7 February 2008
In order for us to be effective we need to get organized continuously. Theorising about organization is an important requisite for action in any university of mass struggles. Dealing with this subject in the mid 80’s the South African Youth Congress recalled:
“The most potent weapon available to (hu)man in charting an existence for himself or herself is organization. This conclusion has not been arrived at by deduction from a sum total of simple experiences as mere events. It has been arrived at from a concrete historical condition attending to the existence of (hu)man…. without organization, any community of people will be defenseless and bound to fail in trying to address any social or political problem. Organisation becomes indispensable in addressing any social, political and economic problem. This is a noble teaching left to us by the March of History.”
Campaigns aimed at dividing the ANC and having some of our cadres detracted will always fail if we have, and believe in organization as our basis of existence. Obviously we cannot talk of organization as the bedrock of our unity without loyalty to it’s principles, values, etc.
To this extent the late president of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, summed it up thus:
“Be true to the party and loyal to the people, fulfill any task, overcome any difficulty and defeat any enemy.”
For loyalty to flourish, organization needs trained cadres to see it through.
On the question of cadreship, another Vietnamese revolutionary, Le Duan, said:
“There is a dialectical interrelation between cadres and revolutionary movement of the masses. A cadre’s life is lived within a framework of multi-faceted relationship. It is this relationship, which makes a cadre, a cadre. In this relationship a cadre is at the same time the cause and effect. Conversely a cadre is at the same time effect and cause.
A cadre cannot be conceived outside an organization, for a cadre is an element of the organization. A cadre lives in a definite organization. She or he makes an organization a living organism.
On the other hand, after organization becomes a quantity, existing in its right and has struck deep roots in life, organization, in its turn, has a decisive effect on people. It determines who will do what, what position he or she should hold in apparatus of activity. It defines beforehand the direction and objective of human beings’ actions. It obliges people to act one way instead of another.”
If any cadre is not in a position of understanding this theoretical construct on the behavior of cadres in organization and the effect of organization to cadres, it will be impossible to correctly read the current challenges facing our movement, the ANC, and its allies. This means that a careful study to a revolutionary force has a hallmark of uniting in action and act in unity. To that extent there is no free agent.
Nathi Mthethwa
ANC Chief Whip