NUMSA Press Statement
25 July 2026
NUMSA condemns the Trump allies in Congress who have subpoenaed Breakthrough News and The People’s Forum, together with other progressive organisations. On 21 July 2026, the House Ways and Means Committee demanded both organisation’s internal communications, records and finances by 7 August.
This attack is not just about these organisations. This fascist action follows a propaganda document issued by the U.S. State Department titled “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism.” This fraudulent report is a weaponised tool of empire designed to vilify, intimidate, and target progressive organisations like The People’s Forum and Breakthrough News. It advances sweeping lies aimed at criminalising international solidarity, and falsely framing anyone who opposes the illegal, criminal blockade against the heroic people of Cuba—or who fight for social justice—as “left-wing terrorists.” The Report even openly references Senator Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunt for the destruction of a robust socialist movement that existed in the United States until it was crushed following World War II.
This is clearly a political attack on organisations that speak truth to empire. It falls part of an escalating crusade against all progressive organisations and any group or person who expresses opposition to the ultra-right, racist, and pro-war, imperialist policies of the Donald Trump administration. We recognise this method. In South Africa, the United States kept our own liberation movement on its terrorist list while it bankrolled the racist apartheid system. This is the desperate application of apartheid style Red Scare tactics!
The empire is tightening its brutal blockade against Cuba. Working-class children are the first to suffer. Total blackouts of electricity have become the order of the day. Before the Cuban Revolution, the island was a playground for US elites. Under the dictator Batista, they gambled and propagated the vices their own society rejected. The Cuban Revolution reclaimed the dignity of the Cuban people. Under the heroic leadership of Fidel Castro, Vilma Espin and others, Cuba built a socialist society where healthcare and education are human rights that are accessible to all, not commodities centred on profit for an elite few!
The same United States leaves close to 40 million of its own people in dire poverty. Simultaneously it continues to support the spread of racist Zionist ideologies throughout the world and the genocide of the Palestinian people. It has extorted 13 billion US dollars from its colonial seizure of Venezuela’s oil. Thirty-two Cuban soldiers died in January defending the independence of Venezuela when President Nicolas Maduro and First Combatant Cilia Flores were illegally kidnapped by US imperialism.
Following the devastating earthquake in Venezuela that completely collapsed nearly 200 buildings and killed over 5000 people, the U.S. has not lifted any sanctions – severely restricting the country’s ability to respond to the disaster. This month, the empire sanctioned Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism. It has wasted more than 40 billion dollars on a failed attempt to bring Iran to heel. That is the morality of a system that punishes dignity and rewards greed.
Here in South Africa, we are under the same threat. Right-wing Afrikaner nationalists see the end of apartheid as an unfortunate hiccup. They have teamed up with the right-wing political establishment in the United States. They demand that South Africa surrender its sovereignty to the likes of Elon Musk, and they peddle lies and imperialist propaganda about a white genocide taking place in our country. NUMSA says no! We will not trade our freedom for the interests of racist capital.
NUMSA stands with all peoples who are rejecting tyranny. We stand with the brave journalists at Breakthrough News and the young activists leading The People’s Forum in New York, where our General Secretary has spoken. The People’s Forum is being attacked for raising levels of consciousness through successful political education programs and progressive cultural work that unite people across historic lines of division.
The People’s Forum has played an important role since October 2023 in mobilising mass opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and in the mobilisations against ICE’s terrorist assault against immigrant families, and the brutal US blockade that is designed to destroy the people of Cuba.
Breakthrough News is being targeted for reporting on Washington’s crimes and those who organise and resist imperialism around the world – from the Palestine solidarity movement to the Congo, Sudan and the Alliance of Sahel States. NUMSA’s struggles have been broadcast on Breakthrough News many times where the struggles and victories of workers take centre-stage.
At a time where majority of the media we consume around the world is controlled by five profit-driven mega corporations, media like Breakthrough News which feature organisations like ourselves, are more important than ever!
An attack on The People’s Forum and Breakthrough News is an attack on the international working class. Hands off The People’s Forum and Breakthrough News!
Issued by:
Irvin Jim
NUMSA General Secretary
073 157 6384
For more information, please contact:
Mbali Ngwenda
NUMSA Media & Communications
mbalin@numsa.org.za
078 458 0617
For more information:
NUMSA Head Office: 011 689 1700
NUMSA Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/NumsaSocial
NUMSA Twitter account: @Numsa_Media
NUMSA Website: https://numsa.org.za/
PDF DOWNLOAD: NUMSA Stands in Solidarity with The Peoples Forum and Breakthrough News in the United States of America