Workers Party of South Africa

The Workers Party of South Africa ( WPSA, German as " Workers' Party of South Africa ") was a Trotskyist party in South Africa. She asked no deputies in the South African Parliament.

History

The Communist Party of South Africa ( CPSA ) in 1929 nearly wiped out by influencing international Stalinist circles, disregarded the question of the black majority. The distribution of copies of the U.S. Trotskyist newspaper The Militant caused as a result the creation of Trotskyist groups by former CPSA members. In Cape Town, 1934, the Lenin Club, which also belonged to Isaac Blank, who moved the end of 1934 to London, there to lead the Trotskyist movement was born. In Johannesburg in 1934 was the Bolshevik -Leninist League of South Africa (such as " Bolshevik -Leninist League of South Africa" ​​). The League was closely linked with the small Johannesburg Laundry Workers' Union, which represented the interests of laundry workers and in 1934 a strike of workers initiated, but which ended with the dismissal of most participants.

The majority of the Lenin Club joined in January and February 1935, the Bolshevik -Leninist League of South Africa League of WPSA together, the minority in Cape Town founded the faction of the Communist League of South Africa. Among the founding members of the WPSA were Isaac Bangani Tabata, Dora Taylor and Ralph " Raff " Lee. Leon Trotsky remarked in April 1935 in writing to the party's founding. He greeted her, but warned that too much to distinguish from the African National Congress, which also represented the interests of the oppressed blacks. There were two centers of the party, Cape Town and Johannesburg. Within the party, the debating society Spartacus Club was founded. The party participated in the set up in December 1935 All African Convention (AAC ), which opposed the racial laws of the government Hertzog. On the issue of dealing with the CPSA, there were differences within the party. After another unsuccessful strike several members including Ralph Lee moved to London in June 1937 to, represented there with Isaac Blank, who now called himself Ted Grant, the Trotskyist movement.

In 1939, the activities of the party were increasingly suppressed, so they went into the ground. The WPSA founded in 1943 under Tabata's leadership, the Anti- CAD, which was directed against the activities of government authority Coloured Affairs Department ( CAD), as well as the Non European Unity Movement ( NEUM ) in order to continue to be politically active can. In 1950 the South African government has captured the activities of all communist groups that NEUM was not banned. The timing of the resolution of the WPSA is not known.

The WPSA was from 1935 to 1939, the newspaper The Spark ( German " The Spark " ) out. It contained considerably more theoretical articles as publications other left-wing groups in South Africa.