In Crisis and Chaos, There Is Always Opportunity
PORT ELIZABETH, SOUTH AFRICA— The virus has created opportunities for us as a collective and as a Party, which we need to seize.
Most of the working class sees that we are not the bosses’ priority—that the main thing for them is profit. The government is prioritizing giving millions and billions of rands to their companies. This is not the government’s money. They took it from the taxpayers, the workers. Instead of giving it back to the workers, they’ve given it to the workers’ exploiters.
We urgently need a communist system without bosses, money or cops. The masses will mobilize to meet our needs for food, housing and everything else using our collective knowledge, skills and creativity. We need to continue to take this message to the masses and use it to recruit workers to our cause.
Concrete Steps in Zwide Township
We distributed Red Flag to high school students in Zwide even before the virus. We made plans to revive our collective there. Our comrades in Zwide have come back in response to these plans.
They are distributing Red Flag and our pamphlet about the Coronavirus in the high schools, in their communities, following up contacts and trying to recruit. These developments need to be encouraged because they help advance building our collective there.
We will also be doing the same thing in our neighborhood, because all the workers are here. We will be taking this message directly to the masses.
New Front in Motherwell
We are now in a better position than last time to advance in Motherwell, one of the largest townships in the area. We have taken the Red Flag and our pamphlet there.
A comrade who was with us there had retreated and then he came back in response to the fight against the bosses’ exploitation during this pandemic. He recruited his father. His father promised that after the lockdown, when he returns to work, he will spread the word and our material in the factory. Our comrade is also a worker. He will be able to take the Red Flag to work.
We will consolidate this work and the contacts we will be getting. We supplied them with the RF and also our pamphlet.
Virus Has Exposed Capitalism’s Fault Lines
Even though things are bad, in every crisis and chaos, there’s always an opportunity. Workers are seeing with their own eyes the brutality of the system. It’s up to us to come up with the solution, which is communism. Even those workers who were ignorant are starting to see the need for what we’ve been advocating: for a communist revolution and communist society.
We will be taking this message directly to the masses, as hopefully also other comrades in other places. We’ve been inspired by the comrades’ work in India and in the US and in the Americas. We hope this work also inspires other comrades.
The comrades have taken the communist message to the workers and they are recruiting. Now it’s up to us to consolidate their work leading up to May Day—to struggle with all these new contacts so that they can become members of the party.
CAPE TOWN, April 19 —Hungry South African workers defy lockdown, loot shops that sell mainly food. Soldiers have shut down the whole area, killing at least one person.
Angry Workers Are Potential Communists
PORT ELIZABETH, SOUTH AFRICA—Some of us, listening to the news, get infuriated whenever the President or the ANC opens its mouth. They are arresting people for being outside. The police and soldiers are terrorizing the communities. They can’t comprehend that people are outside because they don’t have a choice.
The government supposedly has a plan for everyone: they are going to give small and large businesses many millions of rands. Some workers are going to get their unemployment fund.
But what about the unemployed workers? Many of them are young people. It’s also people who have families, in the millions. Before this pandemic, the mining sector was bleeding jobs. The gold and platinum sectors each lost 50,000 to 70,000 jobs. The government doesn’t have a plan for them.
They tell people to lock themselves inside their houses for 42 days. Lots of families will go these 42 days with nothing to eat. How is this possible?
The government also has the audacity to assume that everybody has a shelter. Even the shelters that we have are 42 square meter two-bedroom houses. How can a family of 8 or 10 people isolate themselves, lock themselves in, in that kind of house, no bigger than a match box?
That is the problem with capitalism: rot and corruption.
This is looting of the workers’ surplus in broad daylight. They are simply rewarding themselves with millions of rands instead of giving this money to the people who need it. Shops are open but people with no money can’t buy anything.
This crisis has demonstrated the divide between the workers and the bosses. Some of them sit in their own islands. We are trapped in these townships. They have the privilege of testing to see whether they have the virus. We workers can’t afford the 850 or 900 rands to do the test. How is someone who is unemployed, who has been locked in their house for over 3 weeks, going to afford the test?
In communism, food won’t have a price tag, and no one will profit from it. Food, housing, tests and medicine will all be free. Without communism we will continue to suffer. Communism will eradicate the material basis for this corruption, greed, and exploitation.
This pandemic has presented us with an opportunity to expose capitalism’s failure and to really interact with the masses so that we can open their eyes to these things.
Now the workers are feeling more than ever that they are distant from the people in charge. We need to use that anger to achieve our goal of a communist revolution.
As a Party we need to do more to use this crisis for mass recruitment of workers and potential workers worldwide. They are the most vulnerable. They will die of starvation before they can die of coronavirus. We need to be there at the peak of things so that we can win them to our cause.
We don’t have the resources, but with cooperation within our class, there is nothing we can’t do. We have a communist world to win. This is the message we need to take to the masses.