26 "Africa in Struggle', LETTERS 1 Send to:
London N1.
AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS South Africa 49 Rathbone Street, London WIA 4NL. Women 3 Section 17th February 1976 Dear Friend, Greetings on March 8, International Women 3 Day, from the women of South Africa. International Women 3 Year- 1975 — has drawn to a close, but the fight for the complete independence of women continues, all over the western world, but particularly in those parts where social and national emancipation are incomplete. In order to guarantee equality of the sexes, the UN General Assembly S Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee has followed up International Women 3 Year by proclaiming the 1976- 85 decade to be one of " equality, development and peace " for women. So the implementation of equality is envisaged to be a fairly long-drawn-out process. In the countries of Southern Africa where the national liberation movements are gaining strength great strides are inevitable. The struggle to eliminate the last vestiges of white domination in Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa is broadening in scope and drawing ever broader sections of the oppressed peoples into action, and women are making their contribution on an ever-increasing The liberation of Guinea Bissau and Mozambique from Portuguese colonialism has led to a striking improvement in the status of women in these countries; and in Angola where South African imperialist agression is hindering the complete liberation of the Angolan people, women are playing a vital role not only in the armed forces of MPLA but also in the task of reconstruction and the restructuring of society in free Angola. In struggles involving the whole people, women are inevitably brought forward and enabled to make giant strides in their progress towards equality. COMMENT We thank you for your letter of 17th Feb. We return your greetings for International Women's Day. We do so particularly because women in Africa have played a leading role in the struggle against colonialism and racialism and for socialism. In South Africa in particular women have been in the front line of the defence of the black working class against the merciless attacks of the white supremacist bourgeois regime. In the armed struggle that has begun the liberation of the workers and peasants in Angola, Guinea Bissau and Mozambique, African women have been in the forefront. IN Namibia and Zimbabwe that armed struggle continues and in these areas too women have begun to assert themselves and to claim their rightful place in the front line of the revolutionary struggle. By these means the women of Southern Africa have set a heroic example to the oppressed masses and to the working class throughout the world. We assure you that the Fourth International will maintain its solidarity with all those in combat against colonialism and white supremacy in Africa. We echo the calls raised in your letter for the release of all South African political prisoners, and for the end of South African interference in Angola. We will continue to use our press and the human resources of our organisation to expose the atrocities of the Vorster and Smith regimes and the complicity therein of Britism and American imperialism. We will continue to struggle with such power as we have against those regimes and their British and American backers. We restress that we support all organisations taking the side of the masses against imperialism, against racism and against capitalism in Africa. We do so because we also consider it our duty to raise certain criticisms, of the ANC in particular, and to clearly state the political differences that make us unable to give support to all the demands and slogans around which you fight. Two issues above all separate us from you and we consider them of fundamental importance. Both show themselves in your letter to us: (1) While we fully support the cause of the equality of women and are fully in favour of the smashing of the South Afriean regime we do not consider that the appeals of the United Nations or of the Organisation of African Unity constitute any kind of basis for advance on these two issues. The UN has proved completely unable to take action against the Smith and Vorster regimes. When the Angolan masses needed military aid this came not from the American capitalist dominated UN but from the Russian and Cuban 97, Caledonian Road, In the country of greatest repression, South Africa, although women are the most oppressed politically, legally and socially, they nevertheless played a leading part in the resistance movement throughout the 65 years since Union. Today the Women S Section of the African National Congress of South Africa has a multifold task - of defending the women of South Africa, of all races, against the oppressive apartheid rule; of protecting family life increasingly disrupted and destroyed by the inhuman pass laws; of asserting the honour of women against the iniquitous Immorality Act and the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act; Job Reservation Act; of mobilising and organising women to fight alongside their menfolk in the liberation movement; of propagating their cause and winning support from the freedomloving peoples of the whole world. It is in this critical situation facing our organisation in South Africa that we in the African National Congress (S.A.) Women 3 Section are approaching you to show your solidarity with our cause. We desperately need all the help we can get so that we in turn can help our people to achieve their liberation. There are many ways in which you can help - by giving financial, material or moral aid to our movement, by organising your own solidarity activity, by fighting lies of the orster regime and its allies, by boycotting South African goods and by implementing the decisions of the United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity calling for the total isolation of the South African regime in every sphere - diplomatic, economic, cultural and educational. RELEASE ALL SOUTH AFRICAN POLITICAL PRISONERS EXPEL ALL SOUTH AFRICAN TROOPS FROM ANGOLA Yours sincerely, Hetty September secretary Women's Section workers' states. The UN is not only ineffectual but practically serves only as a political bargaining place for the bourgeoisies of various countries (1). The participation of representatives of the workers' states in its deliberations redounds as much to their discredit as their military aid to the Angolan masses is creditable. The world bourgeoisie may be embarassed by Smith and Vorster and may go so far as to pass pious resolutions against them. It will never aid the resistance against them for in the midst of the struggle for national independence the spectre of revolutionary socialism rises up, a spectre which these people consider it their constant task to exorcise.(2) Moreover, as the complicity of the leaders of the Chinese people with the CIA and American imperialism over Angola has shown the support of those controlling the workers" states for the struggles of the masses is by no means guaranteed. For all these reasons it is vitally necessary to reassert the positions of Marx and Lenin that it is the masses themselves, and above all the working class, who alone are able to carry through the fight for national independence and for socialism. (2) We consider you to be subject to serious misunderstanding concerning the equality of the sexes. Ever since the Communist Manifesto of 1848 sexual equality has been a demand of revolutionary socialists. The form in which it was raised by Marx, by Engels, by Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky was in the call for the abolition of the family. The institution of the family is the main obstacle to the equality of women. It is by this means that women are reduced to the status of child-rearers and hand-maids to their men. The family in any form is not compatible with full equality for women nor with socialism. The oppression of women is not abstract but real, actual, daily and with an identifiable social root - the family. The masses themselves have already outgrown the family. Every revolutionary struggle tears women out of the home and makes domestic tasks and the care of children the responsibility of the whole of the community. This was so in the Paris Commune in 1870 and is so in the struggles in Southern Africa today. The inhumanity of the pass laws is not contained in their destruction of family life. To be sure the pass laws destroy human relationships and wrench lover away from beloved. But it is not necessary to propose subjection to the men as the alternative to repression of the white supremacist regime. On the contrary it is only in the knowledge and determination that this is not how matters will end that the women of South Africa will be able to stay in the forefront of struggle. In the same way the answer to the Immorality RED BOOKS 97 Caledonian road, London N1 Britain: Please add 15% for postage and packing (minimum 15p) on orders under £5. Overseas: Please add 15% for postage and packing (minimum 20p) on all orders. Act is not the vague and abstract notion of "protecting women's honour" but the political principle that women themselves, and only they, shall control their own bodies. It is women who have children and it must be women who decide whether children are had or not. Moreover the equality of women must include the full right of sexual choice - a choice not subject to the marriage contract and a choice that ensures there are no longer women who take the part of victim in relationships of love and sex. The two issues we raise, we consider to be of fundamental importance for revolutionaries. We are only too happy to work with you or with others against the Smith and Vorster regimes. But we will continue to raise and explain our political positions and to argue for the road of revolutionary socialism. We welcome and have always welcomed debate within the workers' movement and welcome your comments on this document and will print them in our journal. In the meantime we call on you to discuss with us the building of solidarity with African freedom fighters by socialists and the workers movement in this country. The Mast f Engels REVOLU LEON TROTSK* (1931-39) MAIL ORDER: Janice Mills compromise. Get all your books from Felis Morrow Resolution & Counter EONTED BY ARE ROBER Resolution in Spain Neo-Colonialism in West Africa BOLSHEVIK PARTY A POPULAR ORTLINE BY CRICORI ZINNIE О ГЕВАНИТИ THON THE BION Teamster Power forall Dobbr 01-278 9529 Monday to Thursday: 10am to 6pm; Saturday: 10.30am to 5.30pm. Late Opening: Friday: 10am to 8pm. Orders over £5 will be sent post free. Books will be sent seamail; allow 5 to 6 weeks for delivery. 27 DOWN WITH SMITH AND VORSTER! DOWN WITH THE IMPERIALISTS IN AFRICA! LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM IN AFRICA! LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALISM IN AFRICA! revolutionary greetings, (1) The OAU has also compromised itself time and time again with the forces of imperialism. Its passivity during the struggle in Angola is just one more incident in its history of vacillation and (2) Even now British imperialism is preparing, fruitlessly we hope, to save Smith from the wrath of the people of Zimbabwe. Leon Trotsky TERRORIST