South Africa's trade unions The Trade-Union Left and the Birth of a New South Africa, by Claude Jacquin Published 1999, IIRE (#26 in the NSR series. 92 pp., £3.50, $US5.00, f10. Founded in 1989, the (con)federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU until 1985, COSAT thereafter) organized hundreds of thousands of black workers in South Africa's newly emerged auto, steel and other industries.
For thousands of leading activists, these union federations were an embryonic political leadership in the fight against apartheid and for a transformed
For a decade the country's "independent trade-union Left" contended with the AN and Communist Party over leadership and strategy, putting forward a vision of democratic socialism counterposed to the CP's strategy of "national democratic revolution". Butt this current fell apart in the early '90s, when COSATU's most notable leaders became CP and ANC leaders.
This is the story retold and explained in Claude Jacquin's The Trade-Union Left and the Shaping of a New South Africa. Jacquin covered South Africa for International Viewpoint and other publications, travelling many times to South Africa and meet many people in his cast of characters.
His book shows the origins of FOSATU in the country's post-World War II industrialization and the strike waves of the 1970s. It maps the intellectual foundations of the FOSATU leaders' views, showing how they were both rooted in the anti-Stalinist traditions of the Cape region and appealing for a national milieu of newly organizing black workers.
It chronicles the debates and negotiations that made possible FOSATU's 1985 fusion with ANCaligned unions to form COSATU, and the conflicts and maneuvers that the shaky new federation survived.
Then it explains how and why so many of the trade-union Left's leaders gave up their socialist perspective in a time of major economic crisis and organizational difficulties in the late 1980s, and converged with a CP leadership that was itself doing drastic rethinking in the context first of perestroika and then of perestroika's failure.
Finally the book draws lessons for the future working-class Left. [PD] * 36 International Viewpoint #313 July 1999
Voices of Color, edited by Yolanda Alaniz and Nellie Wong, Red Letter Press, 1999, 160 pp, paperback, ISBN 0-932323-05-7. US$12.95 - (plus shipping $2.00) In 35 articles, taken from the "Voices of Color" column of the Freedom Socialist newspaper, writers of different races, genders, and sexual orientations report on labor and community organizing campaigns, Native struggles, opposing racism within progressive organizations, and movie and book reviews.
This anthology reflects the Freedom Socialist Party's analysis of the political issues which connect sex, sexuality, and race, particularly in the USA. [JD] * Order from Red Letter Press, 2278 East 24th Avenue, Vancouver, BC Canada V5N 2V2, Tel +1 604 874 9041, fax 874.9058 Email <fsp@portal.ca> Find out more about Red Letter Press at: www.socialism.com/bookstore/bookstor.htm
Bevolutionary rap musiC
The new CD from Red Dagger is now available for free download as twelve mp3 files or mail order purchase.
www.mp3.com/classlifezearle/
The mp3 files can be played on freeware programs like WinAmp or Mac Amp, available at:
http:/www.mp3.com
SAMIDU
The latest edition of the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU) magazine Workers' News is now online. There is also a SAMWU article on rural water— the demand for 50 litres free per person per day www.cosatu.org.za/samwu/
Seattle to meeting
A new free electronic news bulletin will highlight events, meetings, forums, and other planning activities during the buildup to the World Trade Organization's Third Ministerial meeting, to be held November 29 to December 4, 1999, in Seattle,
USA.
The full text searchable archives to this and other news bulletins produced by IATP can be viewed at:
www.newsbulletin.org.
Youth Camp
The 1999 European Revolutionary Youth Camp will be held on 24-30 July in the French
Massif Central. Over 600 young revolutionaries are expected.
Themes include • Against the bosses' Europe • against the
Nato bombs and Milosevic's ethnic cleansing • For a different Europe • for popular and social democracy • self-determination for the Kosovars • Fight for change • Plus our regular streams of education and discussion on ecology, feminism, and les-bi-gay liberation.
For more information, contact your local International Viewpoint seller or 4* International group.
Net
Working
Submissions to the Road to Seattle should be faxed to Renske van Staveren at (+1) 612-8704846or sent by email to:
rvanstaveren@iatp.org "American socialist" archiue (1954-59)
Supporters of Bert Cochran and Harry Braverman challenged the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party on a broad range of issues in
What began with policy over Walter Reuther and the UAW spread to an extensive examination of the nature of the economies in Eastern Europe beginning with Yugoslavia and continued through the Maoist-led
As the opposition spread to embrace a third of the party, James P. Cannon, leader of the party expelled the opposition group in 1953. Those expelled created the Socialist Union of America, and published The American Socialist from 1954-1959.
http://home.inreach.com/soldoll