Since May over 34 land occupation protests arose in Cape Town. The protests have been organized in Vrygrond, Parkwood, Mitchell‘s Plein, Gugulethu and Ocean View. The people protest because they are on waiting lists for an appartment around 20 years and can not afford housing, or having their own land. They protest against the feudal land system which exist in the semifeudal and semicolonial country.
In Mitchells Plain, a suburb of Cape Town, the protests spread over into the city, after protesters occupied land in the area. The police called on landowners to protect their properties from the „invasion“ of protesters. The protesters blocked streets with burning tyres, set traffic lights on fire and also shoot at police and opened violence at Lentegeur Police Station.
The local government wants to end these protests and claims that they are illegal. They admit the rising violence within the protests: „This represents a 73% increase in protest incidents that have grown progressively more violent“. The mayor of the city, Patricia de Lille, wants to act acainst the protests. More than 175 protesters were injailed during the protests.
The rise of land occupation protests shows the necessary of smashing old feudal landowner system. The democratic task of agrarian revolution is the first problem to take on in suppressed countries. The contradiction between imperialism and the suppressed people and nations leads to resistance and rebellion against the imperialist suppression, like it can be seen here in South Africa.
The Party „Black First Land First“ (BLF) is involved in some of the protests, they are against „white supremacy“ and demand the land for the black people. It‘s a similar way the ANC went in the 90s. But the problems can not be solved threw the parliamentary way, like BLF does, because the bourgeois parliament is an instrument of the imperialists. The people at the land occupation protests show that they have no illusions in government. The universally valid method of peoples war, lead by the working class, to succeed in new democratic revolution must be taken as a weapon for the revolutionary struggle.
