ANC Today --------------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 3, No. 18, 9 - 15 May 2003 --------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS WEEK: * Letter from the President: The people of Zimbabwe must decide their own future * Walter Sisulu: A giant of the liberation struggle * Tributes to Walter Sisulu: The world remembers a great revolutionary --------------------------------------------------------------------- LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT The people of Zimbabwe must decide their own future Earlier this week, we were in Zimbabwe together with Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Bakili Muluzi of Nigeria and Malawi respectively. We went to Harare to discuss with the Government of Zimbabwe and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), what we might do to contribute to the resolution of the problems facing this sister African country. Even as we publicly communicated this simple message about the purpose of our visit, there were some in our country who insisted on imposing their own agendas on us. Accordingly, they pretended to know everything about what we would say to the political leadership of Zimbabwe, raising unjustified expectations that reflected their wishes. This manner of proceeding has bedevilled the general understanding of the situation in Zimbabwe, as well as our response to this situation. These same detractors, who have their own partisan agendas, which they dress in the language of high-sounding principles, are firm in their conviction that we have some divine right to dictate to the people of Zimbabwe what they should do about their country. They seem to believe that if we issued some instructions to the political leaders of Zimbabwe, as determined by themselves, this leadership would meekly obey what the baas across the Limpopo would have told them. Precisely because we are South African, we know the reasons why. Our own experience as a movement tells us unequivocally, that no lasting solution to the challenges that face Zimbabwe can be found, unless that solution comes from the people of Zimbabwe themselves. It tells us that no Zimbabweans with any pride in their country, and respect for themselves, will accept that another should determine their destiny. We remain convinced that the people of Zimbabwe must decide their future, together with their entire leadership. For our part, we will never treat Zimbabwe as the tenth province of South Africa. To ensure that we are best positioned to give such assistance as may be required by the Zimbabweans, we will continue to follow developments in Zimbabwe with great care, and make our own assessments without fear or favour. We will continue to interact with the entire political and other sectors of the leadership of the people of Zimbabwe, excluding no one. As we did before and immediately after the 2002 Presidential elections in Zimbabwe, we will continue to encourage both ZANU-PF and the MDC to sit together to agree on a common response to the pressing challenges their country faces, as we did again earlier this week. We were pleased and inspired that the leadership of Zimbabwe itself holds the same view. Accordingly, we hope that all obstacles to the resumption of the dialogue between ZANU-PF and the MDC, if any exist, will be removed, so that the talks can begin. Certainly more than we, the Zimbabwe leaders understand the very difficult situation imposed on their people by the economic crisis that is gripping their country. Zimbabwe can only extricate herself from this crisis in conditions of political stability. She would be best placed to take the difficult decisions she has to take, if her political leadership acted together, responding to a common national emergency, in the interest of all the people of Zimbabwe. Fortunately, the leadership of our neighbouring country is sensitive to this requirement, for all to act in unity to achieve the common good. In the heated atmosphere that surrounds the issue of Zimbabwe, the tendency among some of us to pose as high priests at the inquisition, hungry for the blood of the accused, as though to condemn, demonise and punish, constituted the very essence of solving the most difficult problems, has taken root. In this situation, as in war, the truth soon becomes a casualty. From its very beginning as an independent country, Zimbabwe took the correct position that it had to address the issue of the legacy of colonialism and white minority domination in the socio-economic sphere. As we all know, this virtually quarantined the critical matter of land redistribution, because of agreements reached during the independence negotiations in London. These sought to counter- balance the principle of black liberation with the protection of white property, inserting into the political settlement the racist notions of black majority rule and white minority rights. Beyond this, the new democratic state worked to advance the socio-economic interests of the liberated majority. This focused on meeting the needs of the people, changing the state machinery to reflect the new political reality, and encouraging black participation in the economy and society in general, so that the majority joined their white compatriots as actors for development, rather than mere consumers and employees. To advance these objectives, the Government of Zimbabwe ploughed considerable resources into the area of education, from the primary to the tertiary levels, with dramatic and measurable successes. Similarly, significant state expenditures went into the area of health in both urban and rural areas. This resulted in such positive developments as an increase in the proportion of those immunised rising from 25% to 86%, and an increase in life expectancy from 55 to 59 years. State expenditures on rural development, food security and nutrition, impacting on the majority in the country, resulted in the small farmers' share of marketed maize rising from zero in 1980 to more than 70% in 1989. During the fiscal year 1990/91, the civil service wage bill accounted for 16.5% of the GDP. This high burden on the economy was caused both by the rapid expansion of state services to the people and the drive to achieve equal pay for equal work between black and white civil servants. Central government expenditure on the social sectors during the same year amounted to about 13% of the GDP. To meet the needs of the people and alleviate poverty, the independent state decided to adopt measures that would keep the cost of living relatively low, to ensure better mass access to essential goods and services. In essence, this was done through a system of subsidies financed through the state budget, which has been maintained for two decades. As a result of this, during the fiscal year 1990/91, the subsidies to the public enterprises absorbed a staggering 3.7% of Zimbabwe's GDP, since these were required to supply goods and services below cost, to guarantee a tolerable standard of living for the people. These extraordinary expenditures could only be sustained by running a large budget deficit and through foreign borrowing. In other words, this could only mean - live now, pay later! By the end of the first decade of liberation, total public sector debt stood at 90% of GDP. In Fiscal Year 89/90, central government interest payments comprised 6.7% of GDP. By 1987, foreign debt service payments had risen to 34% of export earnings. Capital to finance economic growth began to dry up. Private investment in an overwhelmingly capitalist economy, contrary to blatantly false assertions about a socialist Mugabe government, dropped to less than 8% of GDP in 1987, compared to an already low 12% in 1985. By the end of the first decade of independence, it was clear that the growth path chosen by the government of Zimbabwe was unsustainable, despite the objective declared not long after independence, of growth with equity. Even as early as 1984, less than five years after independence, the government of Zimbabwe had to appeal to the IMF for assistance, resulting in a counter- productive structural adjustment programme, the belt-tightening that any banker will demand of a borrower in dire straits. Contrary to what some in our country now claim, the economic crisis currently affecting Zimbabwe did not originate from the desperate actions of a reckless political leadership, or from corruption. It arose from a genuine concern to meet the needs of the black poor, without taking into account the harsh economic reality that, in the end, we must pay for what we consume. Persisting ideological blindness to this reality is evident in our own country, where some who call themselves the unique representatives of the poor, have been seeking to oblige us to follow the same policies that led to the economic crisis in Zimbabwe. We have refused to do this. We will continue to do so. To come out of this crisis, the people of Zimbabwe will have to make serious sacrifices and take a lot of pain. This has been demonstrated by the sharp increases in the prices of petroleum products and the resultant rises in transport costs, as the government has reduced the unaffordable fuel subsidy. All this communicates a message that is perfectly clear. It is that the longer the problems of Zimbabwe remain unresolved, the more entrenched poverty will become. The longer this persists, the greater will be the degree of social instability, as the poor try to respond to the pains of hunger. The more protracted this instability, the greater will be the degree of polarisation and generalised social and political conflict. To respond to this, the state will inevitably have to emphasise issues of law and order, even as it has ever fewer means to address the needs of the people. As it responds in this manner, the less will it have the possibility to address anything else other than the issue of law and order. The more it does this, the greater will be the degree of the absence of order and stability. None of this will happen because there are demonic people in Harare harbouring evil hearts, with no concern other than the exercise of power and the personal enjoyment of its benefits. The internal logic of various processes in human society compel all of us to be carried along by events, to destinations we may not have sought. In this regard, the people and leaders of Zimbabwe are neither more nor less human than anyone among us. As has happened with us at various times, they too will have to break the vicious cycle. I am certain that they will sit together as Zimbabweans and Africans, to listen to and hear one another, and take the difficult decisions that will say, practically, that none among them was born to impose an intolerable burden of suffering on the people of Zimbabwe. The rest of us have an obligation to work with them as they strive to overcome their immense difficulties, faithful to the spirit of human solidarity. As immediate neighbours we have no choice in this regard. As patriots who occupied the same trench of struggle with the people of Zimbabwe when we, together, battled to end white minority rule in our region and continent, we have no choice but to lend a hand to the effort of the people of Zimbabwe to enjoy the fruits of their hard-won liberation, of independence, freedom, democracy, peace and stability, and prosperity. Righteous and self-serving indignation, and the attitude of superior rectitude will not give us this outcome. Our greatest and most enduring strengths as a movement and a people derive from our humility, our respect for others, our commitment to principle, our love of Africa, our commitment to serve the interests of the poor of the world, as best we can, our refusal to abandon what we believe in because of battle fatigue. These we must never lose, simply because some among us tell us to act in an arrogant and superior manner towards another human being who lies by the roadside in pain, bleeding. Thabo Mbeki --------------------------------------------------------------------- WALTER SISULU A giant of the liberation struggle South Africans felt a deep sense of loss at the news earlier this week that Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu, a giant of the liberation struggle and one of the founding fathers of South Africa's democracy, had passed away. Sisulu, who served the ANC as Secretary-General and later as Deputy President, was an African patriot whose heroism, humility and leadership earned him the respect and love of the millions of our people. Walter Sisulu was born on 18 May 1912 at Engcobo in the Transkei, of peasant origin. His formal schooling ended at the age of fifteen. He became a mineworker in Johannesburg, working a mile underground in arduous and dangerous conditions, sleeping in the grim barracks in one of the Reef compounds. His next job was in East London as a "kitchen boy". He returned to Johannesburg to work in a bakery for a miserable 18 shillings a week. Having picked up some information about trade unions he led the workers on strike for higher wages. The strike was defeated and he was sacked. He went through a succession of factory jobs and clashed repeatedly with white bosses. He found relief delving back into Xhosa history and writing articles about national heroes for the African press. As he went from job to job he studied for his senior school standard. Sisulu joined the ANC in 1940, the same year that Dr AB Xuma, also from Engcobo, assumed the position of President General of the ANC. In 1944, together with Anton Lembede, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela and others, he helped found the ANC Youth League and became its first national secretary. In 1949 he was elected the first full-time Secretary-General of the ANC. When Sisulu first took on the complex job of Secretary-General of the ANC he brought natural gifts, a deep political seriousness from a life of struggle as a youth, an unconcern with the usual status symbols of educational and social success - for he had none and learned that other qualities were more important - and a steel nerve for crisis situations. As the ANC grew after the great African miners strike of 1946, Walter grew too. His political experience taught him that behind the great repressive state in South Africa was a ruling class based on complex forms of class and colour exploitation, each supplementing the other to oppress the African as a worker, peasant and human being. Walter Sisulu began to study and write, to plan mass campaigns and to formulate strategies. He was a leader of the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign in 1952. Together with Nana Sita, President of the Transvaal Indian Congress, he led the first batch of African, Coloured and Indian volunteers in breaking the law of entering Boksburg Location without a permit. In 1953, Walter Sisulu was the guest of the World Federation of Democratic Youth to its third World Youth Festival in Bucharest, Romania. Sisulu was impressed with what he saw in the socialist countries, the highlight of which was his visit to the Soviet Union. He was invited to speak over Radio Moscow. On his way back Sisulu stopped over in London, where he immediately set about meeting political leaders, both British and from other parts of Africa. He addressed a rally on South Africa in the Holborn Town Hall. On his return to South Africa he was enthusiastically received by a series of receptions and report-back meetings called by the South African Society for Peace and Friendship with the Soviet Union. Heavily armed police raided these meetings and made arrests. Sisulu was one of the accused in the Treason Trial in 1956. In 1960, during the State of Emergency, he was detained without trial. He was arrested six times in 1962 and placed under 13-hour house arrest on 26 October and under 24-hour house arrest on 3 April 1963. Pending an appeal against a six year sentence, he forfeited bail of R6,000 on 19 April 1963, and went underground. On 11 July 1963, Walter Sisulu was arrested and detained under the 90 day law. At the Rivonia Trial, Sisulu was the main defence witness and was subjected to fierce attack from the prosecutor, Percy Yutar. Sisulu told him: "I wish you were an African. Then you would know..." He was charged with sabotage and other offences in the Rivonia Trial and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island. Walter Sisulu was released from prison on 15 October 1989 together with Raymond Mhlaba, Wilton Mkwayi, Oscar Mpetha, Ahmed Kathrada, Andrew Mlangeni and Elias Motsoaledi. Their release was a prelude to the unbanning of the ANC and release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990. In July 1991, at the ANC's first national conference in South Africa since 1959, Walter Sisulu was elected ANC Deputy President. Sisulu has remained active in the ANC following the end of his term as Deputy President in December 1994. For several years he maintained an office in the ANC's Johannesburg headquarters, undertaking a number of responsibilities on behalf of the organisation. On 18 May 2002, he celebrated his 90th birthday in Johannesburg surrounded by colleagues, comrades, friends and family. --------------------------------------------------------------------- TRIBUTES TO WALTER SISULU The world remembers a great revolutionary Thousands of people from across South Africa and around the world have paid tribute to Walter Sisulu in the last few days. We publish below a selection of the many messages of condolence and tribute that have been received: Nelson Mandela Xhamela is no more. His absence has carved a void. A part of me is gone.We shared the joy of living, and the pain. Together we shared ideas, forged common commitments. We walked side by side through the valley of death, nursing each other's bruises, holding each other up when our steps faltered. Together we savoured the taste of freedom. From the moment when we first met he has been my friend, my brother, my keeper, my comrade. President Thabo Mbeki South Africa's beloved friend and statesman of liberation Walter Sisulu has passed out of this life. He was a massive force for enlightenment and freedom and earned his place in the annals of history together with great figures like OR Tambo who pursued the struggle with unflagging determination in the dark and difficult days of apartheid. ANC Youth League Tata Sisulu was among six comrades who led a group of young women and men assembled at the Bantu Men's Social Centre in Johannesburg in September 10, 1944 during the formation of the ANC Youth League. Tata Sisulu was fired up with profound patriotism and love for his oppressed people; as a result, he dedicated his entire life fighting for freedom, as the youth of that time declared, "Freedom in our life time". South African Communist Party In his life and personality, in his easy-going non-racialism, unpretentious humility and passion for justice, Walter Sisulu embodied the core values of the struggle that liberated our country. He also distinguished himself as a promoter and defender of the revolutionary alliance between the national liberation movement, the communist party and the trade union movement. Cde Walter Sisulu must surely rank as one of the greatest unifiers in our movement, a patient listener and a caring revolutionary. Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) Comrade Walter occupied a special place in the history of our liberation movement and the hearts of millions of South Africans and peace loving people across the World. Comrade Water dedicated his entire life to the struggle for liberation and was prepared to sacrifice everything, even his life, to win that struggle. From the early days, when, as a worker he joined the ANC, through 26 years on Robben Island, to the democratic breakthrough in 1994, he never wavered in his commitment and determination to get rid of the racist apartheid regime and win freedom for all South Africans irrespective of colour or creed. South African National Civic Organisation (SANCO) Comrade Sisulu was indeed a giant of our collective history, as the Congress Movement, and the South African people. We duly recognise that he shall be remembered by history for his courage, commitment to higher values and principles, intellect and bravery. The civic movement shall not forget his memory and the life he lived. South African Council of Churches (SACC) His was a life of integrity. He was dedicated to his people and their well being. While it maybe that we are saddened by Dr Sisulu's death, we are however called to celebrate a life well lived in terms of discipline and commitment to the course of justice and equality. We thank God for this wonderful and exemplary life which in many ways rose above narrow political interests for the common good of all humanity. South African Jewish Board of Deputies Mr Sisulu was a legendary figure in the liberation struggle in South Africa, a man of great courage and integrity who dedicated his life to the pursuit of justice for all. He was universally loved, and his memory will be an inspiration for all South Africans, today and in generations to come. Congress of National Traditional Leaders of South Africa (CONTRALESA) As South Africans, we been fortunate to have a leader like him, a treasure trove of knowledge and wisdom to be tapped by generations present and to come. He was a role model of a husband, a father and proponent of non-racialism and reconciliation. Desmond Tutu We give thanks to God for his dedication and commitment and his remarkable humility. We owe a great deal to him an unpayable debt for what he and his family have contributed to our struggle and the establishment of freedom, justice and democracy. We are where we are today because of this great man whose name will forever be blazoned in letters of gold in the annals of our beloved land and mother continent. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan The Secretary-General was saddened to learn of the death of Walter Sisulu, one of the heroes of South Africa's anti-apartheid movement. Mr. Sisulu was engaged in the struggle for multi-racial democracy for all his adult life. He was known and loved by people far beyond South Africa's borders for his humility, integrity, intellect and vision. Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki I am saddened by Sisulu's death, which is not only a great loss to South Africa, but to the entire African continent. Sisulu will be remembered for integrity, foresight and concern for politics of the majority of South Africa. He was also a guiding light from whom many people drew inspiration in the struggle against apartheid and colonialism. India's High Commissioner Shiv Shankar Mukherjee On Monday night, South Africa and the world bade farewell to one of the great icons of the liberation struggle, Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu. I still recall feeling [at our first meeting] that I was in the presence of real greatness, a man who had triumphed over near-impossible odds, through unimaginable personal sufferings, and yet retained a total compassion for the poor and those in need. Communist Party of China Mr Sisulu devoted his entire life to the liberation cause of the South African people, and made outstanding contribution to the dismantling of the apartheid system and the birth of the new South Africa. His death is a loss, not only for the ANC and his South African compatriots, but also for the progressive cause of the world. US Secretary of State Colin Powell Sisulu's life was dedicated to the establishment of full democratic rule and equality for all South Africans, regardless of race or colour. South Africa has lost a giant, but one whose goals for an inclusive, multiracial, multicultural nation was realised with the end of apartheid rule in 1994. --------------------------------------------------------------------- This issue of ANC Today is available from the ANC web site at: http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2003/at18.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