Politics is life.

Tarqua Bay, Lagos Nigeria

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

I have been accused of many things as we all have. Some are constructive, some not.  Some are honest appraisals, some dishonest attempts to simply obscure an argument and introduce the personal. The worst, possibly most harmful and quite hurtful criticism I face is when people, not most people but some people, not necessarily cruel people and often quite well meaning people accuse me of being too long winded, too wordy. The gall!

I find great pleasure in writing about things, a sort of catharsis really. I have only begun to write extensively in the past 10 years or so as I never considered myself a writer and, surely, one has to be an “accredited”, writer to write,  and a university recognized economist to write or even comment on economics..

This is not so as people have written their thoughts about the world around them long before universities and other institutions of the ruling classes emerged. The cave paintings in France and the ancient scrolls are examples of it.  People made clothes long before society recognized the profession we know as Tailors.

Anyway, getting too wordy here.  I am one of those people who will talk to anyone anywhere, my close friends can attest to that. After I got back from Baghdad in 1971 my mates asked me how it went, me not speaking Arabic and all.  No worries; humans get by real easy in these situations if you enter their community in friendship and want to learn from them, socialize with them; I bought Arab clothes, it was no problem. The Iraqi’s were kind and generous to me, despite the dirty role British capitalism played in their history. All people differentiate between those that rule and those ruled. I am sickened by what the war criminals Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney and others including their British colleague Blair have done to the Iraqi people.

Last week a couple at the pub told me that they “hate politics”.

“But politics is life.” I told them. It can be frustrating and stressful at times but it is also inspiring, “What you hate is bourgeois politics which is what we have here, the politics of the 1%.”  Who votes Democratic and who votes Republican.

Politics determines whether we eat or not. Where our children go to school, where we live, whether we can get medical attention etc. As Marx once said, “Nothing human is alien to me.”

When I’m in airports or any place where as a consumer I get to talk to someone working, I always bring this relationship of work in to the conversation, or at least open the door as the worker won’t shut up when you start on that subject. In my years active in the labor movement I would hear repeatedly from full time staff and high-level officials (the experts on worker attitudes) how workers move in “baby steps” and how we have to “educate”them etc. This was always their excuse for not fighting for concrete needs, for not raising demands that raise expectations because the leadership didn’t believe them realizable.

Mention to one of those workers at the stands in airports that sell anything from papers to candy that you support unions and that they need a union.  My conversation has many times gone like this:

“You’d think the damn bosses would get you a stool to sit on when you need to rest your legs, you need a union.”

I’ve never heard a negative response to this.  I’ve heard, “Can you get me a union?” and, “get me a stool and I’ll join your union.”

Now I’m not saying workers don’t need to be exposed to new or more complex ideas, I have many people to thank for exposing me to new ideas.  But if we consider that the heads of organized labor, and the left, have failed miserably when it comes to increasing our numbers, and while this is partially due to laws that make it difficult, in the main it’s also because of their approach.  We have been in much worse conditions that these. The example of the stool is clear, fight for the basic things that improve our lives, wages, work conditions health care housing etc. and workers will be drawn to that. If we can help put more food on the table, the recipient will be more open to our ideas about society and the world around us.

Malcom X was in the UAW for I while if my memory serves me right.  Had the Union officials fought racism aggressively he would have been attracted to that.  As it was, it was the Black Muslim movement that gave him a theoretical grounding, an explanation for the racism and horror he experienced in his life.

We are encouraged not talk to each other at all except about mundane things like sports. Who came up with the idea that we should never talk about politics or religion?  The intellectuals of the bourgeois talk about these issues. What they don’t want is workers talking about it from our perspective. Prior to the English Revolution, King Charles was adamant about keeping the sports on Sundays (jousting etc.) if not, the people would be gathering among themselves and talking about all sorts of pernicious ideas. Is the king really god’s man on earth?  Do we have to pay tithes? Why must there be an intermediary between god and me?  Why must we work to feed the feudal lords?  Oh yes, and how come the king gets to sleep with my new bride before I do? Or me before my husband does?

I think one of the reasons some workers (blue collar workers like me in particular) are reluctant to write or engage in conversation about more complex things is that we lack the confidence, a missed comma here, incorrect grammar there.  And our society teaches in so many ways that if you see a weakness in someone, exploit it, it’s the way to win and “winning is everything.”

At Costco yesterday I walked to one of the stands as I always do for a free food treat.  The woman was maybe in her 60’s and naturally, there was no stool for her to sit on and she could have easily accomplished her task sitting. It would be nice if she at least had the option. I asked her about the product and she replied in an African dialect. My hearing’s not what it was but I could tell it was an African dialect plus she looked like she was from the west.

“What part of Africa are you from?” I asked her. I’m always a little cautious about this, especially being a white male as it can make someone like this a little nervous, not sure of my intentions.

“West Africa” she replied without looking at me directly.

“Nigeria” I responded

Her demeanor changed somewhat and she responded in the affirmative.

“I used to live in Yaba” I told her.

She was really excited now and told me she was from Lagos.  I mentioned Tarqua Bay where my parents used to take me swimming and another place called Vicky Beach. We used to go by canoe to one place sometimes and I remember the guy telling me not to put my hands in the water, “Cuda Cuda” he said meaning there were Barracuda in there.

We talked a little more and she asked what I was doing there and I told her that my dad was in the British Army, he was stationed there.  He rented from this Nigerian and they were the best of friends for 50 years until Sam’s death.  Sam Fawehinmi was from Ondo State, a Yoruba and she knew of the family. Sam had a furniture factory. She laughed as I told her I used to play with Sam’s daughter Tunde when we were small. Sam became a wealthy man and I know him and my dad had some dealings because my dad was a quartermaster in the army and a bit of a, creative character when it came to making a buck.  But him and Sam remained close friends till they died. Sam would always stay with my folks in London although he had the money to say in more fancy accommodation. He was an imposing figure with a Fez. I never really got to know him although I know my dad told me to keep my politics to myself  if I was visiting at the same time as Sam.

I reminded the woman of the Ju Ju man and how my mum used to give me money to give to him. I was only 8 and the Ju Ju man was something else, I was quite astonished and afraid at the same time.  The lovely man who looked after me when my folks were out and used to take me out in to what in my child’s mind was the jungle but probably local forest, would point to little trinkets, small pouches and bones hanging form tree branches.  “Ju Ju” he warned me and I must not touch them. Ju Ju still has influence as I found out fairly recently when I jokingly told a Kenyan friend I was sick of western religions and was starting a Ju Ju branch here in San Leandro. She wouldn’t sit next to me at the bar last time I saw her.

This man died in the Biafran war, a horrible conflict that many Nigerians died from. The Biafran War was a colonial world conflict the flames of which were fanned by the major powers in the struggle for natural resources and Nigeria has oil; the Stalinists on one side, the western imperialist countries on the other.

My exchange with this Nigerian woman was fairly brief but it made my visit to Costco worthwhile.  I told her Odabo as I left and she responded likewise. We both parted with broad smiles on our faces, it made my day more pleasant and I think it did hers too.

See politics is good stuff.

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South Africa: Miners Struggles---no job losses

DEMOCRATIC LEFT FRONT

www.democraticleft.za.net

18 March 2013

PRESS STATEMENT: NOT A SINGLE JOB MUST BE LOST AT AMPLATS


The National Steering Committee (NSC) of the Democratic Left Front (DLF) met in Johannesburg over the past weekend. The meeting received a detailed report from representatives of the Amplats Workers’ Committee on current worker mobilisation to fight and stop the retrenchments at Amplats. These retrenchments were announced on 15th January and threaten the jobs of some 14,000 workers at 4 mines (Khuseleka 1&2, Khomanani 1 & 2) in Rustenburg, and the Union Mine in Pilanesberg which Amplats threatens to sell. This is equivalent to 3% of the national mine workforce. After the 15th January announcement, the statutory 90-day consultation and negotiation process is due to end on 15th April. After this date, the Labour Relations Act provides for another 2 months until 15th June before the retrenchments can start. However, Chris Griffith, the Amplats CEO, told investment analysts in February that the retrenchment process is unlikely to extend beyond April (‘Time benefit possible in ‘constructive’ Govt/Anglo talks’, Mining Weekly, 15th February 2013). This is negotiating in bad faith.

Already, Amplats has broken a previous agreement with workers. The workers at Amplats agreed to return to work after their historic strike on three conditions:
i)               No arrests of workers due to conflicts that happened during the strike
ii)             The early start of wage negotiations
iii)            No retrenchments

Workers were arrested at Dichaba and the company has not started wage talks. Instead, the company announced plans to retrench 14,000 workers. To add insult to injury, on 19 February company security shot 13 workers at the Siphumelele mine for demonstrating against the re-imposition of the NUM by the Amplats bosses and the ANC government.

The DLF rejects the Amplats retrenchments and calls on Amplats to negotiate in good faith. The DLF fully supports the decision of all Amplats workers to resist, fight and stop the retrenchments. The DLF calls on government to support worker resistance to the retrenchments. The DLF calls on government to use its power to ensure that not a single job is lost at Amplats. The retrenchments are unnecessary and a deliberate attack by Amplats against workers’ demands for a living wage.

As Amplats’ annual reports and reports from Statistics South Africa show, the mining bosses are milking it from the sweat and toil of thousands of black workers. Since the 1990s, the platinum mining sector has risen fast and has become a bigger sector than gold or coal. From 1994 to 2009, platinum output in South Africa expanded by 67% in response to skyrocketing global prices. This led to massive profits which attracted huge inflows of foreign capital into platinum mines in the North West and Limpopo provinces. In 2001, Amplatsbecame the first South African company to report an annual profit of US$1billion earned solely from its domestic operations. In 2007 and 2008, Amplats paid R29,7 billion to its shareholders whilst the total wage bill for the platinum sector was R26,5 billion for these years. In other words, a few hundred shareholders were paid R3,2 billion more than at least 100,000 mine workers in the platinum sector as a whole. In this period of massive profitability, instead of rising along with profits, workers’ wages in the platinum sector declined relative to profits. In 1998, of all the money made from platinum, 60% went to workers and 40% went to profits. In 2010, this had changed to 27% going to workers’ wages and the remaining 73% being profits. Even worse, these profits did not stay in South Africa. Rather they were shipped to Anglo American (Amplat’s parent company), which, thanks to the ANC’s neoliberal macroeconomic policy, now has its primary listing in London. Even before the Marikana-inspired strikes in the platinum belt, Amplats had been planning retrenchments in order to maintain short-termist profit-maximisation at the expense of thousands of workers and their families.

Over the last two years, platinum bosses and mainstream media have falsely claimed that the post-2008 fall in the global price of platinum has reduced profits below sustainable levels and therefore justifies retrenchments.But the problems are greatly over-exaggerated. The average platinum price since the global financial crash of 2008 has still been almost double that during the ‘boom’ period of the early to mid-2000s, and almost three times the average platinum price in the 1990s. And Amplats has continued to make substantial profits since 2008. It claims that the four mines threatened with closure are unprofitable but Amplats’ own figures show otherwise. In 2010, the Khomanani 1& 2 mines contributed R129 million to company profits in 2010. In 2011 this increased to R234 million. In 2010, the Khuseleka mine contributed R290 million. In 2011, this was R341 million. The same Amplats’ reports show that the shafts became more profitable because labour productivity increased: workers worked harder and produced more. In all these mines threatened with closure, labour productivity increased by 20% for the 2010-2011 years and the volume of platinum produced 30% from 2010 to 2011. During the same period of increased worker productivity and profitability the remuneration of the Amplats directors (just 22 people) increased by 30% at the same time that the company held workers’ wages down and claimed that the company was in crisis. By the end of 2011, the combined annual pay of the top two individuals at Amplats was R34 million. Amplats’ good fortunes have benefitted shareholders and managers, and punished workers.

Amplats accounts for 40% of global platinum production and controls the bulk of South Africa’s platinum reserves, which are by far the largest in the world. Rather than being a ‘price-taker’, it is thus uniquely empowered to ‘make’ the world price by controlling supply – the essence of its long-term strategy. The retrenchments are therefore about reducing production in order to boost the global price and maintain profitability, and once market conditions improve the threatened shafts in Rustenburg will be bought back on stream. Indeed, Amplats and financial analysts alike have repeatedly stated that the mid- to long-term prospects of the platinum industry are good. In its interim financial report (June 2012), Amplats not only says that ‘despite the current short-term challenges, the longer term outlook for the platinum business remains attractive, but boasts that ‘with its superior asset base in terms of extent and reef type, [Amplats] is well positioned to adjust project prioritisation and scheduling to match future demand’. 

Beyond platinum, generally South African mining companies are guaranteed high profitability on the back of cheap black labour and a compliant government. It is no surprise that other workers at the Exxaro coal mines in the Mpumalanga province and the construction site at the Medupi power station in Lephalale also went out on strike in the last two weeks to demand a living wage. The DLF supports the demands and struggles of these Exxaro and Medupi workers.

The foregoing show that privately owned mines undermine democratic accountability, wealth redistribution, a living wage and job creation. For this reason, the DLF calls for sustained worker and community mass struggles to demand and win the democratic public ownership of mines under workers’ democratic control in conjunction with the local communities in the mining areas. The ANC and capitalists may think that the ANC Mangaung has buried what it saw as the spectre of nationalisation. We know that the ongoing exploitation of mine workers, mining-affected communities and the environment underline with each passing day the need for public ownership of our mineral resources: all the minerals underneath the soil must be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole. Only then can production be planned on the basis of need rather than falling victim to the private corporations, whose competitive scramble is the root cause of the sector’s recurrent crises of over-accumulation. There must be massive state investment in industries that use platinum in socially useful products like catalytic converters and fuel cells, which hold out the hope of eliminating environmentally harmful emissions. The platinum sector must be a driving force of a new low-carbon economy that creates hundreds of thousands of quality climate jobs that are well-paid and secure. It must benefit the majority that produce the wealth rather than the minority who steal it, and create havoc, misery and despair for us all in their endless pursuit of profit.

AMCU, as the new union of the Amplats workers, must play an important role in the fight against the retrenchments. Beyond the union’s role, the DLF is aware that it is not union bureaucracies that will win this fight. It is thousands of united, organised, fighting and militant workers who will successfully defend their jobs and win a living wage. It is with the class solidarity of all other workers in mines and other industries, as well as the solidarity of the unemployed and mining-affected communities that the Amplats can put pressure on Amplats and government. It is this united action which must pressurise the pro-capitalist ANC government to use its power by reviewing the mining licence of Amplats to insert a no-retrenchments clause. The ANC government has the power to take such action instead of its current narrow focus to protect the profits of mining capital alongside the development of a class of black mining capitalists.

The DLF calls on all Amplats workers and other mine workers to bring all their mass power, determination, resolve, unity and militancy in order to stop these retrenchments. It is workers’ united power and ability to close down all the Amplats shafts that can force the bosses to cancel their retrenchment plans. The resolutions of last week’s COSATU Collective Bargaining Conference can only come to life through such worker action. Working with the Amplats Workers’ Committee, the DLF is an active part of worker mobilisation against these retrenchments.

The DLF calls on all other workers and the entire South African labour movement to join and support this crucial struggle of Amplats workers. This struggle will determine whether workers can win a living wage. As we saw with last week’s announcement by the Free Market Foundation of a legal challenge to labour laws, the bosses and their ideologues in South Africa are determined to destroy worker militancy for a living wage and to keep South Africa a low wage economy. If the Amplats workers are defeated and retrenched, the door will be open in all other industries for the bosses to defeat the confidence and militancy of fighting workers. The DLF is aware that Lonmin and Implats bosses are also planning their own round of retrenchments. To allow any of these retrenchments would be to surrender hundreds of thousands of workers to unemployment and starvation wages, and millions of families to lives of penury, whilst leaving the platinum and other mine bosses with restored profits and continued exploitation of cheap black labour that underpins South African capitalism.Therefore, the Amplats’ retrenchments must be resisted and stopped with all the necessary worker action, political action and solidarity across the length and breadth of the country and internationally.

Farmworker struggles

The DLF meeting also reviewed reports of the responses of commercial farmers against the 52% wage settlement victory scored by farm workers earlier this month. Commercial farmers are now seeking to evade paying the R105 minimum wage as many of them have applied to government for exemptions. Many are also threatening to replace labour with machinery, raise rents and charges for electricity and water, threatening evictions and victimising worker leaders and so on. This is unacceptable and requires government to act decisively in favour of farm workers and the broader landless mass of rural people. The DLF will continue with its work to organise farm workers to defend the victory and to stop the farm retrenchments. The DLF calls for ongoing solidarity with farm worker struggles. In the long-term, this organisation of farm workers and dwellers must be extended to demand state-led land redistribution to farm workers and transformative agrarian reform as a basis for a transformed countryside. This is the only way to end baaskap and exploitation in the commercial farms.

The failing ANC state and service delivery

Beyond the workplace, the unemployed are also fighting against the anti-poor capitalist policies and failures of the ANC government: a failing state, lack of accountability, poor housing, poor service delivery, anti-poor cost-recovery in what should be free basic services, inadequate and expensive public health and transport systems. These conditions sustain and reproduce violence against women, criminality and other social crises . All this underlines the need for sustained working class mobilisation as we have seen with the Unemployed People’s Movement’s work in support of the murdered Thandiswa Qubuda and the 6th March march to the Moqhaka Municipality led by the Rammulutsi and Viljoenskroon Crisis Committee (RVCC). Both the UPM and the RVCC are DLF affiliates. Like millions of other unemployed people, the people of Rammulutsi are fed up with false promises and failure of the ANC government to end apartheid and capitalist logics and geographies. The mass of the unemployed are demanding a universal social wage of free public goods and services, and employment. Millions of women demand equality, freedom and self-dignity. Sustained unity and mass action by workers and the unemployed for wealth redistribution and democratisation of the economy are the only way forward to win a just South Africa.

FOR COMMENTS, CONTACT:
Mazibuko K. Jara – 083 651 0271, email – mazibuko@amandla.org.za
Vishwas Satgar – 082 775 3420, email – copac@icon.co.za

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South Africa: Fight against layoffs, nationalise the mines

DEMOCRATIC LEFT FRONT

www.democraticleft.za.net

08 February 2013

PRESS STATEMENT: JOHANNESBURG SOLIDARITY MEETING TO FIGHT THREATENED JOB LOSSES IN MINING SECTOR

NATIONALISE MINES FOR CLIMATE JOBS

The Democratic Left Front (DLF) fully supports the struggles and resolve of thousands of mine workers to resist threatened retrenchments following the Anglo Platinum announcement that over 14,000 mineworkers are to be retrenched at its Rustenburg operations. To kick-start public mobilisation for a mass solidarity campaign with the mine workers, the DLF calls on all progressive organisations and individuals in Johannesburg to be part of a public meeting to be held as follows:

DATE                :        Saturday, 09 February 2013

TIME                  :        12h00 to 14h00

VENUE             :        3rd floor, Eloff Street Galleries, 72 Eloff Street,

Johannesburg CBD

SPEAKERS     :        Rustenburg Workers’ Committee

                           Social movements of the unemployed

DLF Mines Research report

The Rustenburg Workers’ Committee will report to the meeting on the responses of workers to the threatened retrenchments as well as ongoing mobilisation and work of the elected workers’ committees which have led the struggle for a living wage. The DLF fully supports these worker committees as a key too in the hands of the workers to fight the retrenchments and the struggle for a living wage.

The threatened retrenchments are a direct attack by the bosses which seeks to break the confidence and militancy of workers to fight for a living wage. This attack must be resisted and rolled back with all the necessary worker struggles in the mines themselves as well as decisive political action by South Africa’s labour movement as a whole and solidarity action by communities and all progressive forces across the length and breadth of our country. To allow these retrenchments would be to surrender hundreds of thousands of workers to unemployment and starvation wages, and millions of families to lives of penury, whilst  leaving the platinum and other mine bosses with restored profits and continued exploitation of cheap black labour that underpins South African capitalism.

The DLF research report on mines, which will be presented at the Johannesburg public meeting, will expose how the anarchy of the market in the mining sector undermines democratic accountability, wealth redistribution, a living wage and job creation. The DLF will use this public meeting to connect the solidarity campaign with the mine workers with the call for democratic public ownership of mines under workers’ democratic control in conjunction with the local communities in the mining areas. Only then can production be planned on the basis of need rather than falling victim to the private corporations, whose competitive scramble is the root cause of the sector’s recurrent crises of over-accumulation. There must be massive state investment in industries that use platinum in socially useful products like catalytic converters and fuel cells, which hold out the hope of eliminating environmentally harmful emissions. The platinum sector must be a driving force of a new green economy that creates hundreds of thousands of quality climate jobs that are well-paid and secure. It must benefit the majority that produce the wealth rather than the minority who steal it, and create havoc, misery and despair for us all in their endless pursuit of profit.

For further comment on this press release:

Rehad Desai – 083 997 9204

Noor Nieftagodien - 082 457 4103

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Sweet Commerce: Mau Mau, Ireland and the British peasantry

by Richard Mellor

It is not easy to understand the processes that take place in society, not because it’s hard to understand but because the process are deliberately obscured. Why is there is so much strife, poverty, violence and war? “Human nature is just selfish, naturally greedy” is one explanation we hear all the time.  The pope in Rome and most other religious figures will claim it’s due to rejection of or failure to become closer to god; their god of course. We are sinners, Christians are even born bad.

As a young man in the 1960’s and 70’s during the troubles in Northern Ireland and subsequent bombings in England, the discussions in the workplaces and pubs were about how the Catholics and Protestants just couldn’t get along.  The same with Muslims and Jews in Israel/Palestine, “Jews and Muslims have been killing each other like this for centuries” one guy told me recently.  This is not so, and in certain circles among political people, the discussions may well be about the underlying causes of these conflicts, but I am talking about the propaganda in the mass media and how this shapes the views of millions of workers. The main thing is that religion, race and other social divisions are used to obscure the dominant antagonism in society, the class question-----the exploitation of those who sell their labor power to live by those that buy it.  This is particularly so in the US where there are no classes apparently and identity politics is rife.

Dedan Kimathi, Mau Mau fighter

I am thinking of this as I just finished a book about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya that took place between 1952 and 1960, The Histories of the Hanged by David Anderson and I strongly recommend it.  It was a brutal and violent conflict.  As a child I recall it being portrayed as a violent assault on white settlers but very few whites died although some did die horrific deaths.  But hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu were displaced, thrown from their land and resettled or unable to find work in the cities.  Over 1000 were hanged and many more killed in the conflict with settlers and British troops.  It was the land question that lay behind the revolt, a revolt that was never termed a rebellion by the British because to do so would have given the “terrorists”rights under the rules of war.  The US refers to these people as “enemy combatants” for the same reason.

Toward the end of the conflict Anderson gives an account of the attitude of the colonial authorities to Mau Mau prisoners who they called Mickeys:

“….while we were waiting for the sub-inspector to come back I decided to question the Mickeys.  They wouldn’t say a thing of course and one of them, a tall coal-black bastard, kept grinning at me, real insolent. I slapped him hard, but he kept on grinning at me, so I kicked him in the balls as hard as I could ... When he finally got up on his feet he grinned at me again and I snapped. I really did. I stuck my revolver right in his grinning mouth ... And I pulled the trigger. His brains went all over the side of the police station. The other two (suspects) were standing there looking blank ... so I shot them both ... when the sub-inspector drove up, I told him the (suspects) tried to escape. He didn't believe me but all he said was 'bury them and see the wall is cleaned up'."   

A Young friend of mine, a black guy from the Midwest was talking to me about racism and what that has meant for black people throughout US history, from the kidnappings that brought them here to the racist justice system that incarcerates them at alarming rates and everything in between.  He felt racial war would be more likely than genuine racial harmony. The US media tended to see the Mau Mau revolt as a race war at the time and I can hardly blame my young friend from drawing the conclusions he did although how strongly he held them I’m not sure. But I reminded him of the conclusions about social conflict that Malcolm X drew from his experiences when he said:

“I believe that there will be ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing….” he said, “….I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin...”

While skin color, gender and religious affiliation can lead to conflict, and are also additional forms of social oppression that we have to address----I don’t feel discriminated against by the society in which I live due to the color of my skin for example----the motive force for driving colonial people’s off their land was not a hatred for their color or religion, it is driven by the need for free labor and the expansion of the capitalist mode of production throughout the world.  Wealth in capitalist society is created during the labor process so people that have a means of subsistence from the land have to be separated from it in order to drive them in to the hands of the capitalist class who will willingly pay them a wage for their labor time.

Before the British capitalist class liberated Kikuyu farmers from their means of subsistence, they freed the British peasants, white people, from theirs. The taking of common land that fed and clothed these peasants sped up after the English revolution becoming private land through legal decree (the peasants having no political voice of course) and violence. But the capitalist mode of production was not yet advanced enough to employ all this Labor power, these “free” laborers, so the possessors of it having lost their means of subsistence, were driven in to extreme poverty and were forced to beg, poach or steal to survive.  The punishment for such immoral behavior was death or if you were lucky, the workhouse. 

Marx described the removal of one entire community in Scotland to make way for capitalist agriculture in the six years between 1814 and 1820:

“From 1814 to 1820 these 15,000 inhabitants, about 3,000 families, were systematically hunted and rooted out. All their villages were destroyed and burnt, all their fields turned into pasturage. British soldiers enforced this eviction, and came to blows with the inhabitants. One old woman was burnt to death in the flames of the hut, which she refused to leave.

The perpetrator, the Duchess of Sutherland he points out; 

“…appropriated 794,000 acres of land that had from time immemorial belonged to the clan. She assigned to the expelled inhabitants about 6,000 acres on the sea-shore — 2 acres per family. The 6,000 acres had until this time lain waste, and brought in no income to their owners. The Duchess, in the nobility of her heart, actually went so far as to let these at an average rent of 2s. 6d. per acre to the clansmen, who for centuries had shed their blood for her family. The whole of the stolen clanland she divided into 29 great sheep farms, each inhabited by a single family, for the most part imported English farm-servants. In the year 1835 the 15,000 Gaels were already replaced by 131,000 sheep.”

The same situation began in Ireland long before capitalist expansion reached the shores of present day Kenya.  But my point here is that the capitalist class is not driven by race or religious hatred, it is the necessity for free labor that motivates their actions described here.  But a ruling class, feudal or capitalist, must justify its right to govern society and rule over others. It must demonize them, portray them as lesser beings. Why else would they be the rulers and the others ruled?  They must be more intelligent, more industrious, more motivated, otherwise why would they not be the conquered instead of the conquerors?

Throughout history there is resistance to this process which is what the Mau Mau rebellion was. It is met by direct violence and legislation to back it up and Irish history documents this well.  In England from the reign of Henry VIII beggars and the poor were whipped, branded, and executed for their crimes. Their land was taken from them along with their lives if they resisted; “Thus were the agricultural people, first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system.” writes Marx.

If we read of the colonizing of Mexico or any other land, the process is similar, the Yaquii were driven off their land for the same reason, private property in land is paramount. The capitalist class, “…compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.”

The British ruling class and its intellectual warriors not only demonized its own working class, peasant or industrial worker, it portrayed other races as mere animals, but finds the necessity to convince its own working class that they are not so low and provide them with just a little more to prove it. Super exploitation of the foreigner could provide some extra loot for this task. Racism is the best tool for the justification of oppression and religion is a handy enabler, "How godly a deed it is to overthrow so wicked a race the world may judge: for my part I think there cannot be a greater sacrifice to God” wrote one British chronicler during a colonial expedition in to Ulster in Northern Ireland in 1574.

The Times of London wrote in the midst of the Irish famine as hundreds of thousands of them died: "They are going. They are going with a vengeance. Soon a Celt will be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the streets of Manhattan...Law has ridden through, it has been taught with bayonets, and interpreted with ruin. Townships levelled to the ground, straggling columns of exiles, workhouses multiplied, and still crowded, express the determination of the Legislature to rescue Ireland from its slovenly old barbarism, and to plant there the institutions of this more civilized land."

James Froud was an English professor at Oxford, one of the historic training schools of the British and world bourgeois. He was a proponent of Anglo Saxon superiority and wrote of the Irish peasants at the time as "more like squalid apes than human beings.".

In the British press they were pictured as apes and were often described as “White Chimpanzees”, a step up from the “negro”. This had to be the case as the Irish have white skin, the same color as the British ruling class. Some said that the arrival of people of a different color in to Britain gave the Irish some breathing room.*

Racism has been a very useful tool in securing the aims of the capitalist class as they are forced by the laws of their system to seek new markets, raw material and Labor power and it is not the only tactic used to divide and weaken the working class, sexism and religious division is also useful to them. But it would be a mistake to attribute the motive for the exploitation by one nation of another to be a personal hatred of their culture, their color or their religion. Behind the racism and the violence and the expropriation of land and property is economics.

I was in Ireland recently and saw that there are efforts there to lay to rest in one place or commemorate the martyrs who died fighting for Irish freedom from British occupation.  Many of them that died at the hands of the occupying forces either in combat or through execution, were buried in unmarked graves or simply discarded. (For centuries, Irish revolutionists were sent to Australia as were the poor, political and religious dissidents).

In Kenya too there is an attempt to find the bones of those heroic Mau Mau buried in unmarked plots or simply discarded.  It is no accident that this took place in two different parts of the world.  The object is not to leave a people a place to visit their heroes; those that fought for their independence and freedom from colonial rule, all conquerors do it.  Bin Laden, though I would not place him in the same company as heroic figures like Che Guevara, Lumumba, and others, was dumped in the sea for the same reason.  The hatred of the occupier of one’s land of the ruling class that oppresses, is deep rooted and it is this hatred that must find no outlet, must not take organizational form or have any heroes.

The Mau Mau were presented by British colonialism as insane psychopaths, monkeys and incapable of living in a modern world just like the Irish.  They recently won a major victory in a British court that allows the few remaining Mau Mau fighters to sue the British government for compensation for the torture and brutality they faced under British rule.  It’s not going to amount to much bet even so, the British government opposed it. 

They blamed the Kenyans.

*The quotes on Ireland come from a document from the Irish Famine Society.  To receive this in pdf form send an e mail to: we_know_whats_up@yahoo.com

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Malians exact revenge on Muslim shopkeepers as French and Gov't troops enter Timbuktu

Malians in Timbuktu exacting revenge on Arab or Muslim stores after French and Malian troops take control of the city from Islamic forces. There are considerable mining and resource ventures that imperialist forces need to defend in what is yet another NATO war fought in defense of corporations like French nuclear energy firm Areva’s uranium mines in neighboring Niger. The Islamic fundamentalists that US capitalism nurtured and helped strengthen in its struggle with the old Soviet regime have come back to haunt them as the struggle to contain their old allies has shifted from Pakistan and Afghanistan to Saharan Africa. And Iraq is far from finished.

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South Africa: NATIONALISE MINES FOR CLIMATE JOBS

DEMOCRATIC LEFT FRONT

www.democraticleft.za.net

21 January 2013

PRESS STATEMENT: ANGLO PLATS CRISIS DEMANDS DECISIVE STEPS

NATIONALISE MINES FOR CLIMATE JOBS

Anglo Platinum’s announcement that over 14,000 mineworkers are to be retrenched at its Rustenburg operations demands decisive steps from the South African labour movement. Last year’s strike-wave, which began on the platinum belt and spread through the gold and other sectors, has exposed how far the South African mining industry continues to rely on apartheid-era mechanisms of exploitation, and has inspired the fight for a living wage among the mass of the poorest paid, not least the farm workers.

The Amplats announcement is clearly part of the bosses’ counter-offensive to break this new spirit of militancy. It coincides with Harmony’s indefinite lockout at the Kusasalethu goldmine, while the four shafts targeted for closure in Rustenburg have the highest concentration of AMCU members. Yet, in the first half of 2012, these same shafts achieved labour-productivity and output increases of over 20% and 30% respectively, according to Amplats’ own figures.

And this is just the beginning. The big investors are urging more cuts across the platinum sector to restore their profits and roll back the challenge to the low-wage economy that underpins South African capitalism.

Zwelinzima Vavi is therefore right to declare that COSATU will resist the Amplats assault with “everything in its power”. But these words must now be put into action. The entire labour movement must be mobilised and placed on a war footing. Every effort must be made to support the elected workers’ committees - which have led the struggle for a living wage - regardless of their union affiliation. The Amplats workers must know that when they strike, there will be massive sympathy action. They are now on the frontline of a struggle whose outcome will shape the future of every worker and their dependents. 

At the same time, the Rustenburg retrenchments reflect a deeper crisis in the platinum industry. This, however, is a crisis of the bosses’ own making and demands radical solutions. Amplats complains that it is the victim of the global recession and that its profits have been hit by the downturn in platinum prices. But its problems, and that of the wider platinum industry, are over-exaggerated.  It is certainly true that world platinum prices have fallen since the financial crash of 2008. However, they are still on average almost double those of the ‘boom’ period of the early to mid-2000s and almost three times the average platinum price in the 1990s.

At the same time, Amplats and financial analysts alike have repeatedly stated that the industry’s future prospects are good. In its interim financial report (June 2012), Amplats not only says that ‘despite the current short term challenges, the longer term outlook for the platinum business remains attractive’, but boasts that ‘with its superior asset base in terms of extent and reef type, [Amplats] is well positioned to adjust project prioritisation and scheduling to match future demand’. This gets to the heart of the matter. 88% of the world’s platinum reserves are concentrated in South Africa and Amplats alone accounts for 40% of global production. Rather than being a ‘price-taker’, it is uniquely empowered to ‘make’ the world price by controlling supply – the essence of its long-term strategy.

During the boom years Amplats and its competitors rushed to expand production. However, when the global crisis hit in 2008, Amplats sacked 19,000 workers, suspended three shafts and borrowed heavily from parent company Anglo American. Despite posting record earnings of $13.3 billion at the end of 2011 and paying out R1.1-billion in dividends, Amplats launched its operational review in February 2012 to boost flagging prices by further cutting production.  This is the source of the current jobs massacre, but the shafts will be kept ticking over for when market conditions improve.

 The ANC has publicly reacted to Amplats’ announcement with anger and has threatened to revoke its Rustenburg mining licences. This is simply rhetoric. It was the ANC government that allowed Amplats and the other SA mining giants to move overseas in the first place, and Susan Shabangu’s silence on the lock-out of workers at Harmony Kusasalethu goldmine, whose chairperson is Patrice Motsepe, indicates that her outburst has little to do with the well-being of workers. But even if Shabungu and co did see their threat through, the licences would be allocated to another capitalist who, regardless of the colour of their skin, would simply add to the problem.

It is time for workers in the platinum sector to stop paying the price of the anarchy of the market. The industry as a whole must be nationalised under workers’ democratic control in conjunction with the local communities in the mining areas. Only then can production be planned on the basis of need rather than falling victim to the private corporations, whose competitive scramble is the root cause of the sector’s recurrent crises of over-accumulation. There must be massive state investment in industries that use platinum in socially useful products like catalytic converters and fuel cells, which hold out the hope of eliminating environmentally harmful emissions. The platinum sector must be a driving force of a new green economy that creates hundreds of thousands of quality climate jobs that are well-paid and secure. It must benefit the majority that produce the wealth rather than the minority who steal it, and create havoc, misery and despair for us all in their endless pursuit of profit.

For further comment on this press release:

Noor Nieftagodien 082 457 4103

Niall Reddy (079) 5129584

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Capitalism at work: Tragic shack fires in South Africa

From Martin Legassick in South Africa

This video was taken some 30 hours after a fire caused by a paraffin stove or a candle overturning devastated the shack settlement BM section in Khayelitsha, causing at least 3 deaths, with 800 shacks destroyed and 4000 people displaced. On average there are ten shack fires a day in South Africa, killing someone every other day. This is one of the bad fires -- in January 2005 12000 people were left homeless after a fire in Joe Slovo settlement in Langa, Cape Town. Here people are painfully starting to rebuild. Many will have lost everything save the clothes they are wearing. This video was taken some 30 hours after a fire caused by a paraffin stove or a candle overturning devastated the shack settlement BM section in Khayelitsha, causing at least 3 deaths, with 800 shacks destroyed and 4000 people displaced. On average there are ten shack fires a day in South Africa, killing someone every other day. This is one of the bad fires -- in January 2005 12000 people were left homeless after a fire in Joe Slovo settlement in Langa, Cape Town. Here people are painfully starting to rebuild. Many will have lost everything save the clothes they are wearing. Such fires -- which cause the majority of fire deaths in South Africa -- can be prevented. Electrification of shacks eliminates the danger of paraffin and candles. (Yet in some parts of the country -- though not, so far, in Cape Town -- municipalities are de-electrifying shack settlements!). There needs to be adequate water supply, to every shack -- instead of a few taps for thousands as is the case at present -- with fire hoses and fire extinguishers. There need to be adequate access roads built instead of shacks squeezed next to each other with only a path separating the walls. There need to be brick buildings built to replace the shacks. The millions of unemployed need to be trained and put to work building houses. But the capitalist ANC government cannot do this, it serves only the system of profit.

 

Here is a report on shack fires and a statement of the Abahlali baseMjondolo Durban position.

Abahlali baseMjondolo Western Cape 1 January 2012

As residents of QQ Section shack settlement and members of the movement Abahlali baseMjondolo, we would like to say that we are not happy about what happened early this morning across the street from QQ Section. A massive shack-fire, which started at around 4am, swept through almost the entire shack settlement of BM Section leaving thousands homeless and at least three (but possibly as much as six) people dead. We have a few Abahlali members in the settlement and, as residents of QQ Section, we also have a large number of friends and family who also were affected by the fire.

We therefore remain in living solidarity with all those affect by the fire in BM section and other shack fires in WD Section and in Du Noon. The scourge of shack-fires throughout all of Cape Town's shack settlements and the delayed and uncaring response by the city clearly shows that shackdwellers have been isolated socially, economically and politically. If the government would give us the respect of a citizen of this country, this kind of incident would not have happened. The immediate cause of the fire remains uncertain (either a cooking accident or a knocked over candle by a drunk community member).

Yet the resulting massive fire is beyond our control as residents of the shacks. In other words, these fires are not only preventable, but they are caused by uncaring and anti-poor government policy. As citizens of this country, we have a right to decent housing, to efficient sanitation, to affordable electricity and to well-planned roads. Yet even though residents of BM section as well as numerous settlements affiliated to Abahlali baseMjondolo have been protesting for these things for years, the government has delivered almost nothing we have demanded for our communities.

• If we had electricity, dangerous paraffin stoves and candles would be a thing of the past and shack-fires would be a rare phenomenon.

• If we had piped water into our homes, we would be able to quickly fight the fires ourselves.

• If we had proper access roads in our settlements, fire-fighters would be able to stop fires much quicker.

• If we had brick house and our own plots of land, fires would not spread from one home to the next. If we had all these things, or even some of them, an accident by a drunk neighbour would not affect the livelihood those around him. Shack-fires in Cape Town, just as this report shows they are in Durban, are the result of government policy that denies us the basic things we need to live healthy and safe lives. Instead, shack-fires have now become an opportunity for the city to pretend it cares for us by giving us a few food parcels and blankets each time a fire rips through one of our communities. And yet, even the city's contingency plan is lacking:

• Disaster Management has failed to provide emergency accommodation to all the victims of the fire in BM Section.

• Despite claims to the contrary, Disaster Management has failed to provide all victims with food, clothes, blankets and other necessary emergency items. We therefore appeal to Mayor de Lille to sit down with Abahlali baseMjondolo and other shackdwellers throughout the city to discuss the role that the City of Cape Town plays in creating the conditions of the current shack-fire epidemic. We as AbM-WC are also asking for solidarity with the victims of the BM Section fire.

Please contact us if you'd like to help. For more information, please contact: Thembelani @ 0712604119 Mr Qona @ 0713518483

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WSJ: U.S. Plans Military Intervention in Africa

“Terror Fight Shifts to Africa” screams the front-page headline on this morning’s Wall Street Journal.  The subhead elaborates: “U.S. Considers Seeking Congressional Backing for Operations Against Extremists”

The WSJ article explains: 

“The move, according to administration and congressional officials, would be aimed at allowing U.S. military operations in Mali, Nigeria, Libya and possibly other countries where militants have loose or nonexistent ties to al Qaeda’s Pakistan headquarters. Depending on the request, congressional authorization could cover the use of armed drones and special operations across a region larger than Iraq and Afghanistan combined, the officials said.” 

Well, this is good news indeed!  The U.S. is considering helping Africa to deal with the “Terror Fight” just as it has helped Iraq and Afghanistan.  We know what to expect: war, ruin, and destruction; villages “mistakenly” bombed, massive civilian deaths; drone assassinations. No doubt such an intervention would include targeting mass leaders of the Egyptian and Nigerian working classes. The region and its people will be made worse off by far than before the U.S. intervention. A generation of African youth will join the generations of Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, and Pakistani youth in their profound hatred for U.S. imperialism.  And then, the U.S. will move on, to combat yet another “terrorist” threat – perhaps this one in adjacent southern Africa, where the striking miners and farmworkers are already being accused of “anarchy” and “terror”.

When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, he promised to end the war in Iraq. Many of his then-euphoric supporters took this to mean that he was an anti-war candidate. He was not. They had failed to read the fine print: Obama didn’t plan to end the war, he planned to move it east to Afghanistan – a “smarter war”, he said at the time, because “that’s where the terrorists are”. Well, things didn’t turn out appreciably better there than they had in Iraq – so it’s time to move the war (the “Terror Fight”) yet again.  The places change; the drive to maintain U.S. capitalist global hegemony remains.

The WSJ article quotes Christopher Anders of the American Civil Liberties Union, who warns, “This is the kind of thing that Americans could end up regretting; we could end up in another decade long war if this crazy idea isn’t stopped.”

We must do more than regret. We must demand that the U.S. immediately and unconditionally pull all military forces and CIA agents out of the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa and immediately end the drone murders. These demands already resonate with a vast number of American working people.

 Our voices will be heard!

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