One million out on May Day
SOUTH AFRICA strike action in the first three months of 1986. The next few weeks will be a period of heightened activity on the trade-union front. Important wage negotiations in mines and metallurgy are due to take place.
On May 1, Chief Gatsha Buthelezi's in run up to June strikes
[of the KwaZulu bantustan] Inkatha party launched its own reactionary
- UWUSA (United trade union
Workers Union of South Africa).
However, the events of May Day
THE EVENTS of May 1 in South Africa, when over one million people participated in the largest protest action in the country's history, are testimony to the continuing development of the mass movement.
But as the movement develops in breadth and experience and as the daily confrontations continue, huge debates have also started up. The combativity of the masses continues to come up against the organizational limits of the movement and it is around this question that discussion is focussing. The following article looks at the events of the last few months and towards the possibilities of the future.
PETER BLUMER
One of the most noticeable developments of this year has been the broadening of the popular mobilizations into areas which were not affected in 1985.
This is particularly the case in the bantustan of Bophuthatswana which
"independent"
was declared by Pretoria and is made up of seven separate districts around Johannesburg.
This bantustan, which consists of 2 million inhabitants, was set up by the racist to house the
Tswana authorities of those ethnic group. But many living there
Tswana and, are not for that reason, have been largely subjected to harassment and intimidation from the bantustan's puppet regime. A large section of the male population of the territory is composed of migrant workers working in industry and commerce, in the
Transvaal region.
Others work in mines within the bantustan the itself or in "border" industries where take advantage of employers can a cheap labour force amongst the miserable population of the reserve.
Because of this, the authorities particularly in
•the bantustans,
Bophuthatswana, do not recognize even the meagre rights won by Black workers in the large industrial towns.
They also feel able to introduce forms of repression which even the
Botha government is wary of. Assassination, kidnappings and stonings are the most common forms of maintaining law and order used by these local potentates.
The industrial and mining areas of Bophuthatswana have been the most prone to popular revolt and
International Viewpoint 19 May 1986 repression. On January 6, the Gencor mining company at the Impala platinum mine decided to sack 23,000 mineworkers because they had refused to call off a strike. The bantustan authorities proved ready to deny the people any trade union rights and to put themselves at the disposal of the bosses in clamping down on the workers. The National Union of Mineworkers [NUM] was not recognized by this particular company. (1)
During the month of March there were several popular assemblies which the local police deliberately attacked. It was on one of these occasions that two French doctors from a charity organization were arrested and beaten up. They later explained to the press how the Blacks arrested with them by bantustan police had been systematically beaten and tortured. These clashes resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of people wounded.
The unrest in Bophuthatswana has two main implications. First it reflects the general situation in the Transvaal, since any reserve situated 50 to 80 kilometres from Pretoria and Johannesburg must be tied in with the social and economic situation in this central industrial area of the country. The unrest is also a sign of a new destabilization of the apartheid system, in that it involves a direct confrontation between the population of a bantustan and the Black police authorities.
The mass movement in the large white-dominated meantime, been continuing at the same level as last year. More than half a million days were lost in proved a vital opportunity for the trade-union movement to show its strength. These events were an important prelude to June 16, 17 and 18, the proposed dates for the general strike on the issue of the education system. And finally July 1 should be the date for the implementation of wage increases in the mines and is therefore an important date for the trade unions. As the South African Weekly Mail points out in its April 4, 1986, issue: "All these dates take significance because of the events of the past three months, which have seen the most sustained expression of workers' militancy since Occupations and strikes escalate
Engineering workers and other sections have been occupying their workplaces in the last few weeks; the mining industry has been affected by 30 strikes since January. Already this year there have been more people participating in strikes in the mines than during the great 1946 strike or during the strikes in 1984 and 1985 in this sector. It is estimated that there have been 11,000 people per day on strike in the mines since the beginning of the year. The demands of the strikers vary according to where the strikes occur. They include demands for wage increases and in the case of Bophuthatswana, NUM recognition. In some mines demands were also thrown up around the issue of migrant labour or for non-racialism, that is, against preferential treatment for whites.
The situation in industry as a whole is very tense and some observers on the employers' side believe that it is critical. Again according to the Weekly Mail of April 4, 1986, "a number of different factors have been trotted out to explain these trends, but perhaps the crucial one is the effect of the overall political climate and
1. A director of the Gencor company was quoted as saying that "you run into they get completely unreasonable. The alternative is to get rid of the whole labour force and replace them. There is a condition of massive unemployment in the country and that encourages us to take this kind of action".
5
the impetus given to politics in the labour movement by the formation of COSATU four months ago". (2)
This is why it is important to follow with great attention the debate on the crisis in the education system, on the schools boycott and on the organization of the mass movement around these issues. Having decided to return to classes after long months of boycott, the school students movement - which groups together young people, parents and teachers - has re-raised the demands that have not yet been met and is proposing a new national initiative for the middle
One important and unknown factor in this regard is COSATU's attitude toward this action. There is little doubt the trade-union federation will decide to get involved this movement, mean a real coming together of industrial struggles with the struggles in the townships and popular quarters. This kind of united activity is taking place in the context of a much higher level organization than existed in the united-front actions
The schools boycott was one of the main events of 1985 affecting society as a whole, and it constituted the main point of physical confrontation between the mass movement and the regime. In the last months it was the coloured school students movement in the Cape area which was in the forefront against both ministers of education and so-
"coloured affairs" whole repressive policy of President
As we wrote at the time, the boycott movement was tending to run liaison with the mass movement as a whole, in particular with the working class and the trade unions.
On December 29 and 30, 1986, a large national meeting took place in Johannesburg at which 161 organizations met to discuss the follow-up to the schools boycott. The conference was organized by the Soweto Parents Crisis Committee (SPCC) which is an organization with strong links to the United Democratic Front [UDF]. All the different were represented there including the trade unions.
national meeting registered difficulties facing the movement. Replying to the slogan of some young without liberation", Desneed education in order to be liberated ("education for liberation"). (3) According to the January 7 edition of Argus, Stone Sixani, secretary of the UDF for the Eastern Cape, is supposed to have said that for his part "children had a role to play in the 'struggle for liberation, but in the classroom,
As a result the conference decided on a plan for a return along with a list of demands on the regime and a perspective of renewed activity if these demands were not met.
### Johannesburg meeting important for several reasons. It represented an attempt to achieve unity at a higher level than before. Of course there were some problems but it cannot be denied that the meeting represented a step forward in the fight for a united front. Also the implementation of conference decisions was a way of testing the real possi tees that are leading the various mass activities in the communities. There were some problems in this regard but their real significance is not apparent. The firmness of the decisions taken in Johannesburg on December 29 shows that the UDF leadership had decided to put an end to what was coming to be regarded as disorderliness in the youth movement. It is obviously too early to judge the correctness of this approach and the implications in the medium term. But the national meeting showed a willingness to take up precise strategies rather than to just be carried the spontaneity of the "Turn the classrooms into zones of liberation"
On January 26, in the Cape area, a similar meeting on a regional level decided to support the decisions taken in Johannesburg. The final statement drawn up by most of the political tendencies explained: "One view is that the boycott should continue until all our demands are met, even if we have to sacrifice another year, or even two or three years of inferior education. This view is based on a completely false reading of the political situation in South Africa, since it supposes that the National Party government is about to fall and that an indefinite schools boycott will hasten this fall ... There is no moral, political or educational reason for continuing the boycott of classes 'indefinitely. But we want to say here briefly that the boycott as a weapon of struggle is used most out of through lack of an steam immediate perspective and a real
Riots in Johannesburg, September 1984 (DR)
bility for exercising control on the part of the organizations and commitsuccessfully when the oppressed have it in their power to withhold their consent when the government needs it to give legitimacy to its institutions (such as management committees, community councils, tricameral parliaments etc ...) ... We can and should, quite simply, turn the classrooms into zones of liberation; we can and should turn the whole educational system into a weapon against our oppressors " (Cape Times, January 27, 1986).
It seems, then, that the decision has been taken on the basis of an evaluation of the current relation of forces. Compared to statements made in September or October 1985, this represents an indisputable step forward. But the most important thing politically is the statement on the boycott tactic. Here this is presen-
2. In January 1986, 385,000 days were lost in strikes. This is the highest figure since 1979. In January 1985, there were 5,000 days lost and in January 1984, 96,000. "Weekly Mail", January 19, 1986.
International Viewpoint 19 May 1986
ted as being more effective when seeking to present an obstacle to the state institutions. There were two boycott movements in 1985, one of the schools and the other of whiteowned shops. In the latter case, the boycott sometimes brought local distribution trade to a halt. In the case of the schools boycott, it became necessary to call a halt in order to avoid the risk of its disintegrating of its own accord. But the implicit question raised by the Cape statement is on the nature of the objectives of a boycott. Should they be reduced to objectives aimed at the state or broadened to include economic objectives which would obviously hit the white employers and thus also the liberal sections?
It is obvious that the debate is a very complicated one which goes beyond this or that tactical require-
The debate on ending the schools boycott thus had the merit of touching on wider issues.
The national organization which has taken on the role of coordination, the National Education Crisis Committee, met on the weekend of March 29 and 30 in Durban. It took up the debate on the tactics of the struggle (4) and Zwelakhe Sisulu, son of the imprisoned African National Congress [ANC] leader Walter Sisulu, explained things in the following way: will not defeat apartheid while the youth alone carry on the struggle
Bantu education or other aspects of racist rule. We will not win while our ranks are split by teachers who have not yet thrown in their lot with the democratic We will not win while parents remain alienated from the demands of their
Our task is to look for strategies which continually strengthen and enlarge the ranks of the people and constantly weaken, divide the enemy." (Weekly Mail, April 4, 1986).
This latest national meeting therefore confirmed the back to school. But it also decided to call for a National Youth Day on June 16 and a three-day national stayaway on June 16, 17, and 18 for all sections of the Black movement. It is on this point that COSATU'S response is still awaited.
In the Weekly Mail of April 4 it is noted that student delegates to the conference ... anticipated difficulty in having conference decisions accepted in their constituencies."
More than two weeks after the Durban decision there are several places where students have not gone back to classes. However in Soweto, where the movement is the most organized, the students went back to school, although according to a member of the National Education
International Viewpoint 19 May 1986
May Day protests
IN A MASSIVE show of strength by the trade-union movement, one million. Black workers and school students staged a stayaway
May 1, demanding that May Day be a paid holiday.
"legalized" there has be a paid holiday.
This year a small number of employers had conceded that demand.
demand had been lodged one year
May Day events were tremendous boost for the newly
Business associations reported 70% to 100% absenteeism, with the being in the Transvaal area. The
Anglo-American mining corporation reported that 83% of workers were on strike.
But this strike was also seen by many as merely a practice run for the three-day strike called for
June 16-18 in commemoration of those killed in Soweto and in protest against the bantu educa Crisis Committee, the classes did not
"The main problem in , according to Weekly Mail of April 11, 1986, the demand by students that they should be promoted to the next class and the popular slogan of "pass one, pass all'.
The September and October 1985 various employers' representatives and liberal leaders of the Federal Party [PFP] constituted light for all who might find it useful to meet the leadership of the movement. In other of bourgeois perillegal action has given others a margin
Church representatives also went ANC, and, according to the January 10 Weekly Mail, just before Johannesburg on December 29, 1985, "a Soweto Parents Crisis Committee delegation travelled to Lusaka with executive members the African National Congress." (5)
But the most important visit was undoubtedly that of the COSATU delegation, following an initial meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe, at the end of last year. This second meeting was the occasion for the publication of a joint communique whose importance cannot be underestimated (see International Viewpoint, No. 97, April 21,
According to some newspapers, the first meeting in December 1985
Naidoo, the general secretary of COSATU, and the ANC raised certain within the union federation. COSATU supposed to have called for a boycott of the journal The Sowetan that Naidoo had no mandate for the meeting.
Weekly Mail, murings of discontent over the ANC mous vote of confidence in the general secretary and the executive." does not seem to have caused any major problem within tion, the precise political consequences not yet clear. Most observers have remarked on the very "balanced" character of the final statement with an acceptance by COSATU of the role of the ANC and a recognition by the latter of the special importance of COSATU on the social and political
At any rate, this friendly exchange between the two organizations marks a change on the South African poliand will undoubtedly improve relations between the UDF and the trade unions in future mass campaigns. Something like the apto COSATU following on the schools boycott movement, for example, is a relatively new phenothe schools boycott was at its height in October 1985, few people in the UDF were concerned with the role of the trade result of the critical balance of these struggles and also the outmeetings mean that the role of the workers' movement is now recognized and even sought after by the leaders of the community organiza-
Another slightly less important meeting was the one that took place
4. The Durban meeting was attacked by men from the Zulu party. Inkatha. Two members of their commando were killed in the clashes.
5. Other important meetings with the ANC include official interview with a delegation of the British foreign office. It was also recently learned that the masonic Afrikaner organization, the Afrikaner Broederbond, would be interested in discussing with the ANC and has made some approaches. Its problem is that a number of them are members of the government and Botha has until now refused all discussions with the ANC.
that it really puts pressure on the government which has great difficulty in repressing or even opposing demo cratic or liberal movements. The second reason is that gradually, and despite confusions within this milieu, the ANC has managed to win a substantial number as members and sympathizers working on their behalf.
On April 3 a conference of 31 organizations took place in Durban, Natal, whose aim was to set up a new system of administration for the whole region. This would not just be for "white" Natal but for the KwaZulu bantustan headed by Buthelezi and his party, Inkatha. According to participants the new structure would mark the beginnings of a federalist system capable of overcoming all the current contradictions in the apartheid system. The so-called "Kwa-
Despite Botha's "reforms", the repression continues (DR) between the white student organization, NUSAS [National Union of South African Students] and the ANC. This meeting, which took place at the beginning of April, came after a broad referendum among white English-speaking students to mandate their leaders to call it. Nearly 95 per cent of the 10,000 students in the different assemblies voted in favour of the meeting taking place. In October 1985 students trying to leave the country had had their passports withdrawn by the authorities. This time the government was hard put to it to place any obstacle in their way. A communique from the meeting explained that "the real interests of the majority of the white South Africans do not lie in the system of racial domination and national oppression". According to observers, the discussion centered on the role of whites in a future demo-
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cratic South Africa, on the economic perspectives of the AN and on relations with the South African Communist Party, as well as on a whole series of other issues like ecology, nuclear energy and women's oppression.
This meeting shows the developments taking place among English-speaking whites, democrats, Christians petty-bourgeois intellectuals. The success campaign against conscription illustrates the same phenomenon. animates these layers is not a radical and class-based political perspective but rather a desire to get out of the current crisis and put forward a general democratic solution. The behaviour of such layers often seems to reveal a fear of civil war.
Nevertheless, this movement by a section of the white population is useful for two reasons. The first is
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Natal" perspective came from Inkatha leaders and leaders of a small liberal party, the New Republican Party which, although not very large on a national level, is in a majority in the Natal provincial council. A significant fact is that representatives of the ruling National Party were also present at the conference as observers. The government has already accepted the principle of an administrative fusion of KwaZulu and Natal but are a long way from accepting the creation of a single and unique legislative provincial assembly - that is involving Black people's right to vote. The Natal area consists of 600,000 whites, 700,000 Indians, 100,000 coloureds and 1.4 million Blacks. Crisis affects government and National Party
The spectrum of progressive political and trade-union organizations have rejected this perspective which they see as an attempt to salvage the system through constitutional formal measures.
This whole business shows the complexity of changes occurring in the white bourgeois camp. Of course the case of Natal is special and this kind of reformist project would have little chance of even being discussed at the moment in other regions.
The "KwaNatal" project is only possible because the white employers, the Indian bourgeoisie and Zulu capitalist entrepreneurs in the area all have common objective interests. It is the particular social formation in Natal which has permitted such negotiations. But it is important to look beyond this and relate it to the crisis affecting the government itself and the National Party. The discussion in Natal is aimed at finding an echo in the new project of the President's Council entitled "An urbaniza-
International Viewpoint 19 May 1986
The black shantytown of New Brighton, the second largest after Soweto (DR)
tion strategy for the Republic of South Africa". This latter has its roots in a widespread questioning of the whole bantustan and labourcontrol policy. This development at the very heart of the regime, which could sow divisions amongst its base, is not just a result of social pressure. It is also a necessary response for overcoming the inherent contradictions of the apartheid system and the current stage of capitalist accumulation in the country. According to a paper prepared by DC Hudson and entitled Orderly Urbanization and Influx Control, "this new phase has been brought on by a crisis of profitability, the irreversible erosion of the material basis of temporary migration, the weakening of bureaucratic labour controls and either the economic or political aims
"There is evidence to suggest that the regional ordering of the proletariat is superceding the existing dualistic division with the urban areas between settled and migratory labour ...
"The ruling class's search for more radical solutions to the deepening economic and political crisis of the mid-1980s has finally led to an abandonment of territorial apartheid and acceptance of the need to reinform of single national system, albeit one constituted on the basis of ethniccum-regional / federal / confederal units."
Here we find the real thinking behind Botha's speech on January 31, 1986, known as "Rubicon 2"
The announced that apartheid outmoded, that the pass system international Viewpoint 19 May 1986 would be abolished on July 1, 1986,
South Africa was toward a system of power between the two races. (6)
President's above was published in November 1985, and explains also present system nor any other direct form of 'negative' influx control should be retained. There is, however, positive approach to urbanization that would allow the orderliness process to be promoted. It is necessary for influx control to be replaced by a positive urbanization strategy that, by making use of market forces, subsidies and development, among other things, will encourage people to settle in certain suitable rather than forbidding them to move to certain urban areas. Division on short-term objectives
This debate is running through the whole of the ruling class. The liberals' only perspective is to put they have a tendency to be divided objectives. Botha's 2 speech was aimed essentially at their ranks. The question now for this bourgeois opposition and for the many employers who support it is to choose between Botha's promises, some kind of intermediate solution
"Kwa-Natal" aimed at showing that a multiracial bourgeois rule is possible, or to maintain the systemaof last year. Strangely enough, it was after Botha's speech that the PFP leader, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert and another leader, Alex Borain, made their noisy depar ture from parliament. Slabbert's "'accuse" gesture, when he explained that he was wasting his time in an assembly which was incapable of changing the system, surprised more than one observer. Slabbert was no newcomer, and the most one can say is that he took a long time recognize the limits of the system. His decision was not well received by large sections of the PFP and the liberal press.
With hindsight it seems that Slabbert's gesture had more to do with the problems within the liberal camp than with a sudden awakening as to the true nature of the Botha regime.
It is quite probable that after the intense phase of polemics against the government by the liberals in 1985 and the series of visits to the ANC, now be clarified and differences will reappear. It is to note that whilst some their attention are discussing Buthelezi's formula in Natal, and Slabbert has attended a meeting of the UDF in Johannesburg. . Underlying all this to-ing and fro-ing are the classical problems of the liberals: deciding who to discuss with and guessing who will be the key representatives. Slabbert is betting on the ANC and the others are sticking to the usual channels.
6. Among the recent measures of so-called liberalization note the, opening up of business centres in the large towns to non-white traders.