Detention without trial - Thames Valley Class Struggle Group

Detention without trial, judicial executions, mass evictions and demolitions of homes, murder on the street. This is the daily reality for the working class of the South African townships. But the repression of our class is not dependent on Apartheid alone.

Everyone from the left to the conservatives say they are against apartheid. Even Mrs. Thatcher and U.S. President Bush say they are "morally against" apartheid. Nobody it seems, apart from extreme conservative and neo-nazi elements actually calls openly for the continuation of traditional style apartheid in South Africa. But we know that this is hypocrisy as the ruling class here and the ruling class in South Africa are the closest of friends. However much they may be rhetorically or morally opposed to apartheid they won’t do anything to materially strengthen the position of black workers in South Africa because this will strengthen the position of workers worldwide. Being morally for or against apartheid as a legal or political system is not really the point. What matters is whether you are materially on the side of the bosses or on the side of the exploited. Liberal capitalists in the "democratic west" can spout on as much as they like about how morally repulsive they find apartheid but it is their global capitalist economy that keeps the South African system alive and feeds racism and oppression everywhere.

More or less open warfare exists between the state and its citizens, not just in South Africa but also in Palestine, Iraq, Brazil, Burma, Yugoslavia and throughout the world. The state does not need to make racism its official policy in order to show its inherent brutality. Mass repression is always the response of the state to the refusal of the proletariat to accept its wage slavery. (That is to say its refusal to accept its exploitation at the level the economy requires.) And this is the case whether the official ideology in a country is apartheid or nationalism, free enterprise or Marxist-Leninism, fascism or democracy. Our class can never free itself by changing the constitution of the state. Only the spreading of the revolutionary struggle on an international scale against all states can destroy capitalism and so end the massacres of our sisters and brothers.

Taken from the Antagonism website.