?
  1 AFR1CANA LIBRARY
 UNIVERSITY OF THE WITWATERSRAND
 A F R I C A N S T U D I E S I N S T I T U T E
 African Studies Seminar Paper
 to be presented at Seminar in RW 319 at
 4.00p* on Monday 30th April 1990
 Title: The Origins of Multiracialis?.
 by: David Everatt
 No.: 270
 This paper may not be quoted without
 the permission of the author
The Origins of Multiracialism.
 David Everatt.
 Introduction.
 Resistance politics in the 1950s was dominated by the Congress Alliance,
 made up of the African National Congress [ANC], the South African Indian
 Congress [SAIC], the Coloured People?s Congress [CPC] and the white
 South African Congress of Democrats [SACOD]. The Alliance mobilised
 people of all races against apartheid in a manner previously unseen in
 South African history. The internal politics of the resistance movement,
 however, was dominated by wide-ranging and bitter disputes over the form
 that racial co-operation should take. That dispute centred on the
 multiracial nature of the Congress Alliance - that is, an alliance of
 separate Congresses comprising members of a single ethnic group, co-
 ordinated at regional and national levels.
 Multiracialism afforded each Congress equal representation on all co-
 ordinating structures. As a result, SACOD, with an average membership
 of 250, was equally represented on Alliance structures with the ANC,
 which had an average paid-up membership of between 30 000 and 50 000.1
 Multiracialism stood in marked contrast with the nonracialism of
 organisations such as the disbanded Communist Party of South Africa
 [CPSA], the South African Communist Party [SACP] and the Liberal Party,
 which contained members of all ethnic groups within a single
 organisation.
 Multiracialism generated a wide range of criticism. At the centre of
 such criticism lay SACOD, "the white wing of the Congress Alliance."2
 SACOD was a small, militant white organisation which supported extra-
 parliamentary campaigns in pursuit of equal rights, and which included
 a number of former CPSA members. SACOD1s place in the Alliance provided
 a focus for a wide range of organisations which regarded SACOD as a
 ?communist front1 and multiracialisin as the means by which communist
 influence was being entrenched in the Alliance. Liberals and Trotskyists
 in Cape Town stated:
 COD is a boss organisation in an alliance of racial organisations
 and is a great believer in the big stick. The organisations
 allied to it are boy organisations. COD dictates its instructions
 to them. They never meet as equals: theirs is simply to obey...3
 In essence, multiracialism was seen as a mechanism of control engineered
 by white communists following the disbanding of the CPSA in 1950, who
 were unable to gain individual membership of the black Congresses.
 Existing explanations of the emergence of multiracialism stress its
 strategic content: that is, the fact that it acknowledged the differing
 material conditions affecting ethnic groups which had been politically
 and geographically divided under both segregation and apartheid. As
 leading SACOD member Helen Joseph recently put it.
 The feeling . .. was that it was important for work to be done
 amongst the different groups of people who whether we like it
 or not are separate - the bloody Group Areas [saw] to that. It
 corrals us in separate areas so that we are living apart from
 each other and we can't deny it.4
 The ideological content of multiracialism has been ignored. This paper
 explores the ideological roots of multiracialism, and argues that they
 lie in large part in the hostility which characterised relations between
 Lodge: Black Politics in South Africa (1983), p.75.
 2
  Helen Joseph: Side By Side (1987) p.40.
 3
  Bus Apartheid Resistance Committee in New Age 21-8-1956, p.8
 4
  Interview with Helen Joseph.
the CPSA and the ANC Youth League [ANCYL].
 Both the CPSA and ANCYL called for the radicalisation of the ANC and
 the development of a mass base as the only means to a successful
 national revolution. However, the CPSA Central Committee [CC] warned
 that nationalism obscured class oppression, and called for the
 transformation of existing organisations "into a revolutionary party
 of workers, peasants, intellectuals and petty bourgeois"; that single
 organisation would co-operate with the CPSA in opposing racial
 discrimination and "develop[ing] class consciousness in the people."5
 The ANCYL brought to the ANC a strident (and at times exclusive) African
 nationalism and a strong anti-communism. Youth Leaguers strongly
 resisted nonracialism, which they saw as a CPSA-inspired attempt to by-
 pass existing national organisations and create a permanent "unity
 movement" emphasising class above national consciousness. In contrast,
 the League insisted that racial co-operation "can only take place
 between Africans as a single unit and other Non-European groups as
 separate units."7
 Leading Communist Party member Brian Bunting, speaking of the
 distinction between the CPSA's nonracialism and the ANCYL1s
 multiracial ism, stated: "let us not be confused by semantics. "8 The
 distinction, however, was more than semantic. The hostility between the
 ANCYL and the CPSA resulted in the strategic debate over nonracialism
 or multiracialism being imbued with heavily ideological overtones.
 This paper analyses the dispute between the CPSA and the ANCYL in order
 to locate the ideological roots of multiracialism. In so doing, tensions
 within the CPSA over the relationship between class and national
 struggle are discussed. Those tensions grew in the late 1940s as a
 result (in part) of CPSA/ANCYL hostility. As one Party member put it:
 [in] the late 40s you'll find that the Party got itself into a
 bit of a bind. On the one hand there was the classic class
 communist analysis. On the other hand there were people ... who
 were terribly sensitive to the national liberation struggle ...
 So these two things had to be reconciled.9
 The Communist Party and the African National Congress.
 The ANC in the 1940s and early 1950s was transformed from a small
 organisation concerned to enroll "distinguished university graduates,"10
 to a mass-based nationalist organisation pursuing national liberation
 by extra-parliamentary means including stay-aways and passive
 resistance. Those changes were largely brought about by the ANC Youth
 League, formed in 1944 and comprising a group of highly able students
 of law, medicine, and teaching; non-professionals such as former miner
 and bakery worker Walter Sisulu were important but rare.
 SC.10-53: Report of the Select Committee on the Suppression of
 Communism Act Enquiry: Central Committee Report to the CPSA Annual
 Conference, January 1950 [hereafter 1950 CC Report].
 6
  See Nelson Mandela, in The Guardian 29-7-1948, p.5.
 Anton Lembede: Policy of the Congress Youth League in Inkundla
 ya Bantu, May 1946.
 3
  B.Bunting: Moses Kotane: South African Revolutionary (1987)
 p.159
 Hope and Challenge (1977), p.199.
 9
  Interview with Ben Turok.
 10
  Resolutions of the 1942 Annual ANC Conference: in Tom Karis:
Congress politics in the late 1940s was dominated by the ANCYL as it
 set itself the twin tasks of "impart[ing] to Congress a truly national
 character," and opposing those who sought to provide "foreign leadership
 of Africa."11 Youth Leaguers stressed "the need for vigilance against
 Communists and other groups which foster non-African interests."1 In
 practice the ANCYL programme entailed gaining control of Congress, while
 isolating organisations and individuals who exerted influence over the
 ANC, or sought to develop their own African support base outside the
 ANC.
 The transformation of the ANC took place in the years following the
 second world war. Influenced by the liberal ethos of the war years, the
 ANC concentrated on drawing up and popularising Africans' Claims in
 South Africa, a major statement of principle which attempted to
 delineate the ideological path that should be followed by a government
 which appeared to be backing away from segregation. In so doing, the ANC
 continued the constitutional petitioning of the pre-war years. Grass-
 roots organisation around civic issues was left to other organisations.
 Black trade unions grew, while squatter movements and bus boycotts
 represented a spontaneous popular response to the hardships faced by the
 black population.
 In contrast with the wartime ANC, the Communist Party was directly
 involved in grass-roots organisation in some townships, most notably
 on the East Rand. As Hilary Sapire has demonstrated in the case of
 Brakpan location, the CPSA mobilised residents around immediate local
 concerns such as wages, employment practices, the extension of passes
 to women, the shortage of housing and pass law raids. The CPSA contested
 Advisory Board elections and used the Boards and Vigilance Associations
 as means of establishing "footholds in location communities."13 Through
 the work of CPSA members such as David Bopape and Gideon Ngake in using
 such elected positions as platforms to defend local interests, the CPSA
 in Brakpan instituted itself as "the undisputed political force in the
 region." The CPSA also ran night-schools in the major centres which,
 according to the Johannesburg District Party secretary, were "a very big
 factor in the development of the membership of the Party." Elsewhere
 in the country the CPSA successfully contested Advisory Board elections,
 winning all six seats in East London in 1942, as well as local council
 seats in Cape Town, East London and Johannesburg.
 The CPSA, with organisations such as the Springbok Legion and Friends
 of the Soviet Union, successfully mobilised large sectors of the white
 population.16 CPSA members were active in the burgeoning black trade
 union movement, while Hilda Watts won a seat on the Johannesburg City
 Council in the whites-only Hillbrow ward. As a result of its high
 political profile and success in various spheres of operation, some
 elements within the CPSA began to think of the Party in terms of a
 potential mass movement.
 11
  Provisional Committee of the Congress Youth League: Congress
 Youth League Manifesto, March 1944 in Karis: Hope pp.300-308.
 r?
  Notes of ANCYL drafting committee, in Karis p.100.
 13
  Hilary Sapire: African Political Mobilisation in Brakpan in the
 1950s: ASI 1989, p.6.
 14
  Lionel 'Rusty' Bernstein, interviewed by Don Pinnock [hereafter
 interview with Rusty Bernstein].
 15
  Bunting p. 110.
 16
  See C.Burns: An Historical Study of the Friends of the Soviet
 Union and the South African Peace Council. Hons. thesis, Wits, 1987.
 1/-
  Bunting p . m .
By the end of the war, the CPSA had emerged as a significant force in
 black organisation. However, it remained CPSA policy to work with the
 ANC and build it up. In 1929 the CPSA had accepted a Comintern directive
 which stressed the need to work within "the embryonic organisations
 among the natives, such as the African National Congress11 so as to
 transform the latter into a "fighting nationalist revolutionary
 organisation against the white bourgeoisie and British imperialists."
 This remained Party policy despite being affected by the internal
 ructions of the CPSA in the 1930s, and the anti-fascist 'Popular Front1
 strategy of the 1940s.
 The national organisations, according to the CPSA, were to spearhead a
 revolution aimed at abolishing racial discrimination and attaining equal
 rights for all. Thereafter, the struggle for socialism could take place.
 Nonetheless, in 1940 the ANC was a small, weak organisation of the black
 elite. As the CPSA complained:
 The year 1940 has arrived with hardships and misery for the
 oppressed and poor peoples of the Union of South Africa . ..
 Unfortunately the year finds the forces of freedom as scattered
 as sheep in the presence of wolves. When talking of the forces
 of freedom, one cannot lose sight of the fact that the African
 people are potentially the most important of these forces.
 Therefore, if the Africans do not pull themselves together to
 face the enemies of freedom vigorously, not only will they let
 themselves down, but they will let their allies down also. 9
 Black Party members were reluctant to join the ANC. As CPSA Johannesburg
 District secretary Rusty Bernstein recently noted, some black members
 "wouldn't join it. They thought the ANC was rather reformist bourgeois
 nonsense - 'that's not for us, we're revolutionaries!1"20
 While the CPSA extended its township base during the war years, it
 remained concerned with the state of the ANC on which it focussed much
 critical attention. Party members such as David Bopape, J.B.Marks, Edwin
 Mofutsanyana and Moses Kotane were also ANC members. CPSA literature
 emphasised that national liberation struggles "fought in the colonial
 and semi-colonial territories" were "no mere side issue," but rather an
 integral part of a global anti-imperialist struggle.21 By the end of the
 war, signs of change were visible within the ANC. The increasingly
 prominent Youth League had begun to criticise the moderation of the ANC,
 and its failure to establish a branch structure and win a mass
 following.
 During the war years black trade unions grew apace and strike action
 increased markedly over the 1930s. Black militancy increased as black
 urbanisation and proletarianisation was met with an acute housing
 shortage, soaring prices and, after 1943, the harsh implementation of
 influx control. The ANC however failed to capitalise on these
 conditions. As a result, rival organisations aimed at mobilising black
 opinion were formed or revitalised.
 As Karis has noted, Africans impatient with the ANC for its moderation
 and failure to develop a mass base "had various courses of action open
 18
  ibid., p.31: Comintern Resolution on South Africa, 1928.
 19
  Inkululeko, January 1940 p.2.
 20
  Interview with Rusty Bernstein.
 21
  AD1181: CPSA: The Foundation of Socialist Teaching from the
 Manifesto of 1848 to the 1928 Programme. Left Book Club, nd.71943.
to them in 1943."22 The Youth League was formed within the ANC,
 comprising young urban intellectuals who rejected traditional ANC
 constitutional protest in favour of mass mobilisation and extra-
 parliamentary action. Outside the ANC, the African Democratic Party
 [ADP] was formed, while the All-African Convention [AAC] agitated for
 a 'non-collaborationist' strategy.
 The CPSA accepted that the ANC, the largest of the three, remained "the
 premier political organisation," both because of historical ties and
 possibly affected by the fact that both the ADP and the AAC were
 influenced, in differing degrees, by Trotskyist thinking. As a result,
 CPSA statements in the 1942-1948 period insisted that black communists
 had a responsibility to work within the ANC and SAIC; the Johannesburg
 District passed a resolution declaring it "to be the duty of all
 Communists belonging to oppressed nationalities to join their respective
 national movements, so as to work for the strengthening of such
 movements."24 As we have seen, such resolutions were made necessary
 through the reluctance of some black CPSA members to join the ANC. As
 Rivonia trialist Elias Motsoaledi recently stated:
 [the] Party taught me the struggle. I attended ANC meetings but
 was not happy with it at the time [the late 1940s]. To me, the
 ANC did not interpret the aspirations of the masses. But the
 Party taught me that it was my responsibility to tell the ANC
 about our aspirations ... at the time, the ANC was dominated by
 sophisticated intellectuals who only spoke in English.
 CPSA literature and internal reports during the war reflect three
 related themes in discussing the ANC and the broader national liberation
 movement. In the first place, the CPSA acknowledged the progress made
 by ANC President-General Alfred Xuma in reorganising the ANC, but
 criticised the Congress for failing to provide political leadership in
 a period which witnessed black industrial organisation and urban
 militancy. In a 1943 report on National Movements of the Non-Europeans,
 the CPSA Executive Committee noted that "the lack of a strong and
 influential organisation among the Non-Europeans, has been felt time and
 time again" and criticised the ANC for failing "in its main task - that
 of uniting its membership and carrying out the formation of branches in
 a systematic manner."26 In 1945 the CPSA Johannesburg District called for
 a "practical plan of campaign and action" to channel popular militancy.27
 Flowing from this, a second theme of CPSA commentary on national
 movements was to consistently call for the elaboration of a minimum
 shared programme between national organisations, the CPSA and the trade
 union movement. Such a programme, it was argued, would allow for both
 ideological and organisational unity. The third theme comprised repeated
 calls for the development of a united front of all organisations
 opposing racial discrimination. The CPSA argued that "[a]11 genuine
 movements towards national liberation are progressive," but warned
 against the tendency to racial exclusiveness which would obscure the
 22
  Karis p. 110.
 23
  ibid. , pp. 107-114.
 24
  Democracy In Action!: Proceedings of the Johannesburg District
 Annual Conference of the Communist Party. 1945 p.30; repeated in 1947.
 a
  New Nation Supplement, October 27-November 2 1989, p.7.
 26
  CAMP Reel 3A:2:CCl:62/2: CPSA Executive Committee Report:
 National Movements of the Non-Europeans, 6-12-1943, p. 2.
 ?f
  CPSA: Democracy op cit p.7.
28
 underlying reality of the class oppression of all workers. The CPSA
 supported the emergence of a "broad fighting alliance"29 or "wide
 democratic front"30 which would oppose segregation while underplaying
 exclusive nationalism.
 The postwar programme of the CPSA was internal ly contested, as some
 members called on the Party to capitalise on its wartime successes and
 concentrate on class struggle in place of its commitment to a 'two-
 stage1 revolution.31 In part, this flowed from the changing nature of the
 ANC, as the ANCYL grew increasingly prominent. CPSA members and reports
 expressed concern that
 the realities of the class divisions are being obscured ...
 Nationalism need not be synonymous with racialism, but it can
 avoid being so only if it recognises the class alignments that
 cut across the racial divisions.32
 The ANCYL voiced criticisms of the ANC similar to those of the CPSA,
 calling for the development of a branch structure and mass membership,
 and the utilisation of extra-parliamentary means of opposition. At the
 same time, however, the late 1940s saw the spreading influence of the
 Youth League and its twin hostilities: - towards the CPSA, and towards
 anything other than "occasional cooperation" with other racial groups.33
 The ANC Youth League.
 The ANC began to show signs of change following the formation of the
 Youth League in 1944. The ANCYL Manifesto, issued in March 1944, noted
 criticism of the ANC as "a body of gentlemen with clean hands" which had
 failed to organise the mass of the African population.34 The ANCYL was
 formed as "a protest against the lack of discipline and the absence of
 a clearly-defined goal in the movement as a whole" and was committed to
 "rousing popular political consciousness and fighting oppression and
 reaction." More significantly, it stressed that "the national liberation
 of the Africans will be achieved by Africans themselves. We reject
 foreign leadership of Africa." The ANCYL programme was based on an
 interpretation of African nationalism which rejected non-African
 leadership and "the wholesale importation of foreign ideologies," while
 emphasising African pride and self-sufficiency.35
 The ANCYL was influenced in part by the growth of anti-colonial
 movements in the postwar period. Anton Lembede, a lawyer and leading
 Youth League ideologue, noted that
 the history of modern times is the history of nationalism ...
 All over the world nationalism is rising in revolt against
 foreign domination, conquest and oppression in India, in
 Indonesia, in Egypt, in Persia and several other countries. Among
 Africans also clear signs of national awakening, national
 renaissance, or rebirth are noticeable...36
 The ANCYL saw its "immediate task" as the need "to overhaul the
 machinery of the A.N.C. from within," remoulding the ANC into a mass-
 PR
 CAMP Reel 3A:2:CC1:14/2: Programme of the Communist Party of
 South Africa (draft), nd.1941, p.7. ;
 *
 y
  The Guardian 9-1-1947 p.l: 1947 CPSA Annual Conference.
 The Guardian 24-6-1948 p.5: CPSA CC statement.
 31
  See The Guardian, January 1945.
 32
  1950 CC Report.
 33
  Lembede: Policy op cit.
 34
  ANCYL: Manifesto op cit.
 35
  ibid.
 36
  Lembede: Policy op cit.
based organisation pursuing national liberation and mobilising support
 by means of a militant African nationalism. The ANCYL stressed "the
 divine destiny of the African people"38 and the need for "high ethical
 standards" to "combat moral disintegration among Africans."
 One aim of the ANCYL - as of the CPSA - was to radicalise the ANC. For
 the Youth League this entailed the provision of nationalist leaders who
 rejected constitutionalism in favour of mass-based extra-parliamentary
 action. Part of that task was seen to be the removal of non-African
 nationalists from influencing Congress. Lembede, the League's first
 President, argued:
 No foreigner can ever be a true and genuine leader of the African
 people because no foreigner can ever truly and genuinely
 interpret the African spirit which is unique and peculiar to
 Africans only. Some foreigners Asiatic or European who pose as
 African leaders must be categorically denounced and rejected.40
 In calling for the development of African nationalism as a mobilising
 force sufficient to challenge the status quo, the Youth League came to
 see both liberalism and communism as competing ideologies.41 In attaining
 its objectives - providing a radical African nationalist leadership
 intent on developing a mass base - the ANCYL came to see the CPSA as a
 competitor.
 The ANCYL and the CPSA 1944-1949.
 The conflict between the ANCYL and the CPSA between 1944 and 1951, and
 its resolution in the 1952 - 1955 period, has been widely discussed.42
 That discussion has nonetheless remained within the bounds set by Youth
 Leaguers themselves, who stressed that Africans in South Africa suffered
 national, and not class oppression, and therefore rejected CPSA analysis
 as spurious. The ANCYL opposed 'Vendors of Foreign Method1 who
 seek to impose on our struggle cut-and-dried formulae, which so
 far from clarifying the issues of our struggle, only serve to
 obscure the fact that we are oppressed not as a class, but as a
 people, as a Nation.
 However, a closer analysis of Youth League antipathy towards the CPSA
 is required in order to elucidate the precise nature of the conflict
 between the two organisations, and the ramifications of that conflict.
 Such an analysis questions the acceptance of the ANCYL simply as an
 expression of anti-communism or exclusive nationalism (or both), and
 sheds light on the internal politics of the resistance movements in the
 1940s and 1950s.
 The conflict between the ANCYL and CPSA operated on two main levels.
 On the one hand, the ANCYL reacted strongly to the Communist Party's
 repeated calls for a broad nonracial alliance of organisations opposed
 to segregation. The broad front proposed by the CPSA was to "conduct
 37
  A.P.Mda to G.M.Pitje 10-10-1948: in Karis p.321.
 38
  Lembede: Policy op cit (emphasis in original).
 39
  ANCYL: Manifesto op cit.
 40
  Lembede: Policy op cit.
 41
  The first task of 1948 ANCYL President A.P.Mda was to clarify
 the ANCYL stand in relation to liberalism and communism: see Karis
 p.103.
 42
  See inter alia Bunting, chapter 8; Karis, pp.98-110; Lodge,
 chapter 1; P.Walshe: The Rise of African Nationalism in South Africa
 (1987) chapter XIII. In contrast, Meli: South Africa Belongs To Us
 (1988^ makes no mention of the conflict.
 Basic Policy of Congress Youth League 1948, in Karis p.330.
mass struggles against race discrimination" while underplaying exclusive
 nationalism by "develop[ing] class consciousness in the people" and
 "forg[ing] unity in action between the oppressed peoples and between
 them and the European working class."44 The ANCYL rejected the class
 content of nonracialism as proposed by the CPSA. Rather, the League
 insisted that "the national liberation of Africans will be achieved by
 Africans themselves"45; co-operation between the oppressed groups was
 acceptable only when the racial groups were organised in "separate
 units."46
 On the other hand, both organisations were seeking to influence the
 development and direction of the ANC at a time of growing black
 militancy. As will be seen, the programmes of the two organisations
 were in many respects not dissimilar. As a result, the conflict appears
 to have mixed ideological disputation with elements of a power struggle.
 That conflict moreover worked itself out over a particular issue: the
 form that racial co-operation should take.
 The programmes of the Youth League and the Communist Party had many
 points of similarity. The ANCYL, in insisting on the national basis of
 black oppression in South Africa, argued that black South Africans
 "suffer national oppression in common with thousands and millions of
 oppressed Colonial peoples in other parts of the world."47 Moreover,
 Lembede argued: "After national freedom, then socialism."48 In this he
 was joined by Ashby Mda, a lawyer and leading Youth Leaguer, who argued
 that the interests of the mass of Africans could be protected only by
 "the establishment of a true democracy and a just social order." By
 1951 Mda defined 'a just social order1 in terms of "full political
 control by the workers, peasants and intellectuals" combined with "the
 liquidation of capitalism" and "equal distribution of wealth.1'50 While
 the ANCYL as a whole did not explicitly endorse socialism, Lembede
 argued that "Africans are naturally socialistic as illustrated in their
 social practices and customs," and concluded that "the achievement of
 national freedom will therefore herald or usher in a new era, the era
 of African socialism."51
 In essence, nothing in the above programme conflicted with the CPSA's
 understanding of the South African situation. Strategically, both called
 for the radicalisation of the ANC leadership and the development of an
 ANC branch structure and mass base as necessary preconditions for a
 successful national revolution. Ideologically, the CPSA had accepted the
 primacy of the national question following adoption of a 1928 Comintern
 thesis which placed South Africa within the ambit of fcolonial and semi-
 colonial countries.f The 1928 thesis endorsed
 an independent native South African republic as a stage towards
 a workers1 and peasants1 republic, with full equal rights for all
 races, black, coloured and white.52
 The vision of a socialist revolution taking place in phases meant that
 44
  1950 CC Report.
 45
  ANCYL: Manifesto op cit.
 46
  Lembede: Policy op cit.
 47
  ibid.
 Lembede: Policy op cit (emphasis in original).
 49
  A.P.Mda: Statement to the Youth League of Congress Inkundla ya
 Bantu, 27-8-1949.
 50
  A.P.Mda: The Analysis (nd.1951) in Gail Gerhart: Black Power in
 South Africa (1978) p.130.
 51
  Lembede: Policy op cit.
 52
  Quoted in Bunting p. 31.
the CPSA programme largely tallied with Lembede's vision of national
 revolution followed by (African) socialism. Finally, the CPSA accepted
 the premier position of the ANC in the national liberation struggle.
 The ANCYL, with a belief "in the unity of all Africans from the
 Mediterranean Sea in the North to the Indian and Atlantic Oceans in the
 South," saw the struggle for equal rights as part of a pan-African anti-
 colonial movement.53 For the CPSA, the notion that black South Africans
 were colonially oppressed was at least implicit in the 1928 thesis. The
 idea of internal colonialism was hinted at but not developed by CPSA
 member Eddie Roux in 1928:
 we have a white bourgeoisie and a white aristocracy of labour
 living in the same country together with an exploited colonial
 peasantry. Here the participation of the workers of the ruling
 class in the exploitation of the colonial workers is very
 apparent ... the exploitation occurs within the confines of a
 single country.54
 Caught up in the factionalism of the 1928-1935 period, and thereafter
 in the Popular Front politics of the anti-fascist period, internal
 colonialism and its implications were not assessed by the CPSA until
 the period under study.
 The Politics of Nonracialism.
 The above discussion should not imply that there were no differences
 between the ANCYL and the CPSA. Rather, it should serve to focus
 analysis on the precise location and nature of the ANCYL/CPSA conflict.
 The CPSA switch from opposition to active participation in the second
 world war following the invasion of the Soviet Union had generated
 widespread hostility. The CPSA expended much energy during the war in
 popularising the Soviet Union and was seen by the ANCYL to have an
 agenda which stretched beyond national liberation and was informed by
 a 'foreign ideology1 using "methods and tactics which might have
 succeeded in other countries, like Europe."
 The issue on which Youth League suspicion of the CPSA came to focus
 most directly was the question of nonracialism. The CPSA was concerned
 to avoid the emergence of a racially exclusive African nationalism which
 would obscure and retard class struggle. As we have seen, the Communist
 Party stressed the need for the liberation struggle to be waged by a
 broad front of organisations led not by the black bourgeoisie but by
 "the class-conscious workers and peasants of the national group
 concerned" so as to foster class-conscious racial unity.56 While both the
 ANCYL and the CPSA called for the development of the ANC, the latter
 supported the emergence of a broad front of organisations (including the
 ANC) representing Africans, Indians, Coloureds and trade unions.57 In co-
 operation with such an alliance, the CPSA could
 carry out its task of exploring the class purposes of race
 oppression, creating a working class consciousness, breaking
 down national prejudices and providing leadership in the struggle
 for socialism.58
 As Lodge has noted, j oint CPSA/ANC members on the whole enjoyed the
 support of more conservative and established members of the ANC national
 53
  ANCYL: Manifesto op cit.
 54
  Quoted in Bunting p. 35.
 55
  ANCYL: Basic Policy op cit.
 56
  1950 CC Report.
 J See The Guardian 9-1-1947 p.l: CPSA Annual Conference.
 CC Report to 1949 CPSA Conference in Bunting p.155.
10
 executive.59 Both rejected the Youth League call for a complete electoral
 boycott, while the more pragmatic ANC leaders supported broad unity in
 opposition to racial discrimination. Black unity increased markedly in
 the late 1940s. In 1947 Doctors Xuma, Naicker and Dadoo, representing
 the ANC, Natal Indian Congress [NIC] and Transvaal Indian Congress [TIC]
 respectively, signed the 'Doctors Pact1 which accepted "the urgency of
 co-operation between the non-European peoples and other democratic
 forces for the attainment of basic human rights..." In 1946 the NIC
 began to mobilise support for a passive resistance campaign against the
 ?Ghetto Act1 which lasted for two years and saw over 2000 resisters of
 all races (predominantly Indian) imprisoned. Rallies and public meetings
 began to be held under the joint auspices of the African and Indian
 Congresses, as well as the (Coloured) African People's Organisation
 [APO].
 The Youth League position on racial co-operation was complicated by the
 presence of both an exclusive approach which rejected such co-
 operation, and a more inclusive approach. The leadership of the League,
 however, was drawn increasingly from the latter category, comprising men
 who accepted greater racial co-operation while laying stress on the
 centrality of a strong African nationalist organisation. In 1946 Anton
 Lembede stated that co-operation between Africans, Indians and Coloureds
 "can only take place between Africans as a single unit and other Non-
 European groups as separate units."61 The ANCYL thus endorsed the 1947
 Pact, stating in its Basic Policy: "The National Organisations of the
 Africans, Indians and Coloureds may co-operate on common issues."62
 The CPSA had endorsed a similar position in 1943, calling for separate
 organisations representing Africans, Indians and Coloureds, co-
 ordinated at regional and national levels.63 with the rise of the Youth
 League and the spreading influence of its nationalist programme,
 however, the CPSA increasingly supported the idea of one mass
 organisation which would co-operate with the Party. At the end of the
 decade, the CPSA called for the transformation of the existing separate
 national organisations
 into a revolutionary party of workers, peasants, intellectuals
 and petty bourgeoisie, linked together in a firm organisation
 ... guided by a definite programme of struggle against all forms
 of racial discrimination in alliance with the class-conscious
 European workers and intellectuals.64
 The language of the report was imprecise and unclear. For the Youth
 League, however, it implied the creation of a single nonracial
 organisation and served to cement their rejection of the CPSA approach
 as the 'importation' of methods and tactics which originated in
 conditions prevailing in Europe. As a result, the question of racial co-
 operation - that is, the form that racial co-operation should take -
 became an issue of contention between the Youth League and the Communist
 Party.
 The nature of this conflict became apparent in the CPSA/ANCYL dispute
 59
  Lodge p. 29.
 60
  AD1189/5/Fa/17: Joint Declaration of cooperation 9-3-1947.
 Lembede: Policy op cit.
 62
  ANCYL: Basic Policy op cit.
 63
  CPSA: National Movements op cit p. 4 Proposal 1: "We should strive
 for one organisation for each of the three racial groups. Unity among
 these groups should be based on the basis of a joint Committee, both on
 a national and regional scale."
 64
  1950 CC Report.
11
 over the 1948 People's Assembly for Votes for All. In 1948 the Transvaal
 branches of the ANC, CPSA, APO and TIC proposed the calling of a
 nonracial People's Assembly as a means of highlighting the franchise
 issue on the eve of the general election. However, the Assembly soon
 became caught up within the ANCYL/CPSA conflict. Youth Leaguers on the
 ANC Transvaal Executive declared themselves willing to participate in
 the Assembly only if the organising committee was restricted to
 representatives of the ANC, TIC and APO - in other words, accepting co-
 operation between national organisations but not with the CPSA.
 As a result of Youth League agitation, the ANC refused to officially
 participate in the Assembly. Transvaal ANC President C.S.Ramohanoe later
 faced a motion of no confidence for issuing a statement in support of
 the Assembly. The point at issue was not mere anti-communism. Rather,
 as law student Nelson Mandela of the Transvaal ANC Executive (and a
 leading Youth League member) made clear in a report carried by The
 Guardian,
 the Working Committee of the People's Assembly had invited the
 African National Congress to send delegates to the Assembly. The
 A.N.C. Executive was not in opposition to the general aims of the
 People's Assembly, but felt that it was being summoned in an
 incorrect manner, in that the established national organisations
 were being by-passed ... The organisers of the People's Assembly
 had departed from agreed methods, and there were suspicions
 that a permanent "unity movement" was being formed.
 The 1948 clash between the ANCYL and CPSA is important in two respects.
 The Assembly dispute highlighted the way in which ideological
 differences were being fought out over the issue of nonracialism - not
 simply because of Youth League exclusivity or racism, but because moves
 towards nonracialism were seen to be part of an ideology which stressed
 class above race, and would retard the emergence of a strong African
 National Congress.
 Both anti-communism and exclusive nationalism existed in the ANCYL. The
 League however was led by men such as Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu and
 Nelson Mandela, who emerged as leaders of the Congress Alliance in the
 1950s. Their position in some degree parallelled that of CPSA member
 James La Guma who first proposed national democratic struggle as the
 initial phase of a socialist revolution in the 1920s. From different
 perspectives, both stressed the fact that, as the Simons put it with
 reference to La Guma,
 equality could be achieved only when Africans were powerful
 enough to win respect from the whites.
 Secondly, the dispute reflected the changing fortunes of the ANCYL and
 the CPSA. In the late 1940s, the influence of the Youth League spread
 within the ANC, while that of the CPSA diminished. The League had
 initially set itself a three to five year programme to change Congress 7,
 but over the next four years the ANC made few moves towards developing
 a mass base or radicalising its methods of opposition. At the same time,
 the squatter movement was organised by Mpanza into the Sofasonke party
 and contested Advisory Board elections, the ADP gained representation
 on the Native Representative Council with the election of Paul Mosaka,
 and the CPSA extended its township base. In 1948, in far more assertive
 65
  The Guardian 29-7-1948, p.5.
 66
  Simons & Simons: Class and Colour in South Africa 1850-1950
 (1983): p.404.
 67
  ANCYL: Manifesto op cit.
12
 terms, the League claimed that the ANC required "drastic and
 revolutionary changes," which it was to bring about:
 From the very outset, the Congress Youth League set itself, inter
 alia, the historic task of imparting dynamic substance and matter
 to the organisational forra of the A.N.C. This took the form of
 a forth right exposition of the National Liberatory outlook -
 African Nationalism - which the Youth League seeks to impose on
 the Mother Body.68
 In a private letter, 1948 ANCYL President Mda acknowledged that a clash
 between the ANC and the Youth League was "inevitable" because "the
 Congress Senior leadership reflects the dying order of pseudo-
 liberalism and conservatism, of appeasement and compromises."69
 The Rise of the Youth League.
 In order to successfully implement its programme, the Youth League had
 to transform the ANC. To achieve this, it had to gain a position from
 which it could determine Congress policy. In the first instance this
 entailed building up its own ranks, and branches were established in
 Durban, Cape Town and at Fort Hare (although the majority of Youth
 Leaguers remained in the Transvaal). At the same time, League members
 moved into ANC provincial structures. Secondly, as we have seen, it
 entailed combatting the competing ideologies which sought to influence
 the development of the ANC. In the first place, the Youth League turned
 on white liberals such as the Ballingers, Edgar Brookes and members of
 the Institute of Race Relations who had influence over certain leading
 Congress personalities. Hostility towards the liberals was exacerbated
 by the 1946 dispute over the NRC adjournment and the League's call for
 the boycott of all 'Native Representation1 elections. The weaning of
 Congress from the influence of white liberals was largely completed by
 1947.
 Finally, if the Youth League were to direct a militant movement for
 national liberation under the aegis of the ANC, competing organisations
 had to be isolated. The AAC remained a small, Cape-based organisation
 increasingly dominated by the Non-European Unity Movement to which it
 had affiliated, while the ADP had begun to collapse by 1947. Both the
 AAC and ADP were accused of causing Mrift[s] on the national unity front
 at this critical moment" which would have the effect of "invit[ing] more
 oppression for Africans."70 In essence, all those who sought to mobilise
 Africans in support of organisations other than the ANC, or ideologies
 other than African nationalism, were attacked. This included the CPSA,
 which had largely set the pace in township organisation in the 1940s,
 and which stated:
 Our first task is to continue building the Party, to strengthen
 it so that we can play a decisive part in shaping the future of
 South Africa. We must draw in thousands of members of each racial
 and national group, provide them with a Socialist education, and
 organise them for work among their own people...
 ANCYL power and influence within the ANC grew markedly in the late
 1940s. For much of the period, older ANC leaders revealed a preparedness
 to work with Communists. The League failed in 1945 and 1947 to have all
 CPSA members removed from Congress, and were outvoted by CPSA and
 conservative ANC members on their call for an electoral boycott.72
 68
  ANCYL: Basic Policy op cit.
 ?
 70
 72
 A.P.Mda to G.M.Pitje 24-8-1948, in Karis pp.319-320.
 ANCYL: Manifesto op cit. :
 CC Report: 1944 Annual CPSA Conference, in Bunting p.112.
 Walshe p. 3 57.
13
 Nonetheless, Leaguers occupied increasingly important positions within
 the provincial structures of the ANC, and by 1948 were sufficiently
 entrenched to stop ANC participation in the People's Assembly.
 By 1949, the League was powerful enough to insist that endorsement of
 the Programme of Action should be a precondition for election to the
 post of President-General of the ANC. At the 1949 ANC Annual Conference,
 the League succeeded in ousting Xuma from the post and securing the
 election of Dr. James Moroka, while six ANCYL members were elected to the
 National Executive Committee (Sisulu as Secretary-General), Two years
 later. Leaguers were able to remove A.W.G.Champion as ANC President in
 Natal, securing in his place the election of Albert Lutuli, later
 elected President-General of the ANC.
 While the Youth League grew in importance and influence within the ANC,
 the fortunes of the CPSA declined markedly. Following the 1946 African
 miners strike, the CPSA Executive Committee was tried for sedition, in
 a case which lasted from 1946 to 1948. White support for the CPSA,
 visible during the war, disappeared as the Cold War gathered force, and
 organisations such as the Springbok Legion, Friends of the Soviet Union
 and the Left Book Club either shrank or disappeared. The Trades and
 Labour Council was divided as the Nationalist Party made a concerted bid
 for white working class support. The attacks on the CPSA by both the UP
 and NP governments culminated in the Suppression of Communism Act of
 1950 which outlawed the CPSA and any doctrine 'which aims at bringing
 about any political, industrial, social or economic change within the
 Union.'
 Finally, the rise of the ANCYL threatened to remove CPSA influence
 within the ANC. This was clearly of central importance in view of the
 CPSA commitment to a ' two-stage' revolution. As we have seen, the
 dispute between the CPSA and the League comprised a number of
 interrelated factors. Central to the dispute was the growing stress
 placed on class struggle by the CPSA in reaction to the apparent rise
 of an anti-communist petty-bourgeoisie in the shape of the Youth League.
 Moreover, on the critical issue of the Party's approach to the national
 question and relations with national organisations, differences appear
 to have existed within the CPSA.
 The CPSA and National Democratic Struggle. 1947-1950.
 Few documents are available relating to the internal workings of the
 CPSA in its final years, or to the activities and debates of the
 underground SACP during the 1950s. The ensuing discussion is made up
 from those documents which do exist, the j ournals attached to the
 discussion groups of the early 1950s, and interviews with leading
 CPSA/SACP members. ?-
 The CPSA in the late 1940s revealed differing approaches to the national
 question and the national movements in South Africa. According to Rusty
 Bernstein, "political tendencies had developed which began to separate
 to some extent." Crudely put, the differences revolved around the
 emphasis laid on the place of class struggle in relation to the national
 struggle waged by the Congresses. As Bernstein put it, "it related to
 the significance to be attached to the national liberation movement."73
 Differences moreover revealed themselves (allowing for generalisation)
 in largely regional terms, with the Party in the Cape differing from the
 Transvaal and Natal regions.
 73
  Interview with Rusty Bernstein.
14
 The headquarters of the CPSA had been moved from the Transvaal to Cape
 Town following the internal vicissitudes of the 1930s. Cape members
 dominated both the Executive and Central Committees. Throughout the late
 1940s, the Transvaal without success exerted pressure for Party
 headquarters to be returned to Johannesburg, arguing that the centre of
 political developments was located in their region. More pertinently,
 Party members in the Transvaal and Natal (and some in the Cape) argued
 that the Cape leadership revealed an approach to the national
 organisations that was grounded in "traditional concepts of Communist
 Party activity" and did not "adequately understand the national
 movement.l|75
 The differing emphases placed on class and national struggle by the
 Cape CPSA appear to have resulted from a number of factors. Firstly,
 the Cape Town branch of the ANC was small and weak in contrast with
 similar centres elsewhere. This was in part the result of demographic
 factors, Cape Town being the only centre where Africans were a minority,
 in addition to which migrant labourers made up a large part of the
 African population. As the Cape District Secretary Fred Carneson put it,
 the majority of the population were coloureds . .. they were
 articulate, they had been well organised for years, they were
 used to participating in trade unions and the whole atmosphere
 was different in the Cape. So certainly, Johannesburg and Durban
 and PE, we were each operating in a different political
 ambience.76
 The Cape Town branch of the ANC was led by Thomas Ngwenya, who later
 worked closely with the Liberal Party. Leading Congress and Youth League
 personalities were concentrated in the Transvaal and, to a lesser
 extent, Natal. As a result, the CPSA in Cape Town worked with a small
 ANC, and an even smaller Youth League.
 The major political battles of the late 1940s were largely fought out
 within the Transvaal ANC, where Youth Leaguers clashed with ANC/CPSA
 members over a series of initiatives including the People's Assembly. 7
 Leading Transvaal CPSA members such as Marks, Bopape, Mofutsanyana,
 Tloome, Dadoo and others worked within the Congress movement and
 supported moves to radicalise the Congresses. Communist Party politics
 in the Transvaal was to a large extent bound up with Congress politics,
 as Party members rejected the strand of exclusive nationalism within the
 ANCYL while supporting the militancy it injected into the ANC. Black
 Party members involved in Congress politics emerged as leading CPSA
 personalities in the Transvaal and Natal.
 In contrast, the dominant personalities in the Cape CPSA were white.
 As Ben Turok put it, compared with the Cape, Johannesburg
 was a different world. In Cape Town the whites were the strongest
 personalities, around The Guardian - you could on two hands pick
 out a good number of intellectuals, very experienced political
 cadres - Simons, Bunting, Carneson, Ray Alexander, a whole group
 of them. Whereas the African group was small, inexperienced, and
 much less senior.78
 The Cape-based CPSA Executive Committee, as well as the CC, were
 predominantly white, which added fuel to Youth League attacks on
 74
  ibid.
 75
  Interview with Ben Turok.
 76
  Interview with Fred Carneson.
 Similar clashes took place over the 1950 Defend Free Speech
 Convention and May Day stay-away.
 78
  Interview with Ben Turok.
15
 'foreign' bearers of non-African ideologies.
 To some extent, the dominance of whites in the Cape arose from the
 political activities undertaken by the Party in Cape Town, which
 differed from those of Communists elsewhere. As Fred Carneson put it,
 "we had to tailor our approach, it had to be completely different in
 the different areas, and so it was."80 Cape Town was the headquarters
 of The Guardian, a leftwing newspaper which focussed on the struggle
 against racial discrimination and carried news of the Congresses largely
 ignored by mainstream newspapers. Its foreign news was consistently pro-
 Soviet and anti-American. In the late 1940s The Guardian was edited by
 CC member Brian Bunting, and its editorial board comprised many leading
 Party personalities in the Cape. A large number of CPSA members worked
 for The Guardian as j ournal ists and in sell ing the newspaper. The
 Guardian was in itself a major focus of activity - as Turok put it, "you
 ... joined The Guardian when you joined the movement ... you joined The
 Guardian and its circle."81
 Lacking a strong Congress presence, the focus of CPSA activity in the
 Cape was divided between The Guardian and trade union work in which Ray
 Alexander, James Phillips and others had been involved for many years.
 A third distinguishing feature of Cape activity was continued and
 successful participation in parliamentary and provincial council
 elections. The wartime electoral successes of the CPSA had disappeared
 elsewhere; in the Cape the CPSA continued to win seats on the city
 council, and in 1948 won the Cape Western Native Representative and
 Provincial Council seats.
 The political milieux in which Cape Communist Party members moved was
 in many ways different from elsewhere. Debates in the nonracial Forum
 Club, the Africa Club, and in organisations such as the Modern Youth
 Society, centred on class struggle and hostilities between Communists
 and Trotskyists.82 The major ideological conflict faced by the CPSA in
 Cape Town was not with national ist Youth Leaguers, but with the
 Trotskyist Non-European Unity Movement, the major political influence
 among coloured intellectuals. NEUM intellectuals such as Benny Kies and
 Kenny Jordaan produced a sustained critique of national struggle and its
 supporters (including the CPSA) for having "as its objective the triumph
 of capitalist democracy."83
 Some CPSA members in the Cape expressed similar opinions regarding the
 limitations and dangers of nationalism. Fred Carneson noted that
 it was not only the communists that did not see things, at that
 stage, as a struggle for national liberation. Africans themselves
 did not see it as clearly as they see it now.84
 CC member Jack Simons stated in 1954 that "the history of nationalism,
 whether of the progressive or imperialistic kind, is intimately bound
 up with the history of capitalism . . . and the rise of bourgeois
 79
  In 1950, 10 of the 17 CC members were white; for an
 acknowledgement of criticism of its racial composition, see AD1812
 Ev.1.1.6: Jack Simons: Economics and Politics in South Africa nd.1954,
 p.8.
 so
 Interview with Fred Carneson.
 81
  Interview with Ben Turok.
 82
  Interviews with Ben Turok, Amy Thornton and others.
 83
  AD1812 Ev2.2/Et.l: K.Jordaan: What are the National Groups in
 South Africa? p.4.: Forum Club: Symposium on the National Question.
 June 1954.
 84
  Interview with Fred Carneson.
16
 democracy."85 He continued:
 Communism is not necessarily the antithesis to Nationalism. It
 is the antithesis to Capitalism. But it must be remembered that
 the rise of capitalism is closely associated with Nationalism.
 Simons argued that "nationalism is progressive in so far as it is aimed
 at the removal of discrimination and the achievement of democracy"; at
 the same time, however, nationalism "can be exploited by an aggressive
 movement directed towards the suppression of another group or nation."
 A similar viewpoint was strongly evident in the 1950 CPSA CC report,
 which stressed that
 South Africa is entering a period of bitter national conflict
 ... On all sides the national and racial divisions are being
 emphasised and the realities of the class divisions are being
 obscured.
 In such a situation, the Report argued, "nationalism need not be
 synonymous with racialism, but it can avoid being so only if it
 recognises the class alignments that cut across the racial divisions."
 The need to emphasise class struggle was heightened by the accession to
 power of Youth Leaguers within the ANC, and the anti-communist agitation
 of Selope Thema and other ANC members. In response, the CPSA called on
 its members to "make a practice of issuing immediate and critical
 comment on the statements of the bourgeois leaders" and disallow "the
 bourgeois elements in the national movements" from attacking "the
 working class movement . . . the Party or ... adopt[ing] a negative or
 hostile attitude to the international working class forces."
 In contrast, the CPSA in Johannesburg debated with those to its right
 rather than its left, and engaged with African nationalists. As we have
 seen, many leading members of the Party were simultaneously ANC or SAIC
 members. Where CPSA members in Cape Town emphasised the primacy of class
 struggle, in the Transvaal and Natal Party members in the Congress
 movement fought to prove the Party's commitment to national struggle.
 The Transvaal, and in particular Johannesburg, was the centre of
 political developments in South Africa. This was reflected in CPSA
 activity in the region. The squatter movements, bus boycotts and the
 1946 African miners strike (and their resultant politicising effects)
 had all been located in the Transvaal. The Transvaal ANC was the largest
 and most radical ANC branch in the country. As we have seen, the
 Johannesburg CPSA urged black Party members to join the Congress
 movement, while leading Party members were at the forefront of moves
 to radicalise the Congresses. CC member Yusuf Dadoo was a leading figure
 in the SAIC which he led into alliance with the ANC. The ANC in the
 Transvaal was led by men such as J.B.Marks and David Bopape, joint
 ANC/CPSA members.
 Bopape, as we have seen, succeeded in making Brakpan location the
 political centre of the East Rand, and establishing the CPSA as the
 dominant force in its politics; however, he was at the same time
 Transvaal ANC Secretary and a member of the Youth League. The
 organisational skills of J.B.Marks were demonstrated in the 1946 miners
 strike (Marks was President of the African Mine Workers Union) and were
 largely credited with the successful stay-away on May Day 1950, which
 ?* AD1812 Evl.1.5: Jack Simons: Lecture, nd.1954, p.18.
 Simons: Economics op cit p.7.
 8
  Simons: Lecture op cit p.18.
 88
  1950 CC Report.
17
 resulted in his election as Transvaal ANC President. As we have seen,
 conservative ANC members frequently co-operated with CPSA members in
 opposition to Youth League radicalism; joint ANC/CPSA members worked
 closely with Transvaal ANC President C.S.Ramohanoe, who supported the
 calling of the People's Assembly for Votes for All. Ramohanoe expressed
 little or no support for the ideological battle waged by the ANCYL
 against the CPSA, characterising Leaguers as "armchair politicians who
 keep on going from place to place preaching Congress and doing
 nothing."9*
 The Transvaal ANC, however, was also the political home of leading Youth
 League members such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and Oliver Tambo.
 As a result, the conflict between the Youth League and the CPSA was to
 a large extent fought out in the Transvaal. The late 1940s were a period
 of political ferment within the Congress movement, which saw the ANC
 grow in size and militancy and seek alliances with Indian and Coloured
 organisations. In this ferment, according to Rusty Bernstein, Transvaal
 Communists sensitive to the Congress movement
 began to adjust the Party's view of the significance of the
 national liberation movement. It placed the national liberation
 movement much more in the forefront than it had done.9
 This was made easier at the end of the decade as leading members of the
 Youth League began to show signs of changing their former hostility
 towards both racial co-operation and the Communist Party.
 The resolution of the ANCYL/CPSA conflict.
 In the early 1950s, the Youth League began to divide into two camps;
 one remained strictly Africanist, while the other supported racial co-
 operation in the form of the Congress Alliance. In the same period the
 conceptual language of leading Youth Leaguers came to resemble that of
 the CPSA, particularly the language of anti-imperialism. By 1953 Nelson
 Mandela spoke freely of the ANC "uncompromisingly resist[ing] the
 efforts of imperialist America and her satellites to draw the world into
 the rule of violence and brute force," and condemned "the criminal
 attacks of the imperialists against the people of Malaya, Vietnam,
 Indonesia and Tunisia."92 As Mandela, Tambo, Sisulu and others moved into
 senior positions within the ANC (Mandela was co-opted to the ANC NEC in
 1950), leadership of the Youth League passed to a younger generation of
 Fort Hare intellectuals, of whom Z.K.Matthews1 son Joe Matthews was the
 most prominent.
 As Walshe has shown, by 1951 Matthews was clearly linking the South
 African struggle to a broader international struggle against the
 "indirect enemy," the United States. According to Matthews, Africans
 were exploited under capitalism in "the final stage of monopoly capital
 gone mad, namely fascism." Support for socialist countries amongst some
 Youth Leaguers grew because of the clear opposition to racism and
 support for decolonisation which distinguished them from the western
 countries. Joe Matthews stated:
 I must say I am pretty fed up with the U.S.A., their stand is
 rotten and the Eastern nations have beaten the West on the colour
 issue ... I ... think America has lost African friendship. As far
 as I am concerned I will henceforth look East where race
 89
  Karis p.409.
 on
 yu
  The Guardian 29-7-1948, p.5.9J Interview with Rusty Bernstein.Mandela: 1953 Transvaal ANC Conference speech, in Bunting p.187.
 Joe Matthews: 1951 ANCYL Presidential Address, in Walshe p.361.
18
 discrimination is so taboo that it is made a crime by the state.
 At the same time, leading Youth Leaguers supported extra-parliamentary
 and industrial action. With Mda, Bopape and others, Matthews argued that
 the "labour power of the African people" was the key to success in the
 struggle.95
 The relationship between CPSA and Youth League members in the late 1940s
 and early 1950s was clearly more dynamic than earlier in the decade, as
 both organisations underwent significant changes. During this period
 some sections of the Communist Party adjusted their understanding of and
 relations with the national organisations as those organisations became
 increasingly prominent and active. At the same time, the Youth League
 was itself changing, and ANCYL members such as Mandela, Matthews, Sisulu
 and others increasingly utilised the tools of Marxist analysis.
 As we have seen, some CPSA members argued that the ANC had emerged as
 an anti-communist petty-bourgeois nationalist organisation, aimed at
 the maintenance of capitalist relations in a nonracial society.96 As
 such, it was argued, there existed the danger of a rapprochement between
 the ANC and the 'progressive industrialists1 which had emerged during
 the second world war. Joe Matthews rejected the argument, asserting that
 "the possibility of a liberal capitalist democracy in South Africa is
 exactly nil" because the "political immorality, cowardice and
 vacillation of the so-called progressives . . . render them utterly
 useless as a force against fascism."97 Mda went further: the removal of
 legally enforced discrimination
 might under certain circumstances very well mean that the African
 middle class joined hands with the European, Indian and Coloured
 middle class in order to impose further chains and to exploit the
 black peasants and toiling millions ... It has happened before
 in many Colonial territories even in Africa. It must not happen
 here.
 More significantly, Youth League members who had taken up positions
 within the ANC began to accept the strategic need for alliances. The
 passing of laws which discriminated against the entire black population,
 such as the Population Registration Act, the Group Areas Act, and in
 particular the implications for all resistance movements in the
 Suppression of Communism Act, led to a reassessment by Leaguers of the
 need for a broad alliance of anti-apartheid forces. The reassessment
 included some of the most virulently anti-communist League members. For
 example, Jordan Ngubane, editor of Inkundla ya Bantu, castigated the
 CPSA in 1950 for "stampeding our people into the May Day demonstrations"
 in which 18 Africans were shot by the police. Nonetheless, Ngubane
 argued, while "Communism and apartheid are two similarly vicious evils"
 the most dangerous of those at the moment is apartheid. The
 African Nationalists will do well to exercise a little more
 statesmanship and realise that they can carry their fight against
 the Communists only up to a certain point if they are not going
 to play right into the hands of [Prime Minister] Malan ... it is
 more important to exercise statesmanship in our dealings with the
 94
  CAMP:Reell2A:2:XM65:47/15: J.Matthews to Z.K.Matthews, 20-11-
 1952.
 95
  ibid.; see also Karis p. 103.
 96
  See Danie du Plessis: The Situation in South Africa Today, p.41,
 in Viewpoints and Perspectives [hereafter V&P] 1/3, February 1954.
 97
  Matthews: Address op cit.
 A.P.Mda: African Nationalism: Is It a Misnomer? Inkundla ya
 Bantu, 27-8-1949.
19
 Communists than to help the Malanites by weakening their
 political enemies."
 Attempts to build the existing ANC/SAIC alliance to include trade unions
 and Coloureds threatened by disenfranchisement failed. Following the
 1950 May Day murders, and facing the imminent enactment of the
 Suppression of Communism Bill, June 26th was declared a Day of Protest
 and a stay-away was called. This followed consultation with the SAIC,
 the CPSA and the APO. The aim of ANC and SAIC leaders was to create a
 Co-Ordinating Committee of Congresses and trade unions, but in the event
 the CPSA disbanded while the APO and trade unions sent only moral
 support. By June 26 1950, the alliance remained limited to the ANC and
 SAIC.
 By the end of 1950, Youth Leaguers were in control of the ANC, which
 was committed to a programme of extra-parliamentary action. In 1951
 plans were laid for the Defiance Campaign, which transformed the ANC
 into a mass movement. The CPSA disbanded in June 1950, and individual
 black communists worked increasingly within the ANC. By 1952, debates
 taking place amongst former CPSA members across the country highlighted
 the growing emphasis amongst communists on national liberation struggle.
 The power struggle which it has been argued partly characterised
 ANCYL/CPSA relations in the 194 0s had been settled in the Youth League's
 favour.
 Existing explanations of the resolution of the CPSA/ANCYL conflict
 stress the diminution of hostility following the election of Youth
 Leaguers to the ANC National Executive Committee, where "their personal
 experiences of close co-operation" with communists resulted in their
 "anti-communist tendencies ... [being] modified."100 It is suggested here
 that such explanations are partial; although undoubtedly significant,
 the context in which CPSA/ANCYL hostility diminished was one of
 ideological shifts on both sides and the entrenchment of the ANCYL
 within the ANC hierarchy.
 Class and race in South Africa: The CPSA in 1950.
 The relationship between the ANCYL and the CPSA at the end of the 1940s,
 it has been argued, was dynamic. Youth Leaguers made increasing use of
 Marxist analysis and shared anti-imperialist attitudes with Communists.
 Once in control of the ANC, they included the CPSA in their search for
 allies. In response, sections of opinion within the CPSA began to adjust
 the Party's understanding of and approach to national struggle. In doing
 so, regional differences within the CPSA again became visible.
 Despite changes within the ANC and the Youth League, the CPSA in the
 Cape maintained what one member described as "a long tradition of
 suspicion of the ANC" as a bourgeois, anti-communist organisation.101
 This was a perception by no means restricted to the Party in the Cape,
 or shared by all Cape Party members.
 Former CPSA Johannesburg District chairperson Danie du Plessis argued
 that the ANC should be assessed not in terms of its constituent
 membership, but its leadership. The latter represented an "incipient"
 black bourgeoisie which aimed "to integrate themselves into the existing
 99
  J.K.Ngubane: Post-Mortem on a Tragedy Inkundla ya Bantu, 20-5-
 1950.
 100
  See inter alia Karis p. 409; Walshe p. 359; Gerhart p. 117.
 101 ? ?Interview with Ben Turok.
20
 local capitalism rather than to oust the oppressors. "102 The ANC
 leadership, du Plessis argued, were "bourgeois or bourgeois agents" who,
 at a point of crisis, "would join forces with the government against the
 workers, and would first protect their own interests."103
 Nonetheless, the characterisation of the ANC as a reformist bourgeois
 organisation was strongly identified with the Cape CPSA. According to
 some former Party members, the Party in the Cape placed a lesser
 emphasis on national liberation struggle than elsewhere. Bernstein
 recently stated:
 In Cape Town, where the national movement was really not
 significant [as in the Transvaal] the same emphasis did not exist
 and there began to be an emphasis on the Party as the leading
 element in the whole struggle and the national liberation
 movement to be somewhat insignificant. So this political
 difference began to show itself.
 In contrast with the Cape, sections of the Transvaal CPSA began to argue
 that black South Africans suffered both capitalist and colonial
 oppression, and that the growing national movement was a natural
 response to colonialism. Eddie Roux, who had hinted at this in 1928,
 stated in 1952:
 I do not agree that South Africa is a capitalist country. I think
 one may say that here we have an imperial and colonial
 relationship coexisting in the same country. The African people
 cannot only be considered to be the subjects of proletarian
 exploitation as in other countries; they are subjected to an
 extra exploitation because of their colour, something which is
 not usually found in other countries with laissez-faire.105
 Over the next two years, leading members of the new SACP developed the
 theory of 'Colonialism of a Special Type1 [CST].
 The significance of CST for the present discussion lies in the approach
 to national struggle implicit in the theory. Those who emphasised class
 struggle argued that the "businessmen, financiers, landlords" and others
 in the ANC leadership would always "place their vested interests first",
 characterising them as a 'traitor class.'106 In contrast, Bernstein, CC
 member Michael Harmel and others argued that apartheid, in oppressing
 all blacks equally, had successfully stunted the growth of an indigenous
 black bourgeoisie. As a result, the 'traitor class' was not to be found
 amongst blacks - rather, "the traitor class in South Africa is the
 European bourgeoisie."107
 The adumbrators of internal colonialism argued that the Congress
 Alliance, and the ANC itself, represented "an alliance of the working
 class and the petty-bourgeois strata of the colonially oppressed peoples
 of South Africa." Within that alliance, the working class represented
 "the most energetic, whole-hearted and thoroughgoing section of the
 fighters for bourgeois democracy, for national liberation."108 Moreover,
 it was argued, precisely because of the colonial oppression of blacks
 Danie du Plessis: Notes on certain points raised in the
 discussion, VfiP 1/3, p.44.
 1UJ
  du Plessis: Situation op cit p.41.
 104
  Interview with Rusty Bernstein.
 Eddie Roux: Notes on discussion, V&P 1/1 p.14.
 106
  du Plessis: Situation op cit. p.41.
 107 ? *^  i c
 Bernstein: Bourgeoisie op cit, pp.31-33; see Michael Harmel: A
 Note by the Speaker in V&P 1\3: p.38.
 1U0
  Bernstein: Bourgeoisie op cit p. 32.
21
 and the lack of a significant black bourgeoisie, the working class
 predominated in Congress membership and increasingly in leadership
 positions. Pointing to the adoption of extra-parliamentary strategies
 by the Congresses, Harmel argued that "[i]n recent years, the militant
 working class tendency has wielded increasing influence in our national
 movements." As a result, "the policy of genuine workers1 leaders" should
 not be "to drive out the allied classes, but rather to broaden out the
 109
 movements."
 In the postwar years, black CPSA members began to emphasise black
 demands such as abolition of the pass laws above the traditional CPSA
 concern with the white working class.110 The latter, according to Fred
 Carneson, derived from "the fact that your most active section amongst
 the working class was either your white workers or your coloured
 workers."111 The change in direction for the CPSA was supported by
 Harmel, Bernstein and others, who castigated
 the pedantic arm-chair socialist types of "theoreticians" who
 are apparently unable to see that on practically every main issue
 of home and foreign policy, the outlook and aims of such
 bourgeois elements as, for example, Dr.Moroka, are far more
 progressive in content than such working class elements as the
 Mineworkers Union, the S.A.R. Staff Association or the S.A.T.L.C.
 [Trades and Labour Council]112
 Transvaal communists argued that while colonial oppression blurred class
 oppression, it also ensured that the national movements were
 overwhelmingly working class in composition.
 According to Harmel, changes in ANC policy and strategy - brought about
 in part by the ANCYL - were evidence of growing working class influence.
 As the struggle intensified and working class influence became even
 stronger, Harmel argued, so the national movements would move away from
 formulating political demands and concentrate on economic issues.
 Moreover, because of internal colonialism, such demands would not
 represent the interests of the bourgeoisie; rather, they would highlight
 the economic content of national liberation. For Harmel, this included
 land redistribution and "the nationalisation of the principal means of
 production (for the power of imperialism in this country can only be
 broken by divorcing the imperialists from the means of production)."113
 The Transvaal Communists who put forward the notion of internal
 colonialism concluded that the role of communists was to work with the
 national movements for the attainment of national liberation. This would
 lead to "the clearing away of the race versus class issue," thus
 highlighting class oppression and leaving it "exposed for all to see."114
 In brief, differences existed within the CPSA in the late 1940s as to
 the nature of the ANC (especially as the Youth League grew in
 significance) , and thus over the role of the Communist Party viz a viz
 the national liberation struggle. In the event, the tensions were not
 resolved before the CPSA dissolved in June 1950; it was only when
 members of the new SACP began to elaborate internal colonialism that a
 balance between the two began to emerge.
 109
  Harmel: Note op cit p. 38.
 110
  Lodge p.29.
 111
  Interview with Fred Carneson.
 112
  Harmel: Note op cit p.37.
 Harmel: Imperialism op cit p.34.
 Bernstein: Bourgeoisie op cit p.32.
22
 The 1950 Central Committee Report - the last it issued - revealed the
 tensions within the CPSA. The Report tentatively put forward the notion
 of internal colonialism, arguing that South Africa exhibited "the
 characteristics of both an imperialist state and colony within a single
 indivisible, geographical, political and economic entity." The black
 bourgeoisie, which could be expected to lead the national struggle, was
 small, fragmentary, pinned down in the poorest areas, forced to
 use subterfuge and illegalities to evade discriminating laws,
 starved of capital, and exposed to constant insecurity. It is not
 a class that could provide effective, militant leadership.
 Transvaal Communists argued that this meant that the ANC "is not
 dominated by the unstable and potentially treacherous elements which
 have led similar movements elsewhere," and that Communists should
 therefore work in and with the national organisations.115 The 1950 CC
 Report, in contrast, argued that the black Congresses were vague,
 contradictory and revealed a "tremendous capacity for evasiveness and
 ambiguity."116
 In essence (and allowing for generalisation), the 1950 Report attempted
 to weld together the colonial analysis of the Transvaal with the class
 bias of the Cape. The Report concluded that while nationalism need not
 be racist, the only way it could avoid being so was through the
 transformation of existing national organisations into a single party
 of "workers, peasants, intellectuals and petty bourgeois ... in alliance
 with the class-conscious European workers and intellectuals."117 The aim
 of such a party, which would work in co-operation with the CPSA, would
 be to strive for national liberation. However, it would have to be led
 by "the class-conscious workers and peasants of the national group
 concerned" so as to "develop class consciousness in the people, and to
 forge unity in action between the oppressed peoples and between them and
 the European working class."
 In contrast, Transvaal Communists acknowledged the class content which
 was attached to nonracialism and against which the Youth League reacted.
 Rusty Bernstein claimed that while "[t]here is no doubt scope for an
 organisation representing all races," it was "only possible under a
 philosophy of socialism." In present circumstances, he argued,
 It is difficult to believe that the national liberatory struggle
 can be waged by any organisation other than that representing the
 people who are nationally oppressed.118
 The CPSA was a heterogenous organisation participating in a variety of
 forms of struggle including parliamentary elections, black trade
 unionism and Congress politics. Throughout the 1940s the CPSA called
 for the emergence of a militant mass-based national organisation to
 prosecute the first stage of the 'two-stage' revolution. However, when
 the ANC began to grow in size and militancy, it was largely at the
 instigation of the Youth League, which endorsed a strident African
 nationalism and hostility towards the Communist Party. The CPSA was
 divided in its response.
 One section of opinion within the CPSA, strongly associated with the
 Cape-based Party leadership, called for a greater emphasis on class
 struggle, arguing that the rise of African and Afrikaner nationalism
 was, in the words of Jack Simons, "camouflag[ing] the Universal
 115
  Harmel: Imperialism op cit p.33.
 116
  1950 CC Report.
 117
  ibid.
 118
 Bernstein, quoted in du Plessis: Notes op
 cit p.46.
23
 119
 Exploitation of All Workers, whatever their race." In response to
 Youth League insistence on multiracialism, the supporters of class
 struggle called for one Congress for all, claiming: "Real and absolute
 unity between all races can only be achieved in a workers1 struggle.1'120
 A second strand of opinion within the CPSA, which assumed leadership
 of the SACP after 1953, stressed the working class content of national
 liberation in South Africa, and called on socialists to work in close
 co-operation with the emerging Congress Alliance. The 1950 CC Report
 represented an attempted compromise between the two; it utilised an
 analysis of oppression in South Africa developed in the Transvaal, but
 reached conclusions which stressed the primacy of class struggle and the
 need to under-emphasise nationalism. The Party remained unsuccessful in
 attempting to balance the requirements of national and class struggle.
 Conclusion.
 Multiracialism was commonly seen by many outside the Congress Alliance
 (and some within it) to be a mechanism of control engineered by the CPSA
 after it disbanded in 1950. In fact, multiracialism represented a clear
 setback for those CPSA members who claimed that class struggle was
 obscured by nationalism. The strategic aim of multiracialism - that
 communities should be organised by activists drawn from their own ethnic
 group who best understood local conditions, sensitivities and issues -
 was seen by some CPSA members to represent the final victory of
 nationalism over class. With the formation of SACOD, whites were called
 upon to organise whites. This generated particular hostility from some
 white CPSA members who warned that "there is no such thing in social
 movements as freedom by the instalment plan" and refused to join
 SACOD.121 Far from being the consensual act of white communists concerned
 to dominate and direct the Congress Alliance, the formation of SACOD
 highlighted tensions which had marked the CPSA in the 194 0s and
 occasioned a major split amongst former CPSA members.
 119 ? ?
 Simons: Economics op cit p.3.
 du Plessis: Situation op cit p.42
 Simons: Economics pp.7-8.