After the May 1961 stay-at-home, Mandela wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of all the observations made on the strike, none has brought so much heat and emotion as the stress and em\u00adphasis we put on non-violence. Our most loyal supporters, whose courage and devotion has never been doubted, unanimously and strenuously disagreed with this ap\u00adproach\u2026 [1]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Throughout the 1950s, in fact, on the question of force and\nviolence there was a fundamental difference between the working-class\nsupporters of Congress and the Congress leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Viewing apartheid as an “irrationality” which the ruling\nclass could be persuaded to drop in favour of democracy – not seeing the racist\nsystem as part and parcel of the structure of capitalism<\/strong>– Congress leaders believed\nthat “reasonableness” and “moderation” could induce a\nsimilar “moderation” from the forces of the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We can assure the world that it is our intention to keep on\nthe non-violent plane,” stated Lutuli in 1953. “We would earnestly\nrequest the powers that be to make it possible for us to keep our people in\nthis mood.” [2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The PAC leadership, despite claims to greater radicalism, had in\npractice taken the same approach. “I have appealed to the African people\nto make sure that this campaign is conducted in a spirit of absolute\nnon-violence,” stated Sobukwe at the start of the March 1960 anti-pass\ncampaign.” I now wish to direct the same call to the police. If the\nintention of the police is to ‘maintain law and order’, I say, you can best do\nso by eschewing violence.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Black working people knew or sensed from generations of bitter\nexperience that no reliance could be placed on such appeals. The only means of\ndefence against police violence was effective counter-organisation and the\ncollective mobilisation of counter-force as and when possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time, however, mass “violence” alone –\nunorganised, sporadic, isolated in one area or another, an expression of\nfrustration directed to no clear goal – could produce no lasting advance. It\nwas just as likely to result in savage state reprisals, and even demoralisation\nand defeat, if it did not form part either of deliberate defensive tactics or a\nconcerted revolutionary onslaught by the working class against the state when\nthe ground for that had been prepared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 1950s, as today, a correct approach to the preparation and\nuse of physical force in the struggle was impossible without a correct\npolitical theory, perspective and strategy for revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Already, at the beginning of the 1950s, workers were showing their\nreadiness to fight back against the forces of the state. “Five times in\nthe last six months,” reported The\nGuardian <\/em>(February 16, 1950),\n“bloody clashes between Africans and police have taken place on the Rand.\nMany Africans have lost their lives and many police have been injured in these\nclashes which have at times developed into running gunfights in which whole\ncommunities have been involved.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Defiance Campaign, in the struggle against forced removals,\nin the struggle of women against passes, in the struggles of women in Natal in\n1959-60, in the resistance to Bantu Authorities which erupted in many of the\nreserves, working people confronted the forces of the state with the force of mass organisation<\/strong>– not shrinking from using\nwhatever weapons they could lay hands on and use in the circumstances without\ncourting unnecessary reprisals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What they needed from the Congress leadership was a lead in\nbuilding and strengthening mass organisation – particularly in the workplaces –\nand help in providing means for the defence of this organisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The complaints from activists referred to by Mandela in 1961 were\nprecisely about the ways in which an abstract insistence on\n“non-violence” had inhibited the strengthening of working-class\norganisation in action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was argued, said Mandela, “that it is wrong and\nindefensible for a political organization to repudiate picketing, which is used\nthe world over as a legitimate form of pressure to prevent scabbing.” [3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1961 the factory organisation built under the banner of\nCongress, weak as it was in comparison with workers’ organisation today, was\nstill relatively intact. The task, as Harry Gwala pointed out, was concentrated\neffort to strengthen this – on the basis of campaigns winning the broadest\nsupport from the working class because they were based on struggling for their\ndaily needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Within these factory fortresses the ANC, though banned, could have\nbeen maintained underground, and built to re-emerge openly once the\norganisation of the working class was strong enough for this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that was not the course taken. Instead, in the hope of\ncircumventing the difficulties of worker organisation in a climate of harsh\nrepression, a new organisation was formed. Thus arose Umkhonto we Sizwe, as a\nseparate “military wing” of the struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It soon became clear that the real hopes of the leadership were\npinned, no longer on political mass organisation, but on “MK”. In\nfact, Congress expressly stated that political<\/strong>organisation should be turned\nto the service of military<\/strong>activity – military activity by\nan organisation ultimately responsible only to itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Political agitation is the only way of creating the\natmosphere in which military action can most effectively operate,” stated\nan ANC NEC circular in April 1963. “The political front gives sustenance\nto the military operations.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What did the leadership hope would be gained by this turn?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The initial propaganda of MK still based itself on the conception\nthat the “progressive” capitalists were on the point of ousting the NP\ngovernment and taking to the path of concessions. The actions of MK would\n“assist” in this process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This, too, was the position of the CP. While, in 1959, Michael\nHarmel had written that a democratic revolution in South Africa “need not\ninvolve violence”, [4]<\/a> he turned in 1961 (under\nthe pen-name “A. Lerumo”) to a different view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Violence was now necessary because “before the racialist\noppressors can be made to listen to reason, their ears must be opened by\nspeaking to them in the only language they understand.” [5]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kotane also said at the time: “When a man takes no notice of\nwhat you say, sometimes you have to twist his arm to make him listen to\nyou.” [6]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\nRevolutionary\nact<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Workers know full well that, when the boss refuses to listen, it\nis necessary to “twist his arm” – for example, by strike action. But\nthe more organised and experienced workers are, the more clearly they\nappreciate also that the taking\nup of arms<\/strong>in\nSouth Africa is a revolutionary\nact<\/strong>. It must be used not to “twist the arm” of the enemy,\nbut to break<\/strong>his arm, to overthrow his state\npower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is why, as a conscious strategy, the taking up of arms by the\nworking class is appropriate not to the first stages of organisation and\nmobilisation, but to the stage when the class is moving towards a confrontation\nwith its rulers in an armed insurrection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How could it be imagined that a rash of sabotage actions could win\nconcessions from the ruling class when it was still able to contain the far\nmore powerful force of the mass movement?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In their own ranks, the MK and Communist Party leadership\njustified these tactics as the “first stage” of a supposedly\naccelerating struggle for power. As one ex-Congress activist (presently living\nin Natal) has recalled:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“There was much wild talking at that time. The idea was that there should be isolated sabotage acts in the beginning. These would move rapidly into greater and greater acts of sabotage until large centres would be involved in sabotage and then these would finally end up in the masses moving en masse to sabotage, general strike, and the taking over of the country.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
This was the “plan” proposed in “Operation\nMayibuye”, a document captured by the police in the Rivonia arrests.\nThough not officially adopted at the time, the strategy in it is no different\nfrom anything which has subsequently been published by the ANC leadership to\njustify a strategy of guerrilla struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were, recalls the same ex-Congress activist, two reasons for\nthe decision:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One was the success of Castro in Cuba and the other was the Pondo uprising which made a number of SACP leaders feel that the time was now ripe for the violent overthrow of the Government. If Castro could do it in two years why couldn’t they do it? It was a false analogy. As far as the Pondo rising was concerned, by the time they took the decision the Pondo’s themselves had decided to take the question of violence no further and were looking forward to other methods of struggle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
It was, he continues,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
a complete misunderstanding of the situation and a completely wrong analysis of the forces at work\u2026It was a very very grave mistake which had terrible effects on the growth of the mass movement in South Africa. To my mind certain of the leaders were always dissatisfied with taking things over a long term. They were keen to get things settled as quickly as possible\u2026It seemed such a novel, one may say, easy way to solve the problems\u2026It was this simplistic attitude that was entirely wrong. There was a sense of complete euphoria about this\u2026They did not take into account the strength of the state.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Some CP leaders bitterly opposed the new turn. Bram Fischer, on\ntrial in March 1966, stated that Operation Mayibuye was “an entirely\nunrealistic brainchild of some youthful and adventurous imagination\u2026If there\nwas ever a plan which a Marxist could not approve in the then prevailing\ncircumstances, this was such a one\u2026if any part of it at all could be put into\noperation, it could achieve nothing but disaster.” [7]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
The advocates of guerrillaism believed that a revolutionary\nsituation was coming into existence in South Africa in the early 1960s – or\ncould be brought about by a guerrilla struggle. This, as Fischer and others\nrecognised, was an entirely false perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The realities of South Africa were (and are) completely different\nfrom such countries of the colonial world as pre-revolutionary Cuba, Vietnam,\netc. There capitalism was rotting internally, and held up by a weakly-based\nstate machine – even without the leadership of the working class, it was\npossible for a mass struggle of peasants, organised through a guerrilla army,\nto overthrow the regime, and even to end capitalism. [8]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
South Africa, by comparison, was already highly industrialised –\nand this had enabled the capitalist class to construct a formidable state\nmachine, based on the support of millions of privileged whites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A revolutionary situation can only unfold in South Africa as this\nstate machine becomes paralysed in its ability to defend the rule of the capitalist\nclass. Writing in Africa South <\/em>(October-December 1958), a\npro-Congress liberal, Julius Lewin, had argued that revolution was clearly not\n“round the corner” in South Africa. He quoted an American historian’s\nstatement that<\/p>\n\n\n\n
no government has ever fallen before revolutionists until it has lost control over its armed forces or lost the ability to use them effectively; and, conversely, no revolutionists have ever succeeded until they have got a predominance of effective armed force on their side. [9]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
None of the Congress leaders who replied to this article addressed\nthemselves to answering this critical question. Nor was it answered by the turn\nto sabotage or to guerrilla struggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\nPolitical issue<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
For at the root of this question was not a military but a political\nissue: how politically<\/strong>the ruling class could be\nparalysed – what social\nforce<\/strong>could be\nexerted to tear open divisions in the ruling class and separate from it the\nmiddle layers of society on whose support it depends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The key to the question of revolution in South Africa was, and\nremains, the potential power of the black working class. That is the only force\nwhich will be capable, once massively organised and roused consciously to the\ntask, of dividing the whites, of arming itself for power, and leading all the\noppressed people to the overthrow of apartheid and capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, it is the resurgence of a working-class movement mightier\nby far than in the 1950s that has begun to re-open the splits in the ruling\nclass and among its supporters. Even under this pressure, however, South Africa\nis only at the start of what is likely to be a prolonged period of\npre-revolutionary upheavals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the 1950s the pressure of the working class had also begun to\nintensify divisions in the ruling class and among its supporters. But this was\nfar from the existence of a revolutionary situation. In fact, largely as a\nresult of the policies of compromise with the liberal capitalists which the ANC\nleaders had pursued, the mass movement had become divided and confused. By the\nearly 1960s the ruling class had taken advantage of these circumstances to\ninflict defeats on the working class and force the movement on the retreat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As another argument for the “turn to armed struggle”,\nMandela argued that<\/p>\n\n\n\n
unless responsible leadership was given to canalise and control the feelings of our people, there would be outbreaks of terrorism which would produce an intensity of bitterness and hostility between the various races of this country which is not produced even by war. [10]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Indeed, particularly among the unorganised youth, but even\npenetrating into the ranks of the organised, there was by the early 1960s an\nincreasing mood of frustration. This mood took on its most desperate and\nhopeless form in the random terrorism of “Poqo”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But to respond to this mood by leading those gripped by it into\nthe blind alley of sabotage and guerrillaism, was a disastrous step for the\nwhole mass movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Far from widening the divisions in the ruling class (let alone\nbringing them to “reason”) – far from splitting away their supporters\n– it unwittingly gave the ruling class a greater opportunity to reconsolidate\nitself and its support on the basis of vicious repression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mass arrests, indefinite detention without trial, the systematic\nuse of torture – these the regime had not had the confidence to introduce\nthrough the whole of the 1950s. But now the mass movement was itself torn by\ncrisis. After December 1961, the launching of the sabotage campaign gave the\nregime the pretext it was looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ruling class used viciously repressive legislation not only to\nbreak the sabotage campaign, but to smash the remaining forms of workers’\norganisation. The Sabotage Act of 1962 not only introduced 90-day detention,\nbut defined strikes as acts of sabotage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1965 the Commissioner of Prisons stated that there were 8,500\npolitical prisoners in South African jails. Between 1960 and 1966, 160 SACTU\nofficials were arrested, and many convicted on sabotage charges. Between 1963\nand 1971 at least twenty prisoners died in the hands of the security police.\nSome leading worker militants were executed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the last conference it was able to hold, SACTU stated: “We\nare carrying on in the face of such difficulties that it is like trying to swim\nagainst a tidal wave.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By encouraging the cream of SACTU’s worker militants to leave their\norganising work in the factories, join MK and leave South Africa, the\n“turn to armed struggle” contributed to a devastating rout of\nworkers’ organisation.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
By these policies, and by the savagery of state repression, a\ngeneration of worker activists embodying the most advanced experience of the\nSouth African working class was (politically speaking) wiped out. The thread of\nthe labour movement tradition was broken for a whole period, as dark reaction\nsettled over South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Throughout the remainder of the 1960s and into the 1970s, the\nwhole of the black working class, and with them all the oppressed, were\nvirtually defenceless against the unchecked attacks of the bosses and the\nstate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bosses could amass greater profits by stepping up exploitation\nin the factories. The state could step up its programme of forced removals and\n“Bantustanisation”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The increased repression of the state drove far beyond an attack\non political activists. In 1948 in South Africa there were 37 executions:\nbetween 1960 and 1969 there were, on average, 95 a year. In 1961 the number of\npersons sentenced to prison was 289,000 – in 1968 it was 486,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Facing a more ruthlessly organised and armed state machine, the\nworking class – with its leadership killed, in prison, banned, or in exile –\nhad to find its own means to regroup and reorganise underground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At a great cost, this is what the working class had begun to do by the early 1970s. The tremendous achievements of the last ten years confirm that it is the only force capable of leading a struggle against apartheid and capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Continue to Chapter 13<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n[1]<\/a> No Easy Walk to Freedom<\/em>, p. 105.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[2]<\/a> The Road to Freedom is Via the Cross<\/em>, p. 20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[3]<\/a> No Easy Walk to Freedom<\/em>, p. 105.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[4]<\/a> Africa South<\/em>, January-March 1959.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[5]<\/a> African Communist<\/em>, April-May 1962.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[6]<\/a> Moses Kotane<\/em>, p. 273.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[7]<\/a> United Nations Office of Public\nInformation, Apartheid and the\nTreatment of Prisoners in South Africa: Statements and Affidavits<\/em>, New\nYork, 1967, p. 41. This part of Fischers’s trial statement was omitted from the\nversion published by the ANC: What\nI Did Was Right<\/em>, by Bram Fischer, Mayibuye Publications, London (undated).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[8]<\/a> Even in that case, however, the result\ncould never be a transition to a genuinely socialist <\/em>society, which requires the\nconscious democratic control and management of production and the state by the\nworking class. The ending of capitalism after the victory of a guerrilla army –\nwhere that has been the result – has invariably led to a regime of bureaucratic\ndictatorship on Stalinist lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[9]<\/a> From Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution<\/em>. This\nwas no original discovery of a bourgeois historian! – it was, in fact, a key\nelement in the conclusions drawn by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky on\nrevolution and the state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[10]<\/a> No Easy Walk to Freedom<\/em>, p. 164.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"