South Africa's pioneer anarchist was Henry Glasse, an English immigrant
anarchist who had translated several of Kropotkin's works into English. But
it was in the 1910s that Anarcho-Syndicalism came to be a force worth
reckoning with. A group emerged around the weekly, the Voice of Labour,
South Africa's first socialist newspaper, which went on to found the
Industrial Workers of the World in Johannesburg in 1910. A second
IWW-linked group, the Socialist Labour Party, aligned with the "political"
IWW in the United States, was also formed at this time. Later IWW-aligned
organisations such as the International Socialist League, founded in
Johannesburg in 1915, and the Industrial Socialist League, founded in Cape
Town in 1918, played a pioneering role in early black trade unionism.
Repression, the formation of the Communist Party of South Africa in 1921,
and purges in the Party in the late 1920s ended the early anarchist
movement in South Africa. It is only within the last few years that
revolutionary class struggle Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism have
re-emerged in Africa. Anarchist groups have been formed in South Africa,
Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Zambia, and elsewhere, to fight for a free and
equal, classless society.
Unfortunately, because of the repression of anarchism, none of these
pamphlets are written in the indigenous languages of Africa and, as yet,
none have been translated. Any volunteers please e-mail us (just click on
the email address below).
http://www.zabalaza.net/zababooks/index2.htm
