Alliance politics of a special type: the roots of the ANC/SACP alliance, 1950–1954

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Abstract
The relationship between the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party has long been a subject of controversy and little analysis. This paper seeks to redress the imbalance by returning to the point at which the alliance was forged, in the early 1950s, and studies the ideological basis of the alliance. The roots of the modern ANC lie in the changes it underwent in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the present ANC leadership emerged as militant young African nationalists, committed to mass action and opposed to all organisations which impeded the growth of African nationalism — including the Communist Party. The disbanding of the Communist Party of South Africa in 1950, and the success of the African National Congress‐led Defiance Campaign two years later, forced communists to reassess their relationship with the ANC in particular, and with nationalism more generally. As the struggle against apartheid intensified in the early 1950s, a new theory was evolved to fit South Africa's ‘unique’ conditions. That theory, ‘Colonialism of a Special Type’ or internal colonialism, was the ideological glue which held the African National Congress/South African Communist Party alliance together for the next four decades.

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