Forced Labour in Colonial Africa

229 Pages·1979·4.83 MB·English

by  Nzula

Forced Labour in
Colonial Africa
A. T. Nzula,
I. I. Potekhin and
A. Z. Zusmanovich
Edited and Introduced by
Robin Cohen
Translated by
Hugh Jenkins
Being a new edition and translation of The Working Class
Movement and Forced Labour in Negro A{dca by
Ivan I. Potekhin, Aleksander Z. Zusmanovich and Albert
Nzula (alias Tom Jackson), first published in Russian in
Moscow (1933), together with a new Introduction, Notes
and Appendices containing other writings by Albert Nzula
Zed Press, 57 Caledonian Road, London Nl 9DN.
Forced IA!bour in Colonial Arrica was oTiginal\y pub\i.sh.ed.
in Russian by Profizdat.~ U_S_S_R-~ 1..933_ F\:rst. pub\\.shed. \n.
English by Zed Press. . 57 Caledonian Road .. London N"l. 9DN
in April 1979_
Translation Copyright ©Zed Press 1979
ISBN Hb 0 905762 30 4
Pb 0 905762 31 2
Printed in Great Britain by
Redwood Burn Ltd_, Trowbridge and Esher_
Typeset by Lyn Cald-we\\
Designed by An Dekker
Cover Design by Mayblin/Sha-w
Cover photograph courtesy of Camera Press, London
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
PREFACE AND ACK.."''OWLEDGEMENTS by Robin Cohen vii
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE x
INTRODUCTION by Robin Cohen 1
The Setting 1
Albert Nzula: His South African Period 3
Nzula, Potekhin and Zusmanovich and the African Bureau 10
Nzula and the I.T.U.C.-N.W. 14
Nzula's Death and his Significance 15
The Main Themes of the Book 16
1. BLACK AFRICA's ROLE IN THE WORLD ECONOMIC SYSTEM 20
Africa-Imperialism's Raw Material Supplier 21
Africa as a Consumer of European Goods: the Contradictions 27
The Export of Capital 31
2. THE ECONOMIC OPPRESSION OF THE PEASANTRY 36
Three Zones of Exploitation 36
Small Peasant Production in West Africa 40
Small Peasant Farming on the South African Reserves 50
3. FORCED LABOUR ON PLANTATIONS, FARMS AND MINES 59
The Plantation System in the Belgian Congo 59
Forced Labour on the European Farms of South Africa 69
Forced Labour in the Mining Industry 77
Contract Labour, Forced Labour and Slavery 82
4. THE EFFECTS OF THE DEPRESSION ON BLACK AFRICA 91
The World Capitalist Crisis Hits African Agriculture 93
Impact of the World Crisis on the Mining Sector 97
5. PEASANT MOVEMENTS AND UPRISINGS IN THE COLONIES 103
Determinants of the Peasant Movement 103
The Peasant Movement in Particular Countries 104
6. THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT IN BLACK AFRICA 117
Rising Revolutionary Consciousness amongst the Black
Masses 117
White Reformists- Agents of Imperialism 121
Black Reformists- the Collaborators 121
South Africa's Trade Union Movement 121
West African Trade Unions 137
Africa's Sailors and Dockers 143
First World Conference of Black Workers 144
7. THE ECONOMIC STRUGGLE OF THE WORKING CLASS
IN BLACK AFRICA 150
Strikes and Workers' Struggles in South Africa 150
Strikes Elsewhere in Africa 155
The Revolutionary Trade Union Movement and Rising Class
Consciousness 157
8. LIMITS OF NATIONAL REFORMISM 160
Imperialism's Catastrophic Impact on Black Africa 160
Roads to Revolution in Black Africa 161
Africa's Indigenous Exploiting Classes and the Anti-
Imperialist Struggle 165
National Reformism- the South African Example 167
National Reformist Organization in the Gold Coast 171
National Reformism in Kenya 174
The Task of Revolutionary-.Minded Workers in Africa 175
APPENDICES 178
A. Publications (outside South Africa) by Albert Nzula 178
B. Letter from Durban, January 1931 179
C. Native Workers Make Organizational Advances in South Africa 179
D. South African Negro Workers and Dingaan's Day 181
E. South Africa and the Imperialist Wax 184
F. Speech of Comrade T. Jackson, Delegate from South Africa 187
G. The International Labour Defense and the Negro Peoples 189
H. South African Imperialists Initiate New Terror Against Natives 194
196
I. The Struggles of the Negro Toilers in South Africa
J. The Fusion Movement in South Africa 213
TABLES
1.1 Territorial Shaxes of Africa by the Imperialist Powers 20
1.2 Cocoa and Palm Oil Production in the Gold Coast 26
1.3 South African Industries by Output Value 29
1.4 Shaxe of Imports into Africa by country (%) 29
2.1 British West Africa: Area, Population, Capital Cities 40
45
2.2 Cocoa Production in the Gold Coast
46
2.3 Production of Primary Products in the Gambia
54
2.4 South Africa's Export of Primary Products, 1928
3.1 Export of Palm Kernels and Oil, Belgian Congo (1900·30) 67
67
3.2 Agricultural Exports from the Belgian Congo, 1928
3.3 Distribution of Landholdings in South Africa 70
79
3.4 Comparative Cost of Living, South Africa and Britain
4.1 Imports of Individual Countries of Black Africa 101
6.1 Geographical Origins of Black Mine Workers 127
6.2 Workers in South African Manufacturing Industry 130
PREFACE AND
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book had its birth more by accident than by conscious design. My
interest in African labour history had drawn me to read number of issues
of African Communist, the official publication of the South African
Communist Party. There, I came across an article by 'Historicus' (African
Communist, Second Quarter, 1976) about Albert Nzula, the first black
General Secretary of the Communist Party -a figure who, despite his
prominent official role, seemed to have attracted very little attention, even
by sympathetic historians of the period. A rather cryptic reference,
providing no publication details, referred to Nzula having co-authored a
book with Ivan Potekhin and Aleksander Zusmanovich during his period
in Moscow.
The bulk of this book (Chapters 1 to 8) comprises a translation of the
Moscow manuscript, published in Russian in 1933, under the title The
Working Class Movement and Forced Labour in Negro Africa. From
internal evidence in the text, it appears that the book was written in 1932
and early 1933. According to a printer's note at the end of the original,
the book was printed between 4th August, 1933 and 28th September,
1933.
For three major reasons, I have chosen to re-title the book. First, the
original title seemed long and clumsy and did not accurately convey the
contents of the original. The book represents a generalised and trenchant
critique of colonialism, where this was possible, from the point of view of
workers and peasants themselves. The stress on the working class movement
in the original title therefore seemed misplaced. Also, as the book was
written for a contemporary audience, the period it covered was not
indicated in the title. Now, however, it seems necessary to indicate that the
authors were writing in the midst of the colonial period.
Second, it was necessary to take certain liberties with, and make some
additions to, the original text. For example, it was not always possible to
resolve difficulties in rendering names of places or people into English.
Occasionally names and short passages were elided, and sentences altered
to ensure greater readability and comprehension. The tables were redrawn,
or compiled for the first time, from information presented in the text.
The Notes at the end of the chapters were all provided either by myself or
the translator, Hugh Jenkins. In addition, certain chapters were retitled, or
vii
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
in one case, split into two, while many of the sub-headings have !M>en added
by the editor. Chapter 2, originally entitled The Economic Oppression of
the Native Popu!JJtion, is now called The Economic Oppression of the
Peasantry, while Chapter 3 has been separated from its original place, as
part of Chapter 2, and given a separate heading. The present Chapters 4
and 8 have been given more explicit titles than their originals. While every
effort has been made to preserve the spirit and style of the original work
by Nzula, Potekhin, and Zusmanovich, the reader should bear in mind that
the text printed here is not always a word for word translation from the
original.
Thirdly and finally, both the publishers of the present edition and
myself were concerned that Albert Nzula's distinctive contribution to the
book should emerge. While it is difficult to separate the precise contri
bution of each author to a multi-authored book, there is no doubt that the
Southern African sections -which are a substantial proportion of the
book-were drafted or written by Nzula, while certain other sections
concerning the work of the International Trade Union Committee of
Negro Workers (I.T. U.C.-N.W.) would also seem to have emanated from his
pen. In addition to giving Nzula the full credit he deserves for participating
directly in the authorship of the book and, indeed, for providing the kind
of first-hand information that made it possible for serious Soviet scholar
ship on Africa even to begin (see Introduction), there are now more present
and compelling reasons for securing a full understanding of Nzula's views.
I refer, of course, to the present state of the revolutionary movement in
South Africa. Already, in the last few years, we have seen dramatic
political changes in Angola and Mozambique, while the pace of events
favourable to nationalist struggles in Zimbabwe and Namibia accelerates
daily. Only in South Africa, which Nzula last saw as a stowaway on a ship
leaving from Cape Town in 1931, do the forces of local and international
capital, in alliance with the most virulent brand of racism the world has
witnessed since the rise of the Nazis, appear to be on the increase. But even
that is precarious, for the shock waves of events like the Soweto riots,
beginning in 1976, have not yet been fully absorbed. There is now less
assurance and certainly far less credibility in the Canute-like statements of
the South African government. Now, more than ever, it is necessary to
examine the roots of the ideology of apartheid, the roots, that is to say,
in the production and reproduction of cheap labour power. This system,
as Nzula's writings demonstrate, was already fully developed in the 1920s
and 1930s. But, in addition to looking at how cheap labour power was
exploited, Nzula also had pertinent and interesting opinions on the
character and limitations of the African nationalist leadership, the balance
between economic and political struggle in the trade unions and what is
now termed the race/class question. These views can be found both in his
contribution to The Working Class Movement and Forced Labour in
Negro Africa and in his hitherto inaccessible writings in The Negro Worker.
viii
FORCED LABOUR IN COLONIAL AFRICA
It is now possible to secure virtually a completl' set of his writings outside
South Africa. A full bibliography of Nzula's writings plus all his major
articles have been reprinted here as appendices (see Appendices A-K). I
have also devoted the major part of the Introduction to an attempt to
rescue Nzula's life and work from historical obscurity, a veil of ignorance
that has only been previously lifted to some degree for a Russian reader
ship in the works of A. B. Davidson.
To summarise, because the authors' original title seemed too restrictive,
because it proved necessary to make certain changes in the text and
finally because of the need to highlight Nzula's views by the inclusion of
further material by him, a new title, Forced Labour in Colonwl Africa, has
been adopted. While the book has now been expanded beyond its original
form, the core of the book is still derived from The Working Class Move
ment and Forced Labour in Negro Africa. For help in procuring that book,
I wish to thank the anonymous librarians who operate the International
Inter-Library loans system. After I had searched every possible index and
more or less given up in despair, a poorly bound and badly printed paper
back arrived on my desk -courtesy of the University of Birmingham
Library and the Lenin Library, Moscow. This stroke of luck proved
auspicious. Hugh Jenkins, then conducting research at the Centre of
Russian and East European Studies, Birmingham, undertook to provide a
translation, despite the difficulties the text provided (see Translator's
Note). An article by the Soviet Union's leading scholar on South Africa,
A.B. Davidson, provided invaluable information in filling out some bio
graphical gaps in Nzula's life (see his' Albert Nzula' in The Working Class
and the Modem World (6), 197 5). Efficient librarians at the Marx
Memorial Library, London, tracked down a few copies of the Negro
Worker, a critical journal of the period, that has now become a biblio
graphical rarity. I must also warmly thank Robert Hill, Editor of the
Marcus Garvey Papers, University of California, Los Angeles, who referred
me to the Washington Archives and obtained a number of missing issues
of the Negro Worker. While on a visit to Trinidad, the veteran Marxist,
C. L. R. James, who has personal knowledge of the personalities of the
period this book covers, supplied some remarkable information about the
circumstances of Nzula's death (see Introduction). Roger van Zwanenberg
and Robert Molteno, of Zed Press, provided useful suggestions, and
showed considerable patience at the long delays occasioned by a difficult
translation and the editor's inaccessibility in a far-off island.
Finally, my gratitude and affection go to Selina Cohen for spending long
hours with gazetteers and maps identifying nearly all the strange African
names that emerged from the Cyrillic script. In this, and other ways, she
helped nurture the book from its rebirth, through its periodic sicknesses,
into good health.
Robin Cohen
Trinidad, June, 1978.
ix
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
Due to certain defects and peculiarities from which the original Russian
text of this work suffers, there are aspects of the present translation which
should be treated with caution by the reader. These are discussed below.
Names of persons and places, both African and English have proved
particularly difficult to translate accurately and reliably from Russian to
English. This is because there exist vowels and consonants in English which
cannot be faithfully transcribed into Cyrillic script (notable examples are
w, h, and qu) and also because a Russian transliteration of an English name
can often be retransliterated with equal validity in two or more ways.
(Johnson becomes Dzhonson in Russian; this could be rendered in English
as Johnson or Jonson, there being nothing in the Russian spelling from
which the h can be inferred.) Research by the editor of the present volume
has resolved most of the consequent ambiguities; where spellings remain
open to doubt they are marked with an asterisk.
It will be evident to the reader that the authors made little attempt to
document their sources. All notes that appear are written either by the
present editor or translator. It has usually been impossible to verify the
accuracy of quotations translated by the authors into Russian and now
retranslated back into their original language. Further, there is some
evidence that certain English sources have been poorly translated into
Russian. Lastly, a number of quotation marks are missing from the original
Russian, as a result of which the precise substance of certain quotations
must remain a matter of inference and speculation. From the foregoing it
follows that quotations in the present English version should, in most cases,
be considered at best a close approximation to their English originals. No
attempt has been made to reproduce the original texts of quotations from
French and Belgian sources.
That their work might be read by anyone other than their immediate
contemporaries would seem not to have occurred to the authors. This is
suggested by the frequency in the text of such expressions as 'last year',
'in recent months' and so on. Such phrases obviously present a problem to
the modern reader. It is known that work on the original began at some
time during 1932, and that the book was printed in the latter half of 1933.
Lacking more precise data on the authors' activities during 1932-33, the
present translator has refrained from expressing these vague indications of
X
FORCED LABOUR IN COLONIAL AFRICA
time as specific years. To have done so would have risked the introduction
of unnecessary errors into an already idiosyncratic chronology.
Certain prices and wage rates cited in the present English version are of
somewhat dubious accuracy, due to the fact that they are given in roubles
in the original without any overt indication of the rate used to convert
sterling to Soviet currency. Calculations derived from equivalents given
elsewhere in the text suggest that the conversion rate used by the authors
was £1 = R9.36. Where figures are given in roubles only in the original, the
above conversion rate is applied in the translation.
Those unaccustomed to the rhetoric of Soviet political writing will
doubtless find the style of this work at times somewhat repetitive. It is
arguable that many of the ritualistic epithets as 'imperialist' and 'reformist'
could have been omitted from the English version. We have chosen to
retain them on the grounds that the work, as a whole, bears witness to the
authors' strong political commitment to their subject. To have partially
concealed this aspect of the book would have been to alter the authors'
original intentions. The style of the work has, therefore, been changed as
little as possible.
Hugh Jenkins
London
February, 1978
xi