LONDON—In late November 2015, Julius Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) based in Occupied Azania, toured England.
Malema spoke to bourgeois institutions such as the South Africa Chamber of Commerce (SACC), the Oxford University Student Union Debating Society and the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) which carries the reputation of being one of the most authoritative ruling class think tanks in the UK.
Malema addressed two Pan Africanist institutions. The Pan African Congress Movement in Tottenham, North London and the African Enterprise Awards at the London Capital Club.
Malema's visit to the UK generated a lot of feedback. Nelson Mandela's family is upset that he criticized him.
Some news reports speculated that Malema is visiting the UK to raise funds for EFF's election campaign. He was reported to have met with Lord Robin Renwick who is believed to be EFF's funder.
According to Business Day Live's website, "British investors and the heads of major companies with their headquarters in London have been listening intently to Mr. Malema's message and have expressed surprise at his relatively pragmatic approach towards business, despite his commitment to Marxist-Leninist ideology and to nationalizing banks and land if the EFF won power in an election."
The African People's Socialist Party (APSP) welcomes the criticism of the ANC and of Nelson Mandela by Julius Malema.
It gives our movement another opportunity to express our views on the matter as it is happening.
Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the APSP, has exposed the African National Congress's opportunism for decades.
We need to know whether the EFF is about organizing for the international black revolution and defeating white power in black face or if they are about becoming a better ANC
Freedom Charter and Mandela were always tools of imperialism
Malema's criticism of the ANC is a call to unite the current struggle with the Freedom Charter. The failure of ANC's leadership to implement the Freedom Charter is why he says that the ANC has betrayed the revolution in South Africa.
While addressing students at the Student Oxford Union Debating Society in England, Julius Malema argued that, "The deviation from the Freedom Charter was the beginning of the selling out of the revolution.
"But why did Nelson Mandela sell out the Freedom Charter? When Mandela returned from prison he got separated with Winnie Mandela and went to stay in a house of the rich white men… he was looked after by the Oppenheimers."
We, the APSP, don't agree with that.
The ANC was not deterred from the revolutionary path because Mandela spent his nights at ruling class private homes.
It was never a revolutionary organization. It was created to reform colonial white power.
Mandela and the ANC pledged their allegiance to imperialists long before they were sent to Robben Island.
Evidence of this could be seen when Mandela said in his trial, in 1964 that "he fought all his life against white domination and black domination."
What black domination did Nelson Mandela fight against before being locked up in Robben Island for 27 years by white settlers?
That speech, as Chairman Omali often said, was a political statement that Mandela was ready to collaborate with white power.
His collaboration with apartheid has nothing to do with his advanced age or declining physical ability.
Mandela explained his political thought at his trial when he said, "The Communist party sought to emphasize class distinctions whilst the ANC seeks to harmonize them. This is a vital distinction…I have great respect for British institutions, and for the country's system of justice.
"I regard the British parliament as the most democratic institution in the world, and the impartiality of its judiciary never fails to arouse my admiration. The American Congress, that country's separation of powers, as well as the independence of its judiciary, arouses in me similar sentiments." (Mandela Foundation)
The Freedom Charter, a liberal document adopted in Klipton in June 1956, is the basis for the alliance between the African National Congress, Congress of South African Trade Union and the South African Communist Party.
The Freedom Charter clearly states "That South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and that no government can justify or claim authority unless it is based on the will of all the people." This document surrenders our land to white settlers and to the land snatchers from Europe.
This is the basis for Robert Sobukwe walking out of the ANC and leading the building of the Pan African Congress of Azania in 1959.
Malema's claims to be a continuation of Sobukwe, Biko and others who led the struggles against white settlers before him, are worthless.
Return of the land: Parliamentary or revolutionary way
Malema, in his Oxford University presentation, criticized Mugabe's handling of the land stating that, "We are not going to do what the Zimbabweans have done; of drawing the blood of innocent people. There's nothing wrong with (President Robert) Mugabe's policy on land, but there's everything wrong with the method used to obtain the land.
"We cannot have people killed, injured because you want your land back…Mugabe had more than 25 years to pass legislation through democratic means that would systematically take the land back, he did not do anything about it. He only introduced that policy at a time when he was losing power, it was opportunistic…"
Malema's solution seems to rely on the power of parliament, which is a bourgeois institution in Occupied Azania.He does not say what the peoples' role would be, apart from voting for some politicians to be in the parliament.
As African Internationalists we see everything as a function of revolution, as a function of power of the workers.
We are going to take the land back irrespective of parliament's decisions.
We are aiming for creation of a single African State at the ashes of all neocolonial States in Africa, which will be the guarantor of African land.
The African People's Socialist Party's stance differs from Malema and EFF's position. We consider any document that validates the theft of our land as an opportunist document.
We have opposed the Freedom Charter since the creation of the African People's Socialist Party.We have also been clear that the land was the main question in Azania.
All organizations are class organizations
Malema identifies with the workers, but does not identify his EFF as a revolutionary organization of the African working class engaged in a socialist revolution.
He is, therefore, incapable of making a full criticism of the ANC, whose youth wing, the ANC youth league, he once headed.
We have reiterated that the ANC is a class organization, just as are all organizations in class society in a world split between oppressed nations and oppressor nations, bourgeoisie and working class, etc.
Malema, however is unable to identify the ANC as an African petty bourgeoisie, opportunist organization. He is unable to criticize the fact that the ANC's access to wealth, power and prestige depend on its ability to become the new administrator of the same white colonial State which has oppressed us for centuries.
"It is not true that our tasks are generational, meaning that each generation struggles for a different type of power. For example, Mandela's generation fight for political power, the next generation fights for economic freedom, then the third fights for something else."
If that was the case, the only thing each generation has to do is what they think is reasonable or achievable, and pass the buck to the next generation.
On nationalization of minerals and other strategic components of the South African economy
Malema reiterated that the "EFF did not want to replace white supremacy with black supremacy. We want to restore the dignity of the continent and position Africa as an equal partner in the global economy and international politics…
"We want Africa to be like Europe. We do not want Europe to treat Africa as its subject. Africa's time is now."
He advocates nationalization of mines, banks and strategic sectors of the economy. Any sector of the bourgeoisie in power can, however, achieve nationalization. Mobutu, Nyrere and others have done it.
Imperialists De Gaulle, Hitler and others did too.
The key is the revolutionary process for the workers to seize power.
Nationalization must be part of a revolutionary process of worldwide African workers coming to State power.
Nationalization in Africa, without social revolution, is just a reform of capitalism.
Malema advocates that corporations give up 51 percent of their companies' shares to African workers instead of giving it to a handful of African collaborators.
He denounced the corrupt Black Economic Empowerment.
The African Socialist International (ASI) demands that the corporations be given zero percent and put on trial for crimes against Africa and Africans.
Africa can only be free and respected as a free and united revolutionary nation.
Africa's rise is intertwined with the fall of the white bourgeois nation, because the rise of Africa is the rise of the African workers and the fall of the white bourgeoisie.
Africa will never again be an object of any other power after the African Socialist International Revolution!
Build the Azania Front of African Socialist International!
