Date: Sun, 01 Jul 2001 08:15:41 -0700
Subject: Re: AUT: The consciousness question
From: Sharon Vance <canito3-AT-earthlink.net>


How much support from other groups and communities are they getting? Is
there any left groups in Cape Town or some of the other big cities aware of
the situation? WHat about rank and file unionists or rank and filers in the
ANC?

Such support could help make the right more effective and could lead to a
rise in consciousness among those in the fight. I think this happened with
the Liverpool Dockers. My feeling is they became more radical as they got
more international support and as they realized the importance of their own
struggle for the international labor movement.
Sharon
> From: Peter van Heusden <pvh-AT-egenetics.com>
> Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2001 13:30:12 +0200
> To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject: AUT: The consciousness question
> 
> As usual, I've found the discussions on aut-op-sy inspiring and
> refereshing compared to the drek which passes for 'thought' in
> the left in general. (The 'old left', rooted in political groups,
> NGOs and union offices really depresses me at this stage)
> 
> A practical questions is bothering me, though. Here in Cape Town,
> I'm working with some comrades in Tafelsig, a dirt poor suburb of
> Mitchell's Plain. Mitchell's Plain is a large area populated by
> 'Coloured' people - that is, mixed race people classified as
> 'Coloured' by the Apartheid regime (as opposed to Africans, Asians
> and Whites). Many of them were victims of forced removals under
> the Group Areas Act during the days of Apartheid.
> 
> Anyway, the group I'm working with is the Tafelsig Anti-Eviction
> Campaigm, a loosely geographically organised group of people fighting
> evictions and service cutoffs (mostly water disconnection) in
> Tafelsig. The record of successes is pretty impressive - while
> the community is currently under sustained assault by the Cape Town
> Unicity council, including the deployment of about 100 police and
> private security firms last week, the police of evictions is
> hitting a brick wall. People who are evicted are soon put back
> in their houses by the community. Water is reconnected. All sorts
> of community actions are taking place to fight the policies
> of the Unicity - policies which ultimately are based on commercialisation
> and privatisation of services. In other words, the Unicity wants to
> impose the relations of capital with ever harsher effect - the
> community activists are fighting against their lives being reduced to
> figures in on a balance sheet.
> 
> So - that brings me to the question of consciousness. The current
> approach - of various community activists co-ordinating resistance -
> has brought us to the current stage, a kind of deadlock between
> the council and the community.



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