The Indian Workers Association (Great Britain), has played a significant role in the British working class movement over the last 60 years. The Grenwich & Bexley Heath branch of the Indian Workers Association (Great Britain) held this meeting to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of their branch. (1:34)
Harpal Brar, National organiser of the IWA (GB), and chairman of the CPGB-ML gives a landmark speech reflecting on the history of the IWA (GB). The organisation was able, in its time, to organise demonstrations of tens and hundreds of thousands of workers, and regularly held meetings of 4-5,00 members and supporters, throughout the country.
Hear the Cuban people speak: On the release of the Cuban 5; On US-Cuba relations; On Obama’s role; On the ongoing blockade and the UN General Assembly resolution against it; On the role of the capitalist media; on North Korea.
A tribute to the great and much lamented freedom fighter, Nelson Rohilalal Mandela, written by our South African comrade Khwezie Kadalie, who played an active role in the armed struggle to overthrow Apartheid.
The dichotomy between overblown rhetoric about civil, political, economic, social and human rights, on the one hand, and the omnipresent income inequalities and the conditions of squalor which blight the lives of millions of black South Africans, on the other hand, is all too obvious. The sluggish response to the police massacre of 34 miners at Marikana was a brutal reminder of the gulf dividing the ANC leadership and the poorer sections of the population.
The glaring contrast in the lives of those who tweet on the best technology and those who do not have sufficient food to eat hardly needs pointing out. Wealth is still dominated by the white minority. According to a 2007 survey, white South Africans earn seven times as much as their black counterparts. A white person born in 2009 can expect to live to the age of 71, as against the 48 years that a black person can expect. It is a shameful statistic, but true, that inequality of income presently is worse than even during the decades of apartheid, with the second-worst Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality) among 136 countries.
The black masses of South Africa have achieved political freedom – doubtless an historic advance. They have, however, yet to achieve economic freedom. The power base of monopoly capital, local and foreign, as well as white economic privilege, is intact.
Lack of economic justice is a festering sore and a source of great frustration, anger and sheer hate bubbling just beneath the surface, without addressing which there will be no peace in South Africa. The next phase of the liberation struggle in South Africa is bound to tackle this question and usher in changes which will not be to the liking of the privileged minority.
Amidst the media frenzy following the death of Mandela, with one-sided saturation reporting and wall-to-wall coverage emphasising Mandela’s powers of reconciliation, the following thoughtful comment furnished a healthy antidote to the sickening extravaganza aimed at rewriting the history of the South African liberation struggle with the sole purpose of influencing the future course of its development to the advantage of imperialism and the local elites alike:
” As Mandela led South Africa through the peaceful transition to a ‘rainbow nation’ at the 1994 election, white support for him became near-universal, particularly among the young. But there is a negative side to this near-adulation: many still seem to think that after his journey from a prison cell to the presidency, no further change is required, and that the whites’ overwhelming economic privilege can be maintained.
“Whites often appeared to cling to Madiba, Mandela’s clan name as if to banish the thought of what might happen when he was gone. They are probably right to fear that without his forgiving presence, chillier winds may blow around them.
“South Africa has lost the greatest figure in its history, but Mandela’s death merely marks the end of the first phase in the country’s revolution. There is much change yet to come, and little of it will be palatable to those who imagine things can stay the same” (Raymond Whitaker, ‘Chillier winds may blow through the nation’, The Independent, 6 December 2013).
Opening ceremony witness to fantastic scene’s of friendship and proletarian internationalism
Russian and Swedish comrades in the dinner hall with CPGB-ML central committee member RanjeetMeeting the localsSWAPO in attendance
In glorious sunshine the 18th Festival of Youth and Students opened in Quito, Ecuador with a wonderful display of revolutionary enthusiasm for the building of a world free from imperialism and war.
Delegations from across the America’s, Asia, Africa and Europe gathered for the opening rally which went on well into the afternoon. The Red Youth comrades were pleased to meet up with the other members of the elusive British NPC, all of whom had worked wonders to attend in the face of a concerted YCL attempt to provide little or no communication from the British Preparatory Committee. The British delegation therefore comprised Red Youth and a few of the “Young Socialists” (young Trotskyite sociopaths) and members of the Robert Clough Group (RCG).
Red Youth comrades spent the day enjoying the speeches and generally soaking up the atmosphere with our comrades from the Revolutionar Kommunist Ungdom (RKU) Sweden and friends from Russia, Belgium, India, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Argentina, Syria and Germany.
Red Youth delegates have received a warm welcome in Quito, landing at midnight local time (5AM UTC) after a marathon 24 hour journey.
Delegate Pack for the 18th World Festival of Youth and Students, Quito, Ecuador
So far, we are the only members of the British delegation to have arrived, and – although the defunct Brit National Preparatory Committee have not passed on our registration fees – Red Youth delegates have successfully registered.
Delegates who have already arrived are enjoying the buzz of the festival grounds, which are being prepared for the opening ceremony at 12:30pm (17:30 UTC) tomorrow, in the beautiful and expansive Parque Bicentenario, repurposed from the old Quito airport.
The Festival’s slogan is “Youth united against imperialism, for a world of peace, solidarity and social transformation.”
During our short time in Quito, as well as enjoying the warm hospitality of the Ecuadorian people, members of the British delegation have already had the chance to meet with and talk to many other youth delegations from across the world, including Canada, the USA, Argentina, Russia, and Germany.
While travelling to Ecuador, Red Youth delegates were much saddened to hear of the death of Nelson Mandela, former leader of the African National Congress and central committee member of the South African Communist Party, who became one of the great symbols of the South African masses in their arduous struggle against the vicious, racist, colonial-settler apartheid regime.
Nelson Mandela and People’s Hero Chris Hani
We send our condolences to the people of South Africa, who held him in such high regard as the first president of a non-racist South Africa, to his party comrades, his family, and the freedom-loving people of the world, who admired his articulate and self-sacrificing championing of the cause of equality and freedom.
We note with Mandela’s passing, that the ‘Freedom Charter’ – the document that promised the redistribution of the wealth of South Africa, including its minerals, and its land, to the hungry and impoverished South African masses – remains unfulfilled; and that the struggle which he embodied during much of his adult life, remains to be fought and won. South Africa’s workers and peasants look to their neighbour Zimbabwe as the model for solution to their poverty; one of many facts about Mandela and South Africa that all the press coverage of Madiba’s death is anxious to brush aside.
We are excited and privileged to be able to attend the festival with so many of our fellow optimistic and active youths from across the globe, all here to talk about how we can make the world a better place and achieve a future free from imperialism, exploitation, poverty, unemployment, famine, and war.
Cde Khwezi Kadalie, veteran of the Anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa, toured England in February 2012, explaining the achievements and failures of the Liberation struggle and the ANC government.
Khwezi speaks in Birmingham in February
The principle contradiction during the anti-apartheid struggle was between the white racist apartheid state and the black, indian and coloured masses of South Africa, he says. It is now between workers and capitalists.
Since the ANC did not follow the armed struggle to the point of the revolutionary overthrow of Aparthied, but negotiated the transfer of power from the Afrikaaner state to the ANC led government, bourgeois democracy has become more secure, but the principle beneficiaries of capitalist exploitation of the workers of South Africa remain firmly in place. In effect, Economic Apartheid remains in tact.
Khwezi with members from Leeds Red Youth group
The all important demands of the masses, namely re-distribution of the land, and the transfer of South Africa’s mining, financial and industrial wealth to the masses who fought for the end of apartheid, as laid down in the Freedom Charter, the seminal platform of the liberation struggle, remain totally unfulfilled
Khwezi’s deep knowledge brings insight into the failings of 17 years of the ‘rainbow nation’ to address the crying needs of the masses, and why capitalist free-market fundamentalism continues to heap misery on the people of one of the world’s richest countries.
South Africans today languish under the burden of the capitalist crisis, and a crippling poverty – with an astounding 47% unemployment rate – that they have not before known even during the oppression of the apartheid years.
A new mass struggle is needed, he says, outside of the opportunist confines of the ANC-SACP-COSATO stranglehold, that channels the really revolutionary energy and aspirations of the workers towards achieving their still fervently held desire to achieve a socialist system that brings peace, prosperity, education, culture and civilization to all.
After three excellent talks in Bristol, Birmingham and Leeds, comrade Kadalie will speak in London this Saturday on his life struggle in the anti-apartheid struggle, his hopes and vision for Africa in the 21st century.
:: About Comrade Khwezi ::
Khwezi Kadalie was a fighter in the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa and is a lifelong communist and marxist-leninist revolutionary.
His grandfather organised the first all-black trade union in South Africa (the Commercial and Industrial Workers Union of Africa). A qualified typesetter and printer, Khwesi was arrested by the Apartheid secret police shortly after the 1976 Soweto uprising. He was tortured for four months.
After prison, Khwezi worked for the ANC in the diplomatic service and the information department in Germany and Britain. After the unbanning of the ANC and other organisations he served the movement in different capacities and between 2000 and 2005 he worked in the Department of Trade and Industry in a senior position.
Since 2006, together with other comrades, he has built the Marxist Workers School in South Africa. Today he works as a journalist for communist and working-class newspapers and magazines around the world.
Khwezi’s talk will touch on the important lessons he draws from his time in the movement and his feelings about the present fight against the recolonisation of Africa.
Imperialism steps up its moves to recolonise Africa (Proletarian, December 2011)
US and European interference in African affairs assuredly did not begin with the assassination of Libya, but that crime marks the onset of a renewed and most desperate effort to turn the clock back to the days of the most brazen colonialist meddling. http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=773
Communists and the struggle against imperialism (Proletarian, December 2011)
With imperialism convulsed with crisis and hurtling towards new and ever more dangerous wars of aggression, the work of reuniting and reinvigorating the entire international communist movement on a principled and revolutionary basis is one which will brook no further delay. http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=778
Ivory Coast: No recolonisation of Africa! (Lalkar, May 2011)
The violent overthrow of Ivory Coast’s government by French imperialism, in cahoots with northern rebel militia and with the hypocritical blessing of the UN, signals not the end but the beginning of yet another round of cruel civil strife inflicted on the Ivorian people by imperialism. http://lalkar.org/issues/contents/may2011/ivorycoast.html
South Africa: the fight for equality continues (Lalkar, May 2010)
The struggle against Apartheid was an important step along the road to emancipation for South Africa’s poor majority, but this does not mean that all those who fought against Apartheid want to carry on to a socialist revolution. Black skin does not, any more than white skin, come with a guarantee of common sense, social conscience or saintliness attached. http://lalkar.org/issues/contents/may2010/southafrica.html
Ethinic cleansing in Nato’s ‘new’ Libya (Proletarian, December 2011)
More than 100 militia brigades from Misrata have been operating outside of any official military and civilian command since Tripoli fell in August. Members of these militias have engaged in torture, pursued suspected enemies far and wide, detained them and shot them in detention. They have stated that the entire displaced population of one town, Tawergha, who are largely descendants of African slaves, cannot return home. http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=774
Africans need true independence not imperialist ‘charity’ (Proletarian, August 2005)
The US and European monopoly capitalists are shedding crocodile tears over the havoc they have wrought in their latest scramble for Africa, but the African people will find that charity is no substitute for revolutionary struggle to attain true independence and freedom. http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=118
After the xenophobic violence South Africa will never be the same again (Lalkar, July 2008)
The 11th of March 2008 will go down in the history of our country as the day of national shame. It is the day a pogrom against foreign workers started in Alexandra and then spread from township to township, squatter camp to squatter camp, and from one town to the next. http://lalkar.org/issues/contents/jul2008/safrica.php
Chimurenga! The liberation struggle in Zimbabwe (Proletarian, August 2005)
“The struggle in Zimbabwe and indeed in southern Africa as a whole has never been against the white man per se. It is not a struggle for exclusive African rights. On the contrary, our struggle is against an unjust system — a system of exploitation, oppression and racial discrimination. It is a struggle for human equality and dignity. The struggle, as we see it, is fundamentally between the exploiting class and the exploited class.” — Robert Mugabe http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=111
:: WATCH VIDEOS ABOUT AFRICA AND IMPERIALISM ::
Flowers and famine in Ethiopia
Comrade Mohammad Hassan of the PTB (Belgian Workers’ Party) delivers a powerful speech condemning the puppet regime of Ethiopia for selling his country to imperialism, and engineering a famine with its pro-imperialist policy and at the behest of US/British imperialism. http://youtu.be/0TJZP0p5NcM
Famine in the midst of plenty: the truth about the world food crisis
Comrade Ella Rule explains that although enough food is produced globally to make every person on the planet FAT, the inequality of distribution built into capitalism means that vast amounts are wasted, millions are overfed and obese in the West, while hundreds of millions starve in the rest of the world. These problems can be fixed, but not by capitalism.
China’s meaning to African freedom fighters
Comrade Kojo Gotfreid, former Ghanian liberation fighter and ambassador to China, recounts meeting Mao and the inspiration drawn by African anti-colonial liberation fighters from China’s successful liberation struggle and building of a bright new socialist future. http://youtu.be/RJhlWzFGcS8
Guinea Bissau revolutionary comrade on Libya’s role in Africa
Comrade Teodora Ignacia Gomez of the PAIGC, the party that liberated Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, outlines the supportive relationship that Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya had fostered both with her country and other African nations. Libya had tried to bring about sustainable infrastructural and agricultural development in Guinea Bissau, she tells us, both through the African Bank and through independently granted aid. http://youtu.be/xcBTxFy0ql8
Gaddafi tribute in London
In the 42 years of his leadership, the Libyan people rose from being literally the poorest on earth, to the wealthiest and most egalitarian in Africa. Contrary to the vile assertions of the western media, Colonel Gaddafi faced his executioners, vile mercenaries and unthinking tools of Nato imperialism, as the proud defender of independent and free Libya. He died a hero’s death in battle, facing his enemies with steely resolve, and refusing to desert his post, his country or his people at their hour of greatest need. http://youtu.be/t8AhEiTQTJs
Zimbabwe speaks
Anastancia Ndhlovu, Zimbabwe’s youngest MP, speaks to a British correspondent about Zimbabwe at the 17th World Festival of Youth and Students in Pretoria, South Africa. She addresses many issues including Robert Mugabe’s ongoing leadership, the MDC’s role in coalition government, British and US sanctions and Chinese economic involvement in the country.
Africa: black nationalism, capitalism or socialism?
Comrade Ajamu of the A-APRP talks about his ideological development from black nationalism to socialism, and discusses, in particular, the experience of the African national liberation struggles. With reference to the experiences of Ghana, Nkhrumah, Sekou Toure, and others, he underlines the lesson that capitalism has failed Africa.