Documents: Africans Acting Alone

DOCUMENT 49b-5. "Open Letter to Blackpool."   Article by Clements Kadalie, in The New Leader, September 30,1927

Most Europeans have some knowledge of the opening up of the "Dark Continent" by the white races, from the commencement of the Slave Trade and the invasion of the Continent by missionaries and white settlers, through the successive stages of colonisation and industrialisation, until 1909, when the separate Colonies of South Africa were grouped into a self-governing unit.

After 1909, most British people, except those directly connected with any of the vast profit-making mining or industrial concerns of the country, have ceased to be particularly interested in events in South Africa. The whole fate of the country, and of her millions of people of subject races, has been left to a small minority of white men, whose immediate   interests have been diametrically opposed to the welfare of the vast mass of the population.

The Foundations Of African Civilisation

White civilisation in Africa has been built up on the assumption that the black man is inherently inferior to the white, and that this alleged inferiority gave the white man the right to exploit the black economically, and to oppress him socially and politically. It has been built up on the assumption of the natives forming to all eternity a huge labouring class, satisfied to live on the level of animals, and with little opportunities for education or advancement, and of the white men forming the aristocracy of the country, holding all legislative power in their hands, and doing none but skilled and administrative work, of which the natives, quo natives, were assumed to be incapable.

The South African Act of 1909 robbed the natives of political power, the Native Land Act of 1913 robbed them of whatever land still remained to them, and the Colour Bar Act of 1926 forbade them the use of machin­ery and robbed them of the opportunity for any economic advancement.

The Cracking Of The Foundations

No one but those blinded by self-interest and racial prejudice could have supposed the foundations on which the white men had built their civilisation to be sound. The tide of progress among the natives was inevitable. The men who were called upon to fight in the Great War for "the rights of small nations," and who were stirred by President Wilson's vision   of   "a  world   made safe for democracy"--men, moreover, who were learn­ing how civilisation worked from the very labour which the white man forced upon them in the mines and industries of the country--could not long be satisfied to live as animals, with neither rights nor heritage in the country of their birth.

Deprived of all political means of redress for their grievances, the African workers saw in economic organisation their one hope of freedom. In 1919 the Industrial and Com­mercial Workers' Union of Africa was formed, with a membership of 24. Despite every imaginable persecution and oppression, and the non-cooperation and in some cases even the enmity of the white Trade Unions, the I.C.U. now has a membership of some hun­dred thousand aboriginal natives, coloured (mixed race) and Indian workers. It must be reckoned with as one of the biggest factors in the history of South Africa at the present time.

The White Trade Unions

The attitude of the white Trade Unions and of the Labour Party in South Africa to the growing movement among the natives for better conditions of life and labour may seem incomprehensible to the workers of other countries whose social philosophy has been built upon a belief in racial equality.

The white Trade Unionists of South Africa have never openly repudiated that philosophy;
but the fact must be faced that the wages of the white workers (which are higher than anywhere else in the world) are high because the wages paid to the black workers are so far below subsistence level.

The white Trade Unions have from the first refused to accept natives as members, and in spite of the often-repeated desire of the I.C.U. to cooperate with them, they have refused to do so. The result has been that native strikes to secure better wages and conditions of labour have been broken by the white Trade Unionists, who have filled the places of the black workers, and the I.C.U. has been unable to prevent itself being used as an instrument by the employers to render action by the white Trade Unions non-effective.

In April, 1926, the South African Trades Union Congress, which was sitting simultaneously   with   the  I.C.U. Congress in Johannesburg, refused either to send a representative to the I.C.U. Congress, or to receive a fraternal delegate from the I.C.U. to their own Congress.

The I.C.U., denied the help of the white workers of its own country, and threatened by General Hertzog's Segregation Policy--the Government was about to introduce four native Bills--decided to seek help outside South Africa. The 1926 Congress passed a resolution that affiliation should be sought with the British Trades Union Congress. By the British Trades Union Congress it was advised to seek affiliation instead with the International Federation of Trades Unions, and its application was accepted by that body. At the same time the "Imperialist" Committee of the I.L.P. and various influential individuals in England were doing good work on its behalf. All these factors affected to some extent the attitude of the white Trade Union and Labour Movement in South Africa.

A Gesture To The Whites

The 1927 Congress of the I.C.U. adopted the following resolution: That in the opinion of this Congress the time has now arrived when both black and white workers of South Africa should join in one national Trade Union Movement, with a view to presenting a united front to one common enemy--namely, the arbitrary and unlimited power of Capitalism--and that this resolution be telegraphed to the South African Trades Union Congress now in session at Cape Town.

The I.C.U. gesture this time met with a more cordial response, and a resolution was adopted by the South African Trades Union Congress to seek ways and means of closer cooperation between the two organisations.

It seemed, therefore, that a rapid change was taking place, and that the work of the I.C.U. was to be made easier by the coopera­tion of the white workers.

In July, however, came the bombshell. The Union Government, with the support of all but three Labour Party members, passed the Native Administration Act--one of the most iniquitous and drastic repressive measures which any modern Government has ever enacted.

The Real Motive

The real motive of the Act is clearly the suppression of the growing movement among the natives to secure a living wage and decent conditions of existence. It is, in effect, a proclamation of martial law. The Governor General is empowered to prevent any native meetings, to deport any native from one town to another, and to define Pass areas, outside which no native is allowed to go without a special permit, which can be refused on purely arbitrary grounds, or on no grounds at all. The Government states that the Act is designed "to prevent the promotion of any feelings of hostility between natives and Europeans"!
Already the Act is being put into force. I.C.U. meetings are being prohibited. Officials are being forbidden to go from one town to another, and the farmers of Natal, Transvaal and the Orange Free State, taking advantage of the resulting situation, have announced that any black workers known to be members of the I.C.U. will be ejected. Already the farmers have put their policy into operation; thousands of natives are being rendered home­less, and the efforts of the I.C.U. to assist them, by buying land on which they can live, are blocked by the Native Land Act of 1913, which makes it illegal for natives to purchase any but Crown Lands--which the Government now refuse to sell to them.

The Possibility Of Racial Warfare

If this Act is allowed to remain on the Statute Book the future of South Africa will be dark indeed. Denied all legitimate expres­sion for his grievances and aspirations, who can blame the African if he takes what will seem to him the only possible path to freedom, if he comes to hate the white man as his oppressor, and if the attainment of justice and liberty comes for him to be a thing synonymous with the crushing of the civilisa­tion the white man has built up?

None knows better than we do how fatal is the narrow spirit of nationalism; but, if the present ungenerous and shortsighted policy is continued by the Union Government, what other path will there be for us to take, and who among us will be able to show the African worker, maddened and humiliated by the white man's injustice and oppression, that white civilisation can yet be a fine and beautiful thing, that many of its constructive ideals are sane and desirable, and that its destruction in Africa will be immeasurably to the hurt of the African?

Before It Is Too Late

Before it is too late the workers of the world must come to our assistance. They must force on the South African Government, and on the Labour Party and Trade Union Move­ment in South Africa, the realisation that civilisation has grown beyond the stage where the happiness and prosperity of the few could be held to justify the oppression and misery of the many. The recognition must be driven home to them that slavery destroys not only the slaves but the slave-owners.

Upon the workers of Britain rests a special responsibility, and to them we appeal for immediate action to be taken. Protection must be assured to millions of defenceless souls, and the subjection of the native races of Africa must end.

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