SOUTH AFRICA, April 7 —“We’ve just come from the ‘Zuma Must Fall’ protest. A large number of people of all different races and age groups were there, the working class, the students. People were really interested, asking ‘What’s this?’”
Eight young comrades from the ICWP youth collective in South Africa distributed Red Flag and our Communist May Day call at the protest against Zuma, the South African President. This is their report:
*We thought that white people were not going to respond well because the majority there was white and all of us distributing Red Flag were black. I thought they were going to be racist but they responded well and wanted to talk and ask questions. That’s when we engaged in one-on-one conversations. Many were very interested in knowing more about the party.
Ever since we’ve started this ICWP work, our focus has been in industrial areas. South Africa remains very segregated. We hadn’t found a scenario where we could find so many white, black, Indian and coloured people all in one area. So, as we always say, every crisis in capitalist society presents us communists with an opportunity. This crisis shows the sharpness of the contradictions within the ruling party, the ANC, and within the tripartite alliance as we move towards the general election in 2019.
The idea that ‘Zuma is the whole problem’ is wrong. Zuma is only the symptom of the disease, which is the whole capitalist system. We don’t agree with only targeting him but we were there because it presented us the opportunity to interact with different people from different racial backgrounds.
*I didn’t expect this much enthusiasm especially when we talked to them about communism and ICWP. It shows that regardless of one’s skin color, one’s background, everyone can be won to communism.
I met this one guy in the protest who was talking to my comrade, holding Red Flag and our May Day leaflet. His first question was, “Are you guys affiliated with the South African Communist Party (SACP)?”
I said, “We are not, we are a totally independent movement.”
When this guy was young he lived in Zambia. During the independence movement in the 70’s his father’s farm was nationalized. They lost everything and came to South Africa to start over. He wanted to know the communists’ answer to the issue of land, of mining, and of classes. He asked whether we would have a problem with the middle class working independently, paying its taxes, etc.
We collectively explained that in communism the social relationships in our society today will cease to exist. There will be a major shift in social relations between human beings. There will no longer be different classes, no longer a middle class as we know it today. These ideas excited him. We exchanged numbers and he wants to come to our May Day.
*Another guy had a vast knowledge of the history of the communist movement. I thought to myself, “Some white folks, they know these things.” Even though we live in different places, some of them know what is happening!’ It struck me that we need to know more history, that I must read some more.
*One white lady asked us how we are different from Russia and China, since they were fighting for communism, but it never really worked. We explained that they didn’t implement communism, so you can’t say that communism failed. They implemented socialism, which is state capitalism. We told her that we have to fight our oppressors and build one international communist workers’ party. She said she had never seen a movement like ours. She will go to the web site to find out more and call if she likes it. She was impressed that we were so young.
*Some people approached us instead of us approaching them. I was intrigued that white Afrikaners were so interested in knowing what communism is. There was a middle-aged man who came to me smiling as he read Red Flag. He wasn’t speaking English, so I could only imagine that he was so excited to see youth with Red Flags in their hands.
*I met a white guy our exact age. He took Red Flag and read it. The first question he asked was “Are we going to be Marxists or Leninists?” And I was like, ok, he knows about communism. He listened to me and was quite interested. He had communist ideas but he didn’t know where to go with them. There’s no one around him who he speaks to about this. So he was quite moved that there are people with these ideas. He’s going to read more of the Red Flag and we’re going to call him.
*This was really an opportunity to mobilize more people of different races to show that we want to and can build a world free of racism. We distributed more Red Flags than we expected. We gave out the invitation for May Day and some people were interested in going to our communist May Day.
Jacob Zuma, the South African President, is embroiled in a fight among the rulers within the African National Congress (ANC) and with the Democratic Alliance (DA). He is accused of corruption, which is true of him as well as those accusing him, and all capitalist politicians. Zuma supports Russian and Chinese capitalists’ exploitation in South Africa and in turn has their support. NUMSA, the National Union of Metalworkers, is supporting Zuma. The Zuma faction might fall.
The other faction controls much of the media and is mounting a sustained campaign to oust him. The pro-US Democratic Alliance is spearheading the “Zuma Must Fall” movement.
This movement also includes the billionaire exploiter Cyril Ramaphosa, who has served on the Board of British-owned Lonmin Mine, which ordered the attack on the striking miners in Marikana, where 34 miners were killed. He is also invested in McDonald’s and many other companies.
Zuma fired his economic minister, Proven Gordian, who is deeply invested in US/UK/Europe, including companies like Nestles and Johnny Walker. The “Zuma Must Fall” movement sharply attacked this firing as arbitrary.
Both factions represent rulers fighting to control workers’ growing exploitation and to gain the confidence of the masses whose increasing anger they cannot contain. At the same time they represent the dangerous and sharpening fight between the world’s major imperialists, which is leading to WWIII.
The working class cannot side with any of these capitalists and imperialist exploiters and murderers. Our fight is to use this opportunity to mobilize for a communist world that eliminates capitalism-imperialism and builds the communist power of the working class.
