Mandela can go to hell!

the mother of a guy killed by the ANCs cops at a demonstration, whilst Mandela was president The great appear great because we are on our knees. Jim Larkin A 9 year old multimillionaire dies peacefully and the ruling world treats him as an endearing demi!god because he spent "#$ of his life in prison under a %ile fascistic form of go%ernment and on his release became an international political star& 'id the worlds most well!known shitheads turn up for the (( killed at Marikana, who ne%er e%en had the option of the misery of prison) 'o people e%en know their names) *a%e they heard of +eboho Mkhon,a, Michael Makhabane, Marcel -ing and all the others killed by the ANC filth in peaceful demonstrations before Marikana) No . because these unknowns ne%er had any mystical aura fabricated for them that could possibly wash off on the powerful scum hoping to bathe in Mandelas reflected glory& /n the melting pot that is 0outh Africa, when things came to the boil and then the people stopped stirring, the scum rose to the top& +he story of Mandelas rise to 0ainthood is the story of the re%olution that stopped& +he function of the circus put on now for the funeral of Mandela in 0outh Africa by the worlds dominant powers is to try to implant in the spectators heads the idea that capitalism can reform itself, can make progress, through 1reconciliation2 of formerly antagonistic forces& And this, during an epoch when, once again, proletarians are e3pressing their anger e%erywhere& /t is designed, once again, to reconcile the poor to those who keep them poor, smothering them in some transcendent fog where the only thing %isible is Mandelas smile whose charm is meant to induce amnesia about any significant contradiction& Judgement of people on the basis purely of their personality is generally a flight from looking beneath the surface . at their relation to class society& 4hilst the intensified commodification of e%erything and the constant reinforcement of state power and the market economy e%erywhere creates e%er! worsening disasters both on the ecological le%el and in the e%eryday li%es of the %ast ma5ority behind the scenes, on stage the show must go on& 4e are e%erywhere encouraged to forget history in order to ga,e admiringly on 1the giant of history2, the man who, apparently, ended apartheid and impro%ed the lot of millions of blacks& 1*istory2 is for the 16reat2, not for nothings like you and me& +he truth of the past and present of 0outh Africa and elsewhere is photoshopped out of the picture& 7ut in the real world, as a recent 83fam report said, 0outh Africa is 1the most une9ual country on earth and significantly more une9ual than at the end of apartheid2& 10itting around a table and talking about these things with the whites brings no good future to us. Its just like talking to a stone. Now by violence they will understand a little of what we say a little. Now by war they will understand everything by war.2 black 0outh African youth 9uoted in the film 1Call It Sleep2 After sitting round a table with de -lerk :a man who had been an integral part of the brutal apartheid regime since ;9<#= Mandelas first gift to the rulers was to call for discipline, an end to looting and an end to the theft and burning of cars and an end to classroom boycotts& +hat is, an end to the sub%ersion of e3change %alue and an end to the sub%ersion of 1education2 . i&e& ideological conditioning aimed at acceptance of relations of domination and submission& 7ack to work, back to school& 7ack to wage sla%ery and back to brainwashing& 4hilst the war cry of the uprising in ;9<> had been 1+he school for the oppressed is a re%olution2, the peace cry of the new rulers was 1+he school for the oppressed must be subordination2& +he call for 1discipline2 here clearly meant a call to accept the discipline of the commodity economy with a bit of a change of those who run it, 1peace and reconciliation2 to your miserable lot& After ; years of the ad%ances and retreats of a genuine re%olution already ha%ing a global influence, the %ast ma5ority accepted the 1no good future2 brought to them courtesy of 0t& Nelson, gi%ing up practical struggle for the carrot of a better tomorrow through a change in the personnel of the state& A road that led straight to Marikana& 0o nowadays in any potential future uprising it would be better to say, 10itting around a table and talking about these things with the ruling world, black or white, in the electoral charade or on the telly, brings no good future to us& /ts 5ust like talking to a stone& Now by %iolence they will understand a little of what we say . a little& Now by war they will understand e%erything . by war&2 As e%eryone with a bit of knowledge about the situation knows, the idea that apartheid no longer e3ists is yet another myth? eritage !ark is enclosed by a co"puter#"onitored fence that $aps intruders with %&'((( volts and alerts a corps of security guards). eritage !ark' at *(( hectares +,-, acres. slightly bigger than /onaco' is resolutely "iddle class. 0f 1'&(( residents' 1',-& are white. 2eyond the fence are three townships' ho"e to tens of thousands of poor black people and coloureds' the ter" given to those of "i3ed race. It is a brutal ju3taposition4 inside the fence' pastel#coloured two#storey ho"es in Cape 5utch' 6nglish 7udor or 7uscan styles' neatly divided into seven suburbs with na"es like 2eaulieu' Cape eritage and 7uscana Close. 8alk outside the wire and within "etres you are in a sea of tin shacks and low#cost govern"ent#built houses.9 . 7he :uardian online, > @ebruary "AA>

And if you think this was had nothing to do with the Mandela when he was locked up in prison, that he changed when power got to his head, then this 9uote from the mid!#As should disabuse you of such illusions? 14e want Johannesburg to remain the beautiful and thri%ing city that it is now& +herefore, we are willing to maintain separate li%ing until there are enough new employment opportunities and new homes to allow blacks to mo%e into Johannesburg with dignity&2 New homes for the ANC and their lackeys, new employing opportunities for the small number of rich black middle class, but for the rest . %ery few nicely worded 1employment opportunities2 :ie an opportunity to get a bit more money being shafted than being 1redundant2= and no social security . certainly not like during apartheid, when the whites desperately tried to buy off the re%olutionary mo%ement with increases in benefits and massi%e wage rises& 4hile po%erty, of course, lacks 1dignity2 and the sensiti%e souls of the rich want their beautiful thri%ing en%ironment to remain untainted by such unsightly sights& +he fact that this Christian funeral of the Modern Christ . the biggest funeral e%er . is attended by both the rich mass murderers of this world :7arack 8bama, +ony 7lair, 6eorge 4& 7ush, *ilary Clinton, John Ma5or, @rancois *ollande, etc&= as well as those at the sharp end is indicati%e of how Christianity means different things to different people depending on their position in the hierarchy& 16i%e unto Caesar that which is Caesars2 is what the rich Christians promote, but the poor Christians, relegated to the back row, forget 1/t is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of hea%en2 when mourning the death of this multimillionaire& 7ut of course, probably many adoring Jesus Mandela will e3press, though not too publicly, their contempt for the li%ing fat cats at this funeral& +his is the essence of the Christian mentality . it pro%ides the %ast ma5ority with an internal moral sense of self!5ustification on the basis that they, at least, are not fat cats, that they are not patent scumbags, whilst remaining passi%e towards those who are and the society they maintain& 7ecause the spectators remain abo%e all e3ternal to history, they feel the need, particularly when the conflicts of present society ha%e hit them directly, for their gestures of 1opposition2 to be embodied in mythological heroes, like 0t& Nelson, who represent history for them& Christ is essential to the Christian mentality because he is the sub5ecti%e embodiment of the connection between hea%en and earthB he is the hea%enly body . the earthly di%inity . that makes the Christian mentality possible because it is the earth :and the human corollary, the body? hence its se3ually!repressi%e morality= that constitutes for Christianity the actual inaccessible hea%en&@or the ordinary submissi%e mentality 1re%olutionary2 heroes like Mandela literally perform the function of Christ, and you dont need to be a Christian to ha%e a Christian mentality, to be hypnotised by the forces relentlessly promoting such an icon& +he romantic %ision of a 16iant of *istory2 carries out, through the sacred person of the hero, the union of terrestrial tri%iality with the hea%en of uni%ersal history& Cuma said, 18ur nation has lost its greatest son& 8ur people ha%e lost a father&2 8nly the *oly 6host remains, haunting the li%ing& Mandela the 6od& 1*anging on the walls of the house / had pictures of Doose%elt, Churchill, 0talin, 6andhi E / e3plained to the boys who each of the men was, and what he stood for&2 : ;ong 8alk to <reedo", p"(A=& /n this autobiography Mandela declared that he 1Ehad always been a Christian2 :p>"A=& /ts not in any way contradictory that this Christian used to ha%e a picture of 0talin on his wall& +he 7olshe%iks were great pioneers in this type of cultifying? Lenin declared that to really be a Mar3ist one should always ask oneself, 14hat would Mar3 ha%e thought and done in this situation)2 +oday one can find people protesting against this and that ignorantly using the image of Mandela to substitute for their own words and ideas& /ts no coincidence that the current global spectacle, with its tendency to pick up ideas and practices from, and unify, all pre%ious forms of hierarchical power, particularly those de%eloping capital accumulation, should today find itself united in its eulogy to a former 0talinist!turned!neoliberal& Christ, Doose%elt, Churchill, 0talin, 6andhi, Mandela . the need for 1radical2 heroes tears us away from our own rebellious initiati%es, and ends up crushing and co!opting e%ery independent initiati%e& +he need for rebel role models, for e3ternal authorities in pretensions to changing the world, imbued in some glow of perfection :though the content %aries between the different forms necessary for each geographical place and epoch= is based on the maintenance of the utter nothingness of the li%es of the admirers& 0uch an emptiness e3presses the brutal powerlessness imposed by the self!same system they fail to set their minds and bodies against, the system that erects and resurrects the need for heroes and saints, particularly ones that are integral to the system, as Christ, Doose%elt, Churchill, 0talin, 6andhi and Mandela, all in their different ways, most clearly were& +he mythical history of Mandela is a grandiose %ersion of one that e%eryone is meant to somehow identify with? a long struggle, hea%y repression, endurance in the face of persecution, release, realisation, and a happy old age surrounded by admirers, dying satisfied with the feeling that one has made a significant mark on the world& *ow we all would like to feel thatF Gushed to the margins of e3istence, most of us enter old age with a feeling that our li%es ha%e been meaningless& 8f course, loads of people ha%e fought and been killed, or fought and locked up, remaining unknown& 0o the political hero is created by the capitalist show to pro%ide a %icarious subsitute meaning& A clear e3ample of this is in the struggle of shack!dwellers, were members of AbahlalibaseM5ondolo often resort to the words of u+ata Madiba as a 5ustification for their own rebellion, and by so doing sabotage the power of their actions& +hos who turn their demonstrations into a spectacle Hin honour of MandelaH hi5ack the power of their own anger and defuse it fa%our of the forces of law and order& =e#fusal is the mother of re%olt. /n the Abahlali documentary, called, appropriately enough, 5ear /andela' one of the most striking moments is when one of the young leaders of the organisation addresses a gathering shouting !han$i +down with. 5>? ! with a loud echo from the crowd& !han$i Inkhata? Another loud echo& !han$i >NC?. 0ilence& !han$i >NC? 0ilence& I%en after the most brutal oppression at the hands of +he Garty people are afraid to say it& +he truth is that, far from using his history to help lead people :sicF= toward self!organisation, the failure of 0outh African re%olutionists across the spectrum to sub5ect MandelaHs mythology to ruthless criticism amounts to self!defeating complicity in the deification not only of u7ata /adiba but also of +he Garty to whom his iconography is inseparably anchored& @or all the supposed iconoclasm of their Hre%olutionary traditionsH :sicF=B anti!authoritarian socialists of all stripes ha%e been horrendously tame when it comes to confronting the spectacle of struggle#celebrities with as trenchant a form of attack as the task demands& +hose who wish to ad%ance radical perspecti%es can only keep crying in the wilderness until they find, in the radical rebellion of others, an answering echo& Jnless they ha%e the courage to do this, both they and their celebrated ideal of liberty will always remain eclipsed by the shadows of giants& 0amotnaf 'ecember "A;K I suggest those wishing to struggle against this world of lies read at least the first part of the introduction to 10outh Africa, Now L +hen2' which was written al"ost - years ago. >nd for those who want so"e insights into the current situation@ the irrepressibly intractable' irrefrangibly indecent new novella 1Comrades, Let Js Not Mourn @amous Men2 by 7he ;ife Anrest Celebration Co""ittee' is highly recco"ended. 2oth available online at dialecticaldelinBuents.co"

LET US NOT MOURN FAMOUS MEN

Mandela is dead. Good riddance. Unfortunately, the democratic lie is as healthy as ever. In 1994 blacks in this country were satisfied with electing a black resident! if they were not, they would not have allowed him and his cronies to order an end to mass struggle " or to turn it off and on, like a ta " when it suited them. #wenty years later, the ta s are broken. $e are not satisfied anymore. More elections are around the corner, and we will be ordered again to voice our dissatisfaction at the voting booth with the old motto% don&t change life, change leaders. #he ma'ority see through the con% most don&t bother to vote. #he fact that so many eo le find such an a arently significant act not worth the trouble of standing in line for a few minutes (or hours) once every five years is indication enough of the level of disaffection felt by eo le towards the utrid corru tion at the heart of this ridiculous charade. #o us, (free and fair& elections ) (*ree+from+relevance and fairly+useless&. $e are disgusted not at (electoral fraud& but at the fraud of elections. ,es ite the renewal of autonomous contestation at the oint of roduction! most of this des air -and anger, as shown by ever+ resent rotests. over the failure of olitricks to change our condition of daily misery has thus+far been contained within the terrain of olitics itself. $hat is necessary, however, is to direct this discontent towards its source " the miseries e/ erienced in everyday life. 0ften the route to this kind of radical simplification turns out to be com licated% #o a roach everyday life! it is necessary to return for a moment to #ata Madiba. 1e is a hero. #here is erha s nothing more to say about him. 2ike every other hero, celebrity, and star in this u side+down society -including those of the ( rogressive&, (radical& and (revolutionary& variety.! Mandela has always been an enemy of ordinary roletarians. 3e/t year there will be national elections! the oliticians will use his image as a red flag, waving it around like bull+fighters to trick the working class into running this way, running that way 4 only to butcher us in the end -see% 5ato 5rest 6 Marikana.. 7#he emanci ation of the roletariat is the task of roletarians themselves8. 9n essential element of this task is learning to say% *uck olitics, olitical arties and oliticians. *uck the 935, fuck all the fake+o osition arties, fuck the resident, fuck arliament, fuck ,esmond #utu, and es ecially fuck 3elson Mandela. Unless we can tell them all to go to hell, they will do everything in their ower to take us into its dee est recesses. 9s a matter of fact we already are there! and it&s the 'ob of Mandela and all those like him to kee us here. Many mortals have had visions of 7that abode of the damned which the 'ustice of an offended God has called into e/istence for the eternal unishment of sinners8. ,ante 9lighieri, the inventor of the Italian language, was one of them. :ut, as visionary oet ;enneth <e/roth once said, 7=isions are roblems. =ision is the solution that recedes the roblem.8 9s another oet, $alter 5onrad 9rsenberg, ut it% 7It was the earth that ,ante trod> $hen he trod 1ell, it was the earth%> Itself sufficient for the hearth> #hat warms the hands of a cold God.8 $e don&t need visions or visionaries, heroes or heroism. #hey are all art of the roblem. $hat we need is clarity. 9 clear view of the roblem. #hen we can begin to e/ eriment with solutions for ourselves. ?verything about this society trains us to kee our eyes turned to the sky% 7you may have to starve here now, but you&ll get ie there when you die.8 #his way we are unable to look at the un+heroic e/istence right under our noses. 7#he most owerful wea on in the hands of the o ressor is the mind of the o ressed.8 $e see visions, we follow dreams, we fight for hantoms. $e fear (sin&, we ursue careers, we struggle for (democracy&. 9nd every day, life asses us by because " unnoticed, unthought of, and uns oken " everyday life asses us by. 7:ut to use a somewhat sim listic s atial image,8 wrote Guy ,ebord in Perspectives for Conscious Changes in Everyday Life " which, to modern ears, sounds like a self+hel manual, and in a sense it is, though rather a radical one, 7we still have to lace everyday life at the center of everything. ?very ro'ect begins from it and every accom lishment returns to it to ac@uire its real significance. ?veryday life is the measure of all things% of the -non.fulfilment of human relations! of the use of lived time! of artistic e/ erimentation! and of revolutionary olitics.8 #he ?nglish say 7the roof of the udding is in the eating.8 $hich means% 7if ca italism were good, the lives of those who live in it would be good.8 0ur lives are not good. #hey have not been good. $e know they will not be good as long as we have to work, so long as we have to make money, so long as we have to live in a world of 'obs, cou les, schools, risons, armies, marriage, olice, banks, gangster+governments, anarchism, democracy, socialism, 3G0s, religion, laws, The Mail and Guardian, sho ing. 0f all these evils, work is the worst curse that ever struck mankind. $hen our ancestors lived off the land, when they hunted and farmed for themselves, they did 'ust that% they lived. #hey laboured and they layed, they struggled and they toiled " it was not always easy to make a living, but at least what they made, oor as it may have been in many res ects, was life. #he moment they started to work, labour sto ed being used to make life. It is now used, as the bosses ut it, to (make a killing&. $hen we enter our work laces we leave our lives behind. $e do the making, we do the killing! it is our lives that are killed. $hen it is done to make money, labour is murder. $hen it is done to make love, to make life " when a woman goes into labour " or to nurture life in child+rearing, housework, and re+creation! labour is not work. It makes no money. It means nothing, because it kills nothing. In the vile world of work 6 workers there is no meaning, no value, no use outside (the autonomous movement of non+life& whose slick gears are greased by blood and fuelled with cor ses. #o be a worker is to be a slave. Many oorer workers are ashamed of their overty. It is not the relative overty of some but the absolute slavery of all workers that is truly shameful. 9ll of us " worker or unem loyed, home+maker or student, suburbanite or bergie " are forced each day to live in ways that are out of our control. Until now we have failed at every o ortunity for freedom because we never attacked this curse of work in a sim le, straightforward enough way. $e have confused ourselves with a mishmash of 'umbled ideas about the economy, social+'ustice, the government, social+services, elections, social+democracy, growth+rates, grass+roots artici ation, self+management " we&ve tried every way to change our lives e/ce t the one way that will work% to get rid of work. #here is nothing unusual about such a goal. *or the ma'ority of human e/istence on this earth, not a single erson worked. *or thousands of years women across 9frica would call their neighbours to hel them farm their fields, and nobody thought of turning it into a (decent 'ob& or demanding (a living wage&. #hey shared homemade beer, cider and wine! they sang and they danced in graceful, elaborate costumes! they smoked tobacco and dagga out of ainstakingly carved, beautifully assembled i es! they ate together with food freely rovided by the host! the children layed among themselves or snuck off, as they always do, to @uench the assions of the heart in one another&s bodies. ?ven with all the digging, weeding, harvesting and lanting, it was actually an e/cuse for a arty. #oday it is work rather than field+ arties that organises social time and s ace! the only arties of any significance these days are olitical ones. ?very Aarty, even when it calls itself revolutionary, romises to ut us back to work. $henever we walk out on the 'ob, sure enough all the unions will call for a return to work. #he roblem with the worker&s movement is that it&s not an anti+worker&s movement. #he only solution to the unem loyment crisis is full unemployment. $hy want full em loyment if this recludes full lives? #he roof is in the udding! the truth is in the tasting. 3ow that the old arties and unions have so thoroughly discredited themselves, and more eo le are coming together to change their own lives, many choices will be faced which will determine whether the fate of our generation esca es the miserable failures of our arents. Many eo le will s ring u with ro osals for this or that imaginary system and re@uests for su ort of such and such a cause. *rom now on, whenever there is need to test if a course of action actually holds the ossibility for moving us closer to liberation, the first thing to ask is 7will this be a ractical ste towards the abolition of workB8 If not, not. It&s never so sim le, of course. 0ften the answer will be, ( ossibly&. #hen the @uestion is (how& " and (how likely&B 9nother is, (what ne/t&B 9nother is (what elseB& 9nother is 7if so, what challenges and limitations must be overcomeB89nd so on. Ctill, the first rinci le remainsD rimary. If not, not. rom the first chapter of the irrepressi!ly intracta!le" irrefrangi!ly indecent new novella #Comrades" Let $s %ot Mourn amous Men& !y The Life $nrest Cele!ration Committee' (vaila!le free online at loveletters)ournal'!logspot'com' *onations" comments" +uestions" criticisms" death,threats" panegyrics and miscellaneous correspondence to !e routed via -iddi+ .han" Chairman of the riends of the Life $nrest Cele!ration Committee" at /01 123 4546 or lo!esey7gmail'com