Workers and youth!
Originally published in Inqaba ya Basebenzi No. 16/17 (February 1986).
Inqaba Editorial Board Statement, 2 December 1985
The launch last weekend of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) brings under one banner 34 non-racial democratic unions with over 500,000 members.
This historic advance is of far wider importance than the strength and solidarity which it will add to the industrial struggles of the workers. After twelve months of heroic countrywide insurrection in the townships led by the black youth, the black industrial workers are determined to unite in action at the head of the movement against the murderous apartheid regime.
Fighting Spirit Expressed by Cosatu President
The fighting spirit of the workers was expressed in the speech of Elijah Barayi, vice-president of the SA NUM and now president of Cosatu. Described in the press as “a stalwart of the African National Congress before it was outlawed,” comrade Barayi “spelt out the Socialist aspirations of Cosatu” and declared the workers’ intention of nationalising the mines and big businesses on taking power.[1]
Ultimatum to Botha Regime
He delivered a militant ultimatum to Botha, drawing thunderous applause from the 10,000-strong rally:
Cosatu gives Botha six months to get rid of passes. If that does not take place we will burn the passes… I want to give P.W. Botha a last warning to get rid of the pass laws and to withdraw the troops from the townships before the country burns.
If carried into effect in a full-scale national campaign, this ultimatum can provide the focus for the entire mass movement in the period ahead, and help lift union membership towards the million mark.
Cosatu, together with the youth, in a united front with the UDF, must back up the ultimatum with organisation and power!
Break the stalemate with this campaign!
While thousands of activists in SA still show themselves tireless in battle, below the surface the mass movement has begun slightly to recede (despite continued eruptions), because of the difficulty of carrying the insurrectionary movement in its present form beyond the flaming township streets.
Prolonged stalemate has meant the state gradually (if only temporarily) regaining the upper hand.
The resulting frustration of the fighting youth had begun to open a dangerous rift with unions slow to move into political battle.
A Cosatu-led campaign to smash the pass laws can now provide a way forward – within the scope of the force presently in the hands of the black working class.
The Pass System Can Now be Completely Wrecked
In May, alone at that time, Inqaba urged:
…were there now to be a really determined, well-organised and resolutely led mass campaign of pass burning, the complete defiance of influx control laws, and attacks on pass courts and records offices, this system could be thoroughly wrecked. However, to the extent that the matter is left to the ruling class to decide, it is most unlikely that they could move to the abolition of these measures.
In a Memorandum on Strategy, which was given limited circulation in South Africa, we argued for united action between the unions and UDF organisations in “an action campaign to cripple now the entire operation of the pass laws”.
Now the Cosatu rally proves that this call is fully in tune with the mood of the organised workers. The Cosatu president has set six months for Botha to scrap the pass laws – or the passes burn.
This Presents Huge Difficulties for Botha
The regime faces a dilemma. The big bosses and even the President’s stooge Council have recently declared in favour of ending passes. This is because the pass system is breaking down and no longer doing the job of controlling workers as it used to. So the ruling class thinks ‘on balance’ it would be better to drop passes as they only provoke black people.
But abolition has not taken place because most bosses fear to do this in the middle of a tide of revolutionary mass struggles. The regime fears to give a signal of weakness to the blacks.
Now Botha must decide: surrender in humiliation to the ultimatum of Cosatu, or throw all his force at the unions in a situation, and on an issue, which divides the ruling class and the whites and could potentially even split the troops.
Whether we can inflict a severe setback on the regime, and rouse the movement to greater heights, depends now upon the leadership given by Cosatu.
Cosatu must name the date for the passes to burn!
The ultimatum has been given. The workers have endorsed it with their response to comrade Elijah Barayi’s speech. The political prestige of Cosatu now depends on carrying this ultimatum into force.
To show their clear intention of doing that, the Cosatu leaders must now NAME THE DATE FOR THE PASSES TO BURN!
An Active Campaign of Preparation is Needed
Once the date is set, the whole movement can immediately turn its attention to an active campaign of preparation for the day of pass-burning. The dangerous (and potentially violent) divisions between youth and trade union workers can be healed at once. The frustrations of the youth at the stalemate with the army and police can be turned to concrete political tasks, and courageous fighters not wasted in suicidal acts of desperation which could otherwise take place in this period.
By naming the date, the Cosatu leaders can also prevent the self-seeking sectarians at the head of Azapo, the National Forum, the remnants of anti-Cosatu unions, the multitude of middle class ‘left’ grouplets, etc., from wrecking the unity of the working class movement by ‘proclaiming’ their ‘own’ pass-burning campaigns. If they try to ‘jump the gun’ with an earlier date, this will be seen as wrecking and they will be rejected.
Naming the Date Will Help Protect the Leadership
Once the date has been set, and general guidelines for campaign action have been given, the Cosatu leadership will be in a much stronger position to resist the menaces of the Botha regime.
Once the word is given, the implementation of the campaign can be undertaken by the many organisations and structures within the unions, among the youth and in the communities, which the regime cannot readily crush. This will help to safeguard the national leadership from arrest.
The watchword should be: “On the stated day the passes must burn. No-one may call the action off, except the Cosatu leaders themselves.”
Surely only exceptional circumstances would induce the Cosatu leaders to step back from their own ultimatum. Certainly, they would not call the action off from inside prison!
That fact can provide some protection for the leadership in this situation. Botha will hesitate long before jailing the leaders of Cosatu in any event. Now he must be faced with this dilemma also. It can be done only by naming the date.
Which date should be set for the passes to burn?
May Day would have been a good choice, but is only five months away. 31 May is the 25th anniversary of the white racist Republic. Better still, 16 June is the 10th anniversary of the Soweto uprising. What better acknowledgement of the youth’s role than to set this date for a one-day national general strike and mass pass-burning in the townships?
Whatever date, the key thing is to publicly set it now!
Every pass must burn!
How many passes are there in South Africa? Ten million? Then ten million passes must burn!
This will require a huge campaign to organise – bigger even than the successful boycott campaign around the new constitution and puppet parliament elections in 1984.
The 500,000 Cosatu members, the tens of thousands of youth activists, the women at home – all should become campaigners now to prepare the day when the passes will burn.
It should be a campaign of organised discussion and persuasion of working people up and down the country, to explain the necessity and correctness of this step and build a mass momentum for pass-burning.
What if the army attacks the townships?
Preparations should be made to defend the townships on that day by all available means against police and troop attacks. It can be made very difficult and costly for these murderers to disperse mass pass-burning rallies. The youth have a lot of practical experience in street-fighting tactics now; the workers can add their own strengths and skills learned in production, by joining in.
Even if mass rallies are dispersed, it would still be possible to organise the pass-burning systematically, day or night, street by street.
A one-day national general strike on that day will be essential to concentrate all the forces of the black working class on the townships and ensure that the pass-burning is total.
What can coloured and Indian workers and youth do?
Just as African workers and youth played a big part in the election boycott campaign, coloured and Indian working people can do the same now, through the unions and the UDF youth and community bodies.
The pass-burning campaign could also be linked with actions to compel the resignation of the puppet MPs.
On the day itself, workers and youth in these communities should be prepared to join the strike action and to erect barricades in their townships to draw army units away from the African townships.
Mobilise White Youth and Students also
A big part of this campaign should be to divide and demoralise the whites, especially the troops on whom Botha will rely.
It can be explained clearly that they are being called on to massacre black people for the sake of defending a pass system which the President’s Council itself has denounced!
They are being used to protect the prestige of a rotten capitalist dictator, who has no policy and no solution to offer the people of South Africa, but is intent on driving the country deeper and deeper into crisis and bloodshed.
By pointing to the democratic power of the non-racial trade union movement, headed by Cosatu, the class issues and a socialist way forward can be explained especially to white working class youth. Raised as they are in privilege, and soaked in prejudice, they have not yet understood that their own salvation lies ultimately in going over to the side of the black working class.
On the day set for pass-burning, white students should be mobilised to converge on the African townships in order to complicate the position of the police and troops in opening fire. Difficult though this will be, they can also help in appealing to the young soldiers to defy their officers.
Use this Campaign to Unite the Revolutionary Youth
A nationwide action campaign to prepare the destruction of the pass system can provide the basis to unify the youth movement on a national scale, and build one National Youth Organisation, linking it effectively to the unions.
A massive effort to organise the unemployed can also be undertaken by Cosatu, together with the youth, in conjunction with the pass campaign.
This Campaign Can be Used to Weaken Buthelezi
The Cosatu conference and rally was held in Durban to confront the bantustan collaborator Buthelezi on his home ground and defy his lnkatha thugs who had previously driven the UDF out of key parts of Natal. Sacked BTR strikers mounted security in a significant demonstration of workers’ self-defence.
Buthelezi has now attacked Cosatu verbally. But he is badly miscalculating if he imagines he can defeat the unions in a serious struggle. His own former supporters among the Zulu workers can rapidly turn into his most ferocious opponents.
A vigorous Cosatu-led national campaign to prepare pass-burning will force Buthelezi’s hand. If he is foolish enough to throw his forces into action against the unions for the defence of the pass system, this hireling of the boss class will stand nakedly exposed in front of the workers.
Conservatives in Unions May Try to Block Campaign
Within Cosatu unions, there will be conservative elements who are horrified by what they see as the ‘political danger’ to the survival of the unions if Cosatu goes into head-on confrontation with the government.
They do not understand that the workers, now that they are organised in such large numbers, have to use their trade union organisations as effective weapons also in the struggle for liberation.
We live in dangerous times – that cannot be avoided. A policy of political passivity within any of the major unions now would be the surest way of weakening it also in the harsh industrial struggles ahead.
Conservatives in the unions will want to pretend that the Cosatu president never issued the ultimatum to Botha! They will hope it gets forgotten. They will try to confine Cosatu’s politics to verbal declarations. Their influence must be opposed.
An Ultimatum with Teeth
The Commonwealth heads gave Botha ‘six months’ to change apartheid, or face sanctions. That is a ‘dog with rubber teeth’, as workers say.
The Cosatu ultimatum is different. It has real teeth, and they must be used or the enormous hopes placed in it will be disappointed. Either this situation will be used to inflict a defeat on Botha, or the regime will use any retreat from the ultimatum to weaken Cosatu.
Inqaba supporters in the unions and youth organisations should immediately give active support to the magnificent political stance and bold ultimatum to Botha by the Cosatu leadership. This must now be translated into concrete action.
We must urge that mass report-backs in all the cities and towns on the Cosatu conference be organised and used to launch the pass campaign without delay.
© Transcribed from the original by the Marxist Workers Party (2021).
[1] Guardian, 2 December 1985
