Stepped-up campaign against apartheid
AS THE STRUGGLE against apartheid and racist repression in South
Africa intensifies, solidarity activity in different countries around the world is being stepped up.
Sections of the Fourth International in all the major developed countries are currently preparing their activity for the autumn.
CERRY ROT RV and sister trade-unionists working at the East London [South Africa] factory [of Daimler-Benz] in order to enable us to react immediately to firings and jailings."
2. "To inform ourselves thoroughly about the oppression of Blacks but also about Daimler-Benz's activities in South Africa."
3. To call on workers representatives in the Supervision Council [Aufsichtsrat, a comanagement body] to demand an investment boycott."
4. To better inform the workthe will anti ialis be apa ma› in unic with and acti on of erat a 11 Dut Afri
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GERRY FOLEY
The Militant, the newspaper that reflects the views of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a group in solidarity with the Fourth International, published a special issue on the antiapartheid struggle at the end of August. It reported: "Actions across country demand: 'Free South Africa.' "
The most important action was the August 12 demonstration of thousands of people in Washington, DC, to protest the imposition of the State of Emergency. The organizations represented by banners including "churches, religious-oriented groups, Central American solidarity organizations, and several trade unions ... the American Federation of Government Employees, the ot Government Employees, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, United Food and Commercial Workers, Service Employees International Union, International Association of Machinists and International Union of Electronic Workers."
The California National Organization for Women (NOW) conference held August 16-18 approved a resolution condemning apartheid and calling for support for the protest actions planned against it.
The youth group affiliated with the SWP, the Young Socialist Alliance, decided on August 16 to give top priority to building the national day of protest against apartheid planned for October 11. To this end, the YSA National Committee voted to give full support to the tours of South African and Nicaraguan students by student organizations committed to solidarity with the Black people of South Africa.
In its August issue, Socialist Action, a Fourth Internationalist paper published in San Francisco, pointed to the importance of the example of the mass struggle in South Africa for the US labor movement:
"The revolutionary proletarian methods of the struggle mounted by the South African masses differ profoundly from the 'unfair lists' published by US unions. Such boycotts and strikes - carried out without organized, prepared, mass participation of the union ranks -remain ineffective."
Socialist Action also called for "making every effort toward organizing large protest actions this fall."
The paper of the German section of the Fourth International, Was Tun, published a special on South Africa in its August 15 issue. As an example of the sort of solidarity needed, it pointed to a resolution by 23 shop stewards and Factory Council members at the DaimlerBenz auto factory in Mannheim.
The resolution called for the following actions:
1. "Making contacts directly and quickly with South African brother force through an assembly of the shop stewards, an exhibition in the local union offices, and perhaps a South Africa week in the plant.
5. To organize "regular trips by workers from Mannheim to South Africa and to invite colleagues from East London to Mannheim." Representatives of the East London plant are to be invited to an assembly in the Mannheim plant.
Klassenstrijd, the paper of the Dutch section of the Fourth International, called for a boycott of South Africa on the front page of its August 21 issue and in the editorial, which said:
"We cannot predict how the bitter and bloody confrontation between the apartheid regime and
Free Nelson Mandela! Nowadays repression in South Africa is becoming less and less selective and all sections of the opposition to apartheid are constantly threatened with arrest, death and kidnappings. But the regime still considers that its primary target has to be those currents who are tied in one way or another to the ANC. This explains why the UDF, which is partially under the influence of the AN along with that of the churches, is facing the most violent attacks today. The Reverend Allan Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and a founding member of the UDF, was arrested on August 27 when he was supposed to lead the demonstration for the freeing of Nelson Mandela the following day. Father Boesak was detained under the internal security laws, which allow the authorities to hold suspects indefinitely without preferring any charges.
But other organisations have also been hit by the repression. This was the case for example in the Chemical Workers Industrial Union where Andries Raditsela died in May this year following brutal treatment by local police during detention. No one is safe at the moment. AN members and sympathisers are most often held under the pretext of the anti-communism laws. Assumed or proven membership of this organisation places the person concerned under threat of immediate death. A significant number have already died in detention. But recently commando squads, similar to those used by repressive regimes in Latin America and often composed of Blacks, have grown up, using such methods as kidnappings and assassinations. This avoids any formal need to arrest people and keep them in detention. With this system also, it will now be possible to hit out at all those who threaten the regime including moderate members of the UDF, trade unionists and members of the Black consciousness movement, whom it would be difficult to accuse of membership of the ANC.
The campaign for the release of Nelson Mandela obviously goes beyond the simple issue of democratic rights. For some, the issue of his release is a good propaganda exercise for the need to establish talks between the government and the Black movement. For the ANC it is good propaganda for their organisation. Abroad it is often used in a sectarian way, especially by the communist parties, in order to limit solidarity to the ANC alone.
Whatever the case, however, the liberation of this long-time leader of the ANC would be seen, not as simply a result of international pressure from social democracy and certain liberal sections of society but as a victory for the mass movement. FREE NELSON MANDELA!
International Viewpoint 16 September 1985
FRANCE the Black masses will unfold. A lot will depend on the activities of the antiapartheid movements in the imperialist countries. The focus should be above all on a boycott of the apartheid regime and on giving the maximum support to all currents in the Black resistance. Our trade-unionists must build strong ties with the independent Black unions and extend support to their actions."
This issue highlighted a pamphlet on South Africa published by one of the main Dutch labor confederations, the FNV. It also carried a major article on the activities of Dutch corporations in South Africa, in particular Shell.
its editorial, the August 22 issue of Klassekampen, the paper