Three phases in tic analysis of the class consciousness of the Blacks and founded on July
30, 1921. It came out the Communist of the fusion of several
The organizations.
largest of them was the
Party's history
International Socialist
League (ISL), established in 1915 as a left opposition to the its project of winning them over as quickly as possible to the perspective of a proletarian revolution. The party did not offer any bridges. It was at best ignorant of the social democracy.
RECENT POLITICAL developments in South Africa
At its birth, the
Communist Party was have underlined the need to study the Communist Party, an organization of but its underground existence has made this difficult whites. It was among white trade-unionists until now. The CP's integration into the African National and intellectuals that
Congress added to the problem, and helped to veil the the political transformations in the European workers' movement
A lot of people in South Africa have neglected this managed to find a requestion, because the CP seemed so weak. For a long flection. The African community, because of time it was identified as a party of whites and its status and its hisconsequently treated as marginal. Observers only tory, was by and large recognised the urgency of this study when the CP divorced from these debates.
proclaimed its existence more openly.
However, the party
For about three years, the CP's influence has been carried with it the paternalism of the old growing. First, in the ANC's apparatus, then in the various
European social democsocial movements. Its impact is still modest, but given the racy on this colonial weakness of other political currents, it is worth taking question.
At times, even, the apparent inaccount of. It still claims to be the sole "proletarian ertness of the Blacks vanguard party." When the ANC elected CP general led it to adopt a patronizing attitude secretary Joe Slovo to its national leadership — making toward the "natives."
him its first white leader — this was hardly calculated
Speaking the to
Communist International meeting in
The ANC press has not been sparing in its references to
1919, David
Ivon the Communist Party. The US government also attaches
Jones, leader of the
ISL, tried to analyze a great deal of importance to the CP — demonstrated by the political backwardits attempts to split the ANC's "nationalist" and ness of the South African Blacks:
"The native is capti-
The following article lays out the key turning points in the vated by a piece of machinery, and will seek out its inmost pulsations and tend it as a god." Or: "On every possible pretext they will work in unison, raising and lowering the pick, with rhythmic flourishes thrown in, to the time of their Zulu chants. Ever and anon the time or the times changes in an endless variety from the ancestral repertoire in perfect harmony and rhythm - an impromptu chorus of the wild, charming even the dullest. No gaffer can speed up such a
2 gang. And when the same gang tries to sing a simple Christian hymn it makes a most discordant mess of it. Such is arrested development! "1
The party line was then focused around two apparently complementary objectives — to spread class conscious-
International Viewpoint • June 15, 1987 party's identity. to be discreet. communist wings. history of the party.
### PETER BLUMER ness to the Black masses, seen as historically backward; and to overcome the present divide by forging working-class unity around a socialist perspective.
The manifesto adopted at the found. ing congress of the CP gave no place to the national question as such: "For the immediate future, indeed, the main duty of the party and of every member of it is to establish the widest and closest possible contact with workers of all ranks and races and to propagate
The leadership then did not see any contradiction between a very pessimisnational question, and proposed only socialist missionary work by white activists among Black workers.
This attitude was to lead it to take opportunist positions, such as its for the support
1924 coalition between the Labour
Party and the National Party in the name of casting a useful vote against the ruling right, when it could be foreseen that this coalition would do nothing to alter the discrimination against the Blacks.
The turn was to come from the leadership of the Communist International. At the time, it was involved in a debate the on
"Negro" question in general, in particular in the United
States.
The debate
South Africa over was to a large extent inspired by an analogy with the
American case.
In 1917,
Lenin compared American
Blacks with the former serfs in Russia.
Later, he came to the conclusion that they constituted a nation. The American John Reed did not share this point of view, because he thought that a substantial part of these people considered themselves first as Americans and felt at home in the United States.
This debate was to continue for several years. Should American Blacks be analyzed from the standpoint of their situation in the agricultural South, or rather from the standpoint of their
1. "Communism in South Africa," David Ivon Jones.
Speech given to the Executive of the Communist International on behalf of the ISL of South Africa.
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SOUTH AFRICA I HE SOUTH Af-
growing integration into the industrial North? What was the real dynamic of their insertion into the American social formation? It was, moreover, a rather strange time when world Black congresses were held in Moscow and the International Bureau for Negro Affairs was headquartered in Berlin!
So the leadership of the International approached South Africa on the basis of this analogy. And it found that the South African CP was following a paternalist line that would never enable it to gain a base among the Blacks.
At the meeting of the League Against Imperialism in Brussels in 1927, a motion was adopted, with the agreement of the South African delegation, calling for "the right of self-determination through the complete downfall of capitalist and imperialist rule."
Later on, one of the South African CP delegates, La Guma, went to Moscow. In the Soviet capital he discussed with the authorities of the International a document calling for the creation of an "independent native republic, as a stage toward a workers' and peasants' emment." The bridge now being offered — at least on paper — was the perspective for the "natives" of forming
While the debate was still raging in the American CP, the document brought back by La Guma had major reverberations in the South African party and led to breaks, since some people thought that national independence should not be put ahead of the class struggle. In many cases, moreover, an apparent intransigence on class positions concealed a totally condescending attitude on the part of white activists toward the Black workers. Comintern leads debate on national question
In October 1928, the political secretariat of the Comintern denounced in a resolution "the demoralization white workers through the theory of the superiority of the white race....The Communist Party must become the leader of a national agrarian revolutionary movement of the native masses."
The "independent republic" turn was designed above all to capture the attention of the Black masses. It was a democratic slogan aimed at mobilizing the Blacks, starting from their present level of consciousness. In this way, the Communist International hoped that the party would soon be able to win a predominant influence.
The party was in fact to change somewhat, including a greater number of Black members. But the real leadership was to remain for a long time in the hands of the whites.?
The International strove, therefore, to bring its South African party forward and to transform it through the debate on the national question, without this always being to the liking of the members. 3 Over and above the debate on orientation, the international leadership generally tightened its reins over
But in this period, the leadership was becoming more and more ossified by bureaucratization and dictatorial centralization. As in many other cases, Moscow's intervention did not stop at an honest "Bolshevization." Little by little it subordinated the communist parties to the sole interests of the Stal-
The South African CP did not escape this sad fate. While some parties, such as the Chinese one, were able thanks to their strong national base to attenuate the damaging effects of Moscow domination, the South African Communist Party did not have such advantages. Its "Stalinization" ingly more rapid and thorough going.
The South African CP was therefore to follow the turns in Soviet policy. The official history of the party, in fact, does not hide it: "After the Seventh Congress of the Communist Inter-
1935, had endorsed Georgi Dimitrov's call for a broad united front to halt the drive to fascism and war, the Communist Party of South Africa acknowledged its own sectarian errors of the past and sought to ally itself with other anti-fascist and anti-racist amongst both blacks and
All of a sudden, the "independent republic" was put on the shelf. The task was to establish an anti-imperialist front, and for that it was necessary to "draw the widest native masses into the national liberation movement against the growing imperialist and oppression - for the independence of this country"S
So, the CP made a major turn toward a "democratic" faction of the white bourgeoisie. But the "popular front" that it set up remained under its domination. No doubt the elementary democratic demands on behalf of the Blacks that were put forward in this front were attractive to "white anti-
During the Second World War, the CP again made a turn in its definition of the world conflict and the local alliances it called for. In 1981, the party wrote: "The whole character of the war was altered by the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union."
Once again, the party's policy become detached from national reality, being inspired by Soviet needs and European debates. Of course, the two white communities, the Afrikaners and the English speakers, divided essential-
SOUTH AFRICA ly between the Axis and the Allied powers. But this was basically a division within the ruling class and the white aristocracy of labor.
What place should have been given to these tactical debates when, in any case, they were of very little interest to the overwhelming majority of Black working people? South Africa was a prison for Black people regardless of whether it had a "democratic" government favorable to the Allies, or a "fascist" one favorable to the Nazis.
CP's dependence on
The CP's dependence on Moscow, moreover, was not simply bureaucratic. Given the composition of its leadership, the CP had not yet freed itself from its original Eurocentrism. Stalinist pressure penetrated more easily because the policy of the International was reduced to defence of the Soviet
"building socialism in one
In characteristic style, the CP issued a communique on June 3, 1943, expressing satisfaction at the bureaucratic dissolution of the Comintern by Stalin: "The decision of the Governing Council of the Communist International to first place inspired by a desire to bring about the maximum degree of unity between the United Nations in the struggle against Hitler and his allies."
It was necessary to wait for the postwar period, the 1946 Black miners' strike, the coming to power in 1948 of the National Party and the hardening of segregation, for the party to start to produce more sophisticated documents than in the past.
The slogan of an "independent republic" was designed as a sort of bridge for mobilizing Blacks. But fundamentally the Comintern thought that this right should really be offered to Blacks. The background to this position was Lenin's writings on the right to form a nation state. But South African society was more complex than that, and most importantly of all it was undergoing major social and economic changes. 2. At the beginning of 1928, the CP had 1,800 members. At the 1929 congress, it is supposed to have had 20 Black delegates and 10 white delegates to represent 3,000 members. (E. Roux, Time Longer Than Rope, 3. On this see, Jack and Ray Simons, Class and Colour, IDAF, 1983, p. 405. On the Black debate in the Communist International, see E H Car, A History of Soviet Russia, chapter 89. Leon Trotsky took up this idea of a "Black Republic" again in 1935 in his critical letter to one of the two South African Trotskyist organizations, proposing it in the same terms as the Communist Inter-
4. South African Communists Speak, Inkululeko Publi- 1
cations, London, 1981, p. 125. 5. The Liberation Movement and the Tasks of the June 15, 1987 • International Viewpoint
SOUTH AFRICA
Paradoxically, when the Blacks did not seem even to have the strength to demand a "separate nation," when major tribal prejudices persisted among them, they were very quickly going to want to demand a totally democratized and de-racialized South Africa. This advance in consciousness was related to the uneven but dialectical development of the South African economy.
"Colonialism of a special type"
In January 1950, the Central Committee of the CP wrote: adopted by the working class movement towards national movements in Eastern Europe during the last century is not necessarily the correct one to be adopted now, when socialism has become an established fact in a large part of the world....The distinguishing feature of South Africa is that it combines the characteristics of both an imperialist state and a colony within a simple, indivisible, geographical, political and economical entity."
This idea was to be taken up again in 1962 in the party's new program, Road of South African Freedom." It was on this occasion that the CP explained in detail its conception of two superimposed societies - an exploiter white imperialist nation, which oppressed another Black, colonialized nation within a single territorial space. It was a concept of "internal colonialism." But this analysis was a mechanical one.
The Communist Party did not say a word about the dominant social relationships. But that question was, nonetheless, decisive — not only for discussing the expected revolutionary dynamic, but also to predict the major social changes within the so-called col-
This theory led in fact to a frozen view of South African society, since it was thought that the social changes underway could only be secondary with respect to the major contradiction between the two nations. It was not a question, however, of a hierarchy among the problems but of the dialectical relations between the national ques-
The CP's analysis was curiously focused on external factors, as some third worldist analyses can be for the neocolonial countries, even though it recognized that everything was happening
2 in a single territory with a single state,
one unified market and with an autonomous ruling class.
Even if you accepted this idea of "two
2 nations," it would have to be added that
they are not juxtaposed but that they are in a dialectical inter-relationship, and that both are evolving in accorInternational Viewpoint • June 15, 1987 dance with the needs of South African capitalism. In a nutshell, you would have to start by saying that capitalist social relations prevailed in this country, combining with racial divisions.
If the CP has put so much effort into defending this theory, this is because, as it said in 1962, it looked toward building a democratic state 'on non-capitalist lines," according to the new terminology adopted in 1960 at the international meeting of 81 communist parties in Moscow. The South African CP's 1962 program, moreover, explicitly mentions this meeting as the basis of its own elaboration.
While South African society was moving toward prodigious economic development and an enormous growth of the Black working class, the CP's new position led it to think that "there are no acute or antagonistic class divisions at present among the African people." This was in flagrant contradiction to what the Communist International recognized thirty years before in proposing to break the Black workers away from the influence of the chiefs and the Black notables and petty bour-
Thus, in the early 1960s the CP limited itself to tacking on the Soviet stages analyses of the Ghanean or Guinean societies, which were supposed to be without real class conflict, and to have been set on a "non-capitalist road" by the Nkrumah and Sekou Toure regimes. According to the terms of the 1962 document, the democratic program to put forward is not one for socialism, and its perspective is not one
Since 1955, for the Communist Party, the democratic program to be put forward has been represented by the Freedom Charter. If the CP thus separates its democratic program for immediate mobilization and the perspective of a social overthrow of apartheid, it is because it remains attached to the Stalinist analysis of historical develop-
In the CP's view, the existence of an "internal colonialism" would call for the establishment of a "democratic" state. Since the party leadership knew very well how the social content of any state has to be defined, it more or less relied on the Soviet The future South African state would therefore be equated to a state on the "non-capitalist road," a definition that was all the rage at the time in the third world among the and parties following Moscow's line. 6
P ROGRAM AND strategy form
the main foundations of any political organization. In the case of the South African Communist Party, its program and strategy have been fundamentally determined by its international reference points and its Stalinist affiliation. But the definition of a real party operating in a concrete situation cannot be reduced to these elements alone.
Despite its turns, the CP has been marked by certain forms of continuity. And it is these in the present phase of revolutionary developments that have enabled it to make gains where other forces have been bogged down.
The first element of continuity is the CP's relations with its great Soviet home base, which has offered the political and logistical aid necessary for the totally clandestine existence the party has led since 1961. This link, which involves a strong dependence, could have very unfortunate consequences when Moscow decides to include South Africa in its bargaining with Washington.
The second element of continuity seems to have been the work put into building up the organization, especially after the early 1960s.
Finally, the third element of continuity — and certainly the most important — has been the integration and maintenance of CP members in the main national movements, not just as observers but as disciplined members of a centralized party.
Communists enter the ANC
The communists officially entered the leadership of the ANC in 1927. La Guma, the party's delegate to Moscow, was himself secretary of the Cape branch of the ANC. At the same time, the party was very much involved in a movement that had both a trade-union and political character, the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU). In 1926, the communists were expelled from it, and a few years later the ICU
The Communist International's document adopted by its Executive Committhe Sixth World Congress stipulates: "The party should pay parnatives, such as the African National Congress. The party, while retaining its full independence should participate in these organizations, should seek to broaden and extend their activity. Our aim should be to transform the African National Congress into a fighting nationalist revolutionary organiza-
In its 1928 program, the CP took up this theme again: "The work of the party in its turn has come to centre more
. Among these "non-capitalist" states were Nasser' gypt, Sukamo's Indonesia, Sekou Toure's Guine: Nkrumah's Ghana, and Nyerere's Tanzania.
than ever on native agitation, education and organization, political and industrial extension of the party's influence wherever possible in native bodies like the African National Congress or ICU."
The delegation to Moscow in 1927 included the ANC leader Gumede, who was apparently not a member of the party. On his return, he declared himself a "convinced and enthusiastic supporter of the communists."7 A strong conservative wing remained in the ANC always ready to appeal to the British to force the Afrikaners' hand. But from that time on the CP has had an influence in the Congress and good relations with a section of its members.
The CP's role was important enough for it to be able to write in 1981: "Party members also played a key role in the revival of the African National
SOUTH AFRICA
Congress towards the end of the Yusuf Dadoo (left) and Nelson Mandela in 1951 (DR) 1930s." 8
From that time, the AN was fully included among the forces that the CP wanted to bring together in a broad front. At the end of the 1930s, the CP was well rooted in north Transvaal. In that region, Alpheus Maliba, one of the ANC leaders, was a Communist Party member. The Indian Yusuf Dadoo, who presided over the Non-European United Front during the war, before becoming leader of the South African Indian Congress, was also a member of the CP.
In 1944, the party adopted a program. It was a new turn. The perspective of a socialist republic reappeared. The democratic part of the program strongly resembled the Freedom Charter that was to come into being 11 years later. It was, therefore, possible to combine a democratic revolution and a socialist one!
The party did not restrict itself to entering national movements. It put forward its own policy. The entry into the ANC leadership in 1947 of the young people from the Youth League (Mandela, Sisulu, Tambo) created new conditions for a radicalization of the Congress. But the CP did not stop there. Its Central Committee wrote: "Mr. Mda, President of the Congress Youth League, states that 'we are inflexibly opposed to national oppression and to foreign white domination' ...But the people are not told what kind of 'freedom' they are to struggle for, or what is to be the content of the 'true democracy and just social order.' " 9 In the 1980s, the CP would virulently attack such statements when they were made by others.
In the same Central Committee document, it was clearly set down that the national organizations such as the ANC should be transformed so that they would lead the national liberation struggle in a revolutionary way. The
Communist Party was to remain the guiding party, the party of the communist vanguard.
In 1950, the party was banned. It was apparently ill-prepared for this, since it was to write in its 1962 program: "Despite its great achievements and struggles, the Communist Party of South Africa proved incapable of surviving under illegal conditions. listic illusions had penetrated into the ranks of the Party, including its leading personnel. The party was unprepared and unable to work underground."
Nonetheless, most of the party members in the bodies of the national movements remained in their places. The ruling National Party now threa tened all the organizations, stepped up its repression. Yusuf Dadoo began calling in 1952 for a vast national convention around the ANC to
A Congress of Democrats appeared, some groups of white democrats, which was supposed to represent this sector within the convention. In reality, the Congress of Democrats was also a means of public activity for the white members of the Communist Party. Then came the drawing up of the Freedom Charter and the People's Congress, a huge mass meeting in June 1955, which symbolically adopted this program.
Defeat and reconstruction
The banning of the ANC in 1961 and the flight to exile of a part of its leadThe CP, and behind it the Soviet Union, pushed for a complete recasting of strategy. This was the period of the end of the Algerian war, when the naorganizations in the Portuguese colonies opted for rural armed struggle. In South Africa itself important uprisings occurred in the reserves.
Everything seemed to indicate that this turning point was decisive. In DeUmkhonto we Sizwe, was officially created. In reality, it was the result of an accord between the CP and the ANC It was an independent body with a joint leadership. The CP found in it a decisive element for a pact of solidarity and collaboration with the ANC.
In the mid-1960s, it seems, pressed by the growth of its rival, the Pan-African Congress (PAC), the ANC reaffirmed its character as a "Black" and "African" movement. But after the Morogoro Congress in 1969, the ANC slowly transformed itself, taking on of a broad movement activists of all races. The whites. But it was difficult to demon-
Nothing was easy for the ANC in that period. The armed struggle failed. The movement was greatly weakened inside the country, and in exile disorder reigned. What is more, the Black consciousness movement was growing as a rival among the African youth.
The reconversion did, however, take place, essentially in the apparatus and the foreign delegations, no doubt with the active participation of the CP. Coloureds, Indians and whites, formally members of allied organizations of the ANC in 1955 at the time of the People's Congress, little by little found 2 places under the ANC flag and under the clearly established leadership of its Af-
7. E. Roux, Time Longer Than Rope, p. 219. 3
8. South African Communists Speak, p. 125 and pp. 131-132. 9. Nationalism and Class Struggle, January 1950. June 15, 1987• International Viewpoint
SOUTH AFRICA rican members.
The principle of unity among organizations representing separate communities" became blurred, at least in practice.
The CP then more openly integrated itself in the ANC. But this did not fail to pose some problems.
In 1976, when a small group of op positionists was expelled from
ANC, the CP restated its position: "We pioneered the concept that the content of the present phase
South African revolution is the liberation of the African people.
reason, we have always recognized that the leading role in the liberation front is played by the national organization of the African majority, the ANC."
Further on, with regard to those ex-
"On the surface, pelled, the CP said:
their main complaint is against the
Morogoro decision to integrate non-
African revolutionaries into the ANC's
External Mission."
However, in their way, the oppositionists pointed up the contradiction there was in presenting the ANC as a great, fundamentally African democratic force, and at the same time accepting including communists, in whites. The real problem was not racial, as many of these oppositionists believed, but strategic. The integration in a nationalist movement of a party claiming to represent the proletariat and communism posed some problems for dogmatic supporters of the national democratic revolution. What purpose could the communists and their party serve, if the revolution was to unite all the oppressed classes on a basis of equality?
The CP itself had to find a justification liberties with its rigid gradualism: "In our view, therefore, it is impossible to separate nationalism from class struggle;
and the depth and closeness of this connection will have a vital bearing on the future of the
South African revolution." 10 In other words, the members of the the "communist vanguard"
party represented in the ANC the hidden (class struggle) face of the democratic revolution.
In the years between 1930 and 1950, there were important debates on the question of unity. Was it necessary to unite
2 the non-whites among themstriving little by selves by little to blur the racial barriers that apartheid had introduced
4 among Indians, Coloureds and
Africans? Or was it necessary to aim at a broader alliance with
International Viewpoint • June 15, 1987 democratic sectors, and in so doing to maintain the organizational independence of each "community"?
The Trotskyist-influenced left upheld the first view, seeing the second as the surest road to class collaboration. this debate with the CP, the ANC was a decisive stake, as well as the organization of the Coloureds.
The crisis of the left, its incapacity to build itself as a national, stable force, limited its ambitions. Although they very often upheld a more coherent and "class" national question, the currents to the left of the CP were incapable organizationally and tactically of profiting from this programmatic advantage.
The Communist Party, even though following the latest ideas from Moscow, has undoubtedly proved more pragmatic, at least at certain moments, than the currents to its left.
Today, facing a very extensive radicalization of the mass movement, the
CP can hardly remain hidden in the
ANC. The country's social formation is no longer the one that it described in its 1962 program, seeking to justify a democratic stage. The Black workers' movement exists, and is clearly combining a struggle for democracy with a fight against the bosses. The theory of a "colonialism of a special type"
not stand up to the facts.
It is now unquestionable that the CP has gained an important place in the
ANC. A comparative reading
ANC organ, Sechaba and the CP's, The
African Communist, gives a clear picture of that. The concerns and lines are similar, and sometimes even the signatures are the same. This, of course, does not rule out crossfire debates between the two magazines, although it is impossible to know whether they represent real differences between the
ANC and the CP. 12
But in the final analysis, how can we characterize the CP's role in the ANC?
Is it entryism? Is it the CP that leads the ANC? Or does it just seem to do so, being tolerated
None of these answers is valid.
Joe Slovo, the present leader of the CP and a member of the ANC executive, offered an answer when he denounced "the comic strip image of stereotyped communists who infiltrate a mass organization." According to him, there is a "special relationship"
between the CP and the ANC.
Reading his statements, you almost get the impression that he refer us back to the character of South African society — a special kind of colonialism is matched by special kind of revolution and a special kind of relationship between the ANC and the CP!13
S
TARTING IN 1980-81, little by little independent radical trade-unions established itself within given impetus by the country, the growth of big industry over the preceding ten years. Among these, the Federation of South
African Trade Unions (FOSATU)
emerged as the dominant force.
It was a very well organized
10. "On the Activities of the "Gang of 8,' " The
African Communist, second quarter of 1976.
11. Maurice Hommel, Capricorn Blues, Paul
Roubais Editions, Toronto, 1981. Also Neville
Alexander, "Aspects of Non-Collaboration in the Western Cape, 1943-1963", a speech given to the Centre of African Studies, Cape Town,
Social Dynamics, 1986.
12. See article by Peter Blumer on the "dual power" debate in International Viewpoint 109,
November 24, 1986.
13. Interview with Joe Slovo, Die Zeit, April
10, 1987.
non-racial federation based on industrial unions.
It was FOSATU that forced a debate on trade-union unity. It most clearly expressed the refusal to divide its ranks by joining the United Democratic Front, which was formed in 1982, as the latter proposed. It was also from FOSATU that opinions emerged about the need for building a new political movement of the working class.
The fight for the trade unions
FOSATU is therefore a special symbol in the history of the South African workers' movement. It is in itself the mark of an indigenous development, from which the exile movements were
The union leaderships have concentrated their efforts on rooting themselves in the enterprises. They have wanted to consolidate the trade-union instrument not only where that is possible, but also where it is most urgent. The perspective of building roots in the communities, in the townships, was put off until their base was consol-
From that time on, a spectacular political battle was waged for nothing less than hegemony over the mass movement. The ANC had a very weak trade-union base. There was undoubtedly a modest communist tradition in the unions in the Cape region, but this is
The orientation adopted by the ANC and the CP was to back the principle of general unions, such as SAAWU, for level was by definition very secondary, while the important thing was integration in the communities. Influenced by Chartism (that is, the current that looks to the Freedom Charter), the general unions were all to join the UDF.
During this period, it was the CP and its exile paper that assumed the task of attacking the "leftists" in FOSATU, who were on occasion accused of being rightists because they presumed to believe in legal trade unions. Nothing was left to chance. There was an attack of this sort in every issue of The Afri-
Paradoxically, during these years the policy of the ANC and the CP was to be rather leftist. A desire to put forward SAAWU in an exaggerated way as the Chartist union par excellence was to put it at the center of the repression. Moreover, the option for general unions proved usually to be wrong. The virulent attacks against FOSATU's tactical attitude toward the question of quickly registering legally proved to be inopportune.
At the same time, through the UDF, the ANC broadened its following in the communities. It was so successful in this regard that it can be said that in 1985 there were two juxtaposed authorities — the independent trade-union current in the big enterprises and the ANC in the townships. Since the political movements to the left of the ANC proved incapable of serving as a bridge between the union movement and the struggle in the communities, these were the only two players in the game.
In November 1985, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) was launched. In conformity with the established in the negotiations, its leadership included leaders from all the unions. It still had to unite all its forces in each industry and to set up regional leaderships through local congresses. None of this would
However, the conflict ceased. The ANC and CP quite intelligently made a turn and clearly decided to take a different tack toward their former adversaries. Not a single new attack, even an implicit one, has been published to this day in the press of either movement. The only attacks that are still being made are directed against the Black consciousness movement, which in any case was in the past amalgamated with all the other "ultra-leftists" and
This turn was obviously made necessary by the coexistence of all the currents in a single union, even though there were still some major conflicts in COSATU in 1986 in the region of Port Elisabeth, East London and in the
There was, however, another reason for this change. The ANC is aware of the great strength that it has in the communities, some of which is also present in the base of the unions. The UDF operation has been successful in imposing virtual dominance of the ANC in the townships. At the same time, it has managed to win international authority, having been the only organization to have spent 25 years building up foreign representations. It knows that at this stage there is no way anyone can go around it, not even that section of trade-unionists who might have long-term views about a recomposition of the workers' movement. It knows that the union itself the political pretensions of those who would like to work through it to assert another legitimacy.
In the united front that is gradually being consolidated - it is no doubt more than simple peaceful coexistence - the ANC is playing the role of the political movement, while the others have to be satisfied with the mass structures. The others can always talk about working-class hegemony. They remain trade-unionists.
SOUTH AFRICA
We saw then the setting up of a COSATU-UDF axis. Next, after the formation of a front of UDF youth organizations, the South African Youth Congress, we have seen a very clear axis between the unions and the youth movement 14
This does not resolve everything for the Communist Party. Preaching at those who in the past raised the perspective of a party" on the Brazilian model could not answer the underlying problem. The real social movement has very quickly over the barriers of dogma. The factory strikes led by liberal "democrats" are promoting the development of an overall anti-capitalist consciousness. From this has arisen a series of new demands not provided for in the Freedom Charter, for which the CP itself would have a hard time finding a precedent in any of its writings.
Thanks to the gains made by the trade-union movement in 1980-1985, in a confused way the idea of the need for a revolutionary workers' leadership is making progress among the broad vanguard, in the working class and the youth. This does not necessarily mean a leadership in opposition to the ANC.
The old schemas were no longer enough. It was no longer possible simply to present the relationship between the ANC and the CP as reflecting two sharply distinct kinds of revolution. The CP was therefore going to try to make up for lost time and project itself more systematically.
CP gives itself a higher
Outside the country, first of all, the Communist Party did this by having its main leader, Joe Slovo, speak out more extensively. Moreover, now he is appearing at the side of Oliver Tambo at big public events. Inside the country, an attentive observer can recognize in a university article or a UDF pamphlet the influence of the Communist Party and its concerns of the mo-
This change in attitude has a twosided effect. On the one hand, it reveals that the base of the CP, while not spectacular, is still more substantial than people imagined. On the other, it is pushing some small radical sectors, especially in the UDF youth, to identify today as much with the CP as with
2
Many CP articles show that it re14. At the end of 1986, some sectors of COSATU protested about the way the common campaign with the 5
UDF had been carried out. See, in particular, the journal of the CCA WUSA (the shop workers' union), No vember 1986. June 15, 1987 • International Viewpoint
SOUTH AFRICA mains vigilant in defence of its own interests, while the ANC is the target of ambitious maneuvers by an imperialist faction and South African liberals. Under the pressure of the present radicalization, the party has also to mention socialism a lot more than it has done in the last fifteen years. After all, do not its legitimacy and the explanation of its existence require mentioning the demands of the working class? This is another example of the pragmatism I referred to earlier, a pragmatism that goes hand in hand with a virulent sectarianism and distinct bureaucratism in its apparatus outside the country.
Where does the Communist Party stand now? How much of the change is tactical adjustment and how much genuine evolution? Very few people outside the party could answer this question to-
Joe Slovo gave a long interview to the British Communist magazine Marxism Today. He was asked, "What is the role of the party, given that many other liberation movements have been successful without the need for a separate party?" Slovo replied: one sentence, because there is a need in South Africa to work for the ultimate achievement of a socialist South Africa...The ANC cannot, and should not, tie itself to the aspirations of that single class [the working class] that we communists represent ... But apart from this there is still the socialist perspective, which although not on the immediate agenda of the struggle, cannot be filed away until the so-called first stage has been reached. As far as we are concerned as communists, there is no Chinese wall between the first stage, so called, and the second stage, so called. The revolution is going to be a continuous process."
Lifting the veil on party policy
Has Slovo become a Trotskyist? Here he is repeating what his journal denounced a few months before. Despite the insistence of Marxism Today's reporter, he refused to identify its project with the Mozambique or Zimbabwe models. But he certainly gave no clear definition of the post-apartheid state, which led him to mix up two questions of very different economic and political
"This implies that I don't believe we can envisage the possibility of a sud. den socialization of all the means of production, and the abolishing of private enterprise at all levels. I believe there will be a mixed economy in the post-liberation period, in which in particular the black middle class and small • black bourgeoisie will come into their own." 15 International Viewpoint • June 15, 1987
More recently still, Joe Slovo lifted the veil a bit further on his party's policy. With regard to the relationship between the party and the mass move-
"I would not like to discuss about other communist parties in Africa, especially not about what they have done within the unions and other mass organizations. We have stayed out of that. That explains the unique confidence we enjoy in the ANC. Many comrades are disturbed by the way we operate. But if we operated any other way that would disturb us."
Without a doubt, Joe Slovo wants to keep in step with Gorbachev too: "Stalin and Mao set socialism back 75 years." 16 He also wants to be a democrat to an altogether unreasonable degree: "I am convinced that if we achieve a democratic society in South Africa, the question of an advance to socialism will be settled in debate rather than in the streets. "17
It is a great pity that journalists never refer to the party's official documents when talking to him. The answers they might give would perhaps clarify a bit more the line of his organization. How could one fail indeed to see the contradiction between articles advocating preparation for armed insurrection in a supposedly "dual power" situation and Joe Slovo's ment, "I am convinced that change in South Africa will come through negotiations." 18 He argued, moreover, that the key to getting such negotiations lay in international pressures and eco-
Are there two strategies, or different languages for different people?
The CP has never ceased to present itself as the workers' party par excellence. Any attempt to go around it was, in the best Stalinist tradition, denounced as splitting the working class and ultra-leftism. But it cannot by itself solve two major problems today. The first is how to give the mass movement a revolutionary leadership embracing the various sectors of the vanguard that have emerged in the last ten years. The second is the problem of self-defence and mass violence in order to solve the question of
In both cases, the CP's answers have not been very convincing. On the question of the party, it has until now taken a rigid attitude — the party has already been formed, the CP is it. All that has to be done is to join it and accept its view of the world, its history and its international ties. 19
La conception is possible as long as South African political life remains locked up in the state of emergency and clandestinity. "The fittest will survive." But this Darwinian conception cannot convince all of those who wonder about the Stalinist history of this organization, about the way it functions, about the sectarianism it displayed only recently.
The CP has not arisen from the latest developments, even though now it is trying to come out of the shadows. It carries with it 70 years of history in a country where there is a still a democratic, anti-Stalinist current of socialist Strategic question remains unanswered
The strategic question remains. To negotiate or not to negotiate? Of course, the ANC-CP bloc is not a grouplet of a few dozen members. Negotiations can have a value in some circumstances in order to reorganize the mass movement, divide the ruling class and prepare the way for a new stage of struggles. But there cannot be the slightest illusion about a democratic non-racial state coming into being through negotiations.
Mass struggles and force will remain decisive. The armed propaganda of the ANC is more of a snare than it is an answer to these questions. Useful for building the ANC, it no longer really serves to weaken the state. 20
But this question will become a timely one when the balance sheet of the years 1986-87 has to be drawn and it is necessary to look to the future. New voices will be raised to say that it is impossible to overthrow this system by mass mobilization, and therefore a strategy is needed that is definitely focused around imperialist pressure on
What will remain then of the perspective of a non-racial South Africa? And of the perspective of socialism? These questions will come sooner or later to the heart of the political movement because they will arise from the immense difficulties that this revolution will en-
For the Communist Party, as for all the other currents fighting apartheid, decisive tests are to come. Nonetheless, the Communist Party has become a link in the problem. ignore it would be to shortchange 15. Marxism Today, December 1986. 16. Die Zeit, April 10, 1987. 17. The Observer, March 2, 1987. 18. Die Zeit, April 10, 1987. 19. The CP in turn supported the Soviet interventions in Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. With respect to Africa, it has defended until now the Soviet orientation of supporting the parties in power in the Congo and in Ethiopia. It has also defended the so-called peaceful coexistence policy.. 20. Joe Slovo announced in April 1987 that he was leaving the leadership of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed organization, because he was overloaded with work as a result of his election to the post of general secretary of the CP in 1985.