{"id":1618,"date":"2020-06-03T11:48:41","date_gmt":"2020-06-03T09:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marxistworkersparty.org.za\/?page_id=1618"},"modified":"2020-06-03T11:52:11","modified_gmt":"2020-06-03T09:52:11","slug":"is-azapo-a-way-forward-for-socialist-youth","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/?page_id=1618","title":{"rendered":"Is AZAPO a way forward for socialist youth?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Originally published in Inqaba Ya Basebenzi No.16\/17 (January-June 1985)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Alan Green<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historically, youth have been at the forefront of every great movement for change.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Russian Revolution, Lenin was mocked by his opponents for leading a party of \u2018boys and girls\u2019. In the recent British miners\u2019 strike, it was especially the young miners who provided the backbone of that magnificent struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In South Africa the black working class youth have been in the vanguard of the struggle over the past ten years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nationwide school boycotts have involved a million students at their height. Through fearless action the youth have been at the forefront of mass campaigns against rent and fare increases, for example \u2013 and have now succeeded in crippling two-thirds of the regime\u2019s community councils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most significant has been the involvement of youth organisations in the Transvaal two-day political general strike last November.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By initiating and then vigorously mobilising support for the stayaway, the youth showed their tremendous advance in tactics and organisation since 1976.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recognising that it is only the working class which has the power to take on the state, the youth made a direct class approach to the unions and got an overwhelming response from the workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Typical was the statement of one of the 6,000 workers fired from Sasol: \u201cAs a parent I felt I had to support the call of COSAS.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The militant black youth are now searching for a clear revolutionary programme which can mobilise the workers and rally behind them all the oppressed people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Behind this is the recognition which even bourgeois newspapers are pointing to: \u201cIn the eyes of the young, apartheid is equated with capitalism.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This understanding is shown in the movement of the youth toward socialist ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the founding conference of the UDF in August 1983 (see The United Democratic Front<\/a>), youth delegates enthusiastically applauded speakers who attacked capitalism and called for workers\u2019 power in order to take the means of production into common ownership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the UDF leadership has not taken this socialist understanding as the basis for action campaigns. At the same time the unions have not given the lead \u2013 which they could have done by going into the UDF with a worked-out plan to mobilise the power of the organised workers in a series of actions along with the youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has disappointed the expectations of many of the most militant black youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the successful boycott of the \u2018elections\u2019 in 1984, a powerful mass action campaign could have been built countrywide \u2013 for example, round a demand for R120 a week national minimum wage; over jobs and unemployment benefit; or to cripple the pass laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Platforms<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, having organised platforms for the US Senator Kennedy, the UDF leadership decided to prepare mass opposition to… the All Blacks rugby team! Without having given clear direction to the mass movement \u2013 and while opposing revolutionary socialist ideas from a middle class standpoint \u2013 the UDF leaders are nevertheless facing trial now for treason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some sections of the youth, looking for a \u2018left\u2019 alternative to the UDF, have turned to the National Forum and to AZAPO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those who take this path however, will find themselves travelling in the opposite direction to the mass movement. Their revolutionary energies will be squandered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black working people are being practical in wanting unity in one political organisation, against the murderous power of the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is to the ANC, the established, traditional movement, and therefore also to those organisations in its tradition, that the great majority of the black working class will inevitably turn, looking for a way forward in action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is where conscious socialists need to work, if they are to gain support for the Marxist policies upon which the successful outcome of the revolution will depend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At one time AZAPO and its Black Consciousness forerunners could claim the allegiance of the youth movement. But that was up to the mid-1970s when the movement was still reawakening from the defeats of the 1950s and early 1960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The black youth blamed those defeats on the ANC leadership\u2019s fraternisation with \u2018whites\u2019. This was only a half-truth since, as Inqaba<\/em> has explained (Lessons of the 1950s<\/a>), it was class-collaboration which lay at the root of the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The failures of the ANC leadership were at root the product of reformist policies put forward by the black middle class leaders and the SACP Stalinists alike. This led them into a search for \u2018allies\u2019 among the white liberals, and into holding back the black working class movement for the sake of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The black youth, determined to prevent any dilution of their struggle again, declared \u201cBlack man, you\u2019re on your own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initially, BC had a positive influence by raising the self-confidence of black youth. It began to turn into its opposite however, revealing petty-bourgeois features of its own, once the youth movement began to link-up with the organised working class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current support for the National Forum and its main ideological force, AZAPO, is because of the increasing \u2018socialist\u2019 rhetoric spoken by many of its leaders. But what does this speechifying amount to in practice?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incredibly, AZAPO\u2019s Fifth Congress late last year was characterised by denunciation of the November stay-away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delivering a central committee critique, AZAPO\u2019s \u2018labour secretary\u2019, Rev. Joe Seoka said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two-day stay-away, far from advancing the working class struggle in the country, had antagonised and alienated a sizeable portion of the working class.[2]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That general strike was the biggest mobilisation of the working class in our history \u2013 in the industrial heartland of South Africa. Even the bourgeois press was forced to note its significance because of \u201cthe active involvement and leading role of organised labour.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A series of town-wide general strikes had been the stepping stones to this regional action; as had mass meetings involving workers and youth to discuss their demands and plan what action to take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

400,000 leaflets and 5,000 posters, the production and distribution of which was a marvellous achievement in the circumstances, agitated for the strike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strike had revolutionary significance. In days it illuminated for millions of working people their potential strength, but also what tasks would have to be undertaken to prepare the movement for future battles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thami Mali, a local UDF leader, was chairman of the Stay-away Committee. Interviewed in the Sunday Express<\/em>,[4]<\/a> he said his objective was a \u201cworkers\u2019, state\u201d based on the Freedom Charter. \u201cSo you want a socialist SA?\u201d he was, asked. \u201cExactly,\u201d Mali replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mali explained: \u201c…the economy of a country is its backbone, no matter how powerful it may be politically. It depends on the working class which comes predominantly from the African areas in which the stay-away was called.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How this power was to be used, and to what end the movement should work, Thami Mali made clear when he said: \u201cMore than ever before people have realised that their struggle … will never be solved until the whole system of government is changed.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

These ideas, once they are taken up by the mass of working people as the expression of their own needs and will to change society, will become an unstoppable force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Transvaal strike ended with a sense of achievement and purpose among the workers and youth who had participated. Transvaal shop stewards have told Inqaba<\/em> that the workers were saying: \u201cWe\u2019ve fixed them [the employers] in Transvaal, let\u2019s do so elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by the action, workers were prepared to make sacrifices. A sacked worker boarding a bus for the Transkei said: \u201cThere is no time for us to feel sorry or afraid. We must show Sasol we are brave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Hostility<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AZAPO\u2019s hostility to this magnificent action contradicted their often repeated statements that the black working class are \u201cthe driving force of the revolution\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Disgusted Black, KwaThema\u2019, in a letter to the Rand Daily Mail<\/em> asked: \u201cAZAPO, if you write off boycotts as non-events, then how do you propose (besides your liberation of the mind) to achieve liberation?\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sarcasm was fully deserved. Just as the Africanist leader Peter Raboroko condemned the stay-away called by Sactu and the ANC in 1958, so today the black middle class leaders of radical nationalism have shown their remoteness from and hostility to the real class movement of the workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite their rhetoric, they are afraid of any independent movement of the working class, and the fact that such a movement inevitably raises the standard of a socialist democracy, of real working class power, and presses forward to its practical achievement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly socialist policies are necessary to smash apartheid and capitalism. But, to rally and mobilise the overwhelming numbers of the working class, these policies must be raised and struggled for within the mass organisations \u2013 the organisations into which the majority of the workers will turn to take forward the struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thami Mali\u2019s statements are evidence of a left-wing within the UDF which will more and more make its presence felt at rank-and-file level. This confirms the perspective of Marxism that it is within the mass organisations that the key debates on programme, strategy and tactics are going to take place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conscious socialists among the youth only waste precious time and energy by trying to cultivate their ideas on the fringes of the working class movement \u2013 in the radical petty-bourgeois milieu of AZAPO and the National Forum \u2013 instead of plunging into the mainstream of the mass organisations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There have been many opportunities to develop a strong left-wing within the UDF, opposing in a constructive way the confused class-collaboration policies of the middle class UDF leaders, and putting forward a clear alternative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Polarisation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was evidence of a polarisation within the UDF with the visit of the US Senator, Edward Kennedy. In the Western Cape, the UDF general council refused to be associated with his visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the opportunity to galvanise the mass of UDF supporters \u2013 especially among the workers \u2013 into opposition to the visit, and so shift the whole movement decisively to the left, was lost because of the senseless tactics used by the AZAPO\/National Forum supporters in their campaign against the Kennedy visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They succeeded in gaining much media attention \u2013 not least from the pro-government press. But did they succeed in turning this into a conscious understanding on the part of black workers as to why the UDF leaders were wrong in inviting Kennedy? Did they succeed in explaining why a liberal bourgeois and representative of imperialism like Kennedy should never be dignified with a platform in the movement even when he denounces the apartheid regime?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We think they failed, because of their sectarian approach, to make use of the opportunity to get clear socialist ideas across to the mass of workers marching under the UDF banner. Instead, their tactics played into the hands of the organisers of the Kennedy visit \u2013 as was shown at the meeting at Regina Mundi on 13 January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The agitation of the AZAPO\/National Forum contingent at that meeting that Kennedy should not be heard, failed to gain the support of the majority present. Tutu was able to outmanoeuvre them by putting the issue to the vote. Then the vocal minority proceeded to try to break up the meeting! A fine advertisement for \u2018socialism\u2019! Not surprisingly, they were sharply dealt with by the assembled crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor should the eventual calling-off of the meeting by Tutu be counted a success. Many hundreds of workers, who would have been sympathetic to socialist arguments, were alienated by the behaviour of the \u2018left\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How different the position could have been if, as a section within the UDF itself, the socialist youth had demanded the right to be heard from the platform, either before or after Kennedy spoke. Probably a majority of the audience was sceptical towards Kennedy, and would have welcomed seeing him put on the spot in this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a little preparation and some tactical sense, Kennedy could have been well and truly exposed in this way. The arguments against giving Kennedy a platform would have been overwhelmingly accepted and understood if they had been presented properly, instead of being reduced to a few shrill slogans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terror Lekota justified Kennedy\u2019s visit on the grounds that \u201c… on the immediate question that is eating our people today \u2013 that of apartheid \u2013 the Kennedy\u2019s have taken a stand.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what does it mean to take a verbal \u2018stand\u2019 on apartheid? The \u2018liberal\u2019 bosses in SA do this all the time. Should they be given a platform in our movement to help them deceive black working people into thinking they can be \u2018trusted\u2019?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real question is which are the forces that have the interest and the power to overthrow apartheid \u2013 and these include neither the liberal capitalists at home nor the imperialist Kennedy\u2019s abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Terror says the UDF does not \u201cquestion the fact of American imperialism and even the involvement of the Kennedy family as a whole in American imperialist design.\u201d So why invite him? This is the equivalent of giving a known arsonist a certificate as a fire warden!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He may be on the left-wing of the American Democratic Party, but that is a capitalist party. Whatever its short-term interests might be, or the disagreements it may have with other capitalists, its defence of private property and the US imperialist \u2018national interest\u2019 are fundamental in the final analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Boston University in 1979, Kennedy described himself as \u201can unabashed partisan of our own political and economic system\u201d. In the United States the system is capitalism which forces 34 million people to go to bed hungry each night in the richest country in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A year earlier, he supported President Carter\u2019s policy of wage controls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1983, Kennedy voted in favour of Reagan\u2019s policies on four out of every ten occasions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On international issues, Kennedy may have a different \u2018style\u2019 to other American bourgeois leaders, but his purpose is the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he opposed the lifting of sanctions against white-minority ruled Rhodesia as it was then, this was because doing so would \u201cset back our [i.e., US imperialism\u2019s] political and economic interests throughout Africa, including those with Nigeria, which is our second largest supplier of oil.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This great \u2018democrat\u2019 said in 1966: \u201cI am 89% in favour of the Johnson Administration\u2019s policies in Vietnam.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What possible consistency can there be in his opposition to apartheid, when he voted in favour of the US marines\u2019 occupation of the Lebanon; voted in favour of a grant for the counter-revolutionaries opposing the Sandinista government in Nicaragua; visited the Shah of Iran in 1975; and continued to support economic aid and military grants to Turkey after its occupation of Northern Cyprus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Loyal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kennedy is also one of the most loyal supporters of the Israeli ruling class. The ANC leaders spend enough time twinning apartheid and Zionism, and yet they and the UDF leaders are prepared to support a visit to South Africa by such a man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kennedy can appear at present as a great moral crusader against apartheid \u2013 but the US imperialist interests he defends do not allow him to campaign against the national oppression of the Palestinians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are the facts upon which socialists should have campaigned to expose the opportunism of Kennedy and of those who organised the visit. Had these arguments been put across with the right tactics, Kennedy would have slunk off without a grain of credit in the eyes of the masses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By their policies and methods \u2013 whether on the question of the Transvaal general strike or the Kennedy visit \u2013 the National Forum and AZAPO reveal themselves as essentially sectarian groupings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By this term we mean no abuse, nor simple reference to their numerical size. Lenin once described a Communist Party 300,000 strong as a sect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Marxism, a sect is a political grouping that is unwilling or unable to build strong links with the mass of non-Marxist workers. Remaining aloof from the real living movement of the masses, with all its \u2018warts\u2019 and imperfections, in the name of proclaiming \u2018profound\u2019 and abstract \u2018principles\u2019, a sect condemns itself to inevitable degeneration and irrelevance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The militant youth have too vitally important a part to play in the strategy and tactics of the revolution to hitch themselves to the bandwagon of the National Forum and AZAPO leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time it must be added that the problems that exist in the movement today \u2013 whether of the reformism of the UDF leaders, or the sectarianism of AZAPO \u2013 will not be solved by physical assaults or petrol bombs. These methods only play in to the hands of the regime \u2013 which is already making propaganda use of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nor does the answer lie in a patched-up \u2018unity pact\u2019 among the leaders, whether sanctified by Tutu\u2019s prayers or otherwise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither of these approaches deals with the real political questions which underlie the differences. The answer lies in the development, among the youth and among the workers, of a conscious Marxist cadre, armed with the perspectives, the programme, the strategy, and the methods of Marxism \u2013 willing and able to patiently explain and struggle for these positions in the ranks of the mass organisations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the UDF today, and the ANC tomorrow \u2013 as well as in the trade unions \u2013 there is very fertile ground for a conscious Marxist youth movement. It would play a very important part in the transformation of these organisations into vehicles of revolutionary working class struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inqaba<\/em> supporters need to devote as much attention as possible to the youth movement. Comrades should send in to the editorial board many more comments of the youth and reports about their activities. Lenin said: \u201cHe who has the youth has the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a9 Transcribed from the original by the Marxist Workers Party (2020).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a>  London Financial Times<\/em>, 26 March 1985<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Sowetan<\/em>, 19 December 1984<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Star<\/em>, 26 November 1984<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> 11 November 1984<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> Financial Mail<\/em>, 16 November 1984<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> 9 January 1985<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> SPEAK<\/em>, March 1985<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published in Inqaba Ya Basebenzi No.16\/17 (January-June 1985) by Alan Green Historically, youth have been at the forefront of every great movement for change. […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1606,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1618","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"acf":[],"_hostinger_reach_plugin_has_subscription_block":false,"_hostinger_reach_plugin_is_elementor":false,"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1619,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1618\/revisions\/1619"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marxistworkersparty.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}