ANC Today 

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Volume 7, No. 37, 21-27 September 2007

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THIS WEEK:

* Letter from the President: MDGs - defences against the tsunami of world
poverty 
* A fundamental revolutionary lesson: The enemy manoeuvres but it remains the
enemy / Part V: Lessons from our history 

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LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT

MDGs - defences against the tsunami of world poverty

Three days before the publication of this edition of ANC Today, the 62nd General
Assembly of the United Nations (UNGA) convened at the UN Headquarters in New
York. This year the UNGA will pay particular attention to the important issue of
climate change.

Seven years ago, in 2000, in its Millennium Summit, the UNGA addressed the
challenge of global poverty. As part of its Millennium Declaration, it
identified various Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that had to be achieved
by 2015. Effectively this year's UNGA is the half-way point on the journey
towards the realisation of the MDGs.

The UNGA will therefore have to pose the critical questions - what progress has
been made towards the achievement of the MDGs, and what more should be done to
ensure that the world community of nations realises this objective? Correct and
honest answers to these questions are of vital importance to the billions across
the globe who continue to suffer from the terrible scourges of poverty, hunger
and underdevelopment.

When it was adopted in 2000, the Millennium Declaration brought great hope to
these masses. It communicated the message that the international community,
combining both developed and developing countries, had, at last, resolved to
make poverty history, everywhere in the world.

In moving words, the Millennium Declaration said: "We believe that the central
challenge we face today is to ensure that globalisation becomes a positive force
for all the world's people. For while globalisation offers great opportunities,
at present its benefits are very unevenly shared, while its costs are unevenly
distributed. We recognise that developing countries and countries with economies
in transition face special difficulties in responding to this central challenge.

"Thus, only through broad and sustained efforts to create a shared future, based
upon our common humanity in all its diversity, can globalisation be made fully
inclusive and equitable. These efforts must include policies and measures, at
the global level, which correspond to the needs of developing countries and
economies in transition and are formulated and implemented with their effective
participation.

"We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the
abject and dehumanising conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a
billion of them are currently subjected. We are committed to making the right to
development a reality for everyone and to freeing the entire human race from
want.

"We resolve therefore to create an environment - at the national and global
levels alike - which is conducive to development and to the elimination of
poverty."

Special needs of the African continent

Of great importance to us as Africans, the Millennium Declaration made it a
point specifically to recognise and acknowledge the special needs of the African
continent. In this regard it said: "We will support the consolidation of
democracy in Africa and assist Africans in their struggle for lasting peace,
poverty eradication and sustainable development, thereby bringing Africa into
the mainstream of the world economy.

"We resolve therefore:

* To give full support to the political and institutional structures of emerging
democracies in Africa; 
* To encourage and sustain regional and subregional mechanisms for preventing
conflict and promoting political stability, and to ensure a reliable flow of
resources for peacekeeping operations on the continent; 
* To take special measures to address the challenges of poverty eradication and
sustainable development in Africa, including debt cancellation, improved market
access, enhanced Official Development Assistance and increased flows of Foreign
Direct Investment, as well as transfers of technology; 
* To help Africa build up its capacity to tackle the spread of the HIV/AIDS
pandemic and other infectious diseases." 

These pledges were fully in keeping with the objectives set by the African Union
and its development programme, NEPAD. We therefore welcomed them as a firm
signal that the peoples of the world were fully committed to walk the long and
hard road to Africa's renewal, side by side with us. This commitment was further
confirmed when the UNGA adopted a resolution formally to support NEPAD, which
has been followed by practical steps to give effect to this resolution.

However, it is commonly agreed that during the remaining period to 2015, the
second half of the period the UNGA had set for the achievement of the MDGs, a
lot more will have to be done than was the case during the first half. In
reality, therefore, the 2007 UNGA will have to make the honest admission that
the world community of nations has so far not lived up to the solemn
undertakings it made to the poor in Africa and the rest of the world.

To give a better sense of the challenge ahead of us, we would like to refer to
an assessment made by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) about how many
and which African countries are likely to achieve seven of the MDGs.

With regard to MDG 1, to halve extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, the ECA says
only 13 African countries are likely to reduce poverty to the required degree,
and:

MDG 2, to achieve universal primary education, only 14 countries are likely to
succeed;

MDG 3, to promote gender equality and promote women, only 7 countries are likely
to achieve gender parity at the level of secondary school education;

MDG 4, to reduce child mortality, only 8 countries are likely to achieve this
goal;

MDG 5, to reduce the maternal mortality rate, only 9 countries are likely to
achieve this goal;

MDG 6, to combat HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases, only 8 countries are
liked to meet the HIV and AIDS reduction targets, and with regard to malaria,
13;

MDG 7, to ensure environmental sustainability, only 11 countries are likely to
meet the water requirements in the rural areas, and only 7 are likely to meet
the urban sanitation requirements;

MDG 8 targets the development of a global partnership for development.

Thus the ECA tells the dismal and distressing story that the overwhelming
majority of countries on our continent will, for the foreseeable future, remain
mired in a deeply dehumanising condition of poverty, misery and
underdevelopment.

Diplomatic formulations and polite terminology

The 2005 Human Development Report (HDR) of the UNDP addressed the global failure
to meet the MDGs with a passionate honesty to which we and all people of
conscience must respond. The HDR said:

"As governments prepare for the 2005 UN summit, the overall report card on
progress makes for depressing reading. Most countries are off track for most of
the MDGs. Human development is faltering in some key areas, and already deep
inequalities are widening.

"Various diplomatic formulations and polite terminology can be found to describe
the divergence between progress on human development and the ambition set out in
the Millennium Declaration.

"None of them should be allowed to obscure a simple truth: the promise to the
world's poor is being broken. This year, 2005, marks a crossroads. The world's
governments face a choice. One option is to seize the moment and make 2005 the
start of a 'decade for development'. If the investments and the policies needed
to achieve the MDGs are put in place today, there is still time to deliver on
the promise of the Millennium Declaration. But time is running out.

"The UN summit provides a critical opportunity to adopt the bold action plans
needed not just to get back on track for the 2015 goals, but to overcome the
deep inequalities that divide humanity and to forge a new, more just pattern of
globalisation. The other option is to continue on a business as usual basis and
make 2005 the year in which the pledge of the Millennium Declaration is broken.
This is a choice that will result in the current generation of political leaders
going down in history as the leaders that let the MDGs fail on their watch.

"Instead of delivering action, the UN summit could deliver another round of
high-sounding declarations, with rich countries offering more words and no
action. Such an outcome will have obvious consequences for the world's poor. But
in a world of increasingly interconnected threats and opportunities, it will
also jeopardise global security, peace and prosperity.

"The 2005 summit provides a critical opportunity for the governments that signed
the Millennium Declaration to show that they mean business - and that they are
capable of breaking with 'business as usual'. This is the moment to prove that
the Millennium Declaration is not just a paper promise, but a commitment to
change.

"The summit is the moment to mobilise the investment resources and develop the
plans needed to build the defences that can stop the tsunami of world poverty.
What is needed is the political will to act on the vision that governments set
out five years ago."

Keeping our promise to the poor

Responding to the needs of our people, and seeking to honour the commitment we
made when we also subscribed to the Millennium Declaration, we have also set
ourselves target dates for the achievement of the MDGs.

For instance, among others, we have committed ourselves:

* to halve unemployment and poverty by 2014; 
* to ensure universal access to clean water by 2008; 
* to ensure universal access to sanitation by 2010; and, 
* to ensure universal access to electricity by 2012. 

We made these and other solemn commitments to the masses of our people as a
token of our determination to honour our movement's obligation to work
selflessly for the upliftment of these masses. We must ensure that we do not
open ourselves to the accusation by these masses that we have broken our promise
to the poor.

We have made the point many times before that our country has two inter-linked
economies, the First and the Second. This domestic economic apartheid mirrors
the global economic apartheid between the developed North and the developing
South.

To honour our promise to the poor of our country, the first strategic decision
we took is that we must use the strength of the developed First Economy to
generate the resources we need to uplift the millions trapped in the Second
Economy.

The second strategic decision we took was that we could not leave this to the
market. The democratic state had to intervene as a developmental state,
centrally to ensure that the Second Economy accesses the various resources
generated by and located within the First Economy. This imposed the obligation
on us to achieve two strategic objectives. These are:

* continuously to strengthen, expand, modernise and dynamise the First Economy
to ensure that it generates the wealth we need to attend to the demands of the
millions of our people caught within the Second Economy; 
* and, continuously to strengthen the democratic state, enhance its capacity as
an instrument for progressive change, and entrench its legitimacy in the minds
of our people as a genuine people's agency for reconstruction and development
and the eradication of poverty and underdevelopment. 

We have registered important victories with
regard to both these strategic objectives. However, they must, at all times,
remain an important part of our work in progress. We must therefore always be
ready to oppose and defeat all attempts to undermine our efforts to achieve
these strategic objectives.

Our failure in this regard would mean that we dishonour our promise to the poor
in our country, and betray the targets we have set ourselves with regard to the
MDGs. Thus would history also condemn us as a 'generation of political leaders
that let the MDGs fail on their watch'.

Vol 4 of ANC Today in 2004, published a series discussing the global challenge
of development. The last article in the series (Vol 4 No 48), contained the two
following paragraphs:

"Global poverty constitutes one of the greatest challenges facing humanity. To
confront it will require the development of a strong world movement mobilised to
oblige 'the governments (of the developed countries), the multilateral
organisations, and international NGOs - the actors who have the power to change
the norms and rules of the world economy - to establish as an overarching
priority a more equal world economic distribution, and not just, as now, fewer
people in poverty'...

"The rich world will need to remember that it cannot reason with a hungry belly;
it has no ears! It will need to beware of the natives, whose only possession is
hungry bellies without ears! In the era of globalisation, no country is an
island."

As that article and the others in the series argued, driven by its strategic
objective to defeat the Soviet Union after WWII, the United States used the
strength of its economy and the interventions of the US government to guarantee
the development of Western Europe, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Similarly, for their own strategic reasons, the most powerful countries in
Western Europe have done the same thing to ensure the development of various
European countries, within the context of the European Union.

However, the response of the developed countries of the North to the MDGs and
the needs of the billions of poor people in Africa and the rest of the South,
which the 2005 UNDP HDR denounced in undiplomatic language, suggests that these
countries see no strategic threat to themselves in the failure to achieve the
MDGs.

But we, for our part, know that our democracy cannot survive, and our efforts to
create a non-racial, non-sexist and people-centred society would fail, if we do
not achieve the MDGs, bearing in mind the time frames we have set ourselves. We
will not resort to diplomatic formulations and polite terminology as our
country's defence against the tsunami of poverty within the new South Africa we
are striving to build.

Thabo Mbeki

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A FUNDAMENTAL REVOLUTIONARY LESSON:
THE ENEMY MANOEUVRES BUT IT REMAINS THE ENEMY / PART V

Lessons from our history

We would like to begin this last article in this series by quoting what we said
in the first article. That first article said:

"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."

In the series we have reflected on some of the challenges our movement faces
from both the "left" and the right. Below we continue to reflect on these
challenges as well as what our movement must do effectively to respond to these.

Our movement held an important Conference in Kabwe, Zambia, in 1985. In his
Political Report to the Conference, our late President, Oliver Tambo, commented
on some of the challenges that faced our movement at that time. In this
concluding article, we will quote this Political Report extensively because of
the critical importance today of many of the positions that OR Tambo and the
rest of the leadership of our movement advanced 22 years ago.

It was exactly because of our movement's loyalty to its established strategy and
tactics and the resultant policies that it was able to lead the masses of our
people to the democratic victory of 1994. Had it deviated from these positions,
victory would never have been achieved.

One of the challenges that Oliver Tambo reflected upon in the 1985 Political
Report was the armed offensive that the apartheid regime had launched against
Mozambique and Angola and the political/diplomatic foray into the rest of Africa
to win the continent away from supporting our movement and struggle.

The reactionary offensive

Quoting what he had said at an earlier, 1975, Conference of the ANC, he said:
"The enemy has already undertaken actions to enable him to maintain the sole
right and power to determine the content, direction and pace of change in
southern Africa. The speed of advance of the African revolution is threatened by
this counter-revolutionary manoeuvre. The very gains of that revolution, as
represented by the reality of independent Africa, are themselves threatened with
compromise."

He went on to say: "We confronted the enemy offensive as a united movement,
backed by our people inside the country...Up to that time, these events
represented the sharpest confrontation we had with the apartheid regime in the
struggle for the support of our region and of Africa as a whole. In a thousand
battles and skirmishes, the question was being answered - would our continent
march on from the victories in Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique to new
success or would we fall back in the face of the enemy counteroffensive, submit
to neo-colonialism and the perpetuation of white minority rule? It is no
exaggeration to say that our movement played a role, however limited, in getting
our continent to decide against any retreat, in favour of a continued advance
against racism, colonialism and imperialism."

Reporting that acting together with the rest of our continent we had defeated
the apartheid offensive, he said: "All this signified that Pretoria's political
offensive into Africa had been defeated. The continent and our movement adopted
the same positions...These results were of great importance to our struggle.
They demonstrated that the Pretoria regime could not impose its will on the
people of Africa. The myth of the invincibility of the South African army of
aggression and oppression was destroyed and buried for ever."

However, OR then reported that the situation in our region changed when the
Reagan Administration took office in the US. In this regard he said, "Given the
offensive posture of United States imperialism, the Botha regime also felt that,
for the first time in five years, the balance of forces was shifting in its
favour. Consequently, it resolved that the opportunity had come for it also to
go on the offensive, to shift that balance further in its own favour...

"To change the balance of forces in favour of reaction therefore meant, and had
to mean, that the ANC had to be weakened decisively if not destroyed altogether.
By August 1983, we knew that the United States Government was convinced that the
ANC would be driven out of southern Africa or completely annihilated if it did
not abandon armed struggle, surrender and join the so-called reform process in
South Africa as a peaceful political formation."

But as we know, though we suffered some reverses, this renewed counter-offensive
failed. The struggle inside our country intensified. Africa maintained its
united support of our movement and struggle. The international isolation of the
apartheid regime grew by leaps and bounds. The crisis of the apartheid system
continued to deepen. In the end the white minority regime was forced to
negotiate with us and enter into an agreement that resulted in the historic
victory of April 1994.

OR also dealt with challenges emanating from within our ranks. In this regard he
discussed what was called "the Gang of 8" and the "Marxist Tendency". Before we
discuss these, and in the light of some of the current developments, it is
important that we recall what the 1985 Political Report said about the historic
character of the ANC.

Class and national tasks

After discussing efforts that had been made to establish a "Third Force" that
would replace the ANC, the Report said: "the idea of a Third Force did not
disappear and is still with us today. Its creation will remain a strategic
objective of the forces of counter-revolution.

"In this regard, it is important to confront the matter objectively that within
it, our broad movement for national liberation contains both a nationalist and a
socialist tendency. Our national democratic revolution has both class and
national tasks which influence one another. This is natural given the nature of
our society and oppression and our historical experience.

"One of the outstanding features of the ANC is that it has been able to
encompass both these tendencies within its ranks, on the basis of the common
acceptance of the Freedom Charter as a programme that encapsulates the
aspirations of our people, however varied their ideological positions might
otherwise be.

"The forces of counter-revolution continuously seek to separate these tendencies
('nationalist' and 'socialist' tendencies within the ANC) both politically and
organisationally, set them at loggerheads and thus divide the national
liberation movement. That is why the enemy always speculates about divisions
between 'Marxists' and 'nationalists' within our ranks.

"It is on this basis that the PAC [Pan Africanist Congress] was formed, as well
as the group we have spoken of which called itself ANC (African Nationalist).
Our enemies had entertained hopes that the BCM [Black Consciousness Movement]
would emerge, survive and grow as the organised representative of the
'nationalist tendency' within the national democratic revolution, independent of
the ANC."

It was within this context that OR discussed the "Gang of 8", which was expelled
from the ANC after all efforts to persuade it to end its factional activities
had failed. In the Political Report he said: "the apartheid regime and its
allies sought, among other things, to utilise a faction which had emerged within
our ranks and which posed as the true defender of the policy of our movement.
This is the group which ultimately emerged in public under the name 'ANC
(African Nationalist)'.

"This faction resorted to the well-tried counter-revolutionary positions of
anti-communism and racist chauvinism, in an effort to change the strategic
orientation of our movement, undermine the unity of the democratic forces of our
country and win recognition for itself by the most backward forces in world
politics. By a policy of vilification and outright lies, it tried to discredit
the leadership of our movement and to foment a rebellion from within the ANC in
the hope that it would regain the positions it had lost at the Morogoro
Conference. For its activities this faction won the public recognition of the
Pretoria regime which showered praises on it as the genuine leadership of the
ANC and of our people...

"Nevertheless, such was the level of consciousness and the commitment of the
membership to the basic positions of the ANC that this faction could not and did
not succeed in its purposes. This important victory had important implications
in the decisive struggle for the unity of our people and the broad movement for
national liberation."

The "Gang of 8", which presented itself as the "ANC (African Nationalist)"
represented an attempt to divide the ANC from a "nationalist" perspective which,
in fact constituted a right wing offensive against the national democratic
movement. Its counterpart was the "Marxist Tendency in the ANC", which, for its
part, constituted a "left" offensive which, similarly, sought to divide the ANC
from a class perspective, again intended to defeat the national democratic
revolution.

With regard to the "Marxist Tendency", the 1985 Political Report said:
"significant numbers of democratic activists, particularly from among the youth,
see the ANC as a socialist party and project it as such. Though it came into
being later than the period up to 1974 that we have been talking about, it might
be appropriate at this stage to refer also to the formation within the ANC of a
'left' faction which dubbed itself the 'Marxist Tendency' within the ANC.

"This faction came out in opposition to our ally, the South African Communist
Party, and sought to shift both SACTU [South African Congress of Trade Unions]
and the ANC in a so-called left direction. Members of this group are no longer
within our ranks. It is, however, true that some of their ideas have penetrated
sections of the democratic movement inside our country. These need to be
combated, once more, to ensure that this movement does not splinter into left
and right factions."

To ensure that it reaches its goal of the liberation of our country, the ANC had
to defeat a "total onslaught" from outside its ranks, both inside and outside
our country, as well as right wing chauvinist and ultra-left attempts to divide
it and weaken it from within.

Critical to the achievement of this important victory was the political maturity
and the unswerving commitment of the members of the ANC to serve the people of
South Africa. These must continue to constitute the basis on which we depend to
defend the unity of our movement today and strengthen it to discharge its
responsibility further to accelerate the advance of the national democratic
revolution.

Strategic importance of unity

In the Political Report to the Kabwe Conference, Oliver Tambo said: "We cannot
over-emphasise the strategic importance of ensuring the unity of the ANC, the
broad democratic movement and the masses of our struggling people on the basis
of our programme, our strategy and tactics...Our (movement must) address itself
to the question of the unity of the motive forces of our revolution and the
need, at all times, to take correct positions on the national question...

"We need a strong organisation of revolutionaries because, without it, it will
be impossible to raise the struggle to greater heights in a planned and
systematic fashion...It is vital that (our) cadres should be properly grounded
in our strategy in its entirety, so that they can in fact advance all our
strategic tasks...

"We must act as a vanguard force, the repository of the collective experience of
our revolutionary masses in their struggle for national liberation. We must be
organised to act as such. We must focus on the offensive, instruct ourselves
that we will win and enhance our position as the front commanders of our
millions-strong army of revolution."

These directives, issued to our movement 22 years ago, remain valid to this day.
To carry them out, we must guard the unity of the ANC like the apple of the eye,
relying as before, on the political maturity and the unswerving commitment of
the members of the ANC to serve the people of South Africa. We must defeat the
domestic and international right wing offensive coming from outside our ranks,
and the ultra-left assault emanating within the broad democratic movement we
lead.

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.

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