In his inaugural address as ANC President in 1927, Josiah Tshangana Gumede appealed for the unity of all African leaders, advising that personal ambitions be subordinated to the "greater ambitions of the race". He went on to say, "I know there are two wings to the Bantu movement of political and economic emancipation . . . the conservative and the radical. These two wings are absolutely necessary for our progress. They are the right and the left wings of a great movement. Just as a bird must have both wings for successful flight, so must any movement have the conservative and radical wings. That is to say, we may differ in our views but this should not necessarily mean divisions and bickerings. We can differ . . . and yet work together harmoniously for the good of our oppressed people"16
But Gumede himself was in some measure to blame for the 'divisions and bickerings' that then existed in Congress. As the years passed, and partly as a result of visiting the Soviet Union, he became increasingly radicalised. He began to advocate communist positions within the ANC, which was still dominated by educated professionals, ministers of religion and traditional leaders with little appetite for mass mobilisation and revolutionary activism.
Matters came to a head at the ANC's Annual Conference in 1930. According to a report in Umteteli wa Bantu, the President claimed that:
"Everywhere the oppressed peoples were being inspired by that ideal of emancipation which found expression in the Russian revolution. There was still an illusion that the people would obtain justice from the British Government. But the plain truth was that they had again and again failed in their petitions to the British Government, and that their supplications to the Governor-General had been futile. 'We now have to rely on our own strength . . . We have to demand our equal economic, social and political rights. That cannot be expressed more clearly than to demand a South African Native Republic, with equal rights for all, but free from all foreign and local domination'".
The report goes on to say:
"The effects of this startling speech was to raise a storm of protest from the majority of the delegates who made it plain that the address did not express their views. Probably Mr. Gumede's object in making such a fiery speech was to catch votes, but if so he failed hopelessly."
Dr. Pixley ka Isaka Seme was then nominated for the position of President of the ANC by the conservative wing of the organisation, and was duly elected.
The Communist Party, which had a representative observing the conference, declared Seme's election as 'a challenge to the workers'. On behalf of the newly elected executive, Dr. Seme "welcomed [this] declaration of war, and said that they did not want any militant organisation to hide under the name of the Congress. They were determined to get rid of Communist influences."
So began the most divided, disorganised and insular period in our proud history. Seme, true to his word, set about ridding the ANC of its communist influences and in the process contributed further to the decline of the ANC as united, organised voice of the African people. In the words of Tim Couzens: "the man who launched the ANC ship in 1912, nearly sank it when he was its president in the 1930s. A combination of lethargy and corruption nearly destroyed the organisation"17. In similar vein, Mary Benson wrote of Seme's Presidency, "Alas, he whose dream had been to encourage divided tribes to cooperate was himself incapable of cooperating with colleagues and, once in office, he proved domineering and jealous of newcomers."18.
Ironically, the Communist Party also spent the early part of the 1930's disinfecting itself of those very elements that linked it to mass organisation. Seized by a factional leadership, the Party cast out 'right-wing deviationists', thereby isolating itself from "reformist" organisations such as the ANC, and reducing its contact with the masses almost to nothing19.
These episodes are instructive for our current discussions in a number of respects. First, and most generally, it is important that we never forget that the ANC has a long and unbroken history as an organisation. It has weathered many storms, existed in numerous social and political environments, made many mistakes and learnt many lessons. We should strive to avoid the influence on our thinking of journalists who often write as if the ANC was born yesterday, or as if our organisation is entirely disconnected from its own past. In fact, the institutional memory of Congress is very much alive today, both as a conscious element in the actions of its leadership and as part of the unconscious institutional architecture which binds our entire movement together.
Second, the relationship between the ANC and the socialist, communist and progressive trade union movements is not as recent as is commonly supposed.
The evolving dialectic between these streams of organisation was central to the development of all our formations throughout the twentieth century.
Rusty Bernstein is fond of likening our movement to three trees planted in the same soil. They have grown together, twisting and intertwining towards the light of liberation, so that today it is impossible to tell which branches belong to which seeds.
A formal alliance between the ANC, SACP and COSATU (as heir to the traditions of SACTU) can perhaps be dated back to the 1950's. But our shared history is much older. The political content and organisational forms of these relationships has matured over seventy years against a tapestry of joint campaigns, shared objectives, overlapping leadership and dual membership.
There have been periods of co-operation and conflict, antagonism and collaboration, antipathy and goodwill. In the words of Oliver Tambo:
"Ours is not merely a paper alliance, created at conference tables and formalised through the signing of documents and representing only an agreement of leaders. Our alliance is a living organism that has growth out of struggle. We have built it out of our separate and common experiences" 20
Certainly the formation of MK cemented our relationship in an unprecedented sense. But it would be a mistake to suppose that period of underground and exile is the only definitive experience.
Third, given history's hindsight, Gumede was a leader far ahead of his time, but perhaps too far ahead. On the one hand, his statement that the movement had two wings, whose cooperation was essential for flight, was proved accurate in the coming decades. He was also right to believe that the future progress of the movement and of the country lay in the combination of many traditions of resistance in united action under the banner of the ANC. He correctly anticipated the transformation of the ANC into a revolutionary mass organisation, as a vital step towards the achievement of majority rule without local or foreign domination.
On the other hand, Gumede advocated programmes and policies which, given the character of the ANC at the time, were bound to lead to confusion and division. His positions may have been theoretically 'correct', but he was thwarted by his inability to marry these theories with a practice that would result in the unity of the two wings of the "Bantu movement of political and economic emancipation" which he advocated.
Gumede could therefore be accused of falling prey to errors that were identified forty years later in the ANC's 1969 Strategy and Tactics document:
To ignore the real situation and to play about with imaginary forces, concepts and ideals is to invite failure. The art of revolutionary leadership consists in providing leadership to the masses and not just to its most advanced elements; it consists of setting a pace which accords with objective conditions and the real possibilities at hand. The revolutionary-sounding phrase does not always reflect revolutionary policy, and revolutionary-sounding policy is not always the spring-board for revolutionary advance. Indeed what appears to be "militant" and "revolutionary" can often be counter-revolutionary. It is surely a question of whether, in the given concrete situation, the course or policy advocated will aid or impede the prospects of the conquest of power21.
However radical and correct Gumede's approach, it ignored the real situation and therefore impeded the development of Congress.
Seme and Gumede were both founding fathers of the African National Congress.
In a way they each epitomise a wing of the liberation struggle: one radical, one conservative, both absolutely necessary for our flight. However, both did our movement a disservice at the ANC's 1930 Annual Conference. They went to Congress with an uncompromising certainty in their own convictions, each unwilling to understand the importance of the other's critique.
Seme regarded the strategies and tactics of independent socialist and working class movements as something alien to the Congress tradition; something exogenous to our history, which, having been imposed from the outside, needed to be defeated. Once elected as President General, he acted together with other 'conservatives' to exclude Gumede and his 'radical' friends from the National Executive. Instead of using his victory to consolidate unity, he welcomed the Communist Party's "declaration of war" and committed himself to ridding Congress of its Communist (and working class) elements. In doing so he condemned the ANC to divorce from mass struggles and the broader progressive working class movement.
For his part Gumede could be blamed for having precipitated this bitter outcome. After being elected in 1927 he realised the need for unity. It was in this context that he called on African leaders to bury their "divisions and bickerings". But three years later, having alienated himself from all but the most radical elements in the ANC, he presented to Congress a Presidential address apparently designed to antagonise the majority of delegates through its overtly revolutionary pontifications. The upshot of Gumede's clumsiness was that communists and socialists were excluded from the workings of the Congress on the one hand, while on the other, the Congress itself slid further into its own organisational failures and became even more distant from the masses.
Both leaders chose to pursue the narrow ends of their own ideological and political convictions. They failed to unite Congress behind a broader vision of progress towards liberation that recognised the dialectic of the evolving and complex relation between nationalism, socialism and progressive trade unionism. The two wings of the Congress movement did not help each other to fly. The consequence was a further slide into disunity and disorganisation of the ANC.
It would be fifteen years before the ANC would begin its revival as a mass based revolutionary movement. The ANC Youth League of Mandela, Sisulu and Tambo would reproach their forebears for the failures of the past and revive the Congress on a platform that provided the vision and organisational basis for unity in action of a diverse multiplicity of traditions.
The Realignment of opposition forces