politics for the 99%

Democratic Left Front salutes the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa special national congress: Together, a new South Africa is possible – Published on Links.org, by the Democratic Front South Africa, Dec 23, 2013.

Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal – There is a spectre haunting the ruling class and government in South Africa: it is the radical anti-capitalist movement that the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa NUMSA has given birth to at its historic special national congress held last week. The Democratic Left Front DLF congratulates NUMSA for this congress that united metalworkers in spite of the sustained attempts to divide NUMSA … //

… The NUMSA congress has stated in no uncertain terms the future must rest in the organised and class conscious power of the working class, working poor, and the dispossessed, united in action to challenge capitalism by building the struggle for the socialist alternative in the here and now.

The DLF believes that the post-congress process must build on the bottom-up worker driven process and tradition of democratic debate, solidarity and mass struggle that NUMSA followed. This would lay a strong foundation for bottom-up, democratic left renewal. Important in this regard is the need to recognise and integrate struggles against multiple oppressions reinforced by capitalism: racial oppression and reproduced white supremacy, gender oppression, oppressive rule by the tribal elites, the social oppression of people with non-heterosexual sexual orientations, cultural alienation, ‘new imperialism’, ecological destruction, and so on.

As the social movements, independent trade unions and left groups that constitute the Democratic Left Front, we will engage in this process humbly, genuinely and with modesty, conscious that sustained, united, non-sectarian and principled political action from below is the only solid rock upon which to find mutual, shared and collective socialist alternatives to the complex challenges facing South Africa and indeed wider humanity. We will contribute to this process a perspective for the socialist transformation of South Africa on the basis of deep participatory democracy.

All this requires the maximum unity of the working class and those who are open and willing to side with it. The Democratic Left Front calls on mass movements, workers, the unemployed, women, youth, shack dwellers, backyarders, the landless, other rural dwellers, independent trade unions, trade unions affiliated to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), National Council of Trade Unions (NACTU) and Federation of Unions of South Africa (FEDUSA), the broad left, progressive civil society and individuals committed to a people-driven transformation of South Africa to all embrace the NUMSA moment through democratic political debate, sustained mass action, solidarity and the building of a socialist working-class alternative.

• RALLY BEHIND THE DEMAND FOR A LIVING WAGE!
• MOBILISE ALL FOR THE 26th FEBRUARY 2014 DAY OF MASS ACTION AGAINST THE EMPLOYMENT INCENTIVE TAX ACT!
• Build the socialist alternative NOW!
• Workers take control!

(full text).

Links:

Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit, on Spiegel Online International, by Spiegel Staff, December 29, 2013 (Photo Gallery): The NSA’s TAO hacking unit is considered to be the intelligence agency’s top secret weapon. It maintains its own covert network, infiltrates computers around the world and even intercepts shipping deliveries to plant back doors in electronics ordered by those it is targeting …;

Swartz, Fracking, Manning, GMO: 13 most underreported news stories of 2013, on Russia Today RT, Dec 27, 2013.