The Wor of Nam

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Jim Farnham reviews The Workers national Defence and Aid Fund for At a time when imperialism is facing the challenge of rising working class struggle in the advanced capitalist countries, workers and peasants in colonial and semi-colonial countries are being driven into sharper and politically developing levels of opposition.

Struggles against national oppression and for democratic rights are combined with resistance to economic attacks by imperialism and its agents.

Worse still for imperialism, it also faces the crisis posed by the political instability of crucial imperialist agents and puppets-epitomised by the overthrow of the Shah.

The level of mass struggle has on more than one occasion forced imperialism to sacrifice its reactionary agent of yesterday-as in Nicaragua-in a frantic effort to promote the conditions for the development of a stable reactionary agent tomorrow.

This has meant above all else the search for ways of stemming the forward movement of the oppressed masses, whether through defeat or diversion of mass In some situations, -as in Portugal in the wake of the 1974 events-imperialism has been forced to sacrifice its direct political control, relying temporarily on the collaboration politics of Stalinism, petty bourgeois nationalism and reformism as a way of securing indirect political control.

At the same time, imperialism has shown its willingness to resort to any form of barbarism to maintain its decaying system of exploitation and oppres sion.

Even as the Shah was being sacrificed, imperialist aid was being rushed in to prop up the equally murderous Bokassa in Black Africa.

Repressive strength

And even as imperialism manoeuvres to secure a pro-capitalist compromise in Nicaragua at the expense of the dictator Somoza, Mobutu, relies on imperialist aid to prop up his tottering dictatorship in Zaire.

In Southern Africa, the crises facing imperialism have meant that even as it connives with the Stalinists and nationalists to secure neocolonial solutions which head off mass struggles, it is forced to rely increasingly heavily on the repressive strength of the most powerful promoter of imperialist interests in the region-the South African state.

This book contains a mass of empirical information.

This is particularly useful given the lack of official government statistics and the distortion of the bourgeois media.

Completely It enables readers to begin to understand what precisely the maintenance capitalist relations means the Namibian worker.

Namibia's economy is completely dominated by South African, British ind American capital-to the extent that up to half the gross national product is plundered in the form of repatriated' profits.

Capitanst avelopment Manitatind 1---1--has been markedly uneven, reflecting the imperialist robbery of mineral wealth, and the maintenance of Namibia as a captive market for the South African manufacturing industry.

About 90% of Namibia's imports come from South Africa. The manufacturing and industrial sectors thus remained weak and undereloped.

Mining-in particular diamonds, uranium and copper-makes up around one Farm workers' living conditions third of the GDP, while manufacturing-mainly food processing and construction accounts for less than one sixth.

Over half of the exports from Namibia go to South Africa, thereby saving valuable foreign exchange tor the South African capitalists at the same time as furnishing South Africa with a source of vital raw materials.

The South African government also receives an important contribution to its revenue in the form of taxes and royalties paid by overseas firms operating in Namibia, particularly the mining companies.

wages For the multinational investors, Namibia has served as an extremely lucrative source of profits.

From 1970 to 1973 for example the net profits of the Consolidated Diamond Mines almost tripled.

The same company has, according. to the authors, acquired a reputation over the years as paying the best wages available to black workers.

Yet in 1976, CDM spent only about 10% of its net profits on wages for its black miners.

Wages paid to black workers in Namibia are even lower than those in South Africa, where 30 to 40% of the total product of the mining industry is paid in remuneration-the comparable figure for Namibia is 15%-20%.

The highest wages available to black workers are in mining-for an unskilled miner working a 60 hour week, the highest weekly wage in 1977 was £15.

The average wage for the white workers is some 24 times as great as that of the black-these facts point to the existence of a super exploited black working class whose living standards are appreciably lower then even the appalling standards of their fellow workers in South Africa.

Repressive laws

As is to be expected, this super exploitation maintained through a mass of repressive laws, an extensive police force and a South African army of occupation.

After the first imperialist world war, Namibia was transferred from German to South African rule.

Building on the genocidal wars of dispossession waged by German imperialism, the •South African state laid the foundations for the penetration of British capital. s Ti Aid Dam Etosha Pan Outjo Otjiwa Okaha Usakos Swakan Wahza Atlantic Maltąhöhe Lüda Ocea Oranjamund fro res Africa Ill Afri rive * raih = far -othi cap mai bopulation I40 With the rise of the control over economic power of the South supply to the African bourgeoisie after the mines and fac Second World War, the Male wor oppressed masses of Namibia to leave their were increasingly subjected to Bantustans the ruthless system of contracts of migrant labour-the method for starvatio of labour control developed towns mil inside South Africa by the capitalist own apartheid capitalist state.

Namibia was balkanised Face 'de into ten Bantustans (labour reserves) and a White Police mind Zone (which, as in South workers 'qua Africa, included all the best of the law to land, the mines and the crowded urb factories). shacks on the These Bantustans or Unemplo 'homelands' have, through have no rigl the reactionary tribal face 'depor authorities (which are granted Bantustans, t a level of power within them they can in e by the state), come to serve cannot meet as crucial instruments in the needs and of Namibia by Gillian and : South Africa, 104 Newgate £1.50 in paperback.

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Black workers on strike in the Katatura compound 1971 concrete programme of solid- agents inside Namibia to play a similar role in the workers and SWAPO development of the militants. 'Liberal' capitalist Harry Oppenheimer in his private helicopter zanne treet, lontein HOEK ith lariental Keetma Larasbur iers icted aret an reservi sys ads roads al city towns arra the apitalist farms, pries. rers are orced families serve out to 30 months wages in the es, or on the d farms.

ortation' ity of black y' in terms of ive in the over1 slums or in arms. ed workers to remain and tion' to the survive as best nditions which ren subsistence wage-earning Wednesday August 1 1979 Cronje, published by InterLondon ECIA TAP, price ZAN O mb Axe. Caprivi nebl Cravango Swamp froot Ka dja robabis BOTSWANA giagton JUTH LAFRICA (South West Africal Source: This map has been adapted from "The Namibians South West Africa", Minority Rights Group Report No. 19, new edition 1978, p. 4. opportunities are almost nil. 1977 figures estimate a total labour force of approximately 480,000 of which approximately 50% are wage earners inside the Police Zone.

About 30% are employed in domestic service for whites, 20% are agricultural workers on capitalist farms, 9% are employed In manufacturing and construction in mining.

Estimates put the number •of unemployed workers in the Police Zone at more than 7%, but this should be seen in the context of some 50% of the workforce being forced to remain n the Bantustans-unable either to meet their subsistence needs from and 8% farming, or to get jobs.

About half of the 240,000 workers legally in the Police Zone are there as migrants under the contract system.

Since 1972, the allocation of all jobs under the contract system has béen organised by labour bureaux.

These are operated by the tribal authorities in the Bantustans and are all headed by white employment officers in the Police Zone.

Bureaux

A would be migrant worker must go through these bureaux and is obliged to accept the job, if any, which they offer him-refusal can mean simply that he is forced to remain in the Bantustan with no possibilities of employment at all. Under the contract system, the worker has no say in choosing an employer, or in negotiating his wages and conditions.

All unemployed adult men under the age of 65 who are without physical or mental defects, and who can not satisfy the tribal labour officer that they are self-employed are obliged to register as 'work-seekers' at the tribal labour bureau.

Tribal labour officers thus wield enormous control over those under their jurisdiction.

Important role

Themselves employees of the state, and usually tied to the patronage of a tribal chief who is also an employee of the state, there can be no doubt that tribal labour officers and the compulsory registration of all workers through them play an enormously important role in the political control of workers.

In the central labour bureau, the labour officer (in this case a white South African Civil Servant) keeps a secret black list of migrant workers regarded by police or employers as militants-the ability of the state to remove the access of such workers to employment is a crucial weapon in the struggle to smash or control anv workers' Must ter organised opposition.

This should be seen against the context of near martial law conditions which exist through almost the whole country.

By providing such essential background information, the book can play a useful role for those in the labour movement seeking to develop a arity with Namibian workers.

It can in no way however principled political basis of such a programme.

ELAT It would seem (fortunately) that the constraints of academic research propriety have stopped the authors from making explicit the uncritical idealisation of the politics of SWAPO which is implicit throughout the book.

Popular frontist

As Socialist Press has pointed out, however, it is above all else the popular frontist politics, and mixture of guerrillaism and secret diplomacy of the SWAPO leadership which have allowed the South African state ana ITS reactionary consolidate their rule and inflict blow after blow on The book for example points to the way in which Democratic Turnhalle Alliance supporters repeatedly attacked and murdered SWAPO supporters in the Katatura (Windhoek) street battles of early 1978.

The response of the internal SWAPO leadership to this onslaught, which drew contract workers from the massive Katatura hostel out on strike, was to join the DTA, the police and the churches in a joint committee to 'prevent further Despite years of armed struggle, SWAPO supporters inside Namibia had been left totally defenceless.

Restricted Indeed, SWAPO collaboration with the imperialist UN plan provided South Africa with near optimum conditions to strengthen the repressive powers of its own forces and agents, while SWAPO militants were being restricted to their undefended bases by the SWAPO leaders in response to imperialist pressure.

Nor can the uncritical approach of the authors allow them to point to the class collaboration which led the external SWAPO leadership to respond to the murderous attacks not by any concrete programme able to defend workers and militants, but by resolutions and press releases at the United Nations.

Workers and militants inside and outside of SWAPO have repeatedly shown their desire to move beyona the reformist collaboration of the SWAPO leaders.

SWAPO leader Nujoma What this demands above all else is not simply a break from negotiation and diplomacy, but a break from the reformist politics of collaboration with imperialism which underlies reliance on such diplomacy.

This requires the development of a party and programme based unshakably on the independent class interests of the workers of Namibia, able to provide a way forward in the defence against state and right wing terror attacks for the development of the day to day struggles of workers and leading unalterably to the defeat of South African colonialism and the workers' seizure of power.

Destruction

For the real interests of Namibian workers can be secured not by the reform of capitalist relations, but by their destruction.

Their real ally in that struggle is not the popular front, of moralists, clerics, Stalinists, bureaucrats and 'progressive sections of capital' who seek to replace illegal colonial exploitation with legal neo-colonial exploitation, but their working class brothers and sisters through the world.

And itis only by promoting a programme of solidarity on that same political basis-political independence of the working class -that workers in Britain will be able to meet the responsibilities which proletarian internationalism demands of them.

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1979

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