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INKULULEKO PUBLICATIONS Distributors of The African Communist SUBSCRIPTION PRICE AFRICA £4. 00 per year including postage £8. 00 airmail per year (Readers in Nigeria can subscribe by sending 8 Naira to New Horizon Publications, p.o. Box 2165, Mushin Lagos, or to KPS Bookshop, PMB 1023, Afikpo, Imo State) BRITAIN £4. 00 per year including postage NORTH AMERICA ALL OTHER COUNTRIES $8. £0 per year including postage $15. £0 airmail per year £4. £0 per year including postage £8. £0 airmail per year Single copies: £1, $2 INKULULEKO PUBLICATIONS, 39 Goodge Street, London W1 P 1 FD ISSN 0001-9976 Proprietor: Dan Tloome The African Communist is available on microfilm and microfiche from University Microfilm International, 300 North Zeeb Road, Department P.R., Ann Arbor, Mi. 48106, U.S.A. Phototypesetting and artwork by Carlinpoint Ltd. (T.U.) 5 Dryden Street, London WC2 Printed by Interdruck Leipzig THE AFRICAN COMMUNIST Published quarterly in the interest of African solidarity, and as a forum for Marxist-Leninist thought throughout our Continent, by the South African Communist Party. BANNED IN SOUTH AFRICA This notice reminds readers that the University of Cape Town is oppposed to the State's system of censorship, which undermines academic freedom and restricts the potential contribution of this university and others to South African society. The University of Cape Town is required by law to comply with the rules and regulations pertaining to censorship, but does so under protest. No 109 Second Quarter 1987 CONTENTS 5 Intensify the Struggle on all Fronts! Political Statement of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party. 14 Editorial Notes South African Communist Party Elects New Officials; Botha's Election Farce; The KwaZulu Natal Alternative is a dead end; 80 Years Young. Peter Mackintosh 31 Is The Communist Party Programme Still Valid? A survey of the relationship between national and class struggle and the steps by which the Communist Party policy and programme have evolved. A Cadre in the SA CP Underground 48 The Role of Women in the Revolution All Party cadres must ask: How can we advance the participation of working women in the liberation struggle? Diaego 52 Anti-Communism: Weapon of Reaction An analysis of the methods used by the enemy, at home and abroad, to divide the liberation front. Denga 62 Making a New Approach to White South Africans As the revolutionary situation builds up, it is necessary for the liberation movement to make a systematic approach to the ruling class as well as its mass base. Ahmed Azad 73 Africa Notes and Comment Senegal: A Strategy of Alliances and Unity; Nigeria: The Working Class Speaks; Soviet Union: A True Friend; Mozambique: Democracy in Action. Thando Zuma 84 How the Ultra-Left Play into the Hands of The Ultra-Right Another contribution to the battle of ideas in the South African revolution. Vusizwe Seine 93 Henry Winston: A Man of Vision A tribute to the chairman of the Communist Party of the United States who died on December 12, 1986. 97 Book Reviews Apartheid's Second Front and Beggar Your Neighbours, both by Joseph Hanlon; SocialDemocracy and the StruggleAgainst Colonialism and Apartheid by V. Shubin; Communist and Marxist Parties of the World, a Keesing's Reference Publication, compiled and edited by Charles Hobdav" '-nakomanisi - The South African Communist Party 1921-1986, produced by Inkululeko Films; The Rise of the South African Reich and Moses Kotane, South African Revolutionary, both by Brian Bunting. 106 Letters to the Editor Anti-Communism, a major challenge to all patriots, from comrade Marc; Armed Seizure of power: a revolutionary objective, from Prodigal Hondo; Struggle against Bantustans, from A.M., Bophuthatswana. Correction: Page 1 of our last issue contained the inscription "No 108 Fourth Quarter 1986". This should, of course, have read "No 108 First Quarter 1987". INTENSIFY THE STRUGGLE ON ALL FRONTS Political Statement of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party The situation in our country is characterised by a sharpening confrontation between the revolutionary forces on one hand and the fascist regime on the other. In the period since we issued our last major statement, it is clear that the heightened political and military offensive served further to shift the balance of forces in favour of the democratic revolution. This has forced the apartheid regime to resort to extreme reaction, confirming the tendency we have observed before, that this regime can no longer rule in the old way. The revolutionary movement has achieved progress because it succeeded further to mobilise the masses of the people into struggle in both the urban and the rural areas. Important mass struggles have been waged throughout the country including in such localities as Alexandra Township, the Eastern Transvaal, the Lebowa and KwaNdebele bantustans and other areas. Of great importance also have been the mass campaigns for a people's education as well as the continuing and widespread rent strike which involves millions of working people. Our working masses also struck powerful blows for liberation when they joined together, on a nation-wide basis, in two general strikes on May Day andJune 16th. These actions reasserted the leading role of the working class in the national democratic revolution, demonstrated the strength of the alliance of class and national forces that are fighting for the victory of this revolution and showed their ability to act together nationally. All these mass actions, both local and national, drew greater numbers of the people into struggle, especially in the rural areas, and thus further broadened the mass base of the democratic revolution. These expanded forces for revolutionary change create new possibilities for an intensified and sustained political offensive at both local and national levels. This tendency is further reinforced by the fact the mass struggles we have referred to were also characterised by an open political challenge of the authority of the capitalist, white minority state. The general strikes, the struggles for an alternative education, against KwaNdebele bantustan, high rents and the apartheid system of local government, and others, deliberately focussed their attention on political questions and, fundamentally, the issue of the destruction of the apartheid structure of government. This spread of a revolutionary democratic consciousness emphasises the need for a programme of action to engage these millions of people in organised and purposeful struggle. The tendency of the growth of socialist ideas, especially among the workers and the youth, has also continued and has become a permanent feature in the developing political and ideological maturity of the revolutionary masses of our country. These socialist-minded forces have been in the thick of the struggles we have spoken of. They have been contributing practically to our advance towards liberation and socialism. The increase in the general level of consciousness and mobilisation of the masses has also been accompanied by the growth, the strengthening and the extension of the influence of the national democratic organisations. Indeed the struggles that rocked the apartheid regime became possible thanks to the efforts of these mass organisations. Their success demonstrated that we have the organisational capacity to respond to the increased resolve of the people to act, in fact to draw them into united national and local action as well as further to expand the organised strength of the democratic movement. In this connection one of the most significant developments is the establishment and multiplication of organs of people's power arising directly out of the struggle to make the country ungovernable and apartheid unworkable. The emergence of street and area committees, people's courts, self-defence units and workers' councils represents the birth of new organisational forms which root the revolutionary movement among the people and create additional elements which make ever more effective the conduct of the revolutionary struggle on all fronts. The Trade Unions Of importance also has been the development and the further strengthening of the democratic trade union movement and its centre, The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The final collapse of that representative of the white labour aristocracy, TUCSA, which had managed to attract some black workers, represents a notable step forward in the process of building the democratic trade union movement. The principles on which COSATU was founded have continued to spread among the workers. This creates the basis not only for organising the unorganised but also for those unions outside COSATU to join this democratic congress of the working class of our country. It is however also clear that the process of the mobilisation of the workers into a united trade union movement has not been and will not be straightforward. Various groups are determined to ensure the division of this movement and to strengthen right-wing forces in general. The attempt by Buthelezi, head of the apartheid KwaZulu bantustan, to impose his own yellow and tribally-based union on the workers furthers these reactionary aims. Also of concern is the effort to establish an alternative trade union centre in the so-called CUSA/AZACTU federation. The United States AFL-CIO and the Brussels-based ICFTU do not accept that COSATU should be supported as the one democratic trade union federation of the workers of our country. They have therefore continued to support various groups within the working-class movement in an effort to build up a pro-imperialist faction that would act as a collaborationist force within the national democratic movement as a whole. If revolutionaries maintain their guard, these schemes are doomed to failure, because they do not take into account the level of consciousness attained by the workers and the lessons that the workers have drawn from such earlier experience as the attempt by the ICFTU to establish the so-called FOFATUSA, during the fifties.

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