Red Alert: David Ivon Jones, Moses Kotane, JB Marks: The story of fine revolutionaries, the story of our liberation struggle
Our President, Comrade Jacob Zuma has recently announced that negotiations are underway with the Russian government to repatriate the remains of three of the most important people to lead, guide and direct the South African struggle in its formative years. These are David Ivon Jones (1883-1924); John Beaver "Uncle JB" Marks (1903-1972); and Moses Maune Kotane (1905-1978), "Chief Architect of the South African Struggle".
The fine revolutionaries and internationalists dedicated lives to the struggle for our freedom. Their struggle was not confined in national borders, and so were their lives, and places of rest. The families requested their remains to be repatriated and reburied in South Africa. The Communist Party respects, and will work with both the families and government to ensure the success of the process, and the Party will confer the highest honour that this great revolutionaries deserve.
They all died, and were buried with honour, in the country which was then the most reliable and stalwart supporter of world proletarian revolution and anti-imperialist struggle, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: although the names of later Communist heroes such as Joe Slovo, Ruth First and Chris Hani are still well known, many of our younger generation do not know of the crucial role played by these three martyrs in the development of the South African liberation struggle:
DAVID IVON JONES was born in Aberystwyth, Wales and was a Welsh speaking Welshman for whom English was a second language. He contracted TB when very young which made him emigrate, to a drier climate, first to New Zealand, then, in 1909 to South Africa.
A brilliant socialist theoretician, he became General Secretary of the South African Labour Party in 1914. Prior to that, in 1912, following the formation of the South African Native National Congress (now the ANC), he sent a letter to The Star newspaper in Johannesburg congratulating the new organisation on its formation - the only white person in South Africa to do so.
When the First World War broke out towards the end of 1914, he denounced the South African Government for sending young men to fight for the British Empire and take part in mutual slaughter in a war between competing imperialist blocs. He became a founder member of the War-on-War League and in September 1915, together with other principled socialists, broke ranks with the pro-War Labour Party to form the International Socialist League (ISL) which was to become of the organisations and main forerunner that formed the Communist Party of South Africa.
Unlike many other South African White socialists of the time, he also saw the problem created by the creation of an all-White Labour Party. In an article for the new ISL weekly paper, the International called Parting of the Ways, (1st October 1915), Jones said:
"An Internationalism which does not concede the fullest rights which the Native working class is capable of claiming will be a sham. One of the justifications for our withdrawal from the Labour Party is that it gives us untrammelled freedom to deal, regardless of political fortunes, with the great and fascinating problem of the Native."
This was a major contribution in the birth of the principle of non-racialism in South Africa of which the Communist Party was to emerge as the leading force and living example. Jones immediately also recognised the Russian Revolution of February 1917 which overthrew the monarchy but had no clear direction as:
a bourgeois revolution, but arriving when the night of capitalism is far spent,
and later that year gave full support for the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917. In November 1920, David Ivon Jones left South Africa for Soviet Union where he reported on South Africa to the Communist International (Comintern), the world Communist Party. Although he maintained contact with his comrades in South Africa, he could not take part in the formation of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in 1921.
In Russia, suffering severely from TB, Jones studied the works of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and Vladimir Lenin, becoming the first person to translate Lenin into English. In his last letter to the CPSA General Secretary before his death in April 1924, he wrote:
We stand for Bolshevism, and in all minds Bolshevism stands for the Native worker.
JOHN BEAVER MARKS was born in Ventersdorp, Western Transvaal (now in North-West Province). His father was an African railway worker; his mother an Afrikaner midwife. Although he could have claimed to be Coloured, he always identified himself as an African. He was a teacher by profession. He joined the ANC in 1928 under the influence of his father who was a staunch member. After joining the ANC, he became acquainted with Albert Nzula, the first African to become General Secretary of the Communist Party. In 1929 he agreed to assist the Communist Party by interpreting for Thabo Mofutsanyana at a meeting in Pochefstroom. White hooligans who had come to disrupt the meeting started shouting, when, in retaliation for their insults, Marks told them, "Africa belongs to us". Immediately after this incident, J.B. Marks joined the CPSA.
In 1932 Marks was elected to the CPSA Central Committee and then sent for training in the Soviet Union; following his return, he was to spend the rest of his life working as a Communist. In 1937 he played an active role in the revival of the ANC at the Jubilee Conference (following the removal of the militant and pro-Communist ANC President Josiah Tshangana Gumede by reactionary forces in 1930, it had almost collapsed).
J.B. Marks's greatest personal triumph was in the organisation of the African Mineworkers Union (AMWU) in 1941. This was the first real trade union organisation of African mineworkers in South African history. In 1945, Marks became President of the powerful Council of Non-European Trade Unions, and in the following year came the Great Miners' Strike of 1946.
In 1950, J.B. Marks was amongst those who in the face of the Suppression of Communism Act, voted to dissolve the Communist Party of South Africa; but in the same year he was voted President of the powerful Transvaal ANC. In 1953, when the CPSA reconstituted itself underground as the South African Communist Party (SACP), he became Party Chairperson. Suffering acute problems with banning orders, Marks was sent to Tanzania by ANC President, O.R. Tambo, to join Moses Kotane in organising the ANC externally.
In 1969, J.B. Marks took part in the ANC Consultative Conference held Morogoro, Tanzania, which followed the Hani Memorandum, written by Chris Hani, another Communist, who raised serious concerns and justifiably about the neglect of the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) cadres who had fought side by side with the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZPRA) in the Wankie and Sipholilo campaigns in Zimbabwe, and the general lack of organisation within the ANC. The Conference re-organised the ANC and established the Revolutionary Council (composed mostly of Communists), which was to guide the armed struggle thereafter. In 1971, Marks was became ill and moved to Moscow, where he died the following year.
MOSES MAUNE KOTANE has rightly been described as ‘Chief Architect of the South African Struggle'. He rose to prominence in the 1930s at a time when the ANC had been nearly destroyed elitism and the Communist Party had dwindled into a sect with very little relevance to the South African struggle. Kotane played a major role both in re-organising and directing these two organisations along a road which would put them at the forefront of the struggle and also in bringing them together and co-ordinating their activity. He was General Secretary and therefore leader of the South African Communist Party from 1939-1978.
Moses Maune Kotane was born in Tampostad in the district of Rustenburg, then in Transvaal, on 9th August 1905. He came from a Tswana-speaking peasant family and spent his early years as a herd-boy. He was 15 years old when he first entered the doors of a mission school, where he was to study for only two years before starting work as a ‘kitchen-boy'.
Because of his poor early education, Kotane was to spend a great deal of time trying to compensate and studied right through his life.
After passing through a number of menial, low-paid jobs, in 1928 Kotane secured work at Quinn's Bakery, Krugersdorp as a packet dispatcher. The same year he joined the ANC and the Baker's Union, which had been organised by the Communist Party; he also attended the Communist Party Night School. In 1929 Moses Kotane joined the CPSA.
The CPSA had been formed in 1921, predominantly by white miners. At its formation there was only one black member, T.W. Thibedi. At its 3rd Congress in 1924, the Party agreed that it must struggle to obtain a black majority, and by 1928, this had become a reality, although whites continued as the majority in the Central Executive Committee for some years to come.
In 1929, following a visit to the Soviet Union by CPSA, a leading member James La Guma accompanied by ANC President J.T. Gumede, the Resolution on the South African Question was adopted by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) following the 6th Congress of the Comintern: this stated:
"the Communist Party of South Africa must combine the fight against all anti-native laws with the general political slogan in the fight against British domination, the slogan of an independent native South African republic as a stage towards a workers' and peasants' republic, with full equal rights for all races, black, coloured and white."
And to achieve this goal:
"The Party should pay particular attention to the embryonic national organizations among the natives, such as the African National Congress. The Party, while retaining its full independence, should participate in these organizations, should seek to broaden and extend their activity. Our aim should be to transform the African National Congress into a fighting nationalist revolutionary organisation..."
Many South African Communists did not understand the necessity of the Independent Native Republic, the concept of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) was not understood and many saw the ANC as a weak and ineffectual organisation. S.P. Bunting, the main person behind the 1924 decision to recruit a black majority, believed in moving directly to a workers' and peasants' state - and was supported in this by many African comrades, notably T.W. Thibedi.
In December 1927, Douglas Wolton, who had come from Britain in 1925 became the first full-time General Secretary of the Party, together with his wife Molly, like him, hard-working and fanatical, led the CPSA. In 1929, Albert Nzula was appointed General Secretary in 1930 but the Woltons, joined by Lazar Bach, a recent Jewish immigrant from Latvia who was extremely well versed in the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Joseph Stalin, pursued what they called the line of ‘Bolshevisation' of the Party. In 1931, in their efforts to build a more disciplined Party, they expelled a large group of members as ‘Right-Deviationists', the most prominent amongst them being S.P. Bunting.
In 1929 Moses Kotane was elected as Chairmperson of the South African Federation of Non-European Trade Unions; in 1931 he became a full-time functionary of the CPSA, starting as a print compositor for the Party newspaperUmsebenzi. Also in 1931, Albert Nzula became the first black South African to go to the Lenin School in Moscow for political training, then, in 1932, he was followed by a number of others including Moses Kotane. Sadly, Albert Nzula died of pneumonia in Moscow in January 1934.
During his training, the Comintern saw the value of Moses Kotane:
His training and ideological development at the Lenin School indicates on the basis of his past record that he will prove one of the most valuable of the leading cadres.
Report to Comintern, Information Re the Leading Cadres CPSA (8th June 1933)
Kotane, arriving back in South Africa early in 1933 was horrified by the deterioration of the CPSA, membership had fallen from over 1 700 to about 150 under the Wolton-Bach leadership. In August the same year, the Woltons left South Africa permanently to live in Britain, Lazar Bach then remained at the helm in the Party - intensifying the Wolton line. Bach interpreted the ‘Independent Native Republic' slogan not as a call for a National Democratic Revolution, but as one for a socialist revolution. Criticising a formulation by Kotane in Umsebenzi, 9th June 1933 (Kotane was at the time Editor of the Party journal) that:
the CP [Communist Party] leads the fight for an Independent Native Republic, for the democratic dictatorship and Soviet Power, to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the building of socialism. According to Kotane, the proletariat is more national conscious than class conscious. Quoted: A. Lerumo, Fifty Fighting Years Chapter 4 (1971)
On 23rd February 1934, Moses Kotane wrote from Cradock to the Johannesburg District Committee - it became famous as the Cradock Letter and opened up the way for the genuine Africanisation of the Communist Party.
The letter states:
"the Party is beyond the realm of realities, we are simply theoretical and our theory is less connected with practice. If one investigates the general ideology of our Party members (especially the whites), if sincere, he will not fail to see that they subordinate South Africa in the interests of Europe, in fact, ideologically they are not S. Africans, they are foreigners who know nothing about and who are not the least interested in the country in which they are living at present."
Thus began Kotane's battle with Lazar Bach.
In November 1934, Bach went to Moscow in preparation for the 7th Congress of the Comintern the following year. He went expecting to be fully vindicated in his opinions. However, it was not only the CPSA which had suffered under the sectarian, ultra-left line: other Communist Parties had also suffered internal division and decline. In addition, Hitler and his Nazi Party had assumed power in Germany in 1933 and fascism and related right-wing extremism was taking hold across Europe. The Comintern was already aware of the need to change direction and the line did change to: "For the Unity of the Working-Class against Fascism."
Bach was detained in the Soviet Union, never to return, and Kotane returned to champion the new line, becoming General Secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa in 1939.
Moses Kotane and J.B. Marks had taken part in the revival of the ANC at the Jubilee Conference of 1937; they worked together with the Anglican priest, Rev. James Calata and the Editor of Bantu World, Selope Thema. Methodist minister Rev. Z.R. Mahabane, who had been ANC President-General from 1924-1927, became President-General for a second term. The Jubilee Conference was to usher in a time of co-operation between the ANC and the Communist Party which has lasted until today. It also was the beginning of the life-long collaboration between Moses Kotane and J.B. Marks.
Early in 1939, the CPSA under Kotane's leadership, gained an important and strategic new recruit in Yusuf Dadoo, an active member of the Transvaal Indian Congress and was already Secretary of the Non-European United Front (NEUF) formed in 1938 in which Thabo Mofutsanyana, J.B. Marks and one of the first South African women Communists, Josie Mpama were active members. At about the same time, Dadoo and others formed the Nationalist Bloc within the South African Indian Congress which pledged both to support the national liberation struggle in India and to unite with Africans in South Africa in a joint struggle.
In 1940, the ANC elected Dr A.B. Xuma as President-General. ANC re-organisation begun as soon as he was elected and in 1943, with the help of Afrikaner Communist lawyer Bram Fischer, a new ANC Constitution was drawn up and approved. The House of Chiefs (modelled on the British House of Lords), was abolished and for the first time women were made full members. Xuma also established a working committee to supervise organisation and established a permanent office in Johannesburg. In 1945 Moses Kotane, J.B. Marks and another Communist, Dan Tloome were elected to the ANC Executive.
During this period resistance to the pass laws increased both amongst Africans and Indians. In 1944, the National Anti-Pass Council was formed which included Kotane, Xuma, Dadoo and Mpama.
Under Kotane's leadership, the Communist Party had changed from an insignificant sect into a Leninist vanguard party with a clear vision, capable of leading mass action.
The ANC Youth League (ANCYL) was formed in 1944 under the leadership of Lembede, Mda, Sisulu, Tambo and Mandela. The militant Youth League had pushed for the Programme of Action, which in 1949 was drafted by Msimang, Tambo and Kotane. However, within the Youth League, there was a spirit of racial intolerance and anti-communism, the adherents of this tendency called themselves ‘Africanists' and wanted only ‘Africa for the Africans' - without regard to what form the economy should take, and opposed joint action with people from other racial groups. Most of all they opposed Communism as a "foreign ideology".
After the Programme of Action, which included mass action and civil disobedience was drafted it was opposed by A.B. Xuma who was used to organising deputations to government and writing polite but firm letters to Prime Minister Jan Smuts. At the 1949 ANC Conference, the Youth League obtained the acceptance of the Programme of Action, the replacement of President-General Dr A.B. Xuma by Dr. J.S. Moroka and the election of Walter Sisulu as Secretary-General of the ANC.
In 1950 the Communist Party was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act, introduced by the first apartheid government, which had come into power in 1948 led by D. F. Malan. Under the Act, membership of the Party was enough to incur a 10 year prison sentence without the option of a fine.
Though many Party members wanted to openly resist the Act and were prepared to go to prison for their beliefs, the leadership, under the guidance of Kotane and Marks, decided to dissolve the Party before the Act could come in to force. This Act was subsequently used against the ANC, PAC and even the Liberal Party.
In 1953, still under the leadership of Kotane the Party re-organised secretly as the South African Communist Party (SACP), only announcing its existence in 1961. In 1960 African Communist began publication in London, initially not acknowledging its origin. This theoretical journal was to become an important ideological weapon during the struggle, not only for South Africa, but for the continent of Africa.
Unlike some other members of the ANC Youth League, Sisulu soon saw the value of co-operating with all those opposed to apartheid, and when the Campaign of Defiance Against Unjust Laws started in 1952, he actively worked with members of the South African Indian Congress such as Yusuf Dadoo and Maulvi Cachalia.
During the Campaign, Nelson Mandela was the Volunteer-in-Chief; people marched and occupied public places marked ‘Europeans Only'. More than 8 000 people were arrested, including most of the ANC and SAIC leadership. After his arrest, Moroka decided to appoint his own attorney and distance himself from the other trialists.
The entire leadership (including Moroka) were given suspended sentences. In December 1952, Moroka was replaced as President-General by Albert Luthuli.
Seeing the obvious advantages of a broad approach and under the influence of Moses Kotane and J.B. Marks, Walter Sisulu joined an undercover SACP school in 1954, joined the Party in 1955 (just before the Congress of the People) and was elected to the underground Politburo in 1956.
During the term of office of Luthuli, Kotane was to act as his closest adviser. The SACP, under the leadership of Kotane, was therefore able to influence and be influenced on direction to the militancy of the both the Youth League and the ANC.
In 1955, the Congress of the People proper was held in Kliptown. This Congress not only included the ANC, but also the South African Indian Congress (SAIC), the South African Coloured People's Organisation (SACPO) - later to be re-named the Coloured People's Congress - the Congress of Democrats (CoD) representing democratic whites and the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) representing the organised working class. Together they formed the Congress Alliance.
Despite his major role in building the Congress Alliance, during 1955, Moses Kotane, representing the ANC and Maulvi Cachalia representing the SAIC did not attend the Congress of the People, but instead were sent to the historic Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, Indonesia which brought together the newly independent states of Asia and Africa together with the various national liberation movements and parties.
On their way to Bandung, they were to meet and be hosted by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970) and Indian Prime Minister Jawarharlal Nehru (1889-1964). The Conference was also attended by Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) at that time Prime Minister of Gold Coast, who, two years later was to become President of independent Ghana and Chinese Foreign Minister, Zhou Enlai (1898-1976). The Conference was to be a step towards the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
At the Congress of the People, the main business was the discussion and formulation of the Freedom Charter. In every one of the Congress organisations SACP cadres formed an important part of the leadership. Party members also played a major role in the drafting of the Freedom Charter. The Freedom Charter was the product of the ‘Native Republic' thesis and the work of Moses Kotane in putting the thesis at the centre of the activity of the Communist Party and transmitting that policy to the mass organisation, the ANC.
Through the Freedom Charter, the ANC had transformed itself from a black protest organisation into a national movement with a political and economic programme, prepared to take power and to run government.
By 1961, with the banning of the ANC and the PAC following the Sharpeville massacre, the time for armed struggle had arrived. The decision to form Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) was taken by the SACP and the ANCYL; Nelson Mandela became Commander-in Chief. Second World War veteran and SACP member Jack Hodgson was the first to train young MK cadres in the use of explosives; others such as Wilton Mkwayi, Raymond Mhlaba and Joe Gqabi were sent to China for training. (Later, most of the training would be done with the assistance of the Soviet Union). The SACP was to play a major role in MK throughout its history.
In 1962, the SACP launched its programme, The Road to South African Freedom, which defined for the first time Colonialism of a Special Type (CST) and the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). This document, which enlarges on the ideas found in the Freedom Charter, clearly bears the vision of Moses Kotane within the context of the leadership and membership collective of the Communist Party.
Later in 1962, at the first ANC Conference held outside the country in Lobatse, Bechuanaland (now Botswana), Moses Kotane was asked by O.R.Tambo, then head of the ANC External Mission, to leave the country and assist in its work. Kotane had already played an important role in preparing clandestine structures even before the ANC was banned. Moses Kotane arrived in Tanzania in 1963 and became ANC Treasurer-General. His self-discipline and tight control of the purse strings played an important role in firmly establishing the ANC in exile.
Kotane worked in Morogoro, Tanzania together with his old friend and comrade J.B. Marks, until he suffered a stroke early in 1969 and was sent to Moscow for treatment. He remained in the USSR for the rest of his life. Moses Kotane died in 1978 still General Secretary of the Party which from its beginnings as a small sect, he had built into a genuine revolutionary force.
He was buried in Moscow next to his old comrade, J.B. Marks. At their funerals, both Marks and Kotane were honoured by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and other Communist parties and liberation movements, as well as by the ANC and SACP.
In his Introduction to Brian Bunting's Moses Kotane, South African Revolutionary (1975) Yusuf Dadoo had this to say:
"His life is a true example of the consistency between proletarian internationalism and healthy nationalism. He spurned racialism in all its forms whether expressed in white arrogance or black chauvinism. Never hiding his dedication to the cause of communism, he also became a respected leader of the African National Congress because of his great contribution to the work of that organisation over many decades."
This article first appeared in a special edition of Umsebenzi Online, the SACP's online journal.
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