Brothers and Sisters from the Workers Party (PT). We write from South Africa, a country just like yours, which has known the horrors of colonialism, imperialist racist dictatorship and an unending neo-liberal assault on the black majority.
We watched with great inspiration and with a revolutionary critical stance as your former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (comrade Lula) undertook brave and ingenious policy decisions to move Brazil away from the status of being world number one in inequality. A status South Africa has been competing very competently with your nation for as long as it was under neo-liberalism before your party took over. We laughed at the fact that South Africa was so competent in inequality. That we were your fiercest competition.
Today, both our nations are under attack from imperialism. We believe the attack on your current president, Dilma Rousseff, is part of the imperialist assault on the BRICS countries. They carry out this assault by using internal agents within the political system of our nations. We also share with other progressive peoples of the world the view that, what triggered the coup is the possibility of the return of the most loved son of the Brazilian people, comrade Lula, to continue the programme of making the lives of the excluded majority better. The ruling classes of Brazil have now teamed up with imperialism for a right wing restoration.
Our movement, Black First Land First (BLF) agrees with the assessment of PT, what is happening in Brazil today is a coup! As we write to you, we don’t know what the vote of the lower house has revealed. Have the deputies voted for imperialism to realise the impeachment or have the deputies of the lower house remembered to defend the sovereignty of Brazil?
We speak from South Africa, another BRICS country under imperialist attack. Here, like in Brazil, our compatriots have chosen to side with imperialism and the white land owning classes to effect regime change for the consolidation of white power. The difference between Brazil and South Africa is that our ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), has chosen not to fight the local and global forces of capitalism and racism. Our president, Jacob Zuma, has half-heartedly and for narrow personal reasons under taken a “Look East ” strategy. A strategy which is not part of a national reconstruction program to mobilise the masses towards ending colonial humiliation and hunger. The forces of imperialism are sufficiently irritated with these mild actions of defiance and have decided to remove him. If such a regime change is fulfilled, it can achieve the objective of disrupting the BRICS project. So, the local agents of imperialism who have political ambitions to consolidate racial capitalism and imperialism have a common course.
On our part, we say the best form of defence against imperialism is going on a total offensive against capitalism and imperialism. Our comradely criticism of PT is that is has been too soft on capitalism. This mistake has opened you up for assault. We say, stop negotiating with capital. Rather do the right thing – liquidate capitalism and ensure the defeat of imperialism. Give land to the landless! Mobilise the voting millions into combatants against imperialism for national reconstruction. Socialise the means of production.
This is also our message for South Africa. Our president recently asked for forgiveness following a Constitutional Court finding that he violated the constitution of the land by using state funds to build his Nkandla home. BLF forgave the president conditionally. Amongst the conditions we put forward is that the president must immediately return land to the black majority. We have also asked him to release all political prisoners of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) who were jailed for fighting against white supremacy prior to the advent of democracy in 1994. Yes, South Africa still has black political prisoners in its jails!
There is only one way to defend ourselves against imperialism and that is to be true to the slogan of BLF, Stop Imperialism – Take back the land!
Your movement has to escalate the revolutionary process outside the chambers of parliament. Only the people can deliver the revolutionary process which is being suffocated by imperialism today.
We send you solidarity, love and courage.
ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL CONVENOR OF THE BLACK FIRST LAND FIRST MOVEMENT
17 April 2016
Andile Mngxitama