A-Infos (en) South-Africa, Autonomous Action (Russia) interviews the ZACF Answers by Michael Schmidt, International Secretary of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front

1. The history of worker and anarchist movement in South Africa began more than 100 years ago. 
Could you tell Russian comrades about the history of your struggles (about organisations from the 
beginning of the 20th century like International Socialist League etc)?
South Africa would have remained an agrarian backwater colony similar to Kenya if it were not for 
the discovery of diamonds in 1867 and of gold in 1886. These two events saw a massive influx of 
capital, infrastructure and of a mostly white industrial working class. The new white working class 
was overwhelmingly race-protectionist, what was called “White Labourite” and early trade unions 
were built on those lines. But a small radical tendency with strong anti-racist, anarchist and 
syndicalist leanings (starting with the Socialist Club of Port Elizabeth in 1900) eventually saw 
the establishment of a local section of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1910. It was 
operative mostly among tramway workers in the gold-mining town of Johannesburg, the old Boer 
capital of Pretoria and the British-dominated port of Durban but despite its anti-racism did not 
manage to break out of the white ghetto. But although the IWW (SA) shut down in 1913, rank-and-file 
syndicalist ideas spread during the general strikes of 1913-1914, within the anti-war movement 
during World War I, and by 1917, the Indian Workers industrial Union (IWIU), organized among Indian 
indentured stevedores, hotel workers and cane-cutters in Durban, was established along IWW lines. 
The IWIU was backed up by the formation later in 1917 of the Industrial Workers of Africa (IWA), 
also based on the IWW’s revolutionary syndicalist, anti-racist class-struggle concept. The IWA is 
believed to have been the first black trade union in British-colonised Africa and by 1919 was 
flanked by similar syndicalist unions, the mostly “coloured” (mixed-race) Horse-Drivers Union in 
the diamond-mining town of Kimberley, and various unions in the port city of Cape Town. These 
revolutionary syndicalist unions were established by a group of white, black, coloured and Indian 
syndicalist militants from the Industrial Socialist League, a 1915 revolutionary splinter from the 
reformist socialist International Socialist League, and the IWA, IWIU and associated unions were so 
influential that for a period, they shifted the Transvaal section of the South African Native 
National Congress (SANNC, later renamed the African National Congress, ANC) in a syndicalist 
direction. By 1921, these unions formed the core of the new syndicalist-oriented Industrial and 
Commercial Union (ICU). Although the ICU’s constitution was also IWW-based, it was amore 
ideologically mixed union, and its radicalism was compromised by elements of black nationalism, 
Garveyism and communism. The first communist party in Africa, the Communist Party of South Africa 
(CPSA) was established by syndicalist militants in 1920, but like the first communist parties in 
countries such as Brazil and France was very libertarian and syndicalist. A rival Bolshevik CPSA – 
Communist International (CPSA-CI, the fore-runner of today’s South African Communist Party, SACP) 
was established the following year, adhering to Lenin’s 21 points and attracting many original CPSA 
militants. The revolutionary remainder of the CPSA renamed themselves the Communist League. The ICU 
peaked in 1927 with about 120,000 members. Importantly, it spread beyond South Africa to establish 
branches in South-West Africa (Namibia), and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). The Southern Rhodesian 
branch survived well into the 1950s, but the South African parent organization disintegrated in the 
late 1920s, bringing an end to South African anarchist-influenced syndicalism. Neighbouring 
Mozambique (like Angola, the Azores, and Portuguese Guinea) was a place of exile to which many 
Portuguese anarchists were deported in the 1890s and early 1900s. Some of them established an exile 
anarchist organization, the Revolutionary League, in the port capital of Lorenco Marques (Maputo) 
in the early 1900s. By the early 1920s, a significant syndicalist element had arisen among 
Mozambican workers under the influence of the powerful anarcho-syndicalist General Confederation of 
Labour (CGT) in Portugal (the Portuguese movement was proportionately larger than the Spanish 
movement). But the Mozambican movement apparently had no contact with the South African movement 
because of the language barrier, appeared not to have broken out of the white worker ghetto, and 
was suppressed from 1927 by the Salazar dictatorship. So ended the “glorious period” of anarchist 
and syndicalist organizing in South Africa. Most dissidents expelled from the Bolshevik CPSA in 
1928 for their syndicalist sympathies became Trotskyists instead of returning to the anarchist and 
syndcalist fold. But rank-and-file syndicalism (usually called “workerism” by the communists) 
reappeared from time to time as a minority strain. In the 1950s, for example, a South African 
section of the tiny libertarian Marxist international called the Movement for a Democracy of 
Content (MDC) was established and played a key role in the Alexandra bus boycott. Some dissidents 
from the SACP who left over the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary moved in an anarchist direction 
(one of them, Alan Lipman, is close to the ZACF). The rise to power of the National Party in 1948 
took what was an already polarized racial situation and divided people further. A whole raft of 
repressive legislation was introduced that outlawed the Communist Party, geographically carved up 
the country into ethnic enclaves (the infamous Group Areas Act), racially segregated public 
amenities such as parks, beaches, buses and toilets, and made mixed marriages and inter-racial 
relationships a crime. This was an extension of segregationist laws which had been in operation 
since colonial times. Between 1910 and 1960, in real terms, black wages stayed static and the black 
working class was mostly resigned to its fate under racial capital – except for the 1949 miner’s 
strike, the 1950s passive resistance campaigns aimed at the pass laws (which restricted the 
movement of black men, and later, black women) and other apartheid legislation which culminated in 
the signing of the 1955 Freedom Charter, and the 1961 turn of the ANC (desperate after its attempts 
at legal, peaceful reform failed) towards a limited, ineffective armed struggle (an ANC propaganda 
tool rather than proper armed resistance) led to the arrest of Nelson Mandela and other 
middle-class ANC/SACP leaders.

2. In the 70s-80s South Africa was associated by most people with the struggle against racial 
inequality. Please tell how the situation was developing in this period of time (about student and 
worker organisations and protests, 1976, revolts, strikes etc).
 From the 1970s, the global economy started to shrink and South Africa was no exception. The 
origins of the famous 1976-1977 Uprising lay in a series of illegal, often wildcat strikes which 
started in Durban in 1973, but the Uprising was coloured by the ideas of the Black Consciousness 
movement (whose leaders were figures like Bantu Steven Biko, murdered shortly afterwards), while 
the ANC was lost and ineffective in the wilderness of exile, its leaders in jail or on the run. The 
immediate cause of the uprising was black working class resistance to rocketing rates and service 
charges in the black township of Soweto after the white Johannesburg City Council stopped 
sponsoring Soweto to the tune of R2-million annually. School students added their complaints 
against teaching in Afrikaans to the worker’s complaints about the cost of living. The Uprising was 
the work of the black working class as a whole and not of any political faction, but many of those 
radicalized by the experience were forced into exile where they joined political factions (ANC, 
Black Consciousness Movement, BCM, or the anti-communist ANC splinter Pan Africanist Congress, 
PAC). The 1984-1991 Uprising was provoked by the apartheid state’s attempt at basic housing 
reforms, combined with its attempt to create a three-chamber parliament with separate 
representation for white, coloured and Indian voters – but excluding blacks. Black workers and the 
poor correctly saw these as attempts to draw them into compromise by reforming petty apartheid 
(lesser segregation such as that relating to mixed marriages) while maintaining grand apartheid 
(geographic separation and entrenched white privilege and black exclusion). Again, the uprising was 
mostly the work of ordinary people, but this time, was heavily fragmented along political lines, so 
the ANC engaged in open warfare with competing tendencies, murdering scores of militants from the 
Azanian People’s Organisation (a BCM organization), PAC and engaging in protracted conflict with 
the Zulu-chauvinist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). The apartheid state responded with a State of 
Emergency and sent troops into the townships: conflict between the state and the ANC is the 
enduring image of that time in most people’s minds but by the end of it, the ANC had established 
itself as the leading opposition movement. When the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) 
was finally, legally, established in 1985 during the nationwide State of Emergency, rank-and-file 
syndicalists contested the communist suggestion that Cosatu affiliate to the cross-class ANC. The 
syndicalists were sadly defeated, however, and that defeat is still being felt in Cosatu ranks 
today: despite its 1,8-million-strong membership, it is completely subservient to the much smaller 
ANC ruling party.

3. Nelson Mandela won the elections in 1994 and became the head of state when the system of 
apartheid was abolished. Has the life of workers changed for the better in these 15 years (what 
about poverty, unemployment, lack of housing, police repressions, Mandela as the puppet of 
financial and industrial capital holders)?
In part, you view this correctly: the transition to bourgeois pseudo-democracy was facilitated by 
Nelson Mandela – a Gandhi-like saint who can do no wrong in the eyes of the liberals – who became 
the poster-child for the oligarchs in Washington and London for ensuring that neo-liberal fiscal 
discipline would replace the ANC’s social-democratic promises. Of course the ANC has its own 
political traditions and is a powerful formation within South Africa in its own right, so Mandela 
cannot be said to be merely a puppet of the financial and industrial elites, performing only a 
comprador role in relations to international capitalist interests. Instead it is truer to say that 
the ANC was always a cross-class “national liberation” party that adhered to only a watered-down 
version of state socialism. Its clear intention was always to build a black bourgeoisie to work 
alongside the white bourgeoisie, and this it has been successful in achieving. This is not to say 
there were not black bourgeois under apartheid (the “homeland” leaders, the Zulu King and others 
cannot be said to have been among the oppressed of the country), but the extension of the benefits 
of the ownership of the means of production and of political power has now been extended to a 
narrow layer of black adventurers. What is more important is to recognise that in striking this 
deal with capital, Mandela in fact rescued the right-wing dictatorship’s neo-liberal project in 
South Africa from disaster. He entered into secret negotiations with the apartheid state, starting 
in July 1984 – at a time that the country was in flames, the townships ruled by armed youthful 
militia, local civic organizations, rank-and-file trade unionists and others. These secret 
negotiations followed equally secret talks between spies and business leaders, the real authors of 
the South African transition. An example of how corrupt Mandela was, is that in 1997, Mandela 
awarded our country’s highest honour to Indonesian neo-fascist dictator Mohammed Suharto, 
responsible for the bloody pogrom that resulted in the murder of well over 1-million communists, 
Chinese and other people – because Suharto had donated $60-million to the ANC. I have written an 
extensive paper on this crooked transition to “democracy” for the Chilean anarchist-communist 
journal Hombre y Sociedad (Humanity & Society) which should be available early in 2009.

  4. The worker organizations played a big part in fighting against the system of state racism in 
South African Republic. It can be said that at the time South African Republic symbolized radical 
worker resistance with its numerous strong trade unions. Anarchists took part in organizing the 
biggest and most radical trade unity – COSATU. Please tell more about it.
As I have indicated, the original rank-and-file syndicalist tendencies within Cosatu which were 
evident at its founding in 1985 and which were opposed to collaboration with the 
bourgeois-nationalist ANC and SACP were sadly defeated. An example of this opposition from the 
nationalists occurred at the International Libertarian Labor Conference organised by the IWW and 
IWA in the United States in 1986 and attended by revolutionary union delegates from Canada, 
Britain, France, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the USA. The Cosatu delegate to the 
conference refused to share a stage with a Polish Solidarity delegate on the grounds that 
Solidarity was opposing a “socialist” state! Although shop-floor militancy came to the fore time 
and again especially in the radical Cosatu-affiliated Chemical Workers Industrial Union (CWIU) and 
Cosatu’s radical Transport and General Workers’ Union, there were no explicit anarchists within 
those unions (the former national educator of CWIU is, however, a ZACF member), and by 1998/99, 
Cosatu leadership deliberately undermined Chemical’s and Transport’s radicalism by merging them 
with moderate, poorly-run affiliates – one under SACP leadership! Today, Cosatu remains crippled by 
its traditional class compromise with the ANC/SACP – to the extent that the Black Consciousness and 
formerly white trade union federations Nactu and Fedusa have joined forces, putting them in the 
vanguard of organised working class unity in South Africa, way ahead of Cosatu. For a more detailed 
assessment of where Cosatu is currently at, read my article on the public-sector strike last year, 
Now is the Winter of our Discontent, online here

5. Please describe the actual life conditions of workers in South Africa. What is worker class 
doing now? Are there any strikes? How about old trade unions set up in the 70s and 80s - if they 
still exist and are hard-edged or got conciliating (COSATU, ANC, SACP)?
In the period 1999 until 2002, we used to run the Workers’ Library & Museum in downtown 
Johannesburg, one of the only independent working-class spaces for debate, education, organizing 
and interaction left in South Africa. The Museum recreates how power-station workers used to live 
in 1915, but one day some miners came and looked at the museum and one of them told me: “I don’t 
understand why this is a museum, because we still live like this, 36 men to a room on concrete 
beds”. In real terms, black wages remained unchanged between 1910 and 1960 – and starting with the 
economic recession in 1973, things have often only gotten worse. A few years ago, I interviewed 
women sawmill workers, working in a dangerous environment, who were earning 11 Rand a month (30 
Rubles/month)! South Africa hasn’t experienced the sort of turbo-capitalism, asset-stripping and 
de-industrialisation as Russia has, but that is still shocking. Unemployment hovers around the 40% 
mark and starvation and diseases of malnutrition like kwashiorkor, rickets and marasmus are common. 
The total membership numbers of Cosatu have remained relatively stable – but today a higher 
percentage are flexible, part-time labour. This is the long-term damage that neo-liberal economics 
has done to the working class. And yet Cosatu, because of the benefits its leaders get from their 
relationship with the rich and powerful in the ANC government and in industry, have become totally 
conciliatory. Hardliners tend to be found outside of Cosatu in independent radical unions like the 
General Industrial Workers Union of SA (Giwusa), which consists of many former CWIU members, and 
with which we are involved trying to set up a working-class newspaper. Again, on the general 
situation of the unions, refer to the article I mentioned in point 4 above.

6. Why are the most former apartheid fighters now supporting or being part of political elite of 
South African Republic? How do you think could it happen? In the past there was a direct 
dictatorship of white minority but what is happening now?
For many anti-apartheid fighters, well-paid positions in government or the private sector are a 
reward for their hard years of exile, jail and oppression and it is difficult to deny them that, 
but it naturally changes their class position, and so their ethics and their politics. In our 
analysis, the ANC/SACP doctrine of the “national democratic revolution” which is a developmentalist 
cross-class project to create a black elite is what lies at the core of many former radicals 
supposed “defection” to capitalism. The fact of the matter is that ANC/SACP adherence to the state, 
which is the enforcement arm of capital (although it has its own interests as an unelected 
bureaucracy), could only bring about a state/capital solution that had no chance of being genuinely 
liberatory, or genuinely revolutionary. If anything, money and power has confirmed for many in the 
ANC/SACP the “rightness” of their path from “liberation movement” to neo-liberal political party. 
In other words, this was not a betrayal of the ANC’s principles, but the fulfillment of the ANC’s 
principles – and we agree with them here!

7. Tell about Zabalaza, its origins and its modern situation. Where does its name come from? You 
officially told about its existence only in 2007 December 1 but it has been existing for about 15 
years already – why did it take so much time? What are the most important issues of yours (student 
or worker movement, protests against resettlements)? What are your achievements?
Our name Zabalaza means Struggle in the two most widely-spoken languages of South Africa: Zulu and 
Xhosa. We describe as Anarchist Communist because that is the anarchist tradition that sees the 
necessity for dual organization: a “specific” anarchist organization working inside and alongside 
mass working class organizations. In the late 1980s, a multiracial anarchist movement resurfaced in 
South Africa, opposing itself to military conscription, to apartheid and fascism. By 1992, after 
the unbanning of political opposition organizations in 1990, there was the Anarchist Resistance 
Movement (ARM) in Johannesburg and the Durban Anarchist Federation (DAF, of which I was a member). 
In 1995 after the first democratic election which brought the ANC to power in 1994, key militants 
of ARM and DAF founded the anarcho-syndicalist Workers’ Solidarity Federation (WSF) which 
established branches in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town and which had a majority black working 
class membership, including many trade union shop-stewards. The WSF dissolved in 1999 as the 
ANC/SACP/Cosatu shut down political space in the unions, but its core membership,clustered around 
the Bikisha Media Collective (BMC) took over the running of the independent Workers’ Library & 
Museum, an independent working-class meeting place in Johannesburg – rescuing it from ANC/SACP 
mismanagement – while Zabalaza Books continued producing anarchist propaganda. After the resistance 
to the bourgeois 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg saw the emergence of 
black anarchist nuclei in townships such as Soweto (Johannesburg) and Umlazi (Durban), these nuclei 
plus BMC and Zabalaza Books established the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (ZACF) in 2003. 
The ZACF established a section in Swaziland and worked closely with the emerging anarchist / 
libertarian socialist resistance movement in Zimbabwe, but in December 2007, due to declining 
membership and several internal difficulties, restructured itself as the Zabalaza Anarchist 
Communist Front (also ZACF), a unitary organization instead of a federation of collectives. The 
Front has continued the activities of the former Federation, including co-editorship of the 
international multilingual anarchist-communist news & analysis site www.anarkismo.net , its own 
mostly-English African anarchist portal www.zabalaza.net its Zabalaza Books publishing project, the 
running of anarchist workshops called Red “& Black Forums in the townships, and direct involvement 
in Zimbabwean and Swazi resistance movements, gender/gay rights movements, ecological movements, 
prisoner-support campaigns (through the ZACF’s Anarchist Black Cross), anti-xenophobia campaigns. 
In addition, nine years ago, BMC embarked on an ambitious project to re-analyse and rewrite 
anarchist theory and history: today, the result is a two-volume work called “Counter-power,” with 
the theoretical first volume, “Black Flame: the Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism & 
Syndicalism,” scheduled to be released by AK Press in California before the end of the year. Volume 
2: “Global Fire: 150 Fighting Years of Anarchism & Syndicalism” is nearing completion and should be 
published in 2009.

8. In 2006 – 2007 Swaziland opposition was subjected to repressions by its political regime, some 
members of Zabalaza suffered as well. How are they doing now?
The situation in Swaziland is fraught with problems, not the least of which is the sheer poverty of 
our comrades there. This year, 2008, was meant by the main Swazi opposition party, the 
social-democratic People’s United Democratic Movement (Pudemo) to be the year in which King Mswati 
III, one of the last absolute monarchs in Africa, was to be removed and replaced with a bourgeois 
democracy. Despite a series of bombings, presumably committed by both Swaziland Youth Congress 
(Swayoco) militants and by state agents trying to blame Pudemo and Swayoco, nothing has changed. 
The youth are getting restless and many want to take up arms. I reported in late 2006 on the 
development of an armed struggle tendency within Swayoco, based on very detailed interviews with 
many players, but this was fervently denied by Swayoco. Still, the ZACF has maintained fairly close 
relations with Swayoco, and our former members within Swaziland work alongside Swayoco youth. 
Numerous copies of our propaganda materials have been distributed in Swaziland and we are busy 
finishing a pamphlet which covers 10 years of anarchist writings on the pro-democracy movement in 
the kingdom. The trouble in Swaziland, is that, as with Zimbabwe, the opposition is not strong 
enough to overthrow the government, so we don’t forsee any powerful developments soon. And yet 
things could change: in 1997, a massive general strike shut the country down for days and had the 
chance of, if not toppling the king, at least forcing him to submit to democratic rule, but 
political advantage was not taken of the situation and such circumstances may not rise again soon. 
The situation in Zimbabwe, with its government-by-thug, economic collapse, and cholera epidemic, is 
far more serious. We remain in constant contact with our libertarian socialist comrades there, but 
we fear that with the opposition so crippled, the only “solution” will be a palace coup against 
Robert Mugabe by his own army, a result that will hardly express the will of the Zimbabwean people.

9. «ZACF» is one of few modern anarchist organizations which are based on the positions of 
“Makhno-Arshinov’s Platform”. What is it concerned with?
The ZACF views the Platform as an inspiration and a call to more effective action, but not as some 
sort of Bible of the anarchist movement. When it was originally written, its title was 
Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists: Draft, which shows that it was intended 
as a discussion document and not as a blueprint. The argument that subsequently broke out in the 
movement between supporters of the Platform (Arshinov, Makhno etc), critics (Malatesta, Rocker etc) 
and opponents (Voline, Faure etc) was party driven by a failure to understand that the core ideas 
of the Platform – that anarchists had to be tightly organized in groups based on agreed methods in 
order to succeed – were simply a repeat of Bakunin’s arguments from decades before that anarchists 
needed to work together as “invisible pilots” in order to encourage the masses towards their own 
liberation (this strategy clearly was behind the huge success of what we call the “second wave” of 
syndicalist movements from 1895-1923). Also, opponents of the Platform failed to admit that its 
lessons were drawn not only from the real life-and-death struggle of some 500,000 Makhnovists, but 
that its ideas were derived from the Draft Declaration of the (Makhnovist) Revolutionary Insurgent 
Army of the Ukraine, adopted in 1919 at a mass congress of the Military-Revolutionary Soviet in 
1919 and were not the dreams of a few leaders like Makhno. Therefore it represents the distillation 
of mass libertarian socialist working class experience. From the formation of the Workers’ 
Solidarity Federation in 1995, we have identified with these positive aspects of the Platform and 
today we align ourselves with the growing numbers of anarchist organizations that take inspiration 
from the Platform: the global anarchist-communist movement which mostly comes together in the 
www.anarkismo.net project which represents 17 organisations in Latin America, North America, 
Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Australasia. However, today most of those organisations tend to 
call themselves anarchist-communist, or in Latin America, “especifista” (specific organisations), 
by which we mean not only the Bakuninist/Makhnovist legacy, but the strategy of having a specific 
anarchist organization working in amongst mass organisations of the working class.

10. The Nazis terror is still staying one of the most serious problems in the Post-Soviet area. Are 
there some racist or neo-fascist groups in South America Republic and how do you handle this problem?
With the roots of the apartheid regime firmly planted in pro-Nazi groups during World War II, South 
Africa developed from 1972 one of the most powerful neo-fascist organizations in the world, the 
Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB). The South African version of Nazism, called “Christian 
Nationalism,” has a strong Calvinist religious basis. The far-right was comprehensively defeated in 
1994 with the “Battle of Bophuthatswana” and in the first democratic elections. They do still 
exist, however, and are a serious threat to progressive labour organizers and black people in 
general in the rural areas, such as our comrades in the Landless People’s Movement (there have been 
several instances of murder and torture by right-wingers of black people in rural communities). In 
addition, some of the right has been able to survive within the higher echelons of South African 
society by striking deals with the ANC. One of the strangest instances of this is the 1996 
Mosagrius Agreement signed between Mandela and Mozambique’s Joaquim Chissano in which white 
right-wing South African farmers would be allowed to expropriate black peasants in Mozambique, much 
in the manner the British had forced the Zulus into penury as labour tenants by enclosing their 
land in the 19th Century. And this brings me to the real threat we face on a daily basis at the 
hands of thugs, often armed: the threat against anarchists, left communists and the radical social 
movements in general largely comes from reactionary elements within the ANC itself, especially its 
right-populist Youth League. Several of our (anarchist) projects in the townships have been 
destroyed by armed ANC thugs (who are backed by the police). So, no, we never find ourselves 
fighting neo-Nazis. The real danger comes from the ANC: don’t forget that many ANC strongholds were 
created by the deliberate mass murder of members of competing black political parties like Azapo 
and the PAC.

11. In contrast to the past, modern anarchist movements and groups got less popular with worker 
class. How do you think is to explain it? What should be done to change it?
Our argument is that anarchism became a world-shaking movement of the working class, peasantry and 
poor from the 1860s to 1920s precisely because it was totally submerged in those layers of the 
people. However, this does not mean that anarchists have no defined identity, tactics or strategy: 
Bakunin’s original doctrine of having a specific anarchist organization acting as “invisible 
pilots” of the masses by working among them is as true today as it was more than a century ago. We 
ourselves have been informed by the “social insertion” practices of our Brazilian comrades – that 
we work directly in poor communities – but at the same time, we maintain a specific organization 
with its own identity that continually argues for anarchist ideas of class autonomy among the 
oppressed of our region. This is “dual organisationism” which says that mass organizations 
(including syndicalist unions) are formations uniting the larges possible number of the oppressed 
purely on the basis of their class and the fact that they face a common enemy. But it is obvious 
that the oppressed have reactionary as well as oppressive ideas and practices, and are often 
confused by (and lured by) the false promises of capitalism, so there is a need for a specific 
anarchist-communist organisation to work within the masses of the class organisations to help keep 
the real issues and real options clear. This is the only way, fighting daily alongside the wretched 
of the earth, that anarchism will reclaim its status as the primary working-class ideology and 
practice. Times have changed, of course: the old “working class battalions” of the large trade 
unions have disappeared as factories have been dismantled or been outsourced, but the class itself 
has not disappeared, nor has the reality of oppression and exploitation (despite what the 
“post-anarchists” claim). Trade unions may be shrinking, but wage-slavery is expanding, so our 
place is at the coalface.

12. Does your organization keep in touch with other anarchist movements in Africa: Zambian 
Anarchist and Workers’ Solidarity Movement (AWSM) anarcho-syndicalist Awareness League in Nigeria, 
in Senegal Anarchist Party for Individual Freedoms in the Republic (1981), Sierra Leone Industrial 
Workers of the World (1996), South Africa Anarchist Revolutionary Movement (1992) Workers’ 
Solidarity Federation (1995) the ZACF (2003) and others, Zambia Anarchist Workers’ Solidarity 
Movement (1998), and Swaziland ZACF (2003)?
Africa is an exceptionally difficult continent on which to organise syndicalist trade unions and 
anarchist political organizations in part because of the tiny working classes in most countries, 
the dominance of militarized ethnic comprador elites, and poor communications. Few studies have 
been done into anarchism on the continent, so we do not know what became of Anarchist Party for 
Individual Freedoms in the Republic (PALIR) in Senegal, but we do know that the IWW section in 
Sierra Leone, led by Bright Chiredzi and supported by the IWW and IWA (USA), organized some 3,000 
workers, mostly on the diamond fields, but that the movement was smashed by the civil war which 
started in 1997 and that Chiredzi and others fled into exile in countries like Ghana. The 
IWA-affiliated Awareness League in Nigeria was ironically strongest under the Sani Abacha 
dictatorship when its membership peaked at about 1,000 distributed in 15 different Nigerian states, 
among students, white-collar workers and oil workers. We used to have contact with the Awareness 
League’s Sam Mbah (co-author of the book African Anarchism), but have since lost contact. It is 
believed there may still be cells of the League in operation in the city of Enugu, but the 
organization has clearly declined. The AWSM of Zambia was founded after I visited the country as a 
WSF delegate in August 1998, but it only consisted of about 12 activists and its main militant 
Wilstar Choongo died after an illness the following year so the movement appears to have collapsed. 
I will, however, be visiting Zambia in the next two weeks to re-establish old contacts – as well as 
make contacts with the COCIDIRAIL syndicalist railway workers in Mali (linked to the CNT-France) 
and whatever activists I can find in Uganda. The South African movements mentioned – the ARM and 
WSF – are both fore-runners of today’s ZACF, as was the Durban Anarchist Federation (of which I 
used to be a member in the early 1990s and out of which came today’s Zabalaza Books, originally 
called Land & Freedom). The ZAC Federation, founded in 2003, had a branch in Swaziland until we 
restructured at the end of last year as the ZAC Front, but we maintain contacts with our Swazi 
comrades as well as with new anarchists fighting the Zimbabwean dictatorship. We maintain relations 
with Talal Cockar of the anarchist Wiyathi Collective in Kenya, and with Brahim Fillali of the 
former CLER in Morocco. But outside South Africa, the anarchist movement in English-speaking Africa 
is very weak. There is, however, a growing rank-and-file syndicalist movement in French-speaking 
Africa linked to the CNT-France (sometimes known as CNT-Vignoles after its headquarters in Paris). 
Last year, the CNT-F ran the successful i07 congress at which the following African syndicalist 
organizations were present: Algeria (Snapap), Morocco (UMT, CDT, ANDCN, poor peasants, FDR-UDT), 
Tunisia (CGTT), Guinea (CNTG, CEK, SLEG), Ivory Coast (CGT-CI), Djibouti (UDT), Congo DRC (LO), 
Mali (Cocidirail, Sytrail), Benin (FNEB, UNSTB, AIPR), Burkina Faso (UGEB, CGT-B, AEBF) and 
Madagascar (Fisemare). The CNT-F publishes Afrique sans chaines (Africa Without Chains), the sister 
publication to our own journal Zabalaza.

13. The history of movement developing is totally unknown in Russia, can you tell us about the 
history of anarchist movement in Africa? Especially about the following groups and movements:
a) Mau Mau revolution, Kikuyu people.
As I have argued in my article Nostalgic Tribalism or Revolutionary Transformation?: a critique of 
Anarchism & Revolution in Black Africa, while it is useful to show that there are certain 
libertarian and horizontalist elements in many African tribal societies, including the Kukuyu, the 
dominant tribe in Kenya, it is not true in the ZACF’s view – as argued by other libertarian 
socialists and anarchists – that these tribes were essentially “anarchic” societies. We argue this 
because anarchism is a modernist universalist movement that arose out of the trade unions in the 
First International and usually had an industrial base, so it is not to be found in primitive 
narrow pre-industrial settings. So we do not believe the Mau Mau, the violent indigenous resistance 
to British rule in Kenya between 1950 and 1962 was anarchist in any real sense. Rather it was a 
largely ethnic-based liberation struggle with very confused politics. This is not to say that 
anarchists can’t build on libertarian social tendencies within various tribal settings, but as our 
comrade Brahim Fillali of Morocco has argued, a tribal society, no matter how libertarian, has 
natural limitations because they are usually “a patriarchal society, in which mythology and 
religion dominate the cultural field. This is what characterises agricultural and semi-nomadic 
societies. This is federalism local or regional and not international. It is not an achievement of 
a societal project; it can not be. In its development it cannot exceed the ceiling of the tribe, 
its limits. It’s a tribal federalism in an agricultural and semi-nomadic society.”

b) People’s Free University and the International League of Cigarette Workers and Millers of Cairo 
(Egypt), and the Revolutionary League (Mozambique) in the early 1900s, the Industrial Workers of 
Africa and Indian Workers’ Industrial Union (South Africa) in the late 1910s/early1920s, and the 
Algerian section of the General Confederation of Labour – Revolutionary Syndicalist in the 1930s).
Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and to a lesser extent Tunisia had significant minority populations of 
French, Spanish and Italian anarchists by the end of the 19th Century. According to a study by our 
comrade Dr Lucien van der Walt, “The Italian-language Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicles), 
published in Vermont, United States from 1903 onwards by Luigi Galleani, reached ‘far beyond the 
confines of the United States’ including North Africa and Egypt. Italian radicals played a key role 
in founding the labour movement in Egypt, forming a People’s Free University in Alexandria in 1901, 
and activists associated with the University and Le Tribune Libre appear to have been amongst those 
involved in founding ‘international’ unions in early 20th Century Egypt. Most notable was the 
International League of Cigarette Workers and Millers of Cairo in 1908, ‘open to workers of all 
nationalities, Egyptians as well as foreigners,’ and apparently including ‘production workers other 
than the skilled rollers.’ Other examples of integrated labour solidarity existed. A meeting in 
1901 in support of striking garment workers (including Egyptians) in a Cairo café included a speech 
by the president of the cigarette rollers’ craft union, and a reading of the workers’ demands in 
Arabic as well as Greek, Italian, Hebrew and Austrian. This was followed by a march of 3,000 
chanting workers through Cairo.”
“Algeria, under French rule from 1830, was also a site of anarchist activity. A range of anarchist 
journals were published in Algiers at the end of the 19th Century, including L'Action 
Revolutionnaire (Revolutionary Action) (1887), Le Tocsin (The Alarm) (1890), Le Libertaire (The 
Libertarian) (1892) and La Marmite Sociale (1893).” According to Anderson, by 1894, Jean Grave’s 
influential anarchist-communist La Révolte had subscribers as far afield as Algeria and Egypt, 
while Emile Pouget’s anarcho-insurrectionist Le Pére Peinard (The Toiling Father) had subscribers 
in Algeria and Tunisia, the latter a former Ottoman province that became a French protectorate in 
1881. Van der Walt goes on to note: “Fernand Pelloutier’s 1895 Anarchism and the Workers Unions … 
mentions that anarchists had become increasingly active in “many trade unions”, including those in 
Algiers. The anarchist Victor Barroucand published a daily called Les Nouvelles (The New) in 
Algiers in the first decade of the 20th Century. The syndicalist successor of the French CGT, the… 
CGT-SR… apparently operated a section in Algeria. Like the other French anarchist organisations, 
the CGT-SR opposed French colonialism. Thus, a joint statement by the Anarchist Union, the CGT-SR, 
and the Association of Anarchist Federations denounced the centenary of the French occupation of 
Algeria in 1930, arguing ‘Civilisation? Progress? We say: murder!’ A prominent militant in the 
CGT-SR’s Algerian section, as well as in the Anarchist Union was Saïl Mohamed (1894-1953), an 
Algerian anarchist active in the anarchist movement from the 1910s until his death in 1953. 
Although resident in Paris and Aulnay-sous-bois for much of his life, Mohamed was a founder of 
organisations such as the Association for the Rights of the Indigenous Algerians and the Anarchist 
Group of the Indigenous Algerians with Sliman Kiouane in 1923, organised meetings on the colonial 
exploitation of North Africans in both French and Arabic, and was the secretary of the anarchist 
‘Algerian Defence Committee Against the Provocations of the Centenary’ in 1929. Saïl Mohamed was 
also editor of the North African edition of the anarchist periodical Terre Libre, all copies of 
which have, sadly, been lost. Jailed on numerous occasions, Saïl Mohamed was also a contributor to 
anarchist journals such as L'Eveil Social, and La Voix Libertaire (The Libertarian Voice), often on 
the Algerian question, and fought as a volunteer in the international section of the Durruti Column 
… in the Spanish Revolution. The international group of the Durruti column included “400 Frenchmen, 
Germans, Italians, Britishers, Moroccans and Americans.”
“Portuguese anarchists also played a role in disseminating libertarian ideas in Africa. Some idea 
of the scope of activities may be gleaned from a report in early 1936, prepared by the 
FAI-affiliated Anarchist Federation of Portugal. The report noted that, ‘The Portuguese Federation 
entered a new phase in March 1935.’ It ‘established relations with nuclei of comrades in Spain, 
France, Brazil, Argentina, the United States, French Africa, Portuguese Africa, and Morocco,’ and 
was publishing ‘our journal, Rebellion, although not regularly, because we do not have sufficient 
funds.’ This was ‘distributed inside Portugal, as well as in the Azores, Africa and Oceania.’”
“Although the Spanish state used territories in North Africa for penal purposes, North Africa was 
also a haven for anarchist militants and refugees. Julio Sánchez Ortiz draws attention to the role 
played by Tangiers in Morocco, which was an international protectorate in the early 20th Century. 
While the history of anarchism in this city is not well documnted, Ortiz cites the example of his 
grandfather, José Sánchez Santos. Born to a poor family in Cadiz, Spain, and orphaned at an early 
age, Santos was sponsored by a wealthy aunt and received a good education. At the age of 18, he 
abandoned his studies, and went to work as a typographer in Seville. To avoid military conscription 
against the Riff forces in Morocco, he went to Tangiers around 1922. In 1926, he joined the CNT, 
which seems to have had an organised presence in Tangiers at the time. In the 1930s, Santos married 
and opened a print shop, and worked as a typographer on El Porvenir (The Future), a republican 
paper. He contributed several articles from 1936 to 1937. These attacked the fascist Franco forces 
– which used Morocco as launching point – and opposed their appeals for support. He appears to have 
lost his job with El Porvenir in mid-1936 – because of his CNT links. Santos later worked on 
another republican paper, Democracia (Democracy), to which he did not contribute.
After the defeat of the Spanish Revolution, and with the outbreak of the Second World War, Tangiers 
came under the control of the dictator Franco, and there was a massive crackdown on the left and 
labour in that city. Many fled to Oran in Algeria, but Santos stayed, was arrested in March 1941, 
and sentenced to twelve years in prison. He refused an offer of clemency in return for renouncing 
his beliefs, and was in prison until 1948. He returned to Tangiers to work on the Diario de España 
(Newspaper of Spain) and later on Despeche Marroquine (Moroccan Despatches), but was fired for 
organising a strike in the workshops. He died in 1952 at the age of 50 of a brain tumour. Exiled 
Italian anarchists, like Celso Persici, were involved in the anti-Nazi resistance in Morocco during 
the Second World War, as Vertice Persici notes. According to José Peirats, Roque Santamaria 
Cortiguera represented exile organisations from North Africa at a 1947 intercontinental congress of 
the exile Spanish anarchist movement in Toulouse, France. This was the same year that the 
newly-founded Anarchist International Relations Commission (CRIA) was in correspondence with a 
North African Libertarian Movement with sections in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. This organisation 
was composed of Spanish exiles, French and French anarchists resident in North Africa. However the 
Algerian War (1954-1962) seems to have put paid to this organization.

c) Zambian Anarchist and Workers’ Solidarity Movement (AWSM), anarcho-syndicalist Awareness League 
in Nigeria, in Senegal Anarchist Party for Individual Freedoms in the Republic (1981), Sierra Leone 
Industrial Workers of the World (1996), South Africa Anarchist Revolutionary Movement (1992), 
Workers’ Solidarity Federation (1995), the ZACF (2003), and others, Zambia Anarchist Workers’ 
Solidarity Movement (1998), and Swaziland (ZACF, 2003).
I have already addressed these questions in point 12.

14. What do you think are special features of anarchist and revolutionary movements in Africa? 
Which social groups were the libertarian ideas popular with (Mau Mau revolution, Kikuyu people)? 
The history of partisan war of Kikuyu people against British colonialists is practically unknown in 
Russia, could you tell about this? How were rebels organized and how did the act? What about their 
old traditions of living without building up a state?
Again, I have answered this question relating to the Mau Mau earlier. We can’t, like the 
primitivists, confuse pre-capitalist tribal societies (which have many unfree elements such as 
chauvinism) with the anarchist movement which arose in a modern industrial setting in Europe, the 
Americas, and East Asia in particular. Anarchism has always been a universalist practice, but there 
has been a range of positions on the national liberation question in the colonial and ex-colonial 
world. These are explored in depth by a new book Anarchism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World: 
the praxis of national liberation, class struggle and social revolution, 1880-1940, edited by 
Lucien van der Walt (one of our close comrades) and Steve Hirsch. The book comprises chapters by 
scholars, all structured (to some extent) around issues of a) the role of transnational connections 
in the movement b) internationalist ideas and aspirations c) class politics d) responses to racial 
and national divisions in the popular classes and e) responses to imperialism. The following areas/ 
regions/ countries are covered: Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, China, Egypt, 
Ireland, Korea, Peru, Ukraine, and South Africa. The book shows that while there were different 
responses to the “national” question (including questions of race and culture), anarchism had an 
overarching universal ethic. If there are any “special features” of anarchist movements in Africa 
such as our own, they relate to the ways in which we stress our line-of-descent from the early 
syndicalist movement and the rank-and-file popular struggles of the 1970s/80s), our location within 
the grassroots communist tradition (which still carries weight in South Africa whereas “anarchism” 
is not well known), our emphasis on radical racial equality, and our focus on organizing within 
communities of the poor. However, anarchists in the United States, anarchists would do much the 
same, emphasizing where local history intersects with anarchist ideas, and organizing in local poor 
communities, so it would be wrong to suggest there is some ethnic or geographical element that 
makes us different. The only difference may be that we work within a tiny anarchist movement, 
unlike other countries with large movements such as yourselves. This tends to see us working 
alongside Maoists, Bolsheviks, autonomists and Trotskyists in a non-sectarian manner – yet not 
diluting our anarchist politics.

15. Let’s speak about today. There is a financial crisis of the capitalist economy. How did it 
influence the worker life in South African Republic (what about unemployment, dismissal, wage 
cuts)? What do you think is the reason for modern economical problems and crisis?
South Africa’s economy is not as sheltered from the global crisis as our monopolistic banking 
sector pretends. There have been significant lob layoffs in mining and in manufacturing already, 
although it looks like interest rates are starting to come down – but that is probably too late for 
those who face losing their jobs and houses. One of the things we fear is that the new emergent 
black middle class will be forced back into the working class – and this will drive them 
politically to the extreme right as occurred in Germany in the global economic crisis of the 1930s. 
On the global level, we have made our perspectives on this clear with a statement, initiated by the 
ZACF, on the current crisis. It reads as follows:

Anarchist Communist Statement On The Global Economic Crisis And G20 Meeting
1.The current crisis is typical of the crises that regularly appear in the capitalist economy. 
"Overproduction", speculation and subsequent collapse are inherent to the system. (As Alexander 
Berkman and others have pointed out, what capitalist economists call overproduction is actually 
underconsumption: capitalism prevents large numbers of people from fulfilling their needs, and so 
undermines its own markets.)
2. Any solution to the crisis prepared by capitalists and governments will remain a solution within 
capitalism. It will not be a solution for the popular classes. Indeed, as in every crisis, the 
workers and the poor are paying – while financial capital is being bailed out with huge sums. This 
is likely to continue. No change within capitalism can resolve the problems of the popular classes; 
still less can such a solution be expected from individual politicians, such as Barack Obama. The 
most such politicians can do is play a part in offering the capitalists a way out, and perhaps in 
throwing the working class some crumbs.
3. The bank bailouts show not only whose interests the state serves, but the hollowness of 
capitalist commitment to free markets. Throughout history, capitalists have stood for markets when 
it suits them, and state regulation and subsidies when they need it. Capitalism could never have 
existed without state support.
4. In the US, the UK and elsewhere, the bailouts have taken the form of nationalisation of troubled 
financial institutions – with the full support of capital. This shows that capitalists have no 
fundamental problem with state ownership, and that nationalisation has nothing to do with 
socialism. It can also be a method of screwing the working class. We ourselves, not the state, need 
to take control of the economy.
5. Owing to the globalisation of capital under neo-liberalism, the ruling class recognises that the 
solution must be global. The G20 is meeting from 15 November to discuss the crisis. This is 
significant. The rulers of the US, Europe and Japan are coming to realise that they cannot handle 
the crisis on their own; that they need, not only one another, but other powers, notably China 
(which is emerging as a top industrial producer, and is on its way to becoming the world's 
third-biggest economy). India, Brazil and other "emerging" economies will have seats at the table. 
This may mark a recognition – under discussion for some years – that the G8 alone are no longer the 
world's economic decision makers. It is likely to signal a shift in the running of the global 
economic system.
6. We place no hopes in the inclusion of new capitalist powers. China's rulers may claim to be 
socialist; others, such as Lula of Brazil and Motlanthe of South Africa, may present themselves at 
times as champions of the poor. But in fact, all are defenders of capitalism, exploiters and 
oppressors of the people of their own countries, and, increasingly, imperialist or sub-imperialist 
exploiters of the people of other countries.
7. If the crisis is to lead to anything other than complete defeat for the global popular classes, 
poverty, exploitation and war, the popular classes must mobilise. We must demand bailouts, not for 
the capitalists, but for us. We anarchist communists will fight for those who got homes on subprime 
mortgages to be bailed out and keep their homes. We will continue to engage in and support 
struggles for jobs with better wages and shorter hours, housing, services, health services, welfare 
and education, protection of the environment. We fight for an end to imperialist wars and to 
repression of our class and its struggles.
8. We present these demands in response to the G20 meeting, and will continue to present them in 
the future. Through such demands, and through direct action to bring them about, we will work 
towards building a global movement of the popular classes that can put an end to capitalism, the 
state and the crises they create.
Signed:
  Alternative Libertaire (France)
  Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici (Italy)
  Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (Australia)
  Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (South Africa)
  Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
  Common Cause (Ontario, Canada)
  Unión Socialista Libertaria (Peru)
  Union Communiste Libertaire (Quebec, Canada)
  Liberty & Solidarity (United Kingdom)
  Asociación Obrera de Canarias/Eššer Amahlan n Tekanaren (Canary Islands, Africa)
  Anarchistische Föderation Berlin (Germany)

16. There will be world championship for football in South African Republic in 2010. What do you 
think about it? Are many sports centers going to be built? Does it influence the financing of 
social issues (education, medical care etc.). What do the people of South African Republic think 
about the championship, are there some protests?
This is our recent analysis of 2010:

Will the Workers and the Poor Benefit from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa?
South Africa’s success in winning the 2010 bid for the World Cup has been announced with great 
fanfare. The World Soccer Cup is the second biggest international sports events in the world, 
second only to the Olympics.

GOOD THINGS
Now, there are a number of positive things about this:
  Soccer is basically a working-class sport, in South Africa as well as in the rest of the world, 
and, if the tickets are affordable, there will be some great matches for local fans
  The State has promised - and this is probably quite true - that some jobs will be created
  As part of the build-up to 2010, the State will be spending billions of rands on improving 
transport and health services. There will also be some improvements in housing, although mainly 
around the areas near the sports stadiums, and finally, of course, there will be new stadiums as 
well as significant amounts of money for improving some existing stadiums
  For the first time ever, the World Cup will be held in Africa
  We don't agree with that view of certain sectors of society that the State will not be able to 
get the country ready in time for the World Cup. It probably can get things ready in time. In fact, 
one of the noticeable trends of recent years is that semi-industrial countries can run major sports 
events (there have been, or are, major events in these countries: Malaysia 1998, China 2008, India 
2010 etc.)
As part of the 2010 project, the State will be upgrading, or building, stadiums in the host cities: 
Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Durban, Johannesburg, Nelspruit, Polokwane, Port Elizabeth, Pretoria, 
Rustenburg. Linked to this, State will be spending money upgrading public transport - trains, 
airports, buses - and in making the areas around the main events attractive to foreign tourists. 
This will cost, the State says, around R16 billion - but the figure keeps rising, and we can expect 
it to rise quite dramatically.

ASKING THE BIG QUESTION
But, we need to ask an important question: why has the South African State been so keen to host the 
2010 World Cup? Why has it chosen to spend money on an event like this, when there are so many 
other serious problems in South Africa?
Unfortunately, the State reasons raise a lot of concerns about the whole project, and raise 
questions about who is really going to benefit from this process.
We live in a society dominated by class and capitalism. In this society, there is a ruling class, 
which controls the State and the economy, all the productive land, factories, buildings, shops, 
mines and so on. The State and the economy are used to promote the power and wealth of the ruling 
class. The working class and poor, in turn, provide the labour force to make this happen. The 
working class and poor are exploited by the ruling class, creating the wealth the ruling class 
enjoys, while its needs are ignored: wealth and power benefit the few; the great majority lives in 
conditions of poverty and misery, and when it challenges the situation, it is told to shut up.
Whether we are talking about a private company, like Anglo American, or a government company, like 
Eskom, the aim is basically to make a profit. This profit is squeezed out of the working class 
through low wages and high prices, and this profit goes into the hands of the directors, managers 
and owners, who can live the sweet life of private jets, mansions, holidays in Europe, and salaries 
of millions of rands per month. As you have heard, Whitey Basson, head of Shoprite, gets R67 
million a year in income, while the workers in his shops get around R24,000 a year.
Basically, the resources of society are geared towards benefiting the ruling class; the workers and 
the poor are not really in control. The demands and needs of the working class do not play an 
important role in society: we have to fight for everything we want, because the whole way society 
is organised is to benefit the ruling class. We often speak of redistribution, but in our society, 
redistribution goes one way: from the working class to the ruling class, not the other way around.
Now, our multi-racial ruling class - the bosses (capitalists), the politicians, the Mbekis, the 
Sexwales and the Oppenheimers who rule the country - have their own agenda with regard to 2010, and 
it is important to look closely at that agenda.

MARKETING AND INVESTMENT
The ruling class believes that the 2010 project will attract investment by businesses - local and 
foreign - into South Africa. And how will it do so? By creating space for making lots of money for 
a few people. The use of global games to market and advertise a country for capitalist investment 
is absolutely central to the pursuit of global games by semi-industrial countries. For our ruling 
class, 2010 is about dressing South Africa up nicely and putting it on display. The country is to 
be showcased as a hot investment destination. The idea is that large foreign companies will invest 
in South Africa, and grow the economy. It will also open space for a whole lot of partnerships 
between the South African ruling class, and the ruling class in other countries. This will also, 
the idea goes, create some jobs for the working class and poor, who, after all, will provide the 
sweat that will help the local and the foreign companies to generate wealth for their owners.
The view that 2010 will attract foreign investment is in line with the neoliberal, privatisation, 
approach of the State. It is in line with the GEAR policy, and with its offspring, ASGISA. Both 
GEAR and ASGISA are based on the idea that the only way to deal with the country's crushing social 
ills and evils - poverty, crime, prostitution, unemployment, misery for the many millions in the 
working class - is to create a situation where the rich can get richer. The idea is this: if 
business, South African and foreign, finds it can make a lot of profits in South Africa, then it 
will open up factories and other workplaces. And this will create jobs. With jobs, the working 
class will benefit - even if those jobs are basically designed to enrich the rich.
According to GEAR, the only way to attract business investment is to ensure profits for business: 
in other words, to ensure that the rich can get richer. The wealthy and powerful should not, the 
government insists, be forced to create jobs nor should the wealth of society that they control be 
placed under the control of the masses. No! Rather, those who already control wealth and power will 
continue to decide where and when they want to invest, and whether the millions in the working 
class will get jobs, and, if they get jobs, how much they will be paid. Jobs are created to the 
extent they benefit the ruling class, and because the working class owns nothing, it has to be 
satisfied with this situation.

INFRASTRUCTURE AND NEO-LIBERALISM
So, one of the major aims of 2010 is to create opportunities for making profit, and this will have 
the effect of creating jobs. The spending for 2010 is mainly aimed at promoting opportunities for 
profit; it is not about benefiting the working class, although the working class will benefit to 
the extent that jobs will be created. The investment in transport, health and stadiums follows the 
same approach: creating the space for profit making. 2010 will show businesses that South Africa is 
a great place to make money.
In both GEAR and ASGISA, the State is allocated a major role in providing infrastructure – but the 
aim of this State provision of infrastructure is to do something that the market can’t do (it isn’t 
very profitable, for example, to build a highway) but that capitalists need to turn a profit (a 
company can’t operate without roads). In short, it is not about infrastructure for the masses, but 
about infrastructure for the ruling class. From Adam Smith onwards, free market theory – economic 
liberalism, which we today usually call neoliberalism – has insisted that the State play the major 
role in providing goods that the market requires in order to make a profit, but can’t provide 
profitably (infrastructure, public goods, national defence) or provide fairly (law-and-order, 
currency).
The GEAR policy, as well as ASGISA, are based on exactly this line of thinking. You privatise to 
create new areas to generate profit; you cut government spending in order to reduce tax on the rich 
and the companies; as far as possible, you run the government and its industries to make a profit; 
you remove protection for local industries in order to make those industries competitive, and to 
reduce the costs of the items from abroad; you promote a situation where labour is cheap, so that 
workers can be fired or hired more easily; government takes no responsibility for job creation, but 
leaves this to private businesses; in the meantime, governments spending is focused on creating 
conditions for profit-making, such as investments in harbours (which promote trade), rather than on 
the social needs of the working class (for example, housing).

THE GRAVY TRAIN
Of course, there are many other benefits from the 2010 bid for the ruling class. It will give them 
a chance to show what a good job they do in running South Africa - despite the ongoing poverty and 
inequality! The politicians and the sports administrators will get a chance to make money, through 
various business partnerships and corrupt deals. This is already under way, and it won't be long 
before details of how so-called leaders are involved in getting contracts for construction work, 
and kickbacks for awarding tenders to friends. And you can be sure tenders will go to the rich and 
powerful: yes, we often dream of creating our own small companies and getting rich, but we forget, 
it’s only those who already have money that manage to make more money; the system is stacked 
against the person on the street, and not 1 out of 100 will ever escape the working class, through 
education or through business. Fourteen Cabinet Ministers and Deputy Ministers have been appointed 
to monitor the construction and upgrading of the 10 stadiums, and these politicians will be first 
in line to make sure they get a cut of the money that will be made.
Now, there is a much bigger issue here. Around the world, as we have said, soccer is a working 
class sport. The big English teams, like Manchester United and Arsenal, came from the big 
industrial towns, and started as workers’ clubs. The same is true of South Africa: we only have to 
think of teams like Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates, which emerged in the townships of the black 
working class. But the ruling class everywhere has been taking it over, and using it as another way 
to make money. There is a fortune to be made from owning soccer stadiums, selling tickets, TV 
rights and also merchandise, like flags, shirts, and stickers. The symbols of the big teams are 
owned by capitalists, and they make a fortune selling official items of merchandise. And if you 
produce the logos of your own team, and sell them, without permission, they will say you are 
producing pirate goods, and arrest you and destroy the stuff you made, and they might say that if 
you buy these, you support your team.
And of you buy the official goods, you are showing your support for the team, but the money you pay 
to do so goes into the pockets of people like Irvin Khoza (owner of Orlando Pirates), Kaizer 
Motaung and Primedia (owners of Kaizer Chiefs), and Patrice Motsepe (owner of Mamelodi Sundowns). 
Just like factories, teams are "owned" by bosses, and so we should not be surprised that some 
soccer players have even formed a trade union.

CLASS OR NATION
The other problem is this: in an event like the World Cup, the teams are organised by countries, 
and this provides a way for the ruling class to promote divisions between the working class around 
the world: a German worker is encouraged to support the German team, and think about being German, 
rather than about being a worker. In this way, sadly, a sport that brings the world's working class 
together is used to divide it.
Make no mistake: a lot of money is going to be made. R16 billion at least, mainly paid by tax 
payers, is going to be handed out to local and foreign businesses to make sure the country is ready 
for 2010. That's a lot of money, that's 16 thousand million rands, that's equal to 8 million 
monthly wage packets of R2000 each. Where is the money going to be raised? From two main sources: 
money from central government (which is raised from tax on companies, salaries, VAT, "sin taxes" on 
cigarettes, alcohol and so on), and money from local governments, because municipalities are 
expected to pay in as well. Where does municipal money come from? It comes from partly from tax on 
businesses, but it also comes from charges for property, electricity, water, sewerage removal and 
other services.

NOW, THIS WILL HAVE SEVERAL IMPORTANT EFFECTS:
1. First, money spent on the 2010 project is money not spent on other areas. In 2005, the 
government allocated R48 billion to health. This has to pay for the whole government health system. 
This money has to cover 400 hospitals and 43 million people. Of this money, around 1,5 billion goes 
to upgrading and revitalising hospitals every year, so government will spend around 6 billion on 
repairing the hospitals over by 2010. This is less than half of the money government plans to spend 
in the same period for building soccer stadiums for a one-time event! To put it another way: if the 
money for the 2010 World Cup was spent on hospitals instead, it could do four times more to fix the 
hospitals than it will do otherwise. Now, we know the state the public hospitals are in. The ruling 
class and the middle class are able to access a high tech high quality private hospital system. 
This serves only a few million people.
The vast majority have to use overcrowded, inefficient, dirty, understaffed hospitals that 
regularly run out of medicines. For example, the George Hospital in the Western Cape only has 265 
beds, and it serves 550,000 people in the region. If the money being spent on soccer stadiums was 
directed to a much more pressing need, hospitals, the benefits to the working class would be 
enormous. The money government allocates to fixing the hospitals is, I should add, only going to a 
few hospitals: most don't benefit, and are left to fall apart.
Linked to this: cut offs. The money for 2010 will be partly raised by the municipalities. As we 
said, the municipalities get money from services and taxes. This will place a great deal of 
pressure on the municipalities to increase charges for water and electricity, and, of course, to 
cut off people who don't pay.
2. Transport. One of the main points about 2010, the State says, is that the transport system will 
be improved. And that can't be a bad thing. The railway system caters for millions of working class 
people, and half of the people who use the trains earn under R1600 a month. The trains are cheaper 
than the taxis, and a bit safer, and if you lie far away from your work, you can save quite a lot 
of money by using the trains. But the railway system has never been properly developed. The trains 
cover only a small part of the towns and townships, and many areas are left off the railway gird. 
Also, not only has the railway system not been expanded over the last thirty years, despite the 
huge increase in the cities, but is actually been closed down quite a bit over the last ten years.
The railways are owned by a giant State company, Spoornet, and Spoornet has been reducing the 
number of trains that run during the day, and closed smaller railway lines. This is partly because 
the government has been planning to partially privatise the railways, which has involved closing 
down railways that aren't likely to be profitable. Spoornet also aims to make a profit in the 
meantime. It’s cheaper and more profitable to have a few overcrowded trains at peak hours, than a 
comprehensive railway network and regular trains. The other aim of Spoornet has been to focus 
railways on moving goods, rather than people, because this will cut the costs of doing business as 
companies can move goods quickly and cheaply. In practice, it’s done a terrible job of this, 
because even many bosses are complaining about the inefficiency, unreliability and high costs of 
the trains.
And, of course, the effects of all of this on the working class are bad: around 20,000 jobs have 
been lost, trains are late, and sometimes don't come at all: the system is badly managed, and there 
is a shortage of carriages and workers, so if a train driver is sick or a train engine is damaged, 
the train does not come. Now, add to this the situation in the State's electricity company, ESKOM, 
and you have a serious problem. Over the last fifteen years, ESKOM has been restructured. Although 
it is mainly government owned, ESKOM is run on a profit making basis, and has been making 
increasing profits for years. At the same time, ESKOM has let the electricity grid fall apart, and, 
since the trains use electricity, Eskom’s continual power cuts mean the trains also stop when ESKOM 
messes up.
One good thing about ASGISA, which as I said is GEAR's baby boy, and about the 2010 developments, 
is that government seems to waking up to the need to sort some of these problems out. Make no 
mistake: government is not planning to change its mind about running Spoornet and ESKOM for profit, 
and still has plans to partly privatise both. But it has, it seems, started to realize that there 
is something seriously wrong with transport and power in South Africa. So, one of the major 
promises of 2010 is that the transport grid will be improved, specifically with a) taxi 
recapitalisation, meaning a move from the dangerous combies to buses, b) an upgrade and extension 
of the railways and c) new initiatives like the Gautrain.
But there are worrying signs. The Gautrain, in particular, raises some serious questions. In the 
first place, the Gautrain is basically directed at improving transport between the suburbs in 
Johannesburg and Pretoria, and at a cost of more billions, will essentially set up a middle class 
express for the suburbs. The ticket prices, as announced so far, are quite high, around R60 - but a 
more serious issue is that the money that is beings pent could have been used much more effectively 
to fix and expand the railway network that serves the townships and the south of Johannesburg. It 
will cost R20 billion so far. This is a perfectly good example of the biases in capitalism: while 
millions of people use the trains to put a bit of bread on the table, the Gautrain is about saving 
driving time for wealthier people who own cars anyway.
3. Jobs. Of course 2010 will create some jobs. The big construction contracts, in particular, will 
need large numbers of workers, and there is nothing this country needs more than jobs. But here, 
too, I think we need to be a bit careful before we get too excited. One of the serious problems to 
think about is: how long will the jobs last? Building a soccer stadium is not a lifetime job; at 
most, it’s work for a few years. What will happen after 2010? If the government's plans work, there 
is a chance that investment will increase, and a number of new jobs will be created after 2010 is 
over. Will this be enough for the six million unemployed?
We don’t know what will happen in future, but the terrible record of South African capitalism in 
creating jobs provides reasons to be concerned. The South African economy has started to grow at 
about 5 percent, which is the best performance since the early 1970s. But over the last ten years, 
as we know, at least a million jobs have been lost. Only recently has this started to change: there 
have been around 100,000 more jobs created than lost over the last two years. This is a drop in the 
ocean, and unless people mobilise to demand jobs, and if everything is left up to the ruling class, 
which can create jobs at its own sweet pace, well, the situation looks bad. The other thing, linked 
to this, is that many existing jobs are being casualised and subcontracted, with well over half the 
working class in various types of insecure employment. Will the jobs created to build 2010, and 
maybe the jobs that come after it, be secure jobs with a living wage? Or will they be short-term, 
low wage, dangerous work without benefits like medical aids?

SOME FINAL ISSUES:
The 2010 World Cup project is a ruling class project. We need to mobilise around it, and, where 
necessary, against it.
On the one hand, this means fighting for a better deal from the World Cup. At a simple level, we 
can demand ticket prices are kept low enough to ensure ordinary people, not just the rich, and not 
just tourists, can watch. More importantly by far, we need to mobilise to make sure that transport 
is structured to benefit the working class. Gautrain provides an example of what can go wrong. 
Unions and community groups need to put pressure on the State to ensure that as many jobs are 
created as possible, and that these are quality jobs. Also, that they are safe jobs, and the 
workers organised into strong unions. We need too remember that soccer is our sport, and to start 
to resist the ways soccer is being privatised in the hands of a few capitalists.
On the other hand, we must fight every part of the 2010 World Cup that is anti-working class. There 
is a serious danger that the process will be associated with major evictions, In Cape Town, there 
are already moves to clear the squatter camps near the airports, so the city looks nicer. But this 
moves people away from their homes and jobs. The people are being promised housing: will they 
really get it? Struggles against cut-offs must continue, and we need to start challenging other 
taxes, like VAT. If the government wants to spend R16 billion, let them raise the money by taxing 
the ruling class, not the poor. And let us make sure that money is spent on basic needs, first and 
foremost, rather than on building stadiums that may not have a future after the 2010 cup. Life 
doesn’t end in 2010: what we need are sustainable jobs, pro-poor development and a powerful mass 
movement. This is not going to be provided by the 2010 World Cup.
In every struggle, we need to have a resolute way forward, and a clear perspective: WHAT DO WE 
WANT? AND HOW DO WE GET IT? What we want is a powerful and revolutionary working class movement, 
and we need to build this through struggles. 2010 is just one of the struggles we can use, and we 
need to use it carefully and strategically. In the first place, this means being independent of the 
2010 project. COSATU has, tragically, asked its investment arm to become involved in building the 
stadiums. Now, this makes no sense: how will COSATU's investment arm act differently to any other 
investor? The job of a union is not to hire workers and make a profit, but to protect workers from 
the profiteers who run our society. So we should oppose this terrible idea. We should oppose this 
sort of corruption. We should use the build-up around 2010 to highlight our issues, and demand 
measures that improve the conditions of the workers and the poor. And we should also understand the 
opportunity that the global spotlight on South Africa will provide to the popular movements: that 
is something very important.
At the same time, we must also be aware of the threats that 2010 poses. We must not get caught up 
in this Proudly SA nonsense. South African workers and the poor have nothing in common with South 
African bosses and politicians. Let's not forget that, or get caught up in nationalist campaigns. 
Nationalism is poison to the workers and the poor. We are the working class, and we are part of the 
world's working class. That's what matters; we should not hold hands with the bosses and 
politicians, but keep resisting, keep fighting, until we can win and create a new society without 
bosses and politicians. We need to create a new society, and that is what anarchism is about: a 
society where we control our jobs, where everyone has work, where no one goes hungry, where crime 
ends as inequality ends, where the economy is directed to meeting human needs, not private greed.

17. What are the latest news and events (actions, strikes)?
We have been exceptionally active this year, being involved in the Anti-Privatisation Forum 
(defending the position of some social movements not to vote in the 2009 Election), with the 
Committee Against Xenophobia (to shut down the notorious Lindela deportation centre, and resist the 
spread of anti-foreigner chauvinism in the townships which reared its ugly head this year), and 
with a range of other struggles around gay rights, ecology, the interest rate hikes and general 
economic crisis, etc. However we are now entering the holiday season, so many activities will be 
slowing down or put on hold until the new year. This weekend (December 13 & 14), we hold the ZACF’s 
annual Congress at which all our major strategic decisions are made and I will submit a report on 
this interview for discussion of our relations with AD.

Thanks for answering our questions!
It is a pleasure, and we hope to have many more interactions with AD in future – and we invite you 
to get involved in the www.anarkismo.net international project!
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