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From Protest to Challenge
A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa 1882-1964
By Thomas Karis, Gwendolen M. Carter Hoover Institution Press
Copyright © 1973 Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8179-1223-9
CHAPTER 1
PART ONE
Africans United under the Threat of Disenfranchisement 1935-1937
The years 1935-1937 mark a major turning point in African politics in South Africa. In 1936, the strengthened white government, backed by the combined political forces of Prime Minister J. B. M. Hertzog and Jan Smuts, removed Cape African voters from the common voters' roll. That action, advocated by Hertzog for at least a decade, was the most far-reaching political blow to African aspirations since Union. Africans of widely differing political convictions, from tribal conservatism to urban radicalism, united to protest against the renewed threat to the real though limited rights of enfranchised Africans in Cape Province and to the symbolic importance of these rights for all Africans. At the same time they renewed their demands for greater participation in the government of South Africa. Their protests and demands were in vain, but the heightened political agitation of 1935-1937 shaped the organizational and tactical issues of subsequent African politics. More important, the loss of special status for Africans in Cape Province laid the basis for more effective cooperation in the future among Africans nationally.
The formation of the Hertzog-Smuts coalition government in early 1933 and its endorsement by the white electorate in the general election held later that year was followed in mid-1934 by fusion of the two coalition parties into the new United Party. With economic recovery from worldwide depression under way, the new government began to reconsider the "Native Question" that had preoccupied the two previous Nationalist-dominated governments headed by Hertzog. Hertzog now for the first time commanded a two-thirds majority of the joint membership of both houses of Parliament, the number required by the Act of Union to amend the entrenched clause protecting the nonwhite franchise in Cape Province.
In May 1935 a Joint Select Committee of Parliament tabled two measures: the Representation of Natives Bill and the Native Trust and Land Bill. The first bill, a modified version of Hertzog's original proposals of 1926, provided for the exclusion of future African voters from the common roll while allowing the 11,000 Africans already on the roll to remain there. As compensation, all Africans in South Africa were to elect four white senators (and possibly later two additional white senators) through a cumbersome indirect process. Only later did the government offer the compromise proposal that was finally enacted: a separate roll on which qualified Cape Africans voted for three white members of the House of Assembly and two white members of the Cape Provincial Council. (This roll was abolished in 1959.)
In addition, a Natives' Representative Council (NRC) was to be created in which twelve Africans, indirectly elected by Africans throughout the Union, would sit with four Africans chosen by the government and with white Native commissioners under the chairmanship of the secretary for Native affairs. The new body was to be purely advisory, however, and concerned only with matters affecting Africans. (It was abolished in 1951.) Thus the proposed legislation dealt a final blow to the hopes of many Africans that the Cape franchise could be a useful lever for the eventual extension of the franchise to all Africans.
The second bill offered to redeem the promise of the Natives Land Act of 1913 to increase the area of land which Africans could occupy. The act of 1913 had scheduled about 7½ percent of the country's land for African occupation; the bill, by "releasing" white-owned land for purchase by a government trust, which was to have control over all scheduled and reserve lands, provided for an eventual increase to about 13.7 percent. (By 1972 the total land available for African occupation was still less than 13.7 percent.) The 1913 act also prohibited Africans–but not those in Cape Province–from buying land outside the scheduled areas except with official consent. (In 1937, however, as the step-by-step process of restriction continued, new legislation virtually barred all Africans, including those in Cape Province, from buying land in towns.)
Although seeking to meet African demands to a limited degree, the proposed legislation also contained repressive labor sections, including a section, Title IV, providing for a system of registration and licensing which would force African squatters from white-owned land into the already overcrowded Native reserves or into the cities, where they would swell the pool of cheap African labor.
LEADERS AND CHIEFS OPPOSE GOVERNMENT PLANS
Hertzog announced that a special joint sitting of Parliament would be held in 1936 to consider the new versions of his "Native Bills." African reaction to the bills was unequivocal in its opposition and Unionwide in its expression. Articulate Africans of differing viewpoints and from all parts of the country condemned the Representation of Natives Bill. So also did white liberals and radicals. Although many Africans sympathized with the principle in the Native Trust and Land Bill that more land should be released to Africans, they attacked the bill's specific provisions–in particular, Title IV. In the common concern to devise means to fight the proposed legislation, previous political differences were submerged.
Echoing the African response in 1909 to the impending Act of Union, there was immediate and extensive support for a 1935 proposal to convoke a national meeting of Africans. The Bantu World took the initiative in suggesting a national convention; in mid-May the idea was enthusiastically seconded by the Rev. Z. R. Mahabane, a former president-general of the ANC (Document 1). At a June meeting called by the Transvaal African Congress, representatives of African groups, including locally based vigilance associations, elected advisory boards, remnants of the ICU (Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union), and the Communist Party, endorsed the calling of a national convention of representatives of existing African organizations and urged the subordination of all political differences to the overriding necessity for African unity (Document 2). Thus the stage was set for a broadly representative gathering to consider ways to organize further opposition to the Native Bills.
Meanwhile, other African organizations and publicists added their protests and suggestions for strategy. In Cape Province the executive committee of the Cape Native Voters' Convention, representing the group most directly affected by the proposed legislation, met in emergency session to issue a public appeal for retention of the existing franchise and to request a year's delay to enable Africans to offer "constructive criticism" (Document 3). D. D. T. Jabavu, professor of Bantu languages at Fort Hare Native College and the most prominent member of the convention, contributed his journalistic skills to the opposition movement through publication of a pamphlet containing statements by Africans of diverse political persuasions. He coupled his efforts to present a broad range of African views with an appeal to the government to give adequate time for consideration of the proposals through the established machinery for consultation. The pamphlet's introduction is reproduced in document 4. In it, Jabavu noted that the legislation had not yet been translated into the vernacular languages. "It is fortunate for the Government," he said later in the pamphlet, "that the masses of our people are not aware of what is going on in Parliament as they do not read the papers. This, however, is no security for the European race; for the intelligent Blacks have a way of passing on the information and thus act as an agency to create distrust in the rule of White people."
Taking a different tack, Gilbert Coka, editor of the short-lived newspaper, The African Liberator, focused upon the potential for coordinated African activities in the economic sphere (Document 5). Writing at the start of the Italo-Ethiopian War before Italian victory became evident, Coka hailed the opening of a new era in which Africa would regenerate itself. A former member of the ICU, who had just been expelled from the Communist Party for attempting to organize a "counterrevolutionary" African party, he drew upon his own experiences to urge Africans to end their internal feuds and to organize themselves through economic cooperation and trade unions.
The Hertzog government seemingly ignored the agitation. It neither called a national conference of African leaders in accordance with the Native Affairs Act of 1920 nor postponed consideration of the legislation as Jabavu and others requested. The government, however, did convene a hastily organized series of five regional conferences and some smaller ones to which African chiefs and other selected Africans were invited. But these Africans endorsed many of the protests put forth earlier by others. At the government-sponsored meeting of Africans from the Transvaal and the Orange Free State held in Pretoria in early September 1935, the delegates deplored the government's haste and pleaded for more time in which to consider its proposals (Document 6). At another meeting in King William's Town in mid-September, the African delegates were more definite; they unequivocally opposed the removal of the Cape African franchise, buttressing their opposition with a careful enumeration of the benefits which that franchise had brought (Document 7). Not only had it given enfranchised Africans protection against curfew regulations, exemption from customary law, and property rights in towns; it also had influenced the adoption of some advantageous policies and helped stave off some oppressive policies–for example, the extension to Cape Province of the pass laws in force elsewhere in the Union.
THE ALL AFRICAN CONVENTION
The center of African protests remained, however, within the Africans' own organizations. In response to a call from Jabavu and Pixley ka I. Seme, president-general of the African National Congress, Africans from all shades of the political spectrum and from all sections of South Africa converged upon the African township of Bloemfontein in mid-December 1935 at the same time that Afrikaners were celebrating the ninety-eighth anniversary of the Voortrekker victory over the Zulus. On the site where the South African Native Convention had met in 1909 to formulate its vain protests against the Act of Union and where the South African Native National Congress had been launched in 1912 as a Unionwide political organization, the most broadly representative group of Africans since those gatherings met in the All African Convention (AAC). Under the chairmanship of Professor Jabavu, the delegates drafted comprehensive resolutions on African grievances and resolved to constitute the AAC as "an organized body" that was to meet again (Document 9).
The All African Convention provided a new national umbrella organization within which all existing African political groups could be linked. A number of moderates, in particular the enfranchised voters of the Cape Province, who, like Professor Jabavu, had previously remained aloof from national bodies, joined for the first time with leaders of the ANC, members of the Communist Party, and others who had been active in the once powerful ICU.
Dr. John Dube and the Rev. Z. R. Mahabane, past presidents-general of the ANC, Dr. A. B. Xuma and Dr. J. S. Moroka, future presidents-general of the ANC, J. B. Marks and Edwin Mofutsanyana of the Communist Party, and Clements Kadalie of the ICU were all present. Among the delegates were tribal chiefs (some of them members of the Transkei Bunga), respected church dignitaries, professional men (some recently returned from study in Europe and America), elected members of urban advisory boards, prominent women, and representatives of a score of local organizations, including Coloureds from left-wing study circles in Cape Town. The more than 400 delegates included about 200 from Cape Province, 100 from the Transvaal, 70 from the Orange Free State, 30 from Natal, 10 from Basutoland, and one (representing the paramount chief) from Swaziland. "It is noteworthy," said the report of the proceedings, "that the delegates included six graduates from the University of South Africa, six from the United States of America, one from the University of Budapest, one from Glasgow, two from Edinburgh, and two from the University of London."
The diversity of the delegates made the unanimity of their views all the more striking. Discussion focused upon the pending Native Bills, but antagonism to the entire post-Union trend of government policy ran deep. The delegates paid particular attention to the franchise, arguing, as had the King William's Town meeting, that the common franchise had furthered harmony between the races. The proposed NRC was rejected as an unacceptable substitute for the franchise. In the same vein, the proposals contained in the Native Trust and Land Bill were rejected as inadequate for the satisfaction of African demands for land. The AAC also demanded reconsideration of "oppressive laws" such as the Riotous Assemblies Act, the Native Service Contract Act, the Poll Tax Act, and the pass laws. In every instance, resolutions on African grievances were carried unanimously.
Although the AAC declarations were uncompromising in their opposition to the direction of government policy, which was under right-wing pressure from Malan's opposition Nationalists and English-speaking racialists in Natal, they were punctuated by affirmations of loyalty to South Africa and the British Crown. Seeking some understanding response, the AAC appealed to the House of Assembly and to the four senators appointed for their "thorough acquaintance with the reasonable wants and wishes of the coloured races." It also stressed the importance of appealing to the governor-general, the King, and the British Parliament. The government was again urged to use the existing consultative machinery available under the Native Affairs Act of 1920. Moreover, in keeping with past practice, the AAC called for a national "day of universal humiliation and intercession" during which "prayers must be offered up for the Almighty's guidance and intervention in the dark cloud of the pending disfranchisement of the Cape Natives by the Parliament of South Africa." This resort to traditional tactics in the charged atmosphere of the meeting highlighted the peaceful and constitutional nature of African protests on the eve of a historic defeat for African political representation.
Yet the delegates were also receptive to proposals for more militant action. They unanimously accepted a proposal by a Cape Town Coloured Communist, John Gomas, that mass protest meetings be organized throughout South Africa. Dr. G. H. Gool, another Cape Town Coloured delegate, posed more ambitious aims when he urged that the AAC "lay the foundations of a national liberation movement to fight against all the repressive laws of South Africa." Although the delegates did not accept Gool's formulation, they endorsed a proposal made initially by Clements Kadalie that the convention remain in existence. Thus, there were signs that the AAC would be not merely a platform from which to protest the Native Bills but a potential springboard for further political action.
In its statement of principles the AAC sought a policy of "political identity" and "full partnership" in which no one racial group would be dominated by another. These aspirations were qualified, however, by an indication that Africans were willing to accept a "civilization test" as a qualification for the franchise. At the same time, the AAC proposed that while "various racial groups may develop on their own lines, socially and culturally, they will be bound together by the pursuit of common political objectives." Thus, while accepting "separate development" in the social sphere, the AAC stood in sharp contrast to the apartheid policy of the opposition Nationalist Party by its insistence that Africans and whites held a common citizenship and should participate in common political institutions. By endorsing both the Cape liberal ideal and united African action, the AAC fused the traditions established by the Cape African liberals and the leaders of the ANC.
The AAC's deputation to Cape Town in early 1936 had the same experience as had earlier African deputations: it met with politeness but received no satisfaction of its demands. Composed of members of the executive committee and led by Jabavu, the deputation met with Prime Minister Hertzog and other government officials. Hertzog offered a compromise: retention of the Cape African franchise but removal of all registered African voters from the common voters' roll, where they voted for the same candidates as did whites, to a separate roll which would elect three white members to the House of Assembly and two white members to the Cape Provincial Council. Under pressure from the government and some white sympathizers to accept this compromise formula, the deputation showed signs of wavering in its unequivocal opposition. Reports differ, particularly about the role of Professor Jabavu: apparently some members gave the impression that they would accept the compromise if given time to discuss it within the Convention. (The identity of the Africans who gave this impression has remained unsettled to the present day. Many Africans at the time suspected that Jabavu had supported compromise, but he vigorously denied this.) The prime minister refused to allow a postponement; and, in a statement presented to him before it left Cape Town, the deputation reaffirmed its opposition to the bills in the same strong terms that had been expressed by the AAC at its meeting in December 1935 (Document 10).
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Excerpted from From Protest to Challenge by Thomas Karis, Gwendolen M. Carter. Copyright © 1973 Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of Hoover Institution Press.
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