Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim.
Joining the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa’s (Numsa’s) new workers’ party should be every South Africans’ New Year’s resolution for 2018, the trade union said on Monday.
In its New Year’s statement, Numsa general secretary Irvin Jim called on those who “genuinely see themselves as communists” to swell into the ranks of the party, whose name has not yet been announced.
“We call on you to help us build a workers’ party which will fight in the interests of the working class and the poor,” Jim said.
‘A communist classless society’
“The struggle for socialism is not an end in itself; it is a struggle for a communist classless society which Karl Marx correctly described as: ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’.”
The statement didn’t provide information about where South Africans could join the party.
In the statement, Jim said South Africa’s working class had no reason to celebrate the recent leadership changes within the ruling ANC at its December elective conference.
“We have always known that regardless of who emerged the winner, the governing party will continue to pursue backward, right wing, neo-liberal macroeconomic policies which are hurtful to the working class and the poor,” Jim said.
‘An all-out assault on the working class’
“For the last two decades, the ANC government has waged an all-out assault on the African working class in order to defend white monopoly capital.”
Jim said the policies resulted in “massive job losses and long-term mass unemployment” and created “a society of extreme inequality”.
He said it was naïve to believe that cronyism and corruption will disappear from the ANC.
“The very same people who stood by quietly whilst the state was actively looted by various factions of capital including the Gupta and the Rupert families are the ones who make up the top leadership structures of the ANC, and this includes [newly elected ANC president Cyril] Ramaphosa himself,” Jim explained in his view.
He said 2018 will be the year “to remind the right wing” ANC government that true power resides with the working class majority.
“History teaches the working class one fundamental lesson: they shall always be victims of the elite class unless they learn to see the class interests behind all phrases, proclamations, and political processes.
“It was the working class which destroyed the apartheid government, and only the working class can free itself from the capitalist chains of economic oppression.”