Originally published in Inqaba Ya Basebenzi No.24/25 (October 1987)

At the Cosatu Congress in July, the two key-note speakers, UDF leader Comrade Murphy Morobe and SAYCO President Peter Mokaba, devoted a large part of their speeches to attacking the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the ANC.

Bernard Fortuin, active since 1976 in building Congress youth and community organisations, for which he has been repeatedly imprisoned, responds to the attack.

Many workers facing bitter struggles had travelled hundreds of kilometres to the Cosatu Congress. Like the youth they hoped to hammer out the road for the entire movement. They did not expect to hear an attack on the Marxists in the ANC.

Comrade Morobe made a very serious charge. He said the Marxists promote splits in the movement. This is completely false. Comrade Morobe did not have a shred of evidence for this accusation. No supporter of the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the ANC has ever split from Congress or in any way obstructed the unity in action of the mass organisations.

What does our Tendency stand for?

We stand for the united struggle of the black working class at the head of all the oppressed to overthrow the apartheid state and to take power into its own hands.

We say that neither compromise nor alliance with any section of the capitalists, but only resolute struggle against them and the apartheid state, can win freedom.

We stand for arming workers and youth in self-defence against the police and army, against Inkatha Uwusa, all the vigilantes and forces of reaction. The Congress movement must prepare the black working class for an eventual armed insurrection.

We believe only when the working class has conquered power will it be possible to implement the Freedom Charter, against the resistance of the racists and the capitalists.

We stand for non-racial workers’ unity, workers’ democracy, national liberation and the socialist transformation of South Africa.

We say let us join together to build a mass ANC on a socialist programme.

If the leadership is opposed to these ideas, they could have explained why. Instead the false charge of “splitters” was made and the Marxists in the ANC lumped together with ultra-left sectarians and right-wing reformist trade union leaders, with whom we have nothing in common.

We oppose splits which weaken the fighting strength of our class. Marxists have every interest in maintaining the unity of the working class in action. Marxist ideas are the living experience of the working class in struggle against oppression and exploitation everywhere. Marxism expresses the will of the working class to conquer power.

We are confident that through experience of this struggle, with the patient explanation of what we stand for, the majority of the working class can be won consciously to Marxist policies. For this reason we base our progress not on promoting splits in the working class, but on arguing for our ideas along with the greatest unity in action of the working class under the banner of the ANC.

It is the unity of the working class with a clear programme and strategy which will enable it to draw together all the oppressed sections of the people in struggle.

To the Cosatu Congress came workers and youth who have strained every nerve to maintain unity. But they knew also that more than unity will be needed to overthrow the state. In every factory, school and township workers and youth discuss, debate and think hard about the road forward – about a strategy for the victory of our revolution.

The revolution is against a formidable enemy, the apartheid state. Workers and youth realise we have a long, long way to go before taking power. The revolution asks of us to fearlessly examine our methods, ideas and strategy at all times. This is only to ensure victory, not to promote splits.

The danger of splits doesn’t arise from discussing ideas or from the existence of tendencies. The real danger of splits comes from leaders’ intolerance of questioning; it comes from wrong policies which are not corrected; from threats against opponents in place of reasoned argument; from expulsions – not from the struggle to clarify ideas.

Even if comrades of the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the ANC are attacked, or even expelled by the leadership they will loyally continue to build Congress. We abide by the discipline of the working class movement, which is uniting in action against our class enemy under the banner of the ANC.

In his speech Comrade Morobe was right to identify our enemy as the huge monopolies whose unbridled profiteering the government protects, while it attacks, jails and murders workers who struggle for a living wage. He said “The strategic objective of the liberation movement and the working class is to go forward and to take power from those who have it today.”

To this Congress came workers and youth who wanted to know HOW we are going to get rid of Botha-Malan-Relly? HOW we are going to take power from those who have it today? HOW do we use battles like the Mineworkers Strike to build the unity and power of the whole working class?

On these matters the two speakers gave no lead. Instead comrades Morobe and Mokaba diverted attention by making the completely false accusation of “splitters” against the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the ANC.

Did Comrade Morobe and the leadership not think this might be disloyal to the memory of Comrade Ivin Malaza, Marxist, ANC and Cosatu militant, murdered by Inkatha/Uwusa? The attack was also disloyal to staunch Marxist builders of Congress, who like Comrade Morobe have suffered, and will continue to suffer, in the jails of the apartheid regime. We call for the immediate release of Comrade Murphy Morobe and all political prisoners.

Viva Cosatu! Viva SAYCO! Viva ANC!

Only time for commands?

By Joseph Ngubeni

On 30^th April at Wits University SAYCO President, comrade Peter Mokaba, said “SAYCO is about political power in this country, to seize political power.” Good!

He said our struggle is unfolding in the epoch of transition from capitalism to socialism, and that we recognise the workers as leaders when they are organised politically.

But then he said in South Africa “there unfolds the national democratic revolution.” Of course we are fighting for national liberation and democracy. But to get that we need worker’s power. Nothing else can smash the apartheid state.

Comrade Mokaba didn’t say this, he didn’t explain how power has to be seized. Instead he said there is no time for discussion: “we have got time for only one thing – only commands.”

Youth have always had discussions and debates around questions such as the significance of the Freedom Charter, and whether negotiations can advance our struggle; about the long and difficult battles that lie ahead; and how to prepare for victory through armed insurrection.

How can it be that in the movement there is no time now for discussion, but only commands? This could not but be received with shock by a significant number of the audience.

One student remarked: “The discussions we have on the Russian Revolution and that one of its chief lessons is that the capitalist state must be smashed and workers’ rule established in South Africa… the writings by Lenin and Trotsky that we read and discuss… I mean surely all of that is important?”

The point that must surely be emphasised is the need for constructive debate in the movement, rather than demand that everyone must simply toe the line without thinking. There surely has to be maximum unity in the struggle, but unity cannot be based on blind obedience. The youth above all must be encouraged to think. A lack of freedom of expression can only weaken the youth movement in the long term and raise the danger of defeat. In this I believe most of the youth will concur with us.

Fighting Origins of the ‘Political Hobo’

In his guest speech to Cosatu Congress comrade Peter Mokaba described supporters of the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC as “political hobos”. Many people laughed because a good insult always goes down well. We can also take a joke, but in this instance the joke is on Peter.

It’s not the first time that “hobo” has been used against revolutionaries. At the beginning of this century enemies of the American labour movement used it to slander activists of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

The IWW was the first to organise unskilled workers, black and white, against the barbarous conditions of American capitalism. In its short life it won well over 100,000 members. Many bitter battles, now legend in American labour history, were fought against state forces and vigilantes called in by the mine, steel and textile bosses against strikers.

In The Wobblies, a history of the IWW, Patrick Renshaw writes: “The words ‘hobo,’ tramp,’ and ‘bum,’ all more or less terms of abuse denoting an idle, shifting way of life, were bandied about freely in descriptions of the IWW.”

‘Shifting’ yes, but ‘idle’ they were not. Many of its members were migrant workers, who showed their guts in what became known as the “free speech fights” when whole detachments of workers hitched rides on trains, sometimes travelling up to 3,000 miles, to defend their comrades.

These workers, to show their contempt for the bosses’ insults turned them on their head.

As Renshaw points out: “The union’s own song, which became almost its signature tune, was Hallelujah, I’m a Bum. In fact the terms were not synonymous. Ben Reitman… who suffered at the hands of the San Diego vigilantes, drew a neat distinction between the three modes of life these terms encompassed. ‘The hobo works and wanders,’ he explained, ‘the tramp dreams and wanders, the bum drinks and wanders.”

If we are political hobos, into which category do our opponents fall?

© Transcribed from the original by the Marxist Workers Party (2020).