South African Socialist to Tour U.S. and Canada

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A newly formed organization, the Democracy in South Africa Tour Committee, has announced that South African socialist leader, Mercia Andrews, will tour some 17 cities in the United States and Canada, Feb. 27 through March 28. A longtime socialist, labor and feminist activist, Andrews is the National Organizer of the Workers Andrews was jailed for 29 days in 1986 for her opposition to South African apartheid under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act during the declared State of Emergency. Since then, she has been arrested and detained on a number of occasions Andrews was a rural high school teacher from 1976-81 until she was expelled from the teaching profession by the South African government for initiating a schools boycott to protest apartheid policies. She was a founding member and organizer in 1985 of the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU). Her trade-union experience includes organizing assignments in the Domestic Workers Union and the Public Servants League. Andrews also organized women in the electronics industry who then affiliated with the the Metal and Electrical Workers Union, an affiliate of the National She was a founding member and leader of End Racism and Sexism through EducaWhen the South African government imprisoned 26 people and falsely accused them of killing a policeman in 1985, Andrews helped to found the Uppington 26 Support Committee. This defense group won the release of the 26 who had been imprisoned under the infamous Common Purpose Rule, a South African law that makes all witnesses to a crime liable to be punished for it if the court considers that they Andrews has been published widely in the WOSA journals, Worker's Voice (Vukani Basebenzi) and Strike, and in other popular South African publications, including the For details on Andrews tour schedule and for speaking engagement (908) 463-3139 (East Coast) or (415) 821-0459 (West Coast).

SOCIALISTACTION FEBRUARY 1992 19 (continued from preceding page)

national democratic rights. That demand Will stay as long as it continues to be denied in the existing establishment.

The demand for a Constituent Assembly is on the same footing as the demand for the franchise. The CA is the organ, established by the whole people, for the inauguration of the democratic society.

It is crucial that the CA must be a creation of the people themselves. They should elect those persons who will be entrusted with the function of drawing up a constitution; and they must have control over such delegates. The control is exercised through the right of recall and other appropriate measures for checking abuse and delinquency in office.

A CA should not be confused with any bureaucratically created contrivance which the state might devise and seek to impose upon the population. Democracy, and not bureaucracy, is the watchword. Thus conceived, the demand for a Constituent Assembly and the demand for a democratic society constitute appropriate calls for rallying our population towards the establishment of the new order of society.

But was this how the PF approached these demands? The answer has to be no not at all. This was one among many of the shockingly disappointing features of that conference of the PF.

The PF did not set up a program for the mobilization of the masses of our population on the basis of these principles which they merely enunciated. No plans whatever were made for the rallying of the people around these demands. A curious omission indeed, which is hard to reconcile. with a genuine and serious intent to pursue those demands in a democratic manner and by democratic methods.

The question of violence Mention must also be made of yet another disappointing feature in the PF conference. This concerns the important question of the violence. The immediate impetus to the launching of the PF, we believe, was the rampant violence that is sweeping across the country-bringing havoc, disaster, and death to numberless communities of our people.

It does not seem that at its conference the PF did address, adequately or at all, this question of the violence. It made no plans and it offered no thoughts on the violence. This is disappointing.

One can understand that the Bantustan delegation would have little to say about the violence. They are not in the habit of politicking or theorizing about violence. They practice violence, there among the people in the Bantustans.

But one cannot say the same of the leaders of the populist movements. As persons, they abhor violence and keep clean of it. How was it then, that at the conference, they did not find their way to expressing their abhorrence of the violence?

Could it be that their preoccupation with strategizing towards the multi-party conference [proposed by the De Klerk government] and related matters so absorbed them and their energies that they could find no time nor inclination to consider the question of the violence?

But the violence continues to this day, to be a matter of life and death for the masses of our population. One wishes that the leaders would not be distracted from the real concerns of the people by the promises of reform that the regime continues to dangle before our eyes.

From the information we have, WOSA [Workers Organization for Socialist Action] seems to have been the lone voice that spoke out against the violence, putting forward well-thought-out approaches and methods for building up and enlisting the energies and resources of our communities into an all-out effort to stamp out the violence. Its voice found no echo in that vast hall of the conference of the PF. Other preoccupations prevailed which rendered that voice discordant.

We learn that the COSATU [trade-union federation] was represented at that conference of the PF. Its delegation, too, did not have anything to say on this question of had to fall on one of the youngest of our organizations to address this large question which so much concerned the workers whilst the leaders of the largest organization of workers sat in silence.

Where was the independent voice of the independent organization of workers? It never used to fail or falter in any issue that concerned the workers. It is not conceivable that the workers themselves would be shy to express their feelings and thoughts on the violence, for it is they who continue to take the brunt of that violence. It is their lives that are being blighted every day and every hour by the violence, which is not of their making.

Concerning the violence itself: A feature that has increasingly come into prominence is the state's involvement in it. It is being recognized everywhere that the police and even the military appear powerfully involved in the unending waves of terror and brutal killings that have become a constant feature of life in the Black communities.

The so-called Inkathagate scandal that the press so sensationalized is only a small detail in what has become an enormous and well-orchestrated reign of terror. The state, through its police and military agencies, and in conjunction with large numbers of right-wing vigilante groups are having their field day in what has become a carnival of carnage, terror, and killings.

This crusade of terror is reminiscent of the Renamo massacres in Mozambique. It has much the same purpose, which is to reduce our entire population into terrorstricken panic and disarray. Thrown into chaos and in a paralyzing frenzy, our population will be rendered helpless as the state proceeds to reinforce the establishment by systematic co-optation of the very same class of elites who have been the leaders in the organizations of the people for their liberation.

What about the "Peace Accord"?

Many of the leaders who were at the PF Conference had previously attended the conference of the National Peace Accord; and they endorsed that accord.

The National Peace Accord was an initiative of the state. It purported to seek a solution to the violence by enlisting the leaders in our communities along with the leaders in the liberation organizations in joint undertakings with the police for stopping the violence. Those leaders seemed to have believed that the police and the state, who had been orchestrating the violence, could also be the agency for stemming the violence.

The Nkomati Accord never stopped the Renamo atrocities in Mozambique. Yet, seemingly, the belief prevailed that the National Peace Accord, the domestic version of the Nkomati Accord, could stop the violence inside our country. Perhaps it was this erroneous belief which made these leaders give scant attention to the question of violence at the conference of the PF.

The real initiative in the stemming of the violence will not come from the state and the police. It will have to come from our side, from our communities, from the whole population of the oppressed. That massive effort, for so it will have to be, will have to begin with the recognition of the fact that we ourselves had a hand in the creation of the violence of which we have all become the victims.

In our case the violence originated from and has been generated by the feuding between and among the different factions in the populist movements, which are led by the petty bourgeoisie. It has pitted one organization against another, or more correctly, a combine of organizations against one or another organization.

It could be called a 10-year war. It might well be a 20 or 25-year war, if our movements continue to be dominated and directed by a petty bourgeoisie seeking sectarian interests.

Sectarianism and the quest for hegemony have been the inspiration and impetus of these unending wars in the populist front. The petty bourgeoisie, as a class, does not often have the capacity to hoist itself by its own bootstraps out of its natural urge towards privilege, the pursuit of limited and sectional interests—its tendency towards sectarianism. Consequently, Organization for Socialist Action (WOSA).

for her political activities.

Congress of Trade Unions.

tion (ERASE) and the Children's Resource Center.

sympathized with the person or persons who committed it.

South African Labor Review, Agenda, ERASE, and others.

Mercia Andrews Tour Schedule Feb. 27- New York/New Jersey March 1 Minneapolis/St. Paul March 2-3 Pittsburgh March 4-5 Boston March 6-9 Milwaukee March 10-13 Iowa City Chicago Toronto March 14 Cleveland March 15-16 Baltimore Washington, D March 17 San Francisco March 18-20 Portland March -1 Los Angeres March 22-24 Kansas City, Mo. March 25 New York City New Brunswick instead unity, wars.

Workers' example building unity That is not true of the Black working class. We need only look at their record in the last 20 years. In that period, the Black workers were able to set up their independent trade unions. They established federations of their unions. There were even attempts at founding confederations of those federations of Black trade unions. And that happened in a period of less than 10 years of the launching of the independent Black trade-union movement.

The splendid record of unity building that the Black workers established in close to 20 years is all the more impressive when juxtaposed against the trail of blood that the petty bourgeoisie-led populist movements have left behind them in almost a decade of uninterrupted feuding and mutual slaughtering.

The experiences of the Black workers in their independent trade unions offer us lessons of the highest value. Workers in their struggles always demonstrate the workers' capacity to take in and make their own the very best in the tradition of struggle.

For, in the period that we are now entering it will be the Black workers that will, again, play the decisive and historically determinative role.

Amidst the high excitement that is swirling around the constitutional rearrangements, it will again be the Black workers who will keep a level head and ask the right questions: Where is my house? Where is my job? Where are the teachers requests, and the schools for the education of my children? Where is the peace and security of my community?

These are the demands which will bring the workers in their millions and with great passion to the long march on the road to true freedom.

The subordination of workers' organizations to the populist variety • of organizations is a malalignment, a disorder, which is much like the tail attempting to wag the dog. The condition that has to be satisfied in order to free the workers' organizations from the pressure of the middle-class-led populist movements is a thorough-going democratization of all the organizations of the oppressed.

The leaders of the populist movement have often declared, as they did in the PF conference, that they favor a democratic society. They must be held to the promise of their declaration. Those words have to be translated into deeds.

A democratic society cannot be achieved by bureaucratic fiat or by means that fall short of and contradict democratic practice. We should practice what we preach. The populist movement has to undertake thorough-going democratization of its organizations and their practices.

All pretensions toward overlordship over other organizations, especially the organizations of workers, have to be condemned. When such democratic conditions shall prevail, the mighty force of the workers will be released, and true movement forward shall be brought underway. All the flowers must be allowed to thrive and blossom, and no weed shall be let to throttle wholesome growth.

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Harlem Désir, leader of SOS Racisme,