Comrades Against Apartheid: The ANC and the South African Communist Party (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 155 dictatorship and how individuals are able to cope with despotism. In one gripping section, an ordinary citizen attempts to explain why Chile, a country with a long history of democracy, could become autocratic, stating "I worry more about the fascist within than the fascist without." ComradesAgainstApartheid: TheANCand the SouthAfrican Communist Party. By Stephen Ellis and Tsepo Sechaba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. 224 pp. $12.95/Paperback. Reviewed by Anne V. Russell, M.A., SAIS, 1992. With the lifting ofthe ban on the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) in February 1990, the suspension ofthe ANC's armed struggle against the South African government, and the onset of negotiations between the National Party (NP) and the ANC and seventeen other organizations , South African politics has obviously undergone formidable changes. Concurrent with the National Party's shift to more conciliatory, and therefore negotiable, stances is a shift in the focus of the ANC-SACP alliance from a struggle against apartheid from outside South Africa to a struggle for political power from within its boundaries. What has emerged in both the ANC and the SACP is a need to define the complicated knot that has bound the two movements through thirty years in exile and to determine whether the relationship can continue under a crumbling apartheid state. As negotiations proceed and the NP is forced or cajoled towards the inevitability of power-sharing with the black majority, the "unified" ANC-SACP front must likewise face the inevitable rise of conflicting demands within their own ranks so long suppressed in the struggle against apartheid. Comrades Against Apartheid is a testament to those often conflicting demands within the ranks of the ANC-SACP alliance in exile. Focusing primarily on the SACP's role within the exiled movement, Comrades is a first. Stephen Ellis and Tsepo Sechaba give an insider's view not only of the checkered history of the alliance but of the many power plays and hidden agendas within the varying factions ofthe exiled movement. The book analyzes the role of the SACP as it responded, beginning in 1912, to the growth of British imperialism and to exploitation of South African raw materials. It details the SACP's initial conflicts with the ANC and follows its separate movement as it emerged from within the African middle class to eventually play a leading role in the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the ANC. Comrades then moves from the SACFs use of the ANC as a cover for its own militant stance in exile, to the increase in dual membership between SACP and ANC ranks, and reveals the ANC's strategy for South African liberation. The authors document the numerous frustrations of the exiled movement: SADF destabilization , mutinies within the exiled army, and marginalization during township uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s. It concludes with the confusion of demands between the movements and suggests the possibility of at least a formal split between the two evolving parties. Throughout the analysis, the authors seem to contend that the ANC would not have survived in exile were it not for the 156 SAISREVIEW SACP's infiltration. They argue that it was the SACP organization within Umkhonto we Sizwe, its military and philosophical relationship with the USSR, and its strong-arm tactics within the ANC's National Executive Council, that gave the ANC its semblance of effective militancy. Considering who the authors are, the relatively undocumented inside information should be given the benefit ofthe doubt. Stephen Ellis, former editor ofAfrica Confidential, writes in his familiar authoritative style throughout the text. Ellis is known for his ability to form critical informational links with African political insiders and for his refusal to reveal sources. The book's lack of footnoting does not seem so out of place, especially when one remembers how often Africa Confidential has revealed "the facts" before anyone else. That Tsepo Sechaba is an ANC and SACP insider working under a pen name makes the material content even more convincing. One wonders who Sechaba is and what his or her personal agenda might be in describing Chris Hanni as a populist saint within the exiled...