SACP-ANC veteran Ronnie Kasrils has written. “Racial
disparities in wealth have actually increased since the end of formal
apartheid.”
“There is a brutal exploitation of the working class, in the
mines, farms and workplaces, to keep them in the status of wage slaves,” said
Vavi.
Under the ANC’s policies, racial disparities in wealth have
actually increased since the end of formal apartheid. Horrific state violence
against workers has also returned, with the massacre of 34 miners at Marikana
in 2012. Irvin Jim told an audience in New York, that the current South African
state “represents the dominant classes in society, which exploit the workers.”
That’s why the police massacre at Marikana happened. The ANC government “wanted
to teach the working class a lesson: that if you act in your interest, we will
kill you.”
Unemployment has worsened, to more than 36 percent.
50 percent of youth below the age of 25 are unemployed
Poverty has escalated to 54.3 percent of the people.
26 million live on “below a U.S. dollar a day.”
50 percent of kids drop out of school “before the age of
12.”
“This is what breeds a cycle of poverty among the working
class,” said Vavi, with the rhetorical question: “Why did we make these
sacrifices against apartheid, if this is the result?” Jacob Zuma, whom South
African labor supported to replace the cold and calculating neoliberalism of
President Thabo Mbeki, in 2009, “proved to be the worst thing we have ever done
to the working class. It was our mistake,” said Vavi. “We got so angry at Mbeki
and his neoliberal programs,” as well as his denial that HIV was transmitted by
sex – leading to the death of “360,000 to 400,000 South Africans.” There are
“blackouts every day, because of previous attempts to privatize electricity,”
he said. “Billions and billions of rand are being wasted through corruption,
which has been institutionalized” in the ANC. Such corruption is more than
simple theft; it is built into the system that South Africa’s leaders have
embraced. “The fight against corruption is a fight against the capitalist
system.”
COSATU president S’dumo Dlamini likes to “talk Marxism.” but
behaves like an agent of capital.
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