On 3 September 1984, the Vaal Triangle, which is located southeast of Johannesburg and was part of the industrial heartland of South Africa, exploded into unrest. A general stay-away from work was called, schools were closed, buses and taxis stood idle and militant protest spread across the country. It was the most significant and large-scale rebellion of the black working class since the Soweto Uprising of June, 1976, and signified one of the final nails in the coffin of apartheid and white minority rule.

For the black working class living in the townships across the Vaal Triangle, such as Sharpeville, Sebokeng, Evaton, Bophelong, Boiketlong, Zamdela and others the conditions were very similar to those of today. A slump in the steel industry had led to many workers being retrenched, there were evictions of rent defaulters and bribery, corruption and self-enrichment of local councillors was rife. Councillors’ election promises went unfulfilled and township residents demanded their resignation; allegedly threatening that they would set fire to their houses should they fail to do so.

Thirty-one years later, on 21 April 2015, the Sebokeng Magistrate’s Court in the Vaal sentenced four community activists from Boiketlong to sixteen years in prison each for allegedly setting fire to the local ward councillor’s house and cars during a protest action.

In May this year, Corporate Watch researchers travelled to Turkey and Kurdistan to investigate the companies supplying military equipment to the Turkish police and army. We talked to a range of groups from a variety of different movements and campaigns.

Below is the transcript of our interview with three members of the anarchist group Devrimci Anarşist Faaliyet (DAF, or Revolutionary Anarchist Action) in Istanbul during May 2015. DAF are involved in solidarity with the Kurdish struggle, the Rojava revolution and against ISIS' attack on Kobane, and have taken action against Turkish state repression and corporate abuse. They are attempting to establish alternatives to the current system through self-organisation, mutual aid and co-operatives.

The interview was carried out in the run-up to the Turkish elections, and touches on the election campaign by the HDP, the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party. Soon after the interview took place, the HDP passed the threshold of 10% of the total vote needed to enter the Turkish parliament.

The DAF members – who all preferred to remain anonymous – began the interview by talking about the history of anarchism in the region.

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Syriza’s rise to power elicited widespread praise from the left internationally, inspiring renewed enthusiasm for the possibilities and promise of “mass left” party building in and outside the United States. At a rally celebrating Syriza’s electoral victory in Spain, Pablo Iglesias, secretary general of the Spanish anti-austerity party Podemos, declared that “the sun of hope rose over Greece.”

Yet “the sun of hope” began to set on Greece almost as quickly as it rose. Shortly after taking office, Syriza, the “Coalition of the Radical Left,” formed a coalition government with the right-wing, anti-immigrant Independent Greeks (ANEL) party, followed only months later by the predictable surrender of the government to a new round of harsh austerity imposed by Greece’s creditors.

El objetivo del análisis que se desarrollará a continuación es el de proveer una aproximación a algunos procesos centrales de la historia reciente tanto mundial, regional como local. Entendemos que como militantes anarquistas debemos tener claro cuál es el contexto en el que vivimos para poder intervenir en las luchas sociales en sintonía con el mismo y potenciar así nuestras prácticas.

Será pertinente entonces aclarar que todo el desarrollo analítico siguiente es elaborado en función de la militancia y que como tal no pretende ser un análisis acabado ni un punto de llegada, sino que entendemos que se nutrirá de críticas y aportes que otros compañeros y compañeras puedan hacer. En consonancia con esto, cabe aclarar que este análisis no es únicamente un esfuerzo teórico si no que parte de la necesidad de comprender tanto las estrategias de los sectores dominantes como los diferentes procesos de resistencia que los de abajo venimos llevando adelante, todo esto desde una perspectiva anarquista.

Vale aclarar, además, que el presente análisis fue elaborado entre los meses de Marzo y Abril de 2015 a instancias del I Congreso de la Federación Anarquista de Rosario (ex Columna Libertaria Joaquín Penina), en donde dicho trabajo sirvió como insumo fundamental a la hora de interpretar los principales acontecimientos de la historia reciente.

Based on a talk given in Kenya, this article argues that, while official minimum wages and other improvements are welcome gains, they are inadequate in an exploiting system based on the rule of the few. It is necessary to pose the more ambitious demand for a 'living wage,' set by the working class, and to enforce this by building powerful, autonomous, self-managed, conscientised class-struggle movements.

Rejecting 'privilege' theories, it argues that all sectors of the working class benefit from demands and campaigns that secure equal rights, equal treatment and equal wages, against divide-and-rule systems, and in which strikers build alliances with communities and users. A 'living wage' movement of this type should be located in a larger project of building a popular counter-power that can resist, and then topple, ruling class power.

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