Sharpening an Old Tool

Did you hear what the lumberjack said about his beloved axe?  He’d had it for 20 years.  He replaced the head once a year, and the handle whenever it cracked, but that same old axe was still going strong.

This reminds me of The C4L Reporter.  Back in the days when we used mostly print media, we tried to get it out at least once a year.  It was nice to write about C4L and its themes for general readers, as opposed to donor-specific reports.

Then came the swing to digital media and for a few years C4L’s e-mail bulletins contained its news, not editorial comment.  Sightings of The C4L Reporter became rare.

Then with a programming shift into advocacy and lobbying, C4L’s e-mail bulletins shifted to editorial content.  Earlier this year, some of these were clustered into three “silos” on the themes of Youth, Leadership and Philanthropy.

This month – for the purposes of C4L’s new Green Livelihoods project – The C4L Reporter has been brought out of moth balls.  It will be re-released this week, at the AGM of the Energy and Water SETA.  Here are its headlines:

• The long-awaited Green Livelihoods project gets underway
• DEDT and NYDA are strategic partners
• Training providers sign Memorandum of Agreement
• From coal to solar
• Recruitment drive heats up
• Editorial – Not a Moment Too Soon

The editorial is shared in this media, which C4L now uses mainly for awareness raising…

Not A Moment Too Soon

When you think of Mpumalanga Province you think of green fields, blue mountains, and forested valleys.  But there are also coal mines and generating stations belching smoke into the atmosphere leaving a dirty carbon footprint.

The danger that threatens the Rhino is symbolic.  While that very issue is rife in Mpumalanga, there are broader concerns as well – the water emergency, the energy crisis, global warming.  Yes, environmental degradation is even causing climate change.

At the personal level we each need to own this threat to our children and grandchildren.  For example, we need to stop littering.  We need to sort our garbage, and re-cycle what we can.  We need to re-use our water twice, for example using our grey water from bathing to water our gardens.  We need to turn the lights off when we leave the room.  We need to unplug our chargers when they are not plugged into our cell phones.  We need to conserve resources.  We need to reduce waste.  We even need to see waste as a resource.  That means a new understanding of our Environment, and our role in it.  Possibly even of attitudinal change.

The Green Livelihoods project is above all about activism and even awareness raising.

In the past two year, 14 new “green occupations” like Recycling Sorter and Solar Water Heater Installer have been added to the OFO (Organizing Framework for Occupations).  This reflects a recognition of business opportunities in the emerging Green Economy.

The levels of youth unemployment in Mpumalanga are high, far too high.  Yet the formal sector of the economy is struggling to generate jobs fast enough to keep up with population growth.  So for many youth, the best opportunities are in self-employment.  That is the focus of this project.  That is the answer when people raise the question of its Sustainability.  Entrepreneurship training and coaching is embedded into the project logic.

The Green Livelihoods project links the two paragraphs above – opportunities in the new “green occupations” with needs for jobs.

At a second level, the project also promotes Cooperatives… Green Coops… youth coops.  Not everyone believes that Coops are sound in economic terms.  Some people prefer other entities like sole proprietorships or companies.  But in global terms, cooperatives have worked at times and in certain places – and we are “thinking globally while acting locally”.

Coops have worked best when populated by people with a higher cause.  One example that comes to mind is the kibbutzim in Israel.  “Kibbutzniks” will tell you that they participated because of a higher motive – much as they liked the look and feel of cooperating.  It is in this spirit that the noble cause of “Go Green” has been linked to enterprise and technical training, organized in solidarity groups called Green Coops.  These are not NPOs (nonprofits).  Coops are business entities.  Thus they are relevant to the triple conundrum of Poverty, Inequality and Unemployment.  Yes they do provide a community service.  But they do so in a way that generates wealth.

No one will be affected more by Global Warming than the youngest among us.  So it is appropriate that they should be warned of the impending threat and enabled to do something about it.

Our planet is dying.  Let us rise up and revive the streamflows.  Let us organize to save the Rhino.  Let us build gutters and cisterns that conserve rainwater in communities where there is no water reticulation.  Let us reduce the leaks that drain away as much as 40% of captured water before it can be used.  Let us heat that water with renewable energy in our homes.  (Each solar water heater reduces about 1.6 MT of carbon every year.)  Let us reduce our carbon footprint.

Viva the Energy and Water SETA! Viva DEDT!  Viva NYDA!  Viva C4L!  Viva Ehlanzeni FET College!  Viva VPK Business Venture!

Long live the Green Livelihoods projects, long live!

Land and Credit

I have been a missionary in Africa for about 30 years.  About mid-way through that period, there was a significant paradigm-shift in terms of helping people.  This happened to some extent because of the end of the Cold War and also the emergence of a few Third World countries like the Asian Tigers.  (Some of these have consolidated in BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China & South Africa).  The Clintons also promoted this shift – from a charity mentality to “micro-loans”.  Certainly I have noted that Canadian thinking is less inclined towards welfare “projects”, even in Canada, but more so in their approach to overseas aid.  In fact, just the word “aid” is played down; “trade” is preferred.

South Africa’s population is more urbanized and less rural than most African countries.  Most citizens grow up in “townships” not on farms.  So the twin issues of land and credit - both of which are needed by emerging farmers – are mission-critical to overcoming the “triple conundrum of poverty, unemployment and inequality”.

Credit

To begin with, one has to distinguish between consumer lending and business lines-of-credit.  The truth is that too many South Africans are too deep in domestic debt, and that is becoming a social evil of huge proportions.  However, that is not what I am talking about.  The topic of micro-loans or “unsecured credit” is what I mean.  I have quoted Muhammed Yunus who founded the Grameen banks before: “The banks ask, are the people credit-worthy?  We ask, are the banks people-worthy?”  On this note, I have often lamented that Credit Unions are conspicuous by their absence in South Africa.

The emergence of Africa Bank coincided with C4L’s first campus – both started in 1999.  AB rose much faster, of course!  “The bigger they are, the harder they fall”.

For a long time, AB’s strategy worked.  It focused on the poorer provinces.  It won the confidence of investors.  It loaned to South Africans ignored and deemed too risky by conventional banks.  It charged as much as 60% annual interest rates, because his customers didn’t have collateral.

But It overestimated its 3.2 million customers’ ability to pay back their loans when the global economic slowdown caught up with South Africa - just after the 2010 FIFA World Cup.  The AB just posted a loss of R8.5 billion and asked the Reserve Bank for a bail-out.  This is reverberating into credit downgrades for all banks, and possibly for South Africa as a country.

Frankly, this could not have happened at a worse time for C4L!  We have had a 2-year “funding drought” due largely to our SETA being placed under administration for corruption.  We have had 3 funding approvals from this SETA during this period, but the payments are “queued”.  So we have been consolidating C4L alumni who have already finished their entrepreneurship training, and trying to link some of them into a micro-franchising scheme.  To get going, they need Credit and Land.  But in the current credit climate, who is gonna lend money to poor and unemployed youth?  Eish.

The way financial institutions work, the default on debt of some customers will only make the interest rates higher for the remaining borrowers.  A common fallacy is that garnishees of wages are inappropriate when the borrowers are poor.  The fact is, eliminating these orders would have a devastating knock-on effect on the economy.

Micro Finance South Africa has just released a study that recommends that “unsecured lenders” should have a different set of guidelines than conventional banks.  When caps are so low that credit providers cannot make profits, they become price controls.

Land

Now for the first time in its 15-year history, C4L is experiencing first-hand what is means to have  clients who are landless.

Here is what happens… we suggest that a 25-meter by 25-meter plot will be enough to plant a small orchard of Chaya trees.  I won’t go into the technical details about this Mexican tree spinach, but we feel that it is a huge opportunity for youth to “get back on the land”.  It requires minimal training - to use a familiar phrase, it basically grows itself!  Not even from seed… you place cuttings in the ground and it takes off.  It is water-wise, nutritious, compact, adaptable, and even medicinal.  Youth growers basically just need to cultivate it, as the marketing is all in place with the Franchisor.  It can be picked every month all year round, so it provides steady income – good for repaying bank loans!

But this is a vicious circle.  One of the reasons that youth are poor and unemployed is that their parents are landless.  So where are they gonna grow their Chaya trees?

Then you hear these horrendous statistics about the result of land claims over the past 20 years.  In those specific cases where people can remember being dispossessed, not generally but at an actual address, there has been restitution and/or resettlement.  But the latest research suggests that these farms rapidly fall into disrepair and become unproductive.  The new Deputy Minister of Agriculture has recently released figures that indicate this as a trend.

So you get white voices saying that land re-distribution is a recipe for food imports.  And thus a tendency - as a new Chaya micro-franchising scheme emerges - to go to the white farmers and get them to grow it.  They have land, know-how, tools and staff.  They can put up fence, fertilize, water and buy saplings on a grand scale.  They can plant several hectares each – as opposed to a plethora of small growers organizing themselves loosely into Coops (for purchasing and marketing only – not collective farms).  This approach seems at once reactionary and common sense.  I even wonder if black youth (even the poor and unemployed) want to risk debt to grow Chaya, when it is ultimately sold as products that are popular among the rich and famous?  These youth are known for their defiance.

When one thinks of land re-distribution, Zimbabwe scenarios come to mind.  When one thinks of the Freedom Charter which says that the people shall benefit from natural resources, one thinks of Marikana.  There is a need for more inclusion of black people in the ownership of the land, just as there is a need for their inclusion in the ownership of the mining of mineral resources that still command the South African economy.  This has become clear to C4L as it tries to expand Chaya Tree Spinach programming in favour of poor and unemployed youth.  You need land and credit to farm.  As long as - when you get your hands on the “means of production” - you rise to the challenge and work hard and produce.  Failing black farms will only compound the problems of credit institutions.

Connecting the dots

While C4L Bulletins like this one are issues-centred, they are also part of our networking and fundraising efforts.

We encourage you once again, to consider setting aside some of your reserves, in favour of poor and unemployed youth.  Don’t give this wealth away – just park it, until you need it.  Either your broker or one known to C4L can then release the “increase” on that wealth over the period stipulated.

C4L is not a bank, but the microfranchising scheme allows its Chaya company - Koperano Trading (Pty) Ltd – to make “revolving loans” to new growers.  They won’t get cash, they will get the fencing materials, inputs and saplings needed.  Then they can make their loan payments in Chaya leaves!

Forty acres and a mule

After the American Civil War, many freedmen believed they had a moral right to own the land they had long worked as slaves.  They widely expected to legally claim 40 acres (16 ha) of land (a quarter-quarter section) and a mule after the end of the war.

Some land redistribution occurred under military jurisdiction during the war and for a brief period thereafter. But, Federal and state policy during the Reconstruction era emphasized wage labour, not land ownership, for African Americans. Almost all land allocated during the war was restored to its antebellum owners.

Most blacks acquired land through private transactions, with ownership peaking at 15,000,000 acres (6,100,000 ha) in 1910.  Most of that land was in 4 states - Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina. This figure has since declined to 5,500,000 acres in 1980 and to 2,000,000 acres in 1997. Most of this land is not the area held by Black families in 1910; beyond the “Black Belt”, it is located in Texas, Oklahoma, and California. The total number of Black farmers has decreased from 925,708 in 1920 to 18,000 in 1997; the number of White farmers has also decreased, but much more slowly.

Black American land ownership has diminished more than that of any other ethnic group, while White land ownership has increased. Black families who inherit land across generations without obtaining an explicit title (often resulting in tenancy in common by multiple descendants) may have difficulty gaining government benefits and risk losing their land completely.  Outright fraud and lynchings have also been used to strip Black people of their land.  Government policies – especially in the USDA - have not been conducive on the whole to keeping African Americans on the land.

So the phrase "40 acres and a mule" has come to symbolize the broken promise that Reconstruction policies would offer economic justice for African Americans.  It even took a decade or so, after the American Civil War, for the freedmen to become citizens.

Economic Freedom in our time
 
So you cannot really be too surprised to hear the Economic Freedom Fighters saying they want their land back, “because it was stolen”.  An oft-cited story says that when the White man arrived in Africa, he had the Bible and the African had the land.  When they converted to Christianity, they closed their eyes to pray.  When they opened their eyes, they held the Bible in their hands, and the White man had the land.

Speaking of broken promises… that is the way many feel has happened in South Africa during the first 20 years of Democracy.  Some black people have begun to prosper - an elite, a middle class – but a majority of people have not noticed much improvement.

High unemployment rates are aggravating their sense of disappointment.  The post-war economy in the USA after its Civil War was generally robust and thus the emphasis there on wage labour, not land redistribution.  But that isn’t true of South Africa, where economic growth had been steady but slow.  The number of formal sector “jobs” has not kept pace with population growth.

The phrase “40 acres and a mule” is not known in South Africa.  But the aspirations of many people are shifting towards something similar – to access to land, tools, inputs… and thus to farm credit.  There is a slow awakening that economic growth is not creating enough “jobs” in the formal sector of the economy.  And the jobs there are, are already filled with older people who have better education and more experience.  People – above all youth entering the work force - need to look at self-employment.  In the context of affirmative action, another group also has no choice (not even emigration) but self-employment; these are the “pale males”.

I once heard the then-CEO of our Services SETA (Ivor Blumenthal) describe the difference in work place ethos between China and South Africa.  He said that in China, if a road is needed to connect two towns, they announce this on the radio indicating the day that work will start.  On that day, 10,000 people rock up, each one bringing a shovel or wheelbarrow.  Three months later, there is a road.  Whereas if government announces in South Africa that two towns will be connected by a new road, the first thing people ask is: “Who has the bulldozer?”

In an interview with Dali Tambo, I noted Robert Mugabe commenting on the difference between Zimbabweans, who are largely rural and used to labour-intensive approaches, and South Africans, who think at higher levels of technology.  But it is slowly dawning on more and more that working the land will be better than sitting idle in a township, unemployed.

Pay back the money
 
That explains, further, all the commotion in Parliament this week.  David beat Goliath once again, the state president hastening into retreat, while the EFF refused to budge and so the Speaker asked everyone else to leave.  In terms of visualization, this was historic.  No longer is it white men like Tony Leon or white women like Helen Zille demanding answers from the black elite who have done so well for themselves.  It is black youth, dressed in red overalls to identify with the miners, domestic workers, and gas jockeys who are demanding “Pay back the money”.

This day was a game-changer for Democracy.  In fact, since this happened, the intrepid Public Protector Thuli Madonsela has also written to the state president, stating that the report he presented to Parliament was not a suitable response to her response.  His tactic of deferring it to the new Minster of Police (who he has appointed since receiving her report) is illegal, she says.

There is growing momentum to reduce impunity and increase accountability.  This is largely because the majority of black people have realized that they could be condemned perpetually to landless underemployment if the black elite are not held accountable.  Zuma’s response to Parliament on the PP’s report was blended with his response to all the Inkandla reports, rendering it meaningless and that is why the EFF delegation raised suck a ruckus.  They have done South Africa proud.

Green Livelihoods
 
Woven between the lines in the above commentary is a pitch (in case you missed it) for C4L’s youth empowerment initiative.  We still believe it is innovative and exemplary.  It emphasizes self-employment, in community services that can be money-spinners.

The problem is funding this training and enabling.  C4L belongs to the Services SETA, the largest of all 26 of these sectoral windows of funding for skills development.  The S SETA gets over R1 billion annually in revenue. In its 2010 year, it got the lion’s share of training funds (10% of the learnerships and 50% of the bursaries).  So in the next 2011 year, C4L competed in 2 tenders – and won 2 awards totalling R1.5 million.  In the following year, we presented and gained approval for a much bigger, province-wide initiative.  Only to find that the S SETA was placed under administration in its 2011 year, and remains under it until now!  This resulted in severe spending cuts (like 80% less than in previous years).  This explains the delays in C4L being paid for approved programming.  Meanwhile, the R1 billion per year has still been coming into the S SETA.  So C4L is hanging on, expecting the dam to burst (so to speak) and resources to rain down on it.  In due course.

Why was it placed under administration?  Well, for all the reasons that the EFF and the PP are now raising – tender manipulation, malpractice, lack of accountability, favoritism, etc.  In a word, “corruption”.  It affects us all, and ironically, C4L has had to downsize and lean on its baseline of income from individuals, families and churches, to keep its options open.

Because we believe that C4L has diagnosed the problem correctly, and can still make a difference.

Overall Mayhem

Well who would have thought?  A dress code in Parliament? 

There is no written guide anywhere in existence that stipulates what you can wear or not wear into South African legislatures.  Instead, the conduct of Parliaments in other democracies has simply been borrowed as the “gold standard”.

Do I remember correctly that Pierre Trudeau once raised eyebrows by wearing sandals into Canadian Parliament?

Now the Economic Freedom Fighters have been wearing red overalls into the legislatures, and the ruling alliance is literally seeing red!  In the case of Gauteng province legislature, the red overalls have been banned.  This week that caused 50 000 “fighters” to descend on their provincial legislature, force their way in, and stage a sit-in.

These guys really know how to capture the news headlines, and how to win the support of the people that they identify with, the ones they represent.  It seems like a triviality, but let me ruminate on this a bit…

James 2: 2 – 4
Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in filthy old clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, “Here’s a good seat for you,” but say to the poor man, “You stand there” or “Sit on the floor by my feet,” have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

The red berets of EFF say that the gains of the first 20 years of democratic rule have been too uneven.  SOME black people are better off, in a growing middle class, but MOST have not yet felt the economic gains.  So they are trying to set themselves apart from the “centrist” black people in government, and coming too parliament in overalls is their way of identifying with the miners, gas jockeys, waitresses and farm workers that they claim to they represent.  It is a clever approach that is winning them a huge amount of publicity.  Especially among youth…

By the time the next election rolls around, youth (under 35s) will constitute more than half the electorate.  So the EFF are thinking strategically.

Good habits
St Francis of Assisi also took exception to the unequitable concentration of wealth, particularly the church’s role in this.  Echoes of this thinking are being heard from Pope Francis I.  He has said that we should drive “humble cars” and he is saying a lot by his own lifestyle.  He has declined to occupy the Vatican Palace, and lives in an apartment with some other priests and youth.  There are rumours (reminiscent of the Scarlet Pimpernel) that he slips out occasionally at night to help feed the poor in Rome’s soup kitchens.

I found the next 6 paragraphs on Google:

The word "friar" comes from the Latin word "frater", meaning "brother". When St. Francis founded a religious community, he intended its members to live as brothers without distinction of rank, title, or education.

Capuchins are a religious community of both lay brothers and ordained priests. Yet, in the spirit of St. Francis, friars - lay and ordained - see themselves as brothers, as equals, with no one greater or less than the next, respectful to one another and to all of creation. This humility is a characteristic still evidenced in the lives and even the name of Capuchins, who go by the title OFM Cap., meaning Order of Friars Minor, Capuchin.

People sometimes comment, "How can you tell who's a priest and who's a brother?" With Capuchin Franciscan friars, you can't, and it is a testimony to their style of life that emphasizes the common brotherhood that St. Francis created.

A "habit" is the official garb that identifies a religious man or woman as a member of their individual order or community. The word came into use as it was the habit of religious men and women to daily dress in their respective, distinctive clothing.

St. Francis not only wanted to serve the poor; he wanted to be poor. When he devised a habit for his brothers, he chose the clothing typically worn by the poor: a plain brown robe with a hood for protection, a cord fastened around one's waist, and sandals for one's feet. It is the habit that Capuchins wear yet to this day.

Capuchins received their name because of the long, distinctive hood that is part of their habit, a hood that in Italian is called a "capuche".
Now, if I am not mistaken, a cuppa of coffee with a hood of frothy milk on it is another good habit!  But how many poor people can afford one these days?!  Maybe EFF can take that question up with Parliament’s cafeteria?

So I see the “overall mayhem” as both symbolic and significant.  Lifestyle audits are needed both of government leaders and of church leaders.  I have read that Pope Francis has reined in a few extravagant bishops on this note?

C4L has taken steps to scale down and re-dimension itself.  It has also chosen quite intentionally to focus more on youth and more on enterprise development.

James the brother of Jesus, (I think he’s the one they called James the Just?) asks if we have not discriminated among ourselves?  He rightly points to the attitudes that undergird such behavior.  His question is incisive:  have we become judges with evil thought?  I have to say that the arrogance of those in power is manifest most clearly in their spending crazes – from the Arms Deal to Inkandla.  Tenderpreneurs are South Africa’s public enemy number one.

Beware the prosperity gospel and the pastors driving flashy cars and wearing rings on several fingers.

I have a lot of time for the Fransciscan Cappuchins and for their fraternal approach.  I think it would be better for the ruling alliance to dress down, than for the Economic Freedom Fighters to dress up.

Inclusion – from BEE to YEE

DA presidential candidate Mamphela Ramphele says South Africa deserves better than Black Economic Empowerment, even though it was a noble idea.  “In that greatness that is us, there are better ways of creating a more inclusive (economic) system,” she said.

Ramphele was speaking shortly after DA leader Helen Zille had announced that Ramphele would be the party’s presidential candidate for the 2014 general election.

Gwede Mntashe’s reaction to this announcement was a quintessential ANC one-liner about a “rent-a-black” strategy.  The ANC always plays the race card.  Pan-Africanism has perennially been divided between the inclusivists who are inclined to assimilation or “mainstreaming”, and the exclusivists who believe that Africa is only for Africans.  This is the underlying sentiment.

The debate rages whether BEE is really affirmative action, or whether affirmative action in favour of the huge majority is just benefiting an elite.  Yes, wealth is being transferred to blacks, but not to all blacks, and not fairly.  This is exacerbated by greed that manifests itself in both waste and corruption.


Youth Economic Empowerment

YEE is the order of the day in election year.  BEE is waning; youth power is waxing.  Age apartheid is a major issue in the 2014 elections, as unemployment has replaced AIDS as the primary social evil in this decade.   What good is freedom when you are unemployed for so long that you become unemployable?

Oliver Tambo said: “A nation that does not take care of its youth doesn’t have a future.  And doesn’t deserve one.”  Yet those with jobs in South Africa continue to get pay increases, while the number of school leavers grows every year – who have little hope of finding work.  Mo Ibrahim warned of a coming “tsunami of youth”.  Neither is government employing everybody the correct answer!

Where there should be sharing, there is protectionism.  Where there should be nurture, there is deprivation.  Nkruma said that Africa should not look to the East or to the West, but it should look ahead.  To the future.  Whereas South Africa still hasn’t gotten over its past.  Mamphela Ramphele calls it woundedness.  Government especially should stop blaming apartheid for its own lackluster performance.

Only from citizens healed of this malaise can come new attitudes like: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  This is the opposite of the African proverb that says “A goat eats where it is tethered”.  It is very spiritual.  It is conversion.  Matters like this are far too important for politicians or even judges; this is the work of priests and pastors.  To paraphrase the Rev. Martin Luther King:

We come to our nation's rulers to cash a check.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution,

they were signing a promissory note to which every South African was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all women and men

Yes, young as well as old would be guaranteed paying work and sufficiency.

It is obvious today that the nation has defaulted on this promissory note

insofar as so many of her citizens are unemployed.

Instead of honoring this sacred obligation,

South Africa has given its youth a bad check,

a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults

of resources and opportunity in this nation.

And so we've come to cash this check,

a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed indaba to remind South Africa of the fierce urgency

This is no time to engage in the luxury of fat-cat salaries

or to take the tranquilizing drug of patronage

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.

Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of corruption

to the sunlit path of honesty and transparency

Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of malpractice

to the solid rock of integrity

Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

Tired of Waiting

A graphic Oxfam press release this week pointed out that the world’s richest people could fit on a bus.  Those riding on that single bus would have the same wealth as the poorest 50% of the world’s population.  One wonders if that was the bus from the airport to the conference centre in Davos?  When the rich elite gets together in Davos, can you really expect the theme of this year’s forum – Inequality – to change?

A message from Pope Francis I was sent to Davos.  It articulated this plea: I ask you to ensure that humanity is served by wealth and not ruled by it.  This C4L bulletin echoes that plea, not just for Davos but for all readers who come from a privileged background.

Vested interests make it harder to redistribute wealth as it gets more concentrated.  Finance Minister Gordan is quoted as saying, at Davos, “The world won’t suddenly become disconnected from itself”.  He was speaking about whether the challenges in emerging markets would shake investor confidence.  But that is over-exuberance.  Surely the same motivation could be given for more radical change?  The National Development Plan is almost triumphalist when you read the article in today’s Sunday Times by suspended Cosatu leader Zwelinzima Vavi: What has happened to the decade of the working class?

• The first decade of our democracy disproportionately benefited white business relative to the working class

• Inequality has increased, levels of poverty remain high despite the increase in social grants, and more people than before live on less than R524 a month ($50)

• Piecemeal solutions to a systematic crisis rooted in colonial dispossession and capitalist exploitation will not work

• We are told that employment is bigger than ever before.  This is an attempt to pull wool over the eyes of the working class.  Yes, employment numbers are at their highest, but the context is that, in 1994, we had a population of 40 million.  Today, it is 53 million.  Overall, the unemployment rate in 1995 was 31%, but today it is 36%

• Youth unemployment in South Africa is the second highest in the world

Are “radical” and “leftist” synonymous?

Vavi goes on: “The 11th congress of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) took radical decisions to give practical meaning to the call that we should now embrace radical economic transformation… Cosatu has not been able to implement its resolutions.”

Levels of frustration are so high that some Cosatu members are already distancing themselves from the ruling alliance.  Just today, a conference was convened by the rebel Unions (led by Numsa) to kick-start a united front against Neoliberalism.

This calls for a footnote about terminology, because C4L bulletins are also sent to readers in North America.  For some reason that I have never figured out, what is called Neoliberalism in Africa is called Conservativism in America.  Think Ronald Reagan and Maggie Thatcher.  This digression is important to grasp.  I am indebted to Professor Sampie Terreblanche for explaining it in his 2012 book Lost in Transformation.  Basically, it was Reagan and Thatcher who overpowered “the second world”… Gorbachev conceded, and withdrew not only from Eastern Europe but from the overseas “flashpoints” as well.  South Africa was one of these, so when Gorbachev told the ANC that it could no longer count on Soviet support for its armed resistance, it had no choice but to seek a negotiated settlement.  At the same time, the Americans exerted pressure on the apartheid regime to negotiate.

Of course averting civil war and reaching a non-violent rapprochement was tricky.  But in the New World Order that emerged, with one superpower, the ANC capitulated in terms of its economic path (called GEAR in its fullest manifestation).  Cosatu was in its infancy at the time, but has come to recognize the consequences of this “wrong turn”.

However, Cosatu is a member organization, part of “organized Labour”.  So while it is a force to be reckoned with - even now that it is “of two minds” internally – it is leftist.

Unemployed Youth

Unions represent their members, who pay dues to fund them.  So they do not represent the interests of non-members.  If you are an unemployed youth, Cosatu does not represent you.

Historically, the best interests of youth were articulated by the ANC Youth League.  But when this group raised its voice about the “wrong turn” outlined above, the old guard in the ANC muzzled it.  The end result is that the ANCYL is going under.  It is basically out for the count in terms of the upcoming elections.

The expelled Youth League leader thus formed his own new party called the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).  Its seven pillars tackle Neoliberalism as well.  But not really from a leftist position, as it just represents the half of the population that has not yet felt tangible benefits from Democracy.  Twenty years ago, at the dawn of Democracy, only 20% of the population were well off, mainly whites.  Twenty years later, another 30% have benefited, forming a black middle class.  (A lot of whites have emigrated, so the upper class of 20% is now both black and white.)  But 50% of the population remains without improvement.  This is what Davos means by “inequality”.  So the EFF can be radical without being leftist.

Needless to say, youth are among those whose prospects are grim.  They can’t remember Reagan or Thatcher, as many of them are “born frees”.  Who represents them?  In South Africa, the term “youth” goes up to age 35.  Two-thirds of the population is now in that age bracket, but neither the ANC nor a radicalized Cosatu have youth’s best interest at heart.

I have written another whole bulletin (You are only a boy) about David and Goliath.  The youngest brother goes up to the front lines of battle to deliver some cheese from the farm.  He hears that a giant has caused military gridlock.  Undaunted, he offers to fight the champion of the Philistines.  His brothers laugh at him, but he insists.  King Saul offers him his own armour, but David declines it.  He goes out to meet the giant with his own unconventional weapon, and slays him.  This was completely unexpected and perplexing to the old guard.

Before long, the king gets so jealous that he runs David into hiding as an outlaw.  But the pimpernel becomes a lighting rod for discontent.  He forms a coalition of the wounded.  In due course, he becomes King David father of Solomon and ancestor of Jesus.  The song that made King Saul so insanely jealous can be paraphrased as:

Zuma has won his thousands
But Malema will win his tens of thousands

Pan Africanism

We named different buildings at C4L after people.  For example, our Mentor Centre is named after Charlotte Macheke, the first African women to earn a university degree.  The main building on campus is named after Tiyo Soga, the first ordained priest in South Africa – he became a Presbyterian minister in 1856.  A Xhosa, he studied in Scotland, married a local lass there, and they came back to South Africa as missionaries in 1857.  Needless to say, he was not always accepted by fellow clergy - just as she had challenges adjusting.

Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species in 1859.  The influence of “social Darwinism” spread fast, being broadly accepted as fact by the 1870s.  A fellow missionary of Tiyo Soga’s – named John Aitken Chalmers – predicted that Africans were doomed to become extinct.  Social Darwinism gave rise to this kind of thinking, like the concept of a super race that drove the Third Reich only a few decades later.  Chalmers was upset that Africans were not converting to Christianity, thus his backlash.

Writing in the May 11th edition of the King William’s Town Gazette, Tiyo Soga dismissed the assertion that only a Eurocentric outlook would secure perpetuity for blacks.  He pointed to references even in the Bible of blacks and thus to their resilience: “I find the Negro from the days of the old Assyrians downwards keeping his individuality and distinctiveness amid the wreck of empires, and the revolution of ages.  I find him opposed by nation after nation.  I find him enslaved – exposed to all the vices and the brandy of the white man.  I find him in this condition for many a day – in the West Indian Islands, in Northern and Southern America and in the South American Colonies of Spain and Portugal.  I find him exposed to all these disasters and yet living – multiplying and never extinct.”

This heralded the dawn of an awareness that would later be called Pan Africanism.

The Pan African Movement

The movement was formalized in London in 1900.  An American sociologist attending that indaba was WEB du Bois.  His concern at this inaugural meeting was: “The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the colour line, the question as to how far differences of race – which show themselves chiefly in the colour of the skin and the texture of the hair – will hereafter be made the basis of denying to over half the world the right of sharing to their utmost ability the opportunities and privileges of modern civilization.”

So the movement began with the intent to secure equal rights for black people where ever they were all over the world. 

But in 1915, a Jamaican called Marcus Garvey challenged du Bois.  Whereas du Bois was an assimilationist, trying to secure equal rights so that blacks could integrate into any setting, Garvey was an exclusivist, who believed that different races could not be reconciled.  While du Bois championed full civil rights in America for blacks, Garvey promoted a return to the motherland – “Africa for Africans”.

One way or the other, the Pan African movement’s focus for its first half century was on the diaspora.  But that changed with the emergence of independent African states in the aftermath of World War II.  Ghana was the first nation to gain its independence and Kwame Nkruma hosted a Pan African congress – in Africa for the first time – in 1958.  Its focus shifted to helping African nations to emerge.  This came to pass, and later congresses were held in Tanzania in 1973 and Uganda in 1994 – and in January 2014 in South Africa.

In the African setting, these two strategies are not unfamiliar.  For example, in the former Portuguese colonies, blacks could become full citizens or “assimilados” if they learned to speak Portuguese, studied the colonial curriculum, dressed in European clothes, etc.  The dark shadow cast by this approach was that local culture was of absolutely no value.

Then there was segregation or as it was called in its most Vorwoerdian form – apartheid.  In this approach, there was space for both – but apart.  The “Africa for Africans” slogan took on a more sinister anti-white sense – exacerbating racial tensions.  Implicit in this approach is that each and every culture has some value, but some are worth more than others.  This has been called “open racism” in comparison to assimilation which is called “closed racism”.

Black Supremacy or Black Consciousness?

Malcolm X is an African American folk hero.  He is to America what Steve Biko is to South Africa – the best known voice among black thinkers.  Like Biko, his personal views evolved.  They had some roots in the teachings of his father – an exclusivist - who believed that black Americans should all migrate back to Africa, being unwelcome in America almost a century after its civil war.  The influence of Elijah Mohamed shaped his views, until his own penetrating insights began to see through the charades of the Nation of Islam, that had brought him from prison to the status of national spokesman for black supremacy.  This group taught that blacks should first and foremost come to terms with their own identity and shake off the “colonization of the mind” that kept them enslaved to white agendas - long after slavery was abolished.  So it refused to cooperate with whites, or even with other civil rights groups that promoted integration with whites.  It was fiercely proud and isolationist.

As Malcolm X began to perceive the Nation of Islam's imperfections, he started to open up to collaboration with other civil rights groups.  This was anathema to his long-time sponsors.  Seeing it as betrayal, they assassinated him. Thus, African Americans sorted out their own differences without the help of the whites in authority.  While this was part of their defiance, the use of such violence emptied black supremacy of authenticity.  This was not a case of white supremacists beating up blacks - like the case of Steve Biko.  It was self-destruction.

One has to bear in mind that blacks in the diaspora are a minority, whereas they are the vast majority in Africa, even in South Africa which still has a significant white population.
 

• Every time a black is called a “coconut” in South Africa, it illuminates a paranoia that infers that the opposite to white supremacy is black supremacy.  It is not.

• Even though there is a huge difference between black supremacy and affirmative action, this can get confused at times; this is often described as Triumphalism

• It is inconsistent to be happy that Barrack Obama is the most powerful man in the world and yet wish that you could exclude whites from your own African work place

• Affirmative action in favour of the majority is, in a word, odd

• 150 years after Tiyo Soga married the intrepid Janet, mixed marriages are still very rare in South Africa.  This primary human relationship should become a future focus of Pan Africanism.  If you cannot figure it out at family level, how on earth can you win at work place level or in political arena?