From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-Profiles of Some South African Trotskyists

 

Markin comment (9/18/2010):

The International Communist League (ICL), the international organization of which Workers Vanguard is the flagship publications, in numerous articles and published conference reports has emphasized, correctly I believe, that in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union that the political consciousness of the international working class, although unevenly, has taken big steps backward in its consciousness. The shorthand way to speak of such a condition is that on a day to day basis the bulk of the workers do not connect their defensive struggles with the struggle for socialism.

Seemingly working class history for the past 150 years or so is a blank page although those in the least bit familiar with that history know that it is rich in examples, positive and negative, of working class struggle for our communist future. Although one could see that retrograde situation developing, in some cases graphically as on the American labor scene, well before that demise something snapped in the international labor movement in reaction to the incessant “communism is dead” triumphalism of the international capitalist class and its mouthpieces. Although that situation is slowly changing under the conditions of the current capitalist onslaught, especially in Europe, that sense of the decline of political consciousness is still pervasive.

That brings us to the class consciousness that underlies the article under review in this entry on the situation in South Africa. I mentioned above (as the ICL has in its articles as well) that the decline of political consciousness was not monolithic. South Africa, due to many factors in its national framework not the least the massive struggle against apartheid, may represent the classic contrary case. In the immediate post-Soviet period when everyone, their brothers, their sisters, and their great-aunts was disclaiming anything but hardened and eternal hostility to the word communism, communist organizations, or even lukewarm socialist formations in South Africa they were making an event, a public event, out of the legalization of the Communist Party.

Of course, we know, at least those of us who claim the Trotskyist tradition, that this was the just the legalization of another old time Stalinist, class- collaborationist, two-stage revolution operation but that party represented communism down at the base, communist revolution as the “comrades” understood it. Hey, these guys and gals, these street militants, were waving red flags night and day with the expectation that not only apartheid was over with the African National Congress(ANC) taking over the reins of government but that the meek (militant meek, that is, the others get nothing in this wicked old world) shall finally inherit the earth. It gives me no satisfaction, none whatsoever, nor should it to you that their illusions have been cruelly dashed overt the past sixteen years.

If South Africa represented (and in many ways still does, witness the recent wide-spread strikes AGAINST the ANC-SACP-COSATU government) something like the vanguard of political consciousness in the international labor movement it also represents the classic Stalinist (and not Stalinist alone) stagist theory of revolution in less advanced countries. In short, first the democratic revolution then, in the future, the socialist revolution. Sixteen years on and the “comrades” are still waiting. Thus we have a pretty good idea when that second stage kicks in-never.

And that is my second point. If the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917 proved once and for all that the bourgeoisie of an emerging capitalist country is incapable, for a thousand reasons not the least its myriad intermingled links to the major imperialist powers, of leading (or maybe even tolerating) a democratic revolution then several decades later the emerging (or already existing) bourgeoisies in less advanced capitalist countries are even less likely to so. In South Africa Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution retains its validity. No, not just it validity, more than that it is merely the beginning of political wisdom for those crushed “comrades” down at the base still waiting for the second promised stage. Thus the order of the day is for the black-centered workers movement to break with the ANC as a matter of elementary political hygiene.

Sometimes one can overuse analogies (although that does not prevent anyone from doing so, or it hasn’t in the past, including by this writer) from one period to the next. Obviously there are major differences (not the least the question of political leadership of the working class) between the situation in Russia 1917 and South Africa today but I keep being drawn to the Menshevik’s notion in 1917 (and before and after, as well) that the bourgeoisie should lead the democratic revolution in Russia and the role of peasant and working class socialist organizations was to “support” or “push” them forward. That candidate in 1917 was the Cadet party (Constitutional Democrats); today in South Africa (at least for now) for the Mensheviks of today, the SACP and its hangers-on, it is the ANC. So what, as is pretty well described in the linked article above, we see in South Africa is what Russia might have looked like if the Menshevik “vision” had worked out. No, thank you, then and now. Learn the lessons outlined in Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. Forward! 
Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.

Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.

The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff. 
******** 

 Baruch Hirson

Profiles of Some South African Trotskyists

The Editors of The Spark

IF the Trotskyists in South Africa had done nothing else, the production of The Spark during the period 1935-39 would have marked them as worthy of attention. Without a doubt, it was superior to any other left wing publication in the country until the late 1980s. Although it was mimeo-graphed and small in size, it carried theoretical articles on South African issues, together with reprints of articles by Leon Trotsky and members of the Left Opposition. By way of contrast, most other publications of the left in South Africa avoided serious theory.
The people responsible for producing and for writing most of the articles were Yudel (or Jacob) Burlak, Paul Koston and Clare Goodlatte. The South African articles bore no author’s names, but to meet legislative requirements, Goodlatte’s or Koston’s name appeared in the journal as Editor. These three were also on the Central Committee, representing Cape Town, but they never met with the Johannesburg members. Conse-quently, they constituted the leadership for South Africa.
What is known about Goodlatte’s life (1866-1942), with new details now becoming available, was published in Searchlight South Africa, no 2. Until she was 55 and required to retire, Goodlatte was a nun in the Anglican Community of the Resurrection in Grahamstown and was principal of the teachers training college. She moved to Cape Town, and, becoming increasingly left wing, she joined the Independent Labour Party and then the Lenin Club. When that body split, Goodlatte went with the WPSA, and played a central part in its work. In 1939, when she felt incapable of continuing, she resigned. Goodlatte was an ill person, but there was also a hint of disillusionment in her letters. The WPSA had not made progress, and she was obviously tired, politically as well as physically.
Paul Koston, who left South Africa in 1925, joined the US merchant marine. His movements are not clear, but it seems that in approximately 1930 he jumped ship in Cape Town and entered the Socialist movement. He was Secretary of the ILP, joined the Lenin Club and then the WPSA. For some time he was the party Secretary. Besides his work in the party, he also owned and ran Modern Books, the main outlet for Marxist books in Cape Town.
There are few details of the life of Yudel Burlak. It is known that he arrived from Poland in 1930, and he is said to have been involved in a strike of bank clerks before leaving Europe. In South Africa he worked as a bookkeeper. There is little doubt that all the WPSA’s major formulations came from his pen, and that the party’s theses, the main political letters, and the editorials of The Spark were written by him.

Isaac Bongani Tabata, Goolam Gool and Ben Kies

These three members of the Spartacus Club or the WPSA are seldom mentioned in the WPSA papers. Yet they, together with Jaineb (often referred to as Jane) Gool, Halema Nagdee Gool, Cadoc Kobus and others, all members of the WPSA, were the driving force in the formation of the bodies that joined together to launch the Non-European Unity Movement in December 1943.
Gool’s early involvement has still to be unravelled. He returned from Britain, where he was trained as a doctor, as an avowed Socialist. He joined the Lenin Club, and after the split he first joined the Communist League. At some stage he switched and joined the WPSA. He was an office holder in the National Liberation League, but resigned when he felt that leading members of the NLL, who were also in the CPSA, had deserted a demon-stration near parliament against proposed legislation.
Gool was a member of the AAC, and was associated, together with other members or sympathisers of the WPSA, with the New Era Fellowship, formed in 1937 with a nucleus of students and members of existing Cape organisations. This club exerted considerable influence in and around Cape Town, and secured increasing influence among Coloured teachers and their organisation, the Teachers League of South Africa. The NEF played a leading role in opposing the formation of a Coloured Affairs Department, helped to form the Anti-CAD in 1943, and joined with the AAC to form the NEUM. After 1943 Gool and the others mentioned above devoted all their time to work in the NEUM, producing the Torch, and the newsletters of the AAC and the Anti-CAD.
A critical note on Isaac Bongani Tabata appeared in Searchlight South Africa, no 6. It was slight because the writer had so little information on his activities before 1943. In that year he played a prominent role in relaunching the AAC and the NEUM. In 1958 Tabata led one section out of the NEUM following a stormy debate in which he proposed that after changes in South Africa, the peasants should be allowed to buy and own land. His opponents, led by Kies and Hosea Jaffe, opposed the private ownership of land. A full length biography is being prepared by Ciraj Rassool in Cape Town.
Ben Kies’s story has yet to be researched. A leading member of NEF, Kies led the campaign against the Coloured Affairs Commission and then the Coloured Affairs Department. He was a teacher, and played a major role in the politicisation of Coloured teachers in the Teachers League of South Africa. He later resigned his post as a teacher and entered the legal profession.
The independent radical journal Trek carried articles in July and August 1942, obviously written by members of the NEF, with proposals for a new liberation movement, together with a programme that foreshadowed that of the NEUM. The Educational Journal, organ of the TLSA, had a series of 23 articles on black struggles in South Africa, commencing July-August 1977 and ending in June 1980. Its approach was nearest to that of the Kies-Jaffe group of the NEUM. The issue of April-May 1978 has a sketchy outline of the NEF, and the issue of June covered the formation of the Anti-CAD and the NEUM.

The Workers Voice Group

It is not clear who the members of the Workers Voice group were. The three members who first framed policy were Joe Pick, Moshe Noah Aver-bach and Charlie van Gelderen. They named their group the Communist League of South Africa. Then van Gelderen left for Britain. New members included Joe Meltzer, Max Blieden and Bernhard Herzberg, who edited the group’s paper. It is not known which of the others played a prominent part, partly because the papers are not available, and also because the group dissolved itself and joined the Socialist Party.
When the SP was dissolved, the League reassembled, and several younger persons joined. However, it is not always clear when members entered. Arthur Davids was an early recruit, Zeid Gamiet entered at a later date, and Hosea Jaffe joined in 1939. The younger members, together with Averbach, were the mainstay of the group during the war years.
Joe Pick (1895-1968) came to South Africa at the age of 13. Apparently considered too old to go to school, he was apprenticed as a watchmaker. He entered the Socialist movement at the end of the First World War, and was a founding member of the Communist Party in 1921.
Active in the CPSA, he was on the strike support committee when British sailors walked off their ships in August 1925. But little else is known about his early activities. In 1931 he was expelled from the CPSA (see accompanying box) and joined forces with others who moved to the International Left Opposition.
Moshe Noah Averbach (whose initials form the acronym A Mon) went from Europe to Palestine as a Zionist and from there to Cape Town. Profoundly alienated from the Zionist movement, Averbach joined the CPSA and the Gezerd, and tried to earn a living as a Hebrew teacher. However, finding that his job was to train boys for the bar mitzvah, the religious ceremony when they reached the age of 13, he opened a small grocery shop in the predominantly Coloured area known as District 6, where he lived with his family. Averbach never made a success as a grocer, and devoted most of his time to the group he had started—but was always at a disadvantage because of his poor command of the English language. The articles printed under his pseudonym were always heavily edited, and it cannot be ascertained how much was written in by his editors.

The Johannesburg Groups

At the beginning there was TW Thibedi. He was followed by Murray Gow Purdy, Ralph and Millie Lee, and J Saperstein. They were joined by Max Gordon and others, mainly African recruits. But the groups never solid-ified. The story is told in the main essay above, and accounts of Purdy, Lee and Gordon appear in the discussion of trade unionism and the additional article on Lee. The roles of Gordon, together with that of Dan Koza, are described in greater detail in Hirson’s Yours For the Union. There were at one time three groups in Johannesburg, but they all disappeared when war was declared. Gordon was interned, presumably because of his involvement in organising African trade unions, but no official reason was ever given.
Very little is known about others who joined the WPSA, nor of the Sapire brothers who joined the left in 1937-39. Six members, only four of whom had been active in Johannesburg (R and M Lee, Heaton Lee [no relative] and Dick Frieslich), played an important part in the reconstruction of the British Trotskyist movement, and both Leon Sapire and Saperstein tried to get to Spain during the Spanish Civil War as journalists. All activity seems to have stopped in 1939 or 1940.
After 1943 a Trotskyist group was reformed in Johannesburg. Its main force, alongside Ralph Lee who had returned to Johannesburg and launch-ed the Workers International League, were six members of the left wing Zionist movement Hashomer Hatzair, who were to become part of the leadership. Among the recruits to the WIL were Vincent and Lilian Swart. Vincent had been a lecturer in English, and was a poet of considerable talent. He had gone to Britain as a post-graduate student just prior to the declaration of war, and had to return immediately. After returning he turned increasingly to the left, and was actively involved in the support committee of the bus boycott in Alexandra Township in 1943-44. When he joined the WIL he brought with him some leading members of the boycott committee.
Of the earlier Trotskyists who were enroled by Lee were Raymond Lake, Zina Blank, Issie Pinchuk and several others. Nearly all withdrew within the first year, and little is known of their personal histories. On the other hand, a few African trade unionists joined, or were associated with, the WIL. Except for Dan Koza, who never spoke of his personal life, little is known of the other black members.

* *  *  *  *  *

The Case of Comrade Pick

IN 1990 the CPSA issued an illustrated book entitled The Red Flag in South Africa. On page 20, veteran Stalinist, Ray Alexander Simons wrote a piece entitled: ‘How and why we expelled comrade Joe Pick.’ She explained: the Central Committee in Johannesburg sent a comrade to Cape Town to hasten the Bolshevisation of the party. He was put up at the house of Joe Pick. Then nemesis struck:
’Under the bed he was sleeping in he [the comrade from Johannesburg] found three unsold copies of the party journal Umsebenzi. They were part of a batch given to comrade Joe Pick to sell. Pick had already returned in full the sum owing on the batch. The money for these three unsold copies obviously had come out of his own pocket. Nevertheless, he was expelled from the Party for failing to carry out his duty to the full. That’s how things were in those days.’
It is not certain why Ray Simons waited 60 years to tell this story. A search under the bed, three unsold journals, the money paid, but out he went: ‘That’s how things were in those days.’ Ray Simons also gives the name of the man who went down to Cape Town. He was Lazar Bach—not an insignificant figure in the history of the CPSA. Lazar Bach went to the USSR, got mixed up with the wrong people, and was sent to the gulag. There he was shot or died, and, except for the Trotskyists, everybody said they did not know what happened. Even his lover said she did not know. Lazar Bach was rehabilitated in 1990, and his ghost did a little dance in heaven. So now the story can be told. You see, comrades, it can be said by comrade Ray, Lazar Bach was a bad, bad man. He was only being punished for expelling Joe Pick. Or was he?
What Ray Simons does not say is that Joe Pick opposed the Black Republic slogan. Is that not the real reason for his expulsion in 1931? Poor Lazar Bach, even after rehabilitation, his name is not safe in the hands of his one-time comrades.