strategy of the ANC organisation of black resistance, in particular the African National Congress (ANC). Here ERICA FLEGG, initiating a discussion on this topic, looks at the developing crisis and the orientation which the ANC has adopted. Future issues will carry further contributions to this debate. Photographs by Morris Zwi and Jillian Edelstein/Reflex FOR SOCIALISTS in Britain today the task of billions of dollars of trade and foreign invest-
South Africa The turmoil in South Africa has focused attention on the solidarity with the struggle against the apar theid system in South Africa assumes a greater importance and urgency than ever before. The political crisis in South Africa is a central question in the international arena, as the Western powers debate the use of measures to pressurise the Botha govern ment to introduce reform, in order to sien the tide ofevolutionary toest. For the im perialist powers there atch at stake:
ment, the supply of gold and strategic minerals, the 'sccurity" of the Cape sea route, geo-political military considerations involving the South Atlantic and the Indian Orcan... bur, above all, there is the danger of the unrest developing, into a struggle against the capitalist system itself in the most advancer, industrial, capitalist cconomy in Africa, and the international repercussions that that would be bound to entail.
Morris Zwi/Reflex
It is widely recognised that there can be no permanent reversal of the mass struggle in South Africa. Each time a new wave of struggle has broken in South Africa, it has reached a higher level. The defiance campaign of the 1950s and sixties was quelled by the suppression of the mass political parties and organisations after Sharpeville. After a period of relative quiescence, when the two main liberation movements, the ANC and PAC, went underground and adopted a strategy of armed struggle launched from bases in exile, industrial unrest broke out in a wave of strikes starting in Durban in 1973 This was preceded by a general strike in Namibia, and the heightening pressure of the liberation struggle there throughout the seventies and eighties has made a key contribution to the crisis of the South African state, bork at home and abroad
The 1970s saw not only continuing outbreaks of labour unrest, but the birth of the contemporary independent black trade union movement and the upsurge of struggles by students and youth, which fed into the growth of the 'black consciousness' movement and sparked off the 1976 Soweto uprising. Because of the nature of the apartheid system, struggles by any section of the oppressed masses - workers, school students, township residents in white areas or the Bantustans - can rapidly become generalised, confronting the migrant labour system, influx control in the urban areas, forced removals of people, the education system, and all the ways in which blacks are excluded from political and economic power. Time of ferment The last decade has been a time of ferment in the black community in South Africa, as different ideologies and forms of organisation have been thrown up and tested in struggle, in the search for the best ways to advance. The model of guerilla warfare led by a mass liberation movement with bases amongst the rural population, as employed in its various forms in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Namibia, has not been able to take hold in South Africa, the lynchpin of capitalist domination of the subcontinent.
The Botha government has reached a stalemate in Namibia: it cannot defeat SWAPO, or legitimise an internal client regime. Nor have the Western imperialist powers, organised in the 'contact group', been able to impose a negotiated settlement. At home, Botha has attempted reforms - the progressive removal of 'petty' apartheid, the attempt to incorporate the Coloureds and Indians through an extension of the franchise; but these concessions have been decisively repudiated. The unions have used the space won through legal recognition or recognition by the employers to organise more widely and to press further demands. Blacks seen as collaborators by the masses -Bantustan leaders, municipal administrators in the townships, black police - live today in fear of their lives. In this context, the attempt to buy off a section of the black petitbourgeoisie has been made too late, and no longer seerns a plausible political strategy, since it is premised on the maintenance of the essentials of the apartheid system: the restriction of the franchise and the division of the territory into segregated racial areas, which is the basis of the South African system of labour control.
The white, mainly English-speaking opposition parties splintered in the seventies as they searched unsuccessfully for an alternative acceptable to the whites while capable of being imposed on the blacks. Their relative political demise is reflected in the demise of the Rand Daily Mail, the main English-language alternative to the Afrikaner nationalist press. Meanwhile the Nationalist Party has also been riven by splits and internal dissension: Botha is held back in his reformist drive by the need to placate his party's political base, which was built in the days of Verwoerd on the less privileged section of the white, mainly Afrikaner community. The privileged posi-
tion of white workers, farmers and civil servants rests on the exclusion of blacks from the most productive land and the sections of
Preserved for Botha's strategy of minor reforms combined with the intensification of repression - expressed in the declaration of emergency — is failing, but he cannot find an alternative.
These are the ingredients of the political
the ruling class in South Africa today and its foreign backers: they cannot continue to rule in the old way, but nor are they willing to risk the dismantling of apartheid, because of the instability that would result and the strength of the forces for change that would be unleashed. Thatcher and Reagan are resisting the international pressure to impose effective economic sanctions against South Africa, but the In a township seven kilometres from Johannesburg Western powers are also nervous: they don't want to intensify the crisis of the South African regime without identifying an acceptable political alternative - a provisional government for a black South Africa, in the last resort. A government that would maintain political and economic stability, protect foreign investment, reassure the white South African bourgeoisie, contain the aspirations of the masses, and keep South Africa safe for capitalism and for Western strategic interests. Taking state power There is only one serious contender, today, that is poised to assume the role of a provi-
government: the ANC. In international fora such as the UN the ANC already plays that role: it has an impressive external apparatus that has secured it an unrivalled position, after years of consistent lobbying. The PAC and the Unity Movement have fragmented and declined; the black con-
movement is politically and organisationally heterogeneous and amor-
The emergent mass organisations, however vigorous and popular they may be in terms of support and activity, were not formed to take state power. Their objectives do not extend, as yet, to the development of a full political programme, nor do they have an organisational
developed enough to take power from the forces they are challenging. In this sense they do not provide an alternative to the ANC, although to varying extents, they are often independent of ANC political leadership and sometimes are even hostile to it.
The ANC and its imprisoned leader, Mandela, do of course enjoy genuine, widespread popular support; but so does any black nationalist force or figurehead challenging apartheid. When the leader of the PAC, Sobukwe, died, there was a massive turnout for his funeral; but it should not be inferred from that that the mourners were all supporters, or under the leadership, of the PAC. Similarly, Steve Biko enjoyed a great popular reputation, but that did not make all his supporters activists of the black consciousness movement. Claims of the ANC that the present unrest is a response to their call to make South Africa 'ungovernable' cannot be taken as an index of the level of support for the ANC inside the country or of the extent of their organisational influence over the mass movement. Many of the actions and protests have evidently been spontaneous and local in origin, and it is clear that there is often little or no national co-ordination: this is, in fact, one of the limitations of the current wave of struggles. Had the outbreaks of unrest in different areas been centrally organised, moreover, it would have been irresponsible of the leadership concerned to have allowed workers and communities in the areas jillian Edelstein/Reflex involved to take the full brunt of state repression without supporting actions in other areas to deflect government forces. Although the traditions and leaders of the ANC are a major source of inspiration in the mass movement, and undoubtedly it is the biggest, most influential organisation, the ANC does not organise or lead all forms of the mass struggle: nor is it capable, despite its military forces, of defending the masses against repression. One of the questions at issue in the mass movement is, indeed, the role that armed struggle should play in advancing the revolution and defending its gains. The Soviet connection The ANC is hampered in its international diplomacy - its attempts to win universal recognition and support as the representative of black South Africa - by two main obstacles: the reluctance of the imperialist powers to envisage the disruption and uncertain consequences that would follow the full extension of the franchise (one person, one vote) to which the ANC is committed, and secondly, by the organisation's historical and close political links with Moscow and the Soviet bloc.
The first obstacle becomes daily less severe as the pressure of the struggle inside South Africa and the crisis of the Botha regime increasingly points to the concession of a democratic franchise as the only potential long-term solution to the unrest. The calculation is also increasingly made by the more enlightened sectors of capital that democratic demands will have to be met in some measure in order to forestall the danger of a socialist revolution; a prolonged process
International, No. . Jamarv/Februns Dear
Police riot in Johannesburg of radicalisation of the masses might produce something 'even worse' than the which does not have a socialist programme. Social democratic strategists are also aware of the dangers of allowing the Soviet Union to champion the anti-racist international arena, at the West's expense; they are aware that the ANC. has been pushed towards the USSR by the West's support of apartheid.
Moreover, it is precisely the ANC's commitment to the aboliton of apartheid that gives the organisation its main strength, not only at home, but also in the sense that only such a leadership would hypothetically, of meeting requirement essential to Western interests: that of being placed to contain aspirations of the masses, because of the popular legitimacy that including the ANC could expect to enjoy. Muzorewa's failure, and Mugabe's success, in this respect in the transfer of power in Zimbabwe is a case in point.
The second obstacle, that of the Soviet connection, is a different matter. In the cold war climate encouraged by the Reagan administration and its allies, such as Thatcher, this connection is a significant liability. Right-wing propagandists make much of the horrifying prospect of the USSR and an ANG-ruled South Africa enjoying a work
strategic minerals (in which South Africa, ANC, and Southern Africa as a whole, is very rich). A foreign policy document researched by Philip Crowson of Rio Tinto Zinc for the Royal Institute of International Affairs on cause in the the theme of British foreign policy options for the eighties based its argument on these considerations. The document lists all the minerals concerned, the Southern African countries that produce them, the strategic end-uses of possibilities — in most cases, poor — for the development of synthetic Similarly, it is argued in Western policy be capable, think-tanks that the security of the Cape Sea another route, the only alternative to the Suez canal for the transport of oil and other essential the commodities too large to use the canal — would be a government jeopardised, as would Southern Atlantic complement NATO. The Simonstown naval base in the Cape figures prominently in these calculations, and has significance, use of the USA's rapid deployment' force. Realistically, howerer: the has been made in some quarters that: the ANC's Soviet connection' does not commit the ANC: to socialist revolorion. full-scale nationalisation or other horrors
these minerals, and the substitutes. the Chartists - already many tankers are prospects of à military alliance to critical strategic amongst other things, for the assessment seen. If, Europe, for
Morris Zwi/Reflex international capital — rather the contrary — nor does the USSR appear to be following a course of a major upset to Western 'spheres of influence', despite considerable provocation by the US in Central America, the Caribbean and elsewhere. While the ANC has stated that 'we will remember our friends' (a carrot to the West as much as a warning, perhaps?) it has also been at pains to banish these nightmares of Western strategists. Consequently, indications of a Stalinist 'infection' of the ANC, such as the ANC's implacable hostility to the democratic movements of Eastern Europe -
Tin Czechoslovakia, and Solidarnose in Poland — as well as towards liberation struggles like that of the Eritreans, should not be expected to figure prominently in the considerations of the imperialist powers or big capital
Whether the contradiction between the ANC's espousal of democratic demands at home while it allics with the forces suppressing such struggles in Eastern Europe or the Horn of Africa will strike a note of discord with its mass base in South Africa, or with its supportive milieu in the labour movement in the West, remains to be
however, the ANC opposes demands for socialist democracy in Eastern
the right of Eritrea to self-determination, and the right of workers, 27
Marrie 7wi/Rañlay Scenes from the funeral of a black shor steward who died in police custody
women and other oppressed layers to autonomous political organisation, this must raise questions for socialists about what forms of democracy and national liberation they stand for. At the same time, it is the duty of socialists in the West to lend support to the ANC and other forces that make up the national liberation movement. We should also not equate the rank and file of the movement with its leadership, since it is the mass struggle that we support. The Communist Party As is well known, the South African Communist Party most unreconstructed Stalinist parties of the international embedded in the ANC, and has played a central role in the organisation's political and ideological formation. appears to have been strengthened in the
The elections to the ANC's executive at its congress last June — the first congress for 16 years — confirined this. The
responsiveness development of the mass movement at home was shown most clearly by its failure to add new forces from this movement — workers, youth, women — to the leadership (there are, for instance, only three women on the
The ANC's connection with the SACP has, of course, enabled Botha to link racism with anti-communism,
Africa's resistance to democratic minded from the Kremlin. The prominence given to the likes of the God-fearing Bishop Tutu by the ANC/SACP-sponsored United credibility gap in selling this conspiracy
abroad, except perhaps amongst some deludedRepublican senators in the US. More sober analysts in the Pentagon and elsewhere who have had the opportunity to study the theory and practice of the SACP have no doubt noted that the party has quite explicitly excluded the struggle for socialism from the agenda of the day. The receding of the spectre of communism is the reason why the ANC and its leadership - personified by Mandela — is now beginning to enjoy a 'recuperation' of its image in the bourgeois • media, as happened more belatedly with ZANU and Mugabe Lancaster House settlement, when the gun-
land-grabbing, black Marxist
In the analysis of the ANC/SACP, South Africa is a fascist state; therefore, argued, the movement should adopt a popular front' strategy in order to win demands for basic "bourgeois' democracy This involves a class alliance with the democratic sections of the bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie - the United Democratic Front being a new version of the old Congress Alliance of the congresses of the four main racial groupings in the 1950s, on the basis of the Freedom Charter. The Charter puts forward basic democratic demands but stops short of calling for workers' control or International. No ?. Jamar debruns 1950,
full-scale nationalisation of the means of
As Oliver Tambo put it in his speech to the last Labour Party Conference, the ANC advocates an alliance of
with the democratic forces' whites... and shop-keepers'. This strategy of a multi-class alliance was backed up in the South Africa debate at Bournemouth by the speaker from TASS who argued against a motion calling for political support for the struggle of South African workers on the grounds that support for a struggle for socialism in South Africa was ultra-left and
since the struggle is not for socialisin at this stage but for 'democracy' Kinnock clinched the point by presenting Tambo with a miner's lamp, which, after his broadside against the NUM the previous day, one can be forgiven for thinking was not intended to illuminate the struggle of black miners in South Africa so much as to extinguish it. While it represented an advance for the ANC to get a standing ovation at party conference, it nevertheless stuck in the craw to sec Healy, Hattersley and Co. rising to their feet despite their record of inactivity in implementing party policy on Southern Africa, which for some time has called for support for the struggle against apartheid, economic sanctions, the release of political Disarray on the left
Ton South Africa threw the Labour left into disarray, as the Militantsponsored resolution divided the left and the issues became confused. Sharon Atkin spoke against the Militant resolution, but without motivating her opposition, so that it was not clear how she distinguished her position
that of the Labour right and the Stalinists (if at all). No doubt the failure of
Militant to support black self-organisation in Britian - expressed in their hostility to black sections in the Labour Party — did not help. (To have Hattersley refer to black sections as 'apartheid' in the party is to compound confusion with nonsense...!) But the confusion goes deeper than this. What attitude should socialists adopt towards the ANC? Should we give it our unqualified support or not? If we criticise the ANC, doesn't that put us in the same camp as the reactionaries? If support obliged to support the ANC's projection of itself as the sole legitimate representative of the South African masses? If the ANC demands sole recognition as the basis for support, how can we express support for other mass organisations, as well as for the ANC? And what, in fact, is the best way to give concrete support to the struggle in
more fundamental political questions they relate to, press for answers in the labour movement today, and will be discussed more fully in future issues of International. As socialists, however, our first duty is not to adopt this or that attitude Iu the ANC, but to oppose British imperialism: to understand, expose and contest
Wto hold back against oppression and exploitation at home
and abroad. We need to build links internationally, to unite the forces contesting the international rule of capital. This is not so much a moral duty as a defence of the interests of the British and the international working class. A defeat for our movement in one part of the world is a setback for us all, whether it be in Grenada, Nicaragua or South Africa. Black people in Brixton and Tottenham, or miners at Orgreave, know there's a link between the repression they suffer and the repression in South Africa: we need to give that link a political expression, and find the best ways to make contact with, and support the struggles that link with our
We won't build these links supporting the ANC or some other organisation instead. We need to build a mass, anti-imperialist solidarity movement, that unites workers and trade unionists, blacks and anti-racists, students, youth, women, the peace movernent: a movement that can itself impose sanctions against South Africa, impose the oil embargo and halt the arms trade, and not merely call on Thatcher to do so. We must ensure also, that workers' organisaDepartment, are fully accountable to the members who fund them, and serve the interests of the international labour movement rather than those of the Foreign Office.
In this campaign, we must work with the ANC and the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain, because they go some of the way in this direction. But because they do not go all the way, and sometimes provide an obstacle to building the kind of movement that is
- both organisations cultivate the TUC leadership, for instance, and are totally opposed to challenging the bureaucrats of the International Department - we cannot limit ourselves to supporting their political strategies for building solidarity. We must take our own initiatives in building the solidarity campaign, make contact with the organisations of the mass movement inside South Africa and give them the
they call for. The independent unions, in particular, have been calling for such support, and the Labour Party has committed itself to giving it. We should send delegates to South Africa to make these contacts, and invite delegates to visit Britain. The formation of COSATU provides a stimulus for this. Representatives from the ICFTU and other international labour organisations questionable associations — the churches and international agencies of different kinds travel to South Africa every day; why should we leave the field to them? The policy of boycott must be applied to the institutions of the apartheid state, not to the organisations of the masses in struggle in South Africa. • Future coverage in International will explore further the relationship between the struggle against apartheid and the struggle for socialism, and discuss solidarity tasks in relation to the Labour Party, the trade unions and the Anti-Apartheid Movement. We will also report on the development of the black trade union movement
South Africa and the debate about the independent organisation of the working class
29 within the liberation movement.
No oNE cAN read the horrific reports of child abuse and murder splashed over the front pages this last year without feeling shock and
Young children bitten, beaten, starved, knifed and raped, usually by their father, must surely make us ask what is happening and how it can be prevented.
The right wing media has its own answers. Child killers are 'evil monsters'. Coupled to this, and clearly shown in the tragic cases of Tyra Henry and Jasmine Beckford, is overt racism — implying all black men are potential child abusers. The media are keen to mention illegitimacy rates and live-in' boyfriends, concluding that child abuse is a result of the collapse of familiy life. The right wing answer therefore is a return to a loving, preferably with increased law and order, longer prison sentences and minimal social services. There is also a clear attack on local councils with progressive child care policy and often, at the time of media attention, involved in the rate capping struggle.
Especially picked out for blame are local government social workers, NALGO members in the forefront in the struggle against public sector cuts. Some Labour councils such as Lambeth fell for this divisive tactic. Brent NALGO members are currently attempting to get reinstatement of workers sacked in the aftermath of the Jasmine Beckford inquiry.
Yet the left has remained alarmingly quiet on the problem of child abuse. It avoids condemning what must be, like wife battering, a social crime. The left's only public statement on the subject is to blame the huge increase in unemployment and cuts in social services. But is this the whole story?
Let's start by looking at some of the limited facts available about what we would now call child abuse. It is certainly not a new phenomenon and existed long before the rise of capitalism. Early history documents child slavery prostitution, and infanticide (particularly favoured by British royals). Girls faced special mutilations such as foot binding, and infibulation is still practised today. The heyday of the British Empire with its Victorian values, saw appalling atrocities inflicted on children - forced labour, workhouses and brutal corporal punishment, doled out by family, church, and state. In 1870 according official records, children died from manslaughter, 113 from neglect. Children of the wealthy didn't escape — flogging and fagging were part of public school discipline for boys, educational and sexual deprivation for girls. The 'golden age' gave rise to charities such as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).
But apart from a few social reformers and charitable institutions, the problems left well alone until the tragic death of Maria Caldwell in 1974. The press ran their own trial on the family and social worker and established a pattern for future reporting. The enquiry that followed led to the establishment of registers, kept by the NSPCC, of all children known or suspected of being abused, and specialist NSPCC units to treat abused children and their families.
In 1984 the NSPCC had over 7000 cases
Child