A 67 page pamphlet detailing the Policies and Politics
of the Workers’ Solidarity Federation
Anarchism and South Africa: Policies and Politics of the WSF
The Banks have Raised the Interest Rates, Workers Solidarity Federation
WORKERS SOLIDARITY FEDERATION SAYS:
THE BANKS HAVE RAISED THE INTEREST RATES!
THIS MEANS: MORE EXPENSIVE FOOD, TRANSPORT AND SERVICES!
THIS MEANS: HIGHER CHARGES ON LOANS!
THIS MEANS: WORKERS SUFFERING AND PLENTY OF PROFIT FOR THE EXPLOITERS!
THE BANKS ARE DEMANDING THAT THE POOR PAY BACK THEIR LOANS- NOW!
THEY ARE AFRAID THEY WILL LOSE MONEY!
THEY WANT TO VICTIMISE PEOPLE WITH EVICTIONS!
WE, THE WORKING CLASS, THE POOR AND SUFFERING PEOPLE SAY NO! Continue Reading »
1998 WSF Manifesto
WHAT WE BELIEVE
AGAINST CAPITALISM AND THE BOSSES
The struggle of the Black working class in South Africa is a struggle against the slave bondage of capitalism. Capitalism is based on the ruling class minority (capitalists, generals, top officials, professional politicians) exploiting and oppressing the working class majority (workers of all grades, their families, rank and file soldiers, the unemployed, and the rural poor). The two classes have totally different interests – they are locked in class struggle.
APARTHEID BUILT CAPITALISM
Capitalism in South Africa was built through apartheid oppression- land dispossession, the compound system, migrant labour, the pass laws, and denial of basic worker and human rights to Black workers. Continue Reading »
“A History of the IWW in South Africa”, Lucien van der Walt, 2001
This article was published by Lucien van der Walt in Direct Action (Australia, Summer 2001) as “Many Races, One Union! The IWW, revolutionary syndicalism and working class struggle in South Africa, 1910-21.” It was reprinted in Bread and Roses (Britain, Autumn 2001) as “A History of the IWW in South Africa.”
Note: An incomplete version has also appeared on the internet under the title “1816-1939: Syndicalism in South Africa,” described as “a short history of radical trade unionism, class struggle and race in Southern Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries.” The dates are wrong (there was no syndicalism anywhere in 1816, and while the IWW-influenced ICU would last in Zimbabwe into the 1950s, there was no syndicalism in South Africa in 1939) and several paragraphs are missing, in that version.
For PDF of scanned Direct Action version: click here
For PDF of scanned Bread and Roses version: click here
Lucien van der Walt, Autumn 2001, “A History of the IWW in South Africa,” Bread and Roses
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and the ideas, goals and organisational practices for which it stood, had an important influence on the early labour movement and radical press in South Africa. It also had an impact on neighbouring Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Furthermore, at least five unions were founded on the IWW model in this period. Four of these unions pioneered the organisation of workers of colour, most notably the Industrial Workers of Africa, the first union for African workers in South African history Continue Reading »
“Anarchism and Syndicalism in an African Port City: the revolutionary traditions of Cape Town’s multiracial working class, 1904–1931″, by Lucien van der Walt (2011)
Lucien van der Walt, 2011, “van der walt – Anarchism and Syndicalism in an African port city – the revolutionary traditions of Cape Town’s multiracial working class, 1904-1931,” Labor History, Volume 52, Issue 2, 137, pp. 137-171
The Cape Town docks in 1919, site of the joint strike between the syndicalist Industrial Workers of Africa (IWA) and the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU).
This paper examines the development of anarchism and syndicalism in early twentieth century Cape Town, South Africa, drawing attention to a crucial but neglected chapter of labor and left history. Central to this story were the anarchists in the local Social Democratic Federation (SDF), and the revolutionary syndicalists of the Industrial Socialist League, the Industrial Workers of Africa (IWA), and the Sweets and Jam Workers’ Industrial Union. These revolutionary anti-authoritarians, Africans, Coloureds and whites, fostered a multiracial radical movement – considerably preceding similar achievements by the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in this port city. They were also part of a larger anarchist and syndicalist movement across the southern African subcontinent.
Involved in activist centers, propaganda, public meetings, cooperatives, demonstrations, union organizing and strikes, and linked into international and national radical networks, Cape Town’s anarchists and syndicalists had an important impact on organizations like the African Political Organization (APO), the Cape Federation of Labour Unions, the Cape Native Congress, the CPSA, the General Workers Union, and the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of Africa (ICU). This paper is therefore also a contribution to the recovery of the history of the first generation of African and Coloured anti-capitalist radicals, and part of a growing international interest in anarchist and syndicalist history.
“‘Sifuna Zonke!’: revolutionary syndicalism, the IWA and the fight against racial capitalism, 1915-1921″, by Lucien van der Walt
Revolutionary syndicalism - the strategy of bringing about a stateless socialist society through a revolutionary general strike in which organised labour, through its trade unions, seizes and places under self-management the means of production – played a central, but today, largely forgotten, role in the early twentieth-century South African labour movement.
Before the 1920s, it was revolutionary syndicalism, which is rooted in the classical anarchism of Mikhail Bakunin, rather than the dry Marxism of the Second International, which dominated the thought and actions of the radical left in South Africa. And so it was, ultimately, classical anarchism that pioneered labour organising and anti-racist work amongst workers of colour in South Africa: the nationally oppressed Coloured, Indian and African proletariat. Continue Reading »
“The IWW, Revolutionary Syndicalism and Working Class Struggle in SA, 1910 – 1920″, by Lucien van der Walt
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and the ideas, goals and organisational practices for which it stood, had an important influence on the early labour movement and radical press in South Africa. It also had an impact on neighbouring Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Furthermore, at least five unions were founded on the IWW model in this period. Four of these unions pioneered the organisation of workers of colour, most notably the Industrial Workers of Africa, the first union for African workers in South African history.
“Obituary: Hamba Kahle Wilstar Choongo!”, by Michael Schmidt, AInfos, 2002
“Obituary: Hamba Kahle Wilstar Choongo!”, (Anarchist & Workers’ Solidarity Movement, Zambia), by Michael Schmidt, AInfos, 2002
Source: Ainfos, 5 March 2002
THE international anarchist movement will be saddened at the belated news of the death of Wilstar Choongo, founder of the Anarchist & Workers’ Solidarity Movement (AWSM) of Zambia.A self-taught anarchist activist, Wilstar first came to the attention of the movement in 1996 through his lone battle to improve the salaries of employees at the University of Zambia (UNZA)where he worked as a librarian — and where he built up a formidable collection of anarchist works for the use of students.
Zambia, a former British colony, gained its independence without much of a struggle in 1964. The 30-year African socialist regime of Kenneth Kaunda proved disastrous. The economy remained essentially extractive, agriculture shrivelled as farmers flooded into the cities because of urban food subsidies. Then the collapse of the copper price in the mid-1970s put paid to any hoped-for recovery. Continue Reading »
“Murder! Murder! Murder!!! The Bullhoek Massacre”, 1921, W.H. Harrision
A 1921 leaflet by Cape Town anarchist W.H. Harrison, condemning the South African state’s 24 May massacre of a millenarian black Christian group at Bullhoek, near Grahamstown, the Eastern Cape. 24 May, Empire Day, was a British Empire holiday (phased out in South Africa in 1952 for Van Riebeeck’s Day). Expecting the apocalypse, 3000 “Israelites” led by “prophet” Enoch Mgijima built houses on his land at Bullhoek. Ordered to disperse for violating the 1884 Native Locations Act and other rules, they refused. Hundreds were killed by police, backed by the army; many survivors were sentenced to hard labour.
The anarchist-led Social Democratic Federation (SDF) of Cape Town held rallies in protest; Harrison wrote the anti-imperialist leaflet below. With fellow SDF members D.L. Dryburg and William Green, who also spoke at the rallies, he was successfully prosecuted. An appeal later overturned the convictions.
Source: 28 June 1921, Cape Times
MURDER! MURDER! MURDER!!!
THE BULLHOEK MASSACRE.
Christians Slaughter Their Christian Brethren. Great Empire Day Celebration.
How appropriate and how much in keeping with the Matabele Massacre and other of their brutal empire-building tactics. And the Bullhoek tragedy was either by fate or circumstances enacted on their very Empire Day.
We accuse the responsible Government, whose forces are headed by a brutal assassin, of murdering unarmed strikers in Johannesburg, 1913, slaughtering unarmed Natives in Port Elizabeth, 192o, and their latest debauch is the gruesome mutilation of hundreds of Natives who were Christians and a passive community.
Hence this brutal invasion is truly symbolical of Governmental tyranny their hysterical efforts to exploit the workers, irrespective of their particular colour or religious beliefs, and to maintain their position functioned by an idle and parasitic class. Their armies are ever available to suppress any libertarian effort from the oppressing yoke of Capitalism. A condemnation meeting will he held on the Parade at 11 a.m. Sunday morning; Sunday evening, Adderley Street; St. Mark’s Schoolroom, Tennant Street, Monday evening, 30th.
“The Bolsheviks are Coming”, 1919, by D.I. Jones and L.H. Greene
“The Bolsheviks are Coming” was distributed in Pietermartitzburg by David Ivon Jones and L.H. Greene. Jones was a senior figure in the syndicalist International Socialist League (ISL). The two were prosecuted in March under the Riotous Assemblies Act. What did they mean by “Bolshevism”? Syndicalism, not Leninism, as Jones made clear in court: the ISL aimed “to establish the Socialist Commonwealth and the methods were organization and education by Press and platform, specially with regard to native workers; participation in the elections of public bodies, and the promotion of the establishment of revolutionary industrial organizations by workers to form the skeleton of the Social[ist] Commonwealth” (quoted in Baruch Hirson, 1988, “David Ivon Jones: the early writings on socialism in South Africa”, Searchlight South Africa, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 117).
Source: 25 April 1919 , The International
THE BOLSHEVIKS ARE COMING
To the Workers of South Africa — Black as well as White
A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of Bolshevism! Continue Reading »
