South Africa wants peace between Ukraine and Russia. That was the message from the head of the country’s ruling ANC party, during a feisty interview with the BBC. Fikile Mbalula also stressed his party would welcome the Russian President if he attended the… pic.twitter.com/prUckb7xI6
South Africa wants peace between Ukraine and Russia. That was the message from the head of the country’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party during a contentious interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Fikile Mbalula also stressed his party would welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin if he attended the upcoming BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) summit in Durban, South Africa. That’s despite the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Putin over alleged war crimes in Ukraine. Digital news outlet African Stream breaks it down.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Kawsachun News.
Comrade Chris Matlhako, the Secretary for International Affairs of the South African Communist Party and Central Committee member, passed away in the morning of April 20, 2023, at the age of 58. He was a diligent friend to the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean and partner in the building of socialism internationally. Deepest condolences were expressed by the Cuban embassy and Ambassador in South Africa: “The world loses one of its most exceptional sons.”
Chris, an internationalist, traveled on many occasions to Venezuela and Cuba, offering solidarity and accompaniment from Africa and was an important voice in opposing NATO and the cold war on China. Chris condemned imperialist aggression against Palestine, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and other countries, urging international solidarity from South Africa and was on the Steering Committee for the Black Alliance for Peace’s U.S. Out of Africa Network.
The African National Congress paid tribute in a statement that can be read here.
Below is the statement issued by the South African Communist Party on Comrade Chris Matlhako’s passing.
South African Communist Party
20 April 2023
SACP dips its red flag and mourns the passing of Central Committee member Comrade Chris Matlhako (21 October 1964 – 20 April 2023)
The South African Communist Party (SACP) conveys its message of deepest condolences to the family of Comrade Chris Matlhako, SACP 15th National Congress Central Committee member who served our Party and movement diligently.
Comrade Chris Matlhako passed away on Thursday morning, 20 April 2023.
The SACP also sends its message of condolences to the entire liberation movement which he served till he breathed his last, as well as the working-class across the world.
At the time of his passing, Comrade Chris Matlhako served the SACP as a full-time Central Committee Member as elected by the SACP 15th National Congress held 13 – 16 July 2022. In this capacity, he served as Secretary for International Relations at the Party’s Headquarters in Johannesburg. Previously, he was the SACP 2nd Deputy General Secretary as elected by the 14th National Congress in 2017, and served as a Central Committee member before that tenure. He was also a member of the African National Congress and participated in the mass democratic movement as an activist and leader.
Comrade Chris Matlhako joined the South Africa liberation struggle as a student, actively participating in the student movement to fight against the apartheid system. He later joined the SACP and never shifted from the socialist course.
An astute intellectual fully committed to the socialist cause, Comrade Chris penned many articles for various publications, local and international, on numerous subjects concerning the revolution. A collection of his articles published in various publications over the years was made available and serialised in the magazine Thinking Che, with the first volume appearing in 2019.
Comrade Chris Matlhako did not limit himself to serving the South African working-class, however. He also spread himself across the world, helping to raise the international struggle against imperialism and assiduously delivering the SACP’s message to various parts of the world. As part of his internationalist work, Comrade Chris served as the General-Secretary of the Friends of Cuba Society – South Africa (FOCUS-SA) and was also a member of the South African Peace Initiative, among other responsibilities. He also represented the Party in the Working Group of the International Communist and Workers Parties, directly contributing to shaping and sharpening the socialist voices across all lands.
In paying tribute to Comrade Chris Matlhako, the SACP will continue to tirelessly organise the working-class, galvanise the left forces in order to deepen the building of a socialist movement of the workers and the poor, as mandated by our 15th National Congress. In taking forward his work, the SACP calls for more revolutionaries to actively involve themselves in Marxist-Leninist intellectual work as well as working-class internationalism.
The SACP calls upon young communists, as led by the Young Communist League of South Africa, whom Comrade Chris worked very hard to nurture, to preserve his legacy by organising the youth of our country to fight against imperialism, towards socialism.
Alexander John-Robert Drueke (left), 39, and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, residents of Alabama, may face the death sentence in the Donetsk People’s Republic on the charges of being mercenaries and killing civilians / credit: Families of the prisoners of war / Tuscaloosa Thread
Editor’s Note: This first-person account was originally published on Fergie’s Lighter, the author’s Substack blog, and has been lightly edited for Toward Freedom.
JUNE 28, 2022 (NEW YORK)—Last week, two U.S. citizens who had traveled to Ukraine to fight for the Ukrainian International Legion were widely reported as having been captured by military forces of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the breakaway republic in eastern Ukraine that is allied with Russia in the ongoing conflict in the region.
Alexander John-Robert Drueke, 39, and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, 27, both Alabama residents, were apparently captured amid fighting in the outskirts of the Ukrainian oblast (province) of Kharkov. To this point, they had not had any contact with the U.S. press. That is, until this reporter received a phone call.
This afternoon, my phone rang as I was driving home out in eastern Long Island. A Russian number appeared on my caller ID. It was a number British prisoner of war (POW) Aiden Aslin had previously used to contact me, as the DPR administration had my information from my time reporting in Donbass in April and May. Aslin, a British national who had been living with a family in Ukraine and was a regular in the Ukrainian marines, was sentenced to death for the crimes of being a mercenary and killing civilians. He is currently waiting to see if a prisoner exchange can be facilitated for his release, though current reports do not look good for him. The DPR, unlike the Russian Federation, has not banned capital punishment. Per my discussions with Aslin, Ukrainian and U.K. authorities’ lack of footwork on his behalf is why his exchange has not been prioritized.
This time, however, when I answered, the caller identified himself as Alexander John-Robert Drueke. His DPR state-provided lawyer accompanied the call from the captivity site in Donetsk. Drueke is from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and served 12 years in the U.S. Army Reserve. That includes two deployments to Iraq, though neither resulted in active combat. Above all, he is similarly seeking a prisoner exchange, but he described to me in relative detail how he ended up in his predicament, and some of his perspective on the situation.
Drueke with his mother, Lois (left), and Drueke’s photo from his time in the U.S. Army Reserve, which included two tours in Iraq / credit: New York Post
From U.S. Retired Veteran to Prisoner of War
He said that earlier this year, he had extensively watched U.S. and other Western news reports on the developing conflict in Ukraine, and was particularly affected by images of Ukrainians fleeing their homes. Drueke had been retired and living on veteran benefits. “[I] had to do something to help, not necessarily fighting, but whatever I could do.” He had no prior arrangements with the Ukrainian Armed Forces or the regime in Kiev before flying on April 12 from Atlanta, Georgia, to Warsaw, Poland, hoping to find his way to Ukraine.
On April 15, Drueke rode by bus over the border into Lvov, a western Ukrainian city, without incident. There, he was quickly interviewed by the Ukrainian International Legion, which signed a contract with him to work in a training role with a unit in Lvov, an arrangement that lasted eight days. Drueke said he was “dissatisfied” with this unit, for reasons he’s not at liberty to share, due to a Non-Disclosure Agreement he signed in his contract. By early June, he had signed paperwork to transfer to a reconnaissance unit on the other side of the country, in Kharkov. Drueke presumed the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the primary Ukrainian intelligence agency, oversaw this unit. He and his friend, Huynh, arrived in Kharkov on June 7. On June 9, they were sent into a combat mission—something Drueke said he didn’t expect—and they separated from the rest of their unit. That day, DPR patrol apprehended both men and brought them to Donetsk for detainment. They have not been officially charged as of yet. But Drueke understands they are to be charged with being mercenaries, and may face the death penalty, though their charges are likely to be less severe than their British counterparts’.
Drueke’s captivity, as he described it, has been calm, and he has been well-treated, given the obviously uncomfortable broader context. He says he has been provided with food and water regularly, is in a cell by himself, and has not had any contact with his fellow U.S. POW or any other prisoners. Though, for over a week now, he has had access to phone calls, including to his mother, Lois Drueke, and has been contact with his lawyer every other day. He maintains a very close relationship with his mother, and she appears to be working tirelessly on his case. I reached out to her for her comment and have yet to hear back.
The DPR authorities, per Drueke, are willing to negotiate for his release in a prisoner exchange, and are generally motivated to secure safe return for their own people. While he has been in contact with the U.S. State Department (he named one Michael Abbott as his contact; I was not able to track down this person), and while the U.S. government has told Drueke and his mother that they are “doing what they can,” he told me that “the U.S. is not technically a combatant in this fight, and they have no one to exchange with the DPR, so what they can do is limited to pressuring Kiev.” Whether the Ukrainian authorities were working on his case was not clear to him, and he has had no contact since his capture with anyone in the Kiev government.
Map highlighting the Ukrainian oblast of Kharkiv in orange. The breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugantsk are in gray / credit: Carnegie Europe
‘Extremely Uninformed’ By Western Media
When I asked him about his perspectives on the conflict now, versus when he made the decision to come over, his repeated emphasis was that he had been “extremely uninformed” when he was still in Alabama and relying on the narrative being spun by Western media. “I can tell you that I was very surprised to see most women and children still at home and living normally in all the major Ukrainian cities I went to. And when I was detained here in Donestk, it was the first time I had been able to speak to any Russians or Russian-speakers from Donbass. There’s a side of the story that we’re not getting in America.” He noted that even from his cell in Donetsk, he had been hearing constant explosions, every day, coming from Ukrainian shelling of the city, something he had never anticipated. “Nothing in the Western media shows you that this is a civil war, and one that’s been going on a long time.” He didn’t go as far as disavowing the Ukrainian state, or endorsing the Russian “special military operation,” but he repeatedly said to me, “If I had known the truth about what was going on over here, I would never have made the decision to come. I regret it.”
Feelings of sympathy for a man in a life-and-death predicament, who at face value seems to have been duped into his decision, above all else, are completely understandable. But some on the Donestk side of the conflict aren’t shedding many tears for him, or for similar detainees. Russell “Texas” Bentley is a U.S.-born veteran of the DPR armed forces, having served from 2014 to 2017, and he is a resident of Donetsk. Bentley shared with me his thoughts on Drueke and those like him.
“Yeah, a lot of these punks were just too big for their britches, and that’s almost forgivable. But what they wanted to do was come here to kill, and if the shoe had been on the other foot, they wouldn’t have hesitated. I was behind Ukrop [Ukrainian] lines twice, and didn’t fire a shot either time. Every single battle I was ever in was defensive. We held a position, and the Ukrops came to attack us, and they’d have killed us all if they could have. So, it will be an educational experience for them, hopefully give them a bit of a head start in their next life.”
‘Do Your Research… Be Better Informed’
My inquiries to the U.S. State Department and Ukrainian military press contacts have yet to yield any responses. Drueke remains adamant that the DPR is eager to arrange his release, and hopeful that the U.S. government is trying to facilitate that. But he says, “Time is starting to run out.” Portuguese journalist Bruno Carvalho, with whom I worked in Donetsk, and who remains there on assignment, suggested that one of the hold-ups in these prisoner exchanges with the DPR may be that a foreign government, such as the United Kingdom or the United States, agreeing to negotiate such an exchange might be tantamount to a recognition of the republic. On a diplomatic level, that could have major ripple effects. After all, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recognition of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic proved to be the great harbinger of the recent escalation in what many see as a Western proxy war against Russia.
Before we hung up, I assured Drueke that I would at the very least write about our conversation, and I asked him what he might say to others who were caught in the fever of U.S. propaganda, and might have the same instincts to fly across the ocean and sign up to fight for Ukraine.
“As I said, I did not have a full understanding of what was going on, and if I had, I wouldn’t have made the decision that I did. What would I say to someone else? Do your research, look at sources outside of the West—be better informed.”
A Serbian colleague and friend of mine, Miodrag Zarkovic, is also in Donestk, and was given access to do a full interview with Drueke and fellow U.S. POW Andy Huynh. It can be found in English on his Serbian YouTube channel, HelmCast.
Fergie Chambers is a freelance writer and socialist organizer from New York, reporting from eastern Europe for Toward Freedom. He can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Substack.
Proud Boys in MAGA hats at a neo-Confederate rally in 2019 / credit: Anthony Crider/Flickr
Editor’s Note: This opinion was published as “Left-Right White Solidarity?” in Common Dreams in 2014, shortly after the U.S.-backed neo-Nazi coup in Ukraine, in response to solidarity emerging between left-wing and right-wing people of European descent in the United States and in Europe. However, this does not refer to the “horseshoe theory,” a concept that suggests the left and the right have much in common and pose a threat to a so-called “center.” The horseshoe theory leaves out the colonial question: What happens to people who have been colonized by Europeans in the United States and around the world? And what impact does white supremacy have not just on those who have been colonized, but on people of European descent? This version has been edited with the author’s permission.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” -George Santayana
Some years ago, Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri suggested that while not always visible in the social practices of everyday European life, the racist foundation for European fascism was still present, safely confined to a space in the European psyche, but always ready to explode in what he called a “racist delirium.”
Today, white workers and the middle classes in Europe and in the United States, traumatized by the new realities imposed on them by the decline of the Western imperialist project and the turn to neoliberalism, are increasingly embracing a retrograde form of white supremacist politics.
This dangerous political phenomenon is developing in countries throughout the European Union and in the United States. Just recently, the National Front, a racist, authoritarian party that labored on the fringes of French politics for years, has emerged as one of the dominant forces. The Tea Party in the United States, Golden Dawn in Greece, the People’s Party in Spain, the Partij Voor de Vrijheid in the Netherlands—in these and other countries, a transatlantic, radical racist movement is emerging and gaining respectability.
The hard turn to the right is not a surprise for those of us who have a clear-eyed view of Euro-American history and politics. In all of the 20th century fascist movements in Europe, two elements combined to express the fascist project: 1) The rise of far-right parties and movements as the political expression of an alliance of authoritarian, pro-capitalist class forces bankrolled by sections of the capitalist class and constructed in the midst of capitalist crisis; and 2) racism grounded in white supremacist ideology.
The neo-fascism that is now emerging within the context of the current capitalist crisis on both sides of the Atlantic has similar characteristics to the movements of the 1930s, but with one distinguishing feature. The targets for racist scapegoating are different. The targets today are immigrants: Arab, Muslim and African in Europe; and Latinos as well as the never-ending target of poor and working-class African Americans in the United States.
What makes the rise of the racist radical right even more dangerous today is that it is taking place in a political environment in which traditional anti-racist oppositional forces have not recognized the danger of this phenomenon or—for strategic reasons—have decided to downplay the issue. That strategy has been tragically played out in the “immigrant rights” movement in the United States.
The brutal repression and dehumanization witnessed across Europe in the 1930s has not found generalized expression in the United States and Europe, at least not yet. Nevertheless, large sectors of the U.S. and European left appear to be unable to recognize that the U.S./NATO/EU axis that is committed to maintaining the hegemony of Western capital is resulting in dangerous collaborations with rightist forces both inside and outside of governments.
The manufactured crisis with Russia over the issue of Ukraine is a case in point. The incredible recklessness and outrageous opportunism of the U.S./NATO/EU axis in destabilizing Ukraine—knowing that the driving forces on the ground were racist, neo-Nazi elements from the Right Sector and the Svoboda party—demonstrated once again the lengths this axis is prepare to go to achieve its geo-strategic objective of full-spectrum economic and political global domination.
Yet, strangely, not only did many radicals in the United States and Europe not see the potential threat this situation represented—they seemed unable to penetrate the simplistic cold-war propaganda that suddenly re-emerged to frame events in Ukraine.
Instead of being concerned that—as a direct consequence of U.S. actions—a government came to power in Europe that, for the first time since the 1930s, included ultra-nationalist, racist neo-Nazis in key positions, the left along with the general population allowed the corporate media and U.S. propagandists to turn the narrative away from U.S./EU destabilization of Ukraine to Putin’s supposed expansionist aspirations.
The ease in which the corporate media was able to flip that script and make Putin the new face of evil has been truly astonishing. And the fact that that narrative was embraced by most liberals and large sectors of the white left in the United States only affirmed that—having abandoned class analysis and anti-imperialism, and never really having understood the insidious nature of white supremacist ideology—the U.S. left has no theoretical framework for apprehending the complexities of the current period.
The inability to extricate itself from the influences of white supremacist ideology has to be considered one explanation for the strange positions taken by large sectors of the white liberal/left over the last few years. How else can one explain the bizarre incorporation of the discourse of “humanitarian intervention” and the obscenely obvious racism of the “responsibility to protect”?
Could it be that many white radicals have fallen prey to the subtle and not-so-subtle racial appeal to a form of cross-class white solidarity in defense of “Western values,” civilization and the prerogative to determine who has the right to national sovereignty, all of which are at the base of the rationalization of the “responsibility to protect” asserted by the white West?
The apparent incapacity of white leftists to penetrate and understand the cultural and ideological impact of white supremacy and its powerful effect on their own consciousness has weakened and deformed left analysis of U.S. and European foreign policy initiatives. It has also resulted in the U.S. and European left taking political positions that either objectively championed U.S./NATO imperialist aggression or provided tacit support for that aggression though silence.
As a consequence of the abandonment of anti-imperialism and an active class-racial collaboration with the Western bourgeoisie, an almost insurmountable chasm has been created separating the Western left from its counterparts in much of the global South.
Instead of more resolute anti-imperialist solidarity, broad elements of the white left in the United States and Europe have consistently aligned themselves with the policies of the U.S/NATO/EU axis that supports right-wing forces from Ukraine to Venezuela.
Exaggeration, racial paranoia, and an overly simplistic and divisive—even “racist”—assessment of the liberal/left will be the charge. We accept those charges. We accept them because we know they will come. For those of us living outside the walls of privilege who must nevertheless accept the realities of the colonialist/imperialist-created global South, we don’t have the luxury of comforting illusions. Our lived experiences negate the false history of Europe’s benevolent civilization. We see developing in Europe and in the United States the very real possibility of a left-right racial convergence fueled by crisis, leftist ideological confusion and what appears to be a mutual commitment to maintaining the global structures of white supremacy.
Understanding the violent history of the Western project and the pathological nature of white supremacy, we are forced to see with crystal clarity that within the context of the volatile economic and social conditions in Europe, giving legitimacy to neo-fascist forces like the ones in Ukraine might just be the fuel needed to ignite that racist, fascist delirium Berneri referred to.
Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president of the United States on the Green Party ticket. Baraka is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and was awarded the U.S. Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.
