Albert Nzula

Albert Nzula
Secretary-General of the South African Communist Party
In office 1929–1933
Preceded by	Douglas Wolton
Succeeded by	Lazar Bach
Personal details
Born	1905 Orange Free State
Died	January 17, 1934(1934-01-17) (aged 28–29) Moscow, Russia
Political party	South African Communist Party

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.

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. He was a student at the Bensonvale Institution in the North-Eastern Cape before completing his education at Lovedale. Graduating, he would move to Aliwal North as a teacher and interpreter. He would become a clerk in the Industrial and Commercial Worker's Union when he came into contact with Clements Kadalie who was visiting on a speaking tour. He would later move to Evander, Transvaal as a teacher at the AME institution at Wilberforce. He would later attend 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. He would later would later be reprimanded for reading such works after being reported to an Afrikaner school inspector. The same inspector would fail his pupils during an examination, a situation that Nzula soon appeal and they resat their exams. He later resigned and joined the Communist Party as a full time worker.

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. He was described by Edwin Thabo Mofutsanyana, as a excellent propagandist and agitator during public speaking. Walton and Nzula would clash when it came to the discussion of a "Native Republic". 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. He was smuggled out of South Africa as a member of a singing group off to London to make records. There he was assisted by the British Communist Party to reach Moscow.

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. His pen name was Tom Jackson. He was also involved in translation work for Zulu Tales from Zulu for the author Igor Snegirev which would be published in 1937. He suffered from alcoholism and this lead loose talk. Nzula became disillusioned with the Soviet System, with his views being expressed while drunk, expressing Trotskyite views while expressing anti-Stalinist sentiments. He was brought before officials of the International Committee of the Comintern for disciplinary measures. 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. Nzula accepted this alternative but before he could leave he died.

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. He was cremated and his funeral held in Moscow.

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)