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Recent Articles about Southern Africa Migration / racism

Combatendo e Derrotando o Racismo Dec 10 22 by Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front

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Don't fight your neighbours for their houses - Fight the government for houses for all!

category southern africa | migration / racism | news report author Wednesday May 28, 2008 19:10author by Joe Soap - Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Frontauthor email zacf at zabalaza dot net Report this post to the editors

Over 5000 people from South Africa and Zimbabwe to the Congo and Ethiopia marched through Johannesburg on Saturday, 24th May in protest against xenophobic violence, which ravaged South Africa during the previous two weeks leaving more than 50 dead and an estimated 35 000 immigrants displaced from their homes.
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The march, which proceeded through some of the areas in downtown Johannesburg effected by the violence, was organised by the Coalition Against Xenophobia; a new umbrella group of social movements, faith-based organisations and NGOs.

Protesters called for Africa to unite, saying that the struggle against poverty and exploitation knows know borders, and received a large amount of support from spectators and passers-by - which is partly to be expected given the high numbers of immigrants living in the areas through which the march passed, but which also suggests that a lot of ordinary South Africans do not support the xenophobic violence.

Members of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front participated in the march, distributing 1000 leaflets on the xenophobic violence; which we believe is a result of both the bourgeois nationalism promoted by the ruling ANC and its failure to fulfill promises of 'a better life for all'. We supported the march because we thought it was important to send a message of solidarity to immigrants living in South Africa, and to show them that they are not alone, but also to show those responsible for the violence that many people do not accept that foreigners are responsible for the lack of service delivery, for poverty, for the high levels of crime or for the increase in food prices. Most importantly to assert a sense of African working class solidarity.

We, like the Coalition Against Xenophobia, believe that the outbreak of xenophobic violence is a result of the poverty in which the majority of South Africans are forced to live. We believe that it is not immigrants who are responsible for the miserable conditions people are forced to endure, but the government. Since coming into power in 1994 the ANC government has pursued economic and social policies which favour the rich over the poor; pitting the poor against one another in a fight for insufficient resources when it is actually the government that is to blame for failing to fulfill its promises, and failing to deliver the housing, electricity, water and other basic services which it promised us.

As anarchist communists we believe that, rather than fighting poor people from other countries, the workers and poor from South Africa must unite with immigrants in their communities to put pressure on the government and force it to fulfill its promises and provide adequate service delivery for all, both South Africans and foreigners. It is not immigrants who are stealing jobs and houses, it is the government which is not creating enough jobs, and not providing adequate housing in the first place - while ANC fat cats are enriching themselves. We need to fight the government and force it to meet our demands for jobs, housing and services; not our immigrant brothers and sisters who are also struggling to survive poverty and unemployment.

Although the ZACF supported the march against xenophobia, we do not believe that protesting the violence after it has happened is sufficient. We believe that is is necessary to build a mass working class movement which is capable of defending immigrants from violent mobs which do not recognise that it is the government and the capitalist system - which makes the rich richer, and the poor poorer - which are to blame for their suffering; not the immigrants. We need a movement which can establish working class community-based safe havens for immigrants, where they can go if they are attacked and where they know that they will be defended by those communities. A movement which can intervene and prevent further violence being committed against our working class and poor brothers and sisters just because they are from another country.

We need a mass working class movement that can challenge government and force it to concede to our demands for housing, jobs and service delivery. Social movements such as the Anti-Privatisation Forum and Landless People's Movement have been trying to build such a movement for years, but the xenophobic attacks indicate that they have not yet achieved a mass base, which could have prevented this outbreak of violence from happening. The ZACF is committed to working within and supporting movements such as the APF and LPM in an effort to build a mass-based movement of the workers and poor capable of both defending themselves and their communities from attacks; both internally, from reactionary community members, and externally, in the form of state repression and economic domination; as well as advancing the struggle of the workers and poor for proper housing, jobs and service delivery for all - regardless of their country of origin.

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imageTearing racism up from its capitalist roots: An African anarchist-communist approach Aug 10 by Bongani Maponyane 0 comments

Racism has been a curse in South Africa, and remains embedded in the society. But how scientific are racist ideas? Where do they come from? And how can we fight racism and create a truly equal and fair society? What do we as revolutionary anarchists think?

Racial conflict, inequality, and hatred are not natural, but fed and reared by capitalism and the state. To really change the system, we need a massive programme of upgrading education, health, housing and services; an end to the racist heap labour system; a challenge to the ideological control that splits the working class; and a radical redistribution of wealth and power to the working class and poor –which in South Africa, means primarily the black working class and poor –as part of a social revolution.

imageOne Year after the 2015 Grahamstown Riots against Foreign Traders Dec 15 by Lucien van der Walt 0 comments

A year ago, starting 20 October 2015, around 75 small shops were looted, some burned down, in the eastern townships and downtown area of the small Eastern Cape university town of Grahamstown/ iRhini, South Africa. The attacks targeted Asian and African immigrants, many of them Muslim, and displaced 500 people. These riots were largely ignored by the media.

The text below is a slightly revised revision of a briefing I was asked to write at the time for the local Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM). The UPM played a heroic role in opposing the attacks and assisting the displaced. The text’s general points remain relevant to the working class’s fight against prejudice and racism. And the riots of 2015 should not be forgotten.grahamstown-riots

imageAttacks on Foreigners: Only the Ruling Class Benefits Feb 01 by Siyabulela Hulu-Hulu 0 comments

Attacks on African and Asian foreigners flared up in South Africa twice in 2015, first in April, mainly in KwaZulu, then in October in Grahamstown, the Eastern Cape. Many attacks were on small (spaza) shops run by foreigners. Maybe 500 were displaced in October. The looting and smashing of property in spaza shops, and the immensity of these criminal activities country wide, has had an incredible and negative impact on our democracy, on our lives, on our livelihoods, and reflects badly on the nation's morality.

imageDear Mama: Anarchist poetry against the anti-foreigner pogroms in Grahamstown, South Africa Nov 09 by Leroy Maisiri 0 comments

The poem below was written by Zimbabwean Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front comrade Leroy Maisiri, against the backdrop of the a wave of riots against African and Asian ‘foreigners’ that started to sweep Grahamstown, South Africa, from Wednesday 21 October 2015. By Saturday, around 300 shops, mostly small businesses, owned by people from countries like Bangladesh, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Somalia, had been targeted, many burnedand looted. Perhaps 500 people have been displaced, many are in hiding. While university and college student protests across town faced down the state in the fight against high fees in a heroic struggle, mobs provoked by rumours of murders and mutilations by ‘foreigners,’spurred on by malicious forces including local taxi drivers, attacked the ‘foreigners.’ Heroic efforts by the local Unemployed Peoples Movement (UPM) and some other township residents were not enough to halt the carnage. Working class, see this divide-and-rule for what it is! You have nothing to gain from this. As the UPM says, “We are all the victims of colonialism and capitalism. We all need to stand together for justice. If unemployed young men chase a man from Pakistan out of Grahamstown they will still be unemployed and poor the next day. The students have shown us what unity can do.” The students have shown us the way forward.

imageFor how long can South African elites keep misleading the people? Aug 26 by Philip Nyalungu 0 comments

Those in power don’t want to confront the status quo of hatred against immigrants, or South Africa’s imperialist role in the region. They have a narrow set of interests: getting votes, accumulating wealth and power. However, the recent wave of attacks on immigrants and the ruptures of relations with other African countries – especially where South African corporations are operating – have touched the most delicate nerves of the established political powers, who have vowed to advance corporate interests in making profits.

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imageSerious Concern at Escalating State Xenophobia in South Africa May 18 Abahlali baseMjondolo 0 comments

Since its formation in 2005 Abahlali baseMjondolo, which now has more than 70 000 members in good standing in Durban, has opposed xenophobia and sought to build a politics rooted in democratically run land occupations open to all. During period waves of xenophobic violence, always incited and sanctioned to some degree by the state, the movement has taken direct action to 'shelter and defend' people under attack.

imageTerre'Blanche is dead; long live the workers! Apr 28 ZACF 0 comments

We in the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front will shed no tears for the killing of the racist Eugene Terre'Blanche. Why should revolutionary workers lament the death of a thug who lived in nostalgia for the days when his emulation of Hitler and (empty) threats of war shook the whole country, and who never ceased to exploit and terrorise the black workers on a farm that should rightly be managed by those who work it to meet the needs of all and not be the property of any one single person?

imageAgainst Chauvinism, Against Nationalism! May 23 ZACF 1 comments

[ Nederlands] [ Ελληνικά] As the media, the politicians and the "experts" rack their brains in search of the cause of the "criminality" and "xenophobia" that has killed 42 people in 10 days and driven 15 000 from their homes, organisations of the working class have come closer to the truth than any of these wise men and women. The Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front supports and replies to the Abahlali baseMjondolo Statement on the Xenophobic Attacks in Johannesburg

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