2. Modern Imperialism and the Birth of the Liberation
and Labour Movements

Diamonds and gold

During the course of the nineteenth century imperial policy in South
Africa fluctuated in accordance with conflicts of interest and policy within
the British ruling class, the administrations in power in Britain and the
High Commissioners appointed to Cape Town. Some, like Sir Harry Smith (1847-1852)
were aggressively expansionist - he extended the borders of the Cape Colony
to include the Transkei and annexed the Orange Free State, renamed the
Orange River Sovereignty. He was replaced in 1852 by Sir George Cathcart,
with instructions to disengage from the OFS and cut British involvement
to the limit. His successor, Sir George Grey (1846-61) had far-reaching
plans for a British Federation of South Africa, but these were eventually
turned down by Whitehall as too costly.

The closing third of the century, however, British policy was decisively
affected not only by the ascendancy of monopoly finance capital at home
and inter-imperialist rivalries for Africa, but also by dramatic events
of world significance in South Africa itself.

These were the discovery of fabulously rich mineral resources beneath
the surface: diamonds in Griqualand West (1870) followed by the opening
of the Witwatersrand gold mines (1888).

The discovery of diamonds, and particularly that of underground resources
of vast potential at what is now Kimberley, brought a rush of wealth-seekers
and work-seekers from all over the world. Monopoly soon took over. The
host of smaller claimholders who had participated in the early 'rush' to
the diamond fields were bought or squeezed out. De Beers Consolidated Mines
established a firm control over the Kimberley mines which were soon producing
ninety per cent of the world supply of diamonds and by the end of a century
had netted their owners no less than £700 million in gross returns.

The diamond fields at Kimberley changed the face of Cape Colony, just
as the goldfields of Johannesburg, 18 years later would transform the whole
of South Africa. The white workers who flocked to the diggings from all
over the country, from Europe and even from America fought bitter struggles
- on the one hand class battles against De Beers over wages and conditions;
on the other to retain their privileged position in relation to the thousands
of Coloured and African workers likewise attracted to employment on the
mines. The African workers too entered the field of class organisation
and struggle, coming out on strike for higher wages as early as 1882.

The new-rich diamond millionaires, backed by powerful financial institutions
in Britain and elsewhere, became immensely powerful political figures in
South Africa and abroad. The head of De Beers was Cecil Rhodes, a ruthless
adventurer, obsessed by dreams of British imperial glory and boundless
personal ambition. He became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (1890).
With the blessing of the British government he established his own private
company (the British South African Chartered Company) with its own private
army, which invaded and carved up huge slices of African territory north
of the Limpopo River, named with colossal megalomania 'Rhodesia', and attempted
unsuccessfully to invade and capture the Transvaal.

The Drive for British Domination

The period from 1870 until the end of the century was marked by a wave
of aggressive wars launched by Great Britain and its Cape Colony to conquer
and dominate the entire sub-continent.

A brief chronology describes the process.

Griqualand West, the area of the diamond fields, was a country occupied
by peoples of Khoikhoi Tswana and Coloured descent whose sovereignty under
Chief Waterboer was recognised by treaty with Britain. In 1871 the
treaty was set aside and the territory annexed by Britain. (In 1887-8 the
Griqua, Tswana and Khoikhoi joined forces to gain independence; the rising
was branded as 'rebellion' and savagely suppressed.)

In 1873 a war was waged by Britain against the Hlubi people under
Langalibalele in Natal.

In 1877 - following a major defeat of the Commandos of the Transvaal
(then the South African Republic) by the Pedi under Sekhukhune British
troops entered Pretoria without resistance and annexed the Transvaal. (In
1880, after the British troops had overcome Pedi resistance, the Transvaal
Boers unilaterally declared independence, recognised de facto by Britain.)

In 1879, following their shattering defeat by the Zulu at the
Battle of Isandhlwana the British moved into Zululand in force and imposed
a peace which robbed the Zulu of most of their independence. (Zululand
was annexed outright in 1887 and handed over to Natal in 1897.)

In the same year 1879 the Cape Colony annexed Fingoland, Idutywa and
the independent Coloured Republic of Griqualand East under Adam Kok. With
British approval the Colony expanded to include all remaining African areas
west of Natal, concluding with Pondoland (1894.)

In 1884 a new factor appeared, hastening Britain's drive to dominate
South Africa: the annexure of South-West Africa by Germany. Britain moved.
fast to establish the western frontier. She annexed southern Botswana outright
as 'British Bechuanaland' (consolidated into the Cape Colony in 1895 by
agreement between Whitehall and Cape Town). Northern Bechuanaland (present-day
Botswana) was declared a British Protectorate.

In 1890 settlers of Rhodes's 'British South Africa Company' invaded
Mashonaland, followed by penetration into Matabeleland. Between 1896 and
1897, prolonged wars of resistance were waged by the peoples of present-day
Zimbabwe.

Also in 1890 Great Britain and the Transvaal Republic imposed a joint
administration over Swaziland.

The last area of independent African resistance was not overcome until
1898, a year before the Boer War, when with the aid of African conscripts
the South African Republic defeated the Venda.

The opening of the Witwatersrand gold mines (1886) was of still greater
import for the future of South Africa than that of the diamond mines. Money
and men poured into the Transvaal. Within two years the forty four gold
mines with a nominal capital of 6,800,000 were producing an annual output
of 1,300,000. By 1890 the gold mines were employing over 100,000 workers:
white immigrants mostly from Europe and Africans housed on mine property
in the grim, prison-like bachelor compounds of the type which hall originated
at Kimberley. From a primitive mining camp, Johannesburg mushroomed to
dwarf the capital Pretoria and become the greatest city in Southern Africa.
Over the next hundred years the Witwatersrand was to produce 6,000 million
worth of gold; the bulk of the capitalist world's supply. From the start
the mining industry was dominated at monopoly finance capital. A handful
of big companies dominated by the Kimberley mining millionaires, together
with British and other foreign finance-capitalist institutions, controlled
the industry and, combined in the Transvaal Chamber of Mines, rapidly became
the most Powerful concentration of capitalist Dower in the country.

Boer War

The discovery of this veritable El Dorado determined British Imperialism
to secure political and economic domination of the Boer Republics in the
Transvaal and the OFS In 1895 a conspiracy was hatched between Rhodes,
the Cape Premier, and the British colonial secretary, Joseph Chamberlain,
to send in a raiding party from 'Rhodesia' to the Transvaal (the 'Jameson
Raid'). But the plot was discovered, a planned uprising by pro-British
elements in Johannesburg was nipped in the bud. The venture misfired hopelessly.
Rhodes was made the scapegoat and dropped from public office, while preparations
were made for full-scale war against the Republics.

The 'Boer War' broke out in October 1899.

The war was an expensive venture for British imperialism. 450,000 troops
were sent to South Africa, of whom over 20,000 lost their lives. It cost
the British taxpayers 250 million to secure the interests of the mining
magnates. British prestige suffered incalculable damage; for the war was
fought with the utmost barbarity. Boer women and children were confined
in concentration camps, their homes and farms destroyed, before they could
be brought to surrender; while the gallantry and brilliant guerilla strategy
of the Afrikaners a small nation defying the world's greatest imperial
power in defence of their independence won them the admiration and support
of the democratic world, which knew little of the background: the dispossession
and enslavement of the real owners of the highveld.

Following initial setbacks British forces occupied Johannesburg in May
1900, the Boer President Kruger was exiled and the annexation of the Republics
was proclaimed. But the Boers refused to accept defeat; they carried on
a stubborn guerilla war under commando leaders such as Generals de Wet,
de la Ray and Botha for a further two years.

Peace was signed, after prolonged negotiations, by the Treaty of Vereeniging
(31 May 1902). Among the principal negotiators were Lord Alfred Milner,
British High Commissioner for South Africa and Governor of the Transvaal
and Orange River Colonies; and Jan Christiaan Smuts, once an ardent supporter
of Cecil Rhodes, who had been appointed States Attorney by Kruger and had
saved as a commando general, leading a guerilla raid in the Cape Colony
towards the end of the Boer War.

No Africans were consulted about this treaty. British war propaganda
had made much of the semi-slavery and harsh anti-African policies of the
Boer Republics, but under British rule the legality of Boer ownership of
land stolen by force and fraud was confirmed; the white supremacy laws
of the Republics left unaltered. A period of military government was to
be followed 'at the earliest possible date' by civil government. According
to Article 8 of the Treaty of Vereeniging 'The question of granting the
franchise to natives will not be decided until after the introduction of
self-government.' 'Self-government' therefore meant rule by the white minority.

In December 1906 the British Parliament approved a constitution for
the Transvaal with a franchise confined to white men and the Het Volk Party,
headed by Generals Botha and Smuts took office. A similar constitution
for the Orange River Colony was adopted six months later and resulted in
the election of Abraham Fischer as Prime Minister.

The Union of South Africa

South Africa is not a colony but an independent state. Yet the masses
of our people enjoy neither independence nor freedom. The conceding of
independence to South Africa by Britain, in 1910, was not a victory over
the forces of colonialism and imperialism. It was designed in the interests
of imperialism. Power was transferred not into the hands of the masses
of people of South Africa, but into the hands of the White minority alone.
The evils of colonialism, in so far as the non-White majority was concerned,
were perpetuated and reinforced. A new type of colonialism was developed,
in which the oppressing White nation occupied the same territory as the
oppressed people themselves and lived side by side with them.

The Road to South African Freedom

Not for the first time, nor the last, British imperialism had purchased
peace at the expense of other people's land and liberties. Despite the
differences between them which erupted into the war of 1889-1902, British
imperialism and Boer colonialism found common ground in the destruction
of African land-ownership and traditional societies; and the enforced exploitation
of African labour. That was the basis of the Treaty of Vereeniging. lt
was carried forward in the period of military government under Milner whose
policy was 'a self-governing white community supported by . . . black labour
from Cape Town to the Zambezi.'

The alliance was consolidated by the formation in 1910 of the Union
of South Africa. Following an all-white 'National Convention' representing
the legislatures of the Transvaal, Cape, Natal and Orange Colonies, the
British Parliament approved against the opposition of the then small Labour
Party and the Irish Republicans a constitution providing for an all-white
Parliament for the new self-governing Dominion.

In three of the four Provinces (the former Colonies) only whites could
vote. In the fourth, following the tradition of the Cape Colony, a certain
number of 'qualified' Coloured and African men (a fraction of the electorate)
were allowed the privilege of choosing which representative 'of pure European
descent' to vote for.

Reflecting the economic predominance of the Transvaal, Generals Botha
and Smuts headed the first Union Cabinet, representing the alliance of
imperialism, mining monopolies and the burgeoning class of capitalist large-scale
farmers. Their rising prosperity depended upon speeding the flow of labour
at the lowest possible rates of pay to mines and farms. The accomplishment
of this objective was, and has remained, the main preoccupation of the
South African capitalist class and its government.

Even before the Boer War, the Chamber of Mines had repeatedly petitioned
the Republican government to secure, by coercion, taxation and other methods
a more ample supply of African labour. The mining houses having agreed
among themselves to cut wages (the notorious maximum average wage schedule,
still in operation) found difficulty in getting Africans to come in sufficient
numbers to do the hard, dangerous and unhealthy, unskilled jobs on the
mines for a beggarly 30s. a month. In 1903, after the war, which had temporarily
closed down the mines, a Commission appointed by the Milner government
submitted a report which in the words of L. Bernstein ('The Great Conspiracy'
Liberation, Nos. 11 and 12, Johannesburg 1956) expresses 'perhaps
more clearly than any other document, the attitude of the Chamber of Mines
and its agents to the African labourer'.

'The scarcity of native labour' it reported, 'is due first and foremost
to the fact that the African native tribes are for the most part primitive
peasant communities who possess exceptional facilities for the regular
and full supply of their . . . needs . . . The African natives are in possession
or occupation of large areas of land. No considerable change can reasonably
be anticipated in their industrial habits until a great modification of
these conditions has been brought about.'

Concrete proposals included 'compulsion, direct or indirect changes
in native tribal system or changes in land tenure . . . higher taxes .
. . The more weighty proposals to improve the supply (of African labour)
recommended that the existing native social system should be attacked with
the object of modifying or destroying it.'

These 'weighty proposals' were indeed to be implemented. It was a lengthy
process involving the unification of South Africa (1910) the Native Land
Act (1913) and the subsequent enforcement of innumerable anti-African laws
and practices by the successive governments of the Union and subsequently
the Republic of South Africa. In the meantime the need was met by the massive
importation of indentured semi-slave labour from outside, especially from
Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique) and China. The labour force in 1906
consisted of 94,000 Africans, 51,000 Chinese and 18,000 whites. But this
practice, reminiscent of the slave trade (the Chinese labourers, recruited
with the connivance of the subservient Chinese government of the day under
pressure from the British Tory administration, received five shillings
pay for a sixty-hour week) led to a storm of protest not only in South
Africa but also in Britain. It became a major election issue in 1905 when
the Tory Chamberlain government was defeated by the Liberal Party. The
Chinese were repatriated by 1907.

National Liberation Movements

The defeat of the separated and ill-equipped African tribes was followed
by a rapidly-growing national and political consciousness among the people,
expressed particularly by the few among them who had the opportunity to-acquire
modern education and contact with the outside world. Imbumba Yama Afrika,
the first African political organisation, was established in the Eastern
Cape in 1882 by African teachers, clergymen and others; two years later
the first African newspaper Imvo Zabantsundu (Voice of the Black
People) was started with financial backing from white liberals, by John
Tengo Jabavu (1859-1921), who also established the 'Native Electoral Association'
representing that relatively small minority of Africans able to qualify
for the property and educational standards required to vote for the Cape
Legislative Assembly.

Similar organisations and newspapers were founded in the other colonies
by men such as Rev. J. L. Dube in Natal, T. Makipela in the OFS and Dr.
P. l. Seme, a graduate of Columbia University (USA), in the Transvaal.

The approach of Union, and the colour-bar constitution adopted by the
all-white National Convention, stimulated the unification of these early
organisations. The draft Union Constitution was published in February 1909.
Within a month African leaders from all four colonies met in a national
convention at Bloemfontein. It was decided to send a deputation to the
British Parliament to demand rejection of the anti-African provisions of
the South Africa Act and the substitution of a non-colour bar constitution
for the Union.

The deputation was joined by representatives of the pioneer Coloured
people's organisation, the African People's Organisation, headed
by its president, Dr. Abdul Abdurahman. Also accompanying them as legal
adviser was W. P. Schreiner, a former Cape Prime Minister and brother of
the novelist and pioneer socialist, Olive Schreiner.

The ignoring of this deputation by the major British political Parties,
the establishment of the Union under the anti-African Smuts-Botha government,
and its first major onslaught on the Africans' remaining land rights, the
Native Land Bill of 1912, brought home to Africans throughout the country
the imperative need for an effective national organisation which could
unite the people, regardless of tribal origin or language, for an effective
struggle against white minority domination. A clarion call for unity was
issued by Dr. Seme:

'The demon of racialism, the aberrations of the Xhosa-Fingo raids, the
animosity that exists between Zulus and the Tsongas, the Basotho and every
other Native, must be buried and forgotten . . . We are one people.'

The call met with an overwhelmingly favourable response. The African
Congresses which had been formed in the Transvaal, Natal and Free State,
the pioneer African movements in the Cape, and the traditional rulers of
many African peoples approved the planned formation of a single organisation
to represent their interests.

It was this spirit of African unity that inspired the foundation on
8 January 1912 of the African National Congress. The foundation
conference was a most notable occasion in South African history, and an
outstanding achievement for the times.

Many of the moving spirits were patriotic African intellectuals: lawyers
like Seme, A. Mangena, R. W. Msimang, G. D. Montsioa, ministers like Dube
and Rubusana, teachers like Sol. T. Plaatje, the first secretary general.

The great mass of the people in the countryside were represented by
Chiefs who in that period were still able to voice their interests. Modelled
in part on the British and US Constitutions, the first ANC Constitution
provided for an 'Upper House' of Chiefs, many of whom were present at the
founding Conference. Letsie II of Lesotho accepted the position of honourary
president as did the chiefs of the Kgatla, Lozi, Ngwato, Rolong, Tembu,
Pondo and Zulu people.

From its inception the African National Congress (the original name
was 'The South African National Native Congress.') conducted campaigns
of mass meetings arousing the people against the provisions of the land
Act and other grievances, particularly the extension of pass laws to women
in the OFS It was a pioneer in the cause of the unity of all African peoples,
not only in the Union but throughout the continent, evidenced in its slogan
(Mayibuye i'Afrika! Return Africa!).

In its earlier period the leadership was predominantly composed of members
of the literate minority of men who could speak English and of traditional
chiefs. Its pronouncements were usually of studied moderation. This led
many observers to underestimate the actual and potential significance of
the Congress.

Yet the ANC had a profoundly revolutionary objective the building of
a united African nation aiming consciously at liberation and the assertion
of its rights. It truly represented the aspirations and interests of the
masses. The establishment of the ANC was an historic and courageous action
which inevitably led to its development into a fighting liberation movement
aiming at the revolutionary conquest of people's power.

Indian Resistance

The Indian people also had embarked upon a series of struggles against
race discrimination: the common lot of all 'non-whites' in South Africa.

The Indian community in Natal descendants of those who had been indentured
to work in the sugar-fields and others found themselves increasingly subjected
to the South African brand of discrimination and insult meted out to every
one whose skin was not white. In 1893 a young Indian lawyer, Mohandas K.
Gandhi, came to South Africa on legal business. Shocked and moved by the
treatment of Natal Indians, he began to organise the foundations of the
Natal Indian Congress. It was the beginning of a life devoted to public
affairs. Contrary to his intentions, Gandhi did not leave South Africa
until 1914. In the Transvaal, under the British colonial administrations
of Milner and his successor, Lord Selborne the anti-Asian laws of the Republic
had been tightened up and extended. (The Orange Free State had totally
banned Asians from entering a barrier which continued under British rule
and to the present day.) A new series of anti-Asian measures was introduced
by the Botha-Smuts government as soon as it took office in the Transvaal
in 1907.

The Indians of Natal and the Transvaal responded with a series of spectacular
passive resistance campaigns inspired by Gandhi's developing philosophy
of 'satyagraha' and non-violent resistance. Whatever their philosophical
background, these campaigns united the Indian community and mobilised them
for mass political action. They flouted Smuts's laws and courted imprisonment.
In 1913 a massive and completely effective strike of Indian workers was
accompanied by a mass march across the forbidden frontier between Natal
and the Transvaal. These actions aroused the enthusiasm and political consciousness
of the Indian community to a high pitch. They also focussed Indian and
world opinion on the ugly reality of South African racialism and won widespread
support from democrats of all South African national groups. Even the Transvaal
Federation of Trades was moved to a rare expression of solidarity across
the colour line when it adopted a resolution on the 1913 strike of Natal
Indians expressing 'sympathy with the Asiatics in their struggle' and demanding
'that no white man scab on them.'

Gandhi left for his homeland in 1914. There he continued the quest for
liberation he had begun in South Africa, in a manner which has become a
part of Indian and world history. He left a legacy of self-sacrificing
mass struggle, and the foundation of organisations in the Transvaal and
Natal which, in their later development as the South African Indian Congress,
wrote stirring chapters into the story of the freedom struggle.

Coloured Awakening

In the early years of Dutch settlement at the Cape no rigid social distinctions
on lines of colour were made. The colonists mingled and intermarried with
the Khoikhoi and other Africans, and also with those former slaves from
Indonesia ('Malays') and elsewhere who had gained freedom. Colour prejudice
and white chauvinism grew with the wars of dispossession against Africans,
and the desire of the white minority to

monopolise land, property and opportunities. A national group developed
the Coloured people increasingly the victims of harsh racialist laws and
practices which relegated most of them and their descendants to the status
of urban and rural wage workers, and denied them equal rights.

On many occasions the Coloured people fought militant battles for their
rights. There were slave rebellions in the Cape. Coloured slaves conscripted
to fight the Xhosa mutinied and joined forces with their fellow-Africans.
Large numbers emigrated beyond the borders of the Cape Colony where, calling
themselves the Griquas, after the name of a Khoikhoi tribe, they established
states under Waterboer, Adam Kok and other leaders, whose independence
was recognised until the white colonists and British imperialism coveted
their land.

But most of them remained in the Western Cape, where they formed the
bulk of the working population in town and country, and where, through
continuous struggle, they won a measure of civil rights expressed particularly
in the right of men of colour to vote and even to stand for election to
the Cape Parliament and town councils, even though the franchise excluded
all but the wealthiest and best-educated members of the community.

The pioneer political movement among the Coloured people was the African
People's Organisation, established in Cape Town in 1902, whose chief spokesman,
for many years was Dr. Abdul Abdurahman (1872-1940), continuously re-elected
President for thirty-six years until his death. The APO, as reflected by
its name, identified itself with the indigenous masses and was a pioneer
of the concept of a united front of the oppressed people against white
minority rule. 'If Europeans persist in their policy of oppression there
will one day arise a solid mass of Black and Coloured humanity whose demands
will be irrepressible,' Abdurahman wrote as early as 1909. When the APO
took part, together with African leaders, in the joint deputation to Britain
in 1909 in a vain attempt to prevent the British Parliament from approving
the South Africa Act, Dr. Abdurahman was impressed by and drew far-reaching
conclusions from the solidarity shown by the British Labour Party with
the oppressed people of South Africa. The organisation's paper, the APO
appealed to the predominantly white trade union and labour movement
in South Africa to show a like solidarity with their non-white fellow-workers.
'Too long have black and white been played off against one another,' it
wrote in 1909. 'It is to the Socialists that we must look for help in our
fight against a class tyranny that deprives us of political freedom.'

The arrogant rejection of such appeals by most of the political and
trade union leaders of the white workers strengthened the influence within
the APO of those middle-class elements who sought to win concessions through
compromises and election deals with sections of the white bourgeoisie,
and thus to reduce the Coloured liberation movement to a pawn in the game
of the parliamentary politicians.

The Labour Movement

Rejection of an alliance with the liberation movements was implicit
in the origin and character of the labour movement consisting mainly of
European immigrants, which had developed in the four colonies which constituted
South Africa. As early as the nineteenth century, branches of British trade
unions had been established in Cape Town and other coastal cities. The
era of gold and diamonds, of modern imperialism, saw the centre of economic
development transferred decisively to the north. The mines became the arena
of fierce class struggle where monopoly capitalism confronted the tens
of thousands of immigrant workers in the De Beers-owned and run town of
Kimberley and in the turbulent 'mining-camp' atmosphere of the Witwatersrand.

Imbued with the spirit of British craft unionism as well as with colour
and national prejudice, the miners and other white workers, though they
fought courageously against the mining millionaires and their government,
showed small sympathy with the exploitation and oppression of their African
fellow-workers. Strikes were frequent, prolonged and often bloody.

These struggles came to a head in May 1913, when 68 thousand Rand miners
downed tools demanding trade union recognition and an 8-hour day - a strike
which was not broken until the government called in police and troops,
killing a number of workers in street clashes. In December the same year
the Transvaal Federation of Trades called for a general strike, in protest
against the decision by Smuts, Minister of Defence, to declare martial
law to break a stoppage by railwaymen. Smuts' reply was to bring an army
of 70,000 men, arrest nine union leaders and illegally deport them to England,
arousing a storm of protest at home and in Britain.

The development of trade unions was accompanied as in other capitalist
countries by the formation of working class political parties with more
or less clearly defined socialist objectives.

In 1902 a branch of the British Social Democratic Federation was established
in the Cape, and a similar group was formed in Johannesburg in the same
year. The internationalist spirit of the Cape Social Democrats was attested
by a public meeting in solidarity with the 1905 Russian Revolution.

It is interesting to recall that a message to this meeting was received
from the novelist Olive Schreiner, who had formed a close friendship with
the Marx family when visiting London, and never lost her socialist convictions.
Her message on the 1905 Revolution declared:

'We are witnessing the beginning of the greatest event that has taken
place in the history of humanity during the last centuries'.

Other socialist organisations in the colonies before Union were usually
branches of British bodies, such as the Independent Labour Party in the
Transvaal, the Clarion Fellowship in Natal, and on the extreme Left the
Socialist Labour Party.

The Transvaal elections of 1907 saw the emergence, for the first time,
of the labour movement as a serious electoral force. The Labour Representation
Committee was backed by the Witwatersrand Trades Council under the chairmanship
of W. H. Andrews and most of the socialist organisations. It contested
seven out of the thirteen seats in the Transvaal, and won three of them,
polling 5,216 of a total of 13,180 votes cast. This encouraging start gave
a great fillip to the labour movement and led to the formation in 1909
of the South African Labour Party, which anticipated the Act of Union in
1910 by becoming the first political party to be established on a nationwide
scale transcending the former colonial boundaries.

The South African Labour party

Nearly all the country's trade unions and socialist societies joined
forces in launching the new Party a notable exception being the Socialist
Labour Party. The socialists and trade unionists who formed the Labour
Party were united in their determination to gain adequate workers' representation
in the Union Parliament and the various provincial and local councils but
in little else. From its inception deep differences existed; opinions varying
from right-wing opportunism, typified by Frederick Creswell, former mine-manager
and an ardent upholder of 'white labour' and British imperialism, to forces
supporting socialist internationalism on the Left.

The latter succeeded in writing a socialist objective into the Party's
constitution and securing its affiliation to the Second International.
But on the all-important question of the Party's attitude towards the oppressed
African majority, right-wing views prevailed. Claiming that radical approaches
to 'the native question' would scare away the voters, they succeeded in
deferring indefinitely any definition of policy on the central problem
of the country leaving the Labour Party in effect to trail behind the white
chauvinist policies of the bourgeois Parties.

Although represented in Parliament, the Labour Party raised no effective
protest against the Native Land Act passed in 1913. Nevertheless, the opposition
to it headed by the ANC, the inspiring struggle of the Indian people in
the same year; the violent clashes between the Transvaal workers and the
Botha-Smuts government and perhaps most effective a massive strike of African
mine labourers for better pay: all these events left a deep impression
on the labour movement.

The mood was reflected at the 1913 Labour Party conference, which decided,
though not without strong opposition, to admit Coloured members. It also
elected an executive far more advanced and principled than its predecessor.

Three of them in particular were destined to play an outstanding role
in the revolutionary working class movement of South Africa: the chairman,
W H Andrews, the secretary. D. I. Jones. and S. P. Bunting.

The 1914-1918 War

'The experience of the war, like the experience of many crises in history,
of any great calamity and any sudden tum in human life, stuns and breaks
some people, but enlightens and tempers others.'

LENIN, The Collapse of the Second International

As with most of the Parties of the Second International, the onset of
the first world war brought out within the Labour Party the deep internal
conflict between revolutionary, internationalist elements on the one hand
and opportunist, jingoist elements on the other.

Unlike the leaders of most of the Parties affiliated to the Second International,
the South African Labour Party remained faithful to the well-known anti-war
Basle resolution of the International in the drafting of which Lenin and
Rosa Luxemburg had participated.(1) As early
as 2 August 1914 the SALP Administrative Council, comprising delegates
from branches, adopted a resolution expressing its

'protest against the capitalist governments of Europe in fomenting a
war which can only benefit the International armaments manufacturers' ring
and other enemies of the working class, and appeals to the workers of the
world to organise and refrain from participating in this unjust war.'

Similar resolutions were adopted by Social-Democratic organisations
in the Cape and Natal, and by the trade unions united in the S. A. Industrial
Federation.

This militant stand was challenged after the Botha-Smuts government
decided in September 1914 to join Britain and invaded German South West
Africa (not without opposition from Afrikaner nationalists, some of whom
even staged an ill-fated and brutally suppressed rebellion.)

Right-wingers in the Labour Party intrigued furiously within the branches
to whip up jingoism and drag the Party behind the government and the war
effort of British imperialism. Their leader, Creswell volunteered for military
service and was promoted Colonel; the Party organ The Worker, edited
by his colleague, W. Wybergh, campaigned publicly to whip up war fever.

The internationalists fought back. In September 1914, S. P. Bunting,
Ivon Jones, Colin Wade and others within the Labour Party established the
War on War League. Much of its propaganda was revolutionary and socialist
in content.

A pamphlet 'Keeping the Red Flag Flying' (March 1915) addressed by the
League to members of the Labour Party, emphasised 'the profound opposition
between socialism and militarism, the fundamentally capitalist origin of
war, the essentially International character of working class solidarity'.
Recalling the famous slogan, 'Workers of the World Unite' of the 'authors
of the Communist Manifesto fifty years ago' the pamphlet declared that
'the Administrative Council of the South African Labour Party as well as
the South African Industrial Federation, true to tradition, reiterated
their adherence to the same principles .'

The War on War League firmly identified itself with those trends in
the International labour movement who had stood firm against the stream
of chauvinism. 'In Germany the grand figure of Liebknecht . . . stands
at the head of a large and increasing army of anti-war Socialists. In Russia,
the Socialist Party, more consistent than all, has throughout opposed the
war at the price of wholesale arrest deportation and execution.'

The internationalists, in the face of intensive censorship and persecution
by the Botha-Smuts government, persisted courageously with their policy
inside and outside the Party. The Creswellites, advocates of the 'see-it-through'
policy, by contrast resorted to underhand factional activities and relied
on whipping up jingoism.

By July 1915 this intrigue had reached such serious proportions that
a public rebuke 'The Labour Party's Duty in the War - A Reply to the
"See-it-Through " Policy ' was issued by twenty leading members
of the Party, headed by the Chairman, Bill Andrews, the Secretary, David
Ivon Jones, S. P. Bunting, Colin Wade and others, including six members
of the Transvaal Provincial Council. There was no denying, they wrote,
that 'serious differences' existed in the Party about the war. Cresswell
spoke about his 'duty to his country.' His real loyalty was not to South
Africa but to the Empire. But 'the Labour or democratic principle and the
imperialist principle cannot subsist in the one policy.' 'Socialism must
imply real self-government for South Africa.'

It is the Labour Party's duty to the country not at all hazards to win
the next elections, but to stand firm . . . to the principle of peace and
International goodwill and to the identity of interest of the International
working class.

The appeal was in vain. The 'see-it-through imperialist faction succeeded
in August forcing a special conference, packed by the Creswellites, at
which they carried a pro-war resolution.

The Right Wing followed up this victory by demanding that all candidates
for the coming elections pledge their support for the war. In protest eight
executive members headed by the Chairman (Andre the Secretary ~ones) and
the treasurer (Weinstock) resigned from their positions. A new body of
internationalists, incorporating the War on War League, was formed, and
started its own weekly - The International. Within a few weeks it
became clear that the Labour Party would not tolerate a revolutionary wing
within its ranks.

In September 1915 they therefore quit the Labour Party and established
a new organisation: the International Socialist League of South Africa.
In this they were joined by the De Leonite Socialist Labour Party which
had stood aloof from the Labour Party and whose ideas were of considerable
importance, positive and negative, in moulding the ideology of the ISL

The New International

'Here we plant the flag of the New International in South Africa.' These
were the challenging words with which David Ivon Jones began his editorial
in the very first issue of The International. For he and his comrades
did not believe that the desertion of the leaders of the European socialist
movement meant the end of that movement; they believed that out of that
experience a new and greater movement would arise on sound, revolutionary
foundations the 'New International.' It was the very thought which Lenin
had expressed in November 1914 when, unknown to the South Africans, whose
knowledge of overseas developments was obscured by heavy censorship, he
had written:

'The Second International is dead, overcome by opportunism. Down with
opportunism, and long live the Third International!'

'What the labour movement requires is a return to the limpid, unequivocal
affirmations of the Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx.' wrote The International
('Back to the Manifesto' 10 December 1915.)

It was precisely these two main characteristics of the ISL: its devoted
internationalism; and its determination to break with the opportunism of
the Labour Party and return to the 'limpid, unequivocal affirmations' of
Marxism which were its chief strengths. These were the qualities which
enabled it to survive and develop, to overcome all its inner difficulties
and external hostility, to provide the main foundation upon which the Communist
Party was built in 1921.

For the ISL the break with the Labour Party meant a searching review
of the opportunist errors which had led to its corruption: the assumption
that it was the Party's duty 'at all hazards to win the next election'
and above all, that the white workers alone were or could be the vanguard
of socialism in South Africa. Already in October 1915 Jones had written:
'An internationalism which does not concede the fullest rights which the
Native working class is capable of claiming will be a sham. Not until we
free the Natives can we hope to free the Whites.' He returned to the theme
in The International in December 1915:

Slaves to a higher oligarchy, the white workers of South Africa themselves
batten on a lower slave class, the native races. Thus has the South African
labour movement grown more intolerant to the native slaves than any other
working class in the world, and consequently more parasitical than any
other. To such a movement, talk of the International unity of the working
class could never arouse sincere response.

The first Congress of the ISL, in January 1916, adopted a 'petition
of rights' moved by S. P. Bunting, who was to prove a tireless advocate
of African rights. This document demanded the abolition of pass laws and
indentured and compound labour, and equal rights, political and industrial,
for African workers.

The League began to turn an ever-increasing proportion of its attention
and activities towards socialist propaganda among the African and other
non-white workers. In the election of 1916 for the Transvaal Provincial
Council the League candidate, W. H. Andrews declared that it was the 'imperative
duty of the white workers to recognise their identity of interest with
the native worker as against their common masters . . . It is time for
the white workers to deal with the native as a man and a fellow worker
and not as a chattel slave or serf. Only that way lies freedom and justice
for all.'

In contrast with the indifference shown by the Labour Party in 1913
towards the Native Land Act, the League campaigned in protest against Native
Administration Bill of 1917, designed to complete the process of African
proletarianisation. A meeting held in Johannesburg in March that year was
an historic occasion, for ANC leaders S. Msane and A. Mbelle had accepted
the League's invitation to share its platform: an extraordinary event for
the times.

The Russian Revolution

The upheavals in Russia in 1917 made a powerful impact upon the workers
and oppressed people of South Africa. The significance of Russia had never
been lost upon the South African radicals, some of whom indeed were refugees
from Tsarism.

The International, and particularly Ivon Jones its editor, responded
to the Russian events with enthusiasm and a perception remarkable in one
so far from the scene of action. As early as February 1917 when progressives
the world over were exulting at the downfall of Tsarism, Jones wrote:

This is a bourgeois revolution, but arriving when the night of capitalism
is far spent it cannot be a repetition of previous revolutions. Now two
classes pursue their several ways: one 'to prosecute the war abroad' and
'law and order' at home; the other to pursue the class war at home and
the Socialist Republic in all countries.

'170 Million Recruits' The International,

March 23,1917.

From then on The International returned with mounting emphasis
to the Russian events. 'Exactly what the ISL would have done . . . that
is what the Russian workmen have done.' (April) 'Russian Workmen Vindicate
Marx' (Editorial, May) ' Full Support to the Russian Proletariat' (June).

From July 1917 onwards The International began to receive and
pass on to its readers information from actual Bolshevik sources. The July,
1917, issue reproduced almost in full an article from Pravda (described
as 'Lenin's Organ') and passages from Pravda appeared in nearly
every issue thereafter, as well as from Izvestia. 'Lenin on the
Top' was the heading of an editorial (August 31) declaring: 'The situation
is developing in favour of the principles advocated by Lenin. Every week
proves him right.'

Dawn of the World

The Great October Revolution was a triumphant vindication for Ivon Jones
and his comrades. In November 1917 he wrote, under the above title:

What we are witnessing is an unfolding of the world-wide Commonwealth
of Labour, which if the oppressed of all lands only knew . . . would sweep
them into transports of gladness. It is this high ecstasy which animates
the Russian people today . . . Our task in South Africa is a great one.
We must educate the people in the principles of the Russian Revolution.
We have to prepare the workers against any attempt to mobilise them against
their Russian comrades, and in preparing, spread the flames of the most
glorious and most peaceful revolution of all time.

'We are South African Bolsheviks' declared the ISL A pamphlet The
Bolsheviks are Coming, written by Jones and L. H. Green was published
in English, Zulu and Sesotho in 1918, addressed 'to the workers of South
Africa Black as well as White.'

For distributing this leaflet in Martizburg Jones and Green were prosecuted
for 'inciting to public violence,' and found guilty, the magistrate commenting
that the leaflet was 'libellous, treasonable and indeed diabolical.'

In Durban an Indian Workers' Industrial Union, was established and sent
a delegate to the annual conference of the ISL in January 1918. Backed
by the African National Congress, the ISL founded the Industrial Workers
of Africa, a general union of African workers, later to become absorbed
by the ICU (Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union) which flourished
mightily in the twenties and counted its membership in tens of thousands.

Don't Scab

In 1919 over 70,000 African miners on the Witwatersrand came out on
strike. The ISL, issued a leaflet to the white workers: 'Don't Scab! '

White Workers! Do you hear the new Army of Labour coming? The native
workers are beginning to wake up. They are finding out that they are slaves
to the big capitalists.

But they want to rise. Why not? They want better housing and better
clothes, better education and a higher standard of life.

White workers! On which side are you? Your interests and theirs are
the same as against the Boss.

Back them up! The Chamber of Mines will be a king you to take up the
rifle to dragoon the Native strikers. Don't do it!

Leaflets were distributed to African miners and other workers in Zulu,
Sesotho and other languages. Among them were a simple series of 'lessons'
for those new to Marxism 'Lesson 1' began

In the days gone by the Bantu people lived alone upon the land of Africa.
The land belonged to them and they brought forth the fruits of the kindly
earth for their common good. And in those days the only Masters were the
Kings of the Bantu people Then came the white masters of the world and
took away the land from the Bantu people so that they served the white
masters and toiled for low wages. This is now come to pass more than two
hundred years since the white masters of the world came to South Africa
and prepared to make slave of the Bantu people.'

Others in the series went on to explain the ideas of working-class internationalism
and workers' organisation, and the significance of the Russian Revolution.

The Comintern

The International Socialist League enthusiastically welcomed the establishment
of the Third International (the Comintern) It was among the first Parties
to apply for affiliation and was represented at the third world Congress
of the Communist International, held in Moscow in 1920, by two delegates:
D. l Jones(2) and Sam Barlin.

Others in South Africa had also been drawn Leftwards by the magnetic
attraction of the October Revolution. In Cape Town, a group of revolutionaries
headed by Manuel Lopez, A Z Berman and J. Pick, broke away from the Social-Democratic
Federation and established the Industrial Socialist League Although
influenced by ultra-left syndicalist ideas, it identified itself with the
Russian revolution and entitled its monthly journal The Bolshevik. A
like-minded group in the Transvaal broke away from the International Socialist
League when their motion for a total boycott of Parliamentary elections
was rejected at the fifth national conference of that body at the beginning
of 1920 In October that year these two groups announced that they had merged
into the 'Communist Party of South Africa' though their ultra-left stance,
which isolated them from most South African Communists, made their usurpation
of the title presumptuous.

This application, like those of other minority socialist groups, was
unacceptable. The fifth annual conference of the International Socialist
League had unanimously decided on January 4, 1920, to formally apply for
affiliation: its letter to this effect having been read out, with applause,
at the Second Congress of the Comintern on July 24, 1920.

Like several other groups and circles, such as the Jewish Socialist
Society and the Indian workers' union of Natal, they were anxious to affiliate
to the Communist International. However, among the rules adopted at the
Third International Congress (the 'Twenty-One Conditions' formulated by
Lenin) there was one which precluded the affiliation of more than on Party
from any country.

Accordingly, the International Socialist League took the initiative
of bringing together all the socialist parties, groups and individuals
with the object of establishing a single, disciplined and centralised Communist
Party.

One hundred delegates from nearly all the socialist organisations -
excluding the Labour Party, though some of its individual members took
part - met in Johannesburg on January 2, 1921, and nearly all agreed on
the 'Twenty-One Conditions'.

Foundation of the Communist Party

By March 1921 a sufficient measure of agreement had been reached to
enable the election of a joint Unity Committee to draft a Manifesto and
Constitution and prepare for the Founding Conference of the Communist Party.

This took place in Cape Town, from 30 July to 1 August 1921. It was
preceded by a public meeting, attended by over two thousand, mainly Coloured
workers, addressed by Bill Andrews, who announced the establishment, aims
and character of the new Party.

The Conference formally established the Communist Party of South Africa
(South African Section of the Communist International), and adopted its
constitution and manifesto. It also elected an executive, with its headquarters
in Johannesburg. W. H. Andrews was elected secretary-editor, C. B. Tyler
chairman and S. P. Bunting, Treasurer.(3)

The organ of the new Party was to be The International, and it
took over the ISL's press and offices.

The Manifesto pledged the newly-born Party to struggle despite 'any
sacrifices it may be called upon to undergo, to hasten the time.

when mankind shall no longer cower under the bludgeon of the oppressor,
when the necessaries and amenities of life, the comfort and the culture,
the honour and the power, shall be to him who toils, not him who exploits;
when none shall be called master and none servant, but all shall be fellow-workers
in common.

From the lSL to the Communist Party

At its outset, in its membership, leadership and outlook, the young
Communist Party bore the powerful impress of its main constituent body,
the International Socialist League. Some commentators have concluded that
the Party was 'virtually a continuation of the League'; indeed as late
as 1929 the national conference of the Party referred to its 'origins in
1915.'

Yet the foundation of the Communist Party in 1921 marked something far
more profound than a mere change of name. It marked a decisive turning-point
in the evolution of the Party, its character, aims and outlook.

The International Socialist League was far from being an ideologically
homogeneous and united organisation. Its leaders and founders (among them,
particularly in the person of W. H. Andrews, the very founders and leaders
of the labour movement of the organised i.e., at that time, the white working
class) had broken with the right wing of the Labour Party to maintain the
principle of proletarian internationalism.

So doing they broke at the same time with white chauvinism and the opportunism
which led the Labour Party to consider the 'native question' mainly from
the point of view of what would be acceptable to the white electorate.

Liberated from the stultifying atmosphere of the Labour Party the lSL
began boldly to rethink its attitude towards the African people, and the
African workers in particular. It courageously attacked racialism in principle;
it drew up a 'Charter of African Rights' which, with all its imperfections,
was a tremendous advance on the segregationism of the Labour Party and
indeed of any 'liberal' programme of the time; it established relations
with the ANC and invited its speakers to share the League's platform; it
began an energetic drive for the industrial organisation of the black workers.

Despite all these substantial and historic achievements the lSL was
never able either to evolve a consistently Marxist and revolutionary attitude
towards the national struggle of the African people for land and freedom,
nor to overcome entirely the traces of its origin within the white labour
movement. Considering the inevitable limitations imposed on the pioneers
of the ISL by its own history, the remarkable thing is not these relative
failures but that it progressed as far as it did. Many currents: pacifist,
anarchist, syndicalist and others - were present at its inception and throughout
its existence. It is true that a revolutionary Marxist tendency was also
present and came to be the dominant force, but even then it was for the
most part a partial and distorted concept of Marxism that reached our country.

When the International Socialist League broke away from the Labour Party
it was joined by the Socialist Labour Party, which had long been devotedly
advocating the version of Marxism propagated by organisations of the same
name in Britain and the United States, and expounded in the writings of
David De Leon. These ideas were the predominant influence in the ISL, filling
the ideological vacuum which had hitherto existed.

De Leon, who died in 1914, was a tireless and brilliant propagandist
and populariser of what he understood to be Marxism. He mercilessly denounced
the right-wing leaders of the labour movement and the craft unions Lenin
quoted approvingly his lethal description of them as 'Labour Lieutenants
of the capitalist class.' His ideas exerted a powerful revolutionary influence
in most English-speaking countries, inspiring the formation of the militant
'Industrial Workers of the World' (the 'Wobblies') whose remarkable rise
left an enduring mark on American labour history, and at one stage winning
adherents of the calibre of Tom Mann and Willie Gallacher in Britain, James
Connolly in Ireland, and 'Big Bill' Heywood in the United States.

Yet his was a distorted version of Marxism. Dogmatic and sectarian in
tendency, 'De Leonism' found its expression in the denunciation of all
types of parliamentary political activity and an appeal to boycott craft
and trade unions. The formation of 'one big Industrial Union' and the subsequent
calling of a general strike was the panacea for the winning of workers'
power and the overthrow of capitalism.

William Z. Foster, veteran leader of the Communist Party of the United
States, commented that 'few men have made a greater impression on the American
labour movement than Daniel De Leon, able and eloquent speaker, clever
reasoner and dominant personality. But despite his brilliance he was essentially
a sophist and a utopian.' And in his History of the Communist Party
of Great Britain (p. 18) James Klugmann writes: 'De Leonism was the
essential outlook of the Socialist Labour Party (a predecessor of the CPGB)
right up to World War 1. The British Socialist Party remained in the grip
of De Leonism right up to the war when under the influence of Tom Bell
and Arthur MacManus it began to broaden its political outlook.'

The extent of this theoretical current were revealed in the report presented
by Jones, on behalf of the ISL, to the Comintern in 1921.(4)
Describing the foundation of the League, he wrote:

'The anti-war section (of the Labour Party) broke away and with the
co-operation of what were called the SLP men (Comrades like John Campbell
and Rabb) who propagated the principles of Marxism as propagated by De
Leon, formed the International Socialist League.'.

Jones, indeed, wrote of the lSL as 'having been captured by the De Leonites'.
In the same report he explained the influence of these ideas on the turning
of lSL activities towards organising the African workers:

Imbued with the ideas of De Leon as popularised in the splendid series
of Marxian pamphlets issued by the SLP of America and Great Britain, the
League proclaimed the principle of Industrial Unionism . . . Craft unions
were declared odious as dividing the workers instead of uniting them on
the larger basis of industry. And as part of this craft disunity the exclusion
of the native workers from part or lot in the Labour Movement was denounced
as a crime . . .

At the same time Jones showed that already by 1921 the ISL was realising
the limitations of De Leonism. He continued:

'To us, the rather mechanical formula of De Leon's lndustrial Unionism
(which was deemed capable of performing a bloodless revolution by a "lockout
of the capitalist class") was made a living thing by its application
to the native workers.'

Nevertheless, similar syndicalist concepts remained within the Communist
Party for many years after its foundation; echoes of their approach and
phraseology appear in many documents and journals. Jones's participation
in the Communist International and his study of Lenin's writings was a
revelation to him of the breadth and flexibility of truly revolutionary
Marxist approaches and tactics, far-removed from the arid sectarianism
of the Socialist Labour Parties, which regarded every movement for partial
reforms as treachery and every struggle other than a 'pure working class'
one as a useless diversion. In his last letter written to W. H. Andrews
from Yalta (13 April 1924) he wrote approvingly of the South African Young
Communist League's campaign to improve conditions for apprentices:

What a long chalk this is from the old SALP hatred of all 'reform' .
. . we are learning how to combine the struggle for reform with the revolutionary
struggle, or rather how to make the struggle for reforms revolutionary.
I have just been reading one of Lenin's early brochures of 1902, where
he declares that the political struggle of the working class is not exclusively
a struggle for the economic betterment of the workers, but also a struggle
in which the party of the workers enters in defence of every oppressed
section, even non-worker sections, of society. For example he cited the
call to the workers to demonstrate against the Czar drafting . . . students
into the army. A positive attitude on every issue!

A deathblow to De Leonite survivals and all other dogmatic and sectarian
distortions in the Communist movement in South Africa and throughout the
world was struck by the publication in 1920 of Lenin's pamphlet '"Left-Wing"
Communism an Infantile Disorder'. This peerless exposition of revolutionary
flexibility in tactics, combined with the utmost firmness of principle,
cut the ground beneath the feet of all romantic exponents of 'ultra-revolutionariness'
though no doubt, as the author foresaw, such tendencies will always rise
again within each revolutionary movement.

The National Question

Thus the formation of the Communist Party as a section of the Communist
International marked a qualitative change, the beginning of a radical transformation
in every aspect of the Party's ideology, character and organisation.

In no sphere was the impact of the international communist movement,
and especially of Lenin's contribution to it, more dynamic and far reaching
than in its effect on the Party's understanding of the national and colonial
question, and its application to our country.

Undoubtedly Lenin's thinking opened up an entire new dimension of Marxist
theory on this issue in the age of modern imperialism monopoly capitalism.
Within Tsarist Russia, that 'prison-house of nations', Lenin had ever been
the most ardent fighter against national discrimination, and against those
within the labour movement who condoned it, even when they hid behind leftist'
and 'internationalist' phrases.

'Whoever does not recognise and champion the equality of nations and
languages, and does not fight against all national oppression or inequality,
is not a Marxist; he is not even a democrat' he wrote scathingly (Collected
Works, Vol. 20, p. 28). In the tradition of Marx and Engels, especially
in their writings on Irish independence, he and the Bolshevik Party which
he led proclaimed the right of all oppressed nations to self-determination'
i.e., the right to secede and form independent states.'

During the first world war Lenin completed his detailed analysis of
modern imperialism (Imperialism - the Highest Stage of Capitalism.)(5)

Defining modern imperialism as the period of the merging of finance
and industrial capital into vast national and supra-national monopolies
Lenin showed how this era brought forth the most extreme contradiction
between social production and private appropriation. The whole world was
carved up into empires by a handful of imperialist super-powers, who then
vied with one another to redivide it on terms more favourable to themselves.

From this penetrating analysis, Lenin drew far-reaching conclusions.
While imperialism, greatly exacerbated the contradictions within, and between
the imperialist countries, it had at the same time spread racialist ideas
and won over to the support of colonialism an influential upper section
of the workers, allowing them a share of the super-profits extracted from
cheap labour and resources in the colonies. Hence the opportunism which
had destroyed the Second International.

At the same time, colonialist disruption of the traditional way of life
and economies of the colonial peoples had brought into being an immensely
important new factor in the world revolutionary movement: the national
liberation movements in the colonies. Contesting the conventional view
prevalent in the Second International that this movement was of small or
secondary importance, Lenin wrote:

But this is not so. It (the national liberation movement) has undergone
great change since the beginning of the twentieth century. Millions and
hundreds of millions, in fact the overwhelming majority of the population
of the globe, are now coming forward as independent, active and revolutionary
factors. It is perfectly clear that in the impending decisive battles in
the world revolution, the movement of the population of the globe, initially
directed towards national liberation, will turn against capitalism and
imperialism and will perhaps play a much more revolutionary part than we
expect.

(Collected Works, Vol.32, pp. 481-482).

Lenin's remarkable foresight established the theoretical basis for the
alliance of the revolutionary working class and national liberation movements
on a world scale, so notable a feature of our times. But his ideas were
put forward at a time when the imperialist powers still held firm and apparently
stable domination over practically the whole of Asia and Africa, and it
was many years before they were fully understood or developed in South
Africa, or even for that matter in the Communist International itself.

Certainly, that these ideas had begun to penetrate and be discussed
by the International Socialist League even before the formation of the
Communist Party is evidenced by a striking passage in Jones's 1921 report
to the Comintern, following a brief description of the African National
Congress: 'Here is a revolutionary movement in the fullest meaning of
Lenin's term.'

True the entire passage is disappointingly short (less than a single
page out of twenty) and disparaging. Congress is described as a 'small
coterie of educated natives', 'satisfied with agitation for civil equality
and political rights', with no inkling of the enormous revolutionary significance
of these rights in a country such as South Africa. The ANC is contrasted
unfavourably with the Industrial Workers' of Africa, and the report predicts
that 'the growing class organisations of the natives will soon dominate
or displace the Congress.'

Yet considering the times and conditions, the truly significant factor
was not that the ISL and the pioneers of the Communist movement in South
Africa made errors of analysis and emphasis, arising out of the limitations
of their origin and outlook. It was the extent to which with the fraternal
assistance of the world Communist movement and the inspiration of Lenin's
ideas, the Party was able to transcend these

limitations to become the advanced spearhead of the South African working
class as a whole; the pace-setter in the building of the united front of
liberation, centred in the African National Congress; the front-rank detachment
of the national democratic revolution.

In this process of transformation, the establishment on July 30 1921
of the united Party of South African Communists, as a section of the Communist
International, was a nodal and essential turning point.

Notes:

1. The resolution, passed unanimously
by the International Socialist Congress at Basle, Switzerland, in 1912,
foresaw the type of war which broke out in 1914, declared that was reactionary,
was being prepared in the interest of 'capitalist profits', declared that
the workers consider it 'a crime to shoot each other down' and that the
war would lead to a proletarian revolution.

2. David Ivon Jones did not return
to South Africa he remained in Moscow where he participated with Lenin
and others in the structure of the Communist International. The ill-health
which had pursued him for most of his life overtook him and he died at
a tuberculosis sanatorium in Yalta in 1924 Hence he did not personally
take part in the formation of the Communist Party, though he remained in
regular correspondence with Bunting, Andrews and others until his death.

3. The other members were G. Arnold,
Rebecca Bunting, T. Chapman, J. den Bakker, R Geldblum, H. Lee, E. M. Pincus
and R Rabb.

4. Communism in South Africa by
David Ivon Jones. Presented to the Executive of the Third International
on behalf of the International Socialist League of South Africa Johannesburg,
1921

5. It is interesting here to note that
he made use of and acknowledged the work of the British economist J. A.
Hobson author of Imperialism - A Study (London 1902), based largely
on studies he had made for his earlier work, The War in South Africa:
Its Causes and Effects (London, 1900).