Statement by WASP
The Workers and Socialist Party is taking part in the #NationalShutdown on March 20th in solidarity with the many workers, young people and poor masses who see in this action the opportunity to strike a blow against the ANC and the ruling class, who they rightfully hold responsible for the horrendous living conditions. The organising of a true mass general strike to pose the working class alternative to their nightmare of a system is indeed urgent. That is why WASP had called, publicly and within GIWUSA and SAFTU, for a National Shutdown earlier this year. We called on the organised labour movement, especially the SAFTU and COSATU leaderships to lead the mobilisation.
The need is clear: for an organised mass resistance and working class struggle against the devastating levels of unemployment, poverty and violence, against the energy- and cost of living crises. The dreams of “better life for all” have turned into a horrific nightmare. Failing public services means intolerable rolling electricity blackouts, water supply disruptions, gaping potholes in public roads and a massive housing backlog.
Exorbitant increases in food, energy and transport costs have created a cost of survival crisis as many working and poor people are plunged to new depths of poverty and hunger. Even the lower middle class is finding themselves far more vulnerable than they had ever imagined. The 375 basis points (or 100%) interest rate increases are not stopping the escalating inflation, are pushing many working and middle class people into credit defaults on their houses, cars, credit cards etc. The insolvency, repossessions, and job losses are eroding the accumulated asset base of the upper working class and middle classes; increasing precarity and insecurity of their lives, that is starkly obvious from the pandemic of mental health crises.
For the young people facing 75,1% unemployment, and mass exclusions of 4 million applications for first year university admissions, the levels of desperation are also reaching a feverish pitch.
This only begins to describe the brutal reality for working class, poor and young people in 2023 South Africa, almost 30 years since the end of apartheid and the beginning of the uninterrupted ANC take-over. The criminal betrayal of the ANC, which left the commanding heights of the economy under the ownership of the tiny mainly white capitalist class, and aspirant black capitalist who joined them, meant land was never redistributed to the masses of the dispossessed, black working class and rural masses. The land was left in the hands of the same white landowners as before.
It means the ownership of mines, factories, commerce and banks is still under big imperialist and local corporate monopolies. By this private concentration of the means of production, these corporations ensure the undemocratic rule over the economy, the work and lives of the working class majority by a tiny elite of unelected capitalists, who are accumulating enormous wealth and power.
It is these profiteering monopolies and anti-working class neoliberal policies of the ANC including cuts in corporate taxes and public investment on housing, education, health, water, etc; deregulation of the food industry, privatisation of SOEs and public services, colonial-style land dispossessions of rural communities, flagrant non-compliance and corporate impunity of mining companies; outsourcing and labour broking in public and private sectors; which have created untold misery and suffering. The corporate profiteering and ANC policies supporting them have facilitated a massive transfer and redistribution of wealth from the working class to the tiny elite, a feat that will make Verwoerd blush in shame of his failure to achieve the infamy of South Africa being the most unequal society in the world.
Shut down for what?
With these intolerable conditions, including the failure of the ANC to deliver on the promises of decent jobs for all, free quality public services, and land reforms, the frustrations of the masses have been growing. These frustrations have resulted in people searching for answers. Most important in this search is the correct perception that the ANC is not delivering on its popular mandate and resolutions due to its capitulation to these shadowy private interests operating behind the veil of undemocratic and accountable corporations that dominate the economy and every facet of society.
However, the aspirant black bourgeois, especially those that have not benefited from business favours and support by the traditional colonial bourgeois, have laid the blame on what they call the Stellenbosch Mafia or White Monopoly Capital. Of course, the South African capitalist class is still overwhelmingly white, but the black aspirant bourgeois are using these categories to mean that all socio-economic problems accrue due to the domination of the white cabal in the economy, not the capitalist economy as such.
The EFF leadership has increasingly shaped itself as the lieutenant of this aspirant bourgeois group. Consequently, it fails to face the facts: the failures of the ANC are due to its commitment to capitalism, which binds it to service of the private corporate interests that are responsible for the misery of the working class as they were under the hated apartheid regime. EFF’s wild vacillations and opportunistic isolation/blaming of this or that leader of the ANC, proves the illusions it has in the ANC. At worst, it suggests that the EFF does not see class enemies in the ANC.
In the final analysis, this flows from the fact that the EFF leadership may posture as anti-establishment, but they are certainly not anti-capitalist and their whole populist rhetoric is calculated to weaponize the legitimate anger of the black working class youth in its bargain to force the ANC into coalition, and ultimately it cannot be excluded their hopes are to be restored to their positions in the ANC itself. The complete realignment of the EFF leadership to the RET faction is seen in their pinning of the collective failures of the ANC solely on Ramaphosa and Pravin Gordhan. That they are engaging in coalitions with the ANC, and with the DA, across the country including Gauteng metro councils means that in this #NationalShutDown, the EFF leadership is barking with the hounds while running with the hare.
We take part in the shutdown while engaging the desperate youth in and outside of the EFF on these contradictions, and lay them bare, whilst presenting a principled and alternative revolutionary socialist perspective.
ANC and the entire bourgeois elite must go
Not only Ramaphosa but the ANC as a whole is responsible. Its governments, including all its factions, have been central to the entrenchment of capitalism and the perpetuation of the misery of the working class, young and poor people, of racism and gender oppression.
However, it is ultimately the capitalist system that is responsible for all the economic crises and the social nightmares it entails. For this reason, no party that will replace the ANC without a programme to overthrow capitalism will be able to resolve the crises and suffering that are mobilising working and young people into this shutdown. It is the entire bourgeois elite and their parties that we must remove from power.
Middle class panic and right-wing attacks
The shutdown has come under well-orchestrated attacks in public and social media from the ruling class, corporate and state institutions including establishment parties. The ruling class is playing on and reinforcing the middle class racist prejudices and fears not only of the EFF but of the poor in general to delegitimize the shutdown, in the process also undermining the democratic rights to strike and protest.
The media and police have cited at best anecdotal and isolated incidents from desperate youth and a few hotheads, which are not uncommon in strikes, to fuel middle class panic and to rally them behind the state, private businesses and ultimately for the defence of Ramaphosa himself. The hypocrisy of these forces is telling. They barely cry foul when reactionary xenophobic mobs are attacking, looting and destroying small business property of poor migrants. Many of them including ANC, ActionSA, and Patriotic Alliance are directly responsible for such reactionary mob violence and/or support semi-fascist organisations like Operation Dudula responsible for these acts. The organised labour movement, in contrast, has a track record of disciplined mass actions including organised acts of nonviolent disruptions that are legitimate traditions of working class resistance.
Workers and Socialist Party is calling on all forces participating in the Shutdown to conduct themselves in a disciplined manner and to ensure their members and supporters also act accordingly. It is only by patient persuasion and explanations of the programme for an alternative to the current crises that we will win over the majority of the working class and middle class people who are being swindled into rallying behind forces oppressing them also.
WASP proposes the following as a starting point for such a programme to mobilise around:
- End loadshedding, stop the privatisation of ESKOM, reject the tariff increases – renationalisation of the energy sector, including Sasol and the coal mining industry!
- Rapid socialist just transition – a publicly controlled, renewable-based emergency plan to end the energy crisis, without any loss of jobs and income for workers and mining communities! No tenderpreneurs!
- Reindustrialise the economy – including reopening closed factories, farms, and some mines, and repurpose them to generate renewable energy and manufacture essential goods for public infrastructure and services, for human need not profit!
- End hunger and the cost of living crisis – democratic working class controlled regulation of food prices, housing rentals, transport fares and energy prices; decent homes for all, safe and expanded public transport, revive and grow local food production in balance with nature!
- Decent National Minimum Wage of at least R15 000 and Basic Income Grant of R8500 for the unemployed and working poor!
- Free quality education for all, from the cradle to the grave – end the two-tier system and gather all resources in one unified education system!
- Nationalise private healthcare – replace the two-tier system with one public healthcare provider and free, quality care according to need not wallet!
- Support for the public service workers demand for a 10% wage increase, fight to protect the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike!
- Mass public works programme to employ millions of unemployed people and eradicate the infrastructure backlog – in public education, health, water, energy, housing, roads and railways!
- Fund all of this through nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy – end privatisation of SOEs and social services, bring all key sectors of the economy under public ownership – based on the democratic working class control and management of the economy!
- Struggle together to end gender based violence and sexism, xenophobia and racism – only a united working class will defeat this system!
- Ramaphosa and the whole ANC must fall – convene an all-working class assembly to build for the formation of a working class political party to organise for capitalism to go and instead create a socialist society!
SAFTU let the initiative slip
WASP has decided to actively intervene in this action because of the need to support and discuss with the many working class people who will participate behind the banners of mass working class organisations. We have taken this decision despite our class opposition and criticism of the EFF leadership and its positions and despite our criticism of SAFTU’s approach to the shutdown.
The SAFTU leadership could have called for an independent shutdown action early in January when there was a mass mood for action against the Stage 6 loadshedding and the 18,6% ESKOM tariff increase. Based on this, the ongoing cost of living crisis and public sector workers going out in strikes, a SAFTU initiative would have easily won support of wide layers including trade unions in the public sector desperately in need of support in the struggle for better wages and conditions.
The SAFTU leadership’s effective abdication of responsibility on this handed over the initiative to the EFF leadership which is using the shutdown to advance its electoral agenda, which is not to unseat the ANC, but to prop it up on condition of power sharing with the EFF leadership. We honestly think this decision was mistaken, as it is also clear EFF contacted SAFTU only after it had clearly established its leadership over and set the tone and agenda for the shutdown. It is now extremely difficult to disentangle SAFTU from the EFF agenda.
Unless this is corrected, SAFTU risks undoing the incredible work of pulling COSATU out of its alliance with the ANC, accomplished through its relentless criticism of class collaboration and its united front tactics on basic working conditions and crises facing the working class broadly. SAFTU’s standing as a point of reference for independent class perspectives and programme on fundamental questions of political policy, tactics and strategy is also placed at risk by effectively tailing the EFF.
Notwithstanding this, the decisions of SAFTU, and many working class community organisations to join makes this NationalShutDown an important historic moment where forces representing wide sections of the workers, young and poor people devastated by the current crises of capitalism, have declared in unison to push for a mass working class resistance and action. At this point we cannot sit and lecture from the sidelines, but need to actively intervene.
We do so to highlight and argue for a strategy to ensure that this National Shutdown becomes meaningful as the beginning of a sustained mass movement to push Ramaphosa, his cabinet and the ANC out of power and for the building of a working class political alternative to them and all pro-capitalist parties.
Beyond the National Shutdown
But for this eventuality, SAFTU has to step forward to assume its responsibility to provide leadership and guidance to the rest of the movement based on an independent class- and political programme of demands, and on mass campaigns to support and coordinate existing working class struggles, including setting out a strategy for the upcoming elections.
We have to intervene with the rank-and-file and leadership of SAFTU to demand of it to reconvene an Extended Steering Committee of the Working Class Summit to review the Shutdown and tactical decisions involved. Most importantly, the Extended Steering Committee must place on its agenda a mobilisation of an All-Working Class Assembly – convening all forces and organisations of the movement of the working class to discuss the next steps. Above all the focus should be on building for a truly effective general strike shutdown led by all sections of the working class united. Important tasks also include renewing struggles for the public sector workers’ demands and other working class struggles, and rebuilding the mass organisations, acting on the dire need to pull together the forces for a genuine working class party that can challenge for working class leadership of society, including through contesting the upcoming 2024 elections.
The deepening crises of capitalism – devastating unemployment, poverty and growing inequality; rising cost of living and falling standards of life; energy and climate crises; plunder and collapse of the SOEs and public services by the corrupt predatory political and corporate elite; falling public and corporate investments in job creation, public infrastructure and the economy, the ramping up divide-and-rule through xenophobia, racism and hatred towards women and LGBTQ+ people – it all calls for nothing short of fundamental social transformation.
We need a revolution in this country. To evade that question will not assure the fears of the privileged middle classes, but will certainly sow doubts in the poor, young and working class people who are despairing on the possibility of decent paying jobs for all, free quality services and better life for all. It is this despair that is the danger – it fuels drug- and alcohol abuse; crime and violence, including mass shootings, GBV and xenophobia. It is only a disciplined, organised revolutionary mass movement of the working class, armed with a clear programme for socialist transformation of society, that will ultimately win the majority of society, including the best of the middle class, that are increasingly affected by energy and climate disasters, the cost of living crisis, failing public services and violence.
