ANC e latlhile seaparwelwa khemo so sone! Ba bolaile babereki!
![Malema - desserts of capitalism [tswana]](http://zabnew.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/malema-desserts-of-capitalism-tswana-web.jpg)
Bathapi le boradipolitiki ba molato! Ba tshwanetse go
emisa mapodisi go dira dilo tse di sa siamang.
Ga gona molao, ga gona kagiso. Ga go na Zuma,
ga go na Malema, ga go na LONMIN!
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Molaotheo o tshepisitse ditokelo tsa dipolotiki le tekatekano. Go a bonagala gore boradipolotiki le bathapi ba dira ka mo ba ratang ka teng. Ba tshameka ka batho. Seo se bonagetse ka nako eo mapodisi a bolaileng badiri bao ba neng ba dirile ditshupetso kwa moepong wa Lonmin Marikana. (more…)
I-ANC ikhumula isifihla buso sayo! Kubulewe abasebenzi!
![Malema - desserts of capitalism [zulu]](http://zabnew.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/malema-desserts-of-capitalism-zulu-web.jpg?w=210&h=141)
Osozimali nosopolotiki banecala! Asimise ukuhlukunyezwa ngamaphoyisa. Akukho bulungiswa. Akukho xolo.
![Malema - desserts of capitalism [zulu]](http://zabnew.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/malema-desserts-of-capitalism-zulu-web.jpg)
Asifuni uZuma, Asifuni uMalema, Asefuni iLONMIN!
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Afrikaans | English | seTswana
Umthetho sisekelo walelizwe uthembisa amalungelo epolitiki nokulingana kwabantu. Kucacile ukuthi osozimali nosomapolitiki bazenzela umathanda. Banyathela ubuso babantu baseMzansi. Isibonelo esidumile esamaphoyisa ebulala abasebenzi bezimayini zaseLonmin Marikana. (more…)
Freedom for the “1st of May Cooperative and Social Movement” Political Prisoners in Bariloche, Argentina
“The looters are the politicians, who rob
the workers of their dignity”
The undersigned organisations support the February 5th international day of solidarity with the five political prisoners from the 1st of May Cooperative and Social Movement (M.S.C. 1º de Mayo) in Bariloche, Rio Negro (Argentina) – agreed to at the final plenary of the 10th annual Latin American Encounter of Popular Autonomous Organisations (ELAOPA) – and the call for their immediate release and return to their homes and families. We denounce the violent manner with which the gendarmeria, under order of the Federal Justice, dispersed the families of the political prisoners demonstrating in demand of their release on 21st January. Similarly, we stand firmly in solidarity with the Federation of Grassroots Organisations (FOB), which has suffered aggressions and accusations in certain media sources of being “looters and delinquents” for defending their rights and actively demonstrating their solidarity and support for the persecuted comrades of Bariloche.
ANC wys sy ware kleure! Werkers Vermoor!
Kapitaliste en Politici Skuldig! Stop Polisie Brutaliteit.
Geen Geregtigheid, geen vrede. Weg met Zuma, weg met Malema, Weg met Lonmin!
Die Grondwet maak voorsiening vir politieke regte en gelykheid. Dit is egter duidelik dat die base en politici maak soos hulle wil. Hulle loop oor die mense. Dit is duidelik in die polisie moorde van die stakers by Lonmin se Marikana myn.
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ANC Throws Off Its Mask! Workers Murdered!
South African anarchist statement on the Marikana Massacre
Joint statement on the Marikana Massacre issued by the Tokologo Anarchist Collective, Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front and Inkululeko Wits Anarchist Collective.
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ANC Throws Off Its Mask! Workers Murdered!
Capitalists and politicians guilty! Stop police brutality.
No justice, no peace. No Zuma, no Malema, no LONMIN!
The Constitution promises political rights and equality. It is quite clear that the bosses and politicians do exactly as they wish. They walk on the faces of the people. This is shown by the police killings of strikers at Lonmin’s Marikana mine. (more…)
Towards a Truly Democratic Left: An Anarchist Assessment of the DLF at COP17
by Jonathan Payn (ZACF)
Failures of democracy have been a big part of the history of the DLF. We in the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) have had to raise such challenges several times (see “DLF structure: concerns and proposals” by ZACF). We have long been troubled by the lack of proper democratic structures, by a leadership that consists far more of middle-class intellectuals than of grassroots militants, and by a programme that seems to be determined in advance by the academic and NGO interests of these intellectuals instead of by the immediate needs of the workers and the poor.
Not Another Fucking COP Out!
[Download A4 PDF leaflet here]
At the time of writing, ruling class scum (the rich, big bosses, politicians and state managers) from across the globe are hopping on fancy planes to descend, like fleas, onto the posh air conditioned Durban Convention Centre for the COP 17 meeting. In between living in luxury, posing for press pictures, attending cocktail parties, closing business deals, and flashing fake bleached smiles; we are told – by these very same ruling class parasites – that they are coming to Durban and COP 17 to solve global warming. To be sure, the ruling class scum want us to believe that they are Armani-clad superheroes who care about us and who are flying in to save us all. But hold the applause and cheers, because nothing could be further from the truth.
International Libertarian Statement of Solidarity with the Egyptian popular Struggle
On the weekend 19-20th a new wave of mass protest all over Egypt broke out because of the systematic violence of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) against the Egyptian masses. People are tired of its dictatorial behaviour, the use of extreme force against protesters, the military trials that in 10 months have ended up with 12,000 comrades rotting in jail, their censorship, the torture, kidnappings and selective murder of activists. People are tired of the military council hijacking the banners of our revolution to continue the same old dictatorship through other means. People are tired of the sectarianism they promote to divert us from our real fight for justice, equality and freedom.
Imperialism has dictated an “orderly transition” to democracy in Egypt. The military have shown themselves obedient in implementing this design. The people in Egypt demand an end to dictatorship and the uprooting of all the remnants of the hated Mubarak regime. People in Egypt want to feel, at last, that they have a country run by themselves for themselves.
The anarchists in Egypt, and the international solidarity movement with the libertarian revolutionaries, wholeheartedly support the just struggle of the Egyptian people to continue their revolution and deplore the massacre of protesters that shows that the SCAF is no different to Mubarak.
Andries Tatane: Murdered by the Ruling Classes
- Images of the footage screened by the SABC, April 13 2011
by Shawn Hattingh (ZACF)
On the 13th April, people in South Africa were stunned. On the evening news the sight of six police force members brutally beating a man, Andries Tatane, to death was aired. The images of the police smashing his body with batons and repeatedly firing rubber bullets into his chest struck a cord; people were simply shocked and appalled. Literally hundreds of articles followed in the press, politicians of all stripes also hopped on the bandwagon and said they lamented his death; and most called for the police to receive appropriate training to deal with ‘crowd control’ – after all, elections are a month away.
Andries Tatane’s death was the culmination of a protest march in the Free State town of Ficksburg. The march involved over 4,000 people, who undertook the action to demand the very basics of life – decent housing, access to water and electricity, and jobs. They had repeatedly written to the mayor and local government of Ficksburg pleading for these necessities. Like a group of modern day Marie Antoinettes, the local state officials brushed off these pleas; more important matters no doubt needed to be attended to – like shopping for luxury cars; banking the latest fat pay check; handing tenders out to Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) connections and talking shit in the municipal chambers. Therefore, when the township residents had the audacity to march, and call for a response, the police were promptly unleashed with water cannons and rubber bullets. If the impoverished black residents of Ficksburg could not get the hint, in the form of silence; then the state and local politicians were going to ensure that they got the message beaten into them.
International Anarchist Statement in Solidarity with Zimbabwe’s Treason Trialists
When Mohammed Bouazizi set himself alight he unwittingly ignited a wave of popular uprisings and rebellions that have spread like wildfire across North Africa and the Middle East, the heat of which can be felt as far afield as Zimbabwe where, on Saturday 19th February, 46 pro-democracy activists including students, workers and trade unionists were arrested in Harare. According to police documents they were arrested for plotting an Egypt-style revolt to overthrow Robert Mugabe, who has been in power since 1980, at a meeting to discuss the fall of Hosni Mubarak and events in North Africa and the Middle East.
The arrested, who represent the Zimbabwean Federation of Trade Unions (ZCTU), Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZNSU) and the International Socialist Organisation (ISO), had just watched documentary news footage on the uprising in Egypt and, according to state prosecutors, were there to “organise, strategise and implement the removal of the constitutional government of Zimbabwe … the Egyptian way”.
The “Democratic Left”: A Small Step Towards United Working Class Struggle
Statement by the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF)
From 20 to 23 January 2011, working class and revolutionary militants from throughout South Africa, including a ZACF delegation, gathered in Johannesburg for the Conference of the Democratic Left (CDL). The gathering ended in the launch of the Democratic Left Front (DLF) as a loose alliance of organisations and individuals in struggle.
Plans for the CDL began in 2008, and over the years the ZACF has been cautiously involved in these discussions. We have had, and continue to have, reservations about the goals of many of the comrades involved in this process. At the same time, we can only welcome and support a project that is clearly deepening solidarity in struggle among some of the region’s most militant working class organisations (including both unions and community-based social movements). (See Declaration of the DLF).
In explaining our relationship to the DLF, we will here summarise our reservations, while explaining why they are outweighed by the genuine achievements of the CDL. The reservations cover three main areas: attitudes towards the state and elections; leadership structures; and the DLF programme and demands. (We are also less than enthusiastic about some new terms that have become popular in the CDL and DLF, such as “eco-socialism../”; but this is largely a matter of language, which we will not discuss in detail here.)
Solidarity with the Harare 52: Another dark day in Zimbabwe!
ZACF Statement in Solidarity with Arrested Zimbabwean Activists
Activists gathered in Harare on the 19th February in a closed meeting to discuss the recent uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, were arrested after a planned police raid. Currently they are being held without charge and reports indicate that key members of the gathering are being subjected to physical assault by their captors. [Italiano] [Ελληνικά]
The ZACF strongly condemns yet another act of aggression against ordinary Zimbabweans seeking better alternatives to their current state of violent subjugation to the authority of the state and capital. In a clear show of force, the state and the predator ruling class has once again shown its desire to maintain power as the regulator of Zimbabwean society and will use violence and intimidation to achieve these ends. The present vicious attacks on protestors in Libya speak to this point as well. In any society the oppressed classes organized from below are the decisive forces to end regimes. The ruling classes in the state and capital are keenly aware of this and always seek to crush dissent.
LPM Members and shack-dwellers attacked in Protea South, Soweto
Solidarity Statement by the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF)
The following is an urgent communication issued on behalf of, and in solidarity with the Landless Peoples Movement (LPM) and other shack-dwellers of Protea South, Soweto. It is based on information obtained by telephonic and face-to-face conversations held with LPM members following violent attacks against them last night. There still seems to be confusion, however, and details are sketchy. Updates on the situation will be made available as and when they are received, as will be any factual corrections.
On the evening of Sunday 23 May a group of men attempted to burn down the shack of Landless Peoples Movement chairperson Maureen Mnisi in the informal settlement of Protea South, Soweto. She was inside at the time, and was fortunate to escape with her life only because her son stumbled on the attackers and chased them away.
Resistance not Ballots: Mass Organisation not Authoritarian Leaders
Even with all eyes on the World Cup, movements of the workers and the poor in South Africa must not forget that another challenge looms: the local government elections of 2011. And with the approach of elections, we are already seeing the return of the wave of authoritarians and opportunists of the left, all singing the same old song: if they are elected, they will somehow be able to do something about the problems of the workers and the poor. And while they may remix the song over and over, the tune remains the same: individual leaders, experts, or vanguards can find the answer; the mass movements of the people cannot liberate themselves.
This is the one big lie of all who seek our votes.
Solidarity with the Greek workers’ struggle!
Statement on the Greek crisis
by Anarchist Communist organizations
Greece is a test case for the social dismantling that awaits us all. This policy is being enacted by all the institutional parties, by every government and by all of globalised capitalism’s institutions. There is only one way to hold back this policy of barbaric capitalism: popular direct action, to widen the strike movement and increase the number of demonstrations all across Europe.
Solidarity with the Greek workers’ struggle!
The Greek working class is angry, and with good reason, with the attempt to load responsibility for the bankruptcy of the Greek State onto their shoulders. We maintain instead that it is the international financial institutions and the European Union who are responsible. The financial institutions have plunged the world, and Greece in particular, into an economic and social crisis of historical proportions, forcing countries into debt, and now these same institutions are complaining that certain States risk not being able to repay their debts. We denounce this hypocrisy and say that even if Greece – and all the other countries – can repay the debt, they should not do so: it is up to those responsible for the crisis – the financial institutions, not the workers – to pay for the damage caused by this crisis. The Greek workers are right to refuse to pay back their country’s debt. We refuse to pay for their crisis!
Terre’Blanche is Dead; Long Live the Workers!
We in the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front will shed no tears for the killing of the racist Eugene Terre’Blanche. Why should revolutionary workers lament the death of a thug who lived in nostalgia for the days when his emulation of Hitler and (empty) threats of war shook the whole country, and who never ceased to exploit and terrorise the black workers on a farm that should rightly be managed by those who work it to meet the needs of all and not be the property of any one single person?
Nor can we join with the capitalist newspapers who link the Terre’Blanche killing to “heightened racial tension in South Africa”, nor with the politicians of the Democratic Alliance and the Congress of the People who attribute the killing to the ANC’s Julius Malema and the “kill the boer” song. Not that we have any wish to defend Malema, any more than any other opportunistic capitalist politician of any party. Whether – like so many others – he is deliberately seeking to shift blame onto “the whites” so black workers won’t challenge his own crookery, or whether he is simply trying to identify himself with “the struggle” in his latest attempt at self-glorification by fake radicalism, Malema’s goal in singing this song is clearly self-advancement, and not any fight against racism or any other form of oppression. After all, even if we leave aside the broader capitalist programme of the ANC government and focus only on the question of white farmers, surely the main goal must be, not to kill them, but to redistribute “their” land to those who work it, or are prepared to work it. And here Malema’s government has been all talk and no action: even the pitiful target of 30 percent land redistribution is nowhere near being met. Just one example of the government’s true loyalties: the interests of the ruling class come first.
Anarchist Statement in Solidarity with Swazi Students at Wits
We condemn the recent unilateral decision by Wits management to no longer accept many Swazi students’ medical aid provider, Swazi Med, for the current academic year. This is an unfair move by the university so close to the registration period. It means an additional burden on students from one of the poorest and most authoritarian states in the world, many of whom come from poor backgrounds and study in South Africa not out of choice but necessity.
International students have to pay their full fees and medical aid for the whole year prior to registration which makes it nearly impossible for poor and working class students to enrol.
Unfortunately, this attack on poor students is not an isolated incident but another move by the university in its programme of neo-liberal restructuring.[1] This started in 2000 when the university’s “non-core” services were privatised. Soon after, upfront payments were introduced and have continued to rise steeply ever since.
Solidarity with the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha
International Anarchist Statement
Yesterday, Thursday 29th October, the Civil Police of Rio Grande do Sul, under the command of Governor Yeda Crusius, broke into the premises of the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha. Police seized various materials such as posters, minutes of meetings, the hard disk of a computer and also the contents of refuse containers that were at the headquarters. They also tried to intimidate those who came to show their solidarity and names contained in the records of the organization’s website. Two comrades were arrested and charged.
The comrades of the FAG have spent years fighting against exclusion and casualisation, defending justice and decent living conditions. They are well known for their work with the “catadores” (collectors of cardboard and recyclable refuse), with the homeless and with the landless. In short, work they have been carrying on for years with those at the bottom of society.
Anarchists are Queer and Proud
Anarchism is an ideology that fights against exploitation and all forms of oppression. We fight for a world in which women will be equal to men, a world without racism and class inequality, a world in which LGBTI and queer people are treated with respect. These struggles are part of the anarchist struggle against hierarchy and inequality, for an equal and free world.
Anarchists have been at the forefront in the struggle against LGBTI discrimination
From the beginning of anarchist theory, anarchism has been the first ideology to actively support LGBTI people long before other ideologies. It is believed that one of the key anarchist thinkers and revolutionaries, Mikhail Bakunin, was rumoured to have been homosexual and that this was one among many reasons Karl Marx threw him out of the First International, which caused the split between authoritarian communism and anarchism.
Also, Oscar Wilde, who called himself an anarchist, criticised Marx. His famous trial and conviction of sodomy in 1895 prompted anarchists to engage in an examination of the social, moral, and legal place of same-sex desire. The efforts of the famous anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman (the first advocate for homosexual rights in America) and other anarchists on Wilde’s behalf constitute the first articulation of a politics of homosexuality in the United States. After his trial, Wilde became “a totemic figure” for the anarchists, and at a time when the American productions of Wilde’s plays were closed down and forbidden and his books pulled from library shelves, anarchist journals reprinted his texts and poems.
Kennedy Road Murders Recall Terror of the 1980s
ZACF Statement on the Armed Attack on Abahlali baseMjondolo
in Kennedy Road Informal Settlement
The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) notes with disgust the attacks on the Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) affiliated Kennedy Road Development Committee (KRDC) by a heavily armed gang near the AbM office in Kennedy Road informal settlement in Durban, KwaZulu Natal. We hereby extend our sympathy and solidarity to all those who have fallen victim to these cowardly attacks, and call for both national and international mobilisation and solidarity in their defence.
The attacks took place at about 11h30 on the night of Saturday 26 September, and carried on with impunity for at least 23 hours. Although police are claiming two people died, it has been confirmed by AbM that at least four people have been killed: three during the attacks and another died later in hospital. It is reported that the houses of around 30 AbM members were burnt or destroyed by the mob, which was shouting things like “The AmaMpondo are taking over Kennedy. Kennedy is for the AmaZulu” while carrying out the attacks. Hundreds, if not thousands of Kennedy Road residents have fled the community, some seeking refuge at nearby churches.
The political rivalry in KwaZulu Natal has exploited ethnic sentiment and tensions that emerged during the Jacob Zuma election campaign, and we believe that the African National Congress (ANC) in and around Kennedy Road, and probably elsewhere, is using ethnicity to mobilise local residents against popular social movements such as Abahlali baseMjondolo. It seems clear to us that the popularly elected committee in the Kennedy Road settlement, and the social work they have been doing is perceived by local political leaders from the ANC to be a threat to political and property interests, and they are thus bent on destroying AbM.
ZACF Statement in Solidarity with Students at Santa Cruz University
Workers and poor all over the world are being asked to pay for the current economic crisis, brought about by capitalist stockbrokers, while the big corporations get bailed out.
We have seen millions of retrenchments worldwide. In South Africa over 300 000 jobs were lost in the first 6 months of this year alone. But all over the world the poor are fighting back. We have seen an increase in service delivery and other protests in South Africa as well as student protests against fee increases in recent weeks.
We are delighted to hear that students at the University of California, Santa Cruz are taking direct action by occupying their university at the same time as our comrades take to the streets in Pittsburgh to protest the G20. We urge occupying students in Santa Cruz, as well as struggling students everywhere to forge links with the workers on their campuses and to support their struggles.
May Day: Defend, Widen and Share the Struggle
Anarchist Communist May Day statement
Today as in the past, May Day means respect for mobilizations throughout the world by workers who suffer, at times even paying with their lives, for the sake of their struggles to improve the condition of men and women who labour under the control of capitalism.
As anarchist communists, we support the struggle for a radical change to a society of freedom, equality and solidarity, but we do not forget that in many countries, workers do not even have the most basic possibility to organise into unions, and many work in subhuman conditions for subhuman pay. Our thoughts today go to these workers, as we seek to strengthen the networks of support for the struggles of all the peoples of the world.
In Western countries, the ‘cradle of freedom’, the fate of working men and women has grown worse over the last two decades: casualisation, flexibility, magic words adopted by the Left as well as the Right, whose effects are now plain for everyone to see in the harsh effects of a crisis which grew out of lower wages and the destruction of jobs.
CPFs: Eyes and Fists of State Oppression
Wednesday March 11, 2009
ZACF statement on another murder in Sebokeng at the hands
of the Community Policing Forum.
The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) is angered by the killing of a second working class activist youth by the Community Policing Forum (CPF) in Sebokeng in less than a year.
In July of last year Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) activist Mathafeni Majobe was killed by members of the CPF after partaking in a service delivery protest in Sebokeng. This time the victim was Teboho “Diventsha” Tsotetsi, who was stabbed to death in front of his parents on Wednesday 4 March by members of the CPF for refusing to withdraw charges he had laid against those same CPF patrollers, who had severely beaten him and stolen his cell phone and wallet the previous Friday.
The atrocious murder of these two activist youth is not the only indictment against the Community Policing Forums, which time and again have been associated with ill behaviour, criminality and outright reaction.
Maximum Support to the Women and Water Campaign
Saturday February 21, 2009
On Thursday 12 February 2009 members of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front participated in a protest-march held in Johannesburg as part of the Coalition Against Water Privatisation’s Women and Water Campaign. The protest went from Library Gardens in central Johannesburg, a historic meeting point for protests in the city, to Mayor Amos Masondo’s office in Braamfontein, near Constitution Hill. The march was to demand that Masondo withdraw his appeal of the pro-poor Johannesburg High Court ruling of Judge Tsoka, which ruled that the forced installation of pre-paid water meters and the prepayment water system is unlawful and unconstitutional, and that City of Johannesburg and Johannesburg Water provide residents of poor townships with 50 litres of free water per person per day.
The Women and Water Campaign is an important campaign seeking to highlight the fact that, although all poor people in Southern Africa suffer from a shortage of water due to lack of basic service delivery and the privatisation of water, which makes it unaffordable to most, this suffering is felt most acutely by poor women. Living as we do in a sexist society it is almost always women that have to do all the cooking, cleaning and laundry. All of which they need water for. It is therefore women who have to walk long distances to collect water from rivers and queue, sometimes for hours, at communal taps. It is women who risk being attacked and raped when they have to go out alone, sometimes in the morning before the sun is up or late into the evening, to get water so they can prepare meals for their boyfriends, husbands and children. As women are very often the only breadwinners in families in South Africa, often employed as domestic workers, it is they who feel the double-edged oppression not only of having to work for a wage, but of having to do all the unpaid housework at home which, in the majority-white suburbs where they work, they are paid – albeit too little – to do. This is made worse by the fact that water privatisation means they can only get a measly 25 litres per person per day, far less than adequate, and have to go to great lengths to get water if they cannot afford to pay for more than that.
