English and Dutch Boers (Afrikaners) colonized South Africa and, in 1948, subjected black Africans to a formal racist system called Apartheid, an Afrikaner word meaning “apart.” This system was based on a combination of U.S. slavery and its successor Jim Crow, with no equality politically, economically or culturally.

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June 16 marked the 34th anniversary of the Soweto uprisings in South Africa. Today it’s an official South African holiday, Youth Day. It commemorates the hundreds of young people killed fighting the Apartheid system. June 16, 1976, will live in the memories of South Africans and anti-racist workers worldwide for generations to come.

Black African students received inferior education in overcrowded schools and had to pay the equivalent of half their parents’ monthly income to even attend school, while white students received free education.

The Soweto rebellion’s immediate spark was a new requirement that math and social studies be taught in Afrikaans, the Apartheid government’s official language. However, teachers had always taught in English. Most were unable to teach in Afrikaans, a third language for them besides their native one and English.

The Rebellion Begins

On June 13, 1976, the students called a meeting; 400 attended. The Soweto Students Representative Council (SSRC) was selected to lead the campaign against this new racist edict. Two delegates per school were elected. They refused to accept the order to be taught in Afrikaans, still another racist burden imposed by the Apartheid government. Students, fearing being stopped, told their parents nothing. They decided to march to Orlando stadium to present their demands. On June 16 at 7 A.M., about 5,000 students, most between 10 and 20 years old, met at various points around Soweto Township and started marching. But before they got inside the stadium, police with vans formed a wall blocking them.

The cops fired tear gas, warning them to disperse. With the students holding their ground, the police started shooting into the crowd. Twelve-year-old Hector Petersen was the first one killed. Then angry students began hurling stones and bottles at the cops, running forward, throwing, then retreating and repeating the action. This continued all day.

The Battle Rages

Symbols of the hated Apartheid system were burned: administrative offices, government buses and vehicles. Liquor stores and beer halls were looted and then set afire. Battles continued through the night, with police shooting wildly in the dark (Soweto had no street lights).

Thousands of injured students went to the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital where some died in the hallways and others outside the emergency room. Over 200 students were murdered. Workers arrived home to find cops everywhere in personnel carriers called “hippos,” vehicles built to withstand landmines in the guerilla wars in Namibia and Mozambique. The bodies of dead and injured students were littered all over. Clouds of black smoke hung over the Township.

The next day most workers voluntarily stayed away from their jobs. Then the students realized they’d have to talk to their parents to expand their forces to fight Apartheid. In intensive house-to-house visits they explained the issues to their parents. The police banned all political and mass meetings.

Chrysler Workers Back the Students

On June 22, mass funerals became mass meetings. Townships near Pretoria joined the struggle. Over 1,000 South African Chrysler auto workers struck to support the students, the first time workers had done so. The boycott spread to the Alexandra Township. By June 18, the Apartheid government closed all schools in Soweto and Alexandra.

SSRC’s next major action, set for August 4, was more ambitious — organizing a three-day general strike and a school boycott. This had not happened since 1961. Students cut the key signal box, halting trains from running to Soweto. Students gathered at all the commuting sites, urging workers to stay home. An estimated 20,000 to 40,000 workers struck. It was 60% successful over three days.

By now, the student boycott had spread to the Western and Eastern Cape. The Apartheid government detained hundreds of students indefinitely to stop the demonstrations. Then they used a vicious divide-and-conquer strategy, pitting Zulu workers against the students.

Fight Racist Divisions

Many Zulu male migrant workers lived in hostels, without their families. The police told them the students would attack them. During the second three-day boycott one hostel was burned, probably by an agent provocateur. Under police protection, the Zulus then attacked the students and residents.

The SSRC, realizing they had to win the Zulu workers politically, explained how the police had misled them. Zulu workers were won to see that the students’ and Soweto workers’ fight against Apartheid was their fight too.

The third SSRC demonstration, August 23, spread to Witwatersrand and the Transvaal. A solid 75% to 80% participation was sustained over three days. Almost 750,000 workers participated. Zulu migrant workers gave almost total support.

Sporadic protests continued. In April, 1977, the SSRC successfully stopped rent increases in Soweto. In September, when Black Consciousness Movement leader Stephen Biko was murdered in prison, rebellions spread nation-wide, especially in the Eastern Cape. The following month the last SSRC leader fled into exile. On October 19, the government banned 17 organizations, most connected to the Black Consciousness Movement.

A Worldwide Movement Erupts

Internationally, the rebellion inspired workers and students to hold anti-apartheid demonstrations supporting the South African rebels. Students at universities throughout the U.S. and Europe launched major divestment campaigns demanding college Boards of Trustees sell off stocks in companies doing business in South Africa, such as Ford, IBM, Eastman Kodak and Hewlett-Packard. Citibank was the largest U.S. lender to Apartheid South Africa.

Pressure was maintained throughout the 1980’s. In 1990, the government was forced to lift the ban on resistance movements. That year Nelson Mandela was freed from 29 years in prison.

Today, while “official” Apartheid has ended, it continues unabated through extreme poverty and racism. The workers and youth of South Africa must build on their militant history and move in a revolutionary communist direction so that their amazing struggles in battling Apartheid will not have been in vain. 

WORCESTER, MA, May 12 — PLP led a multi-racial demonstration of 150 workers and youth to oppose a racist Tea Party rally that was defending Arizona’s fascist anti-immigration law.

Prior to a May 11 City Council vote not to discuss a boycott of Arizona for that law targeting immigrants from Latin America, PLP members and friends formed a coalition of groups to present a resolution to the Council to boycott Arizona (see letter, page 6). Meanwhile the ACLU and the Mayor sent their versions of an anti-Arizona boycott to the City Clerk.

But yesterday, the racist Council voted not even to discuss it, even though it had previously voted on resolutions such as divesting from Darfur and passed a “no-hate” resolution against anti-Semitic graffiti. However, in this case the Latino community was raising its concerns about racial profiling and how it was targeting Latinos.

We continued to organize for a rally in front of City Hall. But when we heard that the Tea Party and the racist paramilitary MinuteMen would hold a counter-demonstration to support the fascist Arizona law, we fought for a large turnout to demonstrate against the Tea Party.

Many working people in the city were outraged that the Tea Party would show up so they brought their friends to the action. As usual, the TV and press never interviewed any anti-Tea Party groups, covering only the Tea Party and the City officials.

On the rally day, PLP’ers arrived at City Hall a half hour before the Tea Party and two of us established ourselves in the middle of the Plaza, forcing the Tea Party off to the side. Some wore confederate flags and seemingly included MinuteMen thugs.

The Tea Party racists began yelling at our comrades and friends, saying we were “illegal” and to “go back to Cuba.” We called them Nazis and yelled “death to fascist laws.” More and more people came, swelling the anti-racist boycott crowd to 150, overwhelming the 30 out-of-town Tea Party racists.

When the Tea Party gang saw us using our sound system, they tried to provoke us by pointing their bullhorn one foot from our ears. One of our comrades boldly blocked a Tea Party racist from harassing an anti-racist speaker on our open microphone with a sign that read, “Death to fascist laws!”

We continued to label them fascist and racists, while calling for multi-racial unity and for a worker-run society. We chanted, “Asian, Latin, black, and white, against racism we must unite!”; and, “Same enemy, same fight, workers of the world unite!” which many workers liked. We also chanted, “Working people have no nation! Smash racist deportations!”

The workers in the crowd became energized when one of our friends led a chant in Spanish, “Aqui estamos y aqui nos quedamos!” (“Here we are and here we’ll stay!”), a chant undocumented workers used in New Bedford, MA, when federal immigration cops raided a factory and arrested them. Many people said later that although the Tea Party intimidated them, they felt stronger when PLP members and friends stood up to the fascists.

The confrontation and the City Council’s racist vote caused such anger that people stepped up to call for a community meeting two days later to continue the fight against racism.J

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL, June 2 — Following the massacre on one of the supply ships headed to Gaza earlier this month, the Israeli fascist group “Im Tirtzu” organized a rally at the entrance of the Tel Aviv University in support of that deed and of the Israeli army. The fascists were supported by the Student Council and managed to attract a large crowd of students to their rally.

Various left groups, as well as a significant number of Palestinian nationalists, staged a counter-demonstration in front of the fascist rally, calling Israel a fascist state. Unfortunately, most of them followed a nationalist line, either calling for a two-state “solution” or raising Turkish flags. Nationalism — including that of oppressed nations such as the Palestinians — is a dead-end ideology. It serves the bosses by convincing workers that they have more in common with the bosses from “their” country, than with workers around the world. Nationalist slogans are also ineffective in repelling the rising fascist tide in today’s Israel. An internationalist, communist line is needed.  The only way to rid the world of racist, capitalist attacks is for all workers to unite worldwide to overthrow capitalism and establish communism.

One of our comrades took part in this counter-demonstration, and brought along a red flag with the PLP symbol on it, proudly making a stand for communism and against nationalism. When he was asked by one of the nationalists what the flag had to do with the demonstration, he replied “communism is the only way to smash fascism once and for all.”

Later the fascist horde, supported by the cops, charged the counter-demonstration and tried to beat up the demonstrators; one counter-demonstrator was arrested. But our comrade carried out our Party line and fought valiantly against the attack.

We have many lessons to learn from this demonstration, but the most important is about the urgency of building a mass communist party in Israel/Palestine in particular and in the entire world in general. If we had a larger contingent of communists at that demonstration, for example, we could have smashed the fascists. So we will double our efforts towards building the Party. Join Us!

A Comrade in Israel/Palestine

(see eyewitness letter, page 6)

The U.S. war machine kills workers openly to control Iraqi oil fields and a projected Afghanistan pipeline. While Obama’s brass claims to be aiming at Islamic extremists and drug traffickers, their main objective is guarding U.S. imperialism, especially its control of global energy supplies. Under liberal “peace candidate” Obama, secret assassinations, torture, and intimidation by terror surpass atrocities ordered by avowed warmonger Bush. “Obama, one senior military official said, has allowed ‘things that the previous administration did not.’” (Washington Post, 6/4)

But Obama is also promoting less obvious forms of murder for profit. “[T]he Obama administration has significantly expanded a largely secret U.S. war against al-Qaeda and other ‘radical’ groups, according to senior military and administration officials. Special Operations forces...are deployed in 75 countries, compared with about 60 at the beginning of last year. In addition to units that have spent years in the Philippines and Colombia, teams are operating in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia.” (WP article)

To win U.S. workers to back this war operation, Obama & Co. are using various prosecutions of alleged terrorist “bombers” to foment mass racist terror against Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. They also propagandize U.S. troops with anti-Arab/Muslim racism to demonize the “enemy” as less than human.

Their purpose is to divert workers’ anger over racist unemployment, foreclosures and racist budget cuts which affect the entire working class while falling heaviest on black and Latino workers. The money saved from these cuts and mass layoffs can then be used to fund their imperialist wars. Given the ruling class’s many-sided operation, it behooves PLP’ers to go on a war footing ourselves to meet these attacks.

Major Oil Sources and Routes
Focus of U.S. ‘Anti-Terror’
Clandestine Violence

Somalia’s Horn of Africa — second only to the Persian Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz as a strategic chokepoint for exports of Mid-East crude — draws special attention from the Pentagon’s clandestine wing. “Commanders are developing plans for increasing the use of such forces in Somalia, where a Special Operations raid last year killed the alleged head of al-Qaeda in East Africa.” (WP article)

To help sway public opinion against a Somali “terrorist menace,” on June 5 the FBI and NYPD arrested two men they said were headed to a “jihadist” training camp in Somalia. Yemen lies across from Somalia on the eastern side of the shipping lane. U.S. rulers justify intervention there by alleging ties between a fundamentalist Yemeni cleric and the incompetent “Christmas underwear” and Times Square bombers as well as the deadly, deranged Ft. Hood shooter.

“Plans exist for preemptive or retaliatory strikes in numerous places around the world, meant to be put into action when a plot has been identified, or after an attack linked to a specific group.” (WP article) Widespread hatred of U.S. imperialism, largely misguided into Islamic sects, gives Obama & Co. plausible, secret targets, aimed at protecting oil and gas supplies and pipelines.

An earlier leak to the NY Times (5/24) revealed that top U.S. general Petraeus “has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region.” Saudi royalty control the world’s greatest oil reserves and make a huge part of them available to Exxon Mobil in a sweetheart deal. Since Bin Laden and other non-royal Saudis were shut out of the scheme, it motivated these competing capitalists to organize al Qaeda and the resulting 9/11 attacks. U.S. enemy Iran also has both oil and nuclear dreams of dominating the Mid-East.

Obama/Gates Attack on Military Industrial Profiteers Aims at More Lethal Conventional Forces

U.S. rulers, meanwhile, are striving for greater killing power under the guise of saving taxpayers’ money. A key feature of the Pentagon’s Base Realignment and Closing Program, which is supposed to save billions, is building a new 8,000-strong Navy/Marine base on the Pacific island of Guam. U.S. strategists hope expanding the outpost, which will have a pier for aircraft carriers, will give them an extra edge in confronting the challenge of China’s growing blue-water fleet which can patrol the world’s oceans to secure its own energy supplies.

The NY Times (6/3) reported that, “Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has ordered the military and the Pentagon’s civilian bureaucracy to find tens of billions of dollars in annual savings to pay for war-fighting operations....The goal is...3 percent real growth each year, beyond inflation, in the accounts that pay for combat operations.” Gates wants to rein in costly, dubiously useful, weapons programs to shift expenditures to projects expanding deadly U.S. force. This deadliness-enhancing, “more-bang-for-the-buck” program also involves basing forces where they are most likely to fight.

The purpose of the coming U.S. offensive for Kandahar is to ensure U.S. presence in that city, a strategic point along the projected TAPI pipeline to run from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean.

Finally, the U.S. military is, in fact, prolonging the occupation it pretends to be winding down in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. (see page 8) As U.S. ground troops leave, the USS Iwo Jima is scheduled to arrive. The Iwo Jima is not a hospital ship but an amphibious assault vessel with 2,000 heavily-armed Marines aboard.

Their continued military presence encircling Haiti aims at exploiting the vast oil and gas reserves under the Caribbean Sea which Russia and China are already eyeing. Both countries sent their presidents to Cuba to negotiate financing of projects whereby they could beat U.S. Big Oil to the punch here.

Yet despite their seeming ability to kill anywhere at any time with vastly superior weapons, U.S. rulers face a perilous future militarily. Shaky “ally” Israel, unstable foe North Korea and/or strategic adversaries Iran, China and Russia could in a flash provoke a global conflict causing more casualties — on all sides — than Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

We, as revolutionary communists, should expose the bosses’ aggressive militarizing, like Obama’s burgeoning death squads, and put ourselves on a wartime footing.