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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ANC MPs fail the Kid Test
I think it’s safe to say that parliamentarians of the ruling party, the ANC, are a pretty dismal lot. Since South Africa doesn’t have a constituency system, the Party’s representatives don’t have to display any qualities of character to voters. Criminals, homophobes, racists, sexists, liars, cheats, xenophobes, drunkards, wife-beaters, perverts, sociopaths, drug-addicts and paedophiles are all welcome and are well represented in the parliamentary benches – well at least those who bother to attend.
The only requirement is a slavish devotion to their political masters. If a boot needs to be licked, they’ll polish both with their tongues. If a bum needs to be kissed, they’ll get that tongue in – deep. That is the only qualification required. They understand that their livelihoods, cars, housing, overseas jaunts, kids schooling, medical care and fancy clothes are granted to them by the Party leaders and in turn blind loyalty is required. Otherwise it’s back to the shack, drinking sorghum beer out of a paint tin.
Certainly, intelligence is not a prerequisite. In fact, I would imagine that intelligence is specifically frowned upon, along with original thought. Nothing better illustrates this than the show put on by ANC MPs at the recent meeting of portfolio committees on the country’s space policy. They were discussing the launch of SA’s satellite, Sumbandila Sat, to be launched in Russia on September 15. These MPs asked a bunch of questions so peurile, so irrational and displaying such a breathtaking degree of ignorance, that one is left thinking that maybe the other prerequisite of becoming an ANC representative is deep stupidity. I guess it’s much easier to control dull brutes than those with functioning mental facilities.
But maybe I’m being a bit severe. Perhaps these cretins people are simply uneducated – victims of “no education before liberation” or something. In that case we could apply the Kid Test to them. Kids don’t have a lot of knowledge, but they display an appetite for it, a curiosity that requires an answer. None of us can know everything and we often reach for our inner kid, asking perhaps naïve, but searching questions.
Let’s examine the questions asked by the MPs to see if they pass the Kid Test:
How, one asked, do we protect our space from being used by other countries’ satellites?
I would give this one a PASS. This is the sort of question a kid would ask and would lead to an answer that could lead to a life-long understanding of what we mean by “space”.
Shown two comparative satellite pictures of Midrand, one dating from the ’60s and the other more recent, another MP asked what could be done to prevent satellites causing so much damage.
This is a FAIL. No kid would ask this question. It can only be asked by an idiot adult who has no idea what he is looking at and desperately wants his voice to heard.
Another MP said her suburb was frequently disturbed by the noise of satellites flying overhead taking these pictures.
This is a FAIL. Have you ever heard a kid making this sort of observation? This idiot needs to be locked up in a lunatic asylum.
Another suggested that indigenous knowledge must be applied to our use of space — and began to illustrate her point by telling a story about two women flying on a loaf of bread.
WTF? If this was a kid telling her story, it was a kid on LSD. FAIL.
At which point, the committee chairman shut down questions.
Well, yes. Perhaps he was just embarrassed but more probably he couldn’t think of a question to ask which would match the brilliance of his colleagues.
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.
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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 m
obs 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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The Zanufication of South Africa
Story 1: War veterans illegally occupy private farmland. The ruling political party to which they belong facilitates this by providing shelter to the invaders. When the owner and the local opposition-party mayor lawfully demand that the invaders leave or be forcefully removed, the police threaten to arrest the owner and mayor, not the criminal invaders.
Sound familiar?
Story 2:The supreme law of the land is the Constitution which guarantees a raft of basic human rights to its populace. The highest court in the land zealously guards it. The Ruling Party does not like the rulings the court hands down and so systematically goes about stripping the Court of independent jurists and replacing them with obsequious party hacks. Eventually the Ruling Party is allowed to do as it pleases, stripping people of their rights and brutalising the opposition supporters. The judges smile on in benign approval.
Sound familiar?
Well, we all know the story of Zimbabwe and its brutal ruling party, Zanu-PF. They have reduced their country to ruin, their citizens to penury and fear. In effect Zanu-PF runs a fascist dictatorship, a kleptocracy of vicious thugs.
South Africa is no Zimbabwe – that’s obvious. I for one have been dismissive of hysterical claims that South Africa is turning into another Zimbabwe. But I am starting to get a bit uneasy of late. Two reports appearing today have made me become quite apprehensive.
The first report came from Timothy Nast, the DA mayor of Midvaal Municipality on Radio 702 this morning. A large group of thugs were burning tyres, blocking traffic and stoning passing cars on a busy highway this morning. They had invaded a farm yesterday and, Nast alleges, habitable containers were provided by the ANC-controlled area authority. South Africa has appallingly anti-private property laws regarding squatters but at least they do allow invaders to be removed from the property within 48 hours of arriving. The owner quite rightly and lawfully demanded that the invaders move off the land and that the police should enforce this. Nast alleges that the police refused to do this and instead threatened to arrest him.
The second report was carried by Business Day. Judge President of the Western Cape, John Hlophe’s Judicial Service Commission (JSC) hearing into the dispute between him and the judges of the Constitutional Court (CC) have been cancelled. Let’s put this in perspective. Hlophe was accused by the CC judges of attempting to improperly influence judgements relating to Jacob Zuma. Hlophe ducked and dived, using every trick in the book his rabid supporters led by the fugitive Paul Ngobeni had honed to get Zuma off the hook. His waiting game was a transparent attempt to get a hearing by a far friendlier JSC after Zuma’s election.
And he got it. Zuma replaced his appointments with a bunch of pro-executive and definitely pro-Zuma and Hlophe lawyers. Their first action was to hold Hlophe’s hearing in secret and then to simply cancel them. It looks very much as if Hlophe, who any reasonable person would find to be the last person who should hold such a position, is headed for the post of Chief Justice. Even if that is not the case, these actions show executive intent to mould the judiciary into the ANC’s lap-dog. “Transformation” of the judiciary clearly means to transform independence into subservience.
So yes, Story 1 happened in South Africa, although of course it has happened in Zimbabwe countless times.
Story 2 is the story of the emasculation of Zimbabwe judiciary. Without a judiciary willing to uphold the constitution, ordinary Zimbabweans were left naked in their defencelessness from a ruthless and arrogant ruling party, Zanu-PF – lead by that madman Robert Mugabe. These actions taken in the JSC’s Hlophe hearings are an extremely worrying portent of where South Africa could be headed.
But is there any evidence that the ANC seeks to follow Zanu’s example? Well not directly and not really on the same path. Whereas Zanu-PF is a very aggressive fascist socialist movement, the ANC seems to be moving towards a highly centralised Stalinist statist model. Here are the pointers:
- Under Thabo Mbeki, the ANC government sought to centralise control of all facets of government and “deployed” ANC cadres to key positions – not on the basis of ability but on that of blind loyalty to the leader
- The ANC’s 2007 Polokwane conference resolved to centralise political power with the Party – not with the elected government
- The ANC arrogantly chose an entirely inappropriate candidate, Jacob Zuma, for president and then embarked on an aggressive campaign of threats against the judiciary to make sure the legal impediments to his ascendency were removed
- After years of doggedly pursuing Zuma on fraud and corruption charges, the National Prosecuting Authority succumbed to enormous political pressure and abruptly dropped all charges on flimsy and discredited grounds
- The majority of Zuma’s cabinet are or were loyal communists (as was he), including key appointments such as the Stalinist finance minister Pravin Gordhan and a senior cabinet post for Blade Nzimande, general secretary of the SA Communist Party
- A new, enlarged cabinet structure which has a heavy emphasis on central planning
- Policy, direction and disciple is not set by the president or his government but by the Party under the leadership of SACP chairman and ANC secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe
- Justice minister Jeff Radebe interferes with the working of the “independent” JSC
I agree that this is not conclusive evidence of a South African version of Zanufication. But I would argue that with so many pointers toward total Party control, there is a great deal to be concerned about.
Zuma: Mine’s Bigger Than Yours
So JZ has had his new cabinet sworn in. There’s plenty of comment on the good (although you’ll have to look hard), the mediocre (anywhere else they’d be the BAD) and the bad (truly terrible). But the thing that stands out is the sheer size of this cabinet: a full 34 ministers and 29 deputy ministers. Of course this is going to cost a fortune, as Justice Malala points out:
The whole thing is a waste of taxpayers’ cash.
First , the presidency has about 500 people working in policy and all sorts of other positions. Now President Jacob Zuma has added a Ministry of National Planning and a Ministry of Performance Monitoring to the mix. This is likely to entail a dramatic increase in employees.
Plus, cabinet ministers have been increased from 28 to 34. And every minister gets a blue light, a driver and a whole new department.
In these tough times, when companies are tightening belts, the government is failing to lead by example here.
Virtually every ministry has been renamed, which means millions of rands will be spent on rebranding, making new business cards and so forth.
This is not just ridiculous, it’s wrong.
So how big is South Africa’s cabinet? Well to put in an international perspective, here is a sample of cabinet sizes for some countries around the world*:
Zambia: 11
Germany: 15
USA: 16 (with a further 6 officials enjoying cabinet rank)
Japan: 16
Australia: 19
UK: 22 (with a further 6 officials attending cabinet meetings)
Brazil: (23 with a further 9 cabinet-level officers)
China: 27
India: 28
Zimbabwe: 36
Kenya: 41
* None of these include the leader (president, executive prime minister, etc.)
I noticed an interesting thing when researching these numbers: many countries appoint a single cabinet member to handle multiple portfolios. Take Julia Gillard of Australia, for example. She is deputy Prime Minister, as well as holding the portfolios of Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Minister for Education and Minister for Social Inclusion (whatever that may mean). Strange as it may seem to South African politicians, most countries expect their cabinet ministers to actually work.
Zuma has two ministers in the presidency, delegating his primary roles of strategic planning and oversight to political competitors. So besides making speeches that his audiences like to hear, what is he going to do? Woo more wives? Defend more legal actions? Sue more cartoonists? Practise singing and dancing?
Big government is not healthy. An inflated cabinet, with each cabinet minister representing a government department implies big government. The Armey Curve predicts an optimum government size and it looks very much like we’re getting way too much government.
Neither are big cabinets efficient. In a recent article in Science News, The Undeciders – More Decision-Makers Bring Less Efficiency (paid content), the finding from simulations is that larger (more than 10 members) committees have lower efficiency than those with fewer members. The finding are summarised as:
The team simulated committees as networks in which each member was a node. Before a vote, each member’s opinion could be influenced by those of its immediate neighbors in the network; adjacent nodes could represent, for example, ministers belonging to the same political party. The simulation found that committees of 10 members or less could almost always reach a consensus (with one mysterious exception for the number 8). For larger committees, the chances of getting to a consensus were lower, and the chances decreased even more rapidly for committees of 20 or more. The results show that Parkinson’s law is not an accident, but “a robust consequence of the opinion-formation model,” Thurner says.
Editor’s Note: This “consequence” is a strong claim. At this point all one can claim is that the model and the observations happen to produce similar numerical outcomes.
Look forward to 5 years of expensive talk.
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