Issue 64 of INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM JOURNAL Published Autumn 1994 Copyright © International Socialism

Bookwatch: South Africa--the struggle continues


The defeat of apartheid in South Africa was one of the greatest achievements of the working class movement in decades. It was gained by the militant struggles of black workers which forced the white regime to the negotiating table. Those struggles were a challenge to racist stereotypes and equally to the idea that the methods of strikes and demonstrations are outdated and ineffective. The African National Congress's victory in the elections in April this year has opened a new chapter in the struggle. South African workers no longer face the institutionalised racism of apartheid. Instead they confront the 'normal' racism that capitalism has created throughout the world, and the poverty, bad housing, unemployment and low wages that the bosses' system imposes.

Millions of black people voted for the ANC because they believed it would deliver on its election slogan of 'Peace, jobs and freedom'. They have found very swiftly that, although they have won political rights, other more fundamental changes will require a fight using the same methods that were used to topple apartheid.




Where the unions came from and how they were built are the subjects for several good books. Look at Dennis MacShane's Power!,1 Steve Friedman's Building Tomorrow Today2 and Jeremy Baskin's Striking Back, a history of COSATU,3 all of which have lots of useful information. Baskin leaves out some things and distorts others where the union leaders were opposed by the rank and file, but it is still a very helpful background. Friedman is right to say that the union movement has 'given powerless people a chance to yield power for the first time in their lives'.4 The modern union movement was born after a wave of strikes in 1973 centred on the area around Durban. Despite immense repression it grew, slowly, during the 1970s so that by the end of the decade it clearly posed a real potential threat to apartheid's rulers. They responded by calling for a professor to investigate the unions. His plan was an attempt to co-opt workers before their strength was too great:



Of course while nodding towards these sentiments the majority of union leaders have always argued for a tight alliance with the ANC. The second conference of COSATU adopted the ANC's Freedom Charter which was very far from being a socialist document. Most of the individual unions took the same path.

After the release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the anti-apartheid organisations in 1990 the ANC saw many strikes and protests as 'destabilising' and unhelpful in coming to a negotiated settlement with the representatives of the National Party. The union leaders were vital in helping to argue for this line--although they also had to reflect the concerns of their members and were sometimes forced to call action even when the ANC was hesitant to do so.


The first two thirds of Baskin's analysis has proved spot on. It took Nelson Mandela just a few weeks to turn from praising the unions as crucial in the defeat of apartheid to castigating militants precisely for failing to make the shift from 'resistance to nation building'. The last third of Baskin's prediction has turned out quite differently. Certainly the trade union leaders have secured an input into the plans for reconstruction. Former general secretary of COSATU Jay Naidoo is a minister in the cabinet, charged with overseeing the implementation of the Reconstruction and Development Plan. Other ex-leaders of trade unions have found similar positions.


South Africa is now an explosive mix of heightened expectations, people who have felt their power and their ability to change society during the defeat of apartheid, and a strong trade union movement. But the trade union leaders will, just like their counterparts in the rest of the world, seek to limit the struggles to the boundaries imposed by capitalism and the market. Perhaps some of the most useful reading that anyone could do about South Africa at the moment would be to look at some of the classic Marxist accounts of reformism and the trade unions. One South African trade unionist I know recently described Cliff and Gluckstein's Marxism and the Trade Union Struggle9 as 'the best book to understand what's going on now even though it's mainly about another country 70 years ago'.

How does the union movement fit into the wider history of South Africa and what forces have emerged on the left? For a very basic introduction to the country's history look at something like Apartheid: the Facts10 or The Apartheid Handbook.11 These are just beginnings but give you a sense of the inhuman nature of racism in South Africa. Much of their material is also, thankfully, out of date. The 'homelands', the forced removals and the laws assigning people to racial groups have been banished to the museum of capitalism's atrocities. But we should not forget.

For a fuller treatment there are three 'classic' histories. They are J J and R E Simons's Class and Colour in South Africa 1850-1950,12 E Le Roux's Time Longer than Rope13 and Tom Lodge's Black Politics in South Africa since 1945.14 I think Lodge's is the best account of the later period. Simons's is more centred on the working class than Le Roux--but all of them are well worth a look.

At the centre of these histories is the ANC, and the authors, although very sympathetic to the ANC's political perspectives, cannot help but show some of its deficiencies. Simons and Simons make clear how timid the early ANC was:

The ANC was radicalised by the struggles of the 1950s--the bus boycotts of Evaton and Alexandra in the mid-1950s, the campaign against the destruction of Sophiatown, the women's struggles and the beginnings of intervention in trade unions. These battles increased the pressure from below from a new generation of activists for a less deferential organisation. One indication of that was the adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955 which promised, in very general terms, to provide fundamental reform in the interests of workers and the oppressed. But Lodge makes it clear that the ANC's shift, although real, was limited:

This period also saw the emergence of an alternative reformist tradition to the ANC--the Africanist movement. They differed from the ANC leaders on two points--the role of whites and the relationship between leadership and spontaneity. Africanists believed that whites were allowed too great a role in the ANC, and they used as evidence the clauses in the Freedom Charter which guaranteed the rights and status of all 'national groups'. Without a clear statement of black leadership, they claimed, the psychological subservience of blacks would remain. Secondly, the Africanists claimed, the crucial role of an organisation was not to lead or direct the masses but simply to 'show the light' and let the masses find their own way. The Africanists, who split from the ANC to form the Pan-Africanist Congress in 1958, could often sound radical or even revolutionary. But in practice they have followed a very similar path to the ANC. If anything they have been less centred on the working class and its organisations.

For a detailed and interesting account of the battles before and during the Second World War, see Baruch Hirson's Yours for the Union, Class and Community Struggles in South Africa 1930-47.17 It gives a real sense of the fledgling attempts at union organisation and why they ultimately failed in this period despite heroic efforts. The 1960s were a low point of the South African struggle. After the banning of the ANC and the Communist Party and the arrest of many leading activists, the movement went into a deep lull. It seemed virtually impossible to hit back against such a well organised and ruthless opponent.

The Soweto rebellion of 16 June 1976, coming after the revival of the unions, showed that it was possible to fight. Two good books are Baruch Hirson's Year of Fire, Year of Ash. The Soweto Revolt18 and Denis Herbstein's White Man We Want To Talk To You.19 Hirson writes about the roots of the revolt in the growing anger among the pupils who were pushed though the school system that apartheid had developed. His is also one of the few books that looks in some detail at the Black Consciousness movement--although he still overplays the role of the ANC. Much of the impetus behind the Soweto revolt came from new organisations that had emerged during the doldrums of the 1960s: 'Its leaders spoke of black awareness and of black identity and this was a language that appealed particularly to students and intellectuals.'20

Herbstein's is a more journalistic account but what it lacks in theory it more than makes up for by conveying well the spirit of struggle. Despite the repression that followed the uprising Herbstein was far sighted enough to write that, 'After the 16 June 1976, only the most ostrich-like whites can still say that time is on their side. For the nationwide uprising constituted the first step on the long haul to black rule.'21 Nobody could read these accounts of great struggle without gaining a profound respect for the fighting power of the black workers and township residents who fought so courageously. They also prove that there is no tyranny which cannot be opposed and ultimately defeated if we use our strength.

One of the great debates on the South African left has been the precise nature of the relationship between capitalism and apartheid. The political implication was whether to form alliances with 'progressive' capitalists to destroy what was seen as a monstrously aberrant form of capitalism, or to centre on the struggles of workers against both apartheid and the bosses' system. The Marxist tradition has held that apartheid was not simply a monstrous system of racism. It had its own logic for a capitalist class which was seeking the best method to exploit South Africa's natural resources and its black workers. The full apartheid state was not established until after the 1948 election, but racial oppression has been a dominant feature in South Africa since the Dutch arrived in 1652.

There are a whole series of books and articles which were written in the 1970s to show that apartheid was indeed a product of capitalism rather than simply an irrational horror which could be cured by supporting a 'nice' capitalism. For those who want to delve deeper into South African history, these are interesting works although some of them are far from easy and assume quite a lot of knowledge.

Michael Williams's article 'An analysis of South African capitalism'22 and Martin Legassick's 'Capital accumulation and violence'23 might be in your local college library. They are now quite old but still exciting polemical writing. They insisted that the main struggle inside South Africa is between capital and labour and that this struggle would be the one that determined what happened in the future.

In the same vein a series of books showed that capitalism was the main feature of South African society from the late 19th century and that the traditional African societies had been destroyed. Look at Jeff Guy's The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom24 and Duncan Innes's Anglo American and the Rise of South African Capitalism.25



A much, much more detailed study of part of this process is found in Noel Mostert's much praised Frontiers.27 It is a huge book which if it had been half as long would have been twice as good. It tells the history of the Xhosa people of the Eastern Cape who were defeated only after a century of war. No less than nine separate campaigns were necessary to subdue the Xhosas. Mostert has dredged up every possible detail and some of it is engrossing. But too often the meandering sentences lead nowhere--or into a semi mystical evocation of the 'African spirit'. You could not read this book without finding some fascinating insights. But it is far from a priority.

Allen's book is a much better introduction and so is Eddie Webster's Cast in a Racial Mould28 which looks at how the South African working class--black and white--was created. For a vivid account of conditions at the mines and the struggle to build unions, see Laurie Flynn's Studded with Diamonds and Paved with Gold.29

One of the most brutal and violent players in South Africa has been Chief Buthelezi's conservative Inkatha organisation. It has posed, fraudulently, as the defender of Zulu speakers' interests while butchering those among the majority of Zulus who dare to support the ANC or left forces. It has worked with the apartheid government to unleash a terrible township war and still has considerable power after its fixed win in the KwaZulu-Natal region in the recent elections. L Vail's The Creation of Tribalism in South Africa30 shows that the divisions which Buthelezi and the old government played upon are not rooted in centuries of ethnic conflict but were deliberately encouraged and deepened as instruments of policy to divide and rule the oppressed and exploited. As Baskin says:


For the history and politics of the South African Communist Party, which was and remains a very significant player on the left and now boasts a clutch of cabinet ministers, see Simon Phillips's 'The South African Communist Party and the South African Working Class'33 in an earlier edition of this journal.

It will come as no surprise that I think the most useful way to understand South Africa is to read Alex Callinicos's books and articles. Reading South Africa between Reform and Revolution,34 a collection of writings over a decade, you can find particular stresses which were wrong in terms of immediate detail but the whole analysis is brilliantly sustained by its stress in three areas.


Thirdly Alex has shown that it is perfectly possible both to argue for unconditional support for the ANC's struggles against apartheid and also to insist on going much further than the ANC's bourgeois politics and the need to build a genuinely revolutionary socialist workers' party:

Alex's Between Apartheid and Capitalism37 carries interviews with six leading figures on the South African left and in the trade union movement. It shows all the arguments that were current before the end of apartheid and remain relevant today. His short introduction sets out why President de Klerk was driven to seek a political settlement with the ANC. It exposes the government and Inkatha's responsibility for the political violence which saw thousands of people shot or hacked to death during the period of 'peaceful change' after 1990. The interviews are not only about South Africa but also take up the fundamental questions facing socialists after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Is some sort of market capitalism the only way forward? In the long term can capital and labour coexist amicably so that industry expands and the welfare of the masses improves? What do we mean by socialism and how can it be achieved? Devan Pillay, the editor of Work in Progress, says:

Fortunately the workers, students and soldiers who launched an insurrection to destroy the Bophuthatswana 'homeland' before the 1994 elections, gain the right to vote and show a glimpse of what a revolution could be like, had a rather different vision of 'arenas of struggle'. Communist Party central committee member Jeremy Cronin admits, 'Although the October Revolution hasn't worked out as expected at all and reassessment is required, maybe there are other trajectories from October 1917 which we are still living out here in South Africa'.39

Alex insists throughout on the need for a socialist party, for evolution and for no reliance on other class forces. He bases himself on the tradition of 'militant abstentionism' by which he means workers' history of 'combining the development of strong workplace organisation with a refusal to take any responsibility for the management of South African capitalism'.40

One of those Alex interviews is Neville Alexander, a well known Marxist intellectual who has produced interesting work. After his release from imprisonment on Robben Island he wrote One Azania, One Nation41 on the national question and followed it with Sow the Wind42 and other works including The Language Question in South Africa.43 His latest collection, Some are more Equal than Others44 sums up his and the Workers Organisation for Socialist Action's position on current questions. These are undoubtedly interesting books which are well worth reading. They are an attempt to find an alternative to the ANC's version of national liberation and the Communist Party's vision of socialism. But they are marked by a failure to come to terms with what sort of society the Soviet Union was and the relationship between reform and revolution. Alexander virtually ignores the importance of the ANC's defeat of the National Party at the polls and has consistently argued that a military takeover is likely in the near future.



Cry Freedom is about the life and death of Steve Biko. Some critics accused the film of overplaying the role of Biko's white friend Donald Woods. But that is to miss the genuine power of the film and its total condemnation of apartheid. I was convinced of its strength during an afternoon showing in a near deserted cinema in Llanelli. Two 70 year olds who had originally entered to shelter from the rain were mesmerised almost from the first frames. At the end one turned to the other and said, 'Look at what they did to that poor black man. It's no wonder they fight, is it? I do hope they manage to win one day and get their own back.' Well, they did--and we all won with them. And they are still fighting.


  1. D MacShane, Power! (Nottingham, 1984).
  2. S Friedman, Building Tomorrow Today (Johannesburg, 1987).
  3. J Baskin, Striking Back, a history of COSATU (Verso, 1991).
  4. S Friedman, op cit, p6.
  5. Ibid, p156.
  6. J Baskin, op cit, p44.
  7. Ibid, p54.
  8. Ibid, p465.
  9. T Cliff and D Gluckstein, Marxism and the Trade Union Struggle (Bookmarks, 1986).
  10. International Defence and Aid Fund, Apartheid: the Facts (London, 1990).
  11. R Ormond, The Apartheid Handbook (Penguin, 1988).
  12. J J and R E Simons, Class and Colour in South Africa 1850-1950 (Harmondsworth, 1969).
  13. E Le Roux, Time Longer than Rope (Madison, 1972).
  14. T Lodge, Black Politics in South Africa since 1945 (Longman, 1983).
  15. J J Simons and R E Simons op cit, p621.
  16. T Lodge, op cit, p174.
  17. B Hirson, Yours for the Union (Zed, 1989).
  18. B Hirson, Year of Fire. Year of Ash (London, 1979).
  19. D Herbstein, White Man We Want to Talk to You (Harmondsworth, 1978).
  20. B Hirson, op cit, 1979, p7.
  21. D Herbstein, op cit, p229.
  22. M Williams, 'An analysis of South African capitalism', in Bulletin of the Conference of Socialist Economists, 4:1.
  23. M Legassick, 'Capital Accumulation and Violence' in Economy and Society 3:3.
  24. J Guy, The Destruction of the Zulu Kingdom (London, 1979).
  25. D Innes, Anglo American and the Rise of South African Capitalism (Johannesburg, 1982).
  26. V Allen, The History of Black Mineworkers in South Africa, vol l (The Moor Press, 1992).
  27. N Mostert, Frontiers (Pimlico, 1993).
  28. E Webster, Cast in a Racial Mould (Johannesburg, 1985).
  29. L Flynn, Studded with Diamonds and Paved with Gold (Bloomsbury, 1992).
  30. L Vail, The Creation of Tribalism in South Africa (London, 1989).
  31. J Baskin op cit, p342.
  32. Mzala, Gatsha Buthelezi, Chief with a Double Agenda (London, 1988).
  33. S Phillips, 'The South African Communist Party and the South African Working Class', in International Socialism 51.
  34. A Callinicos, South Africa Between Reform and Revolution (Bookmarks, 1988).
  35. Ibid, p193.
  36. Ibid, p194.
  37. A Callinicos, Between Apartheid and Capitalism (Bookmarks, 1992).
  38. Ibid, p59.
  39. Ibid, p78.
  40. Ibid, p152.
  41. No Sizwe (N Alexander), One Azania, One Nation (London, 1979).
  42. N Alexander, Sow the Wind (Johannesburg, 1985).
  43. N Alexander, The Language Question in South Africa (Cape Town, 1989).
  44. N Alexander, Some are More Equal than Others (Cape Town, 1993).
