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ZabalazaZabalazaA Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism No. 8 December 2007

“FROM EACH ACCORDING TO ABILITY, TO EACH ACCORDING TO NEED!”

Inside... Asgisa: A Working Class Critique SA Public Sector Strikes The 2010 World Cup Protests Against University Privatisation Introduction to the ABC Vigilante Farmers Want Refugee Camps Swaziland: TheAssassination of Our Dear Comrade Europe, Africa and the Neo-Liberal Strategy of Co-Optation Fallacies of the Darfur War The Congo’s Dilemma A New Guantanamo inAfrica? Misrepresentation of Self-Management in the Caribbean Some Thoughts on TheoreticalUnity & Collective Responsibility Clarity on What Anarcho-Syndicalism Is Towards an Anarcho-Syndicalist Strategy for Africa

The SA Communist Party (SACP) praisedthe Asgisa programme soon after itslaunch. Blade Nzimande admitted thatAsgisa was not a new macro-economicpolicy, and that it ignored “logistics” rele-vant to the working class, like decent trans-port and education. 1 Even so, he was“broadly” upbeat, claiming to see signs of ashift towards “an active developmentalstate … a comprehensive industrial policyand … integrated local development plan-ning”, a “welcome shift.” All reasonablepeople, he added, “agree with the rele-vance” of promoting a competitive nationaleconomy.

Cosatu was more openly critical, criticis-ing Asgisa at its September 2006 congress.The union federation went on to argue forits usual social democratic and nationalistproject: expand the State sector, promoteexport-led manufacturing growth, and (inline with Keynesian thinking) 2 redistributeincome to the poor in order to boost localdemand and, so, economic growth. Still,Cosatu reaffirmed its support for the ANC –or, more, specifically, for disgraced ANCleader Jacob Zuma, who many naivelybelieve will implement a pro-labour pro-gramme.

WHAT IS ASGISA?The differences between the SACP and

Cosatu are not that deep. Both currentlyembrace the notion of a “developmentalstate”, which they take to mean an inter-ventionist State machine that can activelyshape the capitalist economy – hopefully inthe interests of the masses.

The “developmental state” is, in this con-text, really a restatement of Cosatu and theSACP’s long-standing support for a“national democratic” interventionist Statethat would supposedly help provide thebasis for a future transition to socialism.This is in line with the Marxist two-stagetheory that the immediate task is a “nation-al democratic revolution” (NDR), meaninga mixed capitalist economy in which the“national question” is resolved beforesocialism becomes possible.

The term “developmental state” was orig-inally coined to refer to ruthless but efficientcapitalist dictatorships in East Asia likeSouth Korea, which succeeded – despite acolonial legacy – in becoming significant

industrial capitalist powers. Since then theterm has mutated, and has become widelyused by the State-centred left to describejust about any alternative to neo-liberalism.Even the ANC government (which avoidsthe term “neo-liberal” like poison, whileapplying neo-liberalism in practice) nowcalls itself a “developmental state”.

The difference between the SACP andCosatu on Asgisa is, in other words, thatthe SACP sees Asgisa as a move fromneo-liberalism to the “developmental state”;Cosatu does not. So, is Asgisa a breakwith the neo-liberal framework laid out tenyears ago in Gear? And, second, willAsgisa help meet the needs of the broadworking class?

THE GENERAL PROGRAMMELike Gear, Asgisa starts by stating that it

aims to create jobs, halve unemployment,and reach sustained economic growth(around 6% annually by 2010). 3 But sincejob creation and reducing poverty are thesupposed goals of just about any econom-ic policy, we can’t evaluate Asgisa on thebasis of its intensions. As with Gear, thecrucial issue is how will these goals bereached? And it is here that the problemsstart.

As Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka (closely identified with Asgisa) hasstated, 4 it is not a replacement for Gear. Itis a package of specific, short-term initia-tives to take the restructuring of the SouthAfrican economy forward by removing“binding constraints” and identifying“growth points.”

The country’s current economic trajectoryis praised in Asgisa as showing “steadyimprovement” in improving living condi-tions, creating jobs, promoting growth, andimproving business confidence (pp. 2-3). Adishonest representation of the data letsAsgisa make manifestly ridiculous claimsthat the real incomes of the poor haveincreased sharply since 1994 (!), and that540,000 net new jobs were created in2004-2005 alone (!!).

The “binding constraints” include a cur-rency that is “overvalued” (making exportsuncompetitive), poor infrastructure thathampers efficiency (particularly in trans-port), skills shortages, a high price oflabour due to transport costs, lack of com-

petition and opportunities for new busi-nesses, a “sub-optimal regulatory environ-ment” (in labour law and other areas), anda lack of State capacity (pp. 4-6). There isnothing in this stress on competition,export-led growth, cutting costs for busi-ness, and developing an efficient State,that departs in the least from neo-liberal-ism.

“DECISIVE INTERVENTIONS”Asgisa’s “decisive interventions” (not “a

shift in economic policy”) (p. 6) to deal withthese issues are generally also within theneo-liberal framework, except when theyinvolve “Black Economic Empowerment”(BEE) measures. BEE does contradictneo-liberalism to the extent that black cap-italists are given special treatment; howev-er, BEE and neo-liberalism can also bepartly reconciled by using neo-liberalmeasures like privatisation (the transfer ofstate operations and assets to the privatesector) and outsourcing to BEE compa-nies.

Asgisa’s “decisive interventions” includesector strategies (mainly promotingtourism, and attracting outsourced jobsfrom other countries), a set of fairly unco-ordinated plans to promote skills (with theemphasis on skills for a competitive econo-my), promoting small businesses (with anemphasis on BEE through privatisation,cheap loans, and a “review” of tax andlabour laws), suitable macro-economicpolicies (mainly continuing Gear’s stresson a weak rand, low inflation, and spendingless money more efficiently), and “gover-nance” issues (more efficiency, and contin-uing to move towards a “social contract” on“economic matters”) (pp. 8-16).

Perhaps the most important part of Asgisais a heavy stress on promoting infrastruc-ture. Admitting that a large backlog in infra-structure developed in the first decade ofGear, Asgisa envisages real and significantincreases in investment spending, growingat perhaps 10-15 percent per year, andleading off with R370 billion being spentfrom October 2005 to March 2008. Aroundhalf of this will be done via the corporatised(and partially commercialised) State corpo-rations, Eskom (electricity) and Transnet(transport) (pp. 6-8). This supposedly (butnot really) 5 “unprecedented” rise in expen-

A s g i s a : A W o r k i n gC l a s s C r i t i q u e

by Lucien van der Walt

The announcement of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative – South Africa (Asgisa) in 2006has been met with some enthusiasm in left and labour circles. There is, however, very little to be

excited about.

ZABALAZA SOUTHERN AFRICAPAGE 2

diture will contribute to the 2010 World Cupinitiative, promote “public-private partner-ships” (PPPs, a type of privatisation) ininfrastructure, and also contribute to thevarious Industrial Development Zones thatare designed to promote exports andattract direct investment.

A HIGHER GEAR?While Asgisa is, as should be expected,

far more concrete than Gear in setting outprecise objectives and initiatives, there isnothing here that breaks with Gear.Asgisa’s “decisive interventions” are eitherdirectly in line with Gear’s approach (suchas the stress on outsourcing), or are directrestatements of Gear’s policies (inflationtargeting, fiscal discipline, the “social con-tract”, more flexible labour laws).

And - this is especially important to stress- the emphasis on infrastructure develop-ment in Asgisa is entirely consistent withGear’s call for “a substantial acceleration ingovernment investment spending, togetherwith improved maintenance and operationof public assets,” up to, and including, theuse of PPPs. 6 This aspect of Gear wasalmost totally neglected in the past, withthe result that infrastructure has crumbled.Even the dullest bureaucrats, it seems,have come to realise thatrolling electricity blackouts,courtesy of Eskom, and anoverworked and unreliablerailway grid, courtesy ofTransnet are disastrous toefficient capitalist accumu-lation.

BEE IN THE NEO-LIBERAL ERA

The only real break is,perhaps, the heavy stresson BEE. Gear itself saidalmost nothing about theapartheid-derived context.Gear emphasised promot-ing small and mediumenterprises (p. 13), but didnot link this specifically toBEE. Given that the ANC isa bourgeois nationalist party, Asgisa’sstress on BEE is not surprising.

As a capitalist party, at the helm of a cap-italist State, the ANC must adapt the neworder of neo-liberalism. As an Africannationalist party, built in the anti-apartheidstruggle, the ANC must also promote thedevelopment of the African elite: it hasdone this in the State machinery quitequickly and effectively, but has made quitelimited inroads into the private sector. Thissomewhat contradictory agenda lies at theheart of ANC policy. Neither side of thecontradiction, however, offers the workingclass anything.

NEO-LIBERAL CLASS WARIf by “developmental state”, we mean a

break with neo-liberalism, it is mere wishfulthinking to see Asgisa representing a shifttowards “an active developmental state.” Itis an elaboration of the Gear project. Onlya highly abstract analysis, where neo-liber-alism is viewed in the most purist terms,could deny Asgisa’s neo-liberal credentials.

With Asgisa firmly part of the neo-liberalagenda, it follows that it offers nothing pos-itive to the working class. As we haveargued before, neo-liberalism is aboutrestructuring capitalism in a period of long-term decline to restore profitability, andshift the balance of class forces decisivelyin favour of the ruling class. This involvesa whole series of measures against theworking class: flexibility, cost recovery,wage freezes, cuts in welfare and publictransport, an ideological offensive againstunions, and so on.

Neo-liberalism succeeds in its objectivesto the extent that capitalist economicgrowth is restored, and to the extent thatworking class conditions and power areeroded. On both counts, Gear is a “suc-cess”. That the South African economy isgrowing at its fastest since the 1970s at theexact same time as poverty, unemploy-

ment and de-unionisation accelerate is notaccidental – it is the necessary outcome ofneo-liberalism.

That Asgisa will continue the pattern isquite clear, once we examine its class char-acter. For example, hundreds of billionswill be spent on infrastructure, but theemphasis is on meeting “rapidly growingdemand”, and providing “spin-offs” for“business development and empower-ment” (p. 7), rather than cheap, reliableand safe public transport; roads will bedeveloped through a so-called “ExtendedPublic Works Programme”, which will cen-tre on short-term jobs and outsourcing to(black) sub-contractors (p. 14).

AND NOW?The fact of the matter is that capitalism, in

general, is based upon the systematicdomination, exploitation, and exclusion ofthe working class. The slums are not theconsequence of isolation from the “eco-nomic mainstream,” but its creation. BEEdoes not marginalise the working class byaccident, but because all capitalists - andthe larger ruling class as well – inevitablyand necessarily marginalise the workingclass, of whatever race or nationality.

In the era of neo-liberalism, these prob-lems are particularly marked, for neo-liber-alism involves a systematic redistribution ofwealth and power away from the workingclass. To assume that neo-liberalism canbe halted by “engaging” the ANC – letalone, by electing a political opportunistfacing corruption charges like Zuma – isextremely naïve.

“Social equity” requires a significantredistribution of wealth and power towardsthe working class, and this requires, in turn,large-scale struggle. Only partial gains arepossible within the current social order;substantial change requires a new order ofthings. The task of the hour is not to placefalse hope in the policies of the ruling class,nor yet to choose which member of the rul-

ing class assumes the pres-idential throne. The task isto start winning people tothe vision of a world beyondcapitalism, based on partic-ipatory planning, distribu-tion by need, international-ism and self-management.

NOTES:1. Blade Nzimande, 11 April2006, “Asgisa’s devil lies in thedetail,” Business Times2. J. M. Keynes argued thathigher working class incomeswere good for capitalist busi-ness3. The Presidency, 2006,Accelerated and SharedGrowth Initiative – South Africa

(a summary), Republic of South Africa, pp 2-3.All subsequent Asgisa references are to thisdocument: the closest to an official statement ofAsgisa available, it first appeared as a back-ground document at a press conference. 4. Vicki Robinson, 10 February 2006, “FromGear to Asgi,” Mail and Guardian Online,w w w . m g . c o . z a / a r t i c l e P a g e . a s p x ?ar t i c le id=263813&area= /budge t_2006 /bud_insight/5. It is easily overshadowed, for example, by themassive expansions in State capital spending inthe 1950s and 1960s, the hey-days of import-substitution-industrialisation by the NationalParty.6. Government of National Unity, 1996, Growth,Employment and Redistribution: a macroeco-nomic strategy, Republic of South Africa, pp. 16-17


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PHANSI

CAPITALISM!

This year’s giant month-long public sectorstrike was a remarkable demonstration of aconvergence of working-class interests,across organisational, ideological,public/private, and racial lines – the likes ofwhich has probably never been seen inSouth Africa before.

And it took place against a backdrop of anintense policy debate within the rulingAfrican National Congress (ANC) alliancethat has seen a go-it-alone faction emergewithin the South African Communist Party(SACP) and a more strident independencetake hold among the 1,8-million membersof the Congress of South African TradeUnions (Cosatu).

By the time the dust had settled, had weseen the emergence of true popular-classconsciousness among workers and thepoor?

THE FIRST SHOTS REVEALCLASS DIVISIONS

By the time Public Service Co-ordinatingBargaining Council (PSCBC) talks gotunderway in Pretoria at the end ofJanuary, there were early warningsigns that the usual mid-year strikeseason generated by negotiationsover wages and bread-and-butterissues would develop into anunprecedented conflict.

It wasn’t just that the governmentwas offering an insulting 6% across-the-board wage increase that fellpitifully short of the rise in the costof living with inflation running at 7%1. This hardline stance is linked tothe government’s neo-liberal orien-tation, which stresses the need tocontain inflation and state spending,inter alia, by capping public sectorwages and by locking state workersinto longer-term wage freezes.

Tensions were initially raised by rumoursthat chief government negotiator KennyGovender had not been properly mandatedby the Cabinet committee from which hetook his instructions – consisting of PublicService and Administration MinisterGeraldine Fraser-Moleketi, Safety andSecurity Minister Charles Nqakula,Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota andFinance Minister Trevor Manuel.Govender denied the claim, but there hadbeen almost zero progress by the eve ofthe strike on June 1. And the role and polit-ical affiliations of the ministers pulling hisstrings would be thrown into sharp relief in

the weeks ahead. The very first day of the strike, a single

incident of violence underlined some of themost basic contradictions in the post-apartheid political compromise: police firedrubber bullets and teargas on strikers pick-eting the Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town.

Cosatu president Willie Madisha (whowas also an SACP Politburo member) andSACP general secretary Blade Nzimande,on hearing the news of the shooting at amarch of strikers in downtownJohannesburg, roundly condemned it. Butso too, naturally, did a leader of theCosatu-affiliated Police and Prisons CivilRights Union (Popcru).

This immediately revealed the raw sub-structure of the conflict.

Firstly, leading communists like Madishaand Nzimande found themselves pittedagainst a strike-breaking force headed byNqakula, who was SACP national chair.This raised the question of whether theSACP’s attempt to sail with one foot in thecanoe of the masses and with the otherfoot in the canoe of the state would not

result in the party doing the splits.Secondly, the state itself – which has

increasingly come under leftist scrutiny inSouth Africa as an unelected counter-dem-ocratic bureaucracy – was revealed as aconventional capitalist employer that readi-ly engaged in deliberate armed violenceagainst its own employees.

Thirdly, the police themselves, accus-tomed to their role as enforcers ofstate/capitalist interests found their mem-bers on both sides of the barricades, theirprofessional duties in conflict with theirneeds as human beings. We would wel-come the unionisation of the police - mostof whom are working class - over recent

years, if it had in any noticeable waycurbed police violence against the workingclass. Sadly, this has not been the case -as recent pre-emptive police gunplayagainst legal pickets in the mining sectorhas shown.

The stage having been set and the battle-lines so clearly drawn, the initially luke-warm response to the strike (starting on aFriday meant most workers simply took along weekend rather than join marches)quickly developed incredible momentum.

THE PARTY’S PALE-PINKCHAMPAGNE SOCIALISM

The SACP had for some time beenundergoing a series of changes that hadshifted it away from its traditional Stalinism.Those changes can probably be dated tolate leader Joe Slovo’s think-piece HasSocialism Failed? (1989), written in the eraof the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and coin-ciding with Francis Fukuyama’s since-dis-credited “end of history” thesis that claimedliberal capitalism had triumphed as the final

mode of politics.Slovo’s document, while reaffirm-

ing the validity of socialism in theabsence of the USSR motherland,inexorably placed the party on thepath to becoming a conventionalparliamentary social-democraticentity indistinguishable from similarex-Stalinist parties abroad, despiteits resistance to change its name.

Fifteen years later, the party paperUmsebenzi showed pretty girlssporting party-branded T-shirts andother gear up for sale. And as thisyear’s SACP funding scandal 2

revealed, the party has no restric-tion whatsoever on businesses,regardless of their motives, donat-

ing funds to the party coffers. More importantly, the party is deeply

divided, and does not - except on paper -have any shared line . Some rank-and-filemembers are old-school Stalinists while thepersonal politics of its leaders veersbetween mild social democracy to ragingneo-liberalism. Clearly the 1990s saw theparty floundering in the political wildernessafter the collapse of the USSR.

In the final analysis, the party deferred itsown commitment to pursuing socialismbecause firstly it mistakenly assumed thatthe USSR had been “socialist” in the firstplace (thus its vision of socialism was for-ever tainted with the idea that it could be

Now is the Winter ofOur Discontent

SA Public Sector Strike Stokes the Fire of Popular-ClassUnity and Reveals “Communist” Weakness

by Michael Schmidt - Pictures by Lebohang Makwela


enforced from above by state-capitalistmeans). Secondly, its historical marriageto the ANC’s bourgeois-nationalist projecthas undermined the party’s ability to thinkoutside the very limited toolbox of national-ist politics.

It had become in very practical ways acapital-friendly party that did not challengethe structure of capitalism/state, but merelyproposed reforms that would see a partialrechanelling of profit towards developmen-tal ends. But this stance was increasinglychallenged by the SACP’s refoundedYoung Communist League (YCL), whichrapidly challenged older party conventions.

By May last year, when the SACPreleased its State Power DiscussionDocument, the party had finally started tograpple with the question of whether it hadbeen a good idea at all abandoning classstruggle in favour of a few seats for its lead-ers at the bourgeois feast.

The SACP correctly notes that the SouthAfrican state is Y-shaped: one arm servicesthe largely-white corporate oligarchy; whilethe other under-services the largely-blacklabour pool. Yet it still sees “capturing” thatstate as the true role of a revolu-tionary party. Although the party cri-tiques the form of the state, it doesnot critique its content as anunelected, bureaucratic instrumentof elite rule over the popular class-es. Unlike the party we recognisethat the state cannot be trans-formed into a democratic instrumentdesigned to uplift the poor majority.

In the party’s draft programme TheSouth African Road to Socialism,released ahead of its July party con-gress, it honestly noted the errors ofStalinism: “dogmatism, intoleranceof plurality, and above all, the cur-tailment of a vibrant worker democ-racy with the bureaucratisation ofthe party and state. Millions of com-munists were among the victims ofStalin’s purges”. But this dodgedthe question of honestly facing the classcharacter of the USSR by claiming it wasreally “socialist” despite “errors”.

The draft later stated that “there is no sin-gle road to socialism” and hailed the “roleof popular mobilisation rather than relyingsolely on inter-state-driven reconstructionefforts,” and of the importance of “organs ofpopular power” among the peasantry andpoor in driving a progressive agenda on theAfrican continent. But the progressivenature of the party’s continental aims arevague at best and appear to be directed atchanelling popular power into the narrowpurposes of African “developmentalstates”. This does little more than strength-en class rule.

“One thing is certain,” the party wrote,“the intensified class struggle that is appar-ent across the length and breadth of oursociety will be the decisive factor determin-ing the outcome”. But how much furtherhas the party advanced towards a pluralis-tic worker-democratic vision?

For one thing, the party has no class line:the popular classes exist merely to bulwark

the “developmental state”. Its vision isblinkered by its slavish adherence to the“need” for a strong state to “help weldtogether a multi-class national democraticmovement buttressed by mobilised popularand working class power”. The party man-ifestly fails to explain why the ruling class -against all logic, against even the mostbasic Marxist theory at that - can be “weld-ed” into a multi-class project that benefitsthe working class.

In line with this crippled version of work-ing class power, it comes as no surprisethat the party warns against “a syndicalistor populist rejection of representativedemocracy, or even of a respect for a pro-gressive law-based constitutionality rootedin social solidarity”. What the SACP meansby “organs of democratic self-government”is equally contradictory: “community polic-ing forums, school governing bodies, andward committees”. No autonomous popu-lar-class organisations in sight. Everythingwedded to the capitalist state.

Trotskyist labour analyst Terry Bell, one ofthe rare pro-labour voices in the main-stream press, said while Public Service

Minister Fraser-Moleketi was becomingcompared in her iron-gauntleted handlingof the strike to that other Iron Lady,Margaret Thatcher, during her strike-break-ing drive against the National Union ofMineworkers in Britain in 1984, the realThatcherite was Finance Minister Manuel.

Still, it is worth noting that Fraser-Moleketiis yet another former communist who hassneaked away from the party in recentyears. Never really involved in the strugglefor a democratic South Africa, she joinedthe ANC while visiting Zimbabwe in 1980.

Her Stalinist training – boot camp inAngola, followed by an officer’s course inthe USSR and unspecified “specialist”training in Cuba – once again demon-strates the very short distance, as the vul-ture flies, between Stalinism andThatcherism/Reaganism.

So it came as no surprise that this pale-pink “champagne socialist” party founditself a house divided against itself duringthe public sector strike.

THE BATTLE IS ENGAGED:SOLIDARITY AND UNITY

The strike generated intense interestamong trade union organisations abroad,and the ZACF did its small bit in publicisingthe strike and drumming up messages ofsolidarity from the international anarchistand syndicalist movement.

The ZACF itself noted that earlier in theyear, the Independent (that is, state)Commission for the Remuneration ofPublic Office Bearers recommended thatPresident Thabo Mbeki get a 57,3% payincrease, taking his total package fromR1,1-million to R1,8-million annually.

Strikers carried placards saying “57,3%good enough for Mbeki – good enough forme”. The fact that Mbeki rejected the com-mission’s recommendations during thestrike in an apparent attempt to pour oil onthe troubled waters does not disguise thecountry’s huge income disparities: whilemembers of Parliament argued they shouldget salaries of R650,000 annually, a hospi-tal clerk told us she fed five mouths with atake-home salary of R12,000 annually.

Support for the strikers’ initial 12%wage demand came from the anar-cho-syndicalist NationalConfederation of Labour in France(CNT-F) which condemned “theSouth African government’s attemptto intimidate strikers into ending thestrike by issuing dismissal notices tostriking workers, and by usingapartheid-era police brutalityagainst picketers”.

Other organisations that sent mes-sages of support via the ZACFincluded the Federation ofAnarchists of Greece (OAE), theInternational Solidarity Commissionof the Industrial Workers of theWorld (IWW) and the Workers’Solidarity Alliance (WSA) in theUnited States. The InternationalWorkers’ Association (IWA) said itwould send a solidarity message

directly to the unions, although its affiliate,the Solidarity Federation of Great Britain(SolFed – IWA), sent a solidarity messagevia us.

The Melbourne Anarchist CommunistGroup in Australia (MACG) issued adetailed statement, noting: “The fact that,even now, [June 19], the public sectorstrike is not resolved is a demonstration ofthe fundamental conflict of interestsbetween labour and capital. Regardless ofthe outcome of this strike, while society isdivided into a working class and anemploying class, there can be no just andlasting settlement to employment dis-putes.”

The MACG endorsed “the right of picket-ing workers to use reasonable force in self-defence” – but as is usual, the red herringof violence was raised in the mainstreampress and among the striking unions them-selves, becoming a point of fracture in theinitially united front.

That front embraced 17 unions represent-ing Cosatu, the Federated Unions of SA


(Fedusa), and the black consciousnessNational Congress of Trade Unions (Nactu)– together accounting for about 1,4-millionstrikers – and about 400,000 independentunionists.

It was a remarkable coming together ofthe three main union federations, usuallydivided by their disparate ideologies intorespective ANC, liberal and black con-sciousness blocs, plus the independents,one of the strongest expressions ever ofmulti-racial, yet single-class power in thecountry’s history. The strike did demon-strate a significant amount of cross-raciallabour action, and probably quite unprece-dented in scale, so on one level it was anadvance in class consciousness. But theideological grip of the ruling class - via theANC and via nationalist mythology -remained pretty strong. These are unevenadvances.

Before long, off-duty soldiers and navalsailors – their members drafted in as scab-labour to work in the hospitals and otherservices – were joining pickets and march-es. Bell told me that “irrational” wage dis-parities in essential services such as nurs-ing, police and defence were fuelling thefire.

A one-day sympathy strike was called onJune 13 and was well-supported. Publicsympathy, despite widespread anger at thelack of service-delivery, was high.

THE CRACKS IN THE DAMBy June 16, when labour had dropped its

demand to 10% and the governmentmoved to 7,25%, the united front was hold-ing firm, and the average union memberappeared to be very well-versed in theissues at play around housing allowances,medical aid and so forth, despite Fraser-Moleketi claiming union leadership waskeeping them in the dark.

Several cracks had appeared around thepolice use of force against strikers, theintimidation of non-strikers, and what theindependents saw as the politicisation ofthe strike by Cosatu ahead of the ANC’scrucial June policy conference andDecember congress.

Popcru’s head of collective bargaining,Alex Mahapa, told me that police memberswere hotly debating whether officers’orders to fire on strikers were legal orders(strangely, while soldiers have a uniquecode of conduct allowing them to disobeyillegal orders, there is no police corollary).

The strike was largely well-disciplined yetsporadic incidents of violence receivedextensive mainstream media play.Although it is a fundamental principle oflabour never to cross a picket line, the verydiversity of the striking unions created diffi-cult conditions.

For example, JR Pieterse of the conser-vative teachers’ SA Onderwysersunie saidthough all teachers’ unions were united bytheir experience of similar poor levels ofpay and working standards, it had onlydecided to embark on a one-day strikewhile other unions voted for an indefinitestrike, raising tensions between the one-

day strikers and the rest and leading tointimidation.

Gavin Moultrie, president of the inde-pendent Health & Other ServicesPersonnel Trade Union of SA (Hospersa)said by June 16, the independents hadbecome disenchanted with what they sawthe abuse by Cosatu affiliates of the strike’seconomic aims to push party-politicalagendas relating to the various factions inthe ANC presidential race. Still, this wouldnot cause the Independent Labour Caucusto break ranks, he said.

Court actions started flying as labour andgovernment tried to see who would be thefirst to blink: the Labour Court ordered the120,000-strong Popcru to restrain its on-duty police members from joining the strikeas threatened. But even the conservative64,000-member SA Police Union (Sapu)warned many of its members were threat-ening a wildcat strike.

By June 24, however, with governmenthaving dug in at 7,5%, and with the ANC’spolicy conference looming, the first unionsbroke ranks: Fedusa affiliate Hospersaannounced it would sign the deal, withpresident Moultrie saying he hoped to con-vince Popcru, Sapu, the independentPublic Servants’ Association (PSA), andCosatu affiliate the National EducationHealth & Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu)to join Hospersa.

This would give it them the bargainingcouncil majority necessary for governmentto enforce the agreement. Moultrie said hefelt by refusing to settle for 10%, the SADemocratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) was“holding the other unions hostage”. Hesaw this intransigence as part of a cam-paign to promote Sadtu president Madishafor the ANC’s National ExecutiveCommittee in December.

In part, the Fedusa capitulation wasrevenge for a 1997 about-face by Cosatuunions who had also capitulated at the lasthour, enabling the government to unilater-ally enforce its will.

But in reality, all unions admitted theywere at the mercy of their membershipsregarding whether to move or not. Even atthat late hour, it was a victory for the shop-floor – especially given that few unions hadany strike funds at all, so strikers were real-ly feeling the pinch.

THE AFTERMATH: SHOPFLOORWINS AND LEFTIST LOSSES

By July 1, the strike was over. BusinessDay reported the score-card as“Government 2, Unions 1,” though natural-ly focused on the extra R5,5-billion – actu-ally well affordable – that had been addedto the public sector wage bill. By compari-son to Thatcher’s crushing showdown withthe British National Union of Mineworkers,which broke the back of British labour,however, government had failed to breakthe power of the unions and had been con-fronted with an unprecedented level ofworking-class unity, initially backed by widepublic sympathy.

Although the closing days of the strike

revealed bitter divisions between Cosatuand its traditional unionist rivals and publicsympathy waned 3, the unions held the linefor unusually long and robbed the govern-ment of an easy victory. Hopefully thepragmatic lesson learned of the power ofunion solidarity will not be lost. And hope-fully the syndicalist lesson of shopfloordemocracy won’t be easily forgotten oreroded either.

The other good things that emerged fromthe strike were the transformation ofCosatu’s weekly labour review into CosatuToday, hailed as the first working-classdaily “newspaper” since apartheid ended,and the launch of the new progressive jour-nal Amandla! which promises to be non-sectarian.

The MACG correctly urged “all workers inSouth Africa to reflect deeply on the role ofthe South African so-called CommunistParty. Communism has not failed. Rather,the SACP has failed communism. Underapartheid, the SACP taught that the work-ers’ struggle had two stages. The firststage was the struggle for the establish-ment of democracy, for the abolition ofapartheid and entrenched racial oppres-sion.

“The second stage, to follow at somepoint after the establishment of democracy,was the struggle for socialism. To theextent that this was true, they deceived theworkers (and many of their own members)by omitting to tell them that, in the secondstage of the struggle, the SACP would beon the side of the capitalists!

“The wretched history since 1994 of thisonce-proud organisation can only beunderstood as the penalty for its funda-mental political errors. The liberation of theworking class itself cannot be delegated toa political party.” And, it seems that theSACP seems doomed to repeat the mis-takes of the past. This was evident at theSACP’s 12th congress, held in July.

While a Markinor survey in mid-June dur-ing the strike had shown 28% of SouthAfricans and 25% of ANC supportersbelieved a new workers’ party should beformed to contest ANC dominance, andwhile some party members have started toseriously question the Alliance with theANC, the SACP avoided making any realshifts. At its congress, party leaders neatlydeferred the decision on whether to contestthe 2009 elections as a self-standing partywith its own platform. However, as exam-ples too numerous to spell out show –including the Workers’ Party (PT) govern-ment in Brazil – electoralist options seldomrepresent true advances for the popularclasses.

OPPORTUNISM IGNORESGRASSROOTS STRUGGLE

Why? The SACP’s long tradition of loy-alty to the ANC is a major factor. In a cut-ting analysis, Dale McKinley of the Anti-Privatisation Forum 4 argued that for thepast 15 years, the party had “fiddled” withthe issue of being junior partners in analliance with the ANC that they will clearly


never control. Their second option, wasnever realised: “to go back to the basics oforganising and mobilising the poor andworking class (which must include real,practical alliances with community organi-sations and social movements) based on aradical programme of demands for theredistribution of wealth …” This pro-gramme should “re-build a genuine leftpolitical and organisational power-base tocontest power relations within SA society(something which is not simply reducible toelections and running as an electoral forceseparate from the ANC)”.

Rather than tackle the crisis in the party’sranks, and in its direction, the congresswas dominated by the leadership squab-bles in the ANC between supporters ofPresident Mbeki and his disgraced rival,Jacob Zuma.5

McKinley noted how the presidential lead-ership battle between factions such asthose supporting Mbeki or contender JacobZuma had come to not only dominate, butin fact supplant real politics within theSACP.

“It is a sad state of affairs – a situation inwhich the largest and most long-standing‘left’ party in South Africa [the SACP] iseffectively held hostage to the outcomes ofpersonal/intra-organisational and patron-age battles within another party [the ANC]and, in which its own programme and poli-tics is also effectively moulded by the samebattles”.

Sure, Minister Nqakula was ousted asparty national chair – but not because ofhis politics but because he (supposedly)represented the Mbeki faction. It wastelling, McKinley said, that Zuma was “nei-ther a communist nor even socialist,” butrather an opportunist, so for Cosatu andthe SACP to claim there has been a shift tothe left both in the party and in the ANC ispatently false.

Instead, the reality is the SACP andCosatu are confirmed in their roles as merehandmaidens, forced to kowtow to theusual old ANC dictates of strengthening theAlliance (exclusively in its favour) and thusendorsing the deferment of any true revo-lutionising of the country’s classist econo-my. Here, too, we see the results of thestrike in terms of consciousness are limit-ed. The energy and anger of the strike wascarefully dissipated into thin air by certainunion and SACP leaders.

The result is that despite memberships of14,000 and 1,8-million respectively, 6 theSACP and Cosatu had been “virtuallynowhere” amidst the “hundreds of commu-nity protests around basic services, crack-downs by the state on these activists/com-munities and efforts to influence local gov-ernment delivery mechanisms and politicsto be more inclusive/participatory…”

He explains why the SACP and Cosatuapproach to the radical social movementshave been so two-faced, making sweetovertures the one moment, then decryingthem the next, instead of seeing them asnatural allies: they wish to “organisationallycontrol the social movements so that theyare not ‘anti-ANC’ and also so that these

social forces do not pose any ongoing orfuture threat to the ‘left’ dominance of theSACP/Cosatu and the self-annointed ‘left’forces in the ANC/the state”.

We anarchist-communists work withinthese social movements because they –and not state corporatist structures likecommunity policing forums - as the SACPwould have it – are true “organs of popularpower”, for all their faults and inconsisten-cies. In doing so, we work alongside alltrue grassroots communists, however theydescribe their traditions, who genuinelysupport the organisational and ideologicalautonomy of the popular classes (workers,peasants and poor).

We also encourage constructive debateand engagement with SACP membersconcerned at their party’s surrender of aclass line in favour of the opportunistic pol-itics of personality, and with rank-and-fileCosatu members concerned at the stran-gulation of the power of their class by theANC yoke.

Only a consolidation of ethical, highlypoliticised, forces of the productive base ofsociety and their reserves the poor canhope to successfully challenge theexploitative status quo. That is the lessonof this year’s strike: only politically-mobilised class unity and shopfloor democ-racy can change the structure of thenational economy in a way that puts theopportunists and the parasitic elites theyserve to flight.

Notes:1. CPIX inflation, which excludes mortgage costsand is the main figure tracked by the ReserveBank for policy purposes, has been slightly lowerat about 6.4% - and when the strike started, it

was still lower, below the bank’s 6% target ceil-ing. On the other hand, food inflation is higher,around 9% over the past few months. This, ofcourse, hits the working class disproportionately,as Cosatu and others (even some bourgeoiseconomists!) pointed out during the strike.2. In August, the Mail & Guardian wrote a storysaying R1,7-million was either missing fromparty coffers or had not been accounted for(including R500,000 allegedly donated by busi-nessman Charles Molele, R600,000 apparentlygiven by ANC man Justice Pitso, R360,000 iron-ically paid in error to the party by the BankingAssociation, and R300,000 donated by theChinese Communist Party). Corruption by sev-eral party leaders Madisha and Nzimande hasbeen alleged, but the matter has yet to beresolved.3. The public’s primary concern became theteaching time lost to Matric students, hundredsof whom have violently protested at the prospectof entering their final exams unprepared.4. The “Zumafication” of Left Politics in theAlliance: A Critical Review of the ANC PolicyConference & the SACP 12th Congress,Amandla online edition:www.amandla.org.za/Site/McKinley.htm 5. Jacob Zuma’s election as ANC President atthe party’s congress in December has beenhailed as a victory for the Left by Cosatu and theSACP – but Zuma has made it crystal clear thathe will not diverge at all from the ANC’s neo-lib-eral, anti-poor agenda. The parliamentary Lefthas thus failed spectacularly to shift governmentpolicy in a more humane direction – but while theeconomic and political superstructure remainsunaltered, Zuma’s election shifts the socialdebate rightwards, in favour of macho populismand perhaps even dangerous Zulu chauvinism.

6. There isconfusion overthe SACP’strue member-ship. In May,N z i m a n d ec l a i m e d40,000 mem-bers, and theJuly congresswas told therewere 51,872paid-up mem-bers. Butt r e a s u r e rPhillip Dexter,suspended forrailing againstthe party’sStalinism, putthe number ata more believ-

able 14,000 (the bigger numbers having appar-ently been reached by simply adding the YCL’sunproven and probably wildly over-inflated20,000 members to those of the parent party).


Note: The unity of the strike paid off in November with the merger of the formerly PAC-aligned, blue-collared National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu), with the formerly white- and white-collared - Federation of Unions of SA (Fedusa) to form a new labour giant,the SA Confederation of Trade Unions (Sacotu). With 890,000 paid-up-members (per-haps 1-million members in all), it is bigger than the ANC with only 621,000 paid-up mem-bers, but still lags behind Cosatu’s 1,8-million. While broadly social-democratic in orien-tation, Sacotu is deliberately non-party-affiliated, a fact that is the major stumbling-blockto the much-desired merger with Cosatu to form a single national confederation.

It remains to be seen whether Sacotu’s “a-political” stance becomes with time reducedto mere economism, whether it dissipates its strength by backing a future labour party,or whether its struggles against ANC neo-liberalism take it in a more militant,autonomous class struggle direction.

South Africa’s success in winning the2010 bid for the Soccer World Cup (thebiggest international sports event after theOlympics) has been widely hyped as thesolution to the country’s huge social prob-lems. In the speeches of the politicians,and the editorials of the bourgeois press,the 2010 World Cup is being presented asthe great test of the country’s ability to“succeed”.

News of the successful bid was greetedby celebrations in the streets – celebrationsthat drew in large sections of the workingclass. Soccer’s history as a working classsport, worldwide, accounts for some of theenthusiasm, and the fact that the Cup isgoing to be held in Africa also has someappeal to the nationalist sentiments thatare, sadly, widespread.

HOPE AND HYPEEven those who have little interest in the

game have grasped feverishly at the hopeof benefiting fromthe billions theState machine isstarting to spendon upgrading orbuilding stadiumsin the host citiesand the moneybeing earmarkedfor upgrading pub-lic transport. Somejobs will certainlybe created, and,more recently, the State has announcedthat money will be injected into the run-down State health system, and that themain tourist hot-spots will be upgraded.Current estimates are R16 billion, but weshould expect the figure to rise dramatical-ly.

We believe the State will probably be ableto get the country “ready” for the WorldCup. But does it matter?

THE TOUGH QUESTIONSWhile improvements in transport and

health, and some job creation, can only bewelcomed, the question must be posed:why is the South African State so keen tohost the 2010 World Cup? Why spend bil-lions on this once-off event, when there areso many other serious problems?

The fact is that there are many powerfulinterests who stand to benefit. Ourincreasingly multi-racial ruling class – thepoliticians, top officials, and big business –see the 2010 Cup as a major opportunity.The ruling class believes that the 2010project will attract investment by business-es, both local and foreign, into SouthAfrica. Global games increasingly play acentral role in marketing countries as desti-nations for investment.

Other semi-industrial countries have usedthese events in exactly this way: thus, wehave seen major events in Malaysia 1998,and there will be more to come in China2008, India 2010, Ukraine/ Poland 2012...A successful event will tackle the country’sreputation for crime, low-skilled labour, andgeneral inefficiency. In addition, the Cupwill provide a focus for the State’s commit-ment (made in both the neo-liberal GEARand ASGISA programmes) to improveinfrastructure.

NEO-LIBERALISM (AGAIN)The focus on marketing the country, and

on infrastructure, is in line with the State’scommitment to a neo-liberal restructuringof the capitalist economy. Since the late1970s, first the apartheid government, and,in the 1990s, the post-apartheid regime,has been set on liberalising the economy.

While many left commentators, like RaviNaidoo, have helped expose GEAR’simpact on the working class (in terms of jobcreation and service delivery, particularly),it is also important to understand that neo-liberal restructuring has massive benefitsfor the South African ruling class. Not onlyhas the economy grown at over 4 % overthe last few years (its best sustained per-formance since the early 1970s), butunions have been hammered, labour flexi-

bility has increased dramatically, costrecovery policies have cut municipal costs,and taxes on high income earners havebeen slashed.

CLASS POLICIESIt is quite wrong, then, to suggest that

GEAR has “failed”, as if the policy can bejudged in class-neutral terms: GEAR has“succeeded” for the ruling class preciselybecause it has “failed” the working class.In a class society, the “success” of a policycan only be judged relative to particularclass interests and agendas.

Now, one consequence of economic lib-eralisation has been the removal of variouscontrols over capital investments (like pre-scribed assets policies) and movements(with a continually rising ceiling on capitaloutflows). The State is focussed more onattracting, rather than controlling, directinvestments, which is where deregulation,marketing and infrastructure come into play

as major instru-ments for growth;the State is, equal-ly, increasingly vul-nerable to the per-ceptions of privateand parastatalinvestors, withlocal capital itself“globalising” intoforeign markets.

In line with neo-liberal theory

(expressed in its crudest, optimistic form inGEAR), implementing neo-liberal policiesmeans more local and foreign investment,which means more economic growth, andthen more jobs, which redistribute opportu-nities to the working class. For GEAR, themain areas of investment would be manu-facturing (with a focus on exports), andservices. Essentially, the theory goes, ifthe rich get richer, the poor supposedlyalso have a chance to get richer.

Hiding behind this cosy rhetoric of cross-class compromise and all-round friendli-ness, however, is the brute reality of capi-talism generally (class inequality) and neo-liberalism particularly (restoring profitabilitythrough class war from above).

The 2010 World Cup...the Neo-liberal Agenda and the Class Struggle

in South Africa


The 2010 World Cup is part and parcel of the neo-liberal restructuring of SA capitalism. It is also,however, a major opportunity for social struggles.


22009...009... 2201011...1...Try

harder... maybe youcan get a job out of

2010 like I didTRY

HARDER...SIGH!

WINNERS, LOSERSThe class realities of the situation are

easily seen in the 2010 initiatives. TheState spending is mainly aimed at promot-ing opportunities for profit: lucrative con-tracts in infrastructure, a focus on upgrad-ing health and transport in wealthier areas,while hiding the poor, a focus on stadiumsrather than houses, schools and townshipupgrading. This is intended to attractinvestors, drop the cost of doing business,and making sure that major economic deci-sions remain out of the hands of the work-ing class.

Money spent on 2010 is money takenfrom other areas. In 2005, the governmentallocated R48 billion to health, covering thewhole government health system, including400 hospitals. Of this, about R1,5 billiongoes to upgrading hospitals every year: inother words, government will spend around6 billion on repairing hospitals by 2010,which is less than half of the money gov-ernment plans to spend on soccer stadi-ums. Yet hospitals are obviously moreimportant than soccer stadiums. If the full2010 budget went to hospitals, four timesmore repairs could be done. This tells yousomething about the priorities of the rulingclass, and how low down on the list publichealth is compared to the neo-liberal proj-ect.

Where is the R16 billion going to beraised? First, from central governmentallocations (raised from tax on companies,salaries, VAT, and “sin taxes” on goods likecigarettes) and, second, from local govern-ments (which means from various localrates and service charges, includingcharges for property, electricity etc.). Theflip-side of the coin will, of course, beincreasing service charges and toughercut-off policies for municipal services.Social movements: beware!

GAU-TRAINSTalk about improving public transport

must surely be welcomed. Around half ofthe millions who use the trains are from thelower ranks of the working class, earningunder R1600 a month and unable to affordthe taxis. However, the commuter railwaysystem has not only been frozen for thelast thirty years, but was actively run downin the 1990s; the trains cover only someareas, are in an appalling state, and around20,000 jobs have been cut. Spoornet andMetrorail, part of the giant State companyTransnet, have focussed on cutting coststo such an extent that even powerful capi-talist sectors, like the big farmers, havebeen seriously frustrated by the lack ofcapacity and unreliability of the railwaygrid.

The focus on 2010, and ASGISA’s revivalof GEAR’s promise to improve infrastruc-ture, suggest a serious change in direction.Outright sell-offs seem to be off the agen-

da: the neo-liberal extremism that suggest-ed that the railway grid be fully privatisedhas been replaced by a more pragmaticneo-liberalist view that recognises thatmajor infrastructure is (as economist MiltonFriedman puts it) a State responsibility -and absolutely vital to a successful exportdrive in agriculture and manufacturing.The same applies to ESKOM, the othergiant parastatal, which has gained anunpleasant reputation for unreliability overthe last few years (to which it has respond-ed, predictably, not by improving servicesbut by raising costs and running TV advertstelling people not to run major appliances-like TVs!).

The State is not planning to change itsmind about continuing the commercialisa-tion of Spoornet and ESKOM, and still hasplans to partly privatise both entities. Theoptimistic view - championed by COSATUfigures like Karl von Holdt and RandallHoward - that union “engagement” with theState had led to abandoning the neo-liber-al project in transportation - has no realbasis. Nor is there any reason to startannouncing the death of local neo-liberal-ism.

But even the dullest bureaucrat supportstaxi recapitalisation,, and upgrading andeven extending the railways, as with thenew Gautrain project, which runs parallel tothe 2010 initiatives. The Gautrain showsclearly the class character of the newcourse. A multi-billion rand high speed linebetween suburbs in Pretoria andJohannesburg, the self-proclaimed “mid-dle-class express” will charge up to R60 aticket, and is primarily designed to alleviatehighway congestion by encouraging mid-dle- and ruling class car owners to take theluxury train instead. It is not about helpingout the working class.

The 2010 initiatives will create some jobs.The big construction contracts, in particu-lar, will need large numbers of workers,and there is nothing this country needsmore than jobs. But how long will the jobslast? Building a soccer stadium is not alifetime job; at most, it is work for a fewyears. What will happen after 2010? Wedon’t know what will happen in future, butthe terrible record of South African capital-ism in creating jobs provides reasons to beconcerned.

GRAVY TRAINS Of course, there are many other benefits

from the 2010 project for the ruling class.The politicians and the sports administra-tors will get a chance to make money,through various business partnerships andcorrupt deals. As the arms deal scandaland the Gautrain have already shown, nomajor State project these days works with-out kickbacks, crooked tenders and con-tracts for pals.

Furthermore, worldwide, soccer is

becoming increasingly controlled by majorcapitalists, and run on capitalist lines. Thebig English teams, like Manchester Unitedand Arsenal, came from the big industrialtowns, and started as workers’ clubs: todaymillions are made from their “official” mer-chandise, while the police diligently arrestsellers and makers of so-called “pirate”merchandise. There is a fortune to bemade from owning soccer stadiums, sellingtickets, TV rights and merchandise. InSouth Africa, this raises millions for peoplelike Irvin Khoza (owner of Orlando Pirates),Kaizer Motaung and Primedia (owners ofKaizer Chiefs), and Patrice Motsepe(owner of Mamelodi Sundowns).

Finally, an event like the World Cup hasthe great benefit (for the ruling class) ofpromoting backward ideas like nationalism.The teams are organised by countries, andthis provides a way for the ruling class topromote divisions between the workingclass around the world: a German workeris encouraged to support the Germanteam, and think about being German,rather than about being a worker, and soon.

SOCIAL STRUGGLESThe 2010 World Cup project is a ruling

class project, but also provides an opportu-nity to mobilise social struggles, particular-ly as the State will be uncomfortable withbad publicity under the global spotlight.There are opportunities to mobilise not justfor small things (like affordable tickets), butfor more jobs, better transport, unionisedwell-paid jobs in the 2010 initiatives, andfor resisting the commercialisation and pri-vatisation of soccer. There is a seriousdanger that the process will be associatedwith major evictions of squatters and hawk-ers, as well as rising taxes and servicecharges. If the government wants tospend R16 billion, let them raise the moneyby taxing the ruling class.

Life doesn’t end in 2010: what we needare sustainable jobs, pro-poor develop-ment and strong working class move-ments. This must be independent of the2010 programme – reports that COSATU’sinvestment arm may become involved instadium building should raise alarm bells.2010 is a chance to highlight popularissues, but this can only succeed if weavoid the poison of nationalism, with itsProudly SA, lets-hold-hands-with-the-boss-es propaganda. We need a different typeof society, and this needs struggles, equal-ity, internationalism, and working classstruggle. Human dignity and rights are notpossible under the current social order.

This is an edited version of a talk given at the 5May 2007 Red and Black Forum, held at

Khanya College, Johannesburg.



REVOLT ON CAMPUS Following a series of late night mobilisa-

tions in the university residences, hundredsof Wits students - mainly African and work-ing class - marched on the morning ofWednesday 3 October to make clear theiropposition to the management’s decisions.Frustrated with official university forumsthat prevent student voices from making areal impact on policy, students disruptedlectures and an ever-growing crowd surgedaround campus.

By midday, tensions were mounting, andWits management launched a media offen-sive against the students - and called onlecturers to report protestors. Lecture dis-ruptions are forbidden under the universi-ty’s Code of Conduct, but have long been astandard part of the student protest reper-toire: class and race divisions amongst stu-dents mean that the African working classminority is not easily able to shut downcampus activities by other means.

The protests continued the following day,and progressive academics, grouped in theConcerned Staff Committee, as well as anumber of outsourced Wits workers, pub-licly joined the students’ protests. Thatafternoon, riot police clashed with students,several of whom were arrested. Membersof the Concerned Staff Committee werealso called into a meeting with top man-agement. The campaign continued overthe next few days. Despite a hostile media,which routinely presented the protestors asvandals and troublemakers, the messagewas loud and clear: no to fees hikes, not toprivatisation, open the bourgeois universi-ty!

The academics’ support was warmlyreceived by the crowds, now around 500strong, and helped underline that the prob-lems faced by the students were part of a

larger set of problems in higher educationas a whole. What is happening at Wits ispart of the post-apartheid ANC govern-ment’s neo-liberal agenda, which is backedby the local ruling class and is reinforcedby the General Agreement on Trade inServices (GATS), the World TradeOrganisation treaty that promotes the com-mercialisation of social services; the ANCgovernment is a GATS signatory. In thehigher education sector, this has involved acombination of funding cuts to public uni-versities like Wits, and pressure to turn theuniversities into profit-driven “market uni-versities”. Wits, for example, saw its Statefunding fall by a third in the late 1990s; inthe mid-1980s, around 80% of universitymoney came from the State; today the fig-ure is around 39%. The result is feeshikes, declining financial aid for poor stu-dents, and a drive to cut costs and promotecommercial activities.

WITS 2001 Back in 1999, Wits adopted the Wits 2001

programme as its manifesto for neo-liberalrestructuring. The immediate conse-quence was the dismissal of over 600workers - a quarter of Wits’ total staff- andthe outsourcing of their jobs in catering,cleaning, grounds and maintenance in2000. The struggle to prevent this out-sourcing - covered in Zabalaza, and widelyin the anarchist press elsewhere - was akey moment in the rise of new social move-ments like the Anti-Privatisation Forum,which have come out directly against theANC’s programme. The outsourcing wasaccompanied by a series of mergers andrationalisation of academic functions, andthen the establishment of a special unit,Wits Enterprise, tasked with commercialis-ing university activities. As profit andpower are so closely intertwined, it is alsonot surprising that the restructuring wasaccompanied by a rapid centralisation ofmanagement power as well.

The conflicts this year - centred around aproposed 25% increase in upfront fees, a500% increase in admin fees for studentscoming from outside southern Africa, anaverage increase of student fees by 8%,and the planned privatisation of two stu-dent residences - must, then, be seen as

part of a longer struggle around the natureof higher education - and the future of Wits.The defeat in 2000 quietened the campus.

The silence was broken in 2004 by stu-dent riots, a strike by outsourced workers in2006, and now, more struggles. Anarchistshave been involved in these universitystruggles for many years, as militants, asorganisers, as speakers, as writers.

THINK GLOBALLYAs we write, it seems the struggle is end-

ing in premature negotiations that will per-haps win some important concessions forstudents. However, a sustained strugglecan only take place if links are madebetween the different campuses, betweenthe students and the staff (including aca-demics, but also support and administra-tion workers), and if the weak and dividedtrade unionism in the sector is overcome.This requires a unifying programme includ-ing demands for access to higher educa-tion for the working class, the reversal ofoutsourcing, the end to privatisation andcommercialisation, and a challenge toState policy.

As struggles without clear ideas are oftenstruggles aborted too soon, it is importantto recognise that the struggle in highereducation is part of the struggle against theANC’s neoliberal policies, and the rulingclass which lies behind them. Many of thestudent protestors were, in fact, membersof ANC-linked youth groups, and the role ofthe ANC was consequently obscured.

But we are confident that the links arebeing drawn between neoliberal policies atWits, at the universities more generally, themassive layoffs in the country, the commu-nity struggles against cut-offs and evic-tions, and so, too the ANC, the State andcapitalism. The struggle continues:protests against fee hikes, partly inspiredby the Wits protests, have begun at theUniversity of Johannesburg. And theseare, in turn, part of the global resistancestruggles in universities and elsewhere,struggles that are against the GATS,neoliberalism, and capitalism.

Note: This article was originally written for LeCombat Syndicaliste and will also be run in anupcoming issue of that paper.

Students and Staff ProtestUniversity Privatisation


Announcements of steep fee increases and the planned privatisation of student accommodation sparked majorprotests at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, South Africa, in October. The fee hikesare the latest consequence of the university’s neo-liberal “Wits 2001 plan”, which has cut spending, outsourced

workers and promoted the commercialisation of research and teaching.

PRIVATISEDSERVICES PUBLICSERVICES

“We’re here to serve!”make a PROFIT

There is much debate over the exact dateof the organisations formation. Accordingto Rudolph Rocker (once treasurer of theAnarchist Red Cross London) the AnarchistRed Cross was established between 1900and 1905. However, Harry Weinstein (oneof the two founders of the organisation inRussia) insists it was founded after hisarrest in 1906, when he and a group ofAnarchists supplied clothing to prisoners inexile in Siberia.

During the Russian civil war (1918-1920)the organisation changed its name toAnarchist Black Cross (Black being thecolour of Anarchism) as not to be confusedwith the Red Cross relief program.

In 1967 the ABC Britain was re-formed byStuart Christie and Albert Meltzer. Thedecade saw the formation of ABC groupsall around the world especially in Europeand North America. In 1995 chapters in theUS merged into a federation - the AnarchistBlack Cross Federation. In 2001 the ABCNetwork, an international network of anar-chist anti-prison groups, started. This net-

work includes the Emergency ResponseNetwork, a network designed to spreadnews of new political prisoners and repres-sion actions from around the world, in orderto get a quick response and aid from glob-al activists.

In August 2002 a group of Johannesburgbased Anarchists started the ABC(SA) as a response to the escalat-ing number of class struggleactivists who had been illegallyarrested (some 72 from theLandless People’s Movement, 98from the Soldiers Forum etc…)which, unfortunately phased out in2004.

As a result of anincrease in activistarrests and repressionactions, brought about bythe dramatic increase of protestsand other demonstrations in thecountry, we are pleased to announce thatthe Anarchist Black Cross Southern Africahas been re-formed.

OUR AIMS

The ABC SA aims to be a valuableresource for imprisoned class struggleactivists. This means aiding them finan-cially, materially as well as mentally, by pro-viding them with reading materials, legalfunds (when possible), necessities etc…

Our actions will transcend only prison-er support in the form of communityorganising. This means engaging

with communities that have beenaffected by the injustice system; thiscan be in the form of relatives orcommunity leaders being impris-oned, “urban cleansing”, unfair dis-crimination by the authorities (weall know that poor communities areoften unfairly targeted by the

police) and eviction campaigns.Our ultimate goal is the freedom of all

class struggle prisoners and the freedomof humanity itself.

contact - [email protected]

A Short History and Introduction to the

Anarchist Black Cross

Remember “they are in there for us so we are out here for them!”

Under the guise of so-called humanitari-anism farmers in the Limpopo province, onthe border between South Africa andZimbabwe, are calling on the South Africangovernment to establish refugee transitcamps where the thousands ofZimbabwean refugees that have beenflooding illegally into South Africa to escapethe miserable situation in their country oforigin can be “fed and inoculated andprocessed properly without fear”. Theharsh reality, however, is that defectors willmore than likely be processed back toZimbabwe, which is something to be veryafraid of.

These farmers have been using “vehiclesdesigned for game hunting to track downillegal immigrants”, making citizens arrestsand then handing them over to the policefor deportation. Police Chief CommissionerCalvin Sengani, however, has sincewarned that farmers doing so could facescharges of kidnapping and assault.

Farm-watch patrols which, duringApartheid were a frontline defence against“terrorist” Zimbabwe, are said by Jody

Kollapen of the South African HumanRights Commission to be racist “paramili-tary” organisations which are actingagainst black Zimbabweans.

According to the regional manager of theTransvaal Agricultural Union, Marie Helm,responsible for the organisation of thefarm-watch patrols which track therefugees down, farmers are concerned thatin the wake of the flood of immigrants “willcome organised crime, drugs and smug-gling” and that because it is hunting sea-son, refugees risk being mistaken for gameand being shot. They are apparently not soconcerned with the theft of livestock bystarving Zimbabweans, but that the holesthey leave in the fences could allow dan-gerous animals to escape and thatrefugees’ fires could become runaway wild-fires under the dry tinder conditions.

As anarchists we are strongly against theestablishment of any refugee transitcamps, and the role of these farm-watchpatrols. Every Zimbabwean should havethe right to a dignified life and, as that is notpossible under the tyrannical rule of a mad-

man, we support their efforts to seek asy-lum in South Africa. Furthermore, bebelieve that every South African whobelieves in human rights and democraticprinciples, however much they may havebeen distorted by our so-called democraticgovernment, should do everything in theirefforts to make Zimbabweans feel wel-come and at home and try to assist, wherepossible, in making their lives better.

Footnote:ZANU-PF and MossadOn 27 September 2007 The Zimbabweanreported that, according to highly positionedgovernment sources, the ZANU-PF governmenthas hired Israeli intelligence operatives to imple-ment systems that will enable the regime togather intelligence against key opposition fig-ures. It is said that the Zimbabwean regime ispaying huge sums of foreign currency for thework of Mossad agents, and the spying equip-ment that they have brought with them.Full story here:http://www.issafrica.org/static/templates/tmpl_html.php?node_id=2678&link_id=5

Vigilante Farmers Want Refugee Camps onthe Borderland



The SSN has learnt with great shock theshameless cowardly co-ordinated assassi-nation of comrade Ntokozo Ngozo by theruthless and dogmatic royal police ofSwaziland whose hands still drips withblood of the many martyred Swazis.These shamesless cowards shouldknow that, by killing comrade NtokozoNgozo, they have crossed the line ofacceptable engagement and declaredwar on the democratic movement as awhole.

The democratic forces as well as theentire peace loving Swazis will not idleby and fold their arms when their ownblood is spilt in shameful manner bythe royal police who criminalises thepeople’s struggle for a democraticSwaziland and outlaws revolutionariesand declares them outcast. They cannever kill the living revolutionary sprit ofcomrade Ntokozo Ngozo. ComradeNtokozo was not a criminal, the Royalregime knows that very well, he was aproduct of the prevailing conditions createdby the regime in Swaziland, they murderedhim with impunity and for that we will notrest until we get to the bottom of the truthand indeed they shall pay heavily. He willnot be another statistic.

Indeed the Royal regime has succeededto test our tolerance levels. We are angrywith those who killed him, we are angrywith the royal autocracy, we are angry withthe intolerance of King Mswati III. He mustreign on his police or face the anger of therevolting masses.

Comrade Ntokozo Ngozo was a commit-ted young revolutionary of the People’sUnited Democratic Movement and a mem-

ber of SWAYOCO who cut his politicalactivism in the Swaziland student move-ment, Swaziland Association of Students.

He was a dedicated freedom fighter, a trueservant of the people and a committed rev-olutionary.

The SSN is proud that comrade Ntokozodid not die a coward running away from theroyal system, he confronted the systemwith unflinching courage of a dedicatedpeople’s warrior, conscious of all conse-quences, he died in full combat fightingagainst the un-democratic autocraticregime of Nkanini and its oppressiveTinkundla system. He died fighting for thetotal liberation of his country for which hisblood will nourish its many seeds of free-dom and galvnise the youth to fight for free-dom until full liberation in Swaziland.

The SSN has no equivocation in callingfor all his comrades, his peers and thosewho love freedom to turn all against theroyal regime until it is down on its knees at

the mercy of democratic dispensation. Wesay to all comrades spare no efforts in yourattack on the cruel system, it should not be

allowed to take one more revolutionarysoul, the time is now or never to endonce and for all this evil nonsense ofroyal lunacy masquerading as traditionand culture but yearns for life of theinnocents.

To his family and friends and the liber-ation movement as a whole we pass onour heartfelt condolences and shareyour pain of losing such a committedcadre and are saddened by his untime-ly death for which its revenge is democ-racy in Swaziland. We call on all of youto take up his spear and carry on thefight in whatever way possible for alegitimate cause - the total liberation ofthe suffering Swazi people.

May his undying sprit live on until the dayof freedom dawns when we shall dig thetruth and punish those responsible for thiscowardly act of maiming human life.

Long live his memory!Freedom or Death - Victory is

Certain!

Issued by the Swaziland SolidarityNetwork - South Africa Chapter

Mapaila Solly - National Chairperson

For more information contact:

Lucky LukheleCell: 0027 72 502 4141Tel: 0027 11 339 3621Fax: 0027 11 339 4244

Swaziland: The Royal Assassinationof Our Dear Comrade

by Swaziland Solidarity Network - South Africa Chapter

The SSN has learnt with great shock the shameless cowardly co-ordinated assassination of comrade NtokozoNgozo by the ruthless and dogmatic royal police of Swaziland whose hands still drips with blood of the manymartyred Swazis. These shamesless cowards should know that, by killing comrade Ntokozo Ngozo, they have

crossed the line of acceptable engagement and declared war on the democratic movement as a whole.

Footnote by the ZACFWe are disgusted, yet not surprised to

learn that the killing of C’de NtokozoNgozo (27) by the Royal Swaziland Policewas indeed, as confirmed by an independ-ent post-mortem, an intentional murder.The post-mortem revealed that C’deNgozo was shot twice at close range by alow velocity firearm, like a 9mm handgun.Eye witnesses confirmed that the policecontinued to shoot him after he had fallen

to the ground and was crying for help. The independent pathologist from

Durban, Doctor Perumal, stated “As aresult of my observations, schedule ofwhich follows, I conclude that the cause ofdeath was, gun shot wound through thechest”.

Although Ngozo was found to be wearinga shirt, Dr. Perumal said that “thedeceased was not wearing a shirt at thetime he was shot as tattooing wasobserved”, indicating that it was put on his

body after his murder. Dr. Perumal saidthat no perforations on the extensivelyblood-stained shirt corresponded to thegun shot entry and exit wounds on thebody.

Our sympathies go out to the family,friends and comrades of the victim of thisheinous act of political repression, andhope that this dreadful incident will notlead people to despair but rather serve tofuel the fires of the Swazi struggle for free-dom.

What is being pursued, after all, is adevelopment model for aid to Africa, a pol-icy which forgets the EU states’ promisesconcerning aid to Africa voiced at countlesssummits, the barriers abolishing promisesfor African agricultural goods in Europeanmarkets, the promises to cancel debt, andthe achieving of the so-called “millenniumgoals”.

It is a strategy that seeks to ensure thatsome countries (mainly ex-colonial pow-ers) can continue to benefit, in what ispractically a monopoly, in some marketsectors. Even the weak Portuguese capi-talism has important economic interestsand groups that invest in strategic partner-ships, for instance in Angola, in the publicengineering sector, the oil sector and mostrecently, in the banking and finance sector.

Such a strategy allows NGO structures tobe the visible image of African countries’increased dependency on EU capitalism.After the dismantling of the health, educa-tion and public sectors in general by thecriminal policies of the IMF and World Bankas part of the infamous “structural adjust-ment plans” in the ‘90s, this is now takingplace with the full agreement of theEuropean powers.

It is also aimed at getting the institutionsof civil society to submit to the logic of theState, and the goals that their governments“generously” assigning them.

One must stress the importance in theEU-Africa Summit preparations of thetrade-union meeting held in Lisbon behindclosed doors on 26th and 27th October.The meeting was jointly hosted by theETUC (European Trade UnionConfederation) and the EU Presidency (thePortuguese government) together with theCIS (International Trade UnionsConfederation) and African Unions.

The ETUC unions (the Portuguese UGTand CGTP confederations are full mem-bers *) habitually make “recommendations”to such Summits. But, on the other handand given the political dependency of suchunions, these unions will be even moredependent on the governmental and inter-regional institutions’ goals.

In practice, the same can be said aboutthe “officially sponsored” NGO meeting inlate November, again in Lisbon.

These proposals and recommendations,

made by either the NGOs or the unions,will only be taken into consideration at theDecember Summit to the extent that thegovernments want. But, by contrast, theythemselves will be requested to or co-opted into carrying out the programmesthat the governments approve and findinteresting.

Neither at the informal forums or meet-ings or the official Summit will there be anyreal compromise in order to achieve things,either at an economic level or at a social orhumanitarian level.

Some will show “concern” about constantHuman Rights violations in some Africancountries or even in “Fortress Europe”,where immigrants are expelled, persecut-ed, humiliated and exploited by everymeans. It is well known that most migrantsto Europe are mostly from African coun-tries. Nevertheless, efficient means to putpressure on the States to fulfil their obliga-tions will not be deployed.

It will be just another stage for the institu-tional actors to perform on: they will makeout that they are doing something andthere will be no shortage of those whocome solely in order to promote their per-sonal image and policies.

These summits are ceremonies, with littleconcrete effect at the level of what is actu-ally talked about, as the relevant questionsare negotiated months ahead, before theprotocols are signed. They are importantonly on the level of “political marketing”, toperpetuate the illusion that something isbeing achieved to “eradicate hunger inAfric”. These oft-repeated lies do convincethe people, after all, in spite of the evidencethat nothing meaningful is done!

But beyond denouncing this “circus”, it istime to strengthen the ties of cooperationbetween social militants from both conti-nents.

Recently, in April-May, the I-07Conference was held in Paris, with the par-ticipation of alternative trade unions andcollectives from various continents, not tomention a conspicuous representation ofAfrican bodies. From 16-18 September,there was a meeting in Malaga of tradeunions and collectives from both shores ofthe Mediterranean, with representativesfrom Algeria and Morocco in Africa andSpain, France, Italy and Portugal from

Europe. In open and fraternal cooperation with all

those collectives and social strugglegroups that are willing, to continue whathas already been achieved, it would be ofgreat interest to have a conference ormeeting to coordinate our strategiesagainst the neo-liberal and neo-colonialistattacks in our countries and to promote therespect of the rights of immigrants and theirfamilies. A meeting that will havea certaincontinuity and which can achieve, be it forPortuguese organisations or those in theother countries participating, the followinggoals:

assessment and monitoring of the poli-cies of the EU and its member States,denouncing all obvious Human Rights vio-lations either on European soil, or in Africa;

periodical meetings with social militantsfrom our countries. This would require afrequent exhange of information and a per-manent coordination network between ourorganisations;

the creation of support structures forAfrican immigrants wherever there arenone, and strengthening those that existalready.

The organisations (trade unions, associa-tions, collectives, etc.) who are active in thesocial field, those supporting immigrantstruggles or other precarious situations,would do better to unite their efforts, whileremaining outside the influence of neo-lib-eral political hegemony. If they allow them-selves to be “bought”, they will soon beneutralised, bureaucratized and will lose allpurpose for their existence.

NOTE:* Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Britain andthe Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) inIreland.

originally published on www.anarkismo.net

Europe, Africa and the Neo-LiberalStrategy of Co-Optation

by Manuel BaptistaThe overall strategy, at governmental level, for the EU-Africa summit on the 7th and 8th December in Lisbon,

presents itself in a very clear form. It consists of co-opting the NGO’s, bethey international ones or from European and African countries, in order

to pursue a series of strategic partnerships.

ZABALAZA AFRICAPAGE 13


Much has been written on the crisis inDarfur, the three arid westernmostprovinces of Sudan, so I will not repeat ithere.

Suffice to say that the USA alleges geno-cide against the Fur, Masaalit andZaghawa tribes by Khartoum-backedJanjaweed militia – an interest spurred nodoubt by Washington’s desire for access toSudan’s oil reserves which are currentlybeing exploited exclusively by China and toa lesser extent, Malaysia and India.

On the other hand, Nafi Ali Nafi, thedeputy leader of the ruling NationalCongress Party admitted that Khartoumarmed and trained a “popular defenceforce” from among civilians to be used tosupport the Sudanese Defence Force in itsbattle against rebels in Darfur, while deny-ing any genocidal campaign.

Sudan remains, in World Bank terms, ahighly indebted poor country. But oil ischanging all that: by 2006, oil accountedfor over 25% of Sudan’s gross domesticproduct. However, little of the wealth fromthat 120,000 barrels of crude a year findsits way into an economy propped up byBangladeshi guest workers lured to Sudanon false promises (winding up sweepingfloors for about US$100/month), or intoneglected extremities like Darfur.

The International Monetary Fund hasbeen pushing the fatal policy of privatisa-tion in Sudan, which has on the one handadopted unpopular austerity measures athome, while joining the initiative for a FreeTrade Area for east and southern Africaabroad.

Also, by last year, it was estimated that upto 200,000 people had died in Darfur eitherdirectly or indirectly as a result of the warand 2,2-million people have been dis-placed. There is no known oil in Darfur, butthe China National Petroleum Corporationis keen on laying a pipeline through it toconnect Port Sudan on the Red Sea viaSudan’s oil-rich Abeyi region to newreserves in Equatorial Guinea. But there isalso a giant aquifer, which runs from theLibyan border under Darfur to the Nile, andgroundwater will soon, I predict, run a closesecond to oil as a valued commodity, assustainable use of the Nile reaches capac-ity.

After spending time in el-Fasher andNyala, the capitals of North and SouthDarfur respectively, last month, I offerthese brief thoughts on the situation inDarfur that I hope will shed a different lighton the war:1. The conflict in Darfur is not between“Arabs” and “Africans”. In Darfur it ispatently obvious that such distinctions,

while embraced by a minority of the peo-ple, do not hold up in fact because those sodefined all speak Arabic, dress identicallyand have the same culture. Within thesame family, facial features express themixed heritage of Darfurians. The differ-

ences that do exist are rather tribal thanethnic, which begs the question of why theDarfur question has been racialised in theWestern media? The conflict in southSudan could easily be used emotively forgeo-political ends by the West by suggest-ing it was a battle between an oppressed

southern Christian culture and a dominantnorthern Islamic culture. The same argu-ment cannot be applied in Darfur which hasa largely homogenous population – and yeta subtle, dishonest version of it (of Arabs

versus Africans) continues to be peddled inthe West. This can only be about thedemonisation of Arab and Islamic cultureby America’s Christian fundamentalist lordsof the New Crusades.2. Sudan is not an Islamic fundamentaliststate. Despite the introduction starting in1983 under a previous regime of certainaspects of shari‘a law and of a policy ofIslamisation that technically only applied tonortherners, Sudan’s Islamic tradition isoverwhelmingly Sufi with its emphasis onpersonal, ecstatic communion with Allah.The austere Salafist Islam that has pro-duced groups like al-Qaeda remains aminority tradition within Sudan and of verylittle social and political effect (even thoughOsama bin Laden lived in Khartoum in theearly 1990s). In politics, the long-livedUmma Party may recall the anti-colonialmania of the Mahdist Revolt of 1881-1885,but in reality, it remains merely the hobby-horse of the Mahdi’s grandson, Sadiq al-Mahdi. Meanwile, the Muslim Brotherhoodwas not consulted (as it should have beenaccording to the shura principle of shari‘a)on the Islamisation policy of the govern-ment, and some aspects of the legal codewere in direct conflict with shari‘a so thelegal code remains unacceptable to manySudanese – Muslims included.3. The cause of the conflict is not only polit-ical. It is clear that many rebels took uparms because they saw that route as theonly way (based on the apparent successof the southern struggle) to convinceKhartoum to devolve power and resourcesto the Darfurian backwaters. But of greatergeneral concern is the implacable east-ward march of the sands of the Sahara, ata rate approaching 10km a year. Forexample, as recently as 1992, the edge ofthe desert stood a good 120km west ofNyala. Today, the desert is only 5km fromthe city limits. So desertification and envi-ronmental degradation – exacerbated bythe decimation of Darfur’s trees by wood-sellers – has compressed the tribes intoever-smaller areas where they bicker andbattle over shrinking water resources andgrazing land. Modernisation since theNimeri era (see below) also eroded tradi-tional methods of dispute resolution, andas in Somalia, the addition of automaticweapons has spiralled tribal bloodlettingbeyond its normal bounds.4. The deployment of United Nationspeacekeepers will not help. It is clear thatthe very establishment of camps for “inter-nal displaces” all over Darfur works infavour of Khartoum. The camps, like theone at Abu Shouk north of el-Fasher where50,000 displacees live, are run by the

Blood, Water & Oil: Fallacies of the Darfur War

by Michael Schmidt

A Sudanese AKM assault rifle lies at aguard-post outside a National Intelligence

& Security station in el-Fasher, Darfur.Picture by Michael Schmidt

An office of the China National PetroleumCorporation on the banks of the Blue Nile

in Khartoum.Picture by Michael Schmidt


regional governments, aided by a plethoraof United Nations and other aid agencies,and policed to a degree by the AfricanUnion. But though life in the camps is rel-atively good, with everything from cell-phones to cosmetics on sale andhealth rates that appear better than thetowns (at least in my comparison ofAbu Shouk and el-Fasher), theyremain concentration camps in theoriginal sense of the term. That is, theyforcibly concentrate formerly nomadictribal peoples in an artificial “town” foryears, urbanising them and exposingthem to the seductions of the market –and of course, removing on-the-groundsupport from the rebels. The deploy-ment of UN blue-helmets will most like-ly merely reinforce this pattern, whichheavily favours Khartoum at theexpense of Darfur.

That said, Darfur is clearly occupied terri-tory, with Sudanese Army “technicals”(Toyota trucks with heavy machine-gunsmounted on the back) much in evidence,with Chinese helicopter gunships at el-Fasher and MiGs on the runway atNyala – and with a strong plain-clothesNational Intelligence and Security serv-ice presence.

We anarchist-communists naturallyneed to condemn Khartoum’s brutaluse of proxy forces – and its cynicaluse of displacee camps – to control thecivilian political process in Darfur.

But we also need to reject both theracialisation of the debate by theWestern media and the false solutionthat an armed UN presence wouldbring. We should also appreciate theenvironmental and tribal roots of thiscomplex war and see that, as the Darfurianrebels appreciate all too well, the onlyguarantor of a modicum of democracy inDarfur is the devolution of power to thepeople armed (though this is not to be readas an endorsement of any rebel platform).

The obvious question then becomes,what is the alternative? For that I willturn to a brief overview of theSudanese left. The SudaneseCommunist Party (HSS) was foundedin 1946 during the global postwarupsurge of anti-colonial sentiment, andgot its first brief taste of power in 1964when a transitional governmentembraced all factions including theMuslim Brotherhood. But after elec-tions in 1965 were followed by seriousfighting by southern secessionists, thegovernment swung rightwards and theHSS was outlawed.

The party was reinstated in 1969 thanksto the coup by Colonel Gafaar MohammedNimeri, who struck a military-HSS allianceand laid the groundwork for a one-partySoviet-aligned state. But in 1970, Nimeri,Libya’s Muammar Gadaffi and Egypt’s

Anwar Sadat announced they were to unitethe three countries in a federation. Thiswas unacceptable to the HSS and it stageda coup under Major Hashim al-Ata whichousted Nimeri – but he was restored to

power within three days and the HSS wasdriven underground again.

Nimeri’s political orientation meanwhileswung towards the USA in the wake of the1981 assassination of Sadat, who had dis-pleased him by reaching a separate peace

with Israel. In 1985, a general strikebrought Khartoum to a standstill and pre-cipitated the fall of Nimeri who was on avisit to the USA, in a bloodless coup. DrGizuli Dafallah, a trade unionist prominentin the strike action, was appointed prime

minister by the transitional military council,an indication of the growing power of theSudanese trade union movement.

But the government proved unstable inthe context of the emergence of a newsecessionist force in the south, the Sudan

People’s Liberation Movement / Army(SPLM/A) and with deepening divisionsover Nimeri-era Islamicisation of the legalcode and in 1989, Brigadier Omar el-Bashirstaged a coup in the name of the

Revolutionary Command Council forNational Salvation.

The left nationalist SPLM/A enjoyedthe support of the Stalinist regime ofMengistu Haile Mariam in neighbouringEthiopia, but he himself was over-thrown in 1991, echoing the generalcollapse of the East Bloc and the liber-ation movements it backed.

In 2001, the Bikisha Media Collectivein South Africa – which went on to formthe core of today’s Zabalaza AnarchistCommunist Front – had contact with amajor who was a rebel commanderwithin the National Democratic Alliance

(TWD). Formed in 1989, the TWD wasbased in exile in Eritrea, embraced 11northern and southern opposition groupsincluding the HSS, SPLM/A and varioustrade unions, and aimed at replacing the el-Bashir regime with a parliamentary democ-

racy.The TWD major asked: “With great

respect as comrades at arms, I wouldlike more information regarding the rev-olution for it is the right of everyone tofight for freedom which we have beendenied as peace-loving Africans sincewe have remained prisoners mental-ly…”

He went on to request information onthe “best formation” and “defined tech-niques” necessary for victory and wedirected him to the OrganisationalPlatform of the General Union ofAnarchists. Although contact was later

lost, this demonstrates there was a hungerfor the sort of practical politics that anar-chist-communism can deliver.

This is not to overstate the potential for ananarchist-communist project in Sudantoday. For one thing, the drawing of the

SPLM into government through thecomprehensive peace agreementstruck in 2005 has undercut the poten-tial of its more radical tendencies (anddissidents within the movement tend tobe ethnically-based).

Legalisation has seen the old Stalinistedifice of the HSS fracture, however,with several “ultra-left” tendenciesbreaking away, primarily among stu-dents at the University of Khartoum.Although these mostly have a Maoistflavour, influenced as they are by con-ditions of rural warfare, the potentialremains for anarchist-communism to

make inroads here with fresh ideas. Andthe trade union movement, though heavilyurban, remains strong, which is a goodsign for any who wish to see an empow-ered Sudanese working class.

Another Wadi Hour picture

Another grim image from Wadi hour

Victims of alleged Janjaweed massacre at WadiHour, Darfur, passed on to me by a very nervous

informant

We all have at least once in our life heardof the “First African World War” or the“Heart of Darkness”, a Western clichéwhich was used to justify colonialism andpost-colonial intervention. We all seem toknow that the conflict in the Congo is, onthe one hand, about so-called “tribalism”and the exploitation of mineral resourcesby Western companies on the other hand.But a closer look shows that the situation ismuch more complex and even if one is notan anarchist one has to agree that theroots of all problems in the Congo are actu-ally capitalism and the nation-state systemof arbitrary borders.

OUTSIDE INFLUENCEThe Democratic Republic of Congo

(DRC) is not only the third biggest countryin Africa, it is also one of the most strategi-cally located and richest in mineralresources. It has been subjected to out-side influence since the beginning of theArab slave trade and then Western colo-nialism. Belgium ruled the country for itsown wealth and, through decades of plun-dering the Congo, became one of the rich-est states in the world. The Congo, on theother hand, is one of the poorest countriesin the world. Outside influence in the formof colonial administration with the help ofthe Church destroyed old structures andold political affiliations and sometimes cre-ated new groups in the form of “tribes”.Colonial borders divided people betweendifferent colonial states; nationalities werethrown together that didn’t have anything incommon. The economy was regionally

uneven, leading to regional conflicts. Themaintenance of colonial borders in thepost-colonial era, accepted by all AfricanStates through the OAU, is still a major fac-tor in conflicts, be they national or ethnic.

CULTURAL DIVERSITYThe Congo is geographically diverse and

so is its population. There are about 250ethnopolitical groups with their own distinctculture and most even have their own lan-guage. The Congo is a vast country whoseregions differ greatly from each other andthe tropical rainforest at the centre hasalways made traffic from one side to theother difficult. Because of these factorsone can see that there is no real unityamong the citizens of theCongo. I do not speak of“tribes” since there are no“tribes” in the Congo or any-where in the world. All groupshave been created for politicalpurposes even if there is some“ethnic” root to them.Sometimes they have evenbeen created by the colonialadministration and the Churchwho tried to group people to rulethem more easily and also todivide them among each otherso that there would not be aunited anti-colonial movement.Later also Mobutu used thisform of divide and rule tactic. Inthe Congo this has been doneby preferring one group over theother - just as in Rwanda the

Tutsi over the Hutu - the Luba over theLulua, the Hema over the Lendu and manymore examples. Sometimes the Belgianseven created chiefs in societies withoutchiefs. This is why I prefer to use the termethnopolitical groups instead of “tribe” or“ethnic group”. Most of the time these socalled “tribes” are seen as natural descentgroups caught up in their web of traditionsand age-old rivalries. The most seriousproblem with the term “tribe” is the distinc-tion between Africa and Europe whenimplying that “tribes” only existed in Europeuntil the Middle Ages whilst they still exist inAfrica today. What is more, while ethnicconflicts in Europe are called national theyare referred to as “tribalism” in Africa.

The Congo’s DilemmaWhy the Congo is yet another example why we have to

rethink our political system

by Stefanie Knoll

A Small Summary of theCongo’s History

The Congo became the private property of King Leopold II of

Belgium at the Berlin Conference held in 1884/5. Leopold used

this to exploit the Congo’s natural resources, most of all to col-

lect rubber, in which the Congolese were forced in a gruesome

way. It has been estimated that within the first decades of out-

side rule 10 Million people in the Congo have died, many others

have been mutilated. In 1908 the Congo became a Belgian

colony due to outside pressure. This didn’t change much in the

situation of the Congolese people. Political parties were still not

allowed and only “tribal” unions could emerge. This led to an

ethnically and regionally fragmented country and at the eve of

independence in 1960 to many crises. Patrice Lumumba

became the Congo’s first Prime Minister but was soon to be elim-

inated by Joseph Mobutu with the help of the US government

who wanted to have the Congo as a strategic partner in the Cold

War. Mobutu installed his dictatorship finally in 1965 and banned

all opposition parties. After 30 years of dictatorship and hard-

ships Zaire (the name the Congo was given by Mobutu) the

regime could only be overthrown because of problems in eastern

Congo due to the genocide in Rwanda and the millions of

refugees that fled across the borders. A rebellion in the east led

to the overthrow of Mobutu in 1997 but the Congolese soon

realised that the new president Laurent Kabila turned into a new

Mobutu and a second rebellion emerged to overthrow Kabila.

This rebellion is generally referred to as the big African war

because of numerous actors, African states as well as interna-

tional states and mercenaries. In 2001 Laurent Kabila was killed

and his son Joseph Kabila was made new president. Soon

peace talks were started but they were always interrupted by

new fighting. The peace has always been very instable and

fights are still going on. Last years elections have been adver-

tised as a triumph in Congolese history but have not amounted

to many changes.


Kinshasa

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE

CONGO

Nevertheless, ethnic differences continueto play a major factor in Africa. This is dueto the fact that they are either based onnatural descent groups that always used tohave such loyalties, or that - even thoughthey have been created by outside factors- people came to believe in such differ-ences themselves and now act accordingto that.

This does not mean that such groups arejust classes and ethnic conflicts are justhidden class conflicts. Only in some cases,as for example in the case of the Hutu andTutsi in Rwanda, this is true. But one can-not deny that there are different classeswithin ethnopolitical groups as well. Inmost of Africa opposing social classes as inEurope have never even developed. Mostof the time conflicts occur along regionallines. Therefore, in Africa we have toaccept a plurality of cultures and the strug-gle has to point out cultural diversi-ty and not just classes. Also, thestruggle for more rights of women iscrucial and part of the anarchiststruggle and should therefore nottake a minor position.

CAUSES OF THE WARThere are many causes of the war

in the Congo. The most recentones have been the collapse of theMobutu regime due to the collapseof the Cold War in which the Congohad been a strategic partner for theUnited States but became unimpor-tant afterwards. Outside interfer-ence by neighbouring countries,Rwanda and Uganda, was a majorfactor in the actual outbreak of thewar. Another recent source for thecontinuation (not the roots of theconflict itself) has been the plunder-ing of the Congo’s resources by foreignstates and Western corporations.

The major factors for the Congolese war,however, are capitalism and the state-sys-tem. Both have plundered and made aperiphery out of the Congo to keep pricesfor resources low in the West. The Statehas always only been used to gain privatewealth. Due to colonialism and the horribleconditions in which Congolese people hadto collect rubber for the Belgian state, 10million people died and others were muti-lated. The population of the Congo wasreduced to half within just a few decades.

As Mobutu’s regime collapsed, civil warbegan and nearly 4 million people died, notto speak of the thousands that still dieevery week as a result of the war, becausethey do not have enough food and medicaltreatment. The people who suffer mostfrom the war and its consequences are ofcourse women and children. There are stillchild soldiers in the Congo and neighbour-ing countries and women still get rapedand mutilated by various local militias. Theregime of Laurent Kabila was seen bymany as a promising new hope for the

future, but soon followed in the footsteps ofMobutu, and another war broke out to getrid of Kabila.

Overall this war has been about powerand profit. It originated in the EasternCongo where there are conflicts aboutland. Certain groups (most of all Tutsi whohave been living in the Congo for decades)don’t have access to land and thereforestarted a rebellion to fight against Mobutu.As the situation didn’t change with Kabilathey started a second rebellion. Bothrebellions have been backed by Rwandaand Uganda. The regimes in Kinshasahave been backed by various other Africanand international countries.

THE NATIONAL QUESTIONNationalism has also been a major factor

for the Congo’s problems. There havebeen various attempts to make a nation out

of the Congo, a country which is toodiverse for that. Patrice Lumumba isalways seen as a pan-African hero whotried to unite the Congo but in fact he alsohas to be blamed for various massacresand conflicts. Mobutu tried to do the sameand this led to some stability, but later healso began to use ethnic diversities todivide the opposition.

The idea of a Congolese nation is an illu-sion and whatever the roots of the ethnictensions, there are continual pressures forsecession. Many people are unhappy withthe borders in the Congo and this has fedinto the current war, as many want thecountry to be split into different states. Thismight lead to peace in the short-term, butmore certainly to other conflicts. The onlyway to solve the Congo’s problems istherefore to rethink the whole system of thenation-state and to completely change it.

SELF-DETERMINATIONSelf-determination and autonomy are the

only solutions to the Congo’s problems. Itjust does not make sense to retain such alarge country as a single unit, especially

when people do not believe they belongtogether. By self-determination and auton-omy I mean real self-government and notmerely the creation of new states. Statesare one of the problems we have to get ridof. To keep the Congo a state as it is at themoment will lead to more violence becauseit is an artificial construct that has notevolved from the inside but was forcedupon the region from the outside. Only anew global system will bring about the nec-essary change.

ANARCHISM - A WAY OUTEspecially in Africa it has become clear

that the state, and capitalism that is upheldby the state, are the biggest evils. Mostpeople live and work without ever gettinganything positive from the state. They onlysee its negative aspects: paying taxeswhen there is no money for it; suffering

from wars that are led by politiciansto gain more power and wealth. Wehave seen in many cases thatWestern democracy is not the solu-tion for Africa. Also, what some call“African democracy” is just a niceword to hide a one-party state, suchas Uganda, which is nothing elsethan another form of authoritarianrule. Most people already live out-side of and in opposition to thestate. Anarchism therefore wouldnot be new to Africa and there werealready many traditional societiesthat used to live in a way close to ananarchist system; some of them stillexist. What we have to do now is toorganise people across Africa andthe world, to fight for a better globalsystem.

Africa has always been dominatedby outside influence. Only a new

global system can change this dilemmaand only anarchism allows for a truly inter-national system that once and for all doesaway with the unjust exploitation of manyby only a few. Only anarchism allows forreal self-determination. No state is suit-able, whether it has cultural boundaries (assome ethnopolitical groups demand) ornot, because if cultural and national bound-aries are the same then the state is in dan-ger of becoming nationally oppressive byexcluding people with different culturalbackgrounds. Similarly, a multiculturalstate always runs the risk of having onegroup try to assimilate others.

Summing up, states - even democracies -only exist because they help some peopleto be more powerful and to accumulatewealth by means of power. This becomesespecially clear when looking at the Congo.We do not need states; there are manyexamples that people can organise them-selves, even on a global basis. Anotherworld is possible; we have to start believingin it and fighting for it.


ZABALAZA AFRICA/INTERNATIONALPAGE 18

This is a 1975 analysis from the Caribbean anarchist journalCaribbean Correspondence, which was based in Jamaica,Antigua and the USA. It was kindly supplied to us by Mitch Millerof the Workers’ Solidarity Alliance of the USA, an anarcho-syndi-calist group which has a long history of support for the strugglesof oppressed black people, whether in the USA itself, theCaribbean or Africa.

The document is important both because of its excellent analy-sis, and because it is an important testimony to the anarchist andsyndicalist tradition in the Caribbean.

The most notable anarchist movement in that region was, with-out a doubt, that of Cuba. The Cuban anarchists pioneered thelabour movement, organised across racial lines in both the work-place and in working class communities, and opposed racial seg-regation. In addition, the Cuban anarchists played an importantrole on the independence struggle against Spain in the 1890s,and against the subsequent influence of American imperialism.The strength of the Cuban movement was demonstrated by thefact that when the Cuban Communist Party was founded in 1925with under 100 members, the anarcho-syndicalist CubanWorkers’ National Confederation (CNOC) had 200,000 members;that is not even mentioning the Cuban IWW section, and theFederation of Anarchist Groups of Cuba (FGAC).

What is rather less well known is the more slender history ofanarchism and syndicalism in the English-speaking Caribbean.This was a minority movement, not a mass one. Whereas themovement in Spanish-speaking Cuba and Puerto Rico datedback to the late 1800s, the movement in Antigua and Jamaicaappears to have only emerged with the New Left in the 1960s and1970s. This was in the immediate aftermath of both decolonisa-tion, and of the so-called “Cuban Revolution” under Fidel Castro.Castro’s regime is often misunderstood to be socialist: it is, infact, state-capitalist and was based from the start on the nakedrepression of the working class movement, not least its anarchistwing. Yet Castro’s example had a major influence on many who

were frustrated by the post-independence situation: MichaelManley of Jamaica, and later Maurice Bishop of Grenada wereprime examples of figures who were inspired by the Cuban modeland who used the language of “self-management” and “commu-nism” to promote a state-capitalist project.

The ZACF reprints this historical article because it covers muchground that remains very topical today: illusions in Cuba, and innationalism, and in cross-class racial movements remain preva-lent. What is needed is an autonomously organised self-man-aged movement by the oppressed classes, not another set ofleaders. On reflection, Montgomery Stone, the author, suggeststhat there is a real alternative: revolutionary self-management,embodied by anarchism. His cutting article exposes the bank-ruptcy of Statist solutions, and of nationalism, and shows that realself-management is a fundamentally revolutionary project thatcannot be reconciled with the two great structures of class rule:capitalism and the State.

This is something that the great Caribbean revolutionary, CLRJames (1901-1989), never fully grasped. While James wasincreasingly critical of the Soviet Union, concluding it was simplya new State-capitalist regime, he nonetheless continued to adoreLenin and the Bolsheviks, and believe self-management wascompatible with a Marxist regime. Likewise, he turned a blind eyeto the crimes of post-independence regimes across Africa, lav-ishing uncritical praise on the radical nationalism of figures likeKwame Nkrumah, who crushed labour and democracy in the pur-suit of an independent national capitalism and powerful AfricanState.

Note: a few very slight changes have been made to the originaltext to ensure clarity and eliminate grammatical crudities(although the original American spelling has been retained); addi-tional footnotes have been added for explanatory purposes; andsub-headings have been added to break up the text into themat-ic sections.

A new “Guantanamo-style” military camp has started operations in AddisAbaba, Ethiopia from where a South African man, Abdul Hamid Moosa, wasrecently released after six months incommunicado detention, where he suf-fered assaults and lengthy interrogations at the hands of mostly American sol-diers.“Abdul was a victim of enforced disappearance” said his lawyer Zehir Omar, “acrime against humanity”. Moosa was abducted from Somalia, but how he gotthere from Damascus is uncertain.News of Moosa’s detention came via Reprieve, a London-based charity organ-isation that helps victims of the “war on terror”, when a Swedish national knownas Muneer contacted them after he was released from detention at the camp

and returned to Europe, informing them of Moosa’s fate.On the camp he said, “I have no doubt that the camp in Addis Ababa is one of the secret hideouts of the United States. Our interroga-tors at the camp were mostly Americans”.Muneer was abducted in December last year when soldiers surrounded a village mosque in Kenya where he was praying, taking 13people including his wife prisoner. They were then interrogated, taken to anddetained in Nairobi for about 10 days before being put on a plane to Somalia. Therethey were detained for about another 10 days before finally being flown to a militarycamp in Addis Ababa. Abdul Moosa was already there detained, in an isolated sec-tion of the camp. He later joined the new arrivals, all kept in isolated cells. They wereshackled, guarded and had their hands tied behind their backs for 24 hours a day,unchained only to eat and use the toilet.When Muneer arrived, he said, there were about 60 detainees at the camp but, whenhe left, there were only 20, mostly Africans. The pattern of releases indicates thatthose from more powerful Western states are more likely to be released than thosefrom African and Arab states, suggesting that it is a political, rather than legal processthrough which prisoners are given their rights.

A NewGuantanamo

in Africa?

Zabalaza Introduction to Misrepresentation of Self-Management in the Caribbean

Australia’s Christmas Island “Guantanamo”

Self-management is what the revolutionis all about. The struggle being waged bythe masses of people to gain direct controlover all areas of social life, the absence ofwhich is responsible for their poverty,oppression and alienation. Relating direct-ly to the place of work, self-managementdoes not mean that management consultsthe workers on what it, management,intends to do. What it means is that theworkers themselves should collectivelymanage their work in all is aspects and putan end to any management other than theythemselves. However the concept of self-management, to be meaningful, couldnever relate to only the place of work orany other separate part of social existence.Because of the interdependence of allareas of our social life, and becausehumanity demands liberty in all areas ofsocial life, then [for] self-management to bemeaningful and real [it] must embrace lifein its totality.

Within the Caribbean today, the conceptof self-management is being terribly distort-ed and prostituted, both by the rulingbureaucracies and the host of Marxist-Leninist bureaucracies which are seekingto replace them. One could sit back with asort of naïve satisfaction and say that it is atestament to the high level of revolutionaryconsciousness of the Caribbean massesthat the tyrants should be forced to includepromises of self-management, as dishon-est as they are, within their arsenal of falsepromises.

The fact is, that while on the one hand itis the day-to-day struggles of the poor andoppressed in the Caribbean that forcesthem to talk about self-management, theirtalk of self-management is nevertheless adirect reaction to that struggle and is meantto spread confusion and ultimately defeatthe oppressed masses in their struggle fortrue liberation.

It therefore becomes of critical impor-tance that every effort be made to unmaskthese wolves in sheep’s clothing, and tomaintain a clear vision of the struggle forself-management, for a society in which themasses of people exercise direct controlover the means of production, the produc-tion process, the products of their labor,and in every area of their social life.

Caribbean society is boiling and seems tobe bursting at the seams. In territory afterterritory, we see employed workers waginga struggle on two fronts, as they openly

challenge so-called management preroga-tives at the same time that they are waginga relentless struggle against their unions.

With the endless number of strikes thatseem to have become a permanent featureof Caribbean life, wild-cats [rank-and-fileillegal strikes] are more the rule than theexception. Increasingly, workers are realiz-ing that so-called industrial agreements,the deals worked out between union andmanagement, not only place a limit on theirdecision-making, but also place restrictionson their methods of struggle. Thus, todayin the Caribbean, it would not be incorrectto say that union bureaucrats are usuallythe last people to hear about a strike.

THE ELITES, THEMARXISTS AND THE UNION BUREAUCRATS:AN UNHOLY TRINITY

The editorial of the Trinidad SundayExpress of December 15, 1974, shouldgive us a feel for the present state ofaffairs. It said, “The utter disregard of theIndustrial Relations Act (IRA) has resultedin strikes becoming an almost daily hap-pening with workers prepared to withdrawtheir labor under the slightest pretext”.

It went on, “It is up to the unions to exer-cise control over their members if they areto justify their positions as bargaining rep-resentatives. It is not sufficient for theunions to take the line that the workers hadbeen advised by them and that there isnothing more they can do. If a union isunable to exercise such control, then itsleadership ought to be changed…”

“The act of striking, which is illegalanyway, for what is certainly a mat-ter falling outside the industrialagreement, can only be regardedas irresponsible action, and it ishoped that those responsible foradvising the workers will indicate tothem the folly of their actions.”

It then turned to the workers saying, “It istime that the workers of the country realizethat action like this, grasping at all sorts ofextras, is reaching to the point of absurdity,and a government might well be forced totake such action that might cost them theirprecious freedom.”

And should any of us harbor any doubtsabout how seriously the union bureaucrats

take their jobs of controlling the workers, letus look at what Basdeo Panday, PresidentGeneral of the All-Trinidad Sugar Estatesand Factories Workers Union, told hisworkers after they had taken just such anaction.

In its issue of 12/14/1974 the TrinidadGuardian reported, “The union leaderexplained to the workers that their actionswere an embarrassment to the union and ahindrance in the current negotiations for anew three-year industrial agreement”.

This is the scene throughout theCaribbean and it is complemented by fre-quent seizure of lands by peasants in theiron-going struggle against land-owners andthe state.

However, we have only been looking atthose people lucky enough to beemployed. The Caribbean youth, whomake up the greater proportion of the highpercentage of unemployment in the region,have not been sitting idly by. FromJamaica to Antigua to Dominica to Trinidadto Guyana and in between those, it is thesame thing. The ruling classes and thestate machinery have virtually declared waron young people.

And in their day-to-day struggle againstthe state, young people, once attracted bythe revolutionary rhetoric of the variousbureaucratically centralized groups in thearea, are more and more rejecting suchgroups because of bitter experiences andare by themselves trying to throw up moredemocratic organizational forms. They aremoving away from the vanguard organiza-tions, which stifle their initiative and seek toset up a “leadership” over them.

It is against this background that we havethe middle-class state bureaucrats on theone hand and the various Marxist-Leninistparties and movements on the other, alltalking about workers’ control and self-management. And as if not to be outdone,the union bureaucrats too have begun tocall for workers’ control and self-manage-ment. All three of these forces are as dif-ferent from each other as the Father, theSon and the Holy Ghost.

What keeps them apart is their powerstruggle, which results from their commondesire to be in control of the state machin-ery. What makes them one is their equallycommon desire to continue the oppressionand exploitation of the masses of the peo-ple, under the hierarchical organization ofwork for their commodity economy, with

ZABALAZA INTERNATIONALPAGE 19

Misrepresentation of Self-Management inthe Caribbean

by Montgomery Stone, Caribbean Correspondence,June 1975, New York City (USA), Kingston (Jamaica)

and St Johns (Antigua)

themselves as professional specialists incharge of the factories and state institu-tions.

THE ERROR OFNATIONALIZATION

Around the world, capitalism is in themidst of a crisis. From Sweden to Americato Cuba to England to Yugoslavia, they areall talking about “worker participation”.Worker alienation seems to be gettingmore acute, and whether it is the worker inMoscow who stays home and drinks vodkaor the worker in Detroit who goes to workand sabotages machinery, workers aroundthe world are fighting back. As a result ofthis, production is not increasing the waythe capitalists would like it to and in somecases even dropping. Their intellectualagents have told them that the workers’sense of alienation could be reduced byallowing them to “participate!” in manage-ment and ownership.

We in the Caribbean are very much a partof the world capitalist system. Thus let ussit back and listen to what the Hon.Michael Manley [Jamaica’s pro-Castroistprime minister 1972-1980, and 1989-1992]has to say on the subject:

“May I now turn to a vital area: work-er participation. One might betempted to feel that one has dis-charged the obligation to changeand restructure the society when anindustry is nationalized. This is atrap into which many an unsuspect-ing socialist has fallen.

“Here, however, we are in dangerof confusing institutional shadow forthe substance of change in theexperience of human beings. Thenationalization of the industry doesnot in itself bring any change in theexperience of the worker. The moti-vation for workers’ exploitation maybe reduced when we substitute thestate for the private shareholder.But the worker may find out that heis, as before a blind cipher in amachine that is controlled and man-aged by powers that are remote andinsensitive.

“Hence we are planning to usethe method of nationalization,where it is appropriate, as morethan a bridge to public accountabili-ty. We see it as an opportunity todevelop full worker participation inall significant aspects of social andeconomic activity.” 1

I am afraid that the second [half] ofManley’s statement proves that he is total-ly unaware of the piercing profundity of thefirst. He has unwittingly put forward thefundamental criticism of the nationalizationtheory (the current fad) and the Marxist-

Leninist theory of state socialism. Boththeories in fact amount to the same thing.

Not for a moment must we imagine thatManley, [Forbes] Burnham [leader ofGuyana 1964-1985] or any of the othershave any intention of restructuring society.2

The big power breed of the metropolitancapitalists, from their position of dominantcontrol of the network of international capi-talism, along with the general chaos intrade and capital investment, add up tomake the particular foreign investors insen-sitive in negotiations with the local statebureaucrats over what percentage of thebooty they must get from exploiting thehuman and material resources in theCaribbean.

At the same time the current assault fromthe prisons, from the factories, in thestreets and through occupations of land,has taxed all the means and weapons ofsocial control, particularly the army, thepolice and academic education. This is thecrux of their government problems ofpower-relations. The motivation behindtheir rush to nationalize is the need to earnmore income for the state. This becomesnecessary because of the increasing costof operating an ever-growing bureaucracyon the one hand and, on the other, theirposition as state bureaucrats is the basis ofthe wealth of a large section of theCaribbean middle-class.

WHAT OF FIDEL CASTRO’SNATIONALIST-CAPITALISTFRIENDS?

[Yet] Manley is perfectly correct when hesays that nationalization is confusing insti-tutional shadow for the substance ofchange in the experience of human beings.Caribbean workers have moved quickly toburst the illusion that the nationalization of

an industry changes their position in rela-tion to it. Note the strike of Guyana baux-ite workers right after “their” company wasnationalized.

However, what we are up against now areall the talk and fraudulent schemes beingput forward as “workers’ control”. Workersin Guyana have recently been appointed tothe management boards of four public con-cerns. They have now become bureau-crats who were once workers, or to bemore precise, worker bureaucrats. Itseems as if an old chapter in Caribbeanhistory is being replayed.

Let us look at the tyrants and semi-tyrantsof today. George Walker, Eric Gairy,Robert Bradshaw, etc, etc, etc. 3 Were theynot the workers of yesterday? How many ofus still believe that you could end a systemof oppression by integrating one or anynumber of the oppressed into the oppres-sive bureaucracy?

No! Even if the entire board of manage-ment was made up of workers, nothingwould have changed. Now as then, thesame system of management wouldremain intact.

The examples can go on and on. Theschemes range from co-operative farms toselling hotel workers shares in somehotels. Worker participation is now officialpolicy. Management consultants and uni-versity academics are making it clear to thestate and private business that some strat-egy of worker involvement has becomenecessary to save the system of capitalistexploitation.

We can not take Manley seriously whenhe talks about bringing people into thefullest participation, because that wouldmean real self-management which wouldget rid of Manley and all like him, and whichhe is not prepared to deal with. For them,workers’ control is just another reform ofthe capitalist system made necessary bydevelopments within the mass struggle.

What must be of concern to us is thedegree to which the poor and oppressedallow themselves to be taken in by suchthings as “workers’ banks” and buyingshares in the company. These schemesserve the double purpose of raising capitalfor the state and other capitalists at thesame time that they harbor in the workersthe illusion of involvement. Historically,one of the worst handicaps of the poor andoppressed has been their own illusions.

The free-market capitalists and the ThirdWorld champions of nationalization are notthe only ones who find it necessary to inte-grate fraudulent schemes of “workers’ con-trol” into their program.

AND WHAT OF THE MARXIST-LENINISTS?

The Marxist-Leninists, known to be thedefenders of hierarchy and authoritarian-ism, have begun to unfurl theories of self-


Michael ManleyMichael Manley

management. We should now be able tounderstand why the confusion is total.

The theory of socialism expounded byMarx and Engels, which calls for the con-centration of the means of production in thehands of the state, is in contradiction to thetheory and practice of self-management.Marx himself brilliantly pointed out thatunless production relations were changed,a change in property relations by itself (ie:a move to state ownership of the means ofproduction) would only mean a society ofone big capitalist, but the same capitalistproduction relations would continue.

It was Marx’s naïve belief in the eventualwithering away of the state, plus his beliefin the very need for the state, which led tohis hierarchical and authoritarian view of“socialist society”. The fact is that if wewere to have an immediate change in pro-duction relations (ie: a move to direct con-trol by workers over the production processand products of their labor), this wouldbring the power of the workers into conflictwith the power of “their” state.

The fact is that genuine self-managementand state power can never exist side byside. It could only mean a situation wherethe state bureaucracy “allows the workersto make certain decisions,” but maintainsthe final power within its hands.

But history has shown that the so-called peoples’ states were neverwilling to do even that, because itputs wrong ideas into workers’heads and the workers may move tomake their state-controlled “self-management” real. This is the con-troversy which is raging inYugoslavia today, where self-man-agement in commodity productionoperates under the centralist controlof the communist party and thestate.

How is it then that Marxist-Leninistgroups like the New BeginningMovement, the Afro-CaribbeanLiberation Movement, the NewJewel Movement, the Movement for a NewDominica, the Workers’ Liberation League,the Revolutionary Marxist Collective, etc,etc; how is it that they present themselvesas people who are advocating self-man-agement?

THE VANGUARD VERSUSPOPULAR ASSEMBLIES

To answer the question, we must first findout what they mean when they say self-management. Make no mistake about this:they are Marxist-Leninist, they see them-selves as the Vanguard; they intend toseize state power and set up a dictatorship.We can only take consolation in the factthat they promised to make their dictator-ship a temporary one. But whateverbecame of self-management? Well, wehave not gotten to that yet.

Lenin saw “workers’ control” as a tempo-rary measure which should be instituted toguard against the counter-revolution, uponthe defeat of which we should revert togood old socialist centralized planning.Also, he was of the opinion that this work-ers’ control thing was a good meansthrough which workers could keep an eyeon the bureaucrats whom he intended toappoint to man the scientific system of one-man management! 4

But did not Michael Manley say some-thing about nationalization being a bridgeto public accountability? (And worker par-ticipation too?) Anyway, the Marxist-Leninist concept of self-management wasnever any different from what we presentlyhave in Jamaica, Great Britain, Guyana, orYugoslavia.

For these Caribbean revolutionaries then,self-management is nothing but a second-ary part of their program and a fraud toboot. How can we reconcile the dictator-ship of their Vanguard and these popularassemblies which they love to make somuch noise about? Where will the powerrest – with their Vanguard or with theassemblies?

Will they be just another set of (Party-con-trolled) rubber-stamp parliaments, or gen-uine forms of organization for workers’

power? The fact is that if you push theseself-styled revolutionaries far enough, theywill admit to you that their version of self-management only becomes meaningfulafter the “transition period”. The only trou-ble with that is that there is no end in sightto this transition period. The transition peri-od, like the “temporary” dictatorship, is per-manent.

These so-called revolutionary organiza-tions are carrying out a program of massdeception. On the one hand they run downthe Marxist-Leninist ideology which canonly lead to a state bureaucracy ruling overa society based upon capitalist productionrelations. On the other hand they babbleabout self-management and workers’ con-trol. They are stuck in the same confusionthat CLR James 5 has been stuck in for solong, pretending that state socialism and

self-management are not irreconcilablyopposed to each other. They run aroundcalling themselves the New Left, the newthis and the new that, trying to hide the factthat theirs is the same old authoritarianism.

Can we solve the problem of the exploita-tion of man by man without simultaneouslyaddressing ourselves to the authority ofman over man?

The fundamental question of the revolu-tion is not one of making more commodi-ties available to people. However thatseems to be the limit to which our Marxist-Leninist friends are willing to go. They arealways quick to point out the statistics ofhow many children are in school after theirseizure of power, how many bottles of milkare produced, and the tripling of the pro-duction of shoes.

But whenever one raises the question ofhierarchical authority, there is always “thecounter-revolution and the backwardnessof the masses” to justify it. Added to that isthe Marxist dogma which says that humansociety only becomes capable of freedomat a certain level (?) of commodity produc-tion. So we in the technologically under-developed areas of the world are facedwith the added burden of having to waituntil “our proletarian dictatorship” has takenus to that magic level of commodity pro-

duction before we can put in ourclaim for freedom.6

SO WHAT IS SELF-MANAGEMENT?

The movement to self-manage-ment is one that sees the questionof alienation as fundamental – andtherefore one that seeks to dealwith the question of exploitationand authority at the same time. Itis not that we don’t see the ques-tion of more food, clothes andhousing as being of the utmostimportance. It is just that we haveno intention of becoming only bet-

ter-fed slaves.Still, this is not to say that exploitation

does not continue under the Marxist-Leninist state. Under the socialist state([or] final state of monopoly capitalism),surplus value goes to the state bureaucra-cy instead of private capitalists. It shouldbe clear then that self-management is notan arrangement worked out by any state(Marxist-Leninist or not) for worker partici-pation.

Seizure of control over the productionprocess and the products of labor are keyelements in any attempt to end alienation.They will also be key elements in anyattempt to establish self-management. Wedo not intend to concern ourselves with thelegalities of who owns the means of pro-duction; whether it is the people, the state,or private capitalists. What concerns us isthat we establish effective control over


them. Let that determine the property rela-tions.

All those who preach the virtues of hierar-chical authority will accuse us of beingopposed to organization. Ironically, in ourstruggle to establish a society of self-man-agement, where decisions are made bythose whom they affect, it is precisely ourorganization (or lack of it) which will deter-mine our success (or failure).

They confuse bureaucracy and its hierar-chical authority for organization. Itbecomes more absurd than ironic whenone realizes that direct democracy, espe-cially in today’s world, requires an amountand quality of organization that is as yet toappear in any society. On the other hand,their organizational form, with the vastmasses being directed by the few, is anabsolute minimum of organization, andanything less would be no organization atall.

Far from being a program for worker par-ticipation within capitalist (or state capital-ist) society, the struggle for self-manage-ment is a revolutionary project for the totaltransformation of society. The number ofinstances in which workers have thrownout management and proceeded to reor-ganise production on their own are actsthat go way beyond the most liberal pro-grams of the authoritarians.

Yet such acts are just the beginning. Theoccupation of a particular place of work byits workers, together with a continuation ofproduction under their collective manage-ment, can not continue in isolation for toolong before it is recuperated in one form oranother. Therefore it is a continuing revo-lutionary process in which other workplaces and communities come to thedefence of this occupation by initiating theirown occupation.

It is only a generalized movement of self-management, a final appropriation of theappropriators, that can get the poor andoppressed out of the vicious circle ofstrikes and strikes and more strikes. It isonly at the point of production that the poorand oppressed masses can seize power.

THE SELF-MANAGEDREVOLUTION FROM BELOW

Workers at particular workplaces mustcollectively manage the production processthrough their workers’ councils, factorycommittees, or what have you. And sinceindividual workplaces could never decidewhat to produce in isolation from eachother, plus the necessity for communityinput in such decisions, there will have tobe widespread co-ordination of activitiesbetween the workers’ councils and commu-nity councils of the various areas of pro-duction and other social activities.

These councils are the organisationalforms which will allow people to seizedirect control of the production process, the

means of production, and all areas of theirsocial life. The process of co-ordination,carried out by mandated delegates who aresubject to immediate recall, will be demys-tified from the state mystification in which itexists under the system of capitalist pro-duction, to the simple administration ofthings.

The defence of the new form of socialistorganization will have to be taken up by thearmed masses themselves, co-ordinatingthe defence of the revolution in the samemanner in which they co-ordinate produc-tion. Any attempt to leave the question ofdefence in the hands of specialist militaryleaders and their hierarchical form of mili-tary organization, can only result in thedefeat of the revolution. There can be nopower in the new society but the power ofthe workers’ councils.

To repeat, it is only at the point of produc-tion that the poor and oppressed massescan seize power. The masses could neverseize state power, because the state is ahierarchical form of social organization andcould only be seized in the name of themasses by somebody else. Whereas astate machinery is needed by the minorityoppressors to carry out the oppression ofthe mass population, the masses do notneed a state machinery to suppress theminority oppressors.

The armed population co-ordinating thedefence of the revolution is not onlyenough and most efficient. It is also theonly form of military organization that willnot end up defeating the purpose of therevolution.

The history of past struggles has alreadyproven the utter uselessness and the para-sitic nature of the bureaucrats of whateverideological brand. Their sermons of howsociety would be in chaos without theirmediation are now bad jokes. They mis-take the clear demands made by the mass-es for control over their lives, as requeststo self-manage their own oppression.However, the final critique of them will bethe act of removing them.

NOTES:1. Address given by Manley at the UWI, StAugustine, 12-14-1974. A former trade unionist,Manley (1924-1997) rose to power in Jamaica in1972 on a programme of “people’s power”. HisPeople’s National Party viewed Fidel Castro’scorporativist “communism” as its model, butbecame increasingly embroiled in political vio-lence from 1976 onwards. In that year, a state ofemergency was declared and 500 oppositionsupporters were detained. In his second periodin office, Manley adopted a watered down, mod-erate stance because his favourite dictatorship,the USSR, had collapsed.2. In 1970, Burnham, another president-for-lifeCastroite, declared Guyana to be a “co-opera-tive republic”. Like all other such pseudo-social-ist experiments, this meant in reality that thepopular classes were required to co-operate intheir exploitation by the republic and its capitalistallies. And yet then, as today, the Marxist-Leninist left remains deluded that Castroite cap-italists Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) and EvoMorales (Peru) can rescue their statist dreamsfrom the trash-heap of history. Burnham’sincreasingly authoritarian regime is held respon-sible for the 1980 assassination of radicalGuyanese historian Walter Rodney.3. Walter was a former unionist who becamesecond prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda(1971-1976) as head of the Progressive LabourParty prior to the country’s independence fromBritain in 1981. Gairy was a former US Navysailor and strike-leader whose United GrenadaLabour Party took Grenada to independencefrom Britain in 1974. His paramilitary “MongooseGangs” were responsible for street violenceagainst the equally “labourite” New JewelMovement that eventually ousted him in 1979.Bradshaw was a former unionist who becamethe dictatorial first premier of St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla in 1967. He apparently style his regimeon that of Haiti’s notorious “Papa Doc” Duvalier.4. Lenin mentions the need of “highly advancedtechnology”. Techonolgy is presented as animpersonal and impervious force in the sameway as matter and finally history, understood asthe history of matter, is presented within a dog-matic Marxism. Thus, all power to the techni-cians who know the secrets of technology, andknow how to command it while obeying it, andwho therefore command others without havingto obey them. The politician himself is nothingbut the engineer or revolution and of popularhappiness. The organizational technique ofLeninism is only effective in the context of analienated revolution. And the hierarchical set-ting, which Gorz points out in the capitalist enter-prise, is immediately found functioning politicallyand not technically in the Party with its structure,


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S o u t h e r n A f r i c a nA n a r c h i s m O n l i n e

ZABALAZA INTERNATIONAL/THEORYPAGE 23

We agree that in order to maximise effi-ciency and potential, theoretical unity is thedesired tenet of an anarchist-communistcollective or organisation; in order for anorganisation to develop an effective tacticalorientation towards an oppression, it needsto be informed by a collectively deliberatedand agreed upon strategy, reflecting saidorganisation’s collective theoretical under-standing thereof.

The success of Platformism depends onthe fact that entry into a group relies on thecandidate’s acceptance – beforehand – ofthe group’s core positions, which aredebated but not negotiated with theprospective entrant. Of course this is not tosay that they are not open to criticism, arepermanently fixed and cannot be changedat a later stage. What is important, howev-er, is that militants are accepted into agroup based on their being won over to itspositions first, and not admitted and thenconvinced of the positions at a later stage.Acceptance into the specific anarchist-

communist group must imply acceptanceof the major line for the group’s day-to-dayactivism, including the willingness todefend that line in public, even if the partic-ipant has disagreements with it. Of coursethere must also always remain a climate ofcomradely debate, so that positions arecontinually being criticised and refined, butthis must come from within, as the result ofthe introspection of the organisation, andnot as a means of attracting more mem-bers.

Failure to maintain this culture of com-radely debate could result in the creepingin of a “false peace”, in which internal criti-cism and debate is avoided, and the theo-retical and practical approach of the organ-isation is therefore not developed furtherand does not evolve. This false peace offake agreement could be based on silenc-ing people through various tactics in anargument, like sectarianism and name call-ing, or through tactics like extreme forms ofconsensus decision-making. It could also

be delib-e r a t e l yapplied inorder not to offend certain members, orupset the internal relations of the organisa-tion, and could have disastrous effects.

An organisation might form on the basisthat all its members are brought togetherby a common ideological vision; but whathappens if, in the course of the life anddevelopment of an organisation or collec-tive, it emerges that militants’ opinions on aparticular issue differ from one another?Perhaps because the issue in question wasnot considered at the outset, or due to theuneven growth of each member. The lattercan be avoided by paying special attentionto the internal education of the group, sothat militants are able to advance theoreti-cally simultaneously, preventing them fromdeveloping their ideas in different direc-tions.

Theoretically, and in practice in a directlydemocratic group, all members should

Some Thoughts on TheoreticalUnity & Collective Responsibility

by Jonathan

This article aims to examine, briefly, the relationship between theoretical unity and col-lective responsibility, and their mutual dependence within an anarchist-communistorganisation. It also poses some questions regarding the problems that may arise

within an organisation surrounding these notions, and the challenges that these maypresent to the growth and endurance of the organisation and the movement.

its top directors, its assistant directors, the sec-retaries, the union bosses, and the official ideo-logues. In a word, the “professional revolution-aries” whose profession is precisely to removethe revolution from the proletariat, to transformpolitics into something external and transcen-dent, requiring their science and their skill. –Forgetting Lenin: TELOS #185. CLR James (1901-1989) was one of theCaribbean’s foremost journalists, theorists andsocial analysts. Hailing from Trinidad andTobago, his political oreintation was originallyTrotskyist, but he later embraced pan-Africanism, though he had an influence onautonomist Marxism.6. Consumer Human is satisfied by an ever-increasing volume of commodities; his labor isnothing more than a means in his life – hismeans of acquiring (by its sale) commodities, ofappropriating property, of consuming. Work isseen as an activity which has no intrinsic value,hence its substance is unimportant, its formimportant only in relation to other goals. It isgood to shorten it, to routinize it, to mechanize it,to increase its return – that’s all that matters.For Creator Human, his work activity is his fulfil-ment, hence it cannot be ordered in such a wayas to preclude meaning, enrichment and pleas-ure. – Administration Theory: TELOS # 12

The text of this article hasalso been published in

pamphlet form as part ofthe Zabalaza Books AfricanResistance History Series.

The ARHS aims at rescuingkey libertarian socialisttexts on African issues

from obscurity

For ordering your copy,see contact details on theback cover of this journal.

AAffrriiccaann

ResistanceHHiissttoorryy SSeerriieess

have an opportunity to present and arguefor their ideas, and try to win the othersover to their positions. Perhaps in theprocess of debate new ideas come to light,and the organisation is able to develop itsown position, which is guided by andacceptable to all its members, resultingtherefore in the growth of both the individu-als and the collective.

This ties in with the idea of collectiveresponsibility; everyone in an anarchistcommunist organisation or collective isresponsible for its ideological characterand its members have the duty to argue forand promote their positions as a means ofrefining the ideological and theoreticalunderstanding of the collective as a whole,not just leaving it up to the intellectuals andso-called experts to develop the politics ofa group. This is why, no matter how seem-ingly trivial and unimportant a specific issuemight appear to some, all the members ofa collective have the responsibility to par-ticipate in that dialogue in order to ensurethat the outcome is informed by and satis-factory to all. This could help to preventbigger differences from arising later on,because the ideological and theoreticalcharacter of the collective will develop intandem with its members, serving to keepthem in constant theoretical closeness.

But what if irreconcilable theoretical differ-ences emerge in the development of anorganisation? If it is a minority of peoplewho hold an opposing view, should they beexpected to compromise to the will of themajority? If they do so, how will it affectthe collective responsibility shared byall, knowing that some might beengaged in something in whichthey do not fully agree? If it isa minor difference, yetunlikely to be overcome,should the organisationproceed as before? Andif it does so, and moredifferences arise, wheredo you draw the linebetween a platforminspired group, with the-oretical unity, and onemore resembling a syn-thesist organisation?How is an organisation toprioritise which are minor,and which are major differ-ences; when a major issueto one, non-classoppressions for exam-ple, may be of less con-cern to another?

It would be helpful hereto make a distinctionbetween issues that arefundamental (issues ofmajor analysis and princi-ple), issues that are criticalin practical terms (e.g. bor-

ing-from-within unions) and those that arenot seen as important or are specifically notaddressed within an organisation (e.g. reli-gion in the case of the ZACF).

Fundamental issues are those that theorganisation presents to the public as itscore principles and specific anarchist-com-munist analyses, and it is essential that,despite any minor disagreements withinthe organisation, all its members are com-mitted to supporting these in public.Failure to do so would result in the concep-tion of the anarchist-communist organisa-tion as theoretically weak and disunited.Moreover, it is essential to the health of theorganisation that these fundamental issuesof major analysis and principle are agreedto and supported by all militants.Disagreement over fundamental issues islikely to lead to fracture and dissolution orsplitting of the organisation, which againgives the impression that the anarchist-communist organisation is disunited andtheoretically weak.

Issues that are critical in practical termsare those that guide the strategic and tacti-cal nature of the organisation. As the effec-tiveness of the organisation depends onthe full participation of all its members in itsactivities, it is vital that collective agree-ment on these is reached. Once again, ifmilitants enter an organisation knowingthat they are in slight disagreement overcertain issues, they nonetheless chose todo so by free association, and the respon-sibility lies with them not only to defend andargue for the organisation’s principles andanalyses but, by participating in the activi-ties of the organisation, to share in the col-lective responsibility implied by the practi-cal engagement of the organisation in theclass struggle.

Those issues thatare not seen

as important, orare specifically not

addressed by theorganisation, are

those that do not detractfrom the efficiency and

proper functioning of theorganisation, nor its per-

ception by the public,despite a possible

lack of theoreticalunity. These aremost often issuesof personal prefer-

ence and interpreta-tion, do not influence

the core principles andanalysis of the organi-sation, and are there-fore of lesser concern.

To attempt to answersome of the questions

posed: it is notuncommon that, in

the life of an organisation, members willsometimes be in disagreement. A healthyorganisation should accept different pointsof view, and members should not beexpected by the organisation to renouncetheir opinions but rather to accept anddefend, provisionally and at least in public,that of the majority of the organisation.

If a majority of members hold a differentpoint of view to the official position of theorganisation, then it might indicate thateither the organisation has grown beyondits original framework, and needs to reviseits positions or, possibly due to a lack ofcoherent internal education, membershave developed their ideas in a directiondifferent to that envisioned at the outset.

As far as possible it should be attemptedto iron out and overcome differencesthrough internal education and discussionbut, while trying to stay as close as possi-ble to the core principles of the organisa-tion, a diversity of views should also berespected and accepted.

Of course, we want our organisations andmovement to grow, but we are also con-vinced of the necessity for theoretical unityand collective responsibility for them to beeffective. In trying to maintain this charac-ter, our organisations will grow more slowlythan others, and strict membership criteriamight give the impression of sectarianism.This can lead to frustration within ourorganisations, and some people mightbecome disillusioned and modify theirviews to make them accessible to morepeople, while others may drop out alto-gether. The question that faces us, then, ishow we can build our organisations andmovement by being non-sectarian andopen to a diversity of ideas, while retainingour specific anarchist-communist orienta-tion and without compromising our princi-ples of theoretical unity and collectiveresponsibility.

If we are successfully able to build a coregroup of anarchist communists with acoherent and theoretically unified under-standing of anarchism, and a clear strategyof engagement in the class struggle, thefirst step is taken. Having done so, theopportunity for building our organisationsand movement lies within our non-sectari-an ability and willingness to engage with adiversity of groups and tendencies on theleft, and in our finding a social insertion foranarchist ideas and practice within themovements and structures of theoppressed classes.

This organisational dualism, on the onehand the specific anarchist communistorganisation, and on the other its socialinsertion within the popular classes, is theanswer both to retaining our anarchist com-munist orientation and building our move-ment.

ZABALAZA THEORYPAGE 24


In the 14-20 September 2007 edition ofANC Today: online voice of the AfricanNational Congress, in an article entitled “Afundamental revolutionary lesson: Theenemy manoeuvres but it remains theenemy” Anarcho-syndicalism (or what hasbeen termed Anarcho-Syndicalism, butmay have been more directed against theshopfloor militancy displayed during thepublic sector strike) has been accused of anumber of truly illogical things in an articleby the ruling party in South Africa. Thisarticle is primarily a response to these non-sensical claims in an attempt to clarify tothose who are clearly ignorant of whatanarcho-syndicalism is, what exactly it is.

One of the accusations is that “anarcho-syndicalism has not served as a force forprogressive change”. Does the author notconsider the victorious struggle for an 8hour working day a progres-sive change? It would do themwell, when making such pro-nouncements, to research abit about what they write.Assuming that they had (other-wise how would they quoteRocker to such an extent), theyshould know that the movementfor the 8 hour working day was ledby anarcho-syndicalists, and 7 ofthem were convicted to death fortheir role in this struggle.International workers day, MayFirst, is a commemoration of theseanarcho-syndicalists’ sacrifice inpursuit of progressive change. Thisclaim by the author/s therefore amounts tonothing more than deliberately ignoring his-tory to suit their own political agenda.

Another example of politically motivatedselective memory; the first trade unions forblack, coloured and Indian workers insouthern Africa were founded by syndical-ists between 1917 and 1919. The ANCitself, as a result, in that period, had amarked syndicalist tendency (at least in itsJohannesburg branches). If this was allsomehow, as they will no doubt claim,immature, then why did the party choose toalign itself with the left and labour duringthe time of the struggle?

How can the call for “one big union”, con-sisting “of all the workers” be construed asan attempt to “principally … divide andweaken the progressive movement, serv-ing the interests of right wing forces”?Anarcho-syndicalists have consistentlyworked against right-wing forces and reac-tion. We flatly reject the accusation thatanarcho-syndicalists have “carefully avoid-

ed a political offensive against capital andthe bourgeoisie”. Anarcho-syndicalism ispolitically-conscious revolutionary tradeunionism that specifically targets capitaland the bourgeoisie, and is in no way a-political. Anarcho-syndicalists have delib-erately avoided engaging in bourgeois pol-itics such as parliamentarianism, true,because they believe it to be a red herring,and that no matter who wins a politicalstruggle, via the ballot box – be they reac-tionaries or so-called progressives – whenthey end up in the seats of power they willinevitably capitulate to the interests of cap-ital. There is enough proof of this all overthe world including here in South Africa.Anarcho-syndicalists recognise that powercorrupts, and that is why their struggle ispolitical, economic and social, asopposed to just political.T h e y

want to make immedi-ate and revolutionaryeconomic and social gains for theworking class and poor, and believe thatthis is best done through the organisationof the working poor independent from polit-ical parties and the state.

As in Russia and elsewhere, anarchistsand anarcho-syndicalists long ago saidthat, the moment that any liberation move-ment parties get into power, that is wherethe revolution will end, that it will neverprogress beyond the first phase of thenational democratic revolution, that of seiz-ing state power. That is the fundamentalproblem with the authoritarian models ofsocialism, and that is what caused thegreat controversy between Marx andBakunin. Bakunin quite rightly saw that,when a so-called workers party enters intopower, it creates a new ruling class that willdo anything to keep its newly acquiredpower and privilege. Namely; it will labelas counter-revolutionary and persecuteanyone who expresses dissent about this

newly emerged elite, while it does every-thing in its power to bring every aspect ofthe popular revolution under its control.

The authors of the article in the ANCToday are, once against, quite ignorant intheir understanding of anarcho-syndicalismwhen they say that “the trade unions mustbe welcomed and accepted as the naturalleader of the entirety of the progressivemovement”. This is quite contrary to themost elemental of anarchist theory, whichholds that people, be they workers, peas-ants, students etc., i.e. the ‘progressivemovement’, actively participate in thestruggle and, in so doing, determine theways and means best suited to their pecu-liar struggles and circumstance. We againflatly reject the accusation that anarchism

and anarcho-syndicalism has no “centralideas and strategy”. No centralist ideasand strategy, sure, because the verypoint of anarcho-syndicalism is to bedecentralised and flexible, able toadapt to the particular conditions of a

certain socio-econo-political environ-ment. But to claim that it has no coreideas and strategy is to say that it isincoherent, chaotic and ill-definedwhich, as anyone who has researched a

bit about the history of anarcho-syndi-calism and who is not deliberatelytrying to tarnish its name shouldknow, is nonsense. The core idea ofanarcho-syndicalism is that tradeunions are a potentially revolution-

ary force which, through the generalstrike, can be used to overthrow

capitalism and the State,replacing it with a federation ofdemocratic and self-managed

trade unions and civil society col-lectives with the underlying principal of theequal participation of all in society.

It would be worth noting here that manyanarchist-communists have criticised anar-cho-syndicalism, saying that it is a strategyfor organising in the workplace, but not anend in itself, and that this workplace organ-ising should be accompanied and rein-forced by organisation of communities,educational facilities and of the unem-ployed.

The full article in theANC Today can be

found atwww.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2007/at36.htm

Clarity on WhatAnarcho-Syndicalism Is

Its thoseDamn

SyndicalistsAgain!


Between 28th April and 1st of May 2007about 250 militants from five different con-tinents came together in Paris, France forthe CNT-F organised InternationalSyndicalist Conference i07, a follow-up tothe industrial Syndicalist Conferences heldin San Francisco, USA, in 1999, called i99,and that held in Essen, Germany in 2002,called i02.

The goal of the meetings was to shareexperiences, debate and to start rebuildinglinks between different organisations anduniting workers of different countries, toappropriate the means of information,struggle and action by organising interna-tional solidarity against capitalist domina-tion and exploitation. The weekend includ-ed discussions, workshops and debatesdealing with syndicalist issues (co-opera-tives, repression, representativity, theEuropean Union, casualised and unpro-tected labour, and relocation...) as well associal issues (anti-sexism, the campaignagainst Coca-Cola, migrant workers, anti-fascism, housing struggles, anti-imperial-ism and neo-colonialism...). Branch meet-ings (metallurgy, education, construction,postal services, health, culture, archeolo-gy...) and meetings devoted to geographi-cal regions (Palestine, Europe, theAmericas, Africa, the Mediterranean zone)also took place. The conference endedwith an anarchist/ anarcho-syndicalist/ syn-dicalist bloc of about 5,000 participantsfrom every corner of the globe at the May1st demonstration in Paris.

What is particularly interesting to us, andthe focus of this article, is that, for the firsttime, the Industrial Syndicalist Conferencehad a significant African presence this year,with delegates representing trade unionsfrom Algeria (Snapap), Morocco (UMT,CDT, ANDCN, poor peasants, FDR-UDT),Tunisia (CGTT), Guinea (CNTG, CEK,SLEG), Ivory Coast (CGT-CI), Djibouti(UDT), Congo DRC (LO), Mali (Cocidirail,Sytrail), Benin (FNEB, UNSTB, AIPR),Burkina Faso (UGEB, CGT-B, AEBF) andMadagascar (Fisemare).

The politics of the workers’ CGT-B andthe students’ UGEB from Burkina Faso aredescribed by the CNT-F as “class struggle,revolutionary syndicalism from a Marxistpoint of view”. In a similar way theMadagascan Fisemare is described as anindependent Marxist revolutionary union,while the Algerian Snapap is independentbut not revolutionary, although it is of inter-est because it opposes what used to be the

only union in the country, the UGTA. TheGuinean CNTG is the biggest union in thecountry, affiliated to the mainstreamInternational Trade Union Confederation,and won a big strike this year. A represen-tative from a Guinean students’ union-in-exile was also present at i07 and the CNT-F has said that the Cocidirail and Sytrailrailway unions in Mali, affiliated to the mainMali union the UNTM, are very solid com-rades. The UNSTB in Benin used to be aMarxist union linked to the state during thesocialist period of that country and as aresult is rather reformist. There was also a“very strange union” from the DRCCongo, Lutte Ouvrière, which theCNT-F says they needed to see “onthe field” to assess their politicsproperly. The Congolese do,however, have links ontheir website to the CNT-F and fellow syndical-ist unions the SpanishCGT and Swedish SAC.The CGT-Liberte and thepublic sector CSP fromCameroon were unable to attendbecause of visa problems, but theyare “very interesting” according, onceagain, to the CNT-F.

As seen by the preceding breakdown theAfrican delegates present, entirely paid forby the CNT, seemed all to have come froma range of independent and radical unionsinfluenced by Marxism, and it is interestingto consider what might have attracted themto attend an anarcho-syndicalist confer-ence, and what this means for creating anopening for spreading libertarian socialistideas in Africa. One cynical participantcommented that they got the feeling that alot of these people where present becausethe CNT wanted to have a big impressiveevent, and that they invited organisationsto participate which they would otherwisehave been a lot more wary of had theybeen from Europe. I don’t think that that isquite the case however – that the CNT wasdoing it for show – and either way, it is cru-cially important for militants from a libertar-ian socialist tradition to engage with organ-isers from Africa coming from an authori-tarian socialist (Marxist or otherwise) tradi-tion. The reason being that one needs toconsider the context in which their politicalidentity would have developed, bearing inmind that there is very little libertariansocialist tradition in Africa as a whole, andthat many people on the continent withLeftist inclinations would invariably have

been attracted to authoritarian/ statist mod-els of socialism and Marxist ideas or, forexample, the type of “African socialism”, aspracticed notably in Tanzania and that wasexplicitly anti-Marxist, as that was all thatmost were exposed to.

It is also important to note that “AfricanSocialism” has been tried and found want-ing, and that radical Leftists in Africa mightbe becoming disillusioned with mainstreamstate socialism and be looking around foralternatives. Perhaps this is what attractedthe African delegates to i07? Perhaps theyfeel so isolated and in such a desperate sit-uation that activists from a statist orienta-

tion are willing to try anything to garnersome support from the international

community. Or perhaps they wereall, as with the delegate from

Burkina Faso, just there tolearn.

Whichever the casemay be, it is a sound

strategy for the FrenchCNT to be in contact with

these groups as it helps tofacilitate a dialogue about forms

of organisation, visions of the typeof society we want to create and it

allows for the building of solidarity strug-gles between groups in the so-called firstand third worlds. Hopefully those dele-gates who attended from Africa would havelearnt something and have been inspiredby the anarcho-syndicalist and revolution-ary syndicalist movements they encoun-tered. I strongly feel that the CNT-F hastaken an initiative that I would love to seebeing followed by the other more devel-oped and stronger anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist groupings and movements, withthe capacity to do so, from the former colo-nial regimes.

There is also, encouragingly, another sim-ilar initiative to i07, the “International con-ference on the co-ordination of base union-ism and social connection in Europe andthe Maghreb” being organised by theSpanish CGT, due to take place in Malagaon 28, 29 and 30 September 2007.According to the CGT “a network of rela-tions, information and solidarity actions hasbeen developing between organisations onthe northern and southern sides of theMediterranean…” and these meetings willhave the “objective of opposing the currentneo-liberal politics […] The principal objec-tive is not to share long expositions on thedifferent problems, but to achieve a con-sensus to establish some minimum agree-

Towards an Anarcho-SyndicalistStrategy for Africa

by Jonathan

ments that will allow us to develop actionsin a way that shows a clear and organisedresponse to neo-liberalism”.

The legacy of Marxism and the SovietUnion is fading into history, and as a result,there is a vacuum of ideas in the AfricanLeft. At such a time it is crucial for anar-chists to step in and try to fill this vacuum,at a point when people may be looking foralternatives and might be open to libertari-an socialist ideas. Anarchists should notbe sectarian about their engagement withthe broader African Left as, without adoubt, if we fail to take the initiative and tryto fill the vacuum of ideas with a libertariansocialist - or more specifically an anarchistcommunist alternative, the larger and still,regrettably, better organised authoritariansocialists will certainly seize the opportuni-ty to provide material and ideological sup-port to the African trade unions, social andanti-globalisation movements who, oftendesperate and uneducated as to the flawsof state socialism, will take whatever helpthey can get.

If, however, anarchist and anarcho-syndi-calist groups abroad are going to try anddevelop contacts with unions in Africa, andtry to spread anarchist and anarcho-syndi-calist tactics and ideas, they would need tohave a strategy for doing so. One key pointto note however, when embarking on thisstrategy, is that every effort must be madeto try to make contact with the rank-and-fileworkers, not the union bureaucrats, or totry and ensure that union leaders dissemi-nate the information and ideas they receivefrom anarchists abroad at the base. Theywould need to make a commitment to per-sistence and patience in building such net-works. It would also be advisable for dele-gates to be sent to Africa to make directcontacts with African organisers and inorder to gauge the impact of their attempts,adjust and revise strategies where neces-sary, and measure the adequacy of the dis-semination of their materials, via the unionleaders or contact persons, at the base.

Another point worth noting for anyonekeen to help spread anarchist ideas inAfrica is that - given the small size of theAfrican working class, high levels of unem-ployment and relative lack of industrialisa-tion - anarchist intervention from abroad inindustrial struggles, and the cultivation ofanarcho-syndicalist tendencies in Africa isnot sufficiently going to help spread anar-chist ideas on the continent, and specialattention should also be paid to ways andmeans of carrying industrial struggles intocommunities. In order to effectively spreadanarchist ideas across the continent, anar-chists and anarcho-syndicalists should notconfine themselves to industrial struggles,but should try to find ways for taking up andsupporting social and community strugglesin the industrial arena, as well as encour-aging workers who may become influenced

by anarcho-syndicalist ideas to try and takethese ideas back to their communities, andorganise there too.

The CNT-F have already taken libertariansocialist debate on Africa significantly for-ward with the publication of what wasintended to be Zabalaza’s sister journal,the French-language Africa-focused jour-nal Afrique XXI, and I hope that measuresare being taken to ensure that this publica-tion finds a decent circulation in Africa andthat it is not confined to the FrancophoneAfrican immigrant communities in Europe(although its circulation there would alsoserve to spread libertarian socialist ideasamongst African immigrants to Europewho, in turn, could send such ideas backhome). It should be noted, though, that thisjournal is not produced by the CNT-Falone, and that there are also some groupsand organisations that do not come fromthe libertarian tradition, which might moder-ate its message to a degree – but whichalso ensure a wider readership than apurely anarchist journal would reach.

Given the scarcity of known libertariansocialist socio-political traditions in Africa,which were mainly confined to North andsouthern Africa and its small and thinlyspread anarchist movement, the supportand intervention of anarchists coming fromregions with more developed anarchist tra-ditions is vital for the spread of the anar-chist idea on the continent. In particularthe anarchists of the former colonial pow-ers (who have the advantage of linguisticand cultural ties with Africa) should try tosupport the growth of anarchism in Africa.Also, sharing experiences of struggle andmethods of anarchist organisation undersimilar socio-economic conditions, such asin Latin America or other parts of the devel-oping world, would be very beneficial.

To this end we need to considera few things:1. How can anarchists abroad work with,and assist, existing anarchist groups andindividuals in Africa?2. How can they establish and maintaincontacts with African trade unions, socialmovements and Left-wing groups?3. What are the priorities when doing so: tospread anarchist awareness; to supportexist-i n gstruggles(mater ia l ly,ideologicallyor throughs o l i d a r i t yactions); or tocounter authoritariantraditions?4. How can they embark on jointinternational campaigns involv-ing African groups?5. How can they show practical

solidarity with African struggles?6. How can they work towards turning sin-gle-issue and reformist campaigns andstruggles into revolutionary movementsand promote horizontal, egalitarian, partici-patory democracy?

When engaging with African trade unionsand trying to facilitate the establishment ofan anarcho-syndicalist presence on thecontinent, it is wise to avoid or to set asidethe sectarian infighting which has plaguedcertain sectors of the movement thus far.In the old debate of whether or not anar-chists should bore-from-within existingunions, to organise inside or work along-side existing and probably reformistunions, what must be avoided in theAfrican context is the “purist” line (whichargues against this boring-from-within),which does not work except in very partic-ular circumstances – which don’t obtain inAfrica at present. The hard reality in Africais that the purist position of trying to estab-lish new, specifically anarchist unions willprobably fail – until such time as there is asignificant growth in the African anarchistmovement itself. Until then, new anarcho-syndicalist formations are likely to remainisolated, numerically and strategicallyinsignificant – if not totally ineffectual.

To conclude, there are two possibleoptions that may contribute to spreadingthe ideas and methods of anarcho-syndi-calism in Africa. The first is for Africa-based anarchists to agitate for anarcho-syndicalism either within existing unions or,possibly at a later stage, by trying to set-upnew unions along anarcho-syndicalist linesfrom scratch. The second and more viableoption – because of the insignificant num-ber of organised anarchists in Africa and

their relative lack of capacity – isfor anarchists and anarcho-syn-dicalists from abroad to inter-vene and assist by trying toestablish contacts and buildpragmatic solidarity with anyexisting African unions –preferably independent andrevolutionary ones where

possible.


ZAB

ALAZA

AN

ARCHIST CO

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Z A C F C O N T A C T D E T A I L SPost: Postnet Suite 47, Private Bag X1,

Fordsburg, South Africa, 2033Email: [email protected] (within southern

Africa) or [email protected]: www.zabalaza.net

New ZACF FormedOn December 1 2007, by mutual consent of all its members and following consultations with the WSM (Ireland), OCL (Chile) and

FdCA (Italy), the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation was replaced by a new, unitary organisation, the Zabalaza AnarchistCommunist Front. The new ZACF retains all the assets of the former federation, including this journal and the www.zabalaza.netwebsite. On December 2, the members of the new ZACF held talks with our Swazi comrades with a view to establishing a newunitary organisation in Swaziland.The organisations are almost the same, but the differences between the Federation and the Front are the following: 1. The Front is a unitary organisation of individual militants, whereas the Federation was a federation of militant collectives. Thismeans individuals are directly responsible to the entire Front and there is no additonal “layer” between the individual member andthe policy-making Congress of all members. 2. The Front is organised within South Africa, whereas the Federation linked collectives in South Africa and Swaziland. In practice,communication troubles has meant it has been difficult to democratically endorse each and every Swazi decision by having to pollthe South African membership (and visa versa). It is easier for the Swazis to run their own collective which will remain affiliated to,and supported by, the Front. 3. The Front’s membership rules (not its politics, but the responsibilities of membership) have been relaxed somewhat to allow thosewho are unable to be fully committed due to work, domestic or other pressures, to nevertheless remain involved. The AnarchistBlack Cross SA is now an autonomous collective, but it has some cross-membership with the Front, which will ensure the Front’scontinued support for its efforts.

ZABALAZA: A JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN AFRICAN REVOLUTIONARY ANARCHISM

Where We StandWe, the working class, produce the world’s wealth. We ought to enjoy the benefits.

We want to abolish the system of capitalism that places wealth and power in the hands of a few, and replace it with work-ers self-management and socialism. We do not mean the lie called ‘socialism’ practised in Russia, China, and other policestates - the system in those countries was/is no more than another form of capitalism - state capitalism.

We stand for a new society where there will be no bosses or bureaucrats. A society that will be run in a truly democraticway by working people, through federations of community and workplace committees. We want to abolish authoritarianrelationships and replace them with control from the bottom up - not the top down.

All the industries, all the means of production and distribution will be commonly owned, and placed under the manage-ment of those working in them. Production will be co-ordinated, organised and planned by the federation of elected andrecallable workplace and community committees, not for profit but to meet our needs. The guiding principle will be “fromeach according to ability, to each according to need”.

We are opposed to all coercive authority; we believe that the only limit on the freedom of the individual is that their free-dom does not interfere with the freedom of others.

We do not ask to be made rulers nor do we intend to seize power “on behalf of the working class”. Instead, we hold thatsocialism can only be created by the mass of ordinary people. Anything less is bound to lead to no more than replacingone set of bosses with another.

We are opposed to the state because it is not neutral, it cannot be made to serve our interests. The structures of thestate are only necessary when a minority seeks to rule over the majority. We can create our own structures, which willbe open and democratic, to ensure the efficient running of everyday life.

We are proud to be part of the tradition of libertarian socialism, of anarchism. The anarchist movement has taken rootin the working class of many countries because it serves our interests - not the interests of the power seekers and pro-fessional politicians.

In short we fight for the immediate needs and interests of our class under the existing set up, while seeking to encour-age the necessary understanding and activity to overthrow capitalism and its state, and lead to the birth of a free and equal(anarchist) society.

zabalaza - wordpress.com

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