"To the Native Conference at Queenstown." Address by Meshach Pelem, President, Bantu
Union, 26 February, 1919. [Extracts]

The Basis of the Meeting

Now, to come to the subject that has brought us together, it is necessary that I should put you in the
way of understanding the basis upon which our meeting is founded. You will remember that four years
ago the whole world was placed under a fearful and ominous shadow by the outbreak of a terribly
devastating war, the like of which has never been experienced before. And when the warring nations
felt that they should come to a settlement of their differences after much bloodshed, they proclaimed
an armistice in order to the discussion of definite peace terms. The Government then informed our
chiefs, headmen and people, that the war was ending, and have the hope that peace would be
resumed. This great and welcome news came upon us unexpectedly, like a thief in the night, as we in
South Africa were quite unprepared for the announcement. We had the misfortune to be surprised by
this war while we were unprepared for such an emergency. Both our representative Associations, the
S.A. Native Congress and the Mbumba, existed only in name, being practically lifeless, but in the good
providence of God another effort taking its rise in the Transkei came into being. I am glad to say that
the Native Convention of the Transkei, having heard the news of peace, without delay proceeded to
convene at Toleni, under the Chairmanship of the Rev. Jonathan Mazwi, on the 16th December, 1918,
and the issue of their discussions there are the present meetings at Queenstown.

The first meeting was held here last month (22nd January, 1919) and the result of that Convention
was the formation of the present Bantu Unie.

The Bantu Unie

The poet was right in saying "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform." Who could
have foretold at the beginning of this Great War what the issue would be to mankind and the world.
Those who take a keen interest in the solution of world problems will have a vivid recollection of the
incidents, which led up to this terrible struggle. Among the old-standing animosities that precipitated
the war between France and Germany in 1871, the German Empire started a song of victory, and all
the other great Powers joined in the refrain, which was the "Survival of the Fittest." All the little
nations and big danced to the tune and desperately armed themselves for the coming orgie. Wicked
eyes peeped out from behind bristling bayonets, the whole civilized world was converted into one huge
arsenal, and children were trained to play with fireworks and explosives. All the diplomatic skill of men
like Edward the Peace-Maker, the late Czar of Russia, W. T. Stead, and a host of other humanitarians,
failed to effect a reduction of armaments, and international pourparlers leading up to the famous
Peace Conferences at the Hague ended in complete fiasco. I am sorry to say, gentlemen, that amid
the turmoil and upheavals which unsettled the times, British statesmanship, which had always stood
for the protection of native rights on principle as a long settled policy of the British people, lost its
balance, suffered an eclipse, and surrendered their obligations and our rights accordingly to the
Afrikaner Party represented by Generals Botha and Smuts. By this ignominious surrender they
imposed a terrific strain upon our loyalty, they have shaken the confidence of a people who have
learned to look to the British Sovereign for impartial justice, have aimed a mortal blow at British
institutions, which have stood the rest of centuries, and have taught the people of this country the
new doctrine unparalleled in English Constitutionalism that "white" is supremacy and "black" is
slavery. It would be impossible to promulgate a more monstrous doctrine than that which has as its
war cry, "Africa a White Man's Country." with the eventual deprivation of its black inhabitants of every
shred of citizen rights, land rights, and other liberties and privileges.

The Survival of the Fittest

When things reached this climax it is evident that God withdrew, and said to the sons and daughters
of men -- sing your war songs, sharpen your swords, on with the dance, but suddenly you shall sing
another song. Who will deny the truth of this? Today we are singing another song, and the demons of
Racialism find that the sword, or in other words, brute force, offers no true solution of the problem of
the social and international relationships of the nations of the world. The doctrine of the survival of the
fittest (an infidel doctrine, which has no faith in the over-lordship of a Sovereign Ruler of the
universe), will find fewer advocates today than it did yesterday. The great song today is the Peace
song at Paris, in which all the kindred nations are rejoicing--"Peace and goodwill toward men."
Armaments must be limited, arsenals demolished, and armies reduced. We must beat our swords into
ploughshares, and our spears into pruning hooks. All the Great Powers must come together to lay
broad and deep foundations for a lasting peace, and the idea so fondly cherished by these fully armed
race-survivalists, that the millions of the weaker races, and only weak perhaps because they have no
arsenals, should be left exposed to the tender mercies of the few swashbucklers like our statesman
soldier, Smuts, for example, to play with, is utterly condemned except in the imaginings of our Union
men of affairs, as an evil dream of the past. We should all be grateful to God that in His merciful
Providence, He should have set it in the hearts of nations to realise, that the time has come when all
the races of the earth must be freed from the tyranny of the few, and be granted equal rights and
liberties in all things without distinction of race, colour, or previous condition. Today the nations are all
provisionally agreed that equal justice must be done to all men without distinction, in order to remove
the causes of war, and it are on these grounds that you and I are assembled here today.

Causes of Race Division

We wish to take counsel together upon those matters which are embittering our relations, our position
in the land of our forefathers, and to find out how far these provisional agreements made in Europe
are likely to affect our destiny for better for worse in South Africa. The presence of our chiefs,
ministers and delegates, from all parts of the Union, is a sign of the general feeling that has so
profoundly disturbed your minds. As your fellow-countryman, I am in perfect sympathy with your
motives, aspirations, and desires, as well as your grievances, and tribulations, because your pains,
sorrows, tears and anxieties, are parts of my own experiences, and moreover the heroic endurances
and sacrifices of this war must have taught you that there is nothing more honourable than that a
man or woman should lose even life itself for the love of country, the honour of their people, and the
graves where the ashes of their forefathers rest. If the celebrations of peace, and all the rejoicings
connected therewith, cannot stir up your hearts, and fire your blood to rise up and strive for our
rights, and interests, which is our lawful and legitimate duty, if we neglect or trample underfoot the
grand opportunity presented by this war, after all the meritorious services you have performed, and
which were acknowledged and appreciated by the British people in the hour of their extremity, if we
cannot accept the utterances of statesmen, and national leaders, who speak for England, her allies
and America, who said that their reasons for entering the war was to fight for the liberties of the
weaker peoples like ourselves; then you will deserve to carry no weight in the counsels of the civilized
world, and to go down to your graves for ever disgraced, "unwept, unhonoured and unsung."
The American Republic, by the mouth of its great President, frankly declared, that it fought for the
regeneration of the world, and its reconstruction upon an entirely new basis, after the principles,
which all faithful Christians realise, are enunciated by (he Lord Jesus Christ.

The Mind of the People

You have been summoned, chiefs and fellow countrymen, to discuss and ascertain the mind of the
people, in relation to those supreme interests, which are agitating men's minds at the present time.
Even as we speak, a memorial setting forth the grievances of the coloured people by the African
Political Organization is now crossing the ocean on its way to Lord Milner, the Secretary of State for
the Colonies. His Excellency the Governor-General for transmission to His Majesty the King has
accepted another memorial from the Native National Congress of the Transvaal. The Nationalist
Republicans among the whites who are agitating for the dissolution of (he Union, a Union which was
aimed against the black man, are also proceeding across the water to lay their complaints before the
Peace Conference. We also feel that the time is propitious for us to move in unison, and proceed to
relate our cause to our sympathetic sovereign, King George V. I know, and doubtless you also are
aware, that there are some among us who are opposed to this step. They contend that we have
Messrs. Botha and Smuts as our representatives, and I should like to ask such, if they really
understand that Botha and Smuts represent a Union from which we are excluded. If therefore they are
our representatives, who represents the Union? Have they had a revelation of the inner secrets and
purposes governing the motives of these men, and are they aware that those motives impelled them
to protest at the peace conference at Vereeniging that they would under no circumstances accept the
British sovereignty unless it was clearly demonstrated that there would be no equal rights extended to
black men in the surrendered republics? Were they present at the conferences at Bloemfontein and
Durban, which settled the question of Union, when their friends Botha and Smuts, with ruthless
violence of speech and utterance, opposed the very thought of granting civil rights to natives, until the
atmosphere of the Convention building was surcharged with vituperative invective hurled against us as
a people, insomuch that the Cape members were stunned, or hypnotized, into insensibility of their first
duty, which was at all costs to maintain the principles of the British Constitution unblemished and
undefiled in spite of the hurricane of scurrilous abuse which sought to pervert and unbalance their
reason.

Chiefs, fellow countrymen and fellow-delegates, I think that I have to the best of my abilities
endeavoured to demonstrate to you, that from the day the terms of peace between Great Britain and
the South African Republics were signed at Pretoria, and the subsequent inauguration of the Union of
South Africa, the British policy and principles of Government, which have always commanded the
respect of the world, are, so far as the Bantu are concerned, being gradually eliminated, replaced, and
superseded, by the introduction and resuscitation of the old, crude, savage ideas and methods of the
defunct Republics of the Transvaal and Free State. Again, you will observe that Great Britain which
once stood as liberator of the oppressed peoples; Great Britain which always threw her influence and
often her sword into the scale of those who struggle for freedom; Great Britain who has always
encouraged and subsidized small and weak nations during periods of despondency and destitution;
and has therefore been known throughout the civilized world as the bulwark, guardian and protector
of human rights everywhere on the broad universe, has been compelled by a new school of political
advisers in this country, and in England, to uphold a wicked policy of selfish exclusiveness and greed,
which aims at the exploitation of the natives of Africa for profit. With stoical indifference and cynical
disregard of the sacred rights of millions of His Majesty's subjects, the safeguards set up for their
security by constitutional mandates of the past, and in direct violation and contravention of the
solemn treaties, obligations, agreements, and assurances, which have been made from time to time
with our chiefs and people, British Ministers have been found or forced to become traitors to the
ancient constitution of England, and have sold the Bantu under a fraudulent Union. We are not without
hope that these conditions will be changed, for if British Ministers who are charged with the duty of
advising His Majesty on questions affecting our welfare, can be allowed so lightly to bargain and trade
with the sacred rights of millions, then it would seem that a question of paramount and constitutional
importance, to the Empire is raised, which can only be dealt with satisfactorily by the Imperial
Government.

This new school of advisers, seem to think that the power, wealth, and glory, of the British nation has
been founded like their own crude, primitive, and barbarous systems, upon the rapacity and plunder
of the weaker, and more ignorant races of this Continent; whereas the British power is founded upon
industry, commerce, and just dealing with the subject races, as a principle of policy and humanity.
The inspiration that caused us as natives to follow the flag to France, is finely set forth in the words of
Albert J. Beveridge in a speech which I am sure you will endorse, delivered at a banquet of the Union
League Club at Philadelphia on 15th February, 1899, because it means to us larger liberty, nobler
opportunity, and greater happiness, besides all other blessings to which we are inheritors under the
British Empire.

"What is England's glory? England's immortal glory is not Agincourt or Waterloo. It is not her
merchandise or commerce. It is Australia, New Zealand, and Africa reclaimed. It is India redeemed. It
is Egypt, mummy of nations, touched into modern life. England's imperishable renown is in English
science, throttling the plague in Calcutta, English law administering order in Bombay, English energy
planting an industrial civilization from Cairo to the Cape, and English discipline creating soldiers, men,
and finally citizens, perhaps, even out of the fellaheen of the dead land of the Pharaohs."

In conclusion, although I am not a prophet, I will venture to say that as long as the foundations of
Union are based upon oppression and injustice, they shall never unify, but on the contrary, evil and
division shall reign, because it does not rest upon that righteousness which exalteth nations. In spite
of all our difficulties the time is not distant, when the poetic vision shall realised which is set forth in
these lines: -

"O Thou on whom the islands wait,

And nations far away, who midst the Gentiles shall be great,

Whom all men must obey.

"Behold the lands where Satan reigns

Upon his cruel throne, that sits in darkness and in chains,

And bow to wood and stone.

"Thine ancient heritage behold,

Thy faithful Abraham's seed, and lead them to the holy fold

Wherein the ransomed feed.

Far from the West bid hatred flee,

And unbelief and pride, how long shall those that love not Thee

Thy seamless robes divide?

"How long shall Thou forget the East?

Where first Thy truth was spread, Where Bishops first Thy Name confessed,

And holy martyrs bled?

"Lead sinners from the paths of sin,

Let scorners hear Thy voice, and let all heretics come in,

And make Thy Church rejoice.

To God, the Mighty and the Just,

All praise and glory be;

To Him in whom the isles shall trust,

And Holy Ghost, to Thee Amen."

Source:

Karis, T & Carter G. M. (1972). From Protest to Challenge: A Documentary History of African Politics in South Africa, 1882-1964, Volume 1: Protest and Hope, 1882-1934. Stanford University: Hanover Press.

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