A look at the South African elections ANC still rule but support fades

Not huge amounts has been made of it but last week the ruling ANC party in South Africa regained power all be it on a reduced turnout. The African National Congress has been re-elected with 62% of the vote. This represents a marginal decline with the shedding of a few hundred thousand votes in absolute terms and the loss of 3.5%. Given the scandal filled five-year term of president Zuma, not least of all the Marikana massacre and Nkandla-gate, ANC strategists must nevertheless be breathing a sigh of relief. However, this “good story” hides the reality that the ANC has continued to shed significant support. Over ten million eligible voters did not register to vote and a further six million were registered but did not turn out. In other words 16 million did not take part in this election. The corresponding figures in 2004 and 2009 were 12 million and 12.4 million respectively. The ANC is in reality a minority government about to resume office with the votes of just eleven million people, barely 32%. As for other parties contesting this election are notably the Workers and Socialist Party with strong links to the CWI who are backed by the socialist party of England and Wales. They came into the elections with high expectations and a lot of bluster as per normal when any election is upcoming the CWI focus's its attention on building votes rather than a mass based movement on the ground. In the CWI piece they claim to be disappointed by the results of their candidates and go on to produce several excuses as to why they received such a poor vote. Such points referring to a lack of resources, lack of people getting involved and isolation from the main unions in SA lead to me thinking this was an election that came too soon for the WASP. They write "The scarcity of resources for the campaign was a fundamental problem. The struggle to raise the finances to pay the enormous election deposits meant that we spent over a month without a cent as we launched the second phase of fundraising for election material and a campaign fund. There is no doubt that if we had had the resources to reach more people our vote would have been higher. In addition, early in the year, the media decided on their narrative – this election was a three horse race between the ANC, DA and EFF. WASP was in reality excluded from serious press coverage. The press did not even cover our manifesto launch. However, they covered the launch of the tiny religious ‘Kingdom Governance Movement’ which received fewer votes than WASP. But there are other important political factors to take account of. Unfortunately, WASP has not been able to consolidate our position amongst the mineworkers. Despite the crucial role of the founders of WASP - the Democratic Socialist Movement – in the move of the majority of mineworkers from the treacherous ANC aligned National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) to the previously marginal Association of Mining and Construction Workers (AMCU), the AMCU leadership has done everything to remove our influence among the mineworkers. DSM and WASP members and supporters have been victimised and expelled from the union, frequently leading to the loss of their jobs. The lie has been spread by the AMCU leadership, disgracefully encouraged by tiny jealous forces on ‘the left’, that WASP is behind the new scab union. The Workers Association Union (WAU) which has attempted to take advantage of demoralisation among sections of the mineworkers in what is now a three month long wage strike. Thus, combined with the hostility from the AMCU leadership, and the understandable ‘closing of ranks’ by the mineworkers, in the midst of a life and death strike, WASP found it very hard to even campaign on the platinum belt with some comrades even facing death threats." Well as I’ve previously explained before looking to capture the state usually leads you to being captured by the state yourself. It’s a dangerous road to tread especially in South Africa. Allot of excuses there in the piece but not a lot of concrete reasons why the WASP failed to gain support in the areas it wished to where it should have done well. In an excellent LibCom piece last week I found really well put on the question if to vote or not in the coming elections in South Africa they made some great points. "As part of the hype that has surrounded the elections this year, however, there are two parties that also claim they are fundamentally different to the ANC and DA. These two parties say they have recent struggle credentials against neoliberalism and say they will really help the poor this time around if elected into the state: the EFF and WASP. Some activists on the left, in community movements and some in workplace struggles, have been drawn to these parties and say they are going to vote for them. Some even believe that parties like WASP and the EFF will bring ‘economic freedom’ and even socialism. While the policies of the EFF and WASP certainly differ – WASP being more socialist and the EFF being a black nationalist party (with authoritarian leanings) that promises land and welfare for black workers and the poor – what these two parties have in common is the tactic of wanting to enter into the state to supposedly bring change. The question, therefore, is: can equality, socialism, national liberation or ‘economic freedom’ – or even a respite from state violence – for a majority be brought about through parties and activists entering into the state or through voting for parties that promise not to use the state for violent or oppressive means; or will this only lead to a dead-end for the working class yet again? The state is an instrument of oppression When looking at this question it is important to understand why states exist and what their role in society is and always has been. States arose when inequality between people in terms of class started to emerge in society: elite needed an instrument of coercion to maintain and entrench their rule and states were that instrument. States have, therefore, always been controlled by, and have been instruments of, a privileged minority class. Consequently, all states have always enforced the rule of a minority privileged class. As part of this states have always protected a minority ruling class’s power, privilege and wealth from the majority and have enabled the exploitation and domination of the majority by a minority. To do so, all states in history have been top-down and centralised organs structured so that only a few can govern: the majority of people were and are deliberately excluded from decision-making under a state system. As capitalism developed, the size and power of states dramatically increased. Today we have huge states that ensure the interests of the ruling class today (capitalists, politicians and top officials in the state) are protected and furthered. Through the state’s executive, legislative, judicial, military and policing arms, the state always protects the interests of this class. Under capitalism, states are also central to protecting minority ownership in the form of private and state-owned property. For capitalism to function, and for class rule to be maintained, a state is therefore vital. Without a state, which claims a monopoly on violence within a given territory, elite could not rule nor could it claim or hold onto the ownership of wealth and the means of production under capitalism. Along with this, the role of states within capitalism is to try and ensure that resistance to the exploitation and oppression of the working class is undermined, crushed or co-opted. States are, therefore, not structures that have been created to bring about liberation or equality or to end capitalism, but rather to ensure oppression, domination and the continuation of capitalism. That extends too to gunning down activists if they pose a threat to the state and the stability it tries to create at a national, provincial and local level. On this alone, the tactic of supposedly trying to use a state to end oppression, domination and capitalism is deeply flawed – states have always been central to oppression, class inequalities, domination and today capitalism, and entering into them as the EFF and WASP propose does not change this. Likewise, voting tactically for politically bankrupt parties like the DA and ANC in the hope they will lesson state violence locally will not change the nature of the state nor the purpose it is designed to carry out: oppressing, dominating and facilitating the exploitation of the working class. The reality is that no state is truly democratic. Even in a parliamentary system, most high-ranking state officials, including generals, director-generals, police commissioners, state legal advisors, state attorneys, judges, officials in the various departments and magistrates, are never elected by the people. Most of their decisions, policies and actions will never be known by the vast majority of people – the top-down structure of the state ensures this. Linked to this, parliamentarians and the executive make and pass laws; not the mass of people. In fact, parliamentarians are in no way truly accountable to voters (except for 5 minutes every 5 years). They are not mandated nor are they recallable. They – along with permanent state bureaucrats – have power; not the people. As such, no state is participatory; but rather designed to ensure and carry out minority rule. If the EFF and WASP’s representatives enter into the state, therefore, they will simply be joining the elite few that rule under a state system. States turn liberation fighters into governors States to generate an elite and a section of the ruling class. When people are hired or enter into top positions in the state, they gain access to the means of administration and coercion, and to new privileges, benefits and kickbacks. Being part of a few, who have the power to make decisions for and over others, and the ability to enforce those decisions, creates a privileged position. As such, the centralisation of power, which defines states, generates an elite. The fact that under a state and elite holds decision-making power usually goes hand in hand with this elite also living under far better material conditions than workers and the unemployed. Linked to this, the bureaucracy that emerges from the centralisation that defines states also develops its own interests, like maintaining the material privileges it has and the power it has over other people. In fact, throughout history, states have been sites that have been and are used by an elite to accumulate wealth. This was so even under Lenin in the Soviet Union. An elite arose in the state in the Soviet Union and they ruled and lived privileged lives. In fact, the privileges that top positions in the state offered in the early Soviet Union attracted opportunists that wanted to gain wealth. To maintain their privileged positions these officials in the state ruthlessly exploited and oppressed workers. Indeed, the good lives that top state officials and politicians live in all countries was and is always based on the exploitation of workers and the unemployed. This has been done through exploitation in state owned companies and/or through taxing the working class. The anarchist Bakunin foresaw the possibility of such a situation arising in cases where supposedly implementing socialism or bringing about national liberation was based on capturing state power. Bakunin said that the “statist path” was “entirely ruinous for the great masses of the people” because it did not abolish class power but simply changed the make-up and faces of the ruling class. Consequently, he stated that if the socialist struggle or a struggle for national liberation was carried out with "ambitious intent to set up a powerful state", or if "it is carried out without the people and must therefore depend for success on a privileged class" it would become a "retrogressive, disastrous, counter-revolutionary movement”. He also noted that when former liberation fighters or activists enter into the state, because of its top-down structure, they come to no longer represent the people but themselves and their own pretensions to govern the people. This has not been due to any faults in the personal characters of such activists entering into the state, but rather due to the logic of the state – which exists for a few to govern. The past, therefore, tells us that even if a party like WASP (which is far more principled than the EFF) enters into the state, in all likelihood their character would alter, they would become rulers and governors; and the working class would remain in a subordinate position. " Something to bear in mind I think With thanks and extracts from http://libcom.org/news/vote-or-not-vote-should-it-be-question-06052014 http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/6772

One year after the Marikana massacre

Both capitalists and working class prepare for unforeseen turmoil Liv Shange, DSM (CWI South Africa) On August 16, 2012, at Marikana, a bloody line was drawn in South Africa’s political sand when police in cold blood shot dead 34 workers and wounded 78. The few seconds of the massacre that were shown on TV tore down decades of carefully nurtured illusions about the ANC government and the capitalist state. The state’s resort to the most brutal form of reaction against the striking Lonmin workers set in motion a new period of revolution and counterrevolution in South Africa. A year later, a mining bosses’ offensive against jobs and worker rights is gathering pace. With the lessons of Marikana imprinted on the consciousness of millions of workers and youth, the scene it set for further mighty upheavals centred on the mining industry. The massacre on August 16, 2012, was a carefully orchestrated operation calculated to crush the Lonmin workers’ deadly challenge to the government and the capitalist order. Provoked by days (and years) of repression, the thousands of workers gathered on the hill, ‘the mountain, outside Marikana were fenced in with razor wire, attacked from behind and from the air with water bombs, and automatic gunfire. Chased towards the five-meter opening in the fence, in front of TV cameras, a first group was shot down. The majority of those killed and wounded were hunted down, out of sight of the cameras, among the rocks and bushes at another small hill. Many were shot at close range, in the back or with their arms stretched up to surrender. Police deliberately destroyed the faces of the dead by running over their skulls with armoured vehicles. Less well-planned, perhaps, was the police ‘investigation’ of the scene which has been revealed as a clumsy cover-up attempt. The true story of Marikana was forced out in the open by the Lonmin workers’ defiant continuation of the struggle after the massacre and the industry-wide strike that followed. In the days immediately before and after the massacre, the public was washed over by a virtual flood of vicious propaganda against the Lonmin workers and their struggle. The workers who had been left, by the National Union of Mineworkers’(NUM’s) betrayal, with no choice but to take the fight for a decent wage into their own hands and for this crime were subjected to brutal repression were painted out variously as bloodthirsty criminals and murderers, muthi-possessed savages or hapless victims of manipulation by a ‘third force’. Jeremy Cronin of the South African ‘Communist’ Party (SACP) took the prize by publicly condemning the strikers a ‘Pondoloand vigilante mafia’. While the state and its appendices continue to hammer the refrain of police ‘self-defence’ at the Farlam Commission, this just shows how detached from reality this farcical show trial is since in the rest of society, these initial ‘truths’ were long overturned by the workers’ struggle. Bloody repression of working class struggles in general, and mineworkers’ struggles in particular, of course did not begin at Marikana. Just two weeks earlier, on August 1, 2012, for example, five protesting workers were shot dead by police at the Aquarius K5 shaft outside Rustenburg. Their murders warranted no more than a paragraph on the business pages. The scale and publicity of the violence meted out on the Lonmin workers, which shook SA and the world, were no accidents. This was the calculated response to the, up until then, most serious challenge to the foundations of the African National Congress’ (ANC’s) rule – a mineworkers’ uprising against the NUM, which throughout the democratic era has been the key to control the mineworkers and thereby the mining industry, the backbone of the SA economy; by so doing also becoming a bearing pillar of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the ANC-led Alliance. The threat was not just to NUM’s authority but to the ANC’s ability to maintain the capitalist ruling class’ confidence in its ability to ‘control the black working class’ (as a recent Business Day editorial so helpfully defined the ANC’s reason for being). ‘Concomitant action’, the expression used by ANC leader and Lonmin shareholder Cyril Ramaphosa to urge the crack-down, therefore had to mean asserting the state’s power through the barrels of automatic rifles. The attempt to drown the worker-led strike in blood, instead of shoring up these relationships, exposed them to millions with blinding and instant clarity. One of the key lessons of Marxism – that any state at its core consists of ‘armed bodies of men and women’ defending the ruling class, while also relying on ‘softer’ institutions (such as parliament as a means to reinforce illusions in the system on regular basis) and extended arms such as the trade unions, political parties and the media to justify the oppression of the many by the few – was suddenly understood way beyond the reach of committed socialists. Marikana spelled out that the ANC government is a party that exists to defend the interests of the capitalist bosses, that the NUM is the main tool to carry out this task, and that the supposedly neutral police, courts and media are in fact little more than the private securities and praise singers of big business. Flowing immediately from these conclusions is the search for a working class alternative. Mineworkers, first in the Rustenburg platinum belt and then throughout the country’s mines, immediately followed the Lonmin workers’ example of setting up independent strike committees. The NUM fulltime shop stewards, often earning ten times the wage of ordinary workers, were chased out of the union offices. Through the spreading, unification and coordination of the strikes the mining houses and the government were forced to instead recognise the workers’ committees. In the minds of the striking workers this was right from the start linked to the need to also take the government bosses out of their Union Building offices, and put in place a workers’ government. As workers regained the confidence in the ability to organise, fight and win, the idea of building a new party, a working class alternative to the ANC and all the established parties, took root as an urgent necessity. The development of the strike committees into the National Strike Committee by October 2012 and the formation of the Workers and Socialist Party (WASP) by December 2012 came out of these realisations. Marikana registered a new level of class consciousness within the SA working class, which is forced to fight on several fronts – in the workplace, in the community – on daily basis. When battles are now escalating again this is against the backdrop of the recognition that things cannot continue as before – both within the working class and the capitalist class. Again, SA’s political and economic contradictions come to their most concentrated expression in the mining industry. While the R15bn in lost sales as a result of the strike wave August-December 2012 is certainly an irritant to the bosses, this is not the cause of the looming onslaught on jobs. It is the relentless downturn in the world economy which have seen prices of e.g. platinum and gold plummet and eaten into the profits and room to manoeuvre of the mining multinationals. Their major objectives are to cut the ‘over-supply’ of minerals such as platinum and gold to restore profitability and to shoot down the workers’ newfound confidence in struggle. Already before Marikana, the mining houses were testing the waters for reducing over-production by attempting the closure of some shafts around Rustenburg. Having been forced to retreat by the strike movement, they resumed the offensive immediately after the strikes were over, starting with the lock-out and eviction of 6000 workers at Harmony Gold’s Kusasalethu shaft in Carletonville on New Year’s Day 2013. Amplats, the world’s biggest platinum producer, followed two weeks later announcing the so-called moth-balling (closure with the possibility of re-opening later) of four shafts in Rustenburg, the closure of one mine and the retrenchment of 14 000 workers. Under pressure from government and the continued combativitiy of the mineworkers, the numbers have been reduced to three shafts and 6000 workers, for now. While the AMCU (Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union) is still busy with the company’s ‘consultation on this ‘strategic review’, the bosses are already acting on the plan and count on its finalisation within the second half of 2013. Anglo Gold Ashanti has announced a 300 000oz cut out of its total 920 000oz global production – in just one year, most likely concentrated to SA. Like Amplats, Glencore Xstrata is a pilot case for the ruling class. They too understand the working class truth that an injury to one is an injury to all. Throughout 2013, brief spontaneous worker-led strikes have continued to break out throughout the mining industry. At Glencore-Xstrata’s Eastern Chrome mine in Tubatse, Limpopo, 2000 workers struck in May in protest against the company’s protection of a white supervisor who had racially assaulted a black worker. The company acted immediately by having the strike declared illegal and dismissed the 2000 workers. Backed by SA mining bosses and international speculators united, the Glencore Xstrata bosses are hell-bent on consolidating a defeat for the workers, who are fighting for their reinstatement supported by the Workers and Socialist Party and the Democratic Socialist Movement. Bourgeois analysts speak of a possible cut of 200 000 mining jobs in the next five years (or three?). At the same time, the falling Rand, falling GDP growth rate, falling tax revenue and rising inflation, unemployment and government debt has the SA economy overall balancing close to a ‘tipping point’ which pro-capitalist commentators fear may trigger an all-out social crisis. In addition to the attacks on mining jobs, the ruling class is responding by pushing for the rolling back of the collective bargaining system and for the cementation of the repression to which they resorted in Marikana. A series of ‘peace accords’, under various labels, have been branded about in the aftermath of the massacre. The latest is the ‘Framework Agreement for a Sustainable Mining Industry’, developed in talks government-industry-union talks led by deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe (a former NUM GS). Just previous, completely ineffectual agreements, it contains vague promises to improve the standard of living in mining communities and more concrete undertakings to enforce law and order, e.g. through the permanent stationing of police and ‘other security forces’ at all mining operations. Workers and unions are made to take responsibility for maintaining ‘peace’ while the bosses are preparing for war. Meanwhile, threats and assassinations against worker leaders associated with AMCU have continued, often provoking bloody retaliation. The ‘Framework’ is part of the ANC government attempts to assure the mining capitalists and the ruling class as a whole that it can re-establish the grip on the situation after Marikana. It is of course no accident that it was drafted just at the start of wage negotiations in gold and platinum which are the most polarised in decades – e.g. a 120% increase demand versus a 5% offer in the gold industry – and the onset of the possible mass retrenchments. The attack on the Democratic Socialist Movement, attempting to scapegoat DSM EC member Liv Shange for so-called anarchy in the mining industry and effectively deport her from SA, also forms part of the efforts to undermine the fighting capacity of the mineworkers. Despite the ANC’s efforts, its ongoing internal rifts are evidence that its big business handlers are yet to be convinced that ‘the centre can hold’. While the Zuma-faction appears all-powerful for the moment, its paranoia indicates a recognition that others, e.g. around deputy ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa, may be biding their time. Increasingly however, the ruling class is shopping around for political ‘Plan Bs’ outside of the ANC. The formation of Agang-SA, a new political party led by former mining magnate and World Bank director Mampela Ramphele, is one such experiment. The right-wing opposition Democratic Alliance is aggressively attempting to swallow other parties into a ‘super-opposition’. Expelled ANC Youth League president Julius Malema is now the ‘commander-in-chief’ of the Economic Freedom Fighters hoping to capitalise on the new situation with a programme of radical demands. The ANC is widely expected to suffer big losses in next year’s elections to national and provincial parliament. A year after Marikana, on the threshold of turmoil that could shake SA to its core, the SA working class has only just begun the reconstruction of its class-independent organisations. AMCU, the union which took over the Rustenburg platinum belt and cut out a large chunk of NUM membership also in the gold industry in the wake of the strikes is yet to show how it will fare in the test that is already beginning with dismissals and retrenchments. So far, the lack of any apparent fight-back strategy is a great cause of concern. Cosatu, the trade union federation to which NUM belongs, appears unable to recover from its historical capitulation to the bosses at Marikana. Since the Cosatu leaders effectively condoned the massacre, and went on to endorse the directly responsible ANC leaders for re-election, the federation has not displayed any effective organising or campaigning work. Instead it stoops to new lows in bitter infighting on weekly basis. It is high time for workers, the unemployed, youth and students to act on the key lesson of Marikana – that there is no more powerful force than the working class independently organised and united in action. Izwi labasebenzi/ the Democratic Socialist Movement calls for the mineworkers National Workers Committee to work for a joint fight-back plan, coordinated across the different mining sectors and trade unions, to stop the mass retrenchments and fight for living wages and jobs. We also call for a national day of action against the job cuts, for the nationalisation of the mines, banks and big and big business under democratic control and management by workers and communities, for jobs and decent living conditions such as housing and education for all. Izwi labasebenzi/ the DSM campaigns for working class unity and urges all genuine working class fighter to come together in the building of the Workers and Socialist Party. The best honour we can pay to those comrades who were mowed down at Marikana is to craft the political weapon we will need to defeat their murderers once and for all – a mass workers party armed with a socialist programme. http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/6433

The inspiration of the Workers and Socialist party in South Africa

Over the last few weeks and months I have been hugely inspired by our CWI comrades in South Africa. With the launch of the WASP the Workers and Socialist Party in South Africa shows what can be achieved with very small resources and numbers of comrades on the ground. The launch of the Workers & Socialist Party was the direct outcome of the struggles of the mineworkers of South Africa throughout the course of last year. With thanks to Democratic Socialist Movement (CWI in South Africa) reporters The Marikana massacre, where police armed with automatic weapons opened fire and killed 34 striking miners, was a watershed in post-Apartheid South Africa. Echoing this, one headline covering the launch read “born in post-Marikana anger, Workers & Socialist Party enters SA politics”. The most significant feature of the 2012 mineworkers’ strikes was the organisation of independent rank-and-file led strike committees outside of the existing unions and bargaining mechanisms. Across the country – in the platinum belt, the gold fields and elsewhere – shaft after shaft created their own organisation and pushed forward a new militant leadership. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) which had collaborated with the mine bosses were evicted at a stroke. On the initiative of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM, CWI South Africa) these shaft-based committees organised first across the mining heartland of Rustenburg and then into a national mineworkers strike committee. The ANC government and their Tripartite Alliance partners – the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) of which NUM is the largest affiliate – refused to support the mineworkers. Not only was support refused but the mineworkers were vilified and demonised by the very organisations that claim to represent them. There is no doubt that in their campaign against the mineworkers’ independent strike committees the groundwork for the Marikana massacre was laid. The recognition by the mineworkers that they stood alone and without a political voice was decisive in the emergence of WASP. The mining industry is the mainstay of the SA economy and the mineworkers the backbone of the working class, but it is not just here that the class struggle rages intensely. The farmworkers of the Western Cape have risen up in several waves from late 2012 to demand higher wages. They followed the model established by the mineworkers and moved to organise independent strike committees and they too forced concessions from the government and the big business farmers. In community after community, service delivery protests are held daily, in demand of roads, sanitation, electricity and water. In Sasolburg, the community exploded in a mass movement against attempts to cut funding even further. In the public sector, under the pressure of a growing budget deficit, mighty battles over pay and outsourcing loom. This is the South Africa that the ANC governs. Raised to power on the backs of the mass workers struggles up to 1994, its support had already eroded before Marikana for its failure to satisfy the aspirations of the masses. Now, in the aftermath of Marikana, and mired in corruption, it has lost whole swathes of its ‘traditional base’ amongst the working class and poor masses. Cosatu is riven with division and the process of disintegration is progressing. Workers are not allowing the slavish support for the Tripartite Alliance by the Cosatu leadership to hold back their struggles. New independent unions are being created and discontent amongst Cosatu rank-and-file and shop stewards is simmering. Against this background, and with a continuing widespread support for socialism amongst the masses, the Workers & Socialist Party has emerged. The launch event and the aftermath have given a clear indication of how WASP has emerged organically from the conclusions workers have drawn from the betrayals of the ANC and the recent experience of struggle. As one of the speakers at the launch, a workers’ committee member from the Carletonville gold mines south of Johannesburg said: “This is the time to build and prepare to fight… During the strike we saw the NUM, Cosatu, the ANC and SACP – none of them came to defend us. Instead they attacked us. It was the DSM alone that came to us when we were on the mountain, and stayed there with us to fight.” The mineworkers embrace WASP as “our” party. It was in these terms that delegates from different mines pledged their support at the launch. Speakers included workers’ delegates from Klerksdorp Uranium, Kumba Iron Ore, Bokoni Platinum, Gold Fields KDC, Harmony Gold, the Mpumalanga coal mines and Anglo Gold Ashanti. As the launch was broadcast on TV, a mineworkers leader from a mine that was unable to attend the launch phoned to report that dozens of workers had turned up at his office demanding to know: “how do we join OUR party?!” The president and executive members of the new National Transport & Allied Workers Union (NATAWU) attended and spoke from the top table. NATAWU is a left-split from the Cosatu-affiliated SATAWU transport union and is already out-stripping them in membership because of their willingness to decisively lead struggle in a series of strikes in the transport sector over recent weeks. The turnout at the launch far exceeded expectations. Pretoria/Tshwane is outside of the mining heartlands. The bulk of the 600-strong audience were Tshwane Municipality workers who, alongside the DSM, waged a struggle against dismissal and won. Hundreds walked miles in order to attend the launch of THEIR party. Already WASP is establishing itself as a party of struggle that can win victories. Students and young people also travelled from far to attend the launch. As Elmond Magedi, a DSM activist and initiator of the new Socialist Youth Movement that is being formed, said in his speech at the launch, young people are at hit by the hardest blows of a system in crisis – mass unemployment, a dysfunctional education system, rape and violence – and have a key role to play in building WASP to fight for a socialist future. And it is not just in South Africa that WASP is making waves. A teacher from Namibia – a member of the teachers’ worker committee – travelled days to attend the launch, despite the death of his son days earlier. Since the launch WASP has been contacted by, amongst others, a group of farmworkers and a group of health workers asking to join and help build WASP. Big business and the capitalist class in SA recognise the discontent amongst the working class and the vacuum that exists and are scrambling desperately to renew the credibility of their system by promoting “new” faces in the ANC, the neo-liberal Democratic Alliance and now also the newly announced Agang, led by one of Africa’s richest women capitalists, Mamphela Ramphele. WASP will sting the hopes of rallying any substantial mass around such attempts. While the ruling class has mostly responded with deafening silence, the few attempts at discrediting WASP by bourgeois analysts nevertheless reflect their warranted unease. The working class response is off to a good start with the launch. A worker from the Sishen Kumba Iron Ore mine in the Northern Cape summed up the mood in his speech – “We are so fortunate to be here today to launch our organisation which is we must build into a force to fight for us. Now we must go back to all shafts and build.”