Vorster's Landslide Win for Repression

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The racist government has been unable to suppress the damning evidence about the security police which has come to light in Steve Biko's inquest.

In fact by flaunting its hideous cruelties throughout the election campaign the regime showed its arrogant contempt for the black population of South Africa and opponents of apartheid throughout the world.

Laughable verdict

The combination of eviice of the trial, the laughe verdict that no-one was - Steve Biko responsible for Biko's death, and Vorster's landslide election victory were a shameless demonstration of the singlemindedly repressive intentions of the white racists.

In their election the white population of South Africa voted as in the past they built their laagers (big fences to protect white settlements) to defend their white supremacy.

Vorster's .. Nationalist Party, which already had a huge majority in the all white "parliament' • got 154 out ol he total of 165 seats.

Since the last election the former main party of the English-speaking whites, the United Party, has disintegrated. 17 seats were won (mostly in the smarter white suburbs of Johannesburg) by the so-called Progressive Federal Party.

Mining capitalists

This party, the darling of British 'liberals' is the property of the mining capitalists and sections of the white professional petty bourgeoisie.

Like the Nationalists it believes s in white supremacy but clothes it in rather more tactful language than Vorster.

The main criticism which the 'Progressives' raise against Vorster and the nationalists is that their repression is carried out too provocatively.

Vorster's election was in part designed to demonstrate very plainly to world capitalism that he embodied the only practicable way of maintaining white supremacy, on hich, despite alt its hypocritical protestations, capita:ism feeds in South Africa.

Parallel assemblies

It also provided Vorster with a clear mandate for his current policies of "constitutional change" , involving the setting up of parallel assemcoloured population, a fraudulent system of "local government" for the black townships as well as the continued denial of all political rights to blacks in "white" areas (87% of the country).

For the black working class the election must be taken as a warning.

It is a warning of the ruthléss strategy of the racists. It is a warning that the kind of struggle represented by the black consciousness movement, of which Biko was a leader, is bound to be trodden contemptuously underfoot by Vorster's racists..

Essential prop.

A successful struggle against apartheid must be simultaneously a struggle against the capitalist system of which apartheid essential prop.

It must be a struggle of the working class organised in its own independent organisations.

Crowds at Steve Biko's funeral