5. Fighting Back Against Apartheid
Essentially, the theory and practice of 'apartheid' as expounded and
implemented by the Nationalist Party, is a continuation of the policy of
its predecessors in South Africa over three centuries, from the days of
Jan van Riebeeck: the oppression and exploitation of the majority of the
people for the benefit of the rich and privileged. But, coming at a time
when the bestiality of German Fascism had aroused the world against racialist
and herrenvolk ideas, a time when hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa
were asserting their rights to independence and human dignity, the policy
of apartheid, that revolting mixture of neo-Nazism, colonialist arrogance
and Calvinist righteousness, was pursued with a lunatic thoroughness and
callous disregard for humanity that shocked and outraged the conscience
of the world.
Under the successive regimes of Malan (1948), Strijdom (1954), Verwoerd
(1958) and Vorster (1966) a mountainous burden of oppressive and discriminatory
legislation was piled upon the shoulders of the already overburdened African,
Coloured and Indian people. Pass laws were made even more stringent and
extended to African women. 'Non-whites' were herded like cattle into ghettoes
('group areas'), 'Bantu homelands', 'resettlement areas' and farm prisons.
The vestigial franchise rights of African and Coloured men in the Cape
Province were abolished.
These attacks on the people were accompanied by an endless succession
of measures to suppress the rising tide of resistance and opposition which
they evoked; to destroy what freedom of speech and organisation existed;
to transform South Africa, step by step, into a fascist police state, ruled
by lawless terror.
The United Party which virtually monopolised the Parliamentary 'opposition,'(1)
excelled itself from year to year in its servile support of government
policies, divesting itself of every shred of the democratic principles
it had once pretended to, and vying with the Nationalists in degrading
appeals to white chauvinism and red-baiting. More and more obviously the
only real forces of opposition and resistance revealed themselves outside
white politics and its Parliament, in the black working class and the liberation
movements of the oppressed people.
These movements rose to the challenge, achieving a steadily growing
measure of inner strength and unity, of revolutionary clarity of purpose
and leadership.
June 26, 1950
It will always be to the credit of the African National Congress that
when the first major onslaught was launched to illegalise the Party of
the working class, it did not stand aside but courageously took the lead
and threw all its resources into the fight for the legal existence of the
Communist Party.
As soon as the terms of the Unlawful Organisations Bill became known
in May 1950, the National Executive Committee of the ANC called an emergency
conference in Johannesburg. Attended by representatives of the executives
of the South African Indian Congress, the APO and the Communist Party -
the SA Trades and Labour Council and the Labour Party declined invitations
- the conference heard an analysis of the Bill and reviewed the government's
record.
Dr. Dadoo, for the SA Indian Congress, made an impassioned speech calling
for the setting aside of past differences and the establishment of unity
against fascism and for freedom. Nelson Mandela, O. R. Tambo, W. Sisulu
and other leaders of the Youth League, now on the NEC of the ANC, responded
in like spirit. If the attack on the Communist Party, said Tambo, were
allowed to pass without resistance, none of the democratic organisations
would be spared. 'Today it is the Communist Party,' he declared. 'Tomorrow
it will be our trade unions, our Indian Congress, our APO, our African
National Congress.'
The conference resolved on mass action, in protest against the law to
suppress the Communist Party and other undemocratic measures. 26 June 1950
was set aside as a day of mourning for those killed by the police on 1
May, a day of nationwide strikes and protests. A joint committee was established
to implement the decision.
The campaign that followed, and the massive response from all parts
of the country, marked a milestone in the development of the unity in
action of the national liberation movements of the oppressed peoples,
together with the revolutionary working class movement, the 'Congress Alliance'.
To bring together all these broad forces was no easy task. Years of
government divide-and-rule policy towards African, Coloured and Indian
people had not been without effect. The seeds of political and ideological
division had been sown among the various sections of the people. To achieve
the cherished goal of the Communist Party, of unity of Communist and non-Communist
patriots in the common liberation struggle, meant hard and patient work,
not only to break down long-cultivated prejudices and misunderstandings
that existed in the liberation movement, but also to eliminate sectarianism
of all kinds within the ranks of the Communists themselves.
The concept of June 26 as Freedom Day was born in 1950. It was to become
a rallying day for the forces of freedom in the years that followed, years
in which the Communists, at every level of the movement, set a standard
of loyalty, courage and devotion which cemented the unity of liberation
and working class forces in common struggle and sacrifice.
Though the first Freedom Day action had been mainly concentrated in
the urban areas, the signs were already present of an upsurge in the rural
areas as well. During 1950, at Witzieshoek, in the Orange Free State, the
peasants came out in rebellion against the state policy of cattle-culling
and their shortage of land and starvation conditions of life. Many were
killed and wounded in clashes with the police, following which a number
of African leaders were sentenced to heavy sentences for public violence'.
In 1951 the government embarked upon its long and stubborn campaign
to remove the Coloured men of the Cape Province from the voters' roll.
The first reaction of the Coloured people was militant. A united Franchise
Action Council was set up in Cape Town, and over 15,000 Coloured people
marched through the streets of the city following a mammoth meeting on
the Grand Parade. Unfortunately this promising movement was wrecked - as
were many other movements of the Coloured people - by the Trotskyite-influenced
leadership of the so-called Non-European Unity Movement.
The Defiance Campaign
In 1952, again on June 26, the African and Indian Congresses launched
the Campaign of Defiance of Unjust Laws, in which 8,500 disciplined volunteers
systematically flouted various apartheid measures and suffered imprisonment.
Undoubtedly the movement was partly based on the experience of South
African Indians' passive resistance campaigns of 1906 and 1913, and this
has led some observers to equate the Defiers of 1952 with the Gandhian
doctrines of 'soul force'. The parallel is incorrect. The Defiance Campaign
was not designed to end the system of white supremacy by the sacrifices
of its victims; it was seen as an effective form of training and mobilising
disciplined volunteers in non-violent action at a time when other (i.e.
violent) means were not yet accepted by the majority of the people or their
leaders. It was for that very reason that the campaign was supported by
Communists and other revolutionaries, and that the very first volunteers
included Kotane, Dadoo and other Communist leaders.
In February 1953 the government brought in a law to kill the campaign
by imposing ferocious penalties for any legal offence committed as a protest.
Clearly new methods were called for.
Yet the effects of the campaign fully justified its planners. It transformed
the character of the African National Congress, from what may have seemed
to many a body of words to one of deeds. The Defiance Campaign marked the
transition of the ANC from a loosely knit body to an effective organisation
in which men of action counted for more than orators, in which workers
of town and country, and young men and women, played an increasingly preponderant
role. The temper of the 'new Congress' found a warm answering chord among
the masses, who surged to the ANC in support and membership.
The leadership was correspondingly strengthened. Dr. Moroka, who had
succumbed to the pressure of the state to 'dissociate himself' from 'Communism'
during the trial of Congress leaders which followed the campaign, lost
his position as Congress President at the next annual conference. He was
replaced by a man who was to become the symbol of African courage, militancy
and resistance until his death in 1967, Chief Albert John Lutuli.
The Indian Congress, likewise, greatly consolidated its ranks around
Dr. Naicker in Natal, Yusuf Dadoo in the Transvaal, and their militant
colleagues.
The defiance campaign stimulated the growth of new democratic movements
among minority sections of the population. The African People's Organisation
was succeeded by the Coloured People's Organisation (later, Coloured People's
Congress) under the presidency of James la Guma. A meeting of white Congress
supporters was convened by the ANC and addressed by O. R. Tambo, after
which it was decided to establish the Congress of Democrats, unconditionally
committed to uphold the Congress policy of equal votes, rights and opportunities
for all.
It was these four organisations which joined forces to call the Congress
of the People (June 26 1955) which met at Kliptown, near Johannesburg,
after 18 months of intensive preparation.
The South African Communist Party
Despite the illegalisation of the Party in 1950, the great majority
of the Communists remained at their posts in the working class and liberation
movements, but they did not lose sight of the need, reinforced by daily
experience, for independent, collective, Marxist-Leninist discussion, organisation
and leadership. Immediately after dissolution, the seasoned Marxist-Leninist
core came together to hammer out a course of action in the light of South
African realities. Two minority views were expressed. The first was that
Communists should withdraw from all public activities in such mass organisations
as were still legally permitted, to concentrate on 'the underground'. The
other was that there was no need for the Communist Party at that stage
in South Africa
The majority firmly rejected both of these incorrect views. It was vital
to maintain such mass work as was legally possible. An independent Marxist-Leninist
party was essential as well, both to fulfil its long-term mission of winning
a socialist South Africa based or workers' power, and also to ensure the
success of the immediate fight for national liberation and democracy. Hence
the Communists, as part of an organised collective body, had both to participate
actively in the public, legal mass movement, and to combine this with persistent
planned illegal work to rebuild and strengthen the Party as the vanguard
of the most advanced class, the working class.
Accordingly, a provisional centre set to work to accomplish these twin,
and related objectives. Through methodical, though necessarily cautious,
work Party cells and district committees were established ir the main centres
of the country. By the beginning of 1953 a national conference was convened,
which adopted a programme and rules and adopted the name, the South African
Communist Party. Its purpose was 'to carry forward and raise still higher
the banner of the Communist movement under the new and testing conditions
of illegality'. Its task was that of 'combining legal mass work with the
illegal work of building the Marxist-Leninist Party'. While distinguishing
itself in its name and approach from the former CPSA which 'despite its
great achievements and struggles . . . proved incapable of surviving under
illegal conditions', the reborn Party declared itself 'the heir to the
tradition created by the CPSA... of unflinching struggle against oppression
and exploitation, for unity of the workers and freedom-loving people of
country, irrespective of race and colour'.
Bannings and Proscriptions
The Party and the liberation and trade union movements worked under
ever-increasing difficulties.
From May, 1952, the government set about systematically eliminating
legal radical opposition through the Suppression of Communism Act and a
stream of additional suppressive legislation.
Scores of trade unionists and African and Indian Congress leaders were
served with government notices 'banning' them from working for or belonging
to their organisations to which they had devoted their lives. Among the
trade unionists banned were J. B. Marks, president of the Council of Non-European
Trade Unions and of the ANC (Transvaal), Dan Tloome, CNETU secretary, I.
Wolfson, treasurer of the Trades and Labour Council, other TLC leaders
such as R. Fleet, W. Kalk, E. Weinberg and B. du Toit. Some of the orders
were extended to those who had long severed their connections with the
Party, such as E. S. (Solly) Sachs, the secretary of the Garment Workers'
Union.
The Guardian, the fighting democratic weekly, was suppressed.
Its resourceful staff, including such outstanding Communist journalists
as Brian Bunting, Lionel Forman, Govan Mbeki, Ruth First and M. P. Naicker,
continued their work by producing Advance, New Age and eventually
Spark as each succeeding journal was banned.
The movement also produced, during the fifties, journals of a high calibre,
such as Fighting Talk, under the editorship of Ruth First, and Liberation,
edited by Dan Tloome, whose reviews and analyses of current events
played an important part in raising the political level of the movement
as a whole.
The government arbitrarily expelled Sam Kahn from Parliament and Fred
Carneson from the Cape Provincial Council. The African voters of the Western
Cape, responded by electing Brian Bunting to Parliament, and when he was
also removed yet a third Communist was elected, Ray Alexander (Mrs. Ray
Simons). But by this time the Suppression of Communism Act had been amended
to make it illegal for Communists to be elected, and she was not allowed
to take her seat in Parliament.
The Suppression of Communism Act was followed by a whole series of repressive
laws - such as the Criminal Law Amendment Act, the Public Safety Act, Sabotage
Act and Terrorism Act - coupled with an unparalleled increase in the machinery
of dictatorship - the army and the police - placing virtually unlimited
powers in the hands of the state to detain, torture and murder political
opponents and place the entire country under a permanent state of 'emergency'
and martial law.
The Congress of the People
The oppressed majority and their organisations protested and resisted
against every new step on the road of fascism. They went further, in deciding
to convoke a true people's 'parliament' or constituent assembly; one which
would embody in a single charter the aspirations of the people for a free
and democratic South Africa.
At its annual conference at the end of 1953 the ANC, on the proposal
of one of its most senior members, Professor Z. K. Matthews agreed to convene
a mass representative gathering of men and women of all national groups
in the country, to reach an understanding of the sort of South Africa which
could enable its people to live together in amity. This far-reaching proposal
was given substance at a meeting of the executives of the ANC, the SAIC,
the Coloured People's Organisation and the Congress of Democrats, presided
over by Chief Lutuli in March 1954. It was agreed to convene a 'Congress
of the People' through which the masses themselves could express their
own demands and wishes.
This decision generated widespread enthusiasm. The joint campaign committee
organised thousands of meetings in every corner of the land; in urban and
rural areas, in factories and mine-compounds, in the Reserves and villages
- even in the prisons. Local Committees were set up in every corner of
the country. They were enjoined to collect the people's demands, express
their grievances, and forward them to the organisers for incorporation
in a people's charter of rights. The campaign continued for more than a
year.
On 26 June 1955, the Congress of the People was held at Kliptown, near
Johannesburg. The preparations had been hampered by continuous police interference,
with organisers arrested, meetings disrupted. Even on the eve of the Congress
itself road-blocks had been set up and hundreds o f delegates stopped.
Yet, over 3,000 made their way to the great open square at Kliptown.
Many familiar faces were absent. Of the three men honoured by the gathering
with the traditional African order 'Isitwalandwe' only one - Trevor Huddleston
- was there to receive it. The other two, Chief Lutuli and Dr. Dadoo, were
banned by Ministerial order, and hundreds were compelled to be absent by
similar edicts. Yet it was the most representative gathering South Africa
had ever seen: men and women of every national group - the great preponderance
Africans - from almost every corner of the land.
The Freedom Charter
An army of armed police surrounded the gathering. The organisers had
collected the thousands of demands and proposals and distilled their content
into a single document which at the same time expressed the people's hatred
of racist South Africa as it is, and their vision of the free South Africa
of the future - the Freedom
Charter.
As the gathering began to discuss and adopt the clauses of this memorable
document, the police moved in, demanding the names and addresses and searching
the persons of the delegates. But the meeting went on with the work it
had come to do. Under the sten-guns of the intruders, it proceeded to adopt
the Charter, clause by clause, the adoption of each being punctuated by
the singing of the people's anthem, Nkosi Sikalel' iAfrika.
The Freedom Charter, in the words of Nelson Mandela, is 'a beacon to
the Congress movement and an inspiration to the people of South Africa'.
For the first time all the major democratic forces in the country found
a common programme. The Charter was subsequently endorsed by national conferences
of the SA Indian Congress, the Coloured People's Congress and the Congress
of Democrats; by the SA Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and in the 1962
Programme of the South African Communist Party.
Essentially, the South African Freedom Charter stems from the tradition
of the proclamations of rights of the French and American revolutions and
echoed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. It demands rights which are
honoured -- at least in theory -- in almost every country: an equal say
for all in the process of making and administering laws, equal access to
education, culture, and economic opportunities for all men and women, regardless
of race or colour. The Charter is not a socialist manifesto. Its demands
for the redivision of the land among those who work it, and the nationalisation
of mineral wealth and monopoly-owned industry, are clearly attributable
to the historical realities of a country where the white minority has forcibly
appropriated nearly all the country's land and assets, rather than adherence
to socialist doctrine on the part of all those who made and support the
Charter.
Yet, in Mandela's words, the Freedom Charter is 'a revolutionary document
precisely because the changes it envisages cannot be won without breaking
up the economic and political set-up of present South Africa.' It was for
this reason that the ruling classes of South Africa regarded the Charter
as 'High Treason'.
The Treason Trial
To prove treason, however, in a court of law, required more than a government
statement. The security police began an intensive drive to amass such evidence.
The homes and offices of hundreds of Congress members and supporters, trade
unionists, members of the peace movement and other bodies were raided and
searched by the police; thousands of books and documents seized. After
eighteen months they were ready to present their case in Court. On 6 December
1966, one hundred and fifty-six men and women from all over South Africa
were arrested at dawn and flown to Johannesburg in military aircraft to
face charges of Communism and High Treason. They included the foremost
leaders of the Congress Alliance, provincial and branch leaders and rank-and-file
members, men and women from every national group and walk of life.
The news of the trial aroused tremendous anger and indignation among
the freedom-loving people of South Africa and their innumerable friends
the world over. Bearing banners and placards - 'We Stand By Our Leaders'
- thousands of Congress supporters gathered around the Johannesburg Drill
Hall when the trial opened, to be dispersed by police baton charges and
gunfire. The trial also evoked passionate interest and support among broad
democratic circles abroad. The prosecution - headed until his death by
the Nazi ex-Minister of Justice Pirow - set out to prove that the Freedom
Charter was a blueprint for a 'Communist state', to be attained by force
and violence. These contentions were torn to shreds by a brilliant team
of defence lawyers, including Bram Fischer, and by the accused themselves,
whose ranks included such able legal men as Duma Nokwe, Joe Slovo, Nelson
Mandela, O. R. Tambo and J. Matthews.
The preparatory examination and trial lasted from December 1956 until
March 1961, when all the accused were found not guilty and discharged.
But by that time the Nationalist Party had abolished all tracks of the
rule of law and political victims could be dealt with outside the Courts.
Hardly one of the treason trial accused escaped punishment in the sixties.
Some were placed under house-arrest and other restrictions. Many were jailed
for life and other long-term sentences. Others were forced into exile from
the country. Many were detained and tortured, some murdered.
In addition to convicting those accused, the government intended the
treason trial to intimidate the resistance movement, to break down its
unity, to smear the movement as 'Communist', and in the process to divide
the Communists among the accused from their colleagues. In each and every
one of these objectives it failed miserably. In the long years of the treason
trial the leaders of the different organisations, of different communities
and ideological outlooks, came to known one another better, to respect
one another and learn from one another. Not a single one of those accused
took the road of asking for a separate trial or 'disassociating' himself
from Communism.
Upsurge on Every Front
Far from breaking the spirit of the people, the years of the treason
trial saw an upsurge of mass activity on almost every front.
There were historic bus boycotts in Alexandra Township, Johannesburg,
Evaton, Pretoria, Port Elizabeth and elsewhere where tens of thousands
of people acted in solidarity.
African women carried on a stubborn and militant struggle against
the extension of the pass laws to them. Following the great demonstration
of August 1956 in which 20,000 women converged on the Union Buildings in
Pretoria, the ANC Women's League and the non-racial Federation of South
African Women led militant protests, not only in Johannesburg and Durban,
where thousands were arrested, but in many country areas of the Transvaal,
Orange Free State, Cape and Natal, such as Lichtenburg, Standerton, Balfour
and Zeerust, as the government implemented its policy of issuing women's
passes piecemeal, beginning in the rural areas. Thousands of women were
arrested and sentenced for destroying their passes.
Workers' Movements and SACTU
Faced with rising living costs, though all strikes of Africans were
and remain illegal, numerous strikes in fact took place for higher wages,
followed by mass arrests and imprisonments. Following the precedent of
the first Freedom Day, the workers came out time and again at the call
of the Congress movement (joined from 1955 by SACTU - the newly founded
SA Congress of Trade Unions) in massive 'stay-at-homes' to back their political
demands. As Sol Dubula later commented in The African Communist (No.
24,1966) the years of the treason trial were
all the years in which, for the first time in our country, the national
general political strike made its appearance. Time and again the great
industrial complexes of the Witwatersrand, the Eastern Cape, Natal and
elsewhere were brought to a standstill, as hundreds of thousands of African
and other workers answered the Congress call, and stayed at home. They
struck for basic political demands, despite lack of recognized trade unions,
loss of pay, police intimidation - and despite repeated scabbing appeals
by most of the people who now lead PAC.
SACTU was formed following the cowardly desertion of principle by the
leaders of the Trades and Labour Council, who dissolved that body to establish
the colour-bar 'South African Council of Trade Unions' whose constitution
excluded African workers. The Unions which had fought against this surrender
joined in 1955 to join the Transvaal Council of Non-European Trade unions
to set up, on 5 March 1955, the first South African trade union federation
truly to fight both the political and industrial colour bars, in word and
in deed, the South African Congress of Trade Unions.
Rejecting the treacherous slogan 'No politics m the trade unions' SACTU
boldly tackled the great main problems - the industrial colour bar, the
pass laws, the absence of political and civil rights - of the mass of workers,
as well as demands for better wages and conditions. It adopted the Freedom
Charter and associated itself in the Congress Alliance. It launched a major
campaign, around the demand for a national minimum wage of £1 a day,
for the organisation of the mass of unorganised workers in town and country.
Its leading organs - unlike those of the former TLC - reflected the composition
of the working class of our country, including, as well as White, Coloured
and Indian workers, African trade unionists such as Leslie Massina, J.
Gaetsewe, and M. W. Shope (successively general secretary) and S. Dhlamini
(national president).
Rural Revolt
The closing years of the fifties were a period in which increasingly
the oppressed people of the rural areas fought back against the government,
involving increasingly revolutionary forms of mass action.
In 1958 massive unrest erupted in Zeerust, following the women's
destruction of pass books at Linokana, Gopane, Witkleigat and Motsoedi,
and the deportation of a patriotic chief. The people set up their own courts,
and tried and executed four pro-government quislings. Massive state reprisals
followed.
In May of the same year the people of Sekhukhuniland revolted
against the imposition of 'Bantu authorities' as a first step towards the
creation of a 'Bantustan'. Similar battles were fought in Zululand, Tembuland
and Pondoland. The setting up of people's courts and the sentencing of
traitors initiated in Zeerust was emulated in Tembuland and Zululand. The
white state suppressed these risings ferociously, many peasant leaders
being deported, sentenced to long prison terms and their homes burnt down.
In Sekukhuniland sixteen peasants. including a woman, were sentenced to
death and executed.
Writing in The African Communist (No. 11, 1962) L. Legwa wrote:
'Particularly bitter struggles took place in Pondoland, a portion
of the Transkei which retained independence until 1894 when the British
government forced its annexation to the Cape by coercion and fraud . .
. The whole district of Bizana fell into the hands of the mountain men
- the freedom fighters. They set up people's courts and levied taxes
on black and white in the area.
The government resorted to extensive military actions. A state of emergency
- which has still not been lifted - was declared over the whole area of
the Transkeian Territory. More than 5,000 peasant leaders were arrested
and detained. Hundreds were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Thirty-two
leaders were sentenced to death...''
In addition to these major struggles, innumerable campaigns were carried
out in various fields. A successful potato boycott (in protest against
slave conditions on potato farms); a boycott of nationalist firms - later
to be echoed on an international scale - vigorous action against the 'Western
areas removal scheme' which destroyed whole African living areas in Johannesburg
- all these and many other activities made up the pattern of political
life in the fifties as reflected in the columns of The Guardian and
its successors, analysed and evaluated in such periodicals as Fighting
Talk and Liberation.
In all these and many other epic struggles of the fifties, the Communist
Party and its members played a worthy role. As Bram Fischer later pointed
out in his great court address while on trial for his life (28 March 1966)
he realised that as he became more deeply involved with the Congress movement
of those years - 'that is, the movement for freedom and equal human rights
for all':
that it was always members of the Communist Party who seemed prepared,
regardless of cost, to sacrifice most; to give of their best, to face the
greatest dangers. in the struggle against poverty and discrimination.
The Sixties - and Armed Struggle
By the end of the fifties it was plain that a showdown was impending
between the fascist rulers of South Africa and the oppressed people. The
great series of militant non-violent struggles, general strikes and boycotts
had succeeded in arousing the people and mobilising them behind the Congress
banner as never before. But neither these campaigns nor the ever-mounting
world chorus of condemnation of apartheid had succeeded in wringing a single
concession from the Nationalist Party government, which merely reacted
by redoubling its methods and machinery of terror. It became increasingly
clear to the masses and their leaders that new methods, a new approach,
was needed in the fight against the colonialist-fascist regime. The violent
struggles of the rural people, especially in Pondoland, unarmed or ill-armed
as they were, had shown the way.
The new phase of the struggle was precipitated by an unexpected and
tragic event - the massacre at Sharpeville on 21 March 1960.
As in every developed country various splits and divisions existed within
the ranks of the oppressed and exploited people. Various 'left' or 'right'
factions split away from the main body of the liberation movements, arising
from petit-bourgeois confusion or outside intrigues. For example in the
Cape, especially among Coloured intellectuals, a body styling itself the
'Non-European Unity Movement', largely under Trotskyite influence had a
long and malodorous record of sabotaging, under ultra-revolutionary slogans,
every struggle launched by the Congress movement or the Communist Party.
Several right-wing splinter movements had begun in the ANC, invariably
under the slogans of anti-Communism and alleged Indian or European influence
in the ANC
In the late fifties a new group of this type made its appearance in
the ANC Calling themselves 'Africanists' they launched a campaign of vicious
calumny against the Lutuli-Sisulu leadership and the Freedom Charter. At
the end of 1959 the Africanists, having failed dismally to gain support
within the ANC, broke away to form their own organisation, the 'Pan-Africanist
Congress'.
The Sharpeville Massacre, March 1960
Little more might have been heard of this body had it not been for the
grim incidents of the following March. Learning that the ANC had decided
to launch a fresh major offensive against the pass laws at the end of that
month, the PAC adventurously called its own 'anti-pass campaign' a week
earlier. Africans were summoned to go to local police stations on that
day and deliver up their passes in 'a non-violent way'. For the most part,
the call fell on deaf ears, the African workers awaiting a call from their
recognised and tested leaders. But in two areas, Sharpeville in the Transvaal
and Langa in the Cape - in both of which ANC organisation was weak - crowds
of Africans did peacefully assemble at the police stations. The reaction
of the police shocked South Africa and the world, exposing the police state
in all its naked brutality. They opened fire with sten guns mounted on
trucks, shooting the fleeing crowds in their backs, killing and wounding
people indiscriminately.
The reaction was angry and immediate. In answer to the call of President
Lutuli, Africans throughout the country staged a highly-effective one-day
strike, and thousands followed his example by burning their passes. Africans
in Cape Town came out on strike for more than two weeks.
War on the People
The government declared war on the people. A state of emergency was
proclaimed. At least twenty thousand young Africans were indiscriminately
arrested and a further two thousand 'politicals' - men and women of all
national groups known or thought to be active in the ANC and other democratic
organisations - arrested and detained for months without trial. The African
National Congress (and for good measure the PAC as well) were declared
illegal organisations.
It was this crisis, coming on top of all the previous acts of repression,
which convinced both the masses of oppressed people and their leaders that
the days when resistance could be confined to 'non-violent' and 'legal'
methods had gone forever. The ANC, despite the loss of so many of its leaders
and cadres, functioned throughout the emergency. The Communist Party -
which had already illegally, in October 1959, produced the first issue
of The African Communist, in Johannesburg - came out with its first
illegal leaflets for mass distribution in all the main industrial regions
of the country.
The leaders of the liberation movement and the Communist Party - both
those in detention and those who had evaded the police net and were living
in hiding - came to the same conclusion. It was necessary to abandon 'non-violence'
as the sole means of struggle, and to begin preparations to meet state
violence and terror with retaliatory violence.
The Maritzburg Conference
These conclusions were strengthened by the temper of the masses as the
historic 'all-in' African conference held in Maritzburg under the leadership
of Nelson Mandela in March 1961 protested against the so-called 'referendum'
of white voters under which South Africa was to be declared a 'Republic'.
The conference called for a National Convention to decide on a new constitution
for South Africa, failing which a general strike would be called to coincide
with the declaration of the Republic on 31 May, 1961.
In the event, the Republican 'celebrations' were overshadowed by the
placing of the country on a war basis to smash the strike. Despite all
these repressive measures - and the treacherous scabbing activities
of such bodies as the PAC and the Trotskyites - tens of thousands of workers
responded to the strike call throughout the country. It was the last peaceful
general strike call issued by the liberation movement. During the years
1951-1961 the working class of South Africa had, time and again, shown
its magnificent solidarity and spirit in a whole series of political strikes
- without strike funds and facing grave risks of victimisation. These strikes
had been of immense value and importance. But the time had come for new
tactics and methods.
Umkhonto We Sizwe
The people's patience is not endless. The time comes in the life of
any nation when there remain only two choices - submit or fight. That time
has now come to South Africa.
Manifesto
of Umkhonto We Sizwe, 16 December 1961
At the end of 1961, backed by the African National Congress and the
Communist Party, a new organisation made its appearance on South African
soil: Umkhonto we Sizwe, Spear of the Nation. It announced its existence
not only in words but also in deeds - a series of sabotage explosions in
all parts of the country.
The explosions were accompanied by a manifesto declaring that in the
situation of terror existing in the country the masses could no longer
rely on peaceful methods of struggle but would hit back with every means
in their power.
Umkhonto we Sizwe's sabotage operations were never intended as an end
in themselves but as a stage towards the building of a people's army
of liberation in South Africa. They served notice of the end of an
era of militant, but non-violent struggles alone; the opening shots in
what will undoubtedly prove a long and bitter, but certainly in the end
victorious, war of liberation.
The path of armed resistance and struggle was one not lightly or easily
taken by the South African people's liberation movements and their Communist
Party. For many years they had striven by every possible means, with indomitable
courage, patience and persistence to achieve a non-violent transition to
people's power. Civil war has been forced upon our country by the racial
arrogance, greed and ruthlessness of the colonialist ruling class.
The 1962 Programme
The general line and direction of Party policy was fully confirmed by
the membership at the fifth national conference held illegally in Johannesburg
in 1962.
The Conference performed an enormous service to the working class and
oppressed people of our country by adopting the new Party Programme - The
Road to South African Freedom, - intensive discussion of a first draft
in every unit and among non-Party circles of revolutionary workers. Hundreds
of amendments were submitted, considered and in many cases incorporated.
The Programme reaffirmed the Party's adherence to the fundamental principles
of Marxism-Leninism, which were briefly described and summarised (an essential
need in a country where the dissemination of Marxist ideas had been prohibited
for over a decade.)
It proceeded to give a clear Marxist analysis of the character of South
African society - a special type of colonialism 'in which the oppressing
White nation occupied the same territory as the oppressed people themselves
and lived side by side with them'. Hence:
As its immediate and foremost task, the South African Communist Party
works for a united front of national liberation. It strives to unite all
sections and classes of oppressed and democratic people for a national
democratic revolution to destroy White domination. The main content of
this Revolution will be the national liberation of the African people.
Carried to its fulfilment, this revolution will at the same time put an
end to every sort of race discrimination and privilege. The revolution
will restore the land and the wealth of the country to the people, and
guarantee democracy, freedom and equality of rights, and opportunities
to all The Communist Party has no interests separate from those of the
working people. The Communists are sons and daughters of the people, and
share with them the over-riding necessity to put an end to the suffering
and humiliation of apartheid. The destruction of colonialism and the winning
of national freedom is the essential condition and the key for future advance
to the supreme aim of the Communist Party: the establishment of a socialist
South Africa, laying the foundation of a classless, communist society.
The 1962 Programme marked a major advance in the theoretical development
of the South African Communist Party, and indeed - as in its section on
'The African Revolution' - made a significant contribution to the development
of Marxist thought throughout the continent.
This was continued and greatly amplified by the party's journal, The
African Communist, which for more than a decade now has helped to spread
the enlightening ideas of Marxism-Leninism in Africa and among Africans
and other interested thinkers in every part of the world.
An important statement, The Revolutionary Way Out published early
in 1963 applied the thinking of the Party programme to a detailed analysis
of events taking place in the country.
Heavy Blows
A whole series of heavy blows was sustained by the Communist Part, and
the entire liberation movement during the first half of the sixties, at
the hands of the fascist government and its secret police, modelled on
the Gestapo.
The government was determined to smash every vestige of the valiant
resisters who had so skilfully utilised every possibility of legal protest
in the previous decade. All the journalists who had produced The Guardian
and its successors down the years, as well as Fighting Talk, Liberation
and other democratic journals, were served with ministerial notices
preventing them from engaging in any sort of journalistic activity.
Many leading cadres were placed under house-arrest. Intensive efforts
were made to infiltrate police spies and provocateurs into the ranks of
the movement. A very substantial addition was made to the funds and activities
of the special branch of the police.
Counter-measures were taken by the liberation movement. A number of
leading members, including O. R. Tambo, M. M. Kotane, J. B. Marks and Y.
M. Dadoo were sent out of the country to conduct various aspects of the
work of the movement in exile. Numbers of young militants were recruited
and sent abroad for combat training as guerillas of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
Following the example of Nelson Mandela, a number of leaders of the Party
and the Congress organisations were directed to leave their homes and assume
new identities and disguises. Secret headquarters were set up at a farm
in Rivonia, near Johannesburg and elsewhere.
Due to inexperience and to some extent underestimation of the enemy,
many of these measures proved inadequate. Following a successful tour of
Africa and elsewhere on behalf of the ANC Mandela returned to his underground
work, but he was captured by the police in Natal.
In July 1963 a serious reverse was suffered when police raided the Party
headquarters at Rivonia. What followed is described in the resolution*
adopted by the Central Committee of the Party on its fiftieth anniversary:
Following a raid on the underground Party headquarters at Rivonia a
number of the most outstanding revolutionary leaders, both Communists and
non-Communists, were arrested and tried on charges of planning to overthrow
the state by armed revolutionary struggle. Despite world-wide protests,
including a 106-1 vote at the United Nations General Assembly, 8 of the
accused were sentenced to life imprisonment: Mandela, Sisulu, Mbeki, Mhlaba,
Goldberg, Kathrada, Motsoaledi and Mlangeni.
Hundreds of Congressites and Communists were detained without trial,
subjected to prolonged torture and some even murdered in the police cells.
The great majority of those detained refused to testify against their comrades,
even to the point of death. But a few were broken by the police, resulting
in yet further trials, such as that of Mkwayi, Kitson and others, also
resulting in life sentences, the execution of the trade unionists Mini,
Khayinga and Mkaba in November 1964, and the rounding up of thousands of
Party and Congress supporters, and trade unionists throughout the country.
A further heavy blow was sustained by the Party in 1965 with the arrest
and sentence to life imprisonment of Comrade Abram Fischer who had been
living in hiding and leading the underground work of the Party at that
time.
Looksmart Ngudle, Babla Saloojee, Caleb Mayekiso, Alpheus Maliba, are
but a few of the many Congressites, trade unionists, Communists and other
political prisoners who died in the cells under torture and were alleged
by the police to have taken their own lives.
It is impossible here to enumerate all the brave sons and daughters
of South Africa who have been killed, imprisoned, deported to remote areas,
and otherwise victimised by the fascists for fighting for the freedom of
their country and their people.
At home, the revolutionary workers have patiently rebuilt the machinery
of the Party, learning from past mistakes and creatively devising new methods
and strategies to meet the terrorism of the police state. A number of Party
leaflets distributed in the country, especially in the later sixties, their
widespread distribution, and the inability of the police to make any arrests,
attesting to the courage and skill of the comrades responsible.
A further tribute to the resilience and growing vitality of the Party
was the successful holding of an augmented meeting of the Central Committee
in 1970.
The 1970 Augmented Meeting of the Central Committee
The 1970 Augmented Central Committee Meeting was an important milestone
in the history of the Party. Since the last National Conference of the
Party in 1962, several full Central Committee meetings had been held. A
regularly functioning and active Executive had been appointed to direct
and intensify the activities of the Party.
But the particularly difficult conditions facing the Party, especially
the widespread dispersion of cadres, made it impossible to convene a meeting
sufficiently representative in character, which could review the activities
of the Executive, assess the lessons of our successes and failures, and
decide the future policy and leadership of the Party.
Formidable tasks therefore faced the Augmented Meeting. Following widespread
discussion at all levels of the Party, the Meeting - comprising a majority
of non-members of the Executive, including a number of Party members who
had already participated in armed struggle - was called to review comprehensive
organisational and political reports from the Executive.
Far-reaching developments in South Africa, on the African continent
and in the international situation face the Party with new problems and
tasks. The hard and dangerous work of rebuilding the Party's organisational
structure under conditions of ferocious terror; the unfolding of the armed
struggle for the advance of the South African revolution; the mobilisation
of the working class and rural masses, and the various strata of oppressed
people; the strengthening of the national liberation movement headed by
the African National Congress; the unfolding of a broad people's alliance
in Southern Africa against the combined forces of South African imperialism,
Portuguese colonialism and the illegal Smith regime - backed by international
finance-capital; these and related problems occupied the focus of the meeting's
deliberations.
In addition, the meeting reviewed and assessed the Party's international
policy. It endorsed the policy and activities of the Executive in relation
to the international Communist movement, and decided upon measures to strengthen
our activities in this field.(2)
The meeting adopted a number of major policy decisions, reflected in
the resolutions. After re-electing the General Secretary and Chairman of
the Party, it proceeded, by democratic means, to appoint a new Executive
.
The Party and the Armed Struggle
The main political resolution of the meeting was summed up in a rousing
'Call to the People of South Africa', the text of which is appended to
this volume. Two important clauses read:
Paying tribute to the heroism of the fighting men of Umkhonto we Sizwe,
we pledge unqualified support for the liberation army in its aims to recruit
and train guerilla fighters, to spread the area of guerilla war to the
heart of the Republic.Believing firmly that the building of our Party as the Marxist-Leninist
vanguard of the working class is a vitally important contribution to the
victory in the common struggle, the meeting instructs the CC to direct
its main efforts to the reconstruction of the Party at home as an organisation
of professional revolutionaries, closely in contact with the working class
and peasantry and able to carry on the propaganda and organisation of the
Party in the face of police terror. A good deal of the discussion at the
meeting was focussed on the strategy and perspectives of armed struggle
under South African conditions, on the basis of a document on this theme
circulated by the executive and in the light of the combat experience already
gained.
The meeting adopted a resolution setting forth a number of guidelines
on this question, pointing out that the armed struggle was not to be approached
as a purely military question, but that operations must be planned to arouse
and organise the masses. Any theory that localised operations of full-time
guerillas would in itself generate revolution was rejected; as also was
the concept that organised armed activity should await complete political
mobilisation and advanced nationwide organisation.
While the principal operations would be initiated in and based on rural
areas, armed activities in the towns were an indispensable 'corollary front'.
Emphasis was laid on the character of the fighting force as one of political
cadres, subordinate to the political movement, and based on conviction
and commitment rather than traditional bourgeois-type army discipline.
Political and military leadership must be co-ordinated and eventually integrated.
The Augmented Central Committee Meeting also devoted much of its attention
to the complex and exacting problems of organisation, propaganda and the
maintenance of high standards of conduct and discipline in the present
testing conditions. A series of practical decisions were taken on these
subjects, as well as on the strengthening of the liberation alliance and
the raising to yet higher level the unity of Communist and non-Communist
fighters for national liberation which has characterised the development
of the movement in South Africa.
The Party 's Fiftieth Anniversary
Messages of congratulation, greeting and good will were received from
all over the world on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Party's
foundation, 30 July 1971. The executives of the African National Congress
of South Africa, the South African Congress of Trade Unions sent cordial
greetings. Messages of solidarity and support were received from the fraternal
Parties of the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic and other socialist
countries of Europe as well from these of all the principal capitalist
countries. From Asia the Party received messages from Vietnam, Korea, Japan,
India and other fraternal parties; from Canada and the USA and a number
of South American Parties.
In the Soviet Union a special all-day seminar was devoted to
the occasion, opened by Central Committee member Academician A. M. Rumyantsev
and addressed by SACP chairman J. B. Marks and leading Soviet scholars.
(The text of Comrade Rumyantsev's address is published in full in the African
Communist, No. 47, Fourth Quarter 1971).
A special session of the African National Congress Youth and Students'
summer seminar held in the German Democratic Republic in July/August 1971
on the theme "Problems of National Liberation" was also devoted
to a discussion of the history of the SACP, its contribution to the national
liberation movement in South Africa and its role in the international Communist
movement.
Inkululeko - Freedom
Inside South Africa itself, implementing the decision of the Central
Committee to concentrate efforts on reconstruction of the Party at
home, the Party produced stickers, reading 50 FIGHTING YEARS - 1921-1971
which appeared in public places throughout the country. The occasion was
marked too by the publication of the first issue of the new underground
journal, Inkululeko-Freedom.
Perhaps it is appropriate to leave the last word in this chronicle of
the heroic and still continuing work of the South African Communist Party
to the anonymous authors of this brave new paper.
A Paper is a Weapon proclaims the editorial:
The publication of the first issue of 'Inkululeko-Freedom' as a regular
underground journal of our Central Committee represents a big step forward
for our Party.In the new conditions which face us, organisation is everything. Without
it all the undoubted anger of our people cannot be directed to deal effective
blows to the enemy. The spreading of understanding is the very beginning
of organisation. That is why a newspaper is an organiser. A grasp of Marxist-Leninist
theory and its application to our conditions not only provides the true
guidelines for action but also reinforces the conviction that the ending
of all forms of exploitation - economic, racial and political - is both
historically necessary and inevitable.Around such a revolutionary organ there must grow a bond between all
units and advanced representatives of the liberation and working class
movements. It must become a spur to those who are still seeking a path
of struggle and the thread which directs them to revolutionary commitment,
organisation and action.Inkululeko-Freedom continues in the great tradition of our Party's
journal and newspapers, like The International, Umsebenzi and Inkululeko
and fighting organs like the Guardian, Liberation, Fighting Talk
and others which have throughout our history played an indispensable
role in furthering the revolutionary tasks which face our people.The ideas which will fill the pages of this journal are hated by the
enemy because they are liberating ideas. The enemy will hound you and persecute
you if they catch you spreading it. But your battle cannot be won without
risks and without sacrifice. Of course you must be careful in the way you
use it and if you work cleverly vou can outwit the enemy and his agents
and informers.
INKULULEKO-FREEDOM IS YOUR PAPER! SPREAD IT EVERYWHERE! ORGANISE
AND EDUCATE FOR THE REVOLUTION !
The journal outlines the history of white conquest and domination in
South Africa, and then shows how the Communist Party has from its inception
fought to bring about a revolutionary change, in association with other
liberation organisations in South Africa and with the world Communist and
anti-imperialist movement. A brief history of the Communist Party concludes
with a summary of the decisions taken at the recent meeting of the Party's
Central Committee.
The journal declares:
On this our fiftieth anniversary, the Central Committee and our whole
Party salutes those who are constructing socialism and fighting imperialism.
We reaffirm our confidence in the principles of Communism and internationalism
of victory for our people and for the working class and pledgeto intensify our efforts - whatever the sacrifices - to help liberate
the mass of our oppressed people from race domination and to bring about
an independent South Africa free from all forms of exploitation.unqualified support for the armed revolutionary cadres of the whole
movement to spread the areas of armed combat to the heart of our country.
the intensification of our efforts to build our Party as the Marxist-Leninist
vanguard of the working class and to fortify it in the face of police terror.
the strengthening still further of the unity of all true patriotic forces
as expressed in the alliance headed by the African National Congress.'WE CALL UPON THE WORKING PEOPLE OF OUR COUNTRY AND ESPECIALLY
THE WORKERS AND OPPRESSED AFRICAN, COLOURED AND INDIAN PEOPLE TO UNITE
THEIR RANKS TO RESIST TYRANNICAL DOMINATION IN EVERY SPHERE AND BY EVERY
MEANS AND TO WORK FOR THE CONQUEST OF POWER BY THE PEOPLE.'LONG LIVE COMMUNISM AND TRUE INTERNATIONALISM!'
'LONG LIVE THE ALLIANCE OF PATRIOTIC FORCES!'
'LONG LIVE THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY!'
Notes:
1. Until 1960 there were three representatives
of Cape African voters in Parliament; the Labour Party lost its remaining
three MPS in the 1958 general election.
2. A good idea of the Party's general
line of policy on these questions is contained in J. B. Marks' address,
as head of the SACP delegation at the 1969 Moscow conference of Communist
and Workers' Parties, and reproduced in Appendix XIII.
