Moses Kotane
Date: May 1954.
Publication history: Published in Advance
(successor to the banned journal Guardian) on May 6 and 13, 1954, and as
a pamphlet in that same month by Competent Printing and Publishing Co. (Pty.) of
Cape Town.
Source for the transcription: South African
Communists Speak: Documents from the History of the South African Communist
Party, 1915-1980. Inkululeko (London), 1981; pages 231-242.
Publication at MIA: January 2024.
The policy of the Nationalist Government is opposed by most of the people of South Africa and condemned by democratic people throughout the world. Nevertheless, the Government is going ahead at ever-increasing speed to implement that policy.
To supply more cheap labour to farms and mines it intensifies to an unendurable extent the pass system and police terror amongst African industrial workers. It legislates to uproot tens of thousands of Non-Europeans in town and country and to destroy the fabric of their lives.
The Schoeman labour laws seek to smash free trade unionism among workers of all races. Verwoerd's measures aim at slamming the door against Africans seeking enlightened education and at conditioning their children to a serf mentality. With each new session of Parliament Swart demands new powers to ban, proscribe and intimidate all the opponents of the Nationalists; to destroy every legal and judicial safeguard against despotic government.
The Nationalists have not been halted by the feeble and half-hearted opposition they have met in Parliament. Nor, as yet, have the mass activities of the people outside Parliament reached the level where they are united and formidable enough to deter the Government from proceeding with its evil designs. These facts have led to despondency and defeatism among some of those who are opposed to the Government. They see Dr Malan and his lieutenants moving steadily towards an absolute and permanent dictatorship. They see the United Party paying the penalty for its desertion of democratic principle -visibly disintegrating. Viewing only these elements of the political scene, they begin to feel hopeless and to abandon resistance against Fascism.
In order to overcome these tendencies it is important to gain a clear understanding of the real issues involved in the people's struggle to defeat the Nationalists and to find a way forward in South Africa.
We cannot gain such a clear understanding if we ascribe the policy of the Government merely to a particular backward and reactionary ideology of the Nationalist leaders. It is true that they have such an ideology which, rejecting all humanitarian and progressive ideals, aims at imposing by brute force a crude system of White supremacy and Non-White inferiority
If this ideology of the Nationalists has found support from a section of the voters and become enthroned as the official State doctrine, it is largely because it is rooted in the basic structure of South Africa, having originated long before the Malanites won the 1948 election.
A brief analysis of this structure shows that it is characterised by:
1. The predominance of financial and gold-mining groups in alliance with the big farming interests and closely linked with British and American imperialism;
2. The amassing by these interests of vast super-profits derived from the exploitation of the Non-White masses, who are regarded purely as sources ofcheap labour They are deprived of land and democratic rights, held in a state of colonial subjection and terror and deliberately denied access to education and the benefits of civilisation;
3. The granting of numerous concessions and monopolies (e.g., of political representation, commercial opportunities, skilled trades and professions) to the European middle and working classes with a view to buying their support and maintaining some stability for this top-heavy structure.
All the basic foundations of this evil system of oppression and exploitation were laid by the successive Governments of Botha, Smuts, Hertzog, and, indeed, in the glaringly undemocratic Constitution of South Africa, the Act of Union itself.
Only under such a Constitution could so unpopular a party as that of Dr Malan, which is hated by nine-tenths of the people, become the Government of the country. Only in such a soil could the vile doctrines of apartheid and race superiority take root and flourish.
The Nationalists differ from their predecessors in the Union Government chiefly in that they are carrying the infamous system to its extreme of barbarity and ruthlessness, destroying the last vestiges of democratic rights won by the people in former days and fanning to the utmost the ugly passions of race hatred.
The choice before South Africa is not one between various methods of maintaining White supremacy : the true choice lies between suffering an increasingly brutal Fascist dictatorship on the one hand, and, on the other, emancipating the majority of the people from oppression. and serfdom in a multi-racial democracy affording equal rights and opportunities to all men and women.
During the post-war years the ruling class of South Africa has been faced with mounting difficulties. These arise from the general international crisis of capitalism in which this country is involved, and also from the marked advance in the leadership and effectiveness of the Non-European liberation movements, which have evoked keen interest and warm sympathy throughout the world. In these circumstances the capitalists turn more and more to the use of terror and force in order to maintain the colour bar system ; and the Nationalist Party has proved a useful instrument for the implementation of such methods.
The one major force which has stood up to the Government as a serious opponent of Fascism and as the defender of the rights of the South African people of all races has proved to be the national liberation movement of the Non-European peoples. Throughout the time when the liberals and the reformist trade unions have been on the retreat, abandoning one after the other the principles which they claimed to uphold, it has been the fraternal alliance of the African National Congress and the South African Indian Congress which held the fort for democracy and rallied the people to resistance.
The Defiance Campaign of 1952 was the biggest and most important mass action ever carried out by the oppressed people of South Africa. It was this campaign which showed up the General Election of 1953 as a hollow sham fight between rival oppressors. It brought the attention of all sections of the population - indeed of the whole world - to bear on the basic problems of our country, and it established the Congresses as the true spokesmen of the aims of the majority of the people of our country. As a result of this campaign the Congress movement is stronger than it has ever been.
The African and Indian organisations have been joined by an organised body of Europeans, the Congress of Democrats, which stands with them on the basis of equal rights for all. Recent events inspire the hope that the million-strong Coloured community will come forward to join in the people's alliance which is being built up.
It would be wrong, however, to overlook the weaknesses which are apparent in the ranks of the democratic people's movements, especially in the field of organisation. The Government's attempts to cripple and behead the democratic organisations have not sufficiently been countered by timely steps to select and train new leaders to replace those forced out of the struggle.
Taking advantage of the lull in general activity which occurred during 1953, all sorts of disruptive and harmful groupings made their appearance and threatened to confuse and divide the people. Here reference must be made not only to the well-known wrecking activities of such bodies as the 'Non-European Unity Movement' and the 'All African Convention', which have long been known to the people as turncoats, but also to new groupings within the Congresses themselves, who from self-seeking motives spread dissension in the ranks, using the methods of slander, racialism and even terrorism against the leaders. Such elements are being exposed and isolated.
Groupings like this are only able to form and to show themselves because of internal shortcomings and weaknesses. A greater measure of participation in the leadership by workers and peasants, the most numerous and militant sections, would do much to eliminate these weaknesses. It must, however, be borne in mind that the Congresses are not, and should not, be homogeneous bodies of people who all belong to the same class and share the same outlook, but are essentially united fronts of all sections of an oppressed nationality who seek liberation and democracy.
A movement which fails to go forward will go back. The absence of a great central political task, common to all democrats, has been a retarding factor during the past year. Such a task is the proposed Congress of the People of South Africa to draw up a Freedom Charter. The preparations for this convention, if properly carried out, will call on every democratic South African to render his utmost effort to the cause of freedom. These efforts will be well spent, for the work of calling the Congress and framing the Freedom Charter is an essential step towards mobilising and uniting the great majority of the people of this country against Fascism and opening the way forward for a democratic South Africa.
It would be of incalculable advantage to the democratic movement of South Africa if the workers, and particularly the African workers, were properly organised into vigorous and effective trade unions. Tribute must be paid to the unwearying efforts of those trade unionists who for many years have battled to keep their organisations going in the face of the hostility not only of the employers and the Government but even, in many cases, of the registered trade unions. However, the blunt fact must be faced that these efforts have not always resulted to any great extent in the establishment of big, stable and effective African trade unions.
This comparative failure is not only due to the objective difficulties and the opposition of the employers and the Government. It is also due to a mistaken approach to the problem of organising African trade unions ; an approach which aims at unions identical in character to those recognised under the Industrial Conciliation Act.
The 'recognised' trade union movement has, thus far, failed lamentably to respond vigorously and effectively to the deep inroads which the Nationalist Gov- ernment has made and is making into traditional working class rights and standards. Dozens of elected trade union officials have been summarily banned from their posts by the Minister of Justice with little more than formal protest : The Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act was not seriously challenged. The Schoeman revised IC Bill threatens to destroy the fruits of decades of trade union struggle and to replace united workers' organisations with numerous small and ineffective racial unions.
The reaction of the leaders of the Trades and Labour Council and the breakaway unions of the Federation is to plan a so-called 'all-in' trade union conference with a colour bar against Africans and to prepare a constitution for a trade union 'federation of federations' which has room for the subservient Nationalist 'Koordineerende Raad' but no room for the Council of Non-European trade unions. The glaring weaknesses which these events reveal are not accidental. South African industrial legislation has fostered a type of bureaucratic, spineless organisation whose leaders have become isolated from the workers and their problems, absorbed in office routine, bounded in their horizons by the industrial councils and the Labour Department, and whose rank and file lack knowledge of and interest in trade unionism. This degeneration of former militant organisations of working class struggle has been the price paid for the illusion of security and legal status. But African unions have never enjoyed even the illusion of recognition and a legal security. Even before the vicious Native Labour (Settlement of Disputes) Act of last year, designed by Mr Schoeman in his own words to 'bleed Native unions to death', our African unions enjoyed no legal status at all, no access to the Industrial Councils and their negotiating machinery or to the employers.
It is vain, therefore, for African organisations to seek for their strength in elaborate office routines and administrative machinery. Their strength lies, and can only lie, in the building of militant rank and file bodies, with active committees ceaselessly attending to daily complaints in every factory and workshop ; sustained not by Government departments, which in fact assist employers, but by the consciousness, unity and determination of the workers themselves. To build such trade unions requires a searching review of their present methods by all trade unionists. It requires discarding unsuitable methods and the adoption of new methods which will bring them close to the workers.
It is a task which will require the full and continuous co-operation of the liberation movement and of all progressive people. But if this task is properly carried out it must result in the creation of powerful and indestructible trade unions which will not only succeed in raising the living standards of their members but which will be an integral part of the people's movement for freedom, greatly strengthening it and reinforcing it.
The majority of the people of South Africa live on the land, but as yet the democratic movement for liberation has barely begun the task of arousing and mobilis- ing the tremendous potential forces for progress among the landless millions in the countryside.
The desperate position in which the people of the rural areas find themselves is well known. We know of the starvation wages,. harsh treatment and bitter life of the agricultural labourer on European-owned farms. We know how on the reserves and Crown lands and in the villages Non-Europeans are struggling against hunger, ignorance and disease.
The peasants are crying out for land, freedom and a better life. It is the duty of the national liberation movements, which are centred mainly in the bigger towns, to reach out a brotherly hand of assistance to these millions of people and to help them to organise themselves into peasant associations and agricultural workers' unions to struggle for more land and higher farm wages, for the right to security and freedom from pass laws, forced labour and other forms of oppression. In this, as in every other field of South African life, unity and organisation is the key to resistance to Fascism and to the advance to democracy.
The same lesson is to be learnt from the efforts of the young people of South Africa in developing the African National Congress Youth League and other youth organisations. The inspiring youth festivals, with their splendid message of peace, unity and racial harmony ; the vigorous resistance of students to the imposition by the Government of apartheid in the universities ; the ties of friendship which our young people are forging with the youth of other countries -all these activities deserve the utmost encouragement of all democratic people, for they provide the surest guarantee of the future People's South Africa that is arising.
All the same, our progressive youth movements have, as yet, made only a small beginning in the formidable task of uniting the young people of all races for a better future. Youth movements must not be regarded as preserves for a small group of intelligentsia with their own separate ideas and theories. Such an attitude would repel the millions of young people who can be attracted by broad, all-embracing youth movements offering cultural and recreational opportunities as well as political guidance in the accepted principles of the senior organisations.
A great need also exists for the democratic women of South Africa, African, Coloured, Indian and European, to come together in common struggle for their common needs; peace, democracy and equality of status. Many women's organisations are already in existence : women's leagues of the Congress, trade unions predominantly of womenfolk, and special organisations such as the Daughters of Africa and the National Council of African Women. It is to be hoped that the recent national conference has laid a basis for uniting all these bodies in a powerful democratic women's federation. Non-European working women in particular suffer from a three-fold subjection of race, class and sex ; they must receive the full co-operation and assistance of every progressive in organising themselves for emancipation.
All the historic strivings of the South African people to achieve liberty, equality and fraternity are interlinked with and related to the world-wide movement of the peoples to avert the horrors of new wars and to compel the Great Powers to negotiate a lasting peace.
The aggressive forces in the USA and its satellites, which seek to profit from war preparations and from war itself, can and must be compelled to give way to the insistent and organised demand of the ordinary people of all countries, including America itself, to end the cold war and conclude a pact of peace between the five Great Powers. Already the influence of the peace movement has made itself powerfully felt. It is true that the Korean peace is unstable and subject to constant new inflammatory provocations from Syngman Rhee, directed by remote control from Washington. It is true that the insistence of Mr Dulles and his British and French clients at Berlin on the participation of Germany in the obviously anti-Soviet 'European Defence Community' precluded any agreement on the future of Germany.
Yet there has been a ceasefire in Korea. There was a conference at Berlin. The US-dictated embargo on East-West trade is obviously breaking down. At the Geneva Conference the People's Republic of China is participating for the first time in a Big Power conference. All these things are fruits largely of the patient, determined work of the peace movement throughout the world, and proof that a negotiated peace is possible. Differences in social systems do not inevitably mean war. Both the possibility and the urgent need are now present for the organised partisans of peace to intensify their activities and to extend them to broad new sections of the people. The very survival of the human race is at stake in this crucial struggle between the overwhelming majority of the people of the world and a handful of money-mad warmongers.
The world has been shocked by the frightful repercussions of the American hydrogen bomb experiments in the Pacific and by the arrogant refusal of the US authorities either to discontinue these dangerous experiments or to modify their reckless policy of 'cold war'. Professor Joliot-Curie, one of the world's greatest physicists, stated last year that the hydrogen bomb was a weapon of unlimited frightfulness and that its development and use 'might risk making the survival of all forms of life impossible on this planet.' Since then his warning has been endorsed by eminent physicists all over the world.
No sane man or woman dare ignore these weighty warnings. The days are past when we in South Africa could comfort ourselves with the thought that this is a far-flung outpost, remote from the fields of battle and carnage. Indeed, South Africa's position as a uranium producer for the American bloc makes our defenceless towns particularly vulnerable in the event of a third world war, in which we would become an inevitable target. More than a quarter of the population of our country is concentrated in the vast mining and industrial complex of towns of the Witwatersrand and its environs and in our big, strategic seaports of Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London. If these centres suffered attack by atomic bombing their entire populations could be obliterated. The rest of the country would face maiming and radiation poisoning, ruin and starvation.
In the face of these grim facts, to which we may not blind ourselves, the apathy of many South Africans towards the major questions of peace and war cannot be justified. Throughout the world millions of people are raising their voices for the total prohibition, under strict international control, of all atomic and other weapons of mass destruction. They are demanding the immediate coming together of the Great Powers to conclude a lasting pact of peace and to remove the shadow of a war of mutual annihilation which hangs over our lives.
It is for us in South Africa to contribute our share to this great movement for peace which is sweeping the world. No one who values the future of South Africa and the world can stand aside. It is significant and proper that members of the national liberation and trade union movements should, thus far, have been the mainstay of the peace movement, for they, representing the common people, have the greatest stake in the future of our country and the highest degree of political consciousness. But the peace movement remains too small, too inactive and too restricted to the major urban centres to make its proper impact on the country. It must sweep forward to draw in new sections of the broad masses of the people, in all provinces, in town and country. It must bring its message closer to the people by linking up the main issues of international policy with events nearer home. Opposition to the cruel butchery of the Africans in Kenya by British imperialism is a part of the fight for peace. So is the struggle of the people against the policy of the Malan Government, which threatens the peace by its ambitions to swallow the Protectorates and by its naked chauvinism which insults that great majority of humanity whose skins are darker than others.
The majority of the European middle-class and working-class are opposed to the Nationalist Government. They look to the future with anxiety. They fear the economic stagnation and deterioration which apartheid must bring in its train. They fear the effects of mounting racial tension and hostility created by the Government's merciless persecution of the Non-European peoples. Trade unionists, ex-servicemen, democratic Afrikaners, English-speaking people, Jews, Catholics -all feel in one way or another threatened by Malanism, with its crude threats and unconcealed bigotry.
Yet these widespread feelings of hostility and opposition towards the Nationalists find no expression, no leadership and no inspiration in the United Party or its newspapers. These representatives of finance-capitalism, big business and the mine-owners fear democracy more than they fear an outright dictatorship by their fellow-capitalists of the Nationalist Party. They are not concerned with protecting the vital interests of the people. Instead, they are busy trying to achieve a political compromise with the Nationalists to give an impression of stability and harmony, to protect capital investments and to encourage overseas financiers to invest more capital in South Africa.
The contemptible cowardice and lack of principle shown by the United Party has resulted in widespread disillusionment and disgust among anti-Nationalist Europeans. The uncompromising, anti-colour bar Congress of Democrats is as yet small in numbers. It would be an exaggeration to claim that any substantial section of the White population has yet grasped the vital truths that the real alternative to a Fascist republic is a genuine all-embracing democracy ; that any real struggle against the autocratic Swart-Malan State is only possible by allying themselves with the great Non-White democratic majority. It is an important fact of our times that the Europeans are realising more and more that a more advanced and enlightened attitude towards the Non-European population must be taken and that the field of race relations is precisely the field in which the Nationalists must be met and defeated if any sort of harmonious political and economic development is to take place.
Even the United Party leadership has begun to react, in its usual hesitant, compromising manner, to this widespread feeling. Though the United Party's vague talk of 'political integration' and qualified insubstantial 'concessions' is not acceptable to any Non-European, it is, all the same, significant. Equally significant is the fact that the UP has been obliged to condemn the hateful Western Areas scheme, and the position of its Johannesburg City Councillors who are accomplices in the scheme is daily becoming more untenable.
Still more indicative of this anti-Fascist trend among the European population are the appearance of the Liberal Party and the new policy statement on the Non-European franchise issued by the South African Labour Party. Here again the policies of the two parties are by no means free from concealed racial prejudice. The suggestion that a democratic constitution should provide for an educational qualification for voters (the Labour Party stipulates Standard V, the Liberals Standard VI) will not satisfy any politically-conscious Non-European - or any real democrat for that matter; for such proposals would, of course, have the effect of excluding the majority of the adult population and leaving effective political power in the hands of the same European minority which has demonstrated its unfitness for a monopoly of franchise rights by electing the Malanites to office in two successive elections.
The burning need, however, which cannot be evaded any longer, is to bring about immediate unity of action between European and Non-European democrats to check the Government's Fascist plans and policies and to quell the rampant racialism, among both Whites and Non-Whites, which those plans and policies are daily evoking. The myth that 'politics is the White man's business' must be abandoned. European opposition to the ruinous Western Areas plan, to the vicious Schoeman IC Bill, to the threatened police state of Swart can only be effective if it is openly and determinedly allied to the great democratic movement of the African, Indian and Coloured people.
It is the great merit of the Congress of Democrats that it has grasped this essen- tial fact of South African affairs and aligned itself as part of the Congress movement.
The alliance of the Congresses is not a 'racial' movement seeking domination and privileges for one section of the population at the expense of the others. It is a movement of people who are bound together by common ties, not of colour or language but of principle: the common belief in a future for our country freed from the curse of racial arrogance, bigotry and hatred which has stained our history with blood and conquest and which to-day disfigures the lives of our people. Such=a future can only be won by the mass action of the common people of South Africa, and in the first place by the oppressed masses, who are the main victims and chief opponents of the system of colour bars and dictatorship.
Whether they have sufficient political consciousness and democratic spirit to accept and act upon this big central reality of the present situation - that is the acid test for the Labour and Liberal Parties and for the leaders of the registered trade unions alike. They may preserve their freedom or their unscientific, worthless pre- judices, but they cannot preserve both.
The decision by the leaders of the main democratic organisations to embark upon a great Congress of the People of South Africa opens the way for a great advance towards a democratic future. For the first time millions of ordinary men and women will elect their representatives to a real assembly of the people. For the first time they will have the opportunity to discuss their own people's solution to the problems of our country, the problems of the workers, farmers, housewives, miners, teachers and others who make up our multi-national community. How South Africa should be governed, who should elect the men and women who make the laws of our country, how these laws should be adminis-tered - these and other questions will be discussed not only in the Congress of the People but in hundreds and thousands of discussions and meetings, great and small, throughout the land. It is these true expressions of the voice of the people of this country which should find their faithful expression in the People's Freedom Charter.
And the Charter can become a historic document, guiding the way forward to a new and better life for all who live and work in this land.
The Freedom Charter will be a charter of the people, and it is not the purpose of this survey to attempt to draft it. Yet it must be clear to every thinking democrat that the Charter will, if it is to be the true voice of the people, do more than express pious hopes in words which will mean all things to all men.
The people must write into this Charter their claim to equality of rights and equality of opportunity, political, social and economic, for all men and women.
The people must proclaim through the Freedom Charter their demands:
That freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of association and freedom of assembly be guaranteed:
That the rich farmlands of South Africa be shared among their rightful owners - those who plough them and water them with their sweat:
That the big mining and other monopoly-owned industries of our country become the property of the people:
That the working people be guaranteed by law their rights to free, recognised trade unions, wages sufficient for a civilised life, leisure and social security in sickness, unemployment and old age:
That urgent steps be taken to provide houses for the homeless, schools for the children and hospitals for the sick, without discrimination.
All these demands, of course, will not be attained just by drafting a Charter. They must be fought for. They will be realised only when the basic colour bar structure of South Africa has been abolished and replaced by a people's democratic state.
But the Freedom Charter, embodying the people's aspirations and pinpointing the way forward, can mark a major advance towards a new South Africa, offering a fuller and happier life to all her people.
The people of South Africa will prevail over their oppressors. We have a long tradition of resistance to oppression. Provided we take up every issue, big and small, with courage, efficiency and unity, we need not fear the future.
We must see to it that a united and uncompromising opposition makes the Western Areas battle the Waterloo of the Nationalist Party. We must strive for a united trade union movement, based on the sound and universally accepted trade union principle of internationalism, rooted in an alert and educated rank and file, free from legalistic illusions and capable of surviving and defeating the disruptive intentions of the Nationalists. We must build and improve all national liberation and other progressive movements.
Independent organs of democratic opinion such as ADVANCE must receive powerful support from all progressive people : we must see to strengthening their finances and increasing their circulation, for they are invaluable awakeners, educators and organisers of the people.
To carry out all these tasks, and many others which demand immediate attention, the fighters for democracy in South Africa must consciously strive to improve their own qualities and characters so that they may be still more useful to the people's cause. They must find time to study all the events of the day at home and abroad and learn from the experience of others. They must exercise unceasing vig- ilance against Government agents and disrupters within the democratic camp. They must pledge themselves at all times to set an example of loyalty, energy and courage to all who strive for freedom.
EVERY NEW ACT OF TYRANNY AND SUPPRESSION MERELY BETRAYS THE WEAKNESS OF THE GOVERNMENT, ITS FEAR OF THE PEOPLE.
THE FUTURE BELONGS TO US.