Black economic empowerment

“The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

Dear Mr. Manuel

We read with interest your new conviction that our claim of white monopoly capital is a fallacy, invented by a public relations company named Bell Pottinger, as you recently did at the Nelson Mandela Foundation event you attended.

President Jacob Zuma’s recent Cabinet reshuffle is nothing more and nothing less than the latest instalment of a long-running story of the capture of the ANC and the post-1994 democratic state it has politically run.

In the midst of gorging themselves through exploitation and corruption, competing factions of the flabby ruling class in South Africa (the ruling class being capitalists, politicians and top state officials) have once again stepped into the ring to take pieces out of one another.

There has been the dialectical and organic relationship between the benefits and misfortunes of capitalism and racism in South Africa since their inception in the country.

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime” - Balzac

The ANC has become the key political vehicle, both in party and state form, of corporate capital; both domestic and international, both black and white, both local and national, and constitutive of a range of different ‘fractions’ of capital.

February 1990 stands out as the most important month in South Africa’s history. This month divides South Africa’s history into two parts. The first, 1652 to 1989, represents the period of institutionalised racism and political oppression of black and indigenous people.

Visitors to “the land of wide open spaces”, as Namibia is successfully promoted to tourists, will be impressed by what they see.

Greater workplace democracy may make South Africa’s labour market more peaceful, productive and less racially charged.