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!
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