Black workers unite against police attacks

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REPRESSION is an every day reality in South Africa. But over the last weeks, there has been a significant escalation of state attacks on sections of the workers' movement. A central part of this has been the ongoing series of attacks by police on workers squatting in the Cape Town area.

According to the crude logic of the apartheid government of the South African ruling class, African workers who are not useful to profits must be kicked out of the urban areas - to battle against starvation at no cost to the state in the bantustans.

The threat of explosions of anger in the urban areas by millions of unemployed workers is defused - by banishing those workers to the rural areas. The costs of providing any social services for those workers are removed - by dumping them without any social services in the bantustans.

The problem of housing expenditure is solved by the state - by a conscious policy of creating a housing shortage, and then banishing those without housing.

Stooges The bantustans are concentration camps policed by stooges who compete in brutality to prove how well they have learnt from their masters in the South African government.

Inside the towns the workers are enclosed in heavily policed townships, dragged down by terrible poverty and chained by repressive laws, courts, officials and armed police.

This is the system through which the profiteering of capital in South Africa is protected and promoted.

But it is being hit at every turn by a growing movement of resistance spearheaded by black worlers.

Strikes have spread from one factory to the next, through the mines, from one part of the country to the other.

There is an unparalleled growth in workers' organisations. The militancy and confidence of the black working class are growing as workers find in struggle after struggle that despite the repression, whatever the law, they can use their class strength to organise, to mobilise and to force concessions against the. class enemy.

The ruling class is weakened by itsecapitalist crisis, and as the boom bascé on the high price of gold disappears, it is being forced to look for ways of making workers pay the costs of the But they don't just sit there thinking hesitant, divided and confused about how to do it.

But to defend their profits, there is no other course open to them - the strength of the working class must be broken.

The current attacks on squatters in the Cape Town area represent a conscious effort by the bosses' apattheid government to isolate and smash what they regard as a more vulnerable section of the working class.

There are three aspects to this - firstly to demonstrate the might and determination of the state to intimidate all workers; secondly, to weaken the workers' movement as preparation for attacking stronger sections; thirdly, to discipline the working class and take back gains won by workers over the last period.

Crossroads

In Cape Town this means above all to attack the gains made in the Crossroads In 1979, massive united resistance from over 20,000 squatters became a national focal point of workers struggle. Faced with determined resistance, and fearing the mass response which a state attack could provoke, the government was forced to make major concessions on two crucial issues - provision of housing and the Pass Laws.

Intensified

But in the current deepened conflict, the victories of yesterday are no longer strong enough to win the victories of today. Over the last year, attempts by the government to drive out squatters have intensified.

A prelude to the current attacks was armed state action against a workers' occupation of a hostel. Although the occupation was broken, the efforts by the government to drive these workers into the bantustans have been repeatedly defied.

Alter arrests, crippling tines, and banishment at gunpoint, these workers, mainly women, have repeatedly returned to the urban area.

Solidarity And the struggle is drawing massive solidarity from workers with some legal rights in the towns. A support committee based on trade unions, community organisations, women's and youth organisations, has been organised.

Through supportive strike action, these feelings of solidarity could be mobilised into class action which would massively strengthen the squatters' resistance.

The squatters have repeatedly defied the efforts of the police to crush them. Mass mobilisations have confronted police. Workers in nearby communities have helped them to evade arrest.

There have been protest marches, massing in demonstrations outside the courts. And arrested workers have defied their banishment by returning immediately.

All of this shows willingness and ability to defy which exposes as a complete lie the picture of passivity and hymn-singing acquiescence portrayed by the liberals.

In fact, it is the liberals and the big capitalists who at every point have tried to convince workers of their defencelessness. In doing this, they try to turn workers away from the escalation and broadening of class action necessary for victory.

The big capitalists and their liberal mouthpieces complain about the harshness of some government actions, not because of concern for the victims, but because of fear of the anger and escalation of struggle which such actions could by Tony Richardson FOLLOWING on the two day strike of print workers aimed at the growing attacks on Solidarity, the union has now taken up the question of the reporting of its forthcoming Congress.

The technique of the bureaucracy has been to try to win over the Solidarity leadership, but also to prepare for any other eventuality by putting out a stream of anti-wrecker' propaganda aimed at the It is to counter this latter method that the union leadership has been forced to threaten a national black-out of the press, television and radio.

This is a further important development towards what would be a part of a transitional programme for the political revolution in Poland, i.e. workers' control of the media.

It's not seen this way by the Solidarity leadership but the objective forces drive that way.

The offer by the government of two half-hour TV slots leaves the bureaucracy in control of the media and leaves the Walesa leadership in control of those slots. This is not the same as workers' control even though it is embarrassing to the bureaucracy.

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workers access to media