Ben Turok Comments on the State of the ANC at the Launch of the Voices of Liberation Series

by HSRC Press on Jun 25th, 2012

The Star‘s Shanti Aboobaker attended the launch of the first two books in the Voices of Liberation series at Idasa on Tuesday 19 June. Ben Turok, ANC veteran and MP, spoke about his relationship with the subjects of the first two books; Albert Luthuli and Ruth First, as well as weighing in on the current state of the ANC. Turok was joined by Ruth First editor, Don Pinnock, and Maanda Mulaudzi from UCT‘s Department of Historical Studies.

ANC veteran and MP Ben Turok has warned against a growing “narrow” African nationalism in the ANC and called for non-racialism and a strong parliamentary democracy that does not decline into a one-party state.

Less than a week before the party’s policy conference, which begins in Midrand on Tuesday, Turok said there was a need for the party leadership to encourage its members to read the documents of the ANC conference in Morogoro, Tanzania, in 1969.

These confirmed that “narrow black nationalism” was a “distraction from socio-economic transformation for a country like ours”, he said. “(Political) liberation without economic liberation is meaningless.”