Kariega (South Africa): Answer Mass Layoffs by Fighting for Communism
KARIEGA (South Africa), June 19 — Goodyear has just announced the closure of a plant that produces tires for the adjacent Volkswagen assembly plant. With this closure, nine hundred workers will lose their jobs. This adds to the official unemployment rate of 48% in Kariega (Uitenhage). For Lwazi, the sole breadwinner in his family, this is a calamity. His three sons are also unemployed.
Just four km away is the township of KwaNobuhle. It’s home to many industrial workers and their families. A young comrade named Siya is distributing Red Flag door to door. She is also organizing students at her school to join the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP).
In her rundown school, students are forced to stand due to a shortage of furniture. There are no textbooks. Last year, her class went without a mathematics teacher. Math is a required subject to graduate. In response, Comrade Siya organized 250 high school students to stage a toyi-toyi protest at the administration building. They demanded the hiring of a math teacher from Johannesburg.
Siya and other ICWP members, including a comrade from Volkswagen, recently attended a youth meeting. They discussed the significance of the 1976 Soweto Rebellion. That historic protest began when the apartheid government killed hundreds of youths. Today, Siya and her comrades are determined to overthrow the repressive capitalist system and replace it with communism. Communism is a system where workers share resources based on the needs of the international working class.
Siya now understands that hiring one math teacher is not enough. What is needed is a communist education system. All workers and students learn from one another to build a new society—one without banks, capitalist bosses, or money.
Capitalist “Master Plans” are nothing but plans to exploit workers.
At the Goodyear plant, we spoke with an executive from Volkswagen Africa. She introduced the African Automotive Masterplan 2035. She explained that although VW had previously bought tires from Goodyear, in recent years they have been importing them to cut costs. “We’re now buying from India, where production costs are 80% lower than in South Africa,” she said.
This is how capitalism works. In pursuit of profit, bosses shift production to countries with lower wages. According to the Masterplan, Africa’s population is projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2035, with one billion under the age of seventeen.
South Africa was once a manufacturing powerhouse. But due to extremely low wages in China and India, much of its industrial base has moved to Asia. South Africa’s six auto plants currently produce about 500,000 cars annually. India’s Suzuki alone produces one million vehicles.
But things change. VW bosses face rising production costs in Europe due to the Ukraine-Russia war. They are turning to Africa, where China already has a strong presence. They believe that by 2035, population decline and rising wages in Asia will make Africa’s large, youthful workforce more attractive for exploitation.
We need our own plans to organize ICWP to bring about the future we want.
The only bright future for Africa—and for the world—lies in young comrades who fight for communism today. Capitalism brings nothing but misery. It crushes the dreams of the working class.
Every day, a large share of workers’ wealth is stolen by capitalists. It’s reinvested to generate even more profit. The effects are clear: shacks, overflowing rubbish, crumbling hospitals and schools, and social conditions that fuel alcohol abuse, gang violence, and crime.
We are also beginning to meet soldiers from the same impoverished townships. Many were recruited simply to feed their families. As one said, “When we’re hungry, they give us guns.” These guns can and should be used against the capitalist bosses. Not against workers, as happened in Marikana.
Hungry soldiers, allied with students and workers, can become a powerful force for revolution. We must organize, recruit, and struggle with them for communism.
Pamphlet: South African Miners Strikes here