South Africa AS WE went to press last month Commonwealth leaders were confidently predicted press-ganging Thatcher sanctions - or forging ahead regardless.
The result of course was very different: far from being dragged along by the team of horses, Thatcher dug in her heels and pulled them back in her direction - exploiting the fact that without British support any package of Commonwealth sanctions against South Africa would be an obvious farce.
A swaggering Thatcher boasted that "They've Joined me now, "and that she had moved "Just a tiny tiny bit. "The tions" decided upon were Irrelevant and insignificant: and she went further, announcing that whatever happens over the next six months before the policy ls reviewed, she will still oppose any sanctions then.
Why has she taken such a tenacious stand in opposition to economic sanctions? The answer is not complicated — £5,000,000. That is the size of British capitalism's annual trade surplus with South Africa. at a time when British economy is in a major delicit on non-oll trade.
On top of this British capitalism last year sold "invisible" financial sevices to South Africa totalling billion,
And of course there is the direct British investment, amounting to 40% of the E12 billion total of foreign Investments in South Africa, plus another 16 billion of indirect Investments (coins and shareholdings).
It is this big money — producing higher rates of return than comparable investment in Britain which has shaped the foreign policy of the Thatcher government on South Africa, and would play a big role Exports France 6.4° Germany USA 9.7% 22.6° Britain 14% Japan Italy 1814.4
apartheid to be - into deciding in government if it came to the crunch. apartheid is to blame for the violent strug "sanc- gles in phasise the nit-picking "reforms" carried out by the Botha regime! Small Howe have laken up the demand that while Botha guns down defenceless children. students and workers wielding whips, batons and teargas, the liberation movement and the ANC in par- government ticular should "renounce violence". from Nassau is quite long — several simply the reiterate existing poicies. South Africa - but of course most loans and Insurance are private bank loans anyway, in which £1.3 British banks will remain central. stop the import of Krugerrands. sions to South Africa - while the missions will go ahead (including one from Leeds). ment sultable for military or police use in South Africa — yet much of this has alrady been supplied by British firms. and technology. South African trade (Trade with industrial (OECD) \ Italy countries 1983) France 4.7 Britain 16.8% Japan 173 Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 pll
the attitude of a Kinnock Small wonder Thatcher now denies that South Africa and seeks to em- wonder she and Sir Geoffrey on the streets. The list of meaningless commitments UN embargoes and • A ban on new government loans to • Take "what action may be possible" to • No government funding tor trade mis- • A ban on the sale of computer equip- • A ban on the export of nuclear goods Thatcher's Imports nose to USA emergency 21.3- black struggles. Germany 19.4 The
• A ban on the sale and export of oil.
• An embargo on imports of arms and military equipment from South Africa.
• An embargo on all miltary cooperation with South Africa.
"tiny, tiny" concessions on sanctions were welcomed by Neil Kinnock but condemned as Inadequate by the Liberals and by the SDP
Within days of the announcements, the South African regime had thumbed its
Commonwealth leaders and signalled its appreciation of Thatcher's stand by extending the dictatorial state of
restrictions to cover one thind of South Africa's population, and impos ing rigid press censorship on reportage of
To Imagine that Thatcher's unyielding stance in defence of the profits of British bankers and multinationals will be altered by petitions, protests and pressure politics would clearly be naive in the extreme. As a consciously imperialist government the Tories are delending their system in the old fashioned way.
British workers' movement. however, has the power and the possibility to take action that could cut the flow of trade and lend direct solidarity to the struggles of their black brothers and sisters in South Africa.
Link the struggles against Botha!
=South Africa By HARRY SLOAN A DEEP economic recession is now playing a role in escalation of the crisis of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
Unemployment has doubled In twelve months; the rand is low in value against other currencies; inflation is eroding already pitiful pay packets; and the profits of retailers and consumer goods firms are plunging, while interest rates remain high.
The consequence is economic demands of South Africa's black working class must increasing ly merge with the mass demands tor sweeping democratic changes to break down the racist apartheid state.
So far the mass struggles on the streets against Botha's hired killers have remained largely isolated from large-scale industrial action. The recent miners strike was deliberately restricted by union leaders to a wages-only struggle, and contined to only a handful of "selected" mines
suicidal tactic which predictable setbacks to the militants who came out on strike.
Elsewhere, with the exception of the massive 2-day general strike by up to 1 million workers in the Vaal triangle area last winter, the unions have in general held back from using their industrial strength to support mass mobilisations demands and against repression.
But the explosion of struggle in November at the giant Baragwanath Hospital In Soweto, in which police arrested 600 striking vorkers (only to provoke supporting strike action by 800 student nurses) has once again shown the integral link between economic" "democratic" demands repressive South African state.
The ancillary staff came out on strike for a pay increase not had a rise since 1983. When they Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 p.22
Recession raises struggle for jobs and wages the baton-charged than more police! tion, and the the union, that the ment immediately brought separation economic demands. powers of the on democratic ruthlessly deployed. the ancillary Botha's course. and the in the - they have third one
were subjected to mass arrest, and an 8pm curfew was imposed upon nurs. ing staff to contain the situation, hundreds of nurses demonstrated. When
Aby cops. they counter-attacked and drove back the
The student nurses then refused to work or attend classes: they are also demanding the recognition of their union, the Health Workers Associa-
ancillary workers General and Allied Workers Union (GAWU). Manage-
announced the sacking of all 1,800 strikers — but the nurses refused to accept pay-off cheques. Ancillary workers were marched off the premises at gunpoint by police, while troops were brought into cover the work of strikers.
In a country where a simple pay claim can explode this easily into a full confrontation with the armed bodies of the state, there can be no
Cof democratic and
Certainly the Botha regime sees the connection between these elements of the black struggle, It is to defend the whole basis of profits of South African Industry as much as any ideological tenets of apartheid that the brutal
Estate are being so,
It will take more than feeble attempts at "diplomatic" pressure from
imperialist countries and bourgeois black Africa to change
Since the pathetic gesture of the Nassau Comonwealth conference, he has substantially extended the repressive measures of the state of emergency to include Cape Town and seven surrounding areas:
dictatorial emergency powers now cover over 9 million people -
Cof South Africa's
South Africa population
lo wield the whip more effectively the police force is to raise its strenath by another 11,000 - nearly 20%. This is their answer to the recognition from General Wandrag, the country's chief counter-insurgency commander that the situation is close to sliping out of control:
Even those people we used to be able to rely on have dwindled."
General Wandrag, like many of the regime's spokespersons, blames this erosion of the authority of the state upon the media exposure of police violence:
"Rioters are seen as innocent victims of a brutal police and army," he complained to a security conference in Johannesburg.
With the death toll of black youth and workers gunned down by cops rising steadily day by day. Botha's answer to this problem was to clamp down on press - and particularly television coverage. This transparent attempt to turn the lights out on the brutality was met by a predictably weak-hearted response rom those who have argued that Botha is taking steps towards "reform".
More courage was shown in challenging Botha's clampdown by the South African editor of the Cape Times (who risked a heavy Jail sentence by publishing an interview with ANC leader Oliver Tambo) than by any of the Western news agencies.
Of course the muzzling of television coverage has not ended the
violence of Botha's cops and soldiers, whose tally of school students and young workers has steadily risen.
Significantly, the more blatant ambush and slaughter of stone-throwing children (a few days after the Nassau deal) followed the first major Incursions of the black struggle into the white shopping areas of Johannesburg - in the wave of anger at the execution of pro-ANC poet Benjamin Moloise. Veale stope op the as yee hudand reveals more: the as yet unused potential repressive power of the South African state, Botha has to act more firmly than ever to suppress dissident currents among his former A passbook: the fight for democratic rights links with demands for jobs and wages Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 pl3
upporters
lis regime has been more anc more business leaders. Now even leader by stridently denounced the Dutch Reformed Church have had to be bludgeoned out of a planned trip to meet AN leaders by theats to withdraw their passports.
Passports of students from the former orthodox Afrikaaner hotbed of Stellenbosch University were confiscated after they, too, planned to meet the ANC.
Botha's motives are clear: only by preventing direct discussions and Information about the ANC can he sus tain his Cold War propaganda myth that they are a bunch of red revolutionaries, and thus reinforce the hostility of white South Africans to any kind negotiations compromise.
The reality — as the Cape Times Interview and many others with ANC leader Oliver Tambo have shown -is very different. The ANC's political perspective is restricted to achieving a democratic reform of South African capitalism.
Tambo told the Cope Times that — like many reformist prarammes, the ANC Freedom Charter enviseages that:
"the state would control some of the Industries, solely with a view to ensuring an equitable distribution of the wealth that we have.
He admited that even the business leaders who met the ANG accept that there should be some redistribution of wealth, and then stressed that the ANC programme would retain capitalism in South Africa:
"It would be a mixed economy. But there would be private ownership. there would be levels of private enterprise and it would all be geared to the situation that obtains at the time."
Roy Hattersley could well make similar statements. The ANC, for all its talk of armed struggle, seeks to reform rather than smash the apartheid capitalist state machine in South Africa, Its deliberate separation of apartheid from the question of capitalist rule Is no accident: it chimes in exactly with the white International Defence & Aid Fund
"liberals" Federal Party is best known in the whose Progressive form of MP Helen Susman. Her view is that:
"The fact that young blacks today believe that apartheid and capitalism go hand in hand is of course a misconception.
Botha knows better. And Botha Is also under pressure from the far right, who are alarmed by even the tokenistic reforms that have been made so far, and who made significant gains in the recent by-elections. This reactionary pressure makes it even more likely that police violence will continue at its present high levels, and escalate further for every black mobilisation which reaches into "white" areas.
Instead of the fragmentation of the struggle, and the separation of the trade unions from the fight for democratic rights, South African blacks need to find ways of linking the community organisations. students' unions, trade unions and all political organisations committed to fight the apartheid regime in councils of action in each locality.
Such joint bodies would in many cases necessarily be clandestine because of the emergency regulations, but, as Solidarnose showed in Poland, under conditions of mass revolt they can still be built.
They would offer the best forum to thrash out a programme of demands linking the democratic issues in each area with immediate economic demands - taking up local issues on housing, rents, transport, unemploy ment, wages, redundancies and all other questions affecting the black communities. The recent develop ment of student struggles - turning from school boycotts to school occupations - could also be linked to community mobilisations through councils of action.
Meanwhile the growing tide of police violence is finding only spontaneous flurries of retaliation from a largely defenceless black population. Despite ANC talk of launching armed struggle, their record over the past year suggests that they still see this as
OP a few Isolated heroic acts by a small (Top) Youth Soweto: (Above)
unemployed workers in Johannesburg minority of trained cadres - and not the systematic organisation of self defence by the mass movement of black workers.
it is difficult to prescribe precisely the forms and methods that are possi ble under the varied conditions of repression. But the move to prepare a workers militia to defend the townships and workplaces against the raids of police and army is a crucial issue if the power of Botha's state machine is to be confronted and cracked.
With more and more black families experiencing the tragedy of young relatives martyred to the fight against apartheid, the appeal tor collective, mass self defence will gather pace by the day.
In the fight for the linking of the democratic and economic demands, and for the leading role of the working class in the struggle to smash the apartheid regime, the building of a
farxist Party capable of grasping th
olitics of the ANG, UDF and othe political currents of the mass move ment is increasingly urgent. SOUTH
South Africa's black workers need a class leadership as conscious and committed as Botha is to white supremacy and the capitalist system which apartheid defends. Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985p14
Scandinavian unions
Solidarity action =
By TERRY SMITH THE November 9 Apartheid demonstration was the biggest ever. Tens thousands turned out to register their revulsion at the regime and their solidarity with the struggles of the majority.
But this increased support has still not found adequate reflection in the British trade union movement. which lags shamefully behind other countries in its failure to mobilise solidarity Australian dockers recently mounted a week of action gainst South African goods. Meanwhile. in Scandinavia. trade with South Africa has been all but completely halted by trade union boycotts.
• Finland's transport workers mounted an indefinite boycott on South African trade.
• Norwegian transport workers have decided to boycott imports from South Africa.
•Swedish transport workers joined this action at the end halting an annual flow of trade which totalled E245 million last year. Raw materials for Sweden's steel plants have been hit.
• Danish workers are expected to begin their boycott this month.
But when the Swedish transport union tried to get a adopted by the International Transport Workers Federation they were blocked by West German and British unions! AF RIC
Anti- of Botha black SHAL action. have of October. MILA bovcott policy with her arguments that sanctions ing redundancies refusal of the NUM. The
lead the way FREEDOM FOg MANDELA FREEDOM Fos UTH AFRICA WARD DON The British opposition does not arise rom union leaders attempting to carry such policies and being rebuffed: il arises from their refusal even to try to impose a serious boycott on South African trade. Far from producing infor- nation to spell out the case for action to Iritish workers the trade union leader: have allowed Thatcher to set the pace or boycott action would Immediately br- One exception to this has been the Swansea and Liverpool Labour dockers to unload cargoes of South African coal, this time with support from the TGWU and (not surprisingly) British National Union of Seamen, as well as the TGWU. have also been invovled in the international issue. moves by Maritime Unions Against Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 p15
NOW 7 RESOUTH, Apartheid to boycott shipping and oil companies involved in supplying oil to South Africa - a campaign supported by the United Nations.
The fact remains that determined action by the TGWU. USDAW and a few other unions could rapidly bring South African trade with Britain to a grinding halt. Despite lip service to the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU). who have called for action to break all links. there is little sign that British union leaders intend to fight for any such poll Parties, union branches and local campaigns would do well to focus their South African solidarity work on local targets for action, and seeking to force union officials at local and national level into a real fight on the
Marx's legacy to liberation The politics of working class
struggles