South Africa – Is Communism Inevitable?

Numerous indications exist that the ANC is moving South Africa increasingly towards the rules and methods of Communism. 

The State Intelligence Bill seeks to place all intelligence agencies under the Minister of State Security, without any effective oversight by independent elected Members of Parliament, and to permit interception of electronic communications from a foreign source without a Warrant.  One of the prime features of totalitarian regimes has always been the control of State Intelligence by the regime and in the interests of the regime, without oversight by a true representative of the electorate.  This was a very conspicuous feature of Stalinist Communism – more of that later – as well as of the Nazi Party under Adolph Hitler, and of many other repugnant regimes, including, of course, the Apartheid regime of the National Party in South Africa.  The ANC Government has shown conclusively that it is not to be trusted in relation to the collection and use of Intelligence, with numerous cases of their duplicity.  Not the least in this regard is the fact that South Africa has a President who reached that position, apparently, by the manipulation of the Security agencies.

The Minister of Defence has gone on record on the ‘need’ to strengthen the Military, declaring that the country needs a Defence Force that is able to stand up to the superpowers!  There appears at present to be no credible military threat against South Africa, any more than there was in the 1990s, when the ANC Government plunged the taxpayers into a corruption-inspired $5,4 billion pool of expenditure on submarines that are no longer serviceable, jet fighters that are unable to take off with the load of ordnance specified, and frigates that we appear to be unable to put into service against the only possible danger to the country that they could counter – the Somali pirates that have increased dramatically the cost of importing goods from Europe -  at a time when there was equally no credible threat against the country.  Surely the country is not intending to enter into a conflict with one or more superpowers?  Was the recent visit of the President to China aimed at bringing South Africa into a possible future conflict of the American-led forces of democracy with the increasingly militarised China, almost certainly on the side of China?  What other reason could the Government have for increasing the size and strength of the Military?  Could the desire to do so have anything to do with the (now frequently repeated) exhortations to the ANC-allied electorate to defend the re-election of the ANC ‘with their lives’ if necessary?  (Given the likely consequences of this scenario, one could perhaps be forgiven for hoping that the real reason for the proposed new wave of Military spending is simply a desire to repeat the personally-lucrative Arms Deal corruption of the 1990s!)  Every oppressive regime in history has used the Military forces to maintain their illegitimate rule, and Communist Russia and Communist China stand out as prime examples of that!  One cannot forget that, among the friends and supporters of the ANC in its bid to gain its version of democracy in South Africa, the discredited regimes of Gaddafi, Mugabe and Asad stand out, alongside Communist Cuba, Communist Russia and Communist East Germany.  Is the ANC intending to use the Military to overturn a duly-elected Government if it is not the ANC that is so elected?  Recent events certainly justify concern in this regard.  Recent statements by senior members of the Tri-Partite Alliance calling on ANC members to become activists and revolutionaries reinforce that need for concern.  Calling on the voters to be prepared to ‘sacrifice our lives’ for the re-election of the Party is surely not a standard method to gain re-election in a peaceful democracy!

Statements by various Government Ministers and senior officials in recent months have extolled the virtues of expanding relations with Communist countries, particularly China.  President Zuma even went so far as to imply that the European Union is a less desirable trading partner than China!  Of course, this flies in the face of the trading statistics, which indicate clearly that it is in the interests of the country to cultivate the relationship with Europe and the United States.  The exports to the United States presently total more than three times the exports to China, and the exports to Germany alone are more than double the amount to China.  Even Zimbabwe, a weak and struggling economy, imports more from South Africa than does China!  The majority of South Africa’s exports to China are of unprocessed ores and foods, such as sunflower seed.  The Government’s stated policy to increase the level of beneficiation of these products is in conflict with the Chinese desire to import raw materials for beneficiation in China, an important element of China’s drive to increase employment of its citizens.  It has been said that the largest export from China to the United States in recent years has been unemployment!  The figures to calculate this in the South African context are not available, but it is reasonable on the face of it to assume that the same would apply in South Africa!  With the increasing drive of Western economies to increase the strength of their languishing industrial bases, it can be expected that the change in the export-import and home-production v imports ratios of those countries will be largely at the expense of China.  At the same time, in Western countries, which represent a huge trading potential for South Africa, there is presently a positive sentiment towards African countries.  It would be foolhardy, to say the least, to alienate those developed countries, unless there is an excellent reason additional to trade!  Development of one market should not be presumed to require abandonment of another market!

The international stance of South Africa has, over the years, drifted ever more towards a closer relationship with China, driven largely by President Zuma.  The joining of the BRIC trade grouping was a clear statement of intention, the payment to Cuba of several million Rands a few months ago an affirmation of the close ties of the ANC with that Communist country which has little capability to become a significant market for South Africa (and thereby a significant driver of labour-utilisation), the importation of large numbers of Cuban doctors (effectively a subsidy paid by the South African taxpayers to Cuba’s ailing economy), the sending of South African students for medical training in Cuba (where those students, who failed to qualify for entry to the South African medical universities, will face the huge burden of gaining a technical education in Spanish!), and, most recently, the clear statement of South Africa distancing itself from the West in favour of China and Russia by abstaining from supporting the UN vote to impose sanctions on Syria, are all very clear signals to an increasingly concerned thinking electorate. 

South Africa is moving purposefully away from the countries that founded democracy towards the roots of Communism.

What does this mean for South Africans?

Communism is a system of Government that has clearly demonstrated its failings in every country where it has been adopted.  Communist Russia is the clearest example.  After seven decades of ruthless Police and Military suppression of citizens who became aware of its failings, the Soviet Union collapsed, not as a result of its citizens having outgrown the need for that system, but as a clear demonstration of the failure of every element of the thinking of Carl Marx.  The Soviet Union simply could not afford the inefficiencies it imposed on its industries, the need to prop up failing regimes that displayed these inefficiencies earlier or more dramatically than did Russia.  The Soviet Union could no longer afford to pump huge amounts of money and arms into the ‘freedom’ groups it was supporting to overthrow capitalist Governments, including the ANC.  It could no longer pay the cost of the central control that was essential to ensure the enslavement of the millions of citizens of Communist countries (the number of lives lost to purges and Secret Police activity to keep the Communist Party in power in Communist Russia exceeds forty million!).  The satellite countries of Soviet Russia still show the effects of the devastation wrought on their economies and their citizens by the system of Communism.  East Germany, which has been the recipient of hundreds of billions of Euros invested since 1990, continues to lag behind the ‘decadent’ West Germany in its economic performance, despite once having been the showpiece of European industry, before it was subjected to Communist rule.  The other ex-Communist countries of Europe could hardly wait for the collapse of the Soviet Union to shake off their bonds.  Poland and Czechoslovakia attempted to do this much earlier, and the Soviets had to suppress these desires to be free by the use of the Military, brutally and with much loss of life, with an additional result that the use of the Intelligence Services was sharply increased, to spy on the citizens of the Communist countries for any sign of deviant thinking.  A statement made by one uninformed commentator that the Soviet Union produced some breakthroughs in industry and science is sadly mistaken, probably as a result of old Soviet propaganda.  The claim was made that the Soviet Union developed jet aircraft, the atom bomb, rockets, and similar items.  The truth is that these technologies were, in fact, stolen from Western countries.  The Russians gained a five-year advance in their nuclear program by stealing the research secrets of Britain and America, they developed their aircraft industry by backward-engineering aircraft taken from Britain and America, they developed their jet engine technology by backward-engineering jet engines given them by the British, they developed their space industry by taking German rocket scientists after the Second World War.  One has only to look at the Trabant and the Volga to see how far behind the developed world their automotive industry was!  It is clearly not correct to say that the Soviet Union achieved no development, but it is equally clear that the world economy, if it had been subjected to Communist rule, would in no way resemble the advanced state that the Western World has achieved.  It is far more likely that the world would have been a mirror image of Cuba!

One clear example of what could happen in South Africa lies to the North, in Zimbabwe.  Robert Mugabe is a confirmed Communist, yet he is also a man who has accumulated enormous wealth, while his country has descended to the level of the worst of the basket-case African economies.  He uses the bloated Military to suppress any opposition, and he uses the ‘Youth’ to terrorise anyone who is not clearly supporting him.  Contrary to very clear undertakings made by him on his accession to power, he has used the question of land redistribution to punish the Whites and to reward himself and his supporters, and he has consistently diverted the lucrative contracts and State activities to the benefit of himself and his cohorts.  The result of Robert Mugabe’s rule is clear to see.  He has destroyed a once-strong economy and killed tens of thousands of dissenting citizens, most of them Blacks.  In order to consolidate his hold on power, he has alienated the tribes who were not allied to his Party and the Whites, who, however they achieved that position, represented, and still represent, the biggest hope of putting Zimbabwe on its economic feet.  In the tradition of the major Communist leaders such as Stalin and Mao, he has perverted the ideals of Marx, unrealistic as they always were, to his own benefit, regardless of the damage that he, Marxism and Stalinism have done to their economies, and of the cost, in economic terms as well as in terms of the lives of the citizens.  He has reached the situation that Communist East Germany did, of having a need to erect a wall around his country, not to keep the alien intruders out, but to prevent his own countrymen leaving the country that they loved, taking their skills, talents and abilities with them.  If you doubt the wisdom of what is being said here, ask any of the thousands of exiled Zimbabwean whether he or she would wish to live in a Mugabe-style Communist democracy!

Against this trend towards Communism, there is a rapidly-increasing realisation by Blacks that the ANC does not really represent them, that the ANC has brainwashed them to believe that the Party desires to deliver to the electorate what it tells them are their rights.  In the Freedom Charter, these ‘rights’, strongly influenced by Communist doctrine, were held out to be the rights of all people in the country.  The actions of the ANC, however, has demonstrated that the rights are available primarily to Blacks, and, over time, that the persons entitled to receive the rights are ANC card-holding members.  This was clear even in 2001, when a foreign mine owner met with a senior official in the Department of Mines to ask whether a proposed Black-ownership deal would meet the demands of the Department.  He was informed that the Black persons listed would not be acceptable.  When he asked who would be acceptable to meet the target of 26% Black ownership of the mining company, he was given a list of five senior ANC names!  Under the ANC doctrine, the poor do not exist, except at election time, when they must dutifully cast their votes in favour of the ‘Party that brought them their freedom’.  More and more of them are asking what that ‘freedom’ really means.  The ANC will always dispute that this is so, but the ANC policy of ‘cadre deployment’, re-stated at the recent ANC Policy Conference, clearly demonstrates that preference in gaining lucrative positions and, by extension, lucrative contracts and tenders, will always be given to those favoured by the Party, regardless of their ability, or lack of it, to perform.  The increasing numbers of Blacks who are achieving success in business, mining and industry are seeing that their best interests are not served by this brand of ‘democracy’, and the rapidly-increasing numbers of service delivery protestors are realising that the funds that are being siphoned off from Government contracts and tenders are not benefiting them.  All of this growing group hold the ANC responsible for the failings of the theory.  The successes of the Democratic Alliance in practically every field where the ANC has failed are starting to convince the ordinary voters that rhetoric is not a substitute for achievement, that a failure to perform can no longer be held to be a result of the ‘legacy of the Apartheid system’, eighteen years after that system was abandoned.  Given freedom to develop, these trends will certainly result in the ANC being relieved of power in the medium term future.

Unfortunately, the ANC seems to have become aware of the inevitable result of their corruption and incompetence, but they still fail to realise that the cure lies in correcting the basic reasons for that failure – incompetence and corruption.  Recent statements by leaders of the Tri-Partite Alliance are reminiscent of those by Robert Mugabe as he was preparing his putsch, of Adolph Hitler as he was preparing his putsch.  They are preparing the way for a militarization of the political field.  Recent legislation and attempts at legislation, read against this background, must make the public aware that the ANC Government is putting in place the legislation that will be used to terrorise and silence any opposition to it.  The Government bodies have demonstrated clearly that they will not hold back from exercising their powers to achieve ends that the Government desires, even though those ends are not enshrined in the law, and even though the powers were designed to be used for purposes that were in the public interest rather than in the Tri-Partite interest.  South African citizens cannot afford to be complacent, to hope that democracy, honesty and good will prevail.  It appears that the end game has begun, and victory will go, either to the Communist dictatorship that appears to be developing, or to the democratically-elected true representatives of the people, on the basis of what happens in the next two years.

Remember:  in order for evil to prevail, it is only necessary for good men to do nothing.