In 1989, tests were carried out on pregnant women in one of the big hospitals. One in ten women tested positive. The government campaign is very moralistic; "don't have sex, say no" and in favour of monogamy and sex within marriage. After all sex is only for procreation, so what is all this fumbling around?
They also hand out free condoms at all family planning clinics, but there is no education about the condom. In terms of the South African situation women are in such a submissive role that there is no time to negotiate the use of a condom. A lot of rural African women come to the cities. Their explanation of how sex occurs is that the woman sleeps on the floor, while the man sleeps on the bed. When the man wants sex he gives her a kick and when it's over she gets back down onto the floor. The women say "where in all of that am I going to introduce the condom?" There is no discussion about it.
There is also the tradition that a woman must prove she is fertile before she can find a husband. A lot of young girls are pressurized into having sex and getting pregnant. If she does have a child, and especially a male child, her future is guaranteed. There is no education around that; the posters all say "be good girls and don't have sex"
AIDS is a disease which affects Black heterosexuals and the government is not really concerned. There was one hostel for terminally ill AIDS patients but it had to close for lack of funding. Another was opened in a very conservative area, but the residents petitioned and lobbied and firebombed the house of the priest in charge until the plan was abandoned.
Many domestic workers are forced to wear gloves and are being taken for tests without their consent. There is a shelter where women have come saying: "l've worked for this family for 30 years and then I tested positive and they sacked me." These women have no insurance, nothing and probably do not know how to do anything other than domestic work. They have no legal recourse. This is one of the issues we have worked with the domestic workers on. • What is the state of the South African women's movement?
The women's movement in South Africa is just starting. The literature we get from, for example, the US doesn't apply. A National Women's Coalition has recently been formed which we hope will include everyone from the lesbians to the domestic workers. The ANC women are dominant — they are well organized and vocal. We
SOUTH AFRICA have formed a lesbian caucus and are fighting for its recognition.
The fact is that the roles of most women in South Africa are those of mother and wife. They don't see themselves as taking the lead in politics. But the Coalition seems to be drawing in women at the grassroots who have been out there working on their own, and hopefully we are seeing a trend to form an organization which does not only pass resolutions but also acts on them. *
George Novack: 1905-1992
GEORGE Novack, a leader of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party (SWP) since the mid 1930's and a founding member of the Fourth International, died in New York City July 30, after a brief illness. He was 86. Novack was a prominent figure in numerous defense committees during six decades of political activity and the author or editor of some fifteen books on history and philosophy.
Born in Boston on August 5, 1905, Novack attended Harvard University from 1922 to 1927. With the onset of the Great Depression, he was drawn around a circle of radical writers and academics, associated with the Menorah Journal, that included Herbert Solow, Clifton Fadiman, Diana Trilling, Sidney Hook, and others. In the early 1930's Novack wrote for the New Republic and the Nation and became active in the Scottsboro and other defense cases through the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners.
In 1933 he joined the Communist League of America, predecessor of the Socialist Workers Party, attracted to its response to the fascist victory in Germany that year. He remained in the SWP until his death, serving on its National Committee from 1940 until 1972. Novack was for many years a writer and editor for the Militant newsweekly, the magazines New International, International Socialist Review, Intercontinental Press, and other socialist publications.
As secretary for the American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky, Novack was part of the delegation that met the Russian revolutionary leader in Mexico when he arrived by ship in January 1937 for his last exile. Later that year, Novack helped organize the International Commission of Inquiry headed by John Dewey that convened in Mexico to investigate the charges against Trotsky in the Stalin regime's Moscow trials. The commission found the charges baseless.
Novack then served as the national secretary of the Civil Rights Defense Committee, which mobilized opposition to the federal government's tirst Smith Act indictments in 1940. The trial ended in December 1941 with the conviction of James P. Cannon, Farrell Dobbs and 16 other leaders of the SWP and Minneapolis General Drivers union for their antiwar activities. They served from twelve to eighteen months in federal prison.
In subsequent years, Novack played a prominent part in many other civil liberties fights, from the McCarthy period through the SWP's civil suit against spying and disruption by the FBI and other government agencies filed in 1973. Novack was a plaintiff and architect of that suit, which ended in 1986 with a federal court ruling favorable to the plaintiffs.
Novack's books, mostly published by Pathfinder Press, include Understanding History, Democracy and Revolution, Pragmatism versus Marxism, Empiricism and its Evolution, The Origins of Materialism, America's Revolutionary Heritage and Polemics in Marxist Philosophy. His works have been translated into Spanish, Turkish, Greek, Gujarati and other languages.
Novack lived most of his adult life in New York City. He also lived in Minneapolis (1941), Detroit (1942-43), Los Angeles (195153), and Paris and London (1951-53).
His wife and collaborator, Evelyn Reed, author of Women's Evolution and other books on women's liberation, died in 1979. *
27 September 14, 1992 • # 234 International Viewpoint
GERMANY
Racist attacks shake Germany AUGUST 25, 1992 will go down as a notorious date in recent German history. On that day some 2,500 fascists and a jubilant crowd of thousands of onlookers succeeded in forcing refugees to leave their hostel in Rostock in East Germany.
On the same day, leaders of the opposition Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in spite of resistance from the party rank and file, made it known that they would support government-proposed amendments to the constitution to restrict asylum rights, thus making it possible for the change to gain the two thirds majority in parliament required for a constitutional change to become law.
The caving in of the SPD leadership is a disaster. This it has done not only on asylum, but also over the involvement of German troops in United Nations intervention units. Briefly summarized: the SPD will do its bit to increase the production of refugees while at the same time preventing them from coming to Germany. Some SPD chiefs are toying with the thought of a grand coalition. But the basic cause of the collapse is the integration of the SPD bureaucracy into the bourgeois state apparatus and their lack of ideas.
The SPD no longer has any alternative to the conservative fog as it did at the start of the Brandt era in the 1960s. The collapse of Stalinism in a rightward direction has not had such a big impact on the SPD as on the Stalinist and Stalinist-influenced left. Nonetheless, the Social Democrats has retreated step by step before the rightwing offensive.
There have been some resignations and
DAVID MULLER
T WAS just a year ago that Nazis found themselves able to force the closure of the local immigrant hostel in Hoyerswerda. Even before that the rightwing parties in the government coalition, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) had started to make asylum an electoral issue.
However this time the spirits they have raised have escaped their control with militant neo-fascists using the racist atmosphere to launch violent actions such as in Rostock. For the first time since the downfall of the Nazi regime they have been able to influence German politics through sheer terror.
Bourgeois politicians and the CDU controlled regional government of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which is responsible for Rostock and its policing, at first refused to take the violence seriously. This was shown by the fact that on August 25 there were only six police to confront over 200 armed Nazis; units of border guards stood idly by, since they were not given the order to intervene. Some 60% of those arrested were antifascists who had tried to come to the aid of the refugees.
### Lack of will
The press and politicians talked of the "helplessness" of the police. In reality, it was simply a matter of a lack of will.
As if by magic, the same police chiefs and politicians were able to overcome their helplessness on August 29 when 3,000 elite police were on hand to control 28 the anti-fascist counter-demonstration, making over 90 arrests. The racist outlook of bourgeois politicians and police chiefs aside, the initial inactivity also had a precise political motive in the form of the campaign for a change to the constitution's provisions on asylum. Furthermore, the racist tide is useful to the government as a way of distracting attention from its own lack of ideas. It was thus no surprise to find establishment media and politicians deploring the "violence of left and right" (meaning that they do not want to see the emergence either of an independent, action-oriented fascist movement or still less of an energetic anti-fascist movement) alongside a swell of "understanding" for the Nazis and those that applauded them. The establishment united front has talked mainly about "the problem of stopping the flood of asylum seekers" Meanwhile CDU and SPD security experts have taken the opportunity to call for the creation of a 1,000 to 2,000 strong special police unit. It is not difficult to guess who will be this unit's real target. The Nazi terror has thus led directly to a stronger state — aimed at the left. All the measures which the state claims are aimed at dealing with the Nazi threat represent concessions to the far right programme and will in fact work to the Nazis' advantage; the refugee hostel in Rostock will be vacated, the article on asylum in the constitution changed and the state strengthened. The Nazis can and have greeted this victory: five to ten attacks on refugee hostels have been taking place daily in Germany.
signs of opposition, especially among the Jusos (Young Socialists), but the latter are scattered and it does not seem that enough support can be found to force an emergency congress. Those that resign from the SPD will probably either drop out of activity or turn towards the Greens. Socialists will try to draw such people into active campaigns against racism and militarism.
### Counter-demonstration
The counter-demonstration in Rostock had very broad support, ranging from the local branch of the DGB trade union confederation to the anarchistic autonomists. The turnout of 20,000 showed that the radical left remains able to mobilize more people than the far right.
However the demonstration also revealed a dangerous split. Some of those in the reformist spectrum see the masses as inherently racist and are therefore ready to consider proposals for tougher controls on immigration. The other problem comes from the radical side where many who are (correctly) ready to directly confront racist ideology and organize militant opposition are unwilling to address social questions. This is not to suggest that committed racists are going to change their views because of social demands.
The point is, however, to present a clear left alternative built around a consistent anti-racist struggle for full legal and social equality for all and a movement of immigrants and refugees which takes up demands relevant to all workers. If such an alternative is not built, "foreigners out" will become the political programme for an increasing number of people in Germany. *