SACP history update incomplete

THE Communist Party of South Africa was formed in July 1921. To mark its centenary last year, renowned South African historian Tom Lodge published Red Road to Freedom: A history of the South African Communist Party, 19212021. It is a welcome addition to the literature about the oldest communist party in Africa.

Most of the existing literature on the party is about its early history until 1950. In the last two decades, a number of publications about the party or leading members appeared.

But policy analysis and exegesis are in most instances largely absent. A good example is what the party meant by “colonialism of a special type” – still a major ideological pillar of the party.

But its ideological and strategic implications are not explored. This includes explaining how the approach enabled a merger between socialism and liberatory nationalism, how it underscored the two-stage revolutionary strategy of a national democratic revolution followed by a socialist revolution, and for justifying the tripartite alliance between the party, the ANC and the trade union federation, first Sactu and later Cosatu.

Also largely absent is a history of the more recent developments, as well as a political analysis of the party’s role between 1960-1990 and as part of government since 1994. Lodge’s book fills some of these gaps. It is therefore academically and historically very important. Eddy Maloka, also an author on the party’s history, assessed its value on the book cover: Tom Lodge takes us on a century-long tour of the history of the SACP … (its) ideological evolution, to its organisational dynamics and relations with other actors.

The Communist Party of SA was banned in 1950 by the new National Party (NP) government, which believed the Soviet Union’s support for it would exploit South Africa’s domestic politics for its own purposes. After the party re-established itself underground as the SACP in 1953, and after its ally, the ANC was also banned by the apartheid regime in 1960, a close alliance developed. After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, followed by the banning of the ANC and other liberation organisations, and when the NP government refused to convene a national convention in 1961, leaders in the party and several prominent ANC leaders (but not the ANC’s president Albert Luthuli) decided to establish an armed wing, uMkhonto weSizwe. Its first sabotage acts were launched on December 16, 1961.

The resort to armed struggle and the party’s involvement in the formation of uMkhonto weSizwe, brought the two movements much closer together during their time in exile.

uMkhonto weSizwe’s High Command members were arrested in 1962 in Rivonia,. They were busy with Operation Mayibuye as a blueprint to stage a revolutionary insurrection in South Africa. They included party members such as Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Ahmed Kathrada and ANC leaders like Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. They were charged with sabotage; not treason. Therefore they did not receive the death penalty but longj ail terms.

Of the uMkhonto weSizwe-accused at the Rivonia trial in 1963, most were also members of the party.

During most of the Cold War, the SA Communist Party’s close alignment to the Soviet Union and to the ANC, pulled the liberation Struggle in South Africa into the global ideological camps of the Cold War. In this respect, the SACP was often regarded as the power behind the ANC’s throne.

The 30 years in exile were divided between establishing bases in African countries, training uMkhonto weSizwe mainly in Angola, and establishing international relations. The party’s main base was in London but with close relations especially in the eastern bloc. Peace processes in south-western Africa and the demise of the Soviet Union as its main sponsor, created new opportunities for dialogue and radical political changes.

After its unbanning in 1990 together with the ANC, the relationship continued but its nature changed dramatically. The liberatory strategy changed from targeting the National Party government, to being the government itself. Party leaders became members of that government.

Tom Lodge is a trained historian. He joined the University of the Witwatersrand’s Department of Political Studies in the 1980s, and testified for the defence in several ANC trials. He published extensively on the ANC’s politics, and later also on elections.

In this book’s more than 500 pages and in nine chapters, he presents the most extensive history of the SACP.

There are some areas and issues that could have done with more attention. For example, deeper political analysis of the latest 30 years after the party was unbanned and became a “mass party” as opposed to membership on invitation, and its role in the ANC governments. This would provide more insight into the party’s political approach.

In addition, the party’s ideological evolution deserves special attention. For example, its 1962 party programme, The Road to South African Freedom, can be linked to the ANC’s Morogoro programme in 1969, The Strategy and Tactics of the South African Revolution. The two documents are very important for understanding their long-standing alliance. But Lodge only briefly discusses this on pages 354-355.

Another omission in my view, concerns Joe Slovo’s paper Has Socialism Failed? (1990). It is mentioned on page 457 but its implications for the party’s reassessment of its ideological position after the fall of the Berlin Wall were not considered. More recently, the party has revised The South African Road to Socialism (2007, 2012) as its programme. But it does not explain how a communist party in a multiparty democratic dispensation sets out its vision.

Chapter 9 presents a political analysis of the party dynamics. It includes brief references to the party’s milestones but a more in-depth discussion could have addressed the shortcomings of the older publications.

For readers who want a comprehensive, up-to-date and accessible publication on the SACP, this is without any doubt the best one. As a Wits academic, Lodge, who now is associated with Limerick University in Ireland, had many personal experiences with people and events discussed in this book. It was therefore not merely a research or academic exercise for him.