Sunday, April 21, 2013
Chronological list of reporting in the Star Newspaper on the Presidential petitions in Kenya after the General Elections 2013
Supreme Court Ruling Shameful
... Court
dismissed former Prime Minister Raila Odinga's and Africog’s
petitions on March 30, 2013, more than half of the country went ... that’s the
equivalent of exactly what happened Raila’s petition. The
constitution itself provides that courts cannot sacrifice ...
BY
SAM OMWENGA -
Saturday, April 20, 2013 - 00:00
Supreme Court releases judgement on election petitions
...
which Uhuru Kenyatta was declared president. The petition challenging IEBC’s declaration of
Uhuru as the winner of the March ... Cord coalition and the African Centre for
Open Governance (Africog)
, a civil society group. Speaking at the Supreme Court, ...
BY
LYDIA MATATA -
Tuesday, April 16, 2013 - 00:00
Gladwell, Kiai launch website on poll petition
... A
website containing all evidence used in Supreme Court petition was launched yesterday. Gladwell
Otieno and Zahid Rajan from ... in public all the evidence around the recent
elections. Africog said it would upload a 900-page
document detailing evidence on the ...
BY HELLEN MWANGI -
Saturday, April 13, 2013 - 00:00
Kethi Kilonzo gets candid on all matters law
... and
was the talk of town during the presidential election petition hearing by the Supreme Court. Last
week she appeared on the acclaimed ... You represented the African Center For
Open Governance (Africog)
one of the petitioners against the results of the recently ended ...
BY SHARON MACHARIA -
Monday, April 8, 2013 - 00:00
Kenya Needs Judicial Activism To Realize Constitution Goals
...
concluded hearing of a consolidated presidential election petition at the Supreme Court of Kenya, counsel
for the respondents argued ... Program Advisor at the Africa Centre for Open
Governance (AfriCOG)
...
BY JAMES GONDI -
Thursday, April 4, 2013 - 00:00
Bungoma Cord MPs in pledge to back Uhuru
...
election. The Saturday landmark ruling followed a petition by Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Africog,
a local Non Governmental Organisation. Waluke said following Cord's ...
BY SIMBI KUSIMBA -
Tuesday, April 2, 2013 - 00:00
LAWYERS APPLAUD RULING CALL FOR PEACE
Lawyers
representing both sides in the presidential petition have applauded the ruling and called
on Kenyans to accept the verdict ... Ahmed Nassir and Kethi Kilonzo who
represented the IEBC and Africog respectively say the verdict is an
indication that the constitution is ...
Joan Wairimu -
Sunday, March 31, 2013 - 07:00
K24 blames hacker for tweet on Uhuru election petition win
...
station associated with Uhuru, who was a respondent in the petition challenging his election posted on their
twitter handle at 1.07pm that ... the Executive Director of Africa Centre for
Open Governance (AfriCOG)
Gladwell Otieno jointly with Zahid Rajan. The twitter posting by ...
BY WALTER MENYA -
Saturday, March 30, 2013 - 00:00
Presidential Petition In Modern-Day Kenya
...
sets. This time to courtroom proceedings over the election petition that was streamed live. The Supreme
Court heard and determined ... instance, which was the first day of the
pre-trial hearing, AFRICOG filed a 900-page reply affidavit. This
affidavit was received by ...
BY DAISY MARITIM -
Saturday, March 30, 2013 - 00:00
Report proves results were accurate - IEBC
...
Lawyers representing respondents in the election petition challenging the outcome of the March 4
presidential elections have ... on the election petition filed by the Cord Coalition and Africog challenging the outcome of the
election in which Uhuru Kenyatta was ...
BY LYDIA MATATA -
Friday, March 29, 2013 - 00:00
''Scrutiny proves our case" - Oraro and Kilonzo
...
supports their case. Kethi Kilonzo, the lead counsel for Africog said that the two reports, prepared
after the Supreme Court ordered a ... stations, confirms the allegations they
have made in the petition in regard to differences in form 34
and form 36. Ms Kilonzo said the ...
BY DICKENS OLEWE -
Friday, March 29, 2013 - 00:00
Uhuru, Ruto lawyers say Cord poll petition has no basis
... as
the third and fourth respondents in the ongoing election petition at the Supreme Court had stated that
the Cord petitionchallenging
the ... Both lawyers said that the second and third petitioners, Africog and Cord respectively, were tasked
with proving the irregularities they ...
BY STAR REPORTER -
Thursday, March 28, 2013 - 00:00
Supreme Court throws out Africog's petition
...
dismissed the oral application by Kethi Kilonzo representing AFRICOG in a case challenging the declaration
of Uhuru Kenyatta as ...
BY STAR REPORTER -
Thursday, March 28, 2013 - 00:00
Poll results were 'massaged' - Africog
...
results saying the tallying process was questionable. Africog filed the petition challenging the validity of the
election outcome in which Uhuru ...
BY STAR REPORTER -
Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - 00:00
RAILA LOSES BID FOR NEW EVIDENCE
...
response. “The affidavits change the character of the petition leading to a new petition.
If we allowed the affidavits to remain on ... also rejected a request by the
Africa Centre for Governance (AfriCog)
to have the IEBC produce electronic equipment that it used to ...
BY
NZAU MUSAU AND JILLO KADIDA -
Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - 00:00
IEBC asks court to rule on rejected votes
...
Kamau Karori who is representing the IEBC in the poll petition by the Coalition for Reform and
Democracy (Cord) challenging Uhuru ... Councils representing African Centre for
Open Governance (Africog)
and Cord however argued against the petition stating that as per the ...
BY STAR REPORTER -
Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - 00:00
Africog's application dismissed by Supreme Court
...
rejected an application by lawyer Kethi Kilonzo acting for Africog that sought to have the court
compel the IEBC to produce the marked ... to produce application should have
been filed with the petition.
Following this ruling, the formal proceedings of the ...
BY EUGENE OKUMU -
Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - 00:00
PRESIDENTIAL VOTES TO BE TALLIED AGAIN
... is
the external hard-drive, which has been annexed to the petition by IEBC. The court also ordered a re-tally
of results from 22 ... In the other two petitions, by civil society
organization Africog and by Jubilee supporters, the
petitioners and respondents will each ...
BY
SAM KIPLAGAT -
Tuesday, March 26, 2013 - 00:00
KATIBA INSTITUTE WANTS ENJOINED AS FRIEND OF COURT
...
Institute will be included as a friend of the court in the petition filed by CORD and AFRICOG.
Yash Pal Ghai for Katiba Institute argues all petitioners ...
Macharia Wamugo, Cornelius Mwau - Monday, March 25, 2013 - 18:00
... and the Law Society of
Kenya to be enjoined in the Cord petition, challenging the election
of Uhuru Kenyatta, as Amicus Curiae , ... the Supreme Court chambers, the
judges heard from Cord and Africog, who are petitioners in the case,
raise their objections to allowing ...
BY EUGENE OKUMU -
Monday, March 25, 2013 - 00:00
PARTICULARS
...AFRICOG - Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 00:00
... by Raila Odinga and
African Centre for Open Governance (Africog) in a newspaper with the
largest circulation. So far, three petitions ... published on Saturday
informing the public of the earlier petition. Soon after the
publication, respondents in the case, who include ...
BY SAM KIPLAGAT -
Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - 00:00
... The African Centre for
Open Governance (AFRICOG) v Ahmed Issack Hassan & Another High Court
of Kenya at ... Constitutional and Human Rights Division Petition No.
152 of 2013 I. Lenaola, D.S. Majanja, W.Korir JJ. ...
BY EMMA KINYA
MWOBOBIA - Wednesday, March 13, 2013 - 00:00
... assembled to represent
Prime Minister Raila Odinga in his petition challenging the
election of Jubilee coalition’s Uhuru Kenyatta as ... Otieno told the Star on
phone. In the suit last Friday, Africog had sought orders to
stop the tallying process that was then going on ...
BY NZAU MUSAU - Monday,
March 11, 2013 - 00:00
... elections. The Africa
Centre for Open Governance (Africog) said that they have “uncontroverted
evidence” of inconsistencies ... which has not been explained to the public. In
the petition, the NGO argues that the failure by the IEBC to tally
the presidential ...
BY SAM KIPLAGAT AND JILLO
KADIDA - Saturday, March 9, 2013 - 00:00
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Non-violence and the narrative of peace
JOSEPH DANA: MIDDLE EAST - Jun 24 2011 00:00
On Sunday June 5, hundreds of Palestinians gathered outside the Qalandia checkpoint separating Jerusalem and Ramallah. They were part of an unarmed demonstration marking the anniversary of Israel's takeover of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, known as Naksa Day.Simultaneously, thousands of Palestinians descended on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and attempted to mass on the Lebanese border with nothing more than their bodies. As the spring sun beat down on the demonstration, Israel killed 23 demonstrators with live ammunition and injured hundreds.
The Qalandia demonstration, organised by the Ramallah-based March 15 youth movement, was the embodiment of the Arab Spring in Palestine. Demonstrators, inspired by the revolutions sweeping across North Africa and the Middle East, approached the concrete walls of the checkpoint and were met by fully armed Israeli soldiers who, without a moment's pause, opened fire with teargas and stun grenades. Panic descended on the crowd as people collapsed from the effects of teargas inhalation.
I watched as some Palestinian youth responded to the Israeli incursion by throwing stones at soldiers, who then returned fire using large, aluminium teargas canisters as bullets, in violation of Israeli army rules of conduct. Within an hour, soldiers had taken over Palestinian rooftops around the walled checkpoint and were firing rubber bullets at the unarmed protesters. One Palestinian was hit directly in the face. The Israeli military reported that one border policeman was slightly injured in the demonstration.
Mainstream Israeli and international media argued endlessly, as though in a state of reverie, about whether Palestinian demonstrators who threw rocks should be considered unarmed, non-violent or violent. Absent from the conversation was the fact that Israel is rapidly increasing a programme of military repression against demonstrations in a last-ditch effort to dominate the narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Portraying unarmed Palestinians as violent rioters enabled the press to downplay Israel's heavy-handed reaction to the demonstrations. This response was largely based on unsubstantiated accounts of demonstrators' behaviour, most of which came directly from the Israeli military and were completely false.
'Striving for peace'
The entire Israeli-Palestinian peace process -- predicated on the fact that both sides are striving for peace -- has allowed Israel to portray any Palestinian attempts to challenge the status quo through unarmed resistance as antithetical to equitable settlement between the two sides.
This approach ignores the Israeli intransigence of endless settlement construction and the military infrastructure required to control Palestinian life. Night raids, mass arrests and lack of freedom of movement are all too often ignored when the international community envisions the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. In fact, the word "occupation" seldom enters mainstream discourse at all.
Palestinians are now coalescing around unarmed resistance as a way of highlighting what occupation means for them. Although peace is clearly desired among Palestinians, their immediate concern is one of human rights.
In the wake of the Arab Spring, Israel is starting to lose its edge in convincing the international community that the conflict is simply about peace and not rights. Palestinian demonstrations on Israel's borders and checkpoints have highlighted the sea change taking place.
It would seem that Israel's only course of action in explaining its heavy-handed military response to unarmed demonstrators is to describe the demonstrators as violent rioters. In practice, unarmed resistance to the status quo of occupation meets extreme violence from the Israeli army.
Historic episodes of human-rights struggles, such as the American civil-rights movement and the anti-apartheid struggle, underwent similar narrative reformulations. Unarmed demonstrations went from "violent rioters" to respected displays of people power in the face of repression. The Palestinian struggle for human rights will be no different when the history of the conflict is written.
Social media is having a transformative effect on Israel's ability to define Palestinian violence. The internet provides concerned members of international civil society with an intimate and immediate view of unarmed demonstrations in the West Bank. Hours after the demonstration ended in Qalandia, dramatic YouTube clips circulated around the world challenging Israel's portrayal of the demonstrators as violent rioters.
The overall acceptance of the Israeli analytical framework in the collective Western perception of the conflict is changing as a result of the Palestinian reappropriation of unarmed resistance in the new media age. While pundits argue whether a stone-throwing Palestinian teenager is violent or not, Israel is killing protesters armed with nothing but stones in plain sight of the international community.
As such observers begin to understand that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is based on human rights, Israel is going to find it increasingly difficult to muster support in the international community for its on-going military occupation of the West Bank and its blockade of Gaza.
Palestinians are going to maintain the pressure with non-violent measures such as the international boycott, divestment and sanction campaign and the Gaza aid flotilla, which highlight Israeli violation of international law and reaffirm the rights-based nature of the conflict.
Now, more than ever, Israel must devise a strategy to confront non-violent Palestinian resistance in a way that does not rely on semantics but addresses the deprivation of Palestinian human rights.
Joseph Dana, an Israeli-American writer based in Tel Aviv and Ramallah, is a contributing editor of the Israeli web magazine +972
Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://mg.co.za/article/2011-06-24-nonviolence-and-the-narrative-of-peace
Monday, April 5, 2010
Namibia: Reflections on 20 years after independence by Jade McClune, Windhoek
Yes, there have been achievements: for some people with connections or capital or a lot of luck, life has improved as they moved into the other side of town, but for most citizens life has become meaner and shorter. There is a breakdown of all social and municipal services and a growing chauvinistic brutishness about the bureaucracy. At the same time we are witnessing a new desperate scramble for Africa's mineral wealth, that will make the evils of 19th century colonialism look pleasant in comparison. So let it be said, the struggle is not over.
We must speak the truth to power, insisted the Palestinian scholar, Edward Said. And in Namibia the truth is that there is actually a war going on, a secret war, a war of the rich against the poor.
Now the ruling class and the ruling South West African People's Organisation (SWAPO) party have chosen their team for parliament, but the poor and unemployed, the destitute and the diseased, the hungry and depressed -- though still pacified and disorientated by the shock of post-colonial economic reality - remain a lurking threat to the established order of extracting our natural wealth. Although there is a call for all to pull together as a nation now, there are many forces more strongly pulling us apart.
The ideological hegemony and control of the nationalists is not as strong as it was two decades ago when the whole world was celebrating "the miracle". Because even now there is no clear way to resolve the outstanding tasks of the national democratic revolution under SWAPO (or the African National Congress in South Africa) leadership. The land and natural resources are still under foreign ownership and control and the majority live in a concentration of shacks. This very day, after returning from Namibia's celebrations South African President Jacob Zuma was faced with masses of people marching for houses, jobs and a decent life in Durban.
Today SWAPO does not claim to be leading the Namibian revolution. The party has gone over entirely, decisively and openly to the side of global capital and actually facilitates the extraction economy as the party of law and order, so it acts not so much as a representative of the people, but rather performs an "overseer", or managerial function on behalf of Western capital. This is reflected above all in the government's neoliberal economic strategy, which involves giving everything up to the highest bidder. That much is becoming clear to everyone. Today we are faced with an even greater threat to our health and safety as government begins to soften up and open up the country to whore itself to the world as an easy source of uranium.
For all these terrible reasons the representatives of capital, in the form of an emerging national capitalist class, must come more and more into direct conflict with the people who are bearing the brunt of so much exploitation and inequality. The reason being that increasingly the conflicting class interests that separate the political elites from the masses of rural and urban poor, make rubbish of the notion that the elites represent the national interest, as they are openly seen as allies and accomplices of international capital, so the workers who have to pay for it all, including the accompanying pomp and ceremony, are forced to rethink our position, because not only our jobs, but often our very lives depend on it.
If we scratch beneath the surface of this idea of the "national interest", we find that it refers to the partial interests of the ruling class and economic interest groups. Radical analysis has been suppressed from the national debates in the mainstream, but we must persist in presenting the perspective from the left and show that unbridled capitalism is at the core of the social contradiction and crisis engulfing, and indeed devouring, the country.
This is not an isolated view. As a baromoter of international opinion one need only refer to the motion [debated by the Friends of Namibia and the Royal African Society] at the Houses of Parliament in London on March 18, which proposed that Namibia is a shining example of democracy, good governance and post colonial development. It was voted down.
The point is for us not to base ourselves on vague hopes and fantasies, nice as they may be, but on our real historical experience. Our history is contested, that is true, but it is being reclaimed and rewritten from below. That is a basis for reclaiming our future. Based on the experience of the past 20 years, the working class must prepare itself for a period of renewed struggle as we face attacks on our living and working standards; we must prepare for renewed struggles to defend our communities from the causes and effects of superexploitation and from privatisation of services. We will have to struggle for a renewed understanding that only the combined force, effort and will of the working class can solve the cause of economic inequality and lead the oppressed people of the country out of this crisis.
[Jade McClune is an independent researcher and former coordinator of the Archives of Anti-Colonial Resistance in Windhoek. He writes for the online journal, The New Worker.]
Conference of the Democratic Left: Unite to make another South Africa and world possible!
The following call was issued by the Conference of the Democratic Left, a left unity project in South Africa. It first appeared at the Conference of the Democratic Left web site.
* * *
A call to a national people’s conference against capitalism and for democratic left politicsA Call for united anti-capitalist action …
This is a call to come together in unity in a Conference Against Capitalism and for Democratic Left Politics.
1. The world is in crisis
Global capitalism threatens our world with disaster. If it is left to plunder the natural resources of our planet and pollute the atmosphere, the oceans and the soil, life itself will be under grave threat.
The current global economic crisis represents the exhaustion of a system that is driven by profit and competition. The basic tenet of capitalism is to grow endlessly with no regard to natural limits, to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few. It explains why wherever we look we see the crisis and decay of the system: be it financial, energy, food, environment, cultural and social. War, global warming and health pandemics threaten the annihilation of humanity within a couple of generations.
This is equally true for South Africa. In spite of the break with apartheid and the establishment of political democracy, the situation for the working people and the poor gets worse. This is because the same crisis-ridden model of development is imposed. The high levels of corruption accompanying the transition from apartheid must be seen not just as greed but an outcome of the failure to redistribute wealth. Government tenders and patronage are the vehicles for accumulation by a minority in the face of the extreme monopolisation of the economy. Polokwane [the African National Congress national conference that replaced President Thabo Mbeki with Jacob Zuma] does not signal a break with a system that has seen a rise in social inequality, social decay and a resurgent social conservatism in the form of ethnic politics, xenophobia, attacks on women and reproductive rights, homophobia, religious fundamentalism, etc.
Internationally:
- 60 million workers are likely to lose their jobs this year
- 50 million more people in the ‘Third World’ are likely to be plunged into poverty
- More than 500,000 jobs have been lost since the start of the recession in October 2008;
- We have become the most unequal society in the world;
- We exceed the world in violence against women and children;
- Despite building of houses, more than 2 million families lack decent housing, the same number as in 1994;
- We have one of the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates in the world.
The rise of a new global left in the context of the World Social Forum, the emergence of left parties (socialist, green) in Latin America and Europe and new anti-capitalist social movements challenge our dogmas.
Another South Africa and another world, free of violence and exploitation, is possible. We have to overcome our disillusionment in the politicians and policy makers.
The future rests in the hands of the working class, the dispossessed, the unemployed, the youth, women and rural people as well as radical intellectuals. But only if we wrestle for power and the right to shape a new agenda rooted in the power of a gigantic movement resting on independent autonomous mass organisations of working people. We must struggle to give meaning to the slogan “we are our own liberators”.
2. Build a platform of struggle and politics of the people!
In a number of forums where the acute problems confronting our people are being discussed the idea that we must draw together left and progressive forces into a united front to confront the ravages of global capitalism is growing. In this task of shaping a new agenda that can make a radical break with disaster capitalism 60 activists from trade unions, social movements and a wide range of radical political organisations and currents came together in October 2008 to begin this process.
It was agreed to work towards developing a new programmatic platform of action on an anti-capitalist basis for democratic left politics The intention is to create a platform that can:
- Build a political consensus on the challenges posed by the current international and national situation;
- Take forward national and international struggles;
- Work towards developing a grassroots democratic eco-socialist, feminist, political program;
- Develop strategies for overcoming race, gender, age, sexual orientation and other divisions within South African society and particularly amongst the working class;
We must struggle to rekindle the mass movement of the 1980s which brought apartheid to an end. We recognise that the conscious forces of transformation are still weak, but believe that such actions can eventually unite class struggle forces in all working-class movements not least from the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP).
3. We need a people’s conference, solidarity and united front The Conference of the Democratic Left is not an event and neither is it about merely sharing intellectual ideas. What is envisaged is:
- A process of bottom up deliberation, debate in which voices from below shape outcomes and collective action. The organising of the Conference of the Democratic Left is about creating local forums, provincial forums and a national platform. The Conference of the Democratic Left is merely one moment in an exciting, vibrant and self-organised process.
- This is a conscious political initiative informed by a recognition that we all fought for the liberation of South Africa. The Conference of the Democratic Left is an affirmation of democratic pluralism and is a process which seeks to elaborate political objectives, practices, alternatives and new ways of engaging in left politics. It aims to create a united front around a programme of action while preserving the autonomy of constituent organisations.
We engage in this process humbly and with modesty, conscious that we do not have all the answers to the complex challenges facing humanity.
4. National and provincial convening committees
The Conference of the Democratic Left will be convened from March 20 – 22, 2010. An interim national convening committee has been established, and provincial convening committees are in the process of being established. These are facilitation structures which will further evolve through adding members in the context of the process.
CALL TO PARTICIPATE
The National Conference of the Democratic Left aims to become a vehicle for the self-organisation of the excluded, the exploited, the discriminated and poverty-stricken majority in South Africa (including all progressive strata) with the power to radically transform South Africa along eco-socialist and participatory democratic lines.
Begin at the bottom left
By Mazibuko K. JaraMarch 12, 2010 -- For someone like me, nearly a year of a Jacob Zuma presidency would be an easy, triumphant moment to ask the South African Communist Party (SACP) and Cosatu whether the Zuma path to power was worth it. But this would amount to cheap politicking and lead nowhere.
But there is an important lesson: change cannot ever be the outcome of the big man. Fundamentally it is a product of the way in which power is configured in a society.
The Zuma path was not about the reconfiguration of capitalist power or a break with ex-president Thabo Mbeki's neoliberal and technicist approach.
In pursuing the Zuma path both the SACP and Cosatu had a blind spot: they ignored a basic issue concerning the conditions under which political elites in capitalist societies have been forced to advance developmental programmes. The removal of Mbeki has not changed the framing pre-1994 property relations.
Change in personnel at the top is useless in dealing with class power that is rooted in the monopoly ownership of the economy, the power of financial capital, the exploitation of cheap black labour and a permissive state. As Adam Habib put it to Amandla: "Individuals, wherever they are, simply reflect the institutional constraints of the balance of power within … society".
Indeed, the removal of Mbeki could have opened up a space to create the political conditions conducive to thoroughgoing change if a mass movement built around basic demands and transformative policies had accompanied it.
Even going forward, the SACP-Cosatu focus remains on "keeping our man" in the job. Still absent in their strategy is a willingness to consider a political project outside the ANC.
The past 11 or so months of a Zuma presidency have shown us a government that is not about to challenge the inordinate power of capital. This can be seen on so many fronts: a commitment to two-tier labour-market policies; a lack of responsiveness to the needs of local communities; a foreign policy aligned to global corporate interests, such as at the Copenhagen climate change negotiations; and in the countryside entrenching the power of undemocratic tribal authorities at the expense of the rights of modern citizenship and, particularly, the rights of women.
Within a neoliberal framework, the global crisis has also cut Zuma's space to manoeuvre.
But that cannot be an excuse as Mbeki faced similar pressures, and the discrediting of neoliberalism offers space for alternative policies.
This past year has also shown us a besieged, unstrategic and unstable ANC-SACP-Cosatu alliance leadership. Even in subjective terms, the negative psychology of such an encircled political leadership reinforces its lack of political will and incapacity to build popular power, undo the neoliberal economic policies of the Mbeki era and energetically drive a genuinely transformative agenda.
Meanwhile, capital has not rested -- it has continued to act on and through the state to block any post-Polokwane transformational momentum that may have been flickering. As part of its strategy, capital can actually afford to have an SACP and Cosatu blowing hot and cold -- in reality they are co-opted into what remains a neoliberal government. To illustrate this: the potentially transformative National Health Insurance proposal is now tilted towards becoming an accumulation site that could address the profit crisis facing private hospitals and medical aid schemes instead of delivering a universal, decommodified and quality public health system.
Another glaring example concerns the continued power of the coal industry to determine our energy policy. Such a subversion is possible largely because, at critical times in the post-Polokwane period, key moments and platforms in which to mobilise and harness the voices, interests and power of the popular forces were lost. In addition the space has increased for the political elite to ride shamelessly on mass support to open the doors of wealth accumulation wider -- as can be seen in the defence of ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema as a deserving black businessman.
The Zuma path represents a serious strategic shortcoming on the part of both the SACP and Cosatu. Objectively, the trajectory of the Zuma path has fashioned the political role of the ANC to be about managing a more legitimate capitalist society and state, while keeping the SACP and Cosatu onside.
A populist ANC in rhetoric and yet conservative in its economic policies is consistent with this objective. This is an ANC that will rant and rave rather than unlock a radical programme of redistribution.
This critique is not to deny the ANC-led alliance's potential still to advance its social delivery programme, which would improve the dire conditions of the people. Although such a legitimate programme is important and should be supported, it would still fall far short of the very necessary anti-systemic transformation of the social, economic and political foundations of this society.
Outside the ANC-led alliance, the post-Polokwane scenario has also underlined the broader weakness of the left and the mass movement. Mass protests largely amount to winning piecemeal concessions from the state rather than creating political conditions conducive to thoroughgoing change. There is still no other left-wing political pole that could contribute to the building of a mass movement that would challenge crisis-ridden capitalism and struggle for a feasible, socialist alternative.
In the face of all this, it is not left-wing infantility to underline the need for a serious class project that would begin at the bottom and be a vehicle to meet immediate demands and build a mass movement for transformative policies.
No matter what the balance of forces is inside the ANC-led alliance, without such a project there will be no social force with the weight and voice to block compromises with capital and secure radical changes in favour of the working class. As any trade unionist knows: "What you have not won on the battlefield, you are unlikely to win at the negotiating table."
If anything, this is the language that the SACP and Cosatu should have no difficulty recalling and heeding. The future demands a course of struggle that goes beyond the limitations of the Zuma path.
[Mazibuko K. Jara was recently expelled from the SACP and is part of the conveners of the Conference of the Democratic Left. This article first appeared in South Africa's Mail & Guardian on March 12, 2010.]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)