APDUSA is a national political organisation which was established in 1961 by the Unity Movement of South Africa (UMSA).

The UMSA, founded as a federal body in 1943, played a major role in the South African liberatory struggle. It was the first organisation to campaign for a principled, national political basis for the struggle according to its 10 Point Programme of minimum demands for full democratic rights for all and a revolutionary resolution of the land question in South Africa.

The policy of Non-Collaboration with the ruling class and its agencies was coupled to this programme with the express purpose of developing the political independence of the working class. Inherent to the programme and policy of the UMSA was the understanding that the demands and aspirations of the labouring masses could not be achieved within the framework of capitalism and that the national democratic revolution should proceed uninterruptedly towards a socialist revolution. In its relentless campaigns for the adoption of its programme and policy the UMSA created a political plateau which all other organisations involved in the liberatory struggle were compelled to recognise.

The APDUSA was created precisely to break the dependence of the working class and its historical allies – the landless peasantry, on the leadership of the treacherous petit-bourgeois intelligentsia. After the political compromise which elevated the African National Congress (ANC) to the position of government of the country, the APDUSA adopted a programme of transitional demands for the completion of the unfinished tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution in an uninterrupted struggle for socialism. [pullquote-right]In the historical context of the South African struggle the APDUSA retains viability since the national democratic aspirations of the working class and peasantry remain unfulfilled[/pullquote-right]. It is a key task of the APDUSA to build the foundations for a revolutionary socialist workers party which alone can lead the working class and the landless peasantry in the struggle for socialist democracy.

APDUSA has a unitary structure. Members are organised in branches, whose functions are coordinated by and subject to the democratic control of the Central Executive Committee(CEC). The CEC is fully bound by the constitution and the decisions and directives of conference. The national conference, in which all members have the right to participate, is the supreme policy and decision making body of the APDUSA.

The aims and objects of APDUSA:

• To organise, and enrol as members, people on the basis of our policy and programme, and for the achievement of those objectives
• To spread political education amongst members of the APDUSA and the public generally by means of meetings, mass rallies and demonstrations, lectures and publications, for the achievement of our objectives
• To struggle for the total liquidation of the national oppression of the oppressed people of Southern Africa, for the abolition of the rights and privileges of small sections of the population, which encroach on the interests of the majority and for the implementation of the fullest democracy.
• To achieve the greatest ideological and organisational unity amongst the oppressed – between the workers in the urban centres and the peasants and workers in the rural areas.
• To form branches of the APDUSA wherever the Central Executive deems necessary, in order to build and extend the APDUSA and to assist in the formation of local Unity Committees of the people.