SOUTH AFRICAN police last week tried to stir up "tribal violence' in an effort to sabotage the three day general strike organised in the black township of Soweto.
• The first day of the strike, Monday 23 August, was almost entirely succesful. The Financial Times reported next day that 80 percent of Soweto's workforce had backed Operation Azikwhela ('Don't Board the Buses') by staying away from work. The regime was in trouble.
of black migrant workers from the giant Mzimhlope hostel in Soweto, armed with clubs, cutters), spears and knives, two-day rampage against strike organisers and supporters during which they killed 21 and badly beat up many more. The police, claiming that these attacks were a justified reaction' to "intimidation', stood by without intervening.
Police that it was the police themselves who were behind these attacks. A reporter from the Rand Daily Mail, hiding in a are asked to withdraw immediately.
what they dubbed istration Board Property.' Zulus The next night, however, hundreds pangas (canebegan a hostel are in fact Zulus.
Evidence quickly emerged, however, tribally coalbox to escape the violence, told how he heard a voice berating the migrant workers through what he took to be a police loud hailer: We didn't their fellow order you to destroy the property. You were asked to fight people only, so you force.
MILAN HLAVSA- Founder of the two Czech rock groups.
Some of the 100 POINTS, a song by the Plastic People.
They They are afraid of Lenin They are arraid ortrutr 1976. c/ o Red London N.T. Another policeman, speaking through an interpreter, was reported to have told the hostel dwellers: You have been ordered to kill troublemakers only, not to damage Bantu AdminThe press, however, mostly followed the police line that these were "spontaneous' clashes between 'Zulu warr- too late. iors from the hostel and other tribal groups. It was left to the Financial Times to point out that 'the latest rioting cannot be ascribed entirely to tribal causes, for many of the students and strike supporters are Zulus'. Furthermore, only about 30 per cent of the of the Mzimhlope A more likely explanation for their action is their utter dependence on the _regime, which can send them back to starve in their rural "homelands' on the slightest excuse. Banned from bringing their wives and children to live with WOTSC them, they are forced to sleep in segregated dormitories, rows of double bunks, often made of concrete, "like giant storage shelves" , (Financial Times, 27 August).
The police offered them a chance to release these pent-up frustrations on workers; and in such conditions it is hardly surprising that many of them joined this armed scab ATrica Group tanat NAC They are afraid out in the streets They are afraid inside their castle ghetto They are afraid of what they have said They are afraid of what they have written They are afraid for their position They are afraid of the educated They are afraid of the talented are afraid of Marx at 6am They are afraid of all our dead presidents They are afraid of freedom They are afraid of democracy They are afraid of The Human Rights They are afraid of socialism Then why the hell are WE afraid of THEM?
(Copy-right Plastic People Defence Fund All donations etc. should be sent Weekly, 97 Caledonian Road real death toll is believed to be far higher, perhaps as many as one thous Detained Hundreds of Africans are being arrested. Last Friday, Kruger announced that 77 people had been detained so far under the recently passed Internal Security Act (which permits indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial and that another 744 had been arrested.
But even so, Fleet Street is seriously worried that the Vorster regime may now be unable to cow the black masses into submission. Even the Daily Teleg raph is now anxiously urging the South Governmacht to introduce some face-lifting reforms before it is "Two fundamental factors' (the Financial Times noted on 24 August) "have fuelled blacks' militancy. The first is that black confidence has been significantly bolstered by the recent victory of black nationalism in form erly white-ruled Angola and Mozambique. Secondly, as the youthful participants in the current demonstrations indicate, there is now a new generation of South African blacks who are prepared to protest violently against apartheid even when they know the consequences will be prison if not But this new generation also dep ends on international support to make its actions effective. The next few months will be a testing time for all concerned