File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-01-05.184, message 21


Date: Sat, 04 Jan 1997 11:15:29 +0200
From: Patrick Bond <PATRICK-AT-niep.org.za>
Subject: M-I: New issue of SA poli-econ journal, "debate"


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Date: Fri, 03 Jan 1997 09:54:09 +0200
From: Patrick Bond  <pen-l-AT-anthrax.ecst.csuchico.edu>
Subject: [PEN-L:8081] New issue of SA poli-econ journal, "debate"

PLEASE CIRCULATE TO INTERESTED COMRADES...

debate
Voices from the South African Left

Issue #2, January 1997

(If you are interested in subscribing, contact
029frb-AT-cosmos.wits.ac.za.)
Contents and editorial follow:

EDITORIAL1
TIME FOR WORKING-CLASS WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP
Roseline Nyman5
TOWARDS A GRASSROOTS WOMEN'S MOVEMENT
Rita Edwards12
*HOW ARE YOU?* D *AS YOU CAN SEE*; STEPPING STONES
Anna Varney14
WHO ARE THE ZAPATISTAS?
Bobby Rodwell15
ON RAMONA'S ROLE IN THE ZAPATISTA STRUGGLE
Ursula Razo17
FEMINISM AND ZAPATISM 
Teresa Rendon19
SECOND DECLARATION OF LA REALIDAD
the Frente Zapatista27
THE WORLD BANK'S STOP-START SA MISSION
Patrick Bond30
ON THE IMF MANAGING DIRECTOR'S VISIT;
DEBATING ALEC ERWIN
Campaign Against Neoliberalism in South Africa37
WORLD BANK
Kelyn Sole45
AFTER THE BAFFLED INTELLECTUALS
Franco Barchiesi46
THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION
AND IMPERIALISM
Chris Malikhane58
>FROM ASIAN TIGER TO AFRICAN LION?
John Pape68
EXTRACT FROM THE TRANSITION IN SOUTH AFRICA
Carl T. Brecker82
RESPONSE TO BRECKER
Dale T. Mckinley88
RESPONSE TO MCKINLEY, SATGAR AND ZITA
Aaron Amaral  96
PAGES FROM THE SOCIALIST COOKBOOK
Darrel Moellendorf105
MASS EVENTS; HARDNESS; RED LAND
Allan Kolski Horwitz120
TWO REVIEWS OF THE FILM LAND AND FREEDOM
Andre Marais and Lucien van der Walt122

EDITORIAL

To our readers,

Our first issue sold out immediately, and for those who didn't manage to
get a copy, we hope you'll bear with us. The many production and
distribution kinks in our debut are being ironed out. Finances are
remarkably healthy, thanks to untiring voluntary labour-power. There'll be
many more debates, so join us. 

We are mindful, in the wake of the October visit by IMF czar Michel
Camdessus - and just prior to another undemocratic national budgeting
process whose aim seems to be spending cuts without regard to social
costs - that government's waning rumours, dreams and promises directly
reflect the spectre of globalisation. The hospital closures, halving of
welfare benefits to women head-of-households, teacher retrenchments,
downgrading of urban housing first to toilets plus bricks and now to pit
latrines in segregated low-income ghettoes, and on and on, are all done
in the name of Camdessus' 3% deficit/GDP nostrum.

Here's the key paragraph from Thabo Mbeki's November ANC think-piece,
*The State and Social Transformation*:  *The Democratic Movement must
resist the illusion that a democratic South Africa can be insulated from
the processes which characterise world development. It must resist the
thinking that this gives South Africa a possibility to elaborate solutions
which are in discord with the rest of the world, but which can be
sustained by virtue of a voluntarist South African experiment of a special
type, a world of anti-Apartheid campaigners, who, out of loyalty to us,
would support and sustain such voluntarism.*

Never mind the ersatz Leninism that infects this document (and that will
get a proper deconstruction in our next issue). The language, after all, is
a flattering signifier that the South African Left, and particularly the gut
anti-neolib instincts of labour and social movements, warrant an
occasional caress by the country's next president. But the paragraph
deserves political translation, so to borrow from Cosatu's November
*Draft Programme for the Alliance*:  *There has been pressure put on the
government by both local and international business, and the media, to
adopt economic policies in direct contradiction to those they were
mandated to implement. The movement seems to be paralysed by the
threat of globalisation and the investment strike of business.*

Thus our themes for this issue easily reflect contemporary concerns.
Given that women continue suffering inordinately at the hands not only
of patriarchs but also of local and global fiscal control freaks and
sado-monetarists, Roseline Nyman begins this issue with a plea for
working-class leadership within the women's movement and, more
generally, greater attention to poor and working women's issues. The
sentiment is concretised by Rita Edwards, who describes the recent
emergence of a women's group in the Western Cape.

In Mexico, similar strategy sessions are underway, and we are proud to
have several articles about gender struggles and Mexico's campaign
against neoliberalism. Bobby Rodwell introduces the Zapatista
movement, followed by a tribute by Ursula Razo to Ramona, a brave
indigenous Mayan leader who in October - when she was thought to be
terminally ill - led the Zapatista delegation to a congress in Mexico City
and was immediately hospitalised for a kidney transplant operation
(which was successful), notwithstanding an extraordinary state military
presence aimed at halting Zapatista geographical and political expansion.
Next is an article written for debate by Teresa Rendon, an academic
and gender advisor to the Zapatistas, on how the indigenous people's
struggle in Chiapas relates to historic demands by women - both organic
and bourgeois-feminist. 

In addition, the Zapatistas update their own call for international
networking of progressive forces. It is now well accepted that
globalisation as a concept was first decisively contested from below by
the Zapatistas three years ago, and it is good to now observe similar
stirrings in South Africa. Patrick Bond's review of World Bank
endeavours helps explain why progressives must think globally and act
globally, not because of massive new loan programmes, but because of
the pernicious grip that Bank-think seems to have on Pretoria.

And this widening of progressive vision is indeed underway, as
solidarity relationships burgeon with democratic forces stretching from
Chiapas and El Salvador to Nigeria and the occupied Western Sahara to
occupied East Timor (and we expect, Burma too). On economic terrain,
we celebrate the formation of a *Campaign Against Neoliberalism in
South Africa* that has helped move both popular analysis and concrete
struggle to a higher stage. We were all happy to hear the discordant
tenor that rang throughout the Camdessus visit, what with protests in
Johannesburg and Cape Town, straightforward hostility from ANC
parliamentarians, the Cosatu and Sanco decisions to cancel two
scheduled photo-opportunity meetings, and public statements
antagonistic to the IMF by the SACP, Sasco, Women's National Coalition
and National Progressive Primary Health Care Network. CANSA also
takes this opportunity to expand upon a debate with Minister Alec Erwin,
begun in the Mail and Guardian in October.

To ensure we not only campaign, but also develop a rigorous
perspective on globalisation, contributions from Franco Barchiesi and
Chris Malikhane provide differing theoretical and political perspectives
on intellectuals, imperialism and traditions of anti-capitalist analysis.
Comrade Franco points out flaws in contemporary academic engagement
with these subjects, while Comrade Chris advances political economic
debates within Sasco using an argument that winds its way from Lenin
to Amin and onwards. The two are divergent with respect to language,
angle of argument and political conclusions, and by printing these we
honour the Left's capacity to move on more than one conceptual and
practical plane at a time. Following this is an empirical argument from
John Pape that we not get hung up on following South Korea to an
export-led future, and indeed for the Left to read more carefully the
reasons for that country's recent industrialisation. 

Looking now to local political theory, we include an excerpt from Carl
Brecker's pamphlet on the need to revive the Permanent Revolution
thesis, followed by a reply from a Communist Party organiser, Dale
Mckinley, who posits that we need not falsely dichotomise permanent
revolution with the National Democratic Revolution. Aaron Amaral (of
the International Socialist Movement) argues against what he insists is a
reformist defence of the RDP, as staked out by Mckinley, Langa Zita and
Vishwas Satgar in our first issue. Darrel Moellendorf then takes us
>from socialist agency to socialist economic principles, by considering the
choices of various blueprints that we as activists and strategists must
surely grapple with one day.

Jumping to an earlier era, we encounter a celebrated film by Ken Loach,
Land and Freedom, about the Spanish Civil War. We expect readers will
have seen this by the time of our publication, but if not the two reviews
here by Andre Marais and Lucien van der Walt provide an incentive.
Cultural production remains critical to the Left's development, and again
we are providing poems by Anna Varney, Kelwyn Sole and Allan
Kolski Horwitz that contribute to the resurgence of progressive politics
in South Africa.

Finally, our solicitation of contributions remains imperfect. Although
gender is one of our themes this issue, and although we are
strengthening our commitment to drawing out arguments by leading black
- especially African - intellectuals and activists, there is a long way to go
before we'll claim to have made progress.

We want to conclude by asking for your suggestions on our next issue
(the theme of which, already the subject of hot debate, is *Intellectuals in
Retreat*). And please keep in touch with us by e-mail (at
029frb-AT-cosmos.wits.ac.za or pbond-AT-wn.apc.org). This will allow us to
include you in an experimental mass-editing discussion forum list, where
journal contributions will be shared. We are serious about this, so join us!

The Johannesburg Collective





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