Namibia Struggles 1 Ana Steals 1 to Amart Strat to Apartheid Strat

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Police at a SWAPO rally, December 1978 In the struggle against capitalist exploitation and oppression, the working class throughout Southern Africa is time and again held back by a crisis of revolutionary leadership. The treacherous policies of the existing reformist, Stalinist and nationalist leaderships have been recently spotlighted by the experience of the working class in Zimbabwe. In the context of the developing mass struggle in Southern Africa Jim Farnham looks at the perspectives for the workers' struggle for power in Namibia.

The deepening crisis of capitalism forces increasingly vicious attacks on the already miserable living standards of the oppressed masses.

But in the drive for protits at the expense of the working masses, imperialism is confronted worldwide by a rising tide of struggle, as new ranks of workers and poor peasants are continually thrust into struggle against capitalist attacks.

During the last period of struggle in Southern Africa, as elsewhere, the tremendous build-up of combativity in an undefeated working class continually threatens to erupt in spontaneous mass struggles only to founder time and again in a crisis of leadership.

Central to the development of struggle in Southern Africa in the current period is the reemergence of open mass struggles in the mighty black working class in South Africa.

In the spontaneous mass mobilisation of 1976/7 around Soweto, black workers in struggle forged a fighting unity and level of political independence that decisively outflanked their petty bourgeois nationalist and Stalinist leaders.

But the mobilised strength of the working class ran up against the limits of spontaneous development and against state repression, allowing a clique of reformists and opportunists to appropriate the leadership of the movement.

Exploited The crosion of the class independence and unity that had been built in struggle was exploited by the state to launch a repressive assault, leading to the demobilisation of the movement.

A period of political stale. mate set in, with the working class lacking the leadership and programme to move forward towards victory, and the state unable to secure a defeat.

But the balance of class forces in the region is shifting more in favour of the working class, as a reemerging workers' offensive sends its first shock waves through the imperialist camp.

In Zimbabwe, the intense rural guerrilla war coupled with the threat of possible mobilisations of the urban proletariat and combined with the ominous movement of the working class in South Africa, spurred imperialism into a deal with the petty bourgeois nationalists of ZANU Cannery workers on the beach and ZAPU, in a desperate bid to shore up the stability of the capitalist state.

The imperialist Lancaster House plan created the conditions for the reformists to consolidate a position in the working class, and to form a popular frontist government.

Not resolved Yet the Lancaster House plan in no way resolved the balance of forces in Zimbabwe in imperialism's favour, and the militancy in the working class is bound to rise as Mugabe proves unable to fulfil the needs for which he was so assertively voted into power.

In Namibia, the spontaneous reaction to Mugabe's governmental victory is widespread enthusiasm for the apparent victory of the anti-imperialist This view will no doubt be peddled by SWAPO leaders, seeking to bolster the popular frontist illusions they have already managed to sow.

But the important political effect of this mass response will be to reinforce the levels of combativity building up in Namibia.

In the last period of struggle, the working class in Namibia has faced a sustained offensive by the South African state and its agents.

This set in with the internal elections force-organised by the South African government in December 1978, which brought the puppet DTA regime to Walvis Bay power under the wing of the South African colonial administrator.

This offensive importantly strengthened the position of the South African state, which has been able to exploit the political confusion and stagnation following from the treacherous policies of the petty bourgeois nationalist SWAPO leadership.

In the course of 1979 the South African armed forces in Namibia were strengthened by an increase in troops to an estimated 70,000 and by wide-ranging extension of martial law powers.

SA soldiers are needed to help paramilitary police control the working masses, to contain the guerrilla war in the north, and to launch massive raids into Angola and Zambia, hitting SWAPO military and refugee camps, and local military and economic targets. : The size of the armed state forces in relation to a total black population of little over 1 million, points to the underlying strength of mass resistance to the systematic imperialist and South African oppression and plunder in Namibia.

An estimated 15,000 militants are being held in concentration camps in Namibia. In one police/army raid alone, over 2500 arrests were made last June in the largest working class ghetto, Katutura (outside the white capital of Windhoek).

Under cover of the DTA regime, extreme right wing terror squads have emerged-one of these armed gangs wrecked SWAPO's internal headquarters in Windhoek last May.

The repressive campaign launched by state and right wing terror forces has effectively smashed SWAPO's internal organisation.

But the South African state and its agents have in no way been able to carry this through to a defeat of the working class.

The balance of forces remains unresolved in Namibia, but now it is the working class that has seized the initiative.

Already during the capitalist offensive, Namibian workers and militants have shown a clear willingness to take up the fight against the attacks.

This combat-readiness came to the fore in a wave of strike actions by thousands of mineworkers in early 1979, and in mass displays of militant solidarity such as the SWAPO rally in Katutura at the height of the state-led offensive.

But in turning to SWAPO for leadership in struggles against repression and around wage and other demands, workers were offered no way forward.

Illusion

The petty bourgeois nationalist leadership of SWAPO could offer only the paralysing illusion of salvation by the guerrilla army and the United Nations.

Central to the strategy of the SWAPO leadership is a reformist combination of guerrillaism (the development of a military capacity in sectarian isolation from the day to day struggles of workers as a means of pressuring reforms in the capitalist state) and class collaboration.

Militant socialist rhetoric serves to submerge the indepen dent class interests of workers

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South African troops on patrol near the Angolan border SWAPO supporters march in Windhoek, December 1978 Walvis Bay dockers at work in an "anti-imperialist" alliance under petty bourgeois leadership.

The strength of the working class has been exploited-in the absence of a revolutionary Marxist leadership-to promote the ambitions of reformists.

• The SWAPO leadership's hostility towards mobilisations of workers other than those which can be controlled and exploited; the inability of guerrillaism to provide any defence of workers aliu militants against state and extreme right wing terror; and the political confusion and stagnation sown by leaders shackled to imperialism-mean that the only thing which stands between the working class and potential disaster is its undefeated strength.

In conditions of a developing movement of struggle, workers will be looking for ways of taking the struggle forward without the organised leadership of SWAPO which has been smashed inside Namibia.

Trotskyists in Namibia must seek to win these forces to the fight to build the independent strength of the working class.

Adventurism

This involves a programmatic fight against tendencies to ultraleft armed adventurism, and against the emergence of opportunist "left" turns towards the working class by reformists and Stalinists inside and outside SWAPO.

The SWAPO bureaucracy in exile, itself weakened by the consequences of its betrayals of the working class' independent interests, will seek to reassert its legitimacy in the working class as struggle develops.

This is likely to be the major impulse behind the sharp increase in military: actions launched by SWAPO in recent months. In isolation from the strength of the working class, many , courageous - SWAPO fighters have been senselessly sacrificed.

Facing the pressures of leftmoving elements in the guerrilla farmy, and increasingly fearful of being outflanked by the working class in struggle, the SWAPO bureaucracy can be expected to produce dramatic opportunist twists, turns and splits.

The extent to which the SWAPO leadership is tied to collaboration with imperialism, can be seen partly in its agreement to the fundamental points Wednesday May 21, 1980. of the current version of the UN plan for Namibian 'independence".

The essence of the imperialist-inspired UN plan is to secure capitalist stability in Namibia.

The South African government has delayed its agreement to the UN proposals, while seeking to establish stability itself.

The imperialist powers, in recognising the need for new measures, have backed the South African government's modifications to the plan and its own direct actions.

Pressure

The pressure of a gathering advance of the working class in Southern Africa narrows the options open to imperialism.

The current development of struggle, which throws into question the ability of Stalinist and reformist forces to control the working class, shifts imperiialism towards an increasingly direct reliance on the repressive strength of its most powerful ally in the region-the South African state.

The relatively firm social base on which the apartheidcapitalist state rests, and its economic and military power, make it the key policeman and promoter of imperialist interests in the region.

The current verion of the UN plan allows for the setting up of a 100-kilometre wide Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) across the length of the Namibia/Angola border.

The DMZ, originally proposea by now-dead Angolan "Marxist" leader Neto, is to be patrolled by troops from 7,500 strong UN force, to ensure that SWAPO fighters remain confined to bases in Angola and Zambia during a transition period before UN Troops South African troops are to be reduced to 1500 in two bases-but the crucial elements of the capitalist state apparatus (police, courts, etc) together with the black Namibian army units and the white Namibian paratrooper unit (drawn from the 100,000-strong white population) which South Africa has set up, will remain during transition.

The growing instability of the bourgeois nationalist Frontline regimes in the face of their inability to meet the demands of an increasingly militant working class, has tightened their dependence on imperialism.

The South African regime has exploited this instability, using military raids into Zambia and particularly Angola (where South Africa suports the antiMPLA forces of UNITA, led by the imperialist puppet Savimbi) as an extra weight in the pressure on SWAPO to yield further to imperialism.

The counter-revolutionary Kremlin bureaucracy has joined with the Frontline regimes (particularly in Angola, where the bulk of SWAPO forces are based and where 19000 Cuban troops provide a crucial prop to the MPLA) in strengthening the bureaucratic grip of SWAPO leader Nujoma.

So long as SWAPO fighters are removed from the only base from which to effectively challenge the SWAPO bureaucracy -the working class-this grip can only tighten.

This carries the underlying danger of SWAPO guerrillas being used in the future against the working class in the interests of the reformists-or today, against militants challenging the treacherous policies of the From carefully measured leaks to the bourgeois media after a recent round of secret diplomacy in Southern Africa and in London (where South Africa's colonial administrator Viljoen met Carrington and Labour's Shore), South Africa is clearly pressing for more modifications to the UN plan, with imperialist connivance.

Ambitions

Under pressure from imperialism SWAPO in its weakened position is set to succumb further-even to the point of sacrificing key parts of its reformist ambitions.

The imperialist powers and the South African government will lose no time in seeking to exploit the weakening of the SWAPO bureaucracy by attempting to split it and win elements to an obedient internal grouping.

These rotten manoeuvres in the corridors of secret diplomacy . confirm yet again the political bankrupicy of SWAPO's leadership.

The resolution of the unstable balance of forces in favour of the interests of workers in Namibia demands carrying through a political struggle against the SWAPO The stored-up militancy in the undefeated proletariat is ready to burst out in mass struggles-in which the task of revolutionary Marxists will be to fight for the mobilisation of workers independently of the reformists and around demands that express their independent class interests and build their political independence.

in the face of decaying imperialism's frenzied efforts to secure conditions of capitalist stability through attacks on the working class and all anti- imperialist forces, the immediate task facing revolutionaries is the defence of the working class. That defence can only be carried through and secured by the fight to take the struggle forward, by developing the independent leadership, organisation and programme to mobilise workers in the struggle to defeat South African colonialism and overthrow capitalism.

Paralysis

Only the fight to build the Trotskyist party in Namibia, section of a reconstructed Fourth International, can defend the strength of the working class against Stalinist/ reformist paralysis and capitalist attack, and build it towards the dictatorship of the proletariat.

*Build the independent organisations of the working class in the ghettoes and workplaces to mobilise the oppressed masses around their independent class interests, and against South African/imperialist plans.

*Build the armed struggle as part of the defence and mobilisation of the working masses. For militants with military training to help build a workers' militia.

*Fight for a revolutionary programme of democratic and transitional demands, including:

1) For a Constituent Assembly tied to the destruction of the state machine-police, aribal courts, labour bureaux, rule structures. For the building of independent organs of control by the working masses over democratically elected delegates.

2) For a massive programme of public works and services in the towns and countryside under workers' control.

3) For a living wage tied to a sliding scale, as determined by workers committees. For work sharing on full pay under workers' control.

4) Nationalise the land under the control of committees of agricultural workers and poor peasants.

5) Expropriate the banks, mines, factories and large farms without compensation, under workers control.

*Break all collaboration with imperialism and its agents. No secret diplomacy.

*For the development of a programme of genuine aid and solidarity for the anti-imperialist struggle to be taken up by the international workers' movement.

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FOR RESIGA ST LABO CONTA