ARTICLE: TRAMPLING INTOLERANCE – WHY 16 NOVEMBER IS IMPORTANT
2017-11-16
The UN declared 1995 the year of Tolerance.
The UN declared 1995 the year of Tolerance.
As the country holds its collective breath for the ANC Elective Conference, currently scheduled for 16 to 20 December 2017, to come and go, the mistaken assumption is that the troubles of the land too shall pass, post this event.
In a recent memorial lecture to Oliver Tambo, the now former Minister of Higher Education, Blade Nzimande, lifted the veil on how the SACP sees and understands the source of the current state capture. The news headlines claim that at its core, his speech speaks of a country in the early phase of a securocracy. However, that is not at the heart of his speech. It is Nzimande’s first speech after being dismissed by Zuma, and he is doing his analysis of what went wrong, holding Tambo up as an example. This analysis brings some interesting, and some troubling, issues to the fore.
It is important to remember that the SACP leadership was instrumental in Polokwane in 2007 in toppling Mbeki and voting Zuma in. Zuma rewarded them for this with a disproportionate number of Cabinet posts. This allowed them to further the SACP and ANC’s National Democratic Revolution (NDR), among others by smuggling socialist elements into policy (such as the draft legislation on property rights).
The recent “Black Monday” protests have again highlighted how emotional the issues of farm attacks and farm murders are. There was both support for and criticism against the protests, the latter fuelled by some protesters making a political statement by waving the old South African flag.
Some historical background may be instructive. The Mandela government did a great deal to classify the phenomenon of farm attacks as a special category of crime, and to confront it. Among other initiatives, there was a national conference on the matter, a Rural Protection Plan, and establishing committees to implement the Plan. This was done in the early 2000s, in cooperation with the established commando system, which most farmers were part of.
Join us for a discussion hosted by the Centre for Unity in Diversity (CUD), supported by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS).
While the outgoing ANC president is heading in his own direction, outside the control of the ANC, the government, and Parliament, the battle for a new ANC president is continuing. There are still three main scenarios for a winner (in alphabetical order): Dlamini-Zuma, Mkhize and Ramaphosa.
According to the numbers of delegates from the various provinces that have now been determined, it is clear that there has been strong growth in Mpumalanga (736 delegates), and only KwaZulu-Natal has more (870). The Eastern Cape and Limpopo come in at three and four (648 and 643 respectively). North West and Gauteng are in the middle group (538 and 508), with the Free State (409), Northern Cape (197) and Western Cape (182) at the lower end. The branches make up 90% of the 5 300 delegates, with the rest coming from the Leagues and the Provincial Executive Committees (PECs).
There is a rich irony when Finance Minister Gigaba quotes at length from one of Africa’s foremost poets and novelists, Ben Okri, followed a few lines later in his speech with a quote from Nobel Laureate, Amartya Sen.
It is a great pleasure for me to be able to address you this evening during this – my first – visit to Panama.
Panama City is one of the great crossroads of the world – between the two largest oceans – the Atlantic and Pacific, and between the two continents of the new world, North and South America.
There is considerable irony when the United Nations’ (UN) International Day for the Eradication of Poverty falls on the day that the President of the country plays fast and loose with the country’s people and resources, driven by unguarded self-interest and self-enrichment.