South Africa and socialism WOSA (Workers Organization for Socialist Action) was founded a few months ago by the fusion of several groups of the socialist left (see IV 184). It has a national Implantation and intervenes in the mass movement in a variety of ways. We publish below extracts of a "self-interview" in which the WOSA leadership explains Its views. The interview is taken from Workers Voice, WOSA's theoretical review.
Defend Mexican Trotskylsts - and free elections!
FOUR MEMBERS of the Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores
(Revolutionary Workers' Party, PRT, the Mexican section of the Fourth
Internatlonal) were murdered on August 18 In Jolalpan in the state of Puebla, while defending the Jolalpan town hall. Those directly responsible for these killings are armed groups of the Partido Revolucionario
Institutional (PRI), the party that has ruled Mexico for 70 years.
The town council of Jolalpan was won in the local elections by a slate Including members of the PRT. The new council took over on February 15. This victory was formally recognized by the Electoral College of the Local Chamber of Deputles, as well as by the state government author!ties, Since the day the new council took office, which was carried out in a peaceful and legal way, a group of PRi members stationed themselves at the entrances to the townhall, trying to block the town council from functioning. Throughout this time, they have been mounting all sorts of provocations, which culminated in the August 16 clash.
For their part, the authoritles of the state of Puebia have not only not apprehended those responsible for the PRI attack, but have arrested other PRT comrades, who at at this writing remain in prison. The clash was not, as the Puebla government represente it, the result of a conflict of armed groups of both partles (the PRi and PRT), but an attack by an armed PRI group against the legally constituted municipal authorities Its purpose, therefore, is to oust the people's elected representatives by maneuvers clothed in a false appearance of legality overriding the will of the people of Jolalpan. We appeal to all democratic and progressive forces to send telegrams 14
S WOSA a vanguard party of the working class that seeks to rival the South African Communist Party (SACP)?
We don't believe that organizations can proclaim themselves as the leaders and vanguard of the working class. This is earned in the struggle itself. WOSA hopes that it can gain influence in the workers movement not by substituting for the working class. We do not proclaim that we have all the answers and denounce those we disagree with.
We will patiently but resolutely argue our politics before the workers, defend their struggles and attempt to lead them in a direction that strengthens them. It is inevitable that WOSA and SACP will compete for the allegiance of the working class to their different policies and programmes. The SACP has, as a result of its alliance with the African National Congress (ANC), its support (material as well as moral) for the armed struggle and its relationship with the heirs of the great Russian Revolution, won tremendous popular support. As such the SACP plays an important role in our struggle. WOSA will support the SACP where it strengthens the position of the working class and will join it in a united front manner to build the unity of the working class. • Is the formation of the WOSA not a
The township war and the negotiations
WITHIN a few days the civil war in Natal, which has been going on such as Moses Mayekiso have jolned the CP. But the CP Is going to have a hard job reconciling its soclalist professions of faith with its unconditional defence of the ANC's current line and its sectarian reflexes towards other currents on the left. *
September 17, 1990 • #190 International Viewpoint potentially divisive step?
No! The idea that political pluralism equals division is nonsense and thankfully now completely discredited with the collapse of Stalinism. Since 1928 when the Communist Party of South Africa, as it
SOUTH AFRICA now for several years, has spread to a whole serles of black townwas called then, adopted the slogan of a ships in the suburbs of Johannesburg. Groups of Zulus organized in Native Republic and developed the two the inkatha party have been clashing with sections of the population, stage theory, there have been essentially primarily young people, who support the progressive movements. two traditions in the workers movement. On the one hand, was the Stalinist view, above all the African National Congress (ANC). The government has profited from these clashes to impose a state of emergency on the held by the SACP, that our struggle is black townships of Transvaal. firstly directed against national oppression or apartheid and that only once apart- These terrible events are the fruit of a long process of deterforation heid has been destroyed can we begin a of the political scene, and implicate all its major actors. struggle for socialism. On the other hand Firstly Inkatha, the single party led by Chief Buthelezi which rules was the view that capitalism has been over the Bantustan of Kwazulu In Natal. This movement appears as a built on the foundations of national reactionary "tribal" force. But it also expresses the specific political oppression. Therefore in order to secure and social interests of the Zulu elites, who are in favour of a liberal national liberation a combined, permanent desegregation of the country, inkatha manipulates a significant prostruggle against national oppression and portion of the Zulu population in Inter-ethnic conflicts, but also wants capitalism is needed. This will put in place to play on the national scene. This is why Buthelezi has been reguiara workers state. WOSA seeks to represent ly received abroad as a national political leader, notably by Thatcher the second view..... and the American administration.
The South African government for its part has used Buthelezi for a • What is WOSA's position on negolong time. But since the opening of the negotiations with the ANC it tiations?
We believe that these negotiations has had an additional Interest in showing that the blacks are divided between the government and sections of among themselves, according to the logic of the racial ideology. the liberation movement will not succeed The permanent complicity of the South African police with the Inkain delivering the central demand of our tha armed groups is an open secret. But now the situation has got so struggle, i.e. full and equal democratic out of control that the government Itself needs to cool things down. rights for all. This will amount to a hand- Its objective is to engage in constitutional negotiations not only with ing over of power to the majority, which the ANC but also with the representatives of the Bantustans, such as the government is dead against. Buthelezl. Mandela's movement has been visibly taken by surprise
For the government, the strategy of by the turn of events, when it had been expecting a slow process of negotiations represents a decisive initia- negotiation and compromise. Their new strategy seems now to have tive to win time and space to extract itself been dictated by a certain Impatience -- the shortcut of negotlations from the economic, social and political for a "post-apartheid South Africa" has been revealed as a trap and a crisis that the system of apartheid is in. dead-end. The regime is increasing its pressure and using the threat
Although the regime faces a deep eco- of repression as blackmail. In these conditions the ANC will have to nomic crisis which makes it vulnerable to choose between remobilization and increasingly risky compromises. international pressure, power is firmly entrenched in their hands. State institutions rest on the military, police and the This Is amply demonstrated when we see how personalities created electoral support of the majority of the by the racial system have found themselves pushed to the front. Not only Buthelezi, but also General Holomisa, the "progressive" leader whites. This the government is still able to of the Transkel bantustan, speaking In the name of the Xhosa popularely on.
While the government is prepared to get rid of most of the racial laws on the statute The present confusion is also partly caused by the ANC's recent books, such as the Group Areas Act and policy of unreserved entente with the authorities, to the point where even the Populations Registration Act, it has been putting Itself forward as co-responsible for the reform they are not ready to hand over power to process. The township youth, which is not very politicized, but has the majority. The government could rein- become used to hearing that liberation would be achieved through tegrate the bantustans into South Africa armed struggle, Is in no way ready to appreciate the finer points or and may even formally introduce some understand what Mandela is up to when he demands that the white form of universal franchise. However the army should intervene to stop the Inkatha attacks, or when the ANC government will not grant majority rule. meets officers of the army to discuss the army's future. It is thus not
They will insist on some form of minority at all certain that the ANC today has the means to control parts of the rights or veto for the whites. This is necessary to ensure not only that economic township youth.
wealth remains in the hands of the small All this will not strengthen the workers movement. It has already minority of whites, but also that material been subjected to Important pressures to line up behind the secret privileges are maintained for whites as a negotiations, and there is a risk of deepening internal divisions.
whole. Many militants are expecting the South African Communist Party
If the ruling white National Party (NP) which Is centrally Involved in the ANC -- to provide an alternative is not going to break its pact with the policy. A sign of this is the fact that leaders of the trade union left white electorate, it follows that negotiations between the ANC and the government will not deliver a unitary, non-racial democratic South Africa in the current period.
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tion. 15
A view of the strike wave
SOME 1.2 million working days were lost during the first half of 1990, almost three times the number of days lost in the same period in 1989 (463,864), and
International Viewpoint #190 • September 17, 1990
SOUTH AFRICA rejects any settlement which offers "universal franchise" (as proposed by De Klerk) whilst still maintaining white privilege in any form. We support unconditionally the demand for one person one vote in a unitary nonfive times the figure for the second half of 1988(226,614). These figures do not racial South Africa/Azania.
include the approximately 3 million workers who stayed away on July 2 to
Further than that, only when ownership protest against the violence in Natal....
and democratic control of the wealth of
• Workers are using the new political space to organize themselves, even in our society is in the hands of the majority, completely new sectors. New areas of organization are usually militant....
can we tackle the fundamental problems
• All the sectors that have had protracted legal wage strikes are low-wage of poverty and social inequality for all.
But historical experience shows that the
• Employers generally seem more cautious than in previous years, particuowners and controllers of wealth do not larly of dismissals in national strikes. However, they are sitting out strikes, and away their ruling position.
workers are coming out of protracted strikes with little or no material gain.
The majority must seize back the wealth
• In the new political climate, unions are already under pressure from they have created. We stand a long way employers and the media to negotiate "reasonably" and to take responsibility from this situation and therefore believe in for the state of the economy.
maximum discussion and debate and a
• The level of unemployment is growing, as is the gap between the unemdemocratic process of decision-making on ployed on the one hand and the employed, organized working class on the othall items negotiated in the name of the er. This is one of the root causes of the violence in Natal and elsewhere.
people of South Africa to ensure that the
Employers are using scabs, and often along racial/ethnic lines.....
struggles of the people are not compro-
From the unions' perspective, there are enormous new organizational tasks in a situation of growing unemployment and economic stagnation. On the one
As part of this process of democratic hand, the possibilities of making inroads into the prerogatives of capital, and of debate, we call for a Constituent Assemdeepening the imprint of the working class on the struggle for democracy, have bly based on universal franchise. Before increased enormously.
that happens, NO organization can claim
While COSATU is best placed to take advantage of this new situation, its left the right to negotiate with the government critics are sceptical. They argue that a national general strike to further both on OUR behalf and speak in the name of economic and political demands of workers is now on the cards, but that
COSATU is holding workers back, given their desire not to upset the ANC's plans for a peaceful, negotiated settlement.
• In the light of what has happened
(from an article by Renée Roux in South African Labour Bulletin, August in Eastern Europe how does WOSA see the future of socialism?
As a political tendency we always warned against equating socialism with what existed in Eastern Europe, China and the USA. We stood by the understanding that socialism meant an even more democratic society than what exists in the most democratic of capitalist states.
You see, we believe that it is necessary to renew the concept of socialism. There cannot be the slightest doubt that for more than 150 years there was a consistent defisocialism, among the overwhelming majority of Marxist and non-
Marxist socialists alike, which did not equate socialism with the disappearance of private ownership of the means of pro-
Socialism meant for all these scholars and political agitators a society qualitatively superior to capitalism in terms of average standard of living, of social equality, of human freedom (including political freedom and civil rights), of pluralistic democracy and cultural diversity and of the weakening of institutic-alized authority (the state, the bureaucracy and its "secular arm"). For Marxists that implied a withering away of commodity production, of market economy, of social classes and of the state, in short it meant a classless society.
Only in the late twenties and early thirties was that consensus broken in favour of a radically reductionist definition of socialism, identifying that new social system with the abolition of private property
16 in the means of production. That reductionist definition was produced by Stalin.
In Eastern Europe (and in China to a more limited extent) what occurred were indeed mass uprisings of the workers and youth. That they have taken on a direction of restoring capitalism can be understood when one examines the consequence of 40 years of Stalinist rule that has led to these economies being wrecked, to them lagging far behind the West European economies and to the continued fall in the living standards of the people. It is understandable therefore that the masses identify prosperity with the market.
If we take this together with the way the Communist regimes acted to depoliticize the people as a means of retaining their control (as can be seen by the ease with which the Hungarians have embraced South Africa) then we can realize the extent to which the cause of socialism has been damaged in the short term. However in the medium term we believe that the future of socialism is assured. This is not simply because of the continued existence of revolutionary socialist organizations in most parts of the world. It is mainly because of the continued class struggle that arises out of the inherent contradictions of capitalism, [including] the periodattacks on wages, the sackings of millions of workers in the interests of profits, [and] the growth of social inequality to the point that it provokes mass
What are the major challenges and tasks confronting WOSA?
We believe that our first task is to elaborate an alternative strategy to that of negotiations. It is not enough to denounce those who seek to resolve the conflict in South Africa if we are unable to chart a clear alternative. For us this means putting perspectives forward that aim strengthening the strategic position of the working class. To take the question of the education crisis, for example, it means not only encouraging the students to go back to school, as all now agree. But it also means winning in the school the space for the operation of democratic SRCs and PTSAs (bodies representative of students, teachers and the community) that can campaign against all the inequities of bantu education and can put forward alternative methods of education - non-racist and non-sexist education.
Of course all this is meaningless if we are unable to develop strong roots in the working class. For us this means not only proclaiming that we defend working class politics but to be an organization of the workers. We see that the only means of establishing an influence amongst the working class is by defending their mass organizations and supporting their strug-
Here, we see defending the independence of the trade union movement as crucial. The decision by the COSATU
(Congress of South African Trade Unions) leadership to form a strategic alliance much like the relationship between the Congress Alliance and the SACTU (South African Congress of Trade Unions) presents a great danger. Again we don't see defending the independence of the trade union movement by denouncing the leadership of COSATU, NACTU (National Congress of Trade Unions) and so on. We will attempt to do this by supporting the campaigns of the labour movement and through promoting maximum unity in action. We see as a priority the need to contribute to the Workers Charter campaign both in ensuring the greatest participation of all workers and by making an input into the Charter itself so that working class perspectives such as workers' control, workers' unity, workers' leadership are concretized around an anticapitalist programme of demands....*
SOUTH AFRICA / GERMANY labour within COMECON, the GDR was the 10th largest industrial power in the world. Industrial production has now fallen by nearly 10% and will continue to decline. The crisis is still more serious in the agricultural sector, despite a record harvest.
What about the receipts from privatization? Already under Modrow a Fiduciary Society had been set up. Its job is to man-. age the 8,000 Combines (nationalized industrial complexes) and VEB ("enterprises belonging to the people" -a euphemism for state enterprises) which