The social demands of these Africans aimed at an improvement of their position, the model invoked being their own former opulence in land and cattle.
    In 1954 Tomlinson came to the conclusion that by and large the Africans in the reserves still adhered to the communal cultivation of land. Houghton notes in this context:

    "Communal tenure under which the land is held in the
    majority of Bantu Reserves, is an adaptation of the
    traditional systems of land usage."

    The African male population - between 16 and 60 years (28) - normally woorks for nine months a year, often however for eighteen months at a stretch, on the white farms, in the factories, or in mines hundreds of kilometres away from their families. (29) This entails the destruction of their family lives and their being reduced to two basic functions: the sale of their labour and the production of a new generation of potential toilers. (30)

    Another fact to be taken into account is the near absence of any independent stratum of smallholding peasants up to this day; the landless blacks commute between city and country as migratory labourers, their consciousness uneasily positioned between the peasant and proletarian modes. Around 1936 already almost three quarters of the total African population were harnessed to the capitalist working process, without however being at the same time genuinely integrated into capitalist society, for the relationship between market economy and traditional economy - a dependence relationship dictated by the interests of capital - is the conditio sine qua non for thhe ruthless exploitation of the Africans.

    In other words, these South Africans are no longer masters of their own lives, let alone of the productive part of their life span. They are prohibited from evolving their specific African personality. By virtue of their subordinate position in the South Africa class and race society they remain forcibly debarred from any progressive development.

--------------------
28  The average life expectancy of the blacks is 37 years, that of the whites 67 years.
29  In 1956 Tomlinson wrote, „Migratory labour ... leads to the absence of men at their most productive time of life ... With the exception of cripples and disabled persons, nearly all males are employed outside the Bantu areas at one or another stage.“ See Tomlinson Report..., p. 9.
30  Cf. also D. Guérin, Negroes on the March, trans. D. Ferguson, (New York: George L. Weissmann; London: Grange Publications, 1956), p. 27-42.

    Africans do not work in white South Africa because they love their master or their alienated labour but because colonial exploitation had reduced their lives to an animal level and restricted their human needs to purely physical reproduction. (31) The agrarian policy of the South African colonial government has contributed a great deal to the miserable situation of the Africans. We should now like to demonstrate with the aid of a number of quotations how the South African colonial ministers and senators consciously carried out their agrarian policy to the detriment of the Africans since 1936.
    Seven years after the Hertzog laws the Minister for Native Questions bought land for the express purpose of enlarging the scheduled areas, although this purchase was still inadequate to bring them up to the size legally determined for the blacks, viz. 13.7% of South Africa’s land surface. (32) But speaking before parliament he declared unequivocally that the government was not interested in a settled black peasantry but that its prime concern was to make available a labour force for the primary, secondary and tertiary sector of the country’s capitalistically run economy.
    He pointed out,

    "We do not buy this land for the Natives to settle down and
    become peasants. We but it for the Natives to plough
    while they go out to work." (33)

    In the same year (1943) Mr. Gemnill, an employee of the Chamber of Mines in charge of recruiting cheap black labour declared,

    „If you pay the Native more wages, or if you give them
    more land, he is going to stay at home. He is not going
    to work in the mines.“ (ibid.)

    The separation of the African from the arable soil was consciously postulated. This was in keeping with the colonial policy of British imperialism and Boer herrenvolkism, which aimed at exploiting the African economically, oppressing him politically, and discriminating against him racially. In a parliamentary debate in 1943 Senator Malcomess stated:

--------------------
31  Cf. Ernest Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory. 2 vols. (New York/London: Monthly Review Press, 1968), vol. 1, p. 288. Cf. also Franz J.T. Lee, „Arbeitsbedingungen unter Apartheid“, in: Was tun? Frankfurt a. Main, July 1976, pp. 9 sq.
32  In 1956 Houghton wrote, „The present extent of the Bantu areas is 17.500.000 morgen or approximately 12.9 per cent of the Union“. See The Tomlinson Report..., p. 7.
33  Quotations from the South African Hansard. Quoted from I.B. Tabata, The Awakening..., p. 56 sq.

    „What is driving the Natives from the Reserves into the towns
    is hunger, want of land and the poll tax. Forty per cent of
    the population of the Reserves do not own any land.“ (ibid.)

    Replying to the request by some senators to make more land in the Zulu reserve with its very fertile soil available for European cultivation, Senator Brookes said,

    „... trying to get land for European settlement in Zululand
    is an absolutely unfair thing. ... We have already got a
    great deal of the best land in Zululand taken away from the
    Natives, and now to take away what is left. ...“ (ibid.)

    Senator Vermeulen countered laconically,

    „The intention was not to give land to the Natives on land
    owned by European farmers. ... What must become of them?
    Let me say immediately that there is lots of room for those
    people on the farms. There is a serious shortage of labour
    on the farms.“ (ibid.)

 The Boer Senator Vermeulen was speaking on behalf of the agricultural sector, which forms the traditional backbone of the ‘Nationalist Party’. It is precisely in the Boer stronghold - the platteland - that the grimmest social and economic condditions pertain. Shula Marks, a South Africans historian, has this to say about the black rural proletariat:

    "Even today this 40 per cent of the African population
    partly still live under conditions of medieval serfdom."  (34)

    Concerning the miserable condition of migratory labourers in the entire Third World, Mandel writes,

    "He is often a seasonal or migrant worker; if he holds
    another job during the dead season he can just about
    attain the bare existential minimum. If he lacks such a
    job - as happens particularly in underdeveloped countries -
    he is bound to sink into the deepest human misery." (35)

    This is a fitting description of the fate of South African rural labourers. Senator Vermeulen wanted to sentence millions of blacks to this miserable condition instead of returning their land to them. His colleague, Senator Basner, summed up the whole debate as follows:

    "The Native must not get enough land on which he
    could become a settled peasant. He must get only
    enough land to place his family, but he must go out
    to work." (36)

--------------------
34  Quoted from Freimut Duves, Kap ohne Hoffnung, (Hamburg: Rohwolt, 1965), p. 123.
35  Ernest Mandel, Marxistische Wirtschaftstheorie..., p. 307.
36  Quoted from I.B. Tabata, see before.

    In the same year (1943) African resistance against this further theft of land increased. In various reserves, such as Witzieshoek, Ciskei, Zululand, Zeerust, and Sekhukhuniland, uprisings took place.

    With the aid of new amendments to the 1913 Land Act the colonial government in 1945 tried finally to translate all expropriation laws into practice by means of the so-called Rehabilitation Scheme. As always had been the case in similar circumstances, the measures taken under this scheme were carried out under the smokescreen of projects favourable to the Africans. In order to counteract soil erosion the Africans were to reduce their live-stock - already decimated on previous occasions - even further and let the land lie fallow ffor a certain period. The true reasons, however, was a different one: after the second industrial revolution in South Africa, which had been gathering momentum since World War II, the need for a massive supply of African labour was becoming even more pressing, especially in order to enhance the rapid growth of the processing industry. For this purpose thousands of blacks had to be forced to leave the reserves for the industrial centres. (37) According to Houghton, 100.000 South Africans were working in factories in 1915. Between 1945 and 1954 this number rose to 667.000, of whom there were 66% blacks, earning only 64 million pounds sterling out of a total industrial wage of 164 million.

    Everywhere in the country the resistance against the increasingly repressive measures of the colonial regime escalated. The ‘Non European Unity Movement’ (NEUM) founded in 1943 and the ‘All African Convention’, the only mass movements whose policy catered for the radical cravings of the reserve dwellers, steadily gained influence. In the largest reserve - the Transkei - the various spontaneously organized African movements, joined forces in the ‘Transkei Organized Bodies’ (T.O.B.). Later on they merged with the A.A.C.

--------------------
37  Cf. Tabata’s theses in his books, 'The Rehabilitation Scheme - A New Fraud', and 'The Boycott - A New Political Weapon'. See also 'South AAfrica’s Changing Economy', Papers by Samuels, Houghton and Fourie (Johannesburg: S.A.I.R.R., 1955), p. 19-35.

"From then on every village thoughout the Transkei, in-
cluding those that had been tricked into accepting it,
rose against the Rehabilitation Scheme. Agitation against
it soon spread to the Ciskei in the Cape Province, thence to
Witzieshoek in the Orange Free State to Zululand in Natal
and to Zeerust and Sekhukhuniland in the Transvaal.
Since the scheme was the chief instrument for chasing
labour out of the so-called reserves, the government had
to take stern measures to break the resistance." (38)

    Mass meetings took place everywhere. The Africans in the reserves rejected the agrarian policy of the master race in its entirety. In 1948 I.B. Tabata was arrested in Mount Ayliff, Pondoland, „while addressing thousands of peasants on a mountain slope.“ (39) He was acquitted later because the government feared an insurrection of the ‘peasants’. Since then numerous freedom fighters have been persecuted and murdered by government agents.
 This rebellion of the rural African population culminated in a series of ‘peasant revolts’.

"The government had no scruples to send the army to surround
particular villages were the opposition was strongest and fiercest.
The army mowed the people down with machine-guns. ...
From the shooting and persecution all over the country they
learnt that the problems of each village and each tribe were
identical and that the struggles of the people were indivisible.
Only the oppressed acting together as a whole, as a nation,
could resolve their difficulties and remove their disabilities.
That is why they readily accepted and found inspiration in
the slogan of the Unity Movement: WE BUILD A NATION." (40)
 

2. The National Question.

    Although the South African agents of imperialism insist on being a nation, the South African population cannot by any stretch of the imagination be termed a nation, not even in the bourgeois sense of the word. For a bourgeois nation presupposes a class society having come into existence through the original accumulation of capital, which in its political form - seen as an ideal type - evolved into parliamentary democracy predicated on the principle of political equality. In South Africa, however, the ‘universal suffrage’ is restricted to the advocates of white supremacy, a system which in practice „is analogous to that of one-party government, but with the important premise that the National Party may be voted out of power“. (41)

--------------------
38  Apdusa, Organ of the Unity Movement, vol. II, No. 12, June / September 1967, p. 12 sq.
39  ibid., p. 12.
40  ibid., p. 13.
41  Leo Kuper, An African Bourgeoisie. Race, Class and Politics in South Africa (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1965), p. 68.

    The partisans of apartheid do not even bother to maintain theoretically the formal principle of ‘universal equality’ or the fiction of a ‘common interest’. Instead they create artificial differences between the oppressed, e.g. by maintaining separate schools and universities for blacks, Coloureds, and Indians, or by forcibly resetting racial groups in barren wastelands inhabited by people of the same pigmentation or even the same „tribe“.

    In the face of such attempts at a division of forces, especially since the term ‘apartheid’ has been transformed into ‘multinational development', the propagation of national unity in the struggle against the deprivation of political rights and economic repression constitutes a progressive element. It must be based on an awareness of the fact that colonial exploitation stunts the lives of all and that only a solidary struggle is susceptible of changing socio-economic conditions. In this process two aspects have to be taken into consideration, of which the latter is gaining ever greater significance. In the first place it is imperative to debunk the differences resulting from the varying ethnic origins of the oppressed as incidental. Even liberal critics consider them inadequate criteria for the functioning of a capitalist society geared to maximum productivity. In the second place, however, the social classes created by capitalism, partly by legislative measures, the masses of African workers and ‘peasants’ as well as the numerically insignificant group of petty bourgeois, must be tied together by a solidary political consciousness.

    All of them have a stake in the abolition of the social, economic, and sexual limitations imposed upon them. (42) This does not imply, however, that their ideas about the form and content of social change are identical or are being left untouched by historical processes.
    Thus the liberation movements in South Africa, e.g. the A.A.C. or the N.E.U.M., used to see themselves, and even do so to this day, as national liberation movements. The content of the category ‘national’ is not, however, amenable to an easy definition since it changes in the historical process and is contingent upon the level of consciousness each liberation movement has achieved and its concrete claims for the transformation of social reality.

---------------------
42  L. Kuper, op.cit., p. 401.

    In a society in which economic exploitation by a dominant minority is concealed by the ideological smoke-screen of racial segregation, and whose social and economic structure strictly speaking still shows colonial features, the category ‘national’ can have a number of implications for the oppressed majority, whose members, before being systematically debilitated by colonialism, had not yet developed a common identity as a unified social body. As ideal types these  implications appear as follows:

1. The gaining by force of bourgeois democratic rights and the „political
    liberation“ of oppressed individuals.
2. A radical split-off, setting off the oppressed from the oppressors.
3. The emancipation of the oppressed classes by means of an active class
    policy aiming at the seizure of political and economic control.

    In the first case the oppressed group fights for its integration into existing economic and political conditions. (43) „Nation“ here formally means only a group integrated under several aspects but retaining its class structure.
 The second case derives from the notion of fatefully determined, insuperable differences supposed to legitimate a total segregation without any critical consideration of their historical relativity and the possibility of supersession. (44)
    The third case is based on an analysis that takes cognizance of the nexus between colonial exploitation, i.e. the forcible perpetuation of a system guaranteeing cheap labour and high profits, as well as of the political, industrial, and sexual colour bar. (45) The existing differences, passed off as racial antagonisms by the dominant minority, are viewed as the expression of profit interest, the rule of which prevents the surplus value created by the coloured masses from being administered in the sense of a concrete democracy. The consequence is the abolition of all institutions that have made the profit motive an instrument of social and economic action.

--------------------
43  e.g. the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S.A. or the ‘Congress Movement’ in South Africa up to 1960.
44  e.g. the Stalinist propagation of a ‘Black Republic’ for Afro-Americans or South Africans in the ‘Thirties.
45  Cf. the policy of the ‘African People’s Democratic Union of Southern Africa’ (APDUSA - president: I.B. Tabata) and the ‘Partido Africano da Independencia da Guine e Cabo Verde’ (PAIGC - late Secretary General: Amilcar Cabral). See A. Cabral, Revolution in Guinea. An African people’s Struggle. Selected texts ed. R. Handyside (London: Stage 1, 1969).

    Within the framework of this concept the ‘national liberation’ of the colonized African workers and ‘peasants’ means nothing more and nothing less than the suppression of narrow-minded national (or ethic, cultural, linguistic and sexual) barriers concealing interests of domination. By virtue of the fact that the colonial relation of exploitation and the developmental phase of productive forces codetermine the purpose of the concept ‘nation’ in this analysis, it becomes a Marxist one:

"The workers have no country. No one can take from them what
they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all win
political power, must make itself the ruling class, must establish
itself as the nation - it is, so far, still national, though by no means
in the bourgeois sense of the term." (46)

 During the ‘Eighties' the national and land questions will form crucial issues within the liberation movement of South Africa.
 

3. Main Theses.

    By way of summary we should like to derive from this short historical overview the following theses, which are of crucial significance for the land and national question in South Africa:

1. The land question is a direct product of British imperialism and Boer
    herrenvolkism, a result of their policy of economic exploitation of the
    African.
2. The Africans’ political demand for the return of their land is intimately
    linked with the striving for general, democratic rights, i.e. the land
    question is germane to the national and revolutionary question.
3. The great majority of Africans never owned land as private property in the
    past, does not own any today and never will obtain any as long as the
    present socio-economic colonial status quo pertains in South Africa.
4. The Africans’ desire to acquire land, i.e. to become peasants de facto,
    derives from a yet immature political consciousness, as the majority of
    reserve dwellers attribute their misery to the lack of land instead of to
    being deprived of politico economic rights.

--------------------
46  The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ed. D. Ryazanoff (New York: Russel & Russel, 1963), p. 49-50. See also: No Siswe, One Azania, One Nation, Zed Press, London, 1979.

5. As early as 1945 the majority of the African population was a class of
    dependent wage earners - according to Marx a „class in itself“ - allthough it
    had not yet developed a proletarian consciousness. Since then it has been
    rapidly developing into a „class for itself“ - into the future nation of South
    Africa.
6. It will not be necessary to redistribute the land as private property among
    South Africans after a radical democratic revolution. It is to be
    re-transformed into communal property.
7. The only solution of the land or national question in South Africa is bound
    to be the total liquidation of the imperialist and hegemonial social system
    by a radical social revolution of the African wage slaves.
 

C. The Position of the Socialist Groupings.

1. General.

    In 1919 the first Marxist-Leninist organization, the ‘Industrial Socialist League of South Africa’ (ISLSA) was founded in South Africa by Socialists and trade unionists immigrated from England. The first edition of their official newspaper, 'The Bolshevik', appeared in October, 1919. This workers’ organization was carried by the enthusiasm and hope that the October Revolution has generated among Socialist workers and intellectuals all over the world. One of its most essential features therefore was its internationalism:

"On the sixth day of this month, all loyal workers of South
Africa, will join us in celebrating the second anniversary
of the Russian Revolution. ... Wherever there is a toiling
slave struggling for his emancipation from Capitalist bondage,
from every corner of the globe, from Sweden to Japan, from
Alaska to South Africa, everywhere will the memory of the
Sixth November, instil hope and courage - courage to
carry the fight on, hope for better times." (47)

    In the November issue of 'The Bolshevik', the South African workers were called upon to assemble on 4th November, 1919, „at eight o’clock sharp in the festival hall of the City Hall“ in Cape Town to celebrate the second anniversary of the October Revolution and thus to demonstrate that in South Africa „the Bolshevist ideas are gaining ground each day“.

--------------------
47  The Bolshevik, Cape Town, Vol.1, No. 2, November 1919.

    In their ‘Socialist bookshop’ the ISLSA, among other books, offered the following titles for sale:
   - Six Weeks in Russia in 1919, by Arthur Ransome;
    - The Russian Revolution, by Leon Trotsky; and
    - The Collapse of the Second International, by V.I. Lenin. (48)

    In subsequent issues of 'The Bolshevik' appeared analyses of themes such as „Reform or Revolution“ (49), „Socialism versus Violence“ (50), „The League and the Third International“ (51), „ABC of Bolshevism“ (52), „White Workers Awake!“ (53), „A New Communist party“ (54), and „The Task of the Proletariat“ (Lenin) (55). While the ISLA claimed to be an organization of all exploited in South Africa, its publications (56) were only addressed to a fictitious reader, the proletarian, whose consciousness was in consonance with European conditions. This is obvious from the way the proletarians’ historical task was formulated:

    "The abolition of the wage system and the establishment of
    a Socialist Commonwealth based on the principles of self-
    governing industries, in which the workers will work and
    control the instruments of production, distribution and
    exchange for the benefit of the entire community." (57)

    In September 1920 the members of the ISLSA decided to found a Communist party. At a rally they laid down the basic principles of the future party:

    - Adherence to the third International.
    - Mass Action and abstention from Parliamentary action.
    - The Soviet system and Proletarian dictatorship.
    - The name of the organization to be either Communist League
      or Party. (58)

    Ten months later, on 21st July 1921, Africa’s first Communist party, the ‘South African Communist Party’ (SACP) sprang to life. (59)
    On the orders of the International, all Communists accused of ‘Trotskyism’ were expelled from the SACP in 1929. They founded the ‘Lenin Club’ in Cape Town. During the next three years two movements developed within this group: the „orthodox Marxists-Leninists“, who called themselves Spartacists (60), and followers of Lev Davidovitch Bronstein (Trotsky), who considered themselves the official representatives of „revolutionary Socialism“ in South Africa.

--------------------
48  The Bolshevik, November 1919.
49  The Bolshevik, December 1919.
50  The Bolshevik, January 1920.
51  The Bolshevik, January 1920.
52  The Bolshevik, March 1920.
53  The Bolshevik, June 1920.
54  The Bolshevik, September 1920.
55  The Bolshevik, December 1920.
56  The Bolshevik only appeared in a English edition.
57  The Bolshevik, February 1920.
58  The Bolshevik, September 1920.
59  The development of the SACP up to 1945 has been described on pages 83-94 above.
60  They had, however, neither theoretical nor practical links with the ‘Spartakusbund’ (1914-1918).

    Both factions were strongly opposed to „Stalinism“ in South Africa, i.e. the policy of the SACP. Apart from their divergent analyses which we shall treat in this chapter, both were influenced by Trotsky. Their critical analyses of society formulated in the ‘Thirties formed the basis for the policy of the ‘Unity’ movement. Tabata’s political theories cannot be analysed in their Marxist context without taking their influence into account. The young  Socialists who are active in the ‘Congress’ movement today (61) were either compelled by experiencing the ever more pronounced contradictions in South African society to accept similar theoretical positions, or tacitly adopted the correct theses of the Trotskyite analysts.
 

2. The Spartacist Theses.

 The political development in the ‘Lenin Club’ around 1934 was described by Edward Roux as follows:

"In Cape Town, Trotskyism had flourished among the European
intellectuals during 1934 and 1935. Lectures and debates at
the Lenin Club drew large audiences. ... In 1934 the Cape
Town Lenin Club split into two sections. One section, calling
itself the Workers Party of South Africa, formed a new
club, the Spartacus Club. The others eventually became
the Fourth International (Trotskyists) of South Africa." (62)

    In the ‘Lenin Club’, which also had offices in Johannesburg and Pretoria, members mainly discussed three questions:

1. The relative importance of the land and national question in the South
    African liberation struggle.
2. The differences between British imperialism and Boer nationalism.
3. The question whether a Marxist-Leninist Party in South Africa should
    constitute itself immediately into an underground movement or work
    legally as long as possible.

    The hottest debate was set off by the agrarian or peasant question and its relation to the national question. We should like to treat the content of this discussion here at some length.
    Between 1936 and 1939 the ‘Spartacus Club’ published the monthly Umlilo-Mollo (The Flame) (63) in Johannesburg. In it, leading members like R. Lee, Bullac, B.T. Phashe and C.B.I. Dladla discussed various socialist theories which aimed at analysing South African conditions and elaborating a social or revolutionary theory. (64)

--------------------
61  Especially in the P.A.C., which today is also strongly influenced by Mao.
62  Edward Roux, Time Longer Than Rope..., p. 213.
63  Erroneously referred to as The Spark by other authors. It was continued by B. Kies, I.B. Tabata and others as The Torch.
64  The Trotskyites tried to achieve the same in their organ, Workers’ Voice.

    Edward Roux remarked on this paper:

    "It was capably edited and during its five years of life it
    published a number of interesting articles and contributed
    a searching analysis of South African conditions in terms
    of Bolshevik theory." (65)

    In their publications the Spartacists presented the following points of view: (66)

1. The agrarian revolution is „the Alpha and Omega of the South
    African revolution“.
2. The South African Union about 1933 possesses a preponderantly
    feudalist structure.
3. There is no mayor difference between the Boer and British
    colonial overlords.
4. The majority of subjugated Africans has the status of dependent
    wage earners.
5. The blacks are characterized by a peasant consciousness.
6. After the national democratic revolution the land must be
    redistributed in the form of private property.
7. The peasant revolution will bring forth a bourgeois democratic
    social and political order.

    The Spartacists insisted that the real task of a Socialist party should be the mobilization and direction of the landless black peasant masses in the reserves and on the Boer farms on the one hand, and call for agrarian reform on the other. To them, the African wage slaves working in industries and mines were simply „peasants from the Reserves“, „native workers“ or „toiling masses“ but not a modern colonial proletariat. In their writings they constantly dwell on the peasant past and origin of the miners or workers.

    "Today (1936) there are half a million miners toiling
    underground. They have been driven from their ancestral
    lands by taxation and famine ... The hundreds of
    thousands of native workers in secondary industry are
    herded in unsanitary ghettos called locations. ...
    A million poor whites have been uprooted from the soil
    and driven to the cities by hunger there to compete with
    the native labourers and to share the native standard
    of living." (67)

--------------------
65  Edward Roux, Time Longer Than Rope..., p. 312.
66  Compiled from Umlilo-Mollo, Youth in Revolt, Socialist Action, and The Revolutionary Communist, all newspapers published by the Spartacists between 1936 and 1939.
67  Umlilo-Mollo, Johannesburg, Vol.1, No.1, September 1936.

    Theoretically the ‘Workers’ Party of South Africa insisted on being a Marxist party drawing its orientation from the October Revolution:

    "The Workers Party of South Africa raises its banner, the
    banner of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, calling upon
    the workers of the whole world to overthrow the capitalist
    system and to set up a workers’ government with workers’
    control of industry. ... FOR THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL!
    FOR REVOLUTIONARY MARXISM!" (68)

    "Russia’s only hope lies in the world proletariat, in ex-
    tending the October Revolution as Lenin and Trotsky
    put it." (69)

    "In fighting Stalinism we struggle to defend the gains
    of the Russian Revolution and to extend October to
    embrace the whole world." (70)

    In their day-to-day policy and their immediate objectives the Spartacists remained, however, petty bourgeois and rooted in parliamentary democracy. The Socialists in the FIOSA, on the other hand, insisted on a policy of social revolution.
    With regard to class psychology and class consciousness the Spartacists failed to draw the correct political conclusions from South African reality. They claimed that Africans on the whole had evolved a mentality which was basically that of petty peasants, ignoring the fact that the migratory labourers and the urban proletariat, by dint of being involved in the capitalist production process, had actually evolved a proletarian consciousness, while it was the intellectuals who thought along petty-bourgeois lines, as reflected especially in the political leadership of the A.A.C., the N.E.U.M., and the ‘Congress Movement’, since 1936. (71)
    A. Mon was of the following opinion:

    "The Reserve dwellers are, in fact, tribal proletarians, and
    the centre of their livelihood lies in the towns and cities.
    ... even their peasant outlook is steadily being changed
    into a proletarian one by the development of industry." (72)

    The Unity Movement’s 10 Point Programme, which in its essential aspects was formulated by the Spartacists, contained mainly petty-bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic, social-reformist and pseudo-socialist demands. (73)

--------------------
68  Umlilo-Mollo, Johannesburg, Vol.1, No.1, September 1936.
69  Umlilo-Mollo, Johannesburg, Vol.1, No.2, October 1936.
70  Umlilo-Mollo, Johannesburg, Vol.1, No.3, November 1936.
71  Cf. Workers’ Voice, Vol.5, No.5, September 1946, p. 9-11.
72  Workers’ Voice, Vol.1, No.3, July 1945.
73  ibid.

    ‘Babeuf’ (74) formulated the Spartacists’ political view regarding the African peasants thus:

    "The Spartacists maintained that, despite their divorce
    from the land and their employment in industry in growing
    number, the migrant workers, farm workers and ruined
    cultivators are deeply wedded to the soil. Their outlook
    was agrarian, not industrial. The migrant workers employed
    in the mines and factories continued to retain a peasant
    outlook and, given the choice, would readily return to the
    land as small producers." (75)

    This accounts for the fact that Point 7 of the programme of the N.E.U.M. calls for a „redivision of the land“.
    The SACP, then under the leadership of Edward Roux, ‘Joffe and Co’ was bitterly attacked by the Spartacists:

    "Joffe and Co. are merely servers and faithful lackeys
    of their Moscow paymasters. ... If Roux and his chicken-
    hearted supporters have failed to draw the correct conclusions
    from the recent turn in the party, namely that the C.P.S.A.
    is nothing but a degenerate appendage of corrupt Moscow
    bureaucracy headed by Stalin, this need not deter genuine
    revolutionary elements from realizing that the correct
    course must be the break with the decayed third International." (76)

    The slogan of the ‘Black Republic’ was rejected in the same breath,

    "The slogan of the Independent Native Republic is in my
    opinion stupid, incorrect, misleading and confusing and
    consequently unfit for a revolutionary Bolshevik-Leninist
    Party, let alone identical with a Workers’ and Peasants’
    Government." (77)

    Instead, the ‘Workers’ Party of South Africa’ tried to translate the following objectives into reality,

    "... to rouse the masses of workers from apathy and in-
    difference born of despair and past defeats, to point the
    lead to the final victory of the working class, bringing
    equality of races, socialism, a new era and new hopes
    for all humanity. These are the ideas and policies that
    Umlilo-Mollo will expound and defend." (78)
 

3. The Political Theories of the Trotskyites.

    Edward Roux made the following general comment on the influence of the FIOSA,

    "This section of Trotskyites gained considerable influence
    among the younger generation of Coloured teachers and
    university students in the Cape." (79)

--------------------
74  Pseudonym of a leading African Trotskyite today living in London and working in the P.A.C.
75  ‘Babeuf’, „Trotskyism in South Africa, 1930-1954,“ an unpublished lecture written in London in 1968. Also cf. his articles in Workers’ Voice, vols. 5-6, 1946 sq.
76  Umlilo-Mollo, September 1936, „Letter sent by Comrade Dladla to the Political Bureau of the C.P.S.A.“
77  ibid.
78  ibid.
79  E. Roux, Time Longer Than Rope..., p. 313.

    ‘Babeuf’ characterized their contribution to the South African revolution as follows,

"... the FIOSA made the most valuable contributions to political
theory, the materialist conception of South African history and the
understanding of the liberation movement’s problems. ... It helped
to educate a new generation of Marxists who went to propagate the
Trotskyist position in the various national organizations." (80)

    The theoretical positions of the FIOSA can best be described by referring to some articles published by A. Mon, its chief theoretician, in the Workers’ Voice in the years 1944/45. (81)
    Mon summarized the theses of the FIOSA thus,

    "It was the majority in the Lenin Club which laid emphasis
    chiefly on the national struggle for full democratic rights;
    which characterized the Nationalist (Boer) bourgeoisie as
    having differences with British imperialism mainly over the
    supply of cheap labour and the political state-form (republic);
    and which held that a workers’ party should work legally as
    long as there are still possibilities for legal work." (82)

    According to Mon the origin of the land question can be traced back to British imperialist policy, which saw its main task in creating a black proletariat „kept in constant readiness in large labour reservoirs, the Reserves“. (83) The solution of the land question could therefore not be sought in an isolated struggle against landlordism but above all in „crushing imperialism, which has its bastions in the cities“. (84) He held that the most important element which was to determine the theory as well as the strategy and tactics of the revolution was the nexus between the Africans’ status as landless peasants crowded together in Reserves and the requirements of capitalist industry:

    "In order to have at hand a ready source of controllable cheap
    labour, imperialism has deliberately prevented the development
    of an African peasantry, for such a peasantry would live off the
    land, would reduce the number of human beasts of burden to be
    exploited in the mines, factories and on the farms." (85)

    In the light of the foregoing the land question, which was created by the overlords of South Africa in their own interest, turns out to be an integral part of colonial policy in general. Ernest Mandel has described the way in which this colonial policy was mostly implemented:

--------------------
80  ‘Babeuf’, „Trotskyism...“, op.cit.
81  Other influential Trotskyites were Hosea Jaffe, Peter Wilson, William Peters, E. Watson, and Z. Gamiet.
82  Workers’ Voice, Vol.1, No.3, July 1945, p.6.
83  ibid., p.7.
84  ibid.
85  ibid.

    "If the conditions of land ownership in Equatorial Africa and
    Black Africa had not been changed, it would have been
    impossible to introduce the capitalist mode of production there.
    But in order to introduce this mode of production, one had to
    separate the mass of the black population radically and brutally
    from its normal means of subsistence by extra-economic coercion (...)
    The black population had to be parked in areas - the native
    reserves, as they are cynically called - which were insufficient
    to feed the population." (86)

    Mon was convinced that a solution of the land question in South Africa could only be found by struggling against national and economic oppression:

    "The land struggle is part of the struggle against imperialism
    and national oppression. It is from this standpoint that we
    have to look upon the rural struggle." (87)

    In order to propagate „the linkage between the land and national questions“, Mon proposed to spread the Leninist slogan „Land and Liberty!“ among the black migrant workers. By first appealing to the immediate needs of rural Africans, the Socialist party was to lead them towards the national and eventually social-revolutionary struggle, and to arouse in them a nationally oriented political awareness. Mon thus insisted on „the land question being subsumed under the national question.“ (88) Analysing the various strata of the Africa rural population he came to the conclusion that there existed no black peasantry worth the name, neither in the European nor in the traditional African sense of the term; instead he recorded a „profound and revolutionary trend toward proletarianization and a proletarian outlook“ (89) among the black farm, urban and migrant workers. He argued that the rural proletariat and the Reserve dwellers could only be led to social revolutionary action by the urban workers, having achieved a higher level of awareness. With regard to the organizational question he proposed to modify the Leninist model, drawing the picture of an „alliance between urban and rural workers“ (90) under the leadership of a Marxist party as the vanguard of the proletariat. Mon wrote literally,

--------------------
86  Ernest Mandel, Einführung in die marxistische Wirtschaftstheorie, (Frankfurt a.M.: Verlag Neue Kritik, 1967), p. 28.
87  Workers’ Voice, July 1945, p.8.
88  ibid., p.9.
89  ibid.

    "Here in this country it is not so much, in fact hardly,
    a question of the alliance between the proletariat and
    peasantry, but rather a case of building up the alliance
    of the city workers and the farm workers, the vast majority
    of whom are wage slaves and commonly oppressed by the
    colour bar, segregation and lack of rights (including the
    right to land)." (91)

    And he added:

    "But this organization and this struggle cannot travel a correct
    path, unless guided by a revolutionary Leninist party of the
    workers." (92)

    The socialist objectives of this party must be „the establishment of a South African workers’ government and the expropriation of the imperialist national bourgeoisie.“ (93) To the call by the Stalinist SACP for a ‘Black Republic’ in South Africa, Mon replied as follows:

    "We do not attack it from the point of view of the White
    labour aristocracy, but from the viewpoint of the non-European
    toilers. ... It is in the interests of the struggle, the
    movement for full democratic rights to combat anti-White
    feeling, to unite Black and White toilers, and not to alienate
    the White workers with threats of Black Republic or non-European
    rule. ... We do not envisage a perspective where one race will
    rule another race in South Africa." (94)

    Although Mon had not given up hope to retrieve the ‘white labour aristocracy’ - the white proletariat- he formulated its negative historical role in no uncertain terms:

    "The White worker is always in between the broad mass of
    super-exploited non-European labour and the White ruling class.
    There his economic, social and political position is always
    privileged, ... The White labour aristocracy is part of the
    social bulwark of imperialism in this country." (95)

    Consequently the white workers cannot be the motor force of the South African revolution,

    "... the main basis, the foundation for any revolutionary
    change for South Africa ... is the non European. Either he
    will perform this change, or there will be no revolution at
    all in South Africa." (96)

    For ‘Babeuf’, South Africa’s political system is a form of oppression of the Africans which the State has created in the interest of the owners of capital. Hence violence is an inherent part of this system, which can only be abolished by counter violence. (97)

--------------------
90  ibid.
91  ibid., p.11.
92  ibid.
93  ibid.
94  A. Mon „The Colour Bar and the National Struggle for Full Democratic Rights“, in: Workers’ Voice, Vol.1, No.2, November 1944, p.7.
95  ibid., p.8.
96  ibid.
97  „The single combat between native and settler (...) takes the force of an armed and open struggle (...) The existence of an armed struggle shows that the people are decided to trust to violent methods only (...) In fact, as always, the settler has shown (the native) the way he should take if he is to become free...“ Frantz Fanon, 'The Wretched of the Earth'. trans. Constance Farrington (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), p. 66.

    "Not to believe in force, says Trotsky, is the same as not
    believing in gravitation. Our road to universal suffrage
    and therefore a free entrance into the historical processes
    at work in society lies through social revolution. Class
    force in the struggle for liberation and democracy lies
    not in parliament but outside parliament, in the revolution-
    ary working class." (98)

    The last sentence of the preceding quotation means that the counter violence of the oppressed is necessary and should take an exclusively extra-parliamentary form, a thesis which distinguishes the Trotskyites from the Stalinists:

    "Leninists have always and everywhere been against a
    Communist going into a capitalist CABINET, because Leni-
    nists believe that such cabinets are THE EXECUTIVE COM-
    MITTEES OF THE CAPITALIST CLASS, according to the
    teaching of Karl Marx’ famous definition of the State.
    It is the duty of Communists to fight against such govern-
    ments and to organize the workers to set up THEIR OWN
    GOVERNMENTS ON THE COMPLETE RUINS OF THE
    CAPITALIST GOVERNMENTS." (99)

--------------------
98  Workers’ Voice, Vol.6, No.1, July 1947.
99  ibid., Vol.4, No.6, August 1945. Cf. also Engel’s preface of 1886 to the Communist Manifesto.

    We shall try to summarize the most essential results of the analyses made by FIOSA as follows:

1. The national question, under which the land question has to be subsumed,
    is of prime significance for the South African liberation struggle.
2. Since 1945 at the latest South African society has been characterized
    by capitalist relations of production, even though some pockets of past
    forms of social and economic organization may still co-exist with them.
3. This is the result of quite specific forms of exploitation, all of which
    basically serve the same purpose, viz. the creation of a social structure
    that guarantees the constant flow of docile, cheap black labour.
4. The Africans have been compelled to become wage slaves, and have
    rapidly developed a commensurate consciousness.
5. An alliance between urban and rural workers, which should be led by a
    Socialist party, has to be organized.
6. The solution of the land question can only be brought about by the
    expropriation of the big white estate owners and the free and easy
    transformation of the land into communal property.
7. The path to the socialist revolution in South Africa must lead via the
    agrarian and national revolutions, which have the same socio-economic
    basis.
8. The transition from capitalism to socialism in South Africa will not be
    effected by means of parliamentary reforms but through the violent
    extra-parliamentary class struggle.
 

D. Trotsky’s ‘Letter to South Africa’.

    In early 1933 the controversy between the Spartacists and Trotskyites in the Lenin Club had reached a deadlock. The two parties could not agree as to whether the ‘agrarian revolution’ or ‘the struggle for the abolition of national oppressions’ ought to be its political main task.
    Each group therefore drew up a number of theses that were to form the basis of an overall revolutionary programme and dispatched it to Lev Trotsky in Paris in the hope that he might be able to solve the contradictions.     However, only the theses of the ‘Workers’ Party of  South Africa’, i.e. the Spartacists, reached Trotsky, and he replied to them on 20th April, 1933. (100)

--------------------
98  Workers’ Voice, Vol.6, No.1, July 1947.
99  ibid., Vol.4, No.6, August 1945. Cf. also Engel’s preface of 1886 to the Communist Manifesto.
100  The letter was published in 'Worker’s Voice' of November 1944 (Vol. 1, No. 2), p. 18-20. Cf. also Trotsky’s ‘Open Letter’ to the South African ‘comrades’, published by 'The Militant', New York, 2 July, 1932.

    In his analysis, Trotsky concentrated on the problem of the national and land questions. He argued that the national question, i.e. the Africans’ struggle for bourgeois-democratic rights, was the key to mobilizing the South African working class. The gist of his argument runs as follows:

    "The South African possessions of Great Britain form a
    Dominion only from the point of view of the White
    minority. From the point of view of the Black majority
    South Africa is a slave colony."

     From this he drew the conclusion - still valid today - that no social revolution in South Africa can be successful unless the majority of the population, that is to say the blacks, is actively involved in it, nor are democratic rights for all conceivable without the liquidation of the British Empire in South Africa:

    "No social upheaval (in the first instance, an agrarian
    revolution) is thinkable with the retention of British
    imperialism in the South African Dominion."

    Trotsky labelled South Africa a "slave colony’’ because four fifths of its total population are unable to exert any political influence on the most important social decisions affecting their own future. The silent majority of Africans must first struggle for its national self-determination. (101) Since Trotsky was, however, insufficiently informed about actual South African conditions and had to reply mainly on the Spartacists theses, he ignored the fact that the black ‘’slaves’’ in the Reserves were not "peasants’’ but wage slaves from the point of view of their social function, for as early as 1930 the process of integrating the blacks into the white-dominated economy, which was in the main dependent on the mining industry, was already affecting a majority of them. The most important aspect of this process of integration, however, was precisely that it sought to forestall the formation of an independent stratum of smallholders producing for the market, since such a development would have been incompatible with capitalist interest, especially gold mining.

--------------------
101  Cf. Trotsky’s preface to the Communist Manifesto published in Afrikaans in Cape Town in 1937.

    Trotsky felt that,

    "The backward Native peasant masses directly feel the
    agrarian oppression much more than they do the national
    oppression."

    Nonetheless he insisted that the South African Marxists ought to make the ‘"peasant masses“ progressively aware of the necessary "political and national conclusions on the basis of the experience of the struggle.“
Since the millions of non-whites, especially the blacks, would be the main protagonists of a new society in South Africa, the transitional State of the ‘Black Republic’, i.e., the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat (Marx), must be strongly impregnated with the will and political consciousness of the blacks.
    At a first glance Trotsky’s concept of the ‘Black Republic’ seems to bear great resemblance to the ‘Independent Native Republic’ propagated by Stalin. (102) But the two concepts do differ, notably in questions of strategy and defining the function of such a state.
    In contrast to the Stalinists in South Africa, Trotsky considered the ‘Black Republic’ merely as a transitional State, as the product of a socialist revolution that was to consolidate the political power of the Africans and form the launching pad for a permanent revolutionizing effort. Trotsky envisaged a colonial revolution such as it was actually to take place in Cuba later. (103)
    For the Stalinists the ‘Independent Native Republic’ meant a state which was to be set up as peacefully as possible by a bourgeois-democratic revolution. According to them the Socialist revolution could only be achieved at a larger stage. In other words, South Africa was to develop through a revolution on the model of the Russian February revolution from a dominion within the British Empire to a sovereign nation state with a bourgeois African government. Trotsky’s position, on the other hand was closer to the Marxist-Leninist one, which we now wish to outline briefly.

--------------------
102  See the Comintern directives of 1928 and 1930 to the SACP as well as the resolution of the V th Congress of the Comintern on revolutionary movements in the colony (1928).
103  Peter Gäng and Reimut Reiche came to the conclusion that ‘’more than any other revolutions in economically underdeveloped countries the upheaval in Cuba is to be understood as a permanent revolution“. Modelle der kolonialen Revolution (Frankfurt a.M.: edition Suhrkamp 1967), p. 66.

    In his ‘’Marginal Notes to the Programme of the German Workers’ Party“ (104) Karl Marx had written,

    "Between capitalist and Communist society lies the period
    of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other.
    There corresponds to this also a political transition period
    in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary
    dictatorship of the proletariat." (105)

    In ‘’The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky“ Lenin pointed out,

    "Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in
    comparison with medievalism, nevertheless remains - and under
    capitalism cannot but remain - restricted, truncated, false
    and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a deception for
    the exploited, for the poor." (106)

    It is therefore necessary, even while establishing the ‘’dictatorship of the proletariat“, to lay the basis for ‘’a proletarian democracy“ or ‘’a democracy for the poor“. (107) The exploiting class must be ‘’forcibly“ overwhelmed and kept down. This ‘’simple truth“ (Lenin) is summed up by him as follows,

    "Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted
    by any laws.
    The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule
    won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat
    against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any
    laws." (108)

    The power thus accruing is however ‘’political power“, i.e. the "organized use of force by one class in order to keep another class in subjection“. (109) According to Marx and Engels, the proletariat can only reach its historical goal ‘’by the forcible overthrow of the whole existent social order.“ (110)
In his letter to the South African Marxists Trotsky explains this class struggle:

--------------------
104  First published by Engels in 1891 as ‘’Critique of the Gotha Programme“.
105  Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in Two Volumes (London: Lawrence and Wishart, Ltd., 1958), Vol. II, p. 32-33. Italics in the original.
Lenin erroneously ascribes this quotation to Marx’s ‘’Letter to Wilhelm Bracke“ of 5th May, 1875. Cf. V.I. Lenin, Selected Works in Two Volumes (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1947) (W.F.)
106  V.I. Lenin, ibid., p. 370.
107  V.I. Lenin, ibid., p. 375.
108  V.I. Lenin, ibid., p. 365.
109  The Communist Manifesto ... ed. D. Ryazanoff, op.cit., p. 53.
110  The Communist Manifesto ... p. 68.

    "The historical weapon of national liberation can only be
    the CLASS STRUGGLE. ... A victorious revolution is
    unthinkable without the awakening of the Native masses.
    ... Under these conditions the South African Republic
    will emerge first of all as a Black Republic; this does
    not exclude, of course, either full equality for Whites
    or brotherly relations between the two races (which depends
    mainly upon the conduct of the Whites). But it is entirely
    obvious that the predominant majority of the population,
    liberated from slavish dependence, will put a certain
    imprint on the State."

    For Trotsky, state power in the hands of the Africans does not only mean formal political independence but also an element in the struggle against the domination of capital that includes the possibility of solidarity between black and white workers:

    "We must accept with all decisiveness and without any
    reservations the complete and unconditional right of the
    Blacks to independence. Only on the basis of a mutual
    struggle against the domination of the White exploiters
    can be cultivated and strengthened the solidarity of
    Black and White toilers."

    Trotsky issues a strong warning against the ‘’devil of (white) chauvinism“; he clearly confronts the white proletariat with the alternative of joining forces either with the blacks or with the imperialists,

    "In any case, the worst crime on the part of the revolution-
    naries would be to give the smallest concessions to the
    privileges and prejudices of the Whites."

    As indicated in the previous chapter, Trotsky considered the foundation of two states in South Africa, a white and a black one, a distinct possibility. But he warned against ‘Bantustans’, i.e. separate pseudo states rammed down the throats of the blacks. He contrasted the coercion implied in the Bantustan concept with the Africans’ free decision for their own black state:

"It is possible that the Blacks will AFTER VICTORY find it
necessary to form a separate Black State in South Africa;
certainly we will not FORCE THEM to establish a separate
Black State; but let them make this admission freely, on
the basis of their own experience, and not forced by the
sjambok of the White oppressors."

And he added,

    "The proletarian revolutionaries must never forget the right
    of the oppressed nationalities to self-determination, in-
    cluding a full separation, and of the duty of the proletariat
    of the oppressing nation to defend this right with arms in
    hand if necessary."

    Trotsky insisted that the South African revolution was not a race struggle. In the ‘Black Republic’ the whites were to be legally placed on an equal footing with the blacks, and ‘’brotherly relations“ were to be created between the two ‘’ races“. For Trotsky the national character of the South African revolution not only implied a chance of class relationships but also of ‘’ the relation ... between the races’’. The South African Marxists were to solve ‘’the national (racial) problem ... in words and deeds.“ He refused to offer any ready-made directives: ‘’The proletarian party can and must solve the national problem by its own methods.“ While South Africa’s Stalinists were of the opinion that the national question could be solved by peaceful means, Trotsky insisted on a violent class struggle, mentioning the October Revolution as an example.

    "The solution of the national question (in Russia) was
    brought about by the October Revolution."

    He further showed that this struggle presupposed the alliance of the  "urban and rural population“. He also pointed out that the revolutionary party (‘’the Bolshevik-Leninist Party“) could play an important role as a catalyst in this process by politicizing the masses and enhancing their self-confidence, in other words, by assuming the function of a ‘’midwife“ of the revolution. How seriously Trotsky took his thesis of South Africa as a ‘’slave colony“ is shown by the fact that he did not consider the revolution in Southern Africa merely an internal affair of the indigenous black population, but also related it to the remaining parts of colonized Africa. He expected the South African revolution  to be a decisive, progressive element in the Pan-African struggle against white hegemony and imperialism.

Trotsky’s theses can be summed up as follows:

1. The agrarian and national questions, being both products of European
    colonization, have a common basis.
2. They can only be solved by a socialist revolution, i.e. by the class struggle
    and the liquidation of imperialism in South Africa.
3. The urban proletariat is to form the vanguard of this class struggle.
4. The Revolutionary Party is to function as the catalyst of the revolution.
5. A ‘Black Republic’ signifies the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, whose
    function is to stabilize the power relationships created by the social
    revolution.
6. A ‘’proletarian democracy“ based on a ‘’soviet system“ is to be the historic
    goal of the revolution.
7. The majority of the South African population, viz. the Africans themselves
    are to determine their own future.
8. The South African revolution is an integral part of the overall African
    revolution.

    As already mentioned, Trotsky’s theories went into the making of the  various programmes of the ‘Fourth International Organization of South Africa’ and the ‘Workers’ Party of South Africa’, i.e. the Spartacists. (111) In addition, Trotsky’s ideas strongly influenced the policy of the ‘Unity Movement’ (and of the ‘Pan African Congress of South Africa’) during the ‘Fifties and ‘Sixties, especially with regard to questions of organization, class structure, and revolution. This development will be pursued further in the next chapter.

    Indirectly, viz. through the Comintern directives addressed to the South African Communist Party (SACP), Joseph Stalin, too, has made a contribution of his own. Since 1953 the ‘Communist Party of South Africa’ has continued the policy of the former SACP. The concept of a ‘Native Republic' was quietly dropped, although the party’s dependence on Moscow continued unabated so that it was possible for Moscow’s ‘’Policy of peaceful coexistence with imperialism’’ also to become a principle of the SACP (112). The ‘Communism’ of the SACP found a congenial ally in the ‘’Ghandism’’ of the ‘African National Congress’, (113) whose most prominent representative was the recently deceased winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, Albert John Luthuli.

    However, with the Sharpeville massacre and the ‘peasant rising’ in Pondoland in 1960, Stalinist policy in South Africa was dealt its death-blow.

--------------------
111  Both factions later joined the ‘Fourth International’.
112  The most recent example of uncritical support for the neo-Stalinist policy of the Russian C.P. is the fanatical SACP organ (sic!), 'The African Communist': ‘’We fully understand the concern of other neighbouring socialist countries and appreciate their efforts to ... rebuff the forces of counter-revolution.“ No. 36, London, Fourth Quarter, 1968.
113  Cf. K.A. Jordaan, ‘’The SACP - Its Counter-Revolutionary Role“, in: Azania News, London, Vol. 1, No. 11, September 1966