Nelson Mandela in America

25¢ ~X-523 WfllillEliS "11'11'11'~.; No. 504 15 June 1990 Nelson Mandela in America mash Apartheid! For Workers Revolution! Across the U.S., hundreds of thousands of people will turn out to enthusiastically greet Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress, who arrives No "Power Sharing" with the Randlords! in New York oil June 20, the first stop on his ten-day American tour. The man who during his 27 years' imprisonment was the symbol of the fight against apart heid slavery has also inspired black peo ple in America, who see in the oppres sion of their South African brothers a mirror of their own. At the same time, some of the most powerful oppressors and exploiters of black people will join in a hypocritical celebration of "free dom" while the South African masses and minorities in the U.S. bear the dead ly weight of racial oppression. Mandela will get the red carpet treat ment at the White House, staunch sup porters of the white-supremacist Pretoria regime, and chat with President Bush, former head of the CIA which engineered Workers Vanguard, like so many informative foreign periodicals of a radical Marxist character, has been banned in South Africa. his 1962 arrest (see article, page 14). He will address a joint session of Congress -which talks of "sanctions" against South Africa while bankrolling the Salva doran death squad regime to the tune of a million dollars a day. In NYC there Steve Hilton-Barber/Afrapix-Impact Visuals will be a ticker tape parade down lower Power of black labor can smash apartheid. Above: Militant black unionists in Johannesburg protest anti-labor laws, Broadway, where the ANC leader will October 1989.._ doubtless meet with the captains of in dustry and the lords of high finance, He where 14 black protesters were mowed The imperialists are courting Mandela segregation) in a country with 28 million will pose with Mayor Dinkins, and there . down and hundreds injured in March. for they see in him the black leader blacks and 5 million whites, let alone will be an enormous outpouring in Har The apartheid rulers, hard hit by six whose unique authority as an anti address economic equality, where white lem organized by the "popular front" years of black revolt and economic loss apartheid fighter is necessary to convince income is across the board twelve times (including many labor leaders) which es, try to salvage their. class rule by South African blacks to submit to a deal higher than that of blacks. elected the black Democrat and now removing some of the most glaring seg with the oppressive racist state. But The London Financial Times (II June) seeks to bask in Mandela's popularity regationist legislation, partially lifting the despite these treacherous schemes, there bluntly laid out the purpose of de Klerk 's while imposing anti-worker cutbacks state of emergency and releasing a few will be no such "power sharing." The negotiations: to "interrupt the process of which hit minorities hardest. score political prisoners, while countless apartheid regime, whose wealth is based radicalisation among blacks." But despite Mandela's message will be for a non thousands remain in jail. A peaceful res on the superexploitation of the black the conciliation of their leaders, who are existent "negotiated solution" in South olution of the conflicting interests of the laboring majority, is necessarily at odds now backing away from even the "mod Africa, which means blacks will pay. His multinational corporations and capitalist with the most minimal level of formal erate" demands of the Freedom Charter, trip grows out of the talks between the politicians who rule South Africa and the democracy. De Klerk's "reforms" cannot South African blacks know their libera ANC and the de Klerk regime in early oppressed majority- including blacks, even include the simple demand of "one tion can only be achieved through a far May, which came on the heels of the coloureds (mixed-race) and Indians-is man, one vote" (keystone of the Ameri reaching social revolution which smashes cop massacre in Sebokeng township, impossible. can civil rights fight against Jim Crow the apartheid state. The fight to forge a racially integrated Bolshevik party that can lead the struggle for it black-centered workers government, drawing as well on the coloured and Indian populations, and South African CP Leader growing numbers of whites who do not want to live their lives in a racist garri son state, is the task of the hour. Massacre in Welkom Mumia South Africa in Microcosm Last February we headlined, "Mandela Abu-Jamal on Released-Black South Africa Jubilant, Defiant" (WVNo. 496, 23 February). We predicted an upsurge of struggle among Nelson Mandela the black masses, who saw Mandela's freedom as heralding their own., as well SEE PAGE 13 as an acute crisis of expectations: "The SEE PAGE 12 smell ofrebellion is in the air," we wrote. continued on page J3 Reply to FSP/Peace &Freedom Party We print below the Spartacist League's struggle and its culmination in workers. response to a request by the Freedom revolution, you are led in your program Socialist Party, an ostensibly Trotskyist to a fundamental revision of the Marxist organization, to endorse FSPer Merle "The Working Class Cannot understanding that the capitalist state Woo's campaignfor California governor (like all states) consists of special bodies in the Peace and Freedom Party June of armed men, courts, prisons. etc. and primary election. The FSP and the New Reform the Capitalist State" is an instrument for the oppression of Alliance Party are currently contesting one class by another. Furthermore, the for control of the long-moribund Peace working class cannot reform the capital and Freedom Party, which for over two ist state to wield it for its own purposes, decades has been a "third party" elec but must smash it, and establish its own toral vehicle to pressure the Democratic rule. Party. Instead you call for the "demilitariza tion and community control of the po June 1, 1990 lice ...." But comrades, the police and the Freedom Socialist Party standing army are the chief instruments, San Francisco the very essence, of the capitalist state! When the police break up picket lines Dear Comrades, and imprison strikers, brutalize peaceful Our Oakland local received your re demonstrators and murder black and quest for endorsement of Merle Woo's Hispanic people on the streets and in the campaign for governor of California, and prisons, they are carrying out their role we have carefully read the accompanying as the enforcers, of capitalist "law and materials, including the Freedom Social order." They will not be "demilitarized" ist Party/Peace and Freedom Party (FSP/ until the whole bloody capitalist state is PFP) election program. UPI smashed once and for all, ending the rule Cops attack and arrest striking shipbuilders in Newport News, Virginia. FSP The Spartacist League has itself con pushes illusions in "community control of the police." of the bourgeoisie by workers revolution. ducted a number of election campaigns To say otherwise is to politically disarm in New York. San Francisco and Oakland cessity for the labor movement to break a workers party based on the unions; the workers and al1 the oppressed and based on our proletarian, revolutionary, from the capitalist Democratic and Re representing the independent political create deadly illusions in the "reformabil internationalist program. Our purpose in publican parties and reliance on the capi mobilization of the working class and ity" of the police at a time when across these campaigns is to focus on the ne- talist state and to cal1 for the forging of oppressed minorities. the country these racist killers are in In elections where we are not running creasingly becoming bonapartist death our own candidates, we are prepared to squads. give critical support to other socialist or Worse yet, in your desire to appeal to For Permanent Revolution labor candidates, providing theirelection a middle-class constituency, and despite in South Africa program contains significant elements of your stated concern for "the trend toward this class-struggle perspective. From this a police state," your program contains For decades the Stalinists have preached standpoint we cannot support the FSP/ distinct echoes of the "law and order" a "two-stage" revolution in South Africa. PFP gubernatorial campaign. Taken as slogans now being used by the govern assigning leadership of the first. "national a whole, your campaign continues the ment and right-wing lobbies to mobilize democratic" stage to the petty-bourgeois history of the Peace and Freedom Party public opinion and strengthen the repres nationalist African National Congress. The as a "radical" third party, purely elector sive powers of the capitalist state. Your Trotskyists have maintained that only a alist vehicle, with a sectoralist program call for "compensation to individual vic socialist revolution led by the black African directed mainly to a liberal middle-class tims of theft and violence" has been part proletariat can smash the white-supremacist constituency. ofthe "victim's rights" campaign used to TROTSKY state and liberate the black, coloured (mixed LENIN As opposed to the utopian socialists of re-institute lengthy mandatory sentences race) and Indian masses. We print below the 19th century, Marxists see the work without parole in California. In the real excerpts from a draft program written in 1945 for the Johannesburg-based Workers ing class as the only class in capitalist world your class-neutral and color-blind International League. society with the social power to overturn cal1 for "communities to exercise their In South Africa, no African bourgeois is allowed to develop, and the only example capitalism.

Load more