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about:blank ---------- Forwarded message ---------From: Black Dragon Date: 11 July 2008 at 17:58 Subject: [zabfed] Politico-Cultural Dynamics of the SA Anarchist Movement To: zabalaza@lists.riseup.net ZACF CONFIDENTIAL INTERNAL DISCUSSION DOCUMENT THE POLITICO-CULTURAL DYNAMICS OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN ANARCHIST MOVEMENT - Michael Schmidt, ZACF IS, July 2008 The SA anarchist movement revived specifically in 1992 with the rise of ARM and the DAF, key members of which built the WSF in 1995, which laid the groundwork for today’s ZACF refounded in 2007. In that period, the movement went from being represented by white/Indian organisations in the dying days of apartheid, to a black-majority/white-minority organisation shortly after “liberation”, to an all-white organisation during the consolidation of “democracy” – an unusual trajectory for a specifically anti-racist organisation, to say the least. This will attempt to briefly tackle what forces were in evidence that so shaped the movement. An important note before I begin: I use racial definitions throughout this piece in their cultural sense, whether perceived and/or imposed, not in their biological sense. The ARM and DAF’s racial composition was determined by its cultural and class composition – middle-class punks – and their politics represented the concerns of that milieu and era (anti-militarism, anti-fascism, anarcha-feminism, ecology). Their more organisationally and theoretically advanced elements, all whites, built a new, syndicalist oriented organisation, the WSF, on the platform of a series of Position Papers (including on race, but with nothing written on culture), influenced by the positions of the Irish WSM, which laid the foundations of a more coherent movement. Its concerns reflected those of the changed milieu and era (syndicalism, African labour, labour education, international relations). But while the WSF’s positions, journals and activities enabled it to reach out to certain layers of the black proletariat, notably shop-stewards, it was unable to act as a genuine syndicalist organisation because of its small size – a common enough problem for anarcho-syndicalist organisations which intend building mass organisations of the class while at the same time requiring members to be ideologically homogenous. More seriously, the theoretical development of its black cadre lagged behind that of its white cadre. The WSF was specifically wound up in 1999 in recognition of these weaknesses (plus the contracting political conditions of the time) and its key replacement, the BMC, remained an all-white affair (although the parallel and associated ZB propaganda project remained 1 of 8