The South African Communist Party and May Day – Some Key Moments

May Day celebrated on 1 May annually, is a celebration of workers and their work. It has a long history, being a day of commemoration and celebration of the international working classes. Historically, the South African Communist Party (SACP) has organised protests, strikes and rallies on May Day. These have been throughout the 101 years that the SACP has been in existence. This article presents some key instances of the SACP’s May Day activism.[1]

Two years after the founding of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) (renamed the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 1953), in 1923, Sidney Bunting helped organise a modest May Day protest at Town Hall in Johannesburg. At the protest, which was organised to commemorate and highlight the contributions of workers, there were four banners – for the CPSA, the miners, the Young Communist League (YCL) and the Building Workers Industrial Union (BWIU). The International (a communist song) was played after each resolution and “the public joined in”. The meeting drew over 600 attendees.[2] 

On May Day, 1931, a decade after the CPSA was founded, a large crowd assembled outside the Rand Club in Johannesburg, Transvaal (now Gauteng) in protest.[3] The club had been established just one year after Johannesburg was formed and was designed to lavishly accommodate the distinguished visitors of the mining industry – those protesting contrasted the opulence of the Rand Club as opposed to the dispossession, low wages and poor living conditions entrenched by the mining industry.  Sidney Bunting, who had helped organise this protest, noted that the Rand Club had long been a site of processions against the ruling classes and that the purpose of the 1931 May Day demonstration was to “was to shake the complacency of the comfortable and moneyed classes, who were doing nothing for the unemployed”.[4]

The group was made up largely of unemployed African people, who protested outside the club and shouted together “we want bread”.[5] The attack on the Rand Club also focussed on the Carlton hotel, both of which were “symbols of the wealth of mine owners”.[6] After efforts were made by the protesting crowd to force entry into the Club (symbolic of their exclusion from the profits of the mining industry), the police swarmed the protesters and charged ten of the people who had attempted to enter the club with public violence.[7] Some key SACP members were part of this event; Issy Diamond and Molly Wolton were the brains behind it, TW Thibedi was present at the rally and got arrested and Sidney Bunting defended some of the unemployed people in court who were arrested during the rally.[8]

The CPSA held a protest on International Workers’ Day (also named May Day) in 1950. The CPSA, African National Congress (ANC) and South African Indian Congress (SAIC) passed a resolution to hold a strike on 1 May 1950 to protest against the pass laws and other discriminatory legislation. The strike was held in Orlando West. The police attacked protesters and opened gunfire on them, killing 18 and seriously injuring 30 people. [9]  

The Suppression of Communism Act, reported to be in response to these May Day protests, was legislated shortly after, on 20 June 1950. This May Day rally was significant in the history of the CPSA, but also for their links to the ANC.

Gauger suggests that following the events of this 1950 May Day protest, Nelson Mandela was convinced of the CPSA’s and communists’ commitment to African nationalism. Both the CPSA and the ANC embarked on a National Day of Protest on 26 June 1950 against the banning of the SACP.

On May Day in 1961, the SACP disseminated a pamphlet highlighting the barrage of racist and unfair conditions in Hendrik Verwoerd’s Apartheid South Africa; pass laws, police raids, low wages, starvation, landlessness, segregation, job reservation and the banning of political organisations opposed to the Apartheid state. The SACP called for “nationwide action” between all workers “African, Indian, coloured and white” at the end of May 1961.[10]

Figure 2: Source: Digital Innovation South Africa (DISA), "South African Communist Party - May Day", South African Communist Party 1 May 1990 [Claimed to be part of SAHA, AL3041, Dale McKinley collection as well].

On May Day 1985, the SACP drafted a powerful document – disseminated through the ANC’s Radio Lusaka – to inspire continued resistance against imperialism and Apartheid. The document decried the imperialist influences that filter weapons into “Katlehong, Tembisa, Thabong, Uitenhage and other killing fields”. The document declared that it is the working classes “who produce […] for the whole country”, yet these working classes “suffer from unemployment, are forced to live on starvation wages, and to pay more and more for food, clothing, transport and rents”. The document argued that “capitalism and Apartheid equal oppression and misery; both must be smashed”.

By 1985, the SACP was a major part of the tripartite alliance (a political alliance made up of the ANC, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the SACP) and on May Day in 1985, they honoured the ANC and Oliver Tambo’s message to “make the country ungovernable”. The document concluded, “On this May Day in 1985 let us dedicate ourselves to the destruction of racist colonialism and the winning of national freedom as an important part of the struggle for the future socialist South Africa”.[11]

Figure 3: Source: SAHA, The SAHA Poster Collection, AL2446_1569, "Umsebenzi: Voice of the South African Communist Party: May Day: Workers Unite”, 1991.

After the 1994 democratic elections, May Day was declared a public holiday. Despite this declaration, the first celebration of May Day in the democratic era by the SACP was not very successful. The SACP held a rally at Grand Parade in Cape Town, drawing a crowd of 1,000. The turnout, according to leaders of the SACP, was low partly because “the era of protest politics had ended” and that many SACP leaders “took up new jobs”.[12] Jeremy Cronin was a speaker at the May Day rally, and began it with the words “voetsek capitalism, voetsek” and “phambili socialism, phambili”. He urged workers to “continue the struggle”, especially for the implementation of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). Cronin also spoke about the threats of privatisation to state corporations like Telkom, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), Eskom and Transnet. The workers who attended the rally cheered at each point made by the speakers and carried national flags and banners.[13]

The SACP’s May Day rally was somewhat overshadowed by the ANC’s rally in Umlazi, which drew over 40, 000 supporters. At the rally, Mandela highlighted the attempts by the Kwa-Zulu Natal provincial government to threaten the Government of National Unity (GNU), suggesting that he would withdraw national government funding (something he went back on). This was followed by gunshots from disgruntled members of the crowd (most likely Inkatha Freedom Party supporters who were against the prescriptions of the GNU) and Mandela had to be evacuated.[14] 

Figure 4: Jeremy Cronin, the general secretary of the SACP at the May Day rally in 1995. Source: Peter Dennehy, “1000 attend city May Day rally”, Cape Times, 2 May 1995.

May Day has over the years symbolised the myriad of struggles waged by the SACP against oppression. The Tripartite Alliance and the loyalties within it have complicated and taken the bite out of the SACP’s May Day activism (despite the Alliance being under a degree of strain for several years). For example, how does the SACP take aim at the ANC for their failure to implement economic policies effectively, which have in turn adversely affected workers and perpetuated unemployment?

In 2017, the May Day celebrations planned by COSATU, the SACP and the ANC were disrupted and then president Jacob Zuma was booed and heckled. A month prior, the SACP and COSATU had declared that Zuma was not the right person to lead the tripartite alliance.[15] On 1 May 2022, President Cyril Ramaphosa attempted to address a rally in the North West. He was due to share the stage with COSATU president Zingiswa Losi and the SACP’s general secretary Blade Nzimande but was not allowed to speak by workers from the Sibanye Stillwater mine who had been striking for higher wages for fifty-one days. This event is symbolic of the tensions both within the tripartite alliance and within society. The SACP suggested that this event shows that the ANC needs to put the needs of the working class first.[16] 

In the most recent statement issued by the SACP for May Day, they argued that while significant advances have been made by the working classes since 1994 (including the provision of housing, water, electrification, and new labour legislation), there is still significant progress to be made. The SACP takes aim at the ANC’s economic policies, which they characterise as neoliberal. Similarly, the statement decries the state of national infrastructure (like the railways) and state capture.[17]