The history of the South African Communist Party (SACP), formed in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and subsequently banned in 1950, has generated a very rich and fascinating literature. During the first phase of its existence, between 1921 and the early 1930s, the CPSA battled with the reality of being a largely white organisation that had to adapt its Marxism-Leninism to conditions in which the African majority, irrespective of class affiliation, were subjected to one of the most oppressive systems of settler colonial rule. Thus the CPSA supported the 1922 white miners' strike whose main objective was the protection of the job reservation regime for white workers. The Communist International, the Comintern, intervened in the form of the famous 1928 "Native Republic" resolution which called upon the SACP to work with the nationalist movement for the establishment of the national democratic order.

During the second phase, from the late 1930s to the outbreak of World War II, the CPSA underwent a strategic reorientation and was fully Africanised, at least in terms of its membership. The period 1931-35 was however one of the most difficult, as the CPSA had to survive Stalinisation efforts in the form of purges and expulsions, the organisation's membership dropping from about 3 000 in 1929 to below 300 in the mid-1930s. The first generation of African CPSA leaders emerged during this phase, beginning with Albert Nzula who became the first African general secretary of the organisation. Other notable African figures who emerged during this phase were Moses Kotane (who became general secretary in 1938), Edwin Mofutsanyane, and JB Marks.

The third phase, 1940s to 1950, witnesses the massive growth of the CPSA, thanks to Kotane's efforts which not only rescued the organisation from the decline of 1931-35, but also rooted the CPSA in the struggles that were taking place in black townships, mines and factories. It was during this phase that relations between the CPSA and the nationalist movement, the African National Congress (ANC), improved, and some of its leading figures were elected to senior positions in the latter.

The fourth phase, 1950 to 1963, began with the banning of the CPSA which however resurfaced underground in 1953 as the SACP, thanks to the efforts of, notably, Kotane, Lionel "Rusty" Bernstein, Michael Harmel and a number of young communists such as Joe Slovo, Ruth First and Harold Wolpe. During the first few years of its underground existence, between 1953 and 1960, the SACP never made its existence public. However, the new Party continued to play its part in the liberation struggle, participating in the mass struggles of the 1950s, which included the Defiance Campaign and the Congress of the People that adopted the Freedom Charter. This period was to result in the consolidation of the liberation movement in two important areas. Firstly, the notion of "multi-racialism" was inte­grated into liberation politics, which resulted in the break-away of the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) from the main nationalist move­ment, the ANC. Secondly, and thanks to the co-operation among organisations representing the oppressed, the "Congress alliance" made up of mainly the ANC, South African Indian Congress, the Coloured People's Congress, the Congress of Democrats (CoD), and the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) was consolidated. The Congress alliance was also important in that it enabled the ANC as an organisation then open only to Africans, to co-operate intimately, both organisationally and politically, with Indians and Coloureds as oppressed minorities. This "alliance" was however to undergo change, both in substance and definition, in subsequent decades. When the ANC and other organisations were banned in 1960, the SACP became part of the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation" or simply "MK"), an organisation established to launch the armed struggle.1

During the first phase of its underground existence, between 1953 and 1963, the SACP was able, at least partially, to resolve the race-class debate that had occupied the organisation since its formation and in the 1930s in particular. The relationship between the struggle for socialism and the struggle against colonialism was resolved thanks to the development in the 1950s of the thesis that came to be known as Colonialism of a Special Type (CST). The CST was not simply an elaboration of the "native republic" resolution, but was in fact a response to the relationship that the Party, especially in the Transvaal, had developed with the nationalist movement during the course of the struggles of the 1940s and 1950s. According to this theory, advanced most prominently by Michael Harmel and Rusty Bernstein who were then the Party's leading theoreticians, South Africa had a form of settler colonialism where the coloniser and the colonised lived side-by-side; the coloniser enjoyed first world privileges while the colonised were subjected to conditions typical of other third world countries. 2

The CST was to be incorporated into the programme adopted at the SACP's 5th Congress, held underground in 1962 inside the country. The new programme, The Road to South African Freedom, contained a very detailed development of the CST as a theory on which basis the Party could fight for socialism and exercise its vanguard role as conceived by Lenin, and, at the same time, take part in the struggle against colonialism under the lead­ership of the ANC. Accordingly, a "two-stage" theory was developed which distinguished between the national democratic phase which was led by the ANC and the second phase aimed at building socialism.

The 5th Congress elected a Central Committee whose life-span was to be very short as many of its members were either to flee the country or end up in prison. The general secretary, Moses Kotane, and the national chairperson, JB Marks, both highly respected within the Congress alliance, had a long history of association with the SACP, dating back to the days of the CPSA, and also occupied influential positions in the ANC. Other Central Committee members who were to play an important role after 1963 included Joe Slovo, Michael Harmel, "Rusty" Bernstein, Brian Bunting, Marimuthu Pragalathan (MP) Naicker, Joe Matthews, Bram Fischer, Duma Nokwe and Mark Shope.

There are a number of ways that the literature on the SACP can be categorised; one can distinguish between polemical and scholarly writings, or between different sources (for example, memoirs as opposed to secondary literature) that can be used for the writing of this history. However, this study will divide the literature in question into three chronologically-determined categories. There is a substantial literature dedicated to the period prior to the 1950 ban­ning, thanks to the availability of oral and written sources as the CPSA operated as a legal organisation during that period. 3 The literature on the periods 1953-63 and 1963-90, as a second category, is very limited, not least because of the difficulty associated with reconstructing those periods due to the problem of sources. The difficulty associated with sources notwithstanding, the literature in this cat­egory is dominated by the "Cold War" and " rooigevaar " schools, whose main preoccupation was Soviet influence and strategy in Southern Africa and the extent to which the ANC was controlled by the SACP. 4 The third category of the literature emerged following the unbanning of the Party in 1990, some as academic works and others as autobiographies, as well as the history written by the Party itself. The "Cold War" and " rooigevaar " perspectives can also be found in this literature, but so were efforts by the SACP and some of its members aimed at exonerating and defending the Party. 5

This study, as an attempt to reconstruct the period 1963-90, is however not without its own limitations. First of all, the archives on which the following narrative is based have not been catalogued, and as a result footnoting may be confusing to the reader. Secondly, the archives in question are yet to be made available to the public as they are still being sorted and catalogued. Thirdly, the author had initially intended to write a comprehensive history of the period in question, but due to time constraints, the project to be abandoned. I was however persuaded by friends and colleagues to continue with the project, but all I could do, given the difficulties I have with finding time for substantive field-work, was to confine myself largely to the interpretation of the archives that I had had the privilege of reading. Finally, and linked to the latter, the following narrative is very incomplete; it does not include other important material, notably oral sources and what should be available at the archives of the liberation movement that are housed at the University of Fort Hare, University of the Western Cape and University of Cape Town. For this reason, the following narrative should not be read as a complete story but a tentative history of the SACP during the period in question. What makes this effort nonetheless so important is the fact that, from the literature that is available, it is clear that the exile-period history of the SACP is not adequately known. Even the history produced by the SACP itself reflects the lack of a comprehensive knowledge that is being proposed in this study.

It is also hoped that the material that is discussed in this study will provoke those who are interested in building on the path-breaking work already done by Vladimir Shubin in his ANC: A View from Moscow. 6 Shubin's book is invaluable in that it was one of the first attempts to use the archives of the liberation movements in order to reconstruct their exile history; the other advantage is that Shubin had the privilege of meeting and interacting with many important ANC and SACP figures, some of whom are discussed in this study. However, Shubin, because of the macro-scopic focus of his project and possibly also due to a lack of sources, could not give the SACP the attention that it is accorded in this study.

There are also a number of methodological and comparative questions that must be stated upfront. A history of a communist party must attempt to tackle issues of ideology, strategy and tactics, internal organisational dynamics, and the relations between the party and other important role players. This is what this study will attempt to do. But it must also be emphasised that the SACP's experience is an exception if other African cases are to be taken into consideration.

Africa's responses to the influence of communism have varied from period to period, and the greatest difficulty has always concerned how the communist party or a like-minded organisation conceptualised and related to colonial oppression as opposed to class exploitation. The party's position on the colonial question was so important not least because the first generation of African communist parties, including the SACP, were formed by European immigrants who found themselves on the continent for one reason or another.

Indeed, the first generation of post-colonial African leaders displayed mixed attitudes towards Marxism-Leninism, preferring instead their African Socialism. Some, such as Kwame Nkrumah towards the end of his rule in Ghana, and Sekou Toure of Guinea, opted for what David and Marina Ottaway call "transitional" socialism - a brand of socialism that drew inspiration from both Marxism-Leninism and African Socialism. 7

As to countries with established communist parties, in particular Morocco, Sudan, Algeria, Egypt and Tunisia, the relationship between these parties and the liberation movement was quite untenable. The tendency was for communist parties in those countries to opt for a narrow conception of Marxism at the expense of the "national question", to the extent that their relationship with the nationalist movement, including their contribution to the nation­al struggle, became conflictual. In the case of Algeria, for example, where the communist party was established as an extension of the French Communist Party, the "nationalists never forgave Communists for consistently putting the interests of France or Frenchmen above those of their own community". 8 In some of these countries the communist parties became targets of repression after independence.

Similarly, in some cases such as in Senegal, Marxist-inclined parties emerged after independence as an opposition to the nationalist government. There are also cases, between the late 1960s and the mid-1970s, where military regimes assumed power and thereafter opted for Marxism-Leninism, even converting their party machinery accordingly. In such cases, for example in Ethiopia under Haile-Mariam Mengistu, Marxism was imposed from the top. The final category was of countries, notably Mozambique and Angola, where, as in the case of Cuba, a nationalist movement converted itself into a communist party after independence and tried to implement socialism. 9 With these cases in mind, it is clear that the SACP is the only communist party in Africa which resolved the ideological tension between nation­al liberation and socialist struggle, and managed to develop a dynamic working relationship with the nationalist movement.

Another comparative point refers to how the Cold War affected the SACP and the whole African communist movement. The SACP, like other like-minded parties on the African continent, was affected not only by the conflict between the Soviet Union and Western powers, but also by the Sino-Soviet dispute of the 1960s. In both cases, the SACP sided with the Soviet Union.

The story of this history of the SACP begins with the arrest of the first generation of MK commanders under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, following the police's ambush on their hideout in Rivonia, thus leading to the famous Rivonia Trial that resulted in life sentences for some members of the group.