Discordant Comrades: Identities and Loyalties on the South African Left

Description

This title was first published in 2000: This book considers the fortunes of socialism in South Africa from the doctrine’s arrival around 1900 to its legal suppression in 1950. Socialism’s universal claims had to come to terms with South Africa’s singular national experience in which a racial ideology and a racial division of the working class played a far greater role than in any other country. The left in South Africa had to deal with all the complexities of ideology and strategy that faced their counterparts in Europe and North America; but in South Africa it was further vexed by challenges of profound racial and national inequalities and a white labour movement which sought protection through racial segregation. Communism, rather than Social Democracy, prevailed; hence the reverberations of the splits in the Communist International were far more debilitating in South Africa than anywhere else. In the years after World War II African nationalism became the dominant influence on the South African left, chiefly through the relationship between the ANC and the Communist Party. Discordant Comrades draws on a wide range of primary sources from inside and outside South Africa, including the archives of the Communist International in Moscow. The result is a scholarly and challenging analysis of the South African left. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction: writing South African socialist history 1 The international and national origins of South African socialism 2 'Rather a strange gospel': socialism in South Africa, 1900-1917 3 'The Word was made flesh': the impact of the Russian Revolution on South Africa 4 Searching for the socialist road: the Rand Revolt and the turn to black labour 5 The one best way: the Comintern's hand and the Native Republic thesis 6 The New Line: fighting the scourge of Buntingism 7 A new prophet, a new prophecy: the origins of South African Trotskyism 8 Inquisition and recantation 9 Illusory visions: black unity and left unity in the 1930s 10 'Wars and rumours of wars': socialists confront the Second World War 11 'Not in word, but in power': socialists and black protest during the war 12 'Peace; and there was no peace': the Cold War and the suppression of socialism Conclusion: the burden of history and the burden of choice Bibliography Index