Now it looks as if the full force of the law might be used to keep the electricity supply to fans’ TVs running, and prevent workers from exercising their right to strike.

Eskom is South Africa’s state owned electricity supplier, although attempts were made to at least partially privatise it in the late 1990s, meaning it operates in many ways as a private business. Eskom workers are demanding a 9% pay increase, as well as a housing allowance to help them cope with the rocketing cost of keeping a roof over their heads. The company has refused to meet their demands, offering increases in wages and allowances well below what the workers need during an economic crisis.

A strike would be unlikely to affect the actual electricity supply to the stadia themselves, as they generally have back up diesel generators. But it could affect the supply to TVs for fans from around the world who are in South Africa without tickets. More importantly for the South African economy, and global capitalism, it could disrupt platinum and gold mines, affecting the global price of these commodities.

In response to the unions pledge to push ahead with strike action next week, as the World Cup moves towards semi finals, Eskom has threatened to go to the courts and have the strike declared illegal, because electricity is deemed an “essential service”, and therefore presumably electricity workers should have no rights. “This is a country of laws and we must all abide by the laws,” said Eskom CEO Brian Dames.

The unions counter that they have tried to reach a ‘minimum service agreement’ with Eskom, meaning that non-essential workers would be able to strike while the lights were kept on. Eskom instead proposed an agreement that would have completely removed the right to strike from all workers, which the unions refused to sign.

What’s particularly ridiculous about Eskom’s refusal to budge is that its own executives have been caught out using company funds to feather their own nests. Executives are to be paid a 9.6 million Rand performance bonus, while they claim they can’t afford to pay their workers properly. They have established a R1 billion pool to fund payments to top bosses.

They’ve also spent R12.6 million on World Cup tickets for top execs.

Dames said he was appealing for “organised labour to play a part in putting our country first.”

But union spokesman Lesiba Seshoka hit back, saying: “We would like to put our country first; why don’t they put their workers first? Why are they putting themselves first?”

After the government attempted to partially privatise Eskom in the late 1990s, it refused to provide funds for the building of extra electrical power plants, meaning that there are now problems with supply leading to blackouts. A huge proportion of the poor population of South Africa continues to have no access to electricity supply.

Protesters slam rising electricity bills

During the Apartheid era, it was common for people to refuse to pay their power bills as a form of struggle against the racist and oppressive government, and to covertly connect themselves to the supply illegally. This form of struggle has seen a resurgence in recent years as the urban poor have been enraged that the impact of neoliberal economic policies means many still have no access to a proper home, electricity or clean water, and for those that do have access to utilities bills have jumped.

These policies have been implemented by the African National Congress government, which has now largely abandoned its left wing roots to become a party that only implements policies that suit South African and international capitalists. Significantly, the British bosses’ paper, the Financial Times, reckons there’ll be no strike because of the ANC. “If things aren’t sorted out by the weekend, expect party heavyweights to get involved,” they write.

The latest strike threat to the World Cup comes after the dramatic strike of stewards at stadia forced police to take over security at games. The stewards were angry that at their poverty pay at the hands of FIFA contractor Stallion Security. They linked up with community protesters who held banners demanding “World Cup for All! People Before Profit” and declaring “Apartheid Still Exists!”

Police used rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse strikers before taking over security themselves at games such as the first round match between Brazil and North Korea.

Workers on strike at Soccer City

The heavy handed security for the World Cup has been a scandalous issue, with FIFA using South African police as a tool to protect their own business interests, excluding anyone who wanted to expose their role, or local traders trying to make a livelihood in the zones around the stadia where FIFA has been given exclusive economic control. A local environmentalist was arrested in durban for handing out leaflets about the World Cup’s impact at a ‘Fan Fest’ event, and another man who was found with 30 tickets and “no explanation” was given three years in jail.

Stallion itself is a scandal ridden operation, after a promise by the labour minister to ban it due to its terrible treatment of workers was not fulfilled. In 2001 it was responsible for a stampede at a Johannesburg football game that left 40 dead.

Their partner as head of security for FIFA’s local organising committee is former prisons commissioner Linda Mti, who gets a cut from a notorious privatised concentration camp for immigrants who have been arrested at Lindela (as well as being a triple arrestee for drunk driving.)

He's a bastard, in't he?

By Calum Nelson, MPharm

In South Africa there’s a popular comedian called Matthias Rath. Here’s one of his jokes:

“Patient: Doctor Doctor, I’m worried about transmitting HIV to my unborn baby.

Doctor: Don’t worry, just have some potatoes. Whatever you do, don’t take any poisonous anti-viral medicine which will actually cause AIDS.”

It’s a screamer eh? Ok, I lied. Matthias Rath is actually a doctor from Germany, not a comedian, and some might also say he’s a serial killer. Not a serial killer in the Harold Shipman way, but his practices have almost certainly led to the deaths of thousands of South Africans.

South Africa is a nation with a massive HIV/AIDS crisis. It is currently estimated that 11% of South Africans are HIV-positive. This means that if you walk down a busy street in South Africa, chances are 1 in every 10 people you see has HIV. This changes by province; in KwaZulu-Natal the rate goes up to 26%. With a disease this widespread, anyone able to market a treatment might end up very rich very quickly and it appears that Matthias Rath also knew this.

Having studied medicine in his native Germany, Rath went into research in California. It was here that he started making claims about the use of high dose vitamins in treatment of cardiovascular disease. He began suggesting that conventional cancer treatments should not be used as they kill patients and that they should instead take Rath’s vitamin supplements. His books developed an impressive readership throughout Europe and he sold lots of interestingly priced vitamins. Despite being criticised and fined throughout Europe for claiming his pills could cure cancer, he developed an impressive following and an impressive bank balance, allowing him to try and break South Africa. Well he broke it alright.

With all guns blazing he filled newspaper pages with his claims. “Antivirals are a conspiracy by the pharmaceutical industry to poison you. Vitamins are the true solution to AIDS. Stop taking your antivirals right now…RIGHT NOW. STOP IT. STOP TAKING THEM. SPIT IT OUT. Now don’t let me catch you doing it again.” Ok, so those weren’t his exact words, but they might as well have been. Soon he was conducting trials, recruiting poor black township residents with promises of money or food. The patients were told to stop taking their antivirals and were instead given high doses of vitamins. Guess what happened. Guess. Everyone was actually fine and they all lived happily ever after. Sorry, typo, what I meant to say was that a considerable number of the study participants quickly deteriorated and died. The South African High Court eventually found that Rath’s trial was illegal. This could have ended up being an unfortunate isolated incident in which a doctor with crazy ideas performed an unethical trial. Thousands of lives may have been saved if one of Rath’s supporters didn’t just happen to be the President of the Republic of South Africa.

And so it came to pass that thanks to Matthias Rath, a country with one of the highest HIV rates in the world was telling people to take African potatoes and garlic instead of antivirals. The country refused to roll out antiviral treatment programmes; they turned down grant money intended for the purchase of HIV medication and even turned down donations of drugs. Presidential advisors recommended banning HIV tests and denied any knowledge of an AIDS epidemic in Africa. President Thabo Mbeki himself repeatedly denied that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS and his health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang repeatedly praised Rath’s work and publicly decried antiviral therapy as being dangerous and counterproductive. Overall it’s estimated that around 330,000 people died unnecessarily in the space of 5 years thanks to the government’s policy on antivirals.

Naturally these policies encountered opposition; the Western Cape province ignored governmental advice and continued to supply antiretrovirals. Groups such as Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) did their utmost to get HIV medication to those in need. This resulted in Anthony Brink, a colleague of Rath, taking TAC to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, accusing them of genocide. In his indictment Brink set out what he believed to be an appropriate punishment for Zachie Achmat, the founder of TAC:

“APPROPRIATE CRIMINAL SANCTION

In view of the scale and gravity of Achmat’s crime and his direct personal criminal culpability for ‘the deaths of thousands of people’, to quote his own words, it is respectfully submitted that the International Criminal Court ought to impose on him the highest sentence provided by Article 77.1(b) of the Rome Statute, namely to permanent confinement in a small white steel and concrete cage, bright fluorescent light on all the time to keep an eye on him, his warders putting him out only to work every day in the prison garden to cultivate nutrient-rich vegetables, including when it’s raining. In order for him to repay his debt to society, with the ARVs he claims to take administered daily under close medical watch at the full prescribed dose, morning noon and night, without interruption, to prevent him faking that he’s being treatment compliant, pushed if necessary down his forced-open gullet with a finger, or, if he bites, kicks and screams too much, dripped into his arm after he’s been restrained on a gurney with cable ties around his ankles, wrists and neck, until he gives up the ghost on them, so as to eradicate this foulest, most loathsome, unscrupulous and malevolent blight on the human race, who has plagued and poisoned the people of South Africa, mostly black, mostly poor, for nearly a decade now, since the day he and his TAC first hit the scene.

Signed at Cape Town, South Africa, on 1 January 2007

Anthony Brink”

Fortunately Rath’s heyday is over in South Africa. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was replaced as health minister and Mbeki was replaced as president by Kgalema Motlanthe, who stated that “the era of AIDS denialism in South Africa is over.” Despite this, a massive amount of damage was done by Rath and the other AIDS dissidents in South Africa. The lack of HIV medication is estimated to have caused 35,000 babies to have been unnecessarily born with HIV and 171,000 preventable HIV infections. Antiviral medication is difficult enough for the poorest to afford at the best of times thanks to prohibitive pricing by the pharmaceutical industry and so extra restrictions are likely to have a devastating effect. Purely for the sake of money and advancing his own career, Rath destroyed thousands of lives and thousands of families across South Africa. In a similar fashion to our own MMR scare, irresponsible claims made with a lack of evidence proved dangerous and the importance of examining evidence is once again demonstrated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFsgCUhYNxg

Today sees the launch of the 2010 football world cup in South Africa. It’s great news for football fans, and we’re playing our part with a world cup raffle (comment if you’d like to get a ticket!) and South Africa night for the final (watch this space for details.)

But great as it might be for us on the other side of the world to get a month of football to watch, the real costs of the tournament for South Africa are getting hidden amongst the excitement.

Over the next month we’re going to be bringing you a series of articles about South Africa, its history and long political struggles for democracy and socialism that are far from over.

Twenty years ago, holding the world cup in South Africa would have been unthinkable. The world at large refused to allow South Africa to participate in most major sporting events because of Apartheid, the state enforced system of extreme racial segregation and oppression.

But with the fall of Apartheid in the early 90s, the world’s media told us South Africa’s problems were solved. There was democracy, and a government elected by the black majority was finally in power.

Since then however, South African governments have turned away from the left wing ideas that inspired many in the struggle against Apartheid, and looked to global capitalism to solve South Africa’s problems.

The result has been that the majority of South Africans continue to live below the poverty lines, with millions of homeless and low rates of access to clean water or electricity. The average male life expectancy is just 49, and there are unemployment rates of 40%.

While so much has been spent on the world cup, the government still does not provide thousands with a proper home

The government has made the world cup an important part of its economic strategy, and has spent $4.1 billion on hosting the event, more than any other country before it. A series of brand new stadia have been built, driving an economic bubble in the construction industry. However, now that the work is done, the real question is, how much will South Africa actually benefit from the world cup?

In order to win the right to host the tournament, South Africa had to give FIFA 17 key guarantees. High among these was that the stadia and the surrounding areas would become exclusive economic zones. Within these zones, FIFA and its partners, such as merchandise companies, service providers and foreign teams, will not pay tax and will not be subject to controls on taking money out of the country.

Huge amounts of stuff has been imported into these zones, but the South African state is not seeing any tax revenue, which will have a long term impact on the South African economy. Where money has been collected, it is then paid back in tax rebates.

The zones, which extend for wide areas around the stadia, have become exclusion zones for small businesses and street traders. Durban fisherfolk will not be able to sell their catch on the piers. And thousands of people who depend on street trading for their livelihood have been displaced, in order to allow FIFA and its multinational partners higher profits.

FIFA, the international governing body of football, is officially a “not for profit organisation,” and as such enjoys tax-exempt status at its headquarters in Switzerland. But it has already banked as much as £2.2 billion in profits from the world cup in South Africa, thanks to the government concessions. Fifa secretary-general ­Jerome Valcke boasted that “we have increased our income by 50% since 2006 in Germany to 2010 in South Africa”

FIFA's Jerome Valcke rubs his hands at world cup profits

Given how much the government has capitulated to the demands of FIFA, the spokesman they put up on the issue is appropriately named Adrian Lackay. He said:

“From the perspective of what we spent as a country and from what the country stands to make in terms of revenue and profits it is almost ­negligible.

“Our approach to the World Cup has been that it was never going to be a revenue-raising exercise. Certainly it would be wrong to view the World Cup as a significant contributor in itself.

“The concessions we had to give to Fifa are simply too demanding and overwhelming for us to have material monetary benefits.”

Another government official, speaking anonymously to South African newspaper, was more blunt: “Fifa are a bunch of thugs. Not even the UN expects you to sign away your tax base. These mafiosos do.

Other demands of FIFA have put a severe strain on South Africa. The South African Football Association has had to provide FIFA with two private jets,  two limousines, 300 cars, half a dozen buses and “chauffeurs who speak fluent English and are thoroughly familiar with the area”.

Hospital beds, intensive care units and ambulances have been reserved for FIFA and its foreign visitors. More than £61 million has been spent readying emergency medical services and numerous state-of-the-art medical centres, ambulances and rescue vehicles which have been kept under lock and key for exclusive use during the 30-day tournament.

The new stadia themselves may well prove to be expensive white elephants.  In Cape Town a brand new stadium was built, despite the fact that the existing one would have done just fine if an extra layer of seats was added. This was the most expensive of the venues, costing over £396 million. The reason for this, according to FIFA, is that, “A billion television viewers don’t want to see shacks and poverty on this scale [as exists near the old stadium].”

The hugely expensive new Green Point stadium in Cape Town

The £273 million new stadium in Durban is in fact a stone’s throw from the existing one, which again could easily have been extended to meet world cup standards. This is all the more perverse, considering that after the tournament 15,000 seats will be removed from the stadium because it’s too big! What this points to of course is that once the world cup is finished these stadia will not have any use.

New airports and train lines have been built specifically for the tournament, which will do nothing to address the huge public transport problems of people who live in poor townships like Soweto, but will allow temporary rich visitors to travel in style.

One of the more sinister demands made by FIFA was to do with the fear internationally of South Africa’s high crime rate. To deal with this, special 24 hour, 7 days a week courts have been set up. Over £3 million has been spent on 56 of these special courts, with the aim of processing any crime around the world cup very quickly. FIFA’s Valcke has spoken publicly about using South Africa’s police and courts as his own tool:

“We will protect our World Cup whatever we have to do – that’s very clear.
Even if we again are looking as bad guys… or me personally as a bad guy…
but that’s my role… is to protect the world cup… and to protect Fifa…
and that’s what I will do. And to do this I need the police, I need the
justice… Because the World Cup has to be a success.”

Its no surprise that this has led to a ratcheting up of police oppression against poor South Africans. Marches and rallies have been banned throughout South Africa in June. Last week protesting workers were killed by cops in Etwatwa (East Rand) and Protea South (Soweto).

But the most brutal legacy of the world cup will be the thousands of people evicted from where they were living to make way for it. Here there’s an interactive panorama of some of the areas affected, where thousands have been forced into transit camps where people will live in terrible conditions indefinitely. The BBC’s studio is on the roof of a hospital from which homeless sick people were removed, and the England team are using changing rooms for training that were previously home to homeless squatters, who have since been evicted.

Inside a transit camp for displaced homeless people

Football around the world is the people’s game, loved by the working class. The world cup is an exciting time for all football fans. But that shouldn’t be allowed to obscure the fact that it is now controlled by powerful, global economic forces, and the South African world cup will do more harm than good for the South African poor. Over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing you info about people’s resistance in South Africa, both today and during Apartheid.

But in the meantime, it’s important to remember that a big sporting event has brought corruption and land grabs in its wake. The Athens Olympics helped contribute to the huge debts of the Greek state today, for example. It’s something that it’s important for us to keep in mind in the run up to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

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The only good fascist is a dead one

"I look all annoyed because I don't like the blecks"

Eugene Terre Blanche was the leader of the AWB – the Afrikaner Resistance Movement. The AWB is a far-right organisation that was founded in the 70′s because some Afrikaners were so mental they thought pro-Nazi Prime Minister BJ Forster was too liberal. The AWB violently opposed relaxation of even “petty apartheid” rules, like black and white people kissing, marrying, shagging etc.

Even when the chips were obviously down for apartheid, the AWB were trying to organise a civil war and carve out their own all-white Boer state out of a multiracial South Africa, not dissimilar to what the Serbs did in Bosnia. At their height the AWB had the support of roughly 5-7% of South Africa’s white population, a similar % that the BNP get today from the UK population.

The AWB organised violent attacks against Blacks in South Africa as well as those Afrikaner politicians they believed were too liberal; for example, shooting and throwing grenades at Black South Africans during the chaos of the Bophuthatswana coup where their members declared they were on a “kaffir hunting picnic”.

The AWB also turned up armed and provoked violence outside a meeting where President FW Klerk was speaking in the Battle of Ventersdorp. Klerk had enraged a minority of Afrikaners for unbanning the African National Congress and releasing Nelson Mandela. This wasn’t the only violent attempt to stop the dismantling of apartheid – the AWB also stormed the Kempton Park World Trade Centre where negotiations to conduct South Africa’s first free and fair multiracial elections were being conducted.

The AWB’s campaign of violence was unable to stop the inevitable destruction of apartheid however. Despite having a small but armed minority of support among Afrikaners, the White population of South Africa was too small to survive as an indefinite dictatorship over the Black majority population any longer. The AWB’s demand for a white ruled Boer Republic was a fantasy, as there was no contiguous landmass in South Africa that had a white majority. The South African state and economy was dependent on the overwhelming majority of the population, the Black population, having no rights whatsoever, allowing South Africa to construct a slave economy over the backs of the populace.

The Boers themselves were largely made up of the descendants of Dutch colonists who had arrived in the South of Africa over 300 years ago. They fled the British ruled Cape Colony, in what was called the “Great Trek” where they lived a nomadic lifestyle. They called themselves “Voortrekkers” and were similar to the European colonists in North America and Zionist settlers in Palestine in that they saw their role as taking control of “virgin territory” that had been unused, left to waste until a superior race of people could exploit it. Like in North America and Palestine however the Voortrekkers were not alone – this land too had a people.

The Voortrekker’s superior technology allowed them to massacre the indigenous Zulu tribes. At the Battle of Blood River the Voortrekkers were able to slaughter 3000 Zulu Natal warriors. No Voortrekkers died – only 3 of them were lightly wounded. After this defeat of the native population, the Voortrekkers were able to establish several Boer republics, which eventually became the apartheid South African state.

It’s this siege mentality among sections of the White South African population, that has been a part of their history in settling in Africa that the AWB relate to and try to exploit. Since the collapse of apartheid many White South Africans have lost their old privileges in the political and economic systems of South Africa. Many Boers and their farms have also been attacked, and there is fear among the Boers that what happened in Zimbabwe – where White farmers were expelled from their land will happen to them. On the opposite side many Black South Africans have not seen their quality of life increase substantially in democratic South Africa, and whilst losing a lot of their privileges the Afrikaner population is still better off than any other racial group in South Africa.

We don't know if Wikus Van De Merwe did kill Eugene with alien weaponry, but we are prepared to float it as a possibility.

So whilst most of South Africa’s population support the dismantling of apartheid, it is by no means a perfect multiracial rainbow paradise yet. There still remains a minority of Afrikaners who are attracted to the ideas of the AWB. In 2004 a poll was conducted to find out who South Africans thought their greatest countryman was – unsurprisingly, Mandela topped it, but Terre Blanche came in at No 25.

If you want to see more about Eugene, Nick Broomfield has done a series of documentaries about the nutter which are available here.

The Daily Mail has whipped itself into a frenzy, calling Zuma a “vile buffoon” and a “sex-obsessed bigot”, as well as repeatedly calling him “Zulu Boy”.

The Telegraph is appalled that he has been invited after  describing the British as “condescending imperialists” and think Her Maj ought to teach him some manners.

The BBC is obsessed with his multiple marriages.

The Guardian’s front page pictured the Queen next to Zuma’s wife Thobeka Stacey Madiba, as if to contrast liberated white womanhood against Mrs Zuma as chattel.

Let’s get some things straight. Jacob Zuma isn’t a very nice man. He’s a corrupt, homophobic, misogynist, rapist.

But most Heads of State and people of power are pretty distasteful, if you look in to it.  The Queen has hosted Mugabe and Ceau?escu, for goodness sake, as well as being big buddies with George W Bush.

So how come the media aren’t reporting on Zuma’s corruption, or his politics, or what he’s done in his role as President? How come they’re not using his actions to talk about issues of rape, women’s rights, gay rights, and equality in South Africa and the rest of the world today?

All we’ve learnt from the media coverage of Zuma’s visit is that we can all point and laugh at the crazy brown man, mock him and his culture and call him ‘Zulu Boy’ and get away with it. It all stinks of racism and white supremacy.

If the British media wants to criticize Zuma, maybe they could have reported on the South African feminists fighting for equality under Zuma’s regime, such as Pumla Gqola, whose wonderful myth-busting article on polygamy cuts right to the chase:

The point of the matter is not whether in a feminist republic we’d force Zuma to choose one wife or banish him… We’d probably banish Zuma for many more reasons, least of which his preference for multiple partners.

How come the white ruling class only give a shit about women’s rights when they’re trying to justify their own racism?