• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

No, ý5 OCI-D"EC I963 No, ý5 OCI-D"EC I963 THE AFRICAN COMMUNIST This journal is published four times a year by the South African Communist Party. DISTRIBUTION Subscripticns, orders and all correspondence and enquiries should be addressed to the distributor: ELLIS BOWLES, 52 Palmerston Road, East Sheen, London, SW 14, England. PRICE Africa except Republic of S. Africa, Is. All other countries, Is. 6d. YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION Africa except Republic of S. Africa, 4s. All other countries, 6s. or US $1. Airmail, 15s. or US $2.50. DISCOUNT Bookshops, booksellers and distribution agents may obtain bulk supplies of 12 or more copies at the usual trade discount. ARTICLES AND COMMENT are invited on all themes of African interest. SPECIAL PACKAGE OFFER One Year's Subscription of the African Communist plus THE ROAD TO SOUTH AFRICAN FREEDOM The programme of the South African Communist Party Only 7/Order from ELLIS BOWLES 52 Palmerston Rd, London SW14 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 15 (Vol2 No 5)o Oct.-Dec. 1963 in this issue EDITORIAL NOTES A GREAT AFRICAN PASSES 3 HANDS OFF OUR PEOPLE African-descended people in the US 4 THE U.N. MUST ACT NOW Comment on Security Council and General Assembly 6 ALGERIA CHOOSES SOCIALISM 8 TOKOLOHO A publication of the Communist Party of Lesotho 11 A STAB IN THE BACK Comment on PAC Memorandum to Security Council 12THEBIRTHOFAFRICANUNITY 14 BASUTOLAND, BECHUANALAND, SWAZILAND 27 Britain plans a new Munich in South Africa LAND RELATIONS IN AFRICAN COUNTRIES 46 FASCIST SOUTH AFRICA TODAY 66 MARXIST-LENINIST STUDY 79 How Social Change Comes About BOOK REVIEWS Africa-The Way Ahead 90 The African Patriots 96 DOCUMENTS A Statement by Soviet Afro-Asian Solidarity Committee 99 South Africa and Peace 109 BPP Protest to the British Secretary of State 115 WHAT OUR READERS WRITE 118 Dr. W. E. B. DuBois N. Numadi Ivan L Potekhin Peter Mackintosh Sol Dubula J. B. Marks F Dr. W. E. B. DUBOIS A Great African Passes ON AUGUST 27, the day before the historic march of 200,000 on Washington, there died in Accra, Ghana, at the age of 95, a great son of Africa: Dr. William Edward Burghardt DuBois. The name of Dr. DuBois is inextricably bound up with the development both of the movement for freedom and equality for Africandescended people in his mother-country, the United States of America, and the great revolution for the freedom, independence and unity of our Continent. He devoted his whole life to the fight against colonialism and race discrimination, for world peace and African liberation. On February 23, 1868, only five years after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation which formally abolished chattel slavery in the United States, he was born at Great Ba.ington, Massachusetts, U.S.A. He graduated as B.A. 1888, M.A. 1891, and PH.D., at Harvard University, 1895. From 1896 to 1910, Dr. DuBois held the chair of Economics and History at Atlanta and edited Atlanta University Studies. He was one of the founders of the Niagara Movement, subsequently the National Association for the Advancement of the Coloured People, and edited the N.A.A.P.C. journal Crisis from 1910 to 1932, when he returned as Professor of Sociology to Atlanta. Dr. DuBois was the father of the modem Pan-African movement. His struggles for many years to establish on firm foundations the struggle against colonialism and imperialism for African independence are recorded in his fascinating memoir published in this issue as a special tribute to his memory. The logic of Dr. DuBois' fight for the rights of the African and Negro people led him, step by step, to ever more radical and militant positions. After the Second World War he played a leading part in the United States and world peace movements, although these were highly unpopular with the United States imperialist authorities. He took part in the first Paris peace conference in April, 1949, and was chairman of the U.S. Peace Information Centre. As a result of these activities he suffered repeated acts of persecution by the U.S. Government. Not long before his death, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois set a bold and courageous example by joining that brave, hounded and persecuted organization, the Communist Party of the United States. In doing so .he not only affirmed that his whole life and career had led him towards the noble and correct principles of Marxism-Leninism; he also showed that a great statesman must be true to his principles, however much his opponents may try to smear and attack him for so doing. During his long and fruitful life, Dr. DuBois wrote a number of books of great value to all African and other interested students. The titles include: Suppression of the African Slave Trade (1896); The Philadelphia Negro (1899); The Souls of Black Folk (1903); John Brown (1909); Darkwater (1920); Dusk of Dawn (1940); Colour and Democracy. (1945); and The World and Africa (1946). At the time of his death Dr. DuBois was living in Accra, Ghana, and working on his great project, the African Encyclopedia. There can be no doubt that this great man has left his own people and the African continent as a whole deeply in his debt. His disciples include most of the foremost leaders of present-day Africa, and there is no doubt that his ideas have moulded our continent and will do still more in the future, carried on by a new generation, until they have triumphed from Cape to Cairo. Hamba Kahle, William Du Bois. Africa will never forget your memory. FREEDOM NOW! IT WAS FITTING indeed that the mighty demonstration of 200,000 Americans of African descent, together with thousands of white supporters, should have stood in solemn tribute to Dr. DuBois whose death occurred the day before that historic march, the greatest ever seen in America. For without the hard pioneering work of DuBois and his small group of founders, architects of the Negro liberation movement, that demonstration could not have taken place. But there are other factors too which have called forth the new fighting spirit of our kinsmen in America, a spirit which refuses to 'be patient and wait' for rights which they should long ago have enjoyed, and insistently demands 'freedom now!' This spirit has already transformed the entire United States political scene, broken through the stranglehold of Big Business monopoly capitalism which for so long froze and paralysed lany sort of mass activity and political progress, and opened up the way for real democratic transformations in America. Not least among such factors has been the tremendous drive and force of the African revolution on our own continent. It is absolutely intolerable to the spirit and the meaning of the New Africa that men and women should suffer in the United States or anywhere else merely because they or their ancestors have the proud distinction of coming from our continent. The 1963 Addis Ababa meeting of heads'of African states served clear warning on the White Supremacists of America that we of Africa cannot and will not allow the scandal to continue. All Africa marched in spirit with the 'Freedom Now!' marchers on Washington. And the day is not far off when the upholders of apartheid in the U.S.A. will have to face the same hard facts as their colleagues in the Republic of South Africa: that they cannot indefinitely ignore the will and the very strong feelings of an entire Continent. All over Africa, our blood boiled in fury when we read of the horrible bomb attack on a Negro Church in Birmingham, Alabama, when innocent children and adults were wantonly murdered by a fascist terrorist. We felt about it just as we do when Verwoerd murders innocent Africans in South Africa, or tortures Walter Sisulu and other heroes of our people in his barbarous jails. We in Africa are far from satisfied with expressions of sympathy from President Kennedy combined with a snail's pace at carrying out any concrete measures to remedy the innumerable forms of discrimination and colonial-type exploitation suffered by our African-descended kinsmen in the United States. We are only too familiar, throughout our continent, with the ruthless disregard of the African working people shown by American monopoly-capitalist mining and other concerns which are established here. And we are convinced that United States employers show the same utter disregard of the interests of the working man, especially the black working man, when they are at home. What is at the back of race discrimination, in the United States or anywhere else? It is not just some mistaken ideology about superior and inferior 'races'. That ideology is spread and peddled by the people who profit by it, by dividing the working class and getting huge profits out of sweated black labour. The same imperialist groups who side with reaction everywhere in the world, as expressed by the continuing trend of United States foreign policy, are responsible for white chauvinism and anti- African outrages at home. They are powerful groups indeed, dominating the American economy. And there is money in racialism; big money. That is why, as the Freedom Now! movement progresses, it is increasingly bound to find itself up against stiff resistance. When it comes, not merely to making verbal or legalistic concessions, but really to abolishing the roots of Jimcrow, the big money men will not retreat without a stern struggle, a struggle in which monopoly capitalism will increasingly expose itself as the enemy of the democratic American people, Negro and White alike.

Load more

  95

Copy Link