Number 113 October I November 1985 - 30centa Black Freedom Struggle "eeds a Workers Party! I I Deepen, Extend Union Bans Internationally! __"J!~~f!I~~!H~!~! ft!!l!J!!~'!!f, South African Oppressed'! SEPTEMBER 30 - Eight years ago black nationalist leader Steve Bao died, after being tortured and beaten into a coma by apartheid's racist killer cops. Today as the apartheid butchers shoot down black people, in the words of black bishop Desmond Tutu, as if they were "swatting flies", the black masses of South Africa are rapidly coming to the conclusion that the kind of "nonviolent negotiated solution" preached by the Tutus is impossible - apartheid must be overthrown. The massive anti-apartheid up­ heaval poses pointblank the question of power: Who shall rule? "Tutu's brand of moderate leadership is rapidly losing ground among the street fighters", wrote Newswee/c's Robert B Cullen and Ray Wilkinson. "Their revolution awaits its Lenin. " For Apartheid Fuhrer P W Bothe (Top). Gold mlneri: workers need leninist party to lead black freedom struggle. stating this simple truth, the apartheid regime threw W'tlkinson out of the that proletariat has been kept on the former a fake franchise and the latter the backs of the country's six million country. But precisely what is lacking, sidelines in isolated skirmishes with nothing, served instead to unite the Zulus. What is necessary to combat and is more urgently required in South' the racist regime and the capitalist non-white population as coloureds and this fifth column is trade-union led Africa than anywhere else in the world baas, as was' demonstrated in the Indians massively boycotted elections multiracial defence guards, in particu· right now, is a party of the kind that aborted mine strike in September. for their "parliaments". In Natal lar drawing on Durban's powerful Lenin built in tsarist Russia: an inter­ And never have conditions been province where the Indians, mainly black and Indian proletariat in Natal nationalist and multiracial revolution­ more ripe in South Africa for the crys­ engaged in commerce, are concen­ province to defend the Indian ary workers party that can mobilise the tallisation of a Leninist party. By all trated, 1,000 striking black rubber communities and ANC supporters and giant of South Africa's black prolet­ accounts, there exists a widespread workers were locked out -in June. in the process teach Inkatha a much­ ariat for its own class dictatorship as hatred for capitalism as it has been When they called a one-day general needed lesson. the emancipator of all the oppressed. experienced and openness to com~u­ solidarity strike in July, Pieter­ The black proletariat last November in nism as it is Understood. Botha's maritzburg, Natal's political capital, Botha's State of Emergency tar­ the Transvaal showed its power in the "divide and conquer" constitution, was completely paralysed as more geting black townships around most massive general strike in the his­ which was supposed to divide coloured than 90 percent of the black workforce Johannesburg in the Transvaal and tory of South Africa. But since then and Indian from black by offering the stayed home and every Indian Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape has business closed. caused the anti-apartheid upheaval to spread west to Cape Town. The Cape Now Botha's Zulu chieftain Gatsha Buthelezi and his Inkatha thugs have coloured, precisely because they are declared open war on the African oppressed by apartheid and concen­ trated in the urban proletariat (in National Congress (ANC). As the many ways culturally Europeans), are situation polarises Buthelezi has that section of the oppressed which become a brazen defender of the apartheid regime, -fearing the collapse can most easily transcend nationalism. of the little kingdom granted him on . Continued on page two ~ I ... ',.. ,':.~ .~ c t· .t. ". ~.~>~;::~ .:~: \- _- ..:: .... ~)., i. Hayden are no friends of South go -into Idioa. Interaational wortina~ African CM'gO continues to be worked SthAfrica ••• African blact labourl class solidarity, reaching out to lint· .- the bans actually only delay the Coathaaecl from page one For a start, they're not going to let hands with the insurgent blact muses ships. When the WWF lifted bans on their well-known "abhorrence" of and their allies, ·can help win concrete cargo left behind by the MUdura, it apartheid disrupt Australia's growing advances and direct the struggle to­ was loaded on another ship. As one It is no accident that in the 1930s and trade with South Africa, worth wards a revolutionary class-struggle maritime worker told the WWF's 19405 Trotskyism had a base among S312 million in exports and $166 axis and away from a disastrous con­ August Maritime Worker, "I don't coloured teachers in South Africa. million in imports last year. Nor can it frontation along race-national lines think it's right. We shouldn't be work­ Today the coloured population are still obscure the fact that Australia, as that brings with it the likelihood of a ing it at all." a key strategic component for crys­ regional sheet-anchor and policeman pointless bloodbath. The aim of inter­ While providing an important· tallising a multiracial Trotskyist of Reagan's global anti-Soviet war national labour solidarity must be to vanguard. example to workers throughout the drive, is in de facto alliance with the strengthen the class independence and Cape Town has also been the centre world, the union actions in Australia South African white supremacist fighting capacity of the black proletar­ have been limited by the union bur­ of multiracial anti-apartheid protests regime. South Africa is an in­ iat on the road to the destruction of the that have included white students, eaucracy, which ties them to pressur­ dispensable ally of the US-led "free apartheid system and the establish­ ing the government to impose stronger especially around the demand to free world" guarding the strategic Cape ment of a black-Centred workers ANC leader Nelson Mandela. Sections sanctions. The September ACTU sea lanes, and is periodically involved government. of the white population do not want to congress was "strong on rhetoric but in military clashes with the Soviet­ Against therdormists' clamour for left decisions on bans and sanctions to live in a garrison state, a white backed regime in Angola which is government sanctions and capitalist laager dominated by backward, future union meetings and .ppeals to defended by Cuban troops. divestment, Marxists fight for con­ government" (Australian, 12 Septem­ bigoted Afrikaner nationalism. It The Australian sanctions are above crete acts of labour solidarity­ is imperative that the revolutionary ber). The week-long bans on trade and all directed at supporting Western protest strikes, blacking of all military telecommunications begins on 21 Oct­ movement reach out to co-opt this imperialism's efforts to force Botha cargo, and more generalised bans and layer, pledging in advance a place for ober, giving South Africa plenty of to implement cosmetic "reforms" , strikes in specific circumstances such time to ensure its ships and aircraft whites in the future anti-racist society. hoping thereby to avert the as the present State of Emergency. This is particularly important as the are clear. threatening revolutionary explosion. Our goal is not to "isolate" apartheid As well, the Australian capitalists white population constitutes an Their fear of the revolutionary South Africa but to help the black indispensable reserve of technical see opportunities to tum the South potential of the six-million strong black masses overthrow it. Victorious African crisis to a tidy profit. South skill needed for the socialist recon­ proletariat was reflected by their workers revolution is the only "divest­ struction of the country. Africa is a major trade rival of Aust­ treatment in late August of the visiting ment" that will benefit the black ralia in the supply of a number of The apartheid system remains secretary-general of the South-West workers. unbroken and unyielding. This was important raw materials - wool, coal, Africa Peoples Organisation, Andimba Over the past two months in Aus­ underscored by Botha's infamous manganese, uranium, mineral sands Toivo ja Toivo, a man who spent tralia, bans by maritime and water­ etc. And as the price of South African hardline speech of August 15. One sixteen years in Robben Island prison front unions have continued to hit the has to live in the land of Reaganite gold shares have plummeted, so have along with Nelson Mandela. Though South African freighters, Safocean myth or be willingly naive to see Australian gold shares soared, as the government itself had paid part of Mildura and Safocean Nederburg as in Botha's latest "concessions" any­ investment managers in the US and the cost of his trip, it demanded for well as the lloyd Australia and other Europe look around for somewhere thing else than cosmetics for foreign his entry visa a written undertaking vessels in ports from Sydney to consumption. The' proposal to give stable to re-invest their "divestment" . not to "espouse or promote armed Fremantle. In Fremantle, the Sea­ blacks South African "citizenship" is funds. This sentiment also fuels struggle or violence as a necessary men's Union and the Waterside just hot air. since blacks will still be sections of the trade-union bureau­ means of bringing about change in Workers Federation (WWF) banned cracy like Transport Workers head barred even from voting and the sep­ South Africa, Namibia or elsewhere". arate black "homelands" will be main­ the Nederbutg in protest at both the Ivan Hodgson, who demanded the tained. The proposal to abolish the Extend the Bans on State of Emergency and the arrest in South African De Beers diamond Pretoria on 16 August of officials of the monopoly be "kicked out" of the new pass laws is larg~ly a recognition of South African Shipping I black dockers union, the National reality, namely that hundreds of Argyle diamond venture in Western thousands of blacks have illegally At this crucial hour, when the General Workers Union.