Gold and

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Of So From the first involvement of Europeans in Southern Africa there have been attempts to enslave and exploit the local African population. The first Europeans to settle - apart from the odd traveller - were the Dutch employees of the Netherlands East India Company in the 1650s.

They established a base at the Cape of Good Hope on the The right wing Gandhi dictatorship in India continues to repress and attack the Indian working class. The struggle for the restoration of democratic rights in India is therefore of great importance.

The dangerous confusion created by Maoism in the Indian working class was shown very clearly by speakers at a meeting in Oxford a week ago.

The Oxford Group Against Dictatorship in India held its first public meeting at the Buxton Hall, Ruskin College, and on the platform were Maoist speakers from their two major Indian parties, the Communist Party (Marxist) and the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist).

Neither of these speakers could offer any perspective or assessment either on what is happening in India now or what needs to be done.

Starting from the concepts of a "fascist" CPI and an "imperialist" Soviet Union, the Maoists can only serve to disorientate and disarm the considerable base of support they hold within the Indian working class.

In reality, the Gandhi dictatorship is still swinging further to the nghi, and one of the first casualties of this is likely to be the CPI. Gandhi's son - a powerful figure in the regime - is already making open attacks on the CPI.

The experience of the national bourgeoisie in other such cases is that they use the Stalinists as a "leít' protection against the working dass for as long as they feel necess! - and then they ditch them. This is the most likely course in India by lol:

Gold mining, 1887 Southern tip of Africa and took up farming and cattle rearing to supply the company's ships on the main route to India.

The settlers had various conflicts with the Company over lack of representative government in the colony.

In the 1770s the combination of the weakening of Dutch seapower in favour of the expanding British navy, coupled with the spread of democratic ideas from France and the American War of Independence, prompted the colonists to take up a The meeting went on to consider a resolution which correctly disassociated the campaign on democratic rights from the "religiousrevivalist parties like the Jan Sangh and Alkali Dal"

This principled stand is a step forward because both the Maoist groups are in favour of cooperating in every way with these groups.

The resolution went on to cali for the restoration of democratic rights in India including the right to strike and freedom of association. It called also for the:

•..ending of all forms of imperialist intervention in India including economic and military aid to the dictatorship"R An amendment to the resolution moyed by WSL members called for the return to the Indian people of all property, tactones and plantations owned by British capitalists, together with a cancellation of the debt on all outstanding loans - all without compensation to the British owners.

This was carried overwhelmingly despite the opposition of the CPM speaker.

The amendment was important because the resolution went on to call correctly on the left of the Labout Party, the trade union movement and the National Union of Students to fight for its demands.

Many of these leaderships would be willing to go along with a toothless protest - just as long as it missed out the basic support of the Gandhi dictatorship, which is world imperialism.

To highlight the direct involvement of British imperialism with the regime is an essential part of this important campaign. foer Commandos passing through Johannesburg. struggle for independence.

As with America however the notions JO independence and democratic government stopped at the colour line - slavery was maintained.

Independence was short lived however. In 1806 Holland gave over Cape Colony to Britain - it was immediately occupied by British naval and military forces - to prevent Napoleon getting his hands on it.

This occupation, and the incorporation of the colony into the British Empire, put paid to any ideas on an independent Republic of Dutch colonists.

British rule in the first part of the 19th Century brought in a number of measures, which, whle beneticial to the rising bourgeosie in Britain, undermined the settlers way of life.

SLAVERY

The most important of these was the abolition of slavery following the Abolitionist Act of 1833 in Britain.

This, coupled with the lack of self government, provoked the Dutch. - the Boers as they came to be called - to set off in 1836 on a great Trek northwards beyond the range of British Colonial Rule to set up two independent Boer republics: the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.

The 'Great Trek' occupies an important place in current South African racist mythology.

It is used to conjure up the myth of a sturdy independent people trekking off into the unknown in their ox-wagons to escape from bureaucracy and sin and armed with Bible and shotgun to establish a new clean go-fearing way of life -just like the "Wild West" of America, and at about the same time.

What is generally not emphasised is of course that this sturdy frontiersmanship involved constant robbery of African lands, and the maintenance of slavery.

Apart from a few skirmishes and a couple of attempts at annexation, the British Colonial Administration at the Cape left the Boer Republics as they were for the time being.

In 1871 diamonds, and in 1890, gold, were discovered, of immense value, both of them inside the territories of the Republics.

The Boer farmers suddenly found themselves facing a massive influx of diggers and prospectors, mining engineers and the representatives of British companies formed to exploit the diggings. him the British government and the mining investors.

Firstly, the untold wealth in gold and diamonds was in the independent Boer republics. Was British Imperialism going to allow itself to be threatened by the growth of what would become powerful industrial rival capitalist states to the north of the Cape colony - a colony that was a vital part of British Imperialism's control of the sea routes to India?

Secondly, the profitability of the mines depended cheap African labour - semi-slave labour. With the advent of the mining boom the liberal spirit' which back in the 1830s had blossomed at the Cape and had involved the abolition of slavery and forced labour went into convenient decline.

But - and this was the crucial point for the imperialists - as long as land was abundant and under the control of outside the white colonies and republics) African nations, relatively few Africans could be induced to come and work in intolerable conditions in the mines. Especially as money played no part in the African tribal The third thing that worried British Imperialism was of course the other imperialist powers.

The 1880s was the period of the "scramble for Africa" in which all the major European Capitalist countries - France, Britain, Belgium and Germany - were searching frantically for new areas of profitable investment to offset the falling rate of profits in Europe.

The mines of Southern Africa, the rich cocoa area of West Africa -all these were up for grabs as far as imperialism was concerned.

Within twenty years the political map of Africa was transformed and the new boudaries were drawi in the blood of thousands of Africans who died in defence of their lands and families against the spread of European control.

this Rhodes, was especially concerned with the fact that the Portuguese might try and link up their two colonies - Angola in the West and Mozambique in the East - by driving across central Africa 07 form a Portuguese colonial "belt' across Africa, threatening South Africa from the North.

From the 1880s on, the British government engineered takeover by trickery and violence of virtually all the independent African kingdoms in the vicinity and they became incorporated as additions to the colonial territories.

The wars often went on for years and involved many British defeats at the hands of the better organised African armies, for example the, Zulus. By 1900 the process was complete.

It was by this method that the colony of Rhodesia came to be established.

Rhodes was convinced that the African kingdoms of Mashonaland and Matabeleland lying to the north of the Transvaal Republic contained valuable gold deposits.

He was mistaken, but nevertheless there were other important reasons for seizing the area as far as Imperialism was concerned.

It would defeat any attempts at a Portuguese or German 'belt' › and it would enable the . British government, as part of its strategy of annexing African territories bordering on the Boer Republics; to complete the encirclement of the Boers.

Already in 1887 the Transvaal Boers had signed a Treaty with Lobengula, the feudal monarch of Matabeleland, giving them the right to prospect for minerals.

Rhodes moved fast. In 1888 he sent Rudd to Lobengulas court to explain the advantages of allying with the British rather than the Boers.

Lobengula thought he had signed a concession with Rudd allowing ten whites a year into his kingdom to dig for minerals.

Rhodes had other ideas. He formed the British South African Company with its own private army and marched into the Southern part of the Kingdom.

His swiftness and flagrant violation of the treaty incurred the displeasure of the British government in London who wished to maintain the facade of correct diplomacy. Not for long.

By 1891 Mashonaland was declared a British Protectorate and in 1893 with London's blessing Khodes marched north to destroy, rape, and loot the Matabeleland stronghold of Lobengulas feudal kingdom.

Further repression followed Matabele revolt of 1896.

HUT TAX