Which way for Blacks in South Africa?

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The release in mid-February of Nelson Mandela from 27 years of imprisonment and the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) and other Black nationalist organizations symbolize the opening of a new phase of the South African revolution. The unremitting and irrepressible struggle for social and economic justice by South Africa's overwhelming Black majority has forced the ruling white capitalists to initiate a major political retreat.

The Black revolution has been steadily making apartheid more costly than it's worth. Capitalists worldwide have been losing confidence in the continued profitability of investments in South Africa. The ruling classes feared that a momentum was building up that would not stop with the abolition political relaxation will only whet the appetites of the masses and encourage them to follow the logic of their impending victory over apartheid to the end. Their fears are well-founded. But the grand revolutionary opportunities opening up for Black South Africa cannot be exploited to a successful conclusion without a conscious leadership.

The program of the ANC leadership and the South African Communist Party cannot lead the masses to liberation. Despite their avowals of socialism and nationalization of basic industry, their strategic orientation goes in an opposite direction. They are committed to a policy based on two distinct stages in the South African revolution.

(It must be noted that nationalization in and of itself is not revolutionary. South Africa under white capitalist rule has one of the highest proportions of its economy under state ownership. But this kind of nationalization, practiced widely by all capitalist countries to a greater or lesser degree, has nothing in common with socialism. Its exclusive function is to supplement and fill in economic gaps to serve the profitability of private industry.)

The first stage of the revolution, according to the stagist conception, must be restricted to the abolition of apartheid and the institution of a "non-racial" democracy. The "socialist stage" is to be put off to the distant future. In the meantime the rights of the white (capitalist) minority are to be protected against inroads by the Black majority. This means that the pressing social and economic needs of the overwhelming majority of South Africa must be subordinated to capitalist profits.

On the basis of this concept there can be no democratic revolution, much less a socialist future. Nelson Mandela and the ANC, even granting the best intentions in the world, cannot lead the Black masses to genuine democracy and true freedom so long as they constrict the revolution within the confines of capitalism.

Our readers speak out Dear editor, There is a war going on today against workers. On March 9, a lightened political discussion with him. Enclosed you will find a donation.

Sean Padilla, El Paso, Texas