Brazil: High school students show way forward for working class resistance

December 16, 2016 / Sifuna Zonke

by Jonathan Payn (ZACF)

Published in “Workers World News”, issue 102, December 2016

“Autonomy and struggle: students and workers decide!”

In September 2016 the Brazilian government published a Provisional Measure (MP 746) outlining a reform in secondary education that would have devastating consequences for the education system, disproportionately affecting majority-black working class students.

Students responded with direct action and occupied schools in the state of Paraná, with occupations soon spreading to at least six other states. One month later 600 high schools in Paraná alone had been occupied to protest the government’s attack on public education – which comes in the context of a broader attack on the working class through a Proposed Constitutional Amendment (PEC 241) that threatens to freeze public spending on health, education and social welfare until 2037.

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One Year after the 2015 Grahamstown Riots against Foreign Traders: Attacks Hurt Working Class and Poor, Only Capitalists and Politicians Benefit

December 16, 2016 / Sifuna Zonke

by Lucien van der Walt (ZACF)

*Text commissioned by Unemployed People’s Movement, Grahamstown, October 2015.
*Edited version: November 2016.

grahamstown-riots A year ago, starting 20 October 2015, around 75 small shops were looted, some burned down, in the eastern townships and downtown area of the small Eastern Cape university town of Grahamstown/ iRhini, South Africa. The attacks targeted Asian and African immigrants, many of them Muslim, and displaced 500 people. These riots were largely ignored by the media.

The text below is a slightly revised revision of a briefing I was asked to write at the time for the local Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM). The UPM played a heroic role in opposing the attacks and assisting the displaced. The text’s general points remain relevant to the working class’s fight against prejudice and racism. And the riots of 2015 should not be forgotten.

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In the ANC’s battle of factions there are no superheroes

November 7, 2016 / Sifuna Zonke

by Shawn Hattingh (ZACF)

460_0___30_0_0_0_0_0_anclogoonwall The battle between Pravin Gordhan and Jacob Zuma has been presented along the lines of a superhero comic. Gordhan, the hero, is portrayed as the last defence against the rampaging villain, vile Zuma. And like all superhero tales Gordhan the good appears to be gaining the upper hand over Zuma the bad – especially since corruption charges have been dropped and the damning Public Protector’s report on state capture has been released.

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ZACF message to the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU) on its 60th Anniversary

October 29, 2016 / Sifuna Zonke

14657291_327115447647655_716175401315126418_n We, militants of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF), send you a big clenched fist salute and revolutionary internationalist greetings on this the historic occasion of the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU) – commemorating 60 years of struggle for freedom and socialism.

It has been a long and no doubt hard and bumpy road since 1956. We honour the many FAU militants who, like Alberto “Pocho” Mechoso, gave up their freedom and even their lives in the struggle for freedom and socialism. Yet, after all is said and done, you are celebrating another milestone, another anniversary. You continue to keep the red and black banner of class struggle anarchism alive and well on the Latin American continent – holding it up as an example for all to see.

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Worker-Student Alliances: Anarchist Approach Needed

October 29, 2016 / Sifuna Zonke

by Leroy Maisiri (ZACF)

First published in “South African Labour Bulletin”, volume 40, number 4, pp. 39-40

Source: “South African Labour Bulletin”, volume 40, number 4, pp. 40

Recent worker-student alliances and activities are lacking in an anarchist/syndicalist approach which focuses on ‘people’s power’ and ‘worker control’. Such an approach is important for radical transformation, writes Leroy Maisiri.

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“Superintendent Officer Mthembu” – Spoken Word Poetry against Police Brutality

October 10, 2016October 10, 2016 / griffin36

Inspired by the Events of 28^th September 2016 –
Police Shooting on RU students.

“Superintendent Officer Mthembu”

by Leroy Maisiri (ZACF)

cops-rhodes If our pain was turned into an art museum the most popular exhibit would showcase portraits of the South African Police Service with our bodies on the floor as their footstools. Our silenced screams chock up the airways in our throats, our tracheas burst out and with both hands we grab the artery veins in an attempt to contain the bleeding, trying to redirect this blood, this life back into the cause and yes, bang, bang, bang; you keep shooting and yes bang, bang, bang, we keep running.

But please first allow me to start this poetic prose in Joza extension 7, the peripheral of the township itself almost excommunicated from the centre of Grahamstown. Somewhere unclearly mapped by angry ground stones who share their space with the kind of dust that does not easily settle well on the road, is what looks like an afterthought of an RDP house. In it is Superintendent Officer Mthembu. A child of the working class. Mthembu on his tea breaks always jokes about how he wanted to be a lawyer, most of his stories start with the words “and during the apartheid…” he would recall those memories so well, remembering quite clearly all the fights, the protests, the revolutionary climate that engrossed South Africa. His stories would also always end with “…if only I could afford the fees in ’94, I would have been a qualified lawyer like Madiba”.

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Hamba kahle comrade Bobo Makhoba (1975-2016)

October 1, 2016October 1, 2016 / Sifuna Zonke

by Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF)

C’de Bobo at the “Reclaim June 16” demonstration in Soweto, 2009.

The ZACF is saddened to learn of the passing away of comrade Bobo Makhoba in Soweto this Thursday 29 September, at the age of 41, after a long illness. He is survived by his son, to whom we extend our deepest sympathies and condolences – as we do to the rest of his family, friends and comrades.

Bobo was a founding member of the ZACF as well as one of the original guerilla electricians for the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee’s Operation Khanyisa campaign, which illegally reconnected thousands of households’ electricity after it was cut off for non-payment – forcing Eskom, the state electricity utility, to scrap arrears for thousands of Sowetans.

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Where to now, Zimbabwe? Beyond the “good” charismatic pastor.

September 17, 2016September 20, 2016 / Sifuna Zonke

by Leroy Maisiri (ZACF)

Pastor Evan Mawarire unwittingly began the #Thisflag movement in May 2016 by posting a video online in which he expressed his frustration with the socio-economic and political crisis in the country.

The last 4 months in Zimbabwe can surely be characterized as an awakening of the Zimbabwean working class, as thousands of these citizens have taken to the streets, responding to Pastor Evan Mawarire’s call: “hatichatya” – we are not afraid. This is certainly a historic time for Zimbabwe; a time of growing labour pains as the country (hopefully) enters a process of rebirth towards a better and new Zimbabwe.

But before we can even begin to talk about a free Zimbabwe and how we would go about getting that, we need to first have a clear and coherent class analysis of the Zimbabwean social and political climate.

Understanding who we are fighting is essential. Zimbabwe without a doubt needs to rid ourselves of the 92-year- old man who thinks the state house is his graveyard. But in the same breath, we must rid itself of the oppressive state system altogether. Swapping a vicious state capitalist manager with another is nowhere close to constituting progress.

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Inside the Zimbabwean Uprising

August 22, 2016 / griffin36

MC Biko, ZACF

Anti-Robert Mugabe protesters in Harare, Zimbabwe

A year and half ahead of the 2018 general elections, the poor and working people of Zimbabwe are up in arms against President Robert Gabriel Mugabe and his ZANU-PF regime which has been in power for 36 years. In the last 3 months Zimbabwe has been shaken by protest actions of workers, informal traders, commuter omnibus operators, and unemployed youths. These actions have occurred at a time when the country is experiencing a liquidity crisis and the ruling party structures are crumbling from within as liberation war veterans, once Mugabe’s staunch loyalists, break ranks from the regime. Meanwhile, the opposition political parties (a myriad of MDC splinter groups and two ZANU-PF splinter groups) are in talks to form a coalition party. The regime has since stepped up its repressive measures in a bid to squash dissent.

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