[DEBATE] : (Fwd) BDS - more arguments (from Dennis)

[Dominic Tweedie]

You are looking at it backwards, whereas we all know that life has to
be lived forwards.

It starts with boycott. No boycott, no sanctions. You've as good as
admitted that much.

Just one other little historical point, though, before you run away
with this idea of the masses in the country giving permission, et
cetera,

The Boycott Campaign in Britain, which quite soon afterwards changed
its name to the Anti-Apartheid Movement, pronounced its boycott a
consideable time before the ANC called for a boycott. This was in the
late 1950s. Before Sharpeville.

The AAM continued to do what its members decided it should do. It
never had the moral problem that seems to plague some people, that
they can't act unless the oppressed masses in that faraway country, by
some means or other, send out the message approving of whatever tactic
it may be.

There is a corallary to this jonesing after permission to boycott. It
is that those who think they have finally got that (illusory) "direct
link" and the feeling of "permission" that it gives, will at once
attempt to subordinate the rest of the movement, and its democracy be
damned.

I am talking of the Moses-Mayekiso-trump-card syndrome, of course. And
where is he now? In COPE. Hopeless COPE. But in those days the likes
of Terry Bell and the SWP were walking around like a dog with two
tails because of their hot line to Mayekiso, and Terry in particular
has been living off that legend ever since, running down the AAM and
the ANC, COSATU and the SACP and everything else that wasn't his
little corner. That's what his kind of legitimacy is all about. In the
end, it's just an ego trip waiting to be exposed, just like his other
recent love affair with Willie Madisha, who is also now in COPE. Not
to mention the dreaded Dexter.

Where is El Tel the Bell, by the way? I don't see his Friday "Business
Report" column any more.


Domza "Ndlovu" VC





2009/1/10 Patrick Bond pbond at mail.ngo.za