Fifty Fighting
Years

A Lerumo

The Communist Party of
South Africa 1921-1971

Nineteen Seventy One marked the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation
of the Communist Party of South Africa. This document is based on a series
of articles contributed to the Party organ, the African Communist.
It traces the Party`s origins as a left-wing movement within the predominantly
white labour movement into a fighting vanguard of national liberation.
The introductory chapter outlines three hundred years of European penetration,
conquest and domination in South Africa

Contents

Foreword

1. Conquest and Dispossession (SA before 1870)
   
2. Liberation
   and Labour Movements (1870-1921)
3. The Turn of
   the Masses (1921-1930)
4. From `Fusion`
   to Fascism (1930-1950)
5. Apartheid
   and Resistance (1950-1970)

Foreword

Marxist-Leninist Parties have a sound tradition of taking their own
history seriously. The assessment of past achievements, as well as of errors
and misjudgments, is a duty of each Party, helping in its own work and
adding to the experience of the international working class movement. The
fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the Communist Party of South
Africa was an occasion when the Party leadership had intended to carry
out such a review.

Unfortunately the conditions under which the Party has to work at present
precluded the fulfilment of this task. Fascist terror and illegality have
taken a heavy toll of casualties among our leaders and members; most of
those remaining are deeply involved in the preparations of our united national
liberation movement for armed revolutionary struggle. Inadequate personnel,
the difficulties of research and of organising detailed collective discussion
were among the serious problems which could not be overcome in time.

The present volume is based on a series of articles published in the
Party`s quarterly journal, The African Communist, with a general
historical introduction needed for a proper understanding of our country`s
present-day problems.

The author wishes to place on record his considerable indebtedness to
those comrades who helped in research and discussion, as well as to the
detailed guidance of members of the Party leadership. But it should be
emphasised that this is in no sense an official chronicle setting forth
the `last word` of the Party on the events and problems described. While
care has been taken to consult wherever possible, the writer accepts responsibility
for the assessments and emphases, the selection and omissions of detail,
of names and events, inevitable in any historical work.

No one can write adequately about the themes presented here without
drawing upon such works as Eddie Roux`s Time Longer than Rope, Lionel
Forman`s Chapters in the History of the March to Freedom, R. K.
Cope`s Comrade Bill, and H. J. and R. E. Simons`s Class and Colour
in South Africa 1850-1950, the last-named in particular being a monumental
tribute to the industry of its authors and a rich storehouse of information.

The incorrect assumptions made by the pioneer Communists of South Africa
led them into some indefensible positions, particularly when as leaders
of the white labour movement they felt themselves obliged to defend on
`Marxist` grounds the maintenance of the colour bar in industry. It is
all too easy, standing on the high vantage-point of retrospect, to upbraid
them, saying they `should have` done this, or `should not have` done that.
This unhistorical approach, however, is not only unjust to men who fulfilled
a notable task and are not able to reply; it also fails to see that those
men were bound by the inevitable limitations of their time, their background
and the pressures that moulded them. It fails to educate because it does
not explain in its historical context what those pressures and limitations
were, and how, with deeper experience and knowledge, the movement they
founded developed to transcend, correct and overcome them.

The truly remarkable thing about the founders of the Party is not that,
being what they were, they made errors. It is that despite their limitations
they founded a great and enduring Party which was able to withstand every
trial and misfortune, to rise above all misconceptions, and with the aid
of experience and Marxist-Leninist science to become a true vanguard of
the workers in the fight for the liberation of South Africa.

It is very much to be hoped that the widespread interest aroused by
the fiftieth anniversary will stimulate the further research and profound
discussion needed to produce a substantial and collective review of the
rich, rewarding and still continuing history of the South African Communist
Party. To the making of this history, the underground cadres inside and
the unwilling exiles outside our country, and the courageous revolutionaries
of Umkhonto we Sizwe, are today contributing fresh and glorious chapters.

To them, to the memory of the martyrs and pioneers, to the thousands
of fighters for freedom imprisoned and under other forms of restriction,
this work is dedicated.

A. LERUMO

London, July 1971

It is perhaps difficult for White South Africans, with an ingrained
prejudice against Communism, to understand why experienced African politicians
so readily accept Communists as their friends. But to us the reason is
obvious. Theoretical differences amongst those fighting against oppression
is a luxury we cannot afford at this stage. What is more, for many decades
Communists were the only political group in South Africa who were prepared
to treat Africans as human beings and their equals; who were prepared to
eat with us, talk with us, live with us and work with us. They were the
only political group which was prepared to work with the Africans for the
attainment of political rights and a stake in society. Because of this,
there are many Africans who, today, tend to equate freedom with Communism.
They are supported in this belief by a legislature which brands all exponents
of democratic government and African freedom as Communists and bans many
of them (who are Communists) under the Suppression of Communism Act.

NELSON MANDELA

(Speech at the Rivonia Trial, June 1964)

1. Conquest and Dispossession

The White ruling classes, and especially the leaders of the Nationalist
Party have manufactured a version of the past and present of this country
which they systematically attempt to impose everywhere, from the schoolroom
to international opinion. According to this picture the early White settlers
penetrated peacefully into a virtually unoccupied country. The African
population, who are depicted as savage barbarians without culture, achievements
or history, are represented as relative newcomers who entered the country
at about the same time as the Whites, and conducted aggressive wars and
raids against them. The impression is given that African occupation was
always more or less confined to the present Reserves - the `Bantu Homelands`.
This version of South Africa`s past is entirely false.

The Road to South African Freedom

(1962 Programme of the South African Communist Party)

There is hardly a region of Africa whose people have not suffered the
ravages of Western European colonialism. None have been oppressed for a
longer period or with greater thoroughness than the indigenous peoples
of the south: the present day Republic of South Africa.

Beginning more than three hundred years ago, with the establishment
by the Dutch East India Company, at the Cape of Good Hope, of a refreshment
station for its ships trafficking to Asia, the people of this area have
experienced wave after wave of incursions, amounting to a continuous war
of aggression, conquest, dispossession and exploitation. Beginning with
penetration and enslavement of some Southern areas by Dutch settlers in
the pursuit of land and labour, they have experienced domination by the
British bourgeoisie in its earlier trading phase and its modern phase of
monopoly capitalism. They are at present suffering the terrorist dictatorship
of a local white imperialism and national oppression on a scale virtually
unparalleled in the modern world.

Some knowledge of this story is essential to the understanding of South
Africa`s present problems; the more so since South African history has
been grotesquely distorted by the upholders of white supremacy. Their myths
are conclusively refuted by historical and archaeological research, which
demonstrate that South Africa belonged to the ancestors of the present
African population, who inhabited every region of it for centuries before
white men set foot on its soil.(1)

Early African Societies

Most of the country belonged to peoples of the language-group which
linguists have termed `Bantu`(2)

The Northern area (now the Transvaal and Orange Free State Provinces
and the states of Botswana and Lesotho) was populated by kindred peoples
of the Tswana-Sotho-Pedi language group, as well as tribes of the Tsonga
and Venda groups. In the East and the South (Natal, East and Central Cape,
and Swaziland) lived people of the Nguni (mainly Zulu and Xhosa) group.

Other groups of indigenous Africans lived mainly in the South-Western
region of the country: the Khoikhoi and the San peoples. They were the
first to come into close contact with the white settlers, who dubbed them
`Hottentots` and `Bushmen` respectively. The Khoikhoi were pastoralists,
the San, hunters, both living in self-contained tribal communities.

Also in tribal communities with a natural, non-exchange economy, were
the peoples of the `Bantu` group; but they had developed far more complex
economic and political institutions. Their life was based on the soil,
which was held in common. They bred cattle, sheep and other domestic animals,
cultivated sorghum and other crops. But the economy was variegated and
developing. They mined and wrought iron, copper, tin, gold and other minerals;
manufactured pottery and hide products. Archaeological research, though
grossly neglected, shows many traces of ancient stone dwellings and fortified
towns and elaborate systems of irrigation and defence. With these developments
a process of class-differentiation had begun, especially at Zimbabwe, with
the mines coming under the control of chiefs and other substantial cattle-owners.
But since the main means of production, the land, was held in common, differences
in wealth and status had not led to acute class divisions.

Some division of labour had developed. Specialised workers such as miners
and smiths were paid in kind. Sometimes entire tribes specialised in metalwork,
exchanging implements for cattle. But the prevailing character of the economy
was subsistence, not the production of commodities for exchange.

The African political and judicial structure was essentially democratic.
Important decisions affecting the tribe were referred to a general assembly
of the people - the Tswana and Sotho Pitso, the Xhosa and Zulu Imbizo.

`The chief`s court, at which disputes were tried publicly, and every
man had the right to attend and speak, was the pivot of the legal and political
structure... An Nguni chief was traditionally below the law and could be
tried and fined by his own privy council`

writes Professor Monica Wilson (The Oxford History of South Africa
Vol. I, p.l22) and similarly:

`The Tswana, like the Nguni, were characterised by a great development
of law and respect for the courts. The Kgotta (council or court of law)
was the centre... of every capital.... The chief was beneath the law and
could be tried by his own counsellors. None of the Sotho chiefdoms was
a military kingdom in which authority was maintained by force...` (Ibid,
p. 158).

Artefacts dating from as early as the twelfth century testify t(l the
existence of ancient trading contacts with Eastern countries; the African
communities exchanging local products for ceramics, glassware and woven
fabrics from China, India and the Arab lands. These early exchanges helped
to enrich the African societies and stimulate their natural development,
in contrast with the later depredations of capitalism which destroyed their
very fabric.

The forms of primitive communism existing in Africa before European
conquest embodied cultures, values and traditions in many ways far superior
to those of the representatives of capitalism who invaded and destroyed
them, and regarded them with such contempt and utter lack of understanding.
Yet, viewed in the light of Marxist historical materialism, these were
backward societies passing through a phase of social development experienced
at one time or another by all human communities. Their implements and methods
of production had not advanced, in a historic sense, to a level which would
enable their communities to withstand invasion by capitalist states. The
early societies of Southern Africa were defeated not only by the superior
weapons of the invaders, but also by their own backwardness and disunity.

The Dutch Settlement

The Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Nederlandsche GeOctroyeerde
Oost-Indische Compagnie) was virtually a state within a state, combining
the wealthiest merchant bourgeoisie of Holland and controlling a vast empire,
whose capital was at Batavia in Java, but which extended to governorates
in various parts of Indonesia, Ceylon and elsewhere.

The Dutch attempted to capture Mozambique from Portugal in 1609-10;
failing in this object they sought elsewhere for a stopping place for their
ships where they could rest and replenish their stocks of meat, vegetables
and fresh water on their long voyage.

It was with that purpose alone that the Company set up their refreshment
station at the Cape in 1652. Some idea of the scope of the project is that
the original expedition was confined to about 90 men and that it was placed
under the direction of a man who had previously been dismissed from the
Company`s service for corruption - one Jan van Riebeeck. In 1657 the Company,
wary of van Riebeeck`s expansionist tendencies, warned him that `not too
much work should be taken in hand... the Cape establishment should be kept
as confined and small as possible.`

The Dutch East India Company, that brutal coloniser, had no scruples
about robbery and enslavement: their bloody record in Indonesia testifies
to that. But they did not consider the Cape as a potentially profitable
colony. They did not want to start a costly war with the Khoikhoi, and
preferred to obtain cattle by barter rather than by crude seizure.

They criticised van Riebeeck for entering into `friendly` relations
with the Khoikhoi. His reply affords a true insight into the mind of the
man who is revered as the `father` of the Republic of South Africa and
whose portrait appears on every banknote and com it issues:

`This we did to make them less shy, so as to find hereafter a better
opportunity to seize them - 1,100 or 1,200 in number and about 600 cattle,
the best in the whole country. We have everyday the finest opportunities
for effecting this without bloodshed, and could derive good service from
the people, in chains, in killing seals, or in labouring in the silver
mines which we trust will be found here.`

In a further letter van Riebeeck complained about Company regulations
limiting the seizure of cattle and slaves: `... it is therefore very vexing
to see such fine herds of cattle... although, were it permitted, we had
this day opportunity enough to take from them 10,000 head... and we might
make prisoners, without a blow, of many savages, in order to send them
as slaves to India, as they constantly come to us without weapons`.

The Directors of the Company seriously contemplated digging a canal
from False Bay to Table Bay, to make the Cape peninsula into an island,
and van Riebeeck `in fact planted a hedge enclosing an area of about 6,000
acres which was considered the right size for the settlement`.(3)

The Company`s original intention, then, was by no means to establish
a Dutch colony at Cape Town. The Company grew its own fruit and vegetables,
and bartered fruit and vegetables from the Khoikhoi. But the soldiers maintained
at the Cape (to guard the station from the British and other rivals) proved
unwilling and inefficient market-gardeners. In an attempt to encourage
private cultivation by settlers on a commercial basis the Company tried
at first to recruit Chinese and Indonesian immigrants. Their efforts were
unsuccessful. Gradually the Directors turned to a policy of encouraging
and subsidising Dutch settlers on Khoikhoi lands, as `boers` (i.e. farmers).
Naturally, the Africans resisted the encroachment, setting off the long
train of aggressive wars conducted by Europeans in Southern Africa.

The original process was a slow one. By the end of the 1680`s the white
population at the Cape (other than Company employees temporarily stationed
there) was less than 300, but during the next ten years the population
doubled through an influx of Huguenot refugees from religious persecution
in France - who were rapidly assimilated by the enforced suppression of
their language.

In encouraging white immigration the prime motive was the raising of
a militia to defend the Cape against Holland`s trading rivals. The settlers
were not inclined to manual labour as farmhands or artisans: this work
was considered suitable only for slaves on the lines common throughout
the Dutch Empire. By 1711 `the burgher (white) population of 1,756 souls
owned 1,781 slaves`.(4) Most of these were
Africans from East Africa, others came from Indonesia and elsewhere m Asia.
By 1778 `the census indicated 11,107 burgher-owned slaves, but these figures
are certainly understatements`.(5) Thus
there was more than one slave per head of the white population. Slavery
was a characteristic feature of white society in the Cape, creating a pattern
for its attitudes well into the nineteenth century. Since most of the slaves
were dark-skinned people, whether from Asia, East Africa, or indigenous
Khoikhoi, a barrier was created on the basis of skin colour, becoming ever
more rigid with the passing generations.

The Company gradually dropped its earlier policy of opposition to the
expansion of the white stockbreeders into the interior, mainly for economic
reasons. `The spreading out of the inhabitants with their cattle is the
principal reason that meat can be delivered so cheaply to the Company...`
declared a government paper of 21 January 1730. Greed for fresh pastures
lured the stockbreeders (`trekboers` i.e. nomadic farmers) ever
further away from Cape Town.

The Cape government periodically set boundaries beyond which settlement
was illegal. This was partly to prevent conflict with indigenous peoples
whose land was being invaded; partly to ensure revenue from grazing licences.
Nevertheless these limits were continuously extended Eastward from the
Cape peninsula - to Stellenbosch (1682), to Worcester and the Great Brak
River (1743), the Gamtoos (1770), the Fish River (1780); North East from
Bruintjes Hoogte (1774) and Colesberg (1778).

Further expansion was checked only by the furious resistance of the
African tribes.

In the North-East a state of continuous guerilla warfare between the
invaders and the San people raged throughout the eighteenth century.

`Further north east expansion was halted by increasingly ferocious warfare
between trekboers and San hunters. After 1715 trekboers went further into
`Bushman Country`. By 1770 the conflict was so intense that trekboer Commandos
systematically exterminated the San, while San raids forced trekboers to
abandon farms in the Nieuweveld and Sneeuberg regions and endangered trekboer
occupation in the Tarka region, in the 1780`s.(6)

The Epic of Xhosa Resistance

At the same time, on the `Eastern Frontier`, the boers came upon far
more formidable opponents to their land-and-cattle robbery than they had
hitherto encountered: the various Xhosa tribes inhabiting the Eastern Cape,
whom they referred to as `Kaffirs`. Unlike the San they were primarily
cattle breeders and agriculturists, whose abundant herds and fertile land
attracted the envy of the trekboers. But they had a military tradition
and knew how to defend themselves and fight back. Intermittent war raged
between the Xhosa and the marauders for more than a century. The attitude
of the boers was described by the poet and journalist Thomas Pringle:(7)

`Kaffirs who resisted were shot; their kraals burnt down and their cattle
seized. No prisoners were made and the wounded and infirm were left to
perish`.

The Xhosa people resisted the seizure of their lands and cattle, but
were by no means averse to peaceful contacts and relations with the white
settlers. Two hundred years ago elephant abounded in the Eastern Cape,
and the Xhosa, as their Chiefs Ndlambe, Cungwa and others told Governor
General Janssens in 1803, were anxious to trade ivory, cattle, and even
their labour power, in exchange for metal, blankets, horses and firearms.
They welcomed missionaries such as van der Kemp, Williams, Brownlee and
others, who, despite their treacherous role in the Africans` struggle for
independence imparted knowledge of literacy and other useful arts. The
Xhosa were for peaceful coexistence. But nothing could restrain the appetite
of the whites for Xhosa land and cattle. A series of acts of aggression
(dignified by colonial historians as `the Kaffir wars`) continued until
1879.

The real nature of these `wars` was well summarised by H. Lawson, writing
in the revolutionary Johannesburg journal Liberation: (No. 20 August
1956).

Early in 1780 two Commandos made a cattle raid and murdered many defenceless
people. In 1781 a Commando took 5,330 cattle in two months. In 1788 a Graff-Reinet
official wrote to Cape Town that `some of the inhabitants here have already
for a long time wished to pick a quarrel with this nation (the Xhosas)
in order that, were it possible, they might make a good loot, since they
are always casting covetous eyes on the cattle the Kaffirs possess`. In
1793 they obtained their object. The first Commando of that year took 1,800
cattle and murdered the owners, another Commando took 2,000 cattle and
murdered forty people, while the third and latest Commando under the `Liberal`
Maynier took no fewer than 10,000 cattle and also 180 women and children
as prisoners for slave labour.

The Advent of British Imperialism

The Xhosa people laboured under numerous disadvantages in their clashes
with the white expansionists. They were not a united people, but divided
into many small chieftainships, disputes between whom could be and were
taken advantage of by the invaders. Lacking firearms and horses, they fought
on foot armed with assegai and shield against mounted gunmen. Yet they
resisted and defended their independence and lands for over a hundred years

The task was made infinitely more difficult after the establishment
of British rule in the Cape. By the end of the 17th century Holland was
rapidly declining as the major maritime and colonial power. British supremacy,
based on the technology of industrial capitalism, was on the ascendent.

In 1806, as a consequence of the Napoleonic wars, the Cape Colony was
taken over by British imperialism.

The eighteenth century parties of marauding trekboers were part-time
raiders in quest of loot rather than conquest. They relied on levies of
Coloured and Khoikhoi conscripts sent in advance to face any fighting,
and liable as happened on several occasions, to desert and join the Xhosa
against the common oppressor.

British imperialism was quite a different and more formidable opponent,
with its organised battalions of full-time professional soldiers, and its
practice of regular warfare to conquer, annex and dominate overseas colonies.

The British having conquered territory, proceeded to expel the inhabitants
and divide their land among settlers from the Cape Colony and from Britain
itself. In 1820 4,000 British settlers were `presented` with Xhosa land
in the Grahamstown district. In 1835 the British Governor proclaimed a
new boundary as far east as the Kei river and in 1857 a number of German
veterans of the British Foreign Legion were settled in the region of King
Williams Town.

The nineteenth-century history of the Xhosa tribes is one of the piecemeal
dispossession of their lands and independence by British imperialism. The
process has been succinctly summed up by Professor Wilson. (Oxford History,
Vol.l,p.252):

During a hundred years the boundary shifted eastward . . . In 1772 some
Xhosa, mingled with Khoikhoi, were living on the Gamtoos; in 1806 the boundary
was the Fish (river)...in 1811 Ndlambe, with 20,000 followers was pushed
across it (The Fish). In 1819 the country between the Fish and the Keiskamma
was declared neutral; by 1824 it was partly occupied by whites. In 1847
the boundary shifted to the Kei; in 1858 to the Mbashe (Bashee); in 1878
to the Mthatha; and in 1894 Pondoland, between the Mthatha and Mtamvuna,
was annexed.

The Xhosa people under such leaders as Ndlambe, Hintsa and Makana fought
back heroically. In December 1818 the white troops, with the aid of some
followers of Ngqika crossed the boundary at the Fish River, burning down
the people`s huts and capturing about 23,000 cattle. But, under the leadership
of Makana, the Xhosa forces rallied. They crossed the Fish River, utterly
defeating Ngqika`s men, and penetrating deep into the Cape Colony where,
armed with assegais, they fought a desperate and epic battle, suffering
frightful casualties against the British firearms before they were beaten
and Makana made a captive on Robben Island.

The usual colonialist `logic` blamed the long and devastating series
of conflicts on the `eastern frontier` upon the alleged `frontier violations`
and `cattle stealing` of the African inhabitants. No doubt retaliatory
cattle-raids did take place during the hundred years war, but as Professor
Wilson justly observes `The Xhosa were fighting not primarily for
booty, but for survival as an independent people`. (Ibid, p.252)

The Rise of the Zulu Kingdom

The tendency among African tribes in Southern Africa was for a long
time one of subdivision into many more or less autonomous chiefdoms. The
country is a big one; when the population outgrew the land upon which it
was settled it was common for a section of it to hive off - often under
the leadership of a member or section of the Chief`s family - and move
to new pastures.

Amongst the Nguni people of Natal at the beginning of the l9th century,
an opposite tendency appeared - that of unification and consolidation under
a highly centralised and organised monarchy. Various reasons have been
advanced for this phenomenon: growing pressure of the population on the
land, with no further room for expansion, the urge to monopolise foreign
trade, especially with Delagoa Bay, and the threat of trekboers from the
Cape, forerunners of the `Great Trek`.

The pioneer nation-builder among the Zulu was Dingiswayo, who came to
the head of the Mthethwa tribe at the end of the 18th century. By means
of conscripting the young men into age-group regiments he built up a standing
army which enabled him to unite the chiefdoms from the Umfolozi river in
the north to the Tukela in the South by the time of his death in 1818.

He was succeeded by Shaka (1787-1828) one of the most remarkable military
geniuses in history. Shaka discarded the traditional throwing assegai and
armed his men with a short stabbing-spear for hand-to-hand fighting. His
barefooted soldiers, rigorously trained and disciplined, were schooled
in highly organised, planned and original battle-tactics. Shaka greatly
expanded the area of Zulu domination. His legendary military conquests,
his enormous standing army - estimates of its numbers vary up to 80,000
men - imposed Zulu power throughout modern Natal and beyond.

The traditions of the Zulu royal lineage became the traditions of the
nation; the Zulu dialect became the dialect of the nation and every inhabitant,
whatever his origins, became a Zulu.(8)

The tribes in neighbouring areas did not always submit to Zulu conquest.
Some, like Sobhuza to the north, resisted successfully, built up an army
on Zulu lines and laid the foundations of modern Swaziland. Others fled
northwards with their peoples, establishing new kingdoms as far north as
the Transvaal and, beyond the Limpopo, in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia).

These great population movements of masses of armed men had far-reaching
repercussions. A period of conflict ravaged the interior of the country,
disorganising its settled population and impoverishing many; a factor which
greatly facilitated the penetration of the white voortrekker invasion (the
Great Trek) which took place from the Cape Colony into Natal, the Orange
Free State and the Transvaal from 1836 to 1854.

The first whites with whom Shaka came into contact were a group of British
adventurers who settled in Tekwini (which they called Port Natal and subsequently
Durban) from 1822, mainly to trade in ivory.

Shaka welcomed them in a friendly way, regarded them as his subjects
and even called them up to fight in his campaign of 1827. The following
year he was killed in a fight for the succession; it was not he but his
successor Dingane who had to meet the brunt of Boer and British aggression
in Natal. By 1835 there were only about 30 whites at Durban, and despite
occasional friction (mainly because they harboured African fugitives) they
coexisted more or less peacefully with the Zulu. But Dingane had been warned
what to expect. An African named Jacob (by the Europeans) who had visited
the Cape Colony told him:

that at first the white people came and took a part of their (the Xhosa)
land, then they encroached and drove them back, and have repeatedly taken
more land as well as cattle. They then built houses among them for the
purpose of subduing them . . . he had heard that a few white people had
intended to come first and get a grant of land; they would then build a
fort, when more would come and demand land who would also build houses
and subdue the Zulus, and keep driving them back as they had driven the
Frontier tribes. (Thompson, op. cit. p. 353.)

Professor Thompson cites this passage from the contemporary record of
H. F. Fynn as evidence that Jacob was `bitterly anti-white`, but events
were soon to justify his warnings.

By the end of 1837 thousands of trekboers from the Cape Colony had begun
the invasion of Natal, pouring through the Drakensberg passes with their
waggons, horses and firearms, their families and Coloured servants.

The Great Trek (1836-1854)

The northern and eastern expansion of the Boer farmers, prior to 1836,
was a largely economically-motivated and spontaneous process. Ever in search
of fresh grazing lands and loot, the trekboers had steadily pushed the
area of white settlement outwards from Cape Town. As they moved, the frontiers
of the Cape Colony, whether under Dutch or British rule, were extended
to incorporate new African territories.

Quite different in character and magnitude was the mass migration of
1836-1854, in the first ten years of which over 14,000 Boers crossed the
Orange River. The `Great Trek` consisted of a series of planned expeditions
of farmers accompanied by their families, servants and all their possessions.
Their wagons were laden with gunpowder. Their `treks` were of the nature
of military expeditions to conquer, dominate and occupy African lands.
They did not seek to extend the frontiers of the Cape Colony; rather their
purpose was to escape British rule and establish a `free and independent
state` beyond the borders of the Colony.

Following British occupation of the Cape Colony a number of areas of
antagonism had developed between the imperial government and the white
settlers, who, predominantly Dutch-speaking farmers, resented the imposition
of the English language, of British officialdom, and particularly of the
concepts Or bourgeois-democratic liberalism in relation to slavery and
`the colour question`.

It is characteristic of rising capitalism that it seeks to replace all
previously-existing forms of exploitation, such as slavery and feudalism,
and replace them with the single form of the exploitation of wage-labour.
The British bourgeoisie, like their counterparts in the United States and
elsewhere opposed slavery not out of humanitarian sentiment - though of
course men of humanitarian views did fight slavery - but because it stood
in the way of the full development of capitalist relations of production,
based on an unlimited supply of workers `free` to sell their labour-power.

Hence, not without a lengthy struggle, the resistance of the slave-trading
interests was overcome. Slavery was legally abolished throughout the British
Empire in 1833, and a number of consequent measures applied to the Cape
Colony.

These British reforms did not immediately or fundamentally alter the
real position of the masses in the Cape. A veiled system of slavery - `apprenticeship`
- continued. The master-and-servant Ordinance of 1856 increased the authority
of the white masters over their Coloured and Khoikhoi servants. The `Kaffir
Employment Act` of 1857 laid the basis for the diabolical Pass Laws, one
of the foundations of anti-African discrimination.

Nevertheless the abolition of slavery and the trend it represented were
opposed and resisted by the Boers, whose way of life and thought rested
upon the arrogant assumptions of white superiority born of generations
of chattel slavery and national oppression at the Cape.

It was such resentments, no less than their own desire for national
independence, which underlay the exodus of many Dutch families from the
Colony.

The Great Trek is depicted by both Afrikaner and British historians
as an act of rebellion against British rule. Boer risings had taken place
before, in 1795, 1799 and 1815, in each case unsuccessfully. In the words
of Professor Thompson, in 1836 they launched `another form of rebellion
- escape to a new terrain.`(9) The Afrikaner
historian, Professor C. J. M. Muller describes the Great Trek as `a rebellion
against the British government.`(10)

Such legalistic assessments leave out of account the principal character
of the `Trek` as a war of aggression. Far from being the relatively peaceful
occupation of empty territory described by their present-day descendants
and propagandists, the intrusion of the Boers into the interior was an
armed invasion of lands belonging to peoples whose ancestors had inhabited
them from time immemorial.

Had the British seriously wanted to do so, they could without much difficulty
have suppressed this `rebellion` and prevented the northward movement of
the trekkers. In fact they connived at it.

Despite their areas of conflict with British imperialism, the Boers
constantly enjoyed in their African wars the favour of the greatest military
and industrial power in the world. The trekkers were, from first to last,
dependent on commerce with the Cape Colony and Europe for the commodities
they needed and above all for the firearms and gunpowder which enabled
them to maintain their presence.

The British authorities were perfectly aware of the activities and intentions
of these `rebels`; indeed they made no secret of them. Yet (in a manner
which irresistibly recalls the reaction of British imperialism to the Smith
`rebellion` in Rhodesia from 1965 onwards) they took no steps at all to
prevent them.

`The British Colonial officials could have seriously impeded the Great
Trek in its early stages if they had chosen to do so. It was unlawful for
British subjects to leave the Cape Colony without permission, to take apprentices
with them against their will, or to remove large quantities of gunpowder
without licence. Since nearly all the Voortrekkers crossed the Orange River
with their weapons by one of six or seven drifts . . . it would have been
a comparatively simple matter to man the drifts and stem the exodus. This
was not done . . .`(11)

Thus in their advance into the interior the trekkers were aided by the
covert support of British imperialism, ensuring their superiority in arms.
They were also helped by the disunity among the Africans, which enabled
them time and again to enrol the assistance of one tribe to fight another;
and by the African system and concept of communal land tenure. Often they
sought and were granted the use of land by one or other African chief,
to whom it was inconceivable that he was thereby ceding a title to permanent
ownership by his `guests` who could then dispose of it as they wished,
deprive him or its people of its use, or compel them to work for the white
farmers to pay `rent`.

African Resistance

Yet the trekkers had no easy path. Wherever they went they met stubborn
and heroic resistance from African peoples. Their occupation of Natal and
later the Orange Free State and the Transvaal was continuously marked by
armed resistance, which at no time did they ever succeed in fully overcoming
and quelling.

In Natal their encounter with the Zulu under Dingane has been a favourite
subject of Afrikaner folk lore. The Voortrekkers, under Retief, the senior
Trekker leader, arrived in great force over the Drakensberg passes. According
to their version they got Dingane to put his mark (he could not read or
write) to a document `giving` Retief `and his countrymen. . . the place
called Port Natal (modern Durban) together with all the land . . . from
the Tukela to the Mzimbuvu Rivers westward and from the sea to the North
as far as the land may be useful and in my possession`.

It is incredible that Dingane could seriously have contemplated agreeing
to these demands. Certainly he was not anxious to enter into armed conflict
with whites, whose fire power he respected. But it is manifestly absurd
that the head of the proud Zulu nation could ever have contemplated voluntarily
submitting his land and people to alien subjection by the Boers. Dingane`s
army was unconquered and victorious; his authority was supreme over most
of modern Natal and as far north as Delegoa Bay (modern Lourenzo Marques).

Retief had asked Dingane for a grant of land in October 1837. Without
waiting for his permission large parties had then settled in the areas
of Northern Natal which they had asked for; they had refused to hand over
his cattle, horses and guns which they had recovered from the Tlokwa chief
Sekonyela; they had threatened him with the fate of the Ndebela chief Mzilikaze
whom they had driven from the Transvaal across the Limpopo River.

Dingane struck back. He knew of the fate of the Xhosa and was ready
to defend his land and his people. When Retief came to his headquarters
at Mgungundlovu in February 1838 with a hundred troops, to demand the surrender
of Dingane they were arrested and executed. Prolonged warfare followed
between the Zulu forces on the one hand and the Boers in the north and
the British at Durban, on the other. Zulu impis suffered heavy casualties
at the battle of Ncome (`Blood River`) and elsewhere, but it was not until
a major split took place within the Zulu nation that Dingane`s power was
broken. His brother Mpande broke away with 17 000 followers to join the
Boers. In January 1840 Mpande`s forces, 10,000 strong, together with a
commando of 300 Boers and 460 Coloured and African troops overcame Dingane`s
army.

The Boers named Mpande King of the Zulu, subject to their short-lived
Natal Republic (1838-1843) but they never succeeded in conquering the fighting
spirit of the Zulu people, who were to continue their fight for freedom
for many years and against far more formidable opponents.

In 1843 Great Britain annexed Natal. The Natal `Republic` submitted
without a fight to the British terms although these included a ban on slavery
and another against legal discrimination on grounds `of colour, origin,
race or creed`. The latter provision was to remain illusory for the whole
period of Natal as a British Colony, its system being even more illiberal
than that of the Cape. Nevertheless the Boer trekkers packed up their wagons
and departed again into the interior. By the end of 1847 nearly all of
them had left Natal. Their place was taken by a flood of subsidised British
immigrants of whom 5,000 arrived between 1849 and 1851.(12)

It is often asserted and fondly believed that the British settlers in
South Africa and Rhodesia were and are less anti-African than Afrikaners
and others. This proposition cannot survive serious examination of the
record.

Sir Theophilus Shepstone, son of an `1820 settler` from Bristol, dominated
African administration in Natal for its formative thirty years, first as
`Diplomatic Agent` and then as Secretary for Native Affairs (1853-1875).
He must be regarded as virtually the father of modern apartheid. His policy,
which later became the pattern for the `native policy` of the entire country,
included the herding of Africans into `locations` and the use of traditional
tribal authorities as instruments of colonial policy (with himself as `paramount
chief`) long before the Nationalist Party, Dr. Verwoerd, and `self-governing
Bantu Homelands` were ever heard of.

Some idea of the attitude of the white settlers in Natal may be gleaned
from a memorandum they submitted in 1854, in which they condemned the `reckless
extravagance` with which the British government had allocated 2 million
acres to the Africans (estimated at 250,000) and `only` 5 million acres
to whites (about 18,000). This report, (C.0.879/1, PRO) recommending the
reduction of African land by about three-quarters, split up into small
locations and under rigid control, was submitted to London by the Lieutenant-Governor,
B. Pine, with the recommendation that it was `a most able official document.`

For the Zulu people, British rule meant the alienation of most of their
traditional land and the imposition of a `hut tax` yielding over £5,000
a year. Since the death of Mpande in 1872 there had been a revival of national
spirit and resistance under the leadership of his son Cetshwayo.

At the beginning of 1879 Britain began a war to break the spirit and
independence of the Zulu nation. Three columns commanded by Lord Chelmsford
invaded Zululand. Within two weeks it was to undergo one of the most crushing
defeats ever suffered by British forces anywhere, at the battle of Isandhlawanda
on 22 January. With their assegais and spears the Zulu impis launched an
attack on a fortified camp of 1,800 British troops. Within a few hours
only 400 British survived. Of this battle, Frederich Engels commented that
the Zulu

`did what no European army can do. Armed only with pikes and spears,
and without firearms, they advanced under a hail of bullets from breach
loaders, right up to the bayonets - acknowledged as the best in the world
for fighting in close formation - throwing them back in disorder and beating
them back more than once; and this despite the colossal disparity in arms`.(13)

This defeat aroused a tremendous storm in the British parliament. The
upshot was a Cabinet decision: `to restore British prestige, the Zulu nation
was to be defeated`.

It cost many years of bitter fighting and the blood of thousands of
brave men to implement that decision. In 1887 Zululand was annexed by the
British, but it was not until 1906 with the crushing of the rebellion under
the leadership of Bambata, that the last flames of traditional Zulu military
resistance were extinguished. From then on the Zulu were to continue the
struggle in new forms, as part of the emergent African nation and the united
front of South African liberation. A similar story can be told of heroic
African resistance in most parts of the country to the Boer and British
interlopers.

Despite the period of turbulence and chaos (the `Difaqane`) that followed
the establishment of the Zulu kingdom, which affected African societies
far within modern Lesotho, the OFS, Transvaal and beyond, new and larger
units had grown up and an era of regeneration had begun. The Trekkers encountered
strong and effective opposition. An early expedition under van Rensburg
was wiped out by the Tsonga of the north-east Transvaal in 1836.

A large party of Nguni people headed by Mzilikazi - they came to be
known as the Ndebele - had broken away from Shaka and succeeded in establishing
a stable kingdom in the Transvaal and Orange Free State highveld. In 1836
they put up a stand against Potgieter`s band of Voortrekkers. Although
Mzilikazi had always welcomed friendly white visitors, he recognised the
Boer intruders as a mortal threat. In October 1836 a major clash took place
at the Battle of Vegkop, when the Boers were defeated and had to call upon
the pro-Boer chief Moroka of the Barolong, who helped them escape to his
place at Thaba Nchu. By the following year, joined by reinforcements from
the Cape, the Voortrekkers hit back. In November 1837 after a nine-days
battle at his headquarters at Kapain in the Transvaal, Mzilikazi retreated
with his followers across the Limpopo, where they established a new `Matabeleland.`(14)

Across the Orange River

Crossing the banks of the Orange River the Boers found their way barred
by the Griqua and Sotho people, particularly by that formidable opponent
Moshweshwe 1, founder of Lesotho, and one of the most astute generals and
statesmen of his day, who repeatedly - but unsuccessfully - attempted to
build a united front of African resistance.

There were two Griqua states recognised as such by treaties signed by
Britain with their leaders, Andries Waterboer and Adam Kok. Made up of
Coloured people, mainly of Khoikhoi descent, they had left the Cape Colony
to escape the degrading colour bar and set up free and independent states.
Waterboer`s Griqualand West was situated in the region of modern Kimberley.
Kok and his people were settled north of the Orange River, with their capital
at Phillipolis.

Moshweshwe likewise had a treaty with the British, signed by Governor
Napier in 1843, recognising the boundaries of Lesotho as `all the land
between the Orange and the Caledon Rivers plus a belt about 25 to 30 miles
north of the Caledon`.

All these treaties were shamefully betrayed when it suited British imperialists
interests to do so. The Afrikaner settlers occupied Griqua lands and a
number of disputes flared up into open warfare in 1845. The British intervened
in favour of the Afrikaners. In 1854 - following a brief period in which
Britain formally annexed the `Orange River Sovereignty` (the present O.F.S.
province) - the British signed the `Bloemfontein Convention` conferring
independence on the Boers and virtually abandoning the Griquas.(15)

Under the rule of Moshweshwe, and the protection of his impregnable
fortress of Thabu Bosiu, the Kingdom of Lesotho was developing into one
of the most powerful and stable nations in Southern Africa, inflicting
a number of historic defeats on both Boer and British forces.

The British abrogated their treaty of 1843 recognising the frontiers
of Lesotho and in 1849 laid down the `Warden Line` in which a large area
of the country was `presented` to the Boers.

However `Warden found that it was one thing to draw a line on a map;
another to enforce it` (Thompson, op. cit. p. 419). Continued conflicts
broke out between Moshweshwe`s people, in alliance with the Taung under
Moletsane, and the Afrikaners acting in concert with Moroka and others.
Warden `abandoned all pretence at impartiality and, mustering a composite
force of whites, Africans and Coloured people, he attacked Moletsane`s
villages on Viervoet mountain; but Moshweshwe`s Sotho came to the aid of
the allies and inflicted a crushing defeat on Warden (30th June, 1851)`.
(ibid ).

The British, under the new Governor. Cathcart, decided to avenge this
defeat and restore the prestige of British arms. A British force of 2,000
infantry and 500 cavalry crossed the Caledon to teach the Basotho `a lesson`.
But they were ambushed by Sotho horsemen and infantry and forced to retreat
in disorder after a severe mauling.

During the incessant aggressive wars which the Orange Free State conducted
against Lesotho from 1865 to 1868, Moshweshwe`s people were crippled by
the ban on the sale of weapons which the Boers could freely obtain from
the Cape and Natal. British imperialism, in the Sand River Convention of
1852, recognised the independence of the Transvaal and agreed `that no
objection shall be made by the emigrant Boers purchasing their supplies
of ammunition in any of the British colonies . . . it being mutually understood
that all trade in ammunition with the native tribes is prohibited`. The
Boers never succeeded in conquering Lesotho or destroying its independence.
But their superiority in weapons, and their constant raids into the country,
seizing great herds of cattle, ravaging crops and wrecking villages, wrought
havoc upon the Basotho. Moshweshwe, who had for so long and so skilfully
maintained his kingdom in the precarious area between British and Afrikaner
threats to its independence, was compelled to accept a British-dictated
settlement as the price of `protection` by the Queen`s government. The
terms were harsh indeed. A meeting between British and Free State representatives
in Aliwal North (1869) - from which the Basotho were excluded - agreed
to deprive Lesotho of all its territory west of the Caledon river, and
expelled Moshweshwe`s ally, Moletsane, and his Tuang people from their
traditional lands.

A Basotho deputation to London succeeded in delaying the implementation
of the Aliwal North diktat until the year of Moshweshwe`s death (March
1870). One far-reaching concession was won - no land in Lesotho could be
sold or alienated to any white settler.

But in essence, under the hammer-blows of the unholy alliance of British
and Boer colonialism, the independence of Lesotho was not to be regained
even formally, for a hundred years.(16)

Resistance in the Transvaal

The Afrikaners who had crossed the Vaal River, forming various Republics
(they were not amalgamated into the South African Republic until 1860)
strove continually and often vainly to subdue the African societies whose
lands they had entered. This was attempted sometimes by trickery - the
signing of various `treaties` which they afterwards claimed as `title deeds`,
as had been tried with Dingane - more often by violence. The Africans stood
up to the invaders. During nearly all of their existence the Transvaal
Republics were engaged in wars against various tribes.

In the eastern Transvaal the Pedi chiefdom of Sekwati and his successor
Sekhukhuni held its own for many years in their mountain fastnesses. In
1852, after beating off a sustained Voortrekker attack Sekwati signed an
agreement with the Lydenburg Republic recognising the Steelpoort River
as the eastern boundary of his kingdom. Sekhukhuni continued his policy
of consolidation. He welcomed refugees and also German missionaries of
the Lutheran Berlin Missionary Society. But in 1866 he expelled these after
bluntly telling their leader Merensky `You are spies of the Boers`.

In the north the Venda chiefs defeated the Afrikaners in 1867, compelling
them to retreat from the Soutpansberg.

In the west a number of Tswana chiefdoms held up the advance of the
Boer land-robbers: the Kwena under Chief Sechele at Dimawe and Kolobeng;
the Ngwaketse under Chief Gaseitsiwe at Kanye; the Ngwato in the north
led by Chiefs Sekgoma and Macheng in the Shoshong region.

In 1852 the Boers made a determined effort to subject the Tswana people
around the Marico district. Their Commandant called the chiefs to a meeting
and told them they had to pay taxes and supply labour to the white farmers.
Sechele, who had boycotted the meeting, became the focus of resistance;
and a Boer Commando came to his place at Dimawe demanding that he hand
over Chief Mosiele of the Mmanaane-Kgatla who had taken refuge with him.
Sechele refused, whereupon the Commando attacked Kwena and Ngwaketse towns,
sacked the residence of Sechele`s missionary David Livingstone (then on
a visit to the Cape) ravaged the crops and seized over 200 women and children
as slaves. Nevertheless the Kwena and Ngwaketse, like their northern neighbours,
the Ngwato, preserved their independence for many years, until like Lesotho
they were absorbed by the British Empire as `Bechuanaland Protectorate`
(now Botswana).

The laws relating to Africans in the Boer Republics were, as might be
expected, intolerably harsh and degrading. The watchword `no equality in
Church or state` was written into the Transvaal Grondwet (constitution).
Only white persons enjoyed the franchise or any other citizen rights. Africans
were not allowed to have firearms, ammunition or horses, or to move without
a pass. Apart from the four African families allotted to each white farmer
to do the farm work, the chief of each location had to pay taxes and to
conscript labour for the whites. Africans thus impressed had to work for
up to a year for a farmer - `wage`: one heifer for one year`s work - or
serve as `auxiliaries` in the Boer Commandos` anti-African wars.

This form of near-slavery was supplemented by a system o£ `apprenticeship`
whereby African children `captured hl warfare` could be held by Boer farmers
to work without pay, up to the age of twenty-five. This thinly disguised
form of slavery. was legally sanctioned, with the proviso - a sop to British
and international opinion - the `apprentice` could not be sold to another
master.

The only reason why these laws were not thoroughly and systematically
implemented was that the Republics lacked the means to enforce and administer
them in the face of ever-alive African resistance. The white population
of the Transvaal numbered not much more than 30,000 in 1870, compared with
about 200,000 in the Cape.(17) There was
no regular standing army, and the police and civil services were negligible.
The Republic was perennially bankrupt.

The Boer societies were non-progressive in their economic aspect. Each
farmstead was an economic unit and they had little need for money except
for those commodities which they needed - textiles, coffee etc. - and which
were supplied by shopkeepers in the villages and travelling pedlars, mainly
of foreign origin, Indian, British, Jewish and others.

Practically all the hard farm work was done by African labour and that
of the Coloured retinue imported without their consent from the Cape.

Looked at from one level the Afrikaner society appeared democratic and
egalitarian: there were no great divisions of wealth and class amongst
them. But in fact it was a community based upon the brutal conquest and
servitude of the majority of the people of the country, .the appropriation
of land and the exaction of forced, unpaid labour. The Boer Republics sought
to perpetuate the economic structure which had previously developed under
the rule of the Dutch mercantilists; to escape from and avoid the capitalist
system of commodity production and the exploitation of paid labour. It
was a vain attempt.

The Cape and Natal Colonies

During the course of the nineteenth century, capitalist relations and
British colonialism had been imposed upon the people of the Cape and Natal,
at the cost-of millions of pounds and untold bloodshed and destruction.

Seventeenth and eighteenth century Dutch penetration was experienced
by the Africans mainly as a series of incursions of robber bands intent
on seizing land and cattle. Nineteenth century British colonialism was
another matter, infinitely more formidable, and intent not only on annexing
African land for occupation by British unemployed settlers, but also to
destroy the Africans` traditional way of life and `convert` them - with
an army of professional soldiers, missionaries and traders - into docile
proletarians, producers and consumers withing the capitalist system of
the British empire.

With the spectacular growth of Britain`s manufacturing industry and
the ascendancy of the industrial bourgeoisie, the main motive of British
foreign and colonial policy shifted to the export of British manufactures.
For the bourgeoisie the Empire became not merely a supplier of indigenous
products, but a vast captive market for the sale of British textiles and
other machine-made goods, and supplier of raw materials produced on a commodity
basis by the super-exploitation of cheap colonial wage labour.

Apologists for imperialism dwell upon such phenomena as the existence
of a degree of self-government and a Parliament, as well as the abolition
of slavery, to support their contention that a more enlightened and benevolent
administration existed in the Cape Colony and Natal. In fact, `Cape Liberalism`
was little more than a facade. The vote for the Parliament was at all times
based on property and educational qualifications which could for the most
part be attained only by whites; African and Coloured voters never amounted
to more than a fraction of the electorate.

Behind this facade was the brutal reality: the destruction of the subsistence
economy of the Africans, to turn them into providers of labour power and
consumers of British manufactures. This purpose was achieved by the alliance
of British imperialism and white settlers at the Cape. The process was
frankly revealed by the pro-imperialist British historian, Cory:

`The only really effective tactics (against the Xhosa) were to burn
his huts and kraals, to drive off his cattle, to destroy his corn and other
food, in short to devastate his country.` (Sir George Cory: The Rise
of South Africa, Vol. V, p. 365 ).

In the words of John Fairbairn, pioneer fighter for press freedom, writing
in July 1835:

The atrocity of the proceedings of the colonialists is without parallel
among civilised people. The Kaffirs are termed savages, but it is the colonists
who are most entitled to that appellation.

Together with the dispossession and proletarianisation of the Africans,
British colonialism wrought far-reaching changes in the rural and urban
areas of white settlement. The former semi-subsistence farming of the Boers
was increasingly replaced by capitalist agriculture to supply raw materials
(especially wool) for the British market. The sea-ports, Cape Town, Port
Elizabeth, East London and Durban grew into expanding urban centres with
the consequent substructures of commerce and light industry, and stratification
of the population. Wealthy merchants and exporters dominated the social
and political life of the country; artisans and others began to form trade
unions. Many of these were emigrants from Britain, and their unions were
often established as branches of bodies with their headquarters in England.

Though established much later than the Cape Colony, the British administration
in Natal followed a similar path of development. The military power of
the Zulu nation having been broken, large tracts of their lands were appropriated
for white settlement, though they long resisted the process of proletarianisation.

An important development was the introduction of Indian workers to work
in the Natal sugar fields.

Lacking, at that time, the means to force the Zulu people to work for
them, the white planters succeeded, after much lobbying, in securing an
arrangement to import indentured labourers from India on an indenture system.
From 1860 to 1866 about 6,500 Indians, many of them with their families,
were brought in. Though subjected, from the start, to the usual harsh discriminatory
treatment, they made their homes in South Africa and came in time to outnumber
the whites in Natal.

Their struggle for citizenship rights was to parallel and in time to
merge with that of the Africans for national liberation.

Both in the Cape and Natal colonies, following the pattern of white
settler populations in North America and Australasia, the local capitalist
class sought increasingly to establish a greater degree of autonomy (but
not separation) from Britain. The Cape Colony in particular strove to extend
its own area of domination, conducting a war of extermination in Southern
Botswana (then `British Bechuanaland`) and a fruitless military campaign
(the `Gun War`) to disarm the Basotho.

By the end of the nineteenth century the indigenous people of Southern
Africa had experienced successive phases and varieties of colonialism.

The earlier phase of Dutch mercantile settlement, accompanied by the
limited penetration and pillage of white settlers, had been followed by
the devastating impact of British imperialism of the era of its domination
by the manufacturing bourgeoisie.

An even more intensive phase of domination and exploitation was to follow.

The world capitalist economy was rapidly moving towards its final stage,
brilliantly analysed by V. I. Lenin in his definitive work Imperialism:
the Highest Stage of Capitalism, a stage in which great monopolies
arose, in which banking capital merged with industrial capital in the major
powers, resulting in the complete domination of their economic life and
hence their state structure by giants of monopoly finance-capital. These
sought ever more intensively to export capital to areas of higher
profitability, especially in areas of underdevelopment, the source of rich
resources and cheap labour. The effects were fierce competition between
the major powers to seize colonies and the complete parcelling out of the
entire world between them. The subsequent clash between the powers as they
sought to redivide it was to explode into the imperialist world war of
1914-18. By the closing years of the nineteenth century the process was
well under way, strongly influencing the course and direction of British
policy.

In South Africa there were dramatic developments decisively determining
the course and direction of British policy in that area, and accelerating
the growth of imperialism itself. These were the discovery of the fabulously
rich mineral resources in the interior: diamonds in Griqualand West and
gold in the Transvaal.

These developments decisively affected the future course of South African
history. A new era had begun, leading to the British occupation of the
remaining African lands and Boer republics, the establishment of the Union
of South Africa, and the birth of the revolutionary working class and national
liberation movements.

Notes:

1. See, among other works, the pioneering
article by M. A. Jaspan, `Civilisation in Southern Africa before European
Conquest` (Liberation, Johannesburg No. 14, November 1955); The
Oxford History of South Africa Vol. 1 (ed. Leonard Thompson and Monica
Wilson, London 1969); African Societies in Southern Africa (ed.
Leonard Thompson, London 1969).

2. From the similarity of the word
for `people` (bantu or batho) in their languages. Unfortunately the coinage
is acquiring a derogatory connotation through its misuse by the white authorities.
The group includes peoples of Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe,
Mozambique, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and further to the
North.

3. M. F. Katzen, Oxford History
Vol 1. p. 190

4. M. F. Katzen, op. cit. p.
20i.

5. lbid p. 205

6. M. F. Katzen, Ibid p.212.

7. T. Pringle, Narrative of a Residence
in South Africa, London 1335.

8. Leonard Thompson, Oxford History,
Vol 1, p. 345.

9. Oxford History, Vol. I, p.
406.

10. Waarom die Groot Trek Geslaag
het. (Why the Great Trek succeeded) Communications of the University
of South Africa, B.12, p.4.

11. Thompson, op. cit. p. 411.

12. *Alan F. Hattersley, The British
Settlement of Natal: A Study in Imperial Migration (Cambridge,1950).

13. F. Engels, The Origin of the
Family, Private Property and The State. (Selected Works, Vol. II p.254).

14. Fifty years later. under Mzilikazi`s
son Lobengula, the Ndebele lost their independence to the mercenaries of
Cecil Rhodes and his British South Africa Company.

15. By 1861, finding independence
impossible under Boer rule, Adam Kok III abandoned the Orange Free State
and trekked with his entire people through Lesotho and over the Drakensberg,
to found the new Republic of Griqualand East at Kokstad. But by the end
of the 1870`s the rich land attracted the greed of white farmers and the
territory was annexed to the Cape Colony. Thus ended the last independent
Coloured State in South Africa.

16. Lesotho gained formal independence
from Britain on 4 October 1966.

17. The OFS with its much smaller
settler population (about 13,000) did not even attempt such a comprehensive
system of control and regimentation.