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We Won't Share the Pain!

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We Won't Share the Pain! ZabalazaA Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism No. 10 April 2009 From Each according to ability, To each according to need! They don’t share the profits- We won’t share the pain! In this issue... Southern Africa «ZACF Editorial.............................................................................................................................................. Page 3 «Unite Against the Minority, Then Unite Against the Majority?....................................................................... Page 3 « The Jacob Zuma Cargo Cult and the “Implosion” of Alliance Politics.......................................................... Page 4 «A Bitter Taste to the Sugarcane.................................................................................................................. Page 10 «Four Tools for Community Control – Part I: “Mutual Aid”............................................................................ Page 11 «Zimbabwe’s Party-Political Stitch-Up - How the Zanu-PF/MDC Deal Ignored Civil Society....................... Page 14 Africa «The Anarchist Movement in North Africa: 1877 - 1951............................................................................... Page 18 «Socialists and Gaullists Haunted by the Ghosts of Genocide.................................................................... Page 22 international «Jalan Journal: A New Asian Anarchist Voice is Born.................................................................................. Page 22 «30th Congress of the National Confederation of Labour - France.............................................................. Page 23 «Hamas, the Left and Liberation in Palestine............................................................................................... Page 23 «Interview with Ilan Shalif from Anarchists Against the Wall - Israel/Palestine............................................. Page 24 «A Hot Winter in Greece............................................................................................................................... Page 25 «Something Smells Different in Cuba........................................................................................................... Page 29 «Imperialism, China and Russia................................................................................................................... Page 32 «Against Political Terror in Russia, We Mobilise!.......................................................................................... Page 35 «Change We Need: An Anarchist Perspective on the 2008 US Election...................................................... Page 36 theory «Tangled Threads of Revolution: Reflections on Anarchist Communists: A Question of Class.................... Page 38 organisational platform of the general union of anarchists (draft) Português: www.nestormakhno.info/portuguese/platform2/org_plat.htm Français: www.nestormakhno.info/french/platform/org_plat.htm Arabic: www.anarkismo.net/article/9237 Castellano/ Español: www.nestormakhno.info/spanish/platform/org_plat.htm Deutsch: www.zabalaza.net/theory/txt_plattform_de.htm English: www.zabalaza.net/theory/txt_platform.htm or download the pamphlet from: www.zabalaza.net/pdfs/varpams/platform_2006_en.pdf southern african anarchism online Links to local groups, educational material, email discussion lists, PDF leaflets for you to distribute etc. etc. www.zabalaza.net zacf contact details Post: Postnet Suite 47, Private Bag X1, Fordsburg, South Africa, 2033 Email: [email protected] Website: www.zabalaza.net Phone: 084 946-4240 Zabalaza page 3 southern africa editorial zabalaza anarchist communist front, johannesburg, march 2009 When we published Zabalaza 9 in Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) In the context of the US’s continued September 2008, in the wake of the leader Morgan Tsvangirai becoming Prime ‘war on terror’ Democrat Senator Barack xenophobic pogroms which swept across Minister in a government of national unity, Obama was elected the first-ever black US South Africa in May of that year, leaving prompting South African politicians to president on the ticket of much-needed over 60 people dead and hundreds of say that the crisis in Zimbabwe was now ‘change’. Despite his failure to commit to thousands displaced, we took a distinct over - despite the ruin of the economy, pulling troops out of Iraq, or his support regional focus in giving the issue the complete lack of infrastructure and basic for the Israeli Zionist regime he has theme of opposing xenophobia and services and Mugabe’s continued control been lauded by so-called progressives nationalism in South Africa. Since then the of the police and armed forces and the and some leftists across the world as a ZACF has been involved with the Coalition continued militarisation of society - so God-send, here to save the world. His Against Xenophobia in organising a 24- that Zimbabwean political and economic first acts were to bail out the banks and hour picket outside the Lindela detention refugees living in South Africa “must now corporations, leaving the workers and center in Roodepoort, and has worked to go home”. poor to pay. raise awareness against xenophobia and In Swaziland, as the year drew to a All of this happened in the context of nationalism through distribution of our close, the 2008 deadline for liberation the worst global economic downturn since journal and by other means. from the Tinkhundla regime of King the 1930s, with hundreds of banks and Since September last year, however, Mswati III, declared by the People’s companies being declared bankrupt and the global political and economic United Democratic Movement (Pudemo), hundreds of thousands of jobs lost. With landscape has changed dramatically, and was missed with little sign of liberation. bailouts by states and the nationalisation we have therefore deliberately broadened In the Middle East, the Israeli Zionist of banks and large corporations, the the focus of Zabalaza 10 to have a more regime attacked the Gaza Strip, killing economic crisis has been called the end international perspective. hundreds of children and other civilians of the neo-liberal era - only going to Locally, former President Thabo Mbeki while at the same time failing to achieve show, probably to the distress of some was unceremoneously removed from their alleged objective of rooting out on the left, that nationalisation does not office by the ruling party, and replaced Hamas and destroying its supply- equal socialism. by President Kgalema Motlanthe; and the lines, leading to massive pro-Palestine In this context the popular uprising in ANC formally split, spawning yet another mobilisations across the world. Greece, sparked by the police murder of bourgeois-nationalist party, the Congress Likewise there was war in Georgia and a 15-year-old boy, with massive popular of the People (Cope), intent on ruling - or South Ossetia, and the continuation of demonstrations and occupations, has is it ruining? - our lives. the US’s war against the people of Iraq, shown the way forward for the popular Regionally, months of stop-start as well as a shifting of forces and focus classes to respond to the crisis of negotiations around a power-sharing deal towards Afghanistan. capitalism. in Zimbabwe finally led to the opposition Unite Against the Minority, then Unite Against the Majority? (Zambia) by malele D. phirii, Lusaka, 2 march 2009 Phiri is a libertarian socialist comrade who I first met in Zambia in 1998 as a Socialist Caucus member when I gave a talk at the university there as a Workers’ Solidarity Federation delegate invited by our late comrade Wilstar Choongo, founder of the now- defunct Anarchist & Workers’ Solidarity Movement of Zambia. Here is a brief, yet telling letter from her to Zabalaza reflecting on the challenges facing serious socialist activists in her region. – Michael Schmidt It would seem that the lead role of [Kwame] Nkrumah has held us in a vise to continue to demand more and more leftists in African politics in the south/ grip for the best of 13 years. accountability. central part of the continent has taken What was left of the Angolan As we strengthen the accountability of a beating. The paradox of Zanu-PF as and Mozambican struggle, has been our own structures, we build our capacity being one of the loudest ‘socialist’ parties overwhelmed by the deep divide to demand the same from the men and in the region does not between rich and poor. Nowhere do the women who call us their leaders. We help much. raw remains of our colonial past moderate our strategies better when we The existence raise their head in an uglier are able to see each other as individuals. and persistence of manner than in the daily life- This is the beauty of the anarchist the International threatening circumstance of approach. No masks, we see each other S o c i a l i s t the people of the DRC. as who we are. Organisation of And if no other country After years of worrying that our Zimbabwe as a clear can outrage us, surely socialist grouping was too small, I am now alternative voice to the misery there should enlivened by the idea that the movement state socialism and move us to action? should move on basic structures of as few the surviving civil society And this is the as 15 people. Because of the limitations organisations in that country will question? If the rhetoric of communication and transport in our not get much relief from the new of the left in this region region, we are better off developing ‘power-sharing’ arrangement.
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