In the midst of imperialist looting and pandemics

The elections in South Africa come to divert the struggle from the streets and in Zimbabwe they are preparing to promote the electoral trap while...

The situation of the masses in South Africa
has become simply unbearable

In South Africa and Zimbabwe the situation of the workers and the poor is desperate and the regimes, subservient to the imperialism of which they are their minor partners, far from meeting the needs of the workers and the impoverished masses, prefer to resort to repression and put the army in on the streets.

As if this were not enough, in both countries, due to restrictions and prohibitions, the working class is prevented from meeting to organize measures to fight for their rights and demands, and cannot even resort to virtual meetings due to the high price of data from Internet, that only the rich and the bosses can buy.

In South Africa, hunger, unemployment, terrible inflation added to the corruption of the rulers led the workers and the exploited masses to carry out huge days of looting and confrontations with the police from July 9. So they went to find food in stores, supermarkets and shopping centers and burned 1,400 ATMs. Although the outbreak contradictorily began as a demonstration against the imprisonment of the corrupt former president Zuma, it was immediately deepened by the appalling conditions in which the workers and the impoverished masses find themselves submerged.
In South Africa 95% of the enormous wealth is in the hands of only 1%, creating brutal inequality, which was exacerbated in the year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Large death toll, slow vaccination, mismanagement of water that has created terrible shortages for both drinking and watering crops, looting by mining companies and other imperialist corporations, recession, economic stagnation, deindustrialization, budget cuts and the generalized corruption of the rulers (which generates great discontent that is being channeled with the trial of former president Zuma) and the entire government apparatus; that is what has long since sunk this country of immense mineral and agricultural resources.
In 2020, 2 million jobs were lost, mainly in the mining sector; the unemployment rate rose to 42%, according to Industrial Global Union; revenue fell 16%; In January 2021, 39% of households were left without money to buy food and 17% suffered from hunger.

Now, the government has established restrictions on the holding of meetings and has banned street vending, as well as the operation of open-air markets and fruit, vegetable and other food fairs. In this country where more than half of the workers are unemployed and can barely support themselves in normal times with street sales or informal jobs, these measures affect them doubly, since it prevents them from carrying out this type of activities due to the prohibition of going out, and in the case of street vendors, they are persecuted by the police and their merchandise seized, while public workers, including teachers, professors and health personnel, are forced to work even if the sanitary conditions for the pandemic are not met. Essential workers (miners, factories, transportation, etc.) must attend their jobs despite the existence of more dangerous variants of Covid and the low percentage of vaccination.

The conditions that led the masses to the July riots and looting have not changed, rather they have worsened. That is why the bourgeoisie, determined not to have them repeated, is now trying to lead the masses into the electoral trap since on November 1 municipal authorities will have to be elected.

This would not be possible without the betrayal of the CP to the masses of the entire region, as in South Africa where it is part of the government and the union bureaucracy; COSATU is dedicated to surrendering the struggles and breaking the heads of the workers just as it did in the strike of Marikana miners in 2012.
Julius Malema, former member of the ANC, a parliamentarian for the party he founded, the EFF (Fighters for Economic Freedom) and supporter of Hugo Chávez, proclaims the redistribution of land and an "Africa for Africans" in which whites are not included , saving the surrender to imperialism and the robbery and exploitation of the black masses by the black bourgeois millionaires; he tries to gain prestige with his support for the mass uprisings in Swaziland, positioning himself to the left of the ANC. Malema and his party, the opposition EFF, are trying to contain the discontent of those who break with the ANC on the left, and are preparing to intervene in this electoral trap. What he wants to impose is a detour to the actions that the impoverished South African workers and masses carried out in the streets last July.

The same is true for Zimbabwe

The same hardships are experienced in neighboring Zimbabwe, where workers still working have not been paid for months and many street vendors have gone to eat in rural areas, unable to go out to sell due to closure restrictions and the closed market zones, and the repression is as severe as in South Africa. And since they are a very important cog in providing food to poor areas of cities, working-class neighborhoods find it even more difficult to obtain fresh food at affordable prices.

Also in Zimbabwe, the bourgeoisie prepares for the electoral trap as the workers and the poor struggle to put food on the table. The general elections, which were postponed from 2020 to 2021 due to the pandemic, will finally be held in 2023. Opposition to the government has increased. Opposition parties, including ISO-Z, are excited about the hope of beating ZANU-PF, having seen the ruling party lose the elections in Zambia, so they are eager to discuss and organize the preparations for the polls, not ruling out the possibility of an electoral front.

The English SWP and its sister party in Zimbabwe, ISO-Z, are silent on the dire situation in the country, as is the ZCTU (workers' central). Currents like the ISO that call to form a workers' party are not putting their weight among the workers' vanguard to regroup it in order to defeat the collaborationist union bureaucracy of the ZCTU.

Nothing good will come from these elections for the workers and the oppressed masses of South Africa and Zimbabwe

Whoever wins the elections, none of the urgent demands of the oppressed, such as ending hunger and unemployment, will have a solution. The hardships of the workers and the exploited masses will only be solved with the self-organization of the working class, the poor peasants and the exploited masses to take over the leadership of the nation, expelling imperialism and its accomplices, the native bourgeoisie, both white and black and with the expropriation of the imperialist multinationals that plunder the African continent; by starting the economy under a workers' emergency plan, the exploited will be able to emerge from the catastrophe to which they are subjected.
The South African masses have staged huge class battles.
They do not have the leadership they deserve because the leaders they do have subject them to the bourgeoisie and its traps and deceptions.

Let's fight for the break with the bourgeoisie of the organizations that speak on behalf of the working class, let's march to set up workers' committees of workplaces, the unemployed and consumers!
Fighting for a revolutionary leadership in the unions is a step to open the way to win jobs and a living wage for all and to unite the working class of all Southern Africa.
We call on those who speak on behalf of the working class like NUMSA and UMCO, the ISO, the ZTUC, TO BREAK WITH THE BOURGEOISIE, and put their weight to organize the mass uprisings that are on the near horizon. The teacher and health worker strikes in both countries, the mass uprising against the monarchy in Swaziland a couple of months ago, fervently supported by the workers of southern Africa, the hunger uprisings in South Africa in July foreshadow huge class battles that are preparing under the fire of the capitalist crash and the unprecedented sufferings of those below.

Correspondent