Chapter 6 - TOWARDS HOME

From: The South African Communist Party In Exile 1963 - 1990

The 7th Congress, organised in Havana in April 1989, and attended by 49 delegates, was the highest point the Party could reach in exile. With some 70% of delegates above 35 years old, the Party had however experienced a significant growth in the number of members under the age of 35. The 7th Congress was also significant in the sense that, for the first time in exile, the underground was represented at a meeting of the highest decision-making body of the Party. The congress, conducted in the spirit of "glasnost", reviewed the 1962 programme and adopted a new programme, Path to Power. The decision of the CC meeting of November/December 1988 was also confirmed; Dan Thloome rose to the position of chairperson, and Slovo was elected general secretary.

Other important decisions of the 7th Congress included the tightening of security measures, appointment of full-timers for regions, and the establishment of an integrated underground leadership inside the country (an attempt in this regard being Operation Vula).1

The review of the Road to South African Freedom which resulted in the Path to Power, was necessitated, in particular, by the deepened crisis against the apartheid regime, the heightened mass struggle, and global changes in the wake of Mikhail Gorbachev's "perestroika". The Path to Power, like the 1962 programme, was still based on the belief that the world was going through an era of transition from capitalism to socialism. Thus the programme reaffirmed, with some elaboration) the Party's thesis of Colonialism of a Special Type. The theory of the national democratic revolution was also elaborated, especially with regard to the so-called "two-stage" theory, and the role of the working class. With the experience accumulated during the preceding decades, the programme revised the earlier conception of guerilla warfare, acknowledging that such a war may have to fought under "unclassical" conditions, as part of a "people's war" for the "seizure of power". Nonetheless a negotiated "transfer of power", as with the case of the 1962 programme, was never ruled out.

The PB report to the 7th Congress was indeed prophetic in declaring that: "[The] 8th Congress will be on our own soil... This is not a pipedream... It is a clarion call whose fulfillment will depend upon each and every one of us and those who have sent us here. We must regard ourselves not only as delegates of struc­tures but as delegates of history." 2 In February 1990, the apartheid president FW de Klerk announced the unbanning of the ANC, SACP and other organisations. The announcement may have caught the Party's leadership unprepared, but nonetheless a few days later in the same month, an extended PB meeting was organised to deliberate on the new situation. The meeting "agreed that the outcome, the speed and social content of the democratic revolution necessitates the existence of the Party as a legal, public and independent political vanguard of the working people. The reconstitution of the legal Party will need speed and bold steps". 3 With regard to leadership matters, the meeting resolved on three areas. The first was to establish an "internal leadership core" to be selected from a list of names including Andrew MIangeni, Ahmed Kathrada, Govan Mbeki, Billy Nair, Sidney Mofumadi, Chris DIamini and Elias Motsoaledi. Secondly, the meeting developed a list of twelve CC members (out of the total of 20) who were to surface and publicly acknowledge their CC status. Thirdly, the meeting instructed three CC members not to "expose" their CC status. Other decisions revolved around issues such as the establishment of districts and the return of certain exiles such as Ray and Jack Simons. Following this meeting, the Party organs, the African Communist and Umsebenzi, carried responses which cautiously welcomed the unbanning, and called for the intensification of the crisis facing the apartheid regime through struggle. Indeed, the CC statement, published in the African Communist, acknowledged that "today our Party is emerging from the underground with massive prestige and popularity. The CC is fully aware of the weighty responsibilities this prestige and popularity place upon our Party and upon each one of our militants", and declared that" a major objective of the coming months will be the building of a strong, legal SACP rooted among the working masses of our people". 4

The unbanning of the Party was not the only new factor that the leadership had to tackle; so was the collapse of the USSR and other former socialist countries. One of the responses by the Party was Slovo's highly debated pamphlet, "Has Socialism Failed?", which was published in the African Communist in January 1990, a month before de Klerk's announcements. 5 Slovo, in his attempt to reaffirm the validity of Marxism, dealt not only with how Marxists globally had responded to the crisis in the Soviet Union, but also with factors which to him contributed to the distortion of Marxism and the eventual failure of socialism in those countries. These factors included the bureaucratisation of Marxism and the economic backwardness of Russia itself. He then argued for his "democratic socialism" as a solution. Subsequent to "Has Socialism Failed?", Slovo delivered other lectures and speeches on the same theme, acknowledging mistakes and excesses committed over the years. 6

Indeed, Slovo's pamphlet received a flood of responses from within the ranks of the liberation movement and outside, especially among the academics. Within the liberation movement, Pallo Jordan's response attracted the most attention. For Jordan, departing from the premise that Slovo's pamphlet only dealt with symptoms and not the causes, the source of the crisis that-led to the collapse of the former socialist countries had to be sought in both structural factors and in how dissenting views and voices were dealt with in those countries. As for the SACP itself, Jordan argued:

One cannot lightly accept at face value Comrade Joe Slovo's protestations about the SACP's non-Stalinist credentials. Firstly, there is too much evidence to the contrary. Any regular reader of the SACP's publications can point to a consistent pattern of praise and support for every violation of freedom perpetrated by the Soviet leadership, both before and after the death of Stalin. It is all too easy in the context of Soviet criticism of this past for Comrade Slovo to boldly come forward. Secondly, the political culture nurtured by the SACP's leadership over the years has produced a spirit of intolerance, petty intellectual thuggery and political dissembling among its members which regularly emerges in the pages of both the African Communist and Umsebenzi . 7

There were other responses, some such as Harry Gwala's attempt to defend Stalin, and others who even took issue with Lenin himself and the notion of "democratic socialism". 8 All in all, the debate was the reflection of the Party's attempt at organisational and ideological introspection.

Nor were the academics silent on this debate. While some such as Stephen Ellis tried to locate the debate within a Cold War perspective, one of the most virulent attacks on Slovo came from Archie Mafeje, a South African scholar who was based in exile. Mafeje's historical critique of the role of both the CPSA and SACP, informed, as it were, by the belief that Slovo was "a confirmed Stalinist until the writing of the essay under review", argued mat the Party was formed by "white émigré communists [who] depended to a very large extent on the Soviet Union and had virtually no constituency inside the country". For him, the Party "succeeded in splitting the black national movement right in the mid­dle for its own purposes. Having lost any support of white workers... it sought a constituency within the black national movement without giving up its privileged position, as a 'vanguard party'" [emphasis in the original]. Thus, concluded Mafeje: "...had it not been for its [SACP] self-interested interference, a number of dif­ferences, say, between the Unity Movement and the ANC, and between the ANC and the PAC could have been resolved". 9

Nonetheless, the establishment of a legal SACP introduced new factors and players as new members flooded the ranks of the Party and the leadership from exile, the underground and prison, had to be molded into a collective. Within three months of the unbanning, and as per the decision of the extended PB, a Consultative Conference of the Party was convened in Johannesburg to deliberate on the organisational and political implications of establishing a legal SACP. Among the issues that were discussed at the conference was the need to revisit the membership and recruitment policy of the Party with a view to doing away with the system of probation; issues of internal democracy and democratic centralism; the need to interrogate Path to Power and its relevance in light of the new situation; and a programme of action towards the public launch of the legal SACP. The recommendation of the extended PB of establishing an interim lead­ership was endorsed, and districts were to be established in all key centres - Johannesburg, East Rand, West Rand, Port Elizabeth, Cape Town, East London, Durban and Bloemfontein. 10

Eventually, the public launch of the legal SACP took place two months later, in July, in Soweto and was attended by 45 000 people, after having been preceded by rallies in different parts of the country such as one that took place in the Transkei and attracted 70 000 people. At the launch rally, a 22-person interim leadership group, drawn from the exile, prison and MDM leadership, was introduced. The launch was followed by a series of activities which accompanied the establishment of districts in different parts of the country, and these included a rally in Port Elizabeth in November 1990 which attracted 140 000 people. Thus the Party's membership soared at a time when communist parties across the globe were undergoing a period of serious decline, and between January and November 1991 the number jumped from 5 000 to 21 000 members. Thanks to this astronomical growth in membership, 414 delegates representing 300 branches based in eight regions across the country attended the 8th Congress that took place in December 1991.11

With Slovo returned to his previous position as chairperson and Hani becoming the general secretary, the 8th Congress also reviewed Path to Power and adopted a new programme - Manifesto of the South African Communist Party : Building workers' power for democratic change. Of course, the Manifesto was the outcome of a very heated debate on the meaning of commu­nism in the wake of the collapse of the USSR and other former socialist countries. Whereas Slovo was unsuccessful in his attempt to argue for "democratic socialism" at the 8th Congress, however, the Manifesto shifted from the optimism that characterised both the 1962 programme and Path to Power, by acknowledging that international conditions were not favourable to the struggle for socialism in the wake of the collapse of the USSR and other former socialist countries. The new programme also failed to pro­pose, in detail, an alternative form of socialism in its critique of "distorted socialism". Nonetheless, the concept of negotiations was further developed, and so was the notion of the "strategic initiative" that the liberation movement had to maintain during the negotiations. Admittedly, there was continuity in thinking in the Manifesto on the negotiations with what was put forward in both the Road to South African Freedom and the Path to Power. The programme also tried to begin to tackle issues related to governance such as the need for a "growth strategy".

As to the issue of membership, with branches and district replacing units and regions as organs of the Party, the new constitution, an amendment of the one adopted at the 6th Congress in 1984, revised the recruitment policy and dealt away with the probation system, thus converting me SACP into a "mass" Party.12 Therefore, following the 8th Congress, the Party was now in a better position to participate in the negotiations and face the liberation elections of April 1994 with confidence. However, the Party's position during the 1990-94 transition, especially with regard to negotiations, was to create a heated debate both within the organisation and outside. Indeed, the African Communist, in the editorial of its 3"' quarter issue of 1990, tried to tackle the problematic of negotiations and compromise: "To enter into discussions with the government does not in itself constitute a compromise, but compromise of one sort or another may eventually be forced upon us by circumstances. The test will be whether that compromise opens the way to the ultimate achievement of our objectives, and whether the alternative to compromise would constitute a setback for the revolutionary cause."13 A more extensive debate followed the circulation and the eventual publica­tion of Slovo's "Negotiations:

What Room for Compromise?", a document which was a product of debates within the ANC on the direction to take on the negotiations.14 Slovo proposed a set of compromises, including "sunset", amnesty, and power-sharing provisions, which could be put forward by ANC negotiators, for unblocking and advancing the negotiations. According to Slovo, "there are... certain retreats from previously held positions which would create the possibility of a major positive breakthrough in the negotiating process without permanency hampering real democratic advance" [emphasis in the original].15 The response from within the Party was pided between those who supported Slovo such as Jeremy Cronin and Raymond Suttner, and those who argued against him such as Pallo Jordan and Harry Gwala. The response of the latter group centered around three areas: (a) the relationship between strategy and tactic, and that Slovo had elevated negotiations to strategy; (b) the lack of consultation in the development of the compromises in question; and (c) the role of struggle and the masses themselves during the course of the negotiations.16 As for the academic left, the overwhelming view was that the SACP had shift­ed to the right - that the SACP had abandoned "insurrection" in favour of "structural reforms"