African National Congress
Founded on 8 January 1912 by John Langalibalele Dube in Bloemfontein as the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), its primary mission was to give voting rights to black and mixed-race Africans and, from the 1940s, to end apartheid. The ANC originally attempted to use nonviolent protests to end apartheid, however, the Sharpeville massacre resulted in the deaths of 69 black Africans and contributed to deteriorating relations with the South African government. On 8 April 1960, the administration of Charles Robberts Swart, banned the ANC and forced the party to leave South Africa. After the ban, the ANC formed the Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) to fight against apartheid utilizing guerrilla warfare and sabotage. On 3 February 1990, State President F. W. de Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC and released Nelson Mandela on 11 February 1990. On 17 March 1992, the apartheid referendum was passed by the voters removing apartheid and allowing the ANC to run in the 1994 election. Since the 1994 election the ANC has performed better than 60% in all general elections, including the most recent 2014 election.
South African Communist Party
The Communist Party of South Africa was founded in 1921 by the joining together of the International Socialist League and others under the leadership of Willam H. Andrews. It first came to prominence during the Rand Revolt, a strike by white miners in 1922. The large mining concerns, facing labour shortages and wage pressures, had announced their intention of engaging blacks in semi-skilled and some higher level jobs at low wage rates, compared to their white counterparts who enjoyed the monopoly of higher and well-paying occupations. The CPSA supported the strike as the struggle between the working class and the capitalist class but it distanced itself from racist slogans associated with the strike (See the Public Statement on the strike, as a primary authority, issued by the CPSA on the accasion of the strike in 1922. The statement is accessible in the book "South African Communists Speak" - containing original - Documents from the History of the South African Communist Party, 1915-1980, published by Inkululeko, 1981). The Party said in the statement a white South Africa was impossible, and that workers had to organise and unite regardless of their race to fight for a non-racial South Africa and better conditions for all workers. In 1928, the Communist International adopted a resolution for the CPSA to adopt the "Native Republic" thesis which stipulated that South Africa was a country belonging to the Natives, that is, the Blacks. The resolution was influenced by a delegation from South Africa. James la Guma, the Party Chairperson from Cape Town, had met with the leadership of the Communist International (Dr Raymond van Diemel, ""I have seen the new Jerusalem": Revisiting and re-conceptualising Josiah T. Gumede and Jimmy La Guma’s USSR visit of 1927" (2001)). The Party thus reoriented itself at its 1924 Party Congress towards organising black workers and "Africanising" the party. By 1928, 1,600 of the party's 1,750 members were Black. During this period, the party has been accused of dismissing competing attempts at multiracial revolutionary organisations, especially multiracial union organising by the syndicalists, and using revisionist history to claim that the party and its Native Republic policy was the only viable route to African liberation. Despite this, in 1929: the party adopted a "strategic line" which held that, "The most direct line of advance to socialism runs through the mass struggle for majority rule". By 1948, the Communist Party had officially abandoned the Native Republic policy.