JF Kennedy – Source: http://www.abcnews.go.com

Half a century ago on the 22 November 1963, the President of the most powerful country on earth, the United States of America, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was assassinated in broad daylight in Houston, Texas. JFK was murdered on a Friday and his fiftieth anniversary falls on Friday (22 November 2013) this very week.

A patsy named Lee Harvey Oswald was fingered as the lone assassin of JFK… it was claimed he shot JFK from the sixth floor of a nearby building and was arrested. However, eye-witnesses who had lined up the street to watch the motorcade of their President said several shots were fired from different directions including from the grassy knoll. The witnesses died one by one until others were afraid to come forward to testify at the phoney Warren Commission which was established by the very same people who had a hand in the assassination of JFK.

The plot thickened when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot by a Mafiosi (a member of the Mafia gang), Jack Ruby, in front of the police escorting him and years later Jack Ruby himself died of cancer in jail. Jack Ruby is reported to have been worried about falling victim of being deliberately infected with cancer since he knew how the people for whom he worked operated. Jack Ruby killed Oswald to cover the tracks of the real killers of JFK.

One of the outstanding researchers on the Kennedy assassination who read all the volumes of the Warren Commission Report, John Judge, says evidence of the JFK assassination reveals that Oswald didn’t own a rifle nor a pistol. He didn’t fire a gun that day. There were no nitrate samples on his cheeks or palms. He didn’t kill anybody.

The witness testimony and photographic evidence show that Oswald wasn’t on the sixth floor and couldn’t have gotten down the staircase to the first or second floor to be buying a coke, when the cop stuck a gun in his stomach in the first round of interchange a few minutes after the shooting. In fact, seven people saw him watching the motorcade go by, on the first floor, as Kennedy was being shot. There is a photo by James Altgen’ shows him standing in the doorway. Yet the Warren Commission says it was somebody else.

A private US citizen, Abraham Zapruder, captured Kennedy’s assassination on film which was doctored by the FBI. The original film shows the secret service agent driving Kennedy’s limo, William Greer, turning and shooting Kennedy in the right forehead area which blew a huge gaping hole out the right rear of Kennedy’s head. When Greer shot Kennedy he had already been hit with bullets from the rear and to his throat probably from the grassy knoll.

The Zapruder film was a subject of years of lawsuits which finally forced the FBI to return Zapruder’s film to him. But what they gave him was doctored with critical frames removed and others fudged. However, there is an online YouTube video narrated by William Cooper titled “William Cooper – JFK Assassin Unmasked”. Cooper’s book Behold A Pale Horse is also an interesting read which this writer reviewed for Botswana’s weekly newspaper Mmegi/The Reporter in the mid-1990’s. Around the same time this writer also reviewed John Judge’s book Judge for Yourself for the same publication. Another interesting book by John Judge is Good Americans which can be accessed online.

On the other hand, several books were written by insiders whose mission was to mislead the public. One such book was titled Case Closed by Gerald Posner. In this book, Posner contended that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of Kennedy and that Jack Ruby acted independently. This flimsy analysis and rickety conclusion do not become a lawyer and an investigative journalist. Posner’s conclusion belongs in the realm of speculation.

There is also a Hollywood film by Oliver Stone in which he puts the blame for the assassination of Kennedy squarely on the laps of the Military Industrial Complex. That is a tiny fraction of the story. After all, we can’t expect Hollywood to bite the hand that feeds it. We should bear in mind that Kennedy was not the preferred candidate of the US’s ruling class. They preferred Richard Millhouse Nixon to Kennedy. However, Kennedy’s friend switched the voting machines in Chicago which saw Kennedy win the 1960 elections. When Kennedy assumed office he already had a baggage. He was clearly not The Establishment’s man.

No sooner had Kennedy occupied the oval office than he realized that things were not the way they were supposed to be. The CIA was a law unto itself. He found out that he had been misled by the CIA about the Bay of Pigs, a botched planned invasion of Cuba and other operations. He wanted to “scatter the CIA to the four winds and place his brother Robert in charge of the CIA”. He was reported to have said that “he was not an errand boy of the Pentagon” and had written a memo ordering the pulling out of US troops from Vietnam. This move raffled the feathers of The Establishment. The answer was to violently remove him from office. Who said there were no coup de tat’s in the US? Kennedy was removed from power through a bloody coup de tat. Nixon was removed from power through a coup de grace. The Establishment hatched the Watergate scandal and forced him to resign. Kennedy was killed on Friday and by Monday 25 November 1963, a memo reversing the withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam had been circulated and effected.

When Patrice Lumumba was assassinated in January 1961 Kennedy was US President. However, Lumumba’s assassination had been planned by the administration of his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower. When asked about the assassination of Kennedy, Malcolm X said the chickens had come home to roost. The corporate media deliberately distorted Malcolm X’s statement to give the impression that he was happy that Kennedy had been killed.

John Judge’s research indicated that the people who killed Lumumba are the same people who murdered Kennedy in 1963 and Malcolm X on the 21 February 1965. Conspiracies are real and do exist. The US ruling class conspired to kill these leaders including their own President in the case of JF Kennedy.

By Sam Ditshego
The writer is a Senior Researcher at the Pan Africanist Research Institute (PARI).

Frantz Fanon
Source: http://www.lehman.edu

The African continent was under colonial rule except Ethiopia and Liberia. Then Ghana became independent in 1957, followed by many other countries in the 1960’s, 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s and the last was South Africa in 1994 although the writer is not oblivious of the fact that Western Sahara’s independence from Morocco is still pending.

Frantz Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, published in 1961, which most African leaders have read before they became leaders of their respective countries after the fight against colonialism but still repeated the mistakes Fanon warned against (I am not sure if Ian Khama and Jacob Zuma read it!).

This is what Fanon wrote: “The people of Africa have only recently come to know themselves. They have decided, in the name of the whole continent, to weigh in strongly against the colonial regime. Now the national bourgeoisies, who in region after region hasten to make their own fortunes and to set up a national system of exploitation, do their utmost to put obstacles in the path of this ‘Utopia’. The national bourgeoisies, who are quite clear as to what their objectives are, have decided to bar the way to that unity, to that coordinated effort on the part of two hundred and fifty million men to triumph over stupidity, hunger and inhumanity at one and the same time. That is why we must understand that African unity can only be achieved through the upward thrust of the people, and under the leadership of the people, that is to say, in defiance of the interests of the bourgeoisie”. (At the time of writing his book, The Wretched of the Earth, Africans were believed to be about 250,000,000).

In South Africa, Botswana and many other African countries the national bourgeoisie hastened to make their own fortunes through self-enrichment schemes such as Black Economic Empowerment. Former Robben Islanders especially from organizations other than the ANC have complained that Nelson Mandela went around the world fund-raising in their name and that he kept the money he collected, in their name, to himself.

The President of Botswana Ian Khama is always out of kilter with the rest of the continent on issues of continental importance. The people of Botswana do not necessarily agree with the bizarre positions he adopts. He adopts pro-Western positions which he never raises in their national parliament. The statement, “That is why we must understand that African unity can only be achieved through the upward thrust of the people, and under the leadership of the people, that is to say, in defiance of the interests of the bourgeoisie” rings true in the face of the wayward foreign policy positions Khama adopts.

As regards internal affairs in the sphere of institutions, the national bourgeoisie will give equal proof of its incapacity… the parliamentary game is faked from the beginning…powerless economically, unable to bring about the existence of coherent social relations, and standing on the principle of its dominations as a class, the bourgeoisie chooses the solution that seems to it the easiest, that of the single party.
The 1994 election results were rigged and were not a true reflection of the wishes of the people of South Africa. The PAC was swindled and once the ANC got into power through a rigged election, state apparatuses were used to further weaken and destroy the PAC. It is clear that the PAC has been infiltrated.

The ANC controls the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC). The ANC government funds the IEC and they say “he who pays the piper calls the tune”. The election results the ANC desires… it will get from the IEC as long as it is controlled and funded by the ANC government. A Russian scholar who visited South Africa recently hit the nail on the head when he said South Africa was to all intents and purposes a one party state.

Fanon says that the national bourgeoisie turns its back more and more on the interior and on the real facts of its underdeveloped country, and tends to look towards the former mother country and the foreign capitalists who count on its obliging compliance. As it does not share its profits with the people, and in no way allows them to enjoy any of the dues that are paid to it by the big foreign companies, it will discover the need for a popular leader to whom will fall the dual role of stabilizing the regime and of perpetuating the domination of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeois dictatorship of underdeveloped countries draws its strength from the existence of a leader. We know that in the well-developed countries the bourgeois dictatorship is the result of the economic power of the bourgeoisie. In the under-developed countries on the contrary the leader stands for moral power, in whose shelter the thin and poverty-stricken bourgeoisie of the young nation decides to get rich.

Fanon continues to say, “The people who for years on end have seen this leader and heard him speak, who from a distance in a kind of dream have followed his contests with the colonial power, spontaneously put trust in this patriot. Before independence, the leader generally embodies the aspirations of the people for independence, political liberty and national dignity. But as soon as independence is declared, far from embodying in concrete form the needs of the people in what touches bread, land and the restoration of the country to the sacred hands of the people, the leader will reveal his inner purpose: to become the general President of that company of profiteers impatient for their returns which constitutes the national bourgeoisie”. Those who were old enough in the early 1990’s will remember that the leader alluded to here is none other than Nelson Mandela whose movie Long Walk to Freedom will be shown in cinemas across the country on the 28 November and is being advertised on Nedbank ATM’s. Mandela was the one who told the African people in the early 1990’s “not to have unreasonable expectations”. He stabilized the regime and perpetuated the domination of the bourgeoisie.

The Mandela movie by Anant Singh will not reveal these inconvenient truths. It is a movie meant to canonize Mandela. It is a movie that seeks to portray Mandela as if he was the only leader who fought for our struggle for liberation when his role was in fact minimal. The movie will not mention leaders like PAC founding President Robert Sobukwe, the principled and uncompromising leader who put South Africa on the international map and made it possible for the world to know about the atrocities perpetrated on the African people in racist South Africa. We need a movie that will tell the true story of South Africa’s struggle for liberation and not one that distorts and disfigures our past out of shape. As the people are being lulled to sleep through movies such as Long Walk to Freedom, let us remember THE LONGEST WALK SOBUKWE trudged.

By Sam Ditshego
The writer is a Senior Research fellow at the Pan Africanist Research Institute (PARI).

The late Nelson Mandela

After my imprisonment for anti-apartheid activities, I spent some years at the United Nations in New York and at the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva as an accredited Representative of the victims of apartheid and colonialism in South Africa. One of my many duties was to call for the release of all political prisoners in this country and expose the barbarism of apartheid colonialism. Some of these prisoners were Mangaliso Sobukwe, Nelson Mandela, Zephania Mothopeng, Walter Sisulu, Nyati Pokela, Govan Mbeki and Jafta Masemola.

When I spoke in Parliament on the 90th birthday of President Nelson Mandela, I said, “It is an extra-ordinary birthday of a man who has lived his life for others, sometimes at the expense of his own people, in the quest to harmonise humanity.” I received the news of the departure of President Nelson Mandela from this planet on 5th December 2013. On that day, I was commemorating the birthday of Prof Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, the founding President of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania, for whom the apartheid colonialist regime had a special law called “Sobukwe Clause.” This law enabled this regime to imprison him on Robben Island without even a mock court trial.

Some of the things I admired about President Mandela were humour, tolerance and perseverance in struggle. I believe diligence as well. He was a hard-working person. My disappointment is that I think the peopled with whom, he negotiated freedom in South Africa did not respond as they should have done. They wanted to eat their cake and still have it. They took the magnanimity of the colonially land robbed Africans of Azania (South Africa) for political imbecility.

Through the Native Land Act 1913, the British colonial government allocated the then five million Africans only 7% of their land and gave its European colonial settlers numbering 387,349 souls 93% of the African country. This law is now disguised as “abolished” in Section 25(7) of the “New South Africa” constitution. Even though, the Native Trust Land Act 1936 added a mere 6% of land to make it 13%.

The freedom fighters of this country, especially those who belonged to the military wings of the Pan Africanist Congress (the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army) and to the African National Congress (Umkhonto Wesizwe) were imprisoned after being paraded before the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (TRC) with the perpetrators of apartheid. As we speak, many freedom fighters such as Kenny Motsamai are still in jail. This is despite the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid through which the United Nations declared apartheid a crime against humanity. This has now passed as “miracle” and “rainbow nation.”

The consequences of wrong political response to the statesmanship of President Mandela by the representatives of the apartheid colonialist regime are that in South Africa today, there are “two nations.” One is extremely rich and white settler minority. Another one is extremely poor and 79.2% African majority. Mandela’s greatest contribution is that he tried his best to secure a prosperous and happy future for everyone in South Africa, but greed on the part of the forces of apartheid backed by the West, simply did not use the golden opportunity that President Mandela gave them. They did not respond to the South African political situation on equally magnanimous terms and in the spirit of justice. The victims of apartheid gave far more to “reconciliation” than the perpetrators of colonialism and apartheid.

The passing on of Nelson Mandela is a serious challenge to this country to rise to the occasion and ensure that there is equitable redistribution of land and its resources according to population number. The Marikana Massacre of African workers has already sent a signal that something urgent must be done to intensify the economic and social emancipation of the African majority in Azania for the good of everyone. The African people cannot live like slaves in their own country perpetually. The poverty, the filthy inhuman shacks in which millions live must go. Azania (South Africa) is four times the size of Britain and Northern Ireland combined and richer in natural resources. Indeed, liberation without repossession of land and its resources by the dispossessed is a gigantic colonial fraud.

The effects of the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference must be banished from the shores of Africa. Perhaps, now that the greedy ones missed the “Mandela magic,” the hope for genuine freedom, will lie in the words of James Russell when he said, “Truth is forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on the throne, yet that scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown stands God within the shadow of keeping watch above His people.”

Farewell Madiba! You have done your share. You have shown the light. Let all the people of the world who cherish human freedom regardless of race, nationality and class walk in this light from Africa. Greet Sobukwe, Sisulu, Lembede and all African heroes for Africa’s total liberation. Remember Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Marcus Garvey and Malcom X.

By Dr. Motsoko Pheko
The writer is a former Member of the South African Parliament as well as former President of the PAC. He is also a historian, political scientist, lawyer, theologian and author of several books.

The late Nelson Mandela

In paying tribute to Nelson Mandela the corporate media and Hollywood should not conceal his mistakes or glorify him as a flawless personality whose character is without blemish. His role in the liberation struggle should be acknowledged just like many before him, his contemporaries and those who came after him but it should not be exaggerated.

Many articles were penned by this writer on Nelson Mandela even before he became President of South Africa, including two book reviews on Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela and Young Mandela by David James Smith. This writer’s point of departure will be a reflection of Mandela’s years as a young person as revealed by PAC founding President Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, especially because Mandela passed away on the birthday of Sobukwe. The question is whether Mandela was the way the media, especially the Western media, portrays him? Was he really the African people’s saviour?

During an interview conducted by Gail Gerhard in August 1970 after his release from Robben Island, Sobukwe described Mandela as a very arrogant man who lacked common touch. Sobukwe said, “I remember him at one meeting around the time of the Defiance Campaign. People had gone there still undecided if they were going to participate. Mandela got up and said very promptly, ‘All those with us, come forward; all others get out. And most people got out. They were put off by his manners. Mandela was strong among the leaders, although we always recognized Tambo as superior in intelligence. Mandela had a way of attacking people very viciously if they disagreed with him, and were a smaller person than himself. He could reduce them to a shriveling mass then he would pat them on the head and draw them to him, and thereafter they would be his men, always deferring to him, looking up to him. If he came across any man who wouldn’t look up and defer to him and acknowledge his superiority (e.g. myself implied) then he wouldn’t have anything to do with that person. Mandela could always attract weak people; but he could never go on with another strong person. In any relationship he had to dominate. But he was an engaging person. He could always crack a joke, make you laugh; he always had a story to tell. But I was never friendly with him… Philosophically, Mandela has always been an opportunist, going from one theory to the next, taking out what seemed most likely to be impressive to other people, most likely to boost his prestige”.

This arrogance was also mentioned by Doc Bikitsha in an article in the Sowetan newspaper whilst paying tribute to Walter Sisulu. Bikitsha said Sisulu was warm and welcoming when they visited ANC offices but Mandela was aloof and arrogant. This writer met Mr. and Mrs. Sisulu in Victoria, Canada in the early 1990’s and they both exuded warmth and humility.

Could Mandela’s arrogance be what drove him to arrogate to himself the right to negotiate a bad deal on our behalf? Is this the arrogance that drove him to think he could exclude the Pan Africanist Congress and Black Consciousness Movement from deciding the future of South Africa? He was not as intelligent a leader as Tambo and should have deferred to Oliver Tambo. Sobukwe says Mandela didn’t get along well with Tambo. Sobukwe was not the only one who acknowledged that Tambo was intelligent. Joe Matthews said it in Parliament when paying tribute to Walter Sisulu.

Mandela probably attacked viciously those who disagreed with his secret negotiations with Apartheid leaders. It has been said that one of those who disagreed with him was Govan Mbeki. It was not for the first time that Govan Mbeki openly disagreed with Mandela. In 1962, when Mandela had skipped the country and came back, Govan Mbeki took him on and asked him why he came back after he had skipped the country. Mandela didn’t get along well with the elder Mbeki. As Sobukwe said, “if he came across any man who wouldn’t look up and defer to him and acknowledge his superiority then he wouldn’t have anything to do with that person. Mandela could always attract weak people; but he could never go on with another strong person. Philosophically, Mandela has always been an opportunist, going from one theory to the next, taking out what seemed most likely to be impressive to other people, most likely to boost his prestige.” This explains why Mandela abandoned socialism in favour of free market capitalism which destroyed the hopes and aspirations of the African people. He wanted to impress the imperialists to boost his own prestige in what has been described by P Greanville at http://www.greanvillepost.com, as a “Faustian bargain with the global status quo”. Greanville continued to say that his “embrace of free market capitalism was a wound and a mistake his nation is still paying for.”

Another writer, Stephen Lendman, in the article titled “Mandela’s Disturbing Legacy” published at http://www.greanvillepost.com, said Mandela “exacerbated longstanding economic unfairness. He deserves condemnation, not praise…. Liberation was supposed to be economic, social and political. White worker wages were manifold more than black ones. White mine workers earned 10 times more than blacks. Post-apartheid promised change never materialized. Mandela embraced the worst of free market orthodoxy….” He concluded by saying “his bigger than life persona is undeserved. So are eulogies praising his accomplishments. They reflect figments of historical revisionism.”

Finally, the third writer, Bill Van Auken, in the article titled “Why imperialism mourns Mandela” published at http://www.greanvillepost.com, said “the death of Nelson Mandela at the age of 95 has touched off a worldwide exercise in official mourning that is virtually without precedent…..Capitalist governments and the corporate-controlled media the world over, however, have rushed to offer condolences for their own reasons. These include heads of states that supported South Africa’s apartheid rule and aided in the capture and imprisonment of Mandela as a “terrorist” half a century ago. Barack Obama, who presides over the horrors of Guantanamo and a US prison system that holds over 1.5 million behind bars, issued a statement in which he declared himself “one of the countless millions who drew inspiration” from the man who spent 27 years on Robben Island (Mandela spent only 18 years on Robben Island. He found PAC leaders such as Jeff Masemola already there and left them there). British Prime Minister David Cameron, the standard-bearer of the right-wing Tory Party, ordered the flag flown at half-mast outside 10 Downing Street and proclaimed Mandela “a towering figure in our time, a legend in life and now in death—a true global hero.”

Auken continued, “Billionaires like Michael Bloomberg, who ordered flags in New York City lowered, and Bill Gates felt compelled to issue their own statements. What is it that the capitalist oligarchs in country after country really mourn in the death of Mandela? It is clearly not his will to resist an oppressive system—that is something they are all prepared to punish with imprisonment or drone missile assassination. Rather, the answer is to be found in the present social and political crisis gripping South Africa, as well as the historic role played by Mandela in preserving capitalist interests in the country under the most explosive conditions.”

By Sam Ditshego
The writer is a Senior Researcher at the Pan Africanist Research Institute (PARI).

Last month it was that time of the year when South Africa and the world catch the fever of the Mandela Day Sabbath; I say Sabbath because this Mandela Day has become a quasi-religious event blindly followed by people who are not prepared to question what the hype about the day is all about or where it actually emanates from.

We are stuck with a cult figure more powerful than the Dalai Lama and Pope combined, yet we cannot actually point out what deed of his earned him this sainthood among people, even a messianic status of some sort.

Mandela enjoys unquestioned Christhood as a saviour of black people when in fact he is the Dalai Lama/Pope of the Imperialist West’s neo-colonialism project, the direct opposite of what he is celebrated for.

Why?

Because the media was cunningly used to sell what, alongside the HIV/AIDS story, is the biggest propaganda manipulation to mislead the masses in human history – the lie that Mandela liberated black people when all he did was deliver them on a silver platter to Imperialist West for another round of unremitting, ruthless molestation under the exploitative project of neo-colonialism. He simply sold the people out.

There’s classic old saying in English that a picture says a 1 000 words; and that this statement is gospel truth is indisputable, because Brett Murray’s “The Spear” painting would not have hit home like it did, neither would Zapiro’s cartooning give Zuma headaches like it does.

I have five pictures – a metaphorical representation of 5 000 words, as touted by the above-mentioned saying – out of which I will squeeze out my interpretation of the “1 000 words” each picture offers me.

Now that our people have spent their 67 minutes in honour of Mandela’s legacy, I urge them to spend another 67 minutes of any day that suits them reading this article (and “reading” the five pictures for themselves of course) and digesting the views shared within it, and verifying them through research of their own; after which they can decide whether indeed Mandela’s legacy is one worth honouring by us Africans, or is it really a legacy marred with beguiling deceit.

THE LABYRINTH OF WESTERN IMPERIALISM

To fully understand the African struggle against Western imperialism, and why Nelson Mandela really has been a regressive factor to that struggle; one must understand the very labyrinth of it; its cunning approach.

Then only we can begin to see that democracy in South Africa is non-existent; instead we have a placebo in place that is even more brutal than right out enslavement because all we live on are future broken promises and more promises that will never be delivered, thus we put our guard down and allow criminals to exploit us in the name of the Rainbow Nation myth and its unequal equality, and Madiba magic deception.

Imperialism facilitated by the West on Africa over the last 350 years has been dynamic and metamorphosing in its approach. First it was right out, brutal enslavement of blacks for trade like cattle in slave-trade routes, predominantly the trans-Atlantic route.

When the system of slavery had used up its energy, new devices to take over the baton had been designed already.

Slavery was abolished and in no time replaced with colonialism – a better tool of gain that meant that there was no longer a need to transport slaves across seas to work in the West, but it was now a matter of enslaving them in their own backyards by means of cheap labour exploitation.

This cheap labour was forced onto Africans; they were used to dig out their own resources for the gain of colonial masters, while they themselves benefitted nothing but hardships of being second-tier citizens, who lived under perpetual abuse in the hands of white supremacy.

But like slavery before it, colonialism was bound to get to a point where it was no longer the most viable tool of gain for imperialists; and like colonialism replaced slavery, colonialism needed to be replaced in order to continue the merciless looting of Africa’s resources.

Neo-colonialism was the new plan, it would continue where its predecessor left off; but what made it and still makes it more nefarious than both slavery and colonialism was that it used the very leaders of the so-called liberation movements as agents in its plans.

The West negotiated – CODESA style – with the post-colonialism leaders of African countries to keep its power in place and retain all that had been stolen during colonialism in their position, while the leaders would be let in on some personal gain schemes to keep them happy.

If leaders of some movements resisted, the former colonisers financed coups for opposition movements and rebel groups who had bought into their idea to come into power; and once in power, the movement leaders would be brought into the spoils, made compradors of imperialism, and in no time they forgot the masses still toiling in sickening poverty and started to feast on their small share of the pie of exploitation thrown to them by the imperialist forces.

Another way would be civil wars, which opened up mass looting opportunities at even lower costs for the West.

This is what has made Western imperialism so successful, its ability to mutate time and again when conditions required a new approach. Neo-colonialism’s success depended on how it would be implemented; it had to be in such a way that was not met with immediate resistance.

To solidify neo-colonialism and be able to sell it to Africa, the West needed an ambassador for its project, someone who would be used by the West to say look at this leader, he complied with our deal and his country is happy, so follow his example; and no better person than Mandela was suited for this.

He was already an international media personality after having been used as a rallying point for international media attention against apartheid by the ANC for many years; so all that had to be done was to turn all the media focus on Mandela as a freedom fighter who singlehandedly saved South Africa and give him endless credit and perks like the Nobel Prize, and messianic status.

All he had to do was to buy into this deal and sign on the dotted line.

ROLE OF THE MEDIA

The legendary Malcolm X warns that the media is so powerful that it has the power to make the innocent look guilty and the guilty look innocent; he terms it the most powerful tool in the world.

Biko teaches us that why we remain in bondage is precisely because of the mind control that the oppressors are able to keep us, the oppressed, in check.

Through the media they tell us how and what to think, so the focal area of our thoughts will not be a revolution, thus allowing them to continue freely with their exploitation.

The media has been at the epicentre of every imperialist venture propagated by the West. It was at the centre of the propaganda of the “war against terror” farce, only this was a way to establish a way to steal the vast oil reserves of Middle Eastern countries, Afghanistan and Iraq in particular.

They created a storyline which the world bought into, and one by one they raided these poor countries and seized what they wanted.

The truth is Al-Qaeda is a creation of the CIA; it never existed in Islamic countries prior to the fabrication. Oh and Osama bin Laden, or should I say Tim Osman, was a CIA agent.

On the same wave of propaganda, Muammar Gaddafi was targeted and killed after 40 years of resistance; and similar propaganda, of nuclear weapons, is being used to target Iran.

Similarly, the drug war in Central and South America is another farce that imperialism uses to infiltrate those countries, oust revolutionary leaders and put their own, controlled, puppet regimes in power so exploitation can carry on.

Why do you think that during the Chavez reign in Venezuela, Spain went into financial crisis and needed a bailout from the Eurozone?

Simple, Chavez severed exploitation of his country’s oil resources; that’s why he, like many South American revolutionaries, died of “cancer”.

I need to reassure you that there isn’t really a war on drugs; organisations like the CIA specifically have made and still make trillions from drug money and finance drug operations coming from South America and the Golden Triangle that ultimately also make it into the US and the rest of the world.

Here in Africa we have the financed civil wars, where rebels are employed by the West to destabilise countries’ governance, making them ungovernable and thus creating an environment for free looting to flourish.

A classic example of this currently is the DRC; an extremely blessed and rich country in terms of mineral resources, be it diamonds, copper, manganese, zinc, you name them.

Here, the West employs Rwanda and Uganda to support the rebel war by financing the M23 through these countries and then continue the looting escapade of the beautiful Congo. Of course they will deploy the so-called peace keeping missions; but trust me when I tell you that keeping peace is never the objective of the UN.

The United Nations is run and controlled by imperialists, America and its allies, and only decisions taken by them matter; if you resist, they veto you at the Security Council – their own kangaroo court.

If they want resources from your country and you do not play ball like Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein and the likes; they finance civil unrest and then NATO is on your doorstep.

No one pertinently sums up the sham that mainstream media really is, than American author Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) is his quote: “If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”

Don’t believe them brethren, they are in on it; they are selling you what the powers that be want you to know, not what you should know!

THE PICTURES…

At many points in history, there are people who had invested in them the power to change the course of history by virtue of their decisions; but because of those decisions that they took, we are only left to wonder how different would things be had they opted to do things differently.

Where would Burkina Faso be today had Blaise Compaore not collaborated with the West and murdered Thomas Sankara? Where would the Congo be had Mobutu not plotted with Belgium, the US and Britain to overthrow Patrice Lumumba and hand him over for execution? Where would Guinea be had Inocêncio Kani not collaborated with the Portuguese to assassinate Amilcar Cabral?

Yes my question is, where would South Africa be, had Mandela opted for the honourable route as a true representative of the people would have done, and not signed a deal with the devil for his own personal gain, pulling a Judas Iscariot on us?

In (my) first picture, Nelson Mandela is pictured with Margaret Thatcher; at one point the most powerful woman in world politics. She was powerful simply because she was at the forefront of British imperialism as Prime Minister, and she did serve with distinction to her masters.

In 1987 Margaret Thatcher uttered these words: “The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation; anyone who thinks that the ANC is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud cuckoo-land.”

If you don’t understand the involvement of Britain in South Africa, you would think that she was being defamatory; but Margaret Thatcher knew exactly what she was talking about, she understood what was going to happen.

The ANC doesn’t govern South Africa; they are the faces of imperialism in what is still a British-American controlled economy to this day.

The ANC’s job is to keep the wrath of the people manageable, so that their bosses can continue the exploitation of resources.

Like many organisations who claim to fight for freedom forget about the people, the masses once some chunk of meat is thrown at them from the master’s table, the ANC went down a similar route, once let in on some part of the wealth; they became “yes sir no sir” boys of the imperialists.

All it took was them being told they would benefit on things like BEE and get co-opted to businesses they did not even know how to run by themselves and all the blood spilt over 350 years in defence of our land was forgotten.

I always hear people talking about “economic freedom”; saying that Mandela and his generation attained political freedom and it is thus up to the current generation of youth to fight for economic freedom.

Brethren, you must understand that imperialism knows how to invent lies that sound very good, because there is no such thing as political freedom existing as a stand-alone from economic power.

Freedom is a holistic entity, it is achieved as is and not in compartments; you are either free or you are not, and there’s nothing in between.

A prisoner in solitary confinement, eating crumbs and sleeping on the floor with no blanket, and a prisoner who has a nutritious menu, a good mattress, and even time for television and gym are both prisoners; yes the one might have better conditions to live under, but they are both prisoners nonetheless.

Similarly, an oppressed individual who is called a kaffir openly, gets kicked in the ribs lawfully and is forced to carry an identification book at all times, and an oppressed individual who can vote, walk around as they please at night without identifying themselves are both still oppressed.

Baron Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), who is the founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty, aptly put it: “Give me control of a nation’s money supply and I care not who makes their laws.”

He knew the very same concept that I am now sharing with you, that whoever controls the means of production in a country, de facto the money supply, is the one with the real power; the politicians can sell all the lip they want to, it is in the economy where power rests.

Using this knowledge, generation after generation of Rothschild came and carried forward what they had started, and they are arguably the wealthiest family on earth today. Their net worth? Incalculable.

Let’s just say that they loan governments money at crazy interest rates among other things!!! Now real freedom is when means of production dwells with the people, not a select few like Rothschild, Oppenheimer, Ackerman, Rupert; it is when all people benefit from the wealth and money supply of the country, not those who align themselves to be beneficiaries at the expense of the people like Mandela, Ramaphosa, Zuma and the likes.

As the status quo is in South Africa, people will have to rise and struggle for freedom, or it will remain a distant dream while the molestation of imperialism on our people relentlessly continues.

MORE PICTURES

We see (another) picture of the “heroic” Mr Mandela seated in a chariot with the Queen of England.

Queen Elizabeth to me represents the British throne, which has been at the forefront of the most atrocious genocides known to mankind; they have annihilated whole tribes of people altogether in their conquest to rule world.

Whenever I see her picture, I hear cries of the Lakota and other American Indian tribes that today do not exist precisely because of the British; I am reminded of how as recent as 1975, any white man in Australia could obtain a hunting licence to hunt and kill Aborigines like game, all because of the British philosophy that people who are not of European descent are not human.

To the British, any race that is not white is akin to mere animals, no more than a troop of baboons; it is for this reason that they felt nothing at all oppressing one third of the world’s population at one point, just for their personal gain.

Seeing Queen Elizabeth’s picture reminds me of the countless crimes against humanity – spanning over centuries – that Britain committed globe throughout, but never accounted for; in her eyes I see countless slaves tied down like oxen and driven by the whip from main land Africa to the West Coast bordering the Atlantic, to be piled up in ships like lifeless cargo.

I hear the cries of all the lynched slaves in American plantations, and the wails of widows bemoaning lost husbands to these brutal executions whenever her name is mentioned; I see her mouth and hands covered with blood of the countless black babies who were fed to alligators by slave-masters of the extension of her empire in America.

However, we see the beloved hero not ashamed to align himself with the face of all this ruthlessness, he is a beloved son of Britain that they erected a Statue of him in Parliament square.

He is put up there with the best servicemen of the Empire, and his name carried next to the likes of Cecil John Rhodes.

Ever heard of the Mandela-Rhodes Scholarship? Well this is a scholarship designed to take African students that show high potential and equip them for roles in neo-colonialism that is pioneered by South Africa; the same way that the Rhodes scholarship did for British Colonialism since 1902.

For those who don’t know, Cecil John Rhodes was a ruthless Englishmen who had not an iota of feeling for blacks. Leading the British conquest of South Africa’s minerals, having founded De Beers (De Beers was financed into existence by Nathan Meyer Rothschild – great-grandson of the founder of the dynasty who I mentioned above), and also leading British rule to our neighbour Zimbabwe and Zambia north of it (The two countries, known as Southern and Northern Rhodesia respectively in past times, were named after him), many a black man suffered at the hand of this man.

The first Chimurenga of the Zimbabwean people in the 1890s was an uprising against atrocities inflicted by Rhodes’ British South Africa Company, and it ended with executions of the likes of Mbuya Nehanda.

In his meditations in 1893 his states: “Nine-tenths of them (blacks) will have to spend their lives in manual labour, the sooner that is brought to them, the better.” He further says: “We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.” As you can see that he was a white supremacist of distinction, he lived for the British Empire and to propagate its ruthless imperialism; in his last will testament he writes: “I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race … If there be a God, I think that what he would like me to do is paint as much of the map of Africa British Red as possible…”

Aimed at following the hermeneutics of this mantra of imperialistic gain, the Rhodes Trust and Rhodes scholarship were founded by Nathan Meyer Rothschild (see that name?) when Rhodes died.

RENT-A-BLACK POLICIES

Now is the question not popping up at the back of your head why Nelson Mandela wants to associate himself with all I mention above? Why he is a tool in shielding and glorifying a murderous heritage of the British Empire with all the falsehood that permeates controlled media?

Why they put him on the notes of their privately owned South African Reserve Bank? You do the math.

Another picture shows our beloved hero in the company of FW De Klerk. Now if the whole process of creating the rainbow nation farce was a movie, De Klerk would have won an Oscar for best supporting actor; we all know who best lead actor goes to … oh but wait, they won the Nobel for it, excuse my feint memory!

FW De Klerk is a representation of Afrikaner supremacy, a microcosm of white supremacy that manifested itself as Apartheid in South Africa.

A strategist of the system, he was a key component in the facilitation of the new South Africa into existence; he was clear about his job even so, stating that he was not going to negotiate himself out of power.

Black people need to understand that a revolution is non-negotiable, and there is no bargain that goes about it; whenever leaders go into negotiations with the oppressive forces and what results is a win-win situation, know that your leaders sold you out for their own gain.

What came out of CODESA was that ANC became an extension of the National Party; it was a change of faces of the status quo but no change to the status quo itself.

After 11 years of excellent service by the ANC to the system of capitalism that unforgivingly blood-sucks blacks on a daily basis, proving their worth of being able to crack the whip on blacks just as well as the Malan, Vorster, Botha and De Klerk governments; the National Party officially co-opted ANC to itself with a merger that took place in August 2005.

It was merely officialising the marriage that had already taken place at CODESA; in which a transition of government faces took place – black ones replaced white ones in a rent-a-black project – while policies kept the power locked with the imperialists.

We need to be frank about things like Chikane’s book intended to be; there really is not any significant difference between a black man in 2013 and a black man in 1983. This is because ’94 changed nothing; blacks are still the wretched of the earth they were before 1994.

Eighty percent of the land is still white-owned and 100 years after the treacherous Land Act of 1913 the ANC is adamant that they will not budge on their policies that allow the land to remain in the hands of a white minority that constitutes a meagre 13 percent of the population, how dare blacks think they can take land back from white masters and rhinos?

White people worked hard for the land isn’t it? We are told that they bought the land; I guess the 100-year war of the Xhosas lasting from the 1700s to the 1800s and the battle of Isandlwana in 1879, all attempting resistance against British seizure of land from the natives were fair economic transactions huh?

Whenever blacks voice out their concerns they are told that they can’t use the land, that they are not skilled as white people to run mines therefore it is a good thing that our wealth is taking by imperialists for their personal gain.

Last year August Lonmin (London Minerals), sitting on the third biggest platinum mine in the world, collaborated with the ANC to mimic their own Sharpeville by mowing down with bullets black workers who stood up and demanded better wages after they realised NUM was another neo-colonialist demagoguery project whose objective was not to stand up for them, but to help the exploiters continue so they could benefit from kickbacks (well now it is public that COSATU and affiliated union bosses screw their workers – pun intended).

I mean NUM bosses are trustees in the investment companies – NUMPROP and MIC – that sleep with mining houses in the form of business relations and tenders; how then is it expected that they represent the interests of the employees when they themselves benefit directly from the exploitation of the employees?

It’s like sending a jackal to represent sheep against a wolf; only one result is possible there – a sell-out.

It is no secret that the vestiges of apartheid and colonial economic patterns, ownership and control remain intact.

For instance: Leibbrandt, M et al (2010) state that trends in South African income distribution and poverty since the fall of apartheid show that in terms of racial distribution of per capita income, African and coloured income levels in 2008 were still only 13 percent and 22 percent respectively of white per capita income, compared to 10.9 percent and 19.3 percent in 1993.

The income gap for Indians has narrowed, with Indian per capita income in 2008 standing at 60 percent of those of whites as against 42 percent in 1993.

In 1995, median per capita expenditure among Africans was R333 a month compared to whites at R3 443 a month. In 2008, median expenditure per capita for Africans was R454 a month compared to whites at R5 668 a month.

We are stuck with a blatantly skewed system that feeds itself at our loss; while Zuma earns more than Obama in terms of citizen ratio, the black male has an average salary of R2 400 that falls far short of the R19 000 of the white male.

Yet FW De Klerk (was pictured) lifting Nelson Mandela’s hand in a triumphant fashion; a sign of Nelson Mandela having won the battle.

The question however is: on whose side was he fighting?

He claims to have fought against black domination, but nowhere have I seen blacks dominating on any level in South Africa at any point since that dreadful Autumn day in 1652, so as to what he was fighting against I am not sure.

FOOLING THE PEOPLE

I am sorry that the ANC did not tell you the truth my people; they spoke about reconstruction and development, yet the piece they forgot to mention was that this RDP programme was aimed only at their mansions in high-class white suburbs, and the scraps you would get were degrading matchbox houses akin to dog kernels and open toilets that intend to further humiliate your undignified existence.

They also did not tell you that should you cry for clean drinking water you would be met with parabellum boot soles and live rounds of ammunition a la Andries Tatane; you probably thought that Vlakplas ended with Eugene de Kock, little did you know that ANC had a bigger “Kock” to screw you with.

Well here we are, and this is where Mandela’s heroics have landed us.

Patrice Lumumba, in his last letter to his wife before being martyred, teaches us that history that will absolve African heroes like him is not that which will be taught in Brussels, London, Paris, Washington nor the United Nations, but in African countries which have been freed from the claws of imperialism.

The fact that Mandela’s legacy is celebrated in London and all other imperialist strongholds as I showed above indicates clearly that he is a puppet of imperialism and is used for imperialist agenda advancement.

It cannot be that the system that murdered Lumumba for his ideas before he even implemented them in the Congo; that murdered Thomas Sankara after he had set the pattern for other African states to follow in a mere four years of power (unlike two decades of lies we have received here), rejecting the world bank and IMF and drastically transforming Burkina Faso, can equally turn and cherish Mandela as they do if he was indeed a genuine revolutionary.

Your kids learn about the French revolution, Nazi Germany, American Revolution, but never do they learn about the Chimurenga or the Battle of Adwa or the knowledge harboured in Timbuktu.

The same system teaches them about Louis XVI, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, but fails to mention Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral, Marcus Garvey, Frantz Fanon or Malcolm X.

They rather your children read books by Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and George Orwell; but none by Chinua Achebe, Tsitsi Dangarembga or Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

This very same system holds Mandela in high esteem; he is the archetypal black man according to them.

Ask Robert Mugabe, when you are doing what the system requires of you, you are a hero; you become a monkey when you start to address the real needs of the black man, like land dispossession.

Before 2000, Robert Mugabe had accolades from institutions all over the world and one by one they were revoked after the land reform programme; simply because he was (not) their puppet, Blair had been told to keep his England and stay away from Zimbabwe and how it addresses its affairs.

Whenever they tell you about “a long walk to freedom”, tell them that the only long walk that has taken place and is still taking place is that of thousands of black children in rural areas and white-owned farms, who walk countless kilometres on end to and from school on a daily basis – in blistering cold during the winter and scorching heat and unforgiving rains in summer – only to learn under a tree at the mercy of these weather conditions, and expected to miraculously produce results when not even textbooks are delivered to them.

We will always have the most progressive constitution in the world for as long it is anti-black, but Sobukwe taught us long ago that it is impossible to implement something that is unjust in a just fashion; thus the wrath of the people will always at some point get to enough levels to inspire reform.

When Africa rewrites the narrative of history that Lumumba speaks about in his final words as he stared death in the eye without a quiver, let it rewrite a narrative that will truthfully present the legacy of Mandela as that which was at the centre of perpetuating a brutal system of relentless exploitation on our beloved continent.

In Azania there must be no Mandela Bridge, mall, university, street or even squatter camp; the deception of Madiba magic must be buried with South Africa.

The only monument left to bear his name should be the Nelson Mandela theatre, as it shall be a constant reminder of the multi-award winning theatrics of the man; which deceived our people to a Rainbow Nation of freedom that still continues to enslave them, where equality is unequal, where justice is discriminatory.

However, history must not forget him; his story must be a constant reminder for future generations, of what not to do.

That we have to overthrow this tyranny and oppression in our strife for true egalitarianism is not in doubt; it is just a matter of when.

Slavoj Zizek asserts that regicide (the killing of a king) is not justified by showing that a king transgressed the people, because the very existence of a king is an offence against the people.

Similarly, a society that purports classism and stratification, creating a polarised control of resources by a few as we know imperialism and capitalism to do is de facto offensive to the people; and revolution against it is always justified. – MyNews24

By Yamkela Fortune Spengane
The writer is a Black Consciousness and Pan-Africanism scholar and proponent. This article was published in The Southern Times newspaper at http://www.southerntimesafrica.com on 02 September 2013.

David Cameron
source: http://www.eluniversal.com.co

The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has long threatened to withhold UK financial aid from African governments that do not reform legislation banning homosexuality. On 30 October 2011, Cameron was reported to have said, “Britain is one of the premier aid givers in the world. We want to see countries that receive our aid adhering to proper rights. Those receiving UK aid should adhere to proper rights.”

Britain has threatened that if Malawi did not legalise homosexuality and same sex marriages, Britain would withdraw its aid which has been reported as being in the order of 19 million pounds. Uganda has become a recent victim of British intimidation, after it passed in its parliament, a Bill making homosexuality and same sex marriage a criminal offence. African leaders must take up pending serious African issues with Europe, the colonial under-developer of Africa. I will elaborate on this later. For now, let me remind that the first same sex marriage on this planet, took place in the Netherlands on 1 April 2001. Was this April Fools day joke? No, Belgium followed in 2003, Spain in 2005, Canada in 2005, Norway in 2009. In America at that time out of 52 states that constitute the USA, only six had legalised same sex marriages. In Africa out of 54 African countries, only South Africa has allowed homosexuality and legalised same sex marriages.

I was a Member of the South African Parliament for ten years. When I spoke in the debate on homosexuality, I said among other things, “Only those who have sold their souls to cultural imperialism will support this obscenity. It is hypocritical to talk of ‘moral regeneration’ and ‘African Renaissance’ and turn round and surrender to this cultural aberration. It is no excuse that it is in the constitution. It should never have been there in the first instance. The burning issues in this country are landlessness [of the African people], inhuman squatter camps, unaffordable education and unemployment, lack of good health care [for Africans] and eradication of poverty….A large body of scientific researchers on homosexuality has established that there is no scientific basis for homosexuality. There is no gay gene.” [Interjections]…..Population is a very important national asset, especially for Africa. Africa has more resources than the so-called “first world” which incidentally, is much younger than Africa, especially on matters of morality. Pre-colonially, African laws never clashed with moral issues. In African societies morality was synonymous with legality. Law is a natural product of a people…… This African principle of law-making was long appreciated by Frederick Karl von Savigny, who was incidentally an outstanding German jurist. He pointed out that “law must develop naturally. Law is a unique creation of each nation and race. Laws must be adapted to the spirit of each nation because rules that apply to one nation are not valid for another nation…. This is correct. That is why there has to be respect for the national sovereignty of every nation, except where there is gross violation of human rights, for example, situations of genocide…… Friederich Puchta, another eminent European jurist said, “Law grows with the growth of a people.” To Puchta, a nation was a community of people linked together by historical, geographical and cultural ties.”…..Puchta elaborated on the theory of jurisprudence known as volkgeist. He said that volkgeist is the broad principles of the legal system that are found in the spirit of the people and become manifest in customary rules. He concluded by saying that “legislation must conform to the popular consciousness of the people.”

Africa must therefore not adopt European laws that are in conflict with the moral values of the majority of Africans and could cause political instability in an African nation, causing violence and even reducing the African population dangerously.

AIDS has decimated millions of young Africans who are the future and source of Africa’s population and its perpetuation. Thousands of young people are buried every week in Africa living older people behind. There are other diseases such as TB and Malaria that are contributing to Africa’s population decline. It has also been found that the fertility of women in South Africa, for example is declining. If Africans are not vigilant and play down the importance of population, soon a depopulated Africa shall be a dumping ground of over-populated countries from elsewhere outside Africa. This will have suicidal consequences for the African people.

Population is an important national weapon, politically, professionally, industrially and militarily. One of the main factors that led to the demise of apartheid colonial South Africa is that the international community found it repugnant that a tiny settler colonial minority could bully 80% African indigenous majority with the assistance of many Western European countries. Nations that practise homosexuality will disappear from the face of the earth. Africa must not be among them.

The pressure on Africa to go homosexual is coming from Europe. This is from the British government and its allies that have not accounted for their role in the Slave Trade of Black human beings (Africans). Through the Berlin Act of 26 February 1885, seven European countries stole the whole of Africa except Ethiopia. They sliced this African Continent among themselves like a cake at a royal wedding. They used the “cheap native labour” and looted the riches of Africa to develop Europe and under-develop Africa. They practised unprecedented racism in human history. They treated Africans as sub-humans. Paradoxically, they are today lecturing Africans on how they must live and govern themselves. These self-appointed “teachers” may have the most sophisticated weapons of mass destruction in the world, but they know very little about morality.

Speaking about the barbaric enslavement of Africans by Europeans in Senegal in February 1992, Pope Paul John II pleaded with Africans “to forgive all those who during those 500 years [of European slave trade] have been the cause of pain and suffering for your ancestors and for yourselves.”

Writing about the inhumanity of the European slave traders with the full support of their governments, the Rev J.H. Soga said, “Murder was the order of the day. Men and women and children were massacred, and the captives sold without regard to the ties of fatherhood or offspring. The one ruthlessly torn from the other as if the bond of love…had no existence. Family upon family, tribe upon tribe was often completely swept away not even an infant being spared. Millions upon millions of the sons and daughters of Africa were sent to destruction as if they had been wild animals.”

These were the days when the Right Rev. Mead, Bishop of the Diocese of Virginia in America, then a British colony, could preach to the African slaves and say, “Almighty God has been pleased to make you slaves here, and give you nothing, but labour and poverty in this world, which you are obliged to submit to, as it is His will that it should be so. Your bodies…are not your own: they are at the disposal of those you belong to.”

A Swiss missionary Henri Junod proclaimed, “The Blacks…despite all that has been written on the fundamental axiom of absolute equality of mankind, are an inferior race, made to serve….Everyone…is deeply concerned that the Blacks should accept the position assigned to them by physical and intellectual faculties. Without the arms of the natives the gold mines in Johannesburg which have built up the prosperity of South Africa would cease to exist from one day to the next for it is the native arms which accomplish the entire manual labour in the extracting of gold…the white man’s role is that of the organiser, the master under whose watch; must work million arms of the native population.”

A British philosopher Betrand Russell has written about European atrocities in the “Belgian” Congo. “Each village was ordered by the authorities to collect and bring in a certain amount of rubber – as much as the men could bring in by neglecting all work for their own maintenance. If they failed to bring the required amount, their own women were taken away and kept as hostages of government employees. If this failed…troops were sent to the village to spread terror, if necessary by killing the men…they were ordered to bring one right hand amputated from an African victim for every cartridge used.”

According to Sir H.H. Johnston the Congo population was reduced from 20 million people to nine million in fifteen years. These Are Matters African Leaders Must Discuss with Western Europe and its allies, NOT HOMOSEXUALS AND SAME SEX MARRIAGES.

The worst genocide occurred in Namibia in 1904. Namibia was then a German colony. A well armed German colonial army under General Lothar von Trotha drove the Hereros to the Kalahari Desert where there was no water. 80% of the Herero people died of dehydration in that desert.

African people must raise this debate to a higher level where it really belongs. All imperialist countries that colonised Africa must pay reparations for the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in African human cargo as well as reparations in looting African riches after the Berlin Conference.

European museums are full of artifacts that were looted from Africa by European colonial governments. Their home is Africa. European countries must repatriate these artifacts to their African owners in Africa.

On the repatriation of these African artifacts from European museums, UNESCO Director-General, Amoude-Mahtar M’Bow wrote, “The return of a work of art or record to the country which created it enables its people to recover part of the memory and identity and proves that the long civilisation which shapes the history of the world is still continuing in an atmosphere of mutual respect among nations.”

Africa has never dictated to Europe what laws Europeans must or must not make. It is therefore, very impudent of Britain and its allies to want to bully Africa into making laws that suit Europe and threaten withholding financial aid to African countries that refuse to legalise homosexuality in their own countries.

Anyway, let it never be forgotten that Western Europe and its allies accumulated its wealth from the enslavement of Africans and underdevelopment of the African Continent through the barbaric and inhuman Berlin Act of 26 February 1885. Unfortunately, while there are attempts to divert this serious issue to homosexuality and same sex marriages; the neo-colonial exploitation of Africans by former architects of slavery and colonialism goes on unabated. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “Our Western way of life has stripped Africa’s people of their riches and continues to strip them.”

By Dr. Motsoko Pheko
The writer is a former member of the South African Parliament. He is author of several books on history, political science, law and theology.

In 2013, there were 36 new articles, bringing the total number of articles posted on Mayihlome News to 195.

The busiest day of the year was December 18th with 3,740 views. The most popular article that day was THE MANDELA DECEPTION.

The following articles, in order of popularity, had the most attractions in 2013:
1 THE MANDELA DECEPTION (By Yamkela Fortune Spengane)
2 THE QUESTION IS: DID NELSON MANDELA SELL OUT OR NOT (By Sam Ditshego)
3 THE EPIC STORY OF JUNE 16 UPRISING (By the Pan Africanist Youth Congress of Azania)
4 SHORT PROFILE OF JAFTA KGALABI “THE TIGER OF AZANIA” MASEMOLA (By Ike Mafole)
5 WHAT CAUSES PETROL PRICES TO RISE AND WHAT MUST WE DO ABOUT IT (By Sam Ditshego)

The most commented on article in 2013 was THE MANDELA DECEPTION with 60 comments as at the morning of 31 December 2013.

The following were the most active commenters:
1 SAM DITSHEGO
2 NAKEDI MBABAMA
3 MOSHE MSIMANGA
4 JAKI SEROKE
5 KUSH360

Mayihlome News readers came from 171 countries all in all. Most of these visitors came from South Africa. The United States and the United Kingdom coming second and third respectively.

Thank you all for the support. Let’s continue the education to liberate Africa. Aluta Continua!

By Mayihlome News

Sabelo Phama

Victor Gqweta, or Sabelo Phama as he was popularly known, was called to head and command the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army (APLA) forces and serve in the Central Committee of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania as Secretary for Defence in 1982 when restructuring of the Party took place under the new leadership of John Nyathi Pokela.

Pokela was released at the end of 1980 after serving a thirteen (13) year term on Robben Island maximum prison. Both the underground and prison leadership of the PAC sent him abroad to join the leadership of Mission-in-Exile and establish unity of the warring groupings, restore Party discipline and roll out a home going programme for APLA combatants.

In essence, the PAC was taking responsibility once more to unfold a programme of action and overthrow an illegitimate racist settler-regime. Vusi Make voluntarily and magnanimously stepped down from the position of chairman of the Party to allow this process to be taken up with untrammelled energy and vigour.

John Pokela, Zephania Mothopeng, Mfanasekhaya Gqobose and others in the Task Force (a PAC structure to propel militant action on the ground) were transformational leaders assigned to launch armed struggle after the Party was forced underground in April 1960. The PAC was banned soon after the Sharpeville and Langa massacres in March 1960. The Party set up Poqo – a rag tag army using traditional methods of secret society – to launch the armed struggle and defend the people from being mowed down by the Saracens and bullets of Hendrik Verwoerd’s security apparatus.

Poqo launched its first attack on 11 September 1960 without having sent one guerrilla for training abroad, and used indigenous methods of fighting to shake down a well-resourced enemy and bring fear to its population. Poqo’s transmutation into the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army took place in 1966. By then it had established operational brigades in each of the then four provinces of the country. Some characters in the leadership committed fatal errors out of recklessness and poor judgments, and the Poqo insurrection suffered setbacks and defeats against the British South Africa powerhouse. Poqo was forced to retreat to Zambia and Tanzania, as some of its prominent leaders were imprisoned on the notorious Robben Island hell-hole prison.

On his release, Pokela was only happy and willing to serve once more – this time as commander in chief of the fighting forces.

The Central Committee established the Military Commission led by Pokela and Sabelo Phama. This Military Commission was an integrated political and military formation that strategically led the PAC and APLA forces to conduct the fight against settler colonialism, monopoly capitalism and imperialism. The emphasis was to raise the fighting capacity of the Azanian masses, and not just to highlight their plight under apartheid. The PAC’s brand of African Nationalism is founded on the premise that the African people are their own liberators.

The apartheid and settler colonial rule was a police state, with every white person accorded the right to kill on sight any form of resistance by the indigenous folks, which they called the ‘Swart Gevaar’. The liberals called this the ‘Native Problem’. There was a compulsory conscription of sixteen to eighteen year old white males who primarily learnt to kill.

The liberation movement, led by the PAC, explained the objective conditions in racist South Africa as one where a life and death contradiction existed between the oppressed and oppressors, and between the dispossessed and the settlers. White domination prevailed – with guns aimed at the defenceless African people who were exploited to the hilt.

APLA carried the burden of history to fight and transform society, and establish peace and safety. But APLA was not aimed at bloodletting and was not a gang of bandits.

In APLA’s definition, a guerrilla is a political fighter. That is, a guerrilla is a freedom fighter pursuing the objectives of national liberation – to resolve the national question and see to it that a people-powered democracy is restored. APLA identified with the dictum of Mao Zedong that a guerrilla is like fish in the water – fish is the guerrilla and water is the people. APLA forces were taught to respect and serve the Azanian masses, and win their hearts and minds.

Theoretically, the ‘mass line’ meant that everything starts from the people, is of the people and is by the people. The Azanian masses as a political definition are the engines of change and transformation. The masses make history. Political and military fighters such as the PAC and APLA are borne from ‘the loins of the African people’. The African people were the alpha and omega of the revolution led by the PAC.

THE NEW BEGINNING: 1982-1985….

1982 was the year of action for Party cadres and leaders. This article sums up the experience from that time until 1994 – which is the period of the Great Storm Campaign. We also appreciate and acknowledge the leadership qualities of Pokela and Sabelo Phama. The life and times of these two comrades represent a stoic symbol of dedication and determination against extremely heavy odds, and are similar to the biblical young goat-herd David using a slingshot to fall down a well-armed Goliath.

After the Party leader Mangaliso Sobukwe died of lung cancer in 1978; the end of the secret (and, at the time, marathon) Bethal Trial in 1979; and, the crisis in leadership of the Azanian Revolution expressed by the poor handling of inner Party struggles in exile; enemies and rivals of the PAC declared the organisation dead. The Vorster regime said the ‘PAC was a monster without a head’, and rival groups said APLA was ‘a man and a fax machine’ or a ‘Dad’s Army’. Opponents ridiculed the PAC stating that the organisation was fighting ‘an imaginary war’.

Pokela and Phama intervened at a critical historical point and made all of them to eat humble pie. The plans and implementation programmes of APLA rose phenomenally in their watch, and led to a critical climax before the new dispensation wherein APLA and the PAC were holding sway. In 1993 the notorious South African Defence Force (SADF) staged the last kick of a dying horse by attacking innocent teenagers in Mthatha with false intelligence information and sloppy reconnaissance that the target place was an APLA High Command facility or safe house. FW De Klerk and his cabinet authorised the cold-blooded murder after advice and recommendation of the Goldstone Commission. The PAC and APLA, pursuing the Great Storm Campaign, had shaken the nerve centre of political and military power at the Union Building and Voortrekkers Hoogte.

The Military Commission set up the APLA High Command and a new style of management. Commanders and the commissariat were now liable to be called to account, and they took responsibility for everything that happens within the organisation, good or bad. Professionalism was encouraged and upheld. Dysfunctional structures were dismantled and new progressive procedures were adopted. The decisions and processes that held the whole organisational structure together were taught and understood at every level of leadership.

The strategic model of APLA’s guerrilla warfare was a three-phased people’s war. Politically, the first phase was to mobilise the masses and take measures to increase their fighting capacity; secondly, to subvert the SADF, the police and all other security organs on the one hand, and on the other to proselytise the auxiliary forces in the Bantustans and encourage defections to join the people’s army; and, thirdly, to take political and military action among the enemy’s population in order to demoralise their opinions and draw their attention to the proximity of the people’s inevitable take-over of political power.

Militarily, the first phase was led by the commissariat setting up underground cells, recruiting new operatives, infiltrating strategic organisations and smuggling in a stockpile of weapons distributed into dead letter boxes. The second phase was guerrilla activities which included surprise attacks and sudden raids on enemy forces, sabotage of economic targets and establishing parallel administrations authorities in areas under APLA control. The third phase was not completely realised – but it was aimed at a conventional war with regular formations.

APLA hierarchy also deployed a smash and grab repossession unit. It targeted the enemy’s commercial banks, their rich land owners and farm entities. It expropriated government resources and wealth belonging to colonial-settlers as a fund-raising campaign to sustain and support guerrilla warfare operations.

In action, APLA tactics were intended to impose a constant debilitating strain on the police and the army by launching low-intensity warfare of small and repetitive attacks – like the war of the flea – to slowly but surely wear down the unpopular authority of the settler regime. The attacks were meant to sow defeatism, discontent and disloyalty among the enemy’s population. With the belief of invincibility and that they were commanding superior fire power; the white settler population could not bear repeated armed attacks, or last long morally and politically as they counted body bags of their own troops.

As leader of a political organisation, Pokela approached Oliver Tambo of the African National Congress to explore a mutual relation of the fighting forces and to work towards a possible united patriotic front. Tambo’s response was tepid. However, in public he took a disparaging attack against the PAC. At the time, the African National Congress held a Soviet Union-inspired policy that it was an ‘authentic’ movement and the sole representative of the South African people, and campaigned to oust the PAC from the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the Organisation of African Unity.

The ANC were also recipients of financial and diplomatic support from Scandinavian countries who ran a concerted campaign against the Great Storm. Gora Ibrahim, the PAC’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs, was rebuffed and deliberately frustrated by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) officials who kept shifting the goal posts and refusing to provide humanitarian aid to the PAC’s exile community and its internal front organisations. Sweden’s Social Democrats mobilised a PAC bashing campaign to exclude the Party from membership of the Socialist International.

The Party, however, kept most of its allies and friends. APLA sent its guerrillas for advanced training in military academies of countries such as the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, Kampuchea, Yugoslavia, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Guinea Conakry, Chad, Nigeria, Congo, Ethiopia, Uganda, Egypt, Burkina Faso, and Ghana and others on a smaller but specialist scale. APLA in turn set up its own training academy – the Zeph Mothopeng Military Academy – in the host country for liberation movement armies, Tanzania, for reorientation of graduates from these different and various disciplines and military cultures. New recruits from home were also put through crash courses to handle weapons and establish discipline.

APLA had well-trained military strategists, engineers, intelligence analysts, medical corps, pilots, topologists, and even documentation forgers.

Two members of the High Command, Jan Shoba and Enoch Zulu, were captured in separate incidents inside occupied Azania by mid-1985. The enemy’s counter-insurgency was beginning to infiltrate the APLA ranks and establishing an embedded fifth column. It was unrealistic to expect that APLA and the PAC, as a formidable opponent of the settler regime, could be water-tight and avoid suffering setbacks and making mistakes in operational activities.

CHAIRMAN POKELA’S UNTIMELY DEATH….

In early June 1985 the Military Commission, accompanied by High Command representatives, met with the underground leadership from home at a secret venue in Botswana. The SADF had killed compatriots and fellow freedom fighters in a midnight raid on Gaborone, to further its project to destabilise the front line states. The security climate was tense but the PAC’s collective leadership met in what would become Chairman Pokela’s last strategic session.

The meeting took audit and reviewed the Great Storm Campaign since 1982 and critically assessed weaknesses and failures. The Mission-in-Exile, the Underground, and the Imprisoned (through smuggled messages) leaderships presented their summary of experiences and suggested remedial plans. It was decided not to put all eggs in one basket. All the sites of struggle needed to be fortified and consolidated – even though armed struggle was considered the principal form of struggle. The meeting adopted a forward looking strategy based on increasing and preserving own resources and capabilities.

Pokela’s transformational leadership had revived and placed the PAC in its rightful place in the hearts and minds of the Azanian masses. Almost all key stakeholders in the PAC worked in a framework where they could relate to one another, and to the axis. They could fairly understand the internal processes, values, organisational culture, and leadership structure, as it evolved. Pokela took personal blame for the failures, acknowledged collective breakthroughs where potential and new avenues and were successfully created, and praised the resilience of the African people where small victories were achieved.

Pokela had chaired the Bureau of African Nationalism, a think-tank of the Africanists guided by the 1949 Programme of Action. He was a Fort Hare University graduate and high school teacher. He worked at Standerton with Robert Sobukwe. One of the key political theorists of the Party, he led the PAC in prison from B-section and united all divergent strands.

He fell ill soon after the Botswana strategic meeting and died at a hospital in Harare, Zimbabwe. The leadership of ZANU (PF) accorded him a state funeral.

THE ONGOING STRUGGLE GAINS MOMENTUM: 1985-1994….

APLA’s campaign gained momentum and captured the imagination of the popular media. Intermittent reports and analysis began to appear in prominent pages and open editorials. APLA was engaging in skirmishes with the SADF along the borders and in the townships, alongside the popular struggles of the masses.

As it would be expected, the media was obsessed with the slogan “one settler, one bullet” and used this to demonise and bash both the PAC and APLA as blood thirsty.

The slogan was used in the seventies in the training camps of Ithumbi and Mgagao in Tanzania by both APLA and the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) who shared the premises as fraternal forces and political allies. ZANLA was led by Josiah Tongogara and Rex Nhongo. APLA’s top commanders were then TM Ntantala and Edwin Makoti. Militarily, the slogan was intended to control wasteful use of ammunition and to instil the practice of a good aim and precision firing among trainees. Politically, it was used to demoralise the enemy’s population and support base, whilst drawing the people’s focus on the national liberation struggle against a common enemy.

APLA forces were tutored on the military strategies of Mao Zedong, Nguyen Giap, Ho Chi Ming, Kwame Nkrumah, Marighella and others. It was compulsory for operatives to know and understand ‘The Seven Deadly Sins of a Guerrilla’.

APLA popularised its calibre of weapons in its attacks. The Czechoslovakian made Scorpion automatic machine pistol, for example, was used frequently around the Witwatersrand townships to distinguish APLA from other formations. Themba Phikwane, who used Solly Mohapi as his nom de guerre, formed a roving unit to attack several guarding post of SADF soldiers in entry points of Alexandra Township in 1986. Azania Combat, APLA’s news bulletin, was often spread within a reasonable radius of its operations and attacks to claim responsibility and inform the masses. The South African Police spread propaganda that the roving unit was a criminal Scorpion gang based in Alex, which harassed the people.

Trained cadres – Tshepo Lilele, Neo Khoza and Fana Sabela – died in a daylight encounter with enemy forces on Corlette Drive in what is now recorded as the Battle of Bramley. They used Scorpion pistols. Some of their comrades in arms retreated from the skirmish unscathed to tell the tale. The police also suffered fatalities.

APLA combatants continued to engage in exchange of fire with the police and army personnel. When they were ambushed, APLA’s forces never surrendered easily – they responded measure for measure. Battles in Lichtenburg, Port Elizabeth, East London, Pietermaritzburg, Bloemfontein and other areas are public records of some major feats by APLA.

The combination between exile and the underground complemented each other successfully; a Springs magistrate’s court convicted a prominent book publisher for leading the underground’s propaganda machinery and sitting on Military Commission deliberations, and the coup de tat by the Transkei military council in 1988 was reported by the enemy media as a PAC-inspired activity.

The SADF military intelligence and the SA police in a swoop on the PAC in May 1993 had planned but failed to charge some sixty members of the leadership of the PAC on a countrywide scale for high treason. It was again a last kick of a dying mule. The PAC and APLA were the very last organisations to be detained by apartheid rule under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act.

APLA High Command members such as Vuma Ntikinca, Andile Ntabeni, Polite Xuma, Happy Mphahlele, Bizza Ntsiki Mbete, Mbulelo Fihla, Mjomba Sello Kungwane, David Castro Phillips, and others were in action on the field – and led their forces in front, side by side, and from the rear. Sabelo Phama was himself frequently active inside the country. He conducted interviews with the commercial media and the government controlled SABC inside South Africa.

Sabelo Phama was a people’s person. He knew every soldier in the camp by name. The women guerrillas adored him. He always carried his own bags, personally cooked for his guests in his house, did household chores to assist his wife and children. His infectious belly laugh made everyone around him at ease. And yet he was a hard taskmaster and demanded focus and deliverables from his charges.

Phama had been an above average student at the University of Fort Hare in 1972 when he was harassed by the security police for taking part as a ring leader in protests and strikes. He went into exile to join APLA. Having shown potential, he was groomed for leadership and eventually entrusted with the responsibility to lead APLA.

There were several misleading reports in the media in November 1993 that Phama had died in action in Durban. The Johannesburg Stock Exchange performed poorly on the day and a PAC spokesperson had to confirm that he was alive and in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. This was a precursor to his death that Phama himself laughed off. In February 1994 he died tragically in suspicious circumstances in a car crush a few kilometres from Magagao military camp.

PATRIOTIC HEROES MUST BE HONOURED AND MEMORIALISED….

Pokela, Phama, Mothopeng, Gqobose, John Ganya, Gora Ibrahim, Dr Naboth Ntshuntsha, Barney Desai, Enoch Zulu, Jeff Masemola, Boniswa Ngcukana, Thami Zani and other valiant leaders of the Azanian revolution who laid down their lives and paid the supreme sacrifice must never be forgotten. Their footprints must not be erased from the psyche of the collective memory of African people. If they are not honoured and remembered, the future of the people and their continent is doomed once more.

By Jaki Seroke
The writer is a strategic management consultant. He is a member of the National Executive Committee of SANMVA, the newly established statutory umbrella body of military veteran’s organisations, and Chairperson of the Pan Africanist Research Institute (PARI).

REFERENCES:
1. Apla High Command Submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans/submit/apla.htm
2. Field Manual for Commissars: PAC publication 1975 (Reprinted 1991)
3. From Protest to Challenge – A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa (2010): Gerhart, Glaser, and Others. Indiana University Press.
4. In the Twilight of the Azanian Revolution – The Exile History of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (South Africa): Kwandiwe Kondlo (2006).
5. Mini-Manual of the Urban Guerrilla (1969): Carlos Marighella.
6. SWEDEN and National Liberation in Southern Africa (Volume 2: Solidarity and Assistance 1970 -1994). Stockholm, 2000. Nordiska Afrika Institutet. Tor Sellstom.

Mr Chairman and distinguished delegates to this important 8th Pan African Congress, let me begin by asking the following questions: Where would Africa be today, if there had never been the 5th Pan African Congress in Manchester in 1945? What would have happened to Africa if the Organisation of African Unity was never formed on 25 May 1963?

What would be the situation in Africa today, especially in African countries such as Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, Zimbabwe and apartheid colonial South Africa if there was never the OAU Liberation Committee to assist the liberation movements in these territories such as the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, African National Congress, MPLA, FRELIMO, SWAPO,ZANU and ZAPU?

How would the African liberation struggle against colonialism have been, if in 1957 Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah established diplomatic relations with apartheid colonial South Africa instead of declaring as he did then that “Ghana’s independence is meaningless unless it is linked to the total liberation of Africa?”

Mr Chairman, the political situation in Africa today is such that even those, among Africans who opposed Pan Africanism and denigrated Pan Africanists as “racists” and “anti-white” are forced by present circumstances to act Pan Africanly or pretend to do so.

I salute the convenors of this 8th Pan African Congress. It is taking place at a time when some people have pronounced the Pan African vision as overtaken by “globalisation.”

The Pan African vision, however, has come a long way. It is therefore, important for us to remember the pioneers of Pan Africanism who emerged at the darkest hour in the history of our beloved Continent, when Africans were regarded as sub-humans by European imperialist countries.

Let me mention a few of these brave sons of Africa to illustrate my point; Sylvester Henry Williams a Trinidadian in the Diaspora convened the first Pan African Congress in 1900. Historians say he is the person who named this political coming together of all Africans, called “Pan Africanism” today. He was followed by Pan Africanist giants such as Marcus Aurelius Garvey, W.E.B. de Bois, C.L. R James, George Padmore, Edward Milmot Bleyden who coined the slogan, “Africa for Africans, Africans for humanity and humanity for God.” Then we have Yosef Makonnen who financed the 5th Pan African Congress in 1945. We have Benito Sylvania of Haiti, John Hendrik Clarke and Malcom X.

At home, on the African soil, let me mention Pan Africanist pioneers such as Kwame Nkrumah, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Akintola, Ahmed Sekou Toure, Abdel Nasser, Ahmed ben Bella, Modibo Keita, Jomo Kenya, Julius Nyerere, Patrice Lumumba, Robert Mugabe, and Emperor Haile Selassie. This African Emperor was prevailed upon by Kwame Nkrumah to bring the Casablanca Group and the Monrovia Group together to form the OAU. A lot of money had been used by imperialist countries to sabotage the formation of the Organisation of African Unity. Had this Emperor been not a lover of Africa, there might have been no OAU and the fruits that followed.

Here in the southern tip of Africa, let me mention Muziwakhe Antony Lembede, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, Zephania Mothopeng, Ambrose Zwane of Swaziland and Ntsu Mokhehle of Lesotho, and Pixley ka Isaka Seme from this country. Pixley ka Seme is remembered among other things for his famous speech at Columbia University in America; “The Regeneration of Africa” also known as “I am an African.” He delivered this speech on 5th April 1906 and won a prestigious award.

Dr. Pixley ka Isaka Seme was never apologetic about the pre-European slave trade in Africans and pre-colonial advancement of Africa and the restoration of Africa’s lost glory and power. Challenging his audience he said, “Come with me to the capital of ancient Egypt, the Thebes the city of one hundred gates. The grandeur of its venerable ruins and gigantic proportions of its architect reduces to insignificance the boasted monuments of other nations…. In such ruins Africa is like the golden sun, that having set beneath the western horizon, still plays upon the world which she sustained and enlightened.”

The inhuman Trans Atlantic Slave Trade in human beings called Africans and the Berlin Act of 26 February 1885 through which the riches of Africa were stolen and looted to develop Europe and under-develop Africa were genocide crimes for which there has yet to be reparation. As a consequence of these maladies, Africa has suffered the worst holocaust in human history.

Pan Africanism is anti-nobody. It is pro-Africa. It is about the rebuilding the destroyed walls of Africa. The riches of Africa are still being looted by former colonial powers and their allies. This is the challenge that Africa must face and fight to restore Africa to her lost power. This politico -socio-economic war cannot be won by a divided Africa.

It was not a joke when Nkrumah said, “If we (Africa’s people) are to remain free, if we are to enjoy the full benefit of Africa’s resources we must be united to plan for our total defence and full exploitation of our material and human means in the full interest of all our people. To go it alone will limit our expectations and threaten our liberty.”

It was not an exaggeration, when Julius Nyerere after some hesitation warned, “There is no time to waste. We must unite now or perish. Political independence is only a prelude to new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our economic and social affairs; to construct our aspirations, unhampered by crushing and humiliating control and interference.”

It was not a political miscalculation when Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) stated, “We regard it, as the sacred duty of every African State to strive ceaselessly and energetically for the creation of a United States of Africa from Cape to Cairo and from Madagascar to Morocco….The days of small independent states are gone. For the lasting peace of Africa and solution of the economic, social and political problems of the continent, there must be a democratic principle. This means that foreign domination under whatever disguise must be destroyed.”

Zephania Mothopeng, a Pan Africanist who was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment for the Soweto Uprising of 16 June 1976 by the apartheid colonialist regime in July 1979, has left this message for Africa’s people:

“Unite unite all you Africans unite…
And rally to the banner of the African nation….
Project, promote African personality….
Create a giant monolithic state of Africa….
Socialistic in content and democratic in form….
A new social order original in conception….
Africanistic in orientation.”

Mr Chairman, I do not know how the 6th PAC and 7th PAC operated. I however, observe that the 5th PAC took place in 1945. This means that there were long gaps before the next Congress could take place. On the average there were nine years between the convening of these Congresses from 1900. But these were different times and world from ours. Today we live in a world of technology where events move very fast. It is clear therefore, that the 8th PAC and future PAC’s must adjust to the present times and circumstances. Imperialism is not dead. It has never gone to sleep on its agenda of looting Africa’s riches and keeping Africa impoverished and under-developed. What do PAC’s do after convening a Congress such as this one?

It seems to me that PAC’s, need administrative machinery that functions on a daily basis and a prescribed agenda with time frames. The first one might be to consider formation of a Pan African Movement geared at raising the Pan African consciousness of the African people both at home and in the Diaspora. This Pan African Movement, once it is viable would apply for observer status to the African Union to bring the views of the people on the ground to the African Union and the African Heads of State closer to the people on whose behalf they rule, presumably in the interest of the citizens of Africa.

The PAC’s must not be mere spectators of events. They must be part of shaping the future of Africa, politically, economically, socially and play a role in advancing the Continent technologically. Africa must process her raw materials and export them as finished goods. Where the situation is desperate, Africa must exchange her raw materials for high technology and not for cash. African States must prioritise and maximise the study of modern science and technology in all her institutions of learning.

Foreign investors must invest more in the infrastructure of Africa that develops this Continent. Many are interested only in the minerals and oil wells of Africa for their quick riches. This economic exploitative kind of investment is impoverishing Africans and under-developing Africa more. This is the 21st century. Western investors, in particular should not be allowed to continue to loot the riches of Africa as in the days of slavery and colonialism.

The Research Unit or Pan African Think Tank should be another consideration. This unit must research problems affecting Africa and provide solutions to the African Union so that this continental body can make informed and wise decisions. The research must include how a well established United States of Africa can be constituted to control the riches of Africa for Africans in order to uplift the standard of living of Africa’s people.

Pan Africanism must never be just a meeting of African Heads of State. Pan Africanism created African States. Pan Africanism is older than these states. A United States of Africa has taken so long because many African leaders in this African Union are not Pan Africanists. They have no qualifications to drive the Pan African agenda. It is like asking capitalists to drive a communist agenda or asking communists to drive a capitalist agenda.

We must claim our inheritance to be a total people. Africa’s riches belong to Africa’s people. The control of our resources and land was the substance and objective of Africa’s liberation struggle. Africans cannot face the onslaughts of imperialism without Pan Africanism because the imperialists are determined to loot the riches of Africa for themselves, even using violence or financing proxy wars in Africa to achieve their heinous objectives.

That beloved brother and son of Africa born in the Diaspora, Frantz Fanon put the challenge to us very clearly when he said, “Each generation in its relative nebulosity must discover its mission, and then fulfil it or betray it.” This 8th Pan African Congress is challenging us as this generation to discover our mission for our African Continent, and then fulfil it, and not betray it.

By Dr. Motsoko Pheko
This speech was delivered on 15 January 2014 at the 8th Pan African Congress in Johannesburg, ‘South Africa’ (Azania).

Photo: By Xola Tyamzashe

The measure of a man is not how he died, but how he lived his life…Not what he gained, but what he gave. The greatest thing in life is to live for a purpose.

The warrior that will be buried on Saturday 25 January 2014, for his deserved terrestrial rest and his celestial honour and glory beyond the grave, conferred on him by his Creator and Heavenly Father through that unique Person in all history who conquered death, and said to those who believe like this African warrior did, “I am the resurrection, and the life: He that believes in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live….” (John 11:25); is Bishop Lesaoana Caleb Makhanda. He was a freedom fighter for this country and Africa, since he was a Pan Africanist. He was a Diplomat and a Prophet. This is a man who could without blinking say, “I know that my redeemer lives, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God: Whom I shall see for myself and my eye shall behold, and not another.” (Job 14:25-27).

I knew this African patriot during my days at the United Nations in New York where I was an accredited representative of the victim of apartheid colonialism in South Africa (Azania). I found him energetic, hard-working person and a dedicated fighter to the liberation of African people and mankind. He was a reliable person, a man of integrity with a high sense of duty. I became acquainted with his spiritual life after he retired from his posting as Ambassador to five countries in West Africa where he was appointed by the late President Nelson Mandela.

Bishop Makhanda was a remarkable person. He always pursued whatever he did with tenacity of purpose and pertinacity of will. This was demonstrated in his early life. He was involved in the Sharpeville Uprising led by the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) under the leadership of Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe. He was the youngest prisoner for the Sharpeville Uprising, along with his friends Dr.Thami Mazwai and Dr.Joe Tlholoe. When Makhanda was released from jail he left the country for military training to fight against apartheid colonialism. The PAC assigned him to various posts including the United Nations one. He served with distinction in all of them. It looks like everything he touched was bound to succeed, yet he remained a very humble man. Even after he served as a distinguished Ambassador with title such as “Your Excellency” “His Exellency,” he remained a humble servant of the people. To him leadership was to be a servant of the people, not a master.

I think it is important to point out that this Bishop Lesaoana Caleb Makhanda has come a long way of a regiment of warriors. It is not an accident that he served the liberation of our people with remarkable dedication, which no one could question. The man known as “Makana the left- handed” is his ancestor. Makana (real name Makhanda) was an African warrior and a prophet. He led the 1819 war of national resistance against British colonialism in South Africa. He stormed the British garrison of Grahamstown (eRHINI isexeko seNgwele) on 25th December 1819. Historians say Makana “the left-handed” as they called him, maintained a strong interest in Christian faith, combining it with elements of African beliefs. He was a commander as well as a military advisor to King Ndlambe. He was arrested by the British colonial government after the war he led and imprisoned in Robben Island in 1820. He died in 1821 by drowning when he tried to escape from Robben Island and lead the liberation struggle of his people. Makana was recognised as a national hero in this country in January 2013. Bishop Makhanda was there to witness the honour bestowed on his ancestor after 194 years since he departed from this planet.

Bishop Makhanda, like his ancestor, became not only political a freedom fighter but a spiritual leader – a prophet. He had a vision which is known to those who were close to him. His death should not be considered as “a blow” to this vision. You can kill a visionary, but you cannot kill his or her vision. You can burn grass, but you cannot burn its roots. You can kill thinkers, but you cannot kill their ideas. We should not be intimidated. We must not fail Bishop Makhanda’s vision. It is good for our nation. It is good for Africa. It is good for mankind. It must triumph no matter how dark it may be and whatever the challenges. The greatest honour we can confer on Bishop Makhanda is the realisation of his vision. He was a great lover of knowledge. He wanted every African to have knowledge because knowledge is power and liberates a nation.

Every adversity, every heart ache carries the seed of a greater benefit. I suppose that is the reason that great English writer, William Shakespeare said, “Sweet are the uses of adversity which like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head.” Those evil men who murdered Bishop Lesaoana Caleb Makhanda have won a cowardly perfidious battle. We must win the war. There is nothing invincible like a vision, called “utopia” today, and flesh and blood tomorrow. There is no crisis that was never a blessing in disguise if harnessed. Life’s greatest achievements are those that look impossible.

By Dr. Motsoko Pheko

THE ELECTIONS TAKES PLACE FROM 27 JANUARY 2014 TO 06 FEBRUARY 2014.

THEME: RALLY DESTITUTE STUDENT MASSES BEHIND REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALIST IDEAS TOWARDS FREE AND SOCIALIST EDUCATION!!!

The Pan Africanist Students Movement of Azania (PASMA), as a custodian and vanguard of the genuine aspirations of students is committed to jealously defend students against the attack of capitalism in the education system, eradicating all these ruthless characters that find host in this system and complement capitalism, these being: neo-colonialism, commoditization of education, racism and all forms of discrimination, and oppression such as financial and academic exclusions.

With no fear of over simplification, contradiction or rhetoric it is meet that we reinforce that: Having an SRC is not a privilege for students nor is it a favour from the various management bodies in our Universities to us as students being the major stakeholders as beneficiaries and recipients of higher education, but rather legislated, statutory entity that is provisioned for in the Higher Education Act 101 of 1997. Every SRC is the supreme body through which students advance their views and fight for what is rightfully their social and academic interest, a right to education!

Our tireless commitment to the cause of attaining a free, obligatory and quality socialist education in South Africa remains laconic and unwavering demand, hence we shall continue to be very radical and unapologetic in dealing with any man-made obstacle that manifests itself against the will of the masses.

We lament the lip service that has been done by universities on the question of access, insofar as registration is concerned and this does not mean the entire Ministry of education is immune from this despicable act of brutality against the African child. Institutional Autonomy and academic freedom is one of the fundamental reasons why an African child is forced to endure unjust and evil acts of exclusions and poor quality learning environment in the lecture halls, residences, sport fields, services, in which the entire student populace is subjected daily.

The Pan Africanist Students Movement of Azania (PASMA) regards education as central to the personal development of members of society, as a critical ingredient in the development of our society and as indispensable to the development of our productive forces and capacity, and transformation of relations of tolerance of greed and cross conspicuous consumption that has no social and moral value in the development of the African student, and society at large.

Currently in our universities we students are faced with a number of challenges that by the looks of things no one seems to be concerned enough to tackle and resolve them, or no one seems to know the solutions. Our manifesto for 2013/14 SRC elections is embedded in those critical areas being:

1. DECLARE WAR AGAINST EXORBITANT FEES AND PERPETUAL FEE INCREMENT:

We highly condemn exorbitant fees of the University and the perpetual annual increment. We view this as financial exclusion of students particularly from the working class background and makes education only accessible to children of the capitalists. We call for FREE EDUCATION FOR ALL irrespective of gender, race and social position; at public cost.

We further object to other forms of exclusion (academic, social, etc) as contrary to the imperative of social development. We demand a democratic education system free from evil and immoral policies aimed at poor students from the impoverished working class families.

2. DEMAND FOR ADEQUATE STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES:

We are brutally against the current lack of adequate student support services and we demand an immediate provision for quality and massive student support services to achieve 100% academic performance:

# Library services: We call for 24- hour library services and study centre at all campuses of the institution.

# Free internet services: The scientific development of mankind over the last few centuries has made almost impossible to make any academic advancement without the internet. It is along this line that we demand massive and FREE internet service, provision for Wi-Fi in all campus and accessible anywhere in the campus including inside our residences.

# Free Bus Services: We demand free inter and intra campus bus services for all inclusive of non-residence students.

# Quality catering and a balanced diet/nutrition: We demand healthy, quality and affordable catering services at all cafeterias and dining halls.

# Provision for Student Residences: We call for the building of more residences to accommodate all students with the desire to use them and we demand regular supervision and improved services of the state of the existing residences to ensure that they are maintain good living conditions.

# Academic Support Services: We call for the establishment of student Academic Support Services in all campuses with qualified tutors, academic counselors per faculty and psychologist to assist students in their academic and social related problems.

# Increment of Books and Meals allowance: We demand an increment to books and meals students to cover all students prescribed books needs and their healthy and preferred meals for all students that are beneficiaries of financial aid.

# Student support services are the most important assets for any student to achieve his/her academic ambitions; we will therefore not compromise in as far as this item is concerned.

3. WAR AGAINST CORRUPTION AND MALADMINISTRATION IN OUR INSTITUTIONS:

# We would like to brutally condemn corruption and maladministration of our institutions. Corruption and maladministration plunged our campuses into crisis after the other, ranging from financial maladministration, forgery of qualifications, tender related corruption and hiring of unqualified lecturers and staff.

# We demand de-privatization of all university services including student bashes to avoid tender related corruption.

# We demand provision for students and general workers to sit in all governing committees and panels including structures responsible of appointing and hiring lecturers, managers and staff at the university to deepen democracy, transparency and accountability.

# We further demand an establishment of worker-student-community watchdog committee to audit all finances of the university and they should be regularly furnished with audited statements of all operations in the university.

4. WAR AGAINST DISCRIMINATION AND EXPLOITATION:

As a revolutionary student movement armed with pure revolutionary theory, we reaffirm our stance against any form of discrimination whether racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, religious and discrimination of disabled people:

# Racism (White Supremacy) and Sexism: We view these two as nothing but particular manifestations of capitalism just like Colonialism and Apartheid, therefore our struggle against them can never be separated from our broader struggle against capitalism, neo-colonialism and imperialism for a socialist revolution that shall present a major breakthrough towards a classless society without both racism and sexism.

# Xenophobia (or Afrophobia): We condemn as neo-colonialist exclusion of students from other parts of Africa from financial aid scheme and subjecting them to payment of high fees and reactionary foreign levy. We further condemn all the unnecessary bureaucratic process of application for study permit and passports that African students are always subjected to each time they choose to come study in this country. We demand equal treatment for all students irrespective of your origin.

# Homophobia: We reject as conservative the abuse and the discrimination of students on the basis of their sexual orientation. We call for equal treatment of gays, lesbians, bi-sexual, transgender, etc. and we shall protect them against all forms of abuse.

# Religious discrimination: We have noticed with greatness the discrimination of other religious denominations by our reactionary managements and we demand equal space for students from different religious denominations to worship and do the rituals.

# Discrimination of differently “able’d” (others wrongly referred to as disabled) people: We demand proper facility to accommodate needs and aspirations of disabled students in all campuses and further demand a disability bursaries for all disabled irrespective of social position and/or family background.

5. DEMAND GENUINE TRANSFORMATION OF EDUCATION SYSTEM AND CURRICULA:

The current education system and curricula, as inherited directly from Settler Colonial Apartheid State without any change. The purpose of the Settler Colonial Apartheid system has been designed as part of the capitalist machinery which aimed to brain damage the African Child’s mind by retaining the state of servitude of the African people thus produce a capitalist labour force. We demand and advocate for an education systems that shall be underpinned by goals such as economic development and emancipation of the African and humanity from all forms social constructs which aims to retain a (contemporary) modern slave system.

We also reject as mere lip service the pseudo transformation agenda as advanced by the current neo-colonial regime because we believe that transformation of education can never be isolated from the transformation of the other sectors and the transformation of the society at large.

Our transformation agenda is linked with our demand for free and socialist education and linked in fate with the poor working class struggles against exploitation and oppression as perpetuated through neo-liberalism, capitalism and imperialism.

We agitate for education system and curricula that is free from capitalist propaganda and exclusion but directly intertwined in terms of content and fate with workers struggle for emancipation and advancement of socialist struggle.

Discrimination of African languages: WE demand that the universities should introduce two or three African Languages and at all students should be required to register and study at least two African languages.

6. WAR AGAINST VICTIMIZATION OF STUDENTS AND LEADERS IN MASS PROTESTS:

We all witnessed brutal victimizations of students and their leaders each time they exercise their democratic rights; a right to protest and picket in advancement of students’ interests.

We condemn as barbaric settler colonial apartheid era methods such as the shooting of students, usage of internal, external (bouncers) and state security forces to suppress protests and of course arrests and expulsions of innocent students and student revolutionaries.

We demand withdrawal of all cases against all victimized students and leaders and call for reinstatement of expelled students and leaders. We have noted that these evil acts as perpetuated by our evil university managements are highly condoned by the Ministry of Higher Education as led by a pseudo communist.

7. CONCLUSION:

It is crystal clear that the task of this nature can only be bestowed upon the almighty student vanguard, the Pan Africanist Student Movement of Azania (PASMA). This of course is due to our strong conviction to combat all these evils mentioned above and PASMA being tried and tested in many universities across the country before and it is needless to state that we succeeded unscathed.

As a student movement, we pledge to remain committed to the cause of liberating the African masses within our domain that currently remain oppressed and traumatized as a result of the current commodified education system in this country, and as we ask you to vote for PASMA, we borrow your attention to focus on this overview of our challenges as students and solutions that come thereafter.

DON’T THINK TWICE! VOTE PASMA!

IZWE LETHU! I-AFRIKA!

TO VOTE VISIT A VOTING STATION AT YOUR NEAREST UNISA SITE OR VOTE ONLINE USING SPECIAL UNIQUE PIN SENT TO ALL REGISTERED STUDENTS!

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: MOLESENG EVANS MALEPE ON 0729220392 OR THABO MATLANYANA 0747215654.

Onkgopotse Ramothibi Abram Tiro
Source: http://www.sahistory.org.za

1 February 2014 marks the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Onkgopotse Ramothibi Abram Tiro way back in 1974, while he was exiled in Botswana. This writer has previously written about the life and times of Tiro in Mayihlome News and other publications. This time around I will focus on trying to bring to book, so to speak, those who were responsible for Tiro’s death and also make readers understand why the killers of Tiro got away with murder in the so called ‘new’ South Africa. I will let the facts speak for themselves.

In my previous articles I mentioned that the author of the book Inside Boss (1981), Gordon Winter, who is a former Bureau of State Security (BOSS) wrote that Tiro was killed by The Z-Squad. The following extract from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Report, Volume 2, Chapter 2, at page 99, corroborates what Winter revealed in his book.

At paragraph 211 the report states that: “The Commission has no corroborated evidence of any external assassinations during the 1960 to 1973 period for which South African security operatives can be said to have been responsible.”

The report also states the following at paragraph 212: “The first known cross-border assassinations in the 1974–79 period occurred in February 1974, when, within two weeks of each other, MK founder member John Dube (aka ‘Boy’ Mvemve) and former South African Students’ Organisation (SASO) founder member Abraham Onkgopotse Tiro were killed by letter bombs in Zambia and Botswana respectively.”

The report further states at paragraph 213 that: “The Commission received no amnesty applications for these two killings. Former BOSS agent, Mr Gordon Winter, alleges that the killings were the work of BOSS’s recently formed covert unit, the Z-squad. At a Commission briefing, a former BOSS and later senior NIS and NIA member confirmed the existence of the Z-squad and named amongst its small band of original members Mr Phil Freeman, an explosives expert, and Mr Dries Verwey.”

Paragraph 214 of the report states the following regarding the operations of the Z-Squad in relation to Tiro’s assassination: “Another former BOSS agent, Mr Martin Dolinchek, also confirmed Z’s existence. In an interview published in the New Nation (9 August 1991), he named Kuhn and Verwey as “among those responsible for his [Tiro’s] death”. In an interview with the Commission, Dolinchek stated that Tiro was killed by the insertion of an explosive device into a package addressed to him from the Geneva-based International University Exchange Fund (IUEF). At that time, all mail destined for Southern Africa (including the BLS states, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and the Seychelles) passed through the airmail sorting office in Germiston near the then Jan Smuts airport. The actual running of that office was contracted out by the Post Office and, according to Dolinchek, South African Airways (then a state corporation) deliberately bid low to gain the contract so that the security police could have easy access to the millions of pieces of mail, including diplomatic traffic that flowed through it annually.”

Lastly, paragraph 215 states that: “According to Dolinchek, in the 1970s and 1980s some 400 police, mostly retired officers, worked in the facility, amongst them Security Branch officers. Dolinchek claims that Tiro’s package from the IUEF was “doctored” at this facility. That particular item of mail would have been a strategic choice as the IUEF, an international anti-apartheid non-governmental organisation (NGO), worked closely with SASO and was channelling funds to the organisation. Tiro was in regular contact with the IUEF and a package would not have aroused suspicion.”

I have previously stated that another South African spy, Craig Williamson, who had infiltrated the ANC, worked for the IUEF. In one of my articles on Tiro in Mayihlome News, a relative of Tiro’s, Ratanang Tiro posted a comment to the effect that the late Tiro’s mom passed away not having known who the killers of his son were because they never came forward. Unfortunately it would seem the ruling ANC provided them with a cover because of the secret deals clinched between the ANC and the former Apartheid government officials.

In fact, a US researcher, John Judge revealed in an interview titled Assassination as a Tool of Fascism that “Many of those scientists, many of the munitions and aerospace experts, many of the spies, (about 300 of them, in fact, under General Reinhard Gehlen, who had headed up Hitler’s intelligence network for the east and the Soviet Union) were brought, from 1943 up until even more recently in the present day, into the United States and into other countries around the world, South Africa included. There’s quite a bit of collaboration between the South African government and World War II Fascists and Nazis. But the Fascism was an indigenous problem in many, many countries. It didn’t just exist in Nazi Germany. There were groups of Fascists that the Nazis were able to use in many countries as collaborationist governments.”

I encourage readers to look for John Judge’s interview on the internet and read it in its entirety. They should also search and read John Judge’s Good Americans article to learn more about the Gehlen Network and its nefarious ways.

One would have expected that when the so-called new South African government came to power twenty (20) years ago, it would search for the records of these fascist Nazis and prosecute those that they could find for the atrocities they have committed, including political assassinations.

Colonel Huyghe, a Belgian rogue who shot Patrice Lumumba on the temples has been living in South Africa for the past fifty (50) years. Interestingly, the ANC government is not bothered by this. Perhaps many people are asking themselves why the ANC government is protecting these white supremacists. I have already alluded to the secret deals the ANC and Apartheid government officials signed and agreed that the ANC would not expose Apartheid war criminals and while the former Apartheid government officials would not expose who, among the ANC leaders, were spies, key amongst them Nelson Mandela, who was named a British M16 spy in the book MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations, authored by the acclaimed intelligence expert Stephen Dorril and another book, The Big Breach by Richard Tomlinson.

The Black Consciousness organizations and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania must demand justice for the Tiro family.

By Sam Ditshego
The writer is a Fellow at the Pan Africanist Research Institute (PARI).

Source: http://uk.reuters.com

“Prisoners are not free to negotiate with their jailers,” these were the words of the then second President and founding member of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania, Zeph Mothopeng, referring to ANC leader Nelson Mandela who has been holding secret negotiations with Apartheid leaders for many years.

Tomorrow the media will be abuzz with the 24th anniversary of the release of Mr. Mandela from Victor Verster prison. Many people are still not aware of the extent and magnitude of the damage the secret deals Mandela clinched with Apartheid authorities and imperialists caused to the hoi polloi.

Former Robben Islanders relate stories of Mandela being taken at night from Robben Island in the 1970’s and brought back in the early hours of the morning. Apparently when Apartheid authorities realized that the intermittent disappearance of Mandela from Robben Island raised eyebrows, they finally moved him to Pollsmor prison and finally to Victor Verster prison.

What engendered from these secret negotiations was a colossal fraud in the form of the outcomes of Codesa. Azapo boycotted Codesa but the PAC was exhorted by some leaders of the frontline states to join in the Codesa talks after Mr. Mothopeng had passed on. However, Mandela and De Klerk had already sealed the secret deal. The PAC was not going to change anything and it didn’t. Everything was cast in stone.

It is public knowledge that MI6 and CIA officers facilitated the secret negotiations between Mandela and FW De Klerk. As a representative of the minorities and assisted by the imperialists, De Klerk wrung far reaching concessions from Mandela.

The PAC founding President, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe said, “Real democracy can come only when Africans by themselves formulate policies and programmes and decide on the method of struggle without interference from the minorities who arrogantly appropriate to themselves the right to plan and think for the Africans”. These profound words of wisdom were ignored and we are now back to square one. We are witnessing the marginalized citizens of this country rejecting the elections as a vehicle that can be trusted to change their lives for the better. Some petrol-bombed the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) voting stations and burned IEC papers while others prevented other citizens from registering to vote. They have lost faith in the voting system and electoral process in just 20 years, something that took Canadians more than a century and the Americans two centuries to realise that elections were a charade. They have realized that the IEC is an extension and a poodle of the ANC.

In the mid-1980’s when I lived in Canada, the Canadians had been voting for about 125 years, their neighbours in the US for 200 years and whites in this country had been voting for about 70 years but this voting never brought about change in the lives of the wretched of these countries. Voter apathy in Canada and the US is prevalent because politically conscious people in those countries have realized that voting does not bring about change. It is a farce, a gimmick.

When street protests are becoming ubiquitous, the ANC government is now craning its neck to look for the causes of these protests from unlikely sources – the third force. There is no need for ANC leaders to crane their necks to look for the causes of the protests elsewhere. The genesis of the causes of the protests is the secret deals Mandela and the ANC clinched with Apartheid leaders and imperialists coupled with the policy position adopted from the inception of the ANC government in 1994.

Zeph Mothopeng advised that this country’s constitution must be drafted by a constituent assembly. Mandela and the ANC rejected Mothopeng’s advice because they knew that they had already cut a deal with the devil. Mothopeng was right. As a country founded anew, South Africa should have had its constitution drafted by a constituent assembly and ratified through a referendum.

The racist Nationalist Party government held a referendum for white people when they were only 12 years in power in 1960 because they respect their constituencies. The whites-only government also held a referendum in the early 1990’s but the ANC government has not held a referendum in the 20 years that it has been in power because the ANC leadership doesn’t respect the African people.

The PAC and Azapo should spearhead an initiative that should call for the redrafting of the new constitution that is based on the wishes of the African people and not on the whims of the African elite, minorities and imperialists. This country needs a constitution that is not going to allow political parties to be controlled by donors like we have recently witnessed with the leader of Agang SA, Dr Mampela Ramphele, and the DA’s Helen Zille with donors forcing the two to merge their political parties. The ANC is also beholden to donors. This country’s constitution should give the central and primary role to the citizens of this country where political party funding is going to be regulated and parties required to disclose their funders. The constitution should also have a provision to limit spending by political parties.

Azapo was courageous to boycott the Mandela-De Klerk farcical negotiations and Azapo should follow through on its initial courageous stance of non-collaboration with the oppressors and their fellow travellers cheek by jowl with the PAC.

By Sam Ditshego
The writer is a Senior Researcher at the Pan Africanist Research Institute (PARI).

Dr. Motsoko Pheko

The meaning of the term “African Renaissance” now running parallel with Pan Africanism in the corridors of the African Union must be clarified. It is confusing to people who are not rooted in the history of Africa before the tragedy of the European slave trade in African people and plundering of African countries by Europeans through their Berlin Act of 26 February 1885.

Lest we forget, the “European Renaissance” brought slavery, colonialism and racism to Africa. It dehumanised Africans, plundered the riches of Africa, destroyed African civilisations and under-developed Africa. Africans have suffered the worst holocaust in human history as a result of the “European Renaissance.”

Pan Africanism challenged the effects of the “European Renaissance” formally from 1900. The wars of national resistance against colonialism in various parts of Africa were of course long fought in countries such as Azania (South Africa as early as 1510). From the very beginning Pan Africanists spoke of liberating Africa and restoring this Continent to its colonially lost power and glory. Pixley ka Isaka Seme spoke of “African Regeneration.” He was right and wise in not using the term “African Renaissance” which would look like an African colonial imitation of a “renaissance” that took place in Europe.

The first renaissance in the world was African. Africa is the cradle of the first human civilisation which was destroyed by the agents of “European Renaissance.” Africa was advanced long before she was invaded by Europe. Europeans took advantage of the superiority of the gun over the African spear in war. Before all this, fascinated by the greatness of Africa, in admiration of this Continent, that famous Emperor of the Roman Empire Julius Caesar proclaimed to the world, “Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Novi!” (Out of Africa comes always something new). This is not surprising when it is remembered that not long ago, Europeans adored “the Black Madona” – the holy family of Jesus Christ and his mother Mary. Sir Godfrey Higgins’ ANCALYPSIS pages 137-138 states, “The infant God in the arms of his black mother, his eyes and drapery white, is himself perfectly black….There is scarcely an old church in Italy where some remains of the worship of the Black Virgin and Black Child are not to be found.” Sir Godfrey has, however observed that lately, “Very often the black figures have given way to white ones and instead of the black ones as being held sacred, they were put into retired places of the churches, but were not destroyed.” This has been one of the many attempts to hide the glory of the first renaissance on earth which was African and to portray the barbaric and immoral “European Renaissance” which produced the darkness of slavery, colonialism and racism as “superior” to the very Africa that sustained and enlightened the world.

The truth however persists. Commenting on the peace and security of many African states before the European Berlin Conference in 1885 which grabbed and partitioned Africa into “British Africa, “Belgian Africa,” “Spanish Africa,” “French Africa,” “German Africa,” Portuguese Africa,” and “Italian Africa”, leaving nothing for Africans except Ethiopia, Basil Davidson, a British journalist and author wrote that “Only six missionaries of some 300 who had penetrated into East and Central Africa are known to have been killed by wanton murder. What looked like chaos was seldom anything of the kind. What seemed like danger to life was nearly always a huge exaggeration. Life for the traveller in middle Africa was in fact a good deal safer –from wars and human killings than it generally was in Europe; which explains – of course, the gentler way in which Africans were accustomed to receiving strangers.”

For his part, the biography writer of Prophet Mohammed, Hisham has stated that this prophet so trusted black people that he instructed those who were persecuted in Mecca to go to Ethiopia [Africa]. “There they will find a king under whom none are persecuted. It is a land of righteousness where God will give you relief from what you are suffering.”

Lucian, a Greek satirist who is regarded as a “free thinker” of the olden days has written, “The gods on occasions do not hear the prayers of mortals [in Europe] because they are away across the ocean among the Ethiopians [Africans/black people] with whom they dine frequently on their invitation.”

Prof. Cain Hope Felder of the Howard University, Washington D.C., has remarked, “It shows the esteem in which the ancients held the African people; that they selected them as the only fit associates for their [European] gods.”

Because many people have deliberately caused confusion about Mizraim in Africa (which the Greeks called Egypt), it is important for me to first clear this confusion. An African Egyptologist, Prof. Cheikh Anta Diop has written extensively on the early history of Africa, especially of Mizraim (ancient Egypt). He has declared, “Egypt was a Black civilisation. The history of Black Africa will remain suspended in the air and cannot be written until African historians dare to connect it with the problem of Egypt. The African historian, who evades the problem of Egypt, is neither modest nor objective or unruffled; he is ignorant, cowardly and neurotic.” Prof. Diop elaborated, “Imagine if you can, the uncomfortable position of a Western historian who writes the history of Europe without referring to Greco-Latin Antiquity, and passes off that as scientific research….The ancient Egyptians were Black. The moral fruit of their civilisation is to be counted among the assets of the Black World. Instead of presenting itself as an insolvent debtor, that Black World is the very initiator of the Western civilisation flaunted before us today.”

When the African Union talks of Pan Africanism and African Renaissance, which “African Renaissance” are they talking about? The first renaissance on this planet was African. If the present African Renaissance AU is talking about is merely to mimic the racist “European Renaissance,” then the Pan African objective of total liberation of Africa; will not be achieved.

The pre-colonial Africa fascinated not only Julius Caesar, but Napoleon Bonaparte of France. Napoleon so envied the title “Pharaoh” which was the title of Black rulers of Mizraim that he also wanted to bear the title “Pharaoh”. Anyway about 1820, this French Emperor sent his scientists to carry out archaeological research in Egypt, Africa. These archaeologists affirmed that ancient Egyptians were Black people. Abbe Emile (1850-1916), a highly qualified Egyptologist excavated Om El’ Qaab. He discovered and identified sixteen African Pharaohs more ancient than Menes who united south and north Mizraim. In fact, a French Egyptologist Count F. Volney has recorded that “The Egyptians were the first people to attain the physical and moral science necessary to civilise life.” A German scholar Karl Lepsius after visiting the tomb of Pharaoh Rameses III, exclaimed, “Where we expected to see an Egyptian [white person], we are presented with an authentic Black!” Also on this subject, Sir A. E. Wallis Budge, a British Egyptologist who has written extensively about Mizraim (ancient Egypt) has declared, “The prehistoric native Egypt [Mizraim, Kemet etc], both in old and new Stone Ages was African and there is a reason for saying the inhabitants came from the South.” Budge was a keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum.

The view that ancient Egyptians were Black people was held by leading ancient historians such as Pliny, Strabo, Diodorus, Tacitus and the venerated Herodotus himself. Africans built Memphis, the capital city of Mizraim in 3100 B.C. Greeks built Athens in 1200 B.C. The Romans built Rome in 1000 B.C. Africans invented writing. It was Hieroglyphics before 3000 B.C., Hieratic alphabet shortly after this. Demotic writing was developed about 600 B.C.; while the Kushite script was used in 300 B.C. Other African scripts were Merotic, Mende of Mali, Coptic, Amharic, Sabean and G’eez, Nsibidi script of Nigeria and Twi script of the Twi people in Ghana.

The AU speaks of “African Renaissance”. The question is which “African Renaissance” is the AU talking about, the one that is just a mimicry of the “European Renaissance”? If it is mimicking the latter, this would be merely a pandering to the arrogance of the agents of cultural imperialism. The earlier notion of Africa’s restoration was expressed in a Zulu/Xhosa slogan “Mayibuye! iAfrika!” Many Africans were aware that Africa had been taken away from them by Europeans through the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885. From then onward everything Africa had been colonised and expropriated by the colonisers for themselves. “Mayibuye iAfrika” means “Africa must return to its rightful owners” with all its resources and its colonised African epistemology. To this notion of African restoration, Prof. Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe’s Pan Africanist Congress added, “Izwe Lethu! iAfrika! (Afrika [and all its riches] is our land!

It is estimated that from the 15th century, the slave trade practised by Europe, America and others pilfered from Africa over three hundred and seventy trillion US dollars ($370,000,000,000,000). This excludes the colonial damage to Africa which is going on even now. Yet, Africa is harassed for “foreign debts” by former practitioners of slavery in human beings and thieves of other people’s countries and their riches. Africa was never inferior to Europe until European terrorist militarism imposed slavery and colonialism on Africa.

As Edem Kodjo, author of AFRICA TOMORROW, who is a great researcher puts it, “It is here in Africa that history began. Far from being a gratuitous assertion, this statement is an undeniable scientific fact for which one finds corroboration when one roves the world in search of the remains of the ancient civilisations. According to the present state of research on the origins of the progress of humankind, the Mother of Mankind, Africa remains the privileged source of the first manifestations of intense human creativity.”

By Dr. Motsoko Pheko
The writer is a historian, political scientist, lawyer and theologian. He is author of books such as Towards Africa’s Authentic Liberation, African Renaissance Saved Christianity and Rediscovering Africa And Her Spirituality. He is a former Member of the South African Parliament and former Representative of the victims of apartheid and colonialism at the United Nations in New York and at the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.

The nervous looking President Jacob Zuma.

I watched the parliamentary debate on 17 February after many years of not watching that circus. I watched because I wanted to listen to the responses to President Jacob Zuma’s porous state of the (ANC) nation address taking into consideration scandal after scandal involving him and the ANC, the ubiquitous service delivery protests and foreign policy faux pas. However, Mr. Zuma deserves kudos for mentioning the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Onkgopotse Tiro and for having invited Tiro’s brother as a guest. It should not end there Mr. President. The killers of Tiro who are known must be brought to book because they never applied for amnesty at the Truth Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

All the political parties, including Azapo, the torch-bearers of black consciousness, failed to at least acknowledge that Mr. Zuma is the only President since 1994 to mention the assassination of Tiro in the national assembly. Azapo’s Member of Parliament, Mr. Jacob Dikobo should have acknowledged the mentioning of the assassination of Tiro in the state of the nation address. It would not have meant Azapo agreed with the state of the nation speech. Dikobo threw out the baby with the bath water. The PAC should have also acknowledged the mentioning of Tiro. But, alas, the PAC MP chose not to address parliament at all. Only God knows why. Or did I miss him? PAC founding President, Robert Sobukwe was mentioned twice, not by the PAC and not even by Azapo but by IFP leader and MP Mangosuthu Buthelezi and APC leader and MP Themba Godi.

Going back to the state of the nation address, I wonder if these politicians are aware the electorate is watching their shenanigans. I wonder what illiterate people make of these parliamentary debates. What about people without access to television sets? Or are these debates meant for the elite or the so-called middle class? They are some of those who are invited the day after the opening of parliament to the SABC-New Age breakfast banquet. One wonders what The Public Protector’s report said about those SABC-New Age banquets and about Motsweding Fm Station Manager in Mafikeng, Sibongile Mtyali ,who was exposed as corrupt in a series of Daily Sun articles but is still retained by Auckland Park, thanks to Hlaudi Motsweneng. Some of these politicians yell at each other in the glare of the television cameras but at the end of the month they go all the way to the bank laughing to cash their fat cheques. They greet each other nicely in the bank queues and sip expensive whiskies together during weekends.

The first politician to speak was Minister of Education Blade Nzimande who, amidst his presentation, took a swipe at the IFP Buthelezi and UDM leader Bantu Holomisa when they had said absolutely nothing. He said they were only concerned with Mangosuthu Technikon in Kwa-Zulu Natal and the University of Transkei or Walter Sisulu University respectively. In his reply, Buthelezi retorted that he didn’t know what Nzimande was talking about because he was once a lecturer at Mangosuthu Technikon. Holomisa on his part spoke in Xhosa that he once helped Nzimande obtain a driver’s license in the Homeland of the Transkei and asked Nzimande, “am I lying”?

It is normal and acceptable in this country for a Cabinet Minister to undermine Members of Parliament in a partisan way and defend his/her party from criticism of the state of the nation address by the opposition as was the case during this state of nation debate on 18 February 2014 and the previous parliamentary sittings. A Cabinet Minister is a Minister of State and an MP is a people’s representative. Just like an MP who is elected, Speaker of Parliament is required to abandon his party loyalty and be non-partisan, Ministers of State are also supposed to abandon their party loyalty and be non-partisan. By the same token, once an MP is appointed a Minister of State or Cabinet Minister he should abandon his/her loyalty to his/her party and serve the country.

The rationale behind this line of thinking is that Cabinet Ministers are answerable to parliament and the custodians of parliament are Members of Parliament. Consequently, Ministers of state should account to the people’s representatives who are Members of Parliament. It should not matter whether or not a certain Cabinet Ministers loathes a particular MP. If the ruling party feels the opposition needs to be challenged, then MP’s from the ruling party are there to challenge MP’s from the opposition benches, not Cabinet Ministers. That is why political parties should appoint educated or learned MP’s who can engage in constructive debates and not bumbling yahoos and voting cattle who are always in slumber land during debates only to wake up when it is time to vote.

What is more important is to make sure that there is no conflation of the ruling party and the state. If Cabinet Ministers speak in Parliament as ANC MP’s then they are conflating the state and the ruling party and that is unconstitutional and unacceptable. Not only is it unacceptable but it also makes a mockery of democracy. If this country’s constitution allows partisanship among Ministers of State then the drafters of this country’s constitution should go back to the drawing boards and amend it. If not then it should be acceptable for other civil servants like police and army officers to publicly take political stances and criticize political parties which they do not belong and those who belong to the ruling party should defend it …and let us see where this would lead to.

There was nothing in the President’s speech about the threat Africom poses to the African continent and no political party raised this issue. There is also no political party that included Africom threat in its manifesto, not even the PAC, the torch-bearers of Pan Africanism. Does this mean the PAC is led by paper tigers? The Libyan leader, Moammar Gaddafi, whom the South African government helped to overthrow by voting in favour of UN Resolution 1973 that declared a no-fly zone over Libya which ultimately led to his overthrow and assassination, had expended his country’s resources in blocking the setting up of Africom military bases on the African continent.

Finally, we can scream until we become green about funding for education but as long as we don’t talk about the quality of education we offer our children, we might as well keep quiet. Why are the books relevant to the conditions of the continent not prescribed? There are many books, which must be made compulsory reading in schools, colleges and universities, by and about African authors. Keeping the African people ignorant by presenting state of nation addresses that conceal the truth will one day backfire.

By Sam Ditshego
The writer is a Senior Researcher at the Pan Africanist Research Institute (PARI).

Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe

Ma Veronica Sobukwe captured the essence of her late husband’s core mission in life when she chose the apt inscription for his gravestone: “True leadership demands complete subjugation of self, absolute honesty, integrity and uprightness of character, courage and fearlessness, and above all, a consuming love for one’s people.”

Using a political lens, the kernel of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe’s contribution to public discourse in South Africa may best be understood as revolutionary thought leadership.

He noted early on, that in African history some chiefs and traditional leaders had, of their own free will, participated in the sale of their subjects to slave traders. They had showed no care for the well-being of their own people, and gleefully focused on self-enrichment. They collaborated with foreign invaders to entrap African people and turn them into beasts of burden. They were invariably used as pacifiers to help get little or no resistance. This anomaly could replicate itself in the modern age if trusting Africans were not consciously aware of their history.

In the Americas, for instance, the indigenous people fought vigorously against the white man’s slavery system. Once captured, they preferred to commit suicide rather than live as slaves. The slave traders then went across the Atlantic sea to fetch cowed products. Sobukwe extolled the revolutionary deeds of Toussaint L’Overture, who led the San Domingo (Haiti) slave rebellion to victory.

A SCHOLAR AND A FREEDOM FIGHTER

Sobukwe developed into a formidable intellectual and acquired academic honours in the languages, economics, law and political science.

His outstanding leadership of the liberation movement was infused with revolutionary ideas which marked a radical departure from conformity, compromise and careless submission to the whims of the powers that be. He acknowledged the influence of intellectuals from the All Africa Convention (AAC) in his initial development. The AAC was marginalised from the mainstream of public discussions due to their non-conformist approach. Sobukwe took the popular platform in the schools, tertiary institutions and the press and tamed it.

His Completers’ Speech at the University of Fort Hare was a game changer in student politics – influencing southern Africa’s burgeoning intellectuals. The historical impact of his speech can only be regarded as a forerunner to Onkgopotse Abram Tiro’s graduation address at Turfloop University in 1972.

Mainstream thought leaders like ZK Matthews, Chief Albert Luthuli and their protégés, Nelson Mandela and OR Tambo, subscribed to the concept of “exceptional-ism” for South Africa. In their prognosis, the country’s colonialism was complex and of a special kind – after the Act of Union of 1909 – and could not be easily likened to the rest of the African continent. They believed that a national convention by all the race groups was best placed to chart a peaceful settlement suitable to all.

The old guard leadership were influenced by Booker T Washington’s Up from Slavery, which advocated moderation and gradualism in winning changes from the authorities. They vouched for steady reforms, the build up of an African bourgeoisie and cooperation of the racial groups under multi-racialism.

Sobukwe on the other hand read the works of WEB Du Bois, George Padmore and other militant revolutionaries in the worldwide Pan African movement. He stated that national politics in South Africa could only be understood from an international perspective.

REVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT LEADER

As a thought leader, Sobukwe interpreted abstract concepts of political theory into concrete ideas which could be understood by ordinary folk. His entire writings do not carry a single exclamation mark. There is no anger and rancour in the way in which he expresses strongly-held ideas against land dispossession, exploitation and racial bigotry. He consciously exercised intellectual rigour and discipline.

Under his watch, the PAC’s eco-system blended various intellectual disciplines – including those who were seemingly in opposition and contradiction to each other – to work seamlessly together in a united front, under the banner of African Nationalism. The church, business, youth, students, rural farmers and traditional communities, the proletariat, and professionals found space to air their views and be heard. He linked the PAC with the 1949 Programme of Action – which he drafted. The PAC was also part of the continent-wide winds of change.

The national executive committee of the Pan Africanist Congress was referred to in the newspapers as Sobukwe’s cabinet ministry, acting as a shadow government to the ruling settler regime. It had luminaries like Nkutsuoe Peter Raboroko, a premier political theorist; Lekoane Zephania Mothopeng, a leading educationist who campaigned against the Bantu Education bills; PK Leballo, a second world war veteran; Jacob Nyaose, labour federation unionist; and a host of other rising revolutionary intellectuals. Founder of the congress youth league, AP Mda, served in the backroom as a spiritual leader.

The policies of the PAC were Africanist in orientation, original in conception, creative in purpose, socialist in content, democratic in form, and non-racial in approach. They recognised the primacy of the material, spiritual and intellectual interests of the individual. They guaranteed human rights and basic freedoms to the individual – not minority group rights, which would transport apartheid into a free world.

His comrades fondly referred to Sobukwe as ‘the Prof’ – a term of endearment for his charismatic leadership and recognition of his intellectual prowess. They were however all required to return to the source – the masses – and show the light, in biblical simplicity. They formed unity between workers, poor peasants, and revolutionary intellectuals. Robert Sobukwe’s team went on to set the pace for the national liberation struggle from 1960 onwards by putting South Africa (Azania)as a troubled spot on the world map.

Sobukwe’s abiding concern has been that Africa as a unified whole could participate as an equal in world affairs. The patchwork of colonial borders drafted at the 1884 Berlin Conference had to be ultimately done away with. A united Africa, under a single government, could spread its humanising influence to resolve conflicts among nations – after the League of Nations had dismally failed to contain and control Nazi Germany’s aggression – and to having its civilisation appreciated and understood.

Sobukwe’s own lifestyle was an expression of his ideas on mass-based leadership. He adopted the political standpoint of ordinary folks in the rural areas and in the urban cities. He led a humble life, and could relate to the poor and ‘the unwashed’, engaging them in genuine dialogue on matters of national importance, even though he had held a ‘prestigious position’ as a senior tutor of languages at Witwatersrand University. He knew that positions like his, shorn of the frills and trappings, were dominated by right-wingers, liberals and leftists from minority groupings “who arrogantly appropriate to themselves the right to plan and think for the Africans.” If he conformed to the status quo, he would be domesticated with a dog-collar mark as in the fable of the Jackal and the Dog.

Sobukwe loved and glorified God. He believed in the power of prayer and called his family and comrades to do likewise. He became a lay preacher in the Methodist church. The PAC followed his path – initiated by the slogan first coined by AP Mda – of making Christianity and other religious beliefs relevant to the continent by stating that “African is for Africans, Africans for Humanity, and Humanity for God.”

POLITICAL OPPONENTS AND RIVALS

After the Sharpeville and Langa massacres, Sobukwe was singled out for severe punishment by the National Party administration. He was imprisoned for three years in hard labour. The whites-only parliament extended his imprisonment by enacting the Sobukwe Clause to keep him in solitary confinement without trial for six more years. They fed him pieces of broken glass in his food, poisoned him in secret, and when he developed traces of lung cancer they banished him to Galeshewe township in Kimberley. He died a banned person in February 1978.

He served the African people selflessly. He suffered under the yoke of oppressive laws like the majority of the people. More than anything else, Mangaliso Sobukwe sacrificed himself and his family for the national liberation of African people.

His detractors who supported the Bantustan system paired him with Stephen Bantu Biko and said as ‘commoners’ they were without a traditional mandate to lead the collective of black people.

The Accra Conference of liberation movement leaders in Africa resolved to target 1963 for complete independence of the entire continent. The PAC mobilised its supporters into an unfolding programme of mass action until freedom is attained – by 1963. Critics oblivious of this background information said Sobukwe’s target date was naive and unrealistic. They claimed the masses were not ready for mass action.

For Sobukwe, the masses needed to assert their African personality and overcome their fear of prison, then overcome their fear of death, in order to overthrow white domination.

In the acclaimed autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, the author condescendingly remarks that Sobukwe was a clever man. He then juxtaposes Sobukwe’s frustrations in handling difficult leadership merit questions from an awkward personality at the Pretoria Central Prison when he served three years for the consequences of the Positive Action Campaign. This literary device is disingenuous and silly, because the parties treated with disdain are not alive to corroborate the anecdotes or to tell their side of the story. It is a cheap propaganda tactic.

HIS WIFE’S CONSUMING LOVE

They met in the heat of a nurse’s strike in the Eastern Cape and sparks of love ignited. When they became soul-mates in matrimony, they also understood that their union was an everlasting bond. Ma Sobukwe grew up partly in rural Kwa-Zulu and partly in the dark city of Alexandra township. She has endured hardships – but was prepared beforehand for the long road ahead of them. When she drafted the inscription on the gravestone as a quote from his Completers Speech in 1949 she was transmitting the message on true leadership as a consuming gift to the Azanian masses.

By Jaki Seroke
The writer is a strategic management consultant. He is a member of the National Executive Committee of SANMVA, the newly established statutory umbrella body of military veteran’s organisations. He is the chairperson of the Pan Africanist Research Institute (PARI).

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:
1. GXabe, Zamikhaya (2008): Serve, Suffer, Sacrifice – The Story of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe. Limacocobela. East London.
2. Mapanje, Jack – editor (2002): Gathering Seaweed – African prison Writings. HEB. London.
3. Pheko, Motsoko (1984): The Political Legacy of Mangaliso Sobukwe. London.
4. Pogrund, Benjamin (1990): How Can Man Die Better – The Life of Robert Sobukwe. Jonathan Ball. Johannesburg.
5. Raboroko, P Nkutsoeu (undated): Congress and the Africanists – the Africanists’ Case. PAC Publication. London.
6. Veronica Sobukwe (1997): http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/hrvtrans%5Ckwtown/sobukwe.htm

The PAC of Azania

1. HISTORICAL CONTEXT AND PROCESSES……

South Africa is an integral part of the African continent; and like all African countries it is the result of colonial and imperialist conquest that led to the division and re-division of Africa among imperial powers following the Berlin Congress of 1884-85 and subsequent World Wars I and II. The end of World War I saw the re-division of Africa among the victorious powers; Germany losing German East Africa or Tanganyika (now Tanzani) to Britain and German West Africa or South West Africa (now Namibia) which was given over to South Africa to administer from the Mandate of League of Nations, now under the Trusteeship Council after the United Nations which succeeded the League of Nations.

At the end of the World War II a new world order was ushered in which heralded the end of colonialism in all its forms and elevated the right of colonised and dependent countries and peoples to independence and self-determination. This accelerated the process of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles that saw the colonized countries of Asia and those under the former Ottoman Empire attain political independence and the exercise of the right of self-determination. Africa followed suite as the wind of change blew over the entire continent uprooting colonialism, white minority rule and apartheid. Thus Africa entered the 21st Century rid of colonialism, white minority rule and apartheid.

Post apartheid South Africa is therefore the outcome of the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles accelerated by the new world order following World War II that ended in 1945 and saw the birth of the United Nations which supported decolonisation. The struggles on the African continent were waged or fought under the banner of Pan Africanism – the quest for the total liberation and unification of Africa. The successes of these struggles were strengthened and accelerated by the formation of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) founded on the 25th May 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Africa has come a long way since the independence of Ghana on the 6th March 1957 and the founding of the OAU on the 25th May 1963. The total liberation of Africa was achieved when the last colony on the continent – apartheid South Africa attained national freedom after a long and arduous political and civil strife combined with armed struggle supported by economic sanctions, arms embargo, cultural and sports boycott imposed by the international community culminating in talks about talks that led to the release of political prisoners, the unbanning of the liberation movements, the return of exiles and the beginning of negotiations and the reaching of agreement on the drawing of a new constitution that opened the way for the democratic elections on the 27th April 1994.

The end of colonialism, white minority rule and apartheid marked the beginning of a long process towards the eventual unification of the continent and the struggle for economic emancipation. The process towards uniting Africa kicked off with the establishment of the Pan African Parliament in March 2002 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This was followed by the Inaugural Summit that launched the African Union (AU) from 28th June to 10th July 2002 in Durban, South Africa. To achieve economic development, the AU created the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). This is the framework within which Africa is waging struggle for the unification and economic emancipation of the continent. But for Africa to develop, she must stop looking up to the industrialised and developed countries of North and Japan for development aid and investment. The African continent must embark on self-reliance development strategies to build basic infrastructure such as roads, rail networks, bridges, dams, irrigation schemes, hydro-electric power, clinics, hospitals and schools using the available resources on the continent.

2. POLITICAL LIBERATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES………

South Africa like all other countries on the continent has achieved political freedom; however, this freedom has remained incomplete without economic liberation. In some countries on the continent, political independence was followed by instability and civil wars that caused a lot of mayhem and destroyed schools, clinic, hospitals, water and sanitation systems; disrupted economic growth and development; destroyed road, railway and telecommunication infrastructures; claimed the lives of innocent people with women, children and the elderly being the most affected and continue to suffer because of the failure of African leaders to establish functioning and acceptable political institutions accommodating all political and ideological persuasions in the post colonial era as well as developing capacity to meet the expectations of the masses of the poor who suffered during the colonial era and continue to do so even after national freedom has been attained.

In the case of South Africa, the transfer of power from white minority to the African majority and the achievement of national freedom had little hiccups. There was undoubtedly violence; state orchestrated violence, so-called Black-on-Black violence; assassination of certain key and popular leaders such as Jafta Masemola, Chris Hani and Sabelo Phama who it was perceived would disturb the arrangement between Mr. F.W. de Klerk of the National Party and Nelson Mandela of the ANC; there were also attempts to disrupt negotiations at Kempton Park by the right wing fringe; there were also elements of the liberation movement who did not believe in negotiations because they were not convinced that negotiations will achieve the goals of the national liberation struggle. They continued to carry out sporadic attacks on targets and symbols of the apartheid regime. They refused to lay down their weapons or gather at the specified camps.

Despite all these incidents, the negotiations continued and succeeded due to the compromises, assurances and guarantees made by the leaders of the majority parties whose leaders had bent too backward to accommodate, appease and alley the fears of the white minority who for over three hundred years had dispossessed, oppressed, exploited, suppressed and humiliated the African majority whom they regarded and treated as inferior beings.

3. RECONCILIATION AND THE APARTHEID ECONOMIC STATUS QUO………

Political compromise was made at the expense of economic liberation because of the protection of property rights which has been entrenched in the new constitution. This state of affairs is buttressed by the policy of reconciliation that has meant the maintenance and perpetuation of the apartheid economic status quo and hence the continued disparities in the possession of property and wealth and the consequent racial and social inequalities that continue to characterize the South African society. This neo-colonial set up is perpetuated and sustained by the new ruling elites in partnership with the apartheid elites.

In practical terms this means leaving the control of the country’s basic resources such as mineral resources, agricultural resources, marine resources and forest resources in the hands of those who controlled them before 1994. This leaves the indigenous African majority dispossessed while they continue to be hewers of wood and drawers of water for other national groups and foreign interests. They do not benefit from these resources and continue to live in abject poverty and destitution in the midst of wealth and plenty in the country of their ancestors and yet politically free.

In other sectors such as manufacturing, service sector and information sector, the majority Africans are still illiterate or semi-literate, unskilled and semi-skilled labourers and consumers who earn wages far below the poverty datum line. These sectors are still owned and controlled by others other than the indigenous Africans whose positions in management are still at lower levels in the corporate hierarchy and at best tokens. The biggest handicap and excuse is that Africans lack the required skills and experience to manage such organisations or sectors or occupy executive positions in these enterprises. Africans also still need equity as well as access to credit to enable them to venture into such sectors. They also need political support to ensure that they enter these institutions without undue hindrance. This calls for political will, courage and policies to break the monopoly in the control of wealth and skills so that these can be opened up to the majority.

4. THE HAVES AND THE HAVE-NOTS………

It is the continued existence of the above situation that has given rise to the phenomenon of the haves and have-nots, the very rich and very poor, with the latter living in the township ghettoes, shack dwellings or squatter camps and the rural poor who are huddled in overcrowded, barren and unproductive and underdeveloped parts of the country including the farm workers who are treated as of yore; working like slaves, refused burial on the farms on which they have lived and worked on for decades; evicted with impunity, mistreated, sometimes shot and killed, overrun with trucks or tractors, beaten, refused to exercise their right to vote, children walking long distances to schools, in some cases schools demolished or closed; in other cases children taken out of schools to work on the farms.

This is the colonial situation which is still prevalent on most white farms in this country. This is the result of the continued exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few as was observed by Sobukwe in 1959. Over 50 years later this situation has yet to change and yet we have the government of the majority since April 1994. In fact the gap between the rich and the poor is widening by the day and aggravated by the neo-liberal policies of the ruling ANC government. The leaders of this country are not ashamed to acknowledge the fact that South Africa is the most unequal society in the world. There is no political will or radical strategy and programme to end the legacies of apartheid because the new ruling elites are beneficiaries of the economic status quo and have vested interest in maintaining and perpetuating this system of neo-colonialism. To change this situation, the struggle for equality and justice must be intensified. The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania must re-affirm its policy of the most equitable distribution of wealth in this country with emphasis on equality of income which will enable equal access including land redistribution or confiscation for redistribution.

5. THE RULING ELITES AND THE EXPECTATIONS OF THE MASSES OF THE POOR………

The situation as we see it in new South Africa calls for radical change so that national freedom becomes meaningful to the masses of the African majority in whose name the liberation struggle was fought. It is true that no one expected miracles from the ruling elites. The masses of the poorest of the poor and have-nots expect the ruling elites to fulfill the promises they made to them when they were elected in April 1994 and in subsequent elections in 1999, 2004 and 2009. The masses of the people also expect the ruling elites to pursue the agenda of the liberation movement to its logical conclusion – that is liberation from all forms of domination, especially from economic domination and the continued lopsidedness in skills.

Failure of the ruling elites to tackle these challenges will send a wrong signal to the masses of the poor who had put their trust in the ruling elites. This will also question the commitment of the ruling elites to the cause of the masses of the poor especially disadvantaged communities of this country who also happen to be the African majority whose material conditions have yet to change remarkably since 1994. Despite this situation, the poor and destitute still hope that change for the better will come. There is an appeal for patience and the masses of the poor are told that Rome was not built in one day.

It is only time that will tell how long it will take until Rome is built and hope and patience fulfilled. But for as long as the socio-economic inequalities and the poverty inherited from the apartheid racial stratification remain intact, the masses of the poor will eventually realize that they were misled and made to live under the illusion that change for the better will come. And this will be the turning-point and the point of no return for the poor. And once this happens, it will be too late for the ruling elites to defend the unfulfilled promises they have made to the poor.

Already in some municipalities it is clear the patience of the poor is exhausted. The masses of the poor and have-nots have become restless as shown by unrest that has turned into violent protests characterized by destruction of government property, burning tyres, closing or barricading of roads, attacking homes of councilors and demanding the removal of corrupt councilors and those who are not delivering the expected basic services. The phenomenon of violent protests has become a general rule all over the country as unrest is spreading to other municipalities or areas where there is lack of delivery or poor service delivery.

6. NEO-LIBERAL FRAMEWORK AND CHANGE………

Failure to effect desired changes flow from the framework the ruling elites adopted after they came to power. Initially the ruling elites adopted the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) as development policy or strategy. RDP was people oriented. But along the way the ruling elites scrapped or abandoned this programme and replaced it with a new programme or policy called Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR). This programme or policy is more inclined to big business and put more emphasis on the appeal for investments, especially Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

The new policy or programme does not seem to be different from the Structural Adjustment Programme of the IMF and the World Bank which wrought lot of havoc on economies of some African states. The new policy is based on privatization of state assets and has resulted in hundred thousands of job losses due to companies effecting what is known as restructuring. The restructuring is embarked upon to answer to the imperatives of the neo-liberal paradigm and globalization, that is, making the companies lean and mean so that their products can be competitive on the world market. This has led to workers being laid off as companies become more capital intensive in order to reduce cost of production. This increases the army of the unemployed and thus aggravating poverty and misery of the already poor and have-nots.

Neo-liberalism does not favour the robust role of the state in the economy. It is against state intervention in any form or shape. Neo-liberalism for its champions stands for competition between nations, regions, firms and individuals. According to them, competition is necessary because it separates the sheep from the goats, the men from the boys and the fit from the unfit. Neo-liberalism is based on the survival of the fittest. It is supposed to allocate all resources whether physical, natural, human and financial with the greatest possible efficiency. It is against social spending because this does not produce profits.

This explains why neo-liberalism is against state intervention or the role of the state in the economy. It is monopoly capitalism at its highest level of development known as globalization or the domination of transnational corporations of industrialized and developed countries or economies of the North and Japan supported by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as well as the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The neo-liberal paradigm or framework inhibits upliftment and development of the poor because it is based on the rich or middle class as its driving force hence the focus on Black Economic Empowerment (BEE).

7. IDLE HUMAN CAPITAL OR RESOURCE………

There can be no end to the imbalances or socio-economic inequalities or the gap between the rich and the poor in this country or privileged and disadvantaged without the decisive intervention of the state in the economy. If this does not happen, transformation will remain on paper or an empty slogan. There can be no change without the effective involvement of the poor themselves in the process of transformation. This cannot be done for them without them and by them. The point of departure here is the recognition of the existence of a huge human resource or capital that is lying idle in his country. This human resource or capital must be put to use in the transformation and development of the economy of this country.

We have seen this approach in the Chinese experience. The building and development of the infrastructure such as: roads, railways, bridges, dams, canals, irrigation schemes, hydro-electric power, schools, clinics, hospitals were the result of self-reliance. This approach will also help in the skills development of the masses of the people through involvement and training on the job. This approach will also promote local exchange of goods and services or internal trade instead of dependence on foreign investment to kick start this processes.

8. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST NEO-COLONIAL DOMINATION………

From the above analysis it is clear that South Africa like all African independent states achieved political freedom but did not achieve economic liberation. The ownership of the means of production, subsistence and distribution are still in the hands of the privileged white minority, local and foreign owners of capital. South Africa does not own and control the mineral resources; the energy sources; a huge portion of the land, forests and marine resources of this country. The bulk of the land is still in the hands of private owners and foreigners; the same applies to the manufacturing industries, service industries and the information industries or sectors.

We have a situation in this country where leaders have been elected by the dispossessed majority but do not represent the interests and concerns of this electorate; at best they represent their own stomachs and at worst neo-colonial and imperialist interests. The economy remains an appendage of the free market economies of the industrialized and developed countries of the North and Japan. These leaders are more concerned with the investors than with their own people and that is why their policies must be adjusted to the interests of these countries.

South Africa like most African independent states continue to be a supplier of primary goods to the developed and industrialized countries of the North and Japan; like all these countries South Africa is subject to the deterioration of the terms of exchange or trade due to the falling of prices of these primary goods affecting rates of exchange and the balance of payments and leading to chronic international debts that compromise the independence of these countries. Not surprising when there are political changes in the country you see these leaders running to London, Washington, Paris, Berlin etc, to go and explain to the leaders of these creditor countries not to panic or worry because there will not be any policy changes by the new leaders. They do not account to their own people or electorate, they account to their bosses in these capital cities of these developed and industrialized countries because that is where their bread comes from. We saw that after Polokwane when the President (Jacob Zuma) rushed to Washington D.C.and the then Minister of Finance rushed to London and the E.U. countries to explain the new situation that had arisen in the aftermath of the recall of Thabo Mbeki then President.

This is the situation in post-apartheid South Africa. We have a country that has not fundamentally changed since 1994 because it has carried forward the socio-economic inequalities and disparities that existed during the apartheid era into new South Africa. This means the material conditions of the majority have not changed remarkably; in fact, there is a view or perception that the life of the majority is worse than what it was during the apartheid era. It is not uncommon to hear people wanting to return to Egypt which is really sad for people to think of apartheid as having been better when so many people have suffered physical, mental and psychological pain and many others losing their lives and some still unaccounted for to this day.

The situation is made worse by the failure of the new elites to deliver simple services to the masses of the poor. This has led to some of these basic services such as water supplies being privatized to conform to the imperatives of the free market economy or the neo-liberal paradigm or being given to what has come to be known as ‘Tenderpreneurs’. In some cases privatization has been met with fierce resistance and violent protests from the masses of the poor. The case of Mothutlung is another where water, a basic necessity or need was deliberately cut in order to give tenders amounting to millions of Rands to water tankers who are relatives, friends and cronies of those in government.

The resistance and protests by the masses of the poor is a clear message from the poor that not all is well 20 years down the line since April 1994. They were made wonderful promises many of whom have remained unfulfilled especially jobs, houses and provision of basic services such as water, sanitation and electricity. They have been made to believe that all will just come down like Manna from heaven and this made the masses of the poor fold their arms and do nothing for themselves and this is the mindset which will be very difficult to reverse and in the meantime the ruling elites are amassing wealth, eating, wining and enjoying while the poor are wallowing in squalor and abject poverty. The ruling elites have in a very short space of time forgotten who they are, where they came from and how they came to be where they are today because they ‘eat good and dress good’ as Malcolm X (Malik Shabaaz) would say about the House Nigger.

This situation of poverty and misery has made others resort to crime to survive and some have yet to become political and realize that there is a need for an alternative to the ruling elites who are not going to change until they are booted out of office by the same vote that put them where they are today. But a lot of work will be needed to change the mindset of the masses of the poor who have been made to believe that there is no alternative to the current ruling elites except what they dread most – the return of the white minority and it is this that continue to blind the masses of the poor to the existence of other parties which are possible alternatives. But there is also a subtle manipulation of the race card which must be countered with a clear and consistent ideological and political education that will ensure that the masses of the poor do not confuse their interests with those of the ruling elites. Their interests must be a reflection of their material conditions and not to be confused with the flashy lifestyles of the ruling elites which are paraded and flaunted in expensive clothes, cars, big houses, birthday parties, weddings which are mirrored in the minds of the poor who are made to believe that they also will be like that one day. This is false consciousness which must be replaced by true consciousness.

The masses of the poor must be aware of their real material conditions which must be a reflection of their consciousness and interests. They must know that they are their own liberators. The struggle for liberation must start with the mind. Sobukwe said: ‘Once the mind is free the body will soon follow’. They must learn to do things for themselves, think for themselves and only accept help where and when necessary. They must shun the habit of handouts and develop the spirit of self-reliance. They must develop the habit and skills of working for themselves and not for others so that they must stop accusing others of taking their jobs whilst folding their arms and doing nothing for themselves and their children. Freedom must mean work or UHURU NA KAZI (freedom and work) as Tanzanians were exhorted under the leadership of Mwalimu Julius Kambarange Nyerere.

9. ISSUES OF IMMEDIATE FOCUS………

There are fundamental issues that need to be addressed if there has to be change for the masses of the poor in South Africa. Some of these fundamentals constitute the elements of real power. They are essential for peace and stability. They constitute the priority of any new government that takes power from colonial rule, that is, classical, settler or apartheid colonialism. These fundamentals include inter alia: the state and administrative machinery, the economy, education and morality. These issues must be seen within the framework of the Africanist perspective driven and guided by the basic needs and interests of the African majority, that is, the poorest of the poor and have-nots; what Sobukwe describes as the illiterate and semi-literate masses of the African people.

(A) THE STATE AND ADMINISTRATIVE MACHINERY………

From the onset, changes must be effected in the state and administrative machinery. The army, police, the justice system, prisons and the civil service must be transformed drastically and radically to ensure that the leadership as well as management is in the hands of competent and capable leaders from the African majority and not just put in the hands of party cadres who do not have knowledge and skills. These changes must reflect the demographics of our society at leadership and management levels. This will need courage and political will to make the necessary decisions to effect these changes. There must be no equivocation as to what the intention of this process is – the indigenous Africans must be in the forefront of every aspect of life in this country. The cadres who are deployed must have the ability and capacity to provide leadership with competence and discipline.

(B) SOCIO-ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF THE DISADVANTAGED………

The economy of South Africa is still characterised by crying socio-economic inequalities and disparities in wealth possession. The white minority and foreign interests are still in control of the major instruments of production, subsistence and distribution buttressed by habit, experience, and monopoly of skills. The latter have been joined by the new African political, bureaucratic and business elites and together constitute the new ruling elites that maintain and perpetuate neo-colonialism. Together these elites share the spoils of the economic pie with very little trickling down to the masses of the poor who continue to live in abject poverty and squalor.

The masses of the poor and destitute comprise the majority of the urban toiling and unemployed masses, illiterate and semi-literate and live in the township ghettoes, shack dwellings or squatter camps adjacent to the opulence and wealth in the cities and suburbs of this country. Most survive on informal or small businesses comprising of the sale of a gamut of small articles, vegetables, fruits, beverages or soft drinks, cosmetics and the provision of a range of services including catering and hair dressing. Those who do not fall in this category of activities and have no other pre-occupation find themselves idling. We know that idle hands are Satan’s workshop. They become social misfits and resort to serious social evils in order to survive. They get involved in violent crime, prostitution, robberies of all types including car-hijacking, heists, bank robberies, bombing bank ATM’s with explosives, drug trafficking, rape, child and women abuse, alcohol and drug abuse, etc. Others do these things out of frustration but some choose these activities as a way of life and these must be dealt with ruthlessly.

In the rural areas the colonial law still reigns supreme. The master and slave relationship is still the order of the day. Unequal access to occupation and use of land has remained intact over 18 years down the line since 1994. The white farmers still occupy vast tracts of land comprising several farms for each farmer. Some of the land has even been turned into game farms which are of no benefit to the majority of this country except for tourists from Europe and Americas and some members of the new ruling class. The majority poor can no longer hunt and kill to enjoy the fauna/venison of their country and if they do so they are arrested or even killed for trespassing and pouching. Only those with money have the right to go hunting and shoot what is regarded as game. This is how alienated our people are from their land and its resources.

Farm workers on these colonial farms are still treated as of yore. They work like slaves and their rights are not respected or recognized by the farmer who is the employer. They are evicted from these farms at the pleasure of the farmer with no recourse to any judicial process and if any the case is lost in advance because of lack of evidence, insufficient evidence, no witnesses or simply because people are afraid to give evidence or the farmer get away with murder because some twisted or funny technicality as was seen with the killing of Chisale who was thrown in the lions enclosure. We know what happened and it is now history because the main perpetrator has walked away a free man whilst the Chisale family has lost a loved one and a breadwinner.

It is not uncommon that the farm workers and their family members are refused burial on these farms on which they have lived and worked for generations and no one does anything about this because these farms belong to the white farmers; it is their property -we are told. Farm workers are ill-treated, even killed and maimed and no one does anything about it. Sometimes their stock is taken or killed and no one does anything about it. Their children’s schools are sometimes demolished or closed by the white farmer and no one does anything about this and yet we respect the rule of law or human rights. All this is happening because these people have been alienated from the land which they one time owned but taken from them and occupied by force.

When people claim this land they are told that it must be bought on a willing seller/willing buyer basis and at current market prices. The properties our fathers lost in the townships under forced removals were compensated on a flat rate basis and the loss of income from these properties of about 50 years was disregarded because the poor were not important and did not need to be appeased. For instance my family was removed at Riverside (Storm near Eersterus) to Mamelodi (then Vlakfontein) in 1955 and we were given R60 000 as compensation in 2006 and at the time our parents had passed away and 8 of us had to share this money. This is what happened to other families in the same situation.

There are also the rural communities that live adjacent to the white farms and some under traditional authorities. Most of these communities live on barren and unproductive land. There are no good farming and grazing land on which they can engage in agricultural activities and stock farming except subsistence farming. All the able-bodied men and women have left for the cities in search of employment and only old men, old women and children have been left behind. Not much is being done to transform and develop these communities. No inputs such as training, equipments, fertilizers, etc have been forthcoming from the government, that is, local, provincial and national and yet we hear outrageous and irresponsible statements such as “use it or lose it” from a Minister of Land and Agricultural Affairs when there is nothing to show that the Department had done anything to help the land owners to effectively use the land.

It is clear that once people start ‘eating good and dressing good’ they forget who they are, where they come from and how they came to be where they are today. This is what is happening to the fat cats. Uppermost in their minds is food security. For them this can be only be provided by white commercial farmers, hence the neglect of the development of African farmers and rural communities. They forgot that the masses of the poor of this country were dispossessed and made only to work for others other than themselves. The only farmers the people know in this country are white farmers (Boere). Africans cannot be farmers. They must be farm-workers and nothing else. This mindset must be changed and the people must be freed mentally and psychologically so that they accept self-reliance as the basis for development. Who does not know that the Native Land Act of 1913 was introduced to stop African farmers and communities from competing with white commercial farmers?

(C) EDUCATION………

Education is still characterized by inequalities and domination by the white minority elites. They have the monopoly of critical careers, skills or know-how, knowledge, experience, information and habit. There is an urgent need to change this lopsidedness so that the children of the disadvantaged and poor catch up in these critical careers and skills. This demands courage and political will from the ruling elites if they are serious about ending the imbalances inherited from slavery, colonialism, settler colonialism and apartheid.

More resources must be pumped into the education and training of the children of the disadvantaged and poor. These resources should be used to transform the material conditions of the schools including equipping these schools with relevant material and paraphernalia for learning and teaching such as libraries, laboratories, computers; ensure that these schools have properly qualified teachers; competent school managers with the authority to impose discipline and create conducive climate for teaching and learning; build more schools to solve the backlog of classrooms; solve over crowdedness and teacher-pupil ratio.

It is for this reason that free education becomes a necessity or logical proposition for the children of the disadvantaged and poor. This will enable these children to continue to tertiary education and training without interruption. This is the only way the disadvantaged and poor communities will be uplifted and participate and contribute in the economic and social development of this country. This is how the imbalances inherited from the apartheid system will be eliminated and a truly democratic and egalitarian society developed based on equal access and equitable distribution of resources.

(D) MORALITY………

We are all aware of the disintegration and decay of the moral fabric of the African society in this country due to many factors including migration, urbanization and industrialization. To counter these disruptive and destructive processes there is a need to restore Ubuntu Morality in order to regulate behaviour, human relations, attitudes and perceptions. There is a need to restore the dignity of the African family threatened with collapse due to the above mentioned factors but also because of the creeping in of new ideas and concepts affecting the relationship between males and females in our society. The family unit in South Africa has collapsed and is further disintegrating as most children are today without a father figure who is traditionally the head of the family and provider. If he is there he has lost authority or his authority has been rendered ineffective due to the shift in economic power in favour of the female or wife. This has resulted in many men or husbands deserting their families/homes to avoid humiliation and stress in order to find sanity where their position/status remains intact. But we also know that there are men or husbands who do not want responsibility or who are simply irresponsible and are afraid to raise a family or take care of children they have fathered. This also applies to women.

As a result of this situation, many single parent households are headed by women who have now become providers. This situation undoubtedly affects the family unit that has no father figure. This has led to children going out of control and misbehaving and some ending up in the streets indulging in alcohol abuse, using drugs and involved in all sorts crimes and some ending up in prison. This may sound like what feminists call male chauvinism. But this is just the reality in many African families today. This situation also leads to another phenomenon in which women end up having children from different males or fathers. To restore the African family unit and Ubuntu Morality there is a need to find reconciliation between tradition and culture on the one hand; and on the other hand the new ideas and forces unleashed by the new social and economic situation we are living in today. There is need for dialogue on the question of gender equality which was suddenly thrown in the African society without thorough dialogue and discussion. The concept has caused confusion and bitterness in many men who blame Nelson Mandela and the new ultra-liberal constitution seen by others as permissive for introducing gender equality and also the rights of children who can no longer be controlled or disciplined by their parents.

We are aware that women in the old democracies compete for comparable positions and jobs on the basis of merit and not appointed or pushed into these positions just because they are women irrespective of competence or necessary credentials. Even where the Proportional Representation electoral system is practiced women compete for comparable positions without favour from their male counterparts or government. It is real men and women with the same human rights and democratic freedoms who have access to these positions or opportunities. This eliminates tokenism, corruption and nepotism because the right men and women are there for the right positions.

Ubuntu Morality is inimical to moral degeneration in all its forms that include violent crime, abuse and violence against women and children; it is against drug abuse; alcohol abuse; raping of women and children. Ubuntu Morality does not accept abject poverty, squalor and deprivation living side by side with scandalous wealth and comfort. Ubuntu Morality is against individualism, selfishness, greed that has led to insensitivity and corruption that have become the order of the day and way of life in this country. The older generation and elders of our society have lost the respect they enjoyed in our society in the past. This was a means of social control which is no longer there because of the narrowing gap between generations, the result of exposure but also because of the nature of upbringing, nurturing or parenting.

Ubuntu Morality is against promiscuity and prostitution; it is for good sexual behavior; it is for one sexual partner so that we can combat the spread of this new germ warfare or alien disease known as HIV/AIDS that is ravaging and decimating the young, adults and old in our communities. Abstaining for the teenagers should be the first weapon in the line of defense. To wage war against this germ warfare, teenagers must know who they are as a people, where they come from as a people and how they came to be where they are today so that they can have direction and purpose as future leaders of this country. The African people of this country and continent will survive if we take ourselves very seriously, not taking others for granted and knowing our interests in relation to the interests of others and ensuring that we defend and promote our interests and thus prepare the future of our children and their children’s. Let us stop being agents of others; let us be our own agents and stop being dictated to and told what to do and not what to do by others who do not have the interests of the poorest of poor, the have-nots and the dispossessed of our country and continent at heart except those of their peoples and countries.

Izwe Lethu! I-Afrika!

By Molefe Ike Mafole
The writer is a Member of Azanian People’s Liberation Army Military Veterans Association (APLA-MVA) and Member of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of Azania. He can be contacted on 072 630 2206.

African Union

After a long time of disappointing many people, the African Union (AU) has given some hope that it can defend and protect African interests without fear from the intimidation of imperialist countries.

It was an unprecedented bold act on the part of the African Union (AU) to elect President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe as First Vice-Chairman of its executive during the General Assembly meeting of African Heads in Addis Ababa on 30th January 2014. This appointment paves the way for him to be eligible for the chairmanship of the AU next year (2015).

The European Union (EU) imposed crippling economic sanctions on Zimbabwe in order to effect a “regime change.” One of its members, Britain, proposed the invasion of this African country, like what it did in Iraq. The EU therefore, reacted to the AU election of Mugabe angrily. The EU threatened not to invite President Mugabe to the coming summit of both the AU and the EU in April this year.

Zimbabwe, led by Mugabe, remains targeted under a list of restrictive measures. These measures stop Mugabe and other ZANU-PF officials from travelling in Europe. The AU has rejected the EU disrespect of Africa and her sovereign decision, democratically taken at the highest body of the African Continent.

Speaking on behalf of the AU, Zambia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Wylbur Simmusa said, “We must now speak with one voice and make sure we act in the interest of Africa. That is why for the EU-Africa Summit coming up, where Zimbabwe is singled out with restrictions for President Robert Mugabe from attending, the position that the AU has taken is that if Zimbabwe won’t go, then Africa will not go and that has been agreed upon.”

The AU deserves congratulations and full support by all Africans on this important decision. For far too long, the AU has bowed to the ne-colonial machinations and arrogance of the EU regarding the interests of African people.

History shows that when Africans fight for their rights Pan Africanly as a family, they always win. The stubborn fact is that Africans are one. They have a common destiny. In their struggles for Africa’s authentic liberation, they will win together or perish together.

The truth is that when Africans were enslaved or colonised by Western Europe, the perpetrators never cared whether their victims of the vile systems were Mozambicans, Ghanaians, Nigerians, Somalis, South Africans, Azanians, Batswana, Zambians, Zimbabweans or Basotho. They inflicted their atrocities on every African whether in Jamaica or in America.

Africa must not engage with the world as if she is a beggar with nothing to put on the international table. Africa has land and riches in it. African leaders must stop dealing with some of the world’s leaders as if they were demigods. Africa is rich. She would have been far ahead today economically if Western Europe did not under-develop her people through slavery, colonialism and racism at gunpoint.

Africa must control her riches for the uplifting and development of her people. She is rich. For example, some researchers have found that Tanzania has most kinds of biological resources including mahogany and other woods. Zambia has 36 million tons of copper. Namibia has the largest deposits of the best diamonds in the world. Guinea in West Africa has the highest reserves of bauxite in the world. Nigeria has 32 trillion cubic feet of gas. Somalia has 30 million tons of Jepson, a building material including recently discovered oil along with Uganda.

This list of Africa’s riches is very long. The Democratic Republic of Congo for which Patrice Lumumba was killed; if developed, can electrify and feed almost the whole of Africa. This African country is 905,355 square miles. It is as large as twelve European countries such as Britain, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal, Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Armenia and Albania. DRC potential wealth is equivalent to the gross domestic product of Europe and North America combined. Any wonder why DRC has been a victim of mercenaries and proxy wars for so long?

It is not surprising that Secretary Godding of exiled Belgian government after Belgium was overrun by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi army; boasted, “During the war [European Second World War), the Congo [then a Belgian colony] was able to finance all the expenditure of the Belgian Government in exile in London, including the diplomatic services as well as the cost of armed forces in Europe and America…the Belgian gold reserve could be left intact.”

The African Union member states must now consider and attend to the following challenges facing the AU:

1. Promote peace and political stability among African states and stand in solidarity with one another when any of these states are threatened by external forces and pressurised to serve the interests of imperialist countries. African people must be sensitised to be vigilant and refuse to be used for the destruction of their Continent and their people.

2. African States must prioritise and maximise the study of modern science, technology, agriculture, geology and international law to avoid signing documents such as the Rome Statute which created the International Criminal Court, now being used against Africa alone. At present knowledge is in the hands of former colonial powers which neglected the education of the colonised Africans. To neglect the education of the African youth is to gamble with the future of Africa.

3. African States must stop exporting their raw materials for exploitative purchasing prices and importing them back as finished products. Africa must develop high technology to process her raw materials and export them as finished products.

4. Where an urgent need has arisen to process a raw material, African States must exchange that raw material for relevant high technology. Many countries are secretive about technology transfer to Africa in order to keep Africa dependent on them. Important raw materials such as uranium, platinum, chrome etc must be exchanged for high technology not for cash or goods. This is the only way Africa can speedily advance technologically and look after her mineral and oil wealth.

5. AU member states must insist on investment on the infrastructure of Africa, instead of in things like KFC, MacDonald etc which indigenous people can do. Infrastructure is essential for the development of Africa. The modern way of foreign investment must be a partnership that advances Africa, while also making investment worthwhile for the foreign investor. African leaders must stop governing their countries primarily for foreign investors instead of advancing their own people and uplifting their standard of living. It is important to note that after nearly fifty years of independence, not a single African country has developed as a result of foreign investment. Most investors have taken more out of Africa than they gave or left after their departure to their own countries.

6. AU Member States must intensify intra-trade among themselves.

7. The AU supported by all its people at home and abroad must demand the cancellation of all “foreign debts”. The European traders in human cargo and colonialism owe Africa 370 trillion dollars for the slave trade alone. The “foreign debt” is a drop in the ocean compared with the amount owed Africa on slavery alone.

8. AU Members States must avoid “foreign aid” which recolonises the Continent. The pioneers of Africa’s liberation long said that they would accept “aid without strings.” “Foreign aid” has already compromised many African States at the expense of Africa’s economic development and social emancipation of African people.

9. The AU must have stringent code to deal with corrupt leaders. AU must have zero tolerance for corruption in all its forms. Corruption destroys nations. It causes revolutions which often lead to massive loss of human life and destruction of property.

10. Work ethics was the secret of Africa’s success before European slavery and colonialism. Africans must work hard to build their own countries and make them places to be proud of for themselves and their children. Work, work, work and hard work are the mother of success and prosperity for a family and for a nation. An African proverb says it all, “Charity will never fill the granary.”

By Dr. Motsoko Pheko
The writer is author of several books such as TOWARDS AFRICA’S AUTHENTICLIBERATION, REDISCOVERING AFRICA AND HER SPIRITUALITY AND THE HIDDEN SIDE OF SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICS. He is a former member of the South African Parliament.

Pictured: Willie “Siyaya” Nkonyeni
Photo by Xola Tyamzashe

It is with deep sadness, for many of us that the Nkonyeni family should lose such a son so unexpectedly. Your son is a great loss also to this nation and to the liberation movement of which he was highly respected, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania. Major General Siyaya Nkonyeni has departed to eternity at a critical time in our history when we need more warriors, for our authentic liberation, like him. He has served the African national liberation struggle of our country with distinction and tenacity.

This is a soldier who knew his military science well and understood that its ultimate objective is the equitable redistribution of land and its resources in our country according to population numbers. This African case was put to King George V of England by Sol Plaatje, John Dube and their three colleagues in July 1914. Our Kings had already fought heroic wars for it. Political giants of this country such as Lembede, Mda, Sobukwe and Mothopeng endorsed this land issue and articulated it without compromise.

Major General Siyaya was a brave soldier. Long before he joined the South African National Defence Force in 1994, his name was associated with the song “Siyaya ePitori” – We are going to Pretoria. This was when he lived in the forests, mountains and hills of Africa where he was being trained as a guerrilla fighter for this country to be liberated from colonialism and apartheid. This was during the darkest times. But far away from his country, where he was suffering the gruesome life of guerrilla warfare, he became famous for the freedom song, “Siyaya ePitori.” This sounded like a manifestation of mental disorder – insanity.

But he did go to Pretoria – Tshwane, not as an apartheid colonial slave. He joined as a free man and he rose in the ranks of the South African Army to the rank of Major General. He served with honour and earned trust to be deployed in our sister Democratic Republic of Congo to perform his Pan African obligation there, as taught by Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, that visionary who was imprisoned on Robben Island without even a mock trial.

I want to convey my personal appreciation to M-Afrika Siyaya’s family and to all his relatives for contributing to our national liberation struggle, a politico-military cadre of Comrade Siyaya’s calibre. Without such men, the indigenous owners of this country would have ended in the 11 Bantustans called “home lands” by the colonialists. They had the audacity to tell us where we may live in the land that God, Qamata, Modimo, Mvelingqngi gave to our ancestors.

Let this generation and coming generations derive inspiration and wisdom from our heroes such as Major General Siyaya Nkonyeni. The liberation journey he was involved in is still long. Cde Siyaya was in the class of General Makhanda colonially called Makana. He defended land rights for Africans in this country under King Ndlambe. On 25 December 1819, he stormed the British colonial garrison in Grahamstown – eRhini isixeko seNgwele!

General Siyaya walked the road of General Makwanyane of Moshoeshoe’s Army who wiped out those who were trying to climb Thaba Bosiu and dispossess Africans of their country and land. Makwanyane demonstrated political clarity and military prowess when he said: “Tshwara thebe e tie wa Rasenate, Wa bona fatshe leno le yaya.” (Hold firm your shield son of Rasenate, You see the land of your ancestors is taken away).

General Siyaya “ePitori”: Sobukwe, Mothopeng, Pokela, Jafta Masemola and many other heroes of our authentic liberation are proud of you.

The architect of Battle of Isandlwana, King Cetshwayo – Uphaqa nje ngelanga; Inyathi yasenhlakanhlakeni; Unokuzila ukudla kwamagwala; Impunzi kaNdaba! is full of joy for your sacrificial national service.

King Hintsa was also a great soldier – Njonga ntshiyini bathi uqumbile; Inkunzi abayikhuzu ukuhlaba ingekahlabi; Uzigodlwana zemazi endala; Zingalala endleni yazini kunyembelekile. He too, is smiling with joy upon your patriotism.

WHAT REMAINS NOW IN OUR COUNTRY IS EQUITABLE REDISTRIBUTION OF LAND AND ITS RICHES ACCORDING TO POPULATION NUMBERS. LIBERATION OF A LAND DISPOSSESSED PEOPLE WITHOUT REPOSSESSION OF THEIR LAND IS A GIGANTIC COLONIAL FRAUD.

General Major Siyaya Nkonyeni Rise in Honour and Glory!

HAMBA KAKUHLE QHAWE LAKOWETHU!

Izwe Lethu! Fatshe la rona! Shango lashu! Tiko ra hina! The Land Is Ours!

By Dr. Motsoko Pheko

Underfire: IEC Chairperson – Adv. Pansy Tlakula
Source: http://www.transformsa.co.za

The arrogance of ANC leaders clearly shows that they are rigging elections and have Western backing. There is no way a leader of a corrupt political party can engage in corruption, make dismissive utterances of corruption charges against him and in the same breath say “the ANC will rule until the second coming of Jesus” if elections were not rigged. What about the response to the Public Protector’s recommendations that he pays back the money improperly spent on his homestead? What did he say? He said he was not going to pay it back because he did not ask anybody to make the so-called security upgrades at his private residence. Yet he says he and his party are going to win elections with a two-thirds majority for that matter. What does this say about the majority of the people of this country? Are they apathetic?

One almost invariably hears analysts and commentators spewing the constant refrain “the ANC is going to win the up-coming elections though with a reduced majority” without mentioning a thing about the voting system and electoral process. Are these analysts and commentators indolent in their work or are they complicit in voting fraud? There is also dearth of investigative journalism especially with regard to voting fraud.

The first problem is that the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) is not independent because it is run by supporters or members of the ANC. Presiding officers belong to Sadtu which is affiliated to Cosatu which is part of the tripartite alliance with the ruling ANC. It is a misnomer to refer to the IEC as ‘independent’. For example, there is a pending case of vote rigging against the IEC in Tlokwe in which it rigged elections in favour of ANC candidates and in another instance it disqualified independent candidates from contesting by-elections and was forced by a court ruling to reverse that decision. Moreover, it’s Chairperson, Adv. Pansy Tlakula was found guilty of corruption and conflict of interest by the Public Protector. Nothing has happened to her. Can such a character be entrusted with running this country’s elections when the IEC itself is beset with problems of stealing elections? There needs to be an immediate injunction against her not to get involved in running elections until she has been sanctioned.

South Africa has thousands of polling stations but not all the votes are counted especially from the rural areas yet we are told there is one man, one vote. What happens is that the Electoral Commission uses a particular mathematical formula to count the votes and concentrates on the votes of the “big” parties and assign a thumb-sucked percentage to political parties such as the PAC and Azapo. The percentages given to these political parties are a total thumb suck…. they are not based on the real votes counted. The EFF has already been given its percentage even before the elections are held. They “predict” that it is going to get four percent. Initially they predicted about ten to twenty percent for the EFF.

In the US elections are rigged through voting machines and programmed software. In Ohio in late 2012 there were media reports that a company linked to Mitt Romney owns the voting machines used in Colorado, Ohio and other states. The Election Systems and Solutions (ES&S) is one of the companies that sell voting machines and manufacture software that is used to rig elections. It is important to find out where elections materials of the IEC such as, for example, computers and its software were manufactured or bought from. All the political parties must agree on the elections materials to be used during elections because running of the elections is not the exclusive prerogative of the ANC or IEC. The ANC with the connivance and collusion of the IEC perpetuate itself in power through rigged elections.

Moreover, it should be borne in mind that the West also wants the ANC in power and will do everything in its power to keep the ANC in power. After all, the ANC was installed by the West through imperialist brokered negotiations and a rigged election. There are very few countries in the world whose ruling parties the West has not endorsed. They are our neighbour, Zimbabwe, Sudan, North Korea, Iran, Ecuador, Cuba and Venezuela. The rest have the approval of the West. Any left leaning political party that can defeat the ANC in elections will face persistent destabilisation from the West including sanctions or the ANC will refuse to relinquish power. The West does not believe in the will of the people as it claims. It merely pays lip service to it.

South Africa is said to be a corporation owned by Britain whose CEO is Jacob Zuma and that Britain would not allow political parties they disapprove of win elections and rock the boat. South Africa is literally owned by Britain and Britain is under the Vatican. To compound the situation, two former South African Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki were honoured by the Duke of Gloucester. Mandela was invested as a Bailiff Grand Cross of the Order of St John at a ceremony at St James’s Palace when he was 86 years old. This order is headed by the Queen of England. Mbeki was made Knight of the most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in Cape Town. Helen Zille and Ebrahim Rasool were present. All these Orders and secret societies fall under the Vatican.

South Africa’s problem is much more complicated than what most people think. It is not going to be a question of winning elections and unseating an organization anointed by the rulers of the world to safeguard their interests. The ANC is a political party of Western allegiance no matter how its leaders want to portray it as a revolutionary organization. It is not a revolutionary organisation; it is a poodle of the West. The people of this country must take charge of their country by making sure that the ANC, IEC and the West do not decide our future for us by manipulating elections and rigging votes.

By Sam Ditshego
The writer is a Senior Researcher at the Pan Africanist Research Institute (PARI).