Two comrades recently traveled 1100 km (700 miles) to spend two weeks with miners in Rustenburg. The party collective in Port Elizabeth undertook this as part of our effort to win this key section of industrial workers to mobilize for communism. There are over 456,000 mine workers in South Africa. They have a history of militantly confronting the racist mine owners and their government. They have an important role to play in leading masses to join and build ICWP.
SOUTH AFRICA, November 16 –Our party organization started here because of the militant massive miners’ strike in Marikana (2012) and the African National Congress (ANC) government’s attack and murder of miners.
ICWP wrote a pamphlet on the miners’ strike, the betrayal of the workers by the unions and the ANC leadership, and the need to fight for communism. The pamphlet exposed billionaire Cyril Ramaphosa, who had been a leader of the ANC and mine workers’ union, and who was on the Board of Directors of the Lonmin mine when they ordered the police to attack and kill striking miners.
A comrade in the USA made contact with a comrade in South Africa. Since then, we have visited Rustenburg several times to distribute Red Flag and make contacts with miners.
We decided to come back to where it started to form a functioning ICWP collective that actively recruits miners, soldiers and students.
Rustenburg, 2018
Our main focus here has been on miners. We two comrades have distributed more than 500 Red Flags in one week. We have done this in a limited time space to those going out and in at shift change. Mine security doesn’t let us inside the mines.
We also distributed at other places miners go, like the taxi stand. About a dozen people gave us their contact information to talk more. Tomorrow we are meeting another person who we’ve already known for a few years. He has a circle of friends, miners who we met before. They know who we are and why we are here. Last time they made a brai (barbecue) for us.
We are trying to develop some relationships. Tomorrow the meeting will be informal but with the goal of struggling with our friend. He agrees with us on many things but there are some things to struggle around. He thinks unions are the first line of defense for the workers. We say that the unions work to preserve capitalism and that the reform struggle is a dead end. We should be active in unions to win workers to communist revolution—the only way to meet our needs. We want to discuss these things with him in detail.
Then the following week we want to focus on meetings rather than distributions. Wednesday we will distribute our remaining RFs. On Friday we will evaluate the new friends we have gathered. We will try to create a group of Red Flag readers, where we can share our material and also answer questions from new friends. These are the practical steps so we can assess progress of new comrades’ understanding and articulating the line.
One challenge is that we do not have someone who stays here permanently who can struggle with these comrades. The most important way for them to learn is to practice. We need to emphasize this. The way for them to learn is to do the work, to distribute the paper inside, invite people to join and then ask the more experienced comrades to explain some things that they are still also in the process of learning.
It will be easier for them to recruit while they are also learning because they are doing this as a collective instead of individually. This method helped us comrades to actively recruit while still learning the line.
We are trying to earmark comrades like our friend to take this leadership role. It’s a challenge but it’s also an opportunity to organize. He is passionate about the wellbeing of the working class, regardless of some disagreements. We think he can fully be won to our cause. This will be the most crucial thing.
There has to be consistency. More experienced comrades should come to Rustenburg maybe every two months so we can check on the progress and advance the work to try to mobilize this group of comrades. We should have communist classes for a few days. This will also aid their development. Then the comrades won’t have to rely only on us. They can actively distribute the paper when we send it here.
Editorial note: An article in the print issue of the last Red Flag misstated the name of Port Elizabeth. We apologize for the error.
The front page of our pamphlet about the struggle in South Africa, published in March of 2013 and available at:
http://icwpredflag.org/MMC/SApamE.html
“If the century-long struggle in South Africa has taught us anything it is that our battle is not to reform capitalism once again. It is to replace it with communist revolution. Communism will abolish private ownership, money, profits & exploitation. It will rip away the need for racism, as well as sexism and nationalism that pit worker against worker. It will create a society where we cooperate to produce for need.” — From the pamphlet
Front page of this issue
