Zabalaza ZabalazaM M A Journal of Southern African No. 7 December 2006 “FROM EACH ACCORDING TO ABILITY, TO EACH ACCORDING TO NEED!” Around the World...

...WE ARE RISING! CHIAPAS 1994, OAXACA 2006!: A demonstrator stones the hated Mexican Federal Police who failed to reassert state con- trol over the city of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. The city is being run by community organisations including the ZACF's sis- ter organisation, the Indigenous Popular Council of Oaxaca - Ricardo Flores Magon (CIPO-RFM). What started out as a teacher's strike turned into a full-blown Magonista uprising against the “revolutionary” Oaxaca state government and for community self-management, a key anarchist demand. see www.anarkismo.net for more Inside... M The Zuma Case and COSATU M China and Africa M Community Struggles and Elections M Anarchism in Morocco M What about the ANC? M Learning from Latin America M Swaziland after the Bombings M 1976: 30 years on M Free the Mind M The Spanish anniversary M the USA and Africa M Hamba Kahle Abel Ramorope MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 2 SOUTHERN AFRICA After 10 years of GEAR: COSATU, the Zuma Trial and the Dead End of Alliance politics by Lucien van der Walt

to 20% of the entire SA economy, although that spoke in the language of class strug- it employed only 1% of the workforce, while gle, there was nothing in the way of a class manufacturing and mining shrunk, with per- analysis of the realities of the situation. haps 1 million jobs lost in these sectors COSATU and the Party were ignored by plus agriculture. The electricity and water the ANC, and periodically insulted - except grid was expanded, but with cost recovery at election times, when their financial sup- applied, 10 million people suffered water port and influence were eagerly sought. cut-offs and 5 million were evicted. After elections, of course, it was business as usual, with South Africa’s particularly SAVING THE ANC’S SOUL vile brand of capitalism flourishing. By In this situation, COSATU and the SACP 2006, the economy was booming, reaching chose to try and save the unhappy mar- 5% growth, the number of families with riage with the ANC. Afraid of being isolat- more than $30 million each shot up four Mbeki ed from the seats of the mighty, flattered by times, but the income of the bottom 40% of the population fell by nearly half. South Africa’s transition, as we stated in pats on the head by ANC leaders, tempted Workers Solidarity in 1998, went sour a by job offers, and unable to break with an long time ago. Overthrowing apartheid almost religious loyalty to the ANC colours ZUMA AND COSATU was a tremendous victory, but not enough. - and a well-established tendency to uncrit- This situation has played out in the Jacob It was soon overshadowed by the ANC’s ically worship ANC leaders - union and Zuma controversy. Zuma, a leading ANC neo-liberal policies, which built on those Party policy makers spent fruitless years member, deputy president of South Africa, adopted in the last years of the apartheid trying to redeem the ANC. and head of the State-sponsored “Moral regime. Reinforcing this approach was the long- Regeneration Campaign,” was found to standing, and seriously flawed, view that have been involved in corruption around LOST IN TRANSIT South Africa must have a two-stage “revo- the arms deal. His associate, Durban busi- lution”: a “national democratic stage,” led nessman Shabir Shaik, was found guilty in As an increasingly multiracial ruling class by the ANC, to end racism, followed by a 2005, and Zuma himself now faces consolidated its position, the working class “socialist stage,” in a vague future. charges. retreated. This retreat was - and remains - “Intervening” in the ANC, “contesting” it, Mbeki, not a man to tolerate rivals in the fundamentally a question of politics and “saving” its soul: these were the terms used ANC, used the opportunity to oust Zuma strategy: COSATU and the SACP had no to justify this approach. The fact that the from office. Another bombshell followed, idea how to deal with the new situation. ANC was - and always had been - a capi- when Zuma was accused of raping a close Having spent years believing the ANC talist party that aimed to open up, as family friend who, it transpired, was HIV- would, like Moses, lead the people out of Nelson Mandela stated back in 1956, positive. bondage in Egypt, they now found them- “fresh fields for the development of a pros- Now, it was fairly clear that corruption was selves in a strange new country. Apartheid perous non-European bourgeois class,” not the main factor in Zuma’s dismissal. was gone, but slavery was not. The sup- was ignored. His replacement in office, Phumzile posed Moses now looked a lot like Mlambo-Nguka, was almost immediately Pharaoh, but COSATU and the SACP involved in a scandal. She used a Falcon remained part of the Tripartite Alliance. BEE-llionaires The fact that the major debate within the 900 executive jet of the SA Air Force to take her husband, children and friends on a ALL GEARed UP ruling ANC after 1994 was on how to link neo-liberalism to Black Economic holiday to the United Arab Emirates. It was The miserable conditions in the townships Empowerment (BEE) - the deliberate cre- also clear that Mbeki, an autocrat of the continued, mass unemployment - which ation of the “non-European bourgeois first water, was more than happy to use the started in the 1970s - continued to grow, class” - was ignored. The fact that the ANC judiciary and the State intelligence services and neo-liberalism accelerated. 30% of had struck a deal with TELKOM was privatised in 1996 and a fur- the apartheid-era ruling ther 20% was listed in 2003, and ESKOM class, and had now and the SA Post Office were commer- joined it, was ignored. cialised. While the GATT (now the World COSATU and SACP Trade Organisation) required tariff protec- positions moved from the tion on telecommunications to fall to 20%, naïve (the idea that the the government set itself the target of zero ANC would drop neo-lib- protection, and also opened up other con- eralism if only it would let trols over trade and capital movements. COSATU provide good These approaches were consolidated in advice) to the paranoid the 1996 Growth, Employment and (there was a conspiracy Redistribution Strategy (GEAR), but did not against “transforma- start with it. tion”). For organisations The unproductive financial sector shot up MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 3 SOUTHERN AFRICA to resolve internal disputes in the ANC. to change it, the union and the Party placed and a “symbiotic relationship between the their hopes in Zuma. Zuma had never leading echelons of the state and emerging COSATU’S POSITION uttered a word against GEAR, against cap- black capital.” There was also nothing surprising in the italism or against neo-liberalism but he had However, there is nothing surprising fact that Zuma used every trick in the book one good point: he was not Mbeki, and it about the COSATU and SACP position. to whip up support at the rape trial, ranging was hoped that he might be a new Moses Bound to the ANC by fear, flattery and a from crude Zulu nationalist appeals to a to lead the people. After all, according to failed strategy - the two-stage theory that legal team that effectively put his accuser COSATU and SACP thinking, there must the ANC will open the door to - on trial. Mobilisations outside the court- always be a great leader: the masses need and blinded by its traditional devotion to house drew in a wide range of groups, with to be led. Congress and its leaders, the two organi- many reactionary features, ranging from The “support for Cde Jacob Zuma,” Blade sations remain in a dead end. The fact that slogans like “Burn the Bitch” to placards Nzimande of the SACP recently told the many of their leaders are only too eager to saying “No Woman for President.” NUM, exposed popular opposition to the join the ANC leadership at the capitalist A whole cult was built up around Zuma. crises of corruption, factionalism and per- feast does not help either. In this situation, The Friends of Jacob Zuma stated: “We, sonal careerism” in the ANC, “crises” that support for Zuma is certainly tragic but the people, will ensure that this man of were “inherent in trying to build a leading almost inevitable. honour, who dedicated his life to liberating cadre based on capitalist values and the Support for Zuma allows the ANC to us, will finally have the right to defend him- symbiotic relationship between the leading remain sacred and untouchable, and the self.” One protestor carried a cross, with a echelons of the state and emerging black politics of relying on a saviour untouched. Zuma picture, claiming that this “man of capital.” The Party Youth League grandly A hard look at the nature of the transition honour” was being persecuted “just like” stated that “Our defence and support for can be avoided, and a serious struggle another “man of honour,” Jesus Christ. Jacob Zuma is the defence of the constitu- against capitalism postponed, yet again. This seems ridiculous, but it was typical of tion.” All problems could be blamed on Mbeki the Zuma mobilisations. Meanwhile, speaking of the upcoming and his faction: Zuma has been discovered What was most surprising - at least at first Zuma corruption trial, Zweli Vavi of to represent the shining soul of the ANC; glance - was COSATU’s almost uncritical COSATU called for Zuma to be reinstated Mbeki became Satan overnight. In return support for Zuma during 2005 and 2006. in his positions: “”We will ensure that for COSATU and SACP backing in the The SACP was a bit more divided, but its whenever comrade Zuma appears in court, Alliance and internal ANC battles, the Youth League was in the forefront of the our people will demonstrate en-masse.” structures hoped Zuma might - just might - Zuma mobilisation and the Friends of be nicer than Mbeki and might - just might Jacob Zuma organisation. EXODUS WITHOUT A MAP - listen to the working class for a while. Nothing can better express the bankrupt- This is what the pro-Zuma mobilisations STRANGE FRUIT cy of the political outlook of COSATU and by working class organisations mean. The outcome of a disastrous politics, they don’t This seems strange at first, but it is the the SACP than these positions. Zuma is take the working class out of the dead end logical outcome of the dead end in which no different to Mbeki: another rich politi- that loyalty to the ANC involves. The only COSATU and the SACP find themselves cian, another false Messiah who misleads way out is a break with the ANC, not a false after ten years of “engaging” the ANC, after the working class, another ANC scoundrel choice between Mbeki and Zuma. The ten years of futile complaints about GEAR, who would implement GEAR as much as ANC is not the solution: it is a large part of after ten years of COSATU policy docu- Mbeki. In no way whatsoever would he the problem faced by the workers and the ments gathering dust at Shell House. break with the ANC policy of developing “a poor. Unable to break with the ANC, and unable leading cadre based on capitalist values” Class struggle brought down Apartheid and it will bring down Mbeki and Zuma’s Capitalism as well MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 4 SOUTHERN AFRICA Collective Bargaining by Riot: Election Day in South Africa

Seeing the police move on a single col- anarchist-communists advocate . [although in Motsoaledi, this was later umn of smoke rising from two burning tyres Khutsong Residents accused councillors reversed following an internal struggle]. over rebellious Khutsong, south-west of of nepotism, the provision of toilets that did Ngwane’s movement won a paid position Johannesburg, on March 1, local govern- not work and, worse in their view, not living as a councillor, based on 4,305 votes. ment election day, I was reminded of the in the areas they supposedly represented, Ngwane did not take the seat as expect- Native American warrior in Dances With a common complaint. Mamela claimed ed, but the OKM councillor who did will Wolves remarking of the distant fire of a that councillors said R1,2-million had been have her lone left-wing voice drowned out frontiersman that he would not tolerate “a spent on the road to the Khutsong grave- by the 75 ANC and 31 DA councillors. single line of smoke in my own country”. yard, whereas he knew it had only cost Working class power lies in the community The ANC-led government in similar fash- R800,000, suggesting the councillors had and in the workplace, not in the forums of ion had determined that Khutsong would pocketed the rest. the ruling class. Ngwane was ousted a not explode on voting day; that the mock- He suggested that Merafong mayor Des month later at the Anti-Privatisation Forum ery of the vote that occurred would be van Rooyen had, unlike previous mayors, annual general meeting as APF chair by “free”, albeit an enforced peace in a town- acquired bodyguards “because he knew Brickes Mokolo of the Orange Farm Crisis ship that had driven ANC leaders out, what he was going to do” in “selling” Committee - a key figure in the anti-elec- revolting against an administrative transfer Khutsong to the North West province. toral faction of the APF. This is a hopeful out of Gauteng province to an uncertain But despite the powerful emotions circu- sign, for Mokolo has helped build a viable, future in the poverty-stricken anti-electoral strategy in that North-West. poor settlement.

FIRE IN KHUTSONG THE OTHER HALF So two armoured Nyalas Houghton is old, genteel lumbered over to the smok- Joburg, replete with bowling ing tyres where photogra- greens, high walls and lanes phers were vainly trying to of poplar trees and oaks, get a dramatic shot - but gated with booms and secu- Khutsong was virtually rity guards. The old and deserted on the morning of new elites, with their black the vote. maids in tow, were smartly The fire-gutted Gugulethu lined up to cast their ballots: community centre was no burning tyres here; only already defaced by crude the worship of Mandela - the sexual, gangster - and, in architect of post-apartheid what is a hopeful sign, anar- neo-liberalism - as some chist - graffiti. The presiding sort of living saint of the officer at the government’s wealthy. Independent Electoral From Houghton, I drove Commission tent set up next north-east to the small dia- to the ruin glumly told me he mond-mine and prison town did not expect a single soul to turn out to of Cullinan to the east of Pretoria. There, vote that day. lating on voting day, Khutsong was suffer- the local Freedom Front Plus branch - He proved right, with barely more than ing a hangover from the previous night’s Afrikaner seperatists - was hoping to oust 200 out of 29,000 registered voters exer- celebration of the successful boycott call the incumbent Democratic Alliance neo-lib- cising their hard-won right. Khutsong resi- and was unlikely to produce drama, so I erals from the Nokeng tsa Taemane dent Albert Mamela stood near the smoul- drove on into Gauteng, north-east to the Municipality. The ANC won, but the only dering tyres and told of his dream that the gated suburbs of Houghton to watch former real excitement on the day was when people of Khutsong - whether Zulu, Xhosa President Nelson Mandela cast his vote. Afrikaner singer Valiant Swart happened to or “foreigner” - could “be like the Bafokeng” pass through town. - the tribe that owns platinum mines near THE APF AND ELECTIONS Rustenburg - and take ownership of I had far to travel, so bypassed Pimville in MPUMULANGA Khutsong’s nearby gold-mines, the riches Soweto where the Operation Khanyisa From Cullinan, I drove out to Siyabuswa of which seldom finds its way into local Movement (OKM) was contesting the elec- in Mpumalanga, the former capital of the pockets. tions. There was a fierce debate in the apartheid-era homeland of kwaNdebele, Community ownership of the mines would Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) over the because here, the Ministry of Provincial render local government irrelevant, he question of elections. Trotskyist leader, and Local Government had promised me, said: “because then we will take care of APF organiser and Soweto activist Trevor was an example of a municipality that, development ourselves”. There is some Ngwane jumped the gun, forming the OKM while not wealthy, was exceptionally well healthy anti-capitalist sentiment here, but it as a party and political vehicle for his run. is also confused. The Bafokeng royal career and his politics without an APF Siyabuswa means “we are governed”, but house controls the mines in question, and mandate. In stark contrast to the social I found that the way that governance works exploitation carries on as before. A king movements in areas such as Motsoaledi, sadly conforms to the patterns of endemic makes the economic decisions: this is not Orange Farm and Sebokeng stood firmly corruption so well established in apartheid the working class ownership and control by a “no services - no vote” position days. MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 5 SOUTHERN AFRICA

Residents such as Amos and Elisabeth the country: COSATU chief economist Dr Meintjies of Wits University’s political stud- Msiza and their friend Petros Mhlangu - all Neva Makgetla and Standard Bank credit ies department put it, “there is a growing in their fifties - complained that their water- policy and governance director Desmond sense that the councillors don’t necessarily supply (charged at a rate guessed by the Golding agreed that a highly educated but hold all the power, that the officials are real- council because their meters didn’t work) permanently unemployed “underclass” ly, if anything, to blame for a lack of service was intermittent and that they lost their pre- constituted the country’s biggest security delivery.” paid electrical power whenever it rained. threat. The working class is retreating, but These unelected municipal officials, she “If you have money, this government not defeated, and it haunts the imagination said, were directly lobbied by very powerful helps you - but not those who struggle,” of those who rule this country. big-business interests that short-circuited Mhlangu said. the country’s bourgeois-democratic The three residents blamed unelected UNFREEDOM DAY process and skewed development in municipal manager George Mthimunye for Further rioting and arson in Khutsong favour of the rich. Siyabuswa’s shoddy service delivery. attended the elevation of councillors to A grim example of this powerful bureau- Their view was supported by ex-ANC office on the basis of a 2% poll - an election cratic class is eThekwini (Durban) munici- independent candidates such as July that Human Sciences Research Council pal manager Mike Sutcliffe, an ANC strate- Msiza who told me that Mthimunye faced society culture and identity specialist Dr gist and die-hard opponent of the Abahlali not only criminal charges of having sexual- Mncedisi Ndletyana rightly described dur- baseMjondolo (Shack-dwellers’ ly harassed his secretary, but was also ing a TV interview as “illegitimate”. Movement), whose protest marches he ille- accused of having stolen council funds to The official celebration was declared an gally tried to ban. pay for two friends of his to be trained as “unFreedom Day” by the poor in Durban In March, Sutcliffe and his ideological traffic officers (one of whom allegedly cohorts suffered two key court defeats - by crashed a council vehicle she the Abahlali baseMjondolo was illegally using for her own and the Soweto Concerned purposes, in far-off White Residents - which confirmed River). So much for well-gov- the absolute right of people to erned Siyabuswa! gather and to demonstrate without requiring police per- TWELVE YEARS ON mission. This is a big victory Fast-forward to April 27, for the social movements that “Freedom Day”, twelve years they should fully exploit. down the line from what Archbishop Desmond Tutu WORKING CLASS memorably called the DEMOCRACY “Rainbow Nation” waiting to We anarchist communists make their mark in the first would go further than post-apartheid ballot. Meintjies, underlining that it is And what a mark it has simply impossible for the been: from the heart-rending country’s 400 Members of wail of Fort Callata’s mother Parliament to truly represent at the Truth and the interests of 46.9-million Reconciliation Commission people. It is even less likely hearings to the ascendancy that 37 very wealthy party- of the Black Economic political Cabinet Ministers, Enrichment phalanx into positions of capi- who decried the evaporation of the dream tainted by the elitist idea of “democratic talist and state power; from the collapse of of equality the 1994 elections had prom- centralism” will bend over backwards for the neo-fascist AWB to the rise of Phumzile ised, but which the elites had betrayed. the working class and poor. Both our Mlambo-Ngcuka as a possible future pres- They demanded an end to evictions, cut- Westminster-style parliamentary democra- ident thanks to the axing of Jacob Zuma. offs and forced relocations, saying they cy and the ANC’s “democratic centralism” Trevor Manual is the darling of this elite were fighting for unconditional access to are anything but democratic. and its middle-class praise-singers, for the resources fenced off by the rich. The elections of 1994 were a huge victo- whom fiscal discipline is a golden calf and Local government specialist Greg Ruiters ry inasmuch as apartheid’s doom was equality a sin. This mutual admiration soci- of Rhodes University told me that the sealed. But there were not enough, and ety has decreed a perpetual round of yawning chasm between the developmen- could never be enough, and their achieve- expensive parties to praise the near-feudal tal promises of neo-liberalism and the ment is increasingly overshadowed by the conditions on which their empires are built, grinding poverty of South Africa’s sprawling grim neo-liberal class war being waged by a perpetual celebration so to speak (I’m shackland (three out of every four South the ruling elite . Capitalism, with its class reminded of Jello Biafra’s phrase “the hap- Africans now lives in urban areas) would system, will always benefit the few at the piness you have demanded is now manda- increasingly see people take to direct expense of the many. tory!”). action. Activists in Swaziland and Zimbabwe But millions look set to be unemployed for “The key problem for all parties contest- should take heed. Real popular empower- life and HIV/Aids, tuberculosis, malaria and ing the local government elections,” Ruiters ment and real economic and social equali- ailments of malnutrition such as kwashior- said, “is that citizens have discovered ty can only be achieved by well-organised, kor and marasmus - usually associated in another, more direct, channel for giving mass-based, directly-democratic, commu- the popular imagination with famine in voice to their needs: ‘collective bargaining nity-controlled action against the parasite Sudan or the Horn of Africa - stalk the pop- by riot’ may become more common than class. “Collective bargaining by riot” is a ulation. waiting to vote.” good start, but we must build working class Last May, at the second annual National The key problem for all the poor, howev- power until we can move onto the offen- Security Conference, two analysts from er, is that electoral, representative politics sive, and remake the world. very different sectors had a dire warning for is so limited and disempowering. As Sheila MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 6 SOUTHERN AFRICA The Anti-Liberation Movements

This is an edited version of a talk given by veteran commu- nist Alan Lipman who participated in drawing up the Freedom Charter in 1955, about why he left the Communist Party and the ANC, subsequently becoming an anarchist. He was addressing a two-day workshop held by the ZACF at the invitation of the Anti-Privatisation Forum, on class, capitalism, apartheid, neo-liberalism and the ANC, which was held at the headquarters of the Orange Farm Crisis Committee on May 21 this year. The talk was given in English and translated into seSotho.

I joined the Communist Party of South such as they wanted to send their children campaign. Bunting initially refused to pub- Africa in 1948 as a Wits student. Before to university. Rusty Bernstein of the SACP lish it, only later printing it in a very cen- then I had just accepted that the way things [the renamed CPSA] turned all the sored form. were was normal. Then I went to Italy demands into “The People Shall Govern...” At that stage I worked on New Age with which had a very strong Communist Party because he had that poetic ability. Mac Maharaj, but he was away doing and the feeling was that it would sieze Whatever its faults and problems, the something. I met some very fine people in power any day. The US Third Fleet was Freedom Charter was a people’s docu- the Communist Party and they introduced patrolling the Mediterranean at that stage ment. me to the world and taught me philoso- and we asked ourselves what they were phy... At that time I was - and I don’t think doing. They were trying to prevent com- THE COMMUNIST BETRAYAL I’m being boastful here - quite an influential munist take-overs in Italy, Greece and to a But in 1956, the invaded member of the Party. lesser extent . Hungary. The whole thing seemed mad to But later, when the Soviet Union invaded One day I saw a huge crowd running me: I wondered how a people could and Czechoslovakia, you’d find towards me, being chased by the police oppose their own government, and a com- there was always someone in the local who were beating them with truncheons. I munist government at that? Party who would explain it away as a good ducked into a doorway and the shopkeep- The Soviets said they were defending thing. I came from a middle-class family er took me inside and explained it was a Hungary from the reaction, an argument but it was members of the Party who were communist meeting addressed by Palmiro that they would later use regarding their my friends. Then when I began to criticise Togliatti [the head of the Italian Communist interventions in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, which was where we Party]. They were protesting the American Poland, but the more I read about the situ- believed there was real socialism and peo- presence and I saw how they were treated. ation, the more I realised this was not true. ple were equal, my friends began freezing Later when I returned to South Africa, I My communist ideas were suddenly in dan- me out. joined the CPSA under Moses Kotane, ger and my questioning lead me to ques- I became isolated: socially, economically Yusuf Dadoo and JB Marks because it was tion the ANC which we all then regarded as and intellectually. I started reading other then the only organisation where people the “Big Daddy” of the liberation move- material and came out of , from all races came together... In 1955, ments, as our father. though it was later my son who turned me messages were sent out to community At that time, I worked for New Age, the into an anachist: which shows that you leaders - which was itself a problem, that it SACP and ANC newspaper that changed often learn more from your children than was only the leaders - to consult the people its name several times (each time it was your parents! on what they wanted from a free society. banned we relaunched it under another [After leaving the SACP, Lipman and a Thousands of scraps of paper came back, name until they finally banned us from few other disaffected members successful- mostly from poor people, saying things doing so). My wife worked as a journalist ly firebombed the office where the for New Age in apartheid state held the records that were Durban, and I also being compiled to include black women in helped out because I the hated pass-law system that so severe- was not doing well as ly restricted black men’s movement. For a an architect. The year, he fought alongside the African newspaper was edit- Resistance Movement which conducted ed by Brian Bunting. several anti-apartheid bombings, but I wrote a letter for became disenchanted with its “feeble liber- the newspaper which alism” and left it]. I submitted to Bunting, arguing that THE DIVISIONS OF APARTHEID the ANC as a people’s One strange story is that one day when I liberation movement lived in Hillbrow... Detective-Sergeant should object to the Johan Coetzee - later General Johan Hungarian invasion Coetzee, the head of BOSS [the secret and I said that Chief police agency, the Bureau Of State Albert Luthuli [then Security] knocked on my door and he and head of the ANC], his policemen searched my flat and took all who I’d met and the books and shook them out to see if he respected very much, could find anything hidden in them. should lead such a He found a poem by Eugene Marais, MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 7 SOUTHERN AFRICA which is good for a winter day like today: “O ing to the liberation koud is die windjie en skraal / En blink in movements, was out die dof-lig en kaal...”: “Oh cold is the wind of the country at the and thin / And shining in the dusk and time of the 1963 naked...” He was surprised that I, a Jodse Rivonia raid that net- komunis [Jewish communist] read ted Nelson Mandela Afrikaans poetry. He asked me if I liked the and other top ANC poem and I said of course. He said “It’s a and SACP leaders. wonderful poem.” Lipman thus narrowly Then he found another poem, where I’d escaped becoming a written in the margins that it was Boy Scout long-term Robben rubbish: “Gee my ‘n roer in my regterhand; Island political prison- gee mey ‘n bok wat vlug oor die rand...” er. He said he never [“Give me a rifle in my right hand; give me discovered why a buck that flees over the ridge...”]. He said Coetzee tipped him he didn’t like that one either. He found my off. rugby clothes and asked me what team I [After fleeing into played for. I could see he was wondering exile in the United what someone like me was doing playing Kingdom where he his game. sat on the national He then found some papers that my wife council of the Beata had hidden under some shirts. He Campaign for Nuclear courses have sprung up after 1994 and looked at them, then looked at me, then Disarmament (CND). After being attracted they consume so much water, yet you are called out to his men that they were fin- to various libertarian socialist critiques of battling to get clean water to drink in your ished the search. I never knew why he did , he became an anarchist. homes. that. Perhaps under other circumstances, Lipman, who returned to South Africa in the I left the “official” liberation movements for Johan Coetzee and I could have been early 1990s after 30 years in exile and personal reasons, but I still support the real friends. wrote his memoirs, which will soon be pub- liberation. [President Thabo] Mbeki’s a Later at the TRC [Truth and lished by the ZACF, is a living link between clever man, but I don’t trust him as far as I Reconciliation Commission, held 10 years the generation that rejected the ANC and can throw this building. I’ve seen too many ago], I saw him there, but I didn’t talk to SACP’s false vision in the 1950s - and forced evictions from this supposed “world him, because I was there to support [ANC those like the ZACF who reject it today.] class city” of ours where those who have member] Marius Schoon whose wife remove those who they say make dirt or Jeanette and six-year-old daughter Katryn THE PARTY FEARS THE who don’t look smart. We live in a country were blown up in a bomb planted by PEOPLE in which the hopes of the past have been [Security Branch spy] Craig Williamson’s I always liked the phrase from the feminist pushed into the dirt. I guess I’d be seen as people... movement: “The personal is the political an “ultra-left” in Mbeki’s terms. [Lipman later said that Coetzee was the and the political is the personal.” In other My philosophy used to be the Christian one who had tipped him off that he was on words, your economic oppression is your “Do unto others as you’d have them do a list of militants targeted for arrest in what personal problem - but it is also a real pub- unto you,” which is not a bad rule for life. became the Rivonia Treason Trial. lic issue. For example, hundreds of golf But as an anarchist, to me, the most impor- Lipman, having passed on Coetzee’s warn- tant truth is that humans can manage their own affairs. You don’t need leaders; leaders are mostly danger- ous people. The reason that the Communist Party today is the same as any other party and behaves in the authoritarian fashion it does is because it doesn’t trust the people. I also believe that what you do to get what you want is as important as what you want. The newspapers are owned by big corporations and they tell the stories they want to hear. But although the newspapers have behaved disgust- ingly over the Zuma affair [the acquit- tal in May on a rape charge of ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma], there is no real difference between Mbeki and Zuma. It won’t be better under Zuma. I spent 35 years of my life supporting the liberation struggle but the ANC is now an anti-liberation movement. Now we need a real “People’s National Congress” - under people’s control - to take back real liberation forward. MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 8 SOUTHERN AFRICA Swaziland after the by MK (ZACF, Swaziland) Bombings and Michael Schmidt

during a PUDEMO tion of the Swazi capitalist state and its organised demon- replacement by decentralised popular stration recently." assemblies" of the working class, poor and The false claim peasantry. perhaps arose from a misreading of a INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY ZACF report from AT THE TREASON TRIAL Manzini on the Still, the bombings awoke the Swazi pop- bombing of an ulace from their traditional political timidity. armoured police After the bombings, the masses throughout "hippo" by young the country have now realised that with the comrades. support of internationalism, they can do Nevertheless, the anything against the system. It’s as if Times was profes- before the bombings, the majority had the sional enough to belief that the decisions of the royal family, publish in full a cabinet ministers and the parliament were denial of involve- always final. The proof of the system’s ment in the bomb- weakness is their over-reaction, threaten- ings by the ZACF - ing suspects with 25 years in prison for including the feder- treason. ation’s stated aims Those accused are: PUDEMO secretary- in the country: general Ignatius B. Dlamini (41), Mduduzi 1) The ZACF, E. Mamba (34) of Sipofaneni, Robert which operates in Nzima (40), Sicelo Mkhonta (22), Goodwill both South Africa Du Pont (19) of Matsetsa, Themba Mabuza and Swaziland, (32) of Mbelebeleni, Vusi Shongwe (37) of supports the pro- Sidzakeni, Kenneth Mkhonta (32), democracy move- Mfanawenkhosi Mtshali (31) and Sipho ment in Swaziland, Jele (36) of Mshikishiki, Mfanukhona but it does so real- In December and January, the royal dic- Nkambule (26), Sipho Hlophe (38) of ising that the Swazi political system can tatorship of Swaziland was rocked by a Gobholo, Wandile Dludlu (24) the president only be changed democratically by the bulk series of 17 petrol-bombings of state tar- of the University of Swaziland’s students’ of the Swazi popular classes organising en gets by pro-democracy militants. No-one representative council, Mphandlana masse to change it at level into was seriously injured in the attacks, but the Shongwe (43), and Gibholo Mfan’fikile a form acceptable to themselves. A few paranoid state overplayed its hand, arrest- Nkambule (16) of Nkwalini. people running around with petrol-bombs is ing several militants and charging them After this decision by the government, both insufficient to change the system and with treason, which normally carries the everyone sympathised with the accused is an anti-democratic substitution of shad- death penalty, for an offence that at most guys. But nobody voiced their disagree- owy unaccountable individuals for demo- amounted to damage to private property. ment with the decision because it came cratic mass action. from the "master", someone who looks like 2) Therefore, the ZACF as a whole has no and is known to be a monster, King Mswati THE ZACF POSITION ON policy of petrol-bombing state or capitalist III. The accused claim they were tortured INSURGENCY VERSUS MASS targets, and its membership in Swaziland in custody, as did Mduduzi Dlamini of have denied to our annual regional con- ORGANISING Mhlosheni, who may be forced to turn gress in December 2005 to having taken The independently-owned Times of state’s witness after confessing to treason part in any such bombings. The report car- Swaziland was quick to place the blame for in February. ried on our website of the attack on the the bombings on the Zabalaza Anarchist However, international interest in the trial hippo has been misread to suggest that Communist Federation (ZACF) which is of the alleged bombers - who the state has ZACF members participated in the attack. organised clandestinely in Swaziland - the so far failed to prove guilty - proved crucial. The reference to "comrade-controlled" ter- only significant left force in the country after On the final day in court, everyone was ritory simply implies territory controlled, at the collapse of the Swazi Communist Party, interested to see the power of the interna- least at the time, by comrades of the pro- but hardly an organisation "even mightier tional supporters of the accused compared democratic movement, not necessarily than PUDEMO [the outlawed main opposi- to the Swazi prosecutors and the different ZACF members. tion Peoples’ United Democratic way they treated Swazi citizens. 3) The ZACF remains committed to the Movement] or SWAYOCO [the Swaziland When bail was granted to the suspects on struggle for mass participatory democracy Youth Congress]". March 15, most of the close comrades and for all people resident in Swaziland (and In a January 15 article headlined friends of the accused came and congratu- more broadly in southern Africa) but, as "Zabalaza’s claims of bombing police van," lated us, expressing trust in the display of The Times of Swaziland article correctly the writer, Mduduzi Magagula, falsely international . And I trust that reported, "agitates to go beyond the usual claimed that the ZACF had "stoned and everybody realised that they can take direct petrol bombed a police vehicle in Manzini bourgeois betrayal and involve a destruc- MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 9 SOUTHERN AFRICA

- and all these suspicions were raised by company by the working class people. name of Zheng This shows that the masses of Swaziland Yong with more have started to regain their feet, and their than 2,000 sense of self-confidence to challenge the employees, whose autocracy. It also suggests that the factory was Imbokodvo vehicle is becoming con- burned to the tentious, is beginning to break down and ground. This fac- will eventually fade completely (the tory produces the Imbokodvo National Movement is the sole famous fashion legal political party, established in 1964 by brand Timberland. Mswati’s father, King Sobhuza II who out- Initially, the work- lawed all opposition in 1973). ers had embarked on a strike for a wage Fourthly, within the cabinet ministers, a increase and 30 days’ maternity leave. action against these leadership sects, scandal has arisen around the Minister of The case went to court and the courts whether state, business or so-called revo- Health and Social Welfare Mfofo performed their class role by declaring the lutionary. For PUDEMO’s stance on the Mkambule who organised some parliamen- strike illegal. The decision divided the strik- treason trial, read Swaziland: Smoking Gun tarians and citizens into a structure called ers, with those who feared the power of the or Replica? online at: www.anarkismo.net/ the Inhlava Forum, which purports to be law returning to work. But those who stood newswire.php?story_id=2412 merely a discussion forum, but which has by their rights as workers decided to take raised the eyebrows of the leadership who and, recognising their employ- THE MASSES START TO see it as the embryo of a political party. As ers as their immediate class enemy (capi- REGAIN THEIR a result, Mkambule was axed. tal, the monarchy and the state being more CONSCIOUSNESS - AND THE The Inhlava Forum’s Manifesto called for remote enemies), the source of their pover- ELITE START TO SQUABBLE a conventional bourgeois-democratic sepa- ty and exploitation, burned the factory ration of powers between "parliament", the down. AMONG HEMSELVES courts, the monarchy and Imbokodvo and This shows that the workers, a key com- The fact that the ruling class responded for a constituency-based representative ponent of Swazi society, for a long time with such a heavy hand to the bombings democracy that consults social organisa- politically inactive, have started to recog- forced a change in the people’s mentality. tions in pursuit of serving the needs of the nise their class enemy and start to do This change is proven by the five key Swazi majority. But it did not spell out how something to directly address the problem. developments. Firstly, there is much this would differ from the false representa- Recognizing that the oppressed people of movement on the ground: for example, the tion already entrenched as the Tinkhundla Swaziland have demands of their own, youth in Manzini are mobilising against the system. which we endorse provided they are pro- system of patriarchy that enables their eld- Under Tinkhundla, constituency MPs are gressive and democratic in nature, the ers to reserve all jobs for themselves with- nominated by loyalist local councils headed ZACF demands the following: out any going to the youth. by tribal chiefs and the "parliament" to which they are elect- 1) A general amnesty for all political prison- ed has nothing but ers; advisory powers. 2) Freedom of association, assembly and Last year, the High speech, and full trade union rights; Court ruled political 3) The abolition of the pseudo-democratic opposition parties Tinkhundla, Liqoqo (chieftains inner circle), "non-existent" after royal and state power structures and their they demanded a replacement by directly-democratic, say in the revised decentralised popular assemblies of the one-party constitu- working class, poor and peasantry which tion of 2005. Now will be horizontally federated across the an apparently bogus territory; political party, the 4) Equal rights for women; African United 5) Abolition of all chiefly privileges - espe- Democratic Party cially the power to steal land from the poor; (AUDP) has been 6) Land redistribution in both commercial allowed, under this and traditional sectors; non-party system, to 7) Free and democratic education, with stu- Furthermore, even the state-owned "negotiate" with the parasitic elite. Clearly dent representative councils at schools; media has now started to take action the elite is starting to feel the heat from the 8) A living wage campaign in the planta- against the corrupt national leadership - grassroots and is trying various strategies tions, factories and farms; throwing the spotlight, for instance, on a to squirm out of the trap it has painted itself 9) A ban on retrenchments, and well-paid cabinet minister who was caught with his into. decent jobs for all: and pants down with a young woman not his 10) an end to discrimination based on wife. Now the ZACF does not take a moral THAT’S WHAT WE’RE TALKING HIV/Aids status and free anti-retroviral position on adultery, but the point we want ABOUT! WORKING CLASS drugs for all people living with the virus. to make is rather that the media is no MASS DIRECT ACTION longer scared to take action against the rul- They can arrest us, torture ing sect that believes it is always right. Lastly, at Nhlangano in the southern part Thirdly, there are even cabinet ministers of Swaziland, the masses and the poor are us, and beat us. Still they’ll who are currently banned from leaving the doing things against their immediate class never ever defeat us! country after being suspected of corruption enemies. For example, there is one textile MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 10 SOUTHERN AFRICA A free working class needs free minds: May-BEE another day

Most workers know increasingly little KWAITO AND CLASS communities are presented as a hip about May Day. Many have simply forgot- STRUGGLE lifestyle choice, something to laugh about. ten it's meaning, and some are disillu- Instead of raising political issues, DJs Community radio stations were set up sioned. Instead of calling it "Our day" and Kwaito glorify the hardships of people, to convey the views of ordinary people, many mindlessly speak of and make a living - like soccer and "Worker's Day," and think "Long media stars - ambassadors weekend". And the bosses give between the rich and poor, earning workers time off, appearing lenient large amounts of money and mid- and generous, making the workers dle class lives. seem ungrateful, with no excuses Major companies move in Nike, to complain. Sasol, Coca Cola, Absa, Vodacom, Nokia, MMW etc. - as sponsors, GET RICH ON MAY DAY shaping people's minds, and leav- Taking advantage of the apathy, ing no stone unturned. The mass- enterprising bosses cash in on soc- es, particularly the youth, who cer events, brewery production and adore these stars, take them as other activities. They benefit from role models. But few can make it the pain of workers and their com- out of poverty, they end up frustrat- munities, and take control of the ed, with time wasted and nothing minds and lives of the masses, and achieved during a vital period of distance them from discussing - their lives. Rather than explore, and questioning - their endless mis- improvise, demand and enjoy life to its fullest, they become mentally eries. allowing previously disadvantaged oppor- crippled and caught up in social and family Yet the workers are the ones who pro- tunities to express themselves. The Kwaito demands. duce everything, yet have neither control music style seemed to be a promising nor ownership of anything. We own our weapon to raise issues and awareness, labour, but without food, cannot exist at all. because of its origin within black townships UNEMPLOYMENT AND LOW So, we are bound to sell our labour for next and its reflection of our lives in the commu- WAGES to nothing, to the bosses who control nities. Those who are unemployed are faced everything we need to survive. But this has not happened. Kwaito has with a pitiless situation of mental and phys- And the bosses have made it impossi- been commercialised, and has nothing to ical slavery. Their families close doors on ble for the working class people to think do with advancing the minds and lives of them, calling them loafers who belong and do things independently through laws the people. The everyday hardships of nowhere in society. They are driven to the and media under their control. They job market, with its crumbs and use these as tools to protect and exploitation. Like sheep, they wait at advance their interest at our expense. the slaughtering pens, hoping to be Social needs are distorted by profit and next under the knife when the bosses power; the wealth of society is not used need new blood. to keep us alive, happy and healthy, Many dream of work, and slaves to but to divide us. capitalism. The bosses appear as In recent years many entertainment kindly people who care and doing enterprises have been booming, partic- everything to save lives by doling out a ularly in the south of Johannesburg tiny number of jobs. And their mask of region. The youth and the unemployed sympathy soon falls away. are drawn into immoral activities, and Workers are thrown on the street accept highly exploitative jobs just to for asking for clarity on contracts, and make sure they don't miss the week- the other workers learn to take care ends, especially the long ones. never to slightly upset their masters, Drinking beer and being a soccer because there are hundreds other fan has become a national hobby, and unemployed workers waiting and used as a sign of patriotism: "love your starving, ever ready to jump to slaugh- country and be proud of the black gov- tering pens. The workers fight ernment". Even commemorations of amongst each other, and the bosses human rights milestones like become kings and queens, on guard Sharpeville, June 16 and Women's 24 hrs a day. The governments back Day get drawn into the circle of up the bosses, and the workers unthinking entertainment, escape from demands for safety and a living wage hard realities and empty patriotism. are drowned out by the bosses' MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 11 SOUTHERN AFRICA demands for higher profits - despite and squatter camps where migrants from xenophobia, but also with the view that the already having sucked the workers dry. different parts of the countryside converge ANC is a Xhosa party, and that its capitalist The bosses are automatically excused to find jobs. Many treat their shacks as policies were somehow caused by Xhosas for job losses and the workers are the temporary camps, and long to return to the - rather than the ruling class. scapegoats. We are constantly reminded country. The chiefs remain powerful, and the to protect our jobs, and avoid trouble, The mindset of ethnic rivalry and the politicians use ethnicity and other legacies because getting a job is almost impossible. belief in a return to the country makes it dif- of the past to lead the working class astray. Workers' rights are walked over: the boss- ficult for these communities to challenge This allows them to implement their neo- es alone decide, because if their liberal policies, without collective interests are not respected they will questioning from the masses who leave the country; other bosses vote these crooks into power. And won't set their foot in the country. all of this is presented as in the ordi- This would leave the workers alone, nary people's interest. and stranded, with no one to turn to It is called democracy and gen- and ask "Please, I want to be your der-equality because a few wealthy slave". black people drive fancy cars and Wages are cut, as an excuse to mingle with wealthy Whites. The employ more workers, or as an people are told anyone can get rich: excuse to retain existing workers. "just listen to the your black govern- Workers' confidence is shattered, ment"; if you are poor, it is your own and their basic needs become fault. unthinkable: women give birth at work to keep their jobs safe. FREE YOUR MIND These mental illusions - "get rich IMMIGRANTS AND DIVID- quick," "the immigrants steal jobs," ED LABOUR "the struggle is over" - must be iden- It is common for bosses to pre- tified and rooted out so we can fer workers coming from countries become healthier and strong again. devastated by civil wars and Surely we need to take care of famine. These workers are desper- things that benefit our communities ate, rightless, often "illegal," and at the end of the day, and leave easy prey to bosses who can avoid aside anything that has a possible any responsibilities to cover for threat to our lives. workers' health and safety. The Surely the working class can immigrant workers are not citizens, take back its traditions, with commu- and the labour laws do not apply. nity soccer teams and genuine com- This way bosses don't have to munity media controlled collectively worry about the precautions and by the people. These must be used the government policies affecting our lives. safety equipment and measures expected as weapons to defend and protect our- Ideas like " This is not our home, we are by the labour laws. selves from the enemy. only here to work, as long as we have a Because of these workers' extreme Every human being must know and be place to sleep," and "There's no use to fight desperation, they have to accept anything aware on the tricks of the class enemy. for people who'll turn their back on you the boss decides. They have no one to Those who choose to become traitors must tomorrow, and "We cannot be ruled by turn to. The government plays its part, do so - but not at our expense. such-and-such nationality" are common smashing any possibilities for these people enough. Such sentiments were the grim to raise their heads, by randomly harassing centre of the cloud that hovered above the and arresting them for identity documents. ANC versus IFP massacres in the 1990s. South African workers are pitted These ethnic divisions were also used against the immigrants, told that they are during the rise of the mining industry, lazy, and instructed to "ask Mandela" for a where jobs were allocated on an ethnic job. In a situation of mass unemployment, basis, and workers were housed in differ- this provides breeding grounds for xeno- ent ethnic hostels. People from a particu- phobia and hatred from South African lar ethnic group were, for example, often workers against their fellow workers from mine police. The chiefs played a role too, neighbouring countries. Blaming immi- recruiting people, providing written permis- grants, rather than bosses, for their misery, sion to work on the mines, and the govern- some South African workers call the immi- ment did not allow the workers to settle in grants insulting names, and inform the town. They were always reminded that police who the immigrants are, and where they belonged in the countryside and were they stay. This behaviour is driven by the harassed and arrested by the police for jealousy and hatred that is the by-product pass offences. of poverty. So working class people's identities were deeply shaped by where they came ETHNIC CONFLICTS from, and the language they spoke. But this is not only happening to the Whether immigrant, or Zulu, or Xhosa, the immigrants. Amongst the African workers worker often saw fellow-workers as aliens there is a good deal of prejudice and dis- stealing jobs, as traitors who stole the trust, especially in the townships, hostels national wealth. Today we see this with MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 12 ANALYSIS The New American Imperialism in Africa by Michael Schmidt

AMERICA MUSCLES INTO Senegal, Ghana, Benin, Togo and Nigeria. tives began training spies for four unnamed “FRENCH TERRITORY” In January this year, the United Nations North African countries - believed to be extended the mandate of Operation Morocco and Egypt and perhaps also Former colonial power maintained Licorne until December. Algeria and Tunisia. the largest foreign military presence in But piggybacking off the French military It is also conducting training of the armed Africa since most countries attained sover- presence in Africa are a series of new for- forces of countries such as Chad and in eignty in the 1950s and 1960s. But France eign military and policing initiatives by the September last year, Bush told the United reduced its armed presence on the conti- and the European Union. It Nations Security Council that the US nent by two thirds at the end of the last cen- appears the US has devised a new Monroe would, over the next five years, train tury, though it continues to intervene in a Doctrine for Africa (the term has become a 40,000 “African peace-keepers” to “pre- muscular and controversial fashion. For synonym for the doctrine of US interven- serve justice and order in Africa”. The US example, under a 1961 “mutual defence” tions in what it saw as its Latin American Embassy in Pretoria said at the time that pact, French forces were allowed to be per- “back yard”). the US had already trained 20,000 “peace- manently stationed in Ivory Coast: the 500- Under the George W Bush regime’s “War keepers” in 12 African countries in the use strong 43rd Marine Infantry Battalion is on Terror” doctrine, the US has designated of “non-lethal equipment”. based at Port Bouet next to the Abidjan air- a swathe of territory that curves across the And now, while the US is downscaling port. globe from Colombia and Venezuela in and dismantling military bases in Germany When the civil war erupted there in South America, through Africa’s Maghreb, and South Korea, it is relocating these mil- September 2002, France added a “stabili- Sahara and Sahel regions into the Middle itary resources to Africa and the Middle sation force”, now numbering some 4,000 East and Central Asia as the “arc of insta- East in order to “combat terrorism” and under Operation Licorne, which was aug- bility” where both real and supposed terror- “protect oil resources”. mented in 2003 by 1,500 Economic ists may find refuge and training. In Africa, new US bases are being built in Community of West African States (ECOW- In Africa, which falls under the US mili- Djibouti, Uganda, Senegal, and São Tomé AS) “peacekeep- tary’s European Command (EUCOM), the & Príncipe. These “jumping-off points” will ers” drawn US has struck agreements with France to station small permanent forces, but with from share its military bases. For example: the ability to launch major regional military there is now a US Marine Corps base in adventures, according to the US-based Djibouti at the French base of Camp Associated Press. An existing US base at Lemonier with more than 1,800 Entebbe, Uganda, under the one-party Marines stationed there, allegedly regime of US ally Yoweri Museveni, already for “counter-terrorism” opera- “covers” East Africa and the Great Lakes tions in the horn of Africa, region. At Dakar in Senegal, the US is the Middle East and busy upgrading an airfield. East Africa - as well as controlling the SOUTH AFRICA SECRETLY Red Sea ship- JOINS THE “WAR ON TERROR” ping lanes. Governments with whom the US has con- But the US cluded military pacts include Gabon, presence Mauritania, Rwanda, Guinea and South involves more than Africa. The US also has a “second piggybacking off Guantanamo” in the Indian Ocean where French bases. alleged terror suspects kidnapped in Africa, In 2003, US the Middle East or Asia can be detained intelligence and interrogated without trial: a detention opera- camp, refuelling point and bomber base situated on the British- colonised MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 13 ANALYSIS

Chagos Archipelago island of Diego on Africa, had no diplomatic experience. massacre of 767 villagers in Guatemala in Garcia, an island from which the indige- Instead, she once served as a politico-mili- 1981 were committed by graduates of the nous inhabitants were forcibly removed to tary planner with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in School. And yet the School of the Mauritius. the Department of Defence and as senior Americas Watch, an organisation trying to In South Africa’s case, while it is unlikely director for African affairs at the National shut WHINSEC down, is on an FBI “anti- there will ever be US bases established Security Council. According to Fraser’s terrorism” watch-list. because the strength of the country’s mili- online biography, she “worked on African So Africa should be concerned if the tary, the SANDF, makes that unnecessary, security issues with the State Department’s African Centre for Strategic Studies has in 2005, the country quietly signed on to international military education training pro- similar objectives, even if the School of the the US’s Africa Contingency Operations grammes”. Americas Watch cannot confirm these Training Assistance (ACOTA) programme fears. And there is more: we’ve all heard of which is aimed at integrating African armed IS THERE A MURDEROUS the “Standby Force” being devised by the forces into US strategic (read: imperialist) “SCHOOL OF THE AFRICAS”? African Union (AU), a coalition of Africa’s objectives. authoritarian neo-liberal regimes. But the Those programmes include the “Next South Africa, by signing on to ACOTA as AU has also set up, under the patronage of Generation of African Military Leaders” offi- its 13th African member, effectively joined the Organisation for Security and Co-oper- cers’ course run by the shadowy African the American “War on Terror”. ACOTA ation in Europe (which also covers North Centre for Strategic Studies, based in started life as a “humanitarian” programme America, Russia and Central Asia), the Washington, which has “chapters” in vari- run by EUCOM out of Stuttgart, Germany, African Centre for the Study and Research ous African countries including South in 1996. After the 9-11 attacks, the of Terrorism. Africa. The Centre appears to be a sort of Pentagon reorganised ACOTA and gave it The Centre is based in Algiers, Algeria, at “School of the Africas” similar to the infa- more teeth. the heart of a murderous regime that has mous “School of the Americas” based at Today, its makeup is more itself “disappeared” some 3,000 obviously aggressive rather people between 1992 and 2003 than defensive. According to (according to Amnesty Pierre Abromovici, writing in the International: equivalent to the July 2004 edition of Le Monde Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, Diplomatique about rumours but ignored by the African left). that South Africa was preparing The Centre’s director, to sign ACOTA - a full year Abdelhamid Boubazine told me before it did so - “ACOTA that it would not only be a think- includes offensive training, par- tank and trainer of “anti-terror- ticularly for regular infantry ism” judges, but that it would units and small units modelled also have teeth, providing train- on special forces... In ing in “specific armed interven- Washington, the talk is no tion” in support of the conti- longer of non-lethal weapons... nent’s regimes. the emphasis is on ‘offensive’ Anneli Botha, the senior co-operation”. researcher on terrorism at the The real nature of ACOTA is Pretoria-based Institute for perhaps indicated by the career Security Studies, said, howev- of the man heading it up, er, that only 10% of terrorist Colonel Nestor Pino-Marina, “a attacks in Africa were on armed Cuban exile who took part in forces, and only 6% on state the 1961 failed US landing in figures and institutions, though the Bay of Pigs,” Abromovici wrote. “He is the latter were “focussed”. She warned Fort Benning in Georgia. In 2001, it was also a former special forces officer who that a major cause of African terrorism was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute served in Vietnam and Laos. During the “a growing void between government and for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). Reagan era he belonged to the Inter- security forces on the one hand and local Founded in 1946 in Panama, the School American Defence Board, and, in the communities on the other”. Caught in the of the Americas has trained some 60,000 1960s, he took part in clandestine opera- grip of misery and poverty, many people Latin American soldiers, including notori- tions against the Sandanistas. He was are recruited into rebel armies, even ous neo-Nazi Bolivian dictator Hugo accused of involvement in drug-trafficking though few of these offer any sort of real Banzer, infamous Panamanian dictator and to fund arms sent to Central America” to solution. drug czar Manuel Noriega, Argentine dicta- prop up pro-Washington right-wing dicta- The Centre in Algiers operates under the tors Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola torships. AU’s Algiers Convention on Terrorism, whose regime murdered 30,000 people Clearly, Pino-Marina is a fervent “anti- which is notoriously vague on what defines between 1976 and 1983, numerous death- communist” - whether that means opposing terrorism, opening the door for a wide squad killers, right up to Efrain Vasquez rebellious States or popular insurrections. range of non-governmental, protest, grass- and Ramirez Poveda who staged a failed He also sits on the executive of a strange roots, civic, and militant organisations to be US-backed coup in Venezuela in 2002. outfit within the US military called the targeted for elimination by the new counter- Over the decades, graduates of the Cuban-American Military council, which terrorism forces. It would be naïve to think School have murdered and tortured hun- aims at installing itself as the government that bourgeois democracy - which passed dreds of thousands of people across Latin of Cuba should the US ever achieve a South Africa’s equally vaguely-defined America, specifically targeting trade union forcible “regime-change” there. Protection of Constitutional Democracy leaders, grassroots activists, students, The career of the US ambassador who from Terrorism and Other Related Activities guerrilla units, and political opponents. concluded the ACOTA pact with South Act into law last year - will protect the work- The murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero Africa is also an indicator of US intentions. ing class, peasantry and poor from state of Nicaragua in 1980 and the “El Mozote” Jendayi Fraser, now Bush’s senior advisor terrorism. MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 14 ANALYSIS Is China Africa's New Imperialist Power? by Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt The African tour of Chinese Premier Wen growth and cheap goods - overseen by the mite attacking their bosses), and multina- Jiabao, centred on fostering trade relations Chinese Communist Party, the CCP - may tional sweat-shop operations such as Nike between China and African and Arabian see the country overtake the US as the and McDonalds setting up operations in countries, highlights an important recent largest manufacturing power worldwide by special “economic exclusion zones”. development. 2010. While terror and repression fuel China’s in Anglophone Africa This capitalist boom has been built on the economy, the country’s capitalist ruling have always seen Britain and France as back of a brutal suppression of the working class looks outwards for cheap labour, raw the dominant imperialist powers on the class and peasantry. Strikes are illegal, materials and fuel supplies. Africa, eco- continent, but other forces are emerging dissidents are murdered, and the top 20% nomically sidelined in the world economic from the shadows to challenge their contin- of households earn 42% of total urban crisis starting in the 1970s, has suddenly ued post-colonial become hot prop- dominance - and it’s erty. In 2005, the not just the United overall African States. economy grew at Southern African 5% - it’s fastest in anarchist-commu- decades - as nists would normal- demand for ly see the former African raw mate- British colony of rials shot up, with South Africa as act- Chinese demand ing as a sub-imperi- playing a key role. alist power on The 1980s and behalf of the big 1990s saw Africa capitalist powers fall off the invest- and its own capital- ment map, with ist ruling class in Africa getting less the region, a sort of than 1% of all pri- regional policeman vate direct invest- as it were: if British A Factory in China ment to “third interests in world” countries in Swaziland are threatened by the democra- incomes while the poorest 20% receive just 1995. Chinese (and South African) capital- cy movement, we are sure that South 6%. ists have increasingly taken the gap, and African military might will intervene (as it There has been a sharp rise in class the trend is reversing. did against Lesotho in 1998) to shore up struggle, with strikes rising from 8,150 in the Swazi elite. 1992 to 120,000 in 1999. Last year resi- CHINA IN AFRICA But the international scene is changing dents of the village of Huaxi, Zhejiang China clandestinely traded with apartheid and today we can chart the rise of the province, battled the police and local offi- South Africa despite its funding of liberation People’s Republic of China as one of cials in hand-to-hand combat in April and movements in the country and in neigh- Africa’s most powerful kingmakers, drove them off. In December, hundreds of bouring countries like Zimbabwe. Formal whether backing the genocidal regime in villagers armed with dynamite and petrol- relations with South Africa were re-estab- Khartoum, or embarking on large-scale bombs attacked police in Dongzhou, lished in 1998. building projects including the new Luanda Guandong province, after police killed 20 According to Martin Davies, the director airport (in exchange for 10,000 barrels of villagers who had protested against land for the Centre for Chinese Studies at crude oil a day) and the Number One seized to build a power plant. A source Stellenbosch University (and a business- Stadium in Kinshasa, a city that with its close to the CCP central committee man with interests in Shanghai), last year, giant gold statue of a fat, Mao-like Laurent- revealed last year that some 3-million trade between China and Africa soared to Desire Kabila is looking like a city on the workers took part in protests last year. US$35-million, with Chinese investment Yangtze River instead of the Congo (the This is a country where the official month- primarily centred on the oil industry, espe- DRC's mimicry of the Chinese national ly minimum wage is US$63 (compare that cially in Nigeria, Angola, Sudan and flag, before adopting a new flag this year, to US$45 to US$55 in rural and urban Equatorial Guinea. was too obvious to miss). Vietnam, respectively, levels won by Grim conditions in these countries have Vietnamese workers last year by embark- hardly worried the Chinese dictatorship: ing on wildcat strikes against their commu- whether it is the total lack of democracy in Unlike the old Soviet Union, China has nist bosses), which has probably the worst Equatorial Guinea, the state-driven race- managed to engineer a successful transi- mining fatality record in the world (the offi- war in Sudan, or the fact that the blatant tion from closed State-capitalism (the cial Xhinhua News Agency figure is 5,986 theft of oil wealth by the ruling cliques in Maoist era) towards an export-orientated dead in coal mines alone in 2005, resulting Angola and Nigeria has fuelled conflict, neo-liberal model. Its rapid economic in some cases in miners armed with dyna- with UNITA and the Movement for the MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 15 ANALYSIS

Emancipation of the Niger Delta, respec- year when members of their affiliated SA controversial Three Dams project on the tively trying to win back a slice of the pie. Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union Yangtze that will displace 1-million people, So it will come as no surprise that demonstrated against the fact that the con- “is a construction engineers’ dream”. This Chinese helicopter gunships have been gress’ red T-shirts were made in China. is a good thing, it seems: “If China is to used against civilians in Darfur, according Many mainland Chinese textile operations remain a sustainable economy, it has to to human rights activists. China - which have relocated to Africa in order to by-pass speed the transition from a rural to an maintains an electronic listening post on European and American quotas on urban society, from an agricultural to an the Comores - gave Sudan massive mili- Chinese imports, but they have often industrial economy.” tary aid between 1996 and 2003, including brought with them brutal working condi- Chief state spin-doctor Joel Netshitenzhe jet fighter aircraft, shipped tons of arms to tions. At the same time, COSATU and its claimed in the same book that “South Ethiopia and Eritrea prior to the outbreak of ally, the SACP continue to praise China as Africa and China share mutual goals as their border war in 1998, and has sold jets, a socialist country. both countries are committed to ensuring a military aircraft and radio-jamming equip- Neither position is correct. COSATU’s better life for all their citizens. Both aim to ment (to prevent outside broadcasts being “Buy South Africa” campaign will do noth- lower the levels of poverty.” Given the heard inside the country) to the ing to stop cheap Chinese imports. It pro- state-enforced poverty of the Chinese peo- Zimbabwean regime. motes anti-Chinese racism and feeds into ple, one wonders what Netshitenzhe has in the poisonous xenophobia that afflicts the mind when he praised the role of the SOUTH AFRICA local working class. It also suggests that Chinese state propaganda machine for China has greased its imperialist wheels all South Africans, capitalists and workers “the rigour and focus with which China in Africa by scrapping over US$1-billion in alike, have a common interest. Nothing is uses information to mobilise people around debt owed by 32 African countries and the further from the truth: South African capital- common objectives and a shared vision…” SABC reported this year that South Africa’s ists are not the friends of South African A chill settles in one’s bones when one trade with China is growing at 26% annual- workers. reads him hailing the “diversity of voices” in ly. Further, the ANC’s GEAR policy promotes the Chinese media, while studiously ignor- South Africa is China’s largest trade part- free trade, so there is no prospect of the ing state censorship and the complicity of ner in Africa, with trade wave of imports subsiding in meaningful Western search engines such as Yahoo in growing 400% over the helping China jail politi- last six years. South cal dissidents. Africa supplies iron ore The view of SACP and other raw materials, deputy secretary gener- and receives manufac- al and one-man think- tured goods - and a new tank Jeremy Cronin is trade agreement will see even more revealing. China limit textile exports The SACP, terrified that but strengthen co-opera- the bubble of “real, exist- tion in areas like nuclear ing socialism” was energy. Meanwhile, washing down the drain South Africa’s trade with with the restructuring of traditional partners like state-owned enterprises Britain is shrinking. (SOEs) in China, sent a However, the impor- delegation there in 2001 tance of relations with to check things out. China is relatively limited, Cronin and his delega- given the strength and tion were clearly wowed diversity of South African Chinese Workers Flocking by their CCP hosts: he capitalism. On the other quotes a 1999 central hand, Chinese invest- to the Cities committee document ment looms very large in that “The public-owner- weak economies like those of Equatorial terms. COSATU is left with making futile ship economy, which includes the State- Guinea. China’s interest in securing direct appeals to the morals and patriotism of the owned economy, is the economic basis of raw material supplies - for example, oil out- South African ruling class - appeals that will China’s socialist system… China must side the OPEC cartel - means we can achieve nothing. South African capitalists always rely on and bring into full play the expect these relations to intensify, and are developing a pact with Chinese capital- important role of the SOEs to develop the African elites to solidify their links with the ists: if these rivals can unite, why can’t the productive forces of the socialist society East Asian power. Africa now provides working class learn the lesson, and defend and realise the country’s industrialisation around 30% of China’s oil imports. Chinese labour? and modernisation…” China, it seems, is socialist as well as capitalist! What are we SOLIDARITY OR XENOPHOBIA THE “CORE OF ENTERPRISES” to make of such confused thinking? “To manage SOEs well in general, efforts But what does all this investment in guns, As we have noted in these pages before, must be made to establish a leadership ore and oil mean? COSATU has reacted both GEAR and NEPAD aim at attracting system and organisational and managerial with alarm to a deal struck between the more trade and more foreign investment, systems in them that conform to the law of South African and Chinese governments, and China fits both bills. Meanwhile, the market economy and China’s actual sit- warning that with the country flooded with Intelligence Minister (and ageing Young uation, to strengthen the building of their cheap imported Chinese clothing (a 480% Communist League politburo member) leadership, to give play to the Party organ- increase since 2003), the already-fragile Ronnie Kasrils enthused in a glossy book isations as the political core of enterprises, domestic textile industry (62,000 jobs lost China Through the Third Eye: South and to adhere to the principle of relying on in the same period) could collapse. African Perspectives - funded by the China the working class wholeheartedly…” And COSATU leaders were embarrassed last Chamber of Commerce and Industry in SA - that China’s building boom, including the “rely” they do, for China’s miracle is built MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 16 ANALYSIS

“wholeheartedly” on exploitation and terror! China has a proud tradition of class strug- unionist militants were driven underground gle - and this does not mean the CCP and and Makhnovist-styled guerrillas such as A CHANGING OF THE GUARD? Mao! Back in 1913, anarcho-syndicalists Chu Cha Pei were forced to retreat into the So, Chinese communism is finally built the first trade unions in Canton, rising hills in Yunnan province from where they revealed as nothing more than a moderni- to challenge reformist and communist continued to harry the new ruling class sation programme guided by author- headed by Mao and his entourage itarian marketing and management of warlords and state-capitalists. gurus who double as Party bosses! As Africa increasingly becomes the And the Party itself is revealed as a back-yard of China’s oil-driven clique of commissars that rides on imperialism, one has to ask firstly, the working class! whether the government will try to Cronin admits that the delegation mimic the worst aspects of China’s “did not have sufficient time to enforced civil peace, a development gauge the degree to which” the cen- that would prove a serious chal- tral committee’s stated commitment lenge to our own working class. to workers’ “democratic decision- making” and “status as masters of ANARCHISM OR their own enterprises” - capitalist We have no interest on following enterprises steered by the party - those leftists who hope for an end to but he thought it significant that “capitalist restoration” in China: these cheap words had been put on China has been capitalist since Mao paper. took power, and any Chinese revo- Cronin lauds the regime for the lutionary movement must jettison “fairly clear socialist agenda [that] Marxism and its Maoist variant. Nor shines through…” “There is no rea- can we agree that China is - in fact - son,” he huffs, “why markets should “socialist,” despite what SACP lead- not exist under socialism” - a liberal ers may think. interpretation that allows for the Capitalism is a class system, and a coexistence of “the emergent small class system means class struggles. and medium privately owned service Sooner or later China’s working sector”. Where exactly “socialism” class will rediscover its proud fight- “shines” is not clear. ing tradition and take charge of its From such mixed economic think- own affairs to the exclusion of para- ing arises a confused politics, based sitic Party leaders and capitalists - on industrial and market require- what is called in Chinese ments rather than people’s needs, wuzhengfgu gonchan, or common where in Cronin’s view, wage production without government, in a increases in the public sector, word, anarchist-communism - and adopted purely to stimulate market bury the CCP. demand qualify as “socialist”. But until that day, there is a more So what we have is an ANC/SACP serious question we have to ask, government that is not only increas- one with implications beyond our ingly trading with, but ideologically borders: will China replace Britain as inclining itself towards, the world’s South Africa’s imperialist power, a last large totalitarian state, a state that is so unionism in all the big industrial centres changing of the guard, so to speak - lead- blatantly capitalist and simultaneously anti- such as Shanghai in the 1920s. Armed ing to South Africa embarking on military labour that Cronin’s skill as a poet fails to anarchist peasant movements controlled expeditions in Africa to protect Chinese gild the brutal reality. The SACP’s state- huge swathes of territory in Fukien capitalist interests. All serious anti-imperi- capitalist thinking has finally manage to province and in Kirin province, Manchuria, alists must consider and plan for the possi- find, in the Chinese example, a happy mar- in the 1930s and anarchist guerrillas fought bility of Africa becoming the future battle- riage with neo-liberalism. alongside communists in the resistance to ground between US-backed Western and Japanese imperialism in the 1940s. Chinese expansionist interests, and unite PROTECTIONISM OR CLASS But after the Maoist coup d’état of 1949, the continent’s people in a battle against China’s estimated 10,000 anarchist trade STRUGGLE the oil barons. Chinese goods are cheap because Chinese labour is cheap. If COSATU wants to protect local jobs - and show its Southern African commitment to the international working class struggle - it should support trade union organising in China, and step up the Anarchism Online class struggle at home and in southern Africa. Neo-liberal capitalism thrives on pit- Links to local groups, education material, ting cheap labour in one country against email discussion lists, PDF leaflets for you even chepaer labour in another, in a race to the bottom. The only way out is interna- to distribute etc. etc. tional solidarity and class struggle, starting with a struggle for an international mini- mum wage and universal union rights. www.zabalaza.net MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 17 NEWS Defend Libertarian Centre for Studies and Investigation

in Morocco by Pat M (trans)

What follows is an appeal from the Spanish CGT for solidarity with a group of Moroccan anarchists that they have been in contact with for some time. It includes a translation from the French of the original appeal from Fillial Brahim by the translator and further translations from the Spanish and French for English speaking readers. The text suggested by the CGT in French is the proper one to send to the Moroccan authorities as few of them could read English, assuming they can read at all. The translation of the CGT's header follows: For further information on the situation in Morocco please communicate in French with Fillial at [email protected] For the background to the project see ‘Project for the creation of a Libertarian Studies & Research Centre in Morocco’ at http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=1206 Pat the M., Translator

Solidarity with the CLER (Libertarian Centre for Studies and Investigation) of Boumaalne-Dades

The CGT has supported in solidarity a The violation of legality and of group of libertarian Moroccans who have citizens' rights to create a cen- been trying to create a Libertarian Centre tre of accusation,research of Investigation and Studies in Boumaine and defense of human Dades, in the province of Ouarzazate in the rights in this marginalized south of Morocco. The project is to create region of the country. a library, a meeting place for speeches and Maintenant' work for sociological investigation, espe- We demand: (Here and Now) cially concerning the collectivist and feder- Respect for the law we have tried alist traditions of los imazighhem (untrans- of authorization that to resume our latable Spanish word for Berbers) permits the funcyion- work, this time by an (Berbers) with a non-racist and libertarian ing of the Libertarian enrichment of the journal's vision. Centre of Studies experience by developing a The local authorities have rejected a and Research in centre of libertarian studies and dossier enclosed and sent via registered Boulmane Moroccoresearch in Boulmane Dades in mail for its legalisation. They completely Dades. Ouarzazate Province. This is independent refused the appeal for legalisation when of the periodical, but it is a continuation of there was already a headquarters prepared the same logic of denunciation, research for the beginning of the project. and defence of human rights in this mar- For all of this we (the CGT) ask from ginalised region of the country. We have you a massive mailing of faxes with this chosen this place in view of the huge prob- text or a similar one to the governor of the The fax numbers for protests follow in lems that meet people, because the organ- province: the original text. isations (union or political) that are not rev- olutionary become reactionary. They facil- Cher Camarades, itate the exploitation and domination of the An English translation of the French Voici une traduction de l'email de Fillali dictatorial regime, a regime that wants a original from the CGT follows. Please Brahim a l'anglais. C'est possible que elle democratic facade to make the world send any faxes in French. sera utile pour les camarades de l'Afrique believe that the people participate in the du Sud. management of their everyday life through Monsieur le Gouverneur de la province de their representatives who are active in the Ourzazate, Et aussi a Fillali: bosom of their organisations, side by side In the face of the attitude of the governing Voulez-vous les actions de la solidarite with the State, "modern and democratic". circle (local authorities) of Boumaine avec votre lutte ? Qu'est-ce c'est pouvons- These illusions in which nobody can right- Dades, province of Ouarzazate who have nous faire vous aider ? ly believe, we want to unmask, to analyse, refused to receive the deposition of a to criticise and, above all, to give a libertar- dossier on the Centre of Libertarian Studies ian alternative of thought and action for the and Research in Boumaine without any From Fillali Brahim: better way that we believe this people explanation for this refusal. deserves. We want to denounce: After the affair of the journal 'Ici et The journal 'Ici et Maintenant' was a first MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 18 NEWS step in this view, and the libertarian centre We declare that the citizenship card and is the road marked out for our will and legit- the passport do not make the individual a imate conviction that this Earth does not citizen, and that citizenship depends on The fax numbers to send belong to thieves, and our will for the well dignity and human rights. protests to are as follows. The being and joy of our people. We are following are in Spanish, as per touched daily by what we see of the evi- Here is the original French text from the the CGT; dence of the permanent crisis that we CGT and the addresses to send faxes to: crash into. Gobernador de la provincia de For this reason we set up the dossier of Le Gouverneur de la Province de the centre in accordance with the law of Ourrzazate: Devant l'attitude du president Ouarzazate: civil liberties of Morocco that permit us the- du cercle de Boumaine Dades, province de Fax # 00-212-44-88-25-68 oretical work (but in reality nothing that is Ourzazate, qui a refuse meme recevoir le not pro-State and not faithful to slavery), depot du dossier sur un Centre Libertaire Ministro de Justica: Fax # 00-212-37-72-37-10 and we have given these to the president d'Etudies et de Rechercheres a Boumaine of the 'Boumaine Circle' ("authority"-PM). sans aucene explication des motifs de ce He definitely heard us explain to him what fefus. Ministro del Interior: Fax # 00-212-37-76-74-04 we had to say about the centre and we gave him all the necessary documents. NOUS VOULONS DENCOUNCER: The president said to us that he could not Con copia a give us the receipt of deposition of the file La violation de la legalite et des droits [email protected] because, according to him, he didn't know a creer un centre d'etudes de denonci- Please send copies to what a research centre was. We respond- ation, de recxherche et de la recherche [email protected] ed that we weren't responsible for his igno- et de la defense des droits humains rance and that the law was clear in this dans cette region marginallee du pays. domain. We told him that we were going to Le respect de la legalite et l'authorisa- send him the refused file by registered tionn qui permet le fontionnement du mail. He responded that if the file was sent Centre Libertaire d'Etudes et de in that way it would be refused again. Recherches a In fact that is what happened. We sent it, Boulmane and after 21 days the file Dades. was returned to us full of refused stamps, without any reason for this bizarre refusal. MM That was how things hap- pened. Now we are going to Rabat, to the headquarters of the National Press Union of Morocco, SNPM, in order to get permission to hold a press conference on May 6th to explain to everybody this contradiction between the official slogans and the real- ity of human rights throughout the South of this country. It means that a citizen is without any right of accom- modation for freedom of expression. I will present the demand to the union headquarters and await the response. I will send you the response of the SNPM on the subject. Finally we continue to vigorously denounce the attitude of the local authori- ties of Boumaine Dades, Ourzazate. We declare that have full rights to do our research, rights that were stolen from us. We address this appeal to all who strug- gle for a better way. To help us be able to do our work in the face of everyday hard- ship and this desert that aims to depopu- late the world. We refuse to accept our poverty and our suffering. That would cause symptoms of a sick situation of accepting the situation made for us. We would end up fighting ourselves.

Original article taken from http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=3249 MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 19 ANALYSIS

Especifismo: The Anarchist Praxis of Building Popular Movements and Revolutionary Organisation in South America by Adam Weaver

Within the broad anarchist movement, we stand in the tradition advocating the need for an organised and disciplined anar- chist political organisation. The "Alliance" in the First International was an early example of this model, but it was one of many such forces. In 1926, , and others restated this approach in the classic "Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists,"* perhaps the most important text of twentieth century anarchism. In South America - a region with many similarities to southern Africa - this tradition has been developed as , and it is for this reason that we carry this important piece.

Throughout A BRIEF HISTORICAL (Krebs). While these different currents all the world, PERSPECTIVE have specific characteristics that devel- anarchist oped from the movements and countries in While only coming onto the stage of Latin involvement within mass which they originated, they all share a com- American anarchism within the last few movements, as well as mon thread that crosses movements, eras, decades, the ideas inherent within the development of and continents. Especifismo touch on a historic thread run- specifically anarchist ning within the anarchist movement inter- organisations, is on the nationally. The most well known would be ESPECIFISMO ELABORATED upsurge. This trend is helping anarchism the Platformist current, which began with The Especifists put forward three main regain legitimacy as a dynamic political the publishing of the “Organisational thrusts to their politics, the first two being force within movements and in this light, Platform of the Libertarian Communists.”* on the level of organisation. By raising the Especifismo, a concept born out of nearly This document was written in 1926 by for- need for a specifically anarchist organisa- 50 years of anarchist experiences in South mer peasant army leader Nestor Makhno, tion built around a unity of ideas and prax- America, is gaining currency world-wide. and other militants of the Dielo is, the Especifists inherently state their Though many anarchists may be familiar Trouda (Workers’ Cause) group, based objection to the idea of a synthesis organi- with many of Especifismo’s ideas, it should around the newspaper of the same name sation of revolutionaries or multiple cur- be defined as an original contribution to (Skirda, 192-213). Exiles of the Russian rents of anarchists loosely united. They anarchist thought and practice. revolution, the -based Dielo Trouda characterize this form of organisation as The first organisation to promote the con- criticized the anarchist movement for its creating an exacerbated search for the cept of Especifismo - then more a practice lack of organisation, which prevented a needed unity of anarchists to the point in than a developed ideology - was the concerted response to Bolshevik machina- which unity is preferred at any cost, in the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU), tions towards turning the workers’ soviets fear of risking positions, ideas and propos- founded in 1956 by anarchist militants who into instruments of one-party rule. The als sometimes irreconcilable. The result of embraced the idea of an organisation alternative they proposed was a “General these types of union are libertarian collec- which was specifically anarchist. Surviving Union of Anarchists” based on Anarchist- tives without much more in common than the dictatorship in Uruguay, the FAU Communism, which would strive for “theo- considering themselves anarchists. (En La emerged in the mid-1980s to establish con- retical and tactical unity” and focus on class Calle) tact with and influence other South struggle and labour unions. While these critiques have been elaborat- American anarchist revolutionaries. The Other similar occurrences of ideas ed by the South American Especifistas, FAU’s work helped support the founding of include “Organisational Dualism,” which is North American anarchists have also the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha (FAG), mentioned in historical documents of the offered their experiences of synthesis the Federação Anarquista Cabocla 1920’s Italian anarchist movement. Italian organisation as lacking any cohesiveness (FACA), and the Federação Anarquista do anarchists used this term to describe the due to multiple, contradictory political ten- Rio de Janeiro (FARJ) in their respective involvement of anarchists both as mem- dencies. Often the basic agreement of the regions of Brazil, and the Argentinean bers of an anarchist political organisation group boils down to a vague, “least-com- organisation Auca (Rebel). and as militants in the mon-denominator” politics, leaving little (FdCA). In Spain, the Friends of Durruti room for united action or developed politi- While the key concepts of Especifismo group emerged to oppose the gradual cal discussion among comrades. will be expanded upon further in this article, reversal of the Spanish Revolution of 1936 Without a strategy that stems from com- it can be summarised in three succinct (Guillamon). In “Towards a Fresh mon political agreement, revolutionary points: Revolution” they emulated some of the organisations are bound to be an affair of 1. The need for specifically anarchist ideas of the Platform, critiquing the CNT- reactivism against the continual manifesta- organisation built around a unity of ideas FAI’s gradual reformism and collaboration tions of oppression and injustice and a and praxis. with the Republican government, which cycle of fruitless actions to be repeated 2. The use of the specifically anarchist they argued contributed to the defeat of the over and over, with little analysis or under- organisation to theorize and develop anti-fascist and revolutionary forces. standing of their consequences strategic political and organising work. Influential organisations in the Chinese (Featherstone et al). Further, the 3. Active involvement in and building of anarchist movement of the 1910’s, such as Especifists criticise these tendencies for autonomous and popular social move- the Wuzhengfu-Gongchan Zhuyi Tongshi being driven by spontaneity and individual- ments, which is described as the process Che (Society of Anarchist-Communist ism and for not leading to the serious, sys- of “social insertion.” Comrades), advocated similar ideas tematic work needed to build revolutionary MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 20 ANALYSIS movements. The Latin American revolu- also socially and historically rooted needs recyclables collectors. Due to high levels tionaries put forward that organisations of resisting the attacks of the state and cap- of temporary and contingent employment, which lack a program which resists any italism. These would include rank-and-file- under-employment, and unemployment in discipline between militants, that refuses to led workers’ movements, immigrant com- Brazil, a significant portion of the working ‘define itself’, or to ‘fit itself’, ... [are a] munities’ movements to demand legalized class does not survive primarily through direct descendant of bourgeois liberalism, status, neighbourhood organisations’ wage labour, but rather by subsistence [which] only reacts to strong stimulus, joins resistance to the brutality and killings by work and the informal economy, such as the struggle only in its heightened police, working class students’ fights casual construction work, street vending, moments, denying to work continuously, against budget cuts, and poor and unem- or the collection of trash and recyclables. especially in moments of relative rest ployed people’s opposition to evictions and Through several years of work, the FAG between the struggles (En La Calle). service cuts. has built a strong relationship with urban A particular stress of the Especifismo Through daily struggles, the oppressed trash collectors, called catadores. praxis is the role of anarchist organisation, become a conscious force. The class-in- Members of the FAG have supported them formed on the basis of shared politics, as a itself, or rather classes-in-themselves in forming their own national organisation space for the development of common (defined beyond the class-reductionist which is working to mobilise trash collec- strategy and reflection on the group’s vision of the urban industrial proletariat, to tors around their interests nationally and to organising work. Sustained by collective include all oppressed groups within society raise money toward building a collectively responsibility to the organisations’ plans that have a material stake in a new socie- operated recycling operation. 2 and work, a trust within the Especifismo’s conception of members and groups is built the relation of ideas to the pop- that allows for a deep, high- ular movement is that they level discussion of their action. should not be imposed through This allows the organisation to a leadership, through “mass create collective analysis, line”, or by intellectuals. develop immediate and long- Anarchist militants should not term goals, and continually attempt to move movements reflect on and change their into proclaiming an “anarchist” work based on the lessons position, but should instead gained and circumstances. work to preserve their anar- From these practices and chist thrust; that is, their natu- from the basis of their ideologi- ral tendency to be self-organ- cal principles, revolutionary ised and to militantly fight for organisations should seek to their own interests. This create a program that defines assumes the perspective that their short - and intermediate - social movements will reach term goals and will work their own logic of creating rev- towards their long-term objec- olution, not when they as a tives: whole necessarily reach the The program must come from point of being self-identified a rigorous analysis of society “anarchists,” but when as a and the correlation of the whole (or at least an over- forces that are part of it. It whelming majority) they reach must have as a foundation the the consciousness of their own experience of the struggle of power and exercise this power the oppressed and their aspira- in their daily lives, in a way tions, and from those elements consciously adopting the ideas it must set the goals and the of anarchism. An additional tasks to be followed by the rev- role of the anarchist militant olutionary organisation in order within the social movements, to succeed not only in the final objective ty), are tempered, tested, and recreated according to the Especifists, is to address but also in the immediate ones. (En La through these daily struggles over immedi- the multiple political currents that will exist Calle) ate needs into classes-for-themselves. within movements and to actively combat The last point, but one that is key within That is, they change from social classes the opportunistic elements of vanguardism the practice of Especifismo, is the idea of and groups that exist objectively and by the and electoral politics. “social insertion.” 1 It stems from the belief fact of social relations, to social forces. that the oppressed are the most revolution- Brought together by organic methods, and ESPECIFISMO IN THE CONTEXT ary sector of society, and that the seed of at many times by their own self-organisa- OF NORTH AMERICAN AND the future revolutionary transformation of tional cohesion, they become self-con- society lies already in these classes and scious actors aware of their power, voice WESTERN ANARCHISM social groupings. Social insertion means and their intrinsic nemeses: ruling elites Within the current strands of organised anarchist involvement in the daily fights of who wield control over the power structures and revolutionary North American and the oppressed and working classes. It of the modern social order. Western Anarchism, numerous indicators does not mean acting within single-issue Examples of social insertion that the FAG point to the inspiration and influence of the advocacy campaigns based around the cites are their work with neighbourhood Platform as having the greatest impact in involvement of expected traditional political committees in urban villages and slums the recent blossoming of class struggle activists, but rather within movements of (called Popular Resistance Committees), anarchist organisations worldwide. Many people struggling to better their own condi- building alliances with rank-and-file mem- see the Platform as a historical document tion, which come together not always out of bers of the rural landless workers’ move- that speaks to the previous century’s exclusively materially-based needs, but ment of the MST, and among trash and organisational failures of anarchism within MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 21 ANALYSIS global revolutionary movements, and are ence by the Platform today, in retrospect it ment, but have come organically out of the moved to define themselves as acting with- can be looked at as a poignant statement movements of the global south that are in the “platformist tradition”. Given this, the that rose from the morass that befell much leading the fight against international capi- currents of Especifismo and of anarchism following the Russian talism and setting examples for move- are deserving of comparison and contrast. Revolution. As a historical project, the ments worldwide. On organisation, the The authors of the Platform were veteran Platform’s proposal and basic ideas were Especifists call for a far deeper basis of partisans of the Russian Revolution. They largely rejected by individualistic tenden- anarchist organisation than the Platform’s helped lead a peasant guerrilla war against cies in the Anarchist movement, were mis- “theoretical and tactical unity,” but a strate- Western European armies and later the understood because of language barriers gic program based on analysis that guides in the Ukraine, whose people as some claim (Skirda, 186), or never the actions of revolutionaries. They pro- had a history independent of the Russian reached supportive elements or organisa- vide us living examples of revolutionary Empire. So the writers of the Platform cer- tions that would have united around the organisation based on the needs for com- tainly spoke from a wealth of experience document. In 1927, the Dielo Trouda mon analysis, shared theory, and firm roots and to the historical context of one of their group did host a small international confer- within the social movements. era’s pivotal struggles. But the document ence of supporters in France, but it was made little headway in its proposal of unit- quickly disrupted by the authorities. I believe there is much to take inspiration ing class struggle anarchists, and is In comparison, the praxis of Especifismo from within the tradition of Especifismo, not markedly silent in analysis or understand- is a living, developed practice, and only on a global scale, but particularly for ing on numerous key questions that faced arguably a much more relevant and con- North American class-struggle anarchists revolutionaries at that time, such as the temporary theory, emerging as it does out and for multi-racial revolutionaries within oppression of women, and colonialism. of 50 years of anarchist organising. Arising the US. Whereas the Platform can be eas- While most Anarchist-Communist orient- from the southern cone of Latin America, ily read as seeing anarchists’ role as nar- ed organisations claim influ- but its influence spreading throughout, the rowly and most centrally within labour ideas of Especifismo do not spring unions, Especifismo gives us a living from any example that we can look towards and call-out which speaks more meaningfully to our or sin- work in building a revolutionary movement gle today. Taking this all into consid- docu- eration, I also hope that this arti- cle can help us more con- cretely reflect on how we as a movement define and shape our traditions and influences.

NOTE: This is the final version of the above article. A slightly different copy, we regret, appears in the print version of the Northeastern Anarchist, and may also be in electronic circulation. Please refer to this final version in any citations.]

FOOTNOTES: 1. While “social insertion” is a term coming directly out of the texts of Especifismo influenced organisations, comrades of mine have taken issue with it. So before there is a rush towards an uncritical embrace of anything, perhaps there could be a discussion of this term. 2. Eduardo, then Secretary of External Relations for Brazilian FAG. “Saudacoes Libertarias dos E.U.A.” Email to Pedro Ribeiro. 25 Jun 2004

BIBLIOGRAPHY: En La Calle (Unsigned article). “La Necesidad de Un Proyecto Propio, Acerca de la importancia del programa en la organisacion polilitica libertaria” or “The Necessity of Our Own Project: On the importance of a program in the libertarian political organisation.” En La Calle, published by the Argeninian OSL (Organisación Socialista Libertaria) Jun 2001. 22 Dec 2005. Translation by Pedro Ribeiro. Original Portuguese or English Featherstone, Liza, Doug Henwood and Christian Parenti. “Left-Wing Anti-intellectualism and its discontents”. Lip Magazine, 11 Nov 2004. 22 Dec 2005. Guillamon, Agustin. The : 1937-1939. San Francisco: AK Press, 1996. Krebs, Edward S. Shifu, the Soul of Chinese Anarchism. Landham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998. Northeastern Anarchist. The Global Influence of Platformism Today by The Federation of Northeastern Anarchist Communists (Johannesburg, South Africa: Zabalaza Books, 2003), 24. Interview with Italian Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici. Skirda, Alexandre. Facing the Enemy: A History of Anarchist Organisation from Proudhon to May 1968. Oakland, CA: AK Press 2002.

Adam Weaver is an anarchist-communist from San Jose, CA, USA.

This essay is from the ‘The Northeastern Anarchist’ (#11) The Northeastern Anarchist is the English-language magazine of the Northeastern Federation of Anarchist-Communists (NEFAC), covering class struggle anarchist theory, history, strategy, debate and analysis in an effort to further develop anarchist-communist ideas and practice. MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 22 HISTORY Remembering and Learning from the Past: The 1976 Uprising and the African Working Class

This year marks the 30th anniversary of abolition of standard six created a huge term "black" was used to include Coloureds the 1976 Soweto uprising in South Africa, "bulge" of students being pushed into the and Indians. The ASM changed its name to which marked the start of the fall of first year of secondary school, leading to the South African Student Movement, and apartheid, and inspired activists worldwide. intensified overcrowding and strain on tried to organise beyond Soweto. African working youth played a leading role, resources. Other important events inspired Soweto and their sacrifices showed us that ordinary youth. The 1973-4 Durban strikes, which people can make a difference to the injus- RESISTANCE spread to Port Elizabeth and the East tices of our world. Revolutionaries should Large schools concentrated African stu- Rand, shattered the political quiescence of commemorate this struggle, but also learn dents together, shared frustrations from the 1960s, and signalled the rebirth of from its failings. national oppression and capitalist crisis African trade unions. The sudden collapse united them, and they started to look for of Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique RACE AND CLASS ways in which they could express and and Angola led many to believe that nation- The 1976 uprising was sparked by the resolve their grievances. Neither parents, al liberation was increasingly possible with- imposition of Afrikaans-language teaching nor the exiled nationalist organisations like in apartheid South Africa. in African schools, seen as an act of nation- So, when the Bantu Education al oppression. But there was more at play. Department tried to implement a new "fifty The 1970s saw growing inflation creating - fifty" language policy - half of the exam much discontent amongst urban African subjects were going to be taught in youth. South Africa's economy, which Afrikaans, a language few teachers spoke, boomed in the 1960s, entered crisis in the and that many Africans considered the lan- 1970s. Unemployment grew steadily, guage of apartheid officials, police and reaching levels unseen for decades. racist Whites - revolt was on the horizon. This was fuelled by under-funded, racist and authoritarian government institutions SPARKS AND FIRE like the local government township adminis- School boards were the first to challenge trations, the Bantu Education system and the language policy, but the Bantu the miserable conditions in the segregated Education department was unbending. Its township schools. Although the govern- intransigence became the focus of stu- ment and large companies such as Anglo dents' political anger. By February 1976 American increased spending on education students were organising protests. - mainly to grow the semi-skilled workforce, Then a mass demonstration was organ- as large companies were facing major skill ised in Soweto for June 16th. Semela was shortages - these schools remained under- Selby Semela in on the "action committee," which later resourced and over-crowded. became the Soweto Students They lacked adequate teaching staff or London in 1977 Representative Council (SSRC). The facilities like libraries, sports grounds etc., protest attracted around fifteen thousand and ranked the highest in terms of dropout the ANC, SACP and PAC, provided much youths. Many displayed their hostility rates and teacher-to-student ratios. direction. towards the language policy by waving Corporal punishment was also used exten- As a result, African youth established their placards such as "Blacks are not dustbins- sively, often sadistically: at Vulamazibuko own organisations such as the African Afrikaans stinks" and "Afrikaans is oppres- Higher Primary School in Diepkloof, for Student Movement (ASM), which organised sors' language". instance, teachers frequently punished stu- students in Soweto schools and aimed to Police had made no preparations for the dents by placing their feet in cold water, and take up student demands and create social event, a protest on a scale unseen in years, then whipping their toes. and political awareness. Selby Semela - an and tensions rose. At 9' o clock that morn- The State began to experiment with neo- 18-year-old school pupil and activist - ing, police and students clashed on Vilikazi liberal policies as well. According to the recalled that "the old spinster-huckster Street: police fired tear gas, demonstrators Truth and Reconciliation Commission organisations" like the ANC, PAC and threw stones, and police opened fire. Two (TRC) report, a key factor in the 1976 upris- SACP played almost no role. children died, many were injured. The TRC ing was a leap in rates and service charges Instead, members of ASM were influ- found that Colonel Theuns "Rooi Rus" by the West Rand Administration Board, enced by young teachers from homeland Swanepoel of the SA Police Riot Unit - a which had just lost the R2-million subsidy it universities like Turfloop, who promoted notorious thug - adopted a "shoot to kill" had received from the Johannesburg City Black Consciousness (BC). Drawing on the policy. Council. ideas of Steve Biko and others, BC The police action ignited the fury of the State spending on education was stressed the need to instil a sense of pride young marchers. By midday rioting had decreased at the same time that the num- and self-worth within "black" people before broken out across Soweto. Cars were ber of schooling years was reduced. The political organisation took place. Here, the stoned and barricades erected. Arson MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 23 HISTORY attacks took place on administration build- apartheid South Africa. State in a single revolutionary process - was ings, schools and beer halls. Two Whites long buried. were attacked and killed: one was Dr THE FALL OF BC This does not mean that 1994 was mean- Melville Edelstein, a liberal who had just In the late 1970s, many BC activists came ingless. There were very real gains, like the published a report warning of impending to a more socialist position, exemplified by end of legalised White supremacy, unrest in Soweto. AZAPO and the National Forum, but BC apartheid repression and press controls, Despite the police's heavy-handed meth- had lost its moment. It was sidelined within even if there were also defeats, like the sur- ods, riots quickly spread across the country, a few years by formations like the FOSATU vival of capitalism. and protests - including three general unions, the United Democratic Front and It was here that BC was tested one last strikes, of varying success - continued into the rebirth of ANC influence. In any case, time, and found wanting. By the 1990s, the 1977. In the Western Cape, the revolt the socialism of groups like AZAPO was once-mighty BC movement was a tiny iso- came to include many Coloured youth - very heavily Soviet in orientation - hardly lated current, mainly middle class. It insist- most of whom were Afrikaans speaking - a different to the SACP. Brutal attacks and ed - contrary to all evidence - that the 1994 very significant development. By the time murders of BC stalwarts by ANC supporters elections were entirely meaningless and the uprising ended there were more than put a further nail in the coffin. should be boycotted. 575 dead (451 killed by police), and 3,907 Some BC exiles, however, pointed to a dif- The elections, however, were a massive injured (2,389 by police). ferent approach. Semela drew anti-capital- victory for the African working class, even if The SSRC and other organisations played ist conclusions, and became a libertarian that victory is now increasingly overshad- a leading role, but the revolt was the prop- communist, with a position very close to owed by the ANC's neo-liberal war on the erty of no organisation: it was spontaneous anarchism. He believed that BC learned all poor. AZAPO saw only the defeats, boy- and militant. Contrary to a myth now pro- the wrong lessons from 1976. Having man- cotted the elections, and largely faded away moted by ANC leaders (and the claims of aged to "leave in the dust the false goals as the African working class overwhelming- then-Prime Minister B.J. Vorster), the ANC, and methods of the struggles of the forties ly voted to end apartheid and oust the as an organisation, played a very limited and fifties," it had no clear alternative. The National Party government. role. BC was central amongst students, 1976 revolt showed the power of working while many workers adhered to the inde- class spontaneity, but BC leaders subse- A REAL MONUMENT pendent politics of the reborn unions. quently decided to lay "firm claim to the We anarchists have worked with BC dubious honour of the avant-garde party." activists on several occasions - the fact we LESSONS The revolt showed the importance of self- are both outside the ANC tradition was The 1976 uprising marked the beginning organisation, but the SSRC ran itself "as a important - but we do not think BC can pro- of a new era. The costs were high, but self-appointed executive, dictatorially con- vide a real alternative. The old-style BC of Soweto showed that struggle was possible, trolled by its chairman." the 1970s lacked a strategy and a vision; opening the last chapter in the anti- SAYRCO was no different. Its main activ- the second generation BC of AZAPO - and apartheid struggle. The 1976 revolt rightly ity was to send leaders into South Africa to the more recent SOPA breakaway - mod- occupies a central place in the story of call upon the youth to join it in exile, when elled its socialism too heavily on the State- national liberation. The language issue the 1970s had shown that the real struggle capitalism of Cuba and the Soviet Union, sparked the revolt, but it was only the match was within the country, with the exiled and misunderstood the real changes that to a tinderbox of grievances from capitalist groups impotent. The eventual outcome took place in the 1990s. And, as Semela restructuring and national oppression. was predictable: the exiled BC groups set shows, some BC activists found an answer The revolt should not be romanticised - it up their own tiny "army," a pale shadow of in . involved State terror, racial attacks, the first the exiled ANC's own failed armed struggle, What, then, is to be done? Plural and use of the notorious "necklace" against sup- and even less effective. organic forms of working class organisation posed informers, and the first major con- should be promoted, working class autono- flicts between township residents and hos- CLASS STRUGGLE AND my and anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian tel dwellers around the Mzimhlope hostel. NATIONAL LIBERATION politics and organisation need to be fos- Revolutionaries must also learn from past tered, and struggle needs to be made The 1994 elections showed that the mistakes, as much as they should celebrate everyday practice. national liberation struggle in South Africa past victories. There were inherent weak- Building tomorrow today in such a man- had been conquered by the bourgeois anti- nesses in the politics of the uprising. BC ner, we can change the world, and honour imperialism of African nationalism, which was a key factor in the struggle at the time, the victims of 1976 with a real monument: a aimed to deracialise capitalism through the and the State found it necessary to ban 17 society free of class and national oppres- State. This was the ANC project. BC organisations and murder Biko before sion. It is a far more fitting monument than The alternative anarchist/syndicalist tradi- the revolt ended. having Thabo Mbeki cynically and disgrace- tion of working class anti-imperialism - But while BC's emphasis on "black" pride fully appropriating the 1976 revolt for the which aimed to merge struggles against was very important - every national libera- ANC. national oppression, capitalism and the tion struggle will involve a similar mental lib- eration by oppressed groups - BC never had a clear strategy to change society. After the end of the revolt, many SSRC Selby Semela, Sam Thompson & Norman leaders fled into exile, - forming the South Abraham, [1979] 2005 African Youth Revolutionary Council (SAYRCO) in 1979, a body that proved as REFLECTIONS ON THE BLACK sterile and ineffective as the exiled ANC, CONSCIOUSNESS MOVEMENT AND SACP and PAC. BC stressed personal change, rather than THE SOUTH AFRICAN REVOLUTION building counter-power. It very rarely devel- oped an anti-capitalist position, even Is now available from Zabalaza Books. though national oppression and capitalist Contact us for ordering details. exploitation were deeply interlinked in MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 24 HISTORY A New World in our Hearts Remembering the Spanish Revolution of 1936

2006 sees the 70th anniversary of one of upheaval sparked by an attempted military rity forces who remained ‘loyal’ to the gov- the most important episodes of European - clerical - fascist coup in July 1936. ernment. In Barcelona the CNT took effec- working class history - the Spanish tive control. Revolution. JULY 1936 Though large parts of Spain were in the Because the Spanish anarchist move- The July revolt by a large section of the hands of the Nationalists, their overall ment was historically such a large and Spanish army, led by General Franco and advance was temporarily halted and the important one, anarchists have had a repu- supported by the Catholic Church and the large cities of Barcelona and Madrid were tation for idealising the Spanish events of fascist Falange party, might be described in the hands of the unions. In Barcelona 1936 - 1937 and the role of libertarians in it. as a pre-emptive counter-revolution. A the CNT and FAI emptied the barracks and Unlike, for example, Britain or Ireland, ‘’ government had been distributed arms to groups of members anarchist ideas had been at the forefront of elected in February, bringing to power a across Catalonia and beyond. So, in the socialist politics in Spain since the 1860s. coalition dominated by the Left midst of civil war and chaos, began the The libertarian movement had deep roots Republicans, a middle class democratic Spanish Revolution. amongst both the peasantry and the emer- party with a programme of modernisation In Catalonia and Aragon, the two regions gent industrial working class for more than and moderate reform. Despite their with the greatest concentration of libertari- half a century prior to the 1936 revolution. involvement in this front, the Socialists an workers and peasants, there began a would not take part. Even so, this was social transformation. Real power was CNT - FAI being taken into the hands of the working Most of that movement could be found in class as the government looked on, tem- “We are not in the least afraid of the revolutionary syndicalist National porarily powerless. The distribution of Confederation of Labour (Confederación ruins. We are going to inherit the food, the maintenance of public services, Nacional del Trabajo - CNT), a union that in earth. There is not the slightest the opening of collective restaurants and May 1936 numbered over half a million. By doubt about that. The the organisation of defence against the no means all CNT members were anar- may blast and ruin it’s own world Nationalist forces were all being undertak- chists; many had joined for the simple rea- before it leaves the stage of history. en by strictly unofficial elements! Human son that the union was the strongest and We carry a new world, here in our creativity was being unleashed and the state was nowhere to be seen, though most effective in their workplace. But the hearts. That world is growing this undoubtedly it was there, waiting to regain organisation was at least nominally com- minute.” mitted to a libertarian communist future and strength. , was regarded as a de facto anarchist Collectivisations of industry and the union. Partly in order to maintain the anarchist militant, 1937 expropriation of the land, initiated by CNT CNT’s libertarian and revolutionary per- and, to a lesser extent, UGT members, spectives, anarchist militants had in 1927 enough to prompt the reactionary forces of were taking place throughout these areas. created the Iberian Anarchist Federation the traditional ruling elite to immediately Often, anarchist militias such as the (Federación Anarquista Iberica - FAI). This prepare for civil war. On July 17th what famous Durruti Column would actively pro- latter organisation had a structure based became known as the Nationalist revolt mote and defend collectivisations as they upon affinity groups and in 1936 claimed kicked off in Spanish Morocco, quickly travelled to the frontline. The collectivisa- something in the region of 30,000 militants. spreading into Spain itself. As town after tion of land has been described as It is easy to see how the libertarian move- town fell to the militarists the Republican “Probably the most creative legacy of ment was a major player in Spanish politi- government vacillated, talked of coming to Spanish anarchism” by the writer and his- cal life, vastly outnumbering the an agreement with the rebel military and torian Daniel Guerin. As large landowners Communist Party and challenging the generally appeared paralysed in the face of abandoned their estates their workers took social democratic party, the Workers’ the revolt. As the initiative for resisting the over and ran them collectively. Where Socialist Party and their industrial wing, the Nationalists was falling to the workers’ landowners stayed, those who had General Workers Union (Unión General de organisations, particularly the CNT and appeared sympathetic to the militarist Trabajadores- UGT), for the allegiance of UGT, the government slowly authorised the revolt were kicked off the land whilst ‘good the urban and rural working class. It was, arming of the union militias. In the capital, republican’ landowners were often invited therefore, inevitable that the anarchists Madrid, the revolt was rapidly disarmed by to join the collectives! In total it is estimat- would play a major role in the social armed UGT militants alongside those secu- ed that possibly 3 million people were involved in collectives in the ‘revolutionary period’ of 1936-37. The collectives variously attempted to put into practice libertarian communism based on the principle of ‘from each according to ability, to each according to need’ but, more commonly, collectivism where a ‘family wage’ was paid by the collective. MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 25 HISTORY THE organisations were engaging in collectivi- dictatorship’ but through the suppression of Socially, the revolution began to cast-off sations and land seizures, the ‘leadership’ the republican democratic bourgeoisie, centuries of mental servitude to the ruling of the movement saved the government which was already in disarray. class and the Catholic Church. Working from complete eclipse. people began to discard formal and defer- And it began this process as early as the THE ‘ANARCHIST’ ential speech, common in Spanish. People 20th July, the day following the halting of POLITICIANS the militarist rising. On that fateful day Luis spoke to each other as equals. Churches The choice of collaboration sealed the Companys the President of the Generalitat, found themselves under attack, often being fate of the revolution. could not the regional government of Catalonia, sum- requisitioned for practical use and some- last very long. On September 27th repre- moned representatives of the CNT and the times simply burnt down as symbols of sentatives of the CNT entered the new FAI. Companys offered to resign from a centuries-old oppression. Council of the Generalitat, the reorganised government which existed in name only, its New groups involving themselves in artis- regional government of Catalonia and the ability to ‘restore order’ non-existent. At tic, musical and cultural activities emerged Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist this meeting the CNT and FAI, representing in a surge of creativity unleashed by the Militias, in which the CNT had placed so the armed and mobilised masses, decided possibilities the revolution offered. much hope, was gone. The decision to that a new administration could be estab- enter the government appears to have lished between the revolutionary workers THE INDUSTRIAL been taken a week earlier by the National movement and the leftist forces of the Committee of the CNT, which was sup- COLLECTIVISATIONS Popular Front. The new structure was the posed to be answerable to the union as a In the industrial areas of ‘Loyalist Spain’, Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist whole. The CNT had called for a Regional particularly Catalonia, large parts of manu- Militias and it was this organisation that Defence Council which would co-ordinate facturing and most public services were oversaw the social re-organisation in the without being a government per se, but immediately taken over and managed by weeks following the effective collapse. It the workers. The collectivised factories when offered places in a coalition with and workshops were, for four months bourgeois parties they did not hesitate after the July events, run without state to cross the class divide. The ‘hard-line’ involvement. The revolution in Russia FAI militant Garcia Oliver was to say in 1917 had faced the problem of the “The Committees of the Anti-Fascist desertion of skilled technicians to the Militias have been dissolved because counter-revolution, and although this now the Generalitat represents all of was not as widespread in Spain, where us.” This amazing statement shows many technical staff were themselves how quickly both anarchist principles active syndicalists, it was still a factor. and class analysis were thrown away. Unlike the agricultural experiments in The stage was set for the ‘anarchist’ self-management, the industrial efforts politicians to enter the National were faced with having to reorganise Government of Spain, led by left social- the factories to produce armaments and ist Largo Caballero, two months later in military vehicles. Added to this was the November 1936. successful attempt by the state to co- was this committee that helped co-ordinate opt the collectivisations. the establishing and supplying of militias to THE RISE OF THE COMMUNIST In October the Catalan regional govern- fight at the front, the collectivisations and PARTY ment ratified the socialisation of industry. the maintenance of social services. But The growth of the Communist Party The state was attempting to both control the vital breathing space gave the govern- throughout what became the Spanish Civil the collectivisation process and to use it to ment the opportunity to recover and re- War was phenomenal. Two main factors its own advantage in building the war effort establish its power. As the dissident anar- promoted that growth. Firstly, the Spanish and disciplining the workforce. The state cho-syndicalist group the ‘Friends of Republic looked to the Soviet Union for decreed that all factories employing more Durruti’ were to reflect later “There can be material aid and support and secondly, the than 100 workers were to be brought under absolutely no common ground between Spanish Stalinists opposed any revolution- the joint management of a Council of exploiters and exploited. Which shall pre- ary activity which might jeopardise the Enterprises. This Council was to include vail, only battle can decide. Bourgeoisie or bourgeois republic and thereby recruited both the workforce and a representative workers. Certainly not both of them at heavily from all those who might be incon- from the Catalan regional government who once” (Towards a Fresh Revolution 1938). venienced by collectivisations. The would act as ‘controller’. The So, with power in the hands of the work- Communist Party, adept at infiltration and Collectivisation Decree of October 1936, ing class, why did the leadership of the manipulation, took control of the Socialist however, transferred all real power to the CNT-FAI not simply dismiss the govern- Party’s youth section and, through the state’s General Council for Industry. ment and maintain workers power? The importation of Russian military advisors Although the workers who had taken con- betrayal cannot be blamed upon reformist and their own political commissars, rapidly trol through direct action in 1936 remained or moderate elements in the CNT, after all, gained an influence in the military of the nominally in control, their role was in reali- the militant FAI was also there. Indeed, the Republic out of all proportion to their size. ty only to be consulted and, naturally, to FAI’s Garcia Oliver, present at the meeting, In 1936 the party united with the Catalan work. stated that the choice was between socialists to form the Catalan United How did this happen? In July 1936 the “Libertarian Communism, which means the Socialist Party (PSUC), which it dominated. state was impotent and almost invisible, yet anarchist dictatorship, or democracy, which The Communist Party was the main a few months later it had returned and had means collaboration.” (quoted in Lessons sponsor of the famous International usurped power from the working class. of the Spanish Revolution, Vernon Brigades, the tens of thousands of volun- Richards 1953). teers who came from across the globe to THE CNT-FAI BETRAYAL This false dichotomy ignored the possibil- ‘defend the republic’. This added to the The reason can be found in the fact that ity of maintaining and extending the gains Party’s kudos. whilst the rank and file of the libertarian of the working class without an ‘anarchist MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 26 HISTORY MILITARISATION CNT-FAI called for the workers organisa- AFTERMATH The communists were also at the fore- tions to unilaterally lay down their arms in a The aftermath of the saw the front of the campaign to integrate the mili- radio broadcast. “Workers of the CNT! power and confidence of the state rein- tias of the CNT-FAI and the Workers Party Workers of the UGT! Don’t be deceived by forced and the morale of the revolutionar- of Marxist Unification (POUM), a large anti- these manoeuvres. Above all else, Unity! ies sapped. In June the state outlawed the Stalinist left socialist grouping, into the Put down your arms. Only one slogan: We POUM, which subsequently disappeared ‘Popular Army’ of the Republic. must work to beat ! Down with fas- from the scene, mainly into Stalinist pris- Opposition to militarisation of the militias cism!” ons. In July the anarchists were excluded came mainly from the grassroots of the But the counter-revolution, spearheaded from the reorganised Catalan government CNT-FAI and, naturally, from the anarchist by the PSUC and the local Catalan and from August onwards the state carried militias which had emerged in July - Nationalists, was determined to humble the on a programme of de-collectivisation. The September 1936 during the existence of anarchists. Libertarians were shot in cold revolution, in the sense of working class the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist blood only yards from the headquarters of power and of a libertarian reorganisation of Militias. The militias were not opposed to the CNT. On the 5th the state escalated society, was dead. The revolution dead, co-ordination of the physical fight against the provocation by an assault on the local the defeat of the Republic followed as the the nationalist military, but of being forced centre and the surround- nationalists, supported by Nazi Germany into a traditional army that would be con- ing of CNT headquarters. On the same and Fascist Italy, crushed the ‘Peoples trolled by whoever was in charge of the night the Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri Army’. state. and his comrade Barbieri were abducted However, the military situation in the peri- and murdered by a joint police and PSUC AN IMPOSSIBLE REVOLUTION? squad. Berneri, editor of ‘Guerra di Classe’ od following the entry of the ‘anarchists’ The Spanish Revolution of 1936 was born (Class War) was one of the most intelligent into the regional and central governments in the midst of a period of darkest reaction. and constructive critics of the anarchist col- was dire for the Republican forces. The Italy and Germany were under the jackboot laboration. government left Madrid for Valencia as of fascism, their working class subdued the capital was besieged in November by repression. The Soviet Union, at the and the pressure increased for the dis- height of Stalin’s dictatorship over the solving of the militias into a regular proletariat, dominated the left through army. The increasing militarisation of the Communist International. Stalinism the Republican area was another sign internationally served to defend the that the revolution was being strangled Soviet Union and the policy of the and that the working class was becom- Communist Parties twisted and turned ing used in a conventional war depending on the needs of the between two rival factions of the ruling ‘Workers’ Fatherland’. It is no exagger- class. ation to say that the working class was in a position of international defeat. THE MAY EVENTS, 1937 When the workers of Spain sponta- The last gasp of the Spanish revolu- neously moved to crush the nationalist tion came in May 1937. Throughout - militarist uprising they were alone, iso- April the Generalitat, complete with 4 ‘anar- AGAIN CAPITULATION lated and far from being part of an interna- chist’ ministers, including the Minister for tional movement. What they had in their At this time The Friends of Durruti group Justice, had been escalating harassment favour were mass organisations, built over issued a proclamation calling for a of ‘uncontrollable elements’ in the CNT and many years and having come through ‘Revolutionary Junta’ (Council) to be estab- the POUM, disarming workers patrol repression and illegality. lished, which would include the POUM. groups, raiding offices. On the morning of From the very beginning the anarchist The POUM, however, remained indecisive May 3rd a provocation occurred that would and syndicalist movement’s ‘official’ leader- and awaited the leadership of the CNT-FAI. signal the final defeat of the Revolution and ship acted like politicians and played the The leadership could only counsel ‘sereni- the capitulation of the CNT to the state. political games of the bourgeoisie. ty’ and calm, calling for a return to work and The Barcelona Telephone Exchange had Paralysed by the fear of establishing an a ceasefire whilst the Catalan government been under the control of its workers, main- ‘anarchist dictatorship’ they instead effec- called in reinforcements from around ly CNT members, since the July days. At 3 tively accepted the dictatorship of the dem- Republican Spain! o’clock on the afternoon of Monday May ocratic, anti-fascist ruling class. And whilst Despite the encouragement not to aban- 3rd the police attempted to occupy the the rank and file of the anarchist movement don the streets that came from the Friends building but could not advance beyond the strove to proceed towards libertarian com- of Durruti, the rank and file of the CNT, FAI first floor due to resistance from the work- munism, they failed to challenge their own and Libertarian Youth complied with the ers. News of the assault spread and rank organisation’s integration into the historical leadership. The majority of syndicalists and file CNT, FAI and POUM militants enemy of classical anarchism - the state. and anarchists continued to trust those responded, arming themselves and organ- The Friends of Durruti put it clearly when who had been their most ardent militants in ising to resist. The leadership of the CNT they said that “Democracy, not fascism, the years before. By Friday 7th, the fight- called for calm and the removal of the defeated the Spanish people”. ing in Barcelona had ended. The Catalan police from the building. But events were An incredible creativity and capacity for and national governments, however, took overtaking the leaders and a creating a new world was exhibited, in the this as a sign that the CNT would now developed in Barcelona as barricades were worst possible conditions, by millions of accept almost anything in the name of anti- erected by the working class across the Spanish workers and peasants. This, trag- fascist unity and despite agreements to the city. Shooting started in the early hours of ically, was not enough to actually make the contrary, occupied the entirety of the tele- the next day and continued sporadically. new world, held deeply in their hearts, phone exchange and continued to harass, Still the CNT called for negotiations to end realised. intimidate and arrest anarchists. the standoff. Exactly 24 hours after the occupation of the telephone exchange the Reprinted from Organise! - For Revolutionary Anarchism #66 www.afed.org.uk/ MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 27 IN MEMORY... Remembering Our Fallen Comrades! Another Anarchist Dies in Prison: Abel Ramarope, Political Prisoner Turned Anarchist, died September 2005 “You must be aware that we are victimised by our fear to stand up for what is entitled us as peo- ple whether in prison or outside prison. We are firstly determined to challenge any barbaric or tyran- nical system if it needs be. Change is a must; and it shall come and be effected by those who needs to see it. Well we need to be strong even when we face incarceration. We cannot afford to be sacrificed at the expense of the capitalists. We fought for the transformation of this land, and yet we are deprived of the right to enjoy the fruits of our labour. Now our votes are seen as a priority but our release as political activists/prisoners is not important to them.” - Abel Ramarope It is always saddening to hear of some- freedom fighters of the apartheid era who tears have dried up like the blood of so one dying in a prison, with cold concrete were not affiliated to the ANC leadership or many who sacrificed their lives and free- and steel preventing them dom for a better future. from being comforted by While there is a working class I am of it, Anyway, we don't only loved ones in their time of mourn for the dead... we need. However, and not to While there is a criminal element, turn anger and sadness place any more value on Then I am in it, into resistance. one life over another, but It was an honour and a when I hear of yet another And while there is a soul in prison, privilege to have know Abel anarchist, whom I believe and, inspired by his enthu- often have a more acute Then I am not free. siasm and commitment to awareness of suffering and exposing and expelling the a stronger longing for freedom and justice were not part of the South African Police or lies about the role and function of the than do most people, having died in a South African National Defence Force dur- prison system - that of protecting and prison cell, I am filled with a sadness ing the times of struggle. upholding class society - with the aim of unparalleled. Abel was an inspiration to fight back destroying them both, we will not rest until Abel was imprisoned as a member of against the injustice of the system if ever I every prison has been razed to the ground. the Pan-African Congress for his role in the met one; I remember when he told me not struggle against apartheid but, through to bring him anything that would make his - Love & Rage contact with the southern African chapter of stay in prison more comfortable, as it made Jonathan, the in early 2004 he him feel stronger and more of an anarchist began to develop a great interest in anar- to suffer. And not to buy him anything from on behalf of the Anarchist chism and devoured any reading material the prison tuck-shop as he didn't want to Black Cross - SA he could get hold of. Despite a decade of contribute in any way to enriching the cor- humiliation and abuse at the hands of the rupt prison wardens and Department of authorities, when Abel became an anar- Correctional Services. Instead he asked chist almost two years ago he was filled for a kettle, which the ABC supplied, that with a hope and belief in a better future that he could use to drink hot water, which he is rare; especially in someone who has said helped his asthma. I only hope it spent so long in prison, having been for- made his last months more bearable. gotten both by his former organisation and Of course one can be sure that if Abel the very people whose freedom he fought hadn't had to endure a decade behind for. bars, surrounded by concrete and steel, In prison he began to organise a clan- trying to survive on a worthless diet and if destine reading and study group on anar- he had had access to the right medication, chism, educating prisoners about the real he may have had the strength to fight his nature of the prison system, and set about sickness as he did his oppressors. That is NOTE: The Prison will not pass on the organising to expose the corruption of the why; when the prison warden told us that details and date of his death until a written ANC and the Amnesty Commission; which Abel had died in September from asthma I request has been approved by the denied amnesty to political prisoners and was furious. Maybe I wanted to cry, but my Department of Correctional Services. Let sadness turn to anger, harness that anger and turn it to rage Give expression to that rage and tear down the fucking cage MMMMZABALAZA P AGE 28

WHERE WE STAND

We, the working class, produce the world’s wealth. We ought to enjoy the benefits. We want to abolish the system of capitalism that places wealth and power in the hands of a few, and replace it with workers self- management and socialism. We do not mean the lie called ‘socialism’ practised in Russia, China, and other police states - the sys- tem in those countries was/is no more than another form of capitalism - state capitalism. We stand for a new society where there will be no bosses or bureaucrats. A society that will be run in a truly democratic way by working people, through federations of community and workplace committees. We want to abolish authoritarian relationships and replace them with control from the bottom up - not the top down. All the industries, all the means of production and distribution will be commonly owned, and placed under the management of those working in them. Production will be co-ordinated, organised and planned by the federation of elected and recallable workplace and community committees, not for profit but to meet our needs. The guiding principle will be “from each according to ability, to each according to need”. We are opposed to all coercive authority; we believe that the only limit on the freedom of the individual is that their freedom does not interfere with the freedom of others. We do not ask to be made rulers nor do we intend to seize power “on behalf of the working class”. Instead, we hold that social- ism can only be created by the mass of ordinary people. Anything less is bound to lead to no more than replacing one set of boss- es with another. We are opposed to the state because it is not neutral, it cannot be made to serve our interests. The structures of the state are only necessary when a minority seeks to rule over the majority. We can create our own structures, which will be open and demo- cratic, to ensure the efficient running of everyday life. We are proud to be part of the tradition of libertarian socialism, of anarchism. The anarchist movement has taken root in the work- ing class of many countries because it serves our interests - not the interests of the power seekers and professional politicians. In short we fight for the immediate needs and interests of our class under the existing set up, while seeking to encourage the nec- essary understanding and activity to overthrow capitalism and its state, and lead to the birth of a free and equal (anarchist) society.

What is the ZACF?

The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (ZACF or simply ZabFed) is a federation of anarchist collectives and individuals from the southern regions of ZA ANA A RC Africa who identify with the communist tradition within Anarchism. The federa- L H tion is organised around the principles of theoretical and tactical unity, collec- A B IS tive responsibility and . Our activities include study and theoretical A T development, anarchist agitation and propaganda, and participation within the Z class struggle. As anarchist-communists, we struggle for a classless, stateless and non-hier- archical society. We envision an international confederation of directly demo-

cratic, self-managed communities and workplaces; a society where all markets, C exchange value systems and divisions of labour have been abolished and the O N means of production, distribution and communication are taken over by the M IO workers and placed under workers' self-management (socialised) in order to M T U A allow for the satisfaction of the needs of everyone, adhering to the communist N ER principle: “From each according to ability, to each according to need.” IST FED ZACF Contact Details FEDERATION SECRETARY INTERNATIONAL SECRETARY Post: Postnet Suite 116, Private Bag X42, Braamfontein, 2017, Post: Postnet Suite 116, Private Bag X42, Braamfontein, 2017, Johannesburg Johannesburg, South Africa Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Phone: 0881220416 (leave message)