by Philip Nyalungu
A sharp increase in fuel prices on Wednesday 6 September will hit the working class and poor hardest. The official reasons for the price hike are rising crude oil costs and the weak Rand. Government tax is also rising. Energy Minister Mamoloko Kubayi claims 4.6 cents a litre will go towards salary increases for petrol station workers.
The reality is rising prices get passed directly onto ordinary people by, for example, increases in taxi fares and food prices.
The Brazilian Anarchist Coordination repudiates the cowardly criminalization of South African fighters and social fighters and their persecution.
In February 2015, four community members were sentenced to 16 years in prison for participating in a protest in their community. After a brief period of provisional release, two of the four militants were again sent to jail on June 19, 2017.
On February 6, 2016, Papi Tobias, the father of three children and a community leader struggling for housing and social rights in his community, disappeared as he went out to watch a football game at a bar. He was seen leaving a bar in the presence of the local police commander, Jan Scheepers. He is missing until today.
The South African ruling class has often used criminal laws and expeditions from the apartheid era to condemn the black and poor working class and criminalize the activities of militants and social fighters.
As in Brazil (Rafael Braga and many others cases), the ruling class in South Africa uses the justice system and its racist armed apparatus to promote the criminalization of poverty, protest and racism.
The continuity between state terrorism and its apparatuses continues regardless of the government it assumes, in South Africa or in Brazil!
Comrades,
Faced with the repression that is unleashed against the South African people, from
Uruguay we demand justice and the immediate freedom for the comrades of Boiketlong
and the immediate appearance of Papi Tobias alive, of course.
We hold the South African government responsible for the lives and physical integrity
of our comrades and demand the cessation of repression of the South African people’s
movement, which remind us of the darkest years of apartheid and the military
dictatorships that ravaged the Southern Cone of America.
In several areas of the world, the criminalization of poverty and protest is increasing as
neo-liberal policies that condemnmillions of human beings to hunger and despair.
In Africa and Latin America, the Resistance lives and develops itself in the struggle of
the people !!
Credits: eNCA / Xoli Mngambi
The labour movement has been unable to de-link itself from its archenemy: capital. As its structures bureaucratise, as its leaders become career unionists, as it opens investment companies and pays staff increasingly inequitable salaries, it increasingly mirrors the very thing it is fighting. If the South African Federation of Trade Unions is to meet its promise, it must be fundamentally different from the organisation it was born out of.
by Lwazi Ngqingo
Cde Kusta’s untimely demise is a great loss. It will be felt by all those who were lucky to cross paths with him and all those who got to hear his music. He never questioned or withdrew his commitment to the struggle for freedom and justice, for a world with less political, economic, and gender based oppression.
by Bongani Maponyane (TAAC, ZACF)
Published in “Tokologo: Newsletter of the Tokologo African Anarchist Collective”, numbers 5/6, November 2015
As anarchist-communists, we oppose sexism whenever and wherever it exists, although we also realise that class position differentiates the experience of sexism. We salute all the woman freedom fighters, and the older generation of women, many our mothers, who bear the scars of the gruesome battles in which they stood firm, fighting the oppression imposed on the African native by colonial conquest.
There were hard times in the apartheid era, where black women were abused, raped and oppressed: the state did nothing to stop this, but aided it, as the state was part of the system of oppression. History shows that dispossession and systematic dehumanization for the purposes of exploitation and domination were undertaken through the uncontrolled and coercive mayhem of the South African state.
by Tokologo African Anarchist Collective (TAAC)
Editorial of Tokologo #5/6
Welcome to the first double issue of tokologo, combining issues 5 and 6. This marks our third year of publishing by the tokologo African Anarchist Collective and its study circles.
2015 has been a turbulent year. On the one side, the horrors of attacks on immigrants and foreigners continue. In April, attacks broke out, mainly in KwaZulu-Natal, spurred directly by Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini’s inflammatory statements. One of the big failures of the 1994 transition was that much of the old Bantustan/ homeland apparatus remained in place, with the continuing power of chiefs and kings. Again, in October, this time spurred by rumours and the taxi associations, there were riots in the Eastern Cape.
by Renato Ramos and Alexandre Samis, Rio de Janeiro, 2001.
Translated by: Paul Sharkey
‘I woke at 5.00 am. Passos, who had been up and about for hours, was sitting on his bed reading Determinism and Responsibility by Hamon. I grabbed a towel and went downstairs to wash my face. When I came back from the yard, after drying off, I saw two individuals. It was a moment or two before I realised who they were. With revolvers drawn they spoke to me and asked me harshly: “Where’s Domingos Passos?”Anticipating another of the attacks that our comrade had been through so often before, I was keen to cover for him and said that he was not around. I told them: “There’s no Domingos Passos living here!”
by D. (First of May Anarchist Alliance)
KNIFE EDGE: An immigrant waits for gangs of locals that attacked foreign shop owners in the Durban city centre yesterday. At least three people were stabbed and one burnt. Image by: TEBOGO LETSIE
The following is a short summary of the anti-immigrant violence happening in several cities and townships in South Africa. The Report is made by a member of First of May Anarchist Alliance currently living in South Africa and has been slightly edited by the ZACF with the author’s consent.
General al-Sisi, a former army chief (and now Egyptian leader – Organise! editors) must grapple with the country’s economic problems as with infighting in the circles of power. —- Abdel Fattah al-Sisi seems to be a victim of his own success. He who in July 2014, seemed to hold a “supernatural” power and popularity supported by a ferocious media machine devouring everything in its path, is now trapped in his post as the strongest man in Egypt. It is even ironic to see him drown in the same defects as those that toppled the President that he overthrew: An empty and populist discourse, measures to capture executive and legal authority in Egypt (while having put Adli Mansour as malleable puppet at the head of the state), etc. Likewise, the socio-economic problems on which he relied to bring down the government of the Muslim Brotherhood have not been solved: power cuts are back at the same rate as at the time of the Muslim Brotherhood, the geopolitical crisis from the construction of the Annahda (Renaissance) dam on the Nile by Ethiopia is nowhere near being solved, (which could have disastrous effects on Egyptian agriculture-Organise! editors) the prices of staple goods are rising, not to mention the crisis in the important area of the economy which is tourism.
zabalaza.net 