BELOW WE REPRINT extracts from a speech entitled 'Nation and ethnicity in South Africa' given by Neville Alexander to a meeting of the National Forum on June 11-12, 1983. This speech puts forward a point of view on the national question which is opposed to that of the so-called Chartist' current but which does not necessarily reflect the views of other currents in the National publication of the National Forum Committee).
In South Africa, a peculiar development took place. Here, the national bourgeoisie had come to consist
Because a class of white capitalists.
they could only farm and mine gold and diamonds profitably if they had an unlimited supply of cheap labour, they found it necessary to create a split labour market, that is one for cheap Black labour and one for skilled and semi-skilled (mainly white labour).
This was made easier by the fact that in the pre-industrial colonial period relationships had been white-Black essentially master-servant relations.
Racialist attitudes were then prevalent in one degree or another throughout the country. In order to secure their labour supply as required, the national bourgeoisie in
Africa had to institute and perpetuate the system whereby Black people denied political rights, were restricted in their freedom of movetied to the land in so-called
'native reserves, not allowed to own anywhere in South education, if they received any all that 'prepared them for life in a
European predecessors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the colonial national bourgeoisie in South
Africa could not complete the bourgeois democratic revolution. They compromised with British imperialism in 1910 in order to maintain their system of super exploitation of Black labour.
They did not incorporate the entire population under the new state on the basis of legal equality, they could contrary, ever since 1910, elaborate been evolved implemented to divide the working people into ever smaller potentially antagonistic groups. Divide and Rule,
Forum. (Source; the main policy of any imperial power, has been the compass of every government of South Africa since 1910.
In order to justify these policies the ideology of racism was elaborated, systematised and universalised. People were thrown into set-up where they were categorised racially. They grew up believing that they were whites, Coloured, Africans, Indians. Since 1948, they have been encouraged and often forced to think of themselves in even more microSCalay; Muslim"; Hindu'; "Griqua', To put it differently: at first the people of South Africa were grouped by God into four 'races' policy of the conservative fascistminded politicians of the capitalist class was to keep these races' separate. The so-called liberal element strove for harmonious race relations in a multi-racial country'. Because of the development of the biological sciences and because of the catastrophic consequences of Herrenvolk policies of Hitler Germany concept of 'race' The social theorists of the ruling class groups, which had in meantime become a firmly established instrument of economic and political policy in the United States of America as well as elsewhere in the world. It is to be noted that this theory of ethnicity continued to be based on the ideology of race' as far as South Africa is concerned. From the point of view of the ruling class, however, the theory of 'ethnic groups' was a superior instrument of policy, because, as I have pointed out, it could explain
Those organisations and within the liberation movement who used to put forward the view that South Africa is a multi-racial country compsed of four races' no longer do so for the same reasons as the conservative and liberal ruling-class theorists. They have begun to speak more and more of building a non-racial South Africa. I am afraid for most people who use this term 'non-racial' it means exactly the same thing as multi-racial. Thes continue to conceive of South Africa's so-called 'races'. It has become fashionable to intone the words a 'nonracial democratic South Africa' as a kind of open sesame that permits one to enter the hallowed portals of the progressive 'democratic move. ment'. There is nothing wrong with do not want to be deceived by words we have to look behind them at the concepts and the actions on which they are based.
The word 'non-racial' can only be if it means the concept 'race' that we deny the existence of 'races and thus oppose actions, practices, beliefs "race'. If in practice (and in theory) we continue to use the word non-racial as though we believe that South Africa is inhabited by four so-called races, we are still trapped in multi-racialism and thus in racialism. Non-racialism, meaning the denial of the existence of races, leads on to anti-racism which goes beyond it because the ter not only of race' but also opposition to the capitalist structures for the perpetuation of which the ideology and theory of 'race' exists. Words are money. They are easily counterfeited and it is often difficult to tell the real coin from the false We need, therefore, at all times find out whether our 'non-racialists' are multi-racial or anti-racists. Only the latter variety can belong in the national liberation movement...
We have to admit that in the libera the question of the different popula
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DOCUMENT A view from
tion registration groups has presented us with a major problem, one which was either glossed over or evaded or simply ignored. I cannot go into the history of the matter here. We shall have to content ourselves with the different positions taken up by different tendencies in the liberation
CHILD D movement today. These can be summarised briefly as falling into three categories.
For some, the population registration groups are 'national groups or racial groups, or sometimes, ethnic groups'. The position of these people is that it is a self-evident and undeniable reality that there are Indians, Coloureds, Africans and whites (national groups) in our country. It is a reality precisely because each of these national groups has its own heritage, language customs and traditions' (Zak Yacoob, speech presented at the first general meeting of the Transvaal Indian Congress on May
The people fight back against the racist state (DR)
Without debating the point any further, let me say that this is the of ethnic theory. I shall show presently that the use of the word 'national group' is fraught with dangers not because it is a word but because it fires expression to and thereby politic of South Africa. The advocates of this theory outside the liberation movement, such as Inkatha and the Progressive Federal Party (PFP), draw the conclusion that a federal constitutional solution is the order of the day. Those inside the liberation movement contradictorily though the national groups with their different cultures will continue to exist they can somehow do so in a unitary state as part of a single nation.
have to state clearly that if things really are as they appear to be we would not need any self-evidently moved around the earth we would require astronomy and space research to explain to us that the true, that the , 'selfevidently real is only apparent. Of course there are historically evolved of language, customs, job specialisation ete among the different groups in this country. But we have to view these differences historically, not statically. They have been enhanced and artifically engendered by the deliberate ruling-class of keeping registration groups in separate compartments, making them lead their lives in group isolation except in the market
This is an historical reality. It is not an unchanging situation that stands above or outside history. I shall show just now how this historical reality has to be reconciled through 20 class struggle with the reality of a single nation.
The danger inherent in this kind of talk is quite simply that it makes room both in theory and in practice for the preaching of ethnic separatism. It is claimed that a theory of 'national advocated in of a movement for national liberation to heighten the positive features of each national group and to weld together so that there arises out of this process of organisation a consciousness' (Yacoob) whereas the ruling class 'relying upon the negative features (of each national group) 'emphasises ethnicity or uses culture in to reinforce separation and division'. We can repeat this kind of intellectualist solace until we fall asleep, the fact remains that ethnic or group, approaches are the thin end of the wedge for separatist movements and civil wars fanned by greatpower interests and suppliers of arms of opportunist 'ethnic leaders'. Does not Inkatha in some ways represent a warning to all of us? Who decides what are the 'positive features' of a national group? What are the boundaries or limits of a national the population register? Is a national group a stunted nation, one given the appropriate soil, will fight for national self-determination in its own nation-state? Or does the word 'national' have some other more sophisticated meaning? These are relevant questions to ask because the advocates of the four-nation or national-group approach maintain that a liberated South Africa will guarantee group rights such as 'the right of national we have to accept that if the existence of national groups is a reality and if each national group own culture, traditions, and problems, the movement for change around issues which concern people in their daily lives, issues such as low wages, high transport costs and poor housing. Or as other representatives of this tendency have bluntly said we need separate organisations for each of the national groups, brought together in an alliance.
These are weighty conclusions on which history itself (since 1960 and especially since 1976) has prothe fires of ethnic politics today is to go backwards, not forward plays into the hands of the reactionary middle-class leadership. It is a reactionary, not a progressive policy from the point of view of the whole. Imagine us advocating Indian', 'Coloured' and 'African' trade unions or student unions today!
There is a diametrically opposite view within the liberation movement though it is held by a very small minority of the people. According to this view, our struggle is not a struggle for national liberation. one in ash struele pure and simple, one in which the 'working will wrest power from the 'capitalist
For this reason, the workers should be organised regardless of what so-called group they belong to. tendency seems to say (in theory) International Viewpoint 30 September 1985
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that the historically evolved differences are irrelevant or at best of secondary importance.
I find it difficult to take this position seriously. I suspect that in practice the activists who hold this to make the most acrobatic compromises the reality of racial prejudice among prejudice and perceived differences, whatever their origin, is to It becomes impossible a mass movement outside the ranks of a few thousand students perhaps.
the historical experience of the liberation movement in South Africa does not permit us to entertain this kind of conclusion. All the little organisations and groups that have at one time or another operated on this basis have vanished after telling which, though 'full of sound and fury, signified
Certainly, the population registranor 'national groups'. In sociological colour castes or more simply as colour
So to describe them is not unimportant since the word captures the nature or the direction of developquestion of words is not really the issue. What is important is to clarify the relationship between class, colour, culture and nation. National bourgeoisie fails to complete democratic revolution
The economic, material, groups are real. They influence and determine the experience their organisation would not have successful in of this country had these differences not been of a certain order of reality. However, these differences are neither permanent nor necessarily divisive if they are restructured and redirected for the purpose of national liberation and thus in order to build the nation.
used language, the working people in order to divide organisation of the people that does not set out to counteract these divisive tendencies set up by the ruling-class reinforcing these strategies. The case of Gandhi or Abdurrahman (1) are good examples. Middle-class and aspiring control of such colour-based 'ethnic'
International Viewpoint 30 September 1985 organisations and use them as power bases from which they try to bargain for a larger share of the economic cake. This is essentially the kind thing that the Bantustan leaders and the Bantustan middle-classes are doing are oppressed, all Black people who have not accepte the rulers' Bantustan strategy desire to be free and to participate fully in the economic, political and social life of Azania. We have seen that the bourgeoisie has failed to the democratic revolution. The middle classes cannot be congenerally speaking and in their own consciousness tied to the capitalist system. Hence only the Black working class can take the task of completing the democratisation of the country on its shoulders.
It alone can unite all the oppressed and exploited classes. It has become the leading class in the building of the nation. It has to redefine nation and abolish the reactionary definitions of the bourgeoisie and of the reactionary The nation has to be structured by and in the interests of the Black working class. But it can only do changing the entire system. A non-racial capitalism is impossible
Africa. The class struggle against capitalist exploitation and the national struggle against racial oppresstruggle under the working class and its organisations. Class, colour in the national liberation movement.
Politically - in the short term and culturally - in the long ter, the ways in which these insights are translated into practice are of the greatest moment. Although no hard and fast rules are available and few of them are absolute, the following are crucial points in regard to the practical ways in which we should build the nation of Azania and destroy the separatist tendencies amongst us.
Political and economic organisations of the working people should as far as possible be open to all oppresexploited people regardless of colour.
While it is true that the Group Areas Act and other laws continue to concentrate people in their organisations - geographically speaking largely along colour, it is imperative and possible that the organisations themselves should not be structured along these lines. The same political organisations should and can function in all the ghettoes and group areas, people must and do identify with the same organisations and not with 'ethnic' organisations.
All struggles (local, regional and national) should be linked up. No struggle should be one colour group alone. The President's Council proposals, for example, should not be analysed and acted upon as of interest to 'Coloured' and 'Indians' only. The Koorhof Bills should be clearly seen and fought as affecting all the oppressed and exploited people.
Cultural organisations that are not locally or geographically limited for valid community reasons should open to all oppressed and exThe historic role of the
The Black working class is the driving force of the liberation struggle in South Africa. It has to that the leadership of this struggle remains with it if our efforts are not disaster. The Black working class has as a magnet that draws all society, organises them for liberation and infuses them with the consistent democratic socialist ideas of racial capitalism as we
In this struggle the idea of a single nation is vital because it represents the real interest of the working class and therefore of the future socialist Azania. *Ethnic', national group or racial group ideas of nationhood in the final analysis strengthen the position of the middle class or even the capitalist oppressors themselves. I repeat, they pave the way for the catastrophic separatist struggles that we have witnessed in other parts of Africa. Let us never forget that more than a million people were massacred in the Biafran war, let us not forget the danger represented by the race riots' of 1949. Today, can choose a different path. We have to create an ideological, political and cultural climate in which this solution becomes possible ... 1. Abdullah Abdurrahman was a leader of the first significant organisation of the Coloured people the African People's Organisation, founded in 1902. Though a largely Coloured organisation the group was in favour of Black unity. However, Abdurraman was opposed to mass action and sought to use the voting power of Coloureds and Africans to influence events. His efforts were singularly unsuccessful. Gandhi, later become a vital figure in the Indian independence struggle, during his time in South Africa founded, in 1894 the Natal Indian Congress. [Note by International Viewpoint']
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