Joe Slovo may have been a brave man in many ways. He may have been a friend of David Miliband's father. But his South African Communist Party was utterly slavish in its support for every outrage of the Soviet Union, its paymasters. And the ANC's ties to it thus considerably extended the apartheid era by prolonging American support for that regime right up until the Cold War was safely over.
The SACP was neither the only, nor the most effective, opposition to apartheid on the part of white South Africans. Alan Paton and Helen Suzman embodied the tradition - usually classified as Liberal, but in fact much more Radical - of non-violent, non-Marxist, ultimately successful resistance.
It is notable that that tradition looked to the Commonwealth as against the Boers' Revenge Republic, which, as a television drama this autumn will correctly depict, the Queen wanted to subject to sanctions; Suzman ended up with the DBE, and I am not sure why she never used it, since South Africa was certainly in the Commonwealth when she was born, just as Ireland was in the Commonwealth when Sir Terry Wogan was born.
And those in that tradition at least arguably suffered more than those comfortably, if no doubt painfully, exiled in London, or Moscow, or wherever.
However, when Slovo's daughter called Bush and Blair terrorists for invading Iraq, she was of course spot on.
"the ANC's ties to it [the SACP] thus considerably extended the apartheid era by prolonging American support for that regime right up until the Cold War was safely over"
ReplyDeleteUh, that's a bit upside down, is it not?
Even if the SACP didn't exist the South African ruling class and the transnationals would still have been worried about black majority rule for fear of the Freedom Charter being implemented - i.e. the wealth of the country being used to lift South Africans out of poverty. Genuine land reform, public ownership of the country's mineral wealth.
With the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the supposed triumph of the free market, the ANC govt was railroaded into accepting the new orthodoxy of central-bank independence, privatisation, etc.
The Americans had wanted to pull the plug on Pretoria for years. They even appointed a black Ambassador to the place to make the point.
ReplyDeleteBut they made no bones about why they couldn't do it: the wholly uncritical ANC attitude to the Soviet Union, under the influence of the SACP, which backed absolutely everything - Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the lot. It remains a nest of Stalinism to this day, quite caught in time.
As soon as the USSR was gone, so was the old regime in South Africa. If the ANC had not been so bound up with the SACP, then it would have been gone long, long before that. Say what you like about, for example, Ronald Reagan, but it would be a bit much to accuse him of having been a white supremacist or a sympathiser with such, at least by as late as the Eighties, if ever.
But there was a Cold War on. And the ANC had unambiguously picked its side. Those for whom it no doubt sincerely saw itself as fighting paid the price for many years.
Meanwhile, real white opposition to apartheid went on. Outside, and indeed opposed to, the SACP. And suffering a lot more in practice.
It was argued that the PLO was oriented towards Moscow, but the US hasn't pulled the plug on Israel.
ReplyDelete(And it was argued Sinn Fein was oriented towards Moscow, but Ireland remains partitioned.)
In any case, the US wasn't the only country with financial interests in South Africa.
The SACP at least understand that unless the Freedom Charter is implemented, South Africa will continue to have the same level of poverty as under apartheid.
Their agenda were rather more and worse than that, of course. And still are, in fact.
ReplyDeleteThe PLO and the IRA were thoroughly promiscuous. The former, at least, still is. And the latter was taking KGB and CIA money simultaneously, the CIA money because of its campaign of assassination against the Workers' Party.