Open letter to the rank and file of SASCO and other progressive organizations

Dear Compañeros

Having heard of your congress outcomes and resolutions, the Workers and Socialist Party felt it necessary to send you its revolutionary greetings, solidarity and to take this opportunity to humbly share with you as we have been doing with the rest of the working class movement, our analysis of the current economic and political situation as well as our vital conclusions on the most essential features, the fundamental strategic and tactical tasks facing the working class, youth and indeed, their mass fighting organisations such as the South African Student Congress.

WASP argues that the political polarisations and intensifying conflicts between the ruling capitalist elite- which confronted with the worst economic crisis of capitalism in more 80 years is stubbornly resolute to ruthlessly impose the burden of it (the economic crisis) on the working class- through mass lay-offs, retrenchments, wage freezes and brutal cuts on public spending on education, housing and service delivery, etc- and the working and poor people, who are desperately resisting these worsening conditions in workplaces, poor communities and campuses, poses forcefully the need for every mass fighting organisation of the working class and youth to meticulously assess its objective position in the widening political divide and conflicts. This necessarily means the revolutionary student movement must rethink and openly debate its old political loyalties and traditional alliances, which for SASCO means the alliance particularly with the ANC and generally, the tripartite alliance.

Marikana massacres and its place in history.

The brutal massacre of the mineworkers at Marikana mines of Lonmin in 2012 will be registered in the annals of history as the most important moment because of both the ruthless, cold-blooded mass killing of the defenceless mineworkers fighting for a modest demands of R12 500 minimum wage to protect the profits of fabulously rich bosses of Lonmin and the political turning point that the massacres represent so far as the relations between classes are concerned.  More sharply than any other event since 1994, the Marikana massacre has correctly concentrated the minds of the working class on the fundamental political and class character of the ANC and its government.

The massacre has engraved eternally in the minds of the working class and poor people of this country and internationally, with the blood of the Marikana martyrs, the brutal anti-working class and capitalist character of the ANC and its government. This vital fact alone represent the most fundamental rupture in the relations between classes and indeed the whole political epoch, whose main feature was an overwhelming dominance of the tripartite alliance and through it of the ANC in the mass movement of the working class and the consequently, the political landscape of the country.

Whereas this qualitative change in the political situation is difficult to quantify for lack of definitive figures, it is nevertheless clear at all levels of political activity of the working class, just as it is from the manoeuvres of the ruling capitalist classes. The unfolding implosion of the tripartite alliance and each organisation of this reactionary, treacherous and class collaborationist alliance is an indirect expression, but the most powerful echo of this historical process. In absolutely no way, is it co-incidence that the tripartite alliance and each of the partners in it, the ANC, SACP and COSATU are each imploding simultaneously at the present moment when the whole country as well seem to be teetering towards a precipice. It is the logical expression of the unfolding historical process of social and political realignment that the ruling tripartite alliance, being the main focal point of antagonistic class interests should suffer the political consequences of the deepening economic crisis and widening social gap between the ruling capitalist elite, which the ANC represent and the overwhelming masses of the working class and poor people, who until now relied on Cosatu as the colossus of the organised labour and the only mass organisation capable to restraining the savagery of the capitalist classes.

This flow not only from the ANC and COSATU in particular being the biggest political and trade union organisations, respectively, through which will flow the lava of social discontent, but also the untenable attempts at keeping in this coalition, organisations historically representing antagonistic social forces, whose interests are objective irreconcilable and increasingly expressed in the bitter conflicts taking place in every major arena of class struggle, in the workplaces, service delivery protests and the student movement. Most directly however, the changing relations is reflected in the simultaneous and universal drift , away from the centrist politics of the congress alliance on the part of both the ruling class and the working classes as well as their feverish search for political alternatives. Various political experiments on the right of the ANC represent attempts of the ruling class to prepare for a reliable alternative to the imploding ANC to perpetuate the current system of capitalist slavery.  Formation of Cope and now, AGANG, together with failing, but desperate attempts at reconfiguring DA into a 'black' party is part of this strategy.

On the other hand the formation of Workers and Socialist Party in the aftermath of the Marikana massacre and the bloody strikes of the mine, and farm workers strikes of last year, was the most important historical step in the conscious assertion of political independence of the working class. Whereas there shouldn’t be illusions so far as the size of WASP or its place in the historical development of the mass, revolutionary workers party is concerned, it’s importance should not be underestimated either.  Just as the first act of taming fire represented a far more revolutionary development in the historical evolution of man in relation to the latter, more technologically advanced discovery of electrical power, WASP is equally the most significant step and qualitatively insuperable entry in the development of the independent mass party of the working class , which if you like, marks the end of the prolonged period of blind search for the genuine political representation of the working class  and the new beginnings of this party. Its very formation highlight a yearning for unity in struggle, which have for sometimes now been waged in varying arenas without any co-ordination within each of the arena and across them. The most striking illustration of this deplorable organisational weakness is the struggle in many working class communities, where particularly with the collapse of the South African National Civics Organisation (SANCO) and dissolution of the UDF in the early 90s, both of which traditionally co-ordinated struggles of many working class communities for rental boycotts and other protests against apartheid regime, there has been an organisational vacuum.

In spite of the community struggles today, waged mainly through service delivery protests being the permanent feature of the political and social landscape, as the result of lack of any political centre, many communities fighting around essentially the same demand and simultaneously, do that separately, episodically and spontaneously.  The working class is paying a heavy price for this tragic weakness, with countless defeats of these heroic and mighty struggles of the poor and brutal repression which claims increasing casualties of many self-sacrificing community activists. The same can be said of the student struggles against annual fee increments, escalating attacks on higher education, academic and financial exclusions, the brunt of which is borne mainly by the black working class students.  Unlike in communities, the student movement nominally still has centres of national co-ordination in the form of its traditional mass organisations, SASCO and PASMA being the biggest amongst them. However, the theoretical and political collapse of these organisations is all the more glaring and graphic in its catastrophic consequences the longer they linger as empty organisational shells of the former mighty and revolutionary movement they once represented.

In all but name, they have become recruitment agencies for every place-seeking power monger and corrupt petty-criminals hoping for a share in the loot of public resources through bourgeoning tenderpreneurship in campuses or hopeless opportunists using the movement as the stepping stone for a politically-bankrupt career in the public service or corporate world through the parliamentary mother bodies, which serves simultaneously as the transmission belt into the revolutionary student movement, of the corporate interests of the imperialists and capitalist forces these parties represent in the final analysis.

Waves of student struggles that swept almost every single university campus few years ago before the current ebb set-in, convulsed the entire youth movement found them wanting. If these powerful tides demonstrated the militancy of the working class students of this country, unfortunately they also stripped-naked the pretensions of the leadership of these organisations and bluntly revealed their political bankruptcy, if not their blatant treachery and betrayals.  The dismal failure of these organisations to organise solidarity actions, co-ordinate strikes in several campuses into a joint regional and national actions was treacherous to say the least. It betrays the very basis on which the student movement was built and the purpose for which its organisations were formed. The national and regional apparatuses in utterly failing to undertake this most basic tasks without which they won’t be able to justify their existence in the eyes of many students, if anything is a reminder that the offices in the regional and national structures of these organisations have become an end on themselves precisely because these organisations have lost their compass.  They’re filled from the top to the least important positions by the same careerists and opportunistic place seekers who having ran their full course with campus politics, SRC and tenders in institutions of higher learning and colleges now seek to venture to higher echelons of the political elite and use these positions not to serve students and advance their movement but to elevate and enrich themselves.

However even more telling is the fact that they’ve demonstrated abject lack of capacity to harvest the energy and militancy of these spontaneous outbursts into a consciously organised, meticulously planned national campaigns to demand free, quality and accessible public education, decent jobs and essential public services for all and in particular, for the devastated masses of working class youth facing gloomy future. With each of these organisations and leaders competing in contests to ingratiate themselves as the most reliable ‘political agents’ of the ruling elite, which despicable actions are disguised under ‘honourable’ pretexts of ‘responsible student leadership’ or ‘loyal cadreship’ of the bourgeois parties in the political service of the multinational corporations and capitalism, there is no hope of them mounting, led alone leading any earnest political challenge to the system.

It is precisely campaigns linking up the interests of students on campuses for a successful completion of their studies, academic and institutional environment supportive of excellence, quality facilities and the best infrastructure to support learning, etc with the legitimate demands of the working class and poor youth fighting for jobs, demanding that doors of learning in higher education be opened and provision of decent public services in their communities that will raise the working class resistance to worsening conditions of life to greater heights attained before only in the anti-apartheid struggle. The student movement in higher schools and struggles of young people in townships will be given a boost in terms of organisation and unity never seen again post 1994.

The present crisis of permanent mass unemployment amongst the youth which makes up 70% of the 7,6 million reserve army of the unemployed, which include over 100 000 young people of post-matric graduates without work,  3,3 million young people of university going age of 18-25 years who are NEET (Not in employment, education and training), means there is a greater scope for organising and active campaigning work to free the student movement from the narrow confines of ‘campus militancy’ devoid of broad political horizons necessary to light the sight of many genuine student activists above their immediate campus issues.

Together with epidemic prevalence of precarious work amongst youth in extreme forms of cheap labour in elementary occupations (Over 50% of the employed people with matrics are in elementary occupations, meaning jobs requiring no qualification), temporary and contract jobs and even so called learnerships, internships, most of which often means thinly disguised pretext to create two-tiers labour market in which young people can be exploited below trade union wages or normal industry rates, also means there an objective basis to build a genuine working class youth movement cutting across sectorial divides in the struggles of the working class youth in campuses, communities and workplaces.

Without this the attainment of a real unity in struggle and not ceremonial substitutes of the alliances with the ruling political elite, which serves as platforms for the pro-capitalist elite to pay an electorally necessary diplomatic homage to the students and youth, with all their stultifying rituals of bogus debates and empty promises, is unimaginable, let alone a realisation of a fighting, mass socialist student and youth movement capable of instilling the whole generation of the working class youth with genuinely revolutionary historical and class perspectives for bringing about fundamental social and political transformation of the university and indeed, of society as the whole in the same way as the mass organisations of the revolutionary youth in campuses, black townships and rural villages did in the anti-apartheid struggle.

We cannot preach unity of the working class like a gospel not meant for this earthly world.  It can and has to be realised in struggle. If the struggle is not chosen but objectively determined by the very material conditions which give rise to the need for a fight, then we must agree that the only genuine unity in struggle has to be unity of forces in struggles against those defending the status quo. The alliance with the ANC and any of the present bourgeois parliamentary opposition only contesting the ANC on the best way to manage the capitalist system and therefore the continuing slavery of the working class in parties like the PAC, AZAPO, etc, does not advance unity but only divide the ranks of the working class and poor.

History demands that the revolutionary student movement must take its proud place in the unfolding class struggle. However, this will not come of its own and can expected from the many in the current crop in top echelons of student leadership up their neck with filth of corruption, self-enrichment and already high in climbing the political and corporate ladder. For this to happen the rank and file of the student movement must pull it out of the alliances with the parties of the ruling class (ANC, PAC, AZAPO) and consciously align themselves with other fighting contingents of the working class in communities and trade union movement, for advancement of the struggles for a free quality education, decent jobs and public services for all and for a socialist transformation.

We are therefore appealing to the rank and file of the student movement to insistently raise a debate within their organisations and public debates in campuses on the questions of present alliances, realignment of political forces, perspectives for the working class struggle and way-forward for the student movement in the same way the organised labour movement and Numsa in particular has come to recognise that it is necessary to debate it.  .

Numsa through a voice of its highest decision-making body, the national congress has correctly resolved to abandon the ANC-led tripartite alliance and join the struggle for the building of the genuine mass revolutionary party of the working class, the process which Democratic Socialist Movement and National Workers Committee of the mineworkers pioneered with the launch of Workers and Socialist Party following the bitter struggles of the mine, farmworkers and communities of Sasolburg amongst others.

Long overdue is an open debate on this and many other pertinent theoretical and political issues in the student movement. Socialist Youth Movement- a newly launched revolutionary Marxist student tendency now existing in several campuses will gladly share its own analysis, perspectives and programme for the way-forward in comradely and constructive debates on these. We cannot stand idle when the most important historical developments in the working class struggle and its political reconfiguration are taking place. There is no room in the revolutionary student movement for the impotent despair of the bourgeois academia shocked at the seismic shifts shattering pessimistic perspectives for the ‘stable political landscape’ of their sterile scholastic analysis.

Even more so, there should be no room for an wait –and-see opportunistic tailism imitating that of the wavering petty-bourgeois left substituting their docile tailing of the trade union bureaucracy for a revolutionary, direct political interventions, active orientation to the rank and file of the organised labour movement and bold initiative based on the ruthlessly objective analysis of the constantly shifting class consciousness and revolutionary perspectives for the working class struggle.

Whereas in the petty-bourgeois circles this wavering tailism generally represent their blind historical perspectives inevitably flowing from their barren philosophical tools of analysis  and objectively conditioned poor faith, sense and flair of the real, living movement of the working classes, the wavering in most student leaders is not motivated by the childish and if you like, sweet and cute innocence of the petty-bourgeois who are forced into pure intellectual speculations from the lofty heights  of their academic ivory towers about the plebeian movements from the lowest depths of society.

The wavering of the latter reflect is mainly motivated by selfish desire to be always on the winning side, pure and simple political opportunism and selfish careerism that is characteristic of this hopeless lot. Campaigns must be initiated in every organisation to expose these real motives behind persecutions of those brave-hearts daring to raise these issues or their golden silence over the earth-shattering political developments taking place.  They must be stripped-naked of their false pretensions and fanatical postures, their disloyalty and political rupture with the proud revolutionary traditions of the student movement must be laid bare for every student to see.

They’re wolves in sheep skin, they ran with the hares and barking with the hounds. Away with them all and the student movement will only benefit from their good riddance. Fighting to cleanse our organisations of this lot is an important task facing any genuine student revolutionary today. We cannot hesitate or flinch any longer.

Brutal class conflicts and seismic historical changes unfolding before our eyes in the last months, flow logically from both the profound world economic crisis of capitalism, social polarisation prepared by the economic boom that preceded the crisis and breach in the political truce between classes reflected in the increasingly rude intolerance and ruthless brutality of the ruling class towards an escalating working class revolts which started long before Marikana  and qualitatively changes in the political consciousness of the working class which have been simmering beneath the political surface which in normal times appears as if the only political actors are the ruling economic and political aristocracy, including the bureaucracy of trade unions and completely bourgeoisified youth organisations such as ANCYL, etc.

Marxists forewarned the leadership and mass organisations of the working class and not any less those of the student movement, which today lay prostrate before these mighty historical developments. This we did long before the fundamental facts of this situation they became a gospel truth of the literary fashion in the ‘respectable circles’ of the left petty-bourgeois intelligentsia and ‘investigative’ bourgeois journalists, as it will be evident from any glimpse of perspectives repeatedly outlined over the years in the pages of Democratic Socialist Movement newspaper Izwi la basebenzi  because we understood from the tectonic shifts in underling economic situation of capitalism, the objective course of class struggle, changing relations between classes and political consciousness that like  the molten rock of the volcano they’ll boil beneath the surface before they violently burst into open.

Just as we said before we can now boldly state that these historical events are merely the beginning and if you like a dress rehearsal for even greater convulsions in the period that lies ahead. Now than ever before, it is no longer a question of working-out clear perspectives for the objective direction of the working class struggle. Marxism as a science of revolutionary perspectives has nothing in common with the sterile academic methods of passive intellectual speculation; it is a guide to action. Today than ever the revolutionary student movement is called upon to grasp the horns of the dilemma that is the rapidly changing political situation and face up its strategic and political tasks.

However understanding and openly stating these tasks as we have done before ritualistically in conferences is no longer enough. We must consciously and actively prepare for even greater political conflicts looming ahead and the means we must undertake feverishly and energetically all the real steps in this direction, not only in relation to the most important political tasks of breaking all ties with parties that politically bind us to the ruling class and their capitalist system, but also in the organisational sense of actively campaigning to rebuild the student movement as a genuinely socialist and revolutionary democratic movement capable to mounting a serious fight in defence of inevitable attacks of higher education and advance popular aspirations of the working class students for a free, public education  open to all and that is not failing them but adequately provide for their current academic and social needs and equip them for more useful productive role in a  bright future that is socialism.

Again and again we insist that all mass organisations of the revolutionary student movement Sasco, Pasma and Azasco must openly debate these issues, now and not tomorrow.

Accordingly SYM submit this as we did with many other unsolicited letters critiquing the student movement as part of our contribution to this debate not only on strength of our faith that is long overdue and the best of student activists recognise it, but to break the deafening silence of the opportunistic tops of the student movement and cowardly flock of sheeps in campuses herding a brave pride of lions, which under heating pressure from below choose to whisper in corridors for fear of persecution and loss of opportunities to rise to the top.

Socialist Youth Movement like WASP is conceived as an embryonic Bolshevik core of this future mass student organisation. In building independent structures in campuses as we have rapidly been doing, we are trying to give a conscious and concrete expression to the blind, instinctive desire to retie the knot of history with the proud revolutionary traditions and principled class politics of the past and most importantly point a way-forward in this direction by propaganda of deeds.

We are certainly not considering ourselves a last letter in the development of future mass socialist, fighting student movement and it is with this spirit that we are open to engaging existing student organisations, organised left factions in existing organisations and individuals willing join this noblest cause of our age, the struggle for the emancipation of mankind from the slavery and exploitation, imperialist domination and national oppressions, wars and violence, hunger and poverty, in a nutshell, barbarism of capitalism and for a bright, prosperous and just future in socialism.

Let those not chained to the gravy train, hear the call and respond accordingly!