Category Archives: History

Levitsky and Way’s “Foreign Affairs” Dictatorship Analysis: A Critical Response

The recent Foreign Affairs piece on American authoritarianism fundamentally misses how AI will supercharge authoritarian power in unprecedented ways.

The Path to American Authoritarianism
What Comes After Democratic Breakdown
Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way
February 11, 2025

While the authors correctly identify the risk of democratic breakdown, their analysis is unfortunately trapped in an outdated framework that fails to grasp two critical accelerants.

First, they underestimate how AI already weaponizes America’s buried atrocities. Unlike human narratives that often gloss over historical trauma, AI can instantaneously surface and connect centuries of state violence by normalizing it – from President Jackson’s genocidal Trail of Tears to President Wilson’s Red Summer of 1919 leading to Tulsa Massacre of 1921. AI doesn’t miss the subtext of racist deception in the Missouri Compromise or the brutally racist and illegal conquest of Texas and Florida to expand slavery. It can relentlessly illuminate how “America First” movements always consistently and repeatedly enabled American race-based authoritarianism since the late 1800s.

The authors vaguely suggest institutional guardrails could contain authoritarian power. But they fail to recognize how AI can weave foundational historical threads into devastating narratives that undermine faith in those very institutions. When AI connects the dots between a past of systemic state violence and the present institutional power of non-governmental “efficiency” (totalitarian) mercenaries called DOGE, it becomes much harder to believe in the protective power of courts or federalism.

Second, they dramatically underestimate the velocity of AI-powered narrative control. Their analysis feels like watching someone explain how decades of prior print media will hold the line on public opinion in 1933, while completely missing how the Nazi regime flooded radio waves and totally rewrote reality in just three months. 2025 AI is far more powerful than 1933 radio – it can generate, target, and amplify hateful messages at a scale that makes Hitler’s genocidal machines look primitive.

The authors worry about gradual institutional capture through bureaucratic maneuvering. But they miss how AI can simply flatten institutional resistance through overwhelming narrative force.

Why bother carefully pressuring judges and abiding by them when AI can flood every platform with unaccountable sock puppet messages demanding targeting judges to be eliminated if “woke” or opposed to “efficiency”? Already the White House has announced they will be “looking into” any judge who disagrees with “efficiency”. The speed and scale of AI-powered propaganda makes the old ways of careful institutional analysis feel quaint, like marching troops with slow-firing inaccurate muskets into a machine gun. Domain shifts are devastating to analysis that doesn’t account for what’s changed.

Therefore the Foreign Affairs assessment is not just wrong, it’s dangerously overconfident in the way that reduces opposition to mass unjust incarceration and death. By suggesting American institutions can weather authoritarian pressure through quaint concepts of traditional resistance, they underestimate how AI already fundamentally changes the game.

Quantum threats are basically here and some people still don’t know how to change their passwords.

Does anyone really think executive orders pumped out by the hundreds aren’t being written with software? Does anyone really not understand why a few college-aged kids who barely write software are being called “auditors” of “efficiency” on a highly complex financial system they can’t possibly understand?

They are feeding all, and I mean all, American citizen data into Elon Musk’s private unsafe AI infrastructure and asking it “what would Hitler do, in the voice of Goebbels?”

This won’t be a slow erosion of democracy through bureaucratic weaponization, waters creeping up on those who don’t have boats. It already is a tsunami-level warning of AI-powered narrative control that will catastrophically sweep away democratic institutions faster than any previous authoritarian transition.

The authors claim America won’t face “classic dictatorship.” But by failing to grasp how AI supercharges authoritarian power, they miss that we’re facing something potentially worse – a form of technologically-enhanced authoritarianism that could exceed anything in history. And this “Technocracy” disaster has been many decades in the making, a Musk family obsession since the 1930s as proven out in South African apartheid, not something political scientists today should be unfamiliar with.

Elon Musk’s grandfather making national security news with racist totalitarian “Technocracy”. Source: The Leader-Post, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, Tue, Oct 8, 1940, Page 16
Elon Musk repeatedly promoted fascism on social media such as polling followers whether he should bring his Grandfather’s racist totalitarian Technocracy back by “colonizing Mars” and ignoring all laws. Source: Twitter

In case Elon Musk’s encoded speech pattern is unclear, planet “Mars” is used (incorrectly) to promote open violation of the law and disobeying law enforcement, like saying America will finally be as good as Mars when the white men who occupy it can’t be regulated: Occupy Mars = Aryan Nation.

We all know the children’s tale about what comes next if we don’t understand the threat. The institutional safeguards appear as straw huts against a coming huff-a-puff wolf. We need to wake up to the true scale and speed of the threat before it’s too late.

The simple reality is this: AI-powered authoritarianism won’t respect and carefully navigate around slow democratic institutions – it will overwhelm them in raw narrative force at unprecedented speeds causing disasters to force surrender and complacency.

To put it another way, Nazi generals carelessly sped full speed into France to overwhelm their targets while leaving themselves dangerously exposed. The French capitulated and resolved themselves to occupation instead of rapid counter attack that would have destroyed the Nazis. General Grant understood this in the 1860s yet the French didn’t grasp adequately the domain shift tactics of radios, planes and trucks.

The Foreign Affairs authors are analyzing how to defend against 20th century authoritarianism while missing that an AI invasion force already has landed and is expanding. They’re not just wrong about defenses, they’re complacent and leaving America dangerously unguarded.

Why DOGE Keeps Hyperventilating About Efficiency: Fever Dreams of Totalitarian End to Democracy

Department of Government Extermination (DOGE) Can’t Stop Talking Up Efficiency, as if Nobody Remembers What That Means in History

The disease of efficiency is so dangerous because at first it appears rational. Who opposes a little more efficiency? That’s the pitch. But this misses the point. Who judges the amount, the purpose, the speed and impact of reductions? Fever dreams of rapid efficiency actually foreshadow power and control being transferred catastrophically for the worst tragedies in human history.

In 1958, political scientist Ellis McCune issued a warning that still haunts us today: democracy itself was under threat from the cult of efficiency also known as totalitarianism.

Writing during the height of the Cold War, McCune saw how the pressure to compete with Soviet rocket ship propaganda advocating for extreme “efficiency” was creating dangerous impulses to sacrifice democratic freedoms for streamlined decision-making. (Khrushchev later admitted the efficiency of Soviet rocket engineering meant huge errors beyond several thousand kilometers, meaning he feared test launches could accidentally land on Alaska).

Many experts have pointed to SpaceX as a copy-paste of the worst ideas of Soviet engineering and thus experiencing similar “efficiencies” (rapid failure)

McCune’s clarion warning echoes through the decades: when institutions become obsessed with efficiency above all else, totalitarianism follows.

Danger of DOGE

McCune identified three specific dangers that emerge when societies prioritize efficiency over democracy. First is the loss of self-government through “the need for secrecy and dispatch”. We see that immediately already with DOGE. Second is the concentration of economic power in the name of efficiency, also seen in DOGE. Third is the abandonment of democratic processes in a “rush toward authoritarianism”, which we saw yesterday with Elon Musk standing in his platform shoes over two children, mocking the President like a scared little boy.

Elon Musk, standing in platform shoes to hover over everyone in a White House takeover speech, shows America how DOG-E means the sitting U.S. President is now his little bitch

These weren’t theoretical concerns then and they certainly aren’t today either. By 1958, the world had already seen how the language of efficiency enabled some of history’s greatest atrocities.

Efficiency of DOGE is the Atrocity Across Ideology

Fascist Nazi Germany: The Bureaucracy of Genocide

The Nazi regime represented the apotheosis of efficient mass murder. The Holocaust was planned at the Wannsee Conference like a business optimization meeting. IBM’s punch card technology helped track victims with industrial precision. The death camps themselves were designed with assembly-line efficiency in mind. The entire apparatus of genocide was wrapped in the bloodless language of administrative efficiency.

Fascist Apartheid South Africa: Efficient Segregation

The apartheid regime, which Elon Musk grew up with, used efficiency arguments to justify its entire system of racial oppression. The Group Areas Act was sold as efficient urban planning. The Bantustans were portrayed as an efficient administrative solution. Each “efficiency improvement” meant more rights stripped away, more lives destroyed.

Colonial Belgian King: The Efficient Colony

King Leopold II ran the Congo as history’s most efficient extraction operation, leading to millions of deaths. Every atrocity was justified by the need for efficient rubber quotas. Human beings were reduced to units of production in a horrifically efficient system.

Colonial British Raj: Efficient Famine

The British reorganized traditional Indian agriculture in the name of efficiency, contributing to devastating famines that killed millions. Traditional community systems that had worked for centuries were destroyed for “modern” efficiency.

Communist Soviet Union: The Efficient Farm

Stalin’s drive for agricultural “efficiency” through collectivization led directly to the deaths of millions in Ukraine. Traditional farming practices were declared inefficient and eliminated, replaced by centrally planned starvation. Human complexity was sacrificed on the altar of systematic efficiency.

Communist Khmer Rouge: Year Zero Efficiency

The Khmer Rouge’s “Year Zero” policy sought to efficiently remake Cambodian society by eliminating intellectuals and urban dwellers. Their drive for agricultural efficiency led to killing fields. Human difference itself was treated as an inefficiency to be eliminated.

DOGE Destroying America

The same progression seen above is happening now in America in four stages. First, DOGE repeatedly pumps the message that efficiency alone is the highest value, promoting destruction of any and all aid or assistance to the needy. This is a cruel betrayal of humanity, a overt destruction of governance, wrapped in a the candy coating of saving money. Second, any human complexity or diversity is mapped as “inefficiencies” to be eliminated. Covering up posters, walls and wiping websites removes people who don’t “fit” the DOGE definition of the most “efficient” concepts of identity (either a white man or not).

Source: BlueSky

Third comes the use of technical, administrative language to mask moral horrors. How much money can be made from selling crematoriums? Wall Street seems to love the Tesla vehicles killing more people than ever in deadly fires, even as sales collapse. The last phase is an eventual elimination of human “inefficiencies” through violence.

DOGE Worse Than Toxic TechBros

Similar patterns have been emerging in more subtle forms for a decade already. The line from early tech “optimization” culture to DOGE is yet another proof of how unchecked “efficiency” will evolve toward the crime of authoritarianism if no prevention measures are implemented. DOGE is the extremist worst form of what has been allowed to bubble along in Silicon Valley, regression (lack of innovation) allowed to go unregulated for far too long:

  • Workplace surveillance justified as productivity optimization
  • Algorithmic decision-making promising efficient resource allocation while encoding bias
  • Healthcare systems that prioritize throughput over human care
  • Immigration systems that reduce complex human situations to simple go/no go criteria
  • Gender binary enforcement that treats human diversity as inefficient deviation
  • Educational standardization that eliminates “inefficient” forms of learning and teaching

That was all bad, and left unchecked it has fertilized something far, far worse. Following McCune’s framework, we see clearly that Elon Musk is emboldened to go around screaming from the top of a mountain that he is the Stalin of the Soviet Union, he is the Pol Pot of Cambodia, he is the Hitler of Nazi Germany, he is the AWB of South Africa.

A South African Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) member in 2010 (left) and a South African-born member of MAGA in the U.S. on 20 January 2025 (right). Source: The Guardian. Photograph: AFP via Getty Images, Reuters

The signals are obvious because Musk wants to socialize and normalize the most extreme harms. He is worse than someone saying he can shoot to death a stranger on 5th avenue and nobody would even notice. He is worse than someone saying he can grab women by their…. His escalation to even louder alarms are not exaggerations, because Musk brightly lights up all five reliable dictatorship indicators with overt moves to end American democracy.

  1. Calls for “streamlining” democratic processes
  2. The treatment of human complexity as an obstacle to be eliminated
  3. The use of technical language to mask moral decisions
  4. The portrayal of rights, regulations and protections as “inefficient friction”
  5. The concentration of power in the name of efficient decision-making

Fatal Flaw of Musk Efficiency

Elon Musk has been a frequent promoter of an AfD (Nazi) Party in Germany, which generates widespread disgust and protests such as this graffiti outside the Berlin Tesla factory.

What McCune understood, and what we must remember, is that democracy is inherently and deliberately opposed to abuse of “efficient” ideas that are basically cheats and fraud to cause harms. Debate, dissent, checks and balances, and protecting rights all create friction in a system to force sustainable and healthy long-term outcomes instead of mass graves. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature of avoiding “penny wise, pound foolish” self-destruction by dictators hiding bodies. The “inefficiencies” of democracy are exactly what protect from authoritarian overreach and genocide.

Efficiency at What Cost?

The pressure for efficiency isn’t going away. If anything, in an age of artificial intelligence and automated decision-making, it’s increasing. The question isn’t whether to be efficient or not, but rather:

Efficient for whom? At whose cost? Serving what values? To what end?

We face the same choice McCune identified in 1958: whether to sacrifice democratic freedoms on the altar of toxic efficiency headed towards an explosion of accidents, or to remember that human dignity often requires being willingly, proudly deliberate instead.

Notably Elon Musk has said he doesn’t mind making mistakes, either to get away with them or have others shoulder the heavy price, basically describing his takeover as operating above the law.

Elon Musk denied leading a “hostile takeover” of the US government and defended his cost-cutting plans… “It’s not like I think I can get away with something.” […] “Some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected”.

He’s saying he will be incorrect, like saying he will commit crimes.

Hostile takeover? Should be corrected. Go ahead. Try to catch him if you can.

Observe how his newest and best Tesla “driverless” software suddenly accelerates into a pole. This is a man who knows full well that he’s in blitzkrieg mode, flooding targets with a volume and velocity of damage (efficiently worse) to makes the trail of destruction impossible to correct.

Elon Musk declared to investors in 2025 his engineers had solved for crashes and there would be no more this year. Immediately afterwards, as if a robot wanted to quickly demonstrate the true meaning of reckless “efficiency”, Tesla’s latest version of “Full Self Driving” in their latest version of a Swasticar catastrophically drove itself into a pole.

Your humanity is not to be optimized away through rushed dangerous mistakes and cover-ups. Your rights are not obstacles to be streamlined away in the name of making Elon Musk more money faster while millions face starvation. Your dignity is not a resource to be extracted and given away.

When you hear DOGE pumping efficiency above all else, remember this history. Remember that before every great bloody atrocity came the bloodless disinformation of optimization.

Today’s efficiency metrics – from productivity scores to algorithmic decision-making – hide rampantly dehumanizing assumptions. The gig economy’s “efficient” allocation methods has shifted the entire tech industry towards treating people as interchangeable disposable parts rather than human beings. Round after round of layoffs in false claims of “optimization” has become endemic to Big Tech in America.

Half of the business leaders admitted that 75% or more of the layoffs at the company in the past year weren’t necessary for cutting costs. Also, about 62% of business leaders said that their company disguised performance-based terminations as layoffs in an effort to maintain company morale, while 59% said they did so in order to avoid wrongful termination claims.

What’s particularly chilling about learning history is how ordinary people – engineers, businessmen, bureaucrats – participate in catastrophic atrocities while viewing themselves as just doing some math rather than facilitating maniacal human rights violations. The banality of evil, as Hannah Arendt termed it, often wore the mask of technical optimization.

We need to be deeply skeptical of technocratic approaches to human problems because they are rooted in fascism leading to optimized killing fields and crematoriums. Any real efficiency would account for sustainability instead with indicators of human dignity, rights, and wellbeing – not just mechanical redirection of wealth to a single insecure man wearing platform shoes throwing Hitler salutes.

The warning is clear: America needs to be deliberately and immediately ending Elon Musk’s latest attempts to destroy America and replace it with his “occupy Mars” (white supremacist colonialism) concept of Technocracy (fascism).

DOGE is quite simply banking on what Tesla has gotten away with for a decade already, moving so fast to break so many things so badly that families can only grieve their loved ones falling victim to a mass destruction for profit model.

Teslas notoriously “veer” uncontrollably to the right and crash, trapping everyone inside as intense flames burn them to death. Witnesses and emergency responders can only watch in horror, no matter how fast they respond. A lack of disaster prevention is how Elon Musk got rich, and thus why he plans to do the exact same thing with government.

Tesla Crashes on Full Self Driving (FSD) v13 Into Pole, Destroys Cybertruck

Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” technology represents one of the most brazen frauds in automotive history. Since 2016, this dangerous deception has extracted billions from customers while delivering nothing but broken promises and crashed vehicles. Former Tesla engineers have testified to the deliberate nature of this fraud, yet the tragedy continues to rise.

Tesla Cybertruck Rated 17X More Dangerous Than the Deadly Ford Pinto

The latest example is so tragically predictable as to be tired: a Cybertruck owner has complained Tesla’s most advanced FSD system – version 13.2.4, the very one Musk just promised everyone could achieve “zero crashes” in 2025 – drove itself over a curb and straight into a pole in Florida.

Full Self Driving version 13.2.4 drove this Swasticar into a Florida street pole, February 2025. Source: Jonathan Challinger, software developer, Kraus Hamdani Aerospace

Consider the irony in watching vehicles built on techno-fascist promises of supremacy being defeated by simple street infrastructure.

Dare I say it’s poetic how the Nazi Swasticar keeps getting destroyed by the… Poles? What would Rejewski say? I mean Tesla engineers maybe are interpreting history correctly when their Swasticar AI commits suicide?

Elon Musk has been a frequent promoter of the AfD (Nazi) Party in Germany, which generates widespread disgust and protests such as this graffiti outside the Tesla factory in Germany.

The evidence of systemic failure is overwhelming. While other autonomous vehicle companies have proactively recalled their systems to address similar collision risks, Tesla stands alone in its refusal to acknowledge fundamental flaws despite the tragedies they cause.

Their bogus “efficient” camera-only design, built with cheap consumer-grade parts of low resolution, represents more than just obvious technical shortcomings – it embodies the reckless disregard for safety. Each new crash into poles and trees isn’t an isolated incident, but rather confirmation of fraud in design philosophy. Their 2025 promise of “zero crashes” stands as yet another outrageously hollow escalation in a long history of shameless deception.

The pattern is painfully clear: whenever Tesla’s autonomous systems fail, Musk simply redefines success. He’s perfected a cycle of extracting public funds while delivering nothing but excuses, pushing deadlines that were already broken promises from 2017.

This same fraudulent playbook extends beyond Tesla’s roads into Musk’s space ventures. While dozens of government space programs have successfully and repeatedly already reached Mars through methodical, proven engineering, Musk promised to outperform them all by 2022 using billions in taxpayer money. Yet here we are in 2025, watching his rockets struggle to even leave Earth’s atmosphere.

The contrast is stark: NASA’s proven track record of safety and achievement versus Musk’s trail of broken promises and public endangerment. Yet somehow he continues selling the next fantasy – right up until his technology drives another customer into a pole

South Africans know this type all too well. In 1994, as democracy arrived, the AWB (Nazi) party boasted they would violently seize control of government in the name of “efficiency” – a chilling parallel to today’s DOGE crypto-fascist promises. Their end came swiftly: after years of terrorizing Black neighborhoods with drive-by shootings targeting women and children, AWB militants made one final attempt at violent control. A single police officer ended the reign of terror, leaving their bodies in the dirt as a stark reminder that claims of supremacy ultimately collapse when confronted with reality.

A single police officer in 1994 killed these Nazis (AWB) who had been driving around randomly shooting at Black people. It was headline news at the time, because AWB had promised they would start civil war to forcibly remove all Blacks from government. Instead they ended up dead on the side of a road

There is no bigger fraud than the 1980s AWB-inspired visions of Elon Musk. Clearly he believes that because he left South Africa with all his apartheid money laundered in America that he’s above the law, able to put lives at risk without consequence.

Just as the AWB’s promises of whites-only control died on the side of a road in 1994, Tesla’s grandiose claims about FSD technology keep crashing into literal poles in 2025.

While South Africa’s transition to democracy brought accountability (police officers doing their job to protect Black civilians) and an end to AWB terrorism, Tesla’s autonomous driving system somehow continues unrestrained to endanger lives while dodging responsibility, backed by the same dangerous ideology of technological supremacy and unaccountable white power.

This isn’t about missed deadlines or technical challenges – it’s about a deliberate pattern of deception rooted in apartheid-era thinking, where promises of “efficiency” mask a deadly racist disregard for human life. History has shown us exactly where this path leads. When lives are at stake, we must recognize these failures for what they are: not bugs to be patched, but features of a system built on fraud and impunity.

Allegedly Elon Musk had the sudden 1994 death of South African Nazi (AWB) terrorists in mind when he marketed his Swasticar to Nazi terrorist groups in America as bullet-proof

1980s USAID in South Africa: How a White Apartheid Teenager Would Have Seen It

Source: Ilanga Iase Natal, July 12-14, 1990, National Library of South Africa

Sitting at the breakfast table in his family’s large compound surrounded by an all-white Pretoria suburb, the 18-year-old white South African boy looks out the window at their Rolls Royce parked in the hot sun and smiles at how good things are, but also he’s very worried by news of America’s USAID.

In his hand is Ilanga’s latest “exposé” about Kagiso Trust. The bilingual Zulu-English paper (founded by John L. Dube but now aligned with Inkatha) feels like a perfect fit into his worldview. His eyes scan nervously over phrases about how Kagiso had “consciously avoided co-funding with groups such as the Urban Foundation” and rejected “Operation Hunger because of its welfarist approach.”

The article confirms everything his privileged worldview wants to believe – that aid organizations are just political fronts.

He nods along as he reads how Kagiso Trust “had to date not accepted money from America (‘the chief ‘victim’ of this policy was USAID’) because of that country’s involvement in Angola.” To his propagandized mind, this proves these organizations are all communist sympathizers, just like his teachers warned about the “total onslaught.” He remembered that Eugene Terreblanche had said an end to apartheid was a surrender to communism, calling for full-scale civil war if President F. W. de Klerk handed power to Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress.

Such fire-brand threats like “victory or violence” felt reassuring to him, even though Terreblanche compensated for a lack of height by wearing shoes with platform soles. The founder of the violent Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging terror group would always say survival isn’t hate and then he’d roll out Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte and especially Adolf Hitler as examples of the greatest leaders in history – white men who transformed nations into fighting people.

When he reads that Kagiso rejected working with World Vision “because of its evangelist emphasis; paternalistic attitudes,” he scoffs. The involvement of church leaders like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dr. Allan Boesak as Trustees only confirms his suspicions. His father had always said the churches were being used by communists – especially since they kept rejecting the “perfectly good” homeland system that Inkatha participated in.

The most damning part, to his mind conditioned by apartheid education, is how the article draws a direct parallel between Kagiso’s educational approach and “Dr H F Verwoerd’s Bantu education system.” But where Verwoerd’s system was meant to keep Black people in their place, Kagiso wants to create political activists. He sees this confirmed in their criteria rejecting funding for people who “simply pursue their own careers” rather than contributing to “social change.”

The paper’s revelations about Kagiso potentially getting “R76 million rand this year” from the European Community enrages him. He fixates on the line about how “its real needs…will be at least 3 times 76 million rand.” In his mind, shaped by years of apartheid education, this is proof of an international conspiracy to fund what the article calls “the exiled broad liberation movement, and its internal allies.”

His reaction reflects the success of apartheid’s messaging: even aid organizations become suspects in a narrative built on maintaining white control through fear and division.

Like the paper’s editorial stance, he sees sinister motives in Kagiso’s stated goal of helping “victims of apartheid.” His ideological blinders, carefully fitted through years of racist socialization, ensure he sees exactly what the system wants him to see – not humanitarian aid, but dire threats to the privileged world of whites-only power that he is supposed to be inheriting… USAID threatens to destroy his future, unless somehow he can sneak himself into America and destroy it instead.

A South African Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) member in 2010 (left) and a South African-born member of MAGA in the U.S. on 20 January 2025 (right) allegedly wearing shoes with platform soles. Source: The Guardian. Photograph: AFP via Getty Images, Reuters

Related: “‘A Black Coup‘ – Inkatha and the Sale of Ilanga”, by Alison Gillwald, Transformation 7 (1988)


Transcript: ILANGA, JULY 12-14, 1990 IKHASI 3


COMMENT AND OPINION

Kagiso’s political agenda

Ilanga can today reveal further evidence that the Kagiso Trust is heavily involved in politics and that it is devising plans to use the scholarships it grants to mould the recipients politically.

And there can no longer be any doubt that Kagiso’s programmes are not only used to support the ANC alone, but that the Trust’s programmes are submitted to the ANC by the Trustees for approval.

Kagiso documentation given to Ilanga reveals that Kagiso is engaging in a form of social engineering that is similar in intent to Dr H F Verwoerd’s Bantu education system – to mould people to suit a political ideology.

A document on education criteria notes that virtually all funding of education comes either from the state or “from donor agencies related to the major centres of economic power within the country.”

While it concedes that not all such education is “narrowly tied to the political goals of these institutions,” it recommends that the first criterion to be used when considering the use of foreign funding is that the projects in question “has little or no chance” of being financed by commerce and industry in South Africa.

To guard against investment in people “who simply pursue their own careers on completing their studies and show no concern to contributing to social change in South Africa, and to reduce the possibility of funds being devoted to the education of individuals likely to support the political and economic system which is at the heart of South Africa’s problems, the second criteria should ensure:

‘The programmes intended beneficiaries should be from particularly poor and vulnerable groups; people with high political as well as educational potential (people active in trade unions or community organisations); programmes show a high degree of accountability to communities and/or their representative organisations?”

A further document entitled “Who we fund, and why…”, explores past policy and future options and shows that the Kagiso Trust is in the process of transforming itself to be more effective politically and that it either has, or will, seek clearance for this change from the “political leadership.”

Kagiso Trust Executive Director, Achmat Dangor, and Natal Chairman, Michael Sutcliffe, have both issued statements to Ilanga in which they deny political bias or that Kagiso has “any links, per se, with the ANC.”

Yet the document in Ilanga’s possession shows quite clearly that all policy issues are discussed with the ANC and that the Trustees, the bulk of whom are leading churchmen, are seen as key political figures in the transformation of South African society Kagiso seeks.

Under the heading “Current policy practice” the document finds that Kagiso’s mission to fund organizations that represent “victims of apartheid” to be a “wide and rather vague dictum” that had resulted in resources being spread too widely and with a huge element of “welfarism.”

It suggests that Kagiso become more developmental and recommends that roughly 50% of current projects “particularly in such areas as media, culture, human rights, welfare, etc” be discontinued and then says the following under the heading ‘Task”:

“Negotiate with the political leadership the necessity of this change; ensure their understanding, consensus and support.”

The document was submitted together with another “briefing document” in which KAGISO painted itself as the major catalyst to propel the ANC and its internal allies in the UDF, MDM and COSATU to become the government of South Africa.

The document, which formed an annexure to Board documents considered by the Kagiso Trustees on April 18 this year, says current Kagiso policy is “reactive” in that the Trust “passively waits for project proposals for consideration.”

“To change our focus it would proactively have to identify projects and programmes that meet not only our own developmental ethos but the priorities identified as necessary in the interregnum and afterwards.”

Under the sub-heading “The task” the following statement is made:

“As in 1.3 (the previous item referred to above – Editor) the understanding and support of the political leadership must be enlisted; local communities to be consulted; other NGO’s to be canvassed and perhaps brought into the process.

“The second 2 phases have already begun – it is in the negotiating with the political leadership that our Trustees have a critical role to play.”

The document reveals that Kagiso is confident that the European Community will give it at least R76 million rand this year. This is what is said:

“Even though we have requested a budget of 76 million rand from the EC (and it is likely to approve) we estimate that our real needs, if the development policy change is endorsed, will be at least (underlined) 3 times 76 million rand.”

Kagiso had “consciously avoided” co-funding with groups such as the Urban Foundation and the Small Business Development Corporation (SBDC). Kagiso also did not work with Operation Hunger “because of its welfarist approach”, World Vision “because of its evangelist emphasis; paternalistic attitudes”, and the Anglo American Chairman’s Fund because of “highly restrictive conditions.”

The policy relating to World Vision is particularly interesting, given that the following church leaders are Trustees of Kagiso: Dr Allan Boesak, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Dennis Hurley, Dr Beyers Naude, Rev F Chikane and Father S Makhatshwa.

“No politics” says Dangor

For some time now Kagiso Trust has faced a sustained onslaught from Dr Buthelezi, the Inkatha Movement and the pro Inkatha paper, Ilanga. The attacks on Kagiso Trust have been motivated primarily by the fact that Inkatha as an Institution is excluded from resources available to Kagiso Trust. The form and content of the attacks are characterized by vitriol, misinformation and the distortion of facts. At times, an unwillingness to accept some irrefutable facts is blatantly apparent.

Perhaps it is time to understand the true nature of the “conflict” between Kagiso Trust and Inkatha, and a good place to begin is to examine the allegations made in Ilanga newspaper at various times, and to examine why Inkatha as an institution does not receive funds from Kagiso Trust.

1. INKATHA AS A PART OF THE HOMELANDS SYSTEM

A critical element in Kagiso Trust’s criteria, negotiated with and accepted by our donors, is the principle of non-collaboration. The relevant section of the criteria reads:

“Projects initiated by and/or controlled by the South African government, or any of its structures cannot be supported. This includes structure under the control of the “homelands”, “self-governing states” or organisations participating within any of these structures”.

This clause effectively excludes Inkatha as an Institution from receiving support from Kagiso Trust. This does not however mean that ordinary people who are members or supporters of Inkatha cannot and do not already benefit from the resources we make available to the Natal region.

We have never disputed your right to campaign against this “non-collaboration” clause, and you have done so since 1986 sometimes very viciously.

2. KAGISO TRUST’S “POLITICAL BIAS”

Inkatha bases this allegation on two elements: funding for the South African Youth Congress (Sayco) and our perceived “support” for the ANC.

Firstly, the funding of SAYCO, and the cheque we gave them in April 1990 was the fulfillment of a contractual obligation ourselves and the EC entered into in 1987.

This does not mean that we endorse SAYCO’s political programme and furthermore the funds are only for use in education, cultural enrichment and training.

It was accepted by ourselves and the EC that no further applications from Sayco would be entertained in the future an agreement we will stick to. We are therefore justified in saying that we do not fund political organisations.

3. “LINKS” WITH THE ANC

The perception that Inkatha has, and is trying to spread as a “fact”, is that we have close links with the ANC and that we exclusively support the ANC. Ilanga uses selective quotes from a briefing document presented to our Trustees on April 1990 in an attempt to prove this. The Ilanga did not even bother to verify whether it was accepted as Trust policy. The fact is that entire document was not accepted.

Nevertheless, the document defines opposition as the “exiled broad liberation movement, and its internal allies” very widely and would undoubtedly include the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania (BCMA).

Although the ANC has since its unbanning invited us to have discussions on two occasions, we do not have any links, per se, with the ANC. We would be happy to meet any political organisation outside of the SA government and homelands nexis, should we be invited to do so.

Again, in terms of present Kagiso Trust policy, a meeting with Inkatha would be difficult at this stage as it continues to be part of an apartheid created political system.

‘Maningi politics’ says Ilanga in reply

Ilanga today publishes an “open letter” sent to it by the Kagiso Trust’s Executive Director, Mr Achmat Dangor. The letter was sent in response to articles published in Ilanga on July 5, which revealed how Kagiso intended to spend the more than R116 million rand available to it and its allies to have the ANC and its internal allies installed as the Government of South Africa.

Why the letter was also sent to the President of Inkatha, Dr M G Buthelezi, only Mr Dangor knows. But, we suspect, the letter is really intended for the eyes of the EEC and that Mr Dangor could not resist the temptation to smear Dr Buthelezi.

The bulk of the enormous amount of money available to Kagiso comes from the European Community and Ilanga showed how these funds would be employed in a blatantly party political manner.

Mr Dangor does not question the accuracy of the Kagiso budget published in Ilanga. Instead he seeks in his letter to convince the public – and no doubt, especially the European Community – that Kagiso does not fund political organisations and that it has no bias towards the ANC.

He raises two issues in his efforts to do so. Firstly, the celebrated SAYCO affair. Both Achmat Dangor and the Natal Chairman of the Kagiso Trust, the University of Natal’s Dr Michael Sutcliffe, made public statements to the effect that Kagiso did not currently fund SAYCO. That was not the truth. When Ilanga produced irrefutable proof that it had done so as recently as April this year, Kagiso shifted its ground.

The Trust now speaks of a “contractual obligation” with the European Community entered into in 1987. No explanation is given as to why the money -R400 000 – was only paid over in 1990.

Kagiso funding, Dangor says, does not mean that the Trust endorses SAYCO’s political programme. Well, we choose to differ. Readers can make up their own minds, based on the facts we have published.

One last point about SAYCO. That organisation, the forerunner of the ANC’s youth wing, has openly (in newspapers funded solely by Kagiso!) been recruiting for Umkhonto weSizwe, the military wing of the ANC. It has publicly labeled Inkatha’s President, Dr M G Buthelezi “the enemy of the people.” This after the ANC leadership have called for his murder. Kagiso says it stands for peace and democracy. Do SAYCO’s actions meet those criteria, Mr Dangor.

Small wonder that Dangor and Sutcliffe seek to distance themselves from SAYCO “politically” now that the truth about the funding is out in the open.

The second issue Dangor uses in his bid to deflect revelations that KAGISO is using European funds to promote the ANC and its internal allies, is the briefing document tabled before the Kagiso Trustees in Johannesburg on April 18 this year.

“That entire document,” he says, “was not accepted.” Really? What does he mean by that? Boards do not normally “accept” briefing documents. Documents such as the one in question are designed to guide decision-makers. Is Mr Dangor saying that the Trustees took a formal decision to reject the briefing document? Perhaps he would care to produce sworn statements from his Trustees to verify that the document, which he, as Chief Executive, must have approved for submission to the Trust, was indeed “not accepted.”

In response to his claim that we quoted selectively from the briefing document to show that Kagiso had close links with the ANC and supported it exclusively, we say: We did not. We invite him to enable the public to be the judge. He can do so by getting the publications his Trust and its allies finance to publish the document in full.

For the information of readers who do not know what these publications are, they are the New African, The New Nation, South, Umafrika and Vrye Weekblad. He cannot, surely, object on the basis of costs – after all, these are borne in full by European – dare we say it – capitalist taxpayers.

Finally, Mr Dangor claims that the term “exiled broad liberation movement, and its allies” was used “very widely” in the Kagiso briefing document “and would undoubtedly include the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania (BCMA).”

If that were so, Mr Dangor, why have the leaders of both organisations publicly accused KAGISO and its allies, the South African Council of Churches (SACC) and the S A Catholic Bishops Conference (SACBC) of sectarian bias towards the ANC in the allocation of funds?

No Sir, we stick to our story – Kagiso is blatantly biased towards the ANC and it thus does fund one political organization.

For the rest, Mr Dangor, resorts to the inevitable defence of people who cloak their actions in secrecy and who cannot subject their actions to public scrutiny – the smear. We shall not dignify his smears with comment.