We Need A Break From The Old Routine

“This year, 2015, the Millennium Development Goals will expire and be replaced with a new set of priorities. It is crucial that the discontents of globalisation are included in this vital conversation about what replaces them.” – Onyekachi Wambu ( New African magazine, January 2015)

INSPIRED BY THOMAS SANKARA - this is a draft Manifesto from the September National Imbizo leadership

SANKARIST PEOPLE'S LOCAL GOVERNMENT MANIFESTO

A proposal to the people!

This Manifesto is drafted and offered for discussion and adoption by all progressive and servant leadership of the local government for 2016. This manifesto does not belong to any political party, or any specific organisation or movement. It is a manifesto inspired by the commitment to serve the people displayed by Thomas Sankara. It is proposed in memory of Andries Tatane who died fighting for water and for a local government that puts the people first!

This manifesto contains the values of a Sankarist Local Government that puts people first and forces councillors to be accountable to the people and serve with dedication, sacrifice and commitment. Also the manifesto has proposals for securing the democratic choices of the people to elect their own local councillors. The people not the political party must choose their own representatives. The local government councillor is first and foremost the servant of the people who elected them. They must listen to the people not the political party bosses.

Disappointment

For the last 20 years we have experienced promises and lies. We have been disappointed! Our townships remain places of poverty, lack of housing, no jobs, bad healthcare and terrible schooling. We watch our children being destroyed by boredom. We watch hopelessly as their dreams are squashed and as they consequently surrender to drugs, alcohol and violence.
20 years after democracy the political dispensation has delivered neither freedom, services
nor an accountable system of governance. It is these structural failures which have lead to the brutal murder of comrade Andries Tatane and many after him during service delivery protests.

We stand with Andries Tatane!

In memory of Andries Tatane, brave committed son of the soil we need
to fight for a new and different country and local government. No
more shall those we elect enrich themselves at our expense and no more
shall they be accountable to their political parties and not their
people. Enough is enough! Now those we elect must serve us!

All Councillors must be servants

Irrespective of political affiliation, all candidates must commit and subject themselves to this manifesto. To this end candidates must undertake to:

1. Take their mandate to govern from the people who elect them not from
political parties.

2. Make all municipality land accessible for free to the people for housing and other development projects including agricultural purposes.

3. Decriminalize land occupations by the landless. Anyone who has waited for more than a year for housing or land has a legitimate right to occupy land to erect a home for her/himself.

4. End all evictions from land.

5. Make public the asset register of the municipality (no more theft of municipality assets).

6. Publicly publish the housing waiting list for all to see and clearly mark or indicate those who have received their houses.

7. Ensure that the total budget for salaries does not exceed 30% of the entire budget. To this end there must be parity of earnings between executives, councillors and general staff.

8. Open all council meetings to the public and have Monthly People’s Assemblies where the majority of people live (townships, informal settlements), so as to consult on all major decisions of council.

9. End the tender system with the exception that it should only apply in cases relating to highly specialized projects with the provision that the relevant specialized outsourced skill must commit to being in partnership with Local Government so as to build the local state capacity to deliver these services.

10. End privatization of services and reclaim/ reverse privatized state assets, including land sold to private companies.

11. Criminalize the use of police to supressed service delivery protests. Demanding basic services is not a crime.

12. Respond to all memoranda from the people within 24 hours.

13. Ensure that the local government is the largest employer providing secure employment and paying all a living minimum wage.

14. Place young unemployed people on a massive programme of socially relevant public works and on minimum wage, for further education including in skills development and for the purpose of rebuilding society (in terms of housing, schools, roads, transport, hospitals). End all cheap labour apprenticeships and unpaid internships. A guarantee of at least the minimum wage and a job at the completion of the internship / apprenticeship.

15. Institute an independent commission of inquiry on corruption. Those who steal from the people shall be encouraged to confess and repent, those who don’t cooperate shall meet the full might of the law. The principle is that those who steal from the people shall be made to account to them and take full responsibility for their actions.

16. Commit to a new vision of human settlement informed by principles of a secure, happy community.

17. Commit to being recalled through a popular vote on the basis that a petition reveals a thirty percent desire by the constituency for such a recall.

18. Commit to a democratic and transparent annual planning and review system in terms of which each area shall have a clear development plan reflecting the priorities. To this end the targets are to be determined by the Community and each ward's plan shall be made public.

19. Live in the constituency that elected them.

20. Adopt and sign the Sankara Oath before being elected as representatives and senior public servants (from mayor to councillor). This will ensure that they use public services and the consequent quality access of such services by all.

21.End the current executive system driven by perks. In this regard, end expensive luxuries such as expensive cars, high housing allowance etcetera.

22. Not live too far away from the life realities of those who elect them.

23. Ensure 50% women representation in all local government related processes and leadership.

These are the ideals of a new local government that puts people first!

Issued by the Sankara Politics and Policy School

Roots Of International Inequality Exposed

To Syriza from Africa

The September National Imbizo Says OXI!

We are a movement of black radicals from South Africa. We have watched your struggle with great interest. We have learned some lessons from your brave stand against the bullies of Brussels. We stand with you and the people of Greece and say a loud NO!
As Africans we have lived through a permanent regime of structural adjustment from the World Bank (WB) and the International Monitory Fund (IMF). Each package of the poison they say is medicine has pushed Africa deeper and deeper into poverty and misery. We have paid over and over the debt but we remain indebted and chained. What the evil troika is proposing is a well-oiled poison that kills. We don’t have to tell you this, you already know it: accepting the austerity regime by the troika will be nothing but surrender. African leaders have for over 50 years surrendered and look at where most of our continent is at. What Brussels is proposing is nothing but a treaty of subjugation. We know this because we are living through the hell of structural adjustment, which people in most countries call “satan after people”. We have seen all the elements of the troika proposal and its identical to what has murdered Africa.

We need Greece to say NO! A resounding NO from Athens shall calibrate our own NO from the African continent. Africa has been fighting the austerity measures for too long. Our cowardly leaders have at different points chosen one more poisonous pill under duress even as our economies are on the dead bed from the poison peddled by the troika. The defeat of the austerity logic shall give the world a new logic to imagine economies of compassion that must put the people first. The logic of money and profits belong to the past. The future if it has to work must put people first. Your NO is a NO we recognise as part our own NO. You speak as Europeans. We speak as the people of no language, because the combined evil force of Europe and America has cut our tongues so that our cries are reduced to a murmurer as they continue to rape our continent and its peoples. Yes we add our muffled NO, to your NO!

We call upon the people of Greece to turn their back on the bullies of Brussels and vote #OXI! We hold our breaths with the progressive peoples of the world for a new Europe, a Europe that shall recognise the devastation of its policies on the African continent and our peoples. We say NO!

We Are The One's We Have Been Waiting For
Issued By September National Imbizo
Leader: Botsang Moiloa
4 July 2015

McCoy Tyner & Ravi Coltrane - Walk Spirit Talk Spirit - LIVE

Concept before Conception - 'How To Teach Your Baby In The Womb'

windblown tribes

Anti-Tribal Poem 1:

i am impure
from my dirty thoughts to my dirty socks
my politics to my national anthem
did i mention my nameless country?
some call it a nation
i call it a timebomb
a melting-pot for seismic revolution
every so called nation deserves one
to every birth there must be blood
nothing thrives in purity
nothing but the righteous ...
nationless me; tribeless I and I
i thrive from the japanese garden sprout and the chinese cultural revolution
i am the product of fornications from the Xhosa-Khoi-San-Zulu- Afrikaans-
Mpondo-Hlubi-Swazi
a black jewish kabbala reading reborn Rasta Rebel Sufi
place me in Northern Ireland and home is where the heart is
leave me stranded in Malawi and i will walk into the mud-house of my ancestors
i will not get lost in Goma and will not be intimidated by Lagos
in Abijan i will find my great great great grandmothers ancestral shrine and break kola nut in the secret grove chanting Nyahbinghi songs in pidgin
i am purely and infinitely windblown like dandelions on windswept hills of eMadlangeni ...

Of Giants, Thought Leaders and Decoloniality

"It is beyond doubt therefore, that capitalism's transition to the stage of monopoly capitalism, to finance capital, is bound up with the intensification of the struggle for the partition of the world." - Imperialism, The Highest STage of Capitalism, by V.I. Lenin*

"in your book The German Ideology, you state that in the Communist society of the future, the individual will not be bound by the limitations of one particular activity but will exercise his faculties in areas he finds interesting and appealing, one thing today another the day after, hunting at dawn, fishing after lunch, at dusk lavishing care on his cattle and enjoying critical thought after dinner, all according to the mood of the moment, yet never turning into hunter, fisher, critic or stockman! - do you truly believe sir, that our life fits such an idyllic description?
the blast-furnaceman interrupted him if we follow your theories to the letter, the Soviet proletariat would be not the object but the subject of its own exploitation!" - The Marx Family Saga by Juan Goytisolo*


Will we ever see the real decline and subsequent death of the Capitalist scourge all over the globe?
Will the wretched of the Earth ever rise up en masse to claim back what is theirs, from the imperialist tyrants of the world,the descendents of Cecil John Rhodes? The ones who will stop at nothing in their pursuit for profits and destabilization of "weaker" countries and governments?
There have been many socio-political movements established with the sole purpose of ENDING THE WORLD as we know it, many have come and gone without achieving their noble ideals, while others survive, thriving on precarious compromises and cleavage to their principles and ideas.
The influencers of these social movements vary, but when it comes to political and economic theory, none stands as firmly established as Karl Marx. Marx's, view of the global market was impeccable and his views remain the focus of diverse economists and politicians. In the Black tadical tradition, only Marcus Garvey and Franz Fanon stand as firmly as Marx, yet more people have heard of Marx more than they have heard or read Fanon, Cabral and the monumental works of Kwame Nkrumah and Mwalimu Nyerere.
Yet many have asked of Marx's theories, "How could he be so wrong and yet so right?"

The role of Karl Marx's work in the Black/Afrikan revolution is undeniable, as one of the principal leaders of newly independent Afrika, Kwame Nkrumah and many ( not all) pan-Afrikanists and Black Consciousness activists would attest ...
While we are still thinking in terms of dialectics and Blackness and Whiteness, it is interesting to note that Marx thought and acted like a grandmaster chess-player and indeed he was one. Marx gave the world the Basic instructions for battling international thievery.

As one of his contemporaries, Wilhelm Liebknecht would recall: "Marx announced triumphantly that he had discovered a new move by which he would drive us all under cover. The challenge was accepted. And really - he defeated us all one after the other. Gradually, however, we learned victory from defeat, and I succeeded in checkmating Marx. It had become very late, and he grimly demanded revenge for next morning, in his house...the next morning the struggle commenced in earnest: through-out the day and afternoon and evening the two men faced each other grimly across the black and white battlefield until, at midnight, Liebnecht succeeded in checkmating his opponent... Marx wanted to continue until Helen the housekeeper presented a message: 'Mrs Marx begs that you play no more chess with Moor ( Marx's nickname, meaning The Black or Swarthy One ), in the evening, when he loses the game, he is most disagreeable."

It is recorded that Liebknecht never played chess with Marx again, but his description of the Marxian technique is very telling, and reveals something about his seminal work, the Communist Manifesto.
"He tried to make up what he lacked in science by zeal, impetuousness of attack and surprise."In the Communist Manifesto Marx asserts, that "Kings, queens, bishops and knights would all be forced into submission sooner or later, beaten down by the sheer determination of their challengers. Like the NEW MOVE of which he was so proud, the manifesto was a WEAPON OF REVENGE AGAINST HIS SMUGLY SUPERIOR ADVERSARIES. forged and fashioned during sleepless nights of brooding rage. His equally smug detractors today are therefore 'still'missing the point.
And I, myself have for a very long time, until recently, avoided delving into the theories and ideas of great thinkers from the West. I have maintained that the only tools that a Black revolutionary requires to Decolonise the Mind and truly get free are those devised by Afrikans ourselves.
But it does not take a longtime to realise that many of our modern day Black liberators gain a lot from the radical thought of people like Marx and Lenin and Mao Zedong.
While I still stand as a rebellious and impure Rastaman, an Afrikanist, an Afrikologist without a tribal identity, I acknowledge once again that I am neither a Marxist nor a communist. However remain inspired by Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin; Amilcar Cabral, Thomas Sankara; Andile Mgxitama and the September National Imbizo and also all the Marxists who have given me a clear yet troubling perspective of the world.
I acknowledge Mphutlane Wa Bofelo, Daggar Tollar and Richard Wright, Angela Davis in the same breath as I extol the works of Marcus Garvey; Ngugi Wa Thiongo and Toni Morrison. They have placed the Black person at the centre of the storm and through their Marxist inspired works and worlds, they have ensured that we all can boldly make New Moves and change the world for the better.

Here is a fitting tribute to Marx, from the September National Imbizo:
Political Education 101
Celebrating The Contributions Of Karl Marx on this 197th Anniversary Of His Birth

Karl Marx' thinking and works can really only be understood if it is considered in its entirety. For example, you cannot draw sound conclusions of Marx' analysis of revolution simply by assessing his early works like "The German Ideology" and "The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts". In this regard a proper conceptualization would require an enquiry into how his theoretical submissions in his early works developed when tested in practice. Marx understood and called for melding theory with practice as the ultimate test for theory. He saw the labor movement as the site for testing his theories. It is instructive to therefore see how the French Revolution of 1848-49 and the Paris Commune of 1871 (the two revolutionary periods in Marx' life) impacted on the evolution of his political thinking.

Of the two texts "The Communist Manifesto" and "The Civil War in France", "The Civil War in France" is considered more important as it reflects Marx's political maturity in respect of his theory of revolution. "The Communist Manifesto" which Marx wrote before the French Revolution is really more of a theoretical prediction of future revolutionary developments based on scientific historical research. "The Civil War in France" however was written after the class struggle there had produced a new system, the commune. But never in his wildest dreams did he or any other thinker ever visualize the commune as a possible state form. This new form of state had in fact developed despite the influence of "Blanquist conspiratorial theories" and "Proudhonist anti-statist anarchist ideas" of that time. The commune was conceptualized and developed directly and spontaneously from class struggle. It was created to respond to the people's need for a new state form.

Marx himself regarded his most important contribution to be his identification of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" as the agency and core mechanism for the transition to socialism. Hence it is not surprising that Marx looked to the Paris Commune (as the first workers government and dictatorship of the proletariat) for inspiration. He referred to it as "a new point of departure of world-historic importance,"

The main theoretical questions raised in "The Communist Manifesto" were answered by the Paris Commune including: What would a government of the dictatorship of the proletariat look like? How would it use state power to deal with the former oppressors as opposed to the oppressed so as to further socialism? How would the other classes that formed tactical alliances with the proletariat against the previous system respond to the new worker's state? Why did previous revolutions fail?

V. I. Lenin in "In Memory Of The Commune" points out that in spite its rather short existence and of the unfavorable conditions giving rise to and establishing it, "the Commune managed to promulgate a few measures which sufficiently characterize its real significance and aims. The Commune did away with the standing army, that blind weapon in the hands of the ruling classes, and armed the whole people. It proclaimed the separation of church and state, abolished state payments to religious bodies (i.e., state salaries for priests), made popular education purely secular, and in this way struck a severe blow at the gendarmes in cassocks. In the purely social sphere the Commune accomplished very little, but this little nevertheless clearly reveals its character as a popular, workers' government. Night-work in bakeries was forbidden; the system of fines, which represented legalised robbery of the workers, was abolished. Finally, there was the famous decree that all factories and workshops abandoned or shut down by their owners were to be turned over to associations of workers that were to resume production. And, as if to emphasize its character as a truly democratic, proletarian government, the Commune decreed that the salaries of all administrative and government officials, irrespective of rank, should not exceed the normal wages of a worker, and in no case amount to more than 6,000 francs a year (less than 200 rubles a month)."

Ultimately, notwithstanding a call for the study of all Karl Marx's works, it is the study of the actual Paris Commune which is key to understanding Karl Marx' theory of revolution.

Selected Readings

1. Karl Marx, The Paris Commune in "The Civil War In France"

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm

2. V. I. Lenin in "In Memory Of The Commune"
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1911/apr/15.htm

3. V. I. Lenin in "Lessons Of The Commune"
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mar/23.htm

Issued By EFF Black Views
6 May 2015