Workers_Party_of_South_Africa

Workers Party of South Africa

Workers Party of South Africa

South African political party

The Workers Party of South Africa (WPSA) was a Trotskyist organisation in South Africa.[1] It published a newspaper, Spark.[2][better source needed]

The South African Trotskyist movement originated with disaffected former members of the Communist Party of South Africa in the early 1930s who had established contact with the American Trotskyist paper The Militant and formed small groups, the Cape Lenin Club in Cape Town in 1933 and the Bolshevik-Leninist League in Johannesburg in 1934, led by Ralph Lee and Murray Gow Purdy.[3]

In early 1935, the majority of the Cape Town-based Lenin Club and the Johannesburg-based Bolshevik-Leninist League of South Africa voted to form the Workers Party of South Africa.[3][1][2] Its first initiative was to intervene in the All-African Convention, called to oppose the Hertzog Bills, which aimed to complete the implementation of apartheid in the nation. The group opposed both the system of apartheid and calls for black nationalism.[2][better source needed]

The group had links to the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM), and the National Liberation League.[1][2][better source needed]

By 1939, the group went underground and began working solely through the NEUM.[1][2]

References

  1. [1]
    Sandwith, Corinne (October 2002). "Dora Taylor: South African Marxist". English in Africa. 29 (2): 5–27 – via Sabinet.
  2. [2]
    "Baruch Hirson: A Short History of the Non-European Unity Movement". www.marxists.org. Retrieved 8 March 2024.
  3. [3]
    Hunter, Ian (Spring 1993). "Raff Lee and the Pioneer Trotskyists of Johannesburg A Footnote to the History of British Trotskyism". Revolutionary History. 4 (4): 60–65. Retrieved 8 March 2024.
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