:ommunistW :ommunistW NO 70 THIRD QUARTER 1977 AFRICAN REVOLUTION ON THE MARCH!! INKULULEKO PUBLICATIONS Distributors of The African Communist PRICE AND SUBSCRIPTION AFRICA lOp per copy 40p per year post free Airmail £5.00 per year (Nigerian subscribers can send 1 Naira to our agent at KPS Bookshop, PMB 23, Afikpo, Imo State) BRITAIN 25p per copy £1.00 per year post free ALL OTHER COUNTRIES $1. 00 per copy $4. 00 per year post free Airmail $10.00 per year. US currency INKULULEKO PUBLICATIONS, 39 Goodge Street, London W.1. THE AFRICAN COMMUNIST Published quarterly in the interests of African solidarity, and as a forum for Marxist-Leninist thought throughout our Continent, by the South African Communist Party No. 70 Third Quarter 1977 CONTENTS 5 EDITORIAL NOTES African Revolution on the March; The Role of Chief Lutuli; A Great Leader Murdered. 21 THE WAY FORWARD FROM SOWETO Political Report adopted by the Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party, April 1977. A. Azad 51 WHAT PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM MEANS TO AFRICA The concept of proletarian internationalism is as valid today as it ever was, and the world communist movement must strive to deepen and extend it. Z. Nkosi 71 HOW THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION CAME TO SOUTH AFRICA An historical account of the way in which South African socialist organisations, the forerunners of the Communist Party, reacted to the news of the Russian Revolution in 1917. A.N.C. Kumalo 88 POEM: Sovietsky Narod Dedicated to the Soviet People on the 60th anniversary of the Great October Revolution. A. Langa 90 MOBUTU AND HIS IMPERIALIST ALLIES The mass insurrection in Shaba revealed popular discontent and rejection of a corrupt regime. 95 DEATH OF M.P. NAICKER Funeral Address by Dr Yusuf Dadoo, national chairman of the South African Communist Party; and comrade Naicker's last interview. Dialego 99 Philosophy and Class Struggle: 4 - THE MATERIALIST THEORY OF HISTORY The fourth and last instalment of a series on the basic principles of Marxism seen in the South African context. The series will be published shortly in pamphlet form by Inkululeko Publications. 112 ON THE QUESTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS A reprint from the Cuban Communist Party paper Granma. 116 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR On China: from Charles Oladipo Akinde, Nigeria, and Spider Hintsa, South Africa. 120 DOCUMENTS Statement by the Socialist Vanguard Party in Algeria on the tasks of the progressive forces to forge the political instruments of revolution. EDITORIAL NOTES AFRICAN REVOLUTION ON THE MARCH The African continent is in a ferment of social revolution. From one end of the continent to the other, the pressures for change are growing, and peoples are being galvanised into action in support of contending class and national forces. On the surface the contemporary African scene seems to be one of unending conflict, of coups and counter-coups, of invasions, plots and assassinations. To the imperialists and racists the turmoil in Africa is proof of "the defects of the African character", "the backwardness of African civilisation", "the instability of African institutions", as though such things as concentration camps, mass arrests, torture, judicial murder, pogroms and executions were never known in the recent history of Europe or America. Even to lump all Africans together is an insult to our nationhood, our history and our culture. Yes, we are varying shades of black and white; and yes, we live on the African continent. But no, we are not all the same. Daily it is becoming more and more evident that Africa consists of a variety of very different nations, states and peoples, in different stages of historical development, and that African society is subject to the same divisions, stresses and strains as affect the development of the peoples of other continents. In actual fact it is the imperialists themselves with their policy of neo.colonialism, economic blackmail, CIA plots and assassinations, bribery, corruption etc., who are responsible for the conflicts which scar the face of contemporary Africa. As a cover and in order to hoodwink world public opinion, they try to lay the blame at the door of the African people, hoping in this way to justify their continued exploitation of the continent and its human and material resources. But if there is one thing which all Africans have in common, it is their recent experience of imperialist domination. At the end of the second world war, there were only three nominally independent countries on the African continent - Ethiopia, Liberia and Egypt - and none of them was in any sense free from the clutches of imperialism, which either owned or disposed of the majority of their resources in the same way as it did in the rest of colonial Africa. First to achieve political independence in the post-war period was Libya in 1951, followed by Sudan, Morocco and Tunisia in 1956, Ghana in 1957, Guinea in 1958. By now the race for independence was under way. No tewer than 17 states broke free in 1960, and today the total is 49. Only a few pockets remain - the territory of the Afars and Issas (scheduled for independence from France in June of this year); the still disputed Western Sahara (divided by Spain between Morocco and Mauritania in 1975 but contested by the Polisario front which proclaimed the Democratic Saharan Arab Republic in February 1976); and closer home, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa. Imperialism completely distorted the indigenous way of life of the various African countries, and its worst crime was to deprive them of their self- sufficiency, the capacity to develop and dispose of their own natural and human resources. The hideous ravages of the slave trade are now universally recognised and condemned, even if the psychological and physical damage caused to Africa has not yet been completely repaired. But even where imperialism did bring about economic development of one kind or another, the new wealth generated was almost entirely siphoned off to the metropolitan country, leaving the peoples of Africa ever more dependent on their foreign masters. It was recognition of their inability to maintain their domination in the old way which, after the second world war, made the imperialist powers more ready to come to terms with the national liberation movements in many countries, more ready to embark on the process of decolonisation. This recognition was not manifested equally everywhere, as the bitter conflicts in Malaya, Algeria, Kenya, Vietnam, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola etc. demonstrated. But if there is one general rule which has emerged from decolonisation, it is that the peaceful transfer of power has been to the greater benefit of the imperialist country, whereas on the other hand the attempt to hold back the independence movement by force has resulted in the ultimate defeat of the imperialist power and the drastic curtailment if not total elimination of its former economic predominance. There are naturally exceptions to this generalisation, but they merely prove the rule. It is no accident that the governments of Mozambique and Angola have adopted the policies of Marxism- Leninism as their guiding lights. Losing Ground There is a growing realisation in Africa, as elsewhere in the Third World, that the achievement of political independence does not bring in its wake the economic independence which could alone enable the newly independent government to promote an improvement in the living standards of its people. Furthermore, in many African countries independence has resultid merely in the replacement of the imperialist administration by an indigenous elite which has performed the same function on behalf of foreign investors, fattening itself in the process while leaving the mass of the people in the same poverty and ignorance as before. Earlier this year the United Nations Economic Commission. for Africa published a report showing that since 1960 there has been no marked improvement in the economies of many African countries, and that independent Africa has succeeded less than any other region in the world in combating the evils of under- development. Fourteen countries whose per capita incomes range between 100 and 200 dollars a year have achieved no growth at all, and under the influence of neo-colonialism their economies have been declining. A further 22 countries with annual per capita incomes of between 100 and 200 dollars have recorded an average annual growth per capita of only 1.4 per cent - far below the targets set by the UN, which have been achieved by only 9 African countries, four of them oil producers: Algeria, Gabon, Libya and Nigeria. The other five countries which have reached the UN standard are the Congo Republic, Ivory Coast, Sao Tome and Principe, Tunisia and Zambia, which have per capita incomes of between 300 and 400 US dollars a year. Eleven countries have per capita incomes of between 200 and 300 dollars - Cape Verde, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal and Swaziland. Another 11 have per capita incomes of between 100 and 200 dollars - Botswana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritania, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Togo and Uganda. Africa's poorest countries with per capita incomes of less than 100 dollars are Benin, Burundi, Chad, Ethiopia, Guinea, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania, Upper Volta and Zaire. The overall conclusion of the UN Commission is that if development levels remain unchanged, by the end of the century Africa will be worse off relative to the rest of the world than it was in 1960. The varying income levels revealed by these sets of figures conceal a number of important factors. The first is that per capita income figures are no guide to the average standard of living, because most of the wealth of the country concerned is distributed either to overseas investors by way of dividends, or to the local governing elite by way of taxes, perks, corruption etc.