LONDON—On August 16, 2012, the world was horrified by video images on TV and the internet of the murder of at least 34 African workers and the wounding of some 78 more by African National Congress (ANC) neocolonial police at the white-owned Lonmin mining site in Marikana, South Africa.
The terrible shootings were reminiscent of the inhumane brutalities Africans endured under white settler colonialist apartheid prior to the ANC's rise to political power following the 1994 imperialist-engineered elections.
In order to prevent a revolutionary change in South Africa, the grotesque forms of direct white colonial rule had to be removed and the administration of the state is now the African petty bourgeoisie, led by the African National Congress.
The land and resources of South Africa were not transferred to the African workers and peasants and remain in the hands of white settlers.
The economic life of South Africa has remained under the bloody control of white imperialists from around the world.
Myths of democracy shattered; the ANC and Mandela exposed
The murder of African workers in broad daylight with hundreds of witnesses at the Lonmin mines shattered the myths of post-apartheid democracy and the rainbow nation that the preacher Desmond Tutu extols.
The Marikana murders reopened the unresolved conflict between African workers and white imperialist owners of the mines and other resources.
More than this, the massacre laid bare whose interest the ANC represents, and that indeed the struggle must be made against the sell-out African petty bourgeoisie, whose mission is to defend and protect parasitic capitalism in South Africa.
This job used to be that of the white settler colonialist apartheid state.
Now it is squarely on the shoulders of the ANC neocolonialist government and state, and no crime against the people is off-limits to them.
All economic signs, without a doubt, indicate that the colonial conditions of our people did not just remain the same, but have gotten worse.
The neocolonialist character of the ANC government was made clear by none other than Nelson Mandela himself when he was in government.
Mandela said that black expectations were his biggest fear.
He had no problem with white expectations as white settlers continue to own 87 percent of the stolen land, and has accumulated, as a social group, more wealth than when apartheid colonialism ruled supreme.
A study published by Patrick Bond, a white political economist in South Africa, shows that since the ANC came into power beginning with Nelson Mandela, there has been an ever-growing gap between the impoverished African majority, who have become 19 percent poorer, and the white settler minority that has grown 14 percent richer.
It is right to fight back, our cause is just, and victory is certain
African workers all over the world need to know that this ongoing vicious and treacherous repression of the struggle of African workers will not subdue our will to resist the ANC neocolonial regime.
On the contrary, we will continue to resist in Marikana as our movement has grown around the country.
This new reality is echoed by the imperialist press in the Wall Street Journal:
“South Africa's economy is being pummeled by strikes, which began in August at a platinum mine owned by Lonmin PLC and have since spread to the country's biggest platinum and gold producers, and other mines including producers of iron ore.”
Beware of the African petty bourgeoisie union leadership
On September 29, after 20 days on strike, the Gold Fields workers at the KDC West mine near Carletonville believed their National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) president, Senzeni Zokwana, had failed them.
The Gold Fields workers then called on Zwelinzima Vavi, leader of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), to address their grievances.
This is like in the U.S., when African workers began achieving ascendancy.
If Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) could not address workers' questions adequately, they would call Roy Wilkins and the NAACP.
COSATU and NUM represent the same class interests as the SCLC and the NAACP, and that is the African petty bourgeoisie.
Their class interest will not allow them to resolve a workers' struggle in favor of the workers and the African Revolution.
Today it is the African workers who are defining South Africa
The ANC, COSATU and the South African Communist party, the custodians of the status quo, are forced to play catch-up and do damage control as they fight for white power imperialism.
Workers are burning COSATU and NUM banners and posters!
The demand for workers' control and Black Power must be raised to forward the African Revolution.
Fearing the wrath of the workers, ANC officials are now escorted in military armored vehicles to address the people.
African workers need a new consciousness, an African Internationalist consciousness
African Internationalism is the weapon that will allow us to fight for wages, better working conditions and any other reforms to better our living situation, while keeping our eyes on the prize, which is power in our own hands.
No one should exercise power on our behalf.
We, the workers, should take power in our own hands and exercise it ourselves.
The black misleaders are doing in South Africa what all African petty bourgeoisie leaders have done in Africa and in the African world since flag independence.
They know what they are doing, just like Obama knows what he is doing when he sends drones to kill impoverished but resisting Africans in Somalia.
The African working class has different and opposing material interests from that of the African petty bourgeoisie.
While ministers in the ANC government are paid millions of rands, we are shot dead for demanding a salary of R12500, which is not a living wage.
Compare this to the current salaries of ANC leaders in government:
President Jacob Zuma is paid R2.6 million; deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe and national speaker Max Sisulu’s salaries are R2.3 million; cabinet ministers, R2 million; deputy ministers, R1.6 million; backbencher members of parliament, R889,000 and chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng is paid R2.3 million.
The future is in our organized struggle to overturn this rotten, parasitic system.
We have the obligation to bring it down; our future begins with the demolition of this unjust and unredeemable world of oppressor nations and oppressed nations.
We must build the party of the African workers revolution in Azania.
It is a party that connects organically the revolution in Azania to the worldwide African Revolution, and that is to build the African Socialist International.
THE STRUGGLE IN OCCUPIED AZANIA IS FOR BLACK WORKERS' POWER!
BUILD THE AFRICAN SOCIALIST INTERNATIONAL IN OCCUPIED AZANIA!
