National Democratic
Revolution, Part 8a
Road to South African Freedom
Among other things, we are trying, in this short series, to recover the
fact that the National Democratic Revolution, taken in full, is a project whose
origins can be found at least 90 years ago, and which has a
continuous history from that time onwards, both outside and inside South
Africa.
We are trying to trace the main steps of the NDR in South Africa and we
have consequently touched, among others, upon the Black Republic Thesis, the
Cradock Letter, the Doctors’ Pact, the Defiance Campaign, the Congress of the
People and the Freedom Charter, the Peasants’ Revolt, and now the Strategy and Tactics
document of the Morogoro, Tanzania conference of the ANC in 1969, which is our second
item in this part.
The Treason Trial that
followed the Congress of the People came to an end in 1959 with the acquittal
of all the defendants. In the same year, the African Communist magazine was
launched from exile. It was the first public manifestation of the South African
Communist Party, re-established and renamed after the banning and dissolution
of the CPSA in 1950.
Between 1959 and the 1969
Morogoro Conference, a number of things happened. New campaigns were launched, but came to an abrupt end
following the Sharpeville massacre and the banning of the ANC and the PAC
in 1960. Umkhonto we Sizwe was launched in 1961. The raid on Liliesleaf
Farm in Rivonia took place in 1963. It was a great setback to the movement.
The SACP published the Road
to South African Freedom in 1962. It is probably the first published document
of the SACP, apart from a few quarterly editions of the African Communist (the
“AC”) that had appeared up to that time.
The Road to South African
Freedom is about National Democratic Revolution. This can be seen from its
section specifically on the NDR, where the document spells out that:
“This crisis
can only be resolved by a revolutionary change in the social system which will
overcome these conflicts by putting an end to the colonial oppression of the
African and other non-White people. The immediate and imperative interests of
all sections of the South African people demand the carrying out of such a
change, a national democratic revolution…”
Things that were said and
written in those days continue to be relevant. In a document we will review
tomorrow, it is recorded that by 1928, after less than seven years of
existence, the Communist Party of South Africa had 1,750 members, and that
1,600 of them were Africans, using the classification of the time. In the 1960s
and 1970s there were struggles within the movement that were essentially about
class, but which often focused on those few members of the SACP who were white,
Indian or Coloured.
We will return to this
question in the next post. Meanwhile, let us celebrate two white comrades who
must surely have assisted with the publication of the Road to South African
Freedom: Hilda and Rusty Bernstein, pictured above.
·
The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Road to South
African Freedom, 1962, SACP: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
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