2005-11-24,+Wa+Bofelo,+Gramsci,+Biko,+Hegemony,+plus+AA,+BEE+for+elite

= Gramsci and Biko on Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony, and the role of intellectuals and mass participation =


 * By Mphutlane Wa Bofelo**

-Antonio Gramsci**
 * “the starting point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is …the mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer consist in eloquence but in active participation in practical life, as constructor, organizer, "permanent persuader” and not just a simple orator…"

-Stephen Bantu Biko \ Frantz Fanon**
 * “ the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressors is the mind of the oppressed”

Antonio Gramsci’ s expositions on the notion of hegemony; the use of both coercion and consent to sustain power and maintain the status quo and on the role of traditional and organic intellectuals and the significance of mass participation in building a counter hegemony offers a great understanding of the role of civil society; religious, labor, cultural, social and political movements and informal educators in transforming traditional forms of education and challenging the right of the dominant class to rule. This essay discuss Gramsci’ s ideas on ideology \ hegemony and counter-hegemony, organic intellectualism and mass participation and examine the extent to which Stephen Bantu Biko and the Black Consciousness Movement took into cognizance the role of ideology and the consent of the oppressed Black people in maintaining the status quo in Apartheid South Africa, and presented psychological liberation and mental emancipation, self-realization, self-reliance and Black Solidarity as essential elements of a counter-hegemony to white supremacism and a sine quo non for the replacement of Apartheid-Capitalism with an egalitarian and anti-racist society. Our point of departure is that civil society organizations; religious institutions, cultural, social and political movements, labor organizations, non-governmental organizations and social clubs, etc have the potential to be turned into organs of working class power- facilitating bottom-up, grassroots-oriented and participatory democracy by availing to the under-classes spaces, platforms and avenues, and strategies, skills, expertise, methods and mechanisms through which they can challenge the establishment, place demands on power and contest its hegemony. They could also be an effective media of imparting alternative information, knowledge and education that challenges the information, knowledge and education transmitted by mainstream educational institutions and the corporate media to entrench the philosophy, culture, ethics, mores and values of the dominant \ ruling class so as to conserve the status quo. The converse is also true; civil society organizations; religious, cultural, labor, social and political movements can also serve to legitimatize the powers that be and preserve the status quo by restricting people to a reformist agenda geared only at searching for solutions within the confines of the prevailing system instead of exploring possibilities of transforming, reconstructing and overhauling the system. To put it in simple terms, by virtue of their involvement in advocacy, lobbying, awareness and training programmes and interventions in issues related to policy formulation, civil society organizations like non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), community-based organizations (CBO’S), social movements; and religious institutions, cultural clubs and societies  are an integral part of social institutions and agencies contributing to the process of education and socialization which is the re-establishment and re-enforcement of the prevailing and dominant norms-and-value system in a society. This means that these organizations and institutions have a role in legitimatizing the prevailing socio-economic and political system and maintaining the status quo or questioning the current dispensation and offering alternative ways of conceptualizing social reality and organizing society for the collective good of all of humanity and the preservation of the entire earth. While Gramsci accepted the analysis of capitalism put forward by Marx in the previous century and accepted that the struggle between the ruling class and the subordinate working class was the driving force that moved society forward, he did not embrace the traditional Marxist theory of power as very one-sided one based on the role of force and coercion as the basis of ruling class domination. He pointed out the role played by ideology in legitimizing the differential power that groups hold and concentrated on the power of the subtle but pervasive forms of ideological control and manipulation that served to perpetuate all repressive structures. He identified two quite distinct forms of political control: domination, which referred to direct physical coercion by police and armed forces and hegemony which referred to both ideological control and more crucially, consent through the permeation throughout society of an entire system of values, attitudes, beliefs and morality that has the effect of supporting the status quo in power relations. [Burke, B. (1999) 'Antonio Gramsci and informal education', the encyclopedia of informal education,http://www.infed.org\thinkers\et-gram.htm] Positing hegemony as the 'organizing principle' that is diffused by the process of socialization into every area of daily life, Gramsci assumed that no regime, regardless of how authoritarian it might be, could sustain itself primarily through organized state power and armed force, as it ultimately needs popular support and legitimacy in order to maintain stability. He asserts that this prevailing consciousness is internalized by the population to the extent that it becomes part of what is generally called 'common sense' so that the philosophy, culture and morality of the ruling elite comes to appear as the natural order of things. [Boggs 1976 :39] Gramsci took Marx’s basic division of society into a base represented by the economic structure and a superstructure represented by the institutions and beliefs prevalent in society further by dividing the superstructure into those institutions that were overtly coercive and those that were not. He identified the coercive ones as the public institutions such as the government, police, armed forces and the legal system, which he referred to as the state or political society and the non-coercive ones as the churches, the schools, trade unions, political parties, cultural associations, clubs, the family etc. which he regarded as civil society. To a certain extent, schools could fit into both categories, as part of school life are quite clearly coercive (compulsory education, the national curriculum, national standards and qualifications) whilst others are not (the hidden curriculum). Gramsci extrapolated on the Marxist notion of society as composing of the base (the mode of economy and the relationship between labor and capital) and the superstructure (external manifestations of the system and the instrument of class control –the government, the army, the police and social institutions like schools, churches, etc), to articulate a subtle theory of power than explained how the ruling class ruled courtesy of the productive relations (capital versus labour); coercive institutions  (the state or political society) and civil society and all other non-coercive institutions). This provided an understanding of why the European working class had on the whole failed to develop revolutionary consciousness after the First World War and had instead moved towards reformism ie tinkering with the system rather than working towards overthrowing it. Having asserted that the ruling class maintained its domination by the consent of the mass of the people and only used its coercive apparatuses- the forces of law and order, as a last resort, and that the hegemony of the ruling capitalist class resulted from an ideological bond between the rulers and the ruled, Gramsci addressed the question of the possibility of overthrowing the system or breaking the ideological bond by arguing that revolutionaries have to build up a ‘counter hegemony’ to that of the ruling class. To this end, Gramsci argued that structural change and ideological change should be seen as part of the same struggle. He argued that while the labour process was at the core of the class struggle, it was the ideological struggle that had to be addressed if the mass of the people were to come to a consciousness that allowed them to question their political and economic masters’ right to rule. In other words, popular consensus in civil society has to be challenged. Thus the role for informal education in overcoming the popular consensus that accrues from the fact that ideological hegemony causes the majority of the population accept what is happening in society as ‘common sense’ or as ‘the only way of running society’. The role of the counter-hegemony is to alter the tendency by the people to critically think of altering the whole system based on unequal power-relations between labor and capital and the commodification of labor and the means of production instead of only complain about the way things are run and calling for improvements or reforms while embracing the basic beliefs and value system underpinning society as either neutral or of general applicability in relation to the class structure of society. In other words, the purpose of the counter-hegemony is to heighten and alter the consciousness of the people to a point where they cease to ask for a bigger slice of the cake but begin to tackle the real issue, which is the ownership of the bakery. (Burke. B 1999. )
 * Introduction**
 * Ideological Hegemony**

Gramsci put great emphasis on the crucial role of the intellectual in creating a counter hegemony that would facilitate mass participation instead of depending on an elite group of dedicated revolutionaries acting for the working class to bring about an equalitarian society. He asserted that social change had to be the work of the majority of the population conscious of what they were doing and not an organized party leadership and further argued that the revolution led by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917- which took place in a backward country with a huge peasantry and a tiny working class, and without the involvement of the mass of the population- was not the model suitable for Western Europe or any advanced industrialized country. Mass consciousness and the role of the intellectual were crucial as essential and critical requirements of the counter hegemony strategy. Gramsci’ s definition of intellectuals went far beyond the boffins and academics that sat in ivory towers or wrote erudite pieces for academic journals only read by others of the same ilk, as he makes it succintly clear in his notebooks that "all men are intellectuals" [and presumably women] "but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals". .. "Everyone at some time fries a couple of eggs or sews up a tear in a jacket; we do not necessarily say that everyone is a cook or a tailor". Meaning that everyone has an intellect and uses it but not all are intellectuals by social function. This is clearly defined in Gramsci’ s statement that each social group that comes into existence creates within itself one or more strata of intellectuals (managers, civil servants, the clergy, professors and teachers, technicians and scientists, lawyers, doctors etc) that gives it meaning, helps to bind it together and helps it to function. The notion that intellectuals essentially developed organically alongside the ruling class and function for the benefit of the ruling class, dismisses the notion of intellectuals as being a distinct social category independent of class was a myth. Gramsci described the traditional intellectuals as those who - despite the fact that they are essentially conservative and allied to and assisting the ruling group in society -regard themselves as autonomous and independent of the dominant social group and are regarded as such by the population at large, and give themselves an aura of historical continuity.
 * Organic Intellectuals**

This constitutes of clergy, the men of letters, the philosophers and professors and others who are traditionally thought of as the intellectuals. Gramsci defines organic intellectuals as the group that grows organically within the dominant social group, the ruling class, and is their thinking and organizing element, as it is produced by the educational system to perform a function for the dominant social group in society and is used by the ruling class to maintain its hegemony over the rest of society. From this description of organic intellectual flows the logic that what is required for those who wish to overthrow the present system is a counter hegemony, a method of upsetting the consensus, of countering the ‘common sense’ view of society. Gramsci maintained that the requirement for this to happen is not only the cross over of a significant number of ‘traditional’ intellectuals to the revolutionary cause as Marx, Lenin and Gramsci had done but also that the working class movement should produce its own organic intellectuals. Building on his assertion that all individuals (sic) are intellectuals but not all persons have the function of intellectuals in society, Gramsci posited "there is no human activity from which every form of intellectual participation can be excluded" and that everyone, outside their particular professional activity, "carries on some form of intellectual activity… participates in a particular conception of the world, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore contributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it, that is, to bring into being new modes of thought". At the risk of being perceived exaggerating the possibilities, Gramsci was actually trying stress the fact that people have the capability and the capacity to think, and that the only problem was how to harness those capabilities and capacities. He therefore saw one of his roles (in his capacity as a traditional intellectual won over to the side of the working class and therefore transformed into an organic intellectual of the working class) as being that of assisting in the creation of organic intellectuals from the working class and the winning over of as many traditional intellectuals to the revolutionary cause as possible. He attempted to do this through the columns of a journal called L’Ordine Nuovo (New Order), subtitled "a weekly review of Socialist culture". Gramsci’ s insistence on the fundamental importance of the ideological struggle to social change meant that this struggle was not limited to consciousness raising but must aim at consciousness transformation - the creation of a socialist consciousness. Arguing that consciousness is not something that could be imposed on people but must arise from their actual working lives, Gramsci propounded that the intellectual realm was not to be seen as something confined to elite but to be seen as something grounded in everyday life. [Burke. B 1999.] The creation of working class intellectuals actively participating in practical life, helping to create a counter hegemony that would undermine existing social relations was Gramsci’ s contribution to the development of a philosophy that would link theory with practice and was a direct counter to those elitist and authoritarian philosophies associated with fascism and Stalinism. As Gramsci believed in the innate capacity of human beings to understand their world and to change it, his approach was open and non-sectarian. Gramsci’ s ideas on the role of the intellectual are relevant and critical in the discourse on role of informal educators in local communities, particularly on the notion of the educator working successfully in the neighbourhoods and with the local community has a commitment to that neighborhood. According to Gramsci-whether s\he may have always lived in the area and have much in common with the local people or not- an organic intellectual \ educator is someone who is not ‘here today and gone tomorrow’. On the contrary, organic intellectuals develop relationships with the people they work with and ensure that wherever they go, they are regarded as part of the community, and strive to sustain people’s critical commitment to the social groups with whom they share fundamental interests. [ibid]

The South African Students Organization and the Black People’s Convention( SASO\BPC) and a host of socio-political and cultural organizations operating under the rubric of the Black Consciousness Movement –on the ascendancy in South African resistance \ liberation politics in the late sixties and early seventies- highlighted the role of (the racist) ideology (of white supremacism) in entrenching the hegemony of the ruling Afrikaner Nationalists  and acknowledged that Apartheid-capitalism thrived not only on coercion and repression but also on the consent of the oppressed black majority. Like Frantz Fanon, Stephen Bantu Biko believed that “ the tyranny of the oppressors is prescribed by the endurance of the oppressors” Through the philosophy of Black Consciousness, SASO\ BPC emphasized psychological emancipation and mental liberation, self-definition, self-realization, self-awareness, self-reliance and mass conscientisation, mass mobilization and mass participation under the framework of Black Solidarity as a sine quo non for a liberatory culture of resistance \ rebellion that would be a counter-hegemony to the hegemony of white supremacism.
 * The Black Consciousness Movement on ideology and hegemony**

Black Consciousness sought to obliterate the myths of white superiority and black inferiority and the normality or the common-sense-ness of the master-servant power-relations between Whites and Blacks \ poor and rich so as to starve white supremacism and racial capitalism of the black inferiority complex and working class compliance \ consent upon which Apartheid-capitalism thrived. In the sense that Black Consciousness was -as Donald Woods says-about the mobilization of black opinion against the established white order [Woods A. 1978:149], it could be regarded as a counter hegemony to white supremacism and racial capitalism. Biko cited the significance and purpose of Black Consciousness and Black Solidarity as helping people to develop some form of security together to look to their problems, and in this way build their humanity. [Woods A. 1978:174]. Pronouncing on the conscientisation language and methodology used by the BCM to heighten the revolutionary consciousness necessary for the development of a revolutionary mass of conscious people Biko declared that SASO\BPC make reference to the conditions of Black people “to get them to grapple realistically with their problems, to attempt to find solutions to their problems, to develop what one might call an awareness of their situation, to be able to provide some kind of hope.”   (Wood. A 1978:174) The role of intellectual (traditional and organic) and the significance of mass participation were eloquently articulated by Stephen Bantu Biko in an interview with Bernard Zylstra in July 1977. Biko asserted that SASO “stressed Black Consciousness and the relations of intellectuals with the needs of the Black community.” (Woods. A.1978:118) He explained that the formation of the Black People’s Convention was a result of the realization that - though Black Consciousness had gained momentum -“we were still faced with the practical issue that people who were speaking were mainly students or graduates. There was no broad debate. For this reason we had to move from SASO to the organization of the Black People’s Convention so that the masses could get involved in the development of a new consciousness”. [Woods. A.1978:118]. Commenting on the successes of the philosophy of Black Consciousness in heightening the revolutionary consciousness that influenced the national students’ uprising of 16, June 1976, Biko declared “the power of a movement lies in the fact that it can indeed change the habits of a people. The change is not the result of force but dedication, of moral persuasion”. [Woods. A.1978:118]. To conscientise and enable black students and graduates (the traditional intellectuals) to establish an organic relationship with the grassroots communities and relate their education \ professions to their experiential reality, SASO\ BPC initiated the commemoration of events like Sharpeville Shooting and initiated commemorative services like “Suffer day”, and “compassion Day”. It also established the Black People’s Programmes, embarking on a variety of educational, awareness and self-help community development projects ranging from health clinics, literacy programmes, and poetry groups to cooperatives. The purpose of these initiatives was explained clearly by Stephen Bantu Biko in the SASO\BPC trial: “Compassion day was meant for remembrance of specific situations of affliction that the Black man was subjected to from time to time, things like starvation in places like Dimbaza, things like floods in Port Elizabeth…. The main idea of compassion day was to get students to develop a social conscience, to see themselves as a part the communities, and direct their energies to solving problems of the nature we were thinking about on compassion day.”   [Woods. A 1978:160-161] This relationship between theory and practice; education and experiential reality, knowledge and social reality, informed the conceptualization, design and implementation of the programmes of the Black Consciousness Movement. This comes out clearly in Biko’s account of the research he, Jerry Modisane and Barney Pityana conducted in preparation of the literacy program that was drawn by SASO. They listened to women in queues waiting to see a doctor or nurse at a clinic –some carrying babies on their backs, to people in shebeens and to people in buses and trains. In all these situations-Biko observed- there was a constant occurrence of “protest talk” about the general conditions of oppression and exploitation such as the de-humanizing and denigrating impact of the migratory labor and single hostels system, exploitative labor practices and unsafe and unhealthy working and living conditions. He outlined that their aim and purpose with the research was to familiarize themselves with the generic terms that the people in the target area were familiar with and to get in touch with the people’s day to day experiences, concerns and issues and their perception and conception of these issues.
 * On the role of intellectuals and mass participation**

Biko’s presentation and articulation of the whole process is instructive: “… this particular method we were using placed a lot of emphasis on syllabic teaching of people. You did not just teach people the alphabet in isolation, you had to teach them syllables, and you had to start with words that had a particular meaning to them, what we called generative terms. Now the preamble to it was some kind of research in the specific area in which you were going to work, which carried you to several segments of the community, to particular places where the community congregated and talked freely. Your role there was particularly passive. You were just there to listen to the things they were talking about, and also to the words that were being used. We also used pictures to depict the themes they were talking about.”(Woods. A.1978:172) Here it is lucidly clear that the BCM saw literacy as not merely being lettered and numerate or being able to read and write alphabets and count numbers but also as the ability to read one’s world \ environment and (re)write one’s reality\ history… being socio-politically  literate and culturally aware. Literacy and education were perceived as tools that capacitate a person to critically and constructively grapple with natural and social phenomena and to actively interact and engage with his\ her natural and social surroundings. The literacy programmes, political education programmes –mass rallies and political workshops or initiation schools in SASO\BPC par lance- and the self-help cooperatives and political campaigns were part of a single and integrated strategy to move the Black Person from social experience to consciousness to social action to the changing of social experience.

It is noteworthy that for Biko and the BCM the point was no longer to reform the system as doing so would imply the acceptance of the basic precepts around which the system evolves but to completely overhaul it. Therefore the BCM castigated Gatsha Buthelezi and other Bantustan leaders and later participants in the sham trichameral parliament and the dummy Black Local Authority councils for –in the words of Steve Biko-diluting the cause by operating on government platform. The BCM shunned attempting to change the system from within as many reformists-sometimes evoking Gramsci- sought to do. As a result the BCM placed emphasis on the principle of non-collaboration with the ruling class and its political instruments. It presented Black Solidarity and Black Power as the real force that will bring about seizure of power to prepare for a revolutionary transformation of society. While acknowledging that the BCM under the leadership of SASO\BPC was not yet at a stage to present the details of the alternative system, Biko highlighted that the BCM recognized the fact that “a change in the color of the occupier does not necessarily change the system”, and also acknowledged that “the debate about economic policy cannot be “pure”, completely separate from existing systems.”  (Biko cited in Woods. A 1978:122)  In its search for an alternative to Apartheid-Capitalism, SASO\ BPC identified consultation, communalism and public ownership of the land as the basic precepts and tenets of the agrarian economic system that prevailed in the rudimentary culture of traditional, pre-colonial African society and sought to appropriate these to develop a more expounded economic system accommodating industry and the relationship of industry and politics. Hence the BCM under SASO\ BPC initially spoke about black communalism and collective enterprise and started discussions around what Stephen Bantu Biko referred to as “socialist solution that is an authentic expression of black communalism.” (Biko cited in Woods. A 1978:122) By the late seventies and early eighties, Black Consciousness formations like the Azanian People’s Organization, Azanian Students Movement and later the Azanian Students’ Convention and the Azanian Youth Organization were overtly talking of scientific socialism as their official ideology. The post-apartheid South Africa saw the emergence of the Socialist Party of Azania articulating a more vociferously socialistic expression of Black Consciousness and affiliated to the International Liasons Committee of Workers and Peoples \ Fourth International.
 * Biko and the BCM on revolutionary transformation**

Boggs, C. (1976) Gramsci’s Marxism. London: Pluto Press Burke, B. (1999) 'Antonio Gramsci and informal education', the encyclopedia of informal education,http://www.infed.org\thinkers\et-gram.htm Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart Woods. A. 1978. Biko-The true story of the young South African martyr and his struggle to raise Black Consciousness. New York: Henry Holt and Company. inc
 * REFERENCES**

Mphutlane wa Bofelo is winner of the Poetry Africa 2003 Slam Competition, and a life-skills facilitator, writer, orator and performer who hold a BA (Hons in Political Science) from the University of the Free State and a Diploma in Projects Management from Varsity College. Mphutlane Wa Bofelo was instrumental in the formation of the Makana Poets in 1989 and Arts in Motion in 1998. His articles, essays, poetry and prose have been published in publications such “Africa Perspective”, “Laugh it Off”, “Fidelities”, “New Coin”, “Botsotso”, “Bliksem”, “Al-Qalam”, “Tribute”, the anthology 5-Poetry (Botsotso Publishing) and The Journey Within (Yaseen Islamic Publishers). Currently, Wa Bofelo is the Vice –President of the Muslim Youth Movement of South Africa, Secretary-General of the African Muslim Youth Congress, Convenor of the Anti-Racism Education Forum and trustee of the Vulindlela Youth Development Trust.

= AA and BEE ADVANCE AN ELITIST AGENDA =


 * BY MPHUTLANE WA BOFELO**

The front page of Mail & Guardian 12-18 November 2004 (Volume 20, N0 46) says it all. On the left side is the photo of Mangosuthu Technikon Vice Chancellor, Professor Aaron Ndhlovu, comfortably resting on an arm-chair. The caption exclaims: “R3 MILLION: What this Technikon fat-cat earns….while our president gets only R964000.” On the right side are the pictures of four prominent members of the ANC. Above them hovers the banner of the party. The writing above the banner is an interesting read: “ANC Inc. African National Congress Head Quarters.” The caption reads: Telkom: How Andile Ngcaba served himself.” The topic at hand here is Affirmative Action (AA) and Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). The question is; how does the empowerment \ enrichment of a few well-educated, politically connected and economically well-disposed elites from the Black community translate itself into the empowerment of the broader community of poor black working class community? And does it take an ANC membership card and \ or a leadership position in the ANC for one to qualify as a candidate for affirmative action and equity \ BEE deals? At an awards dinner organized by the Association of Black Securities and Investment Professionals (ABSIP), finance minister Trevor Manuel’s called out to firm that transfer equity ownership to same black businessmen: “I would like to say to companies, please spend less time chasing after scarce black talent and spend more time developing new talent.” Manuel lamented that Affirmative Action \ Black Economic Empowerment has degenerated into tokenism, cosmetic ownership, rent-a-black-face enterprise, short -cut to wealth scheme, big-money head hunting that results in the enrichment of a few, hand picked minute group of politically well-connected elites and shrewd and unscrupulous bussiness men, and that leadership positions within the ANC in the government has become levers to the corporate world. A speech of ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe read by ANC Chief Spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama to the Black Management Forum in September this year raised similar concerns. “It seems that certain individuals are not satisfied with a single bout of empowerment. Instead they are beneficiaries of repeated bouts of re-empowerment. We see the same names mentioned over and over again in one deal after another.” Shortly after Manuel’s address to ABSIP, came the announcement that former director-general of the communications department, Andile Ngcaba, Smuts Ngonyama – Chief spokesperson of the ANC and head of its presidency, and Gloria Serobe -former Transnet finance director had purchased a stake in Telkom. (This is the very same stake bought seven years ago by the US-Malaysian Thintana Group when government was looking for an equity partner for the telecom monopoly). Business Day called the deal an insult to the poor. Highlighting the fact that Thintana was obliged to run any sale of its shares past government, the paper suggested that the silence of president Thabo Mbeki, Trevor Manuel and Alec Erwin, the capture of this prize by these high ranking ANC people might have met their approval or even active encouragement.

In a scathing attack on Mbeki, Manuel and Erwin, the editorial said: “ Over the past five or six years these three men have engineered arguably the least mass empowering and most individually enriching exercise in the redistribution of wealth unimaginable in a developing country with a majority of extremely poor people. Faced with the opportunity to spread the ownership of the state’s vast assets among poor blacks, and given the powers to force white business to spread ownership of its assets among as wide a group of formerly disenfranchised citizens as possible, they have shrunk before the challenge and ended up with a little more than an embarrassing handful of extremely rich former party hacks and hangers on. Some, like Manuel and ANC secretary Kgalema Motlanthe, can see it and may even say so. But there is no stopping the train now. The die is cast. Mbeki and senior members are steadfast. This is the way.”

The Congress of South African Trade Unions came fuming, saying that the deal would “epitomize the very worst form of so-called ‘black economic empowerment’ which benefits only a tiny elite” and was a further evidence of “a culture of corruption and self-enrichment”. Cartoonists also had a go at the deal. Zappiro (Sowetan Tuesday November 16 2004) portrayed Ngonyama and Ngcaba toasting the Multi-million Telkom deal under a banner reading: “ANC – a better life for all office-bearing fat-cats and recently-resigned office-bearers who’ve paved the way for sweetheart deals”. Brandan (Business Day) depicted an animal farm-like scenario; four pigs are having a feast at “The Party Pen”, and “the ruling farmer” spurs them on “come-on. Eat up! There’s more where that came from. This is just the tip of the tip of an iceberg. ” The starving mass of pigs at the “Broad -based pen” look on with disbelief \ disdain: “And they call US broad-based”

Should we be surprised that AA \ BEE has turned out to be too much wealth and more and more opportunities for the elite few and too much poverty and less and less opportunities for the poorest of the poor? When the post-1994 unveiled the Affirmative Action and Black Economic Empowerment as policies by which it sought to end the inequities and imbalances created by the system, the right critiqued AA and BEE as reversed racism, tokenism, the lowering of standards, and the subjugation of merit and performance to political expediency. But some of us on the left of the political spectrum actually argued that Affirmative Action and Black Economic Empowerment are relevant in the situations where the oppressed and excluded are a minority like in America where the historically disenfranchised, disadvantaged, disempowered, marginalized and under-privileged black people (African-Americans and Hispanics) and other minorities were to be affirmed and empowered within the framework of an economic system and socio-political institutions that naturally would continue to be dominated by the white majority but should not be a trajectory to follow in a context like South Africa were the oppressed, exploited, dispossessed, disempowered and marginalized happen to be the Black majority. We asserted that AA was essentially locked in the meritocratic logic where the top of the cream from the oppressed communities are recruited into the ranks of the owners of capital on the basis of their individual ability to swim their way out of the gutter and the bottomless pit that is black working class life by smelling opportunities and going out of their way to grab them by hook or crook.

We argued that once they have swam their way out of the gutter and the bottomless pit (the township and the slum) and have joined the rank of capital, these BRAVE individuals with the balls of elephants would be dictated by the imperatives of the market to forget about those left behind and below and to know and follow no logic and no law except the logic of profit maximization, capital accumulation and the tyranny of the market and the law of the concrete juggle - the survival of the cleverest, the shrewdest,  meanest, and the most scheming and most opportunistic. We insisted that the trajectory to follow if we are serious about ending racial and class inequities would be the of transfer of political and economic power from the racial and class minority through state control (not ownership) and public ownership of the major means of production and redress and access programs and reparation for the historically dispossessed. This would mean the socialization of land, sea and space and the socialization of the wealth and resources accruing from the land and sea, and the (re)nationalization of essential social services such as health, education, housing, water and electricity, and state provision of quality public transport and communication services. This would mean the establishment of a housing parastatal, state investment in land and housing cooperatives and the release of land and resources to these cooperatives to practically implement and support the people’s housing processes. It would also mean the cancellation of the apartheid debt, the cancellation of the debts incurred by Black Students in historically Black Institutions and scrapping of the rental debts incurred by the poor and working class communities up to the time the redress program is implemented. This would definitely require an end to a state withdrawal, privatization, and de-regulation as currently promoted by Growth and Redistribution program- the South African version of the Structural Adjustment Programs that are imposed on the countries of the world by the IMF and World Bank. It would require an end to a minimalist, austere state, and a shift from a capital –intensive economy that puts the market above everything to a socio-econo-political system based on the primacy of the welfare and well-being of the people and the environment rather the supremacy of the market. Any program short of a reasonable intervention of the state in the economy to bring about the socialization of land, equitable redistribution of the wealth and Black Economic Control (as opposed to BEE) will do nothing but promote and advance a middle and upper class agenda.