South Africa: The Peasants' Revolt - Govan Mbeki

South Africa: The Peasants' Revolt - Govan Mbeki - IDAF - 1984 - 159pp, paperback in goos condition - Internally clean and tightly bound.

Between 1956 and 1960 one of the fiercest of confrontations between oppressor and oppressed in South Africa took place. The epic of the heroic resistance and violent confrontation is to be found in Govan Mbeki`s book "South Africa: The Peasants` Revolt". The book, which was begun on rolls of toilet paper and smuggled out while Govan was awaiting trial under the Explosives Act, earned him international recognition and an honorary doctorate of Social Science from the University of Amsterdam.

Much of the book deals with the revolutionary potential of the poor peasants and agricultural workers. Between 1956 and 1960 revolts broke out in many parts of the countryside. Notably in Zeerust, Sekhukhuniland, Zululand and finally in Pondoland where the confrontation took on the form of a sustained armed conflict. The causes were many: the imposition of government-favoured chiefs, the deportation or arrest of popular ones; pass laws for women and increased state taxes; forced removals, cattle culling and dipping, land rehabilitation schemes. The terror and repression let loose was terrible as armed units of the fascist state moved in with armoured cars and helicopters. In Sekhukhuniland 16 peasants, including women, were executed. In Pondoland more than 5,000 were arrested and detained. In every area hundreds of arrests, imprisonment and deportations were taking place.

The height of organised revolt to white domination and its local lackeys was in Pondoland where the people set up their own administration - Intaba - The Mountain Committee. Resistance was skilfully organised, fearless and sustained.

The peasants, Govan concluded, had demonstrated to the movement in practice what it had always preached in theory, namely, impoverished peasantry, many of them semi-proletarians, constituted a revolutionary force of immense potential, once organised.