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 SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 22, March 1990
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. Ques- tioned 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 con- stitution based on 'one person, one vote': "The day we are able to sit down and dis- cuss 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 back- ing 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 con- vince 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 in- creasingly stormy protests of the mobilising far-right and fascist white groupings, and successfully force through even more radi- cal 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 In- dustrial 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 Zim- babwe, to engage in or support the repression of working class struggle. But if this is the case he is basing his assessment on the Page 1
For a united, socialist
attitudes of the exiled ANC leaders in Lusaka, and seriously underestimating the scale and strength of the ANC's ac- tivist 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 Con- gress 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 genera- tion of youth and workers in the townships who have come into It would not be a vast overes- timate to say that European politics is now dominated by one question: the reunifica- tion of Germany. The ques- tion 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 dis- array. 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.
EDITORIAL
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 im- perialist 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 dif- ficult 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 Gor- bachev (though later dropped) struck at the heart of these is- sues: 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 ex- pectations 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
Mass murders by Sri Lankan regime
Why are the British