back to the index

 

Madagascar

A revolution besieged by imperialism, the native bourgeoisies and the treacherous leaderships

Africa: A Continent under an open dispute between the imperialist powers
Under the blows of the world economic crisis which, like waves of a tsunami, Madagascar has become -as the entire colonial, semi colonial world and Africa in particular, a territory of wild inter-imperialist disputes for the control of cheap raw materials and natural capital; oil, land, markets, cheap labour, minerals, precious stones, etc., taking the plundering of these nations by the imperialist pirates to unprecedented levels.
US imperialism maintains a ferocious dispute with the rest of the imperialist powers across Africa. All the imperialist powers are seeking to get the biggest part of the plunder business in the continent, that’s why they are not only unwilling to hand over even a bit of conquered territory, but each one is going for more against the interests of the others, and that is what explains the ferocious dispute going on between the United States, England, France, Germany and  Japan, expressed in the alliances and confrontations between all with all, and all against all.
The disputes between the US and French imperialist agents opened the gaps at the top by which the proletariat and the masses had burst out, starting the revolution in the ex-French colony of Madagascar, in 2009.
While the local butchers were discussing how to give the Island’s wealth to their imperialist masters, the exploited masses in Madagascar were condemned to hunger and extreme poverty. 70% of the population lives below the poverty datum line. Workers are over-exploited in the mines of Chrome, Uranium and other minerals which are in the hands of the imperialist (mostly Japanese) consortiums, as well as the workers in the maquila (sweat-shop TN) established in the so called tax-free areas. Three quarters of the population survives with an average of one dollar or less per day. The poor peasants live on little pieces of land, gained thanks to the anti-colonial struggle and the expulsion of the French Landlords; there they can hardly cultivate enough to be self sufficient, this is why Ravalomanana’s businesses were expropriated and burned all around the country by the exploited masses in revolt, as a show of justice. The exploited masses were the ones that precipitated the beginning of the revolution. Ravalomanana is a rich business man and owner of an agro-food consortium named Tico, a supermarket chain and big shops.
Ravalomanana, the US imperialism agent is the one who created the tax-free areas where the imperialist companies have established their maquilas – from Germany among others-, and extended the contracts of exploitation of the mining and big land to non French imperialist consortiums.
He had virtually “sold” Madagascar for 99 years to the US-South Korean imperialist group Daewoo-Logistics. On November 2008, he signed an agreement by which he handed over 1 300 000 (one million three hundred thousand ) hectares of land to the (US-South Korean) imperialist group – an area the size of half of Belgium!!!- until 2117; to plant corn, palm trees, produce bio-combustibles and to export corn to South Korea - the world’s biggest corn consumer. And in exchange for all that (massive looting) the group “committed” themselves to invest US$6 billion dollars (Six Billion United States Dollars) and “create 70.000 new jobs”; that’s to say in exchange for some miserable promises. In the mean time, tens of thousands of peasants saw their lands being expropriated –  a reversal of gains achieved during the anti-colonial revolutionary struggle against French imperialism – coupled with devastating hunger and unprecedented  rise  in the cost of living
Before these measures, French imperialism - which considers Madagascar as “its” colony - blew up in anger because its Yankees competitors were stealing part of its business. So, it bought Rajoelina and the fraction of the bourgeoisie that he represents and with whom a French consortium was negotiating to buy Nosy Hara and Mitso, two entire Malagasy islands, for the business of tourism and the luxurious constructions.
This was the inter-imperialist disputes that split the Malagasy bourgeoisie into two fractions; one Yankee’s servant partner and other that wanted to become French imperialism’s servant.
With this disintegration at the top (bourgeoisie camp), a revolutionary crisis was created by the end of January; the starving masses  rose up for their own demands while the bourgeois fractions were at each other’s throats.
When the masses discovered this sinister plan of US imperialism and before the first attempts at expelling the poor peasants, they started a generalized uprising (of the poor peasants) defending their land against imperialism’s claws. During the first months of 2009 the peasants fought, defending their land; Ravalomanana’s government answered with brutal repression. 13 peasants were condemned to death and others were imprisoned to 12 years of hard labour because they refused to give their lands away to an industrial boss who wanted to extend his tourist attraction park. This revolt merged with the struggle of the working class and the exploited in the cities against slavery, the starvation wages and the increase of the cost of living that they are condemned to by the transnationals in the maquilas, in the tax-free areas. The exploited went to get the food for their children where it was: in the supermarkets that belonged to Ravalomanana and in the big imperialist chain-stores. In that revolutionary action, with a precise class instinct, the masses understood that bread can only be achieved if they get arms! Because the Malagasy government couldn’t solve the most elemental demands such as bread, land and national independence; the masses had to defeat Ravalomanana and the bourgeoisie, in the streets. They  seized  weapons by defeating the police and presidential guard in the streets, they divided the army horizontally, between its rank and file and the official caste.
Thus, the motive force of the Malagasy revolution was the struggle for bread, land and national independence, against the brutal imperialist plundering.
The Malagasy proletariat and exploited are the vanguard of the struggle for the workers and socialist revolution in tormented Africa
For the first months of 2009, the disputes between the Madagascar president Ravalomanana – pro-US imperialism - and Rajoelina, Antananarivo’s mayor, manager of French imperialism, assumed a sharp character. The revolt of the masses erupted because of the gaps opened on the top; with street combats, demonstrations, general strikes, fights with the hated police and the mercenaries of the presidential guard, who murdered over one hundred martyrs of the exploited. Malagasy workers went over the heads of the Malagasy Workers Confederation (MWC) that accused the workers of being bandits (just as the Argentinean Workers Confederation, CTA, did in December 2001 when the masses of Argentina were initiating their revolution).
The decisive action of the  masses that ended up hanging the bodies of the hated police in the trees and from the street lanterns of Antananarivo, proved to the soldiers that the workers and poor peasants were willing to go up to the end ( to conquer power) and this was what gave them the confidence to disobey their officials and refuse to repress the people. This was the decisive moment, as Trotsky said: “That the disarming of the Pharaons becomes the general currency. The gendarmes are the irreconcilable, cruel, enemies, hated. There is not even a thought of winning them for the cause.(...) The critical hour of contact between the pushing crowd and the soldiers who bar their way has its critical minute. That is when the grey barrier has not yet given way, still holds together shoulder to shoulder, but already wavers, and the officer, gathering his last strength of will, gives the command: “Fire!”,(...) The rifles waver. The crowd pushes. Then the officer points the barrel of his revolver at the most suspicious soldier. From the decisive minute now stands out the decisive second..(...) At the critical moment, when the officer is ready to pull the trigger, a shot from the crowd (...)This decides not only the fate of the street skirmish, but perhaps the whole day, or the whole insurrection. (...)The way to the soldier’s rifle leads through the revolver taken from the Pharaoh.” (History of the Russian revolution, L.T.)
On March 8th 2009 an enormous workers, poor peasants and soldiers’ revolution began. It was a classic revolution in which the heroic revolutionary action of the masses set up armed workers and the poor peasants’ organisms of self-determination, divided the army, recruiting the rank and file soldiers, defeated the police in the streets, dislodging the bourgeois state, overthrew Ravalomanana and put (in Madagascar) a regime of dual power. On one right hand is the fractured US imperialist regime of Ravalomanana and on the left is the revolutionary armed masses joined with the soldiers in revolt, who then controlled the main military base and its entire arsenal.
For over a week there was no government in Madagascar. The officer caste stayed aside, waiting for an agreement between the two bourgeois fractions, but such an agreement was never to come and they ended up on Rajoelina’s side, they considered him having more chances to contain the masses –which had revolted and were armed-. Therefore they see him as the best candidate (for the moment) who can guarantee the safety of the whole bourgeois property and its domain. On March 16th Ravalomanana resigned, allowing Rajoelina to take office and fill in the vacuum of power. Rajoelina hijacked the proletariat revolution. The proletariat, poor peasants and rank and file soldiers had conquered in the streets a real revolutionary class alliance but they couldn’t seize state power due to the crisis of revolutionary leadership.
US imperialism was forced, for the moment, to accept the government of the French agent –Rajoelina- because of the threat to bourgeois power and property. US imperialism didn’t have to much choice, because the revolution had began against its own puppet and some one had to contain it and abort it, and that was Rajoelina, who was less discredited.
The bourgeoisie has managed to close momentarily the gaps at the top; they put their inter-imperialist disputes aside for to contain the threat of revolution. However they couldn’t take the masses out of the picture by imposing them a historical defeat. The proletariat and poor peasants, who defeated the police and presidential guard in the streets, were still organized and armed. The government hadn’t recomposed completely the chain of command in the army.
Therefore there is still dual power even under Rajoelina: on one hand the weak government of Rajoelina –supported by French imperialism- to whom the police and high-ranking officers of the armed forces (who went on his side but do not control the soldiers), together with MWC union bureaucracy (who have even less control over the workers) and on the other hand is the power of the revolutionary - armed - workers, poor peasants, students and the rank and file soldiers; it is a dual power, “not legal”, but much more legitimized before the eyes of the masses.. The Rajoelina government wasn’t even recognized by all the imperialist powers and imperialist surrogates African governments – the majority of whom are pro-US-UK imperialism.
But all dual power is unstable; it is condemned to last a brief period of time. Either the masses seize power, destroying the apparatus of the state of class enemy, or the bourgeoisie recovers it. As Trotsky said in 1936: “…After the war a series of brilliantly victorious revolutions occurred in Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary and later in Spain. But it was only in Russia that the proletariat took full power into its hands, expropriated its exploiters, and knew how to create and maintain a workers’ state. Everywhere else the proletariat, despite its victory, stopped half way because of the mistakes of its leadership. As a result, power slipped from its hands, shifted from left to right and fell prey to Fascism. In a series of other countries power passed into the hands of a military dictatorship. Nowhere were the parliaments capable of reconciling class contradictions and assuring the peaceful development of events. Conflicts were solved arms in hand”. (Leon Trotsky, Whither France?)
Imperialism and the native bourgeoisie so far managed to contain the masses’ offensive, imposing an interim bourgeois government; but it wasn’t for the lack of disposition of the workers, peasants and soldiers to fight; it was due to the overabundance of counterrevolutionary leaderships in the whole of African continent and in the imperialist metropolis. They imposed an economic, political and military fence to the revolution on Madagascar. It was also due to the absence of a revolutionary internationalist party fighting for the independent organisation, for self-emancipation of the proletariat and the struggling masses, that could give them the program and the leadership that they need to triumph. As Trotsky said in the program of the 4th International, “The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership.”
Stalinism, Castrism and the renegades of Trotskyism were the main allies of imperialism to impose this counterrevolutionary “fence” to the revolution in Madagascar; they play this role from the popular fronts in South Africa and Zimbabwe and in other countries of Africa, they supported their nationalist bourgeois governments. From the popular front government of South Africa and / or from the classical bonapartist government in Zimbabwe they tied the proletariat of Madagascar and the whole Southern Africa; they divided them country by country, submitted them to their native bourgeoisie – who are servants / managers of different imperialist powers-. By these actions they contribute with a weapon more powerful than cannons and rifles to smash the proletariat and the masses in Madagascar: i.e. isolation, country by country, of the working class and poor peasants of Africa.
The renegades of Trotskyism deserve a separate mention. They played a disastrous role in this revolution. They are responsible of the isolation of the revolutionary struggle of the Malagasy masses. The betrayal of Madagascar is a replica of France May 2009 strike at Continental – a tyre company- against massive dismissals. There, in Sony and Caterpillar, workers took the bosses as hostages because they were not going to accept being kicked out like dogs as well as shouldering the responsibility to pay the cost of the world economic crisis that the French imperialist bourgeoisie wanted to make them pay for. At the very same time the colonies of the French Republic in the Antilles, Guadalupe, Martinique and Ile de la Reunion – which is next to Madagascar- was shocked by a general strike. In those places workers were the main factor of heroic fights to demand the fulfillment of the agreement of a 200 euros wage increase and an end to high prices. In the Antilles the renegades, Lutte Ouvriere, lead the unions, in France they also have an “important”union current; but they treated these struggles as union struggles and not as class fights for the overthrow of French imperialism. For Madagascar, they kept silent, claiming that they did not know much about it, thereby isolating the  revolution.
They took that explosive situation in the former French colonies and in the metropolis to a call for general strike completely controlled by the French trade unions who agreed to invite for that strike day a representative of the former colonies for the demonstration in Paris! The strike was made to decompress, to divide and curb the fighting spirit of the workers and to prevent any possibility of a general revolutionary uprising similar to 68-74. And just in case this betrayal wasn’t enough to subjugate the workers to the feet of the Fifth Republic, the candidate of the New Anticapitalist Party, Besancenot, travelled to Guadalupe in the flesh, to silence the voice of the workers by telling them that French contributors couldn’t pay the 200 euros they were claiming; that they should demand that to the bosses in the Antilles! Traitors! This proves that Lambertism and NAP are just a party of the French labour aristocracy.
Their role, as servants of the French imperialist bourgeoisie, is to serve the interest of their masters. They isolated the fight of Guadalupe, Martinique and Madagascar which, could and can only be solved decisively and effectively by the victory of the worker socialist revolution in France and the whole Europe. Together with the counterrevolutionary leadership of Stalinism they were in charge of isolating Madagascar, to separate it from the revolutionary combat from the rest of the African continent. When Zimbabwe was near revolution, they isolated the revolution, contained it and subsequently submitted the working class to Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Popular Front Party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and to Mugabe, the President of the ruling party ZANU-PF and president of Zimbabwe since its ‘independence’ from imperialist Great Britain, or as in South Africa with the submission to ANC. These are the fences meant to defeat the revolution on Madagascar! That was the policy carried on from Maputo with Frelimo, the great gravedigger of the African revolution.
The fear of revolution unites (temporarily)French and US imperialist bourgeoisie: a counterrevolutionary pact to save their properties and business.
The US and French parasites are united because they are frightened of the Malagasy revolution, because it questions and interrogates the property  relations and the businesses of the whole imperialist bourgeoisie, not only in the island, but on the whole African continent. To prevent the victory of the Malagasy revolution is a matter of life or death for them as the ruling class.
The imperialist monopolies extend their business to the whole of the African continent, beyond the borders linking all the “national” economies as a single continental economy, in fact each ‘national’economy is tied by thousands of threads to the world capitalist imperialist economy. That’s why their counterrevolutionary strategy is crushing every revolution in the African continent; because if it advances and triumphs in Madagascar or any other nation of Africa, immediately it could risk their private properties, business and domain not only in the island, but all over the continent, and indeed in the very imperialist centres.
In Madagascar there wasn’t a coup, as the bourgeoisie press says. Rajoelina, did not overthrow Ravalomanana; the masses did, with their decisive actions, destroying the regime and oppressor state and making Ravalomanana run away to the exile. And this is exactly what imperialism wants to hide from the masses: the fact that in Madagascar there is an ongoing revolution. They know it very well that  if the information went out uncensored, that is, as it appears on the ground, it can inevitably arouse the fighting spirit, give confidence and courage to the Madagascar proletariat and to their class brothers and sisters in the region, on the continent and internationally. This would spell doom for the capitalist-imperialist hegemony. Whatever happens, the working already has tasted victory; they are inspired by the defeat they handed the Ravalomanana regime, and with every defeat they impose on their class enemy, the more confident they become.
The imperialist bourgeoisie could not allow for too long the prolonged termination of the regime, of armed dual power imposed by the masses (the working class, the revolutionary masses, too cannot prolong the seizure of state power).
The imperialists were horrified. Their strategy of exploitation in the continent was in danger! They need that huge reservoir of labour and raw materials to supply their monopolies (companies) in China fronted by Chinese native bourgeois, whose government buys at internationals prices and then provides the monopolies at subsidized prices.
But for the imperialist bourgeoisie it is a matter of life or death to strangle this heroic revolution, since it puts the private property and the business into question, i.e., it threatens their existence as a social class. For this, it needs to stop the uprising of the masses and re-establish the discipline in the army, which is fractured since the rank and file soldiers with their weapons moved to the side of their class brothers and sisters, the workers and peasants. 
The armed soldiers that broke the chain of command still had their weapons! And, with this experience, the masses understood that the only way of having bread, land, health, education, etc, is by having weapons, that conflicts are settled, arms in hand.
For its part, the U.S., which lost in this round against France, couldn’t launch an attack against the Malagasy people in order to recover the business deals that Ravalomanana lost, since this could cause the starving masses from all over Africa to rise up in defense of their Malagasy brothers and sisters in a revolutionary fight in Central and Southern Africa. And imperialism does not want to give birth to revolutions, since it could jeopardize all the business in the continent.
Launching an attack, in this case, is not the best scenario for US and world imperialism. In the interest of promoting the continued existence of their social class they even preferred to leave, for the moment, the administration of every business in Madagascar in the hands of Rajoelina (agent of the French imperialism), until the masses were taken out of the picture. Rajoelina is the only one who can guarantee “order”, he is now desperate to gain credibility for his government in the eyes of the masses, to appear a more progressive and democratic government than Ravalomanana’s. This is why, all of a sudden, he designated himself transition president of Madagascar, decreed the dissolution of the parliament, promised elections in no more than two years, trying to contain the masses and legitimize his new presidential standing before the masses. 
So, the strong man of French imperialism, Rajoelina, even breaking the Maputo (Mozambique) agreements -where the different imperialist bourgeoisie’s fractions negotiated for two months their cut in the transition government, a national-unity government-, appointed Colonel Camile Vital (his ally in the army) as Prime Minister.
A well-thought-out class strategy of the imperialist bourgeoisie! They know that the first task is to re-compose the army, the fundamental column of the state, which was broken by the uprising masses! For that, Rajoelina appointed Camile Vital, a “democratic” military man, as Prime Minister. They needed immediately to disarm the masses and recompose the chain of command in the army to use it against any new revolutionary uprising of the Malagasy masses, and also, to prepare counterrevolutionary steps to crush and destroy the revolutionary combats of the proletariat and poor peasants in the region.
Imperialism, like every conscious bourgeoisie, learnt hard the lesson of the revolutions of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century, from the Russian revolution to the Bolivian revolution of 2003-2005. Because of those huge, historical working class struggles, that continue to haunt them today, they had permanently recruited the counterrevolutionary leaders and their movements grouped in the World Social Forum and now in the Fifth International of Chavez, the restorationist bureaucracy from Cuba, the red mandarins, the Communist Party of South Africa (SACP), etc, as part of their policy to crush the Malagasy revolution, for those leaderships to play the role of nurses of capitalism. Ready to fulfill that role, Stalinism poisons the consciousness of the masses, telling them that Rajoelina will give them bread, land, jobs and for this they have to support him. Liars! This way they prepare the road to disarm the masses, destroy the armed dual power organisms and restore the broken chain of command of the army.
Hidden, but ready to attack, U.S imperialism waits for the government of Rajoelina to take the proletariat and the masses out of the scene, to dissolve the dual power organisms and re-constitute the discipline in the army and once the revolution is defeated, they would deploy again their entire offensive in the disputes against French imperialism.
That’s why today it is the African Union, the one that, as a direct agent of imperialism in the continent, applies the most aggressive policy, imposing different sanctions: Madagascar was expelled from the AU in 2009, the development aid programs were frozen (which are more than 50% of the national budget, according to the IMF’s estimate) and the signs of economic collapse are very important, around 230 thousand jobs were lost, the foreign investments dropped sharply while trade has drastically reduced. In the private sector, production reduction hits between 60 and 70%, the trade shortfall has multiplied by four in the last 2 years. On March 2010 the AU imposed sanctions against the government elite. All those measures were taken to force Rajoelina to accept a coalition government with the other 3 bourgeois parties, as a transitional government, until the elections; they try to close the gaps at the top to prevent the re-opening of the revolution and divisions between the different factions of the business of Madagascar. Therefore Madagascar, a year after the heroic action of the masses, is fenced by the sanctions by the USA, Canada, EU, AU and all the countries that give Madagascar subsidies. Even France has “abandoned” Rajoelina, but in what appears as afterthought they sent on April 2nd 2010, representatives of the Foreign Minister to Madagascar; they tried to convince him to uphold the agreements of Maputo, which he broke in December 2009. France can’t allow Rajoelina –as a strong man on Madagascar- become a new Chavez, i.e. a small bourgeois that bargains with French imperialism for more crumbs of the huge plunder it made.
Meanwhile, with the complicity of native bourgeoisies of the whole continent, Stalinism and renegades of Trotskyism, covering by the left, or being part of the popular fronts like in South Africa and Zimbabwe, fencing the masses by hunger, impose counterrevolutionary pacts, submit the masses to the imperialist bourgeoisie, and if they don’t, they will use fratricidal wars like in the DRC, massacring million of workers. If everything has been tried and still fails to crush the rising masses, they would call notorious fascists gangs to attack the most exploited layers of the working class. Like they did in Europe to our African, Asian and Eastern Europe immigrants class brothers and sisters, as a first step to attack directly the “privileged” sector of the proletariat of the European powers. They have started in Rosarno (Calabria, Italy) where African immigrant workers who pick tangerine oranges, were attacked by fascist gangs for having stood up against their slave-like working conditions. They were tired of being chased away and superexploited, they started a revolt against an18 hour-day , facing the cops with rocks and sticks.
Imperialism, the native bourgeoisies, Stalinism, Castrism, and the renegades of Trotskyism, covering by the ‘left’, isolate the Malagasy revolution
Greece, Martinique, Guadalupe, and especially Madagascar, were the firsts hits of the masses’ counteroffensive against the blows launched by the bourgeoisie – imperialism wants the exploited masses to pay the costs of the crisis. It was a true “operation cast lead” at world level. The imperialist monopolies recruited all the counterrevolutionary leaderships from the workers’ and masses’ organizations to make a fence in order to divert, abort, expropriate and defeat the revolutionary processes ,of which Madagascar was the one that went furthest: splitting the Army and destroying all the institutions of the semi colonial bourgeois regime.
First grouped in the World Social Forum (WSF) and now in the Fifth International of Chavez, the “red mandarins” of the Chinese Communist Party, Stalinism, Castrism, Anarchism, renegades of Trotskyism, together with junior partners, the national bourgeois of the colonies and semi-colonies, are doing all they can to save the interests of imperialism. Thus, NAP (New Anti-Capitalist Party) leader, agent of the French V Republic and Sarkozy’s spokesman, went to Guadalupe to repeat that the French taxpayers were not going to pay the €200 increase that workers of Guadalupe had achieved through their revolutionary struggles. He hid that the only way to get the most minimum demands conquered, was through the proletariat taking power in the Antilles and supported by independent organization and action of the proletariat of the metropolis acting against their own imperialist; that the fate of the proletariat in the colonies and semicolonies is tied to that of the proletariat  in the imperialist centres.
In Africa, Stalinism, Castrism and renegades of Trotskyism centralized in this counterrevolutionary V International, not only supported, but they also actively participated in the formative stages, giving illusions to the masses that the fight for real democratic demands will be brought by these popular front parties. In Zimbabwe, they were the left cover of the MDC, which is a bourgeois party that formed a coalition government, also known as Government of National Unity, with ZANU-PF of Mugabe Thus, the counterrevolutionary leaderships of Stalinism, Fifth International of Chavez, Fidel Castro with the help of the renegades of Trotskyism, have for long prevented the revolutionary processes from developing in the African continent; they assisted imperialism to completely isolate the Madagascan working class from interlinking with their class brothers and sisters within the African continent and the imperialist countries. They prevent the flames of this revolutionary processes from flaring up across the African continent.       
But this counterrevolutionary role of Castrism and Stalinism in Africa is not new. When the general revolutionary uprising of 1968-74 in the imperialist centres propelled once again the uprising of the African masses: the uprising of Angola opened the Portuguese revolution in 1974; those revolutionary processes were strangled in Mozambique. Stalinism in Portugal was smashing the heads of the members of the INQUILONOS committees which had emerged from the revolution and in the mean time in the African continent together with the Stalinist regime of MPLA in Angola –supported by Cuba and the USSR- gave the oil enclave of Cabinda to US imperialism while independent communist groups were massacred by Stalinism in Angola.
In South Africa, the uprisings grew more and more after the Durban strikes in 1973, general strikes of 1976, student and workers uprisings in 1976 and 1980, the beginning of the workers independent formations since ‘80s up to the mass uprising that went from 1985 until 1989. During that period the basis of imperialist capitalist relations were shaken and there was a pre-revolutionary situation where imperialism was at risk of losing everything.
But there was the SACP and Castrism; their Stalinist policy of beheading revolutions took the form of a ‘2-stage revolution’ in South Africa; in other words, placing at the first stage the struggle for democratic demands in the hands of the middle class and the indigenous bourgeoisie or aspirant bourgeoisie, and postponing the struggle for working class power to the indefinite future; thus when the workers movement  was smashed and the petti bourgeois in the ANC scattered like flies in the face of state repression, the SACP built and rebuilt the ANC as the leader of the  fight for democratic demands and opposed any independent organization of the working class; Trotskyists were purged and tortured and expelled from the workers movement; a river of blood flowed of the working class who wanted to organize for the seizure of power; in this context, Stalinism in partnership with imperialism, over many years built up Mandela, knowing full well that as far back as 1956 he already opposed nationalization under workers control! He was still in prison when he made a call to “forget all resentment”; on the shoulders of the SACP he become the father of the counterrevolution in the African continent. The SACP together with the African National Congress and the black bourgeoisie, didn’t only succeed in containing the revolutionary fight in South Africa, but they aborted the possibility of extending the revolution thoughout the whole continent. This would have an immediate effect on the metropolis of the imperialist powers. Disguising as a democratic regime and a (bourgeois) black republic that the popular front, propelled by Stalinism and Castrism, kept and increased the relations of super-exploitation not only in South Africa, but throughout all Africa, South African troops used as tools to protect, advance and direct imperialist operations.
When the army of Angola and 40 thousand Cuban soldiers defeated the South African army at Cuito Cuanavale in Angola on March 1988 they refused to move beyond the border of Namibia. At the same time that South African working lass was at it highest peak of fighting against the slave-capitalist state. The Stalinist policy encouraged the bourgeois nationalist SWAPO to accept an agreement in Namibia that left intact imperialist interests; this sellout resulted in the killing and torturing of SWAPO fighters in the camps by their leadership, and in their being killed by the old SA state, and indeed Angolan soldiers in revolt were also sold out and massacred in 1985. In Zimbabwe after singing of the ceasefire agreement tens of thousands unarmed poor were brutally massacred in bases in neighbouring countries, Mozambique and Zambia.  A few years after the ‘independence’ of Zimbabwe, Mugabe, taking orders from UK imperialism, sent Korean trained troops to smash the “dissident” in Matebeleland (who had fought side by side with Mugabe’s ZANLA soldiers during the war of liberation, the Matebeleland arm wing was referred to as ZIPRA under the leadership, of the late Vice-President of Zimbabwe, Joshua Nkomo). 
Since the ‘90s, the renegades of Trotskyism joined definitively the WSF, capitulating to Stalinism, supporting the ANC in the 1994 elections. The same as the Marxist Worker Tendency, Socialist Group, Comrades from the Worker Government, International Worker League; and others, they all entered or supported ANC. While the renegades of Trotskyism did this, in Mozambique Stalinism – with its party FRELIMO - liquidated the struggle for national liberation and became a bourgeois nationalist government that administered the business of the whole bourgeoisie. Just like they did in South Africa, reconcile with imperialism-capitalism, they had played the role of isolation, by fencing off the Malagasy revolution and also supporting the Castrist bureaucracy.
Out the treacherous Stalinist bureaucracy, agent of the reconciliation with Anglo-American and the assassin regime of slave-capitalism! Down with the Castrist bureaucracy that today is selling out the conquer of the Cuban revolution to world imperialism, as yesterday they did in Africa, in Chile in 1973, Bolivia, the Colombian resistance, Nicaragua and el Salvador in the ‘80s and today in Honduras and the ones who made a pact with Obama to sell out the one million men march movement and the movement of the immigrants in the USA! Stalinism keeps playing its counterrevolutionary role because the renegades of Trotskyism supported and still support them all over the world. Out of the 4th International, those who dirty our clean banner! They are servants of the bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie. For the refoundation of the 4th International! This is the slogan we propose to our African brothers and sisters today and just like yesterday; it remains their immediate call.
It was a very hard process where revolutionary workers were prosecuted, expelled from the unions and some murdered.
In Zimbabwe the IST and SWP of Callinicos entered and support the bourgeois popular front, they refused a policy of class independence and capitulated to a Stalinist nationalist vision of the socialist revolution. French imperialism has the services of Lambertism and NAP in the current and former colonies and semi-colonies; British imperialism also has these currents which act as defenders of the interest of their imperialism through international unions led by TUC to protect British imperialist investments in Africa. On the other hand in England they defend the Labour Party and are its left wing, an appendix of the socialimperialist bureaucracy of TUC.
Thus the renegades of Trotskyism all over the world and in Africa play a counterrevolutionary role to contain the revolutionary masses and in so doing ,  prevent the defeat of imperialism in Africa.
The counterrevolutionary role of the World Social Forum in Africa
Today in Mozambique, the supporters of the WSF, Africom, the AU, US and French imperialism are concentrated to discuss how to support a government of national unity, to expropriate and prevent the victory of a workers, soldiers and peasants revolution. All counterrevolutionary elements, servants of capitalist-imperialism, are on guard against any extension of the revolution or even its shades to Southern Africa, thus the policy of isolation is seen as the best tool to prevent a possible spark of the whole Southern African region which already is pregnant with revolution possibilities, in Zimbabwe conditions are desperate and rotten – it’s a time bomb. But the decisive fight will be fought in South Africa, a “safe” house to over 4 million Zimbabweans plus many more foreigners; the hidden, cruel hand of imperialism will be unmasked once the proceeds from the World Cup show case, which is nothing but super-exploitation spree by multinationals, just nicely packaged. In preparation for an obvious eventuality the South African government has started sending its troops to patrol her common border with Zimbabwe, the Ministry of Home of Affairs, South Africa, is refusing entry to Zimbabweans holders of Emergency Travel Documents / Temporary Travel Documents (ETDs / TTDs/), the cheaper travel document  held by many but still one which the poverty ridden majority of Zimbabweans can hardly afford. Many are still finding their way illegally to South Africa, where they offer cheap labour to imperialist companies, which in turn subjects them to slave like working conditions.
Thus, the counterrevolutionary leaderships, all centralized in the Fifth International of Chavez and the red mandarins of the Chinese PC, (SACP ANC) with the inestimable aid of the renegades of Trotskyism have prevented the development of revolutionary processes in the whole African continent to revive the fire of the Malagasy revolution.
They are responsible of the defeat because they helped fencing off Madagascar, leaving it completely isolated from their class brothers of Africa and their allies in the imperialist countries; like for example the immigrants in struggle against the fascists who repressed them in Italy and the revolutionary youth of the Cites, who set Paris on fire demanding their rights.
Today new counterrevolutionary forces are preparing to capitalize on the loss of credibility of ANC, led by Stalinism and Mandelism to create New Anti-Capitalist Parties (NAP) in South Africa, in a similar fashion as was done with the Labour movement in Zimbabwe.
We must immediately draw lessons from these magnificent revolutions, any attempt to ignore or underrate their great rehearsal role can only mean more attacks on the world working class, like the dramatic case of Haiti. There the workers who lived under the dictatorship of US imperialism and live in human degradation because of the imperialist plunder and exploitation, also faced a brutal earthquake which caused tens of thousands of deaths. They didn’t have anti seismic buildings like the ones the bourgeoisie has in San Francisco (USA) and Japan. Now they are suffering a new imperialist invasion of US imperialism as well as the UNO-Minustah’s troops led by France and commanded by its “Bolivarian” lackeys of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, etc.         
After the catastrophe, all the traitor leaderships could only set up a program of “solidarity” and “humanitarian assistance” for Haiti, subordinating again the proletariat and the masses under the bourgeoisie’s feet. Actually, the only way for the Haitian masses to have food, shelter, water and decent life is by setting up their armed organisms and defeating the invading troops and seizing power.
The smashing of the Palestine revolution and the strangling of the Bolivian revolution: the first attempts of counterrevolutionary fences for the revolutions of XXI century
Today’s fence on Madagascar is a doubled version of the counterrevolutionary policy that in 2003 was imposed in Bolivia by imperialism with its minor partners, the Latin-American’s native bourgeoisies and the treacherous leaderships gathered in the World Social Forum. By the terror generated by the workers and poor peasants’ revolution that had escaped from “Pandora’s box” of the class struggle and facing the threat to their domain and properties in all the continent for the advance of revolution, they set up a real continental counterrevolutionary “holy alliance”, to guarantee the strangulation of the Bolivian revolution.
The imperialist powers, the indigenous bourgeoisie and all treacherous leadership of the masses in Bolivia and the whole continent, supported the Evo Morales’ government, i.e. they fortified the popular front, fenced the Bolivian revolution, liquidated the fight for hydrocarbon’s nationalization without payment and under workers control, replacing it with the dirty bargaining program of the native bourgeoisie; who ended up with juicy petrol and gas contracts with French and Spanish imperialism on one hand, and half country controlled by fascist Medialuna, where Yankee imperialism monopolies have settled. For that they counted on US troops in Paraguay, common military exercises between the Brazilian, Argentinean, Paraguayan, Uruguayan and Venezuelan armies; with the Chilean army fully armed by Anglo-US imperialism. They also counted on the occupation Colombian army whose officer caste has been trained in West Point ,  US military school of counter-revolution.
They counted also on the inestimable help of Stalinism and the renegades of Trotskyism. They gathered in the Continental Encounter in 2005, under the command of the Brazilian oil union bureaucracy of CUT. They liquidated the resolutions of COR El Alto (that did not recognize the anticipated elections, saw it as a bourgeois trap of the government of Morales), but mainly imperialism centralized the operating of all the reformists leaderships at a continental level, from USA to Tierra del Fuego to prevent the working class of the whole continent from moving forward on the path of the revolutionary struggle, isolating the Bolivian revolution.
Thus in Latin America they expropriated the working class’ revolutionary struggle with a class collaboration policy of supporting the popular fronts, putting the working class at the feet of their bourgeoisie feet, junior partners of the imperialist monopolies, country by country. 
Today, in Madagascar the treacherous role of these leaderships is expressed in their misleading the masses of the whole continent that Rajoelina is the only one that can guarantee the bread; i.e. that they call to trust on this agent of the French Fifth Republic; the only thing that he wants is to finish the smashing of the Malagasy revolution to preserve the private property and big businesses of the imperialist monopolies. This is the real treason! Because if Rajoelina’s government settles down, recomposing the bourgeois regime’s institution and, overall, the army’s unity and discipline, that the revolt of the masses dislocated, it won’t guarantee bread, but to go on the offensive with counterrevolutionary hit squads, real “July days” (as in the 1917 Russian revolution when the interim bourgeois government went on the offensive against the masses and the revolutionary leadership) to end up decisively smashing any trace of Malagasy revolution, that will decisively impact on the rest of the African continent.
Together with this international policy of isolating the Malagasy revolution, imperialism and their junior partners in Africa, unleash all their economic and military power to strangle the proletariat and the masses. They siege the masses with starvation for them to surrender the weapons! For that reason, on the one hand, the Malagasy bourgeoisie and the imperialist monopolies made a real “lock-out” in the food production, while on December 23rd, Barak Obama – recently awarded the “Nobel peace prize”- excluded Madagascar, Nigeria and Guinea from the list of benefiting countries - as commercial partners of USA - taking away the “financial aid” given to them by the AGOA (Africa Growth Opportunity Act), jeopardizing 100,000 jobs only in the textile industry’s maquilas. (The suspension of ‘Aid’ hides the power of the workers who were threatening a complete takeover; its hides the real relation of exploitation; US imperialism steals in billions of dollars from the workers of Madagsacar and other places and gives back only a few pennies of ‘Aid’, just enough to sustain a permanent level of semi-starvation).
To complete this fence US imperialism started to strengthen its military presence in the region. That is why Obama traveled to Ghana to discuss the installation of a new US military base and establishment of AfriCom’s (US military command for Africa) headquarters in that country, which currently is in Germany.
Also French imperialism, which plunders Africa and had colonies in that continent, and which today is linked to that continent with very strong economic ties, still has 4 big headquarters in Africa: Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, the Ile de la Reunion, and in the Indian Ocean, Senegal and Gabon. It also has deployed military forces in Ivory Coast, Chad, Botswana, Rwanda and Central African Republic. That’s why it is one of the main actors of the western military meddling in Africa.
In Africa, the fence is imposed by the treacherous leaderships, which for example took the masses of Zimbabwe to the feet of the popular front. In that country the International Socialist Organization (ISOZ) of Gwisai, affiliated to the International Socialist Tendency (IST), took part in the popular front party of the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) which is in government with the ZANU-PF the party of Mugabe.
In South Africa they submitted the starving masses to the black bourgeois lackeys of imperialism; taking the revolutionary struggle of the masses to the feet of the African National Congress--Cosatu –SACP alliance; it is this alliance which prevents the South African working class and soldiers frm giving solidarity with the Malagasy workers, peasants and soldiers; there the soldiers disobeyed the orders to shoot their class brothers and sisters. In Mozambique the Stalinists  succeeded in imposing a similar popular front policy.
But this policy of fence and submitting of the African working class has not only been applied by imperialism in Southern Africa. In Rwanda and Congo where imperialism and the native bourgeoisie imposed genocides, the black bourgeoisies and all the leaderships of the working class –i.e. left reformist parties- submitted the revolutionary struggle of the masses against the genocides to the feet of the African Union. The AU is actually a true Ministry of French US-UK Colonies, there to help to divide among themselves, the African continent! Such ministry organizes and guarantees imperialism their business; in that cave of bandits all pacts are agreed and made to maintain the lackey regimes of imperialism and enemies of the exploited masses of the whole Africa.
With this policy of isolation - carried on by the imperialist bourgeoisie and counterrevolutionary leaderships - they could until now enclose the Malagasy revolution and stop it from extending to the entire African continent. They prevented the masses in revolt from defeating their regimes; they also prevent the workers, poor peasants and armed soldiers power to organize, establish and open the path to workers and poor peasants victorious socialist revolutions in Africa.
It is the same policy that they imposed in Bolivia to strangle the revolution; so it is proved that this isn’t a “national” policy, or domestic from any particular country. For that they have their highly centralized apparatus, acting day by day to defeat every heroic revolution of the exploited masses., across the globe.
Different fractions of the Malagasy bourgeoisie went to Mozambique to start to negotiate in Maputo, to discuss a division of roles in the new transitional government of Madagascar, i.e. to discus the distribution of the business on the island, and from there trying to consolidate a Government of National Unity with the goal to save their interests. Rajoelina, victorious in the contest with Ravolamanana, and knowing he is the strong man in Madagascar, the one and only one that can suppress the revolution, after a few months of negotiations, he gave himself the luxury of tearing up the agreements. He named a military man as first minister, on the instructions of imperialism as they realized that their main first task was to win back the absolute control over the army.
 So, Stalinism, Castrism, the renegades of Trotskyism, who from the popular fronts of South Africa and Zimbabwe, or left supporters of all nationalist bourgeois regimes on the African continent, are the fundamental allies of imperialism. They are responsible for imposing the counterrevolutionary fence  against the Malagasy revolution; and they do it from the popular front in South Africa, from the parliament and the commissions of the constitution-making process in Zimbabwe, by tying, dividing and subordinating the South African, Zimbabwean, etc, etc proletariat to their own native bourgeoisie, junior partner from one or other imperialist power.
The Malagasy revolution can only succeed as an African, European and world revolution
The revolution in Madagascar was not a thunderbolt from a peaceful sky. First of all it is part of the generalized revolutionary uprising that shook the French Colonies, from Guadalupe to Martinique and Guyana in Latin America, passing through Ile de la Reunion, just a few miles away from Madagascar’s shores, and up to Polynesia. i.e. it was part of a mass counteroffensive which was stopped by the treacherous leaderships.
The international character of the revolution of Madagascar carries within it a matter of historical character because it expresses the return to the fight of the exploited slaves in Africa, fighting in direct manoeuvres of revolution; 15 years after the strangulation of their revolution made by the popular front of the ANC and Mandela, the SACP and the union bureaucracy of COSATU, which in 1994 fulfilled this treason entirely, take the exploited oppressed masses of the continent to a brutal backwardness, down into barbarism, famine, fratricide wars, pandemics as AIDS, in several regions of Africa.
In the ‘90s Africa’s position deepened as a slave labour reservoir with around 600 million workers. Thousands of black workers and peasants expelled from their lands, died in the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, because they dreamed of reaching the shores of Spain, France and Italy. Others found their end in the wire fences of the Spanish enclaves Ceuta and Melilla. Those who made it to Europe were overexploited as slaves, without any rights; and when the short expansion cycle of the economy was over, the French, German, British, Italian, Spanish imperialist bosses sack them as dogs, since they do not need them anymore. They were squeezed until the last drop of sweat from them and then they fired them, chased them and expelled them from the European shores, as outcasts.
But the bourgeoisie, as Engels and Marx said almost 150 years ago, has a contradiction and it cannot run away from it. It inevitably creates the class which will be its grave digger in history: the proletariat. Africa has vast resources , abundant cheap labour and huge tracts of arable land; the imperialists have for many decades kept Africa as a producer of raw materials; but the process of capitalism unfolding in Africa has reached a qualitative turning point, the rise of a very strong proletariat, which enters now into the fight for the blows of the bankruptcy and the capitalist attack.
In Africa imperialist monopoly capital linked all national economies across the borders. It combined the installation of maquilas, extraction of raw materials, food production, reservoirs of slave labour, concentration of banks, and made a single economy which goes way beyond the borders of each African country and the borders of the countries of the imperialist centres.. For imperialism there aren’t national borders when it comes to plundering and pillaging of the continent. They want to make Africa a devastated land!
There shouldn’t be borders for the workers either! It will be a task of workers, poor peasants, soldiers and the exploited masses of South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola, Congo, Somalia to break with the native bourgeoisie, popular fronts and counterrevolutionary pacts that are imposed on them. They also have to extend the revolution to the whole continent, through millions of immigrants it will link with the proletariat of the European imperialist powers. That is the only way to break the fence imposed to the Malagasy revolution; break the imperialist created isolation and spread the revolution to the whole Africa and into the imperialist centres of Europe, Japan and North America, is the way to defend and extend Malagasy revolution.
Capitalism itself in its imperialist stage gives the African revolution an international character. The revolution in Madagascar is just one stage of this African revolution that if it does not extend and develop to the whole continent, and throughout millions of migrant workers linking to the proletariat of the European imperialist powers, it is doomed. The aim of the fence that has been built now by the imperialist powers around Madagascar is to contain this revolution. A fence that is expressed partly as an economic fence, to put the proletariat into starvation and to subordinate the poor peasant at the mercy of the bourgeois. But  it is mainly a political fence where Stalinism, Castroism and the Fake Trotskyists play a key role. They were recruited by the imperialist bourgeoisie; they imposed from within the working class organizations a division country by country. They are the main mechanism for preventing the working class of Southern Africa from breaking into a revolutionary struggle, as a single class, which they really are, to expropriate the imperialist monopolies and their junior partners of the native bourgeoisies, putting the natural resources and productive forces to guarantee raw materials, food, energy, and so on, for all the sub-continent, including the isolated Madagascar.
The imperialist powers will resort to direct military force only if those mechanisms to strangle the revolution in Madagascar aren’t enough. But, as long as the treacherous leaderships –like SACP, the IST and Gwisai, Castroism in Angola, fake Trotskyists with their “anti-capitalist” parties in the whole continent- control and lead the proletariat, finance capital won’t have the need to appeal to direct military force. Imperialism will keep it as a reserve in case other sectors of the masses escape the control of those counterrevolutionary treacherous leaderships. If this happens, it will appeal to fascism, since the popular fronts are the one that put the masses to sleep and prepares the way to impose each time more bonapartist governments, or directly fascism.
On the burst of the world bankruptcy and the imperialist offensive to make the masses pay for the economic crisis, the response of the African proletariat -which started in Madagascar as a classic revolution- can expand as a fuse of gunpowder  to the whole African continent, which implies that the revolutionary fights in the African continent may combine immediately with a revolutionary uprising in the imperialist centres, as it happened with the revolutionary fights for the liberation of Algeria, which resulted in a revolutionary uprising in France in 1968-1974, as well as in the revolutionary fight in Angola, which led to the revolution in Portugal in 1974. The imperialist bourgeoisie  drew the lessons from this.
Today the vanguard of the African working class at the north of the continent; the masses of the Maghreb, in the uprising from Morocco to Egypt in defense of their class brothers and sisters of Palestine being slaughtered in Gaza, which poses the fight for successful socialist workers revolutions in the path of conquering a Federation of Soviet Socialist Republics of Northern Africa. In the south of the continent, the vanguard is the working class, poor peasants and soldiers of Madagascar, which entered into manoeuvres of a classic revolution, placing on the agenda the point of fighting for a Federation of Soviet Socialist Republics of Central and Southern Africa.
The international character of the Malagasy revolution is also given by the fact that the African proletariat –mostly nominally Arabian and Muslim in the north, black in the centre and south, play a role of revolutionary vanguard in the imperialist countries –like the working class and exploited of Latin American in the first ten years of 21st Century-. The proletariat is the most exploited in the central countries. They have the key for the victory of the worker and socialist revolution in Africa; they also have the obligation to fight for emancipation of their class brothers and sisters of the colonies and semicolonies. The fight of the workers leading the combats in Europe and Greece, with their call to the general strike and demonstrations for last March 1st through the regions of the imperialist Europe; heading in Greece the creation of fighting organizations that were the ones which guaranteed the massive general strike on March 11th; they pose on the streets the steps that European workers must take in their own hands an internationalist obligation. US, British, French, German imperialism hands off Africa! For the expropriation of all imperialist companies that plundered and martyred our class brothers and sisters in Africa!
The 2nd Congress of the III International resolutions in July 1920 emphasised this point; “Terms of Admission into Communist International”… “8) Parties in countries whose bourgeoisie possess colonies and oppress other nations must pursue a most well-defined and clear-cut policy in respect of colonies and oppressed nations. Any party wishing to join the Third International must ruthlessly expose the colonial machinations of the imperialists of its “own” country, must support—in deed, not merely in word—every colonial liberation movement, demand the expulsion of its compatriot imperialists from the colonies, inculcate in the hearts of the workers of its own country an attitude of true brotherhood with the working population of the colonies and the oppressed nations, and conduct systematic agitation among the armed forces against all oppression of the colonial peoples.”
Stalinism and reformist want to make us believe that our strength is in unity with the bourgeois parties, lackey bourgeoisies, Non Government Organisations (NGOs), which from UN and imperialist centres corrupted the working class and a small sector of its ranks to sell out our fights. Enough! Our forces are in the unity of the working class of Africa with the North American and European ones! The unity has been started by heading the combat on the strikes across the borders in Europe a call by the committees of immigrants, headed by African workers. There is our strength! For the international unity of the working class! Stop with the submission of workers to their executioners!
For this, Madagascar cannot be seen from the narrow limits of national borders. It is a link of the revolution in Central and Southern Africa that will succeed as workers socialist revolution in the imperialist countries.
The general staff of the counterrevolution that we have to face is highly centralized. It imperiously needs the raw materials of the continent and the slave labour force to make the factories of the monopolies installed in China work, and for that reason it will drive a fierce offensive, counterrevolutionary pacts, isolation, starvation, extortion of the masses, and if it does not achieve the dismantling of the revolutionary processes, it will appeal to fascism or to a military intervention. For that, they have the military bases of both American and French imperialism. If the revolution in Madagascar succeeds it cannot hold on for long, it will be dissolved early if it does not expand to the southern region and the centre of the continent
The entire African working class must break with the bourgeoisie, bourgeois parties and boot out the treacherous leaderships, such as the Communist Party, the Castroism and the fake Trotkskists and its notorious policy of class collaboration, and they must set up the organs of self-rule and its workers militia to seize the power; to triumph they need to unite with the proletariat of the imperialist countries to expropriate and kick out US, British, French, German, Japanese imperialism from the whole African continent.
All exploited workers, poor peasants, soldiers and hungry masses of South Africa, Somalia, Namibia, DRC, Zimbabwe, in support of the working class of Madagascar! The proletariat in the imperialist centres to write again on their banners the internationalist tasks with their class brothers and sisters of Madagascar and the oppressed countries! With this international unity there will be no attack, nor power of an imperialist military base, nor counterrevolutionary fence against the working class that it cannot defeat. The international proletariat are their allies!
Only the dictatorship of the proletariat will solve effectively the demands of the masses of Malaysia, South Africa, Mozambique and the whole Africa.
As news of the overthrow of Ravolamanana circulated in South Africa, ia report to Le Monde read as follows: “in Madagascar the masses took the rice, the corn, the oil but it is all over since they cannot afford paying the functionaries”. How cynical! It is precisely the result of the fence, the isolation set on the Madagascan masses by imperialism to liquidate their revolution.
Workers, peasants and armed solders cannot stop halfway in order to keep what they has been conquered in their heroic revolutionary fight. They have to take political power. In order to get bread, land, gain national independence from their brutal imperialist exploitation, the Madagascan masses have to impose the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Only a government of workers, peasants and soldiers supported by armed masses, imposed over the ruins of the imperialist bourgeois government, can guarantee land, bread, jobs and salaries for the working class and the oppressed ones, the great majority of the Madagascan nation.
But none of these basic democratic demands could be fulfilled and solve effectively if the proletariat, leading the poor peasants and the whole oppressed nation do not smash the oppressive state and its repressive appendages and impose its own government that expropriate the expropriators, nationalise and put under workers’ control, the resources and the means of production.
Therefore the most important duty is to strengthen that armed power of the exploited, extending it to a national level and centralizing it in a powerful organism of the masses in struggle. They have to choose a delegate for every 100 workers, poor peasants and soldiers to establish a National Council of delegates of workers, poor peasants and revolutionary solders!  To set up, extend and centralize the workers and peasants militia! This organism would begin to organize and prepare the next mass combat and the victorious insurrection; this is the only way the working class with a revolutionary leadership can seize state political power  and take decisive steps towards Socialism.   
The Madagascan exploited must not stop their revolution. It is possible to set up armed councils of workers, poor peasants and solders that, coordinated nationwide, take in their hands the struggle to overthrow the government of Rajolina, defeat the police and the officials caste of the army and seize power to guarantee bread, jobs and health; taking in their hands the control of the state.
In order to guarantee food for workers and peasants’ children let’s expropriate, nationalise and put under workers’ control  the capitalist-imperialist supermarkets (businesses) and all the food industry of the native bourgeoisie!
No soldier should give up their arms. The revolt of the soldiers against their generals should be extended to all the barracks of the country. They need to go on disarming and dissolving the murderous police! Class conflicts are in the end, solved arms in hand!
Do not stop! Ravalomanana and all the members of his regime should be judged by courts of workers, poor peasants and soldiers.
The Madagascan exploited must break with the bourgeoisie! Don’t support Rajoelina’s government nor the trick of the “democratic front” of the Yankees and Ravalomanana! Overthrow the government, agent of the French Fifth republic in Madagascar. The exploited will get nothing from the hands from this agent of imperialism! That is why Madagascan workers and peasants should not trust Rajoelina. Down with the Rajoelina’s Government!
The African Union of the imperialist lackeys in Africa drowns the African masses in a sea of hunger and misery. They guarantee Africa’s role to be the chief exporter of cheap minerals, cheap labour force and raw material to the imperialist centres and to its great maquila (sweatshop) in China.  
To end the hunger, internal wars in the bloodied DRC, to end malnutrition, misery, death, diseases, unemployment that deeply affect Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Somalia, Swaziland, Lesotho, Namibia etc, the working class have to take political power, expropriate the Yankee, English, French, Japanese and German imperialists in the whole African continent. 
Workers and poor peasants: African worker and peasants organizations must break their subordination to the bourgeoisie and they should not put the proletariat at the feet of their enemies. Break with the bourgeoisie! No support to governments of the popular front, managers of the Yankee and French imperialism!
In South Africa, break with the ANC of Mandela,  SACP of Nzimande, servants of the US imperialism!
Break with MDC, Break with ZANU-PF of Mugabe!
Down with the terror regimes of  the African military dictatorships!
The only condition for triumph is to raise the programme of the proletarian revolution; defeat treacherous leaderships; conquering a revolutionary chief staff of the African and world proletariat and then the African working class will be invincible.
In order to get the slightest demands, such as bread, land and national independence workers and poor peasants of all Africa must fight to kick out US and the French imperialism from all Africa.
Out French imperialism from Island of Reunion, the Seychelles and the Island of Mauritius! Out its colonial troops of occupation and its military bases!
Out the Anglo Yankee imperialism of all Africa! Out the occupation troops from Somalia and of the whole African continent!
Out the military base of AfriCom of the Island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean! The murderous troops that massacre the masses in Iraq and Afghanistan are based there! 
Down with the African Union which is a cave of bandits at the service of imperialism! It is a union of those who guarantee genocides and counterrevolutionary pacts so imperialism and its servants live from the super-exploitation and plunder of the African continent!
This is the war cry that the working class and the poor peasants must raise in all Africa to retake the path to revolution.
Out the South African army from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), who save the interests of JP Morgan while millions are murdered!
The masses must deliver revolutionary justice against the imperialists, their representatives, lackeys and union bureaucrats who all keep the masses in chains!
One class, one fight! Let’s stop the fascist attacks against our Brothers and Sisters in Rosarno (Calabria), southern Italy!
There (southern Italy), related to the camorra (mafia), paid by the imperialistic monopolies, Olivetti, Fiat and the Vatican for the first time since Second World War, they set proto fascist forces on the street that, with the slogan “hunt the nigger”, injured two immigrants with airgun shots on January 8th, 2010. One of the immigrants was a Nigerian worker with no documents. The other was a political refugee from Togo. As an answer to the attack, temporary immigrants, collectors of oranges and tangerines, rose up in a revolt that lasted 18 hours. The angry, exploited immigrants marched on the road that joins the orange fields with the town, they overturned luxury cars, burned garbage containers and attacked with sticks and rocks some vehicles of their bosses, surrounding the house of the main local mafia leader who was rescued by the police but only after fierce clashes with the immigrant workers in the streets.
They are condemned to this situation because of the treason of the reformist leaderships on the European proletariat. They guarantee before the world economy crisis the sliding scale of suspensions, layouts and salary reduction. They create the illusionary image that by expelling immigrants, the native working class would not lose their jobs.
The combat against Fascism is a task for all the working class, especially in Italy. Italian workers should view themselves as being on the same side of the barricade as the immigrant workers. If fascism is not smashed today,  tomorrow they will suffer the same fate. Because a people that oppresses another, can never free itself!
It is a task of the whole African working class and the European working organizations to set up armed committees of workers to smash the fascist bands (paid by the imperialist monopolies) that chase and terrify African immigrants in the south of Italy.
Long live the revolt of black immigrants, the super-exploited in Rosarno, Italy! Long live the general strike called by organizations of immigrant workers across the borders of imperialist Europe for March 1st !
We (the working class) have to impose a general strike and organize the worker militia to smash fascism organized by Camorra, Olivetti, the Vatican and international financial capital! Organize workers’ defence committees against attacks by fascists gangs!
Down with the union bureaucracy of the CGIL that leaves the immigrants out of the unions! Labour aristocracy and bureaucracy Out!
We are all (African) temporary workers! They are the heart of the European working class together with all the immigrants from Latin American, Middle East, Asia and from all the oppressed nations of the world!
Defeat imperialism in order to smash fascism! To get over with starvation, super-exploitation, and repression of the migrant and native workers, we have to expropriate the expropriators who stole 90 trillions dollars! They must pay the crisis! 
Let’s defeat the imperialist governments and regimes which are preparing new massacres against the workers and the oppressed people of the world!
Decent Jobs for everyone! For the sliding scale of wages and working hours according to the cost of living! For the nationalization without compensation of the imperialist companies that shut down, suspend or dismiss workers, and place them under workers control! Work for all, No more unemployment!
No discussion with the fascists; they are to be defeated by the workers militia and the general strike!
For the unity of the European working class to set up self-defence committees to smash fascism!
We have to break the siege to restore the revolution in Madagascar, Guadalupe and Martinique! Immediate release of the migrant workers imprisoned in Obama’s jails. Free the Guantanamo’s prisoners! Stop the persecution of the migrant workers!
Full legality and all  union rights !
The exploited of the black continent need an International general staff for the socialist revolution, that International is the 4th  International of 1938. Forward to the Re-Foundation  Congress of the 4th International!

The tragedy of the Malagasy revolution is due to the lack of an international revolutionary leadership. It lacked a leadership steeled with the lessons  of international class struggle and the programme to take power by the proletariat in Madagascar and in the whole Africa. This allowed the bourgeoisie agent of the French imperialism to expropriate it, rising over the split of the army. But the agent of the fifth republic was not alone in this task. It is part of the counterrevolution that is preparing to abort the revolution. It is a matter of survival that the bourgeoisie and the general staff of international companies to save their private property. This is why they recruit the counterrevolutionary leaderships. They are the ones that isolate the revolutions, to smash and silence the mass self-determination organisms, so that imperialism and the native bourgeoisies can expropriate the revolution.
The proletariat needs a revolutionary leadership that, by fighting for developing and centralizing the armed self-determination organisms of the workers, poor peasants and soldiers, defeats the treacherous leaderships that tie the hands of the masses and subordinates them to the bourgeoisie. Without this decisive step, without defeating the treacherous leaderships, the proletariat cannot go forward in its struggle against imperialism and into decisive struggle for power.  
This is why we have to definitively expose the renegades of Trotskyism, who have abandoned Marxism, just at the moment when the working class needs the most of its programme and lessons, since the working class is so susceptible to the effects of the capitalist crisis. These traitors refuse to call the workers to trust in their own strengths to take power, they make workers kneel down to the feet of bourgeois institutions over and over again. Those who don’t fight for developing and centralizing the armed self-determination organisms when revolution opens, are traitors!
Workers and poor peasants need an international strategy to be able to achieve victory. This is why it is crucial for the proletariat to recognize, to draw the lessons and to fight implacably against treacherous leaderships, because they are the main obstacle in their way to take power.
Each revolutionary process shows that the Achilles Heel of the proletariat and the exploited is the crisis of revolutionary leadership. The Madagascan masses lacked neither courage nor class instinct, they showed their predisposition to sacrifice and will to win, every time.
For a successful workers and peasants’ revolution there has to be a revolutionary leadership part of an international revolutionary general staff.
It must be a fight against the power of imperialism, the influence of the bourgeoisie, and the attempts of the bureaucratic and reformist leaderships of all kinds to fence in masses in struggle, and this can only be carried out by the proletarian vanguard organized in an international revolutionary party.
The exploited masses of the entire Africa need a leadership which fights resolutely against the treacherous leaderships, and which do not adapt to the popular fronts. The African working class needs a revolutionary leadership to break, definitively, the fence set by these counter revolutionary leaderships. They need a leadership that fights till the end to break counter revolutionary pacts, and for that, they need a revolutionary party  at their head.
They need a party that links their revolutionary fight in each African nation to the anti-imperialist fight in the whole continent, because by defeating the bourgeoisie and the popular front,  the first step to defeat imperialism, is taken. The strength of imperialism depends on the existence of the bourgeoisie in each country, since they are twin stars. That is why it is criminal to separate the revolutionary struggle in each nation from the struggle against imperialism. These processes cannot be seen from the narrow limits of the national frontier. The time for national programmes are over! The African masses need a leadership that unite the Madagascan revolution with that of  the African continent and with the revolution in the Middle East, in Europe, in America and with the exploited masses in the Pacific Ocean.
They need a party of the International revolution that do not yield an inch to the bourgeoisie, that can explain masses the great swindle of the popular front and the Stalinist ‘national’ democratic revolution. In this way it can guide the masses, with the lessons gained from the international class struggle, on how to smash fascism. They need a party to lead together with the masses the fight to destroy the bourgeois regime and its institutions and not to leave a shred of that regime standing. They need a party that removes the veil of the treacherous leaderships so that they can never again speak in the name of the working class. That is a party of incorruptible fighters that incorporate in its theory and practice, the revolutionary lessons of each acid test in the world wide class struggle.
The revolutionary workers are the ones that, by drawing the lessons of the siege imposed against the revolutionary masses in Madagascar, must unify the fight of the South African soldiers with their class brothers and sisters from Madagascar, who disobeyed their commanders and refused to repress the insurgent masses. They must recover the workers, poor peasants and soldiers’ committees in Madagascar, expand them to South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, to re-open the path to revolution on the entire African continent and make this an electrical shock that shakes the whole continent until the furthest sectors of  Africa! Let it smash the  capitalist states and kick out the imperialist pirates that plunder Africa’s wealth!
The revolutionary workers are the only class capable to carry out a fierce fight for the proletariat to break with that awful class collaboration policy imposed by the popular front of the African National Congress, the Communist Party and COSATU. In this way, the South African proletariat will be able to take the historical task they have at hand, as vanguard of the African revolution. Only by breaking up with the treacherous leadership of Nelson Mandela and Joe Slovo, fathers of the reconciliation with the slavemasters, fathers of “leaving the past behind”, the African proletariat will be able to break the chains that tie it to imperialism. This cannot be other way than the way of a socialist revolution.
The African working class must stand up and defeat the occupation forces of imperialism and the lackey armies of the native bourgeoisie, to guarantee land, food, jobs, health, education, and housing, on the road to expropriate the imperialist monopolies, their banks, their mines, their maquilas, their lands to put them to produce for the working class and the poor peasants and not for the imperialist parasites of the metropolis and their junior partners, the native bourgeoisies. Only by setting up self-determination armed organisms to fight for power and expropriating the bourgeoisie, the working class will be able to lead the exploited masses of the whole continent even to satisfy even he smallest needs, to finally abolish racism and tribalism.
For this, they must have an organisation that, paraphrasing Trotsky, as a perfect nerve system, can tighten all the revolutionary detachments of the continent, from Algeria and Tunis to South Africa, from Mauritania to Somalia. This organisation cannot be other than the African section of the 4th international. This is the task the revolutionaries of the FLTI are carrying, together with our brothers and sisters who are in the frontline in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

International Coordination Secretariat of the ILTF