This fourth and last part of Chapter 2 from Brian Bunting's "Moses Kotane" is a continuation of the material on J B Marks's role posted earlier. This evening we will have a piece of writing of David Ivon Jones. Later this week, more of Bunting's Kotane book will be posted. These are all to commemorate Kotane, Marks and Ivon Jones, in connection with Heritage Day, and in connection with the proposed repatriation of the remains of these three revolutionaries back to South Africa, from Moscow where they are presently interred. _____
Brian Bunting, 1975: Moses Kotane, South African Revolutionary, Chapter 2 The National Question Part 4 of 4: Native Republic Slogan The main protagonists in the argument, Bunting and Wolton, presented statements of their views at the meeting of the CEC held on May 10, 1928. Bunting's statement opposing the ECCI's draft was supported by 8 votes to 2 but it was decided that both the majority and minority reports should be sent to the Communist International. At an earlier meeting on May 3, when it came to choosing between Bunting and Wolton to represent South Africa at the 6th congress, the CEC split 4 - 4, but at a later meeting on May 3, Bunting was elected by 6 votes to 3. It was also decided to send as a delegate E.R. Roux, who was then a student at Cambridge University in England and who had been prominent in the foundation and development of the Young Communist League in Johannesburg before he went overseas. It was also agreed that Rebecca Bunting, who was a member of the CEC and planned to accompany her husband to Moscow, should also be a delegate. The differences between the majority and minority reports are instructive. Bunting's 30-page statement reflects his detailed knowledge of the political movement in South Africa, based on years of painstaking work up and down the Witwatersrand and in country areas of the Transvaal, carrying the Communist Party flag into practically every African township and location. The "native republic" slogan, he said, would have a negative effect on both black and white in South Africa. "The policy of the CP in South Africa has always been to split the whites on class lines and stress the fundamental community of interest of white proletarians and semi-proletarians with the blacks - we could not agree to any weakening or abandonment of this policy, and we therefore quarrel somewhat with the wording of the resolution where it says that there will be an ever sharper 'division of interests between the black and white population', i.e. treated as one whole, without class discrimination"'. The idea of white and black comradeship against the ruling class had been a genuine inspiration to the blacks, especially in the rural areas, "and the demand for visits from white speakers (among others) is continuous, so great is the contrast they present with the usual white arrogance on the one hand and ICU avarice and fire-eating on the other". Bunting's main argument was that it was through the class struggle, and the achievement of socialism under the leadership of the Communist Party that national liberation and the ending of all forms of national and race discrimination and oppression could be achieved. "The class banner is in fact today inspiring more revolutionary enthusiasm than the racial banner", he said, citing as an example the action of tailoring workers in Germiston where 300 white girls and 100 native men had gone out on strike together. "For the first time in history, we believe, whites and natives have come out on strike together on the Rand . . . This co-operation is our work. It is making reactionary trade unionists think seriously" (During 1928 the two racially separate tailoring workers' unions, one black and one white, were amalgamated into one union, and Bunting was able to claim in his speech to the 1928 Comintern congress that this historic achievement was testimony to the soundness of the Party's line on the national question.) Bunting's report stated that he had no confidence in the national movement. "Although the indignation at 'white' oppression, as indeed the oppression itself, is growing, yet in our view the' strictly nationalist stage of native consciousness, in as far as it ever existed in that form, is not a growing force but a declining one; it is being played out, as in other countries such as China, in favour of the class movement (witness the early popularity of the ICU as compared with the Congress); and the attempt to revive it or create it would be to strive against nature and history." There was no native bourgeoisie in South Africa to spearhead a national democratic revolution. The Africans were "all helotised together". "As our first leaflet on native unity said in 1918 'Let there be no Zulu, Basuto or Shangaan; unite as workers, unite!' and this leaflet had an enormous influence in South Africa, and from its slogan originated the whole South African native labour movement, including the ICU,'. Indeed, the ICU, said Bunting, "has a greater expectation of life than the ANC because its foundation is class rather than race unity". Bunting's failure to appreciate the revolutionary potential of the national movement was reflected in his discussion of the strategy and tactics open to the movement. "We cannot see much hope of success for an armed native rising for the present", his statement said. "The main weapons available to the SA Natives today are still only agitation, demonstration, continual pressure of protest on the Government, continual confrontation of it with publication of facts which no ruling class dare defend, strikes, boycotts, elections etc. all aiming at a certain paralysation of the will of the ruling class to persist in its unblushing and brutal oppression in face of nation-wide outcry and resistance To the battle-hardened revolutionaries at the 6th Congress in Moscow, this line must have seemed little better than reformism. By contrast, Wolton's 14-page statement, though disclosing far less acquaintance with the practical problems of organisation and action in South Africa (understandable perhaps since he had come to South Africa from England only in 1921, and had been involved in Communist Party politics for an even shorter period) had a revolutionary content which was lacking in the majority statement National movements in colonial and semi-colonial countries are of paramount importance, for "national independence is incompatible with world imperialism", he said. "The levelling process of capitalist economics is proceeding; the native worker is swamping the industrial life of the country; today, the unskilled spheres, but tomorrow the skilled spheres also..." He quoted official figures that 300,000 Africans were permanently urbanised, "completely proletarianised". "It becomes increasingly clear that as the mass of native workers advance to the struggle, the white workers function proportionately less as a revolutionary factor in the class struggle in South Africa". Black unity was important in the struggle against white domination. "The common helotry of all Non-Europeans is sufficient assurance of the ultimate complete unity between Native, Malay, Coloured and Indian. "The slogan of a South African Native Republic is clearly a challenging cry from the vast majority of the proletariat to sweep away the privileged minority positions occupied by the white workers with the added addendum that they (the white workers) shall take their just and equal stand in The working class movement as a whole. The call to the native proletariat as embodied in the slogan will give birth to a sense of power as a national class unit' While conceding Bunting's criticism of the ANC as having "no very definite policy or activity, either political or economic, at the moment", Wolton added: "Nevertheless it has always remained dimly as an expression at least of the desire of the African people to control their own destinies". ANC activities "reveal a conscious desire of the African people to one day possess power and constitute a very strong national expression of the people towards independent action".' As for the ICU, whereas Bunting had seen it as originating in the desire for class rather than national unity, Wolton held that "the main-spring of its astounding development was its appeal to the national sentiments of the African people". The ICU organ Worker's Herald, he pointed out, bore the slogan "Your own paper, devoted to your own interests, in your own languages". The CP majority were wrong to place their faith in working class unity, said Wolton. "Effective unity between black and white worker cannot be contemplated seriously until power is in the hands of the working class in this country". It was native mass organisation which would win the white workers' respect and possible neutrality or even support Bunting had held that the "native republic" slogan would automatically antagonise all whites, including the workers, and could lead only to a racial war which would indefinitely postpone the socialist revolution. This did not dismay Wolton. "A so-called racial war", he said, "could never mean anything else than a struggle led by the industrial proletariat for liberation from white domination, from white control of the means of life, mines, factories land etc. and as such, the struggle, by whatever 'unpopular' name it may be called, must be supported and fostered by the revolutionary movement' Wolton also placed The South African revolution firmly in its international context, and emphasised the importance of the native republic slogan for the anti-imperialist movement in the whole African continent. At the sixth congress of the CI, the South African majority view, as reflected in Bunting's statement, was, of course, in the minority; whereas the minority view expounded in Wolton's report coincided with the view of the congress as a whole. In an attempt to reach a compromise, the South African delegation proposed through Bunting an amendment to the "native republic" slogan reading: "an independent workers' and peasants' South African republic with equal rights for all toilers irrespective of colour, as a basis for a native government". But this, too, proved unacceptable, and the slogan was finally adopted in the form set out in the resolution adopted by the Executive Committee of the Comintern and published in the Communist International, Vol. VI, No.2, of December 15, 1928. An interesting sidelight on the 6th congress is that in his speech on August 16, E.R. Roux presented a view of The South African situation which in one respect strikingly anticipates the programme adopted by the South African Communist Party at its fifth national conference in 1962. Roux said: "We can regard South Africa as a miniature edition of the British Empire. Here we have a white bourgeoisie and a white aristocracy of labour living in the same country together with an exploited colonial working class and also an exploited colonial peasantry. Here the participation of the workers of the ruling class in the exploitation of the colonial workers is very apparent. That does not mean that the British workers do not share in the exploitation of the Indian workers, but on an international field it does not become so obvious as when the exploitation occurs in the confines of a single country as it does in South Africa". A similar concept was incorporated in the 1962 programme of the SACP which described South Africa as a country based on "colonialism of a special type" in which "the oppressing white nation occupied the same territory as the oppressed people themselves and lived side by side with them". But there the similarity ends. While Roux stressed the class factor; the SACP in 1962 placed the emphasis on the national revolution. Roux asked: "Must The Communist Party stress in its propaganda the parasitical nature of the white workers, even the poor and unemployed whites? Must it stress the parasitical nature of the British workers as sharers in the exploitation of the Indians? No. Rather you would say, we should stress the unity of the workers irrespective of colour, in an attack upon capitalism". The SACP programme of 1962 also stressed that "the fundamental interests of all South African workers, like those of workers everywhere, lie in unity: unity in the struggle for the day-to-day interests of the working class, for the ending of race discrimination and division, for a free, democratic South Africa as the only possible basis for the winning of socialism, the overthrow of the capitalist class and the ending of human exploitation But, it went on, "only the complete emancipation of the non-white peoples can create conditions of equality and friendship among the nationalities of South Africa and eliminate the roots of race hatred and antagonism which are the greatest threat to the continued security and existence of the white population itself. The national liberation of the non-whites which will break the power of monopoly capitalism is thus in the deepest interest of the bulk of the whites. Progressive and far-seeing whites ally themselves unconditionally with the struggle of the masses of the people for freedom and equality.... The immediate and imperative interests of all sections of the South African people demand . . . a national democratic revolution which will overthrow the colonialist state of white supremacy and establish an independent state of national democracy in South Africa. The main content of this revolution is the national liberation of the African people." The resolution on the South African question adopted by the 6th Congress of the Comintern in 1928 laid the theoretical foundation for the work of the Communist Party of South Africa in the ensuing decades and its importance cannot be overemphasised. At the same time, the immediate consequence was a period of confusion and uncertainty in the ranks of the Communist Party. Although the majority of the members of the Communist Party Central Executive had supported Bunting's statement, they now found themselves bound by point 16 of the 21 points concerning the conditions of admission to the Comintern, which stated in part: "All the resolutions of the congresses of the Communist International as well as the resolutions of the Executive Committee are binding for all parties joining the Communist International". After he had left the Party, Roux was at pains to make out that the Native Republic resolution was imposed on The South African Communist Party from outside by a Comintern concerned more with the furtherance of its own interests and those of its biggest constituent element the Russian CP than with the interests of the South African people. This is to misunderstand both the constitutional and the fraternal relationship between the Comintern and its constituent parts. True, the executive of the South African CP had voted for the Bunting statement, while the Comintem had endorsed what might be described as an elaborated version of the Wolton line. But the eventual Native Republic resolution flowed from an interchange of views between the Comintern and the CPSA, and was accepted in South Africa in terms of the policy of democratic centralism on which the international Communist movement was based. Certainly, there is no doubting that the impetus for the Native Republic resolution came from the nationally-minded elements in the South African CP, as indicated in correspondence between la Guma and the Executive Committee of the Comintern before the 1928 Congress of the CI. In a report sent to The ECCI in December 1927, la Guma wrote: "The resolution on South Africa submitted by the ECCI had not received the approval of the Central Executive. Judging from the arguments advanced against the resolution 'that it was drawn up by people with insufficient knowledge of South African affairs', especially the extreme backwardness and widespread apathy of the native masses; that they are such easy prey to rogues and charlatans that they will make a mess of it; that the white worker after all has the first say in such questions etc. etc . . . it is easily seen that the boot is on the other foot, since these arguments are abundantly refuted by everyday facts..." After citing examples of growing militancy and strike action on the part of the blacks in South Africa, la Guma went on: "The argument that the movement depends to a large extent if not solely upon the European workers does not carry much weight if we bear in mind the opposition on the part of the rank and file European labour to co-operation with Blacks, and their further realisation that their privileges and concessions are obtained at the expense of the Black workers. "These arguments drive the non-European comrades to the conclusion that the Central Executive of the South African Party considers the mass movement of the natives should be held up until such time as the white worker is ready to extend his favour. Needless to say, the entire non-European membership of the Cape Town branch and all Europeans, with one exception heard so far, are for The ECCI resolution . . . Once the Comintern Congress had taken its decision, the South African Communist Party, as a constituent element, voted to accept it A report dated September 20, 1929, drawn up by Wolton as secretary of the CPSA for submission to the Comintern described the proceedings of the 7th annual conference of the CPSA held earlier in the year. There were 18 native delegates and 10 white, representing an aggregate membership of 3,000 of whom only 300, however, were in financial standing. The report states: "During the discussion on the CI resolution, which lasted for a whole day, practically all the delegates participated. The whites for the most part opposed the resolution, partly through unclear understanding and the rest through a social democratic outlook. The native delegates, whilst not following all the intellectual hairsplitting of some of the white delegates, supported the resolution on race grounds. Ultimately the resolution was put, and only four votes were cast against . . . Since the conference it can be said that some of those against the resolution have come over and now support the Party line." Superficially, the unity of the Party was maintained. Bunting and most of the adherents of the former majority line accepted the decision of the 6th congress and loyally carried it out. Bunting was elected chairman of the Party executive and Wolton secretary, with an African Albert Nzula as assistant secretary. Bunting and Wolton both stood as party candidates in the 1929 general election, Bunting getting 289 votes in Tembuland and Wolton 93 in the Cape Flats. Both had placed the "independent native republic" slogan at the heart of their appeal to the electorate. But beneath the surface, personal antagonism between Bunting and Wolton and their supporters, as well as ideological confusion continued. Wolton himself, in his report on the 1929 congress, was to show that lack of clarity about the relationship between the class and national struggles was not confined to the "Buntingites". Referring to the white trade unions in which CP members were active, he said: "It is in this section of Party work that the right wing danger reveals itself most clearly, when under spurious slogans of unity of black and white workers, the revolutionary workers tend to lose their independence and become an appendage of the reformist machine." Spurious slogans? Yet the ECCI resolution on the South African question had urged: "The Communist Party must continue to struggle for unity between black and white workers.... It must explain to the native masses that the black and white workers are not only allies, but are the leaders of the revolutionary struggle of the native masses against the white bourgeoisie and British imperialism There was also confusion over the meaning of "independent native republic" and "national movement". Recalling Stalin's definition of a nation as "a historically evolved, stable community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a community of culture", party members argued about its application in South Africa. Was there a single African nation, or were there a number of distinct nations (Xhosa, Zulu, Shangaan etc.)? Was a national group or a tribe the same thing as a nation? The extent to which confusion existed in party circles may be gauged from the fact that as late as December 1931, at a meeting of the Central Committee of the CPSA in Johannesburg, Molly Wolton proposed "The substitution of our slogan Federation of Independent Native Republics for The previous slogan of a South African Independent Native Republic". She went on to explain: "Analysing the work of the Party and the conditions in South Africa, it was felt by the Communist International that an independent Native Republic as applied to South Africa where we have various tribes with different languages, different traditions and customs and to a certain extent different culture, would not meet the situation and therefore the CI discussed this question very fully and very exhaustively and came to the conclusion that in order to ensure a greater unity between the exploited and oppressed people in South Africa in their fight for national independence and land and against imperialism it was necessary that the various tribes in this country should have a full understanding of what a South African Republic would mean; whether it would mean the domination of one tribe by another, whether it would mean that the Zulus would be the dominating people in the SA Native Republic or whether another tribe . . ." The slogan of a Federation of Independent Native Republics, she said, was based on the experience of the Soviet Union, which had more tribes than South Africa, and which had shown that only in this way could the Communist Party gain the confidence of the masses. "We must show them that we have no intention of imposing on any one tribe, but instead grant them independence and even fight for their independence". Only by working for a Federation of Independent Native Republics could the CP gain "the fullest unity of all native tribes living in South Africa to fight against imperialism" The new slogan was argued over by the delegates at the Central Committee meeting. Edwin Mofutsanyana and John Gomas supported it, Nchie opposed it - supporters and opponents cut across colour lines; but eventually it was adopted as official South African Party policy, until the threat of fascism and war in the later thirties swept the whole Native Republic issue into the, background and placed the burning need to form an anti-fascist, anti-war united front at the top of the Party agenda. Even during the war, however, echoes of The Native Republic controversy continued to be heard. Writing on "The National Question in the Soviet Union" in the CP organ Freedom/Vryheid dated November 7, 1940, Moses Kotane maintained that, just as in the Soviet Union, the national problem in South Africa would be solved under socialism. "Socialism will bring Non-Europeans political freedom, and economic and social development", he wrote. "It will do away with economic competition and fear by making it possible for everybody to get a job. "There are predominantly African areas where, with the addition of more land, African republics may be set up. Industries could be established in those areas, agriculture put on an economic footing; towns, schools and training institutions built". This raised again the question of whether there was one African nation or many, and Kotane referred to the problem of language. "The language question would form one of the main difficulties. There is no one language which is sufficiently known and spoken by a majority of the people of Africa. Zulu is spoken mainly in Natal; Xhosa in the Eastern Cape; Sotho in Basutoland and in some parts of the Free State; Tswana in Bechuanaland, western and north-western Transvaal, in some parts of the Cape, and in some parts of the Free State. And then there are Sepedi, Tshivenda and Shangaan in the eastern and the northern Transvaal. Neither English nor Afrikaans is widely spoken among Africans. "So, while in each republic or national area everything would be conducted in the language of its people, there still remains the problem of the official national language to be solved. Nevertheless, this could be settled by the common consent of all". It is significant to bear in mind, in this context, that the language in which proceedings have been conducted at all national conferences of the African National Congress has been English, with translations into Sechuana or Sesutu and Zulu or Xhosa. One African nation or many? One "Native Republic" or several? It is perhaps unfortunate that argument over the Comintern's 1928 resolution on the South African question should have centred on the Native Republic slogan. As an attempt to characterise the nature of the state which would emerge from the national democratic revolution, the slogan was misleading and perhaps premature. Above all, the Native Republic slogan did not adequately embody the main content of the resolution, which was to stress that the Communist Party of South Africa had to study and apply the correct Marxist-Leninist policies on the national question, and to understand the revolutionary potential of the national liberation movement led by the national organisations of the oppressed black majority. In this sense, though the Native Republic slogan may have disappeared from view in the course of time, the 1928 resolution brought about a permanent and beneficial change in Communist thinking and practice on the national question, paving the way ultimately for the tremendous advances registered by both the Party and the liberation movement in later decades. -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. 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