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South Africa: Founding of Workers
and Socialist Party
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Jan 2, 2013
By DSM (CWI South Africa)
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WASP
will now mobilize support for the party
Press Release, Dec 17, 2012, DSM Executive Committee, the Strike and
Workers’ Committee Representatives of Bokoni Platinum, Harmony Gold, Anglo Gold
Ashanti, Royal Bafokeng and Murray Roberts.
 An event that has the potential to change the political
landscape of South Africa, like Marikana has done on the industrial plane, was
quietly marked in the founding of a new political party, the Workers and
Socialist Party (WASP) this week-end. The Democratic Socialist Movement,
affiliate of the Committee for a Workers International and representatives of
strike committees of Bokoni Platinum in Limpopo, Royal Bafokeng and Murray and
Roberts in Rustenburg, North West and KDC in Carltonville, Gauteng founded the
party. This took place despite seemingly unrelated but more than likely to be
deliberate acts of sabotage in the form of the withdrawal of the permission
hours after it was granted to hold the rally at a stadium in Limpopo, the
draconian bail conditions of leaders of the Bokoni Platinum strike committee and
the shunning of the event by the media.
Despite suffering these setbacks in planning what was meant to be a rally and
media conference to announce the intention to launch the party and to celebrate
the release on bail of key leaders of the Bokoni Platinum Strike Committee
leaders, the representatives who could make it there on their own after the
rally was called off were undeterred and determined to proceed with what had to
be pared down to a founding meeting of the Workers and Socialist Party. What
especially lifted the spirit of those gathered was the reading out of some of
the messages of support from Harmony Gold, Anglo Gold Ashanti and sister
organisations of the DSM in Nigeria, Venezuela, China and others including of
the sole member of the Irish Socialist Party in the European Parliament, Paul
Murphy.
The need for such a party was clearly evident in the reports given by strike
committee leaders of the situation that exists at various mines around the
country after the return to work. At Bokoni Platinum a virtual state of
emergency has been imposed and workers found not be at work in the surrounding
villages are frog marched to report for duty at the mine. At Harmony Gold,
workers have resumed strike action and elsewhere discontent is simmering just
below the surface as many of the demands for which workers came out on strike as
far back August, at the huge cost of lost income and in the lives sacrificed on
the koppies of Marikana and surrounding areas remain unresolved and unmet.
Despite the modest founding of the Workers and Socialist Part with just 20
delegates present, it has made concrete the idea of an alternative based on a
socialist programme committed to nationalization of the commanding heights of
the economy of which the mining industry remains a key component. The WASP will
have to put as one of its key demands the nationalization of the mines under the
direct ownership, management and control of workers in the process leading to
the socialist transformation of society which is the only basis on which a
lasting solution to the problems of mine workers and working class as a whole
can be found. The historic first step in the process towards the launch of what
until this time has been referred to as a mass workers party will build the
strike committees as the first battalion in the struggle to unite workers in the
mines, factories and farms, communities and students into a formidable force
that will tie the historical knot between the events at Marikana and those at
Sharpeville on 21st March 2013.
The WASP will have to distinguish itself from all other political parties by
its clearly socialist programme, its approach to electoral politics as but one
terrain of struggle and by its public representatives being subject to the right
of immediate recall and to a workers wage. It will demonstrate the irrelevance
of the ANC conference where candidates contesting for leadership are all
committed to the preservation of the enslavement of the working class under
capitalism - the very system WASP is dedicated to abolishing
In the coming days and months leading to its launch the WASP will mobilize
support for the party with a resolution calling for the building of the party to
popularize the idea of an alternative in organised formations such as unions,
community organisations, social movements and like-minded political
organisations who will be invited to adopt the resolution as part of their
formal affiliation to the WASP. The WASP will be fighting party that will unite
service delivery protests, student struggles against unaffordable tuition fees
and workplace struggles against short time, retrenchments and labor broking. As
part of the mobilization for the launch, WASP militants will fan out across the
country to amass a million signatures in preparation for contesting the 2014
elections. WASP will also lead a campaign for the recall of all incompetent and
corrupt councillors to replace them with WASP representatives - workers
representatives on a workers wage. WASP will put its full weight behind
campaigns against corruption and e-tolling.
A series of regional rallies to report on the adoption of the resolution
spelling out the broad outlines of what will be in the programme of WASP will
culminate in the launch of the party on Sharpeville Day as part of the strategy
to register what will be unapologetically a Workers and Socialist Party.
Issued by:
DSM Executive Committee, the Strike and Workers’ Committee Representatives of
Bokoni Platinum, Harmony Gold, Anglo Gold Ashanti, Royal Bafokeng and Murray
Roberts.
December 17, 2012
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