November 2, 2024

Workers International Vanguard League (WIVL)’s
Shaeed’s speech

In the first place, comrades, greetings from South África to everyone in this meeting. I think this meeting is very important.
The first thing I want to say is that, in our opinion, the international situation is contradictory. On the one hand, we see masses movement to the left, if we consider the uprisings in Kenya, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the very resistance in Gaza, the youth uprisings in the US. So we can see this movement towards the left, which is the first thing I wanted to remark.

As a second idea, the situation in Lebanon offers us an opportunity as revolutionary left in spite of the role Hezbollah has played. What opportunity? That of talking to the base of Hezbollah and drawing conclusions on Syria. Because they have been used by Imperialism to crush the Syrian revolution. Besides we need to say that those preventing the uprising and the fight against Israel in Lebanon is precisely the leadership of Hezbollah. This is what we need to discuss with Hezbollah’s bases, and to tell them they had made an alliance with Imperialism, and an allianve with imperialism is never a solid one, it uses you and then attacks you, which is what is happening now.
So, in spite of them being attacked and everything, it is an opportunity to establish a dialogue. That is my second concern.

The third point we feel important to discuss is the US elections. Of course we know democrats and republicans are both pro genocide. Here is where we have drawn lessons form 4 years ago.  In the 2020 elections, we called to vote critically for the Democrats. That was a mistake, it was wrong. We drew lessons and we are discussing what to do for these coming elections. First, it would be a boycott to elections, make them not happen, support the mass actions and protests for Palestine.
But we haven’t discussed what to say related to the vote in itself. Maybe it should be a critical vote to the Green Party, but we’ll try to discuss that tonight to see if we can write a position over this. We also believe it is important to consider the UAW car union, that has a movement pro Palestine, UAW for Palestine, with which we need to speak and expose the bureaucratic leadership of this union, the UAW.

Another issue we are following is Sudan. We see it as a dispute between France and Russia behind the government of Sudan on one side and on the other, the Fast Deployment Forces, the fraction of the army having the US behind. Both sides are disputing the control of Sudan. The US has already parted Sudan, in 2012 and kept South Sudan. Now they want to control everything and along the way bleed out Sudan masses by defeating the Sudan revolution of 2019.

We also see the US imperialist offensive in Ukraine and Lebanon. In Lebanon, they alongside with Zionism intend to control parts of the country against the French imperialism. In Ukraine, they intend to control more and more territory against the German imperialism.
Ukraine is another point to discuss.  We need to see how we address Zelensky, because he, Zelensky is a US imperialism agent and this is a key point to discuss. Of course we stand for a soviet Ukraine but a discussion around this point is very important.

The last point, so as not to go into too much detail, just so you know, we are building a branch of the WIVL in Johannesburg, of our party, the WIVL, in which we believe it is a key question to discuss the history of the South African workers’ movement, the lessons of the 80s, the lessons of the dual power in the struggle against Apartheid and from there to root ourselves to set up a revolutionary party in South Africa. We'll, this would be something to discuss perhaps at another moment. I’m sending all of you a Big revolutionary hug, we stand by you.