As the fractions of the capitalist ruling class fight for control over the factions of the ruling party, we see the junior capitalists taking flight via Lanseria after the banks and finance capital in the form of ABSA, Standardbank and Nedbank cut ties with them.
Thus what politicians could not achieve, namely the downfall of the Guptas, the capitalist monopoly banks did. Makes you ask who is really running this country? ABSA is tied to Barclays (British Capital); the majority shareholder in Standard Bank is the Development Bank of China, while Nedbank is the bank of Afrikaner and European capital. ABSA’s faction in the ANC is around Trevor Manuel and Maria Ramos. When one talks of Nedbank Vali Moosa comes to mind, including Chancellor House, Eskom and the black diamonds of coal mining, not to forget Anglo Platinum.
Standard Bank is the bank of mining par excellence, and the Chinese Development Bank is also one of the investors that Glencore gave preference shares to before listing in Singapore. In the shadow of Glencore we find the person of our Deputy President and his faction of the ANC. Our Speaker Mbete is tied up with Gold Fields.Traditional monopoly capital trumped the Guptas who are really small fry compared to the old colonial banking, mining and retail monopolies.
So the old colonial monopoly order is reasserting its control and kicking out any “junior upstarts”. The working class will feel the pain. The retrenchment in the mining sector, the call in today’s Sunday Times by Ann Bernstein for government to discipline the working class and affirm the country’s position as a pool of cheap expendable labour in a primarily extractive economy will probably see a reversal of any gains the working class made since 1994 in the workplace as the banks and old colonial monopoly capital use the excuse of Zuma and the Guptas not only to sweep these wanabe kleptomaniacs from political power and economic influence, but also to crush the working class.
What are the lessons of class struggle from this? Firstly, The ruling party cannot advance the cause of the working class, it is entirely polluted by corporate capital whether junior or old colonial capital. It is like a apple infested by worms.
Secondly, the DA is an openly capitalist party, full of old colonial, especially British capital, and worse Israeli capital. We should not forget that Israeli capital in the form of Ivan Glasenberg also penetrated the ANC – particularly our deputy president. The DA might find itself promoted from second choice to first choice of monopoly capital, as the big mining houses and banks seek to discipline their pawns in the ruling party in the next elections.
Thirdly, the Government and Parliament, in fact the entire superstructure that was negotiated in 1994 is nothing less than a capitalist ruling class playground that entirely excludes the masses of the people, who as we saw in the struggles against the upcoming local elections in many communities in today’s news, are now beginning to realise that bourgeois democracy excludes the working class and the poor.
It is time for the South African working class and the poor to realise that we cannot rely on white monopoly capital, nor can we rely on any form of black capital, especially given that the latter is but an appendage of the former. Therefore, the sooner the working class and the poor realise that, “we are the many, and the ruling class in all it factions, fractions, interests, race configurations are the few” and that real power does not reside in money but in the multitude of the working masses and the poor who actually liberated this country from Apartheid, the better. Only then will we be free of patriarchy, exploitation, oppression and discrimination.
Read Also : Thorstein Veblen and the South African Class Struggle
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