The Communist Party of South Africa and The African Working Class in The 1940s

Board of Trustees, Boston University
The Communist Party of South Africa and the African Working Class in the 1940s
Author(s): Dominic Fortescue
Source: The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 24, No. 3 (1991), pp. 481-
512
Published by: Boston University African Studies Center
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The InternationalJowrnal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 24, No.3 (1991) 481
THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA AND

THE AFRICAN WORKING CLASS IN THE 1940S
By Dominic Fortescue
The CommunistPartyof SouthAfrica(CPSA)was unprecedentedlyactive during
the 1940s. From its isolated and ineffectualposition in 1940, Communistshad
established an unmatchedpresence in the black trade union movement and a
considerable influence in South Africa's urban locations by 1945. The
transformation of activitythatfollowedthe invasionof Russiaexpandedthe Party's
membershipfrom a mere four hundredin 1941, to between 2-3,000 by the war's
end. Communistsabandonedall pretenseat upholdingthe principleof a Leninist
vanguardandcommittedthemselvesto achievinga mass membership.Yet for all
its activity,and in spite of its increasedsize duringthe 1940s, the CPSA failed to
establisha mass following amongthe Africanworkingclass, anddelegatesto the
Party'slast annualconferencein 1950expressedconsiderabledisappointment at the
progress made.1This article briefly outlines the growth of Communistactivity
amongAfricanworkersand seeks to understandwhy the Partyfailed to win mass
support.2
1 Inkululeko. 5 (May 1941), 1; Confidential United States State

DepartmentCentral Files,
848A.00B/2-2546, Queen's University (microfilm), John Correll (US Labor Attache),
"Communism in South Africa," 25 February 1946, 6. Correll's memorandum was based on
extensive interviews with Party members in 1945, and is well-informed, insightful, and
remarkablysympathetic. His estimates are probablyreliable ones. The Party itself is vague, only
giving an estimate of 2-3,000 members in 1950; see South African Communist Party, South
African CommunistsSpeak. Documentsfrom the History of the South African CommunistParty,
1915-1980 (London, 1981), 200; Moses Kotane, "Rigid Discipline and Mass Membership,"
Freedom, 10 (December 1944), 16-17; Hilda Watts, "Changesin PartyOrganisation,"Cape Party
Organiser, November 1945, 6; SACP, CommunistsSpeak, 200.
2 How the CPSA interacted with the black
working class, and issues of ideology and
consciousness are almost completely ignoredin the limited existing literature;EdwardRoux, Time
Longer Than Rope (Madison, 2nd ed., 1978) includes some considerationof such issues for the
early period and Thecla Schreuders, "TheSocial and IntellectualLife of the Left in Cape Town
during the Second World War, as Specifically Reflected in the Guardian,"in Helen Bradfordand
Bill Nasson eds., SouthAfrican Research Papers, 5 (Cape Town, n.d.), looks briefly at the CPSA,
and motivations for joining; institutional considerations dominate the remaining literature,
however; for the 1940s see, Jack and Ray Simons, Class and Colour in South Africa, 1850-1950
(Penguin, 1969); Alan Brookes, "FromClass Struggle to National Liberation: the Communist
Party of South Africa, 1940-1950" (M.A. Dissertation, University of Sussex, 1967); A.
"Lerumo,"Fifty Fighting Years (London, 1971), the official Party narrative;Tom Lodge, "Class
Conflict, Communal Struggle and Patriotic Unity: the Communist Party of South Africa during
the Second World War," African Studies Seminar Paper, University of the Witwatersrand, 7
482 DOMINIC FORTESCUE
It has become something of a commonplace among African labor historians

to refute the Whiggish notions of an evolutionary development of revolutionary
working-class consciousness that marked a number of pathbreaking studies in the
1970s, and to assert the need to comprehend how workers actually felt, rather than
why they did not think or behave in certain preconceived ways.3 This article
analyzes both aspects, attempting first to explain why the Communist Party failed to
build a mass following among the African working class, and second, to contribute
towards a fuller understandingof how African workers perceived the South African
system in the 1940s. It argues first, that although a "cultural hegemony" in
Gramsci's precise sense was never achieved in South Africa, a continual awareness
of the repressive and coercive potential of dominant classes and the state, and the
"routinerepression" suffered within and without the workplace, effectively defined
that which was and was not realistic, and drove "certain goals and aspirations into
the realm of the impossible, the realm of idle dreams, of wishful thinking."4 The
ideologically conservative nature of South African rural society compounded this
reality and ensured that the CPSA's emphasis on total emancipation seemed
absurdly unrealistic and even scarcely imaginable to most Africans, who
concentrated instead on winning concessions from within the parameters of the
existing structure of society.5 It was not simply the revolutionary nature of the
Communist Party's ideology that resonated uneasily with African workers,
however. Certainly, African workers did not have to be well-read Marxists, or
interested in the Party's theoretical explanations of societal change, to find the
CPSA attractive. The CPSA's "derived"ideology could mesh with less structured
October1985, an influentiallook at the Party'sactivitiesduringthe warperiod;Joel Bolnick,

Prejudice,Patriotism,and the PartyLine:WhiteRadicalSocialismin South
"Proletarianism,
Africa, 1915-1945," Africa Seminar Paper, University of Cape Town, 23 September 1987; Iain
Edwards, "Recollections: the Communist Party and Worker Militancy in Durban, early 1940s,"
South African Labour Bulletin, 11, 4 (1986), 65-84.
3 The collections edited by Richard Sandbrookand Robin Cohen, The Development of an
African WorkingClass (London, 1975) and Robin Cohen, Jean Copans and Peter Gutkind,African
Labour History (London and Beverley Hills, 1978) are often singled out; see for example John
McCracken,"Labourin Nyasaland:An Assessment of the 1960 Railway Workers'Strike,"Journal
of SouthernAfrican Studies, 14, 2 (1988), 280-81, and Bill Freund, "Labourand LabourHistory
in Africa: A Review of the Literature,"African StudiesReview, 27, 2 (1984), 13-14.
4 James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Ideological Struggle (New
Haven and London, 1985), 321; see also E.P. Thompson, "EighteenthCentury English Society:
Class Struggle Without Class?"Social History, 3, 2 (1978), 161-62.
5 The millenarianWatch Tower movement, which emerged in the 1920s in Central Africa,
similarly failed to attract a mass following, largely because it seemed hopelessly utopian and
contributed little towards day-to-day economic survival; see Charles van Onselen, Chibaro
(London, 1976), 205-206 and Charles Perrings,Black Mineworkers in Central Africa (London,
1979), 216-17.
THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA 483
beliefs in the right to land or simply to a "better life."6 Nonetheless, this article
argues that the undeveloped nature of class or even "race"consciousness, and the
Party's inability to tailor its ideology to the predilections of the African working
class furthercrucially limited the CPSA's appeal and even its perceived relevance.7
Finally, this article argues that Party membership failed to meet workers'
material as well as ideological priorities. Although this paper stresses that the
development of a non-revolutionary working-class consciousness, which sought
concessions from within the system and was often individualistic or ethnically
based, reflected the seeming permanence of the South African system as well as
capitalism's particular trajectory, it also suggests that such forms of resistance
constitute the inherent nature of much working-class activity, particularly in
situations of extreme economic deprivation such as 1940s South Africa. Such
strategies serve the immediate material interests of participants rather well, and as
James Scott has reminded:
To require of lower-class resistance that it somehow be "principled"

or "selfless" is not only utopian but a slander on the moral basis of
fundamental needs; it is, more fundamentally, a misconception of
the basis of the class struggle, which is first and foremost, a
struggle over the appropriation of work, production, property and
taxes. "Bread and Butter" issues are the essence of lower-class
politics and resistance.8
Whatever the potential for radical change, such strategies are likely to form
the bedrock of working-class protest and resistance. One should not, therefore,
disparage the individualistic or ethnic form such strategies took.9 Furthermore, in
South Africa's repressive environment, individual acts of resistance, mobilization
6 GeorgeRude,IdeologyandPopularProtest(London,1980),Chs. 1 and2, for his now

famousdistinctionsbetween"inherent" and"derived" ideologies:theformerarethosenotionsnot
learnedby readingbooksorlisteningto speeches;thelatterarethemorestructuredideaswhichare
importedfromoutsidepeoples'intellectual
horizons.
7 This is not in any way to suggestthatthereis some mythicalstandardby which "true"
classconsciousness canbe measured.Clearlyclassconsciousness canbe expressedin manyforms,
butmustultimatelybe basedon a realization of the unityof experienceandexploitation,as well
as unitedorganization;see Thompson,"Eighteenth CenturyEnglishSociety,"146-50 for an
extendeddiscussionof hisownviews,andRude,IdeologyandPopularProtest,8-9,forhis.
8 Scott,
Weapons of the Weak,296.
9 Scottis surelycorrectto assertthat"revolutionary in Marx'soriginalsense
consciousness"
has arguablyneverexistedanywhere.Historically,revolutionshavenot been usheredin by an
upsurgein revolutionaryconsciousness butby relativelymodestdemandsfromwithintheexisting
system,pursuedon a revolutionary scale.Revolutionary partiesarethusalwayslikelyto remain
small; see Scott, Weapons of the Weak, 341-45, 297.
aroundethnic attachments,and certainlyacquiescenceoften constitutedthe safest

methods of survival both within and without the work-place. Once again, the
CPSA suffered from such realities, exposing its African membersas it did, to
considerableeconomicriskandofferingvery little assistancein the centralstruggle
of theirlives: thatof sheereconomicsurvival.
The Nature and Limitations of Black Support for

the Communist Party, 1940-1950
The CPSA's position in 1940 was a precarious one. The Party, which counted
some three thousand members in the late 1920s, claimed a mere 280 in 1940, half
of whom lived in Johannesburg. Chaotic organization and minimal influence in
both trade unions and urban locations compounded the limitations of the Party's
small membership. At the beginning of 1939, "the Party was in a most chaotic
position organizationally, politically and financially" reported Moses Kotane, the
Party's general-secretary, "everything in connection with Party work was nil."10
The Party freely admitted that its anti-fascist activities "tendedto be confined largely
to the European workers whose attitude seemed to be the most important factor at
the moment in resisting the spread of Nazi ideas." Kotane conceded that "up to
1939 work among non-Europeans was neglected."11
The CPSA had established no more than an intermittent presence in a few
urbanlocations, Kotane urging Party members in 1940 to pay much closer attention
to local township politics.12 Communist influence in the trade union movement
was equally limited. The onset of the Depression, and the growth of sectarianism
within the Communist Party decimated the Federation of Non-European Trade
Unions (FNETU), the CPSA's first organizational presence in the African trade
union movement, and the African Federation of Trade Unions (AFTU), established
as part of the "Bolshevization" process of the early 1930s, proved a disastrous
failure.13 By 1940, a revival in the CPSA's trade union work had scarcely begun.
10 Brookes, "FromClass Struggle to National Liberation,"25; Roux, Time

Longer, 217;
Carter-Karis2CC1:32, "Minutesof Conference of the CommunistParty of south Africa, held at
Cape Town on 23 and 24 Marech 1940," 36, 3, 6.
11 "Minutesof Conference,"6, 24.
12 From
reports in Umsebenzi, it seems that Communist groups existed in Orlando,
Doornfontein, Sophiatown, Western Native Township, Bertrams and Ferreirastown in
Johannesburg,and in Benoni and Brakpanat some point during the 1930s. They appear to have
been only intermittentlyactive; Moses Kotane, "Howto Work Among UrbanAfricans,"Freedom,
4 (October 1940), 9.
13 For
general accounts of FNETU see Simons, Class and Colour, 376-78; Roux, Time
Longer, 207-09. For the establishment of AFTU, see "The Effects of the Economic Crisis in
Ray Alexander, one of the Party's leading trade unionists, delivered the industrial
report to the 1940 conference. She was bitterly critical of the Party's efforts. In
Johannesburg, she reminded them, "the African Trade Union Coordinating
Committee is not under Party leadership," and organizations such as William
Ballinger's Friends of Africa had won black workers' "confidence as their
representatives." Willie Kalk agreed, arguing that as a result of the Party's
"sectarian left outlook" during the 1930s, which had insisted on endless strikes,
"the African unions believed that the communists brought them into trouble. There
were no strikes. We merely shouted from the housetops." "The Party has not the
elementary conception of how to organize a trade union," he complained.14 In
Durban and Cape Town, Communists led no more than ten unions in 1940.15 On
the Rand, the situation was even worse. The Communist Party was acutely aware
of the success of various Trotskyite organizers, notably Max Gordon, who led
seven unions with between 15,000 and 19,000 members in 1939. Although Party
South Africa," Inprecorr, 12, 17 (14 April 1932), 338-39; for a specific example of AFTU in
Hotheads'and the 'GullibleChildren'of CapeTown:The
action,see MartinNicol, "'Joh'burg
Transvaal Union's Assault on Low Wages in the Cape Town Clothing Industry," in Belinda
Bozzoli, ed., Class, Community and Conflict (Johannesburg, 1987), 209-34; contemporary
criticisms were vocal, see Inprecorr, 12, 33 (28 July 1932), 696; 12, 34 (4 August 1932), 714.
14 "Minutesof Conference,"58-59, 65.
15 The estimated Communistinfluence is mine, based
upon the cross-referencingof known
CPSA members with sources (largely newspaperand archival) that name union secretaries. The
process is far from completely accurate,of course, but some actual assessment of the Party'sreal
influence in the tradeunion movement seems imperative;for the establishmentof the steel, sugar,
and tobacco workers' unions in Natal, see reports in the South African Worker, 879 (10 April
1937), 3, and 883 (15 May 1937), 4; 895 (1 August 1937), 3, and Guardian (22 December 1940),
6; (8 December 1939), 6; for an overview of the "verybackward"state of Natal Unionism before
the war, see, Hemson Microfilm, South African Political and Trade Union Material, Institute of
Commonwealth Studies (M. 924), Reel 1, No. 125, Friends of Africa, "Special Report. Durban,
Pietermaritzburgand Natal. Need to Survey, Coordinateand Direct Non-EuropeanLower Paid
Workers'Case, 17 November 1942," 4. For details of the 1936 formation of the South African
Railway and HarborWorkers'Union in Cape Town, see SouthAfrican Worker,851 (19 September
1936), 4; for details on the formationof unions for chemical, sweet, laundryand tin workers, see
Guardian (19 February1937), 8; (12 August 1937), 8; (26 February1937), 10; (3 May 1940), 1.
Communists also led the Textile Worker's Industrial Union and the Stevedoring Union; see
Guardian(1 September1939), 6; (14 April 1938), 8. Partyorganizershad not entirely ignored the
EasternCape althoughthey registeredfew lasting advances;see Guardian (4 August 1939), 6; for
the backward state of Easten Cape unionism, see Lynn Saffery Papers, University of the
Witwatersrand(AD.1178), A.8 1942, "Friendsof Africa Report,October 1940-June1941," 14-15.
members had not been entirely inactive, Communists led only three out of twenty-
five functioning unions in 1941.16
The industrial expansion unleashed by the war, and the Communists'
greatly increased activity, enthusiasm, and membership after June 1941
transformed the Party's influence among the African working class. In 1943, for
the first time, manufacturing industry contributed more to the South African
economy than either mining or agriculture as new secondary industries expanded
dramatically, reliant upon a vastly increased supply of black labor. Wartime
shortages of white labor accelerated this process, which drew numbers of black
workers into semi-skilled positions for the first time. Wartime inflation eroded
already low wages.17 Industrial expansion demanded "almost unrestricted
admission of Natives and the relaxation of carefully built up safeguards against
undue influx" and sucked tens of thousands into the cities; the number of women in
town soared as the urban black population stabilized.18 Low wages and drastically
limited official resources forced such people to live amid appalling conditions.
16 "Minutesof Conference,"65; for a generalaccountof Trotskyiteinvolvementon the

Randduringtheseyears,see BertramHirson,"TheMakingof the AfricanWorkingClasson the
Class and CommunityStrugglesin an UrbanSetting, 1932-1947"(Ph.D.
Witwatersrand:
dissertation, Middlesex Polytechnic, June 1986), Chs. 3 and 4; for Gordon'sinvolvement in the
1930s, see Mark Stein, "MaxGordon and African Trade Unionism on the Witwatersrand,1935-
1940," in Eddie Webster, ed., Essays in SouthernAfrican Labour History (Johannesburg,1978),
143-57; Saffery Papers, A.8 1942, "Friendsof Africa Report, October 1940-June 1941," 5-12, for
the unions in existence at this time. The estimatedCommunistinfluence is mine.
17 Union of South Africa, Social and Economic Planning Council, Report No. 13: The
Economic and Social Conditionsof the Racial Groupsin SouthAfrica (Pretoria,1948), 40-42; the
276,013 Africans employed in industryin 1936 had nearly trebled to 601,172 in 1951, and twice
as many Indiansand nearlydouble the numberof Colouredshad also found industrialemployment;
Union of South Africa, Union Statistics for Fifty Years (Pretoria, 1962), A.31-3; D. Hobart
Houghton, The South African Economy (Cape Town, 1976), 133; for wages on the Rand during
by nearly100percent,see Unionof South
thewar,whichcouldfall shortof essentialexpenditure
Africa, Report of the CommissionAppointed to Enquire Into the Operation of Bus-Services for
Non-Europeans on the Witwatersrandand in the District of Pretoria and Vereeniging, 1944
(Pretoria,1944), 17; wage rates in both Natal and Cape Town were notoriouslypoor; see Hemson
Microfilm, Friendsof Africa, "SpecialReport.Durban,Pietermaritzburgand Natal." 1-4; Union of
South Africa, Report of a Committeeof EnquiryAppointed to Enquire into Conditions Existing
on the Cape Flats and Similarly AffectedAreas in the Cape Division, 1942 (Cape Town, 1943);
EdwardBatson, "A Contributionto the Study of Urban Coloured Poverty,"Race Relations, 9, 1
(1942),2-3; theretailpriceindexroseby 34.2 percentbetween1939and 1946;Unionof South
Africa, Union Statistics, H.22.
18 Ballinger
Papers, University of the Witwatersrand (A410), B.2.14.3, C.W. Slarke,
Inspectorof UrbanLocations,"Reporton the Inspectionof Conditionsof Nativesin the Cape
Peninsular,21 April 1943," 1,3; between 1936-51 the percentageof Africans living in urbanareas
increased from 18.4 to 27.2; Union of South Africa, Union Statistics, A.10; Ellen Hellmann,
"UrbanAreas,"in her Handbookon Race Relations in SouthAfrica (Cape Town, 1949), 239.
Three issues proved of particularly critical concern to urban black populations: the
acute shortages and high cost of housing, transport,and food.19
The creation of a larger, more stable, and more skilled black workforce had
a number of vital implications for the Communist Party. The number of workers
who joined trade unions, took strike action, and won new wage determinations
increased substantially.20 The Communist Party's position in the unions was
transformed. Indeed, the CPSA could hardly fail to benefit, and to a considerable
extent it was workers who took the initiative. The Communist Party responded
successfully, issuing pamphlets explaining the basics of trade unionism, and
supplying organizers, many of whom joined the Party without a trade union
background. The Party's influence increased very considerably. By 1945-1946,
Communists occupied leadership positions in at least thirty-four new African and
sixty-two new registered unions. Party organizers were not the only ones active in
the field, but even the Trotskyite Workers' International League, grudgingly
acknowledged the CPSA as the "unchallenged leader of the trade union
movement."21
Communists combined their union work with an unmatched involvement in
local subsistence struggle. The Johannesburg District Committee's failure to
involve itself in the Orlando squatting movements is a relatively well-known one,22
19 Union of South Africa, Report of the InterdepartmentalCommitteeon the Social, Health

and Economic Conditionsof UrbanNatives (Pretoria,1942), 1; for a detailedaccount of the Party's
involvement in local townshippolitics throughoutthe decade, see, Dominic Fortescue, "TheClass
Struggle, Nationalism, and the CommunistPartyof South Africa, 1940-1950" (M.A. dissertation,
Queen'sUniversity, May 1990), 181-238.
20 Some 16,324blackworkersstruckbetween1935 and 1939, and some 37,700 black
workers struck between 1940 and 1945: Union of South Africa, Union Statistics, G.18; wage
determinationscovered 40,283 black people between 1937 and 1939, 99,073 between 1940 and
1943, and 167,024 between 1940 and 1945: compiled from Union of South Africa, Report on the
Departmentof Labourfor the Year Ended 31 December 1939 (Pretoria, 1939), 50 and Union of
South Africa, Report on the Department of Labour for the Year Ended 31 December 1950
(Pretoria,1951), 42. By 1945, the Council of Non-EuropeanTradeUnions (CNETU) claimed that
158,000 black workers had joined 119 unions: Xuma Papers, Instituteof Commonwealth Studies
(microfilm), ABX/4601 10f, D. Gosani, Secretaryof CNETU to A.B. Xuma, 10 January1946.
21 Bill Andrews, "FromSouth Africa,"WorldNews and Views, 22, 29 (18
July 1942), 310;
interview with M.D. Naidoo, London, 19 September 1989; CPSA, More Money (Johannesburg,
n.d.); interview with Fred Carneson,London, 3 January1990; B. Lewis, "AfricanTradeUnions,'
Trek, 11, 26 (29 June 1945), 13; for a more detailed account of the CPSA's influence in the black
tradeunion movement, see Fortescue, "TheCommunistPartyof South Africa," 131-59.
22 Lodge, "ClassConflict, Communal
Struggle, and PatrioticUnity,' 10-12; David Harries,
"Prices, Homes and Transport,"History Workshop Paper, University of the Witwatersrand,
February 1981, 52; Kevin John French, "James Mpanza and the Sofasonke Party in the
Development of Local Politics in Soweto" (M.A. dissertation,University of the Witwatersrand,
1983), passim.
and probably owed as much to the camps' appallingly insanitary conditions as the
aloofness of the Orlando Communists.23 Elsewhere, Communists responded more
successfully to the acute shortage of accommodation and the exorbitant rents paid
by those who did find shelter, offering unspectacular but systematic assistance to
those affected. Communist groups assisted tenants to fill out Rent Board complaint
forms, took up individual instances of dilapidation and high rents at Party meetings,
organized deputations to City Councils demanding improved conditions, won back
rents, and mobilized urban inhabitants against rent increases and the threat of
eviction. They registered an impressive number of local successes.24 The largest
struggles for improved and cheaper transport centered on Alexandra, and
Communists participated fully in the 1942, 1943, and 1944 boycotts. In Pretoria,
Brakpan, Port Elizabeth, and Western Native Township, the Party also involved
itself closely in protractedboycotts of inadequate transportfacilities, again winning
a number of victories.25 The Party responded vigorously as well to the acute food
shortage in urban areas. From 1943, Communist meetings and pamphlets
demanded higher wages, rationing, the establishment of a Ministry of Food,
increased production, particularly in African areas, and an end to profiteering and
black-marketeering. On the Rand, in Port Elizabeth's black townships, and in Cape
Town, Party groups established Food Clubs that bought in bulk from farmers and
market-gardeners and offered members considerably cheaper food. The largest
club assisted over ninety families each week. Communist pressure brought food-
vans to Langa township, and food-depots to Pretoria in 1945; in Cape Town,
Communists led the Women's Food Committee, which by 1946 was responsible
23 See Fortescue, "Communist

Partyof South Africa,"203-04.
24 CPSA, You and Your Landlord
(Cape Town, n.d.); Guardian (8 October 1942), 7; (3
August 1944), 7; (27 May 1948), 6; (3 February1949), 5; (30 March 1944), 5; (11 May 1944), 4;
(14 August 1941), 7; (21 August 1941), 3, 7; (20 April 1944), 8; (24 August 1944), 5; (8 August
1946), 7; (17 April 1947), 3; (4 December 1947), 5; (5 August 1948), 6; Eastern Provincial
Herald (10 January1945), 7; (17 January1945), 5; (29 January1945), 5; Guardian(11 May 1945),
7; Inkululeko 30 (11 April 1943), 6; Guardian (12 August 1941), 7; (26 November 1942), 8; (18
July 1946), 8; (13 March 1947), 8; Inkululeko 178 (19 November 1949), 4.
25 Details of the variousAlexandriaboycotts are providedby A.W. Stadler,"'ALong Way to
Walk':Bus Boycotts in Alexandra, 1940-45," in Philip Bonner, ed., WorkingPapers in Southern
African Studies, II (Johannesburg, 1981), 228-57; for Communist involvement see Fortescue,
"CommunistParty of South Africa," 208-11; Guardian (6 June 1956), 2; (15 August 1946), 3;
Inkululeko 38 (28 August 1943), 4; Guardian (9 September 1943), 1; (7 October 1943), 2;
Inkululeko, 41 (23 October 1943), 5; Guardian (25 October 1945), 3; Inkululeko 80 (14 July
1945), 5; 92 (18 February 1946), 5; Hilary Joan Sapire, "African Urbanisation and Struggles
Against Municipal Control in Brakpan, 1920-1958" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of the
Witwatersrand,1988), 243; Guardian(9 December 1943), 6; (16 March 1944), 7; (21 April 1949),
5; (5 May 1949), 5; (26 May 1949), 3. Communistshad protestedfares and conditions to Western
Native Township for over nine years; see Guardian (15 May 1941), 1; (29 May 1941), 5; 12 June
1941, 2; (18 December 1941), 11; (20 June 1946), 3; (4 July 1946), 3.
for the orderly distribution of food to thirty thousand predominantly black women
in Cape Town's forty-five food queues.26 As food conditions worsened during
1945, in the face of almost complete government indifference, the Party inaugurated
a more active propaganda campaign, and increasingly resorted to direct action. In
Durban, Communists took to the streets, raiding merchants suspected of hoarding
food, organizing thousands of workers into queues, and distributing large
quantities of rice and other staples. The raids' success encouraged intervention in
Johannesburg and Cape Town as well.27
The CPSA won some support for its work in the unions and locations.
Over the course of the decade, Communist candidates won Advisory Board seats in
Springs, Pimville, Moroka, Brakpan, Benoni, East London, and Langa. Some
joined the Communist Party itself. Members of Communist-led trade unions
showed "a willingness or rather eagerness to learn what the Party line is," and the
unions formed an important recruiting ground.28 In the locations where
Communists were most active, the Party also built up strong followings. Details on
the CPSA's size in individual centers, or indeed nationally, are virtually non-
existent, but successful branches could be large. In Langa for example, the
26 Inkululeko, 31 (24 April 1943), 1; 33 (5 June 1943), 4; 34 (20 June 1943), 4; (11
November 1944), 8; Inkululeko,40 (9 October 1943), 1; 42 (6 November 1943), 7; Guardian (20
December 1943), 1; (4 May 1944), 8; Cape Party Organiser (May 1944), 5; Guardian, 29 (May
1946), 6; (30 November 1944), 7; (27 December 1945), 3; Inkululeko 96 (May 1946), 4; Cape
Argus (31 January1945), 4; (15 February1945), 3; Guardian(15 February1944), 2; the secretary
of the Women's Food Committee, Hetty McCleod, was also secretary of the Woodstock-Castle
branch of the Party; see Guardian (2 May 1946), 5; John Morley, "How Queue Women
Organised,"Freedom,5, 6 (November-December1946)), 22-23.
27 CPSA, Food. What Would You Do? (Cape Town, n.d. [1946)]; Inkululeko, 96, May
1946), 1; Cape Times, 7 February1946), 4; Guardian, 25 April 1946), 1; 5 May 1947, 1, 5, 8.
See Guardian, 16 May 1946), 1, 5; (23 May 1946), 7; (29 May 1946), 1; 6 June 1946), 1, 3, 6-7;
Natal Mercury, 11 May 1946), 9; (13 May 1946), 8; (15 May 1946), 13; CPSA, Smash the Black
Market. The Story of the Fordsburg-FerreirastownFood Raids (Johannesburg,n.d. [1946)]) see
also, Guardian (29 May 1946), 1; (6 June 1946), 3; Cape Times (22 May 1946), 10; Cape Argus
(21 May 1946), 1.
28 Inkululeko, 66 (25 November 1944), 5; 89 (3 December 1945), 1; Guardian (27
November 1947), 1; Inkululeko,89 (3 December 1945), 1; 89 (3 December 1945), 1; 123 (January
1948), 4; 172 (26 August 1949), 1; Guardian(17 December 1942), 8; (16 December 1943), 7; (26
December 1946), 2; (18 December 1947), 5; (16 December 1948), 6; (7 December 1944), 6; (4
January 1945), 1; (9 January 1946), 8; (8 January 1948), 3 (30 December 1945), 1; (5 January
1950), 2. In Cape Town the Party won four City Council seats between 1943 and 1945, drawing
on a significant number of Coloured supporterswho retained the vote, an impressive record in
systematic attention to local grievances, and the strong Party branches functioning in working-
class areas by the mid-1940s; see Andrews, "FromSouth Africa," 310; interview with Pauline
Podbrey,London, 19 September 1989.
Communists claimed 260 members; in East London, ninety.29 Bopape's sustained

efforts on behalf of Brakpan's inhabitants obliged the local Communist branch to
divide the location into three sections, and it was the East Rand that led the "Build
the Party" campaign of 1944, recruiting 159 percent of its membership target. In
the middle years of the decade, Communist meetings in the East Rand and Port
Elizabeth locations, regularly attracted audiences of more than four or five
hundred.30
The Party's influence should not be over-estimated, however. Support for
the Communist Party in Advisory Board elections was not overly significant, nor
was involvement in Communist-led subsistence struggles or trade unions. Urban
inhabitants supported Advisory Board elections poorly, and those who voted
Communist were only required to commit themselves once a year. The CPSA was
often the only organization taking up local issues and location-dwellers generally
supported the Communists for their activism, not their ideology. Furthermore,
although the CPSA built up strong urban branches in particular areas, Communists
found it difficult to win permanent political support from urban inhabitants.31 Fred
Careson, the secretary of the Cape Party recalls:
One of the problems which faced us continuously was how to retain

membership, how to politicize your members, how to give them
theoretical understanding. ... A big meeting on the Parade,
hundreds used to come forward and sign the application form.
They'd taken the first step and now you had to try and incorporate
them in the Party and for a lot of them the understanding wasn't
high enough, so after three or four months . . . they'd become
29 Guardian (19 November 1942), 5; the JohannesburgD.C. claimed 37 groups/branchesin

1942, many of which must have functioned in African and Coloured areas, including Alexandra,
Western Native Township, Jabavu,Fordsburg,Doorfontein, Pimville, Moroka, and Orlando.In
Pretoria, the Party counted functioning branches in Eersterust, Lady Selbore, Eastwood and
Marabastad,and the East Rand D.C. incorporatedbranches in Benoni, Springs, and Brakpan.At
least seventeen branches/groupsexisted in Cape Town, most in working-class areas, including
Woodstock, Athlone, Retreat, Kensington, Langa, Elsie's River, Salt River and Bellville; the
Guardian reported on the activities of at least eleven Durban groups; Cape Party Organiser
(January1945), 11; Tom Lodge, Black Politics in SouthAfrica Since 1945 (London, 1983), 57.
30 Sapire, "AfricanUrbanisationand
StrugglesAgainst MunicipalControlin Brakpan,"190-
91; Inkululeko,64 (30 October 1944), 5; cf. Guardian(2 May 1946), 3-6; (29 May 1947), 3.
31 Frequently
very few were allowed to vote. In Pimville, with a population of some
30,000, only 500 voters were registered;see, Inkululeko, 96 (May 1946), 8; see recollections of
one Brakpan resident of the 1940s in Sapire, "African Urbanisation and Struggles Against
MunicipalControlin Brakpan,"190-91; Guardian(21 June 1945), 2.
inactive, or some of them wouldn't become active at all. And then

you'd lapse them and ... knock them off your membership list.32
Many Communist trade unionists enjoyed only slender contact with the Party, and
mindful of AFTU's excesses in the early 1930s, generally opposed any attempt to
politicize their members. The JohannesburgDistrict Committee reported crossly in
1945 that those "Partymembers active in trade union work are so engrossed in this
work that they find little time for any Party work."33 Although the CPSA recruited
a number of workers from the trade unions, and Communist unionists held political
classes, factory groups generally proved unstable. The 1950 Conference
complained about the overwhelming preponderance of area groups, and about the
tendency for factory groups, where they did exist, to concentrate on narrow trade
union issues, not radical politics. Communist unionists occasionally spoke of
political issues, or sold Party pamphlets to their memberships, but generally simply
"publicized political campaigns and urged them to support."34 In Johannesburg,
the District Committee complained of "the lack of attention by Party members in
linking up the unity of the whole working-class movement."35 The importance of
the CPSA's union constituency should not be exaggerated.
The paucity of available evidence makes it difficult to generalize on the
background of black Communists. The majority, however, were clearly
exceptional. Whereas in the late 1920s, the Industrial and Commercial Workers'
Union (ICU) won a mass following from two groups "losing their footings on the
rungs of class ladders," the CPSA's membership remained eclectic and
exceptional.36 Most African Communists seem to have worked in literate
occupations, particularly as delivery-men and messengers, and probably enjoyed
greater access to political events and radical ideologies. Most were probably long
urbanized or at least committed to permanent urbanresidence. A number too, came
32 Interviewwith Fred Carneson.
33 Bill Andrews, "The Party and the Trade Unions," Freedom, 4 (1 February 1945), 11;
interview with M.D. Naidoo; interview with Pauline Podbrey; CPSA, Democracy in Action.
Report of the District Committeeto the Conference(Johannesburg,1945)), 10.
34 Interview with R.D. Naidoo, Durban (September 1989); Freedom, n.s., 1, 27-8 (15
December 1949), 5; Inkululeko, 52 (20 May 1944), 4; Guardian (12 May 1939), 1; (12 April
1940), 6; (4 May 1944), 1; (6 November 1941), 12; interview with Pauline Podbrey. Communist
unionists differed markedly,therefore,from the SACTU activists of the 1950s and 1960s; see Rob
Lambert, "PoliticalUnionism and Working Class Hegemony: Perspectives on the South African
Congress of TradeUnions,"Labour, Capital and Society, 18, 2 (1985), 270.
35 CPSA, Democracy in Action, 10.
36 Helen Bradford,A Taste Freedom. The ICU in Rural South Africa, 1924-1930 (New
of
Haven and London, 1987), 265-66.
from distinct radical traditions, influenced in particularby childhood experiences of

the ICU, but also the Bulhoek massacre of 1921.37 At the 1949-50 conference, the
Central Committee conceded that the Party had "not made the progress we should
have made during the last few years." "Properlyfunctioning District organizations
exist in only three centers - Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. At Port
Elizabeth, Pretoria, East London and East Rand, the District organizations are
weak. For practical purposes they have shrunk to the status of groups calling
themselves District Committees."38 Even Captain G.H. Ribbinck of the United
Party's intelligence service believed that "the working classes of South Africa are
not, generally speaking, easily influenced by agitation of the nature indulged in by
communist agitators."39
Certainly, the CPSA suffered from organizational weaknesses. George
Findlay attacked the Pretoria District Committee, complaining that "practicalwork
and collecting was bad; the education was dead; teaching was feeble ... every time
the trouble was sought to be met by an organizational change, but really the
membership was slack and disgraceful."40 In Johannesburg, a Party critic feared
that white Communists' priorities lay with municipal election campaigning, not
organizational work in the locations; internal Party publications bemoaned
inadequate numbers of street-comer meetings, poor literature sales, and the large
proportion of inactive members.41 Such factors were undoubtedly important.
Through its union and location work, nonetheless, the Communist Party maintained
considerable visibility, and it seems clear that issue of consciousness and ideology
lay at the heart of the Party'sdifficulties in attractinggreater African support.
37 For a cross-sectionof occupationsprovidedby the Government's

list of 306 one-time
members of the CPSA, see Republic of South Africa, Government Gazette Extraordinary, 142
(Department of Justice, 16 November 1962); for Naboth Mokgatle's account of reading and
politicization, see Naboth Mokgatle, TheAutobiographyof an UnknownSouthAfrican (Berkeley,
1971), 190-91; interview with M.D. Naidoo; see "MosesMabhida- OurNew GeneralSecretary,"
African Communist, 85 (1981), 21-24; Sechaba (May 1989), 30; (October 1983), 30-33; (April
1989), 30-32, for shortbiographiesof Communistsinfluencedby the ICU and Bulhoek.
38 SACP, Communists Speak, 200.
39 United Party Archives, UNISA, CentralHead Office, File: Intelligence Service, Reports
on the Political Situation in South Africa by Captain G.H. Ribbinck from the Intelligence
Service, 1941-1947, "CommunistAgitation, Cape Town, 4 September 1947," 1.
40 Findlay Papers,University of the Witwatersrand(A. 1199), Diary, 18 June 1944, 54.
41
Cape Party Organiser (January1945), 2-3, 11; (May 1944), 3; B. O'Brian, "Should the
Party Contest MunicipalElections,"Freedom, 5, 1 (February1946), 13.
Revolutionary Ideology and the African Working-Class
In part, African workers viewed the radical alternatives promulgated by the CPSA
with simple disbelief. Black workers knew that the system under which they lived
and worked was unjust, frequently couching their bitterness in terms of deliberate
exploitation, and throughout, they struggled against it.42 Workers struck,
boycotted buses, or squatted. Others joined youth gangs, many of which
incorporated notions of resistance to an unjust society, or rioted, often attacking the
symbols of their oppression, the location manager's office or the municipal beer-
hall which deprived so many women of an important form of livelihood.43
Workers manifested an awareness of exploitation in other, less dramatic ways too.
They stole from the workplace, loafed during shifts, deserted, or rejected a variety
of petty indignities from paternalistic employers. Location inhabitants murdered
hated black policemen, escaped punitive transport-costs by dodging fares, and
forged lodgers' permits and passes, determined to maintain a foothold in "white,"
urban South Africa.44
Yet while these struggles were often intense and frequently effective, they
rarely attacked the system as a whole, nor did they envisage a revolutionary
transformation of the established order. Bus-boycotters and squatters sought to
42 Philip Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen(Cape Town, 1961), 48-60; Wulf Sachs, Black
Hamlet (Boston, 1947), 71-72; Ellen Hellmann,Rooiyard (Cape Town, 1948), 100-02.
43 Charles van Onselen, Studies in the Social and Economic History of the Witwatersrand,
1886-1914 (London, 1982), I, 54-60; J. Guy and M. Thabane, "The Ma-Resha: A Participant's
Perspective," in Bozzoli, Class, Communityand Conflict, 436-56; Don Pinnock, "FromArgie
Boys to Skolly Gangsters: The Lumpen ProletarianChallenge of the Street Corer Armies in
District Six, 1900-1951," in C. Saunders and H. Philips, eds., Studies in the History of Cape
Town, 3 (Cape Town, 1980), 131-74; William Beinart, "Worker Consciousness, Ethnic
Particularismand Nationalism: The Experiences of a South African Migrant, 1930-1960," in S.
Marks and S. Trapido,eds., The Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism in Twentieth-Century
SouthAfrica (London, 1987), 291-94.
44 Laura Longmore, The Dispossessed. A Study of the Sex-Life of Bantu Womenin Urban
Areas in and Around Johannesburg (London, 1959), 181, 190; C. van Onselen, "Worker
Consciousness in Black Mines: SouthernRhodesia, 1900-1920,"Journal of African History, 14, 2
(1977), 237-55; Peter Abrahams, Tell Freedom (New York, 1954), 71; D.H. Reader, The Black
Man's Portion (Cape Town, 1961), 81-82; Bloke Modisane, Blame Me On History (London,
1963), 80-81; Ezekiel Mphahlele, Down Second Avenue (London, 1962), 127-29; Ronald
Ellsworth, "'TheSimplicity of the Native Mind:'Black Passengerson the South African Railways
in the Early Twentieth Century,"in Tom Lodge, ed., Resistance and Ideology in Settler Societies
(Johannesburg,1986), 78-82; Julian Cohen, "'Twatwa':The WorkingClass of Benoni During the
1930s,"Africa Perspective, 20 (1982), 90; Bonner, "'Siyawugobha,Siyewugeghola Umbhlabe Ka
Masapala':[We are Digging, We are Seizing Great Chunks of the Municipality'sLand] Popular
Struggles in Benoni, 1944-1952," African Studies Institute Seminar Paper, University of the
Witwatersrand,28 October 1985, 16-17.
reduce the financial penalties attached to residential segregation, not to challenge it.
Those fighting for higher wages demanded better terms of incorporation into the
system, not its abolition; union membership rose and fell with favorable wage
determinations. Workers who stole, loafed, or attacked the hated beer-halls, while
acutely conscious of the harshness of their existence, were not automatically
challenging the economic system in its entirety. Nor could they necessarily imagine
an alternative existence. "I actually accepted the superiority of the white man"
remembers one worker from the 1940s.45 Consciousness developed a local
orientation, based around compelling subsistence issues, not challenges to the
wider structures of South African society. As John Gomas, the veteran Coloured
Communist and trade unionist conceded, workers were "drawninto the struggle for
their immediate needs," and would "sooner strike for one penny per hour more, or
against the reduction of one penny from their wages," than "for the abolition of the
Riotous Assemblies Act, or for the abolition of the imperialist rule of oppression
and exploitation."46 Such realities had obvious implications for the CPSA.
Workers viewed the Communists' revolutionary visions with considerable
suspicion. "Socialism, the proletarian revolution to our rural population (the
majority)" wrote Moses Kotane in the mid-1930s, "is but a vague expression which
sounds more as a dream than reality; to them it sounds like the 'land of Canaan'
which can be 'attained only after death."'47 Little had changed by the 1940s.
"Impress the workers present with the need to change the world and show by
reference to the Soviet Union that it can be done," wrote Ray Alexander, outlining
the correct approach to factory organization. As she herself admitted, however,
few workers shared her optimism. "Fromour own experience" she wrote, "it takes
a great deal of time for the workers to realize the real differences between the
socialist system of society and the system under which we live, yes, it is
45 Inkululeko, 102 (November 1946), 4; Union of South Africa, Report of the Commission
Appointedto Enquire into the Operationof Bus Services, 3; Inkululeko, 102 (4 February1950), 1;
Mokgatle, Autobiography, 230; and Guardian (23 November 1944), 7; (12 March 1942), 2;
MauriceNyagumbo, Withthe People (London, 1980), 65.
46 South African Worker,818 (11 January 1936), 3; building political movements around
ideashasneverbeeneasilyaccomplished.
revolutionary Revolutionarymovementsenvisaginga
newandbetterworld,havealwaysbeendwarfedby massivepeasantmovements
builtaroundmore
limited objectives; see Norman Cohn's classic study, The Pursuit of the Millennium (New York,
2nd edn., 1970), 15, 281-86.
47 Interviewwith SarahCarneson,London (7 January1990); Communistpropaganda,aimed
specifically at black workers, insisted that a new society could be realized: CPSA, What is the
Communist Party? A Word to African Workers (Johannesburg,n.d. [late 1920s]), 4-5; Brian
Bunting, Moses Kotane. SouthAfricanRevolutionary(London,2nd ed., 1986), 66.
unbelievable to them that it is possible for workers to be 'bosses' of factories - the

owners and rulers of their country!!"48
Gramsci, of course, argued that while workers often engaged in intense
struggles against their subordinationin the workplace, the "active man in the mass"
lacked the means with which to formulate the radical alternatives "implicit in his
activity." By controlling the institutional mechanisms through which perception is
shaped, the dominant class, while perhaps rarely persuading most to actively
identify with the existing order, could limit people's ability to perceive another.49
In a meticulous study of a Malaysian peasant village, however, James Scott has
rightly questioned the extent to which institutional mechanisms can ever determine
the manner in which remote villagers, wedded to vibrant indigenous cultures and
far removed from the "institutional circuits of symbolic power," think of and
perceive the world.50 Furthermore, Scott argues, remote people not readily
susceptible to ideological domination are perfectly capable of perceiving radical
alternatives to the system under which they live and work. In reality Scott believes,
the repressive and coercive capacity of the authorities and the "routinerepression"
suffered within and without the workplace, restrain not merely the actions of
subordinate classes, but also the manner in which they view the structure of
society, inculcating a belief in the inevitability and essential permancence of the
existing system.51
48 RayAlexander,"Building
OurPartyin theFactories,"
Freedom,11 (September 1942),5;
RayAlexander,"OntheProductionFront.WinningtheWorkersforan all-inEffort,"Freedom,9
(April1942),4.
49 Joseph V. Femia, Gramsci's Political Thought. Hegemony, Consciousness and the
Revolutionary Process(Oxford,1981),Ch.2, for an excellentdiscussionof Gramsci'snotionof
"contradictoryconsciousness."
50 Scott, Weaponsof the Weak,Ch. 8. Furthermore,unlike those societies where
emergedfromfeudalism
capitalism anda capitalist
hegemonyarguably developedoutof indigenous
classesin colonial-type
ideologiesof deference,dominant countriesfacemuchgreaterdifficulties;
see Belinda Bozzoli, ed., Town and Countryside in the Transvaal (Johannesburg, 1983), 19.
Althougha numberof studiessuggestthatGramsci'scase for socializationis a valid one in
advancedcapitalistsocieties,its application
to thosewhichareless developedmaybe muchharder
to sustain;forthetwentieth-century Britishworkingclass,see RobertMackenzieandAllenSilver,
Angels in Marble: WorkingClass Conservativesin Urban England (Chicago, 1968), 160-62, 241-
52; Eric A. Nordlinger,The WorkingClass Tories (London, 1967), Ch. 4.
51 Millenarianideasareone rarebut important aspectof this, andmostpeoplecan at the
veryleastenvisagetheexistingworldturnedupsidedown,Scott,Weaponsof the Weak,331-35,
325-26. ChristopherHill's classic studyof plebeianideologyduringthe EnglishRevolution
suggeststhatsuchideaswerecommonplace, butkeptlargelyhiddenduringmorenormaltimes;see
ChristopherHill,TheWorldTurnedUpsideDown(Harmondsworth, 1984),18.
Although the educated Anglicized Cape elite in the nineteenth century came
to cherish the carefully cultivated notions of Cape liberalism, most black South
Africans were similarly far removed from the institutions of hegemony.52 Migrant
workers maintained close emotional and physical contact with their country
villages, were largely illiterate,, and remained immersed in rural culture, religion
and beliefs. Even the more settled inhabitants of the towns, segregated and
educationally deprived, lived a "very self contained and isolated life" and developed
a vibrant indigenous culture of their own.53 Furthermore, black South Africans
were well aware of the repressive world in which they lived out their lives and that
alternatives existed.54 That so many found the CPSA's revolutionary message
wildly utopian suggests, therefore, that although capable of imagining alternatives,
in practice, most black workers regarded the South African system as brutally
permanent. Radical transformation simply did not form part of their regular
discourse. Rusty Bernstein feared that the Party's demands for racial equality
appeared as "a dream, an ideal which does not appear possible" to most Africans,
who "come to regard us, who constantly mouth the phrase as dreamers, creatures
from another political planet but not as practical political leaders."55 South African
capitalism never proved entirely capable of fashioning society to its own ideal
image. Africans were not subjected to the near-totalitariancontrol that some have
suggested, nor for much of the century, including the 1940s, could the state claim
52 See
especially Brian Willan, Sol Platjee. SouthAfricanNationalist, 1976-1932 (Berkeley,
1984), Ch. 2; Neville Hogan, "ThePosthumousVindicationof ZachariahGqishela:Reflections on
the Politics of Dependence at the Cape in the Nineteenth Century,"in S. Marks and A. Atmore
eds., Economy and Society in Pre-Industrial South Africa (London, 1980), 275-292; Stanley
Trapido,"TheOrigins of the Cape FranchiseQualificationsof 1853," Journal of African History,
5, 1 (1964), 37-54.
53 Longmore, The Dispossessed, 112; David Coplan, In TownshipTonight! (Johannesburg,
1985), passim.
54 Ray E. Phillips, The Bantu Are Coming (Stellenbosch, 1930), 45-47, 51, for the
importance of religious alternatives; Philip Mayer, "The Origin of Two Rural Resistance
Ideologies," in Mayer, ed., Black Villagers in an IndustrialSociety (Cape Town, 1980), 1-80, for
"School"and "Red"ideologies, both of which envisaged alternativesto the existing subordination;
Robert Edgar, "The Prophet Motive: Enoch Mgijima, the Israelites and the Background to the
Bulhoek Massacre,"InternationalJournal of AfricanHistorical Studies, 15, 3 (1982), 402-22; and
Bradford,Taste of Freedom, Ch. 7, for ruralmillenarianism;Bengt G.M. Sundkler,Bantu Prophets
in South Africa (London, 2nd edn., 1961), 278-94 for separatistprophets;G.A. Pirow and R.A.
Hill, "'Africafor the Africans':The Garvey Movement in South Africa, 1920-40," in Marks and
Trapido,eds., Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism, 209-53.
55 Interview with Sarah Cameson; Lionel Bernstein, "On the Slogan...'Votes for All,"'
Freedom, n.s., 1, 7 (6 December 1948), 3.
omnipotence.56 Nonetheless, although the authorities were intensely concerned to

maintain the loyalty of South Africa's black population during the war, and
remained divided over key aspects of social and economic policy for most of the
decade, such vulnerability coexisted readily with the potential for violent
repression.57 The state dealt bloodily with strikes during the 1940s. Daily
"routine repression" structured men and women's lives.58 Employers sacked
workers for joining unions or attending political meetings, and met strikes with
redundancies, prosecution, or police force. Location managers denied lodgers'
permits and evicted at will, while constant police raids and the persistent
maneuvrings of the pick-up van meant that few could have been unaware of the
authorities' formidable power.59 "Among those of the ruled, suppressed and
56 Shula Marks and RichardRathbone,eds., Industrialisation and Social Change in South

Africa (London, 1982), Ch. 1; see also William Beinart, The Political Economy of Pondoland,
1860-1930 (Cambridge, 1982), Ch. 1; and Alan H. Jeeves, Migrant Labour in South Africa's
Mining Economy (Kingston and Montreal, 1985), 253-64, for complementary studies that
emphasize the difficulty the mining industry had in securing its interests, and the remarkable
resilience of some rural communities. John Rex, "The Compound, the Reserve and the Urban
Location: the Essential Institutionsof South African LabourExploitation,"South African Labour
Bulletin, 1, 4 (1974), 12-13.
57 The lack of a coordinatedmunicipalpolicy, and vacillation over the status of black trade
unions in particular,generatedsufficient political space for the dramaticgrowth of tradeunionism
and the emergence of massive popularsquattingmovements; see Robert Davies, David Kaplan,
Mike Morris, and Dan O'Meara, "Class Struggle and the Periodisation of the State in South
Africa,"Review of African Political Economy, 7 (1976), 4-30; Robert Davies and David Lewis,
"Industrial Relations Legislation: One of Capital's Defences," Review of African Political
Economy, 7 (1976), 56-68; Bonner, "PopularStruggles in Benoni," 1.
58 In South Africa, Stadlerhas suggested, levels of "workable"repressionmay be very high
indeed. In a situation where the poor have evolved out of a conqueredpeople, dominant classes
have very little need for legitimization and are likely to resort to repression until their own
interests are threatened;see Alf Stadler, "The Politics of Subsistence: Community Struggles in
War-Time Johannesburg,"in D. Hindson, ed., WorkingPapers in SouthernAfrican Studies, III
(Johannesburg,1983), 60-1.
59 Guardian (22 August 1946), 1; (10 January 1946), 1-2; of the fifty-four occasions on
which black workers struck in 1945, for example, employers initiated prosecutions in nineteen
cases. Only one was subsequently withdrawn,and the workers in all the remaining cases were
found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment with hard labor, or fined. In two further cases,
employers dismissed their entire workforce without even resorting to the courts; compiled from
Union of South Africa, Report of the Department of Labour For the Year Ended 31 December
1945 (Pretoria, 1947), 23-24. In 1945, too, 59,004 cases were brought to trial for drunkenness,
100,683 for possession of illegal liquor, 24,216 for infringementof location regulations, 68,615
for municipaloffenses, 84,159 for pass offenses, 28,104 for infringementunderthe Natives (Urban
Areas) Act, and 43,700 for offenses under the Native Tax Act; see Union of South Africa,
Departmentof Justice. Report of the Commissionerof the SouthAfrican Police for the Year 1945
(Pretoria,1946), 8.
dependent," wrote Kotane, "the tendency is to take things as they find them, to
resign themselves to the existing state of affairs."60 The fact that the CPSA and the
"unimposing white Communist" seemed unlikely "to win out for him in any contest
with the militant forms of 'capitalism"'compounded the utopianism of the Party's
message.61 "The Africans today," remarked Sam Woolf at a Pretoria District
Committee meeting, "know that they cannot get their liberty through the C.P as we
have been telling them."62 Communist emphasis on total emancipation seemed
absurdly unrealistic to most Africans.
Some Africans found the CPSA's message not merely wildly utopian, but
scarcely imaginable. Scott overestimates the extent to which people with no direct
knowledge or experience of other social orders, particularlynon-literate people, can
develop radical ideological alternatives.63 Africans came from profoundly
conservative societies, with little "awareness of alternatives to the established body
of theoretical tenets," and this ideological legacy drastically mediated the
effectiveness of the CPSA's message.64 Participation in South Africa's urban
60 Moses Kotane, "Defectsin PartyEducation,"Freedom, 11 (September1942), 9.

61
Ray E. Phillips, The Bantu in the City (Lovedale, 1938), 381; Bernstein, "On the Slogan
'Votes for All,"' 3; elsewhere, Communists' ability to take on quasi-administrative functions
considerably augmented the attractiveness of the movement, which came to be seen as much
stronger, more powerful, and irresistible; see Michael Williams, Communism, Religion and
Revolt in Banten (Athens, Ohio, 1990), 177-78; significantly, South African millenarian
movements predicated their salvation on supernaturalintervention, or external assistance, a
reflection of the essential powerlessness felt by most blacks when confronting the South African
state; see Pirow and Hill, "Africa for the Africans," 211; Sundkler, Bantu Prophets, 278-94;
deliverance by external,often supernaturalagencies is a universalfeatureof millenarianism,and a
vital part of its attractiveness;Cohn, Millennium, 13.
62
Findlay Papers, Diary, 4 July 1944, 6-7.
63 For the central role
literacy played in the development of skepticism, criticism, and the
formulationof alternativeworld-views, see the seminal article by Jack Goody and Ian Watt, "The
Consequences of Literacy,"ComparativeStudies in Society and History, 5 (1962-1963), 304-45;
Scott, Weapons of the Weak, 331; millenarian movements usually succeed among disoriented
people, often in the wake of disasters. People are much less susceptible in normal times. They
are more likely to spread,too, in societies which possess a messianic or charismatictradition;see
Michael Barkun,Disaster and the Millennium(New Haven and London, 1974), 34-61, 88.
64 Robin Horton, "AfricanTraditional
Thoughtand Western Science, Parts I and II,"Africa,
37, 1-2 (1967), 50-71, 155-187; millenarianmovements were not unknownin pre-colonial Africa,
and as Gluckman's study of Zulu and Swazi rebellion rituals illustrates, men and women could
partially conceive of an inversion of the existing order: Bonnie B. Keller, "Millenarianismand
Resistance: The Xhosa Cattle-Killing,"Journal of Asian and African Studies, 13, 1-2 (1978), 95-
111,andMaxGluckman,"Ritualsof Rebellionin South-East Africa,"in MaxGluckman,Order
andRebellionin TribalAfrica(London,1963),110-36;Gluckman
emphasizes,however,thatsuch
inversion rituals occurred"withinan establishedand unchallengedsocial order,"and he and other
anthropologistsargue that African societies lacked alternative"theoriesof government,"although
economy did little to immediatelytransformthis situation. The vast majorityof

Africanworkersremainedilliteratein the 1940s,deniedeasy or sustainedaccess to
ideologicalalternatives.Withthe barestsmatteringof Westerneducation,Kotance
fearedthatmanyfoundit difficultto imaginesocial systemsbeing the creationof
men, and thereforesubjectto change. The brutalityand finality of the colonial
conquest compoundedthe conservativeintellectuallegacy of African societies.
African workers often looked back to a glorified pre-colonial age for their
ideological alternatives,seeking escape from, not incorporationinto the white
man'sworld. They regardedtheirpresentsubservienceas inevitable.65 Although
those living permanentlyin town had a betterchance of acquiringa rudimentary
education, and many had ceased longing for a returnto the pre-colonial past
encapsulatedin the "Red"migrant'sumzi(homestead)or promisedby the Zionist
prophet,theirrangeof alternativeswas still limited. Althoughone Orlandoresident
insistedto Wulf Sachs, a left-wingpsychiatristwith whom he maintaineda close
relationship,that "thewhite people came to our country,it is the natives'country
[he was emphaticaboutit] took everythingaway fromus - the land,the cattle
andmadeus work,"attendanceat CommunistPartymeetingsleft him profoundly
unconvinced."Hetold me,"Sachsremembers:
thathe did not entirelyagreewith all they said. For instance,they
deridedclass differenceandracialdifference,buthow could therebe
no distinctionbetweenrichandpoor,blackandwhite? He smiledat
the stories he heardof CommunistRussia. How could there be a
they make no effort to explain why; for criticism of Horton, see D.F. Bauer and John Hinnant,
"Normaland RevolutionaryDivination:A KuhninanApproachto AfricanTraditionalThought,"in
I. Karp and C.S. Bird, Explorations in African Systems of Thought (Bloomington, 1980), 233,
who believe he overestimatesthe openness of scientific thinking,suggesting that most people will
find it difficult to imagine alternatives.
65 Peter Delius, "Sebatakgomo,Migrant Organisation, the ANC and the Sekhukhuneland
Revolt," Journal of Southern African Studies, 15, 4 (1989), 596; Kotane, "Defects in Party
Education," 9; Mayer, "Origins of Two Rural Resistance Ideologies," 42-3; Sundkler, Bantu
Prophets, 100-117, 282-4; Edgar, "Enoch Mijima, the Israelites and the Background to the
Bulhoek Massacre," 421; Pirow and Hill, "Africa for the Africans," 209-53; M. Wilson, S.
Kaplan, T. Maki and E. Walton, Keiskammahoek Rural Survey, III: Social Structure
(Pietermaritzburg,1952), 178, 180.
country where all rich and poor, black, white and Coloured, were all
treatedalike?66
Many African workers held a limited range of world views, often quite
incompatible with Communist ideology and its forward-looking emphasis on racial
and class equality in a common-society.
Proletarian Ideology and the African Working Class
It was not simply the revolutionary nature of the Communist Party's ideology that
meshed uneasily with African workers, however. Throughout the decade, trade
unions and nationalist organizations seeking more modest reforms remained weak.
The persistence of old beliefs, cultures, and ideologies beyond the onset of
capitalist relations not only undermines the case for a straightforward process of
"socialization," but could act to further proscribe the manner in which Africans
viewed the world and their place within it, as well as the attitude they adopted to the
Communist Party itself. African workers did not draw on the comparatively long
and vibrant socialist tradition that Cape Towns' Coloured workers enjoyed.67
Communists recognized the difficult environment in which they worked. As one
Party member reminded delegates to the 1940 conference:
In England, in France, when you talk about smashing the capitalist
system, building socialism, one can take it that a large number of
workers understand what we mean. I think here we have a
working-class that does not understand socialism, that has not had
the benefit of wide propaganda and tradition that other countries
have had.68
The absence of a socialist traditionamong African workers did not prove an

insuperable barrierto membership of the Party, of course. The comparatively few
African workers who joined the CPSA usually possessed only the haziest
knowledge of formal Communist theory and were little interested in the Party's
66 Sachs, Black Hamlet, 106, 164; Sachs's book is a remarkable one based on a close
personal and professional relationshipwith John Chamwafambirafrom the late 1920s to the mid-
1940s.
67 E. Mantzaris, "The Promise of
Impossible Revolution: The Cape Town Industrial
Socialist League, 1918-1921," in C. Saunders,H. Philips, and E. van Heyningen, eds., Studies in
the History of Cape Town, IV (Cape Town, 1981), 145-73; for accounts of Coloured workers
joining the CPSA from a radical socialist background, see Arnold Adams, "Why I Joined the
Communist Party,"African Communist,47 (1971), 57-58; "Gala,"Why I Joined the Communist
Party,"African Communist,89 (1982), 49-52.
68 "Minutesof Conference,"45.
theoretical explanations of societal transformation. They often lacked experience in

trade unions or other working-class organizations, but by grafting Communist
ideology onto deeply felt experiences and injustices, the CPSA appealed
nonetheless. "Not everybody who joined the Party was literate," remembers the
chairman of the Cape District Committee, "not everybody had read Marx.... We
had people in our ranks who were the most marvelous Communists, who were
illiterate. But they just knew what the party was all about."69 Workers joined the
Party simply to struggle for "a better life" or a "happy society," or because the
CPSA was "the only Party which is trying to speak for the rights of the Bantu
people."70 Others were vaguer still on their commitments. Maurice Nyagumbo, a
Cape Town hotel worker "didnot understanda word" of the explanations offered to
him by a European woman he met at a Communist Party dance, but agreed to join
"because I was impressed by the behavior of the European girls."71 A number of
workers adapted Communist ideology to deeply felt religious beliefs and having
consciously abandoned its anti-religious propaganda in the 1930s, the Party
occasionally deliberately emphasized the similarities between Communism and the
Christian brotherhoodof man a decade later.72
Yet few joined the CPSA even so. Whereas in Europe, capital and labor
matured together, the sheer speed of South African capitalist development pulled
African workers in to the workplace imbued with older ideas, beliefs, and loyalties.
Nor was capitalism all-powerful, as already noted, and for decades the process of
proletarianizationremained incomplete. Even the permanentlyurbanizedmaintained
some connections with the land. Between 1936 and 1944, 74 percent of
Johannesburg's African workers came straight from the countryside and continued
to return periodically. Johannesburg's labor force turned over every eighteen
months. Off the Rand, rural connections were stronger still.73 Even when forced
69 S. Holmes,"AFailingto be Remedied,"
CapePartyOrganiser(September1943), 11;
Ray Alexander, "OurPartyMust be Made a LeadingForce,"Freedom, 10 (July 1942), 8; interview
with Brian Bunting,London, 19 September1989.
70 Guardian (25 March 1943), 2; Mokgatle,
Autobiography, 234; Guardian (16 January
1947), 2.
71 Nyagumbo, Withthe People, 72-73.
72 Umsebenzi,632 (19
September1930), 2; Alexander,"OurPartyMust be Made a Leading
Force," 8; for two female Communists, see Mia Brandel-Syrier,Black Womenin Search of God
(London, 1962), 139-40; Roux, Time Longer, 277; Cape Times (23 June 1943), 5.
73 Marks and Rathbone,Industrialisation, 7-8; Beinart, Political Economy of Pondoland,
passim; W. Beinart, P. Delius and S. Trapido, eds., Putting the Plough to the Ground
(Johannesburg, 1986); Hellmann, Rooiyard, 19-20, 25, 97-98, 91-112; Ellen Hellmann, "The
Native in the Towns," in I. Schapera, ed., The Bantu Speaking Tribes of South Africa (London,
1937), 429; Union of South Africa, Report of the Native Affairs Commission, 1939-1940
permanently into the workplace, many found employment outside industry, and
those in industrial occupations generally worked in small factories and unskilled
positions. In the locations, waged workers lived alongside gangsters, the self-
employed, a tiny elite of doctors and lawyers, and the unemployed.74 Capitalism's
particular trajectory in South Africa profoundly conditioned the development of
working-class consciousness, and had a number of implications for the CPSA's
efforts to win mass support. Workers' close connections with the land, and the
nature of their workplace experiences, militated against the emergence of a militant
proletarian consciousness. Class consciousness was undeveloped and fractured,
with many workers resorting to individual protests or struggles along ethnic lines.
Others simply acquiesced. Inevitably the Communist Party found it difficult to
insert its ideology into such an environment.
For some, rural connections constituted an escape route. Many migrants
developed such notions into a wholehearted resistance to urban, capitalist
incorporation. They neither regarded themselves as members of a common society,
nor recognized a common cultural goal with whites. The umzi, its cattle and its
fields, and the community with its ancestor spirits and family constituted "real"life.
The towns were the whiteman's place. Migrant mineworkers and domestic
servants kept themselves apart from other black workers, particularly location
women, determined to maintain their rural identities and not become identified with
urban life. Even in town, they maintained extremely close physical contacts with
their rural villages.75 Although their ultimate fate was largely unavoidable,
migrants saw their long-term future as a rural one, and their sojourn in town as an
opportunity to accumulate cattle and return to the land. The rural orientation of
many African workers often proved distinctly incompatible with membership in the
Communist Party. Even the more permanently settled townsmen maintained some
(Pretoria, 1941), 16; Sheila T. van der Horst, "Native Urban Employment: A Study of
JohannesburgEmploymentRecords,"SouthAfricanJournal of Economics, 16, 3 (1948), 253-54;
H.R. Burrows, "Native Incomes, Housing and Cost of Living," South African Journal of
Economics, 19 , 4 (1951), 351.
74 W.H. Hutt, "The Economic Position of the Bantu in South Africa," in I. Schapera, ed.,
Western Civilisation and the Natives of South Africa (London, 1934), 227; P. Bonner and R.
Lambert, "'Batonsand Bare Heads': The Amato Textiles Strike, February 1958," in Marks and
Trapido, Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism, 348-50; Union of South Africa, Union
Statistics, G.14; A.J. Norval, A Quarterof a Centuryof IndustrialProgress in SouthAfrica (Cape
Town, 1962), 2-3.
75 Mayer, "Origins of Two Rural Resistance Ideologies," 42-43; Delius, "Migrant
Organisation, the ANC and the SekhukhunelandRevolt," 585-56; Rheinallt Jones, "Social and
Economic Condition of the Urban Native," in Schapera,Western Civilisation and the Natives of
South Africa, 172-74; T. Dunbar Moodie, "Migrancyand Male Sexuality on the South African
Gold Mines,"Journal of Southern African Studies, 14, 2 (1988), 243-44.
connections with the land and for those ultimately intending to returnto the country,
revolutionary politics could seem largely irrelevant. Thousands undoubtedly shared
Naboth Mokgatle's views. "At twenty-one," he admits, "I was still not politically
minded but merely a working-boy still hoping that one day, after making enough
money to get married, I should go back to my tribe ... and settle down as a
tribesman. I thought that the best way to get away from the European's web of
pass-laws and curfews was to go back to the tribe."76
The Party faced even greater problems attracting migrant workers. In a
variety of ways, of course, migrants struggled to defend their interests in the work-
place, and the Party fully recognized the fact. But Communist ideology meshed
uneasily with the totality of migrant experiences and priorities. Communism's
emphasis on the brotherhood of man and the propertyless proletarian seemed
irrelevant or actively unattractive to migrants or the newly proletarianized. Moses
Kotane remembered his earliest reactions to the Communist Party's message: "I did
not know what a proletarian was, or why it was good to be a proletarian," he
recalls. "We were told a proletarian had nothing but his labour power. Coming
from an independent people, I could not see how someone who had nothing was
worthy of respect.... To me, a man had to be independent and self-sufficient; a
man who worked for others appeared to me like a beggar with no dignity."77 Nor
did the Communist Party devote much attention to the vital ruraldimension of many
workers' lives. Rural organization was of little interest to white, and more
importantly, African members of the Party. Generally, leading African
Communists shared the somewhat condescending disdain with which the most
settled urbanites regarded their country-brethren. The Party was generally unaware
of happenings in rural areas: "We who live in cities are ignorant of the needs,
difficulties and hardships of our people in rural areas," wrote Kotane. "We have to
have newspaper reports to occasionally remind us of what is going on in the
76 Beinart, Political
Economy of Pondoland, Ch. 2; Tim Keegan, Facing the Storm.
Portraits of Black Lives in Rural SouthAfrica (London, 1988), 29-30; hence too, the leading role
playedby migrantsin all theruralunrestof the 1940sand1950s;see MatthewChaskalson,
"Rural
Resistancein the 1940s and 1950s,"Africa Perspective, 1, 5/6 (1987), 54; the average
Keiskammahoek migrantspent64 percentof his workinglife of thirty-oneyearsawayfromthe
reserve,ultimatelyreturningfor good,agedforty-seven;see Houghton,SouthAfricanEconomy,
87-8; Mokgatle, Autobiography,188.
77 ForVanOnselen'sstemadmonishments
on the issueof migrantconsciousness,see I.R.
Phimister and C. van Onselen, Studies in the History of African Mine Labour in Colonial
Zimbabwe (Gwelo,1978),95-96;J.H.Oberholzer, "TheOrganisation of AfricanMineWorkers,"
Freedom,4 (October1940),3; Bunting,Kotane,49; see alsoJohnGild,"TheBlackBourgeoisie,"
Freedom,5, 3 (June-July
1946),18.
countryside."78 Communist meetings rarely voiced rural concerns, and the Party's
glowing portraits of worker factory ownership in Russia must have seemed
completely irrelevant to such people. Nor, when the CPSA did raise its rural plans
in propaganda, was its announced solution of collectivization likely to find much
support among migrant workers desperate to maintain an independent stake in the
rural economy. Significantly, a pamphlet written by Alpheus Maliba, the one
Communist closely involved with rural resistance in the 1940s, called not for
collectivization but for larger plots of land and even the encouragement of
competition by the substitution of individual for tribal tenure. Membership of
migrant organizations dwarfed that of the Communist Party.79
The rural orientation of many workers was not the only difficulty
confronting the Communist Party. Migrant workers in particularmaintained a real
attachment to the institution of the chieftaincy. Successful political and even trade
union organization demanded careful manipulation of such loyalties, with which the
Communist Party could scarcely compete. Indeed, political opponents accused the
Party of being "anti-chief."80 Loyalty to the traditional elite, furthermore,
generally encompassed a backward-looking world-view. Far from fascination with
the future, many hankered after the "nationalisticreturnto the olden times" held out
by the Zionist prophet, or the past encompassed by the umzi, where "Red"workers
could defend their "real" Xhosa identity. Such visions were not simply easier to
imagine, but sometimes a great deal more attractive than Communist alternatives.
"Semi-urbanizedAfricans," wrote one African, "makelittle or no effort to formulate
new principles or attitudes in terms of their new experiences. They accept the new
but continue to interpret in terms of the old."81 Such an outlook generally proved
78 HymieBasner,who left thePartyin 1939,believedtheCommunists'

failureto consider
the rural aspect of workers'lives central to the Party'sproblems; see Basner Papers, Institute of
Commonwealth Studies, B.3. AutobiographicalTranscript,50; Findlay Papers, Diary, 26 July
1944, 41; FransBongers, "A Successful Conferenceat Worcester,"Cape Party Organiser (August
1945), 11; Guardian (18 December 1941), 9; Inkululeko, 77 (28 May 1945), 4; Moses Kotane,
"WeDo Not Know Their Difficulties,"Freedom, 6, 6 (November-December1947), 13.
79 See for example, CPSA, Meet the Communists(Cape Town, n.d. [1942]) M.S. Kruger,
Russia -- Land WithoutColour Bar (Cape Town, n.d.), 23-27; A.M. Maliba, The Conditions of
the Venda People (Johannesburg,n.d. [late 1930s]), 8. The Witzieshoek Vigilance Association
alone boasted a membershipof three thousandin 1950; see D.A. Kotze, "TheWitzieshoek Revolt,
1940-1950," African Studies, 41, 1 (1982), 137.
80 Delius, "MigrantOrganisation, the ANC and the SekhukhunelandRevolt," 605-09; B.
Hirson, "A Trade Union Organiserin Durban:M.B. Yengwa, 1943-44," ICS Seminar paper, 20
January1989, 12; Bradford,Taste of Freedom,95-103; Umsebenzi,620 (27 June 1930), 2.
81 Mayer, "The Origin of Two Rural Resistance Ideologies," 44-8, 59; Sundkler, Bantu
Prophets, 100-117, 282-4; D.G.S. M'Timkulu,"TheAfrican,"Race Relations, 13, 1 (1946)), 2.
incompatible with membership of a political Party dedicated to fashioning a new

society out of new experiences.
Many did not encompass such an anachronistic world-view, of course, but
close landed connections and the limits to the process of industrializationguaranteed
that ethnic loyalties retained a central importance to many workers. The African
working class was not merely unstable but deeply divided. Once again, it was
Moses Kotane who reminded the Party that many African workers were
"accustomed to the old forms of tribal organization.... They have not yet
altogether shaken off tribal ties and instincts, and . . . modem methods of
organization are still new to them." "Those of the Left who have been working
among them," he charged, "have ignored this."82 For migrants, most of whom
lived in single-sex compounds, home-boy and ethnic networks provided the basic
units of social organization, providing not merely concrete economic support but
strong emotional and psychological comforts. Even for those living permanently in
town, ethnicity remained important, reinforced by still close contacts with rural
areas. Communist organizing work was considerably complicated. According to
one Durban Communist for example, Zulu workers' "support and ... loyalty ...
to the Zulu Chiefs and the Zulu traditions ... was a great problem for us, but it
was something we respected. We respected their attitude that they didn't quite trust
anyone outside the Zulu people."83 Economic competition between workers for
scarce resources enhanced the importance of ethnic associations, which provided an
effective means of workplace mobilization.84 Once again, however, the Commun-
82 Kotane, "How to Work

among UrbanAfricans,"8.
83 Monica Wilson and Archie
Mafeje, Langa (Cape Town, 1963), 50; Beinart, "Worker
Consciousness, Ethnic Particularismand Nationalism," 291-92; Delius, "MigrantOrganisation,
the ANC and the SekhukhunelandRevolt," 590; Mayer, "The Origin of Two Rural Resistance
Ideologies," 44-47, 59; Hellmann, "The Native in the Towns," 416,431; Longmore, The
Dispossessed, 27-29; in those towns where workers maintained particularly close rural
connections, ethnicity was especially marked;see the study of East London's urbanitesby B.A.
Pauw, The Second Generation (Cape Town, 1963), 172, 180-87; Gilbert Coka, "The Story of
Gilbert Coka of the Zulu Tribe of Natal, South Africa," in Margery Perham, Ten Africans
(London, 1936), 316; interview with SarahCareson.
84 DunbarMoodie, "TheMoral
Economy of the Black Miners'Strike of 1946)," Journal of
SouthernAfrican Studies, 13, 1 (1986), 1-35; T. Ranger, "FactionFighting, Race Consciousness
and Worker Consciousness: A Note on the JagersfonteinRiots of 1914," South Africa Labour
Bulletin, 4, 5 (1978), 66-74; Jeff Guy and Motlatsi Thabane, "Technology, Ethnicity and
Ideology: Basotho Miners and Shaft-Sinking in the South African Gold Mines," Journal of
Southern African Studies, 14, 2 (1988), 257-78; Beinart, "Worker Consciousness, Ethnic
Particularismand Nationalism,"293; P.L. Bonner, "An Evil Empire? The Russians on the Reef,
1947-1957," History Workshop Paper, University of the Witwatersrand,February 1990, 12-13;
Bonnerand Lambert,"TheAmato Textiles Strike," 344-47.
ist Party must have seemed irrelevantin comparison. Divisions relatingto the
differentexperiencesof proletarianization and its timing frequentlycompounded
ethnic divisions. The newly proletarianizedand the more settled townsmen
regardedthemselvesas culturallydistinct. Economiccompetitionexacerbatedsuch
divisions. A sense of unity, one observerfound, "lacksmaturityand is counter-
acted by new antipathiesbetweenAfricansdue to frictionin urbanlocation life."
He "discoveredfew signs of the developmentas yet of a raceconsciousnessamong
urbanAfricans."85Kotaneoutlinedthe errorsof past Communistorganizerswho:
merely saw before them a mass of oppressedand exploitedpeople

who could be roused againstsocial injustices. So they put before
them questionsof nationalimportanceand spoke to them as they
would to an advancedandhomogeneousgroup. Forgettingthatas
yet one could not rightlyspeakof an Africannation,a politicaland
economicgroupwith a commonmediumof expression.86
The ideologicalandorganizationalimportanceof ethnicassociations,andthe often
drasticcleavagesbetweenblackworkersensuredthatthe CommunistPartyandits
class-basedideologicalappealsoftenappearedirrelevant,or activelyunattractive.
Many workersadoptedindividualisticmethodsof resistance. Those who
stole, dodged fares, or forged permitseffectively met their immediatematerial
needs, butwere unlikelyto develop an awarenessof commonsuffering,an organi-
zational unity, or sustained action. Such strategies encompassed a decidedly
apoliticalresponseto economicdeprivation.Membershipof the CommunistParty
and thieving from work involved substantiallydifferent commitments. Often,
furthermore,location inhabitantsor migrantworkers channelledtheir energies
against other African workers. Thieves sometimes sought out adjoiningwhite
suburbsor the moreaffluentmembersof the blackcommunity,butoftenrobbedthe
pooresttoo. Nor were the gangs ever simply seen as championsof the oppressed.
Much of theiractivityinvolvedfights over women, gamblingdisputes,and in the
case of the Russians,elaborateprotectionrackets. Constantinternecinedisputes
over territoryandinfluencewere drasticallydislocatingandlocal inhabitantsoften
loathed and always feared them.87 While clearly the productof the stultifying
85
Mayer, Townsmen or Tribesmen, xiv, 88-89; Wilson and Mafeje, Langa, 16-29, 34;
Mphahlele, Down Second Avenue, 41; Coplan, In Township Tonight!, 105-06; Longmore, The
Dispossessed, 123-27; P. Bonner, "Family,Crime and Political Consciousness on the East Rand,
1939-1955," Journal of Southern African Studies, 14, 3 (1988), 388-401; Bonner, "Popular
Struggles in Benoni," 12-13; Phillips, Bantu in the City, 381.
86 Kotane, "Howto OrganiseUrbanAfricans,"7.
87 Robin Cohen, "Resistance and Hidden Forms of Consciousness
Among African
Workers,"Review of African Political Economy, 19 (1980), 21-22. For a very detailed study of
environment in which they lived, the form taken by their activities owed rathermore
to American gangster films than to political consciousness. The gangs were not
easily politicized, and gang life with its emphasis on fast cars, pretty women, and
flashy clothes provided its own special pleasures with which the austerity of the
Communist Party could never compete. Don Mattera, leader of a Sophiatown gang
in the early 1950s, remembers listening to Kotane, Dadoo, and Marks, "but to a
boy with a knife in his pocket they were just names in the foul air of the ghetto."88
Others acquiesced in their miserable existence. The imperative of mere
survival probably absorbed most people's energy most of the time. Communists
recognized this as a problem. "Hand to hand existence bounded their outlook,"
complained one African Communist.89 Moreover, political activity could be
hazardous. Even minor acts of resistance courted disaster and African Communists
informed those Party members demanding more factory meetings that workers who
attended feared instant dismissal. African members of the CPSA always risked
being sacked.90 Acquiescence did not reflect only economic struggle, or the risks
of overt political involvement. Many people joined organizations like burial
societies or churches, which provided crucial economic supports but lacked a
political orientation of any sort. Women joined manyano prayer groups, which
were entirely apolitical, but gave women a sense of dignity and belonging, as well
as the opportunity for status and position. The Communist Party offered little such
emotional support. "In a Party like ours, where whites and blacks come together,"
wrote Moses Kotane, blacks "feel themselves inferior to the European comrades,"
and tend to take "back seats and leave the leadership to the Europeans."91
Widespread religious beliefs encouraged a long sufferance and a tendency to trust in
God, and by the late 1940s too, an "urbanised, eager, fast-talking and brash"
minority had begun to find real pleasures in city life. They had little interest in
crimein EasternNativeTownshipin the early1950s,see Longmore,TheDispossessed,181-97;

Bonner,"Family,CrimeandPoliticalConsciousness,"406; Bonner,"TheRussianson theReef,"
5-7, 11-12, 15-16; Mphahlele,Down Second Avenue, 85-86.
88 Bonner, "Family, Crime and Political Consciousness," 409-17; Don Pinnock, The
Brotherhoods:Street Gangs and State Control in Cape Town (Cape Town, 1984), 28, for attacks
on the CPSA by Cape Town's Globe Gang; Don Mattera,Sophiatown(London, 1989), 98.
89 Tom Lodge, "PoliticalMobilisation During the 1950s: An East London Case
Study," in
Marksand Trapido,Politics of Race, Class and Nationalism, 330-32; Coka, "TheStory of Gilbert
Coka," 317; see also Phillips, Bantu in the City, 68.
90 Abrahams,Tell Freedom, 156; Guardian (22 March 1943), 5; see
Nyagumbo, With the
People,74-75,forhis experiences.
91 Brandel-Syrier,BlackWomenin Searchof God,136,28, 102-04,149-50;FindlayPapers,
Diary,19 July1944,27; Kotane,"Defectsin PartyEducation,"
8.
politics of any sort.92 Even the meager leisure activities in the locations, Roux
believed, helped urbanites "forget their troubles. It makes [it] very difficult
organising them for serious effort to oppose their oppressors."93 The Communist
Party found this particularly limiting. As the New Members' Guide made clear, the
CPSA was a demanding organization, with "no room for paper members or
'passengers."' "All Party members must be active in the party, in a group or on a
committee or in some other organ of the party." Dues had to be paid, meetings
attended, newspapers and literature sold, month by month.94
This undeveloped, fractured, and individualistic consciousness was not all-
encompassing. Organizers did achieve unified protest both within and without the
workplace. Urban inhabitants combined throughout the 1940s to boycott buses,
organize squatting movements, or attack the police.95 Workers joined unions and
went on strike. Unity was rarely achieved in a manner conducive to membership of
the Communist Party, however. Mpanza's squatting movement manipulated
religious symbols, and those of the traditional elite, and workers participated in the
shanty-towns, bus boycotts, or food demonstrations for the direct and immediate
economic advantages they offered, not for their political potential. A specific
ideology of legitimization underpinned rioters' activities, an extremely satisfying
emotional form of mass action which could clearly not be encompassed by
disciplined political parties.96 The most impressive example of work-place mobili-
92 Coka,"TheStoryof GilbertCoka,"316;forLillianNgoyi'saccountof growingup in a

religious household, see Helen Joseph, If This Be Treason (London, 1963), 165; Lewis Nkosi,
Home and Exile (London, 1983), 8-11; Anthony Sampson, Drum. A Ventureinto the New Africa
(London, 1956), 252.
93 Phillips, Bantu in the City, 311; Mokgatle, Autobiography, 210.
94 CPSA, New Members Guide (Cape Town, n.d.), 8-9, 12-13; Mokgatle, Autobiography,
233-4. Partygroups/branchesheld weekly political discussions, meetings, and expected members
to sell literatureand newspapersand read socialist theory themselves; see Cape Party Organiser,
(January1944), 7; (April 1944), 10; (October 1944), 9.
95 Squattingmovementsseem to have had a pan-ethnicappeal,for example;see Tim
Couzens, "'Nobody'sBaby': Modikwe Dikobe and Alexandra 1942-6," Appendix C, Modikwe
Dikobe, "The People Overflow: A Tribute to Schreiner," in Belinda Bozzoli, ed., Labour,
Townshipsand Protest (Johannesburg,1979), 112.
96 French, "JamesMpanza and the Sofasonke Party,"78, 117; Inkululeko 102 (November
1946), Union of South Africa, Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into the
Operationof Bus Services, 3; Inkululeko, 102 (4 February1950), 1. The crowd's forms of protest
were distinct from the more rarefied forms of working-class action which emerged with the
development of capitalism; for a discussion of the distinctions, see George Rud6, "The Study of
Popular Disturbances in the Pre-industrialAge," Historical Studies, 10, 40 (1963), 457-69; for
moreon locationriotsandtheideologiesthatunderpinned
them,see Fortescue,"Communist
Party
of South Africa," 195-97.
THE COMMUNISTPARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA 509
zation during the 1940s, the 1946 miners' strike, occurred in spite of the African
Mine Workers' Union and the Party, not because of them, and mobilized around
elaborate room networks and ethnic groups. The union appealed only to the fully
proletarianized tshipa (absconders), who had "forgotten their homes" to live in the
locations; such people comprised a small minority in the 1940s.97
Others joined orthodox trade unions, but these generally proved weak and
unstable. Organizers faced considerable practical difficulties operating in an
environment hostile to the trade union concept.98 Nor did a militant proletarian
consciousness sustain black trade unions in the 1940s. Strong factory-based
organization was rare. Union membership rose and fell with favorable wage
negotiations.99 One laundry worker recalled his experience in the 1930s:
[In 1938] They organized us to join the trade union. Our employer
protested extremely. The people used to start at six in the morning,
they used to knock off at 5.30 in the afternoon. Since then what we
discovered was that the long period we worked was cut. Then again
in 1939 came the Wage Board, there was a slight increase in wages,
then little by little they gave us some increments. In 1939 it [the
union] was left to drop, because according to the customs of
Africans, once they see some betterment then they leave the
struggle, as a result the union became weaker and weaker and the
employer started oppressing us once more. Then we said, but
97 Moodie, "MoralEconomyof the Black Miners'Strike,"1-35; Beinart, "Worker

Consciousness,Ethnic Particularismand Nationalism,"296; see also Delius, "Migrant
Organisation, theANCandtheSekhukhuneland Revolt,"593;D. HobartHoughtonandEdithM.
Walton,Keiskammahoek RuralSurvey,II: TheEconomyof a NativeReserve(Pietermaritzburg,
1952), 128,estimatedthatin Keiskammahoek district,only 10 percentof familieshadlost their
maleheadpermanently to thetowns;28 percentof familieshadleft togetherforthe towns,buta
massive62 percenthadmaleheadsas migrants.
98 RheinalltJones Papers,Universityof the Witwatersrand (AD394), C.53, "Industrial
Legislation.Questionnaires Issuedby the Industrial
LegislationCommissionSubmittedby J.D.
RheinalltJones, 23 November1949," 13; MurielHorrell,South African Trade Unionism
(Johannesburg, 1961),75.
99 HemsonMicrofilm(Reel3, 13),"Circular LetterfromtheAfricanTradeUnionTechnical
AdvisoryCommittee,"1; workersin advancedcapitalistcountriesjoin unionsprimarilyfor
economicreasonstoo of course,but this is accompaniedby a sustainedcommitmentto the
principleof unionorganizations. Unions,"nomatterwhattheirdeficiencies,werestill in thelast
resortfor 'us,"'and againstmanagement.Dissatisfactionwith particularunionsleads to the
formationof break-away unions,notthecompleterejectionof unionismas a principle;see Tony
Lane,TheUnionMakesUs Strong(London,1974), 182-84.Traditions,usuallyenshriningpast
successes, powerfullysustainunions in advancedcapitalistcountries;see Allan Flanders,
Management andUnions(London,1970),281.
surelythe tradeunionwas helpingus. Again we combined. Once

morewe saw some new andgood development.100
The membershipclaims made by the Councilof Non-EuropeanTradeUnions (or
CNETU)were probablyalwaysconsiderablyinflated,andeven in 1943, when the
black tradeunion movementnearedits height,Inkululekocomplainedthat "the
unions are generallyweak andtheirorganisationbad."101Amid the increasingly
harshpost-wareconomicenvironment,unionmembersabandonedthe tradeunions
as they ceased to meet their immediatematerialinterests. African trade union
membershipdeclinedseverelybetween1945 and 1950.102
If workersshareda common awarenessof economic exploitation,more-
over, was one definedin termsof race, not class. Those forcedoff the land by
it
capitalizingwhite farmersbroughtwith them bitterresentmentstowardswhite
people. Reserve dwellers regardedthe coming of the white man as equally
catastrophic. Experiencesin both the workplaceand locations reinforcedsuch
emotions. African workers, declared J.B. Marks to the CPSA's 1945-46
conference,believeda unifiedclass strugglewas "impossibleof achievementwhen
the attitudeof white workers was as antagonisticand race-prejudicedas it is
today."103Black workersnot merelyworkedlong hoursfor appallingwages, but
werepushedoff the streets,forbiddenfrombrewingbeer,or bundledinto the hated
pick-up van, outside the work-place. Doctors and lawyers suffered alongside
manuallaborersin the locationsandrarelysucceededin developingdistinctpolitical
forms and styles, an essential prerequisitefor the emergence of class-based
ideologies among the working-classmajority. The CommunistParty gloomily
100Hirson,"TheMakingof theAfricanWorking-Class,"
55.
101
Lodge, "PoliticalMobilisation During the 1950s," 312; Inkululeko, 34 (20 June 1943),
4.
102 167,024 black workers benefited from wage determinationsbetween 1940 and 1945.
Only 55,083 were covered between 1945 and 1950. See statistics compiled from Departmentof
LaborReports, 1940-50. Real wages for Africanworkersdeclinedby 1.4 percentbetween 1946 and
1951; see W.F.J. Steenkamp, "Bantu Wages in South Africa," South African Journal of
Economics, 30, 2 (1962), 96; for the political developments behind this worsening economic
environment, see T. Dunbar Moodie, "The South African State and Industrial Conflict in the
1940s,"InternationalJournal of African Historical Studies, 21, 1 (1988), 21-61; according to one
estimate, sixty-six trade unions collapsed after 1945, and only thirty-two African trade unions
existed in 1950, with a total paid-upmembershipof 17,296; see Union of South Africa, Industrial
Legislation Commissionof Enquiry (Parow, 1951), 202-04.
103 Keegan, Facing the Storm, 22, for one case-study; Wilson, Kaplan, Maki and Walton,
KeiskammahoekRural Survey, Volume3, 178-79; Guardian(10 January1946), 5.
recognized that "class alignments and divisions appear as combinations and

hostilities between nationalities."104
Such realities proved painfully restricting. The Party took on an unprece-
dentedly white complexion during the war years. Mokgatle's initial contact with the
Party left him unconvinced. "I was very suspicious of Europeans, having decided
in my own mind that they needed us only for their own benefit." When he did join,
fellow Africans charged him with hypocrisy, claiming that the Communists "were
out to use the Non-Europeans for their own ends." They accused African
Communists of "being weak Europeans' good-boys and girls, who were on their
knees begging the Europeans to bring us freedom in our own country."105 As one
ANC organizer conceded in the early 1950s, "a politically raw African who has
been so much oppressed, exploited and victimized by the Europeans, sees red
whenever a white face appears."106 Prominent contemporaries believed such
issues to be central to the Communist Party's difficulties. With the Party's
whiteness went inevitable class and cultural distinctions. "When the European
Communists went into the locations to hold meetings or to sell copies of the
Guardian," Sampson believed, "they went more as missionaries than as
colleagues." Sampson exaggerates, but the Party's ballroom dances and Beethoven
evenings must have meshed uneasily with most Africans' background in marabi
andfamo, popular township dance styles of the 1930s and 1940s.107
Conclusion
The Communist Party's revolutionary proletarian ideology resonated uneasily with

most African workers. Consciousness was fractured in a multitude of ways, and
crucially conditioned by rural attachments, the still undeveloped industrial context,
104 Sachs,Black Hamlet, 72; Sapire, "AfricanUrbanisationand

StrugglesAgainst
MunicipalControlin Brakpan," 132;TomLodge,"PoliticalOrganisationsin Pretoria's
African
Townships,1940-1963,"in Instituteof Commonwealth
Studies,Societiesof SouthernAfricain
the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 14 (London, 1988), 79; Tom Lodge, "The
Destruction of Sophiatown,"in Bozzoli, Town and Countrysidein the Transvaal, 338-9, 344-5;
Freedom,New Series,1, 8 (1949),1.
105Brookes,"FromClassStruggleto NationalLiberation," 47-51, 113-114;MosesKotane,
"Defectsin PartyEducation,"8-9; interviewwithBrianBunting;Mokgatle,Autobiography,
192-
94, 234.
106 T. Karis and G. Carter,eds., From Protest to
Challenge. A Documentary History of
African Politics in SouthAfrica, 1882-1964, II (Stanford, 1977), 58.
107 John Burger,The Black Man's Burden
(London, 1943), 244-45; Anthony Sampson, The
Treason Cage (London, 1958), 168-69; the outstandingtreatmentof this urbanculture is Coplan,
Township Tonight, Chs. 4 and 6.
and the racial framework of South African capitalism. Africans assumed the wider
structures of power to be unquestionable, and sometimes found the CPSA's
emancipatory visions scarcely imaginable. To conclude that African workers'
consciousness developed in a non-revolutionary manner, seeking concessions from
within the system, and that it was often individualistic or ethnically based, and
when unified frequently Africanist in outlook, is not to pass critical judgement.
Particularlyin situations of extreme material hardship, forms of resistance that meet
the immediate material interests of those involved arguably constitute the inherent
nature of working-class protest. Nor therefore should we disparage the
organizational form such strategies take. Often, indeed, such strategies constituted
the safest methods of organization both within and without the work-place. So,
most certainly, did acquiescence.
Such realities were, however, drastically limiting for the Communist Party.
A belief in the inevitability of the system and the difficulties many workers
experienced even imagining the Communists' alternatives, crucially limited the
Party's appeal. So too did the tendency for working-class consciousness to
develop along ethnic, individualistic, or Africanist lines, or not to develop at all.
Although Kotane warned the CPSA in the mid-1930s, that socialism's "European
language" was not "blindly applicable to South Africa," Communists were severely
restrained in their ability to tailor their ideology to the predilections of the African
working-class.l08 The Party could certainly have paid serious attention to the rural
dimension of many workers' lives, but could not resort to either ethnic or Africanist
appeals. Indeed, by the late 1940s, some Communists were distinctly uneasy about
the extent to which the Party emphasized nationalist to the exclusion of socialist
goals.109 Membership of the CPSA was a potentially hazardous undertaking, and,
apart from its literacy classes, which promised participants the prospect of
improved employment opportunities, Party membership did not offer immediate
advantages in the central struggle of most African's lives in the 1940s: day-to-day
economic survival.110
108 Lerumo, Fifty Fighting Years, 133; unlike the ICU which was much freer to adapt its
ideology; see Bradford,Taste of Freedom,Ch. 4, for her superbanalysis.
109 Unlike the IndonesianCommunistParty, which made good use of existing pre-colonial
Islamic movements, themselves dedicated to the defeat of Dutch colonialism; see Williams,
Communism,Religion and Revolt, 179-180; "Kay,""OurPropaganda,"Freedom, 5, 5 (October-
November 1946), 5; H.A. Naidoo, "The Party and the National Organisations,"Freedom, 7, 1
(1948), 17; Freedom, n.s., 1, 27-8 (15 December 1949), 5.
110 See Inkululeko 11 (December 1941), 6; 25 (23 January1943), 5; 73 (24 March 1945), 8;
Cape Party Organiser (May 1944), 5; (April 1944), 18; for the Africanreactionto night-schools in
the 1920s and 1930s, see Mokgatle, Autobiography,192-97; Roux, Time Longer, 205.

The Communist Party of South Africa and The African Working Class in The 1940s

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Board of Trustees, Boston University

THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA AND

1 Inkululeko. 5 (May 1941), 1; Confidential United States State

It has become something of a commonplace among African labor historians

October1985, an influentiallook at the Party'sactivitiesduringthe warperiod;Joel Bolnick,

To require of lower-class resistance that it somehow be "principled"

6 GeorgeRude,IdeologyandPopularProtest(London,1980),Chs. 1 and2, for his now

aroundethnic attachments,and certainlyacquiescenceoften constitutedthe safest

The Nature and Limitations of Black Support for

10 Brookes, "FromClass Struggle to National Liberation,"25; Roux, Time

16 "Minutesof Conference,"65; for a generalaccountof Trotskyiteinvolvementon the

19 Union of South Africa, Report of the InterdepartmentalCommitteeon the Social, Health

23 See Fortescue, "Communist

Communists claimed 260 members; in East London, ninety.29 Bopape's sustained

One of the problems which faced us continuously was how to retain

29 Guardian (19 November 1942), 5; the JohannesburgD.C. claimed 37 groups/branchesin

inactive, or some of them wouldn't become active at all. And then

32 Interviewwith Fred Carneson.

from distinct radical traditions, influenced in particularby childhood experiences of

37 For a cross-sectionof occupationsprovidedby the Government's

Revolutionary Ideology and the African Working-Class

unbelievable to them that it is possible for workers to be 'bosses' of factories - the

omnipotence.56 Nonetheless, although the authorities were intensely concerned to

56 Shula Marks and RichardRathbone,eds., Industrialisation and Social Change in South

60 Moses Kotane, "Defectsin PartyEducation,"Freedom, 11 (September1942), 9.

economy did little to immediatelytransformthis situation. The vast majorityof

Proletarian Ideology and the African Working Class

The absence of a socialist traditionamong African workers did not prove an

theoretical explanations of societal transformation. They often lacked experience in

78 HymieBasner,who left thePartyin 1939,believedtheCommunists'

incompatible with membership of a political Party dedicated to fashioning a new

82 Kotane, "How to Work

merely saw before them a mass of oppressedand exploitedpeople

crimein EasternNativeTownshipin the early1950s,see Longmore,TheDispossessed,181-97;

92 Coka,"TheStoryof GilbertCoka,"316;forLillianNgoyi'saccountof growingup in a

97 Moodie, "MoralEconomyof the Black Miners'Strike,"1-35; Beinart, "Worker

surelythe tradeunionwas helpingus. Again we combined. Once

recognized that "class alignments and divisions appear as combinations and

The Communist Party's revolutionary proletarian ideology resonated uneasily with

104 Sachs,Black Hamlet, 72; Sapire, "AfricanUrbanisationand

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