Communist Party of South Africa
|
South African Communist Party
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| General Secretary | Blade Nzimande |
| First Deputy General Secretary | Jeremy Cronin |
| Second Deputy General Secretary | Solly Afrika Mapaila |
| Founded | 1921 |
| Headquarters | 3rd Floor, Cosatu House 1 Leyds Street, cnr Biccard Braamfontein Johannesburg, 2000 |
| Newspaper | Umsebenzi |
| Youth wing | Young Communist League of South Africa |
| Membership (2015) |
 220,000 |
| Ideology |
Communism Marxism–Leninism |
| National affiliation | Tripartite Alliance |
| International affiliation | Africa Left Networking Forum International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties (IMCWP) |
| Colours |
Red, Black, Yellow |
| Party flag | |
 |
|
| Website | |
| www.sacp.org.za | |
The South African Communist Party (SACP) is a communist party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921, was declared illegal in 1950 by the governing National Party, and participated in the struggle against ending the apartheid system. It is a partner of the Tripartite Alliance with the African National Congress and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and through this it influences the South African government.
The Communist Party of South Africa was founded in 1921 by the joining together of the International Socialist League and others under the leadership of Willam H. Andrews. It first came to prominence during the armed Rand Rebellion by white miners in 1922. The large mining concerns, facing labour shortages and wage pressures, had announced their intention of liberalising the rigid colour bar within the mines and elevate some blacks to minor supervisory positions. (The vast majority of white miners mainly held supervisory positions over the labouring black miners.) Despite having opposed racialism from its inception, the CPSA supported the white miners in the South African Industrial Federation in their call to preserve wages and the colour bar with the slogan: "Workers of the world, unite and fight for a white South Africa!". With the failure of the rising, in part due to black employees failing to strike, the Communist Party was forced by the Comintern to adopt the "Native Republic" thesis which stipulated that South Africa was a country belonging to the Natives, that is, the Blacks. The Party thus reoriented itself at its 1924 Party Congress towards organising black workers and "Africanising" the party. By 1928, 1,600 of the party's 1,750 members were Black. During this period, the party has been accused of dismissing competing attempts at multiracial revolutionary organisations, especially multiracial union organising by the syndicalists, and using revisionist history to claim that the party and its Native Republic policy was the only viable route to African liberation. Despite this, in 1929: the party adopted a "strategic line" which held that, "The most direct line of advance to socialism runs through the mass struggle for majority rule". By 1948, the Communist Party had officially abandoned the Native Republic policy.
...
Wikipedia