A History of Liberation Organizations in South Africa

This article was initially published in Volume 4, #1 of Azania Worker in February of 1987. A full set of the issues of Azania Worker is available at https://www.sahistory.org.za/search?s=Azania%20worker#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=Azania%20worker&gsc.page=1.

Introduction

As most activists in the anti­apartheid movement realize, the largest and most powerful of the organized groups in the South African liberation movement is the African National Con­gress (ANC).  And while some might be aware that there are other groups in that movement, their distinctive char­acter and their differences with the ANC are seldom discussed.

This carries over to most of the practical activity against apartheid that we engage in.  When we hear a speaker from South Africa, it is almost always a representative of the ANC or, recently, the United Democratic Front (which is closely allied with the ANC).

On some occasions, this organizational predominance is challenged by those who support one or another of the other groups or by those who argue that it is important for the anti‑apartheid move­ment here to extend support to the en­tire liberation movement.  Frequently, such challenges are responded to with the advice that the ANC is the only really important group and that it will be the ANC that will ‘win’ in South Africa. 

In addition, virtually all of the international dialogue on the fate of South Africa hinges on the demands that the South African government legalize the ANC, release Nelson Mandela and begin talking to the leaders of the Congress. There is considerable evidence that influential and powerful people inside and outside of South Africa, as well as many of apartheid’s opponents, believe that the ANC will, in fact, be directly involved in the future government of South Africa.  As a consequence, they would like to arrange a relatively peaceful transition and, at the same time, put the ANC in a position where it might be willing to accommodate the demands that will be placed on it by South African corporations, international investors and the Western powers.

While the supporters of the ANC see this development as a promising one and urge all anti‑apartheid activists to rally behind the ANC, many of the other forces in the movement express considerable concern about it. Many of those other forces have long‑standing differences with the ANC and are not convinced that submerging them in a common struggle under the leadership of the ANC would be wise.

In order to assist anti‑apartheid activists to better understand the dif­ferences within the liberation move­ment, I have written this brief descrip­tion of the history of the movement dur­ing the 20th Century. It would have been too ambitious an undertaking to chronicle the resistance of the indi­genous populations to the spread of European military and economic power for the two and a half centuries prior to the twentieth. But, it should be understood that while the resistance was persistent and determined, the European onslaught was militarily superior and vicious in its brutality.

As will be clear, I have my own sympathies. I hope, however, that I have not distorted the record and I urge all who read the pamphlet to investigate the issue for themselves.

A Note on Sources

Although the article does contain references to various publications and documents, I have not included a biblio­graphy at the end. Such a bibliography will be included in the next edition of the article.

I would like to recommend several of the books and other publications that I relied on in the course of re­searching the material.

First, and perhaps obviously, people should read the Freedom Charter. It is now in its third decade as the definitive statement of the goals of the Congress Alliance and it deserves careful reading and analysis.

Second, people should read the work of Steve Biko, one of the original articulators of Black Consciousness. Some of his spoken testimony is avail­able in the biography written by Donald Woods, Biko and a collection of his wri­tings has recently been re‑issued under the title of I Write What I Like.

Third, I would recommend One Azania, One Nation by No Sizwe. It is published by Zed Press in England. I would also recommend as a follow‑up piece a book published last year in South Africa by Neville Alexander. It is entitled Sow the Wind and was pub­lished by Skotaville Press. Readers should know that Alexander was the author of One Azania, One Nation using the No Sizwe pseudonym.

Finally, I would recommend almost everything that Basil Davidson has writ­ten about Africa but especially the book that I consulted frequently during the writing of this pamphlet ‑ Let Freedom Come.

I’d like to thank Mike Morgan of the South African Military Refugee Aid Fund for bearing with my obvious ques­tions and for providing me with so many un‑obvious answers.

John Garvey

July, 1986

Early Efforts

By the end of the nineteenth century, the white settlers in South Africa had been able to defeat all of the indigenous opposition to their steady expansion eastward and northward from the Cape Province. At that point, however, the long‑standing antagonisms between the Dutch and English broke out into an open conflict. The Anglo‑Boer War lasted for three bloody years and in 1902, a peace treaty ended the war on terms more or less dictated by the English. However, the peace accord did grant the Afrikaners some conces­sions in the area of cultural equality.

Seven years later, an act of the English parliament joined the four provinces (Cape, Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal) into a Union of South Africa. However, it allowed all but the Cape Province to independently determine eligibility for voting. In the Cape, Coloureds continued to vote and some `natives’ retained the fran­chise.

One observer has suggested that the Act of Union was motivated in large part by the Bambaata Rebellion which had shaken white confidence, if not white rule, in 1906. Bambaata, a chief of the Zondi tribe of Zululand, led an armed revolt against European rule. He and his followers relied on guerrilla tactics and enjoyed a short-lived suc­cess. The rebellion cost the English authorities over $5 million. After they killed Bambaata, they beheaded him and took photographs of soldiers hold­ing the head as a display of how the `civilized’ British dealt with the `uncivilized’ Africans. (Frank Talk, July‑August 1984: 10)

No Sizwe has suggested that the defeat marked the end of any serious possibility of a military challenge to white rule and subsequent efforts would either be religious or assimila­tionist in nature. While religious sen­timents “kept alive the belief that Af­rica belongs to the Africans and that the land should be returned,” they sel­dom took a “directly political” form. This left the field open for efforts by various ‘elites’ to try to secure their own political rights and freedoms with­in the framework of a European domina­ted society.

Because of the manner in which they had accepted Christian teach­ings (non‑violence, non‑resistance to established authority, etc.), ….this class of people adopted the political methods of petition, deputation, and remonstrance and were steadfastly opposed to all talk of civil disobedience or vio­lent resistance.  None the less their political and ideological views represented the wave of the future and were to determine the organized political thought and action of the oppressed for the next few decades. (No Sizwe: 45‑46)

In his book on African liberation movements, Basil Davidson tried to describe those `elites’:

They are hard to label. The term `elites’, although they often used it about themselves, is far from satisfactory, partly because it has tended to become a mere term of abuse, and partly because these groups were far from being the `chosen ones’ of early imperialist preference. Yet it is also true that they tended to see themselves as the `chosen ones’ of history, as those who were to be the instru­ments of applying the European model to Africa, and therefore as the saviours of the continent. … Perhaps they can best be called the `Western‑educated few.’ (149)

Thus, the South African Native National Congress (later to become the African National Congress) was formed in 1912 at a meeting of tribal chiefs in Blomfontein as the culminating ef­fort of a number of earlier provincial efforts. Callinicos summarized its approach:

The SANNC aimed to speak to the government on behalf of the Afri­can people, demanding equal rights and justice for all. One of its first actions was to present a pe­tition asking the government to stop the Land Act. The petition was politely received but it failed to change the law. Other petitions followed ‑ to the Brit­ish government, to the Peace Con­ference in Paris after World War I, and several to the Prime Minis­ter. (92)

The Land Act was designed to systema­tically divide the nation’s land in a way that would ensure white ownership and possession of the largest share. Its passage and implementation were likely regardless of the resistance offered. More important than the de­feat for No Sizwe, however, was the acceptance by the educated elite of the ideological consequences of their sepa­ration into Africans, Asians and Col­oureds. Those consequences included the notions of race, culture and language as appropriate grounds for political organization. As a result, the elites “inevitably formed organiz­ations which catered for disabilities felt to be peculiar to the groups from which they themselves originated.” (47)

So while the SANNC was preoccupied with questions of land rights, the Afri­can Political Organization conducted its affairs in the hope that it might persuade the government to alter its policies limiting the educational and business opportunities for Coloureds. And, during the same period, the Natal Indian Congress, organized by Mahatma Gandhi, pressed its concerns about the threat of repatriations to India and the difficulties encountered by Indian travellers. Beyond the “one common plank…for the extension of the franchise to the oppressed,” the groups concerned themselves exclusively with their `own’ problems. (47)

The first exception to this pat­tern was the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union of South Africa (ICU). It was founded by Clements Kadalie and a handful of others in 1919. Origin­ally a dockworkers union in Cape Town, it eventually claimed a national member­ship of 100,000 including both African and Coloured members. The West Indian historian and activist, C.L.R. James, assessed its early years:

Without any help in finance, exper­ience or encouragement, suffering persecution and arrest, these built a movement which matured in strikes, demonstrations and bat­tles with the police, while white South Africa watched its incred­ible growth with alarm. (83)

With the coming to power of the white ­worker/Afrikaner Pact Government in 1924, official persecution escalated and while the union continued to grow, the assaults and lack of support began to take a toll. After 1926, a combin­ation of internal disagreements (espec­ially about the role of white Commun­ists within the union), a lack of organization and continued government per­secution led to a dramatic decline. In 1938, James wrote, “Today, the two sec­tions are but a shadow of the early ICU, and Kadalie keeps a cafe in Port Elizabeth, where formerly the workers had been shot down demonstrating for his release.” (85)

The Modern Movement

While organized opposition was not active during the last years of the 1920’s and the early ones of the 30’s, many individuals, clustered around vari­ous socialist and communist groups, con­tinued to meet and to discuss ways of fighting white rule. Of greater signi­ficance, however, than these efforts of the left was the establishment of the All‑African Convention (AAC) in 1936. This group pulled together individuals who had been in the ANC, in the ICU, and other smaller groups. In addition, it specifically accepted Coloured and Indian, as well as African, individuals as members.  Basil Davidson reports that:

Dr. G.H. Gool made history at the launching of a new organization to promote unity among moderates and radicals, the All‑African Conven­tion. This Convention, he argued, should go beyond the tinkerings of reformism. It should `lay the foun­dations of a national liberation movement to fight against all the repressive laws of South Africa.’ (185)

While the African National Congress was briefly part of the Convention, it soon left to pursue a strategy of limited cooperation with governmental institu­tions. Opposition to such cooperation had been the central political plank of the AAC and it would have been imposs­ible for the ANC to remain.

In retrospect, the ANC’s decision to abandon the option of non‑collabora­tion and to pursue a strategy of partic­ipation in the government’s segregated representative bodies probably set the stage for several more decades of sepa­rate activity against the government. This was in spite of the fact that a concrete example of successful non­-collaboration occurred during the Sec­ond World War. After the government established a Coloured Affairs Depart­ment (CAD) in 1941, an Anti‑CAD Move­ment arose and it denied the govern­ment’s plan any success. (No Sizwe: 55) To some extent, that victory was probably due to the disarray in the government resulting from the breakdown of the United Party coalition, the subsequent repression of the Afrikaner opposition and the advances made by Coloured and African workers in the wartime economy.

Nonetheless, the victory did leave an organizational legacy ‑ the Non‑Euro­pean Unity Movement.  That movement’s approach was summarized in a 1951 docu­ment:

Who constitutes the South African nation? The answer to this ques­tion is as simple as it would be in any other country. The nation consists of the people who were born in South Africa and who have no other country but South Africa as their homeland. They may have been born with a black skin or with a brown one, a yellow one or a white one; they may be male or female; they may be young, middle-­aged or of an advanced age; they may be short or tall, fat or lean; they may be long‑headed or round-­headed, straight-haired or curly­-haired; they may speak Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho, English or Afrikaans, Hindi, Urdu or Swahili, Arabic or Jewish; they may be Christians, Mohammedans, Buddhists or of any other faith. … All that is re­quired for a people to be a nation is community of interests, love of their country, pride in being citizens of their country. (No Sizwe: 56)

This almost over‑stated insistence on the subjectivity of national iden­tity was part of a determined attempt to reject any notion that there existed any biological/natural or even cultural reasons for groups in South Africa to organize independently of each other. It was an Africanism of a new kind ‑ an Africanism that expanded to include all those who chose to be included. Such sentiments were bound to have an effect on the members of the ANC, which was the largest single political force oper­ating in opposition to the racist polic­ies of the government. One of the first indications of such an effect was the formation of the ANC Youth League in 1944. At first, the younger members were hoping to promote an increased level of active opposition to the government’s policies. They proposed direct action campaigns against the government and such proposals even­tually bore fruit in the mounting of the `Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign’ in the early 1950’s.

At the same time, however, many of the Youth League members began develop­ing a different political and social vision than that held by the senior members of the ANC. One spokesperson for this new viewpoint, A.M. Lembede, wrote in 1946 that:

Africans are one. Out of the heterogeneous tribes, there must emerge a homogeneous nation. The basis of national unity is the nationalistic feeling of the Afri­cans, the feeling of being Afri­cans irrespective of tribal connec­tions, social status, educational attainment or economic class. This nationalistic feeling can only be realized in and interpret­ed by a national movement of which all Africans can be members. (No Sizwe: 58)

While these sentiments were consider­ably more Africanist than those which the ANC had traditionally subscribed to and while they implied a somewhat dif­ferent attitude towards white participa­tion in the movement, they nonetheless left firmly intact the notion that separate groups would have to pursue separate interests. Lembede had gone on to say:

Cooperation between Africans and other non‑Europeans on common problems and issues may be highly desirable. But this occasional cooperation can only take place between Africans as a single unit and other non‑Europeans as sepa­rate units. Non‑European unity is a fantastic dream which has no foundation in reality. (No Sizwe: 58)

Eventually, the differences between some of the Youth League’s members and the parent organization grew so pro­nounced that a new, independent organ­ization ‑ the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) ‑ split away in 1958.

But before that happened, several important chapters in the history of South Africa were written.  Foremost among them was the proclamation of apartheid as the official government policy. In 1948, a re‑united Afrikaner Nationalist Party had won a parliament­ary majority on an explicit promise to install a thorough‑going and rigid sys­tem of white racial superiority. While white supremacy had always been the un­written law of the land and while many legislative acts had codified racial inequality, apartheid was designed to insure that there would be no loopholes in the fabric of white power. The early years of apartheid set the stage for a renewal of popular protest.

The ANC launched its new program of protest actions in May of 1950. When the first protests were met by police opposition and resulted in eighteen deaths, the ANC called for a day of mourning on June 26th. Ever since, that day has been celebrated as South African Freedom Day.  And on June 26th of 1952, the `Defiance Campaign’ was begun. People openly violated laws enforcing segregated public facilities in a fashion very similar to the method which the Civil Rights movement in the United States would use almost ten years later. Thousands went to jail and a new period of opposition to white supremacy was ushered in.

The Freedom Charter

In 1955, the ANC called for a Con­gress of the People to be held on Free­dom Day near Johannesburg. A large meeting overwhelmingly adopted the Freedom Charter, probably the single most influential document of the liber­ation movement. The Charter not only opposed the current state of affairs in the country but also held out a vision of a new society. Under a clause head­lined, `The people shall govern,’ the delegates proclaimed that:

Every man and woman shall have the right to vote for and to stand as a candidate for all bodies which make laws; all people shall be en­titled to take part in the admin­istration of the country; the rights of the people shall be the same, regardless of race, colour or sex; all bodies of minority rule, advisory boards, councils and authorities shall be replaced by democratic organs of self-­government.

And, under a clause titled `All nation­al groups shall have equal rights,’ they declared:

There shall be equal status in the bodies of state, in the courts and in the schools for all national groups and races; all people shall have equal right to use their own languages, and to develop their own folk culture and customs; the preaching and practice of nation­al, race or colour discrimination and contempt shall be a punishable crime; the people shall share in the nation’s wealth! All apart­heid laws and practices shall be set aside. (See The Freedom Charter)

The Charter was ratified by the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress, the South African Coloured Peoples’ Organization, the Congress of Democrats (composed of individuals of European descent) and the South African Congress of Trade Unions. Since that time, those organ­izations have been more or less united in the Congress Alliance although the ANC is, in effect, the umbrella organ­ization. A year after the adoption of the Charter, over a hundred leaders of those groups were arrested and charged with treason. Their trial lasted for four years and, even though they were eventually acquitted, the ability of the organizations to function openly was severely restricted.

The PAC

In spite of the ANC’s conviction that the Charter represented a mile­stone in the South African struggle, its adoption brought to a head many of the long‑standing disputes between some of the Youth League members and the par­ent organization. These disputes prin­cipally revolved around the role of white opponents to apartheid in the policy‑making of the Congress Alliance. Youth Leaguers specifically charged that the Charter reflected the polit­ical views of the South African Commun­ist Party.

At the inaugural convention of the PAC, Robert Sobukwe, one of its early leaders, argued that:

We wish to emphasize that the free­dom of the African means the free­dom of all in South Africa, the European included, because only the African can guarantee the es­tablishment of a genuine democracy in which all men will be citizens of a common state and will live and be governed as individuals and not as distinctive national groups.

Therefore, he said:

We reject both apartheid and so­-called multi‑racialism as solu­tions to our socio‑economic prob­lems. Apart from the number of reasons and arguments that can be advanced against apartheid, we take our stand on the principle that Afrika is one and nobody, I repeat, nobody has the right to balkanize our land.

In other words, the PAC was charging that the Freedom Charter had, in ef­fect, endorsed one of the ideas essen­tial to apartheid ‑ the idea that there were different legitimate national or racial groups.  Instead,

Against multi‑racialism we have this objection, that the history of South Africa has fostered group prejudices and antagonisms, and if we have to maintain the same ex­clusiveness, parading under the term of multi‑racialism, we shall be transporting to the new Afrika these very antagonisms and con­flicts. Further, multi‑racialism is in fact a pandering to European history and arrogance. It is a method of safeguarding white inter­ests, implying as it does, propor­tional representation irrespective of population figures.  In that sense it is a complete negation of democracy. To use the term `multi‑racialism’ implies that there are such basic insuperable differences between the various national groups here that the best course is to keep them permanently distinctive in a kind of democrat­ic apartheid. That to us is ra­cialism multiplied, which probably is what the term connotes. (No Sizwe: 116‑117)

There was a good deal of bitter­ness in the disputes and much of it re­mains to this day. In the early years of the PAC’s existence, its hostility towards the ANC’s relationship to com­munism was usually intended to be a criticism of the ANC’s relationship to the Communist Party but, at other times, it represented a more general philosophical/political critique. In any case, the PAC itself eventually developed a political stance that also foresaw a socialist solution to the South African situation. Indeed, when the PAC won the favor of the Communist Party of China, it became a proponent of the notion that the ANC was the hopeless captive of a Moscow‑dominated, `revisionist’ CP and was, therefore, not `communist’ enough.

Sharpeville and Sabotage

One of the earliest indications of the organizational rivalry came in 1960. The ANC had planned a major cam­paign against the pass laws ‑ to begin at the end of March. But a little more than a week before the planned starting date, the PAC initiated its own `pass­ive resistance’ campaign.  At Sharpe­ville, a Black township near Johannes­burg, hundreds of PAC supporters were attacked by the police and many were killed or wounded, “most of whom, characteristically, were hit in the back while running away.” (Davidson: 269) 

Moves and counter‑moves came fast and furious. Sobukwe and other PAC leaders were jailed.  Protests occurred throughout the country. On March 30, the government declared a state of emergency. Two thousand ANC members were detained and many thousands more were arrested and imprisoned. On April 8, the ANC and PAC were declared `unlaw­ful organizations.’  The leaders of those organizations who had escaped ar­rest went underground and began prepa­rations for what eventually became a clandestine strategy of selective sabotage.

But, before those chapters were written, apartheid’s strategists changed some of the rules of the game. In a 1961 referendum, white voters approved the establishment of a repub­lic, thereby severing all ties with England.  Votes were cast largely along the lines of the language groups ‑ Afrikaners voting for the republic and English‑speakers against. Such a `declaration of independence’ allowed the government an even freer hand in the implementation of its policies.  England would no longer serve as a court of last resort for the grievances of apartheid’s victims.

Nonetheless, the ANC’s armed strug­gle strategy was carefully calculated to exploit the broader international reaction to the events at Sharpeville. Protests had taken place in many coun­tries and large amounts of capital had been withdrawn from the country in the aftermath. In addition to its police/ military crisis, the South African government was thrown into a serious financial dilemma. Without inter­national support and investment, the house of cards trembled.

The ANC hoped to shake the table sufficiently that the house would fall down. In a 1964 trial for sabotage and conspiracy, Nelson Mandela was quite frank about the ANC’s perspective:

    The initial plan was based on a careful analysis of the politi­cal and economic situation of our country. We believed that South Africa depended to a large extent on foreign capital and foreign trade. We felt that planned de­struction of power plants, and interference with rail and tele­phone communications, would tend to scare away capital from our country, make it more difficult for goods from the industrial areas to reach the seaports on schedule, and would in the long run be a heavy drain on the eco­nomic life of the country, thus compelling the voters of the coun­try to reconsider their position. Attacks on the economic lifelines of the country were to be linked with sabotage on government buildings and other symbols of apartheid. These attacks would serve as a source of inspiration to our people. In addition, they would provide an outlet for all those people who were urging the adoption of violent methods and would enable us to give concrete proof to our followers that we had adopted a stronger line and were fighting back against government violence. In addition, if mass action was successfully organized, and mass reprisals taken, we felt that sympathy for our cause would be roused in other countries, and that greater pressure would be brought to bear on the South African government. (Woods: 37‑38)

Remarkably, that strategy had lit­tle or nothing to say about the devel­opment of a mass popular movement with­in South Africa itself. Indeed, to the extent that the sentiments of the peo­ple inside are considered, it is large­ly a consideration of persuading them that the ANC has become sufficiently militant ‑ presumably to retain their loyal support in the face of challenges from forces such as the PAC. Internal protest, as such, was to be subordin­ated to the cultivation of internation­al outrage. Selected sabotage and the establishment of a world‑wide network of support became the defining charac­teristics of the ANC’s organizing work for almost two decades. And judged by the effectiveness with which the ANC carried out those tasks, its strategy must be deemed a success. What remains problematical is the relationship that such successes had to the development of the internal movement.

Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, has successfully attacked some of the most sensitive military and economic institutions of the South African state. While the government spared no expense in protecting its institutions or in infiltrating the ANC, it was not able to put a halt to those attacks ‑ at least not until it concluded a series of accords with the Angolan and Mozambican governments (in 1984) which effectively denied the ANC the rear bases that it had been relying on. 

At the same time that the ANC won world‑wide recognition and support, the South African regime enjoyed con­siderable success in carrying off its plans throughout the 1960’s (a boom period for the South African economy) ‑ at least insofar as that could be meas­ured by the level of popular activity against it. In 1962, its security for­ces captured Mandela and he was later sentenced to life imprisonment along with other ANC leaders.

The booming economy also allowed the government to expand its armed forces ‑ in spite of some half‑hearted international attempts to frustrate such an expansion.

The military budget rose from an equivalent of $62 million in 1960 to $168 million in 1962. In 1963 the UN sought to apply an arms embargo. This being ineffective, it was followed by further pur­chases of foreign equipment; in 1964 the military budget stood at $375 million. An arms industry sprang into being, operating chiefly on licenses obtained from a variety of Western Powers; in 1972 the military budget climbed to $479 million, in 1973 to $691 million, and afterwards to more again. (Davidson: 368)

Not even the independence of the nearby countries of Zambia, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland between 1964 and 1967 made much of a dent in the appar­ent ability of the white regime to consolidate its power. Indeed, it eventually adopted some elements of ‘independence’ into its own internal program. In 1963, the legislature approved the Transkei Constitution Act and paved the way for the `indepen­dence’ of that bantustan thirteen years later.

Black Consciousness

A renewal of collective internal resistance to apartheid seemed a dis­tant prospect when a dispute broke out in the National Union of South African Students in 1968 (NUSAS). But, in many ways, the origins of the characteristic ideas and demands of the contemporary popular movement inside South Africa can be discovered in the establishment of the South African Students Organ­ization (SASO) in 1969 as an indepen­dent Black group. Prior to that year, Black college students had joined NUSAS, a federation dominated by white English‑speaking students from liberal universities. But when NUSAS did not respond to SASO’s demands for a new kind of relationship between Black and white students, SASO withdrew. Ironic­ally, this development was first welcomed by the educational authorities since they imagined that it would contribute to a consolidation of the ethnic consciousness that so much of state policy was designed to foster. (Biko,156‑158)

SASO was the first organized ex­pression of what has come to known as the Black Consciousness Movement. Its most prominent early spokesperson, Steve Biko, described Black Conscious­ness thus:

Basically Black Consciousness di­rects itself to the black man and to his situation, and the black man is subjected to two forces in this country. He is first of all oppressed by an external world through institutionalized machin­ery and through laws that restrict him from doing certain things, through heavy work conditions, through poor pay, through diffi­cult living conditions, through poor education, these are all external to him.  Secondly, and this we regard as the most impor­tant, the black man in himself has developed a certain state of alien­ation, he rejects himself precise­ly because he attaches the meaning white to all that is good, in other words he equates white with good. (Woods: 188, emphasis added)

As a result of this direction, the Black Consciousness Movement developed a two‑track strategy ‑ on the one hand, opposing the institutions of apartheid, and at the same time building institu­tions designed to promote Black pride, self‑consciousness and solidarity. Although the roots of black conscious­ness lay among students, it was not long before their ideas found accept­ance in a more general audience.  In 1971, the Black People’s Convention proclaimed:

The object of the Organization is to unite the South African Blacks into a Black Political Movement which would seek to realise their liberation and emancipation from both psychological and physical oppression. The Convention shall operate outside the White Govern­ment created systems, structures and/or institutions, and shall NOT seek election into these. (Black Peoples’ Convention: 13, emphasis in original)

The proponents of black conscious­ness intended the term ‘black’ to in­clude not only Africans, but also Col­oureds and Asians ‑ all those who were oppressed by apartheid. In that sense, their ideas represented a return to some of the notions of the Non‑European Unity Movement but with a new insist­ence that such unity would be forged in common activity rather than by formal analyses of the situation. In the thirty plus years in between, enough had changed in South Africa to make that common activity a genuine possibil­ity.

Black consciousness’ challenge to the hegemonic position of the ANC with­in the organized liberation movement came to international attention in the aftermath of the Soweto uprising of 1976. I will be describing that event and its significance below. For the moment, suffice it to say that the rap­id pace of events within South Africa demanded that the ANC reformulate much of its theoretical and practical agen­da. On the one hand, it was determined to ward off the upstarts of the black consciousness tendency and, on the other, needed to capitalise on the evi­dently profound shifts in mass senti­ment.

The ANC launched a major campaign to recruit those who fled the country, provided many of them with military training, expanded the targets of its sabotage campaign and began hinting that the day was not too long off when sabotage would be replaced by forms of guerrilla warfare.  But, it also turned to the task of creating an organiza­tional infrastructure within the coun­try ‑ no easy task since it remained an `unlawful organization’ and anyone associated with it was liable to ar­rest.

Meanwhile, the black consciousness organizations got their first exper­ience of sustained governmental repres­sion. Steve Biko was detained and mur­dered while in police custody. The South African Students Organization and the Black People’s Convention were banned. Many activists left the coun­try and many were successfully recruit­ed by the ANC. The arrests and exiles were severe blows to the internal move­ment. However, in an apparent reversal of previous patterns, the arrests and exiles did not produce a vacuum inside the country. Much of the reason for this can be attributed to a series of organizational decisions of the black consciousness groups.

During his trial, Steve Biko had been asked why he had not run for re­election to the presidency of SASO in 1971.  He replied that:

Our belief was essentially that we must attempt to get people to iden­tify with the central core of what is being said rather than with in­dividuals. We must not create a leadership cult.  We must central­ize the people’s attention onto the real message. (Woods: 223)

That `real message’ of black con­sciousness found its way into the town­ships, factories and mines of South Af­rica through a multiplicity of organizational forms ‑ many of which no longer exist.  In comparison to the ANC, the black consciousness activists were in the country, were not necessarily prom­inent and were experienced in naviga­ting the actually existing political space inside the country. They were not, however, as politically sophisti­cated as the ANC cadre and had far less in the way of external theoretical and propaganda resources. As a result, much of the international theoretical debate took place with the black con­sciousness position represented by an empty chair.

For example, in 1979, an article in The African Communist, a publication of the South African Communist Party, criticized Biko’s ideas in particular:

Biko’s argument is that the inte­gration of the races is a trap, that it enables white participants to salve their uneasy consciences without losing any of their white privileges, and at the same time prevents the black participants from asserting themselves. Per­haps so, if the reference is to those `tea‑parties at home’ type of liberals only. But what of other attempts at integration ‑ the non‑liberal attempts, the rad­ical attempts made for example by the African National Congress to build up an alliance with indepen­dent white organizations in what came to be called `The Congress Alliance’?…. Or the most radical ‑ and long‑lasting ‑ example of racial integration achieved and maintained for over fifty years by the Communist Party? On all this, Biko is silent. (“Fallen Among Liberals:: 22‑23)

Although Biko had not, in fact, specifically addressed the role of the ANC or the South African Communist Par­ty in the article being criticized, it is quite clear that he intended his com­ments on integration to include both the ANC and the Communist Party. He had written:

We are concerned with that curious bunch of non‑conformists who ex­plain their participation in nega­tive terms: that bunch of do‑good­ers that goes under all sorts of names ‑ liberals, leftists, etc. These are the people who argue that they are not responsible for white racism and the country’s `inhumanity to the black man.’ These are the people who claim that they too feel the oppression just as acutely as the blacks and therefore should be jointly in­volved in the black man’s struggle for a place in the sun. In short, these are the people who say that they have black souls wrapped up in white skin.

        …..

Nowhere is the arrogance of the liberal ideology demonstrated so well as in their insistence that the problems of the country can only be solved by a bilateral ap­proach involving both black and white. This has, by and large, come to be taken in all serious­ness as the modus operandi in South Africa by all those who claim they would like a change in the status quo. Hence the multi­racial political organizations and parties and the `nonracial’ stu­dent organizations, all of which insist on integration not only as an end goal but also as a means.

        …..

Does this mean that I am against integration? If by integration you understand a breakthrough into white society by blacks, an assim­ilation and acceptance of blacks into an already established set of norms and code of behaviour set up by and maintained by whites, then YES I am against it.

        ….

If on the other hand by integra­tion you mean there shall be free participation by all members of a society, catering for the full ex­pression of the self in a freely changing society as determined by the will of the people, then I am with you. (I Write What I Like: 19‑26)

The debates and opposing approach­es of the ANC and the Black Conscious­ness organizations represent the two main political currents within the South African movement and we will return to them below.

Soweto

The 1976 rebellion in Soweto, the sprawling Black township outside Jo­hannesburg, signalled to the world the existence of a new militance and deter­mination in the struggle against white supremacy. While it had been preceded some three years earlier by a wave of Black strikes which had actually nar­rowed the wage gap between white and Black workers, those events escaped widespread international attention. Soweto was different.

The government’s Department of Bantu Education had announced that the language of instruction in all Bantu (African) schools in Transvaal would have to be Afrikaans. In response, students in Soweto organized a school boycott. It led to a direct clash with the police:

…the school children’s demonstra­tion in Soweto on the 16th June 1976 was the outcome of a sustained protest against compulsory instruction in Afrikaans….when 15,000 students conducted a protest march to Orlando Stadium, they were intercepted by police who opened fire on them, the first victim being the thirteen‑year old martyr, Hector Petersen.  (Mafeje: 18)   

Eventually, the students called on the older residents of the townships to join in their struggle by refusing to work. And, in spite of some initial mistrust, workers did just that at the end of August.  In Johannesburg, close to 80% of the Black workers struck for three days.

At that point, the police turned to the exploitation of internal differ­ences among the township residents. In Soweto, police encouraged migrant work­ers, housed in a hostel which had been set on fire by students angry at the refusal of the workers to cooperate with the strike, to attack the stu­dents. On August 24th, the second day of the strike, approximately a thousand migrant workers grabbed whatever weap­ons they could and began threatening students and their supporters. Over the next two days, twenty‑one Soweto residents were killed and over a hun­dred wounded by the migrant workers.

These same migrant workers joined a later work stoppage in September, when they were approached beforehand by the students, but their actions in August brought to the fore a central difficulty facing those combatting the authorities. Why would people who are among the most oppressed (and few are worse off in the townships than the migrant workers) allow themselves to be used to defend the very system that was responsible for their suffering? Mafeje has argued that the actions of the migrant workers can only be under­stood in terms of their precarious per­sonal positions, their self‑identif­ication as Zulus and the on‑going ideo­logical and practical activities of Gatsha Buthelezei, the officially re­cognized Chief of the Zulu people. While the attacks by the hostel dwel­lers might not have been promoted or sanctioned by Buthelezei’s organiza­tion, Inkatha kaZulu, they fit into a pattern of such actions wherein the Zulus or some other tribal group are portrayed as acting to protect their tribal interests and opposed to the efforts of those who would unite them with other Blacks.

In spite of the setbacks produced by these internal conflicts, the up­surge quickly spread across the coun­try. While the initial protests in Soweto were in response to an issue that only directly affected African students in the Transvaal, within a couple of months thousands of others not so affected had joined in. So much so that one leaflet issued in Soweto was urging students in that township not to let down their allies in Cape Town who had brought the challenge to apartheid into the city of Cape Town:

Countrymen, the liberatory struggle has brought a new base, namely, the shattering of the myth that the Coloureds are more white than black. The killing of many of them in Cape Town and their stand, together with their African brethren to rock the centre of the oldest city, that symbol of white occupation of our country ‑ Cape Town ‑ is the greatest victory and marks another step in the develop­ment of a people, namely, common oppression irrespective of degree of intensity has been at last re­cognised by the Black man. Divide and Rule has been dealt its death blow.

Johannesburg or Soweto, the Capital and the supposed centre of this national drive, has already lagged behind the countryside. … Are we made of a different metal from them?  Surely not, they are mortals like ourselves. But their discontent about the present oppressive structure has made them bold. They burnt buildings, they took possession of what was force­fully raped from them a few centur­ies ago……

Police reinforcements were called as far afield as Johannes­burg. Therefore we are in the process of selling out the coun­tryside, which we have stirred to revolt, only two months ago. For we fail to keep busy our local police and soldiers to such an extent that they are free to plun­der elsewhere. Countrymen, this is not yet the time to retreat. (No Sizwe: 195)

It is probably difficult to over­estimate the impact on the apartheid authorities of the young peoples’ will­ingness to confront their armed might. For years, the police had ruled through intimidation, brutality and arbitrary arrest. And the everyday subservience that had been exacted from the masses of Black people had convinced them that such practices were effective. Now, it all seemed to be falling apart. (See Andre Brink, A Rumour of Rain for a remarkable portrait of the white mind‑set in the days before Soweto). The typical police response was to shoot first and ask no questions:

….. it became common practice for the police to shoot student demonstrators at will.  Indeed, in the inquiry conducted by the Cil­lie Commission, the police admit­ted to having used 50,000 rounds of ammunition against student demonstrators ….. and to having killed a total of 284 and injured about 2000. The press, including the pro‑Government Afrikaans news­papers, thought that this was a gross underestimation and that probably the actual figure was thrice as high. While casualties among the police were nil, it is obvious that the police suffered a tremendous shock at the hands of the students who would not be cowed by the usual show of force.  (Mafeje: 18)

As with many other moments of mass popu­lar outrage, few had anticipated that Soweto was in the making. While the ANC subsequently attempted to claim much of the organizational credit for the outburst, it was quite clear that there was little evidence to back that up. Indeed, one internally‑based activist specifically criticised the ANC’s approach in September of 1976:

The former South African National Congress should stop misguiding the world, that all achievements done by the black people of South Africa are performed through in­fluences, this not correct its chief officials had skipped the country so, they don’t feel the present pinch, how can they claim the latest existence of riots, where were they when children complained about Sister language ‑ Afrikaans! Children must be given their own phame for breaking the `ICE’! The book containing the latest activities should be writ­ten and be used as a textbook throughout the oncoming black schools in South Africa. (No Sizwe: 192)

Book or not, the young people of South Africa learned a great deal from the experience of 1976.  And, in many ways, they learned it without the help of most of the formally organized lib­eration movement. Mafeje has noted that many of the activists were not aware of the formal positions of those organizations and were typically not aware of the differences that existed among them.  In the townships, individ­uals professed membership in one or more of the black consciousness groups but membership was apparently quite fluid and organizational growth was not accorded any special priority. (Mafeje)

The New Apartheid

Soweto demonstrated to the world that repression had not extinguished the desire for freedom and justice in the people of South Africa. While some greeted that news with jubilation, others packed their bags to come to the assistance of the government in the de­velopment and implementation of what can only be described as a counter­revolutionary strategy.

To have any hope of success, such a strategy demanded a new labor policy, a new approach to domestic collabora­tors, a revamped governmental struc­ture, a re‑worked consensus among whites, a new balancing act in the whole of southern Africa and a new cultivation of international sympathy and support. A tall order in quiet times. An almost impossible order in southern Africa in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

For the rebellions of 1976 had fol­lowed, with noticeable speed, the de­feat of Portuguese colonialism in An­gola and Mozambique. The liberation movements now had bases of support on the doorstep of South Africa. But, more importantly, the rebellions had also followed the defeat of a South African invading army in late 1975 by the new government of Angola with the aid of Cuban troops. One can interpret the successes in Angola and Mozambique not only in terms, therefore, of the rising expectations that they might have encouraged among the people of South Africa but also in terms of a developing realization that the regime was vulnerable. But, the lessons were there for the learning by both sides in the South African struggle. The regime wasted little time in applying itself to the task.

Labor Policy

The revision of apartheid labor policy is summarized and symbolized by the Riekert and Wiehahn reports issued in 1979. The first of the two declared that “discriminatory measures should be avoided as far as possible by not draw­ing any distinction on the ground of race, colour or sex in legislation or administration rules.” But, in case a reader might think that the report meant what it said, you can go on to read that:

Owing to the potential extent and the nature of the migration of Blacks (Africans) from rural areas to urban areas, serious social and sociological welfare problems will arise in urban areas in South Af­rica for both the established popu­lations in urban areas, White, Coloured, Asian and Black, and the new entrants, if the migration process is left uncontrolled. (Time Running Out: 89)

While the Commission was ratifying the fundamentals of the existing state of affairs, its recommendations were nonetheless significant. These inclu­ded freer movement for Africans already entitled to live in urban areas, a stricter enforcement of the laws a­gainst employers who hire illegal resi­dents, an easing of the most outrageous forms of everyday harassment against African individuals and a renewed emphasis on the fiction that workers from the homelands who travelled to work in `South Africa’ (now probably a million strong) were immigrant workers.

Meanwhile, the Commission of In­quiry into Labour Legislation, chaired by Nic Wiehahn, recommended that the government register independent Black unions, a number of which had estab­lished themselves since the strikes in 1973 and proposed an end to the legal reservation of jobs for certain groups. On the other hand, the com­mission did not recommend the abolition of white‑union restrictions on the employment of Blacks.

Since 1980, Black workers have been quick to take advantage of the opportunity for unionization.  Hundreds of unions have been organized through­out the country. Though there are im­portant differences among them, the unions have been united in pressing economic demands against employers, especially in the mining and industrial sectors. Differences over white par­ticipation, registration with the gov­ernment, participation in Industrial Councils, jurisdictional claims and forms of political activity have been debated quite openly. In addition, the unions have served as centers for wide­-ranging political discussion and for organizing activities outside the trade union framework. 

In December of 1985, most of the Black unions came together in a new federation, the Congress of South Af­rican Trade Unions. This congress is claiming a membership of more than 500,000.  However, several unions re­fused to join. Those refusals earned this commentary by the underground South African Congress of Trade Unions, which is affiliated with the African National Congress:

Those notable for their absence from the new federation are the Council of Unions of South Africa (Cusa)….and the small black consciousness trade union group­ing, the Azanian Confederation of Trade Unions (Azactu). Cusa and Azactu have indicated that they are anti‑racist and cannot support the ‘non‑racialism’ policy of the new federation. Sactu cannot see any substantive difference between ‘non‑racialism’ and ‘anti‑racist’ and does not feel that this should continue to keep Cusa, Azactu and others from joining the new feder­ation. (SACTU Position Paper)

But, according to partisans on the other side, the difference is indeed ‘substantive’ and is but one reflection of a fundamental cleavage in the con­temporary South African movement. 

Homelands Revisited

While unionization created expan­ded opportunities for Blacks to organize as workers rather than as members of one or another of the ethnic groups, the government has pursued its long‑ term objective of institutionalizing the homelands as subordinate, but coher­ent, political units in order to pro­mote exactly that kind of fragmented ethnic consciousness. While this as­pect of their strategy bore a certain formal resemblance to the version intro­duced as part of the apartheid master plan of the late 40’s and early 50’s, it also represented something quite different. The homelands were now intended to have some real political and economic substance ‑ not because the South African government wished the Africans well but because only such a substance held out the prospect of a class‑based alliance with forces in the African communities. This kind of alliance was new indeed.

As long ago as 1974, Gatsha Buthelezei had advised the government to take the homelands more seriously than they appeared to be doing:

If the authorities took advantage of the remoteness of a revolution from below at present, to make certain concessions and to move more quickly, the homelands would have greater potential as a basis of a future South Africa…. Even if the idea and the system are imposed, the fact that we are prepared to make serious sugges­tions should be good enough to warrant our being drawn into full participation in decision‑making on this policy.

The cost of such collaboration would be the extension of wealth and perhaps some share in power to the non‑white elites. No Sizwe insists that these changes are of great significance in un­derstanding the strategy of the apart­heid regime and of the dangers that they pose for the liberation movements.

He has argued that the package of re­forms associated with the last years of Vorster’s rule and the entire reign of Botha has been specifically designed to lay the foundation for this new class alliance in support of the existing capitalist state of affairs. In his argument, the white working class will be taught the wisdom of power-sharing with a new African bourgeoisie ‑ a bourgeoisie that the South African state, in cooperation with some sectors of the South African economy, will foster in a kind of hothouse fashion.

This African bourgeoisie will, however, be a homelands bourgeoisie. Not so much because the apartheid re­gime can’t stomach the thought of sharing economic power side by side ‑ although there is probably a good deal of that–but rather because such a bourgeois grouping is intended to pro­vide a significant material basis for the development of new forms of `nation­al’ consciousness among the citizens of the homelands. No Sizwe makes that case by reminding his readers that Afri­kaners themselves are the products of a sustained process of economic‑political‑cultural activity by people who knew what they wanted. And part of that Afrikaner consciousness was forged out of the memories of oppression suf­fered under British rule. Such memor­ies did not prevent good Afrikaners from becoming good bourgeoisie. But, are there Africans ready and willing to play the parts? The evidence is de­pressing and convincing.

The South African government has had little difficulty in finding those who, in exchange for payment and the prerogatives of local tyranny, will dance to its tune. For example, presi­dents Matanzima of Transkei and Sebe of Ciskei have run roughshod over the resi­dents of those `nations’ and have coop­erated with the South African security forces in the hunting down of suspected subversives. Sebe even sent thirty of his troops to help out in one of the South African army’s sweeps through Namibia. (Resister, October/ November, 1984: 17) And while Gatsha Buthelezei has played hard to get for the South African government by refusing to agree to `independence’ for a homeland in Zululand, he has built Inkatha into little more than a gang ‑ a gang that exacts loyalty through threats and that is prepared to do the bidding of the security forces in the disruption of popular movements and in the promotion of inter‑tribal tensions.  (See SAMRAF News & Notes, #22)

These particular individuals are not necessarily the ones who will be tapped to become members of the new class. They, nonetheless, reveal the existence of a stratum of individuals who can be persuaded that such is an appropriate destiny for them as Afri­cans in the twenty‑first century.

But, as much as No Sizwe is con­cerned about that development, he is probably even more alarmed at a variant scenario:

All class alliances in South Africa are in a state of flux at the moment. What needs to be stressed is that the development of the productive forces has now faced the dominant classes with a crystal clear historic choice: either to ally themselves with the ‘black bourgeoisie’ and the ‘white working class’ to crush the revolu­tion of the urban and rural poor in the hope that, in the ensuing period of calm and stability, they can press ahead with the balkaniz­ation and neo‑colonisation of the country; or to jettison the alba­tross of the ‘white working class’ in favour of an alliance with a petty‑bourgeois‑led black ‘nation­alist’ movement in the hope that the resultant change will stop short of shattering the basis of capitalism itself. (No Sizwe: 159)

In the latter scenario, the cru­cial question also revolves around the availability of political forces who will be expected to lead the movement to the point of political power in a unified South African state but who will go no further. Some have sugges­ted that the history of Zimbabwe in the six years since ZANU’s victory has pro­vided all the basic elements for such a solution to the South African crisis ‑ a solution that will change precious little in the lives of peasants and workers but that will have the imprima­tur of majority rule–a dismal and disappointing prospect that we will examine more closely when we explore the strategic questions dividing the South African movement in 1986.

The Whites

The regime has had little to offer its supporters in the working and mid­dle classes. Except, that is, the warn­ing that if they didn’t go along, the alternative would be worse. In 1979, P.W. Botha, then Prime Minister and now President of the Republic, advised his followers that they would have to `adapt or die.’ Some, at least, are not yet convinced that dying is the less preferable of the two.

Every announcement of a reform of old‑fashioned apartheid brought new outcries from right‑wingers. In 1982, for example, Dr. A. P. Treurnicht broke away from the Nationalists with fifteen other extreme right‑wingers in parlia­ment to form the Conservative Party of South Africa.  At the time, Treurnicht said:

We reject the idea of an open so­ciety and we oppose all political pressure to enforce integration in the social and political spheres and to bring about multi‑racialism in South Africa. (SAMRAF News & Notes, May, 1982)

Considering that no one in the National­ist Party, even the most enlightened of the `verligte’ (as the ‘liberal Afri­kaners are sometimes called), suggested anything like integration, the good doctor could be considered either crazy or far‑sighted. Three years later, the Nationalists voted to end the bans on inter‑racial marriages and moved to permit inter‑racial political organiza­tions. If Treurnicht was frantic in 1982, he must have been beside himself for much of the last two years.  But Treurnicht is not the most extreme of white politicians in these matters. To his right are the members of the Her­stigte Nasionale Parte (HNP) who more or less openly proclaim their Nazi sym­pathies. And there are white resistance groupings, like the Afrikaner Re­sistance Movement, prepared to take matters into their own hands if the government goes too far. (Africa Confidential: October 30, 1985)

The New Dispensation

In 1984, the regime turned to the white electorate for a test vote on its new apartheid. A `new dispensation’ was put forward for approval in a con­stitutional referendum. The dispensa­tion in question provided for the estab­lishment of two subordinate legislative assemblies for Coloureds and Indians and, at the same time, restructured the South African government by replacing the position of Prime Minister with a more powerful State President. Neville Alexander has argued that the consti­tutional amendments, in effect, were designed to nullify the possibility of any significant white parliamentary opposition to the Botha program:

Now the majority of whites, espec­ially the white workers are intran­sigently and paternalistically opposed to any such ‘concession’, however illusory it might be. Their racism and their fears of losing their privileged position have made them into an historical road‑block, an obstruction to even the modicum of reform which the theorists of the ruling class ac­knowledge to be necessary for sal­vaging the system. Parliament rep­resents these people. Consequent­ly, the white parliament has be­come a brake on progress as de­fined by Botha, Heunis and com­pany. Parliament, therefore, has to be stripped of this power of blocking ‘reform’ and, if neces­sary, it should be eliminated altogether. (31)

The constitutional changes were ap­proved only due to the favorable votes of the English‑speaking whites. In Afrikaner districts, the changes were defeated. There are two ways of read­ing this development. The first is as yet another confirmation of the hope­lessly racist views of the Afrikaners. That is, most of the time, hard to argue with. But, the second is as a revealing demonstration of the commit­ment of English‑speaking whites to the regime. This reading goes against the grain of much common‑sense wisdom about South Africa to the effect that the English‑speakers really are more liber­al and, in some fashion, opposed to white supremacy. But no voices in the liberation movement and very few in the entire non‑white community urged support of the new constitution as a step towards reform or abolition of apart­heid. The entire movement was united in characterizing the referendum and the `new dispensation’ as a charade.  When whites voted to support the changes, they were voting to support white rule.

Presumably grateful for the sup­port that it did have, the regime moved forward to carry through with the new legislative scheme. Elections were scheduled, on different days of course, for the Coloured and Indian assemblies.

A major governmental effort was mounted to encourage participation by various political formations, to promote the idea that there were campaigns pitting candidates against one another and, most of all, to get out the Coloured and Indian votes. On the face of it, the effort was an almost complete failure.

In spite of coercion and threats to cut off pensions for older people, no more than 20% of those eligible cast votes. Unofficial estimates put the totals at 15%. This failure can be attributed, in large measure, to a uni­ted opposition campaign conducted by all the internally based movements. While there had been some early dis­agreements over the wisdom of encour­aging whites to vote against the constitutional changes in the referendum and engaging in other forms of participa­tion that would have indicated oppos­ition to the government’s plans, the predominant strategy urged complete abstention.

But, opposition to the government did not stop at abstention. Indeed, the voting more than any other specific governmental action seemed to provoke protest. According to one white oppon­ent of the Nationalists, Di Bishop, “The reforms continue to exclude mil­lions of blacks but they have raised expectations.” (Rieder: 170) It seems more likely that, on the one hand, the reforms seemed to generate no expecta­tions at all but that, on the other, they revealed a regime desperate for an effective strategy. Perhaps, the per­ception of vulnerability emboldened those who confronted the authorities. According to Solidarity News Service, on the first day of polling at least 44 clashes between police and protesters took place. And when protests spread to the townships around Sharpeville,

The apartheid authorities were caught off guard. They banned the press from entering the area, and hospitals were not allowed to release casualty figures. It was at Sharpeville in 1960 that police fired into a fleeing crowd of people….killing 69 people. This year the `official’ death toll was 80, but other reports claimed over 300 people seriously hurt. (SAMRAF News & Notes, October, 1984)

When Botha was inaugurated, protests once again swept the country. The gov­ernment banned meetings critical of the government in most of the major cities. As it happened, this order was issued the day before the anniversary of Steve Biko’s death and there was virtually no chance that the memorial meetings would not be held. When they were, the pol­ice again resorted to shootings and tear gas to break them up.

Why did the government go to all the trouble of implementing this con­stitutional reconstruction when it fanned the flames of opposition among its own supporters and apparently did so little to activate support among the non‑white peoples? Alexander has argued that:

On the one hand, they have to con­vince middle‑class blacks that it is worth their while to ‘go in­side’; on the other hand, they have to get middle‑class and work­ing‑class whites to accept the idea of ‘sharing power’. This government strategy has been de­fined rather nicely as ‘trying to find the secret of sharing power without losing control’. The en­tire purpose of this strategy is to stabilise the capitalist system of white supremacy in South Africa after the destabilising shocks of the period 1974‑1980……..

….There can be no doubt that the elections helped to achieve the government’s purpose of accustom­ing the white electorate to the idea of sharing power….Newspaper reports, opinion polls and actual practice clearly demonstrate this.  (Alexander: 171)

In many ways, the government has attempted to develop and implement a long‑range strategy.  Not only did the government have a plan for its white supporters and another plan for develop­ing the homelands, it also had a plan for cultivating international support. But, at the same time, the people in the townships and workplaces were work­ing on some plans of their own. As is usually the case with such matters, the plans of the oppressed did not receive widespread coverage in the news media and so the rebellions of the last two years have often been greeted with surprise at the persistence and soph­istication of the rebels.

UDF and National Forum

Hundreds of groups had sprung up in the years since Soweto and their members took advantage of whatever space was opened up by the government’s actions in the legalization of unions or the promotion of political activity leading up to the legislative elec­tions. Two national opposition groups formed ‑ the United Democratic Front (UDF), claiming an affiliated member­ship of almost two million and the National Forum (NF), claiming a smaller total of 600,000. The Front was and is closely identified with the political perspective of the ANC while the Forum represents the current coalescence of the black consciousness groupings. It should be noted, however, that an im­portant component of the Forum is the Cape Action League to which Neville Alexander belongs. The League cannot be described as a Black Consciousness grouping; usually it is described as socialist.

Both groups were specifically formed to oppose the government’s at­tempt to recruit Indian and Coloured collaborators for its new legislative scheme. As mentioned above, there were some differences in approach to that effort. The Front, which openly pro­claims its multi‑racial and inter‑class character, originally intended to cam­paign among whites for a no vote on the constitutional referendum. Under pres­sure from some of its members and from the abstentionist Forum, it ultimately urged a boycott of the entire proceed­ings.

Since the success of the boycott campaign, both groupings have continued to function inside the country although their members have been subject to fre­quent arrest and other forms of harass­ment. By and large, the Front has re­ceived the lion’s share of publicity within South Africa and especially over­seas. Perhaps the only occasion when those identified with the Forum got much play in the news media occurred when members of AZAPO, the Azanian Peoples Organization, protested the vis­it of Senator Edward Kennedy in January of 1985. That brought the simmering dispute between the two tendencies into the open since Kennedy was in South Af­rica at the specific invitation of UDF members.

The UDF charged, and the ANC secon­ded the charge, that AZAPO was acting in collusion with the government since the government was also displeased with Kennedy’s visit. AZAPO responded that such a charge was nonsense ‑ that their reason for protesting Kennedy’s visit was his position as a prominent repre­sentative of imperialist interests and that any solution to the South African dilemma which would win his endorsement would be one that entrenched the rule of domestic and international capital. AZAPO insisted that Kennedy’s visit, no matter how unpleasant for the regime, would distract the movement from its central tasks. Such a response was aimed directly at drawing out the im­plications of the UDF’s character as an inter‑class formation.

The UDF could not directly con­front the AZAPO argument since it, in fact, had members who very much wanted a ‘solution’ along the lines that Ken­nedy would presumably prefer. At the same time, however, much of its mass base of support was not especially sym­pathetic to the idea that a `solution’ which eliminated the legal barbarities of apartheid but left intact the eco­nomic barbarities of life for millions of people was what they were risking their lives for. Indeed, there were some groups within the UDF that did not support Kennedy’s visit. Even one of the Front’s presidents, Oscar Mpetha (currently imprisoned), refused to share a platform with Kennedy when he addressed a UDF rally in Cape Town. Instead, their counter‑argument was that the UDF welcomed support in the struggle against apartheid from any quarter and that Kennedy had long been a forthright opponent of apartheid and, furthermore, that he could play an important role in the approval of eco­nomic sanctions by the US government.

Debate on Organization

While much of the sparring between the two tendencies continues along the lines that were first evident in the mid‑1970’s, the debate has also been recast as a debate on the proper organizational form for the South African movement. To some extent, this reflect­ed the organizational challenge to the ANC represented by the formation of AZAPO in 1978 as a new and somewhat more politically sophisticated embodi­ment of black consciousness. In an ed­itorial in Frank Talk, AZAPO hinted at some of its self‑conception:

…BC takes into account that the central problem in any struggle is to find an antidote to fear. Crushed by the realities of rou­tine, we all hesitate to partic­ipate in the liberation struggle.  We fear losing our families and friends. We fear wasting energy. AZAPO is a revolutionary movement precisely because it calls for a break with routine, because it demands sacrifice in the present for a better world in the future. No doubt the sacrifice seems real and immediate while the better world appears distant and very uncertain….We must cling to each other with a tenacity that will shock the perpetrators of evil.  (Frank Talk, July/August, 1984: 2)

Not exactly a prescription for a dues-­paying, monthly meeting, organization.

On the other hand, ANC strategists and those allied with them have articu­lated the need for a national organization to hold the reins of the movement ‑ a movement which characteristically demonstrates unrestrained spontaneity and correspondingly narrow breadth of vision. Auret Van Heerden, a member of NUSAS and of the UDF, has argued:

Precisely because most people are unaware and un-politcised, the is­sues which they see as important are likely to be local, specific grievances, which are seldom overt­ly political, and their demands are unlikely to be political or even progressive. (2)

For him, `first‑level’ or local popular organizations have to be linked togeth­er with each other and ultimately with a `second‑level’ organization which will provide coordination and political direction:

If there is not a direct link be­tween these two components of progressive activity, organizations may participate in broader national democratic struggles without the support of their members, and at the same time will not be feeding the political con­tent of those national democratic struggles back into their first­level organizations.  (Van Heerden: 22, emphasis added)

It is clear that the United Democratic Front is intended to be just that `second‑level’ organization.  And, in many ways, it has been remarkably suc­cessful. Its demands have become the rallying cries of the above‑ground move­ment in South Africa; its activities attract thousands of participants; its leaders have emerged as internationally recognized symbols of opposition to apartheid; it has earned the wrath of the government and many of its members are imprisoned ‑ presumably because of the profound threat they pose to the authorities.

But, important questions remain about its contribution to the develop­ment of the popular movement and about its plans for that movement. On behalf of the National Forum, Alexander has tried to assess the significance of the UDF:

The UDF, because of the hundreds of thousands of rands that back it, has indeed made an impact on the mass movement. Because of the deliberate government policy of harassment of leaders, banning of meetings, detentions, etc., that impact appears to be a radical one in the short term. In fact, of course, the middle‑class leadership can at any time use the tradi­tion that has been created to suit its own purposes.

Although Alexander did not tie together all the strands of the argument, I would suggest that the previously cited preoccupation with national leadership and centralised organization is in­timately connected to the class nature of the UDF. Since the UDF cannot argue that it’s important and correct for it to have middle class leadership (for reasons that parallel its inability to engage AZAPO frontally in debate over the Kennedy visit), it must instead be argued that the movement needs leader­ship and organization. The fact that such leadership and organization will be invariably provided by middle class individuals and organizations is, in that argument, an unavoidable neces­sity. At the same time, it is argued that such leadership is representing a cross‑class set of interests that are united in opposition to apartheid.

It is, of course, difficult to challenge motives. In matters such as these, class designs can only be detec­ted through an examination of specific organizational decisions and actions ‑ such as the Kennedy visit and, on a dif­ferent plane, the decision of the ANC to endorse a strategy of ungovernabil­ity for the internal movement. In an article in The Nation, Calabrese and Kendall reported that the ANC had de­cided on a strategy of “`people’s war’ aimed at turning the townships into `no‑go areas’ for white authority.” The `war’ would involve attacks on black policemen and township admin­istrators who refused to resign. While many observers have cautioned that not every attack can be credited to the ANC’s cadre or even to its influence, few have remarked on the apparent lack of concern for the development of the internal cohesion and self‑sufficiency of the township activists.

In many ways, the ANC’s approach to governability parallels its approach to the implementation of international economic sanctions and divestment campaigns. Such efforts are designed solely to exacerbate the difficulties experienced by the regime. For them, questions of internal organization have all been answered ‑ there should be trade union unity, all anti‑apartheid organizations should belong to the United Democratic Front, multi‑racial groupings are the appropriate organizational vehicle. There is, in other words, little if any need for the devel­opment of new organizational patterns which would promote both practical and theoretical activity inside South Africa. The main task for the masses is to keep up the pressure and wait for the government, or at least part of it, to yield to the combined impact of in­ternal and external pressures and to begin dealing directly with the ANC. Thus, their most inclusive political demand at the moment is a call for a national convention of representatives of different groups to discuss a trans­ition to majority rule. (SAMRAF News & Notes, #22)

In contrast, the National Forum has demanded:

…the convention of a constituent assembly elected on the basis of one person one vote, at which demo­cratically elected representatives of the nation will decide on a new constitution for Azania. The con­stituent assembly will not be a gathering of representatives of so‑called ethnic groups. It is al­so not going to be convened by the present government. It is a goal for which we shall have to strug­gle in the years ahead with even greater dedication than before. (Alexander: 39‑40)

Some will insist that the difference is not important ‑ that so long as the people’s representatives can take part in the deliberations, the outcome will be progressive. While it might be `pro­gressive’, the content of that oft‑ cited word remains elusive. The iden­tification of precise meanings and goals, so that all are prepared for unexpected consequences, is a central task facing any movement. This is es­pecially the case when a movement is torn apart by internal differences which can be manipulated by government provocateurs.

International Responsibilities

Events of the last fifteen years in South Africa have significantly in­creased the likelihood that the African National Congress will achieve its goal of `majority rule’ in the country. While we cannot predict a timetable for that achievement, the recent treks of various elite individuals and organizations from the white community in South Africa to the headquarters of the African National Congress in Zambia and the frequently reported on proclama­tions by various corporate leaders should persuade us that at least some on the two sides believe they have some things to talk about. It is also evi­denced by the extraordinary public at­tention given to Mandela. In early sum­mer of 1986, the Commonwealth Group of Eminent Persons went out of its way to characterise Mandela as perhaps the one person who could put out the rebellion raging across South Africa. And recent­ly, a prominent South African business­man suggested in The New York Times that Mandela could be South Africa’s de Gaulle. While the South African govern­ment proclaims its willingness to go it alone in the face of near‑universal condemnation from abroad, it is none­theless faced with a business commun­ity, both domestic and international, that cannot in fact go it alone and still make money.

An ANC victory would represent a remarkable addition to the post‑war wave of African liberation.  However, a political victory by the ANC should not be identified as being the same thing as the unqualified victory of all those struggling against apartheid. As this article has hopefully made clear, the ANC is not the only organized force in the field against white rule and many individuals who are not necessarily affiliated to one organization or an­other have contributed to the struggle.

Unqualified and premature endorse­ments from abroad of the apparent win­ners will make it more difficult for those who raise different views to ob­tain a full hearing for their case. And it might very well contribute to the eventual proscription of yet an­other generation of `enemies of the people’.

Instead, we should use our re­sources to support the entire libera­tion movement in South Africa and to encourage the widest possible debate among the organized, and not organized, forces in the South African move­ment. We can only provide that encour­agement if we are active in the anti­apartheid movement here because it is here in this country where we can ex­plain to others that the ANC does not stand alone. And indeed, I believe we can say, without hesitation, that the liberation movement is stronger because it includes a multiplicity of political and organizational forms.

While unity against an enemy is always desirable, premature unity around the political goals and strate­gies of one organization can lead to a victory unable to withstand the pres­sures and strains of the years after victory. For there should be no mis­take about it ‑ the determination of the United States to protect its inter­ests in southern Africa will lead it to use all of its economic and military resources to push a Black majority gov­ernment into the directions it prefers.

The new government must be able to count on the support of all of its freedom fighters. And if it is to do that, it must indeed be a government of all of the freedom fighters and not just that of the most powerful organized force.