Communist Party of South African founder Sidney Bunting reports to the Comintern’s Fourth World Congress on conditions in South Africa not long after the Rand Strike.

‘The Labor Movement of South Africa’ by S.P. Bunting from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 2 No. 98. November 13, 1922.

South Africa occupies a position almost unique even among “colonies” in that its working population consists of both whites of the colonizing races and blacks of the conquered subject native races. The black population out-numbers the white by about 7 to 1 ½ and as the majority of the whites are bourgeois the black workers outnumber the white workers by even more. The black does the “unskilled work” at about a sixth of the wages of the skilled white labor, and although the white cannot live “as a white man” at the low scale of the native, yet there are thousands of “poor whites” very little above it. In the leading industry of the country, gold-mining, a “color bar” has been secured by law: certain mine jobs are reserved for white workers, i.e. must be paid on the white scale; and general custom, though weakened latterly by increased poverty among the whites, has always tended to exclude the white worker, even if willing to accept wages at the native rate, from any but “skilled” or overseer’s work, so that if he cannot get such work he is stranded. The capitalist, although interested in keeping the whites on his side against the natives (and vice versa), also wishes to get as much work as possible done at “kaffir wages “, i.e., give it to black men rather than white.

On this issue turned the recent strike on the mines for a “white South Africa”, that is, to retain a scale of wages which will support a European as against the gradual levelling down of all wages to the native scale. This issue was enough to bring about the first armed rising of workers under the British flag.

The relative economic and social position of European and native is largely reflected in the labor movement, which initiated and still predominantly led by immigrants from Britain, for the most part ignores the half-enslaved, docile, “helot” natives whom it is the tradition of the conquering Europeans in case of “disaffection” to shoot down without much ceremony.

In recent years the Dutch population (half the total white population and mostly anti-British-Imperialist) which occupies the greater part of the land of temperate South Africa, originally occupied by natives now serving as their farm laborers, has contributed numbers of men impoverished on the land to the industrial labor market, especially as miners and semi-skilled workers in various town pursuits. These men, especially the less skilled of them who feel the danger of native competition the most, have on that very account added to the conqueror’s contempt a special but quite intelligible prejudice in which indeed every white worker joins to some extent, against everything ending to “equalize” him with the native.

Hence there is next to no common proletarian sentiment between the white workers however poor and the native workers however advanced; rather the social antagonism is more intense as economic equality is approached; and as may be expected, the capitalists take good care to foster the antagonism on both sides. Having facilities, as masters and through the Government Native Affairs Department, of access to native associations and educational organs, which are not open to other Europeans or even to independent natives themselves, they have largely succeeded in intimidating and alienating the native workers from labor agitation, which is made to appear as something foreign and un-native, so that the advanced native elements have been turned rather into channels of mild native-nationalist feeling (curbed, however, by frequent government repression), while the exclusive white trade unionists (between whom and the natives, ignorance of each other’s languages fixes a great gulf) are represented as their greatest enemies, and the government as their best friends. However, the actual landlessness, votelessness, social and economic degradation and violent repression of the natives have produced among them not only a considerable sense of injustice and anti-white feeling but, since about 1918, some rudiments of labor solidarity accounting for perhaps 10,000 out of a total of about 100,000 organized workers in the country and responsible for repeated native strikes affecting a far larger number, but actively discouraged by the ruling class and weakened by want of funds, and by the constant movement of most of the native proletariat between their homes in the “kraals” or reserves and the industrial centres to which they come to work, as well as by the fact that the native proletariat of South Africa is not limited to the frontiers of that country but the whole native population of the African Continent is a reservoir of potential labor.

Thus, although the capitalists dread the spectre of a big native labor movement above all, the only labor movement exercising actual political or industrial power today is still the European. This movement on both the industrial and the political field is chiefly concerned with maintaining its standards and status, and consequently attracts large petty-bourgeois elements chafing under capital predominance; so much so that the South African Labor Party (non-federative), with 13 members of Parliament out of a total of 134, may be called a petty-bourgeois party, while the Communists as such, numbering only a few hundred throughout South Africa, have failed, especially in view of their opposition to the war and their advocacy of native labor organization and European labor cooperation therewith, even to come near winning a Parliamentary seat.

The chief “opposition” party is that of the Dutch Nationalists, with Republican aspirations of varying degree something like Sinn Fein, and some 45 Members of Parliament. The majority of the miners in the strike of last January-March were such Nationalists, although their party did not officially support the strike, and even now it is at Nationalist meetings that the bitterness of the strike defeat is most naturally expressed by them. The Government Party is a fusion of the former English Party with those wealthier Dutch elements who, like Botha and Smuts themselves, have made their peace with British Imperialism and World Capitalism.

The main immediate problems before the Communists are:

1. Generally to propagate solidarity, based on an understanding of the actual class struggle, among the workers, the most accessible of whom are the Europeans, although those most continuously oppressed in the struggle are the natives. It follows. that the Party’s direct propaganda, e.g. through its weekly organ The International reaches the white workers chiefly, although the paper is read by a few natives who it is believed carry its message far afield among their people. Under this head the popularization of the Russian Revolution, Communist International and Red International of Labor Unions also finds place; the two latter are almost unknown and are certainly not generally recognized as authoritative.

2. To gain influence in the white labor movement for its own sake, both among the rank and file of the Labor Party (i.e. the “general public” not closely dependent on the “big houses” and not individually interested, like the Party leaders, in place hunting) and especially in the white trade unions, many of which are exceedingly backward and lacking in solidarity and are dexterously manipulated by one or more typical yellow leaders. This Communist influence is great and increasing, partly perhaps owing to considerations of personnel; a number of trade union official positions are held by Communists, and the Communists Head Office at Johannesburg is today, especially since the Rand strike of this year, perhaps the chief centre of counsel and inspiration to the labor movement, although the Party’s numerical and financial position or the number of subscribers to its organ would give quite a different impression. Tom Mann’s present South African tour will undoubtedly have a good revivalist effect.

3. In particular to work for the United Labor Front. This task has, as a result of the Rand strike, made some progress, especially on the basis of agitation on behalf of the unemployed and for an amnesty for strike prisoners. Tom Mann’s tour is supported by labor organizations of a number of different camps. The United front movement has so far ignored the native workers, but a much needed conference of white and black labor representatives might well be initiated by it.

4. To influence the white workers to abandon their prejudice against native labor organisation and to induce them to encourage and cooperate with it. This is an extremely delicate and difficult task, but the lessons of the recent strike will it is thought tend to lighten it.

5. To carry on propaganda directly among the native workers and to assist their industrial and perhaps political organisation and activities. This is perhaps the most difficult task of all, for the reasons above given and especially because it arouses fierce resentment among the Europeans, workers no less than bourgeois. Indeed many of the Communists themselves argue that the native should preferably be left to develop on “his own lines”, although he is subject to such powerful capitalist influences that it difficult to see how such development can carry him rapidly forward.

6. To make such use of Dutch Nationalist sentiment as may further the cause of the working class, local or worldwide. Here again is a dilemma: for though this sentiment is strongly anti-imperialist (what it would be if offered power as in Egypt or Ireland is another question), it is also traditionally repressive of the natives and generally, as befits its agrarian foundation, reactionary and Junker in ideology. As a result of the recent strike a pact between the Nationalist and Labor Parties not to oppose each other at the next general election, due for 1926, is being discussed. The expected inclusion of Rhodesia in the Union of South Africa will probably destroy the chances of even such a block obtained a parliamentary majority.

7. To strengthen the Communist Party itself, both at its centre, Johannesburg, and throughout South Africa, including the Young Communist Movement and especially i.e. maintenance of the weekly organ, which owing to lack of funds has recently had to become a fortnightly only. In the last two years, and more than ever in the present severe post-strike depression, the Party has been weakened by very serious financial stringency, by apathy of members disappointed of their hopes of a world revolution following the Russian, and by strong anti-“Bolshevik” influence and propaganda both among white trade-unionists and among the more intelligent industrialized natives.

8. To convince the Parties abroad and the Communist International of the importance of the revolutionary movement of the cheap coloured colonial labourers of the world, of the need for organising them, and of the possibility and advisability of European labour cooperating with them not merely locally but on a world scale.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecor” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecor’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecor, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1922/v02n098-nov-13-1922-Inprecor.pdf