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Letters & Opinions
Is the ANC 100 years or 57 years old?
Motsoko Pheko
2012-01-26, Issue 567
http://pambazuka.org/en/category/letters/79394
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Allow me to attend to some comments made by some readers while thanking many who have appreciated my point of view.
1. Douglas Scott: Thank you for appreciating that your figure of 1,116,805 colonial settlers in South Africa in 1909 does not take away anything from my article. You simply want to know my source to satisfy your curiosity. When Britain and its colonial settlers established the Union of South Africa and excluded five million Africans, the white population was as follows:
Cape Colony, 167,546; Natal, 34,784; Transvaal, 106,493; Orange Free State, 4O,014. This was a total of 349,837 settlers. Britain gave them 93 per cent of the African land through the Native Land Act 1913 and only 7 per cent of the African land was allocated to five million Africans.
(Article 34 of the Union of South Africa Act 1909, also Monica Wilson and Leonard Thomson, ‘A History of South Africa’ 187O, page 328)
The representation in the colonial parliament, where the qualification of a member of the House of Assembly was to be a British subject of European descent, according to the Union of South Africa Act 1909, was as follows: Cape Colony, 51 members; Natal, 17 members; Transvaal, 36 members; Orange River Colony, 17 members (Article 33 ).
2. Jennet quotes the discredited view that Africans and Europeans arrived in Azania (South Africa) at the same time, therefore Europeans did not colonise Africans. I would have to write an article to reply fully. If she is a victim of the false ‘empty land theory’ she should read the following literature: ‘Apartheid: The Story Of A Dispossessed People’, Marram Books, London, pages 1-35 (Foreword by Prof. C.L.R. James, Professor of History, Harvard University); ‘Black Bolshevik’ by Harry Haywood, pages 237, 271 and 272, Liberator Press Chicago, Illinois 1978; and five authorities on this subject quoted in ‘How Freedom Charter betrayed the dispossessed’, ISBN 978-1-919815-05-3, Tokoloho Development Association, Johannesburg, pages 18 - 21).
3.Ike Moroe, I am aware of President Jacob Zuma’s call for citizens to come forward and say how the country must move forward. I must also point out that as a former member of parliament I have always co-operated with the current ANC where it serves the interests of the African people and also on issues on which my Pan Africanist views converged with those of the ruling party - such as on Iraq and Zimbabwe, probably now on Iran. Developing countries have a right to develop their nuclear technology for developmental purposes. They also have a right to demand that NATO, America and others destroy all their nuclear weapons for the safety, security and peace of the world.
I insist, however, that land dispossession of the African people - that has caused so much poverty, social degradation, short life expectancy and high child mortality - must be addressed. The 1955 ANC cannot resolve the land question in South Africa with the perfidious Freedom Charter preamble and section 25(7) of the ‘New’ South African Constitution.
The Freedom Charter has also facilitated the imprisonment of former freedom fighters such as the Azanian Peoples Liberation Army (APLA) of the Pan Africanist Congress and others. This was done through the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ (TRC). This TRC ignored that these sons of Africa fought for self-determination in accordance with Articles 1(1), (2), 13(i) (b), 55,56,68,73 and 76 of the United Nations as well that of the Organisation of African Unity Charter article 20(2).
The 1955 ANC must go back to the basics of the 1912 ANC. There must be equitable redistribution of the land and its resources and an end to corruption. There must be release of all former freedom fighters from the prisons of South Africa. Continuous appeasement of the minority whites at the expense of the African majority is not the right way to bring national ‘unity’ as comrade Moroe seems to think. On 19 January 2O12, Sowetan newspaper reported that 12O,OOO white farmers have left the country since 1994. 4,500 schools have been closed since 1994.
Who is going to build this country when there is so much dependence on people who may go to Australia, Canada or Britain anytime they wish? This obsession with appeasement at the expense of the African people and this continent must stop. It is also reflected on how the ANC government voted in the Security Council on Libya over the 1973 Resolution and facilitated the invasion of Libya by NATO and America to access and control Libya’s oil wealth.
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