S. African Youth Struggle Barometer of the Masses

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Africa Colou Asian White "We don't want no education; we don't want no thought control" • These are the well known words of a song by the Pink Flloyd whose sale last week was banned by South Africa's racist regime.

: This bit of thought control was one of the more panicky responses of the regime to a new upsurge of South. Africa's oppressed masses over the last month. inantly "coloured working class youth, have been rallying round slogans like Down with racist education' and 'Don't force us out of school to supply cheap labour for capitalism'.

Unarmed

They have boycotted classes in schools, colleges and universities throughout South Africa, and. in the western Cape in particular.

Less than four years after the Soweto uprisings, when thousands of unarmed school students were gunned down by the police, black youth are once again pushed to the fore in the struggle against the apartheid capitalist state.

Moreover, the current struggles have already demonstrated that the Soweto events contained the kernel of the emerging class struggles in Southern Africa The struggle of the youth reflects and gains strength from the burgeoning combativity of an undefeated black proletariat moving into struggle in the wake of the post-Soweto lull (See SP 184).

In recent months, partial struggles have l'erupted with increasing frequency and intensity around demands relating to the everyday material needs of workers.

In particular strikes, boycotts and mass protests have developed around the chronic housing shortage and exhorbitant rent charges; the massive increase in the price of transport and essential foodstuffs; and unemployment, material conditions in workplaces and wages.

The working class youth in South Africa are, in the objective conditions prevailing there, "the barometer of the degree of political awakening of the masses" (Trotsky).

• Pressures Immersed in the class through their parents and social milieu, the youth are most sensitive to all the pressures and frustrations wracking the class as a whole.

The embryonic struggles boiling at the base of society invariably find their initial expression amongst the youth.

Being impetuous, lacking both the experience and conservatism of their parents and desiring above all a better future for themselves, the youth-to Annual per capita expenditure (Rands)

Soweto 1976 whom the future belongs-are the heralds of the class battles that must follow.

In the present struggles the youth received their impetus from, and turned immediately to the only force capable of winning even the most partial struggle-their worker parents.

The great political lesson of Soweto for the youth was the increasing realisation from their own experience in struggle that their worker parents-whom they had initially castigated for being 'backward'-actually embodied the revolutionary strength to shake the capitalist system to its foundations.

Fighting unity

When workers stayed at home in two nationwide political strikes in 1976, a powerful fighting unity was established which the youth-till then isolated and hence vulnerable to vicious repression-were clearly objectively unable to generate alone.

The carrying through of this crucial lesson of Soweto was demonstrated by the way in which politically K advanced layers of youth immediately posed the need to turn to the working elass.

Beginning with a meeting of worker parents and youth from one school in Cape Town, where a student/parent committee was established to take up their grievances the struggle rapidly gathered momentum.

Deepening its scope politically and broadening it Teacher-pupil ratio 1:47.6 1:29.6 1:26.2 1:19.6 Compulsory education age geographically, youth and workers in struggle spontaneously began to assert a pronounced level of political and organisational independence.

Initial demands

From the initial demands for free text books, the abolition of school uniforms and for investigation into the appalling material conditions at schools, corrupt teachers and 'gutter education', ', the demands quickly extended to include the sacking of teachers politically hostile to the demands of the youth, the reinstatement of politically sympathetic teachers, pay increases for teachers and the abolition of racist education.

Parallel with these, developments, the organisational form which grew out of the struggle expanded to include teachers and student-parent representatives from schools, the 'coloured' university, and colleges in the whole of Cape Town area.

At the same time, youth in numerous towns and cities throughout South Africa began to demonstrate their hostility to every manifestation of the oppressive racist education system.

In the face of this situation the state, fearing above all else the latent strength of the working class from which the youth struggle had burst, conceded to some of the students' demands and dismissed a principal, issued free text books and promised Professionally qualified teachers 18.2% 95.0% Rand = an immediate investigation into the material conditions in schools.

In addition, principals at most schools were forced by the strength of the movement, into recognising the student representative councils which had sprung up in the course of the Sensing both the initiative they had won and the level of control they had asserted in forcing concessions, militants looked for further ways of developing the struggles.

From meetings, sit-ins and occasional school and street demonstrations the youth, with the widespread support of their worker parents and teachers, now threatened a complete school boycott in support of their demands.

Within days thousands of school and college students throughout the country were boycotting classes.

In the Cape, the studentparent committee mushroomed into the Committee of 61, comprising 240 delegates from 61 schools representing 60,000 striking youth.

Declaring that their education is "ideological control on the part of the state designed to train people for the cheap labour market", , the committee's demands included a tree, democratic non-racial system of compulsory education for all; equal pay for all teachers; the abolition of the Coloured Affairs Department and the denial of access of security police to schools.

Total population The boycott now involves over 100,000 youth spread throughout the country.

It has been strengthened by the wide-ranging levels of solidarity that have been built up around it-particularly amongst community based worker organisations.

The degree of political and organisational independence forged in the heat of struggle has temporarily removed the room for manoeuvre of the petty-bourgeoisie, who have been either dragged in the wake of the struggle or already exposed as traitors.

The extent of control asserted by youth in struggle draws its strength from the revolutionary appetite of the working class which has simultaneously starved the petty bourgeoisie of a compromising role.

The state is forced to reckon with this objective balance of class forces.

On the defensive, it is combining selective arrests and attacks on open demonstrations with diplomatic overtures to the organisations which have emerged from the struggle itself.

It has been the mobilised strength of workers and youth which has forced the concessions already won from the state. Those gains need to be consolidated and extended.

The boycott tactic has thus far served as a central weapon around which mobilisation and organisation have been forged.

The crucial advance made has been in the assertion of a Total enrolment in schools Total enrolment matric 3,493 (0.2%) 6,329 (2.6%) 4,980 (2.6%) 53,157 (5.6%) level of control by youth and worker parents over schools and education. It is in the development of that control that the road ahead lies.

This demands the organisational forms, tactics and political leadership through which working class youth move forward from the boycott towards the extension of full control with worker parents over schools and educationcontrol over access, buildings, resources, syllabus, training and the use of their own skills.

The struggle towards this goal will be confronted not merely by the strength of the state and petty bourgeois opportunists, but by the political retormism of the Stalinists and petty bourgeois nationalists.

Popular frontism-which turns the working class away from eliance on its own independent strength and the struggle for its own class interests-and guerrillaism -which adds to that the removal of layers of militants from the day to day struggles of the working class-are both potentially disastrous obstacles to the development of the working class revolution.

It is Trotskyists alone, who starting from the real conditions and day to day struggles of the working class can provide the transitional perspective and programme capable of carrying through spontaneous partial struggles uninterruptedly to the only solution which secures the interest of the workers-the workers government and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Matric passes No figures

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If you won't fight the employers, you must wind

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18,629,000 2,434,000 746,000 4,320,000

156,045 (11%) 106787 (15%) 58,152 (27%) 344,302 (37%)

3,233 (0.25%) 3,630 (2.3%) 47,121 (5.1%)