This 2004 election poster of the Socialist Party of Azania features party president Lybon Mabasa.

ILC: What are the main features of the situation in South Africa/ Azania today?

Mabasa: The main features of the situation in Azania today cannot be looked at without going back to the 1994 Codesa Kempton Park settlement, which was the instrument that led to the election of Nelson Mandela as president. He was the first president who was not white of the Republic of South Africa.

Among the most important points of this settlement was the property clause, which gave in essence the white people, the former colonizers, a total right to the property of lands and enterprises in South Africa. It negated the historical struggles of the Black people, struggles that called for "Black majority rule," for the creation of a republic that represents the nation, which would be a Black Republic, for the return of the wealth of the nation to the Black majority, wealth which over many years has been in white hands.

ILC: What is the balance sheet of this settlement today?

Mabasa: Today there is a new situation. We have a government with a majority whose faces are not Black. But it is a situation where unemployment is even greater than during the apartheid regime, where the present division of land actually is much worse than it was under the apartheid regime.

At the Government Summit of 2005, government officials acknowledge that the agrarian reform has only been performed on 4 percent of the land; they themselves say that more than 80 percent of the land is still owned by 62,000 white families, white institutions or white interests.

Also at Codesa there was an agreement about a lockout trust that reversed the victories that have been won by the labor movement in the process of struggle. The lockout trust's effect is to make sure that the bosses are totally in control of the workplaces during strikes. It allows the bosses to bring in scab labor, and therefore it makes it even more difficult for the demands of the trade unions to be met.
Among other things, the 40-hour week, which was won through the struggle of the working class, today is gone. It's now legal to have workers work up to 60 hours without even be regarded as overtime.

ILC: How is the resistance, the fightback of the people - especially of the Black working class - expressing itself under those conditions?

Mabasa: The growth of the labor movement in South Africa that was expressed around 1994-1995 - a time of great activity and labor growth after the new dispensations - has dissipated. Suddenly the number of union members went down. Suddenly there were fewer strikes because people wanted to give the new government a chance to transform the country.

Given that privatization has stolen so many jobs from so many people, particularly in the public sector; given that many mines have been closed, and given that the local industries of clothing, iron and steel and leather works have been closed, suddenly it is much more difficult for people to survive - and now people are starting to fight back against the privatizations. There is hardly a week or a month that passes without workers organizing themselves to confront the bosses, to fight against privatization.

ILC: There are of course many trade union organizations in South Africa. But the most important is COSATU, which is linked through its leadership to the ANC leadership. What is the part played in those struggles by COSATU?

Mabasa: We have to start by saying that the majority of the workers in South Africa are organized in COSATU and COSATU unions. And these workers who are in COSATU have been in the forefront of all these struggles.

The reality is that even if the leadership is linked to the policies of the government and the policies of the ANC, the situation on the ground is one where workers, the rank-and-file members of COSATU, are forced to confront those very same policies every single day.

I think the pressures that come about from the workers in COSATU has made COSATU as a federation take positions that sometimes might not be popular within their central leadership, but are very popular in terms of workers defending their interests.

And in that way, parties such as the Socialist Party of Azania, of which I am a leader, have supported each and every positive step taken by COSATU as a federation to defend themselves against privatization, to defend themselves against job cuts and unemployment, to defend themselves and reclaim the gains that were reversed.

ILC: In that context, what are the main policies and activities of the party of which you are a central leader?

Mabasa: The Socialist Party of Azania (SOPA) has not operated in isolation. It is part of the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples (ILC). We have organized against privatization. We have worked with other organizations in the continent and outside the continent to advance our common struggles.

We have consistently called for the cancellation of the apartheid debt, which is the major instrument that is used to implode economies of countries, particularly of African countries.

We have stood up against ethnic cleansing, which, like religion, has been wielded as a weapon against peoples throughout Africa. Today we are told, for instance, that people in Darfur are fighting because one group is Muslim and the other Africans belong to other religions. But we know that these are the same machinations by the powers-that-be that are being used everywhere to turn peoples against each other.
We call for real Black majority rule. We call for the establishment of a true Black Republic, which is unapologetic, which is based on the aspiration and the needs of the Azanian people.

ILC: You were a co-convener of the International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which took place in New Orleans, Louisiana, from Aug. 28 to Sept. 2, to judge the crimes committed by the U.S. government at the federal, state and local levels against the people. What conclusions do you draw from that experience and what bearing do you think the struggle for the Reconstruction Party in the United States has to your own struggle in South Africa/Azania?

Mabasa: At the opening session of the Tribunal in New Orleans, I was able to make a statement that our South African Committee for the Tribunal was not in New Orleans out of magnanimity or benevolence. We were there, I said, to share and to find a common ground in our struggles, including in our struggle for independent Black political action.

I explained that I was a member of the International Commission of Inquiry that traveled to New Orleans in August 2006, one year earlier. Throughout our interviews with people at the time, we were told: "They left us here to die." "They want to build casinos." "They do not want us to return to our homes and communities."

In Africa, the situation might not be articulated in the same way. But indeed, if you do not provide medication to those who are assailed by diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis, aren't you leaving those people in Africa to die?

Entire sections of peoples around the world, especially Black peoples, are being left out to die so that the imperialists and capitalists can consolidate their profits, and create even more profits, at the expense of human life. Our lesson is that these questions - the tragedy in New Orleans or the tragedy on the African continent - are not accidental. They are deliberate. They are the product of a system.

Those who are responsible for devastating our nations through Africa through the debt, who are responsible for the wars, who are responsible for the many crimes, are the same people who are responsible for the situation in New Orleans.

To contact the ILC, write to International Liaison Committee of Workers & Peoples (ILC), P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140, call (415) 641-8616, email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit the ILC section in www.owcinfo.org. This interview is reprinted from the Oct. 23, 2007, issue of the ILC International Newsletter. To subscribe, send a note to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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