The real reason behind Malema’s expulsion from the ANCYL

The first point to clarify is that a ‘suspension for 5 years’, in other words to a time when Malema is above the age limit for membership of the ANC Youth League, is an expulsion, not a suspension.

The conduct of Malema has not been different from previous ANC youth leaders such as Mandela, Peter Mokaba, Malusi Gigaba, Fikile Mbalula. So the question arises about why is an ANC youth leader expelled now?

The answer lies in the international situation and raises the question about who really controls South Africa:

Objectively the situation today is much different than 2 years ago when even though the capitalist crisis was deep, the masses had not started to resist in a generalized way. Today, the puppets of imperialism and the imperialist leaders are threatened everywhere on the planet. Millions of the masses are on the march in the USA, Chile, Bolivia, China, England, Spain, Greece, Libya, Malawi, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, historic Palestine. In every country in the world, capitalist rule is being threatened by a mass uprising. The imperialist rulers are desperately trying to stop the wave that has brought down their favoured agents: so far Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gaddafi have been toppled by the masses. Despite their efforts, the mass global uprising is spreading. Since the Second imperialist world war, there has never been such a time when there has been such generalized hatred by the masses for capitalism and capitalist regimes on a global scale. Every capitalist regime is under threat of becoming the next target for the masses. The world capitalist system is threatened to its very core.

Besides trying to infiltrate the mass movement to betray it from within, imperialism has given the instruction for the uprisings and attempted uprisings to be brutally crushed by force: Thousands have been killed by the puppet regimes in Syria, Bahrain, Yemen. The Egyptian military has shot down a number of protestors in the streets, as has the Malawi regime.

The Botswana regime has just survived the longest public sector strike in its history- a strike which threatened the regime but was turned into an economic fight by their trade union leadership, with the support of the Cosatu and SACP leadership. In 2011 the level of strikes is similar to the period of the height of resistance of the masses against the old apartheid regime. Once again the Cosatu and SACP leaders divided the resistance of the masses to the ‘system’ and turned the resistance of the masses, so far, into a purely economic one. In a bid to neutralize the mass resistance, several capitalist sectors have been forced to concede more than 10% wage increases.

In such a climate comes the ANC Youth League calls for ‘regime change’ in Botswana and South Africa, and their calls for ‘nationalization’.

It must be emphasized that both Mandela (in his time) and Malema (today) never really wanted ‘economic liberation’ for the masses, but had ‘self-interest’ in mind.

In the Liberator newspaper of June 1956, Mandela wanted the monopolies to be broken up to create a ‘non-European bourgeois class’ (that is, a black capitalist class) while Malema wants greater shares in the imperialist monopolies and does not want to pay for them ( as the ANC has done up to now). [BEE or BEEE is where big capital lends money to the black capitalists to buy shares in their companies- thus the current ANC billionaires like Tokyo Sexwale and Patrice Motsepe are really owned and controlled by Anglo American. Malema and co want free shares to be independent capitalists in their own right].

Even though Malema and co have only self-interest at heart, Anglo American is worried that their calls for ‘regime change’ and ‘nationalization’ could be the spark that ignites the next uprising that threatens their regime, not only in South Africa and Botswana, but across the entire region. Notably an imperialist rating agency downgraded South Africa’ s status from ‘stable’ to ‘unstable’ just before the ANC handed its judgement of expulsion of Malema. Thus it was really Anglo American, the main target of ‘nationalization’ that gave instruction to their puppet regime, the ANC-SACP in government, to deal decisively with Malema. Thus, not surprisingly, the expulsion comes with a threat of criminal charges for ‘corruption’.

But is Malema any less ‘corrupt’ than Mandela who has several mansions across the country and who was one of several who became overnight millionaires (if not billionaires)?? Anglo American and others have been under-pricing their exports for decades. In this way they under-invoice what their real exports are and in this way take hundreds of billions of Rands in wealth out of the country. In 2009 alone, Anglo American and others took out about R700bn in wealth out of the country that they did not declare. This means that in 2009 over R1 trillion (R1000Bn) in profits was taken out of the country. [And these are just book profits- the real figure must be much higher]. Anglo American and others showed these record profits at the same time that over 1 million workers were retrenched in the country. If there was a list of the corrupt in the country then Anglo American would top.

The main production in Botswana is diamonds which for all these decades are not even sorted and valuated there. Only now has the sorting and valuating been brought to Botswana. But the process where the most value is added, namely the cutting and polishing, is still being done in Israel and elsewhere. It is Anglo American which controls the diamonds and coal mines in Botswana- in other words, Botswana is a direct colony not only of US imperialism but a single company, Anglo American. The US military bases in Botswana are direct agencies of imperialist-capitalist violence against the masses there and in the region. The blood diamonds from Botswana, South Africa, DRC and elsewhere in Africa are shipped to Israel for cutting and polishing. Thus Anglo American artificially props up the fascist Israeli regime and is mainly responsible for the ongoing slaughter of the Palestinians. And yet, the ‘beacon of democracy’, the ANC expels Malema for mouthing what the Botswana masses are crying out for- regime change! Of course Malema has in mind regime change through the ballot box and he is merely playing to his audience for a bigger share of the pie for himself, but imperialism cannot tolerate the slightest challenge to their rule.

Swaziland and Lesotho are slave labour camps for Anglo American- their regimes are brutal and anti-worker. Through the SA regime, Anglo American sustains them. The DRC is being plundered by all imperialists for the minerals- world imperialism sustains the DRC regime and the various armies in the region, killing over 6 million people since 1996. Imperialism says no to regime change. Any spark will broaden the world resistance against the barbaric capitalist system. Maintain barbarism at all costs is the message from Anglo American. Only if the system was about to be overthrown and if other agents had been discredited would Anglo American turn to Malema to control the masses from within. But for the moment, Anglo American prefers Vavi, Zuma and Blade Nzimande to control the masses.

The leaders of the SACP and Cosatu know full well of the practice of under-invoicing by Anglo American and others, yet they do nothing about it. Chancellor House, an ANC front company received R2bn for the government ensuring that well over R1 trillion in contracts go to Anglo American and its partners for the electricity build scam.

Only 40% of those of working age in South Africa, have some form of job. This is the highest unemployment rate in Africa, if not the world. The only way that the youth have any future is through the expropriation without compensation, under workers control of Anglo American and the rest of the commanding heights in South Africa and across the region. Our fathers and mothers have through their sweat and blood paid over and over again for Anglo American and other monopolies.

But such a programme cannot be achieved within the ANC, even less the SACP. The youth need their own revolutionary working class organization as part of a new revolutionary working class party. But this cannot be achieved only in South Africa, but we need to unite all the wage slaves across the region, and indeed across the world. The imperialists are working together on a global scale through the UN, WTO, G20, IMF, World Bank and other imperialist agencies- the working class needs its own international, which we say should be the refounded Fourth International. We need to unite with our class brothers and sisters at the barricades in Botswana, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Malawi, DRC, Swaziland, Chile, Libya, Egypt, Palestine, Greece, China, USA, etc against our local capitalist regimes and against the global capitalist system. For the youth to have a future, the working class needs to take political power through its own mass action methods. For this, a decisive break with the ANC-SACP needs to take place, the class collaborators in the Cosatu bureaucracy need to be removed.

For the refounding of the Fourth International! Forward to Socialism!

13.11.2011