FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
ICWP@Anonymousspeech.com

I arrived in Port Elizabeth one day before the weekend of the ICWP dialectics conference, organized by the South African comrades. In the early hours of Saturday morning, before the sun rose, we drove to the township. This was my first time visiting a township. We passed two funeral homes upon arrival, and I saw garbage littering every corner and street throughout thousands of one-story houses that lined miles and miles of one-lane streets, with broken concrete and pooled water. We arrived at a comrade’s home, and she came out dressed in the ICWP red shirt and a big smile. Another comrade neighbor went door to door to wake people to get ready for the buses. This spirit of hard work and dedication for change set the tone for my first glimpse of South Africa, the people, and what we can do as a party in this international work.
I was dropped off later in the daylight morning to wait for one of two buses organized by comrades to take people to the conference. I spoke to two women who had gone to the May Day March, and were also going to the conference. I was learning about their families and the struggle to find work, support their children, and to have enough money to eat. On the bus, as people gathered, they were in high spirits, singing and laughing. Upon arrival to the rented hall, men and women spilled out of the buses and gathered around me to take pictures, to dance and chant, and energize us for the meeting. A group of 6 to 7 comrades organized in the kitchen by cooking and plating fried chicken, salads, beans and rice for the group.
The conference was organized around several aspects of dialectical materialism- the science of change. We learned about “internal and external,” “likeness and difference,” “conflict and unity,” “quantity into quality,” and “negation of negation.”  Examples were given of how these principles can be applied to objects, ourselves, and our work, and how this helps us understand how to analyze problems and fight for communism. Several comrades came up to the podium to talk about why they want to know about communism. They said that the current ANC party and other political parties have not been able to solve the problems they face on a daily basis and are sell-outs. There was a serious tone in people’s stories as they came to the realization that capitalism, not bad politics, is the root of suffering. They expressed hope in developing an understanding of communist collective work; building the ICWP as a way to change the world to solve the needs of the working class. The group broke into three discussion sections in the afternoon to apply the principles of the conference to what we can do now, and what do we face as obstacles and how does the ICWP work.
Over the course of the next week, the leadership of the South African workers in ICWP met to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the conference, and how to build the movement in the next six months. The comrades who had been working and planning for the conference, particularly the younger members, discussed how to develop more leaders, and how this is necessary—“quantity into quality”—to distribute the Red Flag newspaper, and make a communist school to develop leadership in South Africa.
We all agreed there are personal problems that hold back development of leadership, but that there are strengths in many members of the leadership that can overcome these problems. The enthusiasm and confidence among the young comrades, and the plans made, led me to believe that we will see a growth in numbers and commitment as the work carries on in the ICWP collective in South Africa.

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