Inflation measures disguise attacks on Brazilian workers

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A must for anti-apartheid activists!

By ALBERTO SAO PAULO-A new series of economic measures have been instituted by presidential decree in Brazil. President Jose Sarney caught the country by surprise when he announced the new plan on Feb. 28. The plan was rubber-stamped by Congress barely a month later.

Sarney explained that the new wage and price freeze package (popularly called "o pacote") will put an end to inflation -which rose by 264 percent in 1985. Inflation skyrocketed by an annı lal rate of almost 600 percent during the first two months of this year.

South Africa (continued from page classes in various parts of the country should return to school. Most of the conference participants agreed that the perspective of "indefinite" school boycotts was not effective.

This point was emphasized in a leaflet distributed earlier this year by Students of Young Azania (SOYA). The leaflet pointed out that in most cases "the boycott is a weapon that can and should be used for short periods of time" and for limited purposes.

SOYA urged "maximum unity of students, teachers, and parents, on a single, national program of action." The leaflet concluded, "Let us continue the struggle inside and outside the schools and let us use the boycott when we have to and when it suits our purpose.

Unions help lead struggle Last autumn, when the schools boycott movement was at its height, the organizers of the boycott took relatively few steps to coordinate their activities with those taken by the Black and non-racial trade unions.

But student and community activists responded when, at the founding of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in November 1985, the new 500,000-member federation dedicated itself to increased participation in the anti-apartheid fight.

This bond was reinforced as COSATU members helped to set up action com -mittees to guide the struggles in the Black townships. These bodies of "people's power" have virtually taken over the administration of several communities —such as Alexandra, a township next to Johannesburg.

"What we did in Alexandra," metal -workers union leader Moses Mayekiso told the Socialist Organizer newspaper during a tour of Great Britain, "is set up street committees like those structures in the trade unions themselves, where the leadership has to be answerable to the communities."

The struggles in the townships have, in turn, helped to fuel the strike wave that has swept the country since COSATU'S founding. As the South African Weekly Mail pointed out in its April 4, 1986, But contrary to Sarney's claims, living standards are sure to be eroded still further. Brazilians will have their wages frozen at their average rate for the previous six months, while prices are frozen at the level of Feb. 26—the highest level in six months. Workers who had pay raises scheduled for the period after February will be especially hard hit.

Jose Sarney was the running mate of President-elect Tancredo Neves. Both were appointed to office by an electoral college in November 1984. Their appointment was carried out against the will of the majority of the population, which demanded direct and free elections. issue, the June 16-18 general strike will "take on an added significance because of the events of the last three months, which have seen the most sustained expression of workers' militancy since 1973."

More than 500,000 workdays were lost in strike action during the first three months of 1986. It is estimated that in the mines alone during the same period there were 11,000 people on strike per day. More mineworkers have participated in work stoppages so far this year than in all of 1985—and more than during the great mineworkers' strike of 1946.

The strikes by Black workers have taken on a more political character, too, taking up anti-apartheid demands. Wildcat strikes against "racial incidents" are becoming more common.

Black trade unionists have increasingly made use of the sit-in strike—occupying their workplaces and defending them against scabs. The sit-ins (often known as " downs" in labor history) were begun late last year in the metal industry. The tactic spread to the mines, where sit-ins are especially difficult to carry out due to the lack of oxygen and water. Last month, close to 60 Pic n' Pay supermarkets were occupied by workers.

Buthelezi's sham trade union A back-handed tribute to COSATU's organizing successes and its efforts in the anti-apartheid fight was paid last month by Gatsha Buthelezi, conservative chief minister of the kwaZulu "homeland. Buthelezi chose May Day to hold a rally in Durban to launch a "rival" to COSATU, the United Workers Union of South Africa (UWUSA) —an avowedly "pro-capitalist" formation.

Buthelezi told the rally that COSATU's support of foreign sanctions against South Africa would heighten unemployment among Black people. Meanwhile, Buthe -lezi's followers demolished a symbolic coffin with the names of COSATU's two top officials printed upon it. T-shirts reading "Jobs-not sanctions" were distributed to thousands in the crowd.

It is no wonder that the state railway system facilitated the rally by adding trains from as far away as Johannesburg. In addition, thousands of people were bused in to the gathering from rural districts courtesy of Inkatha, which is the ruling party in kwaZulu.

Neves died, however, before entering office, and Sarney, a supporter of the former military dictatorship, automatically became president.

The government felt pressured by demands of the International Monetary Fund to carry out austerity measures in order to maintain interest payments on the country's huge debt. Brazil owes more than $100 billion—the largest foreign debt of any country in the world.

But the IMF demands were countered by an upsurge in the labor movement. There were 661 major strikes last year. The work stoppages involved over 7 million workers compared to 1.5 million in 1984.

With the new plan, the Brazilian capitalists have been able to take the political initiative once again. Not only was the new scheme successful in placating the demands of the IMF, but it also received initial support from a large part of the Brazilian population.

Sarney told the people, "You are appointed to be price inspectors." Within hours, legions of housewives and other working-class Brazilians responded to his call. They began to organize grass-roots patrols of supermarkets in order to maintain the price freeze and discourage hoarding. Stores that dared to raise prices were forced to close down.

Still, Brazil's leading trade union federation, the Central Unica dos TraUWUSA is almost completely a paper organization, claiming under its banner only a small union of workers in sugarrefining. That union was started with money from a sugar-growing company.

In the beginning, the new "federation" may find some success in signing up members from the Black shanty towns ringing Durban and in kwaZulu, where people are desperately worried about job security. Unemployment among Black people runs between 25 percent and 60 percent throughout the country.

Ultimately, however, Buthelezi's new union will only gain members if it proves able to help workers keep their jobs and win wage gains. This will be difficult, given the reluctance expressed by UWUSA's chief officials to engage in strikes.

COSATU and other democratic Black unions are growing precisely because of their militancy. And they are attractive to most Black workers because of their anti-apartheid activity, not in spite of it. As the struggle in South Africa deepens, it will likewise spread to less politicized workers. Even members of Inkatha will be radicalized.

"Homelands" take up struggle Recent battles against apartheid have spilled over from the central industrial regions into rural "homeland" areas. In some sections of the country, elected By Michael Seligman, 75 So harders Matest postage).

A DOCIALIS ACTION PAMPHLES To order Army St., 94110 balhadores (CUT), opposed the new plan and warned that "o pacote" could not halt the rise in prices. At best, the CUT stated, the measures would affect the "tip of the iceberg" of the problems facing working people. "It is true that the people demand the freezing and control of prices," the CUT stated. "But more should be controlled: The people ought to decide the direction of the economy and whose interests it must serve. They ought to decide on whether or not to pay back the national debt, which we did not contract and which threatens to sink our nation with millions of Brazilians aboard." The CUT, many of whose leaders and activists are also members of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers Party/PT), has put forward its own demands. These include a legal minimum wage, back-payment of all wages lost under the new plan, a new calculation of wage rates according to the most recent level of inflation, and a sliding scale of wages to be readjusted each time inflation goes up 5 percent. It also called for a national day of protest against the new plan.

village councils have completely replaced the government-appointed tribal authorities. In the Northern Transvaal, The [Johan -nesburg] Star reports, villagers have built structures "which are the rural equivalent of the street committees and neighborhood organizations established in the urban townships." The apartheid regime has responded by unleashing a "situation of civil war" in the region, according to Dr. Beyers Naude, secretary-general of the South African Council of Churches.

Incidents of police terror are greater than at any time during the Black upsurge of the past two years. Last month, Alexandra was occupied by almost 1700 troops. Large sections of Crossroads, near Capetown, were burned to the ground by police-backed vigilantes—making as many as 50,000 homeless.

The government is using preparations for the June 14-16 general strike to motivate new laws that will allow authorities to detain political opponents for up to six months without charges or trial. "These people must take what they get!" Law and Order Minister Louis Le Grange blustered in parliament, shrugging off charges that several political activists in Alexandra had been assassinated by the police. It is the terrorist program expressed by Le Grange-not the "power-sharing" schemes that the government occasionally puts on display-that sets the tone for apartheid policy in South Africa today.

This timely pamphlet discusses the on-going struggle in South Africa from a revolutionary Marxist perspective. The program of the South African Communist Party and other political organizations, the role of rural workers, and the recent development of COSATU, the new union federation, are analyzed in detail.

Michael Schreiber Schreiber and 'arole cents 1.10 inc Judes write Socialist Action, 3435 Rm 308, San Francisco, CA SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1986

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