FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
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SOUTH AFRICA—Yesterday I met Mary, the girlfriend of my friend here. I went just to say “Hello.” When I got there, she asked me, “Why doesn’t your party come to South Africa and grow here? You know, ever since I read that Red Flag you gave me when you came from El Salvador the things that I read there, they are still in my mind. And I try to explain to people at my work place about this thing but I can’t go further because I don’t know more about this. I just tell them there’s a party from overseas that wants to free the working class, that wants all workers to be free.”
Then I told her, “Look, the Party is active here.”
Then she said, “No, if it’s active here, please put me in.” So I made a date with her today to deliver a packet of Red Flags. She’s going to give them out to her fellow workers at the place where she works, a printers.
She says there’s a lot of racism and the salary is too little. It was painful to hear. She gets about 500 Rands (about US $32.80) a week and its not enough. From that 500, she has to pay for childcare for her kid about 100 R a week. Her bus fare is 150R a week. And last week she broke a machine and the company said they were going to deduct 300R for the week, so she’ll be left with 200 R. She gets about 12R an hour and she works about 12 hours a day. It’s very bad.
So she ended up saying to me, “I’ve worked and reached the point that I think working is stupid. It doesn’t make sense anymore because this money I’m getting is even short to pay my bills. I’m just creating debts and debts and debts over and over again.” So she said I must give her the paper. She asked for one paper. They are going to share as they shared the paper I gave her before. She said those articles are still on her mind. They don’t go out. She even explained about ICWP, which I thought she had forgotten about.
I asked her to join ICWP and she agreed. So I’m meeting her today to give her the packet of Red Flags. She’s going to give the papers inside at lunch to her fellow workers.
We welcome our new comrade worker and the others that she will recruit.
So there’s another company Kensington that purchases biscuits. It’s bad, bad. Do you know how much the workers get there? Some start at 4R (US $0.26) an hour and others get 7R ($0.49) an hour. How can you make only 4R an hour? I mean it’s crazy. That creates racism. Those workers who make 7R an hour think they are better than the ones who make 4 R an hour. The treatment is not the same. That’s how capitalism divides the workers and why we need to get rid of it with communist revolution.
Berta Cáceres’ Life Must Inspire Us to Fight for Communism
Berta Cáceres, a 44-year-old indigenous mother of four, was murdered by a Honduran government death squad. She was a popular defender of human rights and the environment. Thousands mourned her death and participated in her funeral. In two cities university students and other youth took to the streets and fought the riot cops for hours.
Days later, Nelson Garcia, another environmentalist, was murdered by the capitalists’ death squad. These environmentalists knowingly risk their lives daily. They are brave fighters worthy of our admiration. Their struggle, however, is to reform the capitalist system, not to destroy it with a communist revolution.
They and the masses of workers who support them, together with those rebellious youth, need to fight for a communist world where working-class lives and a healthy environment will be the primary and only concerns of society. More next issue.