Response+to+Zamikhaya+Maseti,+by+Karl+Cloete

**Response to the article by Zamikhaya Maseti in The Star on 11 December 2007****- It's not about individuals**
The article written by Zamikhaya Maseti in the The Star on 11 December 2007 must be responded to with a view to locate the proper historical context and perspective as it relates to the 1969 ANC National Conference held in Morogoro under the leadership of OR Tambo and what confronts us in Polokwane, Limpopo under the stewardship of Thabo Mbeki.

1. When MK presented the so-called Chris Hani memorandum to the Morogoro conference, that moment signified a long discussion within the liberation movement on the kind of guerilla warfare to be employed against the apartheid regime.

It should be remembered that the PAC had a Chinese "cultural revolutionary" approach to warfare whereas the ANC drew many lessons from the Vietnam and Soviet approaches to guerilla warfare in conditions applied to the African continent but South Africa in particular. (in the context of the Zimbabwean revolution for example the PAC had a better alliance with ZanuPF who were adherents of the Chinese model whereas the ANC chose an alliance with Joshua Nkomo's Zapu inspired and supported by the Soviet Union) The debate was therefore underpinned by an ideological outlook and not just an emotional outcry for a return to South Africa to "kill the boers".

The resolution arising from Morogoro and the subsequent execution of the armed struggle in our country was resolved on the basis that (a) we should have as our guiding light the realisation of the Freedom Charter and (b) the central involvement of the oppressed and exploited masses of our people in the ongoing battle to rid ourselves from Apartheid and Colonialism of a Special Type.

It is therefore no accident when in 1979 the ANC declared that ”//The aims of our national-democratic revolution will only be fully realized with the construction of a social order in which all the historic consequences of national oppression and its foundation, economic exploitation, will be liquidated, ensuring the achievement of real national liberation and social emancipation. An uninterrupted advance towards this ultimate goal will only be assured if within the alignment of revolutionary forces struggling to win the aims of our national-democratic revolution, the dominant role is played by the oppressed working people.”//

2. When reference is made to the Communists leadership in the persons of Marks, Kotane, Slovo and others we should not loose sight of the fact that OR Tambo had a very consultative and inclusive approach to the Alliance leadership in exile and would hardly move on any critical matters within the ANC without inviting and soliciting the advise and perspectives of the Alliance leadership. OR Tambo valued the revolutionary Alliance such that he said this to say about the importance of the Alliance //“The relationship between the ANC and the SACP is not an accident of history nor is it a natural or inevitable development.//

//"For, as we can see, similar relationships have not emerged in the course of liberation struggles in other parts of Africa… Ours is therefore not a paper alliance, created at the conference tables and formalized through the signing of documents and representing only an agreement of leadership. Our alliance is a living organism that has grown out of struggle. We have built it out of our separate and common experiences…”//

If truth be told, we must all confess that the Alliance post 1994, but more specifically under the leadership of the Cde Thabo Mbeki, became a mere tool to appease the masses and to be invoked as an instrument when elections were around the corner. More honestly put, the masses of our people was effectively demobilized and reduced to spectators of their freedom and liberation. This is why we are confident about the fact that whilst the lives of the working class and the poor were changed since the 1994 democratic breakthrough, white monopoly capital with a small-thinly spread black elite became the main beneficiaries of our freedom and liberation.

Maseti and others make the point that “…//nowhere does any literature makes reference to individual Sactu leaders saying wrong or bad things about the internal problems of the ANC…”// To their disadvantage this simply proves the point that the leadership of OR Tambo was unifying albeit under very difficult and trying conditions.

3. It is disingenuous of Maseti to claim in THE STAR article of 11 December 2007 that //“////The current ANC leadership wrangle clearly does not depict any ideology at all. The forces at play are not pulling in different ideological directions. This is all about personalities, bordering the politics of resentment and grief.”// Without going back to the fact that some senior ANC leaders who were also senior SACP leaders almost did not want to participate in the PATH TO POWER-SACP National Congress in Cuba in 1989, and who later allowed their SACP membership to lapse, so distartdly imposed the neo-liberal GEAR policy with its privatisation prescriptions on the liberation movement in 1996. Can it be honestly claimed that this shift from the the fundamentals of the Freedom Charter and RDP represents un-ideological position and that it “…//is all about personalities, bordering the politics of resentment and grief.”//? Surely not.

4. Some national leaders within the national liberation movement and within some Cosatu affiliated trade unions dishonestly argues that when we call for the values of the Strategy & Tactics of Morogoro to be an integral part of our outlook in how we transform our society from CST and the Apartheid monstrousty to what the Freedom Charter demands, we are stuck in a timewarp and fail to acknowledge the international and domestic balance of forces. To settle the score on this matter we must insist that a neo-liberal departure which in a meek and mild fashion accept the global reality as GOD given and which thereby ignore the international and domestic weakening position of neo-liberalism is tantamount to pulling the whool over our eyes.

As just but one other example we must be honest to say that the Presidential International Investment Council today enjoys more status and prestige than our revolutionary alliance or the masses who were in the frontline of our libertaion struggle.

5. It can’t be correct to accuse Cosatu and the SACP of wanting “//to weaken the ANC”// when all we point to is the abuse of state power in settling factional scores, when we demand that the Alliance be the political centre that drives policy formulation and the a radical transformation project, when we confirm the historical position of the liberation movement which speaks about the NDR as the most direct route to Socialism, when we ask for a proper execution of the national question in relation to the class struggle and the class content of the national question, when we call for a socilaist oriented NDR and when we insist on the fact that Socialism is the Future Build it Now!

We should all be in agreement and say in a resounding chorus the words of Oliver Tambo in 1990: //"I have devotedly watched over the organisation all these years. I now hand it over to you; bigger; stronger - intact. Guard our precious movement."//

May the delegates in Polokwane ensure that JZ with the collective that we are putting forward, take control of a near modernised and centralised movement back to its liberation movement credentials over which OR Tambo watched so dillegently.


 * Karl Cloete**
 * Numsa Western Cape Regional Secretary**
 * SACP Western Cape Provincial Chairperson**
 * //(writing in his personal capacity)//**

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