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ZabalazaZabalazaA Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism No. 7 December 2006

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

The Zuma Case and COSATU Community Struggles and Elections What about the ANC? Swaziland after the Bombings Free the Mind the USA and Africa

China and Africa Anarchism in Morocco Learning from Latin America 1976: 30 years on The Spanish Revolution anniversary Hamba Kahle Abel Ramorope

Inside...

CHIAPAS 1994, OAXACA 2006!: A demonstrator stones the hated Mexican Federal Police who failed to reassert state con-trol over the city of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. The city is being run by community organisations including the ZACF's sis-ter organisation, the Indigenous Popular Council of Oaxaca - Ricardo Flores Magon (CIPO-RFM). What started out as ateacher's strike turned into a full-blown Magonista uprising against the “revolutionary” Oaxaca state government and forcommunity self-management, a key anarchist demand. see www.anarkismo.net for more

South Africa’s transition, as we stated inWorkers Solidarity in 1998, went sour along time ago. Overthrowing apartheidwas a tremendous victory, but not enough.It was soon overshadowed by the ANC’sneo-liberal policies, which built on thoseadopted in the last years of the apartheidregime.

LOST IN TRANSITAs an increasingly multiracial ruling class

consolidated its position, the working classretreated. This retreat was - and remains -fundamentally a question of politics andstrategy: COSATU and the SACP had noidea how to deal with the new situation.Having spent years believing the ANCwould, like Moses, lead the people out ofbondage in Egypt, they now found them-selves in a strange new country. Apartheidwas gone, but slavery was not. The sup-posed Moses now looked a lot likePharaoh, but COSATU and the SACPremained part of the Tripartite Alliance.

ALL GEARed UPThe miserable conditions in the townships

continued, mass unemployment - whichstarted in the 1970s - continued to grow,and neo-liberalism accelerated. 30% ofTELKOM was privatised in 1996 and a fur-ther 20% was listed in 2003, and ESKOMand the SA Post Office were commer-cialised. While the GATT (now the WorldTrade Organisation) required tariff protec-tion on telecommunications to fall to 20%,the government set itself the target of zeroprotection, and also opened up other con-trols over trade and capital movements.These approaches were consolidated inthe 1996 Growth, Employment andRedistribution Strategy (GEAR), but did notstart with it.

The unproductive financial sector shot up

to 20% of the entire SA economy, althoughit employed only 1% of the workforce, whilemanufacturing and mining shrunk, with per-haps 1 million jobs lost in these sectorsplus agriculture. The electricity and watergrid was expanded, but with cost recoveryapplied, 10 million people suffered watercut-offs and 5 million were evicted.

SAVING THE ANC’S SOULIn this situation, COSATU and the SACP

chose to try and save the unhappy mar-riage with the ANC. Afraid of being isolat-ed from the seats of the mighty, flattered bypats on the head by ANC leaders, temptedby job offers, and unable to break with analmost religious loyalty to the ANC colours- and a well-established tendency to uncrit-ically worship ANC leaders - union andParty policy makers spent fruitless yearstrying to redeem the ANC.

Reinforcing this approach was the long-standing, and seriously flawed, view thatSouth Africa must have a two-stage “revo-lution”: a “national democratic stage,” ledby the ANC, to end racism, followed by a“socialist stage,” in a vague future.

“Intervening” in the ANC, “contesting” it,“saving” its soul: these were the terms usedto justify this approach. The fact that theANC was - and always had been - a capi-talist party that aimed to open up, asNelson Mandela stated back in 1956,“fresh fields for the development of a pros-perous non-European bourgeois class,”was ignored.

BEE-llionairesThe fact that the major debate within the

ruling ANC after 1994 was on how to linkneo-liberalism to Black EconomicEmpowerment (BEE) - the deliberate cre-ation of the “non-European bourgeoisclass” - was ignored. The fact that the ANChad struck a deal withthe apartheid-era rulingclass, and had nowjoined it, was ignored.

COSATU and SACPpositions moved from thenaïve (the idea that theANC would drop neo-lib-eralism if only it would letCOSATU provide goodadvice) to the paranoid(there was a conspiracyagainst “transforma-tion”). For organisations

that spoke in the language of class strug-gle, there was nothing in the way of a classanalysis of the realities of the situation.

COSATU and the Party were ignored bythe ANC, and periodically insulted - exceptat election times, when their financial sup-port and influence were eagerly sought.After elections, of course, it was businessas usual, with South Africa’s particularlyvile brand of capitalism flourishing. By2006, the economy was booming, reaching5% growth, the number of families withmore than $30 million each shot up fourtimes, but the income of the bottom 40% ofthe population fell by nearly half.

ZUMA AND COSATU This situation has played out in the Jacob

Zuma controversy. Zuma, a leading ANCmember, deputy president of South Africa,and head of the State-sponsored “MoralRegeneration Campaign,” was found tohave been involved in corruption aroundthe arms deal. His associate, Durban busi-nessman Shabir Shaik, was found guilty in2005, and Zuma himself now facescharges.

Mbeki, not a man to tolerate rivals in theANC, used the opportunity to oust Zumafrom office. Another bombshell followed,when Zuma was accused of raping a closefamily friend who, it transpired, was HIV-positive.

Now, it was fairly clear that corruption wasnot the main factor in Zuma’s dismissal.His replacement in office, PhumzileMlambo-Nguka, was almost immediatelyinvolved in a scandal. She used a Falcon900 executive jet of the SA Air Force totake her husband, children and friends on aholiday to the United Arab Emirates. It wasalso clear that Mbeki, an autocrat of thefirst water, was more than happy to use thejudiciary and the State intelligence services

After 10 years of GEAR:COSATU, the Zuma Trial and the Dead

End of Alliance politicsby Lucien van der Walt

Mbeki

ZABALAZA SOUTHERN AFRICAPAGE 2

to resolve internal disputes in the ANC.

COSATU’S POSITIONThere was also nothing surprising in the

fact that Zuma used every trick in the bookto whip up support at the rape trial, rangingfrom crude Zulu nationalist appeals to alegal team that effectively put his accuseron trial. Mobilisations outside the court-house drew in a wide range of groups, withmany reactionary features, ranging fromslogans like “Burn the Bitch” to placardssaying “No Woman for President.”

A whole cult was built up around Zuma.The Friends of Jacob Zuma stated: “We,the people, will ensure that this man ofhonour, who dedicated his life to liberatingus, will finally have the right to defend him-self.” One protestor carried a cross, with aZuma picture, claiming that this “man ofhonour” was being persecuted “just like”another “man of honour,” Jesus Christ.This seems ridiculous, but it was typical ofthe Zuma mobilisations.

What was most surprising - at least at firstglance - was COSATU’s almost uncriticalsupport for Zuma during 2005 and 2006.The SACP was a bit more divided, but itsYouth League was in the forefront of theZuma mobilisation and the Friends ofJacob Zuma organisation.

STRANGE FRUITThis seems strange at first, but it is the

logical outcome of the dead end in whichCOSATU and the SACP find themselvesafter ten years of “engaging” the ANC, afterten years of futile complaints about GEAR,after ten years of COSATU policy docu-ments gathering dust at Shell House.

Unable to break with the ANC, and unable

to change it, the union and the Party placedtheir hopes in Zuma. Zuma had neveruttered a word against GEAR, against cap-italism or against neo-liberalism but he hadone good point: he was not Mbeki, and itwas hoped that he might be a new Mosesto lead the people. After all, according toCOSATU and SACP thinking, there mustalways be a great leader: the masses needto be led.

The “support for Cde Jacob Zuma,” BladeNzimande of the SACP recently told theNUM, exposed popular opposition to thecrises of corruption, factionalism and per-sonal careerism” in the ANC, “crises” thatwere “inherent in trying to build a leadingcadre based on capitalist values and thesymbiotic relationship between the leadingechelons of the state and emerging blackcapital.” The Party Youth League grandlystated that “Our defence and support forJacob Zuma is the defence of the constitu-tion.”

Meanwhile, speaking of the upcomingZuma corruption trial, Zweli Vavi ofCOSATU called for Zuma to be reinstatedin his positions: “”We will ensure thatwhenever comrade Zuma appears in court,our people will demonstrate en-masse.”

EXODUS WITHOUT A MAPNothing can better express the bankrupt-

cy of the political outlook of COSATU andthe SACP than these positions. Zuma isno different to Mbeki: another rich politi-cian, another false Messiah who misleadsthe working class, another ANC scoundrelwho would implement GEAR as much asMbeki. In no way whatsoever would hebreak with the ANC policy of developing “aleading cadre based on capitalist values”

and a “symbiotic relationship between theleading echelons of the state and emergingblack capital.”

However, there is nothing surprisingabout the COSATU and SACP position.Bound to the ANC by fear, flattery and afailed strategy - the two-stage theory thatthe ANC will open the door to socialism -and blinded by its traditional devotion toCongress and its leaders, the two organi-sations remain in a dead end. The fact thatmany of their leaders are only too eager tojoin the ANC leadership at the capitalistfeast does not help either. In this situation,support for Zuma is certainly tragic butalmost inevitable.

Support for Zuma allows the ANC toremain sacred and untouchable, and thepolitics of relying on a saviour untouched.A hard look at the nature of the transitioncan be avoided, and a serious struggleagainst capitalism postponed, yet again.All problems could be blamed on Mbekiand his faction: Zuma has been discoveredto represent the shining soul of the ANC;Mbeki became Satan overnight. In returnfor COSATU and SACP backing in theAlliance and internal ANC battles, thestructures hoped Zuma might - just might -be nicer than Mbeki and might - just might- listen to the working class for a while.

This is what the pro-Zuma mobilisationsby working class organisations mean. Theoutcome of a disastrous politics, they don’ttake the working class out of the dead endthat loyalty to the ANC involves. The onlyway out is a break with the ANC, not a falsechoice between Mbeki and Zuma. TheANC is not the solution: it is a large part ofthe problem faced by the workers and thepoor.

Class struggle brought down Apartheid and it will bringdown Mbeki and Zuma’s Capitalism as well

ZABALAZA SOUTHERN AFRICAPAGE 3

Seeing the police move on a single col-umn of smoke rising from two burning tyresover rebellious Khutsong, south-west ofJohannesburg, on March 1, local govern-ment election day, I was reminded of theNative American warrior in Dances WithWolves remarking of the distant fire of afrontiersman that he would not tolerate “asingle line of smoke in my own country”.

The ANC-led government in similar fash-ion had determined that Khutsong wouldnot explode on voting day; that the mock-ery of the vote that occurred would be“free”, albeit an enforced peace in a town-ship that had driven ANC leaders out,revolting against an administrative transferout of Gauteng province to an uncertainfuture in the poverty-strickenNorth-West.

FIRE IN KHUTSONG So two armoured Nyalas

lumbered over to the smok-ing tyres where photogra-phers were vainly trying toget a dramatic shot - butKhutsong was virtuallydeserted on the morning ofthe vote.

The fire-gutted Gugulethucommunity centre wasalready defaced by crudesexual, gangster - and, inwhat is a hopeful sign, anar-chist - graffiti. The presidingofficer at the government’sIndependent ElectoralCommission tent set up nextto the ruin glumly told me hedid not expect a single soul to turn out tovote that day.

He proved right, with barely more than200 out of 29,000 registered voters exer-cising their hard-won right. Khutsong resi-dent Albert Mamela stood near the smoul-dering tyres and told of his dream that thepeople of Khutsong - whether Zulu, Xhosaor “foreigner” - could “be like the Bafokeng”- the tribe that owns platinum mines nearRustenburg - and take ownership ofKhutsong’s nearby gold-mines, the richesof which seldom finds its way into localpockets.

Community ownership of the mines wouldrender local government irrelevant, hesaid: “because then we will take care ofdevelopment ourselves”. There is somehealthy anti-capitalist sentiment here, but itis also confused. The Bafokeng royalhouse controls the mines in question, andexploitation carries on as before. A kingmakes the economic decisions: this is notthe working class ownership and control

anarchist-communists advocate . Khutsong Residents accused councillors

of nepotism, the provision of toilets that didnot work and, worse in their view, not livingin the areas they supposedly represented,a common complaint. Mamela claimedthat councillors said R1,2-million had beenspent on the road to the Khutsong grave-yard, whereas he knew it had only costR800,000, suggesting the councillors hadpocketed the rest.

He suggested that Merafong mayor Desvan Rooyen had, unlike previous mayors,acquired bodyguards “because he knewwhat he was going to do” in “selling”Khutsong to the North West province.

But despite the powerful emotions circu-

lating on voting day, Khutsong was suffer-ing a hangover from the previous night’scelebration of the successful boycott calland was unlikely to produce drama, so Idrove on into Gauteng, north-east to thegated suburbs of Houghton to watch formerPresident Nelson Mandela cast his vote.

THE APF AND ELECTIONS I had far to travel, so bypassed Pimville in

Soweto where the Operation KhanyisaMovement (OKM) was contesting the elec-tions. There was a fierce debate in theAnti-Privatisation Forum (APF) over thequestion of elections. Trotskyist leader,APF organiser and Soweto activist TrevorNgwane jumped the gun, forming the OKMas a party and political vehicle for hiscareer and his politics without an APFmandate. In stark contrast to the socialmovements in areas such as Motsoaledi,Orange Farm and Sebokeng stood firmlyby a “no services - no vote” position

[although in Motsoaledi, this was laterreversed following an internal struggle].

Ngwane’s movement won a paid positionas a councillor, based on 4,305 votes.

Ngwane did not take the seat as expect-ed, but the OKM councillor who did willhave her lone left-wing voice drowned outby the 75 ANC and 31 DA councillors.Working class power lies in the communityand in the workplace, not in the forums ofthe ruling class. Ngwane was ousted amonth later at the Anti-Privatisation Forumannual general meeting as APF chair byBrickes Mokolo of the Orange Farm CrisisCommittee - a key figure in the anti-elec-toral faction of the APF. This is a hopefulsign, for Mokolo has helped build a viable,

anti-electoral strategy in thatpoor settlement.

THE OTHER HALF Houghton is old, genteel

Joburg, replete with bowlinggreens, high walls and lanesof poplar trees and oaks,gated with booms and secu-rity guards. The old andnew elites, with their blackmaids in tow, were smartlylined up to cast their ballots:no burning tyres here; onlythe worship of Mandela - thearchitect of post-apartheidneo-liberalism - as somesort of living saint of thewealthy.

From Houghton, I drovenorth-east to the small dia-mond-mine and prison town

of Cullinan to the east of Pretoria. There,the local Freedom Front Plus branch -Afrikaner seperatists - was hoping to oustthe incumbent Democratic Alliance neo-lib-erals from the Nokeng tsa TaemaneMunicipality. The ANC won, but the onlyreal excitement on the day was whenAfrikaner singer Valiant Swart happened topass through town.

MPUMULANGAFrom Cullinan, I drove out to Siyabuswa

in Mpumalanga, the former capital of theapartheid-era homeland of kwaNdebele,because here, the Ministry of Provincialand Local Government had promised me,was an example of a municipality that,while not wealthy, was exceptionally wellrun.

Siyabuswa means “we are governed”, butI found that the way that governance workssadly conforms to the patterns of endemiccorruption so well established in apartheiddays.

Collective Bargaining by Riot:Election Day in South Africa

ZABALAZA SOUTHERN AFRICAPAGE 4

Residents such as Amos and ElisabethMsiza and their friend Petros Mhlangu - allin their fifties - complained that their water-supply (charged at a rate guessed by thecouncil because their meters didn’t work)was intermittent and that they lost their pre-paid electrical power whenever it rained.

“If you have money, this governmenthelps you - but not those who struggle,”Mhlangu said.

The three residents blamed unelectedmunicipal manager George Mthimunye forSiyabuswa’s shoddy service delivery.

Their view was supported by ex-ANCindependent candidates such as JulyMsiza who told me that Mthimunye facednot only criminal charges of having sexual-ly harassed his secretary, but was alsoaccused of having stolen council funds topay for two friends of his to be trained astraffic officers (one of whom allegedlycrashed a council vehicle shewas illegally using for her ownpurposes, in far-off WhiteRiver). So much for well-gov-erned Siyabuswa!

TWELVE YEARS ON Fast-forward to April 27,

“Freedom Day”, twelve yearsdown the line from whatArchbishop Desmond Tutumemorably called the“Rainbow Nation” waiting tomake their mark in the firstpost-apartheid ballot.

And what a mark it hasbeen: from the heart-rendingwail of Fort Callata’s motherat the Truth andReconciliation Commissionhearings to the ascendancyof the Black EconomicEnrichment phalanx into positions of capi-talist and state power; from the collapse ofthe neo-fascist AWB to the rise of PhumzileMlambo-Ngcuka as a possible future pres-ident thanks to the axing of Jacob Zuma.

Trevor Manual is the darling of this eliteand its middle-class praise-singers, forwhom fiscal discipline is a golden calf andequality a sin. This mutual admiration soci-ety has decreed a perpetual round ofexpensive parties to praise the near-feudalconditions on which their empires are built,a perpetual celebration so to speak (I’mreminded of Jello Biafra’s phrase “the hap-piness you have demanded is now manda-tory!”).

But millions look set to be unemployed forlife and HIV/Aids, tuberculosis, malaria andailments of malnutrition such as kwashior-kor and marasmus - usually associated inthe popular imagination with famine inSudan or the Horn of Africa - stalk the pop-ulation.

Last May, at the second annual NationalSecurity Conference, two analysts fromvery different sectors had a dire warning for

the country: COSATU chief economist DrNeva Makgetla and Standard Bank creditpolicy and governance director DesmondGolding agreed that a highly educated butpermanently unemployed “underclass”constituted the country’s biggest securitythreat. The working class is retreating, butnot defeated, and it haunts the imaginationof those who rule this country.

UNFREEDOM DAYFurther rioting and arson in Khutsong

attended the elevation of councillors tooffice on the basis of a 2% poll - an electionthat Human Sciences Research Councilsociety culture and identity specialist DrMncedisi Ndletyana rightly described dur-ing a TV interview as “illegitimate”.

The official celebration was declared an“unFreedom Day” by the poor in Durban

who decried the evaporation of the dreamof equality the 1994 elections had prom-ised, but which the elites had betrayed.They demanded an end to evictions, cut-offs and forced relocations, saying theywere fighting for unconditional access tothe resources fenced off by the rich.

Local government specialist Greg Ruitersof Rhodes University told me that theyawning chasm between the developmen-tal promises of neo-liberalism and thegrinding poverty of South Africa’s sprawlingshackland (three out of every four SouthAfricans now lives in urban areas) wouldincreasingly see people take to directaction.

“The key problem for all parties contest-ing the local government elections,” Ruiterssaid, “is that citizens have discoveredanother, more direct, channel for givingvoice to their needs: ‘collective bargainingby riot’ may become more common thanwaiting to vote.”

The key problem for all the poor, howev-er, is that electoral, representative politicsis so limited and disempowering. As Sheila

Meintjies of Wits University’s political stud-ies department put it, “there is a growingsense that the councillors don’t necessarilyhold all the power, that the officials are real-ly, if anything, to blame for a lack of servicedelivery.”

These unelected municipal officials, shesaid, were directly lobbied by very powerfulbig-business interests that short-circuitedthe country’s bourgeois-democraticprocess and skewed development infavour of the rich.

A grim example of this powerful bureau-cratic class is eThekwini (Durban) munici-pal manager Mike Sutcliffe, an ANC strate-gist and die-hard opponent of the AbahlalibaseMjondolo (Shack-dwellers’Movement), whose protest marches he ille-gally tried to ban.

In March, Sutcliffe and his ideologicalcohorts suffered two key court defeats - by

the Abahlali baseMjondoloand the Soweto ConcernedResidents - which confirmedthe absolute right of people togather and to demonstratewithout requiring police per-mission. This is a big victoryfor the social movements thatthey should fully exploit.

WORKING CLASSDEMOCRACY

We anarchist communistswould go further thanMeintjies, underlining that it issimply impossible for thecountry’s 400 Members ofParliament to truly representthe interests of 46.9-millionpeople. It is even less likelythat 37 very wealthy party-political Cabinet Ministers,

tainted by the elitist idea of “democraticcentralism” will bend over backwards forthe working class and poor. Both ourWestminster-style parliamentary democra-cy and the ANC’s “democratic centralism”are anything but democratic.

The elections of 1994 were a huge victo-ry inasmuch as apartheid’s doom wassealed. But there were not enough, andcould never be enough, and their achieve-ment is increasingly overshadowed by thegrim neo-liberal class war being waged bythe ruling elite . Capitalism, with its classsystem, will always benefit the few at theexpense of the many.

Activists in Swaziland and Zimbabweshould take heed. Real popular empower-ment and real economic and social equali-ty can only be achieved by well-organised,mass-based, directly-democratic, commu-nity-controlled action against the parasiteclass. “Collective bargaining by riot” is agood start, but we must build working classpower until we can move onto the offen-sive, and remake the world.

ZABALAZA SOUTHERN AFRICAPAGE 5

I joined the Communist Party of SouthAfrica in 1948 as a Wits student. Beforethen I had just accepted that the way thingswere was normal. Then I went to Italywhich had a very strong Communist Partyand the feeling was that it would siezepower any day. The US Third Fleet waspatrolling the Mediterranean at that stageand we asked ourselves what they weredoing. They were trying to prevent com-munist take-overs in Italy, Greece and to alesser extent Spain.

One day I saw a huge crowd runningtowards me, being chased by the policewho were beating them with truncheons. Iducked into a doorway and the shopkeep-er took me inside and explained it was acommunist meeting addressed by PalmiroTogliatti [the head of the Italian CommunistParty]. They were protesting the Americanpresence and I saw how they were treated.

Later when I returned to South Africa, Ijoined the CPSA under Moses Kotane,Yusuf Dadoo and JB Marks because it wasthen the only organisation where peoplefrom all races came together... In 1955,messages were sent out to communityleaders - which was itself a problem, that itwas only the leaders - to consult the peopleon what they wanted from a free society.Thousands of scraps of paper came back,mostly from poor people, saying things

such as they wanted to send their childrento university. Rusty Bernstein of the SACP[the renamed CPSA] turned all thedemands into “The People Shall Govern...”because he had that poetic ability.Whatever its faults and problems, theFreedom Charter was a people’s docu-ment.

THE COMMUNIST BETRAYALBut in 1956, the Soviet Union invaded

Hungary. The whole thing seemed mad tome: I wondered how a people couldoppose their own government, and a com-munist government at that?

The Soviets said they were defendingHungary from the reaction, an argumentthat they would later use regarding theirinterventions in Czechoslovakia andPoland, but the more I read about the situ-ation, the more I realised this was not true.My communist ideas were suddenly in dan-ger and my questioning lead me to ques-tion the ANC which we all then regarded asthe “Big Daddy” of the liberation move-ments, as our father.

At that time, I worked for New Age, theSACP and ANC newspaper that changedits name several times (each time it wasbanned we relaunched it under anothername until they finally banned us fromdoing so). My wife worked as a journalist

for New Age inDurban, and I alsohelped out because Iwas not doing well asan architect. Thenewspaper was edit-ed by Brian Bunting.

I wrote a letter forthe newspaper whichI submitted toBunting, arguing thatthe ANC as a people’sliberation movementshould object to theHungarian invasionand I said that ChiefAlbert Luthuli [thenhead of the ANC],who I’d met andrespected very much,should lead such a

campaign. Bunting initially refused to pub-lish it, only later printing it in a very cen-sored form.

At that stage I worked on New Age withMac Maharaj, but he was away doingsomething. I met some very fine people inthe Communist Party and they introducedme to the world and taught me philoso-phy... At that time I was - and I don’t thinkI’m being boastful here - quite an influentialmember of the Party.

But later, when the Soviet Union invadedPoland and Czechoslovakia, you’d findthere was always someone in the localParty who would explain it away as a goodthing. I came from a middle-class familybut it was members of the Party who weremy friends. Then when I began to criticisethe Soviet Union, which was where webelieved there was real socialism and peo-ple were equal, my friends began freezingme out.

I became isolated: socially, economicallyand intellectually. I started reading othermaterial and came out of communism,though it was later my son who turned meinto an anachist: which shows that youoften learn more from your children thanyour parents!

[After leaving the SACP, Lipman and afew other disaffected members successful-ly firebombed the office where theapartheid state held the records that werebeing compiled to include black women inthe hated pass-law system that so severe-ly restricted black men’s movement. For ayear, he fought alongside the AfricanResistance Movement which conductedseveral anti-apartheid bombings, butbecame disenchanted with its “feeble liber-alism” and left it].

THE DIVISIONS OF APARTHEIDOne strange story is that one day when I

lived in Hillbrow... Detective-SergeantJohan Coetzee - later General JohanCoetzee, the head of BOSS [the secretpolice agency, the Bureau Of StateSecurity] knocked on my door and he andhis policemen searched my flat and took allthe books and shook them out to see if hecould find anything hidden in them.

He found a poem by Eugene Marais,

The Anti-LiberationMovements

This is an edited version of a talk given by veteran commu-nist Alan Lipman who participated in drawing up the Freedom Charter in 1955, about why he left the

Communist Party and the ANC, subsequently becoming an anarchist. He was addressing a two-day workshop heldby the ZACF at the invitation of the Anti-Privatisation Forum, on class, capitalism, apartheid, neo-liberalism and the

ANC, which was held at the headquarters of the Orange Farm Crisis Committee on May 21 this year.The talk was given in English and translated into seSotho.

ZABALAZA SOUTHERN AFRICAPAGE 6

which is good for a winter day like today: “Okoud is die windjie en skraal / En blink indie dof-lig en kaal...”: “Oh cold is the windand thin / And shining in the dusk andnaked...” He was surprised that I, a Jodsekomunis [Jewish communist] readAfrikaans poetry. He asked me if I liked thepoem and I said of course. He said “It’s awonderful poem.”

Then he found another poem, where I’dwritten in the margins that it was Boy Scoutrubbish: “Gee my ‘n roer in my regterhand;gee mey ‘n bok wat vlug oor die rand...”[“Give me a rifle in my right hand; give mea buck that flees over the ridge...”]. He saidhe didn’t like that one either. He found myrugby clothes and asked me what team Iplayed for. I could see he was wonderingwhat someone like me was doing playinghis game.

He then found some papers that my wifeBeata had hidden under some shirts. Helooked at them, then looked at me, thencalled out to his men that they were fin-ished the search. I never knew why he didthat. Perhaps under other circumstances,Johan Coetzee and I could have beenfriends.

Later at the TRC [Truth andReconciliation Commission, held 10 yearsago], I saw him there, but I didn’t talk tohim, because I was there to support [ANCmember] Marius Schoon whose wifeJeanette and six-year-old daughter Katrynwere blown up in a bomb planted by[Security Branch spy] Craig Williamson’speople...

[Lipman later said that Coetzee was theone who had tipped him off that he was ona list of militants targeted for arrest in whatbecame the Rivonia Treason Trial.Lipman, having passed on Coetzee’s warn-

ing to the liberationmovements, was outof the country at thetime of the 1963Rivonia raid that net-ted Nelson Mandelaand other top ANCand SACP leaders.Lipman thus narrowlyescaped becoming along-term RobbenIsland political prison-er. He said he neverdiscovered whyCoetzee tipped himoff.

[After fleeing intoexile in the UnitedKingdom where hesat on the nationalcouncil of theCampaign for NuclearDisarmament (CND). After being attractedto various libertarian socialist critiques ofStalinism, he became an anarchist.Lipman, who returned to South Africa in theearly 1990s after 30 years in exile andwrote his memoirs, which will soon be pub-lished by the ZACF, is a living link betweenthe generation that rejected the ANC andSACP’s false vision in the 1950s - andthose like the ZACF who reject it today.]

THE PARTY FEARS THEPEOPLE

I always liked the phrase from the feministmovement: “The personal is the politicaland the political is the personal.” In otherwords, your economic oppression is yourpersonal problem - but it is also a real pub-lic issue. For example, hundreds of golf

courses have sprung up after 1994 andthey consume so much water, yet you arebattling to get clean water to drink in yourhomes.

I left the “official” liberation movements forpersonal reasons, but I still support the realliberation. [President Thabo] Mbeki’s aclever man, but I don’t trust him as far as Ican throw this building. I’ve seen too manyforced evictions from this supposed “worldclass city” of ours where those who haveremove those who they say make dirt orwho don’t look smart. We live in a countryin which the hopes of the past have beenpushed into the dirt. I guess I’d be seen asan “ultra-left” in Mbeki’s terms.

My philosophy used to be the Christian“Do unto others as you’d have them dounto you,” which is not a bad rule for life.But as an anarchist, to me, the most impor-

tant truth is that humans can managetheir own affairs. You don’t needleaders; leaders are mostly danger-ous people. The reason that theCommunist Party today is the sameas any other party and behaves in theauthoritarian fashion it does isbecause it doesn’t trust the people. Ialso believe that what you do to getwhat you want is as important aswhat you want.

The newspapers are owned by bigcorporations and they tell the storiesthey want to hear. But although thenewspapers have behaved disgust-ingly over the Zuma affair [the acquit-tal in May on a rape charge of ANCdeputy president Jacob Zuma], thereis no real difference between Mbekiand Zuma. It won’t be better underZuma. I spent 35 years of my lifesupporting the liberation struggle butthe ANC is now an anti-liberationmovement. Now we need a real“People’s National Congress” - underpeople’s control - to take back realliberation forward.

ZABALAZA SOUTHERN AFRICAPAGE 7

In December and January, the royal dic-tatorship of Swaziland was rocked by aseries of 17 petrol-bombings of state tar-gets by pro-democracy militants. No-onewas seriously injured in the attacks, but theparanoid state overplayed its hand, arrest-ing several militants and charging themwith treason, which normally carries thedeath penalty, for an offence that at mostamounted to damage to private property.

THE ZACF POSITION ONINSURGENCY VERSUS MASSORGANISING

The independently-owned Times ofSwaziland was quick to place the blame forthe bombings on the Zabalaza AnarchistCommunist Federation (ZACF) which isorganised clandestinely in Swaziland - theonly significant left force in the country afterthe collapse of the Swazi Communist Party,but hardly an organisation "even mightierthan PUDEMO [the outlawed main opposi-tion Peoples’ United DemocraticMovement] or SWAYOCO [the SwazilandYouth Congress]".

In a January 15 article headlined"Zabalaza’s claims of bombing police van,"the writer, Mduduzi Magagula, falselyclaimed that the ZACF had "stoned andpetrol bombed a police vehicle in Manzini

during a PUDEMOorganised demon-stration recently."The false claimperhaps arose froma misreading of aZACF report fromManzini on thebombing of anarmoured police"hippo" by youngcomrades.

Nevertheless, theTimes was profes-sional enough topublish in full adenial of involve-ment in the bomb-ings by the ZACF -including the feder-ation’s stated aimsin the country:

1) The ZACF,which operates inboth South Africaand Swaziland,supports the pro-democracy move-ment in Swaziland,but it does so real-

ising that the Swazi political system canonly be changed democratically by the bulkof the Swazi popular classes organising enmasse to change it at grassroots level intoa form acceptable to themselves. A fewpeople running around with petrol-bombs isboth insufficient to change the system andis an anti-democratic substitution of shad-owy unaccountable individuals for demo-cratic mass action.

2) Therefore, the ZACF as a whole has nopolicy of petrol-bombing state or capitalisttargets, and its membership in Swazilandhave denied to our annual regional con-gress in December 2005 to having takenpart in any such bombings. The report car-ried on our website of the attack on thehippo has been misread to suggest thatZACF members participated in the attack.The reference to "comrade-controlled" ter-ritory simply implies territory controlled, atleast at the time, by comrades of the pro-democratic movement, not necessarilyZACF members.

3) The ZACF remains committed to thestruggle for mass participatory democracyfor all people resident in Swaziland (andmore broadly in southern Africa) but, asThe Times of Swaziland article correctlyreported, "agitates to go beyond the usualbourgeois betrayal and involve a destruc-

tion of the Swazi capitalist state and itsreplacement by decentralised popularassemblies" of the working class, poor andpeasantry.

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITYAT THE TREASON TRIAL

Still, the bombings awoke the Swazi pop-ulace from their traditional political timidity.After the bombings, the masses throughoutthe country have now realised that with thesupport of internationalism, they can doanything against the system. It’s as ifbefore the bombings, the majority had thebelief that the decisions of the royal family,cabinet ministers and the parliament werealways final. The proof of the system’sweakness is their over-reaction, threaten-ing suspects with 25 years in prison fortreason.

Those accused are: PUDEMO secretary-general Ignatius B. Dlamini (41), MduduziE. Mamba (34) of Sipofaneni, RobertNzima (40), Sicelo Mkhonta (22), GoodwillDu Pont (19) of Matsetsa, Themba Mabuza(32) of Mbelebeleni, Vusi Shongwe (37) ofSidzakeni, Kenneth Mkhonta (32),Mfanawenkhosi Mtshali (31) and SiphoJele (36) of Mshikishiki, MfanukhonaNkambule (26), Sipho Hlophe (38) ofGobholo, Wandile Dludlu (24) the presidentof the University of Swaziland’s students’representative council, MphandlanaShongwe (43), and Gibholo Mfan’fikileNkambule (16) of Nkwalini.

After this decision by the government,everyone sympathised with the accusedguys. But nobody voiced their disagree-ment with the decision because it camefrom the "master", someone who looks likeand is known to be a monster, King MswatiIII. The accused claim they were torturedin custody, as did Mduduzi Dlamini ofMhlosheni, who may be forced to turnstate’s witness after confessing to treasonin February.

However, international interest in the trialof the alleged bombers - who the state hasso far failed to prove guilty - proved crucial.On the final day in court, everyone wasinterested to see the power of the interna-tional supporters of the accused comparedto the Swazi prosecutors and the differentway they treated Swazi citizens.

When bail was granted to the suspects onMarch 15, most of the close comrades andfriends of the accused came and congratu-lated us, expressing trust in the display ofinternational solidarity. And I trust thateverybody realised that they can take direct

Swaziland after theBombings by MK (ZACF, Swaziland)

and Michael Schmidt

PAGE 8ZABALAZA SOUTHERN AFRICA

action against these leadership sects,whether state, business or so-called revo-lutionary. For PUDEMO’s stance on thetreason trial, read Swaziland: Smoking Gunor Replica? online at: www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=2412

THE MASSES START TOREGAIN THEIR CONSCIOUSNESS - AND THEELITE START TO SQUABBLEAMONG HEMSELVES

The fact that the ruling class respondedwith such a heavy hand to the bombingsforced a change in the people’s mentality.This change is proven by the five keydevelopments. Firstly, there is muchmovement on the ground: for example, theyouth in Manzini are mobilising against thesystem of patriarchy that enables their eld-ers to reserve all jobs for themselves with-out any going to the youth.

Furthermore, even the state-ownedmedia has now started to take actionagainst the corrupt national leadership -throwing the spotlight, for instance, on acabinet minister who was caught with hispants down with a young woman not hiswife. Now the ZACF does not take a moralposition on adultery, but the point we wantto make is rather that the media is nolonger scared to take action against the rul-ing sect that believes it is always right.

Thirdly, there are even cabinet ministerswho are currently banned from leaving thecountry after being suspected of corruption

- and all these suspicions were raised byworking class people.

This shows that the masses of Swazilandhave started to regain their feet, and theirsense of self-confidence to challenge theautocracy. It also suggests that theImbokodvo vehicle is becoming con-tentious, is beginning to break down andwill eventually fade completely (theImbokodvo National Movement is the solelegal political party, established in 1964 byMswati’s father, King Sobhuza II who out-lawed all opposition in 1973).

Fourthly, within the cabinet ministers, ascandal has arisen around the Minister ofHealth and Social Welfare MfofoMkambule who organised some parliamen-tarians and citizens into a structure calledthe Inhlava Forum, which purports to bemerely a discussion forum, but which hasraised the eyebrows of the leadership whosee it as the embryo of a political party. Asa result, Mkambule was axed.

The Inhlava Forum’s Manifesto called fora conventional bourgeois-democratic sepa-ration of powers between "parliament", thecourts, the monarchy and Imbokodvo andfor a constituency-based representativedemocracy that consults social organisa-tions in pursuit of serving the needs of theSwazi majority. But it did not spell out howthis would differ from the false representa-tion already entrenched as the Tinkhundlasystem.

Under Tinkhundla, constituency MPs arenominated by loyalist local councils headedby tribal chiefs and the "parliament" to

which they are elect-ed has nothing butadvisory powers.Last year, the HighCourt ruled politicalopposition parties"non-existent" afterthey demanded asay in the revisedone-party constitu-tion of 2005. Nowan apparently boguspolitical party, theAfrican UnitedDemocratic Party(AUDP) has beenallowed, under thisnon-party system, to

"negotiate" with the parasitic elite. Clearlythe elite is starting to feel the heat from thegrassroots and is trying various strategiesto squirm out of the trap it has painted itselfinto.

THAT’S WHAT WE’RE TALKINGABOUT! WORKING CLASSMASS DIRECT ACTION

Lastly, at Nhlangano in the southern partof Swaziland, the masses and the poor aredoing things against their immediate classenemies. For example, there is one textile

company by thename of ZhengYong with morethan 2,000employees, whosefactory wasburned to theground. This fac-tory produces thefamous fashionbrand Timberland.Initially, the work-ers had embarked on a strike for a wageincrease and 30 days’ maternity leave.

The case went to court and the courtsperformed their class role by declaring thestrike illegal. The decision divided the strik-ers, with those who feared the power of thelaw returning to work. But those who stoodby their rights as workers decided to takedirect action and, recognising their employ-ers as their immediate class enemy (capi-tal, the monarchy and the state being moreremote enemies), the source of their pover-ty and exploitation, burned the factorydown.

This shows that the workers, a key com-ponent of Swazi society, for a long timepolitically inactive, have started to recog-nise their class enemy and start to dosomething to directly address the problem.Recognizing that the oppressed people ofSwaziland have demands of their own,which we endorse provided they are pro-gressive and democratic in nature, theZACF demands the following:

1) A general amnesty for all political prison-ers;2) Freedom of association, assembly andspeech, and full trade union rights;3) The abolition of the pseudo-democraticTinkhundla, Liqoqo (chieftains inner circle),royal and state power structures and theirreplacement by directly-democratic,decentralised popular assemblies of theworking class, poor and peasantry whichwill be horizontally federated across theterritory;4) Equal rights for women;5) Abolition of all chiefly privileges - espe-cially the power to steal land from the poor;6) Land redistribution in both commercialand traditional sectors;7) Free and democratic education, with stu-dent representative councils at schools;8) A living wage campaign in the planta-tions, factories and farms;9) A ban on retrenchments, and well-paiddecent jobs for all: and10) an end to discrimination based onHIV/Aids status and free anti-retroviraldrugs for all people living with the virus.

They can arrest us, tortureus, and beat us. Still they’ll

never ever defeat us!

ZABALAZA SOUTHERN AFRICAPAGE 9

PAGE 10ZABALAZA SOUTHERN AFRICA

Most workers know increasingly littleabout May Day. Many have simply forgot-ten it's meaning, and some are disillu-sioned. Instead of calling it "Our day"many mindlessly speak of"Worker's Day," and think "Longweekend". And the bosses giveworkers time off, appearing lenientand generous, making the workersseem ungrateful, with no excusesto complain.

GET RICH ON MAY DAYTaking advantage of the apathy,

enterprising bosses cash in on soc-cer events, brewery production andother activities. They benefit fromthe pain of workers and their com-munities, and take control of theminds and lives of the masses, anddistance them from discussing -and questioning - their endless mis-eries.

Yet the workers are the ones who pro-duce everything, yet have neither controlnor ownership of anything. We own ourlabour, but without food, cannot exist at all.So, we are bound to sell our labour for nextto nothing, to the bosses who controleverything we need to survive.

And the bosses have made it impossi-ble for the working class people to thinkand do things independently through lawsand media under their control. Theyuse these as tools to protect andadvance their interest at our expense.Social needs are distorted by profit andpower; the wealth of society is not usedto keep us alive, happy and healthy,but to divide us.

In recent years many entertainmententerprises have been booming, partic-ularly in the south of Johannesburgregion. The youth and the unemployedare drawn into immoral activities, andaccept highly exploitative jobs just tomake sure they don't miss the week-ends, especially the long ones.

Drinking beer and being a soccerfan has become a national hobby, andused as a sign of patriotism: "love yourcountry and be proud of the black gov-ernment". Even commemorations ofhuman rights milestones likeSharpeville, June 16 and Women'sDay get drawn into the circle ofunthinking entertainment, escape fromhard realities and empty patriotism.

KWAITO AND CLASS STRUGGLE

Community radio stations were set upto convey the views of ordinary people,

allowing previously disadvantaged oppor-tunities to express themselves. The Kwaitomusic style seemed to be a promisingweapon to raise issues and awareness,because of its origin within black townshipsand its reflection of our lives in the commu-nities.

But this has not happened. Kwaito hasbeen commercialised, and has nothing todo with advancing the minds and lives ofthe people. The everyday hardships of

communities are presented as a hiplifestyle choice, something to laugh about.

Instead of raising political issues, DJsand Kwaito glorify the hardships of people,

and make a living - like soccer andmedia stars - ambassadorsbetween the rich and poor, earninglarge amounts of money and mid-dle class lives.

Major companies move in Nike,Sasol, Coca Cola, Absa, Vodacom,Nokia, MMW etc. - as sponsors,shaping people's minds, and leav-ing no stone unturned. The mass-es, particularly the youth, whoadore these stars, take them asrole models. But few can make itout of poverty, they end up frustrat-ed, with time wasted and nothingachieved during a vital period oftheir lives. Rather than explore,improvise, demand and enjoy life toits fullest, they become mentally

crippled and caught up in social and familydemands.

UNEMPLOYMENT AND LOWWAGES

Those who are unemployed are facedwith a pitiless situation of mental and phys-ical slavery. Their families close doors onthem, calling them loafers who belongnowhere in society. They are driven to the

job market, with its crumbs andexploitation. Like sheep, they wait atthe slaughtering pens, hoping to benext under the knife when the bossesneed new blood.

Many dream of work, and slaves tocapitalism. The bosses appear askindly people who care and doingeverything to save lives by doling out atiny number of jobs. And their mask ofsympathy soon falls away.

Workers are thrown on the streetfor asking for clarity on contracts, andthe other workers learn to take carenever to slightly upset their masters,because there are hundreds otherunemployed workers waiting andstarving, ever ready to jump to slaugh-tering pens. The workers fightamongst each other, and the bossesbecome kings and queens, on guard24 hrs a day. The governments backup the bosses, and the workersdemands for safety and a living wageare drowned out by the bosses'

A free working classneeds free minds:

May-BEE another day

PAGE 11ZABALAZA SOUTHERN AFRICA

demands for higher profits - despitealready having sucked the workers dry.

The bosses are automatically excusedfor job losses and the workers are thescapegoats. We are constantly remindedto protect our jobs, and avoid trouble,because getting a job is almost impossible.Workers' rights are walked over: the boss-es alone decide, because if theirinterests are not respected they willleave the country; other bosseswon't set their foot in the country.This would leave the workers alone,and stranded, with no one to turn toand ask "Please, I want to be yourslave".

Wages are cut, as an excuse toemploy more workers, or as anexcuse to retain existing workers.Workers' confidence is shattered,and their basic needs becomeunthinkable: women give birth atwork to keep their jobs safe.

IMMIGRANTS AND DIVID-ED LABOUR

It is common for bosses to pre-fer workers coming from countriesdevastated by civil wars andfamine. These workers are desper-ate, rightless, often "illegal," andeasy prey to bosses who can avoidany responsibilities to cover forworkers' health and safety. Theimmigrant workers are not citizens,and the labour laws do not apply.This way bosses don't have toworry about the precautions andsafety equipment and measures expectedby the labour laws.

Because of these workers' extremedesperation, they have to accept anythingthe boss decides. They have no one toturn to. The government plays its part,smashing any possibilities for these peopleto raise their heads, by randomly harassingand arresting them for identity documents.

South African workers are pittedagainst the immigrants, told that they arelazy, and instructed to "ask Mandela" for ajob. In a situation of mass unemployment,this provides breeding grounds for xeno-phobia and hatred from South Africanworkers against their fellow workers fromneighbouring countries. Blaming immi-grants, rather than bosses, for their misery,some South African workers call the immi-grants insulting names, and inform thepolice who the immigrants are, and wherethey stay. This behaviour is driven by thejealousy and hatred that is the by-productof poverty.

ETHNIC CONFLICTSBut this is not only happening to the

immigrants. Amongst the African workersthere is a good deal of prejudice and dis-trust, especially in the townships, hostels

and squatter camps where migrants fromdifferent parts of the countryside convergeto find jobs. Many treat their shacks astemporary camps, and long to return to thecountry.

The mindset of ethnic rivalry and thebelief in a return to the country makes it dif-ficult for these communities to challenge

the government policies affecting our lives.Ideas like " This is not our home, we areonly here to work, as long as we have aplace to sleep," and "There's no use to fightfor people who'll turn their back on youtomorrow, and "We cannot be ruled bysuch-and-such nationality" are commonenough. Such sentiments were the grimcentre of the cloud that hovered above theANC versus IFP massacres in the 1990s.

These ethnic divisions were also usedduring the rise of the mining industry,where jobs were allocated on an ethnicbasis, and workers were housed in differ-ent ethnic hostels. People from a particu-lar ethnic group were, for example, oftenmine police. The chiefs played a role too,recruiting people, providing written permis-sion to work on the mines, and the govern-ment did not allow the workers to settle intown. They were always reminded thatthey belonged in the countryside and wereharassed and arrested by the police forpass offences.

So working class people's identitieswere deeply shaped by where they camefrom, and the language they spoke.Whether immigrant, or Zulu, or Xhosa, theworker often saw fellow-workers as aliensstealing jobs, as traitors who stole thenational wealth. Today we see this with

xenophobia, but also with the view that theANC is a Xhosa party, and that its capitalistpolicies were somehow caused by Xhosas- rather than the ruling class.

The chiefs remain powerful, and thepoliticians use ethnicity and other legaciesof the past to lead the working class astray.This allows them to implement their neo-

liberal policies, without collectivequestioning from the masses whovote these crooks into power. Andall of this is presented as in the ordi-nary people's interest.

It is called democracy and gen-der-equality because a few wealthyblack people drive fancy cars andmingle with wealthy Whites. Thepeople are told anyone can get rich:"just listen to the your black govern-ment"; if you are poor, it is your ownfault.

FREE YOUR MINDThese mental illusions - "get rich

quick," "the immigrants steal jobs,""the struggle is over" - must be iden-tified and rooted out so we canbecome healthier and strong again.Surely we need to take care ofthings that benefit our communitiesat the end of the day, and leaveaside anything that has a possiblethreat to our lives.

Surely the working class cantake back its traditions, with commu-nity soccer teams and genuine com-munity media controlled collectivelyby the people. These must be used

as weapons to defend and protect our-selves from the enemy.

Every human being must know and beaware on the tricks of the class enemy.Those who choose to become traitors mustdo so - but not at our expense.

PAGE 12ZABALAZA ANALYSIS

AMERICA MUSCLES INTO“FRENCH TERRITORY”

Former colonial power France maintainedthe largest foreign military presence inAfrica since most countries attained sover-eignty in the 1950s and 1960s. But Francereduced its armed presence on the conti-nent by two thirds at the end of the last cen-tury, though it continues to intervene in amuscular and controversial fashion. Forexample, under a 1961 “mutual defence”pact, French forces were allowed to be per-manently stationed in Ivory Coast: the 500-strong 43rd Marine Infantry Battalion isbased at Port Bouet next to the Abidjan air-port.

When the civil war erupted there inSeptember 2002, France added a “stabili-sation force”, now numbering some 4,000under Operation Licorne, which was aug-mented in 2003 by 1,500 EconomicCommunity of West African States (ECOW-

AS) “peacekeep-ers” drawn

f r o m

Senegal, Ghana, Benin, Togo and Nigeria.In January this year, the United Nationsextended the mandate of OperationLicorne until December.

But piggybacking off the French militarypresence in Africa are a series of new for-eign military and policing initiatives by theUnited States and the European Union. Itappears the US has devised a new MonroeDoctrine for Africa (the term has become asynonym for the doctrine of US interven-tions in what it saw as its Latin American“back yard”).

Under the George W Bush regime’s “Waron Terror” doctrine, the US has designateda swathe of territory that curves across theglobe from Colombia and Venezuela inSouth America, through Africa’s Maghreb,Sahara and Sahel regions into the MiddleEast and Central Asia as the “arc of insta-bility” where both real and supposed terror-ists may find refuge and training.

In Africa, which falls under the US mili-tary’s European Command (EUCOM), theUS has struck agreements with France toshare its military bases. For example:there is now a US Marine Corps base inDjibouti at the French base of Camp

Lemonier with more than 1,800Marines stationed there, allegedly

for “counter-terrorism” opera-tions in the horn of Africa,

the Middle East andEast Africa - as well

as controlling theRed Sea ship-ping lanes.But the US

p r e s e n c einvolves more than

piggybacking offFrench bases.

In 2003, USintelligence

o p e r a -

tives began training spies for four unnamedNorth African countries - believed to beMorocco and Egypt and perhaps alsoAlgeria and Tunisia.

It is also conducting training of the armedforces of countries such as Chad and inSeptember last year, Bush told the UnitedNations Security Council that the USwould, over the next five years, train40,000 “African peace-keepers” to “pre-serve justice and order in Africa”. The USEmbassy in Pretoria said at the time thatthe US had already trained 20,000 “peace-keepers” in 12 African countries in the useof “non-lethal equipment”.

And now, while the US is downscalingand dismantling military bases in Germanyand South Korea, it is relocating these mil-itary resources to Africa and the MiddleEast in order to “combat terrorism” and“protect oil resources”.

In Africa, new US bases are being built inDjibouti, Uganda, Senegal, and São Tomé& Príncipe. These “jumping-off points” willstation small permanent forces, but withthe ability to launch major regional militaryadventures, according to the US-basedAssociated Press. An existing US base atEntebbe, Uganda, under the one-partyregime of US ally Yoweri Museveni, already“covers” East Africa and the Great Lakesregion. At Dakar in Senegal, the US isbusy upgrading an airfield.

SOUTH AFRICA SECRETLYJOINS THE “WAR ON TERROR”

Governments with whom the US has con-cluded military pacts include Gabon,Mauritania, Rwanda, Guinea and SouthAfrica. The US also has a “secondGuantanamo” in the Indian Ocean wherealleged terror suspects kidnapped in Africa,the Middle East or Asia can be detainedand interrogated without trial: a detention

camp, refuellingpoint and bomberbase situated onthe British-

co lon i sed

The New AmericanImperialism in Africa

by Michael Schmidt

PAGE 13ZABALAZA ANALYSIS

Chagos Archipelago island of DiegoGarcia, an island from which the indige-nous inhabitants were forcibly removed toMauritius.

In South Africa’s case, while it is unlikelythere will ever be US bases establishedbecause the strength of the country’s mili-tary, the SANDF, makes that unnecessary,in 2005, the country quietly signed on tothe US’s Africa Contingency OperationsTraining Assistance (ACOTA) programmewhich is aimed at integrating African armedforces into US strategic (read: imperialist)objectives.

South Africa, by signing on to ACOTA asits 13th African member, effectively joinedthe American “War on Terror”. ACOTAstarted life as a “humanitarian” programmerun by EUCOM out of Stuttgart, Germany,in 1996. After the 9-11 attacks, thePentagon reorganised ACOTA and gave itmore teeth.

Today, its makeup is moreobviously aggressive ratherthan defensive. According toPierre Abromovici, writing in theJuly 2004 edition of Le MondeDiplomatique about rumoursthat South Africa was preparingto sign ACOTA - a full yearbefore it did so - “ACOTAincludes offensive training, par-ticularly for regular infantryunits and small units modelledon special forces... InWashington, the talk is nolonger of non-lethal weapons...the emphasis is on ‘offensive’co-operation”.

The real nature of ACOTA isperhaps indicated by the careerof the man heading it up,Colonel Nestor Pino-Marina, “aCuban exile who took part inthe 1961 failed US landing inthe Bay of Pigs,” Abromovici wrote. “He isalso a former special forces officer whoserved in Vietnam and Laos. During theReagan era he belonged to the Inter-American Defence Board, and, in the1960s, he took part in clandestine opera-tions against the Sandanistas. He wasaccused of involvement in drug-traffickingto fund arms sent to Central America” toprop up pro-Washington right-wing dicta-torships.

Clearly, Pino-Marina is a fervent “anti-communist” - whether that means opposingrebellious States or popular insurrections.He also sits on the executive of a strangeoutfit within the US military called theCuban-American Military council, whichaims at installing itself as the governmentof Cuba should the US ever achieve aforcible “regime-change” there.

The career of the US ambassador whoconcluded the ACOTA pact with SouthAfrica is also an indicator of US intentions.Jendayi Fraser, now Bush’s senior advisor

on Africa, had no diplomatic experience.Instead, she once served as a politico-mili-tary planner with the Joint Chiefs of Staff inthe Department of Defence and as seniordirector for African affairs at the NationalSecurity Council. According to Fraser’sonline biography, she “worked on Africansecurity issues with the State Department’sinternational military education training pro-grammes”.

IS THERE A MURDEROUS“SCHOOL OF THE AFRICAS”?

Those programmes include the “NextGeneration of African Military Leaders” offi-cers’ course run by the shadowy AfricanCentre for Strategic Studies, based inWashington, which has “chapters” in vari-ous African countries including SouthAfrica. The Centre appears to be a sort of“School of the Africas” similar to the infa-mous “School of the Americas” based at

Fort Benning in Georgia. In 2001, it wasrenamed the Western Hemisphere Institutefor Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).

Founded in 1946 in Panama, the Schoolof the Americas has trained some 60,000Latin American soldiers, including notori-ous neo-Nazi Bolivian dictator HugoBanzer, infamous Panamanian dictator anddrug czar Manuel Noriega, Argentine dicta-tors Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Violawhose regime murdered 30,000 peoplebetween 1976 and 1983, numerous death-squad killers, right up to Efrain Vasquezand Ramirez Poveda who staged a failedUS-backed coup in Venezuela in 2002.

Over the decades, graduates of theSchool have murdered and tortured hun-dreds of thousands of people across LatinAmerica, specifically targeting trade unionleaders, grassroots activists, students,guerrilla units, and political opponents.The murder of Archbishop Oscar Romeroof Nicaragua in 1980 and the “El Mozote”

massacre of 767 villagers in Guatemala in1981 were committed by graduates of theSchool. And yet the School of theAmericas Watch, an organisation trying toshut WHINSEC down, is on an FBI “anti-terrorism” watch-list.

So Africa should be concerned if theAfrican Centre for Strategic Studies hassimilar objectives, even if the School of theAmericas Watch cannot confirm thesefears. And there is more: we’ve all heard ofthe “Standby Force” being devised by theAfrican Union (AU), a coalition of Africa’sauthoritarian neo-liberal regimes. But theAU has also set up, under the patronage ofthe Organisation for Security and Co-oper-ation in Europe (which also covers NorthAmerica, Russia and Central Asia), theAfrican Centre for the Study and Researchof Terrorism.

The Centre is based in Algiers, Algeria, atthe heart of a murderous regime that has

itself “disappeared” some 3,000people between 1992 and 2003(according to AmnestyInternational: equivalent to thePinochet dictatorship in Chile,but ignored by the African left).The Centre’s director,Abdelhamid Boubazine told methat it would not only be a think-tank and trainer of “anti-terror-ism” judges, but that it wouldalso have teeth, providing train-ing in “specific armed interven-tion” in support of the conti-nent’s regimes.

Anneli Botha, the seniorresearcher on terrorism at thePretoria-based Institute forSecurity Studies, said, howev-er, that only 10% of terroristattacks in Africa were on armedforces, and only 6% on statefigures and institutions, though

the latter were “focussed”. She warnedthat a major cause of African terrorism was“a growing void between government andsecurity forces on the one hand and localcommunities on the other”. Caught in thegrip of misery and poverty, many peopleare recruited into rebel armies, eventhough few of these offer any sort of realsolution.

The Centre in Algiers operates under theAU’s Algiers Convention on Terrorism,which is notoriously vague on what definesterrorism, opening the door for a widerange of non-governmental, protest, grass-roots, civic, and militant organisations to betargeted for elimination by the new counter-terrorism forces. It would be naïve to thinkthat bourgeois democracy - which passedSouth Africa’s equally vaguely-definedProtection of Constitutional Democracyfrom Terrorism and Other Related ActivitiesAct into law last year - will protect the work-ing class, peasantry and poor from stateterrorism.

PAGE 14ZABALAZA ANALYSIS

The African tour of Chinese Premier WenJiabao, centred on fostering trade relationsbetween China and African and Arabiancountries, highlights an important recentdevelopment.

Revolutionaries in Anglophone Africahave always seen Britain and France asthe dominant imperialist powers on thecontinent, but other forces are emergingfrom the shadows to challenge their contin-ued post-colonialdominance - and it’snot just the UnitedStates.

Southern Africananarchist-commu-nists would normal-ly see the formerBritish colony ofSouth Africa as act-ing as a sub-imperi-alist power onbehalf of the bigcapitalist powersand its own capital-ist ruling class inthe region, a sort ofregional policemanas it were: if Britishinterests inSwaziland are threatened by the democra-cy movement, we are sure that SouthAfrican military might will intervene (as itdid against Lesotho in 1998) to shore upthe Swazi elite.

But the international scene is changingand today we can chart the rise of thePeople’s Republic of China as one ofAfrica’s most powerful kingmakers,whether backing the genocidal regime inKhartoum, or embarking on large-scalebuilding projects including the new Luandaairport (in exchange for 10,000 barrels ofcrude oil a day) and the Number OneStadium in Kinshasa, a city that with itsgiant gold statue of a fat, Mao-like Laurent-Desire Kabila is looking like a city on theYangtze River instead of the Congo (theDRC's mimicry of the Chinese nationalflag, before adopting a new flag this year,was too obvious to miss).

STATE CAPITALISM Unlike the old Soviet Union, China has

managed to engineer a successful transi-tion from closed State-capitalism (theMaoist era) towards an export-orientatedneo-liberal model. Its rapid economic

growth and cheap goods - overseen by theChinese Communist Party, the CCP - maysee the country overtake the US as thelargest manufacturing power worldwide by2010.

This capitalist boom has been built on theback of a brutal suppression of the workingclass and peasantry. Strikes are illegal,dissidents are murdered, and the top 20%of households earn 42% of total urban

incomes while the poorest 20% receive just6%.

There has been a sharp rise in classstruggle, with strikes rising from 8,150 in1992 to 120,000 in 1999. Last year resi-dents of the village of Huaxi, Zhejiangprovince, battled the police and local offi-cials in hand-to-hand combat in April anddrove them off. In December, hundreds ofvillagers armed with dynamite and petrol-bombs attacked police in Dongzhou,Guandong province, after police killed 20villagers who had protested against landseized to build a power plant. A sourceclose to the CCP central committeerevealed last year that some 3-millionworkers took part in protests last year.

This is a country where the official month-ly minimum wage is US$63 (compare thatto US$45 to US$55 in rural and urbanVietnam, respectively, levels won byVietnamese workers last year by embark-ing on wildcat strikes against their commu-nist bosses), which has probably the worstmining fatality record in the world (the offi-cial Xhinhua News Agency figure is 5,986dead in coal mines alone in 2005, resultingin some cases in miners armed with dyna-

mite attacking their bosses), and multina-tional sweat-shop operations such as Nikeand McDonalds setting up operations inspecial “economic exclusion zones”.

While terror and repression fuel China’seconomy, the country’s capitalist rulingclass looks outwards for cheap labour, rawmaterials and fuel supplies. Africa, eco-nomically sidelined in the world economiccrisis starting in the 1970s, has suddenly

become hot prop-erty. In 2005, theoverall Africaneconomy grew at5% - it’s fastest indecades - asdemand forAfrican raw mate-rials shot up, withChinese demandplaying a key role.The 1980s and1990s saw Africafall off the invest-ment map, withAfrica getting lessthan 1% of all pri-vate direct invest-ment to “thirdworld” countries in

1995. Chinese (and South African) capital-ists have increasingly taken the gap, andthe trend is reversing.

CHINA IN AFRICAChina clandestinely traded with apartheid

South Africa despite its funding of liberationmovements in the country and in neigh-bouring countries like Zimbabwe. Formalrelations with South Africa were re-estab-lished in 1998.

According to Martin Davies, the directorfor the Centre for Chinese Studies atStellenbosch University (and a business-man with interests in Shanghai), last year,trade between China and Africa soared toUS$35-million, with Chinese investmentprimarily centred on the oil industry, espe-cially in Nigeria, Angola, Sudan andEquatorial Guinea.

Grim conditions in these countries havehardly worried the Chinese dictatorship:whether it is the total lack of democracy inEquatorial Guinea, the state-driven race-war in Sudan, or the fact that the blatanttheft of oil wealth by the ruling cliques inAngola and Nigeria has fuelled conflict,with UNITA and the Movement for the

Is China Africa's NewImperialist Power?

by Lucien van der Waltand Michael Schmidt

A Factory in China

PAGE 15ZABALAZA ANALYSIS

Emancipation of the Niger Delta, respec-tively trying to win back a slice of the pie.

So it will come as no surprise thatChinese helicopter gunships have beenused against civilians in Darfur, accordingto human rights activists. China - whichmaintains an electronic listening post onthe Comores - gave Sudan massive mili-tary aid between 1996 and 2003, includingjet fighter aircraft, shipped tons of arms toEthiopia and Eritrea prior to the outbreak oftheir border war in 1998, and has sold jets,military aircraft and radio-jamming equip-ment (to prevent outside broadcasts beingheard inside the country) to theZimbabwean regime.

SOUTH AFRICAChina has greased its imperialist wheels

in Africa by scrapping over US$1-billion indebt owed by 32 African countries and theSABC reported this year that South Africa’strade with China is growing at 26% annual-ly.

South Africa is China’s largest trade part-ner in Africa, with tradegrowing 400% over thelast six years. SouthAfrica supplies iron oreand other raw materials,and receives manufac-tured goods - and a newtrade agreement will seeChina limit textile exportsbut strengthen co-opera-tion in areas like nuclearenergy. Meanwhile,South Africa’s trade withtraditional partners likeBritain is shrinking.

However, the impor-tance of relations withChina is relatively limited,given the strength anddiversity of South Africancapitalism. On the otherhand, Chinese invest-ment looms very large inweak economies like those of EquatorialGuinea. China’s interest in securing directraw material supplies - for example, oil out-side the OPEC cartel - means we canexpect these relations to intensify, andAfrican elites to solidify their links with theEast Asian power. Africa now providesaround 30% of China’s oil imports.

SOLIDARITY OR XENOPHOBIABut what does all this investment in guns,

ore and oil mean? COSATU has reactedwith alarm to a deal struck between theSouth African and Chinese governments,warning that with the country flooded withcheap imported Chinese clothing (a 480%increase since 2003), the already-fragiledomestic textile industry (62,000 jobs lostin the same period) could collapse.

COSATU leaders were embarrassed last

year when members of their affiliated SAClothing and Textile Workers’ Uniondemonstrated against the fact that the con-gress’ red T-shirts were made in China.Many mainland Chinese textile operationshave relocated to Africa in order to by-passEuropean and American quotas onChinese imports, but they have oftenbrought with them brutal working condi-tions. At the same time, COSATU and itsally, the SACP continue to praise China asa socialist country.

Neither position is correct. COSATU’s“Buy South Africa” campaign will do noth-ing to stop cheap Chinese imports. It pro-motes anti-Chinese racism and feeds intothe poisonous xenophobia that afflicts thelocal working class. It also suggests thatall South Africans, capitalists and workersalike, have a common interest. Nothing isfurther from the truth: South African capital-ists are not the friends of South Africanworkers.

Further, the ANC’s GEAR policy promotesfree trade, so there is no prospect of thewave of imports subsiding in meaningful

terms. COSATU is left with making futileappeals to the morals and patriotism of theSouth African ruling class - appeals that willachieve nothing. South African capitalistsare developing a pact with Chinese capital-ists: if these rivals can unite, why can’t theworking class learn the lesson, and defendChinese labour?

THE “CORE OF ENTERPRISES”As we have noted in these pages before,

both GEAR and NEPAD aim at attractingmore trade and more foreign investment,and China fits both bills. Meanwhile,Intelligence Minister (and ageing YoungCommunist League politburo member)Ronnie Kasrils enthused in a glossy bookChina Through the Third Eye: SouthAfrican Perspectives - funded by the ChinaChamber of Commerce and Industry in SA- that China’s building boom, including the

controversial Three Dams project on theYangtze that will displace 1-million people,“is a construction engineers’ dream”. Thisis a good thing, it seems: “If China is toremain a sustainable economy, it has tospeed the transition from a rural to anurban society, from an agricultural to anindustrial economy.”

Chief state spin-doctor Joel Netshitenzheclaimed in the same book that “SouthAfrica and China share mutual goals asboth countries are committed to ensuring abetter life for all their citizens. Both aim tolower the levels of poverty.” Given thestate-enforced poverty of the Chinese peo-ple, one wonders what Netshitenzhe has inmind when he praised the role of theChinese state propaganda machine for“the rigour and focus with which Chinauses information to mobilise people aroundcommon objectives and a shared vision…”

A chill settles in one’s bones when onereads him hailing the “diversity of voices” inthe Chinese media, while studiously ignor-ing state censorship and the complicity ofWestern search engines such as Yahoo in

helping China jail politi-cal dissidents.

The view of SACPdeputy secretary gener-al and one-man think-tank Jeremy Cronin iseven more revealing.The SACP, terrified thatthe bubble of “real, exist-ing socialism” waswashing down the drainwith the restructuring ofstate-owned enterprises(SOEs) in China, sent adelegation there in 2001to check things out.

Cronin and his delega-tion were clearly wowedby their CCP hosts: hequotes a 1999 centralcommittee documentthat “The public-owner-

ship economy, which includes the State-owned economy, is the economic basis ofChina’s socialist system… China mustalways rely on and bring into full play theimportant role of the SOEs to develop theproductive forces of the socialist societyand realise the country’s industrialisationand modernisation…” China, it seems, issocialist as well as capitalist! What are weto make of such confused thinking?

“To manage SOEs well in general, effortsmust be made to establish a leadershipsystem and organisational and managerialsystems in them that conform to the law ofthe market economy and China’s actual sit-uation, to strengthen the building of theirleadership, to give play to the Party organ-isations as the political core of enterprises,and to adhere to the principle of relying onthe working class wholeheartedly…” And“rely” they do, for China’s miracle is built

Chinese Workers Flockingto the Cities

PAGE 16ZABALAZA ANALYSIS

“wholeheartedly” on exploitation and terror!

A CHANGING OF THE GUARD?So, Chinese communism is finally

revealed as nothing more than a moderni-sation programme guided by author-itarian marketing and managementgurus who double as Party bosses!And the Party itself is revealed as aclique of commissars that rides onthe working class!

Cronin admits that the delegation“did not have sufficient time togauge the degree to which” the cen-tral committee’s stated commitmentto workers’ “democratic decision-making” and “status as masters oftheir own enterprises” - capitalistenterprises steered by the party -but he thought it significant thatthese cheap words had been put onpaper.

Cronin lauds the regime for the“fairly clear socialist agenda [that]shines through…” “There is no rea-son,” he huffs, “why markets shouldnot exist under socialism” - a liberalinterpretation that allows for thecoexistence of “the emergent smalland medium privately owned servicesector”. Where exactly “socialism”“shines” is not clear.

From such mixed economic think-ing arises a confused politics, basedon industrial and market require-ments rather than people’s needs,where in Cronin’s view, wageincreases in the public sector,adopted purely to stimulate marketdemand qualify as “socialist”.

So what we have is an ANC/SACPgovernment that is not only increas-ingly trading with, but ideologicallyinclining itself towards, the world’slast large totalitarian state, a state that is soblatantly capitalist and simultaneously anti-labour that Cronin’s skill as a poet fails togild the brutal reality. The SACP’s state-capitalist thinking has finally manage tofind, in the Chinese example, a happy mar-riage with neo-liberalism.

PROTECTIONISM OR CLASSSTRUGGLE

Chinese goods are cheap becauseChinese labour is cheap. If COSATUwants to protect local jobs - and show itscommitment to the international workingclass struggle - it should support tradeunion organising in China, and step up theclass struggle at home and in southernAfrica. Neo-liberal capitalism thrives on pit-ting cheap labour in one country againsteven chepaer labour in another, in a race tothe bottom. The only way out is interna-tional solidarity and class struggle, startingwith a struggle for an international mini-mum wage and universal union rights.

China has a proud tradition of class strug-gle - and this does not mean the CCP andMao! Back in 1913, anarcho-syndicalistsbuilt the first trade unions in Canton, risingto challenge reformist and communist

unionism in all the big industrial centressuch as Shanghai in the 1920s. Armedanarchist peasant movements controlledhuge swathes of territory in Fukienprovince and in Kirin province, Manchuria,in the 1930s and anarchist guerrillas foughtalongside communists in the resistance toJapanese imperialism in the 1940s.

But after the Maoist coup d’état of 1949,China’s estimated 10,000 anarchist trade

unionist militants were driven undergroundand Makhnovist-styled guerrillas such asChu Cha Pei were forced to retreat into thehills in Yunnan province from where theycontinued to harry the new ruling class

headed by Mao and his entourageof warlords and state-capitalists.

As Africa increasingly becomes theback-yard of China’s oil-drivenimperialism, one has to ask firstly,whether the government will try tomimic the worst aspects of China’senforced civil peace, a developmentthat would prove a serious chal-lenge to our own working class.

ANARCHISM OR MARXISMWe have no interest on following

those leftists who hope for an end to“capitalist restoration” in China:China has been capitalist since Maotook power, and any Chinese revo-lutionary movement must jettisonMarxism and its Maoist variant. Norcan we agree that China is - in fact -“socialist,” despite what SACP lead-ers may think.

Capitalism is a class system, and aclass system means class struggles.Sooner or later China’s workingclass will rediscover its proud fight-ing tradition and take charge of itsown affairs to the exclusion of para-sitic Party leaders and capitalists -what is called in Chinesewuzhengfgu gonchan, or commonproduction without government, in aword, anarchist-communism - andbury the CCP.

But until that day, there is a moreserious question we have to ask,one with implications beyond ourborders: will China replace Britain asSouth Africa’s imperialist power, a

changing of the guard, so to speak - lead-ing to South Africa embarking on militaryexpeditions in Africa to protect Chinesecapitalist interests. All serious anti-imperi-alists must consider and plan for the possi-bility of Africa becoming the future battle-ground between US-backed Western andChinese expansionist interests, and unitethe continent’s people in a battle againstthe oil barons.

Links to local groups, education material,email discussion lists, PDF leaflets for you

to distribute etc. etc.

w w w . z a b a l a z a . n e t

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

PAGE 17ZABALAZA NEWS

The CGT has supported in solidarity agroup of libertarian Moroccans who havebeen trying to create a Libertarian Centreof Investigation and Studies in BoumaineDades, in the province of Ouarzazate in thesouth of Morocco. The project is to createa library, a meeting place for speeches andwork for sociological investigation, espe-cially concerning the collectivist and feder-alist traditions of los imazighhem (untrans-latable Spanish word for Berbers)(Berbers) with a non-racist and libertarianvision.

The local authorities have rejected adossier enclosed and sent via registeredmail for its legalisation. They completelyrefused the appeal for legalisation whenthere was already a headquarters preparedfor the beginning of the project.

For all of this we (the CGT) ask fromyou a massive mailing of faxes with thistext or a similar one to the governor of theprovince:

An English translation of the Frenchoriginal from the CGT follows. Please

send any faxes in French.

Monsieur le Gouverneur de la province deOurzazate,

In the face of the attitude of the governingcircle (local authorities) of BoumaineDades, province of Ouarzazate who haverefused to receive the deposition of adossier on the Centre of Libertarian Studiesand Research in Boumaine without anyexplanation for this refusal.We want to denounce:

The violation of legality and ofcitizens' rights to create a cen-tre of accusation,researchand defense of humanrights in this marginalizedregion of the country.

We demand:Respect for the law

of authorization thatpermits the funcyion-ing of the LibertarianCentre of Studiesand Research inB o u l m a n eDades.

The fax numbers for protests follow inthe original text.

Cher Camarades,Voici une traduction de l'email de Fillali

Brahim a l'anglais. C'est possible que ellesera utile pour les camarades de l'Afriquedu Sud.

Et aussi a Fillali:Voulez-vous les actions de la solidarite

avec votre lutte ? Qu'est-ce c'est pouvons-nous faire vous aider ?

From Fillali Brahim:

After the affair of the journal 'Ici et

Maintenant'(Here and Now)we have tried

to resume ourwork, this time by an

enrichment of the journal'sexperience by developing a

centre of libertarian studies andresearch in Boulmane Dades inOuarzazate Province. This is independentof the periodical, but it is a continuation ofthe same logic of denunciation, researchand defence of human rights in this mar-ginalised region of the country. We havechosen this place in view of the huge prob-lems that meet people, because the organ-isations (union or political) that are not rev-olutionary become reactionary. They facil-itate the exploitation and domination of thedictatorial regime, a regime that wants ademocratic facade to make the worldbelieve that the people participate in themanagement of their everyday life throughtheir representatives who are active in thebosom of their organisations, side by sidewith the State, "modern and democratic".

These illusions in which nobody can right-ly believe, we want to unmask, to analyse,to criticise and, above all, to give a libertar-ian alternative of thought and action for thebetter way that we believe this peopledeserves.

The journal 'Ici et Maintenant' was a first

Defend Libertarian Centrefor Studies and Investigation

in Morocco

What follows is an appeal from the Spanish CGT for solidarity with a group of Moroccan anarchists that they have been in contactwith for some time. It includes a translation from the French of the original appeal from Fillial Brahim by the translator and furthertranslations from the Spanish and French for English speaking readers. The text suggested by the CGT in French is the proper oneto send to the Moroccan authorities as few of them could read English, assuming they can read at all. The translation of the CGT'sheader follows:

For further information on the situation in Morocco please communicate in French with Fillial at tafokt2001@yahoo.fr For the background to the project see ‘Project for the creation of a Libertarian Studies & Research Centre in Morocco’ at

http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1206 Pat the M., Translator

Solidarity with the CLER(Libertarian Centre for

Studies and Investigation)of Boumaalne-Dades

by Pat M (trans)

Morocco

PAGE 18ZABALAZA NEWS

step in this view, and the libertarian centreis the road marked out for our will and legit-imate conviction that this Earth does notbelong to thieves, and our will for the wellbeing and joy of our people. We aretouched daily by what we see of the evi-dence of the permanent crisis that wecrash into.

For this reason we set up the dossier ofthe centre in accordance with the law ofcivil liberties of Morocco that permit us the-oretical work (but in reality nothing that isnot pro-State and not faithful to slavery),and we have given these to the presidentof the 'Boumaine Circle' ("authority"-PM).He definitely heard us explain to him whatwe had to say about the centre and wegave him all the necessary documents.

The president said to us that he could notgive us the receipt of deposition of the filebecause, according to him, he didn't knowwhat a research centre was. We respond-ed that we weren't responsible for his igno-rance and that the law was clear in thisdomain. We told him that we were going tosend him the refused file by registeredmail. He responded that if the file was sentin that way it would be refused again.

In fact that is what happened. We sent it,and after 21 days the filewas returned to us full ofrefused stamps, withoutany reason for this bizarrerefusal.

That was how things hap-pened. Now we are going toRabat, to the headquartersof the National Press Unionof Morocco, SNPM, in orderto get permission to hold apress conference on May6th to explain to everybodythis contradiction betweenthe official slogans and the real-ity of human rights throughout theSouth of this country. It means thata citizen is without any right of accom-modation for freedom of expression.

I will present the demand to the unionheadquarters and await the response. Iwill send you the response of the SNPM onthe subject.

Finally we continue to vigorouslydenounce the attitude of the local authori-ties of Boumaine Dades, Ourzazate.

We declare that have full rights to do ourresearch, rights that were stolen from us.

We address this appeal to all who strug-gle for a better way. To help us be able todo our work in the face of everyday hard-ship and this desert that aims to depopu-late the world.

We refuse to accept our poverty and oursuffering. That would cause symptoms of asick situation of accepting the situationmade for us. We would end up fightingourselves.

We declare that the citizenship card andthe passport do not make the individual acitizen, and that citizenship depends ondignity and human rights.

Here is the original French text from theCGT and the addresses to send faxes to:

Le Gouverneur de la Province deOurrzazate: Devant l'attitude du presidentdu cercle de Boumaine Dades, province deOurzazate, qui a refuse meme recevoir ledepot du dossier sur un Centre Libertaired'Etudies et de Rechercheres a Boumainesans aucene explication des motifs de cefefus.

NOUS VOULONS DENCOUNCER:

La violation de la legalite et des droitsa creer un centre d'etudes de denonci-ation, de recxherche et de la rechercheet de la defense des droits humainsdans cette region marginallee du pays.

Le respect de la legalite et l'authorisa-tionn qui permet le fontionnement duCentre Libertaire d'Etudes et de

Recherches aB o u l m a n eDades.

Original art ic le taken from h t t p : / / w w w. a n a r k i s m o . n e t / n e w s w i r e . p h p ? s t o r y _ i d = 3 2 4 9

The fax numbers to sendprotests to are as follows. Thefollowing are in Spanish, as perthe CGT;

Gobernador de la provincia deOuarzazate:Fax # 00-212-44-88-25-68Ministro de Justica:Fax # 00-212-37-72-37-10

Ministro del Interior:Fax # 00-212-37-76-74-04Con copia atiwiga@caramail.com

Please send copies totiwaga@caramail.com

PAGE 19ZABALAZA ANALYSIS

Throughoutthe world,

a n a r c h i s tinvolvement within massmovements, as well asthe development of

specifically anarchistorganisations, is on the

upsurge. This trend is helping anarchismregain legitimacy as a dynamic politicalforce within movements and in this light,Especifismo, a concept born out of nearly50 years of anarchist experiences in SouthAmerica, is gaining currency world-wide.Though many anarchists may be familiarwith many of Especifismo’s ideas, it shouldbe defined as an original contribution toanarchist thought and practice.

The first organisation to promote the con-cept of Especifismo - then more a practicethan a developed ideology - was theFederación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU),founded in 1956 by anarchist militants whoembraced the idea of an organisationwhich was specifically anarchist. Survivingthe dictatorship in Uruguay, the FAUemerged in the mid-1980s to establish con-tact with and influence other SouthAmerican anarchist revolutionaries. TheFAU’s work helped support the founding ofthe Federação Anarquista Gaúcha (FAG),the Federação Anarquista Cabocla(FACA), and the Federação Anarquista doRio de Janeiro (FARJ) in their respectiveregions of Brazil, and the Argentineanorganisation Auca (Rebel).

While the key concepts of Especifismowill be expanded upon further in this article,it can be summarised in three succinctpoints:1. The need for specifically anarchistorganisation built around a unity of ideasand praxis.2. The use of the specifically anarchistorganisation to theorize and developstrategic political and organising work.3. Active involvement in and building ofautonomous and popular social move-ments, which is described as the processof “social insertion.”

A BRIEF HISTORICALPERSPECTIVE

While only coming onto the stage of LatinAmerican anarchism within the last fewdecades, the ideas inherent withinEspecifismo touch on a historic thread run-ning within the anarchist movement inter-nationally. The most well known would bethe Platformist current, which began withthe publishing of the “OrganisationalPlatform of the Libertarian Communists.”*This document was written in 1926 by for-mer peasant army leader Nestor Makhno,Ida Mett and other militants of the DieloTrouda (Workers’ Cause) group, basedaround the newspaper of the same name(Skirda, 192-213). Exiles of the Russianrevolution, the Paris-based Dielo Troudacriticized the anarchist movement for itslack of organisation, which prevented aconcerted response to Bolshevik machina-tions towards turning the workers’ sovietsinto instruments of one-party rule. Thealternative they proposed was a “GeneralUnion of Anarchists” based on Anarchist-Communism, which would strive for “theo-retical and tactical unity” and focus on classstruggle and labour unions.

Other similar occurrences of ideasinclude “Organisational Dualism,” which ismentioned in historical documents of the1920’s Italian anarchist movement. Italiananarchists used this term to describe theinvolvement of anarchists both as mem-bers of an anarchist political organisationand as militants in the labour movement(FdCA). In Spain, the Friends of Durrutigroup emerged to oppose the gradualreversal of the Spanish Revolution of 1936(Guillamon). In “Towards a FreshRevolution” they emulated some of theideas of the Platform, critiquing the CNT-FAI’s gradual reformism and collaborationwith the Republican government, whichthey argued contributed to the defeat of theanti-fascist and revolutionary forces.Influential organisations in the Chineseanarchist movement of the 1910’s, such asthe Wuzhengfu-Gongchan Zhuyi TongshiChe (Society of Anarchist-CommunistComrades), advocated similar ideas

(Krebs). While these different currents allhave specific characteristics that devel-oped from the movements and countries inwhich they originated, they all share a com-mon thread that crosses movements, eras,and continents.

ESPECIFISMO ELABORATEDThe Especifists put forward three main

thrusts to their politics, the first two beingon the level of organisation. By raising theneed for a specifically anarchist organisa-tion built around a unity of ideas and prax-is, the Especifists inherently state theirobjection to the idea of a synthesis organi-sation of revolutionaries or multiple cur-rents of anarchists loosely united. Theycharacterize this form of organisation ascreating an exacerbated search for theneeded unity of anarchists to the point inwhich unity is preferred at any cost, in thefear of risking positions, ideas and propos-als sometimes irreconcilable. The result ofthese types of union are libertarian collec-tives without much more in common thanconsidering themselves anarchists. (En LaCalle)

While these critiques have been elaborat-ed by the South American Especifistas,North American anarchists have alsooffered their experiences of synthesisorganisation as lacking any cohesivenessdue to multiple, contradictory political ten-dencies. Often the basic agreement of thegroup boils down to a vague, “least-com-mon-denominator” politics, leaving littleroom for united action or developed politi-cal discussion among comrades.

Without a strategy that stems from com-mon political agreement, revolutionaryorganisations are bound to be an affair ofreactivism against the continual manifesta-tions of oppression and injustice and acycle of fruitless actions to be repeatedover and over, with little analysis or under-standing of their consequences(Featherstone et al). Further, theEspecifists criticise these tendencies forbeing driven by spontaneity and individual-ism and for not leading to the serious, sys-tematic work needed to build revolutionary

Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of

Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary

Organisation in South America

by Adam Weaver

Within the broad anarchist movement, we stand in the tradition advocating the need for an organised and disciplined anar-chist political organisation. The "Alliance" in the First International was an early example of this model, but it was one of many

such forces. In 1926, Nestor Makhno, Peter Arshinov and others restated this approach in the classic"Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists,"* perhaps the most important text of twentiethcentury anarchism. In South America - a region with many similarities to southern Africa - this tradition

has been developed as Especifismo, and it is for this reason that we carry this important piece.

PAGE 20ZABALAZA ANALYSIS

movements. The Latin American revolu-tionaries put forward that organisationswhich lack a program which resists anydiscipline between militants, that refuses to‘define itself’, or to ‘fit itself’, ... [are a]direct descendant of bourgeois liberalism,[which] only reacts to strong stimulus, joinsthe struggle only in its heightenedmoments, denying to work continuously,especially in moments of relative restbetween the struggles (En La Calle).

A particular stress of the Especifismopraxis is the role of anarchist organisation,formed on the basis of shared politics, as aspace for the development of commonstrategy and reflection on the group’sorganising work. Sustained by collectiveresponsibility to the organisations’ plansand work, a trust within themembers and groups is builtthat allows for a deep, high-level discussion of their action.This allows the organisation tocreate collective analysis,develop immediate and long-term goals, and continuallyreflect on and change theirwork based on the lessonsgained and circumstances.

From these practices andfrom the basis of their ideologi-cal principles, revolutionaryorganisations should seek tocreate a program that definestheir short - and intermediate -term goals and will worktowards their long-term objec-tives:

The program must come froma rigorous analysis of societyand the correlation of theforces that are part of it. Itmust have as a foundation theexperience of the struggle ofthe oppressed and their aspira-tions, and from those elementsit must set the goals and thetasks to be followed by the rev-olutionary organisation in orderto succeed not only in the final objectivebut also in the immediate ones. (En LaCalle)

The last point, but one that is key withinthe practice of Especifismo, is the idea of“social insertion.” 1 It stems from the beliefthat the oppressed are the most revolution-ary sector of society, and that the seed ofthe future revolutionary transformation ofsociety lies already in these classes andsocial groupings. Social insertion meansanarchist involvement in the daily fights ofthe oppressed and working classes. Itdoes not mean acting within single-issueadvocacy campaigns based around theinvolvement of expected traditional politicalactivists, but rather within movements ofpeople struggling to better their own condi-tion, which come together not always out ofexclusively materially-based needs, but

also socially and historically rooted needsof resisting the attacks of the state and cap-italism. These would include rank-and-file-led workers’ movements, immigrant com-munities’ movements to demand legalizedstatus, neighbourhood organisations’resistance to the brutality and killings bypolice, working class students’ fightsagainst budget cuts, and poor and unem-ployed people’s opposition to evictions andservice cuts.

Through daily struggles, the oppressedbecome a conscious force. The class-in-itself, or rather classes-in-themselves(defined beyond the class-reductionistvision of the urban industrial proletariat, toinclude all oppressed groups within societythat have a material stake in a new socie-

ty), are tempered, tested, and recreatedthrough these daily struggles over immedi-ate needs into classes-for-themselves.That is, they change from social classesand groups that exist objectively and by thefact of social relations, to social forces.Brought together by organic methods, andat many times by their own self-organisa-tional cohesion, they become self-con-scious actors aware of their power, voiceand their intrinsic nemeses: ruling eliteswho wield control over the power structuresof the modern social order.

Examples of social insertion that the FAGcites are their work with neighbourhoodcommittees in urban villages and slums(called Popular Resistance Committees),building alliances with rank-and-file mem-bers of the rural landless workers’ move-ment of the MST, and among trash and

recyclables collectors. Due to high levelsof temporary and contingent employment,under-employment, and unemployment inBrazil, a significant portion of the workingclass does not survive primarily throughwage labour, but rather by subsistencework and the informal economy, such ascasual construction work, street vending,or the collection of trash and recyclables.Through several years of work, the FAGhas built a strong relationship with urbantrash collectors, called catadores.Members of the FAG have supported themin forming their own national organisationwhich is working to mobilise trash collec-tors around their interests nationally and toraise money toward building a collectivelyoperated recycling operation. 2

Especifismo’s conception ofthe relation of ideas to the pop-ular movement is that theyshould not be imposed througha leadership, through “massline”, or by intellectuals.Anarchist militants should notattempt to move movementsinto proclaiming an “anarchist”position, but should insteadwork to preserve their anar-chist thrust; that is, their natu-ral tendency to be self-organ-ised and to militantly fight fortheir own interests. Thisassumes the perspective thatsocial movements will reachtheir own logic of creating rev-olution, not when they as awhole necessarily reach thepoint of being self-identified“anarchists,” but when as awhole (or at least an over-whelming majority) they reachthe consciousness of their ownpower and exercise this powerin their daily lives, in a wayconsciously adopting the ideasof anarchism. An additionalrole of the anarchist militantwithin the social movements,

according to the Especifists, is to addressthe multiple political currents that will existwithin movements and to actively combatthe opportunistic elements of vanguardismand electoral politics.

ESPECIFISMO IN THE CONTEXTOF NORTH AMERICAN ANDWESTERN ANARCHISM

Within the current strands of organisedand revolutionary North American andWestern Anarchism, numerous indicatorspoint to the inspiration and influence of thePlatform as having the greatest impact inthe recent blossoming of class struggleanarchist organisations worldwide. Manysee the Platform as a historical documentthat speaks to the previous century’sorganisational failures of anarchism within

PAGE 21ZABALAZA ANALYSIS

global revolutionary movements, and aremoved to define themselves as acting with-in the “platformist tradition”. Given this, thecurrents of Especifismo and Platformismare deserving of comparison and contrast.

The authors of the Platform were veteranpartisans of the Russian Revolution. Theyhelped lead a peasant guerrilla war againstWestern European armies and later theBolsheviks in the Ukraine, whose peoplehad a history independent of the RussianEmpire. So the writers of the Platform cer-tainly spoke from a wealth of experienceand to the historical context of one of theirera’s pivotal struggles. But the documentmade little headway in its proposal of unit-ing class struggle anarchists, and ismarkedly silent in analysis or understand-ing on numerous key questions that facedrevolutionaries at that time, such as theoppression of women, and colonialism.

While most Anarchist-Communist orient-ed organisations claim influ-

ence by the Platform today, in retrospect itcan be looked at as a poignant statementthat rose from the morass that befell muchof anarchism following the RussianRevolution. As a historical project, thePlatform’s proposal and basic ideas werelargely rejected by individualistic tenden-cies in the Anarchist movement, were mis-understood because of language barriersas some claim (Skirda, 186), or neverreached supportive elements or organisa-tions that would have united around thedocument. In 1927, the Dielo Troudagroup did host a small international confer-ence of supporters in France, but it wasquickly disrupted by the authorities.

In comparison, the praxis of Especifismois a living, developed practice, andarguably a much more relevant and con-temporary theory, emerging as it does outof 50 years of anarchist organising. Arisingfrom the southern cone of Latin America,but its influence spreading throughout, the

ideas of Especifismo do not springfrom any

call-outor sin-g l ed o c u -

ment, but have come organically out of themovements of the global south that areleading the fight against international capi-talism and setting examples for move-ments worldwide. On organisation, theEspecifists call for a far deeper basis ofanarchist organisation than the Platform’s“theoretical and tactical unity,” but a strate-gic program based on analysis that guidesthe actions of revolutionaries. They pro-vide us living examples of revolutionaryorganisation based on the needs for com-mon analysis, shared theory, and firm rootswithin the social movements.

I believe there is much to take inspirationfrom within the tradition of Especifismo, notonly on a global scale, but particularly forNorth American class-struggle anarchistsand for multi-racial revolutionaries withinthe US. Whereas the Platform can be eas-ily read as seeing anarchists’ role as nar-rowly and most centrally within labourunions, Especifismo gives us a livingexample that we can look towards andwhich speaks more meaningfully to ourwork in building a revolutionary movement

today. Taking this all into consid-eration, I also hope that this arti-

cle can help us more con-cretely reflect on how we as amovement define and shapeour traditions and influences.

NOTE: This is the final version of the above article. A slightly different copy, we regret, appears in the print version of theNortheastern Anarchist, and may also be in electronic circulation. Please refer to this final version in any citations.]

FOOTNOTES:1. While “social insertion” is a term coming directly out of the texts of Especifismo influenced organisations, comrades of mine havetaken issue with it. So before there is a rush towards an uncritical embrace of anything, perhaps there could be a discussion of thisterm.2. Eduardo, then Secretary of External Relations for Brazilian FAG. “Saudacoes Libertarias dos E.U.A.” Email to Pedro Ribeiro. 25Jun 2004

BIBLIOGRAPHY:En La Calle (Unsigned article). “La Necesidad de Un Proyecto Propio, Acerca de la importancia del programa en la organisacion

polilitica libertaria” or “The Necessity of Our Own Project: On the importance of a program in the libertarian political organisation.” EnLa Calle, published by the Argeninian OSL (Organisación Socialista Libertaria) Jun 2001. 22 Dec 2005. Translation by Pedro Ribeiro.Original Portuguese or English

Featherstone, Liza, Doug Henwood and Christian Parenti. “Left-Wing Anti-intellectualism and its discontents”. Lip Magazine, 11Nov 2004. 22 Dec 2005.

Guillamon, Agustin. The Friends of Durruti Group: 1937-1939. San Francisco: AK Press, 1996.Krebs, Edward S. Shifu, the Soul of Chinese Anarchism. Landham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.Northeastern Anarchist. The Global Influence of Platformism Today by The Federation of Northeastern Anarchist Communists

(Johannesburg, South Africa: Zabalaza Books, 2003), 24. Interview with Italian Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici.Skirda, Alexandre. Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organisation from Proudhon to May 1968. Oakland, CA: AK Press

2002.

Adam Weaver is an anarchist-communist from San Jose, CA, USA.

This essay is from the ‘The Northeastern Anarchist’ (#11)The Northeastern Anarchist is the English-language magazine of the Northeastern Federation of Anarchist-Communists (NEFAC),covering class struggle anarchist theory, history, strategy, debate and analysis in an effort to further develop anarchist-communist

ideas and practice.

PAGE 22ZABALAZA HISTORY

This year marks the 30th anniversary ofthe 1976 Soweto uprising in South Africa,which marked the start of the fall ofapartheid, and inspired activists worldwide.African working youth played a leading role,and their sacrifices showed us that ordinarypeople can make a difference to the injus-tices of our world. Revolutionaries shouldcommemorate this struggle, but also learnfrom its failings.

RACE AND CLASSThe 1976 uprising was sparked by the

imposition of Afrikaans-language teachingin African schools, seen as an act of nation-al oppression. But there was more at play.The 1970s saw growing inflation creatingmuch discontent amongst urban Africanyouth. South Africa's economy, whichboomed in the 1960s, entered crisis in the1970s. Unemployment grew steadily,reaching levels unseen for decades.

This was fuelled by under-funded, racistand authoritarian government institutionslike the local government township adminis-trations, the Bantu Education system andthe miserable conditions in the segregatedtownship schools. Although the govern-ment and large companies such as AngloAmerican increased spending on education- mainly to grow the semi-skilled workforce,as large companies were facing major skillshortages - these schools remained under-resourced and over-crowded.

They lacked adequate teaching staff orfacilities like libraries, sports grounds etc.,and ranked the highest in terms of dropoutrates and teacher-to-student ratios.Corporal punishment was also used exten-sively, often sadistically: at VulamazibukoHigher Primary School in Diepkloof, forinstance, teachers frequently punished stu-dents by placing their feet in cold water, andthen whipping their toes.

The State began to experiment with neo-liberal policies as well. According to theTruth and Reconciliation Commission(TRC) report, a key factor in the 1976 upris-ing was a leap in rates and service chargesby the West Rand Administration Board,which had just lost the R2-million subsidy ithad received from the Johannesburg CityCouncil.

State spending on education wasdecreased at the same time that the num-ber of schooling years was reduced. The

abolition of standard six created a huge"bulge" of students being pushed into thefirst year of secondary school, leading tointensified overcrowding and strain onresources.

RESISTANCELarge schools concentrated African stu-

dents together, shared frustrations fromnational oppression and capitalist crisisunited them, and they started to look forways in which they could express andresolve their grievances. Neither parents,nor the exiled nationalist organisations like

the ANC, SACP and PAC, provided muchdirection.

As a result, African youth established theirown organisations such as the AfricanStudent Movement (ASM), which organisedstudents in Soweto schools and aimed totake up student demands and create socialand political awareness. Selby Semela - an18-year-old school pupil and activist -recalled that "the old spinster-hucksterorganisations" like the ANC, PAC andSACP played almost no role.

Instead, members of ASM were influ-enced by young teachers from homelanduniversities like Turfloop, who promotedBlack Consciousness (BC). Drawing on theideas of Steve Biko and others, BCstressed the need to instil a sense of prideand self-worth within "black" people beforepolitical organisation took place. Here, the

term "black" was used to include Colouredsand Indians. The ASM changed its name tothe South African Student Movement, andtried to organise beyond Soweto.

Other important events inspired Sowetoyouth. The 1973-4 Durban strikes, whichspread to Port Elizabeth and the EastRand, shattered the political quiescence ofthe 1960s, and signalled the rebirth ofAfrican trade unions. The sudden collapseof Portuguese colonialism in Mozambiqueand Angola led many to believe that nation-al liberation was increasingly possible with-in apartheid South Africa.

So, when the Bantu EducationDepartment tried to implement a new "fifty- fifty" language policy - half of the examsubjects were going to be taught inAfrikaans, a language few teachers spoke,and that many Africans considered the lan-guage of apartheid officials, police andracist Whites - revolt was on the horizon.

SPARKS AND FIRESchool boards were the first to challenge

the language policy, but the BantuEducation department was unbending. Itsintransigence became the focus of stu-dents' political anger. By February 1976students were organising protests.

Then a mass demonstration was organ-ised in Soweto for June 16th. Semela wason the "action committee," which laterbecame the Soweto StudentsRepresentative Council (SSRC). Theprotest attracted around fifteen thousandyouths. Many displayed their hostilitytowards the language policy by wavingplacards such as "Blacks are not dustbins-Afrikaans stinks" and "Afrikaans is oppres-sors' language".

Police had made no preparations for theevent, a protest on a scale unseen in years,and tensions rose. At 9' o clock that morn-ing, police and students clashed on VilikaziStreet: police fired tear gas, demonstratorsthrew stones, and police opened fire. Twochildren died, many were injured. The TRCfound that Colonel Theuns "Rooi Rus"Swanepoel of the SA Police Riot Unit - anotorious thug - adopted a "shoot to kill"policy.

The police action ignited the fury of theyoung marchers. By midday rioting hadbroken out across Soweto. Cars werestoned and barricades erected. Arson

Remembering and Learningfrom the Past:

The 1976 Uprising and theAfrican Working Class

Selby Semela inLondon in 1977

PAGE 23ZABALAZA HISTORY

attacks took place on administration build-ings, schools and beer halls. Two Whiteswere attacked and killed: one was DrMelville Edelstein, a liberal who had justpublished a report warning of impendingunrest in Soweto.

Despite the police's heavy-handed meth-ods, riots quickly spread across the country,and protests - including three generalstrikes, of varying success - continued into1977. In the Western Cape, the revoltcame to include many Coloured youth -most of whom were Afrikaans speaking - avery significant development. By the timethe uprising ended there were more than575 dead (451 killed by police), and 3,907injured (2,389 by police).

The SSRC and other organisations playeda leading role, but the revolt was the prop-erty of no organisation: it was spontaneousand militant. Contrary to a myth now pro-moted by ANC leaders (and the claims ofthen-Prime Minister B.J. Vorster), the ANC,as an organisation, played a very limitedrole. BC was central amongst students,while many workers adhered to the inde-pendent politics of the reborn unions.

LESSONSThe 1976 uprising marked the beginning

of a new era. The costs were high, butSoweto showed that struggle was possible,opening the last chapter in the anti-apartheid struggle. The 1976 revolt rightlyoccupies a central place in the story ofnational liberation. The language issuesparked the revolt, but it was only the matchto a tinderbox of grievances from capitalistrestructuring and national oppression.

The revolt should not be romanticised - itinvolved State terror, racial attacks, the firstuse of the notorious "necklace" against sup-posed informers, and the first major con-flicts between township residents and hos-tel dwellers around the Mzimhlope hostel.

Revolutionaries must also learn from pastmistakes, as much as they should celebratepast victories. There were inherent weak-nesses in the politics of the uprising. BCwas a key factor in the struggle at the time,and the State found it necessary to ban 17BC organisations and murder Biko beforethe revolt ended.

But while BC's emphasis on "black" pridewas very important - every national libera-tion struggle will involve a similar mental lib-eration by oppressed groups - BC neverhad a clear strategy to change society.After the end of the revolt, many SSRCleaders fled into exile, - forming the SouthAfrican Youth Revolutionary Council(SAYRCO) in 1979, a body that proved assterile and ineffective as the exiled ANC,SACP and PAC.

BC stressed personal change, rather thanbuilding counter-power. It very rarely devel-oped an anti-capitalist position, eventhough national oppression and capitalistexploitation were deeply interlinked in

apartheid South Africa.

THE FALL OF BCIn the late 1970s, many BC activists came

to a more socialist position, exemplified byAZAPO and the National Forum, but BChad lost its moment. It was sidelined withina few years by formations like the FOSATUunions, the United Democratic Front andthe rebirth of ANC influence. In any case,the socialism of groups like AZAPO wasvery heavily Soviet in orientation - hardlydifferent to the SACP. Brutal attacks andmurders of BC stalwarts by ANC supportersput a further nail in the coffin.

Some BC exiles, however, pointed to a dif-ferent approach. Semela drew anti-capital-ist conclusions, and became a libertariancommunist, with a position very close toanarchism. He believed that BC learned allthe wrong lessons from 1976. Having man-aged to "leave in the dust the false goalsand methods of the struggles of the fortiesand fifties," it had no clear alternative. The1976 revolt showed the power of workingclass spontaneity, but BC leaders subse-quently decided to lay "firm claim to thedubious honour of the avant-garde party."The revolt showed the importance of self-organisation, but the SSRC ran itself "as aself-appointed executive, dictatorially con-trolled by its chairman."

SAYRCO was no different. Its main activ-ity was to send leaders into South Africa tocall upon the youth to join it in exile, whenthe 1970s had shown that the real strugglewas within the country, with the exiledgroups impotent. The eventual outcomewas predictable: the exiled BC groups setup their own tiny "army," a pale shadow ofthe exiled ANC's own failed armed struggle,and even less effective.

CLASS STRUGGLE ANDNATIONAL LIBERATION

The 1994 elections showed that thenational liberation struggle in South Africahad been conquered by the bourgeois anti-imperialism of African nationalism, whichaimed to deracialise capitalism through theState. This was the ANC project.

The alternative anarchist/syndicalist tradi-tion of working class anti-imperialism -which aimed to merge struggles againstnational oppression, capitalism and the

State in a single revolutionary process - waslong buried.

This does not mean that 1994 was mean-ingless. There were very real gains, like theend of legalised White supremacy,apartheid repression and press controls,even if there were also defeats, like the sur-vival of capitalism.

It was here that BC was tested one lasttime, and found wanting. By the 1990s, theonce-mighty BC movement was a tiny iso-lated current, mainly middle class. It insist-ed - contrary to all evidence - that the 1994elections were entirely meaningless andshould be boycotted.

The elections, however, were a massivevictory for the African working class, even ifthat victory is now increasingly overshad-owed by the ANC's neo-liberal war on thepoor. AZAPO saw only the defeats, boy-cotted the elections, and largely faded awayas the African working class overwhelming-ly voted to end apartheid and oust theNational Party government.

A REAL MONUMENTWe anarchists have worked with BC

activists on several occasions - the fact weare both outside the ANC tradition wasimportant - but we do not think BC can pro-vide a real alternative. The old-style BC ofthe 1970s lacked a strategy and a vision;the second generation BC of AZAPO - andthe more recent SOPA breakaway - mod-elled its socialism too heavily on the State-capitalism of Cuba and the Soviet Union,and misunderstood the real changes thattook place in the 1990s. And, as Semelashows, some BC activists found an answerin libertarian socialism.

What, then, is to be done? Plural andorganic forms of working class organisationshould be promoted, working class autono-my and anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarianpolitics and organisation need to be fos-tered, and struggle needs to be madeeveryday practice.

Building tomorrow today in such a man-ner, we can change the world, and honourthe victims of 1976 with a real monument: asociety free of class and national oppres-sion. It is a far more fitting monument thanhaving Thabo Mbeki cynically and disgrace-fully appropriating the 1976 revolt for theANC.

Selby Semela, Sam Thompson & NormanAbraham, [1979] 2005

REFLECTIONS ON THE BLACKCONSCIOUSNESS MOVEMENT ANDTHE SOUTH AFRICAN REVOLUTION

Is now available from Zabalaza Books.Contact us for ordering details.

PAGE 24ZABALAZA HISTORY

2006 sees the 70th anniversary of one ofthe most important episodes of Europeanworking class history - the SpanishRevolution.

Because the Spanish anarchist move-ment was historically such a large andimportant one, anarchists have had a repu-tation for idealising the Spanish events of1936 - 1937 and the role of libertarians in it.Unlike, for example, Britain or Ireland,anarchist ideas had been at the forefront ofsocialist politics in Spain since the 1860s.The libertarian movement had deep rootsamongst both the peasantry and the emer-gent industrial working class for more thanhalf a century prior to the 1936 revolution.

CNT - FAIMost of that movement could be found in

the revolutionary syndicalist NationalConfederation of Labour (ConfederaciónNacional del Trabajo - CNT), a union that inMay 1936 numbered over half a million. Byno means all CNT members were anar-chists; many had joined for the simple rea-son that the union was the strongest andmost effective in their workplace. But theorganisation was at least nominally com-mitted to a libertarian communist future andwas regarded as a de facto anarchistunion. Partly in order to maintain theCNT’s libertarian and revolutionary per-spectives, anarchist militants had in 1927created the Iberian Anarchist Federation(Federación Anarquista Iberica - FAI). Thislatter organisation had a structure basedupon affinity groups and in 1936 claimedsomething in the region of 30,000 militants.

It is easy to see how the libertarian move-ment was a major player in Spanish politi-cal life, vastly outnumbering theCommunist Party and challenging thesocial democratic party, the Workers’Socialist Party and their industrial wing, theGeneral Workers Union (Unión General deTrabajadores- UGT), for the allegiance ofthe urban and rural working class. It was,therefore, inevitable that the anarchistswould play a major role in the social

upheaval sparked by an attempted military- clerical - fascist coup in July 1936.

JULY 1936The July revolt by a large section of the

Spanish army, led by General Franco andsupported by the Catholic Church and thefascist Falange party, might be describedas a pre-emptive counter-revolution. A‘Popular Front’ government had beenelected in February, bringing to power acoalition dominated by the LeftRepublicans, a middle class democraticparty with a programme of modernisationand moderate reform. Despite theirinvolvement in this front, the Socialistswould not take part. Even so, this was

enough to prompt the reactionary forces ofthe traditional ruling elite to immediatelyprepare for civil war. On July 17th whatbecame known as the Nationalist revoltkicked off in Spanish Morocco, quicklyspreading into Spain itself. As town aftertown fell to the militarists the Republicangovernment vacillated, talked of coming toan agreement with the rebel military andgenerally appeared paralysed in the face ofthe revolt. As the initiative for resisting theNationalists was falling to the workers’organisations, particularly the CNT andUGT, the government slowly authorised thearming of the union militias. In the capital,Madrid, the revolt was rapidly disarmed byarmed UGT militants alongside those secu-

rity forces who remained ‘loyal’ to the gov-ernment. In Barcelona the CNT took effec-tive control.

Though large parts of Spain were in thehands of the Nationalists, their overalladvance was temporarily halted and thelarge cities of Barcelona and Madrid werein the hands of the unions. In Barcelonathe CNT and FAI emptied the barracks anddistributed arms to groups of membersacross Catalonia and beyond. So, in themidst of civil war and chaos, began theSpanish Revolution.

In Catalonia and Aragon, the two regionswith the greatest concentration of libertari-an workers and peasants, there began asocial transformation. Real power wasbeing taken into the hands of the workingclass as the government looked on, tem-porarily powerless. The distribution offood, the maintenance of public services,the opening of collective restaurants andthe organisation of defence against theNationalist forces were all being undertak-en by strictly unofficial elements! Humancreativity was being unleashed and thestate was nowhere to be seen, thoughundoubtedly it was there, waiting to regainstrength.

Collectivisations of industry and theexpropriation of the land, initiated by CNTand, to a lesser extent, UGT members,were taking place throughout these areas.Often, anarchist militias such as thefamous Durruti Column would actively pro-mote and defend collectivisations as theytravelled to the frontline. The collectivisa-tion of land has been described as“Probably the most creative legacy ofSpanish anarchism” by the writer and his-torian Daniel Guerin. As large landownersabandoned their estates their workers tookover and ran them collectively. Wherelandowners stayed, those who hadappeared sympathetic to the militaristrevolt were kicked off the land whilst ‘goodrepublican’ landowners were often invitedto join the collectives! In total it is estimat-ed that possibly 3 million people wereinvolved in collectives in the ‘revolutionaryperiod’ of 1936-37.

The collectives variously attempted to putinto practice libertarian communism basedon the principle of ‘from each according toability, to each according to need’ but, morecommonly, collectivism where a ‘familywage’ was paid by the collective.

A New World inour Hearts

“We are not in the least afraid ofruins. We are going to inherit theearth. There is not the slightest

doubt about that. The bourgeoisiemay blast and ruin it’s own world

before it leaves the stage of history.We carry a new world, here in ourhearts. That world is growing this

minute.”Buenaventura Durruti,

anarchist militant, 1937

Remembering the Spanish Revolution of 1936

PAGE 25ZABALAZA HISTORY

THE SOCIAL REVOLUTIONSocially, the revolution began to cast-off

centuries of mental servitude to the rulingclass and the Catholic Church. Workingpeople began to discard formal and defer-ential speech, common in Spanish. Peoplespoke to each other as equals. Churchesfound themselves under attack, often beingrequisitioned for practical use and some-times simply burnt down as symbols ofcenturies-old oppression.

New groups involving themselves in artis-tic, musical and cultural activities emergedin a surge of creativity unleashed by thepossibilities the revolution offered.

THE INDUSTRIALCOLLECTIVISATIONS

In the industrial areas of ‘Loyalist Spain’,particularly Catalonia, large parts of manu-facturing and most public services wereimmediately taken over and managed bythe workers. The collectivised factoriesand workshops were, for four monthsafter the July events, run without stateinvolvement. The revolution in Russiain 1917 had faced the problem of thedesertion of skilled technicians to thecounter-revolution, and although thiswas not as widespread in Spain, wheremany technical staff were themselvesactive syndicalists, it was still a factor.Unlike the agricultural experiments inself-management, the industrial effortswere faced with having to reorganisethe factories to produce armaments andmilitary vehicles. Added to this was thesuccessful attempt by the state to co-opt the collectivisations.

In October the Catalan regional govern-ment ratified the socialisation of industry.The state was attempting to both controlthe collectivisation process and to use it toits own advantage in building the war effortand disciplining the workforce. The statedecreed that all factories employing morethan 100 workers were to be brought underthe joint management of a Council ofEnterprises. This Council was to includeboth the workforce and a representativefrom the Catalan regional government whowould act as ‘controller’. TheCollectivisation Decree of October 1936,however, transferred all real power to thestate’s General Council for Industry.Although the workers who had taken con-trol through direct action in 1936 remainednominally in control, their role was in reali-ty only to be consulted and, naturally, towork.

How did this happen? In July 1936 thestate was impotent and almost invisible, yeta few months later it had returned and hadusurped power from the working class.

THE CNT-FAI BETRAYALThe reason can be found in the fact that

whilst the rank and file of the libertarian

organisations were engaging in collectivi-sations and land seizures, the ‘leadership’of the movement saved the governmentfrom complete eclipse.

And it began this process as early as the20th July, the day following the halting ofthe militarist rising. On that fateful day LuisCompanys the President of the Generalitat,the regional government of Catalonia, sum-moned representatives of the CNT and theFAI. Companys offered to resign from agovernment which existed in name only, itsability to ‘restore order’ non-existent. Atthis meeting the CNT and FAI, representingthe armed and mobilised masses, decidedthat a new administration could be estab-lished between the revolutionary workersmovement and the leftist forces of thePopular Front. The new structure was theCentral Committee of the Anti-FascistMilitias and it was this organisation thatoversaw the social re-organisation in theweeks following the effective collapse. It

was this committee that helped co-ordinatethe establishing and supplying of militias tofight at the front, the collectivisations andthe maintenance of social services. Butthe vital breathing space gave the govern-ment the opportunity to recover and re-establish its power. As the dissident anar-cho-syndicalist group the ‘Friends ofDurruti’ were to reflect later “There can beabsolutely no common ground betweenexploiters and exploited. Which shall pre-vail, only battle can decide. Bourgeoisie orworkers. Certainly not both of them atonce” (Towards a Fresh Revolution 1938).

So, with power in the hands of the work-ing class, why did the leadership of theCNT-FAI not simply dismiss the govern-ment and maintain workers power? Thebetrayal cannot be blamed upon reformistor moderate elements in the CNT, after all,the militant FAI was also there. Indeed, theFAI’s Garcia Oliver, present at the meeting,stated that the choice was between“Libertarian Communism, which means theanarchist dictatorship, or democracy, whichmeans collaboration.” (quoted in Lessonsof the Spanish Revolution, VernonRichards 1953).

This false dichotomy ignored the possibil-ity of maintaining and extending the gainsof the working class without an ‘anarchist

dictatorship’ but through the suppression ofthe republican democratic bourgeoisie,which was already in disarray.

THE ‘ANARCHIST’POLITICIANS

The choice of collaboration sealed thefate of the revolution. Dual power could notlast very long. On September 27th repre-sentatives of the CNT entered the newCouncil of the Generalitat, the reorganisedregional government of Catalonia and theCentral Committee of the Anti-FascistMilitias, in which the CNT had placed somuch hope, was gone. The decision toenter the government appears to havebeen taken a week earlier by the NationalCommittee of the CNT, which was sup-posed to be answerable to the union as awhole. The CNT had called for a RegionalDefence Council which would co-ordinatewithout being a government per se, but

when offered places in a coalition withbourgeois parties they did not hesitateto cross the class divide. The ‘hard-line’FAI militant Garcia Oliver was to say“The Committees of the Anti-FascistMilitias have been dissolved becausenow the Generalitat represents all ofus.” This amazing statement showshow quickly both anarchist principlesand class analysis were thrown away.The stage was set for the ‘anarchist’politicians to enter the NationalGovernment of Spain, led by left social-ist Largo Caballero, two months later inNovember 1936.

THE RISE OF THE COMMUNISTPARTY

The growth of the Communist Partythroughout what became the Spanish CivilWar was phenomenal. Two main factorspromoted that growth. Firstly, the SpanishRepublic looked to the Soviet Union formaterial aid and support and secondly, theSpanish Stalinists opposed any revolution-ary activity which might jeopardise thebourgeois republic and thereby recruitedheavily from all those who might be incon-venienced by collectivisations. TheCommunist Party, adept at infiltration andmanipulation, took control of the SocialistParty’s youth section and, through theimportation of Russian military advisorsand their own political commissars, rapidlygained an influence in the military of theRepublic out of all proportion to their size.In 1936 the party united with the Catalansocialists to form the Catalan UnitedSocialist Party (PSUC), which it dominated.

The Communist Party was the mainsponsor of the famous InternationalBrigades, the tens of thousands of volun-teers who came from across the globe to‘defend the republic’. This added to theParty’s kudos.

PAGE 26ZABALAZA HISTORY

MILITARISATIONThe communists were also at the fore-

front of the campaign to integrate the mili-tias of the CNT-FAI and the Workers Partyof Marxist Unification (POUM), a large anti-Stalinist left socialist grouping, into the‘Popular Army’ of the Republic.

Opposition to militarisation of the militiascame mainly from the grassroots of theCNT-FAI and, naturally, from the anarchistmilitias which had emerged in July -September 1936 during the existence ofthe Central Committee of Anti-FascistMilitias. The militias were not opposed toco-ordination of the physical fight againstthe nationalist military, but of being forcedinto a traditional army that would be con-trolled by whoever was in charge of thestate.

However, the military situation in the peri-od following the entry of the ‘anarchists’into the regional and central governmentswas dire for the Republican forces. Thegovernment left Madrid for Valencia asthe capital was besieged in Novemberand the pressure increased for the dis-solving of the militias into a regulararmy. The increasing militarisation ofthe Republican area was another signthat the revolution was being strangledand that the working class was becom-ing used in a conventional warbetween two rival factions of the rulingclass.

THE MAY EVENTS, 1937The last gasp of the Spanish revolu-

tion came in May 1937. ThroughoutApril the Generalitat, complete with 4 ‘anar-chist’ ministers, including the Minister forJustice, had been escalating harassmentof ‘uncontrollable elements’ in the CNT andthe POUM, disarming workers patrolgroups, raiding offices. On the morning ofMay 3rd a provocation occurred that wouldsignal the final defeat of the Revolution andthe capitulation of the CNT to the state.

The Barcelona Telephone Exchange hadbeen under the control of its workers, main-ly CNT members, since the July days. At 3o’clock on the afternoon of Monday May3rd the police attempted to occupy thebuilding but could not advance beyond thefirst floor due to resistance from the work-ers. News of the assault spread and rankand file CNT, FAI and POUM militantsresponded, arming themselves and organ-ising to resist. The leadership of the CNTcalled for calm and the removal of thepolice from the building. But events wereovertaking the leaders and a general strikedeveloped in Barcelona as barricades wereerected by the working class across thecity. Shooting started in the early hours ofthe next day and continued sporadically.Still the CNT called for negotiations to endthe standoff. Exactly 24 hours after theoccupation of the telephone exchange the

CNT-FAI called for the workers organisa-tions to unilaterally lay down their arms in aradio broadcast. “Workers of the CNT!Workers of the UGT! Don’t be deceived bythese manoeuvres. Above all else, Unity!Put down your arms. Only one slogan: Wemust work to beat fascism! Down with fas-cism!”

But the counter-revolution, spearheadedby the PSUC and the local CatalanNationalists, was determined to humble theanarchists. Libertarians were shot in coldblood only yards from the headquarters ofthe CNT. On the 5th the state escalatedthe provocation by an assault on the localLibertarian Youth centre and the surround-ing of CNT headquarters. On the samenight the Italian anarchist Camillo Berneriand his comrade Barbieri were abductedand murdered by a joint police and PSUCsquad. Berneri, editor of ‘Guerra di Classe’(Class War) was one of the most intelligentand constructive critics of the anarchist col-laboration.

AGAIN CAPITULATIONAt this time The Friends of Durruti group

issued a proclamation calling for a‘Revolutionary Junta’ (Council) to be estab-lished, which would include the POUM.The POUM, however, remained indecisiveand awaited the leadership of the CNT-FAI.The leadership could only counsel ‘sereni-ty’ and calm, calling for a return to work anda ceasefire whilst the Catalan governmentcalled in reinforcements from aroundRepublican Spain!

Despite the encouragement not to aban-don the streets that came from the Friendsof Durruti, the rank and file of the CNT, FAIand Libertarian Youth complied with theleadership. The majority of syndicalistsand anarchists continued to trust thosewho had been their most ardent militants inthe years before. By Friday 7th, the fight-ing in Barcelona had ended. The Catalanand national governments, however, tookthis as a sign that the CNT would nowaccept almost anything in the name of anti-fascist unity and despite agreements to thecontrary, occupied the entirety of the tele-phone exchange and continued to harass,intimidate and arrest anarchists.

AFTERMATHThe aftermath of the May Days saw the

power and confidence of the state rein-forced and the morale of the revolutionar-ies sapped. In June the state outlawed thePOUM, which subsequently disappearedfrom the scene, mainly into Stalinist pris-ons. In July the anarchists were excludedfrom the reorganised Catalan governmentand from August onwards the state carriedon a programme of de-collectivisation. Therevolution, in the sense of working classpower and of a libertarian reorganisation ofsociety, was dead. The revolution dead,the defeat of the Republic followed as thenationalists, supported by Nazi Germanyand Fascist Italy, crushed the ‘PeoplesArmy’.

AN IMPOSSIBLE REVOLUTION?The Spanish Revolution of 1936 was born

in the midst of a period of darkest reaction.Italy and Germany were under the jackboot

of fascism, their working class subduedby repression. The Soviet Union, at theheight of Stalin’s dictatorship over theproletariat, dominated the left throughthe Communist International. Stalinisminternationally served to defend theSoviet Union and the policy of theCommunist Parties twisted and turneddepending on the needs of the‘Workers’ Fatherland’. It is no exagger-ation to say that the working class wasin a position of international defeat.

When the workers of Spain sponta-neously moved to crush the nationalist- militarist uprising they were alone, iso-

lated and far from being part of an interna-tional movement. What they had in theirfavour were mass organisations, built overmany years and having come throughrepression and illegality.

From the very beginning the anarchistand syndicalist movement’s ‘official’ leader-ship acted like politicians and played thepolitical games of the bourgeoisie.Paralysed by the fear of establishing an‘anarchist dictatorship’ they instead effec-tively accepted the dictatorship of the dem-ocratic, anti-fascist ruling class. And whilstthe rank and file of the anarchist movementstrove to proceed towards libertarian com-munism, they failed to challenge their ownorganisation’s integration into the historicalenemy of classical anarchism - the state.The Friends of Durruti put it clearly whenthey said that “Democracy, not fascism,defeated the Spanish people”.

An incredible creativity and capacity forcreating a new world was exhibited, in theworst possible conditions, by millions ofSpanish workers and peasants. This, trag-ically, was not enough to actually make thenew world, held deeply in their hearts,realised.

Reprinted from Organise! - For RevolutionaryAnarchism #66 www.afed.org.uk/

PAGE 27ZABALAZA IN MEMORY...

It is always saddening to hear of some-one dying in a prison, with cold concreteand steel preventing themfrom being comforted byloved ones in their time ofneed. However, and not toplace any more value onone life over another, butwhen I hear of yet anotheranarchist, whom I believeoften have a more acuteawareness of suffering anda stronger longing for freedom and justicethan do most people, having died in aprison cell, I am filled with a sadnessunparalleled.

Abel was imprisoned as a member ofthe Pan-African Congress for his role in thestruggle against apartheid but, throughcontact with the southern African chapter ofthe Anarchist Black Cross in early 2004 hebegan to develop a great interest in anar-chism and devoured any reading materialhe could get hold of. Despite a decade ofhumiliation and abuse at the hands of theauthorities, when Abel became an anar-chist almost two years ago he was filledwith a hope and belief in a better future thatis rare; especially in someone who hasspent so long in prison, having been for-gotten both by his former organisation andthe very people whose freedom he foughtfor.

In prison he began to organise a clan-destine reading and study group on anar-chism, educating prisoners about the realnature of the prison system, and set aboutorganising to expose the corruption of theANC and the Amnesty Commission; whichdenied amnesty to political prisoners and

freedom fighters of the apartheid era whowere not affiliated to the ANC leadership or

were not part of the South African Police orSouth African National Defence Force dur-ing the times of struggle.

Abel was an inspiration to fight backagainst the injustice of the system if ever Imet one; I remember when he told me notto bring him anything that would make hisstay in prison more comfortable, as it madehim feel stronger and more of an anarchistto suffer. And not to buy him anything fromthe prison tuck-shop as he didn't want tocontribute in any way to enriching the cor-rupt prison wardens and Department ofCorrectional Services. Instead he askedfor a kettle, which the ABC supplied, thathe could use to drink hot water, which hesaid helped his asthma. I only hope itmade his last months more bearable.

Of course one can be sure that if Abelhadn't had to endure a decade behindbars, surrounded by concrete and steel,trying to survive on a worthless diet and ifhe had had access to the right medication,he may have had the strength to fight hissickness as he did his oppressors. That iswhy; when the prison warden told us thatAbel had died in September from asthma Iwas furious. Maybe I wanted to cry, but my

tears have dried up like the blood of somany who sacrificed their lives and free-

dom for a better future.Anyway, we don't onlymourn for the dead... weturn anger and sadnessinto resistance.

It was an honour and aprivilege to have know Abeland, inspired by his enthu-siasm and commitment toexposing and expelling the

lies about the role and function of theprison system - that of protecting andupholding class society - with the aim ofdestroying them both, we will not rest untilevery prison has been razed to the ground.

- Love & RageJonathan,

on behalf of the AnarchistBlack Cross - SA

NOTE: The Prison will not pass on thedetails and date of his death until a writtenrequest has been approved by theDepartment of Correctional Services.

Remembering OurFallen Comrades!

Another Anarchist Dies in Prison:Abel Ramarope, Political Prisoner Turned

Anarchist, died September 2005“You must be aware that we are victimised by our fear to stand up for what is entitled us as peo-

ple whether in prison or outside prison. We are firstly determined to challenge any barbaric or tyran-nical system if it needs be. Change is a must; and it shall come and be effected by those who needsto see it.

Well we need to be strong even when we face incarceration. We cannot afford to be sacrificedat the expense of the capitalists. We fought for the transformation of this land, and yet we aredeprived of the right to enjoy the fruits of our labour. Now our votes are seen as a priority but ourrelease as political activists/prisoners is not important to them.”

- Abel Ramarope

Let sadness turn to anger, harness that anger and turn it to rage Give expression to that rage and tear down the fucking cage

While there is a working class I am of it,While there is a criminal element,Then I am in it,And while there is a soul in prison,Then I am not free.

Z A C F C o n t a c t D e t a i l s

What is the ZACF?The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (ZACF or simply ZabFed) is a

federation of anarchist collectives and individuals from the southern regions ofAfrica who identify with the communist tradition within Anarchism. The federa-tion is organised around the principles of theoretical and tactical unity, collec-tive responsibility and federalism. Our activities include study and theoreticaldevelopment, anarchist agitation and propaganda, and participation within theclass struggle.

As anarchist-communists, we struggle for a classless, stateless and non-hier-archical society. We envision an international confederation of directly demo-cratic, self-managed communities and workplaces; a society where all markets,exchange value systems and divisions of labour have been abolished and themeans of production, distribution and communication are taken over by theworkers and placed under workers' self-management (socialised) in order toallow for the satisfaction of the needs of everyone, adhering to the communistprinciple: “From each according to ability, to each according to need.”

ZABALAZA ANARCHIST

COMMUNIST FEDERATION

WHERE WE STAND

We, 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 workers self-

management and socialism. We do not mean the lie called ‘socialism’ practised in Russia, China, and other police states - the sys-tem 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 democratic way byworking people, through federations of community and workplace committees. We want to abolish authoritarian relationships andreplace 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 management ofthose working in them. Production will be co-ordinated, organised and planned by the federation of elected and recallable workplaceand community committees, not for profit but to meet our needs. The guiding principle will be “from each according to ability, to eachaccording to need”.

We are opposed to all coercive authority; we believe that the only limit on the freedom of the individual is that their freedom doesnot 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 that social-ism can only be created by the mass of ordinary people. Anything less is bound to lead to no more than replacing one set of boss-es with another.

We are opposed to the state because it is not neutral, it cannot be made to serve our interests. The structures of the state areonly necessary when a minority seeks to rule over the majority. We can create our own structures, which will be open and demo-cratic, 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 root in the work-ing class of many countries because it serves our interests - not the interests of the power seekers and professional politicians.

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

FEDERATION SECRETARYPost: Postnet Suite 116, Private Bag X42, Braamfontein, 2017,JohannesburgEmail: zabfed@zabalaza.netPhone: 0881220416 (leave message)

INTERNATIONAL SECRETARYPost: Postnet Suite 116, Private Bag X42, Braamfontein, 2017,Johannesburg, South AfricaEmail: international@zabalaza.net

PAGE 28ZABALAZA