Democratic Palestine : 37 (ص 35)
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- Democratic Palestine : 37 (ص 35)
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begged for, but something to be
enforced through struggle to change
the balance of forces.
The ANC has long worked on the
basis -of a realistic assessment of the
balance of power and its own poten-
tials at any given time. It has skillfully
combined various methods of struggle;
it has coordinated its work with a
broad spectrum of other organizations,
representing all sectors of the oppres-
sed in South Africa, and maintained
close relations with the South African
Communist Party over the years. ANC
has contributed greatly to the breadth
of the anti-apartheid struggle by apply-
ing a truly non-racist .policy that
mobilized not only the Black majority,
but other ethnic groups as well, includ-
ing democratic whites. It has _under-
.stood how to explore and widen the
contradictions among the different sec-
tors of the white minority, meanwhile
eliciting support from a broad spec-
trum of forces on the international
level. It has tied together all its fields
of work with a political line that exhi-
bited firmness in strategy and flexibil-
ity in tactics.
These are the factors that created
the conditions for Mandela’s uncondi-
tional release, and that ensure that this
marks the beginning of a new stage
that can only end in apartheid’s aboli-
tion.
The PLO can benefit from the
experience of Mandela and the ANC,
for it is the same conditions that must
be created in the Palestinian arena to
ensure that the intifada can be trans-
lated into political gains for the Pales-
tinian cause.
Despite the great advance that Man-
dela’s release means, we do not un-
derestimate the great obstacles that
remain before the majority of South
Africans enjoy freedom, democracy
and social justice. In the coming stage,
which will most likely witness both
militant struggle and peace negotia-
tions, the majority demand for «one
man, one vote, based on a common
voting roll» will be one of the pivotal
issues. To this obvious principle of jus-
tice, President De Klerk has counter-
posed universal suffrage but with polit-
ical power shared on the basis of racial
groups, or «structural guarantees» for
whites. Those who benefit from apar-
theid - both reformers and hard-liners
- can be expected to fight back to
retain their privileges. A poignant sign
of this was the fact that a number of
Black youth were shot and killed by
the racist police while celebrating Man-
dela’s release, while Mandela himself
is under a death threat from the ultra-
rightist Afrikaner organization. There
should be no slacking off of interna-
tional solidarity with the African mas-
ses’ struggle, and no lessening of sanc-
tions, as begun by Margaret Thatcher,
until apartheid has been made a relic
of the past in material as well as
morale terms. @
Democratic Palestine, February 1990
> et al
Nelson and Winnie Mandela upon his release
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- Democratic Palestine : 37
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