Originally published in Inqaba Ya Basebenzi No.24/25 (October 1987).
Editorial Board Statement
Four weeks after the mineworkers’ strike was called off, the realisation has set in among many activists that the cornerstone has been removed from the 1987 strike movement. This is causing frustration, and even depression among some.
Among some sections of workers, doubts have begun to arise. If the mineworkers, strongest regiment in our army, did not carry on the fight for their wage claim, they ask, what can we hope to achieve on our own?
This industrial movement, unparalleled in our history, has been looked to by active workers and youth to break the stalemate which followed out of the revolutionary upsurge of 1984-86.
The insurrections which burst out in township after township at that time, spearheaded by the youth, rested on the foundations of trade union and youth organisation created over more than a decade of struggle – and raised our movement to a qualitatively new level.
These huge battles decisively marked the opening of the SA revolution. It is a revolution brought about by the irreconcilable conflict between the brutal dictatorship of apartheid and the demands of the overwhelmingly working class black majority; between diseased capitalism and the determination of working people to end poverty-wages and to secure jobs, decent homes, decent education, majority rule and socialism.
Township Insurrections Ebb
In 1984-86, the movement ran again and again against the formidable obstacle of the SA state, its strength based upon industry, and upon the social cohesion of more than four million privileged whites. It became clear that insurrection in the townships alone, even when combined with limited general strikes, could not defeat this state. Yet how could the revolution sweep beyond that? Testing and feeling these limits, the movement in the townships ebbed; reaction set in, as the ruling class sought to regain the initiative.
But – despite the stepped-up repression by state forces and their vigilante jackals – the limits to reaction at this point have also become clear. Township organisation may have been driven back, but the re-established state controls are fragile and would at once be swept aside again by a general forward movement. Most obviously, the bosses and the state have not been able to carry through serious attacks against the foundations of our movement’s strength in the thousands of organised workplaces.
The white-based state, for all its viciousness and firepower, is increasingly impotent as an instrument for turning back the arising movement of the black working class. Despite the havoc that vigilantes have wreaked, they cannot compensate for this weakness.
Avalanche of Strikes
Within months, sensing the weakness of the reaction, encouraged by the temporary economic upturn, workers were testing and advancing on the industrial front.
The tenacity, and then the victory, of the OK workers lifted the mood nationally. Each victory became a stimulus. The iron will of the railway workers’ struggle inspired millions. The May 5-6 general strike, completely overshadowing the white elections, confirmed to the black working class its unrivalled power as an industrial and political force. Every section of the class prepared to march.
As the mineworkers moved to confront the Chamber, the strike movement had become an avalanche: 5.5 million strike-days up to the end of August, (compared with 1.3 million in the whole of 1986).
What a magnificent confirmation of the unbreakable will of the working class to break the chains of apartheid and capitalism and to transform society! It was obvious to the ruling class that this was not merely an “industrial” but a political movement.
On the basis of this tidal wave, Cosatu’s national minimum living wage campaign could have been used to unite the forces of the movement – making gains on the wage front, organising the unorganised, thus breaking the stalemate and regaining the political initiative from the bosses, their state, and their collaborators.
This required that the Cosatu leadership put forward to every worker and youth in SA a clear and definite plan of action for taking forward the campaign.
It is necessary to recognise that this was not done.
Tasks of Cosatu
The bosses and the regime, realising the threat of a new and more dangerous working class explosion, had gone on the attack – the shooting of railway workers, the bombing of Cosatu House, the unleashing of Uwusa killers (see Defeating Inkatha), were the most glaring expressions of this.
While some Cosatu leaders talked of the need for self-defence and of action on the wage campaign, they did not take concrete steps to turn this into reality, but instead devoted themselves to misconceived appeals to the bosses in the name of a “Hands off Cosatu” campaign. The readiness of youth and workers to defend their organisations was not tapped.
Trade union organisation is not an adequate substitute for mass political organisation of the working class. Nonetheless, the workplace organisations are the foundations of our class’s strength. The creation of unions like NUM and Numsa, and especially the creation of Cosatu, have been the greatest advances in our history. Not accidentally, Cosatu was brought into being in the fire of 1984-86. 1987 cried out for this strength to be used in action.
An Inqaba Editorial Board statement of 1 March explained all this, and proposed how the national minimum living wage campaign could be used to take the whole movement of workers and youth forward most effectively.
But no serious and systematic attempt was made by the leadership to combine in action the different sections of the industrial workers, or to involve the revolutionary energies of the youth as strike organisers to support each struggle and assist in organising the unorganised.
Even without a vigorous lead from Cosatu, it would still have been possible for big unions like Numsa and the NUM to draw the movement together nationally round their own wage disputes. Hundreds-of-thousands of workers were ready to move, as evidenced in the Numsa and NUM strike ballots. The youth eagerly looked towards the industrial arena. But the Numsa leaders called-off their action. And what happened to the NUM strike?
Far from energetically linking this decisive struggle to the rest of the movement, the NUM leaders insisted on projecting it as “non-political”, legal, a matter for mineworkers alone. Even then, they did not prepare the membership to deal with the strike-breaking measures prepared by the Chamber. Soon the attacks on strikers and mass dismissals brought home to the NUM leadership the scale of the battle that would be needed to win the wage claim against SA’s most powerful employer. Having insufficiently prepared for this, and having not mobilised the forces of Cosatu and the youth, they considered it necessary to call-off the strike.
The Cosatu and NUM leaders now say that more can be achieved next year when there are larger numbers organised. With all workers and youth we will do all we can to help ensure victories in 1988. But, for that, it is necessary to recognise that much more could have been achieved this year with the forces already organised. The size of the mine strike exceeded everybody’s expectations. But numbers in themselves are not enough to win. The point is how the forces are used, how they are led. And using our present forces effectively is itself the best way to draw in bigger forces for the future.
National Strategy of Action Needed
From its origins in the early 1970s through the struggles of 1984-86, and up to the present time, the impetus to the development of the movement has come not from national leadership or plan but from below – from active fighters in the workplaces and the townships. The movement has fundamentally pulled itself up by its own bootstraps to the point of mounting a revolutionary challenge to the state.
Now, however, it is increasingly more difficult to alter the balance of forces in favour of revolution, and prepare the necessary forces for the defeat of the state, without a national strategy of action on the part of the leadership.
The roots of state power lie, not in the townships, but in the centres of industry, finance, and commerce. Against it, the most powerful force of our movement lies in the collective power of the workers at the point of production. It is around this power that all the forces for revolution must be drawn together.
The crux of the problem is to link together in action the full collective power of the employed workers with the revolutionary energy of the mass of working class youth.
This is a complicated task, difficult for the separate forces of the movement to solve “spontaneously”, by improvising. Uniting our forces in action nationally requires a common understanding of perspectives and tasks. The authority of the national leadership is decisive in generalising and organising this understanding, and imparting it to every section of the movement in a systematic way.
Revolutionary Potential
The essence of the problem now is that the Congress leadership, possessing this authority, bases its approach to the liberation struggle not upon developing to the full the revolutionary potential of the black working class, but upon the hope of avoiding that by pressing the bosses and the regime to concede democratic change. By separating the issues of political democracy from those of capitalist class rule, they imagine they can persuade the enemy to concede the one without sacrificing the other.
The whole experience of the working class teaches that the present racist state defends the bosses’ property and wealth and serves to maintain exploitation. This state power will not be surrendered peacefully – it can be conquered only by a revolution, by an armed mass movement led by the conscious working class. The democratic and class questions are tied together.
So acute are the revolutionary antagonisms in our society on race and class lines that anyone who shrinks from these conclusions must draw back also from mobilising to the full the forces of the black working class in action. Every serious struggle, whether on wages or any other issue, now threatens to become general and therefore poses these political dilemmas in front of the leadership.
We fully accept that the leadership is suffering heavy blows from the state. If this fact explained the deficiencies, we would be the first to acknowledge it. But that is not the case. The central problem is political.
The fundamental obstacle to the advance of the movement is now within the movement itself. Until the approach of the leadership to the nature and tasks of the revolution is altered, we will continue to encounter this obstacle again and again in many forms.
The shortcomings in the approach of the national leadership have most effect upon the activists. Working tirelessly, seeing the opportunities missed for transforming the situation, they can become frustrated and, some even demoralised – especially when they notice that previously combative sections of workers are increasingly cautious about throwing themselves into action. In fact the more experienced workers have come to realise the need for effective leadership to ensure a breakthrough.
But the “ebb” is only one side of the picture. Despite setbacks, the underlying capacity to fight of overwhelming sections of the working class remains. There is a deep sense that the collective power we have built cannot and will not be easily conquered – and that the real potential at our disposal has barely yet been exercised.
Even now, in the wake of the mineworkers’ strike, previously passive and isolated sections of the class – like farm workers, or those in Saldanha – are moving into action inspired by the magnificent conquests of the last years. In Natal, where participation in the 1984-86 upsurge was cut across by the Inkatha reign of terror, the tide is beginning to be turned against Gatsha’s vigilante gangs.
Nor can the ruling class take any comfort from our problems. Beset by economic, political, and social crisis, they do not know which way to turn. Our problems can be overcome; theirs cannot.
Against the rising power of the black working class, they can neither carry through a crushing counter-revolution, nor offer reform that has any real credibility for the mass of workers and youth.
They can only twist and turn between bouts of unavailing repression and unavailing reform, and combinations of them. Thus, after a period of leaning on his right foot in an unsuccessful attempt to hold-off the white drift towards the ultra-right. Botha, within weeks of the election, has been compelled to lean more on his left foot, once again presenting himself as a reformer.
SA’s most powerful monopoly boss, Anglo American’s Gavin Relly, laments that SA is in a cul-de-sac out of which he sees no resolution in sight.[1]
All this is a recipe for increasing splits and divisions in the ruling class, which will sap confidence and open-up divisions among the ranks of the whites also. Even the turn by sections of whites to the reactionary and unworkable policies of the far right shows that the social cohesion of the white minority is beginning to break-up.
While our movement needs to promote and take advantage of splits among the whites, it is quite incorrect to believe that the liberals can be used to provide a short-cut towards breaking the stalemate and achieving victory.
Unfortunately, there are many signs that Congress leaders, instead of putting forward a plan of action, are looking to the big capitalists – or even to the Western powers – to break the stalemate. Some are even suggesting that these, because they fear social revolution in SA, will force Botha to the negotiating table to carry through a democratic settlement!
Because of the sickness of their system, every section of the capitalist class – including the so-called ‘liberal’ capitalists – are implacably opposed to democracy in SA. When they brand even our demand for a living wage as intolerable “communism,” how can they possibly afford to concede majority rule?
This they openly admit. As an SA Foundation spokesman said at a recent “Business International” conference in London – attended by Comrade Tambo – “SA business feels it would be suicide to leave the economic system of a future SA to the democratic wishes of the majority to decide on.”[2]
Even if the big SA capitalists or the Western powers find apartheid an embarrassment, they have no viable alternative for the defence of their interests save the white-based state. This state machine is the foremost obstacle to the establishment of democracy – and they will not surrender its power.
Whatever talks and negotiations may be organised in the future between spokesmen of the ruling class and the leaders of our movement, they cannot lead to majority rule. To sow illusions in what they can achieve only diverts attention from the need to mobilise the forces already at our disposal – to break through the stalemate, regain the initiative against the state, and prepare the working class for power.
Entrenched Obstacles
If Marxism was now the predominant tendency in the working class movement, able to imbue with a common purpose the hundreds-of-thousands of workers and youth who are the active vanguard of the movement – then the present stalemate could rapidly be broken.
But the conscious forces of Marxism are still weak, and are confronted by entrenched obstacles in the form of reformism and Stalinism in the hierarchy of the mass organisations.
This weakness of the subjective factor – of revolutionary leadership – has become a factor in the objective situation, which cannot he quickly or easily overcome.
As a result, for quite a protracted period our movement is likely to face a whole number of unnecessary difficulties in trying to move forward decisively. Many blind alleys may be explored before they are rejected. Workers and youth will be compelled to tackle these difficulties and improvise solutions by trial and error without the theoretical clarity which Marxist leadership of the movement would provide in advance.
It is possible that once again next year workers will look for a way forward on the industrial front. But their outlook will now be tempered with doubts as to whether a national wage campaign will become a living reality. Short of a decisive lead from the top, there are no simple keys which can transform the situation.
The central task is to strengthen the forces of Marxism among the active layer of workers and youth.
Even without a clear national lead, many hard-fought struggles will erupt locally, providing many opportunities to build. In addition, there will be many who, out of the experiences of the past period, are now searching for the answers that Marxism can provide.
Building the Movement for Power
Again and again, supporters of Inqaba must explain that there is no way forward through compromises with the liberal bosses; that the need is for worker-youth unity around campaigns on all the basic social and political issues; for systematic armed self-defence against Inkatha/Uwusa, vigilantes and all the forces of reaction; for non-racial workers’ unity, workers’ power, democracy and socialism.
These are the lines along which to build the movement for power which will be capable of splitting the whites on class lines and bringing down the state.
The mighty organisations of our class have all been built upon the countless initiatives of rank-and-file activists. Upon them rests now the task of ensuring that these organisations are correctly led. Locally, regionally, and nationally it is necessary to struggle loyally within the Congress organisations to make Marxist policies the guiding influence in the movement. We must build – and, where necessary, rebuild and transform – the mass organisations on these lines. No-one should sit bewailing the enormity of the tasks and the weakness of our present forces. By joining with the Marxists in Congress the present problems can and will be overcome.
For all the obstacles, the barren future which is all apartheid rule and capitalism can offer will drive the working class again and again into struggle. The ruling class will expose its bankruptcy again and again both through its reformist retreats and its repressive provocations.
The unconquerable determination of the South African working class which has inspired the exploited and oppressed, around the world, the huge reserves of strength still to show themselves in action, will lead inevitably to explosions bigger by far than 1984-86. Shortcomings of leadership will generate a ferment of questioning as to how to overcome the problems.
Attempts to witch-hunt Marxists out of the Congress movement will fail, and rebound against their instigators. Patiently assembling the forces of Marxism in the Congress movement through all the sharp turns and sudden changes that the period ahead will bring, we can play a significant part in building and transforming the ANC into a mass revolutionary party of the working class, capable of leading all the oppressed to national liberation and socialism.
© Transcribed from the original by the Marxist Workers Party (2020).
[1] Sunday Times, 13 September 1987
[2] Cape Times, 13 June 1987
