[The failure of the racist government to crush…]

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The failure of the racist government to crush the resistance to apartheid of the bl ack masses of South Af rica was shown up in the general boycott of the elections in Soweto last Sunday.

These elections were to the "Community Council" a powerless local authority set up by the racist regime.

In Soweto the vast "township" close to Johannesburg, one million blacks live in squalid conditions.

Of these one million, 300,000 are eligible to vote; 126,700 of those are registered as voters. And of these only 492 actually went to the polis on Sunday.

No candidates Only two out of the seats were contested and in 19 of them there were no candidates at all.

The boycott was supported by the imprisoned petty-bourgeois leaders known as the Soweto 10 and other opportunist leaders including Chief Buthelezi who forbade any member of his Zulu-based Inkatha organisation to stand in the elections.

Buthelezi and the Soweto 10, however, oppose the racist elections not from the standpoint of the interests of the working class and the total rejection of the racist apartheid state.

Adjusted

The Soweto 10 advocate an adjusted form of apartheid in which towns like Soweto would have "black autonomy" and would, therefore, be under the political control of the opportunistic black capitalists and professionals and chiefs.

The crisis of leadership of the South African proletariat has allowed the Soweto 10 and Chief Buthelezi to assume a mantle which they would be sure to lose if there were an independent proletarian leadership which could consolidate and extend the gains of the last two years in Soweto.

But the strength of the boycott shows that the diversions cooked up by the petty-bourgeois leaders have not yet destroyed all those gains.

Signor Ciulio Andreotti, who e minority Christian Democratic government quit office on January 16, is to be given more rope (in the form of extra negotiating time) by the leaders of the Italian Communist Party• Not-lt goes without saying-to hang himself, but in order to continue his efforts to tie the Italian working class to another three years of Most importantly, they have been the main force in organising-Jack Jones-like trade union support for an economic strategy directly designed to cut workers' living standards.

Architects

Through their control of Italy's largest trade union confederation, the CGIL, they were the architects of the fraudulent 'rank-and-file' conference in Rome last week CP leader Berlinguer (left).

Almost 1,500 'delegates' from all three national trade union confederations (CGIL, CISL and UIL) voted by a big majority for acceptance.

But fewer than a third of the 'delegates' had been elected by membership bodies, and those selected sections of the membership who have been 'consulted' and had given approval of the package had been tricked into believing it was voluntary and would not limit the right to free collective bargaining by to such hopes:

"This turning point binds everyone. Autonomy does not mean anarchy."

In theory, wage cuts are supposed to provide 'investment funds' (a flimsy euphemism for larger profits) and thus protect jobs.

Firings

But Lama has already made it clear he supports firings-in firms which are 'over-manned'.

Italian Eurocommunism'