The Toyi-Toyi of Southern Africa

Toyi-toyi is a Southern African dance originally from Zimbabwe that became famous for its use in political protests in the apartheid-era South Africa.

Toyi-toyi could begin as the stomping of feet and spontaneous chanting during protests that could include political slogans or songs, either improvised or previously created. Some sources claim that South Africans learned it from Zimbabweans.

After Apartheid ended, people have used toyi-toyi to express their grievances against current government policies.

In October 2004 Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe banned toyi-toyi even indoors because of its use as a protest.

The toyi-toyi was also used with chants such as "Amandla" ("power") and "Awethu" ("ours"). These two sayings were often used together.

The UK band, UB40, incorporated the "Amandla, Awethu" chant into Sing Our Own Song from the 1986 album Rat In The Kitchen.

After the 1976 Soweto massacre, the movement gained more militancy, and songs were charged with imagery of an armed struggle for liberation. The toyi-toyi, a military march dance and song style became commonplace in massive street demonstrations. As one activist puts it, "The toyi-toyi was our weapon. We did not have the technology of warfare, the tear gas and tanks, but we had this weapon."

Workers' Actions in Northern Africa

Egypt has been a hotbed for working class action in Africa, and Northern Africa in particular. There has been alot of great activity in the last year, specifically the strikes and workers actions in the text tile industry. The Egyptians have a strong labor movement and hopefully this tide will increase militancy in other Northern African countries worker's movements. Morocco and Algeria are also both seeing alot of working class actions. Keep your eye on these North African countries for the next year or so. They are the more industrialized nations in Africa and are very critical for the revolution in Africa.


Morocco
Public service workers across Morocco held a one-day strike today and joined mounted protests demanding reforms and better conditions and salaries from the government.

Workers are making a series of demands, many related to reforms of the antiquated civil service statutes, many of which haven't changed since 1958, shortly after independence.

Workers are seeking to improve upon the guaranteed annual increase of 2% won in April last year and are now looking for inflation-based pay increases. They are also demanding the institution of a minimum salary, improved health benefits as well as reforms to the pension system to make benefits more uniform and to increase them for recipients and their dependants.

Other demands include: increasing the quota of internal promotions to 33% and to institute it retroactively for the last 6 years with a special round of promotions; allowing all workers to take professional exams after 4 years of service; revised status for administrators, engineers, doctors, teachers, nurses and all other categories of state workers; creation of a salary grade for primary teachers and nurses; and a reform to the taxation system, including making those on the lowest salaries exempt from taxes

The independent public service doctors' union (SIMSP) has had 35 of its members on strike on a rotating basis since the fifth of February. The union has chosen to rotate 35 striking personnel to maintain patient care but there is a risk that they will extend the action. The union ordered the strike over the grading of medical doctors and several other demands, the government has so far refused to negotiate with the SIMSP as it is 'unrepresentative' in spite of the fact that it is the largest union in the sector representing 50% of doctors.

The workers are also protesting at violations of employment law, specifically over dismissals. The unions claim that 150,000 local government workers are living in poverty.

In other news, Moroccan fishermen ended a 20-day strike today after winning concessions from the government. The government agreed to continue to except them from paying VAT on fuel and to lower the price of fuel sold to fishermen. The government also agreed to devise and implement a strategy that should lead to the creation of 65,000 new jobs in the industry, the doubling of exports and a 33% increase in domestic consumption.



Egypt
A workers' rally before the headquarters of the Ministry of Economic Development during a meeting for the National Council for wages has been planned for Monday to demand raising the monthly minimum wage for Egyptian workers to LE 1200, said the Coordinating Committee for Union and Workers Rights and Freedoms.

Committee member Khaled Ali told al-Masry al-Youm the Committee and the Labor Solidarity Committee will join ranks with workers across Egypt to organize the rally and the following mass sit-in to demand raising workers' wages to above the minimum poverty level set by the World Bank at two US dollars per day per person.
Ali said if workers failed to stage their protest in front of the Ministry of Economic Development, they will take their protests to the Nile Delta city of Mahala, while stressing that in the event the demands of workers were not met, they would sue all members of the National Council for Wages, including Minister of Finance and Social Security Dr. Youssef Boutros Ghali, Minister of State for Economic Development Dr. Othman Mohamed Othman, Minister of Manpower Aisha Abdel Hadi, in addition to the ministers of provisions, investment, business sector, heads of the Central Authority for Public Mobilization and Statistics, the Central Authority for organization and management, and the secretary general of the National Council for Women.

The number of Egyptian workers who went on strike from December 2006 (the first Ghazl el-Mahalla strike) to September 2007 (the second Ghazl el-Mahalla strike) is estimated to be over 198,400 workers, according to the study coauthored by Mostafa Bassiouni and Omar Said (Page 13). This does not include the workers who staged sit-ins and/or demos. The strikes during this nine-month period led to the loss of 647,133,637 working hours (No, it’s not a typo: Six hundred forty seven million, One hundred and thirty three thousand, and Six hundred thirty seven working hours)…

Algeria
The Public service trade unions strike in Algeria continues. The Ministry of Education has sent a letter to the provinces education Directions, requiring them the number of teachers on strike, every 2 hours, and implementing severely the salary discount sanctions, as well as the elaboration of lists and detailed reports dealing with the strike progress at every school, then sending them to the Ministry headquarters.
The strike, for which the Coordination of public service Trade unions, CSAFP, has called, is still underway for the second day in a row. Education, health, higher education, professional training, local authorities, and other sectors, have responded to this strike.
Mr. Mohamed Boukhota, the spokesman of Algiers Secondary schools Counsel, which is one the7 public service trade unions of the Coordination, said the 3 days strike is a success for the first day, notably in the education sector, and 116 secondary schools have responded to the strike, the majority of them responded 100%.
“We are obliged to resort to the protests move, because, unfortunately, the Ministry and the Government does not give importance neither to negotiations nor to partnership” said the same source, calling the Education Ministry and the authorities to open new doors for partnership and negotiations, “we are obliged to resort to protests move”, concluded Mr. Boukhota.

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Egyptian Textile workers continue strike for 4th day

Makarim Textile Co. workers continued their strike for the fourth day in protest against denying them a 15% of basic salary social allowance decreed by the government and a 7% salary increase.

The workers called again on President Mubarak to intervene after Minister of Manpower Aisha Abdel Hadi failed to meet her promise when they ended their last strike.

Workers Mohsen Ali, Ibrahim Hassan and Awad el-Sayed said the workers would not end their strike unless they get all their rights, stressing that the company is making profits contrary to what the management claims.

The workers said Managing Director Ahmed el-Shafei threatened to fire them in a memo rather than solve their problems. "Go strike at home," he wrote.

They said that what was mentioned in the memo about the availability of production requirements was not true, as they have been short for three months, and they threatened to go on hunger strike if their problem is not solved quickly.

On another mote, fifty cleaning fees collectors demonstrated in Mahala before the governorate headquarters for the second time in a week in protest against Governor el-Shafei el-Dakrouri assigning the electricity company to collect the fees, assuring that his decision put them out of work.

They said they have been working on temporary contracts since 2006 after the electricity company failed to collect the fees, stressing that they have generated significant revenues, and requesting the governor to revise his decision or provide them with alternative jobs

Manufacture of Dissent in Revolution Newspaper: Black Tokenism and White Guilt

Revolution newspaper is the central organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA(RCP), a Maoist orientated communist party based in the United States. Even though the party has existed for over 30 years it has yet to establish any mass base or revolutionary movement in the United States. Yet, this failure to draw connections with the masses, especially the Black population is cleverly veiled through the usage of anecdotes and black tokenism. These tactics and others, are used to substantiate RCP claims of having "have forged deeper ties with the masses"(1)

At the same time the RCP heavily relies on language that reinforces white guilt in an attempt to win over white liberals. Both these tactics of utilizing, black tokenism and white guilt achieve the exact opposite of the RCP's intentions. Instead of winning over large segments of the black population and white population, the usage of patronizing language can actually distance these groups from the Revolutionary Communist Party.

White Guilt
White guilt refers to a controversial concept of individual or collective guilt often said to be felt by some white people for the racist treatment of people of color by whites both historically and presently. Condescending and patronizing language and tone towards white readers has become a hallmark of the RCP. This can be witnessed no better than a poster placed in Issue #111 of Revolution. The Poster was entitled Attention White People What is your Problem?!? and used words, images and situations that suggested that all white people are the same, in this case racist. It attempts to invoke a sense of guilt in white people by using a harsh tone directing white people to "Wake the fuck up", "Stop thinking with it's[capitalism] racist values" and "Start resisting". (2)

This urgent and harsh tone towards white people is a reoccurring theme in the Revolution paper. One issue of Revolution featured a letter from a white Jena resident saying, "As a white member of the small town of Jena I am calling on the “majority”—those who oppose the oppression of society, the racism, white supremacists are trying to justify—to stand up to protect the future of our youth." The writer attempts to stir up more of a sense of white guilt by asking, "Would you allow our youth, your son, your brother, to go unspoken for? To spend years in prison for standing up for his rights, for protecting himself from the oppression of Black people? I will not and I’m calling on you, every mother and father, to stand up." Her message picks up a sense of urgency while stirring more guilt of inactive whites when she ends the letter by, "I will be there for the ongoing trials, for any protests, supporting the Jena 6 and demanding they be free. Where will you be? What will you do?"(3)

The RCP has habit of playing up on the inactivity of whites in the defense of civil rights for black people. They assert, "To stand on the sidelines is to stand on the wrong side, with the white supremacist status quo, with the nooses, with the powers-that-be."(4) The newspaper also specifically stresses the racial identity of individuals and groups to further it's agenda on creating white guilt among it's white readership. For example, it notes "on November 16 when thousands of people—mostly Black people—marched"(4) in Washington DC and claiming that "It was shameful that hardly any white people—from Jena or anywhere else—were at the “Free the Jena 6” protest on September 20"(5). Revolution also emphasizes the fact, "When ten thousand people got on the bus to Jena on September 20, there were hardly any white people on board. And again, at the march in DC on November 16, there were very few whites or people of other nationalities in the crowd"(4). One letter to the newspaper claims, "There were certainly more than a few white individuals scattered in the Jena protest crowd and other events," and he reasons, " it seemed that not very many of the progressive-minded whites, young people as well as veterans of the ’60s, to put it bluntly, bothered to get involved in this battle, at least not in any significant number"(6). Thus a strange summation is that not many white people were "bothered to get involved". The RCP cure for this is to "get involved in the struggle and take up this paper, and as you do get into the works of Bob Avakian."(4)

Instead of actually organizing white communities, Revolution's approach is to utilize demeaning and patronizing language targeted at it's white readership in the hopes that feelings of white guilt will propel white people into taking up struggle. It calls them "stupid white people", "complicit"and uses harsh tones against them for not being "involved in the struggle" of Black people like supporters of the RCP. However, this begs the question, does the RCP have a real connection with the black masses or does the Revolution newspaper only perpetuate an illusion that it does?

Black Tokenism
The RCP Draft Programme states that the Party will "need tens of thousands of organized ties", yet the Party has failed to "have forged deeper ties with the masses" which it vehemently claims. However, to hide this failure the Revolution newspaper relies on anecdotes and black tokenism to give off the appearance of successfully creating ties with the black masses. Black tokenism refers to a practice of limited inclusion of members of a Blacks, usually creating a false appearance of inclusive practices, intentional or not. It creates this veil by using language that emphasizes difference; utilizing references to race or stereotypical characteristics.

For example, Revolution #47 features correspondences from readers in Los Angeles who had been reading, promoting, and discussing Bob Avakian's memoir, From Ike to Mao and Beyond. In Letter #2, a correspondence says they "spoke with a Black college student who grew up in the Valley ", that "Another really good conversation I had was when I spoke with a youth who lives in the projects" and how yet "Another high school youth from the same housing projects said that it would be really good to get this memoir into classrooms"(7) This same tactic is applied towards Hispanics as well. The first letter, the writer uses language that unnecessarily emphasizes differences, by asserting he talked to "two Latin-American immigrant proletarians, Tony and Pablo". The writer also had to emphasize the fact that "Pablo said that he was at a disadvantage in this discussion because he had lent his copy of the Memoir to a Latina immigrant friend (who finally has a place of her own after being in and out of homeless shelters and losing all of her possessions including her books)". Yet, it is odd that the fourth letter did not identify the person by identity characteristics, only saying, "A youth in the LA Writers Collective wrote a review of the Memoir last year while he was a college student." Revolution conveniently excludes references to race or stereotypical characteristics(blacks live in projects/ghettos, Hispanics in barrios) when it does not fit into their agenda.

This agenda is based on manufacturing an illusion of the RCP creating meaningful ties with peoples of color. Revolution Issue 100, notes that "One middle-aged Black woman had heard that we were going to be out there because of a flyer she had seen the day before and came over in the afternoon to be a part of it". There are anecdotes of RCP supporters befriending Black Jena residents, as in the cases of "Vera and James" in issue #103 and "Frank and Tyrone" in issue #115.

Due to the fact that anecdotes are essentially stories, a literary analysis can reveal striking information. There are many different critical approaches to literature, but in this case, I will assume a black Marxist approach in analyzing the black/white power structure which makes blacks inferior.

First, there are a series of questions one must ask his or herself during the reading of the piece. Questions like, “What stereotypes of blacks do you find.”, “How do the white characters talk to or treat the black characters.”, “Is there any evidence of the traditional binaries of white/black, intellectual/ignorant, objective/subjective and active/passive. The answer to this question helps us either to perform a studies of difference, studies of power or studies of the black experience.

The article by Alice Woodward, dealt with the efforts to win two local Black youth from Jena(Fred and Tyrone) over to joining protests taking place in Katrina. Woodward notes that Fred was "unsure about how the people in New Orleans would respond to someone like him, an outsider, a Black youth, coming to support them. He had a whole negative perception of the inner city youth. Of gangs and violence, of people without hope or any concern for others." Woodward describes in great detail how the youth were "song after song they spit words full of sexist, degrading, and objectifying shit" and how during the ride they had "a big ongoing struggle" with the Jena youth "over using the word “b*tch” and the attitude that women are sex objects" as well as informing the black youth of the "impact of the N word". (9)

Another Jena anecdote by Li Onesto details her experience with black Jena residents Vera and James. She describes that their daughter "knew her parents had been to the protest on Thursday and all the talk about the KKK and the death threats to the parents of the Jena 6 has gotten her upset." They then go on to mention that the girl looked "a bit embarrassed when her mother tells us this, but then smiles when we tell her that she should be very proud of her parents and the other people in Jena who were standing up to the nooses, standing up for what is right, that this is how history changes, when people take a stand and fight for a better world." (10)

In both stories, the black characters take on an ignorant, subjective and passive role, while the RCP supporters take on an intellectual, objective and active role from the traditional binaries. Revolution portrays Blacks as reactionary and hopeless, while the RCP supporters act as Revolutionary saviors, changing the views and instilling hope in the ignorant black masses giving them courage to struggle to change history. The daughter of Vera and James is "embarrassed" over the fact she is scared over KKK death threats, that is until, the RCP supporters tell her she should be very proud of her parents for standing up against the nooses and she instantly feels better. The black youth Fred uses language "full of sexist, degrading, and objectifying shit" until RCP supporters object to it and Fred ultimately agrees it is sexist. These traditional binary roles can not only be found in these two anecdotes, but many other anecdotes scattered in the Revolution paper.

Manufacture of Dissent
In the book Manufacture of Consent, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomksy introduced a propaganda model that alleges systemic biases in the mass media and seeks to explain them in terms of structural economic causes. Here I introduced a theory that i call, Manufacture of Dissent, which is utilized by the Revolutionary Communist Party through its central organ Revolution.

The paper utilizes demeaning and patronizing language targeted at it's white readership in the hopes that feelings of white guilt will propel white people into taking up struggle. It curses at them, calls them "stupid white people", "complicit"and uses harsh tones against them for not being "involved in the struggle" of Black people like supporters of the RCP. However, the RCP does not have "organized ties" to the masses, particularly the Black masses as it so claims. So in order to hide this failure the Revolution newspaper relies on anecdotes and black tokenism to give off the appearance of successfully creating ties with the black masses. It thus creates a false impression by using language that emphasizes difference; utilizing references to race or stereotypical characteristics.

These tactics are essentially attempting to "manufacture dissent". The RCP claims to be winning over segments of the black population, as "evidenced" by their anecdotes. Next, they try to win over segments of the white population by stirring up feelings of white guilt due to white people's general complicity to the black oppression and not being involved in the day to day struggle of Black America like they are. However, the RCP itself is not involved in the day to day struggle of black America, nor does it have significant ties to the black population, it only casts this illusion in their approach to win over segments of the white population, white liberals in particular by casting a sense of urgency and guilt.

However, this approach fails on many grounds. One, instead of using the paper to have segments of the population "gravitate towards" the RCP, it actually achieves the exact opposite. The RCP's authoritarian stance and harsh, patronizing language towards white's may offend and repel readers from being potential supporters or even future readers. At the same time, the RCP's authoritarian and "holier than thou" attitude towards black America, as evidenced by the binaries intellectual/ ignorant and active/passive found in the many anecdotes, may also offend and repel black readers from becoming active supporters or future readers of the paper.

The Revolution newspaper is a prime example of how wrong line and approach is the main cause towards the Revolutionary Communist Party's inability to "forge deeper ties with the masses". Yet, the RCP explicitly tries to cover up this failure through usage of anecdotes which it uses as evidence of connecting and "winning over" the masses. Instead of lying and using condescending language towards it's readership, to it's white audience in particular, they need to organize within the white communities, instead of neglecting it. Are the white communities at fault for having reactionary views when progressive whites neglect organizing their communities in order to participate in struggles in black community(which evidently can organize themselves)? Can long lasting ties be established in black communities when white progressives only appear in a neighborhood during major social crisis? Certainly not. However, the RCP has yet to correct it's approach in interacting with and organizing the masses. The usage of the Revolution newspaper is just one prime example. Unless it does so, the Revolutionary Communist Party will continue to fail in it's attempt to "win over" and establish permanent ties with the masses.

-blackstone



Notes:
1. “Celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the RCP,USA,” Revolutionary Worker 1076, October 29, 2000, rwor.org
2. "Attention White People What is your Problem", Revolution #111, December 9 2007, rwor.org
3. "Jena and the Big Picture", Revolution #114, December 30, 2007, rwor.org
4. "The Jena 6, the Nooses, And Why We Need a Revolution" Revolution #110, November 25, 2007, rwor.org
5. "KKKluckers with NOOSES marching on MLK Day in Jena, unopposed? NO WAY!" Revolution #116, January 20, 2008, rwor.org
6. "The UNITY WE DO NOT NEED & the UNITY WE DO NEED." Revolution #105, October 21, 2007, rwor.org
7. "Reading, Promoting, and Discussing Bob Avakian's Memoir", Revolution #47, rwor.org
8. "Day of Resistance and Rembrance in Harlem, Revolution #100, September 9 2007, rwor.org
9. "On the Road from Jena to New Orleans", Revolution #115, December 13, 2007 rwor.org
10. "Jena Journal: 48 Hours After a Great Day", Revolution 103, October 7 2007, rwor.org