The Industrial Workers of Africa

An interesting  history of the early socialist movement in South Africa.

http://www.cssaame.com/issues/19_1/2derwalt.pdf

The International Socialist League was a revolutionary syndicalist organization, and not a Marxist group. As such, the International Socialist League held that racially integrated revolutionary industrial unions should overthrow capitalism and the State, replacing both with workers’ self-management of the economy . Hence, the organization must be situated within the context of the international revolutionary syndicalist movement of the early 20th century, a movement exemplified by the Industrial Workers of the World ( or I.W.W.) in the United States of America. It is for this reason that the International Socialist League sought to organize revolutionary industrial unions in South Africa, the most notable of which was the Industrial Workers of Africa. Founded in September 1917, the Industrial Workers of Africa was the first trade union for African workers in South African history...the organization developed a coherent analysis of racial oppression in South Africa, and advocated the removal of racially oppressive laws through industrial action. Although both the International Socialist League,  the organization probably never had more than a few hundred members, and the Industrial Workers of Africa were very small organizations, it is when we understand them within their international context — as part of a far larger revolutionary socialist current — that we best grasp their full significance.

...There is a strong tendency in the literature to present the International Socialist League as simply a chapter in the history of the Communist Party, a sort of Communist Party in embryo...Despite the common presentation of the organization as a mainstream Marxist organization, the ideological orientation of the International Socialist League was not based on classical Marxism, but, instead, on revolutionary syndicalism...In 1910, there were at least two revolutionary syndicalist organizations operating in South Africa. The first, as mentioned above, was a South African section of the I.W.W., which was active between 1910-1912. The second organization was the Socialist Labour Party. Also founded in 1910, the Socialist Labour Party was linked with the American party of the same name. The Socialist Labor Party in the United States advocated an interesting variant of revolutionary syndicalism, which was lucidly articulated by its key theorist, Daniel De Leon...both the South African I.W.W. and Socialist Labour Party had ceased operating by 1914. That same year, however, the nucleus of a new revolutionary syndicalist body, the International Socialist League, began to emerge...a minority of internationalist and socialist South African Labour Party members, previously grouped around a dissident War on War League and the War on War Gazette, resigned from the South African Labour Party, and helped found the International Socialist League in September 1915....The International Socialist League was also joined by former members and supporters of the South African I.W.W. and Socialist Labour Party...

...At its founding, the membership of the International Socialist League was largely based amongst immigrants from Britain, and to a lesser extent, the United States and Eastern Europe (notably, Jewish immigrants). Many of the founders of the International Socialist League were skilled workers...

...“All segregation schemes are doomed to failure. We must either lift the Native up to the White standard [of living], or sink down to his.” Equal wages and equal rights for all workers were the surest safeguard of decent conditions for all workers, as well as a just policy for the working-class as a whole. Given that workers all had the same interests, and given the inability of racist practices such as color bars on the job and in the unions to protect workers, the only realistic way forward for all workers was unification into industrial unions, and the lifting of African workers to the “political and industrial status” of the white; equal rights for all would help remove divisions between workers and lay the basis for socialism and freedom. Thus, socialism required a united struggle against capitalism and racism. Through such a policy the working-class could be united and mobilised for the struggle against capitalism and the State. At the same time, the International Socialist League argued that the pressures of industry were removing ethnic divisions between African workers: “capitalism was killing that more effectively than anything else.”...

...the International Socialist League condemned racial discrimination as unjust and as opposed to the interests of all workers — African, Coloured, Indian and white. The International Socialist League’s opposition to racism did not only, however, revolve around the limitations of racially exc lusive trade unionism and segregation. The International also ran articles critiquing the pseudo-science of “scientific racism” which held that the different races had  inherently different (and highly unequal) abilities...It also condemned a range of racially discriminatory legislation, including the pass laws. This approach was informed by the view outlined in The International in October 1915 that:"…an internationalism which does not concede the fullest rights which the native working-class is capable of claiming will be a sham …"

There is also no doubt that the International Socialist League’s anti-racism — a central part of its revolutionary industrial unionist creed — alienated many white workers and the organization faced increasing levels of violence and harassment....

...Indian Workers’ Industrial Union “on the lines of the I.W.W.” in Durban. The Industrial Union organized in a number of industries, including printing, tobacco, laundry and the docks. It also reportedly attracted waiters, mineworkers and the “sugar slaves” of the plantations...

The new union — the first trade union for African workers in South African history — was initially named the I.W.W., or the “Industrial Workers of the World,” ...The union’s name was slightly modified on October 11, 1917, to the “Industrial Workers of Africa,”

A leaflet prepared by a committee of two International Socialist League and two Industrial Workers of Africa members in October 1917, and issued in Zulu and Sesotho in a print run of 10,000 copies:

LISTEN, WORKERS, LISTEN!

Workers of the Bantu race: Why do you live in slavery? Why are you not free as other men are free? Why are you kicked and spat upon by your masters? Why must you carry a pass before you can move anywhere? And if you are found without one, why are you thrown into prison? Why do you toil hard for little money? And again thrown into prison if you refuse to work? Why do they herd you like cattle into compounds? WHY? Because you are the toilers of the earth. Because the masters want you to labor for their profit. Because they pay the Government and Police to keep you as slaves to toil for them. If it were not for the money they make from your labour, you would not be oppressed. But mark: you are the mainstay of the country. You do all the work, you are the means of their living. That is why you are robbed of the fruits of your labour and robbed of your liberty as well. There is only one way of deliverance for you Bantu workers. Unite as workers. Unite: forget the things which divide you. Let there be no longer any talk of Basuto, Zulu, or Shangaan. You are all labourers; let Labour be your common bond....Workers of all lands unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win.

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