At the turn of the Third Millennium, among other global emancipatory attempts, two outstanding social revolutions mark the current globalized epoch: The South African and the Bolivarian Revolutions. Each one of them blazes the trail for trans-historic lessons that have to be dealt with urgently, by all permanent revolutionaries and emancipators. Concentrating on the South African Revolution, we will just spotlight the main social revolutionary issues at stake. Within our deliberations, the references to the immediate tasks of the Bolivarian Revolution, and the perilous, serpentine roads to tread, are obvious.

Let us commence with the South African Revolution. Firstly, we have to unveil a few myths that surround Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and the African National Congress of South Africa, in order to place the South African Revolution in its real, true historic context. Precisely, like in the case of Venezuela, the national and international mass media have painted a picture of the dynamics of the anti-Apartheid struggle in a totally distorted and manipulated fashion. In reality, the victory of the ANC is at the same time the victory of corporate imperialism in Africa. No true, social revolution has taken place there, on the contrary, it has thoroughly been "nipped in the bud".

As a result of the major ideological, political currents that swept across Africa during the 20th Century -- African nationalism, Pan-Africanism, African Socialism and Reconciliatory Democracy ("Savage Neo-liberalism") -- the ANC is "nationalistic", is "anti-imperialist", (whatever is to be understood by this wishy-washy, generalized concept) but -- as can be witnessed by Nelson Mandela in his famous defence speech before the fascist South African Court -- "I am prepared to Die" -- all along its struggle it was never really anti-capitalist. To be really "anti-imperialist", you have to be truly "anti-capitalist", and to be this, you have to study scientifically and philosophically political economy, history, class consciousness and the "class struggle", that is, true, real scientific socialism. In spite of the fact that the originally Stalinist Communist Party of South Africa had accompanied the ANC, praxically, in the current sell-out and privatization of the means of production, we see how little was studied and understood concerning scientific and philosophic socialism. Nowhere a social emancipation is possible without the knowledge of the basics of revolutionary Marxism. This also applies to the Bolivarian Revolution.

The international mass media have carefully fabricated "Nelson Mandela, the myth" - the political, anti-Apartheid icon of the late 20th Century. We do not intend to "downsize" the heroic battles and the personal sufferings of the great South African leader, what we are underlining here is an international picture that has been drawn of the man, and of the ANC, that stands in stark contrast to the ransacking of the wealth of the South African people by the corporate companies, under their silent acceptance. Hence, we have to be very careful with messianic, charismatic, "populist" figures, created by CNN, Fox, BBC, CBS, etc.

A little while ago, when the charismatic figure, Nelson Mandela retired, it was clear that he was more of a reformist than a revolutionary, and the hungry hopes of millions of "Black" South Africans were already dimmed, because South Africa, as the result of the economic sell-out to corporate imperialism, was already mired in unprecedented misery, starvation, epidemics, illiteracy, poverty and criminality. Even the World Bank had to admit that the distribution of national income was chronically abysmal and that on a global scale, this social inequality is only being surpassed by Brazil. For example, today still, in the post-Apartheid society, the monthly household incomes for Africans average R757 compared to R4,695 for the so-called "whites". Not even this reformist endeavour bore any fruits.

The ANC did everything to foster a wealthy, parasitic "Black" middle class, to replace the British and Boer ruling classes, but the gaping gulf between the wealthy and the impoverished classes in South Africa is increasing daily by leaps and bounds. The original social reform projects have been scrapped, and replaced by a scramble for wealth by this very "Black" middle class, whose core is formed by the previous ANC "freedom fighters". Thus, an important lesson for us is: beware of the "middle class"! It is the social base, the epicentre for virulent social discrimination - racism (no matter if black or white) and fascism.

However, all this that is happening currently, nearly three decades ago, I have already predicted in my book, "Südafrika am Vorabend der Revolution" (South Africa at the Eve of Revolution, ISP-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1976):

"A pivotal element in this whole strategy of the South African government is the rearing of a subservient black bourgeoisie among the various African 'nations'; these elite classes are co-opted to broaden the base of the South African capitalist State. They will each endeavour to capture and to retain captive 'their own', 'national' market in their rural (and to some extent urban) ghettos. They will provide the economic base and ultima ratio for the bogus ideology of 'nationalism', of the Xhosa, Zulu, Coloured, etc. variety. To rear this kind of class requires tact, time and stability. Even parts of the liberation movement and some of its charismatic leaders will be used in this process, even if they have to be repatriated from exile or from Robben Island." (P. 178, Also, see: http://www.geocities.com/maymartin2001/einband.html.)

Because my book was placed on the index of censorship in Apartheid South Africa, and therefore its explosive contents are not known internationally, hence, below we will cite extensively from this work. Its warnings are more valid than ever, and it indicates which errors any revolutionary movement should avoid at all costs.

Concerning the above, the central aim of world capitalism in Southern Africa, that is, to create a black, capitalist middle class, the ANC has adhered to it with religious fire. The truth of the matter is that Mandela and his ANC never were and still are not anti-capitalist, as can be seen in their main programme, that is, in the "Freedom Charter" of 1955; all along, their ambition was to conquer the opportunity for "Blacks" to become capitalists. They were not, are not revolutionaries, at best, they are social reformers, that do not even keep their words. Mandela himself confirmed that the programme of the ANC is to establish a bourgeois democracy within the current global corporate capitalist world order, and thus to maintain the capitalist system in South Africa. This is precisely what the current South African government has accomplished. Hence, the South African Revolution is being postponed for better times to come. We have to study capitalism very carefully in Latin America, not to fall into the quagmire of South Africa.

Decades ago, I warned:

"The social, political, economical and international situation has changed greatly since 1960. Now as ever it is certain that neither the ruling white settler class nor international capital will peacefully bid farewell to their drone-like existence. They will defend their riches, their privileges and profits by main force as they have done before. Only by emancipatory counter-violence will the oppressed Africans be able to obtain their freedom." (Ibid. p. 168-9.)

This surely is valid for the Bolivarian Revolution. Again and again, the oligarchic "opposition" and the Washington administration, will try to topple the Bolivarian Government by all sorts of violent "democratic" means. Furthermore, we explained that "guarimbas", "sabotage acts", "liberalism", Christianity and "Gandhism" will not free the millions of "Blacks", suffering under global capitalism and globalized imperialist terror in South Africa:

"In the face of the massive power of the present State a conventional war or the type of guerrilla warfare that has been practised in South Africa up till now do not, however, offer any chance of success.

"They rather must seize political and economic power by means of a revolutionary theory of their own and a guerrilla práxis geared to the South African situation. This involves long-term planning and co-ordination. Consequently the first task of a proletarian revolutionary party must be to find ways and means of forming cadres in the key areas, i.e. in the mining and industrial centres. They must be as mobile as African migrants themselves: nine months in the city and three months in these reservoirs of labour known as Bantustans. All crucial events in the life of an African occur at his place of work - obviously situated in White South Africa - which thus becomes co-extensive with his area of political activity." (ibid.)

Much of this, in embryonic form, is already accomplished in Venezuela. Concerning the "paramilitary" forces and the "Policia Metropolitana", I described the main weapon of emancipation as follows:

"His strongest revolutionary weapon is his productive, creative capacity. Besides this, of course, those weapons are also needed which will enable him to offer effective resistance to the para-military police force. Therefore the problem of military training inside the country and the arming of the combatants at the decisive moment must likewise be solved by the Marxist party." (Ibid.)
Concerning the South African Revolution itself, I stated:

"There are many indications that South Africa finds itself in a pre-revolutionary phase, although this does not necessarily mean that the last show-down is just around the corner. A revolutionary situation requires certain historical and international factors. A detailed analysis of what they are and whether they exist at all in South Africa would exceed the scope of this book. We have seen at any rate that there are compelling reasons, both of an objective and subjective nature, for social change." (Ibid., p. 165)

Concerning the construction of a revolutionary party, of the vanguard of social revolution, of "being neither Marxist nor Anti-Marxist", I commented:

"The South African revolutionaries cannot, and must not, lose touch with such a highly explosive situation, even though at present it can only be latently sensed. A revolutionary party must not be Marxist by definition. We only have to mention in this context the original core of Fidel Castro's guerrilla movement and the West African PAIGC (Partido Africano da Independencia da Guine e Cabo Verde). When a party really represents the needs and interests of the oppressed, it will of necessity veer to revolutionary Marxism in the course of the armed struggle. " (P. 166)

Criminality and Genocide
South Africa is the paradigm to demonstrate that within the capitalist world system, within corporate democracy, there is no chance of liberation whatsoever; on the contrary, by applying the measures of the World Bank, of the International Monetary Fund, of the ALCA, of "neo-liberalism", of "revolutionary" reformism, of "reconciliatory democracy", of "dialogues with Zombies", the oppressed classes in the "Third World" are digging their very own graves.

Finally, let us just highlight one of the most heinous results of a "Revolution Betrayed", of political reformism: Criminality and Genocide.

As is obvious in the case of Venezuela, we ought to be very careful with statements and statistics of the "United Nations", of the "World Bank", of "Human Rights Watch", of "Amnesty International", etc., yet sometimes, reading between the lines, they do give us a notion of what is really happening in the world.

After the massacres in Ruanda, due to the obsolescence of manual labour, billions of workers are in danger of extinction, to be annihilated by the machinations of globalized terror. What the system cannot exploit anymore, it just dumps. This happened to Mobutu, Pinochet, Bin Laden, Hussein, and the Boers in South Africa -- they have become free prey to any "death squads", mercenaries or blood-thirsty maniacs. Historically, the Boers, the previous ruling class of South Africa, had tasted the bitter fruits of British Imperialism during the "Boer Wars", during which they were massacred like flies, now the South African Government of Thabo Mbeki casts a blind eye at the "black" future of the "Whites" in Southern Africa.

Apart from his own "racist" remarks, six months ago, a pro-white priest reported the following from current South Africa:

"Unbelievably horrific torture-deaths are happening daily in the South African farmlands, writes New Zimbabwe -- yet the ... media in the West say almost nothing about it, while wailing endlessly about a single drug-crazed Black criminal who died while attacking police in Cincinnati. 'South African farmers and their families are being slaughtered. The murders are accompanied by torture and rape. The sadism of the attacks suggests either dark perversion or systematic terror. Dr Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch has even suggested that the killing could be classified as genocide.' "

Stanton further reports:

“In South Africa, in the nine years following the end of Apartheid and the ‘miracle’ of South Africa's democratic election in 1994, more than 1,000 farmers have been killed. The death rate by murder for South African farmers is 313 per 100,000, perhaps the highest for any group of people on earth who are not at war."

The following indicates why we should be very careful with our concept of "Revolution":

" 'There are two opposing theories. At one extreme, these attacks are seen as being directed as part of the ‘Second Revolution.’ The First Revolution was the take-over of South Africa by a black government. The Second Revolution, using terror, is the establishment of a radical black communist society and the expulsion of whites. Driving the white farmers off their land is part of this process. At the other extreme, the attacks are seen as being purely criminal and without political guidance or motives. The white farming lobby is inclined to believe the former; it points to Peter Mokaba, a prominent young ANC politician, who chanted, ‘Kill the Boer! Kill the farmer!’ to cheering black crowds. The ANC government says that it believes the latter. " (See: http://southafrica.indymedia.org/news/2003/12/4973_comment.php#)
To conclude, it is not necessary to spotlight this gruesome reality even more. As the Africans say: There is no smoke without a fire. We saw it coming, and we warned about the horrendous results of a social revolution in South Africa that could possibly fail:

"The violence, inhumanity and cruelty perpetrated by the white colonial overlords against the South African people have built up in the latter such a degree of aggressions, fury, and thirst for revenge that a revolution initially conceived as a class-struggle could easily degenerate into a race war pregnant with catastrophe. It will therefore be one of the most difficult tasks of a South African revolutionary party to design its programme of political enlightenment in such a way as to prevent the race struggle in South Africa from superseding the class struggle and to vouchsafe their dialectic interconnection.

It will, however, be impossible to wipe from the consciousness of the Africans, apart from the dignity of man being daily crushed underfoot, the murders which count by the hundreds of thousands, the terror, the tortures by the Apartheid regime, the executions and banishments, the deaths without number of babies due to undernourishment and lack of medical care, and the ruined psychic as well as physical existence of thousands, all of which make up the history of South Africa. Let us hope that the revolution will succeed in proving that colonialism in league with capitalism and their related institutions are responsible for these enormous crimes. This road of history in South Africa has been chosen by the white masters and capital." (P. 168-9.)