Maravi

(STICKY) (NEWZIMBABWE) Mines have only brought sickness: Malema

COMMENT - The mines must pay for national development. There is no way about it. Until they do, all the laments by politicians that 'there is no money' are completely unbelievable. If there is no money - THEN GO AND GET IT. YOU KNOW WHERE IT IS.

Mines have only brought sickness: Malema
by Sapa
04/10/2010 00:00:00

JULIUS Malema, the leader of the youth wing of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress said mines had “brought nothing but sickness” for rural communities as he vowed to ensure that ANC leaders who oppose his efforts to put the country's mines in the state's hands are removed.

"Comrades we are not threatened ... we will fight until we realise economic freedom in our lifetime. Political power without economic power is useless," he said on Saturday at the launch of the league's nationalisation campaign in Maandagshoek, Limpopo.

If mining did not benefit the majority of South Africans, the league would ensure it didn't benefit the minority of the country's people either, he said. He likened mining companies operating in the area to thugs. The only difference, he said, was that the mines were “daylight robbers”.

"The people who steal these resources play golf in London. They know nothing about your poverty. These mines [have] brought nothing but sickness."

The ANCYL under his leadership would emulate the league of Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu in ensuring the campaign succeeded. “The ANC leadership of the 1940s was writing love letters to the queen of England, when the youth league wanted a radical programme of action.”

This was in reference to the removal of Dr Alfred Xuma, then-ANC president, “who dismissed Mandela and Sisulu when they wanted radical programme of action instead of negotiations”.

At the ruling party's recent conference in Durban, the youth league succeeded in placing the nationalisation debate firmly on the agenda.

At the start of the conference, the league's secretary general, Vuyiswa Tulelo, spelled out the kind of position the league wanted from the national general council.

"They must say we'll talk about it again at the policy conference [in mid-2012] and take a decision at [the national conference in] Mangaung," she said in the lobby of Durban's Hilton Hotel.

The nationalisation discussion was marked by booing and heckling, and leaders such as ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe tried to shift the focus from mines by arguing that Postbank should be "nationalised" as a proper bank.

In the end Deputy Public Enterprises Minister Enoch Godongwana and Planning Minister Trevor Manuel were brought out to explain the outcome of the discussion to the world's media.

Godongwana afterwards grudgingly admitted to journalists that "nationalisation got as far as it did" in the ANC's cycle of debate because he, as chairperson of the economic transformation committee, had not done enough to counter the youth league's discussion documents.

His and Manuel's strenuous arguments about why nationalisation is a bad idea -- it would cost R2,3-trillion, the state cannot even run Alexkor (the state-owned diamond company), and it already owns all mineral rights -- failed to convince the delegates.
In the end, the leadership was forced to include the word "nationalisation" in the final declaration.

Meanwhile South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers said on Monday that Malema’s statements “threaten the livelihoods and security of jobs of the over 400 000 mineworkers employed in the industry”.

Union spokesman Lesiba Seshoka said they supported the resolution of the ANC’s national general council last month that “proper research be done” on nationalisation and that these findings be presented to the party’s national conference in 2012.

“We, however, call on the ANC to provide the much-needed leadership and to rein in its youth wing to ensure that in the process serious damage is not done to the reputation of the country and the image of the South African mining industry” in the eyes of the investor community, he added.

Labels: GWEDE MANTASHE, JULIUS MALEMA, MINING, NATIONALISATION, NEOLIBERALISM

posted by MrK @ 12:25 PM