ANC Today

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Volume 4, No. 15, 16-22 April 2004 

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THIS WEEK:

* Letter from the President: The ANC will not disappoint the people 
* Elections 2004: A decisive mandate to improve people's lives 
* Haiti: No place for regime change 

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LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

The ANC will not disappoint the people

On the 12th, 13th and 14th, the people of South Africa voted overwhelmingly for
national unity and reconciliation. They voted to unite in action in a people's
contract, together to create jobs, to fight poverty and build a better life for
all.

To celebrate our First Decade of Liberation, the majority of our people voted
against the perpetuation of the racial and ethnic divisions of the past. Through
the ballot box, they have spoken out loudly against all attempts to persuade
them that they belong to separate compartments, with competing interests.

As an expression of these positions that are of fundamental importance to the
future of our country, the people of South Africa voted overwhelmingly to renew
the mandate of our movement, the ANC, to govern our country. These masses have
made the unequivocal statement that they have the greatest confidence in our
movement to lead our country as it begins its Second Decade of Freedom.

They have spoken loudly and said they have understood the truths the ANC has
communicated to them, and understood the falsehoods that others have told. They
have said they are confident that our movement can be trusted to take good care
of their future, and are equally convinced that it would be wrong to entrust it
to others.

Our country's central challenge during its First Decade of Democracy was the
eradication of the 350-year-old legacy of colonialism and apartheid. This
entailed and entails all aspects of human activity, the political, economic,
social and cultural.

To eradicate this legacy meant that we had to break with our past, among other
things, by:

* ensuring that our people live and work together without tension and conflict,
regardless of our racial, colour, ethnic and religious diversity, with each
guaranteed his or her human dignity; 
* securing the territorial cohesion of our country as one united entity, with
everybody entitled to work and live anywhere within our borders; 
* translating our democratic victory into a properly functioning democracy that
promotes equality for all and enjoys the support of the overwhelming majority,
if not all our people; 
* rescuing our economy from an endemic and worsening crisis of permanent
stagnation, depression and regression; 
* restructuring that economy so that it achieves sustained growth, becomes
internationally competitive, and generates the resources we need to address the
needs of all our people; 
* changing the state machinery so that it works to advance the political,
economic and social developmental interests of all our people; 
* eradicating poverty and underdevelopment, and closing the racial and gender
disparities in wealth, income and opportunity; and, 
* normalising the relations between our country and the rest of Africa and the
world, regaining our place among the community of nations as a force for peace,
democracy, mutually advantageous cooperation, development for all, and the
victory of the African Renaissance. 

In their struggle against our movement, our political opponents make certain
that they underplay our country's achievements in all these areas. They work to
ensure that the masses of our people become oblivious to the sustained effort it
has taken, for us to register the advances we have made in pursuit of these
objectives.

They try their best to persuade the masses of our people to forget the ugly
reality of the apartheid society from which we have been working to escape
during the last 10 years. As part of this, they constantly argue that to refer
to the continuing impact of the apartheid legacy is to "play the race card".

By trying to obliterate the memory of our racist past and denying its sustained
impact on the present and the future, they seek to attribute to the ANC and the
democratic order all the problems we have inherited from the past. Unashamedly,
they pretend that these problems that are many centuries old, could have been
solved in a mere 10 years, and that failure to solve them constitutes an
avoidable failure of our movement.

In his autobiography, "A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House",
President George W. Bush writes about some of the challenges facing the United
States. He says:

"We live in the greatest and freest and most prosperous nation in the world, yet
too many of our citizens do not believe their lives have meaning or value. The
American dream is a distant offer meant for somebody else, they think…

"This gap of hope is found in the poverty of our inner cities, where
neighbourhoods have become urban war zones, a world of barred windows and gang
violence and failed schools, a world of shattered glass and shattered dreams.

"But the gap of hope is also found in the large but sometimes empty houses of
our affluent suburbs, where young people turn to drugs or alcohol or sex in a
failed search for something they are missing. We see glimpses of this
hopelessness in schoolyards where children inexplicably, tragically,
horrifically murder other children. And we worry about our national soul.

"This gap of hope threatens the very fabric of America. I worry that we are
being divided into two nations, separate and unequal: one nation with the tools
and confidence to seek the American dream; another nation that is being left
behind.

"We risk becoming two societies: one that reads and one that can't, one that
dreams and one that doesn't. Some think they can protect themselves through
wilful apathy. Some put up big fences and live in gated communities. Some close
the shutters, turn on the television, and withdraw."

The American Revolution preceded ours by more than two centuries. In the period
since then, the US has evolved into "the most prosperous nation in the world". 

And yet it is afflicted by entrenched problems of the poverty of the inner
cities, of a sense of hopelessness that grips millions, resulting in the
emergence of urban war zones of violent crime, of division into two separate and
unequal nations, of the rich seeking to protect and insulate themselves from the
poor by putting up big fences and living in gated communities.

Our political opponents, echoed and supported by "Afro-pessimists" from the
developed world of the North, have worked hard during and before the 2004
elections to propagate the dishonest view that problems that could not be solved
in the United States for two centuries, could be solved in South Africa in one
decade.

As they were bound to, the people have firmly rebuffed all the desperate efforts
to mislead them. They have done so because their own direct and practical
experience has taught them the truth that some sought to deny. They have done so
because through a long history of political struggle under the most difficult
conditions, they have learnt to distinguish illusion from reality.

The poor of our country, the millions of working people and the unemployed,
constitute the bedrock of the mass support of the ANC. These are the same masses
that carried the democratic struggle on their shoulders, ensuring that they
became their own liberators.

At the same time, they bore the brunt of the poverty, the deprivation and
suffering imposed on our people by the brutal system of colonialism and
apartheid. They were the worst victims of the systematic abuse and
dehumanisation visited on the people by those who saw themselves and behaved as
our racial superiors, believing that it was their manifest destiny to rule our
country in perpetuity.

Because of this supremely painful experience, these masses, more than any other
section of our population, had the greatest and most intense interest in the
victory of the democratic revolution. They became the most steadfast and
principled members and supporters of the ANC, because this was the movement that
constantly stood at the head of the people in struggle, uncompromising in its
search for freedom and determined never to be terrorised or bribed into
betraying the aspirations of the people.

For all these reasons, the masses have refused to support the proposition that
the problems they face would be solved by building a strong opposition to the
movement that had led them for nearly a century. They have rejected the
assertion that the country's challenges could only be solved if the people
separated into antagonistic camps, defined by race, colour and ethnicity. 

They have refused to accept the claim that the same movement that has led and
leads them in the struggle to eradicate poverty and underdevelopment, is the
cause of the poverty and underdevelopment they continue to experience.

Precisely because they know the meaning of poverty and underdevelopment, these
masses also know that the terrible legacy of deprivation we inherited cannot be
eradicated in a decade. Because they have direct experience of what has been
done during our First Decade of Freedom to address this legacy, they have firmly
rejected the false claim that their movement, the ANC, has failed them.

As Africans, both black and white, our people know the challenges that we and
other Africans face, both on our continent and the Diaspora. They are sensitive
to the suffering experienced by other peoples of the South. They have therefore
unequivocally rejected the treacherous arguments that we should not stretch out
a helping hand to the peoples of Zimbabwe, Haiti, Palestine and others. 

There are some in our country who harbour a deep-seated contempt for the masses
that have voted decisively to renew our mandate. These are the same people who
because they are convinced that the masses of our people cannot think, tried in
vain to cajole them to vote for an Opposition that would not serve their
interests.

As we engaged in struggle to defeat the apartheid system, the racist regime
continued to believe that the people were nothing but mindless cannon fodder
driven into action for their liberation through persuasion by a handful of
people it described as "agitators".

The continued prevalence of this contempt for the people, which informed the
election campaigns of some of our political opponents, was expressed by Martin
Williams of "The Citizen", in an article entitled "Voting to be crucified",
published on April 14, the same day the majority of our people voted to renew
our mandate.

Commenting on the film "Passion of the Christ", Mr Williams says, "What struck
me was the irrationality of the mob. Jesus had not committed a crime warranting
the death penalty. Yet the crowd, whipped up by leaders looking after their own
interests, bayed for his blood and demanded the release of the murderer
Barabbas.

"All through the ages mobs have been susceptible to the machinations of
demagogues. Pick your own examples. Today's election, for instance. The ANC has,
after 10 years in power, failed. Yet the masses are persuaded by promises of
more of the same…

"If the poor keep voting for the ANC they are as misguided as the baying mobs at
Jesus's persecution. They know not what they doeth. They're crucifying
themselves."

Mr Williams makes bold to say the millions who voted freely to renew our mandate
cannot think and therefore know nothing. He, alone, knows better than they in
their millions do, and knows what they do not know, that by voting for the ANC
they are "voting to be crucified."

Whereas Mr Williams is a thinking man, these millions are nothing but an
irrational mob that has succumbed to the machinations of demagogues. 

These are the same "demagogues" who ended up on Robben Island and other
apartheid prisons, on Death Row and exile, and whom, in the past, "The Citizen"
denounced as "agitators and terrorists". 

The "irrational mob" are the same masses who ensured that our country transforms
itself into a non-racial and non-sexist democracy, whose struggle for liberation
"The Citizen" opposed vociferously, in tandem with the efforts of the apartheid
regime to defeat that struggle through brute force.

In 1994 this "irrational mob" mandated the ANC to lead our country out of its
apartheid past. In 1999, this same "irrational mob" renewed that mandate with an
even larger majority. This time, in 2004, the "irrational mob" has once again
mandated the ANC with a larger majority than in 1999, to lead our country into
its Second Decade of Liberation.

Together with those whom Mr Williams denounces as "demagogues", this "irrational
mob" will and must work together in a people's contract to take our country
further forward towards the eradication of the legacy of colonialism and
apartheid. 

This must and will include the creation of more jobs and the reduction of
poverty, the building of a non-racial and non-sexist South Africa with sustained
reduction of the racial and gender disparities that continue to disfigure our
country, the reinforcement of national unity and reconciliation, the further
extension of the frontiers of knowledge and culture, a heightened contribution
to the victory of the African Renaissance and the emergence of a just world.

Those whom Mr Williams denounced as "demagogues" will continue to lead the
"irrational mob" away from a past described by President George W. Bush as "two
nations, separate and unequal: one nation with the tools and confidence to seek
the American dream; another nation that is being left behind."

They will work together in a people's contract to ensure that we address what
President Bush described as the "gap of hope (which) is found in the poverty of
our inner cities, where neighbourhoods have become urban war zones, a world of
barred windows and gang violence and failed schools, a world of shattered glass
and shattered dreams."

It was to achieve these results that the people of South Africa voted
overwhelmingly on the 12th, 13th and 14th of April to mandate the ANC to govern
South Africa. As it has done before, the ANC will not disappoint the
expectations of the masses of our people whom our opponents consider to be but a
contemptible and irrational mob.

Thabo Mbeki

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ELECTIONS 2004

A decisive mandate to improve people's lives

With almost all the results of the 2004 elections counted, the ANC is set to
receive a decisive mandate from the people of South Africa to work with them to
implement programmes to fight poverty and create work. This decisive mandate is
a critical foundation for the building of a people's contract to better the
lives of all South Africans.

South Africans turned out in their millions on Wednesday, 14 April to take part
in the country's third democratic election. The voting proceeded smoothly and
largely without incident.

While a fuller analysis of the results will only be possible once all votes have
been counted, it is clear from what is available that the poor show confidence
in the ANC. In areas where counting within mainly working class and poor areas
has taken place, the ANC is achieving overwhelming majorities of the same level
or higher than in 1994 and 1999. This is an expression of confidence in the
achievements of the ANC in the past ten years, as well as an assertion of hope
and conviction that the programme of the ANC will further improve their lives. 

There is also an increasing diversity in ANC support. As usually happens the
counting of votes and confirmation of tallies starts in those areas with
advanced infrastructure, mainly middle class areas. Though in these areas there
is a large segment of workers and the poor, current trends indicate that the ANC
is winning significant sectors of the middle strata including within white,
Coloured and Indian communities - reflecting increasing unity of purpose among
South Africans.

The overall level of ANC support is destined to increase. Given the character of
most of the areas already counted, and the trends in working class and poor
areas, it seems that the ANC percentage of the vote is bound to go higher. This
reflects the fact that a growing number of South Africans are identifying with
the ANC's call for a people's contract to tackle the many challenges the country
faces.

It is also clear from the results received that opposition parties are have to
fish from a shrinking pond. Compared to the outcome of the last elections, and
given the fact that the ANC is heading towards an increased majority, what is
emerging from the performance of the opposition is that they are competing for a
shrinking pool of support. This they seem to have realised, way into the
election campaign when most of them turned on each other for the "rest of the
votes". 

The support for the Democratic Alliance (DA) reflects mainly the traditional
support base of the combined DP and NNP, but does not meet the actual total that
these two parties had garnered in 1999. Given the areas already counted, it is
quite clear that the DA would not meet the targets it had set itself, which were
about 20 percent for the DA and 30 percent combined with the IFP.

The ANC has made gains, at the expense of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), in
many areas of KwaZulu Natal. There has been particularly good progress in rural
areas where the ANC has previously not managed to achieve significant levels of
support.

There is an obvious reduction in the percentage vote for the New National Party
(NNP), including in "traditional support bases" in the Western Cape, Northern
Cape and Free State provinces. Whether this reflects a continuing trend of
decline since 1994 or lack of clarity in message is a matter of conjecture.
Further analysis is needed on the residue of support it retains, reflecting an
acceptance of the message of co-operation with the ANC.

The Independent Democrats (ID) is a new party with gains linked in part to
profile of the leader and a reputation that attaches itself to simplistic
interpretations of parliamentary opposition. The gains seem to have derived
mostly from the DA and the NNP. The question will need to be examined whether
the message of acceptance of ANC policies and rejection of "opposition for
opposition's sake" may have played a role in this regard. 

The UDM is losing most of the support it gained in rural Eastern Cape and within
the white community, nationally, in 1999. Will the ID experience the same
phenomenon associated with the rise (and fall) of the UDM? One lesson from this
experience is that a significant part of white support for the ID/UDM-types in
fact may represent a transition in a long journey towards acceptance of the ANC.

The ANC profoundly appreciates the commitment shown by millions of South
Africans to exercise their constitutional right to elect a government of their
choice. We are humbled by the vote of confidence that they have shown in the
country's democracy and in the ANC. 

The professional and effective manner in which the IEC conducted the elections
is to be commended. 

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HAITI 

No place for regime change

The UN Security Council remains seized of the question of Haiti. After the
removal of President Aristide, the promise was held out that elections would be
held within 90 days, to choose a new President. But it is a moot point whether
these could be described as democratic, when one of the principal leaders of the
Haitian people, President Aristide, is excluded.

Quite what will happen to President Aristide and his family, who have been
exiled from their country against their will, is uncertain. Equally, the issue
of the long-term security of Haiti has still to be resolved, beyond the period
of the current deployment of the foreign forces from the US, France and Chile
that entered Haiti as President Aristide was being flown out of his country.

This also relates to the issue of the disarming of the criminal gangs and others
who illegally took up arms against the democratically elected government of
Haiti. Beyond this disarmament, the question will have to be answered as to
whether such behaviour should go unpunished, despite the daily strident
protestations by some about the importance of democracy and the rule of law.

Not surprisingly, the most reactionary forces in our country, led by the DA,
have been vociferous in their opposition to President Aristide, mouthing fervent
support for the anti-democratic forces that took up arms to effect regime change
in Haiti by unconstitutional means. 

These are the same people who pretend to be the greatest democrats our country
has ever seen. So committed are they to support reaction throughout the world,
they are determined to ignore all voices that have spoken out against the events
in Haiti.

In its edition of March 6th, 2004, "The Economist" said: "Only last week, when
the Americans became alarmed at a potential exodus of refugees, did their
diplomats put their weight behind a (CARICOM) compromise that would have kept Mr
Aristide in power in a coalition government with the opposition, pending fresh
elections. That was the best option; (President) Bush acquiesced in its
rejection by the opposition…The suspicion remains that the United States is
blessing a coup…Haiti has been ill-served by becoming the plaything of partisan
politics in Washington. There should be no place for coups in the democratic
Americas…

"The Bush administration insists it gave no support to the rebellion. But it
blocked aid to the government for years. And the Republican Party gave active
support to the opposition.

"Mr Aristide became the sixth leader in Latin America since 1999 to be ousted
before the end of his term…The Bush administration has seemed more ambivalent
(than the Clinton administration), withholding support from elected leaders it
dislikes. In 2002 it failed to condemn a coup (quickly reversed) against Hugo
Chávez in Venezuela, one of America's main oil suppliers."

Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington is quoted by
Richard Lapper in the "Financial Times" of March 3, 2004 saying:

"Both Chávez and Aristide are not guys that the US like. There was an antipathy
for both of them, which means we are not first among equals but play the role of
a negative spoiler."

Mr Lapper also wrote that "On Haiti, US policy became politically polarised,
with many Democrats - especially the party's black members of Congress -
supporting Mr Aristide and Republicans viscerally opposing both him and Mr
Clinton's intervention (which had restored President Aristide to power after he
was overthrown by a military coup in 1990.)" 

Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University in the US put this matter more
directly in an article that appeared in the London "Financial Times" on March 1,
2004. He wrote:

"The crisis in Haiti is another case of brazen Unites States manipulation of a
small, impoverished country with the truth unexplored by journalists…President
George W. Bush's foreign policy team came into office intent on toppling
Aristide, long reviled by powerful US conservatives such as former senator Jesse
Helms who obsessively saw him as another Fidel Castro in the Caribbean."

Professor Sachs further explains: "Aristide won the presidential elections (in
2000), in a contest the US media now reports was 'boycotted by the opposition'
and, hence, not legitimate. This is a cruel joke to those who know Haiti, where
Aristide was swept in with an overwhelming mandate and the opposition, such as
it was, ducked the elections…Aristide's foes in Haiti benefited from tight links
with the incoming Bush team, which told Aristide it would freeze all aid unless
he agreed with the opposition over new elections…Cut off from bilateral and
multilateral financing, Haiti's economy went into a tailspin…The ease with which
the US…brought down another Latin American democracy is stunning…The UN should
help restore Aristide to power for his remaining two years in office, making
clear that last week's events were an illegal power grab."

But the best that the UN Secretary General could say was that: "By February 28,
when President Aristide left, the police force had disintegrated and the country
was, to all intents and purposes, in the hands of armed thugs. The following day
the Security Council again (as it had done in 1994), authorised intervention by
UN member states, this time giving the UN itself only three months to take on
the security burden…

"The Security Council has promised humanitarian and economic assistance as well
as help in the areas of governance, human rights, and the rule of law."
("Thisday": March 18, 2004).

The Security Council said nothing whatsoever about restoring President Aristide
to power and "making clear that last week's events were an illegal power grab",
as Professor Sachs correctly suggested!

A provost at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Conn M. Hallinan has
written that: "The hasty departure of the country's duly elected president Jean-
Bertrand Aristide was the sad result of the threat of massive political violence
by feared former members of Haiti's security forces and intense strong-arming
and political pressure by the U.S. government…US organisations like the National
Endowment for Democracy (NED) funnelled hundreds of thousands of dollars to the
opposition… 

"The forces that converged on Port au Prince (the capital, to remove President
Aristide by force) are the very thugs and murderers the US invaded to get rid of
in 1994."

In the March 3, 2004 edition of the "Financial Times", Robert Graham also draws
attention to the involvement of France in the removal of President Aristide. He
wrote:

"By carefully co-ordinating with Canada and Caricom…and managing to keep the
United Nations Security Council on board, France was also able to bring home a
bigger point to the Bush administration.

"Promoting regime change in an interventionist form - even against a
democratically elected president such as Mr Aristide - can avoid diplomatic
fallout provided it is done in a multilateral context under the UN umbrella.
This is precisely the issue on which Mr Chirac fell out with Mr Bush over Iraq."

Was this the reason that the UN Security Council only spoke of governance, human
rights, and the rule of law, without addressing the fundamental issue of the
restoration to power of the democratically elected President of Haiti!

A US scholar, Robert Maguire, director of the Haiti Programme at Trinity College
in Washington DC, explained the antecedents to the policy of the US government
in these terms:

"The International Republican Institute on International Affairs (IRI)…has been
very active in Haiti for many years but particularly in the past three years.
IRI has been working with the opposition groups…The IRI ran afoul of Aristide
right from the beginning since it has only worked with opposition groups that
have challenged the legitimacy of the Aristide government."

The above account paints a very clear picture.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was democratically elected President of Haiti in 2000.

Nevertheless the US Republican Party did not like him and sought to remove him
from power. For this reason it extended support to the opposition using the NED
and the IRI.

When the Republican Bush administration took power in 2000, it resolved to carry
out this Republican Party objective. To achieve this goal, it started by cutting
off bilateral and multilateral aid to Haiti, creating a major economic crisis.

Armed thugs later acted together with the unarmed opposition, which was
supported by the Republican Party, to create a political crisis in the country.
A central objective of this crisis was to remove a democratically elected
President by unconstitutional means.

CARICOM, of which Haiti is a member, presented a compromise proposal that would
result in the formation of a government of national unity, headed by President
Aristide, which would organise early Presidential Elections.

President Aristide accepted this proposal.

The opposition, both armed and unarmed, opposed and rejected it.

The US and France accepted the positions of the opposition, destroying the
possibility for the adoption of a course of action that "The Economist" said
would have been "the best option" to solve the crisis in Haiti.

Instead, rather than act to defend the rule of law, they put pressure on
President Aristide to relinquish his elected position and go into exile.

They also prevailed on the UN Security Council to endorse an unconstitutional
and anti-democratic regime change in Haiti.

These events contributed to the undermining of the process of democratisation in
Latin America.

They demonstrated the truth that the national interests of the powerful take
precedence over everything, including objectives they regularly claim as
fundamental values, including democracy and the rule of law.

They confirmed the vulnerability and helplessness of small and poor countries to
the dictates of the big powers, and the impotence of the UN to play its role as
a defender of the interests of the weak and poor.

They illustrated the danger the small and the weak face, of denunciation by the
global mass media to serve particular political agendas, with no attempt to
respect the precepts of objective, fair and balanced reporting.

As "The Economist" said, "There should be no place for coups in the democratic
Americas." Neither should there be a place for coups and unconstitutional regime
changes in democratic Africa.

Obviously, the DA disagrees with this view. Driven by the arrogance of racial
superiority, it supports the "brazen manipulation of small, impoverished
countries", by those who enjoy superiority by virtue of their power, "with the
truth unexplored by journalists."

As they demonstrated during the April elections, our people will never accept
that our country should be governed by those who have absolutely no respect for
the freedom and democracy for which so many made the supreme sacrifice.
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