The Communist Party and the Germiston By-election, 1932

Abstract

The Communist Party’s participation in the Germiston by-election of 1932 is an episode which for the Party’s own historians has acquired a mythological status. But is it myth in another sense, that is fictional propaganda, as is claimed in recent revisionist treatment of the Party’s history? In fact a range of contemporary sources confirm the details of activist recollections of the event. It was an occasion when Communists succeeded in bringing together and even supplying leadership to two significant courses of communal and class protest.

Key words:

• Communist Party
• sources and evidence
• Comintern
• garment workers
• township tax protests
• trade unions
• Jewish Workers’ Club

Notes

1 A.B. Lerumo, Fifty Fighting Years: the South African Communist Party (London: Inkululeko, 1987), 61.

2 H.J. Simons and R.E. Simons, Class and Colour in South Africa, 1850-1950 (Harmondsworth: Penguin African Library, 1969), 460.

3 B. Bunting, ed., South African Communists Speak (London: Inkululeko, 1980), 118.

4 M. Roth, The Communist Party in South Africa: Racism, Eurocentricity and Moscow, 1921–1950 (Johannesburg: Partridge, 2016), 5–11.

5 A. Davidson, I. Filatova, V. Gorodnov, and S. Johns, eds, South Africa and the Communist International: A Documentary History, Volume 2 (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 29 (henceforth, Davidson et al., South Africa and the Communist International, Volume 2).

6 Letter from E.R. Roux to the Executive Bureau, CPSA, 18 November 1930 in A. Drew, South Africa’s Radical Tradition, Volume 1 (Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press), 114.

7 E. Roux, SP Bunting: A Political Biography, new edition (Belville: Mayibuye Books, 1993), 168.

8 E.G. Flynn, ‘The Life of Eugene Dennis’, Political Affairs, 11, 3 (1961), 5.

9 Davidson et al., South Africa and the Communist International, Volume 2, 36–46.

10 Davidson et al., South Africa and the Communist International, Volume 2, 33.

11 H. Pollit, ‘The work of the Communists of South Africa in the Trade Unions’, Communist Review, December 1932, 598.

12 This was a view of the AFTU which was shared by people still inside the party. Kotane in 1935 told Andre Marty in Moscow ‘There is no AFTU, we cannot kid ourselves, there is no such union’: Online Comintern Archive, 495/14/20/73.

13 Davidson et al., South Africa and the Communist International, Volume 2, 52.

14 Ibid.

15 Roth, Communist Party of South Africa, 112. For earlier questioning by Roth of the veracity of the Party’s engagement in the Germiston election see: M. Roth, ‘Eddie, Brian, Jack and Let’s Phone Rusty: Is This the History of the Communist Party of South Africa’, South African Historical Journal, 42 (May 2000), 191–209. See also Roth, Communist Party of South Africa, 8–9 for commentary on reliability of Umsebenzi between 1931 and 1938, which, she maintains, under Roux’s editorship, reported events that never happened and included articles purportedly by African which were not by Africans. In fact, Umsebenzi frequently published articles in African languages; these were certainly by Africans for generally – there were exceptions – the CPSA’s white members did not speak or write in African languages. Roth thinks that Roux edited Umsebenzi between 1930 and 1938 but in fact his editorship ended in 1936 and was interrupted on several occasions before then. She claims that African members referred to reports that did not happen as in the quotation on this page. It may have been the case that Roux wrote much of Umsebenzi by himself, if we are to believe Maurice Richter’s testimony at Comintern’s Marty Commission which investigated the party’s internal life in 1936, though Richter’s claims in such a forum should not be accepted too readily (Comintern Archive Online, 495/14/20a/261). But Josie Mpama’s statement at the Commission suggests that because Roux did not often accept unsolicited submissions from African party members, Umsebenzi actually under-reported local African party activism, rather than exaggerating it: Davidson et al., South Africa and the Communist International, Volume 2, 193.

16 Davidson et al., South Africa and the Communist International, Volume 2, 71.

17 Wits Historical Papers, Sylvia Neame Papers, A2729, JB Marks, Interviewed by Sylvia Neame, August 1969, Transcript, p. 11.

18 Ibid., 1.

19 M. Basner, Am I an African? (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1993), 55.

20 E.R. Roux, Time Longer than Rope (London: Victor Gollancz, 1948), 88.

21 J. Lewis, ‘The Germiston By-election of 1932’, in P. Bonner, ed., Working Papers in Southern African Studies (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1981), 106. Whether the railway workers in Germiston were mainly English-speaking is doubtful; many of them were employed in semi-skilled and unskilled work reserved for whites by the Pact administration and by 1932 their numbers would have included many Afrikaners. English speakers still predominated in the craft unions that represented the more skilled sections of the railway workforce, though.

22 C. Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa((London: Onyx Press, 1982), 63.

23 Simons and Simons, Class and Colour in South Africa, 460.

24 Bunting, South African Communists Speak, 116.

25 E. Roux and W. Roux, Rebel Pity((London: Rex Collings, 1970), 117.

26 Ibid., 118.

27 Davidson et al., South Africa and the Communist International, Volume 2, 84.

28 Roux, Time Longer than Rope, 271.

29 Ibid., 268.

30 Ibid., 272–273.

31 Roux and Roux, Rebel Pity, 126.

32 J. Grossman, ‘Class Relations and the Communist Party of South Africa, 1921–1950’ (PhD diss., Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, November 1985), 175.

33 Bunting, South African Communists Speak, 118.

34 T. Adler, ‘The History of the Jewish Workers’ Club’, Papers Presented at the African Studies Seminar at the University of the Witwatersrand (African Studies Institute, Johannesburg, 1977), 91.

35 Wits Historical Papers, Colin Purkey Papers, A1984, Matya Ozinsky, interviewed by C. Purkey, L. Witz and S. Ozinsky, 21 February 1988, Johannesburg, E21, p. 1.

36 Wits Historical Papers, Colin Purkey Papers, A1984, Dora Alexander, interviewed by Colin Purkey and Les Witz, 12 April 1989, E29, p. 4.

37 Paul Trewhela to Naidoo, 1 December 2004. See also handwritten note from Naidoo, 20 November, 2004: Phyllis Naidoo Papers, University of KwaZulu Natal, Westville Campus, Gandhi-Luthuli Documentation Centre.

38 Colin Purkey Papers, A1984, Issy Heymann, interviewed by Luli Callinicos, 31 May 1987, E2b.

39 Colin Purkey Papers, A1984, Ray Adler, interviewed by Colin Purkey and Lesley Witz, Johannesburg, 1990, E32.

40 B. Sachs, Multitude of Dreams((Johannesburg: Kayor, 1949), 152–153.

41 The coverage was noticeably uneven between different newspapers. As the references cited here indicate, the Rand Daily Mail referred to the Party’s Germiston campaigning quite frequently. The earliest mention in the Johannesburg Star of Marks’ candidature was as an aside in a report on a Communist Party meeting on the Johannesburg City hall steps (‘Protest meeting City Hall Steps’, The Star, 7 November 1932, p. 5). The Star’s reporting about polling day in Germiston makes no reference to the Communists’ activities that day.

42 W.A. Poulton, ‘Communists in a Riot’, Rand Daily Mail, 11 October 1932, 8.

43 W.A. Poulton, ‘Effort to Nominate a Native Communist’, Rand Daily Mail, 3 November 1932, 4, 10.

44 G.H. Van L Ribbink, ‘Banishment of the Reds’, Rand Daily Mail, 7 November 1932, 9.

45 ‘Elusive Mr Roux’, Rand Daily Mail, 14 November 1932, 8; ‘No Trace of Mr Roux’, Rand Daily Mail, 17 November 1932, 10; ‘Elusive Mr Roux – Police Search’, Rand Daily Mail, 19 November 1932, 10.

46 ‘Elusive Mr Roux – Police Search’, Rand Daily Mail.

47 ‘Roux Arrested At Last’, Rand Daily Mail, 28 November 1932, 7.

48 A.G. Barlow, ‘The Germiston Election’, Rand Daily Mail, 1 December 1932.

49 ‘Germiston Riot – Trouble at Location’, Rand Daily Mail, 14 November 1936.

50 South African National Archives (SANA), Justice Files, 593 2024/32, File: Strike of Garment Workers Germiston, 1932, Sub Inspector Fourie to District Commandant, South African Police, Boksburg, 22 August 1932.

51 For reference to the empathy between the police and strikers see E.S. Sachs, Rebels Daughters((London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1957), 90.

52 SANA, Justice Files, JUS 593 2024/32, File: Strike of Garment Workers Germiston, 1932, Deputy Commissioner commanding Witwatersrand Division to Commandant of the South African Police, 6 September, 1932.

53 The most detailed analysis of the strike is in B.M. Touyz, ‘White Politics and the Garment Workers Union. 1930–1953’ (MA thesis, Comparative African Government and Law, University of Cape Town, 1979), 60–64.

54 SANA, Justice Files, JUS 593 2024/32, File: Strike of Garment Workers Germiston, 1932, R. White, sub-inspector Germiston to the Commissioner of the SAP, 25 August 1932.

55 ‘Railwaymen Protest Banishment Order’, Rand Daily Mail, 17 November 1932, 10.

56 Touyz, ‘White Politics’, 63, Sachs, Rebels Daughters, 91.

57 A. Drew, South Africa’s Radical Tradition, Volume 1((Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press, 1996), 22–23; Discordant Comrades: Identities and Loyalties on the South African Left((Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 112–115.

58 H. Haywood, Black Bolshevik: The Autobiography of an African American Communist((Chicago: Liberation Press, 1978), 257–258.

59 S. Johns, ‘Marxism-Leninism in a Multi-Racial Environment: The Origins and History of the Communist Party of South Africa’, Ph. D Dissertation, Department of Government, Harvard University, 1965, 491.

60 A. Davidson, I. Filatova, V. Gorodnov, and S. Johns, eds, South Africa and the Communist International, Volume 1((London: Frank Cass, 2003) 232 (henceforth: Davidson et al., South African and the Communist International, Volume 1) .

61 Online Comintern Archive, 425/4/399/1-10, ‘To the CPSA. Basic Organisational Tasks’. Letter from the Comintern executive, 2 September 1930.

62 Johns, ‘Marxism-Leninism in a Multiracial Environment’, 541.

63 B. Hirson, ‘The Black Republic Slogan – Part II’, Searchlight South Africa, 4 (February 1990), 46.

64 Drew, Discordant Comrades, 131.

65 W. Record, The Negro and the Communist Party((Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1951), 106.

66 Davidson et al., South African and the Communist International, Volume 1, 12–15.

67 See the minutes of a meeting attended by former African branch secretaries, 13 November 1932 and their complaints about their positions being ‘frozen’: Davidson et al., South Africa and the Communist International, Volume 2, 61. For details about the ways in which the party built its following in Vereeniging see reports in Umsebenzi, 28 February 1929 and 10 October 1930. On Potchefstroom, first-hand evidence is available in R. Edgar, Edwin Thabo Mofutsanyana and the CPSA, 1927–1939((Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 2005), 9.

68 Wits Historical Papers, Sylvia Neame Papers, A2729, Sam Malkinson, interviewed by Sylvia Neame, 1964, Transcript, p. 8.

69 Drew, Discordant Comrades, 127.

70 Wits Historical Papers, E.R. Roux Papers, A2667, Sidney Bunting, ‘Recent Trade Unionism in South Africa’, document submitted to the Sixth Congress of the Communist International. A3.

71 Wits Historical Papers, E. R. Roux Papers, A2667, Speech by Rebecca Bunting, A4.

72 The excellent newspaper holdings in the basement of Johannesburg’s public library remain an invaluable resource for South African social historians with bound series of more than a hundred years from every significant South African newspaper. I am very grateful to Mr Mashaba for his help during my visit to the Library.