In September, 1965, Lin Piao wrote an article which set forth Mao’s “theory” of “self-reliance” and simultaneously declared China’s limited support to the Vietnamese people’s war against U.S. aggression. Commenting on this article—ironically titled “Long Live The Victory of People’s War”—James Chieh Hsiung said:
A central theme was that victory in a people’s war depended on self-reliance. Lin’s statement implied that North Vietnam should not rely on outside support for its victory, that Chinese should refrain from more positive action in Vietnam, and that China consequently would not ease its anti-Soviet stand in the interest of new joint Sino-Soviet efforts to support Vietnam. (Ideology and Practice; The Evolution of Chinese Communism, by James Chieh Hsiung. page 261.)
By the nature of its timing—it appeared a month after U.S. imperialism’s Gulf of Tonkin provocation—Lin’s article served as the “theoretical” basis for China’s non-solidarity with the worldwide support to Vietnamese resistance.
While one might well have expected the Chinese leaders to be in the forefront of this movement since this small country is on China’s border, the Maoists instead opposed unity in any form, justifying their position by stressing Vietnamese “self-reliance” as the sole force for countering U.S. aggression. Lin’s article asserted that a “people’s war” requires a go-it-alone policy, calling for “self-reliance” without the commitment of the world’s Socialist and anti-imperialist forces.
This “theory”—which denies the indivisibility of the world revolutionary process, and the inter-relationship of certain forms of armed and unarmed- struggle—was further elucidated by Mao himself when he wrote that war:
. . . will be finally eliminated by the progress of human society, and in the not too distant future too. But there is only one way to eliminate it, and that is to oppose war with war, to oppose counter-revolutionary war with revolutionary war. (Quoted in Long Live The Victory of People’s War! by Lin Piao. Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1965. page 68.)
Thus, according to Mao, the “counter-revolutionary war” against Vietnam could only have been opposed by “revolutionary war” conducted by the Vietnamese people—without support. (Mao in this statement simultaneously covers up the fact that world anti-imperialist unity could very likely have been able to prevent U.S. intervention in Vietnam in the first place, or at least made it less costly to the Vietnamese.)
This Maoist “thesis” is a formula for surrender to imperialism. If the world anti-imperialist forces have no responsibility for stopping the escalation of U.S. assistance to Portuguese and South African imperialism, if political and material support to the freedom fighters of Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and South Africa is irrelevant—if this is true, then whatever is done must be done by the freedom fighters alone. Alone, they must resist the violence of apartheid fascism—which is not alone, but is generously supported by U.S. monopoly. During a “protracted people’s war,” they must “rely on their own strength,” while forces in other parts of the world who call themselves “anti-imperialists” stand on the sidelines, offering as their only “support” the super-revolutionary rhetoric of Maoism!
Lin’s article was designed not only to justify betrayal of unity with the Vietnamese people. It also signalled a new stage in the Maoists’ worldwide ideological offensive projecting a “theory” that sought to justify Maoist policies directed against internal and international unity with the African and other liberation movements.
Lin Piao has gone from the scene, but the Maoist policies he advanced—aimed at undermining unity among the liberation movements of the world and isolating them through anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism from their natural allies—are still operative on every continent.
A typical example of the kind of Maoist theories for which Lin was the mouthpiece appears in his 1965 article in Peking Review, November 10, 1972. This recent article accompanies its demand for “third world self-reliance” with calls for the people to struggle “especially against the two superpowers.”
By equating the bastion of world anti-imperialism, the Soviet Union, with the world citadel of imperialism, the United States, the Maoists seek to undermine anti-imperialist unity, In calling the USSR one of the “two superpowers,” they seek to engulf the Soviet Union in the hatred the world has come to feel for U.S. imperialism. The rhetoric about “superpowers” is to disguise the difference between imperialism and anti-imperialism, thus camouflaging Maoism’s “leaning” to the imperialist side.
In their “superpowers” rhetoric, the Maoists have a specific great power objective—to gain advantages in their dealings with the U.S. As part of the deal, the Maoists’ attempt to transfer “third world” hatred of U.S. imperialism to the USSR—an invaluable boost to the U.S. monopolists’ strategy in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Lin Piao’s November 10, 1972 article states, “Chairman Mao has pointed out: ’On what basis should our policy rest? It should rest on our own strength, and that means regeneration through one’s own efforts.’ ” Here he is quoting from Mao’s article, “The Situation and Our Policy After the Victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan.” In this connection, one must recall that both before and after this war Mao had repeatedly stated that the “self-reliance” and “regeneration” of the Chinese Revolution were based on the solidarity and support of the Soviet Union. Thus, long before he broke with the principles of internationalism, Mao clearly recognized that the self-action of the Chinese people together with Soviet solidarity was what brought victory to the Revolution. Before “leaning” to the side of imperialism, Mao made many such affirmations. In 1935, for example, he stated:
In the war of Resistance against the Japanese invaders we need the help of other nations, of the peoples of the Soviet Union above all. (“On The Tactics of Fighting Japanese Imperialism,” by Mao Tse-tung. Quoted in What Peking Keeps Silent About! Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow, 1972. Page 37.)
In 1939, Mao stated:
The foreign policy conducted by the Soviet Union has been a consistent policy of peace that combines the interests of the USSR with those of the overwhelming majority of man- kind. (“Identity of Interests of the Soviet Union and All Man-kind,” by Mao Tse-tung. Quoted in What Peking Keeps Silent About! Page 26.)
In 1948, Mao stated:
The October Revolution built a new front of revolutions, extending from the proletarians in the West, through the Russian revolution, to the oppressed peoples in the East, against world imperialism. (“Revolutionary Forces of the Whole World, Unite for the Struggle Against Imperialist Aggression!” by Mao Tse-tung. Quoted in What Peking Keeps Silent About! Page 9.)
In 1948, again Mao stated:
All the revolutionary forces in every country must unite; the revolutionary forces of all countries must unite; they must form a single anti-imperialist front with the Soviet Union at the head and follow a correct policy—otherwise victory is unattainable. (Ibid. Page 19.)
J. D. Simonds, who was with the United Kingdom Commissioner General’s Office in Singapore, in 1950, and later with the United Kingdom Foreign Office, also confirms that when the Maoists “leaned” to the side of anti-imperialism, they did not separate self-reliance from unity with the Soviet Union. In the past, he wrote:
Mao’s expressed view saw China forming a part of a great socialist system. . . . China may have been the centre of Asia or the greatest power in the region but in every other respect it was merely a segment, the second in importance, of the larger socialist world. Eventually, however, the regime’s propaganda on such matters veered away from this view. China is now clearly, if still implicitly, thought of and described as the centre of the world. It may well be that Mao all along considered this to be the case, but that owing to the nation’s weakness and need to rely on the Soviet Union the view was suppressed. (China's World, by J. S. Simmonds. Columbia University Press, New York and London, 1970. page 151.)
Mao’s perversion of the revolutionary interconnection between self-reliance and anti-imperialist unity surfaced at a later date, as he descended to a great nationalist position. When the “Thought of Mao” gained control in China, the ideology of Han chauvinism revived the ancient, racist concept of China as the “center” of the world—replacing the Marxist-Leninist principle of world Socialist and anti-imperialist unity as the center of world resistance to racial, class and national oppression.
Since the early sixties, Maoism has openly obstructed the “single anti-imperialist front” needed to combat imperialist aggression and neo-colonialism in Africa and elsewhere. This Maoist opposition to unity has brought great harm to the peoples’ struggles, especially in Vietnam and in the re-doubt of Portuguese and South African fascist rule.
Events over the past decade in South Africa have done much to reveal the contradiction between reality and the Maoist “theory” of a “third world” versus a “white world.” Whenever the concept of race is put forward as the “chief dynamic” of history, it replaces an anti-imperialist, internationalist class strategy with a bourgeois nationalist policy, dividing and thereby weakening the struggle against oppression. Though the conditions are different, this is true both for the struggles in the U.S. and in South Africa.
The South African liberation struggle certainly demands the unity of “third world” peoples. And the African National Congress of South Africa has sought to build that unity, involving the African majority, and the millions of Coloreds and Asians against the racist regime. But the advocates of Padmore’s neo-Pan-Africanism—supported by the Chinese Maoists—notorious for their ability to adapt “theory” to fit great nationalist aims—countered African, Colored and Asian unity in Africa with a separatist racial policy. Thus, despite their rhetoric about “third world peoples” the neo-Pan-Africanists to this day oppose such unity within South Africa.
When Padmore’s racial, separatist ideology was overwhelmingly rejected by the African National Congress of South Africa, his followers formed the Pan-Africanist Congress—breaching the anti-imperialist front at its most crucial point in Africa. They were supported in this betrayal by the same Maoists who disrupted world Socialist and anti-imperialist unity over the past decade, particularly in relation to neo-colonialism and imperialist aggression in Africa and Vietnam.
In 1956, four years before this Maoist disruption came into the open, Padmore had already found an identity between the Maoists and his own anti-Soviet, bourgeois nationalism. In fact, he wrote of Mao as a “political genius” in adapting Marxism “to suit” China. (Pan-Africanism or Communism? by George Padmore. Page 319.)
During the Accra Conference three years later, Padmore established contact with a small group of dissidents from the African National Congress of Africa. The group was headed by a South African trade unionist linked with the C.I.A. This individual had the support of the so-called International Free Trade Unions, whose operations are financed by the C.I.A., and the Meanys of the A.F.L-C.I.O. (It is especially in South Africa that the alliance of the Maoists, the C.I.A., the neo-Pan-Africanists and the racist misleaders of the U.S. labor movement has come into open operation in the past decade—objectively fitting into the Strategy of South African imperialism and its U.S., Portuguese, and NATO partners.)
With Padmore’s encouragement, this group to returned South Africa and, supported by the Chinese Maoists, organized the Pan-Africanist Congress, P.A.C., as a splitoff from the African National Congress of South Africa—the great mass organization conducting armed struggle against the Republic of South Africa’s ruling class. Today, the P.A.C., which breached anti-imperialist unity in South Africa, continues to enjoy the active support of the Chinese Maoists.
Jordan K. Ngubane, an anti-Communist African writer and member of the Liberal Party, who at one time participated in a united front with the African National Congress, described how Padmore’s anti-Communist, separatist influence brought the split of the dissident group from the African National Congress and the formation of the P.A.C. Revealing how the anti-Communist hatred of the P.A.C. organizers paralleled that of the fascist Afrikaner Nationalists, Ngubane wrote:
Some of the strangest alignments may one day emerge from this hatred—especially since the Afrikaner nationalist is also bitterly hostile to the pro-Soviet side. Communism pioneered the nonracial coordination of black, brown, and white initiatives after Union. After 1924, it admitted to membership people of all races and in that way projected itself as the arch enemy of some of the things Afrikaner nationalism regarded as precious. (An African Explains Apartheid, by Jordan K. Ngubane. Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1953. Pages 178-179.)
Commenting further on the adherents of Padmore’s neo-Pan-Africanism, Ngubane said:
The African’s and the Afrikaner’s hatred of Communism on this plane is so intense that an alignment between the two is no longer as remote an eventuality as events might suggest. (Ibid. Page 179.)
There is no doubt that the activity of the Pan-Africanist Congress and its Maoist supporters has facilitated the fascist onslaught of the Afrikaner regime against the South African people over the past decade. In fact, this apartheid regime has been able to exploit the convenient neo-Pan-African doctrine of separatism to facilitate operation of a sham “self-determination”—and this has enabled it to intensify its aggression against the people’s for real self-determination.
The regime has set aside several widely separated areas—selected for their lack of fertility and because they are completely devoid of natural resources—as apartheid reserves, called Bantu “homelands.” occupying only 13 percent of the land, without possibility of a viable economy, these “homelands” are proclaimed by the racists as “self-determination” for the African 70 percent majority of the population.
These “ghettos” of indescribable poverty—serve as labor pools for the apartheid national economy, in which white workers are paid 15 to 20 times more than Africans. The sole inhabitants within the “homelands,” the Africans at the same time are the majority population outside these rural ghettos. Even though they are restricted by law to the bottom of the job categories, the economy could not operate without them. Whether they live on the Bantu reservations or in ghettos on the outskirts of Johannesburg, Durban, etc„ they are completely segregated and without the semblance of even formal rights.
A worker may never have seen one of the “homelands,” but on the slightest pretext he can have his pass lifted and be sent to jail or to one of the reservations. There he becomes a part of the “surplus” population, whose prospects never go beyond occasional migratory labor outside or on the fringes of the “homeland” where especially high-profit plants are being set up, employing “homeland” labor at even less than the usual abysmal rates.
The neo-Pan-Africanist strategy of racial separation, particularly as seen in the P.A.C.’s policies, stands exposed as playing into the hands of the racist government, now intensifying the separate and unequal existence of South Africa’s majority. Increasingly, this majority sees the non-separatist, anti-imperialist policies of the African National Congress of South Africa and the Communist Party of South Africa as the way to African self-determination and majority rule.
In 1968, the African National Congress of South Africa, (A.N.C.) issued a report on the background and activities of the P.A.C.—activities “aimed not at destroying the oppressive apartheid machinery but at crippling and thwarting the revolutionary program of the African National Congress.” (The Pan Africanist Congress of South Africa, Whom Does It Serve? Prepared and issued by the African National Congress of South Africa. Morogoro, Tanzania, 1968. page 1.)
The report states that toward the end of 1958 the small group of disruptive adventurers operating within the A.N.C. decided on a formal break with the organization.
In 1959:
. . . After a lengthy meeting held in the luxurious premises of the library of the United States Information Service (USIS) in Johannesburg, they decided to form a revolutionary political organization which they called the Pan Africanist Congress. Thus the dark schemes of American imperialists’ subversion of the successful development of the national liberation revolution against apartheid fascism were exposed to the light of day. (Ibid.)
What motivated the breakaway? The disrupters who later formed the P.A.C.:
. . . had all along been bitterly opposed to the United Front Policy of the African National Congress. Their agitation against the policy became particularly vocal after the historic Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign of 1952 which had been mainly carried out by the militant volunteers of the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress, the S.A. Coloured Peoples’ Congress and some militant white youth.
This close alliance and with the democratic organizations from other racial groups, led the Pan Africanist Congress leaders to wildly allege that the A.N.C. had lost its identity as a purely African revolutionary organization and had surrendered its leadership to non-African sections of the liberation movement. These false accusations were made in spite of the fact that the liberation movement had unanimously accepted the obvious truth that because of the concrete historical situation existing in our country, the main content of the revolution in South Africa is the liberation of the African people who are not only the overwhelming majority but are also the most oppressed section of the entire population. (Ibid. pages 1 and 2)
The report then goes on to say:
After the adoption of the historic Freedom Charter in 1955 by all the constituent members of the South African National Liberation Movement (the African National Congress, the South African Indian Congress, The South African Coloured People’s Organization which later became the South African Coloured People’s Congress), the same disruptive elements . . . proclaimed very loudly that the Freedom Charter did not express the true aspirations of the liberation movement and people, but was a document inspired by Moscow.
One of the pet charges that has always been hurled at our organization by the present P.A.C. leaders was that the African National Congress was dominated by Communists, a charge which they have now substituted with the term “modern Soviet revision” in order to solicit financial and other assistance from the People’s Republic of China. This anti-communist hysteria of the PAC. leaders evoked shrill echoes of support in the enemy camps at home and abroad. (Ibid. Page 2)
In 1950 the fascist government of South Africa enacted the Suppression of Communism Act, which has the basis for ever increasing attacks against any type of opposition to its racist regime. The A.N.C. document relates that:
As a result of a reactionary anti-communist witch-hunt which the secret police conducted after the passing of that law, Church leaders, people who avowedly professed anti-socialist ideals and leaders of anti-fascist political organizations received banning and restriction notices, isolating them from intercourse with the masses of the people. The leading ranks of the African National Congress and allied organizations of the national liberation movement were the most severely hit by the provisions of the Suppression of Communism Act.
Only the pure revolutionaries of the Pan Africanist Congress escaped the wrath of the fascist regime of South Africa. The reason for this is of course not far to seek. Their disruptive activities have always been a boon to the South African racists, the only section which has had occasion to feel highly satisfied.
. . .The disunity caused by counter-revolutionary activity is always a blessing to the oppressors. (Ibid. page 3)
In 1956, George Padmore’s Pan-Africanism or Communism? was published. Two years later, Potlako K. Labello—one of the group that was soon to form the P.A.C.—was decisively defeated in the A N.C. when he used Padmore’s anti-Communist separatist arguments to oppose development of a new stage in the liberation struggle.
The essence of Padmore’s position coincided perfectly with the strategy of the racist government, which used—and still uses—anti-Communism to isolate and disrupt the liberation movement, together with intensified application of fascist measures to outlaw contact between the African majority and the millions of Coloreds and Asians, as well as whites who dare struggle against the regime.
The apartheid regime applied the “law,” and enforced it by terror and violence to accomplish its aims. Paralleling the government’s actions, Labello and his group used Padmore’s anti-Communist ideology to create separatist division between Africans and the Coloured and Asian components of the liberation movement.
The A.N.C. report states that:
In April 1958, Potlako K. Labello . . . used the services of the enemy press to oppose the national stoppage of work aimed at highlighting the crippling grievances of the oppressed people of South Africa. The national strike had been called to coincide with the White-only general elections on 14th, 15th, and 16th, April 1958. Naturally. all the reactionary South African dailies lapped up the anti-strike call by this great revolutionary. (Ibid.)
After this strike-breaking act, the dissidents within the A.N.C. were irrevocably exposed. They could no longer conceal their disruption behind Padmore’s anti-Communist, separatist neo-Pan-Africanism. At this point, the P.A.C. was formed to carry out the policies rejected by the A.N.C.
The next phase in the counter-revolutionary activity is one of the most shameful betrayals in the long history of the struggle against white minority rule in South Africa. The African National Congress document relates:
At the annual conference held in December 1959, the African National Congress finalized the plans for a nation-wide campaign of active mass resistance against the fascist regime. The planned forms of mass resistance were to be national stoppages of work, burning of passes and later sabotage against the oppressor’s vital installations.
By March 1960, the A.N.C. massive campaign was already underway throughout the length and breadth of South Africa. Thus the masses of the oppressed people were successfully mobilized for the March 31 Anti-Pass National stoppage of work.
However, on March 21st, the newly-formed counter-revolutionary Pan Africanist Congress issued a treacherous call to the people to go and stand outside police stations. To dupe and confuse our people, the “leaders” of this organization said that the call was being issued by the Congress (a generic title for the African National Congress among and non-political circles in South Africa.) These calculations were also that in view of the massive popular Anti-Pass campaign of the African National Congress, the masses of the people would associate this call with the commencement of the planned onslaught against the pass system. It must be noted here with special emphasis that the A.N.C. campaign was to start on March 31. But the P.A.C. sought to spread disunity by issuing the March 21 call.
The mass massacres of the people on the 21st March in Sharpeville and Langa in Cape Town by the South African government are well known. The African National Congress directed the wrath of the people caused by the massacres along more effective lines which culminated in a successful national stoppage of work called by the late A.N.C. President, Chief A. J. Luthuli. Also at his call the burning of passes on a nationwide scale followed.
At the initiative of the African National Congress, a meeting of African leaders of all shades of political opinion, various religious and cultural groups and organizations, etc. was organized in December 1960 to consider joint plans of action to counter the mounting reactionary onslaught of the fascist apartheid regime on the African people in particular. At the conclusion of the meeting, a Continuation Committee was unanimously elected from representatives of all the participating organizations including the Pan-Africanist Congress. The main task of this committee was to make preparations for a country-wide All-In-African Unity conference of the African people scheduled for March, 1961.
In the midst of unprecedented activity all over the country, preparation for the crucial meeting, the representatives of the Pan Africanist Congress suddenly made press statements withdrawing their support without prior consultation with any of their colleagues serving on the preparatory committee. To add insult to injury, they proceeded to call upon the African people to ignore the consultative committee’s call for the election of delegates to the planned conference. Notwithstanding, the meeting took place at Maritzburg on March 21 and was addressed by Nelson Mandela. This was the last meeting Mandela addressed before his arrest.
The growing anger of the African people against the fascist apartheid regime was demonstrated by the enthusiasm of delegates from all over the country who braved all government intimidation and obstruction in order to attend the Maritzburg All-In-African Unity Conference. The one thousand five hundred assembled delegates took a decision for a national stoppage of work to coincide with the celebrations by the white section of the population for the changeover of South Africa from Dominion to Republic status without prior consultation. The basis of our demand, which had not been heeded, was for the holding of a National Convention of representatives of all racial groups to decide on the future equitable Constitution designed to safeguard and guarantee full democratic rights for all the South African citizens irrespective of colour, race, creed or sex.
On the eve of the planned nation-wide strike, the Pan Africanist Congress issued and distributed thousands of leaflets exhorting the African people to ignore the strike. On the other hand, the terrorist government of our country frightened by the unity of the people unleashed a massive show of strength by combined operations of the army and police in an effort to intimidate the people. In certain areas, police agents were seen handing out the mass produced P.A.C. anti-strike leaflets.
No comment is necessary to illustrate the complete identity of aims between the PAC. and the fascist government of South Africa except to put a poignant question: Who was serving whom? (Ibid. Pages 3, 4 and 5)
The Splitting tactics of the P.A.C. described in the report brings to mind those of the Trotskyites and Maoists within the anti-imperialist struggles in various parts of the world. And those familiar with the anti-war movement in the U.S. will recall how the Trotskyites and Maoists time and again maneuvered to call separate actions on different dates, or splinter actions on the same date, obstructing unity at each turning point in the struggle against U.S. escalation in Vietnam.
The “leaders” of the Pan Africanist Congress, who called the people to the police stations in the name of “Congress,” were serving the apartheid rulers through a strategy directed against the liberation movement. They undermined unity and diverted the people’s forces from a realistic action under conditions of fascist terror, which the A.N.C. had set to begin the March 31 Anti-Pass National Work stoppage—an action aimed at confronting the regime with the mass unity of the people, who were unarmed. By calling upon the people to appear at the fascist police stations, the P.A.C. provocateurs were not only signaling to the fascist regime that the united front of the liberation movement had been breached—in addition, by deceitfully calling this separate action they trapped an unarmed people into a direct confrontation with armed, strong points of South African fascism. Even now, in the new stage of guerilla warfare led by the African National Congress, this would be sheer adventurism! Clearly, the Sharpeville massacre could not have taken place except as a direct result of the P.A.C. “leaders” splitting of the liberation movement and deliberate misleading of the people.
Not a year has gone by since the Sharpeville Massacre without the appearance of books and articles calculated to conceal the meaning of the event and P.A.C.’s role in it. One of the most recent of the books is African Liberation Movements, by Richard Gibson (Published for the Institute of Race Relations, London. Oxford University Press, London, 1972.) who attempts to create a “revolutionary” image around the neo-Pan-Africanist and Maoist disruption of anti-imperialist unity. He describes the P.A.C.’s provocation at Sharpeville as a turning point toward “militant” action; and asserts that with Sharpeville “the momentum had already shifted to PAC.” (Ibid. Page 55.)
To cover up the fact that P.A.C.’s Sharpeville provocation had split the united front and caused “the momentum” to shift not to P.A.C. but to a new fascist onslaught against the people, Gibson falsified the facts concerning P.A.C.’s role in that fateful March 21st at Sharpeville. He writes that “The A.N.C. could not help but follow” after P.A.C. “fixed March 21 as the date for the opening of the anti-pass campaign.” (Ibid, Page 56) However, after more pages of anti-Communist falsification Gibson is forced to contradict himself and admit that the initiative never passed to P.A.C. Despite the fascist assaults P.A.C.’s provocation helped unleash on the people and A.N.C., the initiative remained—and still remains—with the great African National Congress of South Africa.
Gibson makes this admission when he reveals that Matthew Nkoana, a former P.A.C. leader and “convinced idealistic Pan-Africanist,” “sharply castigated” the P.A.C. for its disruption of the liberation movements in South Africa, in the Portuguese-occupied areas and Zimbabwe. Gibson writes:
Nkoana envisages an all-African united struggle against the white minority regimes in South Africa, and he has sharply castigated both the PAC and the Zimbabwe African National Union for their criticism of the ANC-Zanu alliance. . . . (Ibid. page 103)
Gibson next quotes Nkoana as follows:
A halt must be called to the squabbles among the rival organizations, so that they can get on to serious discussion and planning. Don’t let the chauvinistic tail wag the revolutionary dog. (Ibid.)
But Gibson then attacks Nkoana’s call to end P.A.C.’s disruptive activity by asserting that “such an appeal for unity seems both naive and unrealistic.” (Ibid.)
If today Gibson opposes unity of the liberation movements—specifically a united front between the armed struggles led by the African National Congress and the guerillas of the Zimbabwe African National Union—how can one rely on his version of PAC.’s role at Sharpeville over a decade ago?
When, for instance, Gibson claims that P.A.C, called for the March 21st action before instead of after the A.N.C.’s call for the March 31st action, we are involved in something other than a dispute about dates; the issue is exposure—or a coverup—of the difference between devotion to unity against a brutal racist enemy or disruption of unity under cover of anti-Communist, separatist neo-Pan-Africanism. It is significant, in this connection, that while Gibson frequently quotes from Urban Revolt in South Africa, 1960-1964, by Edward Feit, (Northwestern University Press, 1971) he omits the crucial evidence Feit presented on P.A.C.’s role at Sharpeville:
The question of whose decision it was first to launch a campaign against passes in 1960 has been disputed by both ANC and PAC. Each has claimed credit for the idea. It seems senseless to argue the point. Of greater importance is the fact that PAC set the pace and tone of the campaign, regardless of any prior plans that the ANC may have contemplated. But in terms of time alone, the ANC seems to have devised and disclosed its plans first. (Ibid. Page 37.)
After making this admission, Feit asserts it is “senseless” to dwell on it—that is, “senseless” to make an issue of the P.A.C. disruption underlying the so-called date controversy. In this way, he attempts to divert attention from the P.A.C. provocation that helped make it possible for the apartheid regime to “set the pace and tone” of a fascist offensive against the liberation struggles, beginning with the Sharpeville Massacre.
Next, Feit goes on to say A.N.C. “looked to a long-drawn out campaign,” while P.A.C. “planned something completely different.” (Ibid. pages 37 and 38) It is certainly true P.A.C. “planned something completely different” from A.N.C., but Feit would have us believe it was P.A.C. that projected the revolutionary plans!
The A.N.C.’s anti-pass campaign was to have been launched with a mass stay-away-from-work day on March 31st. But P.A.C. planned a diversion instead—and suddenly issued a call for people to confront the fascist regime at its armed Strong points, with leaflets signed “Congress.” As intended by P.A.C., people took “Congress” to mean the African National Congress, since this was the usual way of referring to that great people’s organization. Many people who responded to the leaflet in different parts of the country on March 21st were under the impression that “Congress” had substituted a different action from the one announced earlier for March 31st. Moreover, the apartheid radio played its part in spreading news of the March 21st action called by “Congress.”
Feit, continuing in his build-up of the P.A.C. goes on to say:
The impact of this (PAC.) campaign could obviously be very great. As was set forth in an article in Contact, a news magazine very sympathetic to PAC, this campaign would make or break the movement. Success would catapult PAC to the pinnacle of African leadership, while failure would result in its total eclipse.
In stating this, Feit provides the evidence that refutes his own estimate of the P.A.C. leaders as “revolutionaries.” He inadvertently reveals them as counter-revolutionary adventurers, determined to “make or break the movement” with a formula for “instant revolution.” What resulted from the P.A.C. provocation was “total eclipse” for these misleaders, except insofar as they can continue to cause disunity. And the liberation movement in South Africa is still headed by the African National Congress!
The fascist regime’s objective at Sharpeville coincided with that of the neo-Pan-Africanist P.A.C. leaders who planned their disruption in the offices of the United States Information Service to set the Stage for massive arrests of the A.N.C. leaders. By deceitfully calling the provocation that unleashed the Sharpeville Massacre in the name of “Congress,” the P.A.C. had linked the A.N.C. leaders with this with its mass terror, mass arrests and plot to demobilize A.N.C.’s millions of Supporters by undermining confidence in the A.N.C. leaders, the regime prevented the success of the stay-away-from-work campaign. This campaign—not the P.A.C.’s provocative call to unarmed people to confront the fascist regime at its heavily armed police headquarters—presented the real threat to the apartheid rulers. The policies of the P.A.C. misleaders responsible for that provocation can be interpreted as “revolutionary” only by those who have no understanding of revolutionary tactics or who also wish to deceive the people.
In promoting the disruptive tactics of the P.A.C. misleaders as “revolutionary,” Feit does not hesitate to play with the lives and future of the South African people. This brave white professor is in a class with those white pseudo-radicals who not long ago were applauding from the sidelines as Cleaver and Newton engaged in the rhetoric of “picking up gun”—while enjoying the limelight as the favorite “revolutionaries” of the racist rulers of the U.S.
Feit is one of the many white, anti-Communist academics connected with the racist, centers for “research” who preceded Richard Gibson in attempting to bury the true nature of the diametrically opposed policies and actions of A.N.C. and P.A.C.
The recent strikes of African workers in mines, factories and on the docks are an historically necessary, revolutionary part of the mobilization of masses for ever-higher levels of struggle for liberation in South Africa. One reason why this mass action takes the form today of direct strikes as compared to the A.N.C.’s stay-away-from-work day—an equally revolutionary tactic in an earlier period—is the difference in the present level of struggle.
The strikes are taking place against a background of developing armed struggles led by the African National Congress of South Africa and by organizations of the liberation movements in Rhodesia and Portuguese-occupied areas. The armed struggles are adding to the people’s unity and confidence in all forms of struggle—and intensifying the crisis of white minority rule in South Africa and other countries.
These armed struggles are directed at the most vulnerable points of fascist rule, while in Contrast, when the neo-Pan-African misleaders called upon unarmed people to attack the police strong points, the armed struggle had not even begun.
The P.A.C. diversion served the regime’s aims by heading off the A.N.C. stay-away-from-work action, a tactic uniquely suited to the level of struggle at that time in a context of apartheid terror. The A.N.C. action would have amounted to a general strike since the African workers’ absence from the job would have brought the economy to a halt.
The main demand of the A-N.C. campaign was abolition of the pass laws, the foundation of the apartheid rule. Thus the stay-at-home tactic was truly revolutionary, since it combined the economic power of the masses with a fundamental political demand for democracy. But while the provocation of the neo-Pan-Africanist “revolutionaries” enabled the fascist ruling class to abort the campaign at that time; the struggle for liberation today mounts under far more difficult and complex conditions which combine the unarmed action of the masses with the armed guerilla struggle.
To understand the extent of the neo-Pan-African betrayal at Sharpeville, One must recognize the full significance of the current strikes. The struggle at the time of Sharpeville, led by the A.N.C. and the Communist party of South Africa, was for democratic rights, a basic part of the fight for self-determination. Today’s strikes continue—in a new form and at a higher level—this fundamental struggle for the right of self-determination.
To Maoists and other pseudo-radicals the only relevant tactic is armed struggle. But the fact that armed struggle is now underway in South Africa does not make non-armed struggle irrelevant. On the contrary, the super-revolutionary Maoist insistence on armed struggle alone is a continuation today of the Neo-Pan-Africanist provocation that disrupted the tactically correct stay-away-from-work “strike” in 1960.
The pseudo-radical insistence on disruptive tactics that do not conform to the practical needs of mass struggle is not a new phenomenon. Lenin wrote of it:
Absolutely hostile to all abstract formulas and to all doctrinaire recipes, Marxism demands an attentive attitude to a mass struggle in progress, which as the movement develops, as the class-consciousness of the masses grows, as economic and political crises become acute, continually give rise to new and more varied methods of defense and attack. Marxism, therefore, positively does not reject any form of struggle. Under no circumstances does Marxism confine itself to forms of struggle possible and in existence at the given moment only, recognizing as it does that new forms of struggle, unknown to the participants at the given period, inevitably arise as the given social situation changes. (Collected Works, Volume 11. Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1962. page 213. Emphasis in the original.)
Both the striking parallel and the differences between the Sharpeville Massacre, March 21, 1960 in South Africa and Bloody Sunday, January 9, 1905 in St. Petersburg (now Leningrad), Russia offer a significant lesson for today’s struggle. The most important, but not the only difference was that Bloody Sunday came on the eve of the 1905 Revolution—precursor to the October 1917 Socialist Revolution—during a great strike wave sweeping Russia.
Most of the hundreds of thousands of workers involved in these strikes were under Communist leadership. However, a Colonel Zubatov had organized a split-off of several thousand, and one of the leaders of this breakaway movement, Father Gapon, a priest, succeeded in bringing several thousand workers to present a plea to the czar at the Winter Palace. Most of those who followed Gapon still looked upon the czar as their “Father,” who would surely respond to their anguished pleas for a better life. Lenin wrote that these peaceful demonstrators who gathered at the Winter Palace were met by the czar’s “Plan of the St. Petersburg Battle”
The Grand Duke Vladimir appointed General Prince Vasilchikov Commander of the Army in the Field. The entire capital was split up into areas among the officers. The czar played at war quite seriously, as though confronted by the invasion of an armed foe. During the military operations the General staff sat around a green-topped table on Vasilyevsky Island, receiving reports from every area at half-hour intervals. (Collected Works. Volume 8. Foreign Languages Publishing House. Moscow, 1962, Page 110.)
As the marchers led by Father Gapon neared the Winter Palace, the soldiers opened fire. The czarist Government stated that 96 were killed and 350 wounded. But French, British and other correspondents at the scene reported 4,600 killed or wounded before nightfall, with the killings continuing into the night. Writing a few days after Sunday, Lenin stated:
That Father Gapon is an agent-provocateur is a surmise borne out by the fact that he is a member and one of the ringleaders of the Zubatov society. Furthermore, the foreign newspapers, like our own correspondents note the fact that . . . (the government) wanted to provoke bloody reprisals under conditions favorable to itself. The English correspondents even point out that the energetic participation of the Zubatovists in the movement could only have been of special advantage to the government under the circumstances. The revolutionary intelligentsia and the class-conscious proletarians, who would have been the most likely to provide themselves with arms, were bound to stay aloof from the Zubatov movement, to give it a wide berth. The government thus had its hands free to play a winning game. The demonstration, so they reckoned, would be made up of the most peaceful, least organized, and most backward workers; it would be child’s play for our soldiery to handle them, and the proletariat would taught a wholesome lesson; an excellent excuse would be furnished for shooting down anybody and everybody in the streets; in Court the victory of the reactionary (or Grand Ducal) party over the would be complete; the harshest repressions would follow.
Both the English and the conservative German directly ascribe such a plan of action to the government. . . . is most likely true. The events of the bloody Ninth of January confirm this too well. (Ibid. page 105. Emphasis in the original.)
Lenin then added:
But the existence of such a plan by no means rules out the possibility that Father Gapon was an unconscious instrument of this plan. (Ibid. Page 106. Emphasis in the Original.)
It was Father Gapon’s own action that gave Lenin the basis for saying the priest might have been an “unconscious instrument” of provocation. Right after Bloody Sunday, Gapon called for support to the revolution against the czar:
Comrades, Russian workers! We no longer have a tsar. Today a river of blood divides him from the Russian people. It is time for the Russian workers to begin the struggle for the people’s freedom without him. (Ibid. Quoted by Lenin on page 111.)
Not long after making this appeal, Father Gapon sought out Lenin. He separated himself from the anti-Communist government-controlled Zubatov movement and became involved in the revolutionary struggle.
Objectively, both the march led by Father Gapon and the provocation created at Sharpeville by the neo-Pan-Africanist P.A.C. leaders served as the instruments of extreme reaction. As Lenin predicted, the “harshest repressions” followed Sunday—as they followed Sharpeville.
However, unlike Father Gapon, who left the police-controlled split-off group and joined the struggle against czarism after Bloody Sunday, the key leaders of the P.A.C. have continued their anti-Communist, separatist opposition to unity against the fascist regime of South Africa.
Whether Gapon was “sincere” when he joined the revolutionary movement, “no one can say with certainty, beyond those who knew him well personally, that is, a mere handful. Only the course of historical events could decide this, only fact, facts, facts.” And the “facts,” declared Lenin, “decided in Gapon’s favor.” (Ibid. pages 112-113)
But “facts, facts, facts” have not decided in favor of the neo-Pan-Africanists who formed the P.A.C. split-off from the African National Congress in the Johannesburg offices of the United States Information Service in 1959, who remained with the P.A.C. after engineering the provocation at Sharpeville, and now continue the that have made the Pan-Africanist Congress an objective instrument of the apartheid fascist regime and its U.S. imperialist supporters. The “course of historical events” has decided that this leadership is consciously guilty of treason to the national liberation struggle in South Africa.
Maoism has not only betrayed the right of self-determination and to peaceful coexistence by denying the dialectical inseparability of these two principles. The Maoists have also violated the indivisible relationship between the principles of self-reliance and of mutual reliance within the class and national struggles. The principle of mutuality is at the heart of the Marxist-Leninist concept of proletarian internationalism and anti-imperialist solidarity.
Maoism’s betrayal of the principle of mutuality in relation to Vietnam is matched by its betrayal of the liberation struggles in Africa and elsewhere—in the name of “self-reliance,” “independence” and “protracted struggle.”
Certainly the African movements, while first of all relying on their own strength and self-action, have the right to expect all Socialist and anti-imperialist forces to mobilize their united strength behind the African struggles. But Maoism asserts that:
. . . the oppressed nations and Asian, African and Latin American countries and people will find themselves in a passive position and in a blind alley if they do not adhere to the principle of maintaining independence and keeping the initiative in their own hands and relying on their own efforts. (Peking Review No. 45, November 10, 1972. pages 8-9.)
But in Africa, as elsewhere, the white minority rulers do not rely on their own strength. They also depend on U.S., British, Japanese, German, French and Belgian neo-colonialist economic and military assistance. When the Maoists and neo-Pan-Africanists call for anti-Communist, anti-Soviet go-it-alone they undermine the genuine self-reliance and initiative of the newly independent countries and the African liberation movements, thus giving objective assistance to the combined attacks of the fascist rulers of South Africa, Portuguese occupied areas and Rhodesia against the guerilla fighters.
The Leninist concept of self-reliance combined with the solidarity of the world anti-imperialist forces headed by the Socialist camp will not lead the “third world” peoples into a “blind alley.” It is the Maoist “theories” violating the inseparability of self-reliance and anti-imperialist mutuality that threaten the independence and effective self-reliance of the liberation struggles.
In a lame effort to camouflage the “blind alley” inherent in separatist “theories” of “self-reliance,” the previously quoted Maoist article adds:
The revolutionary people certainly will meet with difficulties and setbacks, since the struggle is protracted and arduous. (Ibid. Page 9.)
It is a “theoretical” deception for the Maoists to project as a universally applicable concept for the second half of the Twentieth Century the specific experience of the Chinese Revolution which culminated at the end of the first half of the century. The victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949 after prolonged struggles, first under Sun Yat Sen’s leadership and then of the Communist party, was bound up with the leading to the October Revolution, to the success of Soviet Socialist construction and the decisive role of the first—and at that time only—Socialist state in smashing Axis aggression in Europe and Asia.
Since the end of World War II, the working class has come to power in many countries—from Pyongyang to Hanoi, from Berlin to Havana. And now the world system of Socialism provides the support for an infinitely more rapid development and acceleration of the world revolutionary process—not only as compared to the period before the Chinese Revolution but to the period of its victory, the period that saw the rise of the world Socialist system, the forced retreat of imperialism from open colonial rule in most of the African countries, and the new phenomenon of worldwide revulsion and demonstrations of protest against the U.S. aggression in Vietnam.
Maoism’s elevation of China’s “protracted” struggles, into a universal “theory” for all liberation applicable to all oppressed in every historical period on every continent, is a transparent attempt to cover up its opposition to a single anti-imperialist front and strategy—which would immeasurably reduce the “protracted” character of the liberation struggles in Africa and elsewhere as compared with the earlier Chinese experience.
Of course, the struggles in Africa and other countries have been difficult. But Maoist “’theories” of “protracted people’s war” with “self-reliance” counterposed to anti-imperialist unity and support—are inseparably related to Maoism’s disruption of the world anti-imperialist front. Maoist influence in Africa, Asia and Latin America does not assist the liberation movements—it plays into the hands of imperialist aggression as in Vietnam where at the very least its role aided U.S. imperialism in making the war more “protracted” and “arduous” for the Vietnamese people.
In Africa, Maoist and neo-Pan-African divisiveness is also making the struggles more “arduous” and while doing so, is “protracting” neo-colonialist domination and aggression, especially in the southern redoubt of fascist rule—where European and Japanese imperialism are directly interlocked with U.S. strategy to bring about an African counterpart of what occurred in Indo-China over the past thirty years.
It is precisely because the guerilla fighters of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola, Guinea-Bissau and South Africa are facing such arduous struggles—demanding the utmost self-reliance and self-sacrifice—that Maoist and neo-Pan-African ideology, which would isolate them from world socialist and anti-imperialist unity, must be rejected.
The Maoist and neo-Pan-Africanist “theories” separating the African liberation struggles from their natural allies on a world scale would prolong the imperialist offensive, increase the human sacrifice, and delay victory in the last area of direct, unified racist domination in Africa. The Leninist principle combining self-action with the unity of the Socialist camp and all anti-imperialist would shorten—not “protract”, and lead to genuine independence and self-reliance for the African people.
Next: THE CRISIS OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY