[OccupyCU] South Africa: Popular Front in Crisis

[a_indabronx]

An important new article on the platinum miners strike and the elections in 
South Africa has been posted on the Internationalist web site:

http://www.internationalist.org/southafricanelexminestrike1405.html

Victory to the Platinum Miners!
Elections and Miners Strike: South African Popular Front in Crisis
For a Black-Centered Workers Government!
For a Revolutionary Workers Party with a Trotskyist Program!

South Africa heads to the polls May 7 in the most important election since the 
1994 vote which marked the formal end of the apartheid system of white 
minority rule. The cold-blooded massacre of 34 platinum miners in Marikana in 
August 2012 has galvanized opposition to the Tripartite Alliance. Last 
December, the National Union of Metalworkers (NUMSA), with 340,000 members the 
largest union in South Africa, denounced the ruling African National Congress 
(ANC) and South African Communist Party (SACP) as nakedly pro-capitalist and 
came out against electoral support to the ANC or any other political party in 
the 2014 elections. Meanwhile, 70,000 platinum miners are in the fourth month 
of a bitter strike not only against the companies but also against the 
policies of the ANC government which has backed the mine bosses to the hilt. 
The intersection of these two events could pose an explosive challenge to 
capitalist rule in the economic powerhouse of Africa: the non-white masses are 
fed up with the black capitalist regime which has kept them mired in poverty, 
while the corrupt rulers have no answers but bloody repression. Yet a key 
ingredient is lacking to provide a positive outcome to this crisis: 
revolutionary leadership.