Victory to
the South African Striking Miners!
Enough of
the bogus “protecting frontline services”, and “cuts too far too fast”!
TU leaders
must fight for needs budgets!TUC: Call
an indefinite General Strike!
The
striking miners of South Africa are the vanguard of the international proletariat.
The brutal and pre-planned massacre of the 34 miners on 16th August is a sharp
manifestation of the International crisis of capitalism. Every class conscious
workers on the planet has a duty to support and work for the victory of these
strikes because they are fighting not just for the future of the South African
working class but for all our futures.
The world
crisis of capitalism continue to deepen; the Greek and European sovereign debt
crisis continues to worsen, several countries in the euro area cannot repay or
re-finance their government debt without the assistance of the dreaded troika,
the IMF, EU and ECB.
The debts
of speculators and banks from property bub-bles were transferred to the
national bank balance and so the crisis became a sovereign debt crisis which is
now threatening the solvency of whole nations and the survival of the Euro and
the European Union itself. This has global consequences, threatening
inter-Imperialist rivalries the like of which we saw before WWI and WWII.
This has
had dire consequences for the Greek working class and poor, food kitchens have
sprung everywhere and real poverty and hunger has begun to reappeared in Europe
for the first time since the end of WWII. Greece shows us all our futures under
this rotten and crisis-ridden capitalist system.
It is
already apparent that a severe housing crisis is developing in Britain, the NHS
is being totally privatised and local councils are about to be reduced to being
the paymasters of privatised and decimated local services. Tory Barnet council
is pioneering US-style total privatisation of services. Chancellor Ed Balls
told the Guardian, “The public want to know that we are going to be ruthless
and disciplined in how we go about public spending”. And at the Labour
Conference, “we cannot make any commitments now that the next Labour government
will be able to reverse particular tax rises or spending cuts.”
Following the terrible Marikana Massacre on 16 August on Monday 15 October the crisis in South Africa’s mining sector worsened when talks between the Chamber of Mines and trade unions failed and the strike wave spread. “The situation is grave,” Willie Jacobsz, head of investor relations at Gold Fields told the Financial Times. “All of Gold Fields’ South African mines, with the excep-tion of the developing South Deep, are now engaged in illegal strike action, putting thousands of jobs at risk and increasing the likelihood of major restructuring.”