Umsebenzi Online Volume 24, Number 7, 7 November 2025
Red AlertRed October is not a calendar entry, but a struggle for socialist renewal |
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Red October holds a sacred place in the political calendar of communists worldwide. It is a call to memory, a tribute to the courage of the Bolsheviks in 1917, and an assertion that another world is possible — not through reform, but through rupture. For South African communists, Red October has long been more than a commemorative gesture. It is our annual rallying cry to advance the struggle for socialism in a society still scarred by apartheid colonialism.
But what does Red October mean in 2025? What does it mean when slogans outlive their substance, when revolution is remembered but not renewed?
We find ourselves at a crossroads. Thirty years after the democratic breakthrough, the working class remains on the margins of economic ownership, political decision-making, and cultural power. Unemployment is sky-high. Inequality is written into the very architecture of our cities and their slums. The state is buckling under the weight of corruption, austerity, and incapacity. For many, socialism feels like a fading promise rather than an urgent project.
And yet it is precisely in this moment of despair that the relevance of Red October becomes more acute. It reminds us that history does not bend on its own. It must be seized and shaped. That no matter how dominant capital may seem, it remains dependent on the exploitation of labour — and vulnerable to the collective power of organised workers and the poor.
The SACP remains the oldest and most consistent voice for socialism on the continent. Our legacy is formidable. But legacy alone will not carry us through the storm. Our challenge is not just to defend the past, but to earn our place in the future. That means rebuilding the Party as a living, breathing, organising force — not just a think tank, not just a shadow behind the ANC, not just a commentator on state failure. We must be present where the people are, and relevant to the battles they are already fighting: for electricity, for food, for land, for dignity.
Red October must therefore be reclaimed as a period of political mobilisation, not nostalgia. It must ignite a deeper reckoning with the state of our movement, our country, and the global system that binds them. It must generate fresh energy — not just statements and seminars — toward building a mass, democratic, revolutionary socialist party that is feared by the powerful and loved by the people.
The truth is: we have allowed the state to become the primary terrain of our struggle, at the expense of the street, the union, the school, the village, the WhatsApp group, the spaza shop, the burial society. We have measured progress by appointments, not by mass mobilisation. In doing so, we have risked becoming institutionalised — legal, yes, but not always legitimate.
To mark Red October meaningfully this year, we need to return to base-building. We need to reignite the Red Brigades as active community organisers. We need to take the People ’s Caravan from theory to tar road, as we are increasingly doing, not least with our most recent week of activities in Mqhekezweni Village in the Eastern Cape (about which there is more in this issue of Umsebenzi Online). We need to make Umsebenzi a site of ideological contestation, not just internal affirmation. We must recruit, educate, organise, and agitate. This is not a rhetorical flourish — it is a survival strategy for the left.
In the face of imminent war, climate collapse, digital surveillance, and widening inequality, socialism is no longer a distant utopia. It is a practical necessity. But it cannot be proclaimed from podiums. It must be built in practice, through patient organising, bold leadership, and the humility to learn from the people.
This Red October, let us recommit to the hard work of revolutionary renewal. Let us remind ourselves that no revolution is ever complete, and that every generation must take up the torch anew. Let us speak to the present — and the future — in a language filled with ideological clarity, working class courage, and a march to working class victory.
Because Red October is not a calendar entry. It is a line in the sand.
BUILDING THE PEOPLE’S ECONOMY
A new chapter in people’s power
Address delivered by SACP General Secretary Solly Mapaila at the launch of the first community-owned store in Hammanskraal, Gauteng, 17 October.
Comrades, members of the Rebothle Consumer Co-operative, leaders of the Dora Tamana Co-operative Agency (DTCA), the United Communities Consumer Co-operative (UC²), members of the Traditional Council, Party structures, and the people of Hammanskraal, revolutionary greetings.
Today, we are not simply opening a store. We are opening a new chapter in people’s power in the economy. This small community-owned shop symbolises a much greater idea – that working people can unite to build and own their own economy from the ground up.
We thank our Traditional Council for joining us here. Your presence affirms that the struggle to build a people’s economy is also a struggle to restore community dignity and collective ownership of local resources.
The store we open today: small in size, great in purpose
The store we opened today is a small square shop – simple, modest, yet filled with great purpose. It represents ordinary people taking the first real steps towards controlling their own economy. From small beginnings like this, great movements are born.
The members started this journey in 2023, through a monthly order and direct-delivery system, bringing affordable goods directly to households and buying clubs. And today, through determination and unity, you have taken the next step by opening a physical store that belongs to its members and serves its community.
This store is a seed of the people’s economy, planted in the soil of Hammanskraal and watered by the hard work of its members. What we see here today is proof that building a new economy is not a dream; it is a living, growing practice rooted in the community.
From Matibidi to Hammanskraal: expanding the people’s economy
Earlier this year, I had the honour of opening the first community-owned store in Matibidi Village, Mpumalanga. Today, Hammanskraal becomes the second community-owned store in South Africa, a continuation of that historic process of rebuilding our economy through people’s ownership.
The Rebothle Co-operative is not a private venture. It is a collective effort by its members, supported by the DTCA and the United Communities Consumer Co-operative (UC²), a secondary co-operative linking local consumer cooperatives into one national movement of ownership, participation, and solidarity.
Supporting local communities’ producers: a small step with a big vision
Rebothle has already begun to take important steps to support local producers. Some of the toiletries sold on these shelves are produced by another co-operative right here in Hammanskraal, showing that community trade can sustain local livelihoods. The store is also already selling fresh produce from local growers, farmers and households around Hammanskraal who are beginning to supply directly to this community shop.
And this is only the beginning. More local products will come as the network expands – eggs, vegetables, fruit, poultry, and other essentials grown and made by our own members.
This is how we build a self-sustaining community economy, an economy that keeps money circulating locally, supports workers, and strengthens community control over production and trade. Plans are already underway to expand household and small-scale production in this area. This area is rich in mangoes, avocados, lemons, poultry, and vegetables. Imagine local co-operatives turning these resources into products such as juice, jam, soap, poultry products, and fresh produce – all stocked right here.
We also celebrate the formation of a worker-owned toilet-paper manufacturing co-operative, a major step in developing productive capacity owned by workers themselves. Through this, we build community self-reliance and a self-sustaining economy.
These small but strategic steps are laying the foundation for a strong co-operative economy that can grow throughout Tshwane and inspire similar projects across the province.
Mobilising and organising our collective purchasing power
The greatest power we hold is our collective purchasing power. Each rand we spend has direction. It can either leave our communities or strengthen the co-operative.
When we buy from Rebothle, we are not simply shopping, we are building our own economy. Every rand spent here supports local jobs, empowers co-operative producers, and keeps wealth circulating within the community.
That is why every household in Hammanskraal must become a member-owner. Join this co-operative. Buy from your own store. Encourage your neighbours, friends, and stokvels to do the same. When we unite our spending, we unite our strength - and we take one more step towards building the people’s economy.
Building the people’s economy
What we celebrate today is not separate from the vision of the SACP. The SACP has always stood for a people’s economy, one that puts social need before private greed, community benefit before private profit.
We have always said that building a new economy cannot only happen in government. It must be built in the community, through collective ownership and production. Every co-operative store, every worker-owned enterprise, every household producer forms part of this broader movement.
Rebothle and the United Communities Consumer Co-operative (UC²) are not charity projects. They are instruments of transformation, uniting producers and consumers, linking trade with education, and building power in the hands of the people themselves.
The road ahead
Comrades, the store we open today may be relatively small, but it opens a big door to the future. It proves that the people can govern not only politically, but economically too.
From Matibidi to Hammanskraal, and soon throughout Tshwane, we are witnessing the rebirth of the people’s economy, an economy owned by the people, serving the people, and controlled by the people.
And comrades, let us have more of these, and even larger stores in every community across the country. Let us expand this movement so that every village, township, and ward can have its own people-owned shop, its own local producers, its own co-operative network.
This is the future we are building: a people’s economy grounded in ownership, co-operation, self-reliance, and solidarity.
Forward with community-owned stores!
Forward with household and co-operative production!
Forward with worker ownership and manufacturing!
Forward with community self-reliance and the people’s economy!
RED OCTOBER
Seventy years of the Freedom Charter: deepening the struggle for its unfulfilled goals
SACP Red October Campaign 2025–2026 launch statement delivered by Cde Thulas Nxesi, SACP Deputy National Chairperson, East London City Hall, Skenjana Roji District, Eastern Cape, 5 October
We officially launch the Red October Campaign 2025–2026, guided by the objectives of advancing the struggle to achieve the unfulfilled goals of the Freedom Charter in its 70th year, the 31st year of our hard-won April 1994 democratic breakthrough. The objectives include the following.
- Strengthening the struggle to realise the Freedom Charter ’s unfulfilled goals, including ensuring the people share in the country ’s wealth to eradicate poverty, radically reduce inequality and reverse uneven development.
- Implementing the National Health Insurance to guarantee access to quality healthcare for all.
- Building safe and secure living environments by strengthening the fight and capacity against crime, corruption and social decay.
- Advancing land ownership transformation through restitution, redistribution, tenure security and state support, including productive equipment and technology, inputs and technical capacity. It is in this context that the SACP is pressing ahead with the campaign for a referendum to finally resolve the unresolved land question and ensure land justice.
- Rolling back neoliberal policy dominance, including privatisation, strengthening state-owned enterprises and reclaiming key strategic sectors, such as energy, water, transport, the ports and communications.
- Addressing the catastrophic unemployment crisis by advancing policies for broad-based industrialisation, promoting collective worker empowerment and challenging casualisation, labour brokering, outsourcing and other exploitative practices while creating large-scale sustainable employment.
- Promoting public ownership of strategic sectors and advancing the campaign for a universal social security system, including the transformation of the Social Relief of Distress Grant and its improvement to form the basis for a universal income grant.
- Building people ’s power through grassroots organisation, co-operatives and initiatives such as the People ’s Red Caravan, strengthening rural and township economies.
- Advancing and deepening the struggle for gender equality and against gender-based violence in everything we do.
- Uniting the working class, trade unions, youth and civic movements, women ’s organisations, progressive traditional leaders in a common struggle for social and economic emancipation.
This year, we are dedicating the Red October Campaign to the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter. We celebrate the historic victories won through struggle, most notably the April 1994 democratic breakthrough against apartheid, and we want to strengthen the struggle to realise the Charter ’s unfulfilled goals. These goals include ensuring that the people share in the country ’s wealth, the only way we can eradicate poverty, radically reduce inequality and roll back uneven development.
We return to the Charter ’s unfulfilled goals, which include the implementation of the National Health Insurance to ensure access to quality healthcare for all, and building an environment for everyone to enjoy dignity in a safe and secure living environment. This requires that we bring down the high rates of crime and corruption in all their manifestations. The SACP insists that the commission probing the capture of authorities within the criminal justice system finish its work and deliver clear outcomes. Those outcomes must help the country strike a deadly blow against crime and corruption.
In reflecting on the Freedom Charter, especially the struggle to achieve its unfulfilled goals, we also celebrate the democratic victory of 1994 against the apartheid regime. The transition from the apartheid regime was not a gift. It was an outcome of a long and bitter liberation struggle, led by our movement, fought for by the masses of our people. The April 1994 democratic breakthrough marked the end of colonial and apartheid regimes and opened the democratic dispensation, paving the way for real gains for millions, especially the workers and poor.
Before April 1994, the right to vote was a privilege of a white minority. Colonial and apartheid regimes built a better life for the minority by dispossessing, super exploiting and impoverishing the black majority, of whom the majority was, and still is, the working class.
For the first time, as a direct fruit of the April 1994 democratic breakthrough, millions of the previously oppressed gained access to political, social and economic rights. This brought progress in health, education, houses for the poor, household electrification, water supply and other tangible benefits that had been deliberately denied under racist oppression. Others, as they gained access to better work opportunities, built themselves better homes, including in rural areas.
The SACP itself has a proud history. From its pre-history of opposition to the imperialist First World War starting in 1914, to its launch as the Communist Party of South Africa in 1921, our Party has played a decisive role in the liberation struggle, in the 1994 breakthrough and in the advances realised by millions, thousands and hundreds since.
Our fight against the dangerous tendency of HIV–AIDS denialism is one such example, in which we continued the struggle towards all the goals of the Freedom Charter post-1994 while some concluded they were free at last and argued that the struggle was no longer necessary. Against resistance, we led the campaign for HIV treatment as part of the broader struggle for the right to life through quality healthcare. This mass struggle saved lives, improved life expectancy and stopped the tide of needless deaths.
We must be even more frank. While important progress has been made, we remain far from the Freedom Charter ’s vision. This is one reason the struggle must continue in the here and now. We must advance, deepen and intensify this struggle, an indispensable part of the national democratic revolution.
For example, the majority of arable and well-located land is still controlled by a minority of the capitalist commercial farmers, mining houses, property developers, hospitality and tourism bosses.
Restitution, redistribution and tenure reforms have been weak, not achieving the goals of the Freedom Charter on the division of land among those who work it. Many of the few beneficiaries of land reform have been abandoned under austerity. The Charter called for all land to be re-divided among those who work it, with state support through implements, seed and dams. Translated into today ’s terms, this means productive equipment and technology, inputs and infrastructure. If you consider what the Freedom Charter says about education, including technical and vocational education, support for productive land use must include technical capacity building.
The Freedom Charter declared that the mineral wealth, banks and monopoly industries shall be transferred to the ownership by the people. Yet these commanding heights remain in private hands, tied to global finance. Notably, 31 years into our democratic dispensation, there is still not a single state bank that serves the people ’s financial and development needs.
The minerals of our land generate enormous value, but this is converted into profits for capitalist bosses. Communities and workers are left with little more than poverty wages. The nation is left with meagre royalties and inadequate development projects from the mine owners ’ social and labour plans. In material terms, in value form, the lion ’s share of our minerals is transferred to the capitalist exploiters as their profit through the current regime of mining licences. It does not belong to the people, despite claims to the contrary, based on the text of the Minerals and Petroleum Resources Development Act.
It is important to recognise the truth in the pursuit of our struggle. This at the time when neoliberal austerity has further entrenched capitalist power. State-owned enterprises have been deliberately weakened. In energy, Eskom was undermined through state capture and restructuring to create space for the private power producers, called independent power producers. The state guaranteed their projects, shifting risks to the people.
In air transport, SAA was nearly collapsed to make way for private airlines. It was almost gifted to private owners as part of privatisation.
The agenda to channel social grant payments to commercial banks is part and parcel of privatisation. In the neoliberal playbook, it is part of the agenda to weaken public entities, in this regard, the Post Office and the Post Bank, and to eventually collapse them in favour of competition between private sector interests.
Privatisation today is not only about selling state assets. It includes weakening state capacity, outsourcing the roles of the government in service provision and handing public goods over to private profit interests. In infrastructure such as electricity, rail, ports, water and telecommunications, neoliberal reforms have opened the door for monopoly or dominant sections of capital. The auctioning of high radio spectrum under the pretext of de-monopolising the ICT sector has entrenched the duopoly of Vodacom and MTN. The two captured the lion ’s share of the high radio frequency spectrum, a national asset.
The Freedom Charter said there shall be work and security. Yet today, unemployment is catastrophic. Exploitation has deepened. The workers ’ share of income from production and trade has fallen. Still, the workers receive no cent from the profits appropriated by the capitalist bosses. Outsourcing, out-contracting, casualisation, labour brokering, perpetual temporary employment relationships are among the strategies through which the exploitation of workers by the capitalist bosses has deepened.
Instead of sharing in the country ’s wealth, the working class is locked out while class inequality deepens, including in its racial and gender dimensions. A handful of capitalists continue to accumulate vast riches while millions are left in poverty. No one is rich on behalf of the rest. Everyone in the few who are rich or empowered at the expense of the rest is rich privately.
Increasingly, the alienation of the masses is expressed in voter abstention. This is not apathy but a conscious rejection of a system that excludes them.
The SACP will not blame the people. Emerging from the recent Plenary of our Central Committee, from which the perspectives we outline today were discussed, we will intensify grassroots organising, rebuild principled struggle and drive programmes that meet material needs. Our democratic dispensation must follow the failed path of capitalist exploitation of the majority of the people. In the period ahead, we must define breaking with exploitation and advancing a revolutionary transformation led by an organised and militant working class.
Our country is facing multiple crises: high levels of unemployment, poverty, inequality, crime and corruption, and a social reproduction crisis. To be sure, the crises we face cannot be reduced to legacies of apartheid or state capture alone. They are systemic, rooted in a capitalist system that survives on inequality and the appropriation of wealth produced by the majority. Neo-liberal policies, post-1994, dating back to GEAR, are embedded with factors that underpin and sustain these crises.
Under the capitalist system, wealth is produced collectively by workers but appropriated privately by capitalists. As Karl Marx observed, wealth at one pole always comes with misery at the other.
The SACP has consistently rejected neoliberal policies.
In economic and social policy terms, the SACP will contest the 2026 local government elections to fight neoliberal policies that have hollowed out and still hollow out municipalities through outsourcing and privatisation. The struggle against capitalist exploitation and neoliberalism must take place on all fronts and significant centres of power, including in election contests.
Instead of a reconfigured Alliance, coalitions with neoliberal, right-wing parties opposed to the national democratic revolution and the Freedom Charter have been prioritised. In political policy terms, the SACP will contest the 2026 local government elections to address the crisis of working-class representation that has emerged in the absence of a reconfigured Alliance.
Ironically, some of those who say they disagree with the resolution by the SACP to contest the elections are the very ones embracing and even defending coalitions with neoliberal, right-wing electoral parties opposed to the national democratic revolution and the Freedom Charter.
Communists cannot abandon the electoral terrain to the class enemy and its political agents amid a crisis of working-class representation. As Lenin warned in “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, to refuse to contest elections is to leave the masses under the influence of the bourgeoisie and its agents. Elections, even under conditions shaped by capitalism, provide a platform to expose the ruling class, to reach millions with revolutionary ideas through campaigning and to organise workers for struggle beyond the ballot. Contesting elections is therefore not an end in itself, but a tactical consideration in the broader political struggle to build working-class power, deepen the national democratic revolution and open the road to socialism.
The SACP will therefore contest the 2026 local government elections not for narrow electoralist ambitions, but to defend, advance and deepen the national democratic revolution as the most direct road towards socialism. We reject the assertion that seeks to divorce the national democratic revolution from socialism and compartmentalise them into unrelated positions. This fatally flawed assertion also seeks to privatise the national democratic revolution, to convert it into a private property of only one organisation within the Alliance movement.
Our electoral platform will be rooted in working-class representation, reconfiguration of the Alliance on democratic and accountable terms, and the full pursuit of the Freedom Charter ’s economic and social programme. This is crucial in the broader struggle to move towards socialism.
The unemployment crisis illustrates the failure of neoliberal policies. Over 8.3 million people are unemployed, rising to 12.6 million if discouraged workers are included. This is not by accident but by design.
The neoliberal shock therapy of rapid trade liberalisation under GEAR, the associated de-industrialisation and austerity, have had a destructive effect on productive sectors. Austerity undermined, among others, budgets for industrialisation and industrial policy incentives. This policy scenario contributed to retrenchments and blocked efforts to create employment at the scale needed to overcome the unemployment crisis.
The shutdown of plants under ArcelorMittal will be remembered as clear proof that privatisation serves private profit, not the interests of the nation. What became the privately-owned ArcelorMittal was once a state-owned enterprise, Iscor, and an ownership stake held by the Industrial Development Corporation, a public development finance institution. ArcelorMittal ’s abuse of market dominance and monopolistic practices, including the import parity pricing model, along with the widespread retrenchments it has caused, must never be forgotten. The productive capacity that ArcelorMittal has mothballed, shut down or intends to close, and which can be restarted and recapitalised, must be renationalised.
The SACP pledges its solidarity with workers who faced retrenchments not only at ArcelorMittal or because of its actions, but also throughout the economy, including in mines, manufacturing sectors, construction and service sectors, to mention but a few. We also stand in solidarity with their unions and families.
We reject the false claim that workers ’ income causes unemployment. This claim is a weapon of the capitalist class. The real cause of unemployment is a system that generates unemployment to keep wages low and profits high.
The SACP calls for radical structural transformation: a broad-based industrialisation programme, public ownership of strategic sectors and a universal social security system. Monetary policy must prioritise development, particularly industrialisation and the creation of maximum, sustainable employment, rather than narrow inflation targeting. This approach is not reckless and has nothing in common with runaway inflation. Interest rates must serve the people and the economy, not the interests of the tiny minority of finance capital.
The launch of this year ’s Red October Campaign comes at a time when we have added a new dimension to our struggle for full economic and social emancipation. The People ’s Red Caravan is an inspiring expression of building people ’s power with the working-class as the majority in action. In our villages, it shows that our people can feed themselves, organise co-operatives and rebuild their communities. It is not charity but a weapon of struggle.
The SACP reiterates its call on professionals, artisans and workers in every trade to join and strengthen the People ’s Red Caravan movement. While our work began in rural areas, we are now moving into townships and city centres that are now decaying under crime, corruption and neoliberal policies. We aim to rebuild township economies and revitalise and reclaim city centres, just as we are committed to building strong rural economies with and for the people.
The Red October Campaign calls on the working class, trade unions, civic and youth movements, progressive faith-based bodies, women ’s organisations and progressive traditional leaders to unite in struggle. Together, we must break with the failed path of capitalism and its neoliberal agenda and build people ’s power to advance to full social and economic emancipation.
International solidarity
The SACP stands in solidarity with the people of Swaziland struggling for democracy and with the people of Western Sahara against the imperialist-backed occupation by Morocco.
We call for an immediate end to the war in Sudan. The war has claimed at least 150,000 lives by conservative estimates, displaced nearly 13 million people and left 70 to 80 per cent of health facilities non-operational.
We reaffirm our solidarity with the people of Cuba and Venezuela against the aggression, illegal sanctions and blockade imposed by the imperialist United States. We strongly condemn the United States ’ military encirclement of Venezuela, not just as a provocation of war but also as an act of war.
We stand with the people of Palestine against the imperialist, United States-backed apartheid Israeli settler state and the ongoing genocide it is committing. Since October 2023, Israel has killed over 66,000 Palestinians and injured more than 168,000, the majority being women, children and the elderly. We reiterate our call for the leaders of the apartheid Israeli regime to be held accountable.
In the same vein, we strongly condemn the criminal interception and abduction of the humanitarian Global Sumud Flotilla by the Israeli regime. The SACP stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine in their just struggle for national self-determination and the return of their dispossessed lands.
RED OCTOBER
Cosatu: sharpen class consciousness and strengthen worker unity!
The following is a shortened version of Cosatu's message of support to the SACP Red October rally, held at East London City Hall, Skenjana Roji District, Eastern Cape, 5 October.
On behalf of the PEC of Cosatu and all the affiliated unions of the federation, we wish to extend warm and revolutionary greetings to everyone who is part of this rally.
President General Oliver Reginald Tambo had this to say at the SACP 60th Anniversary: “The ANC speaks here today, not so much as a guest invited to address a foreign organisation. Rather, we speak of and to our own. For it is a matter of record that for much of its history, the SACP has been an integral part of the struggle of the African people against oppression and exploitation in South Africa. We can all bear witness that in the context of the struggle against colonial structures and racism, and the struggle for power by the people, the SACP has been fighting with the oppressed and exploited.”
The World Federation of Trade Unions
We are gathered here two days after the 80th anniversary of WFTU, an international trade union federation that has been with us in our struggle against apartheid and capitalism, the twins of wickedness. WFTU has been on our side in the true spirit of internationalism, as Che Guevara reflected: “Always being capable of feeling any injustice committed to anyone in any part of the world is the most important quality of the revolutionary”. WFTU understands the true meaning of Che’s reflection.
The WFTU and its affiliates from all over the world played a pivotal role in our struggle against apartheid and offered solidarity, including financial, material and human resources to our struggle. It went on to offer refuge to our exiles from the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), Cosatu’s predecessor, as well as to underground operatives from the liberation movement.
International solidarity was one of the pillars of our South African struggle alongside mass mobilisation, formation of MK, and underground work. Worker Internationalism is one of Cosatu’s core founding principles alongside non-racialism: one industry, one union; one country, one federation.
WFTU was formed in 1945 after the Second World War, in a revitalised atmosphere after the historic defeat of fascism, and the inspiring role of the Soviet Union.
On Friday, 03 October Cosatu joined the millions of workers all over the world in celebrating 80 years of working-class internationalism, solidarity and class struggle. The WFTU was born at a time of wars of imperialism, colonial subjugation and intense liberation struggles, particularly in our region and continent.
Cosatu’s 40th Anniversary
As we celebrate Cosatu’s 40th anniversary this year, we have no doubt that workers in South Africa, and the world over, regard this monumental day as their own, precisely because our democratic breakthrough was in no small measure a product of the domestic struggles and international solidarity that broke the back of apartheid and ushered in a new and democratic government.
The 40th anniversary is at the same time a global anniversary of workers, who throughout the world stood with us in our struggle against apartheid. To that extent, we stand firm with the workers and the people of the world involved in struggles wherever they are.
Cosatu demonstrated outstanding internationalism throughout its existence. From Palestine to Swaziland, from Zimbabwe to East Timor, Sudan to Myanmar and Western Sahara, our flag has been hoisted high in solidarity with workers and oppressed people. Cosatu celebration is their celebration too.
The trace of the South African Communist Party’s influence is found in any shred of the work we have accomplished in our 40 years of existence.
Appreciating our teachers
We are gathered here today, when the world is celebrating World Teachers’ Day. This day has been celebrated annually since 1994 to recognise the hard work and dedication of teachers around the world. It highlights the vital role teachers play in shaping society.
Unesco and our partners have chosen the theme “Recasting teaching as a collaborative profession”. The theme highlights that cooperation among teachers is not just a matter of courtesy but a critical tool for achieving better learning outcomes, enhancing each other's well-being and improving retention.
Teaching is a noble profession, the mother of all professions. Sadtu, our affiliate, is a union that leads the agenda of transformation in the sector, ably assisted by the sister union Nehawu. They are the eyes and the ears of the federation, the alliance and the broader society in the education sector. As you are engaged in the transformation agenda, let them be reminded that education is a weapon too strong to be left in the hands of our class adversaries. In the course of decolonising education, may these unions be inspired by the late Steve Biko’s words “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressor”.
Our affiliate, Sadtu is featuring prominently on the global stage. The National Deputy Chairperson was the president of Education International during his tenure as Sadtu General Secretary. Current Sadtu General Secretary, Dr Mugwena Maluleke, is the sitting president of Education International.
The Red October Campaign is one of the prime campaigns of the SACP that is inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution that resulted in the first government of the working class. That revolution put a living meaning to the preamble of the Communist Manifesto “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. The success of that revolution strengthened the belief in the correctness of Marxism and the possibility of new world order, an alternative to capitalism.
Deepening Class Consciousness emphasises the need to sharpen class consciousness and strengthen worker unity to confront the fragmentation of the working class under neoliberalism. Cosatu resolved to intensify political education, mobilise workers on the shop floor, and expand socialist forums to deepen class consciousness. The Federation will also prioritise campaigns for decent work, universal healthcare and social security.
Umkhonto wegwala uphelela elityeni loosely translated as: The spear of the coward is finished by the sharpening stone as he would continuously sharpen the spear without attacking the enemy. This is the situation of those who are ideologically aligned but lack the courage to engage meaningfully in the political and ideological struggles.
National Democratic Revolution
The Central Committee critically analysed the regression of the NDR, exacerbated by neoliberal austerity policies of the Government of National Unity and its over-reliance on the commitments of capital to the government’s developmental mandates. These policies over the years have failed and instead led to rising unemployment, inequality and poverty, disproportionately affecting women, youth, and working-class communities.
Reconfiguration of the Alliance
The Central Committee resolved to intensify efforts to reconfigure the Alliance and build a united socialist movement to contest neoliberalism, austerity and imperialist aggression. Cosatu will expedite engagements with its allies to ensure that the Alliance has a clear path towards the 2026 local elections. Further engagements will take place at the Central Executive Committee, within affiliate structures as well as with members and workers, and during our Congress in September 2026.
A call to action
Cosatu’s 8th Central Committee concluded with a resolute call to action - workers must organise, build unity, and mobilise across workplaces, communities and international borders.
Cosatu 40th Anniversary
As Cosatu heads towards its 40th anniversary, the federation remains steadfast in its revolutionary mission to dismantle the structures of exploitation and build a socialist future as the only route to equality, justice, and solidarity.
We will hold a Memorial Lecture on 21 November 2025 here in East London as a build-up toward the main event to be held at Dobsonville Stadium, Johannesburg, on 06 December 2025.
Amandla!
RED OCTOBER
Bread, land, peace in the South African context – building people’s power today
Aviwe Rapelang Mohapi
The working class must reflect on October's profound legacy as a symbol of radical change and revolutionary upheaval.
From the seismic events of the 1917 Russian October Revolution, which dismantled centuries of tsarist oppression and laid the foundations for the Soviet Union, to the anti-colonial and socialist struggles that rippled across the globe, October has always represented the triumph of the working class over capitalist exploitation. This is not mere historical trivia; it is a call to action.
In South Africa, amid escalating crises of inequality, unemployment and social decay under neoliberal capitalism, 2025 marks the 70th anniversary of the Freedom Charter, urging us to deepen the struggle for its unfulfilled goals. We must build grassroots power structures that challenge the bourgeois state and advance our national democratic revolution towards socialism. As Marxists, we understand that revolutions are not spontaneous; they are forged through organised mass action, and October 2025 provides the perfect juncture to intensify our efforts.
The historic link: October as a beacon of radical change
October's revolutionary symbolism is rooted in the Bolshevik-led uprising of 1917, where workers, peasants, and soldiers, guided by Lenin's Marxist-Leninist principles, seized power from the Provisional Government. This event, occurring on October 25 (Julian calendar), was no isolated incident but the culmination of class contradictions exacerbated by World War I's imperialist carnage.
The Bolsheviks' slogan "Bread, Land, Peace" captured the essence of these contradictions: "Bread" for economic sustenance amid famine and exploitation; "Land" for agrarian reform to break feudal chains; and "Peace" to end the war that bled the masses for bourgeois profits. This revolution inspired global movements, from the Chinese Revolution of 1949 to the Cuban Revolution of 1959, demonstrating that socialism is achievable through dialectical materialism - identifying antagonisms and mobilising the oppressed to resolve them.
In Africa, October's ethos fuelled anti-imperialist struggles, including our own liberation from apartheid. The SACP, founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa, has long drawn from this legacy, integrating internationalist solidarity with local class struggles. This year, as we celebrate the 31st year of the 1994 democratic breakthrough, we confront the reality that many of the Freedom Charter’s goals - such as equitable land distribution, public ownership of wealth, and universal healthcare remain unfulfilled due to capitalist and neoliberal policies. October reminds us that radical change is imperative. In South Africa, where the post-1994 dispensation has failed to eradicate apartheid's economic legacies, we must revive this revolutionary fervour to confront the ruling class's dominance.
Local grounding: the Red October Campaign and People's Red Caravan
To make this history relevant, the SACP ties October's global narrative to its indigenous campaigns: the Red October Campaign and the People's Red Caravan. Launched in the early 2000s, the Red October Campaign explicitly draws from the 1917 Revolution, mobilising communities around immediate demands while fostering anti-capitalist consciousness. It serves as an annual platform to expose neoliberal failures, such as privatisation and austerity, and to build alliances within the Tripartite Alliance and beyond.
The SACP launched this year’s Red October Campaign on 5 October with Deputy National Chairperson Cde Thulas Nxesi delivering a statement emphasising working-class unity against exploitation. This year's theme, "Seventy years of the Freedom Charter: Deepening the struggle for its unfulfilled goals," commemorates the 70th anniversary of the 1955 Freedom Charter while intensifying efforts to achieve its vision of a just society and also revitalises the visionary demands of the Charter, which remains the cornerstone of our struggle for a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic, and socialist South Africa. The Freedom Charter, born from the Congress of the People, proclaims that "The People Shall Govern!" and outlines radical transformation: land to be redistributed to those who work it, mines and banks to be nationalised, and basic rights to work, housing, education, and security guaranteed for all.
The Red October Campaign focuses on advancing the Freedom Charter’s unfulfilled goals through specific objectives: ensuring the people share in the country’s wealth to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality; implementing the National Health Insurance (NHI) for universal healthcare; building safe communities by combating crime and corruption; advancing land reform through restitution, redistribution, and state support; rolling back neoliberal policies like privatisation; addressing unemployment through industrialisation and worker empowerment; promoting public ownership of strategic sectors; building people’s power through grassroots initiatives like cooperatives and the People’s Red Caravan; advancing gender equality; and uniting the working class and progressive movements.
These objectives ground the campaign in South African realities, mobilising the masses to implement the Freedom Charter’s promises through class struggles. The launch also highlighted the SACP’s commitment to contesting the 2026 Local Government Elections independently to address the crisis of working-class representation and oppose neoliberal policies. This launch underscores the Red October Campaign's living relevance, focusing on grassroots organising to address "bread-and-butter" issues in preparation for the 2026 Local Government Elections.
Complementing this is the People's Red Caravan, a dynamic outreach campaign that brings the socialist struggle directly to the people. Unlike static rallies, the People’s Red Caravan traverses provinces, engaging townships, rural villages, and urban centres in practical actions. In 2025, activations included a week-long program from July 21-27 in areas like Mashilane, where the SACP handed over community projects and reported on progress. Earlier, in June 2025, the People’s Red Caravan launched in Motlhabe Village, North West Province, demonstrating socialist principles through community-led initiatives. In Motlhabe, Matibidi, and other villages, and in Mqhekezweni Village in the Eastern Cape. The Caravan has supported Village Agricultural Cooperatives, fostering communal farming and economic self-reliance.
As the SACP states, the People’s Red Caravan is not charity but a process of working with communities to build socialism at the local level, reconstituting people's power against capitalist alienation. These campaigns are intertwined, serving as vehicles for education, mobilisation, and dual power structures where community assemblies challenge state bureaucracy.
In the lead-up to the 2026 Local Government Elections, scheduled between November 2026, and January 2027, these campaigns lay the foundation for electoral and extra-electoral gains. The Independent Electoral Commission is preparing, with over 55% of registered voters being women and youth, but the SACP recognises that elections under capitalism are limited and must be combined with mass action to build people’s power. The Red October and People’s Red Caravan campaigns empower the masses to demand socialist policies in municipal governance, from service delivery to land use.
Adapting "Bread, Land, Peace" to South Africa's crises
Drawing from the Bolshevik slogan, we adapt "Bread, Land, Peace" to South Africa's context: jobs, housing, safety, and healthcare. These are not reformist pleas but revolutionary demands that expose capitalism's inability to meet basic needs, paving the way for socialist transformation.
- Bread: The demand for jobs and economic security
In South Africa, "Bread" manifests as the crisis of unemployment, a direct result of capitalist accumulation and deindustrialisation. As of Q2 2025, the official unemployment rate stands at 33.2%, up from 32.9% in Q1, with the expanded rate at 42.9%. This translates to over 8 million officially unemployed, with youth joblessness exceeding 60%. The economy shed 80,000 jobs in Q2, largely in trade and manufacturing, highlighting the neoliberal policies failures.
Marx taught us that unemployment is inherent to capitalism, creating a reserve army of labour to suppress wages. The Red October Campaign addresses this by advocating for broad-based industrialisation, public ownership of strategic sectors, and a universal social security system, including transforming the Social Relief of Distress Grant into a universal income grant. Through the People's Red Caravan, communities are mobilised to form cooperatives, prefiguring socialist production.
- Land: Housing and agrarian reform
"Land" in our context demands housing justice and land redistribution, countering colonial dispossession. The Freedom Charter’s call for land to be re-divided among those who work it remains unfulfilled, with 72% of land still controlled by a small white capitalist minority. South Africa faces a housing backlog of at least 2.2 million units, with over 80% of households earning below R26,000 monthly unable to afford formal homes - only one house exists per 3.3 such families. Nearly 30% live in subsidised housing, but informal settlements persist due to market-driven development.
Rural areas suffer from unequal land ownership, with white monopolies controlling vast tracts of land. The Red October Campaign pushes for a referendum to resolve the land question and ensure land justice through restitution, redistribution, and state support with productive equipment and technical capacity. The People’s Red Caravan engages these communities in demand for expropriation without compensation, echoing Lenin's agrarian decrees. By linking urban evictions to rural poverty, we build a unified working-class front.
- Peace: Safety and healthcare for all
"Peace" encompasses safety from violence and access to healthcare, both undermined by capitalist inequality. Crime remains rampant, with housebreaking as the top household offence in 2024/25. South Africa tops Africa's crime index, with sexual offences nearly tripling since 2020/21. While some violent crimes dropped in Q1 2025 compared to 2024, the crisis stems from poverty, not individual morality. The Red October Campaign calls for strengthening the fight against crime and corruption, including ensuring that the commission probing criminal and political interference in the justice system delivers clear outcomes to strike a blow against these issues. Safety requires eradicating root causes through socialist redistribution.
On healthcare, emphasis falls on the NHI, signed into law in May 2024. The Red October Campaign explicitly prioritises accelerating NHI implementation to guarantee universal access to quality healthcare, as envisioned in the Freedom Charter. Implementation progresses amid challenges, with R9.9 billion allocated for 2025/26 in the National Department of Health's Annual Performance Plan, aiming for universal coverage by pooling funds across public and private sectors. Phase III, extended to 2024/25, focuses on piloting integrated systems in selected districts, but faces hurdles like funding shortfalls, resistance from the ANC’s allies in the Government of National Unity, other private providers like medical aid schemes, and the need for robust digital infrastructure to manage claims and prevent fraud.
As of October 2025, early rollouts in provinces like Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal have shown promise in expanding primary care access, yet gaps persist in rural areas where clinics remain understaffed and undersupplied. This hybrid public-private model, while transitional, underscores the revolutionary potential of decommodifying health - transforming it from a profit-driven commodity into a universal right, as envisioned in the Freedom Charter's clause on "free medical care and hospitalisation" for all.
The NHI’s advancement is a core pillar of this year's Red October Campaign, which links healthcare to the broader struggle for the Freedom Charter’s unfulfilled goals. The Red October Campaign's launch explicitly called for accelerating the NHI rollout as part of the Freedom Charter’s implementation, exposing how neoliberal delays perpetuate class-based health disparities. The campaign connects NHI to the Freedom Charter’s vision by advocating for quality healthcare for all, alongside demands for safe communities, land justice, and economic emancipation.
The NHI demands the employment and upskilling of thousands of health workers (nurses, doctors, and community health workers) to staff expanded facilities, countering the casualisation of labour in the sector. It also ties to food security through preventive health programs addressing malnutrition, and also, water and electricity by ensuring that clinics have reliable utilities for essential services.
As communists, we view the NHI not as an endpoint but a battleground for full socialisation of healthcare, free from capitalist interference and sabotage, where the working class leads the charge for equitable "peace" in society. The People’s Red Caravan integrates these demands, organising health workers and communities to defend NHI and linking it to campaigns for electrified clinics, water access, and food security through cooperatives, as seen in Motlhabe and Matibidi.
Towards the 2026 Local Government Elections: Building dual power
These issues interconnect, forming the basis for people's power ahead of the 2026 elections. The Red October and People’s Red Caravan campaigns are pivotal, transforming slogans into structures like people's assemblies. The SACP’s decision to contest the 2026 elections independently reflects its commitment to addressing the crisis of working-class representation and opposing neoliberal coalitions that undermine the national democratic revolution. Local government controls essential services, making it a battleground for socialist advances. Yet, we must guard against co-optation, combining electoral tactics with mass action.
October is a catalyst for revolution. By adapting "Bread, Land, Peace" to demand jobs, housing, safety, and healthcare, we honour our history while forging the future. Through the SACP’s Red October Campaign and People’s Red Caravan, we deepen the struggle for the Freedom Charter’s unfulfilled goals, building the power for 2026 and socialism. Forward, comrades - the struggle continues!
Cde Aviwe Rapelang Mohapi is the National Education Officer at NEHAWU, a writer and political activist.
RED OCTOBER
Red Brigades escalate Red October campaign to blood donation
Lizwi Gegula
For a sustainable healthcare system where lives are saved, and inspired by the People’s Red Caravan – a story of our movement’s veteran photographer, Comrade Randy Pieterse
The SACP’s Red October Campaign comes just a month before the festive season — a season that often witnesses a surge in road accidents, placing immense strain on the country’s blood bank, managed by the South African National Blood Service (SANBS). During this time, the demand for blood peaks, and more donors are usually needed to help save lives on an urgent basis.
While the basic purpose of blood donation is the preservation of life, for communists and the Red Brigades, the act of giving blood carries deeper ideological significance.
This year’s Red October campaign coincides with the People’s Red Caravan (PRC) — a concept rooted in building self-sustainable, self-reliant communities that take charge of their future. The PRC encourages communities to develop collective solutions to their challenges and to reduce dependence on the state, while at the same time taking responsibility for the national democratic revolution.
Among those exemplifying this spirit is Comrade Randy Pieterse, a veteran photographer and long-standing activist of our movement. For over a decade, Comrade Randy has donated blood almost every month, exemplifying the communist values of sharing, solidarity, Ubuntu - in the African context and participating in the struggles of the poor and vulnerable.
His consistency reflects a profound understanding that communism, in the African context, is not only a political and economic system opposing capitalist exploitation but also a way of life — one based on mutual care, collective ownership and contribution, including the creation of a classless society that safeguards both humanity and preservation of our environment.
Comrade Randy has persistently challenged the Party’s leadership and members to lead by example in giving — in this instance, through blood donation. He reminds us that our Red October Campaign and the PRC must go beyond rhetoric and lobbying. Both campaigns must integrate practical acts of solidarity that directly improve the material conditions of the working class and poor.
The Red October Campaign continues to focus on struggles for land, housing, food security, jobs for the youth, safety in communities with no violent crimes and extortion, and provisions of adequate healthcare for all — particularly through the realisation of the National Health Insurance (NHI) and the strengthening of the public health system, through sober leadership.
Comrade Randy argues that the Red Brigades and all SACP members can and should contribute even more tangibly to this cause by donating blood — a simple, direct, and life-saving act that reinforces our collective commitment to a sustainable and equitable decommodified healthcare system.
The crisis of neoliberal capitalism — characterised by its high cost of living, deepening inequality, unemployment, corruption, collapse of state capacity and leadership erosion — continues to collapse the quality of public healthcare and compromise the public. The result is the deterioration of health infrastructure and an increased burden on public hospitals.
The result is that the public, the overwhelming majority of whom are the working class and poor, faces the wrath of the austerity measures that are characterised by understaffing and a shortage of medicines in health care institutions. In this context, initiatives such as blood donation campaigns, led by the SACP, should demonstrate not only compassion but practical socialism in reality and action.
As the Red October Campaign continues, and more provinces prepare to roll out the People’s Red Caravan, communists across the country should be encouraged to take up this noble cause. The example set by Comrade Randy Pieterse reminds us that socialism is not only fought for in theory or policy but practised daily through acts of solidarity.
Through collective participation in blood donation drives, SACP members and the Red Brigades, as well as all members and supporters of the working class, can help build a healthcare system that is not only sustainable but that truly relies on its the people.
Socialism is the future, build it now, through people's power, by the people!
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Comrade Lizwi Gegula is the SACP Western Cape Provincial Spokesperson.
PEOPLE’S RED CARAVAN
The PRC – what’s it all about?
The People’s Red Caravan(PRC) is an initiative that is being rolled out nationwide as part of village development.
The PRC was launched on 6 June at Motlhabe Village in the North West. From 21 to 27 July the SACP took the PRC to Matibidi Village in Mpumalanga, and from 20 to 26 October in Mqhekezweni Village in the Eastern Cape, working with the community to address community challenges while championing development at the local level.
The SACP’s all-inclusive programme is aimed at deepening inviolable ties with the people at the community level, where households and individual community members confront the daily challenges imposed by the capitalist system, which organises society based on exploitation of the working class.
The People's Red Caravan is not an act of charity or external provision. It is a process through which members and leaders of the SACP work in and with communities to collectively address and resolve the problems that the communities experience. It is a practice of building alongside the people, not on their behalf.
Rooted in the pursuit of self-empowerment and self-reliance, the Red Caravan initiative rejects disorganising notions of absolute dependency on a "wheelbarrow-like 'delivery' state”.
The SACP's work during The People's Red Caravan focuses on several critical areas, with its prime objective addressing food security, food sovereignty and food production and through this productive activity, while also attending to issues of community safety and security health, education, social services; sports arts and culture, and heritage activities, , and infrastructure work to support these focal areas – water, agricultural infrastructure, sanitation, access roads and other infrastructure.
While the People’s Red Caravan is activated in each identified community through the SACP HQ provincially being stationed, with the relevant provincial and district leadership and Red Brigades for seven days, the initiatives undertaken are designed to ensure ongoing social mobilisation of our communities into collective developmental efforts and sustainability. Already, there are positive fruits borne out of this work in both Motlhabe and Matibidi villages.
In essence, this is a programme that demonstrates, through practical work, what building socialism from the ground at a local level can look like. While the CC will activate the PRC in each of the 9 provinces, the PECs are expected to activate it in every District, and the Districts and expected to activate this in all villages and townships.
PEOPLE’S RED CARAVAN
Accountability and renewal from the ground up
Handover-delivery address by SACP General Secretary Solly Mapaila, Mqhekezweni village, Eastern Cape, 24 October.
Royal House of Mqhekezweni, Inkosi Zwelithobile, Inkosi Nobullai and all the traditional leadership, elders, women, youth, and comrades of the South African Communist Party - receive our revolutionary greetings.
We meet not for ceremony but for accountability and renewal. The People ’s Red Caravan is the living arm of the Party reaching the people, proving that building a socialist future grows through collective work. It is a movement of the organised working class bringing practical change to communities once forgotten.
We honour the Royal House for steadfast leadership amid adversity, the women who kept the fire burning, the youth who carried seedlings, and the elders whose wisdom anchored us. This is people ’s power in practice - unity in action. The SACP came not with empty promises but with tools, solidarity and commitment to rebuild.
Today we account to you – to show what we have done, to hear your voice, and to declare that Mqhekezweni has stood up again. From these hills a new confidence rises. The hands of this village have proved that real freedom is created, not delivered.
The meaning of the People ’s Red Caravan
The PRC is a national programme of the Communist Party to build socialism from the ground up. It is not a government project; it is a people ’s campaign that joins theory with practice.
To feed ourselves is to free ourselves.
To feed ourselves means breaking the chains of hunger and dependency. To free ourselves means liberation in every sphere - from unemployment, ignorance, violence and exploitation. These are not separate fronts but one struggle for human dignity.
Socialist ideas and practices grow not in offices but in the soil of daily life - in the co-operatives we build, the seeds we plant, and the solidarity we live. The Caravan turns Marxism into lived practice: labour joined with learning, discipline with compassion.
Across South Africa the PRC drills boreholes, restores clinics, revives farms, trains youth and reconnects communities with hope. Socialism is not a theory of tomorrow - it is the practice of today, built through people ’s collective effort and democratic ownership.
Why Mqhekezweni was chosen
When the National, Provincial and District leadership of the SACP identified this year ’s Caravan sites, one name shone clearly - Mqhekezweni.
This is the Great Place of King Jongintaba Dalindyebo, where Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela learned service and humility. Yet this historic village faced harsh realities: land degradation, unemployment, poverty, rising crime, and relentless stock theft. Violence had become so severe that even the chief was forced to leave her home for safety - a painful symbol of how insecurity corrodes authority and hope.
Mqhekezweni was chosen so we could confront these conditions and demonstrate renewal through organisation. We came to link the struggle for bread with the struggle for peace - to rebuild order, dignity and production. If the people of Mqhekezweni, guided by their Royal House and organised under the Party, can restore order and rebuild their land, then the entire Eastern Cape can follow. Here, socialism is not a slogan but a working example for our nation.
Restoring security and order
Freedom must include freedom from fear. Working with the Royal House, traditional leaders, elders and MK war veterans, the Party confronted the crisis of safety. Community patrols were revived; ten new patrollers joined those already active. Two hundred whistles were distributed to households to strengthen mutual defence. A memorandum to Bityi Police Station demanded action against rural crime and stock theft, and letters to national and provincial authorities called for lasting support. Lighting repairs began immediately.
This area has suffered over seventy-seven rape cases and several unresolved murders. These are not statistics - they are lives torn apart. We demand a special investigation and the establishment of a satellite police station here in Mqhekezweni. The Party will stand with the Royal House, the women and the youth until justice is done.
Because crime feeds on poverty, our answer must also be economic:
To feed ourselves is to free ourselves - from hunger, from dependence, and from crime.
We will always be with you. We will never again allow this community to be subdued.
Infrastructure and collective work
Through the hands of the people, what seemed impossible became reality. The poultry project stands at an advanced stage of completion, with roofing and fittings continuing. A new borehole supplies the fields through a functioning drip-irrigation system, turning dry ground into productive soil. Fencing and a farm gate protect communal assets. A plan for five priority roads has been finalised, combining state support with community maintenance teams.
Each repair, each trench, each brick laid is an act of liberation. The people have reclaimed their productive capacity and shown that real development is achieved by organised communities, not private contractors. When labour is united under co-operative values, it becomes a tool for freedom.
This is the living spirit of socialism - collective labour, common ownership, and shared prosperity.
Food Security and co-operative livelihoods
The heartbeat of this community is returning to the soil. Twenty thousand spinach seedlings and five hundred potatoes are being planted under irrigation, linked directly to the poultry project, which will supply both eggs and organic manure for vegetable production. Four-hundred-and-seventy layer chickens are ready for housing once final fittings are complete.
The Village Agricultural Co-operative (VAC) Working Group coordinates this effort - managing aggregation, record-keeping and marketing. It is linked to the community-owned store established through the consumer co-operative, ensuring that local produce is sold and consumed within the village itself and beyond, reaching neighbouring communities. This creates a closed, sustainable loop between production and consumption, anchored in co-operative ownership.
Over forty households have been engaged and trained in household food production that ’s combines with communal production through VAC - more households will be engaged in food production. These households will form form the foundation of the VAC network, supplying fresh produce to the community store and strengthening household income. The upcoming Recycling and Compost Initiative with Zabalaza Pathways and SAWPA will train youth to convert waste into fertiliser and income.
This is not aid; it is empowerment. Every seedling, every egg, every kilogram of compost is an act of freedom. Our technical team remains on site to see this work through to completion.
To feed ourselves is to free ourselves - to build a future for our children.
Health, education and social care
The clinic, once silent, now functions with water and light. Doors and windows are repaired; patients are again being served. The Acudetox programme treated dozens before supplies ended. Profiles of vulnerable families have been compiled for housing and welfare assistance. Local schools and early-childhood centres are fenced, cleaned and secure.
The Party also confronted the crisis of gender-based violence through counselling and community dialogues. Every woman must walk freely; every child must grow without fear. Health, education and safety are the pillars of social justice - not privileges of a few. These services must belong to the people, defended by their own collective organisation.
When clinics reopen, classrooms are repaired, and violence is confronted, the community breathes again. This is how socialism appears in daily life - as care, as solidarity, as the collective defence of dignity.
Youth, sports and culture
The voices of the young have returned to these valleys. Soccer and netball finals rekindled local pride. The Arts and Culture Festival brought together dancers and musicians who told their own stories of struggle and hope. A new Working Group on Sports, Youth, Arts and Culture now unites coaches, teachers and artists to keep this energy alive.
In hard times, sport and culture are more than recreation - they are education in discipline, teamwork and identity. Through these, the youth learn to struggle together rather than against one another. They learn that collective success is sweeter than individual survival.
Socialism must also sing and dance; it must lift the spirit while it builds the economy. Here in Mqhekezweni, we have seen how organised sport and creative culture rebuild confidence, dignity and community pride.
Healing the Land
The hills of Mqhekezweni bear deep scars of erosion, yet the land is alive again. Our youth have begun filling gullies, stabilising slopes, and preparing for mass planting of grass and trees. Through youth brigades we will reclaim the soil, slope by slope, until every household becomes a guardian of the environment.
A revolution that ignores the land is a revolution that will starve.
To heal the land is to heal the people. Environmental restoration is part of the class struggle - the fight for water, food and climate justice belongs to the working class. The youth who plant a tree today are sowing the future of socialism tomorrow.
Social infrastructure and community spirit
The hall, the taps and the sports field now stand repaired, but the greatest reconstruction has been spiritual. Women cooked for volunteers; elders blessed the land; children carried seedlings; cadres mixed cement. This unity - hand, heart and mind – is mobilising for socialism from the ground up.
It has reminded us that the most important infrastructure is not built of bricks and pipes but of trust and collective purpose. The People ’s Red Caravan did not merely fix buildings; it revived belief in one another.
PEOPLE’S RED CARAVAN
Profiling for impact: the PRC roadmap
Mokweni Evelyn Mswetsa
Putting Communities First
Community profiling is more than data gathering—it’s a collaborative journey that uncovers local strengths, gaps, and aspirations. For the People’s Red Caravan, profiling shapes mobile services, advocacy campaigns, and resource distribution to match each community’s unique needs. By blending technical analysis with participatory engagement, the Caravan forges trust and crafts interventions that stick.
Marxism-Leninism Perspectives on “Putting Communities First”
“Our people are still living in hunger and poverty, and lack of basic service delivery, such as water, remains a grave concern in this country. What we have is political right and not economic right, hence our people are still living in poverty and without jobs.” — Solly Mapaila
“We Communists are like seeds and the people are like the soil. Wherever we go, we must unite with the people, take root and blossom among them.” — Mao Zedong
Step 1: Clarify Objectives and Scope
Defining clear goals and boundaries keeps profiling focused and actionable. Kick off with questions that pinpoint local priorities:
- Which demographic groups are most underserved?
- What existing community structures can we partner with?
- Which mobile services (health, legal, education) will resonate most?
A tight scope ensures every data point drives program decisions.
Step 2: Compile Secondary Data
Before hitting the field, sketch the baseline profile
- Population size, age distribution, household incomes
- Education levels, employment rates
- Infrastructure access (water, electricity, health facilities)
These figures guide where the Caravan should prioritize stops and which gaps to address first.
Step 3: Engage Community Stakeholders
Profiling thrives on local insight. Host initial meetings with:
- Traditional and elected leaders
- Civil society groups (youth forums, women’s associations, faith networks)
- Service providers (clinics, schools, NGOs)
Early buy-in builds trust and paves the way for seamless collaboration.
Step 4: Conduct Participatory Needs Assessment
Put community voices at the heart of profiling through interactive methods:
- Focus group discussions with diverse cohorts
- Transect walks to observe resources, hazards, and gathering points
- Community mapping to highlight service gaps and social assets
These exercises surface hidden needs and ground the Caravan’s outreach in lived realities.
Step 5: Develop Sectoral Sheets (workstreams) and SWOT Analysis
Distil your findings into concise, one-page briefs for each theme—health, education, livelihoods, justice:
- Strengths (e.g., active youth clubs)
- Weaknesses (e.g., no local clinic)
- Opportunities (e.g., nearby training centres)
- Threats (e.g., seasonal floods)
A consolidated SWOT keeps programming flexible and targeted.
Step 6: Validate and Refine with the Community
Return draft profiles to stakeholder groups for feedback on accuracy and completeness. This step:
- Builds accountability and shared ownership
- Reveals local nuances (festivals, seasonal labor patterns)
- Fine-tunes logistics (best days for events, accessible routes)
Validation turns an outsider’s snapshot into a living, community-endorsed roadmap.
Step 7: Translate the Profile into Action
A robust profile fuels every aspect of the Caravan’s rollout:
- Schedule activities when and where communities naturally gather
- Design service bundles to address top local needs
- Recruit local volunteers and champions for on-site coordination
- Monitor progress and update profiles with fresh insights
This agility ensures the People’s Red Caravan remains responsive and impactful.
When community profiling marries analytical rigour with genuine participation, it ceases to be a mere report—it becomes a revolutionary instrument of empowerment. The People’s Red Caravan’s methodology ensures each stop is informed by collective reflection and shared aspirations, lighting the path toward sustainable, people-driven transformation.
Cde Mokweni Evelyn Mswetsa PEC member in Moses Kotane Province and an educator.
US TARIFF WAR
Understanding Trump’s tariffs: analysis, implications and elements of a response*
Rob Davies
The imposition of Trump’s tariffs in 2025 has transformed the progressive disregard for global trade rules into a total upending of the multilateral rules-based “free” trade system that the US itself crafted during hyperglobalisation's heyday.
South Africa has been singled out for particularly harsh treatment in pursuit of an agenda reaching far beyond conventional trade issues.
Trump’s “America First” trade policy
On 20 January 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing officials to investigate the US's large, persistent trade deficits and recommend measures such as a global supplemental tariff to correct them. The measures that followed were part of an openly declared objective to rebalance global trade in favour of the US.
Original design and calculation
On 2 April – “liberation day” – Trump unveiled country-specific “reciprocal tariffs” on imports from virtually all countries, ranging from 10% to 50%. The novel methodology used each country's US trade deficit share, halved to determine the base rate, with additional loadings based on subjective assessments of "non-tariff barriers" and political considerations.
Application to South Africa
South Africa faced a 30% “reciprocal tariff” despite USTR data showing a US surplus in 2022-2023 and only a 2024 deficit. Even applying the formula to that single deficit suggests a baseline of 20-21%, meaning the 30% rate included approximately 10% loading based on political considerations.
Key Policy Issues Underlying SA’s reciprocal tariff loading
Examining US congressional hearings reveals extreme US grievance over SA's International Court of Justice genocide case on Gaza. The ICJ ruling on "provisional measures" was pivotal in defining the Israeli assault as genocide, now widely acknowledged worldwide.
Absurd allegations of “genocide" against white farmers in South Africa were partly “tit for tat” response to the ICJ case, and partly driven by Make America Great Again “replacement theory” ideology asserting the defence of “European civilisation”. This has made US officials more receptive to South African white far-right delegations than government representatives.
One delegation reported that a “reset” would require:
- Declaring attacks on white farmers a priority crime
- Denouncing the “kill the Boer” song
- Repealing the Expropriation Act with full market value compensation
- Exempting US companies from BEE legislation
Some demands to moderate anti-imperialist foreign policy stances must also be expected.
90-day pause and legal challenges
The announcement caused significant falls in global share prices, leading to a 90-day suspension on 8 April after 75 countries requested negotiations. By late May, a Federal trade court ruled the legal basis invalid, though an Appeal Court later suspended that judgment.
Section 232 "national security" tariffs
Beyond reciprocal tariffs, Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act imposed tariffs on steel and aluminium (extended to all countries at 50% on 4 June), automobiles (25%) and automotive components (25%).
Transactional “deals"
During the pause, bilateral “deals” with the UK, EU, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and South Korea featured transactional character, extension beyond conventional trade matters, and indifference to WTO rules.
No party received exemption from either Section 232 or “reciprocal tariffs” – at best securing partial rate reductions in return for trade and other concessions. Partners paid for "less worse" outcomes, not additional benefits or even a return to the status quo.
The UK’s “Economic Prosperity Deal” (16 June) allowed limited tariff quotas, but UK exports still face 10% "reciprocal" and 25% Section 232 tariffs. The UK offered zero-tariff quotas on US beef and reportedly agreed to facilitate Boeing aircraft purchases. The EU and Japan received discounted 15% auto duties in return for commitments to increase US liquefied natural gas (LNG) purchases and facilitate investments.
These arrangements breach WTO rules, violating tariff bindings, Article 24 and Most-Favoured-Nation principles.
Truce with China
A temporary truce with China – the only retaliating country – saw tariffs partially rolled back after escalation reached 145% (US) and 120% (China). Chinese imports had fallen 34.5% by May 2025. The truce, extended to August 11, established 55% US tariffs and 10% Chinese tariffs with relaxed export restrictions.
Final “reciprocal tariffs” schedule
On 1 August, the revised schedule replaced the original formula with flat rates: 10% for US surplus countries, 15% for deficit countries, with higher rates based on political considerations. Of 54 African countries, 32 face 10%, 18 face 15%, and four face higher rates: Tunisia 25%, Algeria, Libya and South Africa each 30%.
South Africa's 30% rate remains, raising the loading from 10% to 15% above the new 15% baseline.
Immediate impact on SA
Section 232 tariffs devastated South African automotive exports, falling 73% by April and over 80% thereafter. The 30% tariffs on citrus, wine, macadamias and other value-added products will likely sharply reduce volumes and values. Future exports will likely shrink and shift toward unprocessed mineral commodities required by US industries.
Broader impact on Africa
For Africa and the Global South, the main impact falls on value-added and agricultural products competing with US producers, while raw materials remain exempt. Many countries will see exports further skewed toward primary commodities – subtly reimposing a neo-colonial model, reducing the "developing world" to raw material suppliers.
This is reinforced by “critical minerals” deals with Ukraine and Eastern DRC, giving the US favourable access with minimal beneficiation obligations.
Negotiating a "better deal”
South Africa has sought better terms since April, offering to purchase US LNG and blueberries, ease sanitary regulations, and facilitate $3-billion in investments. An "improved offer" was tabled in July, though a US-imposed non-disclosure agreement limits details.
No country has secured exemption from tariffs – only rate reductions for costly concessions. The “art of the deal” is avoiding overpaying for limited commercial value, while monitoring potential demands intruding into economic and foreign policy areas.
Adapting to the new reality
More important than a "better deal” is adapting to reduced US market access and the upending of the “free trade" system. Diversifying to alternative markets faces challenges from increased competition and potential protectionist responses from countries facing import surges.
Diversification to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offers an opportunity but requires a strategic approach. A mercantilist approach of merely dumping products risks backlash.
Advancing industrial policy for structural transformation
Responding to this contested transition to a multipolar order requires advancing higher-impact industrial policy, reconceptualising sectoral strategies developed for a global political economy that no longer exists. For example, the automotive strategy assumed exporting to the Global North via global value chains. An alternative should capture a larger domestic market share using higher tariffs, stricter local content requirements and limiting tradability duty credits.
A higher impact industrial policy must accept that exporting increased value-added products to the developed world is no longer viable, and that regionalism via AfCFTA offers deeper, inclusive industrialisation supporting Regional Value Chains across multiple countries rather than any single national project.
Cde Rob Davies is an SACP Central Committee and Politburo member and a former Minister of Trade and Industry. He is on the advisory council on the Industrial and Trade policy of the African Continental Free Trade Area and the advisory board of the largely Middle East and North Africa-based New Horizons research group.
*This is a condensed version of an input by the author to the 29-31 August Central Committee Meeting. The full article will appear in the 4th Quarter 2025 issue of African Communist.
CAPITAL & LABOUR
Digital Chains: reclaiming workers ’ power in the age of 4IR exploitation
Thabile Lenkwane
If the workplace is no longer confined to a factory or office, then the struggle must also leave those confines. The digital age is shifting the terrain of the class struggle but not its essence. The exploitation remains. It simply wears a sleeker interface.
Under the banner of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), workers are being sold the language of innovation, agility, and "flexibility," yet the material reality is anything but liberating. What is called flexibility by capital is, for the worker, a quiet compulsion. The workday is no longer ending at five; it spills into the evening under the soft tyranny of Teams meetings and late-night WhatsApp instructions. The expectation to be constantly reachable, constantly responsive and constantly performing is becoming normalised, even idealised, in a context where job insecurity hangs heavy over our heads.
For many of us, working from home initially felt like a relief, almost a small victory. As workers from poor and working-class backgrounds, it meant saving on transport costs, navigating fewer unsafe commutes, and spending less on daily survival in the city. It is, in material terms, a welcome shift. However, that relief was short-lived.
The hidden costs of digital labour are revealing themselves: extended hours, unpaid tasks, constant availability, and the quiet but persistent erosion of boundaries between work and life. What feels like a reprieve from the daily grind of physical toil quickly morphs into a more insidious form of exploitation. We are no longer just selling our labour; we are surrendering our time, our space, and our attention without compensation. And because this exploitation is virtual, it appears less brutal. But it is no less violent. It simply wears the mask of flexibility.
Yet behind the screen, a quieter violence is taking root, the deep alienation of the worker from the collective fabric of class consciousness. Marx reminds us that the isolation of the individual from the community is the necessary consequence of the dissolution of the family as the elementary unit of society, and this logic extends into the digital age, where the individual worker is becoming detached not only from the product of their labour, but also from their fellow workers. With no shared break rooms, no picket lines, and no sense of workplace geography, the atomisation of labour is intensifying. The new world of remote work creates the illusion of autonomy while severing the conditions that historically enabled solidarity. As Ellen Meiksins Wood warns, capitalism doesn ’t just transform labour, it "separates people from one another, making relations between them mediated by things." In today ’s context, those “things” are productivity apps, platforms, dashboards, and data streams, all designed to measure but never to care.
This condition of isolation is breeding guilt and self-blame. When one struggles to meet the impossible demands of being always available and perpetually productive, it is the worker who feels inadequate, never the system that is exploiting them. Here, the ideology of the 4IR functions to privatise structural failure. As Silvia Federici powerfully argues in Re-enchanting the World, “capitalism depends on making structural exploitation appear as personal choice or lack of effort”. Workers are being told to work smarter, to manage their time better, to "build their brand" but this is simply the digital form of wage slavery. The historical task of the left is not to romanticise past forms of labour, but to diagnose the current contradictions and organise from where workers actually are: online, isolated, yet still exploited.
The bosses do not need to shout anymore; the algorithm is doing it for them. Surveillance is no longer in the supervisor ’s glare; it ’s in email timestamps, response metrics, and online presence indicators. This is not progress. This is wage theft, disguised as digital evolution.
What we are living through is a deepening of capitalist extraction under new conditions. Marx reminds us that capital is relentless in its search for surplus value, and the 4IR offers it an efficient, frictionless, and unregulated terrain. No need for machines when the worker is the machine. No need for overtime registers when the work is never formally measured. No need for overtime pay when labour is being blended into “output-based” expectations and Key Performance Indicators.
In this reality, labour law is lagging far behind. Our Basic Conditions of Employment Act, as progressive as it once was, is now being outflanked by the sheer speed and subtlety of digital exploitation. It assumes a spatially-bound workplace and fixed hours. It does not account for the creeping expectation that workers must always be “online”, that connectivity equals commitment, and that pushing back is interpreted as laziness, arrogance, or disloyalty.
Unions remain one of the most important vehicles for the working-class, but they too are facing immense pressure to adapt. The rapidly changing nature of work, defined by decentralisation, isolation, and digital platforms, is outpacing traditional organising models. While the bosses are going virtual, so too must our collective resistance. This is not a dismissal of the work unions are doing, it is a call to strengthen their reach, to equip them to protect workers across both physical and digital terrains. Because workers need them now more than ever in inboxes, in app-based workplaces, and wherever labour is extracted without justice.
It is no longer sufficient to speak of the future of work we must speak of the politics of work, because what is at stake is not just a few unpaid hours here and there. What is at stake is the reconfiguration of exploitation itself. What is at stake is the very ability of workers to live full, dignified lives in which time belongs to them, not to their devices, not to their managers, not to capital.
This is the moment where the progressive left, particularly the SACP and the labour movement, must intervene with clarity and courage. The struggle for liberation cannot ignore the technological conditions under which the working class is now being exploited. We need a new wave of working-class mobilisation that demands a “Right to Disconnect” legislation, that mandates the recording and remuneration of after-hours digital labour, and an unflinching ideological programme that names digital overwork as what it is: capitalist theft of workers ’ time.
We also need to politicise the language around hustle culture and grind culture, both of which are quietly normalising the idea that self-exploitation is noble. The worker is being told to brand themselves, sell their skills, stay up later, and stretch themselves thinner. This is not empowerment. This is the internalisation of exploitation, and it must be rejected.
For young workers, especially those from Black working-class communities, this is not just about labour rights. It is about reclaiming our humanity in a system that is increasingly demanding our minds, our attention, and our time without limit and without reward. And unless we collectively push back, organise, legislate, and educate, we are becoming the generation that works the longest hours for the least compensation, all the while being told we are lucky to be employed.
But there is another way. If the struggle is moving into the digital realm, then so too must our organising, our resistance, and our vision. We must build unions that speak the language of algorithms and platforms. We must develop laws that protect not just traditional workers, but platform workers, freelancers, hybrid employees, and all who are selling their labour under precarious digital conditions. And we must advance an unapologetic politics that says: labour is not free, rest is not a privilege, and our time is not for sale.
The future is not being written by capital. It is being contested, and we have every right to shape it. And we will – one email at a time, one meeting at a time, one reclaimed hour at a time.
Cde Thabile Lenkwane is a National Committee member of the YCLSA.
CORRUPTION
Is South Africa a mafia state?
Tom Mhlanga
After the democratic breakthrough thirty-one years ago, many expected a democratic sovereignty for our country, capacitation of the state, and powerful State Owned Enterprises to drive a capable and ethical developmental state to deliver a better life for all.
However, this became a deferred case as we have witnessed self-serving individuals masquerading as leaders who used the very same state for their avaricious agenda. Some even argued that they did not struggle to be poor.
The capacity of the state was corroded by the pursuit of tender opportunities, consolidation of monopoly capital at the expense of the poor, criminal elements and corruption. In a mixed economy like ours, the state, unfortunately, will inevitably always have to procure to some degree from the private sector. Procurement and the outsourcing of services, even without corruption or other irregularities, are liable to be compromised, especially when you have unethical leadership within the governing party and the public sector as a whole.
What went wrong? How does an organisation like the governing party itself become entangled with elements of questionable characters? Perhaps the most fundamental question to ask is: who are these members and leaders of the African National Congress, and do they understand the task at hand, that of building a better life for all through implementation of the party’s policies?
The 16th century philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, in his work The Leviathan, posited that humans are fundamentally greedy beings, driven by insatiable desires and a struggle for survival in a state of nature. Though this argument may not be universally true, Hobbes was proven to be correct by many politicians and pseudo-revolutionaries through their deeds.
The above was further perpetuated by the introduction of the tender systems in South Africa, which has seen many individuals using political power as a means to get rich quickly. This tendency has brought with it an unhealthy contestation for power with several unintended consequences.
Some view positions in the ANC as their stepping ladder to can accumulate wealth when elected. This is because positions in the ANC are seen to be associated with access to tenders and government positions that can be used to influence the allocation of these tenders.
Inadvertently, this behaviour has attracted questionable characters to the organisation who join not because they want to serve the people, but want to use these positions for self-enrichment. Criminals also join and use the organisation for the same reasons.
Access to resources has not only put the ANC into a political abyss, but also brought these criminal elements, resulting in the loss of lives in ANC meetings, and furthermore to those deployed in government, especially those who are seen to be fighting against corruption. Money takes the centre stage in these meetings, and it is difficult to have conferences that are not influenced by this or that allegation of violence and also money used to influence its outcomes, resulting in instability within the ANC.
The other source of unsteadiness within the ANC is the emergence of the selfish interests from monopoly capital, who back different individuals or formations to win a conference. The consequence of monopoly capital greed is to position itself to secure government tenders and ultimately create factional infighting within the organisation and government structures. This phenomenon results in the loss of confidence by the public, and it opens doors for these opportunistic individuals and criminals to also play their part in influencing these outcomes.
Of late, we have witnessed criminal syndicates playing a key role in politics. Some impose and fund their candidates with the hope of getting tenders in return, but the most dangerous ones are those who organise themselves as business forums, dubbed Construction/ Tender Mafias who hijack government tenders, including services, to enrich themselves.
The most shocking thing is that these organised criminal syndicates involve senior politicians and government officials who are usually richer than the organisations they lead. These individuals lead through violence and intimidation in the main. They are ironically feared by the very same people they claim to lead, and those who speak against this tendency are either threatened or killed.
The current KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Police Commissioner has shed some light on this cancer and this has led to the ongoing Madlanga Commission, which seeks to, among other things, get to the bottom of corruption and malfeasance claims that KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner, Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, made in July about the criminal justice system, which also involves some senior politicians.
The revelations so far are quite shocking, proof that we may be unknowingly living under a Mafia State. However, to deal with the problem, the scope of the commission needs to be extended to include political violence and killings in other provinces like Mpumalanga, which has also seen whistleblowers killed without any justice for the victims and their families thus far.
The commission may help in getting to the root of the problem, but what is needed is a system overhaul. The current one is not assisting; instead, it perpetuates the very same problems it seeks to alleviate. The tendering system is corrupted and abolishing it all altogether may save money and lives of those who believe in clean governance.
However, it will be difficult to do away with the open tender system in the current capitalist economy. The only system that can be a solution advocates for putting people before profits. A system that promotes the socialisation of the economy, a broader ownership of the commanding heights of this economy to serve the people. The first step towards this will be the insourcing of services, including workers who are employed through companies that have tenders with the state.
Tom Mhlanga is SACP Media and Liaison Officer in Mpumalanga, and he writes in his personal capacity.
RED READS
Barney Molokoane: “We must die like soldiers”
Extract from Attacking the Heart of Apartheid: The ANC’s MK Special Operations Unit by Yunus Carrim, published by Penguin Random House, 2025
If we must die, then we must die like soldiers … I will not die running away from the police. I will not die from being shot in the back. I will die in battle, and until they shoot me in my forehead the battle will continue. The area where such a battle will occur will be razed by the burnt bushes and grass.
These were the words of the legendary Richard Barney Molokoane (MK names: Buda, Mmutle, Ramanase), Special Ops operational commander. And this is how he actually died – in battle against the security forces in November 1985.
‘Action was his motto. ’
Talented soccer player. Very good guitarist. A wonderful singing voice. A great story-teller. Lively. Full of fun. Charismatic. Friendly. And more. That was Molokoane, born on 27 August 1957 in Tladi, Soweto.
‘He would always be singing, ’ said his brother Pheko (also known as Sullivan). ‘He joined the choir at the Lutheran Church … As a footballer he was nicknamed “JC” after one of the great players in Soweto, Bhelo Wamabalani from Moletsane Real Tigers, one of the best teams in Soweto. ’
He studied in a vocational training centre to be a builder and ‘loved bricklaying ’ .
‘Barney was one hell of a comedian. People, young and old, would gather around him to listen and laugh at his jokes. ’
[He] loved war and action movies with lots of gunfights … these movies inspired him.
He once came with a picture of a poor black boy featured in a newspaper and made a whole speech about how he wanted to end poverty in black communities.
And then one evening, he bought a bag of cornmeal for his mother, went to play football and disappeared. His family heard the next morning that he’d skipped the country. It was during the Soweto uprising.
[There were] unending visits by a convoy of police who would search for Barney and … they pleaded with us, if we see Barney we must inform them … We just made empty promises to that effect and we never told them anything.
Molokwane did military training with over five hundred Soweto students in Angola – the ‘June 16 Detachment’.
In 1978, he was part of an MK unit (not Special Ops) that reconnoitred safe routes into South Africa and tried to set up a permanent MK base in the mountain ranges of the Pilanesberg and Magaliesberg in the Western Transvaal.
On 31 July 1978, nine cadres, including Molokoane, infiltrated the country. But the food supplies by the courier didn ’t arrive. So, on 1 August, Wilfred Marwane (Windy) and Richard Mmapela (Muzorewa) left the base and went to a store in Witkleigat. The owner became suspicious about them because they bought so much tinned food and had a lot of money. Maybe they were the robbers who stole the R700 from his store? He contacted the police. They spotted the cadres and gave chase. A confrontation occurred. Marwane was arrested. Mmapela escaped and the other cadres were exposed.
The counter-insurgency unit came in. Two helicopters joined the search for the cadres, who took cover behind a rocky hill. An intense shoot-out for over three hours took place. After surrounding the ‘koppie the enemy forces tried to advance … Each time they tried they were repelled by a barrage of AK rifle gunfire. Barney hit a white commander in the chest and saw his rifle flying high in the sky. ’ Other security forces were shot. Molokoane was also shot in the leg.
As it grew dark, Molokoane instructed the unit to retreat and cross the border. With his flesh wounds, he crossed the border last, ensuring that the others got away before him. However, John Sekete refused to go back and said he ’d carry on the struggle inside the country. Sekete was arrested a few months later and convicted. Marwane was sentenced to prison and later killed by the security police.
It was Molokoane ’s bravery, battle skills and leadership of the unit in the shoot-out that catapulted him to fame in the ANC. ‘Molokoane was shot in the leg, but he managed to outwit and outmanoeuvre his adversaries during a 200-km retreat to base. ’
As soon as his wounds healed, he was back in the camps in Angola. Soon after he was recruited into Special Ops. The operations he took part in are covered in chapters 3, 5 and 19.
Matyobeni says:
Barney was my friend. We played soccer in the same team. He was very talkative and didn ’t mince his words. If he doesn ’t agree with you, it doesn ’t matter who you are. Because of the operations he was involved in, Barney was taken as a hero wherever he was. When you sit and talk to him, he doesn ’t even worry about those things. But he looks at you, talks to you as comrades, and mingles with you. You won ’t feel that you are with a commander. He was down to earth. You didn ’t have to bring tea for him or whatever. Barney was like us – and could take turns for everything. He will motivate you to be a fighter … He was very gifted. Barney was everything.
He says Molokoane should have taken over from Obadi, but he was not ‘hungry for positions. He wanted to be inside to carry out operations. That’s why we went with him.’
Molokoane was quintessentially a man of action who wanted to be in the field commanding operations. It ’s unlikely he would have wanted to play the role of being an overall commander.
Marion Sparg says: Meeting people like Barney, I suppose, only strengthened my resolve to be deployed in South Africa. I have vivid memories of sitting under thorn trees at night where everyone gathered around when he played his guitar and we sang.
Kasrils: Barney had the gift of the gab so when he gave you the operational story, you have it with such expressions! It was his mouth and his hands working as he explained, and he just was phenomenal.
Pheko: He was an upright character, very respectful, a thorough disciplinarian. He was also a ladies ’ man, from what I heard.
He was ‘particularly fond of the rigours of survival courses, which he believed prepared him for any contingency.’
Rashid spoke highly of Molokoane. But he says, with some amusement:
I got Barney to work with me in loading the Grad-P rocket launcher for the Voortrekkerhoogte operation. After two nights he was complaining that he hadn ’t slept. I thought, now Barney, you are the great guerrilla leader … He felt his job was to execute the operation, the rest was mine. I thought he needed to know exactly which bolt to undo in which order so that he could get the weapon out safely and not damage it.
But Rashid was very clear that Molokoane was a huge credit to the struggle and his death a big loss. He was seen as a hero and loved by everybody, he says.
In armed revolutionary struggles globally, leaders who die heroically in battle are, understandably, often over-eulogised. Myths about them are created (sometimes subconsciously). Their inadequacies and weaknesses are swept away. Their examples are extolled to inspire others, often youth, to fight heroically and give their lives too if necessary. He has become a legend.
But he must have had his faults. None surfaced though. Except that he could be too much a man of action, maybe too adventurous, maybe too daredevilish.
If Molokoane ’s role in MK is mythologised, it ’s probably closer to the reality than in many other cases. Certainly, he comes across as universally popular, admired and respected. And he ’s one of the most famous MK soldiers of the post-76 generation.
His role has been commemorated several times in meetings and in other forms, including by the Department of Military Veterans. In partnership with Freedom Park on 28 November 2020, DMV organised a commemoration, laying wreaths on his grave at the Avalon cemetery in Soweto and engraving his name on the Freedom Park wall of major freedom fighters.
In Bethal there ’s a street named after Molokoane and in Orange Farm a clinic. And recognition elsewhere in several places too.
In 2004, the Presidency gave Molokoane the Order of Mendi in Gold at the National Orders Awards to acknowledge his ‘inspiring leadership, his exceptional bravery and readiness to risk his life fighting for liberation …’
His death was ‘the most touching, moving and inspiring event, ’ said Sunny Singh, who saw Molokoane shortly before his death.
This was part of Special Ops. When you talk about a soldier prepared to give his life, that ’s Barney!
Cde Yunus Carrim is an SACP Central Committee and Politburo member and former ANC MP.
ECONOMIC GROWTH
Competition legislation is essential for inclusive growth
Khwezi Mabasa
Economist Dawie Roodt published an article on 12 October calling for the Competition Commission to be shut down. He argues that this regulatory entity is stifling growth, and it should be closed so that South Africa can transition towards a purely market-led economy.
Roodt justifies his proposition by stating that economic policy-makers should rather focus on removing restrictive labour laws, addressing poor service delivery and improving what he describes as a “dangerous policy environment”. This market fundamentalist perspective is not based on evidence or serious engagement with researched literature on structural socio-economic inequality in the country. The evidence on market structure trends and competition policy developments since the early 1990s challenges his view on the following grounds.
Firstly, several Competition Commission investigations and market inquiries reveal that companies’ violation of competition legislation has had adverse effects on consumers and smaller enterprises. The negative outcomes include exorbitant basic goods price increases, creating market access barriers for small companies, undermining localisation and cementing market concentration in different sectors. Both domestic and international market competition trends literature sources highlight how these violations are deepening inequality in the economy.
Secondly, Roodt’s articulations are based on a limited conception of economic competitiveness. He reduces competition law and policies to creating deregulated markets where private actors can collude and operate freely with minimal regulation. This is not in line with international policy practice or even the country’s constitution. Competition policy is used to achieve broader positive socio-economic outcomes, which extend beyond Roodt’s proposition.
These include lowering the costs of basic goods, ensuring fair market access, increasing localisation, supporting racial redress, employment creation or protection and addressing collusive behaviour by dominant large companies. Hence, the South African Competition Act contains detailed public interest clauses underpinned by a wider conception of economic competitiveness. Recent market inquiries, such as the ones undertaken in the health and grocery retail sectors, illuminate how competition legislation can be used to achieve the public policy interests stated above. The narrow conception articulated in Roodt’s view is not conducive to addressing the country’s structural socio-economic inequalities.
Thirdly, Roodt advances a case for minimal interference in private sector economic activity. He believes that this will automatically stimulate enhanced economic growth and efficiencies. The market-led paradigm expressed in his perspective has not produced the desired human development goals in South Africa and abroad. Trickle-down economic policy orientation has deepened inequality, joblessness and poverty, and exacerbated the ecological crisis across the world. Even proponents of market primacy in development planning, such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) conceded that their Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAP) imposed on several countries produced negative socio-economic impacts.
These economic policy reforms were based on the same logic articulated in Roodt’s proposition. There has been a shift in development policymaking that appreciates the centrality of the state’s roles in addressing market failures and externalities. Government regulation, policy support, ownership and fiscal expenditure are accepted as key growth drivers. Additionally, several cases illuminate why government regulatory oversight is essential for preventing economic crises. A stark example is the global financial crisis that emerged as a result of minimal regulation in property markets.
In summary, unfettered market-led development leads to concentrated ownership, increases in market access barriers, higher living costs, unemployment, as well as collusive behaviour. The call for dismantling the Competition Commission overlooks these outcomes, which reproduce economic inequality in several ways.
Dr Khwezi Mabasa is an activist and Wits Lecturer.
SHANGHAI COOPERATION ORGANISATION
The SCO and Brics – the power shift from the Global North to the Global South
Seitebaleng Alfred Dikole
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is an Eurasian political, economic and international security organisation of ten member states. It was established in 2001 by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In June 2017, it expanded to eight states with India and Pakistan. Iran joined the group in July 2023, and Belarus in July 2024. Several countries have been accorded observer status.
The SCO held an important and historic summit in which there was a fusion of Eurasian economic strength into global governance. The SCO has witnessed China, Russia and India getting much closer. The result of the SCO, as we saw at the very end in the trilateral handshaking of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi, is that India is likely to receive gross distortion from the Collective West.
The West has just been given a rude awakening by the Global South wherein old world order was practically buried in China. Xi, Putin and Modi have led calls in Tianjin for a UN-centred, multipolar system, as Eurasian blocs tighten and the EU is sidelined. The latest gathering of the SCO in Tianjin looks at first like another summit -handshakes, family portraits, scripted statements. But the meeting on August 31-September 1 is more than diplomatic theatre: it is another marker of the end of the unipolar era dominated by the US, and the rise of a multipolar system centred on Asia, Eurasia and the Global South. Reality of the matter is that both China, India and Russia together represent more than a third of humanity and 3 of largest countries on Earth.
President Xi unveiled a broad Global Governance Initiative, including a proposed SCO development bank, cooperation on artificial intelligence and financial support for developing nations. Putin described SCO as a vehicle for genuine multilateralism and called for an Eurasian security model beyond Western control. Modi’s presence – his first visit to China in years and the powerful optics around his meeting with Putin – signalled that India is willing to be seen as part of this emerging order.
Critics might be quick to characterise this as a platform for photo shoots but this is far much bigger than that. Xi is promoting an order that democratises global governance and reduces dependence on US-centred finance, wherein less dollar dependency and more regional institutions are to be under collective championship. By calling China a partner rather than a rival, Modi signalled resistance to being locked into Washington’s anti-China agenda.
More than 20 non-Western leaders were in the room with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, endorsing the event organisation, not a club meeting in shadows, but a UN-centred frame at a China-led forum.
Beijing’s line is blunt by calling for rejection of the Cold War mentality and championship of the UN system as the only universal legal baseline. This is a clear contrast to Nato's expansionist policy that is totally more violent and oppressive to human development and civilisation. Many of us who are well conversant with the significant role played by the ANC and its alliance at the international level will be more concerned and make comparisons of development in the global South. White racist political parties led by the Democratic Alliance(DA) play a destructive role at the international level to destroy the sterling contributions that South Africa has made at the international level, ranging from Brics, the Ukraine crisis, Israel’s genocide and others. At the local level, mass demonstrations, campaigns play a very critical role in the renewal of international struggle.
In this paper it is important to elucidate the distinction between Nato and its relating formations from the SCO and its related institutions. We also want to bring an argument that calls for South Africa to affiliate with the SCO more particularly when its entire objective is more on peace, security and global governance. International struggle must be waged through participation within all formations that are recognised and South Africa continues to make sterling contributions which are underpinned by a valuable role in international formations during the Cold War and post-Cold War.
Nato was formed as an anti-communist formation that was intended to fight against the existence of the Soviet Union and its historical mission. The Soviet Union also established the Warsaw Pact as a counter to Nato. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Nato started to expand to the former socialist countries such as Estonia, Lithuania and Poland. Commitments were made that it would not expand to Russia's borders and to respect the sovereignty of Russia. Initially, Russia was given observer status at Nato and it was barred from membership application. It is notoriously known for undermining the United Nations as a body by bombing Yugoslavia, killing Muamar Gaddafi in Libya. This was not a mistake at all, but an intended activity that seeks to promote collective Western aggression against peaceful settlements. It is a military wing of the G7 countries, the Bretton Woods institutions, as well as the European Union.
Nato is currently facing both political and economic crisis that were manifested as a result of the Ukrainian Crisis. It is vividly clear that Nato wanted to expand to the Russian borders, although red lines that were established by the Kremlin. Instead of promoting its arrogant and imperialist interests, the war in Ukraine exposed the crisis of Nato as a Western military alliance.
Firstly, the US withdrew its more than fifty-year funding policy for Nato and called on member states increase defence and security spending to 5% of their GDP. Throughout its formation, it has been relying on the US for its actual survival. It has a duty now to spend billions on the security system at a time when there is a sheer economic meltdown emerging from spending on the Ukrainian war. The living conditions of European society are currently facing decline at the most catastrophic demise. The EU, on the other hand, is a champion of imperialism within the economic context. It has imposed many sanctions since 2022 with the intention to reduce the financial capacity of Russia, but instead the Russian economy grew by five per cent of GDP. It has failed to threaten India and China from buying Russian oil, and we are at a critical stage wherein it is facing US tariffs that are impacting badly on its economy. All these activities of aggression by Nato were (and remain) the actual championship of imperialism.
The Western world is still recovering from the result of the SCO summit in Tianjin. The bare minimum that is acknowledged is that its outcomes formalise multipolarity, which was made a powerful statement with a new quality of relations among the leading trio of Russia, China and India.
Perhaps the most critical aspect of the new situation is India’s role, which, under immense tariff pressure from Donald Trump, is forced to decisively align with the Global South and East to which it inherently belongs. The nearly 1,5 billion strong nation, leading the world's growth, visibly tips the geopolitical scales in favour of the coalition of non-Western countries.
Leaders of the Brics countries continue to discuss cooperation in relation to trade, economic, financial, investment and other spheres, taking into account the current situation in the global economy.
Collective leadership of the Global South have applauded. Inevitably embraced, as well as made an unwavering commitment to the proposal of Global Governance Initiative. This entails firm conviction that the initiative came at the right time.
The Concept Paper on the Global Governance Initiative points out, the current international landscape is undergoing changes and turbulence. The UN and multilateralism are being challenged. The deficit in global governance continues to grow. The existing international institutions have shown three deficiencies:
- First, serious underrepresentation of the Global South. The collective rise of emerging markets and developing countries necessitates boosting the representation of the Global South and redressing historical injustice.
- Second, erosion of authoritativeness. The purposes and principles of the UN Charter have not been effectively observed. Resolutions of the UN Security Council have been challenged. Unilateral sanctions, among other practices, have violated international law and disrupted the international order
- Third, urgent need for greater effectiveness
Western bullies have found their match wherein the Brics countries are showing their irrepressible poles emerging in this multipolar world. The world can no longer ignore the voice of China, Russia and India, whether as a troika or on a multilateral platform, when they get together and speak with one voice. This is a resounding message that the powerful trio of Russian President Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping communicated in unmistakable terms to US President Donald Trump and the US-led West at the Shanghai Cooperation Orgarnization’s summit in Tianjin. This marks a new and resolute response to the tariff wars and sanctions that have been unleashed, with threats of worse to follow by the US against the rest of the world, particularly against major countries of the Global South. The Tianjin Troika -as India, China, and Russia have come to be known-represents the world’s most populous countries and their markets with immense potential. All three economies have resilience to reject and resist the tariffs and sanctions. Therefore, it is no surprise when they joined hands to stand up to the US bullying.
Many countries in the Global South are looking the both Brics and the SCO for new global ties. Since South Africa is a founding member of Brics, it must automatically join the SCO and participate equally and effectively, particularly on matters relating to peace and security. The South African defence and military industrial complex must cut ties with the Western-led security system that is destructive and parasitic to the country. Already there are major defence collaborations within Brics nations, and therefore South Africa has to develop its niche within the framework of building a peaceful and prosperous region.
It will be important for South Africa to apply for observatory status at the SCO with the intention to acclimatise itself with its entire historical mission with the expectation to make effective and sterling contributions thereof. The reality of the matter is that the Tianjin summit confirmed that the SCO is no longer narrowly focused on security cooperation. Instead, it has become a comprehensive regional-and increasingly global organisation with a mandate covering economics, development, cultural exchange and governance reform. This breadth of activity helps explain why its profile is on the rise. Despite its expansion, it is not a hegemonic bloc, in the sense that member states champion their national interests and differences within the organisation. The most inevitable contradiction that is on display is Turkey holding both SCO and Nato membership.
At a time when Western capitals increasingly seek to drive wedges among the developing powers, such encounters highlight the SCO’s capacity to promote reconciliation and strengthen unity. It is now becoming a venue not only for multilateral agreements but also for healing divides and fostering trust. The Tianjin summit was not simply ceremonial. Leaders approved the SCO Development Strategy for 2026-2035, settling out the organisation’s long-term trajectory and issued the Tianjin Declaration, alongside more than 20 additional documents covering security cooperation, economic initiatives, cultural exchanges and institutional reforms. A landmark decision was the creation of an SCO development bank intended to accelerate infrastructure construction and support social and economic progress across the region. China also made significant financial commitments by giving 2 billion yuan this year. Four new SCO centres will be established to strengthen cooperation against security threats, transnational crime, cyber attacks and drug trafficking. These measures showed that the SCO is not a forum of empty declarations. It is delivering tangible benefits for its members and demonstrating how South-South cooperation can generate real results. At the political level, the summit confirmed SCO’s ambition to influence the shape of the global governance fight
In conclusion, the SCO is an important weapon to reinforce the multipolar programme that is been driven by the Global South. The Global North has been threatened by the rude awakening of the Global South within organisational and institutional arrangements. It was not accidental for Donald Trump to characterise SCO summit as a gathering that is intended to fight against the overall interests of the US. African countries and existing institutions must analyse the outcome of the Tianjin summit and develop interests more particularly on the Global Governance Initiative that had received overwhelming support. It serves as a framework for engagements of all countries in the South solely for the developmental agenda. Nato remains a formation that is war-driven and profit-driven, with interests to evade human civilisation and development
Cde Seitebaleng Alfred Dikole is the 2nd Provincial Secretary of SACP in Moses Kotane Province.
WEST ASIA
The Syrian tragedy
Faiza Mohamed
Fantine earned too little. Her debts had increased. The Thénardiers, who were not promptly paid, wrote to her constantly letters whose contents drove her to despair, and whose carriage ruined her. One day they wrote to her that her little Cosette was entirely naked in that cold weather, that she needed a woollen skirt, and that her mother must send at least ten francs for this. She received the letter, and crushed it in her hands all day long. That evening she went into a barber's shop at the corner of the street, and pulled out her comb. Her admirable golden hair fell to her knees. ‘What splendid hair! ’ exclaimed the barber. ‘How much will you give me for it? ’ said she. ‘Ten francs. ’ ‘Cut it off. ’ She purchased a knitted petticoat and sent it to the Thénardiers. This petticoat made the Thénardiers furious. It was the money that they wanted. They gave the petticoat to Éponine. The poor Lark continued to shiver. (From Victor Hugo ’s Les Misérables)
Ala’ has never heard of Victor Hugo – never heard of Les Misérables – and most definitely has never heard of Fantine, yet unbeknownst to her, today she is Syria ’s Fantine.
Poverty has struck everywhere in Syria. Years of war, choking sanctions and unforgiving mentors all lead to the destitution of the majority of people. In the governorate of Lattakia – the stronghold of a previous era – people, at best, are wary. Years of war had taken their toll on almost everyone, and when 2025 arrived, bringing with it great upheaval and change, some felt that they had at least the right to be hopeful.
On 5 May 2025, 54-year-old Ilham walked into the closest hairdressing salon to where she lived bringing with her 18-year-old, daughter. Ilham lives in Lattakia, next to the passport and immigration centre. Her daughter Ala’ had thick, long, black hair – beautiful like Fantine ’s hair in the famous novel, but of a different colour – an asset in times of need. She approached the hairdresser with her daughter in tow and asked how much she would get for selling her daughter ’s hair.
This real story has a happier ending than Hugo ’s novel. The women in the salon intervened and offered payment to Ilham to save her daughter ’s hair. So, it all ended. But it didn ’t.
The family of Ala ’ are amongst thousands of other families across Syria who share similar circumstances. Ala ’s father is a retired Arabic teacher. Her mother, a retired army personnel member since 2013, no longer has a pension! Ala ’s mother now works in gathering basil leaves, drying them and selling them for a paltry sum. The family has taken a nosedive financially since the start of 2025. Securing daily food has become a target in itself. With kidnappings rife in the coastal area, possessing a mobile in this day and time is a necessity and not a luxury – so when 18-year-old Ala ’ wanted to purchase a mobile, a simple basic mobile, her mother knew it was well beyond the family ’s capacity.
On 6 March this year, military posts belonging to the general security in the coastal area were attacked by unknown assailants. Later on, it was discovered that ex-army personnel were responsible for the attacks that resulted in the deaths of 125 men from the general security, according to SOHR (Syrian Observatory for Human Rights). No accurate figure was given by the interim government in Syria.
In response, a wave of sectarian hatred erupted across Syria, with mosques calling for Jihad against the Alawites. From many Syrian governorates, mobs mobilised themselves and sped towards the coastal areas. Armed factions, too, that had recently joined the Syrian Ministry of Defence, concentrated their presence around the coastal areas. What followed was a genocide in all ways. Alawite villages were attacked, and Alawite civilians – men, women, children, the elderly and even the handicapped – were massacred. Their sect was their crime. The massacres started on the seventh of March 2025 and continued until 11 March, quietening down in due time but never stopping.
SOHR has put down the number of Alawite victims to be around 2,000, but up to the day of writing this article, the massacres continue. The Syrian government, up to this day, is unable to secure the safety of civilians in these areas. Crimes happen and go unpunished due to the lack of General Security Soldiers. By the time they are called and arrive, the perpetrators have fled. Kidnappings of men, and mainly women, have become a common occurrence. A lot of the blame is placed on the foreign fighters, though the Ministry of Defence has announced on its official website, more than once, that all military factions have merged within the new Syrian Army. The latest of which was the merging of 3,500 Uyghur soldiers within the Syrian Arab Army (maybe no longer so Arab!).
On the ground, this doesn ’t seem to be the case. Foreign fighters have their own posts and their own commands with a lot of skirmishes happening between them and the General Security Soldiers. Orders issued by the Ministry of Defence are not given much importance by the foreign fighters and are more often not heeded at all. This has resulted in creating an atmosphere laden with threats and insecurities, which brings us back to Ala ’s mobile.
Young Ala ’ felt the need to buy a mobile as a sort of safety measure – a talisman against kidnappings and murder. She was willing to sell what was most precious to her – her beautiful hair – for that purpose.
Ala ’ is not the only young woman who has resorted to this solution. Many young women across Syria, from all governorates, have sold their hair for essentials and not luxuries. They are the many Fantines of Syria!
Faiza Mohammed is the pen name of a Syrian-based activist.
Umsebenzi Online is an online voice of the South African working class
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