17 July 2023

Opening Remarks to the Dilemmas of Humanity Pan-Conference

Delivered by Comrade S’bu Zikode, in Bela Bela, Limpopo

Comrade Programme director, Cde Irvin Jim, Cde Kwesi and Cde Cosmos. Our warmest welcome to our comrades from across Africa. It is wonderful for us all to be together here at the Nkrumah School. Our struggle to humanise the world embraces the whole world and pan-Africanism and internationalism are central to our struggle.

We must thank Pan-African Today, which is now led by Cde Jonis Ghedi Alasow, for connecting radical organisations across Africa and for running the Nkrumah School which has been a wonderful contribution to our struggles. It has given confidence to many of our leaders and enabled a grassroots pan-Africanism, a movement-to-movement pan-Africanism, that has never been possible before.

We have a Frantz Fanon School in Durban, in the eKhenana Commune. Comrades who study there then come here to the Nkrumah School and the Amalcal Cabral School in Ghana, and the next step is to go the ENFF School of the MST in Brazil. These schools are a huge achievement for our struggles and we need to do all that we can to protect and advance them. We need to ensure that we build more and more movement managed political schools across Africa and around the world.

Comrades, yesterday I was called to the Kennedy Road settlement in Durban where our movement was formed, and where I lived for many years. A thousand people had lost their homes in a terrible fire. Almost thirty years after apartheid we continue to live in life threatening circumstances. Our lives do not count to society. In fact, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Almost 70% of young people are unemployed. Violence is becoming worse and worse.

When we stand up for our humanity we face prison and assassination. Last year three of our comrades were assassinated, and a fourth was murdered by masked police officers. There is no democracy for the poor and no justice for the poor.

We did not know that when we insisted on our humanity, we would find ourselves in a war. But we are in a war – a war that is fought with live bullets, rubber bullets, tear gas, courts, prisons, lies and slander. We fight that war in our occupations, in the courts and in the media. We fight it with our unity and courage. We fight it by insisting on our humanity and on the full and equal humanity of all people.

Make no mistake comrades, the ANC are our new oppressors. They leave us to live like pigs in the mud and jail and murder us when we insist on our human dignity. Our people now refer to them as ‘amasela’ and ‘ababulali’ – thieves and murderers. Our people are not wrong.

Although the ANC have betrayed the people that brought them to power our people are not defeated. Resistance continues. Our movement continues to grow. Some of our comrades have committed themselves to ‘socialism or death’. Nothing is possible without courage and we are surrounded by courage.

We know that we were made poor so that others could be made rich. We know that we are kept poor so that others can remain rich. We know that there is enough wealth in the world to ensure that poverty is abolished.

There can be no justice until the capitalist system is removed from this earth and land, wealth and power are fairly shared. For us socialism, or what we have sometimes called a ‘living communism’, must be built from below commune by commune. Socialism is not just an idea. It is a way of living. But we know that the ANC and the state are monsters that will destroy all our efforts if we are not able to build enough power to defend our gains. To be strong we must be together.

We also know that even a partial victory in one country will quickly come under attack from the imperialist powers. We have seen what happened in Haiti, in Bolivia and in many other countries.

These realities can seem overwhelming. But we do not suffer alone. The poor of Harare, Nairobi, Lagos, Accra and cities across Africa face the same oppression, as do the poor of Sao Paolo, Bombay and cities across the world. Workers face the same oppression around the world. There is also resistance everywhere. All over the world there are people saying no to oppression and yes to human dignity. All over the world there are people saying that the wealth of the world belongs to all the people of the world.

On our own we are vulnerable. Together we are strong. Together we can win. Together we can humanise the world.

Our movement is rooted in land occupations across the country. We hope to turn each occupation into a democratically managed and productive commune where there is no rent and land is not bought and sold. We hope to build a movement of communes and then a pan-African and international movement of movements.

The great challenge for us has been the difficulties in connecting with radical movements across Africa and around the world. PAT and the Nkrumah School have made a huge contribution in advancing our ability to be closely connected to movements in other countries, and they have always respected the autonomy and internal democracy of the movements that they engage.

This question of how we link our movements and struggles across Africa and around the world is critical because in the past NGOs controlled all the networking. They have claimed to represent us when they have no mandate to do so. They have marginalised and tried to undermine organisations that take direction from their members instead of NGOs. This is what happened within South Africa with the Social Movements’ Indaba (SMI) and internationally with the World Social Forum.

There are some left NGOs, like PAT and the Socio-Economic Rights Institute here in South Africa, that are able to work with movements on a democratic and respectful basis to support the building of the power of the oppressed. These NGOs have our respect. They are our comrades.

However, some left NGOs and academics think that they should substitute themselves for our movement, that they should think and decide for us. We must be vigilant about attempts at NGO capture of movements, organisations and their spaces, events and other projects.

The autonomy of popular organisations must be respected and it must be clearly understood that while NGOs and academics are welcome to participate in movement spaces when invited to do so they have no right to assume that they should have the power to give political direction to the organisations of the poor and the working class. Our organisations are strong because they take their political direction from their members and on this principle, there can be no compromise.

Because our humanity is non-negotiable our autonomy and right to think and decide for ourselves is non-negotiable.

In many countries the forces of oppression are trying to divide the oppressed against each other on the basis of religion, language, ethnicity and so on. Here there is a major attempt to divide the poor by blaming migrants for the problems faced by the majority of people. Oppression wants to turn us against each other so that we don’t unite against oppression. This is a great danger that confronts our hopes for justice. Nobody is poor because their neighbour speaks a different language, follows a different religion or was born in a different country. This is why we say that a neighbour is a neighbour, a worker is a worker and a comrade is a comrade no matter where they were born, what religion they follow or what language they speak.

In all our countries it is vital that we resist these attempts to divide the oppressed. We have to build unity in struggle and unity between struggles.

This meeting is a wonderful opportunity for us to get to know each other personally, to learn about each other’s organisations and struggles, to build unity and to take our struggles forward, to begin to build a movement of movements and to identify and confront our real enemies.

Each of us who is here today has been entrusted by our organisations to undertake this important work. We have been entrusted with a very important responsibility. If we can use these next few days wisely, we can build a platform to ensure real solidarity in the future, a living solidarity, and to take our struggles to a higher level.

Every comrade here has something to learn from every other comrade here. Every movement has something to learn from every other movement here. This week should be a time for learning and growth. Our political school in Durban is named after the great philosopher Frantz Fanon. Fanon famously said that “Every generation must discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it.”

This is the task that we have to take forward this week. If we use this wonderful opportunity wisely, we will look back on this week in years to come as a week that opened up new possibilities for solidarity and struggle, new possibilities to humanise the world and new possibilities for the humanity and dignity of all people to be recognised. Let us use this week to take us forward in the work to discover and fulfil our mission.