South Africa - November 14th, 2021

 About SRWP South Africa

Two alternatives:
Either social democratic electoralist party
or socialist party for the revolution

Municipal elections were held in South Africa on November 1st.  The Revolutionary Socialist Workers Party (SRWP) participated in these elections.

 In its program, the SRWP says it is devoted to "fight against the capitalist State, promote the interests of the workers and fight for socialism."  It details the situation of hunger, the problems of housing, health, education and work that exist in South Africa and suggests that to end the "pandemic of poverty" it is necessary to expropriate the mines, food banks and large farms and setting up workers' committees and grass-root organizations.  It also denounces the imperialist plunder of the nation's wealth.  It says it fights even for the "expulsion of all imperialist military bases from Africa."  In this platform they call to vote their candidates where they are listed and where they are not, it asks to help build the SRWP.

This party was founded by the leadership of NUMSA, the metalworking workers’ union, which in 2018 called for the creation of a revolutionary workers' party.  They even enjoyed the support of currents of renegades of Trotskyism such as the LIT that went to its founding congress.  Already at the time we wrote our opinion regarding the founding of the SRWP in our noteon 08 / 04/19, "The call of the fierce and militant NUMSA workers to set up a revolutionary party was led to great frustration by Castro-Stalinism" (see http://www.flti-ci.org/africa/2019/abril/reporte-congreso-swrp.htm). Today, faced with the current situation in South Africa, we wonder why the SRWP does not take this proposal presented for the elections to the workers' organizations so that it can be voted and become a reality?  Why not take it to every union, every labor organization, starting with the NUMSA that this party leads and that has just staged a heroic 3-week strike that shook the bosses and won the support of the entire labor movement in the country?  Why not propose to the workers in an assembly that they can take the definitive resolution of their hardships into their own hands and call for organizing the masses to overthrow the hated government of the black bourgeoisie, manager of the transnational corporations?  Why not call from there to establish a Workers' Congress that unites all the ranks of workers, both employed and unemployed, South Africans as well as immigrants, etc., to conquer a revolutionary general strike to destroy the already repudiated ANC-PC regime?  This is not only an urgent need but also the obligation of every party that claims to be revolutionary.

 And there are plenty of conditions to do so.  In South Africa there is a pre-revolutionary situation opened by the masses that broke with the reconciliation regime, openly confronting it in hunger revolts in June, with huge strikes in October and with a de facto boycott of the municipal elections.  In this situation, the SRWP stood in the elections without any policy in view of the fact that the exploited had already been demonstrating their rejection of them and their weariness of the ANC that has governed for 27 years.  They are 180º from the actions of the masses that burned the ballot boxes, picketed to prevent the vote, repudiated the candidates, and so on, as due to the terrible living conditions, the workers of South Africa have broken with the ruling party and the CNA regime and this is a historical fact.  There is more than enough predisposition to the struggle from the workers and the poor people.

 Unfortunately, the SRWP leadership keeps the party outside of the labor organization that it leads, separating the "union" and economic demands that, for example, pushed the metalworkers to a strike that paralyzed the sector for weeks, from the demands it raises for the elections to end the system and fight for socialism.  In other words, unionized workers have to win decent wages and demands within the framework of economic struggles, and the broad masses must fight for their most immediate demands by voting for them.

 Though, what the working class needs is a revolutionary workers party, fighting for the seizure of power, to conquer the land and for the liberation of the Bantu nation.  To declare war on the black bourgeoisie of the CP traitors who have always diverted the national struggles, and to fight against imperialism and its looting that constantly expels millions of workers from their countries!  To the north and south of the Mediterranean, to the east and west of the Atlantic, it is the same fight and the same enemy: the transnationals that super exploit them and plunder the black continent are the same ones that treat them as outcasts in the metropolises and even when they are locked up in detention centers that are true concentration camps, left to drown in the Mediterranean, or killed on the southern border of the United States. 

The reason is that this capitalist system in crisis that can no longer even give work to its slaves for exploiting them deserves to die.  That is why the working class needs a party of slaves that unites in the same combat the struggles of the exploited of black Africa with those of the immigrants in Europe;  to join Swaziland's struggle against the bloody Mswati monarchy, to that of the workers who are marching in Spain today against racism and inequality;  that it be united with the movement set up by the Collective of the Black Vests in France, which marched by the tens of thousands through the streets of Paris, with its battle cry "fear has changed sides";  with that which struck like a single fist into the interior of the United States, where last year from Black Lives Matters it made the Wall Street bourgeoisie tremble, leaving its highest representative hidden in the White House bunker.  A party that settles accounts with the traitors who diverted them, disorganized them and led them to the feet of the Democratic Party.

WIL of Zimbabwe.