Inqaba ya basebenzi Number 2 April 1981 - DISA

The White Election
and the
Workers' Movement
The April election called by P.W. Botha takes place
within the framework of a struggle by the South African
bourgeoisie to cut through the constraints imposed on
them by the privileged white middle and working class.
Squeezed by the worid capitalist crisis and the
undefeated mass movement, the ruling class is in a
mess. Looking this way and that for an escape from the
corner in which it is trapped, it finds no answers. Over
the last few years, each move that it has made has only
created fresh problems, and led to more divisions and
greater panic. Leading figures in the ruling class speak
openly of the impending revolution.
Many activists in the liberation
struggle dismiss the election as
simply a white election—an irrelevant
fight between different groups
of our oppressors.
In reality the elections are another
sign of the unfolding crisis of South
African society. Out of them will
come developments which will have a
profound effect (if not immediately,
then in the long term) on the lives of
the exploited and oppressed
majority, the black working class.
Dismissing the elections in such a
manner reflects a misunderstanding
of the nature of the South African
state. South Africa is a bourgeois
state. The absence of bourgeois
democratic rights does not alter its
essential nature.
The democratic rights of the
workers in the advanced capitalist
countries are the gains of decades of
struggle by these workers. Their
absence in South Africa reflects the
success of the ruling class in
by R. Malgas
maintaining its rule without making
concessions to the majority of the
people, the black workers, who are
in constant struggle for democratic
rights.
To put it in another way, there are
no democratic rights for the mass of
the workers in South Africa because
the capitalist class can maintain the
cheap labour system on which its
profits depend only by ruling as the
ruthless enemy of democracy.
A section of the population, the
white section, do have these rights.
However, the right of the white
worker to vote was granted by the
bourgeoisie in a successful attempt
to divide the working class. This
right has existed only as a privilege.
The vote of the white worker is the
material evidence of his bribery by
the bourgeoisie.
The general election and its
aftermath will show how empty these
'rights' of the white worker really
are.
For many years, the votes of the
white workers have given the
Nationalist Party its secure
parliamentary majority as the
governing party of the ruling class.
But now, and for a time past.
divisions have arisen in the Nationalist
Party, which reflect divisions in
the ruling class itself.
The divisions are about how to
establish the cheap labour system
and the rule of capitalism under the
challenge of the black workers' and
youth movement.
For the last ten years, for all its
bullets, bannings, tear gas and
batons, the ruling class has had no
peace. The mass movement, with the
workplace as its fortress; and youth
at its forefront, has drawn into
action broader and broader layers of
the oppressed against every aspect of
apartheid domination.
Against this relentless pressure,
the ruling class cannot continue to
rule in precisely the same old way.
But there is still a small, conservative
section of the bourgeoisie that would
like to do so: the verkramptes.
Because of the privileges which the
white middle class'and white workers
have enjoyed for so long, this small
section of the ruling class has a
powerful appeal for the white voters.
The verligtes are the so-called
'enlightened* ones—but only in the
bosses' terms. They are looking for a
way to subdue the mass movement
(and continue the dictatorship of
capitalism) in a way which does not