[STATEMENT] APF – 24 August 2000 – “No Business as Usual as Anti-Privatisation Forum protests Khetso Gordhaan and iGoli 2002”

The text of another statement I wrote when I was a Media Officer for the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF).

Subject: No business as usual as Anti-Privatisation Forum protests Khetso Gordhaan and iGoli 2002
Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 19:33:31 GMT + 2:00

The Anti-Privatisation Forum organised protest at the Gordon Institute of Business Science on Thursday 24 August was a big success.
The band of comrades entered the buildings, and held a nosiy protest in the foyer. Whilst the rich sipped coffee and pretended (and wished!) to be somewhere else, the stalwart comrades chanted, blew whistles and told it like it was.

There was no way it going to business as usual.

The APF took protest to one of the hubs of power, one of the “network” sessions behind closed doors where the bosses and the politicians make the deals that privatise the basic needs of the working class – water, electricity, jobs,
social services- the very right to life itself.
The slogans reflected the mood: “Khetso would sell his own mother, “No to Capitalist Solutions – Forward to Peoples’ Power,” “Reject GEAR,” “Privatisation is the Acceleration of Poverty,” and, of course, “Reject iGoli 2002,
Reject Wits 2001.”

And the speakers told the bosses clearly: “Your privatisation has no mandate! The working class rejects neo-liberalism!”

As for the man who has somehow been projected as the patron saint of South Africa, mining magnate and bourgeois-in-chief, Harry Oppenheimer,  “his soul burns in hell … we hope he suffers like the workers he jailed in the
compounds .. and we hope you rich all join him.” Because sooner or later, “Revolution is coming.”

Afraid of more militant action, the session organisers agreed to let one of the comrades speak on the stage before Khetso. Of course, the bourgeoisie clapped politely. But they haven’t seen anything yet.

The Anti-Privatisation Forum calls on all working and poor people to join its ranks.

And to the workers of SAMWU, and the SAMWU congress,  we say KEEP UP THE FIGHT AGAINST IGOLI 2002!

A working class united will never be defeated.

ALL PRESS:

Please find below the APF’s press release on the government’s plans to
sell of
Denel, Eskom, Telkom, and Transnet.

—–
The Anti-Privatisation Forum is a coalition formed in July this year from
the merger
of the Anti-iGoli 2002Forum and the Wits University Crisis Committee.
Affiliates of
the Forum include Nehawu (Wits University), South African Students
Congress,
SACP (Central JHB), SANCO, Democratic Socialist Movement, Workers
Organisation for Socialist Action, Keep Left, Wits University
Post-Graduate
Association, Campaign Against Neo-Liberalism in South Africa, SA NGO
Coalition, Jubilee 2000, SA Graduates’ Development Association, Wits
University
SRC, Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee, Ecumenical Services on Socio-
Economic Transformation, Gauteng Hawkers Association, Evaton
Reconstruction
Forum, Keep Left, the S26 Collective, Independent Municipal and Allied
Trade
Union, and the Alternative Information and Development Centre.