South African Communist Party - History

History

The Communist Party of South Africa first came to prominence during the armed Rand Rebellion by white mineworkers in 1922. The large mining concerns, facing labour shortages and wage pressures, had announced their intention of liberalizing the rigid colour bar within the mines and elevate some blacks to minor supervisory positions. (The vast majority of white miners mainly held supervisory positions over the laboring black miners.) The CPSA supported the strike against the mining concerns from a class perspective in the context of the struggle between the working class and the capitalist class but condemned the demand to preserve the colour bar as well as the slogan "Workers of the world, unite and fight for a white South Africa!". With the failure of the rising, in part due to black workers failing to strike, the Communist Party was forced by Comintern to adopt the Native Republic thesis which stipulated that South Africa was a country belonging to the Natives, that is, the Blacks. The Party thus reoriented itself at its 1924 Party Congress towards organising black workers and "Africanising" the party. By 1928, 1,600 of the party's 1,750 members were Black. In 1929, the party adopted a "strategic line" which held that "The most direct line of advance to socialism runs through the mass struggle for majority rule". By 1948 the Party had officially abandoned the Native Republic policy.

In 1946, the CPSA along with the African National Congress took part in the general strike that was started by the African Mine Workers' Strike in 1946. Many party members, such as Bram Fischer were arrested.