(en) Southern Arica, African Anarchist Collective Newsletter Tokologo #2 - Wake Up the Power of the Working Class and Poor By LUCIEN VAN DER WALT

Our country is in a mess. Hunger, poverty, exploitation and injustice stalk the land. ---- 
Th e working class and poor face, at every step, the high walls of injustice, the chains 
of unemployment, and the bullets and batons of the police. ---- Confl icts shake the 
country, and hopes that shone in 1994 are fading, rusting under the waters of greed, 
oppression, and inequality; those hopes seem like a dream that fades when you awake to a 
grim reality. ---- Th e national question, our deep divisions of race and nationality, 
remains unsolved: politicians, black and white, make the situation worse in order to get 
votes. ---- We see the African National Congress (ANC), a party that embodied for so many 
working class people, so many hopes, breaking those people and tarnishing those hopes. We 
see ANC politicians buying votes, stealing money, running a broken school system, and 
grinding down the working and poor people.

3We see breakaway factions from the ANC making the same
false promises, but their record speaks for itself: in offi ce,
they were exactly the same. We see the big opposition
parties, like the Democratic Alliance (DA): more promises,
more lies, and all with a terrible record in offi ce. It cannot go on like this.
While millions are unemployed, those with jobs work endless
hours, sweating, bleeding, faces lined with exhaustion. Big
capitalist corporations like Lonmin squeeze the blood out
of the working class; big government companies like Eskom
drive down wages, and force up prices. Th is means going back to basics, and building the 
power of
the working class and poor, through mass organisations,
political education, and a real understanding: the shining
light of anarchism and syndicalism.
Who killed the workers at Marikana? Th e police? And who
sent the police?
Th e ANC government and its close friends, the army and
police generals, and the big capitalist corporations.
Little breakaway ANCs claim to be diff erent, and even give
themselves new names , but they aim only at getting back
into the circle of the rich and powerful, riding the suff ering
of the masses back to high paid offi ce, tenders and mansions
in the wealthiest suburbs.
It is time to wake up the power of the working class and poor
so we can break the chains, break the illusions, break the
cycle of misery.
To quote from the Industrial Workers of Africa, the
revolutionary syndicalist union our predecessors founded
in 1917 in Johannesburg, and the fi rst African black trade
union in the country:
While you were asleep, the mills of the rich man were
grinding your sweat, for nothing.
Wake up! Open your ears. Th e sun has arisen and the
day is breaking.