[Demonstrations in South Africa, marking last year's slaughter…]

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Demonstrations in South Africa, marking last year's slaughter of over 600 black workers, have again produced a violent response from police upholding South Africa's racist regime.

In Soweto, scene of last year's massacre, nine people were wounded when police fired on a large crowd which had been peacefully commemorating the killings.

Sechaba Montsitsi, president of the Soweto Students • Representative Council and a number of others have been arrested in the township.

The following day the police arrested four white students. All of these students are being held under the apartheid regime's General Law Amendment Act, which allows them to be detained for up to 14 days before appearing in court.

DEAD

In the Inkabah township outside Port Elizabeth, two black youths were shot dead, and in the car manufacturing centre of Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape, seven workers were killed and 23 others wounded. In addition, another 278 people have been arrested.

As usual, the South African authorities have rushed to whitewash the shootings, claiming that those shot dead were drunkenly looting bottle stores, and were merely "tsotsis" (hooligans) with no support within the black township.

The facts destroy this myth: in Soweto over 80% of the The results of the Irish Republic's general election have toppled the national coalition government of Fine Gael and Labour, and have brought back to power Jack Lynch's Fianna Fail.

The final state of the parties in the new Dail (parliament) is: Fiana Fail, 84 seats; Fine Gael, 43; Laboutgives Lynch 17 and Independents 4. This an overall majority of 20, the biggest ever in the history of the State.

The Irish working class will shed no tears at this crushing defeat of the Fine Gael/Labour coalition, and will rejoice at the fact that three former ministers have in fact failed to secure re-election.

ARROGANT

These include ex-Minister of Justice, Patrick Cooney (Fine Gael) and ex-Minister for Posts and one of the most arrogant anti-working class reactionaries in Irish But Ireland's workers will hardly rejoice at the return of Fianna Fail. They fought the election on a manifesto full of promises to reduce unemployment and inflation, to grant equal pay for women, to "revieW' certain anti-republican laws and to secure a commitment from Britain that it will withdraw from the North of Ireland.

BACKTRACK

But already Lynch has begun to backtrack on even these vague and Gmited election pledges. On the last somt above, Lynch has made it aces only a demand for a decor "our demand is not stion to withdraw within a specific black workforce stayed at home on the 16th and . 17th of June; the Soweto Traders' Association unanimously decided to close down on those days also.

In the Kabah township of Uitenhage a mass riot developed on Friday night, causing over £600,000 worth of damage.

Vorster's government has proved as brutally reactionary as ever in the face of this new upsurge by black workers.

TEAR GAS

New weapons, such as a machine capable of pumping out tear gas and talcum powder, have been developed-but these have proved ineffective in crushing the mass movement among South Africa's black workers.

Time is clearly running out for the white racist regimes of all Southern Africa. The South African foreign minister, Pik Botha, made a visit to fellow racist Ian Smith on June 15 and reportedly "received an assurance" that a transition to black majority rule would soon take place there.

Botha obviously hopes to save South Africa by voluntarily "sacrificing" Rhodesia. But such strategy is doomed to failure: diplomatic manoeuvring by South Africa, Rhodesia, the United States and Britain can at best delay the tide of militancy which threatens to engulf all of southern Africa; it can by no means turn that tide back.

VICTORY

In order to ensure victory over Vorster, African workers need both a correct revolutionary policy and the means to carry that policy through to a successful conclusion.

In Britain we can take a positive step along that road by fighting for arms to be sent, under trade union control, to South African workers. And at the same time we must demand an end to all politicking in southern Africa by Labour's foreign minister, David Owen, and must press instead for an international boycott and blacking of all South African produce..

Only concrete action of this sort can help overthrow the racist regimes of Vorster and Smith.

The NUS demonstration in London, calied to commemorate the Soweto killings attracted 7,000 people. The platform of speakers at South African police the end of the march was originally planned to include Tsitsi Mashinini one of the leaders of last year's Soweto uprising. But shortly before the demonstration took place, the Broad Left-Communist Party dominated NUS executive withdrew the invitation to Mashinini, because of pressure from the African National Congress (ANC). In a slanderous statement the executive alleged:

1. that Mashinini had "denounced • by students Botswana" 2. that he criticised the ANC. 3. that he had been acting sh during a speaking tour of the 4. that he has no suppor Soweto.

Finally the NUS executive insinuated that Mashinini either consciously or unconsciously acted in a way that could only help American imperialist interests in Africa!

This series of lies, half-truths and distortions must be dènounced by every. Students Union in Britain, who should now try to pass motions of condemnation of the Executive for this attack on Mashinini. In this the Stalinist policies of the Broad Left are seen to be backed up with Stalinist methods of calumny also. minority report has been drawn up by Colin Talbot who was on the working party which originally extended the invitation to Mashinin:

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Telegraphs, Conor Cruise O'Brien- a former left' intellectual, but now