ZACF message to the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU) on its 60th Anniversary
We, militants of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF), send you a big clenched fist salute and revolutionary internationalist greetings on this the historic occasion of the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya (FAU) – commemorating 60 years of struggle for freedom and socialism.
It has been a long and no doubt hard and bumpy road since 1956. We honour the many FAU militants who, like Alberto “Pocho” Mechoso, gave up their freedom and even their lives in the struggle for freedom and socialism. Yet, after all is said and done, you are celebrating another milestone, another anniversary. You continue to keep the red and black banner of class struggle anarchism alive and well on the Latin American continent – holding it up as an example for all to see.
Worker-Student Alliances: Anarchist Approach Needed
by Leroy Maisiri (ZACF)
First published in “South African Labour Bulletin”, volume 40, number 4, pp. 39-40
Recent worker-student alliances and activities are lacking in an anarchist/syndicalist approach which focuses on ‘people’s power’ and ‘worker control’. Such an approach is important for radical transformation, writes Leroy Maisiri.
“Superintendent Officer Mthembu” – Spoken Word Poetry against Police Brutality
Inspired by the Events of 28th September 2016 –
Police Shooting on RU students.
“Superintendent Officer Mthembu”
by Leroy Maisiri (ZACF)
If our pain was turned into an art museum the most popular exhibit would showcase portraits of the South African Police Service with our bodies on the floor as their footstools. Our silenced screams chock up the airways in our throats, our tracheas burst out and with both hands we grab the artery veins in an attempt to contain the bleeding, trying to redirect this blood, this life back into the cause and yes, bang, bang, bang; you keep shooting and yes bang, bang, bang, we keep running.
But please first allow me to start this poetic prose in Joza extension 7, the peripheral of the township itself almost excommunicated from the centre of Grahamstown. Somewhere unclearly mapped by angry ground stones who share their space with the kind of dust that does not easily settle well on the road, is what looks like an afterthought of an RDP house. In it is Superintendent Officer Mthembu. A child of the working class. Mthembu on his tea breaks always jokes about how he wanted to be a lawyer, most of his stories start with the words “and during the apartheid…” he would recall those memories so well, remembering quite clearly all the fights, the protests, the revolutionary climate that engrossed South Africa. His stories would also always end with “…if only I could afford the fees in ’94, I would have been a qualified lawyer like Madiba”.
Hamba kahle comrade Bobo Makhoba (1975-2016)
by Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF)
The ZACF is saddened to learn of the passing away of comrade Bobo Makhoba in Soweto this Thursday 29 September, at the age of 41, after a long illness. He is survived by his son, to whom we extend our deepest sympathies and condolences – as we do to the rest of his family, friends and comrades.
Bobo was a founding member of the ZACF as well as one of the original guerilla electricians for the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee’s Operation Khanyisa campaign, which illegally reconnected thousands of households’ electricity after it was cut off for non-payment – forcing Eskom, the state electricity utility, to scrap arrears for thousands of Sowetans.
Where to now, Zimbabwe? Beyond the “good” charismatic pastor.
by Leroy Maisiri (ZACF)
The last 4 months in Zimbabwe can surely be characterized as an awakening of the Zimbabwean working class, as thousands of these citizens have taken to the streets, responding to Pastor Evan Mawarire’s call: “hatichatya” – we are not afraid. This is certainly a historic time for Zimbabwe; a time of growing labour pains as the country (hopefully) enters a process of rebirth towards a better and new Zimbabwe.
But before we can even begin to talk about a free Zimbabwe and how we would go about getting that, we need to first have a clear and coherent class analysis of the Zimbabwean social and political climate.
Understanding who we are fighting is essential. Zimbabwe without a doubt needs to rid ourselves of the 92-year- old man who thinks the state house is his graveyard. But in the same breath, we must rid itself of the oppressive state system altogether. Swapping a vicious state capitalist manager with another is nowhere close to constituting progress.
Inside the Zimbabwean Uprising
MC Biko, ZACF
A year and half ahead of the 2018 general elections, the poor and working people of Zimbabwe are up in arms against President Robert Gabriel Mugabe and his ZANU-PF regime which has been in power for 36 years. In the last 3 months Zimbabwe has been shaken by protest actions of workers, informal traders, commuter omnibus operators, and unemployed youths. These actions have occurred at a time when the country is experiencing a liquidity crisis and the ruling party structures are crumbling from within as liberation war veterans, once Mugabe’s staunch loyalists, break ranks from the regime. Meanwhile, the opposition political parties (a myriad of MDC splinter groups and two ZANU-PF splinter groups) are in talks to form a coalition party. The regime has since stepped up its repressive measures in a bid to squash dissent.
Bill Andrews and South Africa’s Revolutionary Syndicalists
by Lucien van der Walt
Published in “Tokologo: Newsletter of the Tokologo African Anarchist Collective”, numbers 5/6, November 2015
If W. H. “Bill” Andrews (1870- 1950) is remembered today, it is usually as a founder and leader of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA, today the SACP). In that role, he served as party chair, member of the executive of the Communist International, leading South African trade unionist, visitor to the Soviet Union, and defendant in the trial of communists that followed 1946 black miners’ strike.
