[DEBATE] : (Fwd) Brutus on Democracy Now

[Devan Pillay]

Great interview.  Dennis hits the right note and balance....

Devan
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-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick Bond [mailto:pbond at mail.ngo.za]
Sent: Tue 9/23/2008 8:41 PM
To: SA discussion list
Subject: [DEBATE] : (Fwd) Brutus on Democracy Now
 
(If anyone's in NYC, Dennis does a show at the Brecht Forum - "Marx in 
Soweto" - in about five hours' time.)

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/23/following_factional_dispute_within_anc_thabo

Following Factional Dispute Within ANC, Thabo Mbeki Resigns as South 
African President

In South Africa, the deputy leader of the African National Congress has 
been chosen to serve as interim president following the resignation of 
Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki resigned on Sunday over allegations of interference 
in a corruption case against political rival and current ANC leader 
Jacob Zuma. We speak to South African poet and activist Dennis Brutus.

Dennis Brutus, poet and activist. He was a leading opponent of the 
apartheid state. He helped secure South Africa's suspension from the 
Olympics, eventually forcing the country to be expelled from the Games 
in 1970. Arrested in 1963, he was sentenced to eighteen months of hard 
labor on Robben Island, off Cape Town, with Nelson Mandela. Today he is 
Professor Emeritus in the Department of Africana Studies at the 
University of Pittsburgh and professor at South Africa's University of 
KwaZulu-Natal.

AMY GOODMAN: In South Africa, the deputy leader of the African National 
Congress has been chosen to serve as interim president following the 
resignation of Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki resigned Sunday over allegations of 
interference in a corruption case against political rival and current 
ANC leader Jacob Zuma. In a televised address, Mbeki said he would heed 
the calls to step down but denied the charges against him.

THABO MBEKI: I have been a loyal member of the African National Congress 
for fifty-two years. I remain a member of the ANC and therefore respect 
its decisions. It is for this reason that I have taken the decision to 
resign as President of the Republic, following the decision of the 
National Executive Committee of the ANC.

AMY GOODMAN: President Mbeki succeeded Nelson Mandela in 1997, becoming 
South Africa's second post-apartheid president. His replacement, Kgalema 
Motlanthe, is a former trade unionist who served years in prison under 
the apartheid government. He'll serve in office until South Africa's 
national election in April.

The in-fighting that led to Mbeki's resignation has put a spotlight on 
the African National Congress's dominance of South African politics. On 
Monday, the Archbishop Desmond Tutu said politics have divided the 
movement that once led South Africa's liberation from apartheid.

DESMOND TUTU: President Mbeki has scored many significant achievements 
in our economy and in promoting peace in Africa, most recently in 
Zimbabwe. But he has made many enemies, even within his party, for his 
intolerance of challenges and dissent. Those enemies have got their 
revenge and are gloating as they rub his nose in the dust. There is 
nothing principled about that. It is old-fashioned, good old-fashioned 
tit-for-tat. Our country deserves better. The way of retribution leads 
to a banana republic. I am deeply disturbed that the nation, the state, 
South Africa, has been subordinated to a political party.

AMY GOODMAN: The Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speaking Monday.

For more on the Mbeki resignation, I'm joined by South African poet and 
activist Dennis Brutus. He was a leading opponent of the apartheid 
state. He helped secure South Africa's suspension from the Olympics, 
eventually forcing the country to be expelled from the Games in 1970. He 
was arrested in 1963, sentenced to eighteen months of hard labor on 
Robben Island, off Cape Town, with Nelson Mandela. Today, he is 
Professor Emeritus in the Department of Africana Studies at the 
University of Pittsburgh and professor at South Africa's University of 
KwaZulu-Natal. Dennis Brutus turns eighty-four in November, joining me 
now from Washington, D.C.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Dennis Brutus.

DENNIS BRUTUS: Thank you, Amy. Glad to be with you.

AMY GOODMAN: Your thoughts today as Thabo Mbeki steps down?

DENNIS BRUTUS: Yes. Well, he steps down, as you know, and at the same 
time he announces, "I continue to be a loyal member of the ANC," and 
accepts the fact that he has been asked to resign by the ANC. He will be 
succeeded next year by Jacob Zuma.

But as Desmond Tutu correctly pointed out, this is really a factional 
conflict between two sections within the ANC itself, and unfortunately, 
not going to make much difference for the position of the people of 
South Africa as a whole, because they share pretty much the same 
neoliberal ideologies. I don't see any difference in policy. There will 
be a kind of a crisis, power struggle, the replacement of one set of 
loyalists by another set of loyalists. But the central ideological issue 
is pretty much the same on both sides.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain the central ideological issues.

DENNIS BRUTUS: Well, it seems to me that when Mbeki succeeded Mandela, 
he was already committed to a position which said, first we keep the 
corporations happy. We don't want them leaving the country. And if the 
people have to wait-questions of housing, jobs, education-all of that 
will have to wait. First, we have to keep the corporations happy. And we 
conformed to the requirements of the IMF and the World Bank or the WTO.

And in fact, when Zuma takes over, after Polokwane earlier, when there 
was a division within the ANC, he then went to Davos, the World Economic 
Forum, also met with Merrill Lynch and said, "Don't worry, the economic 
policies that Mbeki adopted, I'm going to continue those policies." So, 
in fact, there will be a continuity on the economic level, even while 
people are arguing that the corporations should not be given priority. 
The jobs and housing, people living in the shacks and in the shanties, 
as they were under apartheid, still living under the same conditions.

AMY GOODMAN: Dennis Brutus, can you explain who Jacob Zuma is?

DENNIS BRUTUS: Well, there will be various descriptions, and I'll try to 
be as fair as I can be. As opposed to Thabo Mbeki, he was part of the 
armed struggle, spent time in prison for his opposition to apartheid. 
Mbeki was a student at the universities both in Moscow and then in 
England, where I met him. I was in an exile, myself. Zuma is seen much 
more as a populist, a kind of man in the streets, easy to talk to; 
politically, of course, a lot less academic. Mbeki cultivated the image 
of the rather aloof intellectual. Zuma is much closer to the people, in 
that sense. And he has a song about "bring me my machine gun," which 
reminds people, of course, of the time when he was part of the armed 
struggle.

Politically, I think, in my own view, a lot less politically 
sophisticated than Mbeki. But the idea is being that he's more a man of 
the people and, therefore, is likely to pay more attention to their 
needs. I'm not sure that's true. Even though he's being backed by the 
trade unions, COSATU, he's being backed by the South African Communist 
Party, so that the assumption is that he will be more left-leaning than 
Mbeki was. But actually, there's not a whole lot of evidence for that. 
And the chances are that he will simply continue the kind of neoliberal 
policies putting the corporations ahead of the people in terms of the 
resources of the country.

AMY GOODMAN: Criminal trial that Jacob Zuma underwent?

DENNIS BRUTUS: Right. I kind of avoided that, because it is itself 
controversial. There are several elements. Of course, previously, he was 
charged with an alleged rape, in a long, drawn-out trial about that, 
ended with him being acquitted.

Then came the much more complex issue, an enormous arms deal involving 
billions of South African rands or, for that matter, billions of dollars 
or English pounds. The German arms industry was involved. The British 
arms industry was involved. Most seriously, he was alleged to have 
solicited a bribe from the arms industry so that if there was any 
investigation, he would be there to protect them and to stall any 
investigation. Unfortunately, this is unproved. In fact, it's never 
actually got to any kind of conclusive level in court.

What instead has happened is a whole series of legal actions on both 
sides, either by the government prosecuting authority or by Zuma's 
defense, and those have been essentially arguments about procedure, 
whether the correct process was followed or not. And the latest 
development there, of course, has been a judge in Pietermaritzburg who 
said that the procedure itself was flawed, and so that Zuma succeeded at 
that level. But the judge at the same time pointed out, "This is not a 
decision on guilt or innocence. That's a separate issue which has to be 
discussed. My attention is with the procedure, and I'm saying the 
procedure was flawed."

Then he added a very significant footnote. He said, "The process on this 
issue seems to me to have been subject to political meddling." And by 
implication, he was of course blaming Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki has denied it. 
But as a consequence of that, the ANC could say, we are going to ask for 
Mbeki's resignation on the basis that he appears to have meddled in this 
issue.

I hope that covers some of the legal complexities. It's very hard to be 
fair on this issue, but I'm trying to be fair.

AMY GOODMAN: Dennis Brutus, we only have about fifteen seconds, but 
Nelson Mandela's position on what has taken place?

DENNIS BRUTUS: On the whole, he's chosen to be very low-profile. Of 
course, some of the economic decisions made by Mbeki were really 
inherited from Mandela. So he has to take some of the blame for the 
focus on priority for the corporations versus the people. At the moment, 
he has not had a great deal to say but, like Tutu, has expressed regret. 
The real problem, I think-

AMY GOODMAN: Dennis Brutus, we're going to have to leave it there, but I 
thank you for being with us.

DENNIS BRUTUS: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: South African poet and activist.