New state of emergency
SOUTH AFRICA lity in the public; weakening or undermining the confidence of the population in the purpose of the state of emergency; and encouraging disinvestment or the imposing of sanctions or foreign actions against the republic." (3)
This repressive offensive was begun just a few days before the planned mass movement demonstrations and the one-day general strike that were called for June
16, 1986, by the Congress of South
African
Trade Unions (COSATU), the United Democratic Front (UDF)
UNDER THE national state of emergency decreed by the Botha government on June 12, several thousand leaders and activists from all components of the mass movement have been imprisoned for an unspecified period. This emergency rule has been used by Pretoria to perfect its repressive juridical arsenal. On June 20 two new laws were adopted by the presidential council: one extends the legal period of detention without trial from 14 to 180 days, and the other permits the authorities to declare "trouble zones" or regional states of emergency for a period of three months or more.
TONY ROUX
Through these repressive me asures the government can put a quick brake on anti-apartheid activity, disorganizing the mass movement through massive arrests of its central leaders.
The Pretoria regime thus intends to achieve a period of respite to try to unify its own ranks to face the political crises to come.
In so doing, it can count on nearimpunity internationally because of the extreme complacency shown by the
Western capitals toward the new decree. The West has scarcely gone beyond formal statements of position and verbal condemnations of the new repressive
The escalation.
European
Economic
Community
(EEC) has refused to impose economic sanctions.
Since they have interests in South
Africa and see no alternative to the apartheid regime, the capitalist powers are not going to get any tougher with
Pretoria, except in so far as the solidarity movement supporting the strug gles of the Black masses compels them to.
South African regime did
The not succeed in pushing through the Coloured and Indian chambers of parliament the repressive measures that would have permitted them legally to suppress the commemorative demonstrations on the tenth anniversary of the Soweto riots on June 16,
1976. (1) It was therefore obliged to resort to a state of national emergency to prevent a public mobilization of the movement on this occasion.
mass
These measures, in contrast to those adopted in July 1985 and lifted a few months ago, apply to the entire country and not just to certain
International Viewpoint 14 July 1986 regions. (2) They permit the police forces - without even a hint of a warrant - to arrest people and imprison them for 14 days; the imprisonment is renewable through simple notification of the prison officials and can be extended up to 180 days. Searches are authorized by day or night. The press is prohibited from publishing the names and places of detention of those arrested. And in the Port Elizabeth region a curfew has been imposed.
government, moreover, is encouraging informing on - the most anti-apartheid militants in the townships by promising pay-offs to informers. "Subversive commentary"
This emergency rule lays the press "subersive commentary." Evidently, the government itself judges the subversive character of the an information bureau has been established for this purpose. Some South African newspapers have been seized, while most of them are practicing self-censorship so that they can continue publication. The foreign measures. Violations of the press laws include: "promotion of the objectives of illegal organizations; inciting the public to take part in a strike, a boycott, an illegal assembly, or any act of civil disobedience; incitement to break the state of emergency rules or to provoke or aggravate hostiand the National Education Crisis Committee (NECC).
Ten years ago, the riots in the township of Soweto marked a definite turning point in the political had been characterized until then by a downturn in the nationalist movement 1960s. The Soweto uprising demonstrated the enlistment of the township fight against segregation in education and against apartheid in general. The agitation lasted more than a year and was finally ended only by a repression that left more than 600 dead. But riots, like the 1973 already establishing the premises for a renewal of the Black protest move clearly at the beginning of the 1980s.
Ten years later, after two years regular waves of anti-apartheid mobilizations, the anniversary of the riots was politically highly charged. The commemorative demonstrations and the June 16 general strike were going to illustrate the progress made since 1976 by the mass movement, both in its greater ability to mobilize and organize and in the forms of its public activity. Coming in the wake of the strike of nearly two million workers on May 1, June 16 would mark a significant step in the Black proletariat's entry onto the political terrain. (4) This date would also test the progress made in unifying the different components of the mass movement. The June 16 general strike was, in fact, the first action of national magnitude called jointly by the independent trade-union movement and the civic anti-apartheid organizations. The repression pre-
1. The elections for these fake par liaments were massively boycotted by the electorate in the communities concerned. Powerless and unrepresentative, these structures were condemned advance and are barely functioning.
2. During these periods of regional states of emergency beginning in the middle of 1985, thousands of anti-apartheid activists were arrested and hundreds of others were killed during the repression.
3. 'Le Monde,' June 15-16, 1986.
4. See "COSATU targets one million members," International Viewpoint, ' No. 101, June 23, 1986.
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assails the
Demonstrating against apartheid (DR) vented the full application of this test and thus deprived the people of an important experience of strug
The strike was position of the state of emergency. anticipated demonstrations, the June was broadly supported by the Blacks through boy. cotts of transportation and work. But because of the state of emergency the general strike was not an active strike. For the moment that is
The relatively of the arrests that followed the imposition of the state of emergency is indicative of the goal sought by movement of its leadership for of time so as to disorient it confusion in the ranks. This explains why the repressive wave at the onset struck at all the anti-regime sectors: the independent trade-union movement, anti-apartheid civic organizations and the progressive religious milieu.
This was made clear by the first list of arrested people published by the South African daily, on June 12. It is a mixture of names of many national and regional leaders of the COSATU unions, of officials of the Council of Unions of South
Among the chief leaders imprisoned since June 12 are Phiroshaw camay, general secretary of CUSA, has since been released; Jay Naidoo, general secretary of COSATU; Frank Chikane and Rashid Saloojee, UDF officials; Moses Mayekiso, general secretary of the Metal and Allied
Workers' Union; and the Rev. Smangaliso Mkhatshwa, general secretary of the South African Conference of
Several leaders of People's Organization (AZAPO), including its general secretary, were also imprisoned. COSATU, moreover, noted that more than 70 of its national and regional officials had with several
Press censorship makes it difficult to determine exactly the number of prisoners, but it is generally estimated at about 3,000 to 4,000. Regime's institutions seriously challenged
The imposition of the state of emergency throughout the country, reaction of a government driven into a corner by protests.
and the threat of a popular insurrection around the justifications given by the representatives of Pretoria for resorting to a state of emergency. (5) These are only
Of course, during this last year, the regime has seen its institutions seriously challenged in the areas where Blacks live. The municipal that it installed to administer the townships have become the target of denunciation. Most of the forced to resign or to seek the protection of the South African police. In some places the mobilization of the anti-apartheid civic associations has become so broad that the local appeared to take charge of the administrative tasks in the townships that were previously undertaken by the defunct municipal councils.
Pretoria undoubtedly wanted to reassert its power and the authority of its institutions in the townships. To this end, the police manipulated the recent confrontations in Crossroads and the vigilantes' actions in other shanty towns in order to divide the Black communities and to try to re-establish some of the regime's collaborators. (6) Then too, Pretoria, looked askance at the unification process going on in the struggle, of which the Soweto riot commemorations would be a high
But the Botha government did not have its back to the wall. By itself, the level of development reached by the mass movement does not explain the recourse to the state of emergency. This is all the more true since the anti-apartheid mobilization is marked by regional differences that tend to be concealed today by the national character of the state of emergency.
The attitude of the Pretoria government has also to be seen in the context of the regime's own internal difficulties and the complacency of the Western powers, which Pretoria capable of turing to its own advantage. In the last few the National Party's (NP) traditional base has been the Botha government made a show of modifying some of the apartheid measures that were deemed inadequate for the new needs of development country, part of the NP electoral National Party or to the Conservative
In the last few months there has been a spectacular advance in the it several