SOUTH AFRICA, May 1 — Red greetings, comrades. There is no better cause than building ICWP! 

There are shenanigans going on here within the pro-capitalist tripartite alliance. This is the alliance between the ANC governing party, the South African Communist Party and Cosatu, the South African trade union federation. Numsa (National Union of Miners of South Africa) leadership was sidelined in the May Day celebrations around the country's nine provinces. Not a single Numsa speaker was featured. This clearly shows the divisions and paralysis within the alliance and Cosatu in particular.

May Day is the workers' day around the globe.  Here in South Africa it's been hijacked by the alliance for its own selfish, narrow interests, and unfortunately others are buying into these vicious schemes. It has now become obvious that Numsa will be expelled from the trade union federation; it's a matter of time, possibly after the 7 May general elections.

Recently I was visited by ANC volunteers doing their door-to-door election campaign; I was able to convert them. They agreed with me that what they were doing is defeatist.

I visited my contacts to check up on their reading and to encourage them.  It was very exciting to note that they are all reading the Red Flag. One comrade shared the Red Flag with his co-workers. I promised to give him another stack of Red Flags to distribute among his co-workers so as to keep the good news going. He remarked that they found the Red Flag impressive and genuine.

In the neo-apartheid, neo-colonial South Africa, the more things change, the more they remain the same. In the Brits area, which covers Marikana, Mothong township (where many striking platinum miners live) there have been clashes with the police around service delivery protests against the lack of running water. At least four protesters lost their lives.

But President Zuma of South Africa visited the area not to convey his condolences with the families that lost their loved ones but to canvass for votes. Water delivery was restored in the area and things were "stabilizing," at the expense of dear lives. The poor had to make supreme sacrifices.

There was a big May Day celebration here. It was held at Dan Qeqe stadium in Zwide, which was filled to capacity. The gathering was addressed by the deputy president, Kgalema Mothlanthe, and the General Secretary of Cosatu, Zwelinzima Vavi. We members of ICWP were there wearing our red ICWP T-shirts. As usual I bumped into a number of comrades. All the copies of Red Flag that we had were soon grabbed.

Unfortunately the rally was used as an electioneering ploy by these misleaders. Since it is a few days before the national polls, everything is about elections. Workers' issues were relegated to the sidelines. Nothing was said about workers currently on strike for almost two weeks at Continental Tire. Workers at Coega IDZ have been on strike for weeks on end, as well as mineworkers from the platinum mines (see article, below) who have been on strike since January. These are the matters that should have received attention; instead, very little or nothing was said about them.

We had a fruitful and exciting meeting following May Day.  We were joined by four new comrades, who displayed enthusiasm and willingness to join our party, ICWP. We now have regular meetings every Sunday. Our new comrades promised to become part of these developments. One of our comrades is receiving the Red Flag pamphlet directly. He has distributed it to his co-workers.

So, things here are promising.  It's a matter of time before you receive articles from our other comrades. Comrades are coming up with suggestions on how best we can overcome this shortcoming of not writing.

One suggestion to encourage reading is to assign one comrade to read for us an article of one's choice in Red Flag and we all reflect; next meeting another comrade does the same, so the circle goes until everyone is empowered, confident and able to defend and propagate our line of communist revolution as opposed to the reformist revisionist line of pressuring capital. We spent a great deal of time discussing the Marikana massacre. We will wrap up the discussion next Sunday.

Viva ICWP Viva! Amandla!