For a Black-Centered Workers Government in South Africa

(Quote of the Week)

In South Africa, the working-class struggle against capital is integrally bound up with the struggle of the overwhelmingly black African oppressed majority against white domination. As Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky explained in 1935 to his South African comrades, a successful proletarian revolution in that country will be the supreme act of national liberation. This is as true today under neo-apartheid rule led by the African National Congress as it was in Trotsky’s time under direct white rule.

Three-quarters of the population of South Africa (almost six million of the almost eight million total) is composed of non-Europeans. A victorious revolution is unthinkable without the awakening of the native masses. In its turn, that will give them what they are so lacking today—confidence in their strength, a heightened personal consciousness, a cultural growth.

Under these conditions, the South African republic will emerge first of all as a “black” republic; this does not exclude, of course, either full equality for the whites or brotherly relations between the two races—depending mainly on the conduct of the whites. But it is entirely obvious that the predominant majority of the population, liberated from slavish dependence, will put a certain imprint on the state.

Insofar as a victorious revolution will radically change the relation not only between the classes but also between the races and will assure to the blacks that place in the state that corresponds to their numbers, thus far will the social revolution in South Africa also have a national character.

We have not the slightest reason to close our eyes to this side of the question or to diminish its significance. On the contrary, the proletarian party should in words and in deeds openly and boldly take the solution of the national (racial) problem in its hands.

Nevertheless, the proletarian party can and must solve the national problem by its own methods.

The historical weapon of national liberation can be only the class struggle.

—Leon Trotsky, “On the South African Theses” (April 1935)