brief • The seven South African businessmen who met an ANC delegation in Zambia six weeks ago have added their support to the demands for the release of jailed ANC Jeader Nelson Mandela. The same demand has been echoed by the white "liberal" oppostiion. the Progressive Federal Parly, headed by Mr Frederick van Zyl Slabbert, who also trod their way to Lusaka to meet the ANC. • Attempts by South African church leaders to establish an independent leading role in the anti-apartheid struggle fell flat when a call by Bishop Desmond Tutu for a week-long stay-away failed to secure union support and was scaled down into a hall-cocked day of prayers for "national reconciliation" and "justice for all". Unions, including the FOSATU confederation, which have remained aloof from involvement in the cross-class United Democratic Front, on this occasion correctly refused to back Tutu's appeal. • In an important change of tactics. black youth have gone beyond traditional school boycotts: instead they have begun to use schools as a base for agitation and organisation. Anxious authorities in the western Cape have responded by shutting down 450 schools for 'coloured" students. Black youth near Pretoria have also switched tactics - while elsewhere thousands of young people are still boycotting their schools. • Lagging some time after the peak of mass struggle this summer, and still tirmly at a tangent from the necessary mobilisation of South Africa's black National London,
mind. organisations, the ANC has called for blacks to seize guns for use in "armed (Top) Tutu's call igno Socialist Viewpoint, No 8, November 1986. Page 5
Until now the ANC notion of armed struggle has been actions carried out by a distinct body of armed guerrillas. not connected in any way with mass struggles or defending the communities of the black workers. While they still argue strongly in support of this type of armed organisation, and firmly opposing any all for a workers' militia, it is not clear what the ANC now have in
On past form, a number of armed
ruerrilla actions - designed to wir
he admiration and enlist the suppor of the most militant black youth -could not be ruled out. Significantly. despite the heavy bloodshed so far only a handful of those killed have been white: there is little doubt that any major change in this orientation would unleash fearful reprisals and repression from the Botha regime.
----- pull-quotes on this page ----- trade unions and the linking of workers, students and community struggle". Smash Apartheid! Demonstration, November 2.
Time to