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Stop attacks on foreign nationals right now! Focus on the root-causes of our shared problems! Solly Mapaila, Umsebenzi Online, Johannesburg, 17 April 2015 On Thursday, 15 April 2015 the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) convened a joint press conference and condemned attacks against foreign nationals in strongest terms possible. The SACP and COSATU called on their own structures to take action, in their respective communities, in defence of peace. This is very important. People have a role to play on matters that affect society. They are the makers of history, though, as Karl Marx says, not in the circumstances of their choosing. When similar attacks occurred in Soweto the SACP mobilised its structure to stop them. The party has been doing the same in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, and elsewhere throughout the country. Everyone needs to act to stop this anarchy! While intensifying action locally to stop the attacks, it is important we strengthen the international movement against the underlying system that reproduces the problems. Fundamentally, the causes are international. Multilateral institutions must therefore also discuss the problems created by capitalism as the dominant world system they are presiding on. They must take responsibility as well, but only democratically. The problems must therefore be resolved at two levels, that is both at the level of all the causes where they originate and develop from and at the level of the effects where they appear-out. In South African there are those who reduce the task of stopping the attacks to be the responsibility, all alone, of the government, the African National Congress (the governing party), or the President. See, for example, "Centre lashes out at Zuma" (The Citizen, 16 April 2015). Some of the people who do so are simply opportunistic, while others, similarly, are merely advancing a politics of narrow oppositionism in the midst of a serious problem. Without an enquiry into the motions of capital and what it does to achieve expansion in a given historical context it will almost be impossible to develop both the clarity of content and task. This theoretically sums up the approach adopted by the SACP and COSATU. The problems we are facing are an outgrowth of deeper structural processes and forces of the system of capitalism. What we see popping up on the surface - the totally unjustifiable attacks on foreign nationals - are a backward and inward reaction to the effects of the systemic crises emanating from the private accumulation of wealth on a capitalist basis. The appalling phenomenon we are faced with is therefore not just a crisis in itself, but a sore symptom of interacting system crises. The phenomenon is not isolated or unhistorical, but has occurred elsewhere, including in Africa. In The Wretched of the Earth Frantz Fanon analyses the pitfalls of national consciousness and develops a critique of the "national bourgeoisie" in post-independent societies. These strata of the bourgeoisie, which includes the intermediaries of the bourgeoisie from the ranks of the former colonial powers or imperialist capital, are equally interested in the merciless exploitation of the workers. But in the event of liquidating competition from foreign traders they have ways, including hostile ways, of attracting support from some in the ranks of local workers. "The working class of the towns, the masses of unemployed, the small artisans and craftsmen", wrote Fanon in 1961, "for their part line up behind this nationalist attitude; but in all justice let it be said, they only follow in the steps of their bourgeoisie. If the national bourgeoisie goes into competition with the Europeans, the artisans and craftsmen start a fight against non-national Africans". From what we see going on today in South Africa this passage will be worded differently. It will replace the reference to Europeans by that of foreign nationals in general but mainly from Africa and some parts of Asia. Fanon recounts the attacks on foreign nationals caused by the phenomenon in various African countries, Ivory Coats, Senegal, Ghana and Congo. During those times, this wrongfully led to, he writes, "foreigners" being "called on to leave; their shops. burned, their street stalls. wrecked". "As we see it", he writes, "the mechanism is identical in the two sets of circumstances. If the Europeans (Recall the context given above) get in the way of the intellectuals and business bourgeoisie of the young nation, for the mass of the people in the towns competition is represented principally by Africans of another nation". In the present period attacks on foreign nationals are expressed in various forms in different countries. All of this flowing from capitalist social relations of production and consequent political conditions. Capitalism inherently involves uneven development based on economic exploitation. At the micro level more labour value is extracted from workers who are then paid less. Internationally, this law of the motion of capital consist in this - less is advanced in imperialist exploited economies, but more is extracted from them. The countries and the capitalist class which extract more from other countries and the workers respectively are the so-called "developed", while those who are thus exploited are "under-developed". The uneven development and the underdevelopment caused by capitalism are the main system drivers of migration flows within and across borders in the current epoch. The uneven development, which is designed in favour of the countries which lie at the core of the system, is driven through the under-development of countries which are located in the periphery of the system. Not so long ago this was pushed through the colonial expansion of capital, which has ravaged much of the global South. In many of the countries which achieved "independence" thereafter, through their capitalist class forces the colonising countries continued to retain strategic advantages and control over the economies of the oppressed. This has deepened in the consequent neo-colonialism that emerged but has even entrenched under the era of heightened imperialism. Precisely the heart of the two interacting phenomena, in varying degrees, of the continuing underdevelopment of the countries in the periphery and the uneven national and international development! The scarcity of the resources needed to support human life thus created in the affected countries coupled with competition and imperialist machination give rise to consistent political conflicts and wars. This is part of the push factors forcing people out "of their countries" (i.e. mostly colonially partitioned territories) to look for countries which offer the prospects for relief. It cannot be, therefore, that instead of solidarity, the affected people are further violated through super-exploitation by capital, through the so-called "xenophobic tacks", or through government action as we see in the global North. As noted in the African Communist (1st Quarter 2015, No 188): "Today, the most militarised international border in the world is not between North and South Korea, but between the US and Mexico. According to the editorial, this is "designed to keep desperate (but 'illegal') work-seekers out". But there is "a deep hypocrisy in this". As the editorial highlights from Saskia Sassen's research: "Tens of millions of desperate, 'illegal' work-seekers nonetheless still find their way into the US and Europe" in "what looks like failure from the perspective of controlling entry", but which "is actually delivering results that particular sectors inside the US want from immigrants" - "low-paid workers". Their 'illegal' status (sustained by the highly weaponised border) means they are prepared to accept low wages and precarious working conditions". The Capital expansion knows no morals and has no regard to human life. This sort of super-exploitation has been singled out as one of the factors that sparked the recent wave of despicable attacks on foreign nationals in Durban. But unlike the US, South Africa has a welcoming immigration policy. Which is why, in addition to its relative advantages compared to other reachable destinations it has substantive gains from continental and overseas migration streams in Africa. But sections of both local and foreign capital have, like that ruthless Durban based employer we return to, been exploiting the country's migration pull factors. Which is why the SACP and COSATU say the super-exploiters must be held accountable for the social consequences of their actions. Capital not only exploits labour. It exploits unemployment, its own creature. It uses it as a lever to suppress the rate of wages. This is a management strategy to maximise the rate of profit. The employer who replaced striking workers with super-exploited "scab labour" in Durban sought to achieve exactly this. The government must lay down that law on the exploiters. Nobody must be allowed to cause problems and be left to bask in luxury. Instead of turning against one another, workers must unite independently of any nationality, organise and confront capital - the common enemy that pits them against each other in a destructive competition, the race to the bottom. This requires workers to build an ever strong trade union movement. Which is what COSATU seeks to achieve. The SACP fully supports the cause, and will work with the federation to ensure that it achieves the success it needs. But the workers need to unite on a global basis. Similar phenomena of migration patterns forced upon workers by capitalist uneven development last year caused tensions within the European Union, mainly between the UK and Germany. This was triggered by the way the UK government reacted to increasing migration from the south and east of Europe. The government sought to clamp down entry to the UK and limit immigration. If "xenophobia" is the appropriate word used to characterise the disgusting attacks on foreign nationals in South Africa, then the UK government not only sought to respond to xenophobic pressure but it revealed its xenophobic attitude? The least said about France the better. In that country it is a typical electoral politics to campaign against immigration inflows. In the Mediterranean region, thousands of migrant workers risk their lives crossing the sea in attempts to reach Europe every year. And many have lost their lives. The reasons pushing them to the North are the same, war, instability, underdevelopment and uneven international development. All of this is caused by capitalism but masked in different propagandas, "religious conflicts", "poor governance", "xenophobia", "Afrophobia", etc. What about refugee camps? While it is important to ensure that all immigrants are documented, the compartmentalisation of our people through segregated settlements including such camps is just no solution. As a people we must integrate and live with one another in peace and harmony. The complete de-colonisation of Africa actually requires that one day we must transcend the borders set by the colonial partitioning of our continent. We must eliminate all forms of false consciousness, including inappropriate definitions of what constitutes a nation. Many of our people have been divided across borders by the colonial partitioning of our continent. By way of a preliminary conclusion, our work to stop the attacks must include a real drive to identify and isolate the "xenophobes" in our communities. We must hand them over to law enforcement agencies. In the same vein, we must rigorously intensify our efforts to address the economic problems of social inequality, unemployment and poverty which mostly but by no means exclusively affect the youth. These problems are caused by none other capital in its single programme to achieve self-expansion, and must be dealt with decisively. The National Youth Service, including military youth programmes, is important. It must be revitalised to skill the youth of our country and improve their employment prospects. Similarly, the Public Works and Community Work programmes are import. But more decisive efforts are required to expand the productive base of our economy to absorb work-seekers. This should include deliberate measures to advantage co-operatives and give them space to thrive. The massive amounts of capital acquired in our economy and which are not being re-invested to create employment must be unlocked. Capital's investment strike must come to an end. The government has an important role to play in ensuring this through legislative and regulatory reviews, including prescribed asset requirements. Take a stance! Become active for a good cause! Stop attacks on foreign nationals right now! Comrade Solly Mapaila is SACP Deputy General Secretary -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . 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