On the state’s plan to draft

unemployed youth into the army

The capitalist gangsters of  Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase are busy subjecting the working class in Greece and across Europe to hunger and starvation by implementing austerity measures. The working class are already faced  with starvation and unemployment while their governments bailed out the imperialist banks by  printing paper money without any relation to existing production; now those countries themselves are  bankrupt because they owe money to the same imperialist banks they bailed out .Workers in Greece should refuse to pay this odious debt and if they shut down the factories, workers must occupy them and place them under workers control, we call for workers self defense  committees and workers militias to defend themselves against the imperialist onslaught.  We salute the heroism of the working class in Greece, Kyrgyzstan, Thailand , Madagascar and everywhere  in the world  where the working class have stood against the fascistic police and took the battle onto the streets to show their anger and are fighting for their demands . The working class in Kyrgyzstan had gone a mile further by occupying the parliament and burning down the government house.

The imperialist banks are centralizing their attack through the governments, against the working class in Europe and now they are preparing a further, vicious onslaught on to the working class in the colonies and semi colonies. The imperialists had learned a lesson in Madagascar in that even though the masses were burning the government building in Kyrgyzstan, the soldiers were kept in their barracks because they feared that the soldiers will stand on the side of the workers (as they did in Madagascar). Similarly, in Greece, the army has been kept in their barracks. In the semi-colonies  like South Africa, the imperialists, through the ANC-SACP government, are preparing a vicious attack on the masses to avoid a ‘Greece’ or ‘Kyrgyzstan’, by preparing a professional wing of  the most vicious fascist band in the army which is going to be trained to attack their own class brothers and sisters. This is done in the name of job creation for the unemployed youth. The agents of imperialism, the renegades of Trotskyism,  through the social movements[WSF] and Stalinists of the SACP have failed to corrupt and pacify the youth in South Africa.

 When the Minister of defense gave her speech in parliament announcing government’s intentions to absorbs the youth in to the army, she said: “Any television footage of service delivery protest will show that at the fore front of this, in great majority are our youth .with excessive anger and misdirected energy and frustration etched on their faces . We as a country can ill afford this”. She said, that is, what she really meant to say, imperialism can ill afford revolutionary young people coming out to make democratic demands which can cause another revolutionary June 16; they are aware of the revolutionary potential of the youth so they want to corrupt the youth and overwhelm the progressive forces already within the ranks of the soldiers, by outnumbering them with some fascist elements. This initiative by government is not new; when Mugabe’s government was faced with a potential revolution , a fascist paramilitary band was formed from the ranks of the unemployed youth and functions to instill fear among the working class who were pushing for revolutionary measures . Mugabe, the agent of British and American imperialism, through this fascist band, killed and tortured many of the working class in Zimbabwe in the name of patriotism; in the DRC similar fascist bands were created by French and American imperialists to torture the Congolese working class so that their revolutionary aspirations would not be realized. The Khomeini regime in Iran also created a paramilitary band of over 300 000 to terrorize and suppress the working class.

The South African government, the agents of British and American imperialism, after failing to further pacify the youth through the YCL, Cosas, Sasco & ANCYL, have now realized that a potential workers’ revolution led by the militant youth of this country, fueled by the spirit of the workers and youth of 1976, is imminent and now they need to take pre-emptive measures such as to select from among them the ruthless types, to indoctrinate them to hate their own class and use them to attack all working class activists and use them as a counter-revolutionary force against the working class. The world cup will come and go but the needs of young people remains unresolved; after the world cup the South African government will be forced to attack the working class by imposing unto them austerity measures to pay for the debt created by building unwanted stadiums (big capital was bailed out twice: government loaned from the imperialists for the world cup and now has to repay the loans and the huge interest bill) ; in the near future the paramilitary bands would be used to smash any uprising against the government.       

The Minister unashamedly reminds us of how much imperialism and their agents within the ANC hate unionization of the soldiers; they proposed to parliament for unions to be replaced by a counter-revolutionary service commission (a toothless structure similar to the tactics of the old National Party regime) that will serve the interest of the imperialist bourgeoisies. The class antagonisms of capitalist society are reflected in the structure of the army; the handful of generals and officer caste have privileges, high salaries and mirror the capitalist class- they have allegiance first and foremost to the imperialists- they do not hesitate to sacrifice the rank in file soldier in battles and wars of plunder, or in the final analysis, in the case of a workers uprising, to drown it in blood; the rank and file soldiers on the other hand, mirror the working class, having poor conditions and low pay- they are the ones who put their bodies on the line while the generals live in comfort and issue orders from their ivory towers. The rank and file soldier is generally drawn from the working class and has more in common with his/her class brothers and sisters. There is of course a middle layer in the army, which mirrors the middle class, torn between the antagonistic interests of the capitalist and working class. The rank and file soldier has common interest with the working class as shown in the 1871 Paris Commune and lately in the workers and soldiers committees in Madagascar (where the workers and peasants, supported by the rank and file soldiers, overthrew US imperialist puppet, Ravalomanana). Unions for the rank and file soldiers are a very important step forward to defend their interest against that of the capitalist-imperialist class but should not be seen as a replacement for the need for rank and file soldiers to send delegates to structures of the working class in struggle, such as community meetings, strike committees, workers’ summits etc. Ultimately, the interests of the rank and file soldiers are the same as the proletariat as a whole, and cannot be met within the bounds of capitalism and it is in their interest to unite with and support the rest of the working class in struggle.

Such is the antagonism between the generals and the rank and file soldiers that there are some military bases where no general dare set foot. [This is the reason why soldiers are being sent to the borders; imperialism wants to break up the unity of the soldiers].

The state is doing their best to break the unity and militancy of the rank and file soldiers; their strategy of huge increases in wages is a measure to co-opt them and to break their unions. It is in this context that the drafting of unemployed youth into the army, must be seen; it is a measure to smash and neutralize the progressive forces within the army. This process will take some time; however the state has calculated that if a mass workers uprising were to occur now, they would not be able to depend on the army to smash the revolution; on the contrary, the great likelihood is that the soldiers will side with the working class. Imperialism has calculated that they need an immediate, reserve, counter-revolutionary force; thus they have rushed through the creation of a militarized police. This was smuggled though under the pretext of preparation for the world cup; its existence is being prolonged under the cover of so-called ‘xenophobic’ attacks. The leadership of Cosatu offered little resistance to this new force, abandoning it as a sectoral issue in the arms of the police and soldier unions.

To the revolutionary rank and file soldiers we say: unite with the new recruits and let them join the unions. We salute the talks among soldier unions to unite but we want to warn against Stalinist elements within the unions which may want to destroy the union from within or reduce the role of the union to a depoliticized shell separate from working class struggles.

The government failed  to implement HR 2010 and now they want to implement HR 2020 which is a scam to dilute the progressive forces within the SANDF that were trained to fight the unjust, anti-working class system; now they want to recruit ruthless young people who would be trained to kill their own class . We denounce the government intentions to recruit young people to train them to be  paramilitary fascist bandits who would be used to smash the working class protest against government; the state makes delusional claims of  creating  jobs for young people and of affording them chance to acquire skills. Not every young person who will be part of this program would be admitted as soldiers because the real aim is to create a fascist band within the soldiers .Imperialism is known to create fascist band and unleash fascism when it is faced with a potential revolution; this is not new, it has happened in Bolivia during 2003-2005 and Kyrgyzstan in 2010  .

Having said this nevertheless we agree with Lenin when he wrote ‘The bourgeoisie makes it its business to promote trusts, drive women and children into the factories, subject them to corruption and suffering , condemns them to extreme poverty .we do not support such development we fight it’. That is, we condemn the exploitation by the capitalists. In the view that imperialism is armed against the working class and constantly attacking them Lenin went further to say ‘ with the necessary changes that argument that is applicable also to the past militarization is applicable also to the present militarization of the population . Today the imperialist bourgeoisie militarizes the youth as well as the adults: … our attitude should be all the best ! full speed ahead for the fast we move , the nearer shall we be to the armed uprising against capitalism .’

We encourage young working class youth to enroll themselves in the program  to learned skills , to learn how to use guns and arm the entire working class to advance the attack on capitalism; our slogan is forward to the arming of the proletariat and disarm the bourgeoisie for an ‘oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms , to acquire arms , only deserve to be treated like slaves.’  Lenin [the military programme of the proletarian revolution]. The central point is, side by side with this, is that the youth must study Marxism, must study past revolutions; for without such class consciousness, the youth could fall prey to the imperialist parasites