Africa's Aspiring Dynasties

 

Congo-Brazzaville's President Denis Sassou-Nguesso has appointed his son Denis-Christel as a cabinet minister - a move that has revived media speculation that he has succession in mind.

In neighbouring Gabon President Ali Bongo Ondimba is the son of Omar Bongo, who ruled from 1967 to 2009, while in the Democratic Republic of Congo Joseph Kabila ruled for 17 years after succeeding his assassinated father Laurent-Désiré as head of state in 2001.

Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang - in power since deposing his tyrannical uncle Francisco Macías Nguema, the country's first head of state, back in 1979 - has already installed his son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, as vice-president, in pole position to succeed him.

And after Chad's President Idriss Déby died last month - reportedly from wounds incurred in battle with rebels - his son Mahamat, a four-star army general, rapidly emerged as the leader of the interim ruling military council.

 In Cameroon, an anonymous "citizens' movement" campaign has begun to promote the image of Franck Biya, son of the 88-year-old President Paul Biya, who is not yet midway through his latest seven-year term.

Currently, Uganda is seeing a social media campaign touting General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of the present head of state Yoweri Museveni, as a potential governing party candidate for the next election in 2026.

Africa's political dynasties: How presidents groom their sons for power - BBC News

Solidarity - Lesotho Strike

 A woman was shot dead during clashes between factory workers and police in Lesotho in what is the second week of industrial action. Police and army have been blocking the protests, which they say are “in contravention of Covid-19 regulations”.

Lesotho’s 50,000 factory workers are demanding a 20% salary increase for the lowest paid employees, who take home the local equivalent of £113.73 a month. Their earnings can no longer sustain them as prices of goods have increased dramatically since the first Covid-19 lockdown last year. Cooking oil alone has more than doubled in price.

The employers say they can only pay a 5% increase because of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The textile workers accuse the government, which is charged with mediating between the workers and factory owners as well as setting the minimum wage, of insincerity in its dealings. 

Sam Mokhele, from the National Clothing Textile and Allied Workers Union (NACTWU), told the Guardian on Thursday: “It is unfortunate that we lost one of our members, Motselisi Manase, who worked in the packaging department at Nien Hsing textile factory. It is sad that neither the police nor the army, who were both present, are acknowledging the tragic death.”

Last month, three workers were hospitalised after police shot at demonstrators with rubber bullets. 95% of the workers are women, and low wages exacerbates their vulnerability in a country with a high prevalence of violent crimes against women.

In November last year Chief Justice Sakoane Sakoane criticised the police for “state-sponsored violence” against civilians in violation of constitutional provisions guaranteeing their freedom from cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment.

The unions say that workers would “stay at home until they have a concrete promise that they would get salary increments” despite the threat of having their salaries for May docked for the days that they have been out of work.

Woman shot dead in Lesotho as factory workers’ clashes with police escalate | Garment workers | The Guardian

The Other German Genocide

 Germany has officially acknowledged committing genocide during its colonial occupation of Namibia, and announced financial aid worth more than €1.1bn (£940m; $1.34bn). The money will apparently be paid out over 30 years through spending on infrastructure, healthcare and training programmes benefiting the impacted communities.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said his country was asking Namibia and victims' descendants for forgiveness. German colonisers killed tens of thousands of Herero and Nama people there in early 20th Century massacres. The genocide began in 1904 after a Herero and Nama rebellion over German seizures of their land and cattle. The head of the military administration there, Lothar von Trotha, called for the extermination of the population. Many died of disease, exhaustion and starvation with some subject to sexual exploitation and medical experimentation. It is thought up to 80% of the indigenous populations died during the genocide - with a death toll in the tens of thousands.

The atrocities committed have been described by historians as "the forgotten genocide" of the early 20th Century, in what was then known as German South West Africa. The UN defines genocide as a number of acts, including killing, committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

Laidlaw Peringanda, a Herero activist and chairman of the Namibian Genocide Association, said the offer of development aid was not enough.

"We're actually not accepting that offer because our people have lost lands, they have lost their culture and a lot of them have fled to Botswana, South Africa and some of them were taken to Togo and Cameroon," he told BBC World Service.He insisted that Germany should buy back ancestral lands now in the hands of the  german-speaking community, which reportedly makes up less than 1% of the population."People are getting impatient, especially the minority black people who [don't] have a piece of land," he said. "And from what I'm hearing from some of the people, there will be a land revolution. People will grab the land by force. So we must actually try to avoid these things."

Germany officially recognises colonial-era Namibia genocide - BBC News

Africa Day - Feeding Africa

  More than 100 million people are facing food insecurity and about 4.3 million people are being assisted by Red Cross Red Crescent. The poor are the hardest hit. Droughts, floods, climate change and other socio–economic factors have had a profound impact on the food security situation on the continent. Africa needs to reclaim and use indigenous food to break dependence on commercial varieties and food imports and to counter the effects climate change and hunger crises.

Africa still spends billions dollars on food imports particularly grains and other processed foods. In 2020 alone. Africa spent about US$80 billion on food imports and that figure is rising at a rate of about six percent per annum. This is not beneficial for the continent. Heavy reliance on imports comes with a huge risk and price. Covid-19 restrictions have affected the global production of food and in the past 6 months, the price of staple grains has been going due to the shocks on the market. Most African countries are having to fork more money to import food.

This is happening despite the fact that the continent has vast tracts of unused arable land. The population is growing due to the rapid urbanisation of the continent. There are so many mouths to feed and Africa needs to explore diverse strategies and options to grow enough food for its people.

Modern processing equipment for grains such as sorghum, millet, maize, rice and other key crops can boost food production on the continent.

Africa holds a rich and diverse stock of indigenous vegetables. In Zimbabwe, there are indigenous vegetables such as tsunga, nyevhe, mutsine, derere rebupwe, regusha, rename and renyunje and indigenous crop varieties like sorghum, pearl and finger millets, cowpeas, taro, madhumbe and bambara nuts. These are now seen as neglected and under-utilised crop species (NUS) which farmers and public health experts argue are important in improving the nutrition of people, particularly now when there is a rise in non-communicable diseases such as cancers and diabetes.

Africa has the richest diversity of edible insects than anywhere else in the world.  Zimbabwe's  diverse range of edible insects include amacimbi/ madora, ishwa, locusts, grasshoppers, crickets, harurwa and numerous others. These edible insects are harvested from the wild and are rich in proteins and other micro-nutrients. Worldwide some 2 billion people consume insects.

Africa Day: Continent must grow what it eats | The Herald

Tigray Still at Crisis Point

• More than two million people have been displaced by the conflict to date.

• Only about 1.8 million people of the 5.2 million or 91 per cent of the population in Tigray in need of food assistance were reached since late March.

Six months into the conflict, humanitarian needs continue to increase. Humanitarian access in Tigray remains unpredictable with increased incidents of denial of movement of relief cargo and confiscation of humanitarian vehicles and supplies. Military checkpoints are aggressively searching humanitarian vehicles and regularly demanding permission and approvals from local authorities or the Northern Command.

 Sexual and gender-based violence continues but it has been difficult to estimate the magnitude.

Ethiopia - Tigray Region Humanitarian Update Situation Report, 20 May 2021 - Ethiopia | ReliefWeb

Women need power in Kenya

 The survival of Kenya’s smallholder farmers, who predominantly rely on rainfed agricultural systems, is at stake as farmers are increasingly battling floods, droughts and heat stress at more frequent, intense and unpredictable rates. It has led to severe crop and livestock losses.

Peris Wanjiku, a smallholder farmer in Othaya, Nyeri County, which lies approximately 152 kilometres from Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, has watched as her fellow farmers have slowly started to sell off their land in the face of increasingly erratic weather patterns. She said that in a good year, a commercial crop farmer makes between $2,000 to $3,000 per acre from crops such as maize, wheat, tea and coffee. At the same time the price of land was quite high. The country’s average smallholder land size is approximately 1.2 acres.

“An acre of farm land in Kiambu generally goes for a minimum of $100,000, depending on the area. If I hold on to my acre, how many years will it take me to make that kind of money? We are at a crossroads,” Wanjiku said.

The average price for an acre of land in Kiambu County is $323,000 — the third-highest land price across the county. According to the Hass Consult, a leading real estate company, the highest land prices are in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, followed by the coastal county of Mombasa. 

Kenya’s Food Security report released in January predicted a 30 percent decrease in harvest due to below-average rainfall experienced from October to December 2020. A similar report released in March forecast below-average long rains from March through May this year and a subsequent low harvest.

World Bank estimates show that women run at least three-quarters of Kenya’s farms. Meanwhile, women were allocated only 1.6 percent of approximately 10 million hectares of land that was registered between 2013 and 2017, according to the Kenya Land Alliance.

“We indeed have the issue of male-dominated land ownership and female-dominated land use. A majority of women farmers do not have the power to make decisions on how land is utilised,” Judy Matu, the chair of the Association of Women in Agriculture Kenya, explained.  Matu said that at the same time, not only do women farm on land that they do not own, all commercial crops and bigger livestock belong to men. “Women run farms on a day-to-day basis and they need knowledge on proper farming practices such as agroforestry, organic and conservation farming..."

County Climate Risk Profiles Critical and Timely for Kenya’s Struggling Smallholders | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

Chad is hungry

 The World Food Programme (WFP) said it had been struggling to feed those in need in Chad.

“With current resources, WFP is able to provide emergency food assistance to some 223,000 out of the 401,000 internally displaced people in Lake Chad,” said Claude Jibidar, local WFP representative. “We still need $67m [£48m] to support all internally displaced people until the end of the year, but funding is not forthcoming and many do not know where their next meal will come from. The humanitarian community is working to keep up with the pace of displacement but is still unable to provide an adequate and timely response.”

According to WFP, 66% of Chadians live in severe poverty. The oil-rich country ranked 187 out of 189 nations in the human development index in 2020.

‘On bad days, we don’t eat’: Hunger grows for thousands displaced by conflict in Chad | Global development | The Guardian

China Buying Africa?

 A $55m (£39m) deal struck by the government of Sierra Leone with China to build an industrial fishing harbour on 100 hectares (250 acres) of beach and protected rainforest has been criticised as “a catastrophic human and ecological disaster” by conservationists and rights groups. It would destroy pristine rainforest, plunder fish stocks and pollute fish breeding grounds and several ecosystems.

Black Johnson beach fringe the African nation’s Western Area Peninsula national park, home to endangered species including the duiker antelope and pangolins. The waters are rich in sardines, barracuda and grouper, caught by local fishermen who produce 70% of the fish for the domestic market.  The beach is on Whale Bay, so-named because whales and dolphins are seen there.

The government said the beach, one of many along the nation’s 250-mile (400km) coastline, was the “most suitable place” for construction  for a harbour for tuna and “other bigger fishing” vessels exporting to international markets, it said. It would include a “waste-management component” to “recycle marine and other wastes into useful products”.

 The Institute for Legal Research and Advocacy for Justice (ILRAJ) and Namati Sierra Leone, have written to the government, under the 2013 Right to Access Information Act, demanding to see the environmental and social-impact assessment studies, and the report showing that the beach was, as claimed, the most suitable place for construction “in terms of bathymetry, social safeguards (minimum resettlement costs) and environmental issues”. They are also seeking a copy of the grant agreement between China and Sierra Leone.

Dr Sama Banya, president emeritus of the Conservation Society of Sierra Leone, says the proposed development would have a “disastrous” impact on tourism and “the very fish industry that it’s supposed to support”

‘Catastrophic’: Sierra Leone sells rainforest for Chinese harbour | Sierra Leone | The Guardian

Fact of the Day

 There are less than 300 psychiatrists in Nigeria, a country with a population of around 200 million.

Drilling for profit

 

The quest for profit in a predatory economic system has made it possible for humans to willfully ignore extractivist crimes unfolding in broad daylight. A clear case is the clawing into Namibia's Okavango Basin in search of hydrocarbon resources by ReconAfrica, a Canadian oil prospecting company. The company has been licensed to explore for hydrocarbons in an area of 13,600 square miles straddling Namibia and Botswana. ReconAfrica could end up fracking for oil and gas in this highly valuable region which is said to hold up to 31 billion barrels of crude oil.

Experts have already noted that the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report produced by ReconAfrica and accepted by the Namibian government would not pass serious scrutiny, and the process was not open to public participation. Public consultation is a critical requirement in any EIA process and where this is lacking the process is null and void. If the Minister of Agriculture of Namibia could say that his ministry was not consulted, why should we think that citizens were consulted?

Namibia's Minister in charge of mining, Tom Alweendo, interestingly claimed that there was nothing to worry about oil and gas extraction in the Okavango Basin even though the area is a treasure to the people of Namibia and the world. According to the minister, "It's true the company has an oil and gas exploration license and obtained an environmental clearance certificate to do research drilling. They are not going to do hydraulic fracturing (fracking)—a more invasive method—but a conventional drilling method."

The truth is that exploitation of petroleum resources has routinely been accompanied by extreme ecological harms, and in some cases has also been the reason or pretext for violent conflicts and wars. 

Governments keep on allowing oil companies to arm-twist them into accepting patently false promises of revenue booms and of capacity to avoid ecological harms and to trigger development in affected oil field communities.  When the first commercially viable oil well spurted in 1956 in Nigeria's Niger Delta, there were wild celebrations of progress arriving in the area that had hitherto suffered hundreds of years of pillage of agricultural natural resources. The first oil exports commenced in 1958 and so far, more than 5,200 wells have been drilled in the region with over 603 being discovery wells. After more than six decades of hydrocarbons exploitation in the Niger Delta, the region now ranks as one of the top ten most polluted places on earth. Water bodies, soils, and the air have all been stoked full of harmful pollutants, and life expectancy now stands at a dismal 41 years.

You may say that Nigeria is an odd case. 

How about the ongoing massive pollutions in South Sudan and in Sudan? 

The massive area earmarked for drilling by ReconAfrica reminds one of a time when Shell had the entire geographic space known as Nigeria as its concession. Okavango basin is home to over 200,000 Namibians and these Africans mostly rely on the Okavango River which brings supplies of fresh water from the forest regions of Angola all year round.  Of course, ReconAfrica will pollute the natural potable water sources of the people and sink water bore holes for them. The Okavango Basin is an area of rich cultural heritage and boasts of several species that make living in this area a unique experience. Okavango is a highly treasured living community in Namibia and Botswana. Why should anyone allow the quest for petrodollars to turn this into an arena of death?

 It is drilling for profit that ignores the fact that adding oil from there to the fossil fuel fires already raging in the world will compound the floods, droughts, desertification, population displacements, and other negative impacts of global warming.

Opinion | Okavango, Oil Drilling, and the Tragedy of Africa (commondreams.org)

Hunger in Madagascar

 Madagascar’s worst drought in 40 years has left more than a million people facing a year of desperate food shortages. According to the UN’s food agency, the number of people suffering from hunger has risen by about 85% on last year because of the accumulative effects of years of drought and people having to sell livestock and belongings to buy food.

According to the Famine Early Warning System Network, most poor families have to rely on foraging for wild foods and leaves that are difficult to eat and can be dangerous for children and pregnant women. Aid agencies have reported people eating termites and mixing clay with tamarind.

The south of the island will produce less than half its usual harvest in the coming months because of low rains, prolonging a hunger crisis already affecting half the Grand Sud area’s population, the UN estimates.

Julie Reversé, emergency coordinator in Madagascar for Médecins Sans Frontières, said: “Without rain, they will not be able to return to the fields and feed their families. And some do not hesitate to say that it is death that awaits them if the situation does not change, and the rain does not fall.”

The UN World Food Programme says acute malnutrition in children under five has almost doubled over the past four months in most districts in the south. Ambovombe has the highest rates.

It said: “Over 1.1 million people are in high acute food insecurity due to insufficient rainfall, rising food prices and sandstorms. The lean season is expected to begin earlier than usual for the current consumption year, as households will deplete their low food stocks due to minimal production.”

Reversé said MSF staff are also noticing other illnesses in the areas they work in, including bilharzia (a waterborne disease caused by parasitic flatworms), diarrhoea, malaria and respiratory infections. They said the illnesses were caused by malnutrition, as well as a lack of clean water.

At least 1m people facing starvation as Madagascar’s drought worsens | Hunger | The Guardian

Quote of the Day

"My approach to Africa is in some ways like the Japanese approach to Asia, and my approach is not necessarily humanitarian. It is in the long range interest of access to resources and the creation of markets for American goods and services." - United Nations US Ambassador Andrew Young  in 1977 

Nothing changes.

Uganda's New Anti-Gay Laws

 Uganda's parliament passed a controversial sexual offences bill which further criminalises same-sex relationships and sex work.

They condemn same-sex couples who perform acts deemed against the “order of nature” to 10 years’ imprisonment.

Monicah Amoding, the MP who proposed the bill, said, “We are not yet ready for those [homosexual] rights. Maybe in future, as of now our society still views relationships, sex and marriage … as between a man and woman.”

 Frank Mugisha, director at Sexual Minorities Uganda said: “It is unfortunate that the parliament of Uganda is obsessed with legislating around people’s private lives. Such legislation is very hard to enforce. This will only increase the vulnerability of LGBT persons,” he said. “This is yet another law that will be used by law enforcers to harass, blackmail and arrest LGBT persons. I also do not see the need, since same-sex relations are already criminalised in our penal code.”

Uganda passes bill criminalising same-sex relationships and sex work | Global development | The Guardian

Gay in Africa

 

South Africa’s constitution prohibits unfair discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and guarantees equality for gay and lesbian people. Same-sex marriages are legal and transgender people can change their sex description and gender marker in the national birth register. Nevertheless, the LGBTQ community has long been subjected to hate speech, discrimination, and grotesque violence in the country.

Moreover, many South Africans still perceive LGBTQ individuals as inherently immoral and “un-African”, and thus pay little attention to the abuse they endure on a daily basis in the country. It is time for South Africa to respond decisively to this growing problem by adopting preventive measures against homophobic hate speech and hate crimes.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance of South Africa has urged the parliament to pass a proposed hate crimes law. The Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Bill 2018 aims to outlaw hate crimes and hate speech on grounds of race, gender identity and sexual orientation, among others. The bill’s ratification has been delayed due to concerns that it may inhibit freedom of speech.

In South Africa, for instance, the monthly earnings of gender nonconforming, gay or bisexual men are, on average, 30 percent lower than that of gender conforming heterosexual men. Worse still, LGBTQ people also suffer from higher rates of suicide, rape and violence.

In many African countries, colonial anti-LGBTQ laws and attitudes are still in full force, and LGBTQ individuals continue to be routinely targeted by government authorities, religious groups and those who claim to be fighting to preserve “traditional values”.

In Uganda, where LGBTQ people face widespread persecution, President Yoweri Museveni claimed that the protests against his 35-year rule were funded by “foreign homosexuals” in January.

In Cameroon, security forces have arbitrarily arrested, beaten, or threatened at least 24 people for alleged consensual same-sex conduct or gender nonconformity since February 2021.

In Ghana, church groups, politicians and anti-gay rights organisations held demonstrations against the opening of Ghana’s first LGBTQ community centre in February. Predictably the protests and condemnation led to the abrupt closure of the community centre founded by LGBT+ Rights Ghana.

The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated the persecution of LGBTQ communities. The Ghana Muslim Mission, for example, attributed the COVID-19 pandemic to “homosexuality, lesbianism, transgenderism” in a communique it issued in March 2020.

The endless stigmatisation of homosexuals and the presentation of unfounded links between LGBTQ communities and public health or socioeconomic crises are deplorable and inhumane.

LGBTQ people, especially HIV-positive men, struggle to access adequate healthcare in, among others, South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Egypt, Cameroon and Uganda. This unfair and unethical restriction not only puts LGBTQ lives at risk, but also hinders the global fight against HIV.

Moreover, the continent-wide discrimination prevents most LGBTQ individuals from obtaining gainful employment, leaving them struggling to make ends meet.

Africa’s LGBTQ communities need more protection and support | Human Rights News | Al Jazeera

Madagascar - Nothing like the movie

Madagascar is one of Africa’s poorest countries. A lack of basic services – from health and education to employment opportunities – as well as poverty and climate change have exposed many of its 26 million people to natural disasters.

 People in southern Madagascar have been reduced to eating wild leaves and locusts to stave off starvation after consecutive drought and sandstorms ruined harvests, leaving hundreds of thousands on the brink of famine, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). The harvest was expected to be nearly 40 percent below the five-year average.

Amer Daoudi, senior director of global WFP operations, warned on Friday the lives of Malagasy children are in danger, especially those under five years old whose malnutrition rates have reached “alarming levels”.

Daoudi told a UN briefing in Geneva he had visited villages where “people have had to resort to desperate survival measures, such as eating locusts, raw red cactus fruits or wild leaves”.

“Famine looms in southern Madagascar as communities witness an almost total disappearance of food sources which has created a full-blown nutrition emergency,” Daoudi said. “I witnessed … horrific images of starving children, malnourished, and not only the children – mothers, parents and the population in villages we visited,” said Daoudi, a veteran aid worker. They are on the periphery of famine; these are images I haven’t seen for quite some time across the globe.”

Malnutrition among children under five has almost doubled to 16 percent from nine percent in the four months to March 2021 following five consecutive years of drought, exacerbated this year by sandstorms and late rains. A rate of 15 percent is deemed emergency level and some districts are reporting 27 percent – or one in four children under five – are suffering from acute malnutrition that causes wasting.

At least 1.35 million people need food assistance in the region, but the WFP is only reaching 750,000 with “half-rations” due to financial constraints, according to WFP, which seeks $75m to cover emergency needs through September.

“We need resources, yesterday; we need to turn resources into food,” Shelley Thakral, spokesperson for the WFP, told Al Jazeera. “We have seen images of skin-to-bone, protruding ribs of small children – children who, if you looked at them you’d think that they were perhaps two, three years old and not perhaps 10 years old … It’s really worrying,” Thakral said, warning that “people are on the edge”.

“They’re foraging, eating … just whatever they can find,” she added. “The situation is incredibly desperate.”

Starving Malagasy forced to eat leaves, locusts for survival | Food News | Al Jazeera

May Day's Spirit of Revolution

 

Everywhere the working class is confronted by hostile attacks from the ruling class. But this is the day when workers all over the world celebrate. This is the day when we show our strength. This is the day when we demonstrate our global solidarity with fellow-workers. This is the day when workers line up in one body and challenge the ruling class.

Workers of all countries have shed rivers of blood for a better life and real freedom. Those who fight for the workers’ cause are subjected by the governments to untold persecution. But in spite of repression, the solidarity of the workers of the world is growing and gaining in strength. Gone are the days when our fellow-workers slaved submissively, seeing no escape from the state of bondage, no glimmer of light. Socialism has shown the way out. There is no force on Earth that could break the strength of millions of workers united. When the workers' socialist organizations attract an ever greater part of the working class, it will become an even stronger force and will go from victory to victory, ever closer to the great goal — the emancipation of mankind from the present economic and political oppression. 

There cannot be a true socialist movement without the presence of sound political principles, completely absent today on the Left.

The control over the population the ruling class has is first of all a psychological one, built on the Orwellian-style hijacking of language which has corrupted the meaning of socialism or communism or anarchism.

On May Day we have to reflect on mental chains around our minds that enslave us and makes us accept the capitalist system's brutality, pillaging and theft.

The ruling class is incapable of dealing with our unalienable rights to live in social peace and harmony via self-governance without classes and we should celebrate together with fellow-workers all over the world.

May Day is the day of awaking against small or big, local or global ruling elites, not matter where the class war battle front-lines are located, in your neighborhood, at school or college, at work, the office or the store.

Let May Day be a day of conscientious objection, resistance, and rejection of a mental and physical wage-slavery and acquiescence to the exploitation we endure under capitalism.

Let May Day be a day of rejection of a political deceit of the fake opposition.

Let May Day be a day of declaration of our most sacred values of family, community, and hard work; unalienable rights to life and subsistence of all humanity as well as our unwavering commitment to political action against systemic institutions of the Establishment.

Let May Day be a day of unity of all humanity and rejection of hatred and all divisions that ruling elites incessantly continue to instil within human society in order to enslave and destroy it.

Let May Day be a day of warning to all those who sold their souls to the master class for 30 pieces of silver and some creature comforts that the day of reckoning is approaching.

Let May Day be a day of the beginning of an honest debate about the completely new system of societal organization devoid of class or caste or coercion and conspiracy of the ruling class against the people.

Let May Day be OUR day

The World Socialist Movement celebrates May Day in the spirit of international fraternity. We know that the more the workers are organized politically and industrially on a revolutionary basis, the faster and the thicker will the evolution of society will proceed. 

The bosses are united and the government stands with the bosses against the workers. Let them know that the workers are united; that the workers will stand by one another; that the workers’ solidarity is international solidarity and that the working class will fight for its emancipation!

We are confident of tomorrow because we trust that the workers throughout the world, will prove wholly capable of building a revolutionary movement. 

May Day is the symbol of a new era.