South Africa Youth: The International Working Class Is Our People
GQEBERHA (South Africa), June 16— “Young people are the future,” said a student comrade. “Today we remember the youths that fought against oppression. We remind ourselves that these present young people and students are the leaders of a communist future and fighters against capitalism”.
This opened our commemoration of the schoolkids killed in the 1976 Soweto massacre by the South African apartheid regime. They fought for liberation. Today we remember their heroic call for action by recruiting young people to fight the oppressive and exploitative capitalist system.
The same capitalist oppressors who benefited from apartheid still benefit today at the expense of young people. The South African capitalist government is not “white”. The capitalists use their state governed by Black people to exploit the masses and rob young people of their future.
More than twenty young students discussed two questions. What role can we play in shaping the communist future? Who are we fighting for?
We often hear that the schoolchildren of 1976 fought for “our people”. Who are our people?
One comrade said, “We are fighting for our people who are here, who are hungry and don’t have anything, who can’t afford to live a proper life”. Other comrades agreed.
An experienced party comrade asked, “Do we mean who are in this meeting or who are in Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha), or in South Africa?”
Internationalism Versus Nationalism
Another comrade said, “It seems that comrades mean ‘South Africans’”. Comrades encouraged each other to have an honest and free discussion around what they deem “foreigners”.
Comrade T said, “I feel foreigners have taken our jobs and given our kids drugs. Hence, they kill the future of young people”. Another comrade agreed. “They are not our people. They come illegally and do crime”.
Other comrades refuted these remarks in a comradely manner until the comrades saw that what they were saying about immigrants was wrong. It’s dangerous capitalist propaganda to pit the workers against each other.
Comrade S said, “All immigrants live under capitalism. The conditions created by the brutal capitalist system here in South Africa, they also face where they were born. The jobs we say they ‘stole’: that is wrong, because they are employed by capitalists who want cheap labour from them. Once they become immigrants, their situation becomes even worse. They live under terrible and desperate conditions. They are forced to accept very low wages just to survive and send something to their families”.
He continued: “Some immigrants commit crimes. But saying immigrants bring crime is no different from racists who say Black people are criminals because some criminals are Black. We must fight the system that makes them desperate. If they are exploited in the same manner as any worker, or even worse, are they not our people?”
Comrade TH said, “They are our people, comrades. In Addo an immigrant who had been here for years was brutally attacked because one immigrant in the area had killed someone. They targeted everyone who’s an immigrant”.
Comrade Q said, “We shouldn’t be like those people. We should fight against that. We should unite with all immigrants and win them over. We must unite all workers of the world from anywhere. That’s how we win. Even those from corners we have never heard of should join the party.
“The role of the youth”, she continued, “is to recruit energetically and not let any capitalist propaganda into their minds. The biggest example of ‘us versus foreigners’ is what’s happening in Gaza. Thousands are being killed by Israel because they are regarded as unwanted foreigners. Even in Ukraine and Russia, people are being killed because the other side says they are ‘not our people’”.
“We are international. We should follow our name”, commented comrade C. “The youth will liberate us, and the youth will be better than us”.
Comrades reflected on the fight against Trump’s racist deportations of immigrants from the US. We should never allow a situation like that in South Africa. We should recruit more, educate ourselves through the communist line, and reject capitalist propaganda. As comrade Q said, “we should be like those in the US who are standing up against Trump, but we should be standing up against capitalism with our communist line. You touch one, you touch all of us”.
We plan to have such a political struggle around ICWP’s communist line to fight against nationalism and other capitalist thinking from new comrades.
At the end, we asked primary school kids what they know about Youth Day and what they would like to change at school. An eleven-year-old girl said, “I would like to end the treatment kids who are not from here get. When one has done something wrong, they get shouted at and taken to the office. But us from here don’t get that”.
Our struggle continues! We fight for a communist world with no xenophobia or borders to divide us!
Pamphlet: Communist Education for a Classless Society here