South Africa: Crossroads -- the elimination of a people

South Africa Crossroads - the elimination of a people P.W.. BOTHA's succession to the South African premiership will mean little to the people of Crossroads, "the shanty town outside Cape Town. If anything things will get worse since Botha is known as a hardliner on the. squattingissue. WHY THE BULLDOZERS? The threatened destruction of Crossroads, the black squatter township in the dreary Cape Flats, is not simply a deliberate sadistic act on the part of the white ruling class. In a way it is symbolie of the contradictions confronting South African capitalism, as we will attempt to outline below. Crossroads is only the latest of a number of squatter settlements threatened with doom by bulldozer. In the winter of 1977 12,000 black people lost their homes in the squatter townships of Modderdam and Werkgenot (which, ironically, can be translated 'Joy through Labour') near Cape Town. A further 20,000 were rendered homeless by bulldozer in Unibel in January of this year. Similar 'clearance of illegals' took place in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra and in Natal, Zulu squatters in white' areas have been given notice to move. The London-based Africa Bureau estimates that between 1960 and 1970 abouț 1.8 million black people were removed' and 'resettled' - the largest enforced population movements ever known in peacetime. Yet, those who rightly condemn the mass deportations of Tartars and other peoples in the Soviet Union are largely silent about these events in the Apartheid Republic. While it is true that the policy of 'removals' is endemie to Apartheid and has been going on for many years, there is evidence that it is currently being stepped up. This intensified campaign is a specific post-Soweto manifestation and directly linked with that mass upsurge of the black urban workers. When South African capitalism was mainly mining capitalism, the colour bar and the migrant labour policy were essential to its profitability. It had two basic aims - to provide the mines (and the farms which fed the miners) with abundant cheap labour and to build a wall between the skilled white workers from Europe, who brought with them their traditions of trade unionism and "socialism', and the migrant black workers. It was a deliberate policy aimed at preventing a black proletariat taking root in the urban areas and combining with the organised white workers to threaten the very existence of capitalism. With the growth of secondary industries, especially in the long boom which followed World War II, and the increase in multinational operations in South Africa, the needs of capitalism began to change. Capitalism, traditionally, needs a stable work force with relative freedom of movement. This need - expressed politically through the Progressive Party came up against the Apartheid superstructure which had become the ruling ideology of the state: Parliament continued to pass legislation to control the influx of blacks into the urban areas; the economies of industrial capital continued to draw tens of thousands of workers into the towns. The specially constructed townships like Soweto in the Rand and Langa in the Cape, where the authorities could exercise social, police and military control, could not contain the new arrivals. Hence the growth of the squatter townships. These townships constitute a double threat to the apartheid regime. Not only do their very existence manifest an act of defiance against the white-made laws but, as these townships are largely 'auto-administered' they become schools where the workers quickly learn the value of self organisation and the strength which grows from it. What the government fears above all is a whole series of 'Sowetos' under conditions they cannot so easily control. Hence the bulldozers. 'Ndabeni FOR A SOCIALIST AFRICA For a Socialist Africa badge, 15p + p&p from: Africa in Struggle, 328/9 Upper Street, London N1. Cheques/p.o.s pavable to 'Ai.S" 8