Click here to access article by Tina Sizovuka and Lucien van der Walt from Infoshop News.
This rather lengthy article provides an excellent illustration of how capitalist ruling classes are very creative in maintaining their system in order to provide themselves with so much power and wealth. Capitalist elites are always seeking alliances with others who can further these common goals. To maintain a system that provides such a distorted distribution of power and wealth requires numerous strategies such as divide and rule, control of a dis-informing media and other institutions of indoctrination, co-optation of opposition, tight control over political institutions to insure that the right people are elected or outright rigging of elections, and police state methods to suppress opposition.
After the colonization of South Africa by white Europeans, a white minority of capitalists established an overtly racist state. Because they constituted such a small minority of the population while ruling over the vast majority of black Africans and "coloreds", their rule in the 20th century was sustained by the most brutal police state methods. This became increasingly untenable. Thus, they decided to co-opt amenable black and colored Africans to join them on the fringes of the ruling class by installing them in government agencies where they could compete over government largess. (This process and key African leaders, for example Mandela, who went along with this strategy were widely celebrated in international capitalist media.)
Various factions arose among black "co-optees" to secure influence in the government and to obtain the benefits of government contracts. This article mostly tells the story of the rise and fall of one player, Joseph Malema, who often posed as a radical to gain popular support for his rise in the power structure.
