Anarchism in South Africa dates to the 1880s,
and played a major role in the labour and
socialist movements from the turn of the twentieth
century through to the 1920s.
The early South African anarchist movement
was strongly syndicalist.
The ascendance of Marxism–Leninism following
the Russian Revolution, along with state repression,
resulted in most of the movement going over
to the Comintern line, with the remainder
consigned to irrelevance.
There were slight traces of anarchist or revolutionary
syndicalist influence in some of the independent
left-wing groups which resisted the apartheid
government from the 1970s onward, but anarchism
and revolutionary syndicalism as a distinct
movement only began re-emerging in South Africa
in the early 1990s.
It remains a minority current in South African
politics.
== History ==
=== Early emergence and collapse: 1880s–1920s
===
The first notable anarchist in South Africa
was Henry Glasse, an English immigrant who
settled in Port Elizabeth in the 1880s.
Glasse maintained contact with London-based
anarchist circles linked to Pyotr Kropotkin's
newspaper Freedom.
Based on a lecture he gave at the Port Elizabeth
Mechanic's Institute, Glasse published Socialism
the Remedy with Freedom Press in 1901.
He also authored The Superstition of Government
which was co-published with a Kropotkin tract
in 1902.The Social Democratic Federation (SDF),
founded in Cape Town in 1904 and open to socialists
of all persuasions, had an active anarchist
wing.
A notable revolutionary syndicalist formation
was the International Socialist League (ISL).
Founded in Johannesburg in September 1915,
the ISL established branches across much of
South Africa (excluding the western Cape)
and organised the first black African trade
union in the country, the Industrial Workers
of Africa (IWA) – influenced by the Industrial
Workers of the World (IWW) – in September
1917.
In 1918, the anarchists and syndicalists in
Cape Town left the SDF to form the revolutionary
syndicalist Industrial Socialist League, which
supported the IWA in the western Cape and
also formed its own syndicalist union in food
processing factories.
The ISL and Industrial Socialist League, which
developed an alliance, also formed a number
of other unions among people of colour.
While their founders were mainly drawn from
the radical wing of the white working class,
the movement would develop a substantial black
African, Coloured and Indian membership.The
ISL, Industrial Socialist League (briefly
renamed the Communist Party), the SDF, and
other formations, merged into the official
Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) in
June/July 1921, providing many notable early
figures until the Comintern ordered the expulsion
of various non-Bolshevik elements in the late
1920s.
Unaligned syndicalists like Percy Fisher were
active in the miners' 1922 Rand Rebellion,
a general strike-turned-insurrection, and
strongly opposed the racism of a large sector
of the white strikers.
The IWA, meanwhile, merged into the Industrial
and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU) in 1920,
one reason why that union was influenced by
syndicalism.
The ICU would play a major role in rural South
Africa, as well as spread into several neighbouring
countries.
The ICU began declining by the late 1920s,
disappearing in the 1930s in South Africa
(although the Southern Rhodesian ICU – the
Reformed Industrial Commercial Union (RICU)
– persisted into the 1950s).
=== The interim: 1920s–1990s ===
After the dissolution of the Industrial Socialist
League and ISL into the CPSA, there was no
active or explicit anarchist or revolutionary
syndicalist movement in South Africa.
The ICU exhibited revolutionary syndicalist
influence, although this co-existed with ideas
ranging from liberalism to black nationalism.
Beginning with the "Durban Moment" in the
early 1970s, New Left ideas began to influence
parts of the anti-apartheid struggle.
These brought some (often indirect) anarchist
and revolutionary syndicalist influence into
the political scene, although often not very
pronounced or coherent.
A key structure which emerged from the popular
struggle of the 1970s was the Federation of
South African Trade Unions (FOSATU).
The "workerist" tendency which developed in
FOSATU, was indirectly influenced by anarchism
and revolutionary syndicalism, among other
currents.
The "people's power" tendency in the United
Democratic Front (UDF) paralleled anarchist
ideas with its call for replacing state structures
with grassroots "people's power."
There is no evidence that this strategy arose
from anarchist or syndicalist ideas, although
the UDF was influenced by FOSATU's stress
on "workers control" and prefiguration.
Following the 1976 Soweto uprising, at least
one leader of the Soweto Students Representative
Council (SSRC) moved towards a situationist
position in exile.It was only in the late
1980s that a number of self-described anarchists
began to appear, many associated with counter-cultural
movements.
=== Re-emergence: 1990s–present ===
As an organised movement, rather than a loose
smattering of individuals here and there,
anarchism only began to re-emerge in South
Africa with small collectives established
primarily in Durban and Johannesburg in the
early 1990s.
In 1993, the Anarchist Revolutionary Movement
(ARM) was established in Johannesburg; its
student section included militants from the
anti-apartheid movement.
In 1995, a larger movement, the Workers' Solidarity
Federation (WSF), replaced the ARM.
The WSF incorporated a Durban-based collective
which published the journal Freedom.
It also produced its own journal entitled
Workers' Solidarity.
The WSF was in the tradition of platformism,
as opposed to the far looser ARM, and focused
mainly on work within black working class
and student struggles.
It established links with anarchist individuals
and small anarchist collectives in Zimbabwe,
Tanzania and Zambia.
It also helped to establish a short-lived
Zambian WSF.
In 1999, for a range of reasons, the WSF dissolved.
It was succeeded by two anarchist collectives:
the Bikisha Media Collective and Zabalaza
Books.
These two groups co-produced Zabalaza: A Journal
of Southern African Revolutionary Anarchism.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, activists
in these structures were involved in struggles
against privatisation and evictions, and Bikisha
was formally affiliated to the Anti-Privatisation
Forum (APF).
On May Day in 2003, the platformist Zabalaza
Anarchist Communist Federation (ZACF, or ZabFed)
was founded.
The early ZACF was essentially a regroupment
of local anarchist groups, bringing together
a number of new anarchist collectives in Gauteng
and Durban (including a local chapter of the
Anarchist Black Cross), along with the Bikisha
Media Collective and Zabalaza Books (whose
joint journal, Zabalaza, became the journal
of the ZACF).
In 2007, to strengthen its structures, ZabFed
was reconstituted as the Zabalaza Anarchist
Communist Front (ZACF, or ZabFront).
The new ZACF is a unitary "federation of individuals",
as opposed to a federation of collectivesm
with members joining via the collectives,
like ZabFed.
By this time, the ZACF also had members in
Swaziland, and was running a small social
centre in Motsoaledi squatter camp in Soweto.
With the 2007 restructuring, ZACF became South
African only, with a separate Swazi group
set up in 2008.
This group remained closely linked to ZACF,
but was distinct from it.
From the late 2000s onward, the ZACF has come
under the influence of especifismo, a tendency
which originated in the Federación Anarquista
Uruguaya (FAU, or Uruguayan Anarchist Federation).While
committed to promoting syndicalism in the
unions, ZACF work was in practice largely
focused on the so-called "new social movements",
formed in South Africa in response to the
perceived failures of the African National
Congress (ANC) government post-apartheid.
The ZACF was involved in the campaigns of
the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) and the
Landless People's Movement (LPM).
It has also been involved in solidarity work
with Abahlali baseMjondolo and the Western
Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign.
In addition to such work, the ZACF is active
in organising workshops and propaganda.
== Organisations ==
Industrial Workers of the World (1910–1922)
International Socialist League (1915–1921)
Industrial Workers of Africa (1917–1920)
Industrial Socialist League (1918–1921)
Anarchist Revolutionary Movement (1993–1995)
Workers' Solidarity Federation (1995–1999)
Bikisha Media Collective (1999–2007)
Zabalaza Books (1999–2007)
South African chapter of the Anarchist Black
Cross (2002–2007)
Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation (2003–2007)
Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (2007–)
== See also ==
Anarchism in Africa
Platformism
Revolutionary syndicalism
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Articles
Bonner, P. Division and Unity in the Struggle:
African Politics on the Witwatersrand in the
1920s., unpublished African Studies Seminar
Paper, Wits University, 1992.
Bradford, H. Class Contradictions and Class
Alliances: The Social Nature of ICU Leadership,
1924–1929., African Studies Seminar Paper,
Wits University, 1983.
van der Walt, Lucien, Bakunin's Heirs in South
Africa: race, class and revolutionary Syndicalism
from the IWW to the International Socialist
League, Politikon journal, 2004, Vol 30, number
1, pp. 67–89.
van der Walt, Lucien, The First Globalisation
and Transnational Labour Activism in Southern
Africa : white labourism, the IWW and the
ICU, 1904-1934, African Studies journal, 2007,
Vol 66, Issues 2/3, pp. 223–251.
van der Walt, L., 2011, Anarchism and Syndicalism
in an African Port City: the revolutionary
traditions of Cape Town's multiracial working
class, 1904–1931, Labor History journal,
Volume 52, Issue 2, pp. 137–171.Books
Bradford, Helen, A Taste of Freedom: the ICU
in rural South Africa, 1924-1930.
Raven Press, Johannesburg, 1987.
Drew, Allison, Discordant Comrades: Identities
and Loyalties on the South African Left.
University of South Africa Press, Pretoria,
2002.
Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt, Black
Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of
Anarchism and Syndicalism (Counter-Power vol.
1), AK Press, 2009.
== External links ==
Southern African Anarchist & Syndicalist History
Archive
"South African Anarchism", archive of a 1990s–early
2000s South African anarchist site.
Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front
Zabalaza: A Journal of Southern African Revolutionary
Anarchism
Zabalaza Books
South African topics on Libcom.org
