WORKERS AROUND THE WORLD
SOUTH
AFRICA
Public sector workers
strike
Civil-service workers in Johannesburg, South Africa, took
their fight against privatization to the streets on Nov. 15.
Thousands of city workers walked off the job for a two-day
strike against the iGoli 2002, a government plan to
restructure municipal services by privatization and
cutbacks.
Bus service in Johannesburg, the country's capital, was at
a virtual standstill. Trash stayed on the streets as
sanitation workers stayed off the job. Electrical workers
also stayed home.
Some 2,000 workers--members of the South African Municipal
Workers Union and the Independent Municipal and Allied Trade
Union--rallied downtown. Congress of South African Trade
Unions General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi promised that
municipal workers would make Johannesburg "ungovernable" if
the government proceeded with iGoli 2002.
The government in Johannesburg tried to win a legal
injunction to prevent the strike, but failed. But courts did
prevent SAMWU members from striking in Cape Town.
Unions have threatened to continue strikes to fight iGoli
2002. A weeklong strike is planned, and could take hold as
soon as Nov. 21.
RUSSIA
Bolshevik Revolution commemorated
People across the former Soviet Union marked the Nov. 7
anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution with marches and
rallies. The Russian Revolution, led by V.I. Lenin and the
Bolshevik Party, was the first time that workers successfully
took and held state power and was the beginning of a
historical process to build a society without the capitalist
class of bosses and bankers.
The biggest commemoration rallies took place in the
Russian cities of Leningrad and Tyumen, where all left
parties marched together. In Moscow there were two
demonstrations--one led by the moderate Communist Party of
the Russian Federation (KPRF) and a more militant one that
included the Russian Communist Workers Party (RKRP).
A vital question for the communist movement in Russia has
been what attitude to take toward the Russian state, which
has been in the hands of capitalist-oriented forces since
1991. This was reflected in the two demonstrations in
Moscow.
According to a report by RKRP supporter Viktor Bourenkov
sent to Workers World, KPRF leader Gennady Zyuganov "called
for reestablishing the superpower and building a strong state
instead of overthrowing it, failing to distinguish between
Soviet proletarian patriotism and Russian national
patriotism."
The key demand of the parallel demonstration, Bourenkov
reported, was that "the existing government should be put on
trial."
"At the rallies organized by the RKRP, the workers were
once again reminded of the necessity to politicize their
struggle and of the impossibility to achieve their ends by
voting in elections, whose results are pre-determined by the
wealth of contestants,"he wrote. "For all true communists,
the key objective of the workers' holiday remains the
struggle, for there can be no peace or reconciliation between
the poor and the rich."
Communist rallies have been banned from Moscow's Red
Square since 1991. Members of the Communist Youth Vanguard,
the youth organization of the Workers Russia movement, broke
through police barricades and into Red Square.
ARGENTINA
General strike set vs. austerity
Argentina's main unions have set Nov. 24 as the date for a
massive general strike to paralyze the country. The unions
are protesting President Fernando de la Rua's
pro-International Monetary Fund economic policies, presented
in an austerity plan signed on Nov. 16.
They are also protesting police repression against
demonstrators. One demonstrating worker was killed in the
northern province of Salta the week that the austerity plan
was signed.
The Argentine Workers Federation (CTA), one faction of the
larger but more moderate General Workers Federation (CGT),
and the Combative Class War Movement originally called for a
36-hour strike to protest the killing. That strike is slated
for noon on Nov. 23.
But on Nov. 16, with the austerity package approved, the
"official" CGT threw its weight behind the protest movement.
Its members will join the strike for 24 hours beginning Nov.
24. "Next Friday we will bring the country to a standstill,"
CGT leader Rodolfo Daer told Reuters on Nov. 16.
IMF officials have been in constant contact with the de la
Rua government. The banking group announced that it would
expand the credit line to Argentina beyond the current $7
billion in order to carry out the austerity program.
Argentina has $20 billion in foreign debt that comes due
in 2001, and there is growing concern on the part of U.S.
banks that the Argentine government will come up short. The
Nov. 11 Washington Post reported that "a senior IMF official
last night acknowledged that the fund had decided to signal
its willingness to participate in the financing out of fear
that the Argentine crisis would spread to the rest of South
America, which is only beginning to recover from a two-year
recession."
This article is copyright under a Creative
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