One Azania, One Nation The national question in South Africa No Sizwe One Azania, One Nation was first published by Zed Press, London in June 1979. ISBN Hb 0 905762 40 1 Pb 0 905762 41 X © Copyright No Sizwe, 1979 All rights reserved. This digital edition published 2013 © Copyright The Estate of Neville Edward Alexander 2013 This edition is not for sale and is available for non-commercial use only. All enquiries relating to commercial use, distribution or storage should be addressed to the publisher: The Estate of Neville Edward Alexander, PO Box 1384, Sea Point 8060, South Africa 2 CONTENTS List of abbreviations 4 Instead of a Preface 6 Introduction 7 1. The National Party’s theory of nationality 22 2. The reserve strategy and the growth of capitalism 57 3. Responses of the oppressed 70 4. The Bantustan strategy 102 5. The movement for national liberation 155 6. Elements of the theory of the nation 214 7. The national question in South Africa 268 Postscript 300 Appendix: Documents from the Soweto uprising of 1976 305 Select bibliography 317 3 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS A.B. Afrikaner Bond A.N.C. African National Congress A.P.O. African People’s Organisation B.A.A.D. Bantu Affairs Administration Department B.B. Afrikaner Broederbond B.B.V. Boeren Beskermings Verenigin B.C.M. Black Consciousness Movement B.L.S. Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland C.A.D. Coloured Affairs Department C.P.C. Coloured People’s Congress C.P.S.A. Communist Part of South Africa (prior to 1950) C.Y.L. African National Congress Youth League F.A.K. Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge I.C.U. Industrial and Commercial Workers Union I.S.L. International Socialist League N.E.U.M. Non-European Unity Movement N.I.C. Natal Indian Congress N.P. National Party P.A.C. Pan-Africanist Congress P.R.P. Progressive Reform Party R.S.A. Republic of South Africa S.A.C.P. South African Communist Party (post 1962) S.A.I.C. South African Indian Congress S.A.I.R.R. South African Institute of Race Relations S.A.L.P. South African Labour Party S.A.R. South African Republic (Transvaal) S.A.S.O. South African Students Organisation U.M.S.A. Unity Movement of South Africa U.P. United South African National Party 4 Man has never shown as much interest in knowing other men and other societies as during this century of imperialist domination. An unprecedented mass of information, of hypotheses and theories has been built up, notably in the fields of history, ethnology, ethnography, sociology and culture concerning people or groups brought under imperialist domination. The concepts of race, caste, ethnicity, tribe, nation, culture, identity, dignity, and many others, have become the objects of increasing attention from those who study men and the societies described as ‘primitive’ or ‘evolving’. More recently, with the rise of liberation movements, the need has arisen to analyse the character of these societies in the light of the struggle they are waging, and to decide the factors which launch or hold back this struggle. Amilcar Cabral ‘Identity and Dignity in the Context of the National Liberation Struggle’. Address on the occasion of receiving an honorary doctorate from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, 15 October 1972. Reprinted in Return to the Source: Selected Speeches of Amilcar Cabral. 5 INSTEAD OF A PREFACE THE PREFACE TO THIS WORK can only be written once South Africa is ruled by the revolutionary people. Until then, three things need to be said. First, anyone acquainted with scholarship will realise that there are gaps in the material consulted. These gaps are themselves an important part of the story to be told in the preface. The work is nonetheless being published because, together with many who have read the manuscript or helped in its gestation, I consider the subject to be so urgently in need of a thorough airing that publication should not be delayed. Second, even though almost every other contribution on the national question is considered critically by me, it should be stressed that my approach has been motivated throughout by the desire to facilitate the unification of the national liberation movement by fomenting a discussion on the basis of national unity and on the political-strategic implications of ideas about who constitutes the South African nation. Third, many people have helped me to produce this book. All of them have perforce to remain anonymous for the present. Some of them do not share my views at all. They, more than my comrades even, have to be thanked for their broadminded loyalty to scholarship and ideas. No Sizwe January 1979 6 INTRODUCTION Nationality and the relationship between theory and strategy IN THIS STUDY I EXAMINE the theory of nationality which has been propagated by the ideologues and theoreticians of the National Party in South Africa since the mid Fifties. This theory, the official justification for Bantustans and for the policy of Separate Development, purports to be of general validity and in line with political thought and practice throughout the modern world. Theoretically, it involves the question of what the nation of South Africa is, i.e. who constitutes the nation? Since the answer to this apparently simple question is the stuff of political controversy in this country, it is necessary to investigate the historical evolution of the theory of the National Party, to reveal the reasons for its propagation, to show whose interests it serves, to consider alternative theories, and to examine all these in terms of their relation to the class struggle in South Africa. The balkanisation of South Africa by means of the ruling party’s Bantustan strategy has often been pilloried as fraudulent, monstrous, ludicrous and so forth. Yet the very term ‘Balkanisation’ bears within it a historic judgement. For the centrifugal rupture of the Russian, Turkish and Austro-Hungarian empires shortly before, during and after World War I resulted in state formations which have been accepted universally as constituting viable and legitimate nations. In a sense, therefore, the use of the term ‘balkanisation’ imparts to the Bantustans a quasi-legitimacy which is at variance with the critique it is meant to express. The national liberation movement in South Africa finds 7 One Azania, One Nation itself today in a situation analogous to that which faced the precursors of the First International in the middle of the last century in Europe. There, the Pan-Slavonic policy of balkanisation pursued by the Tsarist regime was aimed at weakening the Austro-Hungarian Empire and especially its Turkish rival in the Balkan peninsula. The incipient nationalism of the East European nationalities, created under the impulsion of a politically aspirant bourgeoisie was the main tool of this imperialistic drive to expansion. Since Tsarist Russia was the symbol and bulwark of all that was reactionary and backward-looking in Europe, Marx and Engels and other socialists and liberals were implacably opposed to balkanisation, and many went so far as to deny outright the legitimacy of the nationalisms of Eastern Europe.1 The encouragement of these reactionary nationalisms was seen by the representatives of both the liberal bourgeoisie (e.g. Mazzini) and the working classes to be in direct conflict with the real interests of these classes. But, as Lenin later realised, the emancipation of the serfs (1861) neutralised the historic reactionary character of Russia: the Tsarist empire became in all important respects a colony of Western Europe and was unable (after the crushing of the Polish Revolt of 1863) to play its previous counter-revolutionary role. This altered the character of these Eastern European nationalisms. Indeed, they came to be a vital dimension of the struggle against capitalism and feudalism in Russia itself. South Africa is the Tsarist Russia of the Southern African sub-continent. Whether in Namibia, Zimbabwe, or South Africa itself, its apartheid policy of separate ‘nationhood’ for so-called ‘Bantu’ and other ‘nations’ serves an analogous purpose. Hence political strategy dictates that this nefarious policy be opposed by all possible means. The alleged success of the Turnhalle conference in Namibia in 1978, and the claims made for the ‘independent’ Transkei as representing a model of peaceful decolonisation, are 8 Introduction indications that, in certain quarters of the ‘Free World’, there are influential people waiting to latch on to anything that will lend respectability to a policy and theory that have called forth universal abhorrence. Already the liberation movement itself has had to witness the desolating spectacle of some of its supposedly staunchest members defecting to the Bantustans amid ablaze of publicity. Men such as Joe Matthews (formerly of the A.N.C.), T.T. Letlake (ex-P.A.C.), and Digby Koyana (ex-Unity Movement) have thrown in their miserable lot with the partitionists and supine followers of the National Party’s formula for South Africa – the Matanzimas, Mangopes, etc. They, more than any others, have revealed the counter-revolutionary potential of the Bantustan strategy. The national liberation movement, i.e. the various organisations of which it is composed, has presumably developed a counter-strategy. Illegality of operation has by and large prevented this strategy from being put forward explicitly. Very often that which is written does not reflect the real views of the leadership who have to protect their membership and supporters inside the country. However, strategies can also be inferred from political acts, be they of a literary, mobilising, or military character. The success or failure of such strategies will not be discussed by this work; what this book is concerned with is the fact that there does not seem to exist any systematic refutation of the theory of nationality which the National Party has been propagating.