Anarchism in South Africa
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Anarchism in South Africa dates to the 1880s, and played a major role in the
History
Early emergence and collapse: 1880s–1920s
The first notable anarchist in South Africa was Henry Glasse, an English immigrant who settled in
The Social Democratic Federation (SDF), founded in
The ISL, Industrial Socialist League (briefly renamed the Communist Party), the SDF, and other formations, merged into the official Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in June/July 1921, providing many notable early figures until the Comintern ordered the expulsion of various non-Bolshevik elements in the late 1920s.[6] Unaligned syndicalists like Percy Fisher were active in the miners' 1922 Rand Rebellion, a general strike-turned-insurrection, and strongly opposed the racism of a large sector of the white strikers.
The IWA, meanwhile, merged into the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU) in 1920, one reason why that union was influenced by syndicalism. The ICU would play a major role in rural South Africa,[7] as well as spread into several neighbouring countries.[8] The ICU began declining by the late 1920s, disappearing in the 1930s in South Africa (although the Southern Rhodesian ICU – the Reformed Industrial Commercial Union (RICU) – persisted into the 1950s).[9]
The interim: 1920s–1990s
After the dissolution of the Industrial Socialist League and ISL into the CPSA, there was no active or explicit anarchist or revolutionary syndicalist movement in South Africa. The ICU exhibited revolutionary syndicalist influence, although this co-existed with ideas ranging from liberalism to black nationalism. Beginning with the "Durban Moment" in the early 1970s, New Left ideas began to influence parts of the anti-apartheid struggle.[10] These brought some (often indirect) anarchist and revolutionary syndicalist influence into the political scene, although often not very pronounced or coherent. A key structure which emerged from the popular struggle of the 1970s was the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU). The "workerist" tendency which developed in FOSATU, was indirectly influenced by anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism, among other currents. The "people's power" tendency in the United Democratic Front (UDF) paralleled anarchist ideas with its call for replacing state structures with grassroots "people's power." There is no evidence that this strategy arose from anarchist or syndicalist ideas, although the UDF was influenced by FOSATU's stress on "workers control" and prefiguration. Following the 1976 Soweto uprising, at least one leader of the Soweto Students Representative Council (SSRC) moved towards a situationist position in exile.[11]
It was only in the late 1980s that a number of self-described anarchists began to appear, many associated with counter-cultural movements.
Re-emergence: 1990s–present
As an organised movement, rather than a loose smattering of individuals here and there, anarchism only began to re-emerge in South Africa with small collectives established primarily in Durban and Johannesburg in the early 1990s. In 1993, the Anarchist Revolutionary Movement (ARM) was established in Johannesburg; its student section included militants from the anti-apartheid movement.
In 1995, a larger movement, the Workers' Solidarity Federation (WSF), replaced the ARM. The WSF incorporated a Durban-based collective which published the journal Freedom. It also produced its own journal entitled Workers' Solidarity. The WSF was in the tradition of platformism, as opposed to the far looser ARM, and focused mainly on work within black working class and student struggles. It established links with anarchist individuals and small anarchist collectives in Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Zambia. It also helped to establish a short-lived Zambian WSF. In 1999, for a range of reasons, the WSF dissolved. It was succeeded by two anarchist collectives: the Bikisha Media Collective and Zabalaza Books. These two groups co-produced Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism.[12] In the late 1990s and early 2000s, activists in these structures were involved in struggles against privatisation and evictions, and Bikisha was formally affiliated to the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF).
On May Day in 2003, the platformist Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (ZACF, or ZabFed) was founded. The early ZACF was essentially a regroupment of local anarchist groups, bringing together a number of new anarchist collectives in Gauteng and Durban (including a local chapter of the Anarchist Black Cross), along with the Bikisha Media Collective and Zabalaza Books (whose joint journal, Zabalaza, became the journal of the ZACF). In 2007, to strengthen its structures, ZabFed was reconstituted as the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF, or ZabFront). The new ZACF is a unitary "federation of individuals", as opposed to a federation of collectivesm with members joining via the collectives, like ZabFed.
By this time, the ZACF also had members in
While committed to promoting syndicalism in the unions, ZACF work was in practice largely focused on the so-called "
Organisations
- Industrial Workers of the World (1910–1922)
- International Socialist League (1915–1921)
- Industrial Workers of Africa (1917–1920)
- Industrial Socialist League (1918–1921)
- Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (1919–1935)
- Anarchist Revolutionary Movement (1993–1995)
- Workers' Solidarity Federation (1995–1999)
- Bikisha Media Collective (1999–2007)
- Zabalaza Books (1999–2007)
- South African chapter of the Anarchist Black Cross (2002–2007)
- Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (2003–2007)
- Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (2007–)
See also
- Anarchism in Africa
- Platformism
- Revolutionary syndicalism
References
- ^ Nettlau 1996, p. 262.
- ^ van der Walt 2004, p. 70.
- ^ van der Walt 2004, p. 72.
- ^ van der Walt 2011, p. 150.
- ^ van der Walt 2004, pp. 76–84.
- ^ van der Walt 2004, p. 84.
- ^ Bradford 1987.
- ^ van der Walt 2007, pp. 223–251.
- ^ Schmidt & van der Walt 2009, p. 347.
- ^ Macqueen 2011, p. 146.
- ^ Semela, Selby; Thompson, Sam; Abraham, Norman (1979). "Reflections on the Black Consciousness Movement and the South African Revolution". Libcom.org. Retrieved 9 August 2013.
- ^ South African Struggle Archives (c. 2000). "Anarchism, revolutionary syndicalism and anti-authoritarian movements in South Africa, Lesotho & Swaziland". struggle.ws. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
- ^ a b ZACF. "What is the ZACF?". zabalaza.net. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
- ^ CNT (2011). "Zabalaza: A Voice for Organised Anarchism in South Africa" (PDF). CNT. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
Bibliography
Articles
- Bonner, Philip (1992). "Division and Unity in the Struggle: African Politics on the Witwatersrand in the 1920s" (PDF). African Studies Seminar Paper. No. 307. OCLC 26759507.
- Bradford, Helen (1983). "Class Contradictions and Class Alliances: The Social Nature of ICU Leadership, 1924–1929" (PDF). African Studies Seminar Paper. No. 133. OCLC 122406419.
- S2CID 219731903.
- van der Walt, Lucien (2007). "The First Globalisation and Transnational Labour Activism in Southern Africa: white labourism, the IWW and the ICU, 1904–1934" (PDF). African Studies. 66 (2/3). S2CID 218645592. Retrieved 2 August 2013.
- van der Walt, Lucien (2009). "Anarchism and Syndicalism, Southern Africa". In Ness, Immanuel (ed.). The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest. OCLC 8682166003.
- van der Walt, Lucien (2011). "Anarchism and syndicalism in an African port city: the revolutionary traditions of Cape Town's multiracial working class, 1904–1931". S2CID 220405670.
Books
- Bradford, Helen (1987). A Taste of Freedom: the ICU in rural South Africa, 1924–1930. OCLC 861463176.
- Drew, Allison (2002). Discordant Comrades: Identities and Loyalties on the South African Left. OCLC 469720124.
- OCLC 37529250.
- Schmidt, Michael; van der Walt, Lucien (2009). OCLC 495192914.
- van der Walt, Lucien (2010). "Revolutionary Syndicalism, Communism and the National Question in South African Socialism, 1886–1928". In Hirsch, Steven J.; van der Walt, Lucien (eds.). Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1870–1940. Studies in Global Social History. Vol. 6. OCLC 868808983.
Theses
- Macqueen, Ian (2011). Re-imagining South Africa: Black Consciousness, radical Christianity and the New Left, 1967–1977 (PhD Thesis). OCLC 809551269.
External links
- Southern African Anarchist & Syndicalist History Archive
- "South African Anarchism", archive of a 1990s–early 2000s South African anarchist site.
- Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front
- Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism
- Zabalaza Books
- South African topics on Libcom.org