Document 61 - A. Mon [M. N. Averbach] 4 , “A Comment on Trotsky’s Letter to S.A.”, Worker’s Voice, 1, 3, July 1945 […]

From: South Africa's Radical Tradition, a documentary history, Volume Two 1943 - 1964, by Allison Drew

Document 61 - A. Mon [M. N. Averbach] 4 , "A Comment on Trotsky's Letter to S.A.", Worker's Voice, 1, 3, July 1945 [”¦]

HOW THE LAND WAS CREATED

In order to understand the present land problem in South Africa, it is necessary to see how it was created. It is necessary to grasp that the landlessness of the Africans in particular has flowed from the imperialist policy of creating a migratory African proletariat kept in readiness in vast reservoirs of labour - the Reserves - driven out of these reserves by landlessness, starvation and the poll tax, and controlled in the cities by means of compounds, pass laws, etc. In short, the land question cannot be separated from the question of the way in which imperialism built up a supply of cheap African labour. Here the land question is not only the problem of fighting against landlordism, furthermore a problem of fighting imperialism with its strongholds in the cities. Just as the rural African, in most cases, is also a city worker for part of his life, so the land problem is tied up with the problem of the anti-imperialist fight which has its bastions in the big cities of South Africa. Imperialism has gone about its task of subjugating the toilers here by building up an intricate network of colour bars, segregation, race-oppressive legislation and institutions, all of which it has created, built upon and maintained with increasing brutality and intensity in order to preserve, tap and control a supply of cheap labour. In order to have at hand a ready source of controllable cheap labour imperialism has deliberately prevented the development of African peasantry, for such a peasantry would live off the land, would reduce the number of human beasts of burden to be exploited in the mines, factories and on the farms , and slow down or threaten to stop the migration of cheap labour from town and m to reserves and back again. Imperialism has uprooted the African tribalist, expropriated the African small farmer, prevented their growth into peasants, extended their landlessness and kept them in a state of permanent flux between the slave conditions in the cities and the starvation conditions on the reserves - in short, imperialism has created the land question as part and parcel of its mechanism of depriving the Non-Europeans of their rights, of their land, of opportunities - part of its mechanism of the colour bar and segregation and race-persecution. The landless in-European is landless not merely because he has not got the money to purchase land, but, above all, because the machinery of state mercilessly carries out the policy the economic bosses - to oppress the Non-European nationally in order to exploit n economically. His colour prevents him from becoming a peasant. Under such conditions it is clear that the struggle for land is an integral part of, and not distinct from or raised above, the struggle for full democratic rights. In the sense that this struggle for democratic rights means the abolition of race-discrimination, the struggle for land means the struggle for the rights of Non-Europeans to own land and become farmers.

But in the scientific sense of the term "realising the task of the bourgeoisie democratic revolution", the struggle for "democracy" embraces the struggle, furthermore, not merely for the right to the land, but for the actual division of the land (as was the case with the 1789 French Revolution). Finally, since this land cannot be won except through struggle against imperialism and the South African capitalists, and since the land can be divided only after it has been expropriated from the big landowners, farmers and land-companies, the struggle for land, as part of the struggle for the realisation of the tasks of bourgeois democracy in South Africa can be won only through the socialist revolution, i.e., only, in Trotsky's words “Through methods of proletarian class struggle". This is the road leading to the solution of the problem of landlessness. This, the road of toilers of South Africa, can be trod only if we see the road from the past which has brought us to the present position from where we are to set out along the path of national and agrarian emancipation, through the social revolution [”¦.] Here we are concerned with this path inasmuch as it led to the land problem as it confronts us to-day.

While the Whites robbed the Africans of the land they forced the African into smaller and smaller areas of land, which became "reserves", into which the African was driven or whither he escaped from the attacks of the British and Voortrekkers. By means of brutal wars against the Africans in the Cape, Free State, Natal and the Transvaal, the Africans were savagely driven off their land and herded into small areas (or, in some cases, driven farther north out of the Union). The African was EXPROPRIATED by sword and fire.

Near the end of this process the imperialists began to industrialize the country and to employ masses of cheap labour on the Natal plantations, on the diamond mines, the gold mines, on the industries connected with these mines, and at the big ports. They used the "reserves" where the expropriated Africans had been driven as real reserves -as reservoirs of cheap labour. To force the Africans off the reserve lands the ruling class tore more and more land out of African ownerships and occupation, starved the reserve-population, concentrated them into villages inside the reserves, imposed money-taxes on the male Africans (and are now, in the Transvaal Provincial Council, considering a poll tax for African women as well), entangled the tribalists in debt to traders, and recruited Africans through Chamber of Mines recruiting agents. In the cities the bourgeoisie built up an elaborate system of compounds, passes and regulations to control the migratory labour from the reserves. To prevent the formation of a stable, hereditary urban proletariat which would become used to the traditional methods of organisation and struggle - trade union and political - of the city working classes all over the world - the imperialist bourgeoisie segregated the Africans from each other tribally or otherwise, and from city political life by means of compounds, and allowed a drift back to the reserves after some time of slavery in the towns. At the same time, while preventing the formation of a stable urban African proletariat (which has nevertheless developed as a result of the process of urbanisation and industrialisation characteristic of all capitalist countries and counteracting the segregation policy of the imperialists here), the imperialists simultaneously and even more energetically pre­vented the formation of a settled African peasant in this country, either on the farms or in the reserves. In this way the economic purposes of the imperialists - namely, the exploitation of cheap labour - were served through the policy of segregation, and the prevention of both a settled proletariat and peasantry among the Africans. Combined inevitably with the policy of segregation and the colour bar went the whittling away of the few rights possessed by the Africans in the form of the vote. The fate befalling the Africans steadily extended itself to the Coloureds and Indians, and segregation, the colour bar and race-discrimination became the modus operandi of the imperialist masters of South Africa, and their central instrument in maintaining and widening their economic exploitation of the peoples and resources of South Africa.

From this outline it is clear that the land question was historically created by the labour-demands of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the big farmers. Furthermore, that the land question is inseparably bound up with the whole race-oppression of the Non-Europeans, and that the land struggle cannot be divorced from the fight for full democratic rights. The land problem, created by imperialism, forms part and parcel of the entire problem of national oppression. The land struggle is part of the struggle against imperialism and national oppression. It is from this standpoint that we have to

look upon the rural struggle; and it was from this angle that Trotsky approached the on as is shown by the opening sentence of his critical remarks: a sentence which ns the essence of the correct approach to the national question here:

The South African possessions of Great Britain form a Dominion only from the point of view of the White minority. From the point of view of the black majority. South Africa is a slave colony.

Although this is only a mere sentence, and although Trotsky did not elaborate this, his own description of South Africa, it sums up the entire position, by stating the general fact which stands out when one views the South African scene - namely, the peculiar, unique relations between the national groups which exist in South Africa, and the manner in which these relations are geared to the economic machinery of wage-exploitation and profit-making. From this correct stating of the main fact of South African conditions - its chief peculiarity - flowed Trotsky's emphasis of the national question in general with regard to South Africa and especially in relation to the land question. 'The factual description of South Africa given briefly by Trotsky is made the more important as a base for a correct approach by the addition of a correct history of the colour-bar and land mechanism employed by imperialism in its industrialisation of the country.

THE COMPOSITION OF RURAL AFRICANS

Having used this mechanism to create and preserve a reservoir of cheap migratory an labour, thereby holding back the formation of a settled African city worker, and still more the growth of an African peasantry, imperialism and the rich farmers fashioned a rural African population consisting of the Reserve dwellers and the farmers, leaving practically no room for an African peasantry. The theses to which Trotsky replied informed him of the undeniable demand for land which exists among the rural Africans, but erroneously gave him the impression that there was in existence, economically, materially, in actual fact, a peasantry among the Africans who lived mostly off the land and only wanted more land. Consequently Trotsky speaks in his letter of the African "peasants". While it is true that millions of Africans cry out for land, and wish to become peasants, they are, in this sense, peasants by aspiration only. They aspire towards becoming a peasantry, but are not a peasantry in actual fact, with exception of a small layer of small African farmers in the Transkei and, on a very small scale, in other reserve and rural areas. The fact that an African peasantry, speaking generally, does not exist, does not diminish the weight of the slogan for land, but lends added strength to this demand, in view of the pressure which the landlessness exerts on all those Africans driven to work in the towns, against their feeling to till and live off the land.

About one-half the total African population of South Africa is directly dependent for its income upon the labour of the three-quarters to one million city African workers. The figures in the Mine Wages Commission Report of 1943-44 showed that the families of the mine workers and the V.F.P. workers were almost entirely dependent upon the wages earned by these workers during their stay in the towns, and that their income from their scanty rural occupations and possessions amounts to a negligible quantity. It is no exaggeration to state that practically the entire Reserve population of about half total Africans in the Union are not dependent on the land, but on the wages of their fives in the cities. The Reserve dwellers are, in fact, tribal-proletarians, and the centre of their livelihood lies in the towns and cities. These tribal-proletarians are gradually forced to lengthen their stay in the cities and thus the proletarian side of their social character is steadily becoming the predominant factor, not only in the way of living, but also in their outlook. In spite of the compound system and the pass laws and the various laws and regulations tending to keep them away from becoming proletarians in their outlook and forms of struggle against the employers, the deep process of industrialisation in South Africa, particularly in those industries connected with the mines and in the big "secondary" factories, is increasingly transforming the tribal-pro­letarian into a city proletarian. Hundreds of thousands of Africans live more or less permanently in the cities, and the remainder spends more and more time, in spite of their continual migration, in the cities. Not only are the overwhelming majority of reserve dwellers not peasants in material fact, but also even their peasant outlook is steadily being changed into a proletarian one by the development of industry. Nevertheless, while this change goes on in the outlook of the reservists, the fact that landlessness, land-hunger and intolerable conditions on the infertile reserve lands are used, together with taxes, to hound them into the towns, causes the migratory Africans, even those spending some time in the cities, to see in his landlessness the cause of his travelling to the towns, and consequently to long for and demand land. The horrible condition under which he becomes a proletarian encourages him to strive to become a peasant, even while his living is made as a proletarian. The processes connected with migratory workers develop both the proletarian and the peasant sides of his outlook.

The other half of the total Africans in the Union live chiefly on the farms of the rich Afrikaner farmers and the big imperialist land-companies, including those farms controlled by the Chamber of Mines. The farms Africans are predominantly agricultural proletarians, and not peasants. Gradually, by means of the application of all sorts of laws and amendments, especially since the 1913 Land Act, the Government has discouraged "squatting", tenancy, and sharecropping, and to day the bulk of African farm workers live off wages paid by the farm-owners. According to a statement made in 1944 by the Minister for Native Affairs, about one million Africans on farms are wage earners. This means that virtually the total farm population (African) is agricul­tural proletarians and their dependents. The tendency towards wage-labour on the farms, the destruction of those "peasants" who, in one way or another, were dependent not only on wages, but also on their own plots, crops, cattle, etc., has made it necessary for the African farm worker to struggle for higher wages, shorter hours, etc., as is the case with his urban brother. While being forced to wage this proletarian struggle, the struggle of rural wage-labour against capital, the African farm-worker also strives for land, especially those who are not living permanently on the farms, but are migratory between the farms and the reserves. On the other hand, those Africans who flow between the cities and the farms more and more look towards higher wages than towards land. Again, the process produces two directions - a tendency towards a proletarian outlook, and also towards a peasant's aspirations. On the farms the struggle for wages has to be coupled with the struggle for land, and both in general cannot be separated from the struggle against the colour bar.

This then is the present-day composition of the rural Africans. There is no African peasantry of any significance in fact - there is a demand to become a peasantry - and there is a profound and overwhelming tendency towards proletarianisation and a proletarian outlook. Under these conditions it is impossible to make political headway

If one isolates the So-called peasant struggle - for land - from the fight which confronts the proletarian, especially the Non-White proletarian, in the cities and on the farms.

LINKING THE LAND TO THE NATIONAL SLOGAN

Although Trotsky himself was not furnished with theses which clearly described the rural African in these terms, he nevertheless perceived that the land struggle was factually related to the national problem and he held that the task of revolutionary socialists was to link the slogan for land to the slogan for national liberation. He went further than this and said that the land struggle is important only inasmuch as it is regarded as a stepping stone towards the national struggle, and that the revolutionary's duty was to lead the African ruralist, step by step, from the land struggle to national and political consciousness. [....]

Trotsky [...] clearly subordinates the land to the national struggle. And he does this EVEN working on the assumption that there was a large African peasantry in existence, i.e., a mass of people whose mode of living is based on the possession and occupation of land. But Trotsky's conclusion that the task is to RAISE THE RURALIST TO NATIONAL AND POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS is made all the more weighty when we take into consideration the fact that, as things are, the national problem bears down upon the "rural" African with tremendous force. It is doubtful whether the majority of Africans feel the shortage of land (the "agrarian oppression") more than feel the poll tax. The Reserve and compound segregation, the anti-African labour laws, the discrimination in social life, the industrial colour bar, the lack of political rights, the pass laws, the non-recognition of African trade unions, AND the anti-African LAND ACTS (in short, the "national oppression"). Under such conditions Trotsky's emphasis on the need to subordinate the land struggle to the national struggle becomes heavier. In the practical struggle the task of translating this emphasis into action, is also facilitated by the fact that the colour bar, segregation and all sorts of anti-African laws burden the African terribly, possibly even more than the land-hunger itself. At the distance from which he wrote, without even knowing South Africa, Trotsky could yet question the theses' claim that the land-question was more important than the national one, EVEN for the "peasants". Hence Trotsky's questioning remarks: ".... It is quite possible..."

In thus establishing the connection between the land and the national slogans Trotsky rendered great assistance to our organisation when it was busy shaping the programme during its first years. As far as the programmatic side of our development was concerned this was the chief value of the letter. And, with regard to our practical organisation work in handling the land-problem and the rural toilers Trotsky pointed out what our comrades have long maintained: that our first duty is to organise the CITY workers, and ONLY THROUGH THE ADVANCED URBAN WORKERS could we organise and properly approach the rural masses. This is more important for a party which has not reached the status of a party, has insufficient members and sorely lacks personnel, everyone being urgently required for the growing volume of work in the cities. [....]

THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE CITY AND THE RURAL WORKERS

From theoretical and organisational considerations Trotsky drew the conclusion that the ruralists can be organised chiefly, if not only, through the medium of the advanced city workers. This task is actually facilitated by the peculiar conditions which exist in South Africa. The fact that the majority of Africans come to the cities and spends a growing period in the mines, or factories, etc., actually brings the "ruralists" into touch economically and politically with the urban workers. The alliance is born in the towns. To this extent the political gulf between town and country is half bridged by the migratory labour situation in this country. The fact that the majority of African reservists are either city proletarians or agricultural proletarians for the major portion of their working, if not their whole, lives, enormously simplifies the task of establishing contact between the permanent city and city-reserve workers. This does not mean that the task is itself simple. By no means! Not a few have sacrificed their lives in attempting to work inside a compound; who are segregated rigorously from the city influence, from other compounds, and in which tribal feuds are stirred up to divide and rule the Africans. But the work is simpler than doing organisational work among the ruralists in the country itself, and this latter work is rendered a task mainly of the migrant workers themselves upon their temporary return to their territories.

The organisational alliance of the workers of town and country, however, has to be based and can be based on far more than the possibility of contact in the towns. It is made possible and necessary by the fact that both the urban and the rural Africans, and all Non-Europeans, are commonly oppressed by their lack of democratic rights. On the basis of the struggle against the colour bar, against segregation and race-discrimina­tion - by means of a struggle against the Imperialist-National policy of divide and rule and for the unity of all the Non-Europeans as a major step in the struggle to build up the unity of all the oppressed in the country - both Non-White and White - on this basis the alliance between the workers of town and country can and must be built. Here in this country, it is not so much, in fact hardly, a question of the "alliance between the proletariat and peasantry", but rather a case of building up the alliance of the city workers and the farm workers, the vast majority of whom are wage-slaves and commonly oppressed by the colour bar, segregation and lack of rights (including the right to land), and all of whom are held in bondage by imperialism, which is chiefly responsible for their misery. By means of the national struggle and by means of building up a powerful mass national organisation of all the Non-Europeans and their White supporters in order to wage a determined struggle against imperialist oppression, the toilers of all nationalities and from town and country will be united against a common' foe.

This national organisation is essential to effect this unity. But the national struggle and the national organisation cannot triumph unless the whole course of this struggle for liberation and democratic rights opens up the way to the socialist revolution, to the setting up of a Worker's Government for South Africa and the expropriation of the imperialist and nationalist bourgeoisie - the only revolution and the only government which can introduce democracy for all and divide out land among the landless in South Africa.

But this organisation and this struggle cannot travel a correct path unless guided by a revolutionary Leninist party of the workers.

Unless this party is built speedily and yet soundly, so that it can organise the city workers politically and shape the policy and orientation of the national organisation by means of this proletarian support exercised inside the national organisation and upon it from outside, unless our party is built, there is no hope for the national movement, nor for the landless toilers. When this party will have been built on such a scale that it

Can lead the fight for the conquest of power in this country, then the toilers of this land and all Africa will fully realise the great role which Trotsky's few lines have played in developing the programme and action of our organisation.