The making of Trotskyist tradition in South Africa: A reading of 'The Spark', 1935–1937

ABSTRACT:The purpose of this contribution, towards understanding the contribution of the early years of Trotskyism in South Africa, is to distil the major analytic themes that developed in the political organ of the Workers Party of South Africa, The Spark. It looks critically at the first three years of The Spark to establish how the WPSA was positioning itself relative to the unfolding class struggle in South Africa. In asking what theoretical and conceptual starting points around the questions of race and class emerge out of this corpus of writing it seeks to show that the early Trotskyists were, in their vocabularies and theoretical frames, little different to their political opponents in the Communist Party of South Africa. Through The Spark they showed, however, that there was in the question of race something distinct about South African capitalism. They began but did not complete this explanation in their attempts to explain how segregation worked.