Amnesty has no answer to

Scan page 8

Under a new law proposed in South Africa black workers who lose their jobs and remain unemployed for three months will be open to arbitrary. jailing or immediate 'deportation' to the African homelands.

This move, to accelerate the process of coralling black workers in the 13% of land mass reserved for them under apartheid, seeks also to tie the policy to the immediate needs of capitalism.

Unemployment

Unemployment in South Africa has increased steadily fram 580,000 in 1962 to that there is a gradual easing titanitos of the police state and apartheid regime.

Despite Soweto, despite the murder of Steve Biko and at least 20 other political prisoners since August 1976 in police custody, defenders of trade with South Africa try to give the impression of a gradual end to a dark age which stretches back into the dim and distant past.

The booklet-Political Imprisonment in South Africaproduced by Amnesty Inter. national-has therefore an important educative role to play, though not necessarily the one that the authors intend.

Valuable Far and away the most vaulable section in a booklet which will undoubtably be widely read amone the lahnity movement in 2.=.- LALW S Britain is the section which outlines the introduction of the police state measures.

Far from emerging from a dark age, the barbarous leaders of the South African regime are driving the black population into ever more horrifying conditions.

Repressive

The demands of capitalism and the logic of the racist regime push always towards more repressive legislation, more imprisonments and more economic and social deprivation.

The apartheid programme was introduced in 1948. Before that time many of the racist features of the state were already apparent. But the powers to extend them to their_logical conclusion did they were placed separate roll and were on empowered to elect three white representatives to the House of Representatives.

Rights removed

Blacks throughout the country were empowered to elect three more white 'spokesmen' to the Senate. (If this has a familiar ring that is perhaps because it bears an uncanny resemblance to the method proposed by lan Smith in Zimbabwe to secure white rule there under a sellout settlement).

It was not until 1959 that these minimal rights were removed. For Cape Coloureds the charade of electing four white representatives was illowed to continue until 1968.

This is mirrored by the t----11 trengthening of the powers if the police state. The Supsuwero civilian shot down, 1976 an Amnesty International Report. Price £1.00 from Amnesty International Publications, 10, Southampton St, London WCZE 7HF.

pression of Communism Act was introduced in 1950. It was largely replaced by the Internal Security Act in 1976 -an Act which considerably extended police powers.

In general the laws have been introduced in response to whatever form black resistance was taking. The Criminal Law Amendment Act in 1953 was aimed at passive resistance.

It allowed for three year prison sentences for persons convicted of offences committed in protest against any law.

After Sharpeville when the passive resistance turned active the laws became more direct.

Retroactive

Police were given extensive powered mela stain detain incommunicado and without charge indefinitely.

Communism had previously been defined as:

• . . any doctrine which aims at bringing about any promotion of disturbances or include the promotion of (our italics).

'Prejudice'

The Terrorism Act was equally loose with its language. It included activities which could cause "prejudice to any industry or undertaking" or which would cause "embarassment to the administration of the affairs of the State"

The mandatory minimum sentence is five years jail. The of 1976 is probably the high point in legalised gansterdom. It extends almost all the powers of the Prevention of But Amnesty International 1s Amnesty International. If it JALO could send its reporters to hell it would come back with careful •and accurate account of some of the boiling in oil and skewering of the inmates. It would build up a picture of the barbarity of the Satanic regime. It demand a series of reforms. would then inevitably Amnesty International stands for the release of all political prisoners, a position very different from that of a Exploited Our responsibilities Trotskyists to those men and as tortured and murdered, who women who are being are being economically exploited and politically supThe lid was unceren pressta are great.

• We cannot demand an easing of the nooses around their necks. We must lead them to settle the account with the hangman in full.

Integrated

There are conditions when demands for rights for political prisoners, integrated into a programme for the overthrow of the regime, have a progressive role.

In South Africa such demands are meaningless and irrelevant.

The black workers have shown again and again that they have the will to stand up to the regime directly, to confront it physically. That they cannot do so is a consequence of the lack of Trotskyist leadership.

TY STR • The demand for the release of political prisoners is one that must be a part of the campaign. But it is only a part.

ional will not recognise is that What Amnesty Internatthe apartheid system abhors props up a system which it tolerates-capitalism.

When the day of the South African revolution dawns and those racist leaders and treacherous collaborators face their reckoning, then those who escape the gallows or who fail to flee the country will be hurled into the prisons of their own making.

How then will the demand from -Amnesty International to free all political prisoners look? The freedom demand is for the enemies of we apartheid, not its friends.

----- pull-quotes -----

political, industrial, social or economic change ... by the

disorder, by unlawful acts or omissions or by means which

maximum sentence is death. The Internal Security Act