Anniversary of Soweto Uprising: Mobilize Disgruntled Masses for Communism

SOUTH AFRICA— Youth Day, June 16th, is an historic day in South Africa, representing the student rebellions in 1976 that started in Soweto. The African National Congress (ANC) usually organizes on Youth Day. But now many people do not care about these days. They see that even what they fought against is still happening today. They don’t see that as an achievement because the government today is doing the same thing that the apartheid government did.

This gives us an opportunity to mobilize these disgruntled masses to not depend on politicians and so-called leaders but to depend on themselves and to fight for their needs, for a society with no exploitation—communism.

Since there was no mass mobilization for Youth Day, we went to two shopping malls to reach a diverse group of people with Red Flag. We managed to mobilize the masses for communism, engage with people, get contacts. All in all, it was a good day. We distributed 400 copies of the Red Flag.

Each and every time we mobilize the masses it’s good: how the masses respond, how we go and mobilize, how it would make it all easier if we could work more with comrades in the other ICWP collectives, not only the youth collective. If other comrades had come, it would have made a great impression to attract the masses.

It was a good experience, even though we face some challenges. It could have been better if we were more disciplined. There was miscommunication between us and other collectives. We arrived late. We were waiting for other comrades to be there.

At the second shopping mall, we saw an ANC office. It looked like there was a protest recently there, because the place looked bad, with broken windows. That shows the people now do not trust these people anymore. They realize the ANC doesn’t represent their needs. This creates an opportunity to mobilize the masses and recruit them to the ICWP.

“You can see that we have opportunities,” a comrade said. “I talked to some taxi drivers. I gave them Red Flag to read and to also give to people using their transportation. This one guy was so tired, he said he didn’t even want to hear what I had to say because there are no jobs, there’s a recession, their kids are suffering, there is crime. There are all these ills caused by capitalism. But we did end up talking.

“He said that people in political parties start from the ground and they end up in offices and forget about the masses. I said that yes, we are a political party but we are different. We are not trying to fight for elections and campaigning to be the ones in the offices. I explained that we are building a mass party. ‘You are a worker and I am a student, but we can both be part of building one mass party.’

“I explained that that we are building a classless society that doesn’t allow any privileges. He ended up warming up to the idea and took the Red Flag and said he would read it. But that he’s not promising anything. It shows how people are really disgruntled with the system. But it shows that now many people don’t want to talk about politics, because they say politicians promise heaven on earth and nothing is done, that politicians are liars. They obviously see that something is wrong. Introducing ICWP and communism offers them the solution. That’s what’s needed.”

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