DEFEND THE STILFONTEIN MINERS! NO MORE MARIKANA MASSACRES!
Poverty drives thousands of informal miners known as “Zama Zamas” (meaning one who takes a chance) to enter abandoned mines. Such work is risky and unsafe for the miners and the environment. At the Stilfontein mine in North West Province over 4,500 miners are said to be working, many staying for months underground. They do not receive regular wages and benefits, they are super exploited by mineral traders as they extract chrome and other minerals. They are paid 50% less than union mine workers. The state has declared them illegal. The Pretoria High Court is blocking food, water, medicine and humanitarian aid delivery. The state is preparing to “smoke them out” with the potential of another Marikana type massacre. The AMCU is siding with the police and like the NUM have done nothing to defend or organise the zama zamas workers, rather castigates them as criminals, thieves and rapists.
We propose an international workers United Front for Defence; for labor solidarity and self organisation of the Stilfontein, artisanal and ALL the miners in Southern Africa.
We propose democratic workers committees of miners and their supporters assemble to decide on and take action to defend the miners in the Stilfontein mine. Reject the “smoke them out” policy and any government criminalisation of our social class and xenophobic deportations!
We propose the formation of a fighting democratic miners union which builds a new workers party to use class struggle methods to take power into the hands of the working class and defend this power.
We demand an end to the criminalisation of the Stilfontein and all the Artisanal miners of Southern Africa because they are driven by imperialist and ANC imposed destitution to enter thousands of abandoned mines to eke out a living on the ore left behind by the big companies because it was insufficiently profitable for them to extract it.
We demand the withdrawal of the police sent to drive the miners out of the pits. They limit access to the miners’ supporters and block supplies of food and water. We demand immediate supplies of water, food and medical care be provided to the miners.
We demand unionisation and union wages be paid to the miners. Open the books on the abandoned mines owners’ profits to expropriate their resources to meet the needs of the jobless!
We reject the statified NUM collaboration with the forces of the state. We reject the calls by NUM for the zama zamas to be arrested in their home nations after deportation. 90% of these workers are immigrant workers who can’t find work at the legitimate mines. The NUM must embrace the artisanal miners, organise, defend and support them or be replaced with a revolutionary class struggle union NUM members must overturn the statist collaborators or build a new democratic fighting mine workers union to end the scourge of the imperialists mine owners, bankers and their compradores and lackeys.
We reject anti-migrant chauvinism and violence and call for mine workers to organise self defence organisations to end the violence, defend and organise all migrant labor as co-workers with equal rights! Our class is international! The colonial settlers and imperialists drew the lines that separated our nations! We fight for a socialist federation of Southern Africa.
The ANC Tripartite popular front regime failed to fulfill the promises of the Freedom Charter that the people shall share in the country’s wealth, that the land will be shared among those who work it, that there shall be work and security, that all shall be equal before the law and enjoy human rights. 74% of the land in South Africa is still owned by descendants of white settlers who are less than 10% of the population.
Therefore ANC capitalist rule proves that the stagist theory of liberation (promoted by liberals and Stalinists alike) which asserted that the first tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution to end apartheid would result in self determination has always been a fallacy. The fact of imperialist domination of the economy and subordination by the ANC and the Tripartite regime to the imperialists for the last 30 years is proof positive!
For 30 years the ANC has served as a junior partner to the imperialist exploiters. Equal opportunity and sharing the wealth of the nation of the Freedom Charter was never meant for the masses; it was only intended for toadies like Zuma, Motsepe, Ramaphosa, Nhleko, and Sexwale who made their billions integrating with and defending their imperialist masters. The ANC, SACP (South African Communist Party) and the stagist method of Stalinism must go! The state allows the mining houses to take their profits and run and does not hold them responsible for the abandoned mines leaving them to labor contractors serving black market buyers who profit off the labor power of the zama zamas. Only socialist revolution can fulfill the unfinished tasks of liberation and self determination by expropriating the mines, the land, the banks, big corporations, and foreign imperialist holdings.
Whereas the ANC Tripartite popular front regime never nationalised the mines of the big mining corporations, they allowed the imperialists to take the wealth and ex-patriate it to the foreign shareholders and then abandoned over 6000 spent mines. But the regime did not require the imperialist firms to secure Jobs, Housing, Medical Services, Education and Pensions for all South African workers. There’s no hint of that!
Workers need: Jobs for All with a shortened work week to employ all workers!
Workers need: A sliding scale of wages and prices! Cost of living increases that track inflation weekly!
Workers’ needs can only be won and enforced by a government of workers deputies responsible only to the workers assembled in Workers’ Councils..
The imperialists and the ANC say this is not possible, we say open the books, we know where the money went! The survival of the productive social class and the environment are paramount. Imperialist profits are not!
Why is South Africa in perpetual debt to the imperialists who offshore our wealth while our people starve? Who takes the wealth of the Nation?
AngloGold Ashanti, a British company, capitalised at $10.9 billion is predominantly owned by US imperialist finance capital (Van Eck, BlackRock, Vanguard, Fidelity and Bank of America).
State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) from China (PRC) are also very active in mining South Africa. Companies like ZiJin Mining Group (market Capitalisation $55.8B) are developing the Blue Ridge Mine and Sheba mines in northern South Africa. While owned 24% by the PRC, companies like BlackRock and Van Eck are investors. Minmetals (with assets of $159.6 billion) was actively exploring for ferro-chrom in South Africa. Sino Steel, capitalisation of $10.19B is a Chinese SOE owned by Baowu (total assets $191.9B,) and “has operations in iron-ore, chrome and nickel” in South African Joint Ventures.
These and other foreign imperialist corporations are parasites depleting the resources of the nation while enriching a small class of “entrepreneurs,” politicians, and a layer of compliant union bureaucrats. These beneficiaries of imperialism unite in and with the Tripartite regime to deny the wealth of the nation to the masses. They must go! Their power must be smashed utterly and replaced by a workers government!
LAND FOR THE LANDLESS! JOBS FOR ALL! EMPLOY THE UNEMPLOYED!
SMASH DEBT PEONAGE! For state bank fair credits to provide inputs for small farmers!
WE DEMAND: Billions for public works projects NOW! Fund essential state projects to employ the unemployed!
WE DEMAND: Free and quality health care and Education for All!
Build quality housing, schools, hospitals, modern infrastructure at union wages and provide free public transportation!
State funding for workers compensation for workplace injury and illness!
END SILICOSIS, TB AND WORKPLACE VIOLENCE!
OPEN THE BOOKS! NO CRONYISM NO SKIMMING! For workers’ control of state projects, land distribution, banking and credit!
FOR CLASS STRUGGLE UNIONS! ORGANISE THE UNORGANISED!
Bring the unemployed, the street vendors, artisanal miners and landless farmers into the unions!
SHARE THE WORK: Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to ensure employment for all who can work!
TO DEFEAT INFLATION: We fight for a sliding scale of wages and prices enforced by worker/community price and wage committees!
Build workers’ health and safety committees to enforce safe and healthy worksites for all formal and informal workers!
Workers form action committees to lead the resistance to the growing attacks on the wages and working conditions of workers and the livelihood of the majority poor!
We call on workers and oppressed groups to convene a congress of delegates from the working people, peasants, urban poor, youth and soldiers to write a constitution that guarantees a good life for all!
Workers break with the SRWP, SACP, EFF and ANC to form a worker’s party that truly champions the interests of workers and the poor masses! NUM, NUMSA, AMCU,COSATU, SAFTU members turn your unions into schools for revolution! Defend the Stilfontein and all artisanal miners!
Workers form rank and file bodies to lead action in all unions and break with the reformist and compromised trade union leadership!
Build workers self defence guards for all workers and oppressed in the struggle!
TO WIN: To provide jobs and a decent life for all, big native capitalist and imperialist assets must be nationalised without indemnification and put under workers democratic control and worker’s self-management! For a planned economy for social needs, not profits!
For a workers’ government that defends workers and peasants against the local and foreign capitalists! Delegates to the workers’ government must be elected by workers’ councils and these Delegates must be subject to the discipline of immediate recall elections!
No to US, EU and Chinese imperialisms fronted by mainstream bourgeoisie parties!
No to reformism and Stalinism, build a fighting socialist workers party!
For a workers and peasants’ government on the basis of the armed people to implement decisions that benefit workers and the poor!
For a socialist federation of Southern African workers states!
For an African socialist revolution as part of the international revolution that alone can guarantee a better life for all!
For a new WORLD PARTY of socialist revolution based on the method of the TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM of 1938 to lead the revolution to end capitalism and open the road to socialism!
ILTT November 25, 2024
