We condemn the recent unilateral decision by Wits management to no longer accept many Swazi students’ medical aid provider, Swazi Med, for the current academic year. This is an unfair move by the university so close to the registration period. It means an additional burden on students from one of the poorest and most authoritarian states in the world, many of whom come from poor backgrounds and study in South Africa not out of choice but necessity.

International students have to pay their full fees and medical aid for the whole year prior to registration which makes it nearly impossible for poor and working class students to enrol.

Unfortunately, this attack on poor students is not an isolated incident but another move by the university in its programme of neo-liberal restructuring.[1] This started in 2000 when the university’s “non-core” services were privatised. Soon after, upfront payments were introduced and have continued to rise steeply ever since.

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International Anarchist Statement

Yesterday, Thursday 29th October, the Civil Police of Rio Grande do Sul, under the command of Governor Yeda Crusius, broke into the premises of the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha. Police seized various materials such as posters, minutes of meetings, the hard disk of a computer and also the contents of refuse containers that were at the headquarters. They also tried to intimidate those who came to show their solidarity and names contained in the records of the organization’s website. Two comrades were arrested and charged.

The comrades of the FAG have spent years fighting against exclusion and casualisation, defending justice and decent living conditions. They are well known for their work with the “catadores” (collectors of cardboard and recyclable refuse), with the homeless and with the landless. In short, work they have been carrying on for years with those at the bottom of society.

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Anarchism is an ideology that fights against exploitation and all forms of oppression. We fight for a world in which women will be equal to men, a world without racism and class inequality, a world in which LGBTI and queer people are treated with respect. These struggles are part of the anarchist struggle against hierarchy and inequality, for an equal and free world.

Anarchists have been at the forefront in the struggle against LGBTI discrimination

From the beginning of anarchist theory, anarchism has been the first ideology to actively support LGBTI people long before other ideologies. It is believed that one of the key anarchist thinkers and revolutionaries, Mikhail Bakunin, was rumoured to have been homosexual and that this was one among many reasons Karl Marx threw him out of the First International, which caused the split between authoritarian communism and anarchism.

Also, Oscar Wilde, who called himself an anarchist, criticised Marx. His famous trial and conviction of sodomy in 1895 prompted anarchists to engage in an examination of the social, moral, and legal place of same-sex desire. The efforts of the famous anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman (the first advocate for homosexual rights in America) and other anarchists on Wilde’s behalf constitute the first articulation of a politics of homosexuality in the United States. After his trial, Wilde became “a totemic figure” for the anarchists, and at a time when the American productions of Wilde’s plays were closed down and forbidden and his books pulled from library shelves, anarchist journals reprinted his texts and poems.

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ZACF Statement on the Armed Attack on Abahlali baseMjondolo
in Kennedy Road Informal Settlement

The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) notes with disgust the attacks on the Abahlali baseMjondolo (AbM) affiliated Kennedy Road Development Committee (KRDC) by a heavily armed gang near the AbM office in Kennedy Road informal settlement in Durban, KwaZulu Natal. We hereby extend our sympathy and solidarity to all those who have fallen victim to these cowardly attacks, and call for both national and international mobilisation and solidarity in their defence.

The attacks took place at about 11h30 on the night of Saturday 26 September, and carried on with impunity for at least 23 hours. Although police are claiming two people died, it has been confirmed by AbM that at least four people have been killed: three during the attacks and another died later in hospital. It is reported that the houses of around 30 AbM members were burnt or destroyed by the mob, which was shouting things like “The AmaMpondo are taking over Kennedy. Kennedy is for the AmaZulu” while carrying out the attacks. Hundreds, if not thousands of Kennedy Road residents have fled the community, some seeking refuge at nearby churches.

The political rivalry in KwaZulu Natal has exploited ethnic sentiment and tensions that emerged during the Jacob Zuma election campaign, and we believe that the African National Congress (ANC) in and around Kennedy Road, and probably elsewhere, is using ethnicity to mobilise local residents against popular social movements such as Abahlali baseMjondolo. It seems clear to us that the popularly elected committee in the Kennedy Road settlement, and the social work they have been doing is perceived by local political leaders from the ANC to be a threat to political and property interests, and they are thus bent on destroying AbM.

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Workers and poor all over the world are being asked to pay for the current economic crisis, brought about by capitalist stockbrokers, while the big corporations get bailed out.

We have seen millions of retrenchments worldwide. In South Africa over 300 000 jobs were lost in the first 6 months of this year alone. But all over the world the poor are fighting back. We have seen an increase in service delivery and other protests in South Africa as well as student protests against fee increases in recent weeks.

We are delighted to hear that students at the University of California, Santa Cruz are taking direct action by occupying their university at the same time as our comrades take to the streets in Pittsburgh to protest the G20. We urge occupying students in Santa Cruz, as well as struggling students everywhere to forge links with the workers on their campuses and to support their struggles.

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Anarchist Communist May Day statement

Today as in the past, May Day means respect for mobilizations throughout the world by workers who suffer, at times even paying with their lives, for the sake of their struggles to improve the condition of men and women who labour under the control of capitalism.

As anarchist communists, we support the struggle for a radical change to a society of freedom, equality and solidarity, but we do not forget that in many countries, workers do not even have the most basic possibility to organise into unions, and many work in subhuman conditions for subhuman pay. Our thoughts today go to these workers, as we seek to strengthen the networks of support for the struggles of all the peoples of the world.

In Western countries, the ‘cradle of freedom’, the fate of working men and women has grown worse over the last two decades: casualisation, flexibility, magic words adopted by the Left as well as the Right, whose effects are now plain for everyone to see in the harsh effects of a crisis which grew out of lower wages and the destruction of jobs.

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