The Communist Party in South Africa: Racism, Eurocentricity and Moscow, 1921-1950

By Mia Roth

Why is the history of communism in a country at the bottom of the African continent still important enough to warrant this book? South Africa is one of the few countries in the world that still has a strong communist party whose views are not only taken into account by the government, but whose members hold important positions in both the cabinet and in government offices.
This is the first account of the history of the Communist Party of South Africa based on archival sources. The initial accounts were written by party members and had very little to do with reality. The months that Mia Roth spent in the newly opened Russian and South African Archives in 1998 and the number of years she spent in writing it, revealed to her not only the racism in the South African party but also the role it played in destroying the ICU, the only genuine African mass movement of that time. Its depiction of the part played by African communists was only a facade.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Jan 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781482809640

Mia Roth

Mia Roth was a history professor at an African University in Johannesburg, South Africa. She founded five literacy resources centres in urban African townships. After her retirement she followed her children to Australia and has written two more books. The first “Uberleben Durch Vergessen: Die judische Geliebte, der Retter von der Gestapo und die kleine Zeugin” (Heidelberg, Carl Auer Verlag, 2015), only published in German at present, is based on her recollections as a Holocaust survivor. The second, based on her doctoral studies is “The Rhetorical Origins of Apartheid: How the Debates of the Natives Representative Council shaped South Africa’s Racial Policies”, (McFarland, Jefferson, 2015).

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Copyright © 2016 by Mia Roth.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4828-0965-7

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 The Communist International

Chapter 3 Racism, Policies, Leaders, Tactics and the Party Press

Chapter 4 The Party: 1921-1931

Chapter 5 The Party: 1932-1950

Chapter 6 Africans in the Communist Party of South Africa

Chapter 7 The Achievements of the African Activists, 1924-1950

Chapter 8 Conclusion

Addendum

Works Cited

DEDICATION

My love and gratitude to my son Daniel who retained the original of this manuscript when I had given up any hope of publication

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I was fortunate enough to gain access to the Russian Centre for the Conservation and Study of Modern History Records when the archives were first opened. I wish to thank the Russian librarians who made the archival lists freely available to me. I also have to thank a Russian academic who does not want his name mentioned, who perused these lists naturally written in Russian, translated their contents and enabled me to find much more of relevance than I would otherwise have done. Fortunately, the Comintern documents on the Communist Party of South Africa were either in English or in German, neither language presenting me with any difficulties. I am also indebted to the librarians of Cambridge University Library and the National Library of Scotland; the librarians at the National Archives, Pretoria; the University of the Witwatersrand; Cape Town University and the archival records at Rhodes University and the archivists at the University of South Africa.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AAC: All African Convention

ANC: African National Congress

APO: African Peoples Organization

CI: Communist International

Comintern: Communist International

CPSA: Communist Party of South Africa

CPUSA: Communist Party of the United States

ECCI: Executive Council of the Comintern

IANC: Independent African National Congress

ICU: Industrial and Commercial Workers Union

ICU Yase Natal: George Champion's independent ICU in Natal

IICU: Independent Industrial and Commercial Workers Union

ILO: International Labour Organization

ISL: International Socialist league

KUTV: Communist University of the Toilers of the East

NEUM: Non - European Unity Movement

NRC: Natives Representative Council

PB: Political Bureau

SACP: South African Communist Party (name changed after 1950)

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please...¹

Ninety --five years after its inception, the Communist Party of South Africa is one of a handful around the world which is still newsworthy. It was influential enough to warrant a full page in the country's main newspaper on the date of its ninetieth anniversary. ² At the time of its inception until it was banned by the South African government in 1950, what did it contribute to the Africans yearning for equality and the right to their own country? The belief among its members in international solidarity and the liberation of man, the fight against fascism, all this came to be seen as personified by the Soviet Union. This was the time when communism in Russia, Spain, Germany and elsewhere had become real sources of power and influence. Yet today these once influential political parties are a spent force, but the Party in South Africa not only survived but its members became a part of its ruling elite in 1994 when South Africa had its first democratic elections.

By 1994, when the ANC government was voted into power, in alliance with the South African Communist Party, its early history appeared to well documented. An accepted version of events had emerged, without any input of either the South African or Russian archival records. With the fall of communism in Russia, the Russian archives of the Communist International (Comintern) were opened. In South Africa as well, the democratic elections in 1994, led to the opening of previously inaccessible government files dealing with communist activities. For the first time a far more accurate picture of CPSA activities could now be compiled.

From 1921 until 1950, the CPSA portrayed itself as the vanguard of what they perceived to be the coming socialist revolution in South Africa. In order to do this a version of events emerged, based mainly on the memoirs of old Party members and the CPSA's own publications, including its press. As no documentation or any significant research was available these were widely used. It was imperative for the Party to present itself as an independent entity. The perception that the CPSA's views and actions were dictated from Moscow was inadmissible. Africans were under the domination of white Europeans for nearly three hundred years. A political party purporting to support their liberation would gain no support among them if they knew that it was dominated by yet another set of Europeans, no matter whether the latter were socialists or capitalists.

By eliminating all traces of the influence of the Russian dominated Comintern on CPSA decisions, much of its history became extremely puzzling. The reader could not be told why and who had formulated the policies that underlay its actions.³ Prominent Party members were expelled then some were readmitted, while others were permanently expelled. ⁴Sidney Bunting, for example, its one-time chair was not forgiven for more than fifty years after his expulsion and many years after his death.⁵ But what had he done that was so reprehensible was never fully explained. The only Communist Party member who made any mention of the Comintern was Eddie Roux, who in 1943 published a biography of Sidney Bunting. The Party was so angry at the appearance of a book by Roux on the discredited Sidney Bunting, that it published a book on the man whom the communists regarded as its real hero in 1943, namely WH Andrews, the champion of the white proletariat. African Party members were peripheral to both these accounts, the main actors being the white CPSA leaders. The CPSA was banned, not long after this, in 1950. It resuscitated itself in 1953 but now all national communist parties were renamed. No longer was it the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) but it now became the United States Communist Party as did the CPSA become the South African Communist Party (SACP). The reason for the publication of this book is that a new version of events is now possible.

An important advantage of the Comintern archival collection is that it gives an understanding of how little tolerance there was of individual freedom of action. Edwin Mofutsanyana may have had a derogatory view of the All African Convention (AAC) in 1935 but was an eager participant in the AAC, the reason being that this was a Comintern directive and had to be obeyed, whether or not Mofutsanyana approved of it. ⁶

The books written by Eddie Roux, which chronicled the history of the CPSA, were Roux's SP. Bunting, Roux's autobiography, Rebel Pity and his more general history book, Time Longer than Rope. Eddie Roux was a longstanding member of the CPSA who trained in Cambridge as a botanist and after his activities in the Communist Party ended, became a university lecturer. A faithful Party member, his activities came under suspicion in 1935-1936. He was asked to recant in 1938 or be expelled. Whether he recanted is not certain but what is certain is that Roux was extremely angry at what he perceived to be the shabby treatment meted out to him by the Party. He then wrote a book about another longstanding member who was shabbily treated, Sidney Bunting. Roux himself had been active in discrediting Bunting when he was expelled in 1931, writing derogatory articles about him in the CPSA newspaper and in general being in no way supportive, as will be noted later. After 1935, when Roux found himself in difficulties with the CPSA, his stance changed. It seems that he wrote the book not only as a vindication of Bunting, but of himself. Bunting may have been the hero of the story but Roux was his able and active lieutenant. Another important work on the CPSA of that time was Jack and Ray (Alexander) Simons' book, Class and Colour in South Africa. This book tried to discredit Roux's works by pointing point out that Roux himself was the editor of Umsebenzi, the CPSA newspaper, when it was hurling invectives at Bunting, also that Roux was part of Bunting's opposition which had expelled him, but all to no avail. Jack and Ray Simons were Party members; Roux was no longer a member when he wrote his version of events. ⁷

Nevertheless, Roux's fidelity to the principles of communism was still strong in 1943 when he wrote his book on SP Bunting. He tried his best to minimise the damage to a cause to which he was still attached, even if his ties to the CPSA had been severed. One gets the impression, not only from the work of Roux but also that of Jack and Ray Simons that they felt that they could write what they liked and that one-one would ever dispute it. The notable achievements of the CPSA recorded, for example, in the Simons' Class and Colour of Party activities in 1931-1932, were untrue. The CPSA had no firm footing in basic industries and rural areas, its membership had not increased eightfold, the night schools were not flourishing, having in fact, by this time, stopped functioning altogether. It had no cells in factories, mines or dock works and a miners' union was not taking shape.⁸ These were what the Comintern itself called 'paper' organisations. The South African Federation of Non-European Trade Unions is a particularly good example of how the old historiography still resonates. Not only the importance of this organisation but even the reality of its existence comes into question when one examines not only the archives in Moscow, but also those in South Africa.⁹

The only other Party member who in the 1940's wrote a book that to some extent incorporated CPSA information was its one time chair in the 1930s, Douglas Wolton. Wolton published his version of events in his book, Wither, South Africa?¹⁰ The book, published in Britain, had no impact on the now accepted version of events as set out by Eddie Roux. Why I have given this account of the early historiography of the CPSA in such detail, is because no one has as yet disputed the events as described by historians, the majority of whom who were themselves members of the CPSA.

What made the situation more complex was that after 1950, all communist publications were banned in South Africa. Both the Apartheid state in South Africa and the totalitarian Soviet Union had to disappear before the history of the CPSA could be understood. Hyman Basner, as a CPSA member, for example, undertook to stand as a candidate in the elections under the 1936 Natives Representation Act, because he was instructed to do so by the Comintern. He may in addition, and the evidence indicates that this was so, have been enthusiastic about the elections in any case. However, the major reason for his participation was that he was following a Party directive. If he was not told to do so, no matter how enthusiastic he may have felt, he would not have participated. This type of situation makes it difficult for the historian to assess Basner, as an individual.¹¹ What were his own views and decisions and what actions did he take at the dictates of the Comintern? It is the same situation as discussed above in connection with Edwin Mofutsanyana. This is a problem that arises when assessing all the actions of the CPSA members discussed in this work. However, as the same problems were undoubtedly present in the history of other communist parties, this is another reason I have compared the reactions of the members of the CPSA with that of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). Andreas Wirsching maintains that the initial emphasis on political directives from Moscow has now shifted and that recent research has begun to integrate Moscow resolutions with local actions.¹² To do this, one must first acknowledge what these directives were, in order to assess to what extent they were followed. Part of this understanding is also dependant on our understanding that by 1925 Comintern discipline was inviolate and that as a section of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union the South Africans had no choice.¹³

In 1955 Party member Lionel Forman compiled a history of the CPSA, which he gave to Brian Bunting (son of Sidney Bunting) to assess. Bunting, himself a longstanding Party member, was sharply critical of Forman's statements that the Comintern instructed the CPSA to install WH Andrews as chair, and that in 1938 it told the Party to switch its attention from the Africans to the white workers. ¹⁴ Brian Bunting then set out for Forman what he considered was the correct way to write CPSA history.

'This history', he maintained, 'cannot be neutral, it must be, in the best sense, partisan, educational. I don't suggest that we can remake history to fit a wiser retrospect, but at least we must remember that it is wiser to draw a veil over what... the CI (Communist International) instructed the PB (Political Bureau) to do in the twenties or early thirties. These things were not public knowledge and the ruling class is still looking for evidence of orders from Moscow... I am not suggesting that we should 'alter' or distort Party history for our own purposes. But any history is in the end, a selection of facts...the measure of the historian and the index to his conclusions is the kind of fact he chooses to select...' What should be emphasised was that the CPSA 'was a splendid organisation, beloved by the masses, far in advance of any other organisation in the country, perhaps the continent,'¹⁵ and this was what his work and that of the other Party historians should set out to prove. As pertains to the independence of the Comintern, perhaps Stalin should have the last word:

'There have been numerous cases in the history of the Comintern when its most popular leaders, who had greater authority than you (addressed to certain members of the CPUSA), found themselves isolated as soon as they raised the barrier against the Comintern... A poor hope, comrades!'

Political commitment has been the source of a lot of good history but history can only provide reliable support for social and political empowerment in the present if it can convincingly claim to be true. Once a historian is not engaged in the pursuit of truth then scholarly criteria become irrelevant in assessing the merits of a particular historical argument. While it is true to state that all historians are swayed by present moral or political purposes in carrying out their work, it is the extent to which their historical arguments conform to the rules of evidence and the facts on which they rest, by which they must stand or fall in the end. Facts cannot be mined to prove a case or evidence twisted to suit a political purpose¹⁶

Brian Bunting's answer to Lionel Forman must also be measured against the backdrop of Bolshevik hegemony that was established in the Comintern by the time the CPSA became one of its affiliates. The revolution in Russia had established the dictatorship of the Communist Party. This meant in effect that from the very beginning of the CPSA, its decisions were at the mercy of a foreign imperialist power, the Soviet Union. ¹⁷ It led to the acceptance of Lenin's assertion that by virtue of his successful revolutionary programme, Bolshevism must serve as the model of tactics for all other communist parties. Lenin also rejected representative government. All these led to important implications for the South African Party and must be taken into account in order to understand its history¹⁸

In 1943, Roux asked Rebecca Bunting to comment on his book on her husband.¹⁹ She asked him to leave out all passages that showed how involved the Comintern was in CPSA affairs. By 1943, it was known that Albert Nzula, one of the Party's African members, had died and had most probably been murdered, in Moscow. Thus, it is understandable that she wanted Roux to leave out of his account any mention of Nzula. At the time of the publication of Roux's book, Andrews was CPSA chair. Although she knew that her husband had regarded Andrews as a racist, she still wanted any reference to Andrews' 'conservative' views taken out.²⁰ Not only did she want Roux to leave out all reference to the Trotskyites or to any comments made by Spark, the Trotskyite newspaper, but even the name 'Trotsky' must not be mentioned.²¹ In spite of the book's undoubted vindication of Sidney Bunting, his wife did not want Roux to publish the book, with or without the above-mentioned amendments.²²

The chapters that follow have largely ignored the Trotskyites. The CPSA was at all times careful to distance itself from them and there are only a few instances where they intersect. One is the fallout from the 1931 expulsions, which led some CPSA members to the Trotskyites and the second is the short lived interaction between the Non-European Unity movement (NEUM) in the early 1940s and the CPSA. I have not made any attempt to include a discussion on Marxist theory, thus excluding the differences between the CPSA and the Trotskyites.²³

Party history was thus initially based on a very limited number of books written by Party members. A situation arose where one man wrote his memoirs of certain events (Roux's book on Sidney Bunting). The value of his book being that nothing else was available at that time on that particular subject. He then wrote two more books, reiterating the facts of the first²⁴. By the time the third book is published, his views have become the orthodoxy on the subject. The framework of Party history has been set out and accepted. Other Party historians then appear, Jack and Ray Simons and Brian Bunting. When one examines the sources for their work on the CPSA, one is struck by the fact that they appear to rely on memory, theoretical arguments, and interviews with old Party members, the CPSA Press and selected correspondence between old Party members. Letters written by them must be used with caution in that the writers knew that these letters were frequently opened and read by the police, and this must be taken into account when using them as primary sources. Even after the opening of the archives, old Party members like Rusty Bernstein or Brian Bunting were phoned for information, which was uncritically accepted. Much the same people who wrote the books and edited the CPSA press, gave their oral testimony of the events of the period, as well²⁵

The result is a high level of intertextuality, with a historical dependence of one writer on another. Jack and Ray Simons might not rely on Eddie Roux' books for information but they give Umsebenzi, edited by Roux, as their source for much of their material on this period. In fact, the published press of the communist movement has been described as the 'most valuable source of information' for the early history of the CPSA. Jack and Ray Simons, for example, had at least half of their sources coming from CPSA newspapers, while two-thirds of the citations of Brian Bunting's Moses Kotane, came from this source.²⁶

This brings one to the quality of the news printed in the CPSA press. Roux, the author of the books which have for so long dominated the history of the CPSA was also the editor of Umsebenzi from 1930 until 1938, when Umsebenzi ceased publication. In 1935, the Comintern criticised him for among other things, his work on Umsebenzi. It criticised him because the paper was so uninteresting and had so few readers, but African Party members censured him because it described events that never happened, and organisations that were nonexistent. It also turns out that Roux, according to his own account, a great supporter of the African communists, refused to accept newspaper articles written by Africans.²⁷Yet the newspaper is full of such articles purportedly written by black communists.²⁸ Researchers that try to work out, for example who the initials given as the authors refer to are misdirected. It is unlikely that they were written by the African party members.²⁹

When the Comintern criticised Roux's journalistic abilities, they made no mention of the distortion of the truth in Umsebenzi, giving the impression that this type of journalism was perfectly acceptable. ³⁰This is the only instance where a criticism of a CPSA publication of the pre 1950 era was found in the Comintern Archives. However, there is no reason to suppose, given this attitude, that other CPSA publications, like The South African Worker before it or Inkululeko or The Guardian after it, were any different.³¹

Even when the events and organisations were factual, speeches were misrepresented and organisations in which the CPSA failed to gain any influence were castigated. An article in Nkululeko³², for example, was extremely derogatory about the Natives Representatives Council as a government initiated body. Anyone taking this kind of article at face value would be left with the impression that no African member of the CPSA would take part in its elections. Yet this is entirely misleading. The CPSA participated in every election held under the Natives Representation Act from 1937 until 1948, in all of which they did not manage to win any seats.³³

One of the 21 conditions of affiliation of the CPSA to the Comintern was that:

'The entire Party press must be run by reliable communists... The periodical press and other publications, and all Party publishing houses must be completely subordinated to the Party... Publishing houses must not be allowed to abuse their independence and pursue a policy which is not wholly in accordance with the policy of the Party.' ³⁴ Even the most recent book on Sidney Bunting had as its basis the old version of events. There is no mention of Eugen Dennis,³⁵ the Soviet emissary who had such an important influence on events in the early 1930s, or of Bunting's Banning Order by the South African government. Brian Bunting, whose views on what is acceptable in the writing of history have already been noted, can still be interviewed as a reliable source of information.³⁶

When files of the Comintern Archives are used, in order to maintain the traditional version of events, there is no focus on what the attitude of the Comintern was to these meetings. ³⁷ In addition, little use is made of the newly available material in the South African Archives, that shed so much new light on the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) and its involvement with the CPSA. ³⁸ Books have appeared on individual members of the CPSA. ³⁹ Academic studies have also appeared on various aspects of the period, such as that of 1928-1934. ⁴⁰ The two major works dealing with the ICU were both published before the opening of the South African National Archives and thus where they touch on the CPSA, have had to rely and have adopted the accepted version of events. All this has made the use of South African historiography dealing with the CPSA, problematic.

No one has yet attempted a complete reassessment of the history of the Communist Party of South Africa from its formation in 1921 until it was banned in 1950, which is the first purpose of this book. The second is to focus on the African members of the Party, and their efforts to engage the CPSA in ways that would free them from white domination, a difficult task in a Eurocentric Party. The third is to give some indication of the interaction of the CPSA and the ANC in the 1921-1950 period, in order to enable a better understanding of the post- 1950 era, when the alliance of these two organisations became of crucial importance in the history of post-Apartheid South Africa. The fourth is to see to what extent the CPSA members were able to rid themselves of the cancer of racism which at that time in the guise of segregation was the accepted policy of the South African government.

In the case of the Communist Party of South Africa not enough use has been made of a thorough examination of the Moscow archives, the end result is that the ideologically driven accounts, as put forward by Moscow, are what scholars rely on, and the mythologies produced by Eddie Roux and his fellow Communists persist to this day.⁴¹The influence of the communists in South Africa after 1994, their alliance with the ANC and the crucial role they played in the fall of white domination in South Africa, all this made it difficult to publish a view that contradicted the heroic accounts by CPSA historians. While in other countries the fall of the Soviet Union signalled the opening of the Moscow archives and resulted in a reassessment of the historical significance of the communists, this did not happen in South Africa. Very few of the historians of the period have used the Russian Archives. In mitigation it appears that at times portions of the Russian archives are open to scholars and then again withdrawn, and if that is the case, it has led to some unfortunate omissions.

I have tried as much as possible to avoid all Party jargon. It does not make for easy reading, neither does it add to our understanding of theories and events. Phrases like 'big deviation' merely mean a deviation from the latest directive of the Comintern. A 'left sectarian' was one who in the view of the communists formed a sect to the left of their current views. A' right deviationist' can be similarly defined, but to the right of the current view. The policy changes were termed the 'line' or 'slogan'. Very few of the concepts discussed in this work have needed to be propped up by the use of communist jargon. An added incentive to avoid its usage was the attitude of the Comintern itself to these 'lines'. One of the policy changes introduced by the Comintern in the CPSA called the New Republic slogan, led to a great deal of intellectualising as to what its exact meaning was. The irrelevance of all this discussion was demonstrated during the Commission of Inquiry in Moscow in 1935-6 when no attempt at all was made to explain what was actually meant, all they wanted the South African Party to do was to stop discussing it and get on with their next policy.⁴²

African CPSA members were not much discussed in these early works on the South African communists. This work will try to emphasis their views and those of other African leaders of the period. This is of some importance because it might lead to a better understanding of why the CPSA had so little African support in the 1920s and 1930s and was so successful in the post 1950s period.

Various legislative enactments between 1910 and 1912 caused sufficient alarm among African leaders to provide the impetus leading to the formation of the ANC (initially called the South African Native National Congress).⁴³ However, it was not until the passing of the 1913 Land Act, which advocated territorial separation of black and white that government policy was openly shown to be that of segregation. JC Smuts, then deputy prime minster, stated that once parliament had approved the 1913 Act, segregation was not only a matter of policy, but the law of the country⁴⁴. The ANC pinned its hopes on the liberal views of the British government and sent a deputation to London to protest the Act.⁴⁵ Nothing came of this deputation but in 1919, another deputation, led by RV Selope Thema, then general secretary of the ANC went to Europe, wanting to present the protests of the African people to the Peace Conference at Versailles.⁴⁶ This deputation was taken seriously by the South African government in that the memorandum of the ANC might lead to questions as to the wisdom of the League of Nations in giving a mandate to South Africa over what was then German South West Africa. The memorandum showed the dissatisfaction of South African blacks at their treatment by the South African government. The ANC's memorandum was regarded as of a domestic nature and thus beyond the jurisdiction of the League of Nations Mandatory scheme. ⁴⁷ Thus by 1921, at the formation of the CPSA, the ANC was already a spent force, both its initiatives having failed. Africans lost any hopes that they had in its ability to foster political change. It sank into relative unimportance for almost twenty years. Other African organisations, like the Industrial and commercial Workers' Union (ICU) in the 1920s and the All African Convention (AAC) in 1935 emerged. It was only in 1937 and especially after the election of AB Xuma as ANC president-general in 1940, that the ANC again became