I understand that your take isn't exactly on the opposite side of Franco, but you should understand my concern about how the anti-globalization movements are being domesticated and controlled by people who think they know what is best for other people. If you want to listen to speakers, that your choice. But don't get in the way of those who want to burn the convention center down.
> Don't forget, this march was banned until late last week, and stun grenades
> were tossed by cops into the previous march from Wits University, with world
> tv cameras rolling, which was no mistake. I wasn't at the scene on Saturday
> when the attempted breach by a few unwashed m's happened. With so many
> people walking uphill 10km in the hot sun, and facing the most serious line
> of cops and army assembled since apartheid (just as formidable as anything I
> ever saw from the mid-'80s-'90s), if a few energetic young men had tried to
> storm the line, it would have been suicide, or at best a momentary
> distraction followed by a handful of pointless arrests. Our leading
> comrades' rhetoric in the run-up to the march -- "We will take Sandton!",
> "We will blockade the delegates!" -- was not atypical for the insurgent left
> narrative in contemporary South Africa. But when someone with the courage
> and respect in the local mass movements of a Trevor Ngwane (author of those
> two quotes) reads prospects for an insurgency as an impossible logistical
> exercise, I'd certainly take his lead over adventurism.
What right does Mr. Ngwane have to make decisions for everybody. Was he elected or something?
> The mass march on Saturday was one culmination of thousands of acts of
> resistance being codified in a left project still under construction. (I
> highly recommend the gripping new Ashwin Desai book, "We are the Poors",
> from MR, for more info, and if anyone's interested in my own new book
> "Unsustainable SA: Environment, Development and Social Protest," which
> describes in more boring academic detail the controversies, let me know
> offlist.) The comrades who spoke from the truck included some with
> last-century rhetoric, sure, but they are understood as the genuine organic
> leaders of masses of people. The masses of people *do* still articulate
> their grievances in the preachy/chanty mode.
The masses of people fall into chant mode because sectarians with agendas keep them in that mode. Here in the U.S., the ISO and organized big labor fill that role. They do whatever they can to discourage confrontations and they sing sweet songs that are aimed at getting militants to "work with people" and "be concerned about our image."
In other words, this is the smae old bullshit where the black bloc is left high and dry, even if we went out of our fucking way to work with the more moderate groups.
Likewise, "Phansi Capitalism
> Phansi" is a profoundly popular call-and-reply. Ngwane is a socialist
> Rastaman with great charisma and an hilarious self-deprecating sense of
> humour (as witnessed on a nationally-televised 1/2 hour tribute to Dennis
> Brutus last night where he admitted he was full of hyperbole). He is
> bringing this rhetoric into internationalist terrain, maintaining a strong
> presense in the local/global struggles to shut the WB; his anti-imperialism
> is vibrant. It's silly for me to take one exceptional comrade as an example;
> there are probably fifty others of the calibre of Ngwane around SA, and a
> new layer building all the time.
>
> But Franco's correct that there are also those who take forward the
> 1970s-90s traditions of anti-apartheid didacticism-from-the-platform without
> much translation. Nevertheless, speeches by a Malawian, two Zimbabweans, and
> two internationalists from via Campesino and the WSF were appreciated, by
> the reactions I saw around, and nicely tied the movement into regional and
> global problems. What's new and different about Mbeki's New Partnership for
> Africa's Development, by the way, is the strong evidence of an SA
> subimperialist project now in its infancy. So it was incredible that two
> dozen Malawians drove two days from Lilongwe and camped out in a hostel at
> my wee son's school, along with two dozen very radical Zimbabweans, meeting
> similar though smaller delegations from Swaziland, Lesotho, Ghana, Senegal
> and Zambia at the militant (anti-WB-IMF/anti-Nepad) Africa Social Forum last
> week. These comrades have been circulating all over, adding the necessary
> warning to the local crowd, that Southern Africans will soon need solidarity
> against the depradations of Jo'burg capital and Pretoria politicians. (The
> Zim comrades have been saying this since Mugabe began beating them up, with
> Mbeki's winks and nods, and so the controversy with the landless was a
> necessary stage of conscientisation.)
I'm all for good speakers, but we have this problem in the U.S.A. where the left has been domesticated by leftist passivity for the past 30 years. I don't know the nuances of the current state of dissent in South Africa, but we've seen examples at S11 (Melbourne) and other summit protests where the revolt of those in the streets was co-opted and tamed by OUR OWN PEOPLE.
> Finally, back to where we started: the minor distraction of march logistics.
> There were marshalls last year at the World Conference Against Racism march
> in Durban, including from Keep Left (a former IS-aligned local group which
> for awhile went entryist into the SACP but which has several dozen dedicated
> activists to AntiPrivatisation Forum and anti-neolib struggles). Yes,
> because of a democratically-determined strategy, they were authoritarian
> about preventing a small group from immolating on the police line protecting
> Kofi Annan and Thabo Mbeki. Was that because they were Trotskyist? At the
> march on Saturday, Keep Left was not a factor. There are no other active
> Trotskyist groupuscules in SA with more than a dozen cadres, although come
> to think of it, I've seen more copies of Workers Vanguard around than usual
> the last few days. The call generally being made from grounded
> revolutionaries in the unions and communities (including Ngwane) is for a
> "mass workers' party." I think that's premature, personally, because the
> linkage of militant particularisms is still so fragile, and a major trade
> union break from the ruling party is a prerequisite. But actually, Saturday
> witnessed a profound strengthening of the threads connecting those fighting
> for free lifeline water and electricity, a moratorium on evictions from land
> and housing, free education, free antiretroviral medicines, an end to (*not*
> reform of) the IMF/WB/WTO, and the demise of the neoliberal ruling party's
> privatisation and other macroeconomic policies, and indeed the downfall of
> the ANC itself.
My opinion? All parade marshalls should be treated like cops. It doesn't matter if they are paid by the government or if they raise their funds by selling bad party newspapers.
> I do think Franco's terribly misguided about the need to avoid a "unifying
> identity." Activists and ordinary people here do speak in a fairly
> consistent tone of voice against violations of their human dignity, and are
> post-nationalist in the sense of not resorting to the kinds of easy ANC
> loyalties that are so tempting in the traditions of African nationalism. The
> task of stitching the anti-neoliberal campaigns, demands, struggles,
> grassroots organisations and entire movements into a coherent front,
> programme, network and maybe party stands logically ahead.
I can understand to have consistent messages about certain issues, but that doesn't translate into "united front" politics, which the Left here in the US is still trying to force down our throats.
I support those who resist efforts to build a united front and party. We don't need a united party to defeat capitalism. We need to take our fight to the capitalists.
> So in reality, in contrast to your spin, comrade Chuck, the leaders of A31
> got nowhere near the palace gates. They had, in contrast, explicitly
> rejected a cooption gambit a few days before, when some labour/NGO twits
> announced their desire to unite the Global Civ Soc Forum with the Social
> Movements Indaba. The month before, leaders like Brutus and MP Giyosi from
> Jubilee rejected a gimmick from other NGOers to unite under the SA "Social
> Forum" brand, tying into the WSF, so as to give the pro-ANC gathering more
> credibility (those same NGOers pulled out of the pro-ANC activities in the
> nick of time, on Friday).
Sounds like there is some progress on these matters.
> Indeed, it's safe to report, the leaders and the mass publicly beheaded
> Essop Pahad when he came to the Speaker's Corner. Yesterday's
> Sowetan/SundayWorld (the largest circulation black paper) led with a picture
> of Pahad under the huge heading "Voetsek!" (i.e., fuck off, in the manner
> that an old-school Afrikaner farmer tells his labourer, or the labourer
> tells the dog). Pahad's manhandling off the truck was nationally televised
> and was a profound humiliation to the presidency, not the other way around
> as Franco strangely infers. Setshedi accomplished this politely, in part by
> sarcastically saying "comrade" Pahad, and by not whipping up the crowd --
> something that she excells at when she wants to, as anyone who has seen her
> in Washington, Calgary, Cochabamba or Narmada over the last year knows. The
> mass (or multitude or whatever fad term works for you) knew their choice:
> have Pahad respectfully accept the memo and dish out some anti-poverty and
> probably anti-yankee rhetoric, or send a signal that the ruling party has no
> legitimacy. In my experience working in townships here since the late 1980s,
> this mass is more radical-democratic and participatory, and the leaders more
> attuned to amplifying (not suppressing) grassroots demands and activism, and
> the militancy against neoliberalism more robust and deep-rooted, than
> anything the old national liberation movement would have allowed.
Interesting.
> I'm a backroom academic (and a white expat to boot) when it comes to these
> matters, by way of disclaimer, so can't say with certainty that the warning
> flags Franco is waving aren't without any merit. But today, radicals in SA
> are vastly ahead of where they stood on Saturday morning. This is progress,
> to be denied only by those on our right, or by those with the most
> unrealistic of expectations, like Franco in this instance.
That's good to hear. I see these things as a person in the activist trenches. I'm really worried that concern about our "image" and a fall-back to passive protest will take the wind out of our sails in North America. I've tried to be more tolerant of sectarian leftists in our movements, but I worry about how they domesticate dissent.
Chuck0
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