Alternative Needed to Nationalisation and Privatisation: State Industries like South Africa’s ESKOM show Working Class deserves better

February 10, 2013March 19, 2013 / griffin36

by Tina Sizovuka and Lucien van der Walt

“To assure the labourers that they will be able to establish socialism … [through] government machinery, changing only the persons who manage it… is… a colossal historical blunder which borders upon crime…”

Pyotr Kropotkin,
“Modern Science and Anarchism”

Introduction

Privatisation – the transfer of functions and industry to the private sector – is widely and correctly rejected on the left and in the working class. Privatisation leads only to higher prices, less and worse jobs, and worse services. Given this, some view nationalisation – the transfer of economic resources (e.g. mines, banks, and factories) to state ownership and control – as a rallying cry for a socialist alternative. As the supposedly pro-working class alternative, this cry has resounded in sections of the SA Communist Party (SACP), in the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu), in the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) membership, and on the independent Trotskyite and social democratic left.

This article argues that nationalisation has never removed capitalism, nor led to socialism, and it certainly does not have a demonstrable record of consistently improving wages, jobs, rights and safety. Nationalisation, rather than promote “workers’ control” or companies’ accountability to the public, has routinely meant top-down management, union-bashing, bad services and bad conditions.

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Who Rules South Africa?: An Anarchist/Syndicalist Analysis of the ANC, the Post-Apartheid Elite Pact and the Political Implications

February 9, 2013March 19, 2013 / griffin36

by Lucien van der Walt

2012 is the centenary of the African National Congress (ANC). The party that started out as a small coterie of black businessmen, lawyers and chiefs is today the dominant political formation in South Africa. It was founded by the black elite who were marginalised by the united South Africa formed in 1910, and who appeared at its Bloemfontein inauguration “formally dressed in suits, frock coats, top hats and carrying umbrellas”.[1] Today it is allied via the Tripartite Alliance to the SA Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).

Can the ANC be a vehicle for fundamental, progressive, social change in the interests of the black, Coloured and Indian working classes (proletariat), still mired in the legacy of apartheid and racial domination? This is what Cosatu (and the SACP) suggest.

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Zabalaza #13 Editorial

February 9, 2013February 11, 2013 / griffin36

Red and black greetings, comrades!

It’s been well over a year since the last issue of Zabalaza and much international attention has focused on the socio-economic problems facing the European Union. Despite the ravages of capitalism, and its neo-liberal form, the European ruling classes have responded, generally, with more of the same: increased attacks on the working class through propagating greater austerity measures, and less money spent on social welfare on the one hand, and bail-outs and more tax breaks for the rich on the other. As is to be expected, however, the European working class has not taken this lying down; resistance to austerity imposed from above has been widespread. In recent months we have witnessed, in Greece, a one-day general strike on October 18 and a 48-hour general strike on November 6 and 7. Promisingly, and for the first time in the wake of the global economic crisis of 2008 – we have also witnessed a common European response in the form of a general strike on November 14 that affected Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, with solidarity actions occurring across much of the continent.

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Zabalaza #13 (February 2013)

February 9, 2013February 3, 2016 / griffin36

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Reaping What You Sow: Reflections on the Western Cape Farm Workers Strike

February 9, 2013February 21, 2013 / griffin36

by Shawn Hattingh (ZACF)

The series of strikes and protests that recently took place in and around farms in South Africa’s Western Cape Province was fuelled by the deep-seated anger and frustration that workers feel. On a daily basis, farm workers face not only appalling wages, bad living conditions and precarious work, but also widespread racism, intimidation and humiliation. The extent of the oppressive conditions run deep and it is not uncommon for workers to even be beaten by farm-owners and managers for perceived ‘transgressions’. Indeed, life for workers in the rural areas has always been harsh, but over the last two decades it has in many ways gotten even worse and poverty has in many cases grown.

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Freedom for the “1st of May Cooperative and Social Movement” Political Prisoners in Bariloche, Argentina

February 9, 2013February 21, 2013 / griffin36

“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.

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Egypt: In response to the indictments in Alexandria

January 30, 2013February 11, 2013 / Sifuna Zonke

Statement by the Egyptian Libertarian Socialist Movement

Last Sunday, during the Alexandria court hearing which was to pronounce a verdict on police officers accused of killing protesters during clashes in January 2011, the police in charge of guarding the court began to provoke the victims’ families and activists who had come to support them peacefully as they had done for previous hearings.

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Mali: Areva is well worth a war

January 24, 2013February 11, 2013 / Sifuna Zonke

You thought French Africa was a thing of the past? It most certainly is not, and despite Hollande’s rhetoric on this issue, as on many others, the Socialist Party and the UMP are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

“France has no interest in Mali”, declared François Hollande to the press on 16 January. “It is merely at the county’s service.” Like it? France has no interest in the Sahel region? Not even in the uranium mines in Niger, operated by Areva [1] to supply French nuclear power plants?

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ANC wys sy ware kleure! Werkers Vermoor!

January 23, 2013May 1, 2013 / Sifuna Zonke

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.

A4 double-sided Flyer [Afrikaans]
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English | isiZulu | seTswana

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The War in Mali: for Uranium, Gold and Oil

January 23, 2013February 11, 2013 / Sifuna Zonke

Regardless of what is said in the media, the aim of this new war is none other than to strip another country of its natural resources by ensuring access for international companies to do so. What is now happening in Mali with bombs and bullets, is the same thing that is happening in Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain through debt bondage.

The French government has stated that:

“it would send 2,500 soldiers to support Malian government soldiers in the conflict against Islamist rebels. France has already deployed around 750 troops to Mali (…) We will continue the deployment of forces on the ground and in the air (…) We have one goal. To ensure that when we leave, when we end our intervention, Mali is safe, has legitimate authorities, an electoral process and there are no more terrorists threatening its territory”. [1]