[SPEECH] Lucien van der Walt, 2006, “Xenophobia, Solidarity and the Struggle for Zimbabwe”

August 15, 2016 Leave a comment

I gave this talk at the”Freedom in our Lifetime” resistance festival in Newtown, Johannesburg, 10 December, 2006

It was previously published online, uncredited, at http://www.anarkismo.net/article/4424

Xenophobia, Solidarity and the Struggle for Zimbabwe

Lucien van der Walt, 2006.

How to fight for freedom in Zimbabwe? How to avoid another Mugabe coming into power? How to fight poverty, inequality, unemployment? How to create equality and decent lives for all? These are the burning questions we must face.

There are two main issues we have been asked to talk about today: xenophobia and solidarity. Let’s look at each of these, and then explore them, and look for answers to the burning questions.

Xenophobia

Around the world, millions of people are moving between countries. Some move to find jobs and a better life. Some flee repressive, murderous regimes. And some just want to see more of the world: nothing wrong with that.

What is a problem is that the States, the governments, of the host countries, seek to divide the immigrants from the local working class and peasants. Let me be more precise. Rich immigrants are left alone. Their money brings them access to the charmed circles of the wealthy and powerful elites. The ruling class of one country recognises its fellows from other countries.

The elite knows the elite, and they know that they have something in common: their wealth, their power, are based on keeping the mass of the people – the working class, the peasants and the poor – in their “place.” And what place is that? Working for masters, earning low incomes, being told what to do: suffering through domination and exploitation from above.
Read more of this post

Filed under Africa (other), From 2000s, talks

[SPEECH] Lucien van der Walt, 1998, “The Silent War on the Land against Black Workers”

February 9, 2016 Leave a comment

Lucien van der Walt, 1998, “The Silent War on the Land against Black Workers,” talk given at a public meeting hosted by the Workers Solidarity Federation (WSF), at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. 27 May 1998.

In recent months, the rural areas have come into focus in the media.

Farm killings

The bulk of media reporting has been focussed on high levels of rural crime­: according to some sources there have been 114 farm attacks in the last two months (The Citizen, 15 May 1998). These are attacks directed at farm-owners, as opposed to ordinary crimes in the rural areas affecting farm-workers.

Contrary to the picture presented in the media, where a real hype has been built around this issue, only a few of these attacks have involved murder: 6 people were killed in the over 30 attacks that took place in May 1998 (The Citizen, 20 May 1998).  However, other attacks have involved violence, and white farmers have responded by promising to form paramilitary organisations, private armies with helicopters, assault troops etc. to defend themselves.    Meanwhile, the post-apartheid government has done its best to reassure farmers, and has claimed to be solving up to 90% of farm attacks (The Citizen, 20 May 1998).

The state insists that the farm attacks are purely criminal, whereas a vocal section of the white farmers — obvious beneficiaries of apartheid, and a bloc still not reconciled to the “new South Africa” — claims there is some sort of coordinated armed struggle going on. Well, there is not any real evidence for this imagined bush war.

Crimes Against Workers

We do not, of course, support violent crime. But what we do oppose is the deeply skewed picture that the media is presenting, and that the organised white farmers have presented. In this picture, farm attacks mean attacks on white farmers, and rural crime is presented as farm attacks.

What the media has systematically ignored are equally criminal incidents like the ongoing mass evictions of black farm tenants and farm-workers, particularly in KwaZulu Natal and the Northern Province, as white farmers, fearing land reform, have undertaken. Using labour­-saving machinery, and making every effor Read more of this post

Filed under anarchism/ syndicalism, events, talks, interviews, From 1990s, race and national liberation struggles, talks, union strategy

[Photo + speech]: Prof Lucien van der Walt at fees protests: “Free higher education, complete national liberation,” at “Rhodes” University, 19 October 2015

October 25, 2015 Leave a comment

Speaking at Rhodes, Monday 19 Oct, 2015Personal statement by “Rhodes” University professor Lucien van der Walt:

“Rights are not given from above but won from below. Fight for free higher education as part of the struggle for change and completing the black working class national liberation struggle in South Africa. Move the struggle from individual VCs and universities to confront the neo-liberal capitalist state which has gutted university spending from the 1980s, starting with NP, continuing with ANC.

Existing individual university incomes literally cannot fund the fees. The issue is not to recut a shrinking cake by budget tweaks but to tackle the state that shrinks the cake. Build student-worker-staff alliances, conscious of the revolutionary tasks, as basis for deeper change, a larger transition, working-class driven, for a libertarian (free, anarchist) self-managed system that can complete the struggle against all oppression, exploitation and domination.” ‪#‎feesmustfall‬ ‪#‎nationalshutdown‬ ‪#‎zumamustfall‬ ‪#‎blademustfall‬

Filed under From 2010s, neo-liberalism, race and national liberation struggles, South Africa, talks

SPEECH [+PDF] Lucien van der Walt, 2015, “Working Class Struggle, Blazing a Path to Freedom”

September 25, 2015 Leave a comment

Lucien van der Walt, 2015, “SPEECH: Working Class Struggle, Blazing a Path to Freedom [24 Sept 2012, Heritage Day event, Joza Township, Grahamstown],” Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism, no. 14, pp. 26-27.

Talk by Lucien van der Walt at 24 Sept 2012, Heritage Day event, Joza Township, Grahamstown

pdflogosmall Get the PDF here

NOTE: Heritage Day is a post-apartheid South African national holiday; unlike most, it has no clear link to major struggles in the past, although there are efforts to position it as a more “political” day. The talk below was given by Lucien van der Walt at an event organised by Sakhaluntu Cultural Group in Grahamstown, for black youth.fau_book_graphic439_1.jpg

Thank you all for coming. Thank you, chair, for the invitation. Thank you, organisers, for the event today. Today looks like a great day, a great day to look forward.

But before we look forward, we must look back as well. Unless you know where you come from, you will never know where you can go.

This sort of reflection is extremely important to the working class struggle. Heritage Day provides a space to think back, to look back at where we have come from, and to think about where we need to go in future. It’s an opportunity to reflect on what we have achieved so far, but also on what we still need to achieve in order to secure emancipation.

If we look at that past from the perspective of the working class masses, it’s clear that the past is bittersweet.

It’s bitter: there are many injustices and horrors that we cannot avoid seeing. It’s bitter: there is a long dark night of suffering, dispossession and exploitation that casts its shadow over today. It’s bitter: the past is the time of massacres of the working class, of the repression of unions, of the pass laws, of the Land Act of 1913, of the Bantu Education system, of the imperialist wars against Africans and Afrikaners.

Struggles and Victories

It’s sweet also: the past saw ordinary people, the people on the ground – the working class – rise up and fight for justice, for equality, for our rights: to dignity, to decency, to decide how to run the basics of our lives.

It’s sweet: the time of the mass strikes and uprisings, such as those of 1913, 1918, 1922, 1946, 1960, 1973, 1976, 1983, and 1993. These brought light into the darkness, into the long, dark night of suffering and oppression, where bitter battles were waged for freedom.

It’s sweet: when ordinary people stood together, when the working class united, when the sleeping armies of the exploited, the oppressed, the workers, the poor, woke up, the ground shook. The darkness was driven back.

It’s sweet: every small victory fed the campfires of hope, fanned the flames of resistance and rebellion, moved the people into more action.

1913 saw massive struggles by white as well as black workers for basic rights. 1918 saw the first attempt at a general strike by black workers. Read more of this post

Filed under anarchism/ syndicalism, events, talks, interviews, From 2010s, labour history, neo-liberalism, race and national liberation struggles, talks

[Analysis in translation] Lucien van der Walt, 2015, “Dal Salario Di Esistenza Al Contropotere Della Classe Lavoratrice”

September 12, 2015 Leave a comment

Italian translation of  Lucien van der Walt, 2015, “From Living Wage to Working Class Counter-power,” South African Labour Bulletin, volume 39, number 2, pp 35-39 which you can get here. This translation is from anarkismo.net

Dal Salario Di Esistenza Al Contropotere Della Classe Lavoratrice

Lucien van der Walt, 2015, South African Labour Bulletin, volume 39, number 2, pp 35-39

Pur facendo parte della lotta, il salario di esistenza in sè non dovrebbe esserne il fine, bensì dovrebbe essere collegato alla più ampia lotta della classe lavoratrice per costruire quel contropotere che rovesci l’esistente struttura di potere.

IL SISTEMA SALARIALE

Il sistema salariale è il cuore della subordinazione della classe lavoratrice nel suo senso più ampio: i lavoratori, le loro famiglie, i disoccupati. Non possedendo nè indipendenti mezzi di esistenza -per esempio terreni o macchine produttive- nè potere di governo – per esempio una reale capacità decisionale- la classe lavoratrice è costretta a lavorare per un salario, per poter sopravvivere.

Anche coloro che non hanno un lavoro salariato dipendono, tramite i legami familiari, da coloro che hanno un lavoro dipendente; i disoccupati sono, soprattutto, lavoratori senza lavoro. In questo senso, la classe lavoratrice è composta da “schiavi del salario”: ma diversamente dagli schiavi acquistati dai loro padroni, gli schiavi salariati devono cercarsi i loro padroni a cui vendersi all’ora.

Dal momento che i salari sono inferiori al livello del prodotto dei lavoratori, costoro vengono sfruttati tramite il sistema salariale: essi vengono pagati meno del valore di ciò che producono, mentre il plusvalore va ai datori di lavoro.

Questi datori di lavoro sono lo Stato, comprese le aziende di Stato e l’esercito, gli imprenditori privati, specialmente le grandi imprese, ma anche i piccoli imprenditori. I grandi imprenditori costituiscono una classe di governo, proprietari dello Stato e del capitale, compreso il capitale di Stato, insieme alla classe dirigente politica e militare.

Lo sfruttamento è strettamente collegato ad un più ampio sistema di dominio – a livello economico, culturale, politico- esercitato dalla classe dominante -cioè coloro che controllano i mezzi Read more of this post

Filed under From 2010s, Non-English, talks, union strategy

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