Imperialism, South Africa and the ANC: an exchange of views

Friends in South Africa have responded to the article “Russia and South Africa: the oppressors make a deal”, by Bob Myers, published on People & Nature last month. Here are two comments, by Tom Lodge and Lesego Masisi, and a further comment by Bob.

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Tom Lodge: ‘Treating Russia’s rulers as allies is short-sighted’

I think the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) are making a mistake in supporting Russian operations in Ukraine. [South African foreign minister] Naledi Pandor’s arguments are stretching the professed “neutrality” stance very thin. That said, Bob Myers’s article has too many mistakes to be taken seriously. 

Protesters in Durban against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, March 2022. Photo from GGA

For example, Nelson Mandela in 1946 accompanied JB Marks on visits to the mineworkers’ compounds during the strike, speaking to kinsfolk who were among the isibondas who helped to supply local leadership.  Far from opposing the strike, Youth Leaguers drew inspiration from it.

In 1957, local ANC leaders helped lead the Alexandra Bus boycott and the ANC helped organise solidarity boycotts elsewhere on the Rand.  The politics of the boycott was complicated, and the ANC weren’t the only actors involved. There were disagreements over strategy, but it is simply untrue that the ANC refused support.  The ANC bus owner was Richard Baloyi, but by the 1950s he no longer owned a bus company having been bought out by PUTCO in the aftermath of bus boycotts in the 1940s. 

On Russia and Ukraine.  That the ANC continues to have a sentimental regard for Russia is understandable, given the historic associations between Moscow and the anti-apartheid struggle (to which Ukrainians made a signal contribution as well). Naledi Pandor’s proposal that a multi-polar world might offer better developmental opportunities has merit.  But Russia’s rulers preside over a criminalised capitalist autocracy. Treating them as allies is short-sighted.

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Lesego Masisi: ‘It is not practical to take a stance that aids unilateralism’

One can’t be easily convinced by the contents of Bob Myers’s article, and what it ought to do, if they are grounded in solid analysis of current international geo-economics, in addition to a solid analysis of historical developments. Such lazy analyses seek to absorb some feeble/unsure leftists into right-wing and liberal (right-wing sympathisers) propaganda and conspiracy. It honestly takes away from South Africa’s sovereignty and its ability to think for itself.

This obviously does not mean that those who are involved in serious academia and the Genuine left are oblivious to the failures of the ANC in South Africa, and the Global Left, particularly in the context of historical institutional path dependency analysis, structuralist analysis and post-structuralist analysis of our current issues and how we found ourselves here today.

Russia and South Africa: the oppressors make a deal

This posturing has a history, BOB MYERS writes

The South African government of the African National Congress (ANC) has decided to join military exercises with Russia and China. They were announced during a visit to South Africa this week by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov – who was given a warm welcome by Nalendi Pandor, the South African foreign minister.  

Striking miners at Marikana, 2012

Lavrov denounced “colonialism” – and no doubt various “left” groups around the world will trumpet this accord as evidence that Russia, China and South Africa are “fighting imperialism”.

Last year, South Africa called on Russia to withdraw troops from Ukraine. But this week Pandor said it would be “simplistic and infantile” to ask for that now.

The ANC government uses its stance to bolster its own “anti-imperialist” credentials among its own people and among neighbouring African governments.  

But this alliance is not “anti-imperialist” at all. It is an anti-working class alliance that actually has a long history.

The ANC emerged as a political movement in the early 20th century. It was the party of the small black business and professional class. With the rise of apartheid it fought for the rights of black business. It tried to appear as a spokesperson for all the oppressed black population, but there was always a problem with this as it had no interest in the real emancipation of black workers.

Two good examples of this tension can be seen in the period after world war two.

First, at the end of the war there was an upsurge of black working class militancy leading to a general strike of black miners. Nelson Mandela, at that time leader of the ANC youth wing, refused to support the strike, fearing it would undermine the ANC’s efforts to win concessions for black business.

Titanium mining in South Africa: communities face a “travesty of justice”

A guest post by HALI HEALY

A court in South Africa has found five men not guilty of an armed assault on people in a community that is resisting a titanium mining project.

The verdict, at the Mbizana District Court in the Eastern Cape on 31 August, was denounced as a “travesty of justice” by the Amadiba Crisis Committee (ACC), which unites communities on the Wild Coast against open-cast mining.

The five men had been charged with attempted murder, assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, pointing and shooting of firearms, and theft, in the “Christmas shootings” case. The victims, a group of male residents of Mdatya village, were attacked on a December evening in 2015 as they walked home from a ceremony.

The attack was the culmination of a week-long campaign of intimidation, aimed at community members who since April 2015 had coordinated a blockade, preventing access by consultants trying to carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment for the Xolobeni mineral sands project, which wants to mine a 22 kilometre stretch of the coast.

A petition being handed to Mbizana Court 13 January 2020, demanding an end to postponements of the “Christmas Shootings” case. Photo from Amadiba Crisis Committee facebook page

Given the stakes, tensions in the area have simmered for years. Episodes of violence are frequent, and opponents of the Xolobeni project often become victims of intimidation and assault. But most incidents go unreported out of fear of retribution, and the police are not trusted.

In 2016, ACC chairperson Sikhosiphi Bazooka Radebe was assassinated. Senior officers in the South African Police Service were accused of “intentionally impeding” the investigation.

Let Africa’s queer voices speak in the movement for climate justice

As the climate crisis intensifies in Africa, LGBTQIA+ people will struggle the most, ORTHALIA KUNENE, a South African writer and grass roots activist, writes in this guest post

Climate change affects every one of us on the planet but the burden of its consequences are vastly unequal.

While climate impacts are devastating for everyone, inequalities such as those between the rich and poor, and between different genders and sexualities, widen in times of crisis. The impacts are experienced in varying depths and extremes within – and between – communities.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), people who are already the most vulnerable and marginalised will experience the greatest impacts of the climate crisis. The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and ally (LGBTQIA+) community is one such group, which, because of its social vulnerability, is a hidden victim of climate changes.

In Africa, LGBTQIA+ people are already more likely to live in poverty, have less access to basic human rights – such as the ability to move freely – and to face systematic violence, that escalates during periods of instability. There are more and more instances of violence and state repression, and as climate change intensifies, LGBTQIA+ people on the continent will struggle the most.

The Pride festival in Soweto, South Africa, in 2014. Photo by Siyachamer Ntuli

In the past two years, climate disasters have rampaged through the African continent, washing away homes, bridges, schools, and entire neighbourhoods. In Mozambique, since Cyclone Idai in 2019, there have been three more cyclones.

When Cyclone Idai hit landfall in Beira, Mozambique, it killed more than 1000 people across Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe, and left 2.6 million people in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Catastrophic damage, caused by strong winds and extensive flooding, wiped away harvests and destroyed seed stocks. Millions lost their homes and livelihoods. Two years on, more than 8.7 million people do not have enough food or water, and over 100,000 people in Mozambique are still living in temporary shelters.

While devastating for all the communities impacted, those affected who are LGBTIQIA+ are even more vulnerable – because of pre-existing challenges based on the continuous fight for equal rights and freedom from discrimination and violence. There was a reminder of these challenges earlier this year in Cameroon, where more than two dozen people were arrested between February and April on charges of homosexuality, according to Human Rights Watch, and several of those arrested were subjected to beatings and other forms of abuse.