HISTORICALLY, the struggle against fascist apartheid in South Africa assumed what was described as a crisis for the decolonisation process (the precursor for the launching of the armed struggle phase in the late 1960s). This crisis was spelt out by the internationalisation of the sanctions regime at the United Nations commencing from the mid-1960s at the height of the anti-imperialist war in Indo-China, especially Vietnam and Laos.
Primarily due to its strategic position and relative industrialisation (to the Department II stage of heavy industry), South Africa, during the 1960s, brought together the three main historical processes, namely, that of the national liberation movement; that of the struggle of the working class movement in the advanced capitalist countries; and also the struggle of the countries led by the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), including the CMEA bloc, and socialist Cuba.
Also part of this process were those Asian countries such as India, communist China and the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. The former (India), due to the Indian Ocean geopolitical affinity shared with the East African countries, Kenya (Mombasa) and Tanzania (Dar-es-Salaam) and of course Durban Natal, East London and Port Elizabeth – all centres crucial to Indian Ocean environment and patterns of labour and capitalisation.

The proxy roles of class formations formerly oppressed by the imperialist state forces of western imperialism and Japan

Scientifically, the anti-apartheid process developed through struggles and a series of strategy of Native Prohibitive Acts that identified White Nationalism as an ideological, political and eco-social system. Walter Rodney relies upon other authorities such as Fage and Ranger to illustrate the de jure rationale or white nationalism internal to the territory of the Federation of Cape Province/Natal, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.
This Federation, prior to the outbreak of the First World War, was expressed in the establishment of the Union of South Africa (USAF), the Native Land Act, and the Native Labour Act  were amongst the first of the legislative measures introduced to dispossess the Africans of lands and regulate the hiring of cheap super exploited workers.
These racist supremacist policies continued in the 1920s with the introduction of the Native Urban Act that were allowed under the Native Urban Act as well as a slew of emergency type regulations that imposed in the most arbitrary manner, curfews on African townships – to reside or have employment conditions that demanded a presence in urban areas and districts (as exemplified by the pass laws).
Another apartheid legislation that targeted Africans in the most oppressive forms was the Native Affairs Act. This involved the actual administrative bureaucracy that dealt with and interacted, integrated the involvement of African chiefs and notables – virtually ‘intermediaries’ of the state structure of apartheid.
Based upon the uneven and contradictory character of the apartheid state, as well as the ‘hegemonic’ corporations employing both urban and rural workers and in the process superimposing ultra right-wing restrictions mainly against the blacks, there emerged groups, social formations of proxies that were allowed to participate over a period of time since the end of the 1940s in elections.
Indians and coloured (or mulattos) were granted voting rights that practically served to obscure the venality of the system. The Indian and coloured elections rights objectively placed these communities in a relatively unenviable position.
After the end of WWII, especially with the influx of Japanese investments in ‘assembly line’ and manufacturing as well as in due course the automobile industry, Japanese nationals (and some tourists) were welcomed as whites. The entourage of the Australian entrepreneur, Mr Kerry Packer can be referenced in this proxy interlinkage context.
The Kerry Packer cricket circus that included Lawrence Rowe of Jamaica, Alvin Kallicharan and Colin Croft of Guyana, and possibly English players such as Greig and Jackman in the 1970s, was an example of the complexity of apartheid viz, international capitalism as well as the opportunities such episodes provided for political leaders such as Forbes Burnham.

Zimbabwean independence and validity of NIBMAR

Even the more erudite evaluations of the apartheid regime ultimately reflect critical flaws if these do not identify in the most concrete way the development from stage to stage of extractive monopoly finance capital and its (communist manifesto opposite the proletariat). To extend solidarity to the victims of apartheid after the Soweto (south west township) of Johannesburg (1976), and to realise a degree of historical relevance, it is necessary to gauge how the ANC reappraised the political mass line as a consequence of the Sharpville massacre (during    1960).
It could well be that at the race consciousness level, at the level of opposition to a dehumanising, brutal state terrorism distinctions are not abstracted from the two incidents. This is a political and ideological issue. Suffice to say that after the Sharpville massacre the ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP) as well as the Pan African Congress (PAC) was completely banned.
The ANC of Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and several other including most importantly at this point in time, Ms Nkosazana Zuma, in reality was transformed into a different organisation with the establishment of Umkontowa Sizwe (the Lance of the Nation) or the arm wing dedicated to a liberation struggle in the aftermath of Sharpville and the wanton killings of unarmed Africans.
The new phase of anti-apartheid struggle that ensued as the trial of Nelson Mandela and his close ‘brothers in arms’ for treason created unprecedented opposition to the Afrikaners and reverberated in neighbouring Southern Rhodesonia (now Zimbabwe).
The policy of no independence before majority African rule (Nihmar) was adopted by the national liberation forces in central Africa particularly by the liberation movements of the ZAPU and the ZANU, but Nihmar was essentially a rallying cry to the millions of Africans in Southern Africa to reject any neo-colonial compromise such as the ‘internal settlement’ designed to exclude the ANC – ZAPU, ZANU as a legitimate social and political force of the Africans.
Paradoxically, during this mid 1960s period that coincided with the independence of Guyana, solidarity with South Africa was a policy principle of the PPP under the leadership of Dr CheddiJagan. It was the PPP that organised demonstrations and anti-apartheid events in Georgetown. It was the PPP that embarked on joint anti-imperialist programmes in collaboration with OSPAAL (Havana) where there existed a substantial ANC exile community comprising mainly of students.
Burnham at that time had not abandoned his anti-communist pact with the neoconservatives and ultra-reactionaries in Guyana. However, the PNC line was to launch rhetoric broadsides at international forums with a focus on the ‘kith and kin’ exhortation associated with African nationalists. It was this ‘kith and kin’ rhetoric that sustained the ‘brothers and sisters’ demagogery of Forbes Burnham prior to the Lusaka 1970 conference.
It is however, true that at the United Nations Guyana’s policies from the onset reflected support for the end of apartheid. A policy that was universal as it was subjectively a ploy for Burnham’s anecdotal identification with his student days experience in Britain.
It was therefore not surprising that even as late as 1977/78 period, Forbes Burnham hosted the Rev Abel Nuzerewa and Nathapang Sithole as these sought to gain commonwealth support for the Lancaster House ‘extension’ through the Ian Smith clique for the ‘Internal Settlement’. It was this contradiction illustrated by duplicity and ambivalence that reproduced ‘linkages’ with the UNITA of Jonas Savimbi as well as other pro imperialist, pro-South African insurgents in Central Africa.