THE SOUTH AFRICAN ORGANISATION SASOL - OIL FROM COAL GERMAN TECHNOLOGY - SHOULD BE SOCIALISED!

Umsebenzi Online, Volume 19, Number 7, 23 March 2020

Voice of the South African Working Class

In this Issue:

Sasol should be socialised!

Introduction

The Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF) and Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) lost in total more than R200 billion in this month’s crash of Sasol, reported the Business Report on 15 March 2020. The GEPF is managed, as an investment fund, by the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), while the IDC is a state development finance institution (DFI). The combined loss of workers and public funds occurred through 13.5% and 8.5% stakes held in Sasol by the GEPF and the IDC respectively. The landslide loss did not occur at Eskom or any SOE – it occurred, on the contrary, in a privatised company.

The silence of the private profit sector, its business associations and political and ideological agents, such as the DA, “expert” or “analyst” “notice me” and hangers-on, is deafening. The sycophantic supporters of privatisation are instead calling for more privatisation, divestment of the state in SOEs, and other neoliberal measures. The working class has to unite in defence of public property rights and for the SOEs to be turned around to thrive. Below the excerpt of the editorial from the forthcoming African Communist (Issue 202, 1^st & 2^nd Quarter 2020) deals with the failure of the privatised company, the crash of Sasol, and the way forward, socialisation! 

• Umsebenzi Online

Sasol should be socialised!   

African Communist editorial | Red Alert |

In just one single day in mid-March this year, Sasol lost 45,6% of its share price, with R76-billion of shareholder equity being wiped out in one week. In an attempt to reassure its shareholders, creditors and the markets more generally, Sasol put out a statement valuing its underly­ing assets at R23,3-billion. That’s no small sum, but it represents a huge collapse in value for this synthetic fuel company that was worth more than R400-billion just six years ago.

The immediate cause of the mid-March collapse was the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on global oil demand and the stand-off between two of the world’s major oil producers, Saudi Arabia and Russia. The oil price dropped to around $US35 a barrel. This is close to what the SACP (and others) have long assumed to be the cost to Sasol of producing oil from coal – a cost which, until now, Sasol has kept a closely guarded secret for reasons we will elaborate below.

But behind Sasol’s March 2020 troubles lies another story, and be­hind that story lies yet another. Before the advent of Covid-19 and the oil price collapse, Sasol was already in major trouble.

But let’s first travel back 14 years.

In February 2006 the SACP Central Committee put out a statement welcoming then Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel’s announcement that he was setting up a task team to investigate the possibility of im­posing a windfall tax on Sasol. The announcement was, in principle, an important step forward in the campaign that the SACP had been leading for some years for the socialisation of Sasol and its huge accu­mulation of profits.

Sasol was established in 1950 as a public entity. It was subsidised from the fiscus for many years to cover the difference between the glo­bal price of oil which hovered around $25 a barrel and Sasol’s cost to produce oil from coal (which we long assumed to be around $35). This arrangement was a key part of the strategic intervention of the apart­heid regime to ensure that South Africa’s industrial development was not entirely at the mercy of external oil producers (and later, of course, oil sanctions). This strategic intervention was successful. Today Sasol still supplies around 35% of South Africa’s petrol needs.

Following the global oil price shock of 1973, in which OPEC coun­tries collectively combined to limit production and drive up the global price, oil prices soared. Sasol became immensely profitable as it sold (as it still does) its oil on the South African market at the same price as imported oil. In 1979 Sasol was privatised and sold at a discount to established South African monopoly capital.

But through the 1980s and 1990s and 2000s the global price of oil, sometimes moving above $100 a barrel, was way above Sasol’s produc­tion cost. Over many decades, the South African economy and general public, not just car owners, but taxi and bus commuters, farmers us­ing tractors and food transporters have been subsiding mega-profits for Sasol’s private share-holders – paying at the pump for Sasol petrol as if it were imported all the way from the Middle East.

It is in this context that the SACP has called for the return of Sasol to public ownership and, as a first step, for a variable “windfall tax” to be imposed on Sasol for any time the global oil price tracks significantly above the $35 a barrel – the amount that we believed was the cost to Sasol for producing oil from coal. We also argued that this windfall tax could be the basis of a South African sovereign wealth fund.

So, in 2006 as the oil price hovered around $60, the central com­mittee welcomed Trevor Manuel’s announcement that he was finally establishing a task team to look at the windfall tax proposal. Sasol’s executives went ballistic. “The company is concerned that its ability to reinvest profits into its operations will be compromised if a windfall tax is imposed,” it proclaimed. Sasol CEO at the time, Pat Davies, made veiled threats about “re-thinking” its local investment plans.

To its credit, in 2007 Manuel’s task team, after detailed considera­tion, brushed aside this howling and strongly recommended a windfall tax on Sasol.

Instead, however, and inexplicably Treasury reached a “gentleman’s” agreement with Sasol – in exchange for not imposing the windfall tax, the company committed to investing some of its mega-profits in a new coal-to-oil plant in Limpopo (the so-called Mafutha project).

In 2012, with the global oil price around $120 a barrel, Sasol’s net profit for the year was R24-billion, but there was still no Mafutha! Then in 2013, Sasol announced a R200-billion investment in a gas to liquid plant, not in Limpopo, but in faraway Louisiana, USA.

Even the conservative Business Day journalist David Gleason was outraged: “Born courtesy of taxpayers…South Africa’s biggest compa­ny and world leader in various critical energy technologies is investing ever more deeply in the US than it is here. This may be the right thing for the company, but is it right for the country?”

Gleason was right, but he was also wrong – the decision to disinvest massively into the US has now proven to be a disaster for Sasol and its shareholders. The Louisiana project has run years over schedule and billions over budget. Sasol’s debt has ballooned and creditors are nerv­ous. Before the Covid-19 outbreak, before the oil price collapse, Sasol was in trouble. It joins a list of former pillars of the apartheid economy that disinvested out of South Africa and that have now run into trou­ble. Old Mutual burnt its fingers in London, Anglo American is a pale shadow of its past, SA Breweries got eaten up, Woolworths is limping from its Australian ventures.

And now to add further insult to our injury, Sasol has put out a state­ment reassuring its creditors and investors that even at $28 a barrel, the company can cut it. The blighters! All these years they have kept their cost of producing oil from coal a deep secret, disguising from the South African public the actual amount we have been subsidising mega profits over decades.

The wealth and world-class technical capacities of Sasol need to be socialised and harnessed for the overall development of our country. A windfall tax in 2007 would have been an important step forward in that direction. The task of socialisation has become a whole lot more complex, but no less critical.

• This is an excerpt of the editorial from the forthcoming African Communist, Issue Number 202, 1^st & 2^nd Quarter 2020

Mar 23

FROM DAILY MAVERICK 25 MARCH 2020

ANALYSIS: FACTS V. QUACKS

Comparing the government responses to #Covid19 under Ramaphosa and #HIV under Mbeki

By Mia Malan for the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism• 25 March 2020

Thabo Mbeki and Cyril Ramaphosa. Photo composite supplied by Bhekisisa

Reporting on Covid-19 and HIV in South Africa is like night and day, says a writer who has reported on both epidemics.

It’s the day after the plane containing our repatriates from Wuhan has landed, when Cyril Ramaphosa declares a National State of Disaster in the country, in front of a blaring television in my lounge, when it hits me: Nowhere am I able to see a single activist venting vociferously against the government.

No Zackie Achmats, Fatima Hassans, Vuyiseka Dubulas, Edwin Camerons or Mark Heywoods standing firmly at the ready to contradict the President. No demonstrators spread-eagled across burning tar, playing dead alongside placards pleading for medicine and for the state to use evidence-based strategies to combat an epidemic.

No health minister screeching “Traitors!” at scientists and journalists who disagree with her denial of science and her refusal to provide people with life-saving treatment.

No pontifications about potatoes, beetroot, lemon and garlic as excellent means to protect people from a potentially fatal virus.

Instead we have a president taking responsibility, surrounded by his sober Cabinet, announcing: “It is up to us to determine how long [this epidemic] will last, how damaging it will be and how long it will take our economy and our country to recover.”

An Aids epidemic did not exist, the duo insisted

I was a young reporter when former President Thabo Mbeki and his Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, shocked the world when they denied the link between HIV and Aids.

The virus, they argued, was not the cause of Aids. An Aids epidemic did not, in fact, exist, the duo insisted; it was all down to poverty. They also posited a range of conspiracy theories, including that HIV was manufactured in a lab somewhere in the West.

It was a truly tumultuous point in the history of our then young democracy.
If you were a dedicated health journalist during the late 1990s or early 2000s, you were basically a full-time Aids reporter. You spent your workdays recording Mbeki’s and Tshabalala-Msimang’s quackish HIV statements, which you then took to credible scientists and activists to correct by way of contradictory comments.

That, of course, was, if you DID disagree with the government.

But there were some in the media who either agreed with the president and the health minister, or could not muster the courage to oppose them. It was all about politics, and power.

HIV had become a political football, and with political leaders suggesting that a condition, which was killing hundreds of thousands, was simultaneously a hoax and something that had been manufactured by a demonic pharmaceutical industry, the issue transcended the realm of health. That meant that political and business journalists, also often editors-in-chief, joined the debate – and they chose sides that were mostly determined by politics, not science.

There was confusion all round, with mixed messages the order of the day.
I know this to be so, because I worked for the state broadcaster at the time, and the South African Broadcasting Corporation was a fierce supporter of the Mbeki government. Like many of my colleagues, I had to fight to get my stories, which more often than not presented opinions and facts that contradicted the president, aired.
  
Against the background of South Africa’s hard-fought-for young democracy at the time, disagreement with the president – and in essence taking the side of Western science – about the cause of a condition that was destroying the country, was frequently viewed as anti-democratic and even racist.

So, journalists, scientists and activists who opposed HIV quackery were “anti-Mbeki people”, not just mere supporters of science.

We were the enemy.

‘Shut up and listen!’

At the first International Aids Conference that was held on South African soil, in 2000, in Durban, the animosity was on open display amid the grandeur of the five-star Hilton Hotel, when the health minister reprimanded two world-renowned HIV scientists whose research appeared regularly in prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Tshabalala-Msimang ordered Salim Abdool Karim, now the head of the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research, Caprisa, and Hoosen Coovadia, then from the University of Kwazulu-Natal, to a luxury room where she chastised them in front of Health MECs and other politicians.

Both were respected health activists who had fought for equal access to healthcare for all races during apartheid.

“You’re disloyal! Traitors!” Abdool Karim remembers her screaming at them. “What you are doing is equal to treason to our country!”

Their sin was that they had been publicly defending HIV as the cause of Aids and advocating for access to antiretroviral treatment (labelled “poisonous” by Tshabalala-Msimang) for HIV-positive  South Africans. 

But when the two scientists tried to defend themselves, Abdool Karim recalls, Thabalala-Msimang interrupted them and yelled: “Shut up and listen!”

HIV stories – and scientists themselves – were filled with conflict

Twenty years later, after a decade of State Capture, and on the brink of another epidemic – Covid-19 – Abdool Karim received a call from the current health minister, Zweli Mkhize.

Mkhize was seeking advice, asking the scientist: “How do you think we can slow the spread” of the new coronavirus, known as SARS-Cov-2.

Says Abdool Karim: “With the coronavirus, our experience with government is exactly the opposite [of what we endured during the Mbeki and Tshabalala-Msimang era]. The minister has been contacting us, he wants to involve us, he is seeking the opposite of what Mbeki and Tshabalala-Msimang wanted.”

Abool Karim serves on a special Covid-19 committee. It advises the president on what actions to take. “With HIV we were so slack with taking things up, we delayed mother-to-child-prevention of HIV and access to antiretroviral treatment. But with Covid-19 we’re proactive and we’re acting early,” he says.
The consequences – in the form of more than 300,000 unnecessary HIV-related deaths, according to a Harvard University study – of the time the government took to respond to science, are unfortunately permanent.

As a result of the government’s contrasting responses, reporting on HIV and Covid-19 in South Africa as a journalist is like night and day. With one of the epidemics, activists and scientists were mostly our only sources of information, and the government the ones who blocked access to data. In the case of HIV, study after study has shown how conflict – one of the strongest news values – was a central theme in stories on the subject because of activists and government being played off against each other; but it often resulted in stories being repetitive, rather than meaningful.

With Covid-19, those same HIV activists who fought the government are now supporting and praising Cyril Ramaphosa’s early, evidence-based interventions. And the health ministry, which previously cut journalists off, has set up a media WhatsApp group through which the latest figures, as they become available, are posted directly to journalists’ phones. The system isn’t perfect – press releases have been retracted a few times because they contained the wrong figures – but the point is: there is a system that allows for a free flow of information. And when mistakes are made, the government has acknowledged them.

There’s even a data-free website and a public WhatsApp service that has so far been used by well over 2 million people, according to the health department. 

Is the ANC using its great power for good with Covid-19?

And, it seems, the ANC is, at this moment in history, using its great power for good – for state protection rather than State Capture. When the ANC Youth League in Limpopo, for instance, threatened the “mother of all marches” in the province after it was announced that the quarantine site for the Wuhan repatriates was going to be in the outskirts of Polokwane, Zweli Mkhize — a powerful man in the ANC — shushed them and crushed their plans very swiftly.
After the Wuhan plane landed he took to his Twitter handle to post a video branded with an “ANC Limpopo” logo to welcome the repatriates.

The government has been calling the media its “partners” in the fight against Covid-19. To the ears of someone who reported on HIV in South Africa in the 1990s and 2000s, that has been pretty surreal. I’m sure the “partners” thing has seemed equally strange to those in the media who’ve been reporting on State Capture and government corruption.

Okay, enough Kumbaya for now: As a journalist and editor, I of course am well aware of how rapidly this newfound “partnership” could end. But for now, it’s happening. We’re all in it together, on the same side. For now, I’m witnessing true leadership from the ANC.

We can’t stop this virus from spreading, but we can slow down the pace at which it spreads, to help our health system cope.

We’re moving into lockdown, testing sites are increasing, there are contact tracing teams, quarantine sites-in-the-making and relatively good communication systems that will hopefully prevent panic.

Yet, sadly, the ANC government’s criminal inaction two decades ago is likely to have a bearing on South Africa’s ability to combat Covid-19 successfully: We now have one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world, something that could have been prevented if we had put people on treatment earlier.

Our latest household survey shows that four out of 10 people with HIV are still not on treatment, which increases the chances that their immune systems are weak and potentially vulnerable to attacks from viruses such as SARS-CoV-2.
Lessons don’t emerge only from other countries. With regards to Covid-19 and our response in the coming weeks and months and maybe even years, our own history just may be our greatest teacher. DM

This story was first published by the Bhekisisa Centre for Health Journalism.
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COVID-19 AND NBN

Kendall Lovett submitted this letter to The Age - INDEPENDENT - ALWAYS - under the heading "NBN needs to help us working from home" and The Age letters editor decided that he/she knew best. The Age letter appears below the original letter.

To: Letters Editor, The Age,

From: Kendall Lovett, (address and phone number provided)

The COVID-19 (Coronavirus) has highlighted the need for an NBN that is adequately equipped to facilitate telehealth, tele-education and teleworking.

We need a better digital network for the current crisis --the pandemic as well as the floods and bush fires which preceded it.

According to Laurie Patton, former Internet Australia executive director, the federal government should immediately fund the NBN company to employ suitably qualified people being retrenched, train them and deploy them to start upgrading the FTTN (copper wire) connections so that everyone has access to fast broadband.

That would be a step in the right direction now and help working people at home during the pandemic while fixing an underlying flaw that limits the effectiveness of the NBN.

Signed: Kendall Lovett.

-----------------------------------

Better network priority

COVID-19 has highlighted the need for an NBN that is adequately equipped to facilitate telehealth, tele-education and teleworking.

We need a better digital network for the crisis – the pandemic as well as the floods and bushfires which preceded it.

According to Laurie Patton, former Internet Australia executive director, the federal government should immediately fund the NBN company to employ suitably qualified people being retrenched, train them and deploy them to start upgrading the FTTN (copper wire) connections so that everyone has access to fast broadband.

Kendall Lovett, Preston

March 19, 2020

‘Zionist’ Biden in His Own Words: ‘My Name is Joe Biden, and Everybody Knows I Love Israel’

by Ramzy Baroud

Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair

“I am a Zionist. You don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist,” current Democratic Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, said in April 2007, soon before he was chosen to be Barack Obama’s running mate in the 2008 elections.

Biden is, of course, correct, because Zionism is a political movement that is rooted in 20th-century nationalism and fascism. Its use of religious dogmas is prompted by political expediency, not spirituality or faith.

Unlike US President, Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders, Biden’s only serious opponent in the Democratic primaries, Biden’s stand on Israel is rarely examined.

Trump has made his support for Israel the cornerstone of his foreign policy agenda since his inauguration into the White House in January 2017. The American President has basically transformed into Israel’s political genie, granting Tel Aviv all of its wishes in complete defiance of international law.
Sanders, on the other hand, came to represent the antithesis of Trump’s blind and reckless support for Israel. Himself Jewish, Sanders has promised to restore to the Palestinian people their rights and dignity, and to play a more even-handed role, thus ending decades of US unconditional support and bias in favor of Israel.

But where does Biden factor into all of this?

Below is a brief examination of Biden’s record on Palestine and Israel in recent years, with the hope that it gives the reader a glimpse of a man that many Democrats feel is the rational alternative to the political imbalances and extremism of the Trump administration.

August 1984: Palestinians and Arabs are to Blame

Biden’s pro-Israel legacy began much earlier than his stint as a vice-President or presidential candidate.

When Biden was only a Senator from Delaware, he spoke at the 1984 annual conference of ‘Herut Zionists of America’. Herut is the forerunner of Israel’s right-wing Likud party.

In his speech before the jubilant right-wing pro-Israel Zionist crowd, Biden derided the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Arab governments, for supposedly derailing peace in the Middle East.

Biden spoke of “three myths (that) propel U.S. policy in the Middle East” which, according to the American Senator, are, “the belief that Saudi Arabia can be a broker for peace, the belief that King Hussein (of Jordan) is ready to negotiate peace, and the belief that the Palestine Liberation Organization can deliver a consensus for peace.”

April 2007: ‘I am a Zionist’

Time only cemented Biden’s pro-Israel’s convictions, leading to his declaration in April 2007 that he is not a mere supporter of Israel – as has become the standard among US politicians – but is a Zionist himself.

In an interview with Shalom TV, and despite his insistence that he does not need to be Jewish to be a Zionist, Biden labored to make connections with the ‘Jewish State’, revealing that his son is married to a Jewish woman and that “he had participated in a Passover Seder at their house,” according to the Israeli Ynet News.

March 2013: ‘Qualitative Edge’

This commitment to Israel became better articulated when Biden took on greater political responsibilities as the US vice-president under Obama’s administration.

At a packed AIPAC conference in March 2013, Biden elaborated on his ideological Zionist beliefs and his president’s commitment to ‘the Jewish state of Israel’. He said:

“It was at that table that I learned that the only way to ensure that it could never happen again was the establishment and the existence of a secure, Jewish state of Israel. I remember my father, a Christian, being baffled at the debate taking place at the end of World War II ..” that any country could object to the founding of Israel on the ruins of the Palestinian homeland.

“That’s why we’ve worked so hard to make sure Israel keeps its qualitative edge in the midst of the Great Recession. I’ve served with eight Presidents of the United States of America, and I can assure you, unequivocally, no President has done as much to physically secure the State of Israel as President Barack Obama.”

December 2014: ‘Moral Obligation’

In one of the most fiercely pro-Israel speeches ever given by a top US official, Biden told the annual Saban Forum at the Brookings Institution in Washington on December 6, 2014, that, “If there weren’t an Israel, we would have to invent one”.

In his speech, Biden added a new component to the American understanding of its relationship with Israel, one that goes beyond political expediency or ideological connections; a commitment that is founded on “moral obligation”.
Biden said, “We always talk about Israel from this perspective, as if we’re doing (them) some favor. We are meeting a moral obligation. But it is so much more than a moral obligation. It is overwhelmingly in the self-interest of the United States of America to have a secure and democratic friend, a strategic partner like Israel. It is no favor. It is an obligation, but also a strategic necessity.”

April 2015: ‘I Love Israel’

“My name is Joe Biden, and everybody knows I love Israel,” Biden began his speech at the 67th Annual Israeli Independence Day Celebration held in Jerusalem in April 2015.

“Sometimes we drive each other crazy,” the US vice-president said in reference to disagreements between Israel and the US over Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to halt construction of illegal Jewish settlements.
“But we love each other,” he added. “And we protect each other. As many of you heard me say before, were there no Israel, America would have to invent one. We’d have to invent one because … you protect our interests like we protect yours.”

July 2019: US Embassy Stays in Jerusalem

In response to a question by the news website, AXIOS, which was presented to the various Democratic party candidates, on whether a Democratic President would relocate the American embassy back to Tel Aviv, the Biden campaign answered:

“Vice President Biden would not move the American embassy back to Tel Aviv. But he would re-open our consulate in East Jerusalem to engage the Palestinians.”

October 2019: Support for Israel Unconditional

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on October 31, 2019, Biden was asked whether he agrees with the position taken by his more progressive opponent, Bernie Sanders, regarding US financial support to Israel and Jewish settlement.

Sanders had said that, “if elected president he would leverage billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Israel to push Jerusalem to change its policies toward the Palestinians,” The Hill news website reported.

Biden’s response was that, “ .. the idea that we would draw military assistance from Israel, on the condition that they change a specific policy, I find to be absolutely outrageous. No, I would not condition it, and I think it’s a gigantic mistake. And I hope some of my candidates who are running with me for the nomination — I hope they misspoke or they were taken out of context.”

March 2020: ‘Above Politics, Beyond Politics’

Biden’s fiery speech before the pro-Israel lobby group, AIPAC, at their annual conference in March 2020, was a mere continuation of a long legacy that is predicated on his country’s blind support for Israel.

Biden’s discourse on Israel – a mixture of confused ideological notions, religious ideas and political interests – culminated in a call for American support for Israel that is “above politics and beyond politics”.

“Israelis wake up every morning facing an existential threat from their neighbors’ rockets from Gaza, just like this past week .. That’s why I’ve always been adamant that Israel must be able to defend itself. It’s not just critical for Israeli security. I believe it’s critical for America’s security.”

Palestinians “need to end the rocket attacks from Gaza,” Biden also said. “They need to accept once and for all the reality and the right of a secure democratic and Jewish state of Israel in the Middle East.”

More articles by:Ramzy Baroud

 

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, UCSB.

SOUTH AFRICA - APARTHEID POLICE STATE; AUSTRALIA - APARTHEID POLICE STATE; ISRAEL - APARTHEID POLICE STATE

HOTEL HELL FOR REFUGEES

Headline on front page of Preston Leader on Tuesday 10 March 2020 (This is a Murdoch paper!!! )

Whatever happened to our so-called democracies?

Starting with South Africa, the world waited with bated breath for dramatic changes when Nelson Mandela became the first black president of a united South Africa and possibly the end of apartheid - and the police state.

Mandela retired after his first and only 5-year term as president - he was, of course, quite elderly by then and after the criminally hard life he had had in South Africa's infamously dreadful prison on Robben Island, he rightly thought a younger generation should govern for South Africa.

He  wrongly favoured Thabo Mbeki who was disastrous during his periods as president because he was an AIDS denier to the extent that even today, a few presidents later, HIV/AIDS still presents a major health challenge for the South African people.

A little later Jacob Zuma became president and corruption set in, with disastrous results for the economy and all other facets of South African life.

One of the disasters of this period was the Marikana massacre of many miners who had gone on strike because of the murderous mismanagement of the company owning certain mines.

The person who is now the president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was apparently the person who ordered the police and the army to open fire on the miners. In an earlier incarnation he had been the president of the organisation Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Then he became a business man and also very rich.

Disaster all the way, and the rich got richer and the poor poorer - if possble -  and South Africa still remains a mess - in 2020.

I arrived in Australia from South Africa in 1978, hoping apartheid and police state would not be as bad as in South Africa.

Idle hope! After all, apartheid started in Australia on 26 January 1788 and the nature of the British colonisation of Australia was that it was already a police state. Instead of improving over the years, the police state has intensified to the extent that asylum seekers managing to get to Australia - escaping mostly from brutal regimes around the world and arriving here to ask for asylum, hoping to have peace in their lives, are locked up in concentration camps from which escape is virtually impossible.

Some slightly more humanitarian politicians - and they are few and far between in Australia - managed to pass legislation to bring refugees to Australia from the concentration camps on Manus and Nauru for medical treatment.   This legislation was overturned by the government as soon as it was possible, and 55 asylum seekers have been locked up in a Mantra Hotel in Preston in Melbourne for the last 8 months with no chance of any relief in sight and no hope of change from a government and opposition determined to follow a police state mentality of locking people in concentration camps and throwing away the keys.

What is mostly ignored by most white Australians and many migrants in the last 200 years or so is that the indigenous inhabitants of this ancient country are still treated like savages in their own land and they are imprisoned at alarming rates where they are also suffering deaths in custody by a brutal police regime determinedly maintained by the police state governments of the country.

Some of those of us who have experienced the "joys" of living in a police state despair of any changes in Australia because so many people behave like sheep and also can - or won't be bothered with making any sorts of protests and leaving the rest of us with that hopeless feeling that there is never going to be any changes - ever!

At the age of 93 I thought I had seen and experienced most of the worst aspects of human nature but the longer I live the worse it gets - and I haven't spoken about Israel yet.

Israel is not only a police state, but one with fascist tendencies. Israelis resent being compared to the Nazis but most of what they are doing to keep the Palestinians under control is to keep them incarcerated in their concentration camps in Gaza and the West Bank on land stolen from them by the zionist settlers. Even those Palestinians who were and are in Israel as citizens of their own land are treated like second or third class citizens without full citizens' rights because the zionist project is to occupy the rest of Palestine which has some old Jewish names - Judea and Samaria - for them called after some of the old tribal groups of a few thousand years ago.

Israel wants a Jewish state and if that is what they want, Israel under no circumstances can be called a democracy - it hasn't been that for most of its existence - but a theocracy similar to Iran and other  similar religious states.

.........and Israel is the propagator of much of the anti-semitism in the world in the 21st century.

INSIDE OUT COLLECTIVE -FOR GAY AND LESBIAN PRISONERS AND THEIR FRIENDS - 1982-1991

31 JULY 1991

INTRODUCTION

information sheet

By Kendall Lovett for the Inside Out Collective - 1982-1991



The Inside Out Collective was formed in 1982 with the intention of facilitating support and improving communication between lesbians and gays on the outside and lesbian and gay prisoners in jails throughout the country. It was the initiative of a couple of prisoners, one in Western Australia, the other in a prison in NSW and myself on the outside.


As an active member of Sydney's Lesbian and Gay Solidarity (LAGS) since 1978, I was the correspondence contact for the group with those prisoners who from time to time had sought our assistance. The need for a specific subcommittee became obvious and from the enthusiasm of one of the prisoners the subcommittee became a collective and eventually a separate entity.


As a collective, we decided to present a paper, "Gays in Jail: Who Cares?" and host  a workshop at the 1982 National Lesbian and Gay Conference in Canberra. The paper received quite a bit of media attention and considerable interest was generated within the conference but we found that the interest wasn't sustained after the conference participants returned to their home States.


In 1983, we decided to produce a newsletter for gay prisoners and their friends outside. Even though it was called the Inside Out Newsletter we used an alternative name for our stationery, I.O.C. Publishers, so that it could be mailed to prisoners in some States who would only permit inmates to receive publications which came on subscription or gratis from a publishing house. The first newsletter was mailed to some 40 prisoners. The newsletter was also distributed at the 9th National Lesbian and Gay conference held in Melbourne in 1983. From the distribution, we were able to implement our mailing list with interested lesbians and gays on the outside.


In 1984 we presented another paper, "The Prison Business," and hosted a workshop at the 10th National Lesbian and Gay Conference held in Brisbane.


In 1985, the editorial board of the International Gay Association (now the International Lesbian and Gay Assoc.) invited me to submit an article for the Pink Book 1986. Because of my involvement with Inside Out, I was asked to write about the situation of lesbian and gay prisoners in Australia and the state of the law, etc. However, publication of the book was postponed.


In 1987, the International Association requested an update to my previous manuscript which I supplied and the Pink Book was published in 1988.


The newsletter had folded by 1987 mainly because the prisoners who had been so enthusiastic in providing a lot of inside material had all been released and my commitments in other areas had increased and without help I was unable to produce the newsletter. Nevertheless, I continued correspondence and contact with a number of long-term prisoners and following up their requests for advice and legal referral which has always been part of Inside Out's support work. In 1988, we extended that kind of support and awareness into the gay and lesbian communities by means of a regular weekly segment in the gay and lesbian (Wild G.A.L.S.) programme on Radio Skid Row FM, Saturday nights. After 3 years it is stll an important part of that programme. In 1991, Inside Out made a submission to and gave oral evidence at the Public Inquiry by the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board into Discrimination against People who have or are presumed to have HIV/AIDS.

31 JULY 1991

SUBMISSION

TO THE ANTI-DICRIMINATION BOARD OF NEW SOUTH WALES PUBLIC INQUIRY into discrimination against people who have or are presumed to have HIV/AIDS, in Employment, Provision of Goods and Services (including Medical and Health Services) and accommodation.

This SUBMISSION is made by INSIDE OUT, Post Office Box 380, Broadway NSW 2007, a support collective for lesbian and gay prisoners, formed originally in 1983 by members and friends of the Gay Soldiarity Group Sydney.


Submission author: Kendall Lovett, I.O.Collective member, 31 JULY, 1991.


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PREAMBLE


Because this submission is concerned solely with the NSW prisons system, the administration, the staff and the inmates of the jails, INSIDE OUT urges the Board to accept that such government institutions must be considered as falling into all three categories for the purpose of the Inquiry, especially as the NSW Government is in the process of privatising some of its jails/prisons.

   INSIDE OUT hopes to show by this submission that current laws, policies and particularly practices in NSW prisons and the Department intensify the degree of discrimination evident in the jails.

   There will be also some few recommendations from INSIDE OUT.


1. WHEN RIGHTS ARE LOST

Confined to a jail, a person loses all citizen rights. Prisoners have no rights only certain privileges which can be withdrawn for any reason at any time during incarceration. Even if the government of the day says that it recognises that some rights exist for prisoners, that does not mean that those rights automatically apply in all jails.

   In reply to a letter from INSIDE OUT regarding the "return to sender" of previously acceptable community newspapers sent to individual prisoners in Goulburn Jail, Michael Yabsley, at the time the NSW Minister for Corrective Services, wrote on 19 November 1990 as follows:-

   "Superintendent Klok of Goulburn Gaol allows inmates to purchase papers, magazines and books daily, provided the inmate complies (with number of publications permitted on a daily basis). Superintendent Klok does not permit papers and magazines coming into the institution through the post or visits. This is in accordance with the new prisoners' private property policy introduced on the 9th September 1990. Not all superintendents would necessarily follow Superintendent Klok's lead and indeed it is a matter for each superintendent to decide."

   INSIDE OUT views this example as indictive of the constant discrimination practised by authorities against prisoners. Regulations are framed so that they maybe interpreted in a fashion that very often allows jail superintendents to indulge their prejudices.

   Where HIV/AIDS is concerned, prejudice, homophobia and ignorance displayed by prison superintendents and staff as well as by Department of Corrective Services administrators can be said to have produced AIDS education discrimination in NSW prisons. As far as INSIDE OUT is aware there has been no adequate HIV/AIDS educational programmes provided by the Department for its superintendents and prison officers. But prisoners did it for themselves where they could despite the opposition.

   It is now some years since a small group of prisoners in Bathurst jail initiated a self-help education scheme which eventually became the model for the Prisons Peer Education Programme. The project is coordinated by the Centre for Education and Information on Drugs and Alcohol (CEIDA) and has been to some extent successful in overcoming the prejudice and the rigidity of some people within Corrective Services senior administration.

   CEIDA staff run courses for prisoners who have volunteered to train in various aspects of HIV transmission and prevention and issues surrounding HIV testing and the support of HIV-positive inmates. They graduate as Peer Educators. (See Attachment A.)

   Earlier this year, the prisoner whose certification is tendered as Attachment A contacted INSIDE OUT complaining that the Peer Educators were being denied access to incoming prisoners at Goulburn jail. These new prisoners, he claimed, were HIV tested without being told why or for what they were being tested. The Prisoner Peer Educator asked for advice on complaint procedure to the ADB.
An Inside Out Collective member explained the situation to the ADB Senior Conciliation Officer who advised that because the complaint involved a prison and the Goulburn Committee had complained to the Department, the more appropriate avenue would be the NSW Ombudsman's Office. (See Attachment B.)

   Prejudicial attitudes and obstruction by jail staff, officers and administrators re HIV/AIDS have been brought to the attention of INSIDE OUT directly by prisoners. Checking on the validity of the claims of prisoners by INSIDE OUT is seldom a viable proposition because the jail administration is not open to outsiders.

   A young prisoner who at the time was confined at Long Bay complex when he was HIV tested on Friday, 14 December 1990. He received no pre or post counselling whatsoever. He was still waiting for the results of his test when he was moved to the new jail at Lithgow in February. On the 4th March, 1991, he was informed that the result and details of his HIV test could not be found at Long Bay and had to be presumed lost.

   At Maitland jail, INSIDE OUT learned that there were two prisoners who were members of the Prison AIDS Committee and who were HIV positive, wanted to correspond with HIV positive people outside. INSIDE OUT contacted the People Living with Aids support group and asked the group to publish the request of the two prisoners in its newsletter TALKABOUT, which it did. INSIDE OUT also suggested to the two HIV-positive prisoners that they advise the AIDS Committee at Maitland to apply to receive National AIDS Bulletin and Sydney Star Observer so that the committee could keep abreast of the information on treatment and support. INSIDE OUT had learned from the Goulburn prisoner peer educator (refer Attachment A) that the only publications permitted to come in from outside were those that dealt with HIV/AIDS and then only if they had received approval from the jail authorities.


From a health point of view this is discrimination and discriminates against HIV-positive people in prison particularly. A prison superintendent's prejudice could conceivably prevent a specific HIV/AIDS educational publication from being received in that jail. It took approximately three months before the prestigious National AIDS Bulletin was approved for the Goulburn AIDS Prevention Committee.


Recently in Lithgow jail a prisoner died from AIDS. Another prisoner informed INSIDE OUT that after his death prison officers acted as though the cell was a "quarantine area." The dead prisoner's property was collected in large, plastic hospital-type bags labelled, according to the other prisoner, "Warning! Contaminated Waste." After almost a decade, obviously these prison officers have not been made aware of the fact that HIV/AIDS is not transmitted by casual contact.


Towards the end of July this year, INSIDE OUT learned from a long-time prisoner in Parramatta Jail that he had been diagnised HIV-positive. In a letter to INSIDE OUT he wrote" "I have a new date for my release but who knows or cares anymore what happens. The past two years have been the worst I've had in my life but I'm not going o complain to you about them." He then went on to say that he had to beg a prepaid postage envelope from another prisoner so that he could write to INSIDE OUT. He currently does not receive any prison subsistence  money (which is a pittance) because he takes his entitlement in tobacco. He said he has taken up smoking again to ease the boredom. "I don't even have enough for basic needs," his letter continued, "but not to worry, it doesn't matter anymore."


It is unlikely that this prisoner would receive much support or information about aletrnative treatments or how to care for himself because he is openly gay and in protection. INSIDE OUT is not aware either if there is an AIDS Committee operating in Parramatta Jail. The most INSIDE OUT can do initially is to photocopy what it considers to be relevant, practical and educational literature and use the plain side of the photocopy as notepaper on which to write letters of support to him, and visits if he requests them.


INSIDE OUT believes that these examples of the kind of discrimination that is practised in NSW jails are merely the tip of the iceberg.


In a workshop at the National AIDS Conference held in Hobart in 1988 Bernie Matthews of the Prisoners Action Group told the audience that two years earlier in a Lon Bay prisoners magazine the following advice was included for the prison population. "Don't share your needle! Buy your own fits (Syringe). Soak it in Blue Gum (a disinfectantused in NSW prisons at that time) or in bleach before you use it. Rinse your syringe 5 times before you have a hit.


That advice,Matthews said, was from a group of prisoners who felt concerned within the system not only for their peers but for their families when prisoners were released. What happened to that advice? Matthews said it got raised in the NSW Parliament by the then shadow minister in the Liberal Party opposition, Michael Yabsley. In his media release, Yabsley said: "Whatever the merits of education about AIDS, this kind of material produced with taxpayers' money amounts to the promotion of heroin and other illegal drugs in the prison system."


The prison magazine did not last long after that.


The controversial urine tests for traces of drugs being used by prisoners has been estimated to cost about 1/2 million dollars annually, according to Matthews, based on a cost factor provided by the Macquarie University Pathology Department in 1988, which Yabsley instituted after he became Corrective Services Minister. These tests, Matthews claimed, are simply to find out how many IV drug users there are in NSW prisons. Yet the issue of condoms remains unresolved and disposable needles unlikely to be made available in NSW prisons regardless of how many IV drug usersurinalaysis discovers.


RECOMMENDATIONS


1. That unrestricted access to publications dealing with HIV/AIDS education, information, new developments in treatments and alternative treatments be permitted to all prisoners in NSW jails and that no approval for their receipt be required;

2. That all prison superintendents, prison officers and staff in the employ of the Department of Corrective Services receive specific HIV/AIDS education including manner of transmission and latest treatments;

3. That to overcome the objections of the prison officers to the dispensing and collection of condoms, that a machine be installed that dispenses condoms and located possibly where buy-ups occur and that the manufacturer of dispensing machines be approached to provide a machine that also destroys condoms;

4. That the HIV Peer Education Programme receive increased funding so as to further educators fro AIDS organisations can be engaged to step up the education process for prisoners.


INSIDE OUT does not believe that confidentiality can be achieved in the prisons regarding the HIV status of a testing positive prisoner. However, INSIDE OUT is of the opinion that regular positive health education on HIV will reduce the stigma and fear associated with HIV/AIDS among superintendents, staff, prison officers and prisoners. If that can be achieved then discrimination will cease to be a problem in the jails.


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SUBMISSION ends.


Attachments: two

---

1983-1985

INSIDE OUT NEWSLETTERS - 5 ALTOGETHER

Inside Out Newsletter Vol.1 N0.1

Inside Out Newsletter Vol.1 N0.2

Inside Out Newsletter Vol.1 N0.3

Inside Out Newsletter Vol.1 N0.4

Inside Out Newsletter Vol.2 No.1

  

1985

INSIDE OUT - HISTORY - DECEMBER 1985

Op-Ed

South Africa, Apartheid, Crimes against humanity and the Rule of Law: Quo Vadis?

By Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh• 21 February 2020

Former president FW de Klerk looks on as the EFF raises points of order in Parliament during President Cyril Ramaphosa's State of the Nation Address. The EFF demanded that de Klerk be removed from the national assembly before allowing Ramaphosa to continue with his address. 13 February 2020. (Photo: Leila Dougan) Less

South Africa is a young democracy, but the unfinished business of apartheid remains a pressing priority for the state. South Africa’s embarrassing and often unlawful stance on international crimes has received worldwide attention.

Apartheid (Afrikaans for “separateness”) describes the system that committed acts of racial discrimination, oppression, mass violence and murder in order to protect the white supremacy in South Africa from 1948 to 1994.

FW de Klerk, the last president of apartheid South Africa, who was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together with former President Nelson Mandela made an unfortunate appearance on TV where he stated that apartheid was not a crime against humanity. While the damage had already been done, the FW de Klerk Foundation further amplified this with a statement on 14 February stating that the idea that apartheid was a crime against humanity was an idea propagated by communist political propaganda. 

As a result of the brouhaha, the Economic Freedom Front (EFF) seek to rescind the Nobel Peace Prize from De Klerk. Interestingly, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has never considered rescinding the prize from any Nobel Laureate. Even though both statements were subsequently retracted, questions remain about where South Africa stands in terms of its fight against impunity for international crimes and on reconciliation.

The Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) stands with the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in its declaration that it is irresponsible for the FW De Klerk Foundation to debate the degree of the awfulness of apartheid. We recognise that the offending statement has been withdrawn, but such offensive sentiments have no place in democratic South Africa. We question the relevance and utility of the FW de Klerk Foundation as a nation-building entity. 

Apartheid is a Crime against Humanity

The crime of “crimes against humanity” covers various offences including murder, enslavement, rape as well as the crime of apartheid. The fact of those offences having a connection to a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population is what makes them a crime against humanity. Not only does apartheid constitute a separate offence under the crime of “crimes against humantity; but also a brutal system of oppression that qualifies as a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population. International law recognised apartheid as a crime against humanity from the mid-1950s onwards. The United Nations General Assembly regularly condemned apartheid as contrary to the Charter of the United Nations from 1952 until 1990; and it was regularly condemned by the United Nations Security Council after 1960. In 1966, the UN General Assembly labelled apartheid as a crime against humanity, condemning the policies of apartheid practised by the Government of South Africa as a crime against humanity which was later endorsed by Security Council.

In 1973, The Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid was adopted and codified that apartheid was not only unlawful because it violated the Charter of the United Nations but also declared apartheid to be criminal. Today, apartheid constitutes a separate crime against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. South Africa implemented the Rome Statute by passing domestic legislation with The Implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Act which came into effect on 16 August 2002. This long-standing history of the recognition of crimes against humanity and the crime of apartheid in international law serve as the legal basis to prosecute crimes committed by the apartheid system in the 1970s and 1980s and beyond.

Why does the characterisation of Apartheid as Crime against Humanity matter?

Ahmed Timol, Steve Biko and Neil Aggett are the well known names of persons that died in police custody during apartheid. There are many more who were persecuted, discriminated against, abducted, disappeared and tortured. Ahmed Timol’s murder took place 48 years ago. This long duration of time is one of the reasons why a characterisation of apartheid as a crime against humanity is so crucial. The recognition of apartheid as crime against humanity allows the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to initiate investigations and prosecutions into alleged crimes that were conducted as part of the apartheid system such as the persecution of black people or the torture of anti-apartheid activists in detention. The South African Criminal Procedure Act explicitly states that there is no time limitation to initiate prosecutions for crimes against humanity. Even a single murder can suffice to meet the legal requirements of a crime against humanity. 

Another aspect of the importance to characterise apartheid as a crime against humanity is to show the systematic and/or widespread nature of this system that negatively affected the lives of thousands of South Africans. While crimes against humanity do entail an individual criminal liability, the nexus to a widespread and/or systematic attack against any civilian population shows that the alleged offence was not only the wrongdoing of one individual person but rather by a comprehensive system. In pursuit of truth and national healing, we need to see justice and accountability for all the people murdered, tortured and disappeared by the apartheid government. Prosecutions play a significant role in the healing process of a nation. Catergorising  apartheid as a criminal system of oppression and discrimination is not only important for the current discourse, but also for future generations who might not have the benefit of contemporary witnesses and testimony.

How does South Africa enforce its international obligations in respect of crimes against humanity and other international crimes ? 

South Africa is a young democracy, but the unfinished business of apartheid remains a pressing priority for the state. South Africa’s embarrassing and often unlawful stance on international crimes has received worldwide attention. While the NPA starts investigating and prosecuting cases like the disappearance of anti-apartheid activist Nokuthula Simelane (trial to commence in October 2020), Ahmed Timol or Neil Aggett, there is still a long way to go in order to fight against impunity of individuals in the former security branch of the apartheid system. With regards to the persons who are charged with or have been convicted of international crimes, the South African government has shown an unwillingness  to either prosecute domestically or arrest for hand over to other states or the International Criminal Court for prosecutions. South Africa’s refusal in 2015 to arrest former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir during his attendance of an African Union Summit in Johannesburg is a stark reminder of the country’s willingness to facilitate impunity and disrespect for the rule of law. Al Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. The case of the former head of Rwandan intelligence, Kayumba Nyamwasa, from June 2010 is another situation where South Africa shielded a person implicated in the commission of egregious crimes and is the subject of various extradition requests by granting him refugee status. Nyamwasa continues to reside in South Africa. Dutch war criminal Guus Kouwenhoven has been convicted for complicity in war crimes during the presidency of Charles Taylor in Liberia. The Netherlands requested Kouwenhoven’s extradition in December 2017 so that he can serve his 19-year sentence. South Africa issued him with a visa and he continues to reside in Cape Town. 

The fight against impunity for international crimes requires a solid legal basis. In the case of apartheid, this foundation has been prepared by a long history of international condemnation, codification and classification as crime against humanity. However, this foundation is only the first step.

The inaction of the NPA to pursue individuals who were not granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is unfortunate. The South African government’s resistance and reluctance to prosecute or extradite international criminals illustrates how crucial the implementation and application of existing domestic and international law continues to be. South Africa’s ongoing attempts to withdraw from the International Criminal Court is a display of contempt for accountability and the rule of law. This points to a catastrophic failure of leadership. DM

Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh is Executive Director, Southern Africa Litigation Centre