The sickening smell 'Revolution'

[Paul (Pepe) Freemantle]

Max du Preez

South Africa hasn't had its revolution yet. It is coming, a newspaper editor declared on Twitter this week, echoing the earlier stark warning by writer Peter Godwin.

I'm beginning to smell revolution too. Just a whiff, for now, but still.

But it isn't the exciting, promising smell of the 1980s. The smell of freedom and possibility.

It's the sickening smell of hatred, greed and revenge. The smell of rot.

Revolution fomented by greed

Look, I think there are ample reasons for a lot of people in this country to want to revolt.

I would too if I lived in a shack and had no hope of finding a job and improving my miserable life and those of my children.

But the revolution I fear is not one driven by a genuine desire for a decent life and dignity.

I fear the revolution fomented by greedy, fat cat demagogues lusting for more power, with insecure little men clinging to their coattails.

I don't fear an uprising aimed at correcting imbalances and bringing justice.

I fear an uprising that will dump our constitution in the rubbish bin, rob us of our freedom, destroy our economy and put a nasty, super-wealthy bunch of despots in power.

Sense of unease

My sense of unease was not triggered when Julius Malema called a whole section of the nation a bunch of criminals.

It was triggered when he said it in front of our president, who said nothing to distance himself from such hate speech, and the ruling party praised Malema by its faint condemnation.

Malema's unchallenged insults were a signal that it was open season. Columnists like Andile Mngxitama and Eric Myeni, Youth League leaders like Floyd Shivambu, writers of letters to newspapers and callers to radio talk shows started spewing racism like we last saw coming from the AWB.

The staid British magazine The Economist remarked, "It is becoming more acceptable for black South Africans to scorn and abuse whites openly as a racial group."

Turn your head away from corruption, bad governance and abuse of power; it is time to find a new common enemy to divert the attention. It worked for Robert Mugabe, didn't it?

Supporting economic freedom

The new populist madness dominating our political culture saw Malema's demands for nationalisation of mines and banks and grabbing of land become mainstream thinking in the Tripartite Alliance within weeks, with Cosatu and the SACP backtracking on earlier reservations.

There is nothing wrong with a campaign for "economic freedom in our lifetime". In fact, I support it.

But then fight for real solutions to poverty and unemployment, not for a system that can only lead to more misery, suffering and hunger.

I'm not sure about many things, but I'm very sure large-scale nationalisation and expropriation of agricultural land will not in the end benefit the poor at all.

The economic cake will simply shrink drastically and you will only be certain of a slice if you're already very wealthy or you are an ANC insider.

I listen when a movement such as Abahlali baseMjondolo champions the cause of the destitute, not to the Johnny Walker Blue drinkers who wax on with their racist threats and over-simplifications.

There is no quick way to kill poverty and create millions of jobs, but there has to be a quicker way than the way we're doing it right now.

We have to find that way, "we" meaning government, the business sector, the labour movement and the citizenry.

In need of a wake-up call

Mind you, I sometimes think white South Africans deserve a revolution. Too many of them live in complete denial, as if nothing had changed since the comfortable days when they were what Malema and Co now want to become.

Too many whites fooled themselves into thinking putting black faces in government and parliament would be the extent of their "sacrifice" after apartheid.

Their racism, although mostly uttered privately or anonymously, matches that of the new breed of black racists.

They need a rude wake-up call, or there will be a revolution and they will be its first victims.

As I said, it was just a whiff of revolution that I got. But a whiff that should jolt us all into action.

Don't go stockpiling tinned food and bottled water yet. Rather help stop the madness.

[Michael Alexander]

Yawn! Nice living on this side of the border, wonder if I should braai ribs this weekend or chops?

[Michael Alexander]

Pepe, this is from the Sowetan, written by Mangosuthu....

"I HAVE disagreed with the ANC before, at great personal cost. Necessity calls on me to do it again.

I have said in Parliament and on the record that there is no place in our national discourse for a debate on nationalisation.

Our economic vision cannot withstand the uncertainty this debate is stirring, just as our economy would not withstand the execution of this socialist ideal.

There is therefore grave danger in the ANC's ambivalence. The nationalisation debate has gone unchallenged by ruling party leaders, and now finds itself in the Resolutions of the ANC Youth League.

And the stakes have been raised, for now it is tied to intimations of whether a second term for President Jacob Zuma will be supported by the youth league and the alliance partners.

The sparks of a devastating fire have been lit.

Across the world, the debate on nationalisation closed decades ago. It was part of the socialist agenda that had the youth of my generation starry eyed.

Even I, cutting my political teeth in the ANC Youth League in the 1950s, was enthusiastic about nationalisation and socialism. But I and most of my comrades matured.

As young politicians, we all admired former Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere for his policy of Ujamaa, an African version of socialism.

In the early 1970s, I visited Nyerere in Dar es Salaam and he gave me a copy of his book titled Ten Years After Arusha that contained his thoughts on socialism. Even then he already had second thoughts about socialism or Ujamaa.

I was honoured to receive him in my own office in 1994 when I became Home Affairs Minister, and we had the opportunity to discuss socialism again.

By that time, I had rejected the ideology and I was fascinated to hear what Nyerere had to say.

He told me that when President Robert Mugabe became the first Prime Minister of a democratic Zimbabwe in 1980, Nyerere had congratulated him on inheriting a jewel in the Zimbabwean economy. But he had also warned him, "Don't do what I did; don't destroy it."

History records how socialism destroyed most of the Eastern Bloc countries.

When I was chief minister of the erstwhile KwaZulu government, I was visited by youths from Russia who wanted nothing to do with socialism because of the destruction it had wrought on their country.

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were two Germanys; East Germany, which was socialist and poor, and West Germany which was practising free enterprise and well to do.

Just a few months ago, Zuma wrote off R1,1billion worth of debt that Cuba owed South Africa.

When former president Nelson Mandela was the head of government, he abandoned socialism and embraced the benefits of the free enterprise system.

I was part of former president Thabo Mbeki's Cabinet when he introduced the macroeconomic strategy of Growth, Employment and Redistribution, and I welcomed this tremendous step in the right direction.

But the ANC's alliance partners vehemently rejected Gear and South Africa's macroeconomic strategy was derailed.

Since then no one has been able to pinpoint where the ANC stands, and this uncertainty is compounded by the nationalisation agenda.

The ANC needs to make its position clear.

Senior leaders ought to be saying what I am saying here; that nationalisation would affect the destruction of our economy and the loss of investment, and we will not do it.

I have no doubt I will draw criticism from the ANC Youth League and from the ANC.

I have spent a large part of my life confronting vilification and alienation because of the stand I took in 1979.

At that time, the ANC-in-exile sought Inkatha Freedom Party's support for international sanctions and disinvestment in South Africa, but we could not give it.

I knew that sanctions and disinvestment would devastate the poorest of the poor more than it would touch those with a means of livelihood.

Thus an ideological rift opened between me and former ANC president Oliver Tambo, and Inkatha and the ANC were split.

When we rejected the armed struggle, the rift could not be breached.

I am surprised that the ANC now rejects sanctions and disinvestment against Zimbabwe for the same reasons Inkatha put forward in 1979. Again one wonders where they stand.

So I risk being vilified again, but I have no regrets. The debate on nationalisation has become a burning issue.

It is the senior leaders of the ANC who should be taking this stand. In their absence, I reject nationalisation.

There is no place for this debate. The matter must be closed.

As the president of the IFP, for the sake of our country, I unequivocally stand against nationalisation.

[Dalene Steenkamp (Coetzee)]

This talk of nationalization is going hand in hand with the pressure to ban labour brokers in the metal worker industry as well as in the mining industry. 

First they shouted for privatising most industries  -  that happened with the effect of the vast labour task being dumped on private companies, i.e contractors.  Now that that is in place and the 'job placement' is done by labour brokers, that is not good enough and they want to nationalise it.  Does this not reek of communism?  !!!!!!!!!!!

What the hell do they want? 

[SandyB]

Silly  M ...... F@#$%^!  they are so blind they cannot even see the trail of  disasters of " nationalisation " that have been repeated  over and over ...

Einsteins definition of insanity

DOING THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER  AND EXPECTING A DIFFERENT RESULT ....

[Paul (Pepe) Freemantle]

Hi there all, thanks for your posts, interesting to hear your comments and reading your posts. I agree with you Daleen, I smell Communism as well. The ANC will never learn from history as they seem to want to go back to things that have failed over the world (Communism). We will keep our ears and eyes open and watch as this fairy tale unfolds.

[Michael Alexander]

Perhaps Botha was right, the rooi gevaar is now in power....