Johannesburg, South Africa, 2015
SOUTH AFRICA, February 12—Since the start of the pandemic, xenophobic attacks against foreign-born workers have skyrocketed at the hands of police and politicians alike. Workers worldwide have the same interests: to fight for a communist world that meets the needs of all workers, where we produce for need, not profit. The capitalist rulers fear that we will learn and act on this. That’s why they push xenophobia to divide us.
Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), made rounds on a mall last week to inspect the employee lists of various restaurants and shops. He apparently intended to assess the ratio of foreign-born workers to local-born workers.
On paper the opportunistic and self-serving EFF says they support African immigrants and condemn xenophobia. But this is only on paper. Their racist actions are a frontal assault on the whole working class.
Both the EFF and the Black Land First movement are responsible for some of the vile acts of violence committed against our class brothers and sisters. In recent weeks the African National Congress (ANC) has also joined in.
Just last month in Soweto, one of the largest townships in South Africa, an ANC councillor led a band of racist thugs against “spaza” shops owned by people from other countries, burning them and looking for goods. One shop owner was killed. Several others were sent to the hospital.
As more and more working-class families continue to suffer because of Covid, because of exploitation and greed by the bosses and corruption by politicians, the rulers spread the lie that the reason for the lack of jobs is because of immigrants.
But the real reason is the crisis of capitalism, with its falling rate of profit and rising unemployment. Politicians like Malema are collaborating with the bosses’ playbook of dividing the workers, with the help of some of the union bosses like Irvin Jim of NUMSA.
To fight for higher profits, the bosses are attacking the workers harder. They are laying off local workers and hiring lower-paid workers, decreasing wages. Along with this are direct attacks by the police.
The bosses push xenophobia to blame immigrants for the crisis caused by the same capitalist system that forces workers to immigrate to look for work. This is happening because of the bosses’ need for profit and their need to try to keep angry workers divided. They fear losing control of the workers.
We can see in past miners’ strikes and in mass protests against xenophobia in South Africa the real possibility of a united fight against capitalism. Our international party fights for the eradication of this racist system through revolution to establish a communist world without borders, exploitation, racism, or unemployment.
For us to liberate the working-class worldwide, we must build ICWP everywhere and take on the bosses’ racism with communist solutions.
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