Comments on the Land issue

[Philip Copeman]

Remember I was part of the committee that turned "One Settler One Bullet" into "one family one plot". In 1994 this won us 1%. However I was much younger then and I would have faught harder if I had known what I know today. ONLY TAKE ON ISSUES IF THEY ARE GOING TO WIN US VOTES. The LAND issue has proven spectcularly ineffective.

There are some  problems with the land issue - i) it is all over the place. Noone has really written down exactly what we mean or how we plan to go about it. If you do not have REAL ideas, we simply look UNBELIEVABLE;
                              

                                         ii)  land itself has little value. THe movement off the Land is clearly reported in Cencus 2011. That is why there is a major flow to the urban areas, World wide not just Africa; Because of this people think when you say Land you mean you will transfer  ALL assets. Anyone with assets is thus alientated from the PAC - bad move. People who have no assets, have little political will and can usually be bought by the highest bidder (As per our recent history)

                                          iii) The "land" issue does not come up on any of Subukwes speeches. It seems to be a Xhosa mythology. It certainly has no "ring" value in the vastly numerically dominant urban areas. This concept in Guateng or Cape will make you look like a rural drum beater.
                                                                       iv) A policy based on Land leads to 95% unemployments and a complete exodus of your top end workforce (Zimbabwe). Only the most idealisic can begin to suggest that Zimbabwe is anything less than a failed dictatorship, now going into its 32nd year of failure.

My suggestion - drop the land issue and focus on the unification of Africa (Written into ALL of Subukwe's speeches.)

When it does come to LAND use Rates and a Whealth Tax as the means of preserving the asset for the African people - All land belongs to the African people, but we will allow you to privatise or lease the assets in excahnge for a whealth tax. So if a farmer wants to hold land or a miner wants to hold mining rights, there must be a flow of benefit to the People or they must move off. The model where it gets redistributed to a party insider and that insider does not pay us rates is one that is doomed to failure. (eg Lonmin)

[Philip Copeman]

Some pointers on building a support base for the PAC

SAY WHAT THEY WANT TO HEAR

Choose our costituencies and give them what they want to hear. Our consituencies should be:

YOUTH
UNEMPLOYED
SMALL BUSINESS
AFRICAN DIASPORA

What is NOT our constituency is just as important. They should NOT be:

OLD PEOPLE
ORGANISED LABOR
BIG BUSINESS
SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONALISTS OR TRIBALISTS


DEGREES OF FREEDOM

An issue is not worth taking on unless it adds value. Every issue we have dilutes the message of our other issues. So unless an issue adds voter support, don't do it, simply avoid it. Stay neuttral.

ACCENT THE POSITIVE

People do not rally to negative causes. They respond to positives.

SHARPEN THE BLADE

Don't add issues, throw out issues. Keep narrowing our message. A single message is the best. A single message does not have to say something different, but must say it harder than anyone else, until it becomes OUR message. In the Spirit of Subukwe, here it is:

Africa, coast to coast, one country, one president.

[Philip Copeman]

Comrade Nkrumah your ability and capacity to generate high quality  text is massive. Out of respect to you I  have to figure out a means to answer you ans still keep down a commercial existance! I am going to answer your emails in short hand. Please respect that it is just too huge for me to answer it formally

Before I begin - I take as an  assumption that as Pan Africnaists, Our common desire to Lilberate Africa is sufficcient to bind us above lesser issues. IN this discussion we are just quibbling about the details.

All proponents of the Land Issue are put it forward in Verbal terms. I have NOT READ ONE Thesis that deals with this in quantitive measures and clearly explains econometrically  how changing  Land distribution alone will create Macroeconomic wealth. You will notice even now that noone disputes (or even reads) the data presented in Census 2011. Most particularly that Africans are deserting the Land in their millions. SIMPLY BECAUSE IT HAS LITTLE VALUE.

Why listen to me. My brnach in Tokai consists mostly of Zimbabwean Congolese. Surely the ZIMABWEAN example that after 1990, the Liberation of the Land lead to a mass exodus of their finest workers to South Africa. INhgte DRC there is one thing they are not short of -  LAND.  They voted with their feet against your argument.

I have dealt with long term growth models from Harrod DOmar to Pareto and none of these are consistent with the concept of "Land first and the rest following". My Undersntading of "Land" is in terms of the basic econiomic premise of Land, Capital, Labor and Entrepreneurship. Even this 19th and 20th century economic theory has been superceded by TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN CAPITAL.

Comrade I will put it to you that an African with Technology will win hands down against any African that has only Land at his disposal.

I furhter beleive that the "Land" Issue and the "Whites" issue are particularly South African discussions. The wealth that will be genreated by African Unification will far outweigh these local issues, which serve only to block us from getting to the continental issues.
.

Pan Africanist programme to overthrow capitalism

I can't read that in Subukwe. Overthrow colonialism yes. The socialist aspects of Pan Africanism came later. Its the evolution of the 21st centruy that makes these issues no longer relevant.  Time moves on - even agianst socialism.

We approach the election from different points. You from some ideological arm chair, me from the keybaord of game theory and demographic analysis. I feel that the ANC may have already stolen these elections. I am the first to consider that we should withdraw from the democratic process. BUT NOT FOR IDEOLOGICAL REASONS, SIMPLY BECAUSE THE ANC HAVE CHEATED.  We should only continue if we can win. The cost of losing and going along with the majority as we have done for 20 years is prohibitive

On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 1:10 PM, Philip Copeman a href="mailto:[e-mail]" target="_blank">[e-mail]> wrote:

Comrade you ability and capacity to generate text is massive. Out of respect  have to figure out a means to answer you. I am gogitn to answer you emaisl in short hand. Please respect that it si just too huge fro me to answer it formatlly.

Pan Africanist programme to overthrow capitalism

I can't read that in Subukwe. Overthrow colonialism yes. The socilaist aspects came later. Time moves on even agianst socialism.

We approach the election from different points. I feel that the ANC may have already stolen these elections. I am the first to consider that we shoull withdraw fromt eh democratic process. We shcoul only continue if we can win. The cost of losing and going along with the majority as we have done for 20 years is prohibitive.

On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 12:48 PM, Nkrumah Kgagudi a href="mailto:[e-mail]" target="_blank">[e-mail]> wrote:

Comrade Phillip Copeman

 

I still maintain PAC is relevant as articulated in the 1959 Pan Africanist Manifesto, the Party mainly lacks the required organisational and political capabilities to launch a political programme and strategy to seize state political power. We must draw a distinction of PAC as a liberation party forming part and advancing the revolutionary Pan Africanist programme to overthrow capitalism and white supremacy. Surely seizure of state political power should be any and all means necessary depending on objective reality and this does not imply that as PAC we should always be obsessed about elections since emancipation of the toiling and downtrodden masses of our people as articulated by the five aims and objectives of the PAC stand as a matter of principle and a daunting political task we should forge. The illiterates and semi-illiterates being the African workers and peasants are the motive force to achieve the Africanist Socialist Democracy, in rebuilding the party, we should focus ourselves as to organisation of this social grouping for total liberation of Africa on a socialist programme.

50% of South Africans earn a family income of less than R 1750. In the PAC I only meet people that earn more than R 1750 in a family income. People who are in the bottom 50% cannot organise, therefore we have the irony in place already.  The memebrs of the PAC are nto typical Africans. We are the fortunate. We can only speak on behalf of the unfortunate. But we should not speak in out theory we shcoul first ask them what they want - and their answer is not - "Land". I did not always take thsi position. talked blue in my face to them about Land in 1994 - Nelson Mandela won them with a Rugby Shirt.

Ma-Afrika Victor Frankle who spent 10 years in a Nazi Prizon said, "If we cannot change the situation, we have to change ourselves."

 

As we speak today, the Roman Catholic Church has no Pope but the agenda and work of the church continues undisturbed for through organisation the church functions and works towards realisation of its objectives, drawing from this lesson the African people need organisation through which the people’s and the party’s will shall prevail, leadership will always from the execution and organisation. We build organisation based on a programme aimed at realisation of an Africanist Socialist Democracy, not the current neo-colonial African oligarchy/comprador bourgeoisie system.

 

Your hype around 2014 national elections are misguided and your desire to occupy the Union Building borders around what Chinweizu describe as natives becoming new masters and perpetuate oppression and exploitation of the African having taking over the seats of the unpopular oppressive and exploiting groups. The hype around elections is also misguided when focus is not based on resolving political and organisational maladies that dwarfed and thwarts PAC’s political and organisational functioning including effectiveness. Always when PAC members are supposed to reflect on the state of the party and plan as to how we should rebuild and reorganise the party, we are being flooded with national elections excitement and hype. 1994, 1999, 2004 and 2009 national elections PAC fared badly and these elections thing has done enough damage, it is time we must sober up and take stock, count losses and focus on what necessary actions we should take to rebuild the PAC.

 

Either get out of the elections or work to win them I am currently of the latter persuasion.

 

Any public message resonates well when the carriers  comes from a solid organisational base and secondly carriers with integrity, Western Cape for example is highly divided. I think its being naïve to speak elections with an ailing party incapable of defending itself and also that PAC has become everything to everyone, this neo-colonial parliamentary election has assimilated the aspirant nationalist bourgeoisie within the party to form part of the oppressive and exploitative system.

 

I work in the Western Cape I strongly dispute that we are divided, I come from a history of the party in Guateng, but I have only found good Pan Africanists here isn the Western Cape, 

 

The neo-colonial parliamentary system has become another form of a pyramid system in which the poor masses are used to vote for few people who will then accumulate wealth and live in luxury while the vast majority of the African people subjected in social degrading living conditions. 

You have selectively reduced the perspective I advanced to merely land issue as in soil, whilst I summed the historical, political economic and social economic development aspects. There has been a constant narrow approach and contextualisation of the land issue which I do not support as I I summed in my earlier submission.

 

The reality is that   THE MAJORITY DID VOTE FOR THE ANC. Subukwe is very clear on this "An African is one who give his loyalty to Africa and abides by the decision of the African Majority" It requires a great deal of arrogance to decide that the Africna People do not know what they want. In no surveys do they EVER come up with "Land" as the issue, Land is the dream of a dying minority.

Either we change to give the African people what they want or we continue to take the path down the road to irrelevance. How arrogant are we to decide for them what they want. Lets us listen to them and give them what they ask for - EDUCATION and FAIR EMPLOYMENT.

 

 

 

Secondly PAC’s failure on national elections has less to do with the land issue but a lot to do with mainly organisational aspects, political programme and ideological orientation, these three key aspects are dialectically related. Your elections approach fails to appreciate and recognise the political organisation aspects of party. I worked very closely with Cde Ata Kgosana and Cde Mosebjane Malatsi  in the PAC National Elections Task Team (NETT) during the 1999 and 2000 elections, also the 2004 and 2005 elections PAC’s National Elections Authority (NEA). 

I worked in the 1994 Election. It was fair - we lost.  THe Land Issue Lost us the election. It will ose ud the next one too. We will keep losing this until we dissappear. Simply because it is nto relevant to any large consituency.

Thirdly, you have not made a concrete case about the irrelevance of the land issue, a very elementary argument is that:-

1.         houses requires land for erection including creation of residential areas.

2.         food production requires land for both crop and stock farming;

3.         Job creation requires land for mining and for industrialisation

Its surely an argument of settler colonialism that Africans should not bother themselves with the land question, while as Africans we consume what we do not produce and that which we produce we do not consume. Our people must be trained to understand and appreciate that land is a symbol of wealth and a source for the realisation of a right to national self-determination. Remember even Mao deployed cadres of the party to the countryside to drive agrarian revolution and all developed societies advanced agrarian revolution and later coupled it with industrialisation. 

Comrade my academic training is as a Capitalist. I have spent my life successfully exploiting American and British competitors and beaten them on a gliobal scale. I choose to bring my gains to Africa and invest them here, I do not have to appologise for this as I have not stolen anything form African people I have only helped them. IN continue to do so as we speak.   My arguments agaist the Land issue follow the thread of Smith, Marshall, Keynes Hicks, Klein and De Wet. We share as our common interest the creation of whealth. None of this clashes with my reading of Subukwe. The Land issue is a clash not between me and Subukwe, but between me and the interpreters of Subukwe.

If you can bear the short hand I will tackle your previous email, albeit with less eloqunece than you are able to deliver.

 

I find your argument and statistics less convincing!

 

Shango lashu

 

For Pan Africanist revolution not nationalist bourgeoisie conformism and revisionism

Nkrumah Raymond Kgagudi

 

From: Philip Copeman [mailto:[e-mail]]
Sent: 05 March 2013 11:11 AM
To: Nkrumah Raymond Kgagudi
Subject: Re: Making The PAC more relevant

 

You have written a very comprehensive argument for the Land issue whcih I dismissed with "Its not relevant".

I still beleive that irrelelvancy is the biggest downfall of the Land argument, but there is a also very strongargument, essentially Economics vs Socialogy as to why it is not viable. It will take a few hours to lay it out. Do you need to me to expouse this or can we leave this aside and get on with winning the next elections?

We can have the discussion once we get into the Union Buildings.

--
He who lights his candle from mine, does not diminish my flame. Thomas Jefferesen

--
He who lights his candle from mine, does not diminish my flame. Thomas Jefferesen