black communities under racist at-
Tand goings and rearof Thatcher's squalid gang of millionaires is little more than an irritating
Black masses defy Botha's emergency
bonary siogans af a mass funeral, PRESIDENT Botha's July 20 deci. |
sion to impose a State of Emergency on 36 key cities and towns in South Africa was an unmistakeable sign of weakness and defeat from the apartheid regime.
For nine months Botha had exercised a degree of relative restraint in the stale repression of a rising tide of militant black struggle on the streets. Beatings, shootings and the routine intimidation meted out by the regime had only on one occasion lurched out of control into mass slaughter, on the March 21 anniversary of the 1960 Sharpeville massacre: and Botha had on that occasion felt obliged to go through the motions of a rigged "inquiry".
Events since the State of Emergency confirm that Botha's initial reluctance to escalate the conflict arose not from any moral scruple or liberal inclination, but from economic and political calculation.
200 KILLE REVOLTTION By HARRY SLOAN
• The Rand has since dropped to a / historic low against the dollar, forcing the countrys Reserve Bank governor, Gerhardus du Kock, into a futile cap-in-hand trek around Western banks in serch of loans, a suspension of dealings in foreign exchange and the stockmarket, and noW 3-month suspension of repayments on South Africa's payments on its £12m foreign debt.
• Four major business organisations and the giant Anglo American corporation have publicly called on Botha to negotiate with black leaders "including those in jail" , sounding the alarm over the growing boycott by the black population of white. owned shops and businesses.
• Further evidence of the split between Botha and his former allies in the business community has come in the announcement that two big South African firms are to hold talks in Zambia with the banned African National Congress. • Opposition white politicians Socialist Viewpoint, No. 7, September 2985, Page 2
KILL THIS YEAN APARTHEID 3 DIED IN NOT 8P0USIT DETAINES:
arguing for concessions to the blacks have highlighted the disastrous flight of capital from South Africe and the departure of increasing numbers of white families who see the writing on the wall.
• And, following the decision of the French government to halt all investment in South Africa, and the looming uncertainty over the profits to be made amid the riots and disturbances, the regime is finding Itself more isolated than ever on the international stage. Botha is forced to rely" on backing from Thatcher, Reagan and West Germany's Helmut Kohl. But that support is taking an ever lower profile as anti-apartheid campaigns exploit the daily newsreel coverage of brutal repression in the townships. Reagan must lace a decision soon on whether to risk a veto on the latest Congress call for sanctions - and lace the prospect that his veto might be overturned
In exchange for all of these disad vantages from an openly crisis-torn
Armed police raid black fownship. situation, Botha's State of Emergency has plainly failed, for all its brute savagery, to quell the militancy of the black masses. Thousands have been arrested, over a thousand still held without charge; clubs, whips, birdshot, bullets and teargas have been used against crowds from 7-year olds upwards: police and troops have been given - and used - a blank cheque for any action, however barbaric; yet still the keynote emerging from the angry masses on the streets is the sound which heralds doom for Botha and his racist cronies: black, working class revolution.
When youth gather in their hundreds, hemmed in by the guns and armoured cars of the state, seriously discuss the odds of getting killed if they stage a march, and then decide to risk the odds and march: that represents a force that will not be crushed by any State of Emergency, any escalation of repression.
And when a reaime is forced to jail and prosecute schoolkids as young as 7 years old in a desperate effort to break a solid school boycott, that spells out a complete breakdown of the authority of the state, however much the regime seeks to compensate by bravado and brute violence.
Another indication of the rebellious spirit that now stalks the townships is the public display on mass demonstrations of banners not only of the illegal African National Congress but now even of the South African Communist Party itself: workers and youth are prepared to risk Jail sentences simply to display these (and banners with their own revolutionary slogans) — but also feel confident that they stand a good chance of doing so without arrest or punishment.
Boesak.
Such is the radicalisation of the bases netherets that the existing black leaderships have themselves under pressure, or in some cases exposed as allies of the regime.
Most nakedly exposed has been the reactionary politics of Zulu Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, who has consistently denounced the demonstrations by the United Democratic Front, attacked the ANC, and mobilised gangs of lumpen supporters against trade unionists.
It is no accident that Buthelezi, representing the aspiring black reactionary. bourgeoisie angling for a place in the system, was singled out Socialist Viewpoint, No. 7, September 1985. Page 3
Tutu. recently for special attention by the Chair of Anglo American Mr Gavin Relly, as the type of black politician with whom the regime should swiftly move to negotiate.
While the escalation of struggle has flushed out Buthelezi, and largely wiped out the stooge black councillors in the townships through whom Botha hoped to enlist the collaboration of whole sections of the black middle class, it has also intensified the pressures on the clergy. with figures like Bishop Desmond Tutu and Dr Alan Boesak unable to offer any serious prospect of a "peaceful road" to black militants.
Indeed the restrictions imposed by
the Sate of Emergency have made it
increasingly difficult for even skilful
religious opponents of class politics
to stay within the law while working to
defuse mass action.
Boesak himself has been arrested:
Tutu's son has been arrested, and
Tutu himself repeatedly on the edge
of arrest: they have struggled against
these odds and against the logic of
the situation to repeat their calls for a
"dialogue" between the apartheid
rulers and the black population. Not
wanting to be left out, Roman
Catholic bishops intervened to urge
the Chamber of Mines to reopen talks
with the NUM and avert the threaten-
ed strike.
Even when mobilising for the bann-
ed march on Polismoor Misor
lemanding the release f Nelsor Mandela. Boesak, In the lace of clear threats of state violence, presented the demonstration as simply a moral protest:
Restrain yourselves. Wait for that moment which will come and history. will record and the world and the Government will know that all generations have come together in one expression of our determination to be free.
These clerics have no love of apar theid: but they are also opposed to the kind of social upheaval and ideological release that would be unleashed by a mass mobilisation which pulled down the edifice of apartheid and liberated the black masses trom the repression and ex ploitation they are undergoing.
Clergymen - most notably Boesak - are also well represented in the leadership of the mass opposition current. the loose and ramshackle UDF. Of 16 black and Indian UDF leaders who went on trial on July 11 in what the regime intended as a major show-trial, all were middle class professionals: one a clergyman; one a protessor; four union officials, a handful of lawyers, a teacher and a doctor.
The very structure of the UDF. which consists of over 650 organisations ranging from trade unions to sports clubs, militates against a democratic involvement of the unions - each of which would receive only the same voting rights as a local church or youth club.
UDF: has bent to militancy of youth and students.
Yet in a sense the formlessness of
the UDF has enabled it to bend rather
more flexibly to the militant demands
of youth and students, though its own
appeais for dialogue and a "national
convention" are lar from radical in
anything other than a context of total
repression.
Further adrift from the latest
radicalisation has been the African
National Congress. The ANC's con-
cept of a prolonged guerrilla war
which would eventually force the
beleaguered white rulers into a
dialogue and a democratisation of South Africa, led it to stand aloof from the unionisation of the black workers and many of the radical new community movements in the townships.
But the historical allegiance of many older black workers to the ANG
which was banned after the great frame-up trials of 1958-61 - and its ever-present symbol of defiance in the form of Nelson Mandela has ensured that, despite the bankruptcy of its policy and perspectives, the ANC remains a central factor in the South African struggle.
Its June Conference in Zambia saw the ANC display again the extent to which its notions run at a tangent to the needs of South Africa's black proletariat.
In the midst of mass street mobilisations and community struggles, the new ANC perspective is yet again the old scenario of more Socialist Viewpoint, No. 7, September 1985. Page 4
guerilla struggle rather than a turn to
cement links with the black unions
and mobilise working class action
against the apartheid rulers.
This avoidance of the most obvious
connections, which should be made
throught the development of councils
of action, appears well suited to the
leaders of the black trade unions,
who have in general stood back from
involvement in the UDF.. and
separated their workplace organising
work from the mass struggles on the
streets.
The constant ups and downs of the
NUM leadership in their preparation
for the pay strike show a willingness
to use rather than openly support the
current mass struggle.
It is clear that many individuals
and groups of black youth have
developed a revolutionary commitment and a concept of revolution considerably more advanced than the official leaders of the black movement.
But in a climate of savage repression, in which Marxist literature is banned and political debate forced underground, the task of clarifying and developing a leadership independent of Stalinist Influences and reformist conceptions, with a clear view of the need for the working class to lead the struggle for democratic rights and the socialist overthrow of apartheid, is far from easy.
Meanwhile there is little prospect that Botha can stem the tide of struggle. The businessmen who today call on him to discuss with black leaders will tomorrow bleat as loud as any if the apartheid system, which preserves their super-profits by consolidating black unemployment, black poverty and black exploitation, were fundamentally altered.
The very conditions of low wages and enforced divisions of the working class which helped make South Africa a favoured outpost for investment have now become a factor in the struggle. As the prospects for profits temperature rises, the likel hold il decline, that the economy will plunge further into crisis, with growing unemploy. ment adding further pressures towards revolutionary struggle.
SACTU