3. The Communist Party of South Africa and the Communist International

The CPSA had a difficult balancing act in broadening its appeal to Africans while remaining faithful to working class struggles and solidarity. ⁴⁸Although many whites drifted away from the Party after its executive opened up its membership to Africans in 1924, Party leaders persevered with recruiting a small cadre of blacks, Mofutsanyana among them. Framing a programme that resonated with Africans was at the heart of the reasoning for the Independent Native Republic thesis formulated by the Communist International (Comintern) Executive and South African delegates at the Sixth Comintern International Congress in 1928. The thesis supported 'an independent native republic, as a stage towards a workers' and peasants' government'; in practical terms, it meant promoting black majority rule and the return of land to indigenous people as a stage on the way to socialist revolution. The Native Republic slogan touched off a furious debate within the CPSA. Those who supported the Native Republic believed that the issue strongly appealed to Africans, while its detractors resented what they believed was the Comintern's unnecessary meddling in CPSA affairs.

This was not the last time that shifts in Comintern policy would have a disruptive impact on the CPSA. In 1930 the Comintern adopted the 'New Line', which argued that the immiseration of the Great Depression would radicalise the working class and make it more receptive to Communist programmes. In the South African context, the New Line assumed that a radicalised white working class would be more open to joint actions with black workers. When the CPSA's general secretary Douglas Wolton returned from the Soviet Union, he had marching orders to bolshevise the Party, purge social democrats and cease its activities with reformist organisations. Bunting was unceremoniously pushed out of the leadership and the promising League of African Rights was disbanded. A year later Bunting, Thibedi, and a number of other people were expelled from the Party. Party membership plummeted. In 1932 the Party secretariat estimated that the Party had about 125 members.

Because Mofutsanyana was in Potchefstroom and Durban in 1930 and 1931 while the Party began turning on itself, he claimed that he did not participate in the purge of Bunting and others. Indeed, he acknowledged that Bunting's expulsion created major problems for the Party with Africans, because he was a founder of the Party and he was a well-known campaigner for African rights. Mofutsanyana believed the CPSA had blundered by not preparing its rank-and-file members for its actions. 'Even if there was something that was wrong, I think it was necessary to educate the people to understand what was really the fault of Bunting. But that was never done.' ⁴⁹However, Mofutsanyana found no fault with the Native Republic thesis because 'the majority of the people always should rule'. The problem, though, was that the Party devoted too much attention to the slogan theoretically before it could be properly implemented. White Party members were troubled 'because they thought what kind of bloody slogan is this that is inciting the majority against us. Whereas that was not the position.'

After returning to Johannesburg, Mofutsanyana, as secretary of the African Federation of Trade Unions (AFTU), carried out the Comintern's New Line policy through organising unemployed blacks and whites. At a meeting at the Martindale 'bioscope' (cinema) on 5 April 1932, he spoke 'of the unfairness of the Government in failing to provide for the need of the unemployed both white and black. He asked the unemployed natives to unite into a strong body (affiliated to the AFTU) so that they could tell the Government they must be provided with food, clothes and houses, or they would refuse to pay the taxes levied on them.' A week later he led a procession to the office of Johannesburg's manager of African locations, G. Ballenden, who warned the crowd to work with him and 'not to follow people such as the ICU and Communist Party who were out to get their money'. However, after the marchers returned to the Party office, Mofutsanyana responded: 'Mr Ballenden says I am living on your money, but how can this be when you are not working. He is a liar. He is eating your money, as all the money you pay for rent goes to him, and he will do nothing for you in spite of his promises. He tells you not to go to the ICU or Communist Party, but straight to him. That is so that he can tell you what he likes and chase you away.⁵⁰

Throughout most of the 1930s Edwin and Josie struggled to make ends meet. They and their children lived in several rooms at the back of her grandmother's residence at 31 Bertha St in Sophiatown. ⁵¹Although they were supposed to be salaried 'native' functionaries of the Party, they often were not paid and had to generate extra income using strategies common to most township residents - playing fah fee , a Chinese numbers game, participating in stokvels and washing and ironing laundry for Europeans. Twice a week the daughters picked up washing; and at Christmas and Easter Josie and her daughter Carol earned extra money by sewing children's clothes for several white families. ⁵²

MOSCOW

In 1921 the Soviet Communist Party opened the University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV) to train party cadres from the Soviet Union's eastern border areas. Several years later the school was placed under the control of the Comintern and began admitting blacks from Africa and the United States. ⁵³In 1928 James La Guma, who had visited the Soviet Union with J. T. Gumede in 1927, announced that the Comintern had allocated ten slots specifically to South Africans. The CPSA executive proposed sending three comrades - Gomas, Ndobe, and Thibedi - with others to follow later. ⁵⁴Considered an alternative, Mofutsanyana was too immersed in the Potchefstroom protests to take an extended leave; in any case, it was not until the early 1930s that Party members began trekking to Moscow for stints of up to two years.

His involvement in the campaign to organise the unemployed caught the attention of the Comintern representative to South Africa, Eugene Dennis, who tapped him to join one of the first groups to leave for Moscow. Gana Makabeni, Nzula and Mofutsanyana were sent to Durban to be smuggled out. Their contact was a wealthy white businessman who owned a fleet of steamers and fishing boats. Although they planned to masquerade as workers loading cargo and stow away on a ship, they were discovered before the ship sailed. Mofutsanyana suspected that officials saw through their act because they did not play the role of dock workers convincingly.

Their blunder did not end the attempts to send Party members to the Soviet Union. Nzula became the first to leave South Africa. Using the passport of an ICU member, Conan Doyle Modiakgotla, he boarded a ship in Cape Town posing as a member of Griffith Motsieloa's singing group that were travelling to London to make records. After a brief stay in Britain, Nzula journeyed on to the Soviet Union.

In mid-1932 Mofutsanyana tried again, taking a more circuitous route to the Soviet Union. A party member, Joffe, drove him from Johannesburg to the Mozambique border. Mofutsanyana inserted his own photograph into the passport of Edward Roux, a well-known white Party activist, who was being sought by the police. Since he was running the risk of being picked up as Roux, Mofutsanyana had to spend time hiding on the outskirts of Lourenco Marques (now Maputo), the capital of Mozambique. Once Roux had resolved his case with the police, Mofutsanyana was free to move on, and he caught a boat headed for Italy. Joffe sent a telegram to the Party office in Johannesburg: 'The parcel left Lourenco Marques this morning on the Italian boat Timavu.' It was not difficult for government officials to decipher the message once they had intercepted it, and they sent word ahead to British agents to be on the lookout. The Timavu slowly worked its way up the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, stopping at a number of ports along the way. Finally, when the boat docked at Port Said, Egypt, British officials were waiting for the 'parcel'.

Mofutsanyana related his exchange with them:

I saw two men in a steamboat, coming to our boat. They were two Englishmen. I was the only black man on the boat. They came up to me. 'We have come to fetch you.'

'Fetch me?'

'Yes.'

'Who are you?'

'I am the British consul here.'

'Do you know the man you are looking for?'

He asked me where I was going? I said Italy. He turned to his friend and says, 'Can he be going to Italy of all places?' I noticed they didn't know the man they were looking for. I moved away from them. I wanted them to follow me and say something more. So they went out to the owner of the boat and they came back. They didn't even speak to me. That was a close escape.

Mofutsanyana proceeded to Genoa, where he caught a train to Berlin. Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party were rising to power, and Berlin was hardly the healthiest environment for a Party member, let alone a black Communist. Mofutsanyana had been given addresses, but not the names of people to contact. After one dead end, he went to the offices of the League Against Imperialism, where a Chinese comrade assisted him to make his way to a railway station. Travelling with a group of black Americans, he journeyed from Berlin to Stettin on the Baltic Sea. From there they caught a ship to Leningrad.

Most of the African American, West Indian and African students who attended KUTV were placed in Section 9, known as the 'Negro Section', of the Anglo-American Sector. They participated in either a twenty-month or a fourteen-month course, which involved general education courses such as English language training, maths, geography and natural sciences and specialised courses such as Political Economy, History of the Revolutionary Movement and the Comintern, Historical Materialism and Leninism, Military Science, and Party and Trade Union Building, Their teachers included the Hungarian Endre Sik and the Russian Ivan Potekhin, who learned as much as they taught about conditions in African countries, the subject of another course. Mofutsanyana observed:

People like Potekhin and Sik had been studying Africa long before we went there. They also learned a hell of a lot from us because we didn't go there as school children. We went there from the struggle to learn from their struggle.

KUTV students were also exposed to practical activities such as working on a collective farm, engaging in party organising and operating in the underground. They were given a period of military training, where Mofutsanyana was introduced to guns for the first time.

We were sent to the army during the holidays. One month hard training. You see every man there goes to the army for four months every year ... They were teaching green, backward Africans and they made us good shooters, too.

Because of his stint as a clerk in South African gold mines, Mofutsanyana was also sent to observe mine operations.

I found a vast difference between the mining in the Soviet Union and the mining in South Africa because in South Africa in those days ... I don't know what it is now - the tramming was done by people chasing the cars right to the station where the stuff is to be put. But in the Soviet Union it was taken by machinery to the place.

Although Mofutsanyana matured as a Communist in the two-and-a-half years he was in the Soviet Union, he and other black students had to cope with the reality of racial discrimination. Although the official line was that racism did not exist in the Soviet Union, and African-American and African students were supposed to be treated as privileged guests, they were not insulated from racism, either in or out of the schools. In 1932, after black students lodged a formal complaint about racial incidents with foreign whites, the Comintern's Executive Committee set up an investigative commission. Several students, two whites and one black, were expelled. ⁵⁵This action did not solve the problem, and the Comintern chief, Dmitri Manuilsky, launched another probe. Mofutsanyana, one of those who talked with Manuilsky, commented on how children treated him as an oddity as he moved about Moscow. They shouted, 'Come see the Negro!' ⁵⁶Other students talked about racial slights in public, the suppression of a film about blacks and whites, and the negative images of blacks in advertisements and theatrical productions. In particular, they cited a play, The Negro Child And The Ape. Using his code name 'Greenwood', Mofutsanyana and 14 others submitted a resolution to the Comintern on the 'Derogatory Portrayal of Negroes in the Cultural Institutions of the Soviet Union'. ⁵⁷Meeting with the students, Manuilsky conceded that some of their criticisms might have merit, but he also thought that they were embellishing incidents and 'underestimating the fact that there was no "class basis" for racism in the Soviet society'. ⁵⁸

One of the co-signers of the resolution was Jomo Kenyatta, the Kenyan nationalist leader, whom George Padmore had encouraged to study journalism in Party schools. Mofutsanyana had a fair amount of contact with Kenyatta, but he did not regard him as a committed Communist. Indeed he compared Kenyatta to Clements Kadalie, who had purged Communists from the ICU. The South African students used to accuse Kenyatta of being petty bourgeois. And Kenyatta would retort, 'I don't like these petty things. Why don't you say I'm a big bourgeois?'

The most troubling issue that Mofutsanyana had to cope with in Moscow was the sudden death of Nzula on 14 January 1934. Nzula had arrived in Moscow about six months before Mofutsanyana. In addition to studying at KUTV, Nzula had been collaborating with Sik, Potekhin and Aleksander Zusmanovich on a work on conditions in Africa. ⁵⁹

The official version was that Nzula, a heavy drinker, got drunk on a winter's night, passed out in a snowdrift on his way home, and died of pneumonia a short time later in a Moscow hospital. However, because of stories about the purges and executions in the Soviet Union, a rumour circulated in South Africa that Nzula had become disillusioned with Communism, and the Comintern, fearing Nzula's influence in South Africa, killed him before he could return.

Mofutsanyana was very familiar with the conflicting versions of Nzula's death when he read Robin Cohen's introduction to an edited edition of Nzula's Forced Labour in Africa in 1981. Cohen resurrected a charge by Trotskyite writer C. L. R. James that Nzula died at the hands of the Comintern. Mofutsanyana bristled at this assertion. He was certain that Nzula had died because of his heavy drinking; he knew that Nzula had frequented shebeens (drinking places) as far back as the time that Nzula was teaching at Aliwal North. Although his drinking remained a problem after they met up again in Johannesburg, it reached critical proportions in the Soviet Union. 'I had a lot of quarrels with him over his drinking, but I couldn't help him.' Soviet officials sent Nzula to a sanatorium for a cure, but that did not help. According to Mofutsanyana, an English friend of Nzula's who was staying in the sanatorium had convinced a doctor not to give Nzula the medicine to treat him. He checked out of the sanatorium no better off, and his drinking binges continued.

Mofutsanyana and other South African students learned of Nzula's death the same day they returned from a Black Sea holiday. They learned that Nzula and his English friend had been drinking heavily. When Nzula left to go home, he was so drunk that he passed out and fell into a bank of snow. By the time he woke up, he had contracted a severe case of pneumonia and died a short time later. At his funeral, Eugene Dennis attributed Nzula's death to oppressive conditions in South Africa. 'These comrades from South Africa are so oppressed they're not allowed to enter any bar. If they get to a place like this, they will not go out of the bar before they finish all the bottles.' However, Mofutsanyana adamantly attributed Nzula's death to his own weakness. Although Mofutsanyana had often argued with Nzula about his drinking, Nzula would do nothing about it. The accusation that the Comintern killed Nzula and fabricated the story about him drinking and falling into a bank of snow never convinced Mofutsanyana. He was certain that Nzula was the author of his own demise. 'I personally expected him to go. He was overdrinking.' Nevertheless, the rumour that he was the victim of Comintern machinations continued to circulate in South Africa.

Mofutsanyana did confirm that Nzula's drinking contributed to his problems with Soviet officials. When he was on drinking binges, Nzula would vent his criticisms of the Soviet Union and his opinion that Stalin was not a good leader. On one occasion Nzula reminded Mofutsanyana of a Sophiatown meeting they had both attended, at which A. B. Xuma, a medical doctor, launched an attack on the Soviet government. Xuma charged that in the USSR, it was Stalin, not workers, who owned all the cars, and Nzula had pounced on Xuma at the meeting. However, after having a first-hand view of the Soviet Union, Nzula began to regret his earlier defensive stance.

According to Mofutsanyana, Nzula's heresies drew the attention of Comintern officials, who were not prepared to allow the influential Nzula to return home to South Africa until he dried out physically and ideologically. An agreement was reached with American Party activists to take him to the United States for a period before he would be allowed to return to South Africa. Nzula died before that plan could be set in motion.

Mofutsanyana began his roundabout journey back to South Africa in mid-1934. ⁶⁰He embarked from Odessa, and stopped off in Greece, Marseilles and Genoa before boarding a South African boat headed for Lourenco Marques. Again he was the only black on board and was seated at his own table on deck. One day as he was lounging, a woman working on the boat approached him. After asking Mofutsanyana where he was from and where he was going to, she informed him that some passengers were accusing him of being from Moscow. Mofutsanyana denied that and insisted that he was coming from Italy. 'Well,' the woman told him, 'they say you ought to be killed and thrown into the ocean.' Mofutsanyana realised that he 'didn't know whether it was a reality or a joke'.

Mofutsanyana also remembered a 'clumsy sort of a chap' who engaged him in conversations. He was very solicitous of Mofutsanyana's wellbeing and wanted to know if he was getting enough to eat. 'Yes,' Mofutsanyana replied, 'they give me food like anyone else.' The man insisted, 'Well, you tell me if they don't give you food.' Mofutsanyana learned the man was returning from England, where he had been racing his horses, but he did not learn his identity until they were leaving the ship at Lourenco Marques. A small crowd was there to greet the man, who Mofutsanyana then realised was Abe Bailey, a prominent mining magnate.

Mofutsanyana had left South Africa posing as Edward Roux, but he decided to slip back across the border disguised as a Shangaan migrant worker. He thought he had covered his tracks until one day several police detectives called on him at the Party offices in Johannesburg.

They greeted me and said, 'We haven't seen you for a hell of a long time. Where have you been?' Before I answered one of them said, 'Don't you know? He has been in the Transkei.' They laughed. Then I realised that they knew where I came from.

FACTION FIGHTING

When Mofutsanyana returned to Johannesburg in August or September 1934, he found both his family and Party life in turmoil. In his absence Josie had become pregnant by another man. Although Mofutsanyana was upset by her affair, he remembered that Eugene Dennis had counselled him that there are times that revolutionaries have to endure personal hardships for the sake of the struggle. When Josie's son was born a short time later, he was named Dennis, presumably after the Comintern representative. Josie had another surprise for Mofutsanyana. She told him that she wanted to go to Moscow for Party schooling, but he opposed her and nominated a 'Comrade Jane' instead. Palmer argued that Jane was illiterate and would need English classes when she arrived in Moscow. ⁶¹Mofutsanyana probably opposed Josie's trip because he wanted her to look after Dennis, but she had already dealt with that issue by arranging for the baby to stay with her father's second wife, Clara Emma, and her children at the mining compound. The older children stayed with her grandmother and Mofutsanyana in the Sophiatown rooms. Palmer left for Moscow in mid-1935, posing as a nurse attending Matilda First.

As for Party life, Mofutsanyana discovered that the vicious factional disputes within the CPSA were still raging. He found the Johannesburg CPSA branch 'in a sad state'. Its fifty members - most of whom were white with 'petty bourgeois tendencies' (Mofutsanyana's characterisation) - were split into factions supporting either Moses Kotane or Lazar Bach. Ngedlane backed Kotane, and Mofutsanyana and Marks, the other two salaried black functionaries, threw their support behind Bach. That was enough to allow Bach to gain control of the Central Committee. ⁶²

An emigrant from Latvia, Bach came to South Africa in 1929, joined the Party in 1931 and rose rapidly to a position of influence in the Party. A Party organiser in Durban for several years, he was elevated to the Politburo in 1933. He and Douglas and Molly Wolton comprised a formidable troika in Party affairs. When the Woltons abruptly left for England at the beginning of 1933, Bach stepped in and became the most forceful advocate of the Wolton line. ⁶³

A master of 'Imprecor-taal', ⁶⁴Bach waged furious ideological battles with his opponents in the pages of the Party newspaper, Umsebenzi. ⁶⁵One fight was a variation on the Native Republic debate. Was there a 'native bourgeoisie' and would this class side with or oppose the imperialist camp? Those who denied the existence of a 'native bourgeoisie' maintained a democratic revolution was necessary before a socialist transformation could take place. Edward Roux, a Witwatersrand University botanist who normally sided with Kotane, argued that only a few African businessmen might qualify as bourgeois. He acknowledged that class differentiation existed among Africans, but the laws were so hostile to all Africans that petit-bourgeois Africans would ally with workers, peasants, and labour tenants on European farms to resist oppression. Taking the opposing view, Mofutsanyana found evidence of a nascent African bourgeoisie in an African-owned finance and loan company registered in Pretoria with capital of £9 000. Although he conceded that African capitalists could not be deemed an industrial bourgeoisie, he asked how much capital it took to be defined as bourgeois or petty bourgeois and how many exploiters constituted a class? ⁶⁶

In July 1935 the Politburo expelled and suspended several Party members; a few months later they commenced another round of expulsions. For Kotane, Roux and Gomas, this was the last straw; and they fired off a cable to the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) on 12 September 1935, asking them to intervene. The message read:

SECTARIAN LEADERSHIP CONDUCTING MASS EXPULSIONS SPLITTING PARTY TOP BOTTOM IN FACE [OF] ABYSSINIAN WAR DANGER WE PREPARED HELD UNIFY PARTY BASIS SEVENTH CONGRESS DECISIONS.

Three days later Mofutsanyana, Marks and Hilton responded by sending their own appeal to Zusmanovich:

DIFFERENCE CONTINUATION FACTIONAL ACTIVITIES STOP OTHER SIDE IRRECONCILABLE AGAINST LINE LEADERSHIP STOP SPLIT MASS ORGANISATIONS MAJORITY WHICH ARE WITH US STOP COMPELLED TO ADAPT STRICT MEASURES STOP PROFESSOR CAMBRIDGE [ROUX] WITH THEM AND THREATENS CREATION OF NEW ORGANISATION WITH OR WITHOUT YOUR AGREEMENT. SOME HAVE TO BE EXPELLED.

Several weeks later the Johannesburg Party branch sent a letter to ECCI further clarifying the problems that had led to the ousting of Roux and five others from the Politburo. Their expulsions had been because of 'a lack of Bolshevik revolutionary initiative' and a 'sectarian approach to lower Party organs, individual Party members, mass organisations and non-Party persons'. So many members had been expelled that the CPSA's Politburo and Central Committee were leaderless. ⁶⁷

Because CPSA leaders were clearly unable to resolve their differences on their own, the Comintern established a commission chaired by Andre Marty, a French Communist leader and a member of the Comintern executive, to investigate the factional disputes and to recommend a feasible alternative. The leading CPSA protagonists were invited to testify before the commission. The Comintern had called Bach and Kotane to Moscow a year before. Bach promptly responded. When he arrived in Moscow in November 1934, he was sent to a course at KUTV. ⁶⁸However, Kotane claimed that the CPSA secretariat never made it clear to him that he had been invited. ⁶⁹On 29 September 1935 Kotane, Roux, Hilton and Marks were formally invited. Although Kotane had left the previous month and arrived in Moscow in November, the others did not go. Roux had just been expelled as an 'undesired element'. ⁷⁰Hilton was exempted because he was needed for Party work in South Africa, and the Politburo delegated Maurice Richter, a former member of the Johannesburg District Committee, to take his place.

It seems obvious that the general secretary of the Party would have gone, but Marks, probably leery of what waited for him at the other end, had cold feet. There were various explanations. According to Richter's commission testimony, Marks said that Bach could deal with the issue, since he was already in Moscow. ⁷¹Richter also reported that Marks had excused himself because of ill health and that he had to visit Cape Town. Mofutsanyana relayed another message to the commission: 'Raymond's [Marks] excuse was that he was in Durban and that as soon as he returned he would be sent "on a long holiday to witness winter sports", meaning Moscow.' ⁷²

Marks's reluctance to go was probably based on several factors. First, there were the uncertainties about what awaited him in Moscow. Stories of how Nzula had died at the hands of the Comintern were circulating in South Africa. After being called to Moscow, a South African communist, Marks (using the name R. Fleet) reported from Paris in late 1936 on the rumours that 'Jack' [Nzula's revolutionary name was Jackson] had been at odds with the Comintern on the national question and that he had been 'liquidated'. Marks acknowledged: 'This had a very bad effect on numerous comrades. It scared students we prepared to send over.' ⁷³

Moreover, Marks had sensed a change in the attitude of party members towards him. In 1935 Mofutsanyana and Louis Joffe told him that things were not right, and that he would be removed from certain Party work. Nothing further was done because of the Kotane-Bach dispute, but CPSA officials did not inform him that they were suspicious because his wife had relatives who were working for the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the police. Although the suspicions were eventually allayed, future disciplinary action lay in store for him.

When Marks finally set off for Moscow in February 1936, he travelled through Lourenco Marques and stayed with an African sympathiser before proceeding to Mombasa, Kenya, and France. Reaching Paris in March 1936, he contacted French Communists. Since the Marty Commission was already meeting, he was told not to proceed to Moscow, and he returned to South Africa seven months later. While in Paris, Marks looked up Otto Huiswood, editor of the Negro Worker, and mentioned the name and address of his host in Lourenco Marques. Huiswood then mailed Party literature to the man, who was then in trouble with Portuguese authorities. He informed them that Marks was the only one who could have provided his address, and they passed the information on to the South African Police.

Divulging names was not the only blunder Marks committed. In Paris he bought a gramophone, which went missing in the luggage car of the train from Lourenco Marques to Johannesburg. Marks had left South Africa on Fleet's passport, signing Fleet's name on the immigration forms. When he could not find the gramophone, he filed a claim in his own name and gave the Party's Johannesburg office address as his own. The Politburo ruled that Marks had 'failed to observe the elementary rules of a Party member' for maintaining secrecy and that his actions had tipped off the police about how he had travelled abroad. Marks was removed from his leadership positions and expelled from the Party. ⁷⁴

THE MARTY COMMISSION

When the commission commenced its deliberations in late November 1935, Marty set a solemn tone for the sessions by reminding those attending that we are not here in a bourgeois club ... This is not a discussion club; you are here before the C.I. [Communist International] before the world struggle organisation of the workers. ⁷⁵

The purpose of the commission, he then stated, was to delve into the ideological questions that had created the factionalism bedevilling the CPSA with a view to ending it and re-establishing a 'good CP'. ⁷⁶In addition, he hoped that a united front of workers of all races could be forged and a programme of action implemented to build trade union unity and mobilise a mass movement of all racial groups against British imperialism. The commission's primary work took place between 12 and 19 March 1936. It heard testimony from Richter, Bach and Kotane and from Josie Palmer, who had attended the 7th Comintern Congress and was studying in a Party school.

Bach and Kotane were clearly the most important witnesses. In their testimonies, they aired considerably different views on a number of issues, such as the stages of the Native Republic, the existence of a 'native' bourgeoisie, the United Front, the merits of organising in urban or rural areas, the importance of mass organisations such as Ikaka Labasebenzi ('Shield of the Workers') and the trade unions, and even the reopening of the Party night school. On 19 March 1936, after weighing their arguments, the Marty Commission issued a series of recommendations for the CPSA to implement: to cease its ideological debates and factional disputes immediately; to create an action plan that would appeal to both blacks and whites; to concentrate on trade union organising; to select leadership that came from African movements and trade unions; and to convene a Party congress 'to consolidate all the results'. Lastly the commission directed the CPSA to lessen its dependence on Eastern European Jewish members and actively recruit South African-born whites into its ranks.

The Marty Commission did not give its blessing to either Kotane or Bach. Kotane had to pledge that he would not assume a leadership position in the CPSA and would refrain from factional fights. He was also directed to report the commission's conclusions and the resolutions of the 7th Comintern Congress to the CPSA Politburo.

Galvanised by the rising threat of fascism in European, the 7th Congress had adopted the Popular Front and Proletarian United Front policy that directed Communist parties to forge progressive alliances with allegedly reformist elements such as Social Democrats and Liberals. In the South African context this policy meant trying to unite black and white workers around common anti-imperialist goals, a strategy that flew in the face of South Africans racial realities, where white workers, no matter what their economic status, refused to find common cause with blacks. Thus, in practical terms, the Popular Front reinforced the development of two separate movements in South Africa: one, the anti-Fascist movement to protect the existing democratic rights of white South Africans from which blacks were excluded; the other, the movement to gain democratic rights for blacks, represented by the All Africa Convention, in which whites were virtually absent. ⁷⁷

That Kotane was allowed to return home signified that the commission thought his position was more in accord with the new Comintern line than that of Bach, who was treated differently. Bach had admitted to the commission that although he came to Moscow in a combative mood, his studies at KUTV and his attendance at the 7th Congress had made him recognise that his previous line was 'wrong and sectarian' and destructive. 'Facts are stubborn things, and facts speak more effectively than anything else, and the facts say very clearly that we have brought the [South African] Party to bankruptcy, upon the verge of destruction.' He was now ready to carry out Comintern directives 'with the same energy as I fought for my old positions in the old days of the factional activities of the Party'. ⁷⁸Despite Bach's recantation, the Marty Commission decided to keep him and Maurice Richter (and his brother Paul, who had nothing to do with the factional dispute) in the Soviet Union. Marty asked Bach to stay on and assist the commission with its work, and invited Maurice Richter to remain and study until Marks arrived. ⁷⁹Although Bach and the Richters probably did not realise it at the time, the Marty Commission's decision to keep them in the Soviet Union sealed their ultimate fate. After returning in February 1937 from a trip to France, Marty learned that the trio had been expelled from the Party and arrested. Bach was charged with taking 'part in disruptive factional work in the Communist Party in South Africa' and coming 'into contact [in the Soviet Union] with elements undeserving of confidence and to have hidden the fact from the Party'. Questions were also raised about his father's background. The Richters were accused of moving 'in circles hostile to the Party and to the Soviet Government'. In addition the Soviet authorities uncovered documents in the apartment of a Trotskyite, Berman-Yurin, whose brother Jacob had been executed the previous year. The Comintern Executive decided that they had gone further than anti-Party activity and were now engaging in 'criminal activity'. Bach and the Richters were committed to concentration camps in the eastern Soviet Union. ⁸⁰

Back in Johannesburg, Mofutsanyana, anticipating Kotane's return from Moscow, convened a Politburo confessional on 12 July 1936 to absorb the lessons of the Comintern directive. ⁸¹Party members had to acknowledge that they had erred in their obsession with the Native Republic slogan. Mofutsanyana led off by admitting that 'my great mistake was that I also got into these scholastic discussions. They should have been stopped immediately.' He directed all those at the meeting to 'participate in the discussion and state why he was wrong on this question'.

Willie Kalk took up much of the meeting with a long discourse on why the Comintern was infallible, and how it was based on Marxism-Leninism and dialectical materialism and adapted its strategies to changing conditions. The rise of European Fascism dictated a new line, 'not because the line was wrong, but because of the development of the struggle and change of circumstances. It is a mistake to say that the CI made mistakes. Yes, mistakes were made by comrades in carrying out the line .' To Kalk, one of the problems with the Independent Native Republic slogan was that Party members had not followed it up by 'organising the masses'. He was one of those who had sat on the fence and allowed the debate to deteriorate into an exegesis of minute issues.

However, not all the Politburo members joined in this ritual of self-flagellation. John Gomas, well known for his willingness to go against the grain, raised the point that Communist parties had to tailor their tactics to meet local conditions. He did not agree that the Native Republic discussion was 'inopportune', but that members did not understand it properly.

When Kotane returned to South Africa the following month, he dutifully reported the Marty Commission's analysis and recommendations to the CPSA Politburo. The Comintern had sharply criticised the CPSA for adopting 'abstract slogans which had no relation with the concrete situation in South Africa'. As Kotane put it, 'this totally destroyed the C.P.S.A. and we were all condemned'. ⁸²While the Independent Native Republic slogan could be retained, they had to end all internal debates on it and had to focus on the 'daily demands of the people, and build the Party'. The Comintern also directed the CPSA to start two organisations - one committed to the struggle against war and Fascism among trade unions; and the other to mobilise Africans against imperialism. Wherever possible, they had to bring whites and blacks together around general issues 'and try and get them on joint platforms, perhaps united front demonstrations on certain occasions'. Even though Kotane disagreed fundamentally with D. F. Malan's National Party, he recognised that they were at heart Republicans. 'We must try and find points of agreement with them and draw them into our movement.' The same applied to the Labour Party. Despite its anti-black stance, 'we should work for the united front'.

He also passed on the Marty Commission's directive that the CPSA had to recruit its European members from South African-born English settlers and Afrikaners. There was a perception that Eastern European Jewish immigrants controlled the Party and that the Jewish Workers' Club in Johannesburg essentially formulated Party policies. 'The Jewish elements', Kotane put it bluntly, 'must not infiltrate too much into the Party'.

Although Kotane faithfully passed on the Marty's Commission's recommendations, he remained adamantly opposed to the strategic thinking of Party leaders. For instance, he and Wolfson had sharp differences over the importance of organising the urban African working class. Wolfson argued that the one and a half million Africans in urban areas presented a tremendous opportunity for organising workers who could take the message back to the rural reserves. Kotane did not deny that the Party should do work in the industrial areas, but he felt that it was ignoring the issue of national liberation. The Party had neglected to maintain its branches in the countryside and had left rural folk to the 'good boys' or moderates. 'The position will be gloomy if we do not turn towards the question of national liberation.' He cautioned that they had to remember that miners had close ties with the peasantry. ⁸³

Kotane broke with the Party leadership in early 1937 when he announced that he would give up his position as a salaried party functionary and move to Cape Town. Disillusioned with the direction of the CPSA, he wanted to distance himself from the squabbles of the Johannesburg leaders. 'I am not going to ask you whether I can go or not ... I know the discipline of the Party, but I feel justified in and am not going to listen to any discipline of the party. We have a party leadership to which we do not account for our work and I feel we cannot account to ourselves.'

Other Politburo members took Kotane to task for his 'defiant attitude'. Marks asked him why he was weakening rather than strengthening the Party. Hyman Basner chimed in that, 'If a man feels he is right, he should fight in the Party for his point of view.' Mofutsanyana said that he understood Kotane's reasons, but was disappointed he was not prepared to fight for his point of view. 'I am sure that the CI remembers Lenin's remark that a fight on two fronts is the fight for the right line of the Party.' ⁸⁴In February the Party leadership concluded that Kotane had broken discipline and removed him from the Central Committee and the Politburo. ⁸⁵

A FIRST-CLASS BLUFF

While engaged in the ideological disputes of the 1930s, Mofutsanyana remained an active voice on a range of African causes. For instance, he condemned Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935. The war aroused tremendous interest among Africans, and the sales of black newspapers, such as Umsebenzi, soared when they gave extensive coverage to the war in its early stages. Mofutsanyana penned columns decrying the Italian invasion and organised and addressed 'Hands Off Ethiopia' rallies. Ethiopia had been a beacon of hope for Africans, because it had maintained its independence during the European scramble for Africa in the late nineteenth century. Mofutsanyana slammed Britain and France and the League of Nations (or 'League of Thieves', as he dubbed it) for not taking strong measures to counter Italian aggression and Fascism. He argued that the recourse for Ethiopian workers was to join the 'suffering workers' in Italy in their common working-class struggle. ⁸⁶

His speeches led to at least one confrontation with police. After a gathering in Johannesburg, a policeman demanded that Mofutsanyana show the necessary permit for holding the meeting. When he did not produce one, he was arrested and taken to a charge office. After the police boasted that their role was to tame lions, Mofutsanyana replied that they were not taming lions, but making them. ⁸⁷

Mofutsanyana was often the CPSA's liaison with black political movements. For instance, shortly after he joined the CPSA, Josiel Lefela, the leader of the Basotho anti-colonial movement Lekhotla la Bafo (Council of Commoners), visited Party offices in Johannesburg. Because Lefela was under attack from Basutoland's British colonial administration and prevented from airing his views in the Basutoland press and even some black South African newspapers, he wanted to disseminate news about his organisation in the South African Worker and gain access to the Party's international contacts, such as the League Against Imperialism. ⁸⁸Although Thibedi and Majoro initiated contacts with Lefela, Mofutsanyana, who had grown up on the Basutoland border, became the Party's primary contact in subsequent decades. ⁸⁹

Mofutsanyana also played a pivotal role when the People's Front strategy enjoined the CPSA to reach out to black reformist groups in 1935. African political movements were then undergoing a redefinition. The ANC, under Pixley Seme's tepid leadership, had virtually disappeared from the map. When Prime Minister Hertzog reintroduced his 'Native Bills' to abolish the qualified franchise for Africans in the Cape Province, a spontaneous coalition emerged to fight the Hertzog legislation. In December 1935 CPSA activists Mofutsanyana, Palmer, Kotane and Gomas were among the 400 delegates from all over South Africa who met in Bloemfontein and established the All African Convention (AAC). D. D. T. Jabavu, a Fort Hare College lecturer, was elected president and Mofutsanyana was placed on the executive. Because the AAC provided a rare sense of unity for a wide range of black organisations, Mofutsanyana believed that the convention had great potential for challenging 'Boer and British imperialists'. ⁹⁰

Mofutsanyana's optimism did not last long. The AAC appointed a delegation to lobby members of parliament in Cape Town and meet Prime Minister Hertzog. 91 By the time the delegation arrived in Cape Town, rumours were already afloat that Jabavu was prepared to strike a compromise with Hertzog and accept the ending of the Cape franchise for Africans in return for a few sweeteners. Mofutsanyana became suspicious of a backroom deal when AAC leaders attacked him for raising questions about who was paying for the delegation's hotel rooms. 'You have Moscow gold, keep that gold to yourself. Don't be asking us about our money.' However, Mofutsanyana discovered that the delegation's money was coming from the Donaldson Trust, which was administered by the white liberal South African Institute of Race Relations. He also discovered that white liberals were meeting openly with AAC delegates to get them to accept a 'half-a-loaf' compromise.

When the AAC delegation met Hertzog in the first week of February 1936, Mofutsanyana recollected that 'he addressed us like school children' and remained intransigent in the face of their arguments. Nevertheless, Mofutsanyana understood how Hertzog had arrived at his position. He remembered how in the 1924 election Hertzog had written to Clements Kadalie, asking him to use his influence with Cape African voters to back Hertzog in what was shaping up to be a very close contest with Smuts. Hertzog told Kadalie, 'You and I belong to the oppressed group. In this election you must use your influence to have people vote for me.' Now, in 1936, it was Hertzog who was getting rid of the people who voted for him. When we got there we stated our case that it was not good to remove the voters. We put it that the promise had been made by the South African government that in time the voting rights would be extended to the northern provinces. Now, here you are, Mr Prime Minister, removing the voters of the Cape, which was our only hope.

Mofutsanyana thought that at least Hertzog gave them an honest answer.

Look, I can understand what you are saying. You must also understand in South Africa we [Europeans] are a minority ... When we are in England, we are quite free when overseas, you know. When I am over there I feel quite free. But when I come here you have so many that you will overwhelm us one day ... If we don't remove these people (because even in the Cape they were increasing), one day you will overwhelm us and we will lose everything.

The Representation of Natives Act was enacted at the end of the 1936 Parliamentary session. In exchange for abolishing the qualified franchise for Cape African men, the Act created three seats in the House of Assembly and four in the Senate for Europeans to represent 'Native' interests and opinions and established a 22 member Natives' Representative Council (NRC) to advise the government on African issues (12 Africans indirectly elected and 10 to be appointed by the government).

The first elections for the NRC were held in 1937. By then, Mofutsanyana and CPSA leaders had concluded that the AAC risked going the way of the ICU and ANC - 'empty shells making a noise without substance' - and that the NRC would be powerless to effect change. ⁹²Nevertheless, he and other CPSA leaders determined they were not strong enough on their own to organise a boycott and decided to participate in the 1937 elections through the AAC. Moreover, they figured that the election gave them an opportunity to have direct contact with chiefs and people in the rural areas, where there was at least a chance they could persuade some of them to support more enlightened positions. Furthermore, if anti-government candidates could be elected to the NRC, they could work to destroy it from within. Basner, a candidate for one of the 'native' seats in parliament, put an optimistic spin on the possibilities:

The whole Native population is drawn into the election field - peasants who never heard of the franchise before. The chiefs, owing to the peculiar feudal structure of the tribes, are compelled to explain and get approval of their tribesmen for their vote. The Native teachers and ministers can now be won away from the Chamber of Mines organisations (Race Relations Institute, Joint Councils) into an active and militant struggle for national liberation. ⁹³

Although Mofutsanyana initially concentrated his campaign for a seat in the NRC in the urban areas, he soon realised that the rules for NRC elections stipulated that African males had to vote in the area where they paid their poll taxes. For the most part, that meant their rural home districts. Because only about 20 000 were eligible to vote in the urban areas, Mofutsanyana took his campaign to the countryside.

The election was stacked against Mofutsanyana and Basner from the outset because the outcome depended on winning bloc, not individual, votes. Mofutsanyana called this system of indirect voting 'a first class bluff', ⁹⁴because in the end candidates really had to vie for the support of individuals who spoke for three blocs: location advisory boards in urban areas; headmen councils in rural areas; and chiefs.

Location superintendents also exerted their influence on the nomination process. When Mofutsanyana returned to Potchefstroom, his arch-nemesis Weeks tried to arrest him and openly boasted that he and the location advisory board were going to make the nominations regardless of popular sentiment. ⁹⁵Because chiefs voted on behalf of their people, one chief could swing thousands of votes. Thus, it was more important to win over a chief than individual voters. Referring to the importance of winning the support of a few key leaders, Mofutsanyana observed: 'It is easier to bribe individuals than it is to bribe a whole nation.'

Mofutsanyana had to combat white officials who were set on disrupting his campaign. He remembered a visit to Reitz in the Orange Free State to address a public meeting. 'But the superintendent came in the evening and closed the hall. So I had to speak in the darkness to a huge crowd of people.' He remembered another occasion at Messina on the border with Rhodesia. Arriving late in the evening, he went to the black location to find accommodation.

I found the municipal police lining up there and saying that the superintendent instructed them that I should not be allowed to enter there in the location. I said, 'You are not the Superintendent. You are the police. Go and tell him I am here.' The police went, and he became furious, saying who has the right to wake me when I am sleeping. I told him the police were not letting me in the location. He couldn't pronounce my name correctly. He said, 'I don't care whether your name is 'Mafushanyana' or 'Fushanyana', you can't get into this location.'

Well, I had been there before, not as a candidate, but as a speaker for the Party. We got the people to give us a tent in which to sleep. The following day, we had a huge meeting. We addressed the people and then left. The Superintendent was beaten about by the people. They were arrested, but I had left.

The final result of the election was never in doubt. Mofutsanyana's opponent, R. V. Selope Thema, an ANC founder and the Bantu World 's editor, had widespread name recognition. He received 132 000 votes, while Mofutsanyana mustered only 3 000. Despite the obstacles Mofutsanyana faced, Basner thought he could have won more votes. ⁹⁶He attributed Mofutsanyana's poor showing to his frail health (he had a tubercular condition), his lacklustre performances as a speaker, and his inability to connect with the masses.

The first session of the NRC amply demonstrated its limitations. Government officials held a tight rein over proceedings. Elected representatives were restrained in their comments, and appointed chiefs toed the government line. Ralph Bunche, an African-American political scientist from Howard University, who attended the NRC session, was dismayed by the extent to which the NRC chairman, D. L. Smit, controlled deliberations and how timid and obsequious the representatives were. ⁹⁷Mofutsanyana singled out Zulu chief Mshiyeni for expressing regret for the Vereeniging riots and for suggesting that white farmers could cope with labour shortages by dragooning African tax defaulters to work for them. ⁹⁸

While the Party was prepared to continue contesting NRC and advisory board elections, it had lost faith in the AAC's potential to unify and rally forces opposing the government. The NRC elections, according to Mofutsanyana, provided conclusive proof that the AAC had become 'a roof in the air without walls'. ⁹⁹In other words, it existed without a foundation of organisational support. It had failed to take the lead in articulating issues for the masses or garner support for its candidates for nominations to the NRC, so a search for alternatives to the AAC began. Although Mofutsanyana had recently dismissed the ANC as an 'empty shell', he and politicians such as Rev. S. S. Tema, J. B. Marks, Richard Baloyi and Gaur Radebe began exploring the possibility of resuscitating it. They convened meetings at Western Native Township on 15 August and at the Bantu Men's Social Centre on 25 August 1937, where they discussed 're-organising the African National Congress' and making it 'a very strong body of African people, and function as the mouthpiece of the people of Africa'. ¹⁰⁰But this could not be done as long as Seme was still its president. They convened meetings in the Transvaal province, and joined forces with other provincial leaders such as Rev. James Calata, a Cape ANC leader who favoured ousting Seme. At the December 1937 ANC annual conference, Rev. Z. R. Mahabane was elected president and Mofutsanyana was delegated to handle labour issues in his cabinet. The next year, the CPSA's Central Committee, after Mofutsanyana had submitted a report up-dating the 'Struggle of the Africans', commented that the 'African National Congress has . made headway by taking up mass-work in a number of areas, thus proving that the African people are anxious to organise politically and to fight for their rights'. ¹⁰¹

RED, WHITE AND BLACK

Whatever its ideological leadings, an enduring image of the CPSA is that it was still virtually the only multiracial political experiment in South Africa for many decades. Comparing the CPSA's ability to recruit black members with that of the American Communist Party (CPUSA), George Fredrickson observed that the CPSA's 'claim to be the cutting edge of racial egalitarianism for South Africa was more persuasive than the CPUSA's pretensions to leadership in the American struggle against racism'. ¹⁰²However, CPSA internal documents from the 1930s reveal a very different picture of black-white relations.

In the Johannesburg area African Communists levelled charges of racial insensitivity at Issy Wolfson, secretary of the Textile Industrial Workers' Union, and Willie Kalk. On 9 August 1935 at a tempestuous meeting to discuss the Marty Commission's directives, an inebriated Peter Ramutla, organising secretary of the Gas and Power Workers' Union, lashed out at the pair. 'They treated the Natives like their servants and acted as bosses. All white men should be shot and the leadership was not native, but puppets carrying out instructions from overseas.' One of the people he blasted was Mofutsanyana, who was 'not secretary only a figurehead from the other side. Many secrets are not known to our party leaders. Because we have black skins we are not allowed to collect money. ¹⁰³

Although Ramutla's drunken state should be taken into account in evaluating his remarks, his sentiments were echoed by Gomas, who focused on the large salaries that he claimed Wolfson and Kalk were drawing from their trade union positions.

Native Workers are a secondary consideration ... Kalk cannot speak to the workers and also been a long time in the movement and I am not considered. I am a 'Boy'. I have not the same status in South Africa as you Europeans.

In his defence, Wolfson revealed that he allocated part of his salary every month to the Party. ¹⁰⁴

The Johannesburg meeting was not the only time such charges surfaced. When Basner spoke with Comintern officials in Paris in late 1937, he passed on Mofutsanyana's complaint that Wolfson was not sharing with him the reports that he sent the Comintern or those received from overseas. ¹⁰⁵

Both Mofutsanyana and Basner shared the view that Wolfson and Kalk 'do not keep sufficiently in touch with membership and do not study the technical difficulties of the Native comrades, especially in running the paper and building Native trade unions'. They felt it was critical for the pair to 'drop a certain attitude of "bossism" towards the Native members of the Party'. Kalk in particular came in for some stinging criticism for the way in which he related to African members. Wolfson noted that 'native' comrades complained that Kalk had rushed an article into print in the Party newspaper, Umsebenzi, that did not issue a call for action 'and somehow seems to be apologetic for what happend [sic] on Dingaans [sic] Day'. At a Johannesburg district Party meeting, heated arguments broke out because Kalk accused black members of doing nothing, while he himself was neither keeping up with work, nor following through with tasks. At one conference he had been delegated to prepare a resolution on the 'Native' question, but had not carried out his task and had to leave the meeting to complete it. ¹⁰⁶

According to Basner, Mofutsanyana also observed this attitude when he visited Durban in September 1937 to smooth out relations between white and black comrades. Mofutsanyana 'found the Natives complaining that White comrades were acting as bosses and not giving native comrades any help. They were working apart.' However, Mofutsanyana found fault with both sides.

Native comrades must realise whites are busy and have lots of work to do and Natives must not rely on whites for everything like children. But white comrades also wrong in not realising that Natives are 'backward' through lack of experience and education and also quick to take insults, to feel neglected.

The CPSA's two-pronged Popular Front strategy also exacerbated racial tensions in the Party. Besides working with black political movements, the CPSA attempted to construct anti-fascist coalitions with white trade unions and white political groupings such as the Labour Party and 'left' Republican elements of the National Party. The challenge of working with these groups was that while some of their members may have been willing to support Africans on specific grievances such as taxes, pass laws and police brutality, they were not prepared to accept that Africans were the political and social equals of Europeans. The dilemma, as posed by George Hardy, a British Communist sent to South Africa as a Comintern representative, was clear: '[S]hould we refuse to accept these workers as members or should we make a temporary concession to their prejudices?' Hardy supported the latter line, contending that eventually white members could be educated about larger issues and their fears about blacks dispelled. This was a highly risky policy, Basner argued, because if the Party bent over backwards to accommodate white racist attitudes, Africans would get the impression that the Party was abandoning them. ¹⁰⁷

Mofutsanyana rationalised the contradictions of the People's Front. In numerous instances, the Party had to put itself through some extraordinary contortions that taxed even the most loyal functionary. Its insistence on inviting black speakers to a May Day rally in 1937 provoked white leaders of the Labour Party and the Building Union to withdraw because they would not appear on the same platform as blacks. Kalk and Wolfson both adopted the attitude that the Party had to compromise on the issue of a black presence if they wanted to have diverse representation on the platform. Wolfson argued that 'we must utilise every possible occasion to put our line, for example if we get an opportunity to speak in the City Hall on Spain, must we refuse to speak because we cannot get a Native speaker there today?' Although Mofutsanyana went part of the way with Kalk and Wolfson, he insisted that there must be two platforms - one for blacks and one for whites. This compromise was enough to secure the Labour Party's participation in the rally. ¹⁰⁸

As a Party functionary, Mofutsanyana was expected to conform. However, it is clear that privately he had deep misgivings about what the Party had accomplished in the previous decade and where it was headed. When he met Ralph Bunche at the Party office in Johannesburg in late 1937, he acknowledged that the Party was paying a price for a decade of ideological self-immolation. Branding 'every intellectual untrustworthy and a traitor to the cause' had proved to be counterproductive. ¹⁰⁹For the sake of the People's Front, it was neglecting work in the black community in favour of winning over European workers.

SPLITTING THE PARTY

By the time that the Party's executive met in Johannesburg for four days at the end of 1938, ideological, factional and racial disputes had taken their toll. In the course of the meeting two important questions were debated that had important consequences for the Party in both the short and long term. The first was whether the Party should split into two wings, one for Africans and one for Europeans. The second was whether the Party politburo and headquarters should move from Johannesburg to Cape Town.

Drawing on his experiences as general secretary, Mofutsanyana offered a resolution on the first question. ¹¹⁰He acknowledged that although the Party should in theory remain united, the reality was quite different. For a variety of reasons African Party members charged that European comrades did not make them feel comfortable at Party meetings that both blacks and whites attended. While Africans would talk easily with each other at meetings in the townships, when they joined with European comrades in mixed meetings, they were intimidated by their lack of education and kept silent. Their reticence did not stem from their inability to converse in the English language, but from their lack of experience and comfort in handling the intricacies of a particular ideological discourse. As Gaur Radebe, who supported Mofutsanyana's position, put it, 'I cannot speak to European comrades in the manner in which I speak in the location.' This made it difficult to recruit the best Africans to the Party because 'when they come to aggregate meetings, they think we are talking Greek. If the African communists could come together, and discuss in a language they understand (I don't mean Zulu or English) then they will become staunch members.' By creating autonomous wings, the Party could root itself in the black community and prove to them 'that the Party is theirs and they belong to it