Learning from joint struggles against apartheid
By Karl Cloete
After the establishment of the ANC in 1912 a plethora of organisations in the white, Indian and coloured communities worked side by side in an alliance with the ANC to overcome the apartheid monster and put in its place a democratic, non-racial, non-sexist and prosperous society.
People’s organisations such as the Congress of Democrats (COD, an organisation for white democrats), the Natal and the Transvaal Indian Congress (NIC and TIC, for Indian democrats) and the Coloured People’s Organisation (CPO, for coloured democrats) went into the trenches of our liberation movement to destroy the apartheid regime and install in its place a democratic state where “the people shall govern in a country that belongs to all who live in it”.
The coloured and Indian communities actively participated in the national liberation struggle. Testimony of this is captured in the ANC Strategy and Tactics document of 1969, which says: “Historically both communities have played a most important part in the stimulation and intensification of the struggle for freedom. It is a matter of proud record that amongst the first and most gallant martyrs in the armed combat against the enemy was a coloured comrade, Basil February.
“The jails in South Africa are a witness to the large-scale participation by Indian and coloured comrades at every level of our revolutionary struggle. From the very inception of Umkhonto they were more than well represented in the first contingents who took life in hand to help lay the basis for this new phase in our struggle.
“The stirring demonstrations of the Fifties from the Defiance Campaign to the Congress of the People, to the general strike, and peasants’ revolt and mass demonstrations, saw many examples of united action by all the oppressed people.
“Memory is still fresh of the outstanding response by the coloured workers of the Western Cape to the 1961 call by the ANC for a national general political strike.”
The launch of the United Democratic Front (UDF) on August 20 1983 in Mitchells Plain in the Western Cape saw a broad front of different communities, organisations and strata throwing their weight in with the struggle for the eradication of the apartheid system and ensuring that all segments of our communities actively partook in the national democratic struggle.
The UDF mobilised all communities (white, coloured, African and Indian) and class formations together against the apartheid state. Through campaigns such as rent boycotts, consumer boycotts, sports boycotts, cultural boycotts and protests against the tri-cameral parliament, the rallying cry of the liberation movement was heeded and rooted in all black communities.
Some developments since the unbanning of the ANC and dissolution of the UDF require very serious and honest interrogation of where we made strategic errors in the manner in which we approached this question, including understanding the nature of racism.
How racism manifests itself in our society
Prejudice along racial lines has found a safe haven within many spheres in our society. It finds expression where one group wants to yield power over others and where there is a scrambling over positions and resources. While we are not born racist, this phenomenon comes as a result of society’s influence on us over time.
We must accept that if we want to defeat racism, racial prejudice and racial stereotypes at the point of production, we must raise the consciousness of our workers to understand that they are historically tied and bound together as a component part of the working class who are exploited by the capitalist class, which knows no colour when it seeks to maximise profits.
What is to be done?
We must address the following issues if we are to bridge the race, class, cultural differences and poverty in our society.
We need to struggle for the redistribution of wealth to address the distortions of apartheid colonialism, which guarantees economic inclusion and material equality. Given the scramble for resources, we cannot unite our people unless we return to the noble principles of the Freedom Charter wherein we:
• Share in the country’s wealth – the national wealth of our country shall be restored to our people; the mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole;
• The land shall be shared amongst those who work it – restrictions of land on a racial basis shall be ended and all the land shall be re-divided amongst those who work it to banish famine and land hunger.
In our endeavours to build unity we must ensure that transformation, which is fundamental if we are to reverse the legacy of apartheid, must wipe out poor delivery of basic services, providing affordable and safe public transport, a public health system that is caring and efficient to the working class and the poor, integrated housing that overcomes the apartheid spatial development patterns, and free and compulsory education. Again the Freedom Charter is instructive on what must be done;
• There shall be houses security and comfort – all people shall have the right to live where they choose, be decently housed and to bring up their family in comfort and security.
• Free medical care and hospitalisation shall be provided for all, with special care for mothers and young children. A preventative health scheme shall be run by the state.
• Slums (read squatter camps) shall be demolished and new suburbs built where all have transport, roads, lighting, playing fields, crèches and social centres.
• Education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children.
Employment equity
If we are to build real unity, transformation of the workplace and our industries are critical. Employment equity, as a tool to correct the distorted labour market, must be sharpened as a tool. In this regard the Freedom Charter says:
• There shall be work and security – the state shall recognise the right to work and duty of all to work and to draw full unemployment benefits.
• Men and women of all races shall receive equal pay for equal work.
• Child labour, compound labour, the tot system and contract labour shall be abolished
As we seek to transform our society to the higher ideals of our National Democratic Revolution which is embedded in the struggle for a non-racial, democratic, non-sexist and prosperous South Africa, we should accept that this can only be achieved if we address the interconnected national, gender and class question on the basis of the working class leading the struggle.
The Freedom Charter presents the most fertile ground to cultivate the kind of non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society we aspire to. The struggle continues.
Karl Cloete is Numsa deputy general secretary