Black Agenda Radio - 01.28.19

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: Women in business and politics are being praised for acting like cutthroat capitalists and war-mongering men. But, is that feminism? And, a leader of South Africa’s newly-formed Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party explains why workers must take political power in that country.

Dr. Martin Luther King is popularly known as a civil rights leader, but he was also deeply committed to the labor movement. Peter Cole teaches African American history at the University of Western Illinois. Cole is author of the book, "Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area.” He says labor issues were a top priority for Dr. King, who early on saw himself as a kind of socialist.

Women are engaged in all kinds of activities these days, including war, torture and cut-throat corporate business. But, is that progress? Dean Spade is a professor at the Seattle University School of Law, and co-author of a recent article titled, “There’s Nothing Feminist About Imperialism.”

South Africa has been under Black political rule for the past 25 years, since the end of apartheid. But the African National Congress government left control of the economy in the hands of white business interests. The gap between rich and poor has gotten even bigger. After decades of frustration, activists centered in the nation’s largest labor union, NUMSA, the National Union of Metalworkers, last year formed a new political party to fight against white monopoly capitalist rule. Irvin Jim is the leader of NUMSA and a key architect of the new Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party. Last week, he traveled to New York City to speak with American activists at the People’s Forum.

Also on hand at the People’s Forum was Dr. Cosmas Musumali, the General Secretary of the Socialist Party of the southern African nation of Zambia. The ruling party of Zambia has declared the Socialist Party to be a danger to national security, and party members are under constant danger of imprisonment. Dr. Musumali told his New York audience that the imperialist powers have enlisted African governments as collaborators in neocolonialism.