Mandela faces the acid test
NO SOCIALIST anywhere in the world could have failed to be moved by the scenes of Nelson Mandela's release from the Victor Verster Prison after 27 years in jail for fighting apartheid.
Mandela's Immediate reaffirmation of loyalty to the newlylegalised African National Congress (ANC), his declaration of commitment to the armed struggle and to the call for nationalisation of the major industries of the South African economy redoubled the respect for his courageous and consistent stance since he was convicted in the now notorious 1964 show- trial of plotting to overthrow white rule.
His release is a victory and a massive boost for the black masses of South
Africa. Their unbroken struggles created the conditions in which President de Klerk found himself forced to break from the traditional single-track repressive tactics of his predecessors and concede legality to the ANC. It is a victory for the solidarity movement and anti-apartheid campaigners around the world who have battled away on the issue for decades, and who have forced most European governments and the US Congress into imposing limited sanctions against the South
African regime.
It seems clear that for de Klerk the gamble of ordering Mandela's release - triggering an even bigger backlash among the ultra- right and fascist elements of whites than even the unbanning of the
ANC - represents more than a token exercise: it is a key part of a serious shift of policy, in which some kind of negotiated settlement will be sought to take the place
Youth atop a statue of Smuts of the costly, unstable and internationally isolated policy of brute repression.
But the new policy is contentious within the white population, not least the influential ultra-right within the armed forces of the state, who may not be able openly to challenge de Klerk but are nevertheless opposed to any concessions, and determined to minimise the leeway that the present concessions can open up for the emergence of mass struggle by the black population. Hence the bizarre contradiction between the final steps towards Mandela's release and the simultaneous brutal violence of police against anti-cricket tour protestors, police tactics of encouraging scabs to launch vicious attacks on striking rail workers, and the heavy- handed baton-charges against the first legal ANC rallies.
Mandela's release has been accompanied by a massive hype by the world's press, designed to promote him as the one black leader with the authority to represent the repressed majority In negotiations with the ruling whites. This clearly suits de Klerk's plans. It is now revealed that talks had been going on behind the scenes for three years between the jailed Mandela and the regime, beginning under Botha, represented by Justice Minister Kobie
Coetsee: Mandela for his part had insisted on the unbanning of the ANC and had refused to back down from his commitment to the armed struggle. Eventually de Klerk conceded what he asked for.
The same period has seen Mandela make significant political overtures to Chief Buthelezi, leader of the rightward-leaning
Zulu-based Inkatha movement, a notorious thorn in the side of
ANC and United Democratic Front militants in the townships.
Buthelezi is imperialism's favourite black leader, the kind of
"anti- apartheid' figure Margaret Thatcher would like best to do business with.
Now he is free from prison, Mandela's stance is shaped above all by the restricted political line of the ANC. Indeed, for all the hard-line rhetoric of his first speeches in Cape Town and Soweto, he seems set to strengthen the "moderate' wing of the ANC. Questioned on the issue of negotiations, he told Journalists "Once you say a particular issue is not negotiable you are destroying the whole process of negotiation". This is more significant If taken in the context of the statement by acting ANC president Alfred Nzo, who declared that the ANC would be flexible' even on its fundamental demand for a constitution based on 'one person, one vote':
"The day we are able to sit down and discuss things we may be able to compromise on point A, B or C*.
On the issue of nationalisation, too, while Mandela himself sent South Africa's financial markets reeling with his talk of nationalisation based on the traditional
ANC programme, the Freedom Charter, the dominant political influence in the
ANC, the South African Communist
Party, headed by Joe Slovo, is now backing away from such a policy. The ANC is slotting itself more and more into the frame of reference of those sections of the
"liberal" white capitalists who want to convince key sections of blacks that apartheid and capitalism are not necessarily related.
The government's concessions to the AN are designed to back up this view.
Yet the reality is that even if de Klerk could ride out the increasingly stormy protests of the mobilising far-right and fascist white groupings, and successfully force through even more radical relaxations of apartheid (such as the repeal of the Group
Areas Act and the Population Registration Act), the very fabric of
South African capitalism rests on the vast inequality between black and white - the super-exploitation of black workers.
Formal legal equality would be no more than a sham so long as the average income of whites remained more than ten times that of blacks. But there is no way that even the most "liberal" white capitalist is going to forego the prospect of profitability in order to make such huge concessions to the black working class. That is why the political concessions to the ANC have run alongside a crackdown on the trade unions - as shown by the protracted, violent rail strike, and the heavy tactics of the government's Industrial Relations Act. And it is why the struggle for democratic rights in South Africa must run hand in hand with the struggle for socialist revolution and a workers' republic.
De Klerk may cherish dreams of turning the ANC Into just another pro-capitalist party, ready, like Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe, to engage in or support the repression of working class struggle. But if this is the case he is basing his assessment on the
For a united, socialist attitudes of the exiled ANC leaders in
Lusaka, and seriously underestimating the scale and strength of the ANC's activist base in the working class, which does not necessarily share the same limited objectives. The South African class is much larger and working stronger with much greater political culture and record of struggle than the
Zimbabwe proletariat before Mugabe took power. And AN activists know they would be severely weakened if they lost their foothold in the growing Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and in the proletarian elements of the townships. It is questionable whether the ANC could continue to control its activists on the ground if it attempted to deliver any compromise deal which cut across the struggles of the black working class.
repression, now faces the toughest test of his political career. His release has rekindled the imagination and enthusiasm of a generation of youth and workers in the townships who have come into
It would not be a vast overestimate to say that European politics is now dominated by one question: the reunification of Germany. The question is no longer whether it but how.
will happen,
Despite pretensions to grand schemas for European unity, the imminence of a unified
Germany has thrown both
NATO and the EC into disarray.
There can be no question as to who is leading the way at present - Helmut Kohl, with the
Bundesbank behind him, faces no serious opponents. Now that the Bundesbank president Karl
Otto Pöhl's misgivings have been swept aside, IMF-style plans for austerity plan plan for the GDR are well advanced.
with their life savings reduced to a fraction of their former value.
Democrats.
Mandela, who has suffered the full brunt of the regime's the devaluation of the East German Ostmark and an economic
Citizens of the GDR may well be horrified to find that once these schemes move into action, far from achieving easy access to stores stocked with consumer goods, they wind up on the dole,
Unfortunately there is little alternative on offer. Though the West German social democrats of the SPD may also be the most popular party in the GDR, (as well as experiencing Oskar Lafontaine's recent regional election victory in the West), their ideas for reunification differ little from those of the Christian
Those in the East (such as New Forum) who have tried to defend the social gains of the working class have - despite starting
NC LNVE country the battle for solidarity with the South African struggle In the British and international labour movement, and the fight to defeat Thatcher's single-handed efforts to rehabilitate apartheid must be stepped up. This means opposing every move by the imperialist governments to slacken their timid sanctions against
South Africa, and building practical solldarity - including direct links - with the South African trade unions, and with the various political elements of the liberation movement.
Germany!
NATO troops with Lance missile launcher
Germany.
many!"
the struggle while he was in
Jall. His early statements echoed their determination to make no compromise with the must decide
He regime.
whether his loyalty will be shaped by their demands and struggles, or by the search for some kind of compromise with the regime that will leave capitalism intact, the black masses exploited, and im perialism exultant.
In the meantime our responsibility is clear: as socialists in this from a seemingly promising position, in the leadership of the mobilisations that ousted the
Honecker bureaucracy - found themselves marginalised as a result of eschewing unification.
However, the failure of the left to date does not mean that all is lost. The capitalists, too, are divided and confused: it is difficult to find two NATO leaders that agree with each other. On a number of questions they are distinctly vulnerable.
The demand put at one stage by Gorbachev (though later dropped)
struck at the heart of these issues: the call for a united neutral
With 90% in favour of this in the East, and a clear majority in the West, a popular movement around such a demand would, at a stroke, serve to put NATO on the defensive. In addition, the expectations of the working class in the East are very high: if they were to unite with workers in the West around issues such as pay and social security, the Bundesbank would really have problems.
There is thus a clear conflict - as in so many of the countries of
Eastern Europe - between the expectations of the masses from capitalism, and what it actually has on offer. There is a crying need for the left to move onto the offensive on a pan-European scale, putting forward an alternative that can answer those aspirations and offer a real prospect of a united Europe - rather than EC rhetoric. In the case of East Germany, this could be summed up as "No to the Kohl Plan - For a United Socialist Ger-
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 22, March 1990