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Workers and Socialist Party
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Workers and Socialist Party
The Workers and Socialist Party (WASP) is a Marxist and Trotskyist political party in South Africa affiliated to International Socialist Alternative.
WASP began life as the Marxist Workers Tendency (MWT), operating inside the African National Congress (ANC) from 1979. The MWT was founded by activists who had helped build independent trade unions and participated in the 1973 Durban strike wave and youth from the Black Consciousness movement. Active both in exile and within South Africa the MWT was an affiliate of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI) participating with them in the struggle for socialism worldwide. This included fighting for direct links between the international labour movement and South Africa's emerging independent trade unions that later formed the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).
The MWT published the journal Inqaba Ya Basebenzi in exile for circulation underground in South Africa between 1981 and 1990 and later, following the ANC's unbanning, the newspaper Congress Militant published inside the country.
The MWT raised the slogan "For a mass ANC on a socialist programme" with no illusions that the pro-capitalist ANC leadership would ever commit to a socialist programme. Rather, the MWT oriented toward the ANC because at that stage the mass of the working class looked toward it for unity in the struggle against apartheid. But the MWT explained that the only way genuine national liberation and economic freedom for the black working class majority could be achieved, including the Freedom Charter’s demands for free education, free healthcare, welfare and workers’ rights, was on the basis of a socialist revolution and the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy - the banks, the mines, the commercial farms, big factories and big businesses - under democratic working class control.
The MWT worked for the independent organisation of the working class within the ANC and openly criticised the leadership. This resulted in four of its leading members' suspension in 1979 and expulsion from the ANC without a hearing in 1985.
In 1996 the MWT left the ANC when it adopted in government the neo-liberal Growth Employment and Redistribution policy (GEAR). The MWT believed that the working class would increasingly come into conflict with the ANC leadership as it embraced the maintenance of capitalism and worked to demobilise the mass movement that had forced the end of apartheid by subordinating Cosatu within the Tripartite Alliance under the influence of the anti-socialist ideas of the South African Communist Party. The MWT’s perspective anticipated that developments toward independent working class organisation would increasingly take place outside of the ANC and in direct opposition to it. In recognition of this changed situation, in 1996, the MWT, after briefly reconstituting itself outside the ANC as Socialist Alternative, became the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM).
In 2009 the DSM met a group of more than 4,000 workers from Aquarius Platinum’s Kroondal shafts which were then managed by Murray & Roberts (M&R). These workers had been dismissed after a wage strike in August 2009 after the Cosatu-affiliated National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) obtained a strike certificate, then cut a deal with management behind the workers’ backs. The DSM was able to push the M&R workers’ dismissal case through the Labour Court. The M&R workers had already elected a strike committee which held weekly mass meetings. A number of workers, including strike committee members, joined DSM and founded the DSM’s first mineworkers’ branch at Kroondal in Rustenburg.
The DSM developed a perspective recognising that the ‘love-triangle’ between the mine bosses, the ANC government and the NUM leadership was pushing the mineworkers ahead of most workers into facing-up to the co-option of their organisations and the betrayals of their leaders. The Kroondal DSM branch together with DSM’s national office in Johannesburg took part in and supported the struggles around Rustenburg in the following years including the Lonmin workers when they went on strike at the Karee shafts in 2011, and the Impala workers who took strike action in January 2012.
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Workers and Socialist Party
The Workers and Socialist Party (WASP) is a Marxist and Trotskyist political party in South Africa affiliated to International Socialist Alternative.
WASP began life as the Marxist Workers Tendency (MWT), operating inside the African National Congress (ANC) from 1979. The MWT was founded by activists who had helped build independent trade unions and participated in the 1973 Durban strike wave and youth from the Black Consciousness movement. Active both in exile and within South Africa the MWT was an affiliate of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI) participating with them in the struggle for socialism worldwide. This included fighting for direct links between the international labour movement and South Africa's emerging independent trade unions that later formed the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu).
The MWT published the journal Inqaba Ya Basebenzi in exile for circulation underground in South Africa between 1981 and 1990 and later, following the ANC's unbanning, the newspaper Congress Militant published inside the country.
The MWT raised the slogan "For a mass ANC on a socialist programme" with no illusions that the pro-capitalist ANC leadership would ever commit to a socialist programme. Rather, the MWT oriented toward the ANC because at that stage the mass of the working class looked toward it for unity in the struggle against apartheid. But the MWT explained that the only way genuine national liberation and economic freedom for the black working class majority could be achieved, including the Freedom Charter’s demands for free education, free healthcare, welfare and workers’ rights, was on the basis of a socialist revolution and the nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy - the banks, the mines, the commercial farms, big factories and big businesses - under democratic working class control.
The MWT worked for the independent organisation of the working class within the ANC and openly criticised the leadership. This resulted in four of its leading members' suspension in 1979 and expulsion from the ANC without a hearing in 1985.
In 1996 the MWT left the ANC when it adopted in government the neo-liberal Growth Employment and Redistribution policy (GEAR). The MWT believed that the working class would increasingly come into conflict with the ANC leadership as it embraced the maintenance of capitalism and worked to demobilise the mass movement that had forced the end of apartheid by subordinating Cosatu within the Tripartite Alliance under the influence of the anti-socialist ideas of the South African Communist Party. The MWT’s perspective anticipated that developments toward independent working class organisation would increasingly take place outside of the ANC and in direct opposition to it. In recognition of this changed situation, in 1996, the MWT, after briefly reconstituting itself outside the ANC as Socialist Alternative, became the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM).
In 2009 the DSM met a group of more than 4,000 workers from Aquarius Platinum’s Kroondal shafts which were then managed by Murray & Roberts (M&R). These workers had been dismissed after a wage strike in August 2009 after the Cosatu-affiliated National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) obtained a strike certificate, then cut a deal with management behind the workers’ backs. The DSM was able to push the M&R workers’ dismissal case through the Labour Court. The M&R workers had already elected a strike committee which held weekly mass meetings. A number of workers, including strike committee members, joined DSM and founded the DSM’s first mineworkers’ branch at Kroondal in Rustenburg.
The DSM developed a perspective recognising that the ‘love-triangle’ between the mine bosses, the ANC government and the NUM leadership was pushing the mineworkers ahead of most workers into facing-up to the co-option of their organisations and the betrayals of their leaders. The Kroondal DSM branch together with DSM’s national office in Johannesburg took part in and supported the struggles around Rustenburg in the following years including the Lonmin workers when they went on strike at the Karee shafts in 2011, and the Impala workers who took strike action in January 2012.