BLACK PEOPLE in South Africa are not simply victims of super racial prejudices and discrimination unparalleled in the Terms like racism are totally inadequate to describe the situation. The attitude of individual whites, and laws can be described as 'racist', but the apartheid system is more than that.
The South African state itself is based on outlawing black people in their own country summed up by the brutal pass law system whereby blacks considered "foreigners' Officially, blacks cannot cross a road without showing a passport, every street is a border post. They have no right to own land. They have no rights to live in the cities.
Black The vast bulk of black workers are still official categorised as 'migrants' whose only recognised place residence is in a distant bantustan. incy have no ngut to orig lael wives and children to live with them.
And, of course, blacks are deprived. of a vote. deprived of any right to even minimal control over the political system in their country.
Other settler states in history have in practice operated in this way. there is a fundamental contradiction for the South African whites. The white Ohe ACCUSED American settlers slaughtered native Indian population, Australian whites aboriginal population, Caledonia the French Caldoches moved in enough whites to outnumber the Kanak population, but in South Africa the black population is there and is five times the size of the white population.
It is this situation that sums up the basic character of simply discrimination, or even the expression of racist prejudice, it is a state system of a particular type. gle of black people can only be vicsystem completely.
against this apartheid state It IS system that the South African revolution is inevitably directed, and it is this that gives the struggle of black people its fundamental dynamic. character of the struggle that black people are engaged in assumes the form of a revolutionary struggle for democracy and national liberation. summed up 1n the slogan of majority rule son, one vote. That is the key to every other demand — including the transfer of the land to the black population, and the development of the struggle for socialism.
Axis within The struggle for socialism in South Africa passes through the struggle for national liberation and democracy. It is through this struggle for democratic demands that a violent clash will unfold with the capitalist class in South Africa.
The first step in developing a correct appreciation of the dynamic of the South African revolution is to reject the economistic wrong forces who attempt to explain that the key demands in South Africa are in of FIRS capitalist, for the nationalisation of the top monopolies and so on. tionary democratic demands. in everv aspect, constitute the cutting edge and axis of the South African revolution. Other struggles will unfold from this axis — not the other way around.
The cornerstone of this approach is But to recognise that the state that exists in South Africa is not a nation state. It is a state of the white settler class, the which the black population is excluded. the The struggle of the majority of the slaughtered population is a struggle to create a single nation, and a single nation state, in South Africa.
to the white settler state — which insists that there are at least four nations inideology that corresponds to this apartheid. It is not that of 'separate development' and the creation to the different tribal and supposed The strug- 'national' groups which they define.
smashing that state Land proach is starkly revealed by the fact that these so-called separate nations in South Africa, wnich overwhelming majority of the populaThe tion, the land, holds more than 80 per cent.
— one per- has gone through stages of development. Initially even the most advanced forces of the black 'population accepted this framework of majority separate nations — and the African National Congress was originally formed with the aim of creating a African nation out of the different tribal groups, whites' coloured and Asian nations.
gest that the course of the liberation struggle in South Africa through a stage of partition and the establishment state. This is what corresponded to the exisung consciousness vanced forces among the black majoriscnelds ty population and was correct at that time as an application of the right of directly anti- nations to self-determination. But it is today bypassed.
RevoluSoweto ward in the struggle was taken in identifying the existence of a black nation comprising all the black, Asian and coloured people of South Africa. This was the tremendous advance registered by the black consciousness movement, the leading force of the Soweto uprising:
Nelson Mandela This perspective is directly counter and proposes ar of bantustans corresponding The reality of this latter racist apare confined to 13.7 percent of whereas the white minority The black struggle in South Africa several different single while it accepted the definition of separate white, This led Trotsky in the 1930s to sugwould pass of a separate African of the most adIn the 1970s another huge leap forSouth African racists. Soweto uprising in 1976 Its leader, Steve Biko, not surprisingly 'coloured by the However while this consciousness of a necessary unity of all the black people of South Africa was a vital step forward it did not provide an adequate framework for countering the 'separate vital. nations' ideology of the white supremacists. Today the leadership of national liberation struggle put forward the clear and unambiguous position that there is one nation in South Africa, comprising all who live in it. The national struggle is for the forging of a nation state that corresponds to that reality. Whites will have to accept the authority and legitimacy of that nation state. The whites have no special rights, they do not constitute a separate nation. Ihat is a basis of any revolu tionary strategy in South Africa.
It is in this context also that the land question comes to the fore. As long a the majority of the South Africa population is confined to 13.7 per cent of the land there can be no resolution of the national question. The national necessarily istroive a tremendous class liberation struggle must struggle in the countryside against the wille capilalist farmers. i reel make land available to the population as a whole. Without taking the land from the white settlers there can be no successful conclusion of the national liberation struggle in South Africa. Any attempted solution which does not resolve this question, as for example occurred in Zimbabwe, is not capable of meeting even the democratic and national aspirations of the black population as a whole.
Goals In order to achieve these goals of the revolution a movement which insists upon the right of one person one vote, and which understands this can only be achieved through the violent overthrow of the apartheid state, The white settler ruling class is thoroughly opposed to any democratic system in South Africa, because it i •directly and fundamentally counterposed to their own class interests and their own rule.
In the present political upsurge the destabilisation of the South African economy has meant that sections of the
tion in South Africa white ruling class have suffered real economic damage. Some sections the ruling class have even begun to demand quite radical reform of apartheid.
However, we should be quite clear cumstances at all.
With the whites so hostile to even the most minimal concession to the masses it is exceedingly unlikely that a programme even of minimal reforms can be drawn up that would be both acthrough prevent the formation of a stable, to labour unrest by perspectives.
against the 1983 socialist tasks. the 1976 Soweto events.
democratic theid state Africa.
perialist backers. perienced apartheid, was to none are immune.
ban black working class. By classifying population and as casual labour' and responding the majority of workers as 'migrants', 'coloured.
expulsion to the rent round of the struggle The new upsurge in the national liberation struggle has deepened the discussion in the black and non-racial about their This discussion has centred on the issue of affiliation to the mass organisations that led the boycott campaign 1984 raciallybased elections. And a discussion had begun on what 'independent working class politics' means in the context of apartheid. It also begins to pose directly the overflowing of the democratic struggle against apartheid into directly It is the much greater development of working class organisation that gives the current upsurge in South Africa its unprecedented scope and intensity -which takes it far beyond any previous experience in that country. It gives the present upsurge the character of being a much closer approximation to a general insurrection than either the first period . struggle agains apartheid show. leading to Sharpeville in 1961, or to the A tremendous intertwining of the must revolution socialist revolution is developing South Africa.
that 10 1s through the democratic struggle to smash the aparthe perspectives of socialism will be opened up in Soutt It is that democratic struggle that will open up the perspective of the overthrow of South African capitalism and the expropriation of its imThe South African revolution is still not a matter of short term struggle -there should be no illusions on that but the different elements that will go to make up that revolution are coming together in a more and more clear cut way — not just in theory, but in the living experience of the struggle itself.
Firstly we see its character developing as a nationwide and national struggle. All areas of the country have exdistinct waves of protest, Secondly the protests involve every section of the black African, Many areas of the country have Socialist Action 6 September 1985 Steve Biko power does not pass into the hands of South Africa's workers and peasants to that degree even the democratic revolution will be aborted as innumerable examples Zimbabwe to India But the line of march is clear in The black working class throw itself totally into the democratic revolution. It must seek to lead it - in alliance with the black peasants. How far down that line of march to a workers state South Africa the working class will be able to go depends on the relation of forces that emerges in the struggle itself. Thi more that the black working class is able to take up and lead the democratic revolution the closer it will come to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Any tur ning away from the the tasks of the democratic revolution, any leaving of the leadership of the struggle to any other force, will both serve to abort the democratic struggle itself and leave the working class further away from the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
There was a famous maxim of the French revolution 'On s'engage et puis on voit' - one engages in the struggle then one sees what happens. Today the working class must take the leadership of the democratic revolution in South Africa. This struggle to overthrow the apartheid state will be what determines how far every other struggle in South
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TREASON TRIAL DECEMBER 1956