An inglorious victory for of the Afrikaner Weerpopularity standsbeweging [AWB - Afrikaner
SPANISH STATE
-
Resistance
Movement] of Eugene
Terreblanche, who has adopted the
NP's traditional themes and is demanding the establishment of an
Afrikaner republic along the lines of the Socialist Party the good old days of the Boer colonization. So the AWB managed to disrupt and even to sabotage several public NP meetings during May. This organization has at its disposal an armed militia, "Brandwag" (Sentinel), and enjoys the compli- THERE HAS hardly been a national election in recent times in city of the regime. (7) Western Europe where a ruling party has had such a clear field as the
The Botha government is also Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) did in the parliamentary elections under crossfire from this extreme right wing on the one side, and on the other, from the advocates of a Its only rival on the left were the splinters of a shattered and disrapid reform of apartheid, which is credited Communist Party. On the right, it faced shipwrecked bourseen as a capitalist solution to the regime's present crisis by some South geois centrists trying to find a new footing and the rightist rearguard African employers. The South African government, then, is under multiple contradictory pressures that work against its cohesion. Its policies illustrate this state of affairs. At the same time that it was decreeing the state of emergency, the government was proposing to abolish some sections of the "pass laws."
The Botha government's tactic seemed to be to prevent these timid modifications from dividing the dominant white community and from opening breaches that could benefit the mass anti-apartheid movement.
Imposing the state of emergency may illustrate the repressive capacity of the South African regime, but it hardly constitutes proof of political strength. Rather, in the climate of confrontation with the Black masses, this measure reflects the difficulties the regime is having in laying out a coherent strategy to meet all of the contradictory pulls the Botha government has to accommodate - such as the demands by some factions in the capital to lift apartheid, international diplomatic pressure for self-reform of the regime, resistance to any change on the part of the white petty-bourgeoisie It is not likely that the government will be strengthened by this situation. The contradictions riddling it can hardly be eased by this repressive interlude.
However, the outcome of this situation depends largely on the way the mass movement comes through this new ordeal. The most basic task of the solidarity movement is to break through the wall of silence that Pretoria has built up around itself, with the complicity of the interna tional bourgeoisie.
7. Last March, the AWB organized a meeting including Connie Mulder, a former member of the government who had been considered possible successor to the prime minister in 1978, but who withdrew following a scandal known as Muldergate.
International Viewpoint 14 July 1986 of June 22. led by Fraga Iribarne. GERRY FOLEY
In this context, the big victory of the PSOE so celebrated in much of the international capitalist press was not so glorious. Combate, the paper of the Liga Comunista Revolucionaria (Spanish state section of the Fourth International), commented in its June 23 issue:
"The victory of the PSOE on June 22 is politically much weaker than the one in 1982 [when it came to power]. Then it was based on the strength of the illusions that the overwhelming majority of the left had in its promise of 'change.' In these last elections, it was based on the force of disillusion, resignation and the lack of alternatives, in the political framework created by the defeat of the referendum against NATO on May 12. It is true that about nine million people voted for the PSOE to make sure that 'everything stays the same' - a number similar to the pro-NATO vote in the referendum.
"But it is not all going to stay the same. The PSOE thinks that it holds two trump cards for continuing the road of modernizing Spanish capitalism - which has been built on the basis of unemployment, attacks on social welfare, political repression and corruption in public administration. One is sustained and stable economic recovery. The other is the weakening, marginalization and dispersion of the social movements.
"In all probability they will lose their first trump at some point during the life of the next parliament, when the expected recession in the international capitalist economy hits. As for the second, that will have to be decided, and we will see who wins.
It is not the parliamentary relationship of forces that will decide that. It will be decided by the capacity and determination to struggle of the social movements, in particular their more militant, tenacious and imaginative sections."
The lack of enthusiasm for the PSOE was pointed up by the fact that where there were alternatives, they stole the social democrats' thunder. In the Basque country, the revolutionary nationalists who call for an independent Basque state, Herri Batasuna, made major gains. The same was true of the very tepid nationalists in Catalonia, the Ciu. In Andalucia, the IU slate [United left, dominated by the official CP], headed by the charismatic and heterodox former Communist mayor of Cordoba, Julio Anguita, rolled up an impressive score, getting about 20 per cent of the vote. Revolutionary nationalists gain ground
The PSOE vote went down a bit in the part of the Basque nation included in the Basque Autonomous Area. But the big loser was the bourgeois Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which has been in a pact with the antinationalist PSOE. For the first time it got a minority of the nationalist vote, and found the revolutionary nationalists of Herri Batasuna gaining on it.
The Euzkadiko Ezkerra group also increased its vote significantly. It has its origin in ETA [the Basque revolutionary nationalist movement], but moved to the right in the name of
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