By Martin Legassick
Ben Turok (‘Calm down. The ANC is not about to seize mines’, The Times, 19/7/2009) may not support nationalisation of the mines in the present, but as one of the authors of the 1955 economic clauses in the Freedom Charter, the honourable Turok should be mindful to not distort history nor mangle language.
While Turok may have written the economic clauses in the Freedom Charter, he does not quote them fully in his article. For example ‘The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry, shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole.’ In the present, Turok omits ‘the banks and monopoly industry’.
Moreover, he claims that what ‘was in our minds at the time was to emphasise that white economic power had usurped the historical legacy of the indigenous people whose ownership had to be restored. It was the colonial aspect that the charter sought to reverse, not private ownership of property.’ Turok’s re-interpretation of the Freedom Charter is similar to that of Nelson Mandela in an article in Liberation (June, 1956). But the actual words do not allow for this. Transfer to ‘the ownership of the people as a whole’ is something different from a transfer to ‘some of the people’, i.e. black capitalists (BEE), as Mandela argued for. Transfer to the ownership of the people as a whole does represent a reversal of private ownership of property.
Turok himself emphasised this in his speech motivating these clauses on June 26 1955 when he said the Freedom Charter says ‘there will be a committee of the workers to run the Gold Mines. Friends, we also say that wherever there is a factory and where there are workers who are exploited, we say that the workers will take over and run the factories.’ (Karis and Carter, From Protest to Challenge, Vol III, p. 195)
Turok continues (contradictorily) by claiming that ‘external’ factors such as Labour Party nationalisations in Britain and Latin America influenced the Freedom Charter. He continues: ‘In post-colonial Africa … Tanzania nationalised many industries, Zambia took over the copper mines and so on … and we were all influenced thereby.’
While Turok may well be correct on the influence of Britain and Latin America, the nationalisations by African states in the 1960s could hardly have influenced the Freedom Charter, drawn up in 1955!
Turok omits one other key influence. Just two months before the Freedom Charter was adopted, on 18–24 April 1955, the first major conference of Asian and African states took place in Bandung, Indonesia, and adopted a strongly anti- colonial and anti-imperialist stand. At that time, President Sukarno of Indonesia (who was to lose power in the 1960s as the result of a right-wing military coup) had already nationalised the main bank, two public utilities, and the national airline and further nationalisations were under discussion, to be implemented from above in 1956 and from below in 1958. Equally India, a leader of ‘non-alignment’, had already nationalised a number of banks and the airline. Equally Iran had nationalised the Anglo-Persian oil company, and Nasser in Egypt was shortly to nationalise the Suez Canal. India, Iran and Egypt all attended the Bandung conference and nationalisation was in the air.
In the present global crisis of capitalism, which marks the death-knell of neo-liberalism, nationalisation is once again on the agenda, in Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America. In Indonesia last year, students began a campaign for nationalisation of oil, gas and mining companies. Why should the ANC government not implement its own document, the Freedom Charter, and nationalise the banks (whose charges are reportedly higher than anywhere else in the world), the mines (who are shedding labour at a rate of 5% a year) and the monopolies (whose degree of price-collusion against the poor has been recently exposed by the Competition Commission)? To prevent inefficiency and corruption, and to ensure accountability (‘ownership of the people as a whole’), the nationalisation should be carried through with democratic workers’ control and management.
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