[DOCUMENT] Lucien van der Walt, 2001, “Reorganising the APF Media Committee: Report”

From an old file, when I was an Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) media officer.  The APF was founded in 2000; by this stage (early 2001), with rapid growth, the “core” that met Mondays at COSATU House (myself included) were pretty stretched. The unions that helped found the APF (NEHAWU via Wits University Crisis  Committee;  SAMWU and IMATU via Anti-iGoli Forum) were pulling out but new township-based groups were affiliating en masse. Exciting times. The Coordinating Committee was a delegate-based structure,  for affiliates, although it was quite loose at first  – as was the whole APF. (This was never quite sorted: there were no clear rules for individual membership, no dues, great unevenness in affiliates’ structure etc).  CCs were partly a way of bringing the COSATU House “core,” many of whom were individual activists and/or in “political” groups,  into sync with the mass-based groups. Anyway, the proposals below were meant to try and address these, as far as APF  media work went.

Reorganising the APF Media Committee

 Report for APF coordinating committee meeting of Sunday 12 April 2001

 Comrades

 The APF Media Committee has not been running as smoothly as one would have liked over the last two months.

 This is due to three main factors:

 * The increasing demands being made on committee members by new APF initiatives (e.g. the APF in the inner city)

* The limited spread of media skills within the APF, and

* The commitment of APF media comrades in related political work (e.g. the Workers’ Library).

 In short, the problem is one of capacity. I am, however, willing to help rebuild the APF Media Committee over the next few months. Specific projects around which to rebuild the Media Committee over the next few months include

 * The relaunch of the APF Monitor, trying also to develop a national coverage of anti-privatisation struggles in future. I have spoken to some comrades in Durban unofficially on this, and it seems feasible to broaden our scope. The key challenge here is to ensure that printing takes place, and distribution

* Development of a Resist_Wits2001 webpage on the struggle at Wits University, chronicling its history, providing resources for militants, and developing a basis for a new wave of action on campus. This work has already begun, and, with the help of comrade Anna Weekes at SAMWU, a page should be up by early next week. The Resist_Wits2001 e-mail list that I set up is still operating and can be linked into this initiative.

* Workshops – developed in conjunction with the Education Committee comrades – to help train comrades in media skills, in order to develop as wide a layer as possible of comrades with media work capacities. This will help ensure more sustainable media work. 

* Redevelopment of press-release capacity by the APF. This is relatively easy work

 At the moment, the key task is to get more comrades active in the media committee, and I would be happy to get suggestions from comrades in this regard.

 Red and black regards

 Lucien van der Walt

APF Media Committee

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