National Democratic Revolution, Part 3b
The National Question
The attached document, divided into two parts, is large, but
it is of great use because it covers the period under consideration from
another point of view, while nevertheless confirming the general outline that
we have drawn so far. It is from Brian Bunting’s 1975 book, “Moses Kotane, South African Revolutionary”.
Kotane was the author of the 1934 Cradock Letter, “For
Africanisation of the Party”. Five years later Kotane became General Secretary
of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and subsequently of the SACP,
holding the position from 1939 until his death in 1978. He was also at some
stage Treasurer-General of the ANC, and an ANC NEC member.
This document was written by Brian Bunting a participant and
witness of the events described. The period covered was one of difficulty for
the Party (the CPSA). Those who had ostensibly advocated the correct “line” at
the correct moment, and who, perhaps for that reason, possessed the leadership,
behaved with extreme cruelty towards other comrades who had been more
circumspect about the adoption of the “native republic” thesis. Wave after wave
of expulsions took place.
The sectarian period of party history is a lesson on how not
to behave. In the end it is clear that there were great obstacles in the way of
the execution of the native republic thesis, and that those who took the
difficulties seriously were some of those, like Brian Bunting, Jack Simons, and
Ray Alexander Simons, who survived; while those who had expelled their
comrades, blaming them for the difficulties, and who ruled the Party like
tyrants, did not last.
Moses Kotane [pictured] came through, survived, and is
identified forever with the defence of the NDR and of the Alliance that
the NDR required. It was on the surface an alliance between the SACP and the
African National Congress, but at root it was, and remains, an alliance between
proletarian and national-bourgeois class elements, for freedom, and against
monopoly capital and imperialism.
There is nothing exceptional or unique to South
Africa about class alliance. It is an organic, dialectical and necessary
factor in all class-divided societies. Nor was it imposed. The following
excerpt from Brian Bunting’s book is relevant:
“After
he had left the Party, [Eddie] Roux was at pains to make out that the Native
Republic resolution was imposed on The South African Communist Party from
outside by a Comintern concerned more with the furtherance of its own interests
and those of its biggest constituent element the Russian CP than with the
interests of the South African people… the eventual Native Republic resolution
flowed from an interchange of views between the Comintern and the CPSA, and was
accepted in South Africa in terms of the policy of democratic centralism on
which the international Communist movement was based.
“Certainly, there is no doubting that the
impetus for the Native Republic resolution came from the
nationally-minded elements in the South African CP…”
- The above is to introduce the original reading-text: Moses Kotane, South African
Revolutionary, Chapter 2, The National Question, Bunting, Part 1 and Part 2.
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