Remember Soweto? (1976)

From the August 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now that the headlines have died down over the recent riots in Soweto, South Africa, and the press vultures are picking over some other gory carcass, it is worth a look at what the Johannesburg Star had to say before the outbreak of riots.

In an article on 14th June 1976 it described Soweto as ". . . just a huge agglomeration of people living without many of the accepted amenities of urban life. Physical security, schools, decent sanitation, and roads, electricity, proper shopping and recreational facilities . . ." In other words, a massive shanty town for “probably well over a million people” (i.e. black workers). Since last year, when the Johannesburg Star had another article on Soweto “matters have not improved”. The cauldron could well have boiled over earlier.

The real concern of the paper is revealed in the last paragraph of the later article:

Can any government in its right senses allow this drift towards disaster to continue? Even if you leave human compassion right out of it and simply consider the huge potential threat that is building up here to the security of everyone. White as well as Black?

The capitalist class are always willing to “leave human compassion right out of it”. What they are concerned with is “the security of everyone”, specially themselves. You can’t have the workers going round rioting, stealing and destroying property; they might start bringing these reactions into the factories and other places. Workers must respect property. The capitalists must keep the lid on and maintain law and order “at all costs” as Vorster emphatically pointed out.

The tragic lesson of Soweto is that the capitalists will unhesitatingly use the state power when they think their interests are threatened. While we abhor the conditions under which the South African workers are forced to live, the solution does not lie in abolishing apartheid but in the recognition by all workers that their common interest lies in the abolition of capitalism and its replacement by Socialism throughout the world.

T. K.