What It Means to Fight Oppression.

There are vital lessons to be learned from the accomplishments and failings of Nelson Mandela. Yet the mainstream media prefer to portray this great man as a kindly and benign old codger who won his battle for freedom. The assumptions behind this can be easily detected and should be excavated with a critical eye. The emphasis is always on the efforts towards reconciliation between the 'races' and not looking for 'revenge' against his former oppressors. The presupposition of biological distinctions between Africans remains intact while Mandela is to be applauded for being a 'restraint' on the barbarous hordes. Behind this lies the white racial consciousness, e.g. 'us' versus 'them'. We should resist this troubling banalisation of such an important figure. What is most admirable about Mandela is not the compromises his side made once in negotiations to dismantle the Apartheid regime.

The much lauded multiracial democracy of South Africa is actually a balancing arrangement between a state monopolised by the black vote and economic power resting in largely white hands. The mines remain privately owned and the largely black workforce is still being squeezed dry. In some ways the South African class system is now even worse than it was under Apartheid, the aspects of racial oppression which were inherent to that system remain in place in economic form. Except now the black people to rise to the business class have a vested interest in maintaining the continued subjugation of the toiling masses (most of whom are not white). The Marikana massacre in September 2012 demonstrated the disgraceful extent to which the ANC has become embroiled in the exploitation and oppression of the working-classes. The sight of white and black cops shooting the miners should be taken as the metaphor for the New South Africa.

To find the true heroism of Nelson Mandela we must examine the reasons for hysterical right-wing accusations of 'terrorism' against him. The African National Congress was dedicated to non-violent resistance for decades by this point and had exhausted every alternative to violent direct action. This was the background to the important moment when Nelson Mandela and his compatriots decided to found the Spear of the Nation and initiate the armed struggle. The targets were to be primarily governmental and symbolical, other targets included industrial and agricultural sabotage. Mandela was always eager to prevent the campaign from getting out of hand. He consistently opposed attacks on civilians and car-bombing in particular for it would degrade the movement and its cause. But he recognised that the situation in South Africa demanded more than pacifism.

In the Rivonia trial Nelson Mandela gave a virtuous defence of the cause "During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." It was these words which were the reason Mandela was sent to prison for 27 years. It was these words which were the reason the US Congress refused to remove Nelson Mandela from their terrorist list until 2008. And it is precisely for these words which we should admire him in his indomitable resistance to tyranny. To call this 'terrorism' is to hold secret sympathy with the same kind of people we defeated in 1945.

If you want to know what the ANC were fighting against for decades you ought to examine the barbarism in which the Apartheid regime was by its nature embroiled. South Africa was a counter-revolutionary force in the face of national liberation movements in its neighbouring countries. In its occupation of Namibia and invasions of Angola and Mozambique, South Africa became the belligerent in a conflict which left more than 1.5 million dead. This was at the same time that the white supremacist state was carrying out assassinations, coups and atrocities which spanned the whole of Africa and beyond. The ultra-violence of the regime was completely supported by the American and British governments of the day, as well as most other European countries and Israel. The major ally of the ANC in its solidarity with the African rebels was the Castro regime of Cuba - who sent thousands of health workers, arms and troops to assist the Africans in their fight with the old colonial powers, as well as forces from South Africa and the CIA.

The reason why the mainstream media would prefer not to delve into the details of the struggle against Apartheid is that it leads to embarrassing questions about the Cold War. We might be tempted to ask why Western governments were so vehemently on the side of Afrikaner minority rule. We might also want to know why is it the Communists were intervening on the side of freedom and not the West. When it comes down to it we would have to examine the history of South Africa and ask some pointed questions. This is precisely what the compromises of the 1990s blacked out from the public discourse. In a way this isn't surprising. Common to all beginnings the traumas of the past are always to be suppressed to prevent troubling questions of the new order from being raised. If the Apartheid system was a means of managing the class antagonism built into any capitalist society (which was the case) then we should want to know if this multiracial democracy is really much different.

Through divide and conquer the Afrikaner minority could maintain its hold on wealth procured through the exploitation of South Africa's copious resources as well as its working-classes. In the end it was the international campaigns to boycott and impose sanctions against the South African economy which crippled the system of divide and conquer. The ANC fought alongside the MPLA, SWAPO and Cuban troops against the counter-revolutionary forces at Cuito Cuanavale in what Nelson Mandela called "a turning point for the liberation of our continent and my people." These events combined with the sight of burning townships from Table Top Mountain was no doubt enough to convince many it was over. In the late 80s the Afrikaner business class then began to meet secretly with Oliver Tambo and others in places like Zambia to establish ties and negotiate. It took the party-state a bit longer. In a couple of years Nelson Mandela would be brought to meet with FW de Klerk in the first steps to his release and the official negotiations.

No Clean Hands.

Q: How big a part did violence pay in moving ANC forward?

A: These things are always difficult to gauge, but it's worth noting that pretty much every means of non-violent struggle were exhausted over many years. In my view Nelson Mandela was justified in shifting gears in the early 60s and founding the Spear of the Nation to initiate a campaign of sabotage. That's not to say every single action was justified, and indeed Mandela didn't simply believe that the resistance was to be fought by all means available. He was an opponent of car-bombing for example, precisely because it would degrade the movement. It's also the case that Mandela was very careful to select government targets, as well as industrial and agricultural targets for sabotage. So this wasn't indiscriminate civilian bloodshed for the most part. Then we have to put the struggle in its regional context.

The decolonization of Africa was still underway when Mandela undertook the new approach, but the liberation of Spanish and Portuguese colonies was stalled until the Fascist regimes began to collapse in the late 60s and early 70s. The primary force of counter-revolution in the region was Apartheid South Africa and it quickly moved to try and prevent its neighbours from achieving independence. The CIA was heavily involved of course. South Africa occupied Namibia and intervened in Angola and Mozambique, as well as organising bombing raids, coups and death squads in a lot of other places. We're talking 1.5 million dead plus $60 billion in damage from 1980 to 1988. Cuba pledged a great deal of support for the rebels in Angola, Namibia as well as the ANC. In fact, the ANC along with the MPLA and SWAPO fought alongside one another at Cuito Cuanavale in what Nelson Mandela called "a turning point for the liberation of our continent and my people."

I don't claim expert knowledge on this. My South African friends will probably have a lot to add on this. I would stress the demands of historical conditions and how quickly those demands can change. Gandhi's approach worked because the British Empire was crippled. You couldn't say that about the South African state in 1961.

Afterthoughts: Eventually the South African state was effectively crippled through the boycott campaigns and the international sanctions imposed on the country as opposition gradually became the predominant position in the world. Once the US had given up on Apartheid the South African regime had no choice but to dismantle the system of white supremacy. The next best scenario for the Afrikaner elite in South Africa was a compromise where the black masses would be given suffrage, while overwhelming economic power would remain in the hands of the white minority. The business class realised this by the late 1980s and began meeting secretly with Oliver Tambo and others in places like Zambia. It took the political class a bit longer to reach the same conclusion. Once free Nelson Mandela and the ANC negotiated away the possibility of economic justice, possibly out of fear of what the white generals might do if the ANC opts for significant social and economic reform. In this way we might understand Nelson Mandela as a transitional figure in an unfinished revolution.

Apartheid, Analogy and Disanalogy.

 

"Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians." - Nelson Mandela
 

The analogy between Israel and South Africa is often drawn when it comes to the question of the occupied territories and the Palestinians. There are good reasons for making this analogy, as well as serious differences between the cases that would mean the analogy is dubious. The problem of a Palestinian state is innate to Israel in the same way that racial equality is a problem innate to South Africa. The creation of nation-states out of the processes of European colonialism comes with the brutality of expansionism and war. South Africa was a principle aggressor in Southern Africa in its role as a counter-revolutionary force it slaughtered over a million people in neighbouring states in the 1980s. By comparison, Israel has been at war almost constantly for most of its existence and it serves the US as a "cop on the beat" in the Middle East. This is well demonstrated by the worrying tensions between Israel and Iran. I don't think I will be able to settle this matter in just one article, so I'm only going to go over a few points about the comparison.

The network of roadblocks and checkpoints which regulate the daily lives of Palestinians has been compared to the Apartheid rule of South Africa. Though it is worthy of condemnation even if we dismiss the comparison as a disanalogy. After all it's a system which has left pregnant women to give birth in the street only for their newborn babies to die in the heat, all in the name of Israel's national security. There is even a segregated highway system, roads on which only Jews are allowed to travel. This highway system was established on the pretext of counter-terrorism.  Actually this has nothing to do with counter-terrorism. Instead it is a part of the maintenance of the occupation of the West Bank, where the Israeli government supports (directly and indirectly) the settlements which hold 60% of the land. To this end the Israeli government are busily constructed a wall of annexation in and around the West Bank to snatch the major concentrations of resources and water from the Palestinians. This wall is called a 'defensive barrier' in Israel, which is what the Berlin Wall was called in East Germany. But the West Bank wall is longer than the Berlin Wall.

It's clear that the Israeli government is not too comfortable with the prospect of a Palestinian state. The continued encroachment into and domination of Palestinian territory has the potential to reduce the possibility of a free Palestine to a Bantustan at best. This isn't an accident of history. As Noam Chomsky would remind us Moshe Dayan's recommendation to his colleagues shortly after the 1967 conquests was that we must tell the Palestinians in the territories "You shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads". This is not the last of the ugly words spewed over Palestinian territory. Almost 30 years later the Director of Communications and Policy Planning David Bar-Illan who said in 1996 that "the Palestinians can have a state if they want, or they can call it fried chicken". And that's when the Israeli establishment talks peace. The establishment is aware of the situation on the ground, the need for a two-state settlement. It's just that there is no reason for the Israeli government to seek out peace.

It would seem that the Israeli elite are for a peaceful solution, whereas the more economically deprived and zealous Israeli citizens - particularly Mizrahi Jews and refuseniks - are much more hawkish. The ruling-class have been busily eroding the civic institutions and welfare state of Israel in recent decades. The neoliberalisation that the Israeli economy has undergone is another point of fair comparison with South Africa. Israel was once a quasi-socialist state with a significantly slim gap between the rich and the poor. Today it is one of the most unequal countries in the world. This is what comes with expanding a state by force and creating a country out of thin air. The apparent abnormality of Israel by world's standards today is exactly what makes it normal in historical standards. The very same process of aggressive expansionism was carried out in North America to a much more genocidal degree. And the founding of the American Republic provoked a desperate resistance from the likes of Geronimo.

"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq." - Benjamin Netanyahu

There are good reasons to suspect that the Israeli ruling class is well aware of the consequences of their actions. In an interview with Gideon Levi Prime Minister Ehud Barak said "If I were a Palestinian at the right age, I would have joined one of the terrorist organizations at a certain stage." By the way, everyone should know that Nelson Mandela was officially listed as a 'terrorist' in the US until about 2009. This isn't to say that by analogy Hamas are the Palestinian version of the ANC. Sadly the picture is much more complicated than that. The concept of 'terrorism' really designates the use of violence to achieve goals of a political, religious or ideological nature. That would certainly include all of modern warfare. So it could be that the notion of 'terror' lacks any weight in terms of moral condemnation. When the US shoots down an Iranian civilian airliner, it's an accident and not an act of terror. So it might be better to talk about specific forms of violence. For instance, in his years as 'terrorist' leader Nelson Mandela argued against car-bombing as a tactic. This wasn't a rejection of violence, rather it was about scale.

Christopher Hitchens observed the similarity of the theological justifications of Apartheid in the dogma of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Church adhered to a variety of Calvinism that enshrined a strict separation of white and black in holy design. Its presupposition was racial inequality, for the white man shares the bodily form of Christ. The ravings at the pulpit spewed forth its own blood myth of a Boer Exodus and in what Hitchens describes as an "Afrikaner permutation of Zionism" awarded the whites exclusive rights in a promised land. It should be no surprise that the National Party had an appalling record for anti-Semitism and took the side of Hitlerism in the Second World War. The end result was a pariah state where the rights of non-whites were nonexistent, in fact the people were confined to open prisons with boundaries defined by pigmentation. The state exercised its monopoly on violence to maintain this system for as long as it could. But the justifications were not simply theological.

Apartheid justified itself further as a separation which protected African culture from being drowned in white civilisation. Earlier in the 20th Century Jan Smuts formulated a holistic philosophy to justify British colonialism. This holism took the world to be composed of wholes, each together constitute a grand system while each can sustain and stabilise themselves. The stability of the system was guaranteed by the arrangement of wholes, provided each whole remained in the right place the system could be maintained. Every whole is made up of small wholes which are evolving and will inevitably come together to form larger wholes until finally becoming part of a single unified whole. This was the beginning of what would become Apartheid. South Africa further justified its brutal methods of repression in its claim to be an outpost of freedom fighting against Communism. Although Israel does not have the same kind of racial mythology as South Africa, its government often claims that the country is an outpost against radical Islamism.

No wonder then Israel and South Africa entered into a pariah's pact in 1975 to trade in weapons of mass-destruction. The end of Apartheid might actually signal how the occupation might end and Palestine might actually be established as an independent state. It was almost inevitable that the Apartheid system would undermine the future possibility of survival of the state. So the Afrikaner business elite began meeting with the ANC in neighbouring countries in the late 1980s. By then a campaign of sanctions and boycotting had done its damage on South Africa's economy and body politic. Around this time the Priests had a 'revelation' regarding racial equality. The fate of the regime was settled before the National Party goons even knew it. South Africa had been significantly isolated in the international community by that point. It was when the US started to withdraw its support for Apartheid that the Botha government started to cave. But this came after decades of struggle in spite of extreme violence and rejectionism.

Weakspots of Despotism.

The theorist of non-violent resistance Gene Sharp has been credited as the major intellectual influence on the Arab Spring. It was seminal book From Dictatorship to Democracy that has been cited as the principle inspiration for the grass-roots uprisings all over the Middle East and democratic movements elsewhere. Let's be careful not attribute too much to Sharp, the revolutionary explosion came out of certain socio-economic conditions in the region. We shouldn't exaggerate the role of external sparks, the democratic movements of the Middle East were endogenous. To suggest otherwise risks the reinforcement of Orientalist illusions of a primitive Arab rabble, 'It had to be our revolution really, they couldn't have done it on their own!' But it was interesting to flick through Sharp's book and I recommend it. In regard to political power it cites the following sources:

1. Authority, the belief among the people that the regime is legitimate, and that they have a moral duty to obey it;
2. Human resources, the number and the importance of the persons and groups which are obeying, cooperating, or providing assistance to the rulers;
3. Stills and knowledge, needed by the regime to perform specific actions and supplied by the cooperating persons and groups;
4. Intangible factors, psychological and ideological factors that may induce people to obey and assist the rulers;
5. Material resources, the degree to which the rulers control or have access to property, natural resources, financial resources, the economic system, and means of communication and transportation; and
6. Sanctions, punishments, threatened or applied, against the disobedient and non-cooperative to ensure the submission and cooperation that are needed for the regime to exist and carry out its policies.

Sharp notes that each of these sources in turn presupposes a degree of acceptance of the regime, whether it just be submission or complicity, which is not guaranteed. This is very interesting with regard to the section on the weaknesses of dictatorships, which lists the following weaknesses:

1. The cooperation of a multitude of people, groups, and institutions needed to operate the system may be restricted or withdrawn.

2. The requirements and effects of the regime's past policies will somewhat limit its present ability to adopt and implement conflicting policies.

3. The system may become routine in its operation, less able to adjust quickly to new situations.

4. Personnel and resources already allocated for existing tasks will not be easily available for new needs.

5. Subordinates fearful of displeasing their superiors may not report  accurate or complete information needed by the dictators to make decisions.

6. The ideology may erode, and myths and symbols of the system may become unstable.

7. If a strong ideology is present that influences one's view of reality, firm adherence to it may cause inattention to actual conditions and needs.

8. Deteriorating efficiency and competency of the bureaucracy, or excessive controls and regulations, may make the system's policies and operation ineffective.

9. Internal institutional conflicts and personal rivalries and hostilities may harm, and even disrupt, the operation of the dictatorship.

10. Intellectuals and students may become restless in response to conditions, restrictions, doctrinalism, and repression.

11. The general public may over time become apathetic, skeptical, and even hostile to the regime.

12. Regional, class, cultural, or national differences may become acute.

13. The power hierarchy of the dictatorship is always unstable to some degree, and at times extremely so Individuals do not only remain in the same position in the ranking, but may rise or fall to other ranks or be removed entirely and replaced by new persons.

14. Sections of the police or military forces may act to achieve their own objectives, even against the will of established dictators, including by coup d'etat.

15. If the dictatorship is new, time is required for it to become well established.

16. With so many decisions made by so few peole in the dictatorship, mistakes of judgment, policy, and action are likely to occur.

17. If the regime seeks to avoid these dangers and decentralizes controls and decision making, its control over the central levers of power may be further eroded.

Democracy Prevention.

Like many I have been trying to keep track of the Syrian conflict, which has gone from an uprising to a full blown civil war beyond anything seen in Libya. The conflict has raged for 18 months leaving over 20,000 dead and over 1.5 million people have fled their homes. It would seem the bat-eared Bashar is looking to outdo his father in this slaughter. I haven’t covered the conflict on my blog, until now, as I feel a tad under-informed to follow events consistently. With that in mind I have picked up on Saudi financial support (at least) for armed Islamist rebels in Syria. It seems the case that the US has ‘encouraged’ the Saudi bourgeoisie to fund and arm the rebels. No doubt the other Arab Gulf states are in on this too, given that the Saudi Kingdom leads the way in the Gulf Cooperation Council. Now the British have pledged £5 million to the rebels. There has hardly been a word about this until it became apparent that the money is probably going to Wahhabi fundamentalists in the opposition.

It was from the mouth of George Galloway that I first heard of Western support for al-Qaeda in Syria. Putting Galloway’s troublesome support for Assad aside, the case is that there are radical Islamist militants fighting in Syria with the backing of the Saudi bourgeoisie and, indirectly, the US government. Conveniently Galloway draws no distinction between the Muslim Brotherhood, radical Wahhabi elements and what's commonly called al-Qaeda - which really refers to a diffuse network of terrorists, ideologists and their financiers. It also should be emphasised that the Arab Spring has predominantly been a force for democratic reform in the region. Syria should be no exception. But there is indirect Western support for Islamic conservatism in the region at large. And it remains that Islam is a common means of association and identification in Middle Eastern politics. The alternative model of revolutionary nationalism died long ago.

Sami Ramadani has argued that the influence of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the US has been to pursue militarization of the conflict in order to block democracy in Syria. He argues that the non-violent resistance would have brought down Assad if it was not for the militarization of the conflict. There may be some truth in this given the contradictions in the Ba'ath Party and Syrian society that the army may have brushed aside Assad as the generals threw out Mubarak in Egypt. At the same time, it should be noted that the military establishment in Egypt has yet to be defeated. The systems which held these dictators in place have survived the revolt in many countries. It seems plausible that the peaceful movement for democracy in Syria may have dethroned the Assad family, but it seems less likely that the peaceful means could be used to bring down the Ba'athist regime. As inevitable as violence seems to be the only means to destroy the regime it is definitely the case that the US will do anything to prevent democracy from prevailing in the Middle East.

It should surprise no one that the Saudi Kingdom is promoting a particular version of political Islam in Syria to destroy a republican alternative. Its policy of petro-Islam has a long record of supporting Islamist militants, including the Taliban in its barbaric rule over Afghanistan. Many Syrian women are right to fear the impact of Saudi influence for this reason, just going on its appalling internal record on women's rights. But even comparatively progressive Turkey is seen as a regressive force. Remember the cries in the West that the fall of Mubarak would allow a Iranian style Islamist government to spring up and immediately go after the Jews? There are no such cries over Syria for the reason that the fall of Assad is perfectly compatible with American-Israeli strategic interests. Even if the GCC find a way to conjure a Sunni-Muslim despotism out of this chaos, it is totally within the contours of US interests. The problem is not Islamic politics, it is a particular Islamic politics.