Nelson Mandela leaves US$4m estate to family, staff and ANC
By Reuters
Mon 03 Feb. 2014, 16:10 CAT
COMMENT - At some level I understand that Presidents will have more money than most, and that $4 million is really not that much money nowadays, even frugal. However, you can't shake the feeling that this money was accumulated because President Mandela refused to take back the mines and the land, which would have economically empowered all South Africans. - MrK
Nelson Mandela left his roughly $4.1-million estate to his wife Graca Machel, family members, staff, schools and the ANC, according to a summary of his will released Monday.
Two months after the death of the 95-year-old South African statesman, lawyers said wife Graca was likely to waive her right to half the estate, opting instead to receive four properties in Mozambique and other assets.
Royalties from his books and other projects, as well as his homes in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Qunu and Mthatha were left to a family trust.
The home in Houghton, Johannesburg where Mandela died on December 5 will be used by the family of his deceased son Makgatho.
"It is my wish that it should also serve as a place of gathering of the Mandela family in order to maintain its unity long after my death," the former statesman wrote.
Mandela's children each received $300,000 in loans during his lifetime and will have that debt scrapped if it has not been repaid.
The will was first written in 2004 and last amended in 2008.
Even before his death, Mandela's children and grandchildren frequently clashed over who leads the family and who should benefit from his investments.
Several have already put the Mandela brand behind commercial projects including wine, clothing, artwork, a social network and a reality television show.
Executor Dikgang Moseneke, the deputy head of South Africa's Constitutional Court, said the reading of the will to the family had been "charged with emotion" but no one had yet contested it.
Mandela's other bequeathments reflected a life in politics and championing education.
Mandela gave around $4,500 each to members of staff, including long-time personal aide Zelda la Grange.
The will also provided around $9,000 each for Wits and Fort Hare universities, and the same amount to three other schools.
The African National Congress, which Mandela led to victory in the first democratic elections in 1994, could receive between 10 and 30 percent of his royalties.
The cash will be used specifically to promote "policies and principles of reconciliation amongst the people of South Africa."
Family feud
It is unclear if the will can prevent family battles over who controls the Mandela name, which have seen family remains exhumed and reinterred and exhumed and reinterred again.
Eldest daughter Makaziwe reportedly had the locks changed on Mandela's rural home after his death to exclude his eldest grandson Mandla, the head of Mandela's clan.
Makaziwe and Mandla both lay claim to lead the family following the death of the anti-apartheid hero in December.
Makaziwe is backed by his second wife Winnie and Mandla has the support for the royal family of his tribe.
Three executors will now be tasked with winding up the estate and carrying out Mandela's wishes.
They are George Bizos, who represented Mandela at the trial that jailed him for 27 years; Moseneke, the deputy head of the country's Constitutional Court who spent years with the icon imprisoned on Robben Island; and Themba Sangoni the head judge in Mandela's birth province the Eastern Cape
Mandela became South Africa's first black president after the first all-race elections in 1994 and his politics of forgiveness and reconciliation made him a global peace icon.
He died December 5 and was buried 10 days later in his rural boyhood home of Qunu
Labels: ANC, CORRUPTION, NELSON MANDELA
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Nelson Mandela leaves US$4m estate to family, staff and ANC
By Reuters
Mon 03 Feb. 2014, 16:10 CAT
COMMENT - At some level I understand that Presidents will have more money than most, and that $4 million is really not that much money nowadays, even frugal. However, you can't shake the feeling that this money was accumulated because President Mandela refused to take back the mines and the land, which would have economically empowered all South Africans. - MrK
Nelson Mandela left his roughly $4.1-million estate to his wife Graca Machel, family members, staff, schools and the ANC, according to a summary of his will released Monday.
Two months after the death of the 95-year-old South African statesman, lawyers said wife Graca was likely to waive her right to half the estate, opting instead to receive four properties in Mozambique and other assets.
Royalties from his books and other projects, as well as his homes in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Qunu and Mthatha were left to a family trust.
The home in Houghton, Johannesburg where Mandela died on December 5 will be used by the family of his deceased son Makgatho.
"It is my wish that it should also serve as a place of gathering of the Mandela family in order to maintain its unity long after my death," the former statesman wrote.
Mandela's children each received $300,000 in loans during his lifetime and will have that debt scrapped if it has not been repaid.
The will was first written in 2004 and last amended in 2008.
Even before his death, Mandela's children and grandchildren frequently clashed over who leads the family and who should benefit from his investments.
Several have already put the Mandela brand behind commercial projects including wine, clothing, artwork, a social network and a reality television show.
Executor Dikgang Moseneke, the deputy head of South Africa's Constitutional Court, said the reading of the will to the family had been "charged with emotion" but no one had yet contested it.
Mandela's other bequeathments reflected a life in politics and championing education.
Mandela gave around $4,500 each to members of staff, including long-time personal aide Zelda la Grange.
The will also provided around $9,000 each for Wits and Fort Hare universities, and the same amount to three other schools.
The African National Congress, which Mandela led to victory in the first democratic elections in 1994, could receive between 10 and 30 percent of his royalties.
The cash will be used specifically to promote "policies and principles of reconciliation amongst the people of South Africa."
Family feud
It is unclear if the will can prevent family battles over who controls the Mandela name, which have seen family remains exhumed and reinterred and exhumed and reinterred again.
Eldest daughter Makaziwe reportedly had the locks changed on Mandela's rural home after his death to exclude his eldest grandson Mandla, the head of Mandela's clan.
Makaziwe and Mandla both lay claim to lead the family following the death of the anti-apartheid hero in December.
Makaziwe is backed by his second wife Winnie and Mandla has the support for the royal family of his tribe.
Three executors will now be tasked with winding up the estate and carrying out Mandela's wishes.
They are George Bizos, who represented Mandela at the trial that jailed him for 27 years; Moseneke, the deputy head of the country's Constitutional Court who spent years with the icon imprisoned on Robben Island; and Themba Sangoni the head judge in Mandela's birth province the Eastern Cape
Mandela became South Africa's first black president after the first all-race elections in 1994 and his politics of forgiveness and reconciliation made him a global peace icon.
He died December 5 and was buried 10 days later in his rural boyhood home of Qunu
Labels: ANC, CORRUPTION, NELSON MANDELA
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(GLOBALRESEARCH) Fidel Castro: Mandela Is Dead, So Why Hide The Truth About Apartheid?
By Fidel Castro Ruz
Global Research, December 29, 2013
Maybe the empire thought that we would not honor our word when, during days of uncertainty in the past century, we affirmed that even if the USSR were to disappear Cuba would continue struggling.
World War II broke out on September 1, 1939 when Nazi-fascist troops invaded Poland and struck like a lightning over the heroic people of the USSR, who contributed 27 million lives to preserve mankind from that brutal massacre that ended the lives of 50 million persons.
War, on the other hand, is the only venture that the human race throughout history has failed to avoid, leading Einstein to say that he did not know how World War III would be like but most certainly the fourth would be fought with sticks and stones.
Added up, the means available to the two most powerful powers –United States and Russia— amount to 20,000 (twenty thousand) nuclear warheads. Mankind should know that three days before John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency of his country on January 20, 1961, a US B-52 bomber, in a routine flight, carrying two atomic bombs with a destructive capacity 260 times that of the bomb dropped in Hiroshima, had an accident and the aircraft crashed. For such cases sophisticated automatic equipment are in place to prevent the bombs from exploding. The first bomb landed without risks. In the case of the second, three of the four mechanisms failed, and the fourth, in very critical conditions could barely function. The bomb did not explode by mere chance.
There is no present or past event I remember or have heard of that has impacted world public opinion so much as the death of Nelson Mandela, and not because of his wealth, but for his human quality and the loftiness of his ideas and feelings.
Throughout history and barely one and a half century ago — before robots and machines took over our modest tasks with a minimum energy cost– none of the phenomena that today shake mankind and inexorably rule each and every person –men and women, children and elders, young and adult, farmers and factory workers, manual workers or intellectuals– existed. The prevailing trend is to move to the cities, where the creation of jobs, transportation, and basic living conditions demand huge investments to the detriment of food production and other more rational ways of life.
Three powers have landed in our planet’s Moon. The same day Nelson Mandela, covered with his country’s flag, was buried in the backyard of the humble house where he was born 95 years ago, a sophisticated module from the Peoples Republic of China descended upon a bright spot in our Moon. The coincidence of both events was purely by chance.
Millions of scientists are studying earth and outer-space matters and radiations. Through them we now know that Titan, one of Saturn’s rings, accumulated 40 times more oil than the existing amount in our planet when oil extraction began 125 years ago and which will last barely one more century at current consumption rates.
The fraternal feelings of profound brotherhood between the Cuban people and Nelson Mandela’s homeland were born out of an event that has never been mentioned and about which we have never said a word during all these long years; Mandela, because he was an apostle of peace and did not want to hurt anyone; Cuba, because we have never done anything for the sake of glory and prestige.
Since the very triumph of the Revolution in Cuba we extended our solidarity to the Portuguese colonies in Africa. Liberation movements in that continent had colonialism and imperialism on the rack after World War II and the liberation of the Peoples Republic of China –the most highly populated country in the world— following the glorious triumph of the Russian Socialist Revolution.
Social revolutions were shaking the pillars of the old world order. In 1960 the inhabitants of the planet amounted to three million. Along with this, the power of big transnational companies –almost all Americans– was growing and the American currency, underpinned by US gold monopoly and its intact industry so far removed from the battle fields, took control of the world economy. Richard Nixon unilaterally abolished the backing of US currency in gold and his country’s companies took control over the main resources and raw materials in the planet which they bought with paper bills.
Nothing I have said till now is new.
But why do they try to hide the fact that the Apartheid regime –that brought so much suffering onto Africa and arouse so much indignation in most nations throughout the world– was the fruit of European colonial powers and was turned into a nuclear power by the United States and Israel, something Cuba, who supported Portuguese colonies in Africa fighting for their independence openly condemned?
Our people, handed over to the United States by Spain after 30 years of heroic struggle, never reconciled with the slavery regime imposed during almost 500 years.
In 1975, racist troops supported by light tanks equipped with 90-millimeter guns set off from Namibia –then occupied by South Africa— and penetrated more than one thousand kilometers into Angolan territory up to the vicinity of Luanda, where an airborne battalion of Cuban Special Troops and several Cuban crews for Soviet tanks with no crews, succeeded in delaying their advance. This happened in November 1975, 13 years before the Cuito Cuanavale Battle.
I’ve already said that we have done nothing for the sake of prestige or seeking benefit of any kind. It is a fact that Mandela was an upright man, a profound revolutionary and a radical socialist who endured with great stoicism 27 years of solitary confinement. I could not but admire his honesty, modesty and enormous merit.
Cuba was strictly fulfilling its internationalist duties by defending key positions and training thousands of Angolans in the use of weapons every year. The USSR was providing the weapons. At the time, however, we disagreed with the idea of the main advisor of the suppliers of military equipment. Thousands of young and healthy Angolans were constantly joining the units of their then incipient army. Their main adviser, however, was not a Zhúkov, Rokossovski, Malinowvsky or any of the many men that brought so much glory to Soviet military strategy. His obsessive idea was to send Angolan brigades carrying the best weapons to the territory where the tribal government of Savimbi – a mercenary serving the United States and South Africa– was supposedly located, which was tantamount to sending the troops fighting in Stalingrad to the border with the Falangist Spain that had sent over hundred thousand troops to fight against the USSR. That year a similar operation was going on.
The enemy was advancing behind several Angolan brigades severely hitting them near the place they had been sent to, approximately 1,500 kilometers away from Luanda. They were returning from there, pursued by South African troops en route to Cuito Cuanavale, a former NATO military base, located some 100 kilometers away from where a Cuban Tank Brigade was stationed.
At such a critical point, the President of Angola requested the support of Cuban troops. The commander of our troops in the South, General Leopoldo Cintra Frías, sent us the request as usual. Our firm reply was that we would provide such support provided that all Angolan troops and equipment would be under the Cuban command in South Angola. Everybody understood that our request was a requirement to turn the former base into the ideal battle field to hit the racist South African forces.
There was a positive response from Angola in less than 24 hours.
It was decided that a Cuban Tank Brigade would be immediately sent there. Several other were in the same line towards the West. The main obstacle was the mud and humidity due to the rainy season and the fact that every stretch of land had to be checked for anti-personnel mines. The military personnel to operate the tanks and guns without crew were also sent to Cuito.
To the East, the base was separated from the territory by the large and fast- flowing Cuito River over which there was a solid bridge under the frantic attack of the racist army. A radio-controlled airplane full of explosives was hit, brought down on the bridge and put out of action. The retreating Angolan tanks still moving were crossed more to the North. Those that were not in good conditions were buried with their weapons facing East; a thick strip of anti-personnel and anti-tank mines turned the line into a mortal trap on the other side of the river. When the racist troops renewed their advance and ran into that defensive wall, the artillery and tanks of the revolutionary brigades came down on them shooting from their positions in the Cuito area.
The Mig-23 fighters had a special role to play. Flying at a speed of almost 1,000 kilometers per hour and 100 (one hundred) meters altitude they were able to distinguish if the artillery personnel was black or white and began firing relentlessly against them.
When the battered and immobilized enemy began to withdraw, the revolutionary forces began to get ready for the final combats.
Numerous Angolan and Cuban brigades began moving quickly and keeping proper distance to the West towards the only wide routes from which South Africans always began their military actions against Angola. The airport, however, was approximately 300 (three hundred) kilometers from the border with Namibia, which was totally occupied by the Apartheid army.
While troops reorganized and rearmed the urgent decision to build a runway for the Mig-23 was made. Our pilots were using the aircraft equipment provided by the USSR to Angola, whose pilots had lacked the time for a proper training. Several aircrafts were inoperative sometimes due to the action of our own artillerymen or anti-aircraft weapon operators. South Africans still occupied part of the main road going from the border of the Angolan plateau to Namibia. They began shooting from the bridges over the wide Cunene River –located between Southern Angola and Northern Namibia– with their 140-millimeter guns giving their projectiles a range of about 40 kilometers. The main problem was that the racist South Africans had, according to our estimates, 10 to 12 nuclear weapons. They had even tested them in the frozen areas or seas to the South. President Ronald Reagan had authorized such tests and the device for blasting the nuclear charge was among the equipment delivered by Israel. Our response was to organize the troops in combat groups of no more than 1,000 men, who would have to advance equipped with anti-aircraft tanks throughout an extensive territory at night.
According to reliable sources, South African nuclear weapons could not be transported by Mirage planes; heavy Canberra type bombers were required instead. In any case, our forces’ air defense had many different types of missiles that could hit and destroy air targets located dozens of kilometers away from our troops. In addition, a dam with 80 million cubic meters of water located in Angolan territory had been occupied and mined by Cuban and Angolan fighters. The explosion of that dam would have been tantamount to the explosion of several nuclear weapons.
Nonetheless, a hydroelectric plant using the strong current of the Cunene River, before reaching the Namibian border, was being used by a South African army detachment.
When the racists began shooting with their 140-millimeter guns in this new theater of operations, the detachment of white soldiers was strongly hit by the Mig-23 and the survivors fled the place leaving some posters criticizing their high command. That was the situation when Cuban and Angolan troops marched over the enemy lines.
I learned that Katiuska Blanco, the author of some historical accounts, together with other reporters and press photographers were there. It was a tense situation but everybody kept cool.
It was then that we got the news that the enemy was willing to negotiate. We had succeeded in stopping the imperialist and racist adventure in a continent where, in 30 years time, the population will exceed that of China and India together.
The role of the Cuban delegation on the occasion of the demise of our brother and friend Nelson Mandela will be unforgettable.
I congratulate comrade Raul for his brilliant performance and particularly for his strength of character and dignity when in a kind but firm gesture greeted the United States Head of Government and told him in English: “Mr. President, I’m Castro”.
When my health imposed limits to my physical capacity, I did not hesitate in expressing my criteria on who, in my view, could assume the responsibility. A life is a minute in the history of the peoples and I believe that whoever holds today that responsibility must have the experience and authority required to choose among an increasing -almost infinite— number of alternatives.
Imperialism will always have several cards up its sleeve to subdue our island even if it has to depopulate it, depriving it from young men and women to whom they offer the scraps of the goods and natural resources it ransacks from the world.
Let the spokesmen of the empire now talk about how and why Apartheid came to life.
Labels: FIDEL CASTRO, NELSON MANDELA, NUCLEAR ENERGY
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(GLOBALRESEARCH, AUDIO) Rethinking Mandela: Champion or Obstacle to Justice?
Global Research News Hour Episode 48
By Michael Welch
Global Research, December 25, 2013
Region: sub-Saharan Africa
“We, the people of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know:
That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people.” Opening words of the Freedom Charter, 1955[1]
“The nationalisation of the mines, banks and monopoly industries is the policy of the ANC, and the change or modification of our views in this regard is inconceivable. Black economic empowerment is a goal we fully support and encourage, but in our situation state control of certain sectors of the economy is unavoidable.” Nelson Mandela, January 1990[2]
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From the time of his death on December 5, 2013 to his burial ten days later, and beyond, Nelson Mandela has been the subject of near universal praise from prominent figures around the world.
Not that Mandela was not a towering figure in his own right.
A prominent and committed militant with the African National Congress since the 40s, Mandela was among those guiding the ANC in a more radical and revolutionary direction. He pushed for direct actions against apartheid, and had spent twenty seven years as a political prisoner. He was an inspiration to millions in the global anti-apartheid movement when it was not fashionable for Western leaders to critique South Africa’s racist-based political system.
It is his choices following his release from prison, however, that warrants scrutiny. For example, during negotiations with the De Klerk government, the ANC ended up abandoning the 1955 Freedom Charter condition of nationalizing the country’s banks, mining and other major industries. The ANC later came to embrace IMF and World Bank Sponsored neoliberal structural adjustment programs, such as privatization and government cut-backs which struck a blow to social conditions for South Africa’s most marginalized people.
Also controversial was the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, pioneered under Mandela, which granted amnesty for crimes conducted by high officials in South Africa provided they come forward to provide full disclosure of the wrongdoing.
The Global Research News Hour speaks to two individuals with roots in the anti-apartheid movement: Margaret Kimberley, senior editor and columnist with the Black Agenda Report, and Professor Eliakim Sibanda, Chair of the University of Winnipeg History Department originally from Zimbabwe.
These two guests help introduce much needed complexity to the far to simplistic portrayals of Mandela’s life and legacy which dominate the media narrative presently.
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The Global Research News Hour, hosted by Michael Welch, airs on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg Fridays at 1pm CDT. The programme is also broadcast weekly (Monday, 5-6pm ET) by theProgressive Radio Network in the US, and is available for download on the Global Research website.
Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:
CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT
Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario – Thursdays at 1pm ET
Notes:
1) http://faculty.washington.edu/lhc3/494b/The%20Freedom%20Charter.pdf
2) http://www.globalresearch.ca/mandelas-dream-of-black-power-became-a-neoliberal-nightmare/5360825?print=1
3) http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/legal/bill.htm
Labels: FREEDOM CHARTER, NELSON MANDELA, NEOCOLONIALISM
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(BLACK AGENDA REPORT) Nelson Mandela, Free Market Capitalism and the South African Crisis
Tue, 12/17/2013 - 21:17 — Anthony Monteiro
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by Anthony Monteiro
The veil must be lifted from the deliberations and machinations that led Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress to discard the people’s Freedom Charter in favor of an accommodation with white capital, in the early Nineties. Why, at South Africa’s most critical juncture, did the ANC make a pact with the Devil? And why did they keep it?
Nelson Mandela, Free Market Capitalism and the South African Crisis
by Anthony Monteiro
“The decision against nationalization has left the people worse off than when Mandela was elected in 1994.”
Why and when did Mandela change his mind about nationalization of the wealth of South Africa? And what have been the results? I find the mainstream media’s accounts, citing Mandela’s claim that he changed his mind at Davos, Switzerland, in 1992 implausible. More troubling is why when Mandela and the ANC led government saw things going so badly for the people they didn’t change course? These questions arise as we try to make sense of Mandela’s legacy. This is especially important in light of the catastrophic crisis of poverty, hunger, unemployment, education and health care besetting the South African people. The decision against nationalization has left the people worse off than when Mandela was elected in 1994. White economic privilege remains the same, and their wealth exponentially increased, a tiny, rich and mostly parasitic black bourgeoisie and a black middle class have been created. For 90 percent of the African population things have not improved.
The New York Times reported on December 10 that Nelson Mandela’s change of thinking occurred at Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum (the annual meeting of the major bankers, capitalist, entrepreneurs, celebrities, politicians and intellectuals tied to the neo liberal globalist model of the world economy) in January 1992. Tito Mboweni, a former governor of the South African Reserve Bank (that nation’s Central Bank), who accompanied Mandela to Davos, says when Mandela and the ANC delegation arrived Mandela had a speech written by the ANC that focused on nationalization. Mboweni says “we discussed this at some length and decided that its content was inappropriate for a Davos audience.” Mboweni drafts another speech that was friendly to the Davos crowd. The speech was vague and filled with clichés and platitudes and assured the audience that they had nothing to fear from Mandela or the ANC.
In a letter to the Sunday Independent last January Mboweni says it was meetings with representatives of the Communist parties of China and Vietnam that changed Madiba’s mind completely. According to Mboweni the Chinese and Vietnamese told Mandela “We are currently striving to privatize state enterprises and invite private enterprise into our economies. We are Communists Party governments, and you are a leader of a national liberation movement. Why are you talking about nationalization?” According to Anthony Sampson, the author of Mandela: The Authorized Biography, Mandela told him “They changed my views altogether. I came home to say: ‘Chaps we have to choose. We either keep nationalization and get no investment, or we modify our own attitude and get investment.’”
”The path to Mandela’s radical change of mind involved more than conversations during a five-day meeting in Davos in 1992.”
It is obvious that the ANC, the South African national liberation struggle and the nation as a whole were at a critical juncture. They were faced with problems of consolidating political power and moving the nation towards economic emancipation. On the other side, the white regime and its backers in the West were concerned with making concessions to black South Africans that would not disturb western corporate control of this mineral rich and strategically located economy. However I find the accounts of Mr. Sampson and Mr. Mboweni implausible. In other words, the path to Mandela’s radical change of mind involved more than conversations during a five-day meeting in Davos in 1992.
The first question is about the representatives of China and Vietnam. Both nations in 1992 were at different levels of economic development. Vietnam was still in the social and economic reconstruction phase after 25 years of war against foreign aggression. China was a socialist economy that twelve years earlier had entered upon a path of reform within its socialist economy. China at that time had about 80 to 90% of the strategic parts of its economy under state control. Vietnam was similar with the state controlling economic reconstruction. Even today close to 70% of China’s economy is under state control. The most technologically dynamic and profitable sector of the Chinese economy is the state, or nationalized sector. The facts are that China and Vietnam are heavily state dominated economies and each says the objective of their economic planning is to build advanced socialism. Even if we accept that the Chinese and Vietnamese representatives at Davos said what Mboweni says, the next question is who were they and did they represent the official positions of their governments? If we accept the mainstream media’s accounts, they must have been saying, “do as we say, not as we do.” Of course this would have been an instance of unbelievable bad faith, even cynicism. But on this matter, rather than looking to the Chinese and Vietnamese delegates, I think we should question Mr. Mboweni ‘s and Mr. Sampson’s account.
The second point is that when Mandela emerges from prison two of his and the ANC’s most important allies were Cuba and Libya, two nations whose economies were heavily nationalized. Why did Mandela not consult Fidel Castro and Muammar Gadaffi among others to get a more complete view on how well nationalization was working or not working in their nations?
”The decisions made by Mandela and the ANC thwarted a robust transition and allowed the old system to remain pretty much intact.”
The third point, any nation emerging from a long period of civil war and national liberation, experiencing a radical transfer of power, necessarily goes through a period of transition. It is ludicrous to think that sober minds, especially those with the training of most of the ANC, could underestimate a transition where something like a New Deal for the people, including a jobs and infrastructure programs, an anti-poverty crusade, health care, housing and political education, would not be considered necessary. No clear thinking person could have imagined an overnight great leap forward from a ravaged apartheid economy to an advanced socialist one. There would be a transition period of at least a decade where the groundwork would be laid for a new democratic and socialist economy. The forms of this transition would have many layers, even ambiguities, but its direction would be firmly established and based on the Freedom Charter and its call for nationalization. The decisions made by Mandela and the ANC thwarted a robust transition and allowed the old system to remain pretty much intact and thereby recklessly undermined the future of South Africa.
The more plausible scenario, from my perspective, is that Mandela and a small circle around him, long before Davos, perhaps in the last year or so of Mandela’s imprisonment, cut a deal. As we know Mandela entered into secret talks with the white regime before being released. These talks were kept secret from the ANC leadership. There were others in and outside of the ANC who were involved in secret talks about the economy well before 1990. By the time Mandela is released an agreement had been reached with the regime against nationalization. The question for Mandela and those in the ANC who supported him, was to get an appropriate time and place for Mandela to announce his change of position. There had to also be a plausible explanation of why such a drastic change. The Davos story fulfills both requirements, an appropriate place and a plausible story.
The fact that Mr. Mboweni, a free market capitalist, accompanied Mandela to Davos and had such power that he was allowed to trash the ANC speech and substitute for it his own, should raise further troubling questions about the behind scenes operations among the ANC elite. Why weren’t other views present in the ANC delegation at Davos? Or were they dismissed as “too radical” even before Davos?
”By the time Mandela is released an agreement had been reached with the regime against nationalization.”
Not long after the Davos announcement the ANC (or the free market and neo liberal elements within the ANC) announced that the first black government would assume the entire debt of the white regime. A sum of close to $25 billion. The ANC took an IMF loan to pay the debt, which came with severe strings attached that protected white control of the post apartheid economy. (see my article in BAR Dec 11 2013 for a further discussion of this). Mandela’s claim that he was turned around at Davos is questionable and his turn against the Freedom Charter and the aspirations of the masses of South Africa (who cherished the Freedom Charter as their manifesto of freedom and reflective of their freedom aspirations) is problematic.
Winnie Mandela has said repeatedly that when Mandela emerged from prison he was not the same man. She says his revolutionary resolve was different. What she probably meant is his change of heart on economic policy and his willingness to, as she saw it, make unnecessary compromises with white South Africans and Western interests. Ronnie Kasrils, former minister in ANC governments, a member of the ANC executive and a leader of Umkonto weSizwe recently wrote (The Guardian, June 23, 2013) that the decision against nationalization was a “Faustian bargain” with the white world that sold out the South African poor. Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine suggests the bargain was that in return for the ANC turning against The Freedom Charter and nationalization, the West would make Mandela a living saint.
In my BAR article “Nelson Mandela, The Contradictions of his Life and Legacies” I argue there are four stages in Mandela’s life. The fourth is 1990 to 2013. This is the most contradictory in terms of his previous revolutionary activity. However, it is as significant to understanding his legacy and life as the previous ones are. The burning question is in power what did he and his ANC colleagues do to liberate the nation from economic apartheid and foreign corporate control. At this point the answer is in power the ANC failed. The problem is not important only to South Africans or Africans, but for how humanity, especially its impoverished and destitute majority, imagines the future world and how we fight for it.
Anthony Monteiro is a professor of African American Studies at Temple University. He can be contacted at tmon(at)comcast.net.
Labels: ANC, NELSON MANDELA, NEOCOLONIALISM, NEOLIBERALISM
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(THOUGHTLEADER SA) The danger of making Mandela apolitical
By Nhlanhla Mtaka
It is true, nature has the capacity to force us humans to act. This was evident the day former president Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela died. On that day the message from Mother Nature seems to be clear: stop individualising the multiple and avoid the trap of making Mandela apolitical.
Mandela died on December 5, a day that arsenal of Pan-Africanism, Robert Managaliso Sobukwe, was born, in 1924. In African political history, Mandela and Sobukwe’s activities place them among other African giants like Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere who personified the African need and urge for independence and freedom.
But for so long government historians, some politicians, thought leaders and media practioners/houses have been altering the post-colonial and post-apartheid narrative. Especially about former president Mandela, to the point of trying to single him out as a unique man, better than Sobukwe, Biko, Nkrumah or Nyerere and yes even better than President Robert Mugabe. In essence this scholarship and idea, paints Mandela as an anomaly among Africa and Africans.
It was therefore, not surprising to hear President Barack Obama’s eulogy saying that “like America’s founding fathers, he (Mandela) would erect a constitutional order to preserve freedom for future generations”. Obama continued to compare Mandela to Gandhi. You will notice that here, Mandela is treated and singled out as being a better African — dead or alive.
There exists a danger with such a narrative, as the African intellectual Cheikh Anta Diop once warned Africans when he stated “every time when situations are not favourable to Western cultures, an effort will be made to undermine the cultural consciousness of Africans by telling them, there are no Africans”. Diop continues warning Africans not to fall into this trap because if they fall, they will be going round in circles in their quest for cultural, political and spiritual consciousness and emancipation.
One of the many problems with this false narrative is that it has the capacity to distort the whole African political history particularly the liberation movement’s importance and sociological meaning.
In her paper titled “Notes on the general features of national liberation movements” Mwesiga Baregu (1979) argues that national liberation movements were essentially a historical phenomenon responding to conditions of foreign domination, invasion, political domination, cultural sub-ordination and economic exploitation. They were thus inspired and driven by the desire to address these challenges, with the ultimate aim of bringing about national self-determination, political independence, equality and economic progress.
In defining the character of the liberation movement in the transformation process Baregu (2004: 97) presents that:
* The liberation movement is organised to overthrow an incumbent regime and capture state power by force. The political party is expected to win elections through democratic processes and persuasion of voters.
* The liberation movement is largely concerned with the mobilisation and radicalisation of popular dissent. The political party in power is preoccupied with the consensus building and, to extent, the suppression of deflection of dissent.
* The liberation movement, with its armed wing, is organised to prosecute armed struggle until it wins the liberation war. The political party is interested in demobilisation and disarming the guerrilla forces, or transforming them into regular professional army. Moreover, it has the challenge of winning the peace.
Looking at this explanation it should therefore not be difficult to conclude that Mandela was not a lone ranger. That his contribution to the national struggle, like that of leaders who came before him was a response to conditions of foreign domination, invasion, political domination, cultural sub-ordination and economic exploitation.
Given Africa’s colonial and apartheid history, one of the critical problem areas is the manner in which post-colonial and post-apartheid Africa is portrayed, and the extent to which the continent’s history has been falsified. The passing of Mandela calls for a continued interrogation of the manner in which African agency in the continent’s history is treated.
Africans must understand the trap and understand the stakes. If not, those who succeeded in divorcing the struggle of W.E.B Du Bois from that of Marcus Garvey, the struggle of Martin Luther King from that of Malcolm X will eventually succeed in divorcing Mandela from the liberation movement and context. Perhaps as a start, let us do as Mother Nature has reminded us. Let us use December 5 as a day to celebrate the lives and contributions of Sobukwe and Mandela to our collective struggle. In doing so we will avoid the trap.
Nhlanhla Mtaka is the group chairman of the Ingabadi Group
The problem is that there is no consensus program, complete with budget and schedules, to turn back the hoarding of land that happened under colonialism and apartheid.
Without it, the economy cannot change, and no amount of BEE is going to paper over that.
(BLACK AGENDA REPORT) Reconciliation is Not Decolonization
Wed, 12/11/2013 - 13:02 — Jemima Pierre
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/reconciliation-not-decolonization
(HERALD ZW) A strange love for Mandela
December 9, 2013 Wenceslaus Murape Mai Jukwa
ajukwaAmai Jukwa and Garikai Chengu
http://www.herald.co.zw/a-strange-love-for-mandela/
Labels: APARTHEID, LIBERATION, NELSON MANDELA
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(LUSAKATIMES) Kaunda Takes a Dig at the former Apartheid Regime
Time Posted: December 15, 2013 1:55 pm
Many guests at the state funeral of former president Nelson Mandela enjoyed the animated vote of thanks given by former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda in Qunu, in the Eastern Cape, on Sunday. Loud laughter was heard when Kaunda referred to the apartheid-era National Party, led by FW De Klerk, as the “Boer” party.
As his address ran over time, African National Congress deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa walked up to the podium to signal to him to wrap up.
Kaunda got the audience giggling when he protested, saying people were “trying to control an old man who fought the Boers”. Ramaphosa shrugged and smiled.
Kaunda took the opportunity to remind the apartheid government of its shameful treatment of Mandela and his fellow men.
“I had a chance to meet a number of friends of the Boer company. I spent three nights with [former prime minister John] Vorster on a train [stationed on the railway bridge over Victoria Falls, which separates Zambia and Zimbabwe],” Kaunda said.
“I asked the prime minister to please release Nelson Mandela and his colleagues and come together in discussions. It came to nothing.
“Then came another boer leader — I think he was called [PW] Botha — to discuss the future of South Africa together. I didn’t succeed and it also came to nothing.
“Then came my meeting with FW de Klerk… and, after a few hours, I called a press conference where I said: ‘I think I can do business with this man’. Thank goodness he released this great man.”
Kaunda also referred to some quotes from the Bible and ended his speech by saying “Amen”.
Labels: KENNETH KAUNDA, NELSON MANDELA
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(NEWZIMBABWE) In Mugabe, Africa must seriously trust!
12/12/2013 00:00:00
by Bernard Bwoni
AS the media circus hijacked the memorial service of Nelson Mandela, certain ideological African themes are becoming more prominent and ineradicably embedded. There is a resurrection of the belief in the African ideology and the resonant acclamation President Robert Mugabe received at the mention of his name at the FNB stadium is affirmation of the credence.
The people of Africa, the real people of Africa know who their real heroes are and no amount of illusory media sophistry and air-brushing is going to change that. President Mugabe received a standing ovation and he did not even stand at the podium to give a speech. The man must be doing something very right. No let me rephrase that, the man is doing something right. Legends are born, not scripted.
It is that unwavering, lifelong and indelible ideological immersion to a cause that personifies Robert Mugabe amply. What is interesting to note is that the inexorable thunderous ovation for Mugabe was right in the glare of those hypocritical kingmakers with privy designs and ominous intent who have incessantly and historically misinformed and disinformed the world about Mugabe. The Mugabe frenzy that is sweeping across the African continent has no preclusion.
Those with inauspicious intentions on Zimbabwe have tried suppressing and smothering the ideologically-congealed Mugabe mania for it to resurface again and again as happened at the FNB stadium. Mugabe’s standing ovation was for an unshakeable belief in a cause and the ovation for Obama was sheer curiosity and that novel feeling of seeing a black man fronting the very threat to that African cause.
Mugabe is an extraordinary African. A man with the black African cause permanently ingrained to his whole being is what defines him. Zimbabwe has been under siege and the man has soaked all the demonization and onslaught with an unparalleled tenacity and resoluteness. He is a principled man with an indefatigable desire to deliver his people from the implacable neo-colonial structure which manifests itself in many forms to continually quell the African quest for lasting and real independence which seeks to economically liberate the continent and its people.
The tumultuous ovation he received in the FNB stadium was no gimmick. That was open recognition from real African people with an unfulfilled thirst for definitive emancipation and not the delusory independence they had to settle for. Mugabe represents real hope for the masses with an unfeigned and authentic proposal to truly liberate Africa and Africans. Do not believe the media hype about demons and dictators! That is just a smoke-screen to asphyxiate the African economic genesis that has the unique bonafide raison d’être of uplifting and upgrading the lives of black Africans.
Aid and donations have not done it yet! Most definitely will never do it and Africans eternally declassed to beggars and burgers! No real meat, no substance just barebones. No foreign aid is ever truly altruistic and the sooner Africans realise that the better. Only pessimism, calamity and undesirable negative anticipation shapes black Africa in the eyes of those with baleful and exploitation-inspired intrigue on Africa and representation of Africa is in terms of absences, delinquencies and alien.
Obama delivering a hot-air speech to the permanently economically crippled black people of South Africa at the memorial service of a revolutionary who could have forced an upgrade of their lives is one of the most strikingly sardonic moments in African history. As the themes continue to emerge, Mugabe’s ideals are resonating well with Africans continent-wide.
South Africa, a significantly unequal society with one of the highest gini-coefficient rankings in the world is on the threshold of a riveting social and political malfunction. Someone somewhere failed to fully address the obvious inequalities which define and are deeply entrenched in this ‘Rainbow Nation’ today. The standing ovation for Robert Mugabe, a real driver for change to address the historically and racially skewed inequalities and to economically empower the black people of Zimbabwe, is an affidavit to the inevitable cataclysmic unravelling in South Africa. Little brother will guide big brother towards the summit of economic freedom.
Mugabe is a visionary leader, period! The unique feature about this living legend is the unflinching fidelity to ideological course and epistemological substance. When South Africans stood up and gave a resounding ovation to the man who has dedicated his entire life to the Zimbabwean cause, the South African cause was instantly thrust on the agenda. The inequalities in South Africa are not going to be addressed by flamboyant oration from the neo-colonial point-man of those who wish to indefinitely degrade Africans to eternal bondage.
Africa must seriously starting putting trust in the Mugabe vision. The Mugabe inspired and perceptive astuteness which seeks to dismantle and restructure the neo-colonial DNA which continues to inextricably fasten Africa and its people to enduring subjugation.
Labels: LIBERATION, NELSON MANDELA, ROBERT MUGABE
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Emulate Mandela - Mpezeni
By Staff Reporter
Wed 11 Dec. 2013, 14:01 CAT
PARAMOUNT Chief Mpezeni says very few leaders can match Nelson Mandela's leadership qualities.
And Lusaka mayor Daniel Chisenga and South African High Commission counsellor Patrick Jacobs yesterday opened the laying of wreaths at the Rhino Statue at Longacres in Lusaka yesterday.
After leading his Ngoni chiefs, Madzimawe and Nzamane, in signing the book of condolences at the High Commission yesterday, Mpezeni said Mandela's leadership should be emulated by all as he suffered for his people.
He said Zambian leaders should take a leaf from Mandela's heart for the people.
Mpezeni said Mandela suffered for the people, and that very few people in Africa, having been imprisoned for many years, would handover power after a couple of years.
After laying the wreaths, Jacobs said Zambia played a central role in the liberation of South Africa.
"If it was not for the support and for the encouragement from people of Zambia and its leaders, South Africa would not be where it is today and for that, we are eternally grateful to the people of Zambia and its leadership," he said.
And Chisenga said South Africa and Zambia were like an extension of one big country.
"We have always enjoyed this relationship. For us losing a great man like Mandela is like losing our own here. And we commend the Republican President Michael Sata for declaring seven days of national mourning," said Chisenga.
World leaders converged in South Africa for a funeral service for Mandela who will be put to rest on Sunday.
Labels: CHIEF MPEZENI, DANIEL CHISENGA, LEADERSHIP, NELSON MANDELA, PATRICK JACOBS
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(HERALD ZW) Zimbabwe: Myth-making and Myth-eating
December 7, 2013
Nathaniel Manheru
"David Cameron at Heathrow Airport with some of the delegation flying with him to China. – The Guardian"
My deep condolences to the Mandela family and South Africa on the passing on of Madiba. May his soul finally rest in eternal peace.
West call, Chinese curseZimbabwe has received many myths, repeated them, expanded them, fed on them, munched them to specter-thinness. Of course her hope was for an all-weather nourishment. For that very reason, Zimbabweans have been unable to clearly envision, unable to lay their hands firmly on reality.
Last week I gave you a slice of such myth-receiving, myth-making, myth-expansion and myth-eating. And the rich slice was that the West is Zimbabwe’s call, while China is Zimbabwe’s curse. Zimbabwe’s salvation would come from the West, so the myth goes. Native voices were conscripted to validate that myth in a chorus, a myth which is white to the pith. And to even elaborate on it and give it profound colour.
Best with received thoughts
The white boss wants us to remain tethered to him forever. He invents gorgons to frighten us from venturing beyond the oppressive circle he has enchanted, a circle that we can’t break. We wonder round and round, unable to break that spell of servitude. And when the white oppressor tells us how grateful we should be to be in that circle, how well we must behave as his slaves, we quickly pick up the lethal exhortation, elaborate on it, bedeck it with formidable statistics in order to make it unassailable, to make it perfect and enduring enough to blight our own children, their scions and many black generations to come.
We are always at our best with a received thought – a mis-thought! And it fires us into blind raillery: against ourselves, against our own, against our futures. Cry the accursed race.
Best across the Crocodile river
Last week’s statistically-backed argument attempted to perforate that blighting myth. It is yet to be thoughtfully challenged. Not the crass challenge it got from Muckraker, that white centurion by the gates of the myth-making chamber where vile thoughts are cooked. Dear reader, what you must grasp is that once imperialism loses state power, loses instruments of coercion, loses even the ballot, its recourse is mental games that allow it to retain its hegemony.
This is why any attempts at challenging that remaining zone of vestigial hegemony invites vicious rebuke. Such as I got from Muckraker for merely stating the obvious. We are all supposed to be unthinking when the white man hands down a nugget thought! Muckraker takes himself for the best editor north of the Crocodile River, regards himself the best authority and guardian of Rhodesian history.
Yet in spite of this claimed enormous knowledge and skills, he misses an elementary distinction: the difference between settlers and intruders. By giving us a smaller figure meant to capture white settlers who blighted our land by their permanent residence, he thinks he makes lighter the burden of oppression that the black Zimbabwean suffered for close on to a century, still suffers in politically post-colonial, economically colonial Zimbabwe.
The one who bear scars
But I am black and oppressed. I know the tongs of oppression that scarred my skin, the hard forced labor that caroused my hands, that gave me lasting scars. All that came from white oppressors who came into my life, into my country, whether or not they stayed temporarily or stayed to their grave or to now.
Only a fellow white man would know and count those who came to leave, distinguishing them from those who came and stayed. For he was the one to lose a friend, a neighbour, or gain either or both. What I saw with black-red eyes was an endless chain of white oppressors coming in, coming to me, terror in hand.
None ever left, many made way to each other as they took turns to abuse me. By way of their oppression, there was no distinction. And hey Mister Muckraker, the one who counts accurately is the one who is mounted, indeed the one who bear and suffers the harsh cut. Since Muckraker is an historian — and only last week I was reading a piece of research he published in one of the Rhodesian journals in the 1970s – let him tell us where exactly Rhodes’ men – his symbolic forebears — slaughtered Lobengula, indeed where they hid the poor King’s abused remains.
I am sure that is a more useful start to the story of white brutality and oppression here. Not this myth about two hundred thousand plus white settlers here. Or about King Lobengula committing suicide in his northward flight. Not this diversionary journey to “Tibet” as if we need to go that far to learn oppression, we who carry its scars. Why is he not talking about Wales, Scotland, Gibraltar and Malvinas?
Only facing East
But grant him ground. He says: “When Zimbabweans talk of zhingzhong, that is not something invented by whites”. He is right, dead right and we should listen to him, understand him and his kind. As I write, Cameron is just back from a long trip to China. The published image on that visit is a massive Virgin Airbus, overflowing with British businessmen who were part of Cameron’s delegation.
He led a massive, all-manner British delegation of 131, all to help him plead for Chinese investments, Chinese money. Tactfully, the trip was framed as one seeking to persuade China to do business with Europe. In reality, the trip was for needy Britain seeking to escape the riotous fate of Spain, made more likely each day that passes.
The major economies of Europe are actually not pleased with him for inviting the dragon into the EU. But, as the editor of the British Guardian noted, there was something of mendicant in the trip! I am sure for Muckraker, Cameron did not “look East”. He merely “faced East”, with “zhingzhong” being a place he visited, never a description of Chinese wares, or their quality.
Incidentally, this is Cameron’s second visit to China.
Only an old European country
Cameron met a new China, a China way above its weak, dynastic past. Much soberer, stronger, certainly richer, this new China would no longer be coerced into taking opium by British gunboats. Not even into losing its Tibet. Or its politics. Not in a hurry to forgive Cameroon for an impulsive and populist tete-a-tete with the hugely-symbolic-in-the-West-but-politically-empty-at-home Dalai Lama, China, through one of its authoritative papers, foully reminded Cameron that Britain was nothing more than an historical relic in Chinese eyes.
Part of the editorial ran: “The Cameron administration should acknowledge that the UK is not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese. It is just an old European country apt for travel and study. This has gradually become the habitual thought of the Chinese people.” I am sure that hurt, wounded British pride, pierces Muckraker’s empire ego, leaving gushing scarlet.
It helps for Britain and all her children, whether at home and abroad, to know that this is in fact more than a Chinese view. The editorial summarised the world’s view of Britain, including that of her previous colonial subjects who now know that beneath the feathery horn of the proverbial owl is no gore!
When the wheel has turned
More hurt came. Among the key investments Britain hoped to attract from China was for its rail system, for a long time ailing, directionless since privatisation. History records that China’s maiden attempt at rail was done by the British, way way back in 1876, the age when Britain once mattered. No trains ever ran on that track.
Only the second attempt succeeded, prospered. It came in 1881, all under the supervision of an English engineer, Claude William Kinder. And the locomotives that followed the track puffed greater glory to Robert Stephenson, a British inventor! Today the land of Stephenson and Kinder seeks Chinese intervention for Britain to have fast moving trains.
Britain, the train-master, is now by the rail station, waiting, desperate to catch a lift from a Chinese bullet train. Not a very kind fate, if you ask me. And yes Mr Editor of the Guardian, the wheel has indeed turned!
Mad pig disease
As a write, reports are now taking stock of Cameron’s visit. One of his major breakthroughs during that visit reportedly is a £45million business proposal by which Great Britain will export hog semen and trotters of pigs that no longer grunt, export all that to China. Grunt, grunt, gruuuuunt!
At least it is far, far better than opium. One hopes China is not importing mad cow, sorry mad pig, disease. And receiving trotters that kill, not arouse Chinese desire. Real food for thought if you ask me.
Myth of junkets
But yes, all this is for Zimbabweans to note. Muckraker is right to say it is not whites who speak of zhingzhong. They cannot, for they are busy courting China, flooding its markets for succour. Those who speak of zhingzhong are “Zimbabweans” — you and me at the instigation of whites already aboard a plane to Beijing!
Wake up Zimbabwe, shake off the myth and then understand why it is in the interest of the West and Rhodesians to incite you against China, to cultivate an anti-Chinese sentiment designed to avert any strengthening partnership between us. Surely a whole old imperial country does not cart itself to China of junkets? This is the first myth we need to cast off.
The bogey of indigenisation
Tapiwa Nyandoro always writes quite boldly. His latest instalment advises the Zimbabwe Government to “suspend indefinitely its indigenisation policy and replace it with the “thin capitalization rule” to raise tax and broaden the tax base.” I don’t know what “thin capitalisation rule” means, or says.
I hope he does, which leaves one wondering why such a crucial part of his recommendation is not digested, but shoved down the reader so indigestibly. Whatever he means by that phrase, his recommendation betrays his image of Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans: we are a good-for-nothing-else-but-taxation bunch.
We must build our nation on taxes. Our role and fortunes must be viewed in terms of taxes, we the tax-collecting Nation. But beyond all this, there is a clear thesis to say indigenisation policy is the real problem foreign direct investment is shunning us, skirting around our country.
When capital proves less timid
Nyandoro throws in very succulent figures: $1,35 trillion as value of global FDI in 2012. Out of this $50billion went to Africa, led by Nigeria, Mozambique, South Africa, DRC and Ghana. Zimbabwe — our Zimbabwe — bagged a paltry $400million out of all that. Poor Zimbabwe, opines Nyandoro, plaintively advising this wretch of a country to please “prioritize FDI-friendly policy measures for economic development”.
I said we are notorious for receiving myths, regurgitating them after munching them. Here is a case of square figures being forced into round conclusions. The countries that grabbed much of the $50bn that came to Africa are no different, no better, no more righteous than poor Zimbabwe.
Quite the contrary, they leave one wondering why timid FDI regained boldness to venture into them. Three of them have conflicts. Or rumours of them. Two are quiet but facing social threats arising from acute inequities, acute marginalisation of their indigenes. Some of these social conflicts have forebodingly spilled blood.
But all are natural-resource rich, covering a whole gamut of mineral resources including that dark, dank liquid, oil. Or its more refined, airy twin — natural gas. All this apart from a whole range of minerals they richly have. Is that not the key consideration, which by the way also account for the destination of the paltry $400million which came our way in spite of sanctions and our odious indigenisation and land policies?
They still put in $400million, in spite of our policies which Nyandoro says block investments. He thinks we should not indigenise as that amounts to seeking more instead of being content to collect tax, thinly collect tax.
Where are the billions from minerals?
I just hope Nyandoro read a business story in yesterday’s Herald. I will summarise it for him in case he didn’t. Headlined “Mining firms bank 3pc of revenue”, the story revealed that a mere 3 percent out of about $2billion which foreign mining firms get from our resources find its way into our banks!
The rest goes overseas. Meanwhile the country reels from illiquidity, blaming itself, its politics, its politicians and its policies for this bad situation. It does worse. It hopes from continent to continent to seek more debts, including from those economies which receive fabulous receipts from our minerals.
Frigidly, these economies will not give us anything, not even loans from money that came from us! I really wish vaChidhakwa could share with the Nation what came to us by way of royalties and taxes from the same mining sector this year, against what miners took away, all read against our requirements “for economic development” which Nyandoro so sorely wishes us.
That way the second, dual faced myth of taxation versus indigenisation, could, hopefully, get finally exploded.
Beggaring a noble policy
I have sat in many investment-related meetings, here and abroad. To the meeting, the message coming through is that no one, none in this whole world, has any problems with the policy of indigenisation as we visualise it here. None at all. Quite the contrary, they find our policy quite mild-mannered, weakly and often corruptly implemented.
What is more, all that has been done since its inception has been words, voluminous words remarkably matched by absolutely no action on the ground. Spare me this nonsense about community share ownership. That is not indigenisation. It is only social responsibility which is an image-making exercise for serious corporates.
We have just made that corporate responsibility compulsory, poorly so too! Spare me this nonsense about chasing little African and Chinese retail outlet owners from messy Kaguvi road, before going to bed contentedly and heroically saying to our wives, we have indigenised! Bull . . . silly.
Far from doing anything for anyone, such stupid calls simply leave a noble policy in tatters, its proponents not just morally bankrupted, but sounding ridiculously mean and xenophobic. It’s coming across as a poor man’s desperate hard asset grabbing, sinking a big sharp dagger in the cornered back of Pan Africanism, the very spirit and impulse which has saved us and won us African support.
Why cheapen, beggar a noble policy, while looking away from where real wealth is being made and lost?
Speaking too much, at cross purposes
Botswana has harder policies on indigenisation than we do. Yet it gains fabulous FDI. Nigeria is beginning to give us man and women of real means, native investors who are beginning to go abroad, Strive-like. In relative terms, Nigeria calls for partnerships between locals and investors simply because it now has a dashing middle class.
Here the middle class is Government, for everyone else is either a manager or worse, a fawning fraud seeking to happen. What investors and investing nations have been complaining about is our lack of clarity and consistency on indigenisation, the lack of clarity on our policy on indigenisation.
We speak too much, speak at cross purposes. What is worse, we exploit an honourable, well-grounded and quite accepted and acceptable policy to feed our venality. And we seek to ingratiate ourselves with the white investor, we take a dig at that policy so as to look better, wiser, more reasonable than bad Africans.
All that, not indigenisation, has been the bane. Once we speak with one voice resolutely, once we make a real clear policy out of our aspiration to indigenise, the whole world will engage us, engage us on our terms. See what is beginning to happen in the chrome industry, once Government made it clear raw chrome exportation would attract punishing taxes.
Of course Biti hoped to spite the Chinese, upset them to poison their relations with Zanu-PF. But he has advanced Zimbabwe’s interests like he never intended. Many more myths abound and encrust us. I hope I can lay them bare for you so we begin to tackle the issue of our vision for the future.
Icho!
nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
Labels: NATHANIEL MANHERU, NELSON MANDELA
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(HERALD ZW) Rousing welcome for President in SA
December 11, 2013 Musah Gwaunza Headlines, Top Stories
From Mabasa Sasa in JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
PRESIDENT Mugabe received a rapturous welcome from upwards of 50 000 people who packed the giant Soccer City Stadium here for the memorial service of former South African president Nelson Rohihlahla Mandela who passed on last week. Incessant rains threatened to wash out the emotional event which drew leaders from over 90 countries, among them pop and film stars as well as 10 former heads of state and government.
President Mugabe — who was accompanied by First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe and children Ms Bona and Chatunga — was among the scores of leaders present at the giant stadium where the upbeat crowd gave the masters of ceremony a hard time.
When the Master of Ceremonies, ANC deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, announced that President Mugabe was among the dignitaries, his image was promptly beamed on the giant screens in the stadium drawing wild applause, cheers and blasts of vuvuzelas from the crowd that had earlier on jeered host President Jacob Zuma prompting the MC to skip Zuma’s name when he announced the dignitaries present to curb more jeers.
President Mugabe responded by smiling and waving to the crowd.
The other leaders who received similar acclaim were former South African president Thabo Mbeki, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and US president Barack Obama.
The stream of people — who included politicians, friends and family members – all said the same thing: Mr Mandela’s life was both long and well-lived.
After spending some 17 years as a firebrand anti-apartheid activist, Mr Mandela was jailed for 27 years only to swap his prison cell for the Office of the Presidency as South Africa’s first democratically-elected leader.
It was this triumph of patience and principle over oppression that the 50 000-odd people at Soccer City chose to focus on, even as the grieving visage of Mr Mandela’s widow – Graca Machel – and the incessant rain served to remind that it was death that had brought them all together.
The choice of Soccer City was inspired: This was the scene of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup Final, the first time the event was hosted on the continent, representing a sporting triumph that Africa still cherishes.
Royalty joined statesmen and women, and ordinary people from all over the world, in appreciating moving tribute after moving tribute that was given about Mr Mandela, a man who President Mugabe described as “a great champion of the emancipation of the oppressed” who was also “a humble and compassionate leader who showed selfless dedication to the service of his people”.
Family members, like General Thandaxolo and Mbuso Mandela, mixed it up with African Union Commission Chair Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, United Nations Secretary-General Mr ban Ki-moon, China’s Vice President Li Yuanchao and Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff in honouring Mr Mandela.
Cuba’s President Raul Castro Ruz recalled the strong bond between the Caribbean Island and Africa, drawing particular attention to the
landmark battle of Cuito Carnavale.
It was at this battle in 1987 that Cuban, Angolan, South African and Namibian fighters dealt a hefty blow to apartheid’s military. This
paved the way for Namibia’s independence three years later, and South Africa’s within the decade.
Before US President Barack Obama told the crowd that Mr Mandela “speaks to what is best inside us”, gospel stars Kirk Franklin and
Joyous Celebration whipped up already charged spirits with fine singing.
This was not time for dirges, those will come soon enough. Instead, happy song, dance and bright colours sat quite easily with the shrouds
and the black suits worn by some present.
Through the rain, applause and cheering were commonplace.
The biggest ovations were reserved for (naturally) President Zuma, Uhuru Kenyatta (Kenya), Joyce Banda (Malawi), Obama and – as has
become usual all over Africa – President Mugabe.
Namibia’s President Hifikepunye Pohamba, many of whose fellow Swapo members shared apartheid prison cells with Mr Mandela at Robben Island, delivered a sombre address in which he characterised the late freedom fighter as a “symbol of fundamental human values”.
These values, President Pohamba said, were freedom, peace and justice.
On concluding, the crowds broke into song once more – still undaunted by the pouring rain – much to the irritation of one of the MCs, ANC
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, who repeatedly tried to quiet them so that the programme could move along.
When Mr Ramaphosa was able to regain a measure of control, India’s President Pranab Mukherjee gave an outline of the extraordinary ties
between the two countries and the similarities between their respective great leaders.
And then it was President Zuma’s turn to recount that Mr Mandela was a courageous leader who was “able to abandon narrow concerns for bigger, all-embracing dreams, even if such dreams came at a huge cost”.
Quoting from a popular folk song, President Zuma said “there was no one like Mandela – he was one of a kind”.
“Today on International Human Rights Day, we celebrate Mandela, a man of peace; today on the 20th anniversary since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 1993, this freedom fighter”.
President Zuma noted that Mr Mandela was not afraid to fight, as he was instrumental in radicalising the ANC and was the first Commander-in-Chief of the armed wing of Africa’s oldest liberation movement.
As the crowds took their celebrations from the giant Soccer City and onto the streets of Johannesburg, there were many promises to
reconvene today (Wednesday) at Union Buildings for what promises to be a more sombre affair: the body viewing.
President Mugabe will be there, as will Amai Grace Mugabe and thousands of other people.
The week-long national mourning will come to an end with the burial of Mr Mandela in his ancestral village of Qunu in Eastern Cape Province.
Mr Mandela was born on July 18, 1918 in Umtata in Transkei.
In the 1940s he was to increasingly move away from his law career and gravitate to the centre of national politics, being subsequently
influential in the expulsion of an ANC President and formation of the Youth League.
As is well-known, he was to be jailed for close to three decades but in 1993 the ex-prisoner was to become a Nobel Peace Prize winner, an
honour he shared with the last president of apartheid, FW de Klerk.
What followed was a convincing victory for the ANC in the 1994 elections and Mr Mandela’s elevation to the Presidency of the country.
After retiring in 1999, Mr Mandela was to make his last public appearance at the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
In recent months, his health deteriorated and South Africa and the world finally faced up to the reality of Mr Mandela’s mortality.
Labels: LAND REFORM, NELSON MANDELA, ROBERT MUGABE, SOUTH AFRICA
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(HERALD ZW) Zimbabwe: Myth-making and Myth-eating
December 7, 2013
Nathaniel Manheru
"David Cameron at Heathrow Airport with some of the delegation flying with him to China. – The Guardian"
My deep condolences to the Mandela family and South Africa on the passing on of Madiba. May his soul finally rest in eternal peace.
West call, Chinese curse
Zimbabwe has received many myths, repeated them, expanded them, fed on them, munched them to specter-thinness. Of course her hope was for an all-weather nourishment. For that very reason, Zimbabweans have been unable to clearly envision, unable to lay their hands firmly on reality.
Last week I gave you a slice of such myth-receiving, myth-making, myth-expansion and myth-eating. And the rich slice was that the West is Zimbabwe’s call, while China is Zimbabwe’s curse. Zimbabwe’s salvation would come from the West, so the myth goes. Native voices were conscripted to validate that myth in a chorus, a myth which is white to the pith. And to even elaborate on it and give it profound colour.
Best with received thoughts
The white boss wants us to remain tethered to him forever. He invents gorgons to frighten us from venturing beyond the oppressive circle he has enchanted, a circle that we can’t break. We wonder round and round, unable to break that spell of servitude. And when the white oppressor tells us how grateful we should be to be in that circle, how well we must behave as his slaves, we quickly pick up the lethal exhortation, elaborate on it, bedeck it with formidable statistics in order to make it unassailable, to make it perfect and enduring enough to blight our own children, their scions and many black generations to come.
We are always at our best with a received thought – a mis-thought! And it fires us into blind raillery: against ourselves, against our own, against our futures. Cry the accursed race.
Best across the Crocodile river
Last week’s statistically-backed argument attempted to perforate that blighting myth. It is yet to be thoughtfully challenged. Not the crass challenge it got from Muckraker, that white centurion by the gates of the myth-making chamber where vile thoughts are cooked. Dear reader, what you must grasp is that once imperialism loses state power, loses instruments of coercion, loses even the ballot, its recourse is mental games that allow it to retain its hegemony.
This is why any attempts at challenging that remaining zone of vestigial hegemony invites vicious rebuke. Such as I got from Muckraker for merely stating the obvious. We are all supposed to be unthinking when the white man hands down a nugget thought! Muckraker takes himself for the best editor north of the Crocodile River, regards himself the best authority and guardian of Rhodesian history.
Yet in spite of this claimed enormous knowledge and skills, he misses an elementary distinction: the difference between settlers and intruders. By giving us a smaller figure meant to capture white settlers who blighted our land by their permanent residence, he thinks he makes lighter the burden of oppression that the black Zimbabwean suffered for close on to a century, still suffers in politically post-colonial, economically colonial Zimbabwe.
The one who bear scars
But I am black and oppressed. I know the tongs of oppression that scarred my skin, the hard forced labor that caroused my hands, that gave me lasting scars. All that came from white oppressors who came into my life, into my country, whether or not they stayed temporarily or stayed to their grave or to now.
Only a fellow white man would know and count those who came to leave, distinguishing them from those who came and stayed. For he was the one to lose a friend, a neighbour, or gain either or both. What I saw with black-red eyes was an endless chain of white oppressors coming in, coming to me, terror in hand.
None ever left, many made way to each other as they took turns to abuse me. By way of their oppression, there was no distinction. And hey Mister Muckraker, the one who counts accurately is the one who is mounted, indeed the one who bear and suffers the harsh cut. Since Muckraker is an historian — and only last week I was reading a piece of research he published in one of the Rhodesian journals in the 1970s – let him tell us where exactly Rhodes’ men – his symbolic forebears — slaughtered Lobengula, indeed where they hid the poor King’s abused remains.
I am sure that is a more useful start to the story of white brutality and oppression here. Not this myth about two hundred thousand plus white settlers here. Or about King Lobengula committing suicide in his northward flight. Not this diversionary journey to “Tibet” as if we need to go that far to learn oppression, we who carry its scars. Why is he not talking about Wales, Scotland, Gibraltar and Malvinas?
Only facing East
But grant him ground. He says: “When Zimbabweans talk of zhingzhong, that is not something invented by whites”. He is right, dead right and we should listen to him, understand him and his kind. As I write, Cameron is just back from a long trip to China. The published image on that visit is a massive Virgin Airbus, overflowing with British businessmen who were part of Cameron’s delegation.
He led a massive, all-manner British delegation of 131, all to help him plead for Chinese investments, Chinese money. Tactfully, the trip was framed as one seeking to persuade China to do business with Europe. In reality, the trip was for needy Britain seeking to escape the riotous fate of Spain, made more likely each day that passes.
The major economies of Europe are actually not pleased with him for inviting the dragon into the EU. But, as the editor of the British Guardian noted, there was something of mendicant in the trip! I am sure for Muckraker, Cameron did not “look East”. He merely “faced East”, with “zhingzhong” being a place he visited, never a description of Chinese wares, or their quality.
Incidentally, this is Cameron’s second visit to China.
Only an old European country
Cameron met a new China, a China way above its weak, dynastic past. Much soberer, stronger, certainly richer, this new China would no longer be coerced into taking opium by British gunboats. Not even into losing its Tibet. Or its politics. Not in a hurry to forgive Cameroon for an impulsive and populist tete-a-tete with the hugely-symbolic-in-the-West-but-politically-empty-at-home Dalai Lama, China, through one of its authoritative papers, foully reminded Cameron that Britain was nothing more than an historical relic in Chinese eyes.
Part of the editorial ran: “The Cameron administration should acknowledge that the UK is not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese. It is just an old European country apt for travel and study. This has gradually become the habitual thought of the Chinese people.” I am sure that hurt, wounded British pride, pierces Muckraker’s empire ego, leaving gushing scarlet.
It helps for Britain and all her children, whether at home and abroad, to know that this is in fact more than a Chinese view. The editorial summarised the world’s view of Britain, including that of her previous colonial subjects who now know that beneath the feathery horn of the proverbial owl is no gore!
When the wheel has turned
More hurt came. Among the key investments Britain hoped to attract from China was for its rail system, for a long time ailing, directionless since privatisation. History records that China’s maiden attempt at rail was done by the British, way way back in 1876, the age when Britain once mattered. No trains ever ran on that track.
Only the second attempt succeeded, prospered. It came in 1881, all under the supervision of an English engineer, Claude William Kinder. And the locomotives that followed the track puffed greater glory to Robert Stephenson, a British inventor! Today the land of Stephenson and Kinder seeks Chinese intervention for Britain to have fast moving trains.
Britain, the train-master, is now by the rail station, waiting, desperate to catch a lift from a Chinese bullet train. Not a very kind fate, if you ask me. And yes Mr Editor of the Guardian, the wheel has indeed turned!
Mad pig disease
As a write, reports are now taking stock of Cameron’s visit. One of his major breakthroughs during that visit reportedly is a £45million business proposal by which Great Britain will export hog semen and trotters of pigs that no longer grunt, export all that to China. Grunt, grunt, gruuuuunt!
At least it is far, far better than opium. One hopes China is not importing mad cow, sorry mad pig, disease. And receiving trotters that kill, not arouse Chinese desire. Real food for thought if you ask me.
Myth of junkets
But yes, all this is for Zimbabweans to note. Muckraker is right to say it is not whites who speak of zhingzhong. They cannot, for they are busy courting China, flooding its markets for succour. Those who speak of zhingzhong are “Zimbabweans” — you and me at the instigation of whites already aboard a plane to Beijing!
Wake up Zimbabwe, shake off the myth and then understand why it is in the interest of the West and Rhodesians to incite you against China, to cultivate an anti-Chinese sentiment designed to avert any strengthening partnership between us. Surely a whole old imperial country does not cart itself to China of junkets? This is the first myth we need to cast off.
The bogey of indigenisation
Tapiwa Nyandoro always writes quite boldly. His latest instalment advises the Zimbabwe Government to “suspend indefinitely its indigenisation policy and replace it with the “thin capitalization rule” to raise tax and broaden the tax base.” I don’t know what “thin capitalisation rule” means, or says.
I hope he does, which leaves one wondering why such a crucial part of his recommendation is not digested, but shoved down the reader so indigestibly. Whatever he means by that phrase, his recommendation betrays his image of Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans: we are a good-for-nothing-else-but-taxation bunch.
We must build our nation on taxes. Our role and fortunes must be viewed in terms of taxes, we the tax-collecting Nation. But beyond all this, there is a clear thesis to say indigenisation policy is the real problem foreign direct investment is shunning us, skirting around our country.
When capital proves less timid
Nyandoro throws in very succulent figures: $1,35 trillion as value of global FDI in 2012. Out of this $50billion went to Africa, led by Nigeria, Mozambique, South Africa, DRC and Ghana. Zimbabwe — our Zimbabwe — bagged a paltry $400million out of all that. Poor Zimbabwe, opines Nyandoro, plaintively advising this wretch of a country to please “prioritize FDI-friendly policy measures for economic development”.
I said we are notorious for receiving myths, regurgitating them after munching them. Here is a case of square figures being forced into round conclusions. The countries that grabbed much of the $50bn that came to Africa are no different, no better, no more righteous than poor Zimbabwe.
Quite the contrary, they leave one wondering why timid FDI regained boldness to venture into them. Three of them have conflicts. Or rumours of them. Two are quiet but facing social threats arising from acute inequities, acute marginalisation of their indigenes. Some of these social conflicts have forebodingly spilled blood.
But all are natural-resource rich, covering a whole gamut of mineral resources including that dark, dank liquid, oil. Or its more refined, airy twin — natural gas. All this apart from a whole range of minerals they richly have. Is that not the key consideration, which by the way also account for the destination of the paltry $400million which came our way in spite of sanctions and our odious indigenisation and land policies?
They still put in $400million, in spite of our policies which Nyandoro says block investments. He thinks we should not indigenise as that amounts to seeking more instead of being content to collect tax, thinly collect tax.
Where are the billions from minerals?
I just hope Nyandoro read a business story in yesterday’s Herald. I will summarise it for him in case he didn’t. Headlined “Mining firms bank 3pc of revenue”, the story revealed that a mere 3 percent out of about $2billion which foreign mining firms get from our resources find its way into our banks!
The rest goes overseas. Meanwhile the country reels from illiquidity, blaming itself, its politics, its politicians and its policies for this bad situation. It does worse. It hopes from continent to continent to seek more debts, including from those economies which receive fabulous receipts from our minerals.
Frigidly, these economies will not give us anything, not even loans from money that came from us! I really wish vaChidhakwa could share with the Nation what came to us by way of royalties and taxes from the same mining sector this year, against what miners took away, all read against our requirements “for economic development” which Nyandoro so sorely wishes us.
That way the second, dual faced myth of taxation versus indigenisation, could, hopefully, get finally exploded.
Beggaring a noble policy
I have sat in many investment-related meetings, here and abroad. To the meeting, the message coming through is that no one, none in this whole world, has any problems with the policy of indigenisation as we visualise it here. None at all. Quite the contrary, they find our policy quite mild-mannered, weakly and often corruptly implemented.
What is more, all that has been done since its inception has been words, voluminous words remarkably matched by absolutely no action on the ground. Spare me this nonsense about community share ownership. That is not indigenisation. It is only social responsibility which is an image-making exercise for serious corporates.
We have just made that corporate responsibility compulsory, poorly so too! Spare me this nonsense about chasing little African and Chinese retail outlet owners from messy Kaguvi road, before going to bed contentedly and heroically saying to our wives, we have indigenised! Bull . . . silly.
Far from doing anything for anyone, such stupid calls simply leave a noble policy in tatters, its proponents not just morally bankrupted, but sounding ridiculously mean and xenophobic. It’s coming across as a poor man’s desperate hard asset grabbing, sinking a big sharp dagger in the cornered back of Pan Africanism, the very spirit and impulse which has saved us and won us African support.
Why cheapen, beggar a noble policy, while looking away from where real wealth is being made and lost?
Speaking too much, at cross purposes
Botswana has harder policies on indigenisation than we do. Yet it gains fabulous FDI. Nigeria is beginning to give us man and women of real means, native investors who are beginning to go abroad, Strive-like. In relative terms, Nigeria calls for partnerships between locals and investors simply because it now has a dashing middle class.
Here the middle class is Government, for everyone else is either a manager or worse, a fawning fraud seeking to happen. What investors and investing nations have been complaining about is our lack of clarity and consistency on indigenisation, the lack of clarity on our policy on indigenisation.
We speak too much, speak at cross purposes. What is worse, we exploit an honourable, well-grounded and quite accepted and acceptable policy to feed our venality. And we seek to ingratiate ourselves with the white investor, we take a dig at that policy so as to look better, wiser, more reasonable than bad Africans.
All that, not indigenisation, has been the bane. Once we speak with one voice resolutely, once we make a real clear policy out of our aspiration to indigenise, the whole world will engage us, engage us on our terms. See what is beginning to happen in the chrome industry, once Government made it clear raw chrome exportation would attract punishing taxes.
Of course Biti hoped to spite the Chinese, upset them to poison their relations with Zanu-PF. But he has advanced Zimbabwe’s interests like he never intended. Many more myths abound and encrust us. I hope I can lay them bare for you so we begin to tackle the issue of our vision for the future.
Icho!
nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw
Labels: NATHANIEL MANHERU, NELSON MANDELA
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(WHAT'S LEFT) Why the West Loves Mandela (and Hates Mugabe)
Posted in Mandela, Mugabe by what's left on December 9, 2013
By Stephen Gowans
In the wake of Nelson Mandela’s death, hosannas continue to be sung to the former ANC leader and South African president from both the left, for his role in ending the institutional racism of apartheid, and from the right, for ostensibly the same reason. But the right’s embrace of Mandela as an anti-racist hero doesn’t ring true. Is there another reason establishment media and mainstream politicians are as Mandela-crazy as the left?
According to Doug Saunders, reporter for the unabashedly big business-promoting Canadian daily, The Globe and Mail, there is.
In a December 6 article, “From revolutionary to economic manager: Mandela’s lesson in change,” Saunders writes that Mandela’s “great accomplishment” was to protect the South African economy as a sphere for exploitation by the white property-owning minority and Western corporate and financial elite from the rank-and-file demands for economic justice of the movement he led.
Saunders doesn’t put it in quite these terms, hiding the sectional interests of bond holders, land owners, and foreign investors behind Mandela’s embrace of “sound” principles of economic management, but the meaning is the same.
Saunders quotes Alec Russell, a Financial Times writer who explains that under Mandela, the ANC “proved a reliable steward of sub-Sahara Africa’s largest economy, embracing orthodox fiscal and monetary policies…” That is, Mandela made sure that the flow of profits from South African mines and agriculture into the coffers of foreign investors and the white business elite wasn’t interrupted by the implementation of the ANC’s economic justice program, with its calls for nationalizing the mines and redistributing land.
Instead, Mandela dismissed calls for economic justice as a “culture of entitlement” of which South Africans needed to rid themselves. That he managed to persuade them to do so meant that the peaceful digestion of profits by those at the top could continue uninterrupted.
But it was not Mandela’s betrayal of the ANC’s economic program that Saunders thinks merits the right’s admiration, though the right certainly is grateful. Mandela’s genius, according to Saunders, was that he did it “without alienating his radical followers or creating a dangerous factional struggle within his movement.”
Thus, in Saunder’s view, Mandela was a special kind of leader: one who could use his enormous prestige and charisma to induce his followers to sacrifice their own interests for the greater good of the elite that had grown rich off their sweat, going so far as to acquiesce in the repudiation of their own economic program.
“Here is the crucial lesson of Mr. Mandela for modern politicians,” writes Saunders.
“The principled successful leader is the one who betrays his party members for the larger interests of the nation. When one has to decide between the rank-and-file and the greater good, the party should never come first.”
For Saunders and most other mainstream journalists, “the larger interests of the nation” are the larger interests of banks, land owners, bond holders and share holders. This is the idea expressed in the old adage “What’s good for GM, is good for America.”
Since mainstream media are large corporations, interlocked with other large corporations, and are dependent on still other large corporations for advertising revenue, the placing of an equal sign between corporate interests and the national interest comes quite naturally. Would we be shocked to discover that a mass-circulation newspaper owned by environmentalists (if such a thing existed) opposed fracking? (Journalists will rejoin, “I say what I like.” But as Michael Parenti once pointed out, journalists say what they like because their bosses like what they say.)
Predictably, Saunders ends his encomium to the party-betraying Mandela, the ‘good’ liberation hero, with a reference to the ‘bad’ south African liberation hero, Robert Mugabe. “One only needs look north to Zimbabwe to see what usually happens when revolutionaries” fail to follow Mandela’s economically conservative path, writes Saunders.
At one point, Mugabe’s predilection for orthodox fiscal and monetary policy was a strong as Mandela’s. Yet after almost a decade-and-a-half of the Western media demonizing Mugabe as an autocratic thug, it’s difficult to remember that he, too, was once the toast of Western capitals.
The West’s love affair with Mugabe came to an abrupt end when he rejected the Washington Consensus and embarked on a fast-track land reform program. Its disdain for him deepened when he launched an indigenization program to place majority control of the country’s mineral resources in the hands of black Zimbabweans.
Mugabe’s transition from ‘good’ liberation hero to ‘bad’, from saint to demon, coincided with his transition from “reliable steward” of Zimbabwe’s economy (that is, reliable steward of foreign investor and white colonial settler interests) to promoter of indigenous black economic interests.
That’s a transition Mandela never made. Had he, the elite of the imperialist world would not now be flocking to South Africa for Saint Mandela’s funeral, overflowing with fulsome eulogies.
Labels: NELSON MANDELA, NEOCOLONIALISM, ROBERT MUGABE, STEPHEN GOWANS
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