'justice' Is a Class

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Jim Farnham reviews "JUSTICE IN SOUTH AFRICA" (Penguin)

The barbaric ruling class justice' which terrorises the everyday lives of South Africa's black masses probably receives more attention in the bourgeois media than all the capitalist tyrannies on this planet.

Notwithstanding that attention, even the appearances of apartheid-capitalist brutality have not begun to be adequately documented, much less analysed.

Jackson's book-Justice in South Africa-does little to fill that gap.

The book is a subjective account of Jackson's experiences of the machinations of South Africa's legal system as a liberal lawyer in the Eastern Cape over the past twenty years.

His book is a good example of the indignant bourgeois-moralistic response to certain aspects of the excesses of capitalist terror so characteristic of the liberal and Stalinist reformist opposition in South Africa.

Mechanisms

However the book does provide a glimpse into the repressive mechanisms of a legal system based on the denial of even the most basic democratic rights to the mass of South Africa's black people; a legal system which, in one of its aspects (the only one dealt with by Jackson), legitimises hard labour, solitary confinement, floggings, bannings, torture and murder.

But for an understanding of law and justice in relation to the reality of the class struggle being fought out in South Africa, this book is useless.

Yet in recent months the massive forward movement of black workers in South Africa has highlighted the fact that the law is created and destroyed, not in the pages of capitalist statute books, but in the living clash of irreconcilable class Today in South Africa the. dividing line between legality and illegality has been eroded in various respects. With the balance of class forces currently tilted in favour of the working class, the class basis of bourgeois justice has been undermined as the strength of the working class has forced open certain semilegal arenas of struggle.

The solid struggle of the Crossroads worker-community is one, example of this. In the post-Soweto lull which preceded the reemergence of mass struggle this year, the state was able literally to smash to the ground three huge squatter communities within a few miles of Crossroads.

Combativity

But the determination and combativity oi the Crossroads workers, coupled with the widespread mood Crossroads Black youth in revolt, 1978 of solidarity for their struggle throughout the black working class, forced the state to back down and officially recognise the existence of Crossroads last year.

'Legalise'

What was illegal in 1978 was legalised' in 1979 through nothing other than the revolutionary pressure of the working class.

Likewise this year's nationwide campaign for the release of political prisoners indludire Nelson Mandela s anotce: example oi how ise more its has begun to. as = *2=. appropriate the law - to take the law into hands in struggle.

Whereas a couple of years ago any indication of open support for the illegal petty-bourgeois nationalist organisations and their leaders in prison would have landed one a lengthy jail term, today the bourgeois media in South Africa brazenly publishes the programme of the ANC while thousands sign an open petition supporting the release of Mandela.

Although these actions are illegal in the statute books. the huge combativity =35 503. 10: :3e =0E: 30825 C :2E African activity.

Again and again

struggle, the workers bre through the repressive leg parameters and establish fact the semi-legalisation an illegal action.

Of course, all the gains forced by the working class in this way stand threatened by the treacherous reformist politics of their pro-capitalist ANC and PAC leaderships.

While the working class has thrown its class weight behind the demand for the political sage doseste demands riot over wages, jobs, housing and transport, the petty bourgeois nationalists have sought to transform it into a singie-issue campaign of petitions and declarations to the racist government.

They have found ample support for this orientation amongst the big bourgeoisie and their liberal mouthpieces who were quick to recognise the qualitative difference between a campaign orchestrated by the black petty-bourgeoisie and a demand emerging alongside others from the struggles of black workers.

By wresting the demand iar the release of political Srise the =0W283 ie not only undermines the only class force capable of realising the demand but also boosts its own sagging political credentials.

Unable to provide any Ieadership itself to the workers' struggle in South Africa, the petty-bourgeoisie actively seeks to turn workers away from their own independent strength towards passively awaiting their liberation from their leaders-in-absentia and the guerrilla forces responsive to them.

Like Jackson, the petty-bourgeois nationalist leadership of the ANC and PAC seek only to reform capitalism in South Africa, to strip it of its racist vestiges and to clothe it in the acceptable garments of bourgeois 'democracy'.

They don't want to overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie-they aim simply to share power with the bourgeoisie in the same way as Mugabe in Only a Trotskyist party, basing itself irreconcilably on the independent interests and strength of the black working class, can smash these reformists' obstacles in South Africa and lead the workers' struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat and a socialist Southern Africa.

Build the South African Troiskyist party as a section

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ESS 23.