History of the African National Congress

South Africa's ANC controls eight of nine provinces - why the Western Cape will remain elusive in the 2024 elections

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, August 1, 2023

The African National Congress (ANC), which governs South Africa, finally held its postponed Western Cape provincial elective congress in June.

Key Points:

The African National Congress (ANC), which governs South Africa, finally held its postponed Western Cape provincial elective congress in June.
The new executive is the first elected ANC Western Cape provincial executive in six years.
By history and demography, the ANC in the Western Cape faces tougher challenges than anywhere else in the country.
A majority of coloured voters vote against the ANC, and in the Western Cape coloured voters constitute a majority of the electorate.
The coloured majority of the Western Cape electorate has ensured that the ANC has never won an absolute majority in that province.

Challenges and own goals

These were liberal activists and veterans committed to nonracialism.
But in the rural Western Cape, today’s DA branches are based upon the renamed National Party branches of the 20th century.
The first ANC Western Cape chair after 1994 was the respected Chris Nissen, a trilingual clergyman (speaking isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans) from the Presbyterian church.
Simultaneously, nationwide, the ANC Youth League was disbanded, and the ANC Women’s League very little in evidence.

Bottoming out?

The newly elected Western Cape provincial executive committee balances Africans such as Tyhalisisu and Ayanda Bam with coloureds such as Neville Delport, Sharon Davids and Derek Appel.
Next year’s general elections will show how far these measures have changed ANC fortunes in the Western Cape.

Essop Pahad: a diligent communist driven by an optimistic vision of a non-racial South Africa

Retrieved on:

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Any examination of Pahad’s full political record will take you back to the heroic phases of South Africa’s liberation history, when prospects for a democratic South African government seemed very remote.

Key Points:

Any examination of Pahad’s full political record will take you back to the heroic phases of South Africa’s liberation history, when prospects for a democratic South African government seemed very remote.
As a teenager in the 1950s he was busy in the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress.
This was the equivalent of the youth league of the liberation movement, the African National Congress (ANC), for Indian South Africans.
In my own research on the South African Communist Party’s history, groups like the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress were game-changers.

The early years

Pahad employed ANC leader Walter Sisulu, supporting his efforts to become an estate agent.
Both Essop and his younger brother Aziz did well enough to obtain entry to the University of the Witwatersrand.
The Transvaal Indian Youth Congress was led by party members and its political affiliations were very evident in its journal, New Youth.
Mbeki was then staying in Johannesburg, completing his A-levels through correspondence after expulsion from Lovedale College for leading a class boycott.

Exile years

Pahad would complete an MA and a doctorate at Sussex between 1965 and 1971, producing a workmanlike dissertation about the South African Indian Congresses.
Pahad’s most conspicuous activity during his exile was his deployment in Prague at the World Marxist Review; acknowledgement by the Communist Party of his status as a reliable theoretician.
He and Meg lived in Prague between 1975 and 1985, and their two daughters were born there, attending Czech schools.

Right-hand man

At that time Mbeki’s future succession to the presidency was uncertain and the party was one key constituency.
But it is true that Pahad’s subsequent political career would be defined by his status as Mbeki’s trusted friend, his best man as it were, a function he actually performed at Mbeki’s wedding in 1974.
So, during the presidency of Nelson Mandela (10 May 1994-16 June 1999) he served as Mbeki’s “parliamentary counsellor”.

Diligent

He surprised even his critics with the diligence with which he supported the offices placed under his authority as minister, for example urging municipalities to “mainstream” disability rights.
He had invited Ajay Gupta to join the International Marketing Council in 2000, an appointment that he subsequently regretted.

Painted messages in Angola's abandoned liberation army camps offer a rare historical record

Retrieved on:

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

On one of them, the fragmented words “IAN NGOYI” recall a figure little-known in Angola but familiar to South Africans: anti-apartheid leader Lilian Ngoyi.

Key Points:

On one of them, the fragmented words “IAN NGOYI” recall a figure little-known in Angola but familiar to South Africans: anti-apartheid leader Lilian Ngoyi.
As part of this research I visited some of the sites where liberation soldiers were trained in Angola.
The liberation movements looked not only to their own countries’ histories but to earlier struggles in Cuba and Vietnam for ideas and inspiration.
The apartheid regime in South Africa, determined to undermine the liberation movements, provided military support to Unita in order to weaken the MPLA.

Places of learning and solidarity

Host countries like Angola allowed exiled movements to act, to a certain extent, like enclave governments with state-like powers over their own members.
But they were also at the mercy of national and international strategic calculations, without the immediate prospect of returning home in triumph.
Camps were places where liberation fighters came into contact with officials and soldiers from their host countries, as well as trainers from Cuba and the Soviet Union.

From King Cetshwayo to Ho Chi Minh

South African history appears again with the name of Cetshwayo, the last Zulu monarch to resist the British Empire before conquest.
This was likely painted in 1979, the ANC’s “Year of the Spear”, the centenary of the Battle of Isandlwana when Cetshwayo’s army resisted the better-armed British.
On a similar building, the letters “…O C… MI…” point to the commemoration of the Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh.
The Angolan ruling party had taken a firm stand against apartheid and Washington saw it as a bridgehead for communist influence.

Southern Africa liberation movements and geopolitics

Trenches and the remains of underground bunkers remind us that this was the front line of the MPLA’s war against UNITA.
Exiled movements were responsible for their own security within Angola.
In their different ways, Camalundu and Caculama provide historians with evidence of liberation struggles and how they were entangled with the international politics of the time.

Wagner group mercenaries in Africa: why there hasn't been any effective opposition to drive them out

Retrieved on:

Saturday, June 24, 2023

The US has little interest in Africa beyond supporting fights against Salafi terrorists.

Key Points:

The US has little interest in Africa beyond supporting fights against Salafi terrorists.
The Wagner Group was set up by Yevgeny Prigozhin in 2014 as a private military company to support the Russian invasion of Ukraine that year.
Assuming that Putin successfully represses the rebellion, Wagner mercenaries are likely to come under the command of the regular Russian military.
I was re-alerted to the “return” of Russia to Africa in preparing a textbook, Africa’s International Relations, published in 2018.

Wagnerian misdeeds

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project research group found that between 52% and 71% of Wagner’s uses of force in the CAR and Mali targeted civilians.
Firstly, the Russian government has been on the lookout for military bases in Africa.
Even before Wagner first got involved in Africa in 2017, Russia already had military cooperation agreements with 18 African countries.

A vacuum of opposition

This small number of beneficiaries will stymie action against Wagner’s mercenaryism, which is banned under international law.
Nor is there likely to be collective pressure under the umbrella of the AU.
It can only organise collective action – as it did against apartheid – when there is a broad consensus on an issue.
South African elites also value both Russia and China as counterbalances to the perceived western dominance that they still loathe.
Lastly, China has been deploying its own private security companies on the continent, mainly to secure access to minerals.

Harry Oppenheimer biography shows the South African mining magnate’s hand in economic policies

Retrieved on:

Friday, June 2, 2023

Based on a remarkable depth of research, it is written in an elegant style which makes for a delightfully easy read.

Key Points:

Based on a remarkable depth of research, it is written in an elegant style which makes for a delightfully easy read.
It is rendered the more impressive by the author’s deep conversance with the debates over the relationships between mining capital, Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid.
Cardo’s reckoning is that Oppenheimer transcended his country’s parochial political arena to become a significant figure on the world stage.

The man behind the money

Yet Oppenheimer emerges from this study not as a “malevolent monster” (p.1) but as a personally likeable individual, intensely loyal to his friends.
One who was highly cultured and sophisticated, with a deep love of art, literature, old books and antiques for their own sake, rather than for opulent display.
His devotion to his Anglican faith was deep and real, underlying his perhaps too-convenient conviction that wealth and power could be combined with “doing good”.
His father, Ernest, was the founder of the Oppenheimer empire, but Harry would become its consolidator (p.18).

The conservative liberal

He served as the party’s financial spokesman and was touted as a future leader.
Later, when liberals formed the Progressive Party, he lent them his firm support.
Cardo characterises Oppenheimer’s liberalism as “pragmatic”, opposing the idea of a universal franchise.
Regarding himself heir to British colonialist and businessman Cecil Rhodes, he deplored the threat to civilisation represented by “primitive tribesmen”.

The influential magnate

He exercised all the soft power at his disposal, through Anglo and his personal contacts with politicians locally and internationally.
His advice to prime minister and president PW Botha to inaugurate multiracial negotiations was ignored.
But when Botha’s notorious “Rubicon” speech in August 1985 prompted a massive outflow of capital, he urged US companies to resist the disinvestment drive.
All these efforts were capped by Gavin Relly, who had succeeded Oppenheimer as chairman of Anglo, meeting with the ANC in exile.
Oppenheimer and Anglo now reached out to leading figures in the ANC to reshape their ideas on the economy.
This book does not offer a radical re-interpretation of either the Oppenheimers or the Anglo-American empire.