Ishumi Leminyaka – Consolidating the ground towards socialist power by Chumani Matiwane

Ishumi Leminyaka – Consolidating the ground towards socialist power

Progress in human development has always been achieved through a struggle against nature or against the tyranny of man. It falls upon each generation to develop the struggle in order to respond to the prevailing material conditions which are a major determinant of the motive forces. 

In the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) Founding Manifesto one of the stated goals of this generation is to raise the political consciousness of the masses in order to get to a critical mass which will play a decisive role in crushing neo-colonialism which currently underpins our economic, social and cultural structure. The challenge faced by the EFF is that the dawn of democracy in South Africa brought about a false consciousness of an illusion of freedom whereas we had only achieved limited political freedom. The result of this has been the high levels of apathy in society which has disengaged itself from active participation in the political life of the country. In the last General Election held in 2019, it is reported that a majority of registered voters chose not to vote as a result of this disengagement. 

It is therefore not enough for the Constitution to guarantee universal suffrage and regular multi-party elections if the majority of citizens choose not to exercise this right because of the failure of the former liberation movement to deliver on its promise of delivering “A better life for all.” To paraphrase Karl Marx, he states that the rights enshrined in the Constitution are in part political rights, which can only be exercised in community with others. He further goes on to say that their content is participation in the community, and specifically in the political community, in the life of the state and that they are linked to political freedom. Therefore, the strategic goal of the EFF which is to raise the political consciousness of the people in order for them to participate in the political community by engaging in political action through community, labour and student struggles is consistent with the awakening of the motive forces.

Since the dawn of democracy, there has never been a political movement which has consistently managed to capture the imagination of the poor and marginalised like the EFF has done over the past 10 years since its formation in 2013. This has been made possible by the correct application of strategy and tactics employed in building an organisational base through grassroots mobilisation. The EFF which prides itself as a vanguard movement has consistently been at the forefront of working class and community struggles in pursuit of its strategic mission as articulated in the Seven Non-negotiable Cardinal Pillars. Since its inception it has declared a theme for each calendar year which becomes the base from which rolling campaigns are built up through the guidance of the National Leadership. The branches which are the basic nucleus of activity have managed to cover house to house through these initiatives. For instance, the year 2022 was defined by the 1 million membership campaign which coincided with the year of the branch. This campaign allowed the organisation to interact with the people at a grassroots level in order to understand the prevailing mood in country. Therefore, the existence of the EFF has been a blessing for the poor and marginalised as it has managed to walk hand in hand with our People in the pursuit of economic freedom. Ishumi leminyaka  is a culmination of the consistency in developing a praxis by Groundforces under the command of the CCT. 

Our consistency in action further exposed the notion that bourgeoisie regimes no matter their skin colour are in their nature violent and repressive as our activists across the country have been victimised for choosing the side of the poor. Such tactics by the State  are reminiscent of the brutal Colonial-Apartheid era. This further strengthens the call for our members to develop security consciousness in order to not expose themselves to the tyranny of Cyril Ramaphosa’s regime. The mantra should be that militancy is discipline and that organisational plans are treated in a discreet manner that will not allow for counter-revolutionary forces to sabotage nor hijack the struggle for economic freedom. 

The unwavering commitment of the Fighters to the 7- Non-negotiable Cardinal Pillars has engraved our movement in the hearts and minds of our People. They now understand that truly power concedes nothing without a bold demand as demonstrated by our uncompromising stance even at the face of the threat of arrest, injury or death for our Leaders and Groundforces. The EFF has demonstrated that it is the leader of society and is readying itself to take over state power in order to usher in a Socialist Azania. #EFFTurns10

Open Letter To Blade by #DownWithDirectPayment #BladeMustGo

 Revolutionary Greetings

We scribe to  your office with the clarity of thought and mind when it comes to the direct payment system. Before we dwell on this matter, we would like to unequivocally reject this system and reject the companies that come with it.

Why do we reject this?

We reject this system because it is patently corrupt and seeks to benefit the four unknown companies, namely, Norraco, eZaga (Access Bank Nigeria), Coinvest Africa and Tenet Technology. Another reason why we reject this system is due to the reality that NSFAS has not developed the capacity to directly pay students. In a nutshell, this so-called direct payment is not direct payment but indirect payment not fundamentally different to the previous decentralized system. Another  fundamental reason why we reject this system is due to the fact that consultation was not done. In fact, NSFAS and you Minister Nzimande imposed this system when it was clear that SAUS was operating outside of the mandate of SRCs. Another reason why we reject this is due to the exploitative nature of the charges that these bogus companies impose on Students. The other reason lies with the fact that this system is unreliable and has opened up students to scams. Lastly, this is an abuse of taxpayers money and it must be treated as such.

Minister Nzimande, you preside over a department that has over sixty per cent of the student populace dependent on NSFAS. This means when the unregistered and unrecognized companies (FSCA has no record of their existence) fail to do their job as they are currently doing in TVET Colleges we will have a crisis of magnificent proportions, as we are witnessing it now. This means that out of the +/- two million students in the sector, approximately one million and two hundred thousand students will be affected. When we further break it down +/- six hundred thousand students - seven hundred thousand students will be affected. This means that over thirty percent of the students will be directly impacted. As things stand, in most universities approximately sixty to seventy percent of the students have not received their allowances for July. This is a self-manufactured crisis that you have presided over due to your Neoliberal model in the department.
Furthermore, we would like to highlight the fact that the attitude displayed by these companies towards students is consistent with the arrogance displayed by NSFAS and your Department, with your Office being a particular case. We would like to put this on record that the rot starts from the head, and your inability to listen to reason has led us to this blind alley. It is very unbecoming for someone who calls himself a Communist to subject hundreds of thousands if not over a million students to an exploitative system which is more exploitative than the banks. At one point in your careerist political journey, you were at the forefront of campaigns against the Financial Sector when you still served as the GS of the now moribund South African Communist Party (SACP). You have reversed the gains of the Freedom Charter, and have undermined the constitutional fundamentals of our robust democracy by making it clear that South Africa does not belong to all who live in it, but to the rich and your upstart capitalist friends who are now exploiting students through companies that cannot be tracked by the FSCA.

We have heard it through the grapevine that this coming Sunday (9th of July, 2023) you will be in a meeting with the sellout union called South African Union of Students (SAUS). You will be presenting your MTT report while students are dying of hunger and do not have the means to go back to campus because the companies you imposed through NSFAS and directly yourself have not disbursed allowances. Instead, they are stealing these allowances wholesale (Norraco and Tenet to be more specific and direct). In that meeting we would like you to reconsider your decision and immediately reverse these bogus companies or else the country will burn because of your arrogance and hate towards the children of the working class, peasantry and the poor (both urban and rural).

Our Demands

No struggle lacks demands, thus, we will table our demands and they are as follows:

1. Immediate scrapping of direct payment.

2. Decentralization of NSFAS with NSFAS reverting back to the system of having a deployees in an institution.

3. FREE EDUCATION NOW as this is a matter that would not exist if our education system was decommodified.

4. The upstart capitalist companies must return the monies they received from the state through the tender system. This means their contracts must be canceled with immediate effect.

5. Your resignation letter with immediate effect, because you have failed to lead this department. Ever since you returned students are being defunded and all kinds of corrupt shenanigans like the two hundred and sixteen thousand ghost students which were discovered by an independent report are normalized.

6. Disbandment and termination of the tenure of SAUS and a Congress of SAUS must sit within sixty days to elect a new structure.

These are our demands and we will fight for them.


Conclusion

In the words of the Revolutionary icon of the Liberation Struggle, Mama Winnie Nomzamo Madikizela-Mandela, "Singayisusa nanini sithanda"

We hope you will find the above in order


Revolutionary Regards

#DownWithDirectPayment
#BladeMustGo

SAUS Has Blood On Its Hands! by Lindokuhle Mponco

The direct payment policy has been a thorny issue in the sector of Higher Education due to many factors. The main factor has been the process of outsourcing this system and appointing unknown service providers who are not even recognized by the Financial Services Conduct Authority (FSCA). Through countless inquiries on the origins of the companies and how they got the contract, it finally dawned on us that NSFAS would never approve such a scandalous method without cooperation from SAUS. The South African Union of Students (SAUS) is a key cog in the machinery that continues to exploit the children of the Working Class and the Peasantry.

At the beginning of the year, NSFAS published the NSFAS Financial and Academic Eligibility Criteria for 2023. In the over 50-page document, NSFAS imposed the Direct Payment method and the Straight-to-Landlord policy. The SRCs from across the country rightfully rejected this due to NSFAS imposing a policy without maximum consultation. It was in one of these meetings that SRC members from across the country found out that SAUS had approved on behalf of the SRCs it represents without consultation! This was the first warning flag which indicates that this process was a patently corrupt process. This triggered a response from the SRCs which rejected this agreement. SAUS was forced to convene an extended NEC meeting to posture themselves as consultors of the masses of our people. In that very same meeting, SAUS was roundly rejected for taking decisions without consulting the SRCs. That was the last time we heard of SAUS, and we never heard or saw a statement against them. It became clear to everyone that SAUS had sold students out! Rumors abound that the President of SAUS (Yandisa Ndzoyiya) allegedly received over R2 million to approve these bogus fintech companies. In the words of Pravin Gordhan, students started connecting the dots and realized that SAUS is not an ally but an enemy.

 After this realization, the majority of the SRCs (excluding the University of Fort Hare Institutional SRC and the University of Witwatersrand SRC) embarked on an occupation of the offices of NSFAS to raise their dissatisfaction. NSFAS responded by activating the might of the State (Police) and private Security who are nothing but mercenaries of the bourgeoisie. It is from that point that SRCs began giving in while some began accepting bribes to keep quiet. Some rejected it rhetorically (UFH Institutional SRC is a clear example) but practically told students to onboard. It is true that an unled revolution always collapses due to the lack of organized leadership. Organized leadership acts as a vanguard that constantly advances the struggle of a class or strata in society. The struggle for free, quality, decolonized, and well-resourced education is a class struggle that requires class consciousness. Direct Payment entrenches the commodification of education and further exposes the system to capitalist penetration. SAUS has chosen to run with the wolves and now they are howling with the pack as Leon Trotsky would put it. 

The lack of their leadership in this struggle exposed the weaknesses of the SRCs and the weakness of the subjective factor. In his classic work, The Transitional Program, Leon Trotsky made it clear that the problem we have in this era of proletarian struggle is a problem of leadership. He further exposes the fact that the objective conditions for a socialist revolution are there, but the subjective conditions are not there. This means that in the 1930s, Leon Trotsky realized that the Socialist movement has an issue of leadership. The opportunistic and reformist character of our leadership has been laid bare through this direct payment policy. Some of them are members of the SACP and its associate structures yet they have indulged in one of the most patently exploitative methods of disbursing allowances. They approved companies that are headquartered in New Zealand claiming that they are overthrowing 'White Monopoly Capital'. In the previous article, I clearly exposed how this in dialectical laws is not a negation but rather a multiplication of a degenerate tendency. They substituted the capitalists who were operating in the decentralized system and replaced them with unknown start-ups that have no track record in the space. To emphasize, these entities are not even registered with the FSCA. One can conclude with confidence and disgust (which is a paradox) that SAUS has the blood of students on their hands. Students are dropping out due to not having funds, and students are committing suicide and subjecting themselves to prostitution and drug abuse because of a SAUS which chose to take pictures with the blunt Blade Nzimande. NSFAS has just recently defunded thousands of students across the country, yet the SAUS spokesperson and Deputy Secretary General of the lumpen, reformist, and class collaborationist SASCO (Asive Dlanjwa) is busy posturing on social media as if nothing is happening.

Students must reject SAUS with the contempt they deserve because they have chosen to abandon students. In the words of Leon Trotsky, "You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on - into the dustbin of history." Student Organizations that still have a revolutionary bone in their body must consign SAUS to the dustbin of history where they belong. SRCs must either call for a SAUS Congress (which should have been convened in June because their term has expired) and elect revolutionary leadership which will turn the reformist union into a fighting organ of the masses, or form a new revolutionary union that will not be tainted by the vile and corrupt character of SAUS. We must not be afraid to break new ground and pioneer new things in the name of working smart. Revolutionaries from across the Left spectrum must move beyond agitating for an inclusive union that represents all SRCs from across the sector (including TVET colleges) but must be laying the groundwork for the formation of such. In the formulation of Marcus Garvey, material conditions are forcing us to be organized and as revolutionary Marxists of the Bolshevik tradition we must not lag behind the movement of the masses, yet we must not move too ahead of the masses. We must move with them but be clear to all that we are the vanguard of this struggle. 

The EFFSC must begin reaching out to like-minded organizations and SASCO branches that will be progressive in this struggle even though we know they will be forced to sell out either through the intervention of 'Abakhuluwa' or through the sheer selloutism that is pervasive in their structures. A United Front must be formed to combat this accelerated commodification and neo-liberalization of our sector at the hands of the pseudo-Communist pair of Buti Manamela and the blunt Blade Nzimande. We must create a new organ that will be the base of the movement and it must be controlled by students, for students, and only students. This Organ must also be tasked with linking our struggle to the Workers' struggle in urban areas and in the rural areas it must link the struggle to the struggle of Workers and Peasants. The de-commodification of our education will never be achieved through studentism, it can only be achieved through a class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisies on the one side, and the working class and the peasantry on the other side. A new worker-student alliance must be formed with urgency, while we raise the clarion call of #FreeEducationNow!

Down with Direct Payment, Forward to Free Education! by Lindokuhle Mponco

 At the beginning of 2023, we were ambushed with a decision that was adopted in the dingy corners of the sector of Higher Education by SAUS (South African Union of Students) and NSFAS. This decision was sanctified and blessed by the Godfather of the sector, Dr. Bonginkosi Emmanuel 'Blade' Nzimande. The decision is an opportunistic decision given the fact that the mechanism of direct payment is more expensive than the previous mechanism. The reason why this decision can be categorized as opportunistic is due to the timing and the implementation of the decision. 

In student spaces, the question of direct payment has been one which has gripped the space after the #FeesMustFall was neutralized by the 'free education' announcement of the former President, Monsieur Jacob Zuma. This announcement created an opening for the neoliberal wing of government to implement policies that would increasingly centralize the disbursement process. This was also accompanied by reports of a general collapse in the management of the system which has led us to this point we find ourselves in. The year 2023 has brought to our attention these lingering issues caused by the opportunistic announcement by Jacob Zuma. The announcement without modalities is a typical example of how the neoliberal regime of the ANC normally announces progressive solutions to the contradictions of society without a plan only to reverse such a plan due to 'impracticality'. As students of Marxism-Leninism, we have learned to go beyond what the naked eye can see, and we apply the tools of analysis (Dialectical & Historical Materialism) which help us see things for what they are. These announcements are just mere announcements that are meant to appease the masses while the neoliberals prepare for a vicious counterattack against the Working Class and the Peasantry. 

The current crop of students has no memory of the Heher Commission; thus, it is the duty of us revolutionary Marxists to remind the masses of our people. The Heher Commission was appointed by the former President, Mr. Jacob Zuma. This commission was tasked with investigating the practicality of tuition fee-free education. The commission resolved that it was impractical; thus, banks must step in and fund students directly through loans that will be paid back when a student is employed and earns a certain amount of money. The threshold was to be decided by the Department of Higher Education; however, a militant SAUS rejected that recommendation. SAUS led a shutdown which was supported by many SRCs and Student Political Organizations, which ultimately led to the opportunistic announcement by Mr. Jacob Zuma. The opportunistic announcement laid the groundwork for the Neoliberal fightback which has manifested itself in the form of direct payment. The principle of direct payment is not wrong; however, it has been used as a gap by the upstart capitalists who are endorsed by the moribund ANC. As Lenin once said, "Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps." In a nutshell, the capitalist retreat was not a genuine retreat but one which was tactically made to open the gap for further capitalist penetration.

Norraco and eZaga are the hallmarks of this selfish and greedy arrangement. Norraco is not even older than two years while eZaga is only six months old. This goes to show that the companies which have been awarded these lucrative tenders are not even capacitated enough to run this process. This goes to show the moribund nature of capitalism in South Africa. It has gotten to the level of crony capitalists accumulating wealth by ripping students off. The second characteristic of these companies is that they charge hefty fees. This stands in contrast to the Banks Act of 1990. They have entered the realm of loan sharks without exiting the realm of established banks. This was justified by some SAUS leaders as an overthrow of White Monopoly Capital. The ABCs of Marxism tell us that you cannot replace one fraction of capital with another in the name of overthrowing capital. In fact, that does not even qualify as a negation but qualifies as a multiplication. Lenin warned us in his classic work, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism that in its moribund state, capital doesn't exist in perfect and free competition. It becomes a monopolistic system that divides markets into different pieces owned by different companies. What has happened with the direct payment outsourcing process has followed that logic. Four companies will be responsible for disbursing allowances directly to students. They will get fees from students' allowances while getting money from the State for the contract of doing this job. This is a clear example of how capitalism works, and how fintech and financial services companies operate in this era of Monopoly Capital known as the imperialist stage of development.

Our SRCs tried to fight back; however, the lack of revolutionary backbone saw some cave in while others were bought off. The dominance of the EFFSC in the sector was found wanting due to a lack of central, provincial, and branch coordination. Branches should have stubbornly mandated their deployees to reject to the point of mass demonstration, Provinces should have ensured that the party line is maintained, while the Central structure should have coordinated a national response to what is a blatant neoliberal attack on the student populace across the country. It is the duty of the readers of The Spark to go out and canvass for a national shutdown. It is the duty of the readers of The Spark to go out to the student leadership of their various branches and call for them to uphold the revolutionary principles that the EFFSC upholds. We also need to take a grassroots approach and use branches as a medium and basic organizing tool for the masses. The EFFSC branches must consciously seek out alliances with revolutionary tendencies within the student populace with the intention of forming a United Front against NSFAS. The slogan of #BringBackIntelli & #BringBackeFundi is outdated and must be thrown in the dustbin of history. The new slogan must be #FreeEducationNow. To prioritize the fight for free education is to prioritize the fight for socialism. A Marxist worth his/her own salt will know that free education cannot be practically attained within the confines of the bourgeois capitalist system, especially when it follows a neoliberal path.

Our fight against Direct Payment is a fight against Neoliberalism and must be understood within that context. The fight against NSFAS must not be mistaken as a fight against fee-free education but must be understood as a fight against commodified education. NSFAS represents the commodified nature of our education as it seeks to remind us that those without money cannot study or access the spaces of Higher Learning. It is on this premise that we raise the clarion call for #FreeEducationNow because we know that where there is free education there is no NSFAS and there is definitely no Direct Payment but a well-resourced education system that is freed from the capitalist trappings of commodification and commercialization. We know that where there is free education capitalism doesn't exist and if it does, it is subject to the dictates of the State which is run directly by the Workers and the Peasants.