Despite the isolation and consequent defeat of the March-April\n1960 Cape Town and Vereeniging strikes, despite the banning of the political\norganisations looked to by the mass of the workers, the working-class movement\nhad not yet suffered a defeat that was crushing or conclusive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trade unions built by SACTU and oriented to Congress, weak as\nthey still were, remained in existence. Indeed, with a growing movement to base\nthem on factory committees, with the beginnings of break-throughs into new\ncrucial sectors, with the establishment of general workers’ unions where\nfactory bases were still weak, SACTU was growing rather than declining in\nstrength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For fear not only of the local reaction of workers, but also of\ninternational worker reaction, the NP government was much more cautious in its\nattitude to African trade unionism than to the ANC and PAC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The power still able to be mobilised by the working class through\nSACTU was demonstrated in the stay-at-homes called for three days in May 1961\nagainst the government’s declaration of a Republic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The regime’s mobilisation against this action was the most\nintensive of the decade: nightly police raids in the townships, 10,000 arrests\nwithout charges, a twelve-day detention law, road blocks, and the deployment of\ntroops, tanks, armoured cars and helicopters. Nevertheless, as Bunting states,\nit was “the greatest national political strike ever witnessed in South\nAfrica.” [1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town there was a\nbig response from workers – with coloured workers in the Cape participating on\na large scale for the first time. Workers in many smaller towns also\nparticipated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SACTU activists played the major role in mobilising for the\naction, and the organised workers were in the vanguard. As an assessment of the\nstrike concluded, “wherever workers were organised into trade unions there\nwas a favourable response to the strike call.” [2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The leadership of the strike, however, was not in the hands of\norganised workers, but lay with a National Action Council, headed by Mandela.\n(As in 1958, the PAC opposed the stay-at-home.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The demand raised was for the government, instead of proclaiming a\nRepublic, to call a National Convention with sovereign powers, of elected\nrepresentatives of all adults on an equal basis irrespective of race, colour,\ncreed or any other limitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Should the demand be ignored, the National Action Council called\non “all Africans not to cooperate or collaborate in any way with the\nproposed South African Republic or any other form of government which rests on\nforce to perpetuate the tyranny of a minority, and to organise and unite in\ntown and country to carry out constant actions to oppose oppression and win\nfreedom” – and called on Indians, coloureds and “democratic\nEuropeans” to join this struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was strong rhetoric indeed, calculated to recover for\nCongress the ground that had been lost to the PAC “fire-balls”. But\nwhat were these “constant actions” by which oppression would be opposed\nand freedom won? What was the method, the strategy by which the mobilisation\ntaking place around the strike could be consolidated into organisation and\ncarried forward? On this, the National Action Council was silent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact Mandela – as the ANC leadership had done in 1958 – called\noff the strike on the second day. Later, relates Bunting, Mandela\n“admitted that he had been misled by the initial radio and press reports\nwhich falsely claimed the people had ignored the strike call. In a statement issued\nfrom the underground offices of the ANC in South Africa and the United Front\nabroad, Mandela stated: \u201cIn the light of the conditions that prevailed both\nbefore and during the three-day strike, the response from our people was\nmagnificent indeed.” [3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Once again, the workers had mobilised only to be disappointed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through the 1950s, the fundamental driving force in Congress was\nits working-class support. Increasingly, as Ben Turok recalled later, the activist core<\/strong>of Congress was constituted by\nworking-class militants:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Congress movement\u2026became more progressive and more proletarian. As things got more difficult it was those with the least to lose and the least illusions that came to the top. Working-class comrades became more involved and people with class ideology came to the fore because they were more militant and more committed, which is not to say that there were no committed petty-bourgeois. [4]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Overwhelmingly, these worker-militants were SACTU members,\nbuilding the trade unions, and Congress along with them. Some also joined the\nCP, expecting there to find the ideas and methods to take forward the struggle\nfor national liberation, democracy and socialism on a class basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the CP leadership used its authority – in SACTU, in the\nvarious Congress organisations, and in the Party itself – to prevent the\ntransformation of the movement on proletarian lines. The effect of the\n“two-stage” policy of Stalinism was to paralyse the best endeavours\nof the worker militants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Turok (then a CP local leader, active in Congress) revealed how\nthis policy operated, when he stated later:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “In the weight of the thing, the pressure of the proletarian elements were stronger and sometimes one in fact had to be careful that this tendency did not become hegemonic [i.e. dominant – Editor<\/em>]. Yes, one had to be aware of the fact that the policy was that there should be an alliance and not a single party struggle and a single class struggle. This was always recognised. Care was taken not to frighten off the petty-bourgeois elements.” [5]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This was the argument put also in the African Communist <\/em>(April 1960). In what was intended\nas a critique of those who felt that the Party was tailing behind the\n“national movement”, it warned against the “error” of\ntrying to “impose exclusively working-class leadership and programmes on\nthe national movement.” To do so was described as an error of\n“sectarianism, which undermines the unity of the various classes and is\nbound to create internal conflicts thus diverting the attention of the people from\ntheir common enemy – imperialism.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n To the CP leaders, the “leading role of the working\nclass” was to be confined to ceremonial speeches and paper declarations.\nIn practice, supposedly to avoid “frightening off” the middle class,\nthe workers had to limit their struggle and demands to what was assumed to be\n“acceptable” to this vacillating stratum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually this policy served merely as a cover for efforts to hold\nback the workers’ struggle within the framework of the compromises which the\nmiddle-class leadership was always seeking to reach with the liberal bourgeoisie.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For the CP leaders, hardened in Stalinism, the power of the\nworking-class movement was not the important thing. What was important was\n“the unity of the various classes” (which classes precisely?) – an\nincredible position for so-called Marxists to proclaim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Indeed, any challenge to middle-class dominance over Congress, any\nassertion of leadership and programme by the organised workers, potentially<\/strong>a force millions strong, was\ncontemptuously denounced as “sectarianism” – as an assertion of a\nnarrow, selfish, sectional interest!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lectured<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, too, when the SACTU-organised National Workers’ Conference\nthreatened to seize the initiative in the organisation and programme for the\n1958 stay-at-home, Lutuli lectured the workers that Congress was not\n“exclusively” a workers’ organisation, but had in its ranks\nbusinessmen, professionals, housewives, etc. Organisational work for the\nstay-at-home must not be confined to the factories, but carried out in the\ntownships “where we are strong”. [6]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n But the overwhelming majority of those in the townships, just as\nin the factories – or on the farms and in the reserves – were working-class\npeople. They had every interest in pursuing the struggle until all their\nburdens – of racism and capitalism alike – were lifted. They had most to gain\nfrom success in action, and most to lose by its failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, in reality, determined struggle by the working class was in\nthe interests too of the bulk of the black middle class – even though their\nleaders failed to appreciate the fact. Teachers, nurses, small traders, etc, are themselves oppressed by both racialism\nand capitalism, but with no power to get rid of either on their own account.<\/strong>\nThey would not have been “frightened off”, but attracted to, a\nCongress movement organised on a programme to win national liberation and\ndemocracy, based on workers’ power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was the task which presented itself for the working class in\nthe 1950s, and which could have been spearheaded by the worker militants who\nwere at the core of building the trade unions and Congress. That is still the\ntask today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, in the 1950s, such militants had no access to the\nideas, methods and perspectives of Marxism which form an indispensable guide –\nin fact, they were frustrated in the search for genuine Marxism by the\nmisleading influence of the CP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a result, although SACTU had promised to pursue an\n“independent policy in the interests of the workers” in the Congress\nmovement, it in fact became subordinated to the dictates of the middle class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because the mass of the working class was looking to Congress for\nleadership, it was entirely correct for the organised workers to enter – with\nthe force of their unions – into the Congress ranks. But, to uphold an independent policy, it was\nessential to establish working-class leadership and a working-class programme\nas predominant over the whole movement.<\/strong>This was not done – and thus\nthere could be not be any “independent policy” on the part of SACTU\neither.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is wrong to say, as some do today, that SACTU could not have\nprovided a base for working-class political organisation, and for the\ntransformation of the Congress movement, in the 1950s. The basis was there in\nworkplace organisation, and in the tremendous activity<\/strong>of the working class which made\nit the overwhelming force in every struggle against the regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the necessary clarity and understanding, the necessary\nconscious political leadership, had existed in the 1950s, the task could have\nbeen undertaken. The subsequent fate of SACTU itself – and indeed of the\nCongress movement – could have been significantly different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are many today who argue, in the light of what happened in\nthe 1950s, that the organised workers should not enter Congress (or the UDF),\nbut instead aim to build a “workers’ party” outside the ambit of any\nmiddle class-led movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What these comrades forget is the enormous weight of historical\ntradition in the movement of the working class – and the way this affects\npreviously unorganised workers who take to the road of struggle in their\nhundreds of thousands when a revolutionary period opens up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The tradition of the Congress movement, established in the 1950s,\nas the focal point for the political mass movement in the past, will assert\nitself vigorously again in future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Initially, it will not be the mistakes or failures of leadership\nwhich stand out in the minds of black working-class people, but the finest and\nmost heroic traditions of Congress, which its leaders – imprisoned and exiled –\nwill be seen to embody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here what happened in the 1950s is relevant also. While, towards\nthe end of that decade, the activists became angered and embittered by the\npolicies of the leadership, and sections of the masses turned to the PAC,\nnevertheless even then fresh layers of the working class moving into struggle\nturned first to the Congress banner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even the PAC, with no real alternative to offer, gained the\nsupport that it did precisely because its leaders emerged out of Congress<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In future, the re-emergence of the ANC openly in South Africa,\nwith its now exiled or imprisoned leadership, will be an enormous attraction\nfor millions of those as yet unorganised. This force will carry in its flood\nalso the ranks of the trade unions. Even if a separate “workers’ party”\nexisted at that time, linked to the unions – something that would be\nexceptionally difficult, in any event, to create and sustain under present\nrepressive conditions – it would most likely be compelled to turn to Congress\nor be bypassed by the mass movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, by orienting clearly towards Congress now, by\nturning organised workers without delay to the task of building and changing\nthe UDF into a consciously working-class movement, under a workers’ leadership\nand programme, the way can be prepared for the ANC itself to be transformed.\nThen, for the first time, a real mass workers’ party will have come into\nexistence in South Africa, capable of drawing all the oppressed behind it, and\nmounting a revolutionary challenge for power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the foundation for all this must obviously be the systematic\nextension and strengthening of the independent, democratic trade union\norganisations of the workers at the point of production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That task, magnificently carried forward in South Africa since the\nearly 1970s, was the main task identified by worker activists in Congress at\nthe end of the 1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Analysing the 1961 stay-at-home-and what it reflected about the\nstate of organisation of the class – Harry Gwala wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n “When it comes to the actual stay away by the workers it must be boldly admitted that the working class did not come up to our expectations. What was the cause? With the only trade union coordinating body – SACTU – enjoying only a membership of 55,000, and no political party of their own <\/em>in the Congress alliance, we must confess that on the working class front we are still very weak. The basic economy of the country – the mines and agriculture – have not yet been seriously tackled. To achieve the next successful national stoppage of work we shall have to assist SACTU to build up powerful trade unions and treble its present membership.”<\/p> (Fighting Talk<\/em>, August 1961. Our emphasis.) <\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n But the possibility for building powerful trade unions was again cut across – not simply by intensified state repression, but by the decision of the Congress and CP leaders to turn to futile policies of sabotage and guerrilla warfare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [1]<\/a> Moses Kotane<\/em>, p. 263.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/a>\nReport by the National Action Council, quoted in Black Politics in South Africa\nsince 1945<\/em>, p. 197.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [3]<\/a> Moses Kotane<\/em>, p. 263.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [4]<\/a> 1977 interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [5]<\/a> Ibid.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n [6]<\/a> Organize or Starve!<\/em>, p. 350.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Continue to Chapter Twelve<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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