Originally published in Inqaba Ya Basebenzi No.2 (April 1981)
by Zakes Ramushu
The Black Consciousness Movement started as a movement of radical nationalist confrontation. It arose out of the soil of undisguised national oppression, the foundation and source of cheap labour.
With the igniting slogan “Black Power”, the student youth from the bush colleges were expressing the beginnings of a movement which was set to oppose national and racialist domination totally.
The BCM and black consciousness itself has not arisen on a distinct ideology. The nationalism of “Black Power” is essentially the expression of an undeveloped class consciousness, which can only have assumed the form it has taken in the BCM because of the absence of an independent working class leadership, with its own mass programme. The BCM was the eruption of that hidden volcano of class consciousness, beneath the iron heel of white baasskap.
Power
However, mobilisation for black unity can only be consciously realised by the power of black workers in the factories, mines, and on the farms. The BCM has been drawn as by a magnet towards the source of its strength, the working class.
The growth and limitations of the BCM are reflected in the variety of its organisations: the struggles of the SRC’s of the early 1970’s in the bush colleges; the formation of SASO, NAYO, and SASM, BPC, BCP, and BAWU;[1] then, with the magnificent uprising in Soweto in 1976, the formation of the original Committee of Ten; and following on this the appearance of PEBCO and other community organisations;[2] AZAPO, AZASO, and COSAS;[3] the organisations of the mass boycotts throughout 1980; and the rapid growth of SAAWU.[4]
All these, together with the unsuccessful attempts to crush the movement on October 19 1977, impose on the BCM the question:
Either apart from the rising tide of the working class movement, or organised under its banner for the total overthrow of national domination and capitalism.
The BCM leaders cannot successfully create organisational structures of any value apart from or above the mass movement of the youth and the workers. Yet organisation in the mass movement increasingly requires a clear identification of the tasks of the struggle, and a concrete programme for unity in action.
The unity of the BCM is impossible outside of the mass movement; the unity of the mass movement cannot be completed without a programme for smashing the capitalist state and for taking over the factories, mines and farms into the hands of the working class.
The open turning of the mass of the youth to the black workers’ movement in 1980 has shown the answer to all that has plagued the BCM. Being chiefly a movement that has mobilised the youth, the heroic traditions of the BCM can only be maintained, and its divisions and weaknesses can only be overcome, by consciously resolving to struggle on the basis of a working class programme for the destruction of capitalism.
The developing struggles within the BCM over the question of Marxism precisely arise from efforts of the youth to clarify the way forward.
The conferences of the BCM of Azania in April 1980, in exile, and of AZAPO in January 1981, both demonstrate the necessity, and wide acceptance of the need, for the development of a Marxist programme. Both conferences, under different conditions, show that socialism is the only way forward for the black oppressed.
The weakness of both conferences, however, turned on the question of which class will control the new state and build socialist society. Another unresolved question was whether nationalism, under South African conditions, is opposed to Marxism?
These questions will only be fully understood if we are conscious of the task confronting the mass of the oppressed, the black working class. The working class does not contrast its opposition to white baasskap to ridding itself forever of the entire system of that baasskap, i.e. the cheap labour or slave system of the white bosses’ capitalism.
Workers’ Democracy
The only power that will smash bosses’ rule is the power of the state in the hands of an undefeated black working class. That means the dictatorship of the working class over the bosses and their supporters. It means a society ruled through workers’ democracy.
The struggle for clarity will not stop at the past two conferences. Just as the upward thrust of the workers’ movement has ignited the search for clear answers to the tasks of our revolution, so its continued forward movement will help produce the necessary clarity among those who have nothing to lose by drawing the correct conclusions – the working class youth.
For the BCM, how armed struggle can be linked with the movement of the masses has become a central question in the recent period.
Armed struggle is no new question to the black oppressed. The unshaken certainty that no other alternative can completely smash the brutal machine of bosses’ conquest has been a life-source of mass endurance.
After 1976, the youth and the BCM were decisively thrown onto the path of strategy. How to overthrow the apartheid capitalist state, with what to replace it, with whom?
The latter – with whom? – was answered for the youth in 1976 with the three general strikes by their parents, the workers.
The failure of the leadership of the ANC and the PAC in the 1950s and 1960s was undeniably revealed for the youth and the BCM in 1976. The armed struggle had not been prepared amongst the masses, the power of mass organisation was not relied on. The youth by the thousand were forced into exile.
For the BCM and the youth, exile has offered no solution to the question of armed struggle.
Training, necessary to armed struggle, of itself resolved nothing. The apartheid state remained. The masses were surging forward and building their unity in the trade union and community struggles against the slave-owner bosses.
Now, as before, despite it not being raised by the exile leaderships, the question has opened up with all its fullness among the youth:
How to link the struggle against the state with the masses of workers in their struggles for genuine unions, against rent increases, for better housing?
How to link it with the new community organisations in the townships, with the new youth organisations?
How to organise mass armed self-defence against the police?
In short, what programme is needed to move the masses of the oppressed towards the successful armed uprising, who will arm them, and how?
For the mass movement, the answer cannot be the simple formula of the gun only.
The answer is not to be found in merely repeating the dust and blood of late surprises such as 1976: “where are the guns?”
The answer is a clear and definite need to turn towards the enormous task of preparing – under workers’ leadership, with a socialist programme – the difficult and most decisive period of the actual mass armed uprising against the bosses’ state.
This cannot be prepared apart from the movement of the masses. Nor can armed actions by groups or individuals be used to electrocute the masses into struggle. The mass armed struggle can only be successful with the full and conscious leadership of the workers’ organisations, ready for the greatest sacrifices.
Challenge
In the BCM, the challenge is the strenuous struggle for the socialist programme, as this can be the only guide to the tasks and experiences of the youth and the workers. The impatience of the individual or of frustrated heroes is no substitute for the mass armed struggle leading to the violent liberation of the people from the bosses’ chains of profit, privilege, and wage slavery.
For the BCM leadership the growth of Marxism amongst the youth poses a number of questions. The most central of these has been whether the privileged and rabidly racist white worker is in actual fact a worker.
No doubt, the white worker is the immediate tool and the last resort of white bosses’ rule, of the bosses’ state.
Politically the white worker, through generations of privilege and, essentially, Afrikaner nationalism, has been transformed into the whip in the white bosses’ hand. Who can argue against this reality?
But, true as this is, the answer to the task of the black workers’ movement in relation to the white worker is not found in the useless formula: “All blacks are workers and the white worker is a capitalist”. The white workers are exploited sellers of labour power, even though their labour power is exploited on significantly better terms than that of their black brothers and sisters.
The white worker question cannot be answered in the BCM unless the BCM is prepared to answer the question of what the major tasks of the mass revolution are. The fear of answering the question of the white worker is the fear of decisively resolving that capitalism and the state must be totally destroyed, and workers’ democracy and socialism triumphantly take its place.
Unlike the white bosses, the mass movement of the black oppressed has no interest in loading the guns of capitalism. For the mass movement the white worker is a section of the whole working class which must be wrenched out of the armoury of the white bosses to weaken radically the firepower of white baasskap.
Only the overwhelming might and power, in action, of the ORGANISED black workers’ movement can achieve this.
The mass of the black workers and youth have no doubts on this question. Apartheid and the white bosses’ state must be torn up by the roots.
Not answering the white worker question and not being certain of whether capitalism should be destroyed opens up the mass movement to the arch-capitalists like Oppenheimer and Suzman and opportunist black middle class elements like Dr Motlana and Bishop Desmond Tutu.
‘Reforming’ capitalism and apartheid can only become a question when the tasks of the mass workers’ movement are misunderstood.
Self-determination
Nationalism offers no solution on its own. Rather it highlights the necessity to destroy the foundations which obstruct its true mission, i.e. genuine national self-determination. This can only be implemented when the workers have destroyed the apartheid state of the Oppenheimers and have taken over the mines, banks, factories, and farms.
The white worker cannot defend all of these without defending also the domination of the Botha’s and Oppenheimers. The task of the black workers’ movement is to destroy the ability of the ruling class to use this potential vicious tool of the white worker against the total overthrow of apartheid and capitalism by the mass movement of the black oppressed.
The danger in not answering these questions raises the possibility that the BCM will be bedevilled by the apparent radicalism of black middle class figures. The true interests of the majority of the middle class can only be served by the leadership of the workers’ movement with the aim of socialism.
Just as the BCM will have to clearly resolve its relationship with the workers’ movement in order to move forward, so too it will have to resolve its relationship with the ANC. This is because the black working class, demanding the greatest mass unity in the life-or-death struggle against the state, will find no real alternative but to rally their forces together under the banner of the ANC.
In the coming years, the ANC will more and more develop inside South Africa on mass foundations, as the people themselves take up the task of building and transforming Congress for the revolution. This process will exert a mighty pressure on all the existing organisations, local and national, to draw towards the ANC.
The recognition of this likelihood has already raised sharply the question of the ANC in meetings and conferences of the BCM. Certain of the Black Consciousness leadership in exile, including some of the founders of the movement, have hurriedly gone over to the ANC – but merely seeking bureaucratic positions for themselves and without conducting any principled struggle for revolutionary policies.
Rejected
An opportunist approach to the question of the ANC is firmly rejected by most of the BCM youth. Where does the answer for them lie?
It cannot lie in keeping their backs turned to the ANC – at least not the ANC as it will grow on the basis of the working class movement in the factories and townships. The answer lies in boldly taking-up the task of building the ANC on genuine mass foundations, and of undertaking a concerted struggle in the ranks of the ANC for the Marxist programme that alone can lead the movement to victory.
Only in this way can the militant traditions of the BCM, maintained in the fighting spirit of the youth, be brought to full power in the mass movement.
Only in this way can wrong policies of the ANC leadership be successfully combatted.
Playing around with ideas of ‘uniting’ various organisations at the top in so-called ‘Patriotic United Fronts’ is no answer to the desire of the masses for genuine unity in action. This unity will only arise on the basis of the organisation of the workers and youth around a programme to overthrow every facet of national oppression and capitalist exploitation – a socialist programme that will leave no possibility for the desire for genuine self-determination to be used as a vehicle that will drive across the sacrifices of the masses, only to unite a new group of bosses, black as well as white.
All energies must be bound together for this future transformation. All else will be mere signposts to failure, frustration, and eventual demoralisation.
Forward to mass armed insurrection as the fruit of mass unity under workers’ leadership!
Build the ANC as a mass organisation with a socialist programme!
© Transcribed from the original by the Marxist Workers Party (2020).
Continue to Part Three
[1] SASO – South African Student Organisation; NAYO – National Youth Organisation; SASM – South African Students Movement; BPC – Black People’s Convention; BCP – Black Community Programmes; BAWU – Black Allied Workers Union [Footnote by the MWP, 2020]
[2] PEBCO – Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organisation [Footnote by the MWP, 2020]
[3] AZAPO – Azanian People’s Organisation; AZASO – Azanian Students’ Organisation; COSAS – Congress of South African Students [Footnote by the MWP, 2020]
[4] SAAWU – South African Allied Workers Union [Footnote by the MWP, 2020]
