ANC celebrates 75th
International Viewpoint 23 February 1987
SOUTH AFRICA
In this period, the PAC and ANC -along with other groups - opened up large-scale campaigns against the internal pass system that had been imposed on Africans. The PAC called for giant demonstrations for March 21st, 1960, in which the passes were to be symbolically burned. At Sharpeville and Langa, the force of the repressive system descended. The ANC and PAC were banned. The leaderships went underground.
This was to be the second major
THE MAJOR South African political movement, the African National
Congress (ANC), has just celebrated its 75th anniversary. It was formed on January 8, 1912, as a democratic formation of Africans demanding the emancipation of their people. At that time, South
African society was colonial in the strict sense of the term. While
Coloureds and Indians could still exercise some rights, the "natives"
were entirely bereft of them.
DOMINIQUE LEGRAND
The question of the liberation of the African people of South Africa came to the fore with the rise of the movements in and the Caribbean, initially groupings of intellectuals inspired essentially by a cultural and democratic awareness.
At its inception, the ANC was a the end of the economic and social situation in the country was undergoing big changes, the ANC experienced a serious in.
ternal crisis. A few years later this led the younger generation to take the them were
Mandela and Oliver Tambo.
This was an important change for the ANC. It meant turning more toward the mass movement, more toward mobilizations on concrete issues and an end to relying on based on statements of principle. The rise of African tradeunionism and the big miners' strike in 1947 indicated these new needs.
the ANC remained a nationalist movement, open only to
Africans. Its conception of a demo.
cratic South Africa called for a multinational society in which laws would guarantee a certain defined legal space for each "nationality" in order to assure coexistence among all of them.
This conception was reflected in the drafting of the famous Freedom
Charter of 1955.
The ANC put forward a special sort of united front policy corresponded to its conception of the national question. It was based on bringing together equivalent movethe Coloureds, representing and whites. That gave rise the formation of the Congress of the People, which launched the Charter in the name of five organizations: the ANC, the South African the Congress of the Coloured Congress and the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU).
During the 1950s, the ANC held to this line. When the government forcibly imposed all the mechanisms of apartheid, the ANC sought the support of liberal leaders who already represented a significant section of big capital. These figures were supposed to offer a workable solution for setting up a democratic government.
At the time, all of Africa was fighting for its independence, seeth a classical colonis sociel, was regarded as heading rule. Unfortunately, view failed to take account of the imperialism's need. The apartheid regime gave no ground, and installed a system of repression and surveillance of Black labor that all South African capitalists, including the "liberals," found useful for about 20 years.
experienced a split by those who claimed that it single-minded defender of the African population. From their standpoint, represent a qualitative change.
While fundamentally federative, the Freedom Charter had perhaps, in the eyes of these people, left open the door for a South Africa where the Black majority would have to share its power. They ended up by breaking with the ANC and forming the Pan-African Congress (PAC).
turning point for the ANC. Faced with the most systematic repression, inspired by the example of the Algerian revolution and aided by the Communist Party, it opted for armed
However, Sharpeville was the culmination of a retreat by the mass movement. It marked a defeat. Therefore, the armed struggle of the ANC and the PAC was launched against the current of the real situation. It was scarcely begun before it suffered setbacks. Many of the main leaders were arrested, tried for high treason and sentenced to life in prison. Nelson Mandela was one of them.
That impelled the ANC leadership to go into exile and to rebuild the maintaining the • principle of guerrilla warfare within the country. The newly independent African countries were supposed to serve as a backup. In Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), the ANC worked with Nkomo's ZAPU and formed a giant guerrilla column that came to a New developments of 1970s
The ANC began a march through a desert. Exile can be a necessary temporary solution; it can also be a blind alley. The situation within the country was to change more quickly than the backers of apartheid expected. The industrialization achieved through high profitability for capital developed a new working class. In 1973, the first expression of this change was seen in a general strike in Natal province that gave rise to the new generation's first teams of trade-unionists.
At the same time, a radical nationalist current developed among African youth that combined a new cultural awareness with a rejection of any collaboration with the system and with any section of "enlightened" capitalism. This "Black Consciousness Movement" influenced and organized the June 1976 rebellion in Soweto.
These two developments marked the beginning of a radicalization,
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anniversary
The ANC and other movements are fighting the racism and poverty of South African society (DR)
International Viewpoint 23 February 1987 and the ANC was largely bypassed by them.
Around 1980-81, it became evident that the entire system of rule had gone into crisis, and that the mass movement was continuing to radicalize. The ANC existed. It had a definite base of cadres and influence within the country. But it was far from being able to claim leadership of the growing mass movement.
In recent years, however, the ANC was to change its position on a series of important questions. This is not the place to interpret these changes. But it is important to take note of them.
The ANC was to make a considerable effort to build its organization within the townships by making the best use of its network of activists. It was to give relatively less prominence to its claims of conducting an "armed and attach more importance to mass work. It was to succeed in using its tactical devices to build a broad multi-class democratic movement around itself, winning the confidence of white cratic circles and the churches. led to the launching in August 1982 of the United (UDF), number of community and organizations that take the Freedom Charter as their basic reference.
In the trade-union movement, where its authority was challenged by radically anti-capitalist leaderships, the ANC made a turn after the founding of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in November 1985. It adopted a more open attitude toward those whom it had formerly condemned, and aimed 26 at winning them politically to its own strategic project.
the only movement that has built up a real network of representatives outside the country, the ANO can call on varied and valuable sup port. It has built up a real foreign diplomatic service, established contacts with the South African liberals and big capitalists, and is developing a profile as an essential partner in international consultations on South Africa. Tambo and US Secretary of Schultz is the token of this worldwide diplomacy.
an apparent contra diction, it is more and more proclaiming its structured links with the South African Communist Party, whose general secretary, Joe Slovo, on the national leadership of theANC at its last congress in June 1986. ANC has rebuilt considerable strength
The ANC has thus rebuilt a very considerable strength within the country. Whatever differences may divide it from other currents and organizations, it cannot be gone around. Over and above what it represents as a centralized political movement, the ANC
"Chartist tradition" -a vast social movement that united, without organizing, thousands of young people and workers who look to Nelson Mandela or identify with a movement with 75 years of history behind it.
It would undoubtedly be false to claim that there have been 75 years of real continuity. But these 75 years of struggle, suffering and represssion as a foundation for credi bility. The ANC has continually suf fered heavy blows. Hundreds of its activists have been murdered by the racist regime without this weakening the determination of the new genera-
The South African revolution is not right around the corner, of programs and tactics of the various forces will be modified as time passes. The question of socialism is discussed more and more. The future particular COSATU, is becoming increasingly tied to the building of a politically independent workers' movement. It is impossible at this stage to predict what role the ANC will play in this debate and how it will affect these developments.
The ANC's past belongs to history. It has to be freely discussed and debated with no taboos or romanticizing. As for the future, the complexity of the debates that are going on in South Africa itself and of the strategic questions in that country indicate quite clearly that the ANC does not have all the answers. These two points reveal the need for open discussion.
But that must not detract from the solidarity and respect that is owing to the ANC. Like all the other South African movements, this current is writing one of the most glorious pages in the history of the resistance of the toiling masses to racism, repres sion and exploitation.
Tom Gustafsson (1947-1987)
"A strong link has been
International Viewpoint 23 February 1987 broken"