The Young Communist League of South Africa held its 3^rd Congress in the university town of Mafikeng on December 8-12, 2010. The congress was the culminating point of four years of explosive growth and big success for the organization that has quickly grown to be a massive force of more than 56,000 activists. It also brought into sharp focus the conflict between the left and right wing within the South African Communists.

Miners at the Aurora mining company’s Grootvlei mine in Springs, on the East Rand, and the Orkney mine in the North West have taken action demanding the payment of their wages and to get their jobs back. We publish here a letter (with an introductory explanatory note) we have received from South Africa regarding this issue, which expresses the anger of the miners and also advocates the only solution to the problem: nationalization under workers’ control.

South Africa was moving towards a general strike type situation as the public sector strike that started on August 18 was building up momentum. Now the strike has been suspended by union leaders because of some concessions on the part of the government. This has angered many workers who wanted to step up action, not take a step back.

The strike by 1.3 million public sector workers in South Africa has entered its third week after angry union members rejected the latest offer from the government.

As the strike by more than a million public sector workers in South Africa enters its second week, the government has launched an all out attack against the unions using all powers at its disposal, including the courts, the police, the Army and the media. The unions have replied by threatening solidarity action which could involve the police and the army.

More than a million South African public sector workers started an all-out national strike for better wages and conditions on Wednesday, August 18. The present wave of strikes shows that the South African workers are not prepared to accept promises anymore and it's time for the Zuma government to deliver the change it was voted in for.

After months of build up, the World Cup is finally underway. As it approaches the end of the first week, in what is a month-long bloated competition, something has become rather clear. Hype is everything.

The recent death of Eugene Terre Blanche, leader of the AWB (Afrikaner Resistance Movement), at the hands of two farm workers, has highlighted the situation that exists today in South Africa, on the one hand the many unresolved problems of the huge majority of black workers and poor, and on the other a minority within the white population who cannot reconcile themselves to the end of Apartheid, upon which their privileges depended.

As part of the debate on the nationalisation of the mines in South Africa we re-publish here an article by Mojalefa Musi and Zico Tamela, both of whom are SACP, ANC and labour movement activists. While we do not necessarily agree with all their positions, we think it is an interesting contribution to the debate.

We provide here a link to this important document produced by the ANC Youth League on the question of the nationalisation of the mines. The ANC YL document is inspired in the bold call of the Freedom Charter that "the mineral wealth beneath the soil, monopoly industries and banks should be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole." This document has created a heated polemic within the workers' movement in South Africa and with the capitalist class. We publish it here for the information of our readers. This should be read in

A storm erupted in policy circles in South Africa after Julius Malema the leader of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) boldly proclaimed the need for the mining industry in South Africa to be nationalized. The demand was predicated on fulfilling the vision of the Freedom Charter, which was adopted at Kliptown in 1955 as the ‘manifesto’ of the liberation struggle. According to the Charter “The wealth of the country shall be shared among all who live in it!” (Note: the full ANC YL document on nationalisation of the mines can be read ...

The working masses and poor of South Africa overthrew the old hated Apartheid regime as a means of improving their living and working conditions. Instead what we have is a party in power, the ANC, which was created by the working masses but which is presently carrying out policies in the interests of the rich. This contradiction must be resolved and the only way is for the working people to take back control of the party they created.

As we predicted in earlier articles on the April 2009 elections, working class communities throughout South Africa are rising up and demanding that the state gives attention to the appalling conditions they are working and living in. Everywhere workers are striking demanding better wages and working conditions.

South African miners and building workers have come out on strike, affecting the building projects for the 2010 World Cup. Here we publish a solidarity meassage from Mexico.

The entire land redistribution programme in South Africa is being bedevilled by a mixture of feudalist and capitalist land rights, with the liberal constitution of the country protecting private property as a 'right', while the majority black African population not having private property in land, still being subject of a pre-colonial property dispensation that came to be entrenched under Apartheid.

The National Union of Mine Workers of South Africa today marched on the Reserve Bank of South Africa to deliver a memo protesting the conservative monetary and fiscal policies of the Reserve Bank. The Reserve Bank Governor Toto Mboweni refused to receive the memo from the protesting workers. After hours of waiting outside the SARB, the protesters broke down a police barrier and threatened to storm into the bank.

The workers and poor of South Africa voted massively for an ANC that had been purged of its right wing. Now that the ANC is once more in office, the bourgeois – having failed to stop this – are putting enormous pressure on its leaders to steer away from any radical pro-worker policies. What is required is a struggle within the South African labour movement to anchor its organisations to genuine socialist policies.