Fight ree press in S. Africa

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The liberal' press bosses in South Africa have recently closed down two of their "black' newspapers il. the face of government threats nalists-all leading members of the newly-formed Media Workers Association of South Africa (MWASA)have been banned.

These developments arise in the context of the continuing powerful forward movement of the black working class in general and the militant and united struggles of black newspaper workers and journalists in particular.

National The two newspapers closed down-the Post and the Sunday Post -have been the focus of the national struggle of newspaper workers and journalists for improvements in their conditions of work and recognition of the union MWASA in recent months.

Last August workers and journalists on the two newspapers went on strike for eight days and won improvements in pay and working conditions.

Then at the end of October workers and journalists on the Post and several other newspapers organised . in MWASA came out on strike in solidarity with striking workmates at the 'coloured' Cape Herald newspaper in Cape Town.

The strike lasted eight weeks, affected ten newspapers and completely stopped the production of lour others, including the Post and Sunday Post.

The demands for the immediate improvement of salaries, wages and conditions and for recognition of MWASA were eventually won by the strikers who received widespread support, not only from the black community but from sections of the white journalists as well.

«Freedom of press While the liberal newspaper bosses of the Argus and SAAN groups spend their lives pontificating about freedom of the press' in South Africa, they didn't lift a finger to try and defend their papers against the government's threatened banning.

For now it was their own workers uniting with their journalists in struggles which ! not only dented their profit rates but also began to threaten their very control of the newspapers themselves.

MWASA, which had been in the forefront of the struggle against the newspaper bosses, embraces both black workers and black professional writers.

The union was instigated by black journalists under the political banner of black consciousness.

Middle The strength of the workers' struggle in South Africa is beginning to make itself felt in the ranks of the black middle class, and accordingly some sections like the journalists, are turning to the working class as the only force for revolutionary change.

If this turn is going to be politically reflected in MWASA, then it must be built as an independent fighting organisation which puts workers interests first and which puts class consciousness before black consciousness.

The closure of the Post and Sunday Post is first and foremost a threat to the jobs of printworkers and journalists. MWASA must take up the struggle throughout the Argus and SAAN groups for work-sharing with no loss of pay to defend the threatened jobs.

Solidarity

And workers and journalists must fight for the continued production of Post and Sunday Post as well as the lifting of the banning orders on their leaders, through the mobilisation of solidarity strikes and blacking actions throughout the newspaper industry.

It is only on the basis of independent working class mobilisation that the freedom' of even the bourgeois press can be defended.

And it is only through the extension of that independent mobilisation, on the basis of a transitional programme of democratic and revolutionary demands, that the socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat can be achieved and genuine freedom of the press guaranteed for the masses of South Africa.

Labour Movement Conference Media Censorship and convened by National Union of Journalists Saturday February 28 Birmingham Details from Ron Knowles, NUJ, 314 Grays Inn Road, London WC1.

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to ban them. And in the past month five black jour-