Columbia sit-in sparks U.S. protests

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Longshoremen recess national convention to solidarize with Berkeley students on April 18. ILWU President Jimmy Herman (right) spoke to students at rally 2 SOCIALIST ACTION MAY 1985 Student leaders announced April 22 that they were calling off their threeweek sit-in against apartheid at Columbia University in New York City. The sit-in will end April 25, a day after the boycott of classes called by dozens of campuses nationwide.

The sit-in has been staged since April 4 to demand an end to Columbia's investment in companies that do business in South Africa. Some 400 students have participated in the 24-hour, vigil in front of Hamilton Hall, a major building on the campus. The building has been renamed by the students Mandela Hall in honor of the African leader.

At the start of the blockade of Man... Apartheid :

(continued from page 1: “Apartheid agony continues despite latest ‹reforms'”)

cent of the South African population. The 10 "homelands" are scattered in over 80 separate and non-contiguous pieces of land. The Zulu bantustan, for instance, consists of 29 different areas.

Four of the bantustans— Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda, and Ciskeihave already been declared "independent states" by the government, although this status is recognized by no other national or international body, including the United Nations.

By this declaration millions of Blacks have with one stroke been deprived of South African citizenship and made "migrant laborers,, without the right to belong to unions or to have their homes and families in areas where they work. And the South African ruling class created an almost bottomless pool of cheap labor to be controlled with passbooks and dehumanizing legislation.

The clear intent of this declaration was expressed in 1978 by the then Minister of Plural Relations and Development: "If our policy is taken to its full logical conclusion as far as the Black people are concerned, there will not be one Black man with South African citizenship."

Prior to 1979, no African worker was classed as an "employee."

All were considered "contract" workers who were permitted to come to the cities or onto white farms to work under a contract of no more than one year. At the expiration of the contract I'M IN CHARGE OF OUR CONSTRUCTIVE ENGAGEMENT POLICY TOWARD SOUTH AFRICA STATE DEPI CLAIM SUCCESSES... OBJECT TO WCTIO 5... EMPHASIZE E POSI IVE... dela Hall the administration secured an injunction against the protesters. But the students obtained a countervailing court order forbidding Columbia officials from taking any "improper" action against the students so long as classes were not interrupted.

Despite this order, 14 students were served with court summonses for "continuing trespass."

In addition university administrators have threatened 65 demonstrators with disciplinary penalties ranging up to expulsion. The students have not been moved by these threats.

The students want the trustees to withdraw $32.5 million in university funds from 27 companies doing business in South Africa. They want student WE REAGAN MARISAN APARTELS WE (see speech opposite page).

they had to return to the bantustan, report to the labor bureau, and wait for another contract.

In May 1979 the Industrial Conciliation Act was amended to allow the definition of "employee" to be extended to any worker who could legally reside in the Republic of South Africa. But by the Catch-22 of apartheid logic few Black workers could be legal residents.

By the complicated rules of apartheid a small minority of Black workers have MY JOB IS TO POINT TO PROGRESS... HAIL REFORMS AND URGE RESTRAINT AND DEPLORE MASSACRES AS OFTEN AS NECESSARY On April 18, 2000 demonstrators marched onto the Columbia campus to support the anti-apartheid demonstrators. One thousand of the supporters marched from Harlem. They demanded university divestment from South Africa and amnesty for the arrested students.

Various unions also supported the students. A Teamsters local pledged $100 a day as long as the boycott continued, and District Council 37 provided a huge tarp to keep the rain out.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson came on campus to support the sit-in. He praised the protesters for setting a "moral example."

Their action is in the "greatest and highest tradition" of the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, he said. In concluding the sit-in, student leaders said that they were ending this phase of the protest with high morale and determination to continue the fight against their university's tacit support to apartheid.

SUPPORTS ‹yan Socialist Action/Joe been permitted to live in townships outside the large industrialized white areas if they have been able to prove long residency in the same place or long-term employment by the same employer. The new government decision would apparently extend this permission to an additional small number of Blacks.

Negation of rights remains But permission to live in or near white areas—or to marry across racial lines-does not constitute citizenship. Political and civil rights for Blacks are virtually non-existent. No Black has voted or held office in South Africa since 1936. Meetings of Africans can be prohibited on any pretext.

Under the Intimidation Act and the Internal Security Act, both of 1982, people may be arrested merely for "jibing or jeering" in the streets, and may be detained without trial indefinitely. The Security Act contains within its definition of "terrorism" any "intent...to Editor: ALAN BENJAMIN Assistant Editors: NANCY GRUBER MICHAEL SCHREIBER Business Manager:DON MAHONEY Circulation Manager: RALPH FORSYTH Editorial Board: Alan Benjamin, Les Evans, Dianne Feeley, Jeff Mackler, Nat Weinstein Staff: Paul Colvin, Larry Cooperman, May May Gong, Millie Gonzalez, Mark Harris, David Kirschner, Hayden Perry, Joe Ryan, Carole Seligman, Kwame M.A. Somburu, Marion Syrek, Sylvia Weinstein Socialist Action (ISSN 0747-4237) is published monthly for $6 per year by Socialist Action Publishing Association, 3435 Army St., No. 308, San Francisco, CA 94110. Second-class postage is paid at San Francisco, Calif. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Socialist Action, 3435 Army St., No. 308, San Francisco, CA 94110.

Rates: 12 issues for $6.00; Canada and Mexico $12.50; $30.00 airmail for all other countries; $14.00 surface mail for all other countries. Signed articles by contributors do not necessarily represent the views of Socialist Action. These are expressed in editorials. Blacks, with estimates ranging as high as 2 million to 3 million.

Increasing militancy

This is the context within which the rising tide of militancy in the independent unions, as well as the increasing violence with which Black youth and township inhabitants are resisting their oppressive situation, must be viewed. Since the beginning of the year over 100 Blacks have been killed, the majority of them by police firing into generally peaceful gatherings of people.

In some cases the victims have been Black policemen or members of community councils installed by the white government to rule in the townships. These people are viewed as collaborators by the inhabitants, and it is entirely understandable that the rage toward their oppressors should be turned against these extensions of white rule.

The recent announcements by Botha are an obvious effort to defuse this rising militancy. The attempt is doomed to failure. The last year has seen a spectacular advance in mobilizations of the Black working class. This rise climaxed on Nov. 5-6, 1984, with a regional general strike in the Transvaal called by a broad coalition of 30 anti-apartheid associations and unions.

The demands of this Transvaal Regional Strike Committee were political and social as well as job-related. They included: withdrawal of the police and army from Black ghettos; the suspension of increases in rents and bus fares that the government was seeking to impose; the release of detainees and political prisoners; the reinstatement of workers fired in earlier strikes; and the rescinding of taxes regarded as unjust.

The strike was observed by 75 percent to 90 percent of the workers in the region—almost a million people-workers and students. The non-white working class, which it is estimated will comprise 93 percent of the South African work force by the year 2000, will not be satisfied with such fraudulent sops as the ones that Botha is offering them.

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