Fort Hare’s Unfinished Crisis: The Fight for Student Democracy by Lindokuhle Mponco

You can’t really grasp what’s happening at the University of Fort Hare right now if you see the protest as just about maintenance issues, NSFAS, accommodation, or unpaid student allowances. Those matter, but they’re not the spark that set off this round of protest. The real heart of it is the Student Governance Constitution (SGC) and what it means for student democracy. It comes down to a pretty basic question: Who gets to make the rules for student governance at Fort Hare? The students themselves, or the university administration?

The Struggle That Still Isn’t Over: 2025

To see why this is blowing up again, you have to roll back to October and November 2025. The protests back then were fired up by a bunch of demands: holding SRC elections, re-forming the Institutional Student Parliament (ISP), fixing student funding, infrastructure, accommodation, and general service-delivery failures. But at the core, students were fighting for a say in their own governance. Students didn’t just accept the creation of an interim SRC while the SGC was being changed. They pushed back because they didn’t want an unelected group setting the rules for student democracy.

Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Higher Education eventually stepped in. They saw the mess; no SRC elections, an interim SRC without a proper mandate, and called it out as part of the crisis. The Committee told the university to review the SGC with real student input, and to make SRC elections transparent. So what’s happening with the SGC now? It’s not a new problem. It’s the same fight from 2025, still unresolved.

From Protest to Fixing the Institution

Yeah, the violence and destruction that happened in October was wrong. Breaking down campus buildings hurts students most, and everyone around Fort Hare. But just condemning the destruction misses the point. If you ignore the reasons people are angry, the crisis won’t go away. That’s why the Portfolio Committee and DHET got involved. Fort Hare was in an institutional crisis. They met with Council, management, students, and labor and called for a plan to actually rebuild the university.

Fixing things isn’t just about patching up buildings; it’s about fixing governance, rebuilding trust, and making sure students, workers, management, and Council can operate together in structures people respect.

Council and the Crisis That Still Lingers

During the 2025 crisis, Ms Kuselwa Marala was the Interim Chair of Council, and Prof Judith Favish was Interim Deputy Chair. They were part of university leadership during the interventions. Later, they left those temporary posts. Dr Siyanda Makaula took over as Council Chair, and Dr Yoliswa Mancotywa followed as Deputy. Marala and Favish stayed on the Council, just not at the helm. This isn’t just about who’s in charge. The leadership shifted around, but a lot of the reasons for the crisis in 2025 are still there.

SGC Is at the Center of Everything

You can’t just talk about the SGC in isolation from everything else students are dealing with. Lots of first-time and returning students are still fighting to get funding sorted out. NSFAS and GAP investigations only add more confusion. Accommodation is still a headache, infrastructure’s failing, and basic maintenance keeps being delayed on both campuses. These are real, material problems.

If you don’t have funding, you might not be able to register, eat, travel, or keep your room. If your residence is falling apart, studying isn’t easy. And without real student representation, it’s hard to push the university to sort these problems out. Democracy and service delivery are linked. The SGC is about the political framework that lets students actually organize and fight for better living and studying conditions.

Seeing the Larger Picture

Historical materialism helps you realize these issues are all tied together, they’re not just random complaints. Fort Hare serves a lot of working-class and poor students who need public education, financial aid, and decent accommodation. The university, meanwhile, has its own bureaucracy, limited resources, and its own interests. Those interests don’t always line up with what students need. And that’s where the struggle comes in.

The right response isn’t pointless bureaucracy or just tearing things down. Students should be militant—but organized. Radical, but strategic. Ready to fight but careful to protect the school and resources they rely on.

SASCO and YBMM

This is why you also have to look at what SASCO and YBMM are doing in East London. The issue isn’t about whether every member is “reactionary.” The real question is what are these organizations actually doing? If they block real student action for democratic governance without coming up with a solid alternative for fixing the SGC, funding, infrastructure, and accommodation, then they end up just preserving the status quo. That’s what reactionary politics looks like. Students need to beat that through political education, organizing, and democratic action. Not through personal attacks.

The Haniist-Bikoist Mission

EFF Youth Command? Fort Hare ought to be a center for political education. Students should dig into what the SGC, SRC, ISP, Council, NSFAS, budgets, and decision-making at the university actually mean. This is where Scientific Socialism with Afrocentric Characteristics — Haniism-Bikoism — steps in. Marxism brings in historical materialism and class analysis. Leninism steers organization and discipline. Trotsky helps you link the immediate struggles to transforming the system. Haniism; after Chris Hani; focuses on mass politics, working-class unity, and socialism in a South African context. Bikoism adds African pride, awareness, and liberation. The aim? Turn spontaneous anger into real, organized political action.

From Protest to Real Power

The biggest lesson from October 2025 is that protest on its own isn’t enough. Right now, the fight needs to push for a truly democratic SGC, real SRC elections, a working ISP, solutions for student funding, fair GAP investigations, solid NSFAS administration, reliable infrastructure, livable residences, and institutional accountability.

And, sure, those responsible for the violence must answer for it. What happened during the 2025 chaos has to be investigated based on evidence not hearsay. Fort Hare needs more than patched-up walls; it needs a democratic rebuild. The SGC isn’t just a bureaucratic paper; it’s about who has power. So it’s on revolutionary students to understand, organize, teach, mobilize, and win. That’s how Fort Hare’s unfinished fight in 2025 can become a real movement to remake the university as a center for true student democracy.

The conditions of young people in the CBD of KuGompo City by Lindokuhle Mponco

Walk through the CBD of KuGompo today and ask yourself one question: is this what freedom was supposed to look like? Young people sleeping in abandoned buildings. Young men smoking nyaope before sunrise. Graduates sitting on pavements with CVs nobody will read. Sewage flowing through the streets like it is part of the town’s natural infrastructure. Potholes big enough to damage taxis, businesses collapsing, and police vans driving around after everything has already fallen apart.

This is not “normal”. This is social collapse. South Africa now has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world. According to Statistics South Africa, youth unemployment for people between 15–34 rose to 46.1% in early 2025, with millions of young people completely excluded from the economy. In reality, many communities know the real number feels much higher. The CBD of KuGompo has become a waiting room for hopelessness. And the worst part? Society has started acting like this is just how young black people are supposed to live.

UbuPhara: The Language of Abandonment

People love insulting young people in the streets. They call them “amaphara”, criminals, junkies and failures. But nobody asks: what created UbuPhara in the first place? Nobody is born wanting to sleep in shop doorways or sniff substances just to survive another day. These conditions are created by poverty, unemployment and social abandonment. When a young person spends years without work, without opportunities and without dignity, society should not be shocked when destruction follows.

Drug abuse in the CBD is no longer hidden. It is visible everywhere. Some young people are using drugs not because they are “evil”, but because hopelessness itself becomes addictive. Escaping reality becomes easier than living in it. Under capitalism, poor youth are treated like rubbish until they become a “crime problem”. Then suddenly politicians want law enforcement and media cameras. But policing poverty is not solving poverty. A young person cannot smoke a CV and become employed.

Crime and Unemployment Are Twins

South Africa’s official unemployment rate reached 32.9% in 2025, while the expanded unemployment rate — which includes discouraged work seekers — climbed above 43%. That means almost half the country is either unemployed or has given up looking for work. In the Eastern Cape, the situation is even worse. The province consistently records some of the highest unemployment figures in the country.

Now think about KuGompo. How many young people wake up every morning with nowhere to go? How many graduates are sitting at home while politically connected people get jobs through corruption and patronage? How many young people survive through gambling, hustling, crime or exploitation because the formal economy has locked them out? Then politicians act surprised when crime increases. Crime is not simply a policing issue. It is an economic issue. A society that refuses to give young people work should never act shocked when survival becomes violent.

The CBD Is Falling Apart

KuGompo’s infrastructure tells its own story. The roads are collapsing. Sewage spills remain unattended for weeks. Streetlights do not work. Public spaces are neglected. Entire sections of the CBD feel abandoned after dark. This is what municipal failure looks like in real life. And it is working-class communities who suffer the most. The rich can move to gated suburbs, drive expensive cars and avoid public infrastructure altogether. The poor cannot escape collapsing municipalities. Infrastructure is political. A city that cannot maintain roads, sanitation and public safety is a city that has stopped caring about its people.

The question young people must ask is simple:

Where is the money going?

Because it certainly is not going into fixing the city.

Haniism-Bikoism: A Different Future

Young people are constantly told there is no alternative. That corruption, unemployment and decay are just “South African problems”. That is a lie. What KuGompo needs is a new political direction rooted in Scientific Socialism with Afrocentric Characteristics — what we may call Haniism-Bikoism. This means combining the revolutionary socialism of Chris Hani with the black consciousness and psychological liberation taught by Steve Biko.

It means understanding that black working-class communities deserve dignity, jobs, housing and democratic power. Imagine if municipalities employed young people directly to:

• repair roads,

• clean communities,

• fix sewage systems,

• renovate abandoned buildings,

• build public housing,

• establish youth cooperatives,

• and run rehabilitation centres.

Imagine if public money served communities instead of tenders. That is Municipal Socialism. Not slogans. Real material change.

Register to Vote — Or Accept More Decay

Many young people say voting changes nothing. But refusing to participate while corrupt politicians continue governing changes even less. Elections alone will never liberate the working class. Real change requires organisation, political education and mass struggle. But voting remains an important weapon. At local government level, ideology matters.

Who controls municipalities determines:

• where money goes,

• who gets jobs,

• which communities develop,

• and whether public resources serve people or politically connected elites.

The Economic Freedom Fighters remains the most credible socialist-oriented political alternative capable of laying the foundations for Municipal Socialism in South Africa. The coming local government elections are not simply about councillors. They are about deciding whether cities like KuGompo continue collapsing or begin rebuilding around the needs of the working class. Because if young people do not shape the future politically, they will continue suffering economically.

And the truth is painful:

A society that abandons its youth is already dying.

Municipal Socialism and the Youth Question in South Africa by Lindokuhle Mponco

 

1. Introduction

The Crisis of Local Government

Across South Africa, municipalities are collapsing. Potholes are swallowing roads. Sewage flows through communities. Streetlights no longer work. Corruption has become normalised. Young people sit unemployed while politically connected elites become millionaires through tenders. Local government was supposed to bring development closer to the people. Instead, for many working-class communities, municipalities have become centres of looting, dysfunction and hopelessness.

The biggest victims are young people. This raises an important political question:

What would happen if municipalities were controlled in the interests of the working class instead of tender elites?

This is where the idea of Municipal Socialism becomes important.

2. What Is Municipal Socialism?

Core Definition

Municipal Socialism is the idea that local government must directly serve the social and economic needs of ordinary people — especially the working class and youth — rather than private profit.

It means municipalities should:

• create jobs directly,
• build public housing,
• expand public transport,
• maintain infrastructure,
• support cooperatives,
• and place communities at the centre of development.

Under Municipal Socialism, public money serves the people, not politically connected contractors. Local government is not “small politics”. Amongst many other things, Municipalities decide:

• who receives services,
• which communities develop,
• where resources go,
• and whether young people live with dignity or decay.

This means ideology matters at municipal level.

3. Why the EFF Is Central to This Project

The EFF as a Socialist-Oriented Vehicle

The Economic Freedom Fighters remains the most visible radical left formation in post-apartheid South Africa advocating:

• land redistribution,
• economic transformation,
• state-led development,
• free education,
• and public ownership of strategic sectors.

Unlike liberal parties that treat municipalities as administrative machines, the EFF approaches local government politically. Its political language already speaks about:

• economic freedom,
• spatial justice,
• public intervention,
• and working-class development.

This creates the ideological foundation upon which Municipal Socialism can be built.

Why Young People Gravitate Towards the EFF

Many young people support the EFF because it speaks directly to:

• unemployment,
• inequality,
• black dignity,
• student debt,
• and economic exclusion.

The EFF uses militant language because many young people are already living militant conditions. A graduate with no job. A township youth surviving through hustling. A student excluded because of debt. A homeless young person in the CBD. These are not moderate realities.

4. The EFFYC as the Engine of Transformation

Beyond a Youth Wing

The EFF Youth Command cannot merely function as an election machine or mobilisation structure. It has the potential to become:

• the intellectual engine of the EFF,
• a revolutionary political school,
• and a socialist think-tank rooted in working-class realities.

The EFFYC should be the force constantly pushing the EFF:

• internally towards ideological clarity,
• and externally towards mass-based socialist programmes.
• The Role of the EFFYC Internally

The EFFYC can push the organisation towards:

• deeper political education,
• stronger branch structures,
• socialist policy development,
• youth cooperatives,
• municipal planning models,
• and community-centred governance.

A revolutionary youth structure must not only defend the movement. It must also sharpen it. Historically, youth formations have always radicalised liberation movements:

• the ANC Youth League radicalised the ANC in the 1940s,
• the Black Consciousness Movement radicalised student politics in the 1970s,
• and student uprisings transformed South African politics permanently.

The EFFYC can play a similar role in advancing Municipal Socialism.

5. The EFFYC and Student Power

Organising in Institutions of Higher Learning

One of the clearest signs of the EFFYC’s organisational strength has been its growth within universities and TVET colleges.

The EFF Student Command has secured major SRC victories across South Africa over several years, including at:

• the University of the Witwatersrand,
• University of Limpopo,
• University of the Free State,
• Walter Sisulu University,
• and multiple other campuses nationwide.

At Wits University, the EFF Student Command won 12 out of 15 SRC seats in 2017, marking a major shift in student politics. Since then, the trajectory has been upwards, even after the Student Command was converted into the Youth Command. At the University of Limpopo, the EFF Youth Command has repeatedly achieved dominant victories, including consecutive SRC wins in recent years. At Iyunivesithi Walter Sisulu, the EFFYC secured control across multiple campuses in SRC elections. While at the University of Fort Hare, a historical institution which has produced the core of the liberation movement, and was the birthplace of ANCYL, the EFF Youth Command has deployed a President & SG after years of building a power base.

These victories matter politically because universities are ideological battlegrounds. Student politics often becomes the training ground for future national leadership.

Why This Matters

The EFFYC has demonstrated an ability to organise:

• unemployed youth,
• working-class students,
• and black intellectual spaces.

This organisational experience can be transferred into communities and municipalities.

The same energy used to fight for:

• NSFAS,
• student accommodation,
• registration access,
• and fee reductions,

can evolve into broader struggles for:

• housing,
• sanitation,
• employment,
• public transport,
• and municipal transformation.

6. Towards Haniism-Bikoism and Municipal Power

Scientific Socialism with Afrocentric Characteristics

Municipal Socialism in South Africa cannot simply copy European models. It must emerge from African realities. This is where Haniism-Bikoism becomes important:

• combining Chris Hani’s socialist militancy,
• with Steve Biko’s emphasis on black consciousness and psychological liberation.

This means:

• building democratic working-class power,
• restoring black dignity,
• and developing communities collectively rather than through capitalist individualism.

7. Conclusion

The Youth Must Govern the Future

South Africa’s crisis is not only economic. It is ideological. Young people are told:

• corruption is normal,
• unemployment is inevitable,
• and municipalities will always fail.

But history shows that organised youth can reshape society. The struggle for Municipal Socialism is ultimately a struggle over who controls the city:

• tender elites,
• or the organised working class.

The EFF has laid part of the political foundation for this struggle. But the EFFYC has the potential to become the force that gives it revolutionary direction, ideological depth and organisational energy. Because without politically conscious youth, socialism becomes a slogan. But with organised youth, it can become a governing reality.

On Nguni Chauvinism and The Current Wave of Afrophobic Violence in South Africa by Lindokuhle Mponco

We're watching something incredibly disturbing begin to rear its head in South Africa. A kind of politics that I and many others believed had been buried with apartheid. This is a politics of collective punishment, group suspicion and mob justice. What started out as anti-immigrant concerns around the country has transformed into a terrifying phenomenon, a vehicle for the expression of ethnic chauvinism, particularly Nguni chauvinism, politically.

The tragic and violent death of Nhlamulo Sambo and everything that transpired surrounding it should, frankly, tell us some uncomfortable things about where a part of our society is heading. What occurred in Mossel Bay was not simply an act of isolated violence; it was a product of a broader context of anti-foreigner violence and dispossession. Over fifty shacks were destroyed in the uprising, more than fifty homes reduced to rubble. Mozambican nationals had to be forcibly evacuated and repatriated; displaced and dispossessed Tsonga-speaking South Africans as well as migrant families alike remain in temporary shelters today, having lost everything they had.

These were not the actions of peaceful community protestors. These were the actions of a pogrom. A pogrom is not simply a mob outburst of anger, rather, it is the "attack on a group in an organized or semi-organized way for religious or ethnic reasons." When homes are burned down and families are forced to flee as a result of their identity and place of origin, we have no choice but to describe it precisely for what it is.

The circumstances surrounding Nhlamulo Sambo's death illuminate what has gone unspoken until now: while first claiming not to be related to the migrant crisis, subsequent accounts given by suspects in interviews have muddled the issue significantly and are at variance with each other. One version claims that Nhlamulo had been pursued by a mob through a shanty, the houses belonging to both Mozambicans and Tsonga-speaking persons being simultaneously destroyed and torched, before the deceased eventually succumbed to injuries. According to the suspect who was released due to a lack of evidence, he provided the dying Nhlamulo with a stick and that is how the scene transpired before death ensued.

Whether the courts of public opinion believe this story is secondary to the reality: Nhlamulo died amidst anti-foreigner violence and dispossession and this cannot be divorced from that larger reality. The central question then is not who administered the lethal blow. It is more critically about the nature of the society which allows a Tsonga-speaking man to be chased and beaten amidst an anti-foreign and ethnic cleansing violence.

And herein lies the importance of the Nguni chauvinism critique: When I speak of Nguni chauvinism it is not to implicate every single Nguni speaker, nor to denigrate the vibrant cultures of Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, Swati and other Nguni speakers; it is instead to highlight a particular mode of political expression, one that positions Nguni identity as the natural yardstick of who belongs in South Africa, one that sees the experiences of Nguni speakers as South African, while simultaneously viewing African identities outside of that group as subordinate, suspicious, foreign and even threatening.

It is this mode of thinking that places migrant workers at the center of our fear, today Mozambicans, tomorrow Tsonga-speakers, and the day after, possibly Venda-speakers, Basotho, or any other ethnic group that falls outside the definition of the present ethnic nationalist rhetoric. History tells us chauvinism cannot exist on a single object of hate, it always craves another to fuel itself. All the talk of and incitement to June 30 further exacerbated these concerns. The stated objective of stopping undocumented migration has morph into ethnic entitlement. Communities are pushed to 'identify enemies,' not by their criminal acts, but by their language, their accent, their features, and where they hail from, blurring the lines between illegality and identity such that entire groups of people become inherently suspect. It is in this manner that xenophobia gives birth to Afrophobia and thereafter Afrophobia gives birth to ethnic persecution.

Compounding these concerns is the unnerving silence or equivocating statements from institutions that hold significant moral authority, the traditional leaders, politicians, and cultural custodians of South Africa. While abstaining from strongly condemning the politicisation of identity and ethnic mobilization has often been taken to signal tacit consent, non-condemnation often serves to legitimize the actions taken, especially at times of socio-political flux.

Our struggle for liberation in South Africa was predicated on the need to unite, as oppressed people, regardless of ethnic background, language and nationality. The Johannesburg workers did not bother to ask each other if they were Zulu, Tsonga, Sotho or Shangaan before uniting in the workplace; the exiles that fled from across Africa were afforded sanctuary without being questioned about their nationality. Pan-Africanism itself is predicated on a political principle: the arbitrary borders imposed by colonialists must not dictate how humans express solidarity. Yet here we stand, being made to witness these same divides resurface.

These dozens of burnt houses, these thousands of displaced people, these terrorized immigrants pushed back to countries of origin, and the murder of Nhlamulo Sambo should all serve as a wake-up call: These are not merely individual incidents. These are manifestations of a much deeper malaise. This is a political malaise that says that some Africans, belong more than other Africans. This is chauvinism. And without confrontation, this politics of exclusion will continue to victimize untold numbers of people long after it leaves the front pages.

People don't eat ideology? Then why are you eating xenophobia?

"People don't eat ideology." You hear it all the time from certain corners, don't you? It's the kind of phrase that gets tossed around by politicians who've run out of ideas, by social media commentators looking for a quick hit, or by opportunists who haven't really thought through society's problems, let alone found solutions.

It sounds like common sense, and that's exactly what makes it so dangerous. After all, who can actually eat a political theory? Can a philosophy book feed your family? Will an ideological pamphlet pay the rent? It sounds smart, right? But only because no one ever really stops to think about it. Because while people might not physically eat ideology, they certainly starve because of it.

Think about it: the way our economy is structured, who owns what, how the labour market works, how land is distributed, these aren't just random facts. They're all deeply ideological. The very organization of global capitalism is ideological. The reasons millions remain unemployed? Ideological. The conditions under which a tiny elite hoards obscene wealth? Also, ideological. So, to claim that ideology doesn't matter isn't actually rejecting ideology. It's an attempt to keep people from understanding the ideological roots of their own suffering.

We're facing a crisis in South Africa, one that many are reluctant to name. It's not just an economic crisis, and it's not just about governance. It's a deeper crisis of consciousness. The liberation movement that once gave us intellectual giants now seems to produce mostly political consumers. A nation that used to fiercely debate colonialism, capitalism, race, class, and liberation now spends its days sifting through social media rumours and WhatsApp conspiracy theories.

Political education has been pushed aside for outrage. Careful analysis has given way to raw emotional reaction. Theory has been swapped for 'vibes.' The result? A political culture where the loudest voice often gets mistaken for the most informed one. This anti-intellectual shift isn't accidental. It serves a very specific purpose. When people truly understand systems, they start questioning those systems. But when they stop questioning systems, they start blaming victims. There's a clear reason why Afrophobia thrives wherever political education collapses. Someone with a scientific mindset, for instance, would ask: Why do we have such massive unemployment in South Africa? Why does poverty persist despite democratic rule? Why is wealth still so concentrated? Why is economic power still so detached from political power? These kinds of questions naturally lead us into discussions about colonialism, apartheid, capitalism, how classes formed, and global economic structures.

But the Afrophobe asks something completely different: "How many foreigners need to leave before my life gets better?" One question digs into systems. The other just looks for scapegoats. One leads to political understanding. The other fuels mob politics. The casual dismissal of ideology, this anti-intellectual stance, creates perfect conditions for Afrophobia. It discourages any real structural analysis. When people stop asking why poverty exists, they very quickly start asking who they can blame for it. The easiest target is always someone who seems poorer, weaker, or more vulnerable than themselves.

So, suddenly, the unemployed South African is pointing fingers at the unemployed Zimbabwean. The struggling worker turns on the struggling migrant. The township entrepreneur blames the street trader. All the while, the actual structures generating poverty remain completely untouched. Capitalists celebrate. The poor end up fighting amongst themselves. This is exactly where Haniism-Bikoism comes into the conversation. What you could call Scientific Socialism with Afrocentric Characteristics starts from a simple, clear observation: You can't fully grasp contemporary South Africa with just class analysis or just Black Consciousness on their own.

Steve Biko was spot on when he said the oppressor's most powerful weapon is the mind of the oppressed. Chris Hani understood that political liberation without real economic transformation would just recreate inequality under a new flag. So, a Haniist-Bikoist approach says we need both. Black Consciousness alone, without actual economic change, can easily become just symbolism, without any real power. And economic transformation without consciousness? That just means new managers, but the same old domination. The struggle, then, is simultaneously psychological, political, cultural, and economic. Freeing the African mind and freeing the African worker are two sides of the same coin.

This Scientific Socialism, with its Afrocentric lens, rejects three dominant trends we see in South African politics today. First, it says no to neoliberalism. The market simply can not solve the very problems that market domination created. Second, it rejects narrow racial chauvinism. An African revolutionary can't talk about African unity on Monday and then hunt fellow Africans on Tuesday. Third, it rejects anti-intellectual populism. The people deserve genuine political education, not manipulation.

This framework is built on six key ideas:

1. Political education isn't just a good idea; it's a revolutionary necessity.

2. Pan-African solidarity is the only real cure for Afrophobia.

3. You can't have true political democracy without economic democracy.

4. Black consciousness is still vital in a society where colonial ways of thinking persist.

5. The class struggle remains necessary in a society still built on economic exploitation.

6. Revolutionary action needs to come from clear, scientific analysis, not just emotion, prejudice, or populist noise.

That slogan, "people don't eat ideology," actually tells us something important. Its popularity reflects a society that's become increasingly suspicious of thinking itself. The anti-intellectual wants quick fixes but refuses to investigate the causes. They demand outcomes but skip the analysis. They want answers without asking questions and transformation without any underlying theory. But that's simply impossible. No engineer builds without a blueprint. No doctor treats without a diagnosis. No revolutionary can transform society without first understanding it. Refusing to think isn't pragmatism; it's surrender.

South Africa is truly at a crossroads. One path leads toward deeper political education, Pan-African solidarity, and revolutionary consciousness. The other takes us down a road of anti-intellectualism, scapegoating, and permanent social fragmentation. One path asks difficult questions. The other just offers easy enemies. One creates citizens. The other creates mobs.

The task for our generation isn't just about winning elections. It's about rebuilding consciousness. Because people who stop thinking critically about their own conditions become incredibly vulnerable to every charlatan, every demagogue, and every merchant of hate. No, people don't eat ideology. But without it, they might just end up consuming something far more dangerous: their own future.

Afrophobia in South Africa: Capitalism, Class Fear and the Politics of Division By Lindokuhle Mponco

Afrophobia in South Africa is a problem. When poor black people fight poor black people somebody with a lot of power benefits from it. This is a truth that South Africa does not want to face. Afrophobia in South Africa did not start in 2008. The violence that happened in the townships that year was not created overnight. It was built up over centuries of colonialism, people being forced off their land, and a system of capitalism that is based on racism. To understand why people blame migrants for things like unemployment, drugs and crime we need to understand how South Africas economy works.

South Africa was built on labour from migrants. From the 1800s South African companies needed cheap labour to work in the mines. The European colonisers (British) found out that South Africa possessed diamonds in Kimberley in 1867 and gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886, which changed the region into a place where people went to work. Mining companies brought in workers from all over Southern Africa including places like Mozambique, Lesotho, Malawi and Zimbabwe. This was facilitated by what later became known as the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA). According to the African History Archive and other studies on labour, the system of migrant labour was designed to keep workers away from their families and communities, and to pay them very low wages.

The Native Land Act of 1913 cemented and made it more rigid and institutionalised so that black South Africans could only live on 7% of the country's land. This forced millions of people to have to work for wages. This system did not bring workers together. Instead it divided them. Different groups of people were housed in segregated areas and employers used this to their advantage to weaken the workers and prevent them from coming together to fight for their rights. In other words, the system of capitalism in South Africa was designed to make black workers compete against each other.

The violence that happened in 2008 was not the beginning of the problem. It was the point when things exploded. In May 2008 there was a lot of violence against foreigners in South Africa and 60 people were killed. Thousands of people were forced to leave their homes. The world was shocked by the violence. The problems that led to it had been around for decades. There were people without jobs, not enough houses, and services that were not working well or being delivered. South Africa is still one of the most unequal societies in the world. According to the World Bank, the difference between rich and poor in South Africa is one of the biggest in the world. In 2008, unemployment was starting to become stubborn, and when things are this bad people get angry, and look for someone to blame. Instead of blaming the people in power, the corporations, and the corrupt system, many communities turned against migrants who were also poor and vulnerable. This is how the people in power stay in control, and continue to accumulate wealth.

The idea that foreigners are taking jobs is not true. Research by the African Centre for Migration & Society at Wits University has shown that migrants make up a negligible percentage of the population in South Africa (3.9%), and they mostly work in informal or unstable jobs. Many studies have also shown that when migrants start their businesses they create jobs and help the local economy. The main reasons for unemployment are things like companies leaving the country due to corruption or loss of market or any other excuse that the capitalist investor will come up with, machines replacing workers, corruption and a system that is unfair. It is not the migrants who are selling vegetables or running shops.

The claim that foreigners bring drugs is also not true. Organized crime in South Africa is deeply connected to the country’s politics and economy. Recent investigations have shown that local people, corrupt officials, businesspeople and law enforcement are all involved in the drug trade. Poor migrants are often the face of the street-level economy but they are not usually the ones in control of the criminal activity. The people who really benefit from crime are often hidden and are the ones with the most power. The system of capitalism creates economies that are driven by profit, and the underworld also operates on the same principles but in a vile, raw, and unfiltered manner.

The Marikana massacre in 2012 changed South African politics forever. When 34 mineworkers were killed by the police during a strike many black working-class South Africans realised that the government and the corporations were still in control. Marikana showed that the alliance between the government, the corporations and the police was still strong. It also showed that the government was still willing to use violence to protect the interests of the corporations. Out of this moment, the Economic Freedom Fighters was formed in 2013. The party positioned itself as a response to the economic inequality, the colonial theft of land, unemployment, and the power of the corporations. Whether or not you agree with their methods, the party was successful in making social justice a major part of the national conversation. It is no wonder that the capitalist machinery has invested major resources to decampaign the EFF, and render them the face of illegal immigration. This is done by deliberately misinterpreting the EFF’s posture on Immigration.

This misinterpretation is peddled with the intention of making it seem like the EFF espouses a free for all bonanza arrangement as far as immigration. Which is why they invest time in demonising the internationalist and humanist posture of paragraph 107  - 109. This distortion exposes their inherent anti-working class and anti-poor posture, because the question of immigration in its broad sense and the flow of immigration follows the logic of capitalist patterns of production, and the relations thereof. People migrate to South Africa because the industries which are labour intensive are found in South Africa. They come here whether they have documentation or not because of the design of the system which I touched on when I delved into the foundations of our economy. Therefore, we can conclude that the Afrophobic movements are all funded by the evil hand of White Monopoly Capital, and the Zionist elite, which has invested time, money, and resources in ensuring South Africa is balkanised into small pro-Western ethno states due to among other things, our government’s solidarity to Palestine. Which is why they also don't hesitate to take swipes at the EFF, and its Commander-In-Chief, Julius Malema because of the vehement and stubborn insistence that Afrophobia is a by-product of self-hate and aids the coloniser rather than free the oppressed.

In the final analysis, we see that the attack on the EFF is a continuation of the politics that gripped the 70s, 80s, and 90s when the masses of our people were rendering Apartheid South Africa ungovernable, and capitalism unworkable. These are the politics of divide and conquer. They do this by using a familiar face who happens to demonise and distort the crisis on ground by reducing it to African migrants, who, by the way, are sucked in by the design of the SADC economy, and the broader African economy. They build movements and use some sections of the media to provide a megaphone of hate to propel this message of division and diversion. Social media bots are amplified to make the message seem widespread, and resources are pumped in to ensure the wheels of hate are greased. At the end of the day, the capitalist continues to profit, while the working class continue being exploited.

Afrophobia ultimately helps the people in power. When the working class is divided it cannot fight against the corporations, corruption and the system that is unfair. When South Africans and African migrants fight each other in the townships the billionaires are not affected. That is why real liberation politics must reject both the system of capitalism and the idea of nationalism that is based on hatred. African workers have enemies: poverty, exploitation, unemployment and inequality. The future of South Africa depends on rebuilding solidarity among the working class across nationality, language and ethnicity. Because history has shown us what happens when desperation is turned into hatred: the poor fight each other. The powerful get richer.

May Day Blues: My Letter to the Workers, Youth, & Peasants of Occupied Azania by Lindokuhle Mponco

 Dear Toiling Masses of Occupied Azania,

I write to you this May Day to address three major issue that I feel should be openly addressed, and dealt with in the most clear, concise, and sober manner. I write to you not because I want to posture as a knower of all things or a paragon of virtue and endless knowledge, but rather as a means to publicly share my observations, perspectives, and possible solutions to the many problems that are birthed by this exploitative capitalist system that rules Occupied Azania under the pretext of democracy. This is not an academic exercise. It is a political intervention grounded in lived reality, sharpened by theory, and guided by the historical necessity of transformation. As Marx and Engels remind us:

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” (The Communist Manifesto)

May Day itself is not a celebration—it is a reminder of unfinished struggle.

On the unemployment crisis, precarity, & immigration crisis

The first contradiction confronting our society is the mass unemployment of the working class and youth, alongside rising precarious labour conditions and the scapegoating of African migrants. We are told that unemployment is a “skills issue” or a “market imbalance.” This is ideological cover. In reality, unemployment is structural. It is a permanent feature of capitalist accumulation, where labour is intentionally kept surplus to discipline wages and intensify exploitation. Karl Marx is clear:

“Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour.” (Capital)

In Occupied Azania, this vampiric logic manifests in outsourced labour, labour broking, informalisation, and permanent job insecurity. Steve Biko’s warning becomes relevant here:

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” (I Write What I Like)

The unemployed are not only excluded economically—they are ideologically fragmented, turned against each other, and redirected toward migrant workers rather than the structures of capital that produce scarcity. Frantz Fanon sharpens this critique:

“The colonised subject discovers reality and transforms it through his praxis.” (The Wretched of the Earth)

But in our present condition, praxis is deliberately obstructed through division—South African versus migrant, formal worker versus informal worker, employed versus unemployed—while capital remains untouched. The solution is not xenophobic containment, but class unification. The unemployed, the precarious, and migrant workers share a common material condition: exploitation without stability. Leon Trotsky’s Transitional Programme reminds us:

“The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of revolutionary leadership.”

The task is therefore not moral condemnation of xenophobia alone, but the construction of organised working-class unity capable of redirecting anger upward toward capital.

On the economic crisis, poverty, & inequality

The second contradiction is the deepening poverty and inequality produced by a semi-peripheral capitalist economy integrated into global imperialism. Despite political liberation, the structure of ownership remains largely intact. Wealth accumulation continues to be racially inflected but class-driven in its logic. The post-1994 order resolved political apartheid without dismantling economic apartheid. Lenin provides clarity:

“The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms.” (State and Revolution)

The democratic state in Occupied Azania does not transcend these antagonisms—it manages them. Social grants soften starvation but do not transform production. Black economic empowerment creates a narrow elite layer without altering the capitalist base. The result is what Marx describes in his analysis of the Paris Commune:

“The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” (The Civil War in France)

This insight is critical. The existing state is not a neutral instrument. It is structurally designed to reproduce capitalist relations. Poverty is not a failure of governance—it is a requirement of accumulation. Trotsky’s Lessons of October reinforces this urgency:

“The most favourable revolutionary situations may be lost if they are not utilised.”

We are living in a prolonged favourable situation of crisis—rising inequality, declining legitimacy, and mass disillusionment. Yet without organised direction, crisis becomes stagnation rather than transformation. The economic question, therefore, is not redistribution alone. It is ownership. Who owns land, finance, mining, energy, and logistics? Until this question is resolved, inequality will remain structurally guaranteed, not incidental.

On the landlessness crisis, economic ownership, & reparations

The third contradiction is landlessness and unresolved colonial dispossession. Land remains the material foundation of historical injustice in Occupied Azania, yet its transformation has been partial, slow, and often reabsorbed into market logic. Fanon warns against this halfway transformation:

“For Europe, for ourselves, and for humanity, comrades, we must make a new start.” (The Wretched of the Earth)

A “new start” is precisely what has been deferred. Land reform without structural transformation of property relations becomes symbolic restitution rather than material reorganisation. The Paris Commune offers a practical historical lesson. Marx observed:

“The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary, body, executive and legislative at the same time.” (The Civil War in France)

This is not nostalgia—it is organisational theory. It demonstrates that emancipation requires new forms of power, not mere reform of inherited institutions. Steve Biko further deepens this understanding when he insists:

“Liberation is of fundamental importance for the future of South Africa.” (I Write What I Like)

But liberation is not simply political inclusion; it is material restoration of land, dignity, and economic control. The question of reparations is therefore not moral sentimentality. It is historical necessity. Landlessness is not accidental—it is the foundation upon which capitalist accumulation in Occupied Azania was constructed. Trotsky’s Transitional Programme provides the method:

“It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist programme of the revolution.”

Land redistribution, expropriation without compensation, and community-controlled production are not final demands—they are transitional demands linking present struggle to systemic transformation.

Conslusion

The three crises outlined above—unemployment and xenophobic fragmentation, deepening inequality, and unresolved landlessness—are not separate issues. They are expressions of a single historical contradiction: the incompatibility of capitalist social relations with the aspirations of a liberated but still economically colonised people. The bourgeois democratic system has reached the limits of its historical function. It can no longer stabilise contradictions without intensifying them. What remains is not permanence, but transition. As Marx reminds us:

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.”

The task before us is not to romanticise collapse, but to organise clarity within it. This requires rebuilding political consciousness, restoring organisational discipline, and reconnecting struggle to material conditions rather than electoral cycles alone. The alternative is not neutrality. It is decay. Or as Lenin sharply puts it:

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

We are entering such a period. The question is no longer whether change is coming. The question is whether the toiling masses of Occupied Azania will be prepared to shape it.