GIVE US A FIRM turn. I'd like to make a few comments on Clive Baldwin's review of Southern Africa The New Politics Of Revolution. in Red Weekly, 30 September. More specifically I'd like to develop an area comrade SaWin Cien - ne actuaroractice or SACP]. The SACP dominates the African National Congress (ANG), Ine movement paraded around as 'the liberation movement in South Africa [in fact at least two otner organisations EXIST African Congress (PAC) and the Unity Movement].
rollowing ine snarpevile massacre in 1960, and the massive wave of repression which followed it, the SACP and the ANC made a TUrn oreanising warfare in South Africa, although prior to Sharpeville they had followed a line of peacetul resistance The SACP and ANC had actually expected this 'peaceful resistance' campaign Dressunse INe wnite racist regime into granting concessions. The thought that this campaign, linked to international movemen pressurise apartheid's backers (the British, American etc. imperialist powers), would gradually erode apartheid. Sharpe ville and the repression which followed brought a swif end to schema. The SACP and ANC could not possibly continue to advance the 'peace ul road' without losing all credibility ine eves or ine masses. oo mey mauc d armed basically bombast. The ANC and SACP decimated in South Africa. were mass movement was broken and demoralised. Armed struggle would therefore be exceptionally difficult to organise especially by two organisations had lately been Gandhian However there was a further drawback the absurd notions of the AN and SACP about how to organise an armed struggle.
Firstly they adopted a strategy of rural guerilla warfare. In South Africa, incustnaused country. they thought to orcanisa a successful assault on might of the South African state from the reserves [bantustans] by handfuls all its stupidity, is an unserious atitude to revoluton It should come as no surprise that the ANC has singularly failed to organise any significant actions in South Africa in the 15 years since its turn to armed struggle. The only action it has been involved in Was In Zimbabwe in 1966, which resulted in the massacre of many heroic but misled and ill-trained fighters ar wankie The South African masses themselves are giving an indication of the genuine revolutionary road for South Africa. It is motor of revolution is to be found. The Party both democratic and economic. Against the Pass Laws, for trade unions. Against stator labour.
Release of all political prisoners. Against the racist state, for a Black Republic ran But it should be demands cannot be satisfied within or by South African capitalism. The socialist particular was WHICH pacifists.
WOTKETS be sure of acans me Land ACTS clear that these revolution. chester). revolution, the dictatorship of the black working class, is the logic and must be the aim of liberation in South Africa.
ne orooramme or ine south atrican Revolution has still to be written. We can one thing however. That •rocramme will not De worked ourav InE Stalinists and petty-bourgeois nationalists of the SACP and ANC. They have already demonstrated neir pankruptcy. i falls to genuine revolutionary socialists to chart the course of the South Africar COEN ALSO Man
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