New groups oppose Pretoria Govt

Press, 27 June 1983, Page 18

New groups oppose Pretoria Govt

By Benjamin Pogrund in Johannesburg through NZPA

Phoenix-like, organised black resistance to apartheid has risen again. Nearly six years after the last mass bannings by the South African Government, two new umbrella movements have been formed. The immediate stimulus for the two movements — the United Democratic Front, which was set up at a series of meetings in the major cities, the most recent in Johannesburg in May, and the National Forum, which came into being in early June — is the angry rejection by many blacks, Asians and mixed-race Coloureds of the constitutional reform being undertaken by the Afrikaner National Government. The reform is intended to bring the minority Asian and Coloured communities into government by giving each of them a segregated parliament. Opponents point out that at no time will the Coloureds and Asians be able to outvote the white parliament. The country’s blacks, who form more than 70 per cent of the population, are excluded from the new deal. Instead, blacks continue to be sent to tribal mini-states and to be denied full rights of South African citizenship. It is against this background that the United Democratic Front (U.D.F.) was born at a protest meeting held earlier this year where Dr Allan Boesak, a leading Coloured church minister, who is also president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, was the speaker. Referring to “the politics of

refusal,” Dr Boesak said churches, civic associations, trade unions, students, and sports bodies should pool their resources to “inform the people of the fraud that is about to be perpetrated in their name and expose plans for what they are.” The U.D.F.’s founding meetings have thus far seen a considerable number of organisations, running into the dozens, coming together across colour and class lines. They include such groups as the Transvaal Indian Congress, trade unions of black workers, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference and the white-led National Union of South African Students. The declared aims of the U.D.F. are relatively bland: a non-racial, united South Africa and the need for unity among those opposed to apartheid. To those in the radical wing of the country’s politics, the codeword descriptions for the U.D.F. are “charterists” or “progressive democrats.” This is because of the support by many of the U.D.F.’s members for the “freedom charter” — a controversial document of vaguely worded democratic and socialist aims adopted in 1955 by the then-legal, but now-banned, African National Congress. Phrases such as “the land shall be shared among those who work it” and “the wealth shall be shared amongst all the people,” have drawn “communist” accusations from the Government, and more than 20 years ago led to a lengthy, but abortive, criminal trial of

Forum also reflected another change — that of some greater tolerance of white people. Previously, black-consciousness advocates confined themselves to blacks, Coloureds and Asians and usually asserted that, in the nature of things, whites could not take part in the struggle against white supremacy. Speakers at the National Forum conference, however, conceded that some whites could prove their support of black-consciousness aims. It was also noteworthy that a few white journalists were personally invited to attend the conference; previously, white journalists had been barred from such meetings. So South Africa has two brand new resistance movements. The strengths of the National Forum and the U.D.F. — and exactly what sort of a challenge they represent to the Government — remain to be seen. Each has not yet presented a definite programme of action. Initially, they will be concentrating on building up grassroots support through seminars, pamphlets and meetings. And then what? The indications are that they favour institutions. That is a great deal easier said than done. Clearly, the leaders know they must step carefully. The Government has a virtually limitless armoury of suppressive measures available and can be relied upon to use any of it in defence of white supremacy — from loss of civil liberties to indefinite and incommunicado jaoling. Those leading the new movements know this only too well from bitter personal experience. In the National Forum, for example,

those connected with the charter. These many years later, support for the charter tends to indicate sympathy with the African National Congress (A.N.C.). The A.N.C. has since turned to insurgent warfare; during May it was responsible for setting off a bomb in Pretoria that killed 19 people and injured more than 200. The other new group, the National Forum, on the other hand, is an aggressive expression of the black-consciousness philosphy — of the sort of outlook shared by most of the 18 organisations proscribed by Government decree in October, 1977. At the founding conference, some 800 delegates, said to represent about 200 organisations nationwide, agreed to a set of toughly worded principles: “Antiracism and anti-imperialism, noncollaboration with the oppressor and its political instruments, independent working-class organisation, opposition to all alliances with ruling-class parties.” The Forum’s emphasis on what has become a standard Marxist analysis of the South African situation is a significant factor in the renewed black-consciousness organisation. Language of this sort is bound to chill the hearts of those who want to see a future South Africa within the Western capitalist fold. The shift to such thinking, however, can be ascribed to frustration among blacks, Coloureds and Asians at getting nowhere in their struggle against white rule. At the same time, the National

Lybon Mabasa has been through a years-long “banning,” and Neville Alexander and Saths Cooper have served lengthy prison sentences after being found guilty under “security" laws. In the United Democratic Front. Ismael Monmoniat and Samson Ndou were detained without trial as recently as last year. All of them, and their followers, feel impelled to go forward in seeking the overthrow of apartheid. Mabasa and Cooper were among several people arrested last week after a June 16 commemoration service in Soweto, the giant blackghetto near Johannesburg, erupted in stone-throwing by a crowd and tear-gassing by police. They were released a few hours later, but Cooper is an Asian and — illustrating one of the problems in forging unity across racial lines — he faces prosecution for being in an area for blacks without Government permission. It also remains to be seen whether the two movements will be able to link up, a possibility that seems unlikely at this stage because of the differences in approach and emphasis. But no doubt efforts at a wider unity will be made. Indeed, at the National Forum conference, one of the keynote speakers, Bishop Desmond Tutu, general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, said: “What does it really matter whether you say you are an exponent of black consciousness and somebody else is an upholder of the Freedom Charter? “The struggle itself is for our total liberation and the liberation of all the people of South Africa, black and white ... Is that not what we are all striving for?”