South Africa Miners here ♦ Tribalism here ♦ Towards Building a Mass ICWP here ♦
SOUTH AFRICA, August 1—Masses continue to protest chronic electricity outages and the rising cost of living in townships across the country. In Motherwell (Port Elizabeth), hundreds of workers staged a day of violent protests after a worker was accidentally crushed to death by a defective electric pole. Several ICWP comrades went to organize there the next day. They distributed literature, talked to workers, and made contacts. These workers live in miserable shacks made of discarded metal sheets. They have no sanitation. Temperatures can fluctuate between extreme hot and cold conditions. These shacks are located not far from the multi-billion-dollar Coega port facilities that were financed by Chinese capital. We will be visiting the workers we met in the shacks where they have to live.
South Africa Miners Build New Communist Collective
RUSTENBURG (South Africa), July 14— “Mobilizing the masses for communism!” We must recruit tens and turn them into hundreds, hundreds to thousands and thousands into millions of workers fighting directly for communist revolution.
This was our guiding understanding as we distributed hundreds of Red Flags and other party literature to mine workers in Rustenburg over two weeks.
Mine workers are disillusioned with the unions that purport to represent them. They understand that the bosses are their enemies, and that union officials collaborate with them. The workers are looking for a solution. Communism is the solution.
Two comrades who went there the first week recruited and befriended a new comrade. He organized his friends and showed us around while distributing the literature. Six mine workers joined ICWP. We aim to form a mine workers’ collective.
Our biggest challenge was the language barrier. Many mine workers speak neither English nor Xhosa. Some do not even read English.
The second challenge is that the experienced comrades live far from Rustenburg. We do not want to lose consistent struggle with the new comrades and workers.
The last Red Flag described our July 11 visit to a Sibanye-Stillwater mine. The next day we went to the Impala mine. Before that we met with a new comrade who works around town and knows many mineworkers. We briefly met his friends before they went to look for a mine job.
We distributed around 80 Red Flags at the Impala mine and secured a contact with a mine worker. He warned us to beware of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU). Many workers thought we are a union and feared AMCU might get hostile.
On July 13, the new party comrade organised two mine workers to meet with a comrade from Port Elizabeth. The mine workers were tired, coming from a shift underground, but they made time to attend. They are part of a group of
workers who mostly grew up and studied together. These existing relationships can develop into communist relationships as we try to recruit them to join the party.
The new comrade explained that we are not a union or a party that contests election. We are the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) that fights directly for communism. To seize power from the capitalist class, we need the working class in large numbers to join our party. The comrade further explained that Red Flag has articles from workers around the world detailing their experiences of this brutal capitalist system.
They started reading MOBILIZE THE MASSES FOR COMMUNISM. The comrade explained that capitalism can never be reformed. Any gains will be short term and the class struggle will continue. They are determined to work with us because they understand what is needed. We have to ensure they both know the theory and how to apply it to practical work.
We want to continue struggling ideologically with these workers so that they can join the party and continue the struggle with other workers when the Port Elizabeth comrades go home.
On July 14, we went to Marikana West to the former Lonmin mine (now owned by Sibanye-Stillwater). We distributed Red Flag inside the hostel. Another worker warned us that union officials inside the hostel won’t just let us continue telling the workers that the unions fight for their own interest, not the workers.
We met a comrade’s relative at Marikana East who works at Sibanye-Stillwater. He showed us where the 2012 massacre happened. We explained that the ICWP wants to abolish this capitalist system. We want a communist society where the working class will own the means of production. To achieve this, we must unite as the international working-class and fight directly for communism.
This relative rises at 2:30 am to be ready to go underground at 3:30. There is no set time to knock off; depending on the work it could be 17:00 (5:00 pm). It is so hot underground that some faint. They’ll have to work every Saturday to get days off in December to visit their families.
He described how tribalism divides the workers. He’s been working for the mine for about ten years. He can speak most of the languages, even the miners’ unique mixed language spoken mostly underground, called Fanakalo. He will help us to overcome the language barrier.
“The problems start with us,” a comrade explained. “If you were born in Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth), the Xhosa is not the same. In Rustenburg, most workers come from elsewhere. If you speak Port Elizabeth Xhosa, they don’t trust you because you sound like a gangster.
“You can’t just talk with an older person like you’re talking to someone your age. Your sentences must be full and proper Xhosa. Port Elizabeth is the only town that speaks different Xhosa. When you go outside PE you have to adapt to the language, even Setswana or Zulu.”
We promise the new comrades that we will try by all means necessary to write Red Flag in languages they understand.
Tribalism: Deadly to The Working Class
A mine worker detailed how tribalism exists amongst them. A week ago, a miner who’s a Sotho (from Johannesburg) killed someone from the Eastern Cape. Eastern Cape workers retaliated by killing seven Sotho miners. The police arrested some of the Eastern Cape miners, but all the Eastern Cape miners went to the police station. They threatened to come back the next day and burn the whole station if the arrested miners weren’t released. The following morning, they were released.
The police fear this group of miners because some survived the 2012 Marikana massacre and don’t fear a standoff with the police. Their anger and unity is what made the mine agree to a wage increase of R1500 (US$90) two months ago. In contrast, another group of workers from a different mine had to strike, and even after that they settled for an increase of R700 (US$43).
We want this mine worker to join the party so that he can also recruit more workers and turn their anger against the bosses in working-class unity to fight for a communist society where exploitation, wage slavery, and tribalism will not exist.
Toward Building a Mass ICWP in the South Africa Mines
I really struggled to meet a comrade who works in a mine in Rustenburg where shifts can often end very late. You don’t go out while your work is unfinished.
This comrade had to start work late. He told me to wait for him around six or seven. He’s going to be an asset to the party. He knows a lot about mines and can speak English a lot better. So, I waited after our mobilization until it was getting dark. Finally, he contacted me, and we arranged to meet the next day.
He doesn’t know the other six new ICWP comrades, so I told comrade A that he has to continue with the workers. Working with comrade A has boosted my confidence. He’s not fully understanding the party yet and we will struggle with him by the phone. And I’ll keep coming back.
I told a comrade that you cannot recruit workers while you are shy to talk. You need to have guts. Politics are dangerous. This is not child’s play. This is peoples’ lives.
We need comrades to join ICWP as quickly as possible. These proxy wars that are happening are all created by capitalism. The new comrades thought that Russia and China are communist. I showed them that in Red Flag we explain that these countries are not communist, they are revisionist.
What’s revisionism? I made an example of the ANC. That’s where they agree. It is people who are not really communists but instead fight for a capitalist position to control the world. Russia and China are new emerging imperialists. They are trying to overtake the others.
Our party doesn’t want transition of power. We want to eliminate everything that is created by capitalism, not leaving even a single branch. Everything has to start from fresh.
When you talk about the communism of ICWP, without money, workers don’t always take it seriously. I emphasize that everything in capitalism is based on producing profit. The means of production, everything we live on, is for profit.
They also create divisions. They can’t survive without racism. While we were discussing this racism, we made examples about tribalism. In the mines there are Mozambicans and Zimbabweans. Some South Africans claim that these guys are “stealing their jobs.” I explain that no one is a “Mozambican” or “Zimbabwean.” All these people are workers.
The capitalists know that we are going to fight as workers. That’s why they created these borders. So, we have to be one. All workers in the world have to unite and fight this dragon because this dragon is united to kill the workers.
We’re on the same page, but they need more time. For example, I explained about capitalism and the liberals and the nationalists. If someone is HIV+ they have a virus. The medication ARY doesn’t kill the virus but makes them feel better for a moment. If they stop the medication, the virus will overtake the body and they will die. Like that, the liberals, the nationalists, and the revisionists are just reforming the problem they are not eliminating it. The ICWP objective is to eliminate the problem.
We need this comrade to join the party very fast and work with other comrades here. There are a lot of opportunities here in Marikana. We can make a mass party if comrades have the skills and flexibility to approach the other workers who are coming up from the mine shaft.
—Comrade in South Africa
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