Exploring Egypt: Traces of the Past in Old Alexandria

Ahram Online takes you on a tour of the picturesque Mediterranean old districts in Egypt's second capital

Hatem Maher , Wednesday 21 Sep 2016
Sayed Darwish theatre

A man walks past classical Greek style columns as he leaves Alexandria Opera House towards Fouad Street. The opera house, which was built by French architect G. Parcq between 1921 and 1929, was inspired by Viennese opera houses (Reuters)

Alexandria, Egypt’s second biggest city and the capital of the country in ancient times, is famed for its rich history and glorious past.

Traces of past glory remain standing today despite the adverse and often ugly consequences of so-called modernisation.

The air of the older Mediterranean city can still be best breathed in the Bahari district at the western end of the corniche, a seafront promenade that stretches for over 17 kilometres.

The journey to explore the gems of an old Alexandria, away from the fancy hotels, buildings and restaurants that are now ubiquitous, starts at the Citadel of Qaitbay, a defensive fortress built by Mamluk Sultan Al-Ashraf Qaitbay, who ruled Egypt from 1468 to 1496.

The Citadel of Qaitbay

With an entrance fee of a modest 10 Egyptian pounds, you can get inside the fortress and move through the narrow corridors and get a glimpse of the outside world through tiny and steely windows.

You can also move upstairs and enjoy a stunning view of the Mediterranean from above, where many lovers gather.

At the same complex just outside the citadel, vendors line up to sell souvenirs to tourists and kids enjoy smooth bike rides on a long corridor, while others simply relax by the sea.

A few metres away, the Greek Club’s White and Blue Restaurant stands out with a wonderful view of many fishing boats decorating the sea, offering a variety of dishes and drinks and relaxing Greek music, although its prices are relatively high.

On weekends, you will probably have to reserve a table in advance for a minimum charge of EGP 100 per person.

Greek club

For more modest prices, the same complex also hosts Al-Kal3a, another restaurant with a superb ambiance including an open air area right by the sea.

Moving outside the complex back towards the corniche, a walk would be enjoyable in the older part of Alexandria. Signs of the bygones are obvious in the architecture, with old and ship-shape residential buildings lined up along the coast.

The wall that separates the corniche from the sea in the Bahari district is another important feature of the good old days, given its small size which allows passersby and daydreamers an unhindered view of the sea. It stands in stark contrast to the eastern end of the corniche where high walls were erected.

During the stroll in Bahari you will find Azza, one of the most famous places to offer cheap ice cream in Alexandria, as well as several humble cafes that all have in common a great view of the sea.

For romance seekers who are willing to spend about 400 Egyptian pounds for an unforgettable lunch, the historic Windsor Palace hotel near Al-Raml Station would be a safe bet, with its sky roof offering a panoramic view of the Mediterranean.

Another stop from the corniche side is Al-Raml Station itself, a commercial hub that includes many cafes and restaurants, from common ones like Kentucky Fried Chicken to decades-old places like pastries kings Delices, which was founded in 1922.

Abul Abbas Al-Mursi Mosque

Just a few steps from Azza Ice Cream and across the colourful boats on the corniche, cross the street and treat your eyes to this beautiful mosque from the 13th century dedicated to the Andalusian Sufi Saint Abul Abbas Al-Mursi, which also contains his tomb.

Sea food restaurants

Abul Abbas Al-Mursi is located in an area called Al-Anfoshi. This area, along with Al-Mansheya just next to it, is home to some of the best sea food restaurants in Alexandria's Bahari.

On the corniche there is the famous Qadora, Hosni, and a few blocks down the road there is Arous El-Bahr. These are local restaurants where you can have loads of fresh sea food delights for relatively cheap prices, but the restaurants lack ambiance. If you are after a more glamorous setting, head to the Fish Market, right by the sea in a posh restaurants complex that includes Chicken Tikka and other restaurants.

Street Markets

Keep walking down the manshiyat on the corniche or delve into the side streets to enjoy the street markets. The oldest of all and the most famous is Zanqet El-Setat, where you can buy anything from handmade scarves to puppets and household stuff.

Also on the corniche is Alexandria's delightful fish market mentioned in Alexandrian literature. It is home to many of Ibrahim Abdel-Meguid's scenes in No One Sleeps In Alexandria. This fish market is delightful for a walk or if you are after some fresh sea food to cook at home.

Keep walking down the corniche and enjoy the sea breeze and the beautiful architecture of some of the old buildings-turned-embassies like the Swedish and French embassies.

The Cecil

Towards the end of this walk you will find yourself at Saad Zaghloul Square, the end of Bahari and beginning of Al-Raml district. This is home to the most famous hotel in Alexandria, the Cecil. It was recently bought by Steigenberger and they are refurbishing it.

The Cecil hotel was built in 1929 by the French-Egyptian Jewish Metzger family as a romantic hotel. It still maintains a magnificent sea view. The Cecil was mentioned in Laurence Durell's Alexandria Quartet and Naguib Mahfouz's Miramar. This hotel is historic, as Winston Churchill stayed here, as well as author Somerset Maugham.

The British Secret Service had a suite there for their operations. The hotel was seized by the Egyptian government after the 1952 revolution and the Metzger family was expelled from the country together with most of the Jewish community, who either fled to Europe or Israel.

This left Alexandria with only traces of what was a real cosmopolitan culture where Greeks, Italians, Frenchmen, Jews, Christians and Muslims had lived and owned businesses for generations. You can still see the lovely Greek shop facades in Bahari at many of the shops, cafes and restaurants.

End your walk with a drink and a Chinese dinner and enjoy the breathtaking views of the Mediterranean from the Cecil’s rooftop restaurant. Try their prawns barbecue and steamed rice, as well as their vegetable spring rolls.

A little bit away from the corniche, Fouad Street represents another landmark of a beautiful and old Alexandria. Named after the late Egyptian king, who ruled the country from 1917 to 1922, it is filled with antique shops, fancy restaurants, and most importantly the Sayed Darwish Theatre, which is now the Alexandria Opera House. It resembles a European street and offers a reminder of what was once the cosmopolitan nature of Alexandria, which used to host many expatriates decades ago.

Steigenberger Cecil Hotel

The four-star Steigenberger Cecil Hotel in Alexandria was built as the Cecil Hotel in 1929 by the French-Egyptian Jewish Metzger family as a romantic hotel.

Address: 16, Saad Zaghloul Square, 16 El-Gaish Rd, Al Mesallah Gharb WA Sharif Basha, Qesm Al Attarin, Alexandria Governorate 21311
Phone: 03 4877173

Le Metrople Hotel
Dating from 1902, this elegant hotel overlooking the Mediterranean Sea is a two-minute walk from the Alexandria National Museum’s history exhibits and 2 km from the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

Casual rooms and refined suites are decorated with traditional European furnishings. All come with free Wi-Fi and satellite TV, and upgraded quarters add sea views.

Breakfast and parking are complimentary. There are 2 sophisticated French restaurant/bars, 1 with regular live music.
Address: 52 Saad Zaglol Street, Raml Station, Alexandria, El-Seifarah El-Etalia, El-Mesallah Sharq, Qesm El-Attarin, Alexandria Governorate
Phone: 03 4861465

Paradise Inn Windsor Palace hotel
Dating from 1906, this palatial, luxury hotel overlooks a waterfront promenade, and is a 6-minute walk from the Alexandria National Museum. It's also 2 km from the modernist Library of Alexandria.

The antiques-filled rooms feature gilded walls and hand-decorated high ceilings, as well as free Wi-Fi and flat-screen TVs. Most have private balconies with Mediterranean Sea views. Upgraded rooms have living areas, while suites add stately living rooms and art from the hotel's collection.

Breakfast is free and served on the rooftop terrace. A restaurant adorned with frescoes serves high-end cuisine, while a cafe and terrace offer light fare.
Address: 17 El-Shohada Street Alexandria, El-Gaish Rd, Alexandria Governorate
Phone: 03 4808123

Budget hotels

These are basic hotels where you can find a clean bed and basic breakfast. Some rooms share a bathroom, others have an ensuite bathroom. Most of the rooms have an unbeatable sea view terrace.

Union hotel

Al Mesallah Gharb WA Sharif Basha, Qesm Al Attarin, Alexandria Governorate
Rooms are clean and spacious, and the sea views are terrific. The hotel serves a basic breakfast of bread, butter, jam and croissant with tea or coffee, and the kitchen can make some basic sandwiches and drinks. The food is nothing special but there are plenty of restaurants, cafes and supermarkets in the area.
Phone: 03 4807312

Le Crillion hotel
Two buildings away from the union hotel, this beautiful hotel is characterized with the old high ceilings and beautiful European wall encriptions. There are a couple of family rooms with a private bathroom, and the rest of the rooms share bathrooms. The kitchen of the hotel provides a very nice traditional Egyptian breakfast with foul, falafel, Egyptian cheese, salads, and omelets.
5 intersection of 26th of July St. Al-Raml Station,Alexandria
Phone: 03 4800330

Ramses Hotel
Al Mesallah Sharq, Qesm Al-Attarin, Alexandria Governorate
Phone: 03 4869620

Triomphe hotel
Al Mesallah Gharb WA Sharif Basha, Qesm Al-Attarin, Alexandria Governorate
Phone: 03 4807585

Hotel Acropole
Al Mesallah Gharb WA Sharif Basha, Qesm Al-Attarin, Alexandria Governorate
Phone: 03 4805980

Getting there
Alexandria is a two-hour ride from Cairo by car, bus or train.

Moscow Says US Failed to Separate Rebels From Terrorists in Response to Ultimatum Over Syria

28 Sep, 2016 15:59
Rt.com

In a phone conversation with the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Wednesday morning, the US Secretary of State John Kerry “expressed grave concern” over the “attacks on hospitals, the water supply network, and other civilian infrastructure in Aleppo” by the Russian and Syrian forces, State Department spokesman John Kirby said.

“The Secretary made clear the United States and its partners hold Russia responsible for this situation, including the use of incendiary and bunker buster bombs in an urban environment, a drastic escalation that puts civilians at great risk,” Kirby added.

The Russian foreign minister pointed out that a number of anti-government groups described by Washington as “moderates” refused to follow the ceasefire arranged by Russia and the US on September 9, instead choosing to side with Jabhat Al-Nusra and attack the Syrian Army alongside this Al-Qaeda branch.

Washington is preparing to suspend the “bilateral engagement” on Syria with Moscow, including the establishment of the Joint Implementation Center, unless Russia immediately halts the attack on Aleppo and restores the ceasefire, Kerry told Lavrov.

The US promised long ago to separate the rebels from terrorists and it needs to live up to that obligation, Lavrov told Kerry, bringing up the recent interview of an Al-Nusra commander about how the group is receiving outside support – including American weapons – as well as the statement of a Syrian opposition leader Riyad Hijab that he did not consider Al-Nusra terrorists.

In addition to Lavrov’s comments, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Wednesday said that a comprehensive solution for the Syrian crisis may be reached only if the US takes more constructive steps in the process.

“It all has now come to a critical point – either they fulfill their obligations, or the process can really slow down very seriously,” Zakharova said in an interview with Russian tabloid “Komsomolskaya Pravda.” “There is apparently a [side] in the United States, for which any real cooperation does not seem profitable, as does any evidence that it exists,” she said.

Kerry’s belief that Russia was responsible for the ceasefire’s collapse is “absolutely mistaken” author and journalist Abdel Bari Atwan told RT.

It was Washington that did not follow through on to the deal, failing to separate what it called moderate opposition from terrorist groups, he said.

“I’m really scared about this ultimatum, because it seems like the US administration is going to escalate the [situation] in Aleppo,” Atwan told RT. “Things are really moving into a really dangerous zone here.”

US-led International Coalition Strikes Destroy Two Bridges in Deir Ezzor

28 September، 2016

Deir Ezzor, SANA – Aircrafts of the US-led international coalition launched strikes on two main bridges on the Euphrates River in the countryside of the eastern Deir Ezzor province.

SANA reporter in Deir Ezzor said Wednesday that the strikes resulted in the destruction of al-Asharah Bridge that links the river’s two banks in the eastern countryside of the province only few hours after destroying al-Mayadin Bridge.

The destruction of the two bridges aims at disconnecting the areas located on both banks of the river, the reporter noted.

The coalition, which claims to be fighting ISIS terrorist organization, has repeatedly targeted the Syrian infrastructure with the aim to deliberately inflict damage on sites and facilities in the country.

Late last year, the coalition’s aircrafts destroyed two electricity plants in al-Radwaniyeh area and water pumping stations in al-Khafseh area, east of Aleppo, in addition to claiming hundreds of civilian lives.

In a latest targeting that took place on September 17th, the coalition hit a position for the Syrian Arab Army in Thardah Mountain in Deir Ezzor, paving the way for
ISIS terrorists to take over it.

H. Zain/ H. Said

Syrian Army Kills More Terrorists in Several Areas, Including Two of Their Leaders in Daraa

28 September، 2016
Provinces, SANA

Units of the Army and Armed Forces targeted the terrorist organizations’ positions, gatherings and vehicles in a number of areas across the country, killing and injuring scores of their members.

Hama

Units of the army thwarted a large attack by terrorists of Jaish al-Fatah, Jund al-Aqsa and Ahrar al-Cham on Karah and al-Zaghba villages in Hama northern countryside, killing more than 70 terrorists.

Earlier, the Syrian Air Force destroyed terrorists’ positions, gatherings, a number of tanks and tens of vehicles in Atshan, Zour al-Tibeh, Maardes, Eneiz, al-Kabbariyeh, Tal al-Zaatar and Qbeibat Abu al- Huda in the countryside of Hama province, according to a military source.

The terrorists who were hit suffered heavy losses in personnel and equipment and a number of their positions, tanks and machinegun-equipped vehicles were destroyed in the strikes.

Homs

An army unit destroyed a training camp for Jabhat al-Nusra to the northwest of Kisin village in the northern countryside of Homs.

Earlier, terrorists’ positions and vehicles were targeted by army units in Talbisa, al-Rastan, Kisin, Um Sharshouh and al-Ghanto in Homs countryside, with the operations leaving many terrorists dead, while the positions and vehicles, some equipped with machine guns, were destroyed.

Daraa

Army units killed a number of Jabhat al-Nusra-linked terrorists in the neighborhoods of al-Sad and al-Bajabjeh in Daraa al-Balad in Daraa city, in addition to destroying their vehicles.

A position for terrorists and more vehicles were destroyed east of Dael town in the northern countryside of Daraa province.

Later, a military source said that army units destroyed drones carrying explosives deployed by terrorists from Jabhat al-Nusra and prevented terrorist groups’ infiltration attempts in the direction of the abandoned battalion from Da’el and Ibta’a towns in Daraa’s northern countryside, inflicting heavy losses in personnel and equipment upon them.

Later still, two leaders of terrorist groups were killed in a special operation carried out by an army unit on the road between al-Nazihin Camp and Gharaz south of Daraa.

Aleppo

The Syrian Air Force hit gatherings of terrorists and their vehicles in Khan Touman, Maarata, Kafr Hamra, Hreitan and Babis in the countryside of Aleppo province.

Scores of terrorists were killed in the airstrikes and a number of their armored and machine-gune equipped vehicles were destroyed.

Moreover, Army units destroyed a meeting headquarters for leaders within Jabhat al-Nusra in Salah-Eddin neighborhood and two weapons and ammunition caches of the terrorist organizations in Old City of Aleppo.

An army unit destroyed a position used by Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists for making car bombs on Aleppo International Highway in southwestern Aleppo.

Idleb

The Syrian Air Force destroyed two positions, seven vehicles and three cars equipped with machineguns that belong to “Jaish al-Fatah” terrorist organization in al-Tamaniaa area in Idleb province.

Two positions, 7 vehicles and 3 machinegun-equipped cars belonging to the terrorists were destroyed and a number of terrorists were killed.

Deir Ezzor

The Air Force of the Syrian Army carried out a series of air strikes on ISIS positions in the surrounding of al-Tharda Mountain, to the east of Deir Ezzor Military Airport and in the villages of al-Juneiniyeh, al-Husseiniyeh and al-Bugheiliyeh in the western countryside of Deir Ezzor province.

Many terrorists were killed or injured and armored vehicles were destroyed in the strikes.

Turkey Hoists Its Flag on Building in Jarablus in New Violation of Syrian Sovereignty

28 September، 2016

Aleppo, SANA – In violation of the international laws, the Turkish regime under Recep Tayyip Erdogan has established a hospital in Jarablus city, northern Aleppo, and hoisted the Turkish flag on top of it, committing a blatant violation of Syria’s sovereignty.

Local sources and media reports said the Turkish regime transformed a school building in Jarablus city-which is located in the north of the country adjoining the Turkish borders- into a hospital with a board fixed atop saying “Turkish Health Ministry- Jarablus Hospital”.

Social networking websites circulated images showing the Turkish flag hoisted on the building and a number of Turkish officials standing in front of it, in an unprecedented and dangerous act of aggression on the Syrian territories and the country’s sovereignty.

Observers see that the Turkish aggression is a new proof of Erdogan’s regime’s greed and hostile intentions against Syria’s independence and territorial integrity, attempting in several occasions to pass its project of establishing a no-fly zone in the north of Syria.

Erdogan’s regime has repeatedly assaulted the Syrian territories during the past few weeks through allowing ground forces into Jarablus and its outskirts under the pretext of combating ISIS terrorist organization- its partner in stealing the Syrian oil, gas and antiquities through deals between the terrorist organization and Erdogan himself as divulged by many reports.

Contrary to the claims that the hospital will serve the locals of Jarablus city, the facts show that it will be used for hospitalizing and treating injured terrorists.

R. Milhem/H. Said

Syrian Army Establishes Control Over New Areas in Aleppo, Damascus Countryside

Provinces, SANA – The Army and Armed Forces, continued on Tuesday targeting the positions, gatherings, and vehicles of terrorists in several areas across Syria.

Aleppo

A military source confirmed Army units restored full control over al-Farafira neighborhood in Aleppo city after eliminating the latest gatherings of terrorist groups in it.

The source said in a statement to SANA that army units carried out a swift operation, during which they established full control over al-Farafira neighborhood to the northwest of Aleppo Citadel after killing many terrorists, most of them members in the so called “Noor Eddin al-Zanki Movement” and Jabhat al-Nusra, and destroying their weaponry and ammunition.

The source added that engineering units dismantled landmines and explosive devices that were planted earlier by terrorist organizations before the rest of their members fled away from the neighborhood.

The source pointed out that an army unit destroyed command sites for terrorist organizations through detonating a tunnel in al-Izaa neighborhood along with all terrorists inside it.

The source said that another army unit directed a concentrated strike on a site that terrorist organizations were using for monitoring the area of al-Brij to the south of Handarat Camp in the northern countryside of Aleppo, destroying it totally.

The Air Force destroyed a number of positions and vehicles belonging to the terrorist groups in Daret Izzeh town and Qubtan al-Jabal village to the west of Aleppo.

The Air Force carried out sorties against fortifications and dens of terrorist organizations on the axis of Kafr Hamra, Anadan, and Haiyan to the northwest of Aleppo, destroying their positions and dens and killing a number of their members.

Damascus countryside

A unit of the army and armed forces, in cooperation with popular defense groups, confronts infiltration attempts by terrorists and launch a counterattack and establish control over farms between al-Rihan and Tal Kurdi in Damascus countryside.

Daraa

Army and Armed Forces unit destroyed several vehicles and positions of terrorist organizations and killed a number of their members in bombardments against their fortifications in Daraa al-Balad area in Daraa province, a military source told SANA.

Hama

A military source told SANA that army units targeted the terrorist organizations’ gatherings in the villages of Ma’an and its surroundings, Tayebet al-Imam, Mourek, Tal Bezam, and M’ardes in the northern countryside of Hama province.

The source added that the army destroyed three tanks, four combat vehicles, and six machinegun-equipped cars, in addition to eliminating a number of terrorists.

Idleb

In the southern countryside of Idleb province, the Syrian Air Force destroyed terrorist organizations’ vehicles and killed a number of their members after targeting their gatherings and fortifications in the villages of Ba’rbo, al-Tamana town, and south of Khan Shaikhoun town.

Homs

The Syrian Air Force destroyed a number of ISIS positions and vehicles, some equipped with machineguns, in al-Sekhneh, north of al-Shaer oil field, south of Palmyra, and al-Rastan in Homs countryside, according to a military source.

The source confirmed the destruction of one of ISIS sites and the killing of a number of terrorists during an army’s airstrike on their locations to the south of Um Qobiba east of Homs city.

In the northern countryside of Homs, the Syrian Air Force carried out an airstrike on the fortified positions of Jabhat al-Nusra in al-Rastan city, destroying a number of the terrorist organization’ sites and killing many of its members.

U.S. Deploys More Troops to Iraq 

By Carlo Muñoz
The Washington Times
Wednesday, September 28, 2016

The U.S. and Iraq took a big step closer to a showdown with Islamic State fighters Wednesday as the Pentagon announced that 615 more U.S. soldiers are heading to Iraq in anticipation of the battle to liberate Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city.

The move pushes the number of American troops in the country above 5,000 for the first time since 2011, when President Obama announced what he said was the end of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq.

Over 5,200 American troops will be on the ground working alongside Iraqi and coalition forces in the final push to drive out the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL. Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa are the two biggest cities held by the violent jihadi group that swept across the region two years ago.

The influx of troops will likely be the last before U.S.-backed Iraqi and Kurdish forces launch the long-awaited assault on Mosul. On Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi characterized the additional U.S. troops, who he stressed would serve only as advisers and trainers, as the “final increase” needed before operations can begin, likely in mid-October.

“We emphasize that the role of the trainers and advisers is not combat, but for training and consultation only,” Mr. al-Abadi said in a statement. “It is our troops who will liberate the land.”

Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this month that all U.S. assets needed to support the Mosul operation would be in place by October — which could mean heavy fighting in Iraq while Americans head to the polls in early November.

Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis declined to confirm a timeline for the assault but said the additional U.S. forces would “accelerate the campaign as we close in on Mosul.”

‘Major’ objective

Administration officials estimate that 3,000 to 4,000 Islamic State fighters are hunkered down inside Mosul, part of the terrorist group’s more than 10,000-member force stretching all the way to Raqqa.

An Islamic State defeat in Mosul would, for all intents and purposes, end the two-year U.S. mission in Iraq.

“There are no other major objectives,” Capt. Davis said. “This is it.”

The political fallout from the Mosul fight could have major implications for the presidential election a little more than a month away.

Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump have traded barbs over the state of the war against the Islamic State. A quick victory for the U.S. and its allies could boost Mrs. Clinton, while a stalemate or military reversal could help Mr. Trump, who once labeled President Obama and Mrs. Clinton the Islamic State’s “co-founders” because they failed to anticipate the terrorist group’s rise.

Iraqi forces retook Ramadi, Fallujah and other key conquests of the Islamic State within a matter of weeks, but Baghdad and Washington have warned repeatedly that the fight for Mosul will be more difficult.

U.S. military officials have refused to discuss any of the political calculations for the Mosul offensive, even on background. The deployment of more U.S. troops was “long anticipated and long planned” as part of the Mosul strategy, Capt. Davis said Wednesday.

He said he could not rule out additional deployments if needed.

“Anything we do, we do with the permission of the government of Iraq,” Capt. Davis said. “Anything we do in the future [in Iraq] will be based on those parameters.”

Battle plans

Most of the 615 U.S. troops will support the fight to retake Mosul from al-Asad air base in Anbar province, about 100 miles west of Baghdad, and Qayara airfield, roughly 40 miles south of the Islamic State stronghold, Capt. Davis said Wednesday. They will handle the maintenance and operational logistics tied to U.S. air operations out of both bases, which will involve a massive uptick in activity once the Mosul offensive gets underway.

U.S. advisers are helping various factions construct small firebases and military camps encircling Mosul. The bases, in conjunction with a main U.S. military logistics hub in the tiny town of Qayara, will serve as jumping-off points for 14 Iraqi army brigades and thousands of Kurdish peshmerga and mostly Shiite militia fighters to advance on the city.

The remaining troops heading into Iraq will be split between military advisers working alongside local forces and “expanded intelligence resources” for the Mosul operation, Capt. Davis said.

Islamic State-held territory in Iraq and Syria dropped from over 48,000 square miles to 42,000 square miles — roughly the size of West Virginia — from December to July. With the loss of Fallujah and other areas surrounding Mosul, that territory has shrunk even more.

Last week, Iraqi forces recaptured the city of al Shirqat, 70 miles south or Mosul, which had been under Islamic State control since 2014. Planning has also begun to retake the Islamic State-held city of Hawijah, 50 miles east of Shirqat, which U.S. and Iraqi commanders say is the final step before the assault on Mosul.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, speaking to reporters while traveling in New Mexico, said the decision to press ahead with the deployment is a sign that the U.S. military is prepared to seize openings on the battlefield when they arise.

Even in advisory roles, he said, the U.S. troops will be deploying into a dangerous situation.

“We’ve said all along: Whenever we see opportunities to accelerate the campaign, we want to seize them,” Mr. Carter said, according to the Reuters news agency. Though Iraqi forces will be doing the fighting, “American forces combating ISIL in Iraq are in harm’s way.”

U.N. Calls for Support for Libya Neo-Colonial Government, Upholding of Ban on Arms From Gaddafi Era

By Stephanie Nebehay and Tom Miles
GENEVA

The top United Nations official in Libya called on Tuesday for countries to support the fledgling national unity government of the North African country and do more to halt banned arms shipments there.

U.N. envoy Martin Kobler also cited "positive signs" of management of Libya's oil sector and in ensuring that revenues go into the central bank's coffers.

But Libya remains plagued by corruption and an absence of the rule of law, marked by "abominable" state-run detention centres holding migrants trying to reach Europe, he said.

The fall of Pan-Africanist Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 brought chaos that splintered Libya into rival armed fiefdoms. A U.N.-backed Government of National Accord has been trying for months to extend its authority beyond its base in Tripoli in western Libya.

"It is very important that the international community maintains cohesion in order to bring the Government of National Accord to a stage where it can effectively combat the questions on the table," Kobler told reporters after addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

General Khalifa Haftar, who has been waging a military campaign against Islamists and other opponents in Benghazi and the east, has been in a stand-off with the GNA for months, blocking a parliamentary vote to endorse the GNA and challenging the U.N.-mediated deal to unify Libya.

Kobler said Libya had 26 million weapons and a population of 6 million. All U.N. member states must respect the arms embargo - with no guns going to either side, he said.

"My position here is very clear. These weapons do not fall from the sky, they come via the sea, they come via land."

Neighbouring countries in particular had an interest in preventing any spillover of the conflict, he said.

"This is of course Europeans, but this is also Egypt, Algeria, in particular the south. There is a link between the terrorism in Libya and with Boko Haram in the south."

But the fact that Libya had one national oil company and one central bank, with slowly rising oil production, was a positive sign.

Libya's Arabian Gulf Oil Company (AGOCO), a subsidiary of the National Oil Corporation, has raised its production to 261,000 barrels per day - 50,000 bpd higher than its output last week, spokesman Omran al-Zwai said on Monday.

"This is the lifeline for the Libyan people, that more money comes into the coffers of the central bank in order to improve the imports and to finance salaries and other basic needs and services for the population," Kobler said.

(Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Libyan Renegade General in East Rejects UN-backed Government

German UN envoy Martin Kobler front-man for imperialist-backed GNA.

Rami Musa and Brian Rohan
Associated Press
6:53 am, Wednesday, September 28, 2016

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — A powerful Libyan general whose forces recently captured several key oil facilities has rejected a U.N.-brokered government and said the country would be better served by a leader with "high-level military experience."

In a series of written responses to questions from The Associated Press this week, Field Marshal Khalifa Hifter said his army only recognizes the authority of the Libyan parliament based in the east, which has also rejected the U.N.-backed government in the capital, Tripoli.

Libya was plunged into chaos by the 2011 uprising that toppled and killed longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi, and for the last two years has been split by rival authorities based in the far east and in Tripoli, in the west.

The two sides are deeply divided on Hifter's future role in the country. In the east, he is seen as the kind of strong, experienced military leader who can defeat Islamic extremists and restore order to the oil-rich North African country. In the west, where powerful Islamist militias hold sway, he is seen as remnant of the Gadhafi government — which he once served — and an aspiring strongman.
Hifter said little to put such fears to rest.

He cited generals who went on to lead Western nations, as well as President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in neighboring Egypt, who led the military ouster of an elected Islamist president in 2013 and has presided over a sweeping crackdown on dissent.

"Military people who were elected to lead their country achieved remarkable success," Hifter said.

Asked if he intended to seek the highest office, Hifter demurred, saying the country first needed security, political and social stability, and that he would not answer the question until that was achieved.

The U.N.-backed government is led by a presidential council headed by Fayez Serraj, an independent technocrat. It was supposed to present a new Cabinet to parliament for approval after lawmakers rejected the last one in August, but has yet to do so.

Egypt has backed Hifter who, like el-Sissi, blames much of his country's problems on the Muslim Brotherhood group. He says Tripoli has been "hijacked" by armed gangs, blaming disorder there and the expansion of rogue militias on Islamist factions.

Hifter has also lashed out at U.N. envoy Martin Kobler, accusing him of "meddling" in Libyan affairs after he allegedly sought to set up a meeting between Hifter and Serraj to discuss the makeup of the Libyan army.

Both Hifter's troops and forces loyal to the U.N.-backed government are battling the Islamic State group and other extremists. Militias from the city of Misrata, in the west, have driven IS militants out of most of their last urban stronghold, Sirte, with the help of U.S. airstrikes.

But there are concerns that victory against IS could bring renewed conflict between east and west.
Earlier this month, Hifter's forces accused a militia from Misrata of carrying out an airstrike that killed at least six women and a child near Sirte. The Misratans denied the allegations.

Hifter's forces also recently seized three key oil terminals — at Ras Lanuf, al-Sidra and Zueitina — from a militia allied with the U.N.-backed government, drawing international condemnation. The U.S., France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain called on his forces to withdraw from the terminals, saying the Tripoli government is the "sole steward" of the resources and warning against "illicit oil exports."

Exports from the Ras Lanuf terminal have resumed, and Hifter said in the interview that he had returned them to the authority of the National Oil Corporation. Oil revenues are channeled to the central bank, which is under the authority of Tripoli. He also said he has no plans to withdraw from the area.

"The Libyan National Army's priorities are to protect the oil fields and ports of export," he said.

He also called on the U.N. to lift an embargo on weapons sales to Libya, and help it remove mines left in "huge quantities" by IS fighters in residential neighborhoods they have been driven from. He blamed authorities in the west for the rampant smuggling of migrants bound for Europe, which he blamed on the militias and the "absence of state authority."

Hifter returned to Libya after decades in exile during the 2011 uprising against Gadhafi. Hifter had played a key role in the 1969 coup that brought Gadhafi to power and eventually became his top general. He was captured during the 1980s war with Chad. After the war ended in 1987, he defected and eventually fled to the United States.

While living in exile in Virginia, he became commander of the armed wing of the Libyan National
Salvation Front and orchestrated a couple of failed coup attempts against Gadhafi before breaking with the opposition group. In interviews with Arab media in the 1990s, he described himself as building an armed force with U.S. assistance to topple Gadhafi and his associates. A 1996 Congressional Research Service report suggested that the United States provided money and training to the National Salvation Front.

Hifter has long denied ever working for the CIA, but now he says he has proof.

"If I was working for U.S. intelligence they would be my first supporters with weapons and money," he said.
___
Rohan reported from Cairo.

Obama Expected to Extend Airstrikes Against ISIS in Libya Another Month

By Lucas Tomlinson
September 28, 2016
FoxNews.com

President Obama is expected to extend the bombing campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS) in Libya for a second time, three U.S. military officials with knowledge of the request tell Fox News.

The decision authorizes the U.S. military to launch a third month of airstrikes against ISIS in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte. Airstrikes began Aug. 1 following a request from the Uited Nations-backed government in Tripoli. At the time, the Pentagon said the Libya mission would likely last “weeks, not months.”

Extending the bombing campaign for another month in Libya means the Navy will have to keep two warships off the coast of Libya for up to a third consecutive month, according to defense officials. The initial plan called for the two warships to remain off Libya for one month only.

One of the U.S. warships, the amphibious assault vessel USS Wasp, had been scheduled to go to the Persian Gulf in September to begin airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, as well as keep an eye on Iran following recent incidents involving Iranian gunboats and U.S. Navy ships -- one of which resulted in warning shots being fired by a U.S. warship. The other, the destroyer USS Carney, was supposed to head to the Black Sea near Russia next month. But the Libya operation against ISIS has been deemed more pressing by senior military leaders.

U.S. Marine Corps Harrier jets and attack helicopters as well as drones have conducted 175 airstrikes against ISIS in Libya as of Monday, according to the U.S. military’s Africa Command, which is leading the operation.

The news comes as Obama approved the Pentagon’s request to deploy an additional 615 American soldiers to Iraq to help local forces prepare for the expected assault on Mosul, Iraq's second largest city.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter made the troop announcement Wednesday. The U.S. military is now conducting airstrikes against terror groups in six countries: Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia.

The USS Wasp is serving as the launch point for U.S. airstrikes in Libya. The USS Carney is serving as an escort ship and firing illumination rounds from its 5-inch gun to help a U.S.-backed Libyan ground force in Sirte, located roughly half way between Tripoli and Benghazi.

In addition to the airstrikes, U.S. special operations forces have been in and out of Libya for months advising local ground forces, according to defense officials.

When the Libya airstrikes began, a Pentagon spokesman said the strikes would only back ground forces associated with the fledgling United Nations-backed government known as the Government of National Accord (GNA) for a “finite” period of time and did not anticipate a long commitment.

“The duration of this operation will be measured based upon the length of time it takes for them to do that objective,” Capt. Jeff Davis said during a Pentagon briefing with reporters.

The mission will likely take “weeks not months,” Davis said at the start of the airstrikes in early August. “This is a finite period of time and a very finite mission ... We don’t envision this as being something that’s going to be too long,” he said.

Speaking at the White House in August, President Obama said supporting the Libyan government against ISIS was in “America's national security interests.”

ISIS fighters have been decimated in Libya since US airstrikes began, multiple officials tell Fox News.

Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in August the number of ISIS fighters in Sirte was under 1,000. After nearly two months of Marine Corps airstrikes, the number of ISIS fighters in Sirte has been estimated to be “under 100,” according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the latest intelligence.

The official added that U,S, military operations in Libya could be ending soon. “It’s very close. ISIS is only in three neighborhoods [in Sirte],” the official added.

In June, CIA Director John Brennan said there were 5,000 to 8,000 ISIS fighters in Libya.

Lucas Tomlinson is the Pentagon and State Department producer for Fox News Channel. You can follow him on Twitter: @LucasFoxNews

Chicago Teachers Union Sets Oct. 11 Strike Date

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, center, and Vice President Jesse Sharkey, right, at a news conference on Sept. 28, 2016. (WGN-TV)

Juan Perez Jr.Contact Reporter
Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Teachers Union on Wednesday set a strike date of Oct. 11, moving one step closer to shutting down schools for the second time in Mayor Rahm Emanuel's tenure and increasing the heat on negotiations to replace a contract that expired more than a year ago.

The CTU is required to give 10 days' notice before a walkout, and a strike remains only a threat that the union can use for leverage in ongoing talks. Even with a strike date set, the union could opt to stay on the job if negotiations show progress.

"Technically it means that we're on strike as of Oct. 11 if we have not reached a tentative agreement," CTU President Karen Lewis said after the vote by delegates.

"It's time to move this along," Lewis said. "We're going to continue to try to reach an agreement on this contract."

When asked how close both sides might be to a deal, the union president replied: "I don't even know what 'close' means anymore."

The Chicago Board of Education earlier Wednesday acknowledged the potential for a strike and authorized a $15 million emergency plan to shelter and feed students if teachers walk off the job. As it did during the 2012 strike, Chicago Public Schools would work with the city, the Chicago Park District and other agencies to provide facilities.

CPS chief Forrest Claypool at Wednesday's board meeting defended the contract proposal rejected last winter by the CTU and said the union's plan to set a strike date was "disappointing, because negotiations are ongoing."

"We will continue to listen, continue to negotiate and continue to do everything possible to avoid an interruption to our students' learning," Claypool said. "A strike would harm the children we're all here to serve. It would halt the great progress that our kids are making, and it would create an enormous burden for CPS families."

The CTU's House of Delegates approved the strike date at a meeting late Wednesday afternoon, following a vote by the union's full membership last week that authorized leaders to call a strike.

CTU Vice President Jesse Sharkey said a contract settlement hinges on the city providing more money to schools from sources such as tax increment financing districts, and tried to place blame for a potential strike squarely in Emanuel's lap.

"We know that Rahm Emanuel has it within his power to solve this problem," Sharkey said. "This is the mayor's problem."

Teacher evaluations, testing and a longer school day were part of the dynamic in talks leading up to the 2012 strike, which was the union's first in 25 years. In this round, negotiations have centered more on monetary issues as the district continues to struggle financially.

Negotiators have clashed over health insurance benefits, pay raises and the district's desire to end its long-standing practice of paying the bulk of teachers' pension contributions. CPS officials maintain teachers would see a net pay increase over the life of the contract the union rejected early this year. The union disputes that.

Lewis, the firebrand leader of the 2012 strike, has tried to minimize her role in negotiations this time around, saying she takes her orders from members. She has acknowledged that efforts to give members a bigger role in union decisions have made it tougher to settle a deal.

Wednesday's action by the union came in the same week that CPS' financial reputation took another hit from a major Wall Street credit ratings agency.

Moody's Investors Service dropped the district's bond rating further into junk status, citing a variety of factors, including the district's reliance on short-term borrowing, a "deepening structural deficit" and a budget "built on unrealistic expectations" of help from a state government with money woes of its own.

CPS also this week announced budgets at about 300 schools would lose a collective $45 million largely because of enrollment declines.

Despite the union's suggestion that time is running out to reach a deal, school board President Frank Clark and Claypool repeated that a strike can still be avoided.

"I, too, frankly, expect that we'll figure a way out to address the issues that are important to you and your members and keep the teachers where they want to be — in front of the kids," Clark told Lewis, who made a rare appearance at the school board meeting.

An ordinance to provide more TIF surplus money to CPS is stalled in a City Council committee. Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza, 10th, a sponsor of the ordinance, was at the board meeting and called for the proposal to move forward.

"People are leaving Chicago in droves because of the insanity that's been created here. We cannot let this happen in this great city of Chicago. We can't. We will stand up and we will fight back and take back our schools," Garza said.

Sharkey, in comments after the delegates' vote, declined to go into further details on negotiations.

"Obviously we are not going to take cuts. The conditions in the schools are difficult, and the people who work in the schools deserve not to be cut," Sharkey said. "And then also we don't want to see further cuts to the schools. That's very much the way we are approaching these negotiations."

jjperez@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @perezjr

Chicago Teachers Set Oct. 11 Strike Date If Deal Not Reached

ASSOCIATED PRESS CHICAGO
Sep 28, 2016, 7:40 PM ET

The Chicago Teachers Union has set an Oct. 11 strike date if the union fails to reach a contract agreement with Chicago Public Schools.

Saying it's time to move contract talks along, union president Karen Lewis said teachers will "withhold our labor" if an agreement isn't reached by that date. She wouldn't say if they are close to an agreement.

The union's approximately 25,000 members walked out in 2012 for 10 days and staged a one-day walkout in April.

Union vice president Jesse Sharkey said in addition to pay, the union's stance is partially motivated by cuts in school staffing, including librarians, and services such as special education experts.

Public schools CEO Forrest Claypool says the cash-strapped district will do everything possible to prevent disruption of the school year.

Water Still Not Safe to Drink in Flint, All Michigan Residents With Lead Pipes Urged to Use Filters

Jim Kiertzner
1:56 PM, Sep 28, 2016

(WXYZ) - The water is still not safe to drink in Flint and it is not known when it will be safe. Officials say it could be years before an all clear can be given.

Also a new warning for everyone to check for lead services lines running into their homes and businesses. It comes from Dr. Marc Edwards a water expert from Virginia Tech University who did the early testing in Flint and found high lead levels.

Dr. Edwards spoke by telephone during a media roundtable with Governor Rick Snyder that corrosion control of water had been a band-aid approach in all water systems in the United States.

Dr. Edwards said everybody should check for lead service lines, usually homes and businesses constructed before the mid 1980s. And if they are lead, filters must be used to be safe. He said Flint has become a national lesson saying, "If filters are not in place we will never again be able to say that water coming through a lead pipe regardless of how good the corrosion control is, is safe by modern standards. Not only in Flint but all around the United States."

According to Governor Snyder, Flint has had only 144 lead services lines replaced. The actual number is four to five thousand. They are very expensive to replace as they run from water mains under streets underground into buildings.

The Flint water crisis is one-year-old, but that's a one year anniversary of when state officials including Governor Rick Snyder recognized the emergency.

For the people of Flint, their trouble started in 2014 after their water supply was switched to the Flint River from Detroit to same money.

The river water was more corrosive and caused lead to leach into the drinking water. The water a year ago was switched back to Detroit.

OPEC Agrees on Need to Cut Oil Output

Cartel to finalize detailed output-cut plan after committee report in November

By BENOIT FAUCON,  GEORGI KANTCHEV and  SELINA WILLIAMS
Wall Street Journal
Sept. 28, 2016 3:32 p.m. ET

ALGIERS—OPEC on Wednesday reached an understanding that a crude-oil-production cut is needed to lift petroleum prices, people familiar with the matter said, but the cartel will wait until November to finalize a plan to tackle a supply glut that has lasted longer than expected.

The consensus was reached after a 4½-hour meeting in the Algerian capital. It represents the first acknowledgment from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries that it needed to take action to alleviate an oil-price slump that has wreaked havoc on the economies of oil producers. OPEC, the 14-nation cartel that controls more than a third of world oil output, has been producing at record levels as its members compete among themselves for buyers.

A person familiar with the matter said the cartel was considering cutting production to between 32.5 million barrels a day and 33 million barrels a day—down from August levels of 33.2 million barrels a day.

“Today, an exceptional decision was made at OPEC,” Iran’s oil minister, Bijan Zanganeh, told reporters after the meeting, according to Iranian state media service Shana.

Exactly how the production cuts would be achieved is unclear. The person said a committee would be formed to study how to carry out the cuts and then report to the cartel at its next meeting on Nov. 30 in Vienna.

Iran, Libya and Nigeria are trying to increase production, while countries like Venezuela and Algeria can ill afford to lose oil revenue by cutting. Saudi Arabia, the group’s largest producer, has been pumping at record levels in recent months and was expected to slow down output in the fall and winter anyway.

The meeting was also lacking the world’s largest producer of crude oil, Russia, which is pumping record levels of the fuel. Russia isn’t a member of OPEC but had been heavily involved in talks with the cartel about jointly slowing down output.

The person familiar with the matter said the output cuts would be discussed with non-OPEC members soon.

The prospect of OPEC returning to its traditional role of propping up oil prices with production cuts—a weapon it had kept sheathed since oil prices fell in 2014—sent the crude market on a wild ride. Prices rose over 5% to above $49 a barrel after reports of a deal surfaced Wednesday following a volatile day of trading.

OPEC kicked off Wednesday’s meeting against a bleak backdrop in the oil industry. After years of prices around or above $100 a barrel, oil prices fell below $30 a barrel this year for the first time in over a decade and have remained stuck between $40 and $50 for months. It has resulted in cheap energy costs for consumers but also tens of thousands of layoffs in the petroleum business, which has dragged on the U.S. economy at times.

OPEC hasn’t taken any concrete action to help the market since prices first began falling in 2014. Saudi Arabia, the cartel’s biggest producer and de facto leader, reasoned that an American oil boom made OPEC’s traditional move of cutting production levels less effective at propping up the market. Instead, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members opened the spigots full blast and pumped record levels in a fierce competition for market share.

The previous position of Saudi Arabia’s oil officials had been that low oil prices would push production out of the market and prices would eventually rise as demand overtakes falling supply. But U.S. production has been more resilient than most observers expected, and billions of barrels of the world’s vast oversupply of oil has been put into storage, delaying the day when demand catches up to supply.

At OPEC’s last meeting in June, when the cartel took no action, OPEC believed supply and demand would harmonize—and prices would recover—late this year or early next.

“Our expectations about the rebalancing process have shifted,” said OPEC Conference President Dr. Mohammed Bin Saleh al-Sada, in a speech to the cartel before its private gathering. “It is evident that there is now a greater degree of urgency.”

Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said this week that the market needed reassurance—“a gentle adjustment.” It wasn’t a call for dramatic action, but it represented a departure from Mr. Falih’s predecessor, longtime Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi, who last declared OPEC was no longer a cartel and that the days of production cuts were over.

Write to Benoit Faucon at benoit.faucon@wsj.com, Georgi Kantchev at georgi.kantchev@wsj.com and Selina Williams at selina.williams@wsj.com

At Least 17 Somalian Soldiers Killed in Pentagon Bombing

28 Sep, 2016
MOGADISHU
hamariweb.com

At least 17 soldiers were killed in clashes overnight between forces from two semi-autonomous regions of northern Somalia, local officials said on Wednesday.

Soldiers in Puntland and Galmudug have clashed repeatedly over territory and political rivalries in recent years.As well as fighting in a civil war that began in 1991, national forces, loyal to the Western-backed Mogadishu-based government, and regional militias are battling an Islamist insurgency.

The militias sometimes also attack each other. Puntland said it had killed Islamist militants in an air raid but Galmudugsaid its soldiers were targeted.

"This [story of] killing militants is propaganda. Seventeen of our soldiers were killed and two of our military vehicles were destroyed by the air strike," Abdi Hussein, the deputy governor of Galkayo, the capital of the Galmudug region, told Reuters by phone.

Galkayo hospital confirmed it had received 17 dead and 15 wounded soldiers.

A Puntland police colonel insisted the raid killed militants.

"Puntland security forces launched a planned attack last night. We killed over a dozen militants and destroyed their vehicles," Colonel Abdullahi Nur said.

U.S. Airstrike Kills 22 Somalian Soldiers Said to Have Been Al-Shabaab

By Abdi Sheikh | MOGADISHU
Reuters

An air strike in northern Somalia left as many as 22 soldiers dead overnight, local officials said on Wednesday, and one region said the United States had been duped into attacking its troops.

Galmudug's Security Minister Osman Issa said 22 of his region's soldiers had been killed in the strike, adding that the rival neighboring region of Puntland had requested it on the pretext that the men were al Shabaab Islamist militants.

"Puntland misinformed the United States and thus our forces were bombed," he told Reuters.

A U.S. Defense Department official told Reuters Washington had conducted "a self-defense air strike" against al Shabaab.

"The air strike was called in after Somali troops faced fire from militants," the official said. No evidence had been seen that the attack killed civilians or anyone other than al Shabaab militants, the official added.

A Puntland police officer said the attack had killed "more than a dozen" members of al Shabaab, which is waging an insurgency against Somalia's Western-backed government and regional authorities.

Galmudug and Puntland regions have often clashed over territory.

The United States has launched many air strikes in Somalia, usually against al Shabaab.

Al Shabaab denied that it had any fighters in the area of the latest incident. "We neither have a base nor forces in Galkayo area," Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al Shabaab’s military operations spokesman, told Reuters.

Protesters in Galmudug's capital Galkayo burned U.S. flags and images of President Barack Obama in protest, witnesses said. Shops closed because of the demonstrations.

Somalia is trying to rebuild after two decades of war. The conflict that began in 1991 left the Horn of Africa nation riven by clan rivalries and struggling with an Islamist insurgency. Rival regions still sometimes take up arms against each other.

(Additional reporting by Idrees Ali in Washington D.C.; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Edmund Blair and Andrew Roche)

Niger Universities Paralyzed as Teachers, Students Strike

Dibie Ike Michael
AFP   26/09 - 18:05

Lecturers and students in Niger have launched a week-long strike, paralysing universities across the country in protest over non-payment of salaries and grants.

Industrial action earlier this month had already complicated the start of the academic year, disrupting studies in the capital, Niamey and across the country.

“We have begun a seven-day strike to demand the payment of salary arrears’and research grants,” said head of Niger’s union of teachers and researchers (SNECS), Bakasso Sahabi.

We have begun a seven-day strike to demand the payment of salary arrears’and research grants,
He said the strike, which was being widely observed was the continuation of a strike by teachers who observed a three-day stoppage nearly two weeks ago.

Students had also boycotted lessons to demand the payment of overdue grants and the recruitment of more teachers.

According to head of Niamey University’s students union (UENUN), Salaou Chaibou, the students are also demanding for more class rooms.

The Minister of education, Mohamed Ben Omar acknowledged there had been a problem with salary payments, but insisted the problem had been resolved.

“Four months of salary arrears” at Zinder University in central Niger had already been taken care of, Ben Omar told public television on Saturday, saying there was no longer any reason to continue the strike.

H blamed the delay in payment of wages and grants on the country’s military expenditure which had “ranked in” all the treasury’s revenues.

Spectator Democracy In Zimbabwe

September 26, 2016
Opinion & Analysis
Reason Wafawarova
Zimbabwe Herald

Evan Mawarire’s plot to demonstrate against President Mugabe in New York was spoiled by the counter-protest by some Zimbabweans based in the United States, backed by a larger crowd of members of the December 12 Movement (pictured), a US based anti-imperialist movement
Reason Wafawarova on Monday

It is difficult to determine the position of the common person in Zimbabwe when a group of supposedly disenchanted Zimbabweans travels to the United States to make a protest point against their own Government on the streets of New York. It even gets a lot more complicated when the said group is confronted with an even angrier group of largely African-American citizens, marching in solidarity with the very Government against whom a coterie of supposedly concerned Zimbabweans flew to New York to denounce.

The clash of the two protesting groups was certainly not a global attention event, but it generated a significant amount of interest among Zimbabwean social media patrons, and was keenly followed by US elites who reportedly sponsored the anti-government protesters, hoping to cause an internationally significant humiliation of President Mugabe at the annual UN General Assembly Summit. Agenda setting it is called.

The plot was spoiled by the counter-protest by some Zimbabweans based in the United States, backed by a larger crowd of members of the December 12 Movement, a US based anti-capitalist movement that has in the past stood resolutely with countries that have been sanctioned or isolated by Washington and the West, among them Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela.

The question to be answered is why the people who flew from Zimbabwe to New York thought the streets of New York would make a better platform for the democratic right to protest against their own Government. Evan Mawarire is a self-exiled lone campaigner for the “shutting down of Zimbabwe”. through his #This Flag social media “movement” and he was denounced as a “Green Card traitor” by angry members of the December 12 Movement. Essentially, the assertion is that the lone social media protester has abused the asylum privilege by creating a non-existent crisis in which he has postured as a hapless victim at the mercy of draconian regime — that way earning himself the right to stay permanently in the United States. The gimmick is treacherous and unacceptable, it is alleged.

The New York humiliation of the hired protesters was unexpected by its funders and organisers, and was certainly unexpected on the part of the Zimbabwean activists who embarked on the sponsored foreign mission. Something had to be done to minimise the damage the monumental flop had caused.

In came the Reuters interview with President Ian Khama of Botswana; the man credited with running the “beautiful example of democracy” in Southern Africa. Certainly the Botswana opposition must be infuriated by such accolades to a man they believe stifles democracy in the most cruel of manners, but that is a matter for another day.

Ian Khama is reported to have called for the departure of his elder counterpart in Zimbabwe, ostensibly on the basis of age and the economic situation in Zimbabwe.

The record of Ian Khama in the politics of Zimbabwe is unholy. He has often broken ranks with other regional leaders to pursue his solidarity with Britain and the United States over the land issue in Zimbabwe, and of course his cover has always been the pursuit for the democratisation of Zimbabwe, in the Western sense.

This week I will take a look at spectator democracy in Zimbabwe, a concept where the opinion of the masses is shaped by the preferences of the elite, and hopefully the analysis will detail how the propaganda framework helps to achieve this.

When Woodrow Wilson was elected to the presidency of the United States in 1916, his administration was committed to joining World War 1 at a time the US population was so pacifist that it saw no reason to get involved with a European war.

Wilson decided to establish a propaganda commission called the Creel Commission, which succeeded within an impressive six months to turn an apathetic and pacifist population into a hysterical war-mongering mass sworn to the marrow to the idea of destroying everything and anything German, avowed totally to the doctrine of tearing Germans to pieces limb from limb — in the process saving the world from the deadly threat that Germany had become.

In the aftermath of the war, the Creel Commission successfully used the acquired propaganda tactics to launch an attack on unionism in the United States, whipping up a hysterical Red Scare, and successfully destroying workers unions and eliminating such dangerous problems as freedom of the press and freedom of political thought.

The propaganda model was superbly supported by the media and business establishments, as well as by the intellectual community, especially the intellectuals of the John Dewey era — themselves overly proud of being the “more intelligent members of the community”.

In quite an impressive and indisputably successful way, this group was able to drive a reluctant population into a massive war by simply terrifying them to the point of eliciting jingoist fanaticism.

All it needed was a good deal of fabrication of atrocities by the other side, like making up stories of Belgian babies with torn off limbs, and all sorts of awful things against the Huns that one can easily read in history books today.

The Americans borrowed much of the fabrications from the British propaganda ministry, whose declared objective was “to direct the thought of most of the world”, roping in the process US intellectuals, who in turn passed on the concocted propaganda for facts, successfully converting a passive country to unprecedented wartime hysteria.

This experience shows that state propaganda can have a huge effect on democracy, especially when it bars deviation and when supported by the educated classes.

Hitler himself believed so much in this political doctrine, and the doctrine keeps Western democracies ticking to this day, just like it is used by totalitarian regimes across the world.

Liberal democratic theorists like Walter Lippmann got involved so much in the propaganda commissions of the time and immediately recognised how much could be achieved through them. The prominent journalist ended up arguing that “revolution in the art of democracy” could be positively used to “manufacture consent,” essentially to make the public agree with what they do not want. Not only did Lippmann think that using propaganda techniques to manufacture public consent was a brilliant idea, he also believed it was an absolutely necessary phenomenon.

His reasoning was impressively frank. He argued, “the common interests elude public opinion entirely”, and that such interests can only be understood and managed by a “specialised class” of “responsible men”, who are privileged to be the only ones smart enough to figure out life’s complex realities.

This theory that asserts that only a small elite can understand common interests has become part of Zimbabwe’s political culture across the political divide.

We have come to the point where the whole nation sometimes eagerly waits for the outcome of those long in the night Politburo meetings to know what will happen over many matters of national interest.

Equally the opposition supporters have been cultured to wait for leaders to determine where they must stand on national policy.

We saw the discord where land hungry supporters of the opposition risked being expelled from the MDC for applying for farms during the land acquisition era. One Sekai Makwavarara ended up crossing the floor to the ruling party, but I digress.

After the 2008 election crisis, the nation had to watch six people travel to and from South Africa negotiating our collective future for nine long months.

Spectator democracy then dictated that we all watched and waited as three lawyers, a diplomat, an accountant, and a female political activist shouldered the responsibility of determining our collective future, with South Africans playing the umpire.

Democracy had spoken to us through the 2008 election, and it had told us that Arthur Mutambara, Welshman Ncube and Priscilla Misihairambwi-Mushonga were losers. The GPA negotiations of spectator democracy gave them back to us as winners, one as the Deputy Prime Minister even. This is how elitism works. Someone with better brains must always correct the messy way the unthinking masses do things.

Now we have the so-called National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) being packaged as the national way forward towards elections. Were the masses not told that the equally elitist COPAC did a wonderful job coming up with a people created and endorsed Constitution? Why does this wonderful Constitution need a NERA so soon?

Interestingly the very intellectual and political protagonists who gave us the COPAC headaches are now giving us these NERA dramas.

Then we had to watch from the terraces as these know-alls battled it out to lecture us on the wonderful need to embrace gay rights, dual citizenry, age limits to the presidency, freedom of this and that, and so on and so forth. Now we have to watch NERA telling us how Election 2018 must happen, and we have to put up with NERA’s sidekicks, the likes of Tajamuka and Evan Mawarire’s disappearing #This Flag.

It looks like everyone with an ambition can now delude him or herself into playing hero to an imagined political gallery of the masses. We need real participation of the masses if we are going to develop a true democracy in Zimbabwe, not this spectator games where a few elites create an agenda and expect the masses to cheer along.

We have recently seen bickering personalities within ZANU-PF taking initiatives to gather people so they can spar openly at rallies, and the rallies are organised not to seek public opinion, but to manipulate it, to manufacture public consent in promotion of sinister succession motives. This is what we get when we promote spectator democracy.

The view that what all of us care about can only be explained and articulated well by a few elites is typically a Leninist one — that concept of vanguard revolutionary intellectuals taking power on the ride of popular revolutions, using people power as a force to gain power, and then skilfully drive the stupid masses toward a future they are too dumb and incompetent to comprehend.

The common ideological assumptions between liberal democrats and Marxism-Leninism are quite similar, just like the ideological assumptions of liberal democracies and dictatorships are essentially the same. That is why it is easy for liberal democrats to instantly switch to dictatorship, and also for dictators to instantly convert to liberal democracy.

All that needs to be done is to assess where power lies and say if power is in a popular revolution let that revolution put us into state power; or maybe we can rely on the power of business and corporations to get the same state power; or who cares if that power will come from the military, for as long as it takes us to state power. In the end we will just have to drive the stupid masses toward a world they are too dumb to comprehend.

We now accept it that if the means are in Western funding let us use those means to gain state power, if the means are in civic organisations, in war veterans, or in the youth let us just use those means; but purely on the same assumptions and objectives of accessing state power for power’s sake, never ever to share it with the unthinking masses, but to let it benefit us politicians and the power centres that thrusts us into political office.

After all the masses are like three-year-olds — you cannot reasonably entrust them with complex matters of life.

As Lippmann aptly argues, there are two classes of citizens in a democracy, the specialised class that always talks about what to do about and on behalf of those all others, and of course the class of “those all others,” — the bewildered herd whose function in a democracy is to be “spectators” in the complex action of the thinking elites, when they are not enjoying those moments they are allowed to lend their weight to one or the other member of the specialised class through programmed elections.

Precisely that is why incumbent politicians believe by merely looking at their action plans and adding to them their personal political aspirations they by definition become not only indispensable but also unreplaceable.

Morgan Tsvangirai has become to his brand of the MDC what President Robert Mugabe has become to ZANU-PF — hard to replace politicians in whose absence an election has become so hard to envisage.

Spectator democracy has given to the United States an election in which the masses will have to choose between dysentery and diarrhoea, between two ageing grannies, one a bigot of nonsensical proportions, and the other a pathological liar with a passion for dishonesty. One of the two will be ratified by the masses as the US president in November.

Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death.

Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.

Roll Back Monopoly Capital, Grow Jobs and Build Unity: Unite our Communities, the Working Class and Our Movement

SACP solidarity message to Sactwu`s National Congress delivered by General Secretary Comrade Blade Nzimande.

Cape Town International Convention Centre, 22 September 2016.

On behalf of the 250 000 members of the South African Communist Party (SACP) I bring revolutionary greetings to this, the 13th Congress of SACTWU - a pioneering union and founder member of our federation and ally, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). I must also take this opportunity to congratulate SACTWU, through its creative combination of mass struggles and negotiations, in saving and beginning to grow the textile sector over the last decade over the last two decades.

You are holding your congress under a very important theme of "Defending democracy, protect workers, build unity, fight corruption, grow jobs and strengthening service to members". The subthemes of your Congress slogan in fact constitute the key pillars of advancing the interests of both the trade union movement and our country. Your theme is broadly similar to the SACP`s own recent concerns about the necessity to roll back monopoly capital, fighting the parasitic bourgeoisie through building the unity of our communities, the working class and our movement, in order to drive a second, more radical phase, of our national democratic revolution. I will however come back to these important matters.

Today in our message, we would like to touch on the following:

The global context within which we find ourselves as the left, the working class and as a country
The domestic terrain and its challenges
As well as some of the key internal organisational challenges facing our movement, Alliance and its components
A brief report-back on my part on some of the recent and current challenges facing post-school education and training facing our country
And conclude with a call to action by the working class, by giving the SACP`s own content to your main Congress slogan
The global context: Necessity for build a left alternative to neo-liberalism

Globally we are still living under the lingering effect of the 2008 financial meltdown which was perhaps the worst of the bust cycles of capitalism since the Great Depression of the late 1920s. This crisis is a natural outcome of the contradictions within monopoly capital, arising from the patterns of over-accumulation and over-production on the one hand, and under-consumption on the other. Additionally, the period of globalisation was characterised by stagnation and even a decline in real wages and the implementation of austerity measures and the commodification and outsourcing of basic public services by the state; juxtaposed against massive public financing of the private sector through bank bail-outs. The consequences of these contradictions were increases in unemployment, poverty, and income polarisation and deepening inequality.

Given the enormity of the crisis one would have expected an emergence of a powerful left movement organised to challenge the capitalist system itself. But that was not to be, and it is important for working class formations and the left broadly to ask the question as to why this has not been the case? There are a number of factors, but perhaps the most important factor could be the impact of neo liberal restructuring on the working class in advanced capitalist countries; restructuring that has severely weakened the organisation capacity of the working class structures.  For instance, we no longer have the industrial working class that was defined by Marx and Engels in contemporary advanced capitalist countries in their 19th century writings.  Today, we have people with three or four, often casualised, jobs. We also have displacement of industrial production with services sectors with the emergence of the so-called `knowledge economy`. That has changed the character and social composition of contemporary working classes.

Another factor is the overwhelming dominance of media monopolies, which means that the capitalist class for now is really able to win the ideological war against any attempts at socialism.  The ideological impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union can also not be underestimated, as it was projected as a failure of socialism as an alternative to captialism.

However, we need to study closely and engage with some of the emerging left, alternative projects in a place like Latin America. Much as these projects are under huge imperialist offensive to suffocate them, but the emergence and experiences of left-wing governments in places like Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, etc must be closely studied. They provide some hope that indeed it is possible to organise mass formations into a political bloc of pro-socialist and anti-neoliberal forces.

Working class and progressive movements also need to study closely and engage with the experience of the left political party Syriza in Greece. The Syriza experience shows the increasing dominance of banks over the political system and the dictatorship of capitalist banks of the electoral choices of the people. The people of Greece voted the leftist Syriza into power on the mandate of rejection of austerity measures imposed by European Banks in Greece.  Furthermore, they rejected the austerity measures prescribed by European banks on Greece through a referendum as well.  Yet Syriza, as government, was forced to implement those very same austerity measures that were democratically rejected by the people and undemocratically imposed by the European banks.

The Greek experience perhaps represents one of the sharpest moments of the crisis of Western multi-party democracy under neo-liberalism. It is a serious crisis when the voice of the people no longer matters and when the voice of the big banks and financial institutions matter more and decide the fate of countries over electoral outcomes.  The value of democratic elections is then challenged.  Does it really matter if left parties win elections today, if banks (and rating agencies) can after all impose their will?  What difference does it make, if the capitalist institutions such as banks impose their will against the will of the people?   That is the crisis in the political system of Western democracies.  Are we not experiencing the same with the axe of rating agencies hanging over our democracy?

The other crisis is the rise of right wing neo fascist and populist forces in many countries in the world, ranging from those in Europe to countries that are being destabilised by imperialist forces, thus creating a new momentum for right wing, neo fascist forces.

The emergence of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) platform to provide an alternative to, amongst others, the Brettonwoods institutions through the setting up of the New Development Bank, and through its efforts to promote an alternative (potentially) progressive economic trajectory.  While appreciating these efforts, there has however not emerged a globally significant coherent, left alternative capable of challenging global capital in the wake of the 2008 crisis and its aftermath had failed to emerge and occupy the space presented by the crisis of capital.  Instead the failure to consolidate a left hegemony had allowed for growing instability in some of the countries with left wing governments, ignited in the main by imperialism.

Even in the BRICS countries there are some serious problems and challenges that require that we temper with whatever (legitimate) optimism we might (and should) have. We therefore should be very optimistic about BRICS whilst grappling with the challenges that it faces.  For example each of the BRICS countries is facing some serious problems or challenges. Brazil has been in a recession and the right wing forces have just performed a coup of unseating (through impeachment) a sitting left-wing president committed to the ideals of BRICS as a progressive international platform.

Russia has also been in a recession and its economy under siege from imperialist sanctions. We however need to study and analyse closely the Russian political economy, as well as its political structures and not fall into some romantic idea that contemporary Russia is some re-incarnation of the former Soviet Union. Russia`s political economy is that of an alliance between a securocratic class and some powerful capitalist oligarchies. Some make the pertinent observation and comparison between Russian and contemporary South Africa that the Russian state is able to discipline the oligarchy, whilst in South Africa some established and emergent oligarchs are the ones that seem to discipline the state!

India is now ruled by a right wing government, despite some flash of hope with the communists winning back the state of Kerala - another example we need to study closely.

China is focused on restructuring its own internal economy, and is no longer absorbing our mineral resources, whose exports helped to cushion us from the worst vagaries of the 2008 crisis.

The SACP`s perspectives in the current global conjuncture are that our movement and government need to wage a consistent struggle to develop our country by partially delinking from the major centres of the imperialist economy. This means that whilst we cannot completely delink, but we must wage a serious struggle for our national sovereignty so that we are able to make some choices on our paths to economic development that is beneficial to the workers and poor of our country.

The domestic situation

Our message has spent a considerable amount of time on the global situation, because it has had and continues to have an enormous impact on our domestic realities.

For instance the SACP would like to argue that we need to study very closely, and learn lessons from, the SACTWU own experiences and struggles in trying to save the clothing and textile industry, in order to understand the relationship between global realities and our own domestic challenges. SACTWU has had to wage major struggles and sought to negotiate for workers in the light of cheap foreign textile and clothing imports, against the background of rapid de-industrialisation of South Africa. How did SACTWU manage to achieve what it has done in the light of hugely unfavourable global and domestic terrains? It is perhaps important that we do not learn only from other countries` experiences but to also learn from ourselves, through thorough and dispassionate analyses of experiences such as that of SACTWU and the textile industry. The SACP hopes that you will use your 13th Congress for such reflections.

Employment in the clothing, textile, leather and footwear sector was approximately 239 000 in 1994. It declined by about 36 500 jobs, to just over 275 000 in two years to 1996. This massive jobs bloodbath further resulted in over 100 000 jobs lost in the sector between 1996 and 2009. The sector`s employment shrunk to just over 164 000 in 2009. The decline continued thereafter, but this time at a slow rate, stabilising at about 138 000 jobs in 2014. By 2015, the sector was recovering and new jobs were being created. What these numbers tell us is that 68.77 percent of the workforce in the sector lost their jobs from 1994 to 2009. This means 59.66 percent of the sector`s workforce lost their jobs from 1996 to 2009.

As a direct fruit of your union`s in co-operation with the Economic Development Department established in 2009 and the Department of Trade and Industry to revive production and create jobs in the sector, its exports contributed to its output by R15.9 billion from a low base of R6.1 billion in 2009, to R22.1 billion in 2015. Productivity in the sector has increased remarkably in clothing, footwear and leather segments and is well under way in the segments of leather goods and textiles. Employment increased by about 6 000 jobs in one year from 2014 from about 138 000 to about 144 000 in 2015. What this means is that your work with at least the two government departments has managed to both stabilise the sector and ensure growth in both production and employment. The trend in production and employment growth must be sustained. The SACP has confidence in your union; that you will deliver on this task.

Perhaps the primary (and contradictory) defining feature of the South Africa domestic conjuncture today is that whilst the ANC government has done exceptionally well with some of its major redistributive programmes, it has not succeeded in the transformation of the semi-colonial trajectory of the South African economy. For instance, today, no country in the world, except South Africa has managed to build more than 3 million houses and hand them over to the poor for free! This is a huge achievement indeed! So we can count extension of social grants, electrification and education. For instance today virtually all poor learners in school get at least one free meal a day. In higher education, there has been a phenomenal growth of over 20 year olds with a tertiary qualification from 9,1% in 2009 to 14,3% in 2015!

But (and a big BUT), our semi-colonial trajectory remains unchanged. We still remain a predominantly mining economy that continues with a `pit-to-port` economy, exporting all our raw materials, not beneficiated, into other countries. Our domestic economy continues to be hemmed in by the persisting racial, class and gender inequalities, reproduced by, and in turn reproducing, the structural unemployment, poverty and inequality.

In the above reality, more and more South Africans become reliant on government for redistributive interventions (be it housing, services, social grants, etc) which are unable to cope with the demand. There is also massive and continuing migration from impoverished rural areas into the urban areas, putting more stresses into the services in   metropolitan areas, with a significant growth of both the unemployed or precariously employed poor.

Within the ANC, and the Alliance, these social and class realities are manifesting themselves through an internal and perpetual scramble for political and governmental positions as the only means of accessing livelihoods for many cadres of the movement. It is these realities that form the material basis for factionalism, money politics, tenderpreneurship, politics of slates and networks of patronage and corruption that in turn become an unending source of conflict and the weakening of especially the ANC as an organisation. `Service delivery` as a mode of interacting with our communities, often with a middle man mediating the government-community relations, is reinforced by the patronage-driven offering of many services. Therefore delivery from above, rather than grassroots driven participation in local development, becomes the predominant mode of functioning of government.

The above dynamics also find expression inside a number of our unions, through what we have referred to as business unionism. This is where capturing of union financial and other resources are often elevated above service to workers.

In South Africa, there is also high indebtedness of both the working class and the middle classes, given the very high inequalities in society, as well as consumerism that has become the primary mode of accumulation for the financial sector, rather than investment into the productive economy, SMEs and co-operatives.

All of the above have in turn fuelled student protests as a result of increasing unaffordability of especially higher education, not only for the poor but also for especially the lower middle classes.

Therefore the resolution of all these challenges, including the class dynamics within our own movement and Alliance, are inextricably linked to the radical transformation of the current economic trajectory. But this must not be interpreted to mean that our organisations cannot do a lot through enforcement of the values of our liberation movement, and deal decisively with corruption and factionalism.

It is the SACP`s view that at the heart of the dissatisfaction in most of our communities have a lot to do with this contradictory relationship between, on the one hand, the inadequacy of the ameliorative redistributive measures, and on the other hand, within a context of deepening and stubborn, structural features of our semi-colonial growth trajectory.

However, a crucial struggle we need to jointly wage as the SACP, together with the trade union movement is that of deepening inter-sectoral trade union solidarity campaigns as well as rebuilding trade union and community solidarity struggles.

Challenges in post-school education and training

Let me take this opportunity to report back to you on matters relating to higher education. I will largely be drawing on the statement issued by the Department of Higher Education and Training on Monday, with a particular focus on the 2017 university and college fees.

Currently, our universities face an extremely difficult financial situation. The effects of last year`s moratorium on fee adjustments and the extra costs associated with insourcing have both added to these challenges.

Our immediate and pressing task is to ensure that as we continue to improve access to post-school education and strengthen the quality of learning and teaching, we do not erode the financial sustainability of the sector.

Our economy is currently weak and our fiscal position parlous. The tax burden has been rising in recent years, and we must preserve the fiscal space to fund government`s policy agenda in future years. This means that any funding government mobilises to support the pressing challenges in higher education, it would need to reprioritise from other government programmes.

We understand the legitimate student concerns about the affordability of university education. At the same time, we need to ensure that those who can afford to pay must pay.

Equally importantly, the post-school budget has to cover students in technical and vocational education and training alternatives for 18 million South Africans who are unable to study at university.

In other words, our job as government requires a number of very delicate balancing acts.

To achieve our objectives, we must continue arguing for as significant a budget allocation as possible for post-school education. Indeed, a look at this year`s budget shows that this sector received the largest increase in funding of any government department.

Higher Education and Training this year received an additional 18% for 2016/17, with an average annual increase of 9.8% across the Medium Term Expenditure Framework period up until 2018/19.

From R42 billion in the 2015/16 financial year, the Department`s budget is set to rise to R55.3 billion in 2018/19.

Government has this year provided R1.9 billion of the R2.3 billion shortfall resulting from the subsidisation of the 2016 university fee increase. More than R4.5 billion in the 2016/17 financial year has been reprioritised to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS).

Expanded funding is targeted to support 205 000 students entering universities for the first time or continuing this year, and a further 200 000 students at TVET colleges. This means that a total of 405 000 students would receive government support to access universities and colleges in 2016.

The National Skills Fund (NSF) has allocated R1.393 billion in 2016 towards funding undergraduate and postgraduate bursaries in scarce and critical skills. This funding is directed at meeting the full cost of study for over 13 500 undergraduate and 1 200 postgraduate students enrolled in programmes at our 26 public universities.

Artisan development is also key on our agenda to address the National Development Plan target of 30 000 artisans per annum by 2030. Dependent on the artisan trade, it costs between R350 000 - R400 000 over a period of three years to train an artisan. This year the target is to register 30 750 new artisan learners, which will amount to approximately R4.6 billion in artisan learner grant funding through the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs).

While the Presidential Commission does its important work in developing proposals for a long-term funding model, universities will not be able to operate with less funds than what they already have. Everything is more expensive today than it was this time last year.

That is the reality of inflation.

We have looked at the challenges at hand from all sides and have concluded that the best approach would be to allow universities individually to determine the level of increase that their institutions will require to ensure that they continue to operate effectively and at least maintain existing quality - with the caution that this has to also take into account affordability to students, and therefore has to be transparent, reasonable and related to inflation-linked adjustments. Our recommendation is that fee adjustments should not go above 8%.

To ensure that such inflation-linked fee adjustments on the 2015 fee baseline are affordable to financially needy students, government is committed to finding the resources to support children of all poor, working and middle class families - those with a household income of up to R600 000 per annum - with subsidy funding to cover the gap between the 2015 fee and the adjusted 2017 fee at their institution. This will be done for fee increments up to 8%.

This will in effect mean that all NSFAS qualifying students, as well as the so-called "missing middle" - that is, students whose families earn above the NSFAS threshold but who are unable to support their children to access higher education, will experience no fee increase in 2017. Government will pay for the fee adjustment. This will bring huge relief to nurses, teachers, police, social workers, and other parents who work in occupations that do not earn huge salaries, and who have children at university. This will apply to students at universities and TVET colleges.

Administrative mechanisms will be developed and students informed on how to apply for the gap-funding grant before the end of this academic year.

There are many students from upper middle class and well-off families, as well as students on full company bursaries in our institutions who can afford to pay the adjusted 2017 fees, and we expect them to do so.

It is very unclear to government why families who can afford private schools should, under the current circumstances, be receiving further state subsidies for their children at universities.

To subsidise these students would require taking funding from the poor to support cheaper higher education for the wealthy, which is not justifiable in a context of inequality in our country. We cannot subsidise the child of a cleaner or unemployed person in the same way as we subsidise the child of a well-paid advocate or investment banker.

While NSFAS will continue to provide loans and bursaries to poor students, the Department of Higher Education and Training and universities will continue to mobilise institutional and private sector financial support to enable affordable financial aid options for the "missing middle" students.

I have constituted the Ministerial Task Team on funding support for the poor and "missing middle" students, which is developing a model that will be tested in 2017 to provide affordable support to these students. We will continue to look for other ways of supporting financially needy students not covered by NSFAS, whilst a long-term solution is being developed to raise sufficient funding from the public sector, private sector and other sources to fund "missing middle" students at universities and TVET colleges.

We call upon SACTWU to also condemn some of the vandalism in our institutions, and to express support for the progressive measures taken by government to deal with the 2017 fee adjustments. Also, as parents, we call upon SACTWU to partner with us in the journey to transform higher education.

What is to be done? The urgent tasks of the working class

Our revolution is truly at its crossroads given the many urgent challenges facing our movement and in particular the working class. It is important that we firmly locate our contemporary struggles within the overall context of our struggles to fight for a socialist South Africa. But it is along your own Congress slogan and its subthemes that we must define the tasks of the working class in the current period, against the background of deepening the national democratic revolution towards a transition to socialism:

Defend our democracy

Defending our democracy is an important theme in the contemporary struggles of the working class in South Africa today. At its core, defending our democracy must fundamentally mean the advancement of the socio-economic rights of the workers and the poor and the defence of all the institutions that will advance these. The struggle for defending democracy in the interests of the working class must be integrally linked and connected to the struggle against corruption.

In the current period, this means defending our democratic institutions, and institutions sustaining our democracy, must be defended from being captured either by monopoly capital or by the parasitic bourgeoisie. This means defending, albeit transforming, our Treasury, the South African Revenue Services (SARS), from predatory capitalist elements, etc.

The struggle to defend and deepen our democracy must also mean defending and strengthening the capacity of State Owned Companies (SoCs) so that we are able to use them to discipline and roll back the negative impact and influence of monopoly capital.

If our state, its SoCs and democratic institutions are captured, it would be the working class that would suffer and we would not be able to fight poverty, unemployment and inequality.

We call upon the workers of this country to intensify its struggle against monopoly capital and also to defeat the parasitic bourgeoisie so that we place the interests of the workers and the poor at the centre of our developmental agenda.

Protect Workers

It is of course very important for SACTWU to intensify its struggles to defend the jobs of workers in the textile and clothing sector. On this score it is important that we deepen the struggles against the neo-liberal restructuring of the workplace - against casualisation, outsourcing and labour brokerage.

An important dimension of the struggle to protect workers is that of strengthening trade union service to members and workers generally in various workplaces in which SACTWU is organised.

An important dimension of the struggle to protect workers is that of rebuilding the many industrial unions of COSATU that are currently severely weakened or threatened by corporate capture and business unionism. Two important dimensions of rebuilding industrial unions must be, first, deepening and embarking on inter-sectoral solidarity activities, especially along unions organised in the same value-chain; and, second, to rebuild union-community solidarity activity. It is in the case of the latter struggles that the SACP can be of enormous assistance in using its community based structures to support important trade union and workplace struggles.

Growing jobs

The SACP is inviting SACTWU and the whole of COSATU to join in launching a broad based campaign on the right to work. This would be a very important campaign to challenge neo-liberal, and anti-work, restructuring of the contemporary workplace.

We further and once more invite SACTWU to join the SACP-led financial sector campaign so that we together struggle for resources in the financial sector to be largely invested in the productive sectors of our economy.

Both the SACP and Cosatu need to intensify the struggle for continued government investment into infrastructure, supporting the work done by Cde Ebrahim Patel and the Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Commission (PICC).

Perhaps a small, but very symbolic gesture would be that of the SACP merchandise to be exclusively manufactured and produced by Zenzeleni of SACTWU. This would send a strong message for local production and local content, and intensification of relations between our two formations!

Building Unity and the motive forces of the national democratic revolution

Perhaps this is the most important task facing our movement and alliance. The principal challenge here is that of uniting principally the left axis of our Alliance, the SACP and COSATU. We need to realise that there are frantic factionalist attempts from inside our own movement to try and drive a wedge in order to divide the SACP from COSATU. The aim of this agenda is to draw Cosatu closer to a dominant faction in the ANC in order to isolate the SACP. But the second step in this strategy is that after the isolation and hopefully defeat of the SACP then the parasitic bourgeoisie inside our movement would launch a fatal assault on the organised working class itself.

It is also important at this point to remind ourselves that there is a deep relationship between the parasitic bourgeoisie and factionalism in our movement. The parasitic bourgeoisie needs factions to capture our movement so that it can have access to the state and its resources. In turn, factions need the money of the parasitic bourgeoisie in order to fund their slate politics. And all often deeply hate the communists and the working class.

It is for the above reasons that we need to deepen relations not only between the SACP and Cosatu, but also to deepen relations between the SACP and all the affiliates of COSATU, including relations between the SACP and SACTWU. We need joint campaigns between our two formations as well as joint political schools in order to deepen our common understanding of the tasks facing the working class in the current period.

Our challenge is already that the loss by the ANC of most of the major metropolitan areas point to the growing chasm between the ANC and leading sections of the organised working class. It was in the metros that the national liberation movement, with the organised working class at its head, that the final assault was led against the apartheid regime. The fact that we are losing these metros now means that the ANC may be losing its capacity to mobilise and lead the principal motive force of the national democratic revolution. A critical question in this regard is where is the organised working class in all of this?

It is therefore very important to rebuild the militancy of COSATU and the whole of the progressive trade union movement. Building trade union unity, defeating factionalism in our movement, and trade union militancy are all important mutually reinforcing ingredients for the working class to stamp its authority in the current period, and rebuild our movement as the leading force in South African society. Let us build a fighting SACTWU and a fighting COSATU!

Good luck with your Congress!

* Dr Blade Nzimande is SACP General Secretary and Minister of Higher Education and Training. This is the final edition of Comrade Blade Nzimande`s address to the Sactwu National Congress, 22 September 2016, Cape Town International Convention Centre.