South Africa — Technical College students protest withholding of much-needed financial aid
PORT ELIZABETH, SOUTH AFRICA, March 8 –Students here have been struggling and striking for a week, including at a college that a comrade attends. Our collective has been involved, distributing Red Flag and engaging with the students about our solutions to the problem.
We fight for a communist world where education is to fulfill the needs of the international working class—in a world where production is to meet the masses’ needs, not for profit. Eliminating bosses and money, we will eliminate racism and sexism.
One main reason for the strike is that students from outside Port Elizabeth were promised free housing and education. But once they arrive, they find that this is not actually happening. The landlords are kicking them out of student residences. All the colleges have been striking against the government, the landlords, and the brutality of the police who are trying to suppress the students.
It’s not unique here. It happened in Marikana and it’s happening in India. The working class needs to join together and create a Red Army that will fight against the brutality of these criminals and for revolution, and to safeguard the benefits of the revolution.
A few days ago, some students who were kicked off campus were sleeping outside. Two women students were raped. This was reported to the police, who did nothing. So, the students of three campuses joined to hunt down the perpetrators. They reportedly apprehended and punished them.
This shows that once we rely on the unity of the working class instead of the puppets of the bosses, the police, anything is possible. It is important for ICWP to wage this ideological struggle.
Many parties are trying to exploit this—especially the EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters) student command and the ANC’s SASCO (South African Student Conference). Each is trying to outdo the other, to the detriment of the students, to further their political gain. We were there on the ground engaging with the students to expose these opportunist parties.
The strike continues. It has presented the party with an opportunity to recruit more because now more people are starting to see the EFF and the ANC for what they truly are. Most people disagree with some methods they are using. They see that they are opportunistic. We can organize the students who are feeling cheated and disillusioned with these organizations. We need to intensify our efforts to distribute the paper and ask students to join our fight against capitalism.
Our collective hasn’t fully seized this opportunity. More needs to be done to help our student comrade reach these students and recruit them.
A comrade said, “As we were sitting outside talking, a classmate asked if we should consider setting up an ICWP student command in the college because he sees the corruption of the EFF command and SASCO. He knows that, based on our line, we are not looking for material gain, unlike other parties. He was asking if we would consider doing this so we can genuinely help the students.
I told him that these are good ideas that we are discussing inside the party, whether we should wage class struggle while at the very same time advocating for communist revolution. I think we need to consider these things more, moving forward as a collective in South Africa, because these are the cries of the working class. They don’t see any alternative. He sees us as an alternative to these reformist parties, because they know that they have been sold out many times by these parties.”
The strikes starting, from industrial workers to students, are the clear results of the weaknesses of capitalism. These are the responses from the working class against the bosses’ exploitation, xenophobia, racism, and sexism. Students are not immune to these, especially from the colleges we are in. These are technical colleges where everyone is being prepared to be workers. The colleges rigorously enforce their ideology on workers to make them more obedient to the bosses.
But workers and even students are responding to the violence of the police with their own fightback. The party should be at the forefront. We are actively trying to recruit in this strike. After May Day we will have a dialectics conference. We are trying to recruit as many people as possible to be part of that conference, so that together we can improve our understanding of dialectics.
We have had some progress. Right now, we are struggling with around ten people on one campus. This is a first step. The goal is to win all the students on the campus to our cause.
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