Originally appeared in Inqaba ya Basebenzi No. 18-19 (February 1986)

Statement issued in London, 31 July, 1985, by expelled comrades.

Inqaba has received the following statement (dated 31 July 1985) by Marxists recently expelled by the ANC in exile. We reprint the statement for the information of our readers. We also demand the unconditional reinstatement of these comrades, who have been expelled for no other ‘crime’ than putting forward policies in the interests of the working class.

With the flames of revolt sweeping through the townships and industrial areas of South Africa, all the forces of the liberation struggle should be concentrating their united efforts against the murderous apartheid regime and the capitalist exploiters. Yet the South African ‘Communist’ Party, which dominates the apparatus of the African National Congress in exile, has chosen this moment to turn its fire against Marxists in the ranks of the ANC itself.

(The SA ‘Communist’ Party, though claiming to be Marxist, stands for Stalinism – i.e. for bureaucratic dictatorship over society on the lines of the Soviet Union today – and opposes the Marxist idea that workers’ democracy is necessary for socialism.)

Four comrades, who were suspended by the ANC in London in 1979 for putting forward their ideas on policy, strategy and tactics in Sactu and the ANC, have now been expelled. What have the Marxists argued for over the years?

  • That the working class movement in South Africa should be prepared politically and armed for insurrection against the racist, capitalist regime;
  • That wholehearted support should be given to the growing independent trade union movement;
  • That national liberation and democracy, together with the basic material needs of the working people, can only be achieved through the victory of the working class and the socialist transformation of South Africa.

Precisely as the correctness of these ideas is being proved in the arena of living struggle – when the leadership can no longer avoid shifting, albeit partially and in words, closer to these positions – those comrades who have most consistently put them forward within the ranks of the ANC have been expelled. This was done without debate, and without the comrades being given a hearing – in blatant violation of the ANC constitution itself.

The expulsions have been carried out, not in the interests of the ANC, not as a serious step by ANC activists to protect the movement, but on the contrary in the narrow factional interests of the Stalinists.

The decision was made by the ANC’s recent ‘Consultative Conference’ in Zambia (the first since 1969), where the vast majority of participants, being exiles dependent upon the official apparatus for their very existence, were effectively screened and controlled by the ‘Communist’ Party leadership. The Marxists were not allowed a voice in this conference.

CP Disintegrating

The decision was announced on 23 July, in Britain, in the pages of the pro-Moscow Morning Star – days after Botha had announced the State of Emergency in South Africa. The British CP is disintegrating in the throes of a major split between Stalinism and liberal reformism. This paper is the voice of the Stalinist faction, which openly supports the privileged bureaucratic dictatorship in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe against the masses’ demands for a workers’ democracy.

Writing on behalf of the ANC, comrade Francis Meli (a well-known SACP leader whose very name is constructed from the initials of the ‘Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute’ of Stalinist ideology in Moscow) describes the Consultative Conference.

He writes:

It is impossible to exhaust in a few paragraphs what was discussed in some days. But I need to mention a resolution which I think is important for the labour movement in this country. This is the text of the resolution:

The Second National Consultative Conference of the ANC, held in Zambia June 16 to 23 1985, considered the decision of the Regional Political Committee in London to suspend the following:

1. Rob Petersen

2. Paula Ensor

3. Martin Legassick

4. David Hemson

It found that, after having been suspended in 1979 by the London region of the ANC for their disruptive activities in Sactu, the group organised itself outside the ANC under the title, ‘The Marxist Tendency within the ANC’, and produced Inqaba ya Basebenzi, a journal claimed to be produced by a ‘Marxist wing’ of the ANC.

Contacted Trade Unions

This group contacted trade unions and solidarity organisations in several countries using a mailing list stolen from Sactu…

In violation of Sactu’s policy, they have encouraged and maintained bilateral contacts with trade unions inside the country…

Recently, some of them were arrested and expelled from Zimbabwe for activities contrary to the interests and independence of that country.

Conference considers that the decision of the RPC in London to suspend this faction was correctly taken. It further resolves to expel the above-mentioned from the ANC.

It must be stated first and foremost that the organisational charges against the expelled comrades are groundless. Far from “disrupting Sactu”, we played an active role, from 1976 to 1979, in reviving Sactu and re-establishing its paper Workers’ Unity, which under CP control had become defunct. We played an active and constructive part also in units of the ANC. What the Stalinists regard as “disruptive activities”, in fact, is any democratic questioning of their policies and methods.

Discussion

Far from organising “outside” the ANC, we continued the discussion of Marxist ideas only through the official channels controlled by the Stalinists themselves – until they stamped out discussion, using administrative measures, including the closing down of an entire committee, when they could not reply to our political arguments.

After we were unconstitutionally suspended, we maintained a clear and public position of loyalty to the ANC and commitment to the task of building the ANC on a mass basis of black workers and youth within South Africa. At the same time we had, of course, the revolutionary duty to continue to put forward our ideas within the movement and contribute as best we could to the clarification of programme, strategy and tasks.

In this context we certainly contacted trade unions and solidarity organisations in several countries, with which we maintain many fraternal links in a common cause. The claim, however, that we used “a mailing list stolen from Sactu” is a blatant lie which the leadership know to be a lie. The Sactu mailing list, created by our own efforts on metal addressograph plates, remained intact in the Sactu office when we were ejected. The addresses of “trade unions and solidarity organisations in several countries” are well known, not least to ourselves, and are a matter of public record. It requires no “stolen mailing list” to discover them.

This charge of a “stolen mailing list” is a classic example of Stalinist smear tactics, unscrupulously used to cloud the issues when they can offer no political answer to their opponents’ case.

If the organisational charges against us are groundless, the political charges merely bring to light the bankruptcy of the Stalinists’ ideas.

They persist in maintaining outright opposition to direct links between the labour movement abroad and trade unions inside South Africa. It is scandalous that this position is endorsed without a murmur by the ANC Consultative Conference as official “Sactu policy”.

For our part, we are proud to plead ‘guilty’ to “encouraging and maintaining bilateral contacts with trade unions inside the country”. We are proud to be guilty of promoting direct support for the independent non-racial and black trade unions in SA and to have helped mount campaigns in support of strikes and boycotts called by these unions.

Our achievements in this regard have been all too modest – but among them has been the successful campaign (against the combined obstruction of the British and South African ‘Communists’) to secure recognition of the SA NUM by the British NUM.

Support Ideas

We deny that we are “organised … outside the ANC under the title ‘The Marxist Tendency within the ANC.” However, individually, we support the ideas put forward in Inqaba ya Basebenzi, the journal of the Marxist Workers’ Tendency of the ANC.

A “tendency” is a current of opinion. There are many currents of opinion within the ANC – both in exile and in the broad mass movement which gathers under the ANC colours in the heat of the revolutionary struggle in South Africa.

There are, for example, tendencies which support compromise with the SA ruling class; which are prepared to accept less than “one-person-one-vote” in an undivided South Africa; which are willing to water down the Freedom Charter and abandon the nationalisation clause; which are willing to negotiate even the maintenance of influx control. In the main, these represent the confusion and vacillation of middle class elements afraid of losing control to a working class revolutionary movement.

On the other hand, there is the “tendency” of the great majority of the working class rank-and-file ANC members and supporters, some of whom are guerrillas in the camps of the ANC outside South Africa, but most of whom are fighting in the mass battalions of the movement in the factories, mines, townships and schools inside South Africa.

Overwhelmingly these comrades are striving to bring about a thorough-going revolutionary transformation of South Africa, often at the cost of their own lives. They know that nothing less than the overthrow of the regime by the mass movement can bring genuine liberation. They know that for this purpose the movement must be powerfully organised, united, armed with clear policies, strategy and leadership, and ultimately equipped with the weapons necessary for a victorious insurrection. They demand to be free both of racist oppression and capitalist exploitation. They want a democratic and socialist South Africa.

Foursquare

Comrades of the Marxist tendency stand foursquare together with the mass of ANC members and supporters in fighting for these goals. Fundamentally, Marxists explain that only through the conquest of power by the working class and the expropriation of the bourgeoisie can national liberation and democracy be achieved in South Africa, and the way opened to a socialist transformation. It is not through guerrilla actions, but through the organisation and arming of the mass movement that this can be achieved. Inqaba ya Basebenzi sets out the policies, the perspectives, strategy and tactics which, from the standpoint of Marxist theory and the international experience of the working class movement, offers a way forward to victory.

What, then, of the SA ‘Communist’ Party? The SACP is more than a “tendency”, more than an organised faction in the ANC. It is a rigidly controlled bureaucratic apparatus, which leans for support upon workers in the ANC, but relies fundamentally on political and material aid from the ruling bureaucracy of the Soviet Union.

It proclaims “socialism” (Moscow-style) as its ‘eventual’ goal. In this way, and by the use of guerrilla actions, it maintains its revolutionary credentials and holds on to its working class supporters. But at the same time, within the ANC, it joins forces with and indeed props up the middle class tendencies reinforcing their utopian idea that “democracy” can be achieved without a workers’ revolution, by putting pressure for negotiations upon the ruling class.

Under the cover of the false “two-stage” theory – democracy “first”, workers’ rule and socialism only “later” – the CP leadership take their stand against the independent assertion of power by the black working class. In this they represent the policy of the Moscow bureaucracy, which fears the threat to its own dictatorial and privileged rule if revolutions in important industrial countries should bring to power regimes of genuine workers’ democracy and socialism.

The clause in the expulsion resolution which refers to Zimbabwe makes the reactionary position of the Stalinists absolutely plain. Precisely what activities of any of the expelled comrades were “contrary to the interests and independence of that country”?

One of the four comrades (David Hemson) was arrested and deported from Zimbabwe for carrying on work of socialist education among black trade unionists and ZANU(PF) members. Using powers inherited from Smith, the white-led Zimbabwean CIO arrested him together with a number of leading black trade unionists and local militants of the ruling party with proven records of struggle.

What was their “crime”? They openly defended trade union rights in Zimbabwe against a new Labour Relations law which subjects the unions to total government control and wipes out their independence. They campaigned against corruption among trade union officials. They criticised the compromise of the Mugabe government with the capitalist class. They steadfastly maintained that only the socialist transformation of Zimbabwe could guarantee the independence of Zimbabwe from IMF and SA imperialist pressures, and unite the workers and peasants across the tribal divide. While critically supporting ZANU(PF) against its bourgeois enemies, they posed this task before the workers’ movement and the youth in Zimbabwe, urging the closest links of mutual support with the revolutionary working class movement in South Africa.

Stalinist Influence

Yet the ANC leadership, under Stalinist influence, describe this as “contrary to the interests and independence” of Zimbabwe – and that is endorsed by the Consultative Conference without a peep of protest!

Comrades of the ANC leadership, are you now openly defending the policy of the Mugabe regime in consolidating capitalism, defending the white farmers’ land, bulldozing urban squatters, taxing workers and promising not to nationalise the property of the South African companies and other imperialists who exploit Zimbabwe? To find favour with Mugabe, are you now prepared to support the imprisonment and torture of genuine trade unionists and socialists?

Have the comrades forgotten even their fellow-combatants from the 1968 Wankie campaign now serving indefinite detention without trial in Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison? We have always opposed the terrorist methods of the ex-ZIPRA ‘dissidents’ in Matabeleland, but have opposed no less the counter-terror of the Harare regime. Are you prepared to justify the national oppression of the Ndebele minority who suffer massacres, torture and detention? That is the consequence of bowing down uncritically to the present regime in Zimbabwe, and of failing to stand up for workers’ unity, workers’ power and socialism which are the only way forward in Southern Africa.

On the vital questions of the South African revolution, as well as on the international issues, the Stalinists represent an obstacle to liberation – within the ANC. Marxists in the ANC are duty-bound to oppose their ideas and their influence, and struggle for the building of the ANC on the basis of correct ideas. Neither we, nor any class-conscious worker aware of the facts, could agree to submit and abandon our revolutionary ideas merely because the SACP presently holds effective control of the ANC apparatus in exile and is thus capable of “expelling” us.

In fact, these expulsions – six years after we were suspended and our ideas declared dead and buried by the leadership! – merely confirm the growing strength of Marxism within the movement. The expulsions are intended as a warning by the bureaucracy to the rank-and-file. That is why they have been carried out precisely at this time of enormous revolutionary ferment within South Africa.

Not Deterred

Together with the many other comrades in the ranks of the ANC, the UDF, the trade unions and the youth movement in South Africa who support the ideas of Inqaba ya Basebenzi, we will not be deterred by these expulsions any more than we were by the suspensions in 1979. No administrative measure taken by the Stalinists in their own narrow factional interests can separate us from the movement. No amount of expulsions will halt the spread of Marxist ideas.

We remain determined to build the ANC as an effective vehicle for the unity of the revolutionary movement and the conquest of power by the working class. We are confident that we will be reinstated with honour to full formal membership of the ANC once substantial numbers of workers and youth become conscious of the issues and the facts, and take into their own hands the task of building and transforming the ANC.

For a mass ANC with a socialist programme!

Forward to workers’ power, democracy and socialism!

© Transcribed from the original by the Marxist Workers Party (2021).