The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front was saddened and concerned to learn of the murder of Pudemo Deputy President Dr. Gabriel Thandokuhle Mkhumane.

Although the truth behind his murder seems unclear, with some mainstream newspapers in Swaziland reporting that C’de Mkhumane was victim of a violent robbery, and although township life is by definition far from safe from random criminality; the murder took place close to Swaziland, in an area where many Swazis live and in which their intelligence and undercover cops operate, so we feel the likelihood is great that this was a politically-motivated assassination.

It appears to indicate the murderous nature of the Mswati regime, and the degree to which the regime will go to protect its interests, and though it creates a martyr for Pudemo, the hit (if it is such) must be seen as a blow against the very idea of popular democracy in Swaziland, a blow directed at the people as a whole by targeting a figure representative (in the state’s mind at least) of that people.

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The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front declares its support for the Anti-Privatisation Forum and Coalition Against Water Privatisation activists who have recently been victims of police intimidation and violence.

Community members in Sebokeng have been beaten up and harassed by members of the Community Policing Forum, their wallets and cell phones stolen. After community members delivered a memorandum to the Sebokeng Police Station – one of the concerns of which was police violence against poor communities – and tried to open a case against the CPF, the very same police station responded to the activists by sending in more than 8 police vehicles and close to 200 CPF members to search the houses of APF and CAWP activists, telling them that their time had come and that they would be dealt with – forcing them to go into hiding.

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ZACF Human Rights Day Statement

South Africa is said to have one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. It enshrines the rights of every person, of every background, from workers and immigrants to women and homosexuals. As such you would think that, especially for people from oppressed groups, South Africa would be a safe haven.

But if you look a bit closer you will surely see that, despite all the rights we hold on paper, people living in South Africa are far from guaranteed a safe and enjoyable existence. Our so-called human rights, as enshrined by the constitution and gloated over by politicians, are violated on a daily basis.

Workers have the right to strike, but only if they first warn their bosses of their intentions and after they have exhausted all other avenues for addressing their concerns. Workers who decide to strike without first giving their boss a chance to hire scab labour, and even when they do – as we have recently witnessed with the excessive use of force by the SAPS on striking Samwu workers in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropole (137 of whom were arrested and held over night after being shot at without warning) – are likely to be arrested, fired or violently attacked.

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All too often across South Africa women are assaulted and abused at the hands of sexist and chauvinist men. If a woman wears long pants, she may be stripped and humiliated; if she wears a mini-skirt she may be assaulted; if she loves another woman she may be raped and/ or murdered; or all of the above just for being a woman. In this country, in which everyone is so proud of their so-called progressive constitution, a woman is not free to be herself unless the image of herself conforms to that narrow-minded image of how a woman should act and behave held by so many bigoted men.

The statements of Jacob Zuma during his rape trial reflect the prevalence of such sexist attitudes within the leadership of the ruling party and might very well encourage such attitudes in others. All the more so now that the ANC has chosen Zuma as its leader. Contrary to the claims of the Cosatu bosses, Zuma is no friend of workers or oppressed people, but a reactionary sexist traditionalist.

We welcome the mass action on Friday 29th of February, made by the Remmoho Women’s Forum (an initiative of the Anti-Privatisation Forum) in protest against the assault on a young woman at the Noord street taxi rank in Johannesburg. We were disgusted, however, to learn of aggressive and sexist attitude displayed by the taxi drivers towards the protesters.

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In response to Trevor Ngwane’s comment, we must acknowledge that our article “Collective Bargaining by Riot” contained errors and misleading statements. We regret any statement or suggestion that Ngwane was a candidate either for the Johannesburg metro council in 2006, or for any position as an office-bearer of the Anti-Privatisation Forum at the time of the election of Bricks Mokolo as chairperson. We know of nothing in APF policy that denied Ngwane and his comrades the right to stand in the local elections via the Operation Khanyisa movement, nor would we have denied them that right, although we have consistently rejected electoral politics as an authoritarian method that can only undermine the struggles of the oppressed classes. Let them stand if they want, but we will neither vote for them nor in any way support them. Further, we regret the misspelling of comrade Bricks’ name, while noting that Ngwane was also in error on this matter.

At the same time, we stand by our rejection of Ngwane’s authoritarian and divisive electoral politics, and we further reject his comment as a whole: it is an entirely unsupported slander against the APF, Bricks Mokolo, anarchists and autonomists. We may, indeed, have gone too far in calling Ngwane a careerist. We must acknowledge that he has made sacrifices. If Ngwane had toed the party line of the ruling ANC, of which he was once a member, he could have been a prominent party bigshot or a “black economic empowerment” businessman. We assume that he rejected such opportunities on principle, and, indeed, that his sacrifices went much further than this.

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It is clear that what is happening at Wits – the fee increases, privatisation of residence etc – is part of the ANC government’s plan for the general neo-liberal restructuring of the universities in order to turn them into “market universities” orientated first and foremost towards generating profit. This is a hard fact which both the ANCYL and Sasco students leading the protests have tried studiously to avoid admitting.

In the same way that government’s neo-liberal policies (eg Gear and Asgisa), which say that service delivery must be based on cost recovery and ability to pay, affect primarily the working class and poor, so too does the restructuring at Wits and other universities. The proposed 25% increase in upfront fees, the 500% increase in admin fees for students coming from outside the SADC and increases in residence fees are obviously going to affect poor and working class students the most.

The proposed outsourcing of some residences to the commercial for-profit wing of the State, the Public Investment Corporation, in conjunction with various banks, shows clearly that the intention of the government and Wits management is not to improve the university and quality of education, never mind the access of underprivileged students to higher education, it is about making profit and needs to be resisted.

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On Tuesday morning, 14th of August, over 1000 community members from Sebokeng’s “informal settlement” attempted to blockade the Golden Highway between Sebokeng and Johannesburg in protest at the ANC government’s inadequate service delivery since its election in 1994.

The police arrived in numbers and fired randomly at the community members, allegedly with live ammunition, seriously injuring 6 people and injuring others, including small children.

Thirty-five people were then arrested and taken to the Sebokeng police station, and are being charged with public violence and illegal gathering. When leaders of the Anti-Privatisation Forum and Coalition Against Water Privatisation, under whose banner the protest was held, arrived at the police station to enquire about the situation and try and have their comrades released nine of them were also arrested, for addressing a community gathering.

The fact that the SAPS police, under the ANC, can shoot with impunity at poor people who are merely attempting to have their most basic human rights met reminds one of the Apartheid era police. And it only goes to prove that all governments, even those democratically elected, soon turn on those they are supposed to represent, in order to defend their newly acquired wealth, power and privilege. We know very well by now that the ANC is not concerned with providing for the majority of the population in South Africa and delivering on the promises that got the ANC into power, but that it is only concerned with making a profit out of the people, and further enriching the already disgustingly rich new back elite. Even if it means charging the poorest of the poor for the most basic necessities and essential human rights such as electricity and water, which are laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which South Africa is one of the signatory states, as well as in the ANC People’s Charter.

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The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (southern Africa) supports the public sector strikers, not just in their demand for a wage increase of 12%, which has now been reduced to 10%, but also in their struggle to improve the standard of all public sector services. We call on all workers and community members to show their support for this strike, as it is not just about wages but an attempt to raise the quality of public services provided to us all.

We strongly condemn the government’s attempt to intimidate workers into ending the strike by issuing dismissal notices to striking workers, and by using apartheid-era police brutality against picketers – even though the police are headed by SACP national chairperson Charles Nqakula. We support the workers’ demands that any agreement reached must be accompanied by the unconditional reinstatement of any and all workers dismissed during the strike.

We strongly condemn the government’s duplicity in its negotiators, led by Kenny Govender, having pretended for four whole months to be negotiating in good faith when Govender’s team turned out not to have the mandate of the four ANC Cabinet ministers tasked with managing the strike: Nquakula, Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and ex-communist Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.

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