Abortion
I just read Pamela Valemont's letter (GLW #485) in which she describes how, through being "united in the political struggle" as we all are, she also happens "to believe very strongly that abortion enslaves women..."
I also have that sense of being hugely out of step with the resistance movement at large, due to my own anti-abortion stance. I have always joked that while it is unusual to find radical left-wing people in Sydney's upper crust north shore, it would be impossible to find one anywhere who is anti-abortion. It feels as though, even if not done consciously, it has been "a done deal", as Pamela puts it, on the issue by the left.
I have thought long and hard about this issue and feel that I understand the reasoning of those people who are pro-choice and I am not angry or judgmental about their views. Therefore, I hope they would accord me the same respect and endeavour simply to understand where I am coming from and not passing judgement in disagreeing.
Unfortunately (and perhaps unnecessarily) so far I have felt a mixture of defensiveness and slight embarrassment at being so out of step. More discussion in GLW and elsewhere would be great!
Marianne Zargar
Wahroonga NSW [Abridged]
CFMEU
I was interested in Gary McCarthy's letter in GLW #486, concerning the role of the CFMEU's NSW branch secretary, Andrew Ferguson. I am also cynical about Ferguson's "left" credentials, based on my experience as a NSW Labor Council delegate.
As one of the three trustees of the Labor Council, a position he holds by "gift" of the right, he has signed the "management agreement" handing over our union holiday facility at Pittwater, "Currawong" to a private developer, identity unknown, for 35 years for $200,000 a year with the right of first refusal should it be sold.
This was done in breach of the Labor Council's "property rule" which expressly prohibits the kind of "alienation, encumbering" that this "management agreement" provides. The agreement was a device resorted to by the right when their plans for a 35-year lease were frustrated by the "seven union veto" on the floor of the Labor Council. It is also a secret agreement.
My union has been told that it is "commercial-in-confidence" so a copy will not be made available to the affiliates who own this property.
Ferguson, if he claims to be a member of the left, should make the agreement available for scrutiny. Until he does this all I see is a right-wing ALP opportunist.
Dave Bell
Turramurra NSW [Abridged]
Zimbabwe
Jonathan Nack (Write On, GLW #486) believes GLW has provided "pro-MDC coverage" on Zimbabwe. I don't think that can be justified given the repeated, consistent critiques that have been made in GLW, nearly uniquely amongst progressive publications, against the MDC's turn to neo-liberalism not long after it was launched.
These critiques come from correspondents like myself, from the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe, whose activities receive more coverage in GLW than anywhere else, and mainly from Norm Dixon, the extremely perceptive GLW journalist. And I think Dixon's dissection of what Nack describes as "overt and covert interventions by the US, Britain, and other imperialist powers" is the most balanced of any I have read.
An example was the analysis of how MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai could be led to utter the verb "eliminate", in talking about scenarios for Mugabe's departure, on an obviously rigged videotape last December. Dixon took pains to point out how the sting operation, associated with Mugabe's notorious Montreal political consultant Ari Ben-Manashe, could only happen in a context in which Tsvangirai could get himself stung.
I find it inexplicable that, with all the evidence of electoral theft on and before March 9-10, Nack implies we should give credence to "the observer delegations from South Africa, Nigeria, and the OAU [which] all certified that the elections were legitimate". No, that finding — endorsed by Thabo Mbeki — deserves total condemnation, except insofar as it unveils how the "good governance" promises of Mbeki's New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) are merely rhetorical.
Whereas Nack begs GLW not to be fooled into believing that Mugabe's party-political opposition is innocent of imperialist manipulation — which no one, even entryist ISOZ comrades, would deny — the crucial lesson is that no African elite is innocent under contemporary conditions. And while Mbeki, Mugabe and the rest degrade workers, the poor, students, the peasantry, women and their environments, none should attract our support.
Patrick Bond
Johannesburg, South Africa[Abridged]
From Green Left Weekly, April 24, 2002.
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