New state of emergency assails the mass movement 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 emer-
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 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) and the National Education Crisis Committee (NECC).
Ten years ago, the riots in the township of Soweto marked a definite turning point in the political situation, which had been characterized until then by a downturn in the nationalist movement since the 1960s. The Soweto uprising demonstrated the enlistment of the township youth in the fight against racial 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 the Soweto riots, like the 1973 workers' strikes in Durban, were already establishing the premises for a renewal of the Black protest movement, which would appear more clearly at the beginning of the 1980s.
Ten years later, after two years of 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-
The elections for these fake par liaments were massively boycotted by the electorate in the communities concerned. Powerless and unrepresentative, these structures were condemned in advance and are barely functioning. states of emergency beginning in the middle During these periods of regional of 1985, thousands of anti-apartheid activists were arrested and hundreds of others were killed during the repression.
3.0 'Le Monde,' June 15-16, 1986.
4. See "COSATU targets one million members," International Viewpoint,' No. 101, June 23, 1986
3 gency for a period of three months TONY ROUX
Through these repressive meas ures 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 escalation. The 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. The South African regime did 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 mass movement on this occasion. 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 or more. 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. The government, moreover, is encouraging informing on the most active anti-apartheid militants in the townships by promising pay-offs to informers. "Subversive commentary"
This emergency rule lays the press open to prosecution for any "subersive commentary." Evidently, it is the government itself that judges the subversive character of the articles, and 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 press is subjected to the same measures. Violations of the press laws include: "promotion of the objec tives 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 hosti-
Demonstrating against apartheid (DR) vented the full application of this test and thus deprived the people of an important experience of struggle. The strike was also the most immediate motivation for the imposition of the state of emergency.
Despite the ban on all of the anticipated demonstrations, the June 16 general strike was broadly supported by the Blacks through boycotts of transportation and work. Soweto on that day, like many other townships, was a dead city. But because of the state of emergency the general strike was not an active strike. For the moment that is the only success that the regime can claim.
The relatively massive character of the arrests that followed the imposition of the state of emergency is indicative of the goal sought by Pretoria: to deprive the mass movement of its leadership for a period of time so as to disorient it and sow confusion in the ranks. This explains why the repressive wave at the onset struck at all the anti-regime sectors: the independent Black trade-union movement, the 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, The Argus, 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 Africa (CUSA) and of cleries belonging to the South African Council of Churches.
Among the chief leaders imprisoned since June 12 are Phiroshaw Camay, general secretary of CUSA, who 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 Catholic Bishops. Several leaders of the Azanian 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 been arrested, along with several hundred members.
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, however, is not a panic-stricken reaction of a government driven into a corner by protests. The recent confrontations in Crossroads township near Durban and the threat of a popular insurrection around the June 16 demonstrations are the justifications given by the representatives of Pretoria for resorting to a state of emergency. (5) These are only pretexts.
Of course, during this last year, the regime has seen its institutions seriously challenged in the areas where Blacks live. The municipal councils that it installed to administer the townships have become the target of mass Black denunciation. Most of the Black council members have been 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 structures (area committees) have 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 point.
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 is capable of turing to its own advantage. In the last few years a part of the National Party's (NP) traditional base has been eroded. As soon as the Botha government made a show of modifying some of the apartheid measures that were deemed inadequate for the new needs of capitalist development in the country, part of the NP electoral base turned to the Herstigte National Party or to the Conservative Party.
In the last few months there has been a spectacular advance in the
These confrontations between the inhabitants of different shanty towns in the Crossroads area in the last few weeks have left tens of thousands homeless and several dozen dead. In these conflicts groups of conservative Blacks living in the old sections of Crossroads clashed with progressive activists from the outlying shanty towns. Many witnesses vouch for the support given by the South African police to the conservative groups who initiate these confrontations. Beyond this manipulation and intervention by the South African forces to stir up divisions, the confrontations in Crossroads reflect numerous antagonisms between the opposing camps: conservatives against progressives, but also the old authorities against the young rebels and long-time residents against squatters.
6. The phenomenon of vigilantes appeared in several townships toward the end of last year. These groups called by different local names (Pakhatis, Amabutho, A-team), but known generically as vigilantes, are conservative militias that attack demonstrations and civic association activists in the townships. Enjoying tolerance, even the direct support of the white police, these groups are recruiting especially from the circles surrounding the Black municipal councillors and the Black police. They have been responsible for the assassinations of many anti-apartheid activists. International Viewpoint 14 July 1986
popularity of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging [AWB - Afrikaner 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 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 complicity of the regime. (7)
The Botha government is also under crossfire from this extreme right wing on the one side, and on the other, from the advocates of a rapid reform of apartheid, which is seen as a capitalist solution to the regime's present crisis by some South 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 interational bourgeoisie.
7. Last March, the AWB organized a meeting including Connie Mulder, a former member of the government who had been considered a possible successor to the prime minister in 1978, but who withdrew following a scandal known as Muldergate.
International Viewpoint 14 July 1986
SPANISH STATE