TheAfrican Communist, 1991.

ByBlade Nzimande

October 26, 2009 – A browse through the veryfirst edition of theAfrican Communist in 1959 notonly gives an insight into the time and context during which it waslaunched but also the courageous and defiant character of those whobreathed life into our historic journal.

This magazine, theAfrican Communist, has been started by a groupof Marxist-Leninists in Africa, to defend and spread the inspiring andliberating ideas of Communism in our great Continent, and to apply thebrilliant scientific method of Marxism to the solution of its problems.

It is being produced in conditions of great difficulty and danger.Nevertheless we mean to go on publishing it, because we know thatAfrica needs Communist thought, as dry and thirsty soil needs rain.

These conditions of "great difficulty and danger" developed as aresult of the banning of the Communist Party of South Africa in 1950and its underground reconstitution as the South African Communist Partyin 1953.

Born of struggle: The political origins of theAfrican Communist

Veteran comrades tell of the fierce behind the scenes debate at thetime about whether the reconstitution of the party should have beenpublicly announced. Those who argued against the public declarationworried that it would jeopardise and raise suspicions about the motivesof known communists in the trade union movement, in the African National Congress (ANC) and thecongress alliance. It is ironic that even now, 50 years later, thetendency to ring alarm bells about the motives of communists has notdissipated; albeit now this view reinforced by a creeping and dangerousintersection between holding of public office and business interests.All this proves is that our Alliance [between the South African Communist Party (SACP), the ANC and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)] has stood the test of time.

Those who wanted the reconstituted party to be publicly announced,argued that this would be a necessary act of defiance and would giveconfidence to existing communists that they still had a political home.It would also allow for ease in the recruitment of new members into theunderground.     

True to the robust character of the SACP, the debate raged for manyyears until in 1959 the publication of theAfrican Communist symboliseda compromise. It was decided that a journal would be published as aforum for Marxist-Leninist thought in Africa, but not as an officialpublication of the now reconstituted SACP, as it indeed was.

Although it was launched in trying conditions and faced severerestrictions, theAfrican Communist, which was produced in London, was from the outsetbold and forthright. Under the heading "Why they hate communism", aneditorial in that historic first issue in part read as follows:

It is no accident that the first thing the Nationalist Governmentdid, when it took power in 1948, was to outlaw Communism. They bannedthe Communist Party, which for thirty years had led the people instruggles for freedom and equality. Hundreds of Communists have beenbanned and banished, driven out of their jobs, forbidden on pain ofjail to go to meetings or take any part in political and trade unionmovements.

Yet, belief in Communism lives on in South Africa. It is spreadingthroughout the Continent, although every day it is denounced andattacked by agents of United States, British, French, Portuguese, andBelgian imperialism.

They hate Communism because they know that the Communists are thebravest, most clear-headed and incorruptible leaders in the people'sstruggle against imperialism, for freedom and equality. They know thatonce the African workers and peasants have mastered the great ideas ofCommunism, nothing will stop them in their onward march to freedom,independence and socialism.

African revolution not ‘renaissance'

That first edition of theAfrican Communist pioneered the idea of an Africanrevolution saying the peoples of the continent needed the "liberatingspirit of Communism" in order to be free of the forces of imperialism.It is a point worth noting that the founders spoke of an African"revolution" not an African "Renaissance". They wanted an uprisingwhich was rooted in African realities not a conversion which copied theEuropean Renaissance.  

The heroic contribution of SACP freedom fighters to the liberationstruggle will perhaps never be completely documented and understood,particularly by future generations. One of their greatest achievementswas to enrich political discourse through published material and tolead and develop public debate in the movement. While the struggleagainst racial discrimination defined the liberation struggle, asuccession of SACP leaders promoted an understanding of the classstruggle, and the intersection between racial and class divides andstruggles in South African society. TheAfrican Communist was one of the mediums whichreflected and supported years of fearless political activism andthinking through examining topical issues of the time from a communistperspective.

The pioneering role of communists on progressive media in South Africa

The SACP is proud of its role promoting and cultivating progressivemedia in South Africa.Umsebenzi (The Worker) played a pioneering rolein the late 1920s and early 1930s as a platform for internal and externalcommunication for the working class.

The apartheid machinery did its damnest to restrict, ban or closepublications, and in so doing constrain the flow of information andpolitical knowledge in South Africa. Lobbies for censorship can betraced back to at least 1898 in the Cape but the rise to power of theNationalist Party government in 1948 ushered in unprecedented degreesof censorship. Over the next 37 years, more than 100 lawsrestricting the flow of information wiped away all semblance of pressfreedom.   

But an array of brave and heroic journalists kept the spirit alivethrough publications such asNew Nation,Weekly Mail,Vrye Weekblad,South, New African, Injula andSpeak. Despite having limited resourcesand in the face of constant harassment by the apartheid regime, theydisplayed tenacity, courage and resourcefulness. These publicationsplayed an invaluable role in exposing the horrors of the regime andtelling "the other side of the story". It is one of the tragedies ofour past that not one of these publications still exists to tell thestory of this phase of our history. In their place are, at best, poorcousins of those valiant publications, pandering to special, narrow andcommercial interests.

During the liberation struggle, there was recognition within themovement that an integral part of defiance and mobilisation againstapartheid was through the promotion and sustenance of mediapublications.Work in Progress, for instance, was a progressivepublication, produced from 1977 to 1994 and founded by University ofWitwatersrand postgraduate students. Under trying conditions, theAfrican Communistwas also kept alive as an internal theoretical journal of the SACP, andin 1990 moved to South Africa where it took on a new role during thetransition phase and democratic era.

It is also important that at this stage we must note the factthat for the entire existence of both the ANC and the SACP, (white-owned) colonial and bourgeois media, which has been the mainstreammedia for more than a century, has always been against the nationalliberation movement. Prior to 1994 it acted as the mouthpiece of thewhite bourgeoisie and the apartheid state, and since 1994 has generallyacted as part of the array of forces in opposition to the nationalliberation movement.

In the course of its vehement opposition to the national liberationmovement, the colonial and bourgeois mainstream media has consistentlysupported and praised all the factions that have sought to underminethe national liberation movement and its alliance components andformations. For example, when the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) broke away from the ANC in 1958,it was praised by the media as the more genuine representative of theoppressed majority, in the same way as the Group of 8, the UDM and nowCOPE [Congress of the People] have been championed as better organisations than the ANC and theAlliance.

Similarly, the enthusiastic manner in which a publicationlike theMail and Guardian has prominently published sinister andopportunistic attacks on the SACP and COSATU by essentially what areelements of the emerging black sections of the bourgeoisie and othercompradorial elements on the October 9, 2009, are nothing but areflection of this continuous attacks of bourgeois media on progressivepolicies of our movement.

As has always been the case, colonial and bourgeois media havealways found useful idiots to advance their agenda, even within theranks of our own movement. It was also these tendencies that the veryfirst edition of theAfrican Communist referred to; highlighting the fact thatimperialism often succeeds under conditions where it also fosters itsown local compradorial elites, by also projecting them favourably intheir own media. It is precisely for these reasons that publicationslike theAfrican Communist are important in exposing this agenda whilst simultaneouslybeing a platform for deepening a working class led national democraticrevolution.

TheAfrican Communist as a platform for debates on the national democratic revolution and the struggle for socialism

Since its launch, theAfrican Communistbecame a leading platform for debate oncurrent and controversial issues. The July/August edition of 1962 talksof its reception around the world and how the first special edition inFrench made a favourable impression in French-speaking parts of Africa.An editorial on the success of the AC read as follows:

Since its first publication, at the end of 1959,The AfricanCommunist has met with, and continues to find, a warm, indeed a glowingreception, not only in all parts of Africa, but in many other parts ofthe world. Articles from our magazine have been reprinted in British,Canadian and United States publications; they have been translated andpublished in Arabic, Russian, Chinese and other languages. The Britishmonthly,Marxism Today, in its issue of April, 1962, says, "We wouldlike warmly to greet and pay tribute to our colleague The AfricanCommunist," and proceeds to give its readers a detailed survey of thecontents of our issue No. 8. In the same month, the French journalDe'mocratie Nouvelle, reprinting the article on South African racialismby Toussaint from our French language special edition, lists thecontents of this edition and offers to make copies available to itsreaders on request.

For this continuing success we who, under severe difficulties,produce this journal owe most of all to you, our readers, who continueto write in from every part of Africa and many other parts of theworld, encouraging and inspiring us in our work.

The recognition of our journal in the communist world as aformidable medium for Marxist/Leninist thought and debate was alsoillustrated through the extension of an invitation by the editor of thedistinguished Soviet publicationPravda, for a representative of theAfrican Communistto attend its 50th anniversary celebrations.

All this coincided with the program of the SACP in 1962The Roadto South African Freedom which first introduced the concept of"colonialism of a special type" as the most appropriatecharacterisation of South Africa, a colony where both the coloniser andcolonised shared the same territory.

The 1962 program will perhaps go down in history as one of theSACP's most significant programs in shaping and defining both thecharacter and tasks of the South African revolution. This programfirmly emphasised the need to unite all the oppressed whilstsimultaneously defining the leading role of the working class in thenational liberation struggle.

The imprisonment of many of our freedom fighters in the 1960sincluding Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba,Bram Fischer, Ahmed Kathrada, Elias Motsoaledi and many others, and theharassment of those who operated in the underground, led to achallenging and dark period in the struggle for liberation with avisible stagnation in the revolution. In 1970, an augmented central committee of theSACP issued a call to the South African people that reignited thespirit of defiance and mass struggle. "Freedom Can Be Won" wascirculated illegally inside the country and reproduced in theAfrican Communist. Thecall to action then included the following:

Today at this critical time, the Communist Party calls on you. Itcalls on all South Africans who love their country and who lovefreedom. We call upon the workers and the people in the countryside. Wecall upon the African people, the Coloured people, the Indians and thedemocratic elements among the whites.

Let us build up our people's organisations, in town and country, in factories, mines and villages.

Let us unite for the fight to end the shame and suffering of white minority rule: headed by the Nazi Nationalist Party.

Let us resolve that the beginning of the seventies will put an endto white South Africa and mark the beginning of People's South Africaadvancing towards socialism.

The armed groups of Umkhonto we Sizwe are ready to enter the fight. But they cannot fight alone.

The people must act!

They must build and support their illegal organisations. The ANC: the trade unions and the Communist Party.

They must act militantly for higher wages, land and freedom.

They must arouse the spirit of resistance and defiance.

They must arm themselves.

The war of national liberation is on and we must fight it to the finish.

Victory or death!

The people of South Africa responded and with the working class inthe lead, three years later South Africa was rocked by the 1973 Durbanstrikes that laid the foundation for the internal rebuilding of aprogressive trade union movement. Six years later, the Soweto students'uprisings, spreading into many parts of our country, indeed changed thecourse of history. TheAfrican Communist was able to analyse the uprising and providean understanding of the mood and circumstances of the time.

TheAfrican Communist was also central in debates around the formation of COSATU,particularly the two strands of thinking at the time about its natureand character. It was able to examine the thinking within FOSATU whichwas at its formation dominated by a workerist tendency, as well as thepush for a revolutionary trade union movement aligned to the Congressmovement. In this way, theAfrican Communist guided debates and analysis as COSATUtook shape and deepened working-class struggles in the workplace.

Over the years, theAfrican Communist became the only published platform of majorAlliance discussions, among the most notable was the debate on the"sunset clauses" during the transition period in the early 1990s.

Post 1994, it remained a major carrier of central committeediscussion documents and political reports of the SACP. It led thedebates and analyses on amongst other things, the dangers associatedwith access to state power without a mobilised working class, undertookthe most thorough critiques of the ill-advised GEAR [the ANC's neoliberal econmic] policy and attemptson wholesale privatisation of state-owned enterprises, and properlygrasped the weakness and what is to be done on what we now refer to asthe 1996 class project.

The following 10 years after the adoption of GEAR our Alliancerelations turned for the worst perhaps in its entire existence. Butwhat our detractors, both inside and outside our movement, do not fullyappreciate has been the role of our publications, especiallyUmsebenziand theAfrican Communist in keeping us focused, deepened the SACP's and broaderworking-class ideological coherence, and clearly defined therevolutionary line of march for our country. Due to resource and otherconstraints, we did not publish all editions in each year as planned,but theAfrican Communist continues to be an important weapon in the struggle todeepen, advance and consolidate the national democratic revolution.

Then, in November 2007, theAfrican Communist published an openletter from the SACP to the ANC membership titled: "We can't go on likethis... together, let's make sure things change". The concluding paragraph read:

The SACP calls on fellow ANC members-- together, let us rise to the challenge of the ANC 52nd NationalConference. Together, let us re-build an ANC and an alliance of whichcdes Albert Luthuli, Moses Kotane, O.R. Tambo, Walter Sisulu, Chris Hanicould be truly proud. That historic responsibility is now in ourcollective hands.

As with the call to action in 1970, the spirit of this letterresonated and indeed we are pleased that the ANC delegates to thePolokwane [national] conference grasped the moment and reclaimed the ANC, andindeed our alliance, back to the control of their organisation from theclutches of the 1996 class project [the victory of Jacob Zuma's supporters over those of Thabo Mbeki]. We will forever be proud of thecontribution of the SACP, together with others, in effecting thisturnaround. True to our historic role, we will continue to stand as thevanguard of the working class and not be cowed by attacks by those whoseek to reinvent the 1996 class project in our ranks, mainly guided bynarrow class interests. TheAfrican Communist will continue to re-affirm the truismthat there is no contradiction between the multi-class character of ourmovement and the working-class bias of the ANC.

One of the greatest achievements of our 50-year-old journal, theAfrican Communist was that it developed and encouraged writing andanalytical talent over the decades of its existence. In so doing, ithas become a major resource for analysis of the challenges we haveovercome and continue to face. In keeping theAfrican Communistalive, we need topromote writing particularly among young communist cadres and provide aplatform for new ideas and debates.

As we celebrate the remarkable milestone of our journal, we need toensure the sustenance and development of publications which counter theproliferation and influence of bourgeois media. South Africa has beenideologically suffocated by a mainstream media which remains out oftouch with the masses of our people.

Therefore publications such as theAfrican Communist,Umsebenzi, Umrabulo, theShopstewardand others remain important platforms to provideinformation, knowledge and timely analysis of political developmentsand working-class struggles in our country and in the world.

In advancing some of our recent perspectives and analyses, andenriching Marxism-Leninism in Africa, especially when we talk about the “1996 class project'', a “compradorial BEE [black empowerment program]', etc., some of our detractorsclaim that theAfrican Communist, if not the SACP, has substituted labels foranalysis. Nothing can be further from the truth, as such concepts arenot labels but actually capture the evolving class struggles andtendencies in South African society.

We owe to generations of communists, and indeed revolutionaries andcombatants in our broader liberation movement, to continue to publishtheAfrican Communist and other progressive journals.

We also need to take this opportunity to salute the founders of theAfrican Communist, and the thousands of leaders and cadres who participated in itsproduction and debates over the last 50 years.

[Blade Nzimande is general secretary of theSouth African Communist Party. This article is the text of a speech given to mark theAfrican Communist's50th anniversary. A number of past issues of theAfrican Communist can be downloadedHERE. See also the collection atDigital Innovation South Africa.]