Report from South Africa (1963)

Book Review from the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

I Will Still be Moved: reports from South Africa. Edited by Marion Friedman. (Arthur Baker, 24s.).

Dr Verwoerd claims that his policy of apartheid is aimed, not at subjugating the Negro and Coloured Peoples of the Republic (who constitute the vast majority of its population), but that the Bantustan developments he plans is for “separate but equal development along the lines most suited to them.” It is doubtful whether even he and his Ministers still believe this—if they ever did—with the glaring evidence to the contrary which comes to light every day. He himself, when Minister of Bantu Affairs, explaining his Government’s policy on African education said: “There is no place for him (the African) . . . above the level of certain forms of labour.”

The case histories in this book were chosen to show in how many different ways this glaring untruth is constantly being demonstrated.

The case of Nelson Langa gives a brief insight into the terrible conditions obtaining in farm jails, where “convicted” Negroes are “sold” to European farmers to work in conditions of abject slavery. The fact that, in the majority of cases, they have never been in front of a magistrate, much less convicted, has no relevance to the treatment they receive. In a rounding up of “unemployed Africans who were roaming the streets,” Nelson Langa was taken, in spite of the fact that at the time he was wearing the badge of the municipal authority which employed him as a street cleaner and was actually carrying his broom. On the other hand, he was not carrying his pass for which, on conviction, the maximum penalty is a £1 fine. However, the small formality of charging him was dispensed with and with many others he was put on a lorry and “sold” to a farmer in the Bethal district. After long enquiries, his brother found out what had happened and, with the aid of a lawyer, managed to get him released. There was, of course, no question of compensation yet Mr. Langa was “lucky” in having his freedom restored, in most cases family and friends never find out what has happened to their breadwinner or whether, in fact, he is still alive.

Patrick Duncan, a White editor, now a prohibited person and living in England, said in his address to the magistrate when charged with contravening the emergency regulations:

“. . . How else can one explain the cruel cancellation of the African school-feeding scheme, while White children continue to be fed by the State? How else can one explain the mean attempt to abridge and constrict, by administrative action, the pension scheme for non-Whites which this government inherited from its predecessors? How else can one explain the present intention of this government to institute family allowances—for Whites only?”

Later in his speech he enumerated some of the unjust legislation, which shows up any claims for “separate but equal developments” for what they are; the Group Areas Act, the Separate Amenities Act (separate and unequal facilities), Urban Areas Act which, with its “influx control” splits up families, the Land Act of 1913 under which 85 per cent. of the surface of the land in South Africa is closed to ownership to 66 per cent. of the population; the feudal pass law, under the misleading title of Abolition of Passes Act, the Job Reservation Law, Bantu Authorities Act, the Bantu Education Act.

The case of Nelson Mandela, the “Black Pimpernel” received quite a lot of publicity outside South Africa. It is from his speech in his own defence against a charge of “inciting people to strike”—it is illegal for African or Coloured workers to strike—as well as leaving the country without a valid travel document, that the title of this book is taken. He concluded with the words:

“. . . rest assured that, when my sentence has been completed, I will still be moved, as men are always moved by their consciences; I will still be moved by my dislike of the race discrimination against my people when I come out from serving my sentence, to take up again, as best I can, the struggle for the removal of those injustices, until they are finally abolished once and for all.”

As explained in the Acknowledgements, the editor’s comments and the introduction, the purpose of this book is twofold; to give voice to the voiceless in South Africa, and to raise funds to aid them in their fight. Although of course, the book is banned in South Africa, the hope is expressed that “one day (it will) be read where if most matters . . . and that this evidence of folly, injustice and irrationality will provoke action even from those who are not directly its victims.”

There is certainly plenty of evidence on all these indictments and many others. This small volume can, obviously, cover only a very few of the many cases of injustice and persecution over the last decade, and this review can only mention one or two of these. How one section of people can treat another in such inhuman ways, seems incredible at first sight. However, Chief Albert Luthuli, in his address when presented with the Nobel Peace Prize, put his finger on the explanation when he said:

“There is nothing new in South Africa’s apartheid ideas, but South Africa is unique in this: the ideas not only survive in our modern age, but are stubbornly defended, extended and bolstered by legislation at the time when, in the major part of the world they are now largely historical and are either being shamefacedly hidden behind concealing formulations, or are being steadily scrapped . . . These ideas survive in South Africa because those who sponsor them profit by them . . . They are the moral whitewash for the conditions which exist . . .” (our emphasis).

It is quite obvious that, whether by peaceful means, or—as seems more likely now—through civil strife and violence— one day in the not too distant future, the vast Negro and Coloured majority will achieve their objects. But, although many of the inhuman and impossible conditions imposed on them, now will have disappeared, they will still be faced with the problems and troubles which beset workers in a capitalist society. When they have achieved a way of life on a par with that of their fellow workers, both White and Black throughout the world, they will be able to listen to and accept the case for Socialism and join with us in the struggle to establish it.

Eva Goodman 

Voice From The Back: The Seeds of War (2011)

The Voice From The Back Column from the September 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Seeds of War

Many reasons are put forward for the conflict in Afghanistan. Some would argue it is a conflict over religion, others that it is a struggle for democracy. The following piece of information seems a more likely cause for the hostilities. “Afghanistan and Central Asia are abundant with natural resources worth billions. So far, they are largely untapped but the battle is raging for who will be able to exploit them in the 21st century. In the 19th century it was the Russians and the British who wrestled for influence in Afghanistan and Central Asia in a highly-explosive endeavour known as the Great Game. Today, Afghanistan’s natural resources are estimated to be worth billions of dollars. The resources in the neighbouring Central Asian states are thought to be worth even more – the cake is huge and as yet largely untouched.” (Deutche Welle, 15 July) The seeds of all modern wars has been the rivalries over sources of raw materials, markets and political spheres of interest.

Premature Celebrations                            

The abolition of the hateful system of Apartheid in 1994 was correctly celebrated throughout the world, but capitalism remained intact and as long as capitalism survives it will throw up problems of exploitation and inequality. “South Africa celebrated Nelson Mandela’s 93rd birthday on Monday with songs by millions of children and calls for public service, but the nation he led out of apartheid is divided by poverty and his ANC movement seems to many to be losing its moral compass. … Mandela’s calls for greater access to the economy for the poor black majority have been dealt blows by corruption eating into welfare programmes and entitlements that benefit a sliver of the black elite with close ties to the ANC.” (Reuters, 18 July) .

The Future is Bleak

                              

The illusion that many workers share is that as they reach retirement age they will be able to live in a sort of rocking-chair contentment.  In reality most of us will live even more parsimonious existences than we do at present whilst we are surviving from pay-day to pay-day. “Millions of people face a ‘bleak old age’ because they are falling through the cracks of private sector pension provision, a review suggests. The Workplace Retirement Income Commission says 14 million people are not saving into a workplace pension scheme at all.” (BBC News, 1 August) Working for a wage or a salary as we all have to do is a precarious existence but when we are finally thrown on the industrial and commercial scrapheap the future for most workers according to the Commission is apparently even more awful.

The Perfect Worker                          

Newspaper editors have a difficult task every day – what should be their front page headline? Millions starving in a famine in East Africa? Demonstrators gunned down in Syria? A difficult choice perhaps but the editor of The Times led with a really important headline. “Welfare in chaos as thousands live to 100” (Times, 4 August). In any sane society the news that human beings are managing to live a little longer would be the cause for celebration, but this is capitalism and there will be no dancing in the street at the news. The news that the working class who produce all the wealth of the world are tending to live longer is bad news for the capitalist class who live on the surplus value that the workers produce. To the owning class the perfect worker is one who goes to work after they leave school, works two nights overtime and a Sunday and on the day he retires goes to the Post Office to collect his state pension and drops dead at the counter. No pension, no drain on the owning class’s surplus value. Perfect!

Who Are The "Primitives"?                       

For thousands of years small tribal groups have lived in the forests between what is now Brazil and Peru. They are looked upon by many as “backward” or “primitive”, but nevertheless they have survived in isolation and relative security. The advent of capitalism has changed all that. “The head of Brazil’s indigenous protection service is to make an emergency visit to a remote jungle outpost amid fears that members of an isolated Amazon tribe may have been ‘massacred’ by drug traffickers. …. On 5 August Brazilian federal police launched an operation in the region, arresting Joaquim Antonio Custodio Fadista, a Portuguese man alleged to have been operating as a cocaine trafficker. But after the police pulled out, officers with the indigenous protection service (Funai) decided to return fearing a ‘massacre’. They claimed that groups of men with rifles and machine guns were still at large in the rainforest. Reports suggest the traffickers may have been attempting to set up new smuggling routes, running through the tribe’s land.” (Guardian, 9 August)

World View: Arms and Mandela (1995)

From the April 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

For decades, Nelson Mandela decried the apartheid machine and its arms hardware manufacturer Armscor (South African Armaments Corporation). and many commentators therefore looked with interest to the country's first free elections last year to see how the new government would tackle the arms issue. Socialists saw what they had always anticipated. Overnight, Mandela changed his views and bowed to the whims of international capital. Last November, launching the South African equivalent of Farnborough, the Defence Exposition of South Africa (DEXSA), Mandela announced that "South Africa is launching a defence industry which is guided by new priorities and a new ethos,” that this was a "unique opportunity to help ensure that peaceful purposes are served by the defence industry" (New African, February 1995).

This from the man who had just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace!

Mandela's reasoning was that arms sales could be justified if the recipients were "responsible" countries—an idea that smacks of insanity, for any country that buys arms does so with the view that they will come in useful. Further, any increase in the world's arms stockpile can only increase the likelihood of conflict breaking out Kasrils. a former member of the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, was another to defend the South African search for new markets for arms. The South African government, he stated,

"...is establishing strict criteria concerning countries to which we will or will not sell arms ... countries that violate their people's human rights, are involved in civil war, or threaten the sovereignty of their neighbours".

Kasrils's words come only a month after a shipload of automatic rifles, intended for unstable Lebanon, ended up in Yemen, itself embroiled in civil strife.

Embargo

In 1977, the UN Security Council had imposed an arms embargo on South Africa. At the end of May 1994 it was lifted. As the election results were announced, Armscor, assured of Mandela’s support, informed the international media that it would now increase its share of the world’s arms market from 0.2 percent to 2 percent, a tenfold leap. In reality, the UN embargo had only paid the anti-apartheid lobby lip-service, for Armscor had enjoyed 17 years of covert circumvention of the embargo, supplying arms to Angola, Argentina (used in the Falklands War). Iraq. Libya, Rwanda. Somalia and Zaire—everyone a repressive regime.

Indeed, the Guardian reported last year that “evidence has been accumulating that for political and strategic reasons, Western governments and their intelligence agencies turned a blind eye to sanctions-busting" (23 September).

Abba Omar, an Armscor spokesman and another former Umkhonto we Sizwe figure believes the South African arms industry has an "outstanding contribution to make to the development of South Africa". His view is that the arms industry, being the biggest exporter of manufactured goods. not only brings much needed money to the South African economy, but that the technology it generates spills over into developments in transport, health care, water purification and the like, as well as providing employment. Thus, as the argument goes, everyone benefits.

Ranged against the advocates of arms trade benefits is the anti-weapons lobby. One such voice, Peter Storey, a Methodist minister argues that “to talk of a moral or ethical defence industry is a contradiction in terms. The defence industry represents one of those areas of human behaviour where ethics have to be suspended in order for it to function at all (New African).

In her analysis Open Arms for the Prodigal Son; The Future of South Africa’s Arms Trade Policies (BASIC Report, June 1994) Sue Willett, of King’s College, London’s Centre for Defence Studies, argues the arms industry can only be developed at the expense of civilian industry:

“Heavy dependence on the exports of weapons is not a good foundation for an exporting manufacturing sector . . . The danger is that temporary reliance on arms exports serves to put off into the indefinite future a really vigorous programme of developing alternative civil industries (Quoted in CAAT News, August 1994).

Insane logic

Mandela promised, on coming to power, that he would see to the implementation of improved housing, health care and sanitation, for instance. To maintain an arms industry is not only to betray the aspirations raised by the ANC’s Freedom Charter. It is more importantly an acknowledgement by Mandela, a recognition, that what the ANC stood for in the past—"black majority rule" and "socialism now"—was in fact a pipe-dream, and that those who take power within the capitalist system have to allow, and encourage it to operate according to its own insane logic.

When the arms embargo was lifted, Armscor’s general manager announced that he expected South Africa’s weapons exports to double within the next financial year. Between 1993 and 1994 Armscor’s sales to some 55 countries netted South Africa R886 million. If we add to this the fact that 72 countries attended DEXSA recently to view the wares of over 100 exhibitors, and the recent British invitation for South Africa to put a tender to supply 90 "Roolvalk" helicopters for the British army, then it becomes apparent that headlines like "Mandela applauds South Africa's rising arms trade" (Times, 23 November 1994) clearly cast Mandela in the same mould as every other pro-capitalist government official in the world.

Wittingly or unwittingly, Mandela has subordinated everything he once stood for to the profit motive and to the risks, inherent to the capitalist system, it entails. With Mandela aiming to stand down at the next election, it is evident that he will do so having sanctioned the ascendancy and, more, the legitimacy of the profit-seeking élite of South Africa. Time will teach the South African working class not to put their faith in leaders, but in their own collective strength and to link their struggle with workers everywhere.

John Bissett

News in Review: Mandela Speaks (1964)

The News in Review column from the June 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mandela Speaks

In Pretoria Nelson Mandela has stood trial, with eight others, on charges of attempting revolution by violence. If he is found guilty—and he does not deny that he helped to organise acts of sabotage— Mandela could be sentenced to death.

It is inevitable, in the prevailing conditions and atmosphere in South Africa, that Mandela's case should arouse considerable sympathy. To many of those who resent the repressions and indignities which the coloured people of South Africa are subjected to, Mandela's admitted activities are anything but crimes. They are his people’s cries for help.

It is a truism that violent repressions are bound to provoke violent resistance. Because of this, a man in Mandela’s predicament can often come to be thought of as almost a saint. But history has shown how a saint under duress at one time, can be a devil in command at another. The past is crowded with men who have been imprisoned—and even sentenced to death—for their opposition to a repressive power and who, when they eventually themselves took over their country, proved to be no better than the power they had deposed. DeValera, Nkrumah, Ben Bella are only three like this who spring to mind. 

What of Mandela?

During his trial he set out his views in a four and a half hour speech. It is instructive to examine this speech, especially some of the more revealing passages in it.

We all (Ghandi, Nehru, Nkrumah, Nasser) accept the need for some form of Socialism to enable our people to catch up with the advanced countries of the world . . .

It is common for the leaders of rising nationalist movements to tag the name of Socialism onto the measures of state control they would like to impose to try to advance their country's economy. The correct description for these measures is state capitalism, which in large .doses has often led to the imposition of a dictatorship, and which in any case never offers a country’s workers a future any better than private enterprise capitalism.

But even more significant is another passage.

I approached this question (guerilla warfare) as every African Nationalist should do . . . I attempted to examine all types of authority on the subject. . . . covering such a variety as Mao Tse-Tung and Che Guevara on the one hand, and the writings on the Anglo-Boer War on the other.

The point in this, which Mandela’s sympathisers arc bound to miss, is that both Mao Tse-Tung and the Boers were once lighters against oppression. They used the same sort of arguments about human dignity and freedom which Mandela now uses. Yet in the end they have themselves imposed hard dictatorships, under the thrall of which Mandela and his friends have suffered.

What reason is there to believe that the African Nationalists, if they ever got power, would be any improvement on the Boers? The history of capitalism says that there is no reason whatever.

Spy exchange

Of all the dirty jobs which capitalism needs to have done, spying is one of the worst.

And not the least unpleasant aspect of spying is its calculated indifference. A spy knows the score. He knows that he is out on his own and that if he gets caught he must take what is coming to him. The government which sent him out will not—indeed cannot—help him. Except in the very rare occasions when their hand is forced—the U2 is an example—they will not ever admit that the man is a spy.

This was why the Russians never officially recognised Gordon Lonsdale as one of their agents. For the same reasons, the British government’s protestations, that Mr. Greville Wynne was just a harmless business man, should not be automatically believed.

What seems most likely is that Wynne was a small cog in the British espionage machine, perhaps convinced that he was only doing his patriotic duly by being a messenger boy. The freedom which the press were given, to interview him and to follow him around, when he returned to England suggest that he was anything but an important spy.

The striking thing about the affair was the grisly cynicism with which Wynne was used. The British government held off agreeing to the exchange until they were given a “humanitarian” reason for doing so. The Russians duly obliged by ill-treating Wynne, so that he came back an unrecognisable shadow of the man who went out.

Thus the newspapers were given sonic interesting photographs to take and some interesting stories to print and presumably someone, somewhere, was satisfied that all the niceties of international double-dealing had been complied with.

It never seemed to strike anybody—except the Wynne family—that they were playing with a man's life.

Ah, well, Capitalism has shown again and again that it has an order of priorities and that human welfare is nowhere near the top of it.

Ready for the Unions

More than ever convinced that they are a sure bet to win the next election, the Labour Party are turning anxious eyes upon the problems they are likely to meet when they take office.

One of these problems will be the size of our wage packets. Despite the airy assurances which the capitalist parties give at election times, all of them know that one of their knottiest problems is to hold wages in check while doing nothing which they think might affect the conditions which give rise to a heavy demand for labour.

The Tories have played this one pretty cool, but the Labour Party are convinced that they have a special advantage in meeting this problem. Their leaders never tire of telling us that only a Labour government, with its close ties with the unions, can effectively control wage claims. And now, as the autumn draws near, they are busily rallying the unions to accept the restrictions which lie ahead. 

Listen to these.

A Labour Government and trade unionists have shown how to work wholeheartedly for the same thing. Sometimes they will have to share uncomfortable responsibilities and consequences. [Who said that? Deputy Labour Lender George Brown.]

. . . unless the unions face the facts of life as they are in the late 1960’s, then in seven to ten years’ time the State will have to intervene. [Who said that? Labour's Shadow Minister of Labour Ray Gunter.]

The miners never had a better friend than Alf Robens. They would be in a mess if he had not come to the Coal Board in I960. [Who said that? Alf Robens, of course.]

These statements—and there are many others to choose from—have a nervously sanguine tone to them. Do the present Labour leaders remember the fights which the Attlee government had over wages? Do they remember the wage-freeze? The strikes, and how the Labour government did their best to break them? Do they fear that they will have to face the same battles, when they are the government?

And is that why they are so determinedly whistling in the dark?

Big time divorce

One of the fashionable tendencies in big business over the past few years has been to merge and to concentrate into gigantic industrial and commercial combines. We need hardly say that the drive behind this fashion has been the need to hold their own in the jungle war that is capitalism.

This tendency has accounted for firms which once seemed to be implacable rivals. An example of this was the merger between the Austin and Morris motor companies, which produced the British Motor Corporation.

These mergers have happened because the companies involved in them have been convinced that they stood to gain a lot by the marriage. And it is that same conviction that has persuaded ICI and Courtaulds apparently to go against the trend and to break up their partnership in the jointly owned British Nylon Spinners.

This divorce will entail Courtaulds surrendering their half share in BNS and ICI giving up their holding of 30 million Courtaulds shares which they were left with after their unsuccessful takeover bid in 1962.

Despite this big shareholding, ICl had no director on the Courtaulds boards, which meant that although they had a substantial amount of capital at stake in the company they did not have a commensurate amount of control over its day to day affairs.

This was one of the results of the strained relations between the two firms which came out of the great takeover battle.

At the same time, Courtaulds have become interested in Nylon 6, a new fibre which they are already producing in a few countries abroad. Dutch and American firms are starting production of Nylon 6 in this country (on the very day the ICI/Courtaulds divorce was announced Chemstrand, a subsidiary of the US Monsanto Corporation, gave out that they intended to build a £6 million Nylon 6 plant in Scotland), and Courtaulds, restricted by their interest in the BNS fibre Nylon 66, saw that they might be losing a trick.

By all the profit-conscious, competitive, standards of capitalism, then, the divorce was a logical move. But it does not mean that there is any reversal in the trend to concentrate.

Rather, in the manner of living cells, ICI and Courtaulds have divided only to become larger and to multiply. It is very much on the cards that one day in the not too distant future we shall see them in a head-on battle over the nylon market. That will be a contest with a horrible fascination all of its own.

Voice From The Back: After apartheid (1999)

The Voice From The Back Column from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard  

After apartheid

About 20,000 people were murdered in South Africa last year. Nearly 50,000 women were raped. There were close to 250,000 burglaries and 12,000 car hijackings . . . Last year Nelson Mandela derided those who leave South Africa because of crime, and identified crime as a white problem. But Antoinette Louw of ISS [Institute for Security Systems] said: “Mandela’s message was that the government doesn’t recognise the ‘fear of crime’ as a problem. That’s a grave mistake. It’s not just a white problem. Black people do feel very unsafe” Guardian, 18 February.

Agony Aunt advises

Would that the tough world of employment were different, but there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that personal hard-luck stories are a bad call when asking for a pay increase. As an approach, it turns an applicant into a supplicant and weakens the ground on which they stand. What is recommended is a more positive attitude: base your case on your value to your paymaster. You magazine, 21 February.

South Africa’s crisis

Terry Bell writes for the Business Report of the Johannesburg Star. He has obviously had more than a passing acquaintance with Marx’s writings because his column, “Inside Labour”, on the economic scene in South Africa is invariably perceptive and sceptical. On 30 October, 1998, he wrote: “The police are part of the armed wing of the state, a section of that monopoly of force exercised by the powers-that-be for the maintenance of law and order and the status quo . . . In fact, the claim that the police are the mere tools of ‘the bosses’ was reinforced over the recent strike wave. More work days were lost in the first nine months of this year than at any time since 1992. The strikes saw numerous clashes between strikers and police, and hundreds of complaints from striking workers about police brutality. Tales of sjambokkings, tear-gassings and the firing of rubber bullets and birdshot flooded in.”

On 6 November, 1998, he wrote: “Yet within the broader trade union movement, at all levels, there is a clear explanation for the cause of the present crisis. It is summed up by June Dube, president of the Transport and General Workers’ Union. ‘Overproduction,’ he said. ‘The world is suffering a crisis of overproduction.’ Calls for greater productivity (more products produced by the same or fewer workers) and greater competitiveness (more products produced by the same or fewer workers) and greater competitiveness (more products being produced more cheaply) therefore amounted to ‘pouring oil onto a raging fire’.”

Cuba’s crime wave

This week the national assembly passed draconian laws against a rising crime wave on the island, which impose the death penalty and life imprisonment for violent crimes and drug smuggling. They also lay down stiffer sentences for prostitution, pimping, robbery and theft . . . Dr Castro said that crime had increased because the government was forced to open the country to tourism and foreign investment, creating inequalities on the island. Guardian, 18 February.

It is political economics

“The real wages of low-wage male workers have shown increases in the past few years.” Trumpeted a recent report from President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, “in contrast to the period from 1979 to 1993, when they declined by 14.7 percent.” The real story is that low-wage earners are still significantly worse off than they were 20 years ago, at least if you only count their paychecks. But government programs like the earned-income tax credit mean that wages don’t tell the whole story. For economists the prolonged stall in wages remains the great contemporary conundrum. For politicians it is an opportunity to argue for new legislation. In his State of the Union message President Clinton proposed to increase the minimum wage by $1 to $6.15. [In 1979 it was $6.75] Forbes, 22 February.

Pleasure wicked

Children are suffering mental health problems in increasing numbers and at a younger age because of the pressures of the national curriculum, according to a three-year £1 million report [called Bright Futures] . . . The inquiry, by the Mental Health Foundation, claims that schools need to teach “emotional literacy” in addition to academic knowledge to combat the rise in the number of children who are withdrawn, isolated and depressive or disruptive. Sunday Telegraph, 31 January.

Into the future?

If you have a job to do, find someone to share the work and you get the job done in half the time. That’s the idea behind Distributed.net, a group that co-ordinates spare computer processor power from across the Internet to solve huge mathematical tasks which otherwise would take days, weeks, and in some cases years. The tasks range from research projects to find large prime numbers, to cracking code messages, to analysing radio waves emanating from space in the hope of finding signals from alien civilisations. Guardian, 28 January.

What Next for South Africa? (1990)

From the April 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

We may never know what discussions took place between President de Klerk and Nelson Mandela before the famous prisoner’s release, but it is evident they did a deal. It is possible they agreed on a detailed programme of reform. Economic forces have been pressing in on the deadlocked conflict for decades but movement has been slow. It has been thirty years since Harold Macmillan spoke of “a wind of change blowing through Africa”, but in South Africa this has been a gentle breeze which disturbed little, leaving the white monopoly of power intact. Delayed change results in greater pressure and now it seems the deadlock is about to be broken. What will this mean for our fellow workers in South Africa, both black and white?

An ideal model of capitalism would rest on a simple division between capitalists and workers with the latter voting in governments to administer their own exploitation in a “liberal democracy”. Capital would be free to invest most profitably and train workers to achieve maximum output without skin colour or ethnic background being an issue. This would tend to secure the most efficient use of labour resources, with political stability and without excessive expenditure on forces of repression.

Tortured history
In practice capitalism rarely confirms to this model. In South Africa the legal classifications of “European”, “Bantu”, “Coloureds” and “Asians” complicate the economic and political structure in ways which inhibit efficiency. They result from the tortured history through which these groups took root in the country.

Even within these groups there was never a common identity. For over two centuries the Europeans were bitterly divided between British and Dutch. Cape Town was established as a supply station by the Dutch East India Company. During the Napoleonic Wars the British pre-empted a French take-over by seizing it themselves after which it was kept as a British colony. In the 1830s a large number of the Dutch trekked north to found the Transvaal and Orange Free State but again they came into conflict with the British when gold, diamonds, coal and other materials were discovered in the Boer republics. To gain control of these materials colonial adventurers like Cecil Rhodes conspired with the British government to instigate the Boer War. Following the defeat of the Boers, and the sufferings of their families in concentration camps in which thousands died from disease and starvation, British imperialism gained control over the entire land area of what is now South Africa.

But it was not only the people of European origin who were in conflict. Tribal differences also divided the African peoples who in the seventeenth century had migrated south from East Africa. These divisions are still a potent force, further complicating the politics of South Africa. The Zulus are mainly concentrated in Natal under Chief Buthelezi and it is interesting that he controls his power base, Inkatha, as its unelected leader. Despite their demand for it, there is no “one person, one vote” amongst the Zulus. Nelson Mandela is a Chieftain of the Xhosa people and is acclaimed as being more representative of black South Africans through the African National Congress.

During the past seven years more than 2,500 people have died in violence between different black groups and Mandela has appealed passionately for an end to the fratricidal strife. “Throw your arms into the sea”, he recently implored a vast crowd of Zulus. The response of Inkatha was positive but also tempered with a warning:

  Only the enemies of peace and black unity would wish otherwise. However, we shall not succeed to achieve this by protracted attempts to demonise, vilify and marginalise Dr. Buthelezi. To do this is tantamount to planting the seeds of future civil war in our country.

This threat of possible civil war, presumably in circumstances in which the Afrikaner Nationalist government may have collapsed, is indeed ominous.

Those called the “Cape Coloureds” were originally descended from the offspring of early Dutch male settlers and their female servants brought to the Cape Province from the Dutch East Indies. The temptations of sexual relations between the “races” were more than the Calvinist citizens could resist and, in any case, pre-dated the ideology of “apartness”.

The indigenous inhabitants of South Africa were the defenceless Hottentots who suffered genocide at the hands of every invader, Dutch, British and Bantu. These three groups, very different in their origins and outlook, were pitched into the same land area and now form the main elements in today’s political strife.

Capitalists’ political frustration
One of the ironies of this history is that Rhodes instigated war with the Boer Republics under the slogan of “democratic rights for all white citizens” with the object of gaining control of diamonds, precious metals and vital raw materials. In this he succeeded but as the mining industry developed under mainly British investment together with manufacturing, the white working class of the urban areas eventually formed a political alliance with the rural Afrikaners to elect an Afrikaner Nationalist government in 1948 which has held power ever since. The various National Party governments under Malan, Strijdom, Verwoerd, Vorster and Botha (the names alone speak of the return of the Afrikaners to power) have never been the “natural” or direct representatives of capitalist class interests. The more liberal-minded United Party disappeared and its current replacement, the Democratic Party, has little chance of gaining majority white support.

Capitalist interests would have best been served by a reform programme aimed at integrating the black population within a non-racial system of exploitation. This could have been introduced through a gradually-widening franchise based, for example, on property or education qualifications, arriving eventually at “one person, one vote”. This was not to be. It is to the eternal discredit of white workers in South Africa that in the majority they have pursued what they saw as their interests through racist trade unions and by voting for the National Party.

But if all this has been frustrating for capitalist class interests neither has it advanced the hopes of the Afrikaner nationalists. Their ideal of apartheid, or separate development, was always an illusion. Whether we see it as, at best, a nostalgic yearning for an independent “volk” or, at worst, a cynical euphemism for racial oppression does not matter. Either way, apartheid was against the tide of history.

When the more fanatical Conservative Party accuses de Klerk of “betrayal” and “sell-out” the greater truth is that the National Party has been overwhelmed by the economic forces of capitalism. The seeds of this were planted when the Afrikaners won political control. As a government they had no choice but to depend on taxes from mining, industry and manufacture to run their state machine. From this moment on, they were tied to capitalism. It costs a lot of money to pay for the repression of 20 million black people and, inevitably, the bills increase. Where once the Afrikaners eschewed the idolatry of gold, diamonds and profit, their heirs speak the universal language of trade and commerce. De Klerk is a capitalist politician.

In his recent important speech to the South African Parliament on 2 February he said:

  A new South Africa is possible only if it is bolstered by a sound and growing economy, with particular emphasis on the creation of employment.

At times he sounded like a Thatcherite:

  By means of restricting capital expenditure in state institutions, privatisation, deregulation and curtailing government expenditure, substantial progress has been made already towards reducing the role of the authorities in the economy.

At other times he also sounds like Gorbachev:

  The government’s policy is to reduce the role of the public sector in the economy and to give the private sector maximum opportunity for optimal performance. In this process, preference has to be given to allowing the market forces and a sound competitive structure to bring about the necessary adjustments.

We might ask how it comes about that politicians as different in their backgrounds as de Klerk, Thatcher and Gorbachev are committed to the same policies. They each share a common role as functionaries of capital; the economies of South Africa, Britain and Russia are locked into the same system – world capitalism. As a result their respective governments are compelled to react to the same economic pressures to achieve efficiency and profitability and to pursue strategies which best protect their long-term interests. These are the same forces which are driving politicians in South Africa, despite their own very different origins into a common outlook.

An added reason why de Klerk can sometimes sound like Gorbachev is that both face problems of restructuring, or perestroika. According to the Independent (27 February):

 British businessmen and bankers are unlikely to return to South Africa in droves as a result of the lifting of the ban on new business investment . . . They left because of rising commercial and political risks, poor investment returns, difficulties in repatriating profits and higher returns available in other countries.

In his speech to the South African Parliament de Klerk complained of “a serious weakening in the productivity of capital and stagnation in the economy’s ability to generate income and employment opportunities”.

It is evident that de Klerk, through his negotiations with Mandela and the ANC, hopes that he will be the man to restructure the South African economy on the basis of political stability achieved through extended democratic rights, but it is likely that the National Party has left it too late. Surely the party and the man for the task is the ANC under Nelson Mandela? Is it not more likely that it will be they who emerge as the new functionaries of capital best suited to achieving a more efficient exploitation of workers in South Africa without distinction of “race”, as capital demands?

Not afraid of black government
Certainly a number of leading capitalists assume that the future lies with a black government. For some years, Gavin Relly, the chairman of Anglo-American, South Africa’s largest business corporation which controls gold, platinum and coal production, has been in close contact with the ANC. In 1985, together with the chairman of the South African Foundation, which represents general business interests, he met with Oliver Tambo and a negotiating team from the ANC. He said then:

  What we are concerned with is not so much whether the following generation will be governed by black or white people, but that it will be a viable country and that it will not be destroyed by violence and strife.

He added that he and the ANC “shared a common interest in maintaining the profitability of the South African State”.

Since Mandela’s release there has been some concern in capitalist circles over the ANC’s apparent commitment to nationalisation, including the mines. However, on 26 February Gavin Relly, continuing his personal contacts with the ANC, met Mandela and afterwards urged investors to calm their fears. He said it was premature now to get agitated about the ANC’s economic programmes:

  The community and international community should not get into a flurry over nationalisation. These are issues for sensible men to discuss. Issues of nationalisation will have to be subjected to the tests of debate and the tests of what is practical to make the modern economy work.

In his own comments on the meeting, Mandela said nationalisation remained, in certain areas, a basic policy of the ANC, but the economy at large would still be based on private enterprise. “The entire economy will remain intact” (Independent, 27 February). Again, we shall never know the details of their discussions but it is clear that Gavin Relly, a leading representative of capitalist interests, emerged a happy man from his meeting with Mandela.

Where does all this leave our fellow workers in South Africa? Our interests are directly linked with theirs and if democratic freedoms are now to be extended to that country it is in all our interests. Perhaps now the Directorate of Publications in Cape Town will release our pamphlets and the copies of the Socialist Standard which have been kept under lock and key in the cell where banned literature is stored.

In the short-term it appears that workers in South Africa may well continue to support those reformist organisations which they see as representing their interests in a “racially” divided society. However, it is also likely that the increasing pressure of the economic forces of capitalism and the reforms which are in prospect will simplify the issue into a straightforward confrontation between capitalist and working class interests. This will leave the fundamental problems of the workers still to be solved. Even now the vital work must be to ensure that a growing world socialist movement is extended to South Africa.

Pieter Lawrence

50 Years Ago: Mandela Speaks (2014)

The 50 Years Ago Column from the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Pretoria Nelson Mandela has stood trial, with eight others, on charges of attempting revolution by violence. If he is found guilty—and he does not deny that he helped to organise acts of sabotage—Mandela could be sentenced to death.

It is inevitable, in the prevailing conditions and atmosphere in South Africa, that Mandela’s case should arouse considerable sympathy. To many of those who resent the repressions and indignities which the coloured people of South Africa are subjected to, Mandela’s admitted activities are anything but crimes. They are his people’s cries for help.

It is a truism that violent repressions are bound to provoke violent resistance. Because of this, a man in Mandela’s predicament can often come to be thought of as almost a saint. But history has shown how a saint under duress at one time, can be a devil in command at another. The past is crowded with men who have been imprisoned—and even sentenced to death—for their opposition to a repressive power and who, when they eventually themselves took over their country, proved to be no better than the power they had deposed. De Valera, Nkrumah, Ben Bella are only three like this who spring to mind.

What of Mandela?

During his trial he set out his views in a four and a half hour speech. It is instructive to examine this speech, especially some of the more revealing passages in it.

  “We all (Ghandi, Nehru, Nkrumah, Nasser) accept the need for some form of Socialism to enable our people to catch up with the advanced countries of the world . . .”

It is common for the leaders of rising nationalist movements to tag the name of Socialism onto the measures of state control they would like to impose to try to advance their country’s economy. The correct description for these measures is state capitalism, which in large doses has often led to the imposition of a dictatorship, and which in any case never offers a country’s workers a future any better than private enterprise capitalism.

(Socialist Standard, June 1964)

Apartheid, Capitalism and the ANC (1988)

From the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

It hardly needs stating that South Africa's apartheid regime imprisons, tortures and ruthlessly exploits the country's black working class, and that socialists are working for a society in which such obscene discrimination would be impossible. But does it follow that we endorse the struggle for apartheid's removal?

Nelson Mandela, arguably the best known black political figure in Africa, was seventy on 18 July. His imprisonment in South African jails since his capture and trial in 1962 on charges of treason has won him world-wide sympathy and gained international support for the African National Congress.

Such support is misplaced. It is based on the wide-spread political belief that the main problem facing workers in South Africa is apartheid and that it is in their interests to uphold the ANC's objectives:

  A democratic state based on the will of the people . . . equal status for all national groups . . . protected by law against insults to their . . . national pride . . . industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well being of the people . . . equal rights to trade . . . the land redivided amongst those who work it. . .
   The police force and army. . . shall be the helpers and protectors of the people. . . equal pay for equal work . . . a national minimum wage . . . maternity leave on full pay . . . the right to be decently housed . . . free medical care . . . Slums shall be demolished . . . South Africa shall be a fully independent state . . .

(The Freedom Charter adopted by the ANC in 1955)

This is a thorough-going reformist platform which in parts reads like a nineteenth century tract of the kind Marx condemned in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. Decked out with superficially attractive proposals and promises, it deflects the unwary majority from pursuing their class interests. Where similar programmes have been adopted elsewhere they have demonstrably failed to alter the position of the propertyless majority.

In their frustration the ANC decided in 1961 to adopt violent minority action to achieve their aims. Originally committed to non-violence, their policy changed and they "would no longer disapprove of properly controlled violence . . .  we decided to adopt violence as part of our policy, the plan had to be one which recognised civil war as the last resort ' (Nelson Mandela, No Easy Walk to Freedom. 1966, page 170).

In order to justify such violence and bloodshed the ANC needs to use the doublespeak practised by politicians everywhere when persuading others of the need to sacrifice and suffer in causes which involve no working class interests. They must attempt to disguise their true motives and the bitter realities that others are expected to face. At a press conference given by Oliver Tambo (President of the ANC) warning was given of an escalation of ANC violence. He urged Umkhonto we Sizwe (the military wing of ANC) to "Attack, advance, give the enemy no quarter, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” and acknowledged that "over-zealous" elements might attack "soft targets" (that is, human beings) (Keesing's Contemporary Archives, p. 3466b). In an interview in 1983 Tambo said he thought". . . it must be a matter of regret that civilians were injured . . . as our struggle intensifies more innocent people are going to get hurt . . .  An armed struggle embraces violence . . . We certainly must conduct our struggle in such a way that we are not seen to be taking blows and not returning them " And what are these brave words used to cover? "The answer is in the uprooting of the apartheid system . . . The problem in South Africa is the apartheid system" (Oliver Tambo. Preparing for Power, 1987, pages 164-169).

The kind of action advocated by the ANC will not bring freedom to the workers of South Africa, black or white. They might talk of being "committed to bringing about fundamental change to the entire socio-economic and political formation which constitutes the South Africa of today" (Tambo. page 247) but all the workers will get. even with full implementation of the Freedom Charter, is a change of rulers or, more likely, the absorption into the ruling class of some new rulers whose skins are black.

The leadership of the ANC appear ready and willing to murder their way to the thieves table, not in order to abolish capitalism but to stake their claim to a share in the exploitation of the workers. We have the declaration of Mandela himself:

  Under the Freedom Charter, nationalisation would take place in an economy based on private enterprise . . . (this) would open up fresh fields for a prosperous African population of all classes, including the middle class. The ANC has never at any period of its history advocated a revolutionary change . . . nor has it. . . ever condemned capitalist society. (Mandela, page 179)

When asked "Are you attracted by the idea of a classless society?", Mandela replied "yes, very much so . . . I  think that a lot of evils arise out of the existence of classes, one class exploiting another [but] . . . the ANC has no policy in any shape or form on this matter" (page 84). His concept of freedom is the freedom for him and his lieutenants to join the ranks of the exploiting class. In this he is following a course laid down by previous generations of black African "freedom fighters" who now vie with one another to attract investments from international capital. They may rid the country of the odious system of apartheid but they will be left with the problems of running capitalism. Class rule and exploitation would continue and a free society of abundance and equality would be no nearer. Indeed, in their efforts to get rid of apartheid they may well find support from within the ranks of the capitalist class, who are finding it an increasingly intolerable block to the most efficient exploitation of black labour power. For example Sir Albert Robinson. Chairman of Johannesburg Consolidated Investment Company, told shareholders back in 1974:

  It is essential to engender in the minds of all South Africans a far greater enthusiasm for . . . the elimination of restrictive employment barriers . . . The ultimate goal is a uniform wage scale for all employees, irrespective of race, based on objective criteria. (Daily Telegraph. 19 November 1974)

Or as a recent academic study more bluntly put it:

  . . .  a stage has now been reached in South Africa at which for important sectors of local capital the costs of apartheid exclusion outweigh the benefits. For the first time capitalists are rebelling . . . they worry about calm labour relations: and they dislike operating in a siege economy . . . (Herbert Adam and Kogila Moodley, South Africa without Apartheid.,1986. page 22).

If the ANC come to power they will have to take on the task of controlling and disciplining the majority when it becomes clear that capitalism run by blacks is little different to the white-dominated variety. They will have to ensure "calm labour relations", which will bring them into inevitable conflict with "All who work shall be free . . . to make wage agreements with their employers" (Freedom Charter). Potential investors need not worry however. The ANC Director of Information Thabo Mbeki assured reporters at a four day conference of the ANC and Afrikaner businessmen at Dakar in July 1987 that "the feeling of common South-Africaness between us all was very strong . . .” (Keesing's page 35362). A new twist to the old "We are all in the same boat" fraud under which black workers will find that they will still be doing all the rowing.

Another problem which will face an ANC dominated government is what to do about opposition groups. Such is the effectiveness of their propaganda that many who sympathise with the ANC cause assume them to be the only political organisation seeking to represent black opposition in South Africa. While there is evidence that they have much support in the townships, there are other groups such as Inkatha Yenkululeke ye Sizwe ("Freedom of the Nation"), the Pan Africanist Congress and the Azanian People's Organisation. The last of these “. . . incorporated a class analysis into their policy. . [but thought] . . . there was no material basis for united class action by whites and blacks . . . the black petty bourgeoisie . . . have joined the Black liberation struggle. The leadership of the Black liberation struggle is provided largely by this class'" (Tom Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa since 1945, 1987. page 345). It is unlikely that groups such as these will easily give up their political objectives. How are they to be treated? In her 1986 biography Mandela, Mary Benson describes how . . . Mandela and other young nationalists clashed with the organisers, broke up [opposition] meetings . . (page 38). which does not auger well for the opponents of ANC in power. And the horrific "necklace" killings of supposed "collaborators" have been enthusiastically endorsed by Winnie Mandela, herself a powerful figure in the ANC (Anthony Sampson, Black and Gold, 1987. page 232).

The ideology of Mandela, Tambo and the ANC "is, and always has been, the creed of African Nationalism" (Mandela), chasing the shadow of harmonisation of class distinctions. We urge all workers to reject their outmoded ideas and join with us in building a strong world movement to establish the only society worth working for, socialism.

Gwynn Thomas

Where is South Africa going? (1993)

From the June 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

There was a time when the battle-cries of the ANC were “Black Majority Rule" and “Sanctions Now”. But that was when Nelson Mandela was still a political prisoner— in the days when “communism” was seen as a threat to those governments which advocated free-market policies.

We live, however, in unpredictable times. The last 4-5 years have been momentous in shattering illusions, beliefs, notions of what had hitherto been taken for granted. The impossible became possible. There were great shifts in public opinion. Governments have been toppled and national boundaries have moved overnight as if blown by a breeze.

Many believed the breeze reached South Africa when Mandela was released from 27 years of imprisonment on 11 February 1990. Headlines praising the release and eulogizing F.W. De Klerk were flashed around the world, and the 78-year struggle of the ANC seemed finally about to be vindicated.

The dreams of South Africa’s black majority appeared to have been realized in mid-1991, when the parliament in Cape Town repealed the Population Registration Act, and when De Klerk announced to a joint sitting of the country's tricameral parliament that “Apartheid now belongs to history”. Brave words, indeed, from a ruling National Party that had held power and practised institutionalized racism since 1948.

By September De Klerk was seen to be pushing South Africa towards democracy, by unveiling further constitutional proposals for a new non-racial South Africa. The scheme was lambasted by opponents as an underhand move, designed to allow the white minority to keep the “accumulated privileges of apartheid" (Guardian, 4 September 1991). Although the new proposals would extend the franchise to all adult South Africans, it would in effect, it was argued, give the whites and other minorities the right to veto important policy decisions.

It is hardly a coincidence that De Klerk s decision to free Mandela, legalize the ANC and the South African Communist Party, and begin constitutional negotiations should coincide with the discrediting of international “communism” in the wake of the end of the cold war. The South African government knew full well that any change in the constitution would not upset the country’s economic status quo. Under apartheid the black majority had laboured as wage-slaves, or rather volatile wage-slaves; enfranchised, they would still be wage-slaves but this time a little more contented. Besides, a South Africa seen to be getting its act together would be an incentive for foreign investment.

In February last year De Klerk announced that white voters would be asked in a referendum to answer “yes” or "no” to the question: “Do you support the continuation of the reform process . . . which is aimed at a new constitution through negotiations?” One month later the white voting population returned an impressive 68.6 percent "yes" vote. It is a fair guess, however, that many voters, voting either way, had their minds set when violence surrounding the campaign left 25 dead.

Massacre

The entire reform process ground to a halt on 17 June 1992, when Inkatha warriors, with the assistance of the security forces massacred 42 in the Transvaal township of Boipatong. The ANC abandoned constitutional talks and Mandela was "convinced that his [President De Klerk’s] method of bringing about a solution to this country is war" (Guardian, 22 June). All sides were in agreement on the suspending of talks and within a week tit-for-tat killings had left another 70 dead.

Within three months it was the turn of the South Africa’s defence forces to have themselves a massacre, opening fire on a demonstration by 70,000 ANC supporters at Ciskei, killing 28 and leaving another 200 injured.The government, who were accused of complicity with the defence forces, awaited an ANC-led backlash, it never came. Instead, in a surprising act of volte-face, the ANC, three days later, agreed to hold peace talks with the De Klerk government.

In September Mandela signed a “record of understanding" with De Klerk, agreeing that a new South African constitution could only be shaped by an elected constituent assembly, and that there would be a non-racial interim government in the future. For good measure, and probably as way of compensation for the recent massacres. De Klerk agreed on the immediate release of 150 political prisoners. Two months later De Klerk was calling for further negotiation to be re-started by the end of March 1993 with a view to holding South Africa's first non-racial general election by April 1994.

On 4 February this year the ANC again met with the government for a further round of bilateral talks. In a meeting a month previous both sides had agreed there should be an “interim government of national unity”, though no agreement had been reached on the timescale for a new constitution. Nevertheless, it was understood that an “interim government of national unity”, consisting of parties that had secured a minimum percentage of the vote in elections, would hold power for five years following an agreement by a constitutional assembly on a final constitution.

Many in the ANC, however, objected any set-up which would give a disproportionate share of power to Chief Buthelezi, the Inkatha leader. Disagreement also remained on the suggested devolved regional plan. The ANC had pushed for a centralized authority, be it within a federal framework, while De Klerk pressed for regional autonomy on such issues as health and education.

On 1 April delegates from 26 political organizations, extreme left as well as right wing, attended a round of multi-party negotiations. The talks ended a day sooner than scheduled, with many surprised that negotiations were back on track and to continue at a lower level. A day later secret negotiations began to reincorporate the "independent" homelands back into South Africa. Matters appeared to be going smoothly.

Assassination

No-one could have anticipated what would happen eight days later, when a member of the neo-nazi AWB assassinated Chris Hani, a leading ANC politicians as well as the leader of the South African Communist Party. This had been the first political assassination in almost 30 years, and many believed that previous mutual restraint had signalled an unwritten agreement between blacks and whites not to target one-another s leaders.

The ANC urged restraint on its members, hoping that something fruitful could emerge out of the death of Hani, that his death would at least induce some kind of urgency into negotiations. Meanwhile ANC Youth leaders rejected peace calls. One speaker announced to a rally in Pretoria: "It is time we told the leadership that enough is enough . . . now is the time to hit back” (Times, 13 April). In a country where peaceful demonstration has been met with violence and force, and where the black majority has for so long been denied the right of the ballot box to voice their wishes, it is little wonder that many still feel that violence can be the only tool of reform.

Hani's murder has a deadly logic for those in South Africa who hope to gain by it. those who are attempting to upset reform and derail negotiations at any cost, who will deny the black majority any rights, even if it means civil war. Thankfully their numbers are few. They include the likes of Eugene Terrcblanche, the AWB leader whose hypocritical view of the death of Nani was of an “atrocious deed". But whatever the latent motives were for the death of Hani, his assassination does not seem to have dowsed the flame of reform. On 15 April the South African government reacted to the current crisis by tentatively promising to hurry along constitutional reform.

It looks likely that in the near future an electorate with enfranchised blacks in the majority will have voted in a new constituent assembly and a power-sharing government of national unity holding power for five years, headed, probably by Nelson Mandela. The ANC are in favour of a government of national unity of limited duration. but have opposed a five-year power-sharing plan. De Klerk, however, appears to be in the better bargaining position. How smaller factions within South Africa will react remains to be seen. The extreme right-wing AWB will never be placated, neither will comfort be found in the Inkatha camp where Chief Buthelezi has warned of civil war should the ANC and De Klerks National Party reach an agreement to share power on their own. In any event, a future South Africa will probably be a highly devolved federation, with local and regional rights entrenched.

The negotiations have been taking place against the background of a South African economy in turmoil. Employment between 1991 and mid-1992 contracted by five percent and there is a continuance of capital flight—six billion Rand last year and 40 billion Rand since 1985. It is only a matter of time before the finger of blame is pointed. Should the economy continue to collapse Mandela will be blamed as much as De Klerk.

George Meddemmen.

Courting capitalism

Much has been compromised by the ANC since Mandela was released. Black majority rule has been sacrificed for a share in an interim government of national unity, in which parties with a minimum percentage of support will be given representation. Similarly, the ANC ultimate goal of a “socialist society” has been sacrificed for a share in a government with a proven track record of capitalist management.

There are now claims that the ANC elite are the new South African free marketeers, courting white businessmen and aspiring to their lifestyle. Recently the Johannesburg Weekly Mail ran a piece by a disillusioned ANC supporter, who questioned the contrasting lifestyles of the ANC elite and the black majority they represent: Mandela lives in a lavish suburb of Houghton; Zini Mandela’s honeymoon was financed by a wealthy white businessman; Allan Boesak now enjoys an extravagant lifestyle. “Are there gifts from the South African white economic elite?” asked the ANC member, “is our human suffering under apartheid rule so cheap to be bought by gifts from the white racists?”

Professor Heribert Adam, noted South African observer, commented:

On the part of the ANC/SACP, socialism has been reduced to anti-trust legislation and affirmative action. Lenin may still be quoted, but the World Bank, it seems, exerts a stronger pull . . . The more far-sighted sections of the business elite ingratiate themselves with any political leadership. (Guardian. 17 April)

The legalization of the ANC has much to do with this. Once legalized, given legitimacy, they struggled for acceptability, and were easily discredited when Winnie Mandela was indicted on charges of kidnapping and murder, and when news broke about ANC detention and torture camps. The government could even use the Inkatha movement and their own defence forces against the ANC in acts of intimidation, knowing that any backlash would damage the new moderate image of the ANC. The only way the ANC could gain acceptability in the eyes of the white minority was by sacrificing some of their long-held views and recognizing the economic system, as run by the white capitalist elite.

For the ANC there is no going back now, only forward, forward with a perspective tainted by the capitalist economic values of the white minority. The ANC now want sanctions lifted, condemn acts of violence and aggression, and frown upon the kind of demonstrations they backed only six months ago at Ciskei.

"Our ideal is a socialist society”, said Chris Hani a few months before his assassination. “socialism is the best and most cohesive system for South Africa” (Guardian, 15 February). Ironic words, true socialists will agree, in light of recent events. Socialism (not the state capitalism Hani had in mind) is indeed a "most cohesive system”, but only on a world scale. Socialists, however, will not fail to welcome recent developments in South Africa. A South Africa with universal suffrage can only bring the realization of world socialism a step closer when the chains of capitalism begin to rust through and the world’s working class begin to voice objection through the ballot box.

John Bissett

Who will be the winners in South Africa? (1994)

From the April 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard 

It was in 1652 that Dutch settlers first went to the Cape of Good Hope. This began as a supply station to service the ships of the Dutch East India Company. It also began 350 years of conflict which has now produced a very different beginning. In April, new constitutional arrangements will start with all adult South Africans having the vote and the election of a transitional government.

The struggle of mainly black workers against that bigoted, racist ideology, "apartheid" has been long and bitter. The struggle to get the vote has required determination and sacrifice. Socialists support that struggle. Without the power to capture control of the state by democratic means, socialism is impossible. This raises an important point. Getting the vote is not the end. Now that it has been won, how is it to be used?

Inevitably, in the first flush of the expected ANC victory in the election there is a lot of optimism amongst its supporters about what the ANC in power will do for them.

Great expectations

They foresee not just the end of race discrimination but the end of the grim poverty in which most of them have lived. They expect their living standards to rise on the basis of jobs and good wages for all. They expect decent housing, health care, education, pensions and other benefits. In fact, this will not happen.

This is not a question about the sincerity or good intentions of Nelson Mandela and his associates. It is about economic realities. The ANC leaders are now being fitted into the mould of reforming capitalist politicians and as such believe that when in power they will be able to do all sorts of good things for their supporters. They believe they are the right men and women for the needs of the hour. It has been a popular misconception that if only workers are able to get the right people into the right positions of power at the right time then everything will be alright. This false idea has led to failure and disillusion in almost every country throughout this century and it won’t be any different in South Africa. By now the reason should be obvious.

Committed capitalists

The ANC leaves no room for doubt that it is committed to running the capitalist system. For example, in the ANC "Freedom Charter" Nelson Mandela has written:

   "Under the Freedom Charier, nationalisation would take place in an economy based on private enterprise . . . [this] would open up fresh fields for a prosperous African population of all classes, including the middle class. The ANC has never at any period of its history advocated a revolutionary change . . . nor has it.. . ever condemned capitalist society " (page 179).

This means that in a South Africa run by an ANC government it’s going to be capitalist business as usual. Class differences, with a great gap between rich and poor, will continue. Black workers will still be exploited alongside whites. Through their labour they will continue to keep the wealthy and the privileged in a society which puts the profits enjoyed by a few before the needs of the whole community.

If a movement has at last managed to form a government to run capitalism, as Nelson Mandela says the ANC is going to do, it has no choice but to work within the economic limitations and class objectives of the market system. Particularly at this time of world slump most governments are in financial difficulties and this is the situation that the ANC will have to take on.

One of the first promises to go will be the promise of jobs for all black workers at good wages. No government can control the level of employment or wages; this is impossible. The promise to provide decent housing for everyone along with health care, education and pensions will also be forgotten.

What is also inevitable is that the ANC government will come into conflict with the trades unions. Despite the present links between the unions and the ANC, when in power the new government will be concerned to run and develop a profitable economy. The unions will be concerned with wage increases and better conditions.

Higher profits

The two objects of higher profits and higher wages will be in conflict with each other and as always, this will lead to disputes at places of work with the possibility of the ANC government using the state machinery to smash the workers’ strikes. The function of the state is to administer class society and enforce the exploitation of workers and this is the anti-working-class role that the ANC is about to embrace.

The policy of apartheid was never in the best interests of South African capitalists. The Nationalist government was kept in power by an eccentric alliance of Afrikaner fanning interests and white urban workers who. to their eternal discredit, imagined that it was in their interest to keep black workers out of the skilled labour force and to deny them the vote. Hence the support of white workers for the various job reservation Acts and other forms of discrimination against black workers.

Best interests

Capitalist interests would have been best served by a reform programme aimed at integrating the black population within a multi-racial system of exploitation. The old United Party formed by Smuts might have achieved this but it was obliterated by the success of the National Party which held power continuously after 1948. Latterly, capitalists like the Oppenheimers put money into a new reforming party, the Progressive Party, but this also failed.

For many years it seemed that the Afrikaner bigots of the National Party would be the last people on earth to change their ideas but they have at last caught up with economic realities. Confidence in the economy began to drain away as a result of poor investment returns, the collapse of the Rand and rising commercial and political risks coupled with stagnation. In February 1990 De Klerk told the South African Parliament that "a new South Africa is only possible if it is bolstered by a sound and growing economy, with particular emphasis on the creation of employment".

Before this, the ANC had already been in discussion with South African capitalists assuring them that their interests would be safeguarded under an ANC government. For their part, the capitalists were anxious to emphasise their own non-racist credentials. For example, in 1985, the Chairman of Anglo-American Corporation, one of the biggest in South Africa, told the ANC negotiators that::

  “what we are concerned with is not so much whether the following generation will be governed by black or white people, but that it will be a viable country and that it will not be destroyed by violence and strife" 

he added, 

   "they [by which he meant the ANC and South African business] shared a common interest in maintaining the profitability of the South African state".

At last it seemed that under the ANC a reforming regime could emerge to facilitate the maximum exploitation of South African workers without distinction of colour on the basis of a broad consensus between the main political forces. This leaves the question of whether the groups outside the consensus, Inkatha and the extreme Afrikaners, will be strong enough to disrupt the new arrangements.

So, who will be the victors in this long struggle that has held the attention of the world since the end of Second World War? If the extreme elements are so foolish as to plunge the country into a civil war that will only add new chapters to a conflict in which the main sufferers, as always, will be the working class.

Given that the new arrangements work out on the other hand, we take it that black workers will enjoy greater freedom to organize in trades unions and benefit from the end of political censorship and repression.

We shall see. But the most immediate class beneficiaries of the constitutional changes will be the South African capitalists and those with high investment in the country.

As the Chairman of Anglo-American emphasised, when it comes to the human resources that it wishes to exploit, capital is completely free of racial prejudice.

We should ask whether these results will be worthy of the suffering, torture, imprisonment and deaths which have been the input of black workers into the struggle. It will be a very poor testament to the courage of that struggle, and all the sacrifices that have been made, if its gains are now thrown away in a betrayal in which the great majority continue to be exploited.

Surely, the least that struggle deserves is that those who have won the vote should think long and hard about how it should be used. Since all the main strands of South African history still intrude so forcibly into the present political situation it is useful for black workers to think back to their past. It is worth remembering that working for wages is very recent and that tribespeople had to be forced into it.

A colonial report entitled African Labour Efficiency Survey - 1949 was concerned with the problem of how to force the people of the Kikuyu in East Africa to become wage workers. It said this:

    "The East African comes from a tribal economy in which his human needs of sustenance can still very largely be met. He has not, to any significant degree, been de-tribalised. The East African has not been bent under the discipline of organised work . . .  In respect of the few working activities which in the past occupied him he was free and independent.
     Though the tasks he performed were prescribed by tribal law and custom, he could do them in his own way and at his own speed, for him time had no economic value. The work he did for others was not for wages, but was one of the duties arising from his relationship with his fellows. He gave satisfaction by his work and he derived a measure of contentment from it. In these circumstances he was willing to do what was required from him.
      To work steadily and continuously at the will of another was one of the hard lessons he had to learn when he began to work for Europeans."

This was how African people lived for countless centuries, not working for wages but co-operating to provide for the needs of the community.

Healthy society

Why should black workers embrace and continue the economic forces of capitalism that destroyed that way of life? If the traditional relationships of co-operation are extended to all other workers and are applied using modern technology, modern communications and fully democratic methods of organization, they are all we need to create a healthy society which can serve all our needs without distinction of race or sex.

Pieter Lawrence