https://iclfi.org/pubs/bh/27/malema
Printed below is an edited speech by comrade Erica of the Spartacist League at the Partisan Defense Committee’s January 24 Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners in New York City. She talked about the need to defend Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader Julius Malema, who was recently convicted by a South African court on bogus charges for having allegedly fired a rifle in the air during a celebration in 2018. He could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.
New York PDC Holiday Appeal event, January 24: Erica of SL provides update on fight to defend Malema, urging all socialists to take up fight.
Amandla! Awethu! Yesterday the South African government postponed the sentencing of EFF leader Julius Malema to April 15. This means the fight continues. We join in solidarity with our comrades in Spartacist/South Africa and fighters in the EFF in building support to defend Malema, to defend ourselves here in the belly of the beast too. The “Government of National Unity” (GNU) coalition—the ANC and the openly pro-imperialist and white-dominated Democratic Alliance—is going after Malema in order to prevent any resistance to the strangulation of the black masses. The GNU enforces this on behalf of Trump and the Randlords. Trump put a target on Malema’s back last year in that infamous White House visit with imperialist puppet Cyril Ramaphosa.
Why Malema and the EFF? The imperialists want to prevent the masses attracted to the EFF from trying to fight for liberation from the racist Randlords and the neo-apartheid ANC government, which is responsible for a trail of broken promises and misery.
The black South African masses are hated by the U.S. ruling class because they want land, good jobs, adequate housing, basic services like electricity and control of the mines and other imperialist-owned property. That’s what is behind Trump’s instruction to Ramaphosa to get rid of Julius Malema: the imperialists want to eliminate any movement that even gestures toward fighting for the land and resources that rightly belong to the black people of South Africa. Hands off Malema and the EFF!
The end of apartheid in 1994 was supposed to mean real liberation, but the reality is massive unemployment, miserable living conditions and rampant exploitation of black and coloured workers. This is not so dissimilar to the aspirations for black liberation here. We were promised 40 acres and freedom following the Civil War, but instead got over a century and a half of racist capitalist oppression, segregation and massive state repression—with cops gunning down black and brown people with impunity.
Many black people in the U.S. feel a connection with black South Africans. There is a natural alliance. They both, along with the entire U.S. working class, share a common enemy in U.S. imperialism. The imperialists are trying to do to Malema in South Africa what they’ve done to militant black political leaders here, like Mumia Abu-Jamal: lock them away or worse.
Trump’s crushing and starvation of the black South African masses goes hand in hand with his attacks on immigrants and his assault on workers here, too. And the threat to this country’s black population is undeniable.
But both of the struggles, the struggle for the national liberation of black South Africans and the struggle for black liberation here, have something else in common. Both have been betrayed by leaders of the union movement and leftists who seek alliances with the capitalist rulers and their politicians. Here that expresses itself by trying to keep the struggle for black liberation confined to what is acceptable to the liberals and the Democratic Party. This has resulted in turning off many workers who have seen their livelihoods suffer at the hands of the Democrats and have turned to Trump. This has deepened divisions in the working class, especially along racial lines.
These polarizations help keep working people divided against themselves as Trump launches attacks on immigrants and the unions. Now that the liberal mask has been torn off, the true face of racist U.S. imperialism again reveals itself, from the bombing of Venezuela and kidnapping of Maduro to the genocide in Palestine and attacks on Iran. U.S. imperialism is trying to force the world to line up behind its ambitions to maintain its world dominance. As the Mamdani administration works hand in hand with the healthcare bosses to freeze out striking nurses here in NYC and the Trump administration sics ICE on protesters and immigrants alike, united-front class-struggle defense is posed now more than ever.
All of these fights that you will hear about today—the fight to free political prisoners, to defend Malema, to release Maduro, to rebuild the movement against racist cop terror, to defend immigrants against ICE, to defend union workers on strike—show that the only way out of this mess is to bridge the divisions in the working class by appealing to the need for all those under attack to take a united stand against the common U.S. imperialist enemy. We have a lot of groups here. Talk to us after about how we can join forces.
