We demand complete liberty to give ourselves to those who please us, and absolute liberty to refuse ourselves to those who displease us.
Emile Armand,
French Anarchist,
on free relationships
Author: griffin36
Zabalaza #11 (October 2010)
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Contents:
- Editorial – by the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front
South Africa:
- At the End of the Baton of South African Pretentions – Warren McGregor (ZACF)
- Electricity Crisis in Protea South – Lekhetho Mtetwa (ZACF)
- Conned by the Courts – Sian Byrne, James Pendlebury (ZACF), Komnas Poziaris
- Death and the Mielieboer – Michael Schmidt
- COSATU’s Response to the Crisis: an Anarcho-Syndicalist Assessment and Alternative – Lucien van der Walt
- Sharpening the Pangas?: Understanding and Preventing future Pogroms – Michael Schmidt
- Riding to Work on Empty Promises – Jonathan P. (ZACF)
Continue reading
All in the Name of the Beautiful Gain
A ZACF statement on the 2010 Soccer World Cup
in South Africa
The 2010 Soccer World Cup must be exposed for the utter sham that it is. The ZACF strongly condemns the audacity and hypocrisy of the government in presenting the occasion as a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity for the economic and social upliftment of those living in South Africa (and the rest of the continent). What is glaringly clear is that the “opportunity” has and continues to be that of a feeding-frenzy for global and domestic capital and the South African ruling elite. In fact, if anything, the event is more likely to have devastating consequences for South Africa’s poor and working class – a process that is already underway.
In preparing to host the world cup the government has spent close to R800 billion (R757 billion on infrastructure development and R30 billion on stadiums that will never be filled again), a massive slap in the face for those living in a country characterized by desperate poverty and close to 40% unemployment. Over the past five years the working poor have expressed their outrage and disappointment at the government’s failure to redress the massive social inequality in over 8000 service delivery protests for basic services and housing countrywide. This pattern of spending is further evidence of the maintenance of the failed neoliberal capitalist model and its “trickle down” economics, which have done nothing but deepen inequality and poverty globally. Despite previous claims to the contrary, the government has recently admitted this by doing an about turn, and now pretends that the project was “never intended” to be a profit making exercise [1].
Zabalaza #9 (September 2008)
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In this Issue…
Southern Africa
- Workers, Bosses and the 2008 Pogroms
- “Ba Sebetsi Ba Afrika”: Manifesto of the Industrial Workers of Africa, 1917
- Ninety Years of Working Class Internationalism in South Africa
- Unyawo Alunampumulo: Abahlali baseMjondolo
Statement on the Xenophobic Attacks in Johannesburg
- Xenophobia, Nationalism and Greedy Bosses: An Interview with Alan Lipman
- Interview with Two Libertarian Socialist Activists from Zimbabwe
Africa
- Kenya’s Troubles are Far from Over
- Will EU troops stop the Central African cycle of violence?
- Brutal Repression in Sidi Ifni (Morroco)
International
- Obama and Latin America: a Friendly Imperialism
Theory
- Anarchism & Immigration
- The Poison of Nationalism
- Nostalgic Tribalism or Revolutionary Transformation?: A Critique of Anarchism & Revolution in Black Africa
Zabalaza #8 (February 2008)
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Contents:
- Asgisa: A Working Class Critique
- Now is the Winter of Our Discontent: SA Public Sector Strike Stokes the Fire of Popular-Class Unity and Reveals “Communist” Weakness
- The 2010 World Cup, the Neo-liberal Agenda and the Class Struggle in South Africa
- Students and Staff Protest University Privatisation
- A Short History and Introduction to the Anarchist
Black Cross
- Vigilante Farmers Want Refugee Camps on the Borderland
- Swaziland: The Royal Assassination of Our Dear Comrade
- Europe, Africa and the Neo-Liberal Strategy of Co-Optation
- Blood, Water & Oil: Fallacies of the Darfur War
- The Congo’s Dilemma: Why the Congo is yet another example why we have to rethink our political system
- A New Guantanamo in Africa?
- Misrepresentation of Self-Management in the Caribbean
- Some Thoughts on Theoretical Unity & Collective Responsibility
- Clarity on What Anarcho-Syndicalism Is
- Towards an Anarcho-Syndicalist Strategy for Africa
People must empower themselves, not wait for government
ZACF on the recent Young Communist League (YCL) Statement
on the Unjustifiable Increase of Bread.
“We call on government to empower our people, especially through community cooperatives with the necessary inputs for bread production, namely land, tractors and seeds to plough wheat.” – this was the demand made by the Young Communist League (YCL) in their recent Statement on the Unjustifiable Increase of Bread.
The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) agrees with the YCL that “This increase will have negative consequences on the majority of our people, especially the working class and the poor youth who rely on bread as a source of living.” We support the YCL and Cosatu in defying this price increase. We regard the vast and repeated increases in the bread price – and in the prices of maize meal, other grains and food in general – as a direct attack by capitalist profiteers on the very survival of workers and the poor. An attack against which workers and the poor need to defend themselves.
But the YCL does not seem to recognise the inherent contradiction in its statement.
ZACF Statement on the “racist anarchists” of Potchefstroom
Right-wingers in the South African town of Potchefstroom removed street-signs with the names of liberation figures and replaced them with those of Boer leaders. But the Potch City Council attributed the actions to “racist anarchists”.
The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (ZACF) of South Africa and Swaziland notes with concern that the removal and defacement of street signs in Potchefstroom has been attributed without proof by Potchefstroom City Council spokesman Kaiser Mohau to “racist anarchists”. We presume that Mohau is simply politically naive in putting about his mistaken attribution of these acts of vandalism. However, his comments have the unfortunate effect of besmirching the good name of the small, but active anarchist movement in southern Africa.
SWAZILAND: ZACF Statement on Alleged Armed Struggle Tendency
Recent reports in The Star (25/11/06) allege that the development of the “armed struggle” tendency within a section of the pro-democracy movement in Swaziland could be accelerating. Given that the pro-democracy movement has set itself the goal of liberation in 2008, it is understandable that frustration has led some comrades in this direction.
We do not believe that an “armed struggle” approach is appropriate. The dangers inherent in such an approach are many. We support the right of the oppressed to self-defense against repression.
Zabalaza #7 (December 2006)
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Contents:
- After 10 years of GEAR: COSATU, the Zuma Trial and the Dead End of Alliance politics
- Collective Bargaining by Riot: Election Day in South Africa
- The Anti-Liberation Movements
- Swaziland after the Bombings
- A Free Working Class Needs Free Minds:
May-BEE Another Day
- The New American Imperialism in Africa
- Is China Africa’s New Imperialist Power?
- Defend Libertarian Centre for Studies and Investigation in Morocco: Solidarity with the CLER of Boumaalne-Dades
- Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organisation in South America
- Remembering and Learning from the Past: The 1976 Uprising and the African Working Class
- A New World in our Hearts: Remembering the Spanish Revolution of 1936
- Remembering Our Fallen Comrades! Another Anarchist Dies in Prison: Abel Ramarope, Political Prisoner Turned Anarchist, died September 2005
Power corrupts the Left in South Africa
Phansi Nohulumeni, Phansi or
Down with Government!
For any person who has hung around anarchists long enough, you must of heard us ranting on about how “parliament is not a means of stuggle” because “people who get their asses into parliament and all the money and power start to only worry about getting more money and power” or “society is run from the board rooms of the giant companies who control the economy and NOT by a bunch of liars sitting comfortably in Parliament” etc. etc. These people feed us a whole bunch of lies to get themselves elected and then for the next couple of years sit comfortably and do nothing about anything of relevance to us (except maybe how to get more money or labour out of us). Emma Goldman speaking about her time in Russia during the revolution had this to say about the “revolutionary government” of the Bolsheviks: “Government, whatever its form or pretences, is a dead weight that paralyses the free spirit and activities of the masses.”
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