Anthony Egan
SOUTH AFRICA’S RADICAL TRADITION: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY. VOLUME ONE:1907-1950; VOLUME TWO: 1943-1964 edited by Allison Drew
( Buchu/Mayibuye /UCT Press, R79,99)
TWENTIETH-CENTURY South African liberation movements owe a considerable debt to the radical left. The left has played a giant part in supporting – at times leading -the struggle for a non-racial democracy. It has also been at times fractious, divisive and riddled with what would seem to the outsider absurd internal squabbling. The left’s own history is itself a site of struggle – between the “official” and the “dissident”, between “fellow traveller” and “cold warrior” scholars, with numerous permutations in between.
Documentation of the left abounds – if you know where to find it. The idea of producing a collection of documents is itself hardly new . What these volumes’ editor has done is similar but goes a step further – not only communist party (or proto-CP ) material but also considerable material from the Trotskyist movements has been included.
The documents in volume one start dramatically. British Labour Party leader James Keir Hardie recounts a visit to South Africa in 1907, when he was stoned by white workers in Durban for suggesting non-racial unions. From this unfortunate start the documents pick up momentum – how white, mostly immigrant workers built up trade unions, expanded into politics, breaking ties with the established Labour Party, struggling with the questions surrounding a growing black labour force and how to respond to the growth of black unions like the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU), amidst the growing support for a Bolshevik-style state modelled on that of the post-1917 Soviets.
After the 1922 Rand Revolt, we see the debates in the Communist Party of South Africa (formed in 1921) over the nature of the revolutionary society needed for South Africa. With a little pressure from the Comintern and amid much internal conflict, the “Native Republic” thesis was adopted.
In later years, growing tensions and a Stalinisation of the party would lead to mass expulsions of members, some of whom joined the nascent Trotskyist movements, which developed quite a following in certain areas like the Western Cape and later played a part that is often forgotten now.
The left’s relations with movements like the African National Congress is also examined. Tense at first, they improved somewhat in the 1930s during the period of “united front” Comintern strategy. After first opposing war, communist support for South African involvement in World War II led to improved fortunes – and even a few seats on white city councils.
Communist support for black trade unions was also significant, despite continued suspicion in some ANC circles, right up to the banning of the party in 1950. Undercover communist activity and the influence of radical thinking continued, however, playing a pivotal role in developing the idea of non-racial democracy.
By the end of volume two of South Africa’s radical tradition, we find the left articulating the need for armed struggle, and we see also the non-communist left’s largely unsuccessful engagement in guerrilla activity.
Editor Allison Drew has brought together an impressive array of documents and has carefully and masterfully set them in context with her endnotes and introductory comments. These documents illustrate the heterogeneous and eclectic nature of the South African left, and correct strongly ANC-slanted volumes of collected documents and histories of the liberation struggle.