ANC Today --------------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 2, No. 48, 29 November - 5 December 2002 --------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS WEEK: Letter from the President: Our obligation to women and children Viewpoint by Dumisani Makhaye: The ANC must respond to professionals of the 'left' --------------------------------------------------------------------- LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT Our obligation to women and children Our country is involved in the important 16 Days of Activism on Violence against Women and Children. The country's response to this critical issue has been most commendable. We take this opportunity to thank everybody who has taken this campaign seriously, including the mass media. Without discriminating against other activists, I believe that we should especially commend the Deputy Minister of Justice, Cheryl Gillwald. She has done an excellent job of leading our government to communicate the message that all our people should show zero tolerance towards violence against women and children. I would also like to thank the Minister of Justice, Penuell Maduna, and the rest of his family, for openly speaking about the incidence of this crime within their own family, thus challenging all of us to show the courage we all need to expose the wrongdoers. The 16-day period will end on December 10, International Human Rights Day. The point however is that, having mounted the continuing offensive for the protection of the lives, safety and security, dignity and welfare of the women and children of our country, we should not terminate our work on these matters when the 16-day period ends. We will have to continue beyond this date to ensure that we bring down the levels of violence against women and children to lower levels than those that obtain today. A critical element of this is sustaining the public consciousness in all our communities and localities about the challenge we continue to face. This will require that we get a better understanding of the incidence of this crime in our country. In our continuing work, we should look for concrete results. One concrete result must be a radical reduction of the numbers of victims of this crime. Another must be a major upward movement with regard to the overall climate of safety and security as it relates to women and children in particular, and all our people in general. These results must come about in part because the wrongdoers begin to understand that they will not get away with their crimes. This is particularly important because much of the abuse to which the majority of our people are firmly opposed occurs behind the closed doors of family homes. Accordingly, we have to ensure that the united voice of our people against violence against women and children penetrates into and is heard in the very private homes within which the women and children of our country are abused. The government also has an obligation to ensure that our criminal justice system continues to work very hard to improve its effectiveness in this struggle. This must relate both to the speedy punishment of the guilty and the prevention of the occurrence of this crime. All elements of our criminal justice system have an obligation to respond to this challenge. An important part of government's contribution in this regard is the communication of the relevant and accurate information. Among other things, this must mean that our country as a whole uses the South African Police Service crime statistics to better effect. This is particularly important given the greater accuracy of these statistics since last year and the detail they provide. This level of accuracy should also help the country in general to do what it needs to do to support our law enforcement authorities in the fight for the greater safety and security of all our people. As we continue our fight against violence against women and children beyond the 16 Days of Activism, we should use the information contained in the SAPS crime statistics properly to focus our campaign as we strive to achieve real results. In this regard, we must make the point that a study of these statistics will show important geographic variations in the incidence of the various types of crime. Given the persisting racial patterns of human settlement in our country, it is not difficult to identify the racial patterns in the incidence of various crimes. We must qualify this with the observation that this will also be affected by the freedom of movement that accompanied the defeat of white minority rule. As we continue our struggle to build a non-racial society, working, in part, to overcome the racist stereotypes that emerged during centuries of racism at home and abroad, these geographic statistics might suggest that these stereotypes are correct after all. However, we also need to incorporate socio-economic factors in the characterisation of these areas. What this will show is that the areas we are talking about are also characterised by the serious incidence of poverty and underdevelopment. In reality, this is what informs the sociology of the kinds of crime we are talking about. As part of the process of ensuring that we continue a sustained and successful campaign against the crime of violence against women and children, beyond December 10, we made a preliminary examination of some of our crime statistics. In this regard, we examined the SAPS statistical series: "Crime in the RSA per Police Area: January to September 1994-2001", and extracted only the figures for 2001. Obviously, these include the period prior to July 2001 when our crime statistics were less reliable than they are now. Nevertheless, despite this limitation, the series is useful in terms of indicating the crime trends. We must, again, qualify this observation by indicating that a more scientific assessment of these statistics would require that we also take into account the size of the population in each geographic area. Obviously, the detailed crime statistics reflecting the incidence of crime in the catchment areas of individual police stations would illustrate the fundamental point we are making much clearer and more precisely. The particular crimes we have selected, which encompass the crime of violence against women and children, are identified as: * rape and attempted rape; * intercourse with a girl under the prescribed age and/or female imbecile; * indecent assault; * cruelty towards and ill-treatment of children (excluding sexual offences, assault and murder); * assault with the intent to cause grievous bodily harm (GBH); * common assault; and, * drug-related crime. With regard to Cape Town, the SAPS statistics divide the city into the West and East Metropoles. The latter includes the major black townships of Cape Town. The East Metropole shows a higher incidence in almost all these categories of crime. Among others, the Gauteng statistics identify the two areas of Soweto and Johannesburg. These show the same pattern as in Cape Town, with Soweto reflecting a higher incidence in almost all the same categories of crime. One of the statistical tables we selected covers the Northern Cape areas identified by SAPS as the Upper Karoo. De Aar and some smaller towns fall within this area. We examined the relative significance of three crimes in this area, compared to Soweto and the Cape Town East Metropole. The incidence of GBH in the Upper Karoo amounted to almost 24 per cent and 20 per cent of the same crime in Soweto and the Cape Town East Metropole, respectively. The figures for common assault were 29 and 13 per cent. Those for drug related crimes were almost 20, and 11 per cent. Of course, the critical point to make about these comparative figures is that they are completely at variance with the much smaller size of the population of the Upper Karoo, compared to the people resident both in Soweto and the Cape Town East Metropole. This means that in per capita terms, there was a higher incidence of these crimes in the Upper Karoo than in Soweto and the Cape Town East Metropole. This makes the point most vividly that for us to understand the sociology of crime requires that we grasp as objectively as possible, the impact of socio-economic conditions on social behaviour. Anybody familiar with figures published in the past about the incidence of various crimes in the Northern Cape will not be surprised at the figures we have just quoted. Unfortunately, some in our country have only sought to use information about crime in our country to feed their political campaigns. About two years ago, the National Working Committee of the ANC, together with our Northern Cape Provincial Working Committee, took the decision that our movement should pay particular attention to the Northern Cape communities afflicted by the crime patterns we have indicated, which include violence against women and children. In this context, our national and provincial leadership drew attention to the levels of poverty among these communities. It spoke about the unacceptably high degree of alcohol and drug abuse, driven by the hopeless conditions of life of these black masses and their enslavement by a terrible tradition built over a long time, which grew out of the practice of paying agricultural workers with alcoholic beverages. We addressed the circumstances that had arisen from the fact that some of our people had been subjected to sustained and endemic poverty, all-round social alienation, the relentless denial of their dignity, and the breakdown of the family. Our leadership concluded that it was inevitable that these fellow South Africans would inevitably lose their own self-respect. They would therefore have little possibility to respect the next human being, especially those who shared their human condition. In part this has manifested itself in a high level of inter-personal violence among relatives, friends and acquaintances. Our leadership recognised the fact that a combination of all these factors led to the tragic crime situation and social breakdown in the affected communities of the Northern Cape. From this it was clear that we had to combat and prevent crime in these areas, strive hard for their socio-economic upliftment, and attend to the restoration of the dignity of the individuals and communities that were victims of a terrible past, working together with them. When our government considered the areas we should target as the first and priority nodes for our Urban Renewal Programme, some of the critical matters it considered were precisely the same as those our leadership considered when it discussed the Northern Cape. As we continue the struggle to end the abuse of women and children, these are some of the matters to which we must attend, to ensure that we produce concrete results. At the same time, we have to focus on other manifestations of social dysfunction affecting other social strata in our country. Some among these will be people who have been socialised to accept sexism and the use of violence against the person to assert authority, as normal conditions of human and social existence. To achieve the results we must achieve, in the continuing struggle to end violence against women and children, requires that we approach our common challenge with the necessary attention to the issues that must inform our actions. The work we have to do over a protracted period may not be material for newspaper headlines. It is nevertheless an obligation we owe to the women and children of our country. It stands at the centre of our effort to rebuild and transform our country into a humane and caring society. Thabo Mbeki --------------------------------------------------------------------- LEFT FACTIONALISM AND THE NDR The ANC must respond to professionals of the 'left' The goal of reconstruction and development demands that the ANC defends its leadership role in the continuing struggle for the victory of the national democratic revolution, and maintain the unity of the forces that brought about the defeat of the apartheid regime. For many decades, the ANC and the SACP have worked together as reliable and dependable partners. Each partner understood their respective and non-antagonistic roles, their different and common goals. The task of the ANC, composed as a multi-class formation, was to lead the masses of our people in the struggle for the victory of the national democratic revolution. It had to ensure the defeat of the system of white minority domination, the achievement of democracy, and the eradication of the legacy of colonialism and apartheid. The SACP had determined that its historic mission was, and is, to lead the workers and the working people in the struggle for the victory of the socialist revolution. Nevertheless, it determined that for these working masses to tackle the challenge of their class oppression, first of all, they had to free themselves from national oppression. The SACP therefore shared a common responsibility with the ANC to organise and mobilise the black workers into the struggle for national liberation. At the same time, the two formations had a common obligation to mobilise this majority of our workers to engage in struggle to improve its wages and working conditions. In organisational terms, the various tasks of the ANC and the SACP meant that the two formations had to maintain their independent existence, to create the possibility for them to pursue their different objectives. At the same time, they had to elaborate the necessary forms of organisation that would give effect to the equally important reality that, with regard to a variety of important matters, they pursued common objectives. This led to a complex ideological, political and organisational struggle within the camp of the forces of the national democratic revolution, stretching over a number of decades. Nevertheless, in time the main questions were resolved. This struggle created a stable system of cooperation and united action between the ANC and the SACP, which gave our broad movement for national liberation the strength and the cohesion it needed to defeat the system of white minority rule. The broad movement included the progressive trade union movement, which would be an independent formation of all workers without regard to the political allegiance of these workers. Another was that both the ANC and the SACP would work among the workers and their trade union organisations to provide the political consciousness and leadership that would ensure the adherence of these workers to the respective political programmes and goals of the ANC and the SACP. However, as we approached the moment of the accomplishment of the political tasks of this alliance, trends began to emerge from within the alliance whose effect was to question and threaten the ideological, political and organisational construct representing the united movement for national liberation that was on the verge of victory. Objectively, this emerged out of the natural consideration by each independent formation of the alliance, of the implications for itself of the impending victory of the national democratic revolution. This natural process led to the emergence of groupings within the SACP and COSATU that sought to redefine the tasks of the working class, among others. These groupings within the SACP and COSATU came to the conclusion that the victory of the national democratic revolution would create the possibility for them to use the democratic state power to achieve the goals of the socialist revolution, as they understood these goals. In the meantime, the task that faced the ANC was to define, as precisely as possible, the tasks of the democratic state in the continuing struggle to achieve the goals of the national democratic revolution. Nevertheless the groupings in the SACP and COSATU we have mentioned, set about positioning themselves within the alliance in such a way that they would be able to determine and decide what the democratic state would do. Necessarily, a number of consequences arose from this strategic shift. One of these is that these groupings would adopt the position that the national democratic revolution had run its course. Accordingly, in their view, the time had come to build socialism now. At the same time, the determination would be made that the same popular forces that secured the political victory of the national democratic revolution should be mobilised and transformed into the forces that would build socialism now. To do this, it was necessary and obligatory that the forces of socialism, defined as the groupings located within the SACP and COSATU, should therefore take over the leadership of these popular forces. They would have to remove and replace the ANC in terms of the exercise of this leadership. We must make the point that the majority of members of both the SACP and COSATU do not constitute part of these groupings. These same members will ensure that their organisations, the SACP and COSATU, are not abused and misused as instruments for the pursuit of goals inconsistent with the aspirations of the ordinary South Africans they represent. To achieve their objectives, the 'left' groupings in the SACP and COSATU that we have mentioned, decided to act and acted on at least seven fronts. One, they presented their own unique political platform to the country, not hesitating to contradict and challenge the publicly expressed positions of the ANC. Two, they opposed the concept of building the SACP as a vanguard party of the working class. They prefer that the Communist Party should remain a 'mass party'. The advantages the 'left' grouping in the SACP and COSATU derive from this is that this enables these groupings to rely on the low level of socialist consciousness in the country to use all and sundry as part of their 'left' cadres. Three, they worked to popularise this platform, engaging in an ideological, political and organisational struggle to build as broad a movement as possible to support this platform, specifically aimed at defeating the policies and positions of the ANC. Four, they worked to exclude and deny ANC political leadership especially of the progressive trade union movement, to destroy the tradition built during the most difficult period of our struggle for national liberation, of ANC leadership of and integration with the organised workers, in the advance to national liberation. Five, they engaged in determined efforts to capture the leadership of the ANC in a factional process historically described in the progressive movement, with its tradition of forming united fronts, as entryism. Six, they have relied on conspiratorial methods to achieve their objectives. This includes the processes in which they engage to capture the leadership of the broad democratic movement, including the ANC. Seven, they have worked to turn the international forces that worked to defeat the apartheid regime, into opponents of our movement. They do this through a sustained campaign to discredit the efforts of both the ANC and the democratic state. The critical fourth point in the agenda of the 'left' groupings, which relates to their determined effort radically to change the relationship among the organisational leaders of the national liberation movement, the socialist revolution, and the workers organised into the trade union movement. These 'left' groupings in the SACP and COSATU have had to work hard to destroy the credibility of tried and tested leaders and activists of the ANC. This necessarily led to them constituting themselves as a faction within the ANC. Acting as such a faction, these groupings set themselves particular tasks within the ANC, including using the fact of the ANC membership of their members to promote their factional policy positions, pretending that these represent a progressive improvement of the policy positions of the ANC. Another was to manipulate the democratic processes of the ANC to ensure the election of their candidates to positions of leadership within our movement. Among other things, this has taken the form of the executive lists these groupings secretly present to the delegates at ANC elective conference at all levels, for whose election they canvass, presenting themselves as a genuine ANC lobby. It is easy then to see why the anti-ANC groupings in the SACP and COSATU earn the accolades and support of others in our country that oppose the ANC from conservative and right-wing liberal positions. These forces, principally concentrated in Democratic Party/Democratic Alliance, know that they are too weak effectively to oppose the ANC. This is despite their support by a variety of non-governmental organisations, various academics and 'experts', and sections of the media. They believe that our 'left' opponents have a better possibility to weaken their opponent, the ANC, and thus will contribute to the realisation of the strategic objective of the rightwing. This confirms the global experience of the progressive movement for a period that extends over a century, that left factionalists end up working as allies of right-wing reaction. Unfortunately, and perhaps understandably, it took the ANC some time fully to understand the new tendencies we have been discussing. There was a time lag between the evolution of objective reality and the subjective comprehension of this reality. Our organisation failed to take into account the fact that not all leaders of the alliance would necessarily respond to our accession to political power in the same way, remaining loyal to the traditions established by our broad movement through and after many decades of struggle. The result of this was that the ANC took time to respond to the ideological, political and organisational offensive of the groupings that had located themselves in the SACP and COSATU. This created the impression that these groupings had a just cause, whereas the ANC was guilty as charged by these groupings. Our movement now understands very well both the objective and subjective factors that relate to the emergence of ultra-left factions within the alliance. Correctly, we have begun the counter-offensive to defend the best revolutionary traditions of our broad movement for national liberation. Naturally, this will evoke a response from those against whom we defend our revolutionary traditions. We will continue to tackle this task in a principled, but vigorous fashion. Necessarily our opponents will respond in a different way, essentially driven by their inability to mount a straightforward and effective ideological and political response. This has been demonstrated by the manner in which the 'left' groupings have, for instance, treated the issue of the restructuring of state assets. To substantiate their case, they have resorted to gross and deliberate falsification of everything relating to this process. In this regard, we are faced with a number of tasks. One of these is properly to understand the strategic objectives, tactical tasks, operational goals and composition of the forces of the 'left' groupings. This must include their domestic and international 'left' and right-wing allies. The other is properly to inform and mobilise the membership of the ANC about and around all these matters. This membership must then act within all our structures to defend and advance the agreed positions of our movement. Another task is to communicate with other organisations of the mass democratic movement and other influential public organisations, to familiarize them with the positions of our movement. We will achieve our revolutionary goals in spite of the combined opposition of the 'left' inside and outside our ranks, and our right-wing opponents. Confronted as we are by 'left' and right-wing professionals, our movement must and will respond to these professionals in a consistently revolutionary, honest and open manner. We will not retreat from, or abandon, this struggle. Dumisani Makhaye is an ANC National Executive Committee member. This is a summary of an ANC Today Discussion Supplement. http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/docs/atsup021129.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------- This issue of ANC Today is available from the ANC web site at: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2002/at48.htm To receive ANC Today free of charge by e-mail each week go to: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/subscribe.html To unsubscribe yourself from the ANC Today mailing list go to: http://mail.anc.org.za/mailman/listinfo/anctoday