The following is excerpted from a document called ‘Socialist Perspectives for New Zealand’ that was co-written for CWI Aotearoa/NZ. Fightback also supports MANA, but opposes any entry into a capitalist coalition government.

The Mana Movement provides an important opportunity for reframing a pro-worker and pro-Maori political agenda. Mana was formed in 2011 as a Maori radical and leftist split from the Maori Party, led by MP Hone Harawira. The split finally took place after the Maori Party, in government with the ruling National Party, supported an increase of the general services taxes which disproportionately impacts on workers and the poor.

Since then the Maori Party has shifted to the right and in many respects has become a circus. Most of the media attention about the Maori Party has been about its leadership disputes. Meanwhile Mana has had a consistent and strong presence on issues such as child poverty (with actions and events around Harawira’s Feed the Kids Bill), asset sales and housing. Mana has been very visible in key industrial disputes, particularly in the meat industry disputes.

Harawira has said “Mana is what the Maori Party was supposed to be – the independent voice for Maori, the fighter for te pani me te rawakore (the poor and the dispossessed).” Mana plays a good role in local communities and in parliament. The development of the Mana Party can be seen as an important step in the process of building a mass working class party in the future.

At the moment Mana has democratic space for socialist participation and while its leadership is not socialist it is comprised of many respected class fighters. Its base is almost exclusively working class and there is scope for socialist ideas to take root both inside and outside the party.

Hone Harawira has won the last two elections for the Te Tai Tokerau seat for Mana. It will be important to put other people alongside him in the next parliament as well as developing the party’s structures and its ability to intervene in struggles. Mana came close to winning Waiariki in the 2011 general elections. Its candidate also made a strong showing in the Ikaroa-Rawhiti by-election in mid-2013, gaining 26% of the vote. They lost out to Labour but beat the Maori Party.

As the Maori Party diminishes and Mana develops there is a possibility of Mana establishing a base real base across four North Island Maori electorates of Te Tai Tokerau, Tamaki-Makaurau, Waiariki, and Ikaroa-Rawhiti. Work in these areas will be become increasingly important in the coming period.

However, the key issue in the long-term for Mana is two-fold. Firstly, it needs to maintain itself as a party of struggle over the long term and not succumb to an electoral focus. The maintenance of a struggle-based approach is always a question for any organisation of the oppressed. It is a question which has to be taken seriously and consciously. Secondly, it needs to be clear that it will not enter capitalist government coalitions.
It is possible that an opportunity arises for Mana to participate in a Labour and Green led government after the next election. The character of this government would be pro-capitalist from the outset. Neither of those two parties have an economic or political alternative to capitalism. While their style may differ to National they too will be forced to adhere to the demands of big business and the finance markets. At the end of the day they will also implement policies that make working people pay the price for the crisis.

In our view if Mana entered into government with those parties it would become trapped or absorbed into a regime that fundamentally represents the interests of the ruling class. They would be forced to vote for budgets that include cuts and other attacks against the people they are supposed to represent. As was seen with the Alliance a decade ago wrong decisions in regards to coalitions with capitalist parties can destroy small fledging parties.

Some prominent left populists within or aligned with Mana, who do have some influence, are aggressively pushing for a Labour-Greens-Mana government. Some people in other socialist groups who also participate in Mana have similarly encouraged this position by creating illusions in Labour.

In our view it would be a mistake and a distraction from the work of building movements from below for Mana to participate in a capitalist government. Real support and growth will not be built from inside parliament house but from leading campaigns. If Mana avoids entering the traps of government or supporting supply agreements then it is possible that it can play an important role in pushing back assaults on our rights and living standards.

Socialists must warn that Mana is facing the possibility of a real turning point and decisions in 2014 can be key to the party’s future.

Talked delivered by Grant Brookes, MANA Pōneke branch and Fightback (Wellington), at Wellington event Waitangi Alert.

To start with the annoyingly obvious, Waitangi Day means that the poly-ticians are back from their summer holidays. Have you noticed? The talking heads have started filling the TV news again. And in recent years, this means “state of the nation” addresses from the prime minister and opposition leader, and follow-up speechifying at Ratana Pā and Waitangi.

And most people know that February 6 is also Bob Marley’s birthday. So sometimes Waitangi Day means “One Love” concerts.

But what is this “nation” the politicians speak of in their “state of the nation” addresses?

Who is this unified people, who are persuaded to “get together and feel alright”?

On this day in 1840 Te Tiriti o Waitangi was signed by Governor William Hobson, for the Crown, and by over 40 chiefs. The Māori signatories included some of those who had issued the 1835 Declaration of Independence, He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga.

As each chief signed Te Tiriti, Busby proclaimed: “he iwi kotahi tātou” – we are one people.

So the proclamation of the “nation” that our politicians speak of began at Waitangi. And maybe, just maybe, it could have been true that “we are one people” – if the treaty signed there had been honoured.

But today, anyone who knows anything about Te Tiriti, knows that the Crown never honoured it. Prime minister John Key admits that the Crown breached the agreement signed at Waitangi . Helen Clark said that the Crown failed spectacularly to fulfill its treaty obligations. The current Crown representative, Governor General Sir Jerry Mateparae, says the Crown breached the Treaty.

So what does Waitangi Day mean, 174 years on? It serves as a reminder of Busby’s original untruth. We are not one people. There is not a single nation in this land. There are different nations existing side by side.

There’s one nation of around 35,000 people, living mainly in South Canterbury. When this nation woke up three years ago and found that up to $1.8 billion worth of assets had been taken from under them, John Key said it was “a distressing and sad day”. He said it was fair for them to get all their money back, and he said the government would move swiftly, so they were fully compensated. This nation of depositors in South Canterbury Finance got $1.8 billion of taxpayers’ money from the government, quick as a flash.

Then there’s another, much bigger nation, of around 750,000 people all up. This nation had around 250 million square kilometres of land taken by force and fraud, worth tens of billions of dollars. Countless other treasures were taken, too, and communities wiped out. People belonging to this nation have waited and waited, in some cases for 150 or 160 years, for compensation from the government. Even though they are much more numerous, and have suffered far greater dispossession, they’ve received less than the $1.8 billion given to the nation of South Canterbury investors. As a fraction of what they lost, compensation in monetary terms has amounted to a few cents in the dollar. Yet when the people of the Māori nation protest the unfairness, John Key says they need to get beyond grievance mode. When Māori point out discrimination against their nation – with imprisonment rates six times higher than others, twice as much child poverty and unemployment, or lifespans 10 percent shorter due to second-rate health care – they’re told by Justice Minister Judith Collins that their human rights are “excellent”.

Waitangi Day reminds us that we are not all one nation, equal before the lawmakers.

And believe it not, there’s a tiny tribe living among us which is completely foreign. Its customs are different, as are its values and beliefs. It’s a nation so small that the names of all its inhabitants can be printed in a magazine in July each year. Their tribal connection is reflected by the common first name many of them share: “Sir”. Although entry to this nation is extremely difficult, it seems that a handful of Iwi Leaders are pursuing residency.

This the nation made up of the people on the National Business Review’s “Rich List”. Last year, the wealth of these 164 individuals and families was $60 billion. This is more than the combined wealth of the two and a quarter million people who make up the poorer half of the population in Aotearoa.

The residents of Rich List NZ believe that everyone living here this year is part of a “rock star economy”. It’s not surprising they believe this, when they live like rock stars themselves. Their leader, Graeme Hart, lives in a $30 million dollar house, when he’s in Auckland. But he also owns mansions overseas and two 200-foot superyachts, which he can sail to the Fijian island he owns. Or he just could ask his compatriot, Andrew Bagnall, for the use of his Gulfstream G200 private luxury jet. This is the lifestyle that comes when you’ve got a personal fortune of up to $6.4 billion.

The inhabitants of this nation believe privatisation is right, and paying taxes is wrong. Their system of values is based on alien concepts of individual self-interest. They do not agree with protesting on Waitangi Day. To them, leaders like Metiria Turei and Hone Harawira who uphold the right to protest are like the Devil himself. They even deny that issues like inequality and environmental destruction are growing problems needing urgent attention.

There are other nations residing in Aotearoa. There’s a Rainbow Nation, whose sexuality is used a term of abuse. And there’s a people who shoulder the majority of the work but get 17 percent less pay per week, who experience 75 percent of the sexual assaults in this land, and are blamed for it.

But make no mistake. The nation of Rich Listers is at war with us all.

They are the ones holding the most valuable real estate taken from Māori through colonisation. Property tycoons like Michael Friedlander and Peter Cooper enjoy the spoils of victory in Auckland, and Sir Robert Jones here in Wellington.

They’re attacking livelihoods. Members of the Talley family personally oversaw the cuts to wages and job security for the meatworkers at AFFCO, and directed the 12-week lockout to try and break the union when the workers objected.

They’re attacking our environment. The Todd family made its billion dollar fortune drilling for oil, in partnership with offshore oil companies. They also own the airport at Paraparaumu, built on land confiscated from Māori in my parents’ lifetime.

But their foreign occupation of this land is secured not by their wealth alone. It is also maintained by their control of the levers of power. John Key is a citizen of the Rich List nation. So is National Party President Peter Goodfellow and Labour Party funder Sir Owen Glenn. ACT Party financiers Craig Farmer, Craig Heatley and Doug Myers are residents, along with the Vela family who bankrolled NZ First.

They use this power to block efforts to tackle child poverty, to undermine unions, to defend double standards which discriminate against us.

Today, it is right that we’re standing up to resist those who are waging war on us.

Today, we should celebrate the Hīkoi from Te Rerenga Wairua to Waitangi, opposing offshore drilling by Norwegian company Statoil. We should support author Patricia Grace’s stand against the confiscation of Māori land at Waikanae so yet another motorway to be built. We should cheer the high school teachers in Whangarei, and their union, for boycotting cooperation with the Charter Schools which will further undermine education for the majority.

We should take up the calls to honour Te Tiriti.

And as well as “One Love”, there’s another Bob Marley song we should remember on February 6. It goes:

Until the philosophy which hold one race superior

And another

Inferior

Is finally

And permanently

Discredited

And abandoned –

Everywhere is war –

Me say war.

That until there no longer

First class and second class citizens of any nation

Until the colour of a man’s skin

Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes –

Me say war.

That until the basic human rights

Are equally guaranteed to all,

Without regard to race –

Dis a war.

That until that day

The dream of lasting peace,

World citizenship

Rule of international morality

Will remain in but a fleeting illusion to be pursued,

But never attained –

Now everywhere is war – war”

There’s a leaflet being handed out at this event – the one with “MANA” at the top. It says, “end child poverty”, “feed the kids”, “end economic apartheid”, and “end the war on the poor”.

These are messages we need to take forward from today. The war has been going on too long.

What is the meaning of Waitangi Day in 2014? The politicians are right about one thing. It is “our national day”. It’s the day for our nations to renew the resistance against theirs, in the hope that one day we may become one people.

Mike Kyriazopoulos reviews Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia, by Jeffery R. Webber

This major study of the movement in Bolivia that delivered hammer-blows to the neoliberal project is rich in lessons for activists in Aoteroa.

In tracing the movement’s origins, Webber notes how its indigenous activists are inspired by the tradition of the anti-colonial hero of the 1781 insurrection against the Spaniards, Túpaj Katari. Before Katari was drawn and quartered for his role in the six month siege of La Paz, he warned the colonialists that he would “return as millions”, and the protagonists of recent rebellions see themselves as the embodiment of this return.

Another influential figure was the writer Tristán Marof, who advanced the slogan “Land to the Indians” alongside “Mines to the state”. Marof went on to become a founder of Trotskyism in Bolivia, which was influential amongst the vanguard of the working class, the miners. Events such as the Catavi Massacre of 1942, when striking miners and their families were machine-gunned by the army are indelibly burned into the collective consciousness of the working class.

After a prolonged period of dictatorship in the 1970s, the union movement, in alliance with indigenous activists launched a general strike. Electoral democracy was eventually restored in 1982. However, this was followed by a “neoliberal revolution” in 1985, which saw the privatisation of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), and the proliferation of subcontracting, leading to informalisation and fragmentation of the working class. [Read more…]