In your response to Mam’Khawula of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), you made assertions that Treasury and Reserve Bank of South Africa do not have evidence on the manipulation of the South African currency by Banks.

Perhaps, it is of paramount importance that I give you a brief historical account as to where you come from as the Minister of Finance. For I sincerely, and of the genuine view that such will give reflection on the class that you represent between the basic and antagonistic classes existing in a capitalist mode of production such as our beloved South Africa.

Lest, we forget that you, Min Tito Mboweni are the product of the capitalist establishment that continues to subject the working class and the poor to abject poverty. Hence, you had to undergo a complete induction by the Queen of England before you were appointed the Governor of the Reserve Bank of South Africa (SARB). This was done because the market did not trust you enough to entrust you with such huge responsibility of safeguarding the interests of the RULING CLASS through the only institution that continues to drive the capitalist agenda in South Africa in the form of the Reserve bank.

Anton Rupert in his biography makes mention that the then President, Nelson Mandela had  consulted him on your appointing as the Governor of Reserve bank and he refused, until you were taken to London and were converted to a neo-liberal proponent before you were appointed the Governor of the Reserve bank of South Africa.

You went on a rampage by attacking and vilifying the Public Protector, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, when she recommended that the Reserve Bank must change its mandate by focusing more on the standard of living of our people (I am not quoting her verbatim). This also demonstrated the class where your loyalty lies between the antagonistic and fiercely contending classes (The Bourgeoisie and working class) in the context of a capitalistic society such as ours.

Even after some Banks and individuals have conceded on manipulating the South African currency, you continue to deny the undeniable and further making a mockery of our intelligence. Maria Ramos the former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of ABSA publicly admitted that, the bank played a role in manipulating our currency, again the, CITIBANK, the only Bank locally pleaded guilty on manipulating the Rand, and even went further to pay an administrative penalty of R69.5m. Well, also other foreign banks took part in collapsing our currency.

I, however, understand where the brouhaha that you are having emanates from the self-assurance that you are untouchable, because you are the lackey of the omnipotence capitalist world. Where you, Jamnadas Pravin Gordan, Cyril Ramaphosa, Koos Beeker, Markus Jooste, Christo Wessie and others have through the compradors in the form of Johan Rupert, Oppenheimer and they have captured the state. You utilize the media and Judiciary to drive the capitalist anti-worker, anti-black Agenda in South Africa. You use the state apparatus to persecute everyone and anyone who dares to question your corruption and capturing of the state, this confirms what Lenin stated on the State and Revolution on how the state has become a product of the irresponsibility of class antagonisms, an organ of oppressing the lower and less privileged class (The working class).

Across the political spectrum, there has been a developing common feature in political spaces of a certain culture of blanket ascription. Moreover, in simple terms, the culture insists on a muzzy logic that if in a situation one person is bad, everyone else is bad too. The central problem in the culture of blanket ascription is an inability to place criticism within a wider context of a general political assessment and account of events.

Put differently, there is never a frank admission and a candid discussion of what the underlying challenges are, both real and imagined, for purposes of addressing such contradictions. Instead, there is an odd hastiness in reaching simple-minded conclusions on very critical questions and discussions.

Evidence of this was seen in the EFF Commander In Chief (CIC) and party leader, Julius Malema’s recent visceral attack on the EFF Student Command.

A brief contextual background:

We would all recall this year’s EFF Students’ Command’s third National Students Assembly (NSA) held at the University of the Free State, in Bloemfontein last month, between the 12th – 15th July, in which EFF party leader, Julius Malema blessed the gathering accompanied by a few commissars from Central Command Team (CCT) including the current Secretary General, Commissar Gordirch Gardee.

This was the CIC in his usual address of the opening remarks in all the EFF Students’ Command assemblies as per norm, however this time around, the CIC took everyone by surprise when he launched a constellation of relentless attacks on the political existence of the Students’ Command.

The CIC’s criticism of the Students’ Command combined intellectual riposte with populist appeal and so seemed to be centered around two problematiques.

1. What he suggests is a growing enfeeblement of the Students’ Command, thus making it fail to break out of the dependency complex on the mother body.

2. The EFF SC’s own internal dissidence and disorderly factionalism caused by a fierce power-mongering battle that ensued leading into the Assembly.

These two points, among other things, are what I took out to be a rationale and basis for the CIC’s suggestive tone of the withdrawal or dissolution of the Students Command.

Therefore, here I wish to play the proverbial Devil’s Advocate in this instance by engaging with the above-mentioned points for purposes of highlighting them as not an outcome of political science thinking on the part of the EFF President, but as a visceral approach to what is a political question.

Seemingly, in the first critique the CIC hasten to characterize the EFF SC as a fickle movement that would not be able to survive the political power dynamics without the involvement of the mother body (EFF). As motivation, in this regard he pointed to all the recent Student Representative Council’s (SRCs) elections losses the SC has suffered, notably the unwelcomed Vaal University of Technology (VUT) SRC defeat. As the CIC himself said the fall of VUT branch from political glory brought national shame to the EFFSC.

Therefore, the CIC believes that it remains a moot argument whether the spirit of #Uphephela can survive long enough as a sustainable student organization that can challenge the PYA alliance, PASMA and other student formations across institutions of higher learning.

In addition, in the long-term run, he clearly is unconvinced that the continued existence of the EFFSC is a good investment. To this effect, he has vowed to lobby the rest of the EFF national leadership at the upcoming National People’s Assembly (NPA) in December to thoroughly reflect on the EFFSC’s future (or lack thereof).

Frankly, this is a very worrying view if one thinks about the fact that EFFSC is from a recent July Congress, which elected the incumbent Central Student Command Team (CSCT) leadership collective under the presidency of Mandla Skhambana.

It is a dilemma because meanwhile it suggests to us that the EFFSC’s collective membership should hang on a miserable future of uncertainty leading into the EFF’s NPA now that the jury is out on what national might resolve on, come December.

In addition, the second pointed critique apparent in the CIC’s castigation of the Student Command is what he refers to as an unenviable culture of organizational ill-discipline which manifest itself in distractive internal factions, chaotic conducts, and a general disregard for party leadership and/or organizational processes. Particularly he stresses how all of these collectively affects our failure to consolidate SRC victories and stay in power for longer.

Malema thus posits that highly organized and united institutional campaigns to champion student issues and drive real change is highly impossible in the midst of the contradictions I have alluded to the above. He stresses the importance of centralizing the organizational culture as anchor for our struggle, which ostensibly were lacking.

So in short, history now is pulling the rug under our feet as the Students’ Command, and there seem little that we can do about it.

Here are some of the political contestations I put forth in starting what I hope would develop into a fruitful and healthy polemical exchange of ideas about our collective future (or lack thereof).

With that said, a suggestive approach in following my own intervention here is to go back to what I have argued elsewhere. That these assertions by the EFF party leader, Julius Malema in relation to his SC position reflects less political science thinking and can summarily be analyzed as an angry fulmination from someone who insists on the use of emotive tone and logic in engaging political matters.

For starters, all registered students at institutions of higher learning in South Africa will, upon affiliation to the EFF Students’ Command in their respective campuses, constitute the collective political property of the structure. Together if they are more than 100 they can constitute a Branch Student Command Team (BSCT) begin crafting political programs and become a home to the vulnerable student populace. This in all likelihood what has been the case since the June 16 movement was born in 2015.

Stated differently, the students are the EFF SC and vice versa. For the Malema to think he can divorce the EFF SC from students is an extreme view that runs the risk of undermining the future.

Moreover, such a view shows no conceptualization of the role and importance student activism plays. Political student based formations as commonly the case are conceived with the sole aim of inculcating a critical culture of reflection about nation-building issues amongst University students. In short, their role is to awaken the unconcerned intellectuals in the University to be involved in political and public life.

The EFF SC’s aim is akin to this general conception too but only adds ideological flavor. EFF SC in its founding cardinal principles strives, among other things, to shape public and ideological discourses and rally students towards the idea of economic emancipation in our lifetime. This is what positions the Students’ Command as an ideologically advanced student formation drawing its ideological outlook and perspective from the triumvirate of Marx, Lenin and Fanon.

Therefore, to propagate these ideas is our duty. This is our identity body politic and this is who we are. Through engaging in seminars and public lectures in and around the University space this is an intellectual task we take upon ourselves.

A critique against us has to therefore be seasoned reflective of the EFF Students’ Command’s collective role and not someone who will cherry-pick that which they not happy with and use it as a basis to dismiss us.

I argue that although Julius Malema’s criticism on the EFFSC reflects a welcomed disappointment in some way or another at the way certain quarters of the EFF SC have conducted themselves and engaged party questions, which they feel strongly about. We know very well that things have not been hunky-dory between the mother body and its student component, there has been mounting tensions between certain members of the SC and mother body with many factors triggering it and that oftentimes degenerated into ugly public spat.

This of course is coupled with the fact that we have struggled to retain power in some institutions and that our loses were at times unjustified.

However, these are typical problems that any organization goes through, and that party leadership should find political ways to resolve. They are not alien in political discourse and spaces. Then my problem here is that the dimension the CIC has taken in ventilating out these problems is the use of what I referred to earlier on as “blanket ascription”. The one wrong, all wrong logic.

To think you can halt a structure’s existence based on strong emotional views you hold against certain individuals in the structure is inimical to revolutionary ideas, and in fact undermines the revolution.

Secondly, this approach is at odds with basic political thinking in many concrete ways. As a revolutionary party ours is to rise above parochialism and always strive for the transformation of the Self through revolutionary ideas that shapes both our thinking and practice. In other words, what makes us revolutionaries should not be lip service, instead we must every time speak about how revolutionary theory is guiding our actions on a day-to-day basis, and how Marxists-Leninists should resolve party questions and conduct themselves.

As a Marxist-Leninist party, this debate speaks to the question of how we resolve contradictions. It speaks to the question of how to center democratic engagements first ahead of unilateral conclusive pronouncements, which lack foresight and would regretted in the future.

I ask how does disbanding an entire structure, which has found its own relative life and existence serve a revolutionary agenda? In addition, when we evaluate the pros and cons of such a decision what is the balance of scale?

Lastly, this call to dissolve EFF SC not only shows a failure to grapple with the underlying contradictions in the students movement and giving political leadership in charting out progressive options around contentious matters, but that it fails also to conceptualize who the students and their role in the struggle.

Students are not only the collective political property that gives expression to the existence of the EFF SC, students; particularly those of the oppressed and marginalized blacks are also the collective intellectual property of their parents.

Black people in the current framework own nothing. They do not one the land. They do not own the financial institutions. They are completely outside ownership of institutions of power and influence in South Africa.

However, the wealth of black people are young black people especially those in Universities and colleges who are wrestling power. This is a breed of wealth that blacks own and has entrusted their future on.

To discard the energy, uniqueness and resolve of this group of people is to hamper with the future. Young people and those who are in the students command have shown potential to become leaders in their own right who can mould public opinion and influence the direction and implementation public policy. The EFF motherbody should co-opt them now and again for national and political roles as it has done to the former EFF SC President, Peter Keetse, fighter Naledi Chriwa and fighter Vuyani Pambo.

With these three young firebrands and graduates of the mighty EFF Students’ Command and only as a flicker of things to come, I submit that dissolving the Students Command is a luxury the EFF mother body can ill-afford.