ANC Today --------------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 3, No. 14, 11-17 April 2003 --------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS WEEK: * Letter from the President: Opening the doors of economic empowerment * Response to the opposition: Have conditions improved in SA since 1994? * Chris Hani: A love of freedom that still inspires a nation --------------------------------------------------------------------- LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT Opening the doors of economic empowerment This week, the Minister of Trade and Industry, Alec Erwin, announced the names of the Black Economic Empowerment Task Team. This team will serve until the Advisory Council on Black Economic Empowerment is appointed in terms of the projected legislation on black economic empowerment. The Task Team will help to finalise this legislation as well as further elaborate the guidelines for the achievement of the objectives of the Black Economic Strategy announced earlier on behalf of our government by Alec Erwin. It will also interact with all other parties relevant to, and interested in the accomplishment of the important task of black economic empowerment. This marks an important step forward as we intensify our work to address the related challenges of non-racism and prosperity for all. This demands that we pay even greater attention to the matter of the deracialisation of our economy. We have in the past said that we are a country of two nations, one black and poor, and the other, white and prosperous. Some of our political opponents have made a big song and dance about this, trying very hard to pretend that in less than ten years of liberation, we have eradicated the legacy of colonialism and apartheid. This is despite the fact that this legacy is evident to the naked eye wherever you go in our country. Strangely, those who normally contest the validity of class analysis, now want to use the fact of class differentiation in our society to deny the reality of the racial disparities that continue to characterise our society. For almost five decades, we have rallied behind the call contained in the Freedom Charter - South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white! This famous statement carries a deep meaning. It is not merely about citizenship. It addresses the task we face to ensure that we create the situation in which all our people, black and white, truly feel that South Africa is their common home, that this common home affords all our people equitable access to its resources and possibilities, and that it develops on the basis of a vision shared by all our people, black and white. This requires that we act together as South Africans in the mutual interest, to produce such an outcome. Obviously, those who were the excluded and marginalised by colonialism and apartheid are determined that South Africa must belong to all who live in it. For a century, even in the face of the worst brutalities and excesses of the system of colonialism and apartheid, they have demonstrated that what they want is a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it, black and white. Contrary to the propaganda of those who wanted to perpetuate white minority domination by frightening our white compatriots, these black masses demonstrate everyday that they are deeply committed to the vision of a non-racial South Africa, a shared future and a common patriotism across the colour line. Those who benefited from the apartheid system, our white compatriots, also have a responsibility to contribute to the accomplishment of the task of building a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it, black and white. This is for the simple reason that the vision the overwhelming majority of South Africans share, of a peaceful, stable, prosperous society of equality, requires that we eradicate the colonial and apartheid legacy we inherited as we transformed ourselves into a liberated and democratic country. Without this, no one in our country, whether black or white, will enjoy the peace, stability and prosperity that belong among the fundamental rights of all our people. We should not perpetuate the situation in which those who belong among the prosperous and comfortable live in fear behind high walls, seeking to protect themselves with all manner of security devices and guns, simply because they fear what the poor and marginalised outside their walls might do to them and their possessions. The road ahead of us as we strive to develop a united national response to the challenge to build a non-racial society remains long. Among other things, this means that we still have a lot of work to do to convince some in our country that black economic empowerment is in the interest of all our people, black and white. The continued political polarisation in our society was demonstrated during the 'floor-crossing' period affecting the national and provincial legislatures that has just ended. This was starkly demonstrated by the movement of a number of white elected representatives out of the NNP into the DA. From 1994, when the NNP was part of the Government of National Unity, the Democratic Party, the parent of the DA, decided to outflank the NNP by attracting the historical constituency of the latter. The DP therefore decided to assume the mantle of the old NP, as the NNP was trying to grapple with the challenge of transforming itself into a political party committed to building the non-racial society called for in our Constitution. As did the NP, it sought to frighten the national minorities with the spectre of a swart gevaar. It made it its duty to oppose every single step we took and have taken to transform our country into one that belongs to all who live in it, black and white. It presented itself as the tough guy who would protect the white and other minority interests threatened by the swart gevaar. It called especially on our white compatriots to fight back. Believing that it has convinced these that the ANC is the very representative of the swart gevaar, as the DA it proclaims that it is the only political force in the country capable of defeating the ANC, and therefore eliminating the threat of anti-white black domination. Having transformed the DP into a destructive remnant representative of the past against which we fought, and renamed itself the DA, naturally, it continues to attract to its ranks those who felt comfortable in the bosom of the NP that was led by P.W. Botha. This was clearly demonstrated during the 'floor-crossing' period, as it has been since 1994, when it decided to occupy the political space abandoned by the NP when it decided to become the NNP. Understandably, the DA is fond of boasting of its achievement in the 1999 elections of displacing the NNP as the official opposition in our national politics. It crows with great joy each time it defeats the NNP in municipal by- elections. What it celebrates in all these instances is the fact that it has succeeded to give a false hope to some of our white compatriots that it has the possibility to guarantee them a return to the reassurances of the past, that South Africa would remain a racially divided country, with the privileges derived from colonialism and apartheid intact. In the face of this, we have to work hard to convince even those who vote for, and support the DA, that their future lies in a non-racial society. We have to work among them to win them away from fear of our non-racial democracy. We have to persuade them that they have a positive and important role to play in the national pursuit of black economic empowerment, as South Africans and in their own interest, as architects of a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it, black and white. The opponents of the process of the deracialisation of our economy are fond of arguing without any facts whatsoever, that what black economic empowerment is about is the enrichment of a small black elite connected to the ANC. The truth they will not tell is that if there are such individuals, they acquired their riches as private entrepreneurs, and not as a result of any partisan intervention either by the ANC or our government. At the same time, they go out of their way deliberately to misrepresent the goal of black economic empowerment as being such enrichment of ANC 'cronies.' None of this should surprise us. The opponents of a deracialised South African economy will use every trick in their book to discredit and defeat our efforts in this regard. This includes ominous threats that these efforts frighten foreign investors, as though these investors would be attracted to a South Africa rendered unstable and unsafe by the perpetuation of the unjust social order represented by the legacy of colonialism and apartheid. To realise its true objectives, black economic empowerment must contribute to the central task we face, to end poverty and underdevelopment in our country. It must help us to end the gross racial imbalance in skills, income and wealth, which acts as a barrier to the objective we pursue and must pursue, of higher rates of growth and development. A larger domestic market with greater numbers of people with the skills required by the modern global economy, is critical to the achievement of the goal of a prosperous South Africa that belongs to all who live in it, black and white. Black economic empowerment is therefore about radically increasing the numbers of South Africans with modern professional qualifications and productive skills. It is not about displacing those who are skilled and white with others who are newly skilled and black. It is about reducing and eradicating poverty, so that all South Africans have more to spend on themselves and their families, having increased their spending power through honest work. It is not about impoverishing those who are white so as to enrich those who are black. It is about increasing the numbers of South Africans who can play a role as leaders of our society in all areas of human activity, as managers, without which we will not achieve our goal of building a modern and people-centred society. It is not about destroying our existing managerial skills base, in order to rebuild it by bringing others who happen to be black, changing nothing except the colour of management, and losing the accumulated experience of those who were managers before. Black economic empowerment is about increasing the numbers of those among our people who take the risk to use their material and intellectual resources not for purposes of immediate consumption, but to create additional wealth through the productive investment of these resources. It is not about reducing the number of investors in our society, or merely shifting existing wealth from white into black hands. We are determined to open the doors of the common home to all who were kept outside in the cold, excluded from opportunity, income and wealth. We are equally determined to ensure that those who were inside, with access to opportunity, income and wealth, remain inside. This is what black economic empowerment is about. It is about translating into reality, the vision of a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it, black and white. All South Africa, black and white, has the opportunity to help realise this noble objective, to contribute to the sustenance of 'the South African miracle.' Thabo Mbeki --------------------------------------------------------------------- CHRIS HANI A love of freedom that still inspires a nation It is ten years since Chris Hani, General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and ANC National Executive Committee member, was assassinated outside his home by right-wingers. South Africans are commemorating this tragic event by recalling the life and contribution of Chris Hani and re-affirming our commitment to the values and vision for which he fought throughout his life. Hani was murdered on Saturday morning, 10 April 1993, as he returned to his house in Dawn Park, Boksburg. Right-wingers Januz Walus and Clive Derby-Lewis, who were convicted of the crime, admitted that their intention was to fuel a violent racial confrontation. It is due to the discipline and steadfastness of the South African masses, and to the leadership of the ANC, that their plan did not succeed. In the hours and days following the killing, there was heightened tension within the country as the people expressed their anger and outrage. Nelson Mandela, then ANC President, made a live TV broadcast to the nation calling for calm and resolve in the face of extreme provocation. The killing took place at a critical time in the country's history. Negotiations around the country's interim constitution and transition had entered its third year, and, while some progress had been made, the National Party government was not willing to submit to a timeframe for its conclusion and the holding of democratic elections. The assassination of Chris Hani - and the people's response to it - seemed to change that. Within weeks, the De Klerk government had agreed to hold the country's democratic election the following April. Yet already the balance of power was visibly shifting. In the hours after Hani's assassination, it was the ANC President who was called upon to address the nation in a live broadcast. The country's nominal president, FW De Klerk, was nowhere to be seen. Some commentators have said the funeral of Chris Hani at FNB Stadium on 19 April was the first 'state funeral' of the new South Africa - a year before the new South Africa was formally born. If his death had a profound effect on the course of the transition to democracy, it was his life that helped bring the struggle to that point - and it is life that continues to inspire South Africans to take forward that struggle. Tembisile 'Chris' Hani was born on 28 June 1942 in Cofimvaba in the Transkei, the fifth child in a family of six. His political activism was triggered by his experience of Bantu Education, by the clampdown on the leadership of the Congress Alliance in 1955, and by the Treason Trial of ANC leaders which followed in 1956. He joined the ANC Youth League in 1957 at the age of 15. In 1959 he went to the University of Fort Hare, where he became openly involved in the struggle. It was here that he became exposed to Marxist ideas and where his non-racial perspective was deepened. In 1961 he joined the underground South African Communist Party. This decision, he said, was influenced by people like Govan Mbeki, Braam Fisher, JB Marks, Moses Kotane and Ray Simons. In 1962 he graduated and went to Cape Town to take up a position as an articled clerk in a law firm. There he joined the fledgling Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and became a member of the Committee of Seven who made up the Western Cape leadership. He left the country to represent the Western Cape at the Lobatsi Conference in Botswana, which brought together the internal and external wings of the ANC. He was arrested on his return, and sentenced to 18 months under the Suppression of Communism Act. The ANC instructed him not to serve the prison term, so he went into hiding for four months, and was then instructed to leave the country for military training. It was, as he described, 'the beginning of my long road in the armed struggle'. He was a political commissar in the Luthuli detachment during the joint ANC/Zapu military campaign in Zimbabwe in 1967. In 1974 - the year he became a member of the ANC NEC - he returned to South Africa to build the underground, and settled in Lesotho for the next seven years from where he coordinated underground MK activities. He returned to Lusaka in 1982 having survived several assassination attempts against him. He became Commissar and Deputy Commander of MK in 1984, before becoming MK Chief of Staff in 1987. Returning to South Africa following the unbannings of the ANC and SACP, he was again elected to the NEC at the 1991 National Conference. In December 1991 he became General Secretary of the SACP. Speaking at Hani's funeral, then ANC President Nelson Mandela captured why even to those who didn't know him, Chris Hani was deeply loved and respected: 'Through three decades of exile Chris Hani remained steadfast in his commitment to free our people from bondage. He was taken to our hearts, as a people, as a nation, because he lived so that we may be free. Chris Hani touched the very heart of millions of us because he knew our pain, and eased it by giving us hope, giving us courage, giving us a way forward. Chris Hani loved life, and lived it to the full. But he loved freedom more. Chris Hani loved our people, our organisations, our South African nation, and for that love he was brutally murdered.' More Information: Autobiographical note by Chris Hani, 1991 http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/people/hani_c.html Address by Nelson Mandela at Chris Hani's funeral, 19 April 1993 http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/speeches/1993/sp930419.html SACP Chris Hani Memorial Month activities, 1 April 2003 http://www.sacp.org.za/pr/2003/pr0401.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- RESPONSE TO THE OPPOSITION Have conditions improved in SA since 1994? In his speech during this year's State of the Nation debate, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Tony Leon, said: "But the South African reality is that for millions of our fellow citizens, life is no better now that it was in 1994. For many people, in spite of political freedom, life is actually worse." Perhaps the problem is that some of us still do not regard others as human beings of equal humanity and worth. Because when the DA says that life is worse for many people than it was under apartheid they are saying that it was less offensive to the dignity of some people to treated as sub-human on the basis of their race or gender than for other people. They are saying that it was less humiliating for some people to be treated as foreigners in the land their birth than for other people. They are saying that it was less fundamental for some people to be denied the right to vote than for other people. They are saying that was less hurtful for some parents to see the potential of their children being wasted than for others. They are saying that it was less traumatic for some people to live in fear of arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and assassination than for others. They are saying that it was less heartrending for some people to die exiled from the land of their ancestors than for others. They are saying that some people were less attached to the land and homes that they were forcibly removed from that others. They are saying that it was less frustrating for some people to have their entire human potential restricted through Bantu education, job reservation, pass laws, the Group Areas Act, the Land Act, the Immorality and Mixed Marriages Acts than for others. In short, the DA is saying that is was normal and not very much out of the ordinary for Africans to be regarded as savages and to be treated as such. They downplay the enormity of the reign of terror that was perpetrated against all facets of the humanity of the majority of South Africa's people. The DA asks: 'Have conditions improved in South Africa since 1994.' Since 1994 the government led by the ANC, with the involvement and support of the overwhelming majority of South Africans, black and white, has ensured that: * 486 new clinics have been built in rural areas; * 3.8 million new electricity grid connections have been established; * 1,4 million hectares of land have been redistributed and 512,000 hectares of land have been restituted; * 26,000 emerging black farmers have been assisted; * 4.5 million learners are receiving meals under the Primary School Nutrition Programme. * Social grants have increased in both quantity and the range of beneficiaries. Year on year our national budget has been directing more and more resources to social spending. We live in a country where we can truly say that: "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, Black and White." We live in a country in which the rule of law and the supremacy of our Constitution is respected. We live in a country where we can be proud to be proud South Africans, united in our diversity, working together to create a better life for all our people. This is not to suggest for one moment that the road ahead is not still very long or that all South Africans have benefited equally, or that mistakes have not, are not and will not be made in the process of pushing back the frontiers of poverty. Conditions have improved in South Africa. Unfortunately the arrogance of some of those who have consistently tried to block these improvements has not. During questions to the President, the DA's Raenette Taljaard asserted that race is being displaced by class as the fundamental dividing line in our society. This statement is based on a wrong conception of the relationship between racial oppression and class exploitation in South Africa that can only set back the cause of social transformation. Have our own homegrown Tories become champions of the working class? Hardly. Leon says in his speech during the State of the Nation Debate: 'We must focus on the welfare of the individual human being. Not a particular race of human beings, or a class of human beings, or 'the masses'. No - we must focus on the woman, the man, the child, each created uniquely in the image of God.' But the stubborn fact, consistently denied by the DA, is that those of us who were oppressed by apartheid were not oppressed as individuals. Neither were those of us who were advantaged by apartheid advantaged as individuals. We were advantaged and disadvantaged as members of certain races, genders and classes. What does the DA mean when it says that 'race does not matter'? It means that the grotesquely distorted patterns of ownership of, control over, and access to, socio-economic power along racial lines must be accepted as normal or incidental at best. What we must be suspicious of are those black entrepreneurs who in the face of tremendous obstacles are slowly de-racialising our economy - with or without assistance from the state. They are characterised by the DA as an elitist group of corrupt, nepotistic cronies. Put simply the DA is saying that to be black and to be anything other than poor is inherently morally suspect. To paraphrase the President: In our specific situation, what this means is that those who are fittest to survive will survive. Those who are best able will qualify on the basis of merit. Those whose race defined them as sub-human must now have no access to state support, which state must, after all, retreat to allow those who have the means to survive and dominate, to dominate. The DA hopes that by propagating these distortions they will succeed in their strategic objective to undermine the popular support of our movement especially among the African people and to persuade the national minorities to turn against us. They hope that by consistently attempting to discredit our policies and arguing that they are ineffective in terms of solving the problems facing our country and people, they will succeed to persuade the majority to abandon our movement and switch its allegiance to political forces that oppose the creation of a better life for all. These distortions betray the contempt and disdain the DA has for the poorest of the poor. They think that they can continue to ride on the backs of those they exploited in the past by telling them untruths. The struggle to achieve a better life for all will be a long and difficult one. However our policies are correct, a solid foundation has been laid, significant progress has been made in a relatively short time. The pace of delivery is speeding up. The tide has turned. With the support and involvement of the masses of our people we will succeed just as we succeeded in defeating apartheid. The ANC has declared 2003 'The Year of United Action to Push Back the Frontiers of Poverty'. The ANC's programme for 2003 will see our branches taking forward the experience of the letsema volunteer campaign by mobilising communities to work in partnership with government to push back the frontiers of poverty. Drawing on the spirit and practice of last year's letsema campaign - which was launched to mark the ANC's 90th anniversary - the 2003 programme will seek to mobilise all sectors of society in working to encourage job creation and tackle the effects of poverty; expand service delivery; and build safer communities. We urge all South Africans to join us in these endeavours. This is an edited version of a speech delivered in the National Assembly on 27 March 2003. Andries Nel is the ANC's Deputy Chief Whip in the National Assembly. --------------------------------------------------------------------- This issue of ANC Today is available from the ANC web site at: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2003/at14.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://lists.anc.org.za/mailman/listinfo/anctoday