This photo of a strike of Ford workers in Pretoria, South Africa, in August, 2013, reminds us of the militant history of industrial workers in South Africa.
Five comrades have just come from an auto factory to mobilize the workers there for communism. It’s good because industrial workers like them form a huge and key part of the movement. So we really need to visit these workers more often.
We went to distribute Red Flag. We distributed 150 papers, which was good. There are a lot of people there who need to know about ICWP. We have to make another visit so that we can explain everything because today some of the workers were rushing into work and the others were rushing home from work.
“I will share this important experience today with my comrades in my neighborhood who couldn’t come,” a comrade said.
It was a good thing that today we went to industrial workers because we usually go to malls, and to the students, and other mobilizations of people. So it was a good thing to now focus on industrial workers.
It’s been two or three years since we went to this factory. We need industrial workers in the Party; they face the sharpening contradictions of wage slavery everyday. We hope in the future we will be able to build a cell there in order to mobilize the masses for communism and recruit them to the party.
We targeted a shift change. As a collective, we decided, as our last report stated, that we want to concentrate our efforts in the area where we went today because there are many industrial workers there and also many colleges. We plan to concentrate there for at least three months. Then we will evaluate our progress. Building a communist collective inside the factory would be a big step for the whole party.
As we distributed the paper there, we gave the paper to a white guy. He was a bit older, maybe in his 60’s. He said, “What’s this?”
We said, “It’s a communist newspaper.”
He said, “No, I don’t like you guys. You are socialists. You want to take our pensions and stuff and give them to the government.”
A comrade shot back, “No, you mistake us for socialists. I’ll show you that we are not socialists. We stand with the workers. We don’t believe there should be a group of people with privilege who control the wealth the masses produce.” The worker ended up taking the paper.
As he held the paper, he saw that in this issue there was an article about Brazil. He asked, “Why do we have to be concerned about the people in Brazil when we have our own problems here in South Africa?” We didn’t have time to answer because he was rushing in to work. But it was good that he took the paper.
It was the first time that some of the comrades had mobilized at a factory and not at a school or some other place. We will continue to mobilize for communism at this factory and other factories, and try to get workers’ contact information, so that more industrial workers join ICWP and mobilize for communism.
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