The growing black revolt inside South Africa could hardly have come at a worse time for the Vorster Government. Not only is it trying to cope with the effects of the crisis of the Smith regime in Zimbabwe-to-be, but at the end of this month it will also come under a renewed international spotlight for its brutal occupation of Namibia (South West Africa), when the United Nations ultimatum demanding South African withdrawal expires.
leaders but firmly excluding the armed liberation organisation SWAPO [South West Africa People's Organisation]. This conference annonced last week that it had set a target date of 31 December 1978 for "independence', and that an interim government would shortly be set up.
battle on all fronts such a puppet administration is established. After ten years' experience of armed resistance it is certainly in a position to carry out this threat. Below, JO MORRIS of the Namibia Support Committee looks at the background of this struggle.
This month marks the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the armed struggle in Namibia. According to a SWAPO communique South African soldiers have been killed in three separate ambushes in the last two months. The growing threat posed by the SWAPO guerrillas has forced the illegal South African regime to impose a complete news blackout on military activity in northern Namibia, while the white settlers are in a state of panic-last month there was a net outflow of at least £9m from the SWAPO grew out of Ovamboland People's Congress, which was formed in 1958 by migrant labourers working in Cape Town.
From the beginning it was a workers' After a year of tinkering with the reform programme inherited from the so-called President Morales and the military rulers of this country are now set to junk it entirely.
Ministers who have been forced to resign include key personalities associated under President Velasco with the renegotiation of the terms of Peru's dependence on foreign capital, the fostering of solidarity among Third World bourgeoisies, and the cooperativisation of large-scale agriculture.
But this is not a 'counter-revolution'.
Rather it is the latest in a series of rightward shifts begun under Velasco, which have as their cause the international economic recession and the steadily growing militancy of the Peruvian working class.
All the same, things are going to be different from now on. To start with, there are gomg to ve more generous moucemcats to foreign capral, bou in Fera nsem and in the common market of the Andean Pact. In its international relations, the regime has given priority to friendly contacts with the extreme right-wing militaries of Chile, Argentina and Brazil.
At home it is proposing to denationalise fishing and extend direct wage controls into the theoretically autonomous agricultural cooperatives, together with a concerted attack on the right to strike. The whole package is designed to provide incentives to medium and small capital, which has benefited much less from the "Revolution' nan ne bie comesce. forean ano state-un concerns, and which has been on a virtual investment strike since 1970.
From the point of view of the working class, the curtailment of the right to strike is probably the most serious of these meaThe apartheid regime has tried to confuse the issue with the holding of a 'constitutional conference', involving a number of black stooge SWAPO, however, has called this bluff by threatening to 'escalate the — economically, diplomatically and militarily' if ganisation, with the twin aims independence for Namibia and abolition of the contract labour system. By the early 1960s the organisation had taken on a national character, and was renamed the South West Africa People's Organisation to reflect this.
Weapon The early membership was recruited almost entirely from the mines, canning factories and other branches of the urbanised proletariat. This has given SWAPO a distinctive character: strikes have been a major weapon of resistance, culminating in the first Prime Minister Fernandez Maldonado -ousted by the right wing.
the State of Emergency sures. effective since 1 July, strikes are illegal — as are meetings or demonstrations of any kind. By means of these provisions, and by closing down the opposition press, the military have sought not only to maintain the unity of their own ranks - something which the abortive right-wing putsch on 9 taken for granted - but also to deprive the workers movement of every means of protesting the raiding of trade union offices, the deportation of leaders such as Hugo Blanco and kidnapping, torture and imprisonment without trial of numerous Hies In Peru, as distinct from Chile, however, the emergency regulations cannor De ex tended indefinitely. It is for this reason that the Ministry of Labour has recently decreed that, in future, days lost in strikes will be general strike in southern Africa in 1971/2, when 20,000 men and women came out for three months, only returning when forced to by lack of food.
Plans for the armed struggle began as early as 1962. conference of SWAPO took place in Namibia and passed a resolution stating that political and military activities were supplementary to each other and should be pursued concurrently. That year SWAPO started military training that resulted in the establishment of the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), the military wing of SWAPO. A programme of politicisation was set up to prepare the population for this new stage of the struggle.
By 1964 the first camp was set up inside Namibia, and in the following year there were small military cells in three regions of Namibia. The cells and camps survived the vigilance of the South African Security Forces only through constant mobility and the computed against workers' holiday entitleTECHES A courageous lead in the fight back against this frontal assault on the longstanding rights of the working class has been given by the Miners' Federation of Central Peru. In a statement published on 7 August, the miners urged the country's workers and peasants to take an independent class position and reject the argument of the Communist Party and other pro-government tendencies that to oppose the regime is to play the game of imperialism'. The statement called for a broad response to the call put out by the Coordinating and Unifying Committee of Class-struggle Unions ICCUSC] for an indefinite general strike on 16 August.
Despite the urgency of this appeal, however, its impact has been severely weakened by the sectarian tactics of the Maoist leaders of the CCUSC towards the CP-controlled trade union confederation, the CGTP. Whereas revolutionary Marxists in Peru defend the CGTP against its Stalinist leadershin and struggle for unity ir action both inside and outside this body, the Maoist-dominated CCUSC has in practice divided and depleted the forces that might be won to a class-struggle orientation Dy posing Hisell as tne alternative to a hopelessly "social-imperialist' CGTP.
Even within sme CCUSC, the Maoists conduct themselves in an exclusivist fashion, using their majority to impose what amounts to their tull programme on the organisation. As a result, iwo years atter its formation the most important class-struggle nucleus does not even coordinate all those currents which have left the CGTP during the last five General Strike, Namibia 1971 - Workers refuse to leave the Katutura compound for work. support of the local population-here the support and organisation of the women in northern Namibia was of great importance.
On 18 July 1966, after the International Court of Justice had refused to rule against the occupation of Namibia, SWAPO issued a declaration of war from its exile headquarters in Dar es Salaam: 'We have no alternative but to rise in arms and bring about our own liberation. The supreme test must be faced and we must at once begin to cross the many rivers of blood on our march towards freedom. And as sure as night follows The guerrillas were well trained and well armed and the attacks which followed created a degree of panic among the white community, whose farms were attacked as far south as Grootfontein. Other early targets were HUGO BLANCO - the deportation of the Trotskyist leader after return from exile, has been accompanied by numerous other deportations, imprisonment and torture or working class militants. years. And it has not begun the task of drawing into common struggle all the sections of workers, organised mainly in the CGTP and in some instances in the government-sponsored CTRP, who have demonstrated that they are prepared to complex of Government buildings were burnt down.
Torture The South Africans were taken by surprise, but the Defence Force was soon in action. Helicopters spotted the guerrilla base in Ovamboland and on 26 August 1966 a large party of guerrillas was captured in a dawn raid. The captives were brought to trial in Pretoria after two years of interrogation, torture and many months of solitary confinement. The majority of these men are now serving le sen tences on the bleak Robben Island prison.
Until the overthrow of Portuguese colonialism in Angola, guerrilla attacks were mainly in the north-eastern regions of Namibia: South African ally camps, landmine operations, ambushes of military and civilian convoys. But during the last year guerrillas have infiltrated the densely populated area of Ovamboland, increasingly attacking collaborators with the South African regime as well as military targets. Casualty figures on the South African side have risen dramatically.
ulation in Ovamboland excludes it as a potential "liberated area', the region is reaching the stage where it is ungovernable except by explicit martial law. The Security Forces-including tribal police-are ordered to 'shoot to kill' anyone seen in the 'no-go' zone running along the Angolan border.
brutality of occupying forces — there are many well documented accounts of torture, -tape, stealing and assault-can only deepen the antagonisms.
The general state of tension-ostensibly caused by the murder of white farmers in southern Namibia and the assassination last year of the South African-appointed puppet chief of Ovamboland—has created a new situation in Namibia. The building of military bases, the massive call-up of troops, the bombing of SWAPO camps in Zambia all point to the determination of South Africa to maintain its control of Namibia. But in the face of the intensified guerrilla war being waged by SWAPO, it can only be a matter of time before the collapse of the South African occupation and the liberation of Namibia.
As a result, it seems probable that the miners will only be joined instruggle by the two Maoist strongholds in teaching and the universities. In the present atmosphere of repression, the cost to the working class and popular movement of so partial a challenge to the regime could be heavy.
SPECULATION has already started that Brian Faulkner, who announced his retirement from active politics last week, is to join other has been Prime Ministers in ine House of Lords Certainly, Brian has done much over the years to earn this reward from the British ruling class.
Arthur Brian • Deane Faulkner entered the Stormont parliament in 1949 with strong backing from the Orange Order. And Inrougnout nis political life he was always quick to play the Orange card. As rising young Unionist MP he told an Orange rally JOHN MAGEE reports from Belfast on 17 July 1954: There is no reason why Orangemen individually and collectively should not interest themselves in the economic welfare of the community. i mean by nat statement we should be anxious to find employment for our brethren.' A year later he reinforced his point by declaring: The Government must ask themselves whether it were safe to employ in Government service, people who openly advocated treason." In plain language - don't employ Catholics. Red Weekly 26 August 1976 Faulkner now rose quickly in the ranks. He was made Unionist Chief Whip in 1956 and Minister of Home 1959, WHen ne virst in troduced internment to deal with the IRA border campaign which went on till 1962.
Throughout Faulkner never ceased in his attempt to manoeuvre himself into the top post of Prime Minister by skilful use of the Orange card. But it was not until the Northern Ireland Parliament was on its last legs that he achieved his ambition. Almost immediately he once again introduced internment of Republicans. But instead of quelling the resistance of the nationalist minority this measure fuelled it. In March 1972 Faulkner and Stormont fell.
He was to rise again to prominence with the Sunningdale agreement as Minister TERE power-sharing executive. The executive collapsed after four months, and with it collapsed Faulkner's career.
Gerry Fitt, the Social Democratic and Labour Party leader, described Faulkner last week as a man with tremendous courage'. Like the press, the SDLP wish to portray Faulkner as a reformed character to give credibility to their abject collaboration with the Faulknerite Unionists. Yet Ireland/Spain tornignt ago rauikner was caring to tougher army action, the building of a home guard, and the reintroduction of internment.
Described once by a Labour Government minister as 'as cunning as a wagon load of monkeys', Faulkner may well nave conned many in his time, including British Governments and the SDLP. But for the nationalist community in general Führer Faulkner, •WRO upheld the Orange Order as 'the most democratic body in the world', will always be remembered of the Protestant anenchman ascendancy and the author of intern ment without trial.
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day, victory will be ours.' Targets
Liberation While the terrain and dense pop-