socialist South Africa is essential. Reversing Financial Flows Flow from North to South A positive transfer 1983 1982 1961 Flow from South to North Developing Nations: Net Transfer of Resources 1980-1988 Sample of 98 nations - covers private drect investment, prate icans, ofcal fow Sevice Un won Econom surely The UN DAMe Pok Wern
"the left have by and large replicated, rather than challenged, the political bankruptcy of the labour movement over Africa" Paqe 15
Southern key to the
"Setting off on the road to bourgeois democracy, an ANC government will end up having to carry out the dirty jobs of capitalist logic just as Mugabe's regime has done, but on a grander scale." Page 16*01
The future of South Africa holds the key to the region Despite its smaller population of 29 million, South Africa's medium-sized capitalist economy, with a GDP of $76 billion, towers over that of the ten surrounding states.
Combined, the ten's 90 million people only produce a GDP of $26 billion. South Africa's racially divided working class of about 7 million is largely industrial, whereas the 4 million black workers in the ten surrounding states are generally less skilled and more scattered.
Because all the states are, to differing degrees, highly integrated economically, and the working class there constitutes a discreet organic section within the world working class today, it is politically necessary that the black working class in South Africa lead a combined socialist victory.
That the socialist struggle in southern Africa must be combined is a necessity also because of the intimate, over-arching links of capital in the region. Today, to break out of too great a dependence on primary exports and low productivity, South African monopoly capital must gain significantly greater access to the
SUPPLEMENT region African market, both at home and abroad. The regime claims to do business in 44 African countries. Figures show South African investment in the surrounding region to have risen by 23 per cent between 1985 and 1988, and exports to Africa have risen from around $1 billion in the mid 1980s to around $5 billion by early 1990. The ten surrounding states, grouped into the Southem African Development Conference (SADCC), bought over 20 percent of South Africa's nongold exports, and were the source of nearly half of South Africa's trade surplus of $1.3 billion.
Each neighbouring state does of course have a different relationship with the South African state and economy. Lesotho in particular, but also Swaziland, Botswana and now Namibia, have always been extremely dependent because of transport, energy. trade, investment and (bar Namibia) migrant labour remittances from South Africa.
After a brief spell of greater independence in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Mozambique has succumbed to apartheid terror and become highly integrated in a similar manner. Since 1967, Malawi's regime has been a willing client of Pretoria. Zimbabwe
IDAF and Zambia are less dependent, but still have substantial ties with the apartheid economy. Only Tanzania and Angola have insignificant links, but their diamond mines are in the hands of de Beers. Federation of democratic
workers' states
Given the likely prospect of an eventual co-option of the South African nationalist movement, especially the ANC, into government structures within the next decade, albeit not without enormous social upheaval, a community of interests amongst the states in the region to preserve and develop the existing capitalist economy is most likely to emerge.
Already the AN has fraternal relations with almost all regimes in the region, and the ten SADC states have invited a liberated' South Africa to become an automatic member. This is extremely attractive to the South African bourgeoisie, because they also see SADC as a means to secure massive foreign finance. The price the imperialists will ask for this will be to police the region, especially in fragile Mozambique and Angola.
The prospect of capitalist restructuring under an expansionist South SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 25, June 1990
the region who look to a Breed LEE, THE HOME OF 22Ca1KCO2EE PIES AND CAKES terms. Only in this way Workers struggle crucial to direction of South African revolution
African state will be resisted by workers everywhere in socialist liberation as their emancipation. Following independence, the surrounding states drove down the living standards of workers in all but the most strategic sectors of the economy and bought off the union officials, enlisting them to police any organised workers.
To carry out the project of South Africa's giant monopolies like Anglo-American and SANLAM, an ANC government would have to discipline the working class in South Africa for Japanisation and line up a neighbouring governments for preferential access on the most labour-repressive could it compete with US, German, Japanese and British capital.
Southem African workers must unite. Failure to do so will invite an extended period of existing poverty, unemployment, homelessness and ill-health. Independence and "liberation' for them has been a sick undemocratic joke with marginal advances. So far very little regional organising has been done. increased number of South African union leaders joining the "two revolution' SA Communist Party will only prevent any such development, because of the SACP's allegiance to the ANC leadership's nationalist project and its vision of building socialism in one country. Setting off on the road to bourgeois democracy, an ANC government will end up having to carry out the dirty jobs of capitalist logic just as Mugabe's 'Marxist-Leninist' regime has done, but on a grander scale.
Revolutionary socialists understand that the national democratic tasks of the South African revolution can only be realistically undertaken through the establishment of a democratic workers' state as part of an interational dynamic towards world revolution. Such has been proven by the historical experience of the working class in different parts of the periphery of world capitalism. In the concrete conditions of southern Africa, only the achievement of a southern African federation of democratic workers" states will fulfil the needs of the working class in the region. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 25, June 1990
ONE NATION ONE UNION perialist countries like Britain, with close ties to South Africa as well as the left in South Africa, have still to address this strategic question in any detail and develop the necessary campaigns and other tactics to go for- and other small solidarity groups in The such discussion, but will prevent any concerted action to combine cam- paigns on Africa with those on South in the socialist movement to clarify and renew intemationalism. Unlike Britain, socialists in souther Africa will be able to draw upon a common senti- ment amongst hundreds of thousands workers. This was expressed by Jay Naidoo, the general secretary of COSATU, in a recent interview:"One has to accept that South Africa is part of a sub-continent and that the wealth of South Africa has been built not just by South African workers, but by workers from our (sic) neighbouring well...South Africa has a very important role in uplifting the standards of living not just of the South African people, but of the people of the entire region and in Africa as a whole." To lead and strengthen such forces in revolutionary action in the sub-continent
SUPPLEMENT BREAD ONE AS INDUSTRY WORKERS ONE UNITE UNION At present, socialists in im- active vigorously ward. The anti-apartheid movement Britain, Westem Europe and North America have some limited scope for Africa. It is necessary to create space Nicaragua. of politicised Sugar Coffee Cotton states as Wheat
IDAF WAN STRIKE THE STRU CONTIU will only be successful if workers at the centres of advanced capitalism, particularly Britain, are drawn into and collaboration. support Going to fun concerts and buying nebulous Mandela regalia is not enough. The labour movement must imperialist oppose catastrophe in Africa and shift resources to socialists in popular democratic structures there, especial- ly in southern Africa. Anything less socialists in South will condemn Africa to go the way of isolated And events are now moving more quickly than ever. Plunging Prices Iron Ore Crude vi Drop in Real Prices of Selected Commodities 1980-1988 Prices of primary commodities fell an average of 18 per cent in this penod Page 17
democracy for Africa?
"At least organised event. 1,500 SWAPO members were detained in Angola, held in makeshift democracy. dungeons without adequate food and water, and tortured to confess that they and others were 'spies for Pretoria'" Page 18
SUPPLEMENT Namiblan workers are begining to develop their own trade union organisation Despite May Day being a public holiday and the first chance for Namibian workers to celebrate their country's independence after 105 years of brutal German and South African colonialism, most workers boycotted the officially-
In contrast, the US assistant secretary of state for Africa, Herman Cohen, in a widely-publicised interview on May 17, urged Angola, South