April 8th 2019
Report from Johannesburg – South Africa
On the foundational Congress of the “Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party”
The call of the fierce and militant workers of NUMSA
to build up a revolutionary party was taken to a great frustration by Castroism-Stanilism
By James S., correspondent in South Africa for the IWO
With collaboration of Jussa K. y Julián Juárez
Neither “socialist”, nor “internationalist”… turning its back to the rank and file workers, a new appendix of the South African CP has emerged
The foundational Congress of the “Socialist Revolutionary Workers’ Party – SRWP” has finished. The leadership of the metal workers union –NUMSA- had called to set it up. This Congress was held from April 4th to 6th.
The requisite to be part of the SRWP is to be Stalinist; in order to be allowed in the Congress you have to wear Chavist beret, a T-shirt with Castro’s face on it and swear loyalty to both. If not, you were not allowed in the Congress. Videos show this and I also witnessed it being there as correspondent for the “International Workers’ Organizer” covering this event.
Of course the ones who did enter, those who had full access to the Congress and who received tribute there were: the delegates from PSOL, PT and MST from Brazil, the Stalinists and Boli-bourgeoisie who surrendered the anti-imperialist struggle of the Latin American masses, partners of the fascist genocidal al-Assad, the members of the new bourgeoisie of the Cuban CP (who handed over the worker state to the US) as well as the MP of Podemos, servants of the Borbon Monarchy and enemies of Catalonia’s independence.
Thus, the Stalinist leadership of NUMSA separated (going in an opposite direction) the nascent Castroite-Maoist party from the original appeal issued by the metal workers’ union on January 1st 2018. Back then the appeal to set up a revolutionary party was made by NUMSA. Such appeal raised the need for the struggle for the most immediate demands of the masses, like wage equal to the cost of living and decent jobs, and it stated the need of breaking with the ANC, denouncing it as servant of the rich and protector of privileges of the white. This appeal defended the right to go on strike and denounced COSATU bureaucracy as well as that from every federation of trade union as traitors to the working class. The appeal called for the nationalization of all branches of the economy and minerals, as well as the need to impose workers’ control over the nationalized companies. Together with defending outsourced workers, the appeal called to defend public free education and to expropriate the lands and ended up stating that the power should be in the hands of the working class, since it is the only one that “can free itself from the Capitalist chains of economic oppression”.
This appeal by NUMSA was issued when a pre-revolutionary situation was starting in South Africa: the general strike of April 2018 threatened Ramaphosa’s government. It took place two months after the regime was forced to surrender Zuma’s head (the president until February), as they were afraid that the masses may overthrow him revolutionarily.
To divert these massive struggles, the ANC regime –supported by Stalinist treacherous bureaucracy of COSATU- called for national elections for next May. That was the starting point for the Stalinist leadership of NUMSA to start setting aside the appeal to organize the forces of the working class politically on a revolutionary road and move forward towards setting up a party, out of the control of grassroots workers, not only from this union but from all the exploited who fight every day.
The SRWP Congress, held in the 5 Star Birchwood Hotel in Johannesburg, did not count with the presence of thousands of delegates who should have been voted by the workers’ grassroots in the factories, communities in struggle, etc. The appeal to set up a “revolutionary party” was made on behalf of NUMSA and when the time to found it came, workers were left aside. The rank and file delegates from abour 300,000 workers of NUMSA and other several thousand workers that are part of SAFTU –the federation of trade unions opposed to COSATU- did not voted this new party’s program.
The Stalinist leadership of NUMSA prevented the working class –who is the one really leaving in crisis the infamous regime of the ANC and the black bourgeoisie of selling-out to imperialism- from being a decisive factor of this party, from the streets and struggles in the factories carried out by workers.
The workers who earn miserable wages, working as slaves in mines, fractories and plantations in South Africa- would never make a congress to discuss how to build socialism and defeat the capitalists in a luxurious hotel, like the SRWP leaders did.
As a matter of factr, the leadership of NUMSA (which is a fraction of the old South Africa Communist Party, as it is a 2014 split) based itself in the union just to organize this new Stalinist communist party from the top and super-structurally.
The independence of a Stalinist political apparatus –which departs from NUMSA after using it to call a congress- is expressed in the fact that this leadership claims proudly that the SRWP founds do not come from the rank and file workers. Workers do not spend a part of their wages on building the SRWP as they do for their union. This would have meant that they were the ones in charge of deciding how to set up THEIR own party and with whom.
A proof of what stated before is what Irvin Jim (NUMSA general secretary and also presidential candidate for SRWP) said at the opening speech of the congress: “This is not workers’ money. I can assure everyone that the workers’ money is intact at NUMSA…” So who pays for this party and this Congress and therefore decided what happened there? Irvin Jim continued: this congress is funded by money raised “locally and abroad”… Seeing T-shirts with Castro face on them, the beret of Chavism and the luxurious hotel where the Congress was held (where many managers of TNCs who visit South Africa stay in), there is no need to be very sharp to realize who is really funding this party and deciding what happens in it. This included the resolution that I, as revolutionary socialists Trotskyist from Zimbabwe, was not allowed to enter nor witness any discussion, even to cover it as correspondent, except from Irvin Jim opening speech, despite the fact we did a political and programmatic contribution to the foundation of SRWP.
Unfortunately the rank and file and the struggling organizations (like NUMSA, SAFTU, etc) were not the ones that imposed their mark and decided the fate of the party.
Today, from Johannesburg, we must tell the workers the truth: we are not going to announce that a new revolutionary party, an instrument for the seizure of power, has emerged in South Africa. Quite the opposite: a new obstacle has been created against the workers and their struggles.
What has emerged is a new communist party, led by Irvin Jim.
In this new party, only a few hundred delegates were able to vote and decide, led by a fraction of South African Stalinism. What was resolved in the deliberations that took place between four walls is a secret also for me. But what is clear is that the leadership of the SRWP will increasingly remove the off from them the influence of the masses fighting in the streets against the regime and the government, and will increasingly remove from their program every “revolutionary” phraseology.
The foundation of the SRWP took place at a time when the working class of South Africa has entered into a new offensive of revolutionary combats ... A new obstacle against the workers' struggle rises
From Zimbabwe, we travel every year to rallies for justice for the 34 Marikana miners who were killed by the government's police hordes and the strike-breaking traitors of the bureaucracy of the official unions of the South African regime.
This always reminds us that it was from that heroic Marikana strike of 2012 that this workers’ uprising began throughout South Africa. Then the industrial workers entered the fight, with strikes and picket lines. Communities and rural workers have revolted alongside them. Thus arose a powerful General Strike that in 2018 faced the government of Ramaphosa, successor of Zuma, the heir of Mandela. The engine of struggle is wages, decent work, housing, water, education... We are before a workers’ rise that threatens to overthrow the hated regime of the ANC, headed by a millionaire black bourgeoisie, manager of the AngloAmerican.
This pro-imperialist regime has been supported for almost three decades by the official Communist Party, which is trained to strangle revolutions and to disorganize the ranks of the workers.
Therefore, after the 6-month strike of the Marikana miners, the regime tried to rearrange itself quickly. Thus, the first split of Stalinism was promoted from above, to contain the rise of the miners: Malema, the former leader of the Communist Youth, formed the party "Economic Freedom Fighters" that calls for the establishment of a black bourgeois nationalist movement and manipulates the revolutionary anti-imperialist consciousness of the black working class of South Africa to take it to a class collaboration policy. This party has already organized sectors of the black bourgeoisie, preparing, ultimately, a new ANC more to the left, with a demagogic anti-imperialist rhetoric, and in “defence of the black nation” but tightly controlling the miners movement so that they do not return to fight with their assemblies, their bodies of delegates and their strike committees, as they did in 2012.
Malema was in charge of taking all demands for trial and punishment for the Marikana miners to the bourgeois justice, where they saved all the murderers of the people, the CEOs of the transnational mining companies and the bosses who ordered to savagely massacre the workers.
But this was not and is not enough to stop the workers’ uprising that has begun. While the official CP has been supporting the ANC, the regime, the government and the electoral trap that is being prepared for May to remove the masses from the streets, the bourgeoisie had to control a brave working class. That working class broke all collaboration with its executioners, was the vanguard of the combat that caused the fall of Zuma and has faced his follower, the anti-worker government of Ramaphosa.
Today, for example, all the factories of steelmaker Arcelor Mittal are on strike. Their demands are: "No more labour outsourcing! Equal pay for equal work for all workers in the steel industry!". This program and this struggle will set the path for the entire working class in South Africa and internationally.
The bourgeoisie must deal with a workers’ movement that began to turn to the left and that is what the new Stalinist party and its "socialist" phraseology is about ... for the electoral campaign.
The leadership of the IWL-FI (LIT-CI) and of the CSP-Conlutas of Brazil conceals the bureaucratic leadership of the planet that is to be portrayed as "revolutionary" in the eyes of the working class
The Stalinist leadership of the NUMSA prepared for this occasion for years. In 2013, pushed by the workers who entered the fight against the government, the NUMSA leaders announced that they would break with the ANC and that their objective was to set up a workers' party. The rupture of the working class with the bourgeoisie had begun in South Africa and the workers' rank and file stamped its imprint on the left.
The leadership of the union, in April 2014, traveled to the US to participate in the Labor Notes conference, that is, it met the trade union advisers of the Yankee imperialist Democratic Party's lawyers. There, undoubtedly, they received instructions on how to deal with this fierce offensive of the South African working class against the infamous regime of "reconciliation" with Apartheid.
Months later, in August 2014, the leadership of NUMSA received in South Africa the official delegation sent by the PSTU of Brazil and the LIT-CI to the symposium called by the leaders of this union to discuss the way forward and their proposal for "March to build a socialist alternative". Thus, this Stalinist leadership knew how to conceal itself as "socialist" and "revolutionary" maintaining fraternal relations with the "Trotskyists" of the LIT-CI, which willingly consent to it, as they have done so for example in Bolivia and Chile (see box)
After openly breaking with the COSATU and being expelled from it by 33 votes against 24, in 2015 the leaders of NUMSA met the leadership of the CSP-Conlutas trade union center in Brazil, which is directed by the IWL-FI, in a congress of the IG Metall in Germany, sponsored by the social democracy of that country.
As we can see, the LIT-CI, the PSTU of Brazil and the leadership of the CSP-Conlutas, from the very moment that this process of turning to the left of the masses of South Africa began, branded the leadership of the NUMSA as "revolutionary" to grant a "socialist" varnish to the workers in struggle that broke with the ANC.
The LIT-CI cannot claim that they were carrying out a unity-confrontation or united front tactics to work on a centrist phenomenon. This had to be done. But the LIT-CI only had a policy of making "agreements from the top" with the leadership of the NUMSA, dedicating itself to giving it political victuals and whitewashing the Stalinist. In this way, the LIT-CI concealed all the actions of the NUMSA leadership in the wave of struggles that moved South Africa in 2017-2018. No one can deny that after the general strike of April 2018 against Ramaphosa, the way had been opened to overthrow the entire ANC regime at the hands of the masses. This "united front on the top" of the LIT-CI and the CSP-Conlutas, concealed the leadership of the NUMSA that far from promoting this revolutionary policy, went to organize the SRWP, as we see it today, to subdue the workers' vanguard to the electoral trap. This congress that just ended was also about that.
With the collaboration of the renegades of Trotskyism, a third communist party emerged in South Africa to contain the masses on the left
After being covered by ex-Trotskyist currents such as the LIT-CI, "anti-capitalists" like the PSOL of Brazil and centrist groups of South Africa, the third communist party in this country has been set up. The three that exist (the official CP, Malema's party and now the SRWP) are essential to try to control, manipulate and abort the irruption of the South African revolutionary workers’ movement.
In the '90s, imperialism and the bourgeoisie resorted to Mandela to give a "peaceful way out" to the fascist regime of Apartheid, without "bloodshed". They imposed a regime of reconciliation and the "Freedom Charter" to get the masses out from the path of the proletarian revolution. The result of this policy was not more freedom, but the continuation of slavery at the hands of imperialism and a new black millionaire bourgeoisie, now associated to them.
That regime is the one that is collapsing today, with the working class breaking away from it. Those from below have begun the fight, performing maneuvers of revolution. The bureaucracies of the trade unions, the reformist leaderships and the bourgeoisie, in the midst of the economic catastrophe, the crisis of the regime and the irruption of the masses of the city and the countryside, need to block the way so that the dual power bodies do not arise and do not arm themselves. Those bodies are already beginning to emerge, such as the strike pickets, factory committees and community committees that fight for health and housing. The bourgeoisie and the reformists must prevent the coordination, centralization and armament of all the masses in struggle. If these bodies of those from below arise, history would change quickly.
The role of the Communist Parties is to keep the exploited in new political bantustans that, this time, isolate all sectors of the masses in struggle, prevent their coordination and centralization at provincial and national level. They are prepared to set up all the necessary traps so that the dual power of the exploited does not emerge, whereas that dual power is the only way to set up the organizations of direct democracy and armament of the masses to advance to the revolution and the seizure of power. This is the only path for the socialist revolution: to set up committees of workers, soldiers and poor peasants for the insurrection.
All the words of "socialism" that I heard in this SRWP congress were just that, words. This congress did not instruct the masses to raise the power of those from below, not even to face the electoral trap in May or to unite the working class in concrete struggles throughout South Africa and internationally.
Stanilism manipulates the 1959 Cuban revolution for better deceiving and controlling the working class in South Africa
While I was in South Africa, a public symposium on Cuba and Latin America was held in the main campus of the University of South Africa in Tshwane (Pretoria) on March 29th. Together with the ANC and the official CP, Cuba’s Vice-President, Ines Maria Chapman, and Venezuela’s Ambassador in South Africa, Mairin Moreno Morida were there. Clearly, they met with the SRWP leaders and maybe, why not, as they said, they received some donations to buy berets, T-shirts and other Stalinist symbols for the Congress.
What caught my attention is the contradiction of this Congress where “socialism” and “internationalism” were proclaimed. But they did it by raising the banners of Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese CP, of brothers Castro and the repressor, anti-worker and coward before the Yankees Maduro; they are all partners with the butcher Putin and the fascist al-Assad, who are in charge of massacring the revolutionary masses of Syria. For the SRWP “Proletarian internationalism” means the unity with the greatest traitors and those who surrender the world revolution.
Their relationship with the scammers of “Bolivarian Revolution” and with the “democratic” Borbons of the Spanish State speaks by itself.
That is the point of this third Stalinist variant named SRWP. Without this new obstacle, the bourgeoisie and imperialism would not be able to contain the sectors of the struggling masses and divert them towards the electoral trap, which wants to legitimize the infamous regime of ANC and Anglo-American.
The Cuban revolution is admired by millions of black workers, from Harlem to Missouri to Southern Africa. The workers’ state took place in the island while the struggles of national liberation in Africa were taking place. The black workers of Africa saw the victory of their revolution in the Cuban revolution in the ‘60s.
Back then, Castroism deployed all its forces here. Obviously they did not want to see the victory of the anti-colonial revolution as socialist revolution, but they wanted to prevent it. Even Che Guevara was isolated in Congo and left unarmed for weeks by the old Stalinist USSR bureaucracy, which proves this enormous betrayal.
But world black workers took that revolution and their own. They took it as part of their own combat and that remained as part of their consciousness. This created a fair aspiration of the black masses defending the Cuban socialist revolution, but it also gave Stalinism a tool to manipulate such consciousness.
We cannot forget that Castroite militias went to Africa to defend Rockefeller’s oil fields, like in Angola and Guinea Bissau after the Portuguese imperialism was defeated. After surrendering the anti-colonial struggles of liberation, Stalinism manipulated this consciousness of the black workers in Africa for years. Now it does so, when it cannot wear T-shirts with Mandela’s face, nor Obama’s nor the black millionaire bourgeoisie and all its agents on it. Now they use T-shirts with Castro’s face on it to dress in “red”.
This is a paradox, because the manipulation takes place when Chavezism is not laying a finger on imperialism’s properties while Trump fences and sieges Venezuela to get all its oil. This is a contradiction because Castro himself, before he died, said that “socialism does not work anymore, not even in Cuba”. The right to inheritance has been re-established there as well as the private property and a “new China” is being imposed by settling up factory-sweatshops that will work in dock Mariel, in a tax-free area with slave workers earning 18 dollars a month.
Castroism sold out all the conquers of Cuban revolution and their last effords are to support this rotten capitalist system in Southern Africa.
But this deadly trap for workers would not work if it was not for the renegades of Trotskyism of Brazil and Latin America, from the Spanish State, from the USA and South Africa would not have cover up the Stalinist leadership of SRWP.
If so much betrayal and surrender can be settled is yet to be seen. While the Congress of the SRWP took place, in other district of Johannesburg the community of Alexandra fought with sticks and machetes in their hands for decent housing, health, electricity and against repression. At the same time there are hundreds of struggles with strikes and factory occupations, without even going to Hotel Birchwood to say hi to “their” shop stewards and representatives. Most of the exploited struggling have not even heard of this luxurious place, where the Congress was held.
Here I could see the slaves struggling in deep South Africa who could not participate in this Congress, where a bureaucracy and petty-bourgeoisie, openly Stalinists now, without shame and under a sumptuous luxury, founded this third communist party.
Those who funded this Congress “from abroad” are happy. But the workers who have no job or house could not find a solution here. The workers of South Africa, unfortunately, have nothing to celebrate.
Before this Congress, SRWP leadership prevented any debate with revolutionary currents of the continent. We, revolutionary socialists of Zimbabwe, sent a critique and contributions to the appeal for setting up the SRWP. We had no answer. Silence. The same silence that struggling masses suffered as they could not participate in this Congress. Revolutionaries could not either.
The true struggle for the socialist revolution is in the embryo bodies of dual power of the masses, which are emerging in South Africa. The struggle for proletarian internationalism of the South African workers is side by side with the revolutionary masses who are fighting today in Algeria, Tunisia and Sudan; those who are resisting in Syria and in Palestine; those who are fighting in the imperialist countries like the Yellow Vests of France.
This Congress of SRWP did not vote a program for socialist revolution, which would open the road to the masses to set up their dual power bodies. It voted a “socialist” program to be applied “peacefully” from the Parliament, not to split the army and recruit rank and file soldiers and set up workers militias. In there they did not call to dissolve the police, murderers of the Marikana miners.
This Congress, while it cheered brothers Castro, did not call the black workers of the USA to coordinate a common fight organized and centralized to strike as one single fist against Wall Street imperialist pirates, Frankfurt banks and London City.
The counterrevolutionary partners of the Chinese CP were the ones that participated in this Congress. The Chinese CP has become a new millionaire bourgeoisie, which enslaves the largest working class of the world. Furthermore, they dedicated a room of the Congress to their leaders, Mao Tse Tung and his followers. There were the biggest surrederers of world socialist revolution.
The SRWP threatened with expressing this enormous process of radicalization of the South Africa working class directly, particularly the metal workers. Hundreds of thousand workers were looking forward to it. This process was seen with sympathy from many countries around Africa. Stalinism destroyed the initiative of grassroots workers of NUMSA of imposing a political and revolutionary way out to their combats and prevented the revolutionary regrouping of workers’ ranks that those of the bottom need to win.
When the Congress was about to finish, we heard that there was certain resistance to this policy imposed. Different delegates did not understood why there were so many words of “socialist revolution”, when all the tasks of this party were organized around the elections in May. In different interventions, a tiny sector of delegates tried to unmask this program is not to be conquered through revolution but through the scam of the “peaceful way to socialism”.
Also, during the Congress I saw a total submission to the discipline of the new communist Stalinist party from those who up to yesterday claimed to be revolutionaries. I witnessed how they put on Chavez’s beret, a T-shirt with the picture of Fidel Castro and swore them loyalty. This talks about the crisis of our party, the Fourth International, sworn enemy of the treacherous leaderships and Stalinism, which caused countless defeats and sufferings to the world working class.
It is unbeliavable that those who have been members of Trotskyism for years, confused or not, are claiming today that Trotskyists and Stalinists can be in the same party. After the USSR was handed over and after the historical betrayals to world working class by Stalinism, attempting that the banners of the Fourth International can march together with those of the Communists Parties -traitors of world revolution- is an offense to the legacy of the world revolutionary movement.
Defending the massacred working and peasant Syria, and say nothing about it in this party of al-Assad and Putin’s partners, means breaking away from Trotkyism openly.
We, the Trotksyists, have intervened in this progressive phenomenon of layers of the working class turning left. We did it during the ‘30s and later, after WWII. From the FLTI and revolutionary socialists of Africa, we acted in the same way with this process in South Africa since the beginning. We proclaimed the program of NUMSA and this initiative of the militant unions of setting up a revolutionary party as the way to be followed by all the exploited of the tormented Africa. We share their internationalist statement to the workers’ vanguard of Zimbabwe, Mozambique and internationally. Also, we stated our position and critique on the limits that the centrist program had. And we constantly exposed the policy of an opportunist leadership that threatened with taking this working initiative to a dead end, as it finally happened.
This struggle will be patrimony and landmark to be conquered by workers led by a revolutionary leadership. As it has been proved, Stalinism promises victories and it will only bring defeats. This is what has to be avoided.
Neither revolution nor the combats of the workers of Africa reached Brichwood Hotel, let alone those of the world working class
The masses of Alexandra are far from this Congress, who are still without water and food; the immigrants and their women coming from all over Africa, kept working as slaves; workers remain claiming for justice for their partners.
I thought about my siblings of Zimbabwe and Mozambique who suffered natural catastrophes and capitalists’ voracity and I also thought about the tormented masses of Angola and Guinea Bissau, who could not be part of this Congress. I thought about the miners of Hwange and their brave women who will remain separated from their siblings of Marikana. I thought about the little vendors who will remain unemployed in Zimbabwe or slaved in South Africa without the support of workers organizations. I thought that once again we have been divided.
As I walked around the streets of Johannesburg I also thought: “How much water the AngloAmerican’s regime and its lackey bourgeoisie need to put down the revolutionary fire that threatens with setting on fire South Africa!” The grass is dry and could be set on fire. The masses want concrete solutions: they want bread, decent jobs, land and stop living in shacks in the country of the gold. Following the path of the masses of Sudan, Algeria and Haiti, the exploited of South Africa have taken to the streets to conquer their demands with their own struggle.
The revolution starts to arise. It tries doing so, but so many treacherous leaderships prevent it. The main obstacle that the working class and masses have is the crisis of leadership, which prepares a new betrayal today as the one used to expropriate in the ‘90s the great revolution of the slaves of South Africa. This time the masses will not clash against Apartheid and the white like back then, but against “Capitalist Apartheid” of Anglo-American and of a black millionaire bourgeoisie, supported by three treacherous party, which allows them to live among a sea of black slaves.
The last word has not been written yet and probably it will not be. The revolutionaries must fight for it. Our first task is to tell workers the truth: who their allies are and who their enemies are. And the Congress of the SRWP has not become an ally of the socialist revolution. Actually our allies are in the fierce working vanguard who do not let the exploiters or the treacherous leaderships that betray them to live in peace, neither in South Africa nor internationally.
James S., correspondent in South Africa for IWO
With the collaboration of Jussa K. and Julián Juárez |
Posters supporting the Bolivarians
in the Congress of the SRWP
Posters supporting Lula in the Congress of the SRWP
Speakers with the T-shirts of Fidel Castro
and the Chavist beret in the Congress of the SRWP
Ana Claudia Mielke, leader of the PSOL of Brazil
in the Congress of the SRWP
Rita Bosaho, leader of Podemos of the Spanish State in the Congress of the SRWP
James S. in Marikana in 2014
Strike at Arcelor Mittal in South Africa in April 2019
Strike at Arcelor Mittal in South Africa in April 2019
General Strike in South Africa on 04/25/18
Strike of the Hwange miners, Zimbabwe in April 2018
Women's Committee of the Hwange strike
Women's Committee of the Hwange strike
Strike against fuel hike in Zimbabwe in January 2019
|
