A Class For Itself

Johannesburg’s Communist University convenes today at 17h00 at the Women’s Jail, 1 Kotze Street, Constitution Hill, to discuss Kwame Nkrumah’s short paper given in 1967 to a conference in Cairo and called “African Socialism Revisited”. This paper is very relevant at the present moment. Next week we will reconvene at the same time and place. This (9 June) session was reserved for discussion of a topic to be handed down from the SACP Gauteng Provincial political school, but once again this has not happened according to the plan. Therefore we must also discuss today what we are going to do at next week’s session. Both the SACP and COSATU have responded to the extraordinary situation of the Cabinet’s rejection of their statements of last week (following the SACP Central Committee meeting and launch of the CC discussion document, and the subsequent COSATU Central Executive Committee meeting). This is in spite of the ANC National Executive Committee meeting in between. See the linked documents below. The government is not supposed to reject what the democracy is telling it. It is not supposed to second-guess alliance structures. It is supposed to listen. Mittal Steel has announced 800 intended retrenchments; COSATU is protesting. Meanwhile 480 FAWU members are on strike at the Kraft factory in Elandsfontein on the East Rand, half way between Johannesburg and the Johannesburg International Airport. See the linked bulletins from COSATU and FAWU. SADTU is a militant and class-conscious union, second in size only to the NUM. The release following SADTU’s National Executive Committee meeting sharply and clearly articulates many of the issues facing the working class as a whole in South Africa. See the linked statement. The working class, with class-conscious leadership, moves from being an actually-existing “class in itself” to being a class that is actively “for itself”, and self-consciously so. The SACP is the vanguard party of the working class. Any Communist University must study what the working class is doing, and any communist formation must seek ways to assist the working class in struggle. Study these documents! Click on these links: SACP response to Cabinet comments on CC discussion document (323 words) COSATU on Cabinet Statement re CEC observations (450 words) COSATU, 800 steel retrenchments, commitment to action (216 words) 480 FAWU members on strike at Kraft, Elandsfontein, East Rand (432 words) SADTU NEC Press Release and Resolutions May 2006 (1145 words)