ZACF Statement of Support for APF and Kliptown Residents
We, the ZACF, support wholeheartedly the APF and Kliptown residents demands (see statement below) and their action to occupy houses which by right should be theirs. It is ironic that Kliptown, being the site where the Freedom Charter (1955) was collectively developed, is the very place where these rights are being denied, despite the fact that the ANC still claims to support and struggle for the principles of the Freedom Charter in its so called National Democratic Revolution. Perhaps we should remind them that the Freedom Charter, available on their website, states:
…There Shall be Houses, Security and Comfort!
“Hands off MST (Brazil)!” say SA Social Movements
Landless Peoples Movement (LPM), Shack-Dwellers’ Movement (Abahlali baseMjondolo)
& Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF), South Africa
Joint Statement on Workers Party (PT), Brazil, Campaign to Criminalise the
Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST), Brazil
7 August 2008
To the poor of the world, to all people of good will who work for progressive change.
We, the landless and homeless people and associated activists of South Africa, decry the secret campaign by the so-called Workers’ Party (PT) government of the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul to criminalise, outlaw and otherwise illegitimately harass our landless comrades of the MST.
ZACF Statement on Cosatu Strike, Electricity Crisis and Food and Fuel Prices
by Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front
Tuesday, Aug 5 2008
The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) expresses its solidarity with the rank and file workers of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), as their national campaign of rolling mass action against the electricity crisis culminates in a national strike and stayaway throughout the country on Wednesday, 6th August.
Mass action on one issue…
We share Cosatu’s concern that Eskom’s 27.5% increase in electricity prices (which can be increased still further by municipalities) as allowed by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa, to help fund Eskom’s R343-billion expansion plans, will be felt most heavily by the poor and working poor. This increase in tariff will put thousands more jobs at risk as, already confronted by large increases in fuel prices and interest rates, companies will try to maintain their profit margins by retrenching workers, and may even be forced to close operations.
ZACF Statement of Solidarity with Jerome Daniels and Ridwaan Isaacs
The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front wishes to express its heartfelt solidarity with Mr Jerome Daniels and Mr Ridwaan Isaacs – two Delft Anti-Eviction Campaign members who, on Wednesday 2nd July, were sentenced to 12 months in prison for their political and social activism.
The two – one of whom was not even present in the community when the incident in question took place – maintained their innocence in the face of charges of malicious damage to property; although it is clear that what was really on trial was their role as community activists in the Delft-Symphony Way settlement. The testimony of one Mrs Evelyn Mokoena, who was speaking in defence of the accused, was repeatedly interrupted when the magistrate questioned the defendants about their involvement in the Anti-Eviction Campaign, a grassroots and autonomous social movement.
In passing his verdict Magistrate Van Graan said that he was holding Mr Daniels and Mr Isaacs responsible for the actions of their community; which dismantled the tent of one of its residents after a person the owner, Elmory Isaacs, allowed to stay in her tent threatened other community residents with violence. She acknowledged, however, that when the evicted occupants of the Delft Symphony N2 Gateway homes began their pavement encampment they agreed – as a community – to remove anyone who threatened or used violence against other community members. When it became evident that it was the community as a whole which took the decision to dismantle Ms Isaacs’ tent the magistrate said “I can’t understand under what circumstances does the community take a decision? [...] Is this what is happening in this country? Is this thing justifiable?”.
ZACF and the ABC (SA) demand that the trumped-up charge Against U.S. Community Activist be Dropped
Joaquin has been known to us for some years now as a voice of militancy and reason in the Los Angeles area, working with Cop-Watch LA, Anarchist People of Color, and Revolutionary Autonomous Communities. His arrest at the end of June on a felony charge of possession of a concealed weapon – a legally-purchased firearm kept in the boot of his car while he was driving it – appears to be concocted by members of the Los Angeles Police Department who have come under the uncomfortable community scrutiny of Cop-Watch Los Angeles.
Statement of Solidarity with South African LGBTI Community
by Gender Working Group – ZACF
We, Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF), were recently shocked to hear about another homophobic murder in Johannesburg and extend our sympathy and solidarity to the LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex) community of South Africa, that has had to suffer from oppression and discrimination so often within a short period of time. The murder of drag queen Daisy Dube is yet another horrible chauvinistic murder and adds to the escalating number of people killed in homophobic violence in South Africa in recent times, including 10 lesbians killed since just 2006.
We deeply regret this and all the other murders and hope that the case of Dube’s murder be solved soon, although we do not have much faith that the police will do so. Dube and others who speak out in such a chauvinistic environment – that not only verbally discriminates against people who are seen to be ‘different’ or ‘abnormal’ but also physically, including raping and killing them – should be seen as heroic. LGBTI people who know they are targets but still stand up for their gender identity and fight for their rights need our full support. It is such people, who stand up against oppression and discrimination, who will change the world.
Against Chauvinism, Against Nationalism!: An Introduction by the ZACF
Friday, 23 May 2008
As the media, the politicians and the “experts” rack their brains in search of the cause of the “criminality” and “xenophobia” that has killed 42 people in 10 days and driven 15 000 from their homes, organisations of the working class have come closer to the truth than any of these wise men and women.
Abahlali baseMjondolo tell how “the anger of the poor can go in many directions”. They tell how fury is stirred up by “the rats and the fires and the lack of toilets”, by unemployment, homelessness and mandrax. They tell how people are “damaged” in a world where few are rich and many are poor.
The demon that has been unleashed in Gauteng, that is spreading to Mpumalanga and other provinces, is the demon of poverty. It is the child of the demon of capitalism, of the demon of exploitation.
But another demon has also been unleashed. This is the demon of NATIONALISM.
Abahlali point out that all the poor, all the workers, face “the same kind of oppression”. They call on all the poor and the workers to join in struggle against this oppression. The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front joins this call.
But against this unity of the working class appears another unity, a false unity, the unity of nationalism. This is a false unity between the rich and the poor, between the oppressor and the oppressed. It is a false unity that divides those who should be united. It proclaims that because the master and the slave were born in the same country, they have something in common, from which the slaves of other countries must be excluded.
The ZACF does not deny or reject bonds of language, culture and tradition. But in the greatest of struggles, the struggle against poverty, exploitation and oppression, we proclaim that class unity, the unity of all the oppressed and exploited, must come first.
In Solidarity with Cosatu and the Workers of the World
ZACF Statement on Zimbabwe, Xenophobia and Food Prices
The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) recognises that the crisis in Zimbabwe, ongoing xenophobic attacks and rising food prices are of great importance to the working class, both in South Africa and internationally. Resolving these crises in favour of the poor and working poor will require mass direct action and solidarity.
We stand by the right of Zimbabwean people to be free from violent repression, intimidation, arbitrary arrests, torture and murder by state forces and others allied to the despotic Mugabe regime.
We support the right of all people to be free from hunger, malnutrition and easily preventable sickness caused lack of healthy food.
We support people’s right to freedom of movement under any circumstances, especially when seeking a better future for themselves and their families when the political and economic conditions in their places of origin to do not allow for their wellbeing.
We support the right of people to satisfy their basic needs, such as electricity, housing and other basic services.
From Haymarket to Sebokeng: the Struggle Continues
A comrade fighting for water and housing in Sebokeng, south of Johannesburg, was murdered by police on the night of April 30. The ZACF condemns the latest outrage in a long tale of repression of working class movements, and calls on the oppressed to stand firm in struggle.
On 1 May 1886, the workers of the United States went on strike for the eight-hour day. It was not long before they faced the wrath of the police, the repressive forces of the state, the defenders of capital. The cops murdered four workers at a picket in Chicago on 3 May. A peaceful gathering was held the following day in Chicago’s Haymarket Square to protest; the cops ordered the workers to disperse; an unknown person threw a bomb at the forces of repression; the defenders of capital opened fire; at least 50 people were killed, including several cops who shot at each other. Eight anarchists were charged with the bombing. There was never any evidence that any of them had anything to do with it; but in a farcical trial, all were convicted, for no other reason than their commitment to the liberation of the workers. Four were executed.
Every May Day, the workers of the world remember the martyrs of the struggle for the eight-hour day. But the struggle continues. And to this day, the cops, far from defending justice and the rule of law, remain ready to murder working class militants in defence of capital.
May Day 2008
Towards a new international movement of the exploited,
Against neo-liberalism, against war, against hunger and poverty,
For peace, food and housing for all, for safe and secure jobs,
Towards the libertarian alternative!
A harsh reaction has been unleashed by States around the world against the cycle of social, labour and political struggles which have been carried on by the movements of opposition to neo-liberalism since the late 20th century, with a consequent general worsening of living conditions for millions of proletarians who are increasingly enslaved by capitalist exploitation.
In every country, the primacy of finance as the motor of the economy, with its lethal rules based on interest rate increases, credit clampdowns and social dumping, is provoking a grave crisis. Its results can be seen in millions of families falling further into debt and impoverishment and losing their homes and their economic security. The workforce is being concentrated into more intensive and highly flexibilized units of exploitation in order to strengthen supply and competition in macro-economic areas (EU enlargement, the re-launch of Mercosur and ASEAN, the WTO crisis, etc.). The concentration of production into monopolies on an international basis (motor industry, energy, telecommunications, agro-chemical/pharmaceuticals, etc.) is destroying social wealth and jobs and producing a food crisis without precedent. Economic development is tending to create a neuron-like network of privileged sites and related corridors of capital and raw materials around which public and private investment can coagulate, thereby impoverishing the large areas in between. And the background to all this is the state of endemic war generated by the USA for control over the system of imperialist dependencies, the increasing use of militarism and nationalism (and all its religious and ethnic varieties) in order to control/de-stabilize an area which goes from the Middle East throughout Asia and Africa and to destroy the autonomy of the exploited classes by forcing them to side with a particular State, religion or elite to whom they entrust their present and future destiny of exploitation.
The Working Class Takes a Stand: Stop Chinese Arms Shipments to the Zimbabwean Regime!
We welcome and support the decision by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union for their workers neither to unload nor transport the shipment of Chinese-made armaments destined for Zimbabwe. This is a very encouraging sign of working class solidarity and internationalism, and we hope that such actions will indeed prevent this weapons consignment from reaching its destination – the Zimbabwean Defence Force.
At the same time, if the transport workers should fail, if President Robert Mugabe’s friends should find a way to bypass their resistance, all who stand with the Zimbabwean people should be ready to take a stand. Should the action taken by Satawu fail to prevent the armaments from being transported across South African territory to Zimbabwe, we call on all progressive elements across the country to intervene.
On 29 March 2008, parliamentary, presidential and local elections were held in Zimbabwe. This represented the last-gasp attempt of the Movement for Democratic Change to oust the 28-year-old regime of incumbent President Robert Mugabe, after a series of contestations since 2000 had resulted in an impasse.
ZACF Statement on the Murder of Pudemo Deputy President Dr. Gabriel Thandokuhle Mkhumane
The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front was saddened and concerned to learn of the murder of Pudemo Deputy President Dr. Gabriel Thandokuhle Mkhumane.
Although the truth behind his murder seems unclear, with some mainstream newspapers in Swaziland reporting that C’de Mkhumane was victim of a violent robbery, and although township life is by definition far from safe from random criminality; the murder took place close to Swaziland, in an area where many Swazis live and in which their intelligence and undercover cops operate, so we feel the likelihood is great that this was a politically-motivated assassination.
It appears to indicate the murderous nature of the Mswati regime, and the degree to which the regime will go to protect its interests, and though it creates a martyr for Pudemo, the hit (if it is such) must be seen as a blow against the very idea of popular democracy in Swaziland, a blow directed at the people as a whole by targeting a figure representative (in the state’s mind at least) of that people.
ZACF Statement of Solidarity with APF/CAWP Activists and Against Police Violence
The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front declares its support for the Anti-Privatisation Forum and Coalition Against Water Privatisation activists who have recently been victims of police intimidation and violence.
Community members in Sebokeng have been beaten up and harassed by members of the Community Policing Forum, their wallets and cell phones stolen. After community members delivered a memorandum to the Sebokeng Police Station – one of the concerns of which was police violence against poor communities – and tried to open a case against the CPF, the very same police station responded to the activists by sending in more than 8 police vehicles and close to 200 CPF members to search the houses of APF and CAWP activists, telling them that their time had come and that they would be dealt with – forcing them to go into hiding.
Real Human Freedom Not Fake Human Rights
ZACF Human Rights Day Statement
South Africa is said to have one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. It enshrines the rights of every person, of every background, from workers and immigrants to women and homosexuals. As such you would think that, especially for people from oppressed groups, South Africa would be a safe haven.
But if you look a bit closer you will surely see that, despite all the rights we hold on paper, people living in South Africa are far from guaranteed a safe and enjoyable existence. Our so-called human rights, as enshrined by the constitution and gloated over by politicians, are violated on a daily basis.
Workers have the right to strike, but only if they first warn their bosses of their intentions and after they have exhausted all other avenues for addressing their concerns. Workers who decide to strike without first giving their boss a chance to hire scab labour, and even when they do – as we have recently witnessed with the excessive use of force by the SAPS on striking Samwu workers in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropole (137 of whom were arrested and held over night after being shot at without warning) – are likely to be arrested, fired or violently attacked.
ZACF Statement on Violence and Harassment Against Women
All too often across South Africa women are assaulted and abused at the hands of sexist and chauvinist men. If a woman wears long pants, she may be stripped and humiliated; if she wears a mini-skirt she may be assaulted; if she loves another woman she may be raped and/ or murdered; or all of the above just for being a woman. In this country, in which everyone is so proud of their so-called progressive constitution, a woman is not free to be herself unless the image of herself conforms to that narrow-minded image of how a woman should act and behave held by so many bigoted men.
The statements of Jacob Zuma during his rape trial reflect the prevalence of such sexist attitudes within the leadership of the ruling party and might very well encourage such attitudes in others. All the more so now that the ANC has chosen Zuma as its leader. Contrary to the claims of the Cosatu bosses, Zuma is no friend of workers or oppressed people, but a reactionary sexist traditionalist.
We welcome the mass action on Friday 29th of February, made by the Remmoho Women’s Forum (an initiative of the Anti-Privatisation Forum) in protest against the assault on a young woman at the Noord street taxi rank in Johannesburg. We were disgusted, however, to learn of aggressive and sexist attitude displayed by the taxi drivers towards the protesters.
A Reply to the Opportunistic Slanders of Trevor Ngwane
In response to Trevor Ngwane’s comment, we must acknowledge that our article “Collective Bargaining by Riot” contained errors and misleading statements. We regret any statement or suggestion that Ngwane was a candidate either for the Johannesburg metro council in 2006, or for any position as an office-bearer of the Anti-Privatisation Forum at the time of the election of Bricks Mokolo as chairperson. We know of nothing in APF policy that denied Ngwane and his comrades the right to stand in the local elections via the Operation Khanyisa movement, nor would we have denied them that right, although we have consistently rejected electoral politics as an authoritarian method that can only undermine the struggles of the oppressed classes. Let them stand if they want, but we will neither vote for them nor in any way support them. Further, we regret the misspelling of comrade Bricks’ name, while noting that Ngwane was also in error on this matter.
At the same time, we stand by our rejection of Ngwane’s authoritarian and divisive electoral politics, and we further reject his comment as a whole: it is an entirely unsupported slander against the APF, Bricks Mokolo, anarchists and autonomists. We may, indeed, have gone too far in calling Ngwane a careerist. We must acknowledge that he has made sacrifices. If Ngwane had toed the party line of the ruling ANC, of which he was once a member, he could have been a prominent party bigshot or a “black economic empowerment” businessman. We assume that he rejected such opportunities on principle, and, indeed, that his sacrifices went much further than this.
ZACF Statement on WITS Protests
It is clear that what is happening at Wits – the fee increases, privatisation of residence etc – is part of the ANC government’s plan for the general neo-liberal restructuring of the universities in order to turn them into “market universities” orientated first and foremost towards generating profit. This is a hard fact which both the ANCYL and Sasco students leading the protests have tried studiously to avoid admitting.
In the same way that government’s neo-liberal policies (eg Gear and Asgisa), which say that service delivery must be based on cost recovery and ability to pay, affect primarily the working class and poor, so too does the restructuring at Wits and other universities. The proposed 25% increase in upfront fees, the 500% increase in admin fees for students coming from outside the SADC and increases in residence fees are obviously going to affect poor and working class students the most.
The proposed outsourcing of some residences to the commercial for-profit wing of the State, the Public Investment Corporation, in conjunction with various banks, shows clearly that the intention of the government and Wits management is not to improve the university and quality of education, never mind the access of underprivileged students to higher education, it is about making profit and needs to be resisted.
ZACF Statement of Solidarity with Sebokeng Community Struggle
On Tuesday morning, 14th of August, over 1000 community members from Sebokeng’s “informal settlement” attempted to blockade the Golden Highway between Sebokeng and Johannesburg in protest at the ANC government’s inadequate service delivery since its election in 1994.
The police arrived in numbers and fired randomly at the community members, allegedly with live ammunition, seriously injuring 6 people and injuring others, including small children.
Thirty-five people were then arrested and taken to the Sebokeng police station, and are being charged with public violence and illegal gathering. When leaders of the Anti-Privatisation Forum and Coalition Against Water Privatisation, under whose banner the protest was held, arrived at the police station to enquire about the situation and try and have their comrades released nine of them were also arrested, for addressing a community gathering.
The fact that the SAPS police, under the ANC, can shoot with impunity at poor people who are merely attempting to have their most basic human rights met reminds one of the Apartheid era police. And it only goes to prove that all governments, even those democratically elected, soon turn on those they are supposed to represent, in order to defend their newly acquired wealth, power and privilege. We know very well by now that the ANC is not concerned with providing for the majority of the population in South Africa and delivering on the promises that got the ANC into power, but that it is only concerned with making a profit out of the people, and further enriching the already disgustingly rich new back elite. Even if it means charging the poorest of the poor for the most basic necessities and essential human rights such as electricity and water, which are laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which South Africa is one of the signatory states, as well as in the ANC People’s Charter.
ZACF Statement of Support for Public Sector Strike
The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (southern Africa) supports the public sector strikers, not just in their demand for a wage increase of 12%, which has now been reduced to 10%, but also in their struggle to improve the standard of all public sector services. We call on all workers and community members to show their support for this strike, as it is not just about wages but an attempt to raise the quality of public services provided to us all.
We strongly condemn the government’s attempt to intimidate workers into ending the strike by issuing dismissal notices to striking workers, and by using apartheid-era police brutality against picketers – even though the police are headed by SACP national chairperson Charles Nqakula. We support the workers’ demands that any agreement reached must be accompanied by the unconditional reinstatement of any and all workers dismissed during the strike.
We strongly condemn the government’s duplicity in its negotiators, led by Kenny Govender, having pretended for four whole months to be negotiating in good faith when Govender’s team turned out not to have the mandate of the four ANC Cabinet ministers tasked with managing the strike: Nquakula, Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and ex-communist Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.
ZACF Member Arrested by “White” Swazi Dicatorship
“MK”, a member of the ZACF’s underground structures in Swaziland was among eight Swaziland youth congress (SWAYOCO) members arrested by police following a SWAYOCO demonstration in the city of Manzini on Saturday, October 1st. The SWAYOCO demonstration was to protest against King Sobhuza II’s autocratic decree of 1973 that outlawed all pro-democratic political activity in this, Africa’s last remaining “white” (monarchist) dictatorship. Today Sobhuza’s successor, King Mswati III, presides over one of the world’s highest HIV/AIDS infection rates, in a country where for people to draw water from a stream without permission is a crime – while he continues to splurge millions of rands on a private jet, swan around in a r2-million luxury Maybach vehicle and a string of palaces, and kidnap schoolgirls as his brides.
Over the past two years, the ZACF has established a presence in Swaziland as the only grassroots revolutionary organisation pushing for the overthrow of the king and of the british-south african extractive capitalism he supports.
Southern African Anarchists condemn apparent Terrorist blasts in London
July 8 2005
We, the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (ZACF) of southern Africa, stand foursquare with the working and poor people who were apparently the targets of the craven July 7th bus and train bombings in London. We were previously called to task by another leftist revolutionary organisation for offering similar sympathies in the wake of the Madrid train bombing on March 11th last year. But we are unrepentant in our bitter opposition to terrorism in all its forms, whether driven by state or sub-state opportunism.
It matters little to us that a supposed “Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe” has claimed responsibility for randomly slaughtering at least 33 ordinary travellers today and injuring scores more. It matters little that the killers may cloak themselves in high ideals, perhaps including religion.
Solidarity Message from the ZACF of southern Africa to FWCUI Conference in Baghdad on 2 April 2005
23 March 2005
Comrades!
Revolutionary syndicalist greetings to the FWUCI from the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (ZACF) of southern Africa. [“Zabalaza” means “Struggle” in Zulu & Xhosa].
We are friends with a veteran of the 300-strong Shagila, which split from the Iraqi Communist Party (HCI) in 1973 and waged a guerrilla war against the Ba’athist security police and whose members crossed into Iran to support the worker’s Shorahs and community Kommitehs during the Iranian Revolution 1978-1979. And as opponents of the US-lead invasion of Iraq, we have a great interest in your organisation.
Southern African Activists on the Terrorist Attacks in Madrid
Comrades, friends and all working and poor people living on or travelling through the Iberian peninsula.
We southern Africans wish to express our deep disgust at the terrorist bombings of commuter trains in Madrid on March 11 with so much loss of life and limb. We join our voices with the millions of “ordinary” people who totally reject indiscriminate killing by faceless cowards as in any way justifiable, for any cause.
As people living on a continent that has experienced not only similar terrorist bombings (in Kenya and Tanzania), but also the murderous policies of the proxy regimes of French, British, Russian, Portuguese and American capital, we empathise with your pain. That pain, inflicted on you, our sisters and brothers, by heartless people without conscience, cuts to the heart of our shared humanity, regardless whether those responsible consider themselves inspired by faith or politics.
We stand united with the victims and their families, regardless of their personal creeds, recognising that we are all being used as canon-fodder in the wars of the wealthy. We beg you to refuse to allow your anger to be turned against your neighbours, whether Basque, Muslim or north African, by cynical politicians. Basques, Muslims and north Africans travelling through Madrid are doubtlessly also among those so callously murdered. They have bled, died and cried with you.
No War But The Class War!
Against capitalism – Against the US government -
Against state and fundamentalist terrorism
South African anarchist statement on the New York / Washington DC attacks – September 2001
The WTC attacks
The September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre (WTC) and the Pentagon by suicide bombers, leading to over 6,500 deaths have grabbed world attention.
We revolutionary anarchists condemn the attacks and extend our condolences to the families of those injured or killed. The death of thousands of ordinary civilians – including many ordinary workers – is not acceptable. The use of civilian aircraft for such an operation is authoritarian and coercive and shows the contempt of terrorists for human life. It also shows that the terrorists are anti-working class: attacking people just because they are “American” regardless of their class position is reactionary and xenophobic.
