Comrade Y Zungu<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chief Representative of the ANC and Chairman of the Regional Political Committee (UK)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For attention of the Regional Political Committee<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Comrades,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Re: Our suspension from all ANC activities and units<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We have received your letter of 26 October with feelings of great disappointment and sadness. We believe that the decision of the Regional Political Committee (UK) to suspend us from all activities and units of the ANC, and to refer the matter to the NEC for \u201cfurther consideration\u201d, is politically very wrong. It will do great harm to our movement as a whole and to the ANC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To begin with, the suspension violates the ANC Constitution. Clause 23 (c) of the Constitution states: \u201cBefore<\/strong> any disciplinary action is taken against any member… , such member… shall<\/strong>, in the absence of extraordinary circumstances justifying the contrary, be given an opportunity to appear before the relevant tribunal and there admit, deny or otherwise account for the conduct complained of.\u201d (Our emphasis). Suspension is specifically included in the \u201cdisciplinary action\u201d referred to. The \u201ctribunal\u201d to which the clause refers is the Committee making the suspension \u2013 that is to say, in this case, the RPC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All the Committees empowered to take disciplinary action in terms of the ANC Constitution are, in principle, elected<\/strong> bodies. The RPC in the UK, unlike its counterparts elsewhere, is for some reason not<\/strong> elected. But, even assuming the power of the RPC to take disciplinary action against ANC members, there can be no justification for its action in ordering our suspension without first giving us a hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moreover, Clause 23 (e) of the Constitution states: \u201cWhen a member is suspended, the committee suspending him shall state the period and conditions<\/strong> of such suspension.\u201d (Our emphasis). This was not done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The RPC\u2019s action in suspending us is, for these reasons, plainly unconstitutional. As recently as January 1979, \u201cSechaba\u201d, the official organ of the ANC, reprinted in full the ANC Constitution. The RPC must be fully aware of the provisions of the Constitution to which we refer, but has chosen to ignore them. We call for the immediate lifting of the suspensions.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The RPC\u2019s disregard of the constitutional rights of ANC members is a serious matter \u2013 but more serious still are the political errors which it has committed in taking this action against us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Comrades of the RPC: our \u2018crime\u2019 in your eyes is that we are signatories to a document entitled \u201cThe Workers\u2019 Movement and Sactu \u2013 a Struggle for Marxist Policies\u201d. Actually, the document as such has no signatories; but it is quite true that, together with other comrades, we produced the document concerned and our names appear within it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is this document? It is the end result of a long political struggle within the ranks of Sactu over the whole future course of development of that organisation. In that struggle we have argued:<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are the political ideas for which we have fought in Sactu. These, we believe, are the only ideas on which Sactu can be built as a revolutionary underground trade union organisation in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What are your charges against us? Your first charge is that we failed \u201cto seek the resolution\u201d of disagreements \u201cwithin the established structures of our movement\u201d. This charge is wrong, both factually and politically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As our document clearly shows, we repeatedly raised our concerns within the channels of Sactu<\/strong> and called for discussion of them to take place. But we were denied access to any \u201cestablished structures\u201d within Sactu for a democratic resolution of the issues raised. It was this fact, and only this, which compelled us reluctantly and after serious consideration to produce and circulate our document within Sactu, among workers, and among sympathisers in the struggle. Had we remained silent, no democratic discussion whatsoever on the crucial issues facing Sactu could have taken place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Surely this fact alone disposes of the first charge against us. Or is it possible that something more is meant by it? Are we charged, perhaps, with failing to seek the resolution of differences in Sactu<\/strong> by using \u201cestablished structures\u201d of the ANC<\/strong>? If so, the charge is based on a non-existent \u2018rule\u2019 which would imply the power of ANC bodies to dictate to Sactu and to every organisation which may be allied with the ANC. Is this what you seek to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a very important principle which has come to be accepted in the revolutionary struggle of the working class, in South Africa and internationally. This is that workers\u2019 organisations<\/strong> must be independent<\/strong> of control by other classes and their organisations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ANC is not, and has never claimed to be, a workers\u2019 organisation, but rather to represent a broad combination of oppressed people with different class interests. Within the ANC, working class and middle class interests struggle for dominance. Despite the fact that the ANC acknowledges, in some of its policy statements, the leading role of the working class in the South African revolution, there are many within the ANC who wish to push the working class into a secondary role, who wish to hold the workers back from realising their class interests, and who wish to restrict the aims of our movement by separating the struggle for national liberation from the struggle for socialism. For these reasons, it is necessary for workers\u2019 organisations in South Africa, while struggling in or together with the ANC, to maintain at the same time their own independence of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, even between a workers\u2019 party and a trade union, there ought to remain a relationship of autonomy. Revolutionary political parties and tendencies of the working class, while fighting democratically for their ideas, policies and influence within the trade unions, ought never to attempt bureaucratically or by manipulation to subordinate the trade unions to their command. These principles are, we believe, an essential part of the genuine heritage of Marxism, confirmed through the experience of succeeding generations of the world working class movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because, as it is presently constituted, the ANC is an organisation combining different and conflicting class interests, it is doubly necessary that the independence of Sactu, as a workers\u2019 trade union organisation<\/strong>, should be respected. Sactu is allied<\/strong> with the ANC. It should not be subordinate<\/strong> to the ANC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It would have been entirely wrong if we, when the channels for discussion through Sactu committees were arbitrarily closed to us, had proceeded to fight out the particular issues \u2013 the question of the role, strategy and direction of Sactu \u2013 through ANC units and committees. We would then rightly have been accused of seeking to make the ANC a court of appeal over the Sactu leadership. Thus the only<\/strong> correct and responsible course open to us was to produce the document of which you now complain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In contrast, your action against us sets an extremely dangerous precedent for the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In time, will ANC committees claim the right also to intervene, for instance, in political struggles within the SA Communist Party, and to suspend from ANC membership<\/strong> those of the Communist Party rank-and-file who may give voice to differences with the leadership of the Party?<\/p>\n\n\n\n In passing, we would like to note that among the key members<\/strong> of the RPC are the very same right-wing individuals who, through their positions in Sactu, took the lead in suppressing our democratic rights and in closing down an \u201cestablished structure\u201d of Sactu in order to prevent the discussion of vital issues. Comrades, this charge \u2013 that we \u201cfailed\u201d to use \u201cthe established structures of our movement\u201d to air differences \u2013 rests uneasily on your lips!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your second charge is that, in producing the document, we have sought to \u201cweaken the position of our movement among the general public at home and abroad\u201d. This accusation is a disgraceful slander. The purpose of the document, as anyone who reads it can see, is exactly the opposite. It defends in painstaking detail the Marxist policies and strategy which we believe to be essential if Sactu is to play its part in helping to make our movement victorious<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a measured, comradely and constructive tone, in a manner entirely free of personal attacks, with scrupulous attention to security, we have put forward our view of what is vitally needed to gain strength, to gain public support, and above all to win the mass of the workers\u2019 movement<\/strong> at home to the trade union banner of Sactu. There is not a word in the document which could give the slightest comfort to the enemies of our movement. On the contrary, it advances policies which would ensure the elimination of the enemy\u2019s power, root and branch, from South Africa. It explains, in fact, the need to arm the masses, headed by the organised workers, to overthrow the apartheid regime and the power of the capitalists which the regime sustains. How can this be intended to \u201cweaken the position of our movement\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your third charge is that we constitute \u201can organised faction\u201d. What in fact links us together, and with many other comrades in our movement at home and abroad, is the ideas<\/strong> which we share. As our document shows, we make no secret of these ideas. We believe they are an essential part of what is needed to equip our movement to secure its eventual victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Differences always arise in organisations, and no less so in revolutionary organisations. It is quite correct in general that the hardening of differences into organised factions, where this is unnecessary or avoidable, is not a development to be encouraged. But even in a revolutionary workers\u2019<\/strong> organisation, the overcoming of factions is a matter for skilled, responsive and convincing leadership and never a matter for arbitrary prohibition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How much more is this true within the ANC, an organisation in which there exists a wide variety of ideological tendencies, reflecting the interests and the pressures of different classes<\/strong> among our people! We believe that members of the ANC must have the right to campaign for their revolutionary ideas, both individually and in an organised way if they so choose. From the standpoint of the workers who are members or supporters of the ANC, it is absolutely essential that those groupings and tendencies seeking to promote workers\u2019 interests within and through the ANC should have the fullest possible freedom to campaign for their own ideas on policies, strategy and tactics. Any unreasonable restriction of this freedom can only have the effect of stifling democracy and strengthening within the ANC, especially in exile, the hold of the right-wing and middle class elements whose aims and interests are in conflict with those of the workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The democratic rights of members do not contradict the necessity of discipline in action against the enemy. In fact, the experience of all revolutionary movements shows that without democracy there can be no effective discipline in action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The harmonious combination of democracy and discipline \u2013 which can only find its complete expression in a revolutionary workers\u2019 organisation \u2013 is democratic centralism. This is the method of organisation learned through the experience of the international workers\u2019 movement for well over a century. Democratic centralism means maximum democracy in discussion and decision-making; maximum freedom to criticise and disagree \u2013 but maximum centralism of command and discipline in action<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Every worker who has taken part in effective strike action knows the basics of democratic centralism at first-hand. There is thorough discussion among the workers of the issues and basic tactics before the decision to strike is made \u2013 then total unity in the strike itself and no toleration of strike-breakers. There is constant re-discussion and criticism of the decisions made and the tactics adopted \u2013 but each time, when action is decided, the workers act together as one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In our conduct as members of the ANC, we have always acted in this spirit. And no complaint has ever been raised over the way in which we have worked and participated in ANC units and activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In contrast to democratic centralism, bureaucratic centralism<\/strong> grossly exaggerates command from the top, combining this with the stifling of free discussion through the ranks and the erosion of the voting powers and other democratic rights of members. This is the opposite of the revolutionary method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Democratic centralism in a revolutionary organisation includes the right of members to struggle in a concerted way to promote definite ideas, perspectives and policies within the framework of the revolutionary aims of the movement. It is precisely this which you would condemn as \u2018factionalism\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The RPC accuses us of forming a \u201cfaction\u201d, and suspends us from ANC activities on these grounds. But, comrades, this is not consistent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What about the SA Communist Party? Does it not operate as the most organised<\/strong> of factions within the ANC<\/strong>? Yet, quite correctly, the faction rights of SACP members in the ANC are not denied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We ourselves, as is well known, have profound differences with the policies and practice followed by the SACP. As our document makes clear, we do not accept the \u2018two stage\u2019 theory of the South African revolution which the CP leadership expounds. We believe that that approach spells disaster for the working class and, in fact, for all the people of South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are critical of the gulf which separates many of the radical statements made by CP leaders (especially in leaflets for home consumption) from their actual political practice in exile. We believe that despite their acknowledgement of the \u2018leading role\u2019 which the working class must play in the revolution, the CP leaders fail to give these words any practical effect \u2013 something which can only be done by building the movement of the workers inside the country<\/strong>. While claiming to be a workers\u2019 party, the CP fails to organise within the working class at home, does not root itself within the mines, farms, factories and docks, and is neither shaped nor led by the class-conscious vanguard of the struggling black workers themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the CP leadership, the \u2018leading role of the working class\u2019 has been translated to mean little more than the occupation by CP members of official positions in the ANC-in-exile. And yet, having gained effective control of the ANC apparatus, it conspicuously fails to use its power to transform the ANC into an organisation promoting the revolutionary socialist aims of the workers\u2019 movement in a struggle for workers\u2019 power. Instead it helps to prop up and defend within the ANC the influence and interests of the middle class, even when the basis of support of these elements within the mass movement at home is so rapidly being swept away. And, as the struggle in Sactu has shown, the CP leadership has played a crucial role in the efforts of the right-wing to undermine Sactu\u2019s independence and to turn Sactu back from revolutionary working class policies and tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In short, our political differences with the SACP \u2013 essentially differences with its bureaucratic leadership rather than with the comrades of its rank and file \u2013 run very deep. But nevertheless we stand for the right of the SACP to organise within the ANC and Sactu, to advance its own ideas, perspectives and programme, and to compete democratically for positions of leadership and influence.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That same right must be extended to all revolutionary tendencies basing themselves on the struggle of the oppressed workers, and on the claims of the workers and their interests to predominance in the ANC.<\/strong> Indeed, it is the inescapable duty of Marxists to struggle for the transformation of our entire movement in order to give real effect to the workers\u2019 leading role in a mass struggle for national liberation, democracy and socialism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Comrades, the charges made against us are factually and politically wrong, and their implications are very dangerous for our movement. But it is not enough for us to leave the matter there. We must ask the question: What is the real purpose<\/strong> of the extraordinary action taken against us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is not questions of procedure or a \u201ccode of conduct\u201d that are really at issue here, but questions of politics<\/strong>, of programme and strategy. Unfortunately, the facts of the matter are that one political faction within the ANC<\/strong> \u2013 comprising the middle class right-wing and leadership of the SACP \u2013 having gained positions of decisive power within the ANC-in-exile, is now using those positions bureaucratically to begin to eliminate from the ANC those who struggle for Marxist policies… on the pretext of acting against factions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That and that alone lies behind the decision of the RPC (UK) to suspend us from units and activities of the ANC and refer the matter to the NEC for \u201cfurther consideration\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moreover, and perhaps not coincidentally, this action against Marxists has been mounted at the same time that leaders of the ANC have been holding discussions with Chief Gatsha Buthelezi and other leaders of Inkatha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is necessary constantly to underline that, despite his pretences, Buthelezi is no friend of the working class. He is a defender of capitalist interests, and as our struggle mounts he will be used by big business in an attempt to restrain the movement of the workers from carrying out its revolutionary tasks. Can it be imagined that such meetings of the ANC with Buthelezi, which only foster illusions in him especially among the less advanced layers of the working class, are anything other than damaging to the cause of national liberation and socialism in South Africa? Why else have the bourgeois newspapers and even the Security Police in South Africa commented favourably on these meetings?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Comrades of the RPC, you know better than we that the same political differences which have openly emerged in Sactu run also through the ranks of the ANC, and for that matter the ranks of the Communist Party as well. It is only that the struggle has come to a head in Sactu earlier than elsewhere. In trying to uphold Marxist ideas in Sactu we have done no more than the simple duty of every Marxist in every part of the movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By the action you have taken against us, you have dealt us personally a severe blow. But this action will not succeed in cutting out Marxist ideas, Marxist policies and Marxist influence from the ranks of our movement. On the contrary, Marxism can only grow in influence, rooted as it is in the rising movement of the working class, in the world-wide struggle for liberation and socialism. It is no accident that our enemies, whose main fear is the power of the working class, point day after day in their press and journals in South Africa to the danger of the ideas of Marxism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today you have the power to act in exile against us, as Marxists. But as the struggle at home rises in intensity, the leadership of the ANC, Sactu and the Communist Party will ignore the demands and pressures of the mass movement of the working class at their peril. For the rising tide of the workers\u2019 struggle inside the country will lay the basis for the authentic ideas of Marxism, of workers\u2019 internationalism, of workers\u2019 democracy and the socialist revolution to become an unstoppable force within the ranks of our movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We call on you now to reverse the decision you have made to suspend us from units and activities of the ANC. We ask you, as the responsible committee of the ANC in this area, to pass on to the NEC a copy of this letter. Furthermore, we ask that you ensure that all units and \u201cestablished structures\u201d of the ANC, at home and abroad, are informed both of the charges against us and of the contents of this reply<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But whatever your efforts to exclude us from the ranks of the ANC, we will not be separated from our comrades throughout the movement, in the trade unions at home, in Sactu, in the ANC and in the Communist Party. If we cannot stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them in the ANC, Sactu and the CP, we will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them alongside<\/strong> the ANC, alongside<\/strong> Sactu and alongside<\/strong> the Communist Party. We will not give up the struggle until it is won.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In conclusion, we extend to you the courtesy which is customary in our movement, but which you omitted to extend to us in your letter of 26 October:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fraternally in the struggle,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Paula Ensor<\/p>\n\n\n\n David Hemson<\/p>\n\n\n\n Martin Legassick<\/p>\n\n\n\n Robert Petersen<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a9\u00a0Transcribed from the original by the Marxist Workers Party (2020).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"