Mandela dead, so what?
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So Nelson Mandela is dead! and? as I write this, Obama, another failure for the black man is waxing lyrical on Mandelas legacy. The black population of S.Africa, were no better or worse off with or without this "icon". Did he get rid of oppression in S.Africa? no. Were the Blacks better of after aparteid than before? no not appreciably. S.Africa, as with the rest of the worlds, is as run in the interests of a tiny minority, the Capitalists, as it was before Mandela. The rich are still rich, the poor still poor, no matter their colour.
As with Mandela, the US cretin Obama is another who fails to live up to the hype given him. When workers really grasp the truth, it will not be trust in the likes of Mandela, Obama etc etc that workers look to for respite, it will be the strength that a unified working-class can bring about.
Sod leaders, sod the eulogising that will go on from now on, re Mandelas death. I would rather put my faith in my fellow class members, than this "icon"! Why is this guy an "icon"? your guess is as good as mine. Is the emancipation of the "vast" majority any closer? no!!!!!!
Stevie C.
http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/07/mandela-godfather-of-neo-apartheid.html Obama is now glorifying Nelson Mandela when they kept him in the list of terrorists, he does not mention all the anti-workers policies and mandates that he promoted in South Africa, he did the same thing that Obama is doing, defending and protecting the interesst of the capitalist class. . Mandela is just the godfather of neo-apartheid
Chavez and Mandela gone…who will be the next political icon to worship….answers on a postcard…SOYMB Mandela's obituary herehttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/12/saying-good-bye-to-madiba.html
Not a single reference substantiating his statements: http://www.countercurrents.org/mountain090713.htm Also no references on your blog.
“Also no references on your blog.” John Pilger a respected journalist is quoted. John Minto, an anti-apartheid campaigner. A Financial Times article is cited. A number of facts are used that are verifiable. The proof is in the pudding. Mandela accepted the decision for the new country to go with free-market economic policies in 1994 and the results were predictable. The rich have got richer and the poor poorer. Much of Mandela’s failings is what he did not do such as criticise ANC corruption. Here is John Pilger again.
“The ANC, said Mandela, would take over the great monopolies, including the mines, and the financial institutions. ‘That is the fundamental policy of the ANC’, he said. ‘It is inconceivable that we will ever change this policy.’ When it was clear, in the 1980s, that the regime of P.W. Botha was doomed, big business changed its allegiance to the ANC, confident that its multinational interests would not be obstructed and that foolish promises about equity and the natural resources “belonging to all the people” would be abandoned. Since the ANC has settled into office, Margaret Thatcher’s infamous TINA (“there is no alternative”) has become the government’s touchstone. The policy is known as GEAR – for growth, employment and redistribution – but it has little connection with employment, as jobs are being shed by the tens of thousands, and even less with redistribution, which seemsconfined to changing seats on a gravy train. A government adviser told me: “We refer to cautious Thatcherism’Nelson Mandela is very different, and perhaps he is the enigma It seemed to me that his authority and reputation rest on what he represented, rather than his politics. He has served as a mighty symbol, calming and reassuring; this has been his remarkable power. He also has the rare quality of grace; he makes people feel good.
When we met, he listed for me the ANC’s achievements: the supply of water to more than a million people, the building of clinics, the free health care to pregnant women and children under six. (To these, I would add the new abortion laws, which have saved the lives of tens of thousands of women, whose death at the hands of back-street abortionists was a feature of apartheid.) Then he suddenly changed course and praised privatisation “as the fundamental policy of this government”, which was the diametrically opposite of what he promised in 1994. He quoted an array of statistics about inflation and the deficit, while omitting the terrible facts of unemployment. By the year 2000, it is estimated that half the population will be unemployed: a bomb ticking to its inevitable detonation. He told me he had repeatedly warned people that substantial change “could not happen overnight: that the process might take as long as five years”. Five years are up next April. Moreover, it has to be said that the rise of the new elite has not been inhibited by such a time restriction, that their enrichment did, in many cases, happen “overnight”. I was surprised that the president failed to see the irony in his statement that an ANC government, brought to power partly as a result of boycotts and sanctions, was willing to “do business with any regime regardless of its internal policies”. The west, he said, had no monopoly on human rights, which were also the rights to health care and education. Amazingly, he gave as a model Saudi Arabia “where students enjoy benefits I have not seen anywhere in the world”. Saudi Arabia and Algeria, both of them serious human rights violators, are current clients of the billion dollar white-run South African arms industry, the source of death and suffering in the region, and which has been reinvigorated under the ANC. On one of his visits to see the dictator of Indonesia, General Suharto, Mandela offered to sell him arms, too. How many times”, he said, “has the liberation movement worked together with the people and then at the moment of victory betrayed them? There are many examples of that in the world. If people relax their vigilance, they will find their sacrifices have been in vain. If the ANC does not deliver the goods, the people must do to it what they have done to the apartheid regime.’ http://tomweston.net/ANCSOLD.TXT Admice, Mandela declined to take his own advice and condemn the ANC (although he did recant on South Africa’s suicidal AIDS/HIV denial that led to the death of hundreds of thousands)and as the SOYMB said allowed himself to be used to give the ANC legitimacy, that makes him in my eyes guilty of betrayal and hypocrisy.We do not have to do a social, and economical research in order to understand and see that Nelson Mandela was a traitors to the working class of South Africa, and that he helped the rich to get richer, and that he was part of the economical capitalist re-structuration of that country. He became the president of a capitalist state and a capitalist economy, and a capitalist country, and there is not any politician able to alter or change the economical bases, his real bosses were not the workers of South Africa, but the national and international capitalist class, and big bankers, and the owners of the mines
mcolome1 wrote:He became the president of a capitalist state and a capitalist economy, and a capitalist country, and there is not any politician able to alter or change the economical bases, his real bosses were not the workers of South Africa, but the national and international capitalist class, and big bankers, and the owners of the minesIf this is difficult to understand simply replace 'capitalist' with 'slave' or even 'wage slave'. He did not free 'his' people; they remain exploited and poor. Capitalist propaganda will never pull the wool over the eyes of class consious workers. We see right through it all.
duplicate
Vin Maratty wrote:If this is difficult to understand simply replace 'capitalist' with 'slave' or even 'wage slave'. He did not free 'his' people; they remain exploited and poor. Capitalist propaganda will never pull the wool over the eyes of class consious workers. We see right through it all.At a SWSS meeting in 1987 about Apartheid at my Poly, we had a black guy from South Africa in attendance. He was (not surprisingly) very sympathetic to Mandela (and by implication Mandela's politics). I pointed out to him that Mandela wanted 'black capitalism' rather than workers' power, that the future would bear me out, and based my opinion on the historical development of other African states since the 'Winds of Change' started blowing in the late '50s.He looked a bit shocked (don't forget, Mandela was still in prison), but nevertheless listened, and seemed to be weighing up some confusing information which he'd never had before. He didn't say much, though. On the other hand, the SWP members were openly pissed off at me, perhaps because they thought my 'unwelcome' intervention would drive away a potential recruit.I often wonder if that worker ever thought back to what I said, and started to use a class, rather than a black nationalist, analysis of his society.Anyway, now that Mandela has gone, I wonder if his legacy will begin to be questioned by the workers of South Africa and elsewhere?
Vin Maratty wrote:mcolome1 wrote:If this is difficult to understand simply replace 'capitalist' with 'slave' or even 'wage slave'. He did not free 'his' people; they remain exploited and poor. Capitalist propaganda will never pull the wool over the eyes of class consious workers. We see right through it all.
Mandela is just another mythology created by the right wingers and the left wingers. Any idol that serves "liberal" capitalism and state capitalism will be worshipped by both political wings of capitalism, and both can be mixed on a political blender, and we will obtain the same juice, and the same results: Capitalist reforms, in favor of the capitalists, and in detriment of the working class. Both are based on the individualistic conception of history, proven that it is totally incorrect, because an individual, or a leader, is not the protagonist of our historical eventsWe can not be fooled by the capitalist propaganda, and the capitalist agents wearing the cloth of liberalism and leftism,( state capitalism ) when you have the proper principles in your consciousness you have the proper tools to be able to understand this society, and its maneuvers. An eagle is able to see miles away from its objectiveJust look at the most recent case of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, another idol of the left wingers, and some sectors of the right wingers, it has been proven that his government produced more benefits to the capitalist class, than all the prior governments that existed in that country, and despite all the talks against Yankee imperialism, to reduce poverty, and to empower the workers, most of the American petroleum companies have total control over the natural resources, and the Venezuelan wage slaves, the rich got richer, and the poor became poorer, the grip of the state over the peoples is stronger now, and an elite of military bureaucrats became richer also, it is just another failure of state capitalism, and south Africa is just another failure of liberal capitalism..History has proven that capitalism in any of its varieties will never benefit the working class of the whole world, and it has proven that our only alternative ( not alternatives ) is socialism, or a democratic society of common possession of the means of production, without wage slavery, without states, and without leadersNelson Mandela was part of the same game in a different country, and a different hemisphere of the world, like Chavez he took over a capitalist economy instead of implementing state capitalism, he helped to implement liberal capitalism, and poverty was increased, and a tiny group of parasites became richer, and they took total control of all the natural resourcesSince the very beginning the Socialist Party was correct in regard to both phenomenon, we can not be fooled with the romantic speeches of the capitalist class, we do not need statistics, capitalist economists, and sociological guru to open our eyes, we have already a clear visionAs we can see left wingers and right wingers are not relevant for the workers, because both are the same dangerous trend within the working class, in the same manner that Leninism is a dangerous trend within the working class movement
One person i notice not being asked for her opinion and feelings is ex-wife WinniePerhaps the kidnapper and inciter to murder remarks here maybe the reason the press appear reluctant to ask herhttp://www.standard.co.uk/news/how-nelson-mandela-betrayed-us-says-exwife-winnie-6734116.html
Interesting quote of Mandela that may sound familiar. "It is not the kings and generals that make history but the masses of the people, the workers, the peasants…"
Vin Maratty wrote:Interesting quote of Mandela that may sound familiar. "It is not the kings and generals that make history but the masses of the people, the workers, the peasants…"Perhaps if he'd given a less 'familiar' quote, it would be even more 'interesting' to the workers of the world:"It is not the kings and generals that make wealth but the masses of the people, the workers, the peasants…"He came from a wealthy background, and became a lawyer (something still realistically out of reach for most workers in the 'first world' like the UK) under Apartheid.He was never going to share the ill-gotten gains of his class, just to share platitudes about 'people'. He wanted his class, black and white, to share the wealth amongst his own class more 'colourlessly'.
LBird wrote:At a SWSS meeting in 1987 about Apartheid at my Poly, we had a black guy from South Africa in attendance.While we're reminiscing about Mandela, South Africa, etc, a few years later the Socialist Party had a debate with the Inkhata party of Chief Buthelezi. Their speaker came armed with their tradional knobstick and played the Zulu warrior. He said Mandela was ok as he came from an offshoot of the Zulu tribe, but that Archbishop Tutu wasn't as he came from a slave tribe.
Mandela finished his law degree while in prison where he was locked up for 27 years. Does this incarceration redeem him in your eyes and thus give him a sort of "moral equivalence" to all those workers of the developed world who you suggest don't have the same opportunity as Mandela had to become lawyers (not true BTW in my part of the world)? And what are these "ill-gotten gains" you refer to? And what "class" are you referring to? He was born the son a a tribal chief (not wealthy by the standards of Whites in Apartheid South Africa). Surely you are not suggesting he was a paid up member of a black bourgeoisie!
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