1. The boycott of South Africa
The questions of economic boycott and isolation of South Africa have become major elements in propaganda against the apartheid regime. This boycott has taken various forms: denunciation of all organized expression by or for the benefit of the South African authorities, the "governments" of the bantustans and other collaborators; the demand for an end to to all trade with South Africa, as well as to all exchanges of technology and other services; and the ending of all banking or financial relations.
Depending on the countries and the circumstances this has concerned the export of military technology to South Africa, the provision of petrol, the import of Namibian coal or uranium, the maintenance of air links, or South African access to bank loans and credit facilities.
Finally, it has involved exposing foreign investments in South Africa and calling for the withdrawal of imperialist companies from the country.
Over the last few years, several imperialist governments have undertaken to put pressure on the Pretoria regime by adopting a certain number of economic sanctions. For them it is a question of defending a third way (between apartheid and revolution), demanding that the Botha regime commit itself to negotiated reforms, and themselves preparing to take part in these hypothetical negotiations.
What is more, a certain number of companies — including some important multinationals, particularly American — have decided to leave South Africa. Some of them mentioned risks to the image of their product caused by staying in the country. Most of them put the emphasis on their criticism of the South African system. This, however, had been their main motivation for setting up in the country and making large profits there. So all this cannot delude people. In reality the economic crisis that the country is presently going through, combined with political and social instability, have been reason enough for many foreign companies to decide to close their South African subsidiaries, sell them to South Africans or hold on to subcontracted markets only.
The solidarity movement must be able to explain these singular practices on the part of people who have colluded with the racist regime for so many years.
It must also know how to avoid the trap of an over-economistic conception of the boycott. Disinvestment must not be translated into a de-capitalization implying factory closures, dismantling of machinery or other formulas which try to make Black South African workers pay for this retreat. The capitalists must sort things out themselves, accept the proposals of the independent trade unions, find appropriate solutions!
Any boycott campaign or call for the withdrawal of a company must be accompanied on the part of the workers' movement and solidarity organizations by a clear willingness to build links with the South African independent trade unions of the branch and the company involved. This is essential if this kind of campaign is not to echo agreement with the demagogic pretensions of certain imperialist governments, the media operations of certain multinationals or bourgeois lobbies.
For example, this is what was cruelly lacking at the time of the General Motors workers' strike in Port Elisabeth in 1986. The solidarity and workers' movements must take up the possible positions of the South African trade unions on the withdrawal of foreign companies, popularize them and make them an element of their own agitation.
The boycott campaigns must be the means of developing mass mobilization. A boycott campaign should be the chance to show the complicity or passivity of governments, as well as the formal character of their denunciation of apartheid. It is an instrument for education and denunciation which cannot be reduced to parliamentary pressure or to formal demands on the governments concerned.
We support the calls on governments that they impose sanctions against the South African regime. By putting forward these demands, we do not encourage illusions in their capacity or their desire to take effective measures. On the contrary, we urge the workers' movement to fight to impose these sanctions. For this reason, we popularize and call on the workers to take direct action initiatives to prevent the exchange of goods and services with South Africa. Our goal is actions like that of Dunnes Stores in Dublin, where the workers fought a long strike in support of South African Blacks.
2. Support for all those struggling against apartheid and for a non-racial democratic society in South Africa
Solidarity must be carried out in a non-exclusive fashion at the same level for all those who are repressed by the racist regime. Solidarity is organized around concrete tasks. It should not get bogged down in judgements on the political positions of one or the other group when they are in the same camp against the racist regime. International solidarity should be first and foremost in favour of the mass movement and resistance actions led by Cosatu, the UDF, the ANC and, in particular cases, by other social or political forces.
3. Solidarity with the independent trade-union movement
Among the tasks of the solidarity movement, one is particularly important — that of informing and mobilizing workers and their organizations. The existence of an anti-apartheid struggle by a Black working class fighting daily against the state and the bosses should be stressed. Strikes which take place in the branches of the big multinational companies must be reported.
It is therefore necessary to mobilize workers and their organizations in solidarity with the South African independent trade-union movement. In this context, the defence of Cosatu and support for its unions are urgent and decisive tasks. At present, Cosatu represents the highest form of the workers' united front in South Africa and the most solidly organized social sector.
International solidarity must devote particular attention to this form of support. The international workers' movement must establish direct relations with the independent South African trade unions. The formation of Cosatu, which is the authoritative voice of the union movement in South Africa, provides added opportunities for deepening fraternal ties between the labour movement in South Africa and the unions in every country. Workplace unions and unions in branches of the same multinationals must develop links with their South African counterparts.
Tours of South African unionists must be organized in a unitary fashion. However, they should not only meet trade union leaders but also talk to the rank-and-file. Trade-union fact-finding delegations should be sent to South Africa to meet trade unionists and to bring back information and eye-witness accounts. Appropriate trade union help, popularization of strikes, distribution of the trade-union press and permanent links can be organized, not only to help South African trade unionists, but also to take the solidarity movement to the heart of the workplaces.
Today, the South African independent workers' movement is the standard bearer of a radical anti-apartheid fight. It leads significant struggles against the bosses' exploitation, puts forward specific demands and has important experiences of self-organization and mass democracy. It struggles simultaneously for the disappearance of racial discrimination in society and for the achievement of its own class objectives. It is in this sense that it is taking a more and more socialist perspective.
4. Free Mandela and all the prisoners
Racist South Africa is a vast prison. Each year thousands of men, women and children pass through the authorities' gaols. Botha has just extended the state of emergency introduced in June 1986, having already achieved a noticeable fall in the political activity of the masses.
Exposing this repression must be one of the central axes of propaganda against the apartheid system.
For twenty-five years large numbers of prisoners have been condemned to heavy penalties for "terrorism", "communism" or "high treason". Nelson Mandela, leader of the ANC, figures amongst these. Mandela has become a symbol of the victims of brutality of the regime against Blacks and against the ANC. His liberation would constitute, whatever the motivations of the government, a significant event for the mass movement in South Africa.
The danger which the various groups of "vigilantes" — the para-military sections of the Inkatha party and so on — present for the mass movement should also be taken into account. Particular stress should be placed on condemning these new phenomena, since they now form one of the main links in the repressive practice of the white authorities.
The trade-union movement, which had been less affected by the repression than other sectors in 1985, is now one of the main targets of the ruling party. Repression against the railworkers' strike, as well as the police entry into the Cosatu offices and the bombings of trade-union offices, confirm this tendency. The trade-union leaderships are now directly threatened in order to prevent the normal functioning of their organizations.
In this respect the example of Moses Mayekiso is particularly symbolic. The leader of one of the principal trade unions in the country — the metalworkers in Numsa — he was imprisoned and is now accused of high treason for having led the coordination of neighbourhood committees in the Alexandra township. Condemning the imprisonment of trade unionists is therefore an element to take into account in solidarity activity — particularly in trade-union solidarity actions and in the workplaces.
5. The academic and cultural boycott is a weapon for solidarity. It must not be a constraint.
It is not acceptable for people — artists, intellectuals or sportspeople — to travel to South Africa in the name of the so-called "neutrality" of their professional activities. In many cases it is a genuine objective collaboration with the system, in so far as it normalizes relations with South Africa.
In the same way it is not acceptable for South African personalities, with the same aim or for similar reasons, to go abroad. These practices and the public events that result from them should be condemned. This is one means the solidarity movement can use to expose the racist system.
But this cannot become a total blackout, which would damage the development of struggles and solidarity. Today, the South African revolution is opening to the outside world. It can exercise a strong attraction on all those struggling elsewhere. Similarly, those who are fighting in South Africa seek to know about and discover the struggles of other people and to escape from the damper of South African censorship.
Nothing should be done to limit communications between those struggling in South Africa and those who support them abroad. In order for a revolution to win it is clearly not helpful for the people concerned to be isolated from other struggles, from discussion of ideas and the exchange of experiences.
The ANC has just modified its traditional attitude in favour of a complete cultural and university boycott. This was posing more and more problems given the development of international contacts between progressive South African artists and intellectuals and those worldwide — determined to see and to speak out about apartheid. The principle of a total boycott, usually accompanied with special dispensations under the control of the ANC, could not continue in such conditions. According to the ANC itself, the debate remains open in terms of who is going to decide, and on what criteria.
6. A unitary and democratic solidarity movement, centred on the workers' movement and youth
The international solidarity movement needs to last as long as the revolutionary struggle of the people of South Africa continues. For this to be possible the solidarity movements need to reinforce links with the workers' movement and youth, and to aim themselves principally towards these groups. The solidarity organizations should develop in a direction independent of the projects put forward by bourgeois circles and imperialists. These groups are aiming at resolving the South African crisis at the least cost for capitalist interests.
It is in turning the solidarity movement towards workers and youth and in mobilizing for the defence of workers and youth in South Africa that it will be possible to stabilize solidarity in the long term. This does not exclude any broad democratic campaign (around the boycott, political prisoners etc.), but above all it is a question of turning the solidarity towards the main social forces of the South African revolution.
This supposes broad and objective collaboration with major church organizations in those countries where they play a major role in spreading to the broadest layers of the population the moral repugnance of apartheid and the justification of resistance to apartheid rule inside South Africa.
But allowing two separate, or indeed, alternative sorts of solidarity to develop should be avoided: one being a general denunciation of apartheid, oriented essentially towards boycott appeals, the release of Nelson Mandela and so on; and the other specializing in support for strikes and trade unions. A division of labour between the different solidarity structures is not excluded, but all actions must be seen in a complementary, and not contradictory or competitive, way.
7. Stop South African aggression against the countries of southern Africa. South Africa out of Namibia!
The Pretoria regime increases military operations in countries like Botswana, Zambia or Mozambique in order to stop all aid to the ANC and all chance of South African activists being able to move freely in the region. It aids and trains military movements in Mozambique (Renamo) and in Angola (Unita). The South African government uses not only its military strength but also its economic strength for this, by threatening these countries with commercial retaliation. It also uses the duplicity of the imperialist governments in these matters, who want reconciliation with the aggressor as much as those suffering the aggression. The solidarity movement must denounce these attacks and solidarize with the peoples threatened by the South African regime.
The international solidarity movement must not lose sight of support for the Namibian population struggling against South African occupation. It must support the right of national independence for the Namibian people, including total sovereignty over the port of Walvis Bay, which is a particularly important stake for the South Africans and imperialism. A specific task of explanation has to be made regarding the situation, and solidarity must be given to Swapo and to the independent Namibian trade unions that are now appearing.
Fourth International groups should seek to collaborate with others to mobilize condemnation of the apartheid regime's invasions of other countries, its continuing illegal occupation of Namibia, and its backing of counterrevolutionary mercenary groups in Angola and Mozambique. We should counter the anti-Cuban propaganda that is aimed at justifying these acts of aggression, denouncing all demands that Cuba should bow to imperialist pressure, ignore the requests of the Angolan government and withdraw its forces — military and civilian — from Angola.
8. Down with imperialist manoeuvres! The "anti-apartheid bosses are not our friends"!
The international condemnation of apartheid has the distinctive characteristic that participation of imperialist governments, of groups of employers and multinationals is more and more common. This is not due to the "marginal" or "atypical" nature of the anti-apartheid struggle, allowing South African racism to be condemned by "the western democracies" and their liberal circles.
On the contrary, it is due to the scale of imperialist interests in this country and to the growing fear that the South African crisis is turning into anticapitalist revolution. Some governments and groups of imperialists are therefore looking for a compromise solution that can save the basic interests of capitalism in the country, and demobilize the popular movement. The product of such a scheme, if it were to work, would be the formal de-racialization of the institutions, with the preservation of the basic social and racial inequalities existing today.
The whole popular movement now rejects this perspective. Consequently, this hypocrisy must be exposed and its objectives explained. All the protagonists of this policy have been, including some until very recently, model collaborators with, or accomplices of, apartheid. We should use the same slogan as the South African workers, faced with liberal bosses who sack them and call the police in against the strikes: "The anti-apartheid bosses are not our friends!".
All attempts by governments or bourgeois circles to interfere in the affairs of the South African mass movement, and to try to manoeuvre and divide it, should be denounced.
9. The role of the sections of the Fourth International in anti-apartheid solidarity
The sections of the Fourth International, principally in the imperialist countries, must consider anti-apartheid as one of their long-term international campaigns. In campaigns and specific support structures they should defend a unitary and non-sectarian conception of solidarity. They should always aim to give a mass character to all initiatives, centred on the workers' movement and youth. They should attempt to integrate the trade union organizations into solidarity structures and campaigns.
Fourth International organizations should participate fully in and build the broadest possible solidarity with the struggle against apartheid, centering on the demands for an immediate break of economic, cultural, diplomatic, trade-union and sporting ties with the apartheid regime. This campaign has special weight in Britain, the US, Australia, New Zealand and other imperialist countries where government ties with the apartheid regime are particularly important and where, as a result, the anti-apartheid solidarity movement has developed significant support.
While supporting every struggle against the apartheid regime and mobilizing solidarity with all victims of repression in South Africa, Fourth International organizations everywhere should particularly seek to develop links with the ANC.
The deepening South African revolution is leading to a clarification of discussions in our movement, and among other international currents in the workers' and revolutionary movement.
It is also being reflected in the interrelated political debates being carried on within Cosatu and other liberation and working class forces in South Africa. These discussions are important for the future of the revolutionary movement in South Africa, and for the ability of its working class vanguard to construct a revolutionary leadership. Familiarizing ourselves with these discussions is part of the preparation for competent participation in this development by our current on a world scale.
In the many countries where the existence of competing committees is harmful, the sections will endeavour to help build united mobilizations.
Finally, they will develop in their press their analysis of the South African revolution, the specific tasks of the South African proletariat and the events taking place, in order to contribute to a better political understanding by all those taking part in the solidarity movement.