COMMENTS AND OPINIONS Joseph M. Schwartz Black Politics in South Africa I. The Level of Mass Resistance T he massive resistance to apartheid in South Africa shows few, if any, signs of abating. From the state of emergency declaration of July 20, 1985 (exempting all security forces from legal respon- sibility for acts of brutality) until mid-October approximately 250 people were killed, 1,500 in- jured, and 3,800 arrested (with over 2,000 still in detention). The government has not been able, despite heavy repressive measures, to quell the unrest. There may, perhaps, come a lull, but it will be followed by still larger waves of protest. In 1960, three months after the Sharpeville massacre when the authorities had detained 11,000 individuals, relative calm returned to the town- ships. But the present upheaval is not Sharpeville 1960. Rapid industrial development since that time has doubled the black urban population, from 35 percent of total urban residents to over 50 percent. The small black trade union movement of the 1950s (of 50,000 members) had been crushed be- fore Sharpeville. Today the ranks of independent black trade unions have swelled from 150,000 after their qualified legalization in 1979 to close to 750,000. Though the national leadership of the broad nonracial antiapartheid coalition, the United Democratic Front (UDF), has been detained, its decentralized structure seems to generate new leadership daily. And two consecutive generations of grade- and high-school students have been rad- icalized by the South African Student Organiza- tion (which provided the core leadership of the Soweto uprisings, and was banned in 1977) and by the Congress of South African Students (a UDF affiliate, banned last September). Much of the Western press has failed to note that the current state of resistance has been going on for nearly three years. The new period of mass resis- tance began with opposition to the Black Local Authorities Act of 1982 (which supposedly de- volved powers for operating basic services—such as electricity, roads, fire and police duties—to local elected town councils). In reality, however, this law curtailed Pretoria's financial support for the satel- lite urban townships, rendering them "autono- mous" from the wealthy, urban white authorities. The most lucrative source of local revenues—home rents—remains in the hands of the central white authorities, while sales of alcohol, property levies, fines, and utility charges are now to pay for local services. Resistance in the black townships grew beyond proportions that state authorities, and initially the black political activists, could have envisioned. What began as a boycott of the November–Decem- ber 1982 Local Authority elections (Pretoria claims a 21 percent turnout, while the United Democratic Front claims that under 10 percent participated) mushroomed into general resistance to the apartheid regime. The threats and violence visited upon local town councillors have led over 90 percent of them to resign. The rest now live under permanent government protection. Of the 38 local councils created under the act, only two are still functioning. Almost simultaneously, the trade union and stu- dent movements witnessed massive rejuvenation. In 1979 the government's Wiehan Commission recommended the legalization of independent black trade unions as a way of controlling a pleth- ora of wildcat strikes. Legalization was accompa- nied by legislation severely limiting the right to strike (strikers can still be fired and strike votes can only be taken after lengthy cooling-off periods). The government hoped that legalization would prevent the wave of aggressive and political trade- union organizing that immediately followed. By the 5