States Cut Back and Layoffs Hit Even Recipients of Stimulus Aid

September 5, 2009

States Cut Back and Layoffs Hit Even Recipients of Stimulus Aid

By MICHAEL COOPER
New York Times

ST. CLOUD, Minn. — It was just five months ago that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. made the New Flyer bus factory here a symbol of the stimulus. With several cabinet secretaries in tow, he held a town-hall-style meeting at the factory, where he praised the company as “an example of the future” and said that it stood to get more orders for its hybrid electric buses thanks to the $8.4 billion that the stimulus law devotes to mass transit.

But last month, the company that administration officials had pictured as a stimulus success story began laying off 320 people, or 13 percent of its work force, having discovered how cutbacks at the state level can dampen the boost provided by the federal stimulus money. The Chicago Transit Authority did use some of its stimulus money to buy 58 new hybrid buses from New Flyer. But Chicago had to shelve plans to order another 140 buses from them after the state money that it had hoped to use to pay for them failed to materialize. The delayed order scrambled New Flyer’s production schedule for the rest of the year, and led to the layoffs.

One of those laid off was David Wahl, 52, who had worked there for a decade and who sat behind the vice president at the town-hall-style meeting, soaking up the optimism of the moment. “With mass transit being pushed so hard,” Mr. Wahl recalled, “I figured I’d be able to work until I was 75.”

The layoffs at New Flyer are a vivid illustration of the way that some of the economic impact of the $787 billion federal stimulus law is being diluted by the actions state and local governments are taking to weather the recession.

While the stimulus law cut federal taxes to inject money into the economy quickly, at least 30 states have raised taxes since January, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal fiscal policy group. The stimulus will spend $27.5 billion in federal money on highway projects, but at least 19 states are planning to cut their highway spending this year, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association, a trade group. And as the stimulus devotes $8.4 billion to mass transit, transit systems across the nation have been forced to cut service, raise fares and delay capital spending.

Dean Baker, an economist who was an author of a paper called “The State and Local Drag on the Stimulus,” said that while the stimulus had undoubtedly helped states, the cutbacks and tax increases at the state and local level threaten to offset much of its economic impact.

“The economy doesn’t care whether the dollars are coming from the federal or the state and local level,” said Mr. Baker, a co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Mr. Biden did not respond directly to news of the layoffs at New Flyer, but another administration official said the stimulus money was expected to help transit agencies buy almost 8,000 new buses, which would help New Flyer and its competitors. Sasha Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Department of Transportation, said stimulus dollars had helped bus companies survive the economic downtown, and would have an increasing effect through the year.

“Without the boost provided by Recovery Act orders, bus companies like New Flyer would be even harder hit than they have been,” Ms. Johnson said.

In St. Cloud, though, all that red ink from the states dimmed the hopes for more federally financed green jobs, for now. Chicago transit officials — who noted recently that their older buses had enough miles on them to have gone to the moon and back — estimated that they needed $7 billion for capital improvements. But the State of Illinois, facing budget pressure, agreed to spend only $2.7 billion, and not all of that will go to Chicago. The city’s hopes for another 140 buses from here were put off.

New Flyer Industries, which is based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, said over the summer that it still had a large backlog of bus orders, including some from California, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Rochester, that would use stimulus money. But because its buses are engineered to order for each customer, the company said in a statement, it cannot easily switch its production schedule to fill the gaps left by the delayed order.

So the company plans to cut 320 jobs, to reduce its production schedule to 36 units a week from 50, and to close its plants during the last two weeks of the year. Glenn Asham, New Flyer’s chief financial officer, declined to comment further.

Even before New Flyer announced its layoffs, St. Cloud’s mayor, David Kleis, was critical of the stimulus law. He said the two small road projects that were approved by the state were low on the city’s list of priorities, while the city’s top priority — widening a busy, accident-prone intersection in a commercial area — did not make the grade. Neither did his applications for money to pay for more police officers, or for the city’s wastewater treatment plant. “The expectations were just very high here after that town hall meeting,” Mr. Kleis said.

Mr. Wahl said the loss of his job was still sinking in. He joined New Flyer soon after it opened the St. Cloud plant in 1999 — he was the 118th employee, he said — and worked on everything from power steering to putting on side panels to installing engines. When the work force unionized, he became president of the local. Last November, he moved to a nonunion job working with transit systems as they prepared to take delivery of the buses.

“It was a lot easier on the body,” he said. But the switch to a nonunion job also made it easier for him to be in the first round of layoffs, despite his 10 years with the company.

“First it’s shock, and then you get angry,” Mr. Wahl said. “And then you wonder, What am I going to do?”

So far he has filed for unemployment benefits, and a couple of days after his 52nd birthday, he drove to the Workforce Center in Crow Wing County to see if he might qualify for help getting a driver’s license allowing him to become a long-haul truck driver.

The stimulus law may have failed to save Mr. Wahl’s job, but it is helping him out in a way that he hoped he would never need: thanks to a provision in the law that pays 65 percent of the cost of continuing health insurance for the unemployed under the Cobra law, Mr. Wahl’s health insurance bills will now be closer to $400 a month instead of the $1,200 they would have been otherwise.

US environmental agency says mountain-top mining permit decisions will be coming shortly

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson Thursday said her agency is now reviewing 84 mountaintop mining permits approved by the Army of Corps of Engineers on whether to approve dozens of applications from mountaintop-mining companies to dispose of rock and other debris in valleys and if the applications hold up under the Federal Clean Water Act or will have to be ultimately vetoed.

In an interview with National Public Radio, Jackson said the decisions will have to be made within the next few weeks.

Mountaintop mining involves using explosives to blast off the topsoff mountains in order to get at coal seams under the surface. The technique has become increasingly common — surface mining operations in central Appalachia account for about 10% of U.S. coal production. But the EPA says that streams have been contaminated in the process and some forest lands have been destroyed.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the EPA, the Secretary of the Interior and the Army Corps of Engineers in June that has implemented tougher federal regulation of mountaintop coal mining in six states. The Corps and the EPA have established a process for CWA Section 404 permit applications for surface coal mining activities that would discharge fill material into U.S. waterways.

At the time, National Mining Association Senior Vice President Carol Raulston said the process “adds further uncertainty to the policy/policies governing permit applications for surface coal mining at a time when employment and economic uncertainty are not what we need.”

Meanwhile, the reluctance of President Obama’s choice for the Office of Surface Mining to comment during his August 6th Senate confirmation hearing on mountaintop mining or what changes the Obama Administration might propose has drawn fire from environmental special interest groups.

The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources has yet to vote on the confirmation of Pennsylvania mining regulator Joseph G. Pizarchik as the new director of the OSM. The committee is expected to vote on his confirmation when the Senate reconvenes after Labor Day.

In a recent statement, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) Executive Director Jeff Ruch said, “Putting forward a nominee who claims ignorance on a central issue so that his true position cannot be discerned is the sort of cynical politics I thought President Obama vowed to change.”

Glenda Owens, one of the Bush Administration’s leading defenders of mountain-top mining, will remain as deputy OSM director, which has also disappointed PEER.

Source:
Mineweb, “US environmental agency says mountain-top mining permit decisions will be coming shortly“, accessed September 3, 2009
Wall Street Journal, “EPA to Soon Decide on Mountaintop-Mining Permits“, accessed September 3,2009

Zimpapers Launches New Newspaper

Zimpapers launches new newspaper

Herald Reporter

Zimpapers yesterday launched a new newspaper — H-Metro — that reports on issues and events in Harare’s the Metropolitan province.

The tabloid hits the streets on Monday and will cost US50 cents. The launch also coincided with the fifth anniversary of the Southern Times — a joint venture regional newspaper between Zimpapers and New Era of Namibia.

Speaking at the launch and anniversary celebrations, Media, Information and Publicity Minister Webster Shamu said the H-Metro would indeed dominate the Harare market.

“Zimpapers have identified a niche market in which this popular tabloid is set to occupy and, I am sure, it is set to dominate when competition eventually comes,” he said.

Minister Shamu stressed the need for journalists and marketers to have a feel of the people, write objectively and to avoid sensationalism.

“It cannot be a vehicle for profitable decadence and ruination of personalities. This is the balance, which Zimpapers is now being called upon to establish and maintain, particularly given the niche market it is now about to enter,” he said.

Minister Shamu said the Southern Times would be strengthened and would enter into new markets, particularly Botswana and Mozam-bique, where the paper would be printed in Portuguese.

“The Southern Times expresses the determination by our two governments to deepen and expand relations beyond historical and political foundations. The two sister companies are one on many matters. We need to validate this openness in our small way,” he said.

Minister Shamu said the founding of the Southern Times represented a correct reading of the world situation and an attempt to manage the flow of information by those in Southern Africa.

Former Namibian Information and Broadcasting Minister Nangolo Mbumba, former Minister of Information and Publicity Professor Jonathan Moyo, chairman of NamZim board Mr Mathew Goeseb and various business partners from Zimbabwe, South Africa and Zambia attended the function.

Also present were Zimpapers CEO Mr Justin Mutasa, Zimpapers Group Editor-in-Chief Pikirayi Deketeke, editors of other Zimpapers publications and managers and representatives of other sister companies.

In Unemployment Report, Signs of a ‘Jobless Recovery’

September 5, 2009

In Unemployment Report, Signs of a Jobless Recovery

By PETER S. GOODMAN and JACK HEALY
New York Times

The unemployment rate surged to 9.7 percent in August, signaling that joblessness and financial anxiety were likely to endure in millions of American homes for many months.

The Labor Department’s latest employment report, released Friday, added weight to a growing belief that, at least technically, the economy had already escaped the grip of recession. Though 216,000 net jobs vanished in August, the losses continued to moderate from their worst numbers of the year.

Yet the report also lent credence to a deepening consensus that, even as the economy resumes expansion, the recovery was likely to be weak, prompting most companies to hold back from aggressive hiring.

“In the context of a full-blooded recovery, this report is disappointing,” said Alan Ruskin, an economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland in Stamford, Conn. “We’re still clawing our way back.”

Many experts envision a jobless recovery, in which the economy grows but job losses persist. That would reprise the end of the last recession in 2001, when payrolls continued to decline for nearly two years afterward.

Such an outcome would confront the Obama administration with a potentially nettlesome political problem heading into next year’s midterm elections. After the government unleashed $787 billion to stimulate economic growth, and after it bailed out financial institutions and the auto industry, the unemployment rate exceeds worst-case projections envisioned by the administration early this year.

On Friday, Jared Bernstein, the top economic adviser to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said the picture would look far worse were it not for the stimulus spending. He added that more help was on the way as the government distributed the remaining two-thirds of the package.

“Our interventions have contributed to significant cuts in the rate of job loss,” Mr. Bernstein said. “We’re headed in the right direction, but we’re far from out of the woods. There are simply too many Americans seeking work.”

If the jobless rate continues to climb, as is widely expected, that could generate pressure for another stimulus spending package. But given intensifying concern about the size of federal budget deficits — now projected to exceed $9 trillion within a decade — any new spending could be politically perilous.

The latest snapshot of the nation’s labor situation testified to the drastic improvement since early this year, when nearly 700,000 jobs a month were disappearing. Yet it also underscored the continued bleakness of the economic landscape.

“It’s a good picture compared to where we were, which was just a free fall,” said Dean Baker, a director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “But compared to anything else, this is just a horrible report. The rate of decline is slowing, but it’s not going to stop. We’re likely on a path toward more than 10 percent unemployment.”

Most economists see recent improvements as the result of pulling away from the disaster of last fall — when the investment giant Lehman Brothers collapsed, spreading fear throughout the financial system — and not a sign of vigorous growth ahead.

After years of borrowing against soaring home values, tapping credit cards and harvesting stock market winnings to spend in excess of their incomes, millions of households are being forced to conserve. That limits consumer spending, which makes up 70 percent of the nation’s economy. And that makes businesses that might otherwise hire and expand more inclined to hunker down.

“Household balance sheets are shot,” Mr. Ruskin said. From here, spending “has to come from income, and income has to come from employment, and at this juncture it looks like employment will only improve very slowly.”

The unemployment rate is up from 9.4 percent in July, when the economy lost 276,000 jobs.

The jobs report underscored the broad reach of the labor crisis, which has imposed austerity even on those still employed. In the last year, average weekly earnings have increased by only 0.8 percent — a decline, after factoring in the rising cost of goods. So many companies have trimmed working hours that paychecks have shrunk.

The so-called underemployment rate — which counts the jobless along with those working part time because their hours have been cut or they cannot find full-time jobs — reached 16.8 percent in August.

In recent months, the economy has benefited from a slowdown in the pace at which businesses have slashed inventories, prompting factories to expand production. Auto sales have been aided by the cash-for-clunkers program, which gave buyers incentives to trade in cars. Home sales have been stimulated by a tax credit for first-time homebuyers, an inducement that expires in November.

After those programs wear off, the nation may again confront a fundamentally weak economy.

“Everybody is looking around saying, ‘Where is a robust recovery going to come from?’ and not finding it,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “We’re going to have elevated unemployment for four years to come.”

In Williamsburg, Va., Ginny Hoover, 49, has remained unemployed since she lost her job at a pharmaceutical company in November 2007. She has maxed out her credit cards and borrowed money from friends. She broke her apartment lease and moved in with her boyfriend. But other than an offer to sell insurance door-to-door for commissions only, she has found no work.

“I thought maybe a month or two and I’d have another job,” Ms. Hoover said. “I never would have guessed that it would be as brutal as it was out there.”

Despite increased factory production, manufacturing shed 63,000 jobs in August. Construction lost 65,000 jobs. Health care remained a rare bright spot, adding nearly 28,000 jobs.

“I don’t think businesses will hire back anytime soon,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at Decision Economics. “Companies are rewarded by the stock markets for not hiring and keeping their costs down. We will see another jobless recovery.”

In Delray Beach, Fla., Donna Angelillo lost her job as a property manager in May and quickly exhausted her savings. Her $1,000 monthly unemployment check does not cover her $1,030 monthly rent.

Jobs are scarce, she said. Past-due bills are abundant.

“I don’t have September rent, but right now I’m more concerned about the electricity,” she said. “Either today or tomorrow, they’re going to shut it off. I’m getting desperate.”

G20 Clash Over How to Stop Another Banking Crisis

G20 clash over how to stop another banking crisis

MATT FALLOON AND PAUL CARREL | LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - Sep 05 2009 06:54

Finance leaders clashed on Friday over how to stop banks plunging the world into another crisis.

While new International Monetary Fund forecasts obtained by Reuters showed the world economy looks finally on the mend, G20 policymakers gathered in London are divided on how to ensure any recovery lasts and bankers don’t run riot with risk again.

They all agree economic life-support packages have to stay in place for now, but a G7 source told Reuters France and Germany oppose a United States plan to get banks to hold more capital. The Europeans also want much tougher curbs on bankers’ pay and France is pressing for strict limits.

“Public opinion in most European countries, including at home, here in the UK and in the United States, has been flabbergasted, horrified by the amount of compensation paid,” French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has called for strengthened bank capital requirements aimed at curbing some of the risky lending practices blamed for the crisis. Lagarde said she could not see the point.

British finance minister and meeting host Alistair Darling told Reuters he supported the US plan but admitted there were differences between policymakers. He said it was more important that no country was complacent about the recovery despite signs the world economy is healing.

The IMF now forecasts the world economy to shrink 1,3% in 2009, a shade less than its April forecast of a 1,4% contraction, and grow 2,9% in 2010, revised up from 2,5% previously.

But policymakers are cautious about declaring victory yet, especially given most major economies are only expected to post sluggish growth next year, with Germany remaining in recession, while layoffs are set to increase.

“People are at risk of saying the job’s done, now we can throttle back,” Darling told Reuters. “We’ve made those mistakes before — most notably, in America, in the late 1930s, [they] called it wrong and got themselves back into a recession again.”

Scars
More than two years of financial upheaval have left deep economic scars in many countries. With unemployment high and banks reluctant to lend, growth may be subdued for a while, putting pressure on governments to maintain supports.

What financial markets want to know is when they can expect governments to start withdrawing the trillions of stimulus pumped into economies, or raise interest rates. For now officials are only willing to talk about developing strategies with little clarity on when they may be applied.

G7 sources have told Reuters that the G20’s communiqué, due on Saturday, will likely maintain the pledge to keep policy accommodative for as long as was needed.

“Unwinding the stimulus too soon runs a real risk of derailing the recovery, with potentially significant implications for growth and unemployment,” IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said at a conference in Berlin.

Leaders from Brazil, Russia, India and China, the four emerging markets that comprise the “BRIC” economies, met with Geithner on Friday, They called in a communiqué for a more powerful voice in the global financing agencies — the IMF and World Bank — than the United States and EU have so far offered.

Regulatory environment
Once the recovery is firmly on track, banking regulations are likely to become more restrictive. Geithner called on Thursday for higher capital levels at all banks and even more stringent requirements for those that could pose a threat to overall financial stability.

He wants international agreement by the end of next year, with new standards implemented by the end of 2012.

ING analyst Rob Carnell said that while tighter capital rules were probably “not a bad idea”, clamping down could constrict lending and put a heavy burden on banks struggling to recover from heavy losses.

“Raising capital requirements for banks to levels that will provide a much deeper buffer against future asset crises may also make it harder for a repeat of this crisis, but when capital is still being eaten up with rising default and delinquency rates, it is a very tough hurdle for banks to clear,” he said.

“It is also totally at odds with governments’ other demands that banks increase lending,” he added. - Reuters

Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-09-05-g20-clash-over-how-to-stop-another-banking-crisis

Zimbabwe Traditional Leaders, Legislators Off to Libya for Anniversaryof September 1 Revolution

Chiefs, legislators off to Libya for anniversaries

Herald Reporter

A delegation of local chiefs and three legislators left the country yesterday for Libya to join in the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the September 1 Revolution and the 10th anniversary of the African Union.

The September 1 Revolution toppled the Western backed King Idris.

The delegation is led by the president of the Chief’s Council, Chief Fortune Charumbira, and comprises 10 other traditional leaders and three legislators.

“We are going there as part of the Sadc delegation on the invitation by the brother leader to participate in the anniversary of their revolution. Apart from participating in the commemoration, the trip will afford us an opportunity to meet with other delegations of traditional leaders from other sub-regions of the continent,” he said.

Chief Charumbira said that as chiefs, they hoped to share experiences with other traditional leaders.

“We are very keen to share experiences and practices with other countries with respect to their institutions as traditional leaders,” said Chief Charumbira.

The Chief’s Council president said this interaction was important given that Zimbabwe had embarked on constitutional making exercise.

“The interaction with other traditional leaders will also inform our input into the constitutional review process with respect to the status of the institution, legal and other institutional frameworks and development in the realm of culture and customs,” he said.

The chief’s delegation includes Chief Charumbira’s deputy, Chief Mtshane Khumalo, Chief Ntabeni, Chief Masaraure, Chief Ngungumbane, Chief Gampu, Chief Chitanga, Chief Nembire, Chief Nebiri, Chief Masendu and Chief Chimombe.

Meanwhile, the three other legislators who are members of the Pan-African Parliament are attending the celebrations, but will also take part in the 10th anniversary celebrations of the AU and discuss results of the AU Summit held in Sirte, Libya, in July.

The three are Kadoma Central legislator, Editor Matamisa, Bikita Senator Rugare Kokera and Patrick Dube of Gwanda Central.

North Korea ‘At Final Uranium Stage’

Friday, September 04, 2009
12:19 Mecca time, 09:19 GMT

N Korea ‘at final uranium stage’

US officials have long suspected North Korea has been operating a parallel uranium weapons programme

North Korea is in the final stages of enriching uranium, the country’s state media has said, a process that could give it a second way to make nuclear bombs.

According to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), North Korean officials have informed the UN Security Council that the process of enrichment was entering “the completion phase”.

The senior US envoy to North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, said the enrichment claim was “of concern”.

“I think for all of us, it reconfirms the necessity to maintain a coordinated position on the need for complete, verifiable denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula,” Bosworth said.

The country has already tested two plutonium-based nuclear weapons and has long been suspected of running a parallel effort to develop uranium-based weapons.

Reaction to sanctions

KCNA said the North’s decision to push ahead with its nuclear programs was a reaction to Security Council’s moves to tighten sanctions against the country following its second test of a nuclear weapon in May.

The report called the resolution a “wanton violation” of North Korea’s sovereignty and dignity.

“We are prepared for both dialogue and sanctions,” the report quoted a letter to the head of the Security Council as saying.

“If some permanent members of the [council] wish to put sanctions first before dialogue, we would respond with bolstering our nuclear deterrence first before we meet them in a dialogue.”

The letter pointedly blamed the Security Council’s decision to impose sanctions following its April rocket launch, while taking no action following one by South Korea last month.

“Had the UNSC, from the very beginning, not made an issue of the DPRK’s (North Korea’s) peaceful satellite launch in the same way as it kept silent over the satellite launch conducted by South Korea on August 25, 2009, it would not have compelled the DPRK to take strong counteraction such as its 2nd nuclear test,” the letter said.

Agreements scrapped

The US, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea have been negotiating with North Korea for years in an effort to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for aid and other concessions.

However, North Korea walked away from the talks earlier this year, saying the so-called six-party process was dead and announcing that it was scrapping all previous agreements.

North Korea has said it needs nuclear weapons as a security guarantee against what it sees as the “hostile policies” of the US, which has 28,500 troops based in South Korea.

Balbina Hwang, a former US assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs, told Al Jazeera that North Korea’s announcement was “reiterating the same message they have been sending since January, which is that they are not interested in six-party talks”.

She said the North had decided the talks were not working for them, because it was going to force them to “a very critical step – namely were they going to give up their nuclear weapons or not?”

“What they’re doing is telling the UN that sanctions will not work, that they will continue with weapons development of weapons of international rules, and instead that they’d rather deal bilaterally with South Korea, the US and China – because that’s their best way of keeping the regime going and also being able continue with their nuclear weapons.”

‘Provocative’

South Korea’s foreign ministry has expressed regret over the North’s announcement, urging Pyongyang to return to the stalled disarmament talks.

“The North’s move to continue provocative steps… can never be tolerated. We will deal with North Korea’s threats and provocative acts in a stern and consistent manner,” the ministry said in a statement.

Al Jazeera’s Nick Spicer, reporting from the United Nations, said the North Korean statement will likely be seen as a defiant move, especially given that the US has just taken on the rotating presidency of the Security Council.

The US has said it will make non-proliferation the top priority of its time in the presidency.

Our correspondent says the North Korean announcement will also likely be seized upon by critics of the Obama administration to say policy that the White House’s policy of engagement with North Korea and other so-called rogue regimes is a failure.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

The South African National Question and Nation-Building

ANC Today Viewpoint

by Buti Manamela

The national question and nation-building

The issues of nation-formation and nation-building will remain in our society for a while given the fact that racism was and still is, rooted in all institutions of society. However, the resolution of the national question cannot remain a permanent feature of our society. If this were to be the case, the historic mission and mandate of the National Liberation Movement (NLM) would be defeated, mainly because it is about attaining a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society.

The 2007 Strategy and Tactics document of the ANC says:

“The main content of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) is the liberation of Africans in particular and Blacks in general from political and socio-economic bondage.” It goes further to declare that this, “…means uplifting the quality of life of all South Africans, especially the poor, the majority of whom are African and female.”

It is important to emphasise that the target for the NDR is the poor because the objective of our struggle is to unite all the oppressed in our country for the formation of one nation.

The 1969 ANC Morogoro Conference succinctly confirmed the need for the unity of the oppressed and their drive towards defeating Apartheid in the following lines:

“The African…is not the only oppressed national group in South Africa. The two million strong Coloured community and three-quarter million Indians suffer varying forms of national humiliation, discrimination and oppression. They are part of the non-white base upon which rests white privilege. As such they constitute an integral part of the social forces ranged against white supremacy. Despite deceptive and, often, meaningless concessions they share a common fate with their African brothers and their own liberation is inextricably bound up with the liberation of the African people.”

The objective linked to this is not only the defeat of white supremacy, but also that if we were to advance nation building and nation formation - we also have the task of “…liberating the white community from the false ideology of racial superiority and the insecurity attached to oppressing others”. It is important to note that this is not merely a tactical consideration but a strategic objective to liberate the most oppressed of all “in the league of the oppressed” whilst in the process “liberating the oppressor”.

“But none of this detracts from the basically national context of our liberation drive. In the last resort it is only the success of the national democratic revolution which - by destroying the existing social and economic relationships - will bring with it a correction of the historical injustices perpetrated against the indigenous majority and thus lay the basis for a new - and deeper internationalist - approach.” (Morogoro: 1969)

Therefore, the attainment of a national democratic society can only lie in the destruction of Apartheid’s social and economic relations and the continued existence of such relations. There are clear signs that the form and content of our national democratic revolution is still facing a long path towards attainment.

Historically, the twin threats to this strategic objective in our society and our movement have been “white racism” on the one hand; and narrow African chauvinism on the other hand. These twin threats have always manifested themselves in the super-structural institutions of our society. It would be suicidal to deny the continued presence of racism in our society, but even more dangerous for the attainment of national unity and nation-formation is the denial of narrow African chauvinism.

The danger of these twin threats is articulated in Nelson Mandela’s famous Statement from the Dock:

“I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

These twin threats are not on an equal pedestal. The dominant contradiction that faces our society is national contradiction, whilst the fundamental one is class contradiction. Emphasis should also be made that the reason why we need to deal with both in almost equal terms is that the narrow African chauvinism is not an effective tool of defeating racism, but can also act to reinforce racial tensions as people may withdraw into their racial cocoons.

In essence, the task of “liberation of Africans in particular and blacks in general” lies in the success of the movement in using the platform of building a non-racial society. The two, meaning, the task and the platform, are mutually inclusive and interconnected and failure to maintain this interconnection exposes the inability to
overcome white racism, on the one hand, and black chauvinism, on the other.

Let us look at both threats each in turn. In our society there still exists white racism that we should confront, expose and deal with. The figures released by Commission on Employment Equity (CEE) shows that white people occupy 74% of senior positions in the private sector. This is a serious indictment on white capital’s commitment to honour their role in nation-building and nation-formation.

Fraught race relations will remain for some time in a nation where everything, from division of labour, composition of national sporting teams, political preferences, cultural preferences and every social facet of our life was historically determined on the basis of race. We need to intensify progressive nationalism and ensure that it triumphs against this.

This means affirming blacks in the economy, changing the division of labour at both junior and senior level in both the public and private sector; transforming social relations in education, access to health, shelter and also ensuring that we begin to confront problems of equality and wealth distribution by breaking the back of racism and racial exclusion.

Narrow African chauvinism is a tendency and dangerous phenomenon of seeking to redefine the objective of the movement at different periods as installation of African majoritarianism. The National Liberation Movement has always been able to transcend beyond this narrow perception and strategic objective of the NDR as it recognised that ours is Colonialism of a Special Type.

Those who held this “elitist” view always combined their narrow objective with an anti-communist agenda that sought to isolate and distinguish between “white revolutionaries and white reactionaries”. This elitist tendency has always hid its narrow objective under the veil of seeking to represent the interests of the black majority. The tendency emerged with the breakaway of the PAC from the ANC by Leballo; the expulsion of the Group of Eight immediately after the Morogoro Conference; and now recently, the breakaway by Shikota. (For more on this, see Mavimbela’s article titled “The Shikota Phenomenon - A Counter-Revolutionary Tendency”).

Thus, the Strategy and Tactics of the ANC from Morogoro declared that:

“Those belonging to the other oppressed groups and those few white revolutionaries who show themselves ready to make common cause with our aspirations, must be fully integrated on the basis of individual equality. Approached in the right spirit these two propositions do not stand in conflict but reinforce one another. Equality of participation in our national front does not mean a mechanical parity between the various national groups.”

It further went on to declare that the “Coloured and Indian people have often in the past, by their actions, shown that they form part of the broad sweep towards liberation.”

Morogoro further declared the elitist nature of those who opposed the main content of the NDR by declaring that “our nationalism must not be confused with chauvinism or narrow nationalism of a previous epoch. It must not be confused with the classical drive by an elitist group among the oppressed people to gain ascendancy so that they can replace the oppressor in the exploitation of the mass.”

This tendency can only lead to, and may even strike concessions for, either modernised forms of black or white Bantustans . They may not see the need to break the barriers, economic or political that is entrenched in many localities in our country. They may even seek to promote some of these tendencies. The main reason why it would seek to do so would be to lazily assume elitist leadership of society by wishing away whites in order to easily attain a “nation”.

Equally, this tendency stems from the narrow definition of nation as being defined through language, race and culture whilst undermining progressive elements and the realistic challenges of the national formation in our society. Because of its backward nature, like its twin of white racism, it may pretend and sugarcoat some of its more conservative demands with legitimate demands for nation building.

But this tendency is even more dangerous for us as the youth as we face the challenge of nation building for a future South Africa. Our role as youth formations is to lead all young people, irrespective of their culture, without patronising them into constituting quotas or seeking to attain parity. The Progressive Youth Alliance has, for instance, the task of winning the coloured and white population in the Western Cape over to the objectives of the NDR instead of seeking to outgrow them by importing young black South Africans from the Eastern Cape.

It is a challenge also for us to win over, and not to hate, young white South Africans in our universities to appreciate our objectives of a national democratic society as a way of “liberating [them] from white supremacist ideology”. We also have the task of winning over the Indian youth in KwaZulu Natal on the same objective. We need to accept them into our fold without question their credentials or scaring them off with limited, narrow and elitist “black paranoia”.

The progressive and epochal Morogoro (1969) document states that:

“Until then [the attainment of liberation], the national sense of grievance is the most potent revolutionary force which must be harnessed.”

And what will easily constitute the national sense of grievance remains the class question. This, of course, is the debate for another time.

Buti Manamela is an ANC Member of Parliament and the National Secretary of the Young Communist League of South Africa

Is there a nice side to radical Islamism?

From the Inbox: Bristol Bay’s Endangered Wildlife Needs Your Voice

Don’t Drill in the Home of the Steller Sea Lion and Other Endangered Animals! Forward to friends Bristol Bay, Alaska, is home to the world’s largest run of wild sockeye salmon, provides critical habitat for the endangered Steller sea lion and North Pacific right whale and is offshore from one of the world’s largest concentrations of sea bird colonies. But unless we take action to stop a Bush-era drilling plan, it could also be the home of the latest oil and gas development Recognizing the potential damage of oil and gas developments, the U.S. government bought back previous leases in Bristol Bay during the 1990s at taxpayer expense to prevent more drilling there. But President Bush opened Bristol Bay and other Arctic Ocean locations back up in his leasing plan. The environmental impacts of oil and gas development in the waters of the U. S. Arctic are not adequately assessed. Until a comprehensive, science-based Arctic Ocean plan is developed, we must impose a “time-out” from all oil and gas related activities. Urge Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar to permanently remove Bristol Bay from current and future leasing plans and defer oil and gas activities and new leasing in the Arctic Ocean Thank you, LiAnna Care2 and ThePetitionSite Team Take action link: http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/AFPA./zJp2/147Z P.S. Care2 just launched a new look for our click-to-donate pages! Your free daily click generates a real cash donation from our sponsors for nonprofits. Click once a day, every day and make a real difference for rainforests, big cats, children and more: www.care2.com/click-to-donate