspection and look at how best it can move out of the mess it finds itself into today, open caucus is the only way I would see ANC moving out of this mess. Why have those who have vision and wisdom to serve the people are sidelined and are not given platform?  I still believe that the ANC is underutilized leaders such as Dr Pallor Jordan, Joel Netshitenze, Thabo Mbeki and those who did not subscribe to the formation of the current leadership by those who needed to use the platform for their own benefit. Why now two centers of power will work out if those who came with the concept were sidelined and those who criticized the idea are now calling for something they were against it? How will they monitor the progress of ensuring that the president of the country tows the line and is the servant but not the King of chief of some newly developed village?

Through the eye of the needle is some document concocted by those who were visionaries and were servants and aimed at the development of those who lived in South Africa, now we face a president that does not comply with the rule of law and is above the law, what the ANCYL president has been alerting everyone that we are facing someone who is developing dictatorship tendencies and these tendencies are showing up while those who are members of the cabal are clapping hands and do not see anything wrong because they are afraid that once there is change, they will also be affected. Open caucus should have a standard set of questions and one of them should question as to what the current leadership has done to guard against the practises we face today.

4.                 Status of ANC Branches

At this stage we should be having branches with office with their own banking accounts, but is it the case? When one was elected to serve as some branch secretary some years ago in one Olof Palme branch, we resolved that our branch should have its own bank account and fundraising in adopting the race course, one primary school, one high school, and should ensure that we have a community multipurpose/development center and that we should have our own branch office and move away from the PCO. Although we were not at the same par within the zone, but since we believed in democratic centralism, we had to convince those who were not seeing this with the same eye and it was resolved that we had to improve our administration system so as we can have some database that those who come after us can have some paper trail that they can use as reference. I was then deployed to established a youth league for this branch and managed to established youth league branched within our zone, with the mission that if all branches within our zone have youth participating we would be able to have volunteers who will work and serve the interest of ordinary people within our constituency.

I am using this background with the aim of why branches should learn to stand up on themselves and become the unit of each community without using PCO facilities but this has never become a practical mission even though it has been some ten or so years ago. Most of the branches I have visited in the past few years, they still have theorist and the practical is a mission to achieve despite all those resources at our disposal. A man and a fish scenario applies, man needs to be natured and developed as indicated above, for each unit to work, we need regional structures that will become visible and assist branches in ensuring that they establish branch offices with branch secretaries that can be paid a salary and some administration staff that can be paid monthly salaries as well, will this not be a job creation initiative? What is it that branches discuss when their BEC meet? It is Minutes and maters arising on the agenda? Branches should be giving directives to the NEC but now it is the NEC that gives direction to PECs, RECs, and BECs, it is top bottom approach. When I was employed for IEC at some stage as well, I question one of the leadership in that, why is it that in South Africa, we have people accounting to politicians when it is politicians who should be account to their electorate as it is the case in developed democratic countries such as Sweden? It is branches that need to discuss policies that should be adopted at the National Assembly and not that the leadership in parliament should come up and inform the country that there is some Protection of State Information Bill that needs the attention of everyone and those opposed should be dealt with. In a democratic environment all ideas are tabled and discussed and those who are against the opinion will be convinced to a level that later they will be defending that idea as if it is theirs, which is democratic centralism. Branches will then become visible to serve the interest of communities but this has been a challenge that not only ANC but all political parties have, you need some multipurpose facility where you need to blog, discuss with anyone on line at the time, nirhabulisane on line, we are still in the dark ages. In this dispensation young people who are unemployed but educated and are abreast with the developments, each ward should be having a multipurpose facility, but because some have not political connections and sometimes differ on ideology with what is happening, end up being sidelined. The ANC is busy playing with mucus while people are hungry out there, it is going to regret this as time goes when no one will be willing to cast the vote for it, patriotism is dying from branch level, there is no engagement of the tripartite alliance partners at branch level, people are confused as to where are we in the NDR? Most young people will support that there must be economic freedom in their lifetime while those in power will do everything to protect the capitalistic agenda and come at meeting to display their new investments in expensive cars, clothes, and drinks as it has been displayed in parliament recently, the spending of more than R4 Billion for one financial year, while there are poor people who spend sleepless nights without anything to eat, I am one of those, and I am very angry with the party I voted for, stop playing with my dole, stop playing with mucus, my kids needs something to eat tonight while you’re gallivanting and ganguzle  with what our for-fathers fought for.

5.                 Moral Regeneration and the our Societal Values

What happened to Father Simangaliso Mkhatshwa? When Moral Regeneration was formed it was on the bases of looking at the morals of our country, but where are we today? One has to look at Religion, values that are entrenched in our Constitution Act 108 of 1996, the Constitution itself from its formation 1993 interim to Act 108 of 1996, Patriotic Front Movement, KemptonPark resolutions, economic emancipation (NDR: where are we?), Social Ills and Social stratum, Chapter 9 institutions and the way we live in 2012 leading to 2030. Gays and lesbians in our society is a sensitive issue but I was impressed by the Ugandian delegate (at the Midrand African Parliament /African Union Conference) who has introduced the topic, the Malawian President who has postponed the introduction of gays and lesbians in Malawi. The argument the Western powers have dominated us as Africans in the past is practical to our Constitution that was crated without considering the way and background we came from. Our constitution has promoted Western values more than looking at the African customs and traditions thus we are now facing a huge number of our young people being involved in Satanism today. We have allowed Colonial of a special type to control us and have also criticized the way our ancestors have lived and have promoted gays and lesbians over our way of life, we promote Nuclear families over Communal way of life. Is it Adam and Eve or Adam and Steve? We have to live with the decisions that we have taken, if we go with the later, we need to understand that there will be no reproduction, then why should we have children who are innocent that should be brought up from this way of life? My challenge is that, we cannot promote men kissing each other in front of my children that I up bring with values and morals that does not promote this way of life. This practice will affect my child and would want to experiment this conduct at some stage. How did I became aware of this practice? While growing up around the mines of Buffelsfontein, Vaal Reefs, and Stilffontein, migrant labourers (men) used to live in hostel dwellings and used to practice this and were caught and imprisoned for sodomy. Today, those who have become victims of being sodomized are now gays since they were forced to this practiced. I say this because not everyone is born gay or lesbian, they are either forced into this practice from hostels, prisons or from churches (Rome) as they live as either men or women and those with power who have some sexual desires and want to release would want to use the chocolate box. The whole is used to excrete faeces and now is used to insert sperm, what then will come from this? AIDS. When growing up, one would get into trouble and be infected by STD /STI from girls that we said had (dirty) feil sick because of certain things, but then what happens to a men /boy who sleeps with other different men and gets sick and goes and pass this to an innocent girl /women? When you (as an innocent men) sleep with that female who has some disease that I do not know what to call, you will then get sick and before you notice, you sleep with another female who then sleeps with another female who sleeps with another male who sleeps with other males at the side, what do you get? AIDS. It may come innocently to you as you were not aware that in the line of your experience you have slept with someone who was either sodomised or something. We tend to look the other way, while we know the truth is in front of us. You would drink an African Imbiza and clean yourself from the feil (dirty) sick from girls you slept with and the sickness would go away, but today it does not instead, you would be bedridden and die, though this does not guarantee that AIDS comes from this practice, has there been any test done on this analysis? God has punished people of Sodom and Gomorra for experiments such as these, but what can you say if the very same men who claim to practice celibacy are the very same people who are sodomizing young boys in these Churches? Do you blame the victims? It has been justified that they will then develop sexual feelings for same sex people.

Looking at the Constitution of the country, it is in English and was promulgated in an English version although it was supposed to be in all eleven official languages as promised before in the Interim Constitution of 1993. How will one interpret the constitution in other languages and ensure that all people that are intending to serve understand it as it supposed to do? As a nation one will agree with those that argue that we have lost morals and that our children will not understand as how they lost the freedom that they must fight for again despite the efforts made by our forebears. It has become a common thing for those who are card caring members of ANC to exploit and corrupt the system with those who are prepared to kill because they do not approve of the challenges they face. If MKVA does not understand the constitution of this country, how do you expect Sihle Zikalala to understand it? Where did these objectives that were agreed upon in Kliptown early this year end? Was this exercise positive or was it just a public stunt? Is our nation united? What plans do we have for those who are coming from the northern borders of Africa? If you remember, we had whites who came with missions and build missionaries and now we have missions /establishments that are churches and there are no missionaries, where are they? After those white settlers, there was no constestation of jobs instead people were recruited from rural areas and neighboring countries and more people were needed by the Nationalist government, why has that changed. There were Indians that were recruited from India, they have come with their own agenda as well, then we had the chines with their own missions –at that time there were no xenophobic attacks for those communities by Africans, but then one wonders why are there attackers on Africans who are coming to this country as political asylum seekers? It shows that there is lack of leadership in ensuring that there are laws guiding as to how these foreign nationals should live in this country.

We have people who have no identification documents that are involved in criminal activities and cannot be traceable when committing crime. The rate of rape in this country has increased and no one knows where this culture comes from as we never had such violent crime in our country before. Who will you blame for all this mess? I will go back to the administrations since 1994, not much was done in ensuring that we tighten our laws for the benefit of ordinary citizens after 1994. We never had a chance to breathe and speak as a nation in community halls on laws that should guide us as communities. In Zimbabwe for example, there is a legislation that allows foreign nationals to own business but should report every three months and make an oath that they have not committed any crime in the past. What legislation do we have that guides us a nation? Does this law apply as well to Indians, Chines or European nationals who are in this country illegal and are doing business in this country? We now have illegal nationals who are hijacking properties in the Johannesburg South and CBD that are now owning houses illegally so without anyone monitoring as to what is happening, the Minister of Human Settlement has looked at the Agencies but in these areas foreign nationals keep on doing business as if nothing is wrong, for example offices of a media company called Western Sun became a victim of this practice where the Booysens police station commander instructed police to come and hijack the property and was hijacked around 21H00 on a Thursday. If it was South African people doing this, they were going to be arrested but nothing has been done on this despite efforts of reporting the matter to the provincial office. In Regents Park for example, a similar incident occurred where a foreign national stabbed one woman in the head for her property and no one cares (this appeared on the daily sun newspaper of 17 July 2012). What is really happening in this country? During the xenophobic attackers we had tents that were built in Glenanda for example, where these nationals were placed and were monitored, but the government decided that this was some expensive exercise and took this people back to the community. Were they thought as to how we live? In some cold days you will see people moving around with broken trees to make fire in a suburb, people throw plastic bottles, cans and paper in sewerage pipes things that if people were given some induction they would know that some of these can be recycled, you cannot blame them, they were never oriented when they come to the city with lights from dark cities.

6.                 Where are we in terms of NDR, Is Tripartite Alliance still relevant?

In terms of NDR we should have been owners by now, thus a lot of people would sympathies with Junju but would not agree on the way he puts his ideas. If COSATU was effective, buy now it should have owned at least ten mines that belong to its subscribers and workers could be owners instead of being workers for life, Marikana is the example that one will never forget. In terms of NDR this country should have been on its third stage, economic emancipation but we have policy makers who have been promoting capitalistic mentality thus we will not achieve this stage in the near future. Documents such as Freedom Charter were created to assist the poor people that government enters into loans using their doles without considering who benefits. From the first administration, we have not been able to look at how these policies agreed upon can be implemented as we have diverted in what was agreed upon early in the fifties, then the second administration has turned to look at serving the African Agenda instead of looking at ways that would benefit the ordinary South Africans, though one will agree that a majority of lives were changed for the better like, moving from dark city to light city, the third administration has taken people back to rethink whether the ANC is good or not.  ANC will have to convince people in 2014 as to why they should be part of the tripartite alliance.

If Communists within the tripartite alliance are promoting capitalism more that capitalists within ANC, whose agenda does this alliance serve? SACP should learn to stand on its own and contest elections led by Gwede Mantashe so as we can see as to how will they convince ordinary citizens to vote for them come 2014. It is with sadness that the Nationalist within the alliance have been so quiet and have not put their agenda on the table comparing to the current dispensation. Some individuals within the ANC are failing the ANC and time will be against ANC if people are promoting that people should just be quite on issues of leadership as MKVA is pushing for, they will only serve robots that will not have ideas and mind to question this that are wrong happening and nothing is done. Are they serving the interests of one individual instead of building the ANC and its policies and principles, maybe people do not understand as to why it is said that people join political parties voluntary and can decide not to renew when they see things not going the way they believe they should go, this is one of the democratic centralism principles, let us agree to disagree on principle. What positive contribution is being added by those who are calling that the current administration should be retained while there are strikes all over the country and greed has become central or focal point to those who will die or kill for some leader.

7.                 Should ANC be a cultural movement instead of being a political party?

We only need four political parties as a country but the question will be, does ANC have to be part of those political parties? After some deliberations in looking at whether the ANC is relevant to become an organisation or a political party, I am of the opinion that the ANC will have to choose whether it must continue and become a political party or not. The history of ANC comes from the system of a broad church movement that has been giving direction for those who have been oppressed by the system, then how come those who have been fighting oppressors are now oppressors? If everyone in this country practices values, principles and policies of the ANC, we only need four political parties to contest elections. It will be cheaper to run elections and cheaper to maintain parliament as we would only have a few number of people who know what they are employed to do. Policies need to be interrogated at that Mangaung Conference so as they are kept abreast with the current developments in serving the interest of ordinary people. Serve us for six months and give us the report as to what have you achieved in that term, if you have failed in coming with strategies that can convince everyone that you were practical in serving the interest of people then you can be re-elected. What reports will government ministers bring in convincing those delegates if open caucus is adopted in that conference? People should be re-elected on merits not that they have some entitlement as freedom fighter who are only serving their personal aggrandizement as we see things transpiring towards this conference. Those who belong to prison, must not apply but should just be shown the way to prison, if the public protector is doing her job she will have to convince us that she will use Malema’s case as a yard stick for the Khulubuses, and all of those who are corrupt.  This will be a move towards shaping South Africa for a common goal, all political parties should work for the people of South Africa and we need to transform towards achieving that if we really want to work for our country. No one is entitled to be in power for life, we have seen what is happening around the global village on countries that have not adapted to democratic principles.

In conclusion, this is the first draft of the book entitled “The History of South Africa and ANC 20 years later” and all those who have contributed will be acknowledged once the final draft is completed. This is a call for those who are interested in building up this book for the benefit of our future generation are called to contribute in shaping this up. This has been a critical analytically view based document, though a lot of positive things have happened and will be included in the second draft in looking at the abovementioned topics.

Chapter 2

The Hard Way for Africans

 I had to write this letter so that I can also contribute in shaping democracy in the SADC region. It is an opportunity for most of SADC community to communicate in matters relating to the Zimbabwe issue, the SA attitude towards the Africans, and the role that the youth should be playing in politics. The level of understanding of politics by some South Africans is not impressing at all. I say this because we will be going for elections next year, but I foresee that some people might not be taking part on them because that some are disgruntled.

My contribution to the SADC region is that it is some opportunity for us to unite and form one block that might be able to fight the Western domination over us. Our economy is being controlled by some elite group (the western power) that is making decisions on our behalf –by means of controlling food prices as it is the case today. We can only unit on this if we stop trading with countries of the West who keeps on dictating terms on us. We should just request that we go for a state of isolation in the whole SADC region, and that we can have some time to debate differences that we might be having. For example, as South Africans, we are still far from being united - the Tswanas have their own understanding of matters, the Xhosas on the other hand have the same attitude towards other groups. When listening to some radio talk shows, you can notice that this country is divided - the blacks will have their own understanding of matters in discussion, and the whites on the other hand will also have a different opinion on the matter at hand. The ANCYL should have tried to organize youth in all spectrums of society and should have led public debates on this, but it did not stick to what OR would have envisaged on the youth of today. The west will continue using these gaps and influence what happens in our society, if you look at some Africans coming from other countries, they come with only one mission of developing themselves under sever conditions and they are able to make it in our markets. Do you blame them? Do you blame the apartheid? These are some of the challenges that we are still facing in shaping our democracy in this region.

If we can just sit and think, we can use the current situation as an opportunity that might develop our way of living. We can just go for a state of isolation and trade amongst ourselves, anyone willing to trade with us should go via the SADC. During this time, we will be discussing issues that we should have discussed sometime ago -how will we have one currency? What education system should we follow? Which language can we use when we communicate amongst ourselves -should we adopt Swahili or continue using the language of the Holly King and Queen English? What agenda should we follow -who are we serving? do South Africans able to have "ubuntu" to other SADC community members e.g., someone coming from Angola? These are some of the few issues that can be placed in the table for discussions to the SADC agenda. Let us put the notice for this on the UN table and the deadline is 2012. When looking at the Zimbabwe elections and results, I have an understanding that our leaders who are leading the SADC on the Zimbabwe issue are still on the right path. This is because most people in the world are for the view that Mr. Mugabe has lost the elections and that he should just go and leave the office, but this can be a problem for the incoming president. Most soldiers, police, civil servants are still loyal to the ZANU' s politburo and will not serve either Tswangarayi or Makoni at this stage. Yes, the MDC has won the parliamentary elections and can only use this opportunity in infiltrating the ranks of decision making for Zimbabwe during the first five years. They can either negotiate that the position of a Prime Minister be introduced and be filled with one of the above mentioned leaders, with constitutional amendments that should go the parliament that will be shaping the government of national unity. The main aim to be in power in any democracy is to serve the nation and thus I call upon both camps to sit down and follow what the Kenya has done in the few recent weeks.

Our (as South Africans) attitude should change towards people coming from the northern parts of Africa and have some tolerance towards them. We will not be able to say that the SADC leadership is wrong on the decisions that it has taken till far, because a lot of havoc has been avoided and that there was no crisis during the elections in Zimbabwe. People should understand that the fight for neo-colonialism is not yet over, so 'aluta continua' as Cde Samora would say, our economic system has been infiltrated by opportunistic individuals who would only want to gain as much as they can on our gold, platinum or any mineral that we produce. The question is are we all for the idea of African development or that people should serve their masters and have dual citizenship and /or double agenda in our parliaments? When you look at some political parties in this country, you would wonder who is it that they want for ensuring that we have patriotism in this county at least by 2012. The challenge we face not only as Africans, but the whole global village is, if leaders are serving people why do they develop a notion of becoming greedy? Why a group of people would want to form some elite class and forget about the humanness while the brother next door will be sleeping without some bread on the table?

I have only raised these concerns so that we can promote the culture of talking amongst ourselves, responding to challenges like: - Who should lead us? If you are tasked, then why do we loose confidence in you? Did you serve the people well in that they would keep you in their minds? Are we fit to take control of our lives from western domination? You end with more questions than answers, but one thing that most of us will agree upon is that at this time we should be moving towards maintaining peace in the global politics and stop the double agenda. Why will it be wrong for Mugabe and not for Bush or Blair because they have also attacked Iraq despite marches that were conducted around the world calling 'NO TO WAR', 'NO OIL FOR FOOD', etc and look at what they have done. A lot of people are still dying in those parts of the world and no one has called for justice for both of these leaders at the International Court for crimes that are still going in Iraq and Palestine.

Chapter 3

THE MORAL DECAY IN MZANTSI

There is a high moral decay in Mzantsi and people should start talking to resolve conflicts. Our children will also be lost more and more if we do not set the record straight. Should we blame young people for their misbehavior in the last few years without coming up with constructive solutions that will assist us in building this nation. As predicted in the article I sent to City Press on the 22 April 2008 titled "The Hard Way for Africans" we are now facing xenophobia a term that we never expected to be in our minds after our liberation. Our young brothers and sisters who are now doing their matric will not have a brighter future because of gate-keepers who are not interested in ensuring that this country move forward. Why can't we engage all those 19years and older in our military? Let us move back to military conscription and ensure that we engage our children in brighter future developments. By doing so we would have kept at least 80% of the youth from roaming around the street doing nothing and ending up doing wrong things and we start blaming them. What is Moral Regeneration if it does not make any sense to ordinary people? What programs are in place today of ensuring that our young people are kept busy? No we have BEE or BBBEEE, Asgisa, or all these fancy names that do not make any sense to the targeted groups. No they do not have skills and cannot participate in the programs at hand, is this an insult if we have people who have been to University and have done some skill development courses but are still unemployed. It is time to wake up and implement policies in place or what we have been doing in the past few years will just be useless to people who are watching. We have to get some reports regarding Business Unusual, what is it that has been unusual in the past three months?

More on this will be included in the next edition.

As we are confused......we are like this traffic circle.....its innovation but where are we going?

Chapter 4

THE NEED FOR AFRICAN SOCIALISM

This will be a weekly update for all of us to participate in the debate of nation building objectives. I have decided to come back to my mission of educating the young minds of Africa on calling for some dialog on African Socialism. What then is African Socialism? African Socialism is the practice that used to be practiced by Africans long before the colonisers thought of coming to invade the dark continent of Afrika. Long before Reformation, Industrial Revolution, Renaissance and Scientific Revolution there was African Renaissance where Africans were trading with other Nations as mentioned in the Holly Book, the Bible as you will notice that during the time of Solomon there were people who had moved from Maphungubwe to present gifts to the great King of the world at the time. My focus for now will only look at these developments that were happening during these years and why are we now back to reviving the old way of life leading to African Socialism.

When you look at Qeeun Basheba who had to pay some visit to the King as sent by the Kings of Africa to represent Africans during the thanks giving ceremonies which were held at the time. She was from Ethiopia, the great-great-grandmother of Emperor Heile Selase and was one of the woman who went to King Solomon’s Kingdom long before Jesus came to earth. In the Southern parts of Africa there was a Kingdom of Maphungubue just above Limpopo, and people were trading with the Arabs from the North and people of Asia. So then, how did these people manage to survive? It is said that some were hunter gatherers while others were farmers and were practicing Ubuntu and shared their wealth. So how is this relevant to our life these days? Sharing is key to everything we have to do, you become part of the community before you become an individual. In the West for example, nuclear family is key where an individual is promoted and you should move for the achievement of self-fulfillment. Is this bad or good? I am of the opinion that if we look at most philosophies, you will find Socialism as being ideal way of life that is promoted by most governments in addressing social ills or plights. In the Marxists theory, Communism is promoted as the ideal way of life and Capitalism is the end goal to that achievement. As human beings, we should be fulfilled when we are self-sufficient and are able to achieve whatever goals we might dream of. Then will I say nuclear family system is bad? I will be wrong by saying that, and principles of living conditions does not allow that we can achieve the goals of Communism if we have not gone through all the processes or stages of Class struggle. There should be a dictatorship of the proletariat before thinking that we are free from the shackles of Colonialism. In South Africa for example, I would think that most of the goals that our fore bearers had in mind during the forming of organisations like the ANC where National Democratic Revolution was set as the guiding tool for our liberation in achieving African Socialism. But the question is. Are we still on the right track in achieving those set goals? As I have indicated above that sharing should be our key primary basis in achieving these goals.

All members of the society should be involved in ensuring that we participate on the programmes that are set before us by those we have chosen to lead us in achieving our goals. In Xhosa for example, there was a say that I grew up not understanding of “Into yomntu ye yami, eyomlungu ndiyayifanisa”. When I made a research of this, I was informed that in the past a father of the family who had no horse or a suit and had to go and attend a meeting, he would go to his neighbour and take the horse and the suit even if the absent farther of that family was not in the house. While attending the meeting he would take good care of these commodities as if they belong to him. On his return he would ensure that the horse has eaten and drank water and make sure that his wife cleans the suit before returning these items to the owner. This was good transaction and good practice because the absent father would not mind sharing his things with his neighbors who in return were taking good care of his family during his absence. While I was growing up some of these principles were still practiced because I could not do mischief in front of any parents as we were taking those parents as ours. Things have changed in today’s days in that I will not raise a hand of any person’s child even if I have seen him /her doing wrong in front of me.

That is where I think Moral Regeneration Forum should be practical in our communities, by ensuring that we establish common rules in which we should live under. You are who you are because of who you are brought up to be, as an individual you are a member of a family and that family is part of the community and that community is part of the society and the society is part of the global village. Then how do I make my point to have an impact in the community I live in? I have leaders I would like to take them as my aspirators, people like John Langalibalele DUbe, Pexley Isaka Seme, Anton Lembede, Walter Sisulu, Oom R Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Duma Nokwe, Alijah Barayi, Steve Biko, Joe Slovo, Chris Hani, and many others who have made sure that we are this Rainbow Nation were are today. Steve Biko once wrote in his I write what I like book, that “it is better to die for an idea that will live than to live for an idea that will die. Yes he has past on in this life, but what is the fulfillment of his life is that his ideas are still guiding us to live for the better and participate in the creation of fighting for a better life for all. Once all have achieved a better life, then poverty would be something of the past, and one should be proud of having learnt from the dogma of the above mentioned legends. The challenge for now is that, access to participate in these programmes is only limited to a few and one would call all young people to participate on programmes created for them in ensuring that a better life is created for all. There must be a way of ensuring that young people are called to participate in these platforms by ensuring that at least a patriotic front movement is revived especially on the National Youth Development level for all of them to establish common goals in the shape up of this African Socialism ideology. For the achievement of this, one would be subjected to raise his /her opinions and peruse and scrutinize what I have raised for this week.

Hi Vuli and Gents,

I am writing some article that I need to paste it on my wall in encouraging these young people to become involved in some debate on Socialism, I will send it to you just now and make your remarks and comments and revert back at me on how we can send it to relevant key stakeholders. Your input is always highly appreciated on this. Yah there is no hope and we need to engage all those whom we have elected in these key positions not to think only of themselves but should remember why are they chosen to lead this struggle.

NB: Please note that it is not yet finished and need us to guide those involved.

Over the last 200 years South Africa has been ruled by at least four types of political elite: indigenous African aristocracy, British imperialists, Afrikaner landowners and black upper class.

Each of these groups has had its own perspective on economic development.

The indigenous aristocracy was completely opposed to the introduction of private ownership of land (And yet they had different names for different clan areas eg eMzimkhulu,  KwaDabeka, KwaDuma, KwaVilakazi, eMpembeni, say nothing of what you don't know please.). Private property is one of the key preconditions to economic development. The indigenous aristocracy was also opposed to many aspects of modern science, especially Western medicine, and it saw Christianity as a force that undermined its rule.( First you don't fix unless its broken, our medicine were sufficient for all the little aches and pains we used to get at the time. Secondly -  and many may disagree, Christianity did undermine our entire humanity as a black nation and it was and still is not worth it so the were correct in opposing it. - if you want me to elaborate on what I mean by it not being worthy, contact me.)

By contrast, during British imperialism's control of South Africa from 1795 to 1910, Britain was a leading industrial and military power in the world but saw no need to bring economic development to South Africa.

The British objective in South Africa was to control the Cape sea route. It was only when it was realised that South Africa had large deposits of diamonds and gold that the British took an interest in developing the South African economy, but its concept of South Africa's development did not extend beyond extracting these two minerals.

The Afrikaner nationalist landowners in most of South Africa were largely pastoralists who raised cattle, sheep and horses. There was a small group that grew wheat and grapes for wine-making.

So, until well into the 20th century, South Africa's agriculture remained underdeveloped. After this group took power from the British in 1910, it started to promote some economic development.

Their objective was to make the land they owned more profitable. Their first initiative after coming to power was to establish the Land Bank in 1910. The Afrikaner nationalist elite wanted to invest in the building of South Africa's transportation and communication infrastructure.

It also had to build educational institutions to provide white citizens with expertise in all aspects of agriculture.

As an incentive to investors(meaning other white people), this elite group made available a dependable supply of cheap labour from South Africa's black population. All of these efforts culminated in the South African economy becoming the largest in Africa, generating almost a quarter of the continent's gross domestic product.

 (I trust you realise it when you praise a crime, what you are saying is that one is justified in robbing a bank if the money is going to be used to establish a community library)

The black upper middle class that became South Africa's dominant political elite in 1994 was a class of intellectuals rather than of property owners. Its main objective in its pursuit of political power was not to protect or develop its property, because it did not have any. If you say they were intellectuals, how do you then separate them from wanting to own the land that rightfully is theirs, so as to develop and protect something that is theirs? - This is the dumbest assumption about a people ever, I should not even respond to this.

Its main objective was to bring about equality among the races and redistribute some of the white-owned wealth to the blacks.

To achieve political equality, this elite fought for democracy, which was eventually achieved in 1994. To achieve economic equality, it adopted a policy of wealth redistribution.(There was no elite in the fight for freedom, we all wanted it and fought for it and even died for it, all of us,...what elite?

There is, however, a downside to an economic strategy predominantly driven by wealth redistribution (your plate is full that’s why you say that)- it diverts resources from investment to consumption. (Invest means in simple words - put money away so some other day I can have more of it. I don't know about you but I cannot do that while my sister has no food to eat, so yes you can say that from "from investment to consumption" but maybe I'm investing on my sister, that once she is full she may be able to come and assist me in working this field.

This is already beginning to show with the growing de-industrialization of the country's economy. The scramble for wealth redistribution has also become a main driver of corruption.(Corruption in my land started in and around 1652 - why are we so forgiving to the century old crimes against humanity? - You want to correct corruption - start there - ----- Didn't think you could, so stop pointing racist fingers at my people) - {"Instead of war on poverty they got war against drugs so the Police can bother me, and I aint never done a crime I never had to do" Tupac Shakur - 1996} Remember that.

The enclave economy that Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid, was so eloquent about is thus perpetuated under the ANC government. To maintain its power, the ANC developed welfare programmes that appease the huge underclass. I don't know much about Verwoerd and I don't intend to, far as I'm concerned, staying dead is the best thing to do for him and for everybody else. Regarding the welfare - you need to be poor to realise the need for assistance, black people know that, if you have never been you'll never get it, furthermore, considering that all whites were TOLD that they were interested in farming by their government  and the money and land for that was freely available from the government yearly, was the best welfare the white government could have ever done for its white folks, so I guess I'm saying the ANC / Black government still needs to establish more grounded, sustainable and long lasting welfare.

There is no better-positioned organisation on the South African political landscape than the ANC. And what does that suggest? ---Black Intelligence I say.

If its voters remain poor (previous regime made sure we were poor, not the ANC), the ANC wins because they vote for it(But of coz, that's why the ANC was formed, so our people can vote for themselves). In the very unlikely event that they become richer (Are you for real?)- for example, through "tenderpreneurship" - they will still vote for the ANC because they want to be on the list for the next tender. I don't know where you come from, but let me have you know this, the reason you assume that in order for a black south African to accumulate any form of wealth they have to get tenders from the government is because you are very well aware that whites were subsidized by the government for as long as you can remember, did not matter how dumb and slow they were just as long as they were white, until 1994.

Even here at my work place there are whites to this day who assume that I have tenders somewhere because I'm black, yet I started working here with some of them, with nothing.

Take this: If you are down you cannot fall any farther, and that's where we start, and because we are so hungry, you don't need to spoon feed us, so even if there were no tenders at all from the government, you would still see us budding financially while voting for our own.

Voters for the ANC do not vote for its for ideological or policy reasons; they vote for it primarily because of their material dependence on the ANC-controlled state. Resp: Hello  material dependence !, do you think the people that vote for VF/FF or DA are voting for them because they sing well in church? That they will open the heavenly gates for them? NO!!

If I can count on you that you will ensure a level plane for me to achieve whatever is materialistically and otherwise due to me, eg Land, ensure my kids have a future in this land and that no one will take by force their possessions  including freedom in any form, then we are talking, I probably will vote for you, and therefor one may say I depend on you when the truth is, I count on you and have an expectation that you will deliver  I have no fear of you and when you are there I feel like I am in control.

Think on that when it comes to a black vote my friend.

A November 2009 Ipsos Markinor survey found that two-thirds of the people who vote for the ANC do not work. Of the one-third who do, slightly less than a quarter work full-time and about a tenth work part time. Resp: I would rather not rely on any Ipsos Markinor surveys, I don,t remember any precise surveys nor analyses conducted by them, in a nutshell they are always either completely wrong and or biased in their publications - sorry man.

Even more striking is the ANC voters' education levels:

Only 8% of ANC supporters have a higher-education qualification;

23% have graduated from high school; and

69% either have no education or have not completed high school.

The primary constituency of the ANC is poor blacks.

This is an edited extract from the introduction to Advocates for Change: How to Overcome Africa's Challenges, edited by Mbeki and published by Picador

Malibongwe is not on your Guest List | Approve sender | Approve domain

Haha well responded but I question the authenticity of this shallow document especially when it suggests that Thabo edited it.He does not hold these views reflected here as far as I understand the man's philosophy and his fundamental basis of political discourse. He would have to discard this document and not edit it knowing the man's take on issues.As for the BLUE I agree mostly with the responses especially the direct link between Christianity and oppression,Land issue and lastly the brutal rape of our commodities in full view of the owners.Two cents worth yam leyo. 

On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:24 PM, wrote:

Oh I just had to share my piece. I'm on BLUE. Yes I Said it, it had to be said. Bring it on.

"Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship." - William Blum  

"Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play." - Joseph Goebbels, Propaganda Minister of the Nazi Regime 

"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." - Albert Einstein

"The jaws of power are always open to devour." - John Adams

"Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty." - John Adams

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." - Plato

 “There comes a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can’t take part, you can’t even passively take part. You have to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who own it, to the people who run it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.” - Mario Savio

"If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed." -  Mark Twain

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

Chapter 5

DEADLOCK AND SOCIAL ILLS THAT WE FACE TODAY

By Zolisa Memani, Western Sun 18 July 2012.

Unemployment is one of the challenges that we face in this country especially black South Africans, as one look at how things unfold in our communities. One cannot look at the global village and wonder how people relate to each without looking at how people relate at local communities. People are losing jobs and the rate of unemployment continues to grow while we have the business sector that has been called by government to establish partnerships with all relevant stakeholders. In this community of the South of Johannesburg, we need to have a partnership of all stakeholders in one roof for a common course for saving those in need. Once all stakeholders are in partnership we can be able to solve the social ills that we face as the country. We need to come up with ways of coming on board with these stakeholders in helping government to implement policies that are aimed at creating a “better life for all”.  Thru de eye of the needle; sleepless nights and the cold winter days we seem to be infested by deadlocks. The road is full of potholes and the future seems to be bleak for our young people. Anyway good day people base Mzantsi, I was asking some friends the other day on what documents seem to be relevant to read these days to keep abreast with the developments and they all referred to print media as a form of a good tool if used correctly.

So then I asked myself some questions as follows; if media tribunal is implemented, who will benefit out of that resolution or legislation? But one must also balance the equation in that, if media has total access to sensitive information and mislead the public will the dented image of those affected be restored by law suits? I am of the opinion that we need to be engage in these discussions in making sure that all opinions are represented from the onset. What happens to those who are not having access of information and are not clued up with the issues? What has happen to the principle of ubuntu? Where are these structures aimed at empowering us? -For example, if Regeneration Forum is created in our communities? How should we assist those who were not fortunate to acquire the education that was at our disposal by platforms created since 1994? What can be done to assist those in power in ensuring that the decisions they make are well acceptable by the majority? Where are the black intellectuals that we urgently need in our societies and what is it that they do these days? What will happen to those in power but are not well capacitated with the mandates needed for the implementation? Why are we not adding value to the society and not think about those poor citizens in need of services? In the spirit of Madiba Magic spirit that is with us during the 94 Birthday of Tata Mandela we are pleased that people are now taking part in activities that affects them. This will also assist in ensuring that the aims of social cohesion are achieved in this Long Road to Freedom of Nelson Mandela, as Moses did in the Bible, by leading his people to the Promised Land as a humble servant to the people. We really need many people of this caliber in shaping the future of uTata wethu sonke singabantu basemzantsi (our Father as people of Mzantsi Afrika). I am because we are, the time has arrived for the people of Mzantsi to unite together for a common cause.

This road is full of potholes that we have created by driving heavy duty vehicles on roads meant for private cars. In our area for example, you will find heavy duty Lorries in streets meant for small private cars taking the whole street with no space for incoming cars using the same road. Are we facing a threat of some kind of revolution that we are not aware of? The future seems to be bleak for those young kids that are currently unemployed but who envisage being our leaders in future as there are people who would not like to see South Africa becoming a better country. It was said that we are the lost generation and what is happening seem to confirm those projections. One would be scary if we have weapons of mass destruction on the loose with things going on like this; one has to be careful where he goes. Should I attend the events where a huge gathering of ordinary people are invited? These will impact negatively on our economy in the next few years to come and one has to prepare himself on this in time. Only through working together for a common cause will assist us in this war that we face as a country, the “chicken has crossed the ocean and caused the war”. We need to be ready.

What documents should one read in improving the knowledge and that he becomes abreast with the developments of what is happening around the globe? One is exposed to print media, television, internet and books that can be accessed any time. But in our beloved country, we need to participate in the transformation of media and in the establishment of media tribunal, is this good or bad for the country? Media has been used as a useful tool in the fight against the apartheid regime as I was involved in distributing pamphlets from an early age while at high school. I was involved in the distribution of books that informed the communities on what the movement was embarking on in those days and it seemed as a useful tool. But one has to ask if media is relevant in addressing bread and butter issues or is it targeting our leaders in creating some confusion in our communities? Do media improve the knowledge of understanding events, activities and what is happening around the globe? One would agree that by reading newspapers, reading news on internet or watching news on television you get informed on the developments of what leaders do in addressing mandates given to them by their constituencies. In Sweden for example, politicians account to their electorate, but this is not the case in South Africa. People account to politicians and this has created some vacuum when it comes to accountability, is there anyone who can assist me on the developments of Monitoring and Evaluation department for example.

In a democratic society one expect to be engaged on issues that affect the living conditions as we all share the geographic space and resources that belong to the state. One then would like to know how the imbalances of the past will be implemented without someone feeling robbed of their rights. One would think that CST (Colonialism of a special Type) has led us to be in this situation as those who have benefited in the past are still protected by legislation to continue exploiting those who have been robbed of their rights in the past. In some farming communities ordinary farm workers are exploited by their employers, and we read about these every year, but nothing drastic is done to curb the situation. Then if media will be bias of cases involving blacks killing whites or vice verse then one would support that media should be transformed. The question is on state indoctrination, if government will censor articles that should be published. Is it not infringing the rights of media groups who would like to express views that will be against the misuse of state resources in settling political agendas?

Who owns the media? Media cannot only look at the challenges that will be created if it has not participated or created platforms that allows transformation and invited Africans to own these companies. One would remember that black journalist met some time ago in addressing matters pertaining to the exploitation by white editors. Has this not created a platform that media should be transformed? What happens to cases on which certain newspapers would write a statement in small one paragraph in apologizing for a misinformed or wrong article and what has done in the previous publications? Everyone should have an interest in these debates and this does not mean that we should create a situation of editors who will act as lap dogs for administrations who are in power. But one can also support the situation that a national debate on this must be created and call all citizens to participate in shaping what media should act like in the future. Media must stop complaining if certain groups decide not include them in their internal discussions as a press release will be issued later informing the public on what was agreed upon. Family matters for example, should be discussed by family members and a spokesperson to come out and inform us on the decisions taken in that meeting. This can be done by media companies on informing the public about the development of the public representatives on the mandates given. So, should we go for a state of isolation and state of emergency in addressing these concerns raised by fellow citizens? What will happen to the economy?

As Africans we have the concept of Ubuntu and should not only apply it if people feel that it is safe to do so. South Africa is part of Africa and anything is possible, so then why can’t we engage on community based organizations in addressing these concerns? It is only when those in power of recourse are supposed to come with strategies of sharing them with the poor would feel intimidated by what is proposed. South Africans are not talking amongst each other on issues that should be addressed, but are good at throwing stones at each other. We need to come with ways that should be aimed at developing each other, why not share the bread you have with those suffering than throwing it away? Through our Mandela Day events coverage on the 18th of July 2012, we met a Project Manager of one of the sponsors in the event that we attended in Turffontein. She caught our attention in that Black South African Business Communities are not coming on board on campaigns that are aimed at promoting participation of stakeholders for a common cause. When you look at structures that were created in the past aimed at addressing this challenge, are only there in theory, look at Moral Regeneration Forum for example, what reports do they submit to parliament on monthly basis? Social Cohesion debates can be used as the platform in shaping the communities we would like to have in our future generations, where does one start in monitoring this project in these communities? Do all towns or suburbs have street committees, if so, how often do these households sit and discuss challenges they face in those streets? Is there a website in which you can go to that will inform you on the developments and challenges that our government faces? Has the CPF been launched with a constitution that will guide provinces, municipalities and regions in helping the unemployed youth in participating in volunteer programmes? In theory, yes we have these platforms and might be working on pilots in some areas, but are they effective enough for citizens to access them?

We have developed some greed as individuals and need to go for some social counselling as suggested by the Bishop Tutu a few years ago, this will bring back the concept of Ubuntu in our medulla oblangata and practice this in our daily lives. When you take salaries earned by our Ministers, government officials, civil servants, CEOs of companies, leaders in all structures and the working force of this country we should have at least acted patriotic and suggested ways of improving the living conditions of the working class and those in need especially the poor, either by volunteering to cut their month salary to a coffer that will assist in this deadlock. People are angry in that they have voted for some of these leaders who do not have messy for the poor people but are good in spending money on parties and travelling or buying expensive cars or houses. These leaders are voted for but cannot go back to their primary schools or high schools in the communities they grew up in and assist in developing a new crop of coming leaders in those areas. The leadership of this current administration was voted in power with the understanding that the poor will be at the center  but has this happened? As individuals we’re fallible and always make mistakes, but if we do not address these mistakes we will end up facing the reality. These leaders will have to go back to these constituencies and become part of the society, but if we continue like this, you will have to remember what happened to George Orwell‟s Animal Farm book. Napoleon will end up claiming that “some animals are more equal than others” Are we really going toward this direction as a country? In chapter 5 of this book it reads as follows “Afterwards Squealer was sent round the farm to explain the new arrangement to the others. "Comrades," he said, "I trust that every animal here appreciates the sacrifice that Comrade Napoleon has made in taking this extra labour upon himself. Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure! On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? Suppose you had decided to follow Snowball, with his moonshine of windmills--Snowball, who, as we now know, was no better than a criminal?" "He fought bravely at the Battle of the Cowshed," said somebody. "Bravery is not enough," said Squealer. "Loyalty and obedience are more important. And as to the Battle of the Cowshed, I believe the time will come when we shall find that Snowball's part in it was much exaggerated. Discipline, comrades, iron discipline! That is the watchword for today. One false step and our enemies would be upon us. Surely, comrades, you do not want Jones back?" Once again this argument was unanswerable. Certainly the animals did not want Jones back; if the holding of debates on Sunday mornings was liable to bring him back, then the debates must stop. Boxer, who had now had time to think things over, voiced the general feeling by saying: "If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be right." And from then on he adopted the maxim, "Napoleon is always right," in addition to his private motto of "I will work harder." By this time the weather had broken and the spring ploughing had begun. The shed where Snowball had drawn his plans of the windmill had been shut up and it was assumed that the plans had been rubbed off the floor. Every Sunday morning at ten o'clock the animals assembled in the big barn to receive their orders for the week. The skull of old Major, now clean of flesh, had been disinterred from the orchard and set up on a stump at the foot of the flagstaff, beside the gun. After the hoisting of the flag, the animals were required to file past the skull in a reverent manner before entering the barn. Nowadays they did not sit all together as they had done in the past. Napoleon, with Squealer and another pig named Minimus, who had a remarkable gift for composing songs and poems, sat on the front of the raised platform, with the nine young dogs forming a semicircle round them, and the other pigs sitting behind. The rest of the animals sat facing them in the main body of the barn. Napoleon read out the orders for the week in a gruff soldierly style, and after a single singing of 'Beasts of England', all the animals dispersed” George Orwell – Animal Farm chapter 5.

Is it true that history (or should I say his story) repeat itself in some case? I did not expect COSATU to be in this struggle after Polokwane as the elected leadership was more lenient and bias to the left. The Tripartite Alliance should have been instrumental in ensuring that we do not have what we are now experiencing as it involves all parties that have ensured that we are in this process. At leadership level everyone should have been abreast with the developments of the mandates at hand and should have proposed ways that should have avoided this situation. As a country we will not recover from the losses we have incurred in the process of this deadlock and leadership should have guided the negotiators in ensuring that there is stability in the public servants. To me as an ordinary citizen a father of school going children, it seems as a power struggle and political scoring game by those who knew that we will be having this deadlock prior and did not come up with solutions in addressing these issues. I am frustrated by what is happening as we are in this season of strikes as we will see others mushrooming from other sectors as well. When are we going to address unemployment? What must I feel as a poor citizen and as an electorate? I would therefore request those in a position to educate me on the above mentioned concerns to do so that I can be at par with everyone who knows the reason of this deadlock. Who is benefiting from this? Leaders emerge; a new crop of leadership has emerged and wants to make a statement to those in charge. Thus I have summed it up to a political scoring battle between those involved meanwhile people are dying at hospitals and children are not getting any education. As about 40 to 60% of our people still go home to sleep without any food at the table while we have those who just through food to the dust bins, time to wake up Mzantsi let work together in partnership for a common cause.

More info will be included in the next edition.