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Post by dodger on Dec 6, 2013 18:35:10 GMT
Nelson Mandela was a member of our CC at the time of his arrest - SACP
Alex Mashilo 06 December 2013  Party says late former president will always symbolise the monumental contribution of the SACP in our liberation struggle
SACP statement on the passing away of Madiba
"...the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love"
Last night the millions of the people of South Africa, majority of whom the working class and poor, and the billions of the rest of the people the world over, lost a true revolutionary, President Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, Tata Madiba.
The South African Communist Party (SACP) joins the people of South Africa and the world in expressing its most sincere condolences to Ms Graca Machel and the entire Mandela family on the loss of what President Zuma correctly described as South Africa's greatest son, Comrade Mandela. We also wish to use this opportunity to express our solidarity with the African National Congress, an organisation that produced him and that he also served with distinction, as well as all his colleagues and comrades in our broader liberation movement. As Tata Madiba said:
"It is not the kings and generals that make history but the masses of the people, the workers, the peasants..."
The passing away of Cde Mandela marks an end to the life of one of the greatest revolutionaries of the 20th century, who fought for freedom and against all forms of oppression in both their countries and globally. As part of the masses that make history, Cde Mandela's contribution in the struggle for freedom was located and steeled in the collective membership and leadership of our revolutionary national liberation movement as led by the ANC - for he was not an island. In Cde Mandela we had a brave and courageous soldier, patriot and internationalist who, to borrow from Che Guevara, was a true revolutionary guided by great feelings of love for his people, an outstanding feature of all genuine people's revolutionaries.
At his arrest in August 1962, Nelson Mandela was not only a member of the then underground South African Communist Party, but was also a member of our Party's Central Committee. To us as South African communists, Cde Mandela shall forever symbolise the monumental contribution of the SACP in our liberation struggle. The contribution of communists in the struggle to achieve the South African freedom has very few parallels in the history of our country. After his release from prison in 1990, Cde Madiba became a great and close friend of the communists till his last days.
The one major lesson we need to learn from Mandela and his generation of leaders was their commitment to principled unity within each of our Alliance formations as well as the unity of our Alliance as a whole and that of the entire mass democratic movement. Their generation struggled to build and cement the unity of our Alliance, and we therefore owe it to the memory of Cde Madiba to preserve the unity of our Alliance. Let those who do not understand the extent to which blood was spilt in pursuance of Alliance unity be reminded not to throw mud at the legacy and memory of the likes of Madiba by being reckless and gambling with the unity of our Alliance.
The SACP supported Madiba's championing of national reconciliation. But national reconciliation for him never meant avoiding tackling the class and other social inequalities in our society, as some would like to make us believe today. For Madiba, national reconciliation was a platform to pursue the objective of building a more egalitarian South African society free of the scourge of racism, patriarchy and gross inequalities. And true national reconciliation shall never be achieved in a society still characterized by the yawning gap of inequalities and capitalist exploitation.
In honour of this gallant fighter the SACP will intensify the struggle against all forms of inequality, including intensifying the struggle for socialism, as the only political and economic solution to the problems facing humanity.
For the SACP the passing away of Madiba must give all those South Africans who had not fully embraced a democratic South Africa, and who still in one way or the other hanker to the era of white domination, a second chance to come to terms with a democratic South Africa founded on the principle of majority rule.
We call upon all South Africans to emulate his example of selflessness, sacrifice, commitment and service to his people.
The SACP says Hamba kahle Mkhonto!
Statement issued by the SACP, December 6 2013
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Post by dodger on Dec 10, 2013 14:42:20 GMT
Just a silly silly misapprehension....crossed wires
"No-no-no Nelly. We said we would like 'hang with you--NOT hang you!!"
"HA-HA, it was da 80's, don't yer know--gulp!"
I know if Margaret was here, she would love to "hang" with us, tooo!!!!""Pull da other leg, David......" bbbb
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Post by dodger on Dec 20, 2013 15:46:43 GMT
The Hijacking of Mandela’s Legacy:
Mandela Defeated Apartheid But Was Defeated by Neoliberalism
Post Categories: Africa
Pepe Escobar | Sunday, December 15, 2013, 20:10 Beijing
Beware of strangers bearing gifts. The “gift” is the ongoing, frantic canonization of Nelson Mandela. The “strangers” are the 0.0001 percent, that fraction of the global elite that’s really in control (media naturally included).
It’s a Tower of Babel of tributes piled up in layer upon layer of hypocrisy – from the US to Israel and from France to Britain.
What must absolutely be buried under the tower is that the apartheid regime in South Africa was sponsored and avidly defended by the West until, literally, it was about to crumble under the weight of its own contradictions. The only thing that had really mattered was South Africa’s capitalist economy and immense resources, and the role of Pretoria in fighting “communism.” Apartheid was, at best, a nuisance.
Mandela is being allowed sainthood by the 0.0001% because he extended a hand to the white oppressor who kept him in jail for 27 years. And because he accepted – in the name of “national reconciliation” – that no apartheid killers would be tried, unlike the Nazis.
Among the cataracts of emotional tributes and the crass marketization of the icon, there’s barely a peep in Western corporate media about Mandela’s firm refusal to ditch armed struggle against apartheid (if he had done so, he would not have been jailed for 27 years); his gratitude towards Fidel Castro’s Cuba – which always supported the people of Angola, Namibia and South Africa fighting apartheid; and his perennial support for the liberation struggle in Palestine.
Young generations, especially, must be made aware that during the Cold War, any organization fighting for the freedom of the oppressed in the developing world was dubbed “terrorist”; that was the Cold War version of the “war on terror”. Only at the end of the 20th century was the fight against apartheid accepted as a supreme moral cause; and Mandela, of course, rightfully became the universal face of the cause.
It’s easy to forget that conservative messiah Ronald Reagan – who enthusiastically hailed the precursors of al-Qaeda as “freedom fighters” – fiercely opposed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act because, what else, the African National Congress (ANC) was considered a “terrorist organization” (on top of Washington branding the ANC as “communists”).
The same applied to a then-Republican Congressman from Wyoming who later would turn into a Darth Vader replicant, Dick Cheney. As for Israel, it even offered one of its nuclear weapons to the Afrikaners in Pretoria – presumably to wipe assorted African commies off the map.
In his notorious 1990 visit to the US, now as a free man, Mandela duly praised Fidel, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and Col. Gaddafi as his “comrades in arms”: “There is no reason whatsoever why we should have any hesitation about hailing their commitment to human rights.” Washington/Wall Street was livid.
And this was Mandela’s take, in early 2003, on the by then inevitable invasion of Iraq and the wider war on terror; “If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.” No wonder he was kept on the US government terrorist list until as late as 2008.
From terrorism to sainthood
In the early 1960s – when, by the way, the US itself was practicing apartheid in the South – it would be hard to predict to what extent “Madiba” (his clan name), the dandy lawyer and lover of boxing with an authoritarian character streak, would adopt Gandhi’s non-violence strategy to end up forging an exceptional destiny graphically embodying the political will to transform society. Yet the seeds of “Invictus” were already there.
The fascinating complexity of Mandela is that he was essentially a democratic socialist. Certainly not a capitalist. And not a pacifist either; on the contrary, he would accept violence as a means to an end. In his books and countless speeches, he always admitted his flaws. His soul must be smirking now at all the adulation.
Arguably, without Mandela, Barack Obama would never have reached the White House; he admitted on the record that his first political act was at an anti-apartheid demonstration. But let’s make it clear: Mr. Obama, you’re no Nelson Mandela.
To summarize an extremely complex process, in the “death throes” of apartheid, the regime was mired in massive corruption, hardcore military spending and with the townships about to explode. Mix Fidel’s Cuban fighters kicking the butt of South Africans (supported by the US) in Angola and Namibia with the inability to even repay Western loans, and you have a recipe for bankruptcy.
The best and the brightest in the revolutionary struggle – like Mandela – were either in jail, in exile, assassinated (like Steve Biko) or “disappeared”, Latin American death squad-style. The actual freedom struggle was mostly outside South Africa – in Angola, Namibia and the newly liberated Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
Once again, make no mistake; without Cuba – as Mandela amply stressed writing from jail in March 1988 – there would be “no liberation of our continent, and my people, from the scourge of apartheid”. Now get one of those 0.0001% to admit it.
In spite of the debacle the regime – supported by the West – sensed an opening. Why not negotiate with a man who had been isolated from the outside world since 1962? No more waves and waves of Third World liberation struggles; Africa was now mired in war, and all sorts of socialist revolutions had been smashed, from Che Guevara killed in Bolivia in 1967 to Allende killed in the 1973 coup in Chile.
Mandela had to catch up with all this and also come to grips with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of what European intellectuals called “real socialism.” And then he would need to try to prevent a civil war and the total economic collapse of South Africa.
The apartheid regime was wily enough to secure control of the Central Bank – with crucial IMF help – and South Africa’s trade policy. Mandela secured only a (very significant) political victory.
The ANC only found out it had been conned when it took power. Forget about its socialist idea of nationalizing the mining and banking industries – owned by Western capital, and distribute the benefits to the indigenous population. The West would never allow it. And to make matters worse, the ANC was literally hijacked by a sorry, greedy bunch.
Follow the roadmap
John Pilger is spot on pointing to economic apartheid in South Africa now with a new face.
Patrick Bond has written arguably the best expose anywhere of the Mandela years – and their legacy.
And Ronnie Kasrils does a courageous mea culpa dissecting how Mandela and the ANC accepted a devil’s pact with the usual suspects.
The bottom line: Mandela defeated apartheid but was defeated by neoliberalism. And that’s the dirty secret of him being allowed sainthood.
Now for the future. Cameroonian Achille Mbembe, historian and political science professor, is one of Africa’s foremost intellectuals.
In his book Critique of Black Reason, recently published in France (not yet in English), Mbembe praises Mandela and stresses that Africans must imperatively invent new forms of leadership, the essential precondition to lift themselves in the world. All-too-human “Madiba” has provided the roadmap. May Africa unleash one, two, a thousand Mandelas.
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.
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Post by dodger on Jan 3, 2014 14:03:05 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/features/feat_0114/mandela.html
Western eulogies to Nelson Mandela are trying to airbrush out of history the man who never renounced the revolutionary fight...
Nelson Mandela: 1918–2013
WORKERS, JAN 2014 ISSUE Two foreign leaders gave orations at the memorial service to the great Nelson Mandela on 14 December. One was Barack Obama of the USA, whose windy rhetoric lectured the 90 or so government heads present about following the example of “the great liberator”. The other, Raul Castro of Cuba, spoke of Mandela as the “ultimate symbol of dignity and unwavering dedication to the revolutionary struggle for freedom and justice”.
The statue of Nelson Mandela erected on the South Bank,
London, installed in 1986 by the Greater London Council
shortly before Thatcher abolished it.
Of course it was Obama’s speech that featured in western press coverage largely promoting Mandela’s life as one of saintly fortitude in the peaceful fight for freedom.
After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 Mandela called for an end to peaceful resistance and for people’s armed struggle against the brutal apartheid government. He was a member of the central committee of the Communist Party of South Africa when he was subsequently imprisoned, and he was able to take part in leading the struggle even from a prison cell. All this was airbrushed out by capitalist leaders rushing to be part of the eulogies.
Armed struggle
Also heard was Mandela’s unswerving support for the ANC’s armed campaign of sabotage, bombings and attacks on the police and military to destroy the regime.
The crowd’s huge cheers for Castro went unreported here. As did those whenever Robert Mugabe was mentioned – he also led a bitter struggle against a western-backed racist tyranny and was a lifelong friend of Mandela. There was good reason for Castro to be introduced on the memorial platform as from the “tiny island that fought for our liberation”. In 1988, Cuban forces defeated South African troops in Cuito Cuanavale, Angola (see Workers July 2010, available online).
Mandela said in Havana in 1991, “Without the defeat inflicted at Cuito Cuanavale our organisations never would have been legalised... The Cuban internationalists have made a contribution to African independence, freedom and justice, unparalleled for its principled and selfless character.”
Contrast this record with that of the USA and Britain, whose presidents and prime ministers present and past were obliged to travel in 2013 to South Africa to speak admiringly of Nelson Mandela.
The British state was apartheid’s greatest foreign supporter. In 1960 the Sharpeville massacre, when police shot dead 69 peaceful demonstrators protesting against the Pass Laws, and the Coalbrook gold mine disaster where 435 miners were buried alive (their bodies never recovered), both laid bare the brutality of a state where the black population was treated as expendable in the search for ever greater profits. Yet in 1961, the British government opposed the expulsion of South Africa from the Commonwealth (it was outvoted).
Then, in 1962, the UN called for sanctions against South Africa on the grounds that the regime was a threat to international peace. The British government opposed this, and also refused to observe the UN embargo on arms to South Africa.
In June 1964, the UN passed a resolution calling on the South African government to end the trial of Mandela and the other imprisoned ANC leaders. The British and US governments shamefully abstained. For three decades, although you wouldn’t know it from the present words of politicians, the ANC’s main international supporters outside African armed struggle were Cuba and the Soviet Union.
Mandela stayed on the US terrorism watchlist until 2008. Reagan described the apartheid regime as “essential to the free world”. The CIA helped the regime, and information from the Agency led to Mandela’s arrest. Margaret Thatcher saw Mandela and the ANC as terrorists and opposed sanctions.
Norman Tebbit, an ageing Thatcherite ex-minister, still holds that view as correct. At least he is prepared to acknowledge it, unlike Cameron, who joined in with pro-apartheid junkets but now fawns at Mandela’s memory (although, unlike many other young Tories and always the PR man, he avoided wearing a Hang Nelson Mandela T-shirt).
Mandela was released from jail in January 1990 and President de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC. Talks on a new democracy for South Africa began. When in 1993 Mandela was elected the country’s first black president, at his inauguration as President, he embraced Fidel Castro, saying, “You made this possible.”
Of course, it was the South African people who made it possible, with their brave fight over many years, black and white together, to bring about the downfall of the brutal apartheid regime. But Mandela’s tribute acknowledged the truth of what happened and reflects the true source of his huge moral authority – the understanding that nothing less than a lifelong revolutionary fight is needed to overthrow the people’s enemies.
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