NELSON Mandela, one of the great heroes of the anti-Apartheid struggle who was jailed for 27 years on Robben Island for his opposition to the Apartheid regime, has died aged 95, and is being mourned by millions of South African workers and youth for his role in standing up to, fighting, and ending Apartheid.
He was jailed in 1962 at the age of 44 and was freed, when the anti-Apartheid movement proved to be unstoppable in 1990, aged 72. This was when the international bosses and bankers, and their governments, convinced the Apartheid rulers that even with their vast network of terror, from the army to the police and state death squads, the choice was either free Mandela and accept the political consequences, the end of minority rule, or face a revolution that would completely destroy them.
In 1994 he led the ANC into multi-racial elections that it won. He emerged out of them as the President of South Africa under an ANC government, at the centre of which was an alliance between the Cosatu trade union federation, the Communist Party and the ANC.
It is one of the peculiarities of the situation that his death is receiving wall-to-wall coverage and adulation, and even worship from political parties and news empires that supported the Apartheid regime and his imprisonment, and the imprisonment of tens of thousands of other anti-Apartheid fighters at the hands of a regime that murdered many of them.
The secret of this contradiction is that the masses and the former supporters of Apartheid are saluting different Mandelas.
The masses hail his epic struggle against Apartheid and his huge sacrifices in that fight alongside millions of others, many of whom were tortured and killed.
The bourgeoisie of the world and its hangers-on of all kinds hail the fact that, almost 20 years after political liberation, gigantic super-profits are being made out of the black working class, that remains super-exploited and lives on low wages in wrecks of townships without electricity and running water, with the poorest possible schooling and healthcare for their children.
Mandela, who became president at 75 years of age, presided over a black regime which ran capitalism for the bosses and continued with the super-exploitation of the working class.
Running the post-Apartheid regime, the black middle class achieved its place in the sun, supervising the super-exploitation of the working class and the rural poor.
Under this regime, black servants of capitalism became millionaires, and trade union bureaucrats sitting on the boards of big companies became billionaires and some of the richest men in Africa.
Mandela’s death coincides with the ending of this process.
The masses of the working class, the miners and other workers, are founding new trade unions or are breaking the old trade unions away from the Cosatu, SACP and ANC alliance.
Millions of workers and youth are now on the march, demanding the expropriation of the bosses and the bankers, the nationalisation of the land and its distribution amongst the rural poor, decent wages and proper modern homes.
The ANC-Cosatu-SA Communist Party Alliance has served the bosses well but it is now being seriously challenged by the working class and the youth.
They want the revolution that the ‘Alliance’ brought to a halt continued until the working class has the power in its hands and is able to deliver socialism and a better life.
Workers and youth are now on the march forming new trade unions and political parties.
What is required in South Africa is the building of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International that will mobilise the millions of workers, youth and rural poor to complete the revolution that the ANC tried to bring to a halt.
This completion will see the working class and the rural poor take the power, putting an end to the domination of South Africa by the world’s bosses and bankers, by expropriating them and building socialism.
It will also encourage the working class throughout Africa to take the same road to put an end to the domination of Africa by imperialism, by establishing a United Socialist States of Africa.
