STATEMENT OF THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST FRONT

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For Immediate Release

Date: 8 January 2026
Attended by:

_Workers and Socialist Party (WASP), Socialist Youth Movement (SYM), General Industries Workers Union of South Africa (GIWUSA), the Palestinian Solidarity Alliance (PSA), United Front, South African Boycott, Divestment and Sanction Coalition (SA BDS), Mining Affected Communities United in Action (MACUA), Women Affected by Mining United in Action (WAMUA) Youth Affected by Mining Uniter in Action (YAMUA), Unemployed People’s Movement, Gauteng Housing Crisis Committee, Association of Artisanal and Small Scale Mining SA (AASMSA), Save Our Sacred Lands (SOSL), New Unity Movement, KZN Palestine Solidarty Front, South Africa Palestine Movement, Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Abahlali Base Freedom Park, Socialist Party of Azania (SOPA), International Solidarity Movement for Africa and Palestine (ISMAP), Wage Peace, International Legal Coalition for Palestine (ILCP), Friends of Cuba Society Western Cape, and various activists and formations in South Africa and beyond._

Great Success: Emergency Solidarity with Venezuela and the Launch of a United Front Against Imperialist Aggression

An urgent and well-attended emergency meeting of over 170 delegates from anti-imperialist forces was held online on 7 January 2026. Convened in response to the brazen kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Foreign Minister Celia Flores by the United States regime of Donald Trump, the meeting brought together trade unions, socialist organisations, and international solidarity movements from South Africa, Latin America, and beyond. The broad participation and robust engagements reflected a deep understanding of the gravity of the situation, not only for Venezuela and Latin America, but for the entire globe. There was a clear recognition that South Africa itself lives under the constant threat and blackmail of American Imperialism, particularly due to its stance on Palestine and BRICS. This gathering unanimously condemns this act of political gangsterism and declares a new phase of coordinated, mass resistance against imperialist bullying, belligerence and drive towards a catastrophic third world war.

1. Condemnation of Imperialist Escalation

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the illegal kidnapping and detention of President Maduro and Foreign Minister Flores. This is not an isolated event, but the sharpest expression of a new, more dangerous era of naked imperialism, pushing the world to the brink of wider conflict. The Trump regime, acting as a right-wing populist, warmongering and bonapartist whip for American capital, is shredding the pretence of international law and so-called rules-based world order. It seeks not allies, but vassals, and is launching military and trade wars to control global resources and markets. From Venezuela to Palestine, from Colombia to Iran, Nigeria and South Africa, the system in crisis is lashing out against the Global South and weaker nations everywhere.

The fraudulent “War on Drugs”, narcoterrorism, dictatorship and other pretexts are mere covers for a colonial agenda of plundering minerals and exploiting labour. The recent slander against Colombian President Gustavo Petro and the ongoing aggression against Venezuela prove that no sovereign nation that defies U.S. diktat is safe. This escalating aggression signals a terrifying disregard for multilateralism and peace, heightening the threat of a global conflagration.

*2. Our Analysis: Capitalism in Crisis, Working-Class Power the Only Answer*

This crisis is rooted in the dead-end of the capitalist system, characterised by over-production, intense rivalry for markets, and a desperate scramble for resources that fuels the engine of war. We hold no illusions in any capitalist power, be it the USA, the European Union, Russia, or China, to oppose imperialism in principle. Their conflicts are with each other for dominance, not with the system of exploitation itself, and their rivalries themselves risk exploding into a third world war.

The experience of Venezuela, while achieving significant gains through nationalisation under Chavez, ultimately demonstrates that a ‘halfway’ revolution, or to be precise, reformism, cannot succeed. The capitalist state and its logic must be broken. We note with concern the suppression of democratic rights, socialist and working-class forces within Venezuela, and the compromising tightrope walked by its government. Our sole and unwavering reliance is on the independent power of the international working class and the oppressed to halt the march to war, not the bureaucracy and political elite in Venezuela or anywhere.

*3. Unity in Action: Our Enemy is One, Our Resistance is One*

We salute the historic stance of President Hugo Chávez, who cut all ties with the Zionist apartheid state and told the “Yankees to go to hell”, notwithstanding the fundamental limitations of his reformist programme. We stand in united solidarity with the peoples of Venezuela, Palestine, Colombia, Cuba, and all nations under the gun of imperialism and express our commitment to stand in defence of the hard-won sovereignty and the right of self-determination conquered by the working class and the oppressed black majority in the struggle against Apartheid and European colonialism before that in this country and continent.

The struggle against the blockade of Gaza is the same struggle against the blockade and aggression on Venezuela. The fight against job losses and austerity in South Africa, itself a target of imperialist destabilisation, is intrinsically linked to the fight against the corporations that profit from war and occupation.

Therefore, we are forming a broad, action-oriented Anti-Imperialist Front. Our unity does not depend on a common position on every government, but on a common commitment to mobilise the power of the people against imperialist war, plunder, and the looming threat of a global catastrophe.

*4. Programme of Immediate Action*

We commit to the following immediate actions:

*• Monday, 12 January 2026:* Coordinated pickets at U.S. Embassies, Consulates, and other symbolic sites of imperialist power across South Africa.
*• Global Day of Action:* We fully endorse and will mobilise massively for the Global Day of Action on Friday, 6 February 2026, including through occupations, blockades, and sustained demonstrations.
*• Building a Fighting Labour Movement:* We will integrate this anti-war mobilisation with the ongoing “Factory Closures, Jobs Bloodbath and Deindustrialisation” campaign against austerity, mass layoffs, strangulation of the industry and subjugation of the economy into a neocolonial quarrying and gardening. We will take this fight to the shop floors, mines, and communities to rebuild the fighting battalions of the working class, directly challenging the local manifestations of imperialist economic stranglehold.
*• Targeting the Profiteers:* We will launch a concerted campaign to expose, boycott, and blockade corporations complicit in imperialism and genocide, such as Chevron, and those on the BDS list, drawing the link between economic exploitation and war.
*• Grassroots organising and coordination:* We support the creation of a permanent coordinating body, the production of regular bulletins, and the use of community media to educate, agitate, and organise. We will engage in grassroots organising to claim public spaces for prolonged political action and education.

*5. Call to Action*

We call on every trade union (especially SAFTU, COSATU, FEDUSA, AMCU and their affiliates), Abahlali base Mjondolo, MACUA, GHCC and every community organisation, every student, every principled democrat and fighter for social justice to join this Front. We call for the formation of local anti-imperialist action committees in every region and provincial coordinating centres across the country and other parts of the continent, in the spirit and tradition of internationalism.

Join the picket this Monday. Mobilise for February 6th. Link the struggle for jobs to the struggle against imperialist war. The politicians will not save us; the UN will not save us; the courts will not save us. Only our own collective power, organised independently in our workplaces and communities on an international scale, can defeat imperialism and halt the slide into a third world war.

_*Our enemy is one. Our resistance is one. An injury to one is an injury to all!*_

*Hands Off Venezuela!*
*U.S. Imperialism Out of Africa and Latin America!*
*No to World War Three!*
*Solidarity with the Workers and Oppressed of the World!*
*Build International Working-Class Resistance!*

*For further information, contact:*

Mametlwe Sebei: +27 81 368 0706
July Eccles: +27 79 158 2552
Zaki Mamdoo: +27 81 395 9738