African Communist, No. 87 http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.0001.9976.000.087.1981 Use of the Aluka digital library is subject to Aluka’s Terms and Conditions, available at http://www.aluka.org/page/about/termsConditions.jsp. By using Aluka, you agree that you have read and will abide by the Terms and Conditions. Among other things, the Terms and Conditions provide that the content in the Aluka digital library is only for personal, non-commercial use by authorized users of Aluka in connection with research, scholarship, and education. The content in the Aluka digital library is subject to copyright, with the exception of certain governmental works and very old materials that may be in the public domain under applicable law. Permission must be sought from Aluka and/or the applicable copyright holder in connection with any duplication or distribution of these materials where required by applicable law. Aluka is a not-for-profit initiative dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of materials about and from the developing world. For more information about Aluka, please see http://www.aluka.org African Communist, No. 87 Alternative title African Communist Author/Creator South African Communist Party Publisher South African Communist Party Date 1981 Resource type Magazines (Periodicals) Language English Subject Coverage (spatial) South Africa, Africa (region) Coverage (temporal) 1981 Description Editorial Notes; Mutual Trust and Comradeship in Battle; The Two Pillars of Our Struggle Four who were Communists; Praise of Communism; Why I am a member of the Communist Party; Fight US Subversion of Trade Union Movement in Africa; Twentieth Anniversary of Umkhonto We Sizwe; Of Maids and Madams; Book Reviews; Africa in the Struggle for Literary Autonomy; Why I Joined the Communist Party; Patrice Lumumba - Personality and Fighter. Format extent 113 page(s) (length/size) http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.0001.9976.000.087.1981 http://www.aluka.org INKULU KOW ] INKULU KOW ] LONDON 'xcNrl? Documenfrm me and en.q Pu rtn,. 4 and Sout~1,AZ4N~ mvcc 23 ylm.Am.nSj MOSFS KOTANE South African Rfvoutonary. A political bigrphy. Pric £3.00 (se.00) FFlT FIGHTING YEARS by A. Le~~, (Michael Harel A History of the South Affican Communist Party from 1921-1971. Prcc £3.00 (s8. 00) LISTEN TO RADIO FREEDOM, VOICE OF THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS AND THEl PEOPLE#8 ARMY# UMKHONTO WE SIZWE. RADIO MADAGASCAR: shrtanv 49 mn band. 6135 &Wz s.9gam daily. RADIO LUSAKA slmr*eave 41 mn b~nd 7.3 MgHa, 8-30-94m dtily. RADIO LUANDA: ~hrtw 40 mn 0 30 bands. medium uuaw 27.6 im bad 7.30 PM' dnily. RADIO TANZANIA: ~*=tawc, 19 mn band, 15,433 XHz,. 8.15Ipm Sna, ody Wcdnes&uy. Fvday; 31 mn band, 6. l 3~ T~edy, Thusdy. Sa uvday. THE AFRICAN COMMUNIST PubkuAed quart~viy in the mntertsts of Afvican mskiduty, anud as eforwn for Marxist -Lenaist thought throughout our Contuwst, by tAw South Africass Commust Party No 87 Fourth Quarter 1981 CONTENTS 5 Editorial Notes Botha's Programme of Murder and War; How Our Anniversary Was Celebrated; Casualties in the Struggle: Apartheid Rugby is not Cricket. 16 Mutual Trust and Comradeship in Battle Extracts from the speeches of Mooe Mabhida. general secretary of the South African Communist Party, and Oliver Tambo, President of the African National Congress, at the 60th anniversary meeting of the SACP in London on July 30. 1981. Sol Dubula 26 The Two Pillars of Our Struggle Reflections on the relationship between the ANC and the SACP in the liberation struggle - some lessons from the past and pointers to the future. Alexander Sibeko 41 Four Who Were Communists Profiles of four members of the South African Communist Party who gave their lives recently in the struggle for national liberation and socialism. Bertolt Brecht 50 Praise of Communism Poem. Eh" Wernberg 51 Why I am a Member of the Communist Party A contribution submitted to The African Communsst by Eli Weinberg just before his death. R. S. Nyameko 56 Fight U.S. Subversion of Trade Union Movement in Africa Pretending to help organise African workers into trade unions, the agents of. US imperialism are subverting the African trade union movement and posing a threat to the independence and peace of the African continent. M. K. Mtungum 65 Twentieth Anniversary of Umkbhouto We Sizwe The author shows how the choice of violence was forced on the people's organisations by the violence and intransigence of the racist regime. Anon 78 Of Maids and Madams The tragic plight of domestic workers in South Africa, unprotected, underpaid and exploited by white laws and ladies. 64 Book Reviews Freedom For My Peofkk, autobiography ef Z.K. -Matthews: Why South Africa Wil Surtiw, by L.H. Gann and Peter Duignan: Present-Day Problems in Asia - Afr*a, by R. Ulyanovsky; Inide The Third World, by Paul Harrson. Emilia Mbewa 93 Africa in the Struggle for Literary Autonomy The author, who is a lecturer in English at Sofia University, Bulgana. contributes this article to The Afr*an Communist "as a form of solidarity with the struggling people in Southern Africa and a means of creating a true image of all Africa". Rashad 98 Why I Joined The Comnunist Party A Cape Town activist describes his early experiences in the political movement. 102 Yuri Vnokurov Patrice Lumumba - Personality and Fighter Profile of the great African patriot who led the fight for the independence of the Belgian Congo. now Zaire. and who was murdered by agents of the CIA and Tshombe because he refused to bow to imperialism. Reprinted from Asia and Africa Today. Cover Pictures: Left, Moses Mabhida, general secretary of the South African Communist Party. Right, Oliver Tambo, President of the African National Congress. EDITORIAL NOTES BOTHA'S PROGRAMME OF MURDER AND WAR The brutal murder of ANC leader Joe Gqabi in Salisbury at the end of July was no isolated incident but part of South Africa's co-ordinated campaign to maintain white domination not only over South Africa but also over the whole of southern and central Africa by every possible means. An attempt earlier in the year to blow him up in his motor car had been foiled. This time the racist assassins succeeded in removing one of the bravest of their enemies, and a man holding a key position in the front line against them. Suggestion have been made in sections of the venal South African press that Joe Gqabi was the victim of some sort of internecine quarrel inside the ANC, itself. This is utter balderdash. There is no such quarrel inside the ANC, and even if there were, this is not the way the ANC or any of its members would seek to settle it. The ANC is a mature political organisation which solves its internal problems by political means, not through terrorism. The South African racists, on the other hand, who rule by terrorism and refuse to admit blacks of any shade to "their" political arena, know only one answer to protest and that is force and repression. They have killed over 50 of our political prisoners in their solitary confinement cells, they daily ban, banish and detain our political and trade union leaders without trial, they have shot down thousands of bur young people. women and children in the streets of Soweto and other townships. At the beginning of the first session of Parliament after his April 29 election victory, the "reformer" Premier Botha once again reaffirmed that he stood for white domination, that Africans, Coloureds and Indians would never be given political rights on the basis of one man one vote, that the offensive against the ANC and its allies would be stepped up. Nor is Joe Gqabi the only victim of this racist terrorism. We call to mind the victims of the Matola massacre in January, the murder of Abraham Tiro in Botswana, the attempts to assasinate ANC leaders in Swaziland and Lesotho, the plots which have been uncovered to capture or liquidate the ANC leadership wherever it is to be found, in Lusaka, Dar es Salaam or Maputo. In the words of the statement issued by the ANC National Executive Committee after Joe Gqabi's murder: "Never before have the South African racist rulers been confronted by such a kpowerful and united force from the oppressed. This savage act, in part, explains the reaction of the enemy to this rising revolutionary tide and the vanguard role played by the African National Congress and its allies in struggle. It is the key element in the criminal apartheid regime's strategy of destroying the ANC politically, eliminating its leaden and militants physically, at home and abroad. An important ingredient of this strategy consists in the intimidation of the front line states through open and unprovoked acts of aggresion, as we are witnessing in Angola, Mozambique, Zambia. Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland". In Washington at the beginning of August Mr Randall Robinson, ditector of the lobby organisation TransAfrica, which earlier had released confidential State Department documents on US-South African relations, said the United States shared complicity in the murder of Joe Gqabi. A classified US Defence Department document showed that the US knew South Africa was assembling an assassination squad to hit ANC leaders in the frontline states and had done nothing to intervene. The US was under an obligation either to put pressure on South Africa not to act, or to warn the intended victims, he said. The US knows about more than the Botha regime's hit squad.