The left-wing coup consolidates

While South Africans manically debate who should be the next soccer coach leading up to the 2010 World Cup, their country is silently falling into the hands of an unelected communist cabal.

It’s all falling into place for the Marxists, Trotskyites, Stalinists and other tendencies within Cosatu and the SACP who now effectively govern South Africa. The sop to realism that was placing the respected Trevor Manuel in a central planning position, is over. Manuel has been removed from a central planning role and is no longer in the “economics cluster”.  His right-hand-man and director general Joel Netshitenzhe has resigned. The ascendency of Ebrahim Patel and Cosatu continues apace.

My suspicion that Manuel had seen the writing on the wall were first raised when he uncharacteristically splurged on a R1.2 million BMW 7-series vehicle. Why not? Everyone else is doing it and he would no longer need to lead by example.

When Manuel resigned as finance minister it caused chaos in the financial markets. Keeping Manuel in a central planning role in the presidency kept the markets quiet. But he knew it was going to be tough going.  When he branded business as cowards for not standing up to labour, it was clearly a cry for help to his party. The left has targeted him unrelentingly with shrill and vicious personal attacks.

I hope I am mistaken, but I think Manuel has given up the fight and has ceded the policy-making and control of the economy to the communists. He knows that the average South African cares far more about soccer than their future under a communist regime.

The Workers Socialist Republic of South Africa?

As pointed out before, the South African government is being taken over by a cabal of far-left communists. I used to say “communists and trade-unionists” but that isn’t necessary since Cosatu, the trade union movement, is a self-declared communist organisation, urging its members to join, and it requires its leaders to be card-carrying members of the SACP.

Of course, the Communist Party is pretty much in the driving seat with its senior leaders all in the government or running the ruling Party. This has all the hallmarks of a silent coup: an unelected body now holds effective control of South Africa. Cosatu is less well represented, but has the “street muscle” to enforce its views on a sympathetic and beholden ANC leadership.

I have heard a number of pundits in the media that Cosatu is just a bunch of uneducated and unsophisticated thugs that will easily be sidestepped by the ANC. The SACP are described as a group of committed, smart activists who get things done. The message is that they might be irritating but these organisations shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Well let’s look at some of the resolutions passed (pdf) at the recent Cosatu 10^th Nation Congress.

Among the short-to-medium term demands:

1. Immediately, nationalize the major means of production.
…
4. Centralise the major means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
5. Create a workers bank to concentrate all pension and provident funds, medical aids funds and
union investments into a single bank.
…
7. Begin restructuring the state – executive, judiciary and parliament – in the interests of the
working class.
8. Abolish labour broking.
9. Abolish retrenchments.
10. Workers takeover of companies threatened with closures because of the collapse of the
neoliberal paradigm of global capitalism.

In short, destroy the economy, loot its assets and deny poor people access to casual jobs. But that’s only for starters. Long-term demands are:

1. Abolish bourgeois private property.
2. Nationalise, socialise and democratise all key strategic means of production in South Africa
such as land, water, minerals, mines, banks, oil companies, shipyards, telecommunications,
transport, food, housing, etc, etc, etc.
3. Concentrate all credit and the power to make money in the hands of the state.
4. Abolish the bourgeoisie executive, parliamentary and justice system, and replace them with
working class state structures.
5. Abolish the distinction between former white suburbs and shacks and townships, and between
rural areas and urban areas.
6. Everyone to enjoy the right to work, housing, education, health and a healthy environment.
7. Everyone to work.

So, reduce the country to a smoking communist ruin, and then force legions of slaves to toil since there will be no incentive remaining to voluntarily do so.

The fact that this stuff has never worked – anywhere, ever – doesn’t seem to bother these megalomaniacs. Ironically, one of the first things such a government will do is to outlaw trades union! This has happened wherever a communist regime has seized power.

Cosatu is a radical organisation with very radical aims. Its champion in government, economic development minister Ebrahim Patel, is well qualified for the position. This wild-eyed ultra-leftist is particularly oblivious to the consequences of his idealogical actions: as general secretary of the trade union SACTWU he virtually single-handedly caused the almost total destruction of the textile industry in the Western Cape. You wouldn’t want this character anywhere near any enterprise, but Cosatu want him to displace one of the only reasonable people left in the government, Trevor Manuel.

Virtually no defence of Manuel has come from the ANC. They might be uneasy but I think they realise that game is up and the party has fallen into the hands of the communists while they had their snouts deep in the trough of public funds.

Can’t write about Mo Shaik

I was sickened by Zuma’s appointment of Mo Shaik. I was going to write about it, but it would just make my blood pressure spike.  So I’ll let Nic Borain not write about it.

However, Mo(e) has inspired me to do a bit of pictorial commentary:

ANCs fascist attack on democracy and the poor

I admit with some embarrassment that the story of the of the vicious attack on shack-dwellers by the ANC in Durban didn’t initially grab my attention. I can perhaps blame this on that apart from a few opinion pieces, it was largely ignored by the mainstream press. But this is a story that should be ringing alarm-bells for all South Africans. ANC thugs – aided and abetted by the police and ruling ANC officials – attacked a peaceful community, destroying homes and killing at least three people.

Their crime? Members of this community belonged to an independent organisation – crucially not ANC-aligned – which actively campaigs for better housing, sanitation, healthcare and education, to be provided on terms favourable to its members. The organisation is called Abahlali baseMjondolo, and the settlement is Kennedy Road in Durban. Abahlali has successfully fought for its member’s rights – all the way to the Constitutional Court. This has clearly irked the notoriously anti-poor ANC ruling elite who would much rather divert development funds to their own bank accounts.

On the night of 26th September, a heavily armed gang launched a surprise, unprovoked attack on the settlement. They destroyed everything they could while calling on Zulu’s to identify and spare themselves. This ethnic rampage resulted in at least three – many reports have it at eight – deaths. This murderous spree went ahead with the connivance of the police who refused to intervene. The only activity the police undertook was to arrest eight Abahlali leaders!

Watch this video: it’s a heartbreaking tale of repression:

The ANC, in a display of unbridled arrogance and cynicism, held a sham reconciliation meeting – attended solely by ANC activists.  They then complained loudly when the Abahlali leaders – in hiding for their lives – did not attend. They spent their time heaping abuse on the movement and blaming them for everything. ANC Councillor Nigel Gumede left no doubt that this was a case of Zulu vs Pondo:

He added a dash of tribal hatred, saying that “in our [presumably Zulu] culture, this [Mfene] dance is associated with muthi” (witchcraft) and needed to be investigated.

Still the community remains under attack. There is nothing covert about it: the ANC is sending a strong message that anyone not actively supporting them is their deadly enemy and will be destroyed. Here are the reasons given for a planned attack on Sunday night:

A decision has been taken to demolish two more shacks after the meeting. These shacks both belong to AbM members – they are both women. The decision has been justified on the grounds that:

1. They are known AbM activists.
2. They failed to attend today’s meeting.
3. They failed to accept pressure to board the ANC buses to protest for denial of bail at the bail hearing for the Kennedy 8.

Zuma, of course has not said a word. This tacit support for pro-Party fascist thugs – in the mould of the Nazi Brownshirts and Zanu-PF youth militia – must be taken very seriously.

Please sign this petition to ask Zuma to intervene.

Related article:

• State turns against shack dwellers

Jacob’s ladder of lies

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, South African President Jacob Zuma attempted to wash away any culpability for his role in his government’s deliberate extermination of at least 300,000 (mainly ANC-supporting) AIDS sufferers. He attacked ex-president Thabo Mbeki maintaining that his insane idea that there is no link between HIV and AIDS was his own private view and not government policy.

Somehow it was Mbeki’s private affair that let his criminal, alcoholic health minister unleash her bizarre cure of onions, beetroot and garlic (with a side helping of African potatoes) for AIDS on the public health system. It was rigorously enforced; doctors were fired trying to treat their patients with anti-retroviral drugs drugs. Activists had to go to the Constitutional Court to force these murderers to allow the distribution of ARVs. They didn’t take Mbeki and Tshabalala-Msimang to court in their private capacities: they sued the government – which vigorously defended its position.

So Zuma lied that it wasn’t government policy. But worse than that, Zuma vigorously defended this disgusting policy at the time. In an address to parliament in 2000, calling on members to acquaint themselves with the AIDS-denialist literature. Then he dragged out the old straw man canard, They laughed at Galileo:

In Europe in the Seventeenth Century, the main stream scientific view was that the sun moved around the earth. An Italian scientist Galilei Galileo had a different view and believed that the earth moved around the sun. However his views were considered to be so threatening to the scientific establishment that he was forced to publicly recant. As we all know today, he was right and they were wrong.

In the history of science and in particular the history of medical science, there are other examples where solutions were found to difficult challenges as a result of robust scientific debate between conventional and alternative views.

This House, which is based on the fundamental principle of the right to differ and to express a different opinion, ought not to balk at the idea that the President is asking scientists to behave as scientists.

As Carl Sagan said: “They laughed at Galileo. They laughed at Newton. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”

In 2000 Padraig O’Malley interviewed then ANC Secretary General and current deputy-President, Kgalema Motlanthe on his views on HIV/AIDS (part 1, part 2). He toed the line that HIV does not cause AIDS, as simply a natural breakdown of the immunity system. As such the “opportunistic” diseases should be treated in their own right. He called AIDS a symbol – perhaps he hadn’t understood Mbeki’s assertion that AIDS was just a syndrome - not a disease. He then went on to blame the drug companies for fabricating the whole thing to make huge profits. And of course he had a swing at whites:

No, they are gullible. You see half of them don’t read but they regard themselves as well informed because they’re white. The reason why when you ask – you ask any of the experts whether they have seen evidence, any piece of document that says scientist so-and-so in such a country has isolated this HIV virus and photographed it and studied it’s modus vivendi under controlled conditions, they will swear at you.

They will tell you that question was answered twenty years ago, they will tell you you are giving audience to dissidents. They will not tell you because it’s not there. That’s why they become vicious because it is simply not there. They take it on authority and then it gets passed on like that but there’s no authority, it’s a lie repeated by those who are supposed to know better. The truth of the matter is that if they were to admit that indeed no such thing has happened, I mean it would cause serious reverberations across the scientific world.

Zuma can lie all he wants but we know the truth: the ANC hates its own people and was willing to let them die in their hundreds of thousands rather than confront the source of this disease and the source of the life-saving drugs. As George Annandale writes on this subject:

Perhaps the president can explain how it is possible to recall and redeploy President Mbeki for creating a nuisance and sowing division in the party, yet, when he was the driving force in the thinly veiled extermination of hundreds of thousands of HIV/Aids sufferers, this moral alliance and its moral upstanding leaders, could not stop him.

Yes Jacob, they laughed at Galileo. And we would laugh at you too if the stench of death didn’t hang around you like a vulture.

The rise of the Weak Man

As the editor of a major South African broadsheet, Peter Bruce writes an amazingly naïve article on his surprise at how the Zuma presidency is panning out:

Jacob Zuma is proving to be almost the opposite of what I expected him to be. I expected a decisive presidency but he isn’t. I expected an authoritative leader, yet no one in or around the ANC seems to pay him the slightest heed. I expected that he would keep party loudmouths quiet but the only person whose attention he seems to have is the mayor of Balfour.

Zuma’s weakness was fully expected. Zuma is not a leader at all. He didn’t take the Party by the scruff of its neck and impose his leadership vision on it. He never had to stump for support or run on his record. He has never debated an opponent in public nor has he made any direct appeal to the South African public.

South Africa is being ruled by a Weak Man.

A Weak Man is someone who is deeply flawed and in deep trouble. He desperately needs support to keep him out of jail or penury but has nothing to offer his benefactors other than his soul. He is without principle and will do anything to get out of his predicament.  He has another very important characteristic: he is a populist and appeals to the ordinary man who empathises with his “oppressed” persona.

The Weak Man is surrounded by power-hungry individuals who prefer, or are only able to rule by proxy. In Zuma’s case this is largely the South African Communist Party and its leftist allies, the trade union movement Cosatu and the ANC Youth League. These organisation would be hard-pressed to win any seats in an election, let alone a general election itself.

Bruce is “rescued” by writer Meshack Mabogoane:

“A hardcore party man, he (Zuma) defers to the ANC for the positions he adopts,” writes Mabogoane. “He reads what is written for him and avoids discussing complex matters. At the same time his comments on crucial matters are usually made after the events and are generally evasive and weak. Zuma has never committed himself to any policies and never offered any personal vision.”

The ANC leaders he defers to are SACP chairman Gwede Mantashe, SACP secretary-general Blade Nzimande and Cosatu head Zwelinzima Vavi.

This same strategy was tried in the campaign to get John Hlophe onto the Constitutional Court. The fact that it stumbled at the last hurdle this time does not mean it won’t be successful in the long run. The problem with Hlophe is that he is just too unpredictable and not nearly as pliant as is Zuma. Perhaps Hlophe will come to realise this and make himself the vassal his supporters so wish him to be. At the moment he is not quite weak enough – but give him time.

Another manifestation of the Weak Man phenomenon is one Siyabonga Gama who is in the running to be the next Transnet CEO. Except that he has been suspended by his board for awarding lavish contracts without authority amongst other misdeeds. There is no doubt he is a loose cannon and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near South Africa’s largest state-owned enterprise.

But what do we see instead? Huge, unprecedented political support – and threats – from the same team that put Zuma in power. In fact, they are claiming he is a victim of political conspiracy just like Zuma was. Another Weak Man is being pushed into an influential position to do his masters’ bidding. Transnet of course has many billions of Rand flowing through it and under its control. Thanks to previous CEO Maria Ramos, it is not yet a smoking, bankrupt ruin and remains a deep trough for alliance parties and the leaders that run them to get their snouts in it.

South Africa on a Slippery Hlophe

Today will mark a dark day in South Africa’s future history: it is the day the judiciary was emasculated. Judge John Hlophe has been cleared by the Judicial Services Council of gross misconduct in attempting to influence two Constitutional Court judges. In doing so, the majority of the disciplinary committee of the JSC twisted and turned in a grotesque dance to find a justification for clearing this fatally flawed man.

I expected it. I even predicted it. But there was some part of me that hoped that sanity would prevail and that sacrificing the independence of the judiciary for a single man could simply not happen. And not just any man: a racist liar who is completely unsuited to be a judge. But then again, the same people who championed Hlophe were also prepared to sacrifice the independence of the prosecuting authority – and much more – for a single man, Jacob Zuma.

The only question is: what is the deal? Hlophe clearly knew that he would get a far more friendly hearing from a reconstituted JSC under Zuma, so he used every trick in the book, including feigning illness to delay his hearing until that day arrived. Now he’s free to be selected to serve on the Constitutional Court. Could this really be? One part of me is hoping…

As Pierre de Vos says:

The JSC itself also comes out of this saga with its credibility in tatters. It drew a distinction where none existed to avoid a full hearing that could have exposed the lies of a sitting judge and could have gotten rid of one or more bad apples on the bench. The fact that the JSC does not seem concerned about the fact that their decision condones scurrilous lies, suggest it has no ethical compass of its own.

Race obsession leading South Africa to ruin

I almost expressed my expresso this morning when I read that Jimmy Manyi is tipped to become director-general of South Africa’s department of labour. Manyi chairs the Employment Equity Commission and presides over the Black Management Forum, a talk-shop and pressure group to force racial quotas on firms. Manyi is totally obsessed with race and perceived racism, and I fear he will use this new post (if he gets it) to dictate to private companies exactly who and who not to employ.

I attended a talk given by Manyi some months ago and left feeling revolted by the extreme racial profiling he and his organisation promote. His ideas sound as if they come from some crazy nineteenth-century racial theorist.  Employment equity is apparently not about trying to find a reasonable balance of affirmative action and scarce skills. It is about strict racial quotas, with females and disabled people also get a look-in. And it’s not only about blacks and whites either. No, every shade of skin has to be classified and have a quota.

Only race matters to Manyi. Not the content of people’s characters. Not their intelligence, or general knowledge. Nor their education or experience. Not their work ethic, presentation skills, management ability, inter-personal skills, vision, insight, creativity, diligence, energy, temperament, leadership qualities, technical skills or loyalty. No – just race. And certainly not competence. In fact competence is seen as a negative, because it reflects badly on the great majority of people who are not competent to do a specific job.

The architect of apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd, would have been proud of him.

So what if you can’t find enough suitably qualified people to fill certain jobs – simply change the definition of “skilled”. To Manyi, a skill is something you can learn on the job just so long as you show some potential. An example he gave was that of Hamilton Naki, Chris Barnard’s so-called “assistant”. This primary school-educated vivisection lab cleaner and janitor, Manyi asserts, would have been a heart surgeon the equal of Barnard but for being Black. To be sure, Naki’s story is an inspiring one – but working around a heart surgeon does not qualify you to become a learn-on-the-job surgeon – no matter what colour you are. Would you allow yourself be operated on by such a surgeon? Would you drive over a bridge designed by a kerbside welder who “learnt” engineering on the job?

Manyi’s tinkering with the definition of “skill” leads him to say that the skills shortage is “a myth”. And this is leading South African down a very dangerous path. We’ve already seen how the deployment of these types of “skills” to run government departments and state-owned enterprises has lead to full-scale failure and dysfunction of most of these institutions. It justifies the minister of labour to furiously threaten private companies with a “revolution”. It shields incompetence and inefficiency behind a protective wall of racial guilt.

It also costs a great deal of money as poor management simply squanders the nation’s wealth. Eskom has just posted a R9.7 billion loss, after making R33.5 billion in profit the five years previously. And it’s put down to sheer bad management. It is a management that is totally out of its depth and yet rewards itself with grotesquely large bonuses. And yes, rewards itself for replacing highly skilled and experienced white engineers and managers with young inexperienced poorly trained blacks. It is Manyi’s redefinition of “skill” that allows this sort of thing to happen.

But worst of all, the idea that there is no skills shortage, just racism, removes any incentive to correct the imbalances of the past by the one means that would actually work: education. Education in South Africa is in a dismal state, and getting worse. And it’s not for lack of money: South Africa spends more per capita than countries of comparable economic development. Could it because schools are run and staffed by people who don’t have the skills to do so? Mr Manyi would probably argue that’s it’s all a racist plot since there is no skill shortage.

The hard fact is that whites are generally reasonably educated and by and large have the necessary skills for the jobs they are employed to do. Generally blacks do not have those skills for both historical and cultural reasons. The way to fix this is not to deny this, but to do something about it. Like educating the kids properly. Like removing the ridiculous handbrake on the economy that is Telkom and getting inexpensive broadband into every home. And like providing incentives to companies to provide mentoring to young black people in the workplace.

These things can be done without damaging the economy and will ensure a prosperous future for all.  Or we can let Jimmy Manyi and his race obsessed comrades lead us to ruin.

---

Update: Yes, the government confirmed that Jimmy Manyi is the new director-general of the labour department. Business: watch out for the racial jackboot.
 

Is Zuma an evil genius or a genial idiot?

The fading arc of dye at the end of my left thumb nail is a reminder that it’s about 100 days ago that Zuma became president of South Africa, the customary evaluation time. Like the faint mark, most South Africans have probably a less black-and-white view of the man now than they did 100 days ago. Yet I’m not convinced that we fully understand his strange presidency.

Let’s roll back and consider how the Big Man got into power in the first place. Certainly, he didn’t campaign on his clean record of public service and exceptional leadership qualities. Was it perhaps identification with an uneducated, polygamous and deeply conservative tribalist that got him elected? No, I think rather it was the sleazy outcome of a deal between a highly compromised man facing a life of jail and ignominy, and a power-hungry left-wing rabble of communists and trade-unionists. It is difficult to find any other motive for this other than the creation of a puppet for the real rulers, who are perhaps unpalatable to the average voter.

In the process, this rabble threatened and pressurised the judiciary, viciously threatened their enemies real or imaginary and engineered the collapse of prosecutorial independence. Zuma was willing to see the Constitution – the crowning achievement of decades of bitter struggle – threatened and weakened just so that he, as an individual, could escape the very serious charges against him. The way was then opened for him to be pushed into office.

We are seeing the ramifications on this assault on the Constitution. The judiciary is feeling extremely vulnerable and is involved in a public squabble. The prosecuting authorities have lost all credence. Whether these will have long-term ramifications is yet to be seen. Needless to say, the supremacy of the Constitution is in peril.

So the deal is: the left-wing cabal guarantee that Zuma is protected and is given the leeway to use State resources to form a ring of steel around him – an immunity zone. In return, he will be a compliant figurehead, a stooge for the real rulers who have been slavering away for power but could never achieve it in their own right.

Let’s have a look at the evidence for this deal.
Read more

Politics of the Past

South African townships are once again in turmoil. There are widespread protests against the lack of “service delivery” by the government, usually resulting in violence. This violence typically starts with chanting, menacing mobs setting fire to tyres and blocking traffic, then harassing passing motorists and stoning vehicles. Following this it escalates into running battles with the police who react highly aggressively. Public buildings, such as community halls, schools and administration centres are burnt. Mayors’ and councillors’ houses are attacked and destroyed. Then the most vulnerable (and most productive) members of the community, the foreigners, are violently attacked in fits of xenophobic hatred.

These people are taking this action against the very politicians they overwhelmingly voted into power less than three months ago. It is obvious that the Wonderland promises of fantastic largesse – in the form of housing, service, healthcare, education and a chicken in every pot – have a lot to do with this. In a cynical populist exercise, the politicians created expectations they had no means of satisfying.

And yet, there is no positive action from the government. It remains passive, putting out statements that plead for ending the violence and calling for patience. Any action taken against the violent mobs is quietly dropped.

Can you really blame these people for feeling frustrated? For 15 years now the government has promised its voters a Halcyon life where their major needs, including health, education, housing and even leisure facilities, will be delivered to them. Instead these dependant masses have to deal with government departments near collapse, rampant crime and corruption, and State-owned enterprises in free-fall. And very few of the generous promises ever result in something tangible.

The inertia in dealing with the grievances of the citizens is contrasted to the zeal with which the government has promoted its “transformation” programme. By this it means the obstacles to unfettered ANC rule. The Zuma administration has shown single-minded determination to let nothing stand in its way, including the Constitution, that golden child born out of the peaceful negotiations and transfer of power from apartheid to liberation.

I recently discussed this with a prominent political consultant and he summarised the problem as “the politics of the past”. What he meant was that the ANC is obsessed with “righting the wrongs of the past” and spends most of its energy to that end. It is not about building for the future but destroying the past. It is a mindset of perpetual victimhood, which it uses to build a strong “us vs. them” group identity.
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