Defend the lives of SA revolutionaries

Message of solidarity from the Communist Party of Finland to the SACP and YCLSA – defend the lives of SA revolutionaries! 

The Communist Party of Finland (CPF) sends revolutionary greetings to the South African Communist Party (SACP) and in particular extends its solidarity to the SACP and to the Young Communist League of South Africa in light of the recent spate of murders of communists in South Africa. 

The CPF is appalled that 25 years into democracy communists and progressives in the ANC-led Alliance movement have increasingly become the target of violent attacks.  

The persistent problem of attacks on and killings of, in particular, African National Congress and Alliance members in KwaZulu Natal has long been a pressing concern, prompting a commission of enquiry (the Moerane Commission) to examine the reasons for the high number of political killings from 2011 until 2018. 

We were shocked to learn of the murder of on 12 February of Comrade Mhlengi Khumalo the local ANC Youth League and YCLSA leader in KwaPata, near Pietermaritzburg.  

The dire situation recorded by the Moerane Commission has been compounded recently by a spate of killings of SACP and South African Municipal Workers Union (Samwu) members in Limpopo.  

This was apparently linked to their outspokenness over the blatant looting by depraved local leaders, including leading lights in the Economic Freedom Fighters, of the defunct Venda Building Society – a financial service that was supposed to serve the workers and the poor of the Vhembe area of Limpopo.  

A common factor in the recent murders of communists active in the Alliance movement has been their opposition to the corruption and moneyed patronage of cliques and factions within the ANC.  

We laud the role of communists in South Africa in fighting corruption and the ‘capture’ of ostensibly progressive groups and individuals by cash-driven vice and gangsterism.  

The CPF appreciates the massive job this struggle involves and the terrible demoralizing impact of good communists and progressives being hounded by the enemies of revolutionary change.  

We offer our full solidarity in this struggle (particularly as you head for intensely contested national elections this year), the material context of which is the fight for wealth and the power that goes with it by populist proto-fascists on the one hand and bourgeois extreme centrists on the other. 

We call on other communist and workers parties around the world to similarly voice their solidarity with the SACP and YCLSA in defending the lives of their revolutionary activists, and to draw attention to the life-and-death struggle facing the National Democratic Revolution in South Africa. 

JP (Juha-Pekka) Väisänen

chairperson

Communist Party of Finland