Red Road to Freedom: A history of the South African Communist Party 1921-2021
by Tom Lodge
James Currey £70

BUILDING on earlier seminal texts such as RE Simons’s voluminous Class and Colour in South Africa and Michael Harmel’s more celebratory account Fifty Fighting Years, Tom Lodge’s latest work is a monumental, fascinating and painstakingly researched book that provides by far the most up-to-date and comprehensive history of the South African Communist Party.

Unlike liberal and Trotskyist commentators, Lodge also emerges as a critical but undoubtedly sympathetic observer who skilfully captures a dramatic and compelling story that has film-like qualities.

Lodge kicks off his book by demonstrating how the organised left in South Africa can effectively date its history back to the 1890s, a period in which a myriad of socialist, anarchist and syndicalist organisations began to be formed.

Many of these organisations were effectively derived from movements in Europe and North America. British migrants, for example, were often involved in South Africa branches of the Independent Labour Party and the Social Democratic federation.

Italians tended to favour syndicalist ways of organising, Jews from Tsarist Russia focused on the Bund and the more broadly based Friends of Russian Freedom and Germans veered towards the “orthodox“ Marxism of their home country.

Sickened by the failure of avowedly socialist bodies to oppose imperialist war and at the same time inspired by the world changing Bolshevik revolution of 1917, more radical elements eventually came together to form the Communist Party of South Africa in 1921.

In this unflinchingly honest account, Lodge argues that much of the work the party carried out in the 1920s and indeed the ‘30s was of a propagandistic nature and, even then, activity was intermittent and localised with most branches outside the main cities lasting no longer than a few years.

Despite the erstwhile contributions of formidable characters such as Bill Andrews, WH Harrison, Rebecca Bunting and Johnny Gomas and the recruitment of influential trade unionists, membership remained at just a few hundred, a recurring problem being when the organisation did manage to recruit rapidly during periods of labour militancy it rarely managed to retain newcomers.

Lodge relates this to three fundamental and often interrelated weaknesses.

The first being whether the party was effectively functioning as a Leninist organisation. Lodge convincingly demonstrates how interpretation of policy diverged widely, national decisions and detailed Comintern interventions about the need to struggle for a Native Republic notwithstanding.

Second, although the CPSA was undoubtedly operating in a difficult and in many ways unique environment, most members were of white, European descent and prioritised work in the more “proletarian” but overwhelmingly white, skilled industries. Trade unions occasionally took it down some horrific paths. The most notorious of which being when party militants unfurled a banner reading “white workers of the world to unite for a white South Africa” during the incredibly bloody and often since ignored miners’ strike of 1922.

Third, although some tangible links with individuals in the wider national liberation movement were created, operational connections between itself and the then small African National Congress were surprisingly weak and fragmentary, marked as much by an atmosphere of mutual suspicion as by anything else.

The late 1930s and the war years were to see a limited upsurge in the party’s fortunes.

Popularity rose among all groups other than far right nationalist Afrikaners who remained as violently opposed as ever. An emphasis on anti-fascist popular front style organising and the increasing prestige of the Soviet Union brought some dividends. Just as significantly the party showed a growing inclination to “Africanise” its approach to labour struggles, something helped by over 100,000 black workers being brought into industry, a 40 per cent increase on pre-war levels.  

Party influence was similarly strengthened by a willingness to work in rural areas and by imaginative campaigns against the infamous pass laws, in defence of squatters rights and against profiteering.

Again, though, while this period did see significant gains, it sometimes came at a cost, inner party factionalism and sometimes justified criticism for restraint in labour militancy during the “production first” war years being not least among them.

As the nightmare of apartheid began and as the Suppression of Communism Act started to be brutally enforced, the party was quickly driven underground and forced to function very much as a party in exile.

Ideologically, however, it’s probably fair to say that during this time the party developed its outlook in a much more concrete and sustained fashion, eventually publishing its detailed programme titled The Road to South African Freedom.

In terms of contents this owed much to the experiences of the people’s democracies of Eastern Europe in the immediate post war period and to Soviet theories about how post-colonial states could effectively by pass capitalist stages of development.

Party work accordingly began to stress the need for a national democratic revolution against what they considered to be “colonialism of a special type,” an analysis which enabled it to develop a growing respect and influence with the now mass based African National Congress.

Following the Sharpeville massacre of 1961, the ANC was to abandon non-violence, and again communists were pre-eminent in the “People’s War” of its armed wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe.

Just as importantly, the party became a key player in the tripartite alliance alongside its comrades in the ANC and Cosatu. By 1985 of the 35 members elected to the national executive, 21 were communists.

In 1990 legal restrictions were lifted, the party published its new programme The Path to Power and negotiations as to how apartheid was to end began.

Assessing the historic contribution of the party to ending racist rule, Lodge draws attention to the importance of its intellectual analysis of what South Africa was and how it could best be changed, its influence in the national liberation movement being out of all proportion to its size.

Lodge additionally emphasises the party’s efficient and targeted organisational prowess, particularly within the ANC and Cosatu where cadres, rightly or wrongly, often never drew any distinction between work for the party in particular and work for the tripartite alliance in general.

In terms of the armed struggle, the organisations heroic role remains unchallenged and indisputable, the incorrigible Joe Slovo and martyr Chris Hani having attained iconic status even among those who would offer no support for communist politics.

On an international level, the party was a central body in securing political, economic and military support for the anti-apartheid struggle. The ANC received a huge amount of aid from the Soviet Union and the GDR, solidarity that contrasted sharply with the relentlessly pro-apartheid politics of, for example, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

Finally, the SACP was multiracial and multinational to its core and received popular acclaim for its resolute fight against all forms of racism, anti semitism and communalism.

And today? The ANC government still continues to command overwhelming support and gains have been made in housing construction and in the provision of utilities. In terms of foreign policy, South Africa tends to play a broadly progressive role as well.

However, the country remains one of the world’s most unequal societies, unemployment is at record levels and a failure to nationalise mines and initiate land reform has led to an increase in support for somewhat opportunist and politically unstable bodies such as the Economic Freedom Fighters.

The brutal response of the state to strikes such as at Marikana strike in 2012 alienated many who had assumed that such anti-working-class violence would never be repeated in the post-apartheid era.

Led by the more than capable and comparatively youthful leader Blade Nzimande, in 2007 the party launched its new programme The South African Road to Socialism and membership was said to stand at 50,000. Ten years later it stood at 284,000 and by 2019 to an all-time high of 319,108, becoming in effect the country’s second largest political party

Although four leading communists continue to hold ministerial portfolios, it is not surprising that cracks have appeared in the SACPs longstanding alliance with the ANC.

The party openly campaigns against corruption, has been vocally critical of recent presidents and there have been some recent cases of it fielding independent candidates with limited but not necessarily negligible results.

By no means an easy read, like all in depth historical accounts it raises as many questions as it manages to provide answers and whether or not South African communists will succeed in building socialism in the coming years is obviously a moot point.

What is beyond question is that the party is as central to South African politics today as it has been over the past century and as a guide to understanding its development then, now and in the future Red Road to Freedom” is unapparelled.