Hello and welcome to the last edition of Workers World News, issue 129 for 2024. We are moving towards the end of another year in crisis for the world, but also a year where progressive forces have come together, some more than others, to realise that there is really no time like the present for an international working-class revolution against the forces of violent nation-state and patriarchal capitalism. It is also the time of the year for most to go on holidays, but for many precarious, retail, undocumented and student workers the season is one of mass exploitation by the retail and service industries where there is no double pay for holiday and weekend work, not to mention no vacation/holidays for these workers and even in big corporate workplaces, the exploitation at the bottom sees little respect to labour laws, getting away with not paying overtime hours for example. Which brings me to the theme that set in appropriately for this issue- that of the worker.
Dale McKinley’s lead article on the cover speaks of Colonisation of a Special Type-CST that is the situation of South Africa, where the history of the ANC and its type of democracy is explored and how the ‘will of the people’ was denied. This difference between political and economic freedom is analysed in this context and what I call the “new blackjacks”, capitalists who profited from the new political democracy within the same liberal system recycled from apartheid with just new managers responsible for the lives of the working class, abandoned by the party they once believed a rainbow future under a new type of democracy but it was just the old wolf in sheep’s clothing.
In Gender News, page 3, an organised coalition of revolutionary anarchists in South Korea, Anarchist Yondai (Solidarity) presents the struggle of women workers and the exploitation they face at their university campus showing how ‘female workers’ are ‘at the bottom of an intersectional hierarchy.’ Central to the struggle is the organising of student activists who are in touch with the ‘sensibilities of the masses on the ground.’ The abuse of older women workers, not only at universities but in general corporate employment is an international issue for women workers, amongst the other intersecting exploitations the article speaks to.
In Educational Series, page 4, Lucien van der Walt takes us through a history of the most far-reaching and radical union for its time- Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU), a non-party-aligned union mass movement in southern Africa. They spoke of take-overs of mines, factories and farms, had an anti-capitalist approach and were involved in every aspect of social organising in the townships and included women. Read more about the lessons that can be learnt from the ICU in its heyday, what keeps them as ‘one big union’ to why they fall and what made it a union that terrified governments.
In our Struggle Section, page 6, Nicolas Dieltiens writes about the Unpaid Benefits Conference held in Johannesburg by the Unpaid Benefits Campaign (UBC). If you are one of the many South Africans tired of the scams and waiting for your hard-earned money in pensions from administrators of funds, UBC has vital information for you. UBC is determined to be holding those accountable for holding back of workers pensions, using a multi-sector approach to get back the money. In a flawed and corrupt system, where workers are always at the back end of the receiving line, it’s important to know people like Dr Weitz Botes from the Office of the Compensation Commissioner within the Department of Health, one of the rare few in the system actually interested in helping the people they serve.
From the ILRIG Resource Centre, page 5, Anastasya Eliseeva details the Cape Town School and shares some of the highlights and photos she captured. Our year usually closes with our 2 main political schools where ILRIG partner activists are invited to be popular education students and various radical and Freirian pedagogies are used to inculcate an atmosphere of sound, researched, radical and feminist education.
On the Creative page 8, two poems, one by an anonymous ‘proletarian’, We Have Fed You All For a Thousand Years and Kyle Dargan, the American poet’s But My Chains, are reminiscent of working-class culture and you may certainly relate.
Our pull-out poster by Anastasya Eliseeva, depicts the strength of the working class, held up by hands of working women, called RISE! Also find a tribute to the late James Mathews, an anti-apartheid resistant poet, with a beautiful portrait by Anastasya of his iconic style.
The ‘house on fire’ analogy Dale uses is appropriate to round off the year relating not only to South Africa but the urgency the world faces from Sudan to Palestine, escalating this year. There is only hope through the liberation of women, and in international working-class solidarity.
For comments to the Editor, letters, articles, or artwork, contact Lara Reddy –