Africa

The recent Constitutional Court judgment against President Jacob Zuma is only the latest in a series of rapid-fire events which have shaken South African society fundamentally. From the Marikana massacre in 2012, to the latest revelations, society has been staggering from one crisis to another. The turnover of these events is astonishing. New shocks crop up almost on a weekly basis, and old controversies resurface periodically only to assume new convulsive forms. In the final analysis, this shows that, on a capitalist basis, none of the fundamental problems of society can be solved.

Nigeria is an oil-rich country and yet periodically it faces massive fuel shortages. The inept Nigerian bourgeoisie is incapable even of building the necessary fuel refineries to provide enough fuel for the home market. The reason for this is that it is more profitable to trade in importing refined fuel than to produce it themselves! Here we provide a comment on the situation from a comrade in Nigeria.

The clashes among the South African ruling class which erupted into the open last December have now turned into open war. The revelations that the Gupta family have offered cabinet posts to various people on behalf of president Jacob Zuma have thrown the ANC government into disarray. This indicates the extent to which corruption has extended itself to the executive branch of government and to the heart of the ANC itself. The fact that private families can decide who serve as ministers in the cabinet shines a spotlight on the rottenness of the scandal-prone Zuma presidency.

Everything has now been set in place for an imperialist intervention in Libya. Ashton Carter, United States Defence Secretary, has anointed Italy as leader of the “Coalition”. Meanwhile, in Italy, the past imperialist master of Libya, the war drums are beating.

For the past several months there have been persistent reports in the media about the possibility of a coalition between the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the main bourgeois opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), at local government level. Now the leadership of the EFF have confirmed that discussions have taken place.

In the last few months, the Group of Unemployed Saharawis, which consists of many masters degree holders, university graduates and technicians, organized several peaceful demonstrations in the main streets of Laayoune, Western Sahara, demanding their right to employment. This modest demand has been met by the most monstrous oppression at the hands of the Moroccan police. After the authorities refused to open channels of dialogue with the protesters, the Group found no other resort but to go on a hunger strike.

This report was originally sent to us on January 14th as the movement of the trainee teachers in Morocco was beginning. Since then, the struggle of trainee teachers against the decrees has continued. In response to the intransigence of the government, the National Coordination of Trainee Teachers called for a national march in Rabat on Sunday, January 24th.

On Wednesday, 9 December the government of South Africa was thrown into a new crisis when president Jacob Zuma unexpectedly fired his finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene and replaced him with David van Rooyen, a little known ANC backbencher. This decision was so unexpected that neither the ANC nor members from his own cabinet were aware of it. The events over the four days which followed, once again shook the country to its foundations and ushered in a new period in the class struggle.

As the third wave of global crisis of capitalism is approaching – the first and second waves being respectively the sub-prime housing and European sovereign debt crises – the so-called emerging and developing economies are entering deeper into economic, political and economic crisis. Nigeria connects to this global crisis through the mechanism of the global crude oil glut and collapsing commodity prices.

Below is a resolution of the which is being discussed in Marxist societies all over Britain this week. As Marxist students fighting tuition fee rises, privatisations and attacks on our living standards, the struggle of the South African students is a great inspiration to us. Their struggle is our struggle. Workers of the world unite!

On Friday, 23 October, South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, announced that there will be no increases to student university fees for next year. This was a clear attempt by the government to contain a movement which has became too big to control.