As we approach the end of 2025 and matric exams conclude, South Africa faces a deepening crisis in access to higher education. Youth unemployment remains alarmingly high—recent figures from Statistics South Africa estimate that over 59% of people aged 15–24 are unemployed. In this context, a university degree is increasingly seen as essential for improving job prospects. This year, a record 900,000 candidates are writing matric. Yet, of the 430,000 expected to qualify for university entrance, only about half (235,000) will be admitted to one of the 26 universities. The competition is at an all-time high, and the stakes for young people are critical.

Compounding these challenges, universities are contending with shrinking budgets. The Auditor-General’s 2023 report reveals that funding for higher education has declined in real terms for nearly five consecutive years, with funding increases not keeping pace with inflation. This has resulted in reduced per-student expenditure, even as enrolments rise. Consequently, infrastructure, staff, and academic quality are under mounting pressure, threatening the sustainability of the entire sector. Students who do gain admission often face delayed NSFAS (National Student Financial Aid Scheme) disbursements, inadequate accommodation, overcrowded lecture halls, and overburdened lecturers, all of which collectively undermine the quality of teaching and learning.

South African youth face a dual dilemma: limited access to university amid a climate of “qualifications inflation,” where even menial jobs require degrees, all while unemployment soars and the higher education system is stretched by budget cuts and increasing enrolments.

It is important to recognise that, nearly fifty years after the Soweto Uprising of 1976, South African youth are once again at a crossroads. In 1976, students mobilised against Bantu Education and the enforcement of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction—a system designed to entrench racial and class subjugation. Today, although the context has changed, the crisis in education remains, now worsened by neoliberalism, state neglect, and the commodification of learning.

Neoliberalism refers to economic policies that emphasise privatisation, deregulation, and reduced government spending, often resulting in increased inequality and weakened public services. In the education sector, this shift has moved responsibility away from the state, treating learning as a commodity to be bought and sold. Despite the official end of apartheid and the promise of transformation, youth continue to confront the reality of broken schools and burning campuses. It is time to rebuild a unified, principled student movement rooted in working-class struggles, honouring the legacy of 1976 by fighting for quality education.

The demand for increased university intake collides with persistent budget constraints. The Auditor-General’s 2023 report documents a consistent decline in real funding per student since 2021, even as enrolment surges. This has led to deteriorating infrastructure, shortages of student accommodation, and overcrowded lecture halls. Many students endure long delays in financial aid disbursements (NSFAS), further compounding their difficulties.

Academic staff are also stretched thin, with heavier workloads and limited resources undermining their capacity to deliver quality education. The pressure on both physical and human resources is eroding the foundations of higher education and compromising its long-term sustainability. With university budgets shrinking and enrolments growing, campuses are becoming increasingly overcrowded, and resources are becoming scarcer, leading to declining educational quality.

The historic struggle for educational dignity and relevance continues, now shaped by new economic and political forces that necessitate renewed activism. You can access the Draft Programme and Platform for Youth and Students to help build a new socialist youth and student movement here

Neoliberal Policy and Corporate Tax Reduction

To understand the genesis of these challenges, one must examine the impact of neoliberal economic policies on South African universities. Neoliberalism, as previously defined, promotes privatisation, reduced public spending, and reliance on free-market solutions. This policy trajectory was adopted globally by the capitalist class as the post-World War II economic boom ended in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Previously, high levels of taxation on corporates had financed significant social reforms, including free education, healthcare, social security, and housing.

As profits declined, capitalists pressured governments to reduce corporate taxes and open public services such as water, education, health, and electricity to private profit. In South Africa, the apartheid regime nationalised services and maintained higher corporate taxes to finance white-only reforms. By the mid-1980s, however, the capitalist class began pressuring the regime to reduce taxes and privatise services. The ANC government, under further pressure after 1994, continued this trend, imposing the neoliberal Growth, Employment and Redistribution strategy in 1996. Corporate tax rates fell from 52% in 1992 to 27% today, but promised investment did not materialise. Gross fixed capital formation remains at 1946 levels, while manufacturing capacity utilisation dropped to around 65% as of May 2025. Meanwhile, the top 10% now own 84% of wealth in income and assets, poverty has deepened, and unemployment remains severe.

Instead of increasing social spending to match the demographic realities of a majority Black population, the government reduced corporate tax, cut spending, and resorted to borrowing. Today, R1.1 billion is spent daily on debt servicing—22 cents of every Rand in the annual budget. This has led to limits and cuts in social spending, forming the root of the education crisis, alongside crises in housing, health, and social services.

Commodification and Privatisation in Higher Education

Education suffered as colleges closed, university subsidies were reduced, and costs increased through measures like the merging of historically white and Black institutions. This process commodified education—transforming it from a public good aimed at social upliftment into a market-driven product for individual advancement and profit. Commodification manifests as rising tuition, cost-sharing models, and increased reliance on private funding. Universities operate more like businesses, prioritising branding, performance metrics, and efficiency at the expense of critical pedagogy and transformation.

As public funding declined, universities turned to private partnerships and donor funding, increasing inequality and financial exclusion—especially for working-class and Black students. Privatisation created opportunities for profiteering and corruption. The consequences are stark: rising school dropout rates, increasing numbers of NEETs (not in employment, education, or training), and growing student debt. Academic staff face pressure to publish and fundraise, with research often shaped by corporate interests. Technology is used as a substitute for in-person teaching, widening the digital divide. Despite rhetoric about transformation, real structural change is hampered by a narrow focus on diversity statistics and return on investment.

Movements like #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall emerged in response, demanding free, decolonised education and challenging neoliberal university practices. Although some progress was made—such as securing free education for some—investment in staffing, infrastructure, and expansion of institutions did not follow. As a result, higher education stands at a tipping point.

The Fort Hare Arson Attack: A Symbol of Crisis

The October 2025 arson attack at the University of Fort Hare, which destroyed infrastructure worth over R500 million, starkly illustrates the crisis facing higher education. Once a beacon in the struggle for African liberation, Fort Hare now symbolises decline, a result of sustained neglect and mismanagement. Efforts to address these problems have met resistance: Vice-Chancellor Sakhela Buhlungu’s anti-corruption campaigns have reportedly made him a target, highlighting the risks faced by reformers in compromised institutions.

Many student grievances—such as unsafe housing, delayed SRC elections, and exclusionary decision-making—are legitimate. However, these issues have sometimes been manipulated by corrupt networks, including those with political connections, seeking to destabilise universities for personal gain. Since 2010, at least 10 higher education institutions, mostly historically disadvantaged or merged universities, have been placed under administration due to governance failures or financial mismanagement. The Auditor-General’s 2023 report points to ongoing risks, including irregular procurement and weak financial controls. Chronic dysfunction, as described by Jonathan Jansen in his study of South African universities, stems from a lack of institutional capacity and integrity. However, these issues are not merely the result of a crisis of values or a simple lack of institutional capacity. Rather, they are the inevitable outcomes of neoliberal economic policies that prioritise the privatisation and commodification of goods and services once managed by the state for public benefit. The transformation of public assets into private commodities has undermined the foundational purpose of higher education, replacing collective advancement with individual gain and exacerbating systemic inequalities.

The destruction at Fort Hare is not only physical but ideological. When legitimate student grievances are co-opted by corrupt actors, student power is weakened, and criminal syndicates exploit education for profit. The absence of independent, democratic, and principled student organisations leaves students vulnerable to manipulation and unable to effectively challenge systemic injustice.

Schooling Crisis: Persistent Inequality and Structural Violence

Since 2021, declining funding for public schools has led to soaring learner-teacher ratios—sometimes as high as 100 to one—and inadequate classroom resources. The Department of Basic Education reports that fewer schools are able to offer essential subjects like mathematics and science, further limiting opportunities for higher education.

Quintile 5 (Model C) schools, introduced under the neo-liberal GEAR policy, were intended to offer parents and communities a greater say in school governance. In practice, this shifted the financial burden of education from the state to wealthier parents, excluding the poor majority. Today, even these schools face subsidy cuts, threatening infrastructure and increasing class sizes. Township and rural schools remain overcrowded, under-resourced, and often unsafe. Learners are alienated by the curriculum, face language barriers, and endure authoritarian discipline. Black working-class youth are especially affected, attending schools plagued by drug abuse, gender-based violence, and bullying. Despite the end of apartheid, the legacy of Bantu Education persists, preparing youth for low-wage work or unemployment rather than empowerment and advancement.

Towards a New Youth and Student Movement

Addressing these entrenched challenges requires an approach grounded in an understanding of the root causes—neoliberal capitalism—and their interconnection with the broader socio-economic crises. Drawing on both the successes and limitations of movements like #FeesMustFall, the MWP proposes a new, independent, democratic, and socialist youth and student movement. This movement must reach beyond universities to include TVET and community colleges and high schools, uniting all educational sectors.

Existing structures for learner and student participation are often weak, captured, or dysfunctional. University SRCs and Representative Councils for Learners need revival, strengthening, and reclamation. Several concrete reforms can help achieve this:

• Transparent election processes: Open, fair, and interference-free elections can restore trust. For example, some universities have implemented online voting and independent monitoring committees, boosting turnout and reducing fraud allegations.
• Regular training for members: Ongoing leadership and ethics training equips council members to serve effectively. Partnerships with NGOs or educational foundations have improved council performance and responsiveness.
• Oversight committees: Independent bodies to audit council activities and finances can prevent capture and corruption. Peer review panels and public reporting have produced greater transparency and accountability.
• Uniting education structures: SRCs and RCLs can coordinate regionally and provincially, supporting campaigns and including unemployed youth in community advocacy for NEETs.

Dysfunctional councils pose real risks. Misappropriated funds and unaddressed grievances have led to distrust and disengagement. For instance, a 2023 survey found over 60% of university students felt unrepresented by their SRC, citing lack of transparency and nepotism. This highlights the urgency of reform and the transformative potential of strong participation structures. By implementing these measures, councils can genuinely advocate for students, resist corruption, and drive positive change in education and society.

Where councils have been co-opted, a renewed campaign must connect specific issues in education to their economic causes and advance a fighting programme based on:

• Socialist principles: Education is a right, not a commodity
• Abolition of student debt
• Free education from pre-school to tertiary level
• Ending outsourcing and private funding, and eliminating corporate branding in faculties
• Permanently employing all education workers on a minimum wage of R12,500 per month with full benefits
• Taxing the rich
• Jobs for all—utilising idle manufacturing capacity
• Democratic accountability: Student leaders should answer to students, not funders or political factions
• Class struggle: Linking campus demands with broader worker and community movements for social justice
• Abolishing capitalism: Nationalising key sectors under worker control for socialist transformation
• Internationalism: Building solidarity with youth and students across Africa and globally against neo-colonialism, neo-liberalism, and capitalism

The goal is not symbolic protest, but real power—from lecture halls to picket lines. A new, unified youth and student movement must be independent, democratic, and rooted in socialist principles, reaching across all levels of education.

South Africa’s education crisis is shaped by shrinking budgets, neoliberal policies, corruption, and entrenched inequality. Burning campuses and broken schools are not inevitable—they result from policy choices and systemic neglect. By grasping the historical, economic, and ideological roots of the crisis, students and youth can build a powerful, unified movement for change. The approaching 50th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising should be marked not only with remembrance, but with renewed commitment to the struggle for quality education, equality, and socialism. The time to act is now.

Please click the link below to complete the form if you would like to help start a branch of the Marxist Youth and Student Movement at your learning institution. Let us target 16 June 2025 to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the Youth Uprising with a new youth and student movement.

Click here to access the form

The suspension of Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality Head of Traffic and Licencing, Warren Prins on trumped-up charges, is a clear indication that the municipality’s disciplinary process is abused to eliminate skilled workers and tarnish their good names.

Weizman Hamilton, Marxist Workers Party General Secretary and organiser of an international solidarity campaign to stop the unfair labour practices at the municipality, condemned the suspension.

“It is an outrage! Prins is known to have dramatically improve services at the Traffic Department since his appointment in 2016. He got rid of long queues at the service centres, established the Motherwell Traffic and Licencing Department, introduced card payments amongst others.

“The municipal workers unions should be in uproar that such an exemplary official is suspended on flimsy charges. He allegedly transgressed employment equity targets and started disciplinary proceedings against an official accused of accepting bribes from motorists.

“The official was eventually dismissed by the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality.

“We are also very concerned that the municipality investigated senior environmentalist Clyde Scott, found him not guilty and still stripped him of benefits enjoyed prior to the allegations levelled against him.

“The dismissal of human resources specialist Gayle Grootboom (in June) and municipal spokesperson Kupido Baron (in July) further completes the picture of deliberate racial targeting and an institutional campaign to eliminate competition for critical senior positions,” Weizman Hamilton said.

In September 2024, two armed men attempted to attack Warren Prins at his family home and a bullet, in a brown envelope with the initials of Prins’ deputy Eric Tiso, was found in the briefing room at the Sidwell Traffic Department.

Prins was formally suspended on Tuesday, 18 November.

For more information, call MWP General Secretary Weizman Hamilton at 081 366 7375.

South Africa is drowning in unemployment, poverty and inequality. Millions are desperate for work and services are collapsing while a narrow elite captures the spoils of public budgets and municipal contracts.

The struggle against apartheid united the overwhelming majority across the racial and ethnic boundaries consciously constructed by the white minority regime as part of the strategy of divide-and-rule to prevent solidarity in a common struggle against racial oppression and class exploitation. Today the political climate in SA is seeing the return of racism, tribalism and xenophobia. The champions of these poisonous ideas have become increasingly emboldened. They draw their inspiration from the ANC’s capitalist policies.

Enough is Enough’s establishment, sparked by the dismissals of comrades Gayle Grootboom and Kupido Baron, is aimed at drawing a line under this assault on the gains of the struggle against apartheid, to demand equal opportunities for all, and an end to racial discrimination and injustice. However, the experience of the campaign has led Enough is Enough early on to conclude that the solution to this discrimination requires a struggle for jobs for all irrespective of race. This represents an important step forward in understanding that the effect, if not the conscious intention of these government policies is to pit working class communities of different races against each other for a diminishing pool of jobs. Enough is Enough is therefore campaigning for class solidarity across the racial, ethnic apartheid walls being reconstructed.

The government’s policies have provided the basis for forces attempting to rally the victims of unemployment and poverty by exploiting the sense of racial injustice felt by particular sections who face this discrimination directly in the form that it takes – that jobs and promotional opportunities for the Black majority take precedence over those of what are now referred to as “minorities”. Yet the reality is that, per head of population, it is the very Black working class majority who, suffer the consequences of the government’s neo-liberal capitalist polices the worst in terms of mass unemployment and poverty. They are at the bottom of the social pyramid of destitution followed by Coloureds. The same social pyramid of class divisions that took on a racial form under apartheid, continues today under bourgeois democracy. The black working class majority are not “previously disadvantaged”- they continue to be so.

Parties like the Patriotic Alliance, the Coloured People’s Congress and similar formations are playing the same role in relation to Coloureds as do ActionSA, Operation Dudula, and the PA which is playing a dual role – pitting South Africans against African foreign nationals and depicting Coloureds as marginalised for the benefit of Black Africans. They advance the careers of their leaders who aim to plant their noses into the government trough for self-enrichment. They provide a cover for and distraction from the government and the capitalist class’ culpability for the rampant poverty and mass unemployment suffered by working class people of all races.

Post-apartheid SA’s constitution is supposedly the founding document aimed at achieving a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic SA. Yet these comrades’ dismissals betray every aspect of these lofty aspirations. Comrade Kupido’s dismissal was sparked by his refusal to accept his denial from even being considered for promotion into a post he had been acting in and excelled, on the racist ground that he is Coloured. Comrade Gayle’s dismissal represents a contemptuous repudiation of the constitution’s commitment to the eradication of gender discrimination and the tyranny of undemocratic practices in the workplace marked by a callous inhumanity towards her physical and mental well-being.

Comrade Gayle and Kupido’s victimisation are not isolated incidents. Anecdotal evidence is plentiful of Coloureds who apply for jobs and filling in their application forms “Black”, only to be told “But You are not Black Black.” Yet the EAA defines “Black” as “Coloured, Indian an African.” There is therefore no basis for the preferential treatment of one over the other.

But this discrimination has also taken a tribal form. The EFF recently protested publicly that if you cannot speak Tshivenda, you cannot get a job in Limpopo in which the majority is predominantly Sepedi speaking. Helen Zille’s denunciation of people from the Eastern Cape coming to the Western Cape for jobs as “refugees” is thinly veiled tribalism. She is in fact inciting the Western Cape separatism which has spawned movements openly calling for Western Cape independence. Similar sentiments are sprouting in the KZN. These are all fruits of the same poisonous tree – capitalism whose preservation was central to and the main strategic objective of the negotiated settlement at Codesa.  The elites of all the different racial groups are mobilising “their” constituencies in pursuit of their own class ambitions to get a piece of the capitalist pie at the expense of those constituencies.

The political and economic elites are showing the symptoms of recidivism – the tendency of a convicted criminal to re-offend. Their conduct has evolved into a systemic resuscitation of the very practices the struggle against apartheid was dedicated to eradicating.

What lies at the root of these developments?

The ANC came to power believing that it would be possible to eradicate the inequalities inherited from apartheid without dismantling capitalism which the aspirant black capitalist class it represents wants to be assimilated into. The main legislative instruments for what was called “transformation” were Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and the Employment Equity Act (EEA) presented as aimed at expanding “ownership” and inclusivity at the top of the economy and employment and promotional opportunities in the workplace at the bottom. The driving force for BEE was the incubation a black capitalist class that would rise to the summits of the economy to occupy a position in proportion to the demographics of the country. EEA was the instrument to break down the barriers to employment and promotional opportunities for African, Coloured and Indian – those “previously disadvantaged” by apartheid job reservation and the deliberate obstruction to the acquisition of skills under an inferior education system.  In this vision there would be both ownership and jobs for all. On the basis of capitalism, this was always utopian.

BEE has not only been a dismal failure. It has become discredited as a result of the fact that it has benefitted a connected few who have become fabulously wealthy. Ownership as the Competition Commission has reported, has become more concentrated.  The top 10% owns 84% of the country’s wealth in income and assets. Although Blacks (Coloured, Indian and African) make up just under half of the top 10%, there is only one wholly black owned company in the top 100 of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. As economist Duma Gqubule points out:

“Wits University professor William-Mervin Gumede recently said R1-trillion had been transferred to about 100 politically connected people. A quick sense check should make it obvious that this is not true. It means that the 100 individuals received an average of R10bn each, which is clearly nonsense.

I am the expert on this topic and have interviewed and met most of the founders and leaders of large BEE companies. After 31 years of democracy there is now a “super league” of about 30 companies (not individuals) that are worth more than R1bn. A handful are worth more than R10bn.”

There is no space to do justice to the latest fake news about BEE. Solidarity and the Free Market Foundation said JSE firms had achieved 30% black ownership and that R1-trillion to R2-trillion in equity had shifted since 1994. But black ownership on the JSE is not 30%.

There is a “voodoo system” of accounting for black ownership. There is no relationship between actual ownership — as reported by companies in their annual reports — and the figures that appear on their BEE certificates.

Pick n Pay has never done a BEE transaction, yet its 2025 verification certificate shows that is has black ownership of 22.2%. At the end of 2022 there was black ownership of R228bn within the top 50 companies on the JSE, which accounted for 93% of the exchange’s market capitalisation.

This was equivalent to 1.2% of the market capitalisation of the top 50 companies. After excluding the value of foreign assets of listed companies, black ownership was 5.8% of the value of SA assets. (emphasis added) (BL premium 22 July 2025)

In an attempt to resuscitate its credibility BEE, was reinvented as Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment “Triple BEE.” It’s aim was to achieve BEE’s original aim of “economic transformation” by expanding the criteria for businesses to achieve the different levels of empowerment classification. BBBEE was now broadened to specifically include women, workers, youth, people with disabilities, and those in rural areas. Its strategies, like promoting black ownership and management, skills development, equitable representation, and preferential procurement and thus portrayed as a complementary instrument to the EEA.

BEE had been thoroughly corrupted by big business through fronting that Gqubule describes as “blackwashing” and fraud that aspirant black capitalists have been only too willing to collude in.

EEA

The EEA amendments were introduced to restore its credibility after a similar failure to reduce let alone eradicate poverty and mass unemployment. The National Development Plan, chaired by Ramaphosa, stated in 2012 that for the  extreme poverty (not poverty in totality) to be eliminated and unemployment reduced (not eradicated) by 2030, the economy would have to grow at the rate of 5.6% per annum for 10 years consecutively. This in turn would require an overall investment (public and private) rate of 30% of GDP by 2030, up from 17%.

What have been the results? Annual economic growth has averaged 1% over the lifetime of the NDP. According to the SA Federation of Trade Unions, since 1994, manufacturing’s share of GDP has declined from 22% to just over 11%.  Capacity  utilisation  has  dropped  from  82%  to  around  65%.  (Statement 09/05/2025).  This means that there are millions of jobs that could be created if the other 35% were utilised.

As Duma Gqubule points out, since Ramaphosa became president:

“…there were eight out of 10 quarters of declining gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), a measure of investment before the lockdown at the end of March 2020. In February 2019 the government announced a R100bn infrastructure fund. Four years later it does not contain a cent. Despite four investment summits where pledges of R1.1-trillion were made, GFCF plunged to 13.1% of GDP in 2021 — the lowest since 1946 when the Reserve Bank started collecting statistics — from 16.4% in 2017.

From the fourth quarter of 2017 to the first quarter of 2020 the SA labour force increased by 1.8-million and the economy created 212,000 jobs. The number of unemployed people soared by 1.6-million to 10.8-million and the unemployment rate increased to 39.7% from 36.3%. The economy was collapsing before the pandemic. Since Ramaphosa became president the number of unemployed people has increased by 2.7-million to 11.9-million. The unemployment rate has increased to 43%. (emphasis added) (BL Premium 07/02/2025)

This is the background against which the abuse of the EEA amendments must be understood. For both BEE and EEA’s aims to be realised required increased investment and economic growth. But both the government and the capitalists are not investing. At Codesa, the capitalists promised to invest if corporate tax was to be reduced. The government complied and reduced it from 52% in 1993 to 27% today.

As the GFCF figures above show, they have not invested. Instead there has been capital flight of trillions over and above illicit capital flows of R400bn per annum according to Judge Dennis Davies who was appointed by SARS to investigate this theft. The top 10% of the 2 000 multinationals operating in SA are responsible for 90% of it.  Capital flight stands GFCF includes public investment. The reduction in corporate tax has led to a chronic budget deficit. The government plugs this by borrowing R2.5bn on the financial markets every single day. They pay R1,1bn a day on the interest of this debt to avoid a default. Thus 20% of the annual budget is set aside to service the debt which is the first priority before spending on anything else.

A default would be highly damaging and precipitate massive capital flight and a collapse in the value of the Rand which is already one of the most volatile currencies in the world. This in turn would require raising interest rate that would increase the indebtedness of consumers 9m of whom are already 3 months in arrears with their bond, car, retail and personal debt repayments.  It would also strangle economic activity as especially, but not only, small business would not be able to cope with repayments and therefore shut down and retrench. So the government’s “solution” is to cut spending on social services even more savagely. To make matters worse, the announcement that the inflation target will be reduced can only be achieved by increasing interest rates. This will create greater indebtedness, increased unemployment, even deeper poverty and necessitate further social spending cuts.

To make matters worse the capitalist class and their black apprentices have engaged in an orgy of looting, plunder and corruption as first the Zondo Commission revealed. The Madlanga Commission’s subsequent revelations of eye-watering corruption show this has become even more brazen.

That the EEA has become a flashpoint was thus inevitable. When mass unemployment and poverty increases, its aims are not only unrealisable; quotas are turned into the reincarnation of apartheid job reservation – a competition for a diminishing number of jobs and promotional opportunities that can only result in bitterness and animosity. EEA is weaponised to achieve multiple purposes: to conceal the reality of the overall failure of the government’s macro-economic policies, to turn the working class against each other by converting EEA into tools for division and to enrich a tiny elite. “Redress” in the form of BEE and the EEA has been an unmitigated failure both at the top and bottom of society.

The problem lies in SA’s crisis-ridden capitalist economy – the preservation of which was the strategic aim of the negotiate settlement at Codesa. At the best of times, capitalism is incapable of providing permanent jobs, decent wages and conditions for all. The ANC’s 1994 election slogan: “jobs for all” was always an impossible goal. The neo-liberal model of capitalism that the apartheid regime began in the 1980s, the Normative Economic Policy, was continued and rebranded as the Growth Employment and Redistribution (Gear) policy and imposed by the ANC leadership on both the party and the country, turned that promise into it opposite. Gear is a programme to privatise state owned enterprises, outsource public services, reduce corporate taxes and cut social spending.

The result has been an economy that has failed to keep pace with a growing population and the increased need for social services. This has led to job losses, stagnant wages and a deterioration in social services.  Superimposed on the “jobs for all” promise that could never be fulfilled, has been the ANC’s commitment to its historical mission – the creation of the “prosperous non-European bourgeoisie” as Mandela pointed out in his 1956 article, “In our Lifetime” – a rich black capitalist class.

Today the World Bank has classified SA as the most unequal society on the planet. The top 10% owns 84% of the wealth in income and assets. The bottom 50% have negative wealth because of debt.  Although amongst the wealthy, Coloureds, Indians and Africans make up just under half of the top 10%, the widest disparities in the distribution of wealth are no longer between white and black but within the black African population itself, followed closely behind by inequalities amongst Coloureds.

The fact that the GNU has now revised its economic growth ambitions downwards to 3% – a target that many capitalist economists themselves regard as unattainable – is a confession that poverty and mass unemployment is here to stay.

Numerical targets already applied without transparency or accountability can only become instruments of division – attempting to empty the sea of mass unemployment and poverty one teaspoon at a time while the rivers of capitalism continue to pour out into the sea. The protection of workers’ rights, stoking divisions amongst them, managerial and political practices that substitute patronage for merit – are all inevitable.

Dignified  employment for all requires the demands for fair employment practices for all combined with a broader campaign for the restoration of municipal service delivery capacity, through ending privatisation and outsourcing and the abolition of BEE and the EEA. The abuse of these allegedly transformation instruments ultimately stem from budget cuts that lie at the heart of national government’s macro-economic policies. The demands that follow are the practical compass for a class‑based, inclusive politics that rejects both scapegoating and managerial manipulation.

The DA of course opposes BEE and the EEA. But they do so from the standpoint of capitalism. For them these measures interfere with the “free market” whose “invisible hand” ensures greater economic efficiency, creates more jobs and ensures economic growth. The same DA, however, opposes a minimum wage, proposes that the unemployed be given vouchers, opposes strikes for higher wages and better conditions. By the logic of their argument under apartheid when black workers in particular did not have the right to form unions and strike there should have been full employment and prosperity for all

BEE quotas themselves limit share ownership to the “previously disadvantaged” to 30%. That means the top 10% should keep 70% whilst 30% is left for the bottom 90% even without considering the status, quality and legitimacy of the shares owned by the 30%. This is self-evidently not a formula for equality. Objective reality exposes the idea that there can be both equal share ownership and equality of employment under capitalism as a fantasy. Capitalists have historically introduced share ownership schemes to discourage workers from demanding higher wages, to discourage strikes and to weaken unions by giving them a stake in the company and the capitalist economy.

Equality of ownership requires the abolition of private ownership. Since private ownership is the cornerstone of capitalism, it requires the abolition of capitalism.  Mining industry bosses have screamed blue murder because the  “previously disadvantaged” shareholders sell their shares as soon as market prices go up to make a profit. This brings their BEE score cards below 30%. So they argue that the rule that should apply to the mining industry is ”once empowered, always empowered”. But that goes against free market” do as you please” principles. The DA, moreover, was the main driver along with business behind the amendments to the LRA that amount to the most serious assault on worker rights.

We argue for the abolition of BEE and the EEA from the standpoint of the working class. They entrench inequalities whilst pretending to do the opposite, do not prevent the normal workings of the capitalist system that requires driving down wages to increase profits, and leads to greater concentration and monopolies from competition itself. These contradictions are inherent to capitalism. Equality of ownership can only be achieved on the basis of collective ownership of the economy by society as a whole – i.e socialism. Production and distribution will be organised democratically for the satisfaction of social need not private profit. The surplus produced by the labour of all be owned by society as a whole and inequalities abolished. Our struggle is based on achieving that objective.

• BEE and EEA must be abolished. They have a proven track record of failure and are used to deceive and divide the working class by promoting the fiction that there are enough jobs for all but that all that is needed is to be allocated on a racially proportionally equitable basis. The only “equity” that BEE and EEA have achieved is in respect of unemployment and poverty. The distribution of destitution reflects the demographics of the country – Black Africans at the bottom, followed by Coloured Indians and Whites
• However, in the meantime all appointment must be transparent and accountable. All public sector and municipal appointments must have published shortlists, clear selection criteria and independent oversight. Contested appointments should be reviewable by independent panels with trade union oversight. Transparency removes the cloak that allows EEA compliance to become a cover for patronage.
• Fill vacancies as a binding obligation. Municipal services collapse has resulted in hundreds or thousands of posts remaining vacant. Filling these posts reduces destructive overtime abuse, cuts dependence on profit-driven contractors who themselves undermine worker rights under the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and the LRA. It would restore the capacity of local government to deliver essential services that underpin local economies under democratic oversight of communities.
• End exploitative cheap labour schemes like EPWP. For permanent, collectively‑bargained positions with living wages and full labour protection.
• Protect and restore collective bargaining. Exemptions from collective agreements under the pretext of “affordability” must be rejected. Collective bargaining is not a ceremonial ritual; it is a fundamental mechanism to secure decent wages and conditions and dignity for working people.
• For independent investigations with trade union representation into discriminatory labour practices. Independent committees must be empowered to examine dismissals, appointments, overtime practices and procurement processes for evidence of collusion or discrimination. Findings must be public and enforceable.
• Affirmative action measures must be based on special programmes for the provision of skills, recognition of prior learning to eliminate the advantages and social capital whites enjoyed under apartheid. This will ensure that those advantages are eliminated and enable all who compete for positions do so on an equal footing.
• The reintroduction of apprenticeships, combined with the abolition of outsourcing and privatisation will increase the capacity of the state along with expanding the number of jobs and permanent employment.
• Reinvigorate equality institutions. Equality courts, the SA Human Rights Commission and other mechanisms must be properly resourced, given powers of compliance enforcement to resolve discrimination.

We must build a campaign that unites workers across racial lines while holding managers and political elites to account. Campaign messaging must centre jobs, dignity and accountability. The movement must expose practices of collusion and patronage.

We must avoid the twin dangers of insensitivity to a sense of racial discrimination and the conversion of legitimate grievances into campaigns for neoliberal racialised “solutions” — lower wages, weaker protections and vouchers for the unemployed. We must do this by patiently addressing any misperceptions using facts, figures and argument that show that irrespective of race, the working class as a whole have much more in common with each other across racial boundaries than they have with the elites seeking to politically exploit them within racial laagers. Both paths lead to reactionary mobilisation on a racial basis lead away from collective emancipation.

Our strategy must be unapologetically class‑based. It must insist that employers, political parties and managers stop using “transformation” to keep things the same – a cover for casualisation and patronage. We must demand the state uses procurement, budgets and hiring to create secure, well‑paid employment as the only way to redress historical inequalities.

Enough is Enough requires militant demands for the filling of existing vacancies and the creation of new positions commensurate with the requirements of decent service delivery for all. No appointments without trade union oversight to ensure transparency, permanent decent work, and restored bargaining rights. It requires a movement that refuses to be divided along the lines that elites and reactionary actors use to protect their privilege.

Jobs for all is not just a slogan; it is a political program. It places before the working class the wider task of the socialist transformation of society as a whole. This is only possible on the basis of working class unity in struggle in communities, in the education sector, in all workplaces united within each other in a United Socialist Civic Federation, a Marxist Youth and Student Movement, a Socialist Womens Movement, a Socialist Trade Union Confederation united across all these separate theatres of struggle under a mass workers party on a socialist programme.

 

Trade unionist and soldier of the working class with a lifelong commitment to socialism

We express our deepest condolences to his wife, Suzanne, his former wife Trish, his children, his family as a whole, including his brothers Crispin and Jonathan. Suzanne and his stepdaughter Soraya supported him with unstinting dedication on his last journey after his illness compelled him to return from the US.

The flood of tributes from across the world are eloquent testimony to the mark he has made on activists in the working class struggle at home and in every country he set foot in – Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Israel/Palestine, India, Britain and the US amongst others. As so many tributes testify, he became part of the trade union and workers struggles everywhere he found himself.

Dave cut his political teeth in the struggle of the working class against cheap labour, exploitation and oppression in Natal (today’s KwaZulu-Natal) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Before that he was involved in student politics and the National Union of South African Students.  At the then University of Natal, he served on the Students’ Representative Council and edited the student newspaper, Dome. He thereafter “graduated” into the workers struggle, exposing the exploitative conditions British companies subjected workers to in SA, going on to be part of establishing the Wages Commission in 1971. His activism connected him with others who made a significant contribution to the struggle of the black working class like Rick Turner and Steve Biko. Both were subsequently murdered by the SA police, the latter after prolonged torture revealing in full the barbarism of the apartheid regime.

Arguably his most important contribution then was his role in the re-building of the trade unions in that period in the face of state repression. That “kragdadigheid” had endured since the apartheid regime’s declaration of a state of emergency in 1960 to end the struggles of the 1950s including the Defiance Campaign. It led to the banning of the African National Congress (ANC), Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), and the life and death sentences imposed on political and trade union leaders.

Dave thrust himself into the midst of the stormy events that marked the reawakening of the workers’ movement and broke the regime’s aura of omnipotence. It not only restored the self-confidence of the working class but boosted that of the entire black population in their struggle for national liberation. In the slipstream of the winds of the 1973 strikes, the working class student revolt followed in 1976. Beginning in Soweto it became a nationwide uprising. The leap in consciousness turned the struggle onto the political plane. The United Democratic Front (UDF) was launched in 1983. The confluence of the workers and youth movement sparked the 1984-86 uprising. Most decisively, the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) was born in 1985 amidst the intensified repression of the partial state of emergency imposed in May 1985. On the banner of Cosatu’s 1987 congress were inscribed the words: “Socialism means Freedom”. Less than ten years later the apartheid regime was defeated in the first democratic elections.

There is no better account of the Durban 1973 strikes than the one written by Dave himself in an article published by Congress Militant, the paper of the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the ANC (CWI South Africa) in 1990. The 1973 Strike Wave: How We Rebuilt the Unions. He described not only the mountainous challenges they faced and how these were overcome. It is an incomparable account of a participant, armed with a mature understanding of the power of the analysis of Marxism to which that struggle had drawn him. He describes the leading role of the working class in process of the breaking down of the racist barriers the apartheid regime had erected, the lesser known role of women, including the highly repressed Indian women, as class unity was forged. He also reveals the role of Gatsha Buthelezi in an early dress rehearsal of the barbaric counter-revolutionary role he was to play and in the 1980s and 1990s.

In this tribute we believe it necessary to give Dave his voice that death has deprived us of. Let it reverberate for the present generation to learn its rich lessons. About 1973 he wrote:

“There were tremendous difficulties in building the unions: a complete lack of experience, few organising skills among the workers, the implacable hostility of the bosses, and the police watching like hawks. There was a desperate urgency to train shop stewards and union leaders. There were no dormant Sactu cadres who could be called on to play a key role. Most union leaders then were victimised activists who often had only two to three years education. The factory activists were not recognised shop stewards as in British unions, for example – they had to work secretly. There were no handbooks on how this should be done!”

He recounts the savage attack on an Indian women activist disfigured by acid thrown in her face.
Slapped with a banning order, constant surveillance and persecution he went into exile in March 1974. Armed with the experience and above all the conclusions he had drawn from the struggle he was to join with other comrades from the workers struggle in SA, the struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, and Trotskyists from the African Peoples Democratic Union of SA and the Black Consciousness Movement to form the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC.

The MWT of the ANC immersed itself in the struggle of the British working class collaborating with Militant, the British CWI affiliate and today the Socialist Party of England & Wales. The MWT campaigned against apartheid and for solidarity by the British and international workers movement for the emerging independent trade unions under the banner “Direct Links.” The exiled SA Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu) denounced this under the front page headline of its organ Workers Unity: “Direct Links Stink”. At that time, Sactu, unlike the MWT, held that only yellow, stooge fake trade unions could be built in Apartheid SA, a position which the 1980s growth of unions an Cosatu’s formation in 1985 utterly disproved.

The most shocking disdain for the working class was then Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement leader Kader Asmal’s pressure on the heroic Dunnes Stores strike in Ireland after refusing management’s demand to handle SA goods, to call off the strike. As recounted by strike leader Mary Manning in her memoir: Striking Back: The Untold Story of an Anti-Apartheid Striker, Kader Asmal denounced the workers’ nearly three-year strike – an act of strike breaking. They were supported throughout by MWT member Nimrod Sejake, who had shared a cell with Nelson Mandela and who appears on the cover of Sactu’s official history: “Organise … or Starve”. The strike led to the Irish government being the first in Western Europe to impose sanctions on apartheid SA.

Dave contributed to the production of campaigning material like the video: “We Live Like Dogs” on the exploitation of mineworkers; the bringing over of activists from SA and Zimbabwe to the UK through the Southern African Labour Education Project and the production of a political education pack for mineworkers by agreement with the National Union of Mineworkers: “Sifuna Konke”.

Under the CWI’s guidance, the MWT oriented towards the ANC based on the perspective that the masses would look to it for unity in the struggle to overthrow apartheid. This would entail a struggle against the ANC leadership’s capitalist policies and those of the SA Communist Party. The SACP played the role of a Stalinist tendency that provided the ideological cover for the ANC leadership’s capitalist policies in the form of its two-stage theory – (bourgeois) democracy now and socialism in the indefinite future, the results of which we see in SA today.

Alongside Paula Ensor, Martin Legassick and Robert Petersen, David was deployed to the ANC where they served on the editorial board of Workers Unity, the organ of the exiled SA Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu). For putting forward Marxist ideas, and for criticising the secret talks between the ANC leadership and Gatsha Buthelezi, the ANC unconstitutionally suspended them followed by expulsion in 1985 without a hearing at a special congress in Zambia. Ironically, at the same congress O.R. Tambo admitted the ANC leadership had colluded with Buthelezi – as the blood of the pro-ANC activists, UDF, trade unionists and youth had begun to flow in Natal at the hands of Inkatha death squads armed and protected by the apartheid regime’s army and police that was to claim up to 14,000 lives by the mid-1990s.

After this Dave was to locate to Zimbabwe where he put his socialist internationalism into practice together with fellow MWT members, D’Arcy Du Toit, and their respective partners, his then wife Trish, whom he had met and married there, and Annecke Poppe. Tasked with building a section of the CWI, comrade Dave played a leading role in campaigning for socialism in Zimbabwe and establishing the Campaign for Democratic Gemwu, the metal and engineering union, that led to his arrest without charge and imprisonment and later deportation along with his fellow comrades and their families to the UK.
In a draft of an article forwarded to the MWP for comment in 2019, Dave wrote of this experience in Zimbabwe:

“He (Mugabe) was no friend of the left. He displaced trade unions from negotiations to set minimum wages. Then in February 1985 he ordered the arrest of (14) ZANU(PF) and trade union leaders in Harare and the Midlands who were campaigning for uncompromised union leadership and a radical program of democratic socialism on land, jobs and wages. These comrades were tortured and their children excluded from schools. When the British miners’ strike came to an end early in March 1985 the interrogators crowed: “Your friends have been defeated and you’re on your own”. They threatened to deport detained South Africans to Pretoria prisons. Only after Militant Labour Party MP David Nellist spearheaded an international campaign, were all these comrades released from police cells and Chikurubi Maximum Security on Independence Day, 18 April 1985.”

Dave produced a brilliant analysis of the political situation in Zimbabwe published in a special issue of the MWT of the ANC quarterly journal Inqaba Ya Basebenzi on whose editorial board he served: “Zimbabwe Perspectives” (No. 8 – 22nd December 1986). Regrettably, Dave and other comrades broke from the MWT and the CWI in 1999 during the period of a discussion over a need for a reorientation from the ANC following its imposition in 1996 of the neo-liberal Growth Employment and Redistribution policy. We believe this was a mistake resulting from the ideological disorientation of the left worldwide following the collapse of Stalinism, and the questioning of the Bolshevik methods of building a revolutionary Marxist cadre party.

His faith in the working class and socialism, steeled by his personal experience first at home before exile, and reinforced from international activism afterwards, remained undimmed, however. The same question he said had evaded the activists he had struggled with in SA in the 70s: how to build the instrument for workers unity and socialism, temporarily disoriented him.

But only those who do nothing do not make mistakes. He continued to organise solidarity for the striking workers as in the Clover strike and engaged the leadership of the General Industries Workers of SA (Giwusa). He organised a delegation of dock workers from the USA to participate in the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of 1973 Durban strikes.

From his close observation of events in SA, he recognised in time that the analysis of those who remained in the CWI’s SA section, first as the Democratic Socialist Movement, then the Workers and Socialist Party, and from 2019 the MWP, were confirmed by events. By the late 2000s Dave, for whom political differences never degenerated into personal acrimony, began to seek out comrades in the MWP with the generosity and modesty that has marked his personal and political character. This led to regular telephonic discussions whilst he was in the US, exchanges of documents and collaboration in defending the original ideas of the MWT of the ANC from assault from our detractors and the class enemy. He responded with indignation over the MWT’s despicable political assassination comparing it the ANC’s corrupt Radical Economic Transformation faction in the pages of the now defunct City Press with a letter to the editor. His denunciations of the eulogies by the ANC and EFF leadership towards Mugabe and Buthelezi were full throated. He was deeply disappointed by those who had betrayed the working class and socialist cause, crossing the class barricades. This only strengthened his commitment.
In Dave’s own words:

“Listening to some of the tributes to the belatedly dead former president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, over the past fortnight, one could have sworn that Pope Francis’ recent visit to southern Africa was organised to check on the man’s credentials for beatification. In South Africa, we had everyone from Julius Malema to President Cyril Ramaphosa turning history and reality upside down as they tried to portray Mugabe as an unblemished champion of the rights of African people. But it was former president Thabo Mbeki who took the cake when he spoke in Durban last week.

To Mbeki, Mugabe “was a great patriot, a defender of Africa’s independence, a defender of Africa’s interests. To Mbeki, the man who oversaw the slaughter of more than 20,000 people in Matabeleland in the 1980s and visited misery on the Zimbabwean population during the last 20 years of his rule “was very brave”.

As these engagements, including in-person meetings during his visits to SA, progressed, Dave came to recognise that the MWP’s strategic goal of building a mass workers party on a socialist programme was a continuation of what he had fought for in the MWT days. He made an appreciable financial contribution to the MWP fighting fund. In his last email from the US on 7th May, 2025 Dave confirmed that he was going to arrange for the MWP to address an online meeting of International Workers International Network and SA comrades on socialism and the struggle for a mass worker party. Unfortunately, his illness meant this did not materialise.

The MWP recognises this contribution by a stalwart of the working class struggle for socialism as worthy example to follow. As he would expect us to, we rededicate ourselves to the struggle he devoted his life to. “Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we’ll keep the red flag flying here.” (The Red Flag)

The fragmentation of struggles—whether in education, labour, gender justice, or community resistance—has allowed the capitalist state to isolate and suppress dissent. The working class must respond with unity, clarity, and organisation. The formation of sectoral movements is not merely a tactical necessity; it is a strategic imperative for building a mass workers’ party rooted in Marxist principles.

This party must be democratic, militant, and uncompromising in its opposition to capitalism. It must reject the reformist illusions peddled by the ruling elite and their allies in the trade union bureaucracy. It must be built from below, through the active participation of workers, youth, women, and communities in struggle. A socialist programme must unite youth struggles with those of workers, women, and communities. Only through mass organisation—under the banner of a Marxist Youth and Student Movement and a broader workers’ party—can youth reclaim their future and transform society.

The Role of Youth and Students

The youth must reclaim the revolutionary legacy of 1976—not as a nostalgic symbol, but as a living, breathing force for change. The Marxist Youth and Student Movement (MYSM) must be the spearhead of this transformation, linking arms with youth across Africa and the globe. The global nature of capitalism’s crisis demands international solidarity and coordinated struggle.

Youth must be the ideological vanguard, raising consciousness, organising in schools, colleges and universities, confronting the commodification of education. They must reject the false promises of upward mobility through elite schooling and instead fight for a system that serves the collective needs of society.

The Urgent Need for Political Organisation

This generation is not apathetic—they are abandoned. Their suffering is not inevitable; it is the product of a capitalist system in decay. What is missing is a credible political movement that speaks to their conditions and offers a path forward.

A Mass Workers Party (MWP) must be the political home of all these movements. It must be rooted in the lived experiences of the working class and be guided by a revolutionary socialist programme. It must reject the capitalist logic of profit over people and build a society based on human need, equality, and democratic control of resources.

This is not a distant dream—it is a necessity. The crisis of capitalism is deepening. The working class is being pushed to the brink. The time to organise is now.

The crisis of capitalism is global. So must be our resistance. The youth must be the light cavalry—swift, bold, and uncompromising—clearing the path for the heavy battalions of the working class. Together, we can overthrow capitalism and build a socialist society where every young person has the right to learn, to work, to live, and to dream.

Meanwhile, the private sector hoards profits, engages in illicit capital flows, and refuses to invest in job creation. The result is a stagnant economy, unable to absorb new entrants into the labour market. The government’s response—cheap labour schemes like the Expanded Public Works Programme—has failed to eradicate mass unemployment. These schemes offer no long-term prospects, no benefits, and no dignity. Unemployment can only be overcome through job creation. Poverty can only be defeated through decent wages. South Africa’s wealth must be redirected toward productive use by:

• 💰 Halting illicit capital outflows
• 🏦 Enforcing compulsory investment in job creation
• 📈 Raising corporate taxes

But these social aims collide with capitalism’s foundation: private profit. To align production with social need, the commanding heights of the economy must be collectively owned. A centralised, democratically planned economy is essential. This requires the abolition of capitalism and the creation of a democratic socialist society.

🔧 The Need for Systemic Change

The crisis of youth unemployment cannot be solved through piecemeal reforms or short-term interventions. It demands a radical restructuring of society—one that prioritises human development over profit. This means:

• Free, decolonised, and quality education for all
• Guaranteed placement in universities and TVET colleges for all qualifying students
• A public employment programme that offers dignified work at a living wage
• The nationalisation of key industries to create jobs and redirect profits toward social needs
• The abolition of class apartheid in hiring practices and workplace access

Young people must be at the forefront of this struggle. Their energy, creativity, and anger must be channelled into building a revolutionary movement that challenges the foundations of capitalist exploitation. The formation of a Marxist Youth and Students Movement is not just a strategic necessity—it is a moral imperative.

The Future Is Ours to Build

The formation of a Marxist Youth and Student Movement must go beyond reactive protest. It must develop a coherent programme that links immediate youth and student demands to the broader struggle for socialist transformation. This means confronting the structural conditions produced by neoliberal capitalism: mass youth unemployment, the commodification of education, the crisis in schooling, the erosion of academic labour, and the deepening inequalities that shape access, curriculum, and campus life.

Organise or Perish: The Socialist Alternative

The crisis of youth unemployment, mental health, and social exclusion demands more than policy tweaks—it demands systemic change. The youth must rise not as passive victims of capitalism’s decay, but as active agents of transformation. The capitalist system offers no future. The youth must build one.

The answer lies in organisation—militant, democratic, and rooted in socialist principles. must unify youth across schools, universities, townships, and rural areas, linking their struggles to those of workers, women, and communities.

Youth Demands of the MYSM

🛠️ Fight for a living wage R20 000 per month for all full-time workers backed-up by a rigorous regime of workplace inspections under the democratic control of workers’ representatives. Nationalise non-complying big business; based on proven unaffordability, subsidies and tax relief to small and family businesses adequate for the minimum wage to be paid.

✊Demand job creation through a mass programme of public investment in services and infrastructure and democratic planning.

• 🛠️ Fight for a living wage of R20 000 per month for all full-time workers, enforced through democratic workplace inspections and the nationalisation of big businesses that refuse to comply.
• ✊ Demand massive public investment in job creation in services, infrastructure through democratic economic planning to guarantee quality jobs.
• 🗳️ Demand democratic control over hiring and firing, and redesign shift patterns to distribute work fairly among both workers and the unemployed.
• 🚫 Abolish exploitative labour laws, ban labour broking and outsourcing, and transition all EPWP workers into permanent, dignified employment.
• 🛑 Fight all retrenchments and closures with workplace occupations and nationalisation under workers’ control.
• 🤝 Organise the chronically unemployed into active branches led by the trade union movement, maintaining transparent skill registers for fair job allocation.
• 🔗 Uphold permanent union membership and full democratic rights for retrenched workers—once a member, always a member.
• 💼 Expose the bosses’ lies by demanding open business finances; workers’ representatives must scrutinise company accounts, rebutting claims of “unaffordability.”
• 🧠 Address mental health by building support networks, challenging stigma, and demanding comprehensive, state-funded mental health services and accessible drug rehabilitation linked to jobs and community reintegration.
• 🏘️ Resist “waithood” by organising for housing, income support, and social services that empower youth to transition to adulthood with dignity.
• 📚 Fight for free, quality education: Demand the expansion of public universities and TVET colleges, end financial exclusions, and abolish NSFAS delays.

Building the Marxist Youth and Student Movement

A national Marxist Youth and Student Movement must be built to coordinate these struggles, provide political education, and develop leadership rooted in working-class communities. It must reject co-option into ruling party structures and instead align itself with independent worker organisations, community movements, and women’s and feminist collectives committed to systemic change.

The first step is to unify campus-based struggles—against fee exclusions, accommodation shortages, academic precarity, and curriculum alienation—into a single national programme. This programme must be democratically developed and collectively owned by students, not imposed by party-aligned structures or external consultants.

Such a movement must reject the narrow confines of identity politics when divorced from material analysis. The decolonisation demand must be re-rooted in the lived realities of neo-colonial exploitation, racialised and gendered oppression, and class domination. It must expose how these intersect within the education system and society at large.

The MYSM must not stand alone. It must be part of a broader socialist front—united with a Socialist Civic Federation, a Socialist Women’s Movement, and a Confederation of Socialist Trade Unions. Together, these formations must build the Mass Workers Party (MWP) on a revolutionary socialist programme.

Student Mobilisation and Democratic Accountability

Students must reclaim their institutions. The Student Representative Councils (SRCs), which are embedded in university governance structures, must be transformed from passive intermediaries into militant organs of accountability. Many SRCs have been co-opted, implicated in corruption, and disconnected from the real struggles of students. This must change.

Strategic Demands for Youth and Students at Universities

• 🏫 Expand the number of public universities to meet growing demand.
• 👩‍🏫 Hire more and retain qualified academic and administrative staff with fair wages and benefits
• 👩‍🏫 Fair wages, secure employment, and professional development for academic and administrative staff.
• 🏫 Expand public sector employment to absorb graduates and trainees
• 🧭 Demand full transparency in university budgets, staffing decisions, and infrastructure planning.
• 🛡️ Campaign for safe campuses, with zero tolerance for sexual harassment and gender-based violence.
• 📢 Expose and resist the commodification of education and the erosion of academic freedom.
• 🔗 Build alliances with workers, academics, and communities to democratise university governance.
• 🧑‍🎓 Reclaim the SRCs as platforms for radical student representation, rooted in socialist principles.

This mobilisation must go beyond campus boundaries. It must link the crisis in higher education to the broader collapse of public services under neoliberal capitalism. The struggle for decent education is inseparable from the struggle for decent housing, healthcare, transport, and work.

Strategic Demands for Youth and Students in TVET and Community Colleges

Education must no longer be a privilege or a stepping stone to elite assimilation. It must become a tool of collective empowerment, rooted in the needs of the working class and directed toward the building of a socialist society.

Special attention must be given to rural youth, who are four times more likely to participate in public employment schemes than their urban counterparts. Community Colleges must be prioritised in these areas, not as charity, but as a right.

The Marxist Youth and Student Movement must also champion the transformation of post-school education itself. To reclaim vocational education as a legitimate and empowering pathway, youth and students must organise around clear, radical demands:

• 💰 Double the budget allocation for TVET and Community Colleges to match university funding.
• 🏫 Expand the number of public TVET colleges to meet growing demand.
• 👩‍🏫 Hire and retain qualified academic and administrative staff with fair wages and benefits
• 💰 Increase per-student funding and reverse subsidy cuts.
• 🏫 Expand the number of post-school institutions, especially in rural and working-class areas.
• 🔗 Integrate SETA programmes into public colleges and universities, ensuring learnerships lead to decent, permanent jobs.
• ❌ Abolish exploitative cheap labour schemes like the Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP).
• 🧑‍🏫 Fill vacancies and invest in qualified, full-time lecturers and support staff.
• 🛠️ Rebuild the credibility of vocational education through curriculum reform, infrastructure investment, and public campaigns.
• 🏗️ Align with public works programmes by offering education and training that transitions youth into permanent employment in both the public and private sectors.
• 🧭 Serve as “one-stop shops” for accessible learning, especially in rural and underserved areas.
• 🔗 Link formal and non-formal education to community needs, including agricultural skills, artisanal trades, and cooperative development.
• 📚 Curricula that serve social needs, promote critical thinking, and reflect the lived realities of students.
• 🧠 Integration of education with lifelong learning, civic engagement, and democratic participation
• 🌱Prioritise rural development through education hubs and community colleges that serve local needs

🔴 MYSM Demands for Schooling and ECD

Structural Barriers

• 🏚️ Many schools lack basic infrastructure: libraries, laboratories, sport facilities, sanitation, and internet access
• 🔤 Half of Grade 1 learners do not know all the letters of the alphabet
• 📚 81% of Grade 4 learners cannot read for meaning in any language.

• ❌🔢 Numeracy outcomes mirror literacy: learners lack basic number sense, operations, and problem-solving foundations.

• 📉 STEM subjects are poorly taught or not offered at all—especially in no-fee schools
• 📊 Pressure to improve matric pass rates leads to learners being encouraged to drop Maths and Science in Grade 10
• 🧑‍🦽 Inclusive education is underfunded and poorly implemented, leaving learners with disabilities behind
• 🔄 Annual disruptions due to delays in school registration, textbooks and stationary delivery and in awarding of contracts for transport and school feeding schemes affect continuity and morale
• 📉 Education expenditure per pupil has declined from R20,000 in 2009 to R16,500 in 2021, with projections dropping to R14,000 over the next three years.

A socialist programme must demand:

• 🏫 Guaranteed universal access to well-resourced, community-based schools
• 📚 Free, quality education with trained teachers and inclusive curricula
• 🧑‍🏫 End outsourcing and corruption through public ownership and accountability
• 🧠 Integrate education with social support—nutrition, transport, mental health, and safety
• 🏗️ Investment in infrastructure to meet and exceed minimum standards especially in rural and township schools
• 🧱Enforced compliance with the Norms and Standards for Infrastructure in schools
• 📚 Universal access to well-taught STEM subjects, with support for learners and teachers
• 🧑‍🏫 Massive recruitment of qualified teachers to attain a ratio of twenty learners per teacher over the next five years with improved pay and working conditions and continuing professional development for teachers
• 📚 Guaranteed every child in South Africa the right to read and count by ensuring universal access to structured, mother-tongue literacy and numeracy programmes in the early grades — with trained teachers, coaching support, books and learning materials in every classroom, and clear public targets for Grade 3 reading and numeracy.
• 🧠 Curriculum reform to promote critical thinking, civic engagement, and practical life skills
• ♿ Full implementation of inclusive education, with dedicated funding and trained support staff.

🧸 2. Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE)

The foundation for learning, care, and survival for working-class children must not be left to the market or household burdens.

• Universal access to free, quality ECD for all children from birth to 6 years old.
• Expand state-funded early learning centres in every working-class community.
• Train and hire ECD practitioners as public servants with decent wages and permanent jobs.
• End reliance on unpaid or underpaid care work, often done by women; recognise and socialise care as public responsibility.
• Publicly funded feeding, healthcare and early stimulation at ECD centres.
• Include ECD centres in all education budgets—not as welfare or NGO work but core state responsibility.

To access the final youth and student platform click on the link below:

Final Youth and Student Platform

The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality (NMB) this year dismissed Senior Work Study Practitioner, Gayle Grootboom, and Municipal Media Liaison Officer, (municipal spokesperson), Kupido Baron on trumped up charges of gross insubordination. They had served NMB for respectively 27 and 20 years of commendable service with spotless disciplinary records. Their dismissals were the culmination of ordeals spanning years of bullying, harassment, unfair labour practices and racial discrimination. With all internal processes now exhausted, the comrades have now appealed to the SA Local Government Bargaining Council which has jurisdiction over workers below senior management level.

The NMB’s conduct is an egregious example of the ANC’s abandonment the aims of the struggle against apartheid including worker rights and non-racial equality. Shockingly, in its persecution of these comrades, it has drawn from the cesspool of apartheid racism.

The MWP calls for their immediate reinstatement. We appeal to all trade unions, socialists and activists in SA and worldwide to support this demand and to write to the employer condemning their actions. Please send all letters to the officials at the email addresses provided below. 

Comrade Kupido’s victimisation:

• Comrade Kupido was suspended without charge to remove him from responsibility for management of the communications budget during Covid. His suspension was lifted without ever having been charged after the budget process was completed in his absence.
• He was subsequently excluded, along with other internal candidates, from applying for an advertised post, Communications Director, one level immediately above his.
• He was advised in writing that whilst he had the requisite qualifications and experience, as a Coloured, he did not meet Employment Equity Act requirements. The post was for Black people only. He had been registered Coloured by the apartheid regime.
• Lodged a grievance, along with others in the Media Office against the newly appointed Communications Director, Sithembiso Soyaya, over this unilateral change to their conditions of employment.
• The grievance was never heard. Instead, the newly appointed Communications Director responded to the grievance by initiating disciplinary action. This is prohibited by the Labour Relations Act’s Code of Good Practice (LRA Code).
• In further contravention of the LRA, no independent person was appointed to preside over the hearing. 
• The Presiding Officer signed off the guilty finding before comrade Kupido’s SA Municipal Workers Union representative had submitted a plea in mitigation. 

Comrade Gayle’s persecutio:

From October 2022 to November 2023

• After a prolonged period of victimisation including prevented from performing her duties, her doctor diagnosed her as suffering from depression. The doctor forwarded his medical report to management.
• Comrade Gayle submitted an application for transfer on medical grounds supported by her doctor’s written recommendation.
• In flagrant contravention of the transfer policy of her department, Corporate Services, management rejects her application. Corporate Services is the custodian of the transfer policy that specifically provides for transfer on medical grounds. Her supervisor, Mr Nameka, declared the doctor’s recommendation “null and void,” and demanded a psychiatrist’s report. No such provision exists in the transfer policy. Her psychiatrist’s report was nonetheless ignored. Her victimisation continued. 

• From November 2023 to June 2024
  • Comrade Gayle suffered a heart attack from the persecution.
  • Whilst on sick leave management unilaterally went through the motions of initiating her transfer request
  • Management conceded to the transfer, confirmed it to her union the SA Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) but subsequently denied there had been a meeting.
  • Received a “Notice of Counselling” over attendance and sick leave, despite documented heart attack and specialist reports.
  • This was followed by notification of “Potential Disciplinary Action” for “insolence” for voicing frustration at management’s cat and mouse tactics.
• From July to November 2024
• Suffered relapse in health twice, in July and For both, her doctor diagnosed workplace-induced stress related and booked her off.
• During second relapse comrade Gayle lodged a grievance citing failures to apply transfer policy, victimisation, exclusion, threats of disciplinary action, inconsistent transfer practices and abuse of process. She is promised feedback by 22 November.
• After returning from sick leave, she was charged with insolence, gross insubordination and absence without leave. She is given a disciplinary hearing notice but no feedback on her grievance.
• From January to June 2025
• June 11, after several disciplinary hearings sittings, she is dismissed.

The NMB municipality’s attitude towards its own internal disciplinary processes and the Labour Relations Act’s Code of Good Practice (LRA Code) can only be described as complete contempt. NMB has violated these comrades basic labour rights including to a fair hearing. This blatantly contravenes its own internal disciplinary policy as well as the LRA Code. The NMB is acting in line with the bosses and government’s attacks on the LRA Code.

The NMB’s use of race quotas as a weapon of discrimination, victimisation and persecution, mimics apartheid racist practices. It constitutes the most disgraceful betrayal of the anti-racist principles of the struggle against apartheid that inspired solidarity worldwide. We are outraged that a government elected democratically by all, has resurrected the disregard for basic human rights and even the racist methods of the universally hated apartheid regime. This is a betrayal firstly and foremostly of the struggle of the oppressed working class majority in SA, but also the millions globally who acted in solidarity with them.

This would be bad enough on its own. But the NMB municipality management’s treatment of comrade Grootboom given her medical condition descends to apartheid-style cold blood callousness. The NMB is directly responsible for precipitating the onset of comrade Gayle’s mental and physical ill health – her depression and heart attack.

We stand in unwavering solidarity with Comrades Kupido Baron and Gayle Grootboom, whose dismissals have not only stripped them of their livelihoods but have deeply impacted their families and communities. These are not just workers—they are parents and breadwinners who now face the daily anguish of being unable to provide for those who depend on them. The emotional toll of this injustice reverberates far beyond the workplace, affecting the dignity and stability of entire households. We demand that the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality recognises the human cost of these actions and correct this injustice with urgency.

The devastating impact of the NMB’s persecution, victimisation and racial profiling of comrades Kupido and Grootboom is not, however, limited to them personally. The LRA and EEA are violations to clear the way for nepotism and corruption. The official who dismissed comrade Kupido is facing charges of procurement corruption in the Commercial Crimes Court.  The NMB’s conduct sheds light on why it regarded as the weakest of the country’s large metros in the poorest province in the country in the world’s the most unequal society.

Reinstate comrades Kupido Baron and Gayle Grootboom now!

Reject racism! Defend Labour Laws! An injury to one is an injury to all!

• Head of Corporate Services – Nosipho Xhego: nxhego@mandelametro.gov.za , cspa@mandelametro.gov.za
• City Manager – Ted Pillay: cm@mandelametro.gov.za; tshabudien@mandelametro.gov.za
• Mayor – Babalwa Lobishe: mayor@mandelametro.gov.za; pamayor@mandelametro.gov.za; babalwa.lobishe@gmail.com
• Mbulelo Sogoni, Director General: Office of the Premier, PA,  Nomveliso Dudumisa, dudumisa@ecotp.gov.za
• Premier Lubabalo Oscar Mabuyane, PA – Tandile Mtiki – tandile.mtiki@ecotp.gov.za

 

Although the working class entered the democratic era without its own independent workers party, socialism and the yearning for such a party survived the SACP’s onslaught. As the end of apartheid came into sight, a healthy class suspicion towards the ANC still ran through the outlook of the leading layers of the organised working class despite yielding to the pressure the SACP exerted on the Cosatu leadership to support the ANC.

Numsa’s 1993 congress for example adopted a resolution that called on Cosatu and the working class to support the ANC in the 1994 elections. However, thereafter immediate steps must be taken towards building a workers party.

Unfortunately, the capture of the Cosatu leadership in the class collaborationist Tripartite Alliance meant that it was converted into what Trotsky described as “lieutenants of capital in the labour movement.”

Absorbed into senior positions in government and the private sector, many Cosatu leaders were also infected by the corruption that oils the machinery of capitalism. Trade union leaders were first given positions on the boards of profit-making “service providers” for funeral and life insurance policies. Investment companies in some instances entered into partnership with private companies in which the unions themselves were organising, sparking a vicious rivalry for the accompanying perks of vehicles, laptops and lucrative salaries amongst officials. Union investment company CEOs and trade union leader board member incomes served as the benchmark for higher salaries for leaders within unions themselves. This widened the gulf between a wealthy leadership and a rank-and file in a constant struggle against deeper impoverishment.

The NUM for example entered into a 50/50 partnership with the Chamber of Mines in Ubank with mineworkers its primary clientele. Ubank’s profitability became as dependent on slave wages as the mining companies themselves. The NUM secretary general Frans Baleni denounced his own members R12 500 wage as excessive during the 2012 uprising that culminated in the Marikana massacre.

After the ANC’s accession to government, its capitalist policies inevitably brought it increasingly into conflict with the working class. Working class community protests against poor service delivery and corruption, were violently suppressed. Police action claimed the life of 17 year old Teboho Mkhonza on August 31, 2004, during a march by thousands of residents in the township of Intabazwe in the Free State against what has come to be known as service delivery protests. On the 13^th April 2011, a year before the Marikana massacre, community leader Andries Tatane was shot and killed by police live on television in another such protest.

The accelerated polarisation between the classes fertilised the soil for the rebirth of the ideas of socialism and working class independence. It inevitably expressed itself on the political plane, within the ANC indirectly and within Cosatu, first implicitly and then explicitly. The Cosatu leadership’s loyalty towards the ANC placed it on the opposite side of the class barricades. It was caught between the conflicting interests of the class the ANC represented, the capitalist class, and the aspirations of the working class the federation was created to fight for. The logic of the Cosatu leadership’s loyalty to the ANC not only alienated it from the working class; it turned its leadership hostile to the very class that had created it.

In the 1980s in particular, the independent trade unions and then Cosatu itself had played a leading role in uniting the organised working class in the workplace and the townships. The struggles of these different sections of the working class were regarded as battalions of the same proletarian army. Even Ramaphosa was compelled to proclaim the inextricable link between them at Cosatu’s founding congress. In the absence of an independent mass workers party, and with the SACP acting as the ANC’s political and ideological police to restrain the working class, it was to Cosatu that the majority of working class people looked for leadership in the mass struggles of the time. The 1984 Transvaal general strike was organised on the basis of this unity.

In the aftermath of the ANC’s accession to power, these ties between Cosatu and working class communities were severed compelling township residents to organise themselves independently. Today’s social movements, many of them not organic outgrowths of working class communities but petty bourgeois-led, nonetheless owe their existence to the vacuum that had developed to left of Cosatu and the ANC. The logic of the Cosatu leadership’s position furthermore led them to view these community protests and the organisations they gave rise to with hostility. This was captured in Cosatu’s 2003 congress resolution: “The emergence of social movements hostile to the alliance necessitates the strengthening and consolidating of the political centre, with a view to leading the masses on the issues that have given rise to these single issue based movements. Cosatu’s task is to lead and mobilise mass campaigns to avoid opportunism and undermining of Alliance organisations.”

The Tripartite Alliance’s class contradiction just as inevitably reflected themselves in Cosatu itself. Post 1994 the “ANC broad church” started showing the cracks that led to the crumbling that has produced splits within each component of the Tripartite Alliance. The MWP’s predecessors’ call on the Cosatu rank-and-file to take the federation out of the Alliance was in step with a growing recognition in the working class that it had become a prison for them. This contradiction led to splits in a number of unions over the years. The majority of these were not precipitated directly by a conscious rounded out understanding of the ideological contradictions, but by the consequences of the leaders’ ideological degeneration. The union splits in particular were triggered by the results of the habits adopted by a leadership that had, consequently, mimicked the post-apartheid political elite’s culture of self-enrichment and corruption.

This significantly degraded their capacity to provide members even a basic union services.

Post apartheid bourgeois democracy re-ignites yearning for a workers party

The common thread running through a number of events post-apartheid was workers’ desire to reclaim their class independence and for the reassertion of the workers movement’s socialist traditions. Not all the precipitating factors, and the actions they gave rise to, reflected a rounded out understanding of their interconnectedness and common roots. In the political and ideological disorientation that filtered down from the top of the unions in particular, this was inevitable. The solution lay in recognising that each individual manifestation, whether a service delivery protest, or opinion polls and even splits in unions, was part of a whole. They could be overcome only through working class unity in struggle. This in turn requires a common platform of demands in all the different theatres of struggle, unity in struggle within and across them on a common programme of action, united on the political plane under a mass workers party on a socialist programme.

Despite the ANC/SACP’s success in capturing the Cosatu leadership, the Tripartite Alliance was founded on the insecure foundations of irreconcilable class contradictions. The Cosatu leadership’s political loyalty obliged it to oppose any struggles and movements that arose in opposition to the ANC’s capitalist policies. This included for example initially the Treatment Action Campaign launched in 1998 in opposition to President Thabo Mbeki’s catastrophic HIV/Aid denialism that was to claim 300 000 lives under the ANC government. It was only in 2002 that the Cosatu leadership, under the pressure of the TAC’s mass action campaign, that it adopted a more conciliatory attitude to the TAC. Cosatu supported the TAC’s tabling a national HIV/AIDS treatment plan at the National Economic, Development and Labour Council (Nedlac).

However ideologically inchoate, and lacking in organisational unity, the events that unfolded post-1994 nonetheless reflected a yearning for unity in struggle, ideological clarity and working class political independence. In time the question that was implicit in all these events – socialism and a workers party – would become explicit and be placed back on the working class agenda.

Indicators of support for a workers’ party:

• Towards the end of the ANC’s very first term, in 1998, Cosatu’s first post-apartheid survey on member political attitudes, already 30% – a substantial minority – expressed support for the formation of a workers party.
• In 2003 the Witwatersrand region of the Chemical, Energy, Paper, Printing, Wood and Allied Workers’ Union moved a resolution calling for a referendum in Cosatu over the federation’s membership of the Alliance. The national Ceppawu and Cosatu leaders were not satisfied with merely ensuring the resolution was rejected. A vicious witch-hunt followed. 16 Wits office bearers and officials were undemocratically removed from office, labour laws violated, locks of offices changed and placed under guard. In protest 9 000 workers cancelled their subscriptions and marched in protest. In the end 6 000 workers resigned. Today’s Giwusa arose out of this.
• In 2005 rank-and-file discontent over Cosatu’s failure to act against Gear’s destruction of jobs, the orgy of self-enrichment of the new black elite, and lack of support for rising community protests, compelled the leadership to adopt a resolution to reconnect with working class communities. Cosatu resolved to establish Coalitions against Poverty (CAP) in all provinces. The first of these in the Western Cape in April attracted, 72 different organisations, representing labour, churches, land sector NGOs and fishing communities, among others. “We never fought to make a few black people wealthy, we fought to enrich all of our people,” Western Cape Cosatu secretary Ehrenreich said to the 1 300 crowd to loud applause. (Mail & Guardian – 23/08/2005).
• The SACP leadership in particular reacted to the red flags at the rally like a bull to a red rag. The rally was denounced variously as an attempt at “regime change” by the mythical “third force” in concert with imperialism. It was an attempt, they claimed, to thwart the National Democratic Revolution through the revival of the United Democratic Front the Alliance leadership had unilaterally dissolved in 1991. The Cosatu leadership repudiated its own resolution ensuring that the Western Cape would be both the birthplace and the burial ground of the CAP – the first and last province where a CAP would be established.
• The Cosatu leadership’s subversion of its CAP resolution at the Western Cape rally was premeditated. Cosatu deputy provincial chairperson Wente Ntaka told the crowd that… former deputy president Jacob Zuma had been attacked by South Africa’s leaders “left and right, centre, criss-cross …” (Mail & Guardian – 23/08/2005). In arguably their most shameful act of betrayal, they supported Zuma even though he was already facing charges of arms deal related corruption and the rape of a comrade’s HIV/Aids positive daughter.
• Confirming the Cosatu leadership’s complete ideological and political degeneration, they attempted once again to ensure that the working class like voting cattle, would be herded behind the ANC by supporting Zuma in the ANC Polokwane conference in 2007. Both the SACP and Cosatu leadership had initially supported the neo-liberal Gear despite its undemocratic imposition on the Alliance. This did not prevent them from an opportunist somersault into adapting to mass anger against it by posturing as GEAR’s
• Subsequent Cosatu member political attitude surveys confirmed the rising support for a workers party. The most striking example was the survey Cosatu outsourced to Thabo Mbeki’s brother Moeletsi Mbeki’s Forum for Public Dialogue (FPD). This survey was carried out after Zuma’s installation following Thabo Mbeki’s removal at the ANC’s 2007 Polokwane conference Cosatu had spearheaded. The release of this survey’s results was postponed to just before the ANC’s 2012 national conference in Mangaung where the Cosatu leadership had committed to re-electing Zuma as ANC president.  Cosatu leaders told researchers it was “uncomfortable” about the survey. The survey found that Cosatu shop stewards had lost confidence in the South African Communist Party and would like to see the country’s mines nationalised.
• Even more worrying to the Cosatu leadership was that the study also found that the majority of the more than 2 000 shop stewards surveyed did not support Jacob Zuma’s re-election as ANC president, preferring instead his former deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe.
• A qualitative change in political attitudes and consciousness had occurred. The immediate background was the loss of over a million jobs resulting from the stepping up of the relentless, more than a decade long assault on living standards and a million job losses after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis under Zuma’s presidency. The fall in working class living standards and the widening inequalities in the distribution of wealth led the World Bank to classify SA the world’s most unequal society in 2010. The survey found that support for Cosatu to form a workers party had risen to 65%.
• Cosatu workers had not only questioned but had seen through the fallacy of the “broad church.” Even more significantly, the report was released before the mowing down of the mineworkers at Marikana under the same ANC government and the same Zuma the Cosatu leadership had elevated to the ANC and the country’s presidency.
• It is these processes that explain the political conclusions the mineworkers drew from the Marikana massacre and together with the MWP’s predecessors, Democratic Socialist Movement, launched WASP on Sharpeville Day 2013.
• They explain also Numsa’s 350 000 members compelling the leadership to convene the 2013 Special National Congress to form a workers party.
• With the conflicting class interests in the Tripartite Alliance having become unbearable, Cosatu expelled its biggest affiliate Numsa in 2014.
• The class polarisation continued after an enormous increase in service delivery protests that catapulted SA to the protest capital of the world as well as 2015/16 #Feesmustfall protests.
• The formation of the new federation Saftu following Numsa’s expulsion by Cosatu for breaking from the ANC and SACP
• Saftu’s 2017 founding conference that adopted a resolution to form a workers party and convened the WCS which adopted a declaration for a mass workers party on a socialist programme

These irreconcilable class contradictions had their highest expression in the Marikana massacre – the public execution of 37 mineworkers. This is why the 2012 mineworkers uprising was as much against slave wages as against the class collaboration of the NUM, Cosatu leaders and ultimately the ANC-led Tripartite Alliance.

Marikana detonated the explosive social material of conflicting class forces built into the Tripartite Alliance’s foundations. Despite its failure to announce the formation of a workers party at its 2013 special national congress, Numsa broke from both the ANC and the SACP. Together these developments dealt the first major blow to the Tripartite Alliance. Followed by eight other Cosatu affiliates, Numsa initiated the establishment of the new federation, Saftu. Saftu’s founding congress adopted a resolution to form a workers party. It convened a Working Class Summit in 2018 where 1 000 delegates representing 147 community, youth, social movements and trade union formations adopted a declaration to establish a mass workers party on a socialist programme. This represented, at the time, the highest point of the process of ideological clarification and reassertion of working class independence ideologically and politically not just in the democratic era but under apartheid.

The aftershocks continued to reverberate after Saftu failed to implement its founding congress resolution and the 2018 WCS declaration it led to. Despite this, the idea of a workers party returned to the working class agenda. At Cosatu’s 2022 congress delegates from affiliates representing 600 000 members moved a demand from the floor for Cosatu to break from the ANC. At a special national congress in 2023 Amcu adopted a resolution to form its Labour Party

In 2013 Numsa workers attempted to retie the knot with their 1993 counterparts on the need for a workers party. Similarly in 2023 the mineworkers attempted to retie the knot with their counterparts in the national independent strike committee who had, in collaboration with the DSM launched the WASP in 2013. The Association of Mining and Construction Workers Union (Amcu) that had become a significant force after inheriting tens of thousands of mineworkers from the mass exodus from the NUM) returned to the question of socialism and a workers party at its own Special National Congress in June 2023. Extracts from the resolution read:

7. The working class, which is mainly black, impoverished and who live without dignity have no political party on which they can depend to pursue their interests…
8. The AMCU National Executive Committee (NEC) shall be mandated to register and establish the South African Labour Party, with a manifesto focussed on ensuring that all who are willing to work have decent work at a living wage and are able to make a meaningful contribution for the reconstruction of South Africa and the entire Southern African region on a democratic socialist foundation.

Abandoned by the Numsa leadership and the Left and squeezed in the 2014 elections by the incomparably better -resourced EFF as well as its subsequent split, WASP did not fulfil its potential to become a mass workers party, But WASP had given concrete expression to the yearning within the working class and planted the red flag of genuine, red-blooded socialism on the electoral plane for the first time in the post-apartheid era. This alone vindicated its creation.

The establishment of the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (and the earlier emergence of the populist Economic Freedom Fighters) were not established for the purposes of creating a democratic mass workers party. On the contrary they functioned as a source of new divisions, with the SRWP in particular paralysing Saftu and the WCS process. Nonetheless they were a negative confirmation of the vacuum for working class representation described in the Amcu Special National Congress Resolution of June 2023 to establish the Labour Party.

Since then, the SACP’s own ideological contradictions and allegiance to classes whose interests are irreconcilably in conflict with each other, have taken its crisis to a qualitatively new level by the formation of the ANC-led neo-liberal capitalist GNU. Its leadership firstly stridently denounced DA’s inclusion in the GNU. It argued that the DA is pro-capitalist as if the ANC was not. They demanded that the GNU should be made up of ANC, MKP and EFF in a so-called “progressive alliance”. The EFF and MKP are cut from the same cloth as the ANC. The EFF’s radical pretensions are at least concealed behind talking left and walking right. The MKP does not even pretend to be anti-capitalist or even democratic. It opposes the country’s bourgeois constitution from the right not the left. It is the formation of the GNU that has acted as the precipitating factor behind the SACP into announcing that it will contest the 2026 local government elections independently of the ANC. What will understandably be seen by many as a childish tantrum could eventually turn-out to have been the SACP pressing the self-destruct button.

Aggravating its crisis, the SACP has pre-empted its decision on the future of central committee leaders in the ANC cabinet deferred to its 2027 conference. It has purged ANC chairperson Gwede Mantashe from its central committee. His misconduct is his alleged failure to ensure that his ANC commitments did not conflict with his SACP central committee obligations, absenting himself from meetings without apology.   No such action has been taken to others such senior SACP leaders … so far.

Despite announcing that it is contesting the 2026 elections independently, it insists it remains loyal to the Alliance and the NDR. It will in effect be contesting against not just its own Alliance partner, but its own central committee leaders in the ANC-led GNU cabinet. With both claiming to be the custodians of the NDR, the ANC and SACP are in public conflict over a bankrupt policy that has led to both becoming renegades from and standing in opposition to the working class. These contradictions have become so acute, not to say absurd, that the New SACP is the first of what could become several splits. The SACP has remained silent over the emergence of the New SACP. But even a hairline fracture has the potential to develop into an open rupture.

The SACP can justify contesting the elections only if it does so on a programme that is based on what it claims to be – communist. Capitalism and communism are irreconcilable. The SACP may fool itself, but it will not fool voters. The derisory 1% share of the vote in the two Limpopo local government bye-elections it has so far contested show this. It is in effect contesting against itself. Unless it campaigns on a communist programme there is no reason way voters should choose this ANC imitation over the original. The SACP’s contradictions will only sharpen. Like an ostrich with its head in the sands, it imagines that its torso, riddled with ideological contradictions and tainted with its record of betrayal as a co-accused with the ANC it has supported throughout, is invisible to the working class electorate. It will not be exempted from their wrath for the crimes committed by its ANC alliance partner it has supported throughout.

Workers Party – an urgent necessity

Worldwide the material prerequisites for the socialist transformation of society have been rotten ripe since at least the October Revolution in Russia in October 1917 – far more so today. The weakness of the subjective factor – mass revolutionary working class parties – is the reason the life of capitalism is being prolonged. The crisis of capitalism is taking society towards even greater disasters as shown by the barbarism of the holocaust consciously being perpetrated on the Palestinian people, the wars in the Congo, Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine etc, there are no depths to which the capitalist class will not sink to preserve their system including war and climate degradation.

In doing so they are calling into existence the most reactionary racist, xenophobic and misogynistic formations some openly identifying with fascism, emboldened by the policies pursued under the US’s Trump 2.0 regime. Trump is acting as an international point of reference for the far right and similar forces globally. SA is no exception. Xenophobia is being consciously instigated by parties funded by big business including ActionSA, as well as the Patriotic Alliance, and MKP, with the active encouragement of the ANC leadership itself. Operation Dudula founder, Nlhanhla Lux proudly posted FB pictures of himself in the company of an Oppenheimer doyen. The “Pan Africanist” EFF is disgracefully telling Zimbabweans to home for jobs where unemployment and poverty is worse than in SA.

The yearning for workers unity and socialism has been part of the tradition of struggle for at least 50 years in SA. In fact, for all its betrayals the SACP’s existence since 2021, is a negative confirmation that it goes even further back.

The building of a mass workers party on a socialist programme continues to be the main strategy of the MWP as it was of its predecessor at its founding in the late 1970s as the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC.  When the ANC adopted GEAR in 1996 and made its capitalist orientation explicit, we ended our orientation towards it. We renamed ourselves the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) and campaigned for a mass workers party on a socialist programme independent of and outside the ANC.  We made several efforts to contribute towards bringing about the unification of working class struggle.

Our record on the building of working class unity: 

• In October 2011, ahead of the 2012 local government elections the DSM took the initiative of inviting a number of organisations to establish an Assembly for Working Class Unity hosted together with the Thembelihle Crisis Committee as a step towards the building of a mass socialist workers party. It hosted an Assembly for Working Class Unity to chart the way forward together with other struggling working class communities, workers and socialists. Representatives from the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC), Operation Khanyisa Movement (OKM), Golden Triangle Community Crisis Committee (Golccom) – Freedom Park, Solidarity Economy Education and Communication Cooperative – Ivory Park, Commercial Services and Allied Workers Union (Cosawu), the Mine Line Workers Committee, the Socialist Group and the Landless People’s Movement – Protea South, resolved to campaign for a national “service delivery general strike” on a common platform and programme of action at the end of November. The meeting resolved to work towards the formation of a new socialist mass workers’ party by combining mass action with taking the struggle onto the political plane. The delegates resolved to encourage working class communities contest the 2012 local government elections by standing independent candidates on the principle of the right of recall and a workers representative on a workers wage.
• Responded to the Murray & Roberts mineworkers for solidarity in 2010 and going on to support the 2012 mineworkers uprising. In collaboration with the mineworkers national independent strike committee, launched WASP in 2013 as a federal structure to enable affiliate organisations to retain their independent political and organisational identity and unite on a common platform and programme of action.
• Pledged support for, attended numerous locals and met with the leadership ahead of the NUMSA special national congress in 2013. We proposed to the leadership that it takes its place in WASP in accordance with its numbers numerical and political weight in the workers movement.
• Establishing the Greater Eldorado Park Civic in 2016 as a step towards a Gauteng Civic and then a national civic
• Campaigned for workers and student unity through the #OutsourcingMustFall Campaign during the # FeesMustFall protest movement
• We played an important role in SAFTU’s founding congress decision towards establishing a workers party and convening the 2018 Working Class Summit which adopted a Declaration for the establishment of mass workers party. We supported the reconvening of the WCS after the 2019 general elections and agreed to the Steering Committee’s assignment to draft the paper: “Why the decision of the 2018 WCS to establish a workers party was correct”, ahead of the planned reconvened WCS in 2021
• Pledged support for Amcu’s establishment of its Labour Party in 2023. We met with the leadership to appeal for unity with the Saftu and the WCS process and appalled to the Saftu NEC and WCS Steering Committee to do likewise.

The MWP outlines the above not simply to set the record straight on our role. We do so to demonstrate that the call for a mass workers party on a socialist programme accords with the outlook of the working class. We therefore reiterate our call for workers unity under a common platform of demands and programme of action in each of the main theatres of struggle – communities under a Socialist Civic Federation, youth and students under a Marxist Youth and Student Movement, women under a Socialist Womens Federation and organised workers under a Socialist Trade Union Confederation. All of these in turn must unite under the umbrella of a mass workers party on a socialist programme.

   

“What has developed in South Africa is a very powerful tradition of popular or populist politics. The role of the great political movements such as the ANC and the Congress Alliance has been to mobilise the masses against the repressive minority regime… Where virtually all the population is voteless and oppressed by a racial minority then a great alliance of all classes is both necessary and a clear political strategy.”

“These movements cannot and have not in themselves been able to deal with the particular and fundamental problems of workers. Their task is to remove regimes that are regarded as illegitimate and unacceptable by the majority. It is, therefore, essential that workers must strive to build their own powerful and effective organisation even whilst they are part of the wider popular struggle. This organisation is necessary to protect and further worker interests and to ensure that the popular movement is not hijacked by elements who will in the end have no option but to turn against their worker supporters.” (Foster, 1982 FOSATU Congress)

The killing of 34 Marikana mine workers on the 16^th August 2012 showed clearly the class contradictions which Joe Foster predicted in the FOSATU 1982 congress. He did not call explicitly for a workers party. However, without a worker’s party to fight for and protect the class interests of the workers, the bosses with the help of the ANC were able to put their oppressive boot on the neck of the working class.

In fact, the betrayal of the working class by the ANC and SACP leadership was long in the making even before the 1994 elections. It was rooted in the fact that the ANC was created as the political instrument not of the black working class but that of the black capitalist class. Whilst they shared with the black working class a common opposition to white minority rule, the ANC’s vision of a post-apartheid SA was irreconcilably opposed to those of the working class. Their grievance against colonialism and apartheid was that they obstructed their capitalist aspirations. The fulfilment of working class aspirations on the other hand, requires the overthrow of capitalism.

That the aspirations of the working class and the black capitalist class were incompatible was not clearly evident to most after the adoption of the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People in Kliptown on June 26, 1955. The Congress of the People was of a multi-class character. On the one hand the Charter called for the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy. On the other it called for freedom to privately own property ie the banks, mines etc ie to preserve capitalism.  Since a socialist programme would require the expropriation of the capitalist class and the transfer of ownership of the commanding heights of the economy under workers control, the Charter’s nationalisation clauses could be interpreted to be a blue print for socialism. These contradictory clauses could sit side by side in the Charter for as long as they remained on paper. Implementation of the Charter would require the resolution of this contradiction in favour of one class or the other. By the time the ANC came to power, state intervention in the economy even on a capitalist basis had been abandoned globally under neo-liberalism – the dominant model of global capitalism since the seventies.

Recognising this contradiction even during the immediate post-World War 2 period when the capitalist class in the advanced capitalist countries especially, had accepted state intervention as an unavoidable necessity, Mandela addressed the question in 1956. He revealed the ANC’s class character even more clearly than it had been since its birth in 1912. Mandela explained that socialism entails, amongst others, collective ownership of the means of production, distribution, exchange and production for social need not profit.  He made it abundantly clear that the ANC does not stand for the socialist transformation of SA. He declared with crystal clarity that the ANC had never stood for socialism. Nationalisation therefore was not a step towards socialism. Its purpose was “to open up fresh fields for the development of a prosperous non-European bourgeois class.” This was nationalisation but on a capitalist basis.  (from his article “In our lifetime” published in Liberation June 1956 as quoted in South Africa’s Impending Socialist Revolution (Inqaba Ya Basebenzi – Perspective of the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC March 1982) [1]

The ANC modelled its economic policy on that of the Nationalist Party post-1948 of significant state intervention to incubate an Afrikaner capitalist class. The logic of Mandela’s outlook meant that it was only a matter of time post 1994 that what the Charter set out on paper would in practice conflict with the aspirations of the black working class on whose electoral support it depended, revealing which side of the class divide it stood.

It was as a member of this “Non-European bourgeois class,’ and Lonmin mining company non-executive board member and the country’s deputy president in 2012, today the ANC and the country’s president, that Cyril Ramaphosa, created the climate for the Marikana massacre. He denounced the strike as “a criminal act that must be dealt with concomitantly,” and called on government for police intervention.

 SACP leads Cosatu’s ideological capture an entrapment in tripartite Alliance

Fosatu general secretary Joe Foster’s 1982 speech sent shockwaves through the ANC and SACP. Foster’s sin was to merely imply the SACP was not the political representative of the SA working class as it arrogantly claimed, and that the working class must create its own party.  The SACP through the pages of the African Communist, denounced Foster. BBC journalist specialising in the Horn of Africa and Southern Africa, Martin Plaut pointed out: “Not to put too fine a point on it, the liberation movement, in the form of the ANC and South African Communist Party, panicked. They realised that they were being outflanked on the left, and that they would have to re-assert their assumed role as the natural leadership of South Africa’s oppressed. Exactly how this was done has never been revealed in detail and no academic has investigated exactly what took place.”

Martin Plaut was correct in his appraisal of the SACP/ANC’s fear of what Joe Foster’s speech represented. The African Communist statement was the SACP’s first step to reclaim its self-appointed role as the leadership of the oppressed and of the working class in particular. However, to understand “how this was done”, Plaut would have had to be armed with a Marxist understanding of the impact of the emergent trade unions before, and after Joe Foster’s speech as well as the impact of international events, especially the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism there, through the 90s.

In the early eighties the full political significance of the impact of the emerging trade union movement that had followed the 1973 Durban strikes escaped the exiled SACP/ANC leadership understanding. The role of the organised working class in the struggle against white minority rule was viewed as no more than as adjunct in the generalised resistance to apartheid.

The MWT argued for recognition of the working class as the spearhead of the mass movement and the necessity for a programme linking the struggle for national liberation to that for the overthrow of capitalism, towards a socialist SA. ANC leader Oliver Tambo responded that “we must not exaggerate what workers as workers can do.”  For the ANC leadership, the working class was but one of the four pillars in the liberation struggle alongside mass mobilisation, underground organisation, the armed struggle and international isolation of apartheid SA through diplomacy and sanctions.

The MWT of the ANC on the other hand, recognising that the struggle for socialism was international, appealed to the international labour movement through the Southern African Labour Education Project (SALEP)’s “Direct Links” campaign for solidarity with the emerging trade unions including with strikes like that at British Tyre and Rubber (BTR).  With the assistance of the British section of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), Militant, which led the Labour Party Young Socialists, SALEP, as well as our Campaign for a Socialist SA, won huge support in the British labour movement especially, as well as amongst students and youth.

At its worst, the SACP/ANC’s attitude towards the organised working class was hostile in that initial period. Instigated by the SACP, the ANC and Sactu leaderships pressured the right wing Labour Party leadership into conducting a witch-hunt against SALEP to have it banned from receiving support from Labour Party structures. SALEP was charged with the crime of campaigning for the overthrow of capitalism, for a socialist SA and for the promoting the idea of the leading role of the working class against apartheid and capitalism. Following a 3-month enquiry by the LP International Committee, a 21-page report was submitted to the LP NEC. It found SALEP’s arguments as a  “horrifying, very fundamentalist Marxist bias and an extremely narrow via of Marxism”. It went on to adopt a resolution on 27/03/1985 directing that: “Regions, CLPs (Constituency Labour Parties) and affiliates have no contact with SALEP, do not use its materials or allow it facilities and publish an advise NOTE outlining the NEC’s principle criticisms of SALEP….”.

In the article under the front page headline “‘Direct links’ Stink,” in the April 1982 edition of its organ, Workers Unity, Sactu stated: “The Special branch stands at the at the gate of our prisons – at the border and the airport. All who enter or leave are controlled and followed. It is true not all who visit us are arrested but then we ask the question, why? It is because they are doing what the Special branch wants them to do….’Direct Links’ are nothing more nor less than a new form of colonialism in which the Far Left joins the Far Right in opposing the Congress movement in SA”.  Yet the very same ANC endorsed the US’s Senator Edward Kennedy visit to SA in 1985 – one in a long line of representatives of British and US imperialism ANC leaders had “direct links” with in exile.

Undeterred, SALEP continued its campaign, succeeding, for example, in forging direct links between the SA National Union of Mineworkers NUM) and the British NUM. During the British mineworkers strike in 1984/85, SALEP arranged with the NUM in SA for a British mineworker, Roy Jones, to pay a visit to the SA NUM. Jones addressed mineworkers and shop stewards meetings and was taken into the shafts underground. The SA NUM in turn made its first ever donation in solidary with the British mineworkers during the 1984/85 strike. Sactu denounced the visit and claimed we had no evidence of the SA NUM’s support for it.

SACTU ignored the letter from the SA NUM that SALEP submitted to LP international department. This letter, addressed to the President of the North Staffordshire NUM (Roy’s area) signed by President, James Motlatsi and General Secretary Cyril Ramaphosa, the SA NUM thanked their British counterparts stating that “Roy’s presence has helped forge much greater links between your union’s area and our union. We hope that eventually links will be formed between the entire British NUM and a shining example of the British working class… We look forward to your victory in your struggle against pit closures … Kindly accept our humble donation to your strike fund. You are not alone!” The Rand Daily Mail (19/12/1984) reported the Chamber of Mines’s condemnation of Roy Jones’ exposure of SA mineworkers exploitative conditions stating that he had no credibility.

The masses arise…    

The re-emergence of the workers movement changed the balance of forces decisively against the apartheid regime and raised the confidence of the working class movement. The enormous leap in confidence was accompanied by a rising level of class, ideological and political consciousness. The inspiration provided by the workers movement ignited the youth who entered the arena of struggle in the Soweto Uprising of 1976.

The struggle rapidly acquired a more directly political character. The yearning for unity led to the launch of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in 1983 to directly challenge the apartheid regime on the political plane to thwart its attempts to reverse the growing unity of the oppressed through the sham reforms of the Tricameral Parliament. The UDF inflicted a resounding defeat on the apartheid regime’s 1984 Tricameral Elections for Coloured and Indian chambers calculated to break Coloured, Indian and African unity. This in turn ignited the near-insurrectionary movement of 1984-6. The regime’s attempt to crush this nationwide uprising through the imposition first of a partial state of emergency in 1985 and then a full one in 1986, failed. The regime deployed troops in black townships across the country, arrested thousands and instigated a “black-on-black” civil war using the Inkatha Freedom Party that was to claim thousands of lives into the nineties.

In the working class movement’s greatest step forward, the emerging trade unions united to launch Cosatu in 1985, under the guns of the partial state of emergency. These events confirmed what Marx had pointed out: that sometimes the revolution needs the whip of the counter-revolution to move forward.

These developments forced a complete change in strategy on the part of the ANC/SACP leadership towards the independent trade unions and Cosatu in particular. To assert control over a movement that had developed independently of the ANC and the SACP, the leadership began engaging Cosatu’s leaders to pressurise them to abandon its independence and subordinate it to the ANC politically. This culminated in the Cosatu leadership beings summonsed to the ANC’s exiled headquarters in Zambia in 1985. The South African Labour Bulletin reports that “a high powered delegation, consisting of (newly elected secretary general) Jay Naidoo, his deputy, Sydney Mufamadi, and NUM secretary general, Cyril Ramaphosa, went to Lusaka to meet the ANC on 5 and 6 March. The ANC was represented by Oliver Tambo, its president; John Nkadineng, Sactu secretary general; Thabo Mbeki, head of Information and publicity; Chris Hani of Umkhonto we Sizwe; and Mac Maharaj, a senior member of the political department.” (Weekly Mail, 07- 13/03/86).

In the statement that followed, Cosatu officially announced its support for the ANC as the only party that can lead the working class supported by the SACP.  Prior to the Lusaka meeting the pressure exerted on the independent trade unions had already led to the leadership pledging its allegiance to the ANC by the incorporation of the word “congress” into the name of the new federation – politically orienting it towards and subordinating it to the ANC.  This was the Cosatu leadership’s first public repudiation of its class independence. They publicly reneged on the spirit of its founding statement that “it is important that the politics of the working class eventually becomes the politics of all the oppressed people of this country”. From that point onwards, the programme of the capitalist class took precedence over and elbowed aside that of the working class.

The working class vanguard draws socialist conclusions

The bourgeois press in Britain and SA reflected the alarm of the capitalist class internationally and in SA, over the yearning for a socialist SA which expressed itself throughout all formations in the 80s. The Financial Times reported: “In the eyes of the young, apartheid is equated with capitalism” (26/03/1985). Harry Oppenheirmer complained in the British Sunday Times: “left wing radicals, often Marxists .. believe that racial discrimination and free enterprise are parts of the same system and should be eliminated together,”

The SACP leadership apparently shared these fears of the class enemy. They precede to trample these ideas underfoot in the name of Marxism-Leninism. From the experience of the struggle against apartheid, the understanding developed that the struggle for national liberation from white minority rule was bound up with that of the struggle against capitalism. This became the dominant outlook of the leading layers of the mass movement.

The aim of a socialist SA was the common thread running through statements across the board:

• Metal and Allied Workers Union (Numsa’s predecessor) secretary general and Fosatu Transvaal regional secretary, Moses Mayekiso’s, address to its 1983 Annual General Meeting (Fosatu Worker News October 1983)
• The centre pages of the 250 00-strong Council of Unions of SA (Cusa) (official journal, Izwilethu, June/July 1984)
• The 70 000-string SA Allied Workers Union president Thozamile Gqweta’s address to its annual conference, (SAAWU newspaper The Worker, October 1984)
• Thamil Mali, chairman of the committee that led the 1 million strong 2-day Transvaal general strike’s interview in November 1984 (Sunday Express – 11/11/1984)
• Statements by workers leaders at the Joint May Day rally 1985 of 31 trade unions as reported in the Star – 02/05/1985)

From SALEP’s socialist education work – why does the Labour Party NEC want to ban it? 28/05/1985.

A similar position was put forward in the 1984 manifesto of the National Forum, representing 400 organisations primarily from the Black Consciousness Movement which considered themselves to the left of the ANC such as Azapo (Azanian People’s Organisation), Azasm (Azanian Student Movement), and Soya (South African Youth Organisation), Action Youth, the Cape Action League.

Recognising that it was not possible to completely erase socialism from the consciousness of the working class and yet committed to the preservation of capitalism that the two-stage theory dictated, the SACP abused the illusions in it that it was “communist.” It denounced calls for the revolution to proceed without interruption to the socialism as ultra left and Trotskyite. Socialism was still on the agenda they assured workers … but not now. The shortest route to socialism was through the “national democratic revolution.” The immediate priority was to use the “democratic breakthrough” to avert a racial civil war.

Yet in reality the more sober minded amongst the apartheid SA Defence Force (SADF) generals had recognised the decisive change in the racial and class balance of forces. They above all recognised the insurrectionary mood amongst the black working class masses. They prevailed over the “bittereinders” (who wanted to fight to resist to the bitter end), recoiled from and abandoned the idea of holding onto power by force.

The SADF generals, moreover, had been assured by the incoming ANC leadership that there would be no Nuremberg trials for the “crimes against humanity” the ANC had persuaded the United Nations to designate apartheid as. The SADF would essentially be preserved with the combatants of the ANC’s and Pan Africanist Congress’ armed wings, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and the Azanian People Liberation Army respectively, merely incorporated into the renamed SA National Defence Force. As further reassurance, it was to be announced that MK’s armed struggle had been “suspended”- a euphemism for abandoned – without the consent or even prior knowledge of Chief of Staff, Chris Hani.

In addition, in the last whites-only referendum, in March 1992, in a massive turnout of 96% in some areas, an overwhelming majority of 68.3% had” voted “Yes” for a continuation of the Convention for a Democratic SA (Codesa) negotiations that had begun in 1991. The white population had clearly demonstrated that they had no appetite for a racial civil war and in effect surrendered to political realities; they reconciled themselves to the end of white minority rule and the inevitability of black majority rule. The SACP was mimicking the methods of the Communist International, which, after falling under the control of Stalinism, had imposed on its affiliate the policy of class collaboration with capitalist parties in the 1920s and 30s by exaggerating the forces of capitalism and imperialism. It imposed popular fronts with “good capitalists” leading to catastrophic defeats of the working class in eg China and Spain.

Under the influence of the SACP leadership, the Alliance completely misrepresented the balance of racial and class forces in society and the mood of the whites, to justify a capitulation on the democratic and social demands of the black working class majority.  Their real agenda was the preservation of capitalism to afford a “patriotic bourgeoisie” the opportunity to ascend to the summits of the economy as part of the post-apartheid capitalist ruling class. The 1994 GNU was in reality a popular front of a “special type”, the political medication the SACP ideological doctors prescribed to end apartheid in line with their diagnosis of SA as “colonialism of a special type”.

The SACP thus marched Cosatu into the political and ideological prison of the Tripartite Alliance. Whist the alliance was in words, one of equals, it was emphasised that it was to be ANC-led. The Stalinist position of the SACP in practice meant that it was to be the black capitalist class that should benefit first from the centuries old struggles of the working class for socialism. The realisation of the interests of the working class would have to wait.

[1] Mandela’s said “Whilst the Charter proclaims democratic changes of a far-reaching nature it is by no means a blueprint for a socialist state but a programme for the unification of various classes and groupings amongst the people on a democratic basis. Under socialism the workers hold state power. They and the peasants own the means of production, the land, the factories and the mills. All production is for use and not for profit.

“The Charter does not contemplate such profound economic and political changes. Its declaration ‘The People shall govern!’ visualises the transfer of power not to any single social class but to all the people of this country be they workers, peasants, professional men or petty-bourgeoisie.”

In the same speech Mandela even goes further to say “It is true that in demanding the nationalisation of the banks, the gold mines and the land the Charter strikes a fatal blow at the financial and gold-mining monopolies and farming interests that have for centuries plundered the country and condemned its people to servitude. But such a step is absolutely imperative and necessary because the realisation of the Charter is inconceivable, in fact impossible, unless and until these monopolies are first smashed up and the national wealth of the country turned over to the people. The breaking up and democratisation of these monopolies will open up fresh fields for the development of a prosperous Non-European bourgeois class.”

Part 1

The messages emanating from the various annual commemorative Marikana massacre events rightly denounced the bloodletting on the day as the ANC’s worst act of suppression since the Sharpeville massacre of the apartheid regime. It was the ANC’s most bloody act of class warfare against the black working class since it came to power.

But too many commemorative messages overlook the Marikana massacre’s profound political significance. The most important feature of the uprising was the political conclusions the mineworkers drew. The massacre revealed the ANC’s class character much more sharply than the implementation of its neo-liberal capitalist policies had been doing incrementally since the imposition of the Growth Employment and Redistribution (Gear) policy in 1996. The mineworkers recognised that the working class was in fact politically disenfranchised. Their independent national strike committee therefore collaborated with our predecessors, the Democratic Socialist Movement to launch the Workers and Socialist Party – the first party with a red blooded socialist programme to contest the elections in the post-apartheid era.

Marikana opened new epoch in class and political relations

As we pointed out at the time, the massacre divided the post-apartheid era into two epochs: the first was one of illusions in the post-apartheid bourgeois democratic dispensation. This was founded on the mistaken belief that the ANC was the representative of the working class majority that would bring about the transformation in their lives, end poverty and exploitation and bring about in the words of its slogan: “a better life for all”.

Marikana shattered that illusion. It opened up a new epoch marked by the recognition of first the mineworkers themselves and then the working class as a whole that the ANC represented the interests not just of the mining bosses but the capitalist class as a whole. In defence of the capitalist class, the ANC was prepared to drown the aspirations of the working class in blood.

As Leon Trotky, co-leader of the Russian Revolution of October 1917, pointed out: “The proletariat may “tolerate” for a long time a leadership that has already suffered a complete inner degeneration but has not as yet had the opportunity to express this degeneration amid great events. A great historic shock is necessary to reveal sharply the contradiction between the leadership and the class.” (The Class the Party and the Leadership – Why Was the Spanish Proletariat Defeated? – 1940)

In SA, the mineworkers heroic 2012 uprising and its brutal suppression by the ANC regime constituted the “great historic shock” Trotsky refers to. The conditions under which this year’s Marikana commemorations took place were prepared by those events. Most important of all, the mineworkers had recognised the need to reclaim the proletariat’s class, ideological and political independence and to place the question of a workers party back on the agenda.

As we show in Part 2, the idea of a workers party is not new. It has been on the agenda of the workers movement since the commencement of the rebuilding of the workers movement in the 1970s. The working class first made its reappearance on the stage of class struggle as the central force against apartheid and capitalism in the great 1973 Durban strikes. The leading role of the mineworkers independent national strike committee in the launch of WASP was in fact a retying of the historical knot between the guiding layers of the pre- and post-apartheid generations of the working class. Unfortunately, today, the central question facing the working class, the resolution of what Trotsky describes as the central question of the epoch globally, the subjective factor i.e. the political unification of the working on a socialist programme, still eludes the working class. It is no consolation of course, that the crisis of the subjective factor is not unique to SA. Its international manifestation is dealt with comprehensively by Tony Saunois, the secretary of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI) that the MWP is affiliated to in: “The Struggle for a Revolutionary Party Today”. (Tony Saunois’ article).

The numerous opportunities to resolve this crisis on a world scale have been squandered especially by the leadership of the trade unions, but also those of the traditional parties of the working class. The majority of trade union leaders have become what Trotsky described as the “lieutenants of capital in the labour movement.” The traditional parties of the working class have been transformed into open capitalist parties.

The failures of the new left formations that the class struggle had made possible from Europe to Latin America and in SA itself have added to the crisis. As Trotsky continues in the same piece quoted above: “… But even in cases where the old leadership has revealed its internal corruption, the class cannot improvise immediately a new leadership, especially if it has not inherited from the previous period strong revolutionary cadres capable of utilizing the collapse of the old leading party.”

Crisis of political representation – the political and economic ruling elite

This year’s commemoration took place against the background of the worsening of the disastrous social and economic conditions that led to the ANC’s defeat in the 2024 elections. The discontent over social conditions had spilt over onto the political plane. This raised the crisis of political representation for both the capitalists and the working class that had been unfolding incrementally before the 2024 elections, onto a qualitatively new level. Less than two years into the post-2024 elections, that crisis continues to deepen today.

The disastrous outcome of the elections for the ANC and DA, the first and second eleven of the capitalist class, compelled the strategists of capital into compelling both into the forced marriage of the Government of National Unity (GNU), with the additional eight others in the role of maids and men of hour. This coalition of he rejected isa desperate emergency political rescue act that has resolved nothing.  If anything, the GNU, which has stumbled from one crisis to another going through a near death experience more than once, has underlined the ongoing fragility of political formations on which post-apartheid capitalist rule now rests.

The ANC, that has served as the main instrument of their rule, is unlikely to ever recover from the catastrophic loss, for the first time in the post -apartheid era, of its overall majority. Hardly 18 months into the post-2024 era – the end of presumptive ANC rule – any illusions in the possibility of a return to the relative stability of the first thirty years of post-apartheid parliamentary democracy have, as we predicted, evaporated.

Superimposed on the deepened socio-economic crisis, is a palpable sense of a failing state. Crime and corruption are now much more brazen inducing a growing sense that matters are out control. The SA Police Service (SAPS) and the criminal justice system as a whole convey a sense of paralysis. Little to no action much less prosecution have followed the billion-Rand Zondo Commission into “state capture’ i.e. corruption. SAPS is in turmoil with accusations and counter accusations of corruption at the highest level playing themselves out in the courts. The police minister is on “special leave” following public accusations of corruption against senior government officials, ministers and the judiciary to be investigated by yet another Commission of Inquiry headed by a retired judge this time. Service delivery protests are on the rise against a worsening decline in water and electricity provision.

The government’s unofficial xenophobic sentiments have resulted in criminal campaigns against the use of public health facilities by African immigrants. The ANC has issued public reprimands over Operation Dudula preventing African migrants accessing health services at over 53 clinics and hospital across the country. But it has at the same time condoned its actions, taking on the role as their political attorneys. The ANC has seized on the xenophobic attacks, using them as a smokescreen to conceal their responsibility for the degradation of public services through neo-liberal austerity. ANC ministers and other senior leaders sympathetically describe these actions as driven by legitimate concerns over the alleged strain on public services they say are caused by illegal immigrants.

The GNU – the continuation of class warfare under the guise of national unity

The strategist of capital’s foreboding of the electoral calamity that lay ahead in 2024 spurred them into unprecedent action – the million rand sponsorship of numerous bourgeois formations in anticipation of the ANC’s post-2024 need to be propped up. In the cynical manner of all bourgeois ruling elites, the capitalists repudiated any responsibility for the crisis of their capitalist system. It is the fault of all of us – oppressor and oppressed, exploiter and exploited alike. This is what lies behind the cynical promotion of the fiction of “national unity.” The working class in the nation must unite with the parasitic minority whose boots are on their neck in a common national effort to solve the crisis.

The GNU, born in 2024, is in reality the reincarnation of the original coalition that ushered in the post-apartheid political dispensation over thirty years ago – a GNU 2.0. The ANC, with a 62.7% majority, did not need a coalition to govern on its own in 1994. It chose to. The alternative was a likely further electoral demise. That ever being able to form a government on its own was emphatically underlined by its failure to benefit from the ANC’s biggest electoral reverse losing 600 000 votes. It they were ever going to be in government; this was the only way.

GNU 1.0 was a contrivance – the ANC leadership’s pretext for the betrayal of the aspirations of the working class majority. GNU 2.0 with the ANC now unable to form a government on its own, became an unavoidable necessity. The purpose was exactly the same in 1994 as in 2024 – the continuation of the capitalist policies under whose ruins the working class’ post-apartheid hopes and dreams lie. A new global capitalist is looming accelerated by Trump’s traffic wrecking ball among others. It is likely to be worse than that of 2008 that cost SA 1m job losses. GNU 2.0 is destined to fail with even greater certainty than GNU1.0.

The ANC collaborated first in ensuring the attainment of the strategic aim of the negotiated settlement agreed at the Convention for a Democratic SA (Codesa) – the preservation of the capitalist economic order. It then proceeded within two years to abandon even the social democratic promises incorporated in diluted form from the abandoned Freedom Charter into the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). It capitulated to the pressure of imperialism and domestic capital by imposing the neo-liberal GEAR policy. This lies at the heart of the social and economic disaster today.

The full responsibility for this lies on the shoulders of the ANC. It imposed Gear in June 1996, the very month when the Nationalist Party (NP) resigned from the first Government of National Unity. The NP’s resignation did not disturb one hair on ANC governance. The ANC went on to implement Gear with single minded determination brushing aside the protestations of its Tripartite Alliance partners. The ANC leadership reminded them that the ANC was not even the first amongst equals. The SACP and Cosatu were cheerleaders and prison warders of the Alliance – a political prison in which the working class had been incarcerated.

DA kicks and screams but fears leaving GNU

As events have demonstrated since the formation of the GNU, the Democratic Alliance has disabused itself of the illusion that it can blackmail the ANC by threatening to walk out of this coalition of the rejected. The DA has kicked and screamed hysterically, thrown tantrums and postured. But it has stayed. Its hysterical threats to walk out of the GNU have come to nothing. It would have left the ANC with no alternative but to draw into the GNU the very parties the DA had sworn to keep out – the EFF and possibly former president Jacob Zuma’s Umkhonto we Sizwe Party. Terrified of taking political responsibility for such a scenario, the DA elected to remain handcuffed to the ANC in the GNU like escaped convicts on the run from the wrath of the electorate.

From the point of view of the strategists of capital who control the DA’s purse strings, it’s continued presence offers the best constellation of parties to insulate a weakened ANC from the populist pressures of the likes of the Economic Freedom Fighters. The threat of the ANC calling on the EFF to replace the DA has concentrated its mind. It cannot be ruled out that Helen Zille was reined in and reminded of her humiliating removal to make way for its first black leader, Mmusi Maimane in 2015. She was removed after the DA’s best ever election result in 2014. If the interests of capital took precedence over Zille’s personal ambitions, then they would prevail again a decade later under conditions where the DA’s electoral position had weakened.

A DA exit would be undesirable from the standpoint of the capitalist class. Although the EFF poses no threat to capitalism, it is untested and unreliable. Despite the unashamed ease with which its leadership consorts with and accepts funding from the very “white monopoly capital” it ritually denounces, they cannot be trusted to contain the expectations its populist demagoguery may arouse. The EFF’s incorporation into the GNU would complicate capital’s ability to keep the ANC on the last thirty years’ straight and narrow road of neo-liberal capitalism. However, in the final analysis, the DA is as dispensable for capital’s purposes today as its political ancestors, the NP were in 1996.

The merger planned between the miniscule bourgeois parties on which billions had been spent in preparation for the 2024 elections, Bosa, Rise Mzansi and Good, is likely an attempt to consolidate them into something weightier as the sum of their nearly inconsequential individual parts they emerged as from the 2024 elections. This is an attempt at constructing a new prop for the ANC ahead of the 2026 local government elections and beyond. Such is the desperation of the capitalist class in attempting to address their deepened crisis of political representation given the crisis in the ANC which remains its main instrument for the protection of their interests.

This crisis in the GNU’s main anchor tenant is deepening ahead of the 2026 local government elections. The presidential succession race to come in the 2027 National General Council and the fear of a complete rout in 2029 under a lame duck Ramaphosa’s second term are the new landmines on the road ahead.  The National Dialogue debacle underlines this. Far from reviving the ANC and the GNU’s fortunes, the August national convention came nowhere near even resembling a Codesa reunion. It was a pale even ridiculous mimicking of Codesa’s lofty aims of creating “national unity”. Even the proponent of the idea, former president Thabo Mbeki withdrew his Foundation from participating in it.

Crisis of political representation – the working class

Outside the Tripartite Alliance, the Left’s reaction to the formation of the GNU resembles a political and ideological Tower of Babel. Its political evaluations of the elections outcome have veered wildly between ultraleftism and opportunism. On the one hand, for some it signified the readiness of the working class for revolution that allegedly began with the riots orchestrated by the reactionary pro-Zuma forces in 2022. For others, the outcome reflected the complete demoralisation of the working class who allegedly lacked the appetite for both socialism and a workers party. Located on the opposite ends of the political spectrum, these polar opposite views have contrived to be as false as each other.

Within the “official” left of the Tripartite Alliance, the ideological disorientation has taken a different form as incapable as that outside it, of charting a way forward for the working class. To the GNU coalition some have counterposed a “patriotic alliance” of black parties as a “progressive” alternative. Others have called for the radical sounding “popular front” oblivious of the catastrophic defeats that this idea of a “strike breaking conspiracy” as Trotsky described it, paved the way for the defeat of the working class in e.g. Spain in the 1930s.

Candidates for both these popular fronts share between them either petty bourgeois nationalist populism, tribalism even xenophobia or a combination of these. Their common denominator is the DA’s exclusion – anything but the DA coalitions. Their proponents vastly overestimate and confuse the DA’s position. The DA is a prisoner of the GNU, not its prison guard.

Concomitantly, they have bestowed supernatural powers on the DA’s shoulders. By the logic of their arguments, the DA succeeded in dictating the adoption of the neo-liberal Gear to the ANC four years before it was itself born. The DA had even more magically done so after its political part-ancestors, the NP, had jumped the GNU 1.0 ship leaving the ANC as its sole captain. In so doing, the proponents of these ideas have absolved the ANC of all responsibility for the catastrophe of the last 30 years of neo-liberal capitalism.

Most important of all, the candidates for inclusion in the popular fronts are without exception pro-capitalist. Not a single one of them stands for the socialist transformation of society. They would therefore be operating within the framework of the very same capitalist policies as the ANC with the same disastrous results.

The mineworkers Marikana uprising – a political rebellion against the Tripartite Alliance

Marikana shifted what had been the steady erosion of the credibility of the post-apartheid political dispensation into higher gear. It accelerated the crisis of its political custodians, the Tripartite Alliance, jointly and severally. The Tripartite Alliance pre- and post-1994 had always been a political prison for the working class. Its intention has been to keep the working class in an alliance which serves the interests of the ANC, the political representative of the emerging black capitalists and by extension the capitalist class into whose ranks they aspired to be assimilated at the summit of the commanding heights of the economy.

The fulfillment of the aspirations of the emergent black capitalist class required the preservation of capitalism. The fulfillment of the aspiration of the working class whose electoral support the ANC needed required, the overthrow of capitalism. This is the conclusion that the guiding layers of the working class had already concluded in the 1980s.

The Tripartite Alliance was thus born as an alliance of incompatible class interests. To keep the working class in check they had to be politically and ideologically policed. The prison warder mentality on the part of the Cosatu leadership stems from this. They accepted the SACP’s ideological misdirection – the Stalinist two-stage theory. Irish socialist James Connolly, summed up this policy as: “the workers must wait.” We would add wait for the unicorn of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR).

According to the NDR, before proceeding to the second, socialist stage, the material conditions must first mature; the balance of forces domestically and internationally must turn in the working class’ favour etc etc.  To the extent that this means that the level of economic development (and the size of the working class) in the colonial world must first reach a level comparable to the advanced capitalist countries, it is a fantasy.

In giving way, under the pressure of the colonial revolutions’ demand for independence, the colonisers ensured that they surrender direct political control but retained their economic subjugation. This is the essence of neo-colonialism. By the logic of the NDR, the Great October Revolution of 1917 the Stalinists ritually celebrate, was premature. The working class was no more than 10% of the population, and Russia economically a semi-colony of Europe. The two-stage theory, the foundation of the NDR, is a policy of the Mensheviks, the enemy of Lenin’s Bolsheviks.

In practice it meant that the economic foundations of the “democratic” first stage was therefore the very same capitalist system previously managed by the apartheid regime, against which the workers had risen, were preserved, and their exploitation perpetuated indefinitely. The workers were thus prevented from proceeding to the overthrow of capitalism by their own leadership.

The most grotesque expression of this service to the capitalist class was clear for all to see in the run up to and after 16^th August 2012 in Marikana. The SACP and Cosatu leaderships were joined at the hip in their betrayal of the mineworkers.

The Cosatu leadership turned their backs on the mineworkers observing not even so much as a moment of silence for the martyrs of Marikana. Instead, they echoed the ANC leaders’ crocodile tears in describing the massacre as a tragedy.  The Cosatu leadership’s then secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi denounced those like the Democratic Socialist Movement, holding us responsible for instigating “illegal strikes. The SACP leadership went even further. Then SACP deputy secretary general, Jeremy Cronin, denounced the mineworkers strike as orchestrated by a “Pondoland vigilante mafia.” The NUM’s secretary general, Frans Baleni condemned the mineworkers demand for a living wage of R12 500 as excessive and unaffordable and condemned the Lonmin mining bosses for setting a “bad” precedent for conceding it.

The launch of WASP was part of the wider, decisive reconfiguration of the political landscape. This was reflected in the pressure by the National Union of Metal Workers of SA (Numsa) workers for the convening of its special national congress in 2013 to launch a workers party.   After WASP’s March 2013 launch followed that of the populist Economic Freedom Fighters in July – the ANC’s second major post-apartheid split after that of the Congress of the People (Cope) in 2008.

The aftershocks of the Marikana earthquake continued to reverberate across the political landscape, further fracturing the ANC-led Tripartite Alliance’s foundations. Cosatu expelled its biggest affiliate, Numsa, in 2014. This in turn led to the launch of the SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) in 2017. MWP comrades (then as WASP) played an important role in the Saftu’s founding congress adopting a resolution to form a worker party. Saftu convened a Working Class Summit (WCS) in 2018 where a thousand delegates representing a 147 political, student, trade unions and social movement formations adopted a declaration to form a mass workers party on a socialist programme.

The formation of the now discredited Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP) by the SACP 2 grouping dominating Numsa was an act of political strike breaking to cut across the implementation of the 2018 WCS declaration. The SRWP’s 24 439 votes – not enough for even one seat – was a humiliating failure for its Stalinist leadership. It represented an emphatic rejection by Numsa’s 350 000 members. Their message was clear: the SRWP was not the party they had in mind when they called for the 2013 special national congress.

The SACP 2.0 cabal’s legacy is the paralysis it had created in Saftu – an important, but not the only factor in the failure to implement the 2018 WCS Declaration. Opposed as its leadership was to the fulfilment of the aspirations of the martyrs of Marikana for a workers party, it nonetheless owed its birth to the conditions created by their martyrdom.

Despite overwhelming evidence as we show in Part 2 of this article, of the desire for a working class political alternative, every opportunity to unite the working class on a common platform of demands, a programme of action and a socialist programme, has been spurned by the leadership not just of the labour movement, but the middle class-led social movements,  research institutes and academics pre-occupied with their single issue campaigns.

Moreover, to the extent that they all recognise the link between whatever their particular campaigns may be their sole pre-occupation, whether e.g. climate change, housing, land, or a universal basic income grant, they do not see capitalism as a system as the problem, but its particular neo-liberal austerity model. They suffer from the illusion that a better capitalism is possible. Their point of reference is the era of post-World War 2 social democratic reforms wrung from the capitalist class mainly in the advanced capitalist countries through working class struggle. They are completely blind to the reality that those reforms belong to a bygone era, never to return. They arose in geo-political historical conditions that have ceased to exist.  After their systematic dismantling over the past 50 years there is virtually nothing left of them anywhere. Committed therefore to the reform of capitalism and not its overthrow, they see no need for socialism and consequently no need for the only instrument to achieve it, a workers party on a socialist programme.

The combined role of all these leaders has been the to prolong the crisis of political representation of the working class itself. The MWP believes that the desire for a mass workers party has never been greater. It may have may have waxed and waned over the past 50 years, but it has been a constant in working class consciousness.

In Part 2 we trace its presence in the organised working class from its origins in the impact on consciousness that followed the revival of the modern trade union movement in the 1970s and its evolution since.        

The following thesis on perspectives for world capitalism was agreed at the 14th World Congress of the Committee for a Workers’ International, which convened in Berlin, Germany, from 27 to 31 July 2025. Delegates attended in person from Europe, Asia, Africa and North and South America and online from Australia. The Congress also hosted guests from Israel-Palestine, Kazakhstan, Romania and Sweden.

The coming to power of Trump 2 has ushered in an entirely new period. There are few alive today who have experienced the conflict, instability, uncertainty and polarisation that the new world now heralds. It is necessary to have lived through the inter-imperialist wars period from 1918 to 1939 to have experienced the degree of social upheavals, instability, polarisation and conflicts that are taking place – more of which are pending.

This does not mean that the events between 1918 and 1939 will be repeated, as crucial differences exist between then and now. This includes the crucial factor of the absence of a workers’ state (albeit increasingly degenerated), a widespread socialist consciousness and mass political organisations of the working class.

Another important difference is that today there are not the mass fascist organisations that developed in that period. The social basis for such organisations is not present today. The right-wing populist parties that have emerged, coming to power in some countries, have a different character, although some do include a fascistic element. These have grown because of the crisis of capitalism, the bourgeoisification of social-democratic parties, alongside most ‘communist’ parties and, due to the failure of the populist left movements which emerged following the 2008 crisis, or before it in some countries.

How can we characterise this new period? We are in an era of dramatic social, political and economic polarisation, shocks, instability and uncertainty, the degree of which have not been experienced for generations. A new world, of a protracted death agony of capitalism is unfolding. There is revolutionary potential and optimism involving a glimpse of a new world. This has been reflected in important class and social movements that have erupted. Even greater class battles and social upheavals are pending in the new era we are now in.

At the same time, the death agony of capitalism has many dystopian features. Alienation, desperation, lack of hope and an epidemic of psychological problems confront millions, especially of the younger generation. In this new period, what was impossible in the post-Second World War period now becomes possible. What was implausible becomes plausible.

Marxists must not view world events and the class struggle today through the prism of yesterday, in a fundamentally changing world situation. The need for an alternative social system – socialism – is both possible and more urgent than ever.

The collapse of the former Stalinist states in 1989-91 broke the post-1945 relationship of power that existed between two rival social systems – capitalism and Stalinism. This had decisive consequences for the world situation and the organisations of the working class and political consciousness. The CWI was among the first to recognise the decisive historical consequences of these developments.

Despite those historic changes, western imperialism broadly maintained a consensus in geopolitical relations, dominated by US imperialism, despite some differences and divisions. The broad agreement amongst the western imperialists continued in the period after the collapse of the Stalinist states from the end of the 1980s onwards. For a time, this allowed US imperialism to be clearly the dominant world power. Yet this was undermined by China’s rise and other developments. Now the coming to power of Trump 2 has decisively broken the previous consensus between the older imperialist powers.

The character of the new era is epitomised in the genocidal war that the Israeli regime launched against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank following the 7 October 2023 attack led by Hamas. This war of extermination, as we explained at the time, is not a simple repetition of previous attacks against the Palestinians. It is of a different order, with massive regional and global consequences.

Global capitalism now faces a series of multiple crises – economic, political, social and environmental. Climate change and other catastrophic environmental crises are now impacting on every aspect of the world situation. They are provoking famine, violent storms and flooding, fuelling increased migration, and worsening the economic conditions of millions. These horrors can only be resolved through global planning, something which is impossible within capitalism. Degrowth and the “green economy” can offer no way forward or solution. The urgency for a democratic socialist plan is reinforced by the climatic crisis.

Breach Amongst Imperialist Powers

The breach which has taken place in imperialist and geopolitical relations is not merely the product of the whim of this or that individual political leader or the coming to power of right-wing populist nationalist regimes like Trump’s. Reflected in this development are deeper political and economic processes. A crucial factor is the emergence of a multipolar world flowing from the historic decline of US imperialism and the rise of China. This has been accompanied by a strengthening of some other weaker capitalist powers, such as India.

The breaking of capitalist equilibrium and severe erosion of the political infrastructure and institutions that the ruling classes previously rested on is a decisive feature of this era. The institutions capitalism has rested on, e.g. the traditional political parties, the church, judiciary, police and other state institutions, and internationally bodies like the WTO and the UN, are severely weakened. In some cases, they are totally discredited or shattered. This historic change is irreversible. The genie cannot be put back in the bottle.

The clash between the Trump regime and Europe over protectionist measures and military expenditure marks a historic break from the post war consensus that existed between US imperialism and Europe. Behind this lies the economic clash of interests and a divergence in geopolitical goals and interests. Trump has attempted to wean Putin away from China’s orbit. Something which, despite some friction between Russia and China, he has so far failed to do.

The situation in Europe has fundamentally changed. It is increasingly intertwined with the Chinese economy. China is crucial for the EU. The Chinese car market is vital for Germany. Volkswagen has over thirty plants in China. And now Europe is also a growing market for China. Whilst Chinese shipments to the US fell by 34.5% in May 2025, exports to France increased by 24.1% and to Germany by 21.5%. However, the US at this stage remains the largest export market for the European ruling classes.

The expansion of the EU has been combined with the coming to power of the far-right populist Orban regime in Hungary and, in different ways, the growth of right-wing populist parties in Poland, Romania and elsewhere. In various forms there has been the growth of right-wing populism in most of the EU countries. Together with political crisis at the centre of the EU in Germany and France, Europe is not the same Europe as it was in the previous period. This feeds the crisis and instability which exists. The sharp tensions within the EU raise the prospect of its possible break up or reconfiguration, possibly around the euro currency or the entire structure of the EU, as the global crisis develops further, although this process has been more protracted than we anticipated originally.

Militarisation and Wars

Inter-imperialist geopolitical conflicts have centred on the major wars in Ukraine and Gaza, both of which have assumed a global dimension. Yet the centre of gravity of such conflicts is not static or fixed. Major devastating wars are also being fought in Africa and Asia. Others can erupt in major flash points such as Taiwan, or conflicts in the south China sea, in Kashmir – as witnessed in the recent clashes between India and Pakistan, the Balkans, various parts of Africa and even in South America.

The Israeli attack on Iran, followed by the US bombardment, something that the CWI has raised as a serious threat in our previous analysis, illustrates the nature of the period we are in, in terms of global relations. This attack further intensified the crisis throughout the Middle East, plus its global consequences. The present dynamic is towards the outbreak of a regional war or wars at a certain stage, despite the highly unstable “ceasefire” that has been brokered. The underlying causes of the crisis remain unresolved and cannot be resolved within the confines of capitalism. The potential for such major wars reflects one aspect of the new period we are now in. Generally, world capitalism is now in an era of wars – both economic, trade, political and military to a degree not witnessed since 1945.

Even during the post-war upswing major wars and conflicts erupted, for example in Vietnam and Korea. Often these were the result of a revolt against colonialism. Today, however, there are fifty-two military conflicts taking place – the highest since 1945. Ninety-two countries are involved in conflicts outside their national borders. The global rearmament programmes that are being implemented in all the major imperialist powers and others have their own dynamic.

Global military expenditure reached an all-time high of US$2.7 trillion in 2024. Although as a percentage of global GDP (which is not the only measure) this is still less than at the height of the cold war, the trajectory is upwards and on current trends it will surpass that level in a few years. Wars and conflicts will intensify in this era. The global explosion of militarisation and military expenditure has both been in the form of nation-states’ military hardware and the plethora of privatised mercenary forces fighting proxy wars.

The worldwide militarisation alongside the economic and military wars reflect the fundamental changes taking place in the world economy and international relations. The decisive over-arching issues globally are the protracted decline of US imperialism, the rise of China and the weakened position of European capitalism. The balance of power amongst the imperialist powers is in the process of undergoing historic changes. It means that no one power will rule or dominate as in the past – like Britain in the nineteenth century and then, more briefly, the US.

The sharp integration of the world economy and dominance of globalisation which took place in the 1980s was rapidly accelerated following the collapse of the Stalinist states. This process went a long way. Some wrongly concluded that it was irreversible and that the nation-state was becoming a historic relic, as capitalism was in the process of outgrowing it. The CWI argued that this was not the case and that with the onset of a new structural crisis of capitalism the process would go into reverse. The globalisation and integration of the world economy that took place in the early part of the twentieth century gave way to the First World War in 1914, as capitalism then entered a new era of crisis and clashes of national interests.

Today, as recent events have illustrated, the hyper-globalisation of the 1990s has been slammed into reverse gear when compared to that period when the euro was introduced and speculation was rife about the EU evolving into a nation-state. That period has now given way to trade wars and a resetting of the integration of the world economy. The fragmentation of the world economy, accelerated earlier by Covid, is deepening, with trends of ‘de-coupling’, ‘friendshoring’, etc., as capital is forced to rely more on the nation-state. With this, a further undermining of the feeble international ‘rules-based order’ is taking place. This does not mean the end of some features of a globalised world economy.

Protectionism, Regional Blocs and the Economy

Protectionism, nationalism, rivalries and conflicts between the powers are now the dominant trend. This does not mean a total breakdown of the interconnection or integration of sections of the world economy. However, the trend towards more regional blocs, sub-regional blocs and trade patterns is emerging and will develop further. Reflecting this process, albeit on an unstable basis, it is significant that the BRICS now account for 35% of world GDP compared to 30% for the G7. The BRICS include over 40% of the global population and is growing as a bloc. Other smaller blocs and trade alliances exist. New ones can emerge. The rivalry and unstable situation can lead to shifting alliances within and between all the blocs which already exist, or new ones which can develop. The world situation is thus poised to become even more unstable, with heightened tensions and clashes of all kinds, rather than less.

There is no prospect of a return to the period of ‘hyper-globalisation’ that rapidly followed the collapse of the Stalinist regimes. This would need a sustained period of economic growth and upswing. Capitalism is not in such a cyclical phase. Rather it is in a protracted death agony. One that is marked by stagnation and recession, or at best short-lived, feeble, unsustainable, limited growth. It is marked by unprecedented and growing inequality and polarisation between the super-rich and the rest.

The world economy has seen expected global growth in a downward spiral this year to its lowest level since 2008, according to the World Bank’s latest ‘Global Economic Prospects’. In fact, illustrating the era of capitalist crisis, growth in world trade has been steadily falling for the last twenty-five years. In the 2000s it grew by 5% on average, in the 2010s by 4.5% and in the 2020s by 3%. Global economic growth in the first seven years of the 2020s has thus far been the slowest since the 1960s.

The world economy currently has unsustainable features which are a prelude to a deeper crisis. The lurch to protectionism under Trump, which Biden had also resorted to, reflects the decline of US imperialism. The fact that in the most powerful imperialist power, manufacturing only accounts for 10% of US GDP, down from 16% in 1997, illustrates the decline which has taken place. The rise of finance capital and the service sector in most of the western imperialist powers is a key aspect of the current period in which capitalism finds itself. Within this, the new sectors of high-tech and AI have strengthened their position, reflecting a certain change in the composition of the ruling class.

Manufacturing is now overwhelmingly concentrated in Asia where an enormous industrial working class now exists. This is crucial for future developments in the class struggle. It is estimated that in China over 200 million workers are employed in the manufacturing sector, in Indonesia 18.8 million and in India 60 million. The crisis in these countries is certain to lead to the outbreak of massive class battles. The political and ideological expression these take is something we must be attentive to, and be prepared to audaciously intervene in, and be open to learn from. This does not mean that the working class in the older imperialist powers in Europe or the US will not play a central role in the global revolutionary process.

The shrinking of the manufacturing sector in the US and other western imperialist powers is one factor which has triggered a lurch to protectionism by Trump and sections of the ruling class. One of the preoccupations of the ruling class in some countries is that the decline of manufacturing weakens the capacity of the ruling class to rapidly switch to armaments production should they need to. The prospect of a full global trade war, or even one concentrated in specific regions or countries, is one element threatening the prospect of a serious downturn and recession in the global economy in 2025 or 2026.

As already illustrated, the level of tariffs that are applied will oscillate, as will the intensity of the trade war, depending on specific economic and political factors. Although there will be no outright winners from this conflict, China has key advantage points – not least its concentration of rare earth mineral mining and processing. China’s president Xi Jinping got the upper hand in recent negotiations with Trump. To one degree or another trade wars are now an established part of the world economic situation in this period. In some countries in the neo-colonial world, they are having devastating consequences and can trigger defaults and revolutionary upheavals as we saw in Sri Lanka.

The staggering levels of global debt – unprecedented in capitalism’s history – are unsustainable in the medium and long term. They threaten to trigger crises, especially given the rise in financial speculation and now crypto ‘assets’. The debt repayments are having disastrous consequences in swathes of the neocolonial world which have no, or little, manoeuvrability on this issue. Twenty of the poorest countries spend more than 20% of government revenue on paying interest on debt.

The larger imperialist economies are also impacted by the debt crisis but have some manoeuvrability. The question of the massive debt levels is not just confined to the neocolonial world. It is crucial in the two most powerful world economies – the US and China. Japan kicked the crisis down the road and sustained a massive debt to GDP ratio (which reached 263.9% in 2022) for decades. Some argued that this illustrated that such a development was indefinitely sustainable. It resulted, however, in falling conditions for millions and a declining population. Now its economy is on the brink of a new crisis which is a warning for the other larger economies.

The crucial issue of the global debt is one factor, together with others, that can trigger a new financial and systemic crisis, deeper than in 2008. The possibility of a financial collapse cannot be ruled out. In the 2008 crisis the capitalist classes globally stepped in to prevent a total global financial meltdown. In this, the US and China played a central role. Today’s world is very different to 2008. The surge in protectionism and nationalism will make a global response more difficult and may mean state intervention is more national or regional than global as it was in 2008.

The contradictions and systemic crises of capitalism historically have meant that an economic reset is periodically needed. This historically has led capitalism to embark on a destruction of value, as Marx explained. This has been done through recessions, factory closures, war and even world wars. Through this, a rebooting of the economy could be possible that may create conditions for a renewed upturn or boom. This however was not automatic. The destruction of value during World War I for example did not prepare the conditions for an upturn or boom of the economy post-1918. Today, there is an element of the destruction of value taking place in the wars being fought which some capitalist sections will attempt to profit from.

Recovery from wartime destruction could stimulate some economic growth in some countries. On a larger scale the rebuilding after the Second World War did this for some countries. But this was not the only factor that prepared the way for the post-World War II upswing. The existence of the Stalinist regimes and other factors were also crucial. The fear of bankrupted states falling out of the orbit of capitalism and into the Stalinist ‘camp’ after the Second World War was an important factor that drove US imperialism in particular to bankroll massive investment in the productive forces – the Marshall Plan – which underpinned the post-war boom. Such measures are not available today, for the US or any other imperialist power.

Today, the destruction of value will not be through the medium of an all-out world war. It will be partially through regional wars like those being fought in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere, recession, factory shutdowns and other attacks on the working class. This process is at the beginning. But this will not prevent the ruling classes making brutal attacks against the conditions and living standards of the working class and masses globally. However, it will not be sufficient in the current situation to allow a reboot of the global economy and a new global upswing.

The element of the destruction of value is being done in a protracted drawn-out manner today. An all-out world war today would mean a nuclear cataclysmic event that would obliterate the working class, the productive forces and the capitalist class. The capitalist classes at this stage are not contemplating a nuclear Armageddon. For this to take place an entirely new world situation would be necessary involving the defeat of the working class in key countries and the coming to power of extreme Bonapartist authoritarian regimes. At this stage, the ruling classes – although fearing mass movements and uprisings – are not threatened immediately with the threat of socialist revolution. This is due to the throwing back of political consciousness and absence of mass political organisations of the working class. The destruction of value is thus being carried through by stealth.

The development of AI and new technology is a very significant development and will have a big impact in some sectors of the economy in some countries. It shows the enormous potential, but there is the class question of who gains from it. Unprecedented profits and massive investments are taking place in this sector. However, AI’s full development and application, especially throughout the global economy, will be restricted by the limitations of capitalism and it is not yet fully clear which capitalists will profit from it.

The Collapse of Rome and Capitalism

It is striking that many of the internal factors that led to the collapse of the western Roman Empire are present in the current protracted death agony of capitalism. Constant wars and overspending on the military; power struggles, corruption, and a succession of weak emperors and rulers; massive inequality and a chasm between the ruling elite and the poor giving rise to social unrest and climatic changes and disease; all contributed to the fall of western Rome. These are all symptoms of a social system that is rotting, putrid and decaying from within. Feudalism suffered the same fate in its bloody death agony. Social systems approaching their exit from the stage of history are riddled with such features. Yet for a period they may not immediately be confronted, overthrown and replaced by a new social system on a higher level of progress.

The slave-based economy of Rome meant that there was no class capable of overthrowing the old system and taking society forward. Thus, it disintegrated and collapsed. Feudalism allowed the emerging bourgeoisie, with the support of other social forces, to eventually carry through the various bourgeois revolutions and replace feudalism. Capitalism will not simply step aside and depart from the historical stage; it will need to be overthrown.

The very decomposition of capitalism is however preparing the way for such a challenge, led by the working class. The massive polarisation, wars – both economic and military – and growing alienation in capitalist society are beginning to forge a new generation of fighters that are looking for an alternative to the dystopian future that capitalism now offers. The decay in some areas of the neocolonial world however, due to the lag in the socialist revolution, is already leading to social disintegration and collapse.

Right-Wing Populist Regimes

The coming to power of a series of right-wing populist regimes, including now in the largest imperialist power, has enormously compounded and destabilised the world situation. These regimes assume Bonapartist, authoritarian methods. The ascent to power of such regimes is a product of a crisis of liberal bourgeois democracy which has offered no solution to the crisis that capitalism has plunged planet earth into in this era. They are also a product of the ideological implosion of the socialist left since the collapse of Stalinism and the throwing back of political consciousness which has taken place. They have come to power on the back of everything else having failed – including the left-populist forces that developed in some countries. In the imperialist countries, the Bonapartist, authoritarian features of these regimes have been in the form of parliamentary or presidential Bonapartism at this stage. Often, they have used the judiciary as a weapon to impose their agenda.

However, it is not only the right-populist regimes that have turned to the use of Bonapartist methods and more authoritarian measures. Other bourgeois regimes, like Macron in France and Starmer in Britain, have also increasingly adopted these methods. In some areas of the neocolonial world, it can and has assumed the character of military coups.

Attempts at imposing Bonapartist regimes can trigger mass social upheavals as we saw in South Korea with the unfolding of a mass movement and general strike. At the same time, these Bonapartist regimes can offer no solution or way out. They become regimes of crisis sooner or later as we are beginning to see in the US under Trump 2. The challenge for the working class and Marxists is to build an alternative. For this to take place a series of mass class battles are needed for a new generation of activists to be forged. Crucially, an ideological struggle is also essential to put the idea of socialism back into the equation – of an alternative social system and the programme necessary to achieve it.

The roots of the major wars currently being fought in Ukraine, Palestine and the Middle East, like many other conflicts are unresolvable under capitalism. They reflect one aspect of the character of the era – the increased capitalist competition and changes in the world balance of forces, and the character of the regimes that exist in both Russia and Israel. Russia is ruled by the nationalist, Bonapartist, authoritarian regime of gangster oligarchical capitalism of Putin. The Israeli capitalist state, while it has always been under variants of fundamentally right-wing bourgeois regimes of Zionist nationalism, is presently ruled by an ultra-right coalition with an unprecedented weight of far-right elements including some fascistic ones. Both wars are being fought by these regimes for their own strategical, economic and political interests. One factor, although not the dominant one, is that they are to various degrees motivated partly ideologically.

This is especially the case in Israel. Netanyahu, Likud and their ruling coalition are driven by a thirst for a ‘Greater Israel’, while militarily asserting Israeli capitalism as the dominant power in the region and the obliteration of the Palestinians as a nation. This is why a section of the Israeli ruling class wants to physically remove the Palestinians from Palestine. After 7 October 2023 they saw an opportunity to partially achieve this goal (which is contentious within the Israeli bourgeoisie) – they unleashed the war in Gaza which we said as it broke was not a mere repetition of previous wars in the Middle East.

Putin and his autocratic regime is partly driven by a longing to regain dominance in at least eastern Europe, which was lost with the collapse of the former USSR, the perception of the security threat posed to Russia by western imperialism’s expansion, and the idea that Ukraine, as a nation, should not exist. In its propaganda the Putin regime presented it as a war against fascism, almost a re-run of the Second World War. The invasion of Ukraine by Putin has led to the outbreak of a proxy imperialist war being fought on the backs of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples.

Gaza and Iran Open the Gates of Hell

The need for an independent class position is essential in the conflagration taking place in Gaza and the crisis erupting in the Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Gulf. A new stage was opened by Israel’s massive mid-June aerial bombardment of Iran, followed by the US, attacking over one-hundred targets, including nuclear facilities as well as a civilian centre, and assassination of senior military commanders (including the Chief of Staff of the armed forces). It dramatically escalated the crisis throughout the Middle East. The gates of hell have been opened in Gaza and elsewhere in the region. US imperialism, although initially not supplying the bombers, was aware the attack was imminent and did nothing to prevent it. As the CWI has warned, both Netanyahu and Trump have had regime change in Iran in their sights through one means or another. However, the fears of other US allies, especially the Saudi regime, resulted in a pause in mutual attacks.

The threat remains of a regional war at a certain stage, because of the dynamic of the crisis. This is despite the desperate attempts by the Arab elites, western imperialism and most of the Iranian regime to avoid it. The underlying causes of the crisis remain. The attacks can assist the Iranian regime’s use of nationalist propaganda to temporarily shore-up its position. For how long this will last is another question. There is mass opposition to the Iranian regime. This has been reflected in the important ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ social movement of 2022-23, the revival of the workers’ movement since 2017 and the historic low turnouts in elections. These struggles were blunted in the face of the bombings but can erupt again on a higher level, possibly provoked by an ongoing water shortage, or by the hundreds being executed for opposition to the regime for “spying”.

The ethnic cleansing by the Israeli regime in Gaza is putting massive pressure on the Saudi dynasty and other Arab and Gulf states from the ‘Arab street’ demanding that something should be done. The bourgeois democratic revolution has not been completed in the Middle East and the threat of overthrow of the regimes can increase as the crisis intensifies. This may not be immediate, but this dynamic is present in the situation. Such revolutionary developments would be faced with the tasks of the permanent revolution – combining bourgeois democratic and socialist demands.

The attack on Iran followed the genocidal war the Israeli regime is waging on the Palestinian people. The bloody slaughter of the Palestinian masses, including brutal repression and the use of famine, is aimed at carrying through a policy of ethnic cleansing; driving the Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank and creating a Greater Israel. This has been combined with further bombings and advances in Lebanon and Syria.

The desperation of the Palestinian people can result in them fleeing Gaza, which is already largely unhabitable, storming towards the Egyptian border to force the Egyptian, Jordanian or another state to accept them. Capitalism has witnessed such a mass displacement of a peoples historically – in India/Pakistan, Armenia, Greece/Turkey and elsewhere, especially after the First and Second World Wars.

It is not excluded that the Israeli regime will succeed in this objective or at least herd the mass of the Palestinian people into what will amount to what the former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, referred to as a “concentration camp”. This policy can provoke mass movements throughout the Middle East, Persian Gulf and north Africa especially at a certain stage, as the rage felt by the masses ignites into a social explosion. There is no solution to this cataclysmic massacre and displacement while capitalism exists. Even if Netanyahu is removed and the Israeli bourgeois opposition takes over, the brutal repression would still be prosecuted, although probably in a different form.

An independent class programme is essential to resolve the crisis, in opposition to capitalism and imperialism. A central part of the programme of the CWI in relation to the genocidal war against the Palestinians is for the withdrawal of all Israeli occupation forces, an end of the war and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people, including the right to form their own state in their struggle for their liberation. A mass movement of the Palestinian people with a revolutionary socialist programme is necessary, linking together with movements of the working class and poor across the region. Based on capitalism there is no solution to the crisis, including two capitalist states. At the same time, it is important to recognise the right and support amongst the Israeli population for their own state and to support the demand for urgent socialist change in Israel. Replacing the Zionist capitalist state which currently exists is the only way to end oppression and poverty. The consequences of the crisis of capitalism in Israel, and internationally the struggle of socialist and workers’ forces, can assist sections of the Israeli working class and youth to begin to oppose the Israeli capitalist state. At this stage this is a small minority. This can grow because of experience and the deepening crisis. Such an independent workers’ and socialist movement will also require rejecting national chauvinism and adopting an independent programme that opposes oppression of the Palestinians in Israel/Palestine along with all forms of oppression throughout the region.

Russian Invasion of Ukraine – an Imperialist Proxy War

Western imperialism initially tried to ingratiate itself with Putin but then blocked and provoked his regime. The expansion of NATO eastwards and blocking of Russia had the effect of provoking the “Russian bear”. This was something that some western capitalist advisers warned against historically. Even today, some are questioning the hostility to Putin and raise the prospect of some collaboration and agreement with Russia as being more beneficial to their capitalist interests, especially against China.

Western imperialism, through NATO, has in effect been conducting a proxy war against Putin as he now threatens their interests. NATO forces, under Biden, were not only supplying weapons to Ukraine but worked hand in glove with Ukrainian commanders on intelligence and advising on planning operations. Putin’s adventure has been bloody, costing Russia probably hundreds of thousands of casualties plus tens of thousands more on the Ukrainian side. Putin at this stage seems determined to prosecute the war further, to try and secure more territory than the approximately 20% of Ukraine under Russian control.

Despite recent Ukrainian drone attacks deep inside Russia and attacks on the crucial bridge to the Crimea, Russia is making military advances in the east of Ukraine. A frozen war is possible. Neither side is likely to formally compromise its claim on Crimea. Putin’s threat of using a tactical nuclear weapon has receded as Russia has made gains; however, this could change. The threat of such a horrific development globally has increased in the recent period. This horror can emerge in other confrontations involving authoritarian, Bonapartist regimes that already exist or other rogue regimes which are likely to seize power in some other countries.

It is not excluded now that Trump and the US will step back further from the war. This would weaken Ukraine and provoke divisions within the EU about how to respond to such a situation. In any event, even with a patched-up ceasefire the conflict is set to continue in one form or another. The importance of socialists adopting an independent class programme in this and other war zones is crucial.

US Polarisation and Class Struggle

The massive polarisation and crisis unfolding in the US is crucial for how events develop internationally in this era. A social, political and economic tsunami is hitting the most powerful of imperial powers. The processes unfolding in the US illustrate what is developing on every continent in one form or another. Trump 2 has ushered in a new world situation and an entirely new domestic situation in the US.

Trump, at the head of a right-wing nationalist populist movement, mobilised a base and stepped into the vacuum that existed. His movement and election victory are a product of the failure of everything that preceded it, particularly the bourgeois Democrats and the old Republicans pushed aside by MAGA. This failure includes the repeated refusal of Sanders and the “left” to break with the Democratic Party and take the steps necessary to build a mass workers’ party. The processes involved are also a product of fifty years of stagnation, and for millions, decline, in real wages and living standards – a consequence of the slow decline of US imperialism which is now accelerating.

The Trump regime, although continuing some aspects of the policy of previous right-wing presidencies like Reagan’s, is accelerating the processes begun earlier. His regime is taking them to a higher, more acute level. Quantitative measures introduced by earlier administrations have now reached a qualitative change in the situation under Trump. This is against the background of an entirely changed world situation where he has intensified the trade war – despite oscillations in the tariffs to be imposed – and ripped-up the post-war consensus between the US and Europe. His regime has moved in a more authoritarian direction and encompassed strong features of Bonapartism, enhanced by the Supreme Court decision giving presidents immunity for all “official” acts. It is further illustrated by Trump’s bombing of Iran without the approval of Congress, in defiance of the War Powers Act of 1973. This is inherent in all presidential systems, however Trump has accelerated the process and taken it to a higher level.

This is reflected in the deployment of the National Guard and the Marines in Los Angeles – a step of doubtful legality given Trump’s reluctance so far to invoke the Insurrection Act. The seizure of people from the streets of many cities by masked and unidentified ICE and other operatives illustrates this. Trump’s defiance of the court ruling heralds the likelihood of an historic constitutional crisis. It is important to recognise that the Democrats have also deployed the National Guard against other movements in the past. The actions of the Trump regime – including the arrest of a senator, a New York mayoral candidate, attacking and killings of Democratic politicians and growth of arms sales – all illustrate the massive divide opening up. The mass protests and opposition in parts of Los Angeles to the deployment of ICE and the National Guard in that city, illustrates the massive polarisation and potential for action which is now interwoven into the fabric of US society. The killing of the CEO of one private health company, which got widespread sympathy amongst some layers, illustrates the anger and the potential for actions of individual terrorism to develop in the US and other countries, especially if there is a delay in big movements of the working class in struggle.

The degree of polarisation constitutes one aspect of the tendency towards elements of civil war, in a modern form – developments that will intensify as events unfold. This does not mean a repetition of the 1861-65 US civil war as such, but entrenched polarisation, clashes, including armed clashes, in the US. This is something rooted in the history of the workers’ struggles in the US, especially in the 1921 ‘Battle for Blair Mountain’, involving 10,000 armed coal miners and 3,000 law enforcement personnel and strike breakers, the largest military clash on US soil since 1865. It is also something which is not totally unheard of recently in advanced capitalist countries as shown in Ireland from the late 1960s until 1998 and the more recent clashes over the national question in Catalonia. One aspect of this is the prospect of deepening centrifugal tendencies in the US between some states and the federal government. Events in California have illustrated this.

As already seen, the Trump regime will be one of crisis and divisions. At a certain stage it will collide with massive opposition, most importantly from organised labour and crucial social movements such as the migrant population, women, LGBTQ+, environmental and others. This is being enforced by the massive upward distribution of wealth and social cuts to basic services as shown in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”. These will provoke mass opposition at a certain stage.

The growth in some sections of trade union membership is a harbinger of big class battles that will erupt and is very significant. All the polls indicate massive support or sympathy for the idea of trade unions and organised labour. Yet this process is at an early stage and is uneven. A struggle to transform the trade unions into combative fighting organisations is crucial in order to capitalise on the potential. Despite the surge in support for the idea of trade unions this is not transformed into reality. Trade union density is thus the lowest for one-hundred years and remains at 10.7% of full-time workers. The trade union bureaucracy, in the main, has proved incapable of capitalising on the potential which exists.

An important factor here is the composition of the working class. Sections of the middle class are in the process of being proletarianised in terms of conditions, both at work and in society. This will develop further, especially as AI increasingly encroaches on these layers. The strikes of screen writers at Hollywood were significant in this respect. At the same time, an explosion of precarious jobs, agency and self-employed work has taken place. This is an important factor and is an international trend. New methods and forms of organisation are essential to deal with this in the multiple workplaces that millions are now compelled to work in to make ends meet.

Revolution and Counter-Revolution

In the US and globally we are seeing a struggle between elements of revolution and counter-revolution being fought-out. Globally this takes many forms. However, the world situation is now marked by this process. At this stage it is not the threat of socialist revolution that is immediately posed, due to the subjective factors of the absence of mass revolutionary parties, the throwing back of political consciousness and the ideological collapse of most of the socialist left. Objectively the conditions for socialism are rotten ripe. However, the subjective weaknesses become intertwined with the objective situation and are thus interlinked.

These processes have resulted in an era of populism of both the right and the left. The recent period has ideologically been one of populism. The failure of the left-populist movements in Europe, the refusal of Sanders and co. to break from the US Democrats, the betrayals of the first ‘pink wave’ in Latin America and then its paler version, have allowed the populist-right to step in and electorally largely gain the momentum. This is having devastating consequences, provoking further polarisation and conflict. Attacks on the working class, not least under the pretext of debt and militarisation, have been accompanied with an ideological counter-offensive by the ruling classes that has particularly targeted immigrants, but also LGBTQ+ people and women’s rights, alongside anti-‘progressive’, and anti-socialist rhetoric.

Reaction, while having a devastating effect on the lives of many, and often a complicating effect on consciousness of sections of the masses with the whipping-up of chauvinism and prejudice, has nevertheless been further propelling polarisation, crises of legitimacy of governments and state institutions, development of class antagonism and radicalisation among sections of the working class and youth. A backlash against the right-populist movements and regimes will erupt.

The mass social uprisings that we have already seen and significant upturn in the class struggle in some countries are a harbinger to even greater social uprisings and battles in this era. General strikes have developed in a series of countries, from Argentina to Morocco to India, from Belgium to Serbia, as part of resurgent working class militancy. A deep ingrained hatred of the “establishment”, the rich and the rulers is to be found in many countries. The far-right and populist-right have echoed this in a cynical manner.

The devastating crisis in the neocolonial world is leading to explosive developments. The regime in Burkina Faso signifies an important development. A regime denouncing imperialism has significant support at this stage. It has echoes of Cuba in the very early stages of the revolution. Yet reflecting this era, it is not, at this stage, posing the question of socialism, even in the very vague and loose way some nationalist movements raised it in the past.

The Gaza solidarity movement, involving sustained mass mobilisations and some bold working class actions, as well as militant student protests, has been a major focus of radicalisation among sections of the working class and youth. This has involved a recognition of the reactionary role of US and Western imperialist governments – which have often aggressively suppressed protests – and corporations and has been one of the important arenas of intervention for socialist forces over the recent period.

Political consciousness amongst the working class and the masses does not develop in a constant line of ascent. Steps and leaps forward can take place. We saw this during the mass uprisings in Sri Lanka, Sudan and Chile despite the limitations which existed. Yet, as we have seen, this can be followed by regression. Yet this is not the end of the process. A series of crises will be met by mass movements involving bitter class struggles, in which it will be necessary to forge a new generation of fighters that draw socialist and revolutionary conclusions.

The formation of new mass parties of the working class can be an important step in this process. Such developments would signify the working class becoming a class for itself, rather than a class in itself. Bitter class struggles are crucial for this process to develop, and it will be posed in this era. At the same time, the role of the subjective factor is crucial. The process can be even more protracted than it has been, due to the weakness and ideological shallowness of the ‘left’ that acts as a break on the process.

It is important to stress that even with such a delay, a significant layer of workers and youth can be drawn directly to support and join a revolutionary socialist party and international. New broad mass socialist parties of the working class would represent a big step forward in class consciousness and as a part of the struggle to build revolutionary socialist parties. However, it is important that the building of revolutionary socialist parties is not dependent on new broader parties of the working class being formed.

This era is already resulting in ethnic clashes, wars and in some areas of the neocolonial world disintegration and social collapse. Yet it can also produce mass revolutionary explosions even without mass parties or revolutionary socialist parties. New regimes in some countries can be thrust into power that seriously encroach on capitalist and imperialist interests. In the past such regimes could have been drawn into the orbit of the Stalinist states and overthrow landlordism and capitalism. Today, with the collapse of the former USSR it is more likely that such regimes would be short-lived, unless the socialist revolution developed elsewhere. Developments more akin to a modern version of the Paris Commune are not therefore excluded. The CWI must be prepared for such explosive developments.

Role of the CWI

We are now in a new era. What previously was viewed as possibilities in the future, is unfolding today. In that sense the future is now. We need to embrace it, warts and all. We need audacity in active intervention in the class struggle and struggles of the masses. One aspect of this is the need for audacity of thought to conduct an ideological battle. The CWI in many respects ideologically faces similar challenges to those that confronted the First International. The Second International propagated the idea of socialism, which we also need to do today. Yet it was soon comprised of large or mass organisations and the idea of socialism as an alternative social system was more widely part of the political consciousness of the working class. However, the mass organisations of the Second International and those later formed by the Third International did not change the world.

Today, it is essential we train our cadres in the method of Marxism and apply it to a new world. More than ever before, routine repetition of formulae is not applicable to this era. We should consciously challenge any conservative repetitions of formulae that no longer correspond sufficiently with developments and tasks. At the same time, we should be mindful of the dangers of over-abstract, vague notions of a need for ‘something new’ stemming from false perceptions of conservatism – not least under the influence of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideological pressures. If we combine all the important tasks facing us, we can be confident that the CWI can take steps and leaps forward in the struggle to build a revolutionary socialist international, which is an indispensable tool for world socialism.

Appendix

Elaboration on the Middle East, extracted from proposed amendments by visitors to the CWI Congress from Socialist Struggle Movement in Israel-Palestine

Genocidal Onslaught on Gaza and Regional Showcase Bombings Fuelled by Washington

The Israeli government of Netanyahu and the far-right is predominantly driven by aspirations of expansionism and ethnic cleansing between the river and the sea, with the logic of obliteration of the Palestinians as a nation, while militarily asserting Israeli capitalism as the dominant power in the region under the auspices of US imperialism. They have unleashed, with the decisive backing of Washington, one of the worst catastrophes on the planet in this century, including massive extermination and destruction, and the use of famine, in the pursuit of driving the Palestinians from Gaza and large areas of the West Bank, generally striving to advance annexations in one form or another towards a ‘Greater Israel’.

On the one hand, divisions in the Israeli ruling class have been significant and rife, reflecting strategic dilemmas in the face of a profound generalised crisis, including concerns around the ideas of pursuing entangling annexations and a recolonisation project of Gaza, along with opposition to a range of government policies. This went as far as an open alliance by key forces of capital and senior former officials from the military-security elite and state apparatus with the General Histadrut’s leadership around two protest labour general strikes against government policies, including one in the context of the highly contradictory Israeli protest movement for the return of hostages (where left and socialist forces demanding an end to the genocidal onslaught in itself are in a minority). This is a sign of a degree of desperation of the Israeli ruling class, relying on it legitimising methods that may potentially be turned against itself in the future. But nevertheless, the bulk of the military campaign by the Netanyahu government involved carrying out geostrategic aspirations of the ruling class at large, in its extremely cynical exploitation of the Hamas offensive of 7 October 2023.

It is only recently that some Israeli bourgeois spokespersons began criticising ‘war crimes’ by the Israeli government. This reflects their fear of the potential global and regional longer term political fallout, while public opinion about Israel is in a sharp decline even in the US, and it is also Western governments that are pushed to attempt to restrain or softly challenge the Israeli regime to politically camouflage their ultimate complicity in the genocidal onslaught against the Palestinians via symbolic measures, including some support of ICJ and ICC nominal procedures on the charge of genocide.

Globally, the genocidal onslaught on the Palestinians and the massive regional aggression have further propagated reactionary phenomena of chauvinism, antisemitism and Islamophobia. But also the explosion of the international solidarity movement, which has been a worldwide rallying call, and despite systematic repression has been more enduring internationally than the movement against the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In some countries it became a significant factor in the dynamic of elections and pressure on governments.

Generally, the question of Palestinian liberation is bound to remain an important focal point for mass radicalisation and mobilisation, both in the imperialist countries and the neo-colonial world. It is the task of Marxists to energetically intervene and assist also in overcoming limitations through pointing out a way forward for effective mobilisation of international working-class solidarity — including building on the marvellous examples of militant actions by dock workers across several countries — for organising, and for pointing the way forward programmatically for working-class struggle to overcome imperialism, the oppression of the Palestinians, and the regimes of oppression across the region.

The roots of the historic bloody crisis in Gaza  have been first and foremost the extreme oppression and dispossession of the Palestinians. 7 October occurred in the context of important shifts in global and regional relations. The regional Arab–Israeli ‘normalisation process’ — in fact, normalisation of the occupation and subjugation of the Palestinians — that has been integrated in Washington’s broader strive to obstruct advancement of Chinese and Russian rival imperialist interests in the region, was about to yield an official agreement with Saudi Arabia. Hamas, lacking any genuine strategic outlet to fundamentally challenge the occupation, capitalism and imperialism, attempted to cut across the process and bring back the Palestinian question to the centre of world attention.

For the Israeli ruling class, 7 October, with the mass Israeli shock from accompanying acts of murder and kidnapping of civilians, was seen as a historic opportunity to unleash massive firepower to qualitatively reshape the region to their will. That is, carrying out by ‘other means’ the fundamental logic of the diplomatic ‘normalisation process’, delivering a historic blow to the Palestinians, and undermining the regional posture of the Iranian regime and its allies.

The Israeli government was seeking mass uprooting of Palestinians from Gaza from the outset, but met the resistance of Arab regimes, ultimately reflecting pressures of mass rage and the underlying class power balance regionally. However, Trump’s backing has re-boosted their determination in this context, with a plan for a giant concentration camp to serve in preparation for ‘voluntary’ emigration. Given the super-extreme conditions under the constant barbaric attacks by the Israeli occupation, mass desperation can result in a section of the population conceding to either a ‘voluntary’ uprooting, or even to episodes of storming the border with Egypt.

This spectre of another mass uprooting from historical Palestine, is reminiscent of the catastrophic mass exodus of 1967, and of course of the original colossal ethnic cleansing in the events of the Nakba of 1948. It is not excluded that the Israeli regime will succeed in this objective. However, not with a complete depopulation of Gaza, and not without evoking further mass rage across the region and globally.

The mass solidarity with the Palestinians across the region and the deep antagonism by the masses towards US imperialism are putting massive pressure on the pro-US Arab regimes in the region to camouflage their strategic convergence or outright alliances with the Israeli regime, to suppress independent protests, and to rhetorically pose as echoing mass rage and ‘doing something’.

Over the last decade and a half, processes of revolution and counter-revolution have developed across the Middle East and North Africa in a more generalised manner than in other regions, not least as expressed in the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ revolutionary wave of 2011, with an important incipient role played by sections of the working class, but also in consequent episodes of mass uprisings, often on a higher level, drawing out lessons from earlier experiences.

The bourgeois democratic revolution ultimately cannot be completed in the neo-colonial countries of Middle East and North Africa in the era of imperialism, with sharp class contradictions posing a potential existential threat to the interests of the capitalist class, landlords and military generals. While the ‘normalisation’ of relations with the State of Israel has been deeply unpopular before, it is now even more acutely so, and the mass rage over Gaza, even in countries where independent protests have largely been suppressed such as Egypt, is another important factor in the development of simmering mass antagonisms that are bound to re-erupt sooner or later.

The deposing of the Ba’ath regime of Assad, although not by the masses and for a new dictatorial capitalist regime, nevertheless reflected an entirely eroded social base for Assad, and posed once again, albeit in a completely deformed form, the idea of the feasibility of overthrowing longstanding dictatorships. Further new episodes of mass movements and revolutionary crises would be faced with the task of rebuilding mass independent fighting organisations led by the working class, drawing out lessons of the past, and pursuing the tasks of the permanent revolution combining democratic and socialist demands.

The idea that some combined force of several Arab regimes in the region, with or without collaboration from the deeply unpopular Palestinian Authority, would enter Gaza to locally govern the population instead of Hamas, as a subcontractor for the Israeli occupation, would meet, as another foreign occupation force, renewed resistance, but also may ‘infect’ the ranks of any such Arab force with revolt against the regimes in their home countries.

In any scenario, the Palestinians themselves will continue to pursue liberation and challenge the occupation. Recent protests by surviving residents in Gaza itself, for ending the Israeli genocidal aggression but also against the dead-end policies of Hamas for the liberation struggle, implicitly pose the necessity for an alternative, independent socialist voice to be organised and show the way forward. There is no solution to the entrenched occupation and oppression of the Palestinians while capitalism exists. While the Israeli occupation forces are set to potentially remain in parts of Gaza for years, the current extensive hyper-intense phase of the genocidal onslaught may give way to attempts to restructure the occupation and stabilise the situation. It is mass interventions globally, regionally, and locally that may push back the brutal war machine of Israeli capitalism, its Western imperialist backing, and force concessions.

An independent class programme is essential to resolve the crisis in opposition to capitalism and imperialism. A mass movement of the Palestinian people with a revolutionary socialist programme, linking together with the movements of the working class and poor across the region, is necessary . Under influence of domestic crises but also global and regional development of independent left and socialist forces among the working class, sections of the Israeli working class will in the future also move more decisively against Israeli capitalism, which will require breaking with national chauvinism and adopting an independent programme that fully challenges all forms of oppression and dispossession of the Palestinians, for full national and social liberation.

This would provide a basis for a necessary future unity in a struggle to overthrow Israeli capitalism, the Arab elites and the theocratic Iranian regime and establish a democratic, socialist confederation of the region on a voluntary and equal basis.

Only in this context could the resources of the region be democratically mobilised to equally address the needs of the masses, to assist in a comprehensive addressing of the national and social aspirations of the Palestinian refugees, including a right to return, while guaranteeing the rights of all nations and minorities. At this stage such a solution appears remote and is not present. However, this can change through events and struggles. It is the task of Marxists to put forward a transitional socialist programme to point to the necessity of a fundamental, revolutionary solution, to pave the way for complete liberation from all forms of oppression, exploitation, imperialist and colonial subjugation, and on this basis open the prospect for a lasting peace for all.

Regional Power Struggle

With the showcase bombings against the ‘Axis of Resistance’ alliance, the Israeli regime and the ruling class at large were openly aiming to also prove as an efficient ‘outpost’ for the interests of Western imperialist powers at large. The all-out attack on Iran was a further step in a major shift in the regional balance of forces, with the significant setbacks for the ‘Axis of Resistance’. This was openly praised by the German Chancellor Merz, who stated that ‘Israel is doing the dirty work’, essentially for Western imperialism.

While Moscow and Beijing could not in the current circumstances intervene in the region in the face of the Western imperialist offensive without major entangling consequences for them, they want to attempt to safeguard the regime in Tehran, which shortly after the ceasefire already received a shipment of Chinese air defence missiles.

The dramatic military ousting of the Assad regime in Syria, a development that was triggered by the declared ceasefire in Lebanon, led to a significant regional setback for Moscow, with the new al-Sharaa-led regime, under Turkish sponsorship, clearly oriented at this stage towards business with Western imperialism. Although Trump has pushed for a Syrian–Israeli ‘normalisation’, this doesn’t seem likely in the coming period, and the Israeli regime has exploited the circumstances for a more extensive military intervention and occupation on the ground.

Despite the significant setbacks of the ‘Axis of Resistance’, not least Hezbollah, none of its key components are disintegrated, they generally maintain a political base of support, and are not bound to merely capitulate. The Houthi regime in Yemen, even after substantial bombings by the US and UK, as well as the Israeli air raids, can still mobilise tens of thousands to rallies, and is still somewhat challenging the Israeli state and Western imperialist interests with military measures, not least with ongoing disruptions of trade routes in the Red Sea.

However, it is necessary to counter any illusions that those measures may point to a path to strategically force US imperialism and the Israeli regime to cease military aggression across the region. None of the right-wing Islamist, pro-capitalist, components of the ‘Axis of Resistance’ offers a way out for overcoming imperialism, for a Palestinian liberation, and for mass social liberation.

As Trump pursues new geostrategic deals in the region to secure the grip of US imperialism, including reigniting the ‘normalisation’ process of Arab and Islamic regimes with Israeli capitalism, the general regional situation remains highly volatile.

Despite the triumphant rhetoric of Trump and Netanyahu following the war on Iran, recent reports suggest that only the Fordow facility was generally destroyed in the US bombing, and the Iranian regime hasn’t been hurrying to abide by Trump’s dictate of renewed negotiations. The motivation of the regime to pursue a military nuclear programme has generally increased as a result of the Western imperialist aggression, and the motivation of the power-drunk Israeli regime to challenge its rival is at its peak. The underlying causes of the crisis remain.

While for the Trump administration, there is no basis for a potential decisive intervention to impose a ‘regime change’ similar to the Iraqi model, as such direct and extensive military occupations in the region are ruled out as an option for US imperialism in the present conjuncture, the Israeli regime has developed its appetite and more explicitly aspires to advance a vector of ‘regime change’ through efforts to destabilise its Tehran rival.

Further and even more destructive ‘rounds’ of the Israel–Iran conflict are posed. The ruling classes at large, including part of the Israeli ruling class, would prefer to avoid a potential entanglement in what could be an out-of-control regional conflagration, but they are locked into this generally escalated conflict.

Generally in this era, a mere preference by the ruling classes to avoid more explosive military crises cannot in itself cut across the march of processes of generally escalating inter-imperialist and nationalist conflicts, and the military build-up carries the logic of preparation for further qualitative new confrontations.

The recent bombings across Iran has assisted the Iranian regime in temporarily shoring up its position. For how long this lasts is another question. The memory from the crushed 2022 mass uprising — where the oppression of women and the Kurds was a major catalyst for a generalised movement against the theocratic capitalist regime, under the Kurdish slogan ‘woman, life, freedom’ — is still fresh. A resurgence of social protests and labour strike actions was a major development in the months and weeks leading to the Israeli bombings. These were blunted in the face of the bombings but will, eventually, erupt again on a higher level, drawing more generalised conclusions against imperialism and about the potential role of the working class, as pointed out today by some independent unions.

Intertwined with the fundamental suffocating living conditions, state repression and gender oppression, the questions of national oppression will in themselves feed further rage against the central regime. Generally, the Kurdish national question across historical Kurdistan remains a running sore for the stability of the regimes in the region, certainly including after the official dissolution of the PKK and its affiliates following a bankrupted strategy for national and social liberation.

Mass interventions are generally posed across the region more frequently in this era, as indicated by the recent mass protest movement in Turkey against Erdoğan and the AKP. Although, in the absence of independent working-class leadership, they are more open for intervention and manipulation by bourgeois forces, aiming to subjugate the power of mass struggles to their own programme — as must constantly be exposed and warned against.

NB: the content of this appendix was part of background material at the 14th CWI World Congress and was not voted on.