The National Question in South Africa
Published by: Zed Books Ltd, 57 Caledonian Road, London, N1 9BU, UK and 171 First
Avenue, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey 07716, USA, in 1988
Edited by Maria Van Diepen for the Dr Govan Mbeki Fund
REVOLUTIONARY THEORY ON THE NATIONAL QUESTION IN SOUTH AFRICA
By Comrade Mzala
The national question in South Africa is a controversial issue in relation to both theory and
practice. Recently it has again come under the spotlight through a persistent critique of such
concepts as ‘colonialism of a special type’ and the ‘two-stages theory’ and the emergence
within that debate of what are referred to as ‘populist’ and ‘workerist’ tendencies. The debate
has produced a critical evaluation by various writers and publicists of the policy positions of the
(SACP).
Despite debates within the South African liberation movement on the national question since
the early years of this century, some theorists have voiced the criticism that neither the ANC
nor the Marxist opposition to the apartheid regime has formulated any reasonably systematic
theoretical historical analysis of the sociological assumptions of the concept of ‘nation’ and the
process of nation-formation in South Africa. Closer study of the history of the liberation
movement shows, however, that there is probably no other theoretical issue that has received
as much attention as the national question, especially from that section of the movement
inspired by the Marxist theory, although it is probably true that outside this Marxist theoretical
tradition [as organized within the SACP], there have been few efforts to examine in detail the
nature of the national question in South Africa.
The thesis of the South African liberation movement (as represented by the alliance of the
ANC-SACP) on the national question represents a creative application of the most advanced
theoretical principles of social change. Inspired by an internationalist perspective of the
working class movement and by a concrete study of indigenous conditions, it represents a
contribution to the development of Marxist theory and practice. The evolution of the thesis has
been through the furnace of party splits and desertions to emerge as a theoretical perspective
answers all the conceptual problems raised by the subject of the national question in sociology,
it is a thesis which is both analytically precise and which provides a rigorous theoretical
foundation characterizing the South African reality.
Concept of ‘nation’ and the Marxist legacy
Although class struggle and the critique of political economy took priority within the explanatory
framework of historical materialism. Marx was conscious of the nation-formation process and
the problems of national oppression. His formulation that ‘a people that oppresses other
peoples cannot itself be free’, has become the fundamental principle of internationalism.
National oppression is seen as generating distrust and alienation among workers of different
nationalities, creating political enemies out of class brothers; nothing other than oppression and
inequality is seen as preventing them from coming together and joining forces in a struggle for
their common destiny. Alive during the period when feudal principalities and nationalities
integrated into single nations under the compelling force of capitalist economic life. Marx and
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Engels felt obliged, as social scientists, to analyse this process and the new socio-ethnic
formations coming into being.
It was in the Communist Manifesto that Marx exposed the link between colonialism and
capitalism and the monstrous exploitation of the colonial peoples involving the robbing of their
raw materials and the destruction of their cultural personalities in the name of ‘civilization’. In it
he wrote that ‘the need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the
bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere,
establish connections everywhere.’ Discovering America here, rounding the Cape for the EastIndian markets there, capitalism systematically dislodged every national industry of the
peoples, reduced their self-sufficiency to zero, and ‘in place of old wants, satisfied by the
production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of
distant lands and climes.’
Marx’s study of the colonial question provided him with insights into important features of the
capitalist mode of production:
The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in
mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies,
the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalled the rosy
dawn of the era of capitalist production.[capital.vol.I.ch. xxxi]
These discoveries speeded the development of merchant capital and the decay of feudalism
with its individual and exclusive nationalities, facilitated the birth of capitalism with the
emergence of single nations around a common economic life. Although the term nation was
applied to tribal communities more than 2,000 years ago, today it defines a socio-historical
community that has evolved to a qualitative new information in the post-feudal era. If as Lenin
argued, nations proper emerged in society during the capitalist epoch as an inevitable product,
an inevitable form, in the bourgeois epoch of social production then the decisive role in the
inception of national form of social development was the economic factor, the common
economic life. It was the proliferation of economic ties and the creation of an internal market
that provided the basis for the settlement of communities in define territories, a process
accompanied by the consolidation of common language as a standard means of
communication, as well as by a national consciousness manifested in culture.
In recognition of the historical societal advancement represented by the birth of nations. Marx
and Engels became fervent supporters of German unification since its unification as ‘a single
and indivisible republic’ was seen as the principal condition for social revolution. When the
revolution did occur in 1848, Engels added a warning note to the Communist Party in German
that ‘Germany will liberate herself to the extent to which she sets free neighbouring nations’.
Referring specifically to Poland. Marx and Engels were equally sympathetic to the national
unification of Italy, and wrote that ‘the defeat of the Italians is bitter. No people, apart from the
Poles, has been so shamefully oppressed by the superior power of neighbours, no people has
so often and so courageously tried to throw off the yoke oppressing it.’ For Marx and historical
development, when economic and social development necessitated the centralization of small
and scattered states, as well as their chosen territory without oppression or dictation from
neighbours. The Marxist definition of a nation, concrete and historical in character, rejects any
timeless or abstract theory that wholly divorces a nation from its essential material roots, that is,
from its social essence in human history. This method establishes that it was the ending of the
scattered state of production, of property and of population that brought about political
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concentration, with independent provinces and principalities becoming one nation. In this way
the existence of a nation became linked to a definite historical period.
This method contrasted sharply with the views of Karl Renner and Otto Bauer, Austrian
sociologists who formulated in the 1980s a system of ideas which came to be known as AustroMarxism, ideas that departed significantly from the principles established by Marx in analysing
nationalism. This departure was closely associated with the ideological problems that afflicted
the Second International, Kautsky stated that ‘the most important factor, which influences in the
most decisive manner the formation of nations; the language’ presents the absolutely
necessary medium to establish relations; the language. The significant feature of this
characterization was that, contrary to Marx’s emphasis, Kautsky developed the concept of
‘nation’ as a non-historical category, Since he was regarded as an expert on the national
question, Kautsky’s influence within the socialist movement spread rapidly, and his advice was
sought by revolutionaries all over Europe, not in the least by the Austrian social democrats.
Because of the national conflicts within the Austrian Empire, which were seen as obstructing
political progress and the cultural development of nationalities with the Empire. Kautsky
suggested that a solution to this national problem lay in a division of Austria into language
boundaries, they would then exercise autonomy within the Empire organized on a federal
basis. The solution to the problem, he maintained, was not the independence of the various
components of the Empire but the settlement of the language question in a spirit of equality and
in recognition of the view that that was the primary cultural demand of all nations. Under
Kautsky’s influence, Renner and Bauer argued for the transformation of Australia into a
democratic federation of cultural ‘nations’. (Nationalitatenbundestaat), the replacement of
Crown lands by nationally homogeneous self-governing bodies which would take care of the
regions autonomously and whose legislation and administration would be in the hands of
national chambers elected on the basis of universal franchise.
Elevating the Austrian case to a theoretical principle, Renner attempted to define a nation by
implying that the consciousness and will of belonging to a given people was the decisive factor
in the definition of a nation. He further argued that the principle of national-cultural autonomy (
which constituted their main approach to the Austro-Hungarian national question) was based
on the notion of cultural personality rather than territorial determination and that the various
nationalities of the Austrian state could administer their own cultural affairs regardless of all the
other considerations so long as that ensured the integrity and sovereignty of the multinational
Empire. This position was based, not on any admiration for the Empire, but on the
consideration that the working class of all nations must ‘maintain’ international co-operation and
fraternity in its struggle and must conduct its political and economic struggle in closely united
ranks’. Independence of the various nations within the Empire would undermine this. Renner
thus considered nations as non-significant transient social formations which only existed in the
consciousness of peoples as mere psychological abstractions that could not be pinned to
specific periods in history. This elusive psychological definition of a nation was in line with
Kautsky’s inability to pinpoint the socio-historical essence of nations. Hence he could write in
1908 that ‘the nation must be considered as a social structure difficult to perceive…..
Nationality is a social relation which is modified continuously and which under different
circumstances has a very different meaning; it is a Proteus which slides through our fingers
when we try to seize it….’
For Bauer, the nation was also a cultural community (Kultrugemeinschat)’a community of
character, growing out of the soil…. Of a common destiny’. In the polemic that developed after
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the publication of Bauer’s views, Kautsky criticized Bauer for not sufficiently taking into account
the importance of 1908 (Observations On The National Question 1908) that, while not denying
the significance of the community of language, he sought to find the community of culture that
lay ‘behind the generation, transformation and limits of language’. Lenin joined the BauerKautsky debate and criticized Bauer for reducing a nation to a cultural community only and
stated that this approach was founded on ‘an idealistic basis’, Bauer’s views, Lenin wrote, were
nationalism purified, refined, absolute’ and were an exaggeration of ethnic factors, which Lenin
considered the substance of bourgeois nationalism. Because Bauer ‘had completely forgotten
internationalism’, his theory was in substance ‘national opportunism’. He concluded:
Cultural-national autonomy implies precisely the most refined and, therefore, the most harmful
nationalism, it implies the corruption of the workers by means of the slogan of national
culture….In short, this and is in accordance only with the ideals of the nationalist pettybourgeoisie.
Lenin’s concern was that Bauer’s definition should be purged of its non-historical materialist
character. He used in his criticism a class approach, by which he charged Bauer of obscuring
the contradictions between capitalist and workers within a nation, and of propagandizing for
class peace under the common umbrella of culture. By using this class approach in attacking
Bauer, Lenin was not thereby equating nations with classes, but was drawing attention to the
fundamental contradiction in the bourgeois epoch of social development which, though it
engendered the rise of nations, also marked (in historical terms) the most heightened of
society’s class contradictions. Capitalists within these newly emerged nations used the slogan
of nationalism to submit the class interests of workers to their class rule. As a self-confessed
Marxist, Bauer had to avoid elevating one property of a national community to a universal
theoretical principle, particularly that property which would feed on the programme of the
bourgeoisie to compromise the interests of the workers. In short, Lenin acknowledged the
existence of nations but added as a reminder to all socialists that these were bourgeois
nations. This concern was justified in the context of the national chauvinism that had infected
socialist delegates at the Second International.
In was in 1913, in the context of a debate in which Marxists were trying to find a theoretically
satisfactory explanation of the relationship between class struggle and national independence
or patriotism (including the notion of the ‘defence of the fatherland,’ that Joseph Stalin made his
famous but controversial contribution to the definition of the nation. He asserted that ‘a nation
is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common
language, territory, economic life and psychological make –up manifested in a common culture.
For some reason this definition of Stalin’s was regarded within the working class movement (
as well as, to a lesser extent, within the liberation movement) as a formulation that could serve
as a universal criterion of nationhood, and a significant attack on the idealist concepts
advanced by the Austro-Marxist school. Stalin was a very conscious student of Marxisim and,
in the formulation of this definition, he was undoubtedly aware of the contributions that had
been made by Marx and Engels in characterizing this ‘new’ historico-ethnic community in
Europe. Definitional approaches to understanding phenomena, however, have certain
limitations; limitations of what is, in any given time and space, knowable, and which tend to
reject what is either unknown or alien. The perplexity in which most social thinkers have
trapped themselves, even within the pro’ has progressive world, while trying to define the
concept of ‘nation’ has resulted, time and again, in the presentation of antiquated knowledge as
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new by taking it out of its former context and fitting into new garments. Real history, however,
is not static and mechanical, but ever proceeds into new terrain and time. Formulated as it was
in 1913, Stalin’s definition could not account for numerous events that were soon to occur in
the world, one of which took place in 1917 when oppressed peoples
(not even nations within Stalin’s definition) were granted the right to self-determination by
Lenin and the Bolsheviks. How could Stalin have foreseen, for example, that, despite a
common language, there would emerge two nations among Germans, one in the German
Democratic Republic and the other in the Federal Republic of Germany?
This error, however, was not wholly Stalin’s since he never pretended to offer the word a
unified theory of nations. Despite its shortcoming, Stalin’s contribution was of tremendous
value to social science. When in 1920 the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities reprinted his
collected articles on the national question and Stalin was asked to write a preface, he pointed
out that his work reflected the period when a controversy on the fundamental principles of the
national problem was raging within the ranks of the Russian Social Democratic Party; it was an
era of Tsarist reaction (18 months before the outbreak of the First World War) and a period of
growth for the Russian bourgeois-democratic revolution. Two conflicting theories of nations
and two national programmes were being debated – the Austrian programme (supported by the
Mensheviks and the Jewish Bund) and the Russian programme (supported by the Bolsheviks).
The outbreak of war in 1914 produced the final disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
and the emergence of several independent national states dissatisfied with cultural autonomy
and who demanded the right to full national self-determination. These events were seen to
prove the correctness of Bolshevik policy, and also the main line of Stalin’s article at that time.
Whereas the Austrian school saw and articulated only certain special features of a nation, the
Bolsheviks were able to pose the correct demand for full self-determination of nations because
its method, in the Marxist tradition, saw modern nations as a product of a definite epoch, that of
rising capitalism. If the abolition of feudalism and the development of capitalism precipitated
the formation of British, French, German and Italian nations, then it was only logical to see
within the Austro- Hungarian Empire the necessity for the formation of independent nations,
with their own national states.
If it is acknowledged that the tendency of capitalism is to group a population with all its various
classes into a single nation in a single territory and with a single language when did South
Africa manifest this tendency? Can we talk of the existence of single South African nation
brought about by the victory of capitalism?
The South African national setting
Industrial development in South Africa began with the opening of the diamond and gold mines
in the late 19th century. At one level industrialization demanded an expanding core of skilled
artisans to operate complex mining machinery, while, at another, it needed to minimize
production costs and maximize profits to ensure the further expansion of the industry. For the
former requirement, skilled artisans came from Europe, America, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand, while indigenes, particularly Africans, were drawn from the rural areas by various
means to supply unskilled labour. The resultant structural relationship between capital and
labour was such that white skilled workers from overseas received higher wages compared to
their black class brothers, and became increasingly protective of their relatively privileged
position. Here was a classical case of a labour aristocracy allied with the capitalists for the
5
return of higher wages and characterized by an intolerant attitude to the aspirations of the black
workers.
This relative advantage of skilled white workers, buttressed by the laws of the country, created
a social structure that was colonial par excellence. There was a socially visible distinction
between white workers and their black counterparts. While other political features were
characteristic of colonialism as it existed elsewhere- land dispossession, political enslavement,
absence of basic democracy for Blacks, absence of economic leverage for progress, cultural
suffocation and an ideology to justify this oppression.
Taking advantage of this political structure, poor Afrikaners who could no longer make a living
form farming migrated from the rural areas fore employment in the mines where the colour bar
guaranteed good wages by virtue of their skin colour, even though they were ill-equipped for
the tasks reserved for ‘skilled’ white artisans. The demand of the Afrikaner unskilled workers
for ‘a civilized wage for all whites’ regardless of skill confronted capitalism with a problem since
it preferred low wages for all unskilled labour Since the Chamber of Mines had openly stated its
preference fore black workers over Afrikaners, the Afrikaner workers joined the pool of white
workers antagonistic to the mine owners for seeking profits at all costs, even to the extent of
subordinating white interests to a preference for cheaper black labour.
The first generation of white artisans who emigrated to South Africa had belonged to labour
and socialist organizations in their countries of origin, and in South Africa they became the first
organizers of the labour movement. As early as 1895, they were calling workers to unite
against capitalism by joining trade unions. Individual members propounded a variety of
socialist ideas then current in their countries of origin. Demobilized British veterans of the
Anglo-Boer War were mostly followers of Robert Blatchford, the English socialist; Italian
socialist Group; Jewish immigrants formed branches of the Marxist Jewish Bund; the Germans
formed a Vorwarts Club tailored on the ideas of the Social Democratic Party in Germany.
Although their orientation was to the problems of Europe, it was them that the first seeds of
socialist thinking were introduced in South Africa. It is an irony of history that it was a section of
the oppressor nation that brought to South Africa the theoretical weapons for the ultimate
liberation of the oppressed.
The theoretical preoccupation of these pioneer socialists were objectively restricted to specific
issues related to their positions as skilled white workers. They fought to preserve the legal
position by which comparatively well-paid skilled work was reserved for whites. Working under
the constant threat of black competition, the early socialists thus agitated for the protection of
their privileges. There were a few exceptions, like those who preached the extension of
industrial unionism to all workers irrespective of race. Those who dared take this course in
public meetings, like Bill Salter who first advocated the equal treatment of Africans and Whites,
often had to cut their speeches short before threatening white crowds attacked them.
At this time black workers were mostly unorganised. In 1910 a political coalition of white labour
groups from the four colonies shortly to be amalgamated into the Union of South Africa formed
the South African Labour Party. Its constitution included a clause that called fore ‘the
socialization of the democratic State in the interest of the whole community’. This clause was,
however, dropped from the election manifesto for the 1910 elections. The Party made further
compromises of principle when it proposed to encourage Africans to remain in their supposed
‘tribal areas where limited self government, agricultural training, and proper educational
6
facilities would be made available. In the elections the Labour Party won six seats of the 121
Parliamentary seats at stake.
In Parliament Labour members supported measures to protect white workers, such as Mines
and Works Act. No attention paid to black demands despite pressures on the Party from the
Cape section where a significant number of Coloured were voters. The Party reserved
admission to persons of either sex above the age of 18, provided such persons gave evidence
of supporting white standards. According to its constitution, It is undesirable to admit coloured
persons to membership in the Party who have not given practical guarantees that they agree to
the Party’s policy of upholding and advancing white standards.
In 1913 the Labour Party affiliated to the International Socialist Bureau of the Second
International. The South African delegation to the Congress of the Second International
endorsed a policy that proclaimed that ‘Congress does not on principle and for all time reject all
colonial policy, which under a socialist regime can fulfil a civilising role. This group (part of the
majority at the congress) called this a vote for ‘socialist colonial policy’. This revisionist line of
the Second International gave encouragement to the South African Labour Party in its policy
towards Blacks. The assumption was that the question of national oppression need not be the
central concern of socialists since it would be solved automatically with the ‘imminent’ socialist
revolution. A small section within the Labour Party, led by Sidney Bunting, David Ivon Jones
and Bill Andrews, objected to this white chauvinism, and declared during a debate on this
question that the working class in South Africa was comprised of Blacks and argued that a true
working class party would admit the natives. That this group formed only a minority position
was not so surprising given the position white workers and had been accorded in the economy,
earning higher wages than black workers and exercising a supervisory role over them. The
South African white worker was not just getting crumbs from the super-profits of the capitalist
class, but had a seat at the ruling table of the capitalist class helping in the domination of the
working class. Under such conditions not only the capitalists but also the majority of the white
workers wanted to not only the capitalists but also the majority of the white workers wanted to
maintain the inferior economic status of the Blacks. Thus, as Joe Slovo put it:
……the white worker is not just an aristocracy of labour which has been corrupted ideologically
by some concessions from the ruling class; he is, in sense which has no precedent in any other
capitalist country, a part (albeit subordinate) of that ruling class in its broader meaning.
In a way this South African situation resembled the one Marx himself wrote about in a letter to
Meyer and Vogt in 1870:
Every industrial and commercial centre in England now possesses a working class divided into
two hostile camps, English proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary English worker
hates the Irish worker as competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish
worker as he feels himself a member of the ruling nation and so turns himself into a tool of
aristocrats and capitalists of his country against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination
over himself. He cherishes religious, social and national prejudices against the Irish worker…
The Irishman pays him back with his own money. He sees in the English worker at once that
accomplice and the stupid tool of the English rule in Ireland… This antagonism is the secret of
the impotence of the English working class despite its organisation. It is the secret by which
the capitalist class maintains its power.
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This is not to suggest that no antagonism existed between white workers and capitalists,
particularly during the early part of the century. However, the point was that the conflict of
capital and labour was important politically only to Whites, while the black majority were more
sensitive to the violation of national equality and the presence of national domination, that is, to
the national question. For whites, the national question was not a political question, and was
thus neglected. They saw South Africa’s problem not from the black man’s point of view, while
for Blacks the posing of the question of socialism was an abstraction. For Whites, South Africa
had become independent in 1910 when the British Parliament surrendered its political control
of South Africa to the white settler minority. Through this arrangement, imperial Britain gave
power to a minority to rule over a majority. The Union Constitution of 1910 signified a
community of colonial interests, since Blacks were not only excluded from it but also made
subject to it. Whites had become a settler colonial community in 1652 with the arrival of Van
Riebeck van the 1910 Union Act did not change that colonial status, since the Constitution itself
was motivated primarily by the desire to maintain the colonial status of the black people.
What the 1910 Union Constitution marked was the formal creation of a single oppressor white
nation, unifying the oppressor English Afrikaner nationalities. General Jan Smuts, who was
instrumental in this process, saw it precisely in these terms as well:
The whole meaning of Union of South Africa is this: We are going to create a nation- nation
which will be of composite character, including Dutch, English, German and Jew, and whatever
white nationality seeks refuge in this land- all can combine. All will be welcome.
Two years after the consolidation of the oppressor nation in South Africa, the scattered African
ethnic groups and tribes came together on 8 January 1912 to forge their own nationhood,
expressed organizationally by the ANC. The ANC aimed at ending national subjugation and
regaining political and economic independence. It was a national movement aimed at
amalgamating various ethnic groups into a nation by creating a political inter-relationship
among them, giving them a single political language against oppression, educating the new
person in the spirit of respect for members of another ethnic group so that they could jointly
strive for national self-determination.
This process of creating an African nation, a definite community of people, went along the
same lines as processes elsewhere in the world. Was not the Italian nation formed from
Romans, Teuteons, Estruscans, Greeks, Arabs, and so forth? What of the French nation? It
amalgamated Gauls, Romans, Britons, argued in the European context of nation-formation that
this was a development linked to the development of capitalism. But let us look at Eastern
Europe: the formation of nations and centralized states was accelerated by the exigencies of
self-defence (against the Turks, Mongols, and others) which took place prior to the break-up of
feudalism. Here , as a result, the states that finally emerged after the development of
capitalism did not and could not be single nation-states, consisting of one powerful and
dominant nation and several weak and subject nations. Such were Australia. Hungary and
Russia. Even Kautsky once observed that, whereas it is true that the tendency of capitalism is
to form single nation –states, yet there have been of mixed national composition, those ‘whose
internal constitution has for some reason or other remained abnormal or underdeveloped’
(Kautsky).
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In the final analysis, the emergence of the national movement of the oppressed in South Africa
was in a very direct way influenced by the development of capitalism. It was the colonialists
that introduced the capitalist mode of production, thereby greatly disorganizing and destroying
the African people’s hereditary means of subsistence. In this way they were forced, under the
threat of starvation, into proletarians- producers and consumers within the capitalist system of
the British Empire, Marx and Engels described such a process in the Communist Manifesto:
‘The bourgeoisie compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeoisie mode of
production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e become
bourgeois themselves.’
Capitalism in South Africa formed a national market binding various African ethnic groups by
economic unity. In the mines and factories, workers from all groups produced the country’s
wealth using the same means and instruments of production. Individual tribesmen were
meeting wider and wider sections of people, and this provided a favourable ground for the birth
of a national movement of liberation, which also, at a subjective level, built national
consciousness and a desire towards the formation of their own national state over the whole of
South Africa which they rightfully considered their native land.
The nationalism of the oppressed black people in South Africa is not an imaginary grievance, it
is a reflection of the black people’s concrete material conditions in the colour-defined position
they occupy in relation to the wealth of the country, the political institutions of administration,
education, etc. It was with this consideration in mind that Oliver Tambo said in his 1971 New
Year message:
…the black people of racist South Africa must recognize that freedom for South Africa, no less
for them as the most exploited, will come only when they rise as the solid black mass- rising
from under the heel of the oppressor and storming across the colour barriers to the citadels of
political and economic power…. Let us therefore be explicit. Power to the people means, in
fact, power to the black people- the gagged millions who cannot set their foot in the Cape Town
parliament where Bantustans and Coloured and Indian councils are made; the most ruthlessly
exploited, tortured victims of racial hatred and humiliation. Let the black seize by force what is
theirs by right of birth, and use it for the benefit of all, including those from whom it has been
taken.
This strong assertion of nationalism of the oppressed by Tambo was a reflection of an unsolved
national question; it reflected the conviction that the black people of South Africa will only win
their freedom by their own efforts-a positive revolt against oppression, servility and the
unparalleled arrogance of South Africa’s racists.
The split within the white Labour Party
The outbreak of World War One in 1914 created problems both for the Second International
and for the South African Labour Party. Various national delegations to the Second
International (First the French, then the Belgians and English) took sides with their national
bourgeoisies and fought in defence of their fatherland. Lenin, on the other hand, assumed the
leadership of a section that called for the turning of the imperialist war between peoples into the
civil war of the oppressed classes against the oppressors. He argued that one ‘cannot be
9
“national” in an imperialist war’ and condemned those socialists who participated in it as
‘chauvinists’. Back in South Africa the same crisis faced the parliament calling for loyalty to the
British Empire, the fragile unity of the Labour Party was exposed.
In Europe the Second International collapsed, betrayed by working-class leaders who rejected
internationalism in favour of nationalism and the so-called defence of their fatherlands. In
South Africa the majority of the membership of the Labour Party endorsed participation in the
war. Some branches even went so far as to organize Labour Legions who offered their
services to the Botha-Smuts government. At the annual conference of the South African
Labour Party in East London in January 1915, disagreement over the war issue threatened to
split the party. Bill Andrews (who was chairing), David Ivon Jones (secretary) and Sidney
Bunting (another executive committee member) were anti-war; but Party leader Creswell urged
members to regard their duties to the country and the British Empire as primary over those of
international socialism. At a subsequent special conference to resolve this question, Creswell
moved a resolution of support for the Union government’s war efforts, which, after a heated
debate, was carried by a 82-26 margin (Rand Daily Mail, 13.08.15).
Defeated and denied the right of dissent, ten prominent members, almost all of them executive
committee members, resigned their positions and left the conference but decided to organize
themselves into a pressure group within the Labour Party. Cresswell’s supporters, however,
demanded that, as members of the Labour Party , they should pledge their support to the
government during the war. This led to their severing all connections with the Party and they
converted their pressure group into an independent organization called the international
socialist League whose object was ‘to propagate the principles of international socialism and
anti-militarism, and to maintain and strengthen international working class organization’.
A journal, The International, was established; it proclaimed in an editorial, under the heading
‘The Parting of the Ways’, that:
…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 justification for our withdrawal form the
Labour Party is that it gives 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 success 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 (1.10.15)
The formation of the ISL marked a turning point in the politics of the labour movement in South
Africa. For the first time in the history of the organized working class in South Africa, the
problems of the country were associated with resolving the national question: for the first time
in the history of the white labour organization, the ISL proclaimed the solidarity of their
members with the African quest for freedom. The first pronounced Marxist attempt to grapple
with the national question in South Africa was made in 1915 by the leaders of the ISL, foremost
among whom in this regard was Sidney Bunting. The ISL was also the first Marxist-oriented
organization to concern itself with the problem of the relationship between national liberation
and socialism. As early as 9 January 1916, Bunting proposed a “Petition of Rights for the
Native’ to the ISL conference (its first conference) which stated:
10
That this League affirm that the emancipation of the working class requires the abolition of all
forms of native indenture, compound and passport system; and the lifting of the native worker
to the political and industrial status of the White.
Not all delegates supported the inclusion of political rights for Africans. One delegate moved
an amendment that a committee be appointed to consider the proper socialist policy on the
national question. Another, Colin Wade, also objecting to Bunting’s motion, stated that he
could produce biological evidence to prove that Africans could never develop intellectually as
could Whites. Yet another delegate, Andrew Dunbar, denied that a special problem of the
African existed, and maintained that the only problem in South Africa was a class problem,
namely, the need to organize the workers for the attainment of a socialist society.
Eventually Bunting’s resolution was amended 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 of the native wage workers, and to assist the
existing native workers to free themselves form the wage system.
It was passed overwhelmingly. Yet this was an important conference from the perspective of
the national question. Although racist attitudes inherited from the South African Labour Party
persisted, the conference was nonetheless forced to address the question of black workers still
feared black workers and obviously preferred a policy that discouraged their numerical increase
in the urban areas. These position were hardly revolutionary, yet there existed at the time no
other political organization in the country that addressed the specific problems of the black
working class in a clear-cut socialist way or which sought to find a solution to the national
question within a socialist perspective. It was also the first white organization to make contact
with African people. Between the years 1916-1918, meetings were held with leaders of the
South African Native National Congress (later called the African National Congress). This
arose form the decision of its 1916 conference that the ISL, to be true to its internationalist
principles, should make approaches to Blacks, Bunting, who pioneered the implementation of
the policy organized a weekly lecture series under the auspices of the ISL and often non- ISL
members were invited to discuss topics relevant to the struggle for black liberation.
On 18 February 1916, for example, the ISL invited an Anglican priest (Father Hill of the
Anglican Community of Resurrection) to lecture on “Native Aspirations’ during the discussion of
which the Native Land Act of 1913 was attacked. In April of the same year, Bunting invited
George Mason to talk on participated actively in the discussion and analysis that followed. In
June, Robert Grendon, the editor of Abantu-Batho, a newspaper of the ANC, addressed the
ISL on “Links Between Black and White’. In that same meeting a member of the ANC
leadership, Saul Msane, attacked white trade unionists for organizing themselves for the sole
purpose of preserving their privileges.
Msane’s attack showed that black people regarded even white revolutionaries with suspicion.
A not unfounded suspicion given the record of white chauvinism in the labour movement.
Likewise many white revolutionaries revealed a lack of interest in the national problems of
Blacks and a preoccupation with electoral activity and with organizing industrial unionism.
Eddie Roux, biographer of Sidney Bunting, wrote the Bunting’s effort to bring back people into
the ISL ‘was something which made some of his fellow socialists gasp’, but Bunting was
exceptional and he periodically complained the ISL propaganda made no reference to the
11
national question, and that some ISL members continued to deny that there existed in South
Africa a national question for Blacks. With David Ivon Jones he persisted in focusing on the
national question, utilizing the International. Gradually his gospel began to reach the ISL
membership.
Bill Andrews, in an election manifesto, appealed to white workers to recognize their common
interest with black workers against the common capitalist enemy. Writing in the International
(20.07.17) Andrews argued that Whites must recognize Blacks as part of the working class,
that they should support their organization into trade unions, but maintained that the
organization of black trade unions was primarily the responsibility of Blacks During its 1919
Conference the ISL adopted a “Declaration of Principle which stated that the word of the ISL is
to educated, agitate, and organize workers for the great task of effecting revolution in South
Africa. It read:
It is especially its work to attend to the aspect of the struggle peculiar to South Africa,
occasioned by the presence in South Africa of a large mass of unlettered native population,
newly emerging from primitive manhood, and partially assimilated by the system of wage
labour. To awaken and inspire our native fellow workers to grapple with their responsibility as
part and parcel of the world proletariat must be our urgent duty. As part of this task the white
workers must be encouraged to educate, organize and co-operate with their native fellow
workers at the place of work in mine, factory and workshop, in order that the socialist republic
of South Africa may be nominated by unanimous solidarity of all the workers.
Clearly, these pioneer socialists in South Africa saw the solution of the national question as tied
up wit the socialist revolution. With the emancipation of labour from capital, the black worker, it
was hoped, would then rise to a position of equality with his white counterpart. Great hope was
vested in the revolutionary position of that section of white workers which pledged its
unqualified support for socialism.
With hindsight, it is easy to criticize these positions. Those early socialists did not then realize
the extent of the reactionary political convictions of white workers. This was demonstrated
during the 1922 Rand Revolt when white workers called for the establishment of socialism in
South Africa, but sharpened the consciousness of communists on the national question, and
created the realization that the problem of South Africa could not be confined only to class
relations, but that it had to be recognized that these relations in South Africa were somehow
deformed by national imperfections.
The right to self-determination
The Communist Party of South Africa, formed in 1921, maintained close relations with the Third
International (Comintern) founded in 1919, and a number of its leaders participated in
discussions with Lenin before his death in 1924. As leader of the Comintern, Lenin had availed
his theoretical approach on the national question to a number of commissions of the Comintern
for debate. For the first time the national question was transformed from being a specific
country’s problem into a global problem of emancipating oppressed peoples and colonies from
the yoke of imperialism.
One of the focal theoretical questions was the ‘right of nations to self determination’. What did
this mean? Delivering the report in June 1920 of the Commission on National and Colonial
12
Questions to a plenary session of the Second Congress of the Communist International, Lenin
asked:
What is the cardinal idea underlying our theses? It is the distinction between oppressed and
oppressor nations. Unlike the Second International and bourgeois democracy, we emphasize
this distinction. In the age or imperialism, it is particularly important for the proletariat and the
Communist International to establish the concrete economic facts and to proceed from
concrete realities, not from abstract postulates, in all colonial and national problems.
Along the same lines, Lenin stated:
In my writing on the national question I have already said that an abstract presentation of
nationalism in general is of no use at all. A distinction must necessarily be made between the
nationalism of an oppressor nation and that of an oppressed nation… Anybody who does not
understand this has not grasped the real proletarian attitude to the national question, he is still
essentially a petty-bourgeois in his point of view and is, therefore, sure to descend to the
bourgeois point of view.
This proletarian attitude to the national question demanded the recognition of the existence of
oppressor and oppressed nations and not an abstract presentation of the question. Lenin
argued that the Communist Party, as the avowed champion of the working-class struggle to
overthrow capitalism, had to make a precise appraisal of the historical situation which he
characterized as that of imperialism, ‘the highest stage in the development of capitalism’.
Capitalism now finds that old national states…are too crammed for it. Capitalism has
developed concentration to such a degree that the entire branches of industry are controlled by
… capitalist millionaires and almost the entire globe has been divided among the “Lords of
capital’….
In Holland by the seventeenth century the Dutch East India Company had assumed a
monopoly of trade and behaved within its domain as a sovereign state; it sent our expeditions
of exploration, acquired colonies and fought wars in defence of is commercial empire. The
government of Holland held shares in the company and some of its legislators were themselves
directors. I was the government that leased to the company a monopoly of trade and took a cut
of the profits. The colonization of South Africa was a direct result of the expeditions of this
company. The settler white community then systematically conquered the territory and
subjected the indigenous inhabitants to political oppression and economic exploitation. In
South Africa, therefore, the national question became inseparably liked to the colonial question.
This division of South Africa into oppressor and oppressed nations was of the essence of
imperialism, and just like everywhere else in the world where the colonial question had to be
solved, this meant, as it still means, the right of the oppressed to self-determination.
Lenin went further to point out to socialists in the oppressor nations that it would be ridiculous
for them to cherish illusions that they could achieve socialism and practice socialist principles if
they did not fight for the right of oppressed nations to self- determination. A socialist as a ruling
or colonial nation who did not support that right was a mere chauvinist wearing a socialist
mask. It is for the right of the oppressed nations to self–determination , and in a struggle to
13
achieve sincere recognition for that right, that socialists of the oppressor nation must demand
that the oppressed nations should have a free right to separate form alien national bodies and
form their independent states. This means liberation form national bodies and form their
independent states assert their national right to independence.
This thesis had far-reaching implications for white socialists in South Africa who had been
campaigning for the achievement of socialism as the immediate goal, a strategy that proceeded
form the assumption that all South African workers, black and white, shared the same
economic, political and ideological conditions. With Lenin’ approach, it became clear that the
conditions were not the same. Economically, it meant that sections of the South African
working class benefited from the super-exploitation of the black workers of the oppressed
nation so that to this extent the workers of the oppressor nation became partners with their own
national bourgeoisie in plundering the workers (and the mass of the population) of the
oppressed nation. Politically, the difference was that, compared with the workers of the
oppressed nation, they occupied a privileged position in many spheres of political life.
Ideologically, workers of the oppressed nation.
This alienation is a serious obstacle in a struggle against capitalist exploitation because, before
the proletariat can mount a successful struggle to remove the bourgeoisie from political power,
it must constitute itself as a class, and must acquire the faculty of ruling the nation ( as Marx
pointed out soon after the 1848 revolutions in Europe). The white workers of South Africa,
despite their lack of class consciousness and treacherous political position, are none the less,
an integral part of the South African proletariat in the scientific definition of the term. In 1844
Marx had pointed out that ‘the question is not what this or that proletarian, or even the whole of
the proletariat at the moment, considers as its aim. The question is what the proletariat is, and
what consequent on that being, it will be compelled to do’.
White revolutionaries had to learn that, although capitalism existed in South Africa, but because
of the existence of colonialism as well, the principal slogan of the revolutionary movement had
to be that of the oppressed to self-determination. This was how the Comintern formulated the
thesis on the national question.
Comintern and the “black republic” thesis
In 1928 a delegation of the Communist Party of South Africa attended the Sixth World
Congress of the Comintern in Moscow where the national question in South Africa was debated
by communists from all over the world.
The Congress noted the success that had been scored by the Communist Party among the
African workers, and encouraged it to continue energetically the struggle for the complete
equality of rights for the Africans, for the abolition of all special regulations and laws directed
against Africans, and for the confiscation of the land of white landlords. It further
recommended to the Communist Party to struggle by all methods against every racial prejudice
in the ranks of white workers and to eradicate entirely such prejudices form its own ranks.
The Party must determinedly and consistently put forward the slogan for the creation of an
independent native republic, with simultaneous guarantee for the rights of the white minority,
and struggle in deeds for its realisation…In proportion as the development of capitalist
relationships disintegrates the tribal structure, the Party must strengthen its work in the
14
education in class consciousness of the exploited strata of the Negro population, and cooperate in their liberation from the influence of the exploiting tribal strata, which become more
and more agents of imperialism.
The Comintern characterized South Africa as a British Domination of a colonial type. The
development of the relations of capitalist production had led to British imperialism carrying our
the economic exploitation of the country with the participation of the white bourgeoisie of South
Africa (English and Afrikaner) . This did not alter the general colonial character of the economy
of South Africa. Since British capital continued to occupy the principal economic positions in
the country (banks, mining and industry), and since the South African bourgeoisie were equally
interested in the merciless exploitation of the black population. Furthermore, on the very basis
of the growth of capitalism in South Africa, there was a growing tendency to expropriate land
from the Africans. A characteristic feature of the colonial nature of the country was the
complete landlessness of the African population.
Under these conditions, argued the Cominterm, the Communist Party had to orient itself chiefly
t the ‘native toiling masses’ while continuing to word actively among white workers. In the
opinion of the Comintern, the revolutionary importance of the mass movements of black
workers and peasants. Although it carried on a correct struggle for unity of black and white
workers in trade unions, it failed to appreciate the fact that the country was seized by violence
by foreign exploiters, and that conditions of semi-slavery existed for the overwhelming majority
of the black masses. In these circumstances, the Comintern call for ‘an independent native
South African republic as a stage towards a workers’ and peasants’ republic with full, equal
rights for all races’.
The delegation of the SACP opposed this position and felt that when it returned to South Africa
it would be criticized by the white working class whom they had worked so hard to mobilize.
Moreover, was the support of black nationalism by socialism not the negation of the principles
of class struggle? In their eyes the Party was being asked to emphasize African nationalism
instead of the equality of all workers, black and white.
The Comintern’s resolution represented a rejection of the Communist Party’s long standing
position that the struggle was first and foremost a struggle for socialism. The Comintern’s
position maintained that a struggle for national liberation of must precede socialist
transformation. To a degree this formulation resembled Marx’s conclusions when he examined
he means for change would come from British workers, he later changed his position and
concluded that the decisive blow against the English ruling classes could not be delivered in
England but only in Ireland.
This approach became the foundation of the Communist Party’s on the national question, and
on the relationship between national and class struggle. The issue, however, shook the Party
to its roots for close on ten years. But, once adopted, Party leaders campaigned for it.
Reporting the Party’s adoption of the ‘ Black Republic’ policy to a meeting of South African
communists on 18 December 1928 Bunting said:
The new slogan is a ray of hope for the oppressed people of South Africa who suffer not only
from capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination but also form racial discrimination… The
right of the potentially great Bantu nation is embodied in the new slogan. The majority in South
15
Africa is the oppressed people, and they must of necessity determine the future condition of the
country.
Bunting even went further to state that ‘if there was to be any race domination, there must be
native rule in South Africa. If there was going to be equality, there must be domination by the
majority. At the Seventh Conference of the Communist Party in December 1928, the ‘Black
Republic’ thesis was debated for more than a full day. This conference was significant in that
for the first time in the Party’s history, black delegates outnumbered white. By 1928, of the
1,750 members, 1,600 were black.
National and class struggles
Close study of the Comintern’s resolution reveals that the support of socialists for national
liberation was made conditional in the sense that national liberation ws seen as being ‘a stage
towards a workers’ and peasants’ republic’. It stressed thereby the class content of the
national liberation struggle. True national liberation was seen as being impossible without
social liberation and a nationalism which ignored the class basis of national oppression as
false.
This has become the accepted view of the ANC and is reflected in its strategy and Tactics
Document:
Thus our nationalism must not be confused with the classical drive by the elitist group among
the oppressed people to gain ascendancy so that they can replace the oppressor in the
exploitation of the mass… this perspective of a speedy progression form formal liberation to
genuine and lasting emancipation it made more real by the existence in our country of a large
and growing working class whose class consciousness complements national consciousness.
Its political organizations and trade unions have played a fundamental role in shaping and
advancing our revolutionary cause.
A further aspect of the South African reality is that the black working class, which in not only
oppressed as part of the nation but also exploited by capital, is the most uncompromising
enemy of race and class oppression. As such, it constitutes the most powerful force for
national liberation. The ANC maintains that the drive for national emancipation is integrally
bound up with the struggle of economic emancipation. The oppressed in South Africa have
suffered more than national humiliation: they have been deprived and poverty and starvation
has been their life experience. The correction of economic injustice lies at the very core of a
solving of the national question. It is thus understandable that the doubly-oppressed and
doubly-exploited black working class should constitute a distinct and reinforcing layer in the
national liberation struggle. Furthermore, it is the need to ensure that the liberation struggle
contains a strongly organized working class that constitutes the principle reason behind the
alliance of the ANC and SACP.
South African revolutionaries (at least those within the SACP) recognize that the national
question must be treated not merely on a historic basis, but on a class basis. If we examine
how Marx and Engels treated the Polish question, or the stand they took on the unification of
Italy, we shall see that this was precisely their approach- the class approach. Marxists
consider the socio-economic base of national oppression and the solution to the national
question not in a reformist, but a revolutionary, way. The petty bourgeois liberals, to whom any
thought of class struggle is either strange or abhorrent, forget that this national liberation
struggle is only the first stage, only the preliminary part of a social revolution that will end in the
16
victory of the working class. They forget that a social revolution cannot be a single battle, but
goes through a series of stages tacking all sorts of democratic and economic problems, but
crowned ultimately by the expropriation of the bourgeoisie. It is for the sake of this final aim the
Marxists- Leninists formulate their democratic demands including on the national question.
The nationalism of any oppressed nation against colonial oppression and imperialist
exploitation has a general democratic content, and it is this content that socialists support
unconditionally. But, at the same time, we must strictly distinguish from the tendency towards
national exclusiveness which is a drive by the bourgeois elite among the oppressed to take
over the role of the new exploiter. While all socialists feel duty bound to stand for the most
resolute and consistent national democracy on all aspects of the national question, that
however, is their limit because beyond that begins the activity of the bourgeoisie with their
national narrow- mindedness and hidebound chauvinist conservatism. In his theoretical
perceptions of this question Lenin also argued that;
To throw off oppression is the imperative duty of the proletariat as a democratic force, and is
certainly in the interests of the proletarian class struggle, which is obscured and retarded by
bickering on the national question. But to go beyond these strictly limited and historical limits in
helping bourgeois nationalism means betraying the proletariat and siding with the bourgeoisie.
Internationalism and the national question
The theory of the South African revolution aligns its approach to the national question to the
social content of our epoch, the epoch of the transition from capitalism to socialism; it aligns
itself with the stage of social development and the special features of South Africa. Capitalism
is not a static social phenomenon, but develops, and this affects the national question. In its
history, capitalism has manifested two tendencies on the national question. The first was the
creation of nations and the formation of national movements in various countries (but particular
in Europe). The second emerged with the development of capitalism when the international
unity of capital broke down national boundaries and political, economic and scientific life. The
first tendency predominated at the beginning of the development of capitalism, while the
second characterizes a mature capitalism already moving towards its transformation into
socialism. The first tendency was inspired by the bourgeoisie themselves, by their ideologists
who cried our for “Liberty Equality and Fraternity’. These were the first to raise the cry of the
right of nations to self-determination, and this signified the emergence of the national question
as a crucial issue. The second tendency appeared with the evolution of capitalism into
imperialism, when the working class developed in correspondence with industry. In as much
as capitalism during this stage becomes an international factor, so does the working class
become an international factor.
The bourgeoisie then starts fearing the progress of its own nation, precisely at the time when
the working class begins to assert its ideology of proletarian internationalism. Internationalism,
originating basically from the needs of social growth, strives for unity of the proletariat as a
class, whose material conditions and interests coincide irrespective of national origin. With the
working class at the head of the national liberation process, this changes the social content of
the national movement and correspondingly is attitude to the national question.
Whereas the bourgeoisie emphasize national exclusiveness, the working class insists on its
unity with its class brothers. A working class-led national liberation movement does not
legitimise divisions created by capitalists to divide the working class of various nations. That is
17
why the South African liberation movement does not preach black exclusiveness, and neither
does it bar the organizational participation of genuine white revolutionaries in the struggle. The
working class draws its lessons form real South African life because, while not denying that the
various national groups receive different wages for doing the same work, none the less at the
point of production transnational corporations we find capitalists of different nations sitting
together and taking joint decisions. When they take decisions on a profound political matter,
they take sides according to the class to which they belong, not nations. For the workers to act
differently would mean siding with national opportunism and a betrayal of internationalism.
Explaining the policy of the ANC with regard to its attitude to non-racialism Oliver Tambo said
that:
When the people decide to fight for their rights as blacks, as most deprived, people are reacting
to a situation created for them. But they are not going to stay in that situation all the time,
because they are fighting for human rights basically. They are not fighting white people as
white people. They are fighting a white system, but not because it is white, although it is
presented in that form. But, basically the struggle is for justice, for human rights … it is capable
of being supported by all human beings who support just causes irrespective of what race they
belong to.
Theoretically speaking the successful struggle against exploitation requires that the working
class be free of narrow nationalism. If the working class of any one nation gives the slightest
support to the privileges of its own national bourgeoisie, that will inevitably arouse distrust
among the proletariat of another nation; it will weaken the international class solidarity of the
workers and divide them, which is exactly what the capitalists want. To have complete trust in
white workers, the black workers must be convinced that the white workers are no longer
infested with the national chauvinism of such as Arrie Paulus, P.W Botha or Magnus Malan and
that they place fraternity with black workers above the privileges they obtain from the white
bourgeoisie.
In the context of the South African revolution, there is no doubt that the national question ( at
least from the point of view of the working class) should emphasize the unity of black and white
workers so that their minds are not drugged by narrow nationalism. But it is equally important
to point out that the white working class will never itself be free from capitalism until black
people are freed from the yoke of white supremacy. Furthermore, the unity of black and white
workers will remain a pipe-dream unless white workers recognize the right of Blacks to selfdetermination.
In regard to the nationalism of the oppressed nation which sometimes goes under the term
‘Black Consciousness’ in South Africa, suffice it to say that it will, like any other nationalism,
pass through various phases, according to the classes that are domination in the national
movement at the time. Each class has its own view of the national question. Consequently, in
different periods the national question serves different interests and assumes different shades,
according to which class raises it, and when. However, to uphold retrogressive nationalism in
the name of liberation, a kind of nationalism that breeds hostility between the workers of
different nations or nationalities, at a time when their unity is in fact an immediate historical
need of the revolution, can only be described as petty bourgeois national opportunism.
While struggling against the retrogressive perversion of black consciousness, however, the
South African liberation movement does not allow its revolutionary perspective to get carried
18
away to an extent of losing sight of the nationalism of the oppressor nation, of white
chauvinism. The ANC and the SACP strive persistently for the unity of South African
nationalities and ruthlessly suppress anything that tends to dive them, particularly within their
ranks. In doing so, however, they are very cautious and patient, and often make concessions
to the survival of national distrust. In their perspective, the solution of the national question in
South Africa can only proceed form the integration of the two nations, under conditions of total
equality, into a single integration of the two nations, under conditions of total equality, into a
single South African nation. The fusion of these nations, it is perceived, will only proceed
systematically if the exercise is headed by the working class.
If the aim of the South African revolution is not only to end the inequality between the black and
white nations, but also between African, Indian, Coloured, Afrikaner and English nationalities,
and the racial hostility that goes with that national hostility, it is also to bring these nations and
nationalities into a single South African nation without any national or racial privileges. To
achieve this aim, it is necessary to organize the only class that is capable of achieving this kind
of revolution- the working class.
The consequence of organizing the working class will be that the national democratic revolution
will proceed uninterruptedly to socialism. It is impossible to abolish national inequality under
capitalism, since this requires the abolition of classes. Lenin argued in this regard:
By transforming capitalism into socialism, the proletariat creates the possibility of abolishing
national oppression; the possibility becomes reality only- “only!”- with the establishment of full
democracy in all spheres, including the delineation of state frontiers in accordance with the
“sympathies” of the population… And this, in turn, will serve as a basis for developing the
practical elimination of even the slightest national friction and the least national mistrust, for an
accelerated drawing together and fusion of nations… (The Socialist Revolution and the Right of
Nations to Self-Determination).
As the people of South Africa liberate themselves form apartheid oppression, they will gravitate
irresistibly towards integration. But the degree of the smoothness of this process will depend
largely on the class at the head of the revolution, and whether or not the former oppressors
infringe the former oppressed nation’s feeling of self-respect. It is actually the nationalism of
the oppressor nation that is the principal obstacle to the creation of national unity in South
Africa. The ANC and the SACP strive to draw nationalities together, and have already brought
about their fusion within their organizational ranks: the two organizations desire to achieve this
in the future South Africa as well, not by means of state violence, but exclusively through the
fraternal unity of the workers and peoples of both nations and all nationalities.
19
Notes
1. See No Sizwe, One Azania, One Nation, Zeb Books, 1979, p.3.
2. V.I.Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.21, Lawrence and Wishart, London, p.72.
3. Karl Marx, The Revolution of 1848 – Political Writings, Vol.1, Penguin Books,
Harmondsworth, 1973, p.101
4. K.Marx and F.Engels, Collected Works Vol.7, Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1976,
p.389
5. Ibid., Vol.9, p.101.
6. E.Bernstein, E.Belfort, E.Box, K.Kautsky and K.Renner, The Second International and
the Problems of the National and Colonial Question, Mexico, 1978, p.125
7. Brunn Programme of the Second International,1899 (this programme was supported
by the Austro-Marxists)
8. Bernstein et al.op.cit., Mexico, 1978, p.122
9. Otto Bauer, Die Nationalitatenfrage und die Sozialdemocratie, Vienna, 1907, pp. 98-9.
10. V.I.Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.41, Lawrence and Wishart, London, p.315
11. Ibid. Vol. 19, p.541
12. J.V.Stalin, Works, Vol.2, Moscow, 1953, p.307
13. C.H.Haggar, ‘Organized Labour As A Political Factor’, State, Vol.III, June 1910 pp 93345
14. Davidson, Slovo and Wilkinson, Southern Africa: New Politics of Revolution, Penguin
Books, London, 1976, p .122
15. Quoted in K.Hancock, Smuts: The Fields of Force, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1968, p .36
16. Eddie Roux, S.P.Bunting, A Political Biography, published by the author, Cape Town,
1944
17. Sheridah Johns, Marxism-Leninism in a Multiracial Environment: The Origins of Early
History of the Communist Party of South Africa, 1914-1932, unpub. Ph.D thesis,
Harvard University, 1965, p.127
18. The International, 16 March 1917
19. Ibid., 29 June 1917
20. Ibid., 2 November 1917
21. Ibid., 21 December 1918
22. Ibid., 4 January 1919
23. South African Communists Speaks, 1915-1980, Inkululeko Publications, London, 1981,
p.91.
24. South African Worker, 30 November 1928
25. V.I.Lenin, Collected Works, Vol.6, Lawrence and Wishart, London.
26. Quoted in Sechaba, Vol.2, 4th Quarter, London 1977, p11
20