Sunday, November 10, 2013

Are Julius Malema and the EFF fascists or not?


Mathew Blatchford's views on fascism in his letter to today's Sunday Times are no less open to argument than those of Imraan Buccus in his article in the paper last week, The EFF and the spectre of fascism, which Mr Blatchford declares 'extraordinarily inaccurate'.
 
In fact, there is no settled way to see 'fascism' anymore than there is 'communism', 'anarchism' or any other '-ism'. 
 
Adolf Hitler's Nazism in Germany was fundamentally racist; Benito Mussolini's fascism in Italy was not. The pre-Nazi extreme right in Germany and Austria attacked 'big business' as radically as contemporary Marxists, the small man, artisans and the petit bourgeois being its chief support.

Once in power fascism of course co-opted big business, destroying organized labour as the prime threat to the revolutionary, all-embracing state. But one needs always to remember Hitler and his murderous gang were national socialists, as opposed to the international socialism of Lenin's Bolsheviks in Russia, their ideological and 'natural' enemy. Unions that played ball could get by with fascism, as could Catholics and Lutherans.
 
In so far as any of this relates to Julius Malema and the Economic Freedom Fighters in SA today, it is because the Commander-in-Chief of the EFF is clearly a revolutionary and a nationalist, using any discontent and ideology at hand to muster support. The two Sunday Times writers at least seemed agreed Mr Malema is hostile to democracy, which should concern us if nothing else does.
 
It is not theory but how the Revolution works out in practice that people need to worry about.
 

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Are the ANC right to complain the SA press is always negative?


Even those who are not loyal supporters of South Africa’s ruling party sometimes argue that the press in SA should be regulated or controlled in some way because newspapers are unfair to the ANC in never presenting any good news.
Is that reasonable? Do they have a point?

Let us suppose - impossible though this obviously is in the real world - that the government was perfect and doing nothing wrong or open to criticism by anyone. It would be pointless for the press to report political ‘news’ at all in those circumstances since there would be no bad news and no one would be unhappy.
The logical course for the press to pursue, then, given that things can never be perfect, is to point out what is going badly, not what is going well - that is, to appear critical rather than supportive (which is of course how a free press always appears anywhere in the world). 

The problem in SA, once again, is the party-state. If parties alternated in government, it would be unremarkable that the press criticises ‘the government’ whatever they do, as a kind of national duty or pastime.
But there is only ever one party of national government in SA.

That is why criticism of it can only ever appear one-sided.

This first appeared as a letter in Business Day, November 25 2011

Friday, August 16, 2013

Let the voters decide Julius Malema's future

 
 
Chester Missing, who needs no introduction from me, tweeted at the time: "Give your boyfriend millions and you get a slap and then redeployed. Comment on Botswana and you get expelled."
 
The famous puppet was referring to two sharply contrasting disciplinary actions taken by the ANC. The party punished Dina Pule for an extravagant life style with her lover at the taxpayers' expense by demoting her to a mere member of parliament.
 
But it eventually expelled Julius Malema from the party altogether for proposing the overthrow of the legitimate government of Botswana (an assignment presumably to be undertaken at some time convenient to them by Mr Malema and the band of brothers who have since those apprentice days matured into the Economic Freedom Fighters).
 
However, another issue more weighty than either of these transgressions seems to concern what are patronisingly referred to as ‘ordinary South Africans'. They have been astonished to see the South African Revenue Service publicly testifying against Mr Malema for what appears to be tax evasion.
 
If readers' letters to the newspapers and comments on the internet are anything to go by, many people are uncomprehending, if not outraged, that 'Juju' has not already been tried and imprisoned for this, among a menu of other misdeeds, real or imagined.
 
The law's delay aside, a cogent explanation is that it would make a martyr of him. All populist leaders and dictators need to appear as not only speaking for 'the people', but also as suffering for them. They feed and grow on anything that can be presented as persecution, a word Mr Malema uses calculatedly when addressing his followers.
 
Indeed, students of Mr Malema's public speeches will have noted signs that he would not mind, might even welcome, being locked up for a little while in the undemanding conditions the political elite enjoy in SA. He knows a spell in prison would confirm his status, fuelling the fires of publicity he relies on and enshrining his cause as nothing else could. In case he should be so lucky, he is now shrewdly positioned as Commander-in-Chief, an icon above the fray, ready and able to be sacrificed - and immortalised - while his Economic Freedom Fighters bravely soldier on.
 
In short, it would be the worst thing the ANC could let happen.
 
But perhaps the leaders of the party have finally accepted that, just as they could not patronise, mollify or discipline Julius Malema when he was one of them, they cannot intimidate him now he is an outcast revolutionary with nothing to lose.
 
Showing neither malice nor deference, the ANC should allow Mr Malema to follow his star and prove himself in the 2016 and all future elections on the basis of his revolutionary programme.
 
Julius Malema and what he stands for can only be beaten at the ballot box, or not at all. Fear of the ANC no longer works; times have changed.
 
It is over to the South African voter now.
 
 
This is a slightly edited version of an article appearing on Politicsweb on August 12 2013.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Why the ANC has always supported Zanu-PF: morality and self-interest in SA's foreign policy


The Treasurer General of Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change, Roy Bennett, asked on Politicsweb on March 25: Why is the ANC still supporting Zanu-PF?

His question was prompted by ANC spokesman Keith Khoza's statement confirming that to be the official position of SA’s ruling party on the forthcoming Zimbabwe elections under its new constitution. Mr Khoza justified this outrageous and undemocratic intervention - before elections had even been called, let alone conducted freely and fairly so that Zimbabweans can decide the matter - by claiming Zanu-PF has ‘government experience’.

Well, no argument on that point at least. By fair means and foul, the party of President Mugabe, age 89, has been Zimbabwe’s government for over thirty years, which explains why many more besides Mr Bennett are not as keen as the ANC to repeat the experience.

But only on the face of it is the ANC's position ‘simply incredible’, as Mr Bennett writes. In his heart, he must know the answer to his question, for it has always been the same. It involves history and geography and, more than either, the age-old story of self-interest.

Remember how the SA press beat up for years on former president Thabo Mbeki over Zimbabwe, how immoral his policy was? They were less vocal about a Human Sciences Research Council report back in 2008 that suggested elements of Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change were undergoing military training. Whether that was fact or ruling Zanu-PF propaganda, no doubt SA's patriotic papers were conscious of a more disturbing problem: that SA's undermanned, sickly and perhaps less than neutral National Defence Force was in no shape to take on a peace-keeping role, let alone a serious outbreak of fighting in our next door neighbour.

Here is a crucial consideration in any balanced view of what is plainly the new South Africa's settled policy towards Zimbabwe - though 'supporting Mugabe' was taken to be and widely condemned as President Mbeki’s personal policy choice back then. It is easy to see why.

The start of Mugabe's farm invasions was a time when President Mbeki automatically got his way. In one SABC interview he dismissively asked how he was expected to stop things that were going on in another country. Zimbabwe, he said, was not SA. The ugly events broadcast on TV night after night created no pressure on Mbeki at home or, at first, from abroad. In those early days of violence, he did not need to claim, as he notoriously did later, that there was no crisis in Zimbabwe.

As Mugabe went from bad to worse and international outrage grew, this bland approach had to be adjusted. But to admit there was a problem would mean having to take action and the visionary leader who preached the African Renaissance was well aware of another stumbling block. Mugabe enjoyed strong support inside the ANC and SADC. Not only was SA’s military backup unreliable: the political will to impose western-style sanctions on a former ally was altogether missing. The presidency had no answer to the insistent calls to do something - except to assure everyone that quietly, behind the scenes, Mbeki was using diplomacy.

This understandable side-step was soon labelled 'quiet diplomacy', two words that would eventually help to destroy Mbeki. Intended only to fend off charges of inaction, they fatefully suggested Mbeki was 'handling' a brother and comrade and could settle everything peaceably. No one pointed out that diplomacy, quiet or otherwise, is not a 'policy' at all, but a method. No one asked what Mbeki was using quiet diplomacy for.

Was it to rein in Mugabe's tyranny or to get him to stand down? Was it to uphold human rights? Was it to ensure fair play for the MDC in elections, even if that brought an untried opposition in another country to power?

It should be obvious that no SA government could have seriously entertained any of these aims, if only because diplomacy unsupported by coercion cannot achieve them. Whatever South Africans thought about it, the Zimbabwe crisis for President Mbeki was about the direction of SA's foreign policy. The prime aim at all times was to preserve SA's security and regional stability. In Mbeki’s terms that meant keeping out the west and avoiding any action that needlessly divided the ANC.

For Mugabe, the matter has always been simpler: Zanu-PF must stay in power at all costs. The Zimbabwean autocrat threatened publicly that the MDC would never govern in Zimbabwe and must have said the same to Mbeki in private. Powerless before naked power and more weakened than strengthened by SA's membership of the divided SADC, Mbeki's only option was to persist in trying to confine the fallout to Zimbabwe. He kept SA's borders closed (at least technically) and never wavered from lending Mugabe's regime full diplomatic support internationally, despite its brutal abuse of its citizens and contempt for all democratic standards.

A common accusation was that Mbeki was Mugabe's lackey or that the two leaders were cut from the same cloth, even shared shady financial interests. But once more these views miss the point.

While Mbeki is a proud son of Africa and dedicated foe of neo-colonialism, he is also every inch a politician. As state and ANC president, and with Mugabe's excesses giving him every justification on moral grounds, Mbeki had the authority to distance himself from the Zanu-PF leader, if only rhetorically. Zuma did so immediately after his election at Polokwane; what stopped Mbeki doing so earlier?

It is not because as SA president and later as SADC mediator Mbeki could not take sides: the MDC regularly complained of his bias against them. Nor can it be explained away as incurable stubbornness: post Polokwane Mbeki changed direction when he knew he had to - on keeping the Scorpions and on bringing Motlanthe into his cabinet. 
 
With politicians, always look for the political motive. Maintaining the regional status quo brought with it a major domestic benefit for Mbeki. As his problems with Jacob Zuma and his union allies deepened at home, it ended any chance of a post-liberation opposition coming to power on SA’s doorstep, the very last thing Mbeki or his party wanted.

Domestic and foreign affairs are never separable. Jacob Zuma is ANC president now and following tried and trusted policy towards Zimbabwe. Only the names and the form of apologia have changed.