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Our responsibilities
It was once again Frantz Fanon who said these instructive words in the context of a struggle and building people’s organisation:
“Nobody, neither leader nor rank and file, can hold back the truth. The search for the truth in local attitudes is a collective affair. Some are richer in experience and elaborate their thoughts more rapidly, and in the past have been able to establish a greater number of mental links. But they ought to avoid riding roughshod over the people, for the success of the decision which is adopted depends upon co-ordinated, conscious efforts of the people.
No one can get out of the situation scot free. Everyone will be butchered or tortured, and in the framework of the independent nation everyone will go hungry and everyone will suffer in the slump. The collective struggle presupposes collective responsibility at the base and collegiate responsibility at the top. Yes, everybody will have to be compromised in the fight for the common good. No one has clean hands; there are no innocents and no onlookers. We all have dirty hands; we are all soiling them in the swamps of our country and in the terrifying emptiness of our brains. Every onlooker is either a coward or a traitor.”
We are challenged as we move forward on the difficult questions of our country and the continent, to take collective responsibility at the base and collegiate responsibility at the top, lest we become cowards or traitors in our revolution. Aluta Continua!
Silumko Nondwangu, general secretary
It may well be that the focus of this Bulletin is on other issues pertaining to the struggles of metalworkers and the rest of the working class in our country, and therefore these matters raised herein do not find a connection with the Bulletin.
However, recently we have been subjected to media speculation on the difficulties experienced by the component formations of the Alliance . The media and some among ourselves have suggested all sorts of theories on what is happening.
In many instances, this debate has been reduced to the level of this and that other leader. We can continue this trend as comrades at our own peril and that of the formations of the democratic movement.
We said in our structures and that of the Federation that all of us must provide principled leadership on these issues affecting our movement. This will entail among others: adherence to organisational discipline and principles, the need for the unity of our people and that of the progressive forces leading our people. We must remain vigilant, ready to defend the gains of our struggle and to consolidate the National Democratic Revolution. No other rhetoric from whatever quarter must compromise these basic principles of struggle that have taken us thus far.
The numerous interactions that we have had in the NGC of the ANC, the Communist Party higher structures, in the Cosatu Central Committee and in the recent Alliance 10-aside meeting, seek in different forms to reinforce the movement as the body of components that must be charged with the political task of managing whatever issues arise in the course of our noble cause to struggle against the common enemy and in the same vein struggle against our own weaknesses as revolutionaries.
We can only win this struggle if, and only if, we are united and the interests of our peopleand those we struggle with elsewhere, are at the centre stage of our thoughts and actions.