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Topic: The Struggle Against Apartheid has Begun Again in South Africa - Pilger
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martin dufresne
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 11463
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posted 12 April 2008 08:28 AM
John Pilger commentaries on ZNet about South Africa, Britain, Mugabe and the ANC's 'Unbreakable Promise':"(...)there was the struggle, without which nothing changes". This sense of struggle is back in South Africa. (...) Britain's Department for International Development has played a notorious role. Although required by law not to spend money other than on poverty reduction, DfID is, in reality, a privatising agency that greases the way for multinationals to take over public services. In 2004, the department paid the Adam Smith Institute, an extreme right-wing think tank, £6.3m for plans to "reform" the "public sector" in South Africa, promoting "business-to-business" links between British and South African companies whose singular interest is profit. Once the wretched Robert Mugabe is gone, Zimbabwe will get the same treatment. Offering a billion pounds' worth of "aid", the British government will lead the return of capital, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to restore what was, long before Mugabe's wrecking, one of the most exploited and unequal societies in Africa. The new heist was outlined on 5 April at the amusingly titled Progressive Governance Conference in Britain, one of Tony Blair's legacies, where "left-of-centre" leaders pretend to be crisis managers instead of, as is often the case, the cause of the crisis. (In 1999, Blair flew twice to South Africa to promote the now scandalous arms deal.) The South African president, Thabo Mbeki, is said to have been recruited to get rid of the obstacle that is Mugabe, but he is cautious, no doubt recalling that Mugabe, on his last visit to South Africa, received an embarrassing ovation from the black crowd. This was not so much an endorsement of his despotism as a reminder that most South Africans had not forgotten one of the ANC's "unbreakable promises" - that almost a third of arable land would be redistributed by 2000. Today the figure is less than 4 per cent. (...)" [ 12 April 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]
From: "Words Matter" (Mackinnon) | Registered: Dec 2005
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martin dufresne
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 11463
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posted 12 April 2008 09:11 AM
Strange. Of course, it's a good idea to become one. Otherwise, go to http://www.zcommunications.org/, click on ZNet, then, in the "Newest Content" column, scroll down to "South Africa: Pilger" and click on that. Presto. There is also a column by Barbara Ehrenreich on how US truckers are hitting the brakes to protest the economic meltdown. Here are the opening lines. quote: Until the beginning of this month, Americans seemed to have nothing to say about their ongoing economic ruin except, "Hit me! Please, hit me again!" You can take my house, but let me mow the lawn for you one more time before you repossess. Take my job and I'll just slink off somewhere out of sight. Oh, and take my health insurance too; I can always fall back on Advil.Then, on April 1, in a wave of defiance, truck drivers began taking the strongest form of action they can take: inaction. Faced with $4-per-gallon diesel fuel, they slowed down, shut down and started honking. On the New Jersey Turnpike, a convoy of trucks stretching "as far as the eye can see," according to a turnpike spokesman, drove at a glacial 20 miles per hour.(...)
Definitely worth becoming a sustaining member.
From: "Words Matter" (Mackinnon) | Registered: Dec 2005
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N.Beltov
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4140
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posted 12 April 2008 10:07 AM
quote: ... the Freedom Charter remains something to be proud of. Let me remind you how it begins: "We, the people of South Africa, declare that our country belongs to everyone...". And that, as Nelson Mandela once said, was the "unbreakable promise". Isn't it time the promise was kept?
The language of the Freedom Charter, for those of us who memorized it, is still vastly superior to anything the Merricans mustered in their own high-sounding documents that accompanied the slavery of their successful war of independence. South Africa has a powerful working class and there is no reason why that class cannot achieve further victories on the road to fulfilling that sacred promise made all those years ago in in Kliptown, near Johannesburg, on June 26, 1955. Let Freedom Reign from 1955 ... quote: "The main task of the Congress will be to draw up a 'Freedom Charter' for all people and groups in South Africa. From such a Congress ought to come a Declaration which will inspire all the peoples of South Africa with fresh hope for the future, which will turn the minds of the people away from the sterile and negative struggles of the past and the present to a positive programme of freedom in our lifetime. Such a Charter properly conceived as a mirror of the future South African society can galvanise the people of South Africa into action and make them go over into the offensive against the reactionary forces at work in this country, instead of being perpetually on the defensive, fighting rearguard actions all the time."
[ 12 April 2008: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]
From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003
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unionist
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 11323
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posted 12 April 2008 11:01 AM
quote: Originally posted by N.Beltov: South Africa has a powerful working class and there is no reason why that class cannot achieve further victories...
I share your optimism, but I see no signs of any victories on the horizon - no more than I do in other countries that have a much more "powerful working class" (U.S., Russia, etc.). In particular, besides the world financial system which South Africa has embraced unconditionally and which will ultimately destroy it, it has the newly-fashioned economic apartheid to contend with: Class struggle: South Africa's new, and few, black rich Formidable foes, no?
From: Vote QS! | Registered: Dec 2005
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N.Beltov
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4140
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posted 12 April 2008 11:16 AM
quote: (from unionist's article) ... Many blacks say they live in a "cappuccino" society, with a lot of black coffee at the bottom, a layer of white foam on top of that, and a sprinkling of cocoa on the very top, for show.
Interesting metaphor. You're not disputing that apartheid had to be destroyed first, are you? M.Spector seemed to be defending something like that in another thread. Class struggle is the name of the game now. That's progress at some level. It's just that the South African working class needs some victories, none of which are guaranteed. It's the same for us.
From: Vancouver Island | Registered: May 2003
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