Wednesday, September 08, 2021

ANC and the working class

An analysis well worth quoting from


 "...Almost three decades of ANC rule have shown the true content of African nationalism. It is nothing more or less than capitalism controlled by people with black faces, and it is violently opposed to the interests of the working class. The years since the ANC took power in 1994 have shown that they oppose the working class just as violently as the apartheid regime which they replaced. We only need to mention the Marikana massacre of August 2012, where its police shot and killed 34 striking miners, to illustrate this. For the SA working class giving support to the ANC has been shown to be a disaster. We wrote in our paper Workers' Voice in 1990:

"Many black workers look to Mandela as the man who will free them from exploitation and hardship. They are greatly deceived. … In fact the ANC’s objectives have nothing to do with the working class’s interests, they are to use the power of the state to foster a black capitalist class. … South African workers have no interest in placing themselves in the infantry of the African nationalists."

And this is precisely what has occurred. The ANC has used the state to create a narrow echelon of African capitalists, some of them multi-millionaires, while the working class has suffered unemployment and poverty and hunger worse than under apartheid. The president, Ramaphosa, whose assets at the last count were $450 million, is a representative of the few, mostly ANC members, who have enriched themselves via their control of the state or its policies such as the Black Economic Empowerment programme..."

South African Riots: The Social Crisis Erupts (libcom.org)

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