IN his Private Eye: The First 50 Years (2011), author Adam Macqueen recounts how Dave Spart, the magazine's resident polemicist, took a principled stand and declined to be interviewed for this entertaining history. An ultra-left wing activist, he declared "the celebration of anniversaries is an inherently militaristic act and as such totally unacceptable while Britain retains its illegal, repressive and imperialist presence in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Falkland Islands".
Spart first appeared in December 1971, when he joined the National Amalgamated Union of Sixth-Form Operatives and Allied Trades. He is, of course, a fiction used to parody the Marxist dogma popular in the 1970s with institutions like the University of Sussex, where former President Thabo Mbeki and his good chum, Essop "The Thinker" Pahad were taught economic theory and how to speak in bilge.
With the collapse of communism in Europe, Spart disappeared from the frontlines of the international struggle against the hegemonical bourgeoisie - only to surface in spirit a few years ago in the local labour movement.
Castro Ngobese, the National Union of Metalworkers of SA spokesman, is particularly adept at Spartist rhetoric. His statement this week expressing "unflinching and worker-to-worker solidarity" with striking miners and threatening to call on Cosatu affiliates to "embark on solidarity actions" was full of it:
"About 90 000 workers in the mining Gold sector have downed tools . . . after the filthy rich and stinking greedy mining ruling oligarchy, as represented by the Chamber of Mines refused to concede to wage demands of workers. This clearly demonstrates that the mining oligarchy is hell-bent on reversing the democratic gains of workers, particularly the mineworkers by perpetuating and reproducing apartheid Bantu income inequalities and horrendous living conditions."
As an aside I must point out that slop like this leaves me in a quandary. It's clear that English is not Ngobese's native tongue but - quoting him here - do I extend him the courtesy of a tidy-up? Drop in a comma here and there? Edit for clarity? Or do I do that "sic erat scriptum" thing? The one leaves me vulnerable to charges of cultural imperialism, the other of being a supercilious prat.
But perhaps he really wants to sound like a bunch of graffiti in the toilets of a student cafeteria, so I'll take my chances and leave it as is. Whichever way, it's obvious we're dealing with a person who's had enough of listening to those who know better.
"We reject the scare tactics being used by self-appointed Spokespersons of the exploiting class, the so-called ‘Economic Analysts', by referring to these ongoing class struggles for a Living Wage by workers as the ‘strike season'. In our view this is nothing, but a scare crow to delegitimize the genuine and reasonable demands of workers in modern day Capitalist South Africa. The scandalous triple crisis of poverty, unemployment and inequality, as well as the Apartheid wage gap that exists in our country legitimizes the struggles of workers for a decent Living Wage."
On the other hand, here Ngobese could be onto something. It does seem silly to talk of a "strike season" when "class struggles" are ongoing and hardly a week goes by without industrial action scaring up the analysts. Maybe the seasons are just getting longer and longer each year.
Meanwhile, pitiful messages reach us here at the Mahogany Ridge from Johannesburg via social media as apparent acts of sabotage by striking City Power workers have plunged huge chunks of the city into darkness.
"Night two in JHB without power," reads one such Facebook update. "Jem and I sitting with headtorches looking out to patches of brightness and wondering how smug the unaffected suburbs must feel. The fridge has now started to pong. Hot water barely tepid. And all about an eerie silence, with the occasional patrol car passing. Block of flats feels empty, I think some residents have decamped. Feels more like Kinshasa or Harare."
According to a DA councillor up there, workers downed tools in retaliation to "the imposition of new working conditions which . . . led to a serious drop in take-home pay".
I wonder. I was, until recently, a homeowner in Johannesburg. But in the all the years I was a ratepayer there, I've only ever once had dealings with a City Power employee. "What's it worth to you," he wanted to know, "if I don't cut off your electricity?"
That was a few months ago. I never paid him, but was this the "serious drop" in his wage packet? If so, I'm sorry, Joburg. Come down sometime and bath in our sea if you want. Bring money.
This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.
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