Historic defeat for the SACP at the Cosatu Congress- 27.09.09

Monday, 28 September, 2009 8:47:52 AM

The objective reality of the working class impacted on the Cosatu Congress to deal the SACP with a major defeat (the first in a long time). The SACP in Cabinet voted unanimously with the nationalists that they support the mass dismissal of soldiers as well as for the smashing of their unions. The workers at the Congress united and unanimously rejected this proposal. The very lives of many workers, having been shot at and brutalised by the regime during strikes and protests over the last period, have taught workers that we need unions in every sector as a first point of defence against the capitalists-imperialists.

Capitalist crisis has forced together the forces of the bosses within the workers movement to openly side with the capitalists and to refuse to organise resistance, to allow high food prices and mass retrenchment to go unchallenged. Workers adopted a fighting programme but made a crucial error to return to office the very ones who will now drag their feet over the programme and who will do everything in their power to delay and water down the demands of the masses. The failure to adopt a call for a general strike for an emergency workers' plan is another limitation. Nevertheless, the basis has been laid for the start of a fightback by the working class. Now we need to draw the lesson up to the end of the class role of the SACP and of the need for working class independence.

It is not only labour brokers who are the problem but the very system of capitalism.

Forward to a workers summit of all unions, unemployed representatives and soldiers to adopt a programme of action to impliment an emergency plan for the working class!

Forward to a general strike to defend the lives of the working class from the capitalist-imperialist attacks!

Forward to the rebuilding of a revolutionary International based on the lessons of the Fourth International!

Down the regime who conciliates with the imperialists to keep the working class in starvation and slavery!

Forward to a workers' government!
Forward to Socialism!

Workers International Vanguard League
workersinternational@gmail.com
web www.workersinternational.org.za
affiliated to the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction

South Africa: ANC goverment dismisses protesting soldiers and prepares to smash unions as crisis worsens

Open letter to the members of Cosatu, Nactu, Fedusa and independent unions, from the Workers International Vanguard League

We expose the plans of the state to eliminate all progressive forces in the army (including most of the veterans from all ex-liberation armies)

On Friday 4th September 2009, the strikers from the post office (members of Communication Workers Union) were peacefully marching past the Cosatu head office, when 2 policemen (in a police BMW vehicle), opened fire on them with rubber bullets, seriously wounding one of the strikers, Zodwa Maduna. The strike has been going on for weeks now and still the state has not met the demands of the workers. One of the key demands is abolishing the apartheid wage gap. Fifteen years of ANC rule and still the apartheid wage gap in the Post office exists. Many workers at the post office have been retrenched, many post offices closed down and still basic democratic demands in the post office have not been met. Municipal workers who merely tipped over trash cans were shot at; protestors in communities, demanding basic services, after thousands of marches and protests fell on deaf ears, were shot at; unarmed soldiers, who are denied the right to strike, took the unusual step of taking leave, to protest at the union buildings, were denied the right to march, and were shot at.

On the other hand, leaders of the ANC have become overnight billionaires; they live in mansions and have many houses while the masses are starving, homeless and underpaid. Billions are spent on stadiums and coal power stations that will not benefit the working class. Hundreds of billions of Rands in profits are shipped offshore each year by Anglo American and other monopolies, yet of the 28 million people of working age (15-65), only 9 million have some sort of work. [one more million will have lost their jobs by the end of the year].

Employment is in absolute decline and many youth face the prospect of permanent unemployment. 50% of the population are below the age of 25. Population increase is about 1 million per annum; housing need grows by 200 000 each year; housing delivery is less than 200 000 per annum and the backlog in housing is at least 2 million units. Added to this the houses built over the decades for the working class are falling apart; 30% do not have any electricity; only 32% have water in their houses/dwellings; only 42% have access to telephones; 52% have flush toilets and 14% have no toilets at all.

Hand in hand with the shooting of strikers and protestors, are steps taken by the state to clamp down on protests by targeting organisers of protests- this has taken the form of arrests and placing the sweeping charge of ‘public violence’ over their heads. Now the state, through its parliamentary committees, wants to target organisers even of legal protests.

The Constitutional Court ruled in favour of the soldiers, opening the way for unions and centralised bargaining in the military. Even the International Labour Organization (ILO), which is a thoroughly pro-capitalist organization, ruled that where the right to strike is limited/curtailed then workers should have the right to alternative means of having their demands addressed. Thus the Military Bargaining Council, MBC, was set up. Despite this, the state has several times tried to collapse the MBC. In April-May, last year, the soldiers unions made attempts to bargain for the 2009 wage increases. The state ignored them, each time saying that they had ‘no mandate’. The generals received their increases of 10.5% in January this year while the soldiers just received empty promises. Now the state wants to ban unions for soldiers.

Why is the state attacking the working class more and more?

To answer why the state is attacking working class protests, more and more, we have to first look at the global picture:

Anglo American, Old Mutual, Liberty Life, Rembrandt, Sanlam, are the ones who control the SA economy- every single one of these monopolies has a cross ownership by international banks. JP Morgan Chase, for example, controls the Reserve Bank, that punishes the entire working class with high interest rates; most of the gold mines are owned by the Bank of New York, etc etc. The crisis of the international banks has a direct bearing on our lives here.

The rising trend of speculation and the absence of sufficient new areas for capital formation, poses a massive problem for the capitalists- if capital is not invested, it dies. Capitalism needs to increase the rate of exploitation and knows that this poses dangers for them- it opens up a period of capitalist instability where the prospect of the masses rebelling against their greater hardship and starvation, increases.

In the current crisis of imperialism, the older democratic forms, such as parliaments or unions, that were sufficient to contain the working class in the past, now become a fetter, an obstacle to the exploitative relations now required by imperialism. The coup in Honduras, where there was a US military base, shows that imperialism is on the march to take back the few democratic gains that the working class has won. Last year billions of Rands were stolen from our pensions by these imperialist banks. At least 50 million workers, world wide, will be dismissed this year alone; in the past, strikes and unions were tolerated as necessary evils by the capitalists, now every strike and protest opens up the possibility of moving from the economic and social terrain to the political. In other words, every protest by any sector of workers could spark off mass rebellion of the working class who has been trampled on, humiliated and starved for so long.

1996 brought a rise of community based ‘social movements’; these were rapidly sidelined, co-opted and corrupted by the World Social Forum, and isolated by the leadership of Cosatu. Cosatu initially had a resolution supporting actions and campaigns of housing but these were sidelined over time.

Despite this the number of community protests have steadily risen over the years; from 2002 there have been about 1000 protests every year, increasing every year. There is thus great urgency for imperialism to implement their plans to smash the unions in the military and progressive soldiers.

When the hungry and homeless and unemployed start to rise, imperialism would want to protect their assets first. For this they need an army that is brutal, anti-worker and who is able and willing to cold bloodedly slaughter the working class, as they did in Indonesia when they killed off 1 million communists, in Chile where thousands were executed in cold blood, in Argentina, where over 30 000 activists were killed by the state under the time of the dictatorship, etc etc (there are many such examples around the globe). This is the real reason why the state is trying to smash the unions in the army.

The state plans to get rid of all the progressive forces in the army

The Institute of Security studies has already long concluded that the ANC government has a crisis of legitimacy. Imperialism, who draws on the analysis of the ISS, prepared a plan to convert the SANDF into a mercenary-type of army. This is part of a world trend to greater use of mercenaries rather than a conscripted or volunteer army. This trend to a mercenary army is one which came after imperialism drew the lesson of the war in Vietnam and the weakness (for them) of a conscripted or civilian based army, due to the mass protest movement that developed on their home soil. The war in Iraq, with its 300 000 mercenaries, is evidence of this world trend to more fascistic methods. The total security forces in Iraq is 1,3 million and still imperialism cannot contain the masses; Iran also has a 1,3 million paramilitary force and still cannot completely suppress the working class; Israel has been maintained as a fascistic jackboot over the Palestinian and Arab masses for the past 51 years and still they cannot destroy the heroic resistance of the Palestinian masses. On a world scale there has been a trend to more mercenary-type of armed forces. The question is when is quantity changing into quality (world fascism)? [In this stage of world ‘peace’ US imperialism has over 130 military bases around the world and increasing their number rapidly.]

In 1994 imperialism had to neutralize the nationalist liberation armies of the ANC, PAC and Azanla. Thus the process was started of integrating them into the existing army. The integrated army was constructed on the ethos of Mandela’s words: “Never, never again (will we allow such repression of the people)”. Imperialism made this process frustrating for many of the liberation soldiers and many of them accepted dismissal packages. But imperialism knew they had to find a way to purge all the progressive fighters from the army because if this was not done, the next time there was a mass uprising of the working class, the army could not be depended on to shoot the masses down.

In 2002 the SA government produced a document called HR 2010. In this plan they intend to limit the age of the lower ranks to 28, while those in the higher ranks who were not constantly being promoted, would be dismissed; the top ranks would be on 4- 15 year contracts and there would be ‘talent scout’ hunting- in other words, the most fascistic types with experience of putting down uprisings would be brought in; the ratio would be black 64%, 10% coloured, 0.75% Indian, 24% white. The population percentage of whites is less than 10%. This means that many of the killers from the previous repressive regime could find a home within the new army, along with possible ‘special skills’ from US imperialism. 10 000 new recruits would be taken in annually for 2 year military service and only the most pro-capitalist types retained. In short this plan intends getting rid of most of the progressive elements within the army and certainly most of the ex-liberation forces. The plan is to create a professional mercenary army, equipped to suppress any local uprising of the working class. But in order for them to do this they first have to smash and defeat the 2 unions within the army.

The creating of a professional mercenary army has consequences for the rest of the working class in Africa too. Currently the role of the SANDF has nothing to do with ‘defence of the nation’ (we are not under military attack from imperialism at the moment) but everything to do with protecting imperialist plundering in DRC and the rest of Africa. The creation of a mercenary-type SANDF means that the increasing role of the army will be to put down any working class uprising in the rest of Africa as well. Imperialism cannot depend on the current SANDF to do this, thus their need to purge the army of all pro-worker, progressive elements.

From the way municipal and post office workers are being shot, it is clear that the state wants to suppress all forms of protest, including that from all unions. The imperialist mouthpiece, the Institute of Security Studies, on SABC 1, Asikhulume on 6 September 2009, already described all unions in SA as ‘unprofessional’, and ‘unlike unions in Europe’- what he forgot to add was that the unions in Europe are passive, toothless and very skilled at selling out their members.

This explains why the police and the courts were so brutal in suppressing any protest by the soldiers, strikers and community protestors. The ground is being laid for integration of more fascistic types into the army means that the petrol bombing of the military vehicle on the August 26 protest by the soldiers at the Union buildings in Pretoria could have been the work of an agent provocateur. If the state appoints as head of the Hawks, Dramat - whose only claim to fame is being part of a intelligence crackdown on Pagad (where infiltration and framing of activists were of the order of the day)- this explanation seems not only likely but probable and could even become a more widespread tactic by the state to crackdown on the rising tide of resistance. It also shows the methods of the FBI and CIA are alive and well in SA. Imperialism and their lackeys in the state were looking for an excuse to purge the army of any elements who might side with the working class. The first step was to mass dismiss 1300 of the leading ‘troublemakers’ and then proceed with more mass dismissals until they have purged the army of all or most of the pro-working class elements. In 2002 the army stood at 78 000; the state plans to reduce this to 50 000 or less initially, and then increase it by filling the ranks with mercenary-type professional killers, such as those currently operating in Iraq.

There is great urgency for imperialism to implement their plans to smash the unions and progressive soldiers. Protests from the working class are accelerating. In the April 2009 elections 9 million people did not even bother either to register to vote, or to vote. Millions who voted for the ANC were giving them a last chance to deliver. Since June we have been living through a strike wave, where hundreds of thousands of workers (and now the soldiers too) embarked on protest action, despite the efforts of the Cosatu leaders to keep them off the streets.

The SACP is deliberately baiting the WIVL

The SACP youth wing has written a letter to us wherein they hint that the WIVL is calling for an ‘insurrection’ now. This is a blatant untruth. As Lenin wrote in WHAT IS TO BE DONE? …‘the masses have no need of stimulants’. When the masses protest for their democratic demands, on whose side are we? The question is why are they trying to frame us? This is to hide the fact that the state is on the march to not only smash the unions in the army, but also to dismiss all the progressive members of the army, including many of the rank and file of the ANC-SACP-Cosatu alliance supporters in the military.

The SACP ministers, including Nqakula and Kassrils, oversaw, as members of the state Arms standing committee, sales of SA produced weapons of half the total amount to the US military, during the period of the US imperialist invasion of Iraq and its subsequent occupation. The current slaughter of civilians by US imperialism in Afghanistan is being assisted by SA produced weapons, supported by the SACP. The current SACP ministers in cabinet, all unanimously support the mass dismissal of the 1300 soldiers who were brutalised by the state in their attempted peaceful protest at the union buildings. The YCLSA and Cosatu leaders have condemned the mass dismissal but is this just posing ‘left’ or just an expression of fear of the consequences of the state’s actions (to sharpen the class conflict). The current ‘security cluster’ is staffed by higher ranks of the SACP. If there is a mass uprising again in the future, on whose will the SACP be?

The 3 million mzantsi accounts hand over, for free, R30 million extra per month in bank fees, to monopoly capital, thanks to the SACP campaign. [This money comes from the monthly bank fees of a minimum of R10 per account].

Fifteen years of dependence of the middle class and capitalist class in the ANC of ‘deepening democracy’ or of a ‘developmental state’ needs urgent re-evaluation and assessment by the working class. Lenin drew the conclusion in his work STATE AND REVOLUTION, that upon achievement of a democracy, the middle class and the capitalist class lose their revolutionism. Was Lenin wrong? Have the past 15 years proved his analysis wrong, or has it been confirmed?

The petti bourgeoisie cannot deal with fundamental issues and tries to distract the working class from discussing and debating them. The members of Cosatu and the rank and file of the SACP need to confront a real assessment of the class role of the alliance leadership, and indeed of the role of the alliance itself. The lives of the working class depend upon this.

The questionable class role of the Cosatu leaders

The Cosatu leaders have failed to organise a real fight against high food prices; they have failed to wage a fighting campaign against the million job losses this year, and now they want workers to shift focus by not demanding a living wage and rather accept increased slave conditions in exchange for ‘jobs’. They have ‘forgotten’ the basic rule of capitalism, that the capitalists are here to make money, not to create jobs and that any concession from them has to be extracted through struggle. The leaders of the Cosatu unions have supported ‘broad based black economic empowerment’ such as sasol inzalo (where workers lost millions of their savings); they invest in privatization of the health sector and promote an additional tax on workers to fund a so-called National Health Insurance. ‘Empowerment’ is seen by these leaders as advancement of workers into the ranks of management, not as a generalised increase in the conditions of the working class.

Despite the words of the Cosatu and SACP leaders, the interests of the middle class and the billionaires of the ANC are always placed above that of the working class, such is the fundamental nature of the alliance with it.

The way forward

The main axis of the way forward has to be:

Even if the Cosatu leaders do not put it on the agenda, it is important to raise that workers demands for decent housing for all should be met; demands that could be considered also are a sliding scale of wages (when prices go up then wages should too); sliding scale of hours (reduce the working week without loss of pay and share all the work among all those who can work); etc. These demands are important to unite and gain support of employed with the unemployed. All these demands centred around defence of workers and soldiers interests. A living wage for all! Stop retrenchments and mass dismissals of workers and soldiers! Reinstate all dismissed workers and soldiers! Stop the terrorising of the workers’ and soldiers’ protests by the state! Let us put it to the workers of Cosatu and other federations, we need a programme of action irrespective of which party you support or belong to. Defend the worker, defend the unemployed, defend the soldier. Down with the fatcat CEO’s, Cabinet Ministers and generals! This should be our central slogan.

What ever action plan is decided we call for the formation of workers and soldiers committees in every industrial area and in every working class community. These must lead the defence of the working class against the ongoing attacks by the state and the imperialists. We call for a national meeting of workers and soldiers delegates to discuss and plan a national and international programme of action to defend working class interests.

Workers, we want you to know that a section of the advanced guard of the vanguard fighters from Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brasil, New Zealand, USA, and South Africa, as united in the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction support your cause. Without worker-soldier unity, imperialism will defeat us. If the imperialists succeed in mass dismissals from the army, the working class will later pay with its blood, like in Honduras, like in Iraq, like in Afghanistan, like the Palestinians, like the masses in the DRC, like the masses in Rwanda, like the masses in Zimbabwe!

Workers of the world unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains!

PS: Don’t be fooled by reactionary forces such as the church leaders who now at 5 past midnight wake up and ‘discover’ that workers and soldiers are suffering- they and the NGO’s are there to try to pacify the slaves (us), not to revolt against the exploitation of the ‘master’.

8 September 2009
--
Shaheed Mahomed
Secretary
Workers International Vanguard League
1st Floor, Community House
41 Salt River rd
Salt River
South Africa
7925
ph 0822020617
fax 0865486048
workersinternational@gmail.com
web www.workersinternational.org.za

-

South Africa: Solidarity with soldiers of SANDU

Yesterday, 26 August, around 2000 rank and file soldiers of the South African National Defence Force, who were members of SANDU, which is their trade union, marched on the Government offices in Pretoria to demand a 30% wage increase. They were met by police who used teargas and rubber bullets against them. Several were arrested and all face suspensions and possible dismissal. (See updates below on the clampdown on the military union.) We reprint the message of solidarity sent by the WIVL to SANDU. Solidarity statements from HRS (US) and CWG (Aotearoa) follow.

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Workers International Vanguard League condemns in the strongest possible terms the brutal suppression of the soldiers march yesterday to the Union buildings. Soldiers should have the full right to protest as well as the right to strike. It is a disgrace that rank and file soldiers earn such low wages while the officer corp and generals earn huge pay packets, sitting in their comfy armchairs while sending soldiers into life-threatening situations. We fully support the right of soldiers to elect their leaders in the army and that their leaders should be subject to instant recall.

We fully support the demand for a 30% salary increase, a demand which is fully justified and fair. The current Governor of the Reserve Bank recently received a 28% salary increase but he decrees that workers must be 'reasonable' and limit their demands to the 3-6% so called inflation band. In other words, the official inflation is used as a tool to force workers to lower their demands, while actual inflation for workers is much higher than the CPIX. We can see from this that the problems that the soldiers face are the same as the rest of the working class.

We condemn the lukewarm response of the Cosatu leaders to the brutalization of the soldiers yesterday; they only noted 'with concern' the actions of the police, merely describing them as 'excessive'. A true workers leadership would have immediately have called for broader solidarity action from the rest of the working class in support of their demands and have demanded the immediate release of the 2 soldiers who were arrested, and the lifting of the suspension of the protesters. However they are silent. The Cosatu leaders rush to meet the Minister of Defence (Sisulu) instead of meeting with the soldiers and those who have been smashed by the state repressive forces.

On the 28th June there was a military coup in Honduras; well you may ask, what has that to do with the soldiers demands and your protests? The fact is that there is a US military base in Honduras, which means that the Obama regime is involved in the coup. The lesson to be learnt is that imperialism is so desperate to solve its crisis of falling profits that they have to suppress the working class even more; this means that their usual methods of controlling us, through parliament and flowery constitutions, are not enough; they have started a period of greater offensive against the working class, using military coups, police brutality, gangs of hired thugs, etc.

The shooting of protesters in communities, of the municipal strikers for merely tipping over the garbage, here in South Africa is part of the world imperialist attack. The gold mines are owned by the Bank of New York; our Reserve Bank is controlled by JP Morgan Chase. Our economy is mainly controlled by US imperialism. The government is in reality the agent of imperialism here. This is why they guarantee that every year over R200 Bn leaves SA just in declared profits, while the masses live in starvation. This poses immediate challenges for us all. When we meet or organise, can we still operate as before? We need to defend our right to meet, to march, to protest. We need to defend ourselves from the armed attacks of the brutal police and other fascistic agencies.

There is a second major lesson that we need to learn and that is that under these times of crisis of the capitalists, the trade union leaders, such as those of Cosatu, Nactu and Fedusa, close ranks with the capitalist class and act against the interest of workers. At a time that the entire working class should have been on strike for 30% or more increases, the Cosatu leaders persuade workers to lower their demands; they persuade workers not to go on strike, they sign low wage agreements and bind their members, like the municipal unions to 3 year agreements which mean that in the next 2 years their members cannot strike when they receive what is in effect a wage cut.

Even worse, when workers are mobilising to strike, the Cosatu leaders divide the working class by not mobilising any concrete solidarity, and even break ranks to sign for peanuts and weaken the strike, such as when the railway workers went on strike recently (Satawu signed for 8% and abandoned the rest of the workers to strike on their own). The only reason why Cosatu leaders want unions of the soldiers to join them is not to increase working class solidarity, but on the contrary, to use their skills to betray the workers demands and struggles.

The third major lesson to learn is that when SA soldiers are sent to other parts of Africa (Lesotho, DRC, etc), they are being used by the imperialist forces to not only guard their mining and other assets, but to act against the local working class in these respective countries. The war in the DRC has led to over 4 million people being killed; all the imperialists were interested in was not 'peace' for the people, but to rape and plunder as much of the countries resources as possible. Imperialism and their local agent, the SA government, uses you when they need to safeguard the profits of the bosses, but once you have done this, they dump you aside.

To counter the divisive tactics of the SACP-ANC-Cosatu leaders, we need to be better organised, we need to unite with the base of Cosatu and other unions, in action on the ground.

We need to draw the lesson from Madagascar, where the soldiers united en masse with the working class, disobeying their generals order to shoot on worker protests; they took control of the military bases and said loudly and clearly that they are with the people.

What we need are workers and soldiers action committees to defend this current struggle of the soldiers for a living wage and other demands; we need to unite to defend communities for their struggles for jobs for all, for bread, for decent housing for all, for free adequate health care for all; for increasing wages when prices increase. This is the same fight. it is the same fight as the workers in Bolivia and Peru against the imperialist grab of their resources. It is the same fight as the Chinese and Zimbabwean workers against exploitation.

We demand:

1. the immediate unconditional release of the 2 arrested soldiers;

2. the immediate lifting of the suspension of all soldier protesters;

3. 30% increase in wage for soldiers and the entire working class; increase the soldiers wage to a minimum of R5000; wages must increase when prices increase;

4. Recognise the soldiers defence unions and the right to strike and protest;

5. Adequate houses for all;

6. Reduce the working week without loss of pay and share all jobs among all those who can work.

7. Down with all military operations by the SANDF in Africa; unite with the working class to defend the masses against the plunder of Anglo American and other gangster monopolies.

Workers of the world unite; we have nothing to lose but our chains!

Send messages of solidarity to The National Executive of the SANDU, c/o Jeff Dubazana sandu@mweb.co.za ; please cc messages to workersinternational@gmail.com
--
Shaheed Mahomed
Secretary
workersinternational@gmail.com
web www.workersinternational.org.za


UPDATE: 28 August

Workers International Vanguard League condemns the decision by the government to dismiss the soldiers who took part in yesterday's protest. The refusal of the courts to even grant the soldiers the right to march to the Union buildings show that the courts are the agents of the capitalists. The Obama coup in Honduras on 28 June 2009 shows that world imperialism is moving over to greater control by force and trampling on the few democratic gains the working class has made. US imperialism controls the bulk of the SA economy through Anglo American and other global gangsters. The shooting of unarmed community members dying of the cold in shacks, the shooting of municipal workers for throwing over trash cans, and now the shooting of unarmed soldiers are all part of a global capitalist attack on the working class.

The army generals received 10,5% salary increases as well as improved benefits in January this year, backdated to about October last year, while each time the defence workers unions have been stonewalled by the government, claiming time and again that they have 'no mandate'. Soldiers are expected to suffer and starve in silence while the MP's argue about which model of Mercedes Benz to buy. If the soldiers had the right to strike, this matter would have been resolved long time ago. The government is so busy bailing out capitalists who have stolen hundreds of billions of Rands of wealth from SA over the decades, that they have no time for the demands of the working class.

Even though the protest on Wed was called by Sandu, we understand that Sandu, Sasfu as well as non-unionised soldiers took part in the protest. Even the pro-boss ILO regulations support soldiers right to protest and state that where the right to strike is limited there should be alternative mechanisms in place; and even if there are illegal strikes (which this was not), there should be protection from arbitrary dismissal. The government is a signatory of the ILO but throws away even a pretence of fairness when the profits of big capital are deemed under threat.The lukewarm response from the Cosatu leaders has opened the door for the government to mass dismiss soldiers. We call on members of Sasfu, Sandu and non-unionised soldiers to unite against the mass dismissal; we call on the entire working class to rally to the defence of the soldiers cause. They have been the only ones who have been brave enough to demand a wage increase that was really required, namely 30%. We call for joint soldier- worker committees to be built in every community, to unite the struggle of the soldiers with the struggle for adequate housing, for an end to retrenchments, for jobs for all and a shortening of the working week without loss of pay (so that all who can work, can share the work), with the rest of the working class struggle for a living wage increase. We call for wages to increase each time prices increase! Let us stop the retail and food gangsters in their tracks!

We call for an urgent national meeting of delegates from all workplaces (unionised or not), working class communities (including the unemployed) and of delegates of soldiers to plan a programme of action to defend the soldiers and all sectors under attack by imperialism!

We reject the notion that SA soldiers are the last line of the defence of the country; the SA soldiers have been dispatched to the DRC and other countries, where they protect imperialist assets even if millions are killed around them- this is imperialism abusing the soldiers while the fatcats of Anglo American sit in their comfy mansions in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, etc, out of harms way.

Workers and soldiers unite to help throw off the yoke of imperialism on the African continent. workers of the world unite, we have nothing to lose but our chains!

UPDATE 30 August

Workers International Vanguard League has received evidence that the military unions have been attempting since at least May LAST YEAR, to negotiate wage increases fo the soldiers. Each time they were met with governmentnegotiators that had 'no mandate'. The fact that the fat generals received their increases in January this year means that the government was not serious about any negotiations with the rank and file soldiers and that they have been looking for an excuse to bash the unions. Te demand of 30% for the lower ranks and 15% for the upper ranks by the soldiers, goes against the divisions between the upper elite and the foot soldiers, so characteristic of capitalist society.
The current crisis of imperialism needs greater supression of the working class and the creation of a more openly oppressive professional army of mercenaries. Imperialism and their lackeys in the state were looking for an excuse to purge the army of any elements who might side with the working class. This trend to a professional army is one which came after imperialism drew the lesson of the war in Vietnam and the weakness (for them) of a conscipted or civilian based army. The war in Iraq, with its 300 000 mercenaries, is evidence of this world trend to more fascistic methods.

This explains why the police and the courts were so brutal in suppressing any protest. The ground is being laid for integration of more fascistic types into the army and makes us believe that the petrol bombing of the military vehicle last week could have been the work of an agent provocateur. If the state appoints Dramat as head of the Hawks- whose only claim to fame is being part of a intelligence crackdown on Pagad (where infiltration and framing of activists were of the order of the day)- this explanation seems not only likely but probable and could even become a more widespread tactic by the state to crackdown on the rsing tide of resistance. It also shows the methods of the FBI and CIA are alive and well in SA.

Down with the upper layer of officers of the Praetorian (like the elite in Roman times) army of the Afrikaner bourgeoisie, the Angloamerican and the bourgeoisie of the ANC!
Down with the assassin layer of officers that oppresses and massacres the nations of Southern Africa for the interests of American and British imperialism!
For the election and removal of the chiefs of the army by committees of the rank and file soldiers!
For committees of soldiers, armed workers and peasants!
For the Socialist United States of Southern Africa!

August 30, 2009

From: Humanists for Revolutionary Socialism (HRS).

To: To 
Our oppressed soldier brothers, workers in uniform under state attack in South Africa in care of the Worker’s International Vanguard League (WIVL).


We denounce the South African state for its unconscionable behavior towards you and its illegal actions against you and your brothers.
 It is important for soldiers to know that there is worker opposition here in the “belly of the beast” to their ultimate bosses, our own main enemy, the U.S. capitalist class. We demand all U.S. imperialist forces (overt and covert) out of Africa now! Their only purpose on your continent is to further the exploitation of your people and the appropriation of your resources.

We stand opposed to them and all their plans to put you in harm's way and keep you hungry. We stand opposed to the obscene fat Boer and English generals who live off your sweat and to all the sadist and martinet junior officers that make your life hell.
 We denounce all the bourgeois authorities and the way their police 
"support the troops" with tear gas and gunfire. We denounce them and phony union leaders who stand with them when they deny your basic democratic rights to protest and to struggle for living wages and conditions. We know "leaders" like these. We call them class traitors.


The soldier's fate, as rank-and-file soldiers, is tied up to ours
 as workers in ways that cannot be dissolved, as the history of all 
modern revolutions shows. The political forces of the yes men for American and British imperialism, together with the Stalinists of the
 South African Communist party, have stalled out and sold out your proletarian revolution, and with it your national liberation. They
 move you around the African map in support of every imperialist scheme to rob one locality after another. These political forces of yes men 
are the ones who want to prosecute you now. It is they who are denying 
you the pay you need to feed and clothe your families!

Brothers! You are living under conditions of the slave-owner's tyranny.
 The South African bourgeoisie wants you to do their imperialist masters' dirty work on YOUR continent. They want you to do this for the kind of chicken feed pay they paid the non-white colonial levies (draftees)
 they led to slaughter in the past! They want you to do all the dying 
defending their class and the rule of the laws of their class' dictatorship. They want you to die for them like a Gunga Din, fighting his own oppressed people when they rise up in righteous revolt. 


You have organized! You are our Union Brothers now, no matter what 
our top COSATU and AFL-CIO misleaders say! You declare you will never surrender. That is a tremendous source of strength for us! We in the HRS and your champions, the WIVL, will go every mile of the way with you! For you will come to find that for you, as for us, the Socialist Revolution will be the only road out of the crisis of human survival and development!


We stand behind all your demands in the Proposed Agreement and demand the dropping of all charges against the jailed Brothers! For
30% raises NOW covering all 12 months of 2009! For immediate new Collective Bargaining talks to begin as soon as this Trade Agreement 
is in effect! For an across-the-board 5% raise increment on April 1,
2010! For a 1% check off for all those in uniform payable to THE UNION, etc. We support your demands in detail! And we demand the reinstatement without prejudice of any kind to their records for all the Brothers who were discharged/dismissed!


We stand behind all the demands raise by the WIVL on your behalf.
 Your situation is part of and not something different than a generalized South African crisis within a world crisis of capitalism/imperialism. Understood this way we know an injury to one of you is an injury to us all. To advance the struggle the following additional demands are endorsed and recommended for adoption by the soldiers and their supporters


1. Down with the Praetorian layer of officers of the army of DeBeers, Anglo-American and the bourgeoisie of the ANC.



2. Down with the assassin layer of officers that oppresses and massacres the nations of Southern Africa at the command of American and British imperialism.



3. For the election and for the right of recall and substitution of the chiefs of the armed forces by Committees of the Rank-And-File Servicemen to assure the military acts only in the interests of the working class, the oppressed and poor peasants.



4. For Committees of Soldiers, Armed Workers and Peasants.



5. For the Socialist United States of Southern Africa!


28-8-09

To the National Executive of SANDU.

Dear comrades of the SA National Defence Union,

The Communist Workers Group of Aotearoa/NZ sends its revolutionary greetings and proletarian solidarity to your members who are being arrested and suspended for protesting your poverty wages.

We strongly support your right to fight for a living wage, and for the right to protest and demand this and other necessities of life. We salute your militancy and your slogan "we will never surrender". This is a slogan that the whole working class should take up internationally.

We can see that you are not alone in South Africa, nor around the world, where there are many mass struggles against the global economic crisis, and the attempts by the capitalist parasites to make us bailout their system with the food out of our childrens' mouths. It is obvious that for us to live capitalism must die!

The capitalist system is in crisis, and the only thing stopping its downfall is the capitalist ruling class which uses the treacherous union leaders to hold the masses down, and weaken and divide them, while the state forces and paramilitaries prepare to smash them.

The way to end the system is for the workers in uniform to refuse to obey orders to shoot the workers out of uniform, and to join with them to occupy the workplaces, take control of transport and communications, and form armed defence committees to defeat the officers, the mercenaries, paramilitaries etc., and to fight for a Black Socialist Republic of South Africa.

In Solidarity

Dave Brown (for CWG - member of the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction).
Aotearoa/New Zealand