Agitprop,
Part 6
Banners, Flags, Clothing and Stalls
Agitprop, Part 6
SACP Banner, Cradock 4 Funeral,
July 20, 1985. © Gille de Vlieg
Gille
de Vlieg would like to hear from anyone who is in this or any of her other
photographs. She is on Facebook, or e-mail at gille@mweb.co.za
Banners and Flags
The above image is of the
display of an SACP banner at the funeral of the Cradock 4 martyrs Matthew
Goniwe, Sparrow Mkhonto, Fort Calata and Sicelo Mhlauli in 1985.
This is a most powerful and
actual image of a communist party legalising itself. Before this, communist
party insignia were hardly ever seen in South Africa. The Party had been banned
in May, 1950. But within less than five years after the Cradock 4 funeral, the
Party was not only de facto, but
officially legal again. That was in February, 1990.
Here is an edited version of
e-mail correspondence with the photographer, Gille de Vlieg, who very kindly
responded to a request to send a suitable version of her image of the SACP
Banner being displayed at the Cradock 4 Funeral, 20 July 1985:
(Communist
University): “Your image will be good
to show the power of photography for a start, and then the use of the banner.
Not least is to remind people of the Cradock 4. Also the fact that to an extent
SACP unbanned itself, legalised itself, and this funeral of the Cradock 4 was
the emphatic moment when they "came out", and you were there, taking
the pictures. Less than 5 years later, the SACP was officially legalised again
after 40 years of banning. This is a very important point to make in my
opinion, because there are people who mistakenly glamorise underground
politics. I want to show evidence that the struggle of the clandestine is
firstly against being clandestine, and never to make a virtue of it.
(Gille de
Vlieg): “I was a Black Sash member
and was fortunate to meet Matthew Goniwe briefly when he came to address our
Conference in March 1985. I remember the
Funeral of the Cradock Four very well.
Another Black Sash member and I had made a banner for the Black Sash,
and as we entered the 'stadium' the youth took our banner and ran around the
'stadium' grounds with it and then put it up next to the SACP banner. On the SABC news that night the 2 banners
were shown over and over.
“I also remember driving back through the night and
hearing that a State of Emergency had been declared. I had many friends on the buses that returned
from the funeral, and I actually went to John Vorster police station where they
had taken the buses and saw people being taken off the buses and searched.
“I agree that the SACP did unban itself at that
time. I believe the people who made the
banner were Obed Bapela and Maurice Smithers.
“SAHA (SA History Archives) has many of my photographs,
their website is www.saha.org.za and their physical
address is in the Womens' Jail on Constitution Hill. It is rather ironic for me because I spent a
time in detention just across the road from there in Hillbrow Police Station in
1986. I'm happy for you to have a low res of the image for the reasons you
outlined. I am also happy for you to link it to my email address [gille@mweb.co.za].
Gille de Vlieg is also on
Facebook. She has particularly requested that any people who recognise
themselves in her photographs contact her. She would love to hear from you.
SACP and Black Sash banners,
Cradock 4 Funeral, 20 July 20 1985. © Gille de Vlieg
More about the clandestine
The struggle to cease being
clandestine, and to become legal, does not end when formal legality is
achieved. The struggle to be out and to be openly proclaiming who we are,
whether as SACP, as ANC or as COSATU unions, or as any other mass organisation,
continues against different kinds of opposition.
These include the bourgeois
mass media, such as for example eTV and eNCA, and print media, most of which
strive at all times to show the unorganised as the normal, silent majority that
they speak for. At the same time, they represent the organised people – those
with collective agency – as not having agency, or otherwise just ignore the
Movement and do not report its actions at all.
This conflict is at the heart
of the question of Agitprop. It is the reason why Agitprop is constantly
necessary. The organised masses face a constant counter-Agitprop, which is
better funded and, in some media, but not in all, more extensive than our own.
Then there is the extent to
which the movement mistakenly removes itself from the public realm. This
happens when we say that the movement’s business must not be done in public.
But in fact the movement’s business is supposed to be done in public. What we
have to guard against is not exposure, but manipulation by selective exposure
combined with selective concealment, distortion and lies. The best defence
against all of these is openness.
Your Branch Banner and Flags
Usually branches get their
banners made for them, and pay.
The banner is likely to be
any branch’s first big purchase. It needs to be looked after carefully and kept
ready for use.
SACP Flag
The SACP Constitution begins:
1. NAME
The name of the organisation
shall be the South African Communist Party (SACP).
2. SYMBOL AND FLAG
The symbol of the SACP shall be a black star
containing a gold hammer and sickle. The flag of the SACP shall be red with the
symbol placed in the top left-hand corner.
Agitprop, Part 6a
T-Shirt Blanks, used for
design.
Clothing and Caps
You can design your own
T-shirt by putting colours, graphics and slogans on to the blanks, above. You
can do it in the “Paint” programme that is part of Windows.
Caps are even easier to
design. A cap needs to be specified as to its colour and a badge, or a slogan,
or both (e.g. badge in front and slogan at the back).
Most people would contract
out the printing of the T-shirts these days. Silk-screening your own T-shirts
is still possible, but rarely done.
Can you make money from
T-shirts and caps? It is not likely. Given that your main aim is political,
namely agitational propaganda (Agitprop), it follows that if you are also
trying to make money then you are trying to do two things which do not
correspond. Serving two masters is a recipe for failure in any field.
It is better to maximise the
political benefit, and to try to recover the costs in an all-round way.
Therefore, by all means do
sell, but also try to get your clothing project funded in other ways, for
example by outright donations and by “crowd funding”.
The discussion about T-shirts
and caps could extend out to include other kinds of merchandise such as
literature, and other kinds of clothing such as track suits and sweat-shirts. A
full discussion of the business of merchandise would have to be extensive and
to include long-term accounting for all “overhead” expenses, plus stocktaking
and the writing-off of damaged and unsaleable goods.
Such a discussion will
quickly become over-elaborate for our purposes, because at this level, we never
have the means to sustain such activities as businesses over time. So we will
not do that. But in the next item, we will consider what it is to run a stall
as a one-off, occasional activity, and not primarily as a serious money-making
affair.
In the Induction course, we
have said that the secret of funding Party and mass movement activities is to
make them all generate a small surplus as they go along.
Now, we are saying that the
apparently money-making activity is no different. Like all our activities, it
has to, taken overall, generate a small surplus, including from funding and
from outright donations taken.
The distinction between
political activities that also attract money, and money-making activities that
carry a political message, is found to be no distinction at all. For us, the
political intention is the governing intention.
Agitprop, Part 6b
Paste Table
Stalls
You can use a folding
paste-table like the one in the drawing above, and set it up in the street, or
in a mall, or in a hall at an event or a conference or meeting. Or you can use
any other kind of table, for that matter, to create what is called in a general
way, a “stall”.
It is as well to think of the
purpose of your stall as being to serve the cause, rather than to have an
objective of making a big lump of money. Of course you must pass any surplus to
your Treasurer and you must account in some satisfactory way to your Treasurer
for all the receipts and payments of funds, and for the stock of goods, which
must also be properly conserved. You should, as with all Party or mass-movement
activities, strive to generate a surplus, and not to carry debts back into the
organisation.
It should be your intention
to put on a good show, and to give a good experience to anyone who might come
to your stall. You should therefore try to become aware of what such people
might expect to find. Experience will in due course make you aware of what this
is. People will in fact tell you what they want.
They may want to make a cash
contribution to the Party, and you should be open to that, and ready to process
it, with a receipt book, for example. They may want to join the party, so you
should have application forms and be ready to follow a correct and effective
procedure.
Italian stall at Fête de
l’Humanité, France
People may want current literature
of the SACP, ANC or Trade Union, such as its Constitution, or documents like
the South African Road to Socialism, the Manuals and the Election Manifestos of
the ANC, and even documents like the National Development Plan or the
Constitution of South Africa. You will not be able to keep all of these, but
you may be able to bring some of them. A good principle is to bring whatever
you can get of such things to your stall.
Not everything on the stall
will have a cover price or a tariff price, but you can ask for donations.
Clothing and merchandise has
been mentioned in the previous item. As we have said, the main thing is not to
lose money, but to give a political experience to the masses, and to do
whatever business may be appropriate to the political aims of the organisation.
Standing behind your stall,
you become the public face of your organisation. You become a public
representative of what your organisation stands for.
As such it becomes clear that
what you are doing is no more or less than Agitprop. You do it with different
means, but the aim is the same. It is part of the mission to educate, organise
and mobilise.
Finally, it relates back to
what was said in the beginning of this part, about the Party legalising itself.
The open, public relationship that the SACP has with the South African public
is deliberately kept up by all these means, and including stalls of the kind
described here.
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