Revolutionary lead needed to exploit weaknesses of apartheid regime

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Parade: white workers are moving to extreme right Vorster, under constant pressure from the bourgeois media and the liberal parliamentary opposition, was finally forced to resign, more information about the extent of the South being disclosed.

Reports have recently revealed deals with the tottering: reactionaries of Dominica and Zaire.

Consolidate

Prime Minister Botha has used Vorster's resignationfor which he strongly pressed-to attempt to consolidate his own control inside the cabinet and the He has also set about restoring a battered morale and self-confidence amongst the ranks of traditional nationalist voters.

Botha has shifted out Jimmy Kruger, Minister of Police and the main cabinet supporter of ex-Minister Mulder, by 'promoting' him to the relatively powerless Presidency of the Senate.

At the same time, in order to stem the alienațion of the powerful Transvaal wing of the party-of which Mulder and Vorster were past leaders-he has been forced to promote in the cabinet the die-hard right wing ideologue Andras Treurnicht: the Transvaal leader of party and a supporter of Mulder.

Majority

Inside South Africa, the immediate response of the bulk of the white electorate to 'Muldergate' appears to have been a consolidation nuu. #J' HY.. around the ruling. National Party, which commands an enormous electoral majority.

However a small but significant number of traditional nationalist voters have shifted support (in recent by-elections) to the extreme right wing breakaway Herstigte National Party (HNP).

Crisis The increased receptivity of some white workers to the extreme right wing demagogy of the HNP which, of course, continues within sections of the National Party, is not merely based on concern at the fate of Vorster and Mulder.

Fundamentally it is based on concern over their own fate in a situation where the ruling class is no longer able either economically or politically to simply continue immunising all white workers from the effects of the capitalist crisis.

The high rate of inflation and moves by the government and the employers to open up jobs, previously preserved for whites, to cheaper black labour are factors promoting concern amongst white workers.

Socialist Press has argued that the development of the struggle in South Africa has placed white liberal capitalIsts, with their black capita!- -:11 1L.:. L1--1--d-1 ist and petty bourgeois collaborators, in an increasingly important role as the ruling class seeks ways of stemming the forward movement of black workers.

Responded

It is partly in recognition of that new importance that Botha has responded to widespread opposition from the liberal controlled media (echoed in part by National Party newspapers) and withdrawn, for the meanwhile, his threats to further curb press 'freedom'.

In its efforts to assert full political control over black workers the government leadership, sometimes using the 'good offices' of the liberals, is adopting limited aspects of a long-standing liberal strategy of co-option.

This is aimed at securing through strictly limited and controlled reforms, an alliance with co-opted sections of the black petty-bourgeoisie and a layer oI skilled black workers.

These, they hope, will act as a buffer between the ruling class and the mass of black workers.

Like the ruling class of all capitalist states, the ruling class in South Africa has never been a static, homogeneous bloc either of whites as the bourgeois media would have it, or of white capitalists - as according to the radical bourgeois media.

There have always been divisions in the ruling class, especially relating to the use of black labour and the place of the black "petty bourgeoisie.

In recent years these discussions, which extend into the ruling National Party have been sharpened by the accelerated development of the real crises facing the ruling class-the crises of profits and political control posed most clearly during the events of Soweto.

Mulder Different sections of the ruling class and different sections of the ruling party have all attempted to make political capital of the disclosures leading up to the resignation of Vorster, using them as weapons in their ongoing political disagreements and divisions.

Divisions inside :the ruling class are not, however, automatically translated into the immediate strengthening of the working class.

Divided and weakened ruling classes, facing enormous crises have been able to inflict defeats on the working class precisely because the workers have lacked the revolutionary leadership necessary to exploit the crises facing capitalism and resolve them in the interests of workers LL LIAN MILVAVOLO VI VALIAN The development of the crisis of capitalism poses ever more sharply the major crisis facing the working class-that of leadership.

The only real way of building the strength of the working class is. by the development of revolutonary leadership, programme and organisational forms based unshakeably on the independent class interests of the working class.

Botha

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African government's secret diplomacy was