South African revolutionaries call Dutton’s bluff

Nick G.

The Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania has called on Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton to “come to our country and collect all his fellow racists who feel that they cannot live together with normal people and go live where they are accepted in that unbecoming society”.

This follows Dutton’s call to fast-track visa applications by white South African farmers who he said were facing “horrific circumstances” of being murdered and having their land taken away.

He said they deserved to be resettled in a “civilised country”, a clear slur on South Africa.

He said they would be “hard-working and not become dependent on welfare”, a clear slur on non-white refugees accepted into Australia.

He said "They're the sorts of migrants that we want to bring into our country," a clear slur on the unfortunates stranded in Nauru and in Papua New Guinea.

He said all of this after only recently stating that Australia should further reduce the number of migrants coming to Australia.

Dutton’s racially-based sympathy for white South African landowners stands in stark contrast to his indifference to the horrific circumstances of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslin minority, 700,000 of whom have fled to Bangladesh to escape rape and murder

It stands in stark contrast to the horrific circumstances of the continuing murder of unarmed blacks in the USA. 

Data collected by the Washington Post on the use of lethal force by police officers in 2015, 2016, and 2017 indicate that, relative to the portion of the population, Blacks are over-represented among all those killed by police under all circumstances. Blacks made up 13% of the population. However, in 2015 they accounted for 26% of those that were killed by police, in 2016, 24%, and in 2017, 22% of all those killed by police. In other words, Blacks were the victims of the lethal use of force by police at nearly twice their rate in the general population. Whites make up the plurality of victims of police use of lethal force (45% in 2017), BUT they also make the majority of the population (62% in 2015).

The incidents that drive the protests and organization of Black Lives Matter are largely focused on the police use of lethal force on unarmed blacks.

Dutton has ignored non-white victims of horrific circumstances.

Even in South Africa, owing to apartheid’s legacy of poverty amongst the black population, violence and murder is highest amongst blacks.

Last week Gareth Newham at South Africa’s Institute for Social Studies reported “young black males living in poor urban areas” faced a higher risk of being murdered, citing a murder rate in those areas of between 200 and 300 per 100,00 people.

He said the highest estimates of farm murders, regardless of race, stood at 133 per 100,000 people.

Dutton’s racist support for white South African farmers who are resisting an entirely justified and long-overdue redistribution of land has been driven by far-right ideologists and organisations, as revealed in the Guardian.

The Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania, created in 1959, was the most militant opponent of apartheid.

Kenneth Mokgatlhe, PAC spokesperson said in a statement that the socialist party was not taken aback to hear the remarks made by Dutton that "some or all white people will be rescued from our country to Sydney".

"We are not worried at all," Mokgatlhe said. "We must all remind ourselves that Australia was stolen by Europeans the same way in which our country was dispossessed from us, native owners. We sympathise with the dispossessed people of Australia, the aboriginal owners of that country who are today landless like a majority of African people in this country," he said.

"The PAC invite the Australian Minister to come to our country and collect all his fellow racists who feel that they cannot live together with normal people and go live where they are accepted in that unbecoming society," said Mokgatlhe.

"We uncompromisingly support the Indigenous dispossessed Australians to get their land back without compensation from criminals who went around the world capturing land".

Mokgatlhe however reiterated that "PAC welcomed the call by Australian government to collect the land criminals who are not willing to give land back to its rightful owners to go to Australia which has been declared a haven of racists".

40th Anniversary of the Sowetan Uprising and Africans still suffer dispossession

Max O.

Soweto, June 16 1976 was one of the most momentous uprisings in the history of the anti-apartheid struggle. The streets of this township were stained with students' blood, a tragedy that is deeply etched in the minds of dispossessed Africans.

Students from surrounding Sowetan schools protested in the streets of Soweto in reaction to the introduction of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in schools. 20,000 black students marched from their schools to Orlando Stadium to vent opposition that their learning be conducted in the oppressors language.

The protest was organised by the Soweto Students' Representative Council Action Committee and backed by the influential Black Consciousness Movement. The Soweto protest became famous around the world and synonymous with opposition to apartheid South Africa.

The apartheid police brutality was fierce in crushing the Sowetan student's protest. The number of 176 protestors killed by police is generally given, however the number of 700 would be closer to the mark. The Sowetan Student's protest of 16th June is now commemorated as a public holiday in South Africa.

The ANC government sells out its own people

Unfortunately the struggles of those times is officially dissipated and the day is inscribed with the insipid name of, "Youth Day". The black students of 1976 were not asking for civil rights but demanding liberation of their country and rejection of white colonial rule when they sang out 'Azania' (land of the African People).

The African National Congress (ANC), then and now, only ever promoted a limited agenda of civil rights and ignored the struggle of returning stolen land back to African People. Before the ANC became the government of South Africa in 1994, it did a deal with the local white elite, foreign imperialist powers and multinational corporations to maintain and enforce their dominance of the land and economy.

Now 40 years after the famous uprising of Soweto and supposed black majority rule, black Africans have little to show for their struggles and sacrifices. Their plight has not improved but rather deteriorated since Mandela and the ANC took on government back in 1994.

Blacks in South Africa still suffer appalling living conditions of no running water, electricity, decent sanitation, no return of land and in contrast they see a small black bourgeoisie cosying up to a white-imperialist dominated economy. The ANC government's political treachery saw them in 2012 command black police to gun down the striking Marikana miners in support of the Lonmin Corporation.

44 African mineworkers were murdered at Marikana, marking it as a watershed of betrayal in the history of the ANC, Council of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). By 2013 political upheaval in South Africa ensued with the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), lead by Julius Malema, breaking away from the Jacob Zuma led ANC.

Opportunism of the Economic Freedom Fighters

However the EFF have been more puff than substance and is really just a vehicle for Julius Malema's personal political ambitions. Publicly the EFF denounces the ANC for their pro-business position, selling out black people of South Africa to capitalism as cheap labour, proposing to expropriate stolen land, calling for the nationalisation of the mining and banking sectors.

Things came to ahead politically within the EFF when Malema in April, 2015 met with the white agricultural capitalist class in Paarl and Stellenbosch. Invited to their forum "Gesprek" (Afrikaans for conversations) he reassured the rich white farmers that their land holdings were secure and allayed their fears on the issue of “expropriation of land without compensation”.

Malema stated, to the delight of these white farmers, that as long “as it’s a productive farm, we don’t have to interfere with the production on that piece of land” and opportunistically pointed out that there would only be expropriation and occupation of “non-productive land". He thus guaranteed to these white land thieves that "their" land is safe from blacks who would only occupy unused and unproductive land; in other words the best land would stay with the whites and blacks would only take what was left over.

This sell out was all too much for sections of the EFF who were unwilling to accept the abrogation of 'expropriation of stolen African land' policy in the party's platform. By August, 2015 activists who were expelled from the EFF established the Black First Land First (BLF) movement. Its most notable leader, Andile Mgxitama after being expelled from the EFF, described it as a "watered-down version of the African National Congress".

Emergence of the Black First Land First movement

BLF was officially launch in Soweto, 14 May 2016 declaring its ideology as Black Consciousness, Pan-Africanism and Sankarist, completely rejecting the ANC's Freedom Charter, 'South Africa belongs to all who live in it, both black and white'. After more than 350 years of land dispossession and more than 22 years of cowardice by the ANC, there is a resurgence of the Pan-Africanist agenda of Robert Sobukwe (the land must be returned to the indigenous custodians) amongst black South Africans. For blacks the 'Rainbow Nation' has proved a bitter illusion that only benefited the white un-settlers and their black lackeys.

The need for black people to think and act for their own liberation, as articulated by the Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko, is essential because their freedom struggle cannot be outsourced to others; a problem of the past where whites had too much influence within the black liberation movement.

The BLF employs within its black agenda the Sankaraist leadership approach. Thomas Sankara (21/12/1949 - 15/10/1987) was a Burkinabe military captain, Marxist revolutionary, Pan-Africanist theorist, and President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987, until he was overthrown in a coup. Viewed by supporters as a charismatic and iconic figure of revolution, he is commonly referred to as Africa's Che Guevara.

The BLF sees the Sankarist leadership ethos, both in belief and practice, following and honouring the revolutionary legacy of Thomas Sankara, as a crucial measure to counter corruption. To this end their black agenda promotes a servant leadership that is accountable, democratic, responsive leadership that puts black people first.

The movement has busily been promoting land occupations of white owned land by blacks throughout the country. A strategy that aims to return stolen land back to Africans faces a huge task.

Out of the 54 million people in South Africa 35 000 white families, including white businesses, own more than 80% of the land. Since 1994, the ANC government has bought 8% of the land from whites at the cost of about R50 billion.

The ANC's buy-back, using the willing seller-willing buyer method, is a futile approach to the black landless problem. Since 1994 more than 1 million black people have been forcibly removed from white farms. Farm workers, who are always black, are essentially slaves in South Africa.

The uprising in Soweto 40 years ago left an indelible mark, as did Sharpeville 16 years before and Marikana 36 years after, upon black South Africans. These three historic tragic massacres have taught black Africans that their freedom will only be found once they have control of their land.

The launch of the Black First Land First  movement is reminiscent of Pan Africanist Congress beginnings in 1959 and the evolvement of Black Consciousness Movement in the 1970s, where on both occasions it was seen as crucial to breakaway from reformist strategies that deliver nothing to the dispossessed. The BLF has flagged its willingness to unite with the Pan Africanist Congress - PAC and the Azanian Peoples Organisation - AZAPO (the current Black Consciousness organisation) to forge an Azanian Front that can mobilise blacks to overcome their dispossession and win back their country.

The class divide in South Africa reflects the race divide and the race divide is materially expressed in the land divide, where 80% of the population or 43.2 million people are virtually landless. This is an explosive matter that no 'Rainbow Nation' veneer can ever hope to contain nor control, for the dispossessed cannot be suppressed for ever.

South Africa's Marikana massacre commemoration, two years on

Vanguard September 2014 p. 7
Contributed

A Crowd of 15,000, on the 16 August gathered at the Nkaneng informal settlement in Wonderkop, near Marikana in North West province, to commemorate the 38 mining workers who died at the hands of the South African police, Lomin Mine Corporation and the now exposed, corrupt ANC government. The dead mine workers’ suffering families were centre stage at the commemoration (above), making the event a moving tribute to the African people’s struggle for justice and a living wage.

By a living wage the mine workers and their union, Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) want their members to be paid 12,500 Rand per month.  They have been campaigning for this over the last two years. It is a figure which is three times their present wage. However, this increase is not significant or outrageous, for 12,500 Rand is equivalent to $1250 AUS. They want a weekly wage of $312.5 AUS per week, whereas at the moment mine workers and their families have to survive on $104.16 AUS per week.

This is a standard of living that is well below that of first world workers. The mining companies in South Africa have a history organising Africans to leave their homes and migrate to their mines and work as cheap labour so as to increase their rate of exorbitant of profits.


On and off the stage performers and the crowd celebrated their hardships and struggle for worker rights through song, dance, theatre and African protest dance – Toy-Toy. Local school children performed choir singing and their own poetry presentations to express their outrage and hope for a better and dignified future life. A variety of worker groups did their famous militant Toy-Toy around crowds of people as they assembled for the commemorative rally.

The sell-out officials from the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the ANC and local government, were deliberately snubbed and not invited to the commemoration. Not surprising considering that two officials from NUM shot two Lomin mine workers two years ago, in an attempt to break the wildcat strikes that had started at Marikana and get the workers back to the mines.

 

(Above: workers gather at the hill where the massacre took place)

Wives and relatives took the stage as AMCU officials explained how the commemoration would be conducted on the day. Amongst the speakers, ranging from religious and parliamentary leaders – Julius Malema, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and Moosiuoa Lekota, Congress of the People (COPE) – were two inspiring family representatives who resonated most with the crowd.

Whilst Malema and Lekota roared their support for the mine workers their message was essentially parliamentary, of “trust me with your vote”. However the family speakers, a father whose son died from police gunfire and a mine worker who was shot eight times and survived after being unconscious for several months, spoke of the loss of loved ones because of the shootings; hardships of working in the mines; trying to live on appalling wages paid to them by the mining corporations; and their efforts at carrying out industrial strikes to win a living wage. The crowd roared back in approval and support of their own kind.

South Africa’s leading political figures, the country’s President Jacob Zuma and ANC vice president and Lomin director Cyril Ramaphosa came in for a lashing from the family rep speakers. Utter contempt and hatred was expressed towards these two because of the treacherous role they played in supporting the mining corporations and ordering the police shootings, so as to deny the workers and their families a living wage.

The Marikana massacre has become a significant historical turning point, like Sharpeville and Soweto before it, in defining South African politics. It is the beginning of breaking the power and hold that the ANC and Council of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) have over the African population and workers. Their arrogance and monopoly over popular power is now on the wane.

Alternative organizations, such as AMCU and the peak union body National Council of Trade Unions (NACTU), have attracted workers away from the tame cat and corrupt ANC lead unions. Unfortunately, reports indicate some leaders of AMCU are practicing the same opportunism as NUM officials. The old short sighted habits continue: too much focus on signing up members to increase their paid membership; limiting industrial campaigns to just wages; overlooking health and safety issues such as on the job safety and dust blasted from the mining areas that blows over local communities’ shacks ; the correct resolution of land disputes between Indigenous land owners and the migrant labor force; the creation of desperately needed community services – sanitation, electricity, running water, free medical care and clinic and other facilities like community libraries.

Whilst there is militancy amongst the migrant mine workers, political consciousness has still has to be developed to overcome and resolve the myriad of social and political issues that confront the African people in Marikana. Therefore it is vitally important that political work be done amongst the people to overcome potential conflicts such as the mine workers and local land owners squabbling and fighting with each other over rights to land. Once broadening the base and narrowing the target is achieved, the real enemy can be identified – the mining corporations and the South African state!

The ANC in the long term will go into decline because of its open collaboration with corporate capital. Leaders such as Zuma and Ramaphosa are quite rightly seen as bourgeois compradors who don’t serve African workers, but who have become running dogs for white imperialists who actually run the South African economy!