Document 63 - Letter from Workers’ Party of South Africa to the International Secretariat of the International Communist League (B-L), 11 April 1936

From: South Africa's Radical Tradition, a documentary history, Volume One 1907 - 1950, by Allison Drew

THE WORKERS PARTY OF SOUTH AFRICA

P.O. Box 1940

Cape Town

South Africa                      

11.4.1936

I .S., L.C.I. (B.-L.)

Dear Comrade Adolphe.

A comrade of our Club here, the Spartacus Club, has been working in secrecy to bring out the first Afrikaans (i.e., South African Dutch) translation of "The Communist Manifesto". The translation is now complete in manuscript, and is being typed by comrades in readiness for the printers.

Only one thing is lacking to crown the work, and that is a little Introduction from the hand of our great leader. Will Comrade Trotsky honour this small offering to the revolutionary movement by sealing it with his approval and recommendation? We shall indeed be grateful, if he can find time to do this for our remote and backward country.

South Africans, with the exception of a handful of scholars, do not read the Dutch of the Netherlands, and revolutionary literature is not yet to be found in the Afrikaans language, which is the language of more than half the white population and of a large proportion of the people of mixed descent, so that this effort will open up a whole new field of propaganda for Marxism and the Fourth International.

We earnestly hope that you will understand our eagerness for the fulfilment of this task, and we ask you to be so kind as to forward without delay our respectful petition to Comrade Trotsky. Now that the translation is complete, the matter of the printing becomes urgent, lest our secret should leak out before the booklets are ready for circulation.

 Fraternal greetings,

C. R. Goodlatte, W.P.S.A. Cape Town

Paul Koston