A-Infos (en) South-Africa, Johannesburg, Don't fight your neighbours for their houses - Fight the government for houses for all!

Over 5000 people from South Africa and Zimbabwe to the Congo and Ethiopia 
marched through Johannesburg on Saturday, 24th May in protest against xenophobic 
violence, which ravaged South Africa during the previous two weeks leaving more 
than 50 dead and an estimated 35 000 immigrants displaced from their homes.
The march, which proceeded through some of the areas in downtown Johannesburg 
effected by the violence, was organised by the Coalition Against Xenophobia; a 
new umbrella group of social movements, faith-based organisations and NGOs.
Protesters called for Africa to unite, saying that the struggle against poverty 
and exploitation knows know borders, and received a large amount of support from 
spectators and passers-by - which is partly to be expected given the high 
numbers of immigrants living in the areas through which the march passed, but 
which also suggests that a lot of ordinary South Africans do not support the 
xenophobic violence.

Members of the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front participated in the march, 
distributing 1000 leaflets on the xenophobic violence; which we believe is a 
result of both the bourgeois nationalism promoted by the ruling ANC and its 
failure to fulfill promises of 'a better life for all'. We supported the march 
because we thought it was important to send a message of solidarity to 
immigrants living in South Africa, and to show them that they are not alone, but 
also to show those responsible for the violence that many people do not accept 
that foreigners are responsible for the lack of service delivery, for poverty, 
for the high levels of crime or for the increase in food prices. Most 
importantly to assert a sense of African working class solidarity.

We, like the Coalition Against Xenophobia, believe that the outbreak of 
xenophobic violence is a result of the poverty in which the majority of South 
Africans are forced to live. We believe that it is not immigrants who are 
responsible for the miserable conditions people are forced to endure, but the 
government. Since coming into power in 1994 the ANC government has pursued 
economic and social policies which favour the rich over the poor; pitting the 
poor against one another in a fight for insufficient resources when it is 
actually the government that is to blame for failing to fulfill its promises, 
and failing to deliver the housing, electricity, water and other basic services 
which it promised us.

As anarchist communists we believe that, rather than fighting poor people from 
other countries, the workers and poor from South Africa must unite with 
immigrants in their communities to put pressure on the government and force it 
to fulfill its promises and provide adequate service delivery for all, both 
South Africans and foreigners. It is not immigrants who are stealing jobs and 
houses, it is the government which is not creating enough jobs, and not 
providing adequate housing in the first place - while ANC fat cats are enriching 
themselves. We need to fight the government and force it to meet our demands for 
jobs, housing and services; not our immigrant brothers and sisters who are also 
struggling to survive poverty and unemployment.

Although the ZACF supported the march against xenophobia, we do not believe that 
protesting the violence after it has happened is sufficient. We believe that is 
is necessary to build a mass working class movement which is capable of 
defending immigrants from violent mobs which do not recognise that it is the 
government and the capitalist system - which makes the rich richer, and the poor 
poorer - which are to blame for their suffering; not the immigrants. We need a 
movement which can establish working class community-based safe havens for 
immigrants, where they can go if they are attacked and where they know that they 
will be defended by those communities. A movement which can intervene and 
prevent further violence being committed against our working class and poor 
brothers and sisters just because they are from another country.

We need a mass working class movement that can challenge government and force it 
to concede to our demands for housing, jobs and service delivery. Social 
movements such as the Anti-Privatisation Forum and Landless People's Movement 
have been trying to build such a movement for years, but the xenophobic attacks 
indicate that they have not yet achieved a mass base, which could have prevented 
this outbreak of violence from happening. The ZACF is committed to working 
within and supporting movements such as the APF and LPM in an effort to build a 
mass-based movement of the workers and poor capable of both defending themselves 
and their communities from attacks; both internally, from reactionary community 
members, and externally, in the form of state repression and economic 
domination; as well as advancing the struggle of the workers and poor for proper 
housing, jobs and service delivery for all - regardless of their country of origin.

http://www.zabalaza.net
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