Trade Tower: A website we like

BETTER WORLD SHOPPER is a site dedicated to providing people with a comprehensive, up-to-date, reliable account of the social and environmental responsibility of every company on the planet AND making it available in practical forms that individuals can use in their everyday lives. Coming out of more than 5 years of intensive research, this work is based on a comprehensive database of over 1000 companies and utilizes 25+ reliable sources of data to cover everything from the environment to human rights, community development to animal protection.

Well quite rightfully this is not just a website, this is a catalyst for a change of lifestyle. Check it out http://www.betterworldshopper.com/ and tell us what you think. Even though they are based in the USA and many of the brands they rate are based in that country, many of of them are relevant worldwide; courtesy of globalization and American cultural and economic dominance of course.

* Let's start with ourselves and family and friends by voting with our rands and dollars and sooner than we know it change will surely come about. Another great recent initiative worth mentioning is the South African government Department of Trade and Industry's demanding that imports from Israeli illegal settlements be labeled as such so that consumers who want to support Occupied Palestinian products only can distinguish between them. Political will is hard to come by for just causes these days and this step (and it is no small one) by our government is certainly commendable.

Trade Tower: This week's links

Image: M&G

One cant help but reflect on how this Mail & Guardian article provides some vindication for some of the findings of the book, "Banking: the root cause of the injustices of our time." Turns out that "High levels of credit may have contributed to the cocktail of factors that led to the bloody clashes between police and Lonmin strikers." Read full article...

Our favourite anti-finacial terrorism broadcaster, Max Keiser, is at it again: Silver Liberation Army Readies Major Assault with New "Ethical Silver Keisers." Read full article...

Amilcar Cabral: a brief bio

Though his parents were from Cape Verde, Amilcar Cabral was born in Guinea. He was sent to Cape Verde for schooling. Living in rural Santa Catarina exposed him to discrepancies between the big landowners and the tenant farmers who worked the land. It is in this setting that he gained his sensitivity. In 1945, he went to Lisbon to study Agronomy. There he made contact with other students from Portugal colonies. His thesis was on soil erosion in Alentejo dedicated to the tenant farmers of rural Guinea. He returned to Guinea after his studies and was employed in the country’s agricultural bureau. He immediately got to work making people aware of the exploitation of the big landowners. It is while working at this job that he conducts a agricultural census that would allow him to travel Guinea-Bissau extensively, thereby gaining information of the land and its people that will come in handy in his coming struggle for liberation. Word got to the government and he was soon expelled. He then moved on to work in Angola were his knowledge in the agricultural sector was also in short supply. In 1959, he travels to France and Italy and soon after informs his wife in Portugal that he will not be returning to that country. He has now decided to come out with his plans to form an party to bring about independence from Portugal. In 1958, the republic of Guinea Conackry is proclaimed. Cabral decided to set up his base there. Communication networks are setup with the villagers in Guinea-Bissau using the connections Cabral had made in his Agricultural Bureau days there. Soon his troops enter Guinea-Bissau and are thrown into a guerilla war against the Portuguese colonialists. His party, PAIGC, gains a considerable amount of land in the process but don’t fully free the country from the colonizers. Even then in the midst of the war, Cabral begins organizing the lives of the villagers that have come under their control. Like Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, he felt women were fundamental to the development of the country and had women in directorate positions in the PAIGC.

On the 20th January, 1973 Cabral is assassinated after several attempts in his house in Guinea Conakry.

Malik Mahlangu

Thomas Sankara: Our Homeland or Death: a brief bio

Thomas Sankara took over from French occupation in what was known then as Upper Volta in West Africa. Landlocked with no access to the sea and and a desert to the north, it didn’t have much in natural resources. One of the first leaders in the world to stand for women’s rights, and certainly the first in Africa. He banned opposition parties and trade unions but even his detractors did not know him to use violence like other military leaders. Some of his other reforms as part of his revolution program include:

- Boosted cotton production by imposing a national shirt compulsory for public servants made from Burkina Faso cotton

- An environmentalist at heart before it was hip, he saw to the planting of thousands of trees to counter desertification 

- Built railway lines and roads connecting rural Burkina Faso to developments in city with many people volunteering

- Confiscated Mercedes Benzes from public servants and replaced them with cheaper cars and banned them from using first class flights 

- Went on a mass national vaccination program to curb polio. It was so successful that it prompted WHO to congratulate him

And oh he always looked so sharp and stylish even in his military garb.

At an AU summit in Addis Ababa, he called called on fellow African state heads to refuse to pay the national debt to their former colonial masters remarking that in that way they’d avoid being assassinated as individuals if they stand together. 

After three years of the revolution the neocolonial upper class were becoming weary and accusing Sankara of not respecting individual rights. At the height of this growing dissatisfaction, about 1200 teachers went on strike and were dismissed only to be replaced by so called “revolutionary teachers” who were actually just volunteers from the civil and military ranks. Furthermore he was accused of not being able to delegate following his program of mass military training aimed at checking civilian enthusiasm from over-pouring.

As the peak of Western dissatisfaction towards him at an event where Sankara had invited the the French president, he blasted France for allowing South African Apartheid president, Pieter Botha, for allowing Botha to visit France and thus “dirtying France with his bloodied hands and feet.” 

He was assassinated at the order of his close friend and French collaborator, Blaise Comapaore. He was 39 and had always predicted he’d die before 40, just as Malcolm X. Another missed opportunity for Africa to come out of its abyss.

Malik Mahlangu

Music: Download: Motif Records Presents 16s for 16

Motif Records Presents: "16s for 16. A song in honour of the incredibly brave young people who in June 16 1976 mobilised themselves against the repressive apartheid system.

It is a unique lyrical journey featuring 16 of Southern Africa’s most prolific rappers, some you know, some you should. It’s sixteen mcis dropping a 16 bar verse about what concerns the young of today. Make your own legacy this Youth Month."

Full production list below:

Lyrics by:

1. Zubz
2. Kanyi
3. Mr. Beef
4. Kid X
5. Lebo Mochudi
6. Thir{13}teen
7. Tehn Diamond
8. Naked Eye
9. Golden Shovel
10. L-Tido
11. Nthabi
12. Solomon BFG
13. Youngsta
14. Mr Malik (of FAM)
15. Perfecto
16. Reason

Music by:

1. Instro
2. Thir{13}teen
3. Sean Pages
4. BattleKat
5. Al The 3rd
6. Dynamic
7. Hope Master

Download link | http://soundcloud.com/motifrecords/16sfor16

Reflections: The Pan-Africanist road map: A way forward, anyone?

What do we say to the skeptics who say the time of Pan-Africanism has come and went when we say the time of Pan-Africanism has never been more dire and desperate than now? What do we say to them especially when the masses of poor folk in the ghettoes on the fringes of society and a failed state service delivery attack their own African brethren who they see as a threat when trying to get the top of the bucket where the order of the day is "every crab for himself, a better life for us all?" Is the average Azanian indifferent to Pan-Africanism?, and if so then why with service delivery so bad in some rural areas that they could be easily passed off as famine stricken? It was that great early Islamic leader Omar ben al-Khattab who lifted the punishment for a thief in the time of famine who showed what a benevolent government is. The same Omar who walked the streets of Medina, his capital, in disguise asking ordinary people what they thought of his government in an attempt to get a real feel for how he was living up to his title as leader of his people. The lesson is as relevant for today, it is not democracy or whatever other system of rule alone that will save our people but the ship of good institutions. Why else have so many monarchs (read: dictatorships today) survived till the last century when to date not a single democratic nation has abolished poverty fully? Chances are it was because of good institutions in that sultanate or kingdom. The ANC has failed to establish and maintain post-independence institutions that the most deserving of our people can have confidence in. This presents us with an opportunity to go back to the grassroots and establish these social and economic institutions. And here we have been found lacking too. 

But why should we be discouraged and jump ship like the many of little faith for time immemorial have when the numbers our not in our favor? Since when is an idea noble and worthy to live, and if need be, die for only if the majority stand behind it? I say the struggle of Pan-Africanism must pick up its fallen pillar of spirituality. We must remind the masses that we are calling for a compassionate government. Not one that leaves out ordinary people from partaking in the food that is so abundant for all in this rich land like the ANC did recently in Kliptown at their Human Rights Day (whatever that is) celebration. Not only did they once again try to hijack the legacy of the PAC and the people of Sharpeville but they further desecrated on their own Freedom Charter, that dubious document of white liberalism, by shutting out the same people they set out to liberate in 1955. But that's another story for another day altogether as we have dealt with it sufficiently elsewhere and will continue to for as long as the bully of Luthuli House will not change his ways. 

Remember the goal of the selfless Sobukwe was never to be president of Azania or the Republic of South Africa. No, it was firstly the overthrowal of the white minority government and then the exchange, in fact rather return, of land ownership for the benefit of all Africans i.e. anyone whose allegiance was to Africa first. We are not inspired by love of leadership. We need to remind ourselves of that first before we can take the noble message of one Africa united resisting invasion and a second colonial era as we see in countries in east Africa and on our own shores in the Western Cape where huge chunks of the land are sold to foreign nationals and companies from Israel, China and others. Bartering the land is not in our customs, as the BaSotho King Moshoeshoe once pointed out to the British settlers in his time. And indeed not in the customs of any of the people of southern Africa, whom i can speak confidently for being one of their sons myself. This is not some socialist idea we borrowed from China or Russia, no. 

We inherited the same judiciary that enacted oppressive laws that made the system of Apartheid possible, the effect of which we all still feel on a social, economic and political level. But today when you ask that those same institutions enact laws that will reverse for good the aftershocks of the previous system, you are labeled a radical. It is not enough that we simply did away with the Land Act of such and such year and the Pass Laws of such and such year, we need the courts in this country to help us proactively reverse the damage of these previous unjust laws. In the words of Malcolm X, you don't attack a man for not being satisfied when you've stabbed him with a dagger in the back and you pull out a few inches and he demands that you pull all of it out. If this proposition has racial implications, or any other that will accelerate the true liberation of our nation, it is only because the socio-economic issues of this country and continent, nay the whole world have for the past few centuries been tied to race. We are not only here trying to pry our way out of the claws of the legacy of the Land Act but we are up against a system whose tentacles stem as far back as the Berlin Conference and have been allowed to grow stronger and stronger albeit in more subtle ways today. We are not against white people, we are against white supremacy. And for the simple fact that we have to still explain ourselves on that thus wasting precious time on this noble march to economic freedom is the precise reason Sobukwe believed there was no such thing as white liberalism and preferred not to entertain that group. No, there cannot be special guarantees for any section of the population if we are all united under the cry of Africa for Africans. Africans being anyone who owes their allegiance to Africa first. What is so radical about that? I personally as a Muslim hate to bring up race as much as those who hate to hear it being brought up hate hearing it. But to look at everyone who brings up the issue of race as an enemy is disingenuous for as long as economic privilege is so tightly tied to race. Utopian concepts like "willing buyer, willing seller" must be challenged with reason. Only a government staffed (or stuffed) with officials who have been cut a slice of white superiority can so stubbornly remain unwilling to change the status quo. We the sons and daughters of Azania cannot continue to be held ransom by foreign investor interest. Everytime you ask for serious change, Standard & Poor downgrades your credit rating, and patronizing pronouncements like, "South Africa risks losing its place as one of the few success stories in African democracy and fiscal discipline" are made. Quote, unquote "success story!" Our allegiance is with the people, black and white, not with multinational corporations in the West or the emerging East for that matter.

Lastly, personally I would join the chorus of those calling for nationalization if i had any faith that our current government would be an honest owner and distributor of the wealth of mines. But we are not in the business of quick-fix populist solutions meant to bolster personal cults thinly veiled as roadmaps to economic freedom in our lifetime and a better life for all and other slippery slick slogans.

We have been on the defensive for too long. It's time get back on the offensive and retake our rightful place as the pacesetters of true economic freedom in our lifetime.

What's the use of harping on about how we have the best constitution in the world? Best constitution, most badly implemented. Who calls us bitter has bitten us. Ask ubab' Amiri Baraka.

Malik Mahlangu

Reflections: Blacks Are Fools? An Open Letter To Our Brother Slikour

I got my political education from my father first, a former APLA guerilla. Then from my uncle, Vusi ka Zwane, himself an ANC member with ties to the Muslim movement, Murabitun, whose members bombed banks at the order of their mentor (the actor Ian Dallas turned shaykh Abdalqadir As-Sufi) calling for an overhaul of not only the political but the economic system. But my awakening came after or rather while reading The Land Is Ours by P.E.M. Pheko - itself a badly typeset book, something i would've have ignored had i not been married to a publisher- a textbook on the political thinking of Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe. It was on a train from that alleged bastion of white privilege, Cape Town, to that repository of some failed, some realized dreams of the new black about town- Johannesburg. The morning before my departure, i happened to be listening to a song by Slikour titled "Blacks Are Fools", no prizes for guessing what it's about. Naturally i was uneasy about both the name and the content of this shabby excuse of a rally to rouse the "ignant" black masses. After acknowledging that our brother Slikour must've have intended well, it is counterproductive and only played into the hands of the right wing who would only be too glad to make it their new anthem. Or the Swedish art minister who was recently spotted digging into a minstrel caricature cake of a black woman with exaggerated features in the name of calling to attention to the plight of women in Africa or whatever dreamed up misguided Captain Planet hogwash. But I'm losing my train of thought. Back to Slikour's song. It might as well have been Steve Hofmeyer rapping. Though to his credit he does acknowledge that he hoped we are better than that, it still reeks of insensitivity. This is no time for relatively well off blacks like Slikour to be callin out black people for problems that are not entirely of their own making. I would like to advise our brother to get some political education that will bring out a more compassionate way of dealing with these matters that he rightfully raises. At least he didn't make another song about girls shaking their bums. I gave it ten for good intentions, zero for taste.

We need to love our people and not talk down to them. It states on the tomb of the father of our struggle, 'ataturk of Azania', "true leadership demands complete subjugation of self, absolute honesty, integrity and uprightness of character, courage and fearlessness, and above all A CONSUMING LOVE FOR ONE'S PEOPLE." Now i do not for one second doubt our beloved brother's love for his people but love has conditions. You don't speak to the one you love as you wish. Even Moses, who was better than Slikour and all of us who pretend/attempt to free our people, did not speak down to Pharaoh, who was worse than any of our people even by the standards of those who call us fools. There is great wisdom in that. There are too many well-meaning blacks who simply need to learn not only how to speak to the great majority of our people in the slums but need to start backing that talk with the walk, including myself. It has become fashionable for the new black middle class to take up a cause or charity while our immediate family members sleep without a morsel of food in their bellies. Its time to come down from our our ivory towers (and recording studios) and go back to the grassroots. And in this again what a fine example the children of Azania have in the sublime Sobukwe who when a position was offered to him to take up a lecturing post at Rhodes University with the full pay of his white counterparts, turned it down. Not only that but resigned from his current position as a lecturer at Witwatersrand University to dedicate his time and energy fully to the cause. He is also known to have never taken other than the economy class where the majority of his people commuted in trains even though he could afford not to. Now our times do not even require that we follow these examples to the letter. We would do well just to embody the spirit of not feeling and acting like economic white superiority has been conquered just because we have been give some shares in it. Furthermore, the emerging black middle class is today at risk of becoming a class of house negroes, as the current e-tolling system in Gauteng will prove, by exempting public transport commuters (mostly the poorest of the poor) from paying. Who will pour out to the streets and march for us? Satisfied with the crumbs the massa throws at him, he rebukes his brothers left at the bottom of the rung, calling them stupid and lazy. We are still divided and conquered.

The cry of those on whose shoulders we stand today remains relevant, Africa for Africans, Africans for humanity and humanity for God. The Quran says something loosely translated as, "We have created you into different nations and tribes so that you may know each other, not that you may despise each other." At no point in the teachings of any of the three Abrahamaic faiths, which the vast majority of our people subscribe to, is it justified to look down on certain sections of any population that do not look like you. What more your own people?

Though most of the song's lyrics are directed at his fellow music artists and their wasteful ways, in which he has a valid point to call them out, i would rather he moved away from trying to come up with a controversial title for this clearly 'radio-friendly' single and balanced his argument by addressing the issue of predominantly white gatekeepers in the entertainment industry and other sections of our economy.

No, brother Slikour blacks are not fools. In your convenient myopia you forgot that from the vineyards on the winelands of the western Cape to the mining town of Carltonville outside Johannesburg, in between and to the north in Groblersdal up to the mango plantations in Makhado, we are still just cheap labour. Anyway thanks for your concern but we know the problems, how about on your next single you propose some solutions?

Malik Mahlangu

Reflections: Better late than never

[In this image above found in "The Land Is Ours" by S.E.M. Pheko, members of the Apartheid regime on Robben Island Prison have come to check if Sobukwe had changed his views about land repossession by his people and African majority rule.]

Everyone is outdoing themselves trying their hardest to write the legacy of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe off from the pages of our glorious history- the media by not covering him as much as they do their propped up father of the struggle Nelson Mandela and opposition politicians by blatant lies. Or simply relegating him to one month like they have other great stalwarts like Steve Bantu Biko on September the 12th, the day of his assassination. Who's this guy that was once the ANCYL president?, he is infamous for claiming that anti-Pass Laws marches that resulted in the Sharpeville Massacre were organized by the ANC and not the PAC under the leadership of Sobukwe. In March 2012 the Tshwane City Council announced 27 street name changes amongst them Steve Biko, Solomon Mahlangu- no Sobukwe in sight- they even got the DA patting them on the back for extending Nelson Mandela street up to the R21 adding that the street was currently too short for a man of his stature. Nothing about the man who Nelson Mandela mimicked and imitated. Sobukwe was the pace setter for what culminated in the overthrowal of the Apartheid regime. He was the first to come up with concrete, practical steps when the ANC was happy with just asking the white minority government to change their ways, he demanded their total overthrowal. The anti-Pass Laws campaign of 1960 is the most famous but not the only proof of this. After he and several of his comrades were arrested for treason in orchestrating that blow on Apartheid that ushered the era of the black who had finally become not afraid of the guns of the white oppressive government, it is only then that you find the ANC mustering some courage to take the war to the oppressors. Among them is Mandela who famously burns his pass in Alexander township. When he (Mandela) is sentenced in 1963, Sobukwe is serving his final year for treason. Sobukwe was the first to ask not to plead in an Apartheid court citing a conflict of interest in that he was a black man tried in a court of laws made for white men and carried out by white men, essentially that you cannot apply unjust laws justly. Mandela repeats the same notion at his trial some years later. Consequently, the Freedom Charter, that bone of contention between the Pan-Africanists and the ANC is quoted freely in the media while the words of Sobukwe are banned, even after his death. Today you would swear that ban is continuing in a supposedly free media. What Sobukwe achieved dwarfed what any of those who outlived him have achieved for our people. The only in the history of SA law to have a clause enacted especially for him. This is the same man who envisioned the fall of Apartheid in 1963, no easy task facing one of the most brutal if not the most brutal government and police force on earth then. So shaken was the National Party by his vision and drive that they imprisoned him further without trial after he had served out his initial sentence.

The leadership of the Apartheid machine called Sobukwe "a heavyweight compared to the then ANC president, Chief Albert Luthuli." It is dishonest for people like Julius Malema to today act as if the ANC always had a history of militancy. Yes Sobukwe borrowed this from people like Kwame Nkrumah, Anton Lembede and George Padmore but he had no qualms acknowledging that. The same way the time has come for the so called militant and controversial elements in the ruling party today to put aside their petty factional politics and acknowledge that Sobukwe is the father of those who today call for things like the exchange of land ownership without compensation. To go back to the Freedom Charter, the departing point between us and them, the lapdogs of industry forced upon them by white liberals, is found the mad notion that the land belongs to all that live on it, black and white. No, the land was stolen from it's owners. So how can the owners now have to buy it back? They forgot this when they were drunk with independence in 1994 and now again they want to go back to the pace setter- even after his death- now that we are reaching a sobering 20 years since independence. We say better later then never.

To their credit, the ANC declared March Sobukwe month as part of their centenary celebrations. We declare the next years in our struggle for "freedom again" the Sobukwe years. A man who was ahead of his time. A man whose time has finally come.

Malik Mahlangu