In Motsoaledi, Soweto, over 200 residents turned out on the local sports field to hear WASP spokesman Mametlwe Sebei and other WASP, DSM and local activists. WASP held a May Day event in Motsoaledi at the request of the local community following WASP’s assistance in the community’s on-going service delivery protests and police repression against them, including the murder of a local activist. WASP called for the community to build unity with other Soweto communities in the struggle for services – electricity, sanitation, housing, roads etc. Activists from neighbouring Freedom Park attended. The following day, one of the Motsoaledi Concerned Residents leaders, Lucky Ngobeni, was arrested by police.
In the mining town of Carletonville, 150 attended a WASP public meeting chaired by Elias Juba, chairperson of the mineworkers’ National Workers Committee. Workers of the Community Works’ Programme, residents fighting for housing and electricity and mineworkers stood for lively participation throughout the day. Weizmann Hamilton, general secretary of the Democratic Socialist Movement (CWI South Africa) called for those in attendance to unite the struggles of workers, students and communities behind WASP. Hamilton called for those in attendance to take up the ‘one million signatures for socialism’ campaign to prepare support for WASP in the 2014 elections where WASP will target the over 12 million who were too disillusioned with corrupt big business politics that they failed to vote in the last elections.
