The Red Revolt
Part 3
Henning van Aswegen
Abstract: Communist Party of South Africa, CPSA, Communism in South Africa, Socialism, Trotskyism, Leninism in South Africa.
Relying on the British colonialist government for its intelligence needs proved to be a fatal mistake by the young South African Unionist government. Prime Minister Jan Smuts and his government were simply not sophisticated enough to realise and fully understand what was happening during the communist-inspired Mineworkers Strike of 1922.
Protracted negotiations between the mineworkers, under the red flag of the Communist Party of South Africa, the government and the South African Chamber of Mines took place, but no agreement was reached and the violent strikes continued through February 1922. The strikers gained momentum by continually changing their claims and demands, as more and more joined the fight against the mineowners and its representative body, the Chamber of Mines. It was not in the CPSA and the workers’ interests to reach a settlement with the government and Chamber of Mines, because their hidden agenda was a communist takeover of the government and country, not a simple industrial dispute agreement.
Soviets and Scabs
The strikes established ‘soviets’ of several thousand men in Fordsburg and Benoni, and took over government functions in these two areas by force of numbers. The ‘soviets’ disarmed the police, deployed their men at key checkpoints throughout Johannesburg, organised picket lines and set about enforcing a general strike. They took violent action against scabs and Africans who dared to continue working in the mines.
Martial Law and the Red Revolt
By March 11, 1922 Parliament realised the seriousness of the situation and Martial Law was proclaimed. General Jan Smuts sent out the Army, and assisted the infant SA Air Force and artillery units to squash the Red Revolt. The Fordsburg ‘soviet’ was overrun and fell on March 14, 1992 and by the end of March everything was over.
Modern Marxism analysts have concluded that Communist dogma and doctrine regard the 1922 Mineworkers Strike as a lost golden opportunity to establish a Communist South Africa. Had the CPSA concentrated more agitation and propaganda work on the divergent mineworkers’ groups such as non-white strikers and rural communities, especially farmworkers, the strike could have succeeded and very easily meant the start of a Communist South Africa. The CPSA failed because it concentrated its efforts only on White mineworkers, who were by no means powerful enough on thier own to effect a full-scale revolution.
Prime Minister Jan Smuts appointed a commission of inquiry into the 1922 Mineworkers’ strike, which found that the Communist Party played ‘a very important’ and ‘leading’ role in the strike. The General Secretary of the CPSA Bill Andrews was cited by name as the most important strike leader. Of the 5000 strikers arrested, 1400 were prosecuted and 864 were convicted of high treason. Of these, four were hanged: C Stassen, Taffy Long, Hull and Lewis. All four sang the “Red Flag” and gave clenched fist salutes and they marched unsteadaly to the gallows.
Smuts’ heavy hand
The Prime Minister, Genl. J.C. Smuts was determined to defeat the Red strikers and Communist Party for once and for all. Besides severe military and legal repression, Smuts had several of the strike leaders kidnapped in the middle of the night, tied them up in a train carriage bound for Durban, where they were placed aboard a waiting ship for England.
Unsurprisingly, all hell broke loose the next day and Smuts had to face a storm of public indignation and angry parliamentarians in Cape Town. Smuts’ heavy hand with the miners, coupled with a resulting unstable economic climate, resulted in him being defeated at the polls during the general election of 1924. Into power came a coalition government consisting of the Labour Party and the National Party, and a new prime minister in the person of Judge James Barry Munnik Hertzog. The Communist Party’s grip on political power weakened considerably, as most Afrikaner mineworkers shifted their allegiance to the new National Party and its charismatic leader.
Communism in South was defeated, but only for a brief interlude of time. The communists continued to regroup and organise underground, creating new trade unions in different private sectors, new ‘soviets’ amongst rural communities and a secret leadership who quietly and secret sang ‘the Red Flag’ in the shadows, and late at night.
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