October 2014

From the mines of Marikana to enslaved Zimbabwe
Fighting against Anglo American, imperialism and the native servile governments...

The revolutionary and internationalist labor movement is standing up in Southern Africa!

Forging international unity, calling their African American color siblings in U.S to fight alongside them, putting in place their own bodies of political independence and direct democracy and preparing the general strike against TNCs, the governments of the native bourgeoisie, as in Zimbabwe and facing the collaborationist Stalinist bureaucracy of the trade unions

An example for all workers of the world to follow

For the last few years, the colored proletariat in the depths of Africa, that bleeding, martyred and brutally looted continent, has been present on the political scene with their battles and clashes against the transnational corporations, the servile Governments of the black bourgeoisie that give out their nations to imperialism and the treacherous trade union bureaucracy. 
There has been forged a fierce working-class, which already does not support any more theft of all the grandiose riches and natural resources that the huge continent guards. There have been centuries of oppression and martyrdom. There have been centuries of slavery and large massacres perpetrated by white imperialist pirates. There have been dozens of years of experience with the black bourgeoisie and its politicians and officials who ensure the profits of the capitalists and deepen the plight of the hungry masses. There have been years supporting betrayals of Stalinism and the trade union bureaucracy. There have been years suffering from the recipes of those philanthropists of reformist currents and their NGOs, which only bring healing and success for the bankers of large cities and poverty and deadly diseases to our peoples. "No more of this, enough is enough..." the exploited say through each one of their bouts.
One of the most important (if not THE most) milestones was the struggle by workers at the Marikana mine (plundered by Lonmin and Anglo American). They were 5 months of one of the most heroic strikes of the proletariat in the 21st century. Despite the isolation, more than 70,000 miners from all over southern Africa (Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and the same deep South Africa) organized themselves independently and fought against the transnational corporations, confronted the Government of Zuma and the ANC; moreover they did that as well as against the rotten Stalinist trade union bureaucracy of COSATU. They were standing their pickets of self-defense, conquered a Committee of Struggle coordinating the strikers of all mines, faced the bloody police crackdown (who had massacred 34 colleagues), kept working workers’ democracy in their base assemblies and expelled (with physical confrontations included) the rotten trade union bureaucracy.
 
"12,500 RAND (Republic of South Africa’s currency) for all of us or you get out of here!" was their fighting flag, demonstrating an advanced class consciousness and the certainty of the program of revolutionary Marxism, one of whose apothegms says that "you have to fight for everything to get the minimum, because the bourgeoisie does not deliver anything if it does not feel afraid of losing it all".
Struggling in this way, the Marikana mine workers won the admiration of their class brothers, who were encouraged to follow this example, but then fighting together and united in the whole of Africa.
 
In Southern Africa: like a single fist, the working class began to organize their ranks to confront their enemies. They were not the leaderships that the labor movement have at their head who encouraged workers to take these steps (Conversely, the traditional union leaders have always put shackles to our class so this not fights and undergoes the capitalists) ; it was the thorn of the Anglo American in their side and its ruthless and endless thirst for profits who unified the black working class, which views gold and precious metals running beneath their feet while it is confined to live in shacks without bathrooms, its children dying in absolute malnutrition or gripping diseases and plagues created by hellish conditions of life imposed by this system.
They are millions of workers that with their work force extract and give value to Lithium, Platinum, etc. (minerals that transnational corporations use then for their technological products). These workers are who understand that to one or other side of national borders (fictional and drawn to convenience by the white colonizers) the same companies put us on our knees. Anglo American to goes to this part of the planet as to a single –borderless- region to plunder. And workers - aware of this – have recognized themselves of one nation (that runs from central to southern Africa): that of (industrial or agricultural) workers enslaved by imperialism. Then the fight has begun to be a single one. Because it's them or us! And the task to achieve our demands is expropriating Anglo American, landlords and banks that steal mercilessly what is ours. There is money to secure work, wages, housing, health and food which we need so much. Preparing this bout, the African proletariat starts to mark a path of revolutionary struggle as a breakthrough to their suffering.
This fight openly confronts the politics of the World Social Forum, which with its social imperialist parties such as French NPA and English SWP isolated and silenced workers at Marikana’s revolutionary and anti-imperialist struggle. They did so because they know very well that if generalized it would have meant a decisive step to end the infamous regime of reconciliation with the Apartheid imposed by the CNA and Stalinism. It would have meant to pave the way for the struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of the government agent of Anglo American. It would have meant being forced to pose in their own Nations, such as France and England things like: "we must fight as in Marikana", "there is the key for the miners’ struggle to succeed" and "the enemy is at home"; for what they had had to call the proletariat to build self-determination and direct democracy coordination boards for a mass political struggle against the Paris Club and the City of London and the Governments of Monsieur Hollande and Mr. Cameron. It would have meant breaking with that arrogant aristocracy and labor bureaucracy. Finally, it would have meant ceasing to be social imperialist currents... which is impossible!
The fight raised by the workers at Marikana with their organs of class independence where they took in their hands the solution to their problems, is at an angle of 180° against the strategy of the parties that on behalf of the "radical left" tell every day to the working class that the solution to their hardships will come with draft laws presented in the bourgeois parliaments or petitions to the Ministry of labor, or by pressing for "moderating the adjustment" and conquering a "more social Europe".
The FSM knows with complete certainty that "spontaneity is the embryo of the conscious"; they know how dangerous this fight is both for their capitalist masters and also for its own survival as parties. They put their life at stake in ensuring that the workers in struggle do not exceed frameworks of economic struggle, of pressure on the employers and the Government; that’s why Marikana made imperialism tremble because the miners put up their bodies of worker power, faced the scabby bureaucracy with their pickets of self-defense, and put in question the dominance of imperialism in the region.
Reformism comes from encircling and isolating the revolutions of the Maghreb and the Middle East. Today, under the discipline of Stalinism, the reformists have regrouped their forces in the FSM to prevent that the spark of Marikana, as yesterday Tunisia’s, fire the revolution throughout Central and southern Africa. That’s why they left encircled and isolated Marikana workers for 6 months of a heroic strike.
This determinate struggle of the workers in Marikana shocked the region and allowed an effervescence in the proletariat of Zimbabwe, where the exploited already broke openly with those agents-lackeys of the same Anglo American: the Government of Zanuf-PF and MDC - founded and supported by the ISOZ which put its Gwisai leader as a representative in the anti-worker Parliament -.
While the ISOZ was with MDC, the SWP (its “mother current” in England), before the heroic struggle of the miners in Marikana… proposed bringing blankets and meals to the strikers because this is what they needed! This party has nothing to envy to the role that the NGOs play in the region!
But the working class of Zimbabwe felt as theirs and fed on Marikana experience and know that the greatest enemy of all the proletariat of the region is the Anglo American, its lackey Governments and its agents inside the labor movement supporting them.
In this way, as part of the anniversary of the murder of 34 miners at Marikana, Revolutionary Socialist leaders from Zimbabwe traveled to coordinate their forces across the borders. Upon returning to their country they participated in a meeting with trade unions grouped together at the ZCTU where it was resolved by their proposal, that they are authorized as delegates to return to Marikana and deepen the international coordination for fighting.
In this way, working-class internationalism took a huge leap. There the Strike Committee of Marikana, Lonmin and Anglo-American mines’ workers quickly recognized with the internationalist revolutionary workers of the WIL, Zimbabwe, rated as delegates of the ZCTU and traced a plan of action in common. They also wrote a letter to the family of Michael Brown and the US colored working class and exploited, telling: "Around the Lonmin mines there is no more only 34 crosses, but one more has been added, that of your son Michael Brown, which we consider one of our children. He represents for us all workers and young people of color in the United States and the world who suffer oppression like us."  And that it happens nevermore "Let’s unite, let’s regroup and have a powerful labor movement to defeat Obama, the Anglo American and worldwide capitalism!"
These motions they presented together in the Assembly of the AMCU in South Africa so it was taken by all workers who today continue their struggle for decent housing and better living conditions. Long live the militant internationalism of the working class of South Africa! They have already begun to unite their fight!
Internationalist workers of Zimbabwe together with the Marikana Strike Committee voted that their fight is together with the African-American worker youth who fight and call for justice for Michael Brown and they also see the need to unify their fight with the black proletariat of United States.
Conscious revolutionary factor begins to deepen and carry out what the revolutionary masses in the region began to make with their fight: struggling restlessly so Marikana turn on the revolutionary struggle of the working class of color, because they are who will take the revolution to the inside of the imperialist powers; because they are part of the European and North American working class, despite the will of the traitors of worker aristocracies and bureaucracies of the imperialist countries. Open the way to the internationalist worker militancy of the working class of color!
Today, the internationalist revolutionists of the WIL struggle in Zimbabwe so it rises as war cry "we have to fight as in Marikana!". At their returning from Platinum belt to their country, participated in a meeting with combative workers organizations such as the ZCTU, Union of Progressive Teachers, Union of Urban Municipal Workers, and National Forum of Young Workers, with militant students and called for setting up a Committee of struggle. They are going through different towns and villages in Zimbabwe to organize a large unified struggle of the labor movement: a general strike for their most pressing demands and against the repressive Government of Zanu-PF, of Obama’s lackey Mugabe, the Anglo American and other MNCs who loot across black Africa. Thus the regional and local committees are standing all across Zimbabwe, with worker democracy and voting for how best fight for their demands.
Thus resurfaces the international labor movement in South Africa, which is a great example of how by breaking the isolation, a general strike is organized and prepared to unite all the region's exploited’s claims, which means a huge step ahead of the working-class of Zimbabwe and South Africa in the fight against looting and overexploitation by the imperialist transnational corporations. From a core of revolutionary internationalists carrying the Trotskyist program to the revolutionary proletariat and its struggles it begins to break the siege of Marikana in the region. Now let's do it internationally!
We present the program presented by the revolutionary workers of the WIL in a worker assembly in the city of Masvingo where it is called to organize the general strike with the methods of the working class, its methods of struggle and worker democracy inside their organizations. At the same time, against any bourgeois agent who tries to corrupt their struggle, as the NGOs, workers called to set up and carry out a Committee for fundraising that run through cities and towns so that workers contribute to the fight that they themselves organize. That’s the right way to fight!
 
In one of the countries with the worst indexes of unemployment and hunger where imperialism sends their NGOs to control the exploited with money, food and donations, the internationalist workers have managed to put installed their own finances in a clear break with politics of co-optation, of class collaboration WSF- leaderships- mandated. A great example of class independence for all the proletariat around the world! How is it possible that this cannot be done in the other countries of the world where left-wing parties are in unions, or influence worker organizations? Once again it is unmasked the treacherous party politics of labor aristocracies and bureaucracies which use to subordinate the working class and their struggles to the bourgeoisie.