Group steps up campaign on chromium plant — page 2 September 11, 1989 SOS Vol. 52, No.32 ® @ sat ee Members of Southern Africa Action Coalition demonstrate outside Dept. of External Affairs office in downtown Van- Couver Sept. 6 to protest South Africa’s whites- -only election and to demand Canada impose full sanctions against the racist regime. Demonstrations and massive job action that rocked South Africa’s whites-only national elections Sept. 6 sent a clear mes- Sage to the re-elected Nationalist Party and those who think the country’s people are still willing to live under official racial Segregation. “That is that the people demand the destruction of apartheid, now,” Peter Mahlangu, the African National Con- 8ress’ representative in Canada, told the Tribune. Mahlangu, based in Toronto, said the election results clearly “shocked” party leader and South African president F.W. de Klerk and other Nationalist leaders because they show a polarized white elec- torate and greatly reduced support for the Party which has ruled the country with a large majority since 1948. Voting, which excluded the country’s 23 million non-white majority, saw the Nationalist Party returned with a reduced Majority of at least 89 seats, the ultra-right Conservatives with 38 and the liberal Democrats capturing 32. Mahlangu reported that 3% million workers stayed away from work on elec- tion day in one of the broadest anti- apartheid demonstrations in South Africa’s history. The action, forbidden under South * ee Africa’s repressive State of Emergency regulations, was organized clandestinely yet succeeded in pulling out all workers in Capetown and Eastern Cape, and up to 80 per cent of the work force in the Trans- vaal, Mahlangu reported. The movement has become so sophisti- cated that the country-wide action could be organized effectively through word-of- mouth by area and neighbourhood com- mittees. “The whole network built throughout the country is truly amazing,” Mahlangu said. He said the state responded with brutal police and military crackdowns that killed more than 30 citizens on election day, capping some three months of govern- ment violence against peaceful demonstra- tors protesting apartheid. Such deplorable actions put the lie to the claim that the Nationalists will imple- ment significant reforms under the new leadership of de Klerk, who replaced out- going leader P.W. Botha recently, Mah- langu charged. The anti-apartheid forces have planned a large one-day conference on Oct. 7 organized by the Mass Democratic Movement, a coalition of virtually all groups opposed to apartheid. Mahlangu said the conference, to be held in Johan- nesburg, will send a challenge to the de Klerk government. “This is technically illegal. The govern- ment may be forced to ban it,” he noted. High-profile sponsors of the conference include Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, United Democratic Front leader Dr. Allan Boesak, Fr. Smangaliso Mkhatshwa of the Catholic Bishops Con- ference, Beyers Naude of the South Afri- can Council of Churches, president Cyril Ramaphosa of the National Union of Mine Workers, Chris Dlamini of the Con- gress of South African Trade Unions, and Black Consciousness leader Khehla Mtembu. Mahlangu acknowledged that the par- ticipation of Black Consciousness marked a new level of unity among anti-apartheid forces in South Africa. “Obviously there are groups involved who do not recognize the Freedom Char- ter (the ANC’s program of liberation). But they’ve become part and parcel of the mass fight. “(All parties) realize that unity is not something that just involves talk among leaders, but that it comes from activities to confront the real enemy,” Mahlangu said. He said the new power accorded to the reform-minded Democratic Party will “hopefully mean there will be a voice of reason in the wilderness.” _ the Environment gets underway z atl ~ noon at Vancouver's Kitsilano Beach - on ‘Saturday, Sept. 16. Endorsed by more than. 180.organ- 5 ‘izations and individuals, the eight-k _ walk winds up with a rally at oe : _ Elizabeth Park. . Soviets’ national upheaval moves into Committee By FRED WEIR Tribune Moscow Correspondent A dangerous dialectic is playing itself out this summer as the status quo which has bound together the Soviet family of nations for over 60 years crumbles, and struggle builds over what shape the future order will take. Last month a crucial card was played. The Soviet Communist Party published a draft policy document on reconstructing inter-ethnic relations in the USSR. A closely reasoned, profoundly internationalist argu- ment, it constitutes the clearest statement yet concerning the dimensions of the prob- lem and the CPSU’s approach for solving it through an intricate balance between the rights of “peoples” and the rights of “the people.” This platform will now form the basis of discussion leading up to this month’s scheduled central committee con- ference on nationalities policy — a meeting which has been postponed so many times it is almost past counting but which, plainly, has got to be held soon. The terms of the debate now raging in the Soviet press — and, sometimes tragically, in the streets — may sound familiar: will it be federation or confederation? Some Soviet republics, most particularly the three Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, are pressing hard for a funda- mentally new deal, a confederal one, in which the powers of individual republics will outweigh those of the central govern- ment. Their arguments contain enormous justice: their historical grievances are numerous, beginning with the way they were brought into the USSR, and running through the crimes of Stalinism and the negligence and stagnation of the Brezhnev era. They are angry that their languages take second place to Russian, at least in the working world and political discourse, in their own republics. They are fearful their *: cultures and ethnic identities will ultimately be drowned by superior numbers of Slavic see POLICY page 6