He accuses Cosatu of “bootlicking” Ramaphosa who “will never liberate workers”
By Joseph Chirume
24 July 2017 Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary of the South African
Federation of Trade Unions, addressing jubilant workers at Nangoza Jebe
Hall in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth. Photo: Joseph Chirume
On Sunday, former Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi,
said he regretted the days he sang praise songs for President Jacob
Zuma.
Addressing hundreds of jubilant workers at Nangoza Jebe Hall in New
Brighton, Port Elizabeth, Vavi said the workers should start to organise
themselves in preparation for a new revolution that would bring back
mines, land and result in a better life for all.
He said the ANC has distanced itself from the people as it was busy with factional battles.
Vavi encouraged workers and unemployed people to join the recently
formed South African Federation of Trade Unions, Saftu, of which he is
general secretary.
“In 1994, we wanted to create a democratic, united, non-sexist,
non-racial and prosperous society. We wanted to end the oppression of
the black majority by a small white minority,” he said.
But, he said, “The issue of positions became the primary concern and
preoccupation of our leaders. Our members, including the shop stewards,
were given positions in management forgetting the workers. Cyril
Ramaphosa, a former trade unionists and general secretary of National
Union of Mines, became a billionaire in an economy that had failed to
transform.”
Vavi admitted that “in the Cosatu Congress we were busy singing the
Zuma praise songs. We had left the workers behind with no one to take up
their issues. We were busy praising a president who was facing 783
charges that involved fraud, corruption, money laundering, and
racketeering.”
He said the Marikana massacre followed. He also mentioned that farm
workers in the Western Cape successfully negotiated for better wages
without Cosatu. “As a result, ANC lost to the opposition, the cities of
Cape Town, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth, Pretoria and Ekhurhuleni. This
is the worst trauma we have to go through.”
“The Communist Party and Cosatu of today are still repeating the same
mistake we made in 2007, when we praised Zuma. They are now bootlicking
Ramaphosa, not knowing that Ramaphosa will never liberate workers in
this country,” Vavi said. “What we need in this country is a new
struggle, a new revolution, a new process to shake and to collapse all
pillars of colonialism and apartheid. The deputy president says it’s
okay to pay a minimum of R20 an hour.”
He said a report by [audit firm] Deloitte showed that the top 100
companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange have CEOs earning an
average of R17.9 million a year, the equivalent of R69,000 per day.
Saftu has set a target of a million members by December and would be going door-to-door.
A number of trade unions attended Vavi’s speech, including the
National Union of Public Services and Allied Workers, the South African
Public Service Union, the South African Police Union, National Union of
Metal Workers of South Africa, and the Young Nurses Indaba Trade Union,
among others.
By Zoe Postman
24 July 2017 Activists have been occupying Helen Bowden Nurses Home
(which they call Ahmed Kathrada House) since March. Archive photo:
Trevor Bohatch
Eight armed and masked people forced their way into Helen
Bowden Nurses Home in Green Point at about 8:30pm on 19 July, while
about 40 members of Reclaim the City who have been occupying the
property since 24 March were having a meeting. The attackers apparently
forced their way through security and entered the building. They were
allegedly armed with pangas, knives and guns.
Activists occupying the building have renamed it Ahmed Kathrada House.
According to a statement by Ndifuna Ukwazi, once the attackers were
inside the communal room, they broke windows, ransacked rooms and pulled
out their weapons, shouting, “Leave this building. You cannot stay
here.” One of the occupying residents managed to call the South African
Police Service (SAPS) who arrived on the scene a few minutes later.
Nothing was taken and no one was injured.
Nkosikhona Swaartbooi, an organiser at Ndifuna Ukwazi, said that the
police arrested five suspects near the scene. They were questioned and
released “without taking fingerprints” as there was not enough evidence
to convict them, said Swaartbooi. Later, a gun was found at the scene
and was admitted as evidence.
Swaartbooi told GroundUp that Ndifuna Ukwazi was unable to confirm
who was behind the attack but members of the organisation believe it was
politically motivated. “It was intended to send a chilling message to
people who are standing up for their rights against powerful forces who
are intent on maintaining the status quo in this city,” said Swaartbooi
in a statement released on 21 July.
Police confirmed the incident. “An unidentified group of men with
balaclavas and a fire-arm, approached and threatened them [the Reclaim
the City occupiers]. A ‘pointing of fire-arm’ was registered for
investigation. A pellet gun was also handed in,” said Captain FC van Wyk
of the SAPS Western Cape Media Centre.
Members of Reclaim the City occupied Woodstock Hospital and Helen
Bowden Nurses Home after the City of Cape Town decided to sell the
Tafelberg School site to a private school instead of building social
housing. A decision was taken by the Western Cape government to sell
17,000m2 of land for R135 million to the private Phyllis
Jowell Jewish Day School. At the time Bonginkosi Madikizela, MEC for
Human Settlements, explained that the province’s decision to sell the
land to the school was made to generate income for a city whose
population is growing faster than its fiscus.
Published originally on
GroundUp
.
US President Donald Trump and African dictator Idi Amin - different, but the same. EPA and Reuters
US President Donald Trump’s norm-breaking campaign and early reign has been compared to several other divisive historical figures, especially previous American presidents.
But when it comes to the style in which he communicates, there’s an uncanny resemblance to a notorious African dictator from the 1970s. For those that lived during Idi Amin’s vicious reign in Uganda between 1971 and 1979, there are clear echoes four decades later in Trump’s speeches and press conferences, or when he fires off his notorious tweets.
Let me say up front, Trump, who was democratically elected, can in no way be compared to Amin when it comes to how the so-called “Butcher of Uganda” came to power or the brutal way he dealt with dissent during his eight-year regime. One of the most barbaric military dictators in post-independence Africa, the death toll of his own citizens under his rule, is put at 500,000.
The comparison I am looking at is the similarity of styles and tone of communication. Even though Trump and Amin are from completely different eras with different modes of communication, there are clear parallels between the two telegenic men.
Decrees with flourish
Amin’s numerous decrees were announced on radio and television and carried in newspapers with flourish. One such decree was the expulsion of the Asian/Indian community from Uganda.
In front of international television cameras and newspaper journalists Amin accused the Indians of being “smugglers who carried five passports”. He blamed Britain for bringing them to Uganda during the colonial rule. Amin claimed that the expulsion decision was taken in the national economic interests of Uganda:
I took this decision for the economy of Uganda and I must make sure that every Ugandan gets the fruit of independence. I want to see the whole Kampala street is not full of Indians.
Fast forward 44 years. At a campaign rally Trump promised to deport illegal immigrants from Mexico, some of whom he called “rapists”. Trump also announced that he was going to build a wall barring them from entry into the United States which Mexico was going to pay for.
“Mark my words,” he said. Afterwards he proclaimed that he “loved Hispanics”.
In similar style Amin said “it’s not my responsibility to offer them (expelled British Asians) transit camps! The British High Commissioner is here and it is his responsibility”. Remarking afterwards that the British “are my great friends”.
For Amin’s Uganda, it was a devastating decision. The expelled Asians/Indians were the entrepreneurs, bankers, professional class who had formed the country’s middle class since colonial times. Six months after their departure the country’s hitherto promising African economy spiralled into recession.
Trump’s America may not suffer the expulsion of unwanted foreigners but its regional entrepreneurs such as potato and vegetable growers will suffer from the absence of cheap available labour from across the border in Mexico.
Impulsive use of technology
The two presidents have similarities in their impulsive use of quick communication technology. Trump is a compulsive tweeter while Amin loved dispatching telegrams.
Amin telegraphed disgraced American President Richard Nixon wishing him a “quick recovery from Watergate” and to Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, his erstwhile foe, a peculiar message in lieu of peace talks at the height of a war between the true countries:
If you were a woman I would have married you … although your head is full of grey hairs.
There were even more bizarre ones to the Queen of England, saying he expected her to send him “her 25-year-old knickers” in celebration of the silver anniversary of her coronation. There was an offer of assistance to Edward Heath, the British Prime Minister to save the British economy,
If you would let me know the exact position of the mess.
A Trump tweet to Iowa voters who voted against him in the primaries had similar condescending tones:
Too much Monsanto in the corn creates issues in the brain?
There was another tweet about James Comey, the FBI Director he fired:
And then there’s this tweet about a topic that has often occupied his mind, namely his predecessor Barack Obama’s legacy:
Being fired on television
Amin loved firing his officials on radio and television. A minister of culture, Yekosofat Engur, attended a public function as guest of honour not knowing that his junior had just been appointed in his place on Uganda’s broadcast media.
Former FBI chief Comey learned in a similar fashion of his fate. He learned of his firing while addressing agents at a field office in Los Angeles – breaking news flashes on television of Trump sacking him, was the first Comey heard of it.
There are also parallels in their sabre rattling. Amin threatened to invade Israel, not holding back:
If am to prepare the war against Israel completely, I don’t want very many Army, Air force and Navy, just very few and strike inside…
“I love war,” Trump declared his passion for violence during a campaign speech in Iowa in late 2015. He added:
I’m good at war. I’ve had a lot of wars of my own. I’m really good at war. I love war in a certain way, but only when we win.
Low opinion
The two presidents both have a low opinion of women and not shy to express that. Amin remarked that he was a “good marksman” (with women) while showing off his numerous children. He had four wives and more than 30 children.
You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass …
What the two share most is their sense of self importance.
In 1977, after Britain broke diplomatic relations with his regime, Amin declared he had beaten the British. He titled himself “Conqueror of the British Empire”, short for, “His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Alhaji Dr Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, CBE”. He said he would be happy to accept the Scots “secret wish” to have him as their monarch, hence the Hollywood movie title “The Last King of Scotland”.
Amin also wrenched a Doctorate of Law from Uganda’s Makerere University and henceforth considered himself in the same league with medical doctors.
As Salon wrote, the only two words former reality show host Trump has uttered more frequently than “you’re fired” are “I’m smart”. He said about Wharton, the University of Pennsylvania’s business school:
Look, I went to the best school, I was a good student and all of this stuff. I mean, I’m a smart person.
They both share a passion for control and love to be loved. The New Yorker’s Jeff Seshol reckons that Trump’s chief complaint about his own yes-men seems to be that they don’t say yes energetically enough.
It’s easier when you’re a dictator. Amin was clear:
As minister, governor, high-ranking people and the people of the country, they must love their leader. This is the point number one.
Turning into Amin
Respected East African commentator Charles Onyango Obbo believes that,
The genius of Trump is that he understands what adept guerrilla leaders figured out ages ago – do that which the opponent thinks is impossible or so unthinkable, they have not planned how to defend it.
The same went for Amin who for a long time was considered a comic buffoon while he terrorised a whole country and fanned international terrorism.
Some may think it’s alarmist, but Onyango Obbo has warned that with all the similarities,
Trump – or indeed any leader in an “advanced” democracy – can turn into an Idi Amin.
Presidents of Kenya, Guinea, US and Nigeria’s Vice President at the G7 Summit. Angelo Carconi/EPA
Anti-terrorism and transactional relationships are likely be the main features of US President Donald Trump’s Africa policy. But if Trump’s proposed cuts to the state department hold, the US will be less and less of a presence on the continent, according to Prof Gregory F Treverton, who directed the US National Intelligence Council in the Obama Administration.
Treverton, who is currently Professor of Practice at the University of Southern California, is a world authority on security and intelligence. I put a number of questions to Treverton who visited South Africa recently to deliver the keynote address at a South African Council on International Relations conference on South Africa’s relations with Africa.
Why is Donald Trump’s foreign policy so incomprehensible?
I wish I knew! It’s a continual struggle between, on the one hand, the true believers, the American firsters who are anti-trade and anti-engagement in what they see as an unfriendly world, and on the other more traditional conservative Republicans.
The pattern has been that the more traditional conservative Republicans, like the Secretaries of State and Defence, tug policy in a more familiar direction, only to have the president blow the process up with a tweet condemning the Paris climate agreement or labelling Germany an unfair trader. The intensity of the struggle is reflected in the continuing haemorrhage of leaks, all from the very top of the administration.
Didn’t the post-Second World War liberal international order need a shake up?
Yes, and perhaps in that sense we’ll end up thanking Trump, if, and this is a big if, we get through the next years without a major crisis or too much broken crockery. Some of Trump’s complaints, like (America’s Western) allies bearing too little of the burden, have been true for a long time. And the reaction by Americans to the sense that they pay too much for the “public goods” of international economics and security has been going on for a long time.
Polls routinely show that Americans think the country spends on foreign aid 20 or 30 times what it actually does. So, too, the questioning of what we all too easily call the “liberal international order” has been growing over time.
You suggested that Russia under Vladimir Putin, is a declining power. Doesn’t the evidence point in the other direction?
It surely is a declining power, though Putin has played a weak hand extraordinarily well. It is in demographic decline, and far from modernising the Russian economy, Putin has only deepened its dependence on hydrocarbons. My fear is that as the country declines, it will be all the more tempted to turn to what tools it retains – cyber attacks and nuclear sabre-rattling.
How do you think Trump’s Africa policy will turn out?
In testifying before Congress, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson probably was as clear as the administration could be given its disarray. Africa was in the “turning to other countries” category, and he began with the fight against terrorism. He did, though, mention the economic opportunities in Africa, mostly in the sense of business that might be done. I suspect those will continue to be the emphasis.
So does this mean that anti-terrorism and transactional relationships will be the main features of Trump’s Africa policy?
I think they will continue to be the main drivers, for better or worse, though not the only drivers. The country will have to respond to major humanitarian crises whether the administration wants to or not. And some of the legacy programmes of the last two administrations, like the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief have had bipartisan support, so we’ll see how they fare in the congressional budget process.
And, if this is so, what are the long-term implications of this for US relations with the continent?
If Trump’s proposed cuts to the State Department and USAID hold, the US will be less and less of a presence on the continent. The main beneficiary, diplomatically, will be China, followed by the Europeans and perhaps even Russia, though it doesn’t have much to contribute except arms sales.
If there is any silver lining, perhaps it will be that Africans, and particularly South Africans, will realise they have to take more initiative on their own.
When it comes to the US itself, you raised the possibility that it might break up? Where you speaking in abstract terms, or is this a real possibility?
I meant it mostly as a metaphor and as a touchstone for thinking about the future. I don’t think it’s likely, but it does have to be considered.
What is certain is that the next few years will be a kind if a guerrilla war, one mostly fought in the courts, between the US federal government and the “blue” (read Democratic Party-controlled) states, led by California, over climate change, immigration and other issues.
What does the Trump presidency mean for these ideas?
So far it seems bound to increase the divide in America. Trump has talked and acted entirely to please his base. He has played on fear, fanning it by portraying the country in dire straits surrounded by a hostile world. So far that base – especially older and often poorer white Americans – seems to have been satisfied by word, words they see as validating them.
But we’ve known from the beginning that Trump can’t deliver on his promises: those “good” low-skilled jobs in manufacturing or mining (as he has portrayed them) aren’t coming back. So we’ll see, but I expect that realisation to only deepen the anger and disaffection.
23 years ago, genocide was unleashed in Rwanda. Almost a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in about 100 days.
Consider not just the scale of the violence but the intimate means by which some 10,000 people a day lost their lives. Men, women, and children were killed at close proximity – often butchered with machetes, knives, scythes, clubs, picks, and sharpened sticks.
Their killers were not only members of the Rwandan army and the government-backed Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, the Hutu militias. They were also the victims’ own neighbours, those they had sat next to at school, played soccer with, worked alongside. Many were tortured and raped before they were killed.
Instinctively, we recoil from such horror. Yet, in 2003, the United Nations General Assembly designated April 7 the “International Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda”.
Why should we stop to reflect on such inhumanity and brutality, an episode that evokes shame, despair, and revulsion, now decades behind us, when current global problems abound and hope already often seems in short supply?
Looking back as a means of trying to gain perspective on today’s complex crises might seem naive. One might even argue that the Rwandan genocide was an aberration, a temporary slip into collective insanity, a result of some unique confluence of circumstances, still unfathomable.
Yet, the events of 1994 do warrant reflection today. They serve to remind us of two things: the culpability that can accompany simply looking the other way; and the risks, including to ourselves, of building walls (both real and metaphorical) between ‘us’ and ‘them’.
Acknowledging responsibility for inaction
The Rwandan genocide is not only a litany of unimaginable acts and intimate violence. It’s simultaneously a story of unimaginable omissions and the distanced “allowing” of such violence. Inhumanity was not only revealed in the horrifyingly callous manner in which the machetes were wielded but in carefully calculated denial, in silence and inaction, in dithering and stalled deliberation.
Blame shouldn’t be apportioned only to those who carried out or choreographed the killings. Other actors are also to blame, including institutional agents.
The multiple failures of the UN to prevent or mitigate the genocide in Rwanda are acknowledged in its 1999 report which followed an independent inquiry. Inaction when the UN had a capacity to act, and could have averted great harm, is inexcusable.
Of course, the member states of the UN were also blameworthy for their own discrete failures. The US, for example, stubbornly skirted around the one label that was rapidly revealed to be appropriate: genocide, a label that highlights an intention to eliminate, in whole or part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
Its utterance would have indicated recognition by the US – a signatory to the 1948 Genocide Convention – of its obligation to act. So, the word was avoided, and the US’s obligation to act with it. Yet, it was clear that the world was witnessing genocide.
The killings were meticulously planned and orchestrated by those in power. They were executed with brutal efficiency. Weapons had been stockpiled; lists of targets had been compiled and were distributed to local groups. The genocidaires (those involved in the genocide) were infamously urged on by regime-sponsored radio broadcasts that, at first, ushered in the genocide with hate propaganda against the Tutsis and then identified who and where the Tutsis were, and provided instructions on how to kill them. By the time the killing came to a halt in July, three out of every four ethnic Tutsis were dead.
One step forward
Within Rwanda, a slow and painful process of reconciliation followed. The international community offered expressions of remorse – and even apology. US President Bill Clinton, speaking in Rwanda in 1998, acknowledged that
[t]he international community… must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy.
On the tenth anniversary of the genocide, former Secretary-General Kofi Annan lamented that
[i]f the international community had acted promptly and with determination, it could have stopped most of the killing.
He led the call to define a clear set of prospective responsibilities so that the UN would never again stand idly by as blatant and preventable mass atrocities were carried out.
At the 2005 World Summit, all member states signed up to the groundbreaking, if imperfect, “responsibility to protect” vulnerable populations from mass atrocity. Post-Rwanda the world seemed united in its rallying cry of “never again”.
A world of diluted international obligations?
Yet, in an increasingly inward-looking world of Brexit and Donald Trump, fear and myopia threaten to obscure even the formally acknowledged international obligations that the experience of Rwanda supposedly bolstered.
International obligations – to refugees, to those threatened with mass atrocity crimes – seem weakened. The relevance of intergovernmental organisations and supranational bodies has been questioned amid populist proclamations of “my country first”. Cosmopolitan sentiments appear diminished when confronted with often xenophobic distinctions between fellow citizens and “foreigners”.
One of the many things that the 1994 genocide can teach us is how easily fear can be fostered, how effectively divisions can be constructed and manipulated, how quickly ties that we take for granted can unravel – and how our individual and collective security is sacrificed as a result.
If we don’t learn this lesson, I worry that we are poised to take two steps back.
As shameful as the strategic avoidance of the word “genocide” was in 1994, there was some solace in the weight that it was understood to carry. Denial that the violence in Rwanda constituted genocide was, in fact, recognition of the strength of the principle that genuine cases must be acted on.
Today, I am wary of a time when there might be no hesitation to name genocide simply because the expectation to respond has become so thoroughly eroded, and our international responsibilities (as corollaries to human rights) so meaningless, that nothing hangs on inaction.
How to avoid that possible future is worthy of serious reflection.
Trump – or indeed any leader in an “advanced” democracy – can turn into an Idi Amin.
The co-hosts of the conference Treverton addressed were the 
How to avoid that possible future is worthy of serious reflection.