Tutu’s passing is a reminder of the ANC’s unfinished business

Tutu’s reconciliation efforts were supposed to be followed by justice for apartheid victims. That is yet to happen.

Sisonke Msimang Sisonke Msimang is a South African writer and political commentator who focuses on race, gender and democracy. Published On 27 Dec 2021

South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu passed away at the age of 90 on December 26 [File: John Stillwell, Pool Photo via AP]M/p>

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who passed away on December 26, was a tireless campaigner for justice. Though he officially retired in the mid-1990s, he never stopped haranguing those in power and expecting them to do better. As he famously said, “I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.” Over the course of his life, many of his opponents wished the same. Thankfully for South Africans of all ages, the Arch, as he was affectionately known, never learned to keep quiet.

There was no voice quite like his, and his passing is a reminder that the task of bringing justice to the racially traumatised nation he tried to help heal remains unfinished business. Tutu dedicated his life to non-racialism – a peculiarly South African phrase describing a utopian vision that went beyond equality and spoke to a deeper desire to connect with authenticity across racial, ethnic, class and gender divides.

Remembering Desmond Tutu

Today nonracialism has fallen out of favour in the country. The kind of hope Tutu espoused is in short supply at the moment. In the last decade or so South Africans have lost their innocence and even the most ardent champions of racial and economic justice find it hard to call for much more than tolerance. For Tutu, of course, there was no room for such an anaemic response to social justice. His enthusiasm for ending oppression seeped out of him in tears and giggles and whoops; his love for people – “abantu” – was infectious.

Many people divide Tutu’s activism into two parts: his efforts to end apartheid (for which he won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 before the award lost some of its moral sheen); and his efforts to build a nation in which South Africans could embody the ideals of the Rainbow Nation he and his friend and comrade Nelson Mandela spoke of with such eloquence. He was widely admired for the former and was more controversial in respect of the latter although, of course, there was little difference between Tutu before and after South Africa’s freedom.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Tutu served as general secretary of the South African Council of Churches and thus occupied a crucial – and perhaps singular – space in the South African liberation movement. He was at the forefront of an era of marches and boycotts, but he was also called upon to minister to the grieving at scores of funerals in the bloodiest period of the South African conflict.

Those were grim times and Tutu was often at the centre of the fray. It was during this period that the now iconic image of Tutu emerged. He was often “a solitary figure in his purple cassock”, negotiating with police to let mourners express their pain.

It came as no surprise that Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In his acceptance speech he wondered if, “oppression dehumanises the oppressor as much as, if not more than, the oppressed”. He suggested that the oppressed and the oppressor “need each other to become truly free, to become human. We can be human only in fellowship, in community, in koinonia, in peace.”

A decade later his country was free, and Tutu was able to test his theory. In 1995, a year after the historic elections that ushered in the African National Congress (ANC) and put Mandela into the role of president, he was appointed as the chair of the country’s new Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a new entity designed as an experiment in collective healing.

Internationally, the TRC was widely acclaimed for prioritising reconciliation over revenge. At home, there were mixed feelings. On the one hand, the public hearings held by the commission modelled the kind of transparency that had never been seen before – apartheid thrived in the dark of course. On the other hand, Tutu’s insistence on forgiveness sometimes manifested as an institutional reluctance to pursue tougher forms of accountability than forgiveness.

As the TRC collected evidence of wrongdoings perpetrated under apartheid, Tutu wept and harangued and pleaded with witnesses, trying desperately to cajole them into admitting wrongdoing and asking for forgiveness. This was often charming and sometimes confounding.

In a now infamous series of exchanges, Tutu begged Winnie Madikizela-Mandela to apologise to Joyce Seipei, the mother of Stompie, a child she was alleged to have played a role in the killing of in the late 1980s. She apologised, though she was bitter about the exchange for years afterwards.

Today a generation of activists who know little else of Tutu and who hold up Madikizela-Mandela as their hero see Tutu as having been too hard on her. They are not wrong, of course. Still, Tutu was also scathing when it came to addressing former apartheid leaders, like FW De Klerk, who lied and withheld crucial information during their testimonies.

Tutu was neither made nor broken by the difficult exchanges that took place in the context of the TRC. He was a man with nothing to prove and he ran the commission with a deep sense of love and a commitment to truth-telling and forgiveness. This instinct sometimes overshadowed his country’s need for tangible justice, for perpetrators to serve time behind bars and for victims to be provided the details of where their loved ones had been killed.

In the end, however, the most important critiques of the TRC have little to do with Tutu. By focusing on the stories of the most obviously wounded – the relatives of the tortured and murdered – the commission missed an important opportunity to address the structural and systemic impact of apartheid. In other words, in spite of its harrowing stories and its scenes of spectacular grief, the TRC was never given a full mandate to address the group effects of apartheid – the loss of opportunity wrought on generations of Black people by naked racism.

To be sure it is almost impossible to tally such a loss. How do you add up the harms done and would an exact figure lessen the pain? The burden of answering this question falls on the new generation.

The TRC handed a list of apartheid operatives who were thought to have been involved in killing anti-apartheid activists to the National Prosecuting Authority. In the two decades since then, successive ANC governments have done nothing to bring those people to justice, nor have they ever agreed to address the question of redress and compensation for all the victims of apartheid.

The fault for this does not lie with Desmond Tutu. To the contrary, his death reminds us of the unfinished business of the transition from apartheid to democracy. This was not his business – it is ours.

The jaded among us would do well to heed the great man’s words. With his trademark bluntness, Tutu said, “If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” This insistence on reaching out and across all sorts of divides was the key to his effectiveness.

I am not sure I would be free to be me today had he not put on that purple robe day after day trying to make peace where only moments before there had been strife. For this I – and many South Africans, Black and white – owe him everything.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Sisonke Msimang is a South African writer and political commentator who focuses on race, gender and democracy. Sisonke Msimang writes about South Africa, race, gender and democracy. She is the author of two books: Always Another Country: a memoir of exile and home, and The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela.

From the Daily Maverick - Imraan Buccus • 2 February 2020

Remembering Neil Aggett – and others who fought apartheid from outside the ANC

 

The inquest into the death of Neil Aggett is, as with the previous inquest into the death of Ahmed Timol, a most welcome development. This is not just because it raises the possibility of justice for Timol, Aggett and the many others who lost their lives under a brutal state. The renewed attention on Aggett, as we approach the anniversary of his death, is also welcome because it brings forms of leftism and anti-apartheid commitment outside of the ANC to public attention.

 

For a long time, the history of resistance to apartheid was told as if the ANC had liberated South Africa on its own. There was a particular focus on the Robben Islanders and the more or less completely failed attempt to organise a military strategy from exile. The history of the trade unions and the United Democratic Front (UDF) was constantly pushed to the margins. The same marginalisation was true of other liberation movements, such as the Pan African Congress and Azapo.

 From time to time, as we witness the descent into kleptocracy, it is suggested that we replace the figure of Nelson Mandela with Steve Biko or Robert Sobukwe. Biko and Sobukwe are certainly giants in our history and there is much to learn from them.

But there are also many other figures who have not been given their historical due. Harris Dousemetzis’s fascinating 2018 book, The Man Who Killed Apartheid: The Life of Dimitri Tsafendas, has an unfortunately overblown title. But it’s a work of impressive research that shows Tsafendas has had a raw deal from our written history and needs to be given a comprehensive reassessment.
The 2012 republication of Emma Mashinini’s autobiography brought another marginal figure to the centre of public attention. Mashinini, who died in 2017, was an important trade unionist and deserves much more consistent public attention.

There are also plenty of important struggle veterans who have not received the biography that they deserve. Phyllis Naidoo, who spent her life in the ANC, Richard Turner, the academic and trade unionist, Victoria Mxenge, the UDF lawyer, and Alfred Temba Qabulua, the poet and trade unionist, were all towering figures in Durban and richly deserve proper biographical attention. In Johannesburg, names such as Abu Baker Asvat, who was known as “the people’s doctor”, David Webster, the academic, and Mthuli ka Shezi, the playwright, immediately come to mind. In Cape Town, figures such as UDF leader Johnny Issel and Mama Yanta, the first chairperson of the Crossroads Women’s Committee of the 1970s, come to mind.

If we had a much richer sense of our history and of some of the personalities who rose up to challenge apartheid we’d also have a much richer history of ideas. That would give us a lot more space and freedom, as well as more tools, to debate the present.

We’ve slipped into a dangerous situation in which the struggle against apartheid, and the left more broadly, are both associated with an organisation that is in profound moral and political crisis. It is often assumed that the rot in the ANC has delegitimised all forms of progressive politics and that the only alternative to the ANC’s kleptocracy is full-throttle neoliberalism.

But if we had a better awareness of the history of the progressive movement in our country, and the ideas of intellectuals such as Neville Alexander, Richard Turner and many others who worked outside the ANC, we’d know that the progressive movement is far bigger and richer than the history of the ANC in prison and in exile. It would then be easy to oppose both the kleptocratic and the neoliberal elements in the ANC and to offer viable solutions for moving beyond this narrow binary.

When it comes to Neil Aggett, we’ve been particularly well-served by Beverley Naidoo’s extraordinarily accomplished 2012 biography. Naidoo’s beautifully written biography of Aggett is, in terms of its sheer literary quality, up there with Mark Gevisser’s biography of Thabo Mbeki as a truly great work.

Naidoo gives a real sense of Aggett as a person, of the radical milieu in which he moved with people such as Emma Mashanini and Johnny Clegg, as well as the politics of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

 In the wake of the Durban strikes in 1973, many young intellectuals joined the growing trade union movement. Aggett began his professional life as a doctor, working in Soweto and Tembisa, and learning some Zulu. But at the same time, he began working to support the trade union movement and by 1981 was a trusted and respected figure in the Food and Canning Workers’ Union.

Like many of the intellectuals who joined the trade union movement, Aggett was inspired by the ideas of the anti-Stalinist new left, kept some autonomy from the ANC, and had a vision of a future society in which the black working class was not simply instrumentalised by the elites in the national liberation movements, but sustained its own independent power.

At the time there were brutal debates between people who took this position, often labelled as “workerists”, and others, who were often described as “populists”, who thought that all the organs of popular power should be subordinated to the ANC. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, it is now obvious that the so-called workerists were correct and that vesting all power in the ruling party was a road to disaster. The trade unions should have retained some independence from the ANC and the UDF should have done the same.

Famously, the mass protest after Aggett’s death in detention was the first time that all the black trade unions came out together and laid the basis for the solidarity that would later be formalised with the launch of Cosatu in 1985. To this day, in Cosatu and in Saftu, Aggett’s name is revered by the progressives in the trade union movement and he continues to serve as a model for how a principled middle-class activist can commit to working to build popular democratic power among the oppressed.

Aggett’s patient, self-denying and democratic form of activism is a world apart from the frequently nauseating self-promotion on social media that so often passes for activism these days. We have much to learn from him and have been very well served by Naidoo’s superb biography. Hopefully, other figures from whom we also have a lot to learn, people such as Abu Baker Asvat, Johnny Issel, Alfred Temba Qabula and many others will also come to be remembered with the same care.

And hopefully, all the other activists whose deaths were never properly investigated will, finally, also get some sort of justice.  

DM

THE ANC, SOUTH AFRICAN JEWISH BOARD OF DEPUTIES,LINDIWE SISULU, ANTI-SEMITISM

It is disingenuous for the South African Jewish Board of Deputies to single out a leader of the ANC, as if the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Lindiwe Sisulu, was not implementing and promoting ANC policy.

A story is told of how two ladies, one day, spotted Nelson Mandela and Joe Slovo. One wondered who the white man was with Madiba, the other responded: “That’s not a white man, that’s Joe Slovo.”

May 23 this year marks the 93rd birth of Yossel Mashel Slovo better known to us as Joe Slovo or JS. As his name suggests, he was born in Obeliai, Lithuania, to a Jewish family and came with his family, aged eight, to South Africa in 1934. While his father was a truck driver and fruit vendor in Johannesburg, Slovo left school at the age of 15 to start working as a dispatch clerk later becoming a shop steward for the National Union of Distributive Workers. 

A year after leaving school, he would join the Communist Party of South Africa, which would later become the SACP, and volunteered to fight against the Nazis during the World War ll. Eventually, as we all know, JS would become the General Secretary of the SACP while having been the first white person to be elected to the National Executive Committee of the ANC at Kabwe in 1985. He would be a sworn enemy of the apartheid regime.

Up to the talks about talks at Groote Schuur, Joe Slovo was an item on the agenda for the Nationalist Party. FW de Klerk and his colleagues hated Slovo so much that they demanded that he not be included in the ANC’s delegation. Madiba would hear none of it. Yet one wonders why they hated him so much. 
Was it because he was a Communist or Chief of Staff of umKhonto weSizwe? Was it because he was a white man and therefore seen as a betrayer of white people in South Africa? Or was it because he was a Jew? Even though JS was an atheist, he would remain faithful to Jewish culture. He would later marry another prominent Jewish anti-apartheid activist, Ruth First.  Yet the story of JS and Madiba sums up the view that the ANC has had not only of white people but also Jews. On the one hand, the story illustrates that non-racialism which has been the foundation of the ANC, more specifically from the days of the Freedom Charter. On the other hand, it tells of an ANC that is simply not anti-Semitic.
In fact, the expulsion of the Gang of Eight, after the Morogoro Conference in 1969, a conference JS played an instrumental role in, exemplifies the intolerance that the ANC, whose membership was opened to all races by this time, had of those Africanist members within its number that criticised the organisation for being “hijacked by minorities”. Like those who left the ANC in the late Fifties to form the Pan Africanist Congress, the Gang of Eight were dissatisfied with the role and prominence played by people such as Joe Slovo in the ANC’s leadership.
Fundamental to the understanding of the ANC, based on the universal principles of the Freedom Charter, was that despite the fact that oppression under apartheid was being led by and favoured white people, it could by no means condemn or in fact judge all White people. Similar to the notion of “an injury to one is an injury to all”, the ANC believed that, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu would put it, freedom would free not only the oppressed but the oppressor as well. White people themselves needed liberation from the chains of apartheid.  The condemnation of the human rights atrocities perpetrated by the apartheid Israeli regime is therefore not a condemnation of all Jewish people. Far from it. In fact, the ANC believes that just as white people needed liberation from the chains of apartheid, so too Israelis need liberation from the atrocities perpetrated by the apartheid state of Israel. The ANC will never hold all Jews responsible nor even condemn them for the atrocities of Israel just as it never held white people, as a group, responsible for the atrocities of the apartheid regime in South Africa. 
The ANC has a long history of the involvement of Jews in its membership and its fight for freedom. It would be anathema for it and its members, and especially its leaders, to be anti-Semitic and in fact one could be disciplined for “sowing racism, sexism, tribal chauvinism, religious and political intolerance, regionalism or any other form of discrimination”. (Rule 25.17.6 of the Constitution of the ANC.)

It is therefore disingenuous and somewhat dangerous for the national vice-president of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies firstly to single out a leader of the ANC, as if Lindiwe Sisulu was not simply implementing and promoting ANC policy and, secondly to thereby suggest that the ANC is anti-Semitic because it condemns the atrocious abuses of human rights in the Occupied Territories and the crimes perpetrated against Palestinians globally.

Even more so, it is questionable for the SJBD to speak on behalf of South Africa’s Jewry, as if there are not Jews who do not currently support the State of Israel and even worst to suggest that they are lesser Jews because they do not support Israel.

If Israel wishes to recall its ambassador to Pretoria, as a sovereign state it has all the right to do so. The ANC and, in particular South Africa as a sovereign state, should beg no country to keep its ambassador in place where it does not wish to be represented. In fact, the remarks made by the vice-president of the SAJBD are sectarian and radical in themselves because it serves to cause anxiety and apprehension about the ANC administration under President Cyril Ramaphosa by suggesting that South Africa’s Jewry has an enemy.

As in the last 25 years of democracy, South Africa’s Jewry have nothing to fear and have no enemies. What is well within the government of South Africa, they would find, are enemies of discrimination, enemies of human rights atrocities and enemies of violence.
The words of Nelson Mandela, who was seen with Comrade Joe Slovo by those two ladies in that story, continue to reverberate across our country and the ANC continues to listen to them. “As long as the Palestinian people are not free, South Africa will not be free.” As long as Palestinian people are not free even South Africa’s Jewry will not be free. DM
 
Jessie Duarte is Deputy Secretary General of ANC

DIPLOMAT CULLED

Pretoria permanently withdraws its ambassador from Israel

By Peter Fabricius• 5 April 2019

Minister Lindiwe Sisulu. (Photo by Gallo Images / Thapelo Maphakela)
 

International Relations Minister Lindiwe Sisulu says withdrawing SA ambassador is just ‘stage one’ in downgrading relations with Tel Aviv.
 

The South African government has implemented what International Relations Minister Sisulu calls “stage one” of its programme of downgrading relations with Israel, by withdrawing its ambassador from Tel Aviv permanently.
 
Minister of International Relations and Co-operation Lindiwe Sisulu announced this on Wednesday evening in an address to the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) in Johannesburg.
 
Sisulu also suggested that eventually Israel would no longer have an ambassador in South Africa. If so, the government would be going even further than the ANC did at its conference in December 2017 when it decided to direct the government “to immediately and unconditionally downgrade the South African Embassy in Israel to a Liaison Office”.
 
The ANC resolution did not direct the government also to downgrade Israel’s embassy in Pretoria.
 
Sisulu told SAIIA that the ANC already had “no relations with Israel” and would like the government to adopt that position as soon as possible.
 
In her prepared remarks for the SAIIA lecture, Sisulu said that after Israeli security forces had shot Palestinian protesters on the Israel-Gaza border in 2018, Pretoria had immediately recalled South Africa’s ambassador to Israel – Sisa Ngombane – for consultation. It had also “démarche’d” the Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Lior Keinan. To démarche is diplomatic speak for summoning a foreign diplomat and delivering a protest.
 
“We are in the process of following the downgrade resolution of the ruling party and stage one has been completed,” Sisulu continued.
 
“Our ambassador is back in South Africa and we will not be replacing him. Our liaison office in Tel Aviv will have no political mandate, no trade mandate and no development co-operation mandate.
 
“It will not be responsible for trade and commercial activities. The focus of the Liaison Office would be on consular and the facilitation of people-to-people relations.”
 
Sisulu did not actually deliver these prepared remarks at SAIIA but was asked there to confirm her written announcement and also to say if her government had assessed the implications of a downgrade on relations with Israel. She had indicated in March that relations would only be downgraded once the implications had been assessed.
Sisulu replied to this question at SAIIA by confirming:
 
“We are putting together a programme of downgrading our relations with Israel in line with the resolutions which were taken by the ANC.
 
“We have a programme put in place which we will place before the ANC in response to their demands and the resolution they have taken. And we will also look at the legal implications of the agreements we have currently with Israel if there are any. And any other administrative repercussions that come out of that. 
 
“The first thing we have done is that we no longer have an ambassador in Israel. We now operate at the level of a liaison officer. So the liaison officer in Israel will deal with all the diplomatic matters in Israel. 
 
“The ambassador in Israel in South Africa is still an ambassador here until such time as we have adopted fully the resolutions of the ANC conference.”
 
This last remark seemed to imply that Pretoria might also eventually ask Israel to remove its ambassador from Pretoria, which the ANC did not demand in its resolution.
 
Israeli ambassador Keinan said on Thursday he had “no comment regarding South African policymaking”.
 
At SAIIA, Sisulu was asked why the government allowed the University of Cape Town, a partly government-funded institution, to have relations with Israeli universities.
 
Last week the UCT Council overturned a decision by the university’s senate to cut off relations with Israeli universities.
 
“The reason why public institutions have relations with countries the ANC has decided to sever relations with is possibly because we have been slow in getting to where we should,” Sisulu said.
 
“If we had done it much faster we would have a very clear policy where we direct even public institutions like the one you are talking about (with) what the government’s position is in relation to Israel. 
 
“The ANC’s position in relation to Israel is very clear. We have no relations with Israel. That’s what we would like the government to adopt as soon as possible,” Sisulu said.
 
She said the government would eventually deal with the matter of public institutions such as UCT and their relations with Israel. DM

arte

The Palestinian people will forever deserve our unwavering solidarity for freedom

• Jessie Duarte
• 27 Nov 2017 01:03 (South Africa)
24 Reactions

Wednesday 29 November 2017 will be the 40th anniversary of the declaration of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people. It will be the 70th anniversary of Resolution 181-2 and the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War. As we commemorate these anniversaries, we must ask ourselves as a people who suffered oppression and as an international community, whether what we are paying to the people of Palestine is mere lip service.

Resolution 181-2. This is one of the many resolutions adopted by the United Nations but violated by the State of Israel. In sum, the resolution adopted a plan for the partitioning of the land of Palestine into the Jewish State of Israel and the Arab State of Palestine. The plan also suggested a special recognition of the city of Jerusalem which would serve as a capital for both the Israeli and Palestinian states.

The resolution was adopted in 1947. Thirty years later, in 1977, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people on the day that Resolution 181-2 was adopted, 29 November. The Assembly did so because it recognised that 30 years later, Palestinians were nowhere close to having a state of their own. In fact, 10 years after the Six-Day War of 1967, the lot of Palestinians was worse and Israel continued to violate international law.

Wednesday 29 November 2017 will be the 40th anniversary of the declaration of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people. It will be the 70th anniversary of Resolution 181-2 and the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War. The Six-Day War itself had direct devastating effects as, among others, Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank while over 300,000 Palestinians fled the West Bank. Israel continues to occupy the territories, again, in violation of international law.

As we commemorate these anniversaries, we must ask ourselves, as a people who suffered oppression, and as an international community, whether what we are paying to the people of Palestine is mere lip service. We must use this day of solidarity to make bold once again the assertion by Tata Madiba that South Africa will not be free until Palestine is free.

In his address at the state banquet hosting President Yasser Arafat, the late former President Nelson Mandela noted the supporting role played by Palestinians towards the liberation of the people of South Africa despite not possessing freedom themselves. This recognition was important, alluded Madiba, as it showed the immense sacrifices that Palestinians made, even placing the liberation of others above their own.

In that same tribute to President Arafat, Tata Madiba went on to state that: “… South Africa is proud to be part of the international consensus affirming the right of Palestine to self-determination and statehood…” Yet despite these long years and anniversaries, Palestinians are nowhere near to attaining justice and the right to self-determination.

Instead, Israel has continued to violate international law, occupation continues and the brutality of the Israeli system of oppression has, rightly, been likened to apartheid. Today, there should be no doubt that Israel is an apartheid state and in the words of former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, it is fast turning into a tyrannical, fascist one.

Despite the resolve of the Israelis and the friends in the West and, sadly, East to ensure that the quest of Palestinians is drowned out by smokescreens such as the threat Iran poses, as South Africans we must use our international muscle and clout to guarantee that we will keep Palestine firmly on the international agenda.

While the Obama administration abandoned the peace process and while the Trump administration kowtows to the whims of the Netanyahu regime, we must position ourselves in order to ensure the correction of this historical injustice despite the time that has elapsed. Now more than ever, we must ensure that the Palestinian people receive support and encouragement during this time of marginalisation. 

The National Policy Conference of the ANC in July this year, in preparation for the National Conference in December, was emphatic about the support that the ANC continues towards Palestine. The ANC reaffirmed its “unwavering steadfast commitment” towards Palestinians but expressed its disappointment in Israel’s lack of commitment towards peace. 

After debating the possibility of downgrading our embassy in Israel, the National Policy Conference recommended two options of proposals which the 54th National Conference must consider and decide upon. First, we downgrade our embassy in Israel based on the continuous violation of international law and UN resolutions by the Israelis and the ongoing building of settlements in the Occupied Territories. The second option is to shut down our embassy completely, taking or not taking into account the associated risks. 

As the ANC therefore prepares for its National Conference, South Africa’s future relations with Israel hangs in the balance and rightly so. For over two decades, South Africa has pleaded with Israelis and worked with them, together with local groups, to ensure that injustices do not continue. Yet these have gone on unabated and Palestinians are continually denied the right to return and to declare a state with East Jerusalem as its capital. 

At the same time, the ANC has also noted the importance of ensuring that Palestinian unity remains a priority as the fight for liberation and justice is intensified. The ANC’s historical relationship with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and, in particular, Fatah, must not be compromised through its engagement with Hamas. In fact, evidence already suggests that Palestinians recognise the urgent need, given the current cooling down on the international front of issues pertaining to their plight, to unite. The ANC certainly would support any initiative that unites Hamas, Fatah and the larger PLO formation. 

The Policy Conference went on to propose that the National Conference adopt a resolution whereby a Global Solidarity Conference on Palestine, consisting of the liberation movements of Palestine and all other progressive international organisations who support the liberation of the Palestinian people, are invited. It is in this respect that the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian peoples becomes pertinent. 

This particular sentiment was expressed by the former president of the ANC, Comrade OR Tambo, and it is fitting, as we close the year in which we celebrated his centenary, to be reminded of his words, when, sharing the stage with Yasser Arafat, he said: 

“… the unconditional upholding of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination must be an essential condition for a comprehensive settlement of the Middle East conflict, including Israeli withdrawal from occupied Arab territories and the security of all states in the region, including the state of Israel.”

There will be no peace in the Middle East, no secure and prosperous Israel, without a secure and prosperous Palestine. No justice, no peace. DM

Jessie Duarte is Deputy Secretary-General of the ANC 

Jessie Duarte

ZUMA MUST GO - NOW! - BEFORE DISASTER STRIKES IN SOUTH AFRICA.

National Day of Action: When mass power knocked on Zuma’s door

• Ranjeni Munusamy
• South Africa
• 13 Apr 2017  Daily Maverick

442 Reactions

The Zuma presidency has come full circle. He was carried on a wave of mass popularity to the presidency and so it seems that mass power will bring him to his knees. On Wednesday, 10 of South Africa’s opposition parties led a crowd of over 80,000 people to the South Lawn of the Union Buildings, where they demanded that Zuma’s lumbering and destructive presidency be brought to an end. Because South African politics now parodies an epic thespian production, this all happened on the president’s birthday, which was marked at an elaborate celebration hosted by Zuma’s faction in the ANC. This is a time when history and politics are being redefined. By RANJENI MUNUSAMY.


On May 10, 1994 an estimated 100,000 people gathered at the magnificent Union Buildings to see power transferred from an illegitimate and racist regime to South Africa’s first democratic government. After more than three centuries of white rule, Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first black and democratically elected president. It was a day of unparalleled celebration for a nation rising out of the ashes into a new era with one of the world’s greatest leaders at the helm. 

Skip ahead 23 years.

Tens of thousands of people turned up at the Union Buildings, not to praise the president, but to seek to bury his disastrous and highly compromised presidency. This gathering on April 12, 2017 had a vastly different atmosphere. It was a display of a popular revolt; tens of thousands of people from across party lines marched from Church Square in the Pretoria city centre to the seat of power.

Their message was rather straightforward: South Africa’s president must step down or be removed from power.

And so another new era begins. This time the revolution is not led by the ANC, the party at the forefront of the fight against Apartheid and the governing party in the democratic era. The ANC has turned on itself and is convulsing from corruption eating at its soul, the toll of too many scandals involving its leaders, bitter factional battles, the capture of the state by a family that disrespects its political mandate, and a president who has done everything in his power to bring the organisation into disrepute.

The ANC’s decline has been years in the making but the tipping point was solely Zuma’s doing. In an act of irrationality to please those he is beholden to, Zuma reshuffled his Cabinet, dislodging a highly credible team from the National Treasury. Pravin Gordhan and Mcebisi Jonas were fired as minister and deputy minister of finance, for no logical reason, and the director-general Lungisa Fuzile has subsequently resigned. Zuma’s act of wilful sabotage of the economy – the second in 15 months – led to ratings downgrades to junk status by S&P and Fitch, plunging the country into a state of unprecedented political and economic crisis.

Zuma’s leadership has been a heavy burden for the ANC, forcing the party to defend a series of intolerable actions, including a violation of the Constitution. But he has been a boon for the opposition. The ANC lost control of three metros in last year’s local government elections to Democratic Alliance (DA)-led coalition governments.

While Zuma has torn his own party apart, his actions have pushed opposition parties into a united front against him.
The mass march to the Union Buildings was led by leaders of the DA, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), United Democratic Movement (UDM), Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), Congress of the People (Cope), African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), Agang SA, African People’s Convention, African Independent Congress, and Azapo. Usually competitors, the parties brought their supporters together in an unparalleled show of strength.

UDM leader Bantu Holomisa proposed the holding a summit of political and civil society leaders “to hammer out a common vision, binding to all, of how we should address our country’s problems”.

“We can’t continue marching forever. We must find a way to converge in under one roof to discuss South Africa’s future,” Holomisa said.

The IFP’s Youth Brigade leader Mkhuleko Hlengwa said Zuma was in office to serve his own interests and that of his family. 

“Zuma is a failed liberation fighter and must go… We are here with the red card to say Mr Zuma your time has come.”

EFF leader Julius Malema, who stepped into the lead role on the day, told masses of protesters that the national day of action was not a once-off event. He vowed that there would be rolling mass action until Zuma was removed. No memorandum was delivered to the Presidency, Malema said, because the person who occupies the office does not read.

Malema mocked the president’s labelling of the protests against him as racist, saying “If wanting Zuma out is racist, then we are all racists.” He also dismissed claims by Zuma’s allies in the ANC that the ratings downgrades to junk status would only affect the rich and white people. 

“Junk status is not an issue of white people alone. It is going to affect the poorest of the poor and less paid workers… When we take power in 2019, bread will be R80 and you will blame us,” Malema said.
 
He accused ANC Members of Parliament of being cowards, saying they would not vote against Zuma openly in a motion of no confidence debate. Because of threats and intimidation of MPs, Malema called on the Constitutional Court to “protect life” by ruling in favour of a secret ballot in the UDM’s application to the court. 

Parliament announced on Wednesday that the motion of no confidence debate had been postponed from April 18 on request from DA leader Mmusi Maimane, to allow the Constitutional Court to rule on the matter.

According to the Presidency, Zuma was in his office on Wednesday morning, meeting with his ministers, but left later in the day to celebrate his birthday at an ANC bash in Kliptown, Soweto. At the start of the event, Zuma appeared fatigued and downcast but warmed up as his deification unfolded. The party could compete with the praise singing sessions of the world’s best despots, with sycophants lining up to extend their well wishes and pledge their unfailing support for him.
 
Much effort was made to project Zuma as a universally loved leader who would remain in office until his term ended. But it became glaringly obvious that the event was only attended by people in the Zuma faction of the ANC, with the notable absence of four of the party’s top six leaders, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, secretary general Gwede Mantashe, national chairperson Baleka Mbete and treasurer general Zweli Mkhize. Only deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte attended and made cutting remarks in her speech about people who had turned against the president. 

Others who attended and spoke included Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini, Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association president Kebby Maphatsoe, ANC Youth League secretary general Njabulo Nzuza and ANC Women’s League president Bathabile Dlamini. One of Zuma’s chief defenders, Nomvula Mokonyane, was the MC. 

In his address, Zuma said he was not bothered by the onslaught he was facing. He said he did not experience stress as it was an affliction of white people. He told his supporters not to worry about the protest action against him and the campaign by opposition parties to remove him from office. He claimed opposition parties were similarly opposed to Mandela and former president Thabo Mbeki. 

Zuma ridiculed the protests and calls for him to step down, saying opposition leaders would demand his resignation even if he coughed or sneezed, or if they saw the presidential convoy. 

Playing to the gallery, Zuma said he would step down if the ANC wanted him to.

“There are a few more months left before my task as president ends. In December, a new president will be elected,” Zuma said. “In 2019, I will take off my hat of being the state president. I want to tell you that even if you said tomorrow I should step down from these positions, I would do so with a clean heart.” 

Zuma promised, however, that even if he were to step down, he would not disappear into obscurity.

No matter how disconnected from reality Zuma is, he must know by now that the ground has shifted. From the moment he recalled Gordhan from his overseas investor roadshow, the country switched into overdrive with a rapid succession of staggering developments. His Cabinet reshuffle triggered an explosion of public anger and accelerated the crisis in the ANC. More and more people are pulling away from Zuma. 

Civil society organisations and opposition political parties have discovered the power of a united voice and are now charting a new path ahead to intensify pressure on Zuma and the ANC. While the parliamentary vote against Zuma in a motion of no confidence is a long shot, the focus is again shifting to the ANC with calls for a special national executive committee meeting to discuss the crisis. But the ANC’s state of paralysis is now so rooted that bold decision-making seems rather impossible. 

As the mass protest march made its way to the Union Buildings on Wednesday, just ahead of the line-up of leaders, someone dragged the remnants of an ANC t-shirt bearing Zuma’s face along the road. People kicked it along and stomped on it. And as the rally on the lawns rounded up, a cardboard and wire coffin with Zuma’s name on it was set alight. It flamed and then disintegrated into embers as people congregated around it singing “Happy Birthday Zupta”. 

Photo by Ranjeni Munusamy.
 
As Zuma clutches on to power, he should be aware that the turning tide spells bad news for him and his clique. In the same way he rose to power, he seems destined to fall. If the treatment of his effigies is anything to go by, he could be heading for an inglorious end. DM
 
Photo: Protesters hold banners as they crowd the lawns of the Union Buildings during a mass protest by all opposition parties in the country calling for President Zuma to step down, Pretoria, South Africa, 12 April 2017. EPA/KIM LUDBROOK

ZUMA MUST GO - THIS FARCE HAS BEEN PLAYING LONG ENOUGH AND IT IS TIME IT CAME TO AN END!

National Day of Action: When mass power knocked on Zuma’s door

• Ranjeni Munusamy
• South Africa
• 13 Apr 2017  Daily Maverick
442 Reactions

The Zuma presidency has come full circle. He was carried on a wave of mass popularity to the presidency and so it seems that mass power will bring him to his knees. On Wednesday, 10 of South Africa’s opposition parties led a crowd of over 80,000 people to the South Lawn of the Union Buildings, where they demanded that Zuma’s lumbering and destructive presidency be brought to an end. Because South African politics now parodies an epic thespian production, this all happened on the president’s birthday, which was marked at an elaborate celebration hosted by Zuma’s faction in the ANC. This is a time when history and politics are being redefined. By RANJENI MUNUSAMY.

On May 10, 1994 an estimated 100,000 people gathered at the magnificent Union Buildings to see power transferred from an illegitimate and racist regime to South Africa’s first democratic government. After more than three centuries of white rule, Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first black and democratically elected president. It was a day of unparalleled celebration for a nation rising out of the ashes into a new era with one of the world’s greatest leaders at the helm.
 
Skip ahead 23 years. 
 
Tens of thousands of people turned up at the Union Buildings, not to praise the president, but to seek to bury his disastrous and highly compromised presidency. This gathering on April 12, 2017 had a vastly different atmosphere. It was a display of a popular revolt; tens of thousands of people from across party lines marched from Church Square in the Pretoria city centre to the seat of power.
Their message was rather straightforward: South Africa’s president must step down or be removed from power.
 
And so another new era begins. This time the revolution is not led by the ANC, the party at the forefront of the fight against Apartheid and the governing party in the democratic era. The ANC has turned on itself and is convulsing from corruption eating at its soul, the toll of too many scandals involving its leaders, bitter factional battles, the capture of the state by a family that disrespects its political mandate, and a president who has done everything in his power to bring the organisation into disrepute. 
 
The ANC’s decline has been years in the making but the tipping point was solely Zuma’s doing. In an act of irrationality to please those he is beholden to, Zuma reshuffled his Cabinet, dislodging a highly credible team from the National Treasury. Pravin Gordhan and Mcebisi Jonas were fired as minister and deputy minister of finance, for no logical reason, and the director-general Lungisa Fuzile has subsequently resigned. Zuma’s act of wilful sabotage of the economy – the second in 15 months – led to ratings downgrades to junk status by S&P and Fitch, plunging the country into a state of unprecedented political and economic crisis.
 
Zuma’s leadership has been a heavy burden for the ANC, forcing the party to defend a series of intolerable actions, including a violation of the Constitution. But he has been a boon for the opposition. The ANC lost control of three metros in last year’s local government elections to Democratic Alliance (DA)-led coalition governments. 
 
While Zuma has torn his own party apart, his actions have pushed opposition parties into a united front against him. 
 
The mass march to the Union Buildings was led by leaders of the DA, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), United Democratic Movement (UDM), Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), Congress of the People (Cope), African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), Agang SA, African People’s Convention, African Independent Congress, and Azapo. Usually competitors, the parties brought their supporters together in an unparalleled show of strength. 
 
UDM leader Bantu Holomisa proposed the holding a summit of political and civil society leaders “to hammer out a common vision, binding to all, of how we should address our country’s problems”.
 
“We can’t continue marching forever. We must find a way to converge in under one roof to discuss South Africa’s future,” Holomisa said. 
 
The IFP’s Youth Brigade leader Mkhuleko Hlengwa said Zuma was in office to serve his own interests and that of his family. 
 
“Zuma is a failed liberation fighter and must go… We are here with the red card to say Mr Zuma your time has come.” 
 
EFF leader Julius Malema, who stepped into the lead role on the day, told masses of protesters that the national day of action was not a once-off event. He vowed that there would be rolling mass action until Zuma was removed. No memorandum was delivered to the Presidency, Malema said, because the person who occupies the office does not read. 
 
Malema mocked the president’s labelling of the protests against him as racist, saying “If wanting Zuma out is racist, then we are all racists.” He also dismissed claims by Zuma’s allies in the ANC that the ratings downgrades to junk status would only affect the rich and white people.
 
“Junk status is not an issue of white people alone. It is going to affect the poorest of the poor and less paid workers… When we take power in 2019, bread will be R80 and you will blame us,” Malema said.
 
He accused ANC Members of Parliament of being cowards, saying they would not vote against Zuma openly in a motion of no confidence debate. Because of threats and intimidation of MPs, Malema called on the Constitutional Court to “protect life” by ruling in favour of a secret ballot in the UDM’s application to the court.
Parliament announced on Wednesday that the motion of no confidence debate had been postponed from April 18 on request from DA leader Mmusi Maimane, to allow the Constitutional Court to rule on the matter.
 
According to the Presidency, Zuma was in his office on Wednesday morning, meeting with his ministers, but left later in the day to celebrate his birthday at an ANC bash in Kliptown, Soweto. At the start of the event, Zuma appeared fatigued and downcast but warmed up as his deification unfolded. The party could compete with the praise singing sessions of the world’s best despots, with sycophants lining up to extend their well wishes and pledge their unfailing support for him.
 
Much effort was made to project Zuma as a universally loved leader who would remain in office until his term ended. But it became glaringly obvious that the event was only attended by people in the Zuma faction of the ANC, with the notable absence of four of the party’s top six leaders, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, secretary general Gwede Mantashe, national chairperson Baleka Mbete and treasurer general Zweli Mkhize. Only deputy secretary general Jessie Duarte attended and made cutting remarks in her speech about people who had turned against the president. 
 
Others who attended and spoke included Cosatu president S’dumo Dlamini, Umkhonto we Sizwe Military Veterans Association president Kebby Maphatsoe, ANC Youth League secretary general Njabulo Nzuza and ANC Women’s League president Bathabile Dlamini. One of Zuma’s chief defenders, Nomvula Mokonyane, was the MC. 
 
In his address, Zuma said he was not bothered by the onslaught he was facing. He said he did not experience stress as it was an affliction of white people. He told his supporters not to worry about the protest action against him and the campaign by opposition parties to remove him from office. He claimed opposition parties were similarly opposed to Mandela and former president Thabo Mbeki.
 
Zuma ridiculed the protests and calls for him to step down, saying opposition leaders would demand his resignation even if he coughed or sneezed, or if they saw the presidential convoy. 
 
Playing to the gallery, Zuma said he would step down if the ANC wanted him to.
“There are a few more months left before my task as president ends. In December, a new president will be elected,” Zuma said. “In 2019, I will take off my hat of being the state president. I want to tell you that even if you said tomorrow I should step down from these positions, I would do so with a clean heart.” 
 
Zuma promised, however, that even if he were to step down, he would not disappear into obscurity. 
 
No matter how disconnected from reality Zuma is, he must know by now that the ground has shifted. From the moment he recalled Gordhan from his overseas investor roadshow, the country switched into overdrive with a rapid succession of staggering developments. His Cabinet reshuffle triggered an explosion of public anger and accelerated the crisis in the ANC. More and more people are pulling away from Zuma. 
 
Civil society organisations and opposition political parties have discovered the power of a united voice and are now charting a new path ahead to intensify pressure on Zuma and the ANC. While the parliamentary vote against Zuma in a motion of no confidence is a long shot, the focus is again shifting to the ANC with calls for a special national executive committee meeting to discuss the crisis. But the ANC’s state of paralysis is now so rooted that bold decision-making seems rather impossible.
 
As the mass protest march made its way to the Union Buildings on Wednesday, just ahead of the line-up of leaders, someone dragged the remnants of an ANC t-shirt bearing Zuma’s face along the road. People kicked it along and stomped on it. And as the rally on the lawns rounded up, a cardboard and wire coffin with Zuma’s name on it was set alight. It flamed and then disintegrated into embers as people congregated around it singing “Happy Birthday Zupta”. 
 

Photo by Ranjeni Munusamy.
 
As Zuma clutches on to power, he should be aware that the turning tide spells bad news for him and his clique. In the same way he rose to power, he seems destined to fall. If the treatment of his effigies is anything to go by, he could be heading for an inglorious end. DM
 
Photo: Protesters hold banners as they crowd the lawns of the Union Buildings during a mass protest by all opposition parties in the country calling for President Zuma to step down, Pretoria, South Africa, 12 April 2017. EPA/KIM LUDBROOK