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Changed Pass law offenders in South African jail di more .IF.. •arlina alono.. «th aun SPECIAL OFFER copies of Socialist Press. I enclose £1,50.

Send to Socialst Press, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London The South African racist state last Friday claimed another victim-Soloman Mahlangu.

He was hanged despite worldwide protests fromamongst others-the United Nations General Assembly, the Commonwealth President Giscard d'Estaing of France, West German Foreign Minister Genscher and British Foreign Secretary David Owen.

Mahlangu trained as an African National Congress freedom fighter after the Soweto events of 1976.

In June along with two comrades he returned to South Africa and they were intercepted by racist police.

One escaped, another Mondy Motloung shot two of the white police dead.

Tortured

Mahlangu aiso escaped but was arrested later when he tried to find out what had happened to Motoung. He was tortured, tried and convicted of murder and refused the right of appeal.

Motloung received severe brain damage as a result of police torture and was held unfit to plead.

Despite the fact that this was officially the first political execution for 15 years Mahlangu's judicial murder was in fact one of a long se , of political killings in South rica including that of Steve Bi last year.

Shah's friend

Owen, imperialism's left-talking errand boy land friend of the 'Shah' of Iran) who tours Southern Africa urging the liberation forces to come to a negotiated agreement with imperialism also has the nerve to demand a reprieve.

He does so because he thinks this much-publicised judicial murder does nothing to help the interests of imperialism or his own liberal image if it was carried out without his protest.

It should have been clear from the start that if Soloman Mahlangu's life depended on the sort of campaign mapped out by the Anti Apartheid Movement and the African National Congress then he would inevitably hang.

The South African government do not respond to tele grams. But this kind of protest was the focus of the ANC and AA campaign.

Independence

Solidarity must start fror the independent mobilisation c the working elass which alon has the power required fc effective solidarity.

A mat step could useraliy be the launching of a campaign for the cutting aff of all supplies to the South African Embassy and a campaign for the rooting out and expulsion of the hundreds of South African secret agents operating freely in this country.

Nothing to say

No comment on Mahlangu's judicial murder could be allowed to pass without reference to the policy of the organisation which trained him.

The ANC has nothing to say about the systematic work necessary to prepare the mobilisation of the black workers around an independent working class programme.

The focus of their 'strategy' is elitist, more often than not adventurist, armed struggle.

The flower of the black workhly class yout dre urged to leave the country, train as guerrillas and return to carry out hopeless military acts.

Armed struggle in South Africa must be posed first of all as defensive action linked to a strategy of actually organising and politically directing the working class.

For the ANC it is seen as both a catalyst for sparking off struggle and as a form of "pressure" on the South African state.

If Soloman Mahlangu is not to have died in vain then those like him, those prepared to give their lives to free the masses from capitalist and racist oppression, must seek another road.

That road is the building of a South African Trotskyist party on the basis of a struggle around an independent revolutionary If you the coupo Please sen Name.

Address.

NW5 1HR.

EXPENDITURE he answers in PRESS CUTS IN PUBLIC WAGE CUTS DO SOCIALIST fighting defend jobs, social service 10 ISSUES POST FREE! would like to take advantage of this 1 below.

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