3 texts on aspects of the South African Revolution

Quoted on the cover of a radical pamphlet in 1984, this seems particularly apt now that the "colour dimension" has been 'virtually' eradicated from South African politics. The normal national ruling-class behaviour of the ANC is, predictably, now every bit as horrific as its white predecessors.

However, clearly this was not predictable for some - which is indicative of some of the weaknesses of the period from 1976 to the early 90s. The global ruling class, with the help of a section of the South African white rulers, having been faced with an increasingly united and violent opposition threatening its divide and rule tactics based on race, decided that race need no longer be its central method of divide and rule, and used the relative absence of critique of black parties, leaders and umbrella organisations (for organisations’ sake) - one of the movements weaknesses - as an opportunity to stop the revolution.

This is not to say that apartheid has been conveniently confined to the apartheid museum in Johannesburg. The State still uses race, particularly against foreign immigrants and, when convenient, "coloureds", Indians and Zulus. Just that it doesn't use it as its central and legal means of division because it's essential to present a positive image of progress, of a revolutionary break with the official racism of the past (a small example of this is the reconstruction, as a symbol for the "healing" of the nation under what is laughably called "majority rule”, of District 6 - a suburb of Cape Town which was bulldozed in 1966 because of its multi-racial character; significantly, its re-creation, begun amid much fanfare in 2003, has been held up by a shortage of money). This image of fundamental progress is promoted as an attempt to hide the progress of even worse miseries than State-sanctioned apartheid – the progress of a vicious monetarism. In June 2001 a 50 year old woman evicted from what had been her and her children's home for 12 years, said, "This is the worst day of my life...I don't mind moving, but they must give me another house. That is what is driving my head crazy - to go to a shack. We're going to use paraffin in a shack and I've got electricity in my house. I've got water and a toilet: I won't have that in a shack. That means I'm going back to the old South Africa again. That's not freedom for us. Apartheid was better than this. The main difference between the bailiffs now and those under apartheid is one of style: they generally (though certainly not always) are less violent and sometimes speak kindly to the people being evicted and carefully lift their belongings into the street and onto the lorry. Maybe they do Sensitivity Training as part of their PhD in Bailiffing. By 2004 two million had been evicted. An average of R400 a month is needed for rent, lights and water, but by 2002 the majority of the population were living on less than R140 (about $15) per month. A typical job would be working eleven or twelve hours a day, seven days a week for R150 per week. Some cleaners employed by the council for R22 a day spend R14 a day on the bus fare to work.

All this would have been impossible without Saint Nelson - above all, impossible without the unjustifiable respect he and the ANC got from the vast majority of those in the movement who looked to the ANC for a political solution which should have come from a more thorough critique of politics, of hierarchical power. And now everywhere international stars are desperate to meet him, he's got a bridge named after him and he is at the top of every spectator's "Man I Most Admire" list. After all, anybody who was imprisoned for such a long time by a vile regime must by definition be a hero, and certainly little you must look up to him. Who are you to criticise? - you're nothing. The fact that 100s of 1000s of South Africans suffered as much or even more than him under apartheid (and continue to) is ignored in this crass deification. He is the epitome of the 'Progressssssssss' of South Africa and everyone concerned with publicising South Africa with a smiley face hopes he'll live till the World Cup because Mbeki's no more the image black capital and its intelligentsia want to promote of this progress than the burgeoning crime rate. It's because of Mandela as promoter of this image of progress that we can buy South African wine and some can go on guilt-free expensive holidays in other people's misery: the fastest growing sector in the local leisure industry is township tours. The whole place has been gift wrapped in tourist slick from “lifestyle encounters” in Kwa Zulu to “partying in a Soweto b&b”, to the “African tableau”, “Durban is surf-central” “Johannesburg makeovers”, the “Cape Town docks experience”, “hip hotels” and so on ad nauseam.

Some are not so impressed by Saint Nelson, however. "Mandela can go to hell!" said the mother of one guy killed by the ANC's cops on a demo.

When Mandela came out of prison his first gift to the rulers was to call for discipline, an end to looting and an end to the theft and burning of cars (the subversion of exchange value), and an end to classroom boycotts (the subversion of ideological conditioning aimed at acceptance of relations of domination and submission). It's no surprise that in the world following the fall of the Berlin Wall, a former promoter of State capitalism would magically transform himself into a neo-liberal (though he's been careful to promote an image of detachment and distance from these horrendous policies of mass impoverishment). Already in the mid-80s, well before his release, he had said, "We want Johannesburg to remain the beautiful and thriving city that it is now. Therefore, we are willing to maintain separate living until there are enough new employment opportunities and new homes to allow blacks to move into Johannesburg with dignity." With the national unemployment level at 42% (September 2003), and in some of the poorer areas the figures reaching 80% or even higher; and with no unemployment benefit or social aid clearly there are no new employment opportunities to disturb the separate development of the white and black middle and ruling class. The degree of racial segregation in neighbourhoods, schools and lifestyle is still very evident. Only in some of the cavernous malls which have mushroomed across Johannesburg do the races mingle, "united" in their separation - as consumers.

So, while most of the wealth still remains firmly in white hands, the optimistic black middle class, undisturbed by visible proletarian subversion, can claim "rich people have worked hard for their money, it wouldn't be fair to take it away from them" (The Guardian 25/5/04). At the same time, those rich white supporters of apartheid who fled the country 10 years ago are now being encouraged to come back - all is forgiven: advertisements on satellite television will be backed later this year by an international roadshow of seminars and exhibitions urging expatriates to return to a land of sunshine and opportunity, as part of the "Homecoming Revolution", sponsored by the First National Bank. As Pamela Cox, former Head of the South Africa Division at the World Bank, has said, “What [the ANC] have done to put the economy on a right footing, is, I think, almost miraculous” . In fact, given their "miraculous" power to stop what seemed like an unstoppable social revolution, the ANC have felt almost omnipotent in their ability to intensify capital accumulation by even going beyond the advice of the IMF and the World Bank. After they came to power “by every measure (life expectancy, morbidity, access to food, water etc.)the living conditions of the poor rapidly worsened” Ashwin Desai1, ("We are the poors", Monthly Review Press, 2002). Whilst the former National Union of Mineworkers and ANC general secretary, Cyril Ramaphosa, now owns some of the gold mines he used to organise workers in, the number of blacks living below the poverty line has risen from 50% to 62%, whilst 29% of all coloureds, 11% of all Asians and 4% of all whites also currently live below the poverty line, a dramatic increase during the "decade of democracy". Many black people have commented on how life under the old apartheid regime was in some ways better in that there was more job security and there were state subsidies in services, which have been eroded by the neo-liberal GEAR (Growth Employment And Redistribution) economic policy of the ANC. Neo-liberalism has meant stupendous wealth for some 300 black dynasties-in-the-making, the 5% of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange that represents "black empowerment". Whilst an estimated 10 million South Africans have had their electricity cut off and another 10 million their water cut off, mine owner Brigitte Radebe, wife of ANC minister and SA Communist Party leader Jeff Radebe, has become the richest black woman in Africa. The bosses' share of profit in 2003 was their biggest since 1981. Company tax has been brought down from 49 percent under apartheid to below 30 percent. It's clear that all that ideological crap emanating from the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" - which gave an amnesty to the crimes of the white ruling class during the apartheid era - was aimed at making the poor reconcile themselves to the continuation of the power of their oppressors; this time arm in arm with a burgeoning black middle and ruling class. This growing middle class is beginning, like in other parts of the world, to gentrify areas which previously had been exclusively poor communities, sending property values up enormously for those who own property, which in a generally extremely impoverished country, could well be the source of significant conflict in the future.

A letter to the Guardian (26/2/05) says, ''We saw many middle-class black families, driving new 4x4 s, shopping in malls and being served by white assistants, having meals in restaurants and served by white waiters - surrounded by prominent advertisements of attractive, happy, black consumers. ...We were heartened by the lively and polite interaction between all races and economic groups.'' Another letter refers to the author seeing ''a growing black middle class driving smart cars, and poor whites cleaning windshields for tips and begging at crossroads.'' Isn't equality wonderful? In a sense this is progress, though not in the sense of the ''heartened'' letter-writers – it lays the basis for the possibility of collaboration between poor whites and poor blacks, impossible under apartheid, and indeed, there have been instances of whites joining in the stone-throwing. However, it would be dangerous to be determinist about this. Should a more significant social movement start to develop, it's clear that the ANC is prepared to use anti-white racism to impose a divide and rule, even, if necessary, using a Mugabe-type demagogy. It's well-known that rich whites continue to operate racist criteria whenever they sell homes with land: in rural areas racism is a deeply entrenched reality - black labourers have been murdered, tortured or shot at, often for the mildest of supposed infractions. The ruling class could try to recuperate the very real anger of blacks towards the lack of post-apartheid land distribution, attacking some rich whites whilst continuing to hammer the poor, white and black. As we say, if necessary.

It's significant that the main area of development of opportunities for blacks has been the large increase in black intake into the police force (now re-branded under the name Safety & Security - otherwise known as the SS), and into the universities - often the same thing in different clothes, most of those at University training to become ideological cops &/or authority roles over the poor (we say "most" here - there are clearly some exceptions). In fact, the poor are effectively excluded from going to University. On May 16, 2000, Michael Makabane was shot dead at point-blank range during a peaceful protest against the exclusion of poor students from the University of Durban-Westville. The campus had been considered a hotbed of militant resistance under the old apartheid regime yet, while police repression had been brutal, no students had ever been killed during the apartheid era. The local paper, now under black editorship, called for “tougher” action against protesting students (Daily News, May 17, 2000).

Every day front-page stories chart the depredations of Aids: once mainly a disease of western gay men, it is now one of poor black women - 77% of South Africa's HIV positive are women; Durban is running out of land in its cemeteries; 7% of children are infected. Life expectancy at birth is 48, a devastating drop since apartheid (this is not just down to Aids, of course). South Africa has the largest amount of people with HIV of any single country in the world – 21,5% of the population. In some areas, HIV infection amongst pregnant women is as high as 37.5%. By the time South Africa hosts the World Cup in 2010, there will have been between 8 and 10 million deaths. This enormous growth in Aids was encouraged by the refusal of the government to supply cheap or free anti-HIV drugs, to even acknowledge HIV as being a significant factor in the development of Aids2. Under internal and international pressure, not to mention the need to stem the destruction of future wage labourers essential for capital accumulation, the State was forced make a show of reversing its policy. It did reverse it - but only a bit. Even now, those receiving anti-HIV drugs are less than 1% of those infected with HIV. This policy 'reversal' was, essentially, an attempt to rehabilitate the State's image vis-a-vis Aids, image being so necessary for the development of capital accumulation and social control. Though it should be said, the fact that the ruling class and their kids are getting it now probably also plays a part in this 'policy reversal'. In 2003, with 5.1 million infected (almost half a million died in 2002 alone), the government allocated the rand equivalent of $1.7bn, spread over 3 years, to HIV treatment - which, even if HIV victims remained at their 2003 rate, would only mean $330 per person over 3 years. Given that health spending is fixed at 15% of total government spending, it's not much considering the enormity of the scale of the disease and of the health problems exacerbated by State/market policy elsewhere - not much more use than shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. And how much of this money is actually effective? Death by TB accounts for almost half of deaths from Aids-related illness, yet it costs just £5 per patient to save someone from dying of TB. TB is 100% curable, yet less than half of those who have it are cured. And to put all this into clearer perspective, military spending in South Africa for the year 2001 - 2002 was over $12bn.

All these figures, these banal contradictions (and we could certainly continue listing them ad infinitum), would have been the basic component of Anti-Apartheid movement literature prior to the ANC government, but presented in a purely moral framework without any critique of their use for the commodity economy. Such moral considerations were always the ideology of a nice 'reasonable' reformism of capitalism's insanity which was utterly terrified of the uncertainty of revolution. Beyond such moralism, previous government policy has had the desired effect - namely:

1) it, initially at least - and for as long as it was feasible to maintain before the crude 'HIV=AIDS denial' policy became a liability, increased the profit extracted from the production and sale of such drugs for those who could afford them.

2) it got, and obviously still gets, rid of some of the population surplus to the requirements of surplus value - rather like the commodification of water does, though as with everything under the irrational self-contradictions of capital, it might be getting rid of too many people, even for the sick requirements of a meaner and leaner economy.

3) it lowered State spending at a time when the ANC needed to concentrate its resources on establishing its power and its image of providing some external hope.

4) it intensifies anxiety about sex, which, as Wilhelm Reich long ago pointed out, encourages a submissive population. And, like all illness, it makes people more fragile, vulnerable, less able to take risks and usually less sociable, forcing the individual in on themselves (though it should be pointed out that in Kenya there is a social movement of self-help, outside the big towns and cities, to deal with Aids-related illnesses, using plants).

These are the results of ANC policy - we certainly don't mean to imply some conspiracy theory about HIV/Aids. We don't essentially judge things by their intentions, deliberate or not, but by their consequences (though one has to ask oneself why, for example, when a cure for TB is so cheap, is death by Aids-related TB so high).

The fact that Mandela implicitly criticised the government's policy after he announced the death of some close relatives to Aids in January, is one example of his subtle politicking, distancing himself from current ANC policy, a bit like the Queen did under Thatcher. As if he is 'above' politics. Clearly those pushing this image of Mandela hope everyone will forget that it was half way through his presidency that the neo-liberal politics of GEAR* were first introduced.

But then, as always, fiction is there to play a major part in bringing a little light into the darkness of life: the two best-selling books in South Africa are a guide to teaching your children to become millionaires, and Nelson Mandela's autobiography, first published over 10 years ago.

As one can see, despite all this misery, it's essential to present South Africa as progressive. So David Frost, Rory Bremner, Malcolm Rifkind, Stephen Fry, Trevor McDonald, Jamie Oliver, Jools Holland and Rowan Atkinson are to be given a free luxury holiday. Well, the poor hard-working souls need it, don't they? This well-earned rest includes the mandatory (but, unfortunately, only temporary) stay in Robben Island prison, a free trip on the ultra-expensive Blue Train, and a possible photo opportunity with The Saint himself. All so as to promote the New South Africa, which they can do without the guilty conscience they would have had under apartheid, when such collaborators were publicly attacked. The sparkling brand new South Africa must be alright if all those lovely people are there saying how progressive it is. What for them is progress is the opposite for the vast majority. For those who accept dominant ideology it is always an ideology of the progress of alienation that's essential, as part of repressing the progress of any struggle against it. As everywhere throughout the world, the spectacle of progress - "we're getting there - but there's still a lot to be done" - is used to demand a patience towards the system which the system never shows towards its victims.

But some are beginning to lose patience. There are rumblings under the surface. Archbishop Tutu, at the same time as suggesting the wealthy "adopt" a poor family (giving them £18 a month or paying their kids school fees), warns the rest of the ruling class "We are sitting on a powder keg" (Nov. 2004).

Beginnings of a new movement:

"We are not Africans - we are the poors!"

The current struggles are nothing like as powerful, or as central to the general situation in South Africa, as those of the 70s and 80s. Nowadays struggles are essentially marginal, even if growing - and many of them, though by no means all, take the forms of legal challenges to the evictions and cut-offs, and the classic symbolic form of demonstrations. Whilst under apartheid, demonstrations were banned and therefore a demo usually led to a violent confrontation with the cops, this is not so much the case today. This is not to say that all demos don't end in a confrontation. For example, on Human Rights day on 21 March 2004 in Johannesburg near the opening ceremonies for the country's new constitutional court, the cops met a peaceful protest with stun grenades and mass arrests. The Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) and its affiliates had called for a protest to demand that basic services such as water should be included as human rights and against the installation of pre-pay water meters. Protesters were harassed, arrested and fingerprinted even before any march started. Over 50 people were held under the Gatherings Act, a law dating from the apartheid era that gives police wide powers to ban protest. Which says everything that needs to be said about Human Rights.

In the period from 1995 to 2000 it seems that evictions - involving police dogs, tear gas, at least one person killed and hundreds injured - were mostly not effectively opposed. But then the community started to take the offensive – for example going to politicians’ houses and speaking to the gangsters to tell them not to trouble the vulnerable people in the area. They also took Durban Council to court, claiming that the evictions went against the human rights to shelter and water. The council then tried to get the people to buy the houses (after paying their full rent arrears). In order to show how ridiculously out of touch they were, a council administration entourage arrived in Chatsworth, to ‘sell’ the houses. “After the protesters had spent two hours encircling the room, the process was forced to stop. It had become clear to the officials that there were no takers for that deal” (Desai). When one of the officials accused the group of being ‘privileged Indians’ an elderly woman screamed back “We are not Indians, we are the poors”. Within minutes this could be also heard as “we are not Africans, we are the poors”.

The council then tried relocations of those who couldn’t pay to toilet-sized buildings even further out of town (they're often called “dog kennels” by those forced to 'live' in them). Evictions often involve tear-gas. But they are sometimes successfully resisted. For example, in Chatsworth, February 2000, the eviction of a single African father of four children and self-employed mechanic was resisted by over 150 people, mostly Indian women, blockading the stairs to the guy's flat. They asked the police to wait for half an hour while they attempted to gain a postponement from the courts. The police did not wait. They fired live ammunition and tear gas at those preventing the eviction. The on-lookers were so angry that they all joined in. The ferocity of the community forced the security forces to call for further backup in order to retreat from the area, without effecting the eviction. On the same day, in the same town, another family to be evicted were squatting a flat after living for two years in a shed without water or electricity, and with snakes nesting in the floor. They had been on the council housing list for nine years. The community and media presence was so strong that the authorities did not attempt the eviction. Many people turned up for the court cases. As it was adjourned they went to the deputy mayor’s house. As he was not at home they occupied the rent offices. At the next date of the court case the magistrates didn’t show up – but 2000 protestors from the nearby African township, Bottlebrush, did. When the cases finally did go to court, the evictions notices were withdrawn.

Linking struggles in the Cape Town area, the multi-racial Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign was born. “Much like the organisations in Chatsworth, it has become amoeba-like. When there’s a need for action it expands and increases in density. In between it shrinks, concerning itself mainly with resolving community disputes and providing a kind of social worker service. The initiative of poor communities in self-organising, re-housing evicted families, and re-connecting disconnected water supplies (often using inventive local technology), and the courage of campaigners to fight the police in the streets, has meant that to enforce the war on the poor in Cape Town is no simple thing…. By and large the actions of the council grind to a halt.” (Desai)

People seem to be generally more on the move nowadays than before - forming community organisations and linking with other groups in other areas; ‘emergency’ reconnections by ‘struggle electricians’ and ‘struggle plumbers’; mass actions against evictions; demonstrations to and occupations of the houses of the councillors and officers responsible for the decisions; disconnecting the water and electricity of these officers; land invasions and workplace strikes that involve the whole community. In April 2002 there was a massive demonstration outside the home of the Mayor of Johannesburg, Amos Masonde, to protest against cut-offs. The police arrested 50 of the demonstrators including a five year old boy. Those of the demonstrators who still belonged to the ANC – hundreds of them - publicly burnt their party cards. In July 2002, the Landless People’s Movement occupied Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa’s office amid an angry protest over land and rent defaulters on the Cape Flats as they stoned a truck involved in evictions, and tried to necklace a driver (necklacing was a common practice during the revolution of the 80s, involving putting a rubber tyre round the neck of a collaborator and setting fire to it: moralists may cringe, but collaboration with the system involved support for a far worse brutality - a fundamentally irrational and hierarchical violence).

In early July 2004 a rumour went around Diepsloot (a black slum many of whose residents service the nearby ultra-ultra-rich gated town of Dainfern protected by homicidal armed guards and homicidally high-voltage fencing) that residents were to be moved to new housing miles away - so the township erupted in riots that went on for days. Of those riots Thembi, who is out of work and 18, says: "It wasn't true that we were moving, but people thought it was true and they got very angry. This is home." The July riots shut down the entire area and they were the most violent seen since South Africa pretended to put the apartheid era behind it. Cars were stoned, reporters attacked, police fired rubber bullets and many were arrested. Young Mathoba told a journalist 6 months later that he stoned the journalists because "you have to talk to someone". The bitterness in Diepsloot was not directed at Dainferners but at the city council that "is more corrupt than the old apartheid people," said Sophie, a maid in Dainfern - "Big jobs and good times for bigwigs - no house, no hope for us." contradicting another letter to the Guardian (26/2/05), which says that its author is now "able to detect improvements in their [the blacks] position - if only that they now have hope for a better future.'' Fortunately this maid, at least, has no such illusions. As a 60s revolutionary said «Hope is the leash of submission». Hope is the carrot intended to make people endure the stick. Hope in South Africa means that blacks from poor backgrounds are supposedly being indoctrinated with the idea that they have a good chance of making it into the middle class, which was not possible under apartheid, a chance which in reality is very slim. Practical hope, however, entails putting your desperation on the map, which increasing amounts of the working class in South Africa are beginning, yet again, to do.

Those politicians who try to use or influence the new community struggles are often faced with laughter and derision. In Chatsworth, Durban, the election turnout in the year 2000 was 20 percent, not much but, sadly, considerably higher than under apartheid, when it was, supposedly, 15% (i.e. of those registered to vote). This was during the hated tricameral system of 1984, in which 'Coloureds' and 'Indians' were given some token voting rights for a separate parliamentary chamber - which sparked off massive violent opposition and nationwide only resulted in 21% of those registered to vote actually voting – but most didn't bother to register (hence the 'supposedly') .

Water water everywhere yet not a drop to drink

As a result of over a million water disconnections in the 8 years from 1994, 40,000 children were dying from diarrhoea caused by dirty water every year. Cholera returned with a vengeance, infecting over 100,000 people in Kwa-Zulu Natal alone. When the water company came to disconnect water in a house in Bayview, in Chatsworth, the community turned up en masse and formed a human wall around the targeted houses. The security company withdrew. There was a mood of elation and militancy, with people dancing in the cul-de-sacs between the rows of flats to hastily improvised music. This was now the fifth battle in a row they had won against those who would either evict them or cut off their water. Chatsworth was fast becoming a terrain of defeat for the Metro Council. The next day an agreement was reached that the water cut-offs would be stopped, accounts would be frozen with no further interest charged on arrears, and the water could be turned back on. On the day the Bayview water case was to be heard, 200 people from Umlazi arrived at the High Court. Their water had also been cut - they had come to protest in solidarity. Struggle plumbers abound – and are not prosecuted. The council re-disconnects, and the struggle plumbers dis-re-disconnect.

Mpumalanga was violently divided during the anti-apartheid struggle. The youth were successfully manipulated by the white state with the complicity of the the Inkatha Party of the Zulu apartheid collaborator Buthelezi on the one hand and the ANC and UDF on the other hand. Thousands and thousands were killed. It is also a place of desperate economic wasteland. A University of Natal survey concluded that in 2001 the average income per person was R23.70 per month. The council’s electricity and rates bills are R200 a month. Nowadays there is a vibrant, militant and united struggle against both the ANC-dominated local government and the Inkatha controlled provincial government. This was sparked in 1999 when the council tried to install water meters. The community reacted by ripping up the meters and chasing the contractors away. Running battles were fought with the police and the broken water meter gadgets were left strewn everywhere. In 2001 the council tried again. Again residents resisted, ripping up the water meters. Ten thousand people attended rallies, the speeches were hot and the demands straightforward – free essential services for the poor. Amazingy, the physically capable youth of the Inkatha Youth Brigade and the earnest youngsters from a Congress tradition reached out to each other during these times. In May 2001 a mass meeting took place to protest the installation of water meters attended by: the Concerned Citizens Group from Chatsworth, the Mpumalanga Concerned Group, activists from the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee and community leaders from Umlazi. But there was also police repression, arrests, impoundment of communal cars, and two people shot dead by a shadowy ANC vigilante group.

But the most dangerous tactic employed by the council was to employ local people to install the meters, thereby risking a return to violence within the community. However, the community realised this and agreed to suspend the violent sabotage policy and instead waited for the first non-payment disconnection letters. In March 2002 the whole community closed down; schools, taxi ranks and roads were shut as tens of thousands of people marched to the local rent office. There they demanded to pay R10 a month and the UniCity officials had to process each singular payment. The idea caught on and there were ‘ten rand marches’ in Tafelsig, Chatsworth, Wentworth, Umlazi and Mpumalagna.

Since August 2003 at the start of Operation Gcina'Amanzi in Phiri, the water company has confronted resistance to its project to commodify water. In September 2003, residents of Phiri, supported by the Gauteng Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), resisted the installation of pre-paid water meters in the township by destroying the infrastructure that had been laid to allow these meters to be installed (though some of those involved have been arrested and jailed - one for 2 years). On October 5th 2004, residents of Chiawelo, Phiri and Dlamini joined residents from elsewhere in Soweto in blocking the Old Potch road, a main Johannesburg highroad, to demand that the installation of prepaid water meters by Johannesburg Water be stopped. Police were out in force to disperse the protestors using stun grenades and random arrests. Frustrated by continuing community resistance to the prepaid system, Johannesburg Water has not been able to complete the installation of the new meters in Phiri. And again, on January 5th 2005, residents of Bayview in Chatsworth, Durban, resisted council water disconnection teams, turning them away, but the council threatened to return with renewed force - a terrifying threat, as previously council security murdered Marcel King in Phoenix, Durban while disconnecting electricity. On 23rd January, a meeting of the SECC held in the community of Emdeni to mobilise/organise community members against the installation of pre-paid water meters was disrupted by three local ANC councillors, accompanied by a number of ANC members and a representative of the Mayor's office. One of the three ANC councillors then physically assaulted SECC organiser Bongani Lubisi - who was speaking to the assembled crowd. The rest of the ANC mob repeatedly issued verbal threats to the SECC activists present, telling them that they would be "killed" if they continued to hold such meetings and promising that nothing would stop the installation of pre-paid water meters. Sadly, the SECC activists chose not to retaliate and instead ignored the ANC gang and their crude neo-liberal thuggery, hastily concluding the meeting and sending a delegation to Naledi Police Station, where charges of assault and intimidation against the ANC Councillor were laid. As always, the police failed to act on the formal charges laid. It's a sign of the weakness of this new movement as compared with the old that they not only failed to confront the sick violence of the ANC but also tried to look to the cops for redress, something unthinkable 20 years ago. And such weaknesses will encourage the ANC to do their worst.

A young Soweto black said in the late 70s:

''We would like to make it clear to the outside world that we will get whatever we want, and that whatever we want we will get. If possible we will use violence – if possible...Because by sitting around a table and talking about these things with the whites brings no good future to us. It's just like talking to a stone. Now by violence they will understand a little of what we say – a little. Now by war they will understand everything – by war.'' Substitute ''whites'' with ''the ruling class, black or white'' and we can see a programme applicable to the post-apartheid era. Sure, such a leap into a revolutionary situation, into the taking of courageous risks, doesn't come merely by willing it – and we ourselves have had our confidence enormously weakened by the retreats forced on us by the progressive defeats of struggles over the past two decades. We would certainly not advocate 'heroic' strategies in what is still relatively a vacuum, particularly from afar. But a critical reflection on the practical possiblities of developing movements towards such a situation is an essential moment in combatting current weaknesses.

Sparkies lighting the prairie fire

“We don’t ask why or when people are cut off, we just switch them back on. Everyone should have electricity”

- Virginia Setshedi, SECC (Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee).

In 1997 people in the poor Johannesburg suburbs of Eldorado Park and Westbury organised a "stayaway" - exhorting people not to go to work - over increases in local council rates and threats to cut power and water for non-payment. Hundreds of young people built barricades in the streets to prevent residents from getting to work. While the cops cleared away the barricades, their vehicles were stoned and a full-blown confrontation developed as the cops killed a 7 year old boy. By midday, thousands had joined the confrontation in three areas south and west of the city. Nevertheless, though symptomatic of a growing fury against the ANC, it appears not to have developed either in time or geographically: it remained, as far as we know , a one-off, though indicative of the tradtion of revolt that South Africa still maintains.

.

In line with their programme to clear old debts, in 2001 the manager of Eskom (the state-run electricity company) announced, “The aim is to disconnect at least 75 percent of Soweto residents”. 20,000 households a month were cut off during 2001 – many times more than were connected by the ANC's great programme to connect millions of black households to the national grid. In Soweto, the cost of one kilowatt unit of electricity is 28 cents, in Sandton (the ultra-rich area of Johannesburg) it is 16 cents, big business pay 7 cents and the worst- off rural areas pay 48 cents.

As they went to disconnect, Eskom security forces assaulted and bullied members of the community and opened fire on protestors. The community marched to the Mayor’s house and pledged to “embark on a campaign of mass non-payment”. After Emergency Electricians in Soweto reconnected 3,000 houses in six months, Eskom announced that it would not be cutting off those who could not pay – not a bad result! The SECC also went to the home of the Johannesburg Mayor Amos Masondo and disconnected his water supply and electricity. Councillor Rocky Naidoo also had his electricity and water disconnected at his house in May 2001. As part of this movement the offices of banks in Cape Town have been occupied, and the debt-collection building of the Thekwini Council in Durban was layed siege to. Apparently, the struggle to re-connect disconnected electricity supplies was initiated by anarchists in the ZACF collective and in the Shesha Action Group (SAG) in Soweto who started Operation Khanyisa, meaning "light", the operation that illegally re-connected some 25 000 homes in Soweto.

‘We are not striking for demands, we are striking for dignity’

Under apartheid, workers, usually organised within black Trade Unions which had initially been illegal, won considerable gains - sometimes achieving wage hikes as high as 200%(!), though often this was down to just bloody-minded autonomy and trade unions seemed just a means to progress. Now - surprise surprise - they are clearly totally collusive with the ANC government. Take COSATU's endorsement of a Labour Relations Act that, while supposedly guaranteeing more labour rights, in fact places so many mediation obligations before aggrieved workers that it is extremely difficult to embark on a legal strike (also, COSATU is party to NEDLAC, a cross-class labour/government/business policy forum that tends to lock it into agreements with the ruling class). Or take for instance, the National Union of Metalworker at Volkswagen - in 2000 it signed a deal which included, amongst other things: no overtime pay for weekend work, compulsory overtime with no notice, half the break time, and a pension reduction. Workers learned about the signing in the newspapers. When workers struck against the deal, without the Union, they didn't sufficiently confront the inevitable scab labour the bosses brought in, and then tried to get the labour mediation court to rule in their favour - but they lost.

However, at Engen, the South African affiliate of the oil multinational Exxon, workers forged better links with the local community and didn’t put faith in the courts. The Engen plant is the single biggest employer of people living in Wentworth, a Durban township with typical high unemployment. Once a year Engen employs thousands of temporary workers for six weeks during the annual factory overhaul. Engen has its own training centre but uses temp agencies to employ people. Any attempt at unionising results in the temp agency contract being dismissed.

In 2001 a strike was planned. But there was a danger of the anger turning in on the community itself, via either the scabs, or the temp agency bosses, many of whom also lived in Wentworth. So the workers invited prominent members of the community to be on their organising committee. A joint body called the Industrial Relations Forum was formed and operated as both the strike committee and the equivalent of the residents associations in the other areas. The executive of the union devolved their organization into a loose and very broad grouping of activists and community and religious leaders. The unemployed (some of the better off call them ‘gangsters’) were represented at the discussions and their inclusion played a crucial role in cutting off Engen’s ability to recruit scabs. All the time the workers tried to ensure Engen was totally isolated from reaching potential allies in the community, by ”getting there first” in the information battle and creating space for various interest groups to become part of the strike committee. For much of the time the union and community structures appeared as one.

The strike was solid from the beginning, despite the knowledge that this two months work was all many of the people would get all year. At the first meeting every single worker attended, along with their wives and teenage sons – “keen for action”. They all put their badges needed to gain entry to the plant into a large bag and a constant roving picket was planned, but as the meeting broke up some of the key organisers were arrested and the bag of badges were taken by the police. Desai was at the meeting the next day:

“Reggie, one of the workers, takes to the stage. In a speech, replete with Durban slang, he talks of labouring at Engen for over two decades. He talks of exploitation, of being pushed around, and the hurt of still having to find employment again and again every year through a labour broker, being ‘inducted’ anew each time into a plant he built. It is a moving speech that he translates himself into Zulu for the benefit of the African ‘chargehands’ of a particular labour broker who has just joined the strike after walking off the nightshift. They form a bright blue knot in the back of the hall where they stand in their overalls. Spirits are unbelievably high. I feel transported back into the 1980s and the meetings of righteous anger against apartheid that abounded. A member of the Cape Town gang of metalworkers brought down to assist on the shut, pledges his crew’s support for the strike. He speaks in Afrikaans and the message is translated into English and Zulu”.

After the meeting everyone went to the police station to demand back their badges. Not a single window in the Wentworth police station remained unbroken. The army moved into Wentworth using apartheid-era security legislation. The company was trying every trick to bully, cajole, bribe and propagandise the people back to work. It didn’t work. Then they let the temp agencies know that they would accept the strikers’ demands and made a written offer to underwrite the important wage parity demand.

But now that the community had found its voice and its strength there was a sense of purpose beyond the compromises and they stayed out on strike. Desai: “When I pointed out to one of the community leaders that they had won the strike and could just as well call it off his answer confounded me: ‘We are not striking for demands, we are striking for dignity’. I told him that Engen could not provide ‘dignity’. ‘Exactly, my friend, exactly!’ was his answer”. The strike went on for another week until Engen itself negotiated with the strikers and capitulated to all their demands including the instatement of a man badly injured by the police.

The strike at Engen, unlike that at Volkswagen, did not take seriously the conciliation and other legal measures afforded in post-apartheid South Africa. It relied on timing a wildcat strike to fit in with the company turnaround when the company was most vulnerable. A considerable amount of energy was devoted to building community support whilst not becoming a captive of one political tendency or casting itself in dogmatic ideological terms. ‘It was as if the whole of Wentworth was on strike’.

The Durban Social Forum

It's heartening to see in this tentative renewal of proletarian self-organisation a rejection of many of the organisations opposed to such self-organisation. Take, for instance, the declaration of the Durban Social Forum (DSF) in August 2001: "Colonialism is dead but new overlords impose themselves. The World Bank, WEF, G8, IMF, and WTO. They are supported not only by lackey governments like our own but also by a legion of other forked-tongued abbreviations: NGOs, UNOs, USAIDs, and WCARs, of which we are all deeply suspicious, despite their pretense at caring for us." The DSF, having organised a national march and a series of meetings questioning the World Anti-Racism Conference, found that they had "attracted the usual array who earn their keep lobbying, politicking and gaining public notice for some or other cause...The world of the NGO is a cynical yet self-righteous, populist yet undemocratic, sympathetic yet disempowering arena" and, as proof of this critique, the NGOs who were holding an 'alternative' conference at the Cricket ground, called the cops to disperse the DSF when they wanted to camp and sleep the night there. And the march of over 30,000 people that the DSF organised ended with an attempt to break through police lines and storm the conference.

Nevertheless, there's a danger that such an umbrella organisation as this can develop tendencies away from such concrete acts and towards being as self-perpetuating as the organisations it denounces, even if it has a different content - organising itself above all as an organisation rather than organising precise activities, which become secondary. Particularly as this organisation is ambiguously conciliatory towards some of the worse aspects of the social movement against apartheid - "In the process, we had built strong, democratic organizations and elected individuals to lead us whom we trusted as honest and principled people." This is a present-day comment about the situation in the 80s without the slightest hint of critical reflection about the subsequent development of such organisations, or of such honest and principled people. It seems obvious – but perhaps it always needs to be re-said: regardless of whether someone appears to be honest and principled, once they have a position of professional elected leader they develop separate interests, particularly as those who want to be led, in their trust, give up their own ability to initiate activity. And this is part of what happened as soon as Mandela was released from prison. Of course we don't mean to fixate purely on individual personalities - Mandela was the instrument and product of the ANC and the larger ruling class-in-waiting, the collective perpetuators of hierarchy.

Although it flies in the face of the deeply entrenched 'commonsense' logic of this world, the essential question is not to build organisations, strong or weak, democratic or not, but to initiate different attacks on our misery and organising this, rather than organising the organisation as a prerequisite for this, which loses sight of the point of organising: it's a way of developing organisation as an image, a show, an end in itself, which is ultimately the bureaucratic logic of the commodity economy and the State. This organisation question is an inherent pitfall in all struggles of any duration. But in the end, it's a question of constant vigilance on the part of those organising themselves. What might be temporarily practical in one situation can become an obstacle to the progress of struggle in another. The history of class struggle has always involved a tension between, on the one hand, the struggle of individuals struggling for community and, on the other hand, submission to the point of view of a separate specific organisation - proletarian identity versus collectivist identity – identifying with a particular collectivity (the history of trade unions is only the most obvious example of this complex dialectic); sooner or later, one must dominate the other.

And what does this quote from the DSF imply? - "Recently, we have come to understand more about the "global village" and are ashamed about the role our government has chosen to play as an induna of the West. We wish to apologize to the people of Palestine, Harlem, East Timor, Congo, Chiapas, Algeria, Burma, Sudan, Iraq, the Dalits of India, the workers in Asian sweatshops, the women downtrodden in Afghanistan, the street-children in Sao Paulo, the political prisoners in the United States, the villagers in the Maluti Mountain Valley, the Aborigines in Australia, the immigrants of Europe and North America, and every other place in our world where injustice is perpetuated while the leaders of our country keep conveniently quiet, or even support your oppressors." This sounds like middle class guilt – as if they're kids of the rulers feeling bad about their nasty parents. Do they really expect rulers not to act like rulers? It seems to be something more than an unjustifiable shame for voting for the ANC – after all, the whole world hierarchy advertising the joys of bourgeois democracy coupled with the disappearance of a practical movement was the external pressure to vote. Guilt for believing they would be different is not only useless – it doesn't confront the forces that encouraged such “shameful” illusions and perpetuates the illusion that leaders of countries could somehow be ok.. Despite its internationalism, it still implies a strong emotional attachment to the nation, and a belief in the ideal of a Good State - that it could be composed of trustworthy leaders, and hence implies such an ambition on the part of some of the participants of the DSF (the fact that the DSF includes Keep Left, a semi-Trotskyist organisation with links to the SWP, is additional evidence for this attitude: Keep Left even told members to vote ANC - because, apparently, that's where the working class is, something for which they should truly feel abjectly ashamed and guilty about). ). We are not concerned with whether such people are genuine and sincere or not - probably most of them are. But the essential thing is that this is not merely an illusion that flies in the face of the whole historical experience of all the various States but also an illusion that suppresses the consciousness of history as being something other than hierarchical social relations (to take just one small memorable example of anti-hierarchical self-organisation - the blacks of Alexandra[3] organising themselves during the 80s publicly in 'street committees' as an open community, where everything - from attacks on collaborators & cops, to how to deal with rapists to stopping men harassing their ex-girlfriends - was discussed and organised by mass meetings). Above all, it implies (though, of course, we're guessing) the continuation of hierarchical respect in the present, in the DSF itself.

* * *

As a contribution to re-examining the past and overcoming it, we offer the following three texts. If anything useful is to come out of the social movement of the past - for these movements not to have been 'wasted' - it's essential to look at what was an inspiration as well as what was weak in the movements - what enabled people to end the revolution and put their faith in the ANC, especially considering how little the ANC had to do with the real movement. Whilst any future revolutionary movement will certainly not put its faith in the ANC, it might well put its faith in some other representation of the revolution. Of course, we're a hell of a long way from that, though it should be remembered that a few weeks, even days, before the 1976 Soweto uprising, no-one expected such a widespread movement to develop, let alone that it should be schoolkids who initiated it. We're not saying this simply arose spontaneously out of nowhere: the seeds were already sown in the theory of Black Consciousness, and, moreover, it took place in a global atmosphere of increasing self-confidence on the part of the working class - very different from today. And it exploded precisely because the blacks realised they couldn't rely on anybody but themselves. It was only later that the ANC, having initially been contemptuously dismissive of the Soweto uprising, opportunistically honoured it a few years afterwards (yes, it took them that long! ) and thus could seem to be something people could rely on other than themselves.

On the other hand, we shouldn't ignore the simple fact of class war-weariness after 15 years of desperate violent struggle as a factor in the dominant powers regaining the initiative. Which is another way of saying that if you want peace you've got to constantly fight to create the conditions for it. This is why we need to partly look at the past to renew this struggle, for the proletariat to regain the initiative after all these years. This is why we should never forget the incredible moments in the struggles of the 70s and 80s, which, as far as we know, don't compare with anything going on today. Whilst the sick scum who support the ANC smugly claim the end of apartheid as mainly down to this horrendous organisation and its fellow travellers, there are a handful of, equally, if differently, arrogant, ultra-leftist 'revolutionaries' who also put the end of apartheid down to merely a battle between competing bourgeois parties. Such arrogance dogmatically dismisses the complexities of all practical risk in the struggle for freedom by only looking at the eventually victorious weaknesses of such movements, by which criteria one could dismiss the movements of 1848, the Paris Commune, the Russian revolution, the Spanish revolution, the 1984/5 miners strike etc. etc. In their complacent abstract 'critique' they show their contemptible contempt for the uneven process of any concrete practical opposition to this shit world, as well as a refusal to examine the contradictions of such movements, as if there's nothing to be learnt from them. Such petrified attitudes are willfully ignorant of anything real that happened during the South African revolution of the 70s and 80s.

Take this from the Daily Mirror 17/11/84, for example:

Won't pay? Can't pay! More than 2000 blacks were arrested for non-payment of rent yesterday when South African police swamped on compounds near Johannesburg. The blacks said they could not pay because they had burnt down the rent office.

Or take this from a small pamphlet written in 1984 - The Third Day Of September, an account of the uprising against rent hikes in Sebokeng by Johannes Rantete, a 20 year old son of a factory worker who, as a result of writing it, was 'disappeared' by the South African police:

"There was no roof of the business buildings that remained tall after the strikes except the well-planned Mphatalatsane hall, Perm building and various churches. In Zone 11, all the shops were burnt down. The rent office, the bottlestore and the beerhall were burnt. Three houses were burnt, including a brand-new Honda Ballade. The petrol station and the soft-drink cash-and-carry wholesale were also attacked. The roadhouse cafe was broken into and goods were taken away...Roads in this zone were blocked with stones, boxes, and anything else that was easy to carry. The Sebokeng Post Office was attacked and burnt, not surprisingly. All the shops in Zone 12 were burnt down, too. The rent office, the bottlestore, the beerhall, a doctor's surgery and the house of a councillor were destroyed by fire. The tarred roads in this zone were blocked with stones and pelted with bottles and burning objects to hamper the passing of vehicles - especially police vehicles. Zone 13... not a single shop kept its original shape. Everything was ashes. Here again, the rent office was attacked, but the library and two clinics were spared. A house near the shopping centre was burnt. Roads used by buses were pelted with stones and broken bottles. Zone 14...carries public buildings and other large buildings which are not found in other zones. There is the...Mphatalatsane hall, the Perm building, Texido supermarket, the banks and building societies (Standard, Barclays, Volkskas, United, Allied) and the long frontage of the P & A Drycleaners building. Fire raged through all these buildings. All the shops - a "Hire a TV" shop, a Kentucky, a beerhall, a bottlestore - were burnt. Zone 7 ...the rent office and a petrol station burnt down. Zone 3...A bakery, shops, a beerhall, the rent office and a bottlestore were burnt....The strikes spread as far as Sharpeville, Boipatong, Evaton and Residensia...Strikes also erupted in the Sebokeng's mens hostels...a lounge had been burnt, all the shops, the administration board office...

The strikes really proved to me that unity is alive and strong among blacks ...What is most fatal to black unity is the numerous parties formed, that often lead to hatred and mistrust.... The strikes took four days and afterwards 31 people were dead. More than 50 were injured and about 8 policemen, while 37 were arrested. The police used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the rioting crowds...the count of police victims will probably never be known, because of news clampdowns. Some of the victims of the strike can be identified. The Zone 11 councillor, Mr.James Mofokeng, was killed; Councillor Caesar Motjeane was killed after shooting two youths, and on his corpse read the placard, "Away with rentals! Asinamali!" Ntomba Majola (12) was killed ...Evaton's deputy mayor died in the hospital on Tuesday. Evaton's mayor had to remain homeless after his house was burnt down. His gown was worn by an elderly woman who danced down the streets and called herself the first mayor. On Monday... Sharpeville councillor was killed by an angry mob...

When the schools reopened on 26 September no student in the Vaal area was seen in the school yards, nor seen wearing a school uniform. What was the cause of their staying away, whereas the strikes were simmering down? ...The answer from one ..." It will be too difficult for us to go to school when some of our mates are languishing in jail for unspecific infringements."

A lot more could be said about this period, especially by those who lived it. For ourselves, we'll confine ourselves to the reproduction of these three excellent texts:

1. South Africa 1985: the organisation of power in black and white (Aug. 1985).

2. An extract from Chris Shutes' The Poverty of Berkeley Life (May 1983).

3. Reflections on the Black Consciousness Movement and the South African Revolution (Aug. 1979).


STOP PRESS


* In I994 the newly elected ANC government issued its “Reconstruction and Development Program” which purported to be about basic needs such as jobs, land, housing, water, electricity, healthcare, welfare. Two years later it was replaced by GEAR:”Growth, Employment And Redistribution” and having as much to do with window dressing as its acronym. It was “designed” by a cabal of 15 economists, 2 from the World Bank and the rest from big South African banks and conservative think tanks. Typically the language was one we are all now heartily sick of: “greater labour market flexibility”, “foreign direct investment”, “sound fiscal policy”.

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