BY GREG ROSENBERG

WASHINGTON, D.C. - More than 300,000 workers took to the streets and several million stayed away from work throughout South Africa April 30, heeding a call by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) for the first nationwide strike since the 1994 nonracial elections. The 1.6 million-member trade union federation called the one-day walkout to demand that South Africa's new constitution not entrench the right of employers to lock out workers.

Parties in South Africa's government are negotiating a new constitution, under a May 9 deadline. If a draft constitution is not presented to Parliament and ratified by a two-thirds majority, the constitution may go to a national referendum.

The fifth working draft of the new constitution states, "Every worker has the right to strike." Capitalist parties in the coalition government insist on the inclusion of a clause guaranteeing every employer "the right to lockout."

South Africa's current interim constitution was the result of multiparty talks forced on the former apartheid regime earlier in the decade, as a result of the mass revolutionary democratic movement led by the African National Congress.

COSATU estimated that 75 percent of workers in major industrial areas joined the strike action, in the face of a universal chorus of condemnation, threats and forecasts of economic doom from the employers, their press, and all capitalist political parties.

Some 15,000 marched on Parliament in Cape Town; tens of thousands crowded around the Union Building in Pretoria; 80,000 rallied in Johannesburg. In smaller cities and towns, workers poured into the streets: 10,000 in Vereeniging; 7,000 in Mafikeng; more than 3,000 in Kimberly; 5,000 in Nelspruit; and 10,000 - 15,000 in Pietersburg.

Union estimates showed weaker support for the strike in the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. Support varied greatly in different industries and locales. The South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union, for example, reported that 75,000 workers, or 85 percent of the industry, stayed out in Natal. In the Western Cape 43,000 - almost 60 percent - stayed away from work.

"The African National Congress calls on freedom-loving South Africans to support COSATU's 24-hour national strike," the ANC had said in an April 20 statement. "Those parties which are seeking to entrench fundamentally undemocratic provisions in the constitution must realize that the people of this country will not accept a constitution which hampers the democratic transformation of the country."

Big business howled in protest, invoking defense of the national economy. "When [South African and ANC president Nelson] Mandela says the ANC will not turn its back on the unions, he is indicating clearly to the markets where his economic priorities lie and how fragile is his commitment to market-orientated policies," said the Financial Mail, a prominent voice for capital.

"It's not one day - it is an attitude," complained Raymond Parsons, head of the Chamber of Business. "To take this kind of action at this point in time just doesn't fit with the kind of South Africa that we want to develop...it's going to be expensive for the country to indulge in this kind of luxury."

The National Party, Democratic Party, and Inkatha Freedom Party condemned the strike.

"Addressing the huge inequalities we've inherited from the apartheid era is going to require the collective power of ordinary people," responded COSATU spokesperson Neil Coleman.

The Democratic Party warned that the strike would send South Africa's currency, the rand, which lost nearly one-quarter of its value against the dollar in recent months, into free-fall. This prediction did not materialize, as the currency remained around 4.38 to the dollar throughout the week.

In response to claims that the walkout would paralyze foreign investment, Mandela remarked that "strikes are part of Western society." South Africa, he said, "has always had a history of strikes. I don't think investors should be alarmed. They know workers are striving for parity with their white counterparts."

The one-day walkout is part of a range of actions being taken by the working class to abolish apartheid's legacy. On April 18, for example, 5,000 mineworkers at Anglo-American's Elandsrand gold mine near Carletonville held an underground sit-in. They demanded an end to the practice of docking black miners one day's pay if they report five minutes late - a penalty nonexistent for white miners.

Talks on the constitution have deadlocked over several outstanding issues. In particular, the National Party insisted on an education clause in the Bill of Rights making possible the survival of overwhelmingly white state-funded Afrikaans-language schools. The ANC stands for teaching every child in his or her first language - but only in multilingual schools. "We are deadlocked on some very apartheid issues," remarked ANC negotiator Moham-med Valli Moosa. "Compromising on these rights would be a betrayal of the victims of apartheid."

The constitutional talks are being led by Cyril Ramaphosa, ANC secretary general and former mineworkers union leader. Rama-phosa recently announced he was leaving Parliament to assume a post in a new black-led capitalist consortium.

The South African government announced May 6 that it was postponing the May 29 local elections in KwaZulu-Natal. The ANC had proposed the postponement in the face of a fresh wave of violence instigated by Inkatha.

In an escalation of this course, Inkatha thugs assaulted a Zulu royal household on April 26, critically injuring Queen Buhle Mamathe Zulu and several others. A niece of the Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini, was hacked to death. Police arrested nine suspects at a workers hostel loyal to Inkatha near Durban.  
 
 
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