South African regime presses Black majority for concessions

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dented mobilization of 600,000 pro-choice demonstrators in Washington, D.C., just three months prior to the decision.

If Bush doesn't get Souter confirmed, he's sure to come up with an equally repulsive choice. When the pro-choice movement was mobilized to dump Bork in 1987, the payoff was getting saddled with anti-abortion Justice Kennedy for its efforts.

system, which is responsible for the secondclass status of women (because that status creates profits for the employing class). And they have a string of decisions to prove it.

The long-term lesson is the need to replace the capitalist government with one that represents the workers—the majority of women and men who have no material interest in oppressing and exploiting people.

The short-term lesson for the pro-choice movement is that we need to keep the movement independent and in the streets— regardless of who is running for office from the parties of our oppressors or running for confirmation for the capitalist courts. We'll never return to the days of back-alley abortions!

The oppressed Black majority of South Africa is pressing ahead with confidence. Three centuries of white rule are nearing an end. And now, all the players representing the oppressors of the Blacks are scrambling to protect their interests.

In recent days, the South African government has launched a "Red Scare" against the anti-apartheid movement. At least 40 members of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) were arrested in the crackdown.

The arrests took place little more than a week before the Aug. 6 talks scheduled between the government and the ANC and only four days before a rally was planned in Johannesburg to relaunch the SACP as a legal party.

President F.W. de Klerk alleged that a "plot" was underway by ANC and SACP "hardliners" to overthrow the government if talks should fail. The De Klerk regime hopes to press the more "moderate" ANC leaders, including Nelson Mandela, to give major concessions to the white minority in order to avoid being associated with a "communist" bogeyman.

De Klerk (and his international backers from Washington to London to Tokyo) want to negotiate a peaceful transition from apartheid to a "democratic" South Africa, where most property and wealth remains in the hands of the white capitalist oppressors. They hope to quell any possibilities of a revolutionary upsurge that could threaten the flow of corporate profits.

Changes in Black workforce What's behind the maneuvering by the white rulers and their imperialist supporters? It is a combination of the economic and political problems stemming from a system where 87 percent of all land is in the hands of less than 5 million whites out of a population of 33 million (24 million African Blacks).

As South Africa became an industrialized country in its own right after World War II, it needed more educated workers who are Black. There are not enough whites to run the economy. More than 10 years ago, the government-under the pressure of illegal (continued on page 14)

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But even the most "liberal" justices are fundamentally committed to the capitalist