The Communist Party Fights for Freedom
President Botha and his National Party colleagues fear and hate the South
African communist Party more than any other section of the anti-apartheid
forces in this country.
Why?
Because the Communist Party stands for the direct opposite of everything
the apartheid regime stands for.
Instead of apartheid - the Communist Party stands for the unity and
friendship of all sections of the South African people, in a united, democratic
non-racial South Africa; and end to segregation and Bantustans.
Instead of oppression and repression - the South African Communist Party
stands for freedom and equality: freedom of speech, assembly, press, organisation
and movement, equality of rights and opportunities, an end to pass laws,
population registration and group areas.
Instead of exploitation and profiteering by the bosses - the South African
Communist Party stands for socialism: workers' ownership and control of
means of production and distribution, an end to poverty and unemployment.
The South African Communist Party has never hidden these aims. It has worked
for socialism based on the principals of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian
internationalism ever since it was founded at a conference of socialist
organisations in Cape Town on July 30, 1921.
A History of Struggle
From the very beginning the Communist Party has been in the forefront
of organisations and mobilising the black working class for revolutionary
struggle to achieve a united, non racial and democratic South Africa. Side
by side with ANC, the Communist Party has been at the head of the fight
for national liberation. For decades the Communist Party was the only political
organisation in South Africa which had no colour bar. It was the first
organisation in the country to place black majority rule at the head of
its political agenda.
It was communist trade unionist whose pioneering work from 1921 onwards
laid the foundation of the independent trade union movement which is posing
such a direct challenge to the regime and the bosses today. The Communist
Party was the first to organise African Trade Unions to win higher wages
and better conditions for the working class, led by activists like Gana
Makebeni, Albert Nzulu, Moses Kotane, JB Marks, Moses Mabhida and Dan Tloome.
Like wise the Communist Party worked ceaselessly to organise the Indian
and Coloured workers, and the names of Ahmed Kathrada, MP Naicker, Jimmy
La Guma and his son Alex are only some of the many the Communist Party
has contributed towards emancipation of the working class in this country.
The Communist Party has always been in the lead in the fight against
pass laws. The African people will never forget the name of Johannes Nkosi,
the great hero and martyr, who was brutally murdered by the police in the
mass demonstration against passes in Durban on 16, December 1930.
Nor let us forget people like Bill Andrews, SP Bunting, David Ivon Jones,
Bram Fisher and Joe Slovo, the present general secretary of our Party,
whose efforts over many decades are eloquent testimony to the fact that
the Communist Party was South Africa's first non-racial political organisation
admitting all men and women on the basis of complete equality.
Today communist play their full part in the ranks of the ANC and its
military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe, fighting for a new South Africa based
on the equal rights and opportunities for all for which all men and women
of goodwill are striving today.
Many of those martyred by the regime at home and in Front Line States
have been communists.
COMMUNIST AND THE ANC
But above all it is the relationship between the Communist Party and
the national movements which the Botha regime fears and is trying to beak
up.
Botha says the ANC is dominated by the SACP which he says is an instrument
of Moscow. What is the truth?
Every communist party member has played his or her national organisation
and hepled cement the alliance between the ANC, SACP and the South African
Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) - an alliance which is the center-piece
of the liberation movement today.
Communist, among others, have helped build the ANC into the organisation
which stands at the head of the freedom struggle today. In the late 1930's
it was the Party members like Marks and Kotane who played a leading part
in rescuing the ANC from the doldrums, in the 1940's and 1950's it was
the Party members who, together with members of the ANC Youth League and
other militants, helped to raise the level of struggle to the high point
the ANC has displayed in the last three decades.
Similar good work was done by Dr Yusuf Dadoo and other comrades in the
Indian Congress.
Comrades in the ANC and South African Indian Congress have never tried
to subvert or dominate. They have loyally carried out the decisions of
their national organisation and have subjected themselves to its discipline.
The ANC has never taken orders from the SACP, nor has the SACP ever
tried to give such orders. Each organistion has respected the independence
of the other.
TWO STAGES OR ONE?
Botha says the Communist Party are using the ANC as a Trojan Horse -
that once liberation has been achieved the SACP will oust the leadeship
of the ANC and capture power for itself. Botha argues that the SACP wants
to establish a communist dictatorship in South Africa and it is not interested
in democracy.
The SACP makes no secret of its socialist objective. We believe that
most of the problems of the country are generated by capitalism and will
only be solved when capitalism has been replaced by socialism. Capitalism
means private enterprise, each man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.
Socialism means common ownership of the means of production and distribution.
Socialism is a stage on the way to communism.
There is no contradiction between the fight for socialism and the fight
for democracy. It was Lenin who wrote:
'The proletariat cannot be victorious except through democracy, ie.
By giving full effect to democracy and by linking with each step of its
struggle democratic demands formulated in the most resolute terms. It is
absurd to contrapose the socialist revolution and the revolutionary
struggle against capitalism to a single problem democracy, in this case,
the national question. We must combine the revolutionary struggle
against capitalism with a revolutionary programme and tactics on all
demands:
a republic, a militia, the popular election of officials, equal rights
for women, the self-determination of nations etc.' (The Revolutionary
Proletariat and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, 1915).
And Joe Slovo, now the general secretary of the South African Communist
Party, wrote in 1981:
'In South African conditions it is false to counterpose the national
and class struggle as if they are two separate forms of struggle. In a
situation in which the main immediate interests of the proletariat are
served by an assault on racist autocracy, it participation in the fight
for the national liberation is precisely one of the key ways in which it
engages in class struggle.'
(The Two Pillars of Our Struggle, The African Communist, No.87
Fourth Quarter 1981).
The African National Congress is a mass movement fighting for national
liberation, the SACP is a Marxist-Leninist party fighting for socialism.
Yet they are both committed to the Freedom Charter. There can be democracy
without socialism, but there can be no socialism without democracy. When
South African people opt for socialism they will do their own free will,
no because they have ordered to do so by the SACP.
At the 60th Anniversary of the SACP in1981, ANC President
OR Tambo said:
'Our is not merely a paper alliance created at conference tables and
formalised through the signing of documents representing only an agreement
by leaders. Our alliance is a living organism that has grown out of struggle.'
And in response the then general secretary of the Party, the late Moses
Mabhida, said:
'Our Party' s relationship with the ANC is based on mutual trust, reciprocity,
comradeship in battle and a common strategy for national liberation. Our
unity of aims and methods of struggle is a rare instance of positive alignment
between the forces of class struggle and national liberation.
RACIST PERSECUTION
In attempting to smash the ANC/SACP alliance, Botha pretends he is interested
in negotiating with a 'purfied' ANC. Actually, it is the old tactic of
'divide and 'rule'.By separating the ANC and SACP the liberation movement
would be weakened.
The apartheid regime is determined to maintain white supremacy at all
costs. Two years after it came to power the Nationalist Government outlawed
the Communist Party. The listed every member or supporter of the Communist
Party they could find. They forced hundreds of communists to resign from
the Congress Movement and the trade unions, banned them from attending
gatherings. Communists were victimised out their jobs, flung into jail
on one pretext or another or forced in exile.
Ten years later it was the turn of the ANC.
Today it is a state of emergency, detention without trial, murder by
death squad, torture of political prisoners, and all the other horrors
of a fascist regime.
The apartheid regime thinks that with methods like these it can kill
the spirit of resistance, wipe the Communist Party from the face of the
earth. But it will not succeed.
Botha will never destroy communism. He can persecute communists, but
he cannot break the firm ties of comradeship between communists and non
communists in the freedom fight. He can kill people, but he cannot kill
ideas.
The ideas of communism have been evolved by the greatest thinkers humanity
has producedKarl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin. They embody and
carry forward the thinking of all the great humanists down the ages. They
arise from a deep study of philosophy, of history, of the world we live
in and of the capitalist system.
History has proved that the communist road is the way forward for all
humanity. In a short space of time, huge strides towards a better and freer
life have been made under communist leadership in the Soviet Union and
other formerly backward countries. Industrial production was enormously
expanded, poverty and unemployment eliminated. Hitler's armies were crushed
primarily by the Red Army of the Soviet Union. It was the Soviet Union
which pioneered the conquest of space.
Above all, it was the Soviet Union which has shown the world the way
to solve the national question. In the Soviet Union, land of many different
languages and peoples, there is no colour bar, all people enjoy equal rights
and opportunities, all nations are free.
In the international arena, The Soviet Union leads the fight against
war and forpeace.
Despite all the lies of the capitalist media, these and many other
facts prove that communists holds the answers to the problems of
the world; the key to a better and brighter future for all: the key to
peace, national freedom, democracyand socialism.
COMMUNISM FOR SOUTH AFRICA
The aims of the South African Comrilur1ist Party arc set out in the
new constitution which was adopted at the 6th Congress of the Party in
1984.
'The Communist Party is the political force of the South African working
class and is the vanguard in the struggle for national liberation, socialism
and peace in our time The ultimate aim of the Party is the building of
a communist society, towards which it is guided: the principles of Marxism-Leninism.
The establishment of a socialist republic in South Africa requires that
political and economic power be firmly placed the hands of the working
class in alliance with the rural masses.
To this end the Communist Party aims:
A) To end the system of capitalist exploitation and establish a socialist
republic based on the common ownership of the means of production.
B) To organise, educate and lead the working class in pursuit of this
strategic aim and the more immediate winning the objectives of the national
democratic revolution which is inseparably linked to it. The main content
of the national democratic revolution is the national liberation of the
African people in particular, and the black people in general, the destruction
of the economic and political power of the racist ruling class, and the
establishment of one united state of people's power in which the working
class will be the dominant force and which will move uninterruptedly towards
social emancipation and the total abolition exploitation of man by man.
C)To participate in and strengthen alliance the liberation alliance
classes and strata whose interests are served by the immediate aims of
the national democratic revolution. This alliance is expressed through
the liberation front headed by the African National Congress
D) To combat racism, tribalism, sex, discrimination, regionalism, chauvinism
and all forms of narrow nationalism
E) To promote the ideas of proletarian internationalism and the unity of
the workers of South Africa and the world and to participate in and strengthen
the world Communist Movement.'
