Brian Bunting, 1975: Moses Kotane, South African Revolutionary
Chapter 2 The National Question Part 1 of 4 Kotane entered the South African political arena at a time when controversy was raging over the nature of the South African revolution and the relationship between the national and class struggles, precipi-tated by the adoption of the famous 'Native Republic' resolution by the 6th Congress of the Communist International held in Moscow in 1928. To understand the nature of the contribution which Kotane was to make in the coming years, it is necessary to review the arguments which were being hotly debated by the protagonists at the time. The national question had been discussed by both Marx and Engels in terms of the political situation of their day - a period when capitalism was at its height and about to expand and transform itself into the worldwide complex of imperialism. The early writings of Lenin and Stalin contain dissertations on the national question which view it as one of the phenomena accompanying the development of the capitalist system. In his 1914 thesis on The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Lenin wrote: "Throughout the world the period of the final victory of capitalism over feudalism has been linked up with national movements. For the complete victory of commodity production, the bourgeoisie must capture the home market, and there must be politically united terri-tories whose populations speak a single language, with all obstacles to the development of that language and to its consolidation in literature eliminated. Therein is the economic foundation of national movements . . . Therefore the tendency of every national movement is towards the formation of national states, under which these requirements of capitalism are best satisfied . . . The self-determination of nations means the political separation of these nations from alien national bodies, and the formation of an independent national state." But what constitutes a nation? In his famous treatise on Marxism and the National Question written in 1913, Stalin said: "A nation is a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture . . . It must be emphasised that none of the above characteristics is by itself sufficient to define a nation. On the other hand, it is sufficient for a single one of these characteristics to be absent and the nation ceases to be a nation." Stalin also wrote in this same treatise: "It goes without saying that a nation, like every other historical phenomenon, is subject to the law of change, has its history, its beginning and end." As with nations, so with the theory of national liberation, the Marxist laws of change and development operate. Theory and practice are interrelated and interact upon one another. "The several demands of democracy, including self-determination, are not an absolute, but only a small part of the general-democratic (now: general-socialist) world movement. In individual concrete cases, the part may contradict the whole; if so it must be rejected." - Lenin, On the National Pride of the Great Russians, 1916. The Bolshevik Party not only proclaimed the right of nations to self-determination but also put its policies into effect when it came to power in 1917. Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland exer-cised the right to secession from Russia and became independent states. A number of independent Soviet Republics were created which later joined together to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on December 30, 1922, regarding the creation of the U.S.S.R. as the only guarantee that the various peoples who had been colonised and oppres-sed under the former Tsarist regime would have the freedom and the power to exercise the right to self-determination. The U.S.S.R. was not imposed on the various nations and national groups by the power of the Russian majority, but was a union voluntarily and freely entered into by the various contracting parties. As Stalin explained: "Under present international conditions, under the conditions of capitalist encirclement, not a single Soviet republic taken alone can regard itself as secure against economic exhaustion and military destruc-tion on the part of world imperialism. "Hence, in isolation, the existence of the various Soviet republics is uncertain and unstable, because of the menace to their existence offered by the capitalist states. The joint interests of the Soviet Republics in the matter of defence, in the first place, the restoration of the productive forces shattered during the war, in the second place, and the fact that the Soviet Republics which are rich in food must come to the aid of the Soviet Republics which are poor in food, in the third place, all imperatively dictate the political union of the various Soviet republics as the only means of escaping imperialist bondage and national oppression. Having liberated themselves from their 'own' and 'foreign' bourgeoisie, the national Soviet republics can defend their existence and defeat the combined forces of imperialism only by amalgamating themselves into a close political union, or not at all."6 The formation of the Soviet Union by the first All-Union Congress of Soviets on December 30, 1922, was a triumphant vindication of the Marxist theory on the national question, and opened up an era of the many-sided and harmonious development of the Soviet peoples, welding them into a massive force which has transformed the balance of power on a global scale, prised loose the grip of the imperialists and opened the way for the emergence and development of all the formerly subject peoples in all continents of the world. It is on this theoretical foundation, together with its successful realisation in practice wherever it has been applied, that the South African Communist Party bases its conviction that the national oppression of the black peoples of South Africa can be eliminated and the national aspirations of all section of the people fully realised within the framework of a single, integrated South African state based on non-racialism, democracy and full equality. Marxist theories on the national question, and in particular the practical experience of the Soviet Union in applying those theories, were of special significance for South Africa, with its racially mixed population. In 1921, the year of the foundation of the Communist Party of South Africa, the population total was revealed by the census taken that year to be 6,927,000, comprising 1,521,000 Whites, 4,697,000 Africans, 525,000 Coloureds and 164,000 Asians. With the exception of a few thousand blacks mainly in the Cape but including also a handful in Natal, who fulfilled the educational and financial requirements of the constitution and had gone through the often troublesome process of registering on the voters' roll, the franchise was the monopoly of the whites, who alone exercised effective power. Thus the South African situation was not the same as that in the Soviet Union, where the Great Russian majority had to take into account the aspirations of a variety of smaller nations and national groups. In South Africa, by contrast, the problem which confronted the socialist move-ment from the outset was how to smash the colour bar, which both by law and custom effectively prevented the black majority from exer-cising any democratic rights, acquiring education and skills, enjoying equal rights and opportunities and sharing equally the benefits of the economic development of the country. By the Land Acts of 1913 and 1936 the Africans were even forbidden to own or acquire land in 87 per cent of the land area of the country; and restriction on access to the land was extended to Coloureds and Asians by the Group Areas Act of 1950 passed after the Nationalist Government came to power in 1948. Black political organisations existed before the socialist movement came into being. The Natal Indian Congress was formed by Gandhi in 1894, the African Political Organisation (APO) in 1902, the National Congress (later renamed the African National Congress) in 1912; and there were other bodies. But most of these were sectional in their approach, lacking in both ideology and strategy, with a purview which did not extend beyond the immediate interests of the group for whom they spoke. The African National Congress (as we shall refer to it hereafter) did not even have a constitution until 1919, the first draft having been rejected by the annual conference of 19l5. In its early years, the ANC shrank from demanding full equality for all the peoples of South Africa, and perhaps its greatest achievement was that it set out to unite all sections of the African people, it rejected tribal or ethnic division, and it proposed to take action. - at that time essen-tially non-violent - to promote the interests of the African people and obtain redress for their grievances. Though it undoubtedly stimulated African national consciousness, its approach was reformist and gradualist . It was not until socialist organisations emerged in South Africa that it was possible to apply in practice the ideology of Marxism to the solution of the national problem. And here it is important to bear in mind the fact that these organisations did not spring into life fully fashioned with theory and practice to match the needs of the time. The most important of them, the International Socialist League, was formed in 1915 when a section of the white Labour Party broke away from the parent body over the issue of the war. Not all the members of the ISL were Marxists; not all of them indeed were international socialists; many of them thought of socialism only in terms of the white workers who, they thought, must constitute the vanguard of the socialist revolution in South Africa. The more far-sighted of the members of the International Socialist League realised that socialism for South Africa could not be restricted to the whites but must include all races. In October 1915 the first secretary of the ISL, David Ivon Jones, wrote in an article in The International on the 'Parting of the Ways': "An internationalism which does not concede the fullest rights which the Native working class is capable of claiming will be a sham. One of the justifications for our withdrawal from the Labour Party is that it gives us untrammelled freedom to deal, regardless of political fortunes, with the great and fascinating problem of the native. If the League deal resolutely in consonance with Socialist principles with the native question, it will succeed in shaking South African capitalism to its foundations. Then and not till then, shall we be able to talk about the South African Proletariat in our International relations. Not till we free the native can we hope to free the white . . ." Two months later Jones returned to the subject again in the International: "Slaves to a higher oligarchy, the white workers of South Africa themselves in turn batten on a lower slave class, the native races. Himself kicked by his Capitalist masters, the 'correct' and accepted attitude towards the 'nigger' is to kick him, to, teach him his place, and to stand no impudence (meaning 'independence'). Gingerly attempts to show him that in the extension of freedom for the native lies the only salvation of the white worker invariably aroused storms of execration. And thus has the South African Labour movement grown up, more intolerant towards the native slave than any 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 among a rank and file so placed . . . Can we talk of the cause of the Workers in which the cries of the most despairing and the claims of the most enslaved are spurned and disregarded . . . The new movement will break the bounds of Craft and race and sex .. . It will be wide as humanity . . . Another Who early advanced the claims of the black workers was S.P. Bunting, who in the issue of the International of February 18, 1916, wrote an article headed: "Workers of the World Unite" in which he declared: "The solidarity of Labour fails the moment it is divided on colour, race. . . or creed . . ." The Labour Party and the trade union movement with which it was associated consisted almost entirely of white workers. So did the ISL when it first came into existence. When Jones spoke of the "we" and the "us', who were now free to deal with "the great and fascinating problem of the Native", he was thinking in terms of "we white socialists" and. he was still reflecting the prevailing white attitude that the Africans constituted a "problem". This was because up to this time in South African history there was hardly any record of black political industrial or working class organisation or action within the framework of the modem sector of the economy which had made any impact on (white) public opinion. In the beginning the ISL had no black members. There was a tug of war inside the ISL between those who saw the need for pioneer socialist work amongst the black workers, and those who felt the only way forward was to convert more white workers to their way of thinking. At the first national conference of the ISL in Johannesburg on January 9, 1916, a "petition of rights" for the African worker was introduced by Bunting, who moved: "That this League affirm that the emancipation of the working class requires the abolition of all forms of Native indenture, compound and passport systems; and the lifting of the Native worker to the political and industrial status of the white." In his biography of S.P. Bunting, Edward Roux writes: "This did not meet with the unanimous support of the conference. No one openly expressed race prejudice or denied that the black man was entitled to freedom. But there was an attempt to avoid a specific Native programme by asserting that 'there was no Native problem, only a worker's problem'. An amendment by Dunbar to this effect was lost. Colin Wade then got the last part of the motion changed to read 'and the lifting of the Native wage worker to the political and industrial status of the white; meanwhile endeavouring to prevent the increase (in numbers) of the Native wage workers, and to assist the existing Native wage workers to free themselves from the wage system'." Though the motion was passed, there was a minority of members who were doubtful of the place the black worker should occupy in what they (the minority), consciously or unconsciously, accepted would continue to be a white dominated society.11 But above all, absent from the thinking of even the majority in the ISL was any thought of the independent contribution that could be made by the blacks to their own liberation or the creation of a socialist South Africa. The motion, as passed, does not even aim at black liberation as such, but only at the emancipation of the working class, in the ranks of whom the blacks were seen to be a minority. There was no hint in the resolution that the black millions could be recruited as allies of the white socialists in their fight for the new socialist order. Nor was there reflected in the motion any understanding of the way in which the economic and social structure of South Africa was being transformed by the destruction of the tribal way of life and the drawing Into the ranks of wage labourers of millions upon millions of blacks who could no longer live off the land. Marxist thinking on the national question had not yet reached South Africa. And the lack of ideological clarity on the national question meant that the pioneer socialists were confronted with an apparent contradiction. On the one hand, as Jones had pointed out, the racial attitudes of the white workers, an aristocracy of labour, meant that "talk of the international unity of the working class could never arouse sincere response". On the other hand, orthodox socialist theory, as expressed by ISL Chairman W.H. (Bill) Andrews in his 1917 Provincial Council manifesto, 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." This contradiction was to remain embedded in socialist thinking for many years to come, and echoes of it are to be heard even today. Do black and white workers have a common class base and common interests? Does the struggle for national liberation conflict with the struggle for socialism? Can true equality for black and white be achieved short of the establishment of socialism and the abolition of class conflict? Who has not heard the sincere African patriot who says: "We have the ANC, why do we also need a Communist Party?" Must the struggle for socialism pass through two stages: 1. the bourgeois-democratic revolution which will end the colour bar, and 2; the socialist revolution which will end all inequality, whether based on race or class? The ISL may have lacked an adequate theory on the national question, but it moved in the right direction. It made contact with the black masses, sought co-operation with the ANC and, later, with the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU); it brought black and white together on the same platform and in various forms of political action; it formed the first industrial African trade union, the Industrial; Workers of Africa in 1917. Step by step it moved forward 'towards a clearer appreciation of the true nature of the problem which it had to tackle, and it is a tribute to its leaders and the majority of its members that, isolated as they were at the southernmost tip of Africa, their thinking as socialists kept pace with that at the revolutionary fountain-heads in Europe. They welcomed the Russian revolution of 1917 and when the Comintern was formed they hastened to apply for affiliation. At the January 1921 conference of the ISL a resolution outlining the nature of work to be done among the Coloured and Native workers, introduced by Bunting, specifically requested support for "bourgeois democratic liberation movements" among non-whites and backed their demand for the vote, the right to organise, equal civil 'rights and the abolition of all discriminatory legislation such as the pass laws, special taxes and restrictive labour practices. Yet in his reply on behalf of the ISL to the Comintern, Communism in South Africa, only a few months later (it was dated March 29, 1921), Ivon Jones referred disparagingly to the ANC as a "small coterie of educated natives . . . satisfied with agitation for civil equality and political rights", and contrasted them unfavourably with the Industrial Workers of Africa, despite the fact that this organisation at that stage existed only on paper. Jones' report predicted that "the growing class organisations of the natives will soon dominate or displace the Congress" an erroneous calculation which was to be duplicated during the next decade in the Communist Party's relationship with the ICU, which the Party believed would outlast the ANC. In July 1921 the ISL joined with a number of other organisations to form the Communist Party of South Africa, which became the South African affiliate of the Third International. In the six years of their existence as a separate organisation, the South African socialists had made tremendous strides. Yet still there was something missing. Although some black organisations had taken part in preliminary discussions earlier in the year, they were not represented and there were no black delegates present at the foundation conference of the CPSA, and the manifesto adopted by the conference failed to identify the national question as a distinct item. Indeed the fight for equal rights is barely referred to except by implication as an ingredient in the fight for socialism. "For the immediate future", states the manifesto, "the main duty of the party and of every member of it is to establish the widest and closest possible contact with workers of all ranks and races and to propagate the Communist gospel amongst them, in the first instance among the industrial masses, who must provide the 'storm troops' of the revolution, and secondly among the rural toilers. Even that path will not be smooth. Immediate repression in the form of raids, prose-cutions, mob attacks and bloodshed by 'Black (and Tan) Hundreds' or 'White Guards' may be looked for as the propaganda is seen to be working among the submissive helot races whose enlightenment and organisation the ruling class dreads above all. The Communists will therefore proceed neither timorously nor tactlessly, losing no oppor-tunity of demonstrating that, inasmuch as the cheap docile labour is what attracts the world capitalist investor to South Africa, so its understanding of and conscious entry into the working class movement is the most deadly blow South Africa can deal to world capitalism. "But propaganda 'is not enough' in these days of rapid change and action, and the party will be alert to turn to the advantage of the Labour Movement wherever possible any phase of discontent or disaffection, any opposition to imperialism, any indignation at the accepted 'skiet skiet' [shoot shoot] native policy, any genuine revolt of the masses against tyranny; striving always to hasten, sharpen and shorten the inevitable conflict, to guide and inspire the struggling workers in times of stress and trial like the present, and generally to act as the revolutionary vanguard of the Labour army of South Africa." -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. 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