Indians, Africans and Coloureds Stand United

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Socialist Action conducted the following interview with Sipho Khumalo, a member of the Unity Movement of South Africa, in June 1985. :

Socialist Action: What events led to the founding of the Unity Movement?

Sipho Khumalo: In 1910 when the whites decided to form the Union of South Africa from the four republics of the Cape, the Natal, the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State, they left the Black population totally without the franchise.

In 1913 and again in 1936, the government passed acts that removed the African people from the land. The effect was to create a dispossessed labor force for the mines. The Africans were given 13 percent of the, land and the whites 87 percent-although the whites were only about 13 percent of the population.

In 1912 the African National Congress was formed to defend the rights of the African people. The next year women in the Orange Free State organized the first large demonstrations against the pass system, and mine workers organized the first mass strike of Black people.

In the 1940s a new wave of strikes, boycotts, and - demonstrations broke out. Members of the ANC, such as the Black Trotskyist leader I.B. Tabata, decided that they should form an organization that could effectively try to unite all the groups representing the oppressed non-European population— Indians and Coloured people [people of mixed race] as well as Africans.

A number of trade unions and political and community groups came together in 1943 to found the NonEuropean Unity Movement [the original name of the organization]. It was the first and only organization at that time to have a principled program of struggle. It had a 10-point program based on a policy of non-collaboration. Its method of struggle was the boycott.

S.A.: What were some of the themes of the 10-point program?

Khumalo: The program strived toward creating a country where race does not matter and all people are equal by law. It said that the interests of working people and peasants should be paramount in the struggle. For example, point number seven emphasizes that there must be a redistribution of the land. A large number of the members were oriented to socialism. The Unity Movement differed with the other organization, the ANC, in that it called not only for the elimination of apartheid but of economic exploitation as well.

The capitalists use the white workers against the Black workers by paying the white workers far more, but color is just a superficial obstacle between them. We feel that the white worker will join the struggle in time when he realizes that the capitalists also exploit him.

S.A.: Explain your policy of non-collaboration.

Khumalo: The Unity Movement believes that whites are only able to suppress the Blacks if Blacks themselves work the machinery of oppression. The government, for example, created