Rusty Bernstein, CPSA Johannesburg District Secretary at the time, also noted that black members resisted joining the ANC: ‘They thought the ANC was rather reformist bourgeois nonsense – “that’s not for us, we’re revolutionaries!’’ ’26
The CPSA extended its township work during the war years, but remained concerned with the state of the ANC. CPSA members such as David Bopape, J B Marks, Edwin Mofutsanyana and Moses Kotane were also senior ANC members, in part because the party insisted that national liberation struggles ‘fought in the colonial and semi-colonial territories’ were ‘no mere side issue’ but an integral part of the global anti-imperialist struggle.27
But, as stated above, the ANC (unlike the Communist Party) failed to capitalise on the changed conditions resulting from the war, and rival organisations aimed at mobilising black support were either established or revitalised. The African Democratic Party (ADP) was formed, while the All-African Convention (AAC) agitated for a ‘non-collaborationist’ strategy. Within the ANC the restless young urban intellectuals of the ANCYL, who favoured direct, extra-parliamentary action, began to criticise the ANC’s moderation and its failure to establish a branch structure and win a mass following.
The CPSA accepted that the ANC remained ‘the premier political organisation’, both because of historical ties and presumably because both the ADP and the AAC were influenced, to differing degrees, by Trotskyist thinking. CPSA statements between 1942 and 1948 stressed that it was ‘… 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 …’.28
CPSA literature and internal reports during the war shared three related themes with regard to the ANC and national liberation. In the first place the party acknowledged the progress made by Xuma in reorganising the ANC, but criticised Congress for failing to provide political leadership in a period of considerable black industrial and civic action. 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’.29
In 1945 the CPSA Johannesburg District stressed the ‘unity and solidarity … militancy and readiness for action’ evident in the Alexandra bus boycotts, protests over train fare increases and the squatter movements, but criticised both itself and the ANC for failing to provide leadership.30 Given its own failure to appreciate what was going on, the party took a gratuitous swipe at Mpanza, the squatter leader, who ‘may seem a figure hardly worth taking seriously’, as well as at the ADP, which ‘suffers from all the faults of sectarianism, political inexperience and stupidity’.31 But it also acknowledged that they ‘… gave the people what they demanded … they were advocating something positive …’.32 The analysis concluded that ‘the people demand leadership’ and called for a ‘practical plan of campaign and action’ to channel popular militancy.33
Flowing from this was a second theme of CPSA commentary on national movements – a repeated 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 both ideological and organisational unity.
The third theme comprised repeated calls for the development of a united front of organisations opposing racial discrimination. The CPSA argued that ‘[a]ll genuine movements towards national liberation are progressive’, but warned against the tendency to racial exclusiveness, which would obscure the underlying reality of the class-based oppression of all workers.34 The party supported the emergence of a ‘broad fighting Alliance’35 or ‘wide democratic front’36 which would oppose segregation while underplaying exclusive nationalism.
The CPSA’s post-war programme was internally contested, with some members calling on the party to capitalise on its wartime successes and concentrate on furthering class struggle in place of the ‘two-stage’ revolution, which saw national liberation as a necessary precondition for socialist revolution. This also flowed in part from the changing nature of the ANC, as the ANCYL became more prominent and focused its hostility on the CPSA and its ‘foreign’ ideology. The CPSA expressed concern that ‘[t]he 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.’37
The criticisms levelled by the Youth League against the ANC echoed those of the CPSA, calling for the development of a branch structure and mass membership, and the utilisation of extra-parliamentary means of opposition. The two organisations seemed to be competing over who would direct the future of the ANC, fuelling the Youth League’s twin hostilities – to the CPSA, and to anything other than ‘occasional co-operation’38 with other racial groups.
The ANC Youth League
The ANCYL’s ‘Manifesto’, issued in March 1944, noted criticism of the ANC as an organisation ‘of gentlemen with clean hands’ which had failed to organise the mass of the African population.39 The League, it stated, 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’.40More significantly, it stressed that ‘the national liberation of the Africans will be achieved by Africans themselves. We reject foreign leadership of Africa.’41
The programme was based on an African nationalism that rejected non-African leadership and ‘the wholesale importation of foreign ideologies’42 while emphasising African pride and self-sufficiency. The League was influenced, in part, by the growth of anti-colonial movements in the post-war period. Anton Lembede, a lawyer and the League’s first president and leading ideologue, stated:
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 …43
The League saw as its ‘immediate task’ the need ‘to overhaul the machinery of the ANC from within’, moulding it into a mass-based organisation pursuing national liberation and mobilising support by means of a militant African nationalism.44 It stressed ‘the divine destiny of the African people’45 and the need for ‘high ethical standards’ to ‘combat moral disintegration among Africans’.46
Both the ANCYL and the CPSA wanted a more radical ANC, but they also wanted an ANC in their own image. While the CPSA tried to work with Congress, the Youth League saw as part of its task the need to stop non-African nationalists from influencing Congress. Lembede 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.47
The first task that faced Ashby Mda when he was elected ANCYL president in 1948 was to clarify the League’s position with regard to both communism and liberalism.48 In calling for the development of African nationalism as a mobilising force sufficient to challenge the status quo, the League came to see both liberalism and communism as competing ideologies.
The ANCYL and the CPSA
The conflict