Posts by kamantha

The concept of surplus humanity is endemic to the logic of Zi*nism. Palestinians that are not Jewish are “surplus humanity” and they have to be warehoused if they’re not going to be killed through genocide. And so there are human warehouses throughout what’s left of Palestine…Diplomats from across the West that have traditionally provided the residents of the Gaza Strip with food and clothing and provided Israel with bombs to kill them gathered in Cairo in October to raise $5.3 billion for rebuilding. They oversaw two plans. The first was called The Initiative for the Palestinian Economy, which was introduced by John Kerry, the Secretary of State in the US, presided over and conceived by former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. The blueprint of this plan was not presented, but I got a version leaked to me by a Palestinian businessman, and it was produced by McKinsey, which is an international consulting firm. It called for heightened tourism to the Gaza Strip. It doesn’t mention the siege or the occupation once in this bizarre document but concluded that Gaza underperforms on key tourism metrics. That is the actual language in a document that is the economic plan that John Kerry claimed at this donor conference would reduce unemployment in Palestine, West Bank and Gaza, to 8%. It is ridiculous but also disturbing because we watched over 400 factories being destroyed in Operation: Protective Edge and this calls for sweatshops to be built in Gaza. In other words, textiles in mills that will produce zippers and buttons for high-end fashion producers in Tel Aviv. That’s what this was, a shock document of neoliberal disaster capitalism.¹ —Max Blumenthal, American journalist and author of The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza

Saying to African millions,
Socialism is opportunistically reckless,
deflects Capitalists’ opportunistic,
get-rich fecklessness.

It minimises the horror-show damage,
on ordinary (South) African lives,
lower classes dependent,
on more than myopic spending,
pep talks or mismanagement,
decades of corporate colonialism* defended.

Grabby foreign hands,
elites double-clicking African elites,
while tens of millions,
our Africans crawl about their feet,
repeat over and over,
old crimes of colonial control.
egotistically believing they’re entitled,
to any say at all.
Only old colonisers,
believe they’re entitled to interfere,
in a foreign land, not theirs,
cloaked behind a moral figment veneer,
save your “moral” obligation,
or “holy” duty to civilise,
many Africans, not elites,
are just plain sick of all the lies.
Informed consent is a thing,
rapey vibes are not cute,
when you fail to mention global financing structures,
trade deal conditions or military bases,
our elites working in cahoots.
It is time to stay in your lane,
get your own house in order,
stop spending citizen money,
on foreign influence wars.
Learn from your treachery,
confront your conceit.
Africans will take charge of Africa,
it is our homeland,
not a Handmaid to reseed.

*After the Second World War, the imperialist trends of the eighteenth and nineteenth century began to decline. Through collective struggles, the Africans achieved independence from the whites. But though they attained freedom, they could not imagine the fact that it was just a treacherous exchange of power between the out-going masters and few of their faithful heirs. In the colonial period, the European rulers propagated that as the Africans had no culture and history of their own, it was their holy duty to civilize the native Africans. Thus, they regarded themselves superior to Africans whose culture they considered inferior, uncivilized, and savage. In the name of spreading civilization, they dominated, oppressed, tyrannized and persecuted the native Africans not only economically and politically, but also culturally. When the Europeans left, the Africans got political freedom, but the foul practice of imperialism did not end. It appeared in a new form namely neocolonialism which the scholars had branded as the worst form of imperialism…Neocolonialism is a process by which colonial mother country exposed exploiting rules and regulations to her newly independent underdeveloped countries or less developing countries for indirect dominating.²

The examples of Zimbabwe, Sudan, Mali, and the Central African Republic serve as stark reminders of the consequences of Russian influence. The international community must unite to counter this troubling trend. It is our moral obligation to ensure that history does not repeat itself and that African nations have the autonomy and prosperity they rightfully deserve. We should stand against the new form of neo-colonialism and safeguard the future of Africa, as well as the world.³

To assume anti-imperialism,
is anti wholly western,
is to confess your countries’ sins.
It means you know what countries have done,
and you’re looking to mitigate,
a damage control from within,
using abusive framing,
to unfairly label,
critics as hateful,
knowing full well,
the system, the processes,
are chains reining-in our will.
Africans are not barbarous or stupid pets.
We were and are equally human.
We want to be free of foreign domination,
neocolonial control,
including those elites,
who betray us back home.

I am not blindly pro-socialist,
I am anti-hypocrisy,
I am not avidly anti-capitalist,
I am anti-manipulatory.
I am anti-colonialism,
hiding behind liberal economics,
I am anti-elite enrichment,
hiding behind privatise national assets.

Many analysts have accepted that South Africa’s “political miracle” was purchased at the price of ensuring the survival of one of the world’s most unequal capitalist systems. Liberals—with enthusiasm—have argued that South Africa has accepted the inevitability of the market and that it has pragmatically adapted to the new international economic order: it has removed exchange controls, embraced an export-oriented development strategy, practiced strict fiscal discipline, and committed itself to privatization…The Australian political commentator John Pilger captures the sense of disillusionment on the left when he recently lamented that a “historic compromise” between the African National Congress (ANC) and the apartheid government left economic power in the hands of the corporate white elite; all that has changed is “the inclusion of a small group of blacks into this masonry.”⁴

Vested interests,
vested African comforts,
upper-middle classes,
prove they can’t be trusted,
to give full truth uncovered.

Our elites presuppose capitalism’s virtues,
a manipulative, elite charade,
Africans mimicking or pretending,
part of their clingy bousculade.

Framing is deliberate,
skewed toward upper-middle class,
their comforts, desires or pains.
The majority of the majority,
their desires or opposing critiques,
are labelled as insane.

I do not care about the social democratic principles among the rats and mice (‘rats and mice’: irrelevant people). I am referring to the red (Socialist) threat articulated by the ANC, the EFF and MK. The EFF is a self-described ‘Marxist-Leninist-Fanonian’ party. The ANC has long been in a close alliance with one of the oldest communist parties, and today several SACP members hold ministerial positions. The MK—well—just reproduced the socialist wet dream of complete nationalisation of private land.⁵ —Martin van Staden (his online response to Khululekile Mkhandi’s comment on Martin’s BizNews opinion article), Martin is the Head of Policy at the Free Market Foundation, former Deputy Head of Policy Research at the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), Editor of RaceLaw.co.za, Editor in Chief of the Rational Standard, and a columnist at the Daily Friend

We know this,
We see it,
trusted voices, grotesque elitism,
from fancy schools doing their bit,
to create a set view,
of socialism across Africa,
Socialists branded as dangerous caliphates.

We don’t produce television(s). Because this (ANC) government has gone into trade agreements with other countries. Let’s take Germany for instance, our trade agreements with Germany say we cannot manufacture a car, we will assemble the cars from Germany. And we don’t just assemble (it), we put money into assembling German cars. Why should we do that? Why shouldn’t we produce, manufacture our own (African) car? Where is the market? Africa loves everything South African. They will buy from us. We produce a fighter jet. If we produce a flying machine, it shouldn’t be difficult to produce a car. Denel has demonstrated that we have the capacity to do this. Denel is manufacturing army vehicles but why are we not doing it? It is trade agreements with Europe, America, with (the) UK that (say) you (Africans) will not get involved in this.⁶ —Julius Malema, leader of southern Africa’s Economic Freedom Front party

They’re exorbitantly wealthy,
while people starve,
a video on upper Korea,
socialist hell, they remark.

And here’s what I don’t get,
why is inequity “hell”,
when socialism is mentioned,
but somehow less disgusting,
in a capitalist pàiduì century.

South Africa,
a capitalist country,
liberal for decades,
has a Gini index of 0.63,
the most income unequal,
our companies’ dividend shindig.

In 2011, South Africa produced diamonds whose uncut, or rough, value was (US)$1.73 billion, or 12 percent of global production, according to the most recent government data available. Yet from 2010 to 2011, diamond-producing companies paid South Africa’s government just (US)$11 million in mining royalties, according to the latest Tax Statistics report, produced by the South African Treasury and the South African Revenue Service. A 100Reporters investigation of the diamond trade in South Africa has found that companies here pay a royalty rate far lower than that of other African states. Companies can also reduce or cancel out export taxes if they offer locally-mined diamonds to the state for purchase—even if the South African government never buys the gems, often due to formidably high prices…

In an apparent conflict of interest, De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd., the dominant player until 2010, ‘donates’ paid staff to the State Diamond Trader, charged with assessing diamonds offered by De Beers and other companies to the State for purchase. Provided 10 percent of domestic diamonds are offered, these companies may then receive export tax exemptions…From 2005 to 2012, diamond exporters, primarily De Beers, appear to have downplayed the market value of their rough diamond exports by (US)$3 billion, according to an analysis* of declarations in corporate filings under the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, the rough diamond tracking system used to keep conflict gems off the world market. The same undervalued gems were then sold at market prices around the world.⁷

The US free-market,
liberal capitalists extraordinaire,
has twenty million people,
living in deep poverty,
an American despair.
Half of those in deep poverty,
are under the age,
of twenty-five,
young Americans are barely alive.
The number of households,
living on two dollars per person,
increased in fifteen years,
in 2011 was 1.4 million, their (not my) assertion.

India’s top five percent,
own over half of the country’s wealth,
Credit Suisse did not mention,
liberal capitalist policies,
affecting bhaiya’s health.
How many working Indians,
are exploited serfs, living to eat,
or is some getting rich mass justice,
when racialised capitalist colonialism,
killed almost 150 million Indians real quick,
to some, this was incredibly slick,
Indian elites dare not say then,
why complain, jaan, just try to be rich.

Socialism is the devil,
Capitalism is an angel dishevelled.
Mixed economies,
leaning toward capitalist liberals,
those are the good guys,
our true friends,
even when our millions starve to no end.
Socialist economies are deemed cruel,
if leaders eat a wrap for lunch,
while economic crises worsened by US sanctions,
removed their shelved products before brunch.
Socialist economies are called names,
anti-freedom, anti-people,
but it was capitalist economies,
invading Iraq, bombing land of the Slavs,
our UN laws hidden while human lives were halved.

The Israel military declared the town a closed military zone and refused to allow the International Red Cross in. And the Red Cross, the ICRC (and this is scandalous in my opinion) they would not do anything without coordinating with the Israeli military. And in my communication with the ICRC (the International Committee of the Red Cross), they refused to discuss atrocities that their paramedics had witnessed without first clearing it with the Israeli military. They even did a conference during the war with the Israeli military think tank that conceived (of) the Dahiya doctrine I just mentioned.⁸ —Max Blumenthal, American journalist and author of The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza

DRC’s seven million displaced,
six million dead,
connected to capitalist extraction schools,
our African minerals,
forced onto the foreign wealth cruise,
but no, it is socialism killing,
Africa’s ultimate hidden enemy,
upper-middle class farcical drool,
when liberal capitalism’s Africa’s frenemy.

But what about socialist China?
“Tell us how terrible they are,”
Okay…
with around thirty US sites,
AfriCom is a saint,
in 2022, China had one base,
so desperate, so desperate,
to make China look like a military threat,
maps on “likely considered” spaces,
for military bases is used by media internet.

Sabri Al-Qurashi’s native language is Arabic. He was dumped in Kazakhstan nine years ago where they speak Kazakh and Russian. A lot of these men, there were 770 of them, a lot of these stories never got told. Sabri spent twelve years (detained without charge) at Guantanamo (detention site). He was not one of the ‘black site’ prisoners…

He was deemed low intelligence value because he was picked up in Pakistan. He was there in a perfume factory, buying wholesale things, trying to make money. He happened to be there when 9/11 just happened and there were leaflets offering bounty money up to US$5000. Warlords in Pakistan and Afghanistan were selling people to the United States government. This happened to up to 86% of the men that were at Guantanamo Bay…

He was told there would be some restrictions for the first two years but essentially he was going there as a free man. He would have the same rights as a Kazakh citizen. For the last eight years, he has found himself without the most basic needs met…Now he is essentially living in an open-air prison. His movements are monitored. People are actively discouraged from becoming friends with him. They become monitored. He’s kept mostly in isolation because of the stigma of being branded a ‘terrorist’ in Kazakhstan. He does not have an ID. He does not have asylum. He is stateless. He is unable to receive money or mail. He can’t drive. He cannot travel. The International Committee of the Red Cross is the one that pays for him have an apartment and live there. There is no support from the Kazakh government. All of these ‘resettlement deals’ are run out of an office of the (US) State Department.⁹—Elise Swain, Former photo editor and multimedia journalist at The Intercept now freelance reporting/photography

Why the fuck would anyone go to war for you? I’m 100% disabled fucking (US) veteran and guess what they do when you get out? First, they break you down and they brainwash you. And then they tell you, hey, you’re a soldier now, you’re an airman now, you’re a Marine now, you’re a sailor now, stand with pride in your uniform that cost like 800 (US) dollars that you have to pay for with your own paycheck. They don’t just give it to you, you got to pay for it. And after they brainwash you, they throw you in the fucking trash. Nobody wants to go to war for you. You don’t take care of the American people, you don’t take care of the service members and by God dammit you don’t fucking take care of the veterans.¹⁰—American Veteran frustration over post war treatment Jeff_081211 (Tik Tok)

The astounding sheer gall,
to sit on neocolonialist thrones,
and lecture us Africans on foreign threats.
Lumumba warned us,
about normalised military,
slews of corporate backed wars.
Africa has never been truly free,
your liberal democratic vote is a joke,
we vote for askaris, pro-neocolonisers,
who hand-over resources,
before building our globally competitive shores.

We will deal with China,
Saudi and Russia,
India or UAE,
but first, Africa must ban all foreign bases,
and then we can talk,
if we want to,
about your socialism fear.

Morena (the National Regeneration Movement of Mexico) didn’t just win. They won with a super majority in both houses of Congress and in the state house, which means that Morena and their allies can pass constitutional reforms on their own, without consulting the opposition that had blocked a series of reforms before this election. AMLO (Andrés Manuel López Obrador) laid out about twenty constitutional reforms and said we are running (our election campaign) on this, it includes reforms to give indigenous and Afro-Mexican people greater rights and greater autonomy, to ban fracking, to ban open-pit mining, to peg the minimum wage to inflation, to increase workers pensions and create a fund so workers can retire on their last salary up to a certain limit.¹¹—Kurt Hackbarth, writer, playwright and host of Soberanía: The Mexican Politics Podcast

AMLO laid out, saying give us the super majority to pass these (reforms) and the public did…The one reform getting the most media attention is the judicial reform and you see a lot of blow back from the US press, you see Bloomberg, Mary Anastasia O’Grady saying we are going to have to short the Mexican Peso. All kinds of financial coup kind of things…

The sneering from the New York Times, saying Mexico is going to shift (and I am quoting here), ‘from a judiciary based on an appointment system based on specialised training and qualifications to one where just about anyone can become a judge with a law degree and a few years experience’. Sneering elitism dripping from the New York Times. Heaven forbid, ‘just about anyone’ could become a judge in Mexico rather than the coterie of elite judges we have now in Mexico, that cater absolutely to corporate interests and the interests of the wealthy both national and international. And this is what the United States is worried about, they won’t have the judiciary in their pocket anymore for multinationals, multinational mining companies, multinational energy companies to get injunctions to block legislation, block progressive reforms that prevent them from doing whatever they want in Mexican territory.¹² —Kurt Hackbarth, writer, playwright and host of Soberanía: The Mexican Politics Podcast

Our minerals are ours,
Africa is our motherland,
not anyone’s enslaved cash cow,
nationalising resources labelled contraband,
none of you elites are our master,
do not over extend your hand.

But since you bring it up,
why were criticisms,
by Empire Files,
on John Oliver’s run down,
targetting Venezuela with distorted truths mired,
barred under a forced login round.
Sounds like creative blinkers,
forced on by a global network,
trying to ensure westerners
let alone Africans,
never question media bent.

If you understand how Western propaganda operates, we live in an ostensible liberal democracy or we have the veneer of liberal democracy. And so the government, the State and its various tentacles can’t just outlaw a media outlet or jail us, although if we become enough of a nuisance they might do so as they did with Julian Assange for example. The best way to deal with an outlet like The Grayzone is to constantly attack us. Filter out attack pieces in mainstream publications where much of the public (including the liberal public that might even sympathise with the Palestinians) trust. So the Washington Post ran a phony smear piece on us claiming that we are paid by Iran. No evidence at all to support that, all innuendo…

And that gets fed into Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a bulletin board for the national security elite. And we have been placed, blacklisted as a deprecated source on Wikipedia because of the threat we pose to the narrative. Wikipedia will soon become a source for AI, so when you use voice activated AI and say, hey, Siri or whatever it is, What is The Grayzone? It will read you the smears one after the other…and I am unable to edit or correct them. You are unable to correct them. There’s a cartel of less than 300 editors responsible for the majority of edits, and their concept of ‘reliable sources’ or vetted sources is synonymous with maintstream and corporate Western media.¹³ —Max Blumenthal, American journalist and author of The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza

Within 24 hours of Blinken making the statement, our YouTube channel was shut down. Within 72 hours of that statement, our Instagram, Facebook was shut down. And over the course of the week, Tik Tok was shut down. And today, they shut down our Gmail access. That’s all of the shared drive. All the videos we have ever done on African stream, all the gmails (emails), all the stories we were working on…

The good thing about this is the nature of the work we do, the stories we cover meant that the (journalist) team knew this was a possibility. Because we covered the story of Patrice Lumumba, who they (the US) called “the Soviet Agent” and then he was killed, assaulted with acid, body dismembered, burnt and the only thing that remained was a tooth. We know when you step out and you expose imperialism (imposed on Africa) there’s a price to pay. This is clearly politically motivated. It happened just before the US elections are about to take place (in November 2024)…

We were only getting attacks from people who said we were hurting Kamala Harris’s (election) campaign. Before this happened there were two smear campaigns. The first was from NBC. They said we were spreading fake news to 40 million African Americans without a single example. They cited a report, the only thing publicly available is the summary of the report, and in the summary we are not even mentioned. It says email us if you want the full report. I emailed them months ago.¹⁴—Ahmad Kaballo, CEO of African Stream, Pan African news and analysis channel.

Why was DD Geopolitics banned?
Why was the Cradle banned too?
Why is anyone,
who exposes or questions Empire’s hand,
the system design or control,
denied equal rights, equal voice.
across tech giants’ home.

Africans cannot afford,
their usual beggar’s bowl role.
Africans need their own social media system,
their own control, a regional hold.

Africa is covered alot by mainstream (global) media but I think it is covered very badly. They tell a story and decontextualise it, so a person who does not know the nuances will be left with a certain perception. An example of that would be the Niger coup. The way the Western media covered it was military men have just taken power. We had somebody on the ground, in Niamey, spoke to people. People were filling up stadiums. People were lining the streets supporting this coup. The reason is, they recognise that since its independence, Niger has been in a neocolonial relationship with France. At the time, it was the second poorest country in the world. According to the World Bank, it is expected to grow 12.8% this year…In Africa, competition (with African Stream) is not fierce at all….We don’t take a Human Rights Watch report on face value. We investigate. We do some digging. We speak to the people on the streets. Some of these African media regurgitate what the mainstream media are saying. So even though it has “Africa” in its name, it is essentially controlled by the same centres of power from London, Brussels, Washington as the mainstream media.¹⁵ —Ahmad Kaballo, CEO of African Stream, Pan African news and analysis channel.

Why are imperialist critics,
being shoved,
into a different internet box,
Anne Applebaum, I think she’s called,
said global information,
needs to be better controlled,
should reflect “democratic values“,
but not censorship,
oh no, deary me, not that at all.

This is the same woman who said,
lately, genocide is an overused word,
ignoring UN’s Albanese report,
while evidence, horrific,
poured from social media platforms.

This is the same woman,
who failed to mention,
selective shadow bans,
during pro-genocide screaming fans,
during “non-existent”,
mainstream media propaganda,
brutality against western students,
a First World, authoritarian extravaganza.

And take it from me,
shadow banning is being used,
to censor exposure or criticism,
not hate speech or those being cruel,
such is not making S.African news.

I have forever been banned,
the only odd word used,
was “neoliberalism”,
twice criticising the liberal capitalists,
ANC and DA, was for Youtube inexcusable.
Try again.
Perhaps a bot made a mistake?
Try adding a comment,
and it takes you,
to channel creation,
preventing public critique of my national State.
Prior, I enjoyed a brief shadow ban,
for contravening Insta rules,
a comment on More Perfect Union,
on the neocolonialism effect,
detailing Marikana Farlam’s news,
our corporate economic malevolence,
seen as incidental corporate venomous.
What did three-to-six beanies say,
this year’s election would be swayed by YouTube,
he did not mention, not a word,
whether repression of voices takes place,
our voices unheard.
Designed to ensure maximising of one or two narratives,
only those that support,
foreign extraction, minority control,
not a redesigned boat.

Lesufi says,
the ANC has done so much.
Thirty minutes of an interview,
spent talking about the past.
Ah, bless…I get it.
Nostalgic ANC supporters,
DA disillusioned,
want rebranded status quo with bigger crumbs,
for the downtrodden mostly-black losers.
But errr,
the middle-class hold a voice of wily range,
a paternalistic attitude,
what did Brian Kagoro say?
How can you ask poorer people,
what they want,
if they don’t know what is possible,
you’d rather leave them stunted.

ANC lives in a delusion.
DA lives in resentful fear or contempt.
And I say that with clear eyes,
I voted for both parties,
my complicity with their sins, not exempt.

You don’t get to come now,
and lecture the ordinary,
on who to vote for,
after enabling corporate blood suckers,
how rich am I, black fronters,
bought political game punters,
seeing African indigenous or African-born shunters,
live to die slowly,
masses quickly going under.
From before 1994,
the liberal capitalist game was set.
The remember me,
white elites matter,
as true in 1983,
the push-back-on-change Thatcherettes,
in tune with the look at me,
from past liberation seas,
just focus on Nelson Mandela,
but a version from before 1993.
You did this!
You led the country and yourselves,
your ruling class friends,
into your idea,
of socialist seven hells.
You did this!
You thought you were better than us,
thought you were special,
you used millions for votes,
believing your zebra dishonour was essential.

Why should anyone trust you?
You put lower classes in a hole.
Lower classes are supposed to believe,
you act in their best interests,
after what you two enabled for decades long.
Shifting colonialism,
into apartheid,
white settler colonialism,
re-dressed as white immigration spotlights.
Then, you shifted apartheid,
into liberal capitalism,
our neocolonial hell,
forcing us into a liberal democracy shell.
You never told us about trade deals,
choking our neck.
You kept hidden,
Investor State Dispute Settlement effects.
You never mentioned,
the propaganda-by-omission media,
avoiding African imperialism,
elite anti-African, pro-western medians.

(Muserref) Yardim noted that the colonialist mentality still exists in Europe. She said France passed the law on colonialism on Feb. 25, 2005, to impose (on) teachers to teach the positive effects of the French presence in North Africa to students. But the bill was withdrawn due to the public(‘s) reaction. “Although the law was strongly condemned by Algeria and other colonial countries, France still believes in colonial policies, continuing to say that (colonial) policies are for the benefit of the colonised nations,” she said. “The mission of ‘civilizing the colonial people’ remains in the French policy, showing that although the colonies have declared their independence, France still does not withdraw from these countries and tries to protect its sovereignty,” she added.¹⁶

You said nothing about foreign control,
the foreign aid, foreign paid,
anti-corruption watchdogs,
uninterested in baked-in corruption,
from old white elites,
monies buried in European wealth streams.
You failed to investigate,
foreign NGOs,
and what role they play,
in solidifying our neocolonial decay.
You largely ignored racial abuse,
interpersonal and institutional,
anti-majority from minority elites,
who assaulted black poorer, we got receipts.
It was Socialism,
that went toe-to-toe,
with those violent middle class,
or white-lives-matter by policy,
while you remained meek and cowardly.
It was Socialism,
that said in no part,
of majority land,
will majority people be left to fend alone on their sand.
GNU touts the ANC years later,
as “Socialist”,
laughable, if was not so sad,
before their first IMF loan,
a social democracy could have been planned.
But it’s been thirty years,
I was ten in 1994,
now forty with stretchmarks and gray hair,
you betrayed class liberation, showing us you didn’t care.

Year after year,
Socialism would do the work,
you should have done,
calling out public sector outsourcing,
that you failed to mention,
in Gauteng’s governing run down.
You did this!
You did this to yourselves,
now pretending,
your vacuous audacity,
is multiculturalist sagacity.
I don’t trust you.
You left us to die!
Holding onto minority-benefits,
economic minority domination and abuse,
when you could have made it better, mos.
You sought to serve self,
your zebra what’s-in-it-for-me,
my elite kind,
and then pointed fingers,
as if we were all blind.
In the meantime,
children at college starved,
private school land claims grew,
they’ll charge you a million Rand,
for a one-bedroom flat in Sandton,
who can afford housing in a privatisation stew.
We have to pay for petrol,
pay for tolls and transport,
we have no national economic control,
the real rainbow prays on Facebook,
on groups searching for help,
desperate for jobs, they look,
but once they get a job,
in our neocolonialst,
white-now-zebra dominated abyss,
they’ll be paid below inflation, suffer frozen salaries,
while rainbow management’s conscience is amiss.

No where to go when rumours of union busting,
against Indian lower classes,
in KwaZulu Natal,
from healthcare schemes,
legal intimidation baring their teeth.
Indian askaris enforcing indentured labour houses,
while white elites say,
if you have a problem, get out,
unemployment is where you can run your mouth.
But, of course,
let’s look at Socialism.
Okay, let’s look,
Socialism started a labour desk,
resolving almost 97 000 cases,
for the abandoned poor,
workers ignored by media, their privilege now shook.

Sad that that’s what you’re good for,
numerous smear campaigns,
magnified distractions, villains rearranged,
Zille voters were anti-ANC,
next, anti-Socialism,
then my family’s told to be anti-MK,
do they even now know what to say?
Now, minority black middle class,
GNU is gunning for EFF,
sjoep stil on the system,
it’s full colonial picture still obscured, they’re quite adept.

Sudan for Israel is very symbolic. In 1967, there was a conference that happened in Khartoum called the Khartoum Conference, where the “three Nos” were established: No peace, No recognition, No normalisation. By getting Sudan to normalise (with Israel) was an important part of Trump’s (US) Abraham Accords. We know Saudi Arabia wants to normalise relations with Israel. But what Saudi Arabia’s goal is, if you can get all the other countries to normalise first then it doesn’t seem as big a deal that the custodian of (Muslim holy sites) Mecca and Medina also normalises relations...

What was interesting about the documentary is I interviewed the Information Minister who was also the Transitional Government spokesperson (for Sudan) and he gave the most honest and frank interview. To my surprise actually…He basically said that in the lead up to the 2020 election, the Trump administration put immense pressure on Sudan to normalise relations with Israel…At the time, the Sudan economy was free falling. The Minister explained to me that they took this decision to normalise relations (with Israel) because they needed a lifeline...

There was a French president…Chirac, he said that without the business arrangements that we have with Africa we would be a third world country. He knew that as part of their (French) surivival, they need to keep this uranium deal they had with Niger, where Areva, a French-backed company takes 96% of the royalties. They realise that their existence, the status that their civilians have, that their (European) elites have, relies on exploitation of not just Africa, but primarily of Africa, and generally the Global South…Ideology is number one (that sustains the neocolonialist exploitation). We saw it in the Russia Ukraine conflict, in the way that they talked about it. We saw clips of people saying, it is blue-eyed people like me being killed in Ukraine. the premise of that is it is okay if it happens in Palestine, it is okay when it happens in Sudan and Somalia.¹⁷—Ahmad Kaballo, CEO of African Stream, Pan African news and analysis channel.

But make no mistake,
our political class is a mess,
you’re talking, not talking,
aligning, not aligning,
for what purpose,
is anyone’s guess.
Instead of redesigning the system,
not just plugging holes,
making just, actually fair,
you sell us drama,
scandals, rather than visionary hope.

No one is easier sold,
than our academia and political class,
’94 bandmates and others,
must make the upper class laugh,
for a few extra bucks,
they’ll wrap themselves in feathers.
while the majority,
lower classes get whipped and limed,
African slaves trying to escape,
hear, hear, to our democratic lives.

Hollywood possesses between 60% and 75% of shares of the international film market..Since the Second World War, the US government financed movies aimed towards national security topics. The produced films fight against Nazi ideology or denounce the Communist threat, awakening citizens’ patriotic feelings. A direct link was established between the War Department and Hollywood. It would never be broken…

These films also promoted – and even propagandized – the American army, which lent its equipment and men for filming purposes. The 1986 film Top Gun is a perfect example (translator’s note: as much as its 2022 sequel, Top Gun: Maverick). This film even helped to recruit many American soldiers, with the army setting up recruitment booths at the end of screenings…Hollywood films not only unite a nation around the values and geopolitical representations of the United States, but also the entire world. The conflicts and threats that the United States and its allies face are scripted. Plots dating back from the second half of the 20th century battle Nazi ideology and the Communist enemy during the Cold War. Cinema was part of the logic of the National Security State Doctrine, put in place under the Truman administration. The scenarios also illustrate the shift and evolution of conflicts and threats. Cyber-attacks, the threat of terrorism, drug trafficking and gangs have all been featured in plots since the 2000’s…

Furthermore, the films provide an American representation of history by using heroic figures. Examples include Rambo 2, about the Vietnam War, and Rambo 3, about the war in Afghanistan. These films also serve to attenuate – or even glorify – the role of the American army in conflicts: American Sniper, released in 2015, pays tribute to a soldier who took part in the conflict in Iraq (translator’s note: one could also mention Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, released in 2023).¹⁸

Socialism is not merely high taxes,
that’s status quo capitalism,
with a bigger State budget.
Socialism is collective enrichment,
based on restructuring,
economic control,
economic ownership.
not merely social welfare democratic,
a rebranding automatic.

You can run around,
espousing higher family grants,
more jobs, more tourism,
Haha from old leaders coining Rands.
For years, talking black lives matter,
but not in substance,
no global competitive power,
no regional economic control.

I am not talking about racial exclusion,
I am saying,
honour majority lives,
the majority are working class,
not the upper-middle,
the majority are black,
coloured second,
but that’s not how our economy was devised.

And if more of the working youth,
lower class,
the masses, mostly black,
don’t figure out,
when they’re under elite attack,
they, too, will spend their lifetime,
like we did, hustling for more,
looking up to bent-knees,
who would do anything,
to stay second-in-charge lords.

Be careful is what I am saying,
of “non-racialism” masks,
if it does not include,
a reimagining,
an economic control task,
you’re being had, once again,
by the liberal dominant zebra class.
The people who captained us,
into international debt,
more private profits, liberalising regulation,
trying to separate the political,
from an economic system,
our thirty-year democracy tricked-little.

And so stay alert,
stay informed,
the media machine is coming for you,
it will ban or label African voices,
creatively channel,
your African votes to their view.
It will tell you,
economic control questions,
are racist, exclusionary.
It’ll tell you foreign ownership,
is investment and investment is king.
Wees gewaarsku,
you are their useful sheep,
their exploitable African skins.

If we want to talk honestly,
about socialism,
read a damn article or book.
Start with the problem.
Take a look.
Nkrumah’s last stage,
of imperialism,
clearly defines,
a warning lived in real African time.
Or perhaps Babu’s,
African socialism,
or socialist Africa,
writes what before was unwritten.

Having a real critique,
would require real engagement,
real sincerity,
not these bland, deliberately skewed,
fables on Venezuela.

Malema and his party believe the government should nationalise the banking industry, businesses, mines, take peoples’ properties by force, and so much more that violates human rights and would undermine South Africa’s young democracy…The ideas that Malema and his party sell as a solution to South Africa’s socioeconomic problems, have been tried before in many countries around the world, and they failed dismally. Even today they are still being tried in countries like Venezuela…And guess what? All these countries are poor, and ruled by despots who repress civil liberties and muzzle the press.¹⁹—Phumlani Majozi, a South African macroeconomist and political analyst, author of a new book “Lessons from Past Heroes”

To really understand what’s going on in Venezuela, you obviously don’t have to start with (Hugo) Chavez. You have to start with the period before Chavez. Venezuela is a victim of what’s been called 500 years of social disaster. In 1499, the era of colonialism began when it was invaded by the Spanish Empire and Venezuela (like every other colonised country in the world) suffered genocide, to be transformed into a mono-crop, slave State to be devoured by foreign powers, while the people of the country went deeper and deeper into poverty, misery and death. That legacy of underdevelopment still plagues every formerly colonised country in the world, trying to emerge in today’s economy having one export, not having any infrastructure and things of that nature...

When neoliberal reforms hit the country in the (19)80s it devastated them just the way it devastated every other country that was hit by these predatory neoliberal reforms. Poverty was close to 50%, infant mortality was a shocking 20 in every 1000 births and widespread illiteracy amongst other problems. In 1989, the country was in total economic collapse, far greater than anything we see in Venezuela today. When people rose up in protest, they were massacred by the right-wing government who murdered an estimate of 4000 citizens in just a matter of days. It was out of that movement that Chavez emerged as a leader…

“John Oliver:’When that (oil) company protested some of the (socialist) changes he (Chavez) was making, he responded by using his TV show to address his executives directly'”. Well what were they (the corporate executives) protesting? They were protesting the democratic election of Hugo Chavez, and the way that they were protesting was to shut down oil production in the country. So when you have over 95% of income coming into the country coming from oil, shutting down the oil industry is a major act of (corporate) protest, shutting down the entire economy. And what was their (corporate) demand during the protest? For Chavez, democratic leader, to step down from office. Yeah, he fired those people, he took back the oil industry and used the wealth from the oil industry (instead of going into the pockets of those very rich, oil executives) he used it to revolutionise the country…Not only was poverty reduced by half, but extreme poverty fell from 17% to under 7%; pensions for the elderly went from under 400,000 to over 2 million; malnurtrition went from 21% to 2%; unemployment fell from under 17% to 6% and cut the infant mortality rate in half; children in school went from 6 million to 13 million and illiteracy was totally eradicated. Just to be fair.

“John Oliver:’Some of Chavez’s reforms could have been sustainable, if he pursued a sound economic policy and run a tight ship, not only did he stop saving revenue in a rainy day fund but oversaw a government that Transparency International found to be the most corrupt country in Latin America'”. He (John Oliver) cites Transparency International, an organisation that has most of its funding coming from Western governments and big business. For example, one of the biggest donors is the British government, other major donors include the US government (very hostile to the Venezuelan government) and guess who else? Shell and ExxonMobil, the oil companies that really want Venezuela’s oil. And guess where the data came from for this report? It was compiled by an anti-Chavez activist who was part of the 2002 coup against Chavez, so not one to trust as a basis for your argument, John...

Since Chavez’s death and the price of oil has plummetted, the social programmes (in Venezuela) have advanced and have been maintained. For example, a free quality healthcare has expanded to more of the country, making it available to people in historically left behind, impoverished areas, in particular indigenous areas in the Amazons and so forth, causing the United Nations Programme for Development to place Venezuela amongst the countries with the highest human development index in the world, surpassing most Latin American countries. Since Chavez’s death and under Maduro, they reached the goal of building 2 million new housing units for the poor, still moving forward, building about 500 000 new homes a year. Today, Venezuela has the second-lowest rate of homelessness in all of Latin America, despite economic difficulties. They have the highest literacy rate in all of Latin America. For example, oil revenue has decreased by 87% but they (Venezuela) has still increased social investment: socially invested resources in relation to income has gone from 39% to 74%. “John Oliver: ‘It is easy to see why Maduro has pissed people off. He has managed he has managed Venezuela’s economic crisis in the worst possible way. He (Maduro) has doubled-down on Chavez’s most unsound policies like unrealistic policies and price controls while attempting to make up for missing revenue by creating more money and as a result inflation has exploded. Inflation is just one of many reasons why many Venezuelans are struggling to find or afford basic necessities like medicine or food.'” Well, if that’s just one of many reasons, what are the other reasons? He doesn’t list any of them. Here’s a big one: an economic war that is being undeniably waged from within the country, from the biggest corporations, and outside superpowers that have the ability to sanction the country, prevent it from getting loans, increase the price of its debt. You think that would be worth mentioning…

Regarding (Venezuelan) inflation, 70% of the country’s inflation is due to the rate of exchange with the US dollar. This value of Venezuela’s currency is arbitrarily determined by outside superpowers. Perhaps the biggest cause of inflation is ‘extraction smuggling’ where big capitalists, those that have the ability to have large sums of cash, actually smuggle cash out of the country into Columbia and other places and exchange them there- This reduces the amount of cash in the country and raises inflation…

Chavez was elected to power in 1999 on the basis of creating a new constitution. When he took power he started a process of drafting a new constitution. The way this was done was millions of Venezuelans all across the country had mass meetings, discussions, debates and proposed things to be in the constitution. Drafts to the constitution went out, people amended them, discussed them, debated them and ultimately this constitution created by the people was put a national vote. Among the voters that came out, over 70% of voters came out to approve this constitution. The creation of the constituent assembly was completely within the bounds of their constitution that the people created. Now, the constituent assembly, as John Oliver likes to say, he just created it, stacked it with all his people, his relatives and it was sham vote. But the constituent assembly process was a democratic process…every citizen could run as delegates, including the opposition. But the opposition refused to participate in the democratic process.²⁰ —Mike Prysner, Iraq War US Veteran, Political Activist and the Producer/Writer of the TV documentary and interview series, The Empire Files.

And that’s what is missing,
ringing hollow for thirty years,
genuine elite respect for ordinary lives,
the majority Africans who lent you their ears.

Corporate elites and political puppets,
upper-middle pro-capitalists, now liberals,
obfuscate and lie by ommission,
choosing intellectual dishonesty,
as the basis for their trickle-down economy.

What elite games have been played,
at our expense,
you’re not going to say,
because you’d have to examine your puckered face.

For decades, the Soviet Union experimented with EFF’s ideas – to very limited prosperity coupled with political repression.¹⁹—Phumlani Majozi, a South African macroeconomist and political analyst, author of a new book “Lessons from Past Heroes”

The Soviet Union existed for less than the (human) life expectancy in most countries today, only existing for seventy years. People judge these (socialist) experiments with such a harsh ideological attitude. They don’t want to see what these people (the Soviets) accomplished in seventy years. What they want us to say is that it was a (complete) failure. And I think that’s a failure of the imagination, not of the Soviet Union.²²—Vijay Prashad, Indian historian, editor and journalist...

While the Russian Revolution happened in 1917, the Soviet Union as a formal legal entity is created in the early 1920s…At the time of the Russian Revolution, the Russian economy was about one-twelth the size of the US economy, by 1970, they were the second largest economy in the world and the first country to go into outer space. At the same time, every worker had a right to a job, you were guaranteed a right to affordable housing (housing could never be more than 6% of your income or something like that, which doesn’t mean there wasn’t cramped housing or a housing shortage), childcare was free, maternity care for mothers was a year or two years of childcare if maternity care wasn’t immediately available at your workplace, you received a one-month vacation when you started employment. And this was done while competing in a very hostile (anti-Soviet Western) environment. You had a society that was predominantly “peasant” and the society is super poor, very illiterate, even in Russian. In 1917, the literacy rate in Uzbekistan was 2%, by 1970, Uzbekistan had more college graduates per capita than France. The social advance was unlike anything that was happening anywhere else in the world at the time.²³ —Brian Becker, journalist and host on Breakthrough News

Have a curious,
in good faith,
informed discussion,
on what socialism,
capitalism means,
to African us.
Don’t lie,
by omission,
or sell straight-up falsehoods,
don’t pretend your Masters or PhDs,
are anything but covers,
for minimising, excusing or denying,
neocolonialism imposed on us,
minimising, excusing or denying,
how it impacted most of our lives,
don’t lie,
that all lives matter,
when only your life is amplified.
Don’t lie,
that you’re good people at heart,
when you prove how self-absorbed,
you are from the start.
Conscious tools,
sitting in upper-middle class rooms,
ensuring elites win,
at the expense of most of their country,
most of their continent.
You could have been better humans,
allegiant Africans,
but you too might get banned,
it’s easier to stay comfortable,
well-paid,
by foreign or local, mostly western hands.
But while I thankfully,
don’t have to be sickened,
anymore,
by your elite, one-sided bullshit,
I will not be silent,
for what is obvious,
a duplicitous, Western-allegiant,
traitorous friendship.
You are seen,
by me, at least,
little ol’ South African,
a born lower-middle class nobody.
I see you.
All of what you did and do,
the game of deflect, deny,
the upper classes who lie, lie, lie,
by omission, obfuscation,
honing in on the incidental,
not the system design abomination.

Opting for intellectual laziness,
hiding resentful fear or contempt,
or just plain self-enrichment within economic haziness.
No honest assessment,
no moral core or clear vision,
corralling the minds of Africa’s millions,
to ensure their comforts are cemented,
liberals, never-really social democrats,
revealing their African elite deliriousness.
Stop!
Just…stop!
Take a look at yourselves,
centuries-old politicking,
has left you zebra higher class stars,
you can’t ignore pain,
dismiss or belittle,
you can’t carry on pretending you care,
when you’re in the too-comfortable upper-middle.
You have to grow the F up!
Grow a soul or a spine,
ideally both.
You have to get your knees off the floor,
look at your idols, the upper class,
and say, no f’ing more!
And if neocolonial national asset owners,
suffer a bee in their bonnet,
tell them to take a hike,
we will take our assets, those of note.

And to the moderate middle-class,
the black majority minority,
hoping for answers and maturity,
Please, for the love of God,
would you stop putting good vibrations,
a rainbow nation,
before economic control,
system design.
Would you stop making a mockery,
of valuing all black lives.
Your constant “let’s be friends”,
is childishly immature and politically inept,
please round-up some self-respect,
when the class of people you invite,
need African exploitation,
foreign or western neo-control,
to live better lives at working class expense.

Grow up!
Stop scapegoating Socialism,
because you’re miserable, weak, three-decade failures,
or sick, soulless slave-owners.
We will not tolerate Venezuelan-like elite games,
we are learning
how United States names,
it’s preferred home-bound stooges,
messing with elections,
by creating news reels, framing who should lose.

So John Oliver, if you can acknowledge the record of US intervention in the region, that “we have done terrible things before but just not in that instance”, then how can you imagine that somehow today with that history…that the US is not meddling in Venezuela’s affairs right now? But we don’t have to speculate that that’s what the US wants to do. We know that that’s what the US government has been pursuing for almost twenty years and still to this day. Recently, there’s been numerous threats of military intervention to overthrow the (Venezuelan) government…

On August 10th, President Donald Trump threatened a military option in Venezuela if the election outcome wasn’t what they wanted. Three days later, Mike Pence followed up (by) saying, President Trump made it very clear that we will not stand by while Venezuela collapses into dictatorship, reaffirming this threat of a military option. In February, then Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson openly called for a military coup. In the same month, powerful Senator Marco Rubio called for a military coup, and this was echoed by the main media organs of the US government, from the Washington Post to Foreign Policy magazine, they ran op-eds openly calling for a military coup against the elected government as “the best path to democracy”. Not to mention as we reviewed already that we know the US is funding destabilisation efforts, meeting and coordinating with opposition leaders…²⁴—Mike Prysner, Iraq War US Veteran, Political Activist and the Producer/Writer of the TV documentary and interview series, The Empire Files

Funny that, South Africa!
Does the DA want to tell us again,
how their private meetings,
with US and Euro before our election,
was about their operational feelings,
not geopolitical, elite scheming,
sounds pretty undemocratic,
to me, deary,
but sure, upper-middle class pretends,
to neither critically see or hear this.

Don’t stir ordinary’s ire,
anymore than you already have,
lower class majority,
are growing aware.
Your time of getting richer than rich,
funnelling resources to foreign others,
your time of putting minority interests,
maintaining your zebra elite rudders,
is over,
soon,
your manipulative,
media election smirk,
will fade,
as people start talking at work.
Colonialism,
to Apartheid,
Apartheid to liberal Capitalism,
the minority held neocolonial crusade,
must end.
It is an old mentality,
an indifference to equal humanity,
denying the majority racial justice
economic control,
true independence,
from imperialists and their neo-colognes.
If you love “self” so much, just leave,
and never come back,
leave dehumanised ma Africa,
and don’t look back.
Colonise Mars,
that’s the plan, hey?
Just leave ordinary Africans,
so they can finally be free,
of your elite, self-serving ways.

I will however remember you,
everytime you distract,
with Springbok games,
or Heritage Day snacks,
I will remember you, African elite,
upper-middle class henchman,
how you lied, our media for decades,
downplaying with a straight face,
or ignoring Palestine’s ethnic cleansing,
to us, your rainbow mates.
I will remember,
the smug arrogance,
of calling ordinary South Africans,
“rats and mice”.
We who don’t own the means of production,
who don’t own strategic national assets.
We who were forced to watch,
black, brown and white lower-class,
circle and sink into the drain.
Your disgust for us,
will never be forgot,
I will remember in my dismay,
the economic majority being betrayed,
I will remember in my grief.
I will remember you on voting day.

*Bousculade: Scrambling
*Pàiduì: Party
*Bhaiya: Brother
*Jaan: Darling
*Mos: After all
*Sjoep stil: Very quiet
*Wees gevaarsku: Be warned

1. Comments by Max Blumenthal, Israel Apartheid Week 2015, University of Liverpool, 25 Feb 2015 ↩︎
2. Md. Shafiqur Rahaman, Md. Rawshan Yeazdani, Rashed Mahmud. The Untold History of Neocolonialism in Africa (1960-2011). History
   Research. Vol. 5, No. 1, 2017, pp. 9-16. doi: 10.11648/j.history.20170501.12 ↩︎
3. Russian neo-colonialism: promoting instability and state failure in Africa, Wiktor Raica, Anastassia Fedyk, Ilona Sologoub, voxukraine.org, 4 Mar 2024 ↩︎
4. Toward a Class Compromise in South Africa’s “Double Transition”: Bargained Liberalization and the Consolidation of Democracy, Edward Webster, Glenn Adler, POLITICS & SOCIETY, Vol. 27 No. 3, September 1999 347-385, library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/6256364.pdf ↩︎
5. The ‘rooi gevaar’: it’s not okay to be a socialist – Martin van Staden, hosted by the Editor of BizNews, biznews.com, 9 May 2024 ↩︎
6. Comments by Julius Malema, SABC interview, clip from @TopMalema ↩︎
7. Rough and Polished: South Africa Shortchanged on Diamond Trade, Khadija Sharife, May 2014, 100r.org ↩︎
8. Comments by Max Blumenthal, Israel Apartheid Week 2015, University of Liverpool, 25 Feb 2015 ↩︎
9. Comments by Elise Swain, They were released from Guantanamo. But the horrors didn’t end | Rattling the Bars, The Real News Network, 31 July 2023 ↩︎
10. Comments of American Veteran frustration over post war treatment Jeff_081211 (Tik Tok), Americans Unprepared For War: The GWOT Syndrome and Conflict With Iran, Colonial Outcasts, Oct 2024 ↩︎
11. Comments by Kurt Hackbarth, Why Does the US Not Want Mexico to Vote for Their Own Judges? Breakthrough News, 6 Sep 2024 ↩︎
12. Comments by Kurt Hackbarth, Why Does the US Not Want Mexico to Vote for Their Own Judges? Breakthrough News, 6 Sep 2024 ↩︎
13. Comments by Max Blumenthal, Israel’s October 7th Narratives, Jadaliyya show, 7 Oct 2024 ↩︎
14. Comments by Ahmad Kaballo, CEO of African Stream, Pan African news and analysis channel, Kibunga Media (gotKushTV), 2 Oct 2024 ↩︎
15. Prospect for new Africa with Ahmed Kaballo, The Sobh Show, 23 Sep 2023 ↩︎
16. Macron’s remarks prove France still pursues colonial approach toward Africa: Turkish scholar, Enes Taha Ersen, aa.com.tr, 1 Feb 2023 ↩︎
17. Comments by Ahmad Kaballo, Prospect for new Africa, 23 Sep 2024, The Sobh show ↩︎
18. Hollywood, the epitome of the United States’ global power, from article by Lino Heidbrink and Marion Noël, Classe Internationale, classe-internationale.com, 24 Feb 2024 ↩︎
19. Op-ed: Pray for the death of the EFF, Phumlani Majozi, politicsweb.co.za, 18 Aug 2024 ↩︎
20. Commente by Mike Prysnor, Leftist Debunks John Oliver’s Venezuela Episode, Empire Files, 7 June 2018 ↩︎
21. Op-ed: Pray for the death of the EFF, Phumlani Majozi, politicsweb.co.za, 18 Aug 2024 ↩︎
22. Red Star over the Third World: Lessons of Soviet History, Part 2: Vijay Prashad with Brian Becker on Breakthrough News, 16 Dec 2021 ↩︎
23. Red Star over the Third World: Lessons of Soviet History, Part 2: Vijay Prashad with Brian Becker on Breakthrough News, 16 Dec 2021 ↩︎
24. Comments by Mike Prysnor, Leftist Debunks John Oliver’s Venezuela Episode, Empire Files, 7 June 2018 ↩︎

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-Dan Corder on Helen Zille, Rand Manipulation, The Issue with Dan Corder, TikTok, SA 2024 election, SMWX, 11 Jan 2024
-Panyaza Lesufi on ‘GNU’, Helen Zille, Tshwane, ANC, EFF, Jacob Zuma & MK Party, Solly Mapaila, BELA, SMWX, 4 oct 2024
-Western Philanthropy In Africa Is Used To Exploit And Keep Africa Down | Brian Kagoro, Africa Web TV, 30 Aug 2024,
-NGOs in Africa: A tainted history, New African, 15 Mar 2018, newafricanmagazine.com
-WATCH: EFF visits Maselspoort Resort following alleged racist attack, Nokwanda Ncwane, thesouthafrican.com, 26 Dec 2022
-SA Human Rights Commission acting CEO accused of racism, sahrc.org.za, 28 February 2023
-SA losing over R50 billion a year to tax havens, study finds, Jan Cronje, news24.com, 16 Nov 2021
-No MK Party, EFF, PA in unity govt or we won’t join: DA, SABC News, 7 June 2024, elections.sabc.co.za/elections2024/news/no-mk-party-eff-pa-in-unity-govt-or-we-wont-join-da/
-DA, EFF in ‘secret talks’ to beat ANC in local poll, Jan-Jan Joubert, timeslive.co.za, 31 Jan 2016
-The DA’s letter to America – a colossal blunder, Robert Duigan, capeindependent.com, 4 Apr 2024
-Mars settlement likely by 2050 says UNSW expert – but not at levels predicted by Elon Musk, Neil Martin, unsw.edu.au, 10 Mar 2021

Freedom is not a convenience, my brothers and sisters, so this rethinking…somebody said, shifting powers. I have been listening to them talk about “shifting powers”. Power is not a gear that you shift. How do you shift power between yourself and Bill Gates, between yourself and George Soros…Look my friends, you either make alternative power, disrupt existing power or ignore existing power. Stop using placebos…I have a bunch of intellectuals and activists who want to engage in the business of giving society placebos. The progressive underdevelopment of our (African) society is because of three terrains. The terrain that accepts that black, brown, people of colour and Africans really have no notion of civilisation and therefore have the need “to be civilised”. They have no notion of commerce and therefore they need to be put into MICROfinance, MICROenterprise, MICROphilanthropy. The micromanagement and the micronisation of “the native” is also part of native intellectual genocide. They (the accepting natives) accept that we can never be “macro” at any stage. It is impossible for us to own our own economies, the real economies, to manage our own economies, to be the real deciders of our destinies.¹ —Brian Kagoro, Zimbabwean citizen, Pan-Africanist and a constitutional and economic relations lawyer

What is betrayal,
“dark continent”.
Is it only those young or old,
choosing alcohol or drugs.
Gangs, petty theft,
violent protests or crimes,
us middle-class being mugged.

Global leads told us for decades,
postcolonialism was real.
Look, you can vote now,
your leaders look like you.
Just sign on this dotted line,
we will give you room to grow.

But that’s not the real truth, is it?
Thirty, seventy years,
the global media said nothing of note,
Africa was being swindled,
led to believe colonial freedom,
boiled down to a vote.

What in the world is the Bilderberg group?
The invite-only setup.
For Western tech giants, banks,
media, government elites.
Are you wondering why this is messed up?

Because trusted IMF,
sits alongside the Pentagon and Palantir,
western governments and asset managers.
Is global domination exaggerated?
Or just hiding,
behind pale burqas, my dear.

So what is betrayal, ma Africa?
Is it African leaders,
political and business elite,
Revealing after decades,
to be without conscious,
well-compensated or wilfully asleep?

I ask,
because this stuff is getting worse,
every time we open our eyes,
something else is revealed,
Palpatine and Darth Vadar are cartoons,
compared to these guys, gals in heels.

Freedman released the Lisbon agenda,
“AI” came first,
“banking” and “China,”
“Fiscal challenges,”
“India” was top ten,
“Industrial Trade,”
“Transnational threats,” triggering an angina.
Did our corporate elites know about this?
Our so-called Freedom Fighters too?
How can the research pals of Africa’s funders,
be in secret meetings.
Isn’t that weird for you?

Thirty years,
thirty damn years,
we trusted the establishment,
our African elites,
white business minority,
black “non-racial” spears,
they’ve been hiding massive truths,
while they eat.

Then I joined the United Nations Development Programme and we were there empowering communities, building their “capacity”. The people who needed capacity built were the capitalists who kept doing the same old things, even worse would undermine the global ecology, leading to the ecological crisis. And we were not paying attention to the people…In the theory of change, the self seven organising principles that I heard this week that you need to deal with is this idea of altruism of foreign, local, regional rich sugar daddies and sugar mummies; that their private preference and personal fixations should be appreciated no matter how disconnected they are from our own development aspirations as a collective (African) people. Now, the power asymmetry of getting a billionaire to ask only one poor community, what they want, when they don’t have information on what’s possible. It sounds so good, it sounds so empowering. “I come from the left. The people must decide. The local must decide.” And localism in the context of power and information asymmetries becomes the worst form of enslavement...Racialised outcomes are not dependent on the colour of the person implementing the project or the system. And so, you can be analysing each other on the basis of the colour of your skin but racialised outcomes are about a system that produces the same. You can produce apartheid without a single white person in the State because applying certain principles, certain approaches, certain tools gives you the outcomes of separate development. And that is what this localism brings. This localism is a dangerous ideology. ² —Brian Kagoro, Zimbabwean citizen, Pan-Africanist and a constitutional and economic relations lawyer

Mr Renaissance,
gets dragged out of retirement,
note, just before the election,
tells us to be neutral in genocide,
but Tutu warned,
about siding with oppressors.
Then, after his neutrality claim,
Baba pro-IMF,
says Ukraine’s Russia war,
is a proxy flaw,
he waited for Biden to pull out,
repeating what Socialism said,
what the hell for?

Did anyone mention Bilderberg?
The WEF secret meet.
What does this mean for Africa?
Who is,
How are they coming for African seats?
Is it not bad enough,
our elites betrayed,
thirty, seventy years,
a knife they stuck in,
signing finance deals,
tees and cees applied.
It was not their place to decide,
if and what we should win.

Now, lo and behold,
there is more,
normie Africans do not know.
You took money,
from “rules-based order”,
without asking whose rules,
we would be forced follow.
Damn, African leaders suck!
Business elites have no soul.
The establishment,
of media propagandists,
who point here, there,
without telling us much at all.
You African elites,
should be ashamed,
but you won’t be.
All across Africa, you betray.
The black/white,
middle-class askaris,
well paid.
The white/black,
minority elites,
who play the game.
Literate academic drones,
from critically-dof,
posh schools who reign.

At the root of imperialism is merely an economic structure, the purpose of which is to exploit, preserving the wealth and finance of the ruling class (the owners and controllers of countries) at all times. So when you have a system, which is (fundamentally) an economic system that depends on exploitation, it means there is a preservation of consistent inequality.³ —Elina Xenophontos, international law and economic globalisation specialist …In reality, the (US) dollar system is an imperialist system, in which the US imports the wealth produced by workers around the world and US capitalist oligarchs get richer and richer, holding onto these assets (the value of which is artifically inflated like stocks, US government bonds and real estate) because capitalists around the world hold their wealth in the form of the US dollar. As countries de-dollarise and people no longer hold onto dollarised assets, there will be less demand, those assets will decrease in value, the oligarchs in the US will no longer benefit, which means they will try to pressurise the government to threaten countries that de-dollarise.⁴ —Benjamin Norton, investigative journalist, analyst, founder and editor of Geopolitical Economy Report

We find out,
thirty years too late,
the Freedom fighters,
so-called,
made guarantees,
at mining indabas,
to never nationalise,
diminishing foreign hauls.
We find out thirty years,
too late,
networks in construction,
now called mafia. That’s cute!
Show me industry-per-industry,
left to benefit…
How laughable.

What’s more, in a situation mirroring the current Petrobas corruption case in Brazil, South African construction companies managed to fleece the government of $5 billion dollars by overcharging for construction contracts leading up to the 2010 World Cup. Scandals like these are common in South Africa and hamper the state’s ability to deliver on long-term infrastructure projects. More broadly, they are evidence of a state rife with factionalism, patronage networks, and, especially at the local level, an absence of functioning governance mechanisms. It’s telling that despite the country’s abundant natural resources, power outages have become a regular feature of daily life in South Africa, costing the economy billions of dollars a year. South Africa’s new black bourgeoisie lacks the institutional power to remedy any of this — many have lined their pockets with scraps from older and paler capitalists (such as mines purchased with state money by politically connected families), lucrative state contracts, or by playing middleman to foreign companies. Of course, this is nothing unusual. Domestic capitalists have undermined development programs in many postcolonial states, and the old distinction between a comprador bourgeoisie tied to metropolitan firms and a national bourgeoisie invested in building a nation’s productive forces is highly suspect. Perhaps no figure personifies this better than Cyril Ramaphosa, the deputy president of South Africa and a key negotiator during the talks between the ANC and National Party that ended apartheid. Formerly a militant unionist, Ramaphosa has become one of the country’s richest men, acquiring wealth through the active patronage of South Africa’s old apartheid-era captains of industry.⁵ —Benjamin Fogel, historian and contributing editor at Africa is a Country

Where are the boundaries to betrayal?
For ma Africa,
there are none,
silent cartoonists drew,
lady justice being raped,
but not by foreign, domestic,
corporates who stun.
We were told corruption,
only started in 2009,
Zuma’s government,
too trusted or trusting,
Guptas selling “white monopoly capitalist” lies,
But were they lies?
Or is it kinda true?
Who are the corporate elites in South Africa?
Are they non-racial?
Or from the minority few?
But let’s not forget,
domination cannot exist without help,
who are their little helpers,
saying minority domination,
is the rainbow that sells.
Yeah, they dragged old Renaissance,
out into the spotlight,
rickety ol’ Joy mentioned little,
inequity kept constant,
by elite entitlement,
He said nothing,
sweet old man,
about the mining indaba guarantees,
he said nothing,
about anti-competitiveness,
the union-busting,
fixed-term contracts, bilateral treaties,
below-inflation or frozen salaries.

This system is not about,
working your way to just outcomes.
It’s about crushing competition,
a growing monopolisation,
extracting more, for less,
from customers and workers alike,
tees and cees,
contractual run-around-legal-teams,
all devised to prevent mass realisation.

While accepting these assurances, the (South African Competition) Tribunal had laid the condition that this (workers) retrenchment should not be undertaken for at least three years from the (companies) merger, and that no retrenchments other than these 277 should result from the merger. Clover had also assured the Tribunal that within five years of merger, the corporation would create 550 new jobs by expanding the so-called Project Masakhane, aimed at widening its distribution network…The unions’ mistrust of these assurances were proven correct when Clover, in the retrenchment (Section 189A) notices it has recently (in 2022) issued, stated its intention to carry out a “restructuring which will affect 7,382 jobs inside of Clover and its subsidiaries”. 1,418 positions have been “earmarked by Clover as being redundant”, which implies that it “certainly has contemplated [at least] 1,418 job losses”, the unions argued. GIWUSA’s president Sebei said that among 1,418 employees are many “that were going to be involved in the Project Masakhane…including the management. There is no way Clover is going to implement the project by destroying the capacity for implementation of that project, which is one of the conditions.” Sebei further argued that the three year moratorium (ending in October 2022) imposed by the Tribunal on retrenchments under Project Sencillo had also been violated. More than 800 workers, Sebei maintains, were forced to take voluntary severance packages (VSPs). “But there was nothing voluntary about it. Because the changes in conditions of employment included relocation of workplaces to hundreds of kilometers away from their homes in inland regions to coastal cities, where they would not be able to afford a living on the wages they earn,” he argued. One of the merger conditions requires Clover to make reasonable contributions towards the relocation costs of affected employees.⁶

Look around you, black child,
not at me,
your minority brown or white buddy,
Look at how they tricked you, how you lie to yourself,
cash is not ownership, it’s comfort,
not justice,
your majority wealth buggy.

A similar point can be made concerning the impact of neoliberal policies on food export prices. One of the main imperatives of neoliberal policies in agriculture is to shift production from subsistence crops or crops for domestic market consumption to export crops. One of the favourites in Africa was cocoa. Within a short time many governments throughout Africa were being urged to incentivize cocoa production for the world market. At first there was a slight rise in prices in the early 1980s but between 1986 and 1993 the price of African cocoa collapsed about 60% according to the UNCTAD Trade and Development Report. Undoubtedly, there are many reasons why prices fluctuate, but there is no doubt that the increased number of farmers incentivized in the period before 1986 to turn to cocoa farming inevitably glutted the market and drove the price down precipitously. This should have not been surprising, since such a result would have been an elementary conclusion from anyone versed in introductory economics. In this presentation I argue that the apocalyptic failure of neoliberalism in Africa is actually planned and reminiscent of the paleo-liberal strategy of the British state in the famines in Ireland and India and the Clearances of the Scottish Highlands in the 19th century.⁷

The people that own the assets,
own Africa’s south.
Everything in the land,
nearly all above is theirs.
And are these owners,
of government debt and assets,
mostly you, black ideals?
No, darling,
with liberal capitalism,
that was deliberately kept real.

The Rockefellers’ funded the Marxist-Leninist project, and that is the precise term that they used, because they wanted to fund and support forms of theoretical production that was perhaps knowledgeable of Marxism and Leninism but took strong positions against them. What the capitalist ruling class and the bourgeois State managers generally supported was Socialism, meaning “compatible left Socialism” (it could be social democratic, it could anarchist, it could be liberal or libertarian) over Communism, by which they actually understood to be Socialism. What they wanted to do was drive a wedge in the left between the Socialists and the Communists, and then denigrate and neutralise the hard-left or existing Socialist left, in favour of favouring and supporting what is now the liberal left, then was the Social Democratic-left. ⁸ —Gabriel Rockhill, co-author of “Western Marxism: How it was Born, How it Died, How it can be Reborn”

The rainbow-coloured successes,
turned kleptocrats,
where are they in this season of struggle.
Sending money overseas?
Living in mansions?
Getting middle-class askaris,
to mouth their empty drivel.

Thirty years,
what did you actually get?
The right to apply for a job,
beach access, running water.
They protested land reform,
price gouged in lockdowns,
Capetonians refused vaccines,
shouted multivitamins,
but didn’t mention,
ginger selling for exorbitant dollars.

Do you really think yourself,
so gullible, black child?
Falling for half-truths,
constructed,
well-timed faux courage,
This Capitalism Clean-up Plan,
masquerading as saviourism,
is GNU rubbish.

Africa has suffered so much and continues to suffer because of the imperialists. These imperialists hold only one cliché in mind, that Africa is the empire of slaves. This is how they see Africa. For them, Africans belong to them, our land belongs to them, our subsoils belong to them. But how does it proceed? They place local servants at the head of their subprefecture to be able to feed them. These local vassals that we will qualify today as “living room slaves” have no other reference point but to seek to live like the master, to satisfy the master and to do everything that the master dictates. He steals, he pinches from the States, brings everything to the master and their wealth is kept in the master’s safe. When the master orders, they execute…They like to say every year in their economic survey that Burkino (Faso) is the poorest country, Mali is the poorest country, Niger is the poorest country. We are ranked among the last. Very well. If we are as poor as they say, when the time came to take our responsibilities, we asked these masters to leave the place…Why don’t they (non-African foreign military) want to leave?⁹ —Ibrahim Traoré, President of Burkina Faso

The trickle-down that doesn’t trickle,
Quite frankly, what did we expect?
More of us living in neofeudalist times,
paying at every turn,
increasing fees and rents.
We assume trickle-down,
leads to social reform,
but Prof. Dean says it could get worse,
a serf nightmare,
of upward enrichment,
surveillance, our democracies deformed.
Sound familiar, South Africa?
What happened in our thirty years,
beyond Fees Must Fall,
thirteen thousand five hundred protests.
Every year, our national jol,
and all the while,
royalty sent their kids,
to private school halls.

I would take Leon, Zille,
Musi-Steen seriously,
if their children had attended Manenberg,
abided by Mitchell’s Plein rules.
Dunno, maybe that’s heresy.
If Zuma’s kids were educated,
near Nkandla’s pool.
If Gordhan’s girls,
attended Phoenix schools,
or sat on Shallcross, Avoca,
or Overport stools.
But they didn’t,
did they?
And we all know why?
The people’s reps, our public servants,
did not want their precious kids,
living under cloudy, trickle-down skies.
So, of course now,
you can push back,
on tax abuse,
and low tax frames,
Of course, you want to mention,
land access,
and entrepreneurial fame,
you were supposed to be the experts,
a trusted GNU way back when,
you were supposed to,
put down minority domination,
and say, this is how “we” win,
but someone, everyone,
seems to have made a deal,
a Faustian handshake,
with foreign big wheels.
And so, here we are,
GNU round two,
listening to PR kak,
because they are lost on what to do,
trying weak push backs,
on the nutcases,
who tell majority us,
they’ll bring jobs,
if we can sign away,
our minimum wage demands.

In spite of this evidence, South Africa is deepening its implementation of austerity policies.
Despite commitments to counter-cyclical policies in the 2014-2019 Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF), between 2014/15 and 2018/19, South Africa’s average non-interest expenditure growth —spending on government goods, services and salaries upon which many South Africans are reliant — barely kept up with population growth. This spending grew at an average rate of 1.8% over five years, compared to population growth of 1.6%. Average non-interest expenditure growth in the last three years has been 0.9%, well below population growth for that period. What this means is that, despite the massive social challenges in areas such as health and education that face South Africa, spending per person on meeting these needs has fallen in recent years. The increase in the VAT rate from 14 to 15% as of April 2018 also represents a clearly retrogressive austerity measure, reducing the incomes of poor and low-income households. Austerity has undermined the realisation of constitutionally-enshrined rights. For example, despite servicing 83% of the population, health spending per uninsured person has only increased by 1.7% on average (in real terms) from 2014/15 to 2018/19, in the context of a rising burden of disease and high medical price inflation. This accounts for a range of negative health outcomes. Similarly, in education, learner spending has been steadily decreasing for years — it fell by 8% in real terms from R17 822 in 2010 to R16 435 in 2017. This is despite 78% of Grade 4 learners being unable to read for meaning. Although debt levels are used to justify austerity, South Africa’s debt is not high by international norms. According to the International Monetary Fund, emerging market and middle-income country debt levels are projected to reach, on average, 61.2% in 2024, while advanced country debt averaged 104.0% of GDP in 2019.¹⁰

I would take all of the elites,
our political sweets,
more seriously,
if they argued for pay back,
top-down reparations,
a more fair austerity.
I would take all of the elites,
more seriously,
if they told us in 1993,
about the IMF loan,
and the impact of interest rates,
on lower class dignity.
I would trust their ideas,
if I believed,
that they truly represented,
the ordinary man and woman,
but they have long shown,
they’re out for their own “independence”,
fundamentally, elite self-serving wins.

In the UK, Shrubsole says,
1% of the population,
owns 50% of the land.
Our colonisers,
have their own divisional trickle-down,
banding their little lambs.
While billionaire authors,
lose their minds over trans and gender,
UK is being crushed,
called a vassal state,
by investment contenders.
Flying broom,
isn’t cutting herself up,
over British disabled,
having their State funds cut.
Sky News goes on and on,
about leftist this or that.
Tell us little to nothing about economic struggle,
the system’s structures,
vines of genocide complicity.
Oh I guess, they’d rather not.

Some of the coloniser’s people,
come to my African home,
my birthplace, not theirs,
they marry in-country,
and start to make demands,
arguing an entire piece of Africa,
is “culturally” theirs,
while no relation to it forebears…

Gazi…chomma,
sweet Britannia, upper-class twit,
understand one thing about true Africans,
irrespective of colour.
If you threaten,
to cut up our mother,
you will wish,
you had stayed home,
instead of getting on a plane or a ship.
Love for homeland,
will find you,
in that Cape delusion,
your golf estates,
no need for violence or weapons,
just creativity,
to fight neo-colonisers,
who threaten our wholly land,
our true African independence.
You are not born from African hands.
Your allegiance is clearly poisoned,
untrue.
You don’t get to demand,
any part of our mother,
go home,
if you have a problem,
with the majority African view.
We can put you on a dinghy tonight, Earl Grey!
Send you back,
with shortbread, gammon and a few pints of beer.
Do not threaten to colonise,
carve up,
our black Africa,
her body and face,
to us, is very dear.

It is unacceptable for kin,
to promote the stealing,
of provincial harbours or country colours.
Our mother Africa,
is one being,
not a house you can subdivide,
pulling off a scam with your selfish smugglers.
There are KZN families,
descended from the Western Cape,
you will make them pseudo foreigners,
in their province, in their continent,
because you and coloniser feel entitled to a stake.
Shame on our African kin.
We have had enough problems.
Why would they add more?
So self-absorbed,
they can’t help,
but hoard and hoard and hoard.

Broer, look at what trickle-down has done to you,
Those born to ma Africa’s breast.
You can’t imagine being whole.
You can’t bear to be patriotic,
traitorous at every turn,
you never rest.
This federalist move is treasonable,
and if it’s not, it should be.
Hiding colonisation,
under federalism,
playing a game of minority control,
can’t you see the boomerang effect?
This Orania,
your wannabe role.

This is tiresome, you say.
You just want “them”,
to take what is rightfully “ours”.
Upper classes,
in cahoots with smudged middle glasses,
darlings, are we still playing the game of “get away”?
Get away from us,
our minority wealth accumulation.
Get away from our urban or rural land.
Get away from our resources,
manganese, platinum or gold.
Get away from what we are used to,
minority domination,
comfort and control.
Our right to wine farms,
five-ten million Rand homes,
Why don’t you majority just die already,
and leave us minority elites alone.
That’s why almost a hundred elites,
flew to murder Palestinian children.
They’re not the working schmucks of Africa,
living in inaffordable,
or exhausted houses.
They’re not the black,
brown or white people,
grinding down with debt and despair.
No, they can afford to fly to kill,
with passports: South African.
Killing occupied tents,
makes them jump in the air.

It is the capacity to live in truth, when you face despotic power that terrifies despotic power. Because those within the systems of power understand how corrupt and broken it is. And I can see it, unfortunately I have relatives who work on Wall Street, who are as cynical as I am on where we are going. I’m not a cynic, they’re cynical because their response is they’re going to steal as much and as fast as they can on the way down. And their cynicism is, if you understand then why don’t you do the same.¹¹ —Chris Hedges, author of “America: The Farewell Tour” and American journalist

But for real,
our elites don’t see race.
Nooooo,
they only see green,
sometimes backed by gold.
No one is more “not-racist”,
than corporate,
and political elites,
who made and make deals,
while Africans hustled,
for performance salary growth.
Don’t believe me?
Post-2010,
how many upper classes,
flooded corporate, social media,
told us we needed to privatise,
privatise more,
energy, water, healthcare…
go ahead, ask your readers informed.
They said little,
about the privatising,
of urban lands now for-profit,
middle-class housing,
turned into private estates,
education’s private land,
their profits unruffled.
You cannot hear or see,
these pro-profiting experts en masse,
they’re now too worried,
about Pan Africanism,
African socialism is what they harass.
The influencers of trust,
keep selling dirty, half-baked cakes,
telling the ordinary, just wait,
capitalist trickle-down can work,
centuries too late.
People are dead, buddy!
Africa’s walking dead,
were left starving, haggling for more,
while Finance Ministers piled on interest rates,
the rich got richer,
their widespread corporate sins ignored.
But the Guptas?
The State’s poor service?
Top of the media agenda,
ask them about deliberate deindustrialisation,
why, how, always for more.
The political black,
corporate white,
are friends, partners in play,
not backstabbers like ordinary us,
who reject public housing,
in “their” areas they should stay.

Thirty years,
the people’s dignity at risk,
going or fully gone,
but you’ll see,
once you leave the country,
we are no longer alone.
Europeans sigh,
over two-to-three month deposits back home,
wondering why long lists,
for public housing,
can’t keep up with demand,
in the top ten wealthiest,
their first-world model alarm.
Where is the money?
Where is all the world’s wealth going?
We know it’s not spent on innovation,
across most of the world.
But spyware,
online tracking and surveillance?
Collecting data for States,
and corporate tech kings.
Weapons that kill more swiftly?
AI robots telling us,
we humans are inefficient.
Of course, we spend money on that,
then there’s the bunkers,
billionaires are building,
preparing for the end of times.
Zuckerberg has doomsday plans,
but won’t push back,
on military carbon waste signs.

Ma Africa has no idea,
what’s next is deeper despair.
Global this time,
not just us,
and here we are arguing,
over whether taking our resources is fair and just.
Gosh, bigger picture, people,
it’s painful, I know,
most of the world,
is sliding into hellscape,
soon it will be your rainbow upper-middle,
trickle-down toes.

You cannot wait another thirty years,
you have to restructure,
redesign now,
the continent has to unite,
without real unity,
you’re easy pickings for the scramble crowd.

But is all this the real betrayal Africa?
I don’t know…
I am beginning to wonder,
if class brothers,
in foreign lands,
should be held to a mirror.

I hear this constantly, isn’t it better that it’s us? Isn’t it better that we are on top, that we are the empire because if it wasn’t us, it would be a country that does worse things.¹² —Abby Martin, a journalist, host of The Empire Files video series, and director of “Earth’s Greatest Enemy“

While they dish out local news,
US election, domination loss,
our class brothers, their unions,
their mainstream masses offer little critique,
on censoring Pan-African media,
it begins, the strong arm chokehold clique.

How familiar this sounds,
our African elites,
complicitly asleep,
deathly silent on the shutting down,
of African independence as Western pressure mounts.

Are our elites,
fans of neo-colonialism, much?
But only from trans-atlantic,
those who maintain their elite minority lunch.
What else do they choose to keep quiet,
controlled.
What else are we unaware of,
manufactured consent,
that never grows old.

Basically we have monopoly capital that controls the majority of what everybody sees and hears. The mindscape, not only of US citizenry, there’s a cultural imperialism that’s operative. It’s blasted all over the broader world. These cultural industries also work hand-in-glove with the bourgeois State. At certain levels there is distinctions between the private and public realm, but the way in which the US state operates, a large part of its intelligence services work in propaganda, that’s their principle function…The bourgeois State works hand-in-glove with these culture industries and with the internationalisation of these culture industries in order to pump out as much as possible an image of the United States that inverts reality…The culture industry is a product of the bourgeois cultural apparatus, I simply mean the entire system of production, circulation and consumption of culture. It is not individual newspapers, book publishers or universities, it is a systematic framework that is driven by the capitalist base because those are the funders. It includes things like universities and the mainstream press, but it also includes the universities, the system of knowledge production that goes into universities, the think tanks, the NGO world for that matter. All of it needs to be seen as a system that manages the production, circulation and consumption of knowledge.¹³ – Gabriel Rockhill, co-author of “Western Marxism: How it was Born, How it Died, How it can be Reborn”

And where is,
our own not-so-independent media.
Irrelevant I am sure.
Maverick, my ass.
Taking money,
from Biden’s open democracy budget,
hiding your dollar cash,
SA’s homegrown,
upper-class hustlers.

While African funding in theory,
is not bad.
the foreign control,
vested elite interests,
are duplicitously sad.
The temptation to cross boundaries,
perpetuating foreign narratives by omission,
watered-down falsehoods well-grounded.
Why did Multichoice not ban CNN?
Were there not propaganda points,
shared and distributed,
in respect of a genocidal win.
Why did Multichoice not warn CNN,
when they claimed Niamey, Niger,
was full of elites,
one of the poorest nations,
whose uranium lights up French streets,
their democratic “right to vote” is pretty neat.

You might think, Oh this is just something happening over there, 6000 miles away. It doesn’t affect me. Israel is carrying out this genocide with a new system, its called The Gospel. It is an artificial intelligence targetting system that generates targets in record time and allows Israel to kill and target families in their homes through a computer without human intervention. And it’s being developed by companies in the United States like Palantir. And when Israel is done testing these weapons, these Sky Net weapons, which recall the opening scenes of Terminator 2, the war of the humans against the machine, they’re going to export them (these weapons) to any country, to any government that has a restive population, that resists, that refuses to take a knee.¹⁴ – Max Blumenthal, author of “The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump”

Africa has been lied to,
Her children complicit in her harm,
Cancerous foreign military warts,
media parroting stalwarts,
elites betrayed our mother,
stabbed her in the back,
their allegiance sworn.
to themselves or someone else’s mom.

In the meantime,
Southern Africa’s black child is scared,
while they watch Traoré,
Ibrahim,
launch Burkindlim,
the state bank,
a public solar power plant is coming,
while South Africans suffered wet kindling.

Very few African countries have satellites. When there was a desire to ensure that you have your own satellites to help you with all sorts of data of intelligence and also gathering, it was torpedoed by some of our own people, who said it’s too expensive. And yet, for us to understand what’s happening in our geospatial space, even underground to know how many or how much minerals we have, we now have to go to those who have the technology. Clearly, how do you do liberation when you depend on funding to do it, you depend on external data to do it, you depend on external expertise to do it, you depend on external technology to do it. I am not saying never use external resources and technology. It has now been discovered that the African genome, the black gene, possesses a lot of solutions to both current and future global health challenges. So, there is a contest over our [African] genes! But when you ask us [Africans] where do we want to invest? We want to build a new parliament building…Come on, people, we can blame colonialism for many things, but we need to inspect our own heads.¹⁵ —Brian Kagoro, Zimbabwean citizen, Pan-Africanist and a constitutional and economic relations lawyer

Corporates can sacrifice,
what ordinary people can’t afford.
Take back our resources,
our mines,
stop bartering for freedom.
Ma Africa’s no whore.
British, Euro,
American, Chinese,
Arab, Indian,
Russian.
I’m being serious now.
What are you waiting for?
Hoping Kamala, why not bomb Ramallah,
Trump, finish the job,
Biden, defence is one way,
is going to let you go far.
China’s building what should be ours,
they design and build,
leaving our millionaires, billionaires to simp.
African child, put down your beggars bowl!
This is your home,
despite the gay tonne suck-up act,
comparing Lesotho to Palestine,
madir, please read a book, Finkelstein smacks.

Elites fund,
they influence our media,
they have funded,
influence our leaders,
they exert control,
over every business,
every employer,
they can afford assassins,
foreign diplomat meetings before votes,
spewing “democratic values”, their thick molasses.

The system of power-play,
you Africans are up against,
the real rugby World Cup,
is organised as F.
Anyone who does not want freedom,
their identity crisis is their mess.

I am very careful about assumptions that somehow black people are the primary victims, there is a lot of discussion about pain and injury, which of course is very important, but sometimes it serves as a barrier to developing solidarity, to developing the kind of hyper-empathy we were talking about. From where I stand, the importance of black people in the Americas resides precisely in the fact that there has been an ongoing freedom struggle for centuries and centuries. This (struggle against anti blackness) is more about freedom than it is about blackness, because there are also black people participating in the oppressive apparatus.¹⁶ —Angela Davis, author of “Abolition. Feminism. Now.“

Vasyl Muravytskyi started yelling,
on how people,
are being arrested,
for questioning war in Ukraine,
yet media’s not telling.
Zelenscream wants refugees sent back,
to face,
and likely fight in war,
Ukrainian boys who were 16,
would now be eligible,
…poor little dolls.
Imagine what it’s like?
The terror of pagers,
blowing up on your belt,
this Lebanon situation is out of control,
and no one of influence,
is saying cool off, man,
this doesn’t help!

This is an existential war. That is what the acts of resistence have said and that is something Israel is basically operating on, that the Middle East needs to be reshaped in Israel’s image. Back before October 7th, when the Abraham Accords were happening, Netanyahu had gone before the UN General Assembly and had an infographic of the “new Middle East” that was being formed, one that was surrounded by these agreements that were going to happen with Saudi Arabia and the UAE and other nations, bypassing “the Palestinian issue”. Israel was able to form these agreements without them (the Palestinians). And when that was obviously not the case anymore, October 7th happened, and things were forcefully reoriented. The “Palestinian problem” was reestablished (as) forefront, Netanyahu had to forcefully pull it back in the way he wanted to. And now that he sees that the Israeli establishment sees that opportunity, with the (Western) media behind them, with the (US) government behind them, even if the (US) population is not with them, they need to seize it. They need to get it, all of it, and I really do mean all of it. Right now, there are Israelis talking about not only striking Lebanon or Syria, they’re talking about striking Iran. There are pressure groups in this that are talkng about “settling” South Lebanon…The way it’s been portrayed in the media. The idea that Nasrallah was so unreasonable to connect these two fronts (the tactical cross-border firing between Israel and Lebanon and the Gaza Genocide), even though that’s what they’ve been saying from the beginning (i.e. Lebanon’s Hezbollah making regional peace contingent on a ceasefire in Gaza), it is symptomatic of this larger attempt, however inane, to say that all these different conflicts in the region are disconnected. They can all be dealt with separately. We don’t need to focus on the one thing that is governing all of this. And then what happens, the inferno continues because you’re not actually addressing what is the case. It was a similar thing with Yemen, at the beginning of Operation Prosperity Guardian…the idea that they (Lebanon) would just sit back because the heat is getting too hot, no one is going to agree to that. Nasrallah is (was) not going to agree to that, the Houthis are not going to agree to that, Iran is not going to agree to that. And you know this deep down, so essentially you are giving them an ultimatum that is going to fail. And then you will have your excuse to kill.¹⁷ —Séamus Malekafzali, journalist and writer primarily focusing on the politics of the Middle East

With all this,
Africans need to grow up,
asking for finance,
interference,
Kagoro’s right,
about top-heavy weakness,
Africans have been through enough,
even with decimating Obama eras.
Pan Africanists can learn,
grow their own stuff.
You need defence?
Sure, build your own nuclear support,
Take your continent,
Africa is your soil.
You need development,
you can finance, sustain,
manage your own teams,
don’t be infected by aging elite,
low self-esteem.

Multipolarity is almost here,
despite what global news spout.
China is dumping US securities,
stocking up on gold,
EU can’t carry on pretending,
wishing Churchill,
or Truman were still around.
Africa must learn from this mistake,
evolve now,
take back its resources,
get your heads in the game and out of the ground.

In the meantime,
almost a hundred and sixty thousand,
incarcerated in 2023,
South Africa does not tell us,
how many come from,
our sick poverty’s streets.

How many come,
from parentless homes,
abused or guardian neglect,
whether corrupt justice,
locked up innocence,
to close cases,
shoved into rape fiestas,
shit out of luck.

If you’re telling me that in your mind black people are more likely to commit crime, and that’s why we have [the police practice of] stop and frisk, well, who are they selling those drugs to? Isn’t possession of a controlled substance a crime, too? How many houses have you raided in the Upper East Side or the Upper West Side [of New York]? How many doors have you kicked down in Tribeca? How many rich, white businessmen on Wall Street have you [racially] profiled for stealing money? Millions of dollars…way more than any black kid could carry in his pockets that you stopped and frisked. But he’s the danger to society?¹⁸ —Felipe Andres Coronel, better known by the stage name Immortal Technique, is an American rapper and activist

When non-racialism,
or everyone’s tough-on-crime,
doublespeak,
stand behind podiums to tell us,
we should make slaves,
of our prisoners while breathing,
we say nothing,
because black immigrants disgust us,
the brown poor too,
put them in chains, kill them in droves,
the machine should only work,
for comfortable middle-class you.

When we hear,
overcrowding stands,
at over two hundred percent,
or that banned solitary,
is “segregation” now,
mental illness or disability,
stuck without a place to rent.

Yes, yes, yes,
keep quiet, you say
of no consequence,
is this, your speech,
the work horses, the ordinary class,
prefer us and our hay.
The link between Cape gangs,
and apartheid’s land theft,
income exclusion,
those forget-the-past hands.
The link between,
public official enrichment,
and gang sustenance.
Should we forget,
CIA propped up,
crack/cocaine US dealings,
ensuring their hands were rinsed.
Back home,
costly sky eye surveillance,
is what we opt for,
sending military intervention,
strong-man posturing,
but no one asked,
why sons chose unlawful insurrection.

The gang men,
guilty of cruelty,
violence for profit,
where do they come?
From poor Cape Coloured streets,
not a Martian space rocket.
Any black South or African,
caged like an unwanted pet,
comes from where?
Brutalised, exploited Africa, no less.
Indian and white criminals,
tattooed and tough,
trigger-happy seeds,
ready to rule through fear,
they are the white and brown unseen.

Every criminal pipeline,
like any business has two sides,
Supply and Demand,
we give, we want,
we’re ready, we need,
there are no free rides.

Focussing on Supply,
but only on dealers,
hijackers or robbers,
not on circumstances,
that lead to their choices,
these our disingenuous distractions,
your selective doxxers.

Sometimes the State is very efficient in repressing expressions of poverty or very efficient at protecting a few elites, especially foreign elites. The State never fails to protect multinational companies, each time any of their properties or interests are at stake, but the State sometimes grows amnesia when there is a threat to poor people or the poorest of the people. Which means colleagues, if we are thinking of insecurity, ultimately, there is now a marketplace for and of the means of violence. And the merchants of that marketplace are drawn from various levels of society, including the global. For instance, in some of the countries that are listening to me now, there are local militias or defence units (sometimes we call them some other names); we have gangs: gangs that control the extraction of gold, the extraction of minerals; gangs that control narcotics, that control the trafficking of women and girls. Whether it is Zama Zama in South Africa or Makorokoza in Zimbabwe…Of course, we have national armies, police and intelligence. It is not always clear who or what they are protecting.¹⁹ —Brian Kagoro, Zimbabwean citizen, Pan-Africanist and a constitutional and economic relations lawyer

Are there organised networks?
Of course, there are!
When upper-middle class stores,
bought stolen gold thaalis,
my Dad joked, they’re entrepreneurial stars.
When Wolf of Wall Street,
hoodwinked ordinary people,
he got a book deal,
a blockbuster movie, speaking events,
the all-American bootstrap seal.
There are companies,
buying stolen parts,
overseas elites,
trafficking kids,
are we so naïve,
to think drug manufacturers,
are teachers,
bored with their chemistry beat.

But Supply goes beyond wrong doing,
it includes “the why”.
If your life has little meaning,
or prospect for growth,
you are more likely,
to say goodbye.
The morality cliché,
you choose to be lazy,
criminal,
easy to say,
for the already comfortable,
it’s propaganda from haves,
or vote-for-me unoriginals.

The system,
an economic, social ladder,
creates the context of pain,
then points to consequences,
I am blameless,
it feigns.

Let me tell you,
what I said to a student of late,
if you’re poor in Africa,
it’s because the system ensures,
allows it,
then calls you an ingrate.

If you suffer crime,
it is because the system serves you,
plasters over gunshot wounds,
system change,
context-driven policies,
they will rue.

If you suffer racism,
xenophobia,
friend,
the system ensures you do,
encouraging,
or allowing it,
complicity culture baked-in,
for their benefit, not new.

If you suffer injustice,
freedom,
in name only,
car guard, security guard,
lucky to afford mash and polony,
mfwethu, the system put you there,
keeps you in the rut,
then tells you to pick up boot straps,
when you’re bootless,
leaving you to wade through the muck.

Private military companies from America, from France, from wherever, and external special forces are present. Constantly assuring us that we are insecure and that they have brought security, but constantly unable to deal with the so-called minor problem of our insecurity. So, [from] whole governments, foreign money is pouring into parts of this continent, whether it is in Sudan or elsewhere, money is pouring from foreign governments. That money is not solving the extent of violence, it is not solving the insecurity, the forced displacement, but it’s pouring. And some of it is being accrued as a debt by the people who are subject to the insecurity. The one thing though as my brother Minister Diop will tell you, even in this period of insecurity on whether a foreign army is present, and special forces and private military companies were assuring any form of security, the one thing that remained secure was the gold moving out of our countries unprocessed, was the ore, the critical minerals were things that were being taken…Esteemed members of the security forces and diplomats, stop sleeping walking. [When it comes to] Security challenges in Africa, we are often brought into a Premier League of pettiness, Minister. They tell you the reason why these people are fighting is because of tribalism, Islam, Christianity, pastoralism, and I say, Ha! And they just started fighting some more the minute you discovered gold, the minute you discovered chrome, the minute you discovered cobalt?²⁰ —Brian Kagoro, Zimbabwean citizen, Pan-Africanist and a constitutional and economic relations lawyer

Then the distractions come,
“the country’s bankrupt”.
How?
With the world’s largest manganese reserves.
Hear me out,
someone’s enjoying our mineral rush.

Miss SA,
why is she African?
O-kay,
they all end up on Top Billing,
we’re seriously going to argue,
over thirst traps in crowns…
Oy-vey…

There goes a Russian spy bot,
What about the rooted,
foreign tentacle condition.
Why does Monsanto,
have special South African laws,
to control our seeds,
creating a farmer practice abolition.

Over there,
more racist behaviour on streets,
what a surprise…NOT!
You could bring antiracism,
to schools and colleges,
but then how would you guarantee,
future voting slots.

Distracting worker bees,
can’t be our best,
hey,
I don’t envy the government’s struggle.
But system outcomes,
must come before personal choices,
or you’re still manipulating,
the many born into trouble.

Prison was meant to reform,
not cage human beings,
for being poor,
reckless, violent,
cruel or thieving,
we’re still talking about our urban,
lower-class Darfurs.

Punishing the masses for the system,
when our elites,
held the keys,
since then or before,
since 1994,
Freedom Fighters sat back,
begging for inclusion, Geez Louise.

Institute real change,
confront sexism and misogyny,
dismantle subordinate power,
take back our strategic resources,
stop begging,
for a changed physiology.

Should we fight,
against the prospect,
of authoritarianism in suits.
Hundred percent!
But in reality,
we have minority domination,
western manipulation,
mass foreign extraction,
baked-in corruption and widespread exploitation
…you know the rest.

1. Comments by Brian Kagoro, The African Philanthropy Conference in Zimbabwe, 2024 ↩︎
2. Ibid ↩︎
3. Comments by Elina Xenophontos, Media Crackdown as Imperialists prepare for 3-Front War, August 2024, Colonial Outcasts Podcast ↩︎
4. Trump’s threat to punish countries that drop US dollar will speed up de-dollarization, Geopolitical Economy Report, Sep 2024 ↩︎
5. South Africa Doesn’t Need a “Lula Moment”, Benjamin Fogel, Jacobin.com, 17 Dec 2015 ↩︎
6. South African dairy worker strike continues as inquiry looms over Clover Industries, Pavan Kulkarni, Jan 2022, peoplesdispatch.org ↩︎
7. Neoliberalism in Africa, Apocalyptic Failures and Business as Usual Practices, George Caffentzis, Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations, Vol 1 No. 3, Fall 2002,ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu ↩︎
8. Comments by Gabriel Rockhill, US protests and Marxist critique of Žižek, Foucault, Arendt & Frankfurt School (w Gabriel Rockhill), May 2024, India and Global left ↩︎
9. Comments by Ibrahim Traoré, 1st Summit AES (African Economic Security) Confederation, 6 July 2024 ↩︎
10. Sibeko, B. (2019). The cost of austerity: Lessons for South Africa. Institute for Economic Justice Working Paper Series, No 2. ↩︎
11. Comments by Chris Hedges, The Chris Hedges Report podcast, author of Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt ↩︎
12. Abby Martin, Immortal Technique: Civil War, Jan 2023, Empire Files podcast ↩︎
13. Comments by Gabriel Rockhill, US protests and Marxist critique of Žižek, Foucault, Arendt & Frankfurt School (w Gabriel Rockhill), May 2024, India and Global left ↩︎
14. Comments by Max Blumenthal, Rage against the War Machine event, Sep 2024, Washington DC ↩︎
15. Comments by Brian Kagoro, The National Security Symposium in Kigali, Rwanda, May 2024 ↩︎
16. Comments by Angela Davis, Closing plenary session – Symposium III “Planetary Utopias – Hope, Desire, Imaginaries in a Post-Colonial World” of the “Colonial Repercussions” event series at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin (23 and 24 June 2018) ↩︎
17. Comments by Séamus Malekafzali on US-Israel Rampage in the Middle East: Barreling towards WWIII, Oct 2024, Empire Files ↩︎
18. Comments by Immortal Technique, VladTV (djvlad) 27 July 2013 ↩︎
19. Comments by Brian Kagoro, The National Security Symposium in Kigali, Rwanda, May 2024 ↩︎
20. Ibid ↩︎

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-Mother of Miss SA contestant Chidinma probed for ‘identity theft’, Brian Okoth, Aug 2024, trtafrika.com
-Monsanto in South Africa: The True Cost Of Our Food, Greenpeace Africa, Mar 2022, greenpeace.org

Can you see yet, proletariaat? SASOL had a close integrated connection with government through shareholding, governance relationships, and through its elite networks, which were strongly aligned to Afrikaner Nationalist leadership of the apartheid government. In addition to financial support from the state, SASOL was able to count on a cheap labour force, unregulated labour laws and Draconian political laws that used military and policing methods to control society. In this context, during the period between 1948 and 1979, people were not in a position to challenge safety in the workplace or environmental damage…For example, Sappi was fined only R600 for a spill at its Ngodwana Paper Mill in 1989 that devastated ecosystems of the Elands and Crocodile Rivers…on October 1 1987, a wage strike at the SASOL I petroleum refinery in Sasolburg turned ugly when management called in police and vigilantes to break up the workers’ strike. The result was the loss of 77 workers’ lives, and 2400 jobs. SASOL never accepted responsibility for its actions.¹

Mense van African threads,
have you figured out what’s going on yet?
you, in die laer klasse,
boere without holiday homes, yachts, Woolworths mustard,
no European citizenship through property ownership, horse riding lessons, the good leef,
Wim, a locksmith, Ronel the hairstylist,
Jannie, an automechanic, special is a braai list,
new cars for 21st birthdays is not your life,
you who should understand more the werkersklas fight.

This year, when the hoër klasse went to Brakpan,
to make an online video of you,
did you notice your homes and families,
framed by three ryk seuns as a “rof en tof” gross zoo.
Are you their white savages, my klas mense?
The side-joke, the laer klas doormat.
Are you the people expendable,
by economic string-pullers,
their go-to entertainment is how you’re rendered.
You call them broer, they some say buht for boet,
even if their name’s Kruger, de Klerk, Verwoerd,
kan jy regtig not see what game’s afoot?

Because I remember in 2006,
wit ryk seuns from the poshest schools around,
told me I should not enter the Oos Rand,
they’re “rough” monstrous, I may not be found.
Yet, almost ten years later I married,
the Oos Rand’s laer klas seun,
a boer, not a monster,
who felt bad, deep-down wished things were fair, that equal was real.

So, are you their wit woeste? The lesser whites of class frame…
I ask because of double B and C,
This year they sent a posh South African race mate,
to interview the werkersklas,
a former Apartheid polisie man, disabled.
He murdered readily, children too,
and Ms high-and-mighty gave him the boot,
but here’s the farce, the media mask,
high-and-mighty would have benefitted more,
from the economic structures his murders kept in place.
She sits on camera and acts like,
racism, an entire system, was only about violence and hate.
She does not mention if her mum or dad,
is a British immigrant, French, German or Nordic,
who, unlike polisie boer, chose racism,
flying from all over the Western world, making my jaw hurt.
While laer klas was born into the system,
conditioned, what chance did he have? Shaped from birth.
What’s the immigrants’ excuse,
for coming to racism (in their thousands) to build hoër klas hearths.

On why she thought dragging out polisie boer was news,
a cheap sensationalist attempt,
there’s something about dangling your sins, laer klasse,
that I bet she knew would earn her a career boost, leaving you with contempt.

And do you believe her, my klas broer?
My suster too?
Has it dawned on you yet?
That he, you, the many laer conscripted tools,
were used to keep the wealth imbalance in place, a minority and foreign checkmate.

I was listening to a podcast while making our dinner,
a story about poisoning miners,
the name, Dirk Jooste.
An American accent meant I did not recognise the name at first,
until I heard his voice,
stopped stirring to look up the miner’s birth.
And suddenly, all I felt was accustomed rage,
like explosions from an inner volcano,
an inferno that never abates.
These bastards, I thought,
they never stop,
South African elites in business, corporate kings,
with their political puppets treating the laer klasse like toilet mops.
Dirk’s trembling hand was seen while at work,
only to find out he was already poisoned.
The manganese, fine dust, zooming into every orifice,
he can’t possibly be the only one,
how many werkersklas broers have Parkinsons symptoms, are we allowed to frown?

And the executive mine leadership, are they white or are they black?
You know why I ask…
White-on-white exploitation, where is it honoured by your leads?
Especially when it involves class.

Your collective voice will cry foul,
but only for affirmative action.
A man, a human being, once healthy,
is now damaged in the head,
living with shivers while his higher-ups remain stealthy.

The collective voice says nothing, NOTHING,
of equal vehemence and might,
against white-heavy upper elites,
who killed a man’s quality of life.
There’s no social media posts, panel discussions, no protests on streets,
no trips to foreign countries, demanding to know the full, industry-wide truth,
how typical…how disappointing.
And why would you mind this? Ja-broer politics worked for you.
Ja-broer collective voice did you comparatively well in the past,
but how’s that working out for you post-apartheid laws,
I have to, I must ask.

[In 2012] One of the primary demands of the [South African Lonmin mine] workers was a wage of R12,500 per month. Lonmin [mine] management considered the R12,500 increase to be completely unreasonable and the miners responded by engaging in protest and strike action. This demand [for a R12,500 per month wage] is ten times less than the wage of mineworkers in Australia and the United Kingdom…the voices of workers become the revealing testimony of the dehumanisation and reduction of labour at the Lonmin mine at the mercy of capitalism…one of the salient aspects in the events that preceded the massacre [the murder of 34 striking mineworkers by police officers] was the way in which the management of Lonmin [mine] related to labour. A mineworker referring to housing noted that they were closed in by wire like they were cows…A miner sadly recounted how he explained to the employer that they (the miners) were also human.²

Jy dink Dirkie is the only one?
Let me enlighten you,
on what laer klas Afrikaners put up with,
my Mister, raised by a single mother,
a school teacher who also worked as a delivery driver,
trying to give her child a life,
a boy who couldn’t afford University,
even though he was awarded a bursery,
his mom needed his support,
so he worked in the Oos Rand,
where he was born,
teaching himself computer programming words,
nog ‘n wit seun, from the hoër klas group,
a childhood friend from a multi-million Rand home,
asked him to do work on a government project,
their business needing work done for their profit,
multi-million then did not pay for the work done,
avoiding my Mister’s calls,
for no reason at all,
boasting, planning to charge the state more than a million,
for a website that was worth thousands at most,
a hoër klas friend-not friend gets away with stealing earned funds,
and do you think we could afford,
thousands of Rands on attorney fees,
no, not us born in the trenches,
but yes, tell us again how we are all free to your friends, South Africa’s elites.

My man’s long ago ex was abused,
over and over again,
a sexual torment, incest, a childhood’s pain,
a werkersklas girl of no name.
And why does this come as a shock?
Because when many live next door,
too many pretend that they’re inherently, magically more.
You’re not laer klas,
with us in a similar trench,
you’re white, you’re special,
not inferior class savages like the rest.

He pointed out that the process of identifying the interests of this labour aristocracy with those of the ruling class is an element arising out of the development of capitalism during its imperialistic stage. And nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in South Africa, where white labour has completely divorced its interests from those of the natives, to the detriment of the latter, upon whose exploitation it fattens. For “the European worker is haunted by fear of competition with the great masses of native labourers,” is the declaration of a South African trade union memorandum.“….Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and so the policy hitherto adopted has been one of ‘keeping the native in his place’, in order that certain of the higher-paid jobs might be retained as the special preserve of the European worker.” This policy, which has the endorsement of the Labour Party of the Union, is implemented by legislation, and has accentuated the division between white and black labour.³

It’s worse than you think, my swaer is in and out of jobs,
in and out of self rehab,
blonde and blue-eyed, something missing inside,
a laer klas man who doesn’t see his class, only skin, he hides,
from “those darkies”, me, them, all the same,
hiding slurs behind closed doors,
the poor man, born African, not by choice, he has no escape.
He will never join the trade union,
the most powerful, all black,
he will risk exploitation, low wages,
management abuse, even contract traps,
and he does this for one reason,
a minority who cannot bear to see himself as equally “them”,
in a country where the overwhelming majority,
a brother laer klas, do not look like him,
and isn’t that sad? Tragic?
A laer klas man,
without love for black magic,
in a black country, a black continent,
that he, his parents were born to,
generations of his family,
who could have been led, lived and comfortable with,
black cultures, African power allegiance and films too.

But no, the system, real racism,
did a real number on him, on us,
every single community and family,
has been touched,
soaked,
pretending of late, this is only about public service,
and three decades of votes.

There is ample evidence that the violent attack [of 2012] by the [South African] police on the Marikana miners was well planned. There was collusion between the police commanders, the Lonmin management and South African government ministers. The day before the assault, the police ordered 4,000 rounds of live ammunition for R5 assault rifles and four mortuary vans...The South African extractive economy was deeply integrated into the world market [post apartheid] and the new rising black elite eased into the neo-colonial relationship with the established [white minority and/or foreign] economic power. The ownership of land, factories, mines remained unchanged leaving the majority of the black communities in poverty. The legacy of social inequality and violence continued as before.⁴

So when ryk seuns, whether cousins or strangers,
paint my swaer with the laer klas savage brush,
will he stand up for himself?
Hold them to account for their class greed, the real stuff.
Will he tell them, they’re the white kingpins,
who masterminded his lived experience,
separating and degrading,
the greater half for their gains, they needed his obedience.

Will he say, ek is nie jou wrede proliteriaat,
I will no longer be used!
I see the machination,
masses divide and conquer,
racial blinkers on,
us laer klas still your useful tools.

Race matters only because race is class in good ol’ SA,
but in every racial category,
there is, there was a sliding scale.
And so for you, the forgotten,
the shamed laer klas,
what is the plan?
Are you hoping white masters,
upper classes,
bring back legal race protection or segregation?
You must know by now that your elites,
white and Afrikaners too,
were not ignorant during apartheid’s fall,
knowing exactly what it would do to you,
ensuring above all, their interests remain served,
they could have argued for socialist democracy,
but you and I both know, that’s a class prayer they were not willing to observe.
Thirty years later, some höer klas say,
we can debate social democracy homemade,
consider what was asked for decades long ago,
but rooi gevaar is unacceptable, enjoying still their PR charade.
What was denied on purpose was redistribution policies,
holding onto African resources, land and control.
They pushed back and pushed back for thirty years,
while media back pockets,
served us public corruption, not system design flaws.
And who did their policies benefit, if white state-led protection was missing?
Was it you, laer klas? Truly, were you paying attention?
This is my biggest issue with us minorities,
those who have less,
the laer klasse determined to ignore,
the issue of black and class redress,
out of deep ignorance and fear, we vote for our own exploitation,
our own economic impoverishment without thinking it through,
while certainly not less capable than the hoër mense,
who look like me or you.
They will tell us to keep voting, the usual cattle call,
tell us they got it all under control,
but that’s precisely the problem,
their actions, chosen inactions, push-backs,
have led us here, inequity consequences continue to enfold.

The [South African] Farlam Commission of Inquiry wanted an investigation into whether or not Lonmin [mine] was in a financial position to meet the [South African mine] workers’ wage demands, since Lonmin’s management originally refused to negotiate with the workers on the pretense that the corporation was unable to afford the workers’ wage demands…Lonmin’s Chief Financial Officer Simon Scott provided testimony on LMS’ finances. That testimony, read with other documents, showed that LMS, a so-called “Head Office company,” in turn paid management fees to Lonmin PLC in the UK of between 20% and 37% of its revenue, amounting to R429 million between 2007 and 2010. Transactions made for the sole purpose of shifting profits are called transfer mispricing. Transfer mispricing is but one of the tools in transnational corporations’ (TNCs) bag of tricks, used to reduce the profits declared in countries with higher corporate income tax levels—like South Africa—and reduce companies’ tax liabilities…Critically, if Lonmin did not shift profits out of the country, it could have afforded the RDOs’ [mineworkers] wage demands.⁵

You cannot possibly believe,
men who can afford overseas flights,
worth thousands,
are your true post-apartheid kin.
The men so wealthy, they own your debt,
your jobs, the ground at your feet,
homes, you still can’t pay for all of it.
They own every estate,
private beaches, commercial agri and game farms,
while you, laer klas sukkel for affordable meat and recreational yarn.

Women will write books skewed,
arguably fake news,
before moving to Swiss cheese with Phds,
the hoër klasse lying about the apart-system, how it benefitted a few.

And are these the people you betray us for?
A class betrayal you will deny,
even while your children lie closer to us, not them,
on the same exploited floor where we’re all about to die.

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) estimates that the country loses approximately R100 billion in tax revenue annually as a result of Illicit Financial Flows (IFF) and Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS). At a corporate tax rate of 27%, a R100 billion tax loss means that more than R350 billion leaves the country illicitly each year. A recent report indicates that more than 75% of workers earn below R5,800 per month. At the same time, SARS estimates that an estimated 500,000 people earn above R750,000 per annum, and approximately 250,000 people earn more than R1 million each year.⁶

I understand, I throw no shame,
confronting the loss of state protection,
superficial race,
must be hard for a proliteriaat,
not used to different faces.

But at some point,
you have to accept the class system, seeing all laer klasse deserve better,
you’re not their savage, their distraction, you’re more like us,
And I am sorry not-sorry that we look different.

When you learn of abuse of legal frameworks, capital flight,
interest rates beating you down,
hearing words for years: “union busting”, “labour laws problematic” or,
“scrap minimum wage”,
do you get that they’re threatening all of us? Killing us in multiple rounds.

It will be your daughter, a marketing intern,
or perhaps your son, a mechanic graduate,
who must beg and hustle for something better,
scrapped minimum wage, rely on market-related while chasing falling living standards.

When they talk about private investment, private interests,
over state-owned resources,
what makes you think the state does not include you?
You’d see the wealth of your birthplace go to ABC Limited elite,
and not used to make you and your klas maat new boots.

And on innovation, modern creation,
a competitive streak for global business, our economic enrichment,
liberal capitalism, minority dominant, inherited from apartheid,
has brought us how many new inventions, since 1994, kan jy nog sien?

The minority run, largely owned and enriched system,
the free market-leaning economic three-decade machine,
is not, as the hoër klas argued, this innovation-generating guarantee.
Innovation comes from human ingenuity,
resourcefulness and imagination,
financial support, guidance in droves, any economic system socially-structured can bring about good renovation.

Changing the engine, bettering a national system,
imagining its reinvention,
includes you, us,
laer klasse, it must,
are we not capable of reading, critical thinking,
African-bound imagination,
No? We must rely on ryk seuns so-called genius, shoo, you must be kidding.

Since the 19th century, South Africa’s political economy has been structured around the Minerals-Energy Complex (MEC)—the integration between mining, energy, and other upstream sectors (like steel) continues to shape the country’s post-apartheid economic structure. Cheap labor, migration, fossil fuel-powered energy, and uneven spatial development are central features of the MEC [Minerals-Energy Complex]. In post-Apartheid South Africa the character of the MEC [Minerals-Energy Complex] changed following the rapid deregulation of financial markets through the phasing out of capital and exchange controls beginning in 1995….South Africa’s political economy has become over-reliant on the financial sector and capital markets, as well as the speculative and consumption-based economic activities associated with this finance-led growth trajectory…In other words: profit shifting, increased shareholder value and lessened regulation of international financial flows are key markers of South Africa’s finance-led MEC [Minerals-Energy Complex].⁷

A people’s movement demands no blind allegiance,
You must question, listen openly,
and find forums to ask tough questions.
Common goals are what is needed,
not blind love,
you do not have to agree with everything,
but restructuring the African machine we must all agree upfront.
If that’s not your tea, power and privilege askew,
being your beat, hide it behind “conservative” or “liberal”, that’s also fine,
your eye prefers honing in on management issues,
we don’t all have to honour human lives.
But if you persist to rely on ja-broer politiek,
you cannot cry to us later that dear master hurt you between the butt cheeks.
Laer klasse there are two camps in South Africa,
the All lives matter, not equally, because it benefits us so,
and if All lives matter, it must be in substance,
in this country and for all.
The one keeps you focussed on management change,
incidental corruption not the system’s structures,
the other says, look at the house: the walls, stairs, floors, windows and doors,
and says, tell me which race and which classes needs a house restructured.
If you believe that inequity, domination,
keeps you safe, healthy and free,
you are, I submit, terribly mistaken,
dare I say, short-sighted, afraid and sadly quite weak.
Fear not though, the biggest betrayal comes from the höer klasse, so-called liberals or centrists at home,
people who claim to want a just system but only in their way,
centring still, white and black buddies, a minority preference rather than what should be a majority choice.

Are you worried they’ll be no future place for you,
I have been worried, I feel it too,
hey look, brown and white laer klas kids stand on common ground.
Maybe we need to share our vulnerability, more honestly,
our black brothers and sisters, can hear our post-apartheid sound.
But what’s not appropriate though,
is to hold hostage a majority “them”,
expecting a just system, just outcomes should be compromised, avoided,
because justice makes “us” uncomfortable, a select few we’d rather condemn.
The cost to our elites,
cannot take precedence,
whatever our frustrations or fear,
if we truly believe we are civilised and just, our focus should be on policy evidence.
Undoubtedly, it is not their job to place our fears,
at the top of their priority list,
when race, class, systemic injustice continues, built in,
they’re still for centuries more at risk.
For those sincere, we must process our grief, a rippling racial trauma, over and over again,
until we can separate what is truly just,
from our feelings, minority self-preference, privileged protections,
theirs is a long road, which cannot be subsumed by our fears at this stage.

For those insincere, the laer klasse who frown,
where’s free speech when we’re racist?
I ask, why would you want to be racist?
Are you so dead inside that feelings only come from being a sadist?
What about culture? Our culture?
We’re different, too different, we’re special, we’re more,
we can’t be expected to mingle, be led,
be culturally aligned with the economic “majority horde”.
They’re victimising us,
I say, “us”, you sure? Us is a wholly wide word.
There’s a wholescale reverse racism,
whenever I don’t get a job, a university entry or,
perhaps a smile from the domestic worker,
And there’s the nugget, the class betrayal once more,
some of us minorities of the laer klasse are so desperate to be victims of racism,
we’d cut out our own kidney,
just so we can claim: look what they did, black hatred.
But many laer klasse won’t push back on the education system,
when Cape Town minorities sell black students in cages for fun,
when accusations that teachers were role-modelling racist,
the potential endemic disease, we deliberately shun,
turning what should be mental disease eradication,
into an incidental annual distraction, our winning elation.
We won’t talk about years of undeclared white minority affirmative action,
brown minorities too,
how mostly hoër klasse slide into positions,
former alumna bias, big business or political Daddy,
a preferred potential donor, client or system influence,
or the deleting of black CVs, firing black workers,
because the demographic majority, the laer klas disgust you,
losing court cases is too painful,
sure sounds like deliberate impoverishment, mass exclusion,
reminiscent of those “good ol’ days”,
the demographic majority growing pissed,
our leads placing the blame solely on their management ways,
when they accuse “us” of economic apartheid, minority domination,
you’ll pretend we, “us”, are wholly innocent,
no room for total responsibility resulting in their decimation.
Then, there’s the years long equating not-white people,
and just about all women with “incompetent”,
suggesting diversity automatically means,
you’re the department idiot.
What did that headline say in 2017,
“We are running out of whites”,
Geez Louise, and in a country that is what? 85% NOT-white,
sure, makes total sense, no need to fight.
Shall I also tell you about the höer klass seun,
the wit laaitie, a rowing champ from elite university,
who took my work research,
and sent it to the client under his name, a real weenie,
and when I told my boss,
she said “these things happen”, that’s their game.
but my vagina, my brown skin, makes me the target,
worse, if you’re born laer klas,
from schools they’ve never heard of,
then conveniently, you’re the threat,
not a blessing doing most of the work, told to work harder.
Kan jy nog sien? Or is this not enough?
when class betrayal has been your African standard,
a banner you’ll stand behind,
ons laerklas gesin aim knives at our backs, not random.
No wonder, red berets have had enough,
of our nonsense, our duplicitous muck.
All lives matter. Psych! Just kidding.
We suck!

Making matters worse are those who exploit,
who massage your obvious worries, your fear,
laying on thick, butter on toast,
how awful blackness, laer klas is when they’re near.

After the last forty years of redistributed wealth from the poor and middle to the top 1%, they now denounce as “wealth redistribution” when people want to redistribute in the opposite direction. The richest 1% only want one-way redistribution. – Richard D. Wolff⁸

The elites will blur the sliding scale of class between you,
and tell you what they believe you want to hear,
white lives matter variety,
not equally, of course,
don’t ask what they mean by neutrality,
or whether the laer klasse get a veto vote.
They need you more than you need them,
but dare you figure that out,
you may stop treating ryk seuns as cute demi-Gods,
and start questioning the economic layout.
They will give you an enemy,
always someone economically closer to you,
first, swart nou rooi gevaar,
add black immigrants or visibly poor Arab “terrorists” from far,
not our own training camps teaching eugenicist ideas,
“smaller brains equals black people”,
local militarism cannot be domestic terrorism, their PR spins hurting my ears.
Politically, it’s only the ANC or maybe a faction,
Russia, China, tomorrow it’ll be India or Taiwan.
Not the system, never them in crisp suits,
tongues of articulate routes,
friends, higher ups,
planned obsolescence ignored,
we’re not going to mention the geopolitical wars,
those aligned that conspired to illegally bury Assange indoors.

A capitalist rooted government is fundamentally a business-run government. While non-market rooted interests do exist such as educational policy, abortion rights and so forth, they are vastly overshadowed, directly and indirectly altered by market incentives, market forces and the vested power interests related. [It is the] Vested market interests and market incentives that forever sabotage hope for any true democratic effect in government. Just consider the structure of business itself. Firstly, is it democratic? Obviously not, it is a hierarchical command structure with power and control moving from the top down, with loyalty and submission moving from the bottom up, rooted mind you in a scarcity-based game, which requires the use of multiple levels of strategic exploitation and manipulation in the game of competition, which translates into being not only a strict power hierarchy, it is a predatory power hierarchy. And yet, as obvious as it should be people have been conditioned to not see it…What you find is the whole thing is held together by slogans and jingles, and a general superficiality that isn’t based on evidence but rather half-truths, dangerous half-truths that sound like they make sense but actually do not. Slogans like, “you get what you work for” sound like it makes sense but doesn’t account for system influence.⁹

Vote, support whoever you want,
but try harder to let go of your blinkers,
I know times have changed,
but that’s life,
a growing phase,
and your frustrations are easily immense,
but be brave.

we care for you, we do,
we, I, care. I know what happened to our class, to you,
however, we can’t drag you laer klas broers to the street table,
while you’re sitting on the stoep like a good pet, ready to still serve meester and enable.

1. Sasol: Profits from Poison by Ferrial Adam, Earthlife Africa Johannesburg, November 2010, earthlife.org.za ↩︎
2. Boëttger, J.F., Rathbone M…The Marikana Massacre, Labour and Capitalism: towards a Ricoeurian alternative. Koers (online) [online] 2016, vol. 81, n.3 [cited 2024-08-30], pp 1-7, available from www.scielo.org.za ↩︎
3. George Padmore, Whiter workers v Black,Controversy, Vol. 2, No. 20, May 1938 ↩︎
4. Remembering the Marikana Massacre: Demanding justice and accountability, Saleh Mamon, Jul 2022, londonminingnetwork.org ↩︎
5. We need to talk about wage theft, Khwezi Mabasa, Dominic Brown, Dec 2022, africasacountry.com ↩︎
6. Ibid. ↩︎
7. Ibid. ↩︎
8. 10 Feb 2019, Richard D. Wolff (author of Democracy at work: A Cure for Capitalism), social media post on X ↩︎
9. Peter Joseph, author: The New Human Rights Movement: Reinventing the economy to overcome oppression, Episode 50, Revolution Now! with Peter Joseph podcast ↩︎

*Mense – People
*Van – Of
*Die laer klasse – The lower classes
*Leef – Life
*Braai – Barbeque
*Werkersklas – Working class
*Hoër klasse – Upper classes
*Ryk seuns – Rich boys
*“Rof en tof” – “Rough and tumble”
*Broer– Brother
*Boet – Brother
*Klas – class
*Kan jy regtig – Can you really
*Wit – White
*Oos Rand – East Rand
*Wit woeste – White ferocious
*Polisie – Police
*Boer – Afrikaner or farmer
*Suster – Sister
*Ja-broer – Yes-man
*Jy dink – You think
*Nog ‘n wit seun – Another white boy
*My swaer – My brother-in-law
*Ek is nie jou wrede proliteriaat – I am not your brutal or cruel proletariat
*Sukkel – Struggle
*Maat – Mate
*Kan jy nog sien? – Can you still or yet see?
*Laaitie – young person, normally male
*Gesin – Family
*Politiek – Politics
*Swart nou rooi gevaar – Black now red (socialist/communist) danger
*Stoep – Front veranda
*Meester – Master