New socialist group founded in S. Africa

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pact in all the Baltic countries. Addressing the Estonian Congress on May 25, Edgar Savisaar, the Estonian People's Front leader and now premier of the Estonian SSR, began by saying:

"In the past period, the illusion has been dispelled ... that the West did not recognize our incorporation into the Soviet Union and therefore supported our struggle for independence. Lithuania's situation today should give everyone pause for thought. Lithuania has been put in a very tight spot, and the West has not taken one concrete step to support her."

In Estonia and Latvia, where the fronts failed to take a clear position for independence until this fall, hard-line nationalist formations prospered. This did not happen in Lithuania, where Sajudis came out for independence much earlier, in February of last year.

Once the Latvian and Estonian fronts won control of their Supreme Soviets and started moves toward independence, however, the hard-line nationalist organizations began to teel a squeeze.

A myriad of parties-from Christian Democrats to Social Democrats to Greens— arose within the fronts as the political monopoly of the local Communist parties was broken. But the basic differentiation so far has been between radicals and moderates in the fight for national rights. Andres Ehin, an Estonian leader, remarked to me, "We have one party called Social Democrats and another called People's Conservatives, and they have exactly the same program."

I asked Mart Laar, a leader of the Estonian Christian Democrats, if he defined himself as "right wing" because he supported private Gerry Foley is the editor of International Viewpoint.

In the new and rapidly changing situation in South Africa, important debates on political orientation are taking place in every political current.

It is in this context that several groups of the socialist left came together in Cape Town on April 14-15 to form a national orsanization-the Workers Organization the groups involved in this initiative are the Cape Action League (based in the Western Cape), Action Youth (based in the Transvaal), and Students of Young Azania and Mayeboya Youth (based in Uppington and the Eastern Transvaal).

WOSA also voted to establish close political ties with the Azanian People's Organization (AZAPO), whose founding document, the "Azanian Manifesto," strongly resembles its own founding documents.

WOSA's founding resolution states:

"The organization will give support to national liberation organizations insofar as they advance the struggle against oppression and exploitation, but at the same time it will strive to put forward working-class interests in the struggle.

"The organization is committed to the building of a principled united front of liberation organizations which actively promotes and does not compromise working-class interests.

"Our basic principles are the following: leadership by the Black working class, anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, one-person/one-vote in a non-racial undivided, unitary country-—and we believe in collective leadership, accountability, and democracy...

"Central to our program of action will be issues affecting the Black working class in particular, and the oppressed and exploited people in general-such as housing, land, education, health, wages, and issues affecting women."

And the resolution concludes:

"Internationalism is a fundamental principle of socialism, since capitalism is an international system.... The struggle for socialism is therefore a worldwide struggle in which the organization recognizes that its struggle is linked to the struggles of oppressed and exploited people throughout the world and commits itself to support and defend working-class organizations in all countries."

In an interview with International Tribune (June 1990), one of the founding members of WOSA explained his organization's views on the negotiations underway in South Africa:

"We in WOSA don't believe that the majority of people in this country, the Black working class, will be able to free themselves from the yoke of apartheid capitalism through a negotiations strategy.

"It is clear that De Klerk is not prepared to give in to Black majority rule. De Klerk and the regime will attempt to juggle the structures of apartheid with a two-chamber parSOCIALIST the limited nationalizations that are being talked about. These nationalizations, like the ones in the Scandinavian countries, are very far from socializations and do not involve workers' control.

«What we see is that the sections of the liberation movement which are ready to talk with the regime, principally the ANC, are going to have to make more and more concessions at the negotiating table. And this will only compromise the interests of the working class. Workers will be discouraged from taking militant action as alliances are formed with sections of the bourgeoisie.

"What this means is that the question of an independent workers' organization, a socialist organization, is on the agenda."

WOSA is coming out with a monthly newspaper called Workers Arise and has plans for a bimonthly theoretical journal, Socialist Action Review—A.B.

HEW POINT ternational

International Viewpoint is a biweekly magazine pub.

lished under the auspices of the Fourth International. A one-year subscription costs only $47. Write to:

International Viewpoint, 2 rue Richard Lenoir, 93108 Montreuil, France.

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