Chetty correctly points out that the statement that Cuban president Fidel Castro "was given a hero's welcome by millions of South Africans during his two-day state visit" was overwrought. The phrase was printed in the Militant's introduction to Castro's speech to South Africa's National Assembly.
But Chetty goes on to state that: "The mass democratic movement is in decline, most working people who were participants in this movement no longer play any political role whatsoever. I am certain that vast sections of the South African people are attracted to the Cuban revolution and its leadership, they are just too demoralized and disoriented to express this attraction."
There is no question that the "mass democratic movement" that led the battle against apartheid had reached its zenith by the time of the nonracial, democratic elections in 1994. Furthermore, layers of its leadership, as Chetty suggests, are politically exhausted.
But there is no evidence to suggest that the working class in South Africa is demoralized. The opposite is the case.
Chetty cites as proof of demoralization the lynching of three immigrant workers in Pretoria in September. Two workers from Senegal and one from Mozambique were murdered shortly after an antilabor outfit calling itself the Unemployed Masses of South Africa held an anti-immigrant demonstration. The African National Congress and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) condemned the killings.
The "Unemployed Masses" consciously counterposes the interests of unemployed workers to those of the labor movement. Its "proposals" include a demand for so-called labor market flexibility - read repeal of conquests of the organized working class that have been written into law since 1994 - which is why it is a favorite of the liberal capitalist Democratic Party.
Anti-immigrant demonstrations led by middle-class forces are not new here since 1994. But this crime underlines the fertile ground that exists for demagogues in a country disfigured by apartheid's legacy, in which there is 33 percent unemployment. In the gold mines alone, more than 20,000 jobs have been slashed since February, according to the National Union of Mineworkers.
South Africa is in the vise grip of the spreading depression conditions in the semicolonial world. What's been the response of the "demoralized" working class? To fight with the weapons at hand.
According to the October 6 issue of Business Day, workdays lost to strikes grew to 1.85 million worker-days in the first nine months of this year, against 650,000 in all of 1997, the highest since 1994.
The Militant has reported on many of these strikes. They have included walkouts and sympathy strikes by hundreds of thousands of auto and motor industry workers, 40,000 chemical workers, tens of thousands of miners, truckers, and food workers. The central issues in these fights have been wage increases that keep up with or outpace inflation, affirmative action on the shop floor and in training, and - in the case of teachers who mobilized for a strike - speeding up the pace of restructuring the apartheid-skewed education system.
In nearly all of these fights, workers emerged with tangible gains or outright victories. Confidence and morale were boosted as a result, not demoralization.
The mood on most picket lines confirms this.
Finally, the modest size of demonstrations welcoming the Cuban president to South Africa shouldn't be blamed on "demoralized" working people. Instead, the outcome of those demonstrations was simply what was organized by the principal mass organizations - the ANC and COSATU - along with the South African Communist Party. Had a mass rally demonstration been organized, there would have been a response in kind.
The working class - for the first time since its birth as a modern class at the southern tip of this continent - has broken the shackles of apartheid slavery. The scope of democratic conquests and their impact on the confidence of millions should not be underestimated - it's only four years ago that black South Africans attained basic rights of citizenship. These democratic gains are weapons in the hands of workers and peasants fighting to construct a nation and establish a popular revolutionary government.
In addition, working people and fighting youth no longer confront the monolithic obstacle of the Stalinist killing-machine with its counterfeit socialism. The new generations in city and countryside are better placed to fight in the expanding world crisis. In the course of that fight, they will have the possibility to build a communist leadership, which is so clearly needed to advance South Africa's democratic revolution to its conclusion.
T.J. Figueroa
Cape Town, South Africa
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