SOUTH AFRICAN IMPERIALISM
A new report by Simeka Management Consultants shows that South Africa has emerged as a major economic player in Africa, becoming the largest single investor in the continent. For years, the Apartheid regime developed an economic powerhouse on the basis of the aggressive subordination of the black working class. Economic sanctions against Pretoria had the effect of protecting frontline states from the superior competitiveness of apartheid goods. Now that the African National Congress is in power, sanctions have been taken down and South Africa is on the way to dominating the region.
It was not always thus. Two years ago a discussion paper prepared by the ANC's partners, the South African Communist Party bemoaned the 'systemic capitalist crisis' 'rooted in a classical crisis of over-accumulation and declining profitability' (The Current Global Economic Crisis and its implications for SA). The paper warned of the prospect that 'the centre- left will be confronted with the task of managing the capitalist crisis', adding 'We cannot decline this responsibility'.
And didn't they do well! The 'crisis' of late 1997 turned out to be episodic rather than systemic. Pointedly, South African capital took advantage of the period 1994-8 to buy into Zambian and Zimbabwean electricity, Ashanti Goldfields, railways in Cameroon, Madagascar, Mali and Senegal, Kenyan Breweries and banks in Mauritius and Mozambique. As South Africa's capitalists have basked in the reflected glory of the ANC's government, they have invested heavily in Sub-Saharan Africa and swamped it with exports. At the same time country's political leaders have become international statesmen, brokering new settlements in the Congo, Burundi and Zimbabwe.
The Bulletin of Current Trends, July 2000 is available by e-mail from sheilas at simeka.co.za
REGULATED SEX PLEASE, WE'RE BRITISH
Home Office Minister Charles Clarke announced a re-haul of Britain's antiquated sex laws. Discrimination against homosexuality will be removed from the statue books, 'buggery' will be de-criminalised, new laws will be put in place to stop people in authority having sex with those under them and the evidence of rape will be made less testing.
The drive behind the reform is confused, especially since the government itself does not understand what it is doing. On the one hand Prime Minister Blair thinks that the traditionalist underpinnings of sex laws are outdated - specifically the discrimination against homosexuality. On the other hand, Blair is preoccupied with shoring up the family. Blair is not from the same liberal mould as former Labour Home secretary Roy Jenkins, who first legalised homosexuality and abortion in 1967. On the contrary, Blair's every instinct is towards greater regulation.
The proposals to outlaw sexual relations with people under your authority is designed to stop teachers and college lecturers from seducing pupils above 16 - already a matter subject to professional discipline. The introduction of this measure into the review is a sop to those fantasists who complained that abolishing section 28 would lead to teachers buggering their pupils. The legislation has the effect of compromising the rights of young people who have reached the age of consent from giving their consent. For the first time in fifty years the law is restricting consent. Worse, it is blurring the meaning of consent, by calling into question young people's ability to decide for themselves.
The proposal to make the test for rape easier is born of the same instinct for control, and distrust of ordinary people. Convinced that rape is a common, not an exceptional feature of working class life, the Home Office is frustrated at its failure to get more convictions. Despite the Crown Prosecution Service sending many more cases to court, juries have steadfastly refused to increase convictions. Now the government is preparing to redefine rape to win cases. A proposal to remove the proof of intent means that defendants cannot argue that they misunderstood the signals. There is a potential for a much greater legal regulation of people's personal lives.
The demand for the new framework arises out of the collapse of traditional family values. However, this is not happening in the context of liberalisation, but in one of greater regulation. The government's proposal to remove the discriminatory Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act that forbade the promotion of homosexuality in schools was struck down by the House of Lords. Blair fears - wrongly - that this reform made his government unpopular (his government is unpopular because it has no roots in society beyond Islington). Though the fear that his government is 'soft on perverts' exists more in his imagination than the public's, Blair is keen to offset it by introducing new laws regulating sexual behaviour.
Blair might think that he is showing his support for family values, but in fact his new regime of sex crimes will only serve to undermine families - not because of what it permits, but what it outlaws. Legal regulation of sexual relations tends to exacerbate, conflict, not calm it. Already divorce proceedings are aggravated by strategic accusations of abuse and cruelty. Where sexual relations are seen first as a source of harm it is not surprising that 28 per cent of Britons and 34 per cent of Londoners live alone.
PAEDOPHILE PANIC
The News of the World's decision to publicise the identities of child sex offenders following the murder of Sarah Payne has been denounced by the police, Home Office and liberal media in Britain. Already several people have been attacked, many of them cases of mistaken identity. Denunciations of the News of the World, however, are hypocritical. It was not the tabloid papers, nor the residents of housing estates, who started the paedophile panic. It was the liberal media, the police and the social workers. A Sex Offenders Register is kept by the police following the hysterical lobbying of the social work profession. Activists like writer Bea Campbell and social worker Judith Jones raised crazy panics over child sexual abuse that led to hundreds of children wrongly being taken from their parents in Cleveland, Orkney and Oxfordshire. The myth that there are people who are programmed to commit child sex offences was not propagated by the News of the World, but in the broadsheets. In fact, the rate of recidivism for child sex offences is lower than for most other offences, except murder.
The liberal intelligentsia are appalled by the spectre of mob rule, but what really appals them is the reflection of their own illiberal prejudices in the actions of ordinary people. Far from leading to mob rule, the News of the World story is a damp squib. Only a hundred people turned out for a march organised by Mothers Against Murder and Aggression in support of the News of the World. Sporadic acts of violence are a real threat to those accused, but the truth is that only the very vulnerable are prone to be wholly taken over by the paedophile panic - old ladies and Social Workers.
-- James Heartfield
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