Socialist Youth Movement

Scenes from the protest today. Forward with the global fight to topple imperialism and suffocate the Israeli killing machine ✊

As the genocidal state of Israel continues its brutal occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people, we must escalate our struggle against all those who reproduce and entrench this violence and terror. By supplying South African coal to Israel, Glencore fuels a regime of apartheid and genocide!

Join us in taking this important stand and in pushing our movement further to win concrete demands for an energy embargo to suffocate the Israeli killing machine. Let us also be bolder in fighting for the expropriation of all Zionist economic interests embedded in the South African economy, severing the material ties that sustain Israel’s occupation and expanding the struggle against imperialism and global capitalism.✊✊✊

Join the picket line this Friday, 12 July from 10am in solidarity with workers, organised under the fighting Union of GIWUSA, who have embarked on a strike against their employer,

The employer refuses to negotiate- offering workers a meagre R1.75 increase. Workers, who slave away during 10-hour long shifts for minimum wage are entirely reasonable in their demands for a R4 increase & a 10 minute tea break to complement their half hour long lunch break.

We are calling on all left and working class formations to pick up this struggle alongside workers to bring these heartless bosses to their knees and escalate this fight towards victory ✊✊✊

12 July at 10am
40 Hospital Street, Cleveland, Johannesburg

Scenes from the SYM / WASP Mass Meeting convened this past Saturday with numerous Working Class formations present- representing communities, workers and students across Gauteng. The overwhelming sentiment put forward by those present reflects our shared interest in building a political home for and of the working class. We have re-committed ourselves to this task and will work with formations to establish and root a unifying banner under which to unite our struggles and put forward a fierce resistance to the onslaught of capitalist brutality in all its forms.

*ATTENTION ALL WORKING CLASS FORMATIONS!*

The Government of Capitalist Unity that has emerged out of the 2024 elections will continue, if not escalate, the attack on workers, communities, students, youth and all black working class people in South Africa. The conditions of crippling unemployment, poverty, inequality and violence, exacerbated by the onslaught of austerity, increased privatisation, rampant corruption and systemic neglect, demand that the forces of the left build a united front and a fighting organisation to mount a fierce resistance for working class power and control.

Join us for an urgent mass meeting, open to all working class formations from the labour movement, community civics, youth and student organisations, to chart the way towards a MASS WORKERS PARTY and UNITED FRONT against the capitalist class and their political puppets.

Date: Saturday, 6th July
Time: 10am
Venue: Workers Museum, Newtown

This Youth Day the Socialist Youth Movement remembers and honours the brave students and youth of 1976. They are echoed by the Fees Must Fall movement which is this generation’s call and mission.

As violence against children intensifies in Palestine, the gains of are rolled back and poverty and unemployment worsen, we call on the youth in South Africa to join and escalate the fight through a mass workers’ party and direct action.

Our fight is urgent in the face of the new right-wing government coalition which will sharpen the suffering of black and working class people through austerity and privatisation.

The youth must therefore team up with workers to fight against capitalism and fascism and all their manifestations on every shop floor, in every community and on every campus. ✊✊✊

Statement by the NEC of SYM: We now stand on the eve of the 2024 elections- which are arguably the most important elections that we, as young people, have ever participated in. Despite their importance, we are also all well aware of the absence of choice for the working class- with all the major parties falling somewhere on the spectrum of bourgeois oppression.

Against the backdrop of this fictitious multiplicity in our capitalist democracy, it is our contention that irrespective of the outcomes of this election; the task of building the Mass Workers Party to serve as the vanguard in the revolutionary project remains unavoidable. It is an absolutely neccessary task to which we should all recommit ourselves in the next period.

Scenes from the Wits Liberated Zone over the last week. Forward with struggle for a free, democratic, decolonised, socialist Palestine. Forward with the struggle for free, quality, decolonised education. Forward with the Socialist Youth Movement ✊✊✊

The SYM Wits Chapter held its weekly branch meeting at the today. Let this encampment and all others like it become a school for the revolution. We remain resolute in building solidarity and action to confront all the major crises and injustices of our time and will effort to draw out the intersections of our numerous sites of struggle in order to confront the capitalist system and all of its brutal manifestations ✊

Statement from the Executive Committee of SYM Wits: SYM wholly supports our comrades and in the launch of the Palestinian Solidarity Encampment at Wits University today. Let us take forward this fight, in pursuit of the total liberation of all peoples, at every institution across South Africa.

26 April 2024 - SYM forces from Wits have delivered a letter to the management of South Point. Students at 56 Jorrison have not had electricity and water for close to a week! This has had a dire impact on their ability to cook, bath and study! While services were returned by this morning, we are demanding accountability- how can it be that South Point and COJ were able to turn off basic services to a student residence in the first place?? We have also given South Point until close of business today to provide us with a detailed break down of the steps they are taking to resolve the matter and ensure that these issues do not burden students ever again. Additionally, we must raise the need for a national campaign in this moment- to expropriate and nationalise private student accommodation and heartless landlord corporations like South Point. This must be done to ensure quality accommodation is provided to students as a public good and not as an exploitative profit scheme!

The newly established SYM branch in Kwa-Thema took on the vital task of tabling at Kwa-Thema TVET college. Comrades are putting forward the revolutionary programme and building a fighting organisation of the working class. One recruit at a time✊✊✊

Seen outside Starbucks in Solomon House at Wits.

Starbucks has taken the side of Israel as it brutally and illegitimately occupies Palestinian land, and has subjected its workers to abhorrent conditions by practicing union busting.

.u.j has put out this statement rejecting the presence of Blade “Students Must Fall” Nzimande on campus on April 15 2024. SYM notes with great disdain the electioneering and posturing which characterises his involvement as a key note speaker at today’s lecture on the impacts of repression on higher education in Palestine. Students will not be lectured by Blade, who is directly responsible for our repression! Nor will we be fooled by the ANC’s lip service to Palestine. A bourgeois state cannot meaningfully pursue complete liberation. Even the measures we might welcome from government, must be welcomed with bitterness for the ruling party. Aluta Continua ✊✊✊

Key forces of Kwa Thema- the basis of the newly established Ekurhuleni chapter of SYM. Forward with the fight against austerity, for free and quality basic services, for free, quality and decolonised education and for a socialist society. Students, workers and communities unite under a revolutionary socialist programme ✊✊✊

Scenes from SYM’s mass meeting at Wits University on March 20th 2024! Forward the struggle for free, quality decolonised education! ✊🏾

28 Feb 2024 - SYM statement on the greed and extravagance of careless university executives. We condemn this flagrant perpetuation of inequality and injustice to the detriment of students and workers alike.

17 Jan 2024 - SYM statement on the deepening crisis of neoliberal austerity and corruption in Higher Education. We are calling for solidarity, coordination with labour and communities and pre-emptive organising in movements and campuses across the county ahead of this year’s annual battles with capital at South African institutions. Let us rally our movements behind a concrete set of demands in order to mark a qualitative shift in our struggle for Free, Quality, Decolonised Education.

No compromise, no surrender.

Forward with the fight for free, quality, decolonised education for all!✊🏿✊🏽✊🏾

Polls at Wits - University of the Witwatersrand are open today. Vote for a leadership that is committed to meaningfully addressing student hunger, student homelessness, academic & financial exclusions and gender-based violence. Vote for genuine socialist solutions to the crises in higher education ✊

📣 ISSUE #9 of uManyano lwaBasebenzi is fresh off the printing press! 📰

As the newest cold front approaches, snuggle up with some marxist analysis on the crisis of Eskom, the war in Ukraine and the ANC's attempts to maneuvre between imperialist blocs (check out the editorial, link in comments!). Or take in the lessons of the 1976 Soweto Youth Uprising and what is the way forward for youth of today. We also have a 2-page spread on building a socialist feminist fightback against GBV in South Africa, alongside regular features on culture and climate.

All for only a solidarity donation!

📨 Send us a message to secure a printed or digital version (and also previous issues)!

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We reject the new banking system that has been imposed onto students by NSFAS. It has resulted in further exclusion of vulnerable students and has heightened hardships, insecurity and uncertainty.

SYM holds that the only sustainable solution to the crisis of higher education is the immediate implementation of

Read our full statement 👇👇👇

Our forces .up and comrades met with Giwusa President and Workers & Socialist Party executive committee member, comrade Mametlwe Sebei, today to discuss the looming threat of climate catastrophe and the integral role of workers and students in the Climate movement and eco-socialist revolution ✊✊✊

Join .up to engage in knowledge sharing and struggle in pursuit of a society free from the destruction and devastation of capital.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CrOhbPno5PD/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=

To join SYM is to join the militant & fighting ranks of uncompromised and genuinely socialist young people - committed to the pursuit of justice, wellbeing & substantive freedoms ✊

Join our chapter at Wits using self-service and reach out to our chapter at UP .up to get involved there ✊

As SYM, we hold that it’s necessary for our socialism to be an internationalist, intersectional eco-socialism for the masses✊🏿✊🏾 Anything less is a denial of the political & material realities of our historical moment👇🏾

JUST TRANSITION OP-ED: The climate crisis will not be resolved by the capitalist class — it’s either eco-socialism or extinction In their pursuit of profits at all costs, capitalist enterprises have long been at the centre of the brutal extraction and destruction of the natural world as well as the oppression and exploitation of billions of people.

Reject Budget Cuts
Towards a Working Class Budget

University of Pretoria students please engage with our forces outside Prospect Gate to learn more about, & join the Socialist Youth Movement.

Please also reach out to them if you need assistance with registration, accommodation, appeal letters & access.

Our forces will be there everyday this week ✊✊✊

Students Wits - University of the Witwatersrand come to our table in the tent outside the Great Hall if you'd like to learn more about, & join, SYM.

Please also come see our forces if you need assistance with registration, accommodation, appeal letters & access.

We'll be there everyday this week✊✊✊

Our forces on the ground at Wits - University of the Witwatersrand and University of Pretoria are ready to assist with issues and challenges relating to registration, appeal letters, accommodation and access. Please reach out for assistance and support ✊