South Africa
and the
Reagan Factor

As the Black majority in South Africa intensifies its momentous struggle for national liberation, an ever-sharper crisis of existence is created for white minority rule. In their efforts to contend with this deepening crisis, Pretoria and Washington have made a coordinated series of countermoves.

One of these moves was the formation by Secretary of State George Shultz, in late 1985, of

the Advisory Committee on South Africa. The official function of this committee — whose 12 members were selected from the corporate sector, the labor movement, academia and from among former government figures — is to prepare a report on South Africa to be ready in one year. But the actual function of the committee has little to do with producing an advisory report. Its real function is to create the appearance of a consensus around policy decisions already

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made by the Reagan administration and its partner in "constructive engagement," the Botha government.

These joint policy decisions — which place Washington ever more aggressively on the side of white minority rule — were made by U.S. and South African government and corporate figures. They were first made public in September 1985, when 91 leaders of South Africa's major corporations placed a full-page ad — with the headline "There is a Better Way" — in the Johannesburg Sunday Times. A few weeks later, the U.S. Corporate Council on South Africa — consisting of the heads of such transnationals as General Motors, IBM, Citicorp, Mobil, Union Carbide, Exxon and Du Pont — reproduced the ad in *The New York Times*, with their own message affixed to it:

"Today, we add our voices to theirs.

"The U.S. Corporate Council on South Africa strongly supports the ideas and initiatives of this group of responsible businessmen.

"We pledge to play an active role in peacefully achieving their goals."

These U.S. corporate leaders, with the backing of the Reagan administration, join their South African counterparts in declaring that **there is a better way** than the way advanced by the African National Congress and its Freedom Charter, the historic proclamation that has the overwhelming support of the courageous Black majority fighting to end white minority rule.

At the same time that U.S. corporate powers publicly endorse the goals of the South African corporate powers, they offer their assurance that these goals are to be "peacefully" achieved. But this effort to replace the goals of the Black majority — as defined in the Freedom Charter — with the goals of the racist white minority rulers can by no stretch of the imagination be construed as peaceful. On the contrary, it is a declaration of war against the goals of the Black majority.

## "Reforming" Apartheid

According to Shultz, the Advisory Committee will "render its advice on how U.S. policy can effectively promote equal rights in South Africa, and an end to apartheid." Shultz's pro-nouncement of "equal rights" as a goal in South Africa is a measure of his demagogy. At home,

2

where equal rights is a central issue, the admin-
istration is doing all it can to make the political
and socio-economic conditions of Afro-Ameri-
cans more and more unequal. But in South Afri-
ca, where the goal is majority rule, Shultz calls
for equal rights. By substituting this false goal
for the real one, Shultz seeks to perpetuate, not
end, apartheid-minority rule.

By linking "equal rights" to an end to apart-
heid, Shultz is saying that the apartheid system
can be reformed. This same position was ex-
pressed by the corporate leaders, who speak in
their ads of a "reform process." But apartheid
cannot be reformed. There is no solution to the
crisis of the apartheid system other than a solu-
tion to the issue of power. It is this issue that the
administration and the corporate leaders seek to
camouflage with rhetoric.

For example, in elaborating on their claim
that "There is a better way," the corporate
heads speak of "negotiating with acknowledged
Black leaders about power sharing." The issue
in South Africa is not "power sharing" but a
power shift: a shift from white minority rule to
majority rule based on one person, one vote in a
unitary, non-racial state.

By speaking of negotiating with "acknow-
ledged black leaders" around the issue of "pow-
er sharing," these corporate leaders make it evi-
dent that those they acknowledge as "leaders"
are in reality quislings. Those whom the Black
majority acknowledge as their leaders —the
leaders of the African National Congress, the
United Democratic Front and the new Congress

3

of South African Trade Unions — have made it clear that apartheid and white minority rule are not two separate phenomena but an indivisible entity. It is because of this indivisibility that apartheid cannot be ended by “power sharing,” but only by a shift in power from the white minority to the majority.

The South African freedom fighters see "power sharing" as a divisive formula whose purpose is to preserve white minority rule. It was, in fact, the introduction of "tricameral representation" within the apartheid state — a move hailed by Pretoria and Washington as a step toward "power sharing" — that sparked the present and ever-sharpening confrontation.

## Colonialism of a Special Type

At the heart of the struggles giving rise to a broad alliance of the oppressed of South Africa is the partnership between the ANC and the South African Communist Party. These patriotic partners have long championed a shift of power from the white minority to the Black majority. This strategy, which is accepted by the broad front for national liberation, is based on an analysis that sees apartheid as a system of relations based on both monopoly capitalism and colonial oppression of a special type. In this colonialism of a special kind, the dominant oppressor is not based outside the country but within.

South Africa's white minority rulers and monopolists, together with their imperialist partners in the West, control the human and material resources in a developed capitalist economy with the world's highest rate of exploitation and profit. The white minority also occu-

4

pies all of the arable land, that is, 87 percent of the total.

This colonialism of a special kind attained its full development within the context of South Africa's increasing importance to U.S. imperialism and its allies after World War II and the consequent opening of a new era of advance for socialism and national liberation.

### "Reciprocal Relationship"

U.S. imperialism's long record of involvement with the apartheid regime intensified with the advent of the Reaganites' policy of "constructive engagement." Commenting on the underpinnings of this policy, Chester Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, declared that there is a "reciprocal relationship" between the United States and South Africa "based on shared concerns in southern Africa" (TransAfrica News, August, 1981).

It is the special features of apartheid South Africa that form the basis for its "reciprocal relationship" and "shared concerns" with the Reaganites. In fact, the very features that account for this reciprocal relationship developed as a result of shared concerns with world imperialism.

These concerns came to the fore after Winston Churchill, speaking in Fulton, Missouri, just after World War II, declared a "crusade against Communism." This declaration, which became known as the Churchill-Truman doctrine — whose real purpose was to roll back national liberation and social progress — received its most immediate response from those forces in South Africa that had supported Hitler. This response, within the context of colonialism of a special kind, ushered in apartheid and the Suppression of Communism Act, that is, ushered in apartheid fascism.

### "Permanent Transition"

"Reforms" and "power sharing" have never ended colonial oppression anywhere, nor will they. This is illustrated with particular vividness in South Africa, where colonialism of a special kind profoundly intensifies the economic, social and political contradictions that generate anti-colonial struggles.

That the use of such terms as "reform" and "power sharing" is a rhetorical maneuver designed to derail the liberation struggle isdra-

5

matically illustrated by the recent remarks of Gavin Relly, chief lieutenant to Harry Oppenheimer, head of Anglo American Corporation and South Africa's most powerful magnate. Relly — who, along with Oppenheimer, signed the ad calling for “reform” and “power sharing” — declared that “I don't believe in final solutions.” Echoing an idea expressed earlier by Oppenheimer, Relly went on to say that he prefers a “state of permanent transition.” Obviously, the final solution that he and Oppenheimer wish to avoid by “permanent transition” is the end of whiteminority rule.

The same wish was also expressed, in only slightly different words, by Chester Crocker. Objecting to an approach that focuses on an “ultimate goal,” he advocated one that concentrates instead on the “process of getting there.”

The supposedly liberal Oppenheimer, far from offering an alternative policy, supports the Botha-Reagan strategy. In fact, while he calls for

6

"reform," he voices opposition as strong as Botswana's to the ANC demand for "one person, one vote."

In the past few months, the apartheid regime, which is supposedly subject to reform, has murdered more than 1,000 children, youth, women and men. It has done so rather than agree to any of the Black majority's immediate demands.

There is, it must be stressed, a fundamental difference between these demands and imperialism's diversionary call for "reform." If the Black majority succeeded in winning any of their immediate demands, in whole or in part, and in enforcing such a victory through their united strength, this would advance the struggle to end white minority rule.

It appears, however, that the Washington-Pretoria policies, supported by the Oppenheimers of South Africa and their U.S. counterparts,

7

have brought matters to the point where if even
such an elementary democratic right as "one
person, one vote" is to be won, it will be nec-
essary first to replace white minority rule with
majority rule.

Shultz's "Vision"

In another remark that reveals the racist es-
sence of "constructive engagement," Shultz de-
clared that "the next few months will reveal
whether the South African government can
muster the vision and bold leadership that will
be required to move from confrontation to nego-
tiation and a new constitutional order deriving
its strength from the consent of the governed."
Thus, according to Shultz, it is not the ANC and
its leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Oliver
Tambo, but the apartheid rulers who can pro-
vide vision and leadership.

It is impossible to move from confrontation
to negotiation on the racist, imperialist terms
proposed by Shultz, who demands that the
Black majority surrender their inalienable right
to self-determination and "share power" with
their oppressors, who were once partners of the
Nazis and who now perpetuate Nazi ideology
and practices in South Africa.

To speak of involving the racist white rulers
in "negotiations" to form a new "constitutional
order" is to act from a position that is being
upheld by imperialist violence — violence that
has been unleashed to prevent the oppressed
majority, led by the ANC, from determining —
without interference from U.S. imperialism or
its partners in Pretoria — their own national fu-
ture on the basis of a non-racial, unitary consti-
tutional order that they themselves establish.

Rather than projecting a vision, Shultz is
entertaining a fantasy: the notion that a variant
of the betrayal of Reconstruction a century ago,
which perpetuated the oppression of Blacks in
this country in new forms, can be transplanted
to preserve white minority domination in South
Africa. However, the answer the heroic
freedom fighters are giving Shultz is bound to
remind him that the crisis of apartheid rule is
not taking place during the rise of capitalism,
but in the era of its decline and general crisis on
one hand and, on the other, of the world tran-
sition to national liberation and socialism.

8

## Deadly Parallel

There is a deadly parallel between the role of Shultz's Advisory Committee on South Africa and that of the Kissinger Commission on Central America. The formation of the Kissinger Commission coincided with U.S. military intervention, covert and overt, against national liberation struggles in Central America, and in particular with the intensification of Washington's violent efforts to destroy Nicaragua's newly-won independence and social progress.

The establishment of the Shultz Committee not only coincides with the Reaganites' increasing support for the internal war Pretoria is waging against the Black majority's freedom struggles. It is also geared to the Reaganites' drive to provide more and more funds for military aid to the contra forces that they and Pretoria have created — the proxy armies that are waging terrorist wars against Angola, Mozambique and Lesotho and against the Namibian liberation struggle. Through these efforts to destabilize the frontline states, Washington has yet another way of providing direct economic and military support to Pretoria.

In their ads, the U.S. and South African corporate leaders declared their opposition to "violence as a means of achieving change." However, behind this rhetorical camouflage, they support the Washington-Pretoria strategy to prevent change by escalating violence inside South Africa, and to violently turn back change in the frontline states.

In a recent comment on the nature of the support provided by Washington, Winnie Mandela declared that the Reagan administration "refuses any assistance to the true representatives of the people in this country, the African National Congress. We can only conclude from this that the American government is determined at all costs to maintain and support the racist white regime in South Africa." Condemning the administration's policy in regard to the frontline states, she stated, "The South African regime continues with impunity to attack neighboring countries. The American administration not only approves of this conduct but has now followed the examples set by the racist regime by giving aid to and receiving officially in Washington the bandit Savimbi."

9

To gain support at home for its two-front
strategy — support to Pretoria's internal poli-
cies, accompanied by efforts to destabilize the
frontline states — the Reaganites carry out a cal-
culated deception: they try to make it appear
that military aid to Savimbi has nothing to do
with aid to the racist ruling class' violence inside
South Africa. Instead they insist that their sup-
port to Savimbi is to stop "Soviet and Cuban ex-
pansionism" in that region.

Thus Washington follows in the footsteps
of Pretoria, which used the Suppression of

Communism Act as the rationale for imposing
apartheid fascism in South Africa. Today, of
course, Pretoria continues to use anti-Soviet,
anti-communist justifications for escalating its
assaults on the South African freedom strug-
gles, and on the neighboring states that recog-
nize the link between the liberation struggle in
South Africa and their struggle to control their
destinies.

Star Wars and Contra Wars

In late January 1986 Reagan told key Re-
public senators, in remarks paraphrased by The
New York Times, that the "Soviet Union's per-
ception of U.S. strength and resolve in the next
year depended largely on Congressional moves
involving aid to rebels in Nicaragua and An-
gola, as well as protection of the U.S. military
buildup and support for space-based missiles,
popularly known as the 'Star Wars' program."
The Times then quoted Reagan as declaring that
a summit meeting in this country would be "di-
rectly affected by Gorbachev's perception of our
global position and internal solidarity."

In true McCarthyite fashion, Reagan im-
plies that the criterion for patriotism will be "in-

10

ternal solidarity" in support of Star Wars and the mercenary contras in Angola and Central America — a standard that classifies as unpatriotic the U.S. movements in solidarity with the struggle for majority rule in South Africa and the Central American struggles for liberation and national independence.

At the same time, Reagan converts the Soviet Union's solidarity with the liberation struggles in southern Africa and Central America into a "Soviet threat," using this familiar fiction as the rationale for the administration's stepped-up military support to Pretoria via its support of the Savimbi bandits, for its support to their counterparts in Nicaragua, and its escalation of the nuclear arms race.

Shortly before Reagan made these remarks, Mikhail Gorbachev commented on Washington's attempts to justify its opposition to arms control by linking arms control to events in southern Africa and elsewhere:

"The pattern imposed by miltarism — arms instead of development — must be replaced by the reverse order of things — disarmament for development. The noose of the trillion-dollar foreign debt, which is now strangling dozens of countries and entire continents, is a direct consequence of the arms race.

"The Soviet Union is opposed to making the implementation of disarmament measures dependent on 'regional conflicts.' Behind this is both the unwillingness to follow the path of disarmament and the desire to impose upon sovereign nations what is alien to them and what would make it possible to maintain profoundly unfair conditions whereby some countries live at the expense of others, exploiting their natural, human and spiritual resources for the selfish imperial purposes of certain states of aggressive alliances."

As is made evident by Gorbachev's remarks, the Reagan administration's blocking of disarmament allows U.S. imperialism to continue to build up weapons in support of its global and regional strategy. As applied to South Africa, this strategy helps to perpetuate conditions whereby the white minority rulers and their partners in the West can continue to live at the expense of the Black majority. The struggle of the Black majority demonstrates the indivisibilit

11

ty of the fight for peace and liberation.

## Requirements of Anti-Apartheid Solidarity

It is now imperative for the U.S. anti-apartheid movement to recognize that the goal of divestment alone does not correspond to the requirements of anti-apartheid solidarity. What is needed are comprehensive and mandatory sanctions against South Africa. And because military support to the contras in the frontline states is military support to Pretoria, the struggle for sanctions must include a demand for the end of aid to the Savimbi bandits and their counterparts in other frontline states.

Just as the struggle to end the armaments race must be extended to prevent the militarization of outer space, the U.S. struggle against apartheid must be extended to include comprehensive, total mandatory sanctions. Only in this way can we advance the fight to end Washington's "constructive engagement" with apartheid.

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Solidarity
Strategy

As the majority in South Africa intensify their historic struggle, the apartheid regime is confronted with an irreversible crisis of existence. As the shock waves from this deepening crisis reverberate in the headquarters of the transnational corporations and in government and financial centers in the United States and Europe, Pretoria and Washington accelerate their counter moves against the freedom struggles.

Botha, for example, reacted to the expanding, accelerating liberation struggles by promising that he would abolish the pass laws — a move that was hailed by the Reagan administration and the U.S. mass media as proof that the white minority regime was “reforming” itself and “dismantling” apartheid. However, as would soon become apparent, Botha’s promise had an opposite intent: to disorient the liberation movement and so gain time to launch, with Reagan’s help, still more moves to counter the advancing freedom fight.

With his next move, Botha made it hard even for the Reaganites to portray him as a reformer. He announced a plan for new laws even more comprehensive and repressive than the hated pass laws. It became more obvious that Botha's aim was not to dismantle apartheid but to dismantle and destroy the opposition to apartheid and white minority rule.

13

In greeting Botha's deceptive move on the pass laws as a reform, the Reagan administration once again demonstrated that its policy of "constructive engagement" is simply the other side, or the mirror image, of the Botha strategy.

The Reaganites also demonstrated that their policy of constructive engagement depends for its effectiveness on concealing that fascist nature of the South African system. That is, if one acknowledges that this system if fascist, one must also admit that it cannot be reformed any more than fascism in Nazi Germany could have been reformed.

In South Africa, the white minority regime expresses corporate monopoly's rule in its most racist, terroristic form. This rule, backed by U.S. and NATO imperialism, also expresses colonialism of a special type. Those who call for "power sharing" with the regime, who claim that apartheid can be reformed, are putting forth concepts designed to sustain, not end, apartheid fascism. The goal of the South African freedom fighters is the opposite of power sharing. Their objective is a shift of power from white minority rule to majority rule based on "one person, one vote" in a unitary, non-racial state.

## State Terrorism: Internal

Following on the heels of its announcement of a plan for new repressive laws, the Botha regime stepped up its violence internally. For example, it conducted an attack on Crossroads, a shantytown known for its opposition to apartheid. When this operation — in which bulldozers did double duty as tanks — was over, the death toll, according to authorities, was 30. More than 30,000 people were left shelterless.

The explanations presented by the Botha regime and the Reagan administration (and echoed by the U.S. mass media) for this latest atrocity, which was reminiscent of Hitler's scorched earth operations, were remarkably similar. Both depicted the event as a conflict between Black terroristic radicals and the Black population. By this monstrous deception, Washington and Pretoria attempted to cover up the fact that what happened at Crossroads symbolizes the conflict between the apartheid-fascist regime, which used Black traitors as its surrogates at Crossroads, and the majority of the

14

people.

## State Terrorism: Across the Borders

At the same time the Botha regime also launched across-the-border military offensives against Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Botha acknowledged that these raids were modeled on Reagan's blitzkreig of Libya, and justified his aggression by propagating Reagan's rationale for his aggression against Libya.

Botha's fascist attacks on independent, neighboring states were synchronized with Reagan's moves to expand military aid to Savimbi. (At this same time, Reagan was also moving to expand military support to the contras in Nicaragua.) In the past, Savimbi supported Portuguese colonialism against the Angolan liberation movement, as did U.S. imperialism. Today Savimbi's contra operation carries out the Reagan-Botha strategy to destabilize Angola and other frontline states.

The immediate aim of this strategy is to isolate the South African and Namibian liberation struggles, that is, to prevent the frontline states from expressing solidarity with them. The strategy's long-range, as well as immediate, goal is to preserve white minority rule in South Africa as the economic, political, diplomatic and military base through which Western imperialism strives to regain its domination over southern Africa.

This desperate, violent attempt to isolate the liberation struggle in South Africa is a vivid illustration of why it is so crucial to isolate the apartheid-fascist regime by imposing comprehensive and mandatory sanctions.

## The Solidarity Movement

The U.S. movement in solidarity with the South African freedom struggle is entering a new stage. It is timely to ask: Are the current tactics and policies of this movement attuned to the crucial new stage of the struggle in South Africa?

In the South African freedom struggle, the litmus test of every policy and action is whether it advances the strategy put forth by the African National Congress. This strategy — which has the support of the South African majority, including the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the United Democratic Front — calls for “making apartheid unwork-

15

able” and “South Africa ungovernable” by the white minority regime.

If a comparable test is applied to the tactics of the U.S. solidarity movement, it becomes apparent that there is a need to update them. To harmonize with the strategy of the South African freedom struggle, the tactics of the U.S. solidarity movement must more directly confront the policy that is aimed at defeating the ANC's strategy: Reagan's policy of constructive engagement.

The fight in our country for divestment has played an inspiring role in the development of a broad and growing anti-apartheid movement. Yet the divestment struggles, as well as the boycotts, in themselves have limitations. To be effective, the divestment demands and the boycotts must not be regarded as a substitute for the fight for sanctions. In fact, if not placed within the context of struggle for comprehensive and mandatory sanctions against the South African regime, the individual struggles to compel particular corporations to divest could become counterproductive.

For example, even when corporations have been compelled by the South African freedom

16

struggles and world pressure to withdraw from or to stop selling their products to South Africa, Reagan's policy of constructive engagement has continued to offer support to the South African regime. And even if all the present divestment struggles and boycotts were successful, Reagan's policy would still make it possible for the U.S. transnationals to come to the rescue of the white minority regime.

## Stronger Support for Freedom Fighters

The development of the Royal Dutch Shell boycott is a case in point.

This boycott was initiated by the U.S. labor movement in response to a call from the Black South African miners. However, the miners' call for a solidarity boycott by no means implies that they regard this action as sufficient. On the contrary, these workers, who are totally committed to the ANC strategy, are keenly aware that the limited "sanctions" adopted by Reagan are tokens designed to head off further mass pressure and to conceal that his policies are the primary means for fueling the apartheid system.

The South African miners, in unity with the ANC and COSATU, are calling not only for a boycott of Shell, but also for the U.S. labor movement and the U.S. anti-apartheid movement as a whole to fight for what Reagan has vetoed: the comprehensive, mandatory sanctions demanded by the United Nations.

A special call to the U.S. solidarity movement for support in this fight was made by Oliver Tambo, president of the ANC. Expressing his appreciation to the U.S. movement, he declared that by "redoubling the struggle for com-

17

preprehensive sanctions, it would have decisive ef-
fects ... and largely complement our own
struggle."

Solidarity Movement and the '86 Elections

The greatest support we in this country can give to the South African freedom struggle is to change U.S. foreign policy. To help bring this about, the solidarity movement must be both strengthened and linked with the wider electoral struggles, with the aim of defeating every member of the Senate and House who opposes sanctions. A shift of even four or five Senate votes could mean that this body would no longer rubber-stamp Reagan's strategic partnership with Botha, and so create the conditions in which Congress could override Reagan's opposition to comprehensive sanctions.

The Soviet Union and the other socialist countries, it must be noted, have never had diplomatic, trade or any other type of relations with apartheid South Africa. In other words, these countries have always imposed total sanctions against the apartheid regime, and have also expressed solidarity with the South African freedom fighters in many other ways.

Certain Western countries are also beginning to move against South Africa. For example, Denmark has taken initiatives on sanctions and to break ties with the apartheid state. If a small country can have an impact — and Denmark already has — by moving in this direction, then imagine what it would mean if our country imposed comprehensive and mandatory sanctions!

In the U.S, the anti-apartheid struggles involve the multi-racial, multi-national labor movement, the Afro-American people, religious organizations, students, academics, and growing numbers of elected officials at national, state and local levels. Immediate steps to link the U.S. anti-apartheid movement to the wider struggles around the 1986 elections would advance the fight for victory over apartheid, as well as the overall fight for an alternative to Reagan's policies of war, inequality and hunger.

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Reagan and
Botha vs.
Majority Rule

In his speech of July 22, 1986, Reagan made a brutal reassertion of his policy of "constructive engagement." By expressing once again his adamant opposition to sanctions, he reiterated his strategic relationship with the white minority regime against the South African and Namibian freedom struggles and for reversing the independence of Angola and other states in southern Africa. The essence of this speech — which was tantamount to an open declaration of war against the South African liberation struggle and its leading force, the African National Congress — was echoed by Shultz the next day at a Senate hearing.

Ironically, on the same day that Shultz began his testimony, the media revealed that U.S. imperialism has long been conducting a covert war against the ANC: since the early sixties, the U.S. has been collaborating with South African and British intelligence agencies against the ANC. Under Reagan, U.S. participation in this effort has escalated.

In his speech, Reagan made various proposals that, he asserted, are "necessary components of progress toward political peace." As it turned out, these proposals to end the war the apartheid regime and its allies in Washington and Western Europe are waging against the South African majority are contingent upon the Black majority accepting white minority rule and a modified version of apartheid.

Reagan called for the release of all political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela who, Reagan said, should be "released to participate in the political process." But what the South African majority, together with those who support their struggle, call for is not a release that is conditioned on cooperation with white minority rule, but unconditional release for Mandela and all political prisoners.

Reagan declared that all who are banned

should be unbanned. But, as it turned out, this proposal also has a condition: that the banned agree to stop doing what they were banned for — conducting a struggle against white minority rule.

By opposing what he calls "punitive sanctions" against the white minority regime, Reagan can continue to give U.S. economic, military and diplomatic support to the punitive measures — that is, the war and genocidal oppression — carried out by the South African minority rulers against the South African majority.

## The Ambassadorial Ploy

Reagan's speech on South Africa came right after he had proposed a Black ambassador to South Africa on the assumption that this would save his discredited policy.

While this maneuver would have been exposed in any case, its exposure was hastened by Reagan's selection of a Black who serves corporations as a specialist in union busting. This individual's record of divisive activity among Blacks provides a clue to the role Reagan in-

20

ended him to play in South Africa.

Whether Reagan sends a new Black or white ambassador to South Africa is a false, a diversionary issue. The fact that he does not even consider breaking diplomatic relations with this regime reveals his aim of perpetuating white minority rule.

This is the time when all diplomatic and economic relations should be ended by comprehensive and mandatory sanctions. By proposing a Black as ambassador, Reagan hoped to reduce the pressure for total sanctions against the apartheid regime so that he could have a freer hand in giving economic, political and military support to the white minority regime against the emergence of a new political process, one that would realize the goals of the ANC's Freedom Charter: one person, one vote, in a nonracial, unitary state.

Reagan's speech is simply further evidence that, although he has been compelled to change tactics from time to time, his strategic goal remains the same: to preserve white minority rule in South Africa and Namibia as the basis for imperialist domination throughout southern Africa. It is this goal that inspires him to assert that sanctions "won't work." Obviously, what Reagan really fears is that sanctions will work — work to reduce the capacity of the white minority regime to resist the majority's struggle for an alternative to Pretoria's genocidal rule.

Now, in reaction to the ever-mounting pressure, Reagan is considering "limited sanctions." Of course, he is well aware that limited sanctions really won't work. If he proposes them, it is in the vain hope that this step will defuse the fight for comprehensive and mandatory sanctions.

## Shultz, Botha and Jefferson Davis

A special contribution to the constructive-engagement policy was made by Shultz when he called on Botha to comply with Reagan's request for a "timetable for elimination of apartheid laws." To this end, Shultz urged that Botha's regime be given time to write a "bill of rights" — a proposal that might best be compared to the notion of Jefferson Davis' Confederacy writing a bill of rights for the U.S. slaves.

In making such a proposal, Shultz expressed the administration's alliance with such fig-

21

ures as Gavin Relly and Harry Oppenheimer — leaders of South Africa's most powerful monopolies — in opposition to the ANC's Freedom Charter, which is the only viable basis for majority rule in South Africa.

Recently Relly — in characteristically racist fashion — described the Freedom Charter as a "distinctly vague and wooly document on economic matters." But Relly's real objection to this document is not that it is vague on economic matters, but that it so clearly declares that "the mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole: all other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well-being of the people." Thus the Freedom Charter goes directly to the heart of the matter: the way to end hunger and oppression in South Africa is to get rid of the colonialism of a special type that is responsible for it.

Contrary to Reagan, Shultz and the U.S. media, it is not sanctions against Pretoria that threaten the South African majority or the people of the neighboring independent states. It is Washington and Pretoria's military aggression and economic sanctions against Angola and other frontline states that are a real and present danger to the struggle to overcome the hunger and underdevelopment that are the legacy of colonialism.

If "reforms" and "power sharing" have never ended colonial oppression anywhere, then certainly the special type of colonialism in apartheid South Africa cannot be ended by Shultz's idea for a "bill of rights" within a so-called new constitutional order to be negotiated by Botha on terms that reject the ANC's Freedom Charter. For Reagan and Shultz to call for releasing political prisoners and unbanning the banned for participation in a "political process" that maintains white minority rule, monopoly control of the economy, and 87 percent of the land in the hands of whites, is a maneuver designed to derail the liberation struggle.

## Reaganites' Personal Stake in Apartheid

An appropriate follow-up to the Senate hearing on Shultz's views on South Africa would be to investigate the connection between his views and the personal, corporate ties he has had with South Africa. It has long been

22

known that both Shultz and Weinberger were connected to the Fluor Corp. via the Peabody Holding Co., which is jointly owned by the Bechtel, Fluor and Newpont Co. Consolidated Gold, which is owned by Oppenheimer and Relly's Anglo-American Corp., also has a big stake in Fluor. Fluor is also tied to J.P. Morgan & Co., and to the Cal/Tex group of monopolists, who are behind Reagan and Bush.

Just a year ago, Fluor was involved in providing engineering and construction services for coal-to-oil conversion in South Africa, which would assist the Botha regime in offsetting some of the effects of sanctions in the event that Reagan and Shultz fail to block them.

It is understandable why majority rule in South Africa looks so grim to Shultz, Reagan and Weinberger. But such an alternative evokes an entirely different reaction from the South African majority, and from those whites who are willing to participate on an equal basis — not as overlords — in a nonracial, unitary state based on majority rule.

## Sullivan, Young and Reagan

The Reverend Leon Sullivan — author of the notorious “Sullivan principles” — has for some time been the U.S. corporations' ambassador-without-portfolio to South Africa. Thus it was hardly surprising that, at the very time Reagan came up with his proposal for a Black ambassador to South Africa, Sullivan came to the fore once again. Aiming to reduce the pressure for comprehensive and mandatory sanctions, he reiterated a plan that calls for economic sanctions to be put in place after May 1987 if apartheid has not been “statutorily abolished.” In other words, Sullivan calls for a modification of apartheid, that is, for steps that would use a facade of “reforms” to keep white minority rule intact.

23

Sullivan reiterates his faith in the corpora-
tions as the force that will bring about change in
South Africa at the very time the Confederation
of South African Trade Unions has emerged as
the leading force in support of the ANC and its
ally, the United Democratic Front. In other
words, Sullivan wants COSATU to move away
from the political arena and leave matters of pol-
icy to the South African and U.S. corporations
that are at the very core of white minority rule.

Another unsurprising development around
South Africa was Senator Jesse Helms's en-
dorsement of Reagan's proposed Black ambas-
sador to South Africa. It may, however, have
come as a surprise to many that Andrew Young
announced his full agreement with Helms on
this matter. Nor did Young stop at this point.

After Bishop Tutu said he was "nauseated"
by Reagan's speech and "to hell with the West,"
Young addressed an open letter to Tutu. Presu-
mably seeking to reassure him as to Reagan's
good intentions, Young stated, "[T]he president
and I now agree about goals."

A direct question must be addressed to
Andrew Young: What is it that you find so reas-
suring about the President's goals? Surely you
are aware that he aims to continue using South
Africa's chromium, uranium and other mineral
riches for the benefit of U.S. imperialism. In
other words, Reagan's objective is to deny
South Africa's riches to the South African ma-
majority, and continue to use the superprofits from
the oppression and exploitation of this majority
in the interests of U.S. imperialism's global de-
signs — militarization, Star Wars, etc.

Young's effort to enlist Tutu in support of
Reagan's goals evokes an image of what Young
would have done had he been alive during the
Civil War. He would have advised the anti-slav-
ery leaders to side with Jefferson Davis against
the slaves.

The Young-Sullivan proposals, it is evi-
dent, mesh with the Crocker-Relly strategy
aimed at containing the fight for majority rule
within a "process of getting there."

The "Wrong Side"

It is important for those who oppose apart-
heid fascism to recall that this is the 50th anni-
versary of Hitler's "constructive engagement"
with Franco fascism.

24

Recently, Reagan commemorated the war in Spain in his own way: he asserted that the U.S. volunteers who fought in the Abraham Lincoln Battalion against Franco fascism and Hitler aggression had fought on the "wrong side." But this pronouncement was hardly unexpected, coming as it did from the author of the policy of "constructive engagement" with the apartheid oppressors. Nor is it surprising that Reagan's rationale for his opposition to comprehensive sanctions against South Africa is the same one used by the opponents of comprehensive sanctions against Franco and Hitler: the "menace of Communism" and the "Soviet threat."

25

THE DOOR
IS OPEN...

The door to ending the nuclear arms race is open.

In August 1985 the Soviet Union unilaterally
halted all nuclear tests for five months and
invited the United States to join in a permanent
test ban. Without tests, there can be no new
weapons.

When that ban expired, the Soviet Union
renewed it for three months. And then extended
it again. And again. This fourth Soviet test ban
will run until January 1, 1987.

To each of the four Soviet test bans, the Reagan
Administration has said Yet. It has responded
by setting off sixteen explosive nuclear No's
under the Nevada desert.

The Soviet moratorium is being monitored on-
site by U.S. scientists at the Soviet test grounds in
Khazakstan, using seismographs sensitive
enough to detect an earthquake in California,
halfway around the world.

The simple fact is: In the age of nuclear overkill,
there is no security in more weapons or new types
of weapons. Only agreements between the United
States and the Soviet Union can halt the arms
race and avert nuclear annihilation.

Let's not slam the door shut.
Stop nuclear tests! No Star Wars!

Issued by the Communist Party, USA
235 W. 23rd Street, NY, NY 10011 ☎ 989-4994

The Soviets have stopped nuclear tests.
If we stop, too, everybody wins.

name

address

city state zip

Send to President Reagan, your senator, your representative

Please send me:

copies of Gus Hall's full report

copies of 'Open Door' leaflet

name

address

city state zip

send to: CPUSA
235 W. 23rd St.
New York, NY 10011

(212) 989-4994

209