AROUND THE WORLD
AROUND THE WORLD SOUTH AFRICA Free Mandela! IN deciding to free eight black South African leaders held in prison since the 1960s, South Africa's President de Klerk has made a further move in his search for a negotiated way out from the crisis of apartheid. Eight political prisoners were freed, including, most significantly, Walter Sisulu. This old leader of the African National Congress (ANC), who was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 1964, is considered the most popular black political prisoner apart from Nelson Mandela. By releasing Sisulu the South African government is giving a signal that the next step will be the release of Mandela, if the regime feels that negotiations with the ANC are now possible. De Klerk's long meeting with religious leader Desmond Tutu on October 11 is also significant. Furthermore, the big unitary anti-apartheid conference previously planned for October 7, has been postponed until December in the hope that Mandela will be able to take part. An important change in the South African political scene is in the offing. Mass mobilizations will take place in a different situation, and this will require not only tactical changes but a wide-ranging strategic debate. * SRI LANKA Trade union leaders seized FOUR members of the Sri Lankan Janaraja Healthworkers' Union in Colombo, all members of a Trotskyist group, the Nava Samasamaja Party (NSSP), were abducted from their union offices on September 15, 1989. They are still being held. The NSSP is convinced that this abduction is the work of sections of the state securty forces, passing themselves off as anti-government terrorists.
According to a statement from the Committee for Workers' Unity, "This unexpected assault on the Trade Union and its leaders is a clear sign of a profound crisis within the armed forces and 16 of a hardened attitude towards any anti-government activity. State terrorism is doubly applied to the retaliatory terrorism of the rural youth.
"Sri Lankan rural peasant economy was destroyed by the penetration of Finance Capital under British colonialism which in turn hampered a proper organic capitalist development.
Up to this day, no ruling regime has had any policy to solve the questions of landlessness, rural indebtedness and they have shown their inability to utilize the rural resources. So the majority of the rural population are today unemployed, under-nourished and have literally become the scum of the carth. "The rural youth have voiced their utter desperation of the rural people. They have led a rebellion against all established authority and all the accepted standards of the general ethos of traditional Sri Lankan society.
For the last forty years when their basic needs have not been solved, in utter frustration, the younger generation have been pushed into a blind alley and their means of retaliation have become extremely barbaric.
EYESIGHT OK ?HEARING? OTHER SENSES? GOOD. TOO BAD. GENERAL HEALTH ABILITY TO RESUME WORK? PROSPECTS
FOR A LONG LIFE?
GOOD, CONSIDERING.
HOW UNFORTUNATE...
International Viewpoint #72 • October 30, 1989
"This general situation has had an impact even on the trade union movement and has been able to swing a certain tiny layer of young workers to terrorism.
'This rural rebellion became enmeshed with communalism when their Tamil counterparts started their struggle for land and self-determination.
"The rural problem in both the north and south of Sri Lanka is of a nation struggling to possess its own land. This aspect of the rural rebellion can even attract the sympathy of the workers although they abhor communalism and terrorism as means of action.
"Therefore the ruling class in Sri Lanka senses the possible emergence of a combination of forces, the alliance of workers and the rural youth. So they have started an assault on the youth which will eventually grip the whole working population and the radical left movement.
"We ask you therefore to campaign: 1. To immediately release all the Trade union leaders — Brothers W.A.D. Wimalaratne, W. A. Gunadasa of the Janaraja Healthworkers' Union and Brothers Mahind Silva and Dumminda Dharmasena of the Local Government Clerical Services Union. 2. To stop all military interventions in the work places and the Trade Union offic es. Send messages and telegrams to
1. His Excellency the President R. Premadasa Janadhipathy Mandiraya, Colombo, 1, Sri Lanka.
2. General Cecil Vaidyaratne,
Combined Services, Havelock Town (opposite Pediris Udyanaya), Colombo 05, Sri Lanka."*
MEMORY? ALERTNESS? ENERGY LEVEL? GooD. PITY.
...I'M AFRAID, MA. MANDELA,
YOU'RE IN NO CONDITION TO
BE RELEASED FROM PRISON.
SOUTA AFRICA
NICARAGUA Sandinista election campaign appeal launched THE Revolutionary Communist League (LCR, French section of the Fourth International) has decided to organize a campaign to raise 100,000 francs to fund the electoral campaign of the Sandinista National Liberation Front.
Presidential, legislative, and municipal elections, as well as the election of representatives of the autonomous government of the Atlantic Coast (the zone inhabited by the Miskito, Sumo and Rama Indians,as well as a Creole population), are all to take place on February 25 of next year. Eight parties have presented lists for the presidential election.
Undoubtedly, the principal adversary of the FSLN will be the National Union of the Opposition (UNO), an unlikely coalition of the most conservative forces, who have succeeded, after prolonged bargaining and haggling, in reaching agreement on the candidature of Violeta Chamorro, who had been a member of the first govemment formed after the 1979 revolution, a government that. contained bourgeois ministers, but was nonetheless under the hegemony of the FSLN.
As director of the opposition daily La Prensa and widow of bourgeois "democrat" Pedro Chamorro (a wealthy newspaper owner assassinated under the orders of dictator Somoza), she poses as the Cory Aquino or Benazir Bhutto of Nicaragua, a martyr to the "Sandinista dictators".
However the Nicaraguan people have not been taken in by this posturing, as witnessed by the ironic graffiti which have recently appeared on the walls of Nicaragua: "Violeta Aqui No!" (No Violeta here!).
Today, the Sandinista leadership is confronted by a dramatic economic crisis: it is impossible to resist Yankee aggression for seven years with impunity....Under the Sandinistas, Nicaragua has vanquished the Contra mercenaries financed by Reagan, but the country is exhausted. International aid (whether from Western Europe or the "socialist" countries) is not even sufficient for everyday necessities.
And yet the holding of the second democratic elections in the history of the country (the first, in November 1984, confirmed the preeminence of the FSLN, who obtained two thirds of the vote) will be extremely costly.
UNO, for its part, is openly receiving millions of dollars from the United States (which, after having attempted to overthrow the Sandinistas by force, today plays the card of "democratic legality") and is soon to begin a tour of Europe, with the aim of convincing governments of the need for still more assistance in "re-establishing democracy" in Nicaragua.
The FSLN, whilst certainly possessing
AROUND THE WORLD