South Africa: Drawing the lessons from the Samwu strike so far; a fighting plan to win

 

We reprint a WIVL article on the the lessons of the SAMWU [South African Municiple Workers Union] strike that began on April 12. While we are no longer in the same political organisation as the WIVL we are in agreement with the political positions its advocates to win this strike.

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first lesson to be drawn is that both the ANC [African National Congress] and SACP [South African Communist Party] are responsible for cracking down on the Samwu strikers. The Minister of local government (Co-operative governance) , Sicelo Shiceka, is a leader of the SACP. Secondly, the SACP has remained quiet throughout the first 7 days of the strike (the youth wing issued a belated statement on the 7th day of the strike, hardly what we may call a vanguard role). 

 

Why is the silence significant? From the beginning the government (let's face it, Salga [South African Local Government Association] has no real independent existence from the government), called the strike illegal and threatened over national television, to dismiss any worker who went on strike. The government tried to interdict the strike but even this failed. Now the government tries to intimidate strikers by threatening that they must pay for so-called damages of the strike (R6.4 million). These anti-worker attacks by the SACP and ANC on the municipal strikers, are of the type last seen in the dying days of the apartheid regime.

 

In another strike (on the railways), SACP leader Lucky Montana told workers over public television, without even a hearing, that they were dismissed. Later he was made to eat his words when workers forced him to retract the apartheid-style dismissals and they embarked on a face-saving exercise by firing the regional Manager.

 

What is at the heart of the alliance of the SACP and the ANC against the workers? It is the stalinist notion of a 2-stage revolution, namely that for the so-called national democratic revolution, that the leadership of the struggle for bourgeois democratic demands are placed in the hands of the middle class and the capitalist class, in this case, the multiclass ANC. Trotsky and Lenin, in defining the permanent revolution, described how, in the colonial world, in the period of imperialist decay (the world world being divided up among the monopolies) the struggle for the basic democratic demands can only be achieved by the working class taking power. Lenin went so far as to say (State & Revolution) that upon attaining a democratic republic, the middle class and the capitalist class lose all their revolutionism. The anti-worker actions of the ANC and SACP in their attempts to crush the strike, prove Lenin correct.

 

Blade Nzimande got his R1 million BMW within days; JP Morgan Chase, the Bank of New york, the Wall Street gangsters, all got their billions from the 2010 stadiums and infrastructure within months; JP Morgan Chase is actually in charge of loans for Eskom and is daily plundering the working class.

 

On the other hand, the municipal strikers are waiting 7 years for their backpay; millions of the working class have waited many years for housing and adequate services. Millions will always be unemployed and without adequate housing. The people of Matafeni are still waiting for their 2 schools (demolished to make way for the Mbombela stadium).

 

In other words, imperialism is making super-profits at the expense of the working class, and the main agent of ensuring these profits, are the SACP and ANC. Workers need to ask themselves, if the govement cannot even meet a simple demand like 7 years of backpay (which must have been budgeted for), what purpose does the alliance with the ANC and SACP serve? It cannot even meet a single democratic demand! The govenment has for years been taking loans from the IMF and conditions of the IMF are budget cuts. So here we see directly, the govenment refuses to pay the municipal workers their due, but makes sure that the first expense is the massive interest payments to imperialism. Imperialism is the real leader of the ANC-SACP-Cosatu alliance, that is clear!

 

The strike of the municipal workers is thus not against Salga (this is only the superficial form), but against imperialism and their structural adjustment programme applied by the SACP and ANC in government.

But the SACP plays a more sinister role than the ANC, from within Cosatu, and in this case, also from within Samwu. High food, transport and electricity prices are artificially high, but the SACP 'vanguard' in Cosatu sit on their fingers. After the massive electricity increase, the World bank orders that 20% of Eskom workers be fired and Numsa leaders are only upset that they were not consulted (no plan to fight the retrenchments). But the Samwu leaders have made a critical error by applying the stalinist policy of a stayaway after day 3 of the strike. This shows the massive influence of the SACP within the union. The stayaway policy is a recipe for defeat:

 

1. Firstly, workers are atomised and isolated and there is no mechanism for the mass of strikers to control the direction of the strike;

2. it opens workers to victimization as they are now isolated individuals, instead of a united mass;

3. a stayaway deliberately demobilises the strikers instead of posing a united workers stance against the bosses.

4. a stayaway opens the door for scab labour to be used by the bosses;

5. a strike is a contest for power and the bosses, if faced by the united mass of workers at every depot and municipal workplace, would be confronted by working class power; on the other hand, with a stayaway, the absence of the workers gives strength to the bosses; the bosses have huge reserves, they can wait it out. A stayaway (a self-imposed lockout), a pacifict tactic, always tips the balance of forces in the bosses favour;

6. the united working class, occupying the workplace, immediately poses the question as to who the real boss is, the worker or the capitalist (and their local managers, the SACP and ANC). Taken to its end, a general strike, with workers occupying the workplace (as opposed to a general stayaway), immediately places on the agenda the formation of strike committees at every workplace and indeed self-defence committees to defend against the red ants and other fascist tools of the state. If all sectors came out in general strike, in support of the municipal workers, as they should (just give 7 days notice), the formation of factory committees and self -defence committees at every workplace, is immediately placed on the agenda. The next step would be to set up councils of delegates from all workplaces, from communities (1 per 100 workers or unemplyed), and from the soldiers. This bourgeois system, with the rule of the gangsters of Wall street, is immediately placed under challenge by the united working class.

 

The stayaway is a stalinist extension of the 2 stage theory as it takes power out of the hands of the working class, and places it in the hands of the middle class and capitalist class. The stayaway gives gaps to the state to crack down on individual workers and activists. Let us draw the lesson of Greece, when on the 11th March, during the biggest action of the masses in the recent history of their country, the Greek Communist party, supported by the fake left, called a stayaway and the 70 000 who came from different parts of Greece to Athens, were in isolated groups and were openly attacked and teargassed by the state as well being attacked by fascist gangs. The Greek Communist party refused to topple the government which was implementing massive wage cuts and attacks on the masses. The very government, who allowed JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to take over the income from the docks and all export and imports of the country (the income went straight to Wall street and not even to the government, and this at massive interest rates)- the very ones who allowed the imperialists to bankrupt Greece, were protected by the stayaway and the general policy of the Greek Communist party. Soon after, such was the confidence of the imperialists in the stalinists to control the masses, they implemented further cuts in benefits and wages over the Greek masses.

 

We need to draw the lesson of the Chinese workers at Linzhou and Tonghua, who occupied their workplace, and forced the Chinese government to reverse the planned privatization of the metal plant and reversal of the dismissal of 20 000 of the 25 000 workers.

 

It may be that the Samwu worker leaders (or at least part of them) have not been conscious of the implications of the policy of the 'stayaway', so we propose this fighting action plan to win the strike.

 

At its recent Congress, Samwu adopted a resolution for calling a conference to 'conscientize' workers. Here, in the strike, are the best conditions for an open conference. Here are proposed steps to immediately advance and strengthen the strike:

1. First call mass general meetings of strikers in every town and city, in order to regroup and plan the next steps such as setting up strike committees (based on the right of instant recall of any leader, national or local) and self-defence committees (on the same recall principle), for every depot or municipal workplace;

2. Occupy strategic depots and municipal workplaces and then extend the occupation to all municipal workplaces;

3. call mass meetings in every working class area and set up strike support committees, led by municipal workers.;

4. call meetings with all other unions(allocate this task to the strike committees), including soldiers unions, to give concrete support by giving 7 day notice of solidarity strikes, after a process of mass workplace meetings and election of strike/factory committees (which task should include self-defence committees, especially due to the harsh attacks by the red ants [ANC armed thugs]);

5. the election of local councils of delegates of employed, unemployed and soldiers to co-ordinate the solidarity strike action; the immediate calling of a national workers summit of delegates from all workplaces (unionised and non-unionised), from working class communities, including delegates from the unemployed and from soldiers, to plan a general strike, not only in support of the municipal strike, but against the entire imperialist structural adjustment programmes/plans. in every community, care should be taken to include delegates from immigrant workers so their demands are also raised at the workers summit; demands such as full backpay for municipal workers, equal pay for equal work (including immigrant workers), limiting salaries of managers and ministers to that of an average skilled worker, right of instant recall of all government representatives, sharing all work among all who can work, increase wages when prices increase, expropriate all imperialist assets (including all commercial farms and the banks), without compensation to the capitalists, and placing them under workers control, invite delegates from Zimbabwe and Madagascar workers and rank and file soldiers to the summit, and indeed worker and rank and file soldiers delegates from all of Southern Africa.

 

Call general meetings, set up mass strike committees, occupy, resist, all united under one slogan: BREAK WITH THE BOURGEOISIE! BREAK WITH THE PACIFISM OF THE SACP AND ANC!

 

Long live the fighting spirit of the woking class of Kyrgyzstan! Forward to Working class power!

--
Shaheed Mahomed
African Secretariat
International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction.
with the support of the International Co-ordination Secretariat
1st Floor, Community House
41 Salt River rd
Salt River
South Africa
7925
ph 0822020617
fax 0865486048
workersinternational@gmail.com
web www.workersinternational.org.za


affiliated to the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction integrated by
Liga Trotskista Internacionalista , (LTI) de Bolivia
Fraccion Trotskista , (FT) de Brasil
Partido Obrero Internactionaista- CI (POI-CI) , de Chile
Liga Obrera Internacionalista- CI (LOI-CI) Argentina
Liga Trotskista Internacionalista- (LTI)Peru
Workers International Vanguard League (WIVL) South Africa
Revolutionary Internationalist Group- Zimbabwe (in process of affiliating)

South Africa: Lessons from the clothing workers strike in South Africa

Shaheed Mahomed
1 November 2009 in News, South Africa

55,000 clothing workers in South Africa went on strike for 10 days in September this year. At a time other workers were demanding 15 percent wage increases and winning 13 percent, the leadership of the SA Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU) were only demanding a 7.9 percent increase. At the time, official inflation was at around 10 percent, while workers’ inflation was substantially more.

The biggest player in the clothing industry is the Seardel group which employs about 17,000 workers. The Seardel group has a 70 percent stake held by HCI, a company controlled by the clothing union, SACTWU. Despite this major shareholding, a company which was part of the Seardel group, called Frame Textiles, which was a huge player in the production of blankets and fiber for the local industry, was forced to close and 1,400 workers were retrenched earlier in this year. State-of-the-art equipment is now mothballed and being sold off to clothing capitalists elsewhere in the world.

When the bosses started off with a 0 percent offer, they were deliberately forcing the wage negotiations with Sactwu towards a strike. The bosses deliberately linked their wage offer to workers losing overtime pay if the stayed absent, even if they had a legitimate medical certificate. The question is why were the bosses so bold? There is a strong interconnection between the clothing retailers and the clothing manufacturers. Normally this time of year the factories are bursting with orders and many work overtime. Why is this year different? The clothes had to be ready for the shelves within weeks. The bosses could only have played hardball if the retailers have already made plans to source their clothing from elsewhere (eg cheap Chinese goods). This means that there was open collusion between the clothing and retail bosses.

Another point has now become clear as evidence points towards collusion between the trade union leaders and the bosses to hold back the strike and to defeat it. First, was the very low demand, in fact for a wage cut, by the trade union leaders. Secondly, after only 4 days of the strike, the union leaders encouraged the strikers to go back to work. The strikers rebelled and held out for more than 1 week further.

Many of the clothing and retailers are directly and indirectly owned by international banks. For example Foschini is owned by Investec, JP Morgan Chase, State street, Standard bank, Santam. Mr Price is owned by JP Morgan Chase, Northern Trust, State Street, Old Mutual. Wooltru is owned by Old Mutual, RMB, Deutsche Bank. All these international banks are in a deep crisis of having too much capital and not enough returns. The Chinese worker earns R100 (about 8 British pounds) per week while the local clothing worker earns about R600 (50 British pounds). The US banks are major investors in China and use it as a giant sweatshop. Despite the flood of cheaper Chinese produced goods, the retailers have not dropped their prices. In other words, the shift to China produced goods is a means of the major banks to increase their profits. They are not happy with 500 percent profit from the worker in South Africa, they want 1000 percent plus increase in profits. The international banks, who have shares in the retailers and the clothing companies, planned to shut the industry down and destroy the lives of over 300 000 people who are directly dependent on the clothing workers!

During the strike, a temporary agreement to limit ‘Chinese’ goods for 2 years, expired. It was clear that the bosses were planning mass retrenchments and were wanting to use the strike as a platform to start this process.

The bosses did not expect the workers to show the level of unity and determination. The entire clothing sector was shut down. The workers forced their leaders to call a secondary strike in the textile sector and a further 15 000 workers were preparing to join the strike when the bosses capitulated and gave in to a 7 percent increase for workers. The workers had already sent workers to Cape Town and Durban docks to temporarily block ‘Chinese’ goods for the duration of the strike. The clothing workers made it very clear that they were in full support of the Chinese worker but the capitalists were planning on bringing in scab products during the strike to keep their production going. The workers in Durban docks had in principle agreed to discuss the blockading of the docks when the strike ended. A blockade of the harbors were thought of because by the time goods left the factories in China, the Chinese worker would have been paid and the full loss would have been borne by the capitalists.

During the strike workers occupied the factories each day, escorting scab workers out by the front gate, and then strikers would leave the factory premises. In many cases police came to the gates to support the bosses. Even in the supposedly worker-owned Seardel group of factories, the police, armed with shotguns clashed with workers (we have some video footage of this). 20 workers were arrested in Ladismith on charges of public violence after they clashed with scabs.

The strike also coincided with the Congress of SA Trade Union Congress in September; thus all Sactwu delegates were strikers and they forced a resolution for a solidarity strike to be adopted.

This was the first time in the history of strikes within the clothing sector that there was an almost total shutdown of the sector.

Time to review workers’ shares in companies

Sactwu has invested millions of workers money in HCI, and thus in the Seardel group. HCI is an example of supposed ‘black economic empowerment’ but this company is still tied hand and foot to big capital, through the loans it had to make just to get started. HCI had to make loans to buy out a major share of the clothing capitalist, Searll. Thus if the Seardell group now closes, it will be workers’ money that will go to repay this loan. The workers would lose twice: first in loss of jobs, secondly in repaying the international banks. This is similar to what happened to General Motors in the US, where the government took over the company but stole workers pensions to repay JP Morgan Chase. 40,000 workers were still retrenched. The only way is to expropriate all the large clothing manufacturers, retailers and the banks, without compensation, and to place them under workers control. This is the only way for real empowerment of workers. A simple ‘nationalization’ like Obama did to GM, will only bail out the banks and smash the unions.

New leadership is needed

The low wage demand and the conduct of the union leaders in the strike shows that they were openly acting in favor of the bosses; it is time to choose a new leadership from those who proved themselves in the recent strike. It is time for real working class independence from the capitalists. The principle of the right of instant recall of any worker leaders as well as the pay for union officials to be limited to that of the average in the industry, should be seriously considered.

But as the recent strike and 40 day occupation of the Kraft-Terrabusi food factory in Argentina shows, it is important for workers to begin to organize politically as a class, independent of the mainstream parties, and on an international basis. [The factory has re-opened with the workers leaders dismissed, with the agreement of the union leaders, and under military police guard of production]. While big capital operates globally, workers are still divided locally and according to trades.

From Bikya Masr

Workers of General Motors, occupy and take control of your workplace!

The dismantling of the American auto industry, the US government’s bailout of a bankrupt GM, and the deal being cut with the UAW to savage a diminished workforce, if carried out according to Obama’s plan, will be a historic defeat for the working class, with far-reaching consequences. The UAW leadership, which long ago abandoned class struggle methods for classic business unionism, knows it can save its bureaucracy’s privileged position, which enjoys all the perks of Stalinist-era commissars, by selling out the membership, cutting the workers’ pay and benefits, and accepting mass lay offs. Meanwhile, there is not even a glimmer on the horizon of the new industrial jobs desperately needed to build the “green economy.”

The American auto worker’s pay and benefit package (known as the “gold standard for labor”) was won by hard-fought battles on the picket lines, backed by heroic acts of solidarity on the part of tens of thousands of union members, together with their families and communities. Victory could not have been achieved without efforts such as the six-week factory occupations at the Flint Chevrolet and Fisher Body plants in 1937, and the “Battle of the Overpass” at the Ford Motor Company’s Rouge Complex later that same year.

Those historic battles ended in victories for the entire working class, as other industrial and manufacturing workers set their sights on, and fought for, equivalent benefit packages to those won at the “Big Three.” American workers became accustomed to the promise and expectation of vacation pay, lifelong medical benefits, pensions, and a “decent” paycheck. The working class became redefined, in the public discourse and in workers’ own consciousness, as a new “middle class.” Ironically, in part because of their own past victories, workers no longer identified themselves as a class condemned to sell their labor power to the owner of the means of production. The Marxist concept of class, defined by relationship to the means of production, had been displaced in workers’ minds by a concept of class defined by income level.

Meanwhile, a witch-hunt was loosed upon the left within the unions, resulting in the displacement of left-leaning organizers by “loyal” careerists, and even criminals, as union officers. Workers had little natural sympathy for the majority Stalinist left that was still trying to peddle the class peace they had sold the UAW in wartime, so no one noticed the “speedup” at first—or so the story goes. Consequently, business unionism displaced militant trade unionism, and “labor relations” became both an academic discipline and a profession committed to binding labor to capital. The end result was a commitment to capitalism, on the part of the rising cadre of business union bureaucrats, that labor had stopped playing hardball. The crimes of the turncoat labor parasite caste against workers here at home are outweighed only by their role in tying the subjective allegiance of American workers to the overseas exploits, wars, and military interventions of imperialism. These labor fakers traded on the workers of the world for their bowl of porridge. We must demand and fight for a democratic rank and file leadership, with wages and benefits capped at the level of the best paid workers in the union!

Busily selling the “middle class” hype to their members, these labor “leaders” never seriously challenged the Taft-Hartley Act (which, among many other anti-labor provisions, prevents unions from launching sympathy strikes). Our dues and energy should have been used not only to force the repeal of Taft-Hartley, but also to organize the unorganized, educate our membership, build strike funds, and launch a fighting Workers’ Party. Instead, for decades the unions’ parasitic rulers wasted our dues dollars and volunteered our energy electing Democratic Party “friends of labor,” who can’t ever deliver anything of real value to working people (e.g., the ERA, single-payer health care, EFCA, etc.), and who have promoted—and billed us for—every imperialist military action in our history. Meanwhile, generations of labor leaders became accustomed to living the good life along with their corporate counterparts. Now, today, when labor needs to recapture its militant traditions and to fight like hell, the UAW leadership is giving it all away without a shot being fired.

General Motors has announced it is firing another 29,000 American UAW members. Workers fear for their pensions; they see their neighbourhoods abandoned to foreclosures; schools and the social safety net are being destroyed. And what do the “friends of labor” in the White House and Congress have to offer these and the other millions of unemployed? Despite the fact that between them, the UAW and the US government will own a large share of “New GM,” neither the union nor the federal government will be making any use of the leverage this could give them over the company’s future plans.

Revolutionary Marxists do not advocate the nationalization of industries under the control of pro-capitalist governments, rather than under the direct control of the working class. But workers should be told the truth: that the Obama administration, despite its ostensible commitment to the environment and to creating badly-needed “green economy” jobs for US workers, has bent over backwards to avoid even the slightest appearance of nationalizing the company for the benefit of society as a whole. Instead of taking an active role in setting a new direction for New GM, the Obama administration has made it clear that all will remain business as usual. The government will assuming the risk, but retain no decisionmaking power; the workers will make the lion’s share of the sacrifices; and any eventual profit will go straight into the pockets of management and the shareholders.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration boasts in its Fact Sheet on the GM deal that “[t]he UAW has made important concessions on compensation and retiree health care. . . . In virtually every respect, the concessions that the UAW agreed to are more aggressive than what the Bush Administration originally demanded in its loan agreement with GM.” Among other things, the $20 billion that GM owes the UAW for retiree pensions and benefits will not be paid. Instead, the existing pension and benefit trust will be replaced by a new trust that will be given a bunch of currently worthless stock in New GM. This places the UAW in a total conflict of interest with its own members. If the value of New GM stock does not go up, the stock owned by the pension trust will continue to be worthless, and UAW retirees will lose their benefits. But in order for the stock value to rise, New GM will have to make as much profit as possible—on the backs of current UAW members! That is, the UAW’s bureaucracy, as one of the owners of New GM, has a direct interest in increasing the exploitation of the union’s members in order to raise the value of the pension trust’s stock!

To make matters worse, even though the trust will own 17.5% of New GM, it will only have the right to select one independent director, and will have none of the other normal shareholder rights. In other words, instead of taking advantage of its position as one of GM’s major creditors to demand that New GM remake itself into a source of green economy jobs, the UAW has given up any claim to having a say in the company’s future that is proportionate to the trust’s ownership. Meanwhile, the only “green economy jobs” measure to which GM has agreed is the token concession that it will use one idled plant in the US to build a new small car model. This will increase GM’s domestic production by a measly four percentage points.

Who Stands to Gain?

GM’s secured lenders, who stand to benefit from the bankruptcy deal, include Citibank and JP Morgan Chase. These and the other organs of global finance capital have historically exploited and oppressed our brothers and sisters in Africa, Latin America and Asia even more than they have US workers.

Consider all those cell phones, ipods, laptops, and other high-tech toys. Much of the metal for their components came from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). JP Morgan Chase, through its major share in Anglo American Mining has been extracting these metals from the DRC in competition with other banks. The result has been an ongoing war in the DRC since 1996 which has killed over 4 million people.

And working people should never forget that it was Citibank which financed the 1973 overthrow of the democratically elected government in Chile. In the course of that coup, Pinochet and his goons herded thousands into stadiums and executed them.

Obama talks about “change” and a “new beginning,” but what we see is the final nail being placed in the coffin of the “gold standard of labor” by the unholy alliance of Obama, the UAW leadership, and representatives of big finance capital like JP Morgan Chase and Citibank.
Stagnation of the US economy and falling profits

For the past 20 years, the rate of inflation may have been kept nominally low, but in real terms, workers’ wages have fallen. In the struggle to maintain and keep their families afloat, workers resorted to taking loans against their homes, and got into hock up to their ears to credit card companies at usurious rates of interest. What did the banks do with the surplus cash they extracted from workers as interest? Unless it was invested, this capital would have had no value. The banks found these usurious loans and the “financial instruments” that were derived from them more profitable than actual productive investment, thus they offered more and more loans. After the market crash in 2000, the banks were forced to lend at cheaper rates. To make the same profits their shareholders had become accustomed to, they had to issue more loans. A saturation point was finally reached where workers could not afford any more loans, and started to drown under this excessive debt. At the same time, unsecured speculative lending and recklessly risky investments in derivatives left banks wildly overleveraged.

Now the US, European, and Japanese governments are bailing out the banks to the tune of trillions of dollars. But this means nothing in the context of a stagnant world economy. In order to extract more profit from the working class, we see the beginning of inter-imperialist rivalry that threatens to explode on an international scale as the race for raw materials and cheap labor pits the imperialists against each other. The massive displacement of manufacturing facilities into China and third world countries, to exploit the lower wages there and reap the benefit of the consequent higher rate of profit, has cut like a scythe through the gains of working class in the rest of the world. The crisis of the banks and the overall economy is so great that mass unemployment, which has risen to 9% in the US even by official estimates (meaning the real rate is closer to 16%), has not been enough to “stop the bleeding” and increase profits. These western finance capitalists running the US government, who have not hesitated to resort to wars, coups d’état, and punishing workers abroad, are now turning their guns on the American worker, stealing from our pensions, depriving us of medical care, and shredding the safety net for the poor and indigent.


What can workers do?

The Chapter 11 bankruptcy of GM has just been declared; there is still time to intervene!

We call on workers to organize factory committees to coordinate an immediate occupation of all GM plants and dealerships! Tear up the six-year no-strike pledge!

We can have no faith in the sell-out leadership of the UAW; only a revitalized democratic rank and file movement can lead us out of the crisis! An emergency delegated conference of representatives of factory committees must be convened to elect an entirely new union leadership.

Working class communities around the factories should be mobilized to defend the occupations; workers will need to prepare for self-defense against the reaction of the state!
The demand that will mobilize the rest of the working class to take solidarity actions must show the way out of the economic crisis.

Therefore we must demand: Nationalize GM under workers’ control and without compensation! Open the books to give workers full access to all financial information about their company! Workers must take control of all “bailout” funds used to shore up the company. Not a single worker should be laid off. All work should be shared among all those who can work, without loss of pay.

But we need workers’ control to make this happen. It is only under workers’ control that the auto plants can be transformed and retooled to manufacture the infrastructure for green power (e.g., wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles) and clean and ubiquitous public transport (e.g., electric bullet trains and light rail systems). The workers could hire any specialists, such as engineers and designers, that they deem necessary to assist the transition.

Occupations of auto factories aimed at implementing these demands will inspire the entire working class to follow suit, and will be a beacon to the workers of the world, even in China. The international economic crisis is propelling the working class around the world, in countries like France, Greece, and Peru, into massive struggles.

If the UAW rank-and-file undertake mass actions like sit-ins; if they fight for workers’ control and confront the state and its forces of repression as they did in the 1930s, this will provide inspiration for every worker in the world, particularly the many workers in the semi-colonies who produce parts for GM. Nothing could be more inspiring than seeing a key sector of the workers in the belly of the beast take the lead in the struggle to smash US imperialism.

Around the world, every workplace needs to set up factory committees, and these committees need to be united with delegate council meetings in each industrial area, right up to national and ultimately international level. Such structures would be the precursor to the launching of a fighting workers’ party in the US that unites workers across nations, one that sees the struggles of the workers around the world as their own. This is a scenario out of which the Fourth International can be reborn, and all the power of JP Morgan Chase and Citibank be shown for naught, to be as fictitious as the capital their paper accounting purports to represent.

The capitalist class long ago ceased to be progressive. Only the working class has a material interest in rational planning for progressive growth of the productive forces. Capitalist anarchy is all that stands in the way. The time has come for the US working class to put its stamp on events and take a lead in the international struggle against capitalism.

In this struggle, the HRS, FLT and WIVL will be your ally!

Joint Leaflet of Humanists for Revolutionary Socialism (USA); Workers' International Vanguard League (South Africa); Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, Peru).

South Africa: Alexandra residents on the march for houses and jobs for all

On Wed 13th May 2009 at 830am Alexandra residents will march on the Johannesburg High Court, raising their demand for adequate housing and jobs for all. The march starts at Vogas house (corner Pritchard and Mooi streets). Frustrated by years of empty promises by the government for housing and jobs, many residents occupied the RDP houses in River Park, Alexandra.

The Alexandra Renewal Project, a product of the ANC’s so-called broad based black economic empowerment, has not only failed to provide adequate housing for all in need in Alexandra, they have also been involved in corruption, selling houses to their friends which should have been given for free to backyarders and shackdwellers. The Alexandra Renewal Project is seeking a High court action to evict the residents from the RDP houses in River Park. The Alexandra Residents are on the march to oppose this. While several several community and worker organizations support the march, it is being spearheaded by Vukuzenzele and supported by the Landless People’s Movement.

The residents say that the world capitalist crisis is reflected in South Africa, in part by the government not building enough houses for the people, creating an artificial scarcity in housing so that people’s desperation ensures that the banks and construction monopolies can make super-profits. Thus the fight of the workers in North and South America against retrenchments and against homelessness, in the entire world against high food prices and low wages, against unemployment is part of the same fight locally for housing and jobs for all.

Their fight is part of the same fight of workers locally for a living wage or for an end to retrenchment. The government’s commitment to monopoly capital is reflected by their appointment of billionaire capitalist, Tokyo Sexwale to the housing ministry. Mr Sexwale is the head of Mvelaphanda holdings which has substantial shares in construction giant Group 5. He is but one of several paper empowerment billionaires who are owned hand and foot by Anglo American and JP Morgan Chase. To add insult to injury the government has renamed the housing ministry to be that of ‘human settlement’- this shows that the government has now openly given up on housing the masses and will do their masters’ bidding to resettle the poor in shacks away from the city centres (social control).

The Alexandra residents are calling for Cosatu, Nactu and Fedusa to call urgent extended joint shopsteward council meetings to unite the housing struggles with the fight for a living wage, for lower food prices, for shorter working hours and an end to unemployment.


Forward to houses and jobs for all!

Disband the Alexandra Renewal Project!

Down with ‘broad-based’ self-enrichment!

Expropriate the banks and construction companies and place them under working class control!


For further comment:
Freda Dlamini ph 0743520141
Thabo Modisane ph 0781297797

[46 Arrested on MayDay

Frustrated by years of non-delivery and corruption in allocation of the few houses in Alexandra, the shackdwellers and the homeless who live in some of the vacant factories in Marlboro (a section in Alexandra), occupied some flats built by the ANC self-enrichment group, Alexandra Renewal Project. True to form, the police cracked down on the masses, arresting 46 people, today, 1 May 2009. The occupation of the houses symbolises the essence of the birth of Mayday, namely a day of struggle for the demands of the working class on a world scale; this time the right to housing. To date, despite numerous requests by the homeless for the list of who will be able to move into the flats, the Alexandra Renewal Project refuses to release the names. Instead, their instruction was to put the police on the homeless. This summarises the essence of the ANC-SACP -Cosatu popular front: they are talking about worker interests from the platforms of the many Mayday rallies, while in practice are defending the interests of the banks (international capital) by enforcing mass homelessness.

The arrested were being held in the Bramley police station, near to Alexandra but due to the cells being full, they are being transferred to John Vorster square. [John Vorster was one of the most brutal apartheid prime ministers, reknown for his heartless crackdown on the ANC and other then 'liberation' forces]

--
Shaheed Mahomed, Secretary, Workers International Vanguard League
1st Floor, Community House, 41 Salt River rd., Salt River, South Africa 7925
ph 0822020617, fax 0880214476777
workersinternational@gmail.com web www.workersinternational.org.za