Communist
27th August 2009, 22:19
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Todays is the last of our ten-part No Woman, No Revolution (http://amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/No+Socialism+Without+Women) set. To complete the picture of the womens movement that the CU has tried to provide, the linked document today consists of four articles taken from Umsebenzi Online from the beginning of 2006 to the present. Umsebenzi Online is the SACPs authentic voice.
2006 was the year when the CU did its first No Woman, No Revolution series, from February to May, meeting at the Womens Jail, Constitution Hill. 2006 was also the year which, in August, saw the launch of the Progressive Womans Movement, something different and opposite in character from what the Communist University had imagined.
The Communist University is not a constitutional structure of the SACP. It supports the SACP, the ANC, and COSATU. But for pedagogical reasons, if for no other, it must be allowed to speculate, without any prejudice to those organisations.
So here are some speculative theses on the question of women in South Africa :
Women, as such, have no interests that are antagonistic to those of men, but women have a common and particular felt experience among themselves, as women, of the oppression that capitalism has brought to their lives.
Therefore there is a basis for women to organise as a mass, by which is meant a small or large number of people who feel a common disadvantage in society, and who in consequence organise themselves together for their collective good.
Womens mass organisations have the same requirement as trade union and political-vanguard organisations, to be both democratic and centralist. Therefore womens organisations should have individual membership, branches, a national congress, corporate personality, and a constitution to ensure democracy.
The SACP, as a vanguard political organisation of the working class, is designed to relate to such mass organisations, just as it relates to trade union organisations, and others.
As a matter of historical fact, the ANC, through the ANCWL, has on four successive occasions since its founding in 1948, acted to ensure that the above kind of democratic, mass, individual-membership general-purpose womens movement couldnotflourish. The ANCWL, under pressure from the ANC, blighted FEDSAW, the UDF womens structures, and the Womens National Coalition, and it now blights the Progressive Womens Movement.
The ANC adopted non-sexism in the 1980s, and the current South African Constitution is non-sexist, but in practice these provisions mean little as compared to the non-existence of a mass womens movement that has membership and democracy, and which is politically aligned to the working class and to the cause of socialism.
Very little of the above is discussed in the general public realm. What discussion there may be is often based on unexamined vulgar bourgeois-feminist, eclectic, post-modernist precepts. The situation is, on the face of it, much the same as it was four years ago in mid-2005, when the Communist University began to plan its first No Woman, No Revolution series.
Yet two very great gains have been made. The one was the election, in December 2007 at Polokwane, of an ANC National Executive Committee of 84 members of which 50% are women. The other is this months announcement by the SACP GS that the YCLSA has a membership that is more than 50% female.
Click on this link:
Umsebenzi Online on Women, 2006-2009 (http://amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/Umsebenzi+Online+on+Women,+2006-2009) (6340 words)
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Posted By DomzaNet to Communist University (http://domza.blogspot.com/2009/08/umsebenzi-online.html) on 8/27/2009 12:34:00 P
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Linda Jenness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Jenness), 1972 US presidential candidate
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/84/Jenness-for-president.jpg
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Todays is the last of our ten-part No Woman, No Revolution (http://amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/No+Socialism+Without+Women) set. To complete the picture of the womens movement that the CU has tried to provide, the linked document today consists of four articles taken from Umsebenzi Online from the beginning of 2006 to the present. Umsebenzi Online is the SACPs authentic voice.
2006 was the year when the CU did its first No Woman, No Revolution series, from February to May, meeting at the Womens Jail, Constitution Hill. 2006 was also the year which, in August, saw the launch of the Progressive Womans Movement, something different and opposite in character from what the Communist University had imagined.
The Communist University is not a constitutional structure of the SACP. It supports the SACP, the ANC, and COSATU. But for pedagogical reasons, if for no other, it must be allowed to speculate, without any prejudice to those organisations.
So here are some speculative theses on the question of women in South Africa :
Women, as such, have no interests that are antagonistic to those of men, but women have a common and particular felt experience among themselves, as women, of the oppression that capitalism has brought to their lives.
Therefore there is a basis for women to organise as a mass, by which is meant a small or large number of people who feel a common disadvantage in society, and who in consequence organise themselves together for their collective good.
Womens mass organisations have the same requirement as trade union and political-vanguard organisations, to be both democratic and centralist. Therefore womens organisations should have individual membership, branches, a national congress, corporate personality, and a constitution to ensure democracy.
The SACP, as a vanguard political organisation of the working class, is designed to relate to such mass organisations, just as it relates to trade union organisations, and others.
As a matter of historical fact, the ANC, through the ANCWL, has on four successive occasions since its founding in 1948, acted to ensure that the above kind of democratic, mass, individual-membership general-purpose womens movement couldnotflourish. The ANCWL, under pressure from the ANC, blighted FEDSAW, the UDF womens structures, and the Womens National Coalition, and it now blights the Progressive Womens Movement.
The ANC adopted non-sexism in the 1980s, and the current South African Constitution is non-sexist, but in practice these provisions mean little as compared to the non-existence of a mass womens movement that has membership and democracy, and which is politically aligned to the working class and to the cause of socialism.
Very little of the above is discussed in the general public realm. What discussion there may be is often based on unexamined vulgar bourgeois-feminist, eclectic, post-modernist precepts. The situation is, on the face of it, much the same as it was four years ago in mid-2005, when the Communist University began to plan its first No Woman, No Revolution series.
Yet two very great gains have been made. The one was the election, in December 2007 at Polokwane, of an ANC National Executive Committee of 84 members of which 50% are women. The other is this months announcement by the SACP GS that the YCLSA has a membership that is more than 50% female.
Click on this link:
Umsebenzi Online on Women, 2006-2009 (http://amadlandawonye.wikispaces.com/Umsebenzi+Online+on+Women,+2006-2009) (6340 words)
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Posted By DomzaNet to Communist University (http://domza.blogspot.com/2009/08/umsebenzi-online.html) on 8/27/2009 12:34:00 P
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
--------------------------------------------(end)
++++
+++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Linda Jenness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Jenness), 1972 US presidential candidate
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/84/Jenness-for-president.jpg