Afghanistan and the White House - can you spell V-I-E-T-N-A-M?

Reading the press accounts and watching the media coverage of the ongoing debate in the Obama Administration over just what our strategy is and will be in Afghanistan unfortunately reminds of the late 1960’s and a similar debate on what to do in Vietnam. Do we give the mission to the generals and properly resource their strategy and tactics to execute that mission, or does the White House micromanage the war from the West Wing?

If you recall the meddling from the White House in Vietnam - down to the actual daily targets to be bombed - you can see it starting again. When you have Vice President Joe Biden - whose only military expertise is listening to stories that his Army National Guard son might have overheard while serving as a military lawyer in Iraq - offering strategies that conflict with General Stanley McChrystal, the general on the ground with decades of experience, you have to wonder. When Senator Carl Levin - whose military experience pales in comparison to Joe Biden’s - downplays General McChrystal as just someone down chain of command, you have to worry. Military strategy formulated in the Vice President’s office and the Senate does not inspire confidence.

The only person in the inner circle with any meaningful military experience is national security advisor, retired Marine general James Jones, and he has not ventured his own opinion. If his stance on Afghanistan policy is anything like his stance on Iran’s nuclear ambitions, don’t expect anything other than the administration’s nebulous line. Jones must be one of the few people left that are not convinced that Iran is attempting to develop a nuclear weapon.

So, who is President Obama going to trust? His political cronies who might be superb at organizing activists in inner city Chicago, or a professional military staff with years of training and experience? President George Bush listened to his generals and let them execute the mission of removing Saddam Husayn - a major sccess. Then, however, he changed the mission to one of occupation and nation building based on misguided advice of his political counselors. Now we appear to be watching the same mistake that President Johnson made in the 1960’s, that President Bush made after successfully removing Saddam - listening to politicians instead of soldiers.

As I have said and written on numerous occasions, we need to re-evaluate what the mission is in Afghanistan. That debate needs to include politicians to be sure, but not in the formulation of actual strategy and tactics. The White House - which includes Biden - should define the mission and order Secretary of Defense Gates to determine the strategy and tactics, as well as the resources required to accomplish the task.

If the mission is to hunt down and destroy the remnants of al-Qa’idah, then Afghanistan is probably not the best venue for that operation. If that is in fact the mission, then the President better start looking at operations in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. There has been little al-Qa’idah presence in Afghanistan since late 2001. In the last few years, thanks to the CIA drone operations and Pakistani military incursions in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border tribal areas, al-Qa’idah has largely moved from Pakistan as wel, although some remain. Others initially moved to Saudi Arabia, but after being decimated by Saudi security forces, most have moved to Yemen and Somalia.

If the mission in Afghanistan is to defeat the Taliban and provide security so that Afghanistan can stand up as a country, fine, but say so. To continue claiming that the presence of almost 70,000 American troops plus scores of thousands of Afghan and NATO forces is to defeat al-Qa’idah is somewhere between disingenuous and misleading, or perhaps just naive. Some pundits have gone further - Council of Foreign Relations president Richard Haass has stated that with the departure of al-Qa’idah, Afghanistan is no longer a war of necessity, but Obama’s war of choice.

Whatever the decision, it needs to be made now. The longer the President and Secretary Gates publicly discuss the various options and strategies, the more disoriented and confused we appear. That sends a signal to our enemies that now is the time to create what insurgents term a “significant emotional event.” A significant emotional event - a classic insurgent tactic - is one that galvanizes your enemy’s public opinion, resulting in a demand that the targeted government end its involvement in the war.

Knowing they cannot defeat American and allied forces in the field, the insurgents will try to shift the battle to public opinion in the United States. It was the Tet Offensive in Vietnam in 1968 that was the significant emotional event of that war, despite the fact that the actual combat virtually destroyed the Viet Cong as a viable fighting force. This weekend’s mass attacks on two remote outposts in Nuristan province are just such operations.

The President needs to make a decision, then get out of his generals’ way. Either that, or repeat the mistakes of Johnson and Vietnam.

Guatemala: UN voices concern over recent election of Supreme Court judges

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and an independent United Nations human rights expert today voiced concern over the manner of the recent election of judges to the Supreme Court in Guatemala, saying the process was rushed and lacked transparency and objectivity.

UN pays tribute after designer of iconic logo dies at 102

A senior United Nations official paid tribute today to the designer of the original emblem for the world body, Donal McLaughlin Jr., who died peacefully in his sleep last week at the age of 102.

Nestle Bows to Western Pressure

Nestle bows to Western pressure

HR-Reuters

Global food leader Nestle’s Zimbabwe unit has stopped buying milk from Gushungo Farm, owned by the First Family, following pressure from Western nations that wanted the firm to adhere to the illegal economic sanctions regime that bids multinational corporations to stop doing business with Zimbabwean entities.

Nestle had been under intense pressure over the past few weeks and despite initial resistance that it would never stop its Zimbabwe operations, the company finally caved in to Western demands that it stops buying milk from Gushungo farm as part of Western protest over the land reform programme.

Nestle’s argument was that it has been operating in Zimbabwe for over 50 years and did not see reason in pulling out.

However, in a statement on its website on Friday, Nestle said: “In light of the recent controversy surrounding our relationship with the Gushungo Dairy Estate, we believe that this announcement reflects our long-term commitment to Zimbabwe while acknowledging the specific circumstances around these events.”

Nestle’s decision to pull out of the deal came after international media coverage of the milk purchases put the company under the spotlight.

Nestle said its Zimbabwe unit had started buying the milk on a temporary basis in February this year because a local marketing firm which dominates the milk industry was unable to make purchases during an economic crisis.

“This helped prevent a further deterioration in food supplies in Zimbabwe at that time,” said the company of its decision to purchase milk from eight farms, including Gushungo Farm.

The Government’s decision to implement the land reform programme, drew heavy criticism from Western countries whose kith and kin were dispossessed of land. The land reform policy was meant to address historical land ownership imbalances.

In a September 28 statement, Nestle said its business with Gushungo Investment accounted for between 10 and 15 percent of the company’s local milk supply.

“Nestle has been in Zimbabwe for 50 years, working with the population of Zimbabwe and striving to maintain a long-term viable operation in often challenging conditions,” the company said.

“We operate in Zimbabwe, as we do in every country, through good times and bad.

“We work for the long-term, in a way which has positive impact on our consumers, employees and suppliers.” — HR-Reuters.

Anger Builds Over Gaza Report Delay

Monday, October 05, 2009
19:57 Mecca time, 16:57 GMT

Anger builds over Gaza report delay

Israel’s offensive in Gaza left a trail of death and destruction

Hundreds of people in the West Bank city of Ramallah have protested against the Palestinian Authority’s support to delay the endorsement of a UN report on possible war crimes committed during Israel’s offensive on Gaza.

Protesters gathered on Monday waving placards saying the delay “insults the blood of the martyrs and wounds our people”.

“(The decision) was a knife in the backs and in the hearts of all the martyrs,” said Jamal al-Jumaa, a protester.

Similar protests were also held in Jerusalem, where pro-Palestinian activists demanded an apology from Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.

“If the government had anything to do with the decision we want it to resign,” Muhammad Jadallah, the head of the Coalition for Jerusalem, said.

Abbas defence

Critics have accused Abbas of letting down his people by bowing to US pressure on the resolution, but Abbas dismissed the criticism on Sunday.

“The issue of postponing the vote didn’t come from us - we are not members of this international organisation [UN Human Rights Council],” he said.

“I believe all the Arab brothers are members of the organisation and they all know very well that the postponement of the vote happened with their knowledge and approval.”

The adoption of the report by the 49-member council was seen as a key step towards eventually bringing war crimes charges against Israeli leaders and Palestinian fighters at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Though the 575-page report by Richard Goldstone blamed both the Israeli military and the Palestinian fighters for war crimes during Israel’s offensive on the Gaza Strip between December and January, it was more critical of Israeli troops for “targeting and terrorising civilians”.

But the UN Human Rights Council on Friday deferred endorsement of the report until March as requested by sponsors of the resolution. Critics of the move say the postponement came after US pressure.

Mounting anger

Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in the West Bank, said: “Palestinian political factions, including the president’s own Fatah movement, as well as human rights organisations, have been escalating their expressions of anger and condemnation about their leadership’s decision to support the withdrawal,” she said.

“Many questions are being posed about how this unfolding crisis could affect ongoing efforts to reach national reconciliation.”

Hamas, the Palestinian group which runs Gaza and is political rival to Abbas’s Fatah, has blamed Abbas for the delay and ruled out reconciliation under the present circumstances.

“Even if a national reconciliation deal is signed, how can it be implemented if this political policy persists?” Ismail Haniya, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, said on Monday.

“How can we achieve unity if this political leadership persists? Without removing these figures, there can be no consensus because this position is not the subject of consensus.”

There has been strong dissension within Fatah over the delay as well.

One Fatah official said: “The consent to defer the vote had cost us dear. We’ll need years to fix this mistake.”

Salam Fayyad, Abbas’s prime minister, has demanded the report’s recommendations be implemented in full, while Ali Jarbawi, the Palestinian planning minister, expressed his “surprise” over the consent to postpone the vote.

Abbas has also drawn criticism from Syria, which postponed his planned visit to Damascus in a gesture of protest.

During the three-week Gaza war, more than 1,400 Palestinians - one-third of them women and children - were killed while Israel lost 10 soldiers and three civilians.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Building Working Class Hegemony on a Terrain of the National DemocraticStruggle

Building working class hegemony on a terrain of the national democratic struggle

SACP Message to 10th COSATU Congress
Blade Nzimande, General Secretary
21 September 2009

It has certainly been a tumultuous three years since COSATU’s 9th National Congress in 2006. South Africa is a different place and it is sometimes difficult to believe how dramatically the ANC, our Alliance and government have changed in the space of just 36 months.

When we addressed COSATU’s 9th Congress, we observed then that it was taking place during an extremely challenging and complicated period in the history of our revolution and that all our formations in the Alliance were faced with complex political challenges. Hence our refrain ‘The revolution is on trial’.

At that time, we were in the grip of the intolerance and offensive of the 1996 Class Project, our state organs were under siege, COSATU and the SACP were being subjected to ridicule and derision, particularly as a result of our principled support for the then Deputy President of the ANC, Comrade Jacob Zuma.

The Alliance was a pretence. The working class was viewed as a general nuisance to the domination of the class project. We were also being warned to butt out of commenting about matters in the ANC that affected our alliance and government as we were told these were matters exclusively for the ANC. It was a top-down, arrogant and know-all attitude and set of practices.

The eight-year persecution of President Zuma nearly brought the ANC to its knees and threatened to destroy the traditions and values of an almost century-old organisation. Parallel to this was the alienation of the alliance partners, all the leagues, former MK combatants, and an onslaught on its leaders, in an attempt to forge a “pure” ANC pursuing a centrist-reformist agenda.

At the last COSATU Congress we also observed: “The attempts to “modernise” and transform the ANC have ravaged the ANC’s organisational capacity. It is increasingly unable to provide local political leadership in communities, or lead mass mobilisation and campaigns outside of election time.

The attempt to foster a leading cadre of emerging business people and state technocrats has resulted in multiple crises of corruption, factionalism and personal careerism. These problems are not accidental; they are inherent in trying to build a leading cadre based on capitalist values and on a symbiotic relationship between the leading echelons of the state and emerging black capital.”

With regard to the Alliance we noted that there was something fundamentally wrong in the functioning of the Alliance after 1994, and especially after 1996. Within that context, we were justified in asking whether it was not time to change the configuration of the Alliance and whether the SACP should not field its own candidates in the next election.

When we met at COSATU’s Central Committee two years ago, we diagnosed that our revolution was under threat of “palace politics”, noting that this “is the politics of backstabbing, pursuit of individual wealth, use of state organs to settle factional scores, use of media leaks to destroy each other, patronage as a means to consolidate political (and often class) power.”

But three months later, the ANC Polokwane Conference changed the course of history in our country when the general membership of the ANC and the working class reclaimed our organisation. Polokwane brought us back from a point of near no-return and liberated us from the stranglehold of political and class bullying of the worst kind.

The winds of change have continued to blow since Polokwane, also freeing COSATU from the menace of false leaders. The SACP also cleansed itself as we had also produced some of our own political factory faults. Then in September last year, a KwaZulu-Natal judge confirmed to the world what we all knew – and what COSATU had the courage to say way back at its Central Committee in 2005 – that President Zuma’s rights were violated in a politically motivated prosecution aimed at destroying his path to the presidency.

And so, exactly a year ago, our revolutionary movement turned the corner and began a new journey leaving behind a class project and programme that required the marginalisation of the SACP and COSATU and the demobilisation of the ANC.

The recall of Thabo Mbeki, the most powerful leader on the continent, was significant for African and world history as it demonstrated a peaceful removal of a sitting president through democratic and non-violent means. The ANC’s management of the recall and transition period also raised the bar of power dynamics and ultimate political accountability. And despite the warnings of the doomsayers, South Africa moved neatly from one political administration to another, preserving its international standing and proud democratic legacy.

Comrades, with all that we have been through and conquered, we have every right to look back with mixed feelings – anger that our President and our organisations have suffered intolerable abuse and pain, happiness that the ANC has been rescued from the clutches of the 1996 Class Project and relief that an atmosphere of tolerance, openness and respect now prevails.

As the representatives of the working class, we in COSATU and the SACP must never forget that one of the principal aims of the Class Project was to drive us out of the Alliance so that monopoly capital, senior state leadership and a BEE faction of capital could hold the ANC hostage. This project had the support of some sections of the media and analysts who actively promoted the marginalisation of the SACP and COSATU and sold the notion that it would be better for everyone if the Left was to break away from the ANC.

We stand here today, able to proudly declare that “The Left hasn’t left; but the Right has left”. The ANC has returned to its pro-poor, pro-worker bias, the way its founding fathers intended it to be. The Right has now regrouped under the banner of COPE, a failed attempt by the class project to regain its footing. It includes people who operated in stealth in the ranks of our organisations, including the trade union movement, to sow turmoil and disunity. Some of them are now trying to reinvent themselves and their hopeless agenda by impersonating COSATU in a COPE-sponsored puppet show.

A strong and united COSATU

Comrades, it is no secret that it was the voice and might of the workers which first rebelled against the capitalist agenda of the class project and propelled the process of change. COSATU, like the SACP, was able to stand up to the abusive use of state resources and speak out for the long list of casualties, including Comrade Zuma, long before it was fashionable to be associated with him.

Even though COSATU was itself experiencing convulsions instigated by villains in its own ranks, it was able to lead the working class rebellion against a capitalist hegemony in the ANC at the Polokwane conference.

There should be no doubt that our resounding victory in the April elections was delivered by the workers of our country, who worked tirelessly to mobilise community-based support for the ANC and who stood for hours in queues – in wretched weather conditions in some parts of the country – to vote. It is time that we, the leadership of the Alliance, acknowledge and pay tribute to the workers for the Polokwane and election victories.

It is also an imperative now that COSATU remains united in this new phase of the revolution as part of the motive forces for the deepening of the national democratic revolution and in our struggle for socialism. There is no time for complacency during the honeymoon period of our new government.

We must also be under no illusion that the forces who sought to divide us in the past few years are still hard at work to wreak havoc and confusion in our organisations. We dare not gloat, instead we must remain focused on our crucial task to build working class hegemony on the terrain of a national democratic struggle.

There are many tasks and challenges ahead of us, including eradicating the legacy of the 1996 class project, rolling back the grip of capitalist power in society through a principled anti-capitalist struggle; dealing with the current global capitalist crisis and building the unity of our alliance. It is to some of these issues that we shall now turn.

The SACP Special Congress and the tasks and challenges for the working class

One of the most immediate and pressing challenges is to ensure that the advances made in Polokwane and the 2009 electoral victory must not be allowed to be narrowly claimed by forces, whether inside or outside of our movement, who do not have the interests of the workers and the poor at heart. These were victories of the ordinary people of our country, and must be defended and protected as such.

In order to deepen and consolidate the national democratic revolution post the 2009 April elections, it is important that the SACP, and indeed the entire liberation movement focuses its attention on intensifying the struggle to build a developmental state, buttressed by working class power.

One of the critical terrains for building a radical, working-class led developmental state is that of exposing and seeking to roll back and disrupt the intersection between the holding of public office and business interests, and to defeat the corrupting influence that this has had, and continues to have, on our movement as a whole. To wage a consistent battle against such practices and tendencies, including corruption, is not a factionalist battle, but the only guarantee of the unity of our alliance achieved through Polokwane and the April electoral victory!

We must seek to unite our movement as a multi-class movement. There is absolutely no contradiction between the multi-class character of our movement, and the leadership of the working class.

We need to defend the general set of themes that united all of us at Polokwane. These include the following:

-The need to defend inner democracy within our movement
-A rejection of a style of politics that was intolerant of difference and constructive debate, that encouraged a cult of the personality and an inner circle of flatterers and courtiers, in the true sense of palace politics
-To put an end to the abuse of state structures and the use of corporate and/or personal wealth to advance factionalist interests within the movement
-We dare not allow these tendencies to re-emerge again. Where they do, we need to expose and defeat them, in whatever guise they may emerge!
-We need to send out a strong and clear message that the ANC is not for sale and our Alliance is not for sale. In order to expose and defeat the corporatisation of the state and the movement, we need the workers to be our eyes and ears on the ground, as was demonstrated by SATAWU in the Great SAA rip-off.

Comrades, you will be aware that the SACP will be holding a special congress in the historic city of Polokwane in December. As part of our preparations for that Congress, our Central Committee has drafted and released our main discussion document. In this document we seek to identify some of the key challenges that lie ahead for us.

It is by sharing with you some of the propositions and arguments in that document that I will also be outlining some of the SACP’s views on the challenges especially after the April elections.

2.1 The Great Recession

We are in the midst of the worst capitalist crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Still late last year illusions prevailed that South Africa was relatively insulated. As part of maintaining this illusion we were being told as the socialist left that we must not be ‘reckless’ by making statements that may further upset the markets. It was as if it was going to be our analysis of this crisis, rather than the crisis itself that would punish us.

This illusion has now been cruelly exposed. In the first half of 2009, with a deep local recession, nearly half a million jobs have been lost in the first half of this year, thousands of workers have been put on part-time, factories have been closed and businesses liquidated. Some 50 000 people are being black-listed by the credit bureaux per month, and car and home repossessions have soared.

Our view continues to be that capitalist crises are not an abnormality but a norm. There are no solutions within capitalism for these crises, they are systemic and inevitable as long as we remain imprisoned within the capitalist system.

We have said that in response to this crisis, we need both defensive and offensive measures. We welcome the National Framework Agreement as agreed to at NEDLAC. It is an important defensive measure and shield against this crisis. In implementing this agreement we need to ensure that it is not workers who are made to pay for a crisis brought about by capitalist greed.

However a bigger challenge is that of coming up with offensive measures in response to this crisis. The present global capitalist crisis is not over, and, in any case, any return to global capitalist growth will simply be laying the basis for the next crisis.

Moreover, even in so-called “good times”, the majority in SA, like more than a billion people elsewhere in the world, live in abject poverty. We cannot simply adopt defensive measures now, and wait for the next global capitalist up-turn. We have to advance a transformative agenda here in SA and as much as possible globally.

We have to roll back the empire of the capitalist market that turns everything from health-care, livelihoods, education, mobility and shelter into a commodity for profit for the few. We have, as much as possible, to use the crisis to de-link ourselves from the grip of the capitalist market place.

How? In the first place, in times of crises like these, private capital becomes more dependent on the state, for bail-outs, state procurement and state investment into infrastructure. We need to use this dependence of capital not only to regulate the system, but to begin to seriously reconfigure key aspects of the capitalist relations of production themselves.

But to do this, we need to consolidate working class hegemony over the state, we need to strengthen the strategic discipline of the state through effective planning, and we need to eliminate all entry-points for a bourgeois hegemony over the state – in particular corruption.

For us, offensive measures must be anti-capitalist measures that begin to undermine the very logic of the system. When we come out of this crisis it should not merely be a return to the past, but we need something radically different that is capable of meeting the needs of the workers and the poor of our country.

And, indeed, we need to understand that this perspective is written into the logic of our key Polokwane and Alliance Economic Summit resolutions, and the key priorities outlined in our April ANC-led election manifesto. When we prioritise job creation, or education, or health-care, or rural development, or the fight against crime and corruption, we are NOT just providing a list of sectors into which there must be more “delivery”.

We are highlighting key areas that require radical, i.e. systemic, transformation. These are catalytic areas – i.e. sectors in which transformation is both necessary and critical to advance our NDR. And these advances can only be made if they have an anti-capitalist – or, which is the same thing, a socialist-orientation.

THIS IS THE CHALLENGE FACING THE WORKING CLASS AND ITS FORMATIONS IN THE CURRENT PERIOD!

So what are these key sectors?

Four key systemic features for radical transformation

The key challenge for the working class in the current period is to ensure the most thorough implementation of the five key priorities in the ANC’s election manifesto. It is our contention that it is only through building working class hegemony that the most thorough implementation of this Manifesto will be achieved.

It is also by thoroughly implementing this manifesto that working class hegemony will be built in society. So there is no conflict, but a dialectical relationship between the implementation of the ANC manifesto and building working class influence.

For the SACP, the most thorough implementation of the ANC’s Manifesto means the thorough transformation of four key realities that continue to reproduce the grip of capitalist power and worsening racialised, gendered, and class poverty and marginalisation.

These are:

Our economic growth trajectory which remains locked largely into the same, century-long trajectory, previously associated with white minority rule. Programmatically the SACP has consistently proposed – over the past decade and more – that the radical transformation of this systemic reality requires, amongst other things:

-A state-led industrial policy programme that prioritises job creation;
-The alignment of trade policy to our industrial policy, with the latter playing the lead role;
-The alignment of macro-economic policies to a new developmental growth path
-An effective state planning capacity;
-The strategic deployment and coordination of SOEs and DFIs to advance a different developmental growth path, with a particular focus on infrastructure investment;

The progressive transformation of the critical financial sector – to ensure developmental investment

Education and Training: Fifteen years into our post-apartheid democracy we have become increasingly aware that the FORMAL creation of a single educational dispensation masks the material reality of a highly unequal and inequitable system that actively reproduces enormous race, class, and (to some extent) gendered inequalities. The SACP and YCL, together with our Alliance and MDM partners and with the new government administration, have succeeded in making the radical transformation of education and training one of five key priority pillars. Programmatically this requires, amongst other things:

-Intensified effort towards strengthening and expanding early childhood development and Grade R
-The need to increase post-school options for our youth
-Revamping a diversified college sector
-Intensification of adult education and training, including work-place training
-Increased access to and success in higher education
-The training and upgrading of teaching professionals, and the revitalisation of teacher training colleges.

The spatial reproduction of racialised, class and gendered underdevelopment and inequality. What was once actively planned by apartheid’s architects to control the location and mobility of the black majority is now perpetuated on “automatic pilot” by the capitalist market place. Programmatically (in order to radically transform the systemic features of our spatial reality) we need to:

-Ensure a working class hegemony over the process of an accelerated and integrated rural development process
-Actively engage with the review of the future of provinces and local government, to ensure that the capacity to radically transform/democratise our spatial realities is enhanced;

-Ensure that a key mandate of the Planning Commission is the strategic planning for and monitoring of the democratisation of space and mobility
-Use the new Human Settlements Department to ensure that we move away from dormitory townships and suburban sprawl to a more democratic development of mixed income, mixed use and, where relevant, medium density built environments across our towns and cities.

Promote public transport as a catalyser for spatial democratisation and transformation, and reclaim public control and regulation over urban infrastructure (including routes and ranks)

Ban the sale of publicly-owned land to property speculators and use much more aggressively property rates, local business taxes and other fiscal means to ensure better cross-subsidisation of municipal public services – including public transport infrastructure and operations.

Ensure that we implement radical municipal legislation that calls for participatory planning and budgeting;

Mobilise popular forces in favour of the above issues, and connect local protests (e.g. around housing, land, public services, transport) to a broader transformational agenda so that the wider politics of the built environment become campaign issues –rather than simply focusing on “delivery” into “townships”.

Ensure that our state-led R787bn infrastructure programme contributes to the democratisation of space – rather than reinforcing current spatial inequalities through misallocation of excessive resources to serving the current capitalist accumulation path and its key enclaves.

The radical transformation of health-care: Racial, class and gendered inequality are also massively reproduced in SA by a “two-tier” health-care system. On the one hand there is a private health-care system that uses 60% of financial and medical personnel resources, but services a mere 14% of our population (basically those with Medical Aids).

On the other hand, we have an under-funded, and over-whelmed public health system, further burdened by the HIV/AIDS and TB pandemics. The ANC-led alliance over the past year has begun to place this radical transformation challenge clearly on the agenda with the commitment to rolling out a National Health Insurance (NHI) system.

The SACP fully supports this move which will mark a significant step in the direction of basing health-care provision (as the ANC NEC NHI briefing document puts it) “on the basis of from each according to their ability (to pay), to each according to their need” – in other words it will mark a major step in the direction of decommodifying (i.e. socialising) health-care.

It is as a result of all what I have said above the SACP has decided to focus its 2009 Red October Campaign on two critical issues that have a bearing on these realities: the radical transformation of health care and deepening the struggle against corruption. Once more, we call upon COSATU and indeed the entire alliance to join us in this year’s campaign.

2.2 The Opposition

Comrades, we must be prepared for fierce resistance to these transformational imperatives that the Alliance agenda in its totality is advancing. This opposition will come from opposition political parties, amongst others. They are now seeking to club together against the ANC. The recent pronouncements by a leading COPE spokesperson that “there are no strategic differences” between his party and the DA confirms the pro-capitalist and anti-people nature of COPE and of the “1996 class project” from whose loins this anemic off-spring has emerged.

The founders of COPE and their liberal suburban allies had all predicted a democratic melt-down as a result of the recall of former President Mbeki a year ago. Far from there being a melt-down, there is an obvious flowering of democratic openness and of democratic debate in our country. Even the leader of the opposition, Helen Zille, is compelled to concede this. It is only a few lonely figures in COPE who still harbour nostalgia for the years of denialism and a cult of the personality. But COPE, the DA, and a section of the media will continue to advance their anti-worker agenda, and they will use three basic lines of argument:

The democratic “melt-down” card;
The personality assassination diversionary card; and
The pessimism about state power card.

The headlines in much of the media continuously play into the suburban opposition agenda with “melt-down” stories. What they fear is a working-class hegemony in our country, and they want to project working-class hegemony as inherently antagonistic to democracy and our constitution.

It is, of course, bourgeois hegemony that poses the greatest risk to our constitution and our democratic values of non-racialism, egalitarianism and unity. In order to spread their lies about our position as the left, the opposition parties seek to conflate certain ill-considered, unprincipled, factionalist statements that emerge from within the broad ranks of our movement from time to time.

That is why the SACP has said that we must nip in the bud any signs of chauvinism from within our movement. The working class and the broad popular movement are the key bastions to protect our constitutional order and our emergent democracy. We have shown this in the recent past, and we will continue to do so.

The second card with which we are all familiar is the personalized assassination diversionary card. We are living in the midst of the greatest capitalist crisis since the 1930s. But none of the opposition parties is able to analyse this crisis, still less confess their complicity in making our country more vulnerable than it might have been to the crisis.

Even less are they able to advance any kind of systematic analysis and coherent programme of action to deal with the crisis. Instead, we are constantly plunged into diversions – personalized attacks on life-styles of leaders, a media created 2012 ANC election contest years before any ANC electoral conference, and the like. Again, from with the ANC-led alliance we must be careful not to get unduly caught up in these diversions, which simply draw us away from our core NDR and socialist tasks.

The third card, which the suburban liberal politicians, play is to sow demoralization about the importance and potential capacities of the state. Since Polokwane, and particularly since the April 2009 elections, the suburban liberals sense that they no longer have the same access to state power, and so they pick on issues (some of them real issues – like corruption in parastatals, or in line departments, or in local government) in order to spread a message of demoralization about the prospects of building a developmental state. As we have said, we must deal decisively with corruption in the public (and private) sectors, but we are doing so in order to build a developmental state capable of leading a national democratic revolution under working class hegemony.

It is not surprising that the suburban liberals should seek to under-mine confidence in this agenda. But the danger is that this anti-state agenda will also have an influence in our mass base and even within our own ranks – where, for a variety of reasons, there is often an ingrained suspicion of the state in general, and tendencies towards NGO-ism.

Yes, we must mobilize, organize and unleash popular power to expose bureaucratism, technocratic aloofness and corruption in the public sector. But we must also contest the state in order to transform it, from within as much as from without.

The suburban liberals see social movements, NGOs and public participation merely as means to “check and balance” the state. For the left, social movements, and popular participatory democracy are about empowering working class and popular forces, and this empowerment must be outside AND within the state itself.

Advancing the radical, anti-capitalist transformation agenda, the only way forward in our current reality, requires a progressive state-led, and mass-driven struggle.

Our internationalist tasks

More than ever before it is absolutely imperative that we deepen international working class solidarity. It is only through this effort that we can ultimately get rid of the crises ridden capitalist system that has brought so much havoc to lives of billions of people throughout the world.

The SACP wishes to further commit itself to solidarity with the struggles of the peoples of Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Palestine, Western Sahara and Cuba. We especially wish to call upon this congress to deepen its solidarity with the Cuban people and take forward the call for the release of the Cuban Five. All what these Cuban combatants were fighting for was the defeat of terror actions launched from US soil by the Miami mafia against the peace-loving Cuban people!

With these words we wish you a successful congress and for a stronger COSATU to emerge from this.

President Mugabe of Zimbabwe Slams Violence

President slams violence

By Sydney Kawadza
Zimbabwe Herald

President Mugabe has condemned the violence that erupted at Mupedzanhamo in Mbare and claimed the life of a stakeholder, Mrs Martha Chitambira, describing it as deplorable and divisive especially after the formation of the inclusive Government.

Addressing members of the Chitambira family in Harare yesterday, President Mugabe said the attacks were planned by “gangs” who wanted to cause divisions in the country.

“Munhu haangofa asi anofa nekuda kwaMwari, vamwe vanofa nekurwara asi vamwe vanofa nekuti hupenyu hunenge hwaguma.

“Rufu urwu rwakarwadza nekuti vakanga vakarongerwa nemagang ekuMupedzanhamo angaakaronga kutema vanhu.

“These violent acts are deplorable because they cause division especially when the victims plan to revenge,” he said.

President Mugabe said the family was probably itching for revenge, but that should not happen in the country.

“Taremerwa nemutoro wanga usingafanire kutiwana asi ndizvo zvinoita munyika medu nehupenzi hwatirikuratidzwa munyika muno,” he said.

He paid tribute to the late Mrs Chitambira for working hard to unite the family with its relatives.

“Vanga vane rudo rwakatipa ruzivo pahukama hwedu. Tanga tine hukama hwakasimba. Nguva dzose vaiuya kuzobata maoko kana kwafiwa nekusangana navo kuchurch kuRoma kwatinopinda,” he said.

President Mugabe said he would continue working with the late Mrs Chitambira’s husband, Leonard, and his family.

He urged family members to take a leaf from Mrs Chitambira’s exemplary life.

Speaking on behalf of the family, Mrs Chitambira’s son, Christopher, challenged those responsible for his mother’s death to come clean.

“We want the person responsible for her death to come out and make peace with the family,” he said.

Mrs Chitambira died on September 23 after what began as a peaceful march to denounce the reorganisation of Mupedzanhamo and other city markets turned violent.

On that fateful day, Mrs Chitambira (70) was part of more than 500 protestors against the closure of Mupedzanhamo Flea Market in line with Harare City Council’s resolution.

She was hit by a missile on the back of the head and sustained a serious gash leading to excessive blood loss and internal bleeding that affected part of her brain.

Several members of the public were injured, treated and later discharged from Harare Central Hospital.

Six vehicles were reportedly damaged in the commotion.

Police arrested 12 people after the incident while a manhunt is in progress for four other suspects who were on the run. If apprehended, the suspects are likely to be charged with murder.

Harare City Council has announced plans to temporarily close vending markets to allow for re-organisation and re-allocation of the stalls after allegations that some former city commissioners, politicians and business executives owned up to 10 stalls each at the expense of genuine traders.

Council argues that the markets should be allocated to the poor and vulnerable residents who have no other source of livelihood.

However, there are allegations that some rich and influential people are also operating some market stalls.

Migiro to embark on two-nation European trip

Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro departs tomorrow for a two-nation European visit, during which she will, among other activities, meet with United Nations staff members living with HIV, it was announced today.

Iran and the G-20 Meeting; Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust and Oil

Iran and the G-20 meeting

Creating a crisis to cover divisions

By Sara Flounders
Published Oct 4, 2009 11:47 PM

The G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh gathered the finance ministers, top bankers and political leaders of the world’s largest economies, ostensibly to take up the most serious economic collapse of capitalism in three generations. Instead, they attacked Iran.

Without proposing measures to ameliorate the suffering of the hundreds of millions of workers who have lost their jobs, without announcing jobs programs or infrastructure construction, U.S., British and French imperialism joined together with bombast to threaten Iran on totally fabricated charges. They have demanded that the United Nations Security Council and members of the G-20 collaborate on a new round of sanctions against Iran.

Emergency economic proposals were not even on the agenda.

In a theatrical press conference on Sept. 25, flanked by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel delayed but on her way, President Barack Obama declared that Iran was threatening the stability and security of the region and the world. Refusal to “come clean,” he said, “is going to lead to confrontation.”

Sarkozy and Brown denounced Iran and explicitly demanded harder sanctions.

They threatened a military strike, saying that “all options are on the table with regard to Iran.”

This whole scenario shows that these bankers, finance ministers and politicians have no solutions for the crisis wracking the globe. They used the summit to justify the bailout of the banks and to give vague assurances of future economic recovery. The trillions of dollars handed over to the banks is the greatest redistribution of national treasuries in human history.

Unable to reach agreement on regulating international banking, trade or any aspect of international finance capital, which has spread chaos through the entire world, the imperialists gave the appearance of unified purpose by making ominous threats against Iran. All the corporate media loyally fell in line. No journalists dared to ask about the havoc arising from the capitalist economic system or what solutions the imperialists proposed. All the media snapped to attention and joined in demonizing Iran.

Iran in full compliance

In the face of such an onslaught of war propaganda, it is important to review the facts.

Iran is fully in compliance with all international agreements, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and International Atomic Energy Agency guidelines and reporting regulations. The IAEA is the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty guarantees all nations the right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. According to IAEA reports, Iran is enriching uranium to less than 5 percent. At this level of purity, the uranium is useful for peaceful nuclear-based electricity generation but is well below the 90-percent U-235 needed for nuclear weapons. Iran possesses no facility with that capacity. (www.iaea.org)

Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh, told Press TV on Sept. 27 that IAEA safeguard agreements call for nations to inform it of the existence of a new enrichment plant at least six months or 180 days before the introduction of nuclear materials into the facility. Iran notified the IAEA on Sept. 21, which is 18 months in advance.

This second, smaller facility outside Qom, Iran, is an empty building. It has no nuclear material at this time and no equipment for enrichment has been installed yet. The small-scale site is meant to house no more than 3,000 centrifuges—many fewer than the 8,000 machines at Natanz, Iran’s other enrichment facility.

“It is a very ordinary facility in the beginning stages” and 18 months away from operation, President Ahmadinejad said at a Sept. 25 news conference in New York. “It is not a secret facility. If it was, why did we inform the IAEA ahead of time? … What we did was completely legal, according to the law,” the Iranian president said. “We have informed the agency, the agency will come and take a look and produce a report, and it’s nothing new.”

The Iranians also said that the facility was hardly clandestine. Nor is it a surprise, as U.S., Britain and France have claimed. These same countries also state that they have known about it for three years. Both the U.S. and the French have presented aerial photos of the construction, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged that the U.S. knew of the plant before Iran reported it.

Is Iran really a threat?

The U.S. still has thousands of nuclear weapons. It is the only country that has ever used a nuclear weapon and the only country that has time and again threatened to use nuclear weapons. The U.S. refused to abide by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and the U.S. Congress has never ratified it.

Israel clearly has uranium enrichment facilities and is estimated to possess 60 to 400 thermonuclear weapons. Israel refuses to abide by any international agreements or any inspections. Yet every U.S. administration has been completely silent on Israel’s nuclear enrichment and weapons program.

Thirteen countries presently enrich uranium. Argentina, Brazil, South Africa and Australia have also announced plans to begin enriching uranium. Twenty-eight countries have nuclear energy plants, with the largest number of power plants being in the U.S. Another 10 countries without plants have plans to build one. Yet only Iran and North Korea are ever challenged or threatened.

Iran has consistently supported the creation of a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East and proposed the concept in a joint resolution in the U.N. General Assembly.

IAEA and Iran

Iran has not only agreed to more stringent IAEA inspections than other nations, it has also offered to operate the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz as a multinational fuel center with the participation of foreign representatives. Iran has further renounced plutonium reprocessing and agreed to immediately fabricate all enriched uranium into reactor fuel rods. This offer by Iran to open its uranium enrichment program to foreign private and public participation follows suggestions of an IAEA expert committee.

Despite all these agreements, Washington has insisted that Iran must totally suspend its entire enrichment program.

The IAEA released its own statement on Sept. 17, saying, “With respect to a recent media report, the IAEA reiterates that it has no concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapon program in Iran.”

The September-October issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists publishes an interview with IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei. In the course of the interview he declared: “We have not seen concrete evidence that Tehran has an ongoing nuclear weapons program. … But somehow, many people are talking about how Iran’s nuclear program is the greatest threat to the world. … In many ways, I think the threat has been hyped.” These authoritative statements and words of caution are totally ignored by the wild circus of the imperialist media.

Around the world the imperialist countries are isolated on this issue. On Sept. 16, 2006, in Havana, Cuba, all the 118 Non-Aligned Movement member countries, at the summit level, declared their support of Iran’s civilian nuclear program in their final written statement. The Non-Aligned Movement represents a majority of the 192 countries in the U.N.

Again on July 30, 2008, the Non-Aligned Movement welcomed the continuing cooperation of Iran with the IAEA and reaffirmed Iran’s right to the peaceful uses of nuclear technology. The movement further called for the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East and called for a comprehensive multilaterally negotiated instrument which prohibits threats of attacks on nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

In February 2007, lawmakers from 56 member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, addressing Iran’s nuclear program at a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, urged “full respect for equal and inalienable rights for all nations to explore modern technologies including nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”

Sanctions—a weapon against development

Iranian spokespeople have made it clear that Iran will develop its own facilities to enrich uranium for energy. It has been subject to the most severe series of sanctions and export restrictions on technology for peaceful nuclear technology and for all other forms of development. After decades of violated agreements, contracts and treaties, Iran cannot trust the U.S. or Europe to consistently provide the nuclear energy fuel to run power plants.

The U.S. provided aid to Iran’s original nuclear development during the years of brutal dictatorship of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. At that time Washington was more than willing to give Iran nuclear technology. But after the 1979 Iranian Revolution overthrew this U.S.-imposed dictatorship and reasserted national control over Iran’s own oil and gas resources, Washington ended all nuclear cooperation. Since then the U.S. has taken every possible measure to sabotage, strangle and overthrow the Iranian government.

The latest U.S. and European discussion of a blockade of refined gasoline to Iran is just the latest example of efforts to stop Iran’s development.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates discussed ways to harm Iran: “There are a variety of options still available, including sanctions on banking, particularly sanctions on equipment and technology for their oil and gas industry. … I think there’s a pretty rich list to pick from.” (bloomberg.com, Sept. 27)

Washington has used enormous pressure several times to impose economic sanctions through the U.N. Security Council. These sanctions are a form of strangulation, an intentionally brutal weapon applied to developing countries. Sanctions exacerbate social tensions and undercut the support for a targeted government by creating economic havoc. Wildly spiraling, uncontrolled inflation, shortages, long lines, shutting off imports of basic supplies and closing off export markets impact harshly on the most defenseless sectors in every society. Currencies become worthless. Industries are forced to shut down.

Over the last five decades in an effort to extract concessions, different forms of U.S. sanctions have been used against the poorest countries of the planet. They have targeted nine countries in Africa, six countries in Asia, five in the Middle East, three in Latin America and three in Europe.

On Oct. 1 a meeting called the “5 + 1” for the five-member U.N. Security Council plus Germany is scheduled to meet with Iran on its nuclear energy program. The threats restated at the G-20 meeting aim to coerce Iran to accept extremely intrusive controls.

Remember that under U.S. pressure in August 1990, the U.N. Security Council imposed a total blockade on Iraq. The blockade resulted in the deaths of more than 1 million children under the age of 5 from the resulting desperate shortages and preventable diseases. Meanwhile, a hunt for supposedly secret weapons of mass destruction dragged on for 13 years.

In 2003 the Bush administration claimed that Iraq had a secret nuclear weapons program close to completion and posing an imminent nuclear threat. A media frenzy claimed that Iraq was close to producing nuclear weapons. This fear of weapons of mass destruction—WMD—became the main justification for the U.S. invasion and occupation.

All reports from the IAEA confirming that there was no evidence of such a program were ignored. No such weapons were ever found. But after six years of U.S. occupation, a quarter of Iraq’s population is dead, disabled or dispersed in the form of dislocated refugees.

Washington’s lies must be exposed. Iran’s sovereignty and its right to full development must be defended and supported.
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Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust and oil

WORKERS WORLD COMMENTARY
By Fred Goldstein
Published Oct 4, 2009 11:44 PM

Since the G-20 meeting the world has once again had to witness a saber-rattling attempt to force Iran to abandon its right to develop nuclear power. It is orchestrated by the great imperialist powers of the world in Washington, London, Berlin and Paris, who themselves are armed to the teeth with thousands of nuclear weapons.

In the course of this campaign these powers, along with their client state of Israel, have resumed their attacks on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regarding the Holocaust.

Whatever misguided statements Ahmadinejad may have made about the Holocaust in the past, certain important things must be borne in mind by progressive-minded people.

In particular, any references to the Holocaust in the big business press have nothing to do with concern for the suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazi regime. Nor do they have anything to do with concern for the present security of the Jewish people.

Attacks on Ahmadinejad over the question of the Holocaust are really about the security of the oil companies, the Pentagon, the entire U.S. ruling class and its apartheid Zionist client state of Israel. They have been trying to overthrow the Iranian Revolution since it overcame the CIA-backed shah in 1979, took the country’s oil back from U.S. and British oil companies, and ousted the Pentagon from a strategic position astride the oil-rich Persian Gulf.

The greatest enemy of the Jewish people is the anti-Semitic U.S. ruling class, which refused to grant entrance to Jewish refugees from Hitler and pushed them toward Palestine. After the war, Washington used the bourgeois Zionist leadership to establish a military beachhead in the Middle East. Thus Washington pushed the Jewish people, under the dominance of the Zionist Israeli state, into a permanent confrontation with hundreds of millions of oppressed Arab and Muslim peoples—all to serve the interests of imperialism, nothing else.

All the hypocritical talk of the Holocaust out of the mouths of U.S. ruling-class politicians and pundits should not divert attention for one minute from the aggressive aims of Washington. Hands off Iran!

Ban extols UN mission in Kosovo for spurring dialogue and cooperation

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today commended the efforts of the United Nations mission in Kosovo for encouraging dialogue and cooperation among its communities and between Pristina and Belgrade, the respective capitals of Kosovo and Serbia.