A-Infos (en) Extracts from Workers Solidarity, paper of the South African WSF

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Extracts from Workers Solidarity, paper of the South African WSF

Articles in this extract include
  Do immigrants cause crime?
  Mass retrenchments by Mzi Khumalo's JCI
  A history of fighting for women's freedom

see our web page for more articles and other publications
of the WSF
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7017/

------

Do immigrants cause crime?

Although the media and the police paint immigrants as 
evil criminals, the facts show that immigrants are 
hardly ever involved in crime. In 1996, only 257 
Mozambicans, 65 Zimbabweans and 94 people from 
Lesotho were arrested for criminal offences.

Many people are wrong when they think that Zairians 
and Nigerians are involved in drug smuggling. In 
1996, only 1 Zairian and 7 Nigerians were arrested 
for drug dealing.

The real crime is the savage exploitation of 
immigrants on the farms and other industries. Many 
immigrants are not even paid- when it comes to pay 
day the fat cat boss calls the police and has the 
workers deported.

The real crime is the racist Aliens Control Act. 
Between 1988 and 1993, the apartheid regime deported 
96,600 immigrants. But in 1996 alone, the new 
government deported 180,713 people.

We must oppose reactionary organisations like the 
Greater Johannesburg Hawkers' Planning Committee, 
which are trying to drive poor immigrant vendors off 
the streets of Johannesburg. Organise the immigrants 
into the trade unions! Unite immigrants and South 
African workers into a common struggle for jobs and 
freedom! Workers of the world unite and fight the 
bosses!

Source of figures: SA Labour Bulletin, article by 
Busani Selabe

-----

"Empowering" who?

Mass retrenchments by Mzi Khumalo's JCI

"These companies are for empowering all Black 
people". This is a common claim by members of the 
rapidly growing Black elite.

The truth is very different, as Black mineworkers at 
Randfontein Estate goldmine have learned. More than 
4,100 workers face retrenchments at the hands of JCI. 
At Westonaria, JCI will retrench 3,000.

JCI is the biggest mining company. It is now headed 
by Mzi Khumalo, reflecting the increasing role of 
Black shareholders. Khumalo was once on Robben Island 
for fighting oppression, but now exploits workers as 
a member of the boss class.

The National Union of Mineworkers has called the 
retrenchments a "declaration of war by the company". 
However, only mass action by the workers provides a 
defence against these attacks.

The workers struggle is a struggle against all 
bosses. "Empowerment" for Black workers can only come 
through workers struggle and workers control.

---

A history of fighting for women's freedom

The libertarian socialist (anarcho-syndicalist) 
movement long fought against women's oppression. And 
many prominent figures in the women's movement were 
anarcho-syndicalists. This article gives some 
examples, but many more could be found. 

BAKUNIN

Mikhail Bakunin, the founder of anarcho-syndicalism, 
was a fighter for women's freedom. "In the eyes of 
the law", Bakunin noted, "even the best educated, 
talented, intelligent woman is inferior to even the 
most ignorant man".

For the poor underprivileged women, said Bakunin, 
there is the threat of "hunger and cold", and the 
threat of sexual assault and prostitution.

Even within the family, women are too often the 
"slaves of their husbands", and their children are 
"deprived of a decent education, condemned to a 
brutish life of servitude and degradation". Instead 
of this, "equal rights must belong to both men and 
women" (Bakunin). Women must be economically 
independent, "free to forge their own way of life".

This requires united workers struggle against the 
bosses. As Bakunin put it: "Oppressed women! Your 
cause is indissolubly tied to the common cause of all 
the exploited workers --- men and women! "

LUCY PARSONS

Lucy Parsons, the Black woman anarcho-syndicalist 
militant, fought for the rights of workers, Blacks 
and women in the USA.

In her speech to the founding conference of the 
revolutionary trade union- the Industrial Workers of 
the World - in 1905 Lucy Parsons paid close attention 
to the oppression of working class women. She noted 
how that oppression was used by the bosses to reduce 
the wages of the entire working class: "We, the women 
of this country, have no ballot even if we wished to 
use it ... but we have our labour ... Whenever wages 
are to be reduced, the capitalist class uses women to 
reduce them."

At a time when the left tended to ignore the plight 
of prostitutes, Lucy Parsons told the conference that 
she also spoke for "my sisters whom I can see in the 
night when I go out in Chicago".

EMMA GOLDMAN

Emma Goldman was another US anarcho-syndicalist 
militant. She was born in a Jewish ghetto in Russia, 
and left for the USA in the 1880s where she was 
textile worker

Working in the factories as a seamstress, she became 
a militant agitator and speaker after the hanging of 
comrades in Chicago in 1886.

Emma was repeatedly imprisoned: for calling on the 
unemployed to organise to demand bread; for 
distributing information on birth control; and for 
organising against World War One.

She was deported in 1919 and was active in both the 
Russian (1917-21) and Spanish Revolutions (1936-7).

Emma Goldman believed in revolutionary trade 
unionism. Emma Goldman stood for the rights of women.

She rejected male domination in the family and called 
for equality between men and women. She opposed 
capitalism, which reduces women to cheap labour and 
sex objects.

Emma criticised the middle-class reformist feminists 
of her time for being detached from the economic 
realities of working class women.

ARGENTINE

In Argentine, women anarcho-syndicalists set up the 
revolutionary The Voice of the Woman newspaper in the 
1890s. This was one of the "first ... instances in 
Latin America of the fusion of feminist ideas with a 
revolutionary and working- class orientation and 
differs from the feminism found elsewhere in Latin 
America ... which centred on educated middle- class 
women and ... reflected their specific concerns".

The same study continues: "The distinctiveness of The 
Voice of the Woman as an Anarchist paper lay in its 
recognition of the specificity of women's oppression. 
It called on women to mobilise against their 
oppression both as women and as workers" (Maxine 
Molyneux, Latin American Perspectives, 13 (1), 1986).

CHINA

In China, the anarcho-syndicalist movement pioneered 
a distinct anarchist position on women's liberation. 
In contrast to the Chinese nationalists, who wanted 
women's liberation only as a way of "building the 
nation", women comrades like He Zhen argued for class 
struggle and the right of women to determine their 
own lives.

He Zhen linked women's rights to the call for a 
complete social revolution; she knew the "the 
oppression of women to be linked to modern class 
divisions and economic exploitation as well as 
traditional culture" (Peter Zarrow, The Journal of 
Asian Studies, 47(4), 1988).

SPANISH REVOLUTION

In Spain in 1936, the working class organised a 
revolution for libertarian socialism (anarcho-
syndicalism). Workers seized the land and factories 
and organised a workers army.

Women also made gains. Women played a full part in 
the revolutionary struggle. Women were everywhere - 
Women were active in the workers collectives, and 
workers army where they fought alongside the men as 
equals. Women were taking up the fight against the 
sexist attitudes of the past which have no place in 
any real revolution.

The anarcho-syndicalist women's organisation, Mujeres 
Libres (Free Women) had 30,000 members. Mujeres 
Libres organised working-class women. It stood for 
class struggle. It worked closely with the anarcho-
syndicalist youth and trade unions.

Before the revolution, Mujeres Libres had organised 
women workers and distributed information on 
contraception. During the revolution abortion was 
legalised in the revolutionary zone. Centres were 
opened for women, including unmarried mothers and 
prostitutes.

Although the revolution was lost, we can learn a 
clear lesson- when people begin to throw off the old 
ideas and start creating a new society their views on 
many things change. Women's freedom becomes a real 
possibility. This is our fighting tradition- women's 
liberation through workers revolution!
-- 
    * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This article is from South African anarchist magazine
     Workers Solidarity

Other articles from this and earlier isssues can be found at
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7017/

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