The African Peoples' Democratic Union of Southern Africa (APDUSA) is a

Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a rev ...

political group in South Africa. Formed in 1961, it emerged from the

Non-European Unity Movement The Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) is a Trotskyist organisation formed in South Africa in 1943. It had links to the Workers Party of South Africa (WPSA), the first countrywide Trotskyist organisation, and was initially conceived as a broad p ...

, and was closely associated with I.B. Tabata, a leading Marxist who died in exile in 1990. Its aim was to end white minority domination of South Africa and ultimately achieve a

socialist revolution Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revoluti ...

supported by an alliance of the urban

proletariat The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...

and

peasantry A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasants ...

. APDUSA was involved in armed struggle in the 1960s, but suffered heavy repression from the

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

state.'Robin Kayser & Mohamed Adhikari, 2004, "Peasant and Proletarian: A History of the African Peoples' Democratic Union of Southern Africa," ''Kleio'', volume 36, number 1, pp. 5-27 APDUSA remains active today and publishes the ''APUDUSAN Newsletter''.

References

{{Political history of South Africa , state=expanded

External links

*APDUSA website and archiv

*APDUSA/ NEUM online repositor

Trotskyist organisations in South Africa