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 10th 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.
Ebrahim Patel
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.
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Dangerous Clowns
Aaargh! What a mess. Cell phone provider Vodacom listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange this morning despite trade-union grouping Cosatu and the supposedly independent ICT regulator Icasa launching a last minute court bid to stop the process. Sanity prevailed when the matter was dismissed – with costs.
Some background to this debacle:
- In April Icasa told Vodacom that there was NO decision to be made in the R22.5 billion sale of Telkom’s 15% share of Vodacom to UK’s Vodaphone since they already had a 50% ownership stake in Vodacom
- In early May, Cosatu challenged Icasa’s decision (in fact, non-decision) by filing court papers
- On Friday afternoon, the last working day before Vodacom’s JSE listing, Icasa rescinds its decision (or rather, non -decision) citing Cosatu’s action as a sudden new requirement for public hearings in the interests of “transparency”
- On Sunday, the High Court chucks the motion out.
So what we have here is clearly a case of Cosatu pressurising Icasa which then capitulates. This so-called independent body has always been a spineless plaything of the ruling party. I think the fact that Cosatu can now bully it, tells us a great deal about the new political landscape.
Zuma and his great champions, Cosatu and the South African Communist Party, are flexing their muscles based on their experience that they can bully state organs to get their way. They bullied the courts and almost got away with it. They bullied the National Prosecuting Authority and got away with it. They bullied the prisons system and got away with it. They bullied parliament and got away with it.
Clearly they now have business in their sights. Business is easily bullied. When they are told to virtually give away large chunks of their businesses to people of a particular race they roll over. When they are told not to complain, the shut up. It’s very telling that Cosatu has said they don’t want South African companies owned by foreigners since “the deal would remove any remaining South African control over the country’s biggest cellphone company“.
These clowns are dangerous. They are brimming with hubris and have shown they will destroy anything to get their way.
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