working class civil society

Patrick Bond pbond at wn.apc.org
Fri Nov 12 01:47:26 PST 1999



> Patrick, for those of us in this great civil society of ours but not in
the
> know, could you please elaborate? ...
> I believe that the process of co-optation of NGOs as useful
> tools of government has gone pretty far already. And this
includes South
> Africa where, despite Patrick's valiant attempts and his
desperate search
> for exceptions, it is clear the big civil society battalions have
mostly
> become mere fronts for business.
> Russell

Please elaborate? A desperate search for exceptions? Did you miss those 21kb of lefty civil society struggles against the 1994-99 neolib policies and personalities of the SA state? (I didn't even get to anti-corporate and anti-IMF/WB campaigning...)

I begged you for restraint, cde Russell, but you couldn't hold that cynical bile down, eh?!

(For those wondering why petit-bourgeois white guys in a wonderful class/race-struggle setting like SA distract each other with occasional e-attacks, be assured we also share a regular beer on each other's turf and we're smiling while typing. Russell's got a mean wit but a good heart and good street-cred with Eastern Cape working-class civil society, though he wouldn't admit it because it might detract from the working-class-is-dead thesis that LM orders him to bait the local comrades with.)

(And for the record, contrary to flattering allegation, I do virtually no anti-WTO work simply because there are at least a dozen great techy-comrades doing fantastic surgical and political work in this area...)

Patrick Bond (Wits University Graduate School of Public and Development Management) home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094, Johannesburg office: 22 Gordon Building, Wits University Parktown Campus mailing address: PO Box 601 WITS 2050 phones: (h) (2711) 614-8088; (o) 488-5917; fax 484-2729 emails: (h) pbond at wn.apc.org; (o) bondp at zeus.mgmt.wits.ac.za



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