Economic freedom is the only result that will make cents
Withholding bank services is arrogance and aggression against the oppressed
IN THE middle ages, we had the witch hunts, and it became notorious as an instrument to get rid of those you fear or owe money or favours to or have power over you, the witch hunts worked strictly on rumour-mongering and once enough people accused you of having witnessed witch behaviour from you, no court or power in the world could save you from the savage crowd.
This became a bit more sophisticated during the Spanish Inquisition where the type of rumour was more grandiose accusing innocent people of being Jews etc. During the French Revolution, we had the same terror being meted out on political enemies or those who were feared because they could sway the masses whereby you got people to publicly denounce innocent people to get rid of them.
During the 40s and 50s in America, we had a modern-day witch hunt known today as McCarthyism which is the political tactic of making accusations against someone for subversion when you have no evidence to back yourself up. This has become sophisticated to adapt to the changing times of the 21st Century in that you use your powers to influence the banks to tighten the screws on your opponents and thus render them impotent.
What was the legacy of McCarthyism?
Any cursory study of McCarthyism will tell you that what it did, in the end, was to silence black outrage for many years with only blacks coming out only now lately in the Black Lives Matter to vociferously campaign and make their outrage known. The enduring legacy, overall, of McCarthyism was to cower the freedom loving masses called the left into a corner for many years.
In South Africa, if only the lackeys of White Monopoly Capital (WMC) could have stained opponents with anti-Semitism or racism and they could get away with it, they would have employed those methods but given the forces of RET, it would not be able to stick and would have been exposed for the fraud it is.
However, since the heydays of McCarthyism to silence your political opponents, a new, up to date version is to cower your opponents into silence by threatening them by withholding bank services. This is not only a repugnant strategy as it violates our constitution due to the fact that innocent parties are negatively affected.
This is a clear unambiguous blatant capitalist arrogance and aggression against the oppressed of this country who have suffered for over 300 years the ravages of colonialism and its modern day offshoot of apartheid which was very crude, today people are hoodwinked into thinking that political freedom with its associate freedoms such as the freedom of movement and association implies economic freedom as you have the freedom to work for a company of your choice.
In South Africa, with a highly politically conscious population, such a ploy will just not work, and thus, too late the proponents of WMC has realised it and it's not by accident that banking services are withheld from those who are a threat to WMC. Who is the threat of WMC? It is those individuals and their companies who seek to redress the horrors of apartheid. What we are dealing with is the vestiges of Apartheid in a different more sophisticated configuration.
Our people expected democracy to provide besides political freedom also economic freedom. However, it has dawned on our people that we ourselves need to come up with the solutions.
What we have in this new apparition of racial oppression (it’s racial as this is never done in European Countries), is typical tactics of collective punishment which former US president Richard Nixon on behest of the Captains of Industry in the USA instructed the CIA to make the Chilean economy scream. Meaning, make it scream in pain through their turning the screws on all fronts to hurt the Chilean leader Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens and his government who dare threaten to nationalise American oil companies in the sixties.
The question before us is who gave the instruction to banks to make certain companies scream?
In Chile in 1973, upon the CIA instructions from Nixon and former US United States secretary of state Henry Kissinger, so many young children, women and elderly people suffered the worst outrages because WMC decided to make the Chilean economy scream, but it’s the innocent victims who scream in pain.
In South Africa, there are sincere business leaders who genuinely strive to effect black economic empowerment in a country where for over 300 years 80% of all workers have never received more than R3000 per month of which 20% takes home R1500 or less per month.
In WMC, there is a set of hierarchical social relations and all business leaders and businessmen must toe the line. This includes the politicians beholden to WMC such as CR17 and its corrupt cohorts.
It must be pointed out that the oppressed working class has never really accepted the prevailing hegemonic concepts of WMC knowing full well that we fought for economic freedom as well as political freedom. That WMC thought they could hoodwink the oppressed into believing political freedom equates to economic freedom is an indication of crass racist thinking and a repugnance of local cultures.
The powers behind WMC are secure in the knowledge that they will never taste violence from the masses but they will never taste permanent peace, there can be no peace without justice, economic justice, there can be no economic justice without economic freedom in our lifetime.
Economists define wealth and justice in terms of access to the market, WMC echoes the economists because the more dependent that people become upon the market, the more securely they can be roped into the fiscal and political hierarchy.
Unfettered access to banking facilities by those aiming to implement real black economic empowerment is not just a simple threat to the captains of industry but it is a threat to the religion of WMC i.e. unlimited economic growth and the power structure that depends on it at the cost of the impoverished masses.
The market however is illusory as it is based on promises , false promises to the poor that you can share in the economy but it is a manipulated market just as they control the value of the rand ,they control the value of the shares in their companies.
Capitalism based on the bastion of banks is a confidence trick to fool the poor, its value is built on bank entries which is determined by those in control of WMC.
We as the people of Mzansi will never retreat , freedom or death, victory is certain. Racist banks must fall. Nationalise banks now.
Sihlahla is founder and chairperson of Concerned Young Peoples Forum of SA