Workers' Solidarity Key to

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THE 1981 conference of the Anti-Apartheid Movement takes place at the Westminster Cathedral Conference Centre, Morpeth Terrace, London SW1 (10am-5.30pm) on November 1. It is open to all AAM members: apply for membership (£7.50 a year for individuals or organisations), or send resolutions (before September 18) to the AAM office, 89 CharIn this article JIM FARNHAM discusses issues facing South African solidarity activists. IN THE last few weeks, = new strike wave in South Africa, based mainly on the demand for a living wage, has spread from factory to factory in the East Rand -concentrated industrial rea near Johannesburg.

In the same area, 90 workers are struggling to get méir jobs back after the entire workforce was sacked • being members of a anion at Stag Packing.

Like many companies in South Africa, Stag Packing is directly linked with a British -axed company. It is a sub*liary of Turner and There have been and will *e declarations of outrage at such sackings from the liber3i:. from capitalists who seek to promote a more liberal mage, from trade union Fureaucrats who each day knife the struggle of workers on the back.

But it is only from = orkers, and working class sition that real support can come to materially strengthen the black workers in struggle.

The fight must be taken up to mobilise appropriate -lacking and supporting Irike action aimed at Turner and Newall in Britain.

The existing leadership of me Anti Apartheid Movement (AAM) can never be relied upon to mobilise such lass action. Instead these iberals and clerics measure their success by the number -E bourgeois dignitaries that iye can get to declare themwives opposed to apartheid. They seek to 'develop' the struggle through sodies in the UN.

Moroccan

The Moroccan King has ently ordered troops to : i strike. The President Sierra Leone last week • - a planned general * **. haunda, who public• pi when talking about uttering under apartheid :.. month sent his parara to try to smash a Fi thousands of mine .. who were sinking 2:** their own suffering in I- thandi who has just Powers 1o ban all in India writes letters lotte Street, London W1.

supporting strikes in South Africa.

The Stalinists who are loud in attacking apartheid, prop up the imperialist system of which the South African state is a crucial part with their class collaboration and peaceful coexistence'.

Sections of the capitalist class who grow rich off the exploitation and oppression of workers each day, make speeches in which they criticise the way in which exploitation and oppression are organised in South Africa. Even the imperialist backers of the apartheid regime claim to be "anti-apartheid"

But the struggle against apartheid, if it is ever to be carried through to victory, must be developed and built as the workers struggle for power.

No one who exploits and oppresses workers anywhere can ever be the real ally of workers in South Africa -whose real struggle is to destroy oppression and exploitation, not re-organise Repeatedly mass demonstrations show the deep opposition to apartheid amongst workers and militants.

Symbolic acts - the pickets, the protest meetings, marches and demonstrations - can all act 1o boost the morale of South African workers, breaking down the constant efforts by the state to create a sense of isolation amongst those workers.

But left in the hands of well-meaning liberals. such symbolic acts are used as substitutes for the struggle for more effectire solidarity action. The reality is that much more than symbolic acts are possible - and much more is necessary.

Supporting strikes and blacking action are the weapons which the working class internationally can and must wield.

The South African ruling class is completely entwined in international finance capital. There is almost no major international capitalist company which does not invest, directly or indirectly, inside South Africa.

Connive

Again and again there are strikes in South Africa at factories which are subsidiaries of companies based in the imperialist countries. The international capitalist class and its imperialist governments connive with their ally inside South Africa to protect capitalist rule and property.

But exactly the same international links lay the basis for effective and powerful working class action, which can materially aid the struggle of black workers.

Despite imperialist declarations for a halt to arms supplies for South Africa. arms are continuing to be supplied. It is only working class action to black suppites of arms and related materials that can stop the 101.

Only through the struggle to open the books, and against all secret diplomacy. can the realities of imperialit connivance with their ally if South Africa be uncovered by the working class, and effective blacking of arms implemented.

In addition, the struggle for solidarity demands the fight to open the books to investigate the links of every company with South Africa and thereby to lay the basis for immediate supporting class action whenever struggles develop at linked companies inside South Africa.

This requires the direct building of factory to factory links, so that the demands and needs of South African workers can be directly conveyed to their elass brothers ańd sisters.

In order to keep all links with South Africa under their own bureaucratic control, the leadership of the AAM has recently rejected a motion calling for the building of such direct links.

MOBILISING half the country's police force.

Robert Muldoon's New Zealand government enabled the rugby international on August 17 to go ahead despite 20,000 anti-apartheid demonstrators.

The South African team workers refused to serve them,, and were then smuggled into the ground at dawn, six hours before the match was due to start. (No wonder they lost!)

Now Muldoon has given civil servants paid leave to serve as special constables.

But the protest against apartheid continues to grow.

The New Zealand National Seamen's Union, which has already held one one-day strike against the South African tour, will be striking again on August 29. In this they have the support of the trade union bureaucrats. for whom any independent working class mobilisation is a challenge to their control.

Too often have requests for solidarity action from workers in South Africa been swallowed up in bureaucratic manoeuvres -with shop stewards and workers on the shop floor not even being informed by union officials.

This has recently occurred in both the Wilson Rowntree strike (subsidiary of Rowntree Mackintosh) and the Leyland strike.

As a Trotskyist involved in the struggle for solidarity action in the USA put it:

"The bureaucrats fear that if. workers are mobilised to take strike and blacking action in support of black workers in South Africa, next thing they'll be taking the same action in support of workers at home."

The struggle inside South Africa depends on building the independent organisations of the working class and mobilising it behind its own demands and class interests.

So too outside South Africa does the struggle for the most effective solidarity depend on building independent working class action.

This is the struggle which Socialist Organiser will take up inside the AAM. At every point, we will seek to develop and deepen the hatred of apartheid into an understanding and hatred of the class basis on which it arises and is maintained.

We will seek to orientate those involved in anti-apartheid mobilisations to the working class, to take up the struggle for the most effective programme of solidarity action - working class action of blacking and supporting strikes.

This struggle for solidarity with South African workers must not be limited to the organised AAM. It must also be taken directly to workers and into the organisations of the working class.

Messages of support to strikers at Stag Packing: National Union of Textile Workers, 18 Palladium Buildings, Third Street, Springs, SA Wilson Rowntree workers: SAAWU, P.O. Box 7002, East London 5200, SA.

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Organiser, Thursday

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NEW ZEALAND BATTLES ZEA_AND SEAMEN PLAN STRIKE

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