John Rose Archive | ETOL Main Page
From Socialist Worker, No. 2662, 8 July 2019.
Copied with thanks from Socialist Worker Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
I was privileged to speak at a Social Change from Below conference at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa last month.
There were radical research students from many parts of Africa, Europe and Asia, as well as of course South Africa.
But there were also activists from townships and informal shack settlements.
Ronnie Kasrils, former ANC government minister and Communist Party leader, and today radical independent leftist, and Trevor Ngwane, highly respected revolutionary socialist, opened the proceedings.
It included a comradely but robust exchange over the role of armed struggle in defeating apartheid.
Professor Kate Alexander, conference organiser, closed it with an extraordinary and uncompromising one-hour speech. She spoke on the history of revolutionary workers’ movements.
I had discussions with the young organiser of a branch of the newly founded Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party formed on an informal shack settlement.
I also spoke with the student campus organiser of the Economic Freedom Fighters.
Not only did he insist he was also a Marxist, he quizzed me in detail on Brexit and what was the revolutionary socialist “line”!
He told me anti-imperialists everywhere will be cheering the break-up of Britain.
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Last updated: 11 December 2024