SADC returns to Lusaka

On August 16-17, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which incorporates 14 (and potentially 15) countries, held its 27th Ordinary Summit Meeting of Heads of State and Government in Lusaka, Zambia. To emphasise its importance, the Summit Meeting was attended by all the SADC Heads of State and Government.

(Seychelles, a member of SADC for many years, was not represented because of a continuing discussion about the membership dues it must pay. The Lusaka Summit, fully sympathetic to the concerns of Seychelles, expressed its determination to do everything possible to ensure that this island-state, geographically and otherwise part of Southern Africa, resumes its rightful place as a fully-fledged Member of the Development Community.)

The SADC Brigade

Undoubtedly, one of the high points of the Summit Meeting was the launch of the SADC Regional Peace-keeping Brigade. This military-police-civilian brigade is made up of personnel drawn from 11 of the member states of SADC. It has been constituted to respond to the challenges of peace, security and stability that face our region.

At the same time, it constitutes a component part of the African Union (AU) Standby Force which Africa is forming to ensure that it has the organised and multi-skilled force to enable it to respond expeditiously to all situations of conflict on our Continent. Thus the launch of the SADC Peace-keeping Brigade represented, in concrete terms, the resolve of our region and continent to rely on its resources effectively to ensure peace and security throughout Africa.

It was indeed very moving to see the 11 mixed formations, each behind its national flag for purposes of identification, assembled on the parade grounds at the Lusaka City Airport. Nobody present at the launch ceremony could have avoided being moved by the fact that despite the variety of the national flags that led and identified the various formations, all the members of the Brigade marched and drilled with great precision, responding to the commands of one Commanding Officer.

Clearly, here, at the Lusaka City Airport, the combined political leaders of our region were presented with a palpable example of the readiness of our region of Southern Africa to act together, to promote African unity, to bind all countries of our region to the cause of peace, to guarantee peace, security and stability on our Continent, and to create the necessary conditions for the defeat of poverty and underdevelopment in Africa.

For us, as South Africans, the ceremony to launch the SADC Brigade had a special significance. We were very happy and proud to see members of our National Defence Force and our Police Service parade together with their comrades from the rest of our region. We felt immensely proud when Colonel Botman, of the SANDF, was called upon to assume the position of the bearer of the flag of the Brigade on the very day that the SADC Brigade was born.

Armed and peaceful

In earlier years, the apartheid armed forces, organised in the SADF, had brought death and destruction throughout our region. They had acted as an instrument of destabilisation, destruction, subversion and regime change in the service of the apartheid regime. Their presence, operations and incursions into virtually all the SADC countries had brought death, suffering and misery to thousands of people throughout our region.

Undoubtedly, among the officers from the rest of our region present on the parade ground at Lusaka City Airport, were nationals of various countries who had had to take up arms to defend the independence of their countries, which was under armed attack by forces of aggression that falsely claimed to represent our interests as South Africans.

At the same time, there were officers from the rest of our region who had worked with the commanders and cadres of Umkhonto we Sizwe, and the rest of our movement, out of the public eye even in their own countries, to contribute to the intensification of the struggle to defeat the apartheid crime against humanity. They did this knowing that inevitably, the apartheid regime, with a benign nod from the major Western capitals, would carry out terrorist acts in their countries, targeting both unarmed members and supporters of our movement, and the civilians of our host countries.

Recalling all these painful circumstances, during which the apartheid regime supported the LLA in Lesotho, Super-ZAPU in Zimbabwe, RENAMO in Moçambique, and UNITA in Angola, and various political formations, we could not but be moved to tears by the concrete representation of the fact that democratic South Africa has dedicated all our military capabilities to the cause of peace, friendship, solidarity and development in our region and Continent.

We were moved that men and women of the military, police and associated civilian forces from our region, and their political leaders, openly and unreservedly expressed confidence in our security forces as reliable partners in the common struggle to consolidate our region as an African perimeter of peace, democracy and development.

As President Levy Mwanawasa of Zambia said at the opening session of the SADC Summit Meeting, it was indeed an important matter of note that SADC was meeting in Lusaka for the first time since its formation in the same city in 1980 as the SADCC. As was correctly observed, this was only possible because since 1980, following the independence of Zimbabwe, both Namibia and South Africa had been liberated, ending the long period of colonialism and white minority rule on our Continent.

Regional solidarity

This statement was significant not only as a celebration of victory, but also as a signal of what Southern Africa must do to accelerate its advance towards the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment throughout our region, in the interest of the masses of the people of our region, who had carried the burden of the struggle finally to end colonialism and apartheid in Africa and the world.

Accordingly and correctly, the Lusaka Summit Meeting focused on the urgent task to transform the economies of our region, to ensure that as an integrated whole, they meet the aspirations of the masses of the people of Southern Africa.

In this regard, the Lusaka Summit Meeting was exposed to what can be done. President Bingu wa Mutharika announced that Malawi would donate 5 000 metric tons of maize each to Lesotho and Swaziland, in the light of their food shortages, caused by drought. President Mwanawasa also announced that Zambia had donated 10 000 metric tons of maize to the World Food Programme (WFP) to be made available to any SADC country in need.

The Zimbabwe economy

The Summit Meeting also approved the urgent initiation of a process that would identify the measures that the SADC region should take to assist in the economic recovery of Zimbabwe. The report prepared by the SADC Secretariat in this regard says:

“The restoration of the country’s foreign exchange generating capacity through Balance of Payments support is crucial: however, the most urgent action that is needed to start this process is to establish lines of credit to enable Zimbabwe to import inputs for its productive sectors, particularly for agriculture and foreign currency generating sectors.

“SADC should do all it can to help Zimbabwe address the issue of sanctions, which is not only hurting the economy through failure to get BoP support and lines of credit, but also through reduced markets for its products. Sanctions also damage the image of Zimbabwe, causing a severe blow to her tourist sector.

“Zimbabwe on her part must continue to implement robust policies to reduce the overvaluation of the exchange rate, to reduce the budget deficit and to control the growth of domestic credit and money supply which fuel inflation, and to reduce price distortions in the economy. Equally important is the need to avoid frequent changes in policy initiatives, which have caused uncertainties and led to the view that the policy environment is unpredictable.”

In this regard, on Monday, August 20, the Business Day newspaper published a wholly fabricated story alleging that the SADC leaders were divided over this report, describing a discussion at the Summit Meeting that never took place. This is consistent with an unethical practice in sections of our media in terms of which they manufacture news and information and communicate complete fiction as the truth.

The newspaper manufactured an unbridgeable “rift” resulting in a non-existent paralysis among the leaders, arising out of the discussion that never took place. The fact of the matter is that, acting on the recommendation of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security, (the Organ), the SADC Summit Meeting accepted the report on the Zimbabwe economy, as well as the proposal of the Organ that our Finance Ministers, in consultation with the Government of Zimbabwe, should use the report to elaborate specific interventions that could be made by our region.

The hostile allegation that our countries have recklessly turned their eyes away from the problems of Zimbabwe, because of the imperatives of solidarity, has always been nothing more than a product of propaganda, which all thinking persons would recognise as such. The reality is that in a very real sense the problems of Zimbabwe are our problems, in the same way that the problems of the rest of Southern Africa are problems for Zimbabwe as well. Our entire region stands to benefit most directly from the recovery of Zimbabwe, in much the same way as Zimbabwe benefits from the progress of the region of Southern Africa, of which it is an integral and inalienable part.

The Lusaka Summit Meeting reconfirmed these fundamental positions, which include unqualified respect for the sovereignty of Zimbabwe and the right of its people to determine their destiny. At no point will SADC and its member states act as a super-power that has the right to expropriate the people of Zimbabwe of their right to self-determination, as imperial Britain did.

African unity & regional economic integration

The Lusaka Summit Meeting agreed that the 2008 normal SADC Summit Meeting, which will be held in our country, will launch our regional Free Trade Area. This Summit Meeting will also discuss the decision to transform the SADC region into a Customs Union by 2010. Before then, detailed work will also be done to prepare the basis for the radical improvement of all elements of the regional infrastructure. All this indicates the serious commitment of SADC rapidly to advance the critically important objective of mutually beneficial regional integration.

As we have reported before, the July 2007 AU Summit Meeting decided that the African Regional Economic Communities must serve as the driving force towards the political and economic unity of Africa. This important decision adds an important dimension to the historic obligation SADC has, seriously to attend to the issue of our region’s integration, and its cooperation with other regions of our Continent.

This is particularly important in the light of the fact that our region conveyed a united view at the Accra AU Summit Meeting, insisting that the only rational and possible way to proceed towards the realisation of the objective of a United States of Africa is “from the bottom up”, with the RECs, such as SADC, serving as the critical building blocks of the architecture out of which will be realised the age-old continental dream of African unity.

The 27th Ordinary Summit Meeting of SADC confirmed the determination of our region to respond to this challenge. The launch of the SADC Brigade, the first component of the African Union Standby Force, represented a practical demonstration of the commitment of the peoples of Southern Africa to help give meaning to the resolve of the peoples of Africa to take their destiny into their hands. This is confirmed by the fact that the entirety of the AU/UN “hybrid force” for Darfur, which will include SANDF and SAPS personnel, will be composed of African personnel.

As we knew and said during the difficult years when Lusaka served as the Headquarters of the ANC, Africa will be free!

SAYCO Anniversary

Forging a new generation of young lions

The launch of the South African Youth Congress (SAYCO) 20 years ago proved the determination of the youth of our country to continue the struggle even at the height of repression. The 'young lions' of 1987 met the challenge of the state of emergency with a proud roar that continues to reverberate through the hills and valleys of a free South Africa.

Their determination to realise freedom increased at the very moment that the regime's response grew more deadly. Their militancy and confidence in final victory deepened even as the prisons were crowded and the townships occupied.

SAYCO's aims and objectives were clear. Their inaugural congress adopted the Freedom Charter, demanded the unconditional release of Nelson Mandela and all political prisoners, and the unbanning of the ANC and other organisations.

As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of SAYCO's birth it is fitting to acknowledge the role of the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) for their great sense of initiative. It was COSAS that established a commission in 1982 to establish youth organisations. Following this, the Youth Congresses emerged throughout the country, in the Cape, Port Elizabeth, Uitenhage, Soweto, Alexandra, Huhudi and Lebowa, to name a few. SAYCO brought these militant youth organisations together. It brought national focus in the struggle to unify and politicise the progressive youth. With a membership of over half a million and active support of over two million South African youth, SAYCO immediately became the United Democratic Front's largest affiliate.

The young people who formed SAYCO in 1987 were the product of the resurgence of resistance at the heart of the theatre of the South African revolution. Throughout the history of our struggle each generation of youth had defined its own tasks on the basis of a sober analysis of the time in which they lived, and the generation of 1987 built on the solid foundation of this legacy.

The generation of youth that included Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Anton Lembede, AP Mda, Nthatho Motlana, David Bopape, Henry Squire Makgothi and so many others, realised the need to conduct struggle on all fronts, including in education. The ANC Youth League injected militancy into the African National Congress when the time was right for a mass based assault on the apparatus of state racism.

They articulated a clear and realisable objective: 'Freedom in our Lifetime!' They understood the instrument they would need to achieve this objective. They understood and accepted the sacrifices that this struggle would entail and committed themselves to a lifetime of service to the people.

Their manifesto proclaimed: "Youth is laying its services at the disposal of the national liberation movement, the African National Congress, in the firm belief, knowledge and conviction that the cause of Africa must and will triumph."

True to this assertion, the leadership of the ANC Youth League became central in all the campaigns that the movement embarked on from the moment of their formation: the campaign to defy unjust laws, the Congress of the People Campaign which led to the adoption of the Freedom Charter, the treason trial, the anti-pass campaigns and the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). All were marked by the participation of the 1944-generation at the heart of struggle. Through their action and clarity of purpose they answered the call made by the then President General Chief Albert Luthuli when he said we need courage that rises with danger.

Following the Rivonia trial of 1964, the apartheid state succeeded in temporarily disrupting the organised machinery of the liberation movement. It would be almost ten years before the working class sounded the trumpet of renewed mass action, in the strikes of 1973. In 1976 the youth and students of Soweto led the way towards a resurgence of resistance, which became the final battle in the centuries of struggle to defeat an unjust system.

While the machinery of the liberation movement had been temporarily disrupted by the repression of the1960s, hundreds of activists who were products of the earlier generation of youth activism remained in harness, ready to take up the battle and guide the new generation. They were willing and able to provide the inspiration and wisdom that comes of a lifetime in struggle.

These revolutionaries provided a critical link of continuity between the militancy of the 1970s and 1980s and the struggles that had preceded them in the 1950s and 1960s. They established a network of political mentors that could give clear direction to the revival of mass organisation directly in the theatre of the revolution.

The theatre of the revolution was always on home soil – in the factories, schools, villages, townships, mine compounds and on the streets of South Africa. Whether in underground work, MK operations or mass activism, the South African revolution was forged within South Africa. Those forced into exile or in prison provided vital and critical rear bases for the conduct of revolutionary struggle.

They were at all times aware that the theatre of revolution was among the masses of our people within the country. They understood only too well that revolution means the mobilisation of social forces, that without the masses there is no revolution.

The militant path that had been pioneered by the youth of 1944, and opened anew by the youth of 1976 was ably followed by the generation which formed SAYCO. Every generation has its own historical obligation. The Young Lions, however, would have to identify their own approach to struggle in the new conditions of the revolution. Their task was to be in the trenches of revolutionary struggle, at the forefront of resistance, and they were not found wanting. Whereas the earlier generation had called out, "Freedom in our Lifetime", the new generation said: "Freedom or Death: Victory is Certain!"

The title of young lions was inspired by the heroic battle fought by a young militant of the ANC called Linda Jabane - the Lion of Chiawelo, so named by ANC President Oliver Tambo. He had taken up arms and become a militant combatant of MK. He belonged to a generation of MK combatants who were inspired by a spirit of no surrender. They were prepared to fight to the death. It was in recognition and in honour of what he represented that OR Tambo described Linda Jabane as a young lion. This is how the young lions got their name.

But, like everything else, revolution is not a destination. It is a journey. While victory has been achieved, in the sense that the racist regime has been replaced by a democratic order, the revolution is not over. In fact, it has just begun in earnest following the 1994 democratic elections.

Today, the generation of '87 is playing a leading role in so many parts of our society – in the public sector, in the corporate sector, in academia, and in politics. In all these areas we are facing the challenge of transformation. How do we avoid the danger of ourselves being transformed by the institutions we participate in, by the state, by the corporate sector? How does the generation of SAYCO help us to unpack the problems of transformation and reduce them into clear tasks?

Twenty years ago the programme of SAYCO tried to explain to the youth how our society was structured, and what were the historical processes that led to the present challenges.

However, we should caution against the mistake of slavishly copying the 'young lions'. Rather they ought to learn from the good example of SAYCO and determine their own slogans relevant to today's challenges. This means adapting the content of revolution in a world that has been changed by the sacrifices of those who came before.

The task of youth is not to bask in the glory of earlier generations. Its vital work in mobilising social forces in contemporary conditions cannot be overshadowed by the heroism of the past. New heroes, with new ideas and new revolutionary skills are required for the new society and new struggles we face. Just as in the past, the new generation must define new tasks which are appropriate for the present.

At the centre of these tasks is the question of education. Education is central in giving impetus to the forces of production. It is essential for progress. It is not a cost, but an investment in the future. We must therefore continue to support the call for free and compulsory education.

The young lions said, "Freedom or Death! Victory is Certain!" But, freedom means recognition of necessity. For it to have meaning it must acknowledge and correspond to necessity. Whenever our government delivers a brick and mortar house to a homeless family or anybody living in a lean-to shack, it is not for the ANC to gloat about that but to remain very close to the recipients. Taking delivery of a new electrified house simultaneously multiplies the needs of the recipients. When the recipients of the new house are confronted by the need for various electrical gadgets or home implements the ANC must be with them to help in finding solutions to such challenges.

The youth of '76 and '87 were fortunate that in their midst they could draw on a network of cadres and revolutionaries, who had remained in harness throughout their lives. They could learn the lessons of the past, emulate their experiences and reformulate the challenges of the present. The youth of today also need revolutionary mentors of this nature. And we hope that the SAYCO generation will come forward to mentor COSAS leaders and members considering that COSAS was the midwife who delivered SAYCO.

We call upon the leaders of SAYCO who are still in our midst to remain steadfast to the aims and goals of revolution. To quote Yusuf Dadoo's tribute to Moses Kotane: "In the life of every nation, there arise men who leave an indelible and eternal stamp on the history of their peoples; men who are both products and makers of history. And when they pass they leave a vision of a new and better life and the tools with which to win and build it."

** Kgalema Motlanthe is ANC Secretary General. This is an edited extract from a speech on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the formation of the South African Youth Congress (SAYCO), 18 August 2007.

A fundamental revolutionary lesson:
The enemy manouevres but it remains the enemy / Part I

The ANC must depend on itself to defend and advance the democratic revolution!

It is a fundamental truism of all revolutions that to guarantee its victory, every revolution must learn to defend itself. Necessarily, the task to lead the struggle for the defence of any revolution falls squarely on the shoulders of both the vanguard formation and the masses which constituted the combat troops of the victorious revolution.

This task cannot be delegated to any other organisation or to different fractions of the masses of the people. Neither should we, as revolutionary democrats, expect approval or judge our success on the basis of endorsement by our historical opponents. This fundamental law of revolution, in all its elements, also applies to our national democratic revolution.

This means that our movement, the ANC, and the multi-class black masses whose struggle and sacrifices led to the historic political victory of 1994, have the obligation to defend their victory and use this success to build the national democracy focused on the creation of a united, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa, depending on their own strength.

This requires that the ANC and the revolutionary democratic masses it led and leads must, at all times and in all field of human activity, assert and exercise their hegemony as the leader of the process of the fundamental social and national democratic transformation of our country. Both in the field of theory and in practical activity, this united force must act resolutely and successfully to protect and advance its interests.

It has been perfectly obvious ever since the victory of the democratic revolution in 1994 that the forces opposed to our revolution would not give up their offensive to weaken, defeat and destroy the ANC, the leader of our democratic revolution. Current developments in our country stand out as a concrete expression of this offensive.

The tactics of our historical opponents may and will change from time to time, as will the theatres of struggle they choose. None of this will signify a change in the nature of our opponents and the outcomes they seek. Like commanding officers in conditions of military combat, we must understand that the enemy manoeuvres but it remains the enemy!

The Jacobin option

The primary motive force of our national democratic revolution, the ANC and the revolutionary democratic masses it leads, is the principal architect of democracy in our country. It is also the main guarantor of the process of national reconciliation, which has even given the historical forces of reaction, of various hues, the possibility to continue to exist and freely represent their views and interests within our evolving national democracy.

Wisely or otherwise, and by conscious decision of our movement and the masses it leads, our national democratic revolution has deliberately avoided any resort to the “Jacobin option”. It has therefore not used revolutionary force to suppress and destroy its historical opponents, as did the English, French, Russian, Chinese and many other revolutions.

This means that the motive force of our national democratic revolution, the ANC and the masses it leads, must defend and advance the democratic revolution conscious of the reality of the continuing existence and vibrancy of exactly the same forces that had, to one degree or another, opposed the victory of the national democratic revolution.

We must also recognise the reality that this situation makes it very easy for some who might have been inspired temporarily to attach themselves to the ascendant revolution to change their positions. This includes those who might find greater comfort among, and in the positions advanced by a necessarily sophisticated opposition to the political vanguard of national democratic revolution, in the aftermath of the victory of the democratic revolution.

It also encompasses those who, for partisan reasons, might find themselves acting in collusion with the ideological opposition forces which would consciously avoid presenting themselves as opponents of the national democratic revolution, while openly positioning themselves as adversaries of the vanguard movement of the national democratic revolution.

In our determined effort to build our national democracy in these challenging circumstances, we have sought to avoid highlighting the fundamental fissures in our society that defined the centuries-old and bitter conflict and contradictions which were “resolved”, in part, by the 1994 democratic victory.

However, what has happened since then, and given prominence by the most recent events, has brought to the fore the critical importance for the vanguard movement of the national democratic revolution, the ANC, and the revolutionary democratic masses, unequivocally and without apology, to assert and exercise their hegemony as the leader of the process of the fundamental social transformation of our country.

Of the greatest importance in this regard is the incontestable objective reality that in successive democratic elections since 1994, our movement, the ANC, the vanguard of the national democratic revolution, has been confirmed with ever-increasing majorities as the trusted leader and representative of the masses of our people.

We must therefore exercise the hegemony we have spoken of not on the basis of access to superior access to repressive force, as has happened elsewhere on our Continent and other parts of the world, but on the basis of the democratic and popular mandate of the majority that was the victim of colonial and apartheid oppression and super-exploitation.

Our historical opponents

The first echelon of the opponents of this majority is composed of those who opposed the national liberation struggle, and therefore the national democratic revolution, whom the national democratic revolution deliberately let be, having decided against the Jacobin option. We will now proceed to mention some of these.

The principal political opponent of our movement and struggle was constituted by the succession of organised political formations that espoused white racist superiority as their fundamental outlook, culminating with the National Party (NP).

In the aftermath of the 1994 victory, the democratic revolution took no steps to suppress this and other formations. Accordingly and similarly, it also did nothing to suppress the Democratic Party, and the successor Democratic Alliance, when these used the racist positions of the NP to secure the support of a still racist white minority.

The white population as a whole supported the system of white minority domination and willingly participated in the struggle to defeat the national democratic struggle. However, the national democratic revolution did nothing to oppress or disintegrate the classes and strata that constituted the white population, including depriving them of their democratic rights and property, and destroying the organisations they had created.

The democratic order also inherited the state machinery created during the long period of colonialism and apartheid. This included the personnel which populated this machinery. The democratic revolution instituted various measures to transform this machinery and change its personnel peacefully and gradually, without resort to the Jacobin option. Essentially, it relied, instead, on persuasion and financial incentives.

This has also meant that the democratic revolution took no action fundamentally to dismantle the repressive machinery established by the apartheid state. Even the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), created to help our democracy to bury the past through open disclosure of past wrongs, without retribution, did not help us to achieve this objective, despite the outstanding work done by the TRC Amnesty Committee. Among other things, this means that:

• we did not succeed to uncover the networks at all levels of society established as part of the so-called National Security Management System;
• we did not succeed to uncover the army of thousands of intelligence agents, informers and their handlers, who constituted a critical part of the apartheid repressive machinery;
• we have former apartheid agents in the ranks of the political formations in our country, in the machinery of the democratic state, in business, the professions, including the universities and the media, and civil society in general, who will voluntarily act in a manner consistent with what they did in the past, or submit to blackmail by their former “handlers” to advance a reactionary agenda; and,
• some of those who served within the apartheid machinery have not given up their objective specifically to defeat the ANC.

Despite our access to state power, which has enabled us to gather information not disclosed during the TRC process, and in other ways, the ANC and our government have chosen not to use the possibility they have, to confront those who, in reality, served as part of the apartheid forces of repression. This remains an important part of the uncompleted part of the TRC and related processes, which must be addressed.

Let a hundred flowers bloom

We acceded to power in a situation in which, naturally, many institutions in our country, including business, the universities, the media and other sectors, were inspired by political and ideological perspectives with which we disagreed. Deliberately, the democratic revolution did not use state power to suppress these perspectives. Rather, we adopted the position – let a hundred flowers bloom: let a hundred schools of thought contend!

We were and remain confident that precisely in the context of this contest of a hundred schools of thought, the views of the national democratic revolution would and will emerge triumphant in the minds of the masses of our people.

The necessary corollary of this is that despite our identification of various ideas and perspectives as being inimical to the national democratic revolution, we nevertheless allowed the proponents of these the space to propagate them. This was, and is, consistent with our historic task to discharge our responsibility as our country’s principal architect and defender of democracy, including the freedom of speech.

Consistent with this, during the period preceding, as well as during the Constitutional negotiations, and afterwards, our movement made and has made every effort to accommodate the plurality of views that constitute our inherited polity. Even during the years when we have had the required majority radically to change our Constitution, our country’s basic law, we have done nothing to change the fundamental socio-economic order that was negotiated in the period between 1990 and 1996.

The hegemony of political power

In the period since the political victory of the national democratic revolution in 1994, we have experienced an intense and sustained contest to define the tasks of this revolution. This has manifested itself in various struggles against the ANC, within the ANC, within the broad democratic movement, and in society as a whole. Interventions in this regard have been made both from within our country and from elsewhere in the rest of the world.

With regard to the latter, we would like to recall the bold statement made by a member of the then US Administration, many years ago, that – South Africa is too important to be left to the South Africans! Taking into account what has been happening during the years of our democracy, and the antecedent period, it is clear that this view is shared by both leftist and rightist forces within the global community.

Again, the democratic revolution did nothing to obstruct the intrusion of external leftist and rightist ideas, and their foreign representatives, into our national space, consistent with the conviction of the motive force of the national democratic revolution that its fundamental nature dictated that it should uphold the objective of establishing a truly open society.

Nothing we have said subtracts from the reality that our movement, and the masses it leads, have a revolutionary responsibility to assert and exercise their hegemony as the leader of the process of the fundamental social transformation of our country, without which the democratic revolution would have no meaning.

On the political and ideological plane, the exercise of this hegemony is challenged both from the left and the right. Consistent with what has happened in other countries in the past, more often than nought, this left and right opposition usually comes together in the political positions it expresses and fights for.

We are our own liberators

Thus, actual social practice must serve as the teacher of the national democratic movement as it strives to assert and exercise its hegemony as the leader of the process of the fundamental social transformation of our country, without which, as we have said, the democratic revolution would have no meaning.

This extensive but necessary introduction to this short series, without whose understanding our democratic revolution cannot discharge its responsibilities, lays the basis for a revolutionary understanding of the ideological, political and organisational struggles that have been a feature of our recent and current reality, and what we must do as a truly independent revolutionary democratic movement.

As an integral part of the struggles to which we have referred, the opponents of our movement have sought to present their interpretations of various issues that confront the democratic revolution as constituting elements of a revolution in crisis. Thus they have sought to argue that our revolution will succeed, and achieve universal acclaim as a successful revolution, if it responds to a whole variety of matters according to their prescriptions, directives and wishes!

The media speaks

In this regard the opponents of our democratic revolution, who lack a significant political base among the masses of our people, have sought to use the domestic and international media as one of their principal offensive instruments, to turn it into an organised formation opposed to the national democratic revolution and its vanguard movement. Because of this objective reality, which is not of our making, this short series will, in part, rely on what some in the media say.

The cover page of the July 13, 2007 edition of the South African weekly business journal, Financial Mail (FM), carried the title “A nation adrift”, referring to our country. This was done to advertise a feature series, comprising four articles, which sought to argue that our 13-year-old democracy is immersed in a crisis.

Whatever the intentions of the authors of these articles, which we do not know and on which we cannot comment, obviously what the journal would achieve, first because of its cover page, would be to tell the story that once again, and as expected, yet another African country, South Africa, was sliding towards the dismal failure that necessarily characterises the African continent!

The lead article of the series is headed “Can the centre hold?”, to implant in the minds of the readers the idea of a failing state. (A poem by Yeats says: “Things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”) This lead article was contributed by the editor of the journal, Mr Barney Mthombothi.

The introduction to the series, immediately preceding Mr Mtombothi’s article says:

“In the twilight of Thabo Mbeki's presidency, a silent mood of trepidation, fear and helplessness seems to be stalking the land; things seem to be getting out of hand. Violence and all manner of danger to the citizens are the rage. Anarchy reigns in discrete parts of the country. People aren't safe. Government can't protect them. It looks confused and flustered. Without a safe environment and a sense of comfort, it becomes difficult to build a growing economy and a stable future. Though corporate SA continues to support government's economic and business programme, a sense of disquiet is creeping into the business psyche as the fractious struggle for power within the ANC threatens to undermine the economic and commercial gains of the Mbeki years.”

The opening paragraph of Mr Mthobothi’s article says: “In the past few years, especially since dismissing his deputy Jacob Zuma, Mbeki and his government have seemed tentative, unsure, almost unable to deal with critical issues confronting the country. He seems to think things will sort themselves out. The sense of gloom is captured in recent events.”

The media and society

By merely reading the limited text from the Financial Mail we have cited, without exposure to the rest, any normal human being would begin to experience a sense of great unease about the future of our country. The central question that would vex the very soul of the citizen – and others in the world interested in the future of our country – would be, will the South African democracy survive!

Naturally, many of our people depend on media reports to gain an understanding of our objective reality. However, unfortunately, almost all of us, including our intelligentsia, are not exposed to such journals as the New York Review of Books. If we were, we would have gained some insight into the place of the media in contemporary society.

An article entitled “Goodbye to Newspapers?” by Russell Baker, in Volume 54, Number 13 · August 16, 2007 of the Review, says:

“The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered: too many good newspapers are in ruins. It has lost too much public respect…It is easily bullied into acquiescing in the designs of a presidential propaganda machine determined to dominate the news…Then there are the embarrassments: hoaxers like Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass turn journalism into farce. The elite Washington press corps is bamboozled into helping a circle of neoconservative connivers create the Iraq war. What became of heroes?...Instead of heroes, today’s table talk is about journalistic frauds and a Washington press too dim to stay out of a three-card-monte game.”

With regard to our own media, which seems to thrive on marketing the negative and underplaying the positive, with little regard to the objective reality that ours is a society going through a complex and exciting period of truly revolutionary change, we too must ask the question – where are the heroic journalists and scholars who will tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, about the unprecedented process of the rebirth of our country!

** Part II of this series will be published in our next edition.

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