South Africa was insulated by gold from the worst shocks of the great depression. The value of minerals produced fell from £61 million in 1929 to £54 million in 1932, largely because the diamond mines went out of action. The gross output of manufacturing plants dropped in the same period from £112 to £91 million; and the value of agricultural exports, from £26 to £13 Million. In 1933 the government went off the gold standard and started an inflationary boom that lifted the economy out of the trough. Exports, which had fallen from £83 million in 1930 to £69 million in 1932, rose to £95 million in 1933. Of this amount £22 million represented the estimated value of the 'gold premium' on exported bullion.
Hertzog and N. C. Havenga, the highly orthodox minister of finance, clung to the gold standard so as to demonstrate their faith in the sovereign quality both of gold and of South Africa's political status. A special session of parliament on 18 November 1931 rejected an opposition motion to follow Britain's example. The South African party, backed by mine owners, bankers, an increasing number of farmers and manufacturers, and the English press agitated for devaluation. The government relied on currency controls to stop the flight of capital, imposed dumping duties, raised taxes, subsidized farmers and cut the pay of railwaymen and public servants.
The gold reserves dwindled, the prices of primary products fell, and the budget's deficit mounted as politicians and economists wrangled. Tielman Roos, one of the chief architects of the Transvaal Nationalist party, then brought matters to a head by leaving the Appeal Court to re-enter politics. On 22 December 1932 he called for a national coalition government that would abandon the gold standard and save the country from communism. Money was leaving the country at the rate of £1,000,000 a day when the government announced on 27 December that South Africa had gone off gold.
Roos, a popular hero overnight, threatened to upset all political calculations. The Labour party's annual conference authorized Madeley to negotiate with him, while Smuts and Hertzog prepared to join forces against their common rival. Convinced that he would lose the next election, Hertzog, like Ramsay MacDonald in 1930, preferred to stay in power with the opposition's backing - only, he explained, to defend 'the interests of the country and the Volk'. He told his caucus that if the South African party won the election, Smuts would inevitably surrender Afrikanerdom and its language to the gold magnates and to British jingoes in Natal. ' This the Volk would never forgive us.1
The two leaders agreed on 23 February to form a coalition after Smuts had surrendered his principles on the issue of the African vote in the Cape. He argued at first that it should not be tampered with while the coalition lasted, and finally agreed to the 'separate political representation of White and Black' and the retention of the civilized labour policy. Afrikaner nationalism and African rights had been sacrificed to the golden calf, scoffed Hertzog's critics in his own ranks.
All could now see, said the communists, that the bourgeois parties, which had conducted fierce battles for twenty years on alleged 'fundamental and principal differences', disagreed only over methods of exploitation. Afrikaner nationalism had suffered a defeat, yet it was bound to rally and split the coalition. Meanwhile, Pirow remained in the cabinet to continue his white terror against workers of all races. It was for the party to mobilize them in a united front from below against wage cuts, the civilized labour policy, and capitalist terror. 2
The Labour party's national executive also damned coalition as the 'logical outcome of capitalism's imminent collapse. 'Financial Kings and Exploiters have come together to safeguard the interests of the monied classes at the expense of the worker.' 3 Ever weaving new patterns of unity and discord, Labour prepared for battle at a special conference in March against the people's enemies, among whom were listed the parliamentary 'renegades' Creswell, Sampson, McMeuamin, Shaw and Kentridge. Creswell and Sampson had refused to resign from the cabinet, thereby defying a decision taken in August 1931 by a 'peace conference' representing both factions in the party. 4 The other ' renegades , loyally obeyed the instruction to withdraw their support from the ministry, but defaulted in turn by hobnobbing with Smuts, whom they followed into the coalition.
Hertzog's new cabinet of six Nationalist and six South African party members took office on 31 March. Creswell and Sampson were dropped; Dr D. F. Malan, leader of the Cape Nationalists, refused office. Though objecting to coalition, he persuaded his followers to support it for the sake of unity and so as to make certain of being returned to parliament in the general election on 17 May 1933. It was a sweeping victory for the coalition, which won 138 seats; 75 went to the Nationalists, 61 to the SAP, and 2 to the Labour coalitionists Creswell and Fred Shaw. Six of the remaining twelve members in the assembly undertook to support the government. The opposition of six included followers of Roos, Natal 'home rulers', and two Labour men, Walter Madeley and R. T. MacArthur.
Besides promising an assortment of social services and economic handouts, Labour's election platform gave a preview of Verwoerdian apartheid. 5 There would be complete separation when Labour ruled, 'so that the Natives shall not be allowed to impinge upon us to our detriment and theirs. The aim should be the gradual development of Native States under a white parliament where ' even the de-tribalized Natives would be only too delighted to reside'. As for those who remained near the European towns, it was an important part of Labour's policy so to control them 'that they will not be a menace to the Europeans. The peaceful co-existence of powerful white and black states might well be South Africa's contribution to world socialism. Or so the Labour party said. Afrikaner workers, however, would not be lured into a party that had long ceased to exist as an independent force. From then on Labour could win parliamentary seats only as an appendage of a capitalist party.
The Communist party put up 'demonstrative' candidates voteless Africans, Coloured, and two whites - on 'a programme of extra-Parliamentary struggles' for immediate needs; non-contributory unemployment relief; the abolition of civilized labour policies; complete equality of rights; full freedom of organization, assembly and speech; and the withdrawal of British and South African armed forces from the protectorates and South West Africa. It was an excellent recipe for genuine democracy, but the party refused to foster illusions. The demands could be guaranteed, it declared, only through national independence; public ownership of land, mines, factories and banks; and the setting up of an independent native republic under a workers, and peasants, government. Communists took part in the elections in order to inspire a determination to engage in ' strikes, demonstrations and other militant mass actions leading up to revolutionary struggle for State Power'. 6
The message came through clearly on 30 May when Douglas Wolton, one of the party's candidates, was sentenced to three months' hard labour, and Ray Alexander to one month's suspended for two years. The charge against them was that they had incited bus and tram workers to strike in December for a rise from 1s. 6d. to 2s. an hour. The strike brought Cape Town's public transport to a standstill for ten days, and was broken by the police and the union's officials. Robert Stuart, the secretary, who gave evidence against the communists at the trial, was then defending his trade union empire against the militants in the African Federation of Trade Unions. The breach in the movement later affected the relations between the Cape Federation and the Trades and Labour Council; but it encouraged the growth of a militant trade union organization in the western Cape.
Wolton returned to England with his family after his release from prison. Gomas and Josiah Ngedlane went to Johannesburg to join Bach, Kotane and Roux on the party's political bureau. The infusion of new blood, notes Roux, led to the adoption of 'a more realistic policy' of renewed cooperation with other radical groups. 7 The change was bound to come under the impact of Germany's Third Reich, the spread of Nazi doctrines in South Africa, and the Communist International's appeal in March 1933 for a united front.in June, while Wolton was still in prison, the party asked trade unions, the ANC, socialist groups and joint councils to combine against unemployment, police repression and fascism.
Hitler's triumph, Nazi savagery and the Nordic myth struck a responsive chord in Afrikaner racists. Much dormant hostility towards Jews and the British came to the surface. An immigration act restricting entry from eastern Europe passed through parliament in 1930 with threats and warnings. 8 An ' ever increasing anti-Jewish sentiment', reported the Jewish Board of Deputies in 1931, 'strives to minimize if not destroy the equal status of the Jew as a citizen. 9 The Greyshirts - a National Socialist party - and other imitators of jackbooted Nazi auxiliaries appeared, chanting anti-Semitic slogans or denouncing 'foreign influences'. Hertzog, playing down the persecution of Jews, condemned an economic boycott of German goods. New cleavages and alignments developed in the race-ridden society.
The initial response to the communists' appeal for a united front was disappointing. None of the African organizations so much as acknowledged the offer of cooperation. Their 'pusillanimous policies ' had landed them in chaos, complained Kotane, then the editor of Umsebenzi; 10 while ANC leaders alleged that the party had lost the people's confidence by a reckless militancy. 'Many of its followers,' wrote Halley G. Plaatje, the general secretary of Congress, 'have met with a bloody, untimely and wholly unnecessary death. 11 What had Congress gained with its cap-in-hand policy? asked the communists; and Jameson G. Coka drew up a balance sheet in a series of articles on the African press, the ANC and its intellectual leaders. 12
African nationalism, he argued, had forged ahead after the 1914-18 war when Congress abandoned whimpering resolutions for active struggle. Then came a flock of white liberals, missionaries, lawyers and professors to stem the tide. With money from America and the Chamber of Mines, they founded a tame press, social clubs, pathfinders, joint councils and the Institute of Race Relations. Liberalism and the lure of fat jobs corrupted the leaders. 'All the black reformists and charlatans, all the discarded race-betrayers and unprincipled time-servers suddenly became protagonists of sports, education and inter-racial cooperation.' The young were made sports minded and dance crazy; and Congress fell back into inactivity.
The crop of anti-African laws passed since 1920, wrote Coka, refuted the claim of the liberals that moderation led to better conditions. Racial prejudice, inflamed by cabinet ministers and public men, was ranker than a decade before. The blacks were steadily losing ground; lackeyism was enhanced; and the masses were befuddled, deceived and misled. Reactionary leaders like Dube, Thema, Seme and Jabavu had left the struggle; Kadalie, Mote and other bombastic speakers were silent. Only the communists held on, instilling race pride and class solidarity, pressing for the black republic and a workers-peasants government, which were surely enough to stir the blood of every oppressed worker and black man with a soul.
All but a few intellectuals recoiled from the concept of black power, however, and ignored appeals for common action against fascism, which might well have seemed irrelevant to the victims of South Africa's own brand of totalitarian rule. Congress leaders continued to put their faith in collaboration with white liberals and in non-violent forms of pressure. Yet another deputation went in December 1933 from the Transvaal ANC to Piet Grobler, the minister of native affairs, who defended the displacement of Africans by whites. The whites had created the towns, he said, and were entitled to preference on the labour market. He undertook, however, to make concessions under the pass laws to 'deserving natives'. New regulations issued in September 1934 accordingly gave the administration a discretionary power to issue exemption certificates, which had to be produced on demand, to an elite consisting of government employees, chiefs, teachers, ministers of religion and men certified to be of good character.
It was a minor concession and failed to detach the thin layer of educated and urbanized Africans from the general community. All lived under the same conditions in segregated locations or slums; all were liable to be raided and interrogated as local authorities redoubled their efforts to regulate the flow of workseekers from the countryside. Johannesburg was proclaimed under the Urban Areas Act in July 1933; new regulations restricting the African's freedom of movement, residence and occupation in the city came into force; and magistrate van der Westhuisen broke all records by trying Africans for pass, liquor and kindred offences at the rate of 130 an hour. In April 1934 Dr Roux began serving a sentence of four months' hard labour for urging Africans on Dingaan's Day to defend themselves with arms if necessary against pick-up vans and police brutality. The party night school was closed during his absence.
More communists stood trial and went to prison. James Ncwangu of Pinetown served twelve months for telling Africans not to pay taxes or 'to sign themselves into slavery under the Native Service Contract Act'. Peter Ramutla, a member of the central committee and chairman of the newly formed Native Shop Assistants' Union in Johannesburg, was sentenced to five months' hard labour for promoting 'racial hostility'. The party could not keep up the pace on its own. While determined to maintain their 'clear and independent political line', the communists renewed their attempts to obtain the cooperation of nationalist and liberal organizations in an offensive against the pass laws. But the campaign came to a standstill. It lacked the essential element of a militant mass movement capable of developing effective methods of struggle. 'We have reformist Bantu leaders in this country, noted Kotane in January 1934, 'but no reformist organizations worth speaking about. The once formidable African National Congress and ICU have disappeared. 13
Before the end of the year, the parties of white supremacy began a process that jerked the ANC out of its long passivity. Hertzog and Smuts merged their forces into the United South African National Party in December 1934. A section of the Nationalists, represented by Dr Malan and eighteen other members in parliament, rejected fusion and went into opposition. Imperialist die-hards under Colonel Stallard also refused to merge, and formed a Dominion party with five members in the House. Labour had four, one of them being M. J. van den Berg, who captured the mining constituency of Krugersdorp in a by-election.
The seven principles of fusion were studded with hackneyed phrases about national unity, equality between Afrikaners and English, sovereign status within the empire, a civilized labour policy for white workers, and separate representation for Africans under white Christian trusteeship. 14 Africans were promised a square deal, said the communists, but all they would get was the square heel of the imperialist boot'. The alliance between British mine owners and Afrikaner landlords was a thin cover for more exploitation and another step towards a dictatorship. As for Malan's followers, some would fall a prey to Nazi demagogues. It was the Communist party's duty to obtain the support of poor farmers for its vision of a workers and peasants government. 15
The comment showed more insight than the fulsome praises showered on Hertzog and Smuts. Their merger raised the level of racism, and isolated a hard core of Afrikaner nationalists. Fusion, wrote G. D. Scholtz, later the editor of Die Transvaler, ' caused a wave of bitterness, rancour and distrust to sweep over the Afrikaans people such as even the Rebellion of 1914-15 had not produced. 16 It was after coalition, according to Hertzog, that Dr Malan and his lieutenants joined the Afrikaner Broederbond, a secret society formed in 1918 and dedicated to the aim of an independent Afrikaans government. The rise and fall of parties, declared the Bond's leaders in a letter to its members in January 1934, meant less than the resolve that Afrikanerdom should dominate and the Bond should rule South Africa. 17
Another consequence of fusion was a weakening of the opposition in parliament to Hertzog's segregation bills. These had been before the country since 1926 and been defeated in 1927, 1929 and 1930. A joint committee was appointed to prepare a basis for the betrayal of Cape democracy. In 1930 the committee accepted and in successive years reaffirmed the principles of a bill drafted by Heaton Nicholls, one of Natal's foremost racists, which, he claimed, would secure 'for all time the dominance of the Europeans'. 18 With 118 members on his side in the assembly, Hertzog was certain of the two-thirds majority of both houses required by the constitution for the removal of Africans from the common roll. The publication of the committee's final report in May 1935 sounded the alarm for a campaign in defence of the franchise. 19
The threat to the franchise and the growth of fascism were the main causes of radicalism in the next five years. Africans and Coloured rallied against Hertzog's Representation of Natives Bill and other segregation measures. White workers mustered their forces to contain uniformed bands of fascists and to defeat the Broederbond's attempts to capture or split trade unions. The separation of functions tended to divide the left along racial lines, but its immediate effects were invigorating. A resurgence of militancy healed old wounds, brought men who had fallen by the way back into the struggle, and laid a new basis for unity. The movement was able to tap fresh sources of manpower and money, especially in the Jewish community. Trade unions were stimulated into political action on a wider scale than at any time since 1922.
This was testimony to the skill and doggedness shown by communists in the cause of inter-racial class solidarity. Most of the whites employed in light industry such as the garment, textile, leather, furniture and tobacco trades were Afrikaners, rural in origin, relatively unskilled and badly paid. Unlike the artisan, they worked alongside Coloured, Indians and Africans at the same jobs and for similar wages. Many of the employers were Jews and a favourite butt for fascist abuse. Conditions could hardly be more suitable than these for the spread of fascism, yet it made little headway among factory workers; primarily because men like Kalk, Sachs, Tyler, Weinbren and Wolfson were able to neutralize racial prejudices by means of militant trade unionism and socialist education.
Whereas English-speaking artisans continued to control the craft unions, Afrikaners were soon elected to leading positions in the industrial unions. As chairmen, organizers, branch secretaries and committee members, Afrikaners were personally interested in defending the unions against disruptive movements. Men and women who had grown up in an atmosphere of narrow nationalism moved to catch sight of an international workers, commonwealth. The annual delegations that visited the Soviet Union between 1933 and 1938 included Afrikaners who returned with glowing accounts. It had done away with unemployment, they reported, and stood foremost in the fight for peace against Nazi aggression. Johanna Cornelius, president of the Transvaal garment workers, union, J. Wolmarans, chairman of the textile union, H. S. Lamprechts, secretary of the leather workers' union, Gideon Botha, secretary of the FSU, J. Larkins and other Afrikaners spoke to rural audiences about the dangers of fascism and war. Claiming that the poor Afrikaner was bound to become an important revolutionary force, the Communist party began publishing an Afrikaans monthly, Die Arbeider en Anne Boer ('Worker and Peasant'), in January 1935.
Meeting in the same month, the Labour party's annual conference upheld a decision of the national council to boycott the Anti-Fascist League. They should have nothing to do with communists, said Duncan Burnside, an eloquent Scot who staggered between both ends of the labour spectrum. With barely 300 members, the party had no taste for any action that smacked of radicalism, and refused to join in protests against an amendment in July 1934 of the customs regulations, giving the government power to prohibit the importation of political literature. The first list of banned books, apart from 'pornography, included the Communist Manifesto, Labour Defence News, and What Are the Machine Tractor Stations? J. H. Hofmeyr, the minister of interior, was said to be a great liberal; yet he told a deputation that literature, even though not 'propaganda, in the strict sense, might be dangerous on account of South Africa's 'peculiar race question. 20
The League against Fascism and War was formed in March 1934 by trade unionists, communists, Labour party members, Friends of the Soviet Union and radical societies. A year later the Trades and Labour Council's annual conference decided not to affiliate to the League, and agreed by nineteen votes to eleven to oppose political dictatorships. A. A. Moore, secretary of the reduction workers, union, who introduced the motion, suspected that the League was really 'a jumping-off ground for another political party. J. C. Bolton, the secretary of two Natal unions with a majority of Indian members, said that most people in South Africa were uncivilized. If they had a workers' dictatorship, it would have to put power in their hands. 21
Bill Andrews objected vigorously. Moore's motion was evidently meant to be an attack on the dictatorship of the working class - the only means by which workers could become masters of their own lives. The trade union movement owed its existence to men who grasped the nature of the conflict between the buyers and sellers of labour power. All social evils and injustices arose from the workers' dependence on the propertied classes. Nowhere was this condition more harmful than in South Africa, where the great majority were voteless helots. The real choice before conference was ' a Fascist State or a workers' and peasants' republic'. 22
Capitalism everywhere, thought Andrews, was moving towards a naked dictatorship. The only opposition came from the Communist party. Though it was still weak and unimportant, with much unsatisfactory ' material ', time-servers and even traitors in its ranks, its philosophy of an iron discipline and uncompromising struggle for power was the only possible policy. 'Pacifism leads nowhere. It has been, it is, and will be war to the knife until capitalism is destroyed.' In South Africa, however, 'it appears unlikely that we shall be in the vanguard. Our proletarians, the natives, are more nearly slaves than in most countries. One could only continue to tell the truth and trust that events would provide the soil in which the seed might germinate. 23
This would not come to pass, said the communists, so long as Africans 'submissively bear the derision and bad treatment of the white masters. To do away with this shameful slavery, it was necessary to drive the Anglo-Boer slave drivers out of the country. Neither the tribal chiefs nor the bourgeoisie who jointly controlled the ANC could organize and lead the revolution. For the chiefs were government agents, exploiting and aiding the exploiters. As for the bourgeoisie, they longed for freedom yet feared to free the masses. Consequently, workers and peasants acting together and led by the party must take upon themselves the burden of their emancipation. 24
Why should it be thought proper to form a united front with right-wing labour men and not with African nationalists? The question was debated hotly in the party, as it continued its solitary mission of firing revolt among Africans. This could not be done by stressing the danger of an internal fascism. Such might be new to you, Peter Ramutla told delegates at the Anti-Fascist League's annual conference in 1935, but Africans had lived in concentration camps for generations. 25 Coloured in the Cape joined the League, sat on its committees, and exchanged blows with L. T. Weichardt's Greyshirts. Only Africans who were politically acute, however, would recognize the common factor in colonial fascism and Nazi imperialism.
When the South African air force bombed the villages and herds of Impumbu, a rebellious Ovambo chief, in August 1932, the party urged members of the ANC and ICU to join in a campaign for the immediate withdrawal of all armed forces from South West Africa. 'Hands off Bechuanaland, the communists demanded in 1933, when vice-admiral Evans, backed by marines and field guns, deposed Tshekedi Khama, acting chief of the Bamangwato, for sentencing a white man to be whipped. L. L. Leepile, the secretary of the Cape Town CP, and a native of Bechuanaland, denounced the Anglo-Boer imperialists who jailed, deposed and banished any chief who failed to extract blood money in the form of taxes from the starving peasants. The time would come, he predicted, when they would unite for a federation of native republics under a workers, and peasants' government. 26
Britain had allowed Bechuanaland, Swaziland and Basutoland to drift into a deplorable state of poverty, disease and ignorance. Hertzog said as much and renewed the pressure for their transfer to South Africa. His real motive, the communists argued, was to enable mine owners and land speculators to lay their hands on the labour resources, mineral wealth and grazing lands of the three territories. 'We are for driving out all the Imperialist oppressors from South Africa and the Protectorates,' explained Lazar Bach; for the independence of Africans in the whole of the continent, and the right to rule themselves as they liked. It was the party's task to make them aware of their national destiny, to lead them in struggle for bread and freedom, and to bring about a voluntary association of national republics - Sotho, Tswana, Swazi, Zulu, Xhosa - in a federation of independent native republics. 27
An indigenous South African imperialism was taking shape, and communists saw the signs before most people. The country's 'native policy, was best, said Smuts at Oxford, and should be imitated by settler governments in east and central Africa. 28 Pirow, now minister of defence' foresaw a rising tide of colour', a life and death struggle in which South Africa should be the rallying point for all champions of white civilization. The time might come, he warned, when whites in tropical Africa would need protection against black invaders. All Africa south of the Sudan, he said in November 1934, should have a common native policy'. In South West Africa, where the United party had won a general election, non-German whites agitated for incorporation as a fifth province, while the administration banned Nazi organizations and expelled their leaders. 29
This was not being done out of any love for democracy, said the communists. South Africa was preparing to annex the mandated territory. As for Pirow's vision of the future Africa, it would be no more than a larger edition of the Union's slave system. The forces of history were not going to be dictated by so short-sighted and conceited a buffoon. Yet it was on Pirow's side that history in the shape of Mussolini came down in February 1935, when 3,000 soldiers steamed from Italy to the Ethiopian frontier.
The invasion of Ethiopia brought a deeper understanding of the links between fascism, war and colonial rule. A spirit of national pride spread through all social classes and tribal communities as Africans discovered that black people could stand up in defence of their homes against a white settlers' army. The communists' ' Hands off Ethiopia ' campaign aroused great enthusiasm. Dockers at Cape Town and Durban refused to load ships with goods for Italian troops. Elation gave way to despair when Ethiopia fell. yet the communists kept their faith in the final victory. More wars were on the way, they predicted, and Ethiopians would regain their freedom by joining in the revolutionary struggle with anti-fascist Italian workers.
South Africa's own freedom was in danger, declared the former chief justice Sir James Rose Innes in a review of Hertzog's bill to take the vote from Africans in the Cape. There is a full-blooded Fascist flavour about the proceeding.' 30 An All African Convention, meeting at Bloemfontein in December 1935, rejected political and territorial segregation. It could 'only be justly carried out by means of the creation of separate states', and this was neither a good thing nor feasible. 31 At about the same time, 120 delegates from all parts of the country attended a conference of the League against Fascism and War, the most important united front conference held in Johannesburg for many years. Trade unionists, communists, liberals and intellectuals were making common cause in defence of civil liberties and the democratic ideal.
The communists, forming a slender bridge between the two fronts, had responded to the appeal issued by the seventh congress of the Communist International at Moscow in July-August 1935. The most important of its kind since Lenin's death, the congress criticized the schematic approach and faulty judgements of the sixth congress. Georgi Dimitroff, hero of the Reichstag fire trial, leader of the illegal Bulgarian Communist party, and the CIs new general secretary, lashed out at cut-and-dried schemes which substituted slogans such as 'the revolutionary way out' for a precise, factual analysis of class forces. Communist parties should rid themselves of sectarian tendencies, he said, and give all their energies to building a people's front. 32 The Comintern followed his lead in a series of directives. Workers, peasants, intellectuals must combine with the middle class in a broad movement to prevent war and defeat fascism.
'In South Africa too, for we are not exceptional,' confessed the CPs political bureau, 'the Party has suffered from left sectarian tendencies. It must get rid of them without delay. The correction turned out to be a long and painful adjustment between opposing schools of thought. Kotane argued that a people's front would flourish only if all who took part shared both responsibility and power. Gomas hammered the point home. Those who were not party members, he said, joined the front for a specific purpose and not to carry through the party's entire programme. Communists should respect their opinions and not behave as though the party was in full control. 33
The party would lose its identity if it took this course, warned Bach, and he cited Bunting's experience with the League of African Rights. Anybody who underrated the strength and ideological influence of the African middle class, he said, acted in effect as an agent of the bourgeoisie. An unrepentant defender of the sixth world congress of the CI, Bach preferred the strategy of a united front from below. It left the party free to expose the reformist leaders and take the control in its own hands. In this way it would preserve an independent line of action in struggling for the 'independent native republic. 34
Old wounds reopened as the debate swung back to the black republic slogan. It was being revived, said Kotane, only to obscure the main issue of whether the party should form permanent local branches or persist in putting all its energy into sporadic campaigns. Though pledged to uproot sectarian tendencies, the centre objected to criticisms of past policy which, it said, disrupted the party. Stephen Tefu was suspended, and Jameson Coka, another sceptic who doubted the importance of an African middle class, was expelled in July 1935 for ' attempting to inaugurate a new counter-revolutionary Nationalist Political Party among Africans '. In September the Johannesburg district expelled four of Kotane's supporters and suspended a fifth for attacking the party's 'line and leadership'. 35
Coka explained that at the time of his expulsion - 'for my "reformist activities"' - his chief problem was to get a job. 'I had been working for over eighteen months without a penny payment. Had I not discharged my duty to my race?' Born at Mfolozi, Zululand, in 1910, he attended missionary schools, taught at the early age of fifteen, and was diverted from the usual teaching-church career of an educated African by the ICU, which he joined in 1927. 'A general strike, passive, or even active resistance, demonstrations, or any militant move would, at that time, have changed the history of the Union. The masses were ready to follow the lead even to death.' Kadalie and Champion gave no lead. Coka then went to Johannesburg, studied communism, joined the party, left it and became a lay preacher. His patron, Dr Seme, helped him to find employment on a newspaper, and he began the uncertain career of a free-lance journalist.
A gifted writer, Coka might have been an asset to the party if it had treated him more sympathetically than its rigorous standards allowed. Kotane, Ngedlane and Roux protested against the expulsions and were dropped from the political bureau, leaving it in the hands of Bach, Marks, Kalk and Edwin Mofutsanyana, the general secretary. Kotane, Roux and Gomas thereupon asked the Comintern to intervene. It invited the two factions to send representatives to Moscow. Kotane went to speak for the opposition. Maurice Richter, a Latt who had settled in the Orange Free State, was deputed to state the political bureau's point of view; and he was followed by Bach. 37
The political pendulum was swinging against them, and neither returned to South Africa. The Comintern's control commission in Moscow expelled both from the party, and also Richter's brother Paul, for having shielded a follower of Leon Trotsky. There were additional charges against Bach. The son of a factory owner, he had hidden his social origins, laid a false claim to membership of the Latvian party, and engaged in 'disruptive fractional' activities in South Africa. Subsequent to this finding, the three men were put on trial, sentenced to death and executed. 38
The party had by that time digested Dimitroff's message to such good effect that it undertook to back up any progressive movement. Rank-and-file Afrikaner republicans, discontented members of the British middle class, the Labour party, workers and poor farmers of all races were all likely recruits for the battle against imperialism. Or so thought George Hardy, a British communist who represented the Communist International in South Africa for the greater part of 1936. Like many radicals from abroad, he claimed to have found a great revolutionary force in the medley of races and classes. 39 Substituting reformist phrases for left-wing slogans, Hardy guided the party into making a great turn to the right.
Some enthusiasts went so far as to suggest a separation of forces along racial lines, and an all-white people's front against fascism. Eddie Roux objected to what he thought was a revival of the discredited notion that only whites could make a revolution. No united front was worthy that failed to defend the living standards and rights of all workers. Solly Sachs retorted that Roux suffered from an 'infantile revolutionary exuberance. A united front between black and white might 'satisfy the revolutionary conscience of our honest but impracticable comrades'. He, Sachs, was a realist who wanted to free the hundreds of thousands of poor whites from imperialism and fascist influences. 40
Hardy agreed with Roux that there could be only one united front. Any attempt to split it would strengthen the segregation camp. Specialization was called for, however, and the party should give a hand in making the All African Convention the permanent organization of Africans, Coloured and Indians. When linked to the anti-imperialist front, the Convention would strengthen the fight against fascism and 'assist in maintaining the higher standards of the white workers' while obtaining better wages for Africans. Older members of the movement might have heard in these pontifical sentences an echo of Crawford's theories of thirty years before.
Bunting's death on 25 May 1936 was a painful reminder of the casualties suffered in past ideological battles. The 'black republic' slogan, for which he had been sacrificed only five years before, now seemed far removed from current urgencies. The party made amends in an obituary notice that praised his honesty and devotion to the cause. Though expelled for a 'persistent disagreement on fundamental principles', he would always have a place in the history of the revolutionary movement. It was he who had recognized the great importance of Africans in the struggle against imperialism. Under his leadership, the party had begun to organize them for their emancipation. 'Thousands of exploited and oppressed South Africans will remember Comrade Bunting as a staunch fighter.' 41
Conditions had changed since 1931, the political bureau pointed out in June, and the party must change its policy accordingly. Though it had not given up the aim of overthrowing Anglo-Boer imperialism, the first objective now was to ward off fascism and war. Communists would therefore loyally support a united front and refrain from public criticism of their allies. Roux welcomed the break with the old sectarian approach, yet doubted if its mistakes could so lightly be swept away. The internal struggle had left deep wounds which would heal only if those responsible invited all expelled members to return and get on with the work.
The mistakes, explained the bureau, arose from academic discussions which took the place of mass work, caused inner conflicts, and isolated the party. As a result, it was unable to get on with the urgent business of forming a united front. Kalk and Wolfson were deputed to interview Roux, point out the error of his ways, and bring him back to the fold. He countered by calling them yes-men of the Comintern; and did his stint as a rank-and-file member until he left for Cape Town in 1937. Here he and Kotane wrote, printed and published the African Defender, a monthly journal issued in the name of Ikaka Labasebenzi.
Issy Wolfson, the party treasurer, belonged to the new generation of home-born white communists. Born in 1906 at Luipaardsvlei near Krugersdorp, Transvaal, he formed and led the textile workers, and tailors' unions, joined the party in 1934, and rose to the top leadership after Bach's departure. A powerful speaker, he was in demand at outdoor meetings and prominent in the labour movement. He and Kalk carried the main burden of party work among whites on the Rand, attended to their unions, served on the national executive of the Trades and Labour Council, and were active on peace or united front committees. Though devoted to the party, they could not administer it with the single-minded care given to it by former leaders whose interests had been less diffused.
Under Hardy's guidance, the party became less intensively militant and more broadly respectable. Its paper was renamed the South African Worker in June 1936 and made a severe cut in the space given to news or comment in Bantu languages. Instead of going to jail for defying the state, communists appealed for world peace and assisted in forming the peace committees that multiplied after the outbreak of civil war in Spain. Wolfson spoke at a Johannesburg peace rally in September alongside a bishop, a rabbi, Mrs Ballinger and Archie Moore. Representatives of the CP, LP, TLC, FSU, League of Nations Unions, St John's Ambulance and the university senate sat on the platform. With unbounded enthusiasm for the united front, the party offered to back Labour candidates for the provincial council. It was a pity that they stood for complete segregation, said the CP This apart, Labour was sincere in its endeavours to improve the lot of the poor.
Capitalists drew their profits out of poor blacks and not poor whites, remarked Kalk, while Roux warned that the party might neglect the African's struggle by turning its face to the whites. All faces, white, black and brown, ' should be directed towards the enemy front of Anglo-Boer imperialism, said Hardy, while he led the party into a struggle against greyshirts at home and fascism abroad. Knowing little about South Africa, and unmindful of the great gulf between white and black, he made the mistake of supposing that white workers could be induced to support the liberation movement. ' This is the Communist approach,' he declared. 'Only thus shall we develop a real United Front that will lead to a movement against war and fascism. 42
Eighteen white and twenty-two other delegates at the party's national conference in September approved of Hardy's thesis and agreed that the fight for African rights would best be carried on through the All African Convention. Having agreed in principle to a separation of forces, the party joined in forming an all-white People's Front at a conference called in October by the Trades and Labour Council. Communist delegates nearly wrecked the meeting by suggesting that the programme should call for the removal of pass laws, the recognition of African trade unions, and free primary education for all races. Unity was preserved by deleting all references to a separate 'native policy. 'Let us not discuss details and reforms in face of the great danger, advised Bill Andrews, the president; 'smash fascism and all other things will follow ' 43
He took the short-range view that a non-racial organization would alienate white workers and drive them into the arms of greyshirts and blackshirts. A people's front open to all democrats regardless of race was the proper thing for Europe, explained Moore in a presidential address to the TLSs annual conference, but not in South Africa, where racialism dominated politics. The 'bulk of the proletariat, the black man, is in a state of feudal bondage and what is more important voteless'. The united front must therefore 'rely more on right wing elements who believe in and support the democratic principle'. 44
The united front would split along colour lines, said the communists, unless Africans, Coloured and whites pulled together in double harness on the issue of local, immediate demands. Anti-fascists, Kotane pointed out, were defending the existing state of affairs, which was rotten in the eyes of Africans and Coloured. These would enter the united front only if it helped them to gain democratic rights and higher wages. 45 The proposed strategy never took shape. White men who answered a call to drive greyshirts off the streets refused to assist Africans when struggling against pass laws, police raids and pick-up vans. With the right wing in control, the People's Front never went further than an attempt to combat the spread of fascist propaganda among the whites.
Even so timid and narrow an approach seemed too advanced for the Labour party. It boycotted the inaugural conference and refused to join the People's Front. They should have nothing to do with any movement in which communists appeared, Charles Henderson told delegates at the annual conference in January 1937. They agreed; and also rejected a proposal to change the party's segregation policy. This was little short of fascism, said Duncan Burnside, the Labour M P for Umbilo, and he resigned from the party in order to found a rival Socialist party. Born in Glasgow in 1899, he joined the ILP and served as secretary of the local tailors' union before settling in South Africa in 1922, where he became a member of the Labour party and secretary of the garment workers' union in Durban.
The communists took him to task for splitting the movement. He ought to join their ranks or remain in the Labour party to change its programme; though he was more likely, they said, to follow in its muddy wake by adopting a programme suited to the white voters, prejudices. Three months later, in June 1937, Wolfson suggested a 'working arrangement' between Labour and Communist parties in municipal elections on a platform of slum clearance, reduced bus fares, improved health facilities, and a minimum wage of 10s. a day for white and 5s. for African labourers in municipal employ. Henderson politely replied that his party's constitution ruled out any electoral agreement with another party. In spite of the rebuff, the communists announced that they would urge electors to vote for Labour candidates. 46
The party put up its own candidates in elections held at that time under the Representation of Natives Act. Mofutsanyana failed to secure a nomination to the Transvaal urban seat in the Native Representative Council. H. Basner, the communist candidate for the senate, lost heavily to J. D. Rheinallt Jones under a system of block voting that enabled chiefs and rural electoral committees to decide the outcome. The party made the mistake of hiding its face behind the All African Convention, said Mofutsanyana, who stood as a communist. 'Even Basner could not get on my platform and speak on my behalf because he thought he might prejudice himself. 47 Other symptoms of election strain appeared. Marks, having been expelled from the party in June 1937 for 'failing to carry out even the most elementary duties of a disciplined member', helped R. G. Baloyi, the owner of a flourishing bus company, to win a seat on the NRC. 48
The CPs political bureau reported optimistically in January 1937 that conditions had never been so favourable as they then were for a revolutionary movement. Since it had moved away 'from the domain of sectarianism', the party could hardly keep pace with the rush of new members. The next year's balance sheet was full of gloom. All that stood in the way of fascist reaction were a weak Labour party, incredibly tied to a foolish segregation policy, an African Convention without either a following or a militant programme, a stillborn People's Front, and a small Communist party, the most hated by the exploiting class. The remedy was to form a democratic front by supporting the Labour party, trade unions, and the Convention. 49
The central leadership lost its bearings and self-confidence. Some members complained in 1938 that the party had disintegrated. The South African Worker collapsed in March after nearly twenty-three years of unbroken publication since its first appearance as the International. The Trades and Labour Council, having withdrawn from the People's Front, formed a League for the Maintenance of Democracy which excluded the party. Solly Sachs of the garment workers' union took the TLC to court after a bitter quarrel in which Wolfson and Kalk sided with the conservatives on the Council against other communist trade unionists. The political bureau met irregularly, often at intervals of two or three months, ignored letters and rarely issued directives. Party groups and individual members throughout the country received no guidance or assistance from the centre.
The communists seemed to have taken root and to grow only in Cape Town, hunting ground of tourists, artists and leisurely liberals. Kotane, Roux and Andrews, who rejoined the party in May 1938, settled there. The Guardian, a radical weekly which first appeared in February 1937, found a wide circle of readers in all racial groups by means of lively journalism, progressive policies and an able analysis of international events. Trade unionism flourished in the hands of energetic, efficient party members and supporters, who systematically organized Coloured, African and white workers in shops and factories. A National Liberation League, founded in 1935, was taking the place of Abdurahman's African People's Organization among Coloured in the western Cape.
The only communists to stand for parliament in the 1938 elections were two members of the party in Cape Town, and they fought under different banners. Jimmy Emmerich, secretary of the tramway union, represented the Labour party in the Cape Flats; Harry Snitcher, a young advocate, contested the Castle division for the Socialist party. In spite of their imposing list of backers, which included Coloured radicals, white trade unionists and Afrikaner intellectuals, most of the electors preferred the United party. It obtained 111 seats, the Nationalists 27, the Dominion party 8, and Labour 3. 50 The Nationalists whipped up Afrikaner sentiment to a crescendo in centenary celebrations of the Great Trek. The climax took place at Bloemfontein in October when the Ossewabrandwag (Oxwagon Sentinel) was founded. Before long, it served as the main channel for spreading Nazi propaganda and militarism. 51
The Voortrekker celebrations had given fascism a great boost, Kalk reported at the Communist party's national conference in December; but a majority of Afrikaner nationalists were sincere republicans. The party should work among them through Afrikaner cultural societies, trade unions and the anti-fascist movement; and also redouble its efforts within the Labour party. He went on to admit that the party made a great blunder by hiding its face behind other organizations. It 'rarely came out as an independent political force', lapsed into inactivity, and failed to carry out the decisions of the 1936 conference. The blame for this must be laid at the door of the PB which failed on numerous occasions to give a lead on important questions. 52
Mofutsanyana, the general secretary, said much the same thing about the party's role on the liberation front. Some members held high positions in the movement, yet the party had neglected it to such an extent that we have to admit a complete betrayal of the African people'. The rank-and-file neither understood nor cared about the Munich swindle and other events in Europe which occupied the minds of white communists. 'Our meetings are no attraction to the Africans who are mainly concerned with oppression under which they live. He was being driven to the conclusion that the party should divide into an African and non-African section connected by the executive committee. Such a division already existed in fact. The African section, which leaned heavily on the whites, felt that the party was not their own and failed to develop a sense of responsibility.
The conference turned the proposal down without hesitation. How could it fulfil its mission to unite workers of all races if the party were to tolerate a racial schism in its own ranks? Its own members would not rid themselves of colour feelings unless they met and worked together as one. Josie Mpama (Mrs Mofutsanyana) pointed out that a white communist could hardly claim to speak for Africans unless he worked among them and saw how they lived. The Cape Town delegates had a mandate to reject the proposal, said Kotane. It appeared to them that Johannesburg wanted an autonomous black party with its own leadership. 'If we have two sections, I shall walk out of the CPSA and join something else.
On behalf of his district committee, he moved the temporary transfer of the party's headquarters to Cape Town. The suggestion, he explained, arose out of a report made earlier in the year by Andrews on his return from Johannesburg. It was the natural centre, but the party there needed a breathing space so that it could pull itself together, put its finances in order, and clear away the prevailing atmosphere of hate. All attempts to improve things had failed. Had I not left Johannesburg I would have lost all hope and would have left the Party. In Cape Town I found a different atmosphere and as a result I am still in the Party.'
Six delegates voted for the motion, five against, and two abstained. A new political bureau, consisting of Ray Alexander, Bill Andrews, Mrs Z. Gool, Sam Kahn, Moses Kotane and H. J. Simons, was elected. Though the transfer was meant to be temporary, the headquarters remained in Cape Town until 1950, when the party became illegal in terms of the Suppression of Communism Act. Far removed from the big industrial towns and the main areas of African population, the legislative capital had none of the Witwatersrand's explosive qualities that made it the storm centre of radical politics. As against this, the party could avoid sudden or extreme changes in policy and organize a fairly efficient system of administration in the calm, rather sluggish, society of the Western Cape, where the large Coloured community formed a bridge between African and white minorities.