We sent this because we really do note there is a dangerous campaign going on. Whatever the real or apparent levels of corruption, we must keep alive to the political agenda of those knowingly doing this - and how much their own corruption is the real issue.
In the face of the present all-out media attack on leading figures, the latest attempt to subvert and bring down the ANC leadership, it is time for even the most critical of us to rally round our party, to defend and strengthen our movement, as a tripartite alliance. Let's look at what the real game is, and just who is undermining prospects for proper governance.
We are no loyal party claque. We -- that's everyone from us as a couple, to scores of older strugglers and stalwarts and young activists we know, to thousands we know of -- are not happy with the way our leadership has chosen, or been intimidated into the corporate capital road, so that our country is dotted with casinos instead of public job projects; our Africa policy is an embarrassing combination of Nepad and turning liberation solidarity into keeping quiet about terrible oppression in Zimbabwe; and we cannot muster a social democratic vision and programme even as mild as France or Germany, or show the fiscal policy backbone of even a Malaysia or a Chile.
But it is nonetheless our leadership, still on balance the best bunch we could hope for; and in its mix of commitment, ability and intention, if not performance, potentially one of the most decent governing teams in the world.
It is The Star front page of yesterday which spurred us to write. The attempt to smear Vice President Zuma all over the page, with a six-column photo of a spread of rondavels as his "palatial retreat" is ludicrous. It would be laughable if it were not the latest stage in a dangerous campaign. The smear strategists must be feeling that things are moving so fast their way that they can get away with such a blatant and silly ploy. Tony O'Reilly, who must have quite a few thatched rondavels to his own name, has let his minions go too far this time, to expect sustained credibility.
We gave a hoot of laughter, actually, because it reminded us of two media moments during one of our periods in exile, in Kenya in the mid-Sixties and early Seventies. It was well after Kenyatta had abandoned any attempt at progressive unity, and, to pursue his agenda of enriching not just the Kikuyu tribe, but his own section of it -- chased Odinga and other relatively progressive strugglers into opposition. One of these was Bildad Kaggia, MP and former Minister, a fellow-Kikuyu and stalwart of freedom fighter days alongside Kenyatta and others in the 1950s and early Sixties. He was annoying the new establishment by his radical stance, and by shouting the odds in favour of the freedom fighters who had lost out since the independence they fought for.
How to smear this sober, strong and popular figure? One Kenyatta Day, an annual commemoration, when the leading dozen surviving freedom fighters donned their old 'detainee' leather jackets for a public rally, President Kenyatta embarked on a litany of how well each of them had done "for themselves" since independence: this one had a big farm, that one had a business, the other had a big bus company, and so on. But Kaggia, he'd done nothing to make the best of his advantages, what kind of a leader was he?
Whoops... somebody must have told the old man that this wasn't the cleverest way to undermine Kaggia's support base. So, on the front page of Nairobi's leading daily a couple of weeks later appears a photograph of a modern, plain three-bedroomed house, with a proper roof but no frills, in a village not far from the capital. This, says the headline and caption, is Kagggia's luxury house, built at the cost of XX million shillings -- where did he get the money?
Now, as any South African over 30 should know, and younger people should easily find out, if our history teachers are doing their work, Jacob Zuma has been a most dedicated man, at the political coalface for years, playing a major part in ensuring that KwaZulu Natal has not become the focus for a Unita style rebellion, with Buthelezi as the Savimbi.
Another of the most critical role-players in the pre and early years of majority rule in South Africa, a dedicated and hugely able and intelligent man, was Mac Maharaj. If you didn't know already, you only have to read Allister Sparks to realise how much he did in two of the most critical junctures: keeping exile and internal leadership in communication towards a movement consensus about the way to proceed in the late 80s and early 90s; and that dramatic moment when he stopped the apartheid leaders from furtively restoring another potential Savimbi, the overthrown Bop leader Lucas Mangope.
Interesting, that leaders like these, who should be honoured for their vital contributions, are being hung out to dry at the behest of the very corporates who funked off with vast sums of South African money to get quoted on the international stock exchange, answerable to their foreign shareholders and who knows -- maybe as we speak, some are inflating invoices, illicitly to transfer-price more of the taxpayers money out of the country. And then shout about how badly we need Foreign Direct Investment. What a sick joke.
Nobody can say that some leading political figures have thought carefully enough over the last ten years, before accepting unlimited credit cards, easy loans or free flights or junkets or discounts. After all, it's what the corporate executives give each other every week -- and then make it a tax write-off! We won't even go into the gruesomely high salaries they pay each other in the corporate world.
That's not greed, that's just reward. Private is efficient, Private is god. Public is inefficient. Bureaucracy is evil. It must be true, because that's what the media owners and business reporters tell us, or imply in passing, a thousand tiimes through a thousand programmes, every day.
It's not a matter of excusing corruption, it's a matter of knowing what game is being played, and how high the stakes are.
And please, ANC leadership, get your act together about proper government regulation, a brake on privatisation and socially committed policy and practice. Thank you.
Tony and Eve Hall
_______________________________________________
DEBATE mailing list
DEBATE@lists.kabissa.org
http://lists.kabissa.org/mailman/listinfo/debate
From Costa Gazidis
Dear Halls,
How sad to see that your faith in an organisation can be so total and for so long.
I have been laid up with a prostate problem but can almost sit long enough for a short reply pending a fuller one on your return!
SADC is nothing more than a vehicle for South African domination of Southern Africa. The US likes it because the Mbeki gang (too strong?) have put into place all the policies that have earned them the US franchise for Southern, Central and East Africa, with limited presence in the rest.
Harry Oppenheimer was a great African. Remember those words from the mouth of Thabo Mbeki when the hoary capitalist died? He never made money out of apartheid, we are assured, only astute business practice, forerunning BEE which his dynasty wants to support and control in order to protect their interests. I have seen hundreds of ex-miners with crippling lung disease who could not get their pittance of a lump sum compensation from the MBOD and the Compensation Commissioner. The process is deeply flawed and now that some reparations are sought, who is on the side of Anglo-American? The dear old flexible ANC leadership.
I could mention GEAR, land redistribution, HIV/AIDS, disability grants, privatisation, water and electricity price hikes, lack of transformation in favour of the creation of a Bantustanoid elite, and even the deep corruption which actually outstrips even Uncle Bob's on which you prefer to focus.
Well, keep pulling the ANC to the left. It will keep you occupied and you will not need to consider any other options or even lift your heads. You have saddened me with your blind faith in three little letters - ANC - and it seems you have to maintain hopes that it has not fundamentally changed for the last several decades.
There were many points that I wanted to make besides these very obvious ones, when I get the printed version of your comments about the media conspiracy. I'll save the best for later!
Costa
PS Here is where I am at:
THE NEGLECTED POLITICS OF HIV/AIDS
Reply to Costa
Hey Costa!
It's T here, E is in the shower -- she doesn't want to join in any follow-up polemics/wrangles, but she does join in sending you love and warm hugs.
We aren't actually leaving for a few weeks, so have time at least to do a short riposte.
Don't be too sad about our loyalty to three little letters. It'll never be less than a critical one. We'll treat it more like a rough demarcation as to where the fence is; the fence that, in a time of moral crisis, one mustn't sit on, but be ready to jump on one side with both feet, and risk the present embarrassment of ridicule, rather than booking that special place in hell for remaining neutral -- or caught making common cause with the bigger enemy.
Or something like that.
In any case, there must have been times when you couldn't have taken your own loyalty to three other little letters all that seriously.
Of course I agree with many of the points you make, and share the horror and distaste, though doing almost nothing, so much less than you have, to try and redress it.
For SADC, I retain not so much faith as hope, that an institution originally founded to counter the regional effects of apartheid, can be renewed as one of the regional building blocs (sic) to counter US trade dominance; to help bring local countries together in trade union, tariff and trade alliances: what Lula and Chavez are talking about with Mercosur and the Andes pact, giving them priority before they have to deal with the NAFTA beast.
On the broader question: its not a blind faith in the ANC, more a hope that, if our loyalty is accepted, then so will our criticism be, by some who are also prepared to speak out, and renew the dream; a hope that the spirit of the liberation movement can flicker back into life among more and more of the good people still in it, including some who, having given so much and achieved so much for the country, have not so much sold out as given up.
All our "loyal criticism" may not be so bad -- after all it's got you shouting the odds on things that make the blood run cold. "Lack of transformation in favour of creation of a Bantustanoid elite."Oh lord, yes.
We v v much hope we can come by and see you, if we manage our planned trip
Best,
Tony
2nd reply from Costa
Hi There Tony!!
Shucks, I deserved the dig about my own three-letter loyalty.
Nuff said. Come through the Transkei and visit Buffalo City - uh, I mean East London..... do I? I have room for you guys to stay and the beaches around here are fabulous. I will even show you our own Mdantsane, second only to Soweto. There is lots to discuss and lots of remaining common ground from the Grays days.
Did you know that Gerald Ludi lives in White River? You should have known if you don't and you should have said if you did. He did an angry letter to "Noseweek" recently denying that he was ever as friend of Costa Gazi. What a relief!
So, come on down and I will let you help me with my book. "I Got to be an African" is the copywrit title and Mbeki wishes he had thought of it first, but then he is hardly ever first.
Watch all the spaces.
Costa
In the face of the present all-out media attack on leading figures, the latest attempt to subvert and bring down the ANC leadership, it is time for even the most critical of us to rally round our party, to defend and strengthen our movement, as a tripartite alliance. Let's look at what the real game is, and just who is undermining prospects for proper governance.
We are no loyal party claque. We -- that's everyone from us as a couple, to scores of older strugglers and stalwarts and young activists we know, to thousands we know of -- are not happy with the way our leadership has chosen, or been intimidated into the corporate capital road, so that our country is dotted with casinos instead of public job projects; our Africa policy is an embarrassing combination of Nepad and turning liberation solidarity into keeping quiet about terrible oppression in Zimbabwe; and we cannot muster a social democratic vision and programme even as mild as France or Germany, or show the fiscal policy backbone of even a Malaysia or a Chile.
But it is nonetheless our leadership, still on balance the best bunch we could hope for; and in its mix of commitment, ability and intention, if not performance, potentially one of the most decent governing teams in the world.
It is The Star front page of yesterday which spurred us to write. The attempt to smear Vice President Zuma all over the page, with a six-column photo of a spread of rondavels as his "palatial retreat" is ludicrous. It would be laughable if it were not the latest stage in a dangerous campaign. The smear strategists must be feeling that things are moving so fast their way that they can get away with such a blatant and silly ploy. Tony O'Reilly, who must have quite a few thatched rondavels to his own name, has let his minions go too far this time, to expect sustained credibility.
We gave a hoot of laughter, actually, because it reminded us of two media moments during one of our periods in exile, in Kenya in the mid-Sixties and early Seventies. It was well after Kenyatta had abandoned any attempt at progressive unity, and, to pursue his agenda of enriching not just the Kikuyu tribe, but his own section of it -- chased Odinga and other relatively progressive strugglers into opposition. One of these was Bildad Kaggia, MP and former Minister, a fellow-Kikuyu and stalwart of freedom fighter days alongside Kenyatta and others in the 1950s and early Sixties. He was annoying the new establishment by his radical stance, and by shouting the odds in favour of the freedom fighters who had lost out since the independence they fought for.
How to smear this sober, strong and popular figure? One Kenyatta Day, an annual commemoration, when the leading dozen surviving freedom fighters donned their old 'detainee' leather jackets for a public rally, President Kenyatta embarked on a litany of how well each of them had done "for themselves" since independence: this one had a big farm, that one had a business, the other had a big bus company, and so on. But Kaggia, he'd done nothing to make the best of his advantages, what kind of a leader was he?
Whoops... somebody must have told the old man that this wasn't the cleverest way to undermine Kaggia's support base. So, on the front page of Nairobi's leading daily a couple of weeks later appears a photograph of a modern, plain three-bedroomed house, with a proper roof but no frills, in a village not far from the capital. This, says the headline and caption, is Kagggia's luxury house, built at the cost of XX million shillings -- where did he get the money?
Now, as any South African over 30 should know, and younger people should easily find out, if our history teachers are doing their work, Jacob Zuma has been a most dedicated man, at the political coalface for years, playing a major part in ensuring that KwaZulu Natal has not become the focus for a Unita style rebellion, with Buthelezi as the Savimbi.
Another of the most critical role-players in the pre and early years of majority rule in South Africa, a dedicated and hugely able and intelligent man, was Mac Maharaj. If you didn't know already, you only have to read Allister Sparks to realise how much he did in two of the most critical junctures: keeping exile and internal leadership in communication towards a movement consensus about the way to proceed in the late 80s and early 90s; and that dramatic moment when he stopped the apartheid leaders from furtively restoring another potential Savimbi, the overthrown Bop leader Lucas Mangope.
Interesting, that leaders like these, who should be honoured for their vital contributions, are being hung out to dry at the behest of the very corporates who funked off with vast sums of South African money to get quoted on the international stock exchange, answerable to their foreign shareholders and who knows -- maybe as we speak, some are inflating invoices, illicitly to transfer-price more of the taxpayers money out of the country. And then shout about how badly we need Foreign Direct Investment. What a sick joke.
Nobody can say that some leading political figures have thought carefully enough over the last ten years, before accepting unlimited credit cards, easy loans or free flights or junkets or discounts. After all, it's what the corporate executives give each other every week -- and then make it a tax write-off! We won't even go into the gruesomely high salaries they pay each other in the corporate world.
That's not greed, that's just reward. Private is efficient, Private is god. Public is inefficient. Bureaucracy is evil. It must be true, because that's what the media owners and business reporters tell us, or imply in passing, a thousand tiimes through a thousand programmes, every day.
It's not a matter of excusing corruption, it's a matter of knowing what game is being played, and how high the stakes are.
And please, ANC leadership, get your act together about proper government regulation, a brake on privatisation and socially committed policy and practice. Thank you.
Tony and Eve Hall
_______________________________________________
DEBATE mailing list
DEBATE@lists.kabissa.org
http://lists.kabissa.org/mailman/listinfo/debate
From Costa Gazidis
Dear Halls,
How sad to see that your faith in an organisation can be so total and for so long.
I have been laid up with a prostate problem but can almost sit long enough for a short reply pending a fuller one on your return!
SADC is nothing more than a vehicle for South African domination of Southern Africa. The US likes it because the Mbeki gang (too strong?) have put into place all the policies that have earned them the US franchise for Southern, Central and East Africa, with limited presence in the rest.
Harry Oppenheimer was a great African. Remember those words from the mouth of Thabo Mbeki when the hoary capitalist died? He never made money out of apartheid, we are assured, only astute business practice, forerunning BEE which his dynasty wants to support and control in order to protect their interests. I have seen hundreds of ex-miners with crippling lung disease who could not get their pittance of a lump sum compensation from the MBOD and the Compensation Commissioner. The process is deeply flawed and now that some reparations are sought, who is on the side of Anglo-American? The dear old flexible ANC leadership.
I could mention GEAR, land redistribution, HIV/AIDS, disability grants, privatisation, water and electricity price hikes, lack of transformation in favour of the creation of a Bantustanoid elite, and even the deep corruption which actually outstrips even Uncle Bob's on which you prefer to focus.
Well, keep pulling the ANC to the left. It will keep you occupied and you will not need to consider any other options or even lift your heads. You have saddened me with your blind faith in three little letters - ANC - and it seems you have to maintain hopes that it has not fundamentally changed for the last several decades.
There were many points that I wanted to make besides these very obvious ones, when I get the printed version of your comments about the media conspiracy. I'll save the best for later!
Costa
PS Here is where I am at:
THE NEGLECTED POLITICS OF HIV/AIDS
Reply to Costa
Hey Costa!
It's T here, E is in the shower -- she doesn't want to join in any follow-up polemics/wrangles, but she does join in sending you love and warm hugs.
We aren't actually leaving for a few weeks, so have time at least to do a short riposte.
Don't be too sad about our loyalty to three little letters. It'll never be less than a critical one. We'll treat it more like a rough demarcation as to where the fence is; the fence that, in a time of moral crisis, one mustn't sit on, but be ready to jump on one side with both feet, and risk the present embarrassment of ridicule, rather than booking that special place in hell for remaining neutral -- or caught making common cause with the bigger enemy.
Or something like that.
In any case, there must have been times when you couldn't have taken your own loyalty to three other little letters all that seriously.
Of course I agree with many of the points you make, and share the horror and distaste, though doing almost nothing, so much less than you have, to try and redress it.
For SADC, I retain not so much faith as hope, that an institution originally founded to counter the regional effects of apartheid, can be renewed as one of the regional building blocs (sic) to counter US trade dominance; to help bring local countries together in trade union, tariff and trade alliances: what Lula and Chavez are talking about with Mercosur and the Andes pact, giving them priority before they have to deal with the NAFTA beast.
On the broader question: its not a blind faith in the ANC, more a hope that, if our loyalty is accepted, then so will our criticism be, by some who are also prepared to speak out, and renew the dream; a hope that the spirit of the liberation movement can flicker back into life among more and more of the good people still in it, including some who, having given so much and achieved so much for the country, have not so much sold out as given up.
All our "loyal criticism" may not be so bad -- after all it's got you shouting the odds on things that make the blood run cold. "Lack of transformation in favour of creation of a Bantustanoid elite."Oh lord, yes.
We v v much hope we can come by and see you, if we manage our planned trip
Best,
Tony
2nd reply from Costa
Hi There Tony!!
Shucks, I deserved the dig about my own three-letter loyalty.
Nuff said. Come through the Transkei and visit Buffalo City - uh, I mean East London..... do I? I have room for you guys to stay and the beaches around here are fabulous. I will even show you our own Mdantsane, second only to Soweto. There is lots to discuss and lots of remaining common ground from the Grays days.
Did you know that Gerald Ludi lives in White River? You should have known if you don't and you should have said if you did. He did an angry letter to "Noseweek" recently denying that he was ever as friend of Costa Gazi. What a relief!
So, come on down and I will let you help me with my book. "I Got to be an African" is the copywrit title and Mbeki wishes he had thought of it first, but then he is hardly ever first.
Watch all the spaces.
Costa
Comments
Post a Comment