Anarchic update news all over the world - 13.05.2018

Today's Topics:

   
1.  France, Alternative Libertaire AL #282 - Thomas Deltombe
      (journalist): Cameroon 1948: the independence of the UPC crushed
      by Françafrique (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  anarkismo.net - Book Review: Jean Vigo by P.E. Salles Gomes
      (1998) by Barrie Sargeant - AWSM (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  anarkismo.net - Resist-Occupy-Produce: What can Anarchists
      and Syndicalists Learn from Factory Take-Overs and Worker
      Cooperatives in Argentina? by Leroy Maisiri & Lucien van der Walt
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  Zabalaza News: South Africa: Minimum wages can't end
      suffering when the rich abuse the poor (Bongani Maponyane, ZACF/
      TAAC) (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  Britain, Brighton Solfed: Evict the Evicters! An injury to
      one is an injury to all! (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1





On April 10, 1948, in a bar in Douala, the largest city in Cameroon, twelve activists 
found the Union of People of Cameroon (UPC), which quickly became the main opposition 
force to French colonial rule. The repression turns into a secret war and brings out a 
neocolonial model analyzed by Thomas Deltombe, Manuel Domergue and Jacob Tatsitsa in The 
War of Cameroon. The invention of Françafrique (La Découverte, 2016). ---- Libertarian 
alternative: What is the Union des populations du Cameroun ? ---- The UPC is a political 
movement founded in 1948 that called for the independence of Cameroon, the unification of 
French and British Cameroons, the "  raising of standards of life  ". These three slogans 
were nothing more than the reformulation of the promises made at the end of the Second 
World War by the powers that administered the former German " Kamerun  ": France and Great 
Britain.

Indeed, since 1919, Cameroon was no longer a German colony but an international territory, 
under the supervision of the SDN then the UN (as Togo or Rwanda for example). Territory 
removed from the Germans after the First World War, the former Kamerun was cut in half and 
entrusted to the French administration (4/5 e territory) and British (1/5 e ). This legal 
peculiarity is fundamental to understand the following.

The UPCists - who almost all come from trade unionism - finally demanded what had been 
promised to Cameroonians in the "  trusteeship agreements  " signed in 1946 by Paris and 
London in exchange for the extension of their tutelary "  mission  " to the country. These 
agreements included the notion of "  self-government or independence  " to which the 
tutelary powers promised to bring their Cameroonian citizens. The notion of "  rising 
standards of living  " came from a promise made by De Gaulle at the Brazzaville conference 
(1944). In short, the UPC was simply asking for promises.

In 1948, the UPC is modest in size. But his slogans, his organization, the charisma of his 
leaders allow him to quickly become very popular. In a few years, the UPC becomes the 
first political movement on the territory of French Cameroon. It is established in most 
regions, unlike other movements that are often regional, not to say ethnic. More and more 
crowds are coming to listen to UPCistes leaders.

The archives show that the French administration is quickly worried about the rise of the 
UPC. And especially since this movement has international connections: it is initially the 
Cameroonian branch of the Rassemblement démocratique africaine (RDA), the party " 
interterritorial  " Félix Houphouët-Boigny, and maintains relations with different 
anticolonialist movements in the world.

Does the UPC have links with the Soviet bloc or the communist parties ?

There has been a lot of debate on this point. Since its birth, the UPC, created by trade 
unionists, has relations with the French CGT, which has actively sought to establish 
itself in the colonized territories. If this genesis served as a pretext for the 
administration to accuse the UPC of "  communism  ", the UPC leadership very clearly 
asserted that the movement was "  nationalist  " and nothing else - therefore "  neither 
communist nor anti-communist"  ". And this is true, at first, the UPC welcoming people 
from very varied socio-political horizons: Christians, Muslims, Stalinists, peasants, 
veterans, traditional leaders, etc.

The ideological affiliations will evolve thereafter, the French repression provoking 
internal splits within the UPC and inciting some of its leaders to seek external support: 
in the communist bloc (Soviet, Chinese) sometimes, but especially in the countries 
independent African countries (Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Algeria, etc.). In the midst of the 
cold war, the French will proclaim everywhere that the UPC is a "  communist  " 
organization led by Moscow or Beijing to try to discredit it in the eyes of its Western 
allies and to justify its repressive action.

France reacts by setting up a strategy of intense secret war rather unprecedented.

The intensity of the repression goes up in stages in the 1950s. Initially, it is rather 
devious: the French mutate the small officials of the UPC to disperse the militant forces, 
forbid leaders to hold meetings, confiscates their leaflets , drag them to justice on fake 
motives ... It is in other words the usual administrative repression of a colonial 
dictatorship.

Between 1955 and 1957, things rock: we enter a real war, partly unprecedented, but not 
totally. The techniques are those of the "  counterrevolutionary war  " applied at the 
same time in Algeria and using different stratagems: targeted assassination of nationalist 
leaders, systematic torture of "  suspects  ", territorial grid, regrouping of 
populations, intensive psychological action, etc.

Like Gabriel Périès, Matthieu Rigouste and a few others, we have immersed ourselves in 
these very special warfare techniques that directly attack the people and aim at the total 
control of individuals (territorial, corporal, psychological, etc.). In doing so, we 
discovered that they had not only been used against UPCists who had gone through armed 
resistance but had transferred to government techniques by the time Cameroon officially 
became "  independent  " in 1960 ...

What is the nature of this "  independence  " granted to Cameroon on 1 st  January 1960 ?

For the French, the war against the UPC and its supporters must allow to remain sovereign 
"  in any hypothesis of sovereignty  ". The idea, stated in the mid-1950s, is as follows: 
since we promised "  independence  " in 1946, we will honor this promise ... but by 
emptying this term of its content !

To take short the UPC, which consolidates its guerrilla, which weaves international links, 
which is invited to the tribune of the UN, the French promise so the "  independence  " in 
Cameroon and entrusts it authoritatively to Cameroonians who do not have never asked for 
it. The sentence that Pierre Messmer, High Commissioner of France in Cameroon between 1956 
and 1958, uses in his memoirs is quite clear: "  France will grant independence to those 
who claimed the least, after having eliminated politically and militarily those who asked 
with the most intransigence.  " Cameroon's War is the story of the"  liquidation  ".

And it is in this war that the arms and the wheels of neocolonial mechanics are forged. 
The whole process, from 1955 to 1964, consists in creating a facade of independence: a 
president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, is installed who has on paper instruments of national 
sovereignty. But the latter is mined behind the scenes by France, which, thanks to a 
series of bilateral agreements, for certain secrets, retains the upper hand over 
diplomacy, trade, monetary policy and, of course, all the instruments of repression. 
(police, army, secret services, etc.) that were created during the "  counter-subversive " 
war against the UPC and its "  potential supporters  " (that is, a large part of the 
population!). The war, which has become permanent and generalized, is gradually becoming a 
dictatorship: France has made the Cameroonian state a counter-subversive war machine whose 
aim was - and still is - to crush all the potential opponents of the neocolonial order .

And the maintenance of this dictatorship currently explains the silence on this period ?

The power installed in Cameroon in the early 1960s, and whose current regime is the heir, 
knows that it is illegitimate. Since the 1960s, and with the active support of France, the 
Cameroonian leaders have banned all that could remind the people of this illegitimacy. 
This explains why the war has had a very strong "  psychological  " character . As the 
UPCists lost ground in the 1960s because of the repression, the concept of "  subversion " 
expanded: anyone who did not claim with sufficient conviction his total allegiance to the 
Ahidjo regime , erected as "  father of the nation  " and supported from 1966 on a single 
party, became "  subversive ". In twenty years, the country to which one promised in 1946 
the "  independence  " thus became a relentless pro-French dictatorship.

But there is more. Because of its particular legal status and the "  success  " of the 
repression, Cameroon becomes at the same period, from the point of view of the Parisian 
leaders, a "  model to follow  " that the French will duplicate in the other colonies 
become "  independent  " . Cameroon, the first country whose "  independence  " allowed to 
extend the stranglehold of France, is then a laboratory of what will later be called 
Françafrique.

Things have certainly evolved since the 1960s. But the regime of Paul Biya, president of 
Cameroon since 1982 and direct heir to Ahidjo, is still there. If the single-party regime 
was abolished in the 1990s, the same party still remains in power and a multifaceted 
repression comes down daily on the Cameroonian people. Under the falsely embarrassed but 
really complacent look of the French authorities.

Interviewed by Renaud (AL Strasbourg)

Thomas Deltombe, The Cameroon War. The invention of Françafrique, La Découverte, 2016.

http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Thomas-Deltombe-journaliste-Cameroun-1948-l-independantisme-de-l-UPC-ecrase-par

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Message: 2





This is a review of a book about the famous anarchist-inspired French film auteur Jean 
Vigo. ---- Jean Vigo by P.E. Salles Gomes (London: Faber & Faber, 1988), pp. 266, ISBN: 
0-571-19610-1 ---- BARRIE SARGEANT ---- By the age of 27 I had taught for 6 years and was 
feeling ambivalent about it. I liked sharing information and helping people but hated the 
authoritarian and bureaucratic structures of school systems. I went home one day feeling 
especially frustrated. I popped on a newly purchased movie. It was called Zero de 
Conduite/Zero for Conduct (1933) and was just the right thing at the right time. It became 
one of those rare ‘before and after' experiences. ---- So what was it about? The movie 
opens in a train carriage and we see boys playing. They return to their boarding school. 
We are introduced to the regime of the place. Nightly inspections occur, undertaken by the 
stern Deputy Principal. Anyone not meeting expected standards receives the ‘Zero for 
Conduct' of the title. During the day, the playground antics of the boys are given free 
rein. We discover a troika of pupils plotting a rebellion. There are scenes showing the 
contradictory behaviour of a new liberal teacher, a lesson given by a creepy Science 
master and the pompous and hysterical ranting of the Principal. The revolt happens on the 
day V.I.Ps' visit, with the officials being pelted from the roof and other boys waving a 
pirate flag. It ends with the ringleaders climbing the roof, hands raised in jubilation.

The movie is told from the boys' perspective, with a genuine respect for the creativity of 
youth. It uses a diverse range of techniques, including animation integrated into the main 
action and reverse slow motion, giving it moments of both surrealism and lyrical beauty. 
The whole package intrigued me. I found out that its Director, Jean Vigo, was the son of 
Anarchist militants. The film was made (and subsequently banned for 15 years) when he was 
27 and Vigo died at only 29. Given my own age and circumstances, I had to learn more and 
discovered P.E. Salles Gomes' biography.

It is natural to begin a biography with a bit on the family background of its subject. 
Here the entire initial chapter centers on the life and political career of Vigo's father. 
He was an anarchist involved in anti-militarist activism and a journalist, these efforts 
resulting in imprisonment and eventual murder while in the ‘care' of the state. The 
purpose in cataloguing this activist career is to establish the huge emotional and 
creative impact his father had on Jean. In short, he worshipped his father after his 
death. The author does a subtle job of showing that this worship was somewhat misplaced 
and the chapter gives an interesting character study. Unfortunately it is marred by an 
assumption the reader is well versed in the politics of early Twentieth Century France. 
Lots of names are dropped in, but their significance is often unclear, even when context 
is provided. A re-working of the text or some footnotes would help a lot.

The next chapter is a description of Vigo's own life which was also full of adversity. He 
was bullied at boarding school and constantly struggled with ill-health and poor finances 
all through his short life. Due to some lucky breaks and family contacts, Jean finally got 
into films. His chance to direct the full length feature that became Zero, eventually came 
his way via a sympathetic horse breeder with no experience as a film producer. The rest is 
history. I liked the way Salles Gomes keeps the focus here on the biographical elements of 
Vigo's work. The temptation is avoided to speculate at length about the cinematic 
influences upon Vigo. Mention is made of Russian montage techniques and Un Chien Andalou 
(1928) by Dali and Bunuel, but this isn't pushed too far. The author sees Vigo as an 
experimentalist, not easily categorized in (appropriately enough!) a ‘school' of 
film-making. It's a fair assessment and just the right amount of analysis for the general 
reader unconcerned with the sometimes arcane debates of hard-core cineastes.

The next two chapters look at Vigo's films themselves. Salles Gomes tells us of the 
frequently chaotic creative process in Vigo's work and we are offered a detailed analysis 
of each movie. He makes it clear that they are filled with technical and acting flaws. 
These criticisms are valid, so why does Vigo's work still seem so fresh to viewers like 
me? The writer makes two explanatory points. The basic authenticity of the scenario in 
Zero has real power, rooted as it was in Vigo's own experiences and an anarchist 
sensibility inherited from his father. Coupled with this is the fact that "If he makes 
"mistakes", more often than not he imposes them on us the way poets do". I found this 
pretty convincing.

The remainder of the book consists of a chapter on Vigo's death and an appendix attempting 
to determine the critical success and impact of Vigo's output. Most of this discussion 
centers on Anarchist, Fascist and Marxist critics in France and Italy from the 1930's 
-1950's. It is well written
and will please those into film theory, but isn't vital reading for the rest of us. There 
is also a Foreword, updating information to the late 1990's.

Of course, no book is ever a substitute for experiencing a movie first hand and Salles 
Gomes' work is not the only one about Vigo. It is not a bad thing to read though, if you 
are looking for some background info on this little known anarcho-gem. And me? Well it's 
nearly a decade later and I'm ‘between jobs'.

N.B: This review first appeared in Aotearoa Dissident Voice, Issue 8, March 2005, pg. 18

Related Link: http://awsm.nz/

http://www.anarkismo.net/article/30970

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Message: 3





The remarkable "recovered factories" (fábricas recuperadas) movement saw hundreds of 
closed factories reopened by the workers, run democratically, creating jobs and helping 
working class and poor communities. It showed that there is only so much protesting can 
accomplish - at some point you have to create something new. But it also shows it is 
essential that such alternative sites of production form alliances with, and become 
embedded, in other movements of the working class, poor and peasantry, including unions 
and unemployed movements. This assists them in building larger struggles, and provides 
them with some protection from the capitalist market and the state. It is meanwhile 
important for unions and social movements to start to systematically develop alternatives 
to capitalist- and state- run social services and media. However, it is simply impossible 
to escape capitalism by creating cooperatives, social centres or alternative spaces 
-almost all means of production remain in ruling class hands, secured by force and backed 
by huge bureaucracies. It is essential to build a mass revolutionary front of unions and 
other movements, embracing popularly-run social services, media and production, and aiming 
at complete socialisation of the economy and of decision-making through a revolutionary 
rupture.

Documentaries like "The Take" - a movie that has been widely seen in South African labour 
and left circles - have drawn global attention to a remarkable challenge to 
neo-liberalism. In Argentina, in South America, economic crisis saw a collapse in working 
class conditions. High unemployment, low wages, attacks on social services: we are 
familiar with such things in South Africa. But something happened, which is very 
different. In Argentina, from the 1990s, something new started.

RESIST-OCCUPY-PRODUCE

The "recovered factories" (fábricas recuperadas) movement saw hundreds of closed factories 
and facilities reopened by the workers, run democratically, creating jobs and helping 
working class and poor communities. For example, the former Zanon tile factory was 
reopened under workers' control (it is now called FaSinPat). It was able to create jobs, 
restore dignity and helped build a community clinic; it also makes donations to hospitals 
and feeding schemes. Many of these worker-run sites are still running. They have been 
linked together through two networks: the Movimiento Nacional de Empresas Recuperadas and 
the Movimiento Nacional de Fabricas Recuperadas.

What this remarkable experience shows is that there is only so much protesting can 
accomplish - at some point you have to discuss alternatives. You have to move beyond 
saying what you do not want, and beyond making limited demands, to creating something new. 
The workers in Argentina have helped to show an alternative from below. They have 
rewritten the textbook of economics. The experience - and similar ones before it, and 
alongside it, such as in the Spanish Revolution in the past and the Rojava Revolution 
today - show the immense role and creativity of the productive classes. It shows that it 
is possible produce for need rather than profit. It shows something totally different to 
the two false choices we are given today: top-down exploitative wage labour under private 
companies (and privatisation) and rule by state companies (and nationalisation).

SELF-ACTIVITY NOT ELECTIONS

It represents a profound challenge to the system that leaves factories closed, while 
people need the good and jobs and services they can produce, that closes brickyards while 
people are homeless, and hotels while people are homeless. It shows how democratic 
discussion and assemblies, choices based on meeting needs rather than making profits, can 
work - and work better than the mess we have under current system. In the current system, 
we have massive waste, corruption and exclusion for the majority. Arms deals and blood 
diamonds while people starve on the streets.

BEING EMBEDDED

But what the "recovered factory movement," and the "The Take," also shows is that it is 
essential that such alternative sites of production form alliances with movements of the 
working class, poor and peasantry, including unions, community movements, unemployed 
movements (in Argentina, called "piqueteros"), and in popular struggles. They must be 
embedded in the movements of the popular classes, as a means of being protected from 
eviction by the state, and as a means of building struggles. Zanon, for example, has been 
protected from the police by massive protests, by strikes by unions, and has also 
participated in a range of struggles. Zanon workers are part of the union in the ceramics 
sector, the Sindicato de Obreros y Empleados Ceramistas de Neuquén. In 2003, 
community-based protests plus a mass strike by the Central de Trabajadores Argentinos 
(CTA) union federation prevented Zanon being evicted. In 2007, the Zanon workers joined 
mass protests after police killed a teacher, Carlos Fuentealba, at a demonstration.

Being embedded in this way, alternative sites of production can also be protected to an 
extent from the logics of capitalism, which, through both competition and monopolies, 
forces wages down, and imposes authoritarian management systems as the price of survival. 
It is important to remember here that the "recovered factories" still exist within 
capitalism. They face ongoing pressures: for example, the government refuses to provide 
contracts, and bans block loans; cheaper tiles can be sourced from other plants. Unless 
they have support from movements, and pressure to operate differently to capitalist state 
firms, and some space to do so, they can easily degenerate into worker-run capitalist firms.

Unless they have support from movements, they can easily be captured by states, which will 
impose upon them business plans and other schemes, which will force them to operate as 
capitalist firms.

SOLIDARITY PRICING

Such embeddedness enables a situation where customers - especially larger organisations, 
like unions - can pay solidarity prices. This provides essential protection from the 
capitalist market and the state regulations that impose upon workplaces the pressure to 
cut wages, fire workers and impose authoritarian management.

Locating the alternative production models within mass movements, helps avoid the 
situation, seen in some European countries, where valuable alternative spaces -like social 
centres, squats and radical bookshops -achieve a great deal but can become contained 
within isolated radical scenes and youth subcultures separate from the masses of working 
class and poor people. They also avoid the other situation, where their survival rests 
upon support from wealthy strata, who can afford to pay higher prices and do so as a 
matter of conscience - while the masses, who cannot pay such premiums, rather choose much 
cheaper products made in capitalist sweatshops. In such a situation, alternative 
production becomes dependent upon class inequalities to survive - on ethical "middle 
class" consumerism - rather than on class struggle.

AFRICAN EXAMPLES

We have wonderful examples of such solidarity in the 1980s in South Africa, although it is 
not often found today. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) set up cooperatives among 
retrenched workers, while the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) did 
the same among workers who were fired in the course of a major strike at BTR-Sarmcol 
rubber factory. These cooperatives were then given contracts from NUM (and NUMSA) to 
supply union t-shirts and similar goods. The Food and Canning Workers Union (FCWU) ran its 
own medical aid in the 1980s, using this to set up a Ray Alexander Workers Clinic in 
Paarl. Union aid kept them afloat and allowed workers to also see an alternative.

Today, sadly, unions tend to simply use the cheapest capitalist company, and the cheapest 
shirts, including from union-bashing, worker-repressing sweatshops; and to sell members, 
for a commission, contracts with private sector medical aids that are invested in 
capitalist firms.

It is possible to develop alternatives - as a means of showing something different is 
possible, and as a means of reducing dependence on the corporations and the states. Union 
investment monies, for example, should prioritise spending on worker-run clinics, worker 
cooperatives, a working class media, popular education on a large scale, and mass 
organising - including of the unemployed - rather than invest in profit-making - a recipe 
for a prfpfound corruption of unions and a loss of vision.

The best example of this worst-case scenario is the South African Clothing and Textile 
Workers' Union (SACTWU) Investment Company, HCI, which has shares in casinos, capitalist 
TV stations (e.tv) and bus companies - and helped a certain former SACTWU leader become a 
billionaire. Once a radical union in the "workerist" tradition, in 2017 SACTWU's HCI 
refused to close its bus services -- in theory controlled by the union and its workers -- 
in solidarity with a general strike organised by SACTWU and its federation, the Souh 
African Congress of Trade Unions (COSATU).

PREFIGURE EVERYWHERE

But what is essential is to prefigure a better future everywhere, not just in "recovered 
factories," social services, centres and media, but in mass formations, like unions, and 
local protest movements, like those in communities, as well. This means radically 
democratic organising, solidarity and mass education against the ideas and attitudes and 
behaviours of the existing order.

IT IS NOT ENOUGH

It is important to be clear here that it is not possible to escape capitalism by creating 
a few sites of alternative production, by creating cooperatives, social centres or even 
"recovered factories," or by "buying worker." It is not possible to build a "solidarity 
economy" that can defeat the existing system. The bulk of means of production remains in 
the hands of private corporations and states, controlled by the ruling class; the ruling 
class is backed by armies, police and massive bureaucracies.

To think we can exit from capitalism, or that capitalism will crumble, if we build an 
increasing number of local alternatives is wrong. These will always be on the margins, and 
the ruling class will crush - peacefully and violently - any significant threat. The 
notion that we can "crack capitalism" (John Holloway) by exiting the system, ignoring the 
state, refusing wage labour and building alternative systems is not realistic.

Capitalism and the state will never be suffocated by a proliferation of alternatives: as 
seen in the Spanish Revolution, it is not enough to have even a massive amount of 
collectives and land occupations; while the capital and the state have the commanding 
heights of finance, coercion and administration, the system will recover and crush the 
alternatives. After the disaster in Spain, the notion that the system will quietly die, 
"asphyxiate," when faced with large-scale economic disruption and collectivisation - as if 
its power resides solely in local workplaces - must be rejected.

THE NEED FOR RUPTURE

The aim is not to choose between capitalists: "Buy South Africa," "Buy Black," or 
"people's capitalism" (volkskapitalisme as it was once called by a certain strand of 
unions here).

It is to link alternatives to capitalism together, coordinate them, and embed them in a 
larger mass revolutionary front of unions, social movements, and bottom-up social 
services, and people's media and people's education, which is based on struggle and that 
aims at the complete socialisation of the economy and of administration, a new system 
based on federations of community and workers councils, based on assemblies, and a 
serious, co-ordinated defence of the new.

Without this change - a radical rupture, final showdown, the abolition of the state and 
capitalism - the ongoing pressures of the state and capitalism - and the ruling classes 
they represent will corrupt or kill off alternatives that do not follow its rules; without 
this change, the repressive forces of the state will always remained poised to crush what 
is different, better, democratic.

NO EXIT: RIDE THROUGH

The solution is not to "exit" through refusal, but to confront, through building a 
massive, unified counter-power based on radically democratic structures and direct action, 
resting on a revolutionary counter-culture, based on the widespread acceptance of a 
revolutionary worldview - and alternative sites of production and social services and 
media and education can play an important role, in this struggle.

As part of a larger movement, such alternatives are shielded, assume enormous symbolic 
power, and can help inspire a fundamental change. But there is no possibility that the 
current system will slowly and quietly disintegrate because of a few cooperatives, 
"recovered factories" and worker-clinics. An alternative must mean something new: it is no 
change if we keep relying on the leaders of the system, its institutions like elections, 
its stress on what divides us like colour and language and country, and the aims of the 
system: power and profit for a few. And it must mean something new, from the roots to the 
branches, a new society that replaces the old.

As the anarchist luminary Mikhail Bakunin argued long ago:

"The various forms of co-operation are incontestably one of the most equitable and 
rational ways of organizing the future system of production. But before it can realize its 
aim of emancipating the labouring masses so that they will receive the full product of 
their labour, the land and all forms of capital must he converted into collective 
property. As long as this is not accomplished, the co-operatives will be overwhelmed by 
the all-powerful competition of monopoly capital and vast landed property; ... and even in 
the unlikely event that a small group of co-operatives should somehow surmount the 
competition, their success would only beget a new class of prosperous co-operators in the 
midst of a poverty-stricken mass of proletarians" (in Sam Dolgoff, 2002 edition, Bakunin 
on Anarchism).

MORE INFORMATION:
"The History of Zanon," http://endefensadezanon.com/en/historia-de-zanon/

Oliver Nathan, 2011, "Worker Co-operatives, Markets and the South African State: An 
Analysis from an Anarchist Perspective," Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African 
Revolutionary Anarchism, number 12, 
https://zabalaza.net/2011/07/12/worker-co-operatives-markets-and-the-south-african-state-an-analysis-from-an-anarchist-perspective/
Related Link: http://zabalaza.net

http://www.anarkismo.net/article/30982

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Message: 4






There has been a lot of talk about the promise of a National Minimum Wage (NMW) in South 
Africa. This means wages cannot go below a certain level. But capitalists and politicians 
continue to eat the food of the workers, the poor and unfortunate. Why? In some cases, the 
NMW is an improvement - but generally, the NMW is not a "living wage," meaning a wage on 
which you can live a decent life. Prices keep going up. This society is based on the 
maximization of profit, this is its logic, and this means wages are not linked to what the 
workers and poor need, but to what bosses and politicians need. Wages are a system of 
exploitation. We live a capitalist society of stress and fear and jealousy, rooted in a 
system of cheap black labour, and power and profits for the bosses and politicians. We 
need to fight for something more, take back our unions, and lay the groundwork for an 
anarchists society, with equality based on workers and community councils.

STRESS AND FEAR
The workplace we have is not based on mutual aid (ubuntu), with people working together in 
harmony with each other to survive. It is based on feuds, due to people not being 
satisfied with what they earn, struggling under heavy workloads and overtime, and being 
squeezed by taxes like VAT (sales tax). This situation is squeezing workers dry, causing 
stress and conflict among workers, with finger pointing: who is working a better position 
and getting more pay? Is this because he or she has a good relation with the manager or 
supervisor? Meanwhile, management engages in massive retrenchments. The remaining workers 
end up working twice as hard for the same old wages. Wages are always lower than the value 
of work done under capitalism: this is exploitation. A NMW does not change that.

JOB LOSSES AS WEAPONS
At the end of 2017, there were massive job losses at Anglo-Ashanti Mine at Carletonville, 
on the West Rand, with the closure of two of the biggest shafts. This was an unfortunate 
turn of events for the miners: some were retrenched and others were pushed to take up a 
Voluntary Service Package (VSP). This is something very common in the mining sector: it 
downsizes workers and ruins their lives, and brutalizes their families, to make extra 
profit for the individuals who own and run the business. This devastates local 
mining-based black working class communities like Khutsong township.

THE MINING CRISIS
At Marikana, in Rustenburg, the 2012 massacre did not stop mine workers in the platinum 
mines. There was a massive strike some months later. Workers won a wage raise, but when 
all was done and dusted, thousands of jobs were lost afterwards.

This was to punish workers and ensure profits. So, people lost jobs after the successful 
negotiations for higher wages, which were led by the breakaway union, Association of 
Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU). Capitalists and economists and politicians saw 
the workforce as a problem, hampering capital and profit. They were right: higher wages do 
cut into profits. But that shows the system is unfair, because it makes profits by paying 
people indecently, and by always paying less than the value of work done.

CHEAP BLACK LABOUR
Mines, like other sectors, were built on the backs of cheap black labour, a racist wage 
structure. Workplace structures were racist as well, with authoritarian management systems 
that controlled "general" workers in so-called unskilled jobs. This involved long hours at 
work for low pay, sometimes some of it kept back through various fines, deductions and 
cheating. More often than not, the worker was scared to claim the missing money.

The bosses want to keep this, post-apartheid, but in new ways: job losses, casualisation, 
police atttacks, and crippling the unions. In the mining sector, which the lifeblood of 
places like Carletonville, word is going around that jobs are becoming scarce. 
Unemployment is massive. People will take any job they can get, even bribing to get it, no 
matter the wage.

The leadership of the former vanguard trade union, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was 
corrupted by mine management and by the post-apartheid (the ruling African National 
Congress, ANC, has built a specially close link to the NUM leaders). At Carletonville, 
which is based on gold, NUM is still the main union.

But NUM numbers have been withering away. The biggest crisis for NUM is in platinum. Here 
AMCU, starting as a NUM breakway, has become a powerful challenge to NUM. It rode the 
2012-2013 strike wave. But it has serious internal issues: lack of democracy and very high 
salaries for top union leaders, this is exactly what workers complained about in NUM.

A NATIONAL CRISIS
Parliament talks about the corruption issues at leadership level, but the issue of massive 
job losses and the criminal nature of society based on exploitation and suffering is not 
addressed. There is not even a solution for people that lose their jobs. There is no 
welfare grant for the unemployed: only for children, pensioners and disabled.

Political parties talk "job creation" at elections but deliver nothing. Political parties 
like the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) have revived the NUM idea about employee 
share-ownership schemes (ESOPs) that would give some access to dividends and annual 
bonuses. But the money from shares comes from exploiting workers through the wage system, 
and falls when wages up. So ESOPs will actually punish workers for pushing wages up. They 
don't ever involve enough shares to give real control, and don't change the capitalism of 
the companies.

OCCUPY-RESIST-PRODUCE
What we anarchists/ syndicalists want is workers and their communities to take complete 
and direct control of the firms, mines and workshops. Then they can control the real 
wealth for the country, and use it to benefit the masses - not the agencies like the 
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank or big firms like Lonmin or 
Anglo-American, or the politicians, no matter the party.

Workers must be united and not divided, this will make them a formidable force within the 
workplace. With this will be born a new revolutionary workers movement. We need to take 
back the unions, fight harder and stop hoping politicians will save us. We need to fight 
for a living wage, at a level set by the working class through campaigns and open 
discussion, and then win it by mobilising. The NMW level was set from above, without our 
say, but as a deal between elites, and that is why it is not a living wage.

To take back the unions, we need to form a rank-and-file reform movement in the unions, 
all the unions, to rebuild real workers' control, independence from parties, and a 
fighting agenda for deep change. This means fighting by using daily struggles and 
education, and organising to build for a new anarchist/ syndicalist society of equality, 
workers and community councils - not more of the criminal system we have today. 
Politicians and parties are part of the problem, hand in glove with the bosses and 
capitalism and the state.

We need a movement of the working and poor masses.

https://zabalaza.net/2018/05/12/south-africa-minimum-wages-cant-end-suffering-when-the-rich-abuse-the-poor/
https://www.facebook.com/zabalazanews/posts/2121462204765137

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Message: 5






Trouble with your landlord? Being messed around by your agency? Our housing union stall is 
at the corner of Halls Estate Agents on New Road today, with information about tenants' 
rights. Pop down to pick up some information! ---- Halls are the landlord of a commercial 
property occupied by Youngs agency. Youngs have severely mistreated a tenant, who's 
bedroom was uninhabitable for nine months and to whom they owe compensation and 
remuneration for works undertaken. When the tenant asked for this, the landlord 
represented by Youngs began an eviction process against the tenant. ---- We're demanding 
that Halls either evict Youngs or force them to pay the money they owe. Halls are 
unexpectedly 'out on business' until 12.30pm today, which we suspect means they're running 
scared of the collective power of tenants ? ---- Evict the Evicters! An injury to one is 
an injury to all!

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