Robinson does return

I feel that it is now time to look back on the debate within the Anti-apartheid movement on the orientation of the recent march on Sharpeville Day. I will leave aside the question of the development from opposition to sporting contacts to solidarity with the oppressed people in South Africa as this has already been covered adequately. One comment on the March has already been offered.

A recent 'Socialist Action' has reported that the March was headed by a 'sizeable contingent' of Polynesians and Blacks. This is simply not true.

Hardly any Polynesians turned up to the March. The Black contingent depended largely on Vic overseas students and at the front it hardly extended to the first two rows in a four-to-a-row March. The concept of the March being led by a significant section of 'Polynesians Against Racism' was not realised.

(Both the meeting to reintroduce 'black' into the main slogan and the social after the March had larger contingents of Polynesians and overseas students.)

The inclusion of the words 'Black' and 'blacks' in the main slogan had not made 'blacks' in NZ identify with the aims of the March.

This is not to say that Polynesians etc should not have been leafletted etc. but merely to expose, as the falsities they were, the arguments by the Socialist Action League and its supporters that the revised slogan would attract 'blacks' to the March. The big promises had come to nothing.

Of course, the debate over the inclusion of 'black' in the main Waap slogan had alienated a number of supporters of the Wellington Anti-Apartheid Plenary. Why then were they alienated? Even the compromise slogan 'Black Majority Rule/South Africa, let the oppressed people decide' would have avoided much of this problem.

But at the first big meeting Andre (SAL) Raihman would accept no compromises. This is quite surprising as Mike (SAL) Treen who worked on the Auckland March wrote an article in CRACCUM No. 3 which told us that in Auckland they would marching under the slogan 'Majority Rule Now—let the oppressed decide.' Andre had found this slogan abhorrent in Wellington but Treen in Auckland did not even see fit to comment upon it. The word 'black' did not appear anywhere in the slogans described in Treen's article. But Auckland has a far larger Polynesian population than Wellington.

Since that first meeting it has become clear why the SAL in Wellington felt fit to pursue such a vehement and alienating offensive within Waap; Their childish tactics were solely aimed at gaining a 'victory' at the expense of the 'Maoists' and presumably to be seen as supporting Nga Tamatoa when doing this. (Andre is also a member of Nga Tamatoa and spoke as their representative at the crucial meeting.) Since then they have backtracked almost every day and are beginning to pretend that they really 'do' support 'let the oppressed people decide' but that there had been a better slogan......

This debate, which took up a whole meeting which would have been better devoted to organising to get more people on the March, is now being down-played. Not surprisingly—the SAL position is indefensible. In fact, their contribution to that meeting was solely one of splitting. But they only split themselves off from the rest of the Waap members.

This conclusion is reinforced by the actual history of the build-up to the March and the March itself.

Finally, I offer this as my last comment on this question which I feel is as important to the development of the left in Wellington as it is to the development of Waap.