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
The Workers Party of South Africa (WPSA) was the first Trotskyist organisation in South Africa to have a national base. It published a regular newspaper, ''Spark''.
The party was founded in 1935 by the majority of the Cape Town-based Lenin Club ...
(WPSA), the first countrywide Trotskyist organisation, and was initially conceived as a broad protest front. It proposed a 10 Point Programme of radical reforms.
It stressed
non-racialism, meaning that it rejected race-based organising (and the concept of race itself), unlike the main nationalist groups of the time, was highly critical of the
South African Communist Party and the
African National Congress, and made a principle of non-collaboration with the
apartheid regime and its allies
The movement developed a substantial influence in the
Cape Province, including
Pondoland
Pondoland or Mpondoland (Xhosa: ''EmaMpondweni''), is a natural region on the South African shores of the Indian Ocean. It is located in the coastal belt of the Eastern Cape province. Its territory is the former Mpondo Kingdom of the Mpondo peopl ...
, and had some role in the 1950-1961 Pondoland peasant revolt, but split in 1957. The faction around
Isaac Bangani Tabata formed a new
African Peoples' Democratic Union of Southern Africa (APDUSA) in 1961, and the Unity Movement of South Africa (UMSA) in exile in 1964, and engaged in armed struggle.
['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] The tradition's influence was wider than its membership: for example, notable Marxist
Neville Alexander
Neville Edward Alexander (22 October 1936 – 27 August 2012) was a proponent of a multilingual South Africa and a former revolutionary who spent ten years on Robben Island as a fellow-prisoner of Nelson Mandela.
Early life
Alexander was born ...
, who helped found the Yu Chi Chan Club (YCCC) in 1961, and the National Liberation Front (NLF) in 1962, came from a NEUM / APUDSA background. Until the 1970s, the Unity Movement tradition was arguably the largest Trotskyist current in southern Africa.
All of its sectors suffered heavily from 1960s
apartheid repression, some ending up on
Robben Island. However, the current survived, both in the form of APDUSA, and the launching of the separate New Unity Movement in 1985. Both wings continue to operate. APDUSA remains active today
and publishes the ''APUDUSAN Newsletter'',
following in the steps of ''APDUSA Views'' from the 1980s, and ''Unity'' from the 1960s.
References
External links
*APDUSA website and archiv
*APDUSA/ NEUM online repositor
*Baruch Hirson
A Short history of the Non-European Unity – An insider's view ''SA History Online''
*Neville Alexander writings (incomplete
Anti-Apartheid organisations
National liberation movements in Africa
Organizations established in 1943
Trotskyist organisations in South Africa
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