South Africa - November 4th, 2021

With uprisings and fighting for bread in the streets in Swaziland and South Africa, with general strikes by NUMSA metalworkers, service workers, port workers, transportation, clashing with the ANC army and confronting and boycotting the elections

The South African working class fights against
the ANC-PC reconciliation regime

It is time to win a revolutionary general strike to bring down the regime and Ramaphosa government!

 The global economic crisis hit South Africa and worsened as a result of the COVID pandemic.  A catastrophic situation hits the exploited in the region, unemployment that attacks especially the youth;  hunger, inflation;  lack of housing, electricity, water;  dozens of diseases that are produced by poverty to which covid-19 is added, and there are not enough vaccines for the population!

 The Reconciliation Regime agreed by imperialism with the black bourgeoisie and the CP, who delivered the South African revolution, entered into crisis.

 This November 1 there were municipal elections in South Africa.  The workers, the exploited masses made their anger, hatred and disappointment felt against this regime.  There had  been long years of trust, with the expectation that this government would listen to them and solve the unprecedented hardships they suffered.  But this is over, the exploited said enough!  And after 27 years of the ANC government, they turned their backs on it and did not vote, imposing a true boycott of the electoral deception of the bourgeoisie, and now nothing can be as before.  Less than 30% of those registered voted.  It was the worst election of this government in its history since the implantation of this regime;  the opposition parties that came forward also lost numbers of votes.

 In many localities, the people blocked the entry to vote, digging large pits in front of the gates, setting up pickets and loudly denouncing their complaints, and even attacking some of the government candidates when they went to vote.  Precisely in Soweto, where throngs of unemployed workers, the most exploited, live there was not only abstention, but also digging ditches and sowing large stones in the access roads and around the voting centers, where they put padlocks on the doors and even burned some polls, prevented the vote.

 And in other localities the empty voting places were directly visible during the day.  And the great absentee was youth.  The older ones with great disappointment were voting for the ANC, but said they were  giving it one last chance.  The army had to shield the Ramaphosa residence for fear of an onslaught from the masses.  They declared in the bourgeois press that during these years they had achieved nothing and continued to live in huts, without water, toilets, electricity, or roads to walk on, or with prolonged power outages, or with sewage running through the unpaved streets, without a future for themselves or their children, while their leaders became partners and CEOs of transnational corporations and only cared about favoring the latter and enriching themselves at the cost of the misery of the masses.

 We are facing a crisis of the reconciliation regime of imperialism and the black bourgeoisie of the ANC-PC.  As the South African national problem has escalated to extreme degrees, the pact of Mandela's black bourgeoisie and the communist party with imperialism that surrendered the South African black revolution, prevented national liberation and allowed the looting of southern Africa, has entered In crisis.  The working class and the oppressed masses of the region began the struggle against the murderous ANC-PC regime, Down with the regime of reconciliation!  Open the way to the South African revolution!

 The hatred and fed-up of the exploited classes as a whole has been felt

 Already in June, in Swaziland - a kingdom located within the territory of South Africa on the border with Mozambique - mass actions took place, which expressed anger in the streets against the dictatorial regime of King Mswati III and also against the terrible conditions of life and hardships that affect all the exploited of the African continent.  In July in South Africa, the masses of exploited took to the streets, although initially it was the Zulus (an ethnic group to which Zuma, former president of South Africa belongs) who rose up, as they were against his being imprisoned for allegations of corruption.  But quickly this uprising generalysed and turned into an expression of the anger and hatred among the starving masses, the unemployed workers for the living conditions of misery and hunger.  For this reason they looted shopping centers, supermarkets, stores, burned 1,400 ATMs, clashing with the police for days.  Events that had not happened for 30 years, since the abolition of apartheid.  Days in which they directly confronted the ANC regime and government, and the latter did not hesitate to take the army out to the streets to repress (as it did when it massacred the Marikana Strike, killing 34 miners with the police).  This time more than 350 protester were killed. Furthermore, the police and the army, under the orders of the government, unleashed a witch hunt against the immigrants, who were persecuted, their houses and their settlements  raided, the little food they had stolen!  They were blamed for the hardships suffered by the exploited natives, thus promoting their expulsion!

 Faced with the serious economic, social and political crisis, the working class went on strike

 In October South Africa was shaken by a great struggle of the industrial proletariat, which was a continuation of the heroic days of July, and those of June in the Swazi nation.  To stop and divert these uprisings in South Africa, the bourgeoisie arranged for the municipal elections, which had been postponed due to the pandemic, to be held on November 1.

 In the economic aspect, the automotive industry during the past year froze the salaries of the sector with the excuse of being able to keep jobs in this way.  Their production of cars for export had dropped and this year, as a result of the lack of imported components, lack of investment, there is only a relative reactivation in the sector and they need to produce more, to export after a year of recession.

 Given the terrible inequality between the wages of the CEOS and the workers of the sector, with the managers collecting fortunes while the metalworkers had their wages frozen during 2020;  NUMSA, the largest metalworkers trade union center, called for an indefinite national strike starting on October 5 demanding a salary increase of 8%.  The bosses' chambers only offered a paltry 4% increase.

 Thousands of workers took to the streets wearing the red of their shirts, picketing and mobilizing daily.  This strike, seen favorably by all the workers, dragged other unions outside NUMSA, which prompted the COSATU union central, a pro-government union, to call for a 24-hour strike, sitting down against the adjustment of the government.  In this way the economic strike called by NUMSA quickly turned into a mass political struggle that attracted the solidarity of the electricity service workers and all the exploited in South Africa.  In the midst of the strike, the masses of the Swazi nation returned to the streets against the king of Bantustan that his nation has become;  with clashes with the police and the soldiers, the mass political struggle began.

 The workers' organizations and their parties tried to divide the NUMSA strike from the mass actions, thus preventing the South African workers, both employed and unemployed, together with immigrants, from winning the streets as this could exacerbate the situation and hit the ANC government already wounded by a major internal crisis.  The economic struggle quickly turned into a political struggle as the working class and the exploited masses knew where to strike.  They had understood that to get something, they had to beat the regime and blow it up.

 On Thursday 28 the NUMSA, showing good predisposition with the employers, lifted the strike, accepting what the SEIFSA chamber, which brings together the most important automotive companies, had finally offered: 6% now, and as of 2022, a 2% that does not exceed inflation but fixed for two years.  Even NUMSA itself denounces that small factories, SMEs will not pay these increases, which will only be restricted to large companies.  In other words, only a sector of the South African working class will enjoy this increase while the rest of the workers, the unemployed, the immigrants will continue to suffer terrible hardships.  Thus, NUMSA separates and tears the ranks of the workers instead of becoming the bastion of unifying their ranks and leading a decisive struggle until the regime falls.

 The workers and the masses of South Africa are breaking with their counterrevolutionary leaderships

 This struggle of the South African workers takes up the struggle of the Marikana workers and the general strikes against Zuma;  the working class and the exploited have broken with the ANC and nothing can be as before.  We must unify the ranks of the whole of the South African working class, with that of the Swuazi nation, with immigrants coming from all over the region in search of work.  This strike would have been a great opportunity to start a path to put the foot on the chest of that black and white bourgeoisie, lackeys of the imperialist transnational corporations that steal all the wealth from the soil of that continent, to blow up those responsible for all their hardships.  It is the order of the day to bring down the government of Ramaphosa and the ANC-PC, the only way forward to conquer bread, work, land and resolve all the demands of the oppressed.

 The masses of South Africa with their struggle have placed themselves at a 180% angle with the policy of their leaderships that hand them over to imperialism as slaves (CNA-PC), and of the SAFTU (trade union federation that broke with COSATU) that prevent the unionized working class from uniting with the rest of the workers in South Africa.  The Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party, which emerged from the NUMSA leadership and was hailed and supported by all the workers' organizations of the continent, has shown itself to be powerless in the face of the revolutionary struggle of the masses, refusing to lead these combats and taking the just demands of the masses to the dead end of the elections.

 The task of the moment: unite the working ranks of all South Africa to overthrow the ANC-PC regime

 Committees by factory, by neighborhood, by region, by school to organize the revolutionary general strike!

 Let the socialist revolution begin!

 It is time to break with the reconciliation regime and call a congress of all the workers' organizations of South Africa right now! NUMSA, a workers' union federation that broke with COSATU together with its union federation, the AMCU from the Marikana mines have all the authority to convene it now, together with the trade union centers such as the ZTUC of Zimbabwe, the trade union center and the student union of Swaziland and the organizations of all South Africa.  From these workers 'organizations the call must arise to establish a workers' Congress of the occupied, unemployed, immigrants, poor peasants from all over the region. We must expropriate the transnational corporations, imperialism and the black bourgeoisie who are slave-traders of their own people!

 Committees must be set up and centralized by factory, by neighborhood, by region, by school, in order to vote for and organize a revolutionary general strike to bring down the government and the ANC regime.

 It is the task of the moment to set up the armed self-defense committees to defend themselves from the murderous police of the Marikana workers and the starving town.  Dissolution of all repressive forces.  That the common soldiers break with the army of the white officer caste, disobey their superiors and go over to the ranks of the labor movement with their weapons and refuse to shoot at the oppressed masses fighting for bread! Committees of common soldiers !

 To solve the problem of hunger, we must break with imperialism and stop paying the debt, we must expropriate all the land of South Africa. Nationalization without compensation and under workers' control of all mines, factories and establishments!

 Expropriation of the banks, to give credits, seeds, tools, cheap machinery to the peasants.  Single national bank.

 Out with imperialism and the black bourgeoisie!  Revolutionary general strike until the regime falls!

 Once again the African masses are on their feet to fight for their liberation.  Betrayed a thousand and once by Stalinism and national liberation movements such as the CNA or ZANU, which delivered the anticolonial revolutions by agreeing with imperialism to redraw the national borders of the African nations and become millionaires by exploiting the workers, associated with imperialism.   The struggle against apartheid, the national liberation struggle of South Africa, must culminate in overthrowing the black bourgeoisie, with the establishment of a workers' government and the poor peasants based on the armed self-organization of the masses in struggle.

 Actually, because of the betrayal of the national liberation struggle in Africa, millions of workers live like outcasts migrating to the mines and the countryside to work as slaves worse than in the apartheid era.  By the thousands, modern slaves from martyred Africa die in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe to survive, they die in military occupation in Haiti, full of disease and starvation, and are slaughtered on the US borders as they died on slave ships centuries ago.  Spanish imperialism receives them with tanks in Ceuta and they are enslaved in Libya.  Despite this, in their struggles the black working class once again travels the slave routes, but this time setting up their organizations such as the Black Vests of France, the movements against the murders of the police in the United States ... there, from the heart of the imperialism of organizations like Black Lives Matter, and from all black organizations, the forces will emerge to liberate martyred Africa.  The struggle of the black labor movement for their liberation has started again, with South Africa as the spearhead.  All the forces of the working class and the black labor movement to South Africa, there is beginning the path of their liberation!

 For a federation of black Soviet and socialist republics of all South Africa !!!  Let the revolution of the exploited start, let the socialist revolution begin!

WIL - Zimbabwe