MANSI A control on the agenda. But the union bureaucracy changed the call for a general strike to a two day stay-away, and negotiatons over VAT. But the congress said The regime is ilegitimate - it has no right to Many taxation. VAT.
The bureaucracy ignored all the other demands agreed by the congress. So while the action was significant - it was followed by 80 percent of the working class, about 3.5 million - it was limited. leadership reduced the action to a negotiating ploy surise the regime. instead of allowing it to develop.
Despite this criticism, WOSA was involved from the outset. We were involved in all the force in the demonstrations that preceded the general action. A number of our members were arrested in the actions before the strike as well as during it. The massive response to the strike conflicts with the picture in the West of the pillars of apartheid crumbling and democracy being a matter of negotiation. What Is the real situation of the working class?
There is a concerted offensive against the workers, The reform strategy is nothing new predates Klerk's 1990 speech. Botha had a strategy of reform and repression, and De tended this.
The masses are more im#WORKING CLASS their newspaper poverished than ever. Six million are unemployed, and this figure is rising rapidly -1,370 workers sacked daily. Tens of thousands of schoolkids will obviously swell Chae figure. There por pace at majority. Seven million are homeless. ( The negotiations were sup posed to stop violence, haven't -ine nexonaton the majority still believe that it will deliver the goods- and it's the Congress alliance that is Act and the Iny have been lifted. But these benefit the black middie class, rather than the black workers, who are the YUNT majority. How many black people can now live in white areas? How many can buy land? strike. But It's a relatively yet well known In the West. founded in April 1990, a few months after De Klerk's speech unbanning political organisations, allowing some space for socialist organisations. sions between activists from a Comrades in the 1950s and 60g Movement of South Africa. This into exile or jailed, like our chairperson Neville Alexander. for about a decade after the Sharpeville massacre and the ANC and PAC were banned. The 1970%. with the rise of the black consciousness movement and from "73 the modern labour movement, and the uprising of 76 were formative years for WOSA members demonstrate in Natal (above) others read many of us. For a long time we were in other organisations or independent socialists. Wewere behind the creation of the National Forum. This regrouped the non-stalinist left in 1983-84.
Our experience in the National Forum - an attempt to build a united front - convinced us of the need for a distinct revolutionary current, clearly orientated to the black working class. We saw no separation between the struggle against nanonaro?
ression and class exploitation, but rather process towards workers' conrol of society it is the axis around which WOSA was formed. WOSA has grown rapidly over the past year. What sectors has it based Itself become implanted in the most revolutionary forces in society -the organised workers and the largest branch is in the PWV district in the Transvaal, where the organisations in the and organise a united front of the oppressed and exploited. We have involved ourselves in many united front activities, even when those involved were was formed - but it has serious problems. Such a front should based on the concrete problems towards a democratic concloseto the Azanian Peoples Orrejected negotiations with the regime and we believe that a united front can't include those working within apartheid struc We have met with members Communist Party, the ANC, PAC and AZAPO. We also have many members of both union federations and emphasised civic and I trade union, which we beneve must be mae pendent No. 12 Nov. 23, 1991
CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY