SOUTH AFRICA—In the last few months our community has struggled with a slew of robberies, house break-ins, and armed robberies. One of the comrades in our youth collective was robbed of his cell phone.
The situation has deteriorated further. There are places where we cannot go. We can’t go to the ATM’s or shops. The only place where black comrades can go is where black people live; coloured comrades can only go where other coloured people live.
There are two groups that mostly live on this side of this community: blacks and coloureds. It’s very difficult to live in either side because of all the gangs, violence, crime, and drug abuse.
We comrades have been talking about this. This problem is not only in South Africa. It is in El Salvador, even in the US, it’s the same thing all over. The question raised by our comrades was, “Why is this happening?”
A comrade answered that these problems are the symptoms of the system we live in. If we address this issue of crime as an isolated incident, we won’t be able to deal with it effectively, until we address the disease, the capitalist system.
Today in South Africa, most of the population is young people; 60% are 25 or younger. 40% of them don’t work. It is mostly young people who are using these drugs. When you use them, you get addicted; you can’t afford them. The next step is to steal to be able to maintain your addiction. It’s a problem.
In the last few days in our community, there have been several break-ins. The community members gathered about 300 to 400 people and went to look for these burglars. Once we found them, the community descended on them.
Then the cops were called. They came in riot gear with tear gas and rubber bullets. They started to shoot at the residents. In all this chaos, as we were running away, people were asking, “Why are the police shooting at us, when we did nothing? They were supposed to shoot at the people who were harassing us.”
Whenever community members take action against the gang members and drug distributors, the police always interfere in favor of the gang members. It is so ironic to people watching that the police are supposed to protect us from these things, but they are intervening on behalf of the gangs.
A comrade mentioned that gone are the days when a person robbed you with a knife. Everybody has a gun, even a 13-year-old boy. Where are they getting these guns? These gangs are sold these guns by the police—the same police who are supposed to protect this community. Now we are living in a situation where the police simply stand outside and let everyone kill each other. Then the police simply swoop in and take the bodies.
As Red Flag has said, the police are not here to serve the working class. They serve the needs of the bosses. Whenever a chance arises for them to administer the bosses’ cruelty, they seize that opportunity with both hands. If the masses were to rely on the police, all that we worked for would be lost.
In the community, we decided to have a neighborhood watch. Every night from 11 pm to close to midnight, a whistle is blown and everyone goes out to do our patrols, without the assistance of the police. People had been asking for a police escort for three months and nothing happened. So people have taken matters into their own hands.
In this there’s an opportunity for us as an organization. This unity that the working class has created in the face of this violence and drugs has brought the community, our class, together.
It is up to us as ICWP to take advantage of this opportunity to educate the masses to see that even if we are to deal with these problems, the bigger ones still remain. These problems didn’t just fall on us out of the blue. They are symptoms of the rotten capitalist system that we are living in.
Until we deal with that, the issue of crime and drugs will always remain. But if we build a society where there is no material basis for these things—no money, influence, privilege, unemployment — that is when we will be able to eradicate these things. There is no other solution except communism. This is the message we are taking into this night patrol and the community meetings. We aim to recruit more comrades to ICWP in this struggle.