South Africa - January 8th, 2017

On the last months of the class struggle in South Africa

To generalize again the mass actions and their cry of:
"Zuma must fall!"

We need to expel the class-collaborationist leadership of COSATU!
For the workers' organizations to break with the bourgeoisie and the ANC reconciliation regime!

For a national congress of rank and file delegates from all the workers' and popular organizations in struggle and the committees of rank and file soldiers!

From NUMSA and AMCU we must head this call!

The economic crisis in South Africa deepens more and more. Unemployment rates continue to rise (today is 38%); the famine increases after the devaluation of the Rand, the public health and housing crisis continues growing. The disinvestment in the mines and workplaces causes dozens of daily deaths in the ranks of the employed workers. The foreign debt is already unpayable.

This situation motivated mass actions against the regime of the ANC-SACP. There was no sector of the masses that did not claim for the government to fall."Zuma must fall!" became the demand that united the whole working class and the masses of the nation. The workers in the streets with their picket lines, their assemblies, their strikes, took up the path traced by the struggle of the workers of Marikana in 2012.

The general strike of October 2017 posed the overthrowing of Zuma and the opening of the revolutionary struggle against the regime of reconciliation and the bourgeois state as the current task. But this general strike was turned into an impotent action regarding the problems that the masses wanted to solve. Because a front of the leadership of COSATU (Confederation of South African Trade Unions that support the government), the SACP (South Africa Communist Party) and the ANC (African National Congress) -that is to say a front emerged from the heart of the regime to which the caste of white officers of the army of Pretoria belongs, which is also usurper of the mass struggle against Apartheid- diverted the hatred that the masses radiated in the streets against Zumaand led to a demonstration to put pressure on the parliament. They intended that the parliament (where nothing is decided) could "vote the dismissal of the president and the assumption of the vice president –which belongs to the same party of Zuma, the ANC - as head of state."

While this general strike, manipulated by the collaborationist with the black bourgeoisieleadership of the COSATU, lost all its potential; the leadership of SAFTU (South African Federation of Trade Unions led by NUMSA –metalworker’s union- and AMCU –Marikana miners- opposed to the government), which concentrates the most combative sectors of the South African working class that broke with the regime of reconciliation, split in two policies.
On the one hand, the general secretary of SAFTU,ZwelinzimaVavi, has encouraged workers to participate in anti-Zuma marches, but unfortunately having the same policy than the class-collaborationist trade union bureaucracy of COSATU of taking the struggle at the feet of the parliament. Furthermore, in a rally outside the parliament, Vavisaid: “whether capitalist or worker, we should put aside our differences for the day in support of the MPs inside parliament planning to vote against Zuma”; that is to say a class-collaboration policy that disarms the working class because it subordinates it to its executioners’ feet.
On the other hand, another sector of SAFTU leadership refused to intervenein the general strike saying that COSATU requested against Zuma for the assumption of Ramaphosa: the murderer of the workers of Marikana, former manager of Lonmin, vice president of the current government, president of the ANC and mastermind of the new miserable minimum wage.

Unfortunately, this policy of not calling the workers rank and file to take the fight into their own hands, to defy and expel the leadership of the COSATU from the labour movement and to set up their own bodies of direct democracy and self-organization for the political struggle against the government and the starving and murderous regime took away all possibility from the exploited who sought to concretize their cry "Zuma must fall!" by transforming the general strike into a mass revolutionary action that overthrew the government of the black bourgeoisie, junior partners of Anglo-American in the looting and enslavement of South Africa.

COSATU put a fraction of the working class at the feet of the SACP and the ANC. Zuma did not fall, the bourgeoisie supported him and guaranteed his term until 2019. The ANC with the now "opponent" Ramaphosa prepares a cosmetic change within the same ANC by expellingZuma from the party, to wash their clothes stained with blood and to be able to assist in replacing Zuma if the masses are again in an offensive position against the reconciliation regime.
Thus the bourgeoisie in the face of mass attacks, prepares an opposition within the ANC itself to deceive the masses with "sweet" and "democratic"phrases, while supporting the government and preparing the officers caste of the army of Pretoria to attack and plunge the working class into a bloodbath when the masses are demobilized.

 

Enough of subordinating the organizations of the working class to the bourgeoisie! To deepen the process of breaking the working class with the ANC, we must expel the leadership of the COSATU and unite the ranks of the working class!

It is necessary today more than ever that from NUMSA and AMCU that have broken with the leadership of the COSATU and lead SAFTU (which represents some 800,000 unionized workers and the most concentrated of the industrial workers) fight in all the establishments and factories to convene a National Workers Congress right now, where all the workers (including the COSATU base), the students and all the exploited who seek a path of struggle to defeat the government and the infamous regime are represented with their delegates. A real power body of the exploited must emerge, prepare and organize the overthrowing of the ANC government.

The working class and the exploited must take the resolution of all their problems into their own hands. We must organize unemployed committees, factory committees and committees of the millions of immigrant workers and centralize them together with the combative student movement and the tenants' committees. We must train the rank and file soldiers committees and the self-defence committees of the workers' organizations in each neighbourhood and locality to defend ourselves against the murderous police and the xenophobic groups that attack the immigrants.

In South Africa, as in Zimbabwe, years of "democracy" do not come, but the deepening of the political, social and economic crisis, with the ANC imposing a new electoral detour supported by the COSATU to numb the masses and prepare the caste of white officers, to strike and crush them. Traps are coming, including occasional electoral detours to anesthetize the masses and set the stage as in Zimbabwe, that is, the military coups and the bloody repressions they are fighting. For this, imperialism has its 34 military bases on the African continent, led by the Pentagon from the African, of which the Pretoria army is its counterrevolutionary device throughout Southern Africa.

That is why it becomes urgent to call all workers' organizations to break with the bourgeoisie and to call the rank and file soldiers to set up their committees, so that the working class leading the alliance between the oppressed classes, lead the fight against Zuma's government, against all the politicians of the black bourgeoisie and against the imperialist looters, beginning by preparing a true revolutionary general strike.Down with Zuma! Out with Ramaphosa and the ANC! Down with the officer caste of the Pretoria army!

To conquer bread, work, wages, land, housing, cheap loans for the ruined middle classes: expropriation without payment and under workers' control of the transnationals, the Anglo-American, the mines, the land and the banks!
Only the working class expropriating imperialism and the new black bourgeoisie can guarantee an emergency workers’ plan to get the masses out of their suffering, a plan that can be imposed integrally and effectively under a: Government of the workers' and popular organizationsbased on their bodies of self-determination and the armament of the masses!
To do this, the working class must arm itself, set up the Workers’ and Popular Councils, the committees of rank and file soldiers, the workers' and popular militias, to expropriate the bourgeoisie and destroy its power.

For a congress of all the workers' organizations of Southern Africa!

In orderto expel imperialism and recover the land for the workers and the starving masses of the region, we need to unify our struggles, today divided country by country by the agents of the bourgeoisie in our own ranks. We need to regroup our forces and strike together under the demand of nationalize and expropriate without compensation and place under workers' control of all the mining, oil and imperialist transnationals and their banks that plunder the tormented Africa, in order to end the slavery of black Africa. Not a single cent to the IMF. For this we must defeat the black bourgeoisie partner and manager of transnational corporations in the looting of our nations.
From NUMSA, AMCU, the oil workers of Nigeria, the state workers and millions of street vendors in Zimbabwe, we have the strength to make our international unity a reality to fight the same enemies. A call of all the black workers of Africa to our brothers in the USA and Europe, to the Black Lives Matter movement, to the workers who fight for the minimum wage of $ 15 an hour of work, to the black exploited people organizations that fight for their liberation as nation, to the thousands of black workers who won the streets in Europe against the slavery of our brothers in Libya, would make us unstoppable in our struggle to defeat the imperialist invader and his smaller partners of the black bourgeoisie.
We must set up this international workers' congress that will be the true national liberation movement that will expel imperialism and liberate our brothers enslaved by the bourgeoisie and the transnational companies!

For independent black republics without transnationals, without their counterrevolutionary generals, without imperialist military bases, without black slaveholding bureaucrats and without treacherous union bureaucrats!

For the Socialist United States of the Black Republics in Central and Southern Africa!

WIL of Zimbabwe