Albert Nzula

Albert Nzula (1905 – 17 January 1934) was a South African politician and activist. Nzula was the first black secretary general of the South African Communist Party from 1929 until 1933.^[1]

Early life

Nzula was born in the Orange Free State in 1905, of a ethnic Nguni background but his family was brought up in a Sotho culture, speaking such language.^[2]:676 He was a student at the Bensonvale Institution in the North-Eastern Cape before completing his education at Lovedale.^[2]:676 Graduating, he would move to Aliwal North as a teacher and interpreter.^[2]: He would become a clerk in the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union after he came into contact with Clements Kadalie who was visiting on a speaking tour.^[2]:676 He would later move to Evander, Transvaal as a teacher at the AME institution at Wilberforce.^[2]:676 He later attended a meeting by South African Communist Party General Secretary Douglas Walton and was so impressed, travelled to Johannesburg to pick up books and literature at the party's headquarters.^[2]:676 He would later be reprimanded for reading such works after being reported to an Afrikaner school inspector.^[2]:676 The same inspector would fail his pupils during an examination, a situation that Nzula soon appealed and they resat their exams. He later resigned and joined the Communist Party as a full time worker.^[2]:676

Communist career

Due to Douglas Walton's and others such as Sidney Bunting and Edward Roux's Africanisation of the South African Communist Party by recruiting Black leaders from the workplace, Nzula rose through the ranks and became Secetary-General by 1929.^{[2]:676–7[3]:162} He was described by Edwin Thabo Mofutsanyana, as a excellent propagandist and agitator during public speaking.^[2]:677 Walton and Nzula would clash when it came to the discussion of a "Native Republic".^[2]:677 Walton would nominate Nzula and Moses Kotane, due to their grasp of Marxism and leadership potential, to travel to the Soviet Union for further schooling and education.^[2]:677 He was smuggled out of South Africa as a member of a singing group off to London to make records.^[2]:677 There he was assisted by the British Communist Party to reach Moscow.^[2]:677

There he was employed doing research at the Profintern Trade Union headquarters with Soviet scholars I.I. Potekhin and A.Z. Zusmanovich collaborating on a book called Forced Labour concerning African labour conditions.^[2]:677 His pen name was Tom Jackson.^[4]:6 He was also involved in translation work for Zulu Tales from Zulu for the author Igor Snegirev which would be published in 1937.^[4]:8 He suffered from alcoholism and this lead loose talk.^[2]:677 Nzula became disillusioned with the Soviet System, with his views being expressed while drunk, expressing Trotskyite views while expressing anti-Stalinist sentiments.^[2]:678 He was brought before officials of the International Committee of the Comintern for disciplinary measures.^[2]:678 It was decided that he could not return to South Africa, the fear being that his views would contaminate the minds of the members in that country with Trotskyite ideas, but a compromise was suggested with the United States seen as a place he could be rehabilitated.^[2]:678 Nzula accepted this alternative but before he could leave he died.^[2]:678

Death

After a heavy drinking session with a British friend, he left his friend but fell in a snow-bank and died later of double pneumonia.^[2]:675 He was cremated and his funeral held in Moscow.^[2]:678

Books by Albert Nzula

• A.T. Nzula, I.I. Potekhin and A.Z. Zusmanovich, Forced Labour in Colonial Africa, edited Robin Cohen, translated by Hugh Jenkins (London, 1979)^[2]:675

References