Is China Africa's new imperialist power?

Revolutionaries in Anglophone Africa have always seen Britain and France as the dominant imperialist powers on the continent, but other forces are emerging from the shadows to challenge their continued post-colonial dominance - and it’s not just the United States.

Southern African anarchist-communists would normally see the former British colony of South Africa as acting as a sub-imperialist power on behalf of the big capitalist powers and its own capitalist ruling class in the region, a sort of regional policeman as it were: if British interests in Swaziland are threatened by the democracy movement, we are sure that South African military might will intervene (as it did against Lesotho in 1998) to shore up the Swazi elite.

But the international scene is changing and today we can chart the rise of the People’s Republic of China as one of Africa’s most powerful kingmakers, whether backing the genocidal regime in Khartoum, or embarking on large-scale building projects including the new Luanda airport (in exchange for 10,000 barrels of crude oil a day) and the Number One Stadium in Kinshasa, a city that with its giant gold statue of a fat, Mao-like Laurent-Desire Kabila is looking like a city on the Yangtze River instead of the Congo (the DRC's mimicry of the Chinese national flag, before adopting a new flag this year, was too obvious to miss).
STATE CAPITALISM
Unlike the old Soviet Union, China has managed to engineer a successful transition from closed State-capitalism (the Maoist era) towards an export-orientated neo-liberal model. Its rapid economic growth and cheap goods - overseen by the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP - may see the country overtake the US as the largest manufacturing power worldwide by 2010.

This capitalist boom has been built on the back of a brutal suppression of the working class and peasantry. Strikes are illegal, dissidents are murdered, and the top 20% of households earn 42% of total urban incomes while the poorest 20% receive just 6%.

There has been a sharp rise in class struggle, with strikes rising from 8,150 in 1992 to 120,000 in 1999. Last year residents of the village of Huaxi, Zhejiang province, battled the police and local officials in hand-to-hand combat in April and drove them off. In December, hundreds of villagers armed with dynamite and petrol-bombs attacked police in Dongzhou, Guandong province, after police killed 20 villagers who had protested against land seized to build a power plant. A source close to the CCP central committee revealed last year that some 3-million workers took part in protests last year.

This is a country where the official monthly minimum wage is US$63 (compare that to US$45 to US$55 in rural and urban Vietnam, respectively, levels won by Vietnamese workers last year by embarking on wildcat strikes against their communist bosses), which has probably the worst mining fatality record in the world (the official Xhinhua News Agency figure is 5,986 dead in coal mines alone in 2005, resulting in some cases in miners armed with dynamite attacking their bosses), and multinational sweat-shop operations such as Nike and McDonalds setting up operations in special “economic exclusion zones”.

While terror and repression fuel China’s economy, the country’s capitalist ruling class looks outwards for cheap labour, raw materials and fuel supplies. Africa, economically sidelined in the world economic crisis starting in the 1970s, has suddenly become hot property. In 2005, the overall African economy grew at 5% - it’s fastest in decades - as demand for African raw materials shot up, with Chinese demand playing a key role. The 1980s and 1990s saw Africa fall off the investment map, with Africa getting less than 1% of all private direct investment to “third world” countries in 1995. Chinese (and South African) capitalists have increasingly taken the gap, and the trend is reversing.
CHINA IN AFRICA
China clandestinely traded with apartheid South Africa despite its funding of liberation movements in the country and in neighbouring countries like Zimbabwe. Formal relations with South Africa were re-established in 1998.

According to Martin Davies, the director for the Centre for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch University (and a businessman with interests in Shanghai), last year, trade between China and Africa soared to US$35-million, with Chinese investment primarily centred on the oil industry, especially in Nigeria, Angola, Sudan and Equatorial Guinea.

Grim conditions in these countries have hardly worried the Chinese dictatorship: whether it is the total lack of democracy in Equatorial Guinea, the state-driven race-war in Sudan, or the fact that the blatant theft of oil wealth by the ruling cliques in Angola and Nigeria has fuelled conflict, with UNITA and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, respectively trying to win back a slice of the pie.

So it will come as no surprise that Chinese helicopter gunships have been used against civilians in Darfur, according to human rights activists. China - which maintains an electronic listening post on the Comores - gave Sudan massive military aid between 1996 and 2003, including jet fighter aircraft, shipped tons of arms to Ethiopia and Eritrea prior to the outbreak of their border war in 1998, and has sold jets, military aircraft and radio-jamming equipment (to prevent outside broadcasts being heard inside the country) to the Zimbabwean regime.
SOUTH AFRICA
China has greased its imperialist wheels in Africa by scrapping over US$1-billion in debt owed by 32 African countries and the SABC reported this year that South Africa’s trade with China is growing at 26% annually.

South Africa is China’s largest trade partner in Africa, with trade growing 400% over the last six years. South Africa supplies iron ore and other raw materials, and receives manufactured goods - and a new trade agreement will see China limit textile exports but strengthen co-operation in areas like nuclear energy. Meanwhile, South Africa’s trade with traditional partners like Britain is shrinking.

However, the importance of relations with China is relatively limited, given the strength and diversity of South African capitalism. On the other hand, Chinese investment looms very large in weak economies like those of Equatorial Guinea. China’s interest in securing direct raw material supplies - for example, oil outside the OPEC cartel - means we can expect these relations to intensify, and African elites to solidify their links with the East Asian power. Africa now provides around 30% of China’s oil imports.
SOLIDARITY OR XENOPHOBIA
But what does all this investment in guns, ore and oil mean? COSATU has reacted with alarm to a deal struck between the South African and Chinese governments, warning that with the country flooded with cheap imported Chinese clothing (a 480% increase since 2003), the already-fragile domestic textile industry (62,000 jobs lost in the same period) could collapse.

COSATU leaders were embarrassed last year when members of their affiliated SA Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union demonstrated against the fact that the congress’ red T-shirts were made in China. Many mainland Chinese textile operations have relocated to Africa in order to by-pass European and American quotas on Chinese imports, but they have often brought with them brutal working conditions. At the same time, COSATU and its ally, the SACP continue to praise China as a socialist country.

Neither position is correct. COSATU’s “Buy South Africa” campaign will do nothing to stop cheap Chinese imports. It promotes anti-Chinese racism and feeds into the poisonous xenophobia that afflicts the local working class. It also suggests that all South Africans, capitalists and workers alike, have a common interest. Nothing is further from the truth: South African capitalists are not the friends of South African workers.

Further, the ANC’s GEAR policy promotes free trade, so there is no prospect of the wave of imports subsiding in meaningful terms. COSATU is left with making futile appeals to the morals and patriotism of the South African ruling class - appeals that will achieve nothing. South African capitalists are developing a pact with Chinese capitalists: if these rivals can unite, why can’t the working class learn the lesson, and defend Chinese labour?
THE “CORE OF ENTERPRISES”
As we have noted in these pages before, both GEAR and NEPAD aim at attracting more trade and more foreign investment, and China fits both bills. Meanwhile, Intelligence Minister (and ageing Young Communist League politburo member) Ronnie Kasrils enthused in a glossy book China Through the Third Eye: South African Perspectives - funded by the China Chamber of Commerce and Industry in SA - that China’s building boom, including the controversial Three Dams project on the Yangtze that will displace 1-million people, “is a construction engineers’ dream”. This is a good thing, it seems: “If China is to remain a sustainable economy, it has to speed the transition from a rural to an urban society, from an agricultural to an industrial economy.”

Chief state spin-doctor Joel Netshitenzhe claimed in the same book that “South Africa and China share mutual goals as both countries are committed to ensuring a better life for all their citizens. Both aim to lower the levels of poverty.” Given the state-enforced poverty of the Chinese people, one wonders what Netshitenzhe has in mind when he praised the role of the Chinese state propaganda machine for “the rigour and focus with which China uses information to mobilise people around common objectives and a shared vision…”

A chill settles in one’s bones when one reads him hailing the “diversity of voices” in the Chinese media, while studiously ignoring state censorship and the complicity of Western search engines such as Yahoo in helping China jail political dissidents.

The view of SACP deputy secretary general and one-man think-tank Jeremy Cronin is even more revealing. The SACP, terrified that the bubble of “real, existing socialism” was washing down the drain with the restructuring of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China, sent a delegation there in 2001 to check things out.

Cronin and his delegation were clearly wowed by their CCP hosts: he quotes a 1999 central committee document that “The public-ownership economy, which includes the State-owned economy, is the economic basis of China’s socialist system… China must always rely on and bring into full play the important role of the SOEs to develop the productive forces of the socialist society and realise the country’s industrialisation and modernisation…” China, it seems, is socialist as well as capitalist! What are we to make of such confused thinking?

“To manage SOEs well in general, efforts must be made to establish a leadership system and organisational and managerial systems in them that conform to the law of the market economy and China’s actual situation, to strengthen the building of their leadership, to give play to the Party organisations as the political core of enterprises, and to adhere to the principle of relying on the working class wholeheartedly…” And “rely” they do, for China’s miracle is built “wholeheartedly” on exploitation and terror!
A CHANGING OF THE GUARD?
So, Chinese communism is finally revealed as nothing more than a modernisation programme guided by authoritarian marketing and management gurus who double as Party bosses! And the Party itself is revealed as a clique of commissars that rides on the working class!

Cronin admits that the delegation “did not have sufficient time to gauge the degree to which” the central committee’s stated commitment to workers’ “democratic decision-making” and “status as masters of their own enterprises” - capitalist enterprises steered by the party - but he thought it significant that these cheap words had been put on paper.

Cronin lauds the regime for the “fairly clear socialist agenda [that] shines through…” “There is no reason,” he huffs, “why markets should not exist under socialism” - a liberal interpretation that allows for the coexistence of “the emergent small and medium privately owned service sector”. Where exactly “socialism” “shines” is not clear.

From such mixed economic thinking arises a confused politics, based on industrial and market requirements rather than people’s needs, where in Cronin’s view, wage increases in the public sector, adopted purely to stimulate market demand qualify as “socialist”.

So what we have is an ANC/SACP government that is not only increasingly trading with, but ideologically inclining itself towards, the world’s last large totalitarian state, a state that is so blatantly capitalist and simultaneously anti-labour that Cronin’s skill as a poet fails to gild the brutal reality. The SACP’s state-capitalist thinking has finally manage to find, in the Chinese example, a happy marriage with neo-liberalism.
PROTECTIONISM OR CLASS STRUGGLE
Chinese goods are cheap because Chinese labour is cheap. If COSATU wants to protect local jobs - and show its commitment to the international working class struggle - it should support trade union organising in China, and step up the class struggle at home and in southern Africa. Neo-liberal capitalism thrives on pitting cheap labour in one country against even chepaer labour in another, in a race to the bottom. The only way out is international solidarity and class struggle, starting with a struggle for an international minimum wage and universal union rights.

China has a proud tradition of class struggle - and this does not mean the CCP and Mao! Back in 1913, anarcho-syndicalists built the first trade unions in Canton, rising to challenge reformist and communist unionism in all the big industrial centres such as Shanghai in the 1920s. Armed anarchist peasant movements controlled huge swathes of territory in Fukien province and in Kirin province, Manchuria, in the 1930s and anarchist guerrillas fought alongside communists in the resistance to Japanese imperialism in the 1940s.

But after the Maoist coup d’état of 1949, China’s estimated 10,000 anarchist trade unionist militants were driven underground and Makhnovist-styled guerrillas such as Chu Cha Pei were forced to retreat into the hills in Yunnan province from where they continued to harry the new ruling class headed by Mao and his entourage of warlords and state-capitalists.

As Africa increasingly becomes the back-yard of China’s oil-driven imperialism, one has to ask firstly, whether the government will try to mimic the worst aspects of China’s enforced civil peace, a development that would prove a serious challenge to our own working class.
ANARCHISM OR MARXISM?
We have no interest on following those leftists who hope for an end to “capitalist restoration” in China: China has been capitalist since Mao took power, and any Chinese revolutionary movement must jettison Marxism and its Maoist variant. Nor can we agree that China is - in fact - “socialist,” despite what SACP leaders may think.

Capitalism is a class system, and a class system means class struggles. Sooner or later China’s working class will rediscover its proud fighting tradition and take charge of its own affairs to the exclusion of parasitic Party leaders and capitalists - what is called in Chinese wuzhengfgu gonchan, or common production without government, in a word, anarchist-communism - and bury the CCP.

But until that day, there is a more serious question we have to ask, one with implications beyond our borders: will China replace Britain as South Africa’s imperialist power, a changing of the guard, so to speak - leading to South Africa embarking on military expeditions in Africa to protect Chinese capitalist interests. All serious anti-imperialists must consider and plan for the possibility of Africa becoming the future battle-ground between US-backed Western and Chinese expansionist interests, and unite the continent’s people in a battle against the oil barons.

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Mbeki satisfied at outcome of Masetlha case

President Thabo Mbeki is "satisfied" that the Pretoria High Court turned down an application to reinstate former National Intelligence Agency (NIA) director-general Billy Masetlha, his office said on Tuesday.

As always, the president accepted the outcome of the judiciary, but was satisfied with the outcome of this particular case, said presidential spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga.

In a judgment he took just minutes to hand down, Judge Ben du Plessis ruled that a breakdown of trust was a lawful reason for Mbeki's suspension and sacking of Masetlha.

Masetlha was suspended in October last year and dismissed in March this year.

"(The) relationship of trust between me, as Head of State and the national executive and you as head of the National Intelligence Agency has broken down irreparably," Mbeki wrote after changing Masetlha's terms of office and in effect firing him 21-months before his contract ended.

A day after his dismissal, Masetlha was implicated in a hoax email saga in which fabricated communication interceptions made out that senior African National Congress (ANC) members were involved in a conspiracy against the party's deputy president Jacob
Zuma and secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe.

"It is self evident that mutual trust must exist between the president and the heads of intelligence services. The breakdown constitutes a lawful basis for the president to have dismissed the applicant," Du Plessis found.

Mbeki had to work closely and heavily rely on officials such as intelligence heads in making important decisions affecting the country's security.

It was in the interest of the president and the public to trust the head of the NIA, he found.

Masetlha had asked the court to overturn his dismissal with a finding that it was unlawful and invalid, but Du Plessis dismissed his application with costs on Tuesday.

Accompanied to court by several bodyguards, Masetlha refused to comment on the outcome. He wanted to first study the judgment, he said.

Mbeki has appointed Manala Manzini to a three-year term as director-general of the NIA.

Meanwhile, Masetlha has been charged - together with software salesman Muziwendoda Kunene and NIA electronic surveillance manager Funowakhe Madlala - with fraud involving R152 000 relating to the hoax emails.

The charge sheet alleges that they pretended to Mbeki, Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils and the NIA that several "controversial and damaging" documents were genuine, when they were actually fabrications.

The documents were allegedly produced by Kunene, whose R152 000 fee to intercept emails and other electronic communication for the NIA was apparently authorised and approved by Masetlha.

The preamble to the charge sheet alleges that Madladla and Masetlha failed tell the NIA or their superiors that the documents were fabricated even though it "must have been abundantly clear to them" they were not genuine.

They will appear in court again on February 9. Masetlha is out on bail of R10 000.

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Masetlha says he was fired for knowing too much

Billy Masetlha, the former spy boss, claims he was fired because of people who believed he was too powerful and knew too much. This emerged in the Hatfield Court in Tshwane, where Masetlha is on trial for withholding information from Zolile Ngcakani, the inspector-general of intelligence.

In court papers Masetlha said this was aggravated when Jacob Zuma, the ANC deputy president, was dismissed, and that the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) also found that a group - linked to the Scorpions - was one of several groups responsible for instigating unrest.

Masetlha claims they also wanted him removed from office, because they thought he knew too much. Masetlha linked Ronnie Kasrils, the intelligence minister, to the group. Masetlha also said he was sacked by President Thabo Mbeki because of an unlawful scheme by Kasrils to drive him out of office. Masetlha denies that he refused to cooperate with Ngcakani regarding the surveillance of Saki Macozoma, a businessman.

Ngcakani denied knowing of claims that Kasrils wanted to get rid of Masetlha, and said Masetlha had given a partial version of a complex situation, contained in hoax e mails. These were found to be an NIA fabrication.

The defence accused Ngcakani of functioning in contravention of the law that governs his office. Masetlha's lawyers say even if their client had acted as alleged in the charge sheet, it did not constitute an offence. Meanwhile, in another court case, Masetlha has been added as the third accused in the NIA's so-called hoax email trial. Masetlha faces a charge of fraud.

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Ousted spy tries to get his job back

Ousted spy boss Billy Masetlha has claimed in the Pretoria High Court that President Thabo Mbeki's "decision" to suspend him lacked legal power as the president merely "rubber-stamped" the decision taken by Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils.

Masetlha, who wants his job back, is asking Judge Ben du Plessis to review and set aside his suspension by Mbeki. He was the head of the National Intelligence Agency.

In the second leg of his application, Masetlha is asking that the decision by the president to reduce his term of office be declared void.

Counsel for the president contended that the suspension application was merely academic, but it was argued on behalf of Masetlha that the two applications went hand-in-hand.

Neil Tuchten SC said the president was asked to provide reasons for Masetlha's suspension, but despite an undertaking to do so, he had to this day not provided any reasons.

He said the applicant maintained that the President took no decision in October last year to suspend Masetlha. The decision was in fact taken by Kasrils, who lacked the legal power to take such a decision.

Tuchten said this would explain why the president was unable to provide a proper record on strength of which he had made his decision.

The advocate further argued that the president endeavoured to have the suspension application "go away". Mbeki had also "sweetened the pill to Masetlha" by paying from the public purse Masetlha's costs in the suspension application as well as a gratuity of R1 035 391 through Public Service Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.

The court heard that Masetlha gave the money back and decided to fight his case in court instead.

Masetlha was told by Kasrils of his suspension while attending a meeting with the president. He was instructed by Mbeki not to enter the premises of NIA without his permission for the duration of his suspension.

Tuchten said it was at no stage during the meeting suggested to Masetlha that the decision to suspend him was taken by Mbeki. Counsel for the president, however, said it is clear that it was Mbeki's decision and not that of Kasrils.

The respondent argued that the relief the applicant sought was inappropriate because it amounted to an order of reinstatement in circumstances where the relationship between the parties was such that reinstatement was impossible.

But Tuchten said this was not an application regarding unfair dismissal but to declare certain conduct void. Masetlha's suspension and dismissal followed an investigation by the Intelligence Inspector-General into a hoax email saga.

The case continues.

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Jewish weekly slaps ban on Kasrils

South African Minister of Intelligence, Ronnie Kasrils has been refused a right of reply to criticism of his anti-Israel stance by a local Jewish paper.

In defence of its decision to slap a ban on Kasrils’ response to an attack on his well known position of solidarity with Palestinian victims of Israeli policies, the Jewish Report editorial claims that “some of his statements were so offensive to the sensibilities of the majority of our readers that they would not contribute to constructive debate, but would simply give deep offence”.

The so-called “offensive” statements refer to “comparing Israel with the Nazis” and “other comments in that vein”, according to the editor.

Censorship of this type – reminiscent of apartheid era bannings – is in direct violation of South Africa’s constitutional protection of free speech and the hard-fought for media liberties, central to freedom of expression.

Paradoxically, the right to criticize and abuse a senior Cabinet Minister such as Kasrils in the columns of the Jewish Report seems perfectly acceptable, while his legitimate right of reply is denied.

Indeed, in an earlier column, [Jewish Report, October 20] Judge Dennis Davis questioned such inconsistencies when he lambasted those who prevented one of the most distinguished Jewish intellectuals in this country, Steven Friedman “from publishing a column in this newspaper….”

“Freedom of speech and adherence to listening to the other side are principles that cut both ways” is the view of Davis who went on to ask whether those who protested against the SABC decision not to use Paula Slier, would also defend Robert Fisk’s right to broadcast if he was similarly excluded?

Well, thus far indications are that Fisk has not been barred by the public broadcaster. But Kasrils’ opinions have been banned in the Jewish Report whose Board of directors includes Issie Kirsh, Stan Kaplan, Bertie Lubner and Marlene Bethlehem.

One wonders how this illustrious group, whose editorial committee is chaired by Judge Meyer Joffe, would respond to the earlier remarks by Davis regarding the SABC: “….to silence a voice is a disgraceful breach of standards of speech…..”

This latest controversy follows an op-ed by Anthony Posner titled “Some pertinent questions to Kasrils”, in which he challenged the Minister of Intelligence to respond to a number of questions.

However, despite an assurance by the editor of Jewish Report that Kasrils will be accorded an opportunity to have his response published in the form of an op-ed, he obviously got cold feet and refused to honour his undertaking.

Instead of allowing Kasrils to explain himself, the paper’s editorial sought to justify its decision to ban the Minister’s response by unfairly distorting it. It appears that silencing Kasrils was not enough. It was necessary to malign him as well. Implying that Kasrils is a “Holocaust denier” and therefore incapable of “rational debate”, is insulting and way off the mark.

The most outrageous charge leveled against Kasrils is that his response to Posner may constitute “hate speech”!

By withholding his text from the pages of the Jewish Report, the editor has unfairly abused his own column to smear Kasrils, thus lending undue credence to the vitriol associated with a flurry of angry anti-Kasrils letter writers.

This strange media practice not only belongs to the era of apartheid censorship; it also entrenches a perception that the Jewish Report’s espousal of press freedom is hollow and inconsistent.

The victimization of Kasrils, first by the Goethe Institute at the behest of the Jewish Board of Deputies and now by the Jewish Report, is a glaring reminder of the urgent need by journalists and media practitioners to assess their commitment to press freedom especially if the subject is Israel.

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Spy versus spy

It’s spy versus spy. Six of South Africa’s civilian intelligence organisations are under investigation for malpractice and abuse of state power and resources.

This emerged from the Ministerial Review Commission launched in Parliament by Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils.

They are the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), South African Secret Service, National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee, National Communications Centre, Electronic Communication Security Centre and the Office of Interception.

Kasrils said the establishment of the commission was necessitated by malpractice which occurred within the NIA during 2005.

He said: “We have opted to use this lamentable episode at the NIA to undertake fundamental reforms aimed at preventing it in the future.

“To do this, we need to review the legislation and strengthen regulations, operational procedures and control measures.

“There is also a need to attend to the perfidious mentality that enabled dirty tricks to take place, and such reforms must be placed in the public domain so as to rebuild the public’s confidence and trust.

“The commission will strengthen mechanisms of control of the country’s civilian intelligence services, to ensure full compliance and alignment with the constitution, constitutional principles and rule of law, and minimise the potential for illegal conduct and abuse of power.”

Its focus will be on executive control, control mechanisms related to intelligence service operations, methods of investigation, political non-partisanship, balance between secrecy and transparency, and funding.

DA spokesman on intelligence advocate Paul Swart said: “We have been on record on the need to review intelligence structures, and are pleased that the focus of the commission will include control over methods of investigation and funding.”

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The rebel without a game plan

Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils called his autobiography, Armed and Dangerous. But, looking at his life, it is not always clear: dangerous to whom?

Like Don Quixote, Kasrils is a likeable, honourable and even chivalrous fellow.

But, like Quixote, he is a great romantic and sometimes his revolutionary romanticism leads him to tilt at windmills instead of giants.

The obvious example was on September 7, 1992 when he participated in an ANC march against the government of an "independent" Ciskei.

The marchers mostly stuck to an agreement to march only as far as the sports stadium just outside Ciskei's capital, Bisho.

But Kasrils spotted a hole in the fence around the stadium and led a breakaway group in a charge through the gap towards the Ciskei government buildings.

Nervous Ciskei guards opened fire, killing 28 demonstrators and injuring about 200.

The whole exercise was futile. Negotiations had been under way for some 30 months and the "independent" homelands were bound to disappear eventually.

But, as then-President FW de Klerk says in his autobiography, the ANC radicals were attempting a last-gasp "Leipzig option" at Bisho.

And Kasrils seemed to be pursuing his own more Quixotic revolutionary strategy.

Maybe this was the revolutionary charge he had always dreamed of in exile and no damned peaceful negotiations were going to snatch it away from him. Now Kasrils seems to be pursuing a similarly idiosyncratic strategy on the Middle East.

The ANC government supports a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict to create independent Israel and Palestine states living peacefully side by side.

Kasrils, though, prefers the one-state option, with Israel forgoing its current status as a Jewish-majority state by submitting to a Palestinian majority.

It's a perfectly respectable position to hold, of course, and in many ways more logical than a two-state solution.

But it is also eminently impractical given the regional sentiments. And, more to the point, it's not the official line, either internationally or in South Africa.

But as Bisho demonstrated, Kasrils does not care too much for the official line and is always looking for a hole in it to charge through, his splintered lance to the fore.

The other day he wrote an article in the Mail and Guardian in which he suggested that Israel should no longer be recognised, called the state "baby killers'' and added that "those using methods reminiscent of the Nazis (should) be told that they are behaving like Nazis".

Kasrils purported to be writing and speaking in his personal capacity. But a cabinet minister simply cannot speak in his personal capacity on a policy matter of such importance.

He is confusing the government's message on the Middle East, and, as this week's events suggested, hindering relations not only with Israel, but possibly with another important country, Germany.

If the South African government still cherishes an ambition to play some sort of mediation role in the Middle East - or even if it doesn't- it should start speaking with one, unambiguous voice on the subject.

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Kasrils's Nazi comment costs him

The Goethe Institute, cultural arm of the German government, cancelled a speech on its premises by Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils after he had likened Israel to the Nazis.

Kasrils had to move to another venue at the last minute to deliver the speech in a seminar organised by the Ceasefire Campaign, the Centre for Policy Studies, (CPS) the South African Liaison Office, the Action Support Centre and the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation (CSVR).

The Goethe Institute objected to wording in the invitation which these organisations sent out to the seminar on the subject: Israel and Lebanon; Unpacking the source of the Middle East conflict.

The invitation quoted from a recent article by Kasrils published in the Mail & Guardian, in which he said about the recent Israeli assault on Lebanon that, "we must call baby killers, 'baby killers', and declare that those using methods reminiscent of the Nazis be told that they are behaving like Nazis".

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies complained to the Goethe Institute about these remarks of Kasrils being included in the invitation, the board's head of communications, Charisse Zeifert said.

She said that the Goethe Institute's head of programmes, Nikolai Petersen, told her that the institute had "harshly" criticised the seminar invitation and had been told by the organisers that they would not send it out.

But Petersen told Zeifert that the organisers did send out the invitation out after all, and because of this "deception", the Goethe Institute had cancelled the use of its premises.

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