part of no part

Both Thabo Mbeki and Pallo Jordan miss the proverbial elephant in the room when Mbeki leaks a 30 page pamphlet on the Land and National Question and when Pallo defends the ANC in return. Mbeki seeks to make the conversation about the participation or rather exclusion of Whites in the National Question and links the land question firmly to the National question and argues that the ANC has deviated from its historical position, While Pallo relies on the Morogoro conference of 1969 to argue that the ANC has not deviated from its historical path. Both speak of the central analysis of ANC which argues for prosecution of the struggle in favour of Blacks in General and Africans in particular. Mbeki uses it to argue that it excludes whites from the Land question which undoes the National question, while Pallo argues that it is consistent since at least Morogoro. What they both miss, is that the very analysis of the Morogoro Conference which places a Berlin Wall between what it c...

The decision by Minister Gwede Mantashe and the Cabinet to withdraw the MPRDA Amendment Bill from the Parliamentary process and to simultaneously water down the provisions of the Mining Charter, appears once again to signal a decisive move by the current government to favour business and profits at the expense of some of the most marginalised and impoverished South Africans. This announcement comes ironically at a time when South Africans have been following the Zondo commission into the corporate capture of the state. While the commission appears to be considering a particularly rabid type of corporate capture of the state, the announcement by Cabinet on Thursday, brings to the fore an ideological capture of the state by corporate interests. In its essence, the cabinet decision to set aside the current MPRDA Amendment process, is not so much a victory for policy certainty as it is a smashing down of the popular will and rational thought. Over the course of the last 6 year...