[geeks] Liber-fascism

[Jonathan Groll]

On Mon, Oct 27, 2008 at 07:44:43AM -0400, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
>Jonathan Groll wrote:
>> 
>> Lest you're under the mistaken impression that there has truly been a
>> change of government in Zimbabwe, for the time being, sadly, Robert
>> Mugabe is still very much in power:
>> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7692370.stm
>> 
>
>And of course the contagion is now spreading to South Africa, where ANC
>(of Communist persuasion) politicians have been praising Mugabe's
>ability to get land out of the hands of whites.

It can be argued that the ANC (African national congress) itself is
not a communist party in terms of policy, not withstanding our
previous president's policy of not confronting Mugabe [0].

Thus far the ANC has contested elections as part of a tri-partite
alliance [1,2], with the other two parties being the SACP (South
African communist party) and COSATU (Congress of South African Trade
Unions) - largely as a leftover from shared membership during the days
of the anti-apartheid struggle.

The communist element of the alliance, for all the rhetoric has not
set a communist market policy as it is only partner in the alliance -
and ANC policy in the new South Africa has been consistently free
market. This "historic compromise" [3] is a part of what made the
transition to the new South Africa possible.

There has however been a land redistribution policy based on the
principal of willing buyer willing seller [4]. Inequity in land
ownership is an emotive issue as well as a practical issue (it is
afterall one of the legacies of apartheid), and in South Africa the
majority of commercial farmland is still white owned - the
redistribution policy 'only' has a target of 30% land redistribution
by 2014 [5].


[0] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/24/zimbabwe.southafrica
[1] http://www.sacp.org.za/
[2] http://southafrica.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2007/03/09/the-tripartite-alliance/>
[3] http://links.org.au/node/139
[4]
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/d143d078c02a8be7306ad44dbdb4f45f.htm
[5] http://www.theshebeen.org/agriculture-land-reform/6303-south-africa-govt-aims-30-land-redistribution-2014-a.html

Cheers,
Jonathan