South African Communist Party

The South African Communist Party (SACP) is a communist party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921, was declared illegal in 1950, and participated in the struggle against apartheid. It is a partner of the Tripartite Alliance with the African National Congress and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and through this influences the South African government.

History

The Communist Party of South Africa was founded in 1921 by the joining together of the International Socialist League and others under the leadership of Willam H. Andrews. It first came to prominence during the armed Rand Rebellion by white mineworkers in 1922. The large mining concerns, facing labour shortages and wage pressures, had announced their intention of liberalising the rigid colour bar within the mines and elevate some blacks to minor supervisory positions. (The vast majority of white miners mainly held supervisory positions over the labouring black miners.) Despite having opposed racialism from its inception, the CPSA supported the white miners in their call to preserve wages and the colour bar with the slogan "Workers of the world, unite and fight for a white South Africa!". With the failure of the rising, in part due to black workers failing to strike, the Communist Party was forced by Comintern to adopt the "Native Republic" thesis which stipulated that South Africa was a country belonging to the Natives, that is, the Blacks. The Party thus reoriented itself at its 1924 Party Congress towards organising black workers and "Africanising" the party. By 1928, 1,600 of the party's 1,750 members were Black. In 1929, the party adopted a "strategic line" which held that, "The most direct line of advance to socialism runs through the mass struggle for majority rule". By 1948 the Party had officially abandoned the Native Republic policy.