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landslide electoral victory of Mugabe's so-called "extremist" ZANU-PF guerrilla leadership in the Zimbabwe elections.

. And this determined mass movement now challenges an apartheid regime that is more than ever isolated and encircled and forced to sustain a massive military occupation of Namibia at increasing cost in men and materials.

A significant feature of the current wave of strikes has been the developed level of working class solidarity.

This was clearly shown in Port Elizabeth by the independent response of workers to the tentative suggestion by union leaders of limited blacking in support of the initial VW strike. Thousands of workers came out on strike alongside the VW workers, not only effectively blacking, but adding the strength of mobilisation around their own demands.

At a time when annual wage negotiations are being conducted between bosses and union officials, the strike action adds an effective working class -arques voice to the negotiations..

By their independent action strikers are making clear that they will not accept an employer/union compromise which does not meet their demands.

Trapped between the upward pressure from workers and their acceptance of the employers right to profits, retormist trade unionists are increasingly caught up in a web of negotiated "compromises" which go no way towards meeting workers' demands.

IVO relonnIst, HOwever enframint militant appears his rhetoric or even actions, can produce the impossible-a compromise which simultaneously leaves intact the profits of the apartheid capitalist rulers and promotes workers' interests.

Drawing on the lessons oi Soweto, workers moving into struggle are spontaneously turning to their fellow workers for strength and support.

In the unfolding struggles in the factories, communities and schools, the widespread mood of solidarity must be developed into a generalised movement of joint struggle.

This means fighting to:

*Build workers committees at each work-place to spearhead the struggles on wages, conditions and jobs.

*Build independent trade unions.

*Link and develop growing struggle through Councils of Action.

As events have shown, the working class moving forward in struggle will be faced by a state increasingly forced to rely on vicinus nhvsical renression The moving of army tanks and armoured cars into the Port Elizabeth strike area is one example of a more and more immediately central role for the army in defence of the capitalist state.

The open police order of 'shoot to kill'-a daily threat facing young workers in South Africa-points to the increased state terror which faces workers in struggle.

The growth of right wing terror squads directed at militants and workers is inevit-11r aDIe.

In facing these threats-the frantic responses of a capitalist state in developing political and economic crisis-a crucial issue facing workers is that of organised self defence.

This has been tragically mustrated in the last week by a :11-- -1. :- 1 L- 1- L.. wave of brutal police murders of mobilised militants.

The attempts by the state to conceal the deaths, and the level of mobilisation indicate that the number of murders is likely to be far higher than the reported 60.

But militants are also being attacked by thugs mobilised by black bourgeois leader Buthelezi.

And youth are being attacked by capital-backed vigilante gangs.

Collaborators and tribalists in Soweto have organised private armed gangs.

Terror and brutality from the army and police are ever-present threats.

Yet after 20 years in which they have officially espoused a policy of "armed struggle", , the Dresent period of mass class action throughout vast areas of South Africa finds the traditional nationalist and Stalinist leaders of the ANC unable to offer the working class any way forward.

The individual courage of the ANC's recent raid on synthetic oil plants offered neither direction nor leadership to the masses in struggle in the strikes and boycotts then under way.

The revolutionary enthusiasm of the thousands of ANC militants who have received training in the use of arms arises from the movement of the working class.

They must be freed from the grip of the Stalinists and reformists, and directed into the workers' struggle from which they draw their strength.

*Build united working class action against every state attack.

*The first task of armed struggle is defence of the working class.

*Cadres with military training to build workers defence squads.

*Build a workers militia.

In Britain it is the urgent task of the labour movement to fight for a programme of independent working class action in solidarity with the struggle of black workers in South Africa.

1) For open-the-books .committees to uncover the part played by each company in exploitation in South Africa, and to prepare effective action in support of the struggles of black workers.

2) For the immediate blacking of all supplies to and from the strike-hit Goodyear, General Motors, Volkswagen, Ford Cortina, General Tyre and other plants.

For the immediate blacking of all arms to the South African state.

3) Nationalise under workers control all companies trading with South Africa.

4) For workers control of trade.

MARCH in solidarity with South African and Namibian political prisoners and detainees. Saturday June 28. Assemble at 2.00 p.m.. at Temple Place, Embankment, London.