We are proud to announce the publication of the first issue of the South African Marxist paper Revolution South Africa. Below we publish the editorial for the first issue of the paper, whose first issue argues for the need for a revolutionary way out of the crisis of capitalism and for socialism as the only alternative for the South African masses.

The turmoil in the West African country of Mali deepened this week after a group of soldiers and junior officers based in the capital Bamako detained President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, Prime Minister Boubou Cissé and other top government officials and forced them to resign.

In recent weeks, the potential for open conflict between various states in the South-Eastern Mediterranean has increased dramatically. The Communist Tendency (IMT section in Greece) has already released a statement on the escalation of war tensions between Greece and Turkey over access to hydrocarbons in specific areas of the Mediterranean Sea. Since then, the Turkish air force and navy have been carrying out military exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean, which the Egyptian and French navy have countered with their

As Nigeria is battling with the coronavirus, the merciless bloodshed going on, especially in the northwestern part of the country in recent times, is exacting a much larger human toll. 5,000 people, mostly women and children, have been displaced in the Faskari, Batsari and Dandume Local government areas of Katsina state, the home state of the current Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari. In just a week, over 100 people are reported to have been maimed in these communities.

The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is just beginning to be felt in Algeria. Earlier this month, the government announced that the national budget would be slashed in half due to the global collapse of oil prices. Simultaneously, the much-discredited government is cynically manoeuvring to bury the popular Hirak movement under the cover of this healthcare crisis. But this coronavirus has brought to the fore the contradictions of a bureaucratically-ruled country, corrupted to the core by ‘le pouvoir’. These repressive measures cannot be allowed to asphyxiate the militant mood for change that has once again gripped the country.

Watch our interview with comrade Kazeem about the situation in Nigeria, where the coronavirus poses a catastrophic threat, and the perspective is one of explosive class struggle.

The Moroccan regime has detained over 500 political prisoners, according to the president of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights, Aziz Ghali. Amongst them are those imprisoned in the Hirak Rif protests and the Gerak Jaradah movement: trade unionists, bloggers, a journalist… pretty much everybody. Not a day goes by without social media reporting the arrest of new militants or ordinary citizens whose only crime, in the majority of cases, is having published a Facebook post critical of living conditions or of the state’s politics.

Watch our interview with Ben Morken, who discusses the situation in South Africa: the impact of COVID-19, the political crisis and the perspectives for class struggle.

Kano has become the epicentre of the spread of Covid-19 in northern Nigeria. A large number of so-called “mysterious” deaths was recently reported, but the state government of Kano blatantly claims that the sharp rise in deaths is not due to Covid-19. Here we provide an eyewitness account from an IMT comrade in Kano.

A Moroccan proverb goes: “the sheep spends his whole life being afraid of the wolf, but in the end, who feasts on the sheep? The shepherd!” Well, some months after China and 10 days after Italy, Moroccan authorities announced the country’s first cases of COVID-19 on 2 March and attributed them to “external factors”. Specifically, a Moroccan returning from Italy, then French tourists. The epidemic has worsened, infecting 2,024 people, of whom 126 have died (as of 15 April, 45 days after the first infections) according to official data.

The coronavirus pandemic is a turning point in history. The world economy is receiving one savage blow after another. Healthcare systems are totally overwhelmed in the advanced capitalist countries as a result of decades of attacks on living standards. The inefficient and ghastly nature of capitalism is in full display in the west, where people until recently enjoyed at least a semi-civilised existence. In Africa, Asia and Latin America the consequences of a full-scale outbreak will be catastrophic.

It would be hell if the Covid-19 breaks out in Nigeria on the scale presently being witnessed in Europe and the US. Apart from the dire state of the healthcare system, 69 million Nigerians have no access to clean water. This invariably leads to water-borne diseases like cholera, which continue to break out as regular epidemics. Social distancing and self-isolation presuppose that people have enough space. In Lagos where we have over 100 slum areas, about 80 people can be found sharing a 10-room building with only two toilets and a bathroom being shared by all with no pipe-borne or treated water readily available.

South African capitalism is in total crisis. The ruling class is divided and the worsening conditions of the workers and poor are causing a groundswell of resentment that will burst to the surface sooner or later, placing renewed class struggle on the agenda.

Those who follow the situation in Morocco can see that the repressive dictatorial regime has become more and more frenzied, and the police state has tightened its repressive grip on everyone and everything. They are arresting those who protest, who sing, who criticise, who write, and who show solidarity with those arrested.

Yesterday’s presidential election in Algeria was marked by a massive boycott campaign called for by the Hirak movement, which is now 43 weeks old. The boycott had been preceded by a four-day general strike and was particularly strong in the Kabylie region. Tens of thousands came onto the streets across the country defying a police ban on demonstrations. Whoever the generals decide will be the country’s president, they will not have any real legitimacy.