AROUND THE WORLD
South Africa IV joins censored publications SEVERAL ISSUES of International Viewpoint have been banned in South
Africa over the last few months.
There are two sorts of "bans" for journals and publications. The first is a total ban on possessing the publication in question. The second forbids selling or distribution without forbidding the private possession of one copy.
Thousands of journals, reviews and books are hit by bans in the land of apartheid. It is mainly the publications of banned South African organizations which are censored. But over the last few years they have been joined by certain publications of legal South African organizations of which this or that article offends this police-ridden state. Finally, since it became one of the hot spots of the world, a whole series of Englishlanguage foreign publications which take a stand or give information on the situation in South Africa have been added to the list. This alone gives an idea of the grotesque and suffocating world of apartheid. To oversee this ban on thousands of publications from around the world there has to be a vast bureaucratic mission A rica apparatus in the embassies and in South Africa itself whose 'historic mission" is to seek out the subversive poison in everything published.
Obviously many Marxist classics are banned. But the other area which terrorises the representatives of the "master race" is anything to do with sex: a fairly wide-ranging idea of what constitutes "pornography" ' which obviously is first of all directed at anything do do with homosexuality. It is hard to imagine the worthy representative of the South African embassy in London forced to tour all the sex shops in the city in order to inform his chiefs of the books and publications which should be banned for the sake of the country!
In the great list of evil publications the "Lenin" section immediately precedes "lesbianism". Unfortunately for the defenders of the - racist -moral order, it is more and more difficult to cut South Africa off from the rest of the world. Ideas circulate much more easily than publications. It is perhaps easy to sign a circular banning a European publication. It 26 must be much more difficult to forbid South Africans themselves to think, discuss or struggle. It seems that this is now the main danger for this racist subworld, much more than political journals published abroad. This is a good sign. Ireland Stop strip-searching PICKEIs supporting women Republican prisoners in the North of Ire. land on International Women's Day have become a traditional event. This year was the eighth, but this time the picket was held at Maghaber-
Britain's newest Irish jail in ry County Antrim. Armagh women's prison, where the protests have traditionally been held, has now been closed down.
Over 300 people joined the picket, including delegations from many parts of Ireland - North and South - and from 15 towns in Britain. An all-night vigil was also held on March 8 outside Durham jail in the north of England, where two Irish Republican women are serving life sentences.
The central theme of the protest was the demand for an end to strip-searching of women prisoners, a practice which is used by the prison authorities both in Ireland and Britain to intimidate and degrade Republican political prisoners. Women Republican prisoners in Maghaberry issued the following statement on March 8 (reprinted from the March 12 edition of An Phoblacht/Republican News)
"Sisters. International Women's Day is of great significance to us all as it brings us the opportunity to reaffirm our solidarity and commitment to each other in continuing to further the women's cause ...
"We are regarded as individuals in theory, but in practice are denied the right of individuality. We voice our disapproval at such hypocrisy and demand equal recognition and respect, only to be portrayed as a 'threatening force' to the man's world. Many of our male counterparts would continue to hold the view that we should be seen, not heard!
"For centuries we have been considered the weaker sex - a myth for the male ego. Down through the decades we have eradicated this myth through our persistence to win emancipation. Like a dispossessed people, we can only gain.
"It is on that point that we con front the state standards imposed or the women in this jail. Our ow bodies are being used as weapon against us through the implementa tion of the strip-search policy ir November 1982.
"It is a grossly demoralizing an‹ demeaning practice - a policy whic} proves nothing short of legalized rap of mind and body Young and old are compelled to strip naked enterin and leaving prison for any • reason Refusal to strip is met with the forcible stripping of the women During menstruation the woman i forced to remove her sanitary protec tion and hand it over for inspectior - she remains totally naked and 'unprotected' until the visual body inspection and search of her clothing is completed.
"It is impossible to describe ade quately how one feels during a strip. search. You are within a hostile atmosphere and at the mercy of hostile prison warders who add to the humiliation you are already experi encing through expressing snide remarks on your body shape or any distinguishing marks you may bear. Psychologically it can have far-reaching effects
" 'Security' , which is used to justify this malpractice, is a groundless excuse - the strip-search policy was deliberately designed to quell our resistance to the criminalization policy.
' Sisters, while our situations are different, we have a mutual cause — to defeat the oppression of women in whatever form it may take." South Africa Sanctions loopholes "THE FOREIGN companies have always told us that they think it is important to support us Blacks, to offer us a chance to have careers, and so on. But we know from experi ence that they are not interested in alleviating poverty. They want to make as much money as possible."
That was what Sydney Matumadi, assistant general secretary of the South African confederation of unions, COSATU, told me.
You could see that Sydney was used to answering the question about the role of foreign companies in South Africa. The question of sanctions is often discussed; and, although the law forbids anyone from speaking 9
favor of an economic boycott, e support for it is very great. "A lot of people have visited us, cluding Swedes, and said that their companies leave South Africa ›day, they risk not getting their arkets back after the liberation," ydney said. "We don't think that Ich arguments have any validity .... "The presence of the companies aly increases the military capacity : the South African regime. It is the gime that dictates the conditions or the companies, not the workers • the people or even the foreign rm itself." While the demand for sanctions increasing both among South Afriins themselves and in the solidarity ovements around the world, the ompanies are trying to find ways of roiding them. In the past year, more than 60 S companies left South Africa -; least on paper. In most cases, they sold the US other firm's stock in its South frican subsidiary to some South frican company on the basis of ledges that it would retain the ght to buy it back and that the chnical and manufacturing licences ould continue to be purchased from le US. Often the US firms have lent outh African firms the money to uy their stock. That is what Coca Cola did, and 1 addition it moved the production f its syrup to Swaziland, from which is sold to South Africa at high rices. In 1979, the Swedish company SEA was the first to get around the ew Swedish law banning new Ivestments in South Africa by selling le majority of its stock. In midanuary it got worried about the iternational trend and sold the rest f its stock in the South African SEA Electric. But in the South African media, ISEA promised to continue to proide manufacturing licences and new echnology. The stock was sold • ASEA's former partner, Powerech, which works closely with the outh African military industrial omplex, ARMSCOR.
"The factory would be forced to lose without Swedish technology," aid Josef Selau, formerly chair of he union at ASEA Electric in Rosslyn utside Pretoria.
"In the assembly of transformers, nany parts come from Sweden Vithout those parts the assembly ould not continue," said Josef, ho was fired right before Christmas. ASEA said the layoff was because f lack of work, and laid off 80 vorkers at the same time. Of those, en were in the union leadership, ind one was the chair Josef Selau.
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He has no hope of being called back. "That's the way they treat union activists here," he said.
The demand for sanctions is not coming because people think that it is easy but because of the apartheid system, said Chris Dhlamini, who is the vice chair of COSATU.
Chris is a hunted man, who has not been home for several months .... He sleeps in a different place every night....
He is relatively safe at his job at Kellogs. The company is afraid of a big strike if the police were to arrest him, and so it offers him a certain protection....
"It is not the workers who will suffer from sanctions but those who have exploited the people for too long," Chris Dhalmini said.
"The foreign companies have claimed that they are in South Africa to improve things for Blacks. Now that they are being forced to leave the country, we say that they should turn the factories over to the workers. That is COSATU's demand." • [From the March 5 issue of Internationalen, paper of the Swedish section of the Fourth International.] Kurdistan Protest at Turkish bombings IN ATHENS on March 6-10, Turkish and Kurdish organizations and activists carried out a hunger strike at the Propylaia in protest against the murderous attack of the Turkish airforce on Iraqi Kurdistan. [Recent bombings allegedly aimed at Kurdish terrorist bases across the Iraqi border.]
On March 20, hundreds of people marched to the Turkish embassy.
The following is an excerpt from the press communique issued on March 3 by the Kurdish organization Rizgari, which participated in the hunger strike:
"The massacres that happened in the past in Dersim and Agri and Zilan are being repeated today.
"Do those who talk about human rights and freedom not see what is happening in Kurdistan?.... They know that the language and the political rights of a people numbering 23,000,000 are being destroyed and that their mineral wealth is being plundered.
"Why do they remain silent? There is a struggle, and it is much more developed than other national liberation movements. They overlook it because of the economic interests of various states and in order to crush it."
The Internationalist Communist Organization Greek section of the
Fourth International, called demonstrating on that day: "Where do the Turkish generals find the strength to continue this criminal operation against the Kurdish people? ... US imperialism is preparing to install monstrous weapons systems in Turkey la treaty is about to be signed [it has been signed now ]) to turn the country into a big watchtower on the Soviet border and a border guard of the Middle East, as they did with Israel and the shah's Iran after 1956 for the Arab coun tries and the Palestinian movement.
"The oil in the Mosul and Kirkuk areas in Iraqi Kurdistan is sufficient cause for some fancy maneuvering pecially the German) datel as by the European imperialists (estoward their tactical ally, Evren, in particular since the Iran Iraq war is bringing close the collapse of the Iraqi state. More arms to shed the blood of the workers and toilers. More blood for the profit of the international imperialists and their local lackies. This is the last alternative left to the system of oppression and exploitation, which is everywhere going everywhere going deeper into crisis." [From the March issue of Spartakos, paper of the Greek section of the Fourth International.J Paraguay Two new unions founded A STRIKE by workers at the university clinic in Asuncion, capital of Paraguay, has continued for several weeks for more pay and better conditions. The strike leaderships one after the other have been arrested. Demonstrations have been broken up by the police with clubs and firearms.
The fact that this strike is continuing despite all the repression is a result of the new organization of the Paraguayan trade union movement, with the founding of two unions, the Movimiento Intersindical de Trabajadores (MIT - Inter-union Workers Movement) and the Agrupacion Independiente de Trabajadores (AIT -Independent Workers Group).
The situation has become more tense in particular owing to the resistance to the Stroessner regime's shutting down of Radio Nanduti, one of the few independent radio stations that adopted a bourgeois-democratic line. Since the closing of the station in January, the protests have continued and spilled over into other movements. [From the March 12 issue of Sozialistische Zeitung, paper of the West German United Socialist Party.]
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ISRAELI STATE