South Africa's liberation, wrote Bunting in 1928, involved three major freedoms: formal and actual independence from British imperialism; the emancipation of Africans from white domination; and freedom for workers and peasants of all races from bourgeois rule. In political form, it is a struggle for a S. African Workers' and Peasants' Republic, as contrasted with the present regime of white rule over black and capitalist rule over worker. White workers, bywoners* and poor whites had nothing to fear from 'native rule'. To get freedom for themselves, they must get it for others. 'Experience has shown that white labour unsupported by black is powerless against the ruling class. As in the Soviet Union, national minorities would have absolute equality under a workers' government. The correct watchword was: not destroy the whites'' or white civilization'', but 'DESTROY THE REGIME OF WHITE DOMINATION AND EXPLOITATION, DESTROY THE RULE OF RACE OVER RACE'.' In its place should come a workers' and peasants' government, 'PREDOMINANTLY NATIVE IN CHARACTER, BASED ON EQUALITY AND ON THE PREPONDERANCE OF THE NATIVES' CLAIM TO THE COUNTRY'. 1 .
This was a bolder and more imaginative programme than any yet projected for the overthrow of white supremacy. Sanctioned by centuries of colonial war, slavery and forced labour; by brute force and the concentration of power in the oligarchy; by education, propaganda, Christianity and the entire range of approved institutions - white power seemed so formidable and inevitable that the most radical leaders of the liberation movement hesitated to present a direct challenge to it. They fought a defensive battle to preserve old rights or resist new assaults; they pleaded for acceptance as equals within the existing order, and never envisaged its destruction. The ANCs constitution, based on a draft prepared in 1919 by a committee under R. W. Msimang, stipulated no higher aim than to advocate by just means for the removal of the Colour Bar'' in political, education and industrial fields and for equitable representation of Natives in Parliament'. 2 It needed courage to demand equal rights for all civilized men', as the Congress stipulated in 1923. 3 Not then, however, nor for many years to come, did it claim universal suffrage and majority rule.
The ICU leaned towards socialism until Kadalie succumbed to the liberals. A preamble to its constitution of 1925 declared that the interests of employers and workers were irreconcilable, and affirmed the aim of striving, along with all other organized workers throughout the world, for a socialist society based on the principle from each man according to his ability, to every man according to his needs '. Kadalie never applied the formula to South African conditions or defined his concept of the African's role in a classless society. Radical socialists and communists, on the other hand, discussed these questions at length. Working-class unity, they argued, would lead to socialism; and it, in turn, to complete equality. White workers, it was assumed, would provide the main revolutionary force, and from this seemed to follow the further assumption that they would occupy the commanding heights in the new society.
Faith in the white workers' revolutionary potential had weakened since 1929. Labour leaders sensed the change and made another onslaught on the party's socialist objective. It was a mere relic, wrote Harry Haynes in November 1928, a sentimental memorial to the dead-and-gone working men and women who thought British - and could think no other'. 4 The old Labour party, he argued a year later, went phut'' through a hypocritical lip-service to white Socialism, while being in essence the political expression of the white working class. 5 South Africa, reported the party's national organizing committee in January 1930, was 'an undeveloped continent garrisoned by a handful of white people striving to live a civilized life, superimposed upon a proletariat of black people, gradually evolving from barbarism '. Socialism would not be practical politics for many years. The retention of the objective in the constitution identified the party with international concepts, cramped its actions, and alienated many potential supporters. 6
Coalition with the Nationalists, said the committee, had justified itself and should continue.
The Nationalists have learned that Labour men are not the violent red revolutionaries they have been painted; that a man can be a good Labourite and remain a patriotic South African. The Labour Party, on their part' have realized that Nationalists as such are not reactionaries, nor lacking in social ideals; that they are, in fact, a liberal minded, peace-loving, humanitarian and fundamentally democratic party.
The Nationalists would retain their ideal of sovereign independence, and Labour its industrial ideals. The party's constitution must be brought into line with the sentiments and beliefs of Afrikaners, now a majority of the working class. The committee accordingly proposed, and the party's annual conference adopted in 1930, a revised version of the socialist objective. It called for the common ownership of the means of production and added the rider: due regard being had to the presence of an overwhelming native population and the necessity of maintaining and improving the standards of life.7
The Communist party's policy in 1926 was limited to a demand for the rejection of Hertzog's segregation bills, the abolition of pass laws and other racial legislation, an extension of the Cape franchise to other provinces, and the right of Africans to elect representatives to 'native councils. 8 The party had begun to break out of its isolation from the Africans. Increasing numbers were joining the party, reported Jimmy Shields, the young Scottish communist who had come to South Africa in 1925 in search of health. They should be drawn into the administration, he told the fifth annual conference in January 1927. The conference agreed, and made history by electing Makabeni, Khaile and Thibedi to the central committee. 9 It decided to train 'cadres of class conscious native workers, and to form branches in African areas. 10 The concept of African power was so far removed from current ideologies and apparent realities, however, that even veteran communists doubted whether it was sound.
Only a person who combined a firm adherence to Marxist theory with a passionate belief in national liberation could conceive the prospect of African rule as a necessary first stage to the achievement of a classless society. Such a man was James La Guma, the expelled general secretary of the ICU and secretary of the ANC branch in Cape Town. Though he left few documentary records of his political growth, his son Alex, author and revolutionary leader, has given some insight into the father's thoughts at this period. It is evident that the great turning point was Brussels, where La Guma attended the conference of the League against Imperialism in February 1927. Here he had the opportunity to discuss questions pertaining to the national struggle in his own country with many leaders of the colonial countries'.11
The conference adopted the South African delegation's resolution on The right of self-determination through the complete overthrow of capitalism and imperial domination.' A general resolution on the 'Negro question' asserted in effect the principle of Africa for Africans: their full freedom, equality with all other races, and the right to govern Africa. 12 The programme was evidently drawn up for colonies in which white settlers and administrators formed an expatriate outpost of a distant imperial metropolis. What did the policy mean for South Africa, where settlers and Africans constituted a single society; or, in more abstract terms, where the imperial-colonial syndrome occurred within the confines of a highly integrated and independent political entity? Did 'self-determination' mean that Africans claimed the right to 'secede from the multi-national state? Or did it mean the right to expel the whites? And what was to be the position of other oppressed minorities, Indians and Coloured? There were evident difficulties attached to the formula, apart from the basic issue whether African tribes' or linguistic groups actually constituted a single nation'.
La Guma found an answer in Moscow. He went there after addressing meetings in Germany, and discussed South Africa with members of ECCI (the executive committee of the CI) and especially with Bukharin - 'a genial man, unshaven and moustached like many others, clad in a collarless shirt, trousers held up by an old necktie, and wearing scuffed slippers'. 13 What took place is not known precisely. According to Roux, then studying botany at Cambridge, 'It was agreed that the struggle in this country was primarily an anti-imperialist one. After explaining the reasons for this conclusion, he proceeds to set out the corollary. ' It was clear therefore that the main task of the revolution in South Africa was to overthrow the rule of the British and Boer imperialists, to set up a democratic independent Native republic (which would give the white workers and other non-exploiting whites certain "minority rights) as a stage towards the final overthrow of capitalism in South Africa.14 La Guma subsequently referred to these decisions as the ECCI resolutions on South Africa'.
The resolutions reflected a growing awareness of the common elements in the struggles of Africans against colonial rule and of American Negroes for equality. The Anglo-American secretariat of the CI included a Negro Sub-Committee in which Americans were prominent. They urged the CI to give special attention to the problems of Negroes and Africans, and to their role in the world revolutionary movement. La Guma's arrival in Moscow coincided with a new urgency in the Comintern's approach to the ' colonial question.
Let us try to reconstruct the discussions in Moscow. The three South African delegates at Brussels - an African, soon to be president of the ANC; a white trade unionist, one of the skilled 'aristocrats of labour; and a Coloured politician, the only communist among them - had decided, voluntarily and without intimidation, that their country should have the right of self-determination'. This could not mean the secession of Africans from the existing state, since they claimed prior rights to the whole territory. Nor could it mean the expulsion of any minority group, for whites, Coloured and Indians were also indigenous, and had no imperial homeland. Self-determination could therefore mean only secession from the British crown and the consequent formation of an independent republic. Secondly the Brussels conference had adopted the general principle of African self-rule. Its application to South Africa would mean manhood or adult suffrage, one man one vote, and the prospect of majority African rule. The concept of 'a democratic independent Native republic' was certainly inherent in the Brussels resolutions, and involved no more than parliamentary reform of the kind introduced into western Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Back in South Africa, La Garner and his fellow delegates were in duty bound to establish a branch of the League. Colraine, who had been elected to its national council, spoke bravely in Brussels of the bright prospects in South Africa and his devotion to the cause. 'I am determined,' he vowed, 'to do all in my power to further the aims of the organization. 15 His militancy soon ebbed away in Johannesburg's hostile atmosphere. The Communist party's executive met Gumede and Andrews to discuss ways of implementing the Brussels resolutions. 'A certain attack of cold feet is evident on the part of both,' reported Bunting. ' Colraine has certainly relapsed into a sulky inactivity. He complained of receiving only £75 of the £150 promised for his trip, and accused the TUC and others of using the balance for the fares of his co-delegates. There was very bad blood ' between him and Andrews, who made this an excuse for joining with the reactionaries in the TUC'. They would have nothing to do with the Brussels decisions.16
Gurmede also refused to take the lead in calling a conference. The ANCs total funds amounted to 1s. 7d. he said, and he would first have to rebuild Congress. It had been more or less lethargic' for some years, wrote Bunting in September, and the ICU was eclipsing it in many regions. Moreover, its strong reactionary elements including some paid agents of the Chamber of Mines, etc.' strongly opposed any anti-imperialist programme' and preferred to believe that Downing Street will redress the grievances suffered at the hands of the Union Government. 17 Bunting concluded that the South African branch of the League could not be formed at the present; and it will once more devolve on the Communists to carry on the propaganda alone.18
At about this time the party, being refused offices in the TUCs new premises in Kerk Street, Johannesburg, returned to the working-class quarters of Ferreirastown. These were symptoms, wrote Bunting, of the decline in the ambitions and militancy of the white trade unionists. They seemed to have finally decided to stand on a petty bourgeois, conciliationist, and anti-native platform'. Many old radical stalwarts had drifted away from the party, fondly believing that they would do more good' in the movement if released from the inconveniences of party ties. Like renegades elsewhere, however, they had turned into anti-communists. Though regrettable, the party's geographical isolation from the white unions might assist that constant review of our bearings' which was so necessary. For, alone in South Africa, the party was pioneering the anticapitalist and anti-imperialist movement on almost uncharted seas amid a multitude of conflicting currents and, in addition, an increasing threat of enemy guns'. 19 In this uncertain enterprise, he tended to rely on old and tested doctrines of struggle in spite of a turn to the left in the ANC.
'The only friends of oppressed people are the Communists,' Gumede told an audience in Cape Town on his return from Europe. 'Division amongst our ranks is helping to maintain the present despairing conditions,' he warned, and urged the ICU to cooperate and reinstate the expelled communists. It was not the white man as such, he said in Johannesburg, but the capitalist class which grinds the faces of white and black the world over. This was the universal truth to which my eyes were opened'. The ANC would stand for our people as Hertzog stood for his, and in this fight we need the services of the ICU also'.20
His report on the Brussels conference was well received at the ANCs annual meeting in June 1927. Of all political parties, he repeated, the Communist party was the only one that honestly and sincerely fought for the emancipation of the oppressed. Congress paid him the tribute of electing him to the post of president-general for a term of three years. E. J. Khaile, a member of the CP's central executive and one of the communists expelled from the ICU, became the general secretary. The new leadership undertook to overhaul the structure of Congress, changing it from a loose type of organization limited to sporadic propaganda campaigns into a mass organization based on individual members grouped into branches. To draw together the industrial and political wings of the movement, the conference decided to set up a separate department, called the African Labour Congress, which would be directed by H. S. Msimang and provide for the needs of workers in town and country.21
Prospects were favourable for a united front against capitalism, declared the South African Worker, then edited by James Shields. If the ANC was to become a real fighting force, it would have to reject compromises with 'any set of capitalist and imperialist robbers. He urged the Congress executive to repudiate a resolution of the Cape ANC affirming faith in the Union Jack - that symbol of British imperialism' - in the great flag controversy. The ANCs policy should be one of fighting militancy' against capitalism. 22 This was expecting too much, however. Congress was not a socialist party, nor would it abandon its traditional policy of looking to the British for support against Afrikaner imperialism. Gumede had to take note of the strong conservative element in his ranks, and of the growing opposition to his association with the communists.
Comrade Gumede and Comrade Khaile, wrote S. M. Bennet Ncwana, a notorious political huckster, were not the sort of leaders likely to bring order 'out of a miserable state of chaos'. The effeminate leaders of the defunct African National Congress deliberately betrayed the confidence of the Bantu Chiefs and their people in embracing, without mandate from the provincial congress, the communist platform'. 23 When Mahabane appealed at the ICU's special conference in January 1928 for cooperation with the ANC, Champion objected that the Congress looked for aid to Russia and placed at the head of its affairs former ICU officials who had been expelled for their communist doctrines.24
Bunting came to the conclusion that the setting for a successful revolution was not yet present because of 'the extreme backwardness and widespread apathy of the native masses'. They certainly constituted a majority, 'but they are such an easy prey to rogues and charlatans that they will make a mess of it'. The party's central executive, he told La Guma, would probably disapprove of 'those instructions re a Negro S.A. Republic, which seem to have originated in suggestions raised during your visit', and which were 'drawn up by people with insufficient knowledge of S.A. African affairs'. La Guma had then accepted an invitation to attend the October revolution celebrations in Moscow. Bunting thought he should stand down in favour of some one 'more closely in touch with the C.E.' (Central Executive). It would be an advantage for someone to go who 'could produce an effect, on his return, in fresh circles - e.g. pure Bantu circles, or again among whites, who still have a good deal more to say than natives on the question of war or peace'.25
Did this mean that the whites were more powerful, or more aware of the issues, or merely more vocal? On this occasion, at least, Bunting ignored their political backwardness and fierce rejection of radical change. He also underrated the political sense of Africans and their capacity to influence the course of events. His emotional reaction indicated that, as in 1922, he tended to equate workers, power with white power, and refused to credit the possibility of majority African rule.
Organizational and financial difficulties might have contributed to his pessimism. The party's printing press 'has eaten itself up', he informed La Guma, especially since Weinstock took away the Forward. The Worker was living on £500 borrowed from Rostron and nearly £900 from Bunting himself, 'so that my little fortune is nearly gone. It had been decided to sell the plant and suspend publication of the Worker. such are the difficulties of the only really anti-imperialist publication in S. Africa,' he told Gibarti, secretary of the League against Imperialism. 26 Dependent on the financial backing of white sympathizers, the party leadership might well have been apprehensive about a policy likely to alienate all but the staunchest radicals.
La Guma went to Moscow after all, and so did Gumede. They took part in the October celebrations, attended a Friends of Russia convention, and visited some of the southern and eastern republics of the USSR. While in Moscow, La Guma submitted a statement on the south African Situation'. The resolution on South Africa 'submitted by the ECCI', he reported, 'has not received the approval of the Central Executive of the Party' for reasons which were abundantly refuted by everyday facts'. It was wrong to suppose that the movement depends to a large extent, if not solely upon the European worker'. He obtained his privileges and concessions at the expense of Africans, with whom he refused to cooperate. Bunting's arguments drove 'the non-European comrades to the conclusion that the Central Executive of the South African Party considers the mass movement of the natives should be held up until such time as the White worker is ready to extend his favour. A section of the party disagreed. Members of the Cape Town branch, including the whites with one exception, were for the ECCIresolutions.27
The party's annual conference, held at the end of 1927, view the Comintern's resolutions on South Africa with mixed feelings; and decided that the central executive should discuss them with La Guma and Gumede on their return from the Soviet Union before reporting to the ECCI. Meanwhile, Bunting put forward his own views in a fourteen-page document. 28 The 'native republic slogan, he supposed, was based on Lenin's famous thesis on the colonies adopted in 1920 - a copy of which was unfortunately not available to the party in South Africa! Bunting criticized the slogan, and in doing so challenged the thesis itself.
National liberation movements, he argued, 'usually become a prey to imperialist and capitalist corruption'. This had happened also in South Africa, where the party contended with rival nationalisms, which could not be reconciled. An African movement for secession from Britain 'would probably only accelerate the fusion, in opposition to it, of the Dutch and British imperialists'. The party had 'coquetted' with Afrikaner nationalism in 1920-22 and helped it into power in 1924, 'if only to accelerate the disillusionment of Nationalist and Labourite workers'. The pact government was now the 'worst enemy of the party and of the S.A. proletariat'.
On the other hand, the party's support of the ANC and ICU 'has also led nowhere. There was no movement among Africans for secession from British rule, which they generally preferred to Dutch rule 'as whips to scorpions'. A crusade for emancipation from empire would fail unless it gained impetus from united anti-imperialist movements in the rest of Africa. It was white overlordship that Africans resented. A 'campaign in favour of killing off, "driving into the sea", or otherwise completely eliminating practically all the whites would be very popular if it were given the chance. Their elimination seemed to be implied in the 'native republic' slogan, as in Garvey's 'Africa for the Africans'. This was not a popular demand, partly because of repressive action taken by the white bourgeoisie, partly because the elimination was 'probably too formidable to contemplate'. Africans had long since come to regard white participation, if not leadership, as inevitable and a disagreeable necessity, 'and so in fact it is, under any system of society'.
The slogan was unjust, as well as inappropriate, according to Bunting. For it was 'directed not against the imperialists as such but against the whites as such, against large numbers of workers and peasants because they are white. Objectively considered, they belonged to the anti-capitalist front, and many would support it but for their colour prejudice. If they were to participate in a workers' state, it could hardly be called a 'native republic'. If they were segregated in a ghetto, even with safeguards for minority rights, the existing injustice would be reversed, with whites taking the place of blacks as helots. A future 'native republic' could not, however, afford to dispense with the technical assistance and cooperation of sympathetic whites.
Their cooperation was also immediately useful because of their advantages and the low average political understanding of Africans. It was a case of uneven development due to historical circumstances, and could not be ignored. The party itself had a large majority of African members, yet white members of average experience had to undertake many tasks for which competent and reliable African members were not yet available. This unevenness was reflected in the difference of opinion in the party over the 'native republic' policy. There was more violent colour prejudice in the north than in the Cape, where the general standard of Africans was much higher. Accustomed to 'a higher average type of native' than in the Transvaal, the party members in the Cape 'form a higher estimate of the natives, capacity to dispense with white aid. No one could predict how 'an unarmed native proletariat unaided' could defeat the capitalist class; 'but at least to win the support of their white fellow workers seems imperative. The goal must be: All power to the soviets of workers and peasants - black and white.
A slogan that implied a direct transition to socialism was the more revolutionary in class terms. The future holds no intermediate stage,' declared the Worker in May 1928; the class struggle ever assumes a more open and undisguised form.' Disillusioned by the Labour party's squabbles and impotence, hundreds of its former supporters would turn to the communists, for they alone represented the interests of the entire working class. 29 On the other hand, the native republic' policy would establish 'black power' under majority rule, and was therefore the more revolutionary in racial terms. The controversy centred round the issue of 'working class power' as against 'African nationalist power'. South Africans had to choose between class war and race war. That was the essence of Bunting's appeal. There could be no doubt where he stood. One of the few surviving communists from the days of white labour militancy, he clung stubbornly to the Communist Manifesto's classic tenets.
On a point of fact, he argued that white workers were potentially more revolutionary than an African bourgeoisie which barely existed. The ' only effective bourgeoisie in South Africa is white'. 30 His main objection to the native republic' slogan was that it would neutralize the party's long struggle for unity, alienate white workers not altogether without justification, and drive them into a white united Fascist front against us and the blacks'. A race war would cloud the issue and destroy the tender plant of class solidarity that has just appeared above the ground'. To avert such a war, it was necessary to stress the common interests of all workers, accustom the whites 'to a prospect of black power', and make it clear that 'in our Republic blacks will not predominate as black, nor will whites be in a minority as whites; and that the future black supremacy will not in the least resemble the present white supremacy'' '.
La Guma, back from Moscow, challenged the view that white workers were politically more advanced. 31 They were saturated with an imperialist ideology', fully aware that their privileges were obtained at the African's expense, and ' therefore not prepared to assist in realizing the socialist objective in this country' - at least not until they were forced to do so. They must be educated to understand that their future 'lies in unity with the non-european masses against the exploitation of the large farmers and industrialists'. The new policy, he declared optimistically, 'would provide the necessary stimulant to the mental processes of the white "Socialist'' and must ultimately produce that momentum that will drag the reluctant section of the working class of this country towards the realization of a WORKERS AND PEASANTS REPUBLIC'.
On the other hand, wrote La Guma, 'the attitude of the non-european masses is becoming sharper with the installment after installment of oppressive and discriminatory laws and threats of further oppression. For this reason, and because of acute land hunger, heavy taxation, forced labour migration and political deprivation, a national consciousness was developing rapidly. The new slogan would appeal and give expression to aspirations that contained revolutionary possibilities. Citing Lenin as his authority, he argued that a national struggle for independence from imperial rule, even though led by merchants and middle class intellectuals, would promote the working-class revolution. 'To be revolutionary, a national movement in conditions of an Imperialist yoke need not necessarily be composed of proletarian elements, or have a revolutionary or republican programme or a democratic base.' As in Egypt, a struggle for independence was 'objectively revolutionary' in spite of its bourgeois origin and antagonism to socialism, because it weakened imperialism.
Bunting thought that the road to socialism lay through working-class unity under white leadership. La Guma wanted to reverse the sequence. First establish African majority rule, he argued, and unity, leading to socialism, would follow. The party should therefore concentrate on strengthening the movement for national liberation, and at the same time retain its separate identity and role as a socialist party. Communists should 'build up a mass party based upon the non-european masses', unite landless whites and natives behind an energetic agrarian policy, give expression to the demands of African workers, and dispel their illusion that the British acted as intermediaries between them and their Afrikaner oppressors. The native republic' slogan would act as a political catalyst, dissolving traditional subservience to whites among Africans and racial arrogance towards Africans among whites.
The issues were thrashed out with much heat during 1928. 'All members are arming themselves with a battery of weapons for, and against the thesis,' wrote Wolton in February; and he advised La Guma to come to Johannesburg, 'adequately prepared for a battle of logic and a good deal of nonsense'. 32 Douglas Wolton, the party's newly elected secretary-editor, was a comparative newcomer to the movement. Born in England, he emigrated to Cape Town in 1921, worked on a daily newspaper, set out on a Cape to Cairo journey by foot in 1923, and got no farther than Northern Rhodesia, where he contracted malaria. On his way back he met Schack, a former social democrat from Russia, who had settled in the Cape and joined the party. Through Schack he met the local communists, including his future wife Molly Selikowitz (1906-47), A. Z. Berman's cousin, who came to South Africa from Lithuania in 1919.33
The Woltons ranged themselves on La Guma's side, while a majority of members on the central executive rejected his thesis. They found ample reason for confidence in their ability to give a lead on their own and without entanglements. At last the masses of South Africa are turning to the CP for help from their terrible conditions, declared the Worker, then edited by Wolton. The answer to the smooth-tongued leaders', the money grabbing clique' in the ICU, and the intellectual section' who collaborated with joint councils and imperialist exploiters', was the party's mushroom-like growth', especially in the country districts. 34 Even Basutoland had a large and active branch composed wholly of Africans. A meeting held at Vereeniging's location', in spite of a ban imposed by the superintendent, attracted 2,000 Africans. Several hundred, among them sixty-three women, joined the party. Its branch at Potchefstroom, the ideological centre of Afrikaner Calvinism and birthplace of the Broederbond, claimed to have 700 members after only six weeks, activity. Four delegates from the branch attended a meeting of the central executive to study its methods of work, and Gana Makabeni opened a party school at Vereeniging.35
Equally satisfactory progress was being made on the industrial front. As the ICU split into warring camps, African workers looked to communists for aid in organizing trade unions. More than 150 delegates from half a dozen unions met in the Inchcape Hall, Johannesburg, in March 1928 to form the Non-European Federation of Trade Unions, with Ben Weinbren, a member of the party's central executive, as chairman, and La Guma as general secretary. Andrews and Tyler, both party members, told the delegates that they should not organize in opposition to the ANC or TUC, and should work closely with the ICU. This refused to cooperate, however, and accused the party of being led by white racists. The Federation claimed to have sponsored the first joint strike of Africans and whites, when clothing workers in Germiston came out in protest against the victimization of trade union members. Their action was hailed as a significant sign that economic pressures were driving the whites 'towards the ultimate unity of the entire forces of the working class movement'. Even more promising was the decision of African and white laundry workers' unions in Johannesburg to affiliate under a joint committee. Here were the seeds of an ultimate powerful organization recognizing and embracing all sections of the working class'.36
White racists attacked ICU offices in Natal and communist speakers in the Transvaal. The police also took action. They arrested African strikers for breaking service contracts, harassed party members under the pass laws, and prosecuted leaders for inciting to hostility against whites. Kadalie, prosecuted in April 1928, was the ninth victim of the infamous clause. He was followed by Sam Malkinson, a white party member in Bloemfontein, and by Mrs. M. N. Bhola, organizer of the women's section of the ANC, and the first woman to stand trial on the 'hostility' charge. Few of the cases resulted in a conviction. Thibedi was acquitted at Potchefstroom when the magistrate found that the party was a legal organization, and fully entitled to agitate against the pass laws. Malkinson, charged with having distributed a pamphlet, What is the Communist Party?' at a convention of chiefs called by the ANC, was also found not guilty after the crown's chief witness Matebe testified that the conditions described in the pamphlet were well known to him. He had suffered under them all his life, he said, and reported that the pamphlet called on Africans to unite with white workers against the master class, white and black. 37
The police succeeded, however, in securing a conviction against three party members at Cape Town: John Gomas, the vice-president of the Cape ANC, Bransby Ndobe, its organizer, and Stanley Silwana, a member of the executive. They were sentenced to three months' imprisonment as a result of protesting against the killing of an African and the wounding of another by a white policeman at Paarl. The three accused conducted their own appeal in the Supreme Court. Gomas made a fiery speech, attacking the Native Administration Act and the trial court. Justice Twentyman Jones cut him short and dismissed the appeal, saying that the sentence erred if at all on the side of leniency. Writing from Cape Town's Roeland Street jail, where he was in solitary confinement, Gomas appealed for books. I was hoping to make a complete study of Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, but as all books are confiscated by the Prison I do not like to lose such a valuable copy.' He and his comrades found that 'in prison our wits become exceptionally sensitive'. Their thoughts were alive and every minute of the waking day we are reviewing in our minds the intolerable conditions which are the lot of our people'. Imprisonment had increased their bitterness; but the feeling of revulsion which is continually with each one of us stabilizes and strengthens our determination to work for the freedom of all oppressed.38
Of all parties, said Gumede on his return from the Soviet Union in January 1928, the communists alone 'stood by us and protested when we have been shot down'. He was determined to do all in his power to emancipate his people and win national independence for all in South Africa, black, white or blue; a free republic for all races'. He told an ANC rally in the Inchcape Hall of what he had witnessed in the U.S.S.R. 'I have seen the new world to come, where it has already begun. I have been to the new Jerusalem.' He had brought with him a key which with their help would unlock the door to freedom. Others are persuaded to be Communists. The Bantu has been a Communist from time immemorial. We are disorganized, that's all.' Gumede became the chairman and Wolton the secretary of a free speech movement, sponsored by the ANC, APO, CP, TUC and African unions. The ICU refused to take part. While Kadalie had rejected the call for unity, declared Gumede, the ANC would 'pursue its course of uniting the South African natives to help themselves.39
It was a turning point in the African's history, said the communists. Gumede's conversion was 'a manifestation of the revolutionizing of the oppressed masses. 40 He told them about the Soviet Union's policy towards national minorities, of how it helped non-literate pastoralists to freedom and equality, of its laws that made overt racialism a crime. such contrasts with their own lives electrified his Bantu audiences,' wrote Wolton, 'and contributed enormously towards stimulating the new hopes which were sweeping through the Bantu peoples.' 41 Addressing a convention of the ANCs 'upper house, of chiefs in April 1928, Gumede said, 'We are nothing but slaves.' Sitting on the platform were Bunting and Wolton, the local police commissioner and Bloemfontein's white notables. Africans were grateful for the white man's civilization, said Gumede, but the colour bar retarded their progress. Open the door and let us be represented in parliament by our own colour, he appealed. Class laws were an abuse of the power held by whites, who ruled only in their own interests.42
Some of the chiefs objected to the president's association with the communists. Quoting Bennet Ncwana's articles, Joseph Moshesh of Matatiele said it was the most dangerous party in the world. What happened to the Czar and his family?' he asked. 'The Czar was of royal blood, the same as you, chiefs, and where is he now? He called on the convention to record its disapproval of fraternization with the communists. Gumede replied that they were nearest to the natives, for they worked for the salvation of the oppressed. The issue had been raised to cause a division in their ranks. Moshesh withdrew his motion on receiving an assurance that there was no connexion between the ANC and the CP, but the chiefs were not satisfied.
When he left for Moscow to attend the October celebrations, Gumede told them, he thought that people were not safe in Russia. What he saw there surprised him. They were happy and prosperous under a workers, government, after having slain the Czar, all task-masters and the drones who lived upon the sweat of the brows of other peoples '. A member of the audience asked: Do you intend to kill our chiefs?' Gumede replied that the Russians revolted because their rulers dealt with them in an arbitrary way. The new Russia, he concluded, was destined to lead mankind to a happier life. For in Russia there were neither rich nor poor; ail were equal, and all shared everything that they produced. Thereupon T. M. Mapikela, a successful building contractor who had gone with the deputations of 1909 and 1914 to England, warned the chiefs that they were being dragged by hook and by crook into the hands of the Communist party, which aimed to overthrow the rulers be they white or black.43
The chiefs ended their session by suggesting a meeting with the ICU, then also in conference at Bloemfontein, to discuss cooperation. The two execuitives met and agreed on a resolution moved by Kadalie and Selope Thema. It asserted that cooperation between the ANC and ICU on matters of national policy, such as the Hertzog bills and the pass laws, was essential for progress. But,' continued the resolution, in pursuing these objects, the ANC hereby repudiates its association with the S.A. Communist Party, which of late has openly identified itself with the Congress.' He had insisted on the repudiation, boasted Kadalie, and claimed that Gumede agreed ' after some hedging. 44 Bunting maintained that the talks had been stage-managed, in order to set on record a joint disclaimer of association with the Communists in the interests, so far as the chiefs at least were concerned, of rulers, black and white, and he doubted whether the resolution had actually been adopted.' The inference that Mr. Gumede was forced to publicly repudiate the Communists is not supported by the facts.45
Whether provisional or final, the resolution was a serious setback to the party's campaign for united action with African nationalism. Would the ANC repeat the ICU's betrayal of 1926? The Cape Town branch of the ANC urged its national executive to 'explore every avenue towards the closest cooperation with the Communist Party'. Of all political parties, it alone unreservedly advocates freedom and equality for the non-European peoples '. It knew no colour discrimination in its ranks and correctly reflected the workers' aspirations. 46 No such repudiation came from Gumede. It seemed as though the conservative wing of Congress had forced him to retreat from the bold stand he had taken on his return from Moscow. His apparent defection must have weighed on Bunting's mind as he and his wife set off in June for Moscow to represent the party at the sixth congress of the Communist International.
Edward Roux, the third South African delegate, then working on his doctoral thesis in botany at Cambridge, travelled with them from London. Fifteen years later he wrote about the journey and the great controversy over the 'native republic' slogan. It had come 'like a bolt from the blue' to the great majority of members. Almost all the white communists were indignant,' and so were African members who had been trained in the old tradition'. They saw in the policy a revival of Marcus Garvey's cry, 'Africa for the Africans', and thought that it was the exact opposite of the party's steadfast appeal for international unity. 'We did not want to put the black man on top and the white man underneath. We wanted them to be equal.'47
This argument ignored La Guma's strong point, that equality could be achieved only when Africans were powerful enough to win respect from the whites. Roux never really examined the merits of the proposed policy. He says that he and Bunting were 'negrophilists'. They should therefore have welcomed the notion of African rule in all parts of Africa. Yet one is left in doubt whether they objected to the slogan in principle or only because they thought it premature and inexpedient. In either event, the policy should not have come as a shock. The guiding lines had been laid down as far back as 1920 by the Comintern's thesis on the national and colonial question. South African communists had evidently failed to study the relevant texts or to grasp their implications for the movement. Alternatively, they felt that the thesis did not apply to South Africa because there was no 'native bourgeoisie. The chiefs and intellectuals who dominated the ANC were conservative and unreliable, while the party had demonstrated its ability to attract Africans in large numbers by militant struggle against both class exploitation and racial oppression.
Roux's main objection, however, was that the slogan had been forced, on the party by the Communist International in the interests of the Soviet Union. 48 It then 'regarded British capitalism as the main enemy, and attempted to weaken the empire by organizing liberation movements in the colonies. A contributory factor was the growth of a Comintern bureaucracy anxious to concentrate authority in its hands and impose uniform policies on affiliated parties. This indictment had unpleasant repercussions which Roux must have regretted. It dovetailed neatly with anti-communist sentiment and was seized on by government spokesmen and historians in South Africa to support allegations of 'domination by Moscow. 49 Yet Roux never substantiated what appear to have been only his personal impressions. When recording them in 1943-4, he had not been a party member for at least five years and was distinctly hostile to the Soviet Union. His 'main attack', wrote Andrews in a review at that time, 'seems to be directed against the Communist International and its failure to recognize the value of his advice and opinions on the future of the African people'.50
The native republic policy undoubtedly met with the Comintern's approval and coincided with the Soviet Union's opposition to imperialism. Approval does not mean coercion, however. Though exercising great moral authority, the CI could not compel obedience from the South African party, which had a strong tradition of internal democracy. Roux's accusation of interference from Moscow does not stand up to scrutiny for this and other reasons. As Bunting himself acknowledged, La Guma, as well as the Comintern, initiated the policy, and the policy had the support of some members in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Both sides appealed to the Comintern, as Roux himself had done in 1924 during a dispute in the YCL over the question of African membership.
The South African party blundered by appointing three white representatives, all opponents of the new line. They seemed to present a white front' and aroused a suspicion at the Comintern congress of being racial chauvinists. The accusation has been repeated recently by the historian Endre Sik. The party leadership headed by the opportunist Bunting' and consisting mainly of Europeans,' he states, 'was far from devoid of the remnants of racial chauvinism.' They did not understand and they belittled the significance of African racial oppression. At the same time, they adopted a sectarian trade union policy which 'deepened the gulf between the movements of European and African labour'. For good measure he adds: 'The Communist Party, as such, in the years 1924 to 1928 displayed very feeble activity.'51
Apart from the reference to the dominant role of whites in the leadership, none of these statements is even faintly true. The party had been transformed since its 'turn to the masses' in 1925. It had 200 African members in 1927 and 1,600 in 1928, out of a total membership of 1,750. Twenty African and Coloured and ten white delegates, representing in all nearly 3,000 members, attended the seventh annual conference in January 1929. This advance reflected much dogged work in the face of rabid racialism and police repression. The charge of communist sectarianism in the trade unions or of indifference to national oppression has as little basis as the assertion that men like Bunting and Roux were 'opportunists' and 'racial chauvinists'. They were Marxist missionaries, who sacrificed careers and comfort to an unpopular cause and identified themselves wholly with an oppressed people. If they erred in opposing the native republic' policy, they acted in good faith and according to a long-standing interpretation of the class theory in relation to African nationalism.
More than any other party anywhere, declared Bunting at the sixth congress in August, the South African CP had as the very centre of its activities, fairly and squarely fought, conquered and killed the Dragon of Chauvinism'. This was true; though he set off on the wrong foot by saying that South Africa was a white man's country'. Dunne, the United States delegate, Bennett of the Anglo-American committee, and Bukharin himself saw in the phrase a survival of race prejudice'. Bunting hastened to explain that it merely described a factual situation. South Africa was a colony of settlement' with a large and permanent white population. But the damage had been done. His long and involved attack on the independent native republic' policy fell on deaf ears, the more so because he criticized the Comintern leadership. It had neglected to establish adequate communications with affiliated parties; and it drew an invidious distinction between the proletariat' of industrialized countries and the colonial masses'. Was not that distinction, he asked, exactly the way our aristocracy of labour'' treats the black workers?'52
A majority of the party in South Africa, said Bunting, opposed the independent native republic' slogan for practical reasons, in addition to serious theoretical objections. In the first place, South Africa had no native bourgeoisie' as was contemplated in the draft resolution, and 'certainly no movement for a native republic'. The ANC which the resolution wants us to boost up' was moribund. It demanded equality, not self-determination, and looked to Britain for a redress of grievances. The party gave it much attention and joined with it in a united front whenever it showed signs of life. The 'CP is itself the actual or potential leader of the native national movement'. African workers and some peasants preferred the party to purely native bodies' which had let them down and had fallen into the hands of the bourgeoisie. Put in another way, the class struggle is here practically coincident and simultaneous with the national struggle.' They had the same objects, forces, and methods of struggle. The class aspect was not less fundamental; and might even supersede the national aspect.53
Another important reason for rejecting the draft resolution, said Bunting, was the presence of a white exploited working and peasant class with a spirited, revolutionary tradition. The resolution urged a united front of white workers, African workers, and the national liberation movement; but the class struggles of the whites did not coincide with the national struggles of Africans. On the contrary, white workers tended to forget the class struggle and to side with their own bourgeoisie. special tactics have to be adopted to prevent this, and to harmonize the national and the class movements' with a view to 'neutralizing and correcting white labour chauvinism '.
The CPSA, though almost exclusively centred in the African people, took up the cause of the white minority because of the need for labour solidarity. The fact was that the 'infant native movement, lived in a state bordering on illegality. It was in constant danger of being suppressed by legislation or by massacre, needed allies, and found the occasional support, even the neutrality, of the white trade unions of incalculable value. We say that the white workers are unquestionably going to be alienated by the present slogan and that instead of support from white labour we are thus quite likely going to get its hostility and Fascist alliance with the bourgeoisie. This in turn will also encourage the government to prosecute and the courts to convict everyone who preaches the slogan.
Commenting on the speech fifteen years later, Roux wrote: it is probable that any communist or other labour radical in South Africa would today endorse every word of it.' 54 Like Bunting, he evidently failed to grasp the significance of the demand for an independent republic under African rule. It was, in the circumstances of the time, as remote or utopian' as the concept of a socialist republic under working-class rule. The shift in emphasis reflected the related changes in the party and the society at large: the absorption of the labour aristocracy in the white elite; the 'proletarianization' of Africans after fifty years of industrialism; the transformation of the party from an all-white to an overwhellmingly African membership. As prospects of unity between workers of all races receded, Africans revealed a great capacity and will for militant struggle. The value of the 'independent native republic, slogan was that it jolted the party into awareness of its new role, and inspired in Africans a determination to reject the unquestioned assumption of perpetual white domination.
The Communist party's proper role, advised the editor of Forward, was to educate 'the white working class to a realization of the actual economic position of the workers, irrespective of race or colour'. Africans, as a class, would remain unfitted to participate in government for many years to come. Both they and whites bitterly resented white communists who tried to lead Africans to equality by active participation in Socialist propaganda and agitation among natives'. When Bunting, back from Moscow, explained the new policy to an audience in the Inchcape Hall, Forward noted that his speech would certainly satisfy sensation-mongers. Such publicity has been given to his declaration of a Black Republic that every newspaper-doped South African who possesses a firearm is sleeping with it under his pillow'. There was, however, a vast difference between communism according to St Marx and the Gospel according to St Bunting. The first treats every worker as equal, irrespective of race, creed or colour. The second makes the black worker a member of the Chosen and the white worker an Amalekite. Thus does a misinterpreted gospel of economic liberation become the dogma of a new religion!55
Was it in accord with Communist principles', asked La Guma, to sacrifice or delay the freedom of the large majority in the interest of a small minority of imperialistically imbued white workers?' They had refused to hear the party's message for twenty years, objected to its being taken to the African, and resisted every effort on his part toward a better and brighter day'. In 1922 they rose in arms on the Rand to perpetuate our serfdom'; now, through the Labour party, they supported anti-native legislation and the enactment of colour bars in industry. A ray of hope has appeared on the horizon in the shape of an objective - freedom and equality with other peoples', for which the enslaved black masses of South Africa would be prepared to demonstrate their manhood and desire'. The party must not now turn to them and say in effect, Yes, you will be allowed to march into the promised land at such time as it can be considered without wounding the susceptibilities of the "Baas''.56
Bunting loyally abided by the Comintern's ruling and accepted La Guma's plea for unqualified faith in majority African rule. He had misgivings. The slogan was defective, he thought, yet he would try to make the best of the new line. It might succeed after the initial outcry at it had receded. He and his wife met with a storm of alarmist newspaper reports on their return from Moscow. The police threatened to arrest them; white trade unionists reviled or ignored them. Old party members like Andrews and Tinker would have nothing to do with the Black Republic, and many African members, including the trade unionists, shared their doubts.57
Hertzog demanded white rule and black subjection, Bunting told a crowded meeting in the Inchcape Hall in November, whereas communists demanded a black republic. 'We are a party for freedom and independence.' If there was to be race domination, then Africans must rule. If there was going to be equality, there must be domination by the majority.' He explained the policy and its background in the pamphlet 'Imperialism and South Africa', and presented a shorter, more satisfactory version in a programme drafted for the seventh annual conference in December. Thirty delegates, of whom twenty were African and Coloured, marched with a crowd of supporters behind a band and flying banners from the party headquarters to the hall. Here they listened to reports of struggle and sacrifice in the teeth of persecution, intimidation and espionage; adopted a new constitution modelled on the British party's; spent a full day discussing the new programme; and elected an executive bureau of six whites and three Africans.58
Bunting, in the chair, ruled that any motion to reject or modify the programme would be out of order under the Comintern's rules. Wolton attacked the party's alleged chauvinistic errors', especially Bunting's, but the conference refused to be drawn into the quarrel. Wolton then announced that he wished to return to Britain. He was persuaded to remain in his post of secretary-editor until, he said, a non-European is ready to take my place'. The conference adopted the clause on self-determination of the African people' by eleven votes to four and accepted the programme on the understanding that it implied a workers, and peasants, republic, for practically all natives are workers and peasants'.
Real labour unity could be achieved, according to the programme, only when Africans had been liberated from subjection. Nothing less than a democratic revolution would destroy racial discrimination, abolish feudal relationships, and enable Africans to develop a national identity. A democratic society under African rule would lead to the abolition of class exploitation, socialism, and rule by workers and peasants. Racial emancipation and class emancipation coincided. The party's immediate task was therefore to remove all racial disabilities; restore lands and liberties seized by foreign conquerors; vindicate the principle of equality, independence and self-determination; and establish Africans in power with guarantees of equal rights for all minorities.
Communists had previously argued that equality could be realized only under socialism. First abolish class distinctions, they said, and colour bars would disappear. Bunting's programme reversed the sequence. The removal of racial discrimination in all its forms was now seen as a pre-condition for the building of a classless society. White workers were invited to abandon their role as a tinsel aristocracy', doomed to be either helpless or treacherous in the class struggle; and to support the demand for African power - the only practical road to workers' power. This was a great advance in the analysis of the relations between national and class forces in the liberation movement. The party had at last found a firm basis in Marxist theory for an unequivocal affirmation of the African's claim to govern his country.
Bunting and Wolton took the new message to the electors of Tembuland and the Cape Flats in the parliamentary election of 1929. A manifesto drawn up by Roux gave the particulars: equal citizenship rights for all; the removal of colour bars from the constitution and the repeal of discriminatory laws; an open door to the public services and other spheres of employment; a fair distribution of land and an extension of the reserves; equal wages for equal work; the recognition of African trade unions; free primary education; and freedom of speech and assembly. The programme should have appealed to any voter who resented racial discrimination, but elections are not won by slogans alone. The party lacked a grass-roots organization such as the South African party had built over many years. Wolton lost heavily in the Cape Flats, despite its high proportion of Coloured and African voters. Even La Guma, the author of the black republic ' slogan, suffered an unexplained lapse. He canvassed for one of Wolton's opponents, an 'independent Nationalist candidate, and was expelled from the party for his breach of discipline and 'political opportunism'. 59
'The people of the Transkei are ready for a change, reported Bunting in the midst of an epic electioneering campaign, the atmosphere of which was subtly conveyed in Laurens van der Post's novel In a Province. They came from far and near, eager to join in a militant movement against their conditions. Most of the whites were unspeakably ignorant and insolent. Hooligans broke up the first political demonstration held by Africans in Umtata. It was no more than a police camp. Nearly one-fifth of its voters were in police or government services. 'The shadow of the Kaffir wars is still over the land.' Nowhere else could a parliamentary candidate and his agents 'be shadowed throughout his election tour, night and day, by motor loads of detectives, pursuing them even into grocers, shops and lavatories and arresting and persecuting them ' without legal justification and for nearly every election speech. Far more oppressive was the lifelong and inescapable persecution of the African residents.60
Bunting gave the reasons for his defeat in a series of articles. The police and courts had done all they could to disrupt his campaign. They convicted and expelled his driver for entering the Transkei, his only homeland, without a permit. They instituted more than a dozen prosecutions against him and his agent, Gana Makabeni, at the height of the campaign, and so wasted five valuable weeks. The ceaseless shadowing by the police, their interruptions at his meetings, and direct interference during canvassing frightened the electors away. Leading Africans visibly shunned him. Not a few stayed away from the polls for fear. Fewer than 400 had the pluck to vote communist. Intimidation, however, was the immediate rather than the main cause of timidity.
The people had been corrupted by white missionaries, who taught them to be obedient, loyal servants of those set over them. Nothing was said in the schools of their national patriots and heroes, of the fighters for freedom from the oppressor. So crushed and moulded were the intellectuals, that some asked, like the Blind Boy, 'What is that thing called freedom or equal rights? We are content as we are.' Petty officials, interpreters and agricultural demonstrators formed a thin upper layer, deliberately created, and were often willing to help keep the masses down. The Bhunga or general council of headmen and elected members was not even a safety valve, and served as a 'screen for imperialist despotism'. So treacherous was it, that the council unanimously agreed to ask the government to take action against Bunting under Act 29 of 1897, which allowed the administration to imprison any person dangerous to the public peace , for three months without a trial.
The Transkei, declared Bunting in his election address, was 'a principal labour recruiting and breeding annexe of the Chamber of Mines. Behind the scenes it controlled 'the organs of administration, police, courts, Bhunga, Native Affairs Department, yes, and the Union Cabinet itself, all dancing to the tune of big finance'. The economic standard of the people had been so adjusted by land laws and taxation 'as to ensure just that degree of poverty best calculated to drive the maximum number of able-bodied men from their homes to the mines'. They were allowed to retain a diminutive stake in the country' which relieved the employer of the need to pay them a living wage. By returning a communist, the electors would voice a mighty protest to the whole ' native policy ' of past years, and demonstrate their will to wrest liberty, equality and self-government. The party called on the people to seek their freedom through agitation, political education, organization, demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, and now even the election. He, Bunting, had devoted twenty years to the movement of the working class and subject peoples. He had repeatedly suffered arrest and imprisonment for it, and could be trusted to fight and die for the cause of African freedom.
Wolton remained unconvinced. He blamed Bunting and other 'white chauvinists' in the party for the African's poor response to its call for national independence. They were 'hidden white supremacists 'who concealed their chauvinism ' in a very stealthy fashion, by consistently discouraging the growth of an African leadership. In a 'benevolent paternal way they 'tried to patronize the black man and thus ensure that in reality the white man would continue to direct affairs'. Wolton and his wife left in July for England with the intention of making their way to Moscow. Here they would explain the reasons for the party's shortcomings, and persuade the Comintern to intervene. 61
Albert Nzula (1906-33) took Wolton's place as secretary editor only six months after joining the party. This was remarkably quick promotion, even if he had crammed much into his short life. Born at Rouxville, OFS, he qualified as a teacher at Lovedale, and moved to Aliwal North where he taught, interpreted at the magistrate's court and acted as secretary of the ICU branch. He then took a teaching post in a mission school at Evaton, Transvaal, and here he joined the party in August 1928. Two months later, after reading Bishop Brown's 'Communism and Christianism he decided that 'every right-minded person ought to be a Communist. He could think of nothing else and wondered 'what part will be played by the Bantu in realizing for the world a Communist order'. 62 A good speaker and writer, he soon showed a great aptitude for politics and became a fervent disciple of Wolton, according to whom he was the only African at this time able to hold his own in polemics with white 'socialists'. He exposed their 'faults and shortcomings' with passion and conviction, and inspired a group of African leaders to assert themselves against the entrenched white leadership.
The appointment of an African to the top position was one consequence of the party's 'turn to the masses' in 1927-8. It also led to a falling away of white supporters, taking with them valuable technical and financial resources. The loss was more than compensated for by an influx of Africans, among them teachers like Edwin Mofutsanyana and J. B. Marks, or workers like Moses Kotane and Johannes Nkosi. They Africanized the party; wrote articles for its paper in Tswana, Sesuthu, Zulu and Xhosa; organized its branches in country districts or concentrated on the trade unions. The proliferation of activities, coinciding with a splintering of the ICU into warring factions and the inertia of the ANC, transformed the party. It had formerly been the left wing of the labour movement. The communists now became the acknowledged leaders of the militant wing of the liberation movement. Caption taken from Apartheid and The History of The Struggle for Freedom in South Africa, All rights reserved.
*White share-croppers