South African Communists and elections

Abstract

In South Africa the Communist Party has a one-hundred-year history of contesting elections, making it the oldest electoral campaigner in Africa. South Africa’s elections were increasingly racially restrictive and segregated until 1994. Even so, from the mid-1920’s the Party began to focus on the concerns of its black membership though it continued to seek support from white workers. This article explores the Party’s reasons for continuing to participate in elections, and the circumstances that helped it achieve occasional victories at the polls. It also considers the effects of electoral participation on an ostensibly revolutionary movement.