Vlakfontein massacre 22 Sept 2017

The Workers International Vanguard League/Party condemns the state for massacring 9 people in Vlakfontein on Friday 22nd Sept 2017. If the state had provided adequate housing for all there would have been no need to occupy land. This land has been lying vacant for many years. The capitalist state has failed to provide the basic democratic demand for adequate housing for all. The little housing that has been built, has been in the apartheid group areas, that still exist today. The state used fascist band Wozani Security to massacre and clear the land.

On the crisis at CPUT

A necessary background

Before discussing any aspect of the current situation at CPUT it should be remembered that it is the absence of radical economic transformation is at the root of the crisis facing the masses.

The economy is controlled by imperialism. Every year hundreds of billions of Rands worth of wealth is stolen by the mines and banks. This plunder is well documented in the Journal of Southern African Studies [Ashman, Fine, Newman: Amnesty International: Capital Flight from Southern Africa ]. The theft reached its peak in 2007 when 23% of GDP was stolen by Anglo American and other monopolies. This amounts to R600 bn just in one year. This theft is besides the actual profits of the monopolies which runs into over R1000 bn every year. Most of the profits are taken offshore. The ANC leaders turn a blind eye to this. Both ANC and SACP have investment companies that operate on the mines. All banks and mines have ANC and/or SACP leaders on their boards.  

On the massacres in Myanmar- imperialism is responsible

The massacres in Myanmar/Burma are echoes of the years of slaughter in the DRC. There are haunting parallels too. More than 6 million people died in the DRC, over a number of years since 1996. In the end, hundreds of thousands of poor peasants were cleared off the land and in their place imperialist controlled mines appeared. There were dozens of different militia groups clashing with one another, supposedly in inter-ethnic fighting. Each group sustained themselves by selling minerals, gathered through primitive accumulation (child labour scooping the minerals from the soil), and selling these into the world capitalist market, to imperialist companies. Most of the world’s cassiterite comes from the DRC and thus through open plunder. The working class is precarious and minimal. There is no development; just asset-stripping from the earth. The world’s cellphones, laptops, playstations are all based on the cassiterite stolen from the DRC, over the dead bodies of millions. This is the barbarism of modern capitalism. Jonathan Oppenheimer is director of Umicore, that is listed by the UN as a smuggler of cassiterite. Yet the company acts with impunity. Anglo American openly lists Umicore as one of their supplier companies. This barbarism and impunity has to stop. It requires the working class of the world to organise and defeat imperialism-capitalism. Turning now to the current crisis in Myanmar.

On the attacks on freedom of the press in South Africa

We condemn the long ongoing attacks against journalists by the capitalist editors, we condemn the attacks on progressive journalists, such as Suna Venter, by organised thugs and by Motswaneng and co,  we also condemn the attacks by the fascistic BLF on their hit list of journalists who range  from reactionary to bourgeois democrat. All of these attacks narrow down and attempt to roll back the gains won by the working class through revolutionary mass action in the late 1980’s. Two states of emergency could not put out the flame of revolution. The masses unbanned their organizations through mass resistance and won the space of freedom of expression. Marches and protests were a daily occurrence.The formal unbanning of the liberation organizations by the apartheid state and the negotiated settlement that followed in its wake, placed a limit on freedom of expression. This is fundamentally because freedom of expression was tied to private property. The masses have won the formal right to freedom of expression but as the masses do not have access to stocks of paper, printing presses, radio and television broadcasting, the negotiated settlement has limited the right of freedom of expression from the beginning. There are a few community radio and television stations but they are limited in scope and are dependent on capitalist sponsors or donor funding.

Imperialism prepares a palace coup against Zuma

When Zuma had a mass reshuffle of his Cabinet in the middle of the night (evening of the 30th March) the Rand dropped in value from R12, 84 to the dollar to R13,42. A drop of about 60 cents. Yet when imperialist rating agency, Standard and Poore, downgraded the SA credit rating to junk status, the Rand only weakened to R13,60, a drop of less than 20 cents. How do we explain such changes?

Disband parliament - set up action committees

We condemn the wholesale removal of 20 Cabinet Ministers in the same vein as we condemn the policies of the ANC government. Parliament has shown itself incapable of holding Cabinet or the Presidency to account. Parliament approved of a false report on Nkandla; Parliament approved of cuts in pensions, they refused to raise the tax on company profits and refused to stop the imperialists from stealing trillions. As a result millions are dying early deaths due to poverty and exploitation. Free, decent housing for all is possible; free education, health care for all is possible. But the old and new Cabinet stand for the safeguarding of international monopoly capital. The World Bank is stealing the bread from our pensioners mouths; they are making illegal deductions from the 17 million grantholders; the government is supporting the World Bank’s efforts to steal from the impoverished throughout Africa.

Response to John Pilger on Syria

[This is a response to the article by Pilger: ‘This time it’s Syria, last time it was Iraq’, which appeared on the Stopthewar.uk.org website]

In this article by Pilger, he discusses everything else except what is really happening on the ground in Syria. He makes sweeping generalizations which are out of context. We attempt to deal with his main arguments:

1. He compares Syria today to Iraq 2003. In 2003 the US military invaded Iraq with over 50 000 troops and toppled the Saddam regime. In Syria, the US has sent 500 troops to assist the Kurdish YPG and KDF (Kurdish Democratic Forces). In Syria, the US troops have concentrated on supposedly fighting Isis, NOT the Assad regime. It is true that US proxies, the Saudi and Turkish regimes have been supplying weapons to the forces fighting against the Assad regime. However these weapons have been pea shooters and the supply of these arms have been with conditions, namely that the fight be waged against Isis.

The government has handed Sassa grants over to American loan sharks and is robbing the poorest of the poor

For years the government has claimed it has been helping the poorest of the poor. Now, research by ILRIG (International Labour Research and Information Group), has shown that the government has given over control of the Sassa grants to the hands of an American loan shark called Net1. This company was set up in Florida, USA, in 1997. This American loan shark is parasiting on workers in Iraq , South Korea, UK, Namibia, Nigeria, Malawi, Cameroon, the Phillipines, India and Columbia. Net 1 has partnered with Grindrod to set up Grindrod retail bank, a loan shark. Your Sassa grant is paid into a Grindrod account. Grindrod also owns Moneyline lenders. They offer loans to Sassa grantholders at 68% per annum interest.

Workers International Vanguard League/Party condemns, in the strongest terms, the march by the Mamelodi Concerned Residents scheduled for Pretoria/Tshwane on Friday 24th February 2017. 

Exploding the myth of Syria being ‘anti-imperialist’ – the working class needs to mobilise independently to seize power

Syria has a population of 21 million, of which about 54% are urbanised. This means that the working class has a much greater weight in the Syrian revolution today than 50 years ago. From the 15^th March 2011 up to the current date, much of the urban working class have not participated in the uprising against the Assad Baathist regime. The main reason for this is that the regime has managed to posture as ‘anti-imperialist’. Further, in March the regime gave a 20-30% wage increase to public sector staff and workers to attempt to curb the current revolt. But the central reason why the Assad military dictatorship has managed to sustain

Please note that this website is under reconstruction. Kindly bear with us during the next few weeks of Jan-Feb 2017.

The Workers International News, now The SPARK, formerly the Africa Workers Organizer, is a newsletter that has been around for some time and this website mainly an online edition of the newsletter. Previous editions since 2001 are present inus.
NOTE: We have received complaints that emails are bouncing off previous email addresses; please note that we are now using only one address. Our primary address is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Please check our website for weekly updates, otherwise send an email to us to be added to our mailing list and be included in our breaking news reports and analysis.

Continued imperialist plunder as an obstacle to free education

[EDITORS’ NOTE: This article suggests that access to education in South Africa is dependent on the unequal relationship between South Africa’s economy and imperialist global capitalism. Without solving the question of socio-economic plunder and inequality, we will not get free education.]

The UN Conference on Trade (UNCTAD) just published a report in July on invoice fraud by mining monopolies in Africa, including SA specifically. They reported that virtually all the gold between 2000 and 2014 left the country unreported. This amounted to $113,6 bn or (R1,7 trillion). Also guilty of fraud were the platinum, iron ore and silver mines. UNCTAD estimates $50bn leaves Africa every year through illegal trade. This amounts to over $700 bn over the past 14 years (about R10,5 trillion!). Here was the funds for free education, free health-care, housing to all, etc; this is separate from the reported profits. Yet we find that the government does not lift a finger to to tackle the imperialist mining companies but pursues poor students for not repaying NSFAS loans, while others are excluded for financial reasons.

11/01/2017

Syria

Aleppo, the capital city of the resistance, has fallen

√ The genocidal forces of Bashar the dog and Putin mercilessly slaughtered the people of Aleppo

√ The generals of FSA and Al Nusra openly sold it out

√ USA freed the area and air space of Syria so that Al Assad and Putin, with their missiles and barrel bombs, demolish the Syrian cities and Aleppo in particular

√ The Reformist left isolated the Syrian masses from the world working class. Their war cry: "ISIS is the enemy"; while Al Assad with his mercenary forces under the command of Putin and Obama were crushing the heroic 2011/2012 workers and peasants revolution

***

Aleppo did not surrender! Aleppo was sold out!

 First of all a big salute to all the students who stood up in the fight for free education, against high fees and an end to outsourcing. A big salute to the worker-student and staff alliance that was growing day by day. There are so many lessons that these struggles can teach us all. This breakthrough moment has come through many battles over the years, some partial victories and several defeats.

The activists Dinah Makheta, Sipho Mangane, Dan Molefe and Pulane Mahlangu are political prisoners of the capitalist state. We demand their immediate release. We call for all working class organizations to take up this

call to campaign for the over-turning of their sentences,for an end to the criminalisation of protest and for the arrest of the bosses of Anglo American, Lonmin and other mining giants that have stolen hundreds of billions over the years that could have been used for decent housing for all, jobs for all, free, quality health care for all, free, quality education for all and all the needs of the entire masses. More than 63% of deaths of children are caused by hunger. Hundreds of thousands of people are dying from diseases of poverty. Millions are crowded into small dwellings and shacks. More than half the youth that start school drop out before matric because of poverty conditions. Our pensioners are starving; this year they received only a 4% ‘increase’, which is a cut in real terms. Meanwhile Anglo American and other mining giants not only take hundreds of billions of Rands of profits out of the country and the region, they also do not pay the taxes that they should.