LaRouche Youth in South Africa
Seek To Develop the Continent
by Charlene Pillay and Simon Jensen
As the present world financial system, sometimes referred to as globalization, approaches its boundary-condition and meets its destiny in the trash can of failed ideas in history, the Renaissance concept of cultural transformation advanced by economist and long-term economic forecaster Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., is spreading like wildfire across the planet. Not only has the LaRouche Youth Movement (LYM) established itself as a crucial element in the shaping of politics in the Americas, Europe, the Philippines, and Australia, but the recent formation of the South African LaRouche Youth Movement sparks the potential for the growth of the LYM on the African continent.
This July, one of the first major gatherings of the newly formed South African LYM, took place near Johannesburg. The audience consisted of 20 members. A segment of older participants has been reading the LaRouche's writings since the early 1990s. In March of this year, however, stimulated by the emergence of the international LYM, a small group of youth began distributing material at the local universities and then contacted the LYM War Room in the United States, affirming itself as the South African LYM.
During the extensive discussion session of the July meeting, a number of thoughtful questions emerged regarding LaRouche's system of economic recovery. Other concerns, however, had to do with the way forward for the South African LYM. One of the young women asked what the youth could do to spread the ideas of LaRouche. The reply pointed to the model of Joan of Arc and her sublime actions in the political conditions of her time.
The political situation in South Africa is characterized by many scandals, and an uncertainty towards what will happen after President Thabo Mbeki steps down in 2008. In the background, stands former Vice President Jacob Zuma, who was asked to step down from his position after serious allegations concerning his former financial advisor, Schabir Shaik. Shaik was found guilty in June 2005, of soliciting an annual bribe of $75,000 for Zuma from Thint, the South African branch of the French arms-maker Thomson CSF (now called Thales, it is now being investigated in the context of the BAE scandal), in return for shielding Thint from an investigation into a large arms deal. Shaik was also convicted of bribing Zuma to use his position to promote Shaik's business interests. Zuma maintains his innocence and remains deputy president of the ruling African National Conference, and is attempting to line himself up for the ANC presidency, a stepping stone to the presidency of the country.
One of the biggest political questions is the need for the improvement of the living conditions for the lower 80% of the population, who are still living in extreme poverty conditions in the townships, a remnant of the Apartheid system. Nelson Mandela's ruling ANC party, which led the revolution against the oppressive policy of Apartheid, has come under heavy criticism for maintaining the old social divisions by not dealing effectively with the basic economic infrastructural problems, such as the housing problem in the townships. Therefore, the danger of riots and jacobin violence breaking out in the townships is imminent, as many look towards Mugabe's land reforms in Zimbabwe for a solution.
In fact, the formation of a LaRouche Youth Movement in South Africa has the potential of playing an enormous role, in steering the upcoming political turmoil away from the path of riot and violence. In a country which was influenced by Mahatma Ghandi's political visions, and experienced the abolition of the racist Apartheid system without a violent revolution, the potential for the ideas of Lyndon LaRouche to spread with lightning speed is great. As this article is being written, groups are forming in different townships, dedicated to mastering the ideas of Kepler and to forming effective Bach choirs to take up the challenge from within, to change the destiny of the African continent.
The Empire
The discussion at the first major LYM meeting began by unravelling the current, international BAE scandal; its origin in the oligarchic Venetian system, and the system's impact on South Africa, from the Anglo-Dutch colonization, to the reign of Cecil J. Rhodes, to South Africa today.
South Africans are well situated to understand the BAE scandal. On the one hand, their country's history comes directly out of the British Empire, which itself was born out of the East India Company, which operated its colonies as a private company, and whose business practice lives on today in the name of BAE systems (BAE). []These predatory practices continued after independence. In fact, the British Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and U.S. Department of Justice are currently investigating the financing of military operations in Africa, including arms deals with the South African government.
The founder of the British South Africa Company, Cape Colony Prime Minister and occupier of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Cecil John Rhodes, is still prominently revered and immortalized in the form of statues and in the Rhodes Memorial Monument at Cape Town, South Africa, the prestigious Rhodes Scholarships, and Rhodes as a brand. Not only was Rhodes a mega-imperialist and a true forerunner of Al Gore—both dedicated servants of the British Empire—but he was also the founder of the Rhodes-Milner Round Table of Great Britain, the sole purpose of which was to establish the British Commonwealth of Nations and ultimately thereby, to bring the world under the domination of a restored British Empire.
One of the founders of the Round Table, H.G. Wells, a former member of the Fabian Society, laid out his vision for a one-world dictatorship in The Shape of Things to Come, in which he envisions that nation-states, after exposure to a prolonged World War II scenario, will submit themselves to world government. Lord Alfred Milner, Rhodes' successor as head of the Round Table, envisaged white supremacy as a principle of world government. He once remarked of himself, "My patriotism knows no geographical but only racial limits. I am a British Race patriot."
In the LYM discussion, it was brought out that this racist monster at the very center of the British Empire, can only be truly understood as the continuation of the Venetian System with its secret-government reign of terror, and that the key purpose of its continuation today is the destruction of the United States and the American System of economics. The Fabian Society, the Round Table, and the synarchists, as Lyndon LaRouche has underlined explicitly, were all created to destroy the United States and the American System from the inside. It is explicitly against this Venetian enemy, that the U.S. founding fathers laid down the Declaration of Independence and later the American Constitution, to break with the, looting from the British Empire.[1]
Africa Today: The Role of the LYM
The LYM worldwide has opened up a series of crucial flanks in the fight against this Anglo-Dutch Liberal banking empire, as is evident in the case of Argentina, where the LYM has a continuing dialogue with President Néstor Kirchner, a leading fighter against the free trade IMF system. Although Africa has been even more devastated than Ibero-America by centuries of Anglo-Dutch oligarchic rule, the potential for the LYM to grow and take leadership is similar.
One of the most critical challenges facing the African continent is the epidemic spread of AIDS. Between 2010 and 2015, in South Africa alone, there will be 17 times more deaths among young people aged 15 to 34 than would have occurred in the absence of AIDS. This means that there will be 3.2 million excess deaths in this age group. The epidemic has reduced life expectancy in Sub-Saharan Africa to only 47 years. Infant mortality has increased by 25 to 40%, and the percentage of new mothers who are infected with HIV ranges from 25% in South Africa to 45% in Botswana.[2] The devastation caused by this epidemic is fast destroying entire countries, as 25 million out of a 600 million population are infected with HIV, while 12 million children have become orphans.
Brazil has shown that even palliative action can be effective. It has adopted one of the most comprehensive anti-retroviral programs in the world, which is yielding positive results. Nationally, mother-to-child transmission of HIV has declined substantially, from 16% in 1997, to less than 4% in 2002 (Dourado et al., 2006). According to the CIA Factpage, only 660,000 people are living with HIV/AIDS out of a population of 190 million. Brazil has been able to disappoint the bloodthirsty genocidal population reductionists, a pack of wolves currently led by Al "Zeus" Gore. In comparison, in South Africa, where the population has been denied access to cheap anti-retroviral drugs, the result is that 5.3 out 44 million people today are infected with HIV/AIDS, a deadly process that could be dramatically halted, by adopting the Brazilian AIDS treatment policy.
To solve the AIDS epidemic, however, the traces of Anglo-Dutch Liberalism must be eradicated. Dick Cheney must be impeached now, as demanded by LaRouche, so that a new financial system can be established. It is the evil financial gods of the City of London who are imposing the genocidal policies currently being played out on the African continent. British agent and hedge-fund manager Al Gore has continuously pushed for African population reduction, either directly through his publications, or indirectly through his climate policy. This is shown in Gore's policy of banning low-cost, generic anti-retrovirals to treat AIDS. In 1998, using the sledge hammer of the State Department's definition of protecting "intellectual property rights," then-Vice President Al Gore threatened South Africa's then-Deputy President Thabo Mbeki with an economic boycott if the nation did not void its law allowing the production of generic drugs to fight AIDS.[3] This was the same year in which Gore authorized the bombing of Sudan's only pharmaceutical plant, al-Shifa.
In his texts, Earth's Next Fifty Years and The Coming Eurasian World, LaRouche lays out the principles for a planetary harmony of growth. He points out the necessity of abolishing and replacing the IMF and World Bank with UN credit institutions under the control of the finance ministers of the nation-states. The American System economics of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Carey, and Abraham Lincoln would become hegemonic. The building of a Sub-Saharan magnetic-levitated rail network would become a real possibility, along with the terra-forming of the deserts to make them productive. Above all, it is the setting free of the mind, the release from the oligarchic prison of bestialization, that will allow mankind to discover and conquer the Universe.
The Way Forward
There is great hope for the entire continent of Africa within the framework of the Eurasian Land-Bridge. A transcontinental network of rail-based transportation will lay the foundation for a truly sovereign economic policy for the individual countries. This will entail setting up large agro-industrial projects, medical centers, and mass educational institutions to the highest levels all across the continent.
But without the absorption of the highest technological level known to mankind so far, a rapid recovery will not be possible. Power is the key to kick-starting Africa's economy. Africa accounts for 12% of the world population, but only 2% of the world's energy consumption. The planned construction of the Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) nuclear power system is South Africa's solution to a global challenge of meeting mankind's power needs, including those of transport and industry. The PBMR is a revolutionary nuclear power source combining simplicity, robustness, and inherent safety, with the capability of producing high-temperatures for the production of hydrogen-based fuels and other industrial processes, as well as affordable electricity. The PBMR is a leading exemplar of high temperature reactor (HTR) technology, which LaRouche and his collaborators have long identified as the workhorse for global economic restructuring in implementing programs such as the Eurasian Land-Bridge and reindustrialization of the United States.[4]
By the end of the discussion among members of the South African LYM, optimism was the order of the day for the challenges ahead. As echoed by an older member, the way forward must center on the ideas of Friedrich Schiller and Plato's hypothesis of the higher hypothesis.
[1] Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment, 1981. Read also, the book review, "Britain's Assault on America Revisited," by Jeffrey Steinberg, http://www.larouchepub.com/other/book_reviews/2007/3408quigley_jeff.html
>[2] "AIDS Toll Rises, But Could Still Be Stopped," by Colin Lowry.
>[3] See "AIDS: Don't Be Fooled by Al 'Adolf' Gore," by Scott Thompson.
>[4] Jonathan Tennenbaum, "South Africa's PBMR: World's Most Versatile Nuclear System."
