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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Nationalisation: the politician’s route to money and power
I remember the sinking feeling I had when the details of the US bail-out plans dribbled out. Although the N-word wasn’t used, the bailout effectively resulted in the nationalisation of key companies in the US and later in the UK and other countries. Now I, perhaps naively, understood this was a caretaker holding, and the shares would be returned to the market when the company could once again stand on its own feet. But I also knew this would give the leftists of the world huge ammo to pursue nationalisation in their own countries.
And so it has been. The talk, from Caracas to Cape Town, has been that capitalism has failed and that big doses of socialism, “as practised” by the US and UK, are required. That fact that it was the failure of the interventionist mixed-economy and not of free enterprise matters not a jot to your wild-eyed socialist. Anything not entirely in state hands is “capitalism”. Ironically, the current recession comes after the spectacular recovery of the previous socialist countries, released from the thrall of communism. But time has dimmed those bitter memories.
In South Africa, the cry is now to nationalise the mining industry, South Africa’s largest industry. This is hardly surprising seeing that a left wing cabal of communists and radical trade unionists now runs the country. The ruling party itself is slightly reticent, presumably having been informed what a devastating effect it would have on the economy.
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Zuma’s socialist fantasy
South African president, Zacob Zuma has delivered his first State of the Nation address. Well, to more accurate it was his Fantasy Nation address. Zuma is the friend of everyone – give him an audience and he’ll set out to please. Radical communists? He’ll be as Stalanist as uncle Joe himself. Capitalist businessmen? Positively Thatcherite in business-friendly assurances. Right-wing Afrikaners? They are the best (non-black) South Africans. And so on.
So, true to form, friendly Jake has set out to please everyone. Well, that’s if you like promises of goodies being dished out willy-nilly. Name the problem, and The Kangaman will dish out the goods.
How to tackle unemployment? Easy – just promise to generate 4-million jobs by 2014. And, of course, the small matter of making that 500,000 of them before December. How? Well the old socialist fall-back: public works programmes. This is so outrageously pie-in-the sky as to question if he’s not having a joke at our (great) expense. His bloated ministries aren’t even set up to deal with hiring the required armies of dead-hand bureaucrats, let alone to creating half-a-million new jobs in the next six months. Or is that… no can’t be.
And this while South Africa is in the midst of a deep recession, where jobs are being shed at a record rate.
Poverty is another focus. According to Zuma, “Social grants are the most effective form of poverty alleviation”. Great. There are already more than 13-million people – a third of the entire South African population – on social grants. He vaguely says that the able bodied should be more willing to work, but what and how remains unsaid.
And all of this is off the backs of the hard-pressed 5.3 million taxpayers. Governments do not create wealth, people do. Governments can either support individuals and companies to create more wealth (which seldom happens), or hinder them. The South African government seems to be hell-bent on destroying them in chasing their socialist dream.
Zuma made a number of other designed-to-please promises without any hint of how they will be delivered. It is no more than a grandiose wish-list – a rabble-pleasing socialist fantasy. The only certainty is that the South African taxpayer is in for a rude shock.
There is little doubt that Jake is setting himself up for failure. But he will as usual wriggle out of any blame – there is always someone conspiring against him. The saddest of all is that his supporters will buy his excuses, as they’ve always done.
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