South Africa Strikers, September 27
SOUTH AFRICA—Sept. 27—“This march cannot be a march of COSATU,” thundered a young lion on a loud hailer. “We need to fight for communism. This system can never provide jobs for all. Only communist revolution will guarantee a society where everyone will be able to contribute according to their ability. A society without money will unleash new forces that will benefit the international working class. Join ICWP now.”
This was the urgent message that the ICWP in South Africa brought to the masses who had walked off their jobs. A contingent of about 12 comrades also distributed about 500 Red Flags.
We did this at the strike called for September 27th by COSATU, the Congress of South Africa Trade Unions. Masses of workers struck. COSATU called for workers to go on the street to strike against “corruption and state capture.” Therefore they are calling for the removal of President Zuma and the individuals in his government. They claim that they are corrupted and captured. This is the same union that was behind Zuma in 2007, and the same union that preached the ideology of the ANC (the so-called tripartite alliance) when he was facing criminal charges.
They mobilized the masses to fill up the courts in support of Zuma. Even then they told the lies they are saying now. They are not the solution; they are the problem. They are the enemies of the working class. They told workers that they must rally behind Zuma because he was a working class president. Now they are telling workers that they must rally behind the removal of Zuma because he is corrupt and captured.
Workers don’t need Unions.
Workers need to join the fight against capitalism that makes them wage slaves that “need” unions. Unions justify and prolong the exploitation of the workers by the bosses. They are on the bosses’ side. In actual fact, they are a tool used by the bosses in order to further subject us to their exploitation. Workers need to join ICWP and organize for communist revolution. We are wage slaves and we want to end the rule of our capitalist bosses with a violent communist revolution.
The bosses’ survival depends on their ability to exploit us and ideologically win the workers to thinking just like the bosses. However, we have a different plan. We have a scientific philosophy of change: dialectical materialism. We learn that a small thing has the potential to dominate and the dominant force, no matter how powerful, can be smashed.
To achieve our revolution, we need masses of industrial workers on our side. We also need soldiers on our side to lead and defend a successful communist revolution.
More next issue.
