Black Workers Shake S.a. State

Scan page 2

The first bureaucracy in a workers state, the one that developed under Stalin in Russia, could only consolidate itself by removing all democratic rights.

If the working class have any means of expressing themselves then they will challenge the privileges and power of the To fight against privileges, for independent organs, for freedom of the press, against political oppression, and for an end to secret diplomacy means of necessity to fight to overthrow the bureaucracy.

Cosmetic changes, leaving Gierek in power, only mean that what concessions are won today, the bureaucracy will take back tomorrow. The history of the struggle against the bureaucracy shows that. To involve the United Strike Committees in the "official" trade union elections means that the bureaucracy will hope to buy them off later.

In 1970 Gierek promised to mass meetings in Gdansk that there would be new elections in the official trade unions. The workers gained nothing out of The United Strike Committees should prepare to take the power in their hands, start to plan the economy in a genuinely socialist manner and appeal to the whole of the masses of the deformed and degenerated workers' states to follow them.

They must then help revolutionary movements throughout the world to overthrow capitalism and link up as a step towards planning the world's resources.

The Trotskyist programme to be fought for in the United Strike Committees would include:

*Continue and extend the strikes and United Strike Committees as steps towards soviets.

*To defend such organisations against the violence of the bureaucracy, genuine workers' militia must be built, under the control of the workers councils.

*Build soviets in the armed forces to control the officers. Link the soldiers' soviets with the workers' militia.

*Withdraw Soviet troops! Uppose Soviet intervention! Call South African strikers and carworkers In the mounting wave of struggle in South Africa, the black working class has shown magnificent combativity, determination and courage, and a developed level of class unity and independent class action.

As broader layers have been awakened and mobilised, black workers and youth have grown in confidence and awareness of their class strength.

During the past few months, every important urban industrial area has been shaken by the mobilised strength of workers and youth in struggle against the vicious oppression and exploitation of apartheid-capitalism.

Two weeks ago, following the massive strike in Johannes burg by around 1,000 municipal workers, Cape Town was the scene of explosions of anger in sections of the working class.

Extreme provocation by police in their efforts to crush a boycott of buses, led to attacks on motor vehicles and clashes with police, in which five people were killed.

The bus boycott was launched in early June in response to massive increases in busfares, and has remained rock solid in the African working eacers class ghettoes. The struggle against rising transport costs has been closely linked to the boycotts and partial occupations of schools by working class youth, and to a range of struggles and demands around housing, jobs, wages, etc.

The demand for adequate, cheap housing and the fight against the pass laws have been highlighted by the long and bitter struggle to defend the Crossroads squatter community. The organised unity of this courageous working class community and the threat of struggles in solidarity with it, forced the state in April 1979 to back down from demolishing the squatter shacks, and to promise to build houses for the community.

Untouched

This concession stopped far short of meeting the housing needs of workers and their tamilies, and leaves untouched the workers needs and demands in relation to control over their daily lives, jobs, wages, transport and so on.

Revolutionaries in Cape Town, as elsewhere, must fight for the building of independent working class committees around each partial struggle (transport, housing, education; jobs, wages) to organise and mobilise workers and youth.

A revolutionary programme of demands must be put forward-demands that start from workers' needs and show the way forward in the mass struggle for workers' power.

• The demands for a massive job-creating programme of useful public works and services under workers' control, and for the nationalisation of the bus companies under workers' control, are two of the crucial demands emerging from today's struggles.

The fight must be taken up develop Councils of Action link and unify struggles and organise workers' defence.

The rising levels of militancy and class consciousness mean that struggles are set to erupt in each area over the miserable living conditions and murderous repression faced by the black working class.

Last week in soweto, the largest working class ghetto in the country, a mass meeting of bus drivers saw demands raised for strike action-against the advice of some union leaders.

About 1,000 bus drivers had gone on strike over pay, conditions and union recognition in early July.

The strike forced bosses to negotiate with the drivers' action committee, • and the drivers suspended their action on condition that their grievances were resolved.

Major struggles

The possible bus drivers' strike comes at a time when the bus company is applying for an increase in busfares, and follows the recent increase in rents for the hovels in Soweto that workers and thet families are forced to live in.

The combination of these and other explosive grievances in Soweto, coming in the wake of the recent municipal workers strike, prepares the ground for major struggles in the urban industrial heart of South Africa.

The sharpening of working class struggle and capitalist counter-offensive heightens the necessity for a revolutionary Trotskyist party, as the only means of leading the working class to power. Such a party will be build only in irreconcilable opposition to the counter-revolutionary reformist and Stalinist