00:00 Norman Traub: First of all I would take this opportunity, as a member of the African People's Democratic Union of Southern Africa, of commending Socialist Resistance for the publishing of this book on South Africa, *The Dynamic of Revolution in South Africa*. It says much for their internationalism,
00:31 and they've previously published other books, such as the memoirs of Leonard Nikani on white supremacy in South Africa. Secondly, I'd like to say the African People's Democratic Union of Southern Africa is affiliated to the Democratic Left Front, which is a front
01:03 of organisations in South Africa which are involved in the struggle against oppression in South Africa. They have a wide range of organisations coming from all the sections in South Africa. And of course Niall will know much more about it than I do, because I have unfortunately not been back
01:34 very recently. Now, I'm going to have my notes here, because my memory is not too good. I want to start off by talking about this book, which is the writings and speeches of I.B. Tabata, edited by Dora
02:06 Taylor. It covers a period from 1943 to 1969. 1943 was the year that the Unity Movement of South Africa was established. Tabata became president of the Unity Movement of South Africa in 1964, until his death in exile
02:36 in Zimbabwe in 1990. Both Tabata and Dora Taylor were members of a revolutionary Marxist party in South Africa in the 1930s. That party was called the Workers Party of South Africa, and that Workers Party
03:08 of South Africa enjoined its members to help to form a national movement, and to work to solve the problems of landlessness of the blacks in South Africa. The way they set about it is
03:38 they were faced with this immediate hurdle, which was the slave mentality of the oppressed blacks — which of course was a product of the oppressive conditions in South Africa and the ideology of the ruling class. Now they focused their attention on the inferior institutions which were
04:08 supposed to be representative of the oppressed blacks in South Africa. These we call dummy institutions, which have no power whatsoever: for example the Native Representative Council, as it was called, which was supposed to be the same as a parliament; the advisory boards in the towns, which was supposed to be like a city council;
04:41 and then the bungas in the rural areas, which were supposed to be like rural councils. The ruling class tried to encourage the blacks to operate these, but the first thing
05:12 that the Workers Party of South Africa did was to organise boycotts of these institutions, and adopted the policy of non-collaboration with the oppressor. This was as opposed to the ANC, which adopted a policy of working
05:43 within these inferior institutions — and in fact prominent members in the ANC occupied central positions in these dummy institutions. The next thing that the Workers Party of South Africa were involved in
06:14 was in breaking down the barriers amongst the blacks: the Africans, the Coloureds and the Indians. There was almost a situation of armed neutrality between the various groups, and of course this had been fostered by the ruling class, which suited their ends. The Workers Party
06:48 created a federal organisation, uniting all the organisations that they could with a common programme and a common policy. Now this common programme and policy was open to all the blacks —
07:18 African, Coloured, and South Africans of Indian extraction. This was unlike the ANC, which had a clause in its constitution which reserved it only for Africans; and the same thing with the South African Indian Congress — only South Africans of Asian or Indian origin were allowed to become members.
07:49 This federal organisation had a common programme for democratic rights, and included a clause calling for a new division of the land in accordance with the existing population in the rural areas.
08:21 Now this programme, which was called the Ten Point Programme, was presented to the blacks. It was the first time that a political programme had been presented to the blacks, and this programme was presented twelve years before the Freedom Charter. So this was the
08:53 situation when the Unity Movement was formed. It built organisations in the towns, but also in the rural areas — and the majority of the population in the 40s and the 50s were the landless peasantry. Because of their landlessness
09:25 they had to operate the migratory labour system, and that migratory labour system supplied the workers to the mines and the heavy industry. So the migratory labour was the backbone of the workforce in the mines and heavy industry. Now in 1948
09:56 the white electorate handed power to the Nationalist Party. The Nationalist Party was influenced by Nazi ideology, and it represented all classes of Afrikaners, from the bourgeoisie to the workers. And the first thing they did, of course, was
10:27 to increase the oppression of the blacks. They intensified residential and occupational segregation by introducing the Group Areas Act. Now this policy was defined as apartheid — apartheid in Afrikaans means
10:57 separateness. In essence it's the same as the segregation policy pursued by the previous racist regimes. This attack on the blacks was called
11:28 the apartheid policy. The ANC, which was under the tutelage of the white liberals who represented British capitalism in South Africa, soon after 1948 aligned themselves with the South African Communist Party. And
12:00 the white liberals and the South African Communist Party spurred on the ANC to engage in acts which would frighten the white electorate, so that they would vote against the Nationalist Party and bring in the United Party — of which the English-speaking
12:32 South African capitalists were a prominent section. So this policy of getting rid of the greater evil to be
13:03 replaced by the lesser evil was called an anti-apartheid policy. So the ANC, together with the South African Communist Party, engaged in days of action, when they would call out the black population not to go to work.
13:34 This didn't really influence the whites or the regime. And then they adopted a policy of passive resistance — Gandhism — in which they would call for volunteers to enter the white entrance of public buildings like the post office. And then of course these people would get arrested and stay in prison, they'd come out, and of course the white regime just increased
14:05 the oppression and enacted even more repressive legislation against the blacks. Then, when this policy failed, they decided to go into violence. So they decided on a
14:36 policy of sabotage, and they blew up electric pylons. And of course all that the Nationalist government did was to clamp down more heavily on the oppressed blacks. They introduced legislation which banned the ANC and the South African Communist Party, and
15:08 introduced the Terrorism Act and detention without trial. One wonders where the rulers of the regime in this country got their inspiration from, when they also started with their terrorism acts — because these things had been practised in South Africa long before. And of course
15:39 Tabata was the first person in South Africa to get a five-year banning order. So now the sabotage campaign had failed. At this time the decolonised countries in Africa had formed the Organisation of African Unity, and they had
16:10 established a liberation committee in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, which would provide military training and financial assistance to those organisations still in the colonial countries in Africa, to help them to become decolonised. So the ANC decided they would
16:41 clandestinely send some of their leadership into Tanzania, and they applied for recognition from the liberation committee. They got this recognition and they were supplied with military and financial assistance by this committee — but not only by this committee, because of their ties to the South African Communist Party, plenty of money and military training from the Soviet Union
17:12 and the Soviet bloc, and also financial aid from bourgeois circles in Europe. And of course you had a solidarity movement with the oppressed blacks growing up in this country, the Anti-Apartheid Movement, as some of you will remember.
17:42 So the ANC then decided to engage in guerrilla warfare. And of course what they did is they ignored the fundamental tenets of guerrilla warfare, where you involve the population in the struggle. And of course the guerrilla campaign
18:13 failed. The South African state, with its well-equipped and well-trained army, was able to deal with them without any threat whatsoever to the South African state. Now while the ANC was involved in passive resistance campaigns and sabotage, the Unity Movement of South
18:46 Africa was organising its membership in the towns and in the countryside. Now in the countryside, because of the landlessness of the peasants, the peasants were involved in a resistance against the attempts by the oppressors to increase the landlessness and reduce the stock of cattle that the
19:18 peasants owned. So this rehabilitation scheme, as it was called — they resisted this rehabilitation scheme, and they coupled this with a boycott of the inferior institutions, the Native Representative Council and the bungas. Now they had learned
19:50 that they would not get land unless they had political rights. This rise in their political consciousness was demonstrated when they accepted the slogan of land and liberty. There were rebellions all over South Africa in the peasant areas.
20:23 There was the rebellion in Sekhukhuneland, and there was the Pondoland rebellion. And three or four months after Sharpeville there were peasants in Pondoland who were mowed down by the South African police at the place called Ngquza Hill. Twenty peasants were killed, many were wounded, and many were
20:54 imprisoned. After the Ngquza Hill episode the peasants from Pondoland approached the leadership of the Unity Movement and asked if they could supply arms to them, so that they could conduct an armed struggle against their oppressors. The Unity Movement leadership said there's no point in engaging
21:26 in armed resistance if there is no national political force which is aiming for power. So that was the situation in the early 1960s.
21:57 The leaders of the Unity Movement, in assessing the national situation, came to the conclusion that there was a pre-revolutionary situation in South Africa. And what they did to meet this challenge: they formed an organisation called the African People's Democratic Union of Southern Africa. That's the organisation
22:28 to which I belong. And one of the clauses of its constitution said: the democratic rights of the workers and the peasantry shall be paramount in the orientation of APDUSA.
23:00 None of the other organisations of the Unity Movement had this clause. This clause was specific to APDUSA. The Unity Movement leadership anticipated that the struggle for democratic rights would go beyond political rights. They proceeded to organise in the towns
23:32 and the country. They did get a lot of support in the towns, but much more so in the countryside: in the 60s some of the biggest organisations in South Africa were peasant organisations with thousands of members. And so they recruited from this, and they then
24:03 felt that they could go to the next stage of the struggle, and that was to engage in the armed struggle. So they decided to send three of their leadership to secretly leave South Africa and go to Tanzania, to
24:33 present a memorandum to the liberation committee, asking for recognition. And at that meeting the ANC and PAC representatives opposed the Unity Movement application, and they were very vocal against us. And
25:05 the liberation committee turned down the application of the Unity Movement, stating that it was a decolonisation committee, and that the aspirations of the Unity Movement for a social transformation in South Africa did not fall within its purview.
25:39 In exile the leadership were faced with reactionary forces in the OAU and outside of the OAU, but most of all they concentrated on maintaining the links with the home front. I think that's [where I'll stop].
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