Five Years Since Soweto Tuc Leaders Ignore Struggles of S. African Workers

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to be a drawing back from the level of direct confrontation which developed during June 1976.

The youth and workers could not spontaneously answer the question of power which their actions had posed.

The ANC leaders could not keep up with events, let alone lead them.

Left without leadership and the political programme and perspective to carry them through to victory, the youth and workers stepped back from mass confrontation on the streets.

But this was a step back to gather forces, prepare for struggle, draw on the experience of the rebellion, consolidate and deepen militancy and organisation.

From the lull which followed the Soweto rebellion, the movement-spearheaded by the revolutionary strength of workers-has been moving: consistently forward.

Tested strength

There has been a long period of struggle in which group after group of workers has moved into action-on wages and working conditions, on rents and living conditions, on the lack of power over decisions affecting their daily lives.

Workers in struggle have tested their strength, developed their organisation, drawn on the support of their class.

They have seen that they can create a class strength strong enough to force the bosses and the government to do many things that they would never voluntarily doSoweto rioters, 1976 improvements, but something much much more -that the real needs of all people be met.

It is the determination to fight for their real needs which lies at the base of the developing workers' movement. It is that which is taking them into struggle after struggle, even against the repressive brutality of the South African state.

Workers are now better organised, more confident, more militant than ever before.

To defend the gains of the past and build on them, there is only one path open to workers-the path of struggle, based on the development and mobilisation of their independent class strength. The ruling class are perfectly aware of where the real challenge to their rule is coming from.

That is why they are so concernced to stem and drive back the day to day struggles of workers.

ith Africa Every single genuine step forward that black workers have ever taken has been a step against the control of the government and the capitalists.

The growing struggle for the real needs of workers will have to be more and more consciously directed against the control and power of the capitalist class.

For while production continues to be organised or profit , there is no single lasting concession which the capitalists can make to meet workers' real needs.

Even in the developed capitalist countries where the capitalist state is organIf they could, the same bosses who talk today about improvements and reforms would already be launching all their planned attacks on workers.

It is not the lack of desire on their part which stops them-it is the depth of strength and mobilisation inside the working class, and the division and confusion inside the ruling class about how to strangle the workers' movement.

Behind all the talk of reforms in South Africa, there has always been the reality of consistent efforts by the ruling class and their apartheid regime to tighten control over. the mass of the working class.

While plenty has been said about the new legal rights to organise open to black workers, the reality has been consistent state limitations and attacks on almost every workers' For the ruling class, faced with a growing workers? movement and a developing economic crisis, there is no real option but to lash out to try to stem the workers' movement and drive it backwards.

Evidence

In the arrests, the mass sackings, the bannings of meetings and leaders there is every day evidence of this.

Now a secret government document has been uncovered, as further evidence, if any is necessary, of a government/employers conspiracy to smash the power of the mass organisation SAAWU, organised mainly in the East London area.

The strike at WilsonRowntree reported in SP 250), in which 500 worke have heen sacked for strik in solidarity with three victimised workers in Ichruary,. has become a trucial focal point of this capitalist conspiracy: strikers belong).

The leaders of TUCSA have long since proved their reliability as reformist class collaborators after years and years of acting as functionaries for management:

All the strikers have already been replaced by unemployed workers taken on as scabs (although some • case put to them).

In the last weeks, inore and more of the strikers have been reported to have been arrested by the bantustan puppets of the South African government and bosses.

The bosses see in the Wilson-Rowntree strike the threat of the future-a mass united workers' movement, using collective class strength mobilised in struggle, drawing on wider and wider layers of the class and promoting more and more class action to fight for workers' needs.

Victory in the WilsonRowntree struggle would add enormous strength to every struggle. It would open up a new wave of demands and action by workers who saW a way of protecting themselves against the bosses strike-breaking.

Confusion

But it has become clear that victory will not come easily.

The bosses and their apartheid government have been forced to attack SAAWU from their own position of confusion and GTVISOn faced with division movement growing in strength.

But this does not make the blows with which they are hitting the Wilson-Rowntree strike any the less heavy.

It has already been a major advance for the workers' movement to have mobilised support to maintain the strike in the face of all attacks. Now to be carried through to victory that strike must be massively strengthened.

Inside South Africa, a consumers' boycott has been put forward and mobilised as the means with which to fight the sackings. From this base of support must be built stronger forms of class action to support the strike.

The profits of many bosses do not depend on workers purchasing power. But the profits of every single boss depend on workers' labour power. Workers have the power to halt production, even when the bosses draw on scab The . Wilson-Rowntree strike has already been strengthened through the building of supporting strike action by more and more Wilson-Rowntree workers.

Hand in hand with the fight to organise the unemplayed workers and build a have emerged to reflect the militancy of the working class are looking, with workers, for a way forward. To do this they have turned to the Rowntree-MacK intosh management in England, the British government and the TUC for support.

Disgusting

Of course nothing has come or could ever come from Thatcher's bosses' government or capitalists in England to strengthen workers' struggles anywhere.

But the disgusting reality is that no aid has come to these embattled South African workers from the TUC leaders either.

There have been reports of union officials seeing Rowntree MacKintosh management in Britain but these secret meetings were held without either shop stewards or workers being informed.

The unions invotved are the TGWU, GMWU and USDAW.

The strike depends directly on the level of material aid which can be built in its support. Militants must take up the struggle for effective solidarity action at all Kowntree MacK intosh factories inside Britain.

The massive : feeing of solidarity for black workers struggle inside South Africa must not be allowed to be swallowed up in a series. of bureaucratic manoeuvres and meetings behind the backs of workers, without them even being informed.

Steps must be taken to ensure: direct factory to factory links, so that British workers can be sure of knowing of every appeal for Trades Councils And the lead given through the fight in the Leyland Combine Committee to prepare effective solidarity action in support of South African workers' struggles must be taken up elsewhere.

Trades Councils in York and in Oxford have sponsored public meetings on solidarity with South African workers: such meetings should be held in every area, inviting SAAWU speakers.

Links with South Africa must be investigated at every workplace, to lay the basis for immediate supporting strike and blacking action in solidarity with South African workers.