Black revolt in South Africa

1) The situation in South Africa has changed significantly in recent months. This has been particularly confirmed with the radicalisation of the mass movement and the violence and boldness of popular demonstrations. Factors contributing to the change have built up over the past 12 years, thus opening the way to a modification in the relationship of forces that had been established on the basis of the deepening of racial discrimination and the institutionalisation of apartheid in the course of the 1950s and after the 1960-63 defeat of the Black popular movement.

1985 was a year of continual mobilisations, strikes and riots. The racist regime has already made the mass movement pay a heavy price for challenging its rule; nearly 900 deaths, thousands of injured, nearly 25,000 people arrested, forcibly expelled from the country or imprisoned during 1985.

South Africa has entered a period of very great social and political unrest. The National Party regime up to now has retained support from the majority of the white population while the oppressed population has been radicalisisng its struggles and resistance.

The United Secretariat of the Fourth International in January 1983 adopted a resolution entitled 'The National Question and the Land Question in the South African Revolution'. In this document, among other analyses, the South African economy is defined as 'semi-industrialised, dependent capitalist'. It also analyses the South African state, explains apartheid and the bantustan system, assesses the growth of the mass movement from the beginning of the 1970s and finally evaluates the primary national and democratic content of the revolutionary process. Events since then require this analysis to be complemented and made more precise. That is the aim of this resolution.

For three years now a great number of events have taken place which have changed the situation. The movement of the oppressed remobilised in response to the constitutional projects and to the Koornhof laws and a large number of unitary organisations, fronts and groupings have emerged. Agitation in the townships was transformed after September 1984 into out and out riots. On the other hand the regime has not been able to prevent the continuous development of the independent trade union movement and the setting up of a united confederation, COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions), with 500,000 members. The whole of the political mass movement, starting with the ANC (African National Congress), has increased its audience and the level of consciousness and organisation of the oppressed population has considerably developed in the last period. The extension of the mass movement in South Africa has triggered off a new phase of anti-apartheid mobilisations throughout the world.

Imperialism's responsibility and the apartheid system

2) Imperialist states and imperialist capital have great responsibility for apartheid. They helped set up and defend this system of rule in order to guarantee large profits for their farming, mining and industrial investments and to have at their disposal a state able to play the role of a regional counter-revolutionary power.

Imperialism is particularly responsible for this situation since it possessed means of pressure and control on the South African government when the latter set up the new institutions. Thus for the South African industrialists and the state enterprises access to the sophisticated technologies essential for the growth achieved in the 1960s was only possible thanks to the links established with foreign companies. Considerable sums were allocated at the time, and continue to be so, for the import of technology. Apart from anything else it is this collaboration which allowed South Africa to set up a sophisticated arms industry through the purchasing of Western licences.

So it is quite a different story from the line peddled by the ruling classes of the imperialist countries, i.e. that 'Western dependence' is limited to South African minerals or precious metals. In 1969 one third of imperialist investment in South Africa was in manufacturing and industry (48% of American investment in 1968) and a quarter in mining. Between 1956 and 1969 direct foreign investment increased by 156% compared to a 26% rise in indirect investment—leading to majority control of new industrial sectors like chemicals, oil, computers/electronics and cars. That was the economic context of apartheid's golden age.

In 1985 Great Britain, the United States, West Germany, France and Switzerland held together more than 90% of foreign direct investment in the country, adding up to more than $15 billion. Great Britain on its own has one half of this investment. Total direct and indirect British investment there, that is $14 billion, represents 10% of all British overseas investment. The United States' share is 20% of direct investment, and West Germany holds 10%. Out of 1068 multinationals operating in South Africa, a third have their headquarters in Great Britain, 25% are based in the United States and 25% in West Germany. From the beginning of 1982 to the end of 1984, $4.25 billion were lent to South Africa both to public and private companies. British, Swiss, West German and French banks gave the backing to most of these loans.

3) The mass movement basically expresses a desire to finish with the apartheid regime. The Black population is demanding democracy. It wants an end to the laws of racial discrimination. It knows this objective means frontally attacking the state apparatus. This struggle is therefore considerably determined by the political and social conditions of apartheid.

The theory of 'separate development' has been systematically worked out and implemented by the National Party since 1948. But it was a continuation of all the racist and discriminatory regulations imposed both by the Boers and the British in previous decades. The main apartheid laws derived from legislation adopted before 1948: Land Act (1913, amended in 1936), Immorality Act (1927, amended in 1950), Group Areas Act (1945).

As in many other colonial situations the indigenous labour force was paid at the lowest rates and the traditional rural community was then responsible for providing a substantial part of these workers' reproduction costs. The reserve system on the one hand permits maintenance of the traditional African agriculture, thereby producing a supplementary means of subsistence for Black labour, and on the other hand is a centre for 'parking' the reserve army of labour. It also facilitates police control of the population and of the flows of migrant labour in order to prevent any forms of collective organisation of the oppressed.

However, this system began to exhaust its possibilities at the beginning of the 1940s. The reserves were less and less able to feed their inhabitants. The traditional agricultural system was in complete crisis and partially breaking up through demographic pressure. This decline in the reserves' agricultural production meant a decline in their contribution to the additional means of subsistence of Black labour power. Consequently objective pressure for wage increases risked reducing the rate of surplus value and profit and encouraging Black trade unionism. In order to solve this problem the capitalists had to take into account the effects of the steady disappearance of the initial economic functions of the reserves on the proletariat and on rural African society.

After the Second World War the Black masses became increasingly militant and important strikes broke out. There were extra difficulties in controlling pressures for wage increases in agriculture since a part of the labour force preferred to go and get jobs in the towns. So, as the previous mechanisms were beginning to go wrong, it was necessary to solve the question of distributing the labour force between the different economic sectors.

The arrival of the National Party in government coincided with a debate inside the ruling class on how to resolve the series of contradictions. The choice made by the new regime was to make discrimination worse in order to keep the cost of Black Labour as low as posible and to prevent the oppressed population from strengthening its own organisation. Apartheid reinforced police control over the Black population and was conceived as a means of dividing non-whites. Consequently, new specific regulations were brought in for Coloureds and Indians, withdrawing certain of their previous rights. The new dispositions concerning non-white residence and the movement of labour took ten years to refine and set up completely. The 1960-1963 defeat of the mass movement was necessary.

The ruling class was not simply faced with problems of organising Black labour or of its costs. The acuteness of these questions related to the fact that the country was going through significant economic and social changes. In 1946 manufacturing industry became the main component of GNP. But this sector was still split up into many companies and its economic performance was poor. The 1955-1960 recession aggravated these dificulties. On the other hand the mining industry sustained its growth in this period due to its export basis and consequently remained the backbone of the whole South African economy, providing state revenue and firm backing for the credit system.

Apartheid combines the bourgeoisie's responses at one and the same time to the decline of pre-capitalist production in the reserves to the need for cheap labour power in the emerging industrial sector and in Boer agriculture; and to the particular requirements of a mining economy where most production is exported and whose profits do not depend on solvent domestic demand. It is because the South African economy remained based on mining production (above all gold) that it was possible and necessary to defend profits by institutionalising a system like apartheid. That meant a dual labour market—one for Blacks and another for whites—and a disproportionate differential between their wage rates with the latter being increasingly assigned the foreman and administrative tasks.

Apartheid is a bureaucratic and repressive system for the extra-economic regulation of labour.

Therefore it is the specificities of capitalist development in South Africa which explains why different key bourgeois sectors opted for a radical segregationist system set up and systematised on the basis of the colonial hertitage—at a time when elsewhere in Africa there was a tendency for the system of imperialist domination to be changed. This political develpment was not the result of some sort of autonomy of the South African bourgeoisie from imperialism. On the contrary imperialism was able to to encourage and support an exceptional policy combining increased capitalist accumulation and the worsening of an 'anachronistic' system of racial domination because there was a significant white community and stable, modern and prosperous bourgeois layers in South Africa. But such a system inevitably went into crisis once capitalist accumulation necessary for the development of industry and services required the creation of a huge market for consumer goods.

South African industrial development in the 1960s was achieved through the intensive use of labour whose costs were guaranteed by the state and through the extremely rapid turnover of this labour. But further economic development—leaving aside that produced by the direct investment of foreign companies, has come up against the problems of technological dependence on imperialism, the weak qualifications and skills of Black labour and the narrowness of the domestic market.

It was the state, in liaison with the big mining capitalists, which favoured the setting up of a local financial market. The state fosters the centralisation of capital, the formation of holdings and the formation of joint ventures with imperialist multinationals. The state finds remedies for the particular weaknesses of the South African ruling class and, among other objectives, seeks to overcome the historic divisions between capitalists of English origin and those of Afrikaner stock, the latter having been promoted and protected by the regime. Industrialisation of the country has been dependent on government inducements and meant the overcoming of the traditionally sectoral interests of agriculture and the mines.

A decade was necessary to put the whole system in place. Twenty years later, as early as the end of the 1970s it no longer met the needs of certain key capitalist sectors and began once again to seize up due to the rise of the popular movement. The development of social and economic contradictions has been more or less held back or concealed by the existing political system, today they are breaking out with a vengeance. For 45 years debates between liberal and nationalist bourgeois forces on the question of apartheid have never stopped. But during all the periods of growth political concensus was established between the government and big capital—combined with the integration and growing co-option of white salary-earners. If the racial system was occasionally described by a sector of the bosses as incompatible with 'liberal' capitalism it is because, among other things, apartheid regulates too rigidly the supply of Black labour and gives the state a parisitic role. But recent events show that the discussion between different bourgeois fractions is taking on a quite different character because:

• the South African economy has reached a degree of development which calls for substantial reforms. The distortions of the domestic market due to apartheid have resulted in structural difficulties between different economic sectors, a considerable importance being given to the heavy industrial sectors under state control. Enlarging the market would require a deep-going change in the Black majority's mode of consumption. Increasing export capacity to much more substantial markets than those of the region would necessitate an increase in productivity and consequently higher qualifications of working class labour. The rigidity of the dual labour market produced by apartheid creates a drying-up of skilled labour and constantly increases its costs;

• today the social situation poses revolutionary dangers and a bourgeois reformist solution has got to be found.

The presently constituted apartheid political system has outlived its usefulness for a sector of the bosses. But nothing is more difficult for them than starting down the path of reforms. A part of industry, commerce and obviously agriculture would not be able to survive a total liberalisation of the labour market and the consequent growth in wages. Relations of racial inequality are so integrated with the capitalist system of exploitation that what threatens the former also threatens the latter. The state apparatus has been the motor-force behind this overlapping of structures. It cannot reform itself and in the eyes of the oppressed it has no legitimacy for reforming itself. Adjusting the apartheid system could create a breach for the mass movement to surge through. But this analysis must not lead us to believe in the simplistic idea that the bourgeoisie and imperialism will remain incapable of bringing forward partial reforms. That would be a mechanical conclusion which leaves out the autonomy of the class struggle which in the last analysis determines capital's room for manoeuvre.

The apartheid system has not been an irrational detour from capitalist development in South Africa—it has been the very condition of such development. It is thanks to this system of rule that the country has been able to play the role it still does in the production of gold and strategic metals for the world market; that it has been able to develop modern capitalist agriculture and an up-to-date industrial apparatus; and has been able to stabilise the existence of 4.6 million whites—heirs of the colonial conquest with a dominant position in a country of 32 million inhabitants.

The national question makes the South African social formation quite specific. At first sight this society maintains colonialist features with a white minority (including a labour aristocracy and a vast parisitic bureaucracy) and an oppressed Black majority subject to 'forced labour'. But capitalist domination has now lasted nearly a century in this country. For a long time now modern economic relations, very different from the traditional colonial economy, have been established. This has not only resulted in social differentiations among the oppressed themselves, but has opened the way to the beginnings of class consciousness among the Black proletarian and semi-proletarian masses.

South African society intermixes certain features of a colonial social formation with certain features of an advanced capitalist social formation. National oppression exists because the majority of the population are denied all democratic rights on the basis of skin colour. At the same time the system is screwed down by laws which limit even the political rights of white people and form the basis of a police dictatorship.

But the forms of this combination of features have never been rigid and the relations between these two aspects of the same society have changed, favouring in turn an evolution in the political programmes and ideologies present in the mass movement. The dual system of South African society is the historical product of a phase of capitalist accumulation in this country. It now constitutes the limits of this development.

The understanding of the relations between oppression and exploitation emerged gradually in the consciousness of Black proletarian layers. The growth of the independent trade union movement is one of the signs of this evolution. The ethnic fragmentation of the oppressed produced by apartheid is progressively counterbalanced by the objective tendencies of market mechanisms and boss-worker relations. The combined forces of capitalist development and mass struggles have stimulated the emergence of a common feeling of nationhood among the most advanced layers of the non-White population. As opposed to the previous period—that is up to the 1960s, popular prejudices and consciousness among the masses can no longer justify theories about the cohabitation of two or more 'nations' in South Africa. Both social and ideological developments mean that today's struggles converge in the unity of all the oppressed aiding the development of the consicousness of fighting for a unified nation. This nation will be forged in the confrontation and battle with apartheid. The forms of fragmentation among the whites cannot be forecast although it is likely that a part of them will prefer to leave the country.

The theory of 'colonialism of a special type' or of 'internal colonialism' used by the South African Communist Party up to the present is wrong. It is based on the principle of the existence of 'two nations', one colonising the other. This tends to arbitrarily give too much weight to one of the features of this society and prevents any dialectical understanding of the specific, and historically evolving, combinations of its socio-economic formation. It also provides the theoretical justification for a national democratic revolution not combined with class emancipation.

The economic crisis, the crisis of the regime and differences inside the ruling class

4) The South African economy went into recession at the beginning of 1982 despite some signs of recovery in the second half of 1983. This resulted in a great number of redundancies and an increase in unemployment. In 1985 the economic crisis became combined with the political crisis which particularly affected relations between the government and the main industrial and financial sectors.

Official statistics forecast for 1985 an average of about 8000 jobs lost per month. This swelled the massive numbers of unemployed that had built up over the 1978-1981 period—despite a growth in employment. Unemployment among the Black working population today varies between 40% and 70% depending on the region. In 1977 approximately 4% of urban women and 8% of urban men had been unemployed for more than two years. In 1984 these figures had risen to 54% and 36% respectively. Unemployment and some hardship now affected certain unskilled white workers, who had also seen bosses prefer Black labour to them when the strict regulations about reserved jobs for whites began to be loosened up.

For the bosses the recession has been a means of restructuring its industrial apparatus. For example the fusion between Fords and Amcar resulted, according to the trade union, NAAWU, in the loss of 10,000 jobs. The bosses have also taken advantage of the situation to strike important blows against the independent trade unions built in the previous period of growth. They have also made the most of the crisis to introduce new technologies in order to remedy the technological underdevelopment which characterised South African industry and which in many sectors was compensated by intensive use of labour. The fightback against all these attacks resulted in certain cases of initial demands being raised for workers control, when some trade unions began to ask for access to the accounts and to demand a say over redundancy and working conditions.

The imperialist multinationals, some of whom today declare themselves against the apartheid system, did not wait for the solidarity campaigns to withdraw a part of their investment from South Africa. Many began to take their capital out in 1983 and 1984 after confirmation of the South African recession. According to the weekly Economist more than thirty American companies left South Africa between 1980 and 1984.

Since the beginning of 1985 the political effects of the crisis, coming on top of the economic recession have brought about a much more serious crisis than the political consequences of Sharpeville in 1960 and Soweto in 1976 when foreign partners prefered to conjuncturally withdraw or hold back their investments.

Gold is both a barometer of the country's economy and one of its main financial resources. It is the number one South African export. The beginning of the recession was marked, among other things, by the fact that after the boom in gold prices in the 1979-1980 period there began to be a substantial fall. Due to the over-valuation of the American dollar at that time gold stopped being the only refuge-value and lost a part of its speculative role to the American currency. Even before a campaign for the boycott of gold-coins, the Krugerrands, had taken off (particularly in the USA), its sales had fallen by 25%. Nevertheless the most important mining sectors—that is gold and coal—succeeded in making record profits in 1984 and 1985 thanks to a growth in their production and exports. While in 1984 gold prices declined by 15% revenue from the mines went up 13.6%. But these relative gains did not sustain the general equilibrium of the South African economy due to the extent of the withdrawal and export of capital. In 1982 the country was still benefiting from a net inflow of Rand 662 million. In 1983 on the contrary there was a deficit of Rand 93 million. In 1984 there was an outflow of Rand 2.6 billion. Furthermore just for the first months of 1985 accounts already show a loss of Rand 5.4 billion.

Since 1983 the value of the South African currency has fallen sharply. In 1982 the Rand was worth $1.09 and at the end of 1985 it was worth less than $0.37. To the extent that a great proportion of imports are deemed to be essential and are usually paid for in dollars the balance of payments is in a very serious state. South Africa found itself obliged to interrupt payment of its debt which has risen to about $24 billion and negotiations on this is one of the elements in the political dialogue between Pretoria and the imperialist capitals. Inflationist consequences are considerable. Inflation was more than 16% in 1985 and a rate of 20% is expected for the beginning of 1986.

Most imports are machines, technology and semi-finished products whose prices have followed the growth of the differential between the Rand's value and that of its principal trading partners' currencies. Sectors like the car industry are now undergoing the combined effects of the withdrawal of imperialist imvestment and the decline in the domestic market. In a year and a half this sector has lost 33,000 jobs.

In order to find remedies for this economic crisis the government has vainly tried different policies for economic recovery. It re-instituted a 'commercial Rand' for overseas financial markets in order to favour foreign investment. In 1984 it tried to boost domestic consumption through fiscal measures which resulted in high inflation. At the end of 1985 the declared priority was the fight against unemployment. But none of these measures have been able to bring the country out of recession and even less defuse the political crisis.

5) The contradictions of the system of rule has direct effects on the crisis of the regime led by P. Botha. Botha is constrained to conciliate diverse interests inside the ruling class and take account of pressure from his electoral base. He is also the main person responsible for bringing the apartheid laws up to date so that the system is adapted to the needs of the moment. At one and the same time he is compelled to be the foremost mover of reforms aiming to defuse the social crisis and the great defender of the racist system. Finally he is above all the organiser of repression and must therefore base himself on a strong military and police lobby.

In the context of the structural and social modifications of the 1970s the government sought to adapt the existing institutions in following the proposals of the Weihahn and Riekert commissions. The first aimed to modify labour law, trade union rights for Blacks and limit the application of the 'colour bar'—in other words to change the system of reserved jobs for whites. The second looked to reform the way influx control of Black migrant labour was implemented in order to rationalise the methods employed and to stabilise part of the Black working class. In 1978 the possibility for certain Blacks to take out a 90 year lease on their urban homes was also introduced.

The proposed Koornhof laws concerning Black residence rights in urban zones was one of the big questions in the mobilisations against the regime in 1983. These laws proposed to define a layer of skilled Blacks permitted to become permanent residents and maintained for the majority of Blacks outside this category strict bans on staying legally in urban zones. These laws aimed on the one hand to respond to the uncontrolled growth of Black urbanisation—despite the limitations, the bans and repression 25% of the Black population now live in urban areas, a proportion illegally. On the other hand the Koornhof laws aimed to divide Blacks by creating this 'privileged' status.

The main objective of these legal changes was not to make concessions to the mass movement in order to channel it along moderate lines. It was basically to adapt the institutions to the new needs of the major bosses and of imperialism. These changes obviously had to be brought in without at the same time giving a new space for the movement of the oppressed to operate in.

The constitutional changes proposed by P. Botha had different objectives. He organised a referendum on November 2 1984 for the 2.7 million whites. The proposed reforms, approved by two-thirds of the white electorate, laid down the designation of a president of the Republic, with full executive power, assisted by a presidential Council, partially nominated, and the election of a Parliament with three distinct chambers for the whites, Coloureds and Indians.

Therefore it was a case of checking the unitary tendencies among the oppressed and to isolate the Indians and Coloureds from the rest of the Black population. On the other hand it aimed to create the political conditions for coopting a part of the Indian and Coloured petty-bourgeois layers into the institutional system.

Taking all these reforms together Botha had done too little and too late. The political means and electoral base at his disposal left him with a slim margin of manoeuvre to achieve these objectives. In these circumstances, attempts to push the mass movement into a moderate approach was transformed into its opposite. The legislative changes the Weihan commission gave rise to in the end fostered independent and radical trade unionism. Far from calming things among the Coloureds and the Indians the projected elections for separate chambers ended in the radicalisation of their mobilisation. Today the triple chamber system is a total failure and in any case does not even function. The period set aside for the election campaign facilitated an immense movement calling for boycott which linked up with other struggles in the townships and in the schools and led to new forms of unity and centralisation of the struggle with above all the creation of the United Democratic Front (UDF). The 'Coloured' or 'Indian' political forces which went along with Botha's plans have been very marginalised politically.

Finally less than 20% of Coloureds and less than 10% of the Indians voted. This episode proves that any cosmetic reforms which maintain racial separation will come up against the intransigence of the popular movement including among the Coloured and Indian population. In the townships it is increasingly difficult to be an elected local official. Out of thirty-four municipal councils elected in December 1983 only three were still functioning at the end of 1985. Two hundred local councillors have been forced to resign and fifteen have been assassinated. The July 21 1985 decision to proclaim a state of emergency in the main urban Black zones underlines the failure of the policy of cosmetic reforms.

Up to his January 31 speech announcing the end of 'passes' the political gains made by Botha have been very minor. One of the rare objectives achieved by the government over the last years has been to step up the development of Black petty-bourgeois layers. With the help of certain regulations and by using often liberal regional political and economic authorities it has encouraged the development of a small number of Coloured, Indian and African bosses. All that is obviously not sufficient to radically change the overall sociological picture but at the same time one should not ignore the existence of a well-off petty-bourgeois layer among the Black population whose incomes and means of getting around the worst effects of apartheid are remarkable.

On the other hand the government and the National Party (NP) leadership have not improved the situation inside the white population. The declared wish of the regime to make reforms resulted in a split inside the NP in 1982. Since the middle of the 1970s the party has lost a third of its electorate. A part of these lost voters have gone to the extreme right—benefiting the Conservative Party and the Herstigte Nasionale Party. From 1974 to 1982 the NP has seen its electoral influence among Afrikaners drop from 86% to 56%.

By presenting the whites with the referendum in support of his constitutional reforms P. Botha hoped to re-constitute a broader base of support going from a fraction of his party to a part of the liberals. Indeed the Progressive Federal Party (PFP) called for a 'no' vote in the referendum but a significant part of its electorate voted 'yes' thus compensating for Botha's losses on the right. The liberal English-speaking press called for a 'yes' vote. But the political scheming and the truce tacitly granted him by a sector of the liberals fizzled out as soon as the mass movement proved to be even stronger than before.

Botha and his government appeared less and less capable of overcoming their present difficulties. But no alternative solution really exists and Botha's resignation, which is called for today in certain milieus, would on its own be quite insufficient. Under the pressure of divergent interests the regime has to vacillate—sometimes emphasising repression and sometimes its search for reform. In 1978 Botha declared already that whites had to 'adapt or die'. On August 15 1985 the President whipped up a big stir over a new reform project. The speech, dubbed the 'crossing of the Rubicon' was however a damp squib and contained nothing new. Some weeks later he was to assert his 'principle of a united South Africa, with a single citizenship, universal suffrage, but within the framework of structures chosen by South Africans'. The liberals realised that this no longer was enough to divert the mass movement onto moderate lines and rejected a speech which a few years ago would have inspired their enthusiasm.

The abolition of laws banning sexual relations and marriages between the races (Immorality Act and Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act) appeared as an even more derisory act since it highlighted the absurd logic of the system: nothing in fact was foreseen regarding where these 'mixed couples' could live or whether they could eat together in the same restaurant given the Group Areas Act and the Liquor Act which impose racial separation—not to mention the problem of the school which their children could attend . . .

The regime would like to reform some aspects of the system, but at the risk of sawing off the branch on which it is sitting, it cannot basically and systematically challenge the pillars of apartheid: the Land Act, the Group Areas Act and Influx Control. The liberals are pushing the regime to abolish these laws. But the regime is more conscious than the liberals that these laws are the very foundations of apartheid and if they are eliminated it could very well open up an insurrectional situation. The liberals bank on it being possible to negotiate with Black representatives, including the ANC, in order to reduce this risk and to thoroughly reform the system without the masses getting out of control. At the present time P. Botha does not believe in this possibility. He is seeking to gain time, to manoeuvre and even to avoid an open crisis today in his own government.

In the same period the regime has tried to modify the situation in the rest of Southern Africa in order to protect itself from any risk of destabilisation coming from the outside. Using above all military aggression but also aid to guerilla forces linked to it (UNITA, MNR) and economic pressure, it has sought to bring about a normalisation of relations between neighbouring governments, beginning with those of Mozambique and Angola, and the South African regime. Pretoria aimed to negotiate a consensus allowing it to enlarge its commercial potential in regional markets, to obtain de-facto recognition of its own legitimacy and to isolate the ANC rear bases in these countries.

From this point of view the accords signed with Mozambique on March 16 1984 in Nkomati have been a success. The ANC had to reduce its presence in Mozambique, South Africa was able to increase its economic penetration there and at the same time it has continued to support the MNR guerrilla forces. This agreement was a result of South Africa's favourable relationship of forces with Mozambique which had been bled dry by Portuguese colonialism. But while the Samora Michel regime, as Machel himself recognises, was constrained to sign this agreement, it is also the result of the weaknesses and contradictions of the Mozambique regime itself.

The same type of agreement has been reached without difficulty with the Swaziland neo-colonial regime. The economic blockade of Lesotho followed by the coup d'etat has just resulted in the expulsion of ANC cadre from this country. On the other hand attempts to normalise relations with Angola with the signing of the Lusaka agreement of February 16 1984 has for the moment produced no substantial results. This agreement notably involved the withdrawal of South African troops from Angola. Pretoria has great difficulty in doing this and the Namibian question compells South Africa to carry out frequent military operations in Angolan territory. Although this worsens the economic crisis in Angola, the latter can find some shelter behind the international negotiations on Namibia in order to get some backing and thus hold off South African blackmail pressure. The presence of Cuban troops in Angola and the military aid of Eastern European countries facilitates resistance, forcing the South Africans into costly escalation.

American imperialism has supported this whole process. It has directly participated by exerting economic pressure on these countries and even through military force with its aid to UNITA in Angola. While the Reagan administration has shown itself to be rather open to the Mozambique regime, in Angola it has wanted to push home its advantage as far as possible by openly linking up with UNITA and linking any negotiation on Namibia to the withdrawal of the Cubans. The South African government, strengthened by this American position, has maintained its presence in Namibia and continued its policy of military intervention throughout the region.

The success of the Nkomati accords for Pretoria is no longer enough for the South African government if it wants to guarantee in the long term a maximum of neutrality, even complicity, from neighbouring governments. Continuing this policy of aggression has become a supplementary factor of political crisis in South Africa. Particularly since the economy can no longer sustain the disproportionate costs of apartheid's repressive apparatus and foreign military operations. This country has in fact been to all intents and purposes on a war footing for ten years now. The two-year period of military service obliges young whites to take real risks when they leave for Namibia or for the Mozambique frontier. There are now several thousand young whites who avoid conscription. At the end of 1985 figures reveal 3000 South Africans have been opting to leave the country each month. One survey showed that about 18% of English-speaking white South Africans were said to be preparing to leave the country in the next five years.

6) Following the great number of mobilisations at the beginning of 1985 the political situation changed. The liberals are today declaring themselves vehemently against some of the main regulations of apartheid.

As opposed to the recent past the liberals do not limit their protests to demanding a loosening up of legislation, an improvement in conditions for Blacks or upgrading education and training. It is not just 'petty apartheid' that is now denounced. Now they are calling for the elimination of the main apartheid laws—Influx Control and the Group Areas Act. Furthermore the South African liberal current is mainly represented on the political level by the PFP, considered for many years now to be a party linked to financial circles and the English-speaking bosses, particularly to the Anglo-American Corporation. Capital is highly concentrated in this country. Half a dozen groups control the vast and very rich mining industry and six companies control the financial sector. The Anglo-American Corporation controls the five biggest mining companies and alone owns either the majority or a significant minority of the shares in the five biggest industrial trusts. In 1976 this multinational owned 250 companies operating in 22 countries. Its capital is tied up with 73 big foreign banks and industries. The liberals therefore represent a decisive sector of major South African capital. For the same reasons they are very much linked to imperialist interests.

Bosses who say they are against apartheid and who organise as a pressure group include: the owners or managers of Netbank, Toyota, Barclays, Anglo-American, IBM, Rank Xerox, Caltex, Kodak, BMW, Control Data, Coca-Cola, Argus publishers, Colgate, Volkswagen, General Motors and the important Association of Chambers of Commerce (ASSOCOM). So we can see there are many subsidiaries of American companies which have themselves set up the 'Corporate Council on South Africa' and have organised a 'lobby' in the United States to put pressure on the South African regime.

All these developments are of the highest importance. The fact that large-scale South African finance capital and a sector of the American multinationals and politicians like Edward Kennedy openly place themselves in opposition to a pro-Western regime considered to be a key link in the imperialist counter-revolutionary chain should be noted. Therefore we have to take very seriously the attempts to find a negotiated solution organised by such people who want to avoid a revolutionary explosion or at least a deterioration of the situation and who are now trying to resolve the objective contradictions of the apartheid capitalist economy.

But the liberals' perspectives remain confused since they cannot escape from the contradictory situation in which they are placed by the very crisis of the system. They say they support a democratic South Africa. They take up the necessity of full citizenship for Blacks and universal suffrage for all. But they remain supporters of a federal solution and obviously cannot commit themselves to removing all the social and racial inequalities discrimination produces. Their own capitalist interests are an absolute limit to their desire for reform. Any federal-style solution would ensure a privileged and specific place for whites. The National Convention project, that the PFP has tried to concretise by inviting the Inkatha Party of Buthelezi (Chief of the Kwazulu homeland) aims to draw in the UDF or a part of it. The PFP leadership's position in favour of universal suffrage for the moment avoids the formulation 'one person, one vote'.

Finally and most importantly they explain in part their present condemnation of apartheid in terms of their attempts to find a solution to the economic crisis by enlarging the market, reducing the weight of the state, eliminating the bureaucratic inertia of the racial system and by setting up a broad industrial structure in part with the small companies controlled by non-whites.

The recession has radicalised a sector of the bosses against the regime. But while today these people are displaying a willingness to compromise with the liberation movement, they know that the main compromise will have to be made inside the ruling class between themselves and other sectors of the bosses and the state apparatus. This can only result in the search for an intermediary solution, for a 'realist' policy proposed by the liberal current, which would be a trap for the popular movement.

The revolutionary process and the present situation for the mass movement

7) In many respects, but not exclusively, the mass struggle in South Africa, starts off on the terrain of national and democratic demands. The oppressed population wants to free itself from the yoke of apartheid; it wants an egalitarian, democratic and non-racial nation. The level of violence and hate shown by the white regime in the present mobilisations confirms that the movement is not looking for simple reforms: it wants to bring down the regime, sweep away the racist system and destroy all its institutions. This mass movement is pregnant with a revolution.

The immediate objectives of this revolutionary struggle are the following:

• Ending the state of emergency, freeing all political prisoners, freedom to organise for all the oppressed, democratic rights for all political, trade union or community associations and the withdrawal of all the banning orders.

• Dismantling the whole apartheid system, its laws, its institutions and its armed and police forces. Removing the Bantustans and eliminating all racial segregation in political, educational and cultural affairs.

• To establish a single democratic parliament elected on the basis of a full franchise of one person, one vote, without discrimination or segregation based on colour, social class, sex or religion.

• To build a single, undivided, independent, non-racial and democratic South Africa. Stop the occupation of Namibia and end military aggression against neighbouring countries.

The South African revolution begins as a national democratic revolution because the struggle is organised around these objectives. The pace and the stages of the radicalisation of the broadest masses cannot be artificially bypassed. Any analysis that considers in a mechanical way that the social character of apartheid implies ipso facto an anti-capitalist mass consciousness is sectarian and ineffective.

But the South African popular movement—a movement of the oppressed masses—has been profoundly reshaped by the social and economic changes since the 1950s. The present struggle is a struggle for power. It is a struggle whose culmination will be the establishment of a new state. In a country which has gone through a century of racial discrimination the full achievement of democratic and national demands cannot be obtained by a simple democratisation of the institutions and legal de-segregation by a few government decisions. A democratic and non-racial South Africa would be a country where the workers could get any job without discrimination. Everybody would have to have a right to the same training and earn the same salary for similar work. Young people would have to be able to receive the same education without income inequality, which today runs parallel with racial inequality, becoming a way of maintaining segregation. It would mean each person being able to live, or to buy a house, in any part of the territory. which means that land and urban property prices should not produce a de-facto discrimination combining social and racial inequality as is still the case in Zimbabwe today. Public services and social benefits should be open and equal for all. The rural poor and a part of the urban unemployed should be able to work and live from the land.

In South Africa there is no Black bourgeoisie able to be the force behind this revolutionary transformation. The proletariat which has developed over the last twenty years and which has begun to introduce its own methods of action and organisation is the only class able to really lead this revolutionary struggle. In a country like South Africa, given the means at the disposal of the regime and the stakes involved for imperialism, it would be infinitely utopian to believe that a confused popular movement without a proletarian centre of gravity could win. The democratic and national objectives immediately raise the class character of the power which will carry out this revolution, re-build a state and will be capable of defending it against internal and external imperialist-organised aggression. Given the South African social formation there can be no other answer than one which assigns the leadership role of the mass movement to the proletariat.

It is therefore of the greatest importance that in present and future mobilisations the workers and their organisations play the motor role. Workers' exploitation and oppression, which is an integral part of the oppression of the Black masses, has only been possible by depriving them of all political rights. The Black workers are exploited as proletarians and oppressed as Blacks. The solution to the problems of the working class is today linked to the development of the national liberation movement of all the Black masses. The workers' movement is a part of this movement.

But the victory of the revolution requires the unity of the workers and the rural poor under the leadership of the working class. This is the unity which will permit the consolidation of the whole front of those oppressed by the apartheid system. It also implies that the interests of these workers and the rural population should be at the centre of the movement's concerns when establishing a unified, democratic and non-racial state and nation. Finally it means that economic dependence on imperialism be reduced, which highlights the importance within present struggles of the mass movement's independence from imperialism or from any sort of fraction of political or economic interests of the imperialist camp.

The Chartist current led by the ANC now makes reference to socialism. But it has not clarified what the class character of the new state should be. It maintains an arbitrary separation between the national liberation struggle and building a regime based on workers' power. By doing this it tends to underestimate, even to neglect, the specific place it gives to mobilisations of the industrial working class. In its criticism of other political currents it condemns those who put forward the perspective of a struggle for socialism as ultra-left. But this polemic does not turn around simple problems of pedagogy and agitation in the mass movement. The real debate is in fact about the class character of the state to emerge from the revolutionary overthrow of apartheid.

Moreover, only the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Leninist sense of the term is able to resolve and defend the demands of the national democratic revolution. This understanding of the revolutionary process is decisive for the orientation of the mass movement. It does not involve any sectarianism if it is perfectly understood that the movement mobilises first of all around democratic demands and that this requires the united front of all the oppressed and their organisations. Both the perspective of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the class character of the new state flow, in fact, from the content of the democratic national revolution. This is why the South African revolution will be combined, uninterrupted and permanent.

The mass movement itself at certain times may need to have transitional objectives such as the expropriation of the monopoly sectors and the multinationals. This question is implicit in certain resolutions from the founding congress of COSATU. It is also at the heart of the debate about the content of the nationalisations proposed by the Freedom Charter.

This revolutionary perspective is neither isolated from the working class nor a sectarian attempt to 'force' the destiny of a 'backward country'. Accomplishing the democratic and national tasks on the contrary requires the construction and transformation of the whole nation under the leadership of the proletarian masses because no other class is capable of replacing them in that task. Any attempt to avoid this idea can only result in a half-revolution, which in practice means failing to resolve the democratic and national questions.

In other words, the struggle for national liberation of the oppressed combines with the struggle for class emancipation. This does not mean laying down the pace at which the strictly socialist measures have to be implemented. In a country like South Africa, where part of the white workers will line up with the counter-revolution, the problems of the transition will be very specific and complex. In any case, socialist measures do not depend only on the internal relationship of forces but also on the external ones. As previous revolutions have shown, the revolutionary hegemony of the proletariat takes on particular forms each time.

All these problems cannot, however, be resolved solely by the spontaneous dynamic of the mass movement. For the revolutionary process to be fully accomplished the movement must be led by a proletarian revolutionary leadership.

8) The new rise of the mass movement has notably taken the form, in recent years, of hundreds of community associations. These can take the form of neighbourhood committees, township associations, youth groups or the parents of pupils, non-racial sports organisations, etc. There is the greatest political and ideological diversity inside these associations. Some are of a religious orientation, particularly Christian or Muslim, many are compelled to exist in practice as racial groupings to the extent that they correspond to residential areas defined by apartheid categories. Nevertheless they are an important means of political activity, social solidarity and mobilisation.

It is mainly these movements that are grouped inside the fronts, the most extensive and best-known being the United Democratic Front (UDF). These associations are usually led or controlled by members of the local black petty-bourgeoisie, the liberal professions or teachers. But rather often they are really representative and have authority despite their weak capacity to organise their popular base on a long term and ongoing basis.

The formation of this type of organisation and, even more so, their unity in broader fronts reflects in a certain way unity between different social categories of the oppressed population. This is very easily explained by the fact that all social layers together suffer racial discrimination. On the field of the democratic struggle the Black petty-bourgeoisie is as mobilised as anybody else, as the boycott of the elections to the Indian and Coloured chambers in 1984 proved. It would therefore be wrong to try and systematically counterpose the interests of the proletarianised and semi-proletarianised masses to those of the petty-bourgeois layers in the democratic mobilisations against apartheid. The problem is not only to unify in the same movement all the oppressed whose social positions can be very diverse. The problem is whether the centre of gravity of such unitary fronts should be among the most working class and popular layers. The problem which is really posed is that of the combination between the united front of all the oppressed and the autonomous organisation of the working class.

The formation of an organisation like the UDF provided the occasion for a debate on all these questions. The UDF leaders have kept vague on this question and have got round the problem by simply reiterating that the unity of all the oppressed is necessary. However, certain criticisms of these leaders by other currents have had a tendency to be 'workerist', in other words to underestimate, at least in the polemics, the need for unity to be organised with non-proletarian layers. Certainly political action must try and advance class consciousness and the independent expression of the toiling masses. But the South African situation makes this task extremely complex and the tactical questions can have considerable importance according to the conjuncture and the relationship of forces. Mobilisations in the townships and the communities raise the problem of the forms of struggle, democracy and organisation and different social sectors can have rather different responses to these questions. But development of the toiling masses' class consciousness cannot come about for example on the basis of denouncing the Black petty-bourgeoisie and small bosses in an abstract and inappropriate way.

Nevertheless, social contradictions exist and can even deepen inside the non-white population. These contradictions must not be underestimated or even less ignored. They produce conflicting attitudes on questions like democratic structures at the base or relations with the trade union movement.

The development of middle layers among the oppressed population is an important question. Members of the liberal professions, big and small shopkeepers, and small bosses represent a social reality of some scope. There is a small Black capitalist sector which is the end result of certain developments of the system. It is true that a significant sector of these layers today line up with the democratic movement. But another sector also forms the base of the collaborationist political organisations. The puppet Bantustan regimes also find a base and complicity as a result of these social differentiations. The case of Kwazulu, led by Buthelezi and his Inkhatha party must be analysed in the light of these social developments. Buthelezi does not reign only through the violence and complicity of the Pretoria regime. He expresses the material interests of a well-off Zulu petty-bourgeoisie and small boss class.

In the democratic movement problems have also arisen over whether to relaunch specific organisations like the Transvaal Indian Congress and the Natal Indian Congress, which are members of the UDF. The question is whether that would be a necessary compromise with certain Indian petty-bourgeois layers at a time when the non-racialist demand is taken up more and more strongly and people firmly reject all ethnic and racial categories.

The community association movement in the neighbourhoods and the townships is confronted with this question of the influence of the middle classes in their leadership. The difficulty cannot be resolved by excluding such forces. The weight of the most exploited masses needs to be strengthened in these organisations, the democratic organisation of the population has to progress and thus go beyond the sole function of 'centres of initiatives' that many of these associations have (i.e. proposing initiatives, but not being very structured at the base).

But over and beyond these political debates the repression and the masses' conditions of existence still in many cases limit the potential stabilisation of the civic associations. This is why the primary difficulty to overcome is the general relationship of forces, the repression, in order to release a space facilitating the advance of rank and file structures and practical organisation. Many problems of tactical line are linked to this primary necessity.

The main criticism made against the UDF by those who have not joined it emphasise that its functioning does not guarantee democracy at the base nor the specific expression of the working class and that it is implicitly looking for a united front with liberal currents (PFP, NUSAS, Black Sash).

The UDF emerged as a front between the churches opposed to apartheid (Boesak, Tutu) and the Chartist current. These churches have considerable influence among Black people. They brought in a part of the activist base of the UDF and gave it a certain 'democratic' protection from the regime. Furthermore they helped in drawing significant overseas financial aid. The church leaders are faced with contradictory pressures: on the one hand from the mass movement which pushes them to harden their tone and declarations and on the other hand from the liberal bourgeois opposition which pushes them to present themselves as a third force open to moderation. The religious hierarchies tend to vacillate between these two positions. Some leaders, like Tutu, can at certain times shift back and forth between two roles, one within the UDF framework, the other alongside the liberals in their reformist projects of the 'national convention' type.

In spite of these contradictions, the Chartist current has been able to win hegemony over the UDF in many areas, thus finding new space for its intervention. One consequence has been that many white intellectuals and liberals have joined the UDF or actively sympathise with it.

All that has certainly not resolved the particular problems of the UDF. But the function allotted to it by the Chartist current was not to become a real leadership of the mass movement but to form a framework for the recomposition of the political movement and for alliance with other components. Therefore it does not deal very much at all with problems of structures for activists, ongoing organisation and the political education of the people. This is why in the last period the UDF has often appeared in the mobilisations primarily in the form of groups of young people.

Serious problems obviously arise when these groups display strong sectarianism against anybody who does not identify with the UDF and the Freedom Charter. These groups were behind the clashes with trade unionists from FOSATU in Uitenhagen in March 1985, attacks on Black drivers of white-owned bus companies in the East Rand in July 1985, conflicts with AZAPO or again the excesses committed (and later disowned by the organisers) during the consumers' boycott of white businesses. Similarly, at a very broad national meeting bringing together many movements, including evidently the UDF, on November 29 1985 in Johannesburg, participants frequently and pointedly raised the 'disorder', 'excess' and counterproductiveness of these youth actions. Some of the actions of these youth groups prove to be disordered because of an absence of effective proletartian hegemony in the mass movement.

The regime's selective repression against the local leaderships of the UDF and its member organisations has weakened the front as a whole. The latter, which at its foundation did not succeed in drawing in all components of the mass movement, has even less possibility now to bring this about on the same terms. Furthermore the UDF has ceased to be presented as an eventual interlocutor of the liberal sectors. These forces have now turned directly to the exiled ANC leadership.

Apart from the UDF the other significant unitary front is the National Forum whose members include, among others, the AZAPO organisation and left groupings like the Cape Action League. From the beginning the NF saw itself as a more limited grouping than the UDF. It defined itself as a unitary framework for political reflection and not as a mass front. On the other hand it wanted to appear as a left alternative to the UDF and the Freedom Charter. The Forum programme, the 'manifesto of the Azanian people', combines immediate democratic demands with strategic positions for the establishment of a 'democratic, anti-racist and workers' republic'. But this movement has not for the moment succeeded in resolving the difficulties and contradictions of its original project. In fact, it was trying to conciliate two objectives: appearing as an alternative to the UDF in the mass movement and on the other hand projecting itself as a new political pole struggling for a socialist perspective. Furthermore, its heterogeneity, owing to its different member organisations, did not allow it to go forward on either of the two levels. It is not a mass front since it tries to programmatically mark out a socialist current which in present circumstances could not be anything else but a minority. Neither is it a specific and clearly defined political current because its different member organisations maintain significant divergences. In addition to this there are the specific difficulties experienced by AZAPO, the Forum's main organisation, which, while representing an advance with respect to the old tradition of Black Consciousness, remains heterogeneous and is often reproached for its sectarianism. Indeed it seems that AZAPO has been occasionally reticent about united front work with the UDF. For instance, it did not support the Transvaal stayaway in November 1984.

All this seriously paralyses the National Forum and means its activity is unstable. However, it has had the merit of publicly raising the problem of the strategic objectives of the South African revolution by supporting a position in favour of a socialist republic. This political debate is of the highest importance and affects all those who have responsible positions in the mass movement and its organisations. But propagandism for a socialist republic cannot today be a basis for rallying the mass movement. Being neither a mass front nor a political party the National Forum has therefore a great deal of difficulty in carrying out either of these tasks.

For the mass movement the main question to solve is that of unity of action with the different popular sectors, and particularly between the people living in the neighbourhoods and townships and the industrial workers. Gradually common and united actions have occurred, bringing them together, like the Transvaal stayaway or certain consumers' boycotts. But this conjunctural unity does not bring about a durable solution to the question of the united front against the regime and the bosses. An authentically united convergence of forms and action and organisation still has to be achieved. In fact there are objective reasons for the distinct formation of the community associations and the trade unions. The extent of the unemployment affecting a big part of the population, the instability of certain jobs and the fact that many Blacks work for small companies or in domestic labour, all produce a quite different experience from that acquired by working class sectors which benefit from a certain stability despite the turnover of labour and present redundancies.

The trade union movement is primarily the expression of this working class layer, a minority, but qualitatively decisive for the future of the revolutionary struggle. This division between social sectors will not be overcome merely through the juxtaposition of different forms of organisation. Original forms of united action need to develop, which, once the self-organising capacity of the commnunity associations improves, will strengthen the influence of the popular movement and in particular the workers' movement. Today, apart from a few rare exceptions, the most important trade unions are quite external to the neighbourhoods and townships. The trade union leaderships will have to overcome this problems and set up stable poles inside the communities.

9) One of the most striking events of the last years has been the development of the independent trade unions and the setting up on November 30 1985 of a united confederation regrouping a number of them. Despite the fact that a sector of trade unions close to the Black Consciousness theses refused to join COSATU, it represents a considerable step forward for the working class and an important victory for all the oppressed of the country.

This stage was not reached without going through great adversity. A great number of trade unionists paid with their lives in this effort to build a real organisation for Black workers. The development of the miners' union (NUM) in 1984 was a very important event encouraging moves towards the unity of different dispersed sectors of the South African working class. This advance of class trade unionism also facilitated political reflection and debates on the demands and objectives of trade union struggle. The resolutions from the founding congress of COSATU reflect this gain, some of which are openly anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist, particularly when they deal with denouncing the multinationals.

Independent and non-racial trade unionism, which has unified in COSATU, developed on the basis of the economic evaluation of the country and the growth of the Black proletariat in big industry which opened the way to the emergence of a new generation of worker activists.

After the 1960-63 defeat of the Black masses, South Africa went through considerable industrial growth. Both the re-investment of profits made by the big mining companies and the massive inflow of imperialist capital played a part in this. The return of some South African capital which had been placed abroad during the previous period of recession also contributed. This industrial growth benefited from state incentives and the setting up of a local financial market.

South African industry had become the main component of GNP in 1946, but it was necessary to wait until the 1970s for the country to become an industrialised country properly speaking. In the 1950s the majority of companies were small. In 1954 for instance 65% of workplaces only employed nine workers and 92% less than 49.

Nevertheless this has all produced a Black working class which, while not necessarily concentrated in big workplaces, is grouped in huge ghettos within the four or five main industrial zones of the country. For all this period the bosses needed to stabilise this labour and give it some training. A sector of the employers went around the laws and sought to hire a layer of semi-skilled Black workers. That favoured stable employment and residence for a substantial layer of workers in spite of the migrant labour status imposed on Black workers. There are now ten million Blacks living in urban areas outside the Bantustans. At the same time the Indian and Coloured working class grew, bringing about the coming together on the factory floor of communities kept apart in all other domains of society.

From 1960 to 1970 the number of wage earners in manufacturing industry increased by 65%, going up from 658,026 workers to 1,070,033. The volume of production increased on average by 8.4% between 1963 and 1968. Private industry alone increased its production by 157.6% during the 1960s. Manufacturing and the construction industry's proportion of GNP was 28.2% in 1970 compared to 10.5% for the mining sector. Reflecting the extension of the proletariat, the proportion of women in the working class increased throughout the last twenty years. From 1973 to 1981 the percentage of women workers in the Black working class went up by 23.9% in the shoe industry, 15.2% in commerce and 12% in the textile industry.

This social development was also reflected in socio-economic movements from as early as 1972. But it was above all the Natal strikes of 1973 which marked the turning point in the development of a new workers' movement. Official statistics show a leap from 71 strikes in 1972 involving 8,814 workers to 370 strikes with 98,029 workers involved in 1973. These struggles were essentially about wage increases but they clearly expressed the emergence of a new form of social challenge to apartheid, some sectors demanding increases varying from 50% to 300%. In 1969 there were only 13 African trade unions with not more than 16,000 members. After 1973 a new type of trade unionism was born—in particular out of the Trade Union Advisory and Co-ordinating Council (TUACC). These trade unions were built outside TUCSA, a corporatist federation controlled by white trade unions. Along with the creation of other unions around this time the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) was formed as a national federation in 1979 organising single trade unions for each industry. At the same time a certain number of what were called 'general trade unions' like the Western Province General Workers' Union (the future GWU) or the South African Allied Workers' Union (SAAWU) were formed.

During this period the number of trade unionists in these independent trade unions went up from 70,000 in 1979 to 200,000 in 1982 and to more than 400,000 in 1983. The number of Black workers in trade unions, including in the TUCSA trade unions, due to their recognition and closed-shop system, rose from 223,661 in 1980 to 741,194 in 1983.

Black workers' industrial struggles, which went into a lull after 1973-74, took off again at the end of the 1970s. From 90 disputes in 1977 involving 15,091 strikers there was a rise to 394 disputes with 141,571 strikers in 1982. In 1984, according to official figures there were 469 strikes mobilising 181,942 workers of whom 174,897 were Africans. The number of strike-days lost were 379,712 and the disputes were mainly about wages, union recognition and redundancies. Finally, the new trade unions proved their influence and growing implantation in these movements.

The new laws that came out of the Wiehahn Commission (1979 to 1981) tried to modify the labour market a little while at the same time trying to limit the growth of the new trade unions. They ended up providing a new space for the existence and then the legal recognition of non-racial unions. It had been possible because leaderships within this movement knew how to use the different policies of the regime and of the bosses (particularly the multinationals). The concern of certain trade unions to build up first of all at factory level, at the base of the working class, and to stabilise their existence through partial struggles which were often victorious, represented a very constructive approach. Non-racial trade unionism was thus able to impose itself on the situation even against the tribunals.

However these tactical questions divided the trade union movement when discussions about unification got off the ground. While all the independent trade unions denounced the existing regulations, some accepted to be registered officially and to sit in the industrial councils for tactical reasons. The other trade unions denounced this practice as being more or less collaborationist. It was generally the trade unions which were members of FOSATU and the Council of Unions of South Africa (CUSA) which adopted the first position. The second position was supported at the beginning by certain trade unions that had come out of the Black Consciousness tradition, the Chartist influenced unions and some others like the GWU.

Another discussion related to the type of trade unions to build, that is, whether to build up trade unions divided in industrial sectors or general unions. The distinct options naturally led to different ways of structuring the base of the unions. Some unions justified the general union option by the need to intervene in the communities. In practice this question combined two problems: how the trade unions were to intervene in the political mass movement and then the problem of the less stable Black labour, the 'commuters' (migrants having to return each day or frequently to their Bantustan) often having precarious employment particularly in the service sector. A trade union like SAAWU tried to prioritise this type of trade unionism by building itself as a general union, intervening in the communities, joining the UDF and trying to mobilise the workers from the Ciskei Bantustan. SAAWU had great difficulties resulting from its very weak intervention in the workplaces and the repression that the white regime and the Ciskei administration meted out to it.

The third great debate produced differences between those who wanted non-racial trade unionism and those who called for Black trade unionism, thus prohibiting whites from taking leading positions. The latter position is still held today by CUSA and AZACTU which have refused to join COSATU and retain their faith in 'Black consciousness' ideology.

In all these discussions, where the trade unions lined up in different groups, FOSATU emerged as the organisation in relation to which the other organisations took positions. It was FOSATU and some other trade unions (General Workers Union, Food and Canning Workers Union, Cape Town Municipal Workers Association, joined in the end by the National Union of Mineworkers) which played a major role in the unification talks. FOSATU held this role as a result of its real influence in struggles. In 1982 FOSATU trade unions led 103 disputes involving 87,226 strikers. In the same year for instance another federation, CUSA, led 10 strikes involving 3,675 workers and the SAAWU six strikes with 2,671 workers.

These problems of orientation led up in 1983 to the question of the affiliation of the trade unions to the political fronts, to the UDF or to the National Forum. The main trade unions decided against affiliating to either front. Contrary to the criticism of them by those trade unions who had affiliated to the UDF the problem was never that of denying the necessity for the trade union movement to get involved in the general political struggle. The problem was, and remains, the pace and form this political activity of the trade union movement should take given its recent formation and lack of consolidation. Also each of the unions were being obliged to place themselves in relation to the political currents which are the prime movers behind these fronts. The question of workers' democracy at the base, the specific representation of the trade unions or of relations with the liberals (who are occasionally the bosses of trade unionists) are logically connected to this political debate. It is highly significant that the trade unions which played the central role in the process of unification are precisely the ones which refused to affiliate to the UDF or the National Forum. So two sets of ideas about building the workers' movement were more or less explicitly counterposed during this period. In 1982 the general secretary of the FOSATU, Joe Foster, emphasised the 'need for a working class movement' pointing out that workers 'must strive to build their own powerful and effective organisation even whilst they are part of a wider popular struggle'. This was indeed opposed to the line proposed by trade unions which affiliated to the UDF, for example by Sidney Mufamadi, from the GAWU, who declared: 'Some want to perceive the working class as only found on the factory floor. Our view is that even those people who are not behind machines . . . can be said to be waging a working class struggle if the issues they take up in their various sites of struggle . . . serve to undermine the class relations upon which the present society is built'.

This debate reflects the contradictions in the mass movement today. A large sector of the population socially marginalised in the Bantustans, townships and poor neighbourhoods can only organise through the civic associations. Another sector of the Black population, a minority, but nevertheless comprising several million people who have a more or less stable job in industry, the mines or in certain service industries, find a new form of organisation in the trade union movement. The relationship between these two complementary forms of organisation cannot be simply established in terms of their respective numerical representation. Certainly there is the question of the unity in general of all the mass organisations which the UDF and the National Forum have tried to respond to. But there is also the question of the weight the working class should have in a movement that is highly heterogeneous from the point of view of its experiences of struggle, its forms of organisation and occasionally its social composition. This provides the basis for political and organisational differentiations. While everybody agrees that the unity of this immense movement must be improved and guaranteed, big differences subsist over the content of this unity, notably with regard to the role the newly emerged workers' movement should have as well as the rhythm of development and form its independent political expression should take.

This is the debate that has separated a certain number of trade union leaderships over the past few years from the Chartist current. Whereas the former want to assert the autonomy of their projects, the latter have tried to set themselves up as an alternative leadership in the trade union movement:

• the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), an organisation in exile linked to the ANC, falsely claimed that it was a sort of 'underground trade union centre', more or less presiding over unfolding developments in the trade union movement, calling on the latter to rally behind the ANC banner.

• the Communist Party violently attacked the FOSATU leadership, sometimes criticising it for not recognising the CP's role as the proletarian vanguard and for wanting to replace the CP in that position and sometimes reproaching it for reducing the struggle to economism. In 1979 at a decisive moment for trade union development the party's central committee declared that it wanted to primarily encourage Black unions which had refused to register.

• the Chartist current inside the trade unions, particularly SAAWU, took a rigid position against registration and participation in the Industrial Councils. It also denounced what it concluded was a refusal to intervene on the political terrain when the most important trade unions refused to affiliate to the UDF.

There is no doubt that in this discussion the Chartist current put forward sectarian positions for a period. Reality has been the test: the line it denounced did not lead to betrayal or integration. The criticised trade unions perhaps have not solved all their problems, but they have established solid structures. Finally the moves to trade union unity have been primarily their responsibilty. Once the process towards the founding of a united trade union confederation was confirmed the Chartist current gradually rectified their line. But other problems came up: whereas outside the country SACTU said it supported one union per industry, inside the country organisations like SAAWU seemed to delay a great deal their transformation from a general union to industrial unions which resulted in them being considered for a period as 'observers' by the union most involved in the unification process.

But on the other side of the coin, those 'unitary trade unions', as they have been dubbed, which are seeking to project themselves as a specific and independent force, must overcome an important problem, that of intervening outside the workplaces, in the neighbourhoods and the townships. Since they want to put themselves forward as a proletarian pole they must not merely stabilise trade union organisation in the factories. They need to extend their field of intervention gradually to other mass sectors. There has been a considerable de-synchronisation between the level of implementation of the first task compared to the second. The active propaganda undertaken by certain trade unions in favour of the boycott of the 'Indian' and 'Coloured' elections in 1984, their decisive presence in the Transvaal general strike in November 1984 and then in the organisation of certain consumer boycotts of white businesses, has paved the way for the first significant presence of these organisations on this terrain. But it is probable that the ground to be made up is still significant.

The question of the unemployed—the mass of the marginalised population—is also an important question for the trade union movement. The COSATU congress decided to undertake an organisation of these workers. Any progress in this direction will open up an intervention and organising activity by the trade unions in the residential areas. The question of the trade unionisation of the unemployed is therefore connected to the problem of the autonomous political expression of the trade unions in the townships and communities. All these problems will now be debated inside COSATU. The new confederation will have internal discussions of decisive importance for the future of the struggle of the South African oppressed and for the future of this working class. At a time when there is so much talk of 'reforms' and where the bosses of the biggest companies speak of 'democracy' it is vital that the industrial working class can intervene in an independent way and impose its own demands.

The ANC, its political programme and the question of revolutionary leadership

10) The ANC is today the principle political organisation inside the national liberation movement. Its influence is particularly strong inside the African townships. It has considerable influence over the UDF as such and also over a large number of its member organisations. It is also seen by democratic white layers as the key organisation to relate to. The continued incarceration of leaders like Nelson Mandela symbolises in the eyes of the masses the continuity and tenacity of a movement whose foundation goes back to 1912. This functions to give it a sort of legitimacy in the eyes of broad sectors of the masses.

At the beginning the ANC was set up as a nationalist, reformist grouping whose objectives were to put pressure on the regime in order to obtain real democratic rights for the Africans. After the Second World War a new generation of activists began to bring about a shift in the practice of the ANC. This radicalisation was due to several factors; the influence of liberation struggles throughout the world, the social evolution of South Africa which favoured new forms of struggle, the coming to power of the National Party and the installation of the apartheid system, contacts with the Communist Party and the possibility of benefiting from new nationalist developments in Black Africa. But up to the end of the 1950s the ANC saw itself as an African movement, remaining attached to its idea of a democratised South Africa, but ready to compromise on a federal-style organisation in function of the 'existence' of several 'races' or 'nations'. This was the thinking on the national question which lay behind the launching of the Congress of the People which ratified in 1955 the Freedom Charter. This Congress included the ANC, the South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People's Congress, the Congress of Democrats and the SACTU trade union organisation. Throughout all this period the ANC maintained a vacillatory position between support for the mass movement and support for white liberals. It was the time when it was in favour of a great national negotiation bringing together the different peoples of South Africa. Many of its leaders still thought change could come peacefully. But continued developments and the internal debate meant things did not remain static. One of the 'hot' internal questions was around the question of the entry of whites into the ANC, which was also linked to relations with the Communist Party and the membership of certain of its cadres. These were the problems behind the split by the current refusing to break with the African nationalist tradition of the movement and the formation of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) in 1958. In the same period the political situation began to deteriorate. The mass movement was seeking new forms of struggle but did not succeed in forcing the regime to retreat when it began setting up the apartheid regulations and repressive framework. After 1957 strikes declined both in number and in terms of workers' involvement. The mass movement was divided, hardly politicised and little structured. In 1960 rallies took place in Sharpeville and Langa in response to calls made by the PAC. The rallies were organised to carry out mass burnings of the internal passports Blacks had to carry. The police fired on the masses and there were dozens of deaths. The ANC and the PAC were banned. The defeat was confirmed in 1963 with the arrest of key leaders.

The ANC then opted for the armed struggle. This choice was made not just as a result of a political change in line due to the new relationship of force and the violence of the regime. The ANC also corrected its understanding of South African society and integrated foreign experiences, beginning with that of the Algerian revolution. The choice of armed struggle was also made in relation to the armed revolts that had occurred in the reserves throughout the 1950s and up to 1963. The ANC consequently opted for what it called rural armed struggle—a line it seems to have stuck to up to the Soweto events of 1976. However South Africa was a country whose social and economic structures were changing rapidly and where the feasibility of effectively carrying out such a strategy was clearly seen to be more and more illusory.

But most of the ANC leadership was then in exile, a part in the African countries of the region to organise armed actions, and a part in Europe to set up an apparatus representing the ANC overseas. When the mass movement re-emerged in 1973 the ANC was to pay a price for its strategic eclecticism and its leadership weakness inside South Africa—it found itself marginalised from events. The political life of the movement only took place in exile and the armed struggle project was limited to armed propaganda, although the latter had its uses, for the ANC still today maintains a certain credit in the eyes of the masses for such activity. Nevertheless this policy did not provide it with a line for intervening in the mass movement as it re-emerged. Moreover the ANC did not correct this line after the Durban strike in 1973 which pointed to a new era. It seemed to make the change, and then with some delay, only after the Soweto struggles of 1976. The effects of the 1960-1963 defeat had only lasted a dozen years and the 1976 youth movement confirmed this. But once again another current than the ANC was to be prominent in these events—the Black consciousness movement championed by a new generation of activists.

The ANC was later to win a sector of these activists, particularly those who fled the country, without a political solution, and ended up in refugee camps in neighbouring countries where the ANC was influential and could offer the perspective of armed struggle. This was the period when the movement turned to spectacular actions in the urban areas with the specific hope of economically disrupting the country.

The ANC was to make up its lost ground by seeking to link up with the new wave of radicalisation after 1981. It was able to do this despite the lack of a clear strategy during the whole previous period and despite being relatively outside of the recomposition going on inside the country, because it paid great attention to the questions or organisation and particularly underground networks of activists and cadres. The ANC managed to educate certain of its activists who became capable of boldly and courageously taking considerable risks in underground work. It was right to want to use and capitalise on the radical democratic sentiments existing among a fringe layer of young whites, the petty-bourgeois origin of these people not being an obstacle preventing using this current and even winning a sector of it to the struggle.

The ANC has also been able to take tactical initiatives and exploit certain openings, the main one being the launching of the UDF. At this stage of the struggle, when the mass movement has not worked out a whole series of tactical and organisational questions, the ANC has at least built up a solid influence among a majority of the civic associations.

The ANC's strategic position is now that of a democratic revolution assuring the national liberation of the oppressed. Although it now insists on the particular role of the workers in this revolution it does not define precisely what the social content of this new state power should be. Given the influence of the ANC and its militants this does have some consequences on the actions and forms or organisation adopted today in the mass movement. It can also have an effect on how the UDF approaches its relations with the liberals.

The ANC has gradually modified its line over the last years. It seems to have abandoned the pluri-national conception of the democratic struggle. The emergence of independent trade unions declaring their non-racial character (i.e. in other terms than multi-racial) has been a factor in this change. The ANC has also said along the same lines that it was no longer a supporter of a national convention, implying a federalist solution.

For several months it has chosen to demonstrate more clearly than previously its relations with the CP. Its press has brought out the programmatic similarities with the CP. Elections to the Executive Committee of the ANC at its June 1985 congress confirmed this with the official integration of well-known CP leaders. For 25 years relations with the CP have been an important political problem inside the ANC. The PAC split was partially linked to that. The setting up of the military wing, Umkonto we Sizwe (The Spear of the Nation), enabled the CP to reinforce its collaboration and influence. The period around the Morogoro conference of 1969, the last congress before the 1985 one, was also an occasion for this debate. The ANC has always denounced the amalgam made between itself and the CP since the Pretoria regime uses this argument to justify repression. But recently the ANC's press has begun to praise the CP as the party of the working class and has published articles signed by well known leaders of the CP. The SACP is systematically presented as the permanent ally of the movement. The Communist Party press openly displays its relationship to the ANC. The CP, whose leadership is also in exile, held its 6th Congress some weeks before that of the ANC and confirmed in its new platform that it aimed '. . . to participate in and strengthen the liberation alliance of all classes and strata whose interests are served by immediate aims of the national democratic revolution. This alliance is expressed through the liberation front headed by the African National Congress'.

The Communist Party, which presents itself as the expression of the proletarian vanguard, defends the idea of revolution directly derived from Stalinist tradition. Its press continually denounces what it calls the ultra-leftists, the 'new South African Marxists' and certain trade union leaders who do not identify with the ANC. The CP at one and the same time has an exaggeratedly optimistic analysis of the situation, sectarian attitudes to other currents and a mechanical splitting up of the revolutionary process, it states for example:

. . . It is from the depth of their tragedy and suffering that the overwhelming majority of the people of South Africa, white as well as Black, now look to the Freedom Charter for inspiration in their struggle to escape from the nightmare of their present existence. True, there may be some opponents of the regime who still fight for the Charter because they are reluctant to identify themselves with the ANC or the SACP whom they regard as its authors and principal sponsors. Nevertheless, outside the ranks of racists and a handful of the ultra-leftists, few can be found to repudiate any of the basic principles expounded in the Charter, which today unites Congressists and non-Congressists, Communists and non-Communists, freedom fighters and pacifists, in a broad front pledged to overturn apartheid and complete the first stage of the national democratic revolution.

At the present time the ANC combines its nationalist tradition with a strategic conception derived from the Communist Party. This synthesis has greatly helped the ANC evolve over the last twenty years. It brought it to a new analysis of society and classes in South Africa. The ability to build an apparatus, to form a tight network of international support, to tactically manoeuvre in a way the ANC never could have, is due to the relations developed with the SACP. All this gave it a capacity to intervene enabling it to partially capitalise on movements which it did not instigate. The symbolic use of Mandela and of the Freedom Charter allows it to put itself forward pedagogically to the masses as the natural and logical political outcome to their mobilisations. The Freedom Charter is used as an elementary democratic programme. Written in 1954 the Charter, even interpreted as a simple platform of agitation, is marked by the social situation of that period and the positions the ANC then had on the national question. It was the product of a given historical conjuncture. Furthermore the Charter's formulation on the nationalisation of the monopolies could prove to be contradictory with a line of compromise with the white opposition. All these problems are reflected in the way the ANC uses the Charter. Sometimes it is presented as the present programme both of the struggle and as the finished expression of the national democratic revolution. On other occasions it is used as a symbol, a rallying point aiming to recall the historic continuity of the ANC and its project of a broad front, from the 1955 Congress of the People up to the UDF today.

One of the main problems facing the ANC leadership today is the trade union movement and COSATU. The Chartist current was shown to be weak and in a minority during the four-year long debate on the trade union unification. This confirmed the delay taken by this current to come to terms with the changes in South African society, but also the fact that in the mass political movement there is a several-decades-old debate on questions as important as the role of the working class, the social objectives of the liberation struggle, class alliances and mass democracy.

The liberals have started to openly organise discussion between the white opposition and the ANC. On September 13 1985 a delegation of businessmen went to Zambia to meet the ANC leadership. It was made up of representatives of the main capitalist groups and institutions in the country. On October 12 it was the turn of the PFP leadership to go to Zambia to meet the ANC. Since then the Methodist Churches and the Afrikaner student circles have made the trip. The protagonists have all publicly recognised that the discussions dealt with the ANC's project for society, the way to dismantle apartheid and on the liberal project of a 'national convention'. No agreement has been mentioned but all parties have insisted that it is absolutely necessary to integrate the ANC into any negotiating process. A certain number of declarations, indeed actions, regularly made by them show that the bourgeois opposition is seriously intending to go down that road. By calling now on the regime to negotiate with Black leaders, beginning with the ANC, the liberals are looking for a third way out of the present crisis of South African society. But the contradictions are such that this solution would mean a leadership like the ANC willing to commit itself to limiting the mass movement and bringing it to a moderate approach in a lasting way. For the time being it has used the Zambian discussions to project itself as the main interlocutor both nationally and internationally. It rejected the proposal of a 'national convention' which had been one of its demands in the 1950s.

It is far too soon to evaluate the possibilities of some sort of agreement between these parties. Its contacts with the liberals do not date from yesterday and the rise of the mass movement works in its favour in the present discussions. At this stage of the discussions the Black masses see relations with the liberals as a tactical necessity accentuating the isolation of Botha, deepening the government crisis and holding back the repressive capacity of the regime. These discussions cannot be condemned as such, even if it is legitimate that there is debate in the mass movemenmt on the long term objectives of such discussions. It is correct to use divisions inside the ruling class. It is possible to draw an advantage from the crisis of bourgeois leadership but that must not be done by mortgaging the independence of the popular movement and its revolutionary dynamic. It is certain that any progress in the 'semi-official' negotiations or discussions will speed up political and strategic debate inside the oppressed people's movement. If it was no longer simply a case of tacitly using divisions inside the ruling class but of negotiating, the debate would consequently focus on the question of compromise. In that instance the whole of the perspectives of the South African revolution and needs of the masses would be discussed with respect to the ANC's policies.

Once these discussions between the liberals and the ANC were made public the latter raised among its prime demands the lifting of its own banning. It is trying to push home as far as possible the advantages it has gained through these meetings. If big capital and the liberals want to consider it as their main interlocutor, as the necessary intermediary between themselves and the mass movement, then in exchange the ANC is demanding legality. If such an event did take place as a result of a government crisis and a political reshuffle at the summit of the state, it is certain that the ANC would become a party with massive organised support and a new political situation would open up. While the ANC occasionally presents itself as a broad national front where everybody can find their place, other political forces on the contrary see it as a well defined political current, particularly so given its links with the Communist Party. But the legalisation of the ANC or, even short of that, the extension of its real representation in the popular movement, would accentuate its difficulty of wanting to be at one and the same time a national mass movement and a very ideologically defined political current.

If the ANC could under one form or another legally or semi-legally operate inside the country it would mean that the general conditions for political action would have profoundly changed. All political forces would then have the possibility of publicly existing and defending their positions. Such conditions would also therefore raise the possibility of a political organisation expressing the interests of the working class, that is, a workers' party.

11) Other political currents apart from the ANC are today struggling in South Africa. The best known of these is the Black Consciousness current which emerged at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. This current was prominent in the youth mobilisations of the Transvaal in 1976. But it rapidly fragmented afterwards. Its nationalist ideology fostered certain sectarian attitudes which has added to its organisational difficulties.

All the same, a sector of this current built or influenced the growth of an important wing of the independent trade union movement (CUSA and AZACTU). It was this trade union sector, with the exception of the miners union, the NUM, which has refused for the moment to join COSATU on the pretext of the presence of white activists in its leadership. If this position is not changed the two trade unions could find themselves marginalised in the future and even facing a serious crisis. The forces that have come out of it today range from rather rightist Black nationalist positions to currents which have gradually taken a Marxist approach to society. One sector now defines the Black proletariat as the social vanguard of the popular movement and says it is in favour of a Black workers' party.

The Azanian National People's Organisation (AZAPO) also reflects this evolution. But it is still heterogeneous. However it is the only organisation with a national implantation which is not attached to the Chartist current. AZAPO is facing problems of political line such as the united front tactic, unitary relations with UDF organisations and the analysis of non-racial trade unionism. Its ambiguous position at the time of the Transvaal strike in November 1984 revealed these political difficulties. As one of the key members of the National Forum AZAPO sought to set up an alternative pole to the Chartist current. But this aim has not been achieved.

The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) no longer seems to have any real, centralised forces inside South Africa. This does not rule out the possibility of some activists intervening in other movements still identifying with this current. The PAC has kept up a small network outside the country allowing it to intervene occasionally in the solidarity movement.

On the other hand there is a certain number of organisations, associations, and groupings which aim to develop another line from that of the ANC and the Black Consciousness current through propaganda on the role of the working class vanguard, the socialist perspective and the rejection of alliances with the liberal bourgeois current. Certain of these groups, from a long way back, have defended the position of 'non-racialism', calling traditionally for a struggle for a single nation as opposed to the previous pluri-national ANC position. This current is however very weak and dispersed, often reduced to propagandistic and ideological activity. Among its best known organisations are the Cape Action League (member of the National Forum) and the New Unity Movement. In 1983 a sector of these organisations tried to set up a broad united front against the constitutional reform projects of the regime. That was how the Disorderly Bill Action Committee of the Cape (DBAC) was born. But friction grew very quickly with the Chartist organisations over the functioning of the DBAC and the alliances question and it led to a break-up of the committee.

This current is today facing two main problems which limit its impact: on the one hand its divisions which means it has to unify its forces if its resources and audience are to grow and on the other hand, the need to work out more precisely a concrete line of intervention and not limit itself to defending 'principled' positions. To achieve this it will have to take up tactical and agitational questions with much more flexibility and subtlety in the mass movement. Its criticism of the UDF for instance mainly focused on the alliance with the liberals. However the masses learn first of all through their own daily experiences and this denunciation of the UDF cannot be really grasped at that level. An organisation can only win a certain credibility in the movement through its own ability to take initiatives and carry out activist interventions.

Despite its difficulties this current benefits for the moment from the existence in the trade union movement of certain leaderships which have asserted their independence from the UDF and Chartism. The high degree of organisation of these trade unions and their objective weight legitimises radical positions on the role of the working class. But that cannot be eternally used as a justification and counterweight to the influence of the UDF and the ANC. This current cannot develop its influence only by counting on its programmatic profile. On the basis of its own ability to take initiatives and to actively intervene it could develop a dialogue with other forces on strategic questions placed on the agenda by the powerful upsurge of the mass movement and the emergence of the trade union movement.

12) Among the big political questions facing the national liberation movement is the situation and future of the Black rural masses. One of the main features of apartheid discrimination concerns access to land ownership and the right to work one's own land. The Land Act reserves 87% of the territory for the whites. The aim of this legislation is to produce bantustans grouping reserves of agricultural and industrial labour on a tribal basis and to free the best land for the development of white capitalist agriculture. This policy led to the relocation of the African peasantry and consequently the partial elimination of the various categories of African agriculture; traditional community, individual small holdings, share-croppers, cash-tenants and labour-tenants who lived on the periphery of white agriculture.

The last phase of this process was accomplished in 1956 when all articles of the 1936 amendments were extended to the whole of the country. In 1936 there was still about one million Africans working on the land in the white zones—that is as labour-tenants on white farms. There were no more than 163,000 in 1964 and later only 16,000 in 1973 (in Natal exclusively).

At the end of the 1960s the last squatters working the land, many of whom were cash-tenants for a white farmer, also had to leave. At the beginning of the 1960s there were about 350 'Black spots' of African agriculture in the white zone (of which 250 were in Natal). They have practically disappeared today.

On the other hand there are about 1.5 million agricultural workers working for 70,000 white farmers and the agri-business multinationals. They earn derisory wages and their working conditions are terrible. Even according to the government figures their wages have declined in real terms for twenty years. Important imperialist multinationals (Unilever, Nestlé, Leibig, Cadbury, Tate and Lyle) operate in agro-industry and their plantations profit from the apartheid laws. These companies have now mechanised their operations, making redundant a sector of their Black labour force and thereby stimulating this process throughout white agriculture. The latter is generally modern and the concentration of land into bigger properties continues; 25% of the biggest workplaces bring in 75% of agricultural income. The state heavily protects this agriculture and guarantees it gets underpaid workers and artificially high market prices for its products.

At the other extreme, agriculture in the Bantustans is condemned to a permanent crisis. Even before the Second World War there was a considerable nutritional deficit among the population of the reserves as their land did not produce enough. African agriculture began to come apart particularly because of demographic pressure. Subsistence farm production fell throughout the 1930s. The process continued and worsened in the 1950s under the impact of social, economic and land use changes produced by the development of 'border industries' which forced population relocation and the concentration of people in certain parts of the homeland. This progressive destruction of subsistence agriculture resulted in famine at the time of the 1982-83 drought.

In 1981 African agriculture provided less than 6% of the country's total farm output. But not more than 10% of this production was put on the commercial market. Furthermore the situation is very uneven depending on the region; Natal has an Indian agricultural sector and there is a small African farm sector in Kwazulu. In 1975 the latter placed 12% of its production on the local market. But this layer of small Zulu farmers is precisely a base for Buthelezi's Inkatha party.

On the other hand a part of Bantustan agriculture is under the control of the reactionary bureaucracy of the local puppet regimes and in certain cases white farmers have taken over the land in these zones. Subsistence farming does not generally provide the main income of African families living on a parcel of land. Already in 1970 more than half the adult males normally resident in rural zones were absent; this figure touched 70% in some regions. In 1975 the amount of money sent home by migrants was one and a half times greater than the income produced by farming and corresponded to 86% of the value of subsistence production. This tendency has been accentuated since.

It is clear that living standards in the Black rural zones are substantially supported by the men working in the white zones. Therefore it is questionable whether an African peasantry, made up of stable social groups and reproducing itself through its own agriculture, really exists. The last big rural struggles were those of Witzieshoek (1950), Zeerust (1957-59), Mpondoland (1960), Tembuland (1962-63). Today there is no struggle for the land as such. The only resistance that occasionally develops is concerned with population relocation organised to re-define homeland frontiers. The struggle for land has not for the moment taken the form of revolts in the white farms or in the reserves. The extensive forced takeover of land, the population relocation going back over several generations and the repressive straightjacket of apartheid in general, reduces the objective and subjective potential for partial struggles focussing on the recovery of the land.

The struggle for the destruction of the whole racist system will determine the eventual emergence of rural mobilisations on this question. They will be largely shaped by the forms of organisation and relationship of forces established in the towns. The development of intensive capitalist white agriculture could be a factor favouring a collective appropriation (under varying forms) of part of the big estates and plantations after a revolutionary victory. But today it is not possible to work out what will be the precise demands of the Black masses in the countryside and among the urban semi-proletarianised layers. The destruction of the Bantustan system is the first measure leading to a radical land reform permitting redistribution of land to the rural population and eventually to a sector of the urban unemployed. The redistribution could not be limited to the old Bantustans, where the land is generally bad, but it will fundamentally involve today's white agriculture. But it is impossible at the present time to forecast the specific of a land reform completely overturning the national organisation of land and the possibilities of socialising a part of big capitalist agriculture. Mobilisations and the role of proletarian organisation will determine in part the level of consciousness and demands of the rural and semi-proletarianised masses.

The working class and the leaderships of the mass movement must integrate all these factors in order to advance the unity between the urban and rural masses. The organisation of struggles in the white farms and plantations is made very difficult by the extreme precariousness of agricultural employment. The same thing applies in the Bantustans where the repression exerted by the reactionary administrations is particularly violent. In both cases the type of political agitation and organisation among these populations remains to be worked out. The COSATU congress decision to build an agricultural workers' union could mark an important turn in the history of the Black struggle. The difficulties will be enormous, given the tremendously unstable status of these workers and the repressive resources at the disposal of the white owners—who are known as the most reactionary base of the regime. But the COSATU decision opens up the possibility of activist work whose political consequences can be decisive.

13) The new level of struggles raises new problems. In the present phase the question of convergence between the mass mobilisations (school boycotts, boycotts of white businesses, boycotts of transport) and the organised movement of the working class is urgently posed. Without such convergence difficulties will arise as during the 1985 boycott movements. This question can begin to be resolved thanks to the foundation of COSATU. But the trade unions on their own cannot solve all these problems. Up to the founding of the unitary confederation each trade union or federation was built on a precise line and project. Today every worker, or nearly every worker, is in COSATU, which changes the form of the debate about orientation which is going to continue.

The second problem is mass self-defence and initiatives taken on this terrain so that a new offensive can develop. Up to the present there has been little or no response at this level. Probably the ANC is looking for an eventual answer to this problem, but the armed propaganda that it has carried out up to now will not provide a solution. Furthermore in South Africa it is not possible to count on a process of disintegration inside the army. There is no short term answer to this question but any organisation aspiring to lead the revolutionary process must begin to go forward in this field.

All the main important political and organisational questions are dependent on the strategic objectives one sets for the South African revolution. To be more precise, the dynamic and content of the various democratic and national demands depends on the class character of the state which emerges from the overthrow of the apartheid regime and which will begin to respond to them. Depending on whether one fixes as an objective a 'democratic state' that is not defined socially or a state of the dictatorship of the proletariat, all the problems are not dealt with in the same way.

The need for a proletarian leadership flows logically from our analysis of the South African revolutionary process. The existence of such a leadership is not assessed only by the degree of control such an organisation has over the mass movement, but is also gauged by its programme and its practice. The struggle for the effective accomplishment of the democratic tasks in any case requires that the working class is placed at the centre of the mobilisations. However, this objective is still far from being reached today in South Africa. Strengthening the workers' movement and forming a recognised working class leadership are tasks that are necessary to prevent the present struggles ending in a dead-end, without even being able to resolve the main democratic demands.

Nobody today, apart from the Communist Party, claims to be this leadership. The ANC presents itself as the leadership of the national liberation movement grouping all classes, but in no way as a revolutionary workers' party—a role it implicitly leaves to the CP.

It is scarcely possible to envisage the revolutionary victory of the masses with such a de-synchronisation between the rise of the mass struggle and the building of the revolutionary party—unless one believes in a democratic revolution without the organised hegemony of the working masses. On the other hand it would be wrong to deduce that the South African social formation produces a sort of spontaneous, automatic popular hegemony without a leadership intervening with its programme and action to organise and defend it.

The question of the workers' party has been taken up in relation to the trade union question. Joe Foster, general secretary of FOSATU, had evoked the necessity of such a party in 1981. His speech sparked off significant speculation about the real possibility of a workers' party emerging based on the trade union movement. Joe Foster's references to an eventual 'workers' party' earned him very sharp attacks from the Communist Party. However, since this date nobody has given a more precise, concrete position on the possibility floated by the trade union leader. Obviously it is not a simple problem given the influence of the ANC on one side and heterogeneity of the trade union movement on the other. The growth of a workers' party based on the trade unions would be very likely in present circumstances to bring repression down against the trade unions—which raises the important problem of the defence of the gains represented by the trade unions. The potential emergence of a party on the basis of the gains of the trade unions would in any event depend on a combination of diverse initiatives both inside the trade union movement itself, on its periphery and in the political movement. Through unitary collaboration in practice and common political reflection, a convergence of perspective and mutual confidence between activists intervening on diferent fronts, but ready to build a common political organisation, could develop over the long term. But this necessary convergence on such an ambitious project could only be achieved by starting from the mass base already acquired in the trade unions.

It is imposible to say precisely today what is the way forward for the building of a working class and revolutionary political leadership or when and how long this will take. We cannot forecast the internal political recompositions of the mass movement that achieving such an objective will require. However it appears that the political debates and conflicts involved in the contest for hegemony over the mass movement are underway. The development of the ANC on the one hand and the formation of COSATU on the other are elements in this process.

Organising broad and unitary solidarity

14) The upsurge of popular mobilisations in South Africa and the repressive response of the white regime requires the broadest possible support and active solidarity throughout the country. The Fourth International calls on all its sections to give great priority to this work, helping to organise huge unitary actions against the South African racist regime, for the release of Nelson Mandela and all the political and trade union prisoners and against the complicity of imperialist governments and multinationals with the apartheid regime.

Certain imperialist governments and a sector of companies operating in South Africa have taken wide-ranging measures of economic and political pressure against the South African government. Their respective motives are different but they all concur in seeking a negotiated solution which avoids a revolutionary crisis and maintains a favourable framework in the future for the durability of imperialist interests in this country.

American institutions have withdrawn more than $5 billion from companies with interests in South Africa. In 1985 at least twenty American companies stopped or slowed down their economic activity in this country. Twelve states, 39 towns and 67 universities have sold $5.4 billion worth of shares held by companies operating in South Africa. According to the Department of Commerce direct American investment fell from $2.6 billion in 1981 to $1.8 billion in 1984. South African policy in Namibia is no longer credible for these circles. Military operations in Angola, including the sabotage of an oil well belonging to the American Gulf Oil company, upsets them. Systematic repression of demonstrations worries them because they see it as proof of the lack of any alternative policy. Throughout 1985 the crisis of confidence in Botha's government has worsened. A sector of the American ruling class no longer believes in Ronald Reagan's policy of 'constructive engagement' which consisted in unfailingly supporting the Pretoria regime in the name of the global interests of the United States. Indeed, the present crisis confirms that American aid and support have been no help in avoiding the crisis of the regime, even if this favoured the military and diplomatic operations in the rest of Southern Africa. The reform policy Reagan promised in exchange for this support has proved to be a farce. The capitalist lobbies which want to go further in structural reforms in South Africa do not just take into account the social risks. They also think the time has come to permanently change the South African economic system based on apartheid laws. It is the combination of these economic and political criteria which make these capitalist circles take a line today which is so much harder than in the past. The greatest attention must be paid to this development for, far from absolving these forces from their previous practice it represents a new arm in imperialism's arsenal to push the Black movement along moderate lines, to trap and weaken it.

The British government criticises the South African government in the same formal way as Reagan but nevertheless is also seeking to encourage a process of negotiation by discreetly supporting an 'eminent persons group' whose aim is said to be to favour contacts between the ANC and the Botha regime.

All these manoeuvres must not get in the way of real, active solidarity. Calls to break all links with the South African government, opposing Kruggerrand sales and boycotting all sporting links with South Africa have to be systematically taken up. The demand for an economic boycott of South Africa is a central focus of solidarity, principally in the imperialist countries. The arguments according to which Black workers are supposed to suffer from such a boycott do not hold water. All the South African organisations have themselves rejected this explanation and want the stepping up of such measures against South Africa. The campaign for total sanctions or boycott must be used to show the complicity or passivity of governments to the racist regime and to highlight the importance of imperialist interests in this country. This activity against the regime must also be a means of developing concrete solidarity of the workers and anti-imperialist movements in support of the organisations struggling in South Africa. Organising direct links and supporting civic associations in struggle, should be the natural complement of protest campaigns against the regime.

In African countries, where the South African situation has a particular impact, it is necessary to highlight the passivity of governments which more often than not limit themselves to mere anti-apartheid rhetoric but without bringing any real aid to the Black movement. When there exists in these countries the beginnings of an independent solidarity movement it is necessary to popularise the forms of struggle and the courage of the South African oppressed masses. Since COSATU has said it is in favour of links with independent African trade unions initiatives should be taken building up such links in countries where such unions exist.

The aim of solidarity is to increase the active involvement of youth and workers' movement in solidarity with the South African oppressed.

The South African mass movement is going through internal differentiations on the political, trade union and civic association levels. The press of the International should report this diversity. In a country where the masses are struggling against racist barbarism and are demanding above all basic democratic rights it is not the business of solidarity organisations to make some sort of selection among South African organisations and activists and designate those to whom support must be given as a priority. In present conditions no political conditions justify acting in this way. The struggle in this country will be a long one. It will be very complex. Solidarity must be given to all components of the movement without sectarianism or exclusion. It must be given to COSATU, the ANC and all the social and political forces struggling against apartheid.

Our members should defend this approach in the solidarity campaigns or committees where they are active. Our sections intervene with a position of solidarity with all independent and non-racial organisations representing a sector of the oppressed who are fighting apartheid. Our organisations propose that this approach to solidarity be taken up and asserted when mass actions are organised.

In certain countries like the United States or Great Britain the anti-apartheid solidarity campaigns mobilise a large number of Black workers and Black youth. This must be a way for our sections to link up with these sectors of the masses.

We also try and get working class organisations to send delegations of inquiry and solidarity to South Africa. In the workplaces we call on the trade unions to participate in the permanent solidarity structures. We aim to get them to take up specific tasks of solidarity with the independent South African trade unions both on a national level as well as in each industry or multinational (especially the ones operating in South Africa). Appropriate trade union aid, popularising strikes, distributing the trade union press and ongoing links should be organised, not only to help the South African trade unions but also to bring the solidarity movement into the heart of the workplaces.