South Africa: Solidarity with soldiers of SANDU

Yesterday, 26 August, around 2000 rank and file soldiers of the South African National Defence Force, who were members of SANDU, which is their trade union, marched on the Government offices in Pretoria to demand a 30% wage increase. They were met by police who used teargas and rubber bullets against them. Several were arrested and all face suspensions and possible dismissal. (See updates below on the clampdown on the military union.) We reprint the message of solidarity sent by the WIVL to SANDU. Solidarity statements from HRS (US) and CWG (Aotearoa) follow.

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Workers International Vanguard League condemns in the strongest possible terms the brutal suppression of the soldiers march yesterday to the Union buildings. Soldiers should have the full right to protest as well as the right to strike. It is a disgrace that rank and file soldiers earn such low wages while the officer corp and generals earn huge pay packets, sitting in their comfy armchairs while sending soldiers into life-threatening situations. We fully support the right of soldiers to elect their leaders in the army and that their leaders should be subject to instant recall.

We fully support the demand for a 30% salary increase, a demand which is fully justified and fair. The current Governor of the Reserve Bank recently received a 28% salary increase but he decrees that workers must be 'reasonable' and limit their demands to the 3-6% so called inflation band. In other words, the official inflation is used as a tool to force workers to lower their demands, while actual inflation for workers is much higher than the CPIX. We can see from this that the problems that the soldiers face are the same as the rest of the working class.

We condemn the lukewarm response of the Cosatu leaders to the brutalization of the soldiers yesterday; they only noted 'with concern' the actions of the police, merely describing them as 'excessive'. A true workers leadership would have immediately have called for broader solidarity action from the rest of the working class in support of their demands and have demanded the immediate release of the 2 soldiers who were arrested, and the lifting of the suspension of the protesters. However they are silent. The Cosatu leaders rush to meet the Minister of Defence (Sisulu) instead of meeting with the soldiers and those who have been smashed by the state repressive forces.

On the 28th June there was a military coup in Honduras; well you may ask, what has that to do with the soldiers demands and your protests? The fact is that there is a US military base in Honduras, which means that the Obama regime is involved in the coup. The lesson to be learnt is that imperialism is so desperate to solve its crisis of falling profits that they have to suppress the working class even more; this means that their usual methods of controlling us, through parliament and flowery constitutions, are not enough; they have started a period of greater offensive against the working class, using military coups, police brutality, gangs of hired thugs, etc.

The shooting of protesters in communities, of the municipal strikers for merely tipping over the garbage, here in South Africa is part of the world imperialist attack. The gold mines are owned by the Bank of New York; our Reserve Bank is controlled by JP Morgan Chase. Our economy is mainly controlled by US imperialism. The government is in reality the agent of imperialism here. This is why they guarantee that every year over R200 Bn leaves SA just in declared profits, while the masses live in starvation. This poses immediate challenges for us all. When we meet or organise, can we still operate as before? We need to defend our right to meet, to march, to protest. We need to defend ourselves from the armed attacks of the brutal police and other fascistic agencies.

There is a second major lesson that we need to learn and that is that under these times of crisis of the capitalists, the trade union leaders, such as those of Cosatu, Nactu and Fedusa, close ranks with the capitalist class and act against the interest of workers. At a time that the entire working class should have been on strike for 30% or more increases, the Cosatu leaders persuade workers to lower their demands; they persuade workers not to go on strike, they sign low wage agreements and bind their members, like the municipal unions to 3 year agreements which mean that in the next 2 years their members cannot strike when they receive what is in effect a wage cut.

Even worse, when workers are mobilising to strike, the Cosatu leaders divide the working class by not mobilising any concrete solidarity, and even break ranks to sign for peanuts and weaken the strike, such as when the railway workers went on strike recently (Satawu signed for 8% and abandoned the rest of the workers to strike on their own). The only reason why Cosatu leaders want unions of the soldiers to join them is not to increase working class solidarity, but on the contrary, to use their skills to betray the workers demands and struggles.

The third major lesson to learn is that when SA soldiers are sent to other parts of Africa (Lesotho, DRC, etc), they are being used by the imperialist forces to not only guard their mining and other assets, but to act against the local working class in these respective countries. The war in the DRC has led to over 4 million people being killed; all the imperialists were interested in was not 'peace' for the people, but to rape and plunder as much of the countries resources as possible. Imperialism and their local agent, the SA government, uses you when they need to safeguard the profits of the bosses, but once you have done this, they dump you aside.

To counter the divisive tactics of the SACP-ANC-Cosatu leaders, we need to be better organised, we need to unite with the base of Cosatu and other unions, in action on the ground.

We need to draw the lesson from Madagascar, where the soldiers united en masse with the working class, disobeying their generals order to shoot on worker protests; they took control of the military bases and said loudly and clearly that they are with the people.

What we need are workers and soldiers action committees to defend this current struggle of the soldiers for a living wage and other demands; we need to unite to defend communities for their struggles for jobs for all, for bread, for decent housing for all, for free adequate health care for all; for increasing wages when prices increase. This is the same fight. it is the same fight as the workers in Bolivia and Peru against the imperialist grab of their resources. It is the same fight as the Chinese and Zimbabwean workers against exploitation.

We demand:

1. the immediate unconditional release of the 2 arrested soldiers;

2. the immediate lifting of the suspension of all soldier protesters;

3. 30% increase in wage for soldiers and the entire working class; increase the soldiers wage to a minimum of R5000; wages must increase when prices increase;

4. Recognise the soldiers defence unions and the right to strike and protest;

5. Adequate houses for all;

6. Reduce the working week without loss of pay and share all jobs among all those who can work.

7. Down with all military operations by the SANDF in Africa; unite with the working class to defend the masses against the plunder of Anglo American and other gangster monopolies.

Workers of the world unite; we have nothing to lose but our chains!

Send messages of solidarity to The National Executive of the SANDU, c/o Jeff Dubazana sandu@mweb.co.za ; please cc messages to workersinternational@gmail.com
--
Shaheed Mahomed
Secretary
workersinternational@gmail.com
web www.workersinternational.org.za


UPDATE: 28 August

Workers International Vanguard League condemns the decision by the government to dismiss the soldiers who took part in yesterday's protest. The refusal of the courts to even grant the soldiers the right to march to the Union buildings show that the courts are the agents of the capitalists. The Obama coup in Honduras on 28 June 2009 shows that world imperialism is moving over to greater control by force and trampling on the few democratic gains the working class has made. US imperialism controls the bulk of the SA economy through Anglo American and other global gangsters. The shooting of unarmed community members dying of the cold in shacks, the shooting of municipal workers for throwing over trash cans, and now the shooting of unarmed soldiers are all part of a global capitalist attack on the working class.

The army generals received 10,5% salary increases as well as improved benefits in January this year, backdated to about October last year, while each time the defence workers unions have been stonewalled by the government, claiming time and again that they have 'no mandate'. Soldiers are expected to suffer and starve in silence while the MP's argue about which model of Mercedes Benz to buy. If the soldiers had the right to strike, this matter would have been resolved long time ago. The government is so busy bailing out capitalists who have stolen hundreds of billions of Rands of wealth from SA over the decades, that they have no time for the demands of the working class.

Even though the protest on Wed was called by Sandu, we understand that Sandu, Sasfu as well as non-unionised soldiers took part in the protest. Even the pro-boss ILO regulations support soldiers right to protest and state that where the right to strike is limited there should be alternative mechanisms in place; and even if there are illegal strikes (which this was not), there should be protection from arbitrary dismissal. The government is a signatory of the ILO but throws away even a pretence of fairness when the profits of big capital are deemed under threat.The lukewarm response from the Cosatu leaders has opened the door for the government to mass dismiss soldiers. We call on members of Sasfu, Sandu and non-unionised soldiers to unite against the mass dismissal; we call on the entire working class to rally to the defence of the soldiers cause. They have been the only ones who have been brave enough to demand a wage increase that was really required, namely 30%. We call for joint soldier- worker committees to be built in every community, to unite the struggle of the soldiers with the struggle for adequate housing, for an end to retrenchments, for jobs for all and a shortening of the working week without loss of pay (so that all who can work, can share the work), with the rest of the working class struggle for a living wage increase. We call for wages to increase each time prices increase! Let us stop the retail and food gangsters in their tracks!

We call for an urgent national meeting of delegates from all workplaces (unionised or not), working class communities (including the unemployed) and of delegates of soldiers to plan a programme of action to defend the soldiers and all sectors under attack by imperialism!

We reject the notion that SA soldiers are the last line of the defence of the country; the SA soldiers have been dispatched to the DRC and other countries, where they protect imperialist assets even if millions are killed around them- this is imperialism abusing the soldiers while the fatcats of Anglo American sit in their comfy mansions in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, etc, out of harms way.

Workers and soldiers unite to help throw off the yoke of imperialism on the African continent. workers of the world unite, we have nothing to lose but our chains!

UPDATE 30 August

Workers International Vanguard League has received evidence that the military unions have been attempting since at least May LAST YEAR, to negotiate wage increases fo the soldiers. Each time they were met with governmentnegotiators that had 'no mandate'. The fact that the fat generals received their increases in January this year means that the government was not serious about any negotiations with the rank and file soldiers and that they have been looking for an excuse to bash the unions. Te demand of 30% for the lower ranks and 15% for the upper ranks by the soldiers, goes against the divisions between the upper elite and the foot soldiers, so characteristic of capitalist society.
The current crisis of imperialism needs greater supression of the working class and the creation of a more openly oppressive professional army of mercenaries. Imperialism and their lackeys in the state were looking for an excuse to purge the army of any elements who might side with the working class. This trend to a professional army is one which came after imperialism drew the lesson of the war in Vietnam and the weakness (for them) of a conscipted or civilian based army. The war in Iraq, with its 300 000 mercenaries, is evidence of this world trend to more fascistic methods.

This explains why the police and the courts were so brutal in suppressing any protest. The ground is being laid for integration of more fascistic types into the army and makes us believe that the petrol bombing of the military vehicle last week could have been the work of an agent provocateur. If the state appoints Dramat as head of the Hawks- whose only claim to fame is being part of a intelligence crackdown on Pagad (where infiltration and framing of activists were of the order of the day)- this explanation seems not only likely but probable and could even become a more widespread tactic by the state to crackdown on the rsing tide of resistance. It also shows the methods of the FBI and CIA are alive and well in SA.

Down with the upper layer of officers of the Praetorian (like the elite in Roman times) army of the Afrikaner bourgeoisie, the Angloamerican and the bourgeoisie of the ANC!
Down with the assassin layer of officers that oppresses and massacres the nations of Southern Africa for the interests of American and British imperialism!
For the election and removal of the chiefs of the army by committees of the rank and file soldiers!
For committees of soldiers, armed workers and peasants!
For the Socialist United States of Southern Africa!

August 30, 2009

From: Humanists for Revolutionary Socialism (HRS).

To: To 
Our oppressed soldier brothers, workers in uniform under state attack in South Africa in care of the Worker’s International Vanguard League (WIVL).


We denounce the South African state for its unconscionable behavior towards you and its illegal actions against you and your brothers.
 It is important for soldiers to know that there is worker opposition here in the “belly of the beast” to their ultimate bosses, our own main enemy, the U.S. capitalist class. We demand all U.S. imperialist forces (overt and covert) out of Africa now! Their only purpose on your continent is to further the exploitation of your people and the appropriation of your resources.

We stand opposed to them and all their plans to put you in harm's way and keep you hungry. We stand opposed to the obscene fat Boer and English generals who live off your sweat and to all the sadist and martinet junior officers that make your life hell.
 We denounce all the bourgeois authorities and the way their police 
"support the troops" with tear gas and gunfire. We denounce them and phony union leaders who stand with them when they deny your basic democratic rights to protest and to struggle for living wages and conditions. We know "leaders" like these. We call them class traitors.


The soldier's fate, as rank-and-file soldiers, is tied up to ours
 as workers in ways that cannot be dissolved, as the history of all 
modern revolutions shows. The political forces of the yes men for American and British imperialism, together with the Stalinists of the
 South African Communist party, have stalled out and sold out your proletarian revolution, and with it your national liberation. They
 move you around the African map in support of every imperialist scheme to rob one locality after another. These political forces of yes men 
are the ones who want to prosecute you now. It is they who are denying 
you the pay you need to feed and clothe your families!

Brothers! You are living under conditions of the slave-owner's tyranny.
 The South African bourgeoisie wants you to do their imperialist masters' dirty work on YOUR continent. They want you to do this for the kind of chicken feed pay they paid the non-white colonial levies (draftees)
 they led to slaughter in the past! They want you to do all the dying 
defending their class and the rule of the laws of their class' dictatorship. They want you to die for them like a Gunga Din, fighting his own oppressed people when they rise up in righteous revolt. 


You have organized! You are our Union Brothers now, no matter what 
our top COSATU and AFL-CIO misleaders say! You declare you will never surrender. That is a tremendous source of strength for us! We in the HRS and your champions, the WIVL, will go every mile of the way with you! For you will come to find that for you, as for us, the Socialist Revolution will be the only road out of the crisis of human survival and development!


We stand behind all your demands in the Proposed Agreement and demand the dropping of all charges against the jailed Brothers! For
30% raises NOW covering all 12 months of 2009! For immediate new Collective Bargaining talks to begin as soon as this Trade Agreement 
is in effect! For an across-the-board 5% raise increment on April 1,
2010! For a 1% check off for all those in uniform payable to THE UNION, etc. We support your demands in detail! And we demand the reinstatement without prejudice of any kind to their records for all the Brothers who were discharged/dismissed!


We stand behind all the demands raise by the WIVL on your behalf.
 Your situation is part of and not something different than a generalized South African crisis within a world crisis of capitalism/imperialism. Understood this way we know an injury to one of you is an injury to us all. To advance the struggle the following additional demands are endorsed and recommended for adoption by the soldiers and their supporters


1. Down with the Praetorian layer of officers of the army of DeBeers, Anglo-American and the bourgeoisie of the ANC.



2. Down with the assassin layer of officers that oppresses and massacres the nations of Southern Africa at the command of American and British imperialism.



3. For the election and for the right of recall and substitution of the chiefs of the armed forces by Committees of the Rank-And-File Servicemen to assure the military acts only in the interests of the working class, the oppressed and poor peasants.



4. For Committees of Soldiers, Armed Workers and Peasants.



5. For the Socialist United States of Southern Africa!


28-8-09

To the National Executive of SANDU.

Dear comrades of the SA National Defence Union,

The Communist Workers Group of Aotearoa/NZ sends its revolutionary greetings and proletarian solidarity to your members who are being arrested and suspended for protesting your poverty wages.

We strongly support your right to fight for a living wage, and for the right to protest and demand this and other necessities of life. We salute your militancy and your slogan "we will never surrender". This is a slogan that the whole working class should take up internationally.

We can see that you are not alone in South Africa, nor around the world, where there are many mass struggles against the global economic crisis, and the attempts by the capitalist parasites to make us bailout their system with the food out of our childrens' mouths. It is obvious that for us to live capitalism must die!

The capitalist system is in crisis, and the only thing stopping its downfall is the capitalist ruling class which uses the treacherous union leaders to hold the masses down, and weaken and divide them, while the state forces and paramilitaries prepare to smash them.

The way to end the system is for the workers in uniform to refuse to obey orders to shoot the workers out of uniform, and to join with them to occupy the workplaces, take control of transport and communications, and form armed defence committees to defeat the officers, the mercenaries, paramilitaries etc., and to fight for a Black Socialist Republic of South Africa.

In Solidarity

Dave Brown (for CWG - member of the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction).
Aotearoa/New Zealand

May Day message to the world working class from South Africa

The handful of capitalist parasites are plunging the over 5 billion working class and fellow poor, into the abyss. For several decades there has been no real productive growth in the world economy. The control of the world by monopoly capitalism (imperialism), as demonstrated by so-called Anglo Boer war 1899-1903, ushered in an era of wars, civil wars and revolutions.


Today is no different: over 80% of the world's arable land is under the direct control of the world's monopolies- thus they are in a position to shift their burden of falling profits onto the working class- the capitalists know that we can do without many things, but we must eat. Thus the drive by capital through increased prices in food, transport and housing. Thus we have the massive increased attacks by the capitalist class to lower wages and to retrench millions more.

Around the world, the working class is resisting these attacks.

The uprisings in Guadaloupe, Martinique, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Greece are all signs that the working class is starting to go on the march, to resist the crisis of capitalism being placed on the shoulders of the masses.

The monopoly capitalists are attempting with various strategies to control the working class. In South America and South Africa, they use Popular Fronts (alliances of capitalist parties with the trade unions) to control the masses. When uprisings occur here, the popular fronts increasingly use the fascist jackboot. In the last year fascists took over half of Bolivia. The so-called socialist Morales, allowed the peasants and workers to be massacred; the Morales regime brutally put down a strike by the Huanuni miners- some were killed. The bolivarian regime of Venezuela and the popular front of Lula in Brasil supported a pact with the fascists that has in effect divided the country into half- giving control in part to the fascists. There are some activists in South Africa and elsewhere who want to import the bolivarian regime. This will be a huge mistake.

In South Africa, the crisis of housing reflects the start of the resistance of the working class to the attacks by the capitalists; from Delft, Grassy park, to the Durban Abahlali to Kliptown and Alexandra, the working class has started the resistance; these fights for housing for all and jobs for all needs to be placed on the agenda of all unions so that the unemployed and employed workers join in common fight with common fighting committees (the fights against retrenchment and against high prices also needs to be placed on the agenda of all unions). But without a decisive change in leadership of the unions the working class will be left isolated in struggle. Thus the fight to put broader struggles on the agenda of the unions, it is important to build action committees of employed and unemployed workers, which unite the struggles against high prices, for housing, against retrenchment and for jobs for all. These workers committees should spearhead the resistance to the capitalist onslaught.

There has been growing international support for the scrapping of the sentences of the Kliptown 5 (activists who were sentenced for alleged public violence when the masses rose up for houses 2 years ago- these activists received 2 year suspended sentences. In Kliptown there is a huge squatter camp next to the multi million rand white elephant called Freedom Charter square and a 4 star Holiday Inn. Messages of support have been received from the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (FLT) [which has a presence in Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Peru, Brasil and New Zealand; the FLT has spearheaded the campaign in South America and New Zealand in defence of the Kliptown 5 which has resulted in messages being received from the Federal University Local in Cochabamba, Bolivia, from the heroic workers of the Brukman factory in Argentina [the workers took over the factory by force when the bosses unilaterally closed it] and from the Central Union of Bolivia (COB)- the message is appended below.

The FLT and WIVL have begun a process of joint programmatic work and discussions with a view to uniting the revolutionary fighters from South America, New Zealand and South Africa. This is but part of the same process of the fight for the rebuilding of the Fourth International. Without the coming together of the vanguard working class fighters from the imperialist centres, from Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, from China, from all the former deformed workers states and the colonies and neo-colonies, the struggle to defeat the capitalist offensive will yield only temporary gains. The WIVL makes a call for all principled working class fighters and groups to join with us in the fight to turn the current offensive of capitalism-imperialism into an offensive by the working class, in the life and death struggle, for Socialism.

This is our short and brief message to the world working class, on Mayday 2009.

--
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

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Central Obrera Boliviana

To the comrades of the WIVL (Workers International Vanguard League) and the 4 activists sentenced for their participation in struggle for better housing and living conditions of the people.

Comrades

The workers of the Bolivian affiliates of the COB (Central Obrera Boliviana) hereby present our moral and material support for the cause that you are struggling for and which today has led to the imprisonment of your cadre, who are victims of demagogy, which is a worse form of fascism and veiled iron fist against whomsoever encourages people to stand up for their rights, a struggle we have been busy with since 1955 when we were formed; such social responsibility as housing is today is being neglected by those representatives and defenders of capitalism- they have only one response and that is to criminalise the struggle of those activists who are reclaiming this right to housing, etc.

We, together with yourselves, have only one way to fight against those who greedily cling to power for the benefit of a few while on the other hand the masses are claiming their rights; we dare not lose hope or abandon our struggle and in the spirit of workers internationalism we most energetically raise our condemnation, our protest against the ANC government of South Africa, who is abandoning the people and imprisoning those who reclaim their basic rights.

Comrades, the way forward of our struggle is clear: for a socialist revolution!

DEATH TO THE DEFENDORS OF CAPITALISM!

VIVA THE STRUGGLE OF THE WORKERS!

FOR THE COMPLETE FREEDOM OF THOSE WHO ARE IMPRISONED FOR DEMANDING DECENT SOCIAL CONDITIONS AND BETTER CONDITIONS OF LIVING!

VIVA THE SOUTH AFRICAN WORKING CLASS!

DOWN WITH THE ANC GOVERNMENT OF SOUTH AFRICA!

VIVA WIVL!

La Paz 22 April 2009

Madagascar: The Revolution Begins

On March 8, 2009 the revolution in Madagascar began. The former French colony, an island of almost 20 million inhabitants bigger than France, is located in the Indian Ocean, a 250 miles off the coast of Mozambique and South Africa. On that day the armed forces refused to obey the orders of the President Ravalomanana, to repress the workers and poor peasants who had been in a state of rebellion since mid-January. Hundreds of rank and file mutinied and took control of the Soanierana base, the main arsenal of the Malagasy armed forces, 6 kilometers from Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. Their press release said: "We on longer respond to the orders of our officers, we respond to our hearts. We were trained to protect the people and property, not to attack the people. We are the people".

Why did the ordinary soldiers side with the exploited?

Since late January, the working class and poor peasants had been fighting in the streets, holding demonstrations, general strikes and clashes with the police and the mercenary presidential guard. Over 100 have been killed. During those two months of fighting the union bureaucracy of the four unions of the CTM (Confederation of Malagasy Workers) set up a "Council of the Republic for economic and social affairs" uniting government, employers and unions and condemning the struggles of the workers and peasants as "vandalism".

But what is decisive, without doubt, is that the militant workers and peasants lynched some of the police, and left their bodies hanging from trees and lampposts in Antananarivo. These actions proved to the rank and file soldiers that the workers and peasants – their parents, brothers, uncles, cousins etc - were willing to go all the way in their campaign, convincing the soldiers that they had the strength and confidence to mutiny against their officers and with their weapons join the rebels.

As Trotsky said of the revolution of February 1917: “… the disarmament of the Pharaohs [police. Ed] becomes a universal slogan. The police are fierce, implacable, hated and hating foes. To win them over is out of the question. Beat them up and kill them. It is different with the soldiers...The critical hour of contact between the pushing crowd and the soldiers who bar their way has its critical minutes. That is when the gray barrier has not yet given way, still holds together shoulder to shoulder, but already wavers, and the officer, gathering his last strength of will, gives the command: “Fire!”...The guns waver. The crowd pushes. Then the officer points the barrrel of his revolver at the most suspicious soldier. From the decisive minute now stands out the decisive second...At the critical moment, when the officer is ready to pull the trigger, a shot from the crowd forestalls him...This decides not only the fate of the street skirmish, but perhaps the whole day, or the whole insurrection. ...The street fighting began with the disarming of the hated Pharaohs, their revolvers passing into the hands of the rebels. …The way to the soldier’s rifle passes through the revolver taken from the Pharaoh."
(History of the Russian Revolution, Gollanz 1934: 128-142, our emphasis).

In Madagascar, the way to the soldier's rifle was through the policemen hanging from trees in Antananarivo with their pistols passing into the hands of the rebels, which then gave the soldiers the confidence to disobey their officers when given orders to suppress the people. In this way, the March 8 revolution began. Since late January a growing crisis developed out of a split in the bourgeoisie between the pro-US fraction led by President Ravalomanana and a pro-French faction behind Andry Rajoelina, mayor of Antananarivo. Ravalomanana appointed himself president of a “Transition Authority” to hold a referendum. At that point, the rank and file soldiers who had remained "neutral", as the guarantors, ultimately, the interests of the bourgeoisie as a whole, mutinied.

This mutiny on March 8 was the beginning of a workers and peasants armed insurrection that overthrew Ravalomanana and his regime. This could be called a classic “February Revolution” that causes a revolutionary crisis and creates a power vacuum in the regime.

The revolutionary uprising creates a power vacuum in the regime

For nearly a week between 8 and March 16, there was no government in Madagascar. Faced with the insubordination of its base and the opening of the revolution, the leadership of the armed forces had remained on the sidelines, waiting for an agreement between the two bourgeois fractions. It issued an ultimatum saying that if the two fractions had not come to an agreement in 72 hours, the generals would take control of the government. Ridiculous: no one could believe that a handful of generals and colonels whose troops had mutinied and taken over the largest arsenal in the country could mount a coup.

Ravalomanana ignored the ultimatum and remained in one of his palaces surrounded by the mercenary presidential guard and a few thousand followers. The generals saw that Rajoelina was at the head of an armed mass insurrection and decided that the best way to save bourgeois property and the bourgeois regime was to allow Rajoelina to become the President.

On Friday March 13, Rajoelina along with the generals and the officials of the Transitional Authority occupied the presidential palace. To give some semblance of legality to Rajoelina's investiture as president of Madagascar they gave Ravalomanana four hours to resign. Ravalomanana finally resigned on Monday 16 so that on that day the power vacuum was finally filled by Rajoelina.

The working class and poor peasants who fought with such heroism and spontaneity, attacking the police, dividing the army and toppling Ravalomanana, found that suddenly they faced the question of who would take the power and rule Madagascar. Since there was no revolutionary leadership with a program to fight for power, the generals stepped in an appointed Rajoelina leading the pro-French fraction of the bourgeoisie to fill the power vacuum. Thus the “dual power” of the masses mobilised on the streets and backed by the ordinary soldiers was for the present suspended.


The workers, poor peasants and soldiers began a revolution with their “dual power”

But the revolution has already begun: the government of "national salvation" of Rajoelina is weak, the regime and all its institutions are destroyed, and most importantly, the state is completely breakdown because his pillar, the armed forces were destroyed and divided by insurgent masses who beat the soldiers to rise up against the caste of officers and moving with their weapons on the side of the exploited.

The masses are still in the street, rebel soldiers sent tanks to the capital to counter any possible attack by the mercenaries of the presidential guard, and in the streets, squares, including the churches, can be seen carrying their weapons defending the workers and poor peasants. The soldiers were ordered to clarify things very well for the media that they do not take orders from Ravalomanana or the military, not even Rajoelina.

The revolution has begun and Madagascar and has already gone beyond the heroic workers and peasants of Bolivia 2003-2005, and the revolutionary struggle of the working class and students in Greece in December 2008: it has split the ranks of the army from the officers and the workers and poor peasants from the bourgeois state to create a dual power situation. The evidence is the masses of armed soldiers who mutinied and have control of the main military base and the entire arsenal of the country.

There are two powers now in Madagascar; one of the weak regime of Rajoelina, supported by a fraction of the national bourgeoisie, by a military leadership that neither controls the soldiers the main arsenal; the union bureaucracy, which was overthrown by the insurgent masses, and the leading government officials recognised by the majority of the imperialist powers and governments of various countries of Africa. The other power is that of the workers, peasants and armed soldiers, which is the only power recognised by the broad exploited masses.

This dual power situation can only last a short period of time: sooner or later one must impose itself on the other. Either the working class, peasants and soldiers will centralize its national bodies of power and form a national workers and peasants militia to organize and mount a successful insurrection (in which a government of workers, por peasants and soldiers rule, that is the dictatorship of the proletariat) or, imperialism and the bourgeoisie, deceiving and dividing the masses through class collaboration and the terror of fascism will smash the revolution with fire and drown it in blood.

But this will not be resolved in a single act, but over a period of time. We are at the beginning of a great revolution in which the masses have won a “brilliant victory" in the words of Trotsky referring to Russia in February 1917, the German revolution of 1918-1919, the Hungarian revolution of 1919 and the Spanish in 1931. Today, the masses feel victorious as they are armed in the streets, cities, villages, and the countryside. It's the bourgeoisie that is terrified of losing everything, is status, power and property. But as Trotsky said in 1936, of all those brilliant victories: “... it was only in Russia that the proletariat took full power in their hands, expropriated their exploiters and, therefore, knew how to create and maintain a workers’ state. In all other cases, the proletariat, despite his victory, was stopped, by its leadership, midway. The result was that the power in its hands flowed from left to right, ending up as the spoils of fascism. In a number of other countries, the power fell to a military dictatorship."
(Wither France?)


The struggle for land, bread and for national independence against the brutal imperialist plunder

The beginning of this revolution in Madagascar is not an isolated storm in a clear sky. It is, first, part of the general revolutionary uprising that shook the French colonies from Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyana in Latin America, the island of Reunion, a few miles from the coast of Madagascar, and Polynesia. Thus, while the Malagasy working class, peasants and soldiers began their revolution, on the island of Reunion the exploited workers had been on a general strike since March 5, for the same demands as their brothers of the West Indies. But unlike in Guadeloupe and Martinique, as of Monday 11 March, the masses threw out their leaders, and leaving behind the "peaceful protest" took to the streets French style.

Moreover, Madagascar has become a shining example in the colonial and semi-colonial world, of Africa in particular, of mass resistance to the global crisis and the fierce inter-imperialist disputes of control of resources, land, markets, cheap labor, etc.., which have imposed unprecedented levels of exploitation of these nations.

70% of the population lives below the poverty line on less than one euro per day. The workers are super exploited in the chrome and other mineral mines owned by imperialist corporations, particularly Japanese, also in the maquiladoras located in the so-called "free trade zones" and the services linked to tourism. Much of the population live in the countryside, in small plots without title deeds, achieved thanks to the anti-colonial struggle and the expulsion of the French landowners, but can only plant subsistence crops. Thus, of around 33 million hectares of arable land, only about 3 million are exploited.

Madagascar, since it ceased to be a French colony, has been ruled by France as a semi-colony. In 2002 Ravalomanana became president winning elections against the former president who was a direct agent of French imperialism. Ravalomanana, a wealthy businessman, who owns a chain of supermarkets and large stores (looted and burned throughout the country by the rebels since January 2009) created free trade zones for mainly German maquiladora companies, and signed contracts for the exploitation of mines by non-French imperialist corporations. He also leased 1,300,000 hectares (equal to half of Belgium) for 99 years to a South for growing palm oil and corn for biofuel exports to South Korea. In return the consortium has made false promises to "invest 6000 million dollars" and "to create 70,000 jobs" etc.

French imperialism, the former colonial power, was livid with anger that their competitors were stealing part of their business. So, France backed Rajoelina and his fraction of the bourgeoisie with Development Aid and financed the purchase of tow islands Nosy Hara and Mitsa to develop for business and luxury tourism. Thus, the bourgeosie was divided into two fractions, one around Ravalomanana, client of the US, Germany and Korea, and the other around Rajoelina in the pay of French imperialism. This split in the bourgeoisie saw both fractions competing to exploit the masses, but that around Rajoelina was able to divert the masses justifiable hatred towards imperialism towards the downfall of Ravalomanana.

This anger was fuelled in part by the displacement of peasant families and the expropriation of 1.3 million hectares leased to Daewoo Logistics. The announcing of the lease and the first attempts to evict the peasants brought about a mass revolt to defend their land rights. The mayor of a village who was ordered by Ravalomanana to evict the peasants off the land for Daewoo, refused to do so, saying that he "would be lynched by the peasants."

This uprising of the rural poor, together with the struggle of the working class and the exploited of the cities against slavery and poverty wages of the transnationals in the maquiladoras was against the starvation caused by imperialist super-exploitation. The riots in January and early February, condemned by the sell-out union leaders, were the justifiable response of starving workers and farmers to feed their children. In the face of their poverty the owner of the supermarkets Ravalomanana, and the imperialist businessmen and rich parasites from France, the US, Germany and Japan were living it up in the luxury tourist resorts.

No support in the government of Rajoelina agent of French imperialism!

The Malagasy bourgeoisie has as its main objective to make sure that the regime of Rajoelina resolves the dual power situation by disarming and repressing the masses. First it has concentrated all power into the hands of the Presidential office and the generals. It has dissolved parliament and has announced new elections within two years. Second, it deceives the masses with false promises. It promises to halt the lease of land to Daewoo, to regulate the transnationals, lower food prices etc. Meanwhile during this period of Presidential/military rule the Malagasy bourgeoisie will bargain with all the imperialist powers including France to retain a better share of the wealth produced by the exploited Malagasys.

But events are still up in the air. The power vacuum has been filled but the split in the bourgeoisie has not been mended. Daewoo and the Yankees have not given up. They are condemning Rajoelina’s “coup” and promoting a pro-Ravalomanana demonstration on March 24 in Antananarivo “in defense of democracy”, that is to say a “democratic front.” Imperialist bastards, talking about democracy for which they paid Ravalomanana in Malagasy currency, which came with accessories such as a state of siege, police killings of more than 100 workers, and a real coup against a popular uprising!

Rajoelina seems to be adopting a type of “Bolivarian” popular front in which he wants to break the unity of the workers and peasants and soldiers to strangle the revolution and subordinate it to the French fraction of the national bourgeoisie. But before he can do that he must disarm the masses on the streets. And to do that he has to break the soldier rebellion and get them to obey orders to repress the people. He must convince the workers and poor peasants to return their seized weapons to the police and accept the “authority” of these same murdering bastards that they yesterday hung from the trees.

The masses, armed and victorious, feel strong. The bourgeoisie, are weak and scared, and afraid that the crisis will expose the lies and demagoguery of Rajoelina, leaving the masses strong enough to finish the revolution they have started. But if they do not take the power the popular front will arise to tie the hands of the masses and paralyze their will, while behind the scenes the forces of the counterrevolution, the military officers, or fascist bands, or both, gather strength to smash the revolution. We must not forget the tragic lesson of Bolivia!


¡For a National Delegates workers, poor peasants and soldiers at the Soanierana Base held by rebels! ¡Set up and centralize the national workers and peasants militia!

Any program that claims to be for revolution in Madagascar today must begin by calling for workers, peasants and soldiers not to give the slightest support to the government Rajoelina, nor fall into the trap of "democratic front" backed by the US, Ravalomanana and other killers of workers and exploited. It must call for the insurgents to continue their offensive and revolutionary struggles and to occupy the lands, mines, factories and banks! If they stop they will not get bread for their children from the supermarkets! The same with the soldiers. Do not surrender or give up your weapon to Rajoelina’s generals! Do not stop; complete the military insurrection to defeat the officers!

If you stop disbanding the police they will rearm and kill you! Let's not stop: create popular courts of the workers, peasants and soldiers to try and punish Ravalomanana, his presidential guard of mercenaries and those who killed the more than 100 worker and peasant martyrs during the fighting. No time to lose! Every minute that the uprising is stopped the bourgeoisie gains strength!

"Who has weapons… has bread, land and jobs with living wages”. The armed insurrection brought the workers close to winning bread, land, decent wages and the end of the imperialist rule of Madagascar. Therefore, that armed power must be expanded and concentrated into a powerful militia. Every factory, every business, every industry, every village and every quarter, must choose one delegate for hundred workers, poor peasants and soldiers, to meet at the Soanierana Base and create a National Congress of workers, peasants and soldiers together with a national militia!

That National Congress of delegates of the exploited masses will take into its own hands the authority to impose solutions to problems facing the masses and unite all the exploited in the oppressed nation, led by the workers, and make the imperialists and the national bourgeoisie pay for their crisis!


• Workers, poor peasants and soldiers take up arms to win bread!

• Imperialist out! Get out Daewoo Korea-Pacific U.S! Get out French Development Aid!

• Expropriate without payment all US, French, Japanese and German transnationals under workers' control!

• Nationalise all the mines, factories in the Free Trade Zones, tourism and all other imperiailsts interests!

• Repudiate the external debt and all political, economic and military treaties with imperialism!

• Impose capital controls and a monopoly on foreign trade!

• Nationalise the land with cheap loans to poor family farmers who wish to work their land!

• Collective farms on uncultivated lands under workers control to provide food for the people of Madagascar!

• Expropriate without compensation under workers control all capitalist supermarkets and food outlets!
• For Popular Committees to control prices and supply local councils of workers, peasants and soldiers!

• Jobs for all on decent wages. No more slavery! Maquilas Out!

• Sliding scale of wages and hours of work, on a living wage pegged to the cost of family cost of living!

• Expropriation without payment under workers' control of any plant that closes or sacks workers!


A National Congress can raise these demands but only a Workers Government backed by a militia can impose them. Because in Madagascar, as in all semi-colonial countries, it will not be the national bourgeoisie who are the junior partners of the imperialist powers, but only the working class that has no interests in defending imperialism or capitalist property that will end the imperialist yoke and win land, bread, work and wages, health and housing for the exploited. Only a government of armed workers, peasants and soldiers, with the revolutionary party at its head, can smash the bourgeois state, break with imperialism and expropriate the expropriators.

The revolution in Madagascar shows the way for the other French colonies and France itself!

The beginning of the Madagascar revolution is a new blow to French imperialism. Already shaken by the revolutionary uprisings of the colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique where general strikes and factory occupations raised the specter of revolution and inspired the metropolitan French proletariat to open up a pre-revolutionary situation. Sarkozy and his 5th Republic imperialist regime has contained the revolution in the Antilles but, the fire is still alive on the island of Reunion, where the masses, looking to the onset of the Malagasy Revolution, threw out their leaders and continued with and indefinite strike.

The Revolution in Madagascar shows the way for the other French colonies and semi-colonies to win national Independence and land, bread, work and living wages!

• Long live the general strike ended and the street fighting of the masses of Reunion!

• French imperialism and occupation troops out of Reunion, the Seychelles and Mauritius Islands!


The armed power of the Malagasy workers, poor peasants and soldiers, raises the program for the common struggle of all the French colonies and semi-colonies against French imperialism. At the same time it raises the program for the French proletariat to extend its struggles from the barricades and factories for jobs and wages in France to take up the fight against “their” own bourgeoisie for the victory of the anti-imperialist struggles, the immediate and unconditional release of political prisoners, and the immediate removal of imperialist troops from the colonies. If the massive strike actions in France condemned Sarkosy’s crony Rajoelina and raised the demand for workers to power in Madagascar it would unite the workers and peasants of the colonies with those of the imperialist heartland and create the conditions for successful socialist revolutions in the colonies and semi-colonies.

The international character of the revolution in Madagascar

The revolution in Madagascar reopens for the first time the period of defeats following the strangling of the South African revolution in 1994 by the popular front government of the ANC, the South African Communist Party and the union bureaucracy of COSATU. This huge betrayal of Stalinism and the Popular Front was an historic defeat for the masses of the oppressed and exploited of the whole continent.

This defeat led to Africa becoming a reservoir of slave labor of 600 million workers, hundreds of thousands of whom fled in desperate attempt to get to the imperialist powers of Europe. Tens of thousands of black workers and peasants died in the struggle to reach Europe and those who survived bécame a caste of slave workers super-exploited in the imperialist countries, and then when the crisis hit, deported en masse. In the most recent period of growth, imperialism has increased its investment in Africa to exploit for example the rich oil reserves in Nigeria, diamond mines as in Sierra Leone and the minerals in the Congo. China entered the race to plunder Africa along with other Asian countries to use the land to produce food and crops for biofuels. As the crisis worsens the scramble for Africa intensifies as the various imperialist powers compete to plunder its enormous natural wealth.

But as Marx and Engels said over 150 years ago, the bourgeoisie produces its own “gravediggers”, the proletariat. The flow of capital into Africa in recent years has expanded and strengthened the working class. So, today, as capitalists try to solve their crisis by attacking the workers, Africa is not only a site for fierce inter-imperialist rivalry, but by a mass black working class that has begun to resist these attacks on their jobs, living standards and their lives. The vanguard of this black proletariat in Africa is in the North, where the Arab and Muslim masses revolted in the Maghreb from Morocco to Egypt in defence of the Palestinians, opening the road to the socialist revolution and a Federation of Socialist Soviet Republics of North Africa.

This vanguard has now been joined by the insurgent peasants and workers of Madagascar, widening the struggle towards a united socialist Africa by opening the front for a Federation of Socialist Republics in Central and South Africa.


As we said above these revolutionary uprisings in the colonies and semi-colonies of France and other imperialist countries must become adopted by the working classes in the imperialist heartlands. In France, Britain and the US, the millions of oppressed migrant workers treated like slaves become the vital link to combat the treachery of the labor aristocracy and bureaucracy in fusing the revolutions in the colonies, semi-colonies with that of the imperialist heartlands. Such international revolutionary unity can also reverse the counter-revolution that has restored capitalism to the former workers states and re-open the road to the dictatorship of the proletariat in these countries. Thus the revolution in Madagascar poses again the question of power, not only in that country, not only in Africa, but of the world revolution.

Once again Trotsky writing in 1932 on the role of Black workers in revolution has been vindicated: "... the Black workers, by virtue of their whole position, do not and cannot strive to degrade anybody, oppress anybody, or deprive anybody of his rights. They do not seek privileges and cannot rise to the top except on the road of the international revolution. We can and must find a way to the consciousness of Black workers, the Chinese workers, the Indian workers, and all the oppressed in the human ocean of the colored races to whom belongs the decisive word in the development of mankind”.
(Closer to the Proletarians of the “Colored” Races! Leon Trotsky, 1932).

The revolution in Madagascar demonstrates that the vanguard of the international proletariat must declare war on the labor aristocracy and bureaucracy who are the agents of capital inside the working class. Only by defeating these traitors can the working class solve the crisis of revolutionary leadership, on which, as it says in the Transitional Program of 1938, rests the fate of humanity.

For a new Trotskyist world revolutionary Party founded on the Fourth International program of 1938!

The revolution in Madagascar proves once again that workers, poor peasants and soldiers in Madagascar must solve the leadership crisis of the revolutionary proletariat. Based on its spontaneous insurrection the workers could only go so far: to overthrow Ravalomanana, to weaken the bourgeois state by splitting the army, and to create a situation of dual power. But to succeed in going all the way to a proletarian revolution they need a revolutionary leadership. And just as the revolution in Madagascar is not “national” but has an international character and content, the only leadership that is capable of taking the revolution to victory is an international revolutionary leadership.

Each insurrection and semi-insurrection that has taken place, in Greece, in the West Indies and other French colonies, in France itself where the workers are standing up to fight, poses the question of who shall rule. Standing in the road of the revolutionary proletariat are the parties of the labor aristocracy and bureaucracy which are social patriotic and social imperialist. The Malagasy revolution which now poses the question of power and the urgent need to arm the masses to overthrow the bourgeois state, has become an acid test which separates out the reformists, and the centrists – disguised as ‘Trotskyists’ – from the revolutionary internationalists.

Already the Bolshevik fraction of the international working class is entering the fight to expose and defeat the reformists and centrists traitors. It seeks to intervene in the revolutionary events in Greece, Guadeloupe, general strikes in France, the uprisings of the Maghreb, the Palestinian struggle, and now the revolution in Madagascar. As the proletariat enters into combat the reformists and centrist strain to contain the new layers of fighters and subordinate them to the Popular Front of many colors. Against these counter-revolutionaries the healthy forces of international Trotskyism are fighting to unite around the banner of the Fourth International and the program of its Founding Congress of 1938.

To refound a Trotskyist international it is necessary for the healthy forces of Trotskyism to regroup in an international conference that does not make verbal boasts about “socialism” and “revolution”, but proves in practice that it can defeat the counter-revolutionary leadership in the critical revolutionary struggles, and build a new revolutionary international that the international working class deserves to lead it to victory and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The Fourth International was founded in 1938 to fulfill the task that is stated clearly in its program: “Our task: the abolition of capitalist domination. Our goal: socialism. Our method: the proletarian revolution.” We must reunite the revolutionary internationalists around the world are committed to completing the task, method, and goal of the Fourth International set for us by Comrade Trotsky in 1938.

Leninist Trotskyist Fraction, March 24