The mass struggles that have erupted inside the Republic of South Africa represent the extension of the revolutionary process that has been sweeping through southern Africa, inflicting heavy blows on the Portuguese African colonies and threatening today to topple the entire political strategy of the South African regime and that of world imperialism for southern Africa.
On 16 June this year a spontaneous uprising took place in Soweto, initially focussed on the Vorster regime's attempts to impose the teaching of Afrikaans in the schools of Soweto. In spite of the extreme brutality with which this and subsequent mobilisations were met, the confidence of the masses entering into struggle has not been abated. On the contrary, the struggles have extended themselves to other parts of the Republic, involving for the most part the urban population of the townships from Pretoria to Cape Town.
In the face of these events there have been attempts by imperialism to stave off this revolutionary process by accelerating the transfer of Zimbabwe and Namibia to neo-colonialist rule. The idea is to make some form of 'concession' both to the masses and to the neo-colonial regimes of black Africa in order to provide a breathing space for dealing with the internal situation of the Republic. Kissinger's current moves (at the time of writing) are clearly aimed at this strategy. But this also involves the need to find a means of bringing the Vorster regime more into line with imperialist policies for southern Africa, which in turn means a certain 'liberalisation' of the South African state itself. As The Economist (11 September, 1976) recently commented: 'This only underlines the truism that the key to southern Africa is South Africa, and although Mr. Vorster maybe ready to tolerate black rule in South West Africa and Rhodesia the pressure on him will not abate until South Africa itself is transformed.' The regime, however, remains intransigent about making anything more than the most superficial concessions to the masses — legalising of inter-racial sport, multiracial toilets etc. The only political concessions which it is prepared to make are those which fall within the bounds of apartheid — that is, within the homelands only.
The present policies of the South African regime grow out of a long chain of oppressive and racialist legislation, which stretches back to the colonial era and was systematised and theorised following the election of the first Nationalist Government in 1948. However, the history of apartheid as a coherent ruling class strategy dates back essentially to the 1950's and early 1960's — a period that coincided with the rapid growth of the South African economy based on a shift from the extractive to the secondary manufacturing industries. Thus in 1950 the sectoral contributions (as a percentage of the GDP) of the mining and manufacturing industries were 13 and 23 per cent respectively, while in 1971 they were 10 and 30 per cent, showing a substantial shift to the latter sector. The period was also marked by a general strengthening of the Afrikaaner capital against imperialist capital. Between 1950 and 1960 there was a sevenfold increase of the total assets held by Afrikaans companies, and between 1946 and 1960 the ratio between Afrikaaner and British income changed from 100:180 to 100:125.
This shift to secondary industrialisation intensified the demand for cheap African labour at various levels of skills, and therefore produced new problems of control of the labour power by the state. Thus a system was developed by which cheap labour could be produced and reproduced within the allocated 'homelands'; this meant that the wages of the African worker could be kept to a minimum while the state was relieved of the cost of the reproduction of labour. For the greater part, the skilled jobs were filled by white workers whose privileged position (earning on average five times the wage of black workers, as well as numerous other benefits) ensured that the regime was able to maintain a solid block against any advancement of the black worker. Thus the primary function of the apartheid 'theory' was that of the control and reproduction of cheap labour power. The shape it therefore assumed was that of regulating the relations between racial/ethnic groupings — and thereby classes. Intertwined with this was a policy to regulate the relations between South Africa and the black neo-colonial world to the north — necessary to allow the now expanding South African economy to find new markets. Thirdly, the new apartheid policy enabled the South African ruling block to strengthen itself, allowing it to go on the counter-offensive against its critics overseas.
The essential rationale for this system was that there existed within the boundaries of South Africa a number of different racial groupings, each with its own claim to territory, each with its own history, and each with its own projected 'development'. Thus 'homelands' were granted to each ethnic grouping, while the remainder of the land was designated the territory of the white population. This 'remainder' consists of about 83 per cent of the land — including the urban and industrialised centres, ports, fertile agricultural land, and the main repositories of economically significant minerals. In contrast, the 'homelands' (essentially no more than modified versions of the long-standing 'native reserves') are economically unviable, geographically incapable of self-sufficiency as they are surrounded by 'white land', and are often fragmented: KwaZulu, for instance, consists of twenty nine separate territories.
While millions of blacks are assigned to these homelands, large numbers of the population have never seen the homelands and many are considered 'temporarily absent'. This number varies with the homeland and its geographical relation to those areas with varying demands for labour power. Thus, for instance, 67.2 per cent of the total Venda population of South Africa live in the homeland, while only 35.5 per cent of the Tswana and Shagaan are found in the homeland. The blacks in the 'white' areas (both rural and urban) are thus treated as foreign immigrant workers with no political and very few legal rights. The only place that blacks are able to exercise their political rights — limited as they are — is in the homelands. Here it was intended that the blacks would gradually (and 'separately') develop, under white tutelage, towards self-government and eventually to independence.
Thus an attempt was being made under the flimsy cover of 'separate development' and 'independence' to convert the question of the brutal racial oppression of blacks in South Africa into the question of migrant labour. By this means the regime hoped to defend itself against critics from the western capitalist countries whose arguments on this question are somewhat feeble. Furthermore, by treating the South African question as a whole as a 'national question', they prepared to meet the black neo-colonial world on grounds where its criticisms are equally shaky. This was the essential foundation of South Africa's ideological counter-offensive and the whole 'detente' drive towards black Africa during the last year.
No less a part was played, of course, by the development of South Africa's foreign policy with regard to Zimbabwe. The tactical move towards participation in an attempt to bring about a 'peaceful settlement' in Rhodesia was intended to play an important role in 'normalising' the apartheid regime's relations with imperialism and the black neo-colonial bourgeoisie. The success of this manoeuvre could be gauged from the reaction of the Western capitalist press which dubbed Vorster as a possible 'Kissinger of Africa'. There was also a certain response from the neo-colonial world, with President Kaunda of Zambia announcing that 'Rhodesia is the last bastion of white supremacy in Africa'.
Apartheid in its most complete form — the bantustans — was thus an attempt to construct a system, which while not seriously undermining white domination or racial oppression, would provide a facade necessary for the manoeuvres of 'detente'. To accomplish this did not seem to require a great deal, since both imperialism and the black neo-colonial bourgeoisie were only too willing to accommodate South Africa and reach an agreement with it against the African masses. The problem lay in the fact that this whole policy flew in the face of the actual social and economic development of South Africa itself. The emergence of the apartheid system in the 1950's coincided, as we have said, with the rapid growth of the economy based on a shift from the extractive to the secondary manufacturing industries. However, this shift required the rapid expansion of skilled and semi-skilled labour beyond that which could be provided by the indigenous white population or indeed by immigration.
Secondly, the development of secondary manufacturing industries brought about a demand for a more stabilised and permanent workforce — in contrast to the demands of the agricultural and to some extent mining sectors, which benefited from a cheap labour force (although the development of South African agriculture has led to a situation where 50 per cent of farm labourers in the 'white' rural areas are regularly employed and therefore permanently settled there). Ironically, therefore, the supposed exclusion of blacks from the white areas actually coincided with a massive and permanent settlement of black labour in the 'white' urban areas, who were technically assigned 'homelands' from which they were classed as 'temporarily absent'. Thus one finds that in Soweto 92.9 per cent of adults aged between 18 and 25 years were actually born in Johannesburg (that is, including its associated townships), and 46.6 per cent of the adult population of all ages were born in Johannesburg. On a broader scale, the picture is much the same: of the 17.75 million blacks (in 1970) less than 47 per cent actually resided in the homelands. There were more than 4.5 million blacks living in the cities alone — compared with a total white population of just over 4 million.
But these figures considerably overstate the importance of the homelands as centres of black population. They ignore the fact that many of those living in the homelands are wives, children, dependents of the city-dwellers; and that many listed as resident in the homelands are actually migrant workers who earn their livelihood by occasional forays into the mines or farms. Over 70 per cent of the economically active population of the bantustans are involved in the migrant labour system. In Venda, for example, the population between the ages of 30-39 is 84 per cent women (who cannot readily find employment outside). Most of the jobs in the bantustans are taken by women who have little or no prospect of leaving the reserves, and therefore have no alternative to these extremely low-paying jobs. In those homelands where mines exist, only a small proportion of the local population is employed there. For example, only 20 per cent of the labour force in one of the Bophutha Tswana platinum mines are local Tswanas, and as many as 75 per cent are from outside South Africa itself.
In fact then, South African capitalism has spawned a massive black proletariat living on the fringes of its urban centres. They are totally without political rights, yet at the same time the economy is utterly dependent on them.
Brutal repression
Needless to say, the apartheid strategy of the South African regime was not born and developed without the use of brutal repression and the systematic destruction of all coherent opposition within the Republic. With the introduction of the Suppression of Communism Act of 1950, an offensive was launched to quell all opposition. In the countryside, armed resistance by 'peasants' in Sekhukhuniland and Zululand was crushed; so too were other forms of protest and resistance in the cities. Strikes by workers in the industrial centres were smashed, and boycotts of buses and mass burning of passbooks throughout the Republic received the same treatment. Several attempts were made in this period to form trade unions, but the majority were banned or broken up after meeting with violent opposition — particularly from the white trade unions. Thus in 1954 the Trades Union Council of South Africa (TUCSA) decided to exclude all black workers from the union. One of the results of this was the formation of SACTU (South African Congress of Trades Unions), which had a consultative status in the African National Congress (ANC), and was made up of unions that objected to discriminatory unions. By 1961 the membership of SACTU was in the region of 53,300, of whom 38,791 were blacks. By 1966 the harassment and repression meted out to its members forced it to go underground.
The Sharpeville massacre of March 1960 largely smashed the urban resistance movement. A mass protest was organised by various political organisations calling for a 'stay away from work'. A peaceful demonstration of 10,000 was organised to march to the police station to hand in their passbooks. The resultant massacre claimed 67 dead and 186 wounded, and post-mortem evidence discovered that 70 per cent of the bullets had struck the back of the bodies as people had tried to escape. Once again the masses had found themselves in a situation in which they were unable to defend themselves against the predictable brutal repression that has characterised the regime's attitude to protest. We shall comment again on the inadequacies of the 'stay-at-home' protests organised in the present struggles in South Africa.
Following the massacre, the South African Communist Party (SACP), turned towards a desperate ultra-leftist policy of sabotage which was in turn crushed by the security forces in 1963, with the arrest of the most important CP/ANC leaders and underground units. In the bantustans this led to a significant increase in the credibility of the traditional chiefs, who were drawn into collaboration with the Government's policies. In the urban townships, where no such outlet was available, it resulted in the frustration of the blacks being turned inwards, leading to a dramatic increase in the incidence of violent crime within the communities.
Both these factors led to a situation in which the regime adopted a certain degree of laissez-faire towards the black communities. Since the violence in the townships was fulfilling a certain role as a safety valve for the frustrations of the blacks, little or nothing was done about it. Despite an average of 13 murders and up to 40 robberies with violence per week in Soweto, for instance, less than one third of the crimes were reported or ended in convictions. Periodic forays into the township to arrest those living there illegally were made by the police, but although the official legal population of the township was supposed to be 587,970 in 1970, it was actually nearing one million at that time.
Urban Bantu Councils have been established in the townships with a proportion of elected representatives from the different ethnic groupings to provide a minimal veneer of credibility to the 'self-government' notion. These bodies, commonly termed 'castrated bulls', in fact have no function but merely act as bodies for channelling minor complaints. Similar bodies — the Bantu Assemblies — have been established in the 'homelands' and on average contain about 45 per cent elected members, the remainder being appointed by the state. Such innovations as Bantu Education, which carved out special schools, teachers (often black), and curriculum (designed to avoid giving the black population ideas beyond the possibilities designated for them by the regime), also introduced a new degree of autonomy in the operation of the black communities.
The new 'breathing space' in this period, combined with the political developments in the Portuguese colonies, resulted in the embryonic development of a new vanguard in the black communities together with some elementary forms of organisation. In the early 1970's the new black industrial proletariat began to find its feet in a series of major strikes, largely spontaneous. In the first six months of 1973 alone there were 511 recorded strikes which led to the arrest of 834 people. In 1974-75 there were 317 illegal strikes involving 51,412 workers. Coinciding with this was the emergence of the 'black consciousness' movement, which was organised by the black college student organisation (SASO), the school student movement (SASM), and co-ordinated more widely by the Black People's Convention (BPC). Combining with both of these was the emergence of a permanently urbanised sector of the black population who have no identification with the homelands, who do not suffer from the demoralisation implanted by the repression of the early 1960's, and who are largely free of the ethnic divisions so assiduously sown among the black population by the regime.
The decisive turning point for this new vanguard was the advance of the revolutionary process in southern Africa. The victory of FRELIMO in Mozambique was greeted with mass rallies organised by SASO and the BPC, proclaiming their solidarity. Throughout the Angolan war, demonstrations in support of the MPLA were organised. Above all, the defeat suffered by South Africa in Angola was to inspire enormous confidence in the new vanguard. The South African state, once thought of as invincible, with its massive machinery of arms, was defeated and humiliated by the black masses of Angola.
The demonstrations that began in Soweto and have since spread across the country thus represent the first stages of a link up between this new vanguard and the urbanised proletariat in a new movement of opposition to the regime. The miserable conditions of life and the intense oppression which they have suffered make their resistance a ferocious one indeed. Moreover, it is now reinforced by a stronger internationalist consciousness of the developments in the anti-imperialist struggles to the north. But in spite of the fact that the struggles have become widespread, they have by no means fused a unity within the black population. The impressive mobilisations of the 'coloured' population in some areas, combining with those of the black population, of course mark an important development — since in general the coloured population have maintained a more privileged status relative to the blacks, and for the greater part have been assured of a more secure livelihood than their black counterparts. But the ability of the South African police to manipulate the Zulu workers against the workers of Soweto is, however, a testimony to the fact that serious divisions exist between the urban layers and those who have roots in the homelands — as is the capacity of the homeland leaders to back up the Government without any real opposition from their base. The roots of these divisions lie in the fact that the latter are considerably more susceptible to the ideology of the 'homelands'. They are housed away from the rest of the population in single-sex hostels to which they are strictly confined and they are in general riddled with the insecurity about their jobs inherent to the nature of migrant labour. Furthermore, their wages are in general lower than those of their urban counterparts.
Nevertheless, the mobilisations that have taken place over the past three months have been widespread and ferocious. These struggles can only be dealt with by extreme repression, which in effect, explodes all the regime's careful moves towards detente with black Africa and the normalisation with imperialism, and also strengthens the international opposition to the racist regime. Moreover, it comes at a time when the international isolation of South Africa would have great economic consequences, for the new industrial economy is desperately in need of new markets which it can only hope to develop through northward expansion into black Africa.
General strikes
The recent calls for general strikes focused primarily in Johannesburg and Cape Town have met with a widespread response from the workers. There have been reports that in Johannesburg there was a 90 per cent boycott, while in Cape Town 70 per cent stayed away from work. However, as in the Sharpeville call for a 'stay-at-home' strike, the workers have left themselves open to the most brutal repression, with few means of defending themselves against the inevitable attack that is launched by the state. Thus, on the first day of the three day general strike the police marched into Soweto and Alexandra and quickly arrested some 1,800 people, mostly from Soweto, without great difficulties. Against this predictable attack from the state the masses were unable to make any decisive gains (save for the impact it had on the economy) since they were in no real position to effect a bargain.
A 'stay-at-home' strike removes the workers from the point of production where they would be able to seize the factories and industries in a sit down strike or occupation. Any attempts by the forces of repression to break up such strikes would necessarily pose the question of imposing severe damage to private property and the machinery of the industries. Such a tactic would immediately place the workers at an advantage and in a position to press for gains on other fronts. It would also open the way towards coordinating actions between workers from different townships or areas, as well as laying a viable basis upon which democratic 'councils of action' and workers' self defence militias could be formed. For revolutionary Marxists it is crucial to fight for such an orientation inside South Africa today.
However, in spite of the unity that has been forged, and in spite of the indisputable upsurge of the revolutionary process that is taking place in southern Africa, we should not be over optimistic about the developments there. Against the most positive aspects must be balanced the massive accumulation of military technology by the South African state and its virtual monopoly by the whites. South Africa is today virtually self-sufficient in the manufacture of low and middle-level military weaponry. In 1973-74 the apartheid regime spent over 481 million Rands on defence. By 1967, it was capable of producing 140 different types of munitions and could manufacture wide ranges of infantry weapons and armoured plating — for instance, the FN7.36mm automatic rifle produced under licence from Fabrique Nationale of Belgium. South Africa is also capable of producing Mirage III and F-I jet fighters and vast numbers of other weapons.
Furthermore, there is little prospect of serious differentiation within the ranks of the white ruling block at present — the entire white population benefits massively from the exploitation and oppression of the non-white masses. Insofar as there is a 'liberal' element, it rests upon the big bourgeoisie and its political wing in the Progressive Reform Party, for whom a neo-colonial solution is at least conceivable. But the white masses have nothing to gain from a victorious South African revolution except the loss of their privileges.
The dimensions of the political crisis that has now exploded in the face of the South African bourgeoisie are only too clear. All the good will in the world of imperialism and the black neo-colonial states cannot bail it out of the present dilemma. In fact the prospect is that of an even greater discrediting of imperialism and the neo-colonial bourgeoisie throughout the continent as a result of their collaboration with, or failure to take decisive action against the apartheid regime. In this sense the struggle in South Africa will rapidly become a struggle of continental dimensions, with a decisive impact on the world relation of forces.
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For the Fourth International this poses two important tasks. The first and most urgent task is that of building a world wide campaign of solidarity — in particular in Britain — with the struggles in southern Africa. This must above all involve an international workers' boycott of all trade and other links with the racist state. The second and more long term task is the building of the nucleus of a revolutionary party in South Africa and in the southern African countries. Only with the achievement of these tasks can the full potential of the struggles which have opened up be realised.