Non violence practitioner Mohandas Gandhi born 152 years ago on October 2nd

"Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies." - Mohandas Gandhi 

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi born on October 2, 1869

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi born on October 2, 1869 Mohandas Gandhi was born 152 years ago today and his legacy is still passionately debated in India.  The Economic Times, based in India, today published an editorial titled "Continuing relevance of Mohandas Gandhi" that highlights the challenges to Gandhian nonviolence today in his home country. 

“Gandhi is remembered for Ahimsa, non-violence. However, Gandhi’s Ahimsa was not passive acceptance of violence, but its active resistance by the force of moral purpose and mobilization of public opinion. Today, we have elected representatives who venerate Gandhi’s assassin, but few supporters who follow his example of opposing violence.”

This debate is not limited to India. The September 29, 2019 story in NPR "Gandhi Is 'An Object Of Intense Debate': A Biographer Reflects On The Indian Leader" contrasts the debate around Gandhi with how the Chinese don't debate Mao Zedong, or the Vietnamese don't debate Ho Chi Minh or the Pakistanis don't debate Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Perhaps part of the reason for the lack of debate is that China and Vietnam are totalitarian dictatorships where such debate is forbidden, and Pakistan has been divided between periods of democratic and military rule in questioning the founder could prove unhealthy. India on the other hand has been a democracy through out its period of independence.

Gandhi liberated an entire subcontinent from imperial rule without firing a shot. The United Nations has designated his birthday, October 2nd, as the International Day of Nonviolence. Nevertheless,  he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize and is recognized by the Nobel Committee as the "Missing Laureate."

In 2009 the United Nations has released a one-dollar postal stamp of Mohandas Gandhi to commemorate his 140th birth anniversary. The stamp was designed by Miami-based artist Ferdie Pacheco.

He wasn't a rich man. He never held formal political office. He wasn't a saint or divine figure. He was just a man. An attorney who had taken a vow of poverty and celibacy. His full name was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.  

Gandhi was transformed into a principled strategic non-violent activist in South Africa at the end of the 19th century struggling against racist laws and policies of the colonial authorities. An important theoretical result of the South African campaign was the development of Satyagraha. Gandhi announced on September 11, 1906 in his newspaper Indian Opinion a contest to submit names to describe this movement. The final name was the fusion of two words as explained by Gandhi: “Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force…the Force which is born of Truth and love or nonviolence.”

He was the antithesis of Mao Zedong who took power and killed tens of millions to impose his political ideology on the Chinese. Marxist-Leninists view "truth" as something malleable and in the service of achieving power. 

Gandhi's explicit rejection of Marxist class struggle as hateful, his embrace of truth and love,
 and his critique that socialists and communists did nothing to solve problems are powerful:

The socialists and communists say, they can do nothing to bring about economic equality today. They will just carry on propaganda in its favor and to that end they believe in generating and accentuating hatred. They say, when they get control over the State, they will enforce equality. Under my plan the State will be there to carry out the will of the people, not to dictate to them or force them to do its will. I shall bring about economic equality through non-violence, by converting people to my point of view by harnessing the forces of love as against hatred. I will not wait till I have converted the whole society to my view but will straight away make a beginning with myself. It goes without saying that I cannot hope to bring about economic equality of my conception, if I am the owner of fifty motor-cars or even of ten bighas of land. For that I have to reduce myself to the level of the poorest of the poor.

Gandhi's description of the nature of a regime that sought to use violence to crush capitalism offers an excellent description of what has taken place in Marxist Leninist states that promised paradise but delivered the opposite:

It is my firm conviction that if the State suppressed capitalism by violence, it will be caught in the coils of violence itself, and will fail to develop non-violence at any time. The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. [...] It can be easily demonstrated that destruction of the capitalist must mean destruction in the end of the worker and as no human being is so bad as to be beyond redemption, no human being is so perfect as to warrant his destroying him whom he wrongly considers to be wholly evil.

This explains in large part the hostility from communists to Mohandas Gandhi's social political agenda, and many on the Left who share the Marxist belief in class struggle. However the legacies between those who advocate class struggle and those who advocate nonviolent resistance could not be more stark.

The heirs of Mao Zedong, who were inspired by his violent revolutionary tradition generated great suffering: Ernesto "Che"Guevara in Cuba,  the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Black Panther Party in the United States and Shining Path guerillas in Peru are but just four of many bloody examples.

Contrast these with the heirs of Mohandas Gandhi, who were inspired by his non-violent resistance to injustice and the good they achieved:  Martin Luther King Jr. in the United States,  Steve Biko in South Africa, Abdul Ghaffar Khan in Pakistan, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in Cuba, Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia, Lech Walesa in Poland, and Corazon Aquino in the Philippines are but just seven of many inspirational examples.

Mohandas Gandhi changed political protests and empowered millions with Satyagraha and the use of strategic nonviolence to battle powerful and violent regimes and great injustices in an effective manner that frustrates those who want to preserve or change the status quo using violence.

Today, October 2nd at 4:00pm the Gandhi Memorial Center, Washington, DC will hold an observance of the 152nd birth anniversary of Mohandas K. Gandhi with dance invocation, special remarks, and devotional music.

Free Venezuelans: The case for continuing nonviolent resistance

The strategic wisdom of nonviolent resistance

Venezuela today

These are desperate times in Venezuela with an imploding economy, political violence and a regime bent on consolidating an already brutal dictatorship. Today the illegitimate Constituent Assembly that Maduro and his lackeys have granted supreme powers over all other branches of government began to rewrite the 1999 constitution. It was "elected" last weekend in balloting marred by regime organized violence and tampering with the vote. Among its 500-plus-members are Maduro's wife and son, and is led by Delcy Rodriguez, Maduro's former foreign minister.  At the time of the writing of this blog the Mayor of Metropolitan Caracas Antonio Ledezma was returned to house arrest after being grabbed up in the middle of the night, on early Tuesday but opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez remains jailed along with 600 other political prisoners.

 
There are voices gaining traction in Venezuela making the argument that violent resistance is now necessary to deal with the new political reality in the country. A century of data and the recent examples of Libya and Syria indicates that they are mistaken.

Furthermore, among some Venezuelans, there is the mistaken idea that Cubans did not fight against the imposition of communist rule in Cuba. Cuban author and artist Juan Abreu who advocates violent resistance in Venezuela also does not sugarcoat the difficulty nor the fact that Cubans failed to overthrow the Castros despite a formidable armed resistance because the communists are experts in violence and torture:

As I told you yesterday, Venezuelans, about civil war, that monstrous thing, I should be honest with you; that war guarantees you nothing. I should also warn you that you are going up against an organization made up of assassins who are the most sadistic and brutal on this planet. You should know that in Cuba there was a civil war as well. When the Castros came to power, Cuban citizens organized a formidable armed resistance in the cities and in the mountains. A failure. It was laid to waste.

You Venezuelans should know that the thugs of the Castro secret police (who are directing the repression against you Venezuelans) are brutal assassins and merciless. You should take into account that if you do confront them, there will be blood and death.
All I will say is that one of the methods used by the Castro DSE (the G-2 back in those days) consisted of tying anti-Castro insurgents by their feet to the back bumper of an automobile and dragging them through coral rock on the Cuban coast until all that was left was an unidentifiable mass of human flesh. I am mentioning just one of the atrocious tortures among the many atrocious torture methods used by the killing machine of the Castro repressive organs that you will be going up against.

The Castro enemy is barbaric and cruel. Yes, that is even more reason to kill them, I agree. But you should know what you are going up against.

The violent nature of this resistance made it easier for the communist dictatorship in Cuba to consolidate its totalitarian rule and "hermetically" seal the island, reinforcing the regime's false narrative that the opposition were terrorists and mercenaries, but less than a decade later a nonviolent alternative arose with the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights on January 28, 1976 that the Castros could not so easily eliminate.

University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006 and there study finds “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.”

The usual counter argument is that nonviolence would not have worked against the Nazis but history says otherwise with the successful nonviolent action of the Rosenstrasse protest carried out by German wives who successfully got their Jewish husbands back from the concentration camps in 1943. Nor does one consider the scores of violent actions that failed to dislodge the Nazi regime but only consolidated their rule despite two close calls that nearly got Adolph Hitler in 1939 and 1944.

Hitler was overthrown by the outside intervention of the Allied Powers in WWII that claimed 40 million lives. The troubling question remains what would have happened if more Germans had non-violently resisted the Third Reich, as Mohandas Gandhi had counseled in 1940.

In the case of Libya outside powers led by NATO waged a war that violently overthrew and killed the cruel despot Muammar Gaddafi. Without this outside intervention the violent uprising would have failed. However the rebels that took power turned Libya into a place now described by some as a failed state.

Syria is a cautionary tale that Venezuelans should pay close attention to. Unlike Libya the uprising against Bashar al-Assad was initially nonviolent and despite great provocations maintained a nonviolent posture that successfully placed the Syrian despot on the defensive. Unfortunately when elements of the army joined the opposition to Assad the decision was made, out of the mistaken belief that it would speed up victory, of turning to a violent resistance. On February 5, 2012 nonviolent theorist Gene Sharp gave the following advice to the opposition in Syria:

"Maintain non-violence, do not organise soldiers to use violence against the remaining army. That is suicidal. That becomes a tool - that is what the government would want you to do". ... "Use the mutinous soldiers to persuade the rest of the soldiers also to mutiny - take the army away then the regime will come tumbling down."

In an earlier interview in the United Kingdom on the BBC News program HARDtalk on January 30, 2012 Dr. Sharp said that "using violence is a stupid decision." Sadly that advise was not heeded. The end result has been the escalation of violence and fatalities in a civil war and the consolidation of rule of Bashar al-Assad today and an opposition compromised by violent terrorist elements.
The odds of violent resistance successfully transitioning to a free society are higher than that of nonviolent resistance. However nonviolence is not a magic bullet anymore than violence is. In both a violent and nonviolent struggle success is determined by the side with greater resources and better strategy and tactics. Gene Sharp, a world renowned nonviolence theoretician, offers the following advice:

"You have to learn how to do it skillfully. If you are going to fight a war violently you don't go to all the neighborhood bars and get all the guys out there and say lets go fight a war but thats about the way nonviolent struggle has been conducted over the centuries. People were improvising. They didn't know what the hell they were doing. What would make it effective? What should they be aware of? Who was this guy who was urging violence? They didn't know he was a tool of the political police. This happened in the Russian empire ... and repeatedly. It also happened I am told with the Gestapo doing that. Dictators and rulers who fear the power of people will do their damndest to defeat it and you have to know how to be smarter than they are and more courageous and more skilled in what you do."

These are dangerous and difficult times in Venezuela with a brutal regime aided by the oldest tyranny in the Western Hemisphere, the Castro dictatorship, to consolidate the dictatorship in Caracas. At the same time the vast majority of Venezuelans oppose this government that is becoming increasingly illegitimate and there is an organized opposition. The elements to achieve victory are present but it requires thought, analysis and sustained action.

Those of us outside of Venezuela can demonstrate our solidarity by sharing their communications, providing humanitarian assistance, and standing up in protests of support for the Venezuelan democratic opposition to let them know they are not alone. This Saturday, August 5, 2017 at 11:00am Miami will unite for a free Venezuela at the Torch of Freedom and all people of good will should be there to demonstrate their support.

Dialogue on Nonviolence: Why did Jewish nonviolent resistance against Hitler not work?

"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals." - Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1964 

Nonviolence Icons: Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

The above quote posted on twitter led to a response from fellow human rights defender Maria Al-Masani who asked an important question: "So why did Jewish non violent resistance against Hitler not work?"

Mohandas Gandhi did call for the Jews of Germany to carry out a campaign of nonviolent resistance to the Third Reich but it was rejected and he is still criticized for it today. The answer to Al-Masani's question is that it did not work because it was not tried.

Jewish resistance to the Nazis was violent and widespread.  David B. Kopel in the Journal of Firearms & Public Policy wrote a paper explaining that "Contrary to myth of Jewish passivity, many Jews did fight back during the Holocaust. They  shut down the extermination camp at Sobibor, rose up in the Warsaw Ghetto, and fought in the woods and swamps all over Eastern Europe. Indeed, Jews resisted at a higher rate than did any other population under Nazi rule."

No one seems to ask "Why did Jewish violent resistance against Hitler not work?" Koppel concludes with a counter-intuitive argument calling for more weapons and defending the morality of violence:

"The experience of the Holocaust shows why Jews, and all people of good will, should support the right of potential genocide victims to possess defensive arms, and refutes the notion that violence is necessarily immoral."

At the same time holocaust survivor Bruno Bettelheim described the other phenomenon that took place:

The unique feature of the extermination camps is not that the Germans exterminated millions of people—that this is possible has been accepted in our picture of man, though not for centuries has it happened on that scale, and perhaps never with such callousness. What was new, unique, terrifying, was that millions, like lemmings, marched themselves to their own death. That is what is incredible; this we must come to understand.

The idea that one could only resist the Nazis violently with guns, bombs and explosives because they were so evil led to two outcomes: 1) acts of violent resistance which the Nazis used to escalate their violence against those populations that resisted and 2) that millions who did not have a "weapon" cooperated believing they had no choice and marched to their deaths.

This tragedy is the result of an outlook that does not see the third option: nonviolent resistance as a realistic alternative to dealing with harsh totalitarian regimes. Other groups did try nonviolent resistance to Hitler and history reports that even the Nazis could be stopped in particular instances with nonviolence. In Denmark for example under Nazi occupation the Danes disobeyed under penalty of death and saved between 70% -90% of the Jewish population between 1940 and 1945 first hiding them and then smuggling approximately 7,500 Jews out of the country. 

In Germany in February and March of 1943 German (non-Jewish) wives married to Jewish men and their relatives organized mass demonstrations in Rosenstrasse Street in Berlin to protest their husband’s being sent to concentration camps and escalated the protests until their men were released and returned home which they were.

Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" analyzed the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns between 1900 to 2006. The data showed that major nonviolent campaigns achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns. 

There study also suggests “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.” This depends on the nonviolent opposition movement having a strategic vision and maintaining its non-violent posture even under the worse repression. However the more brutal the regime the better the results with nonviolent resistance and the worse the results with violent resistance.

The latest example of this can be seen in Syria. The uprising against Assad in 2011 was initially nonviolent and despite the brutal repression of the Syrian regime the nonviolent opposition registered great victories until elements of the Syrian military defected  and the resistance abandoned its nonviolent posture in the mistaken belief that violent resistance would achieve change faster. The end result was that rather than undermine the Assad regime it changed the entire dynamic of the struggle and the body count of the opposition skyrocketed. Assad remains in power and does not appear to be going any where soon and a Christian genocide is underway in that part of the world.

Lastly the conceit that nonviolence is more successful against "civilized regimes" isn't true. If by civilized regime one means "free societies" then one finds that these societies can handle mass protests and demonstrations without shaking the foundations of their political systems. Meanwhile dictatorships of all sorts are much more fragile and vulnerable to civic nonviolent actions that open societies can easily resist. This is why nonviolent resistance is more effective against regimes that are more brutal and despotic.  What the tyrants and dictators need are violent opponents to justify their brutal repression. This is why violent resistance is less effective paradoxically when confronting brutal regimes.

Lessons for Cuba: James Lawson on the power of nonviolence

From Havana, from the world, from memory, from the future, from the Cuban heart #AFlowerforPaya - Rosa María Payá, over twitter from Cuba on May 15, 2015

Rosa María Payá in Cuba leaving a flowers at her father's tomb

We are witnessing the power of nonviolence on display now in Cuba with Rosa María Payá Acevedo's return to the island demanding justice and freedom for Cubans. Reverend James Lawson, a contemporary of Martin Luther King Jr., was the man who trained youth in the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins that between February 13 to May 10, 1960 challenged segregation in eating establishments. In the video below Reverend Lawson talks about the importance of Gandhi and the power of nonviolence to effect change in the video below.

Also important to remember that the adversary is not static and will take measures to neutralize your nonviolent action. For example today Sayli Navarro reported over twitter that in Cuba, "the 'authorities of the cemetery' have given the order not to permit taking photos in pantheon where Paya's remains rest."

What Fidel Castro and the ANC don't want you to know about Cuba and South Africa

"Cuba is the sea of happiness. Towards there goes Venezuela. " - Hugo Chavez,  March 8, 2000

Open Letter from the ANC to the Communist Party of Cuba
Voice of America is reporting that South Africa has launched a campaign against US sanctions on Cuba. Reasonable people can disagree on the wisdom of sanctions and also taking into account the South African government's close relations with Cuba the position is not at all surprising and should not be a shock. Nevertheless, the call to release the remaining Cuban spies serving sentences for past crimes in the United States should give one pause. The misnamed "Cuban Solidarity Campaign" seeks to support the Castro regime. Finally what raised concerns about the future of South African democracy is an "Open letter from the African National Congress (ANC) to the Communist Party of Cuba" written by Gwede Mantashe and published on July 25, 2014 that not only celebrates the Cuban Communist Party but its guiding hand in shaping South African democracy while also quoting Lenin:

"In our quest to strengthen and consolidate our democracy, we still rely on the PCC`s willingness and ability to hold our hand against all odds. The ANC will continue to work closely with your party collaborating in all aspects of development and peace. As Vladimir I Lenin stated, 'taking power is easy the challenge is keeping it.' Demands on our 20-year-old democracy are many and varied. The glaring inequality and abject poverty of the majority of South Africans did not come in 1994. This is the legacy of centuries of oppression and deprivation."

However, ideas have consequences as does the belief that "it can't happen here." For example in Venezuela, under a flawed democracy, many thought that Hugo Chavez would shake things up but that it was impossible for the country of Bolivar to follow the path of Cuba under the Castro brothers. Despite the claims of President Chavez that this was precisely where he wanted to take the country. Fourteen years later and with a heavy Cuban presence involved in the repression of Venezuelans and the rule of law obliterated; opinions have changed. Many Venezuelans are risking their lives and freedoms to restore the rule of law, basic freedoms, and ending the rising violence in society. 


Glorifying a false and violent narrative

Michael N. Nagler, in the Six Principles of Nonviolence observes that: "Violence sometimes 'works,' that is, forces a particular change, but in the long run leads to more misery and disorder." In the case of South Africa the decision of the African National Congress to adopt violence as a means to end Apartheid in 1961 may in fact have prolonged the life of the racist regime by decades.  However, in the open letter by the African National Congress a different and self-serving narrative is constructed:

"We do not forget the great battle of Cuito Canavale where the myth of the invincibility of the might of racist South Africa was shuttered once and for all. The military skills of the cadres of both SWAPO and ANC trained by the Cubans sent the racists packing. The "Stalin Organ" or Katusha was so devastating it sent them running helter skelter all over the place. The South African Defense Force (SADF) was forced out and had to face the nation - albeit the white minority - to explain the body bags to parents and loved ones of the young men who had fallen illegally outside the borders of their country. Their grip on illegally occupied Namibia slipped away and the way was paved for the liberation of South Africa. The ANC was absolved by history as the unrelenting force for liberation and peace."

For the record both sides claimed victory in the above mentioned battle. What is disturbing is that the open letter uses the same language of being "absolved" while referencing another act of violence that took place in Cuba in 1953:

"We particularly wish to acknowledge this friendship of progressive forces in this month of July, which marks the 61st Anniversary of the raid on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, a campaign that is to the Cuban revolution what the sabotage campaign was to the ANC in the 1960`s at the beginning of the armed struggle against apartheid. We actually have one of our Umkhonto Wesizwe (MK) detachments named the Moncada Detachment. This is after throngs of young people especially students from all over South Africa joined the ANC and MK to fight the scourge in our country that was condemned as a crime against humanity by the United Nations. The friendship between the CPC and the ANC is not accidental. ... We are working very hard to educate our people about this bond and the trials and tribulations of the Cuban revolution. In a tradition began by the likes of Jose Marti, our brother and comrade Fidel Castro and members of the PCC managed to lead Cuba to freedom. From as early as 1962, despite difficulties created by the imperialist forces, Cuba offered South Africans much needed military and academic training."

The Nonviolent Campaign that ended Apartheid
The narrative laid out by the African National Congress glorifies violence but does not reflect what happened. One thing remains clear the ANC's goal of lifting economic sanctions on the Castro regime is to ensure that the Cuban Communist Party thrive and remain in power in Cuba.  The argument made by some, that engaging the Castro government with trade, investment and political recognition will lead to a democratic transition, was repudiated when made with regards to the South African Apartheid regime. For example consider the following statement by Immanuel Wallerstein, co-chairman of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars in 1977:

"Astonishingly, it is argued that strengthening the economic basis of the white apartheid regime will in fact bring change. This is nonsense, and those who speak it know it ... Continued American investment in South Africa in any form is continued American support for the regime in power. Those who wish to support change in South Africa have only two ways to do it: (1) active assistance to the liberation movement; (2) a call for United States economic disinvestment and political disengagement from the present South African state. The rest is sophistry."

Despite the current propaganda offensive, inside South Africa it was not the ANC and the armed struggle that brought the Apartheid regime to the negotiating table but the United Democratic Front (UDF). ANC and Castro apologists have generated a so-called secret history that is propaganda that has successfully glorified a failed violent struggle as successful. What is often overlooked is the real history of how the Apartheid regime was brought to an end. This is the history of the UDF and the successful nonviolent struggle it carried out that is documented in A Force More Powerful:

 In the city of Port Elizabeth, Mkhuseli Jack, a charismatic 27-year-old youth leader, understands that violence is no match for the state's awesome arsenal. Jack stresses the primacy of cohesion and coordination, forming street committees and recruiting neighborhood leaders to represent their interests and settle disputes. Nationally, a fledgling umbrella party, the United Democratic Front (UDF), asserts itself through a series of low-key acts of defiance, such as rent boycotts, labor strikes, and school stay aways.
Advocating nonviolent action appeals to black parents who are tired of chaos in their neighborhoods. The blacks of Port Elizabeth agree to launch an economic boycott of the city's white-owned businesses. Extending the struggle to the white community is a calculated maneuver designed to sensitize white citizens to the blacks' suffering. Beneath their appeal to conscience, the blacks' underlying message is that businesses cannot operate against a backdrop of societal chaos and instability.
Confronted by this and other resistance in the country, the government declares a state of emergency, the intent of which is to splinter black leadership through arbitrary arrests and curfews. Jack and his compatriots, however, receive an entirely different message: the country is fast becoming ungovernable. Apartheid has been cracked.
Undaunted by government reprisals, the UDF continues to press its demands, particularly for the removal of security forces and the release of jailed African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela. White retailers, whose business districts have become moribund, demand an end to the stalemate. The movement also succeeds in turning world opinion against apartheid, and more sanctions are imposed on South Africa as foreign corporations begin to pull out many investments. In June 1986, the South African government declares a second state of emergency to repress the mass action that has paralyzed the regime.

End of the Cold War coincides with End of Apartheid
If further proof were needed that the violence and militarism of the African National Congress (ANC) and Castro's troops did not achieve change in South Africa then one need only consider that negotiations to end Apartheid began in 1990 after the collapse of the East Bloc and ended in 1991 the year the Soviet Union ended. The ANC no longer had the weapons and financial support provided by the Castro regime and Soviets from the 1960s into the early 1980s. There are those in South Africa who in 1989 mourned the passing of the Berlin Wall but if not for the end of the Cold War things may not have changed. Paul Trewhela in politicsweb offered the following analysis:

On 9 November 1989, twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall cracked open, the Cold War in Europe came to an end, the Soviet empire tottered to its grave and the ANC military option lost whatever teeth it might have had. The military/security state erected by the National Party never lost a centimeter squared of its soil. Umkhonto weSizwe, the military wing of the ANC and the South African Communist Party, never won a centimeter squared of soil. True, the repeated mass mobilizations and popular uprisings within South Africa through the Seventies and the Eighties placed a colossal strain upon the regime, and, true, the economic strain upon the state - especially in conditions of attrition exercised against it by the US banking system - placed it under further serious pressures. Nevertheless, honest accounting must say that, given the continuation of the Cold War system in Africa, this nuclear-armed state at its southern tip was nowhere near collapse.

The international situation that undermined the ANC's armed struggle combined with the successful nonviolent campaigns of the United Democratic Front (UDF) facilitated the end of Apartheid in South Africa. This is because in South Africa there was a far older tradition of nonviolence going back to 1893 - 1914 with Mohandas Gandhi's experiments with nonviolence in South Africa. It was in South Africa on September 11, 1906 that the word Satyagraha came into existence. In the same way that in Cuba there are dueling legacies one violent; one nonviolent the same holds true in South Africa. It is this legacy of nonviolence that has endured and gives hope for the future unfortunately abandoning it and embracing the false and violent narrative of Castroism is a recipe for endangering South African democracy. Under the Castro regime, nonviolent Cuban opposition leaders, such as  Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante have been killed under suspicious circumstances reminiscent of what was done to Steven Biko during the Apartheid regime.

Castroism's corrosive impact on democracy
Replicating the Cuban model in Venezuela has not brought the South American country into a sea of happiness the rule of law, free speech, and freedom of association have been decimated and violence has exploded in the country making it one of the most dangerous places on the planet. In Africa Cuban involvement in Ethiopia led to mass murder and war crimes bordering on genocide. In Cuba opposition leaders such as The obvious question that presents itself is what are the consequences presently of the ANC's embrace of the Cuban Communist Party to "hold [their] hands against all odds."

Amnesty International has been reporting that human rights defenders are being harassed and improper pressure is being placed on institutions, including the Office of the Public Protector and senior prosecutors. Freedom of expression is under threat in South Africa and laws have been passed restricting the rights of journalists. In 2013 the Index on Censorship made the following observation: "the past five years have seen worrying moves against free expression. These range from verbal threats to legislative measures to the irregular arrest of a journalist." On May 30, 2014 the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on another structural threat to a free press in South Africa: "Freedom of expression advocates in South Africa are concerned that the new Ministry of Communications, announced by President Jacob Zuma when he unveiled his cabinet on May 25, will compromise the independence of the public broadcaster and serve as a propaganda office."

The takeover of the media by the government and the ruling party while restricting freedoms of the press and of expression is an important step on the road to taking on Castroism's totalitarian model. Thankfully, in South Africa there is a vigorous civil society resisting these moves, but the fact that the ruling party sees in the Communist Party of Cuba an example to follow should be of great concern to democrats and human rights defenders.

Jose Marti on the 160th anniversary of his birth

"Freedom can not be fruitful for the peoples who have their forehead stained in blood." - Jose Marti

"La libertad no puede ser fecunda para los pueblos que tienen la frente manchada de sangre." - Jose Marti  

José Julián Martí Pérez

He organized a war of independence, but did so without resorting to dehumanizing his adversary or appealing to hatred. He was also a fierce advocate for civil liberties and especially freedom of thought and expression. Today, January 28 marks 160 years since the day José Julián Martí Pérez was born.

Cubans of all ideological stripes claim him as their own, but objectively who has maintained the spirit of his words and ideas? There is a movement in Cuba that seeks to restore human rights and liberties using nonviolent means. There are courageous men and women who risk everything standing up to dictatorship and some of them have been killed in the process and their families targeted for reprisals.

Jose Marti wrote that "There is no forgiveness for acts of hatred. Daggers thrust in the name of liberty are thrust into liberty's heart." Following this statement to its logical conclusion leads us over a century later to:

"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together.’" - Oswaldo Paya, December 17, 2002

"To love one's neighbor is also to love one's enemy. Although in reality that qualifier-'enemy' does not exist in my vocabulary. I recognize that I only have adversaries and I have acquired the capacity to love them because in this way we do away with violence, wrath, vengeance, hatred and substitute them with justice and forgiveness." - Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet Gonzalez (1999)

Both Oswaldo and Oscar embody the best of Jose Marti when they reject hatred and maintain their defiance to injustice while working towards both liberation and national reconciliation. 

José Martí also recognized the power of women in struggle observing that "The struggles waged by nations are weak only when they lack support in the hearts of their women. But when women are moved and lend help, when women, who are by nature calm and controlled, give encouragement and applause, when virtuous and knowledgeable women grace the endeavor with their sweet love, then it is invincible."

The Ladies in White have demonstrated this power and one of their founding leaders Laura Pollan spoke courageously about the stakes in the struggle stating in 2010:  "They can either kill us, put us in jail or release them. We will never stop marching no matter what happens." She went on to continue in her defiance of tyranny declaring on September 24, 2011 that "We are going to continue. We are fighting for freedom and human rights.”

Gandhi, King, and Marti: Brothers in Thought

Finally, what of those who claim Jose Marti as theirs in word but in practice are the antithesis of all he stood for? Today, it was learned that one of the Ladies in White had been detained by officials of the Cuban dictatorship and sexually molested. Last year this same regime had threatened to rape her five year old and this mother went on hunger strike for 19 days to demand that her child's safety be guaranteed. 

Cuba's nonviolent civic movement is making a reality out of what José Martí saw as the necessary final struggle for a truly free people: "One revolution is still necessary: the one that will not end with the rule of its leader. It will be the revolution against revolutions, the uprising of all peaceable individuals, who will become soldiers for once so that neither they nor anyone else will ever have to be a soldier again."

In 1931, Mohandas Gandhi outlined how peaceable individuals could become soldiers because they were soldiers for peace using nonviolent means founded in discipline and truth to achieve real and lasting change through pure defiance without the element of violence in it. This meant in practice that Jose Marti's formulation of a "just and necessary war" had become obsolete because the same or better results could be obtained with nonviolent resistance therefore war is no longer just or necessary. The twentieth century and its bloody tide would demonstrate the failure of bloody wars when compared with the successes of nonviolent resistance both on a small and large scale.




In January of 1998 when the Free Cuba Foundation organized a conference titled Gandhi, King and Marti: Brothers and Thought some protested because Jose Marti had died in battle, but the organization argued at the time that his views prior to his death were evolving in a direction that would find broad agreement with Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Time to overcome revolutionary icons of violence and hatred

We need to nonviolently confront them and take the offensive.

MLK Jr. poster on sale at Amazon.com

 Thor Halvorssen, the founder of The Human Rights Foundation, has written an open letter to Ted Marlow, the CEO of Urban Outfitters regarding their Che Guevara merchandise. It is an excellent analysis of why it is not only a bad marketing strategy but also immoral.

Aung San Suu Kyi T-Shirt by Cafe Press on Amazon

However, it is not only the promotion of a deceased mass killer who never renounced violence that is disturbing but the absence of positive icons such as Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Vaclav Havel, Aung San Suu Kyi and many others who made the world a better place using nonviolent means, respecting and defending human rights and dignity. It is troubling that some around the world want to celebrate a man who committed acts of mass violence that did not make things better but fail in honoring those did.

Mohandas Gandhi t-shirt on sale at Amazon

What kind of message is Urban Outfitters sending to the youth market?  Celebrating icons of violence while ignoring those who made contributions to humanity using nonviolent resistance is a disservice to the future.

Symbol of Polish Solidarity Movement

 In addition to boycotting Urban Outfitters which is a necessary but negative action one should also encourage taking positive action and purchasing posters and t-shirts to celebrate and market those heroes who have made the world a better place. Above and below are t-shirts and posters that can be purchased online that do just that. Time to go on the offensive with nonviolence. There are powerful icons of nonviolence that need to be remembered, honored and taught to new generations.

Hopefully, Urban Outfitters will reconsider promoting a hateful symbol and join in marketing icons who made a difference for the better. In the meantime the following are already available online.

Following in Gandhi's footsteps: Nonviolence pilgrimage in Johannesburg

"It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings." - Mohandas Gandhi

Gandhi: Prisoner of Conscience exhibition at Old Fort Prison Complex

Walking into the Old Fort Prison Complex on Constitution Hill that housed Mohandes Gandhi and stepping into his cell in number four prison. Listening to the description from the tour guide of how prisoners were treated over the years is something that one will not soon forget. Gandhi was first arrested on January 10, 1908 for refusing to carry an identification card also known as a "pass" in South Africa. It was not the last time he would be arrested in South Africa.

Open toilets that faced the common eating area at the prison

The common eating area facing the public toilets which inmates were required to look at while eating their meals is an indication that the agenda was not merely incarceration but an attempt to inflict humiliation. Gandhi was also required to wear the uniform of a common prisoner. All attempts by prison authorities to humiliate Gandhi failed.

Part of the Gandhi Exhibition at Prison #4 at the Old Fort Prison Complex

The popular imagination places Gandhi's struggle in India, but often forgets that his apprenticeship in nonviolence began in South Africa not India. Arriving there in 1893, he would spend a total of 21 years in South Africa before returning to India in 1914. On February 16, 1903 he moved to Johannesburg. The word Satyagraha invented by Mohandas Gandhi and his movement on September 11, 1906 was announced to the world at the Empire Palace of Varieties Theater in Johannesburg, South Africa. Gandhi gave an account of how it came about:

Shri Maganlal Gandhi was one of the competitors and he suggested the word 'Sadagraha,' meaning 'firmness in a good cause.' I liked the word, but it did not fully represent the whole idea I wished it to connote. I therefore corrected it to 'Satyagraha.' Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement 'Satyagraha,' that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence, and gave up the use of the phrase 'passive resistance,' in connection with it, so much so that even in English writing we often avoided it and used instead the word 'Satyagraha' itself or some other equivalent English phrase.

The theater was later torn down and the Ferreira House Apartments are now there on the corner of Commissioner, Fox & Ferreira Streets. A century later in South Africa the one hundredth anniversary of Satyagraha was celebrated with lectures, workshops and the opening of exhibitions.

At the entrance to the Old Fort Prison Complex

Mohandas Gandhi in his Autobiography titled "My Experiments with Truth" described how he responded to being denied service at a barbershop in South Africa that gives an insight into the man:

I once went to an English barber in Pretoria. He refused to cut my hair. I was deeply insulted, but decided to buy a pair of scissors and cut my own hair in front of the mirror. I more or less managed to cut the front of my hair, but made a real mess of the back. My friends in court almost doubled up with laughter. "What on earth has happened to your hair Gandhi? Have rats been at it? "No", I said, "the white barber did not want to stoop so low as to handle my black hair. I decided, therefore, to cut it myself, regardless of the results." My answer didn't surprise my friends. The barber couldn't be criticized for refusing to cut my hair. He would have lost customers, had he cut the hair of coloreds. We (Indians) also do not allow our barbers to touch the hair of our untouchable brothers. I paid the price for this in South Africa, not once, but often, and the belief that this was the punishment for our own sins prevented me from being annoyed.

South Africa was Gandhi's training ground both inside and outside of prison.

Gandhi’s Johannesburg – "Birthplace of Satyagraha is a permanent exhibition at Museum Africa in Newtown. The museum, at 121 Bree Street, is open from Tuesdays to Fridays, from 9am to 5pm. Entrance is free and there is parking in Mary Fitzgerald Square."

Embracing Non-Violence and Love: Boycotting Che Guevara's Image

The serious downside to the marketing of Che Guevara as a symbol of rebellion

Qaddafi as Che icon

The BBC reported on October 7, 2011 that the image of Che Guevara made it onto the list of top icons in the world. Three days later on October 10 came across a blog entry from Capitol Hill Cubans that echoed a sentiment that has been raised here in different contexts: Inspiring Violence Across the Globe with a focus on Yemen. The picture first posted in the Spanish publication El País with the headline "Che Guevara in Yemen."

Yemeni General Yehya Mohamed Abdalá Saleh

Yemeni General Yehya Mohamed Abdalá Saleh, the head of that country's brutal security services. During the interview, General Yehya expressed his great admiration for Che Guevara and "the Cuban model of democracy" then pulled out a picture of Guevara and autographed it.

Ideas have consequences and those ideas are sometimes represented by iconic images. This is the case with the image of Che Guevara and the philosophy of political action that he advocated and that other seek to emulate. In Havana, Cuba on April 16, 1967 Ernesto "Che" Guevara presented the essence of what should drive the revolutionary in a message to the Tricontinental, a gathering of guerrillas, terrorists and other activists:

"Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy."

In Yemen as in Cuba women have been assaulted by rock and club wielding men sent by the security services. On this blog the bloody impact of Che Guevara and his ideology have been reported. From the rise of military dictatorships in Latin America in response to Guevara's call for a bloody continent wide revolution to their coordinating efforts, successfully, to do away with leftist guerrillas like Guevara in Operation Condor. Another bloody episode was adding fuel to the fire in Northern Ireland. Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein, the civilian arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) euphemistically said that "Che was one of the inspirations for the Northern Irish civil rights movement." Whereas Mohandas Gandhi inspired Martin Luther King Jr. to nonviolent civic action. Che Guevara inspired the IRA into greater acts of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. The first with Gandhi's nonviolent vision the latter with Guevara's violent one.

Libyan rebel sitting in vehicle with image of Che Guevara

Australia's News Limited reported on March 28, 2011 that jubilant rebels had set eyes on Qaddafi's home town. At one time Qaddafi himself was viewed as an "African Che." This meant that Qaddafi's rule was brutal, bloody and short for dissenters. At the same time the rebels, also embracing Guevara's bloody political code, have in their uprising against a tyrant also engaged in war crimes and despicable behavior. This does not bode well for what ever emerges out of the conflict in Libya.

Both Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. accomplished more than Che Guevara and achieved far greater authority over millions of people. Unlike Che Guevara they murdered no one. Both men also rejected hating and dehumanizing their adversaries. Gandhi was able to end British colonialism in his homeland and King was able to end Jim Crow segregation and empower African Americans with the vote.

What did Che do? Not much.

Che Guevara played a small role in the overthrow of a corrupt dictatorship in Cuba with a similarly corrupt military that the rebels could buy out when unable to fight them. After Batista fled into exile Che helped organize firing squads for defeated adversaries and for comrades in arms that were against the communist project in Cuba. Once Guevara encountered a professional military adversary, first in Africa and later in Latin America, he suffered defeat after defeat until being hunted down and executed in Bolivia. His is a record of failure but because he was photogenic and his philosophy appeals to base and violent impulses it is his image on t-shirts and graffiti around the world. The current shift to the left in Latin America was achieved at the ballot box not through armed struggle.

It is time to take a page out of the Gandhi and King handbook by boycotting businesses that sell Guevara's image and ostracizing those who wear it. The icon and what it represents: an appeal to hatred to generate greater violence in the pursuit of the total destruction of the adversary was an evil ideology in 1967 and continues to be so today as well as having proven to be suicidal in many cases for the practitioners.

Basta Ya!